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Finals, finals, finals.....

The resulting chaos of all my classes' material crashing together in my brain must be a lot like the day the wall fell here.  It's the last week here and everybody's feeling the crunch.  We were all assinged papers and projects in the beginning of the semester and, as the great top-notch American work ethic liberal arts students we all are here, we've waited until now to start them.  

I have 3 papers to write:  One for econ on Germany's EU level response to the liberalization of the blah blah blah, one for Soccer, Drugs, Rock 'n Roll, and Sex on Americanization (or 'Our Benevolent Bestowance of Good Morals, Entertainment Ideas, Democracy and Freedom to Those Less Fortunate Nations' as I like to call it), and one for Visual Culture where I determine what makes an advertisement Berlinian and then create a stereotypical one of my own using a program I have no idea how to use.

Throw a fat greasy slab of 4 final exams onto that next week and you'll get the heartstopping Sarkis Omellete that is my academic life right now.

As a result, I'll be even more sparse with my blogging, probably until I come home.  I apologize that I fell off the blogging boat about midway through the semester, promising posts that never came, but I will continue to put up my adventures after finals and even after I get home when I'll have ample time sitting in my room after waking up at 3 pm.  I know it wont be totally relevant anymore, but I hope it will still be enjoyable and informative on what I was doing that was so fun.

A quick update though:  I'm ready to come home.  Germany's been great, but I want the semester to be over and I miss people back home and at school.  I will likely miss the people here the most, but thanks to Skype, AIM, and video games (yes, they have social uses now), I'll be keeping in touch.  Secondly, I'll miss the food, especially Doener.  Mmmmm.  And of course the beer.  No I am not an alcoholic.  Far from it, in fact.  I am now a beer snob!  Sucks for my friends from now on, as every beer I drink I will likely compare to one from Germany and consider it inferior.  I will miss the culture surrounding it here as well.  No, not just the younger drinking age, but primarily the everyday position alcohol holds in German society.  Because it's not rebelious or hard to get, people drink for enjoyment and taste rather than to get drunk.  They are not forced to plan crazy drinking events like in the US, the rarity usually resulting in binge drinking.

And I suppose someone will be wondering if I've discovered anything about myself while I was here and the answer is yes:  I cannot grow a good beard.  :-(    <-see?  no beard either.

Will

Playing Catch-Up, Part 2: Amsterdam, Oh Boy...

Pretend that I am a commited blogger and that it is actually Halloween weekend and that nothing has happened since then even though I may reference things that have.  Ok, continue...

So, Amsterdam is not quite the magical fun time as John Travolta described to me in Pulp Fiction.  In fact, it kind of sucked.  Maybe it was the group, maybe it was the weather, maybe it was because I just wasn’t into snorting coke off of a prostitute in a red lit ally.  I dunno.

In actuality, it was probably because the city was largely artificial.  The most historical parts were the 200 year old phallic sidewalk-street separators with the city’s coat of arms (XXX… yup, that’s where that came from.  Surprised?) on it that the residents wanted to preserve.  The old city center, the one with the canals and red light district and stuff, was a rigidly planned semi-circular grid consisting solely of souvenir shops, novelty restaurants, and the infamous coffee shops where the sell pot by the quarter-pounder (of course, they’re on the metric system- they don’t know what the fuck a quarter pounder is…).

Then there was our hostel, the Hans Brinker Budget Hotel.  It was the worst place I have ever stayed in my life.  Dirty, overcrowded, and cold, the place actually took pride in its shitty facilities.  They turned the Gulag-esque conditions into a marketing gimmick- ‘it’s so shitty it’s good,’ I guess, like the poo stench, sex noises through the wall,  and dirty sheets were supposed to make you feel like everybody has an awesome time there.  You know the guy who only thinks it was a good night when he can’t remember it?  He must’ve been named Hans Brinker.

Despite all that, it was a pretty cool city visually:  lots of old houses, beautiful canals, and tight cobblestone streets.  Often the houses jutted out diagonally in several directions over thin streets making much of the city feel like Diagon Alley.  Because of its grid design, it was relatively easy to navigate and the center was only the size of 4 or 5 city blocks/ 4 Carleton campuses (actually, the amount of drinking, smoking, and general freedom and jovalty on the streets made it feel a lot like a Delta house college campus).  I explored most of the city on my own, moving at my own pace, which was kind of nice.

