It's time for me to post a few photos. Yesterday was a BIG day. I have a few photos of the group from our reading on the Bebelplatz in honor of authors whose books were burned by the Nazis on May 10, 2013 in case you missed seeing us on German TV. We received many compliments after the reading, by the way. My group was a bunch of stars. I will let the students tell you about how they experienced riding around Berlin in a van, using a megaphone to promote the event and handing out flyers advertising it beforehand.

For me, the afternoon was spent running around buying and selling theater tickets, making arrangements for our Dresden travel, and logging miles on my Fitbit pedometer. The evening brought another big highlight of the day as we saw our first Theatertr


effen performance, entitled: "Disabled Theater"--and yes, you read that correctly. The English title would not be considered PC to a native speaker of English, but this is an example, after all, of Euro English. Again, I will let the students share their views on this, their first performance. From my own perspective, the performance did exactly what I hoped it would: provoke a lot of thinking, reflecting, and appreciation.

Since I have mentioned "Euro-English" I want to add that this is a language that can be overheard everywhere. Berlin is at least 1/4 "foreigners" and often the language they use to communicate among themselves is often Euro-English. I love hearing it, actually, because it is highly entertaining at its best and it is still sweet to hear even when it is "almost good." I do worry when I am privy to arguments on the subway in Euro English, not only because I feel like a voyeur overhearing things I shouldn't be hearing, but also because when the English is wrong it is hard to figure out exactly what threats and ultimatums are being made.

That is all for now. As they say in German: Tschüss! (which is pronounced somewhere between "juice" and "tush" for those of you unfamiliar with German.

Apologies that the pictures are all out of order.

Reading on the Bebelplatz 

Figuring out the subway

First night. Brandenburger Tor

Yummy lunch. 

Zerstörte Vielfalt. German history everywhere.

Tour of Berlin Mitte

First night. This group even looks good with jet lag.

Hurry up and wait. . . waiting for the U-Bahn.

Arrival and Exploration

 Views outside the airplane window as we descended in Berlin.

 Our lovely airplane dinner.


 12 hours later (18 with the time difference), Teryn and I arrived in Germany to this and more gorgeous views. Getting past Passkontrolle and retrieving our baggage was a breeze. We met Janet outside in the lobby, received two free AB train/bus passes from passing strangers, and immediately set off on our adventure for the day.
    We took the bus and the Bahn to the hostel where I'm now posting this from (at 1 AM, no less) to drop off our stuff before heading off to explore the city. We experienced the various stops and connections that we'll be using during the rest of the time here. We spent some time walking around the gorgeous streets of Berlin (the architecture is astounding, and I've yet to see a tree here that wasn't just bursting with the spirit of spring) and getting used to the trickier stops and then had lunch at Café Sur in Schöneberg, where we got to try some delicious Rhabarbersaft and the popular vegetable of the season: white asparagus. The rest is kind of a blur (we're in the process of getting over our jet lag), but I know that we stopped by Morus 14, where I'll be interning after our program, a couple different malls and shops where we picked up phones, towels, and umbrellas, and Janet's various hotels and places of residence before finally taking the tram back to where our hostel is located and crashing for a couple hours.
   Upon waking up, since Janet was still at a ballet located in some Techno club, we went for a walk and stumbled upon a grocery store, where we saw just how much cheaper food here can be (less than €1 for like 6 loaves of bread!!!) and a Turkish restaurant, where I got to enjoy my first (but certainly not last) Döner.
    Once Janet got back, we went to see the Brandenburger Tor, Holocaust memorial, and Potsdamer Platz, all places well worth waiting to visit at night.
  Overall, the day was exhausting, overwhelming, and informative in all the best ways, and I'm looking forward to taking some more time over the next few weeks to take a closer look.  Pictures will be uploaded later.

"If our lives are dominated by a search for happiness, then perhaps few activities reveal as much about the dynamics of this quest––in all its ardour and paradoxes––than our travels."

The title quote is from a reading we all did: an excerpt from "The Art of Travel" by Alain de Botton. I think it's fair to say that our whole group has been thinking about this trip almost constantly since even the beginning of the past semester. As de Botton wrote about, anticipation is, to say the least, high. It's always hard to know what one is anticipating. Simply speaking, I can't wait to see the trees in Berlin, the bookstores, and to be in a town where essentially no one knows me, and I don't know anyone. Past that, I don't know exactly what this trip will be like, and that is exciting.

