These kids were singing "We Will Rock You"
Postdam is a cute, dead little city. Our tour was pretty short and very, very cold - the place lacked the tall buildings that would normally keep the wind to a minimum, and I made a poor judgment in choosing the amount of layers I'd wear. We wandered through a huge park/backyard of some crazy king to see Frederick II, King of Prussia's Schloss Sansouci (Castle). We got to wear huge slippers while in there! NEATOOOO.
We headed back to Berlin Mitte and on the way I got to experience one of the classics - no seats left on the train and having to stand/sit in the asiles. Oh the treacherous joys of traveling! We arrived back before we expected and the plan was to see a play, "Der Besuch Der Alten Dame" by Dürrenmatt. It was awkward timing to go home and come back, so I decided to stay, eat my first McDonalds in Berlin (they replaced Mayo with Hot Sauce... interestingly yummy) and walk around a huge book store called Dussmann. It's bigger than those damn Barns and Nobel, or whatnots I believe. It's got floors of music and books. I read a couple of short stories (mostly Grimm fairtales) and sampled the new Blind Guardian disc.
The play itself was pretty interesting. It's probably not the best thing to watch for students who aren't too informed about theater or aren't fully fluent in German. They had many things going on at once and talked quite fast. Ayee.
Right after that, me and some friendies headed to another person's house, who was celebrating his birthday! We hung out at his house for a couple hours, had a decent sized group - we eventaully left to go out in the town. Half decided to go crazy for some clubs, while the other half went to a chill rock n' roll bar called Doors. I personally don't want to waste money clubbing all the time, so I joined the chill. We sat around, had a beer, talked about Minnesota and played Uno. Of course, I got home after 4AM... I left that morning at 8. Being out for 20 hours makes me smell funky.
Sunday was mostly a lazy, relaxed day. I went for a little bike ride around Tempelhof (my favorite place to people watch!). My Gastmutter (landlord/host mother/whatever you want to call her) hosts yoga every Sunday, so I joined her and a friend of hers. I need to do it in my free time more often. The problem is, I live in the attic and am scared of making noise O_o
Later on, I headed to Starbucks to work on a presentation with my group - all of us were affected by a long Saturday night, but we still got a little work done...
Yesterday, Tuesday, seemed like a good day. It was like "make Gala feel good" day. Our presentation went pretty decent. We bought food for our fellow students so that they could guess how much it cost and to make our talking more interesting. Our topic was homelessness in Berlin so we discussed Hartz IV, Obdachlosezeitungen and Arche. We had some extra Brötchen left over, so I took them home. Getting off the U-bahn, I saw, of course, a homeless man (there's an abundance of them here) and gave him a piece of bread. He, like many others, had a dog with him and they both seemed extremely happy - I felt unbelievably good after. A random man then told me I did a good thing (in broken German) and we talked... I realized he was kept following me.. And wanted to have a drink with me... and wanted to be my friend. So I as politely as I could got myself away from him.
On Tuesdays, there's a language exchange at a little bar called Travolta. I went with a few friends from class and talked to some strangers in German. I think I'll keep going because I can help them with English, they speak to me in German, it's overall good company and atmosphere. I was actually told that "Sie spricht schon gut Deutsch (she speaks good German) and "You sound fluent". I've noticed quite an improvement since I've been here and already am even reading faster.
Today was another long day in Mitte Berlin. I biked to school because it was finally "warm" out. After class, I hung out at Starbucks in hopes of observing their barista lingo. No huge luck because they were so so busy. I did buy a drink - with the whipped creme. Oh man, it's not sweet here at all! I like it, no sugar overload.
Some of the group visited Reichstag - the German parliment building. Our tour guide had a sweet sense of humor. We also went up the dome and observed Berlin from up high. It was kinda cool, I was just getting to the lazy mood part of day. The way back on my bike was a bitch. A cop saw me riding on the sidewalk (Which, like in MN is illegal). There was lots of construction and cars and people - biking is impossible in downtown here. I also almost got run over and to try to prevent that I ended up falling off my bike in the middle of the road. DANGER! DANGER!
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