berlin adventure time

sorry for the lack of blog posts! it's hard to find time to sit down & write these things! i've got a lot of catching up to do, clearly.

let's see. about a week and half ago, we each had appointments to get our visa's. (these made us official residents of bonn, which is pretty cool if ya ask me). everyone, i mean EVERYONE'S appointments were on thursday after class. no big deal, but mine and like 4 other people's were on friday...at 8am. welcome to my luck. so not only did I have to wake up super early to catch the subway into town(to get into town from erin & i's area, tannenbusch mitte, we have to walk 0.68 miles to the subway stop, wait and catch a subway, and then walk another 10 minutes to where we need to be. it's def a process) but once i got there, we quickly found out that the person in charge of my visa appointment randomly quit his job the day before & i was rescheduled without them telling me. it was pretty glorious.

so yea, i ended up waiting till 10:30 to get my visa. my grumpy face was present. 

that weekend we went to cologne, and it was very cologne-ish so i'm skipping to berlin because that's more interesting. 

we went to berlin for 4 days! it was a pretty neat city. we left on tuesday and caught a 5+ hour long bus ride. it got me thinking that getting from granbury to lubbock takes that long...how do you people do it? torture. it was torture. anyways, once we got to berlin, we were taken on a tour by the most precious welsh man. he looked like he came straight from the hobbit & he had such a fantastic accent. &i realize i probably sound really creepy by saying all that^ he took us around the town on a bus(i was excited to not be walking much). we went to some cool places like brandenburg gate & the column of victory buuuut i was obviously most excited to see the place where michael jackson famously held his child outside the window. 

waddup hotel adlon. 

after that, we went to the holocaust memorial. i loved it. you look at it and it doesn't make any sense but once you interact with it on a personal level, you truly understand it. basically it looks like hundreds of these cement rectangles of varying heights. however once you walk into it, you feel claustrophobic in a sense. the floor gets more and more uneven the deeper you get. it's all about how it makes you feel; uncomfortable and uneasy. 

here's how it feels once you walk thru it. 

the next day, i woke up allergic to berlin. it was probably a cold but it's more fun to blame it on allergies, so yea. we got split into groups & my group went to the transmedial festival. this exhibit was just weird. i'm all for a good art museum but sending paper thru tubes, staring at art made from a xerox machine and watching a creepy movie made me sad that i was awake and not sleeping in my super comfortable hotel bed. the food there was on point though! after that pointless exhibit, we went to tour the parliament. it was cool getting to be there! there were these fierce german shepards guarding it which made it seem even more german than i thought was possible. they looked like they could eat me. 

here's the parliament.

once inside, we got another tour. this time it was with the most unenthusiastic women i've ever met so needless to say, it was really enjoyable. she talked forever and then we went to the dome at the top. by the time we reached the dome, it was night time so we got to see all of berlin lit up. it was pretttttty!

that night, we went to an irish pub to hang out and met a guy from a&m! he was kind of a giant douchebag(him and his friends both), but i'll let that slide because the fact that we met him on opposite sides of the planet from texas was pretty cool. 

the next day was my favorite in berlin. we started off by getting to see a concentration camp. it was named sachsenhausen and once housed 30,000-50,000 prisoners. this was the entrance to the camp. "albeit macht frei" means "work will set you free." The only way one would be freed was through death. very morbid & sad. 

we then walked the grounds. they took us to the barracks and gave us a tour of everything else on the  grounds. after that, they took us into a museum which showed actual pictures of thousands of prisoners standing on the very same grounds i had just walked. talk about surreal. 

(i stole the picture above from erin bc i didn't get a good one. hope you don't mind!)

here's the same building as above, minus the newly added balcony. this picture was in the museum. 

after our tour, we went back to berlin & had the day to ourselves. you know what that means...shoppinggggggggg! kathy & i dragged teaghan & saif around. and eventually i ended up dragging all three of them around...for 6 hours. can't stop, won't stop. we ended up at this super expensive restaurant that we would've regretted(had it not been funny!) we walked in there wearing layers that we had been wearing since early that morning. don't worry, the waiter was in a tux. and everyone else was dressed really nicely. not only that, but everything we ordered was over the top expensive & what we got back in return was not what we expected! teaghan & i split a pasta dish that came with 3 big noodles. kathy paid 10 euros(12 us dollars? something like that) for literally a bowl of water & two tortellini's. our faces were priceless when the waiter came. haahah.

needless to say, we asked for refills on our free bread 3 times bc we're starving college students, obvi. anyways, later that night we were determined to experience the nightlife in berlin. chelsey did research and found this underground club. 

it was awesome.

think of your average club in the usa. then think about this. to get to this club, we had to meet up with these sketchy bodyguards outside a store. they ushered us inside, took our coats, and led us to an elevator. (the whole time this was going down, i was convinced Taken 3 was about to occur). Once we got out of the elevator, we were underground beneath the store annnnd there was a club down there. it was seriously like something from a movie. it blew my mind that it actually existed! i can't even describe it, so i'm not gonna try. just if anyones wondering, yes berlin's reputation for underground clubs does indeed hold up. 

the next(last) day in berlin we went to visit rise, which is an amazing company that has done special effects for harry potter, cloud atlas, etc. gimme a job. 

after that, we went and toured the east side gallery which is a section of the berlin wall that the government lets artists paint. it was easily one of my favorite things in berlin. here's a couple of pictures!

it was so cool. everyone fly to germany right now and go see it. 
after that, we took another waytoolong bus right back. we didn't end up getting back to our host family's homes until midnight. 

between then & now, i've basically been in classes(i tend to forget i'm actually in school) and just hanging out with everyone. it's pretty unbelievable that i'm living in europe with 28 of my favorite people & my preshyyyy boyf. i'm a lucky girl!

until next time y'all. but until then, here's a picture to leave you with.

(it's karneval season in germany! it's known as the fifth season here & it's a week where everyone gets shwastyyy and wears costumes in the street. picture the chaos of spring break in 20 degree weather with europeans. for my costume, i got a pancho and a giant sombrero. 

may the odds be ever in our favor!)