Day 10 May 12, 2012
Oops, I didn’t blog last night but I had good reason. Last
night after dinner and me and the majority of the group decided to hit the town
and see what German night life is all about. But more about that later, let’s
go back to yesterday morning.
Yesterday (Friday), was the last day of the first week of
class and it wasn’t too completely horrible. We had a short class in the
morning in which we discussed our homework assignments from the German History
Museum. Class was just in an apartment upstairs and it was relatively painless.
Some of the things people talked about were quite interesting, and most of them
were war related because it is something we are all familiar with. After class
we had a lunch break and time for a short nap J
McInnis called me around 12:15 to tell us to meet him at the U-Bahn station so
we wouldn’t miss our Regional Bahn train to Sachsenhausen. The ride to the
concentration camp was kind of long. Sachsenhausen is north-east of Berlin and
turns out it was absolutely HUGE! We learned so much with our tour and the
guide was really informative and nice. Sachsenhausen was the first large
concentration camp and it had the “headquarters” where inspectors and such off
all camps where located. The tour was around 2 hours and then we had to take a
bus, a S-Bahn and a U-bahn back to our
apartments. Kristin and I headed back with the first bus. That still gave us an
hour after the tour ended to just look around and take a peek at some of the
museums on sight. I have some really great pictures of just how massive this
place was. It was more than just the camp. There we factories and SS housing,
huge woods surrounding it, and warehouses scattered around. The camp was
largely destroyed after the 1950’s. Immediately after the war the Soviets used
it as a concentration camp but in a different way. It was used to hold Nazi’s
that were arrested for war crimes. I found that very interesting.
When we finally got back I made dinner for me and Kristin.
Travis’ girlfriend met him at the train station and is spending this weekend
with us. It’s cute. They have been dating for over 3 years and they live 4500
miles apart. Anyway, I made spӓtzel with garlic tomato sauce for me
and Kristin and after that we just hung out and had a few glasses of wine. Part
way through our second glasses Liz and Nate come down to our room saying we
should go out with them to a bar. Originally we said not but we were peer
pressured into going. I am glad we did it was a lot of fun. Liz and I did
tequila shots and I had a few drinks as well. At the bar it was Me, Kristin,
Nate, Liz, Sarah, Collin, Emily, and Karl. We laughed and talked and didn’t
head back until after 1. Then we went up to Collin and Karl’s room and talked
some more and had another drink or 2. Around 3ish Kristin and I went down to
the room and took our showers and talked for a while. Apparently I was a bit
drunker than I intended but that’s all good.
Now into today. Kristin and I slept in decently late, and by
that I mean 12:30ish. We woke up ate lunch and watched a movie. We couldn’t
decide what to do with our day because we are kinda pushing off our next
assignment and Travis wasn’t here anyway. We decided that we needed to get out
of the house so we vacuumed and then went into Kreuzberg to explore the area.
The next assignment was to explore a district and write a “ditty” about it. It
has to be 400-700 words again and it doesn’t seem to hard. We spent about 2
hours just walking around and seeing what was there. Then we decided to go to
Hackescher Markt and walk around. Kristin and I ended up spending 23-26€ a
piece on postcards and we went to dinner on top of that. I also bought a Brüder Grimm Fairytales book
that I am really excited about. For dinner we shared a pizza that was topped
with Broccoli and Sheep Cheese. It was sooooo good! After dinner we headed back
to Alexanderplatz and got some ice cream before heading back to the apartments.
When we got back here Travis and Denise were back and just chilling in the
living room so we talked to them for a while. Kristin and I split a beer and
then people started showing up to hang out. When Travis and Denise decided they
were going to bed we moved the part upstairs. There was a lot of us up there
and we just talked and danced a little and just had a good time. I really like
that everyone on this trip gets along pretty well and we can just hangout . I
hope it stays like this when we all return to the states. Towards the end after people started leaving
it was just Karl, Emily, Kristin, Collin, and I and we started playing Egyptian
Rat Screw (Fuck) it was really fun but takes a bit to get the hang of. We kinda
plan on making this a regular occurance. Now I am going to bed because we plan
on doing laundry and some other things tomorrow before heading into the city to
either go to a Sunday Market or go shopping with Liz and Abbey. We will see how
that goes. Goodnight.
No comments:
Post a Comment