Ich bin ein Berliner [for a weekend, at least]

I found myself in Berlin with my lovely host family this last weekend, and before elaborating on the city itself, I would like to say that I found Kinder Eggs there.

Maxi Edition

"Einfach Riesig!"

 These supersized pieces of joy are pretty much the size of half my face.

[Let's take a moment to recall my Kinder fixation....]

Berlin hat sich gelohnt(:

Now, as for the rest of Berlin.

The fam bam and I left for the capital Friday afternoon via a four-hour ICE train, getting there after dark. My host dad, who had arrived before us to attend a conference, met us at the central station. After dropping off our suitcases, I got my first taste of Berlin at night [at below-freezing temperatures but nonetheless exciting].

A ten minute walk from our hotel in the Kurfürstendamm neighborhood [or as the locals say- Ku'damm] led us to our first landmark, the Kaiser-Wilhelm-Gedächtnis-Kirche (Kaiser Wilhelm Memorial Church).

Unfortunately, it was under construction. :(

The "Hollow Tooth"

I'd been rather looking forward to seeing the old church, irreparably damaged in WWII during a 1943 air raid, still standing today right next to the new church. However, it's entirely covered and under construction until sometime in 2013.

Ampelmännchen liebe <3

However, in the same neighborhood was an Ampelmann shop!

These little traffic light men from the former GDR- East Germany- are absolutely adorable, and I still have my eye on the little Ampelmann plushies for the next time I'm in Berlin:)

[Three cheers for stopping in the middle of the road on more than one occasion to get pictures of these guys, aha,]

 

Boy oh boy, a double decker bus!!

The next morning was a tour around the city from the top floor of one of these [life goal right there].

Checkpoint 'C'

  We passed by Checkpoint Charlie, the best known crossing point between East and West Germany in the Berlin Wall with the "you are now leaving the American sector" sign [but I looked out of the wrong side of the bus and missed it ): ]. 

 And then past the Gendarmenmarkt, with almost identical French and German cathedrals facing one another, and the Konzerthaus Berlin with a statue of the German poet Friedrich Schiller in the middle.

 

The bus then drove by the Rotes Rathaus, Berlin's town hall. Like the Kaiser-Wilhelm Church, this building was also damaged by bombing in WWII, but it was later rebuilt with the original plans. From where we drove past, we could also see the Fernsehturm (Berlin's TV tower), the tallest structure in Germany at 368 m. Like the Space Needle back home, there are two elevators leading to a rotating restaurant and visitor's platform up top:)

'Alte Fritz'

 Then came the

Reiterdenkmal Friedrichs des Grossen, the statue of Frederick the Great, kind of Prussia in the 1700s. We saw this driving through the boulevard 'Unter den Linden', and it's actually huge, with three tiers stretching up to 13.5 m (44 ft) high...

 

Oh boy oh boy oh boy(:

And then things started to get really exciting;

Our tour ended right in front of the Brandenburger Tor!

The former city gates with the Quadriga up top, which I'd seen everyday on German euro coins [and on a National-Treasure-esque movie where this group climbed into the gate!!], right there.

...

With Darth Vader and Mario and giant teddy bears mulling about taking pictures with tourists and ripping them off like that Roman guy in Cologne ...

Direct opposite of the gate was Hotel Adlon, a building that is rich with history, withstood both world wars, appeared in a host of famous films, contributed to pop culture...

Not ringing a bell?

This is the hotel from which Michael Jackson dangled his baby 'Blanket' from a window  in November 2002.

 Ta-da.

:)

 And then, one block away: the Reichstag.

This was perhaps one of my favorite parts of our trip; Germany's parliament building [quasi, the equivalent of the Capitol] with its glass dome and history is absolutely breathtaking. 

Glass and more glass and mirrors reflecting light everywhere, and glass again letting you look down into parliament floor itself. The dome afforded a 360 degree view of the city, and I only wish I could have been there at night with the stars out(: 

Photos in the column of mirrors(:

You're not allowed to stand on these, by the way.... oops.

After the Reichstag was a memorial I'd been particularly interested in--

Das Denkmal für die Ermordeten Juden Europas [Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe]. Pulling some facts straight off of Wikipedia, this memorial is a 

"19,000 square meter (4.7 acres) site covered with 2,711 concrete slabs arranged in a grid pattern on a sloping field. The slabs [...] vary in height from 0.2 to 4.8 m (8 in to 15 ft 9 in) [and] are designed to produce an uneasy, confusing atmosphere. The whole sculpture aims to represent a supposedly ordered system that has lost touch with human reason."

