OUR project however was however shown to the entire FUBiS program at the Farewell ceremony (It was the only student project shown from ALL of the classes in the program!!!) where Rory performed it live! Not only did our class LOVE our video and Rory’s performance, but the program and its directors and CEO’s loved it! It was an absolute hit!
The final scene in the video is my personal favorite. After the exam on the last day of class, I stayed in the classroom to work on our video. Claudia our Professor also stayed. It was a really nice day though and Claudia decided she wanted to go out onto the Balcony outside our window. Our classroom doesn’t have a door that lead out to it, but just our window. SO Claudia decided to climb out the window! I thought this was hysterical and as she was preparing and putting her things out there, I prepared Anna’s flip cam and got the wonderful shot of her climbing out the window. SO at the end of our film as the students are walking in it looks like Claudia is trying to escape! She had NO idea I had taken this video and nearly collapsed she was laughing so hard, when she saw it! It was great! After the presentation, we had a free luncheon and I said SOO many goodbyes. I did NOT like that at all! I am going to miss all of them so much! I already do!
After the lunch I went with Nicole out to Friedrichshain and got a few drinks. Watermelon man cocktails are REALLY good btw! Nicole had never been to this area and so I showed her the graffiti and Simon-Dach-Straße. We then went and walked the East-Side-Gallery and took lots of pictures and signed the wall! It was a REALLY great way to end my time with her here in Berlin. We took the train back and she had to leave. That was the first time I REALLY felt upset about everyone leaving. I know I whined the week before, but that is when it really hit me. When she walked off the train, I was SOO upset! Thankfully she lives in Pittsburgh and I’m going to go visit her when I get home! After leaving Nicole, I went back to my dorm and saw people still around and felt a little better. I cleaned my room packed up my things and said a few more goodbyes. The next day I moved into my new place.
This week felt a little weird. Through Monday I had FUBiS friends still kicking around and my friend Rory even stayed with me 2 nights. I’m pretty glad he did, because it would have been a bit lonely and pretty awkward those first few nights had I been alone with my crazy landlady. He and I spent last Sunday walking around Mitte. We started at Friedrichsstraße and then made a big circle to the Museen Insel (museum island) ran into a flohmarkt (which because it was on the Museen Insel was super expensive), wandered through the Insel, down to Gendarmenmarkt and saw the German and French Churches there. We then headed toward the Tiergarten and walked through it on a path parallel to Straße des 17. Juni . It was a super hot day, so the shade on the path was MUCH appreciated. It was a really nice walk though, because the Tiergarten is just beautiful. Then we got to the Siegessäule and paid our €2,50 student fee and climbed to the top. It was super hot and in the stairway it was super stuffy, but at the top it was totally worth it! You can see the whole city from up there! Absolutely Gorgeous! The top was pretty crowded and the side with the shade was even more crowded lol. We stayed in the shaded are for a while and then headed back down.
We then headed through the Tiergarten to my favorite place in all of Berlin, Café am Neuen See! I have visited this café EVERY time I have been to Berlin. The first time was with my cousin Julia, when we met the very flirtatious eastern European men and had fun learning how to row a boat. The second time was with Marybeth and Anna. It took us FOREVER to find the café again! I remember us walking by the zoo thinking we had run into a Jurassic park type park; because the sounds we were hearing were not anything any of us had ever heard before. We finally found it and had beer and pizza and took a rowboat out as well. We got stuck again as I had with Julia in the low hanging vines and tree roots. It was awesome. We went there several times actually and got Pizza and bier, except I always got fresh peppermint tea. With Rory I had a new experience; we ate at the cafeteria style portion of the café and got pizza there. We sat at the long picnic style tables and sat with an old German couple. They were very nice! Possibly the funniest moment with them was when the man was trying to explain to us the type of people that live in Neu Köln. We had just been on an excursion there the week before and knew it has a high Turkish population, and the immigration issue is a big deal in Germany as well. SO when the man told us that Juppys lived there Rory and I just looked at one another thinking, “OMG what have we gotten ourselves into here!?!?!” We thought that this was some sort of derogatory term for the Turkish in the area. Thankfully the man was trying to explain the term to us and then we realized he meant YUPPIES!!!! I guess there is a part of NeuKöln (which is a Bezirk aka borough in Berlin) that is filled with young rich yuppies. We were SOOO relieved when we realized what he meant. He and his wife were very nice. His wife and I teased Rory and the man about the amount of smoking they do.
After a wonderful chat in German with this couple we headed off toward Ku-damm to see the Kaiser-Wilhelm-Gedächtnis-Kirche. It normally looks like this:
However they are renovating it right now and it looks more like this a big aluminum box... lame. I had seen it a few times before with Julia and on an excursion last time with FUBiS, but Rory had not. We did get to look inside though. Then after that we headed back to my apartment. I asked my landlady if Rory could stay another night, because his plans changed suddenly. Once I had the OK from her (we had a backup plan of him sleeping on the floor of another friend in our Goerzallee dorm, but my couch was far comfier), he and I headed out to see the House of 100 beers restaurant in Charlottenburg (another Bezirk). OMG it was SOOO good! I got a Wahrsteiner and potato salad and both were delicious. Rory got himself a Guinness (something from home lol) and knackers, which are long skinny sausages. We went back to my apartment again and then went straight to sleep. I had class in the morning and we wanted to get him out early so he could start planning a new trip for himself. I saw him again that night and met a new friend, whom he had met in his hostel, named Alleigh! She is super sweet and was spending just a few nights in Berlin. She headed to Amsterdam and Rory ended up following her there. I’m excited we met her, because I now have another new friend in Cali and she has a beach house I am welcome to visit!!! YAY BEACH!!!
