S-Bahn Ring

I spent a few hours today riding around the S-Bahn ring through the city. That was relaxing, although not very picturesque. There’s a lot of graffiti in this city. Some of it actually looks really cool, more like art than graffiti, but still – there’s a lot of it.

This morning we spent a long time on German grammar. Our teacher is determined to get us to understand this one part of the grammar that is very confusing and doesn’t exist in English, and I’m having a hard time with it. I think it has to do with whether the verb requires a direct object, in which case you have to change the article. So really, I think I understand it, I just highly doubt I’m going to remember it when I actually try to speak.

Tomorrow I’ve signed up to go to the Holocaust Museum, and I’m hoping the weather forecast is right in saying it should be sunny. I don’t mind the rain, but somehow the idea of going to an open-air museum about the Holocaust seems more appealing in the sun. Or less creepy. Although maybe gloomy weather would sort of add to the effect…

I’ll bring my umbrella.

I also signed up and paid for the boat trip on Thursday, and I’m looking forward to that. I’ll take lots of pictures, like always.

I haven’t decided what I’m going to do after dark tonight. I’m debating going up the TV tower in Alexanderplatz, or just heading out to a coffee shop with a book or notebook and hanging out for a while. Maybe I’ll bring a book or notebook to Alexanderplatz with me and I can go to a coffee shop afterward.

I think that sounds like a plan. But first, to go see what we had for dinner tonight.

This Week

Tonight (Monday) is the Stammtisch, the party at the school for all the students.

Tuesday is a German film, and I’ve been thinking I’ll go to one of the museums I haven’t seen yet that day. I’ll ask Hattie if she wants to come with me. I’d like to see the Musical Instruments Museum, the Jewish Museum, or the German History Museum.

Wednesday is the Holocaust Museum, and I’m definitely interested in seeing that.

Thursday there is a bicycle tour of the middle of the city, or a boat ride on the Spree. The boat ride costs money, but the idea of the bicycle tour reminds me of biking the Golden Gate Bridge, and I just don’t feel a pressing need to repeat that experience. It was great, Mom, but I don’t need to do it again. I think I’ll walk around Mitte and call it a day. Oh, wait, I’ve already done that. Besides, the boat trip sounds really cool.

On Friday the two options aren’t at the same time, so it’s possible to do both. In the afternoon, there is a walking tour around Unter den Linden (which will make up for the bike tour I’m not doing the day before). It looks like it starts at Alexanderplatz and ends at the Brandenburg Gate. That’s actually a little far. I’ll have to rest up the night before. Later in the evening, there will be a pub crawl through Kreuzberg. Now, that sounds fun. I wonder if any of my friends are planning on going to that. I’m sure interested.

The activities on Saturday and Sunday don’t really interest me, so I think I’ll be seeing museums, maybe the zoo, and doing some shopping. I have a list of things that I need to do before I leave, and am planning to make some progress on it this week.

Today

We spent a very long time working on German grammar in class this morning. It’s very confusing. I’m still not entirely sure I understand what was going on. I’d rather see some examples of the different terms we discussed than just talking about the theory (in German) and will suggest that tomorrow.

After class I did some shopping. I bought some postcards to send to friends and family. I wrote them out a little while ago and will mail them tomorrow. I also found the planner I want to use for school next semester, and decided it’s cheaper to buy it here than order it online. I’m going to make that purchase tomorrow. I’m feeding my obsession with fancy notebooks.

The party that the school has every Monday night is, of course, tonight, and I haven’t decided if I’m going or not. One of the metro lines runs in a loop around the city and I’ve heard that’s a good thing to do, both to see more of the city and to help get oriented. I was thinking about doing that tonight.

We got our list of activities for the week, and I’ll put that in my next post.

This Afternoon

Well, I couldn’t find the church this morning, so I managed to be half an hour late. For the record, I think getting lost is a perfectly reasonable excuse.

After church I went over to the Greens’ house for the BBQ, which was very good. It rained a lot, so everyone just stayed inside. I had a great afternoon talking in English to people with American accents – something I’m really starting to miss.

I also played Jenga with some of the kids. I lost. It was my move that made the whole tower fall over. That game is a lot harder with little kids bouncing all around the table.

I took lots of pictures, they’re on my Flickr page.

After returning to the flat, Petra took me and the other two students out for dinner again. Nicholai has left, but another student arrived today, from Poland. Once I figure out how to pronounce her name, I’ll attempt to spell it.

I spent some time this evening trying to figure out how much my books are going to cost next semester, and it looks like the answer is “too much”. Oh well, only one more year of undergrad work to go!

I’m looking forward to tomorrow, to see what activities are planned for this week, and which sights I still haven’t seen yet.

God Is Good

[To this day I want to say "All the time" after that title.]

A few days ago (maybe it was yesterday), I asked on Facebook for some suggestions for things to do this weekend in Berlin, since I hadn’t made any firm plans. My dad suggested I go to the Technology Museum, which I did this afternoon. Another friend who has been here before sent me a message with a whole list of things to do, and also asked if I’d like the information of some people she knows in Berlin. I said I’d like that very much, so she sent me the email address of a missionary couple at the church she went to while she was here. I sent them an email this morning before I left for the museum, and got a response a little while ago.