 Let me put that in perspective: it's huge.

From a distance, it looks interesting, but walking through the concrete maze forces you to appreciate the intricacies of it. As the slabs get taller, the ground dips simultaneously, hence the 15-foot-tall blocks. The ground is like rolling waves, adding another variable to the varying block-heights. And when you finally step out again and look back, you see that the tops of the blocks also tilt, adding a diagonal aspect to the field.

It's disorienting; it's brilliant. 

Yum yum bubble gum

The morning bus tour had taken us past stretches of the Berlin wall, but later by foot, we came across these preserved sections. The pieces we got up close and personal with though  honestly reminded me more of the Gum Wall in Pike Place Market than anything else...

 The Berliner Dom on Museum Island is gorgeous, and the stretches of street and farmers' markets in the surrounding area are so perfect. Those little tents just made Berlin seem so alive, one of the key things about this capital that just makes me happy. Washington D.C. felt like one big museum at times, but Berlin was alive.

'Goldelse'

On a bus, we later passed by the Berliner Siegesäule [Berlin Victoria Statue]. It was designed to commemorate Prussian victories in war, and is really quite aesthetically pleasing.

 In Potsdamer Platz was the Sony Center, a Sony-sponsored center with everything from entertainment and cinemas, to restaurants, to residences, to offices all in this circle of buildings. In the 1920s it was one of the most important business districts in Berlin, with Europe's first traffic light system being installed there in 1924. 

And it has a giant lego giraffe:)

 

 We got rather lucky, seeing as the day we went, all the shops in Ku'damm were open until late in the night for "Late Night Halloween Shopping"--- something entirely untypical in a country where stores close early and our American 24/7 stores are not a likely upcoming trend.

So what better place to hit up then the KaDeWe, the second largest department store in Europe
With six stories, one of which is dedicated entirely to food and then a restaurant on the seventh, this place has literally everything.
Including American chocolate, which I most definitely stocked up on.
[Hersheys and Reeses, how I've missed you <3]

I could live here.

...With the exception of a few entirely unforgivable items, like a fur jacket for your dog (I mean, whut) and this freak bear-centaur plush. No. Just no. No, no, no. Aghgf.
 Yes, this was actually a legitimate item for sale.
....................

One last thing I particularly enjoyed in Berlin were these uniquely painted bears spread across the town, not unlike the pigs that used to grace Pike Place/the Seattle area some time ago. It becomes a little scavenger hunt, really. [Gotta catch 'em all!]

My heart may still be in Köln, but Berlin is working it's way up there.

I can't wait to go back. :)

Kulturschock: Round One

It's October 3rd, which means no school and a mega-cool Google logo for Tag der Deutschen Einheit. In a nutshell, today "[...] commemorates 1the anniversary of German reunification in 1990, when the goal of a unity of Germany that originated in the middle of the 19th century, was fulfilled."
[Thank you, Wikipedia.]

The decked out logo makes me way happier than it should.

So, the topic of the day isss...
Culture shock!
Kulturschock.
What-on-earth-is-all-of-this-oh-god-I'll-just-smile-and-pretend-like-I-know-what's-going-on-shock.

My CBYX blogger buddies have been making thorough [and thoroughly amusing] lists with all sorts of delicious differences between Germany and the U.S. that have taken us by surprise. A post with links to the said other blogs is in the works, but until then, here's a peek into my collection of 'huh?' moments.

 I'm from Seattle.
We have a Starbucks on every corner there.
As in, there will be a Starbucks cafe, and then another in the grocery store right next door, and then another across the street.
That's more common than you'd think, too.
However.
 Fashion is to Europeans was coffee is to Seattleites.
There's an H&M here for every Starbucks back home.
A town with absolutely nothing will still have an H&M, bestimmt.

And then there are three times as many bakeries in every corner as there are coffee shops in Seattle.
People live off of carbs here.
Crobag, Kamps, Backwerk, Backstern, smaller independent bakeries, and one in every major grocery chain.
And everything is delicious and tempting and dirt cheap.
Goodbye, skinny jeans. It was nice fitting in you while it lasted.

Speaking of food here,
Food is carbs, and nothing but.
Bread, toast, rolls, croissants, noodles, potatoes, more bread, more noodles, more bread---
I might as well have an IV drip with some straight up carb-syrup-mix plugged into me the entire day.

I love this country.

However, even though they've got their carbs down here, vegetables are still a work in progress.
Green beans here are white.

Eeeeeeh?