You’re probably all curious about the coffee shops I mentioned earlier.  Well basically, pot is the Amsterdam equivalent of beer and coffee shops are their equivalents to bars.  We went to a few (don’t worry, I didn’t get blazed, fall asleep on a couch to wake up robbed and then run out the shop to find the thief only to trip over a hooker and land in a sunken houseboat in the canals) and they were always heavily decorated with lots of cool art relevant to their store names (the Dolphin, for example, was covered in coral reefs made, much to some high people’s surprise, of Styrofoam) and served lots of good coffee and snacks with a smile and cute Dutch accent.  Oh, and mounds of marijuana.

The people there (though I probably saw more tourists than natives and heard and saw more English than Dutch) were the biggest disappointment.  Most likely because of the abundance of coffee shops, they were all very lethargic and spacey.  It was like being in a city where everyone was me, but not naturally.  One of the girls who went with me stated it best: “this place is just a city of zombies!”

The food was probably the best part.  We went to the greatest pancake restaurant I’ve ever been too, and that includes Evanston’s Walker Brothers.  Yeah, I said it.  Unsurprisingly, the city most famous for its abundance of pot is also famous for its pancakes.  I had a massive omelet with bacon and cheese one night and a Gyro omelet another.  For the former, imagine being able to taste in one bite the excitement in Times Square on V-J day with a dash of Nov. 4^th, 2008 and the feeling of kicking off your shoes and sitting down after running a marathon with a cool lemonade and a dog/cat on your lap.  It was just like that, I swear.

We were there for Halloween weekend.  It was supposed to be a big party there, I mean, Amsterdam, Halloween, what could go wrong?  Oh yeah, the city has a strung out zombie infestation.  I went as Michael Phelps, shown here giving a poor impression of that picture of him where he's yelling really loud: 

I was pretty proud of my McGiverd costume, but didn’t get to put it to much use.  We went to a really bro-d out club where people had as many popped collars as the number of times the DJ repeated “I Kissed a Girl and I Liked It.”  Because no one could fit a costume over so many layers of collar, I was one of only a few dressed up people.

OK!  The Red Light District.  Earth’s Asshole.  Vienna’s Troubled Little Brother.  Mos Eisley.  Detroit.  It goes by many names, usually focusing on the hookers behind the windows, the sex shops and shows, and the red lights lining the doorways of anywhere smutty.  Walking down the dimly lit streets (everything actually runs pretty much 24/7, even on Sundays next to the church in the middle of the district, yet it always looks dimly lit) I was offered more sex, coke, ecstasy, and bikes (yes, bycicles, I guess SOMETHING’s gotta be taboo) than ever before, well, ever.  If you got too close to the hookers’ door windows or made eye-contact, they’d nock on the doors and call to you.  From this I learned all about the pricing and logistics of it all!  Hooray!  Wandering around, I’d often start down an alleyway about 15 ft wide with people going through (I avoided the empty ones) and it would end up tightening to about a shoulder-width and a half with two flows of traffic (all men by the end) edging by each other and glass doors opening up on each side like nets counting on the tight current to push a straggler into them.

I felt bad for anybody actually interested in ‘buying’ anything there, going through that tight current of guys equally ‘excited’ for later ‘purchases.’  He would be like the ticker on the Wheel of Fortune and they’d be the Wheel’s notches.  (For the family: yes, I am making sexual innuendo.)

For all the grime and STDs most commonly associated with the RLD, it’s never remembered for its beautiful swans basking in the canal (in front of Porky’s sex Theater) or the nice old couples, kids, and young families laughing and playing (with the hookers) or the grocery stores, tourist shops, and businesses (in between the brothels).  Because you can buy or see anything, and I mean literally anything in the RLD, it really should be known as the internet in physical form- with more viruses.

Will

Playing Catch Up, Part 1: Obamanation!

Not like abomination, instead reads like domination... perhaps that just didn't translate well into text, never mind.

So I haven't updated in over a month, and for the sake of not flooding this blog with a post as epic in scale as Obama's victory split screen with The Dark Knight, I'm going to break it up into a few posts, so expect more each day talking about my experience Momento-style temporal order.

Anyway, WE WON!  I went to a Democrats Abroad in Berlin event/party/show for election night with most of the people from my program.  Of 800 people filling the old theater, about 40% were Americans, the rest were Germans in support of Obama.  I had been invited to several other all German Obama venues for election night as well.  They seem to like him as much as we do, possibly more, as evidenced by their 200,000 person showing when he spoke here in July.  I’m told that that is larger than any of his crowds in the US, but I’m not sure.  Grant Park was a ‘mere’ 70,000 on election night.

