False Alarm!
So it actually sent. So, I got a copy back when someone replied. Look! I'm alive and doing things!
I took my first mid-term test today, and realized that I wasn't really sure when I had sent out my last e-mail (and/or last updated LJ with something substantial). Sometime after Poland? A month or more ago? Anyway. Nothing particularly exciting happened in those first couple of weeks after getting back from Poland. I finally started classes for this semester (yes, in April). In the first week, I had my IES courses, then the next week my University courses started, and then the week after that my German as a Foreign Language class. Which basically means that until the third week of April, I had not totally started my semester. As it stands, I've still only had two of my language classes, thanks to a National Holiday.
At any rate, exciting things shortly began to happen as the weather here in Berlin finally became spring-like and warm, and I spent my weekends too far away to enjoy it. I did get to spend a couple of lovely weekends hanging out with people here, exploring the city and visiting the flea market at Mauerpark, grilling out in Monbijouplatz, going to Indie clubs, and discovering art galleries at 2:30 in the morning, shortly followed by a delicious 3 am doener kebap.
One weekend I spent with IES in Dresden. My first hostel experience went pretty well, there were only three girls in our group and we got our very own four-bed room. We got to explore a good bit of Dresden on our own, and I spent our only night there walking along the Elbe River at sunset with a couple of friends and exploring really creepy bridges and wandering through the bars to find an ice cream store. I checked out a couple of museums, a really fun park and all the reconstructed old buildings. There are a bunch of pictures up. They used as many of the original stones as possible, all of which have changed color with age, so the new stones don't match yet. It's pretty cool. We got home just in time to run from Hauptbahnhof to the Berliner Ensemble Theater to see a crazy Brecht play that's been running since 1995 and was all sorts of interesting, and often made explicit Nazi references that I was surprised went over. All in all, very interesting. I'll explain more some time.
Back to Berlin for half a week, and then on Wednesday night I hopped a night bus to Amsterdam. I ended up on an aisle seat behind a guy who kept moving and rocking his seat all night (therefore either whacking my knees or my head, which were on the back of his seat) and a few seats in front of a baby, but I still managed to get some sleep. Oh, and they checked our passports at 4 and 5 am. It was gross. But then I was in Amsterdam! Where everything was frustratingly and confusingly almost in German! Brock and I wandered about the Modern Art Museum and a bit of the Central part of the city while waiting for Scott to show up. Then Brock proceeded to give us pretty typical Brock tours: "Oh, this is a museum, but it's boring. I don't know what this building is, but here's a cat orphanage on a boat!" It was quite fun. Scott and I checked out a couple of the more famous museums while Brock did homework one day, and then we met back up and probably ended up getting french fries, the apparently typical Dutch cuisine. One of the nights, we decided to explore the red light district, only to be confronted by a large group of people marching through the whole district and singing loudly about Jesus. We were not deterred, and soon got stuck on a street which had no right turns with which to exit, and a loud of drunk British men and scantily clad prostitutes in windows. An adventure if I've ever had one. Another night bus home, and I made it just in time to finish up my homework for class.
Tuesday night we grilled again (pretty much the best dinner ever, any day) and then I went to see Iron Man. German movie theaters are quite strange, but Iron Man was great. For once, I am not at all disappointed in a comic book movie. Wednesday night I went to an awesome punk rock concert with Sabine (my german mentor/german friend) and had a great time. I got knocked down in the mosh pit, but some nice random German man helped me back up, and I helped several people crowd surf. I didn't know any of the music, but it was still a pretty great time. Thursday I went over to Sabine's with a couple of people and we played card and dice games in which I did a great job with German but a horrible job with adding. As usual. And I discovered that almost every new word I try to learn in German is basically the English word, with a German accent. Which is frustrating.
Then! Early Friday morning, I found my way to Schoenefeld airport and took off for a weekend in Budapest with Scott. Unfortunately, he had class when I arrived, so I got to figure out my way around Budapest on my own. And no one I asked for help spoke either English or German, so that was fun. Especially the awfully nice Hungarian old lady standing near the ticket machine who kept explaining things in Hungarian, even though all I wanted to know was why there was no place to put bills in. Speaking of which, Hungarian money is confusing. The unit is the Forint. 3000 Forintz is about $15. It's really disconcerting to be paying for things in the thousands. Anyway. I wandered around Scott's neighborhood and happened upon some giant market happening in what appeared to be an old train station, which as neat and full of old American and British tourists. I pretended to be a German tourist. Then I went and sat near the Danube and read my play for class.
