Weekly Post #28

Hey everybody!

8. February 2015:

On Sunday I woke up at the crack of dawn to head out to Berlin with my political science class. As we walked into the entrance of the Dortmund train station we saw THE flying Ford Angela from Harry Potter. I took this as a very good sign for the upcoming visit. After a 3.5 hour train right we quickly packed our things into two rooms in our hotel which was right next to the Berlin main train station. After we had packet our stuff into the hotel we had a few hours of free time to roam around. I never realised how close everything is in Berlin. About a 5 minute walk from the train station we were standing in front of the Bundeskanzleramt. Kittycorner is the Bundestag. About another 2 minute walk and we were standing in front of the Brandenburg Gate. There are also several monuments within this surrounding area. You could see the majority in about 2 hours. Our first day in Berlin was so gorgeous. The sky was blue with big puffy clouds. The Brandenburg Gate, Bundestag and monuments looked outstanding. We met back at the train station to catch a Berlin city train (which leave every two minutes!) to East Berlin. There we visited, Hohenschönhausen, a DDR prison. Our tour guide was actually a previous occupant of this prison. It was difficult to understand him with his Berlin accent, but I could understand the conditions in the camp were grim. In the beginning the prisioners were physically and mentally tortured. Later on they were only mentally tortured with lack of sleep, rooms too hot cold, or wet, and the way the could sleep or sit. I never realised how serious the some of the conditions were in this time. After our school activities were over, my friends, Maja, Gina, Johanna, and I, went to the Brandenburg Gate again. It was even more stunning at night. It was even better that we were the only ones there. At least almost. As we were taking pictures a black car pulled up and none other than Kevin Hart got out to also take a picture with The Gate. I know who he is but don't follow him closely, never the less we took a picture with him for all of our friends who do.

9. February 2015:

Monday was our longest day in Berlin. My class visited the Paul-Löbe Haus, the German Bundestag, the Bundesrat, and the Bundeskanzleramt. I really liked both the Bundestag and Bundesrat. I feel like the Bundesrat is the part of the German Government people often look over. I don't think it can be truely compared to either the Senate, or House of Rep, which makes its existance more interesting, as well as complicated. The Bundestag is amazing. It's grand, detailed, meaningful, and a bit quirky. The Bundestag is grand just by how immense it is. The viewing globe thing on top is also a great feat of arcitecture, especially for back in the day. The Bundestag is detailed down to the color of the carpet, chairs and lights. Pictures show the main meeting room with purple-bluish chairs, gray carpet, and mostly natural lighting with help of high white/blue lights. Every part was thouroughly thought out. The Bundestag is quirky in a way that most people don't realize. Almost always the great bird at the head of the room is shown on its front side. Many don't realize the bird on the otherside is snickering. Later in the day as we were waiting to enter the Bundeskanzleramt I saw a woman in a cream blazer hurry into the Bundeskanzleramt from a car. My sources tell me (aka my CDU Bundestag member) may have been Angela Merkel. (That's my story and I am sticking to it) After our activities for the day were done my friends and I headed over to The East Side Gallery. (The Berlin Wall) Never in my whole life have I ever felt so small. The wall itself isn't so big, nor is it that thick. Opposite the wall is a huge road where cars speed along and right behind that are huge buildings. Walking on a small european sidewalk makes things seem so much closer. The wall, which is really supposed to be a dark part of history, starts to feel like a safe haven from what is happening today. It was a very eerie feeling. After that we headed down to Checkpoint Charlie. I love Checkpoint Charlie, even though it is a dinky building with really nothing to show I still appreciate it's history after looking around the museum. That night we also saw the Bombed WWII Church ruins. It's insane to look at, on top is completely hollowed out and looks in danger of giving way. On the inside there are cracks on the beautiful ceiling, but no other damage to be seen. The doorways look like they were never touched by the war. The weathered carvings sit there with no broken pieces. If buildings could talk I would love to hear this one's story. Right across the street was the world famous Berinale. Nothing was happening while we looked at the red carpet. I was disappointed by how small it was, the cameras always make it look much bigger.

