The past few days

What a great few days it's been! So. Much. Walking. But in a good way! It means I'm doing this trip right: walking and seeing the city of Berlin! That's what this trip is about after all! And it's great walking around this city with such a super group! For example, yesterday I sat down with Julia, Stuart, Terryn, and Chris and we had a late lunch early dinner, taking some time to just sit and relax. Enjoying some of the evening and such. We were going to go to Fest der Farben but we discovered 1) we needed tickets to enter the event and 2) the tickets were sold out. So we returned to the apartment for a few minutes to regroup, then Stuart, Chris, Julia and I decided to head over to Alexanderplatz (after I made a bad attempt at taking them MacLaren's Pub, a bar with a theme based on my favor tv show "How I Met Your Mother"). While we were in Alexanderplatz we discovered a Bowling Alley. Now some of you may be thinking "Really? You're in Berlin and you decide to go to a bowling alley?" It was actually a great time though! All of our lane neighbors were native German speakers (naturally) so I had the joy of sitting and listening to German outside the classroom. Of course, we also had fun playing and just relaxing too.

I've now also seen two different theater pieces while here in Berlin: "Disabled Theater" and "Murmel Murmel." Unfortunately I just finished seeing "Murmel Murmel" so I haven't really had a good amount of time to sit and process it but I have had time to think about "Disabled Theater" which I think was critical in my understanding of it. Now for those who don't know, Disabled Theater is a show that has a mentally handicapped cast, and the show was certainly interesting. The first thing that happened in this show was each cast member stood on the stage for "one minute." However, as I'm sure you've all heard before "Time is relative." So some of the actors stood for roughly a minute, others much longer than a minute, and at others less than a minute. At first I was a little frustrated with this but then I thought to myself that I needed to take a step back, and not judge this. I mean, the director had a reason for why he wanted this. It took me a while to find my own meaning in it, but what I feel is that this is how we normally see mentally handicapped people in public. We sort of single them out or look at them and stare as though they were the only person on the stage. However, I'm still working on internalizing it from there. Other than this, this play really didn't speak to me like it did some of the others. I've heard a lot of people in the group say that this show should make you reflect both on yourself as well as the public opinion of the mentally handicapped. But I think it doesn't speak to me very well because I already viewed them as normal people. Yeah, they are a little different than us, but EVERYONE is different! That's what makes this world so unique. I saw them as actors, just like they said they were when asked to tell the audience what their profession was. I will admit that one of the most agrivating parts of the show was one of the actors, Peter, would only say "sky," "star," and "Johnny" who was one of the other actors. Now I wasn't mad he was saying those things, nor that he was saying them in no patticular order, but rather I was frustrated with myself for not being able to understand him. He had a reason for saying those things, and I wish I knew what it was, but I wasn't able to understand. Which is fine, because I have those moments with other people too; they see some kind of connection between two or more subjects and I just can't understand or don't see that connection. But that's okay with me. (Also, I apologize if this all does not seem very chronological, I have a tendency to write whatever comes to my mind at the time)

The other big event was Lesen gegen das Vergessen. Now this event is held to honor and remember the authors whose literature was burned at Bebelplatz in Berlin on May 10, 1933 during the rise of the Third Reich. So in order to commemorate this event people come to Bebelplatz and read excerpts from the works that were burned. Oh. My. Goodness. That was one of THE MOST TERRIFYING experiences of my life! It was also electrifying and fun, but very scary. I was very worried I was going to mess up, or that my German pronunciation would be bad and that the audience would not be pleased with my reading. But as soon as I got up there and started reading, everything went well! My nerves didn't get any better, and in fact they probably became worse, but the audience was laughing as I read (which was a good thing! It was a comedic piece).

Well those are the big things from the past few days. Can't wait to experience more fun in Germany!