 .... As is asparagus.

'Nuff said.

Aren't my veggies are supposed to be green?
They're albinoooo:(

 As if messing with my understanding of colors wasn't enough, the other day at the grocery store I went to pick up ketchup.

And there was a row of toothpaste tubes above all such dressing.

Toothpaste?

You don't want to brush your teeth with these, boys and girls.

Nope.
Ketchup, mayonnaise, mustard, you name it- it comes in toothpaste tubes.
Tubes.

And since we've gone on a theoretical grocery shopping trip, I'll round this off by advising you all to be careful when checking out!

German cashiers check your groceries like they're in the checking-grocery-Olympics. 

So be prepared to shove everything in your bag [You don't get plastic bags here. Don't have your own? Have fun carrying everything back home by hand:)] as it comes flying at you, while trying to pay, all while the cashier has probably already started on the person next in line.

It's terrifying.

And on the other hand, when you go grocery shopping in small stores or stands in markets, don't get all grabby and start feeling up the produce. The owners actually come out, ask you want you need, and pick out/bag everything for you.

[Dear lady who gave me dirty looks when I tried to pick out my own tomatoes. I'm sorry.]

 ---------------------------------------------------

On an entirely unrelated topic [because I feel like the only thing I do here is talk about food], I had an interesting conversation with my host parents the other day. They were talking about a movie with two old men, who took care of a list of things they wanted to do before they died. 

Naturally, I was like, "Oh! The Bucket List!"

"Huh?"

"The Bucket List! Like, with the list of things you want to do before you die."

And they were all like, "Oh you silly American girl. You mean eine Löffel Liste."

Eine Löffel Liste.

Let me translate.

A Spoon List.

 When you die in Germany, you don't kick the bucket.

Du gibst den Löffel ab.

...

You give up the spoon.

Oh Germany, you silly thing, you.

Settling In

I haven't been feeling great these past couple of weeks. My back has been giving me issues, but it's probably nothing[other than that I'm eighteen going on eighty at this point]. That's been translating to unfortunately neglecting this blog [which has nonetheless managed to reach over 2000 views. Here's another shoutout to everyone reading this! :) ]

At least with autumn spontaneously dumping buckets of rain over here, settling in for a Seattleite has never been easier.
Scheiß' Wetter, they call it, but curling up with a cappuccino and a Starbucks mug [of course] and listening to the rain curbs those little hints of homesickness nicely.
Although more often it's tea in my Starbucks mug because we drink tea here like five times a day and then some.

Aaand this is a picture of our dog.

A couple blog posts ago, I talked about the German school system, but I'm getting  little more personal today.
Sitting in class in a foreign country is miles away [ha] from taking that language at home; In a nutshell, how much you know doesn't translate to how much you can understand.
Technical terms in every subject- 'fachbegriffe', literally translating to 'subject vocabulary'- are absolutely terrible. It's bearable when you leave the class with notes, or a reading assignment that can be later translated [even though that's still horrid because translating every technical term makes everything take three times longer than it should]- but discussion based classes.
Nope.
Not a chance.

So~ooo. Here's a rundown of my classes; the good, the bad, and the just plain ugly.

Math
Decimals are commas, and commas are decimals.
Ones look like sevens.
I can't read the teacher's handwriting.
Otherwise, so far so good! As in, I've done the current unit before [ew, optimization] and it's not too bad-- oh, who am I kidding? I get the math part, but of course advanced math is rarely just about that. It's all story problems with blocks of text for me to translate. Bratwurst vendors trying to maximize profit, farmers trying to make sheep pens with the largest possible area...
And standard calculators here are different from our lovely TI-83s. So, calculator work doesn't happen either.
But for the rare occasions where we actually work with  numbers, it's fine(:

Biology
I love biology. I adore it.
Too bad my little English-German pocket dictionary doesn't translate big juicy words like chlorophyll, poiklithermic and homeothermic, oxygen/carbon dioxide exchange rates, and metabolism.
On the other hand, enough words are similar that it's not a total nightmare. Photosynthesis, glucose, chlorophyll, und so weiter.
Translating material from this class isn't too much of a chore, and I can follow the discussions here pretty well.

Art
Art speaks for itself, but we actually do quite a bit of theory and discussion of techniques/ time periods of art as well. There's always plenty of visuals, which works for mee.
It's also fascinating, seeing how art is taught here as opposed to the U.S. There's still artistic freedom, but there's more focus on technique and using that to further artistic growth rather than encouraging wild creativity. Both are good, and arguably equally effective, and I'm so happy to be seeing both sides.

