Die Zufreidenheit mit Berlin

                                                             B   E   R  L   I   N  !

Like so many of my experiences, I cannot tell you every detail of Berlin, it would take more patience then I have to write this blog and more then you have an attention span to read all the way through it. So I will use my usual fall back of lists and pictures! Note: the lists are in no particular order, I have issues ranking things

                                                                Top 5 meals in Berlin

1) Curry at a Vietnamese restaurant, possibly the best curry I have ever had, this is really saying a lot being from Seattle (which as we know has great Vietnamese food).

2) Dolores Burritos- Dolores= Patty when she was hungry, so we had to go eat lunch one day at this delicious and cheap chipotle look-a-like, Naturlisch!

Patty meets Dolores!

3) A Russian Restaurant- Very delicious, warm food on a particularly cold day. 

4) Currywurst on the streets- no pictures, but think of a bratwurst cut up, sprinkled with curry powder and a savory sauce, yum!

5) Hops and Barley- So this wasn't a restaurant, but a hidden gem of a local brewery.

                                              Top 5 Museums (yes I did go to more then 5)

1) Jewish museum- An overview of the history of the Jewish population in Europe throughout history and their role in society, a vast museum that was very well organized and had much more content in it then I expected it to have. 

2) Technical museum- Everything you would want to know about how technology has changed over the past 200 years, from logomotive, wind, hydroelectric and electronic technology!

3) Natural history  museum- lions, tigers and dinosaurs? Oh my, animals in jars!

4) Neues museum- This houses the Nefertiti bust and many other ancient Egyptian treasures besides the rest of the exhibits (can you tell what was my favorite?).

A lunar calender and a hat, so multi-purpose

5) Musical instrument museum- unfortunately we could take no pictures in this particular museum, but it was filled with ancient and modern instruments of the most unusual kind. There was a Stradivarius violin, the break down of the inside of a piano, huge organs and a combination violin/trumpet/tamborine.

Still smiling after, wait, how many museums?

                                                         Top 5 Sights in Berlin

1) Berlin Wall- Needs no explaination.

Touching the wall in the street

2) Cupola- Unfortunately we couldn't walk around because it was frozen (makes sense when it was below zero every day) but it was still cool to be in the parliament building.  

3) Brandenburg- A must see, so beautiful!

4) Checkpoint Charlie- The famous crossing point between East and West Berlin, had to get my passport stamped.

5) Ritter sport store- Here you could make your own chocolate, drink melted chocolate, or simply buy a lot of chocolate! Guess who did all of that...

Leslie hugs the bear in a chocolate stupor

Do I have enough chocolate?

                                           Top 3 things I could only do in Berlin

1)  Family- I had the great opportunity to meet my relatives Bernard and Gisela Lindenbein who live in Berlin. They graciously invited me over for coffee, cake and a huge serving of family history all topped off with practice in speaking German, truly one of my best afternoons in Berlin.

2) Berlin philharmonic- Standing room seats bought the night of to see one of the top symphonies in the world...what a night! They could've played John Cage's 4'33'' and I would've still been in awe.

Dreams do come true

Who's ready for the symphony??

Time for the down beat

3) Berlin Film Festival- We were lucky enough to be in Berlin for the opening weekend of the Berlin Film Festival. I managed to see a film entitled" Aujourd'hui" about a Senegalese man experiencing the last day of his life in his home city of Dakar after living abroad in the US. It was an amazing mix of my two experiences this year, anyone who has been to Senegal should try to find this movie either online or at their video stores, it is very moving.

The reader board that updates which movies are still available

When will the doors open?

 

Who's ready to watch a movie at 9:30am?

This trip was an amazing blur of museums, long bus rides, late nights and so much more. Here are some extra photos of the people who joined me in this crazy endeavor, it wouldn't have been the same without them!