The party was led by Cab Callaway strait out of the Blues Brothers, you know, the guy who sang Minnie the Moocher (not really, of course).  Originally, the plan had been to ‘celebrate’ every five blue states, every time a swing state went blue, and at the end result.  Thank god we didn’t do that, because of the fucking landslide!  When the final result came in around 5 am, the whole room exploded.  Everybody danced, yelled, and cheered in celebration.  Apparently the band had been playing during the announcement, but I lost them in between the chants of “America!” followed closely by, “Fuck yeah!”

We stayed there for McCain’s dignified (unlike his crowd) speech at 530 and then Obama’s BAMFy speech at 6.  McCain gave the cleanest, most dignified, and most intelligent speech I’ve ever heard him give and I was glad.  My friends felt bad for him, being an old man who’s career basically ended last night, but I did not.  He ran a dirty campaign and even if it was not his idea, he didn’t have to.  Also, Palin. 

W.

T.

F.

Mate?

I can’t wait to watch John Stewart demolish CNN’s baby coverage of the election.  They treated the viewer like children, dangling the election numbers on a pair of shiny keys for the American people to bat and giggle at.  That hologram thing?  WHAT THE HELL WAS THAT?  

She was in front of a poorly covered blue screen and there was no god damn 3 dimensional image of her in the CNN studio.  The Obi-Wan-Kenobi  aura around her was just the blue screen not phased out enough.  I bet it was a fluke and they thought the world was dumb enough to just roll with it.

Obama’s speech was epic, huge, monumental, moving- all the things you hear describing the next Steven Spielberg movie.  I was a bit put off by the gospel-church like ‘yes we can’ part towards the end, just because I hate when politicians bypass people’s rationales by going straight to their emotions.  I’m equally annoyed that people let that happen and getting all riled up because of it.  It was certainly great to see people moved to tears by his election, but I was wary when others were streaming tears blindly shouting along at every ‘yes we can.’  No I’m not against the message, or Obama, or hope, or emotion.  I just like to keep my head and worry when others have lost theirs.

'BREAKING' NEWS

1. 'Breaking' News

2. Boring Other Stuff

1. So I broke into a house yesterday.  Well, let me clarify, my friend's house.

My friend Jenn was sick at home so I had to bring her some documents from IES.  She came out in her onesy pajamas to let me in, leaving her apartment door open while she went to open the building door.  Then the Spawn of Satan Cat decided to play a trick on us mortals by rubbing his Grizzly Back of Hate on the door, closing and locking it.  Normally, this would not be an issue, we all get locked out here a lot, but this time the stove was on, and her host wasn't due home for a while.

When calls to the landlord and locksmith-breaker-inner-100 euro-guy failed, we gave the IES emergency number a try.  Now I thought that an emergency number's purpose was pretty clear:  call it and someone will always answer.  Apparently the Germans don't have the second part.  I had to get in touch with a student at IES and had him put me on with a staff member.

It took about 20 minutes before we actually got anywhere contacting Jenn's host, despite the fact that all their numbers are stored at IES somewhere.  I imagine that while Jenn's nice neighbor with a ladder and a toolset and I, with a panicing Jenn on my shoulders trying to climb through a window, were working out in the rain, the people at IES must've been really busy hauling ass to find the phonenumber Excel sheet...

By this time the house had filled with significant amount of smoke and the plastic on her coffee pot had long ago melted away.  Then the fire alarm finally sounded.  Hitler Cat had little time left before the smoke got really bad and Jenn's host was 30 minutes away, so we took the next logical step:  we threw a brick through kitchen window.

It went straight through both panes and crashed onto the kitchen floor, luckily missing the stove and not damaging the floor.  I then had to climb up to the tip of the neighbor's ladder, reach through the foot wide circular hole in the window, and open it from the inside.  I climbed through the window, turned off the stove, and opened the front door for Jenn.

So there you have it, official breaking and entering.  Chairman Meow was ok, hiding under his Bed of Deceit, but he knew he had been beaten.  We opened all the windows and it turned out that the smoke wasn't as bad as it looked.

What was really strange and even more infuriating, was that for the entire hour I was there after the alarm started going off and crashed a heavy brick through the window, no one, not the Polizei, not the neighbors (except the nice ones who helped), no one came by.  Berlin is famous (nowadays) for its people minding their own business, but this was disturbing.  If I had been a burglar, I wouldv'e been able to easily walk off with 2 laptops.  Hell, I could've parked a car in front of the house and made trips until I had cleared it all out.  I probably could broken into another apartment in her huge building even right after all this and gotten away with it.  A neighbor wouldm't have even come in, they'd just knock and all I'd have to is "We're fine, we're all fine here now, thank you. How are you?" and they'd go away.

