Berlin - Overview and Impressions

Before I get into pictures and specifics about our Berlin trip, some background info seems to be in order.

Our trip was organized by the Auslandsamt (the department at the University that deals with international students), which meant that our group (Wheaton, Wesleyan, Vanderbilt) was just a part of a larger group of international students going on the trip. For the trip, the Auslandsamt rented a tour bus to get us to and around Berlin and, since every seat was filled, I would guess we had about 40 or so people along for the ride.

Our trip ran from Wednesday to Sunday and we had a pretty packed itinerary: Wednesday we drove to Berlin and checked into the hostel and then walked over to the Brandenburg Gate and the Reichstag, Thursday we had a bus tour of the city in the morning and then the rest of the day off, Friday we drove to Potsdam (about an hour away) to tour a Stasi prison and one of Fredrick the Great's summer homes and then we came back to Berlin and went to a show at a theater, Saturday we had a foot tour of Kreutzberg (one of Berlin's "boroughs") in the morning and the rest of the day off, and Sunday we drove back to Regensburg.


My first impression of Berlin was that it is huge, open, modern, and doesn't really feel like it's in Germany. A lot of this has to do with the city's history: Berlin is a pretty young city by european standards - it wasn't really important until the last couple hundred years and Allied bombing in WWII managed to pretty much level all of the buildings in the entire city, resulting in a clean slate for lots of new buildings. While Regensburg is a city of stone, Berlin is a city of glass and steel. The fact that everything got destroyed also seems to have created a lot of open space that has yet to be filled in - cities like Boston and New York tend to feel cramped, narrow and don't have much grass, sidewalk space, etc., Berlin just seems to have more space between buildings, wider streets and more parks.

By German standards, Berlin is not particularly wealthy, has a pretty cheap cost of living and therefore a lot of immigrants and young people. This makes Berlin have a really intersting cultural scene. As the mayor said, "Berlin is poor, but sexy."

One thing that kind of annoyed me about Berlin is how much is in English - while the city didn't feel as touristy as Munich, there were times when I felt like I could have been in America. Germany in general has a fascination with America that borders on idol worship at times - on one hand I'm glad that they're not snooty like the French but at the same time it's kind of unsettling how much of our culture they latch on to. Since Berlin is such young and trendy city, it all seems much more magnified here.

I'm Back

I just got back from Berlin - at this point I'm pretty frickin' exhausted since I spent pretty much the entirety of the last 5 days walking and getting very little sleep. With that said, I had a lot of really interesting experiences and for the most part quite a bit of fun - details will be forthcoming once I get some time to upload pictures and process all of it. In the meantime, I'm enjoying having internet again and I'm looking forward to a good night's sleep.

Vocab Test II: the Return to McPaper

I just wanted to show you guys that life over here is not always sunshine and roses. In the midst of taking all of these pretty pictures and drinking plenty of beer, there is a whole lot of homework that I'm blowing off. Here we have the stack of flashcards made from 4 chapters in my lovely German vocab book. The goal is to learn all 4000 words in the book by the end of our crash-course (end of March). This Monday's test covers about a quarter of the words in the book, so I, of course, will be crying myself to sleep tonight.



(McPaper is the name of the store where I bought the squares of paper I use to make flashcards)

Happy Valentine's Day

Today I went into the city to take some pictures for other people. Here are the pictures that they didn't ask for.

Alterkornmarkt

The Dom (again)

The Dom and Steinerne Brucke as seen from Stadtamhof (sort of an island in the middle of the Danube)

a ship going through the canal

The street near the Altes Rathaus (the building with the tower). The Rathaus is the old town hall, which used to serve as the seat of the Bavarian government way back in the middle ages. Aparently they have a dungeon in the basement which I need to check out sometime.

Part of the Rathaus

Neupfarkirche and the Dom

Haidplatz

Yes, I'm Still Alive

I realize that I haven't updated in about a week and there are of course several reasons - first up, I've been very busy with school work/life in general, second not too much new has been going on here. That said, things are starting to get interesting again so expect a bit more in the coming week or so.

For this coming Monday we were given an even more ridiculous number of words to learn (somewhere around 800 ish) so it looks like I will be spending a good chunk of this weekend on scholarly pursuits, but I'm going to try to do some more wandering again too. On the coming Wednesday, our group is heading to Berlin for 5 days (Wed - Sun) so after that I should have enough pictures and stories for about a week's worth of posts.

I'm starting to get excited because my German has gotten noticeably better in the last week or so. Tuesday was my suite mate Katjia's birthday so she had a bunch of her friends over then and then put together a pretty elaborate party on Thursday night, so I got a lot of chances to meet people who aren't Americans. Katjia is from the Ukraine and most of her friends are from the Ukraine or eastern Europe, which means it's often easier to understand their German since they tend to speak a lot slower because it's not their native language. Of course they have an accent but since my German is pretty bad, it's not so easy for me to detect. All of this translates into lots of language practice, which is great. Since I've gotten here (only 3 weeks ago but it feels like it's been ages) I've picked up so much vocab. I can now understand 95% of what people say and actually carry out a somewhat intelligent conversation. I'm pretty psyched about what kind of shape I will be in in a month.

