Classes and Punk Rock and Dresden - oh my.

As I sit here not doing my reading for class, I think about the - dare I use the word - whirlwind week I have had. I only hesitate to use the word "whirlwind" because it is excessively dramatic and contrived, but I digress. It is quite late, and I am quite tired, so this isn't going to be terribly long, but it has been action packed so I wanted to get it all down.

This past week was the official start of classes at the Humboldt University, where I am studying in conjunction with my abroad program (IES, which also offers college-level courses). I've decided, in contrast to what I had expected to be doing, to take four courses at the university and only one at IES. The classes at IES are pretty terrible, so I dropped all of those I was taking but one (which I actually really like - German Pop Culture). So at Humboldt I will be taking: History of the German Language (woohoo!), Popular Music of the 20th Century, German (language course), and Spanish. Seems like a pretty cool course load, and maybe a little harder than what I would do at IES, but hopefully and seemingly more rewarding.

Monday I went to my first class, Spanish. And when I got there the woman said "Oh, language courses don't start till next week." So I left, all of my preceding anxiety for nought.

Tuesday I actually went to my first official German University lecture, which was History of the German Language. It was a very interesting first lecture, and I spoke with the prof afterward and she seemed very cool and nice and willing to work with me on taking the class.

Wednesday is German and Spanish, so no class this week.

Thursday I was running late in the morning, and I literally had to run from the train station to the building where my class was. I got there at 12:05 for a 12:15 class, and the room was seriously chock full - people were sitting on the floor, wandering around looking for a seat, grabbing extra chairs and stuffing them in corners. I finally found a place to sit when the asst. prof got up in front of the class and was like "Hey, I'm very sorry, but class doesn't start till next week!"

So although it's been crazy, I can't yet say all too much about my new classes, since, well, I have only had one. But German universities classes (those that aren't language courses) are kind of great in that they meet once a week for an hour and a half and there's no graded assignments or midterms. Sha-bam. But more on that next week.

Thursday I went with my German friend Jenny to a rockabilly show, saw a band called Thee Merry Widows - very cool, and some really great music. Friday night I went with my other German friend Rainer to see a street punk / oi! show, which was also a lot of fun and super intense. I expected all punks with mohawks and such, but it turned out to be almost all anti-racist skinheads (oh they certainly exist, Wikipedia that shit). A cool experience, and interesting to see a different side of Berlin. I foresee more concert-going in the near future.

Saturday I (with IES) left for Dresden, a city about two and a half hours south of Berlin, about a hundred km from the Czech border. It was definitely a tour-group-type trip, but it was a gorgeous city with more baroque architecture than you can...shake a stick at (I don't really know what that means but it sounds right). We saw a number of palaces and old churches, which I won't describe at length because photos are forthcoming. Suffice it to say it was all beautiful stuff. Saturday night I went with a couple people to see Mozart'sDon Giovanni at the big Dresden opera house. Not a great performance from all sides - costumes and set unimaginative, acting pretty non-existant - but it did really get me in the mood to get back to Berlin and go see more (hopefully good) opera, seeing as you can get a student ticket here for under 10€ if you're lucky.

And now I'm back in Berlin and the real world. By the end of this week I shall have finally been to all my classes, so that's exciting and terrifying at the same time. In fact, I'm off to Spanish right now (ironic?), so I must say goodbye. Unfortunately no time for a THINGS GERMAN PEOPLE HATE right now, but I'll send a note when I've posted my pictures and hopefully have a clever new quip for you at that point.

Lots of B-Town love.

¿Por qué, Dios?

As I sit here, eating chicken soup for the fourth time this week, I wonder why God would see fit to grant me with two separate illnesses in two weeks. I literally had one for a week, and the moment I got better I developed the other one. I imagine my body saying something like, "You have defeated the common cold, young one, but let's see how you match up against a STOMACH VIRUS! MWAHAHAHA!!"

So yeah, last week I was hacking up a lung, and this week my stomach is killing me. That's my excuse for why I haven't written in forever. But it's probably for the best because I've barely done anything fun in the past two weeks and it would have mostly consisted of things like, "Today I blew my nose twenty seven times." And you don't want to hear that.

The fun/cool things I have done in the past two weeks are:

(1) Saw Bertolt Brecht's Threepenny Opera at the Berliner Ensemble, which is the ensemble Brecht founded back in his day. It was AMAZING, seriously one of the best pieces of theatre I've ever seen in my life. I'm not going to expound upon it here, but it was truly an experience.

(2) Participated in an anarchist political rally / techno dance parade. I didn't actually know what it was about - I think they were calling for the dissolution of the German state or something like that - but my friend from Berlin said we should come and check it out so we did. There were a TON of people, dressed in black, just marching through the streets of Berlin, shouting slogans and such. But the part we were there for were the trucks that had DJs on them, playing techno and rap and punk music and what have you, and it was basically just a big dance party. All in all, a good time, and pretty funny to be rolling through a yuppie neighborhood at night while blaring dance music.

(3) Went to the flea market again, got a nice wool scarf and a sweet blue plaid umbrella for super cheap. Sha-bam.

And that's about it. Classes have started, blah blah blah, going to check out a couple at the University next week, so we'll see how everything turns out.

I did have a funny realization, while looking up at the Berlin Fernsehturm, that I'm living in Europe! That's crazy! I know that's not really news, but it's the first time that really hit me. I guess it's because Germany is just a bunch of white people that dress a lot like Americans (though they do dress a lot better than Americans, as a whole), and a big city that could maybe be Chicago or Minneapolis or whatever, so it doesn't have that "exotic" feel that maybe Venice or Granada would. But whateva, I loves it. And I'm living in Europe for a whole year. Madness.

But I know you didn't tune in this week to hear about me, liebe Leute, and I'm fine with that. So at this point in the blog I'll just give you what you want- the next installment of THINGS GERMAN PEOPLE HATE:

#11: Variety in their Slang Words
Curse words not included, these people seriously have two slang words that they use for EVERYTHING: krass and geil. And I don't pretend to have mastered their usages, but they're weird, let me tell you. Krass can mean awesome, cool, etc, but then it can also mean bad, unfortunate, shitty. What? And then geil is even stranger: it means cool, sexy, and horny, and not at the same time. So all I have to say is, WTF.

#12: Any Possibility of Confusion at Check-Out
Germans are absolute fiends for that little plastic thing that you find at the check-out counter at the grocery store. You know, the one that separates your groceries on the belt from the groceries of the person in front of you. Well, don't even try to get away with not using it in Germany. Even if there's like, a foot of space in between their head of lettuce and your box of noodles, they will make absolute certain that there is no confusion by placing the little plastic thing for you. Because they don't want some noodles on their bill.

That's it for now. Much love and alles Gute!