Everything is OK now though, don't worry Mom, I'm not a criminal, nor am I hurt.  IES feels terrible about the whole thing and will take care of most stuff.  I took pictures, so Jenn's host's insurance will pay for the window.

Also, this has only added to the 'Superman' title one of the staff gave me in Hamburg.

2.  Eh, forget it, I'll bunch the other stuff in with another post.  This can sum up most of it:  http://www.nbc.com/Saturday_Night_Live/video/clips/couric-palin-open/704042/

New Pictures: http://s473.photobucket.com/albums/rr94/lliw2322/Around%20Berlin/

Will

We're All Living in Amerika!

Pyramus and Thisbe?

Latin has poisoned my fagile little mind

Hi, my name is Will

(Hi Will)

and it's been 3 weeks since I last played video games.

(clap clap clap)

Eh, this is definitely a good thing.  I'm having a lot more fun actually spending time with like, people, and it's been a good week or so as a result.

New Photos:  http://s473.photobucket.com/albums/rr94/lliw2322/Checkpoint%20Charlie/

http://s473.photobucket.com/albums/rr94/lliw2322/Around%20Berlin/

1.  Meeting English-ers and Dancing with Fast Food

2.  The Hammurabi's Wall

3.  Du, du hasst, du hass die Berliner Philharmoniker!

4.  Favorite foods

5.  Rambling Incoherrant Thoughts of a Spaceout in Berlin

1.  I actually met/made friends with several English speakes over the weekend.  I was stranded on a train station at 1 AM because the trains had stopped running and asked these two guys, who I thought were German and were sticking around for a reason, if there was another train coming.  Turns out they were Irish, though it took me a little while to figure out that they were speaking English.  They were in town for a soccer game and didn't know about the trains either, so we split a cab.  Irish soccer hooligans are the nicest people!  I got out on the way and they told me not to worry about the fare.  No, the whole thing was not a stupid decision.

Then I found out that the girl giving out fliers everyday on our corner is actually from NY.  I started talking to her, but I think she has been in Germany too long, as the whole "mind your own bussiness" mindset seemed to have set in.  Or maybe that's the NY attitude instead.

My program is situated above another American abroad program and we can see into their lounge area.  It feels a lot like we are watching animals in a zoo, so we put signs up on our windows with "Der Zoo: Don't Feed the Animals" written backwards on it so that they would read the backwards text and know that they were the ones in the cage.  This turned out to be not so much a story about meeting people as angering people.

Then on Saturday we met an American girl in a winery.  She was actually from the IES Vienna program visiting Berlin.  She was very friendly, but long story short, in making a reference to a Futurama episode, she 'heiled' in the middle of the winery.  Cea was quick to yank the girl's arm down, but we left very shortly therafter.

Saturday was also Cea's birthday celebration and, after the heiling incident, it was pretty sweet.  I went to my first German dance club called "Fast Food (something else)," which was a slightly American club in the only Chinese restaraunt allowed in the DDR.  I had all the lights and smoke and bass you'd expect, but with very few trashed people, which was nice.  They mostly played American music and I don't think I've ever danced so hard.

It was much more fun than we seem to be having.

2. Franka, my host, gave me tickets to go see the Babylon exhibit at a museum here.  I searched "Staatliche-Museen" on google, and I was all set to get there for my 11 o'clock tour.  Upon arrival, however, the museum was completely closed and in the middle of remodeling.  As it turns out, "Staatliche-Museen" just means "State Museum," of which there are many.  Woops.  So I was left with nothing else to do in the Checkpoint Charlie area of Berlin except take pictures of the wall and other historical tourist traps, seen here: (sorry, lazy, uploading soon)

3. I had my first real introduction to Ramstein in my Drug, Sex, Rock 'n Roll, and Soccer class, taught by the most hilariously awkward 60 year old man ever, Wolfgang.  The band is every bit as crazy as everyone thinks, except for the lead singer.  He is a fairly unintimidating, flabby, dopey looking guy who barely moves on stage, though has a thoroughly haunting voice.  I dont suggest these two videos though:

This one is funny and makes fun of America:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4w9EksAo5hY

This one is kinda cool and shows off their well hidden nerdy side:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hHkhzNLHC4g&feature=related

In other musical news, I tried to go see the Berliner Philharmoniker on Sunday at a musicfestivl at Templehoff Airport, Hanger 2, but my group was the first to not get tickets.  I'll have to try to see them on their home turf instead.

