You Only Berlin Conference Once, Part II

Ahh, I love the sound of the former East Germany being
torn down in the morning right outside my hotel window.

The second day of the Berlin conference was just as excellent as the first! We had an official welcome session for all the Americans and were split into "small" workshops of about 50 people to discuss topics. My group's topic was about the transatlantic relationship - we talked a lot about Crimea. For lunch, I went with some friends to a Italian place which was fun! After that we went to this really cool chocolate store which had chocolate replicas of famous Berliner landmarks. While we were in the store, it started pouring rain, so we headed back to the hotel.

That night was the fancy welcoming ceremony at the University of the Arts. We took buses there, and everyone looked spiffy. The program was really good - several officials, both German and American spoke. There was also a short musical program by some Fulbrighters - I was really excited because one of the young men played the harpsichord!!

The famous Fernsehturm (TV tower).

Trying to split our U-Bahn ticket costs...

Chocolate Bundestag (Parliament)

Deconstructing the former East: Day 2.

There was a giant Haribo bear at the hotel which was
filled with free gummy bears (and other gummy animals)!
It was amazing - I was taking a picture with it when one
of the German Fulbrighters decided he wanted to be in it
as well!

Harpsichord at Universitaet der Kunst

Brandenburger Tor

After the program there was a buffet in the lobby. Since there were still about 600 of us, we had to stand again. I was with some people who decided to hang out and wait for the line to die down - except the line almost never did that! Finally we got in line and waited for about half an hour. The food was pretty good, though, and I met a girl who is doing a Fulbright in the US for international relations! I loved getting to talk to the German Fulbrighters. After eating, I had the idea to go and see the Brandenburger Tor lit up at night, so a group of us went back to the hotel to change shoes/put on pants and then headed that way! We were running against the clock since our day passes expired at midnight and trains run less frequently at night - we made it back to Alexanderplatz at 11:58!

AMERICA, I SEE YOU! (It's the embassy.)

Me + Gate + A tiny bit of America

We stood in the road for this picture. It's Melody, Hannah,
Lisa (the German Fulbrigher!), me, Maggie, and Doria.

"Guck mal! Baustelle!"

I feel like I have been neglecting my praise of the excellent German hotel buffet breakfast. I first experienced it as an exchange student, and it is life changing and delicious. Each morning, I had bacon, a croissant with nutella, muesli with yogurt, some fruit, and coffee. It is simply delicious.

On our third day in Berlin, the Americans all went to the rotes Rathaus (red city hall) for our morning program. It was kinda interesting - a man from the state of Berlin (Berlin is both a city and a state) was there. Unfortunately he had to speak in English because many people there did not speak German - I believe that was frustrating both for him and for the German-speaking Fulbrighters.

After the  program, we were heading back to the hotel when we noticed that the city had set up an observation platform so that people can watch construction on the new U-Bahn line. Only in Germany would the city set up an observation platform for that!! Germans love to stop and stare at...anything, but especially construction.
That afternoon, Doria and I went to visit the East Side Gallery, which is a stretch of the Berlin Wall that is still standing and was totally redone by artists. I mostly took pictures of the stuff people graffitied over it.

On the way back to the hotel, it started hailing on us!!The white flecks in the picture below are the hail falling from the sky...Berlin is ridiculous!

That evening was pretty calm since the German Fulbrighters had all left - we just had dinner at the hotel and turned in early! I kept on waking up early the entire week, so I was happy to go to bed.

On Wednesday I was up early enough to go for a walk after breakfast and before the program started for the day. This is the famous clock in Alexanderplatz - I think it's gorgeous! As you can tell, I was there at 8:30.

Train station at Alexanderplatz

That morning we had a workshop for all the teaching assistants - we broke up into groups and complained a lot. Technically we were coming up with suggestions to better the program, but it turned into people complaining. It was interesting to hear other people's experiences and made me grateful to work at such a great school! (I told my 5th graders this today and they all groaned. I think they thought I was lying.)

For lunch I went with a group of people I met at orientation - we got doener again and then went to the Ritter Sport store!

That afternoon, 12 people presented the projects they had been working on all year. I was expecting this to be really dry, but it was actually really interesting - one person talked about slow food in Turkey and another talked about advertising in the Slovak Republic. Following that, we participated in one of the most German traditions of all time - Kaffee und Kuchen (coffee and cake!). I was by some people who weren't living in Germany in line, so I got to explain the concept to them!

Came in like a wrecking ball.....

That evening we all had dinner at the hotel, then we were all bused to a club that the Fulbright commission had rented out for us. It was a fun time! It turns out that the Fulbrighters as a group are horrible at dancing.

At the club...

On Thursday morning I hung out with the Sachsens until they left me. (By abruptly walking away from me without saying good-bye, which I thought was hilarious. They all texted me to say sorry though...except Philip.)