English
Oh, English.
 I believe I've learned more about America in this class than I ever did back at home. We went so in depth with the American dream, American icons, American stereotypes and mentalities, that several points were actually new to me.
Seriously though, we never learned about the American dream in school. Did we?
Also, students here learn British-English.
Which translates to this adorable half-British, half-German accent.
Which also translates to nobody understanding me when I speak 'American'. Apparently.

History
Absolutely no clue.
This class is entirely discussion based.
I can't read the teacher's handwriting from the board notes.
Actually, I can't read anyone's handwriting.
It's this loose cursive where, to quote a friend:
"80% of the consonants are just completely interchangeable. N? K? L? T? R? S? It doesn't matter, just put a squiggle and call it good!"

French
I'm a double foreigner here.
It's the advanced french class, and we speak only french there... but when there's something we don't understand, it's cleared up in German.
Oh, that helps.
We were reading a text once, and our teacher brought in dictionaries.
I was excited for a brief moment.
Nope.
German-to-French dictionaries.
I can't win.

 German
Absolutely, entirely no clue.
:)
We're reading Iphigenie auf Tauris.
[It's one of those Greek tragedies where everyone is related to and sleeps with everyone else and everyone dies.]
It's written by Goethe.
Goethe is the German equivalent of Shakespeare.
Now how many of you native English speakers understand Shakespeare?
....
That's what I thought.

Documenta13

 Every five years in Kassel, Germany, the modern and contemporary art exhibition 'documenta' is open for 100 days.

Guess where this girl's art class had an Ausflug?

[The field trip itself lasted good twelve hours and was ridiculously long- but still so, so, so worth it.]

It started in this museum, and from the beginning, really hit the question of 'what is art?' hard.

A rabbit in a pen with a sign saying, "The rabbit lives!"

Art?

Empty rooms with nothing but white walls- and wind.

Art?

This exhibit was actually spread over the entire town. They make you work for your daily dose of art here, with specific buildings singled out as parts of the exhibit, making you run across the town and hope that you find your way.

And there's so much, that even given how long we stayed there, we didn't even come close to seeing (let alone finding) it all.
But from what we did find...

A collection of rugs.

Painted glass and transparencies.

Optical illusions.

Of course, a Unicorn.

Mobius.

 

A room with books and seeds, with a video projected on a half of the book and writing on the other half, all with handmade and absolutely gorgeous paper.

Painted bars and banknotes.

Rows and rows and rows of test tubes.

Fetus skeletons. What is art?

A tree exhibit, with books and boxes and lovely surprises.

 

A van haphazardly parked in front of a building with an aboriginaltheme. The trunk had a painted cloth that merged with a screen, on which a video was playing of a woman sitting and painting that very cloth.

Three dimensional art in different dimensions?

A glass cabinet of nothing but cocoons. Strangely beautiful.

 

A truly interactive hall, with rows of painting and sketches and studies covered by cloth.

The abstract room.

A harp player. Doch Kunst.

 Probably one of my favorite rooms; slightly underground, with a row of transparent- and get this- rotating cylinders. With the shadows from the cylinders cast on the walls, and other shadow projected, and lights being controlled from every angle and music to match, it was a singular experience.

I could live here.

 

Another favorite room; an exhibit with canvases everywhere. Solid blocks, painted blocks, solid circles and painted ones. And then more interactive components, with a series of cabinets in the back that could be pulled out to reveal yet more of the canvases.

Simply, a frame.

 

A house, falling apart and all on display.

Really, what is art? 

A little treasure taped into one of the house's walls.

A room with stairs.

And a hallway with stools.

And a bathroom with headphones with music. Art?

And an estate like a lemon cream pie:)

And then, another favorite.
The Brothers Grimm Museum.

This place is a legend, with Kassel actually being the home to these brothers and their most famous pieces of work.

Aaaaaaah!

Knight percussion: always a bit brassy.

And then with an endearing note to bid us farewell as we left our last stop, the Brothers Grimm Museum: 

 A word from the wise as we returned to our bus:

And then, simply: 

The End.

THE END

Days of School and Geburt

I never planned to turn eighteen in Germany. It just kind of happened.
And I wouldn't trade that day for the world:)

Throne for a day.

 My lovely family had a few surprises in store, which completely caught me off-guard. It was ridiculously sweet, and let's just say I'm super stoked to be seeing a german musical sometime in the near future.

And then, after school, a trip to pretty much my dream playground.
A tree garden.
 ...
Tree garden, à la Tarzan.










