So much to talk about, so little time to say it all!

The past week or so has been a total whirlwind. We've been busy every day, and every experience is something new and exciting. I'm going to try and get everything up to speed now because I'm going to Prague in the Czech Republic this weekend, and I want to be able to talk about that all by itself when I get back. So, here goes!


First of all, last Wednesday, we went on a tour to the Bundestag, which is the German house of Parliament and a truly amazing building. While the facade of the building looked very old and regal, the entire inside of the building was modern, sleek, and extremely eco-friendly. The history of the building also showed through in decisions to retain graffiti and damage sustained to the building while it was occupied by the Soviet Union after World War 2. The building was shockingly full of art, a large deal of it symbolizing this restoration from foreign control to domestic grandeur.

Most notable though was the giant glass cupola on top of the building. It is truly an architectural marvel that serves many purposes. For one, mirrors inside the cupola funnel light into the parliament floor of the Bundestag, which in turn radiates a huge deal of light throughout the building. Secondly, it funnels hot air out of the building, which is necessary since almost all of the Bundestag is "naturally cooled" as they liked to say. I'm not entirely sure what "naturally cooled" entails, but it was definitely cool and comfortable inside the building, so I'll take their word for it. Most importantly to me though, the cupola could be walked up, giving an excellent view of Berlin in the Tiergarten area, which provided for many excellent photo opportunities. Ultimately, the building was beautiful, and the sites that could be seen from the cupola were fantastic.

Honestly, I can't remember what happened for the remainder of that week (it's easy to do when you're constantly busy, haha), but Saturday we went to Potsdam, which is a city just outside of Berlin. It's so close to Berlin, in fact, that it often mistakenly gets called Berlin. Potsdam is famous for two main reasons. For one, Potsdam was the location chosen by the Prussian and later German kings for their royal estates, so the city is full of beautiful palaces and gardens. Secondly, seeing as how Potsdam did exist right on the border of West Berlin, it was once the home to a substantial chunk of the Berlin Wall. The bridge that we had to cross to enter Potsdam from Berlin is called the "Unity Bridge," which is ironic because within a year of its creation it was shut down to prevent West Berliners from entering Eastern Germany. The bridge was so new when it was shut down, in fact, that after West and East Berlin had become reunified, no one was allowed to drive on the bridge for over a year because they never had a chance to see if it was stable enough to support the weight of cars before the separation. We also got to see the Potsdam Brandenburg Gate. Most people think that the Brandenburg gate exists only in Berlin, but the truth is that any city old enough to have city walls that had a gate facing towards the city of Brandenburg had a Brandenburg gate, so there are many of different shapes, sizes, and artistic flairs.

The next famous location was saw was the Cecilienhof, the summer home of the German crown prince that was vacated when Hitler rose to power. Because of its large size and vacant state, it was chosen as the perfect place to have the post WW2 Potsdam Conference (Berlin was in such shambles that the Allies decided that there was no good place to have the conference in Germany's capital). It was in this conference that Germany and Berlin were split, leaving Joseph Stalin in charge of Cecilienhof as a part of East Germany (as can be seen with the large red star).


Eventually, we made it to the famous palace gardens of Potsdam. The first place we stopped was the Church of Peace, which was constructed by the German King Frederick William IV. While certainly not one of the grandest churches that I've ever seen, it was one of the most beautiful. It was built to look like it was floating on the water, giving it an ethereal feel, and its use of courtyards and statues gives an open, almost transient feeling to the building.


From there, we bee-lined towards Sanssouci, the famous palace of Potsdam. For being the most famous palace of Potsdam, it is actually the most modest in stature. While beautiful, it is paled by its massive garden, which goes on for as far as the eye can see in all directions. We ended up walking the full length of the garden, more than two kilometers, to see the other palaces.