Kaja, Me, Patty, Andriy

Julian, Andriy, Leslie, Jeremy, Me, Harry, Patty and Blaine

Team Awesome after another successful day in Berlin

Too many to name, IES Three Day Tour 2012

Eating in Prague, Chillin' in Dresden, Surveying in Leipzig

Our intensive three week study of the German language was celebrated with a trip to Germany! A large portion of our program (I would say about 40, but don't quote me on that) said good bye to Vienna in the early morning of saturday February 4th and boarded a bus headed to Germany. Now our trip consisted of two parts, we stayed in Dresden for two days (a lunch stop in Prague) and then onto Leipzig for a quick afternoon tour and then back onto the bus for the final stay in Berlin!Accordingly, I have divided up the trip into two parts, here we go!

Day 1. this was spent on the bus, except for a wonderful lunch break in Prague (no big deal). We found a nice Czech restaurant and had a delicious meal of duck in a restaurant that looked like it had been around for a hundred years. After our stomachs were sufficiently full some of us decided to run up to this look out to snap some quick pictures of the city, thus making us slightly late to the bus (ah such was the theme for the week, not enough time to see everything and always running to make it back on time!) I will have to go back to Prague, it was absolutely stunning and the people were very friendly.

Travel Team Awesome!

Finally we made it to Dresden where we had dinner at a nice Italian restaurant after a long day of traveling. To re-cap my day by country, I had breakfast in Vienna, lunch in Prague and dinner in Dresden. My trip was off to a great start!












Day 2. Being a tourist means that no matter how late you were out the night before, the day starts early! We were off on a bus tour of Dresden where we occasionally would get out and check out the sights. The only hinderance was the extreme cold which prevented us getting a really good lay out of the city. the tour guide was very good (too bad I can't remember the cool information we learned, guess I will have to go back!) and ended the tour at "the most beautiful shop in the world". This was a cheese shop that was entirely covered in handmade tiles. It was gorgeous, but we were not allowed to take pictures in there, although we could take souvenir postcards!
 After the tour we had a break for lunch where we were all ushered into this basement restaurant that summed up every stereotype I had about German food. I can't describe how amazing it was, but these pictures say it all.

We toured our first museum, I believe it was the Dresden state art collection ( Staatliche Kunstsammlungen Dresden) which we couldn't see all the way through, but we got a good look at the Turkish section with our guide. our last day in Dresden was finished up with a warm cheap meal at a small local restaurant that reminded me of some chic places in Ballard (the mac n' cheese was only 4 euros and Patty and I had to admit defeat because it was soo cheesy!).
Dresden was a fun combination of living history and a vibrant, slightly underground modern life. Everything was a little grungy feeling, for example seeing a concert in an abandoned house, but the beer was excellent and the people were friendly despite the freezing weather. Would I go back to Dresden? Yes!

The new Leipzig

Day 3: Our trip was already off to a great start in Dresden and so we soldiered on to Leipzig. We only had a scant half a day in Leipzig but we made the most of it. As per usual we did a bus tour of the city (again, -10 degrees celcius is 14 degrees Farenheit so our planned walking tour would've left us as statues in Leipzig). We saw lots of monuments, important sites, opera houses etc.

We did have one stop on our tour for a "5 minute picture taking of this monument to soldiers (I think)" which, as you can see, is very large.

5 minutes...? No problem

Our tour guide told us that you can climb to the top of it and so we decided to run past the frozen over lake in front and up the monument. Naturally, we were late getting back to the bus, completely out of breath and I was coughing for the next hour from inhaling the sub-freezing air so quickly, extreme tourism!

A couple huffs and puffs later

Bach

We had lunch in a very up scale restaurant with a beautiful view of the city and afterwards us music nerds went to a music mecca; the church of Bach!!!

Love for Bach

After this we piled back into the bus and it was off to...(see next post to find out where!)

Oh what a night!

Oh yes, ball number one has happened, it was as elegant and gorgeous as I imagined! During our orientation weekend we had preliminary dance lessons which made all the girls giggly for a chance to wear fancy gowns and dance the night away with while all the guys started sweat because it was the first time dancing involved more work then swaying back and forth. As the night approached all conversations turned towards the ball, specifically, who would be able to actually pull off the Viennese Waltz (aside from Luke, who deserves a special shout out for giving us all extra dances lessons which we desperately needed).