And as if it couldn't get better, a perfect end to the day with a night out. More cake, more laughs, and more of the sweetest friends I could have hoped to find here:)
 *********************************

So now that I'm an adult and responsible and all [ha], let's turn to more serious matters and take a moment to talk about school.
High school.
German high school.

A component of the CBYX scholarship is attending one, and these past two weeks have actually found me as an 11th grader yet again.
Oh boy.

The School

The school is a middle sized-to big high school by American standards, minus the parking lot, big cafeteria, soccer fields, tennis courts, baseball field, etc.. There's also quite a bit less technology used; chalkboards and projectors [remember? With the transparencies and expo markers back in elementary school? :) :) :)] as opposed to active boards and laptop carts and those absolutely useless microphones for teachers. It's not bad, just - keyword of the year- different.

The System

In Germany, elementary school is only 4 years: Grundschule. From there, students go to a Hauptschule [secondary general school] or a Realschule [intermediate school], both of which lead to vocational tracks and go through10th grade, or a Gymnasium [Grammar School], which is a university track and goes through 12th-13th grade.
At my school, 11th and 12th grade are pretty much a joint curriculum that leads up to the Abitur, a series of tests needed to qualify for University. Therefore, I was placed in eleventh grade so that I didn't jump in halfway through the curriculum, and so that I could actually have friends who weren't completely overwhelmed with testing.
Go figure.

The Students

One of the biggest differences between German and American high schools; there are students from fifth through 12th grade running around.
In other words, there are kids who barely come up to my hip that I'm running over in the halls.
Oops.
In addition, people in my grade are just a bit younger than I'm used to, but are all sweethearts. What's interesting is that a good portion- I'd put it at at least half- of the students know what the exchange students here are going through. While an exchange is something definitely out of the ordinary in an American high school, every other kid has done one here. Whether a couple weeks in Italy, a summer in Cali, or a year in Canada-- students know what we're going through, and there's somewhat of a level of understanding that American kids don't have when exchange students show up at our schools.

The Classes

The classes offered here differ quite a bit. There's not the same variety; for example, instead of offering ceramics, drawing and design, stained glass and more, there's one art class. There's the standard run of math and science classes, but no astronomy, zoology, marine biology, anatomy, or the chunk of business and marketing classes, or others. There is more flexibility with one's classes and schedule, but it's not necessarily as customizable.
Classes here mean business. People come to school to learn, and they do. There's no dawdling; pretty much every class is a two-hour block with a 5 minute break in the middle, and then 20-minute breaks between blocks. Classes are lecture-style with some discussion, and people get down to business here. When there's class work, people shut up, do the work, and get it done.
...
All of which are basic basic principles of school, so this efficiency shouldn't be as surprising as it is.

The Schedule/ Transportation

My schedule!

Class schedules here are more like college schedules than anything else. I'm taking 7 classes [German, French, English, Math, Biology, History, and Art], which is a bit less than the standard load, seeing as I'm not required to take other classes. The way it's set up in the last two years of high school is, in prepping for college and your job down the line, you have two Leistungskurse [main courses] for which you log in the most hours in the week. Your other classes are Grundkurse [base courses], which you have less often.
Wie logisch.

As for school transportation, there is none. No big yellow buses happily carting everyone to school at the same time every morning, and back at the same time in the afternoon. People take public buses to get places, which ties in with the schedule; everybody has such different schedules, with some days ending at 11:00 and others at past 4:00, and other with blocks in the middle, that public transportation is really the only logical option.

The Sports

There isn't the same emphasis on school sports here. In fact, when you want to play one, you join a Ferein outside of school. School here is for learning, that's the long and short of it.

The Fashion

 Oh boy. Here, you're either with it, or you're not. There's no middle-of-the-spectrum. Accessories, skinny jeans, scarves, peacoats, and the shoes to complete the outfit, dressed to kill e'errrry day.
Did I mention skinny jeans?
The second you step out of your door in flare jeans, your American shows.
In addition, although I never bought into this trend back in the U.S., it's worth mentioning that wearing sweats and/or pajama pants to school is just.... no.
 Nope.
Nuh-uh.
Better to stay at home in that case.
***************************************
For the biggest and most obvious differences, that's all that comes to mind for the moment. There are so many little things that are different though, like how people 'raise their hands' with only one finger, or how all the girls hug one another by way of greeting. If you have any questions, feel free to ask or send me a message, and I'll address them in my next post!

Gotta love high school:)