glotzt nicht so romantisch

What a week thus far! And so much work ahead of me still, so here’s an attempt at least a list style description of what I did since Friday (?!)

Samstag:

short trip to Köpenick – the hood

met up with Zujus in KaDeWe – HUGE shopping center

architecture tour of Potsdamer Platz – the ugliests buildings of Europe’s best architects. I don’t quite agree

dinner at the KulturBrauerei

kino! “Sommer vorm Balkon” so Berlinerisch

Sonntag:

Concentration camp Sachsenhausen

Montag:

Mauerspaziergang – tour of the former wall with the awesome Historiker Antonis Hilbers

Deutsch, Deutsch, Deutsch – I don’t quite remember what we did in class, but it was fun. The Russian teacher and I spent the whole first two lessons giggling over prepositions. Well I guess I was the one giggling, but man can they be funny if used correctly! And I don’t think I’ve ever been as conscious of the words people use to express themselves. Favorite adjective-noun pair of the day – “handmade condoms.”

German history lecture #3 – more of the awesome Historiker Antonis Hilbers. I also now have a new favorite song thanks to the amazingness that is Antonis Hilbers.

“Brecht – Die Kunst zu Leben” – alright biographical movie at the Brecht fest in town. The outing itself was much more of an “event” than the screening. And the discussion afterwards with an actress who had actually worked with Brecht, Regine Lutz (Swiss!), was amazing. I should get more sleep though.

Dienstag:

group outing to Köpenick – the neighborhood that my group is investigating for our final project. So many great moments, but the random interviews were by far the best.

[interviewing an old lady who happened to be looking out her window]

[here she is! so sweet]

[waterworks dude telling us about his Cuban girlfriend]

mehr Deutsch - staying amused at our table constantly cracking language jokes. It’s surprising how well one needs to know the vocab to be able to make fun of it. The other two tables have like 72.5% less fun. The French dude even migrated over for a bit ; )

Alex – amazing area, amazing architect tour guide and an amazing long night talking to him. I’m not the only one who cries on the inside about the tearing down of the Palast der Republik - this guy was in charge of running the place for six years! And he still owes me two euros, so I’ll be seeing him again…

Mittwoch: the middle of the week, aka now

Deutsche Welle – the BBC of Germany. Amazing studio visit with the “toaster” machine for video footage input actually smelling like toast. Supposedly this has never happened before. And the Australian, Owen, is so amusing - CNN ‘n NN anyone?

Knut Hamsun auf Deutsch – the Norwegian presented Hamsun’s work today and was surprised that I knew about this Norwegian author’s work. He also approached me after class and proposed yet another time. This time without flowers ; )

Mutter – Brecht’s staging of Gorky’s “Mother” performed by the Berliner Ensemble. My hands still hurt from all the clapping.

I've also developed a number of food addictions over the last week or so. I can't go a day without Türkische Pizza (Brandon, that's your fault), I eat way too many mozzarella and tomato sandwiches (as in at least one per day), drink too much milk coffee and Metropol Imbiss could basically be called my kitchen. So sketchy, so good.