It was sad when Rory left because he was one of my closest friends here. He and Nicole were probably the hardest to say goodbye to. I love you all, but I spent most of my time with them.
Once Rory left and Matt dropped off his things (Matt also was headed to Amsterdam with his brother and dropped off his huge luggage since he is staying for term 3. He didn’t want to carry that around Amsterdam, so I let him leave his things in my room under my bed), just about all of my friends had left the city. I had my classes during the day and I wandered around the city a bit after my classes, but for the most part this week I have been in my beautiful new apartment reading or studying. I watched several movies on my TV in German and OF COURSE watched the World Cup games. My landlady found me fairly hysterical. She and my roommate hadn’t been around the apartment when Rory and I watched the US beat Brazil so they were not prepared for my sport hysterics, Lol. For those of you who have seen me during a game I really care about, you know what I’m talking about. I curse the opposing team to the netherworld, and rejoice like a child given an insane amount of sugar and do everything short of a cartwheel when my team does something good! In between these fits of anger and joy, I pace the room, bite my cheeks, and play with my hands (Lacrosse girls remember the pacing room I needed on the sideline? I need that for every sport! lol).
Outside of the soccer games I have met, just a few new friends at my new school D.I.D. Their names are Heather and Callie. Heather is a PHD candidate at Vanderbilt and got her undergrad at GW, SO ANOTHER DC LOVER!!!! She is from Chicago, but looooves DC. She is getting her PhD in German history (early modern). Her thesis is pretty cool, but a little difficult to explain. Callie just moved here from Dallas, TX to live with her Berliner BF and will be working as a pre-school teacher at the Berlin Metropolitan School. She told me they are looking for another teacher for the pre-school. I’m considering this possibility, although since I don’t have my certification yet, it would be a long shot. I met her on Friday and then after class Heather and I went out to Friedrichshain, one of my favorite parts of Berlin. We went to a café/bar on Simon-Dach- Straße (this is the 3rd week in a row I have brought someone who had never been to Simon-Dach- Straße to this street/area after my Friday classes!) It was just supposed to be for a drink, but we ended up sitting at the café from 4pm until 1am! I don’t know that I have ever sat for 8 hours and talked with someone I just met before! It was a great conversation. We talked about German history and the ridiculous things that happened in our classes this week, we reminisced about DC, talked about our families, our past and current relationships, PhD programs that are good for German History, and SOOO much more. I don’t remember most of the details of our conversation, but it was really fun!
This Weekend I have basically been a lump on a log. I have sat and studied and read. I did have one annoying thing happen though. I need to buy groceries yesterday (Saturday), because all of the grocery stores are closed on Sunday. I also needed to pull out money at the bank, because I was down to my last €2. I took the train ride down to Rathaus Steglitz, because that was the closest grocery area and ATM I know of. It is about 4 stops on the S-bahn from my apartment. I got to the bank and then realized I had left my wallet with my public transportation pass and my debit card back in my room! I was FREAKING OUT! Had I had my pass with me it would have just been frustrating, but I since I didn’t that meant I would have to ride the train without a pass back to my apartment! The way the metro system works here is based on the honor system. They expect you to have your pass on you. On the busses you must show it, but the trains no one checks. HOWEVER there is control. It is super rare, but they are plain clothes officers who periodically check the trains, and if you are checked and don’t have a pass it is €50 on the spot or a trip to the police station! I not only didn’t have the pass, but no little amount of money to even buy a one way ticket to be safe. My only hope was that I didn’t have the awful luck that my first time seeing the control this Berlin trip would be on this short ride home. Thankfully it wasn’t and I went back got my wallet. I Went BACK to Rathaus Steglitz, got myself some more quarkcreme and jam and headed home. I bought some strawberries at the stand by my apartment and made the best dessert EVER! A small spoonful of jam, quarkcreme and 5 large strawberries cut up. It was divine. If I can’t find the quarkcreme I need to make this when I get home I will be SERIOUSLY sad. Quark btw is a fresh cheese that has the consistency of sour cream and cream cheese mixed together. The flavor is kind of like that as well. That may sound awful to some of you, but I swear it is awesome! Quark is also naturally SUPER low in fat, so it as an awesome lowfat healthy dessert!
Ok well I am having a hard time paying attention to the US vs Japan game while writing this and I have been looking forward to this all week so I’m going to end this here. I don’t know why I can’t make these things shorter! I ramble too much lol. 4 ½ to 5 pages per post is a little crazy. OK well Love you all! See you soon!
Kathleen ♥
OK people I have read through this several times and every time I find awful grammar errors. It sounds almost as if i can't make proper sentences! But I'm going to chalk this up to being here.... It happened last time I was here too. AND I was writing this during the US vs Japan game! SO don't judge me too harshly ;)
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