fulbright blog.: 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.