10. February 2015:

Tuesday was a lot of WWII history. First we travelled to Schloss Cecilienhof. It was built by Prince Wilhelm II. Unfortunately they weren't able to live in it for too long due to the outbreak of the war. Many people know how the USA, England, and Russia met at the end of WWII. But not many people know where it was. I have seen pictures of the Potsdam Conference of 1945, but I never really considered the place on which the leaders were standing. To stand in the same spot where three of the most famous leaders of all time stood is an eerie feeling. It is a really beautiful house, with a combination of Prince Wilhelm's and The Potsdam Conference artifacts. For the other side of the war we visited The Wannsee Conference. This conference took place at the beginning of the war. I was suprised to find out that Hitler wasn't actually at this meeting to, "solve the jewish question." Disturbingly it only took 90 minutes for the Nazi leaders to smooth out the final wrinkles in the system. It's astonishing to see how these men thought that there was rational behind what they were setting out to do. Nazis even had scientists do 'experiments' on the human skull of Africans and Europeans. They, not suprisingly, concluded Europeans were undeniably more intelligent due to their measurements. We all know this cannot possibly be true. Anyway....After the day's activies we visited Charlottenburg Palace. Charlottenburg is like the Buckinham Palace of Germany. This thing is huge it is about .3 miles long (1/2 km). Although we didn't go inside, we were already asking ourselves why we didn't live there in that time. It's gorgeous, please just click on the link (or look at my pictures) and you will see what I mean.

11. February 2015:

Wednesday was our last day in Berlin. We started by visiting The Tear Palace. The Tear Palace was the place where, during the Cold War, people could cross the border from East to West or vice versa. Many more people from the West could move to the East, but there was very little movement from the East to the West. I was so tired I didn't understand much of what was being said. All I really remember was that there were some really odd things that weren't allowed to cross the boarder, and the little cubbies that people got their papers approved were tiny and the officials sat so high you could tell them if they had boogers in their nose even when they looked down at you. The last thing we did was to visit the Nordrhein Westfallen Landesvertretung. (It's basically the representation building in Berlin for my German state.) Everybody was so tired at least two people at ever table of five were headbobbing, and the others were staring off into space. Luckily it was the last thing we had to do before heading back to the train station. On the train back I got to sit next to my new friend, Renu, she is Indian. (From India) About half way through the train ride most of us were trying to make up for some of the sleep we missed, including myself. All of the sudden I am woken up by this blasting Schlager music. (German 'feel good' music. Example A: Atemlos) Some of the guys brought a little wireless boom box and were blasting music throughout the whole train car. Pretty soon everybody was singing and dancing to the music including the teachers and strangers in our train car. This was was the frosting on the cake for my trip. I have never experienced something as crazy and as fun as that.

12. February 2015:

Thursday was my meeting with my Bundestag member, Steffan Kanitz. It was interesting to talk to him, he was really helpful and seemed to want to make our year the best as possible. He said that many of the politicians in the Bundestag can be friendly with eachother outside of politics, and that they even have a cross party soccer club which gathers often. I thought that was really great that out of the office politicians can become friends. I think American politicians could take a page out of their book.

13. February 2015:

Friday I was up and at it again. Two of my friends from my YFU beginning seminar travelled to Brussels for the weekend. Friday night in Brussels was actually a nightmare. Luckily Meggie knows French (they are supposed to speak German, but nobody does) which helped us get around. When we finally got to Brussels we spent an hour in the trainstations trying to figure out where we were actually supposed to go. By the time we got to our hotel we found out it wasn't actually located in Brussels, instead in a shady area in the surrounding area of Brussels. We didn't have time to change hotels that night, but we took the time to find a new one on the web. Apparently they had just changed locations so what was supposed to be 5 minutes from the city center ended up being about 45 minutes. It makes an interesting story, even now.

Thanks for reading!

Sandra