They said they would love to have me attend their church. They also mentioned that, if I can make it, tomorrow would be a great day for me to go, because they are planning to have a BBQ at their house after church, and invited me to go. A short-term missions group from LA is in town right now, and this would give me an opportunity to interact with Americans.

This is exactly what I need right now. Over the last few days I’ve still been feeling pretty homesick, although not nearly as bad as my first week here, and I feel like this opportunity to go interact with other Christians (and American ones at that) may really help my emotional state right now. It’s interesting how it’s possible to feel lonely even when surrounded by people. Thank God for His perfect timing in getting me in contact with these people. I feel so blessed.

I’m really looking forward to tomorrow, and am so grateful that God has given me this opportunity.

[Not many people are going to get my "God is good - all the time" comment. Suffice it to say that it was something they did when I was in high school to get us all to be quiet. It's been three years and it's still an automatic response.]

Technology Museum Pictures

A steam engine with all the parts labeled (in German).

Click more for…well…more.

Deutsches Technikmuseum

I went to the German Museum of Technology this afternoon. I took 98 pictures, and have weeded out 19. These were mostly just blurrier versions of other pictures. As I’m reviewing my pictures, I realize that I have a lot of train pictures. A lot. This was the first exhibit I went to, so I think I was a little trigger-happy until I started to get tired and hungry. I have a lot of airplane pictures too, and a few computer pictures. And honestly, that’s about the extent of the selection.

So – trains, planes, and computers. Anyone who knows me and my family shouldn’t see anything out of the ordinary here. Oh, and a couple of pictures of cameras. There was a photography section to the museum.

After the museum, I went to the Science Center. There were a bunch of really cool hands-on exhibits there, but I didn’t take any pictures. I have a few reasons for not doing so. First, most of the exhibits involved things that were moving or were very dark, involving light, so they would have made bad picture material. Second, everything was in German, so there were a fair number of exhibits that I didn’t even know what they were supposed to do. Third, there were so many little kids around that I could barely get involved, and the last thing I need is some parent screaming at me in a language I barely understand because I accidentally took a picture of their kid.

My exporter is giving me problems right now. (Beta software, what can you do.) I’m working on getting my photos uploaded, and when that happens, I’ll put some good ones in my next post.

Photo Attempts

I went out to the Brandenburg Gate again tonight, to try to get some night shots. This was rather difficult, as I don’t have a tripod, and there’s nothing to rest my camera against out in the middle of the square. Only 6 of the pictures I took of the Gate I feel are usable, the rest were just too blurry. However, a couple did turn out pretty well. Click for more info and pictures.

Belated Posting

I suppose I didn’t post all day yesterday, did I? Must have been distracted by my brand new, 700-page book. Fortunately, I’m a very fast reader, and have finished it already. It was excellent, and a perfect end to the series.

Yesterday afternoon, I went to the museum at Checkpoint Charlie. I took a few pictures, and they are all up on Flickr. The lighting was horrible, so a lot of them have a rather orange tint to them. I did what I could with my editing software to remove that, and some of them turned out very nicely.

There was so much information in this museum. I wish it hadn’t been so hot – the temperature was in the 90’s again yesterday (Fahrenheit) and the place had no air conditioning and very few windows open. That’s the kind of place you need a whole afternoon to see. It was very interesting, but also very confusing. I didn’t really figure out that it was arranged by event-based exhibits until it was too late for that to be of any use to me. The beginning of the museum focuses on a few escape attempts (although the real escape part came later) and what some of the political figures were saying at the time. Then you moved into a whole big section on escape attempts, an exhibit on Pablo Picasso, and a few other key things. Fortunately, all the text was printed in German, English, French, and Russian (I think), so there was no need to pay for extra services in English. There is an audio tour available, but I didn’t think it was necessary.

Last night, I decided to stay home (and read), and I haven’t really done much today. In my defense, it’s probably better that I get the book out of the way, so I can concentrate on other things. In my first class, we played a Jeopardy-style game, where we picked the difficulty of the questions and the category and had to give the answer. That was really fun, and my team won. I can understand the language better than I can speak it, and I’m even better when I can see it written. I’m thinking about buying a fiction book in German to strengthen my vocabulary, but I’m not sure if that would just frustrate me. I know very few words, and only one tense, so I wouldn’t know how to figure out what tense is being used. Maybe it should be a kids’ book, and that way it would have a limited vocabulary and few tenses.

It smells like dinner will be soon, and after dinner I think I might go back to the Brandenburg Gate and see if I can get a good twilight shot. I haven’t decided if I want to do something specific, like a museum, this weekend. Hattie’s parents are in town, so she won’t be doing anything like that. I could just sleep in, grab a late brunch somewhere, and spend some more time walking around town. Any suggestions?

Summary of Tonight

After dinner, Petra took me, Nicholai, and Susannah to the lake. She and Susannah went swimming. I thought it was too cold to be swimming, and I still don’t have a swim suit anyway. After the sun went down, they both agreed that yes, it was cold.

I tried a Berliner Pilsner while we were there. It was palatable, though I wouldn’t say that I really liked it.

I took some pictures, mostly of the sunset and the airplanes they flew through it on their approach. I’m uploading them to Flickr now, and they should be posted by the time this publishes. Click for more.