Since I last blobbed I have continued to move into a comfortable pace of life in Ber-lin. A lovely city, and even lovelier now that afternoons and weekends can be spent outside. Check out them freckles! And in a change from my wanderlusting ways I have actually spent most weekends here...the 9-5 doesn't allow for so much travel, and I think it's probably better that way. Europe will always be here, and I'll be back, so for now it's about gritty and wonderful Berlin. I have even become competent enough with my surroundings to give directions to tourists - barring the one woman who I very wrongly directed to Alexanderplatz this week. Sorry! (Years in this city still probably wouldn't help my shotty sense of direction.)
In recent weeks I have explored the neighboring town of Potsdam, scoured the Mauer Park flea market for some German take-home items (my Opa will look so cute in his Bavarian hat!), toured the Spree River on a boat, visited a Soviet prison, and spent countless hours laying/picnicing/otherwise capitalizing on the presence of the sun in numerous green spaces. If I lacked Vitamin D before, now I have enough to ship.
Random German lesson: When you want to say you don't really care one way or the other about something it's "egal" or "scheiss egal" when you REALLY don't care. Doesn't egal sound like a great word to connote "whatever"? I think so. Definitely think I'm bringing that one back to the States.
Berlin is my lieblings stadt, but it is still a stadt, and I had been craving some time with nature...fortunately plans had been in the works to spend last weekend (a long weekend for Easter) down in the Süd with my good friends from the program. The 7 of us stayed in Reutlingen, a town just outside Stuttgart, in my friend Brent's student apartment and had a helluva fun weekend of what the older generation might call tomfoolery. In shorts and tank tops (finally!) we hiked the Alcham hill in Reutlingen, trained to Stuttgart for Frühlingsfest (aka the spring version of Oktoberfest, huge maßes and tents included) and spent a day exploring the sublime Black Forest - but no cake :(. I probably could have fun with that crazy group anywhere...just the nature and friend fix I needed.
Oh yea, and we slept on an empty train one night that was waiting at the station until morning? That deserves a lolz if anything does. Not the most comfortable night, but Deutsche Bahn's solution to us being totally stranded, and a great story. Made even better when we had to explain to the ticket controller the next morning why we were still using yesterday's tickets and someone in our group piped in with "Wir haben auf diese Zug geschlafen," or "We slept on top of the train."
A running theme of the weekend was how lächerlich (ridiculous) DB is, but no words can really express my rage so I won't even try.
A running theme of the weekend was how lächerlich (ridiculous) DB is, but no words can really express my rage so I won't even try.
These days when I'm not being a tomfool (?) with my friends from the program, I'm working. Work has gotten alot busier lately - I was promoted to be the assistant on a big event coming up in a couple weeks. I love them productive days and feeling as though I'm working toward something. Could still do without that commute, though, but I'm many books down on my Kindle.
Oh yea, guiz guiz I'll be spending next year in Micronesia! (It's OK if you have to wiki it - so many people have no idea what/where it is.) I'll be doing this program and serving as a full-time teacher on the island of Kosrae, which has about 6,000 people. I'm trying not to go in with expectations, but I do think I'm in for a very interesting, challenging, and hopefully rewarding year that will be very different from this one. My Southern roots have prepared me for lots of heat and humidity, but maybe not as much as I will experience. And there will be lots of pictures of me in a muumuu up on this thing next year, that's for sure. But that's not even scratching the surface. More to come on that as the time gets closer.
In the next few weeks: my life devoted to work, a road trip to Krakow (!), and the final seminar of this program right here in Berlin. 75 Americans roaming the streets? uh oh.
