The last week in Berlin…
I have finished with Berlin. The last two weeks were pretty hectic, what with people leaving after four weeks and then even more after five weeks. In the last week we were down to ten people, but we barely saw each other unless effort was made.
I say that because the majority of my last week was spent working. In week 5 we had longer German lessons, from 9.30am until 12.45am. I think I found it easier because there were less people and thus fewer levels to differentiate between. I went to all of my last week of classes (unlike a lot of people which meant the classes were smaller again and better for me), which was good fun, we played a few German games, and on our last day we watched Lola rennt – Run Lola Run – and had to answer questions and talk about it in German. Saeeda and Franciscka are gorgeous teachers. Saedda had a crap experience with some director so we taught her what a douchebag is, and the next day when Jay came to class, she goes to us “oh the director is such a douchebag”, and Jay was so shocked it was really funny. We all went down to the park after our last class and sat asking each other questions in German and answering. We were with the beginners as well, but we had to answer with better uses of words and longer sentences.
Everyone headed down to Potsdam on one of the last Saturdays, but as I’ve already been down there, I went one stop back to Babelsberg. Now, I know there is supposed to be a film studio down here where they produced The Reader, The Bourne series and a heap of other blockbusters, but I went into the national park, not the film park. Another gorgeous area, although more ‘in the sticks’ and kept to its natural beauty, so yeah i happened to get lost almost and thought I’d be sleeping in the bush. Turns out I was going the exact wrong direction I wanted to go, but never mind, it also wasn’t as big as I thought. Wandering through the bush all of a sudden a big tower loomed out from between the trees. It looked like Rapunzel’s tower, only it belonged to the King of Prussia way back when they ruled. Further on is Schloss Babelsberg, currently being rebuilt, a lot of the rooms having nothing in them, but they are being pieced back together. I left the others wandering around in Potsdam and headed home for a while. I think I got dragged down to Studio 54 after that, where we danced a bit and also watched fire blowers almost set their little rat tail beards on fire haha.
I didn’t do a lot out of classes, because most days I was subbing articles for the travel guide. Sometimes a few of us went down to Cafe Schmuck, which has free wi-fi and really nice baguettes, although I was a sucker for the chocolate milkshakes. I think I subbed about 90 articles in all, it didn’t feel like that many, but some were shorter, some I mostly had to format into the style we were using – the type of font, the size, the way the contact information was presented. It’s all about consistency, that’s the way you can tell most professional publications from independent ones. You choose a style, a type of formatting, and you stick to it. We did everything through google documents, which is good in one way, although I found the program quite limiting in others. We didn’t have any interesting excursions so i preferred to work and then do my own thing when I could.
Jessie and I spent an afternoon after school down at KaDeWe, the second largest European department store with the biggest food hall on the top floor. You could eat lobster or scallops cooked for you there, you could eat swans made of cream and pastry. There was even an American section where you could buy pop tarts for €7 a box! After that we walked up to Zoo Station and shopped a bit, and checked out the Kaiser Wilhelm Memorial church, which was bombed in the Second World War and never fixed again. The new structure that stands next to it is awful however, this beautiful half-ruined church next to a pile of colourful shining glass in the shape of a hexagon. The 21st century is turning religion into a joke.
On the Thursday we went on the rowboats, finally got Matt into one, he was a big fraidy cat, and I went with him, and Sebastian and Jessie in the other one. It’s really fun and there’s lots of lake and areas where you can row through. We went and had spiders in the English gardens of the Tiergarten after that. Remember in primary school having a glass of coke and then putting a scoop of ice cream into it and watching it fizz? Yeah, I don’t know why I ever did that! It was alright but not a real thirst quencher. We had to walk through the nudie section of the Tiergarten to get from the rowboats to the English garden, which I didn’t realise that was where it was, and it really was a bit much on display. It was one of those, I don’t really want to look but wow it’s so bad I just have to look again. One guy was lying on his side with one leg on the ground and the other cocked in half. Bad use of words, he was the first one I realised was actually butt naked. Ewww. It’s not a pretty site.
I popped over to some galleries after that – free Thursdays! The Gemaldegalerie was quite good. A lot is religious paintings from the 13th to 17th centuries, but they had some pretty cool Rembrandt and Van Eyck, and a few other well-known artists. Then I went into the Musikalinstrument museum, also cool, with a 1930s Wurlitzer (look it up) they used it in the silent era films. The instruments they had showed the progress from banjos to guitars, early flutes made from bone and wood to the ones of today, it was really fascinating. I should have got the audio guide because they tell you a lot more information – the info sheets were only in German so I couldn’t read them that well.
We had a few nights out at various restaurants. The boys took us to Hooters “for the wings of course”, although they reckon the German one is a lot more tame than the American ones. Ben was telling us there’s a Hooters passport, and when you’ve been to 25 restaurants they throw a big party for you. It’s an aim of many the American males.
Matt had to photograph Charlottenburg, and I’d been subbing the reviews and quite fancied one of the dim sum restaurants that Jason wrote on, so we decided to try it out. I had the beef noodle soup, Jessie had the wan tan, both the soups were delicious. We all had dim sum as well, the combination one was two prawns, two pork and two vegetable. The boys of course are never full, and ended up ordering two bowls of extra rice each, and ate them plain with soy sauce. We then found this awesome cake store, which was unfortunately closed, but some of the cakes were amazing. There was one with the chesire cat from Alice in Wonderland, a white cake with yellow daisies, and a blue cake with a purple octopus on it!
Oh what else did we do?! Basically Alison was great and kept dragging me out of the apartments for a break. I remember one day I just walked down to the park and sat. I lay reading my book for a few hours next to the fountain and it was really nice – it was such a hot day but I was lying in the cool shade so it made for a great break.
Ali and I met up with Saeeda a few times, she took us to this funky street in Kreuzberg with a lot of hippie clothes, and Alison sat and braided Saeeda’s hair, which is really long, but she put two braids in with different coloured wool. Then I got one. It’s trying to come out of my hair, but I quite like it. Lija said I turned hippie when she saw me haha.
I finished the layout at 7pm the day before I left Berlin. The last two hours I was running back and forth between Matt’s and my computers, putting in the last of the photos and then the page numbers. Zoe did two sections, Matt did two sections, and I did four, then I proof-read the whole lot. It felt so good to get it finished. We made copies, packed the last bits away and headed out to the Tiergarten for my last drinks and farewell. It was a nice night, but we weren’t quite ready to head home after that. Despite the fact I had to leave the house at 4am to get to the airport for my flight, we headed out to a club in Friedrichshain where Karolin was with some of her friends. Karolin is interning with City Travel Review so we went to some excursions with her and she had German conversation with the higher level students. She’s a lovely person, and we had a good dance. Rosi’s bar is further down from the main nightlife area so it’s mostly locals who know about it, a great privilege for my last night haha. Matt ran me up to the last tram at 3am, I got back, showered, finished packing, lay down for a half hour and went out to catch the tram to catch the train to catch the plane to Italy. Whoopeee!
Tags: Travel
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