After that I went to see a few places in Berlin by myself before taking the train back home. The Berlin Conference was an amazing experience - I learned a lot, ate some good food, and saw some interesting people. YOBO!

(YOBO, or you only Berlin conference once, became our theme after the second night. It was usually used when someone was deciding whether or not to go back for another dessert at dinner.)

Thueringen's delegation in Berlin!

SONNENALLEE!
Sonnenallee is one of my favorite German movies...it appears to be
a big immigrant area now, so I stuck out a tiny bit.

Model train station in the train station - trainception.

You Only Berlin Conference Once, Part I

ICE direct to Berlin!! Perfect for this sleepy traveler.

Last week was the Fulbright Berlin Conference!! We celebrated 60 years of Fulbrighters meeting in Berlin and did a fair bit of complaining about the German school system. (We love it, but it can be annoying at times, like when the students don't do their homework because they don't have to.)

My Berlin trip began very very early on Sunday morning. I really wanted to go to church at the Berliner Dom, so I had to catch the 5:58 tram to the train station and from there I caught the 6:28 train direct to Berlin! I was surprised that I could get a direct train because I usually have to switch in Leipzig for trains to Berlin. (The Berlin-Muenchen line that goes through Erfurt has been under construction for quite some time and may never be finished.)

Berliner Dom

Berliner Dom from outside.

Once I got to Berlin, I locked up my backpack in a locker at the train station before grabbing a scone for third breakfast. (First was schockobroetchen at home, second was a roll on the train, so this was the third.) It was here that I first noticed that my German skills don't get the weird stares that they do in Erfurt because the people in Berlin are used to tourists with limited or no German skills so my accented language was better than what they're used to.

Then I took the S-Bahn a few stops to the Berliner Dom, or Berlin's cathedral. Because of its location in Germany, the cathedral is Protestant. I was about 15 minutes early for the 10 am service, but there were lots of people already filing in. I was happy to discover that the bulletins had every single thing you'd need to say or sing printed in them - one of the problems I have going to church in Germany is that I don't know the proper responses, and the responses can be a bit different at each church. I really enjoyed the service - the Dom has a giant organ and it sounded amazing. They had communion for everyone, which took a while because they only had 2 lines for the entire place! I thought it was funny that the pastor's first name was Friedrich Wilhelm because everyone from German history is named Friedrich, Wilhelm, or Friedrich Wilhelm. It seemed like an appropriate name for someone at such an important landmark!

This is a pun - it says "security advisory, don't leave
your baked goods unattended." (The original is
"don't leave your luggage unattended" - the German for
"luggage" is "Gepaeck" which rhymes with "Gebaeck")

Then it was back to the train station with me to grab my luggage and onwards to the Ramada Hotel Alexanderplatz! Since I have an acute case of Ostolgie (not really. I like united Germany. I just think that time period is fascinating.), I was thrilled to be staying so close to Alex. (Alexanderplatz was a major shopping area for East Berlin. It's where the giant Fernsehturm is, which is the object that defines Berlin's skyline.) The directions that Fulbright gave us to the hotel were from the U-Bahn station in Alexanderplatz. This is okay, but there are about 9 places to enter that U-Bahn station on the square, so I wandered around a bit before finding the hotel.

Doener for lunch! To quote my Grandma Easter, "I shut
my eyes."

Once I got to the hotel, I got in line to register with all the other Fulbrighters. It was amazing to hear so much English being spoken! I ran into Maggie almost immediately, and she waited in line with me. The Fulbright commission gave us all a cool Fulbright tote bag and a scarf. I also purchased a Fulbright t-shirt, which I'm excited about. Then we registered for our rooms, which was another line and took another 20 minutes. After all that, I headed to my room. I was with a girl named Steph that I had met at orientation - we both had our own friend groups there, so we didn't talk much. The hotel room was pretty fancy - the sound from the TV also played in the bathroom, so I listened to the news while taking a shower. The shower was one of those amazing waterfall things, which seemed a bit odd considering that Germans love to conserve water and this seemed like a waste.

I loved the windows in the museum.

After dropping our stuff off, I ran into my Sachsen Fulbright friends, but since they hadn't checked in yet, Maggie and I went to grab lunch by ourselves. We went to the Doener place that Opa Keel took the Holzkirchners to when I studied abroad - it was as delicious as I remembered!

After lunch the Fulbright commission had organized bus tours for all of us - I went on the Cold War one since that's basically my life anyhow. The tour guide told us a lot about The Bourne Supremacy being filmed in Berlin and a bit about Berlin as well! We stopped at the Traenepalast or Palace of Tears - a museum at a former checkpoint between East & West. It was called the palace of tears because people would cry as they left their loved ones after a day's visit. (Also because the border crossing process was terrifying - you got stuck in a tiny room without door handles at the passport check and several people died there of heart attacks and strokes.) It was, like eveery museum owned by the Haus der Geschichte people, an amazing museum. I wish I had had more time there!!

