Oberbaumbrücke

So my plan for sleeping failed miserably – to bed a bit before 4am, awake by a little after seven. I feel like I’m on crack, and although I have no clue what that would feel like, it’s unnatural to just wake up at a crazy early hour like that without a good reason. Well I did do the reading in the morning thing and then headed out the door at ten for some exploration before class. I was originally just going to explore my neighborhood, find a supermarket, buy some detergent and go back before heading out into the city. And it all started according to plan with me walking by the park that I discovered a couple days ago.

[Hippo fountain in front of the park – the most noteworthy part are the two hunters on its back looking for it. And of course the fact that to make sure that people don’t drink the water from the fountain, they just shut it down. I love the German ways]

But after I hit up the local bakery I was ready for more excellent discoveries, so I weaved through the streets and soon found myself way farther off than I expected at a huge rail line crossing. And then I knew I was heading toward Berlin’s prettiest bridge, the Oberbaumbrücke. I followed a barefoot dude for a while and in less than ten minutes I was there.

[Oberbaumbrücke and my barefoot guide]

Calatrava has also had a say in the reconstruction of this bridge, designing both the center piece and mainly just deciding to restore it to its original condition. It is beautiful beyond words and I’m definitely coming back once the open air gallery opens in a couple of days.

[pedestrian walkway]

[Calatrava’s center piece]

[beautifully restored towers]

[neon rock-paper-scissors sign. have to see it at night]

Without even really meaning to I of course ended up at the East Side Gallery on my way to the center. It’s basically a stretch of the Berlin wall that’s still up and is covered in graffiti.

[die Mauer]

[the Kiss]

[Strand, Palmen und Sonne- what more could one want]

I eventually made to an S-Bahn stop and decided that maybe I shouldn’t walk for the remaining hour and half and instead hunt down some food. In my hunt I stumbled across an amazing liquor store that had wine “on tap” – these huge glass jugs and so many to choose from. But I decided that drinking before class was a bad idea and settled for this hole in the wall Brazilian place I found that had the most amazing (and cheap!) mango juice. And of course newspapers to read.

After this short break, I headed to the Goethe Institut for my lessons of the day. I got placed into the C1 level, just a level below the highest level they offer, and seeing as they have so many students they sent away us advanced peoples to another building on the other side of the city. The bus ride over was crazy, meeting people from all over the world and from five different classes, getting confused, forgetting peoples names and getting utterly confused when other languages started flying around and the Poles broke into Turkish and the Greeks into Italian. But it all came back to German and we could converse in relative peace.

My class ended up being an amazing mix of people. With an Iranian teacher (born and raised in Berlin) between the 18 of us, we represented 16 different countries. The Italian lady was obsessed with salsa, the Swiss guy who loves to cook was from Lausanne (!), the Poles understood the eastern European woes too well, the Serbian architect is coming exploring with me, the Tunisian guy who sang and drummed in class is planning a gathering for our super friendly table with food and dance of course, the Venezuelan German language teacher knew way too much about Almodovar, the guy from Egypt thought I was from Italy, and I think I scared the French guy after I downed a cup of coffee during our break and started speaking way too fast, etc, etc. Sadly I’m getting bumped up to the higher class tomorrow, so I’ll have to hang out with my buddies from today only over a cup of coffee and not in class, cracking jokes, singing, and in general causing a ruckus. If the other class sucks, I might just have to “forget” some German because my group today rocked major time.

We all gathered in the courtyard after class for the official welcome, the insider tips on the cultural scene and went for a drink. I was thus a bit late meeting up with Sheila, but we did find each other and headed to the open air kino in my hood. The movie “We Feed the World” (a German one) was a documentary on the food industry featuring everything from eggplants and tomatoes to chicks and slaughterhouses – all made all the better by the bottle of wine that Sheila and I split. I was going to do my German homework tonight but I guess it will just have to wait until tomorrow morning as I was bit too creative an hour ago. Early wake up!