The View from Saturday...or I guess today is Sunday

Guten Tag,

It's been a great week here in Berlin, and I guess a great week of school...right...we're here to study.  We go to school in a beautiful old villa called Haus Cramer.  It's located in a gorgeous part of Berlin called Dahlem, which is the area where the Free University is.  Here is a link to the history of the house.  It's pretty fun to be in class and to see the rose garden right outside of the window.  I thought the other day that if Taylor/TMob were here we would've already come up with some crazy story about how we lived in the villa and either were super rich or Cinderella type villa dwellers waiting to spring into high society.  Anyway, I'm taking a history class that is balls boring and an environmental class that compares US and German attitudes towards green technology and climate change.  I think I'll really like the environmental class and I'm not giving up on the history one yet.  German class is actually really fun because we basically choose what we learn and my German has already improved a lot. 

This week was a great sight seeing week, although I still have a lot left to visit.  I went to the Eastern Viewing Gallery on Tuesday, which is the longest stretch of the Berlin Wall that's left.  It has several murals and general graffiti art, but they've recently been removing some artwork to reinforce the wall, much to the dismay of the artists.  Even seeing the wall it was hard to imagine what it was like to live in a divided city.  After that we went to the Kaiser Wilhelm Gedachtniskirche, which is the bombed church that still stands in what is now a huge shopping area.  We were too late to go inside, but it was an odd site from the outside.  At this area (called Zoologischer Garten) we found a European version of the dollar store, where my friends Molly and Charlton tried to buy wine.  They were carded, much to their disappointment, because the legal age to buy wine here is 16...Later this week I also went to the Deutsches Historisches Museum, which is you guessed it, the history museum!  It was really a fascinating museum, especially because of the section dedicated to Nazi history and WWII.  It's been interesting talking to Germans about the war because there is still a large sense of guilt, but at the same time people don't want to admit their families were involved.  Apparently everything is very directly addressed in schools, but discussion in families is pretty restricted.  My host dad was telling me that Germans didn't feel like they could send troops to Iraq because WWII is still too recent for them.  I thought that was interesting.  

I've been pretty hungry in Germany, so I was very ready for the Bing dinner this week.  The Bing family endows the Stanford study abroad program and sponsors a few dinners for the group each quarter.  Our director here also said that they're called Bing dinners because it's the noise our wine glasses make after a toast.  We had a ton of great food, but the potato sausage soup was probably my favorite.  The free wine wasn't bad either.  

This week was another week of club fun.  We went to a club Friday night with a bunch of Irish and German students.  It was a special salsa night on one of the dance floors and when we walked in it was something straight out of Dirty Dancing 2: Havana Nights.  I had a great time dancing with a Colombian student from our program and it was a step up from Famous Daves salsa Tuesdays in high school.  Another dance floor played current hip hop mixed with pop hits from 2002, but yes Jeff, they played 'Let it Rock!'  Overall it was a great night, except having to pay 4.5 euros for a Corona...when in Rome.  

Yesterday was a fantastic mix of activities.  During the morning I went with friends to a flea/produce market on Winterfeld Platz.  We bought fresh ravioli and vegetables, which were great for dinner last night.  Then, in the afternoon I went to a soccer game at the old olympic stadium.  On the way to the game I was waiting for the train and all of a sudden saw a guy in a Hooters shirt.  My first thought was yay! America! Sad, I know, but then I saw what else was written on the shirt: Bloomington, MN Mall of America.  FML that is how Minnesota is being repped in Europe.  Anyway, soccer.  Fucking crazy here.  The game was Berlin against Dortmund, and Dortmund's fans happen to be the most loyal fans in Germany.  We sat right in the middle of their section and it was ridiculous--so many coordinated cheers and bouncing in seats.  It was a blast even though Berlin lost.  

That's about it for now, except I went running this morning and got horribly lost.  I've never been so excited to see G-Bar 53, which is the strip club on the corner of my street. 

TTFN,

Ellen