 All of us Americans dressed up in our gowns and tuxes, hopped on subways, street cars or taxis and entered the Hofburg Palace with tickets clutched in our hands. Pictures were snapped in the grand staircase and we tried not to drool too much as we found our way to the main dance hall.

There were many rooms opened with different styles of dancing going on throughout the night (traditional, salsa, jazz, you name it and it was probably there).

Room mates! Gwen, Me, Jen and Susan

In the main room was where the opening ceremonies were held, which was with all the debutantes going out with their dates and doing a dance and other formalities (I couldn't see this part, should've worn taller heels). The bands/orchestras/dj's played their music all through the night until the ball ended at 5am!

A group of us stayed until the bitter end, delirious with fatigue and shoes in hands (My feet were sore for at least 3 days after, in fact I still feel that my toes have not recovered) we struggled home to bed for a few hours maybe before German class.

Our German professor took pity on us and held German class in a fancy cafe instead of sitting in a classroom. Thank goodness for that, I don't know if I could've handled real class after a night of dancing and people watching. Needless to say, the ball was almost as magical as a Cinderella fairytale!

After ball class in the cafe

Wir kommen aus Wien!

Now the second half of my insane year of travel has started and wow is it already going by quickly! I arrived at the airport in Vienna and was whisked off right away for a weekend of orientation in the town of Mariatzell. I was again over loaded with study abroad information but the most overwhelming aspect for me was the amount of Americans that I was with! In total there are 107 people in the IES spring program in Vienna. I quickly gave up the idea of meeting and getting to know everyone in the program and focused instead on learning how to "squeeze the juice" in Vienna.

Patty and I freezing in front of the summer palace

Ice skating in front of the Rathause

This is a phrase that one of our program directors uses about every other sentence, but he does have a point. While we are here we should take every opportunity to get up and do something, I mean, we only live once, right? It is a motto I am going to try to live every day by, which so far is just making me so exhausted that I am asleep on my way to hitting the pillow every night. The IES program is set up very differently from the SIT Senegal program, so I would first like to give a little explanation as to how my semester is planned out. We have three weeks where we only take one class (German intensive!) every day in the morning. This way beginners like myself can feel that we may be able to walk into a store and order something in German and MAYBE have the confidence to continue the conversation in German even when the Austrian has already taken pity on us and started speaking in English. Although I feel like I cannot cram much more German into my head, I love the fact that I already feel like I have a handle on the language and may actually enjoy learning more German (I may even take a German class next year...I know my Ege family will be happy to hear this). This period ends February 3rd (this Friday) and then we have a week long break before our actual semester classes start.
Once classes start it is similar to classes at a our home schools, however we are in Vienna so it is far more entertaining. For example, in German class we went to one of the famous Viennese coffee houses and had breakfast the day after a big ball that we all went to (please see the next blog post for full and complete details on this most elegant affair). Our classes take place in a Palace in the heart of the first district of Vienna. For those of you who have never been to Vienna, it is organized in districts which are arranged in a circle around the center.

Heurigen night

Mozart is everywhere

It is very easy to travel in between the districts, I live in the fifth district and all I have to do is take a street car (Strassenbahn for those of you who sprechen Deutsche) and I am in the middle of Vienna! For now I am trying to take advantage of everything I can in Vienna, get a grip on what the city has to offer and gear up for a semester of fun, travel and incredible experiences! Already I have been to Bratislava,

Happy Birthday Oma!

 next week I am going on an IES trip to Germany (Dresden and Berlin here I come! Oh and Prague for lunch) and I have trips booked to London and Brussells. My mind is reeling by how much my has changed this year, but I am just grateful that it is all working out and I will just deal with my shock of way too many cultures later! Right now it is time to "Squeeze the Juice" and enjoy what I have here! Next stop, Berlin!