4. Favorite Foods Thus Far

-Doner: Like a gyro, but with more veggies and sauces, delicious.  Equivalant to burger in terms of availability.

-Bouletten: basically a burger with no bun and made with lots of spices and onions on a skillet.

-Schawarma:  not sure how it differs from a Doner, but it's even better.

-Borrito:  Not German, but god damn delicious.

-Eggs: Hadn't really liked them before this summer, but here they are better than in the college house.  Sorry Joe.

-Burger King: It's better here.  Shut up.

-MSG:  All Chinese places have it here

-Salami/Margharita (not like the drink) Pizza:  Delicious, but I will not eat it with fork and knife, that's one of 2 things I will not yeld to the Germans over.

5. 

-Berlin at 6 am on Saturday is just like 28 Days Later.  I kept expecting hungover zombies 'enraged' by headaches to chase me down and throwup all over me, thereby making me start to throw up and get pissed off.

-Boulette.  I already mentioned it, but now I really want it.

-Speaking of video games, it's also not bad that I'm missing out because by the time I get back, all the games I can waste my money on will be older and thus cheaper!

-Escaltors make me look stupid.  They look out of order, but they're really just off and waiting for you to get on so they can pounce when it's too late to get your footing!  Other times, they're reverse direction if you walk into an opposite moving one.  However, this is NOT, NOT always the case.  I haven't yet figured out what gives away these predatorial pathways.

Play Time is Over

Temple Burger Konig

New Photos Here: http://s473.photobucket.com/albums/rr94/lliw2322/Around%20Berlin/

             http://s473.photobucket.com/albums/rr94/lliw2322/Trip%20to%20Hamburg/

1. Classes

2. Hamburg Trip

3. German Batman

4. Other Little Things

1. Classes started yesterday and we're all gonna have to  get back into the academic swing of things.  I'm taking this Visual Culture class where we learn about Berlin's style and make, basically, a big art project at the end.  I don't have my legos with me, so for the first time in years I may have to do something sophisticated.  I'm also taking a class called Soccer, Drugs, and Rock 'n Roll (and SEX) in Europe, which sounds far more badass than I think it will be, but it seems like it will still be fun.  It's one of those opinion based classes about art and cultural movements, so I can basically say anything I want and be right.  My third and fourth classes I haven't had yet: the Metropolis in Literature and Film and European Econ., which should be useful with the US economy's current state of total failure.  Then of course there is German with my really weird teacher who doesn't understand why "how are politics?" is not a question.

2. On Saturday we went to Hamburg, which is the less cool, more expensive Berlin.  It was still pretty fun, there were lots of cool buildings.  We had a walking tour of the city with the only 6'10", black, Portuguese man in Germany.  He made a lot of relatively harmless sexist comments and showed us where to pick up prostitutes and what their pricings are.  Great.

After that we got lunch at this soccer bar/pub place.  I tried to order milk with my pork schnitzel (with a fried egg plopped on top of it.  ?.), but the guy didn't understand.  It was on the menu, but apparently no one had ordered milk there before.  Ever.

We then went to an art museum where we saw art from this modern art guy.  Each picture was basically 3 different colors: one background, and two rectangles of the other two colors.  They looked more like paint or wallpaper samplings than anything else.  Then there was this group of people with a guide who were sitting in front of literally a black rectangle for 20 minutes discussing it.  Thank God Ella, one of the staff I was touring the exhibit with, thought it was all as rediculous as I did.

We saw the Cat Lady from the Simpsons!

We took a boat tour of Hamburg (pictures here: http://s473.photobucket.com/albums/rr94/lliw2322/Trip%20to%20Hamburg/), which was pretty cool except for the drunken bachelorette party going on behind us, at 6 pm.  One of us got sick on the boat though, and going through about 20 locks was a little annoying, but I'm such a history nerd and sucker for cool buildings and big boats that I didn't mind ignoring the groaning and the waiting.

We had about 2 hours after the boat ride to go look around Hamburg.  The girls went shopping and two other guys and I went to look for some food and a drink.  There didn't seem to be very many places, much unlike Berlin, so when we finally came to a lit up one named 'Willi's' we were pretty happy.  We went in and ordered drinks and sat down at a table with cushoned seats and little fancy candles on the table.  I noticed two guys talking closely at a table, two more at the bar sitting together, and that the bartender's shirt was half open.  It was hard to see much detail, as the rainbow lights outside were messing up the lighting.  Hmm...  I went to the bathroom and on the way saw a picture of two bulky naked guys making out, and then I realized I was in a gay bar.