In route the New Palace, which was constructed by Frederick the Great to house the ever increasing and impossible to put up number of visitors to Sanssouci, we ran across another palace that we unfortunately weren't able to explore and I cannot find a name for yet, but it was extremely beautiful nonetheless. Ironically, the New Palace that we eventually reached is drastically larger than Sanssouci, and its grand scale was extremely impressive. One thing that we noted was that no matter where we went, reconstruction work was being done on everything. You'll have to excuse the scaffolding, haha.


We took the earlier part of this week to relax, enjoy the slight bout of good weather on the beach, and catch up on some much needed sleep. Yesterday (Wednesday), however, we went to the Volkswagen factory and museum. We were lucky enough to get to take a tour of the Volkswagen plant where Golfs and Tiguans are made, but unfortunately were not allowed to take pictures. You guys will just have to take my word for it that it was pretty amazing. I was extremely surprised to see that almost no safety equipment was worn by the workers in the factory, and that the entire factory was very clean and quiet (they opened the doors of our cars so we could get some air in our car, and at no time was it nearly loud enough to make us want to cover our ears). After receiving our tour, we were able to look over the factory grounds.

Amazingly, the Volkswagen factory has its own power plant that not only powers the factory, but also the city of Wolfsburg that the factory resides in. We also had the chance to look at the Audi and Lamborghini exhibits. The Lamborghini show was extremely weird, consisting of about 10 minutes of flashing lights and loud noises around a stationary Lamborghini Murcielago. The Audi museum was quite cool though, and we got the chance not just to look at many new Audi models, but sit in and experience them. My favorite was the Audi R8. Oh what I would do to have one.


Finally, today we visited Sachsenhausen, the famous concentration camp in Berlin. It was, above all else, a sobering experience that warranted and received the utmost respect. I knew that it would be moving, but little can prepare you for the harsh realities of what humans were capable of doing to other human beings, and what people were able to endure to stay alive.

As a large portion of the camp was made out of wood and only a fraction out of brick, it is difficult to today see the camp for what it once was, but there are reminders everywhere of the brutality that once existed. From the multiple watchtowers of various size and eminence, the cabins where people had to live in inhuman conditions, the infirmatories where people were experimented on or deemed unfit to live and tossed to the wayside, the plots of land that today look like nothing, but contain the ashes of tens of thousands of people, to the remains of crematoriums where the bodies of so many innocent people were burned.

There really is no right way to react in a situation like that. One second you see a field, and the next you see what once was. It makes it all very real, not just a story in a history book, and it is something that I think everyone should see in their lifetime. If not to learn about the history, one should go to learn about the human condition, and what hate is capable of creating when it goes unchecked.

The site itself is amazing because it served both as a Nazi and Soviet prison camp, and sites and propaganda from both regimes exist. A huge monument exists, made by the Russians, to commemorate their liberating of the camp, though they made it into a prison camp of their own thereafter. Despite its past, a great deal of Sachsenhausen exists to this day, and the museum is a beautiful testament to the human loss, as well as the human strength, that will always be attached to those grounds.

Tomorrow though, I am off to Prague! I'm not yet entirely sure what we're going to do and see there, but it should be a fun and exciting trip. My next goal for tonight is to plan out some destinations, and to make sure my camera battery is good and charged. Exactly half of the kids from the program are going (which makes 8 by the way), so we should all be able to have a fun time together.

I'll be sure to post stuff about about the trip when I get back. Until then, guten Nacht!

Zoo Time!

Wednesday, we had the chance to go and see the Berlin Zoo. Apart from being absolutely massive, the Berlin Zoo is home to more species of animals than any other zoo in the world. Since we were cramming a zoo trip into an already busy day, we didn't get to see everything that the zoo had to offer, but I managed to collect a pretty good assortment of photos and videos of the different animals that I managed to see.

Accordingly, this post is basically going to be a large list of photos and videos with some captions, because I don't think I could do the zoo justice by blending it in with other events. So, without further ado, I present to you (in no order whatsoever because the image uploader for blogspot is crazy and mixed them all up), The Animals of the Berlin Zoo....















Even from outside of the zoo gates you could see the llamas. They basically did what they do best: be furry and eat hay.