I finally found Scott, and his roommates made a beautifully delicious fajita dinner and we played some card games before getting some sleep (I won Pepper for the first time ever. "Ever" being approximately a year). The next day we took a rather long excursion into the wilderness in the hills of Buda to find some pancakes for breakfast (really lunch. even a mid-afternoon snack), then we walked back down this gigantic hill to attempt to find a bus stop. Scott's roommates went home to do homework, and Scott and I went to do touristy things, including climbing this gigantic hill at sunset. The view was totally worth the grueling climb. I even had a short conversation with a German on the bridge over the river. One night we even found a Palinka Fesztival (Palinka is traditional Hungarian Brandy) billed as a festival of the Hungarian Spirit, so we figured we had to go. We got these awesome little tasting glasses that we got to keep as well as a good infusion of Hungarian Spirit. Then, way too soon, I had to fly back to Berlin, and find the various things needed to make sushi. Unfortunately, things tend to be closed on Pentecost, but we managed to pull together some delicious last-minute sushi because I am that awesome and I have watched Mom make sushi enough times that I am basically an expert. We even had cheap salmon fillets that turned out to be delicious when cooked and mashed up in a spicy sauce, then rolled into sushi.
Anyway. Now, it is mid-sems week, and all of you guys are finishing up your semesters (or are already done), which is crazy. And entirely too many of you are graduating, which is awesome for you, but makes me sad. Good luck with finishing everything up, and then starting whatever it is you're doing next year (feel free to share with me what you're doing, I'm curious...). I hope you all make it through the end of the school year, and enjoy your summer breaks while I actually finally get into the swing of school. I am attempting to do my reading for my University literature seminar, which says it is only 30 pages long, but is actually 60, and therefore it's hard to motivate myself. Oh well. Oh! Also, my final project for my art class is a giant mural. It's going to be amazing. I just need to come up with some ideas.
If you read this whole thing, you rock. If not, that's probably better for you.
I took my first mid-term test today, and realized that I wasn't really sure when I had sent out my last e-mail (and/or last updated LJ with something substantial). Sometime after Poland? A month or more ago? Anyway. Nothing particularly exciting happened in those first couple of weeks after getting back from Poland. I finally started classes for this semester (yes, in April). In the first week, I had my IES courses, then the next week my University courses started, and then the week after that my German as a Foreign Language class. Which basically means that until the third week of April, I had not totally started my semester. As it stands, I've still only had two of my language classes, thanks to a National Holiday.
At any rate, exciting things shortly began to happen as the weather here in Berlin finally became spring-like and warm, and I spent my weekends too far away to enjoy it. I did get to spend a couple of lovely weekends hanging out with people here, exploring the city and visiting the flea market at Mauerpark, grilling out in Monbijouplatz, going to Indie clubs, and discovering art galleries at 2:30 in the morning, shortly followed by a delicious 3 am doener kebap.
One weekend I spent with IES in Dresden. My first hostel experience went pretty well, there were only three girls in our group and we got our very own four-bed room. We got to explore a good bit of Dresden on our own, and I spent our only night there walking along the Elbe River at sunset with a couple of friends and exploring really creepy bridges and wandering through the bars to find an ice cream store. I checked out a couple of museums, a really fun park and all the reconstructed old buildings. There are a bunch of pictures up. They used as many of the original stones as possible, all of which have changed color with age, so the new stones don't match yet. It's pretty cool. We got home just in time to run from Hauptbahnhof to the Berliner Ensemble Theater to see a crazy Brecht play that's been running since 1995 and was all sorts of interesting, and often made explicit Nazi references that I was surprised went over. All in all, very interesting. I'll explain more some time.