I got the nickname 'superman' before and on the train home.  The train arrived on time, but one of the other guys, Jack, was missing, so I ran up the stairs to get him.  Apparently it looked pretty dramatic, because the other people were cheering me on in the station.  Unfortunately, I thought they were called me back, so I ran back down and two others went after Jack instead.  Then on the train, this suitcase was about to fall on this old lady and I jumped up and stopped it.  Thus I became Superman, with the power to make sensicle, quick decisions.

We were pretty loud and obnoxious on the ride back though, so that same woman I 'saved' started giving me the look.  Ungrateful people!  It's times like this that I consider throwing in the cape.

3. On Sunday I went with Max (who is a kind of jittery Tom Cruise lookalike) and Tom (a guy) to see the Dark Knight in German despite all my fears and better judgement.  The previews were all for dubbed American movies that came out at home 2 months ago.  The Hellboy 2 trailer had a particularly poor dub, making things worse for a particularly poor movie.  There was also a poorly dubbed preview for the new Bond movie, "Ein Quantum Trost."  God I hope that comes out in English in the former American sector here.  Anyway, Batman was still totally awesome and, having already seen it, I was able to translate many of the lines and keep up with the story.  Yes, the Joker was dubbed.  Yes, it was a crime, but the dub was actually not bad.  The guy even emulated the Joker's lip-licking twitch noise.  I felt bad for Max, we didn't know he hadn't seen it yet.

Suddenly, the movie stopped.  The lights came up and people started to get up and leave.  We were really confused.  All was ok though.  As it turns out, the Germans put a 10 minute pause in the middle of long movies solely so that they can get more beer from the concession stand or relieve themselves from the beer they got before the movie.

4. That's pretty much all from here.  A few other things that have come up:

Where the hell do you get humus here?  30% of Berlin is Turkish, come on!

This video from Leah has kept me both entertained and pissed off with the Bush administration: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=STvYcG8nmUc

My computer screen has officially fallen off.  It is held on only by the wires connecting the screen to the computer.

Will

So Far in Sum

All My Albums Thus Far:
http://s473.photobucket.com/albums/rr94/lliw2322/

Understatement: It's been quite a week.

I've procrastinated blogging until now, so this will be pretty long, but because I like lists and numbers, I'll categorize things:

1. My flight and public transport here
2. My house
3. People, beer, food, TV, consumer stuff
4. IES program thus far, the people
5. View of Americans and election
6. Trip to Potsdam
7. Trip around Berlin, the Reichstag, and the German History Museum
8. Funny things here

1. US airlines blow. It's all about the European airlines that are not broke. Well, except for the fact that I had to buy another bag because my ginormous laptop put me over the weight limit. My flight left at 10 pm and was to arrive at 1 pm, 8 hours later, so I was a little nervous about my sleep schedule, espcially because I didn't get any sleep on the flight. This is not because I wasn't tired or can't sleep on planes. Oh no, it's because the flight was one of the greatest 8 hour periods of my life. It was because they served us a hot roast chicken meal with warm rolls and beer. It was because I could watch Iron Man in German (favorite lines: "Ja, Ich kan fliegen." and "Ich bin Iron Man"). It was because there were two more inflight drinks (I didn't get any more alcohol), a hot breakfast, an SNES in each seat with the controller in the armrest, and a camera on the front of the airplane with constantly updating statistics about the flight to keep nerds like me entertained.

I transferred in Coppenhagen for a short flight to Berlin. Unfortunately, I never got to leave the airport to look around, but from what I saw on the camera on the front of the plane, there were many fields, the towns were tiny, and the runway was black. The flight into Berlin was short, but still better than any US flight. Again they offered me beer, but I declined. I sat next to a guy who's sister happened to go to Carleton, though she's a senior and I don't know her. He was about 26 and rich as hell, something about starting a company that installs high bandwidth internet to appartment buildings. Pretty good idea and relatively little CS knowledge required. I was intrigued. I also sat next to a really cute Polish girl who was actually also on my flight from Chicago. We talked in very simple English for a while and I was so distracted by her... accent, that I think I walked off the plane without my sweatshirt and my jacket.

2. I arrived a day before my host-frau was expecting me, because IES screwed up, so I was a little panicked. I was able to get in touch her, but she was at work, so after the scariest taxi ride of my life with this crazy Turkish driver who spoke no English (from that I learned that horns and screeching tires sound the same here as at home) and a very blurred view of Berlin, I had to wait with all my stuff at a cafe in front of her apartment. Then it started raining heavily and I was cold because the Polish succubus had taken my sweatshirt with her adorably poor pronunciation. Of course, everything worked out and Franka, my host, ran out in the rain to get bockwurst and eggs to make me dinner.