German art at its finest: a little boy holding water hoses and peeing on a frog. I like to think that it symbolizes the way that man oppresses animal-kind without regard, but it might just be an R. Kelly crack.















Yeah, that's quite a flight. To put it in perspective for my more US standard audience, that's a little more than 6017 miles.















The grizzly bears were nice enough to stay as far away from us as humanly possible and obscure themselves with logs so it was nearly impossible to get a good shot of them. Just to spite them though, I took an alright one.















A pack of African Wild Dogs looking everything but wild. If they didn't eat large antelope on a regular basis, you'd almost think that petting them sounded like a good idea.















An owl, giving me his best pose.















The ever noble bald eagle. On a side note, if I had one issue with the Berlin Zoo, it was that their bird cages made it almost impossible to get a good shot of a bird.















A Sea Lion, cruising around and enjoying himself. I'd definitely say that out of all the animals, it looked like these guys were having the most fun.















One of Berlin's famous polar bears, on a rock they like to fight over.















Two of Berlin's famous polar bears, fighting over the aforementioned rock.















For all critics of zoos, saying that they torture animals by removing them from their natural environments, I present to you... the (aptly named) Sun Bear.















Two of the smallest (and least aquatic) hippos I've ever seen. It was kind of hard to decipher the German signs, but I believe these truly are some kind of Hippo species.















A group of penguins, who all looked like they had nooooo idea what was going on.















A Black Bear, embracing a lazy position trumped only by his sunny cousin.















While the animals tended to draw the most attention, it was worth noting that all of the plant life in the Berlin Zoo was also beautiful. That said, I took one shot of a flower and spent the rest of my time taking shots of way cooler animals.















What I believe to be called a Sun Cat. The room it was in wasn't the brightest, but we can't all live up to the bear standards.















More penguins of a less aquatic sort.















The black stripes on the Zebras must generate a lot of heat, because not once all I day did I see one walk in the sunlight so I could get a decent shot.















A jaguar. While most of the big cats just lounged around, this guy seemed pretty serious about guarding his perimeter. Maybe he's new to the zoo.















A mongoose, which was literally the hardest animal to snap a shot of ever. You can't tell here, but they had ridges and slides and all kinds of things to run around on in their exhibit, and they were using them all constantly.















Clearly, this lion was as excited to see me as I was to see it, haha.




















One of the Berlin Zoo's many cool antelope (I believe this to be a Kudu, but I could be wrong). These guys were actually hanging out with the zebras, and they too liked to hide in the shade.















A Black Panther. It's kind of hard to pick up the killing machine vibe when the cat looks like it just fell out of a tree.















About 1/3 of a Giant Panda. These guys are notorious sleepers, and this one lived up to his reputation.




















I have no idea what this bird's name is, but I like his haircut.




















Believe it or not, this is a baby giraffe. They had most of the adults caged up to keep them separated, but this little guy still managed to roam around and pose for a decent picture.















A huge family of mountain goats. Note the massive beards that all the guys are toting.















The most important part of that above picture. This little guy was still small enough to not have the creepy, dead eyes that his elders did.















One of Berlin's many antisocial Elephants.















Another Leopard who was much happier swinging and looking at his log than acknowledging us.




















Some kind of Heron. Many of them were still able to fly, and it was amazing to see groups of these things just taking off and heading to a different pond within the zoo.















A Rhino, doing his best to take in the sun even though he was mostly shadowed.



I believe the American term for these guys to be Spring Hares, but who knows. They had a ton of cool animals in their nocturnal exhibit, but the lighting obviously didn't make for the best photo-ops.




















Some kind of Lemur. They're basically as prone to hopping about and hanging as you'd expect.















Very protective monkeys. I have a feeling that this little guy might lead a very sheltered life.




















Crazy monkey-squirrels with unique coloring. I may not know exactly what they were, but I definitely know that these guys could run around like the wind.















One big, colorful monkey.















These two little guys seemed to just take turns hiding and looking. They were basically the monkey equivalents of Chihuahuas.















The ridiculous baby Orangutan. He looked like equal parts baby, disheveled old man, and gymnast.




















