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.