A list of allowed items for Christmas
packages - maybe I should send this
to my mom!!

From there we went on to drive around the city a bit more with a stop outside the Topography of Terror museum, which I visited when I was studying abroad. The bus tour was a good time! After that, I hung out in my room for a bit before heading to dinner!

Dinner was a crazy affair. Beer and wine were free, so most people were in pretty good spirits. We were in the hotel's biggest conference room, but there still wasn't room for us to sit, so there were tall tables that we could stand at all over the room. All together, there were almost 600 people there! The German students who will be Fulbrighters in the US next year were there for their orientation, which is part of the reason why there were so many people. Of course the 140 ETAs in Germany were there along with the other German Fulbrighters (this includes professors and students doing research in Germany) and a good number of American Fulbrighters from across Europe!

The dinner was a buffet - the line was ridiculous. I ended up waiting for about 45 minutes before even getting in line. I was with a fun group at my table - Maggie and Doria, a Fulbright ETA in Sachsen, along with a researcher I hadn't met before and a few Germans. It was fun to talk to the Germans and hear about what they were going to do in America. The food, as expected, was really good! I had all sorts of interesting things - my favorite part was definitely the ice cream sundae bar at the dessert table! (I also had some apple cake for good measure.) After dinner and talking to so many people, I was happy to head to bed a bit early.

A map of anti-DDR protests.

Someone has painted Trabis and rents them out for city tours.

Outside the Topography of Terror museum.

A Strike & Springtime

Empty parking lot belonging to an apartment building
that was torn down after the end of East Germany.

Yesterday I was supposed to teach a lesson in one of my 11th grade classes. I had prepared and brought my laptop with me so that we could do a listening exercise as part of the lesson. But when I got to the tram stop at 9:05 am, a lady stopped to tell me that the trams weren't running until 10 am due to a union strike by all the tram and bus drivers. My option, therefore, was to try to walk to school. My school is 6.5 km away from my apartment. Luckily, it was a beautiful day to walk a really long ways, and due to the strike there were tons of people walking around. I (also luckily) had my phone with me, so I was able to call the school and tell them I was going to be late. I finally caught the first tram in the direction of my school at 10:30, which was 10 minutes before the end of the lesson. This tram didn't go all the way to my school, so I rode it for three stops then walked the last two stops to school. By then, it was 10:40 and the lesson was over. It was actually my only lesson of the day, so I just popped in the teachers' room to see if the teacher whose lesson I had missed was there (she wasn't). It was an interesting adventure, to say the least, and I had been wanting to walk from my apartment to the train station. If I had to do it again, though, I'd probably leave my laptop at home. :)

Today is the first day of spring!! Germany responded with incredible weather. The high today was 67, and it was nice and sunny. I went for a walk to Dittelstadt, a village that's really close to my apartment, after I got home from school. The sun was warm, so I wore a t-shirt and shorts. Germans tend to stare a lot normally, but if you're wearing a t-shirt and shorts, they will stare more than usual. The pictures don't do the scene justice - the colors were all so vibrant that they were almost hurting my eyes!!

The path from my apartment to Dittelstadt.

Erfurt as seen from the path. (If you look closely,
you can see the spires of the Dom.)

The grass is so green; the sky is so blue.

Pathway through a set of garden plots.
(People that live in apartments can rent
little garden plots.)

The trees are blooming!

The church in my neighborhood.

Open House & Breadsticks

Admission free...donations
accepted.

It's been pretty normal around here as of late. Tag der offnen Tuer was a success! One of the kids knocked over part of the backdrop during their first performance of Robin Hood, but luckily I was sitting behind the backdrop to run the CD player, so I caught it! The kids were all very embarrassed by this and said that the first show was horrible. I wouldn't know - I didn't actually see it since I sat behind the backdrop! The boy who played the sheriff's dad recorded the whole play, though, so I should get to see it eventually.

This week has just been a normal week at school. I got my new glasses yesterday! The first time I went to pick them up, the lady noticed that the anti-reflective stuff hadn't been put on, so I had to wait two extra weeks. I believe it was worth the wait - I love them!

Today a girl came to look at the apartment I'm living in. It reminded me of last spring when my landlady said she wanted to show our apartment as the model for a few weeks...and then showed it for something like three months. I just sat on the couch and composed an e-mail to my representative asking them to continue to support funding for the Fulbright program. (Apparently some cuts to the program are being discussed.)

Tonight I made breadsticks and cheesy pasta bake for dinner. The breadsticks were really delicious! Since I was bored and hungry, I took pictures while waiting for the breadsticks to rise.

My kitchen was too clean. Luckily, I had the time to
make it messy again.

Oooh. The sunset was pretty tonight.

Finished breadsticks!

And pasta to go with it. (I hate cleaning
cheese out of the pan so I lined the pan with foil.)