Franka's really nice. She actually got wireless for her house because she heard that I was a CS major. Her appartment is very old East Berlin, which was charming for a while. Now the bare-bones-ness of the apartment shows a bit more. Here are some pictures: http://s473.photobucket.com/albums/rr94/lliw2322/My%20Place/

She mentioned that she and most Berliners don't have the towering fridges that we do. I decided not to tell her that we have 3 at home.

It's a lot like living in the off campus house this summer. The stove needs to be lit by a match and the toilet is really weak. However, everything is clean. Everything. Franka has apparently even gone into my room to close any drawers I've left open or fold any clothes I've put out on the floor, you know, for later. Apparently, Germans are pretty passive aggressive with this sort of thing, so I think I'm in trouble.

The bathroom is the only thing I'll never like or get used to in the house. The bathtub is in the middle of the wall with no curtain and a hand held shower head. I get water everywhere, and they have a term for this: 'walrusing,' apparently Americans do it here all the time. It's cold too, and nothing will wake you up in the morning like having to put down the shower heada in a cold bathroom right next to the window for 2 minutes to soap and shampoo up.

The building and the whole neighborhood is pretty cool though, lots of cafes, bars, and young people and families. The Germans, especially the Easterners, love graffiti. Every building is covered with it. Occasionally you'll see some pre-1989 stuff too about freedom or anti-DDR (the not as fun DDR). Some are here: http://s473.photobucket.com/albums/rr94/lliw2322/Around%20Berlin/

3. For the third fattest country in the world, there are very very few fat people here. We must be very far ahead in first. Everybody walks, bikes, or takes the awesome train system wherever they need to go.

The people are pretty much all better looking than Americans too, except for most of the men my age. They are kinda funny looking with anime/Cloud haircuts and I am one of only two single, straight men on my trip, so I look forward to my chances with the gorgeous German women.

People drink beer here literally anytime, anywhere, in half liter bottles. I see at least two guys on my way to the IES building sipping a beer with another in hand at 9 am every day. They also allow people to drink on the street, in parks (where they are also allowed to be naked), and on all public transportation. Beer is also generally cheaper than water, because they don't give out free water in restaurants, you have to buy bottles.

Several of the stereotypes kind of apply. They love recycling, they love small cars (though there are plenty of sedans and vans), and they love punctuality and order.

They drive and bike like crazy here. They don't really stop for pedestrians, they go for the 'smaller thing should move away from bigger thing' rule.

The food here has been amazing. I have not had a meal I didn't like, although I've eaten out so much more than at home, where the most common meal has been bread with cheese and salami. Milk is fatty and thick as cream, soda is expensive, and Doner is their tasty staple junk food. Doner is to Germany as burger is to the US.

TV is mostly American or shows in English dubbed into German. It's surprising how much you can learn from poorly dubbed South Park and Family Guy when you already know all the jokes in English. I try to watch German Nick a lot, because the language simpler than German news. They actually dubbed Spongebob Squarepants pretty well, or as well as spongebob can be. He's not spongebod here though, he's 'Spongebob Schwammkopf' or 'Swimhead,' and he still laughs the same way.

Dogs are loose and everywhere here, but do not touch them! They will not bite, but their owners will. The dogs are very smart and will only listen to and follow their masters, even when they are 100 feet away from the. Dogs are more companions here than pets, you don't go and feel up someone's companion.

4. So the official reason I am here is to take courses in the IES Metropolitan Studies Program, which is a lot of social science courses about European cities, and stuff. Also, we are taking intensive German courses, which I am much more excited about, even though I'm in a class of 3 and my professor is creepy and asks really vague questions like, 'how does a child make Berlin?' and has us do really weird activities like pretend we are in an art gallery talking about the art (the map of berlin) on the wall while holding invisible champaigne glasses. We lost points if we didn't hold up the glasses.

There are 16 students, all American, and we are an, interesting, bunch. Most know very little German and are primarily not from science backgrounds. It feels a lot like the Real World sometimes. There are some serious party goers, bro-y guys, trendy girls, and varieties of beliefs and lifestyles. I don't agree with everybody, but this blog is public so I wont state anything good or bad about anybody in particular, but suffice it to say that things could get pretty interesting between people in the same group of 16 over the next 13 weeks.