This is the gymnast part shining through.















Daddy Orangutan, who looked like he was wearing a cape made out of his own hair.




















Eventually, after sitting for about an hour, daddy Orangutan decided to get up and swing around and let his dread-locks drift in the wind. This is where he ended up.



And this a video of part of his trip to get there.















The last animal I saw all day was this guy, a crazy little red deer fellow. I have no idea what he was called, but it's fun to end the day on a mystery.


And that, in a nutshell, was my day at the Berlin Zoo.

Sadly, this post has taken me about four days to create because the internet we have here in Berlin is terrible at uploading, and because our days are packed as it is, so thanks everyone for having patience with me. I'll try to have the next one up as soon as possible.

Talk to you all soon,

Cody

Willkommen In Berlin!

Well, I managed to make it to Berlin all in one piece, so mission one was a complete success.

The flight over was actually really good. My connectors to Cleveland and then New York all went smoothly, though I had to do some terminal jogging to make sure I wasn't late for boarding. Even though I don't know a lick of German, the passport visa process was really painless, and none of my luggage got lost. I couldn't really ask for more.

The airport in Berlin was pretty cool. Instead of having one huge customs check in line and one huge baggage claim area, each gate had its own customs desk and baggage claim. It made getting things taken care of much easier. I managed to find Kristina Bognar, our liason, very easily virtue of a sign she made for incoming students. It all felt very cliche, which made me enjoy it all the more.

I ended up having to wait at the airport with Ryan Pramer, another U of M student on my flight and coincidentally my roommate for the program, because two other students had landed just before us and Kristina's car was in no way big enough to support 4 student with luggage. In fact, virtually no cars in Germany are suited to hold much at all. It's definitely a trend to have small cars, and the extremely little smart cars are quite common. I mean, you know a car is little when it can back straight into a parallel parking spot and stay inside the lines. Another funny thing was that almost every cab I saw at the airport was a Mercedes Benz, and they're all painted this subtle cream color. It's quite the jump to think of such a luxury car as being so common, even though Germany is the home country of Mercedes Benz and it shouldn't be too surprising that they can get them for much cheaper than in America.

Eventually though, we made it to our apartment, which is in a building (or group of 4 buildings rather) known as the House of Nations. It's a very common student apartment complex, and almost all of our neighbors are Korean or Chinese people studying in Germany. We see very little of them, but I think my neighbor is studying to be a musician because some days I get to listen to hours and hours of classical-jazz-vaudeville-whatever-mashup on his/her piano. Luckily I'm not in long enough for it to get annoying. Ryan and I got extremely lucky with our room. About 1/4 of the rooms in this building are handicapped, and we got put in one. Suffice to say its massive. Sure, all of the tables and door handles are really low, but I consider that a fair trade-off.

I've now also become acquainted with the other 15 people who are studying here in Berlin with me. 16 people is a huge group to keep organized and get around, but somehow we manage. I haven't met a single person I haven't gotten along with yet, so all in all this should be a really fun trip. I also haven't managed to get a group shot together, but I'll be sure to get one up as soon as possible.


One of the shopping districts in Berlin by our apartment. This is as close as I have to a group shot of the kids in the program yet, haha.

Where to start about Berlin though. First of all, I don't think I could see all that this city has to offer if I had a year, let alone the entire country of Germany. Between Germany's history, architecture, and culture, there are hundreds of things to see. Of course, the food is great. Admittedly, I haven't strayed too far in terms of dellicasies, but the things that I've had so far have been great.

