First Day of Intensiv B2

Well, today was a whirlwind of activity but I thoroughly enjoyed it all. On my travels I seem to have taken almost 200 pictures today, which I find somewhat impressive given that I was only tourist-ing for 5 hours or so. I suppose that is more than I have previously though, so I can see why I took so many. I think that I might start editing out the lesser pictures from my album when I have the time, because I can see it growing very quickly. I will start with old photos though, because I like you all seeing all of my new ones...even the ones that aren't completely in focus.

The Berlin Cathedral, one of the many photos taken today.

My day started a little bit earlier than yesterday. I got up at 7:45 this morning because I had to leave a little bit earlier for class. My new class is on the main campus of the FU, right next to the big library. It takes me about half an hour to get there from my house. (It is a bummer that you can only see the map on the link I give you. On the app on my phone, you can replay the trip on google earth, which zooms you across the land. It offers a really interesting perspective of your walk, because you usually can see over the trees with Google earth. I believe if you download the file and have Google Earth on your computer, you can open it up in there and see what I mean. I don't have it on my computer, so I can't try it out first. If someone does try this and it works, let me know, because that would be very cool).

Luckily the people in my new class were very nice before the teacher came in, and he was just as nice. He was one of the ones who interviewed me on Monday, which made me think he thought I shouldn't be in the class. I spent the first bit of the class trying to prove that I should be there, and I believe that I know a similar amount to others in the class. This one will be challenging and I believe that I will learn a lot.

I really liked the class because we had a lot of conversation, and I don't believe the teacher even speaks English. We have students from India, China and Peru in the class as well, which is very interesting. We learned a lot in the first part of the day, and then a small group of us went to Dahlem-Dorf for lunch. I didn't want to go to the Mensa again, so I was a strong supporter of that decision. I also seemed to be the only person who knew how to get around, so they used me for my directions. I had some schnitzel in bread, which was very good. I also tried a new soda, which is a mixture of Fanta and Coke, and thought it was good.

My lunch with Cam and Xiner (I think thats how you spell it) in the background

We then had class for the second part of the day, which included going through the news segment produced by the government. I really enjoyed this because we could go sentence by sentence through the news and understand what they were saying (the teacher helped us with many of the words). I hope that we do that a lot more often.

Uncomfortably anatomically correct benches (?) at Dahlem-Dorf

After class a small group of us decided to be tourists before the river boat tour in the evening. Xiner (again, not sure if that is how you spell the name) and two others, whose names I have already forgotten (this is rough) joined me in taking the U-bahn all the way to Potsdamer Platz, where we got out so we could explore the Brandenburger Tor. We wandered around for a while, stopping in one tourist shop to get some postcards, and and then hopped on a bus to go to Alexanderplatz, which is near where we were going to meet up with the boat. After walking around the area for a bit (and getting some ice cream), we headed over to the boat.

Ein Erdbeerbecher (cup of strawberries and ice cream)

After navigating around some construction (they are building another U-Bahn line, the first to East Berlin), we got on the boat which was going to take us around the Spree river, which runs through the heart of Berlin. I was very excited for this, because I have been here almost a week and have done very little sight-seeing. I was not disappointed, because we traveled past many many beautiful buildings, such as the Berlin cathedral, museum island, the Reichstag building (which I get to tour on Sunday, including a trip around the dome on top), and many more.The boat tour lasted about an hour, but we saw many awesome buildings. After the tour we went to a burrito place near Alexander Platz and ate some pretty good burritos. The whole restaurant was San Francisco themed, which was odd. I really wanted to eat some Brats, but the rest of the group wanted to go to the burrito place. I will get my brats eventually.

Museum Island

Reichstag building

I have taken a TON of photos, and you can find them here. Just let me know if you don't know what something is and I will figure it out. As always the location data is shared, so you can see where I took all of those pictures. The light was perfect from the west, because they have a sunset that lasts from about 6 to 9 (the sun sets at about 9:15 to 9:30). Sadly, most buildings and statues are best viewed from the East, so the pictures were darker than I wished.