I bought my ticket fairly close to my departure so I did not have the best flight time. I honestly did not really know many people that were going to be joining me as many were from other programs that I did not have class with, but I wasn't too worried. Like I have said before, things have a way of working themselves out for me and it was definitely a good time. I did not get to Berlin until pretty late and had no idea where I was going. I had to take a bus to a train station and then take the train into town where my hostel was. On the train I noticed an overwhelming amount of NFL hats on. Although I did not agree with any of the teams, it made me feel comfortable to know that we had some fans over here. I managed to get to my hostel somehow and checked in a little after 10. Since I didn't really know anyone I had no preference of a roommate so it was going to be a surprise. The rooms were more like a hotel and I went up to find my room. I unlocked the door with my key card and as soon as I walked in a Chinese student popped out of his bed in his underwear. I couldn't help but grin and awkwardly introduced myself as we were going to be sharing a room for the next two weeks. He was a very nice guy and it worked out fine. I might have irritated him a bit, especially on the weekends, when I came into the room at about 6 AM. I could only think of the movie the hangover for the next few days as when we met the only thing I could think of was the movie the Hangover. "You want to fuck on me" rolled through my head as I dozed off to sleep. I am just glad I didn't get hit with a tire iron.
I am not a morning person and many of my fellow classmates realized that I was not very talkative until around lunch time. I don't know how some of these people can be so cheerful in the morning. They sang songs about french clowns, some dirty french songs about putting your genitals on your shoulder, and in an attempt the wake me up they supplemented my name in place of shake and sang jake jake jake, jake jake jake, jake your booty. They probably thought I was just pissed off at life for the first few days, but c'mon it was like 7:30 in the morning. We had class every day, but that is obviously not what I am going to talk about. It was a little colder than the area of France in which we live and it was a little slick at times as there had been some mixtures of rain and snow. Marion found out the hard way. In an attempt to run across the street she ate shit. I didn't know whether to feel bad or laugh, but we all laughed pretty hard when she got up and started screaming that she kissed the German floor.Not sure if it completely translates right, but it was hilarious.
I was anticipating Germany as it is no secret that I like beer. There was no shortage of beer anywhere and something else close to my heart. There were soft pretzels everywhere called bretzels. In a train station, on the road, in the actual subway terminals. You could buy a beer and a pretzel anywhere. Not to mention the beer was fabulous. Another favorite of mine was readily available everywhere and that was Jagermeister. I was in absolute heaven. I loved the food as well. There was no shortage of bratwurst or a new dish for me called currywurst. Amazing. This is my kind of food. It was MAN FOOD. I will someday go to Oktoberfest as that is one of my life long goals to spend all day eating sausage and drinking wonderful German beer. It was nice to get out of France a bit. Things seemed much similar to home for me. There were Starbucks and Dunkin Donuts every corner. Not that I drink that crap, but I went in a few times to get out of the cold. They seemed to have more of a sense of capitalism or non laziness and stores were open 24 hours. It had been awhile since I had seen one which I had always I thought was normal for a long time. For my benefit, people spoke amazing English. I had to get used to watching what I said on the subway because people knew what I was saying.
We were able to see some great sites beyond the beer drinking that was going on. O wait, the majority of the beer drank may have been myself. Hey, when are you going to go to Berlin again? The school we studied at lined up a few activities such as going to a company visit of Air Berlin. We almost had to drag Pilar out of that place as she fell head over heels in love with the guy who was presenting. That was a long commute home listening to these girls discuss this Greek God. We were able to finally leave and I assume the girls raced to their computers to try and stalk this guy on Facebook. We were taken to a cool museum that was located on the museum island section of Berlin, but for the life of me I have no idea what it was called. Irrelevant. The trip we did through the school that I remember was the Reichtag (sorry for spelling) building. This was the parliament building for Germany and was an incredible building. It had been rebuilt after it was destroyed by fire. It is assumed they were orders from Hitler himself. Dickhead. There was massive security to get through. I of course forgot to take my belt off and was taken to be fully checked. It was a full check as the person doing it definitely got a handful. Other times I may have been mad, but it was the most action I had gotten in a long time so I was ok with it. I was just glad I composed myself. After seeing some of the preserved historical sections and where the councils were held, you were able to go on top of the building and see the best sites of Berlin. It was breathtaking. As much as I love the top of the Eiffel Tower, the sites up here were just as good if not better. It was truly spectacular. We were given headsets for the many kinds of languages represented in our group. It was cool. While companies have cross functional teams, I was able to have teams like this across numerous programs and even more nationalities. I caught myself people watching as everyone had their headphones on. Like other tours when you reached a certain area a new message would come on. You could see when people were not paying attention or walking to fast and you saw a lot of backing up and walking forward. It was like people putting a treadmill on too fast and trying to catch up. I am easily entertained.
There is so much history in Berlin and it is crazy to think that this history is pretty damn recent. World War II was not that long ago. There are numerous memorials in place for the fallen Jews of Europe and all of the others that were victims of the horrific Genocide. Germany does a great job as to not forget. Not to forget and to remind people that this will not happen again. On a tour through the city we stopped at a parking lot and looked a little confused. We were standing on a car park that was directly over the bunker that Hitler cowardly ended his life. They make no effort to immortalize him and I found that very cool. It was so intriguing to walk by the remains of the Berlin wall and you could honestly see the differences to this day on which sides of the city were in soviet control. Maybe I am old, but the fact that I was alive when the wall fell is so crazy. This city is really just finding itself. We also walked by the hotel where Michael Jackson held the baby over the railing. Fun fact and little bit of recent history. We frequented numerous memorials and even took the train to the outskirts of the city to go to a concentration camp. This was the Sachsenhausen concentration camp. It was a very eerie feeling touring this camp. I'm sure it was the same for most, but I absolutely could not fathom the incidents that transpired here. This was only like 70 years ago. It happened to be the coldest day there and of course I forgot to wear a heavy coat. I woke up a little late. I told you the beer was cheap. I would not have been able to make it in the cold, but I picked up a flask sized bottle of what tasted like peppermint schnapps to get me through and it worked.
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