Probably the one food I've eaten the most are Doner Kebaps, which are much like gyros, except they are in a bread pocket instead of a rolled pita and they have lettuce, cabbage, cucumber, and different sauces. Doner Kebaps are actually a Turkish food, not German. Most people don't know that Germany has a large Turkish population, but almost 10% of the German population is Turkish, and many of those people live in Wedding, the district in which we're staying. As you might guess, their food, culture, and language (as if it isn't hard enough to learn one) are everywhere.
On the more traditional German side, I've also tried currywurst. It is essentially a German sausauge cut into slices and covered with a mild curry sauce (a thick tomato base with just a bit of spice). It's also quite common for currywurst to be served with french fries on top (German french fries tend to be a bit thicker, but they're pretty close to their American counterparts). Finally, I've had some very good, authentic Italian food. It's hard for me to know exactly what I'm ordering at most Italian resteraunts, but I haven't seen anything that looked bad anyhow. I typically eat my food too fast to take any pictures of it, but I'll work on that.


U-9 Train on the way to our building

Another huge part of our life in Berlin is the train. There are actually three different types of trains in Berlin. There are the S trains, which are above ground city trams, the U trains which are below ground subways, and T trains which are trams that run on the roads (though I don't think I've seen a T since I've been here). The trains and stations are all kept very clean, which I find amazing considering how many dozens of stations dot Berlin. While there are the occasional beggars, for the most part it is just a relaxed riding experience. The one big downside is that there are very few signs at the stations. It's important that you know exactly where you're heading when you get to the station, otherwise it's very easy to get lost.

Since being here, I've got to see two notable things. One was the museum at Check Point Charlie, which was the checkpoint of the American portion of the Berlin wall. While the museum appeared small in stature, it spread out a vast distance and contained limitless knowledge about the construction of the Berlin Wall, the effect it had on Germans and the people of Berlin, how the world reacted, and of course the eventual destruction of the wall. It was amazing to me to see the ways that Germans living in East Berlin would conceal and transport themselves to get across to West Germany and the technologies that they created to aid them in their goal.

Secondly, we went on a riverboat tour of Berlin with our Professor in Germany, Professor Behrendt. It was a great chance to see Germany, relax with the other kids in the program, and eat things without having the slightest clue what they were. I was slick enough to forget my camera for the boat ride, but as I get photos from other people I'll put them up.

For now, we're just hanging out, finding out more and more about the city, and working our way into the German class we started today (4 hours of language a day can be tiring). Tomorrow we're heading to the Berlin Zoo, so I'll make sure to get some good pictures and talk more about that later. Til then!

Auf Wiedersehen!

It's hard to believe that in a little less than 22 hours, I'll be on a plane en route to Germany. There are definitely some butterflies, and some worries, but all in all I mostly feel excited for what's ahead.

Packing and getting myself prepared has definitely been a complicated process. One of the most important things to get when you travel to any country are plug adapters (and voltage adapters if necessary) so you can use your electronics at your destination. It was really easy to find adapters that work in Germany, but for some reason Italian plug adapters exist only in a mythical land far from my home, and I haven't been able to find one. Hopefully I'll be able to find some in Germany, or my week stay in Italy will be very tech-less. Under the advise of my travel agent, I've also thrown a back-up outfit in my carry-on in case my baggage arrives a day late, which is apparently not too uncommon. The final big thing I did was to make photocopies of my passport, credit cards, and other important papers. In the event that anything gets lost or stolen, I'll have back-up copies at the ready.

Apart from that good advise, I've mostly been trying to pack light. I was certain that I was going to pack way too much and have to take half of my stuff out and start over, but I have enough room for all of my clothes, toiletries, and school supplies, plus room for an empty duffel bag in case I come home with more than I left with.

To add to all the stress of packing and leaving, my laptop decided to completely crash early this week and make me think that I was going to have to find all new ways to call home and get assignments done. Fortunately, a friend of mine was able to help me out and get it running, so I should be alright in the laptop department.

One thing I've done really well at is getting airplane entertainment together. I got a plane charger for my laptop so I can play some games or whatnot, my girlfriend bought me a movie to watch, I have some guidebooks that I will probably read far less than I should, and I bought an interesting book on programming so I can hopefully turn some idle plane time into productive time, but we'll see.

It'll be weird and hard to leave everything behind and head out to Germany, but I'm excited, and right now can only think and hope that it's going to be great. I'll be sure to put up another post once I get settled in Germany to let you all know how things are working out.

~Cody