5. People love Obama here. Thank God he warmed the Germans up for us a little while ago because I was actually pretty worried about meeting German people my age. My host likes talking US and world politics, so I've gotten a pretty good idea of what moderate liberal Germans think of us. They mostly think that we need to just keep out of other's business, which is what Germany usually does these days. She told me about the stereotypes she believed about us and they were mostly right: people eat too much, we ruin any foreign political situation we touch, and the politicians rely more on being an appealing person rather than their plans for getting elected. I love the German take on politics. They are confused as to why anyone cares that Sarah Palin has 5 kids and was a good mother with a stick up her ass. They would rather hear about her planned policies and judge her based on them. Personal life is separate from one's ability to govern? Brilliant! http://i473.photobucket.com/albums/rr94/lliw2322/My%20Place/GermanyTake2032.jpg

I experienced the obnoxious America thing here the other day that the Europeans complain about. These realy loud annoying American girls about my age got on the very full subway and wouldn't shut the hell up. The Germans consider train time to be quiet time, so this was pretty rude. They spoke to each other like no one could understand them, which is almost never the case here, almost everyones knows a little English, or at least enough to know when they are being talked about. The girls kept talking about the ice cream these two women right across from them had and how one looked good but the other look terrible. The women definitely knew what they were saying, but the Germans are nonconfrontational nowadays, so they said nothing. They must've thought I was German too because the most obnoxious girl pointed me out to her friends near the end of the trip. When I got up to leave, I very clearly said, 'this is my stop, excuse me.' She turned so red in the face. After that I was actually embarrased to be an American.

Oh, and a saying here is: "if you speak 3 languages, you're trilingual, speak 2, you're bilingual, speak 1 and you're American."

6. The only big trip we've taken so far was to Potsdam, about 45 minutes south west of Berlin, to see the New Palace and surrounding palaces. I put up a bunch of pictures (mostly showcasing my weakness for cool statues) on my photobucket site, http://s473.photobucket.com/albums/rr94/lliw2322/Trip%20to%20Potsdam/. You can get most of that trip from those, so only a few funny stories: the king built it as a place that his wife was not allowed to go to. She didn't even have a room. Then, a later king let his wife come, and as soon as she arrived she had the entire place modernized and redone. Even 200 years ago, it was a bad idea to let a woman into your (240 room) bachelor pad/man stronghold. Later on in town, a group of Scientologists convinced our resident (very) Minnesotan student to take a stress test to measure his thetan level or whatever. Problem for them was, he was a Minnesotan, so laid back that they couldn't even make their 'readers' go up upon turning up the sensitivity.

7. We took a bus tour around Berlin and saw all the famous sites like the wall, the Reichstag, the Brandenburg Gate, and the Berlin Philharmonic. Pictures are here: http://s473.photobucket.com/albums/rr94/lliw2322/Berlin%20Bus%20Tour/

We then went to the Reichstag where we had an briefing session given by a Binzio del Toro look alike: http://s473.photobucket.com/albums/rr94/lliw2322/Reichstag%20and%20Brandenburg/?action=view&current=GermanyTake4023.jpg

who never explicitly said 'Hitler' or 'Nazi' until everybody started asking about the conspicuously absent from his speech years of 1939-45. This actually happened again when we went to the German History museum yesterday. We were short on time convieniently right after WWI, and suddenly jumped to Reunification in 1989-90. Pictures from the tour of the museum here: http://s473.photobucket.com/albums/rr94/lliw2322/German%20History%20Museum/

8. The drinking age here is 16 for beer (though i think that was raised recently) and the driving age is 18. This means that for 2 years, teens have to figure out how to get home drunk or having had a little without cars. I think that this is an amazing system because this means that when they can finally drive, they are less likely to want or need to drive home drunk.

Batman just came out here and I could potentially see it again on IMAX, but it would be in German, with a dubbed Heather Leger, which could murder the film for me; 'Warum so ernst?'

People only eat with fork and knife here. Somebody called me out as an American when I ate a pizza with my hands. Screw that, we invented the greasy pizza, eat it the right way.

Men are supposed to sit when they pee because their toilets don't have enough water to protect from splash-back. I will clean my room OCDly, I will use a for and knife to eat a banana, but hell no Germany, I'm going to 'stand' my ground on this one.

Kids don't have trikes, they have these mini wooden bikes with no pedals that go way too fast.

Ballzac Cafe is huge here. hehehe.

McDonalds are usually pretty empty, which is nice to see.

Apfel-schorle- it's like sparkling applecider in a plastic bottle and it's everywhere, BUY IT