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My school sponsors a lot of little excursions, and one nice sunny day we went to a place called Pfaueninsel. (Peacock Island.) The trip was a bus ride and a bit of a hike towards the island. Before we went to the island, we went to the Wannsee Conference building, which is the site where German officials met to outline the details of the "Final Solution", and which is now a memorial to the Holocaust. I think a few people were quite overwhelmed by the memorial. I've studied an awful lot of German and military history, so I already knew a lot of the tragic details. It was something new for other people, and a bit much to take in.




A field on Pfaueninsel. Lots of gold leaves and green grass made this a very pleasant and relaxing walk.

( Lotsa piccies under the cut! )

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...of some of the things I saw and heard in Germany...

Having to leave it.

Meeting friends tonight to go to a Kneipe (pub) for a farewell. Going to buy some poor cash-strapped lasses a few drinks, and whoop it up for the grand finale' known as 15 hours inside airplanes.

I leave around 11:30 am tomorrow. (2:30 AM back at home.)

Bech. I don't wanna leave. :(

Nationalities of my fellow students: A gaggle of people from Switzerland, (The french part, there are always a lot of Swiss-French at this school,) Ireland, Australia, Israel, Denmark and Slovakia.

How I know my German is improving:

- German sounds far more natural to me than before. Background conversations are not so difficult to understand.

- Last year whenever I talked to someone in German, they would almost always answer or react to me in English. Now they just keep babbling away in German.

- I am stumbling with my English. I think I are start to forget how speaka the English. For example: "I"m taking a... kleine Reise, to Hamburg."

Shows on the telly I've seen that were dubbed into German:

- South Park
- Family Guy
- Scrubs
- Dahrma and Greg
- King of Queens
- Newsradio
- Ellen

I also saw the Daily Show with subtitles. I got to hear John Stewart swear! (He sure says 'fuck' a lot.)

Movies I've seen: The Dark Knight dubbed into German, and last night saw Burn After Reading in the original English with German subtitles.

Other stuff:

As far as I know, I'm the only Yank in the whole school. Way to represent, USA! >:P

For some reason I smell better out here in Germany. No, not a sharper sense of smell. I swear, I can wear a shirt for two days and it's not even half-deadly. I have no idea why that is.

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My quicky update!

- Went to the industry washout known as Popkomm on Friday night. We, meaning me, Clare from Australia, Daniella from Slovakia, and Clare's roommate Stella. We all went to a big ol' factory turned into artiste' space Kulturhaus in Prenzlauerberg. For 15 Euros we could go from building to building, checking out all kinds of bands. We seem to have hit the light pop section, and I have to say that a lot of the bands went from just okay to really not that good, which is kind of bizarre considering that it was supposed to be a music industry showcase. The only really worthwhile band we saw was a Spanish band called El Tio Carlos, a good calypso band.

- After having cancelled plans to go way up in the giant TV tower at Alexanderplatz, I decided to spend my Saturday evening at the movies. I saw The Dark Knight dubbed into German. I had already seen it in the states, and now got the hear the German version. Believe me, this film is better the second time around, and the dubbing and translations were actually fairly well done, until they reached what I considered to be the best scene in the film, with the best line in the film, which was completely ruined by inept translating. I literally slapped my forehead. "Ach! Nein!" I was tempted to attempt to file criminal charges, and still insist someone needs to be arrested for having washed out the whole feeling of that killer scene. (The Joker in drag with Two Face scene.)

- Yesterday I got to meet an online friend for the first time face-to-face, anicca_anicca, a friend of my all-German LJ superigel. She gave me a tour of her neighborhood, after we had a coffee and some nice cake, and we ended up having dinner later on. I thought I was just going to spend a few hours with her and go home, but we ended up hanging out all day, as she is a very charming and lovely woman. I was glad to have the chance to treat her to coffee and cake, because she has done so much to help me with my German. She has asked me to help her with her English, but her English is practically perfect, (She could easily pass for a native British speaker,) and I couldn't really do anything to help her out with her second language.

More stuff later. I ran 15 miles yesterday and am a wee bit tuckered out.

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So I've been in the same class for 3 days. I have about 11 classmates in this class, and I'm the only man in the class, so I'm totally outnumbered. There's only one other student over 30, and most of these gals are from Switzerland, so I'm also surrounded by French accents.

The youth factor really shows sometimes. We often get partnered up with another student to work with on problems, and my partner the other day was suffering from a hangover. I was still jet-lagged, so we made quite a pair. "Do you know what we're supposed to do with this sentence?" "I'm not sure. I was hoping you would know."

Our teacher is really good. She really drills us on the grammar, but she's not a meany about it. She's a little older than me, very good looking, and about 10 feet tall. She has been giving us heck about some of our pronunciations, though the Swiss students are having a hard time getting past their heavy French accents. These accents are so damn French that at one point I was getting infected by them, as I suddenly found myself speaking German in a French accent. "Dieeee Vrau vehr syehr Gluuushlick..."

There's a lot of cool people in this class. Tanya, a randy youngerish student from Australia, and I have spoken at length about politics. She remarked that American politics are a lot more interesting than Australian politics. (Do tell!) Clare sits next to me in class and is from Ireland. Her university requires that she go abroad and study a foreign language so they told her to "go away already", so she's in Germany for nearly a year. We were talking about how safe Berlin is, how safety-wise it is basically Disneyland compared to San Francisco or Dublin. Janine is another cool cat, and informed me that, as far as she knows, she's the only Israeli in the school. So far I have, as of yet, to meet one other American student in the school. (Of course!)

I'll see if I can sneak some pictures of these people eventually, maybe by the next Stammtisch.

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So I lucked out on my flight. On the way to New York there was an empty seat next to me. Yay! From New York to Berlin I was seated next to the guy who reserved the window seat before I could. He was an Italian fellow who was on his way to Berlin for a physicists conference. Turns out he's a phsyicist who is studying an aspect of string theory! We had a long talk about physics in which he told me about his field of research in which he is trying to find the allowable parameters concerning the shapes of the extra dimensions predicted by string theory. I'm sure he's got a better explanation for drspiff, but that's how I understood it. (Also might be boring for some people out there, but I thought it was interesting!)

I arrived at my host families very spacious and really elegant apartment. Bernd and Fernando are my hosts, and they have a really swank and spiffo place. Will post pictures soon! On my first day I went to Postdamer Platz, which is one of the few places where you can find open stores on a Sunday. It's basically a shopping mall and it was crowded! I bought a small and cheap umbrella, since it's raining practically all of the time here. Not like downpour raining, just a perpetual sprinkle.

I had a few problems on my first day, such as my Garmin not being able to locate the German satellites, and having some difficulty finding my host's apartment. But everything else is going good.

Will start snapping pics today, and hopefully get some pics up soon.

Bis dann!

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