Back to Berlin for half a week, and then on Wednesday night I hopped a night bus to Amsterdam. I ended up on an aisle seat behind a guy who kept moving and rocking his seat all night (therefore either whacking my knees or my head, which were on the back of his seat) and a few seats in front of a baby, but I still managed to get some sleep. Oh, and they checked our passports at 4 and 5 am. It was gross. But then I was in Amsterdam! Where everything was frustratingly and confusingly almost in German! Brock and I wandered about the Modern Art Museum and a bit of the Central part of the city while waiting for Scott to show up. Then Brock proceeded to give us pretty typical Brock tours: "Oh, this is a museum, but it's boring. I don't know what this building is, but here's a cat orphanage on a boat!" It was quite fun. Scott and I checked out a couple of the more famous museums while Brock did homework one day, and then we met back up and probably ended up getting french fries, the apparently typical Dutch cuisine. One of the nights, we decided to explore the red light district, only to be confronted by a large group of people marching through the whole district and singing loudly about Jesus. We were not deterred, and soon got stuck on a street which had no right turns with which to exit, and a loud of drunk British men and scantily clad prostitutes in windows. An adventure if I've ever had one. Another night bus home, and I made it just in time to finish up my homework for class.
Tuesday night we grilled again (pretty much the best dinner ever, any day) and then I went to see Iron Man. German movie theaters are quite strange, but Iron Man was great. For once, I am not at all disappointed in a comic book movie. Wednesday night I went to an awesome punk rock concert with Sabine (my german mentor/german friend) and had a great time. I got knocked down in the mosh pit, but some nice random German man helped me back up, and I helped several people crowd surf. I didn't know any of the music, but it was still a pretty great time. Thursday I went over to Sabine's with a couple of people and we played card and dice games in which I did a great job with German but a horrible job with adding. As usual. And I discovered that almost every new word I try to learn in German is basically the English word, with a German accent. Which is frustrating.
Then! Early Friday morning, I found my way to Schoenefeld airport and took off for a weekend in Budapest with Scott. Unfortunately, he had class when I arrived, so I got to figure out my way around Budapest on my own. And no one I asked for help spoke either English or German, so that was fun. Especially the awfully nice Hungarian old lady standing near the ticket machine who kept explaining things in Hungarian, even though all I wanted to know was why there was no place to put bills in. Speaking of which, Hungarian money is confusing. The unit is the Forint. 3000 Forintz is about $15. It's really disconcerting to be paying for things in the thousands. Anyway. I wandered around Scott's neighborhood and happened upon some giant market happening in what appeared to be an old train station, which as neat and full of old American and British tourists. I pretended to be a German tourist. Then I went and sat near the Danube and read my play for class.
I finally found Scott, and his roommates made a beautifully delicious fajita dinner and we played some card games before getting some sleep (I won Pepper for the first time ever. "Ever" being approximately a year). The next day we took a rather long excursion into the wilderness in the hills of Buda to find some pancakes for breakfast (really lunch. even a mid-afternoon snack), then we walked back down this gigantic hill to attempt to find a bus stop. Scott's roommates went home to do homework, and Scott and I went to do touristy things, including climbing this gigantic hill at sunset. The view was totally worth the grueling climb. I even had a short conversation with a German on the bridge over the river. One night we even found a Palinka Fesztival (Palinka is traditional Hungarian Brandy) billed as a festival of the Hungarian Spirit, so we figured we had to go. We got these awesome little tasting glasses that we got to keep as well as a good infusion of Hungarian Spirit. Then, way too soon, I had to fly back to Berlin, and find the various things needed to make sushi. Unfortunately, things tend to be closed on Pentecost, but we managed to pull together some delicious last-minute sushi because I am that awesome and I have watched Mom make sushi enough times that I am basically an expert. We even had cheap salmon fillets that turned out to be delicious when cooked and mashed up in a spicy sauce, then rolled into sushi.
Anyway. Now, it is mid-sems week, and all of you guys are finishing up your semesters (or are already done), which is crazy. And entirely too many of you are graduating, which is awesome for you, but makes me sad. Good luck with finishing everything up, and then starting whatever it is you're doing next year (feel free to share with me what you're doing, I'm curious...). I hope you all make it through the end of the school year, and enjoy your summer breaks while I actually finally get into the swing of school. I am attempting to do my reading for my University literature seminar, which says it is only 30 pages long, but is actually 60, and therefore it's hard to motivate myself. Oh well. Oh! Also, my final project for my art class is a giant mural. It's going to be amazing. I just need to come up with some ideas.
If you read this whole thing, you rock. If not, that's probably better for you.