Ein bisschen Geografie

(a little geography)

I decided to make a little annotated map of Regensburg instead of making flash cards. Enjoy. (click to enlarge)


Just a quick note, we moved our classroom since the semester just ended and a bunch of rooms cleared up, so now we're in a much more convenient place (the tower). When the semester starts up in mid-April I'll probably be back in P-T for most of my classes.

Spazieren gehen durch die Altstadt

(strolling through the Altstadt)

Since I had pretty much nothing to do today, I decided to head downtown and wander around for a bit. Even though I've been here for two weeks or so, I haven't had really had much of a chance to just walk around the Altstadt and get a sense of where things are, which basically means that I tend to get lost a lot. This is kind of embarrassing once you realize just how small the Altstadt is.

Here we have the old city wall (the one in front is from the middle ages and behind that is the old roman wall. Sorry for the bad focus.

close up of the Roman wall

translation of the sign:

"This is the south-east corner of the perimeter wall of the Roman fort "Castra Regina" (fort on the river Regen). In front of this wall is a small tower from the middle ages (1383) that was part of the town wall. Uncovered in 1955/61."

close up of one of the firing slits in the medieval wall

ivy on the medieval town wall

moving on, here is a pretty building

This is the Dom (cathedral) again. Here you can see just how dirty the Dom was and how nice of a job they have done cleaning it up.

Some buildings right across the street from the Dom

Not quite as picturesque as the image up top but certainly more representative of what it's actually like here (eternally gray).

An old mill (?) that is on an island in the middle of the Danube

More old Roman stuff - this is the remains of a gateway into the Castra Regina.

A sign explaining what this looked like back in the day. I'm not translating all of that.
A pretty neat church (1 of 55 in the Altstadt, or 125 in the entire city). The engraving says, "I am the way and the truth and the life; no one comes to the father except through me. John 14:6"

Image Dump

I have a bunch of random pictures that I've accumulated so here we go:

Here are two more pictures that I managed to snag from other people of Hofbräuhaus. First we have one of the guys sitting behind me (I'm pretty sure this guy brought his own Stein). You can also see the band on the stand behind them.

This is me grinning like an idiot after finishing my liter of beer. It was pretty good.

Here we have the major Euro bills - they also have 200 and 500 Euro bills but you can't really find them or use them anywhere. As it is, I'm pretty uneasy about this 100 that the ATM gave me - it's worth around $130. Unlike in America, 50s are no big deal here since everyone carries cash because not many places take cards.

The designs on the bills are about as non-offensive as you could think of. In order to avoid hurting anyone's feelings, the designs (which are the same throughout the EU) are of doors and bridges (symbolism!) and don't even depict real buildings - just examples of different archetectural styles.

front

back

I'll post a picture of the coins once I manage to get a German example of each one.

Last night I decided that I would put some effort into making a German dinner (mostly as an excuse to stop doing homework for an hour). Here we have some Spätzle (egg noodles) and Bratwurst (bratwurst).

finished product, with sharfer Senf (spicy mustard) and Bier (beer)

This morning I walked to the University since the bus drivers were threatening a strike. As far as strikes went, it was kind of half-assed since most of the busses were still running, if a bit later or more infrequently. Since I had already woken up extra early and didn't want to find out how late they were running, I decided to just go ahead a walk to the University. The weather was nice and it only took 15 or so minutes.

on the way there

Here we have the beautiful University of Regensburg

This is the Philosophie - Theologie building where my classes are held. When the semester actually starts I will probably be mostly in here too (in addition to housing the Philosophy and Theology departments, PT is also home to the Politics department and a few other in the humanities field).

The entrance to PT

on the way home

Finally, here is my stack of flashcards for Thursday's vocab test. Keep in mind the fact that these are made out of paper and I only made cards for the words I didn't know.

Fun times in Regensburg

Apparently, the local bus drivers are planning on going on strike tomorrow. For once I'm happy that I live in Hiltnerheim since that translates into a 15-20 min walk instead of the 30 min+ walk that the people who live in the Altstadt are looking at.

In addition to this development, classes are starting to get a bit ridiculous - I'm being quized on a vocab list that is about 600 words long on Thursday. The quiz will only have 20 words on it and I know about a third to a half of the words from before - nonetheless, my stack of flashcards is absurd and I haven't even finished making them.

The plus side to all of this is that I'm learning alot (and of course the fact that I'm in frickin' Germany).


P.S. If any of you guys want me to talk more about something, explain something, check something out, take pictures of something, answer questions, etc. please feel free to post comments or email me (congdon_matthew@wheatonma.edu). I'm pretty accomodating and it's always nice to know that people are actually reading this.

More?!

It looks like I forgot to post a few pictures and I also managed to snag a couple that other people took. Enjoy.

our group in the Pinakothek der Moderne

translation: Our milk makes Bavaria strong!

Anya and I grimacing as we freeze in front of the Neues Rathaus

Anya, Erwin and I leaving the Viktuallenmarkt area

1 liter beers (Erwin's, mine)