Got up bright and early this morning to finishing packing and meet the group at the train station by 8:30. Heidi and I had planned to meet at the bus stop around 7:50 and I got there just in time. Actually, the bus was just getting ready to pull away and he stopped so that I could get on. How nice! At first I didn’t see anybody I knew on the bus, but then I heard Patrick and Davor in the back. Heidi and Maressa were back there too so I joined them. At first I thought Patrick was Doug (he was here last semester). I was excited and confused all at the same time. When we got to the train station I was able to meet some of the new AJY students. What a diverse group! I was a little nervous, but we all talked a bit before getting on our first train to Mannheim. Once in Mannheim, we waited for a bit to catch our train to Hannover. I talked to a guy named Brett for awhile and he seems really nice. I think he goes to school in Wisconsin.
On the train I sat next to Heidi and we listened to music and played Sudoku. Patrick, Davor, Jesse and Alexander were sitting at a table diagonal from us and at our 10 Davor whipped out a bottle of wine and they had a little mid-morning drink. Too funny. Of course I had to get a picture!
Maressa, Jeff, and Kayla were playing travel scrabble so after a little bit I went up and sat with them. I LOVE scrabble. Actually any game, but Scrabble is one of my favorites. We played that for awhile until we arrived in Hannover. From there we had to take a train to Berlin. The train was so full, but we had reserved seats. The problem with that was that there were people sitting in our seats and they got all mad when we asked them to move. Frau Heckmann was actually the one to ask them (she’s German) and they were just really rude. They knew that the seats were reserved because it said so on the placard above. Those Germans.
On this train I sat with Sarah, Justine and Jason. A much more quiet group, but nice nonetheless. When we got to Berlin, we took a little walk through the city to our youth hostel. Katie Wachter met us in Berlin because she had been visiting her boyfriend in the north. She met him in October and when her parents were here visiting awhile ago he asked her dad if he could marry her. WHAT?! Crazy stuff. I do think it’s kind of funny though that this is happening because on our first day in Heidelberg Katie told me that it was her goal to find a German boyfriend. But she’s really happy so that’s good.
Our youth hostel was really big and had a nice game room that we are able to use. While we waited for Dr. Tracy to check us in, we hung out in there and a few people played some Tisch Tennis. I stayed in a room with five people including Heidi, Katie Wolfe, Justine and Sarah. We had a few minutes to unpack and then we met back up downstairs. On our walk we saw the Berlin Dom (I think that means Cathedral) and Museum Island (part of town where there are tons and tons of museuems) and Humbolt University. It was a nice walk, but kind of boring since we were mainly just standing outside of buildings and talking about them. We were all really hungry and couldn’t wait to go to the restaurant.
We ate at a really German place called Tucholsky and I had schnitzel. There was this weird fish eye looking thing on my plate that I did NOT eat. Turns out, it was a sardine. Gross. The schnitzel and potatoes were good, but noting spectacular. I was still recovering from some jet-lag and was really tired. I think I was a little overwhelmed from everything and was again missing home. I was sitting at a table with Heidi and Maressa, but they were talking to each other and I didn’t really know the other people sitting around me. I guess I kind of felt left out and out of place. My stomach was also really hurting. I think it was because I was so hungry before we ate that when we actually ate, it still hurt a little. So I got a little sad and when one tear fell, I couldn’t stop the rest. So I put my face in my hands in order to make it seem like I was just tired. I stopped crying and tried to wipe my face off, but then I started crying more and decided I should go to the bathroom for a minute. Within two minutes of crying in there, Heidi and Maressa came in. I didn’t really want to talk to them, but they made me feel a lot better and helped calm me down. I just don’t know what it is with me! Ahhhhh!!!!
Courtney came in a few minutes later and told us that there was ice cream at the table and that it was going to melt if we didn’t come back soon. So I calmed down and then we went back out there to eat it. I guess sometimes you just need to cry and can’t get over it until you actually go ahead and do it. I felt a lot better afterwards and after dinner some of us took a walk around Berlin. We walked to the big TV tower and got tickets to go up to the top. It only took us about 40 seconds to go REALLY high up. Thankfully there weren’t any windows in the elevator. I think I would have gotten sick! But the view from up there was GORGEOUS! Berlin is a humongous city. And it looks really pretty at night. Even though I haven’t been to Paris yet, it reminds me a lot of the pictures I’ve seen. There were a lot of streets that were really long and straight and went out of the city. Just beautiful. We spent a little while up there and then continued on our walk. We stopped at the Brandenburg Tor. We’re going there tomorrow too, but heard that it was really something to see at night. Such a cool feeling to walk through it. I actually felt lucky to walk through so easily because so many people were forbidden to do so in the past. We also stopped at the Holocaust memorial. I had really wanted to go there, but wasn’t sure when I would be able to. The memorial is made up of a variety of sizes of big cement/marble blocks. They get bigger the further you walk in the memorial and the ground also goes lower. It is supposed to make you feel scared, alone and confused. It definitely accomplished its mission! The blocks are somewhat sound-proof so it’s hard to hear anyone else that is walking around. Being that it was night time, it was especially scary because you’d turn around a corner and someone else was doing the same. Some of the others didn’t really think it was a good memorial, I thought it was really great and for just a few moments gave us a VERY small taste of what the people actually felt like. I also found it interesting that this memorial was built on the ground where the Berlin wall once stood.
Our walk continued to the World Time Clock in Alexanderplatz. It was in the movie Goodbye-Lenin! That we watched in German class last year. This clock revolves and has the world’s 24 time zones with the names of major cities in each zone. At the top is a model of the solar system and it revolves once a minute. I like it when you actually get to see things from movies in real life.
Earlier, Dr. Tracy told us that it should only take us five minutes to walk from Alexanderplatz to our hostel. I think we walked for at least an hour! But it was a lot of fun. I got to talk to Peter for awhile, which was really cool. He is one of five from Gettysburg college. It’s funny to think that Elon is tied for the most amount of people in AJY. Last semester there were only two of us, but now we’ve grown to 5! Go Elon! I also talked to Alexander for awhile and he wanted to know what the best thing about going back to the US was…like in terms of things that I didn’t have here. I told him that the thing I was really happy to have was free water when eating out. That stuff is EXPENSIVE here!
It was pretty late and we were exhausted when we got back. My feet hurt SO bad it was unreal. I think they were even more tired than when I did Elonthon.
No comments:
Post a Comment