Time To Stop Hiding Behind A Mask!

One of the things I've noticed since I've been here is the confidence women seem to have as compared to those in the United States. Women wear a LOT less makeup here. If you plaster your face you will stand out. And I feel like women carry themselves differently, like they know they are beautiful and awesome and wonderful all the time just the way they are. Like they are driven and confident and ready to take on life's challenges. And I love it. I started wearing less makeup and I don't think I've ever felt this comfortable without it. I felt confident before, but it's like their confidence is catching :) .

Let me just say that I love being here. Every second of it. It's absolutely amazing. This weekend some friends and I are going to Nürmberg and we will be staying in our first hostel. Time for a little mini adventure :)

Some sights in Mitte

On Sunday we went on a walking tour of the city center, an area referred to as Mitte. We got up close and personal with the Brandengurger Tor, last time I visited with my mom and aunt the gate was closed because of a street fair. We walked through the gate, and it's massive. Everything about it is massive. It is the only gate that survived the war, built in the late 1700's, that marked the old boundaries of the city of Berlin.

Right on the other side of the gate there is a line of stone running through the street and sidewalk representing the place where the wall once stood. The wall was rounded at the top, except for this small section running behind the Brandengurger Tor, where the top of the wall was flat. Those iconic photos you see of people on top of the wall when it was coming down? All of those pictures were taken from that very spot. It was very cool to know that a monumental moment in history unfolded right where we where standing. 

Not far from this there were crosses lined up against a fence commemorating those who lost their lives trying to escape to the West and away from communism. People still bring fresh flowers and wreaths to honor those who have died. 

And the most solemn stop was the memorial to the Sinti and Roma of Europe who were killed during the Nazi period. The memorial was beautiful, a reflective pond with a single stone in the middle, on which a fresh flower is placed every morning. Around the pond are stones, some bearing the names of various ghettoes, concentration camps, and death camps. There was soft music playing in the background. 

Well it is getting late and I'm exhausted! I had way more to say but I'm too tired to articulate those thoughts right now so bis morgen (until tomorrow)! 

Gute Nacht! 

Spree River Boat Tour, Soviet Memorial, And Lunch In A Little Italian Restaurant :)

So if living in the history that is Berlin wasn't enough, let me tell you the story of the apartment I'm living in with my host family. It was built in the late 1800's and was originally a square building about five stories high with a garden in the middle of the square. Well now the apartment building is a 'U' shape because the fourth side of the former square was bombed during WWII. How cool is that history? And if you go down the street left OR right there are parks with fountains where families go and play with their kids and people lay out in the sun. It's awesome. Can I just live here forever??

Today I went with my friend Michelle to go find this little Italian place for lunch. It was so delicious. I got a marguerite pizza. The prices were very reasonable and the staff was great. We got tee und kaffee on the house after our meal. I will definitely be frequently that place. Then after we went and got Eis (gelato) and sat in one of the parks in the sun for a while! Eis just makes everything wonderful :) . 

Yesterday the program took us on a boat tour on the Spree river. It was fun, but some of the bridges were so low you welt like you were going to get decapitated going under them. 

This is an alternative community that we saw along the river. I guess they are having a lot of problems and debates are happening with the government because they want to take away this land to use for development. 

This was near the alternative community, I think is translates as 'No profit madness, the Spree (river) is for all!'

Part of the Berlin wall still standing near the banks of the river.

On this part of the wall they printed images of divided borders all over the world, from the wall between the U.S. and Mexico to the border between North and South Korea. 

Swans on the river.

We also visited the Memorial to the Soviet soldiers who died during WWII. Near the main part of the memorial is a huge statue of a Soviet soldier holding a child and stomping on the swastika. There is a myth that a Soviet soldier rescued this child from the bombing of Berlin and then declared the Battle of Berlin to be over. This statue stands on a mound and in front of this mound are five plots of grass. The plots and the mound itself are mass graves, where the remains of about 1,000 soldiers are buried per each plot.  

Tomorrow they are taking us on a walking tour of Berlin, mainly the Mitte area, or the heart of the city. Then Monday starts classes! I'm looking forward to German classes starting. 

Okay that's all! Gute Nacht!

Everyone Should Learn Languages.