Because my anticipation and excitement for this trip started months ago, I have spent a lot of time (probably too much) thinking about what it means to actually travel. I really loved reading what de Botton wrote about anticipation. This phase of traveling is just that: a part of the process. I think, for me anyway, this period of time beforehand lets my imagination get perhaps the best of me, resulting in not quite what I expect when arriving to my destination (in this case Berlin). De Botton, who writes about Duc des Esseintes, a character from a novel by J.K. Huysman. Des Esseintes plans a trip to London and, after a fair amount of thought, doesn't go as to prevent disappointment from the inevitable discrepancy between London's reality and the London he came to expect in his head.

Des Esseintes never traveled past that experience (which did not include travel), and seldom did before it. Poor guy. With anxiety that would today probably be diagnosed as some disorder, he stayed in his home for the rest of his life, creating visions of various places around the world without ever going to them, and perhaps without a true desire to ever actually visit them.

I think disappointment, or what might better be described as deflating confusion, when arriving and living in the experience of traveling is a key part in understanding what it means to visit a place that is not home to us, but to other people. We seem to idealize other places that are really no different than our homes. Looking past culture and its preceding history, cities, towns, villages, etc., are all homes. It may be simple, but to me that realization has helped me make a lot of connections that seem simple and obvious, but it's taken me about 18 years to even think about this. The resistance that people like des Essenties exhibit towards the disconnect between reality and imagination in the world of traveling feel, to me, like an alienation of other cultures and a perhaps unintentional way of removing the humanity from other places in the world (though he is a fictional character, I imagine there are quite a few people like him in the world).

So, I guess I'm off to Berlin to see the actualization of the what my imagination has been brewing up throughout the past couple of months. Having been to Berlin just over a year ago, I have a small idea of what to expect. I can't wait to be in such a wonderful city with amazing friends, and a knowledgable and adventurous professor.

I will try not to make all of my posts this long! I don't know if having access to a place wherein I can publicly write about Berlin and all of its excitement is a great idea.... ;) only joking.

Bis bald...

Kerry

Here, Have Some of My Pre-Trip Anxiety

Well I have officially lost the ability to make a decision. Two or three pairs of pants? Video camera or digital? Purse or drawstring bag? I spent all day yesterday trying on different pants and crossing out and rewriting items on my what-to-pack list. By the time dinner rolled around, my mom found me lying defeated on my bedroom floor, a different pair of pants on each leg, tearing up about which notebook to bring (or something just as ridiculous). She asked me to decide on a restaurant and I almost had a conniption.
I'm excited for this trip, I really am. But I am so glad I was able to read the Art of Travel, because De Botton untangled the ball of anxiety in my chest and reminded me exactly what I was afraid of. Traveling will not change who I am-I will still be the anxiety-ridden, sarcastically terrified, novice-German-speaker Molly, just on a different continent. And what this reading assured me was that that is ok. Being in Berlin will not change the fact that sometimes I get sad or scared or nervous, and yeah, Berlin is going to be amazing and wonderful and beautiful, but I can't go in expecting paradise. De Botton sums it up perfectly when he describes how no one ever thinks about "the journey through the afternoon." The one filled with plane tickets limp from the sweat of your palms, not entering the correct compartment and dragging your suitcase through the hallway of the now-moving train, not knowing if you're being ripped off by a taxi driver, staring out the window of a car and hoping to god this is not the neighborhood you'll be living in. It's almost-missed flights and miscommunications and awkward back sweat and sleep deprivation.
Have I got everyone excited yet??
But really, this is the reality of travel that I am nervous about it-just the traveling in between places. Once we set our bags down in our apartment, I will be stress free. But until then, the constipated look on my face is called anxiety, and I'd appreciate it if it didn't get caught on camera, thanks guys.
Now I feel like I should talk about something other than my fears (I'll pause a moment here to allow time for Kerry to psychoanalyze those first couple paragraphs)
All of that aside, I really am beyond excited. We've spent a whole semester reading and learning about these different facets of Berlin-Das Kunstseidene Mädchen, Traudl Junge, Micha Kuppisch-all these complex and amazingly different stories, all set in front of the same backdrop. Berlin is basically a confused teenager, just like us, still finding its identity (#salemberlin), and I can't wait to be immersed in it, seeing first-hand all of it's history and growth.
And of course, the theater. I keep telling people that I will be seeing theater almost every night on this trip, and they keep grimacing at me as if to say, "and you're happy about that?" But I really am, and I can't think of a better sherpa to german theater than our very own Janet Hegman-Shier. Reading these plays out loud in Theaterkreis was interesting, but I can't even imagine seeing some of them live. I've been practicing my clapping skills for those long German applauses and everything.
Now, if you'll excuse me, I'm going to go empty my packed suitcase onto the floor of my room and just completely start over. I've still got, what, twenty five hours until I have to be at the airport? All the time in the world.
I'll see y'all in Deutschland!