One of the first things I realized when I got here, or rather the first time I really came to appreciate it, is the importance of language. You never really realize how essential language is until you go have to make your way in one vastly different from your own. German is difficult, but I can get by, and I learn new words every day. But Czech?? There is nothing in that language that even remotely resembles English. Context clues are impossible, in German you can figure certain words out (wasser, hunt, trinken, etc.) but in Czech there is no resemblance. And it didn't hit me until we landed in Prague and our taxi driver spoke zero English. On my trip, I had a layover in Frankfurt. Apparently I look very German, because on the flight (out of Chicago) people were coming up to me and asking me various questions in German. I am by no means fluent, but I can understand enough to answer their questions as well as getting myself by and having conversations. But when we landed in Prague and I couldn't even understand a little of the language, that was when I realized how important it was to be able to communicate. Does that make sense? I don't think I'm articulating it well right now. Anyway, it was almost a relief to get back to Germany, where even though I can't understand everything, it's coming and it's much easier to be here. So I guess the moral of my story is everyone should learn languages. It's so important. In the world we live in today, where everyone is constantly connected, it is essential to learn languages, to become a new type of world citizen. In the American mentality I think we rely on people from other cultures learning English so we can communicate. When you are in America, speak English. But when you travel to other parts of the world you are in a foreign territory and cannot expect people to understand you. We get so aggravated when people in our country don't speak English (because it's America) yet when we travel we expect others to understand us, rather than us understanding them. I think Eddie Izzard says it best, "We are going to have to be bilingual, we going to have to be. And English speakers hate this, 'two languages in one head? No one can live at that speed! Good God man, you're asking the impossible!'" So yes people, LEARN LANGUAGES!!!! 

And for your enjoyment:

Eddie Izzard: Languages 

Praha and Berlin In 8 Days

I got to Europe a week and a half ago and am already absolutely in love. My mom, my aunt, and I flew to Frankfurt, then on to Prague. Everyone, given the opportunity, should visit Prague at least once in their lifetime. It's a gorgeously old city. The streets are cobblestone and there are 900 year old houses under the streets. Need I say more?? We went on a tour of Prague castle, and we got to see the catacombs where past Czech kings are buried. Some of the churches and cathedrals are the most beautiful and ornate buildings I have ever seen. It was absolutely stunning. We also went through the old Jewish sector of the city. The Czech republic was one of the first countries 'invaded' by the Nazis. I'm not sure 'invaded' is really the right word, as there wasn't really much of a fight. The Sudetenland willingly became a part of the new Third Reich. In the memorial (in one of the synagogs) to those victims of the Nazis, thousands and thousands of Hebrew names are written on the walls to commemorate the Czech Jews who died during the Holocaust. Upstairs were pictures drawn by children in Theresienstadt, images of the dreams of innocent children to return home to a life uninterrupted.

In Berlin we walked to the Brandenburg Gate and Checkpoint Charley, and afterwards we found the parts of the wall that are still standing. The graffiti on the wall was a sight to see, on one section is written the word "Tacheles". I read that it is a German phrase with Hebrew origins meaning to be open, to speak one's mind, or to speak openly about one's opinion.

We also went to see the national memorial to the murdered Jews of Europe in Berlin. The memorial is comprised of nothing but huge (granite?) blocks that vary in height from very small to very high. The ground of the memorial sloped downwards as you walked through the maze of blank blocks, and underneath there was a museum. There is just something about the way the memorial is designed that takes your breath away, it makes you stop and think. And you could get lost in it, you feel so small...

We also visited the Jüdisches Museum. The museum is in a tall, thin grey building that zigzags its  way back away from the street. There are very few windows and the only way to get into the building is to go in the building next door and walk down through a tunnel and up into the building. The first floor was about the Holocaust, while the upper two floors where about the history and origins of Judaism and about Jewish religion and life before and after the war. I learned a lot, and the Holocaust portion was sombering. There was the "Holocaust Tower", a room with only one very slim window in the ceiling that let in very little light, otherwise it would have been pitch black. The tower extended through all the floors of the building. Like in the memorial, you just feel very small, and in the dark it's difficult to see, in certain corners (the tower wasn't a square) a person could stand in and not be seen. It was eery and almost frightening. Like you felt powerless. There was also an area, called a 'Memory Void' that had thousands of heavy, metal faces on the ground representing the absence of the Jewish community from European society. 

And of course we went to the Egyptian museum to see the famous bust of Nefertiti. It was amazing, she had her own room and was so well preserved it was like you were actually looking at the person, like any moment she would open her mouth and start talking to you. 

And then there is the Berlin Zoo, located in the Tiergarten. The zoo was very nice, out of all the zoos I've been to this one has to be my favorite. The enclosures were a lot closer, well you could get closer to the animals. I was closer to a tiger than I ever have been before, and my god are those animals beautiful. I have a whole new appreciation for the magnificence of tigers. 

Isn't she just gorgeous?? And this picture is no zoom, we were up close and personal with these animals.

So that was basically my first week here in Europe (Czech Republic and Germany). I'm living with my host family and have some other things to say about coming and living here, but that will have to wait for another time :) 

Goodnight!