i have officially reached the sixth page (out of twelve) on my first hausarbeit. i felt that this monumentous achievement deserved a momentary internet break and thus i immediately thought of you all - my loyal blog public. the big question in hausarbeit land is whether or not i am going to ask for an extension on these papers. i can easily get one - unlike most people i have a really valid reason - but i honestly don't want one. i want to be done with this semester and these papers and move on to my two month whirlwind berlin extravaganza. for this reason i plan on working my ass off over the next week and a half, and if things are looking dismal i'll ask for one. if not i just want to be done. i think i can do it, and hopefully the next two papers will go more smoothly than this one has.


my birthday was last week and it was really fun. i have an amazing group of friends here and everyone got along splendidly and we had a really nice night. i made dinner - tagliatelle with tomatoes, artichokes, kalamata olives and feta cheese. i also made a caprese salad, bought a baguette to go with it and had some cheese too. laura made me a birthday cake which we all ate for dessert. all in all tyler, laura, deborah and her boyfriend til, luisa and cliff, kathi and kiki and tim were all in attendance. we all fit around my dining room table and had a great night full of food and drinks. tyler's present to me was a bottle of vodka and a bottle of kahlua and some ice, i provided the milk/cream selection and we all had white russians (<3) and there were a few bottles of wine and beer in the mix as well. i got two really nice books, a moleskine planner, some flowers and some very nice cards. i wanted to go to a club afterward but a few of us ended up just going to tylers, dancing around with his roommate, taking shots of cheap tequila, and i took the train home at 5 am. it was a really enjoyable birthday though, and i was genuinely happy to share it with all my friends here.


today is the first day in almost a week that it has not been raining. it is pleasantly brisk and windy and there are even large patches of blue sky peeking through, which is nice to see. this weekend was kind of a depressing weekend, culminating with yesterday, which i heard later is supposedly "blue monday" aka the day that has been calculated to be the most depressing day of the year. i find that kind of ridiculous, but for me it pretty much was. the depression is really a culmination of factors - christmas, new years, prague, ben's visit, my birthday ... they're all gone. all of these things were so enjoyable and i had looked forward to them all for so long that it's a big drop off at this point. all i have for the moment is work work work, and although i'm really looking forward to my mom coming, that seems really far off (even though its less than a month away). on top of this sort of lull in the action, a friend of mine here killed himself on saturday which has really shaken me up. he wasn't a really good friend of mine, but i used to see him pretty frequently around campus and i've gone to parties at his house and gone to concerts with him. it really shocked me and has sort of been lingering in the back of my mind ever since. i also started missing ben pretty bad a few days after he left, and the rain kept me apartment bound all weekend so the feelings sort of multiplied and fermented until i was really bummed out.


last night i went to the gym and went in the sauna and just relaxed, which was really nice and will become a more regular part of my routine i think. today i got a lot of sleep and i'm feeling better and i am halfway through my first hausarbeit, which is a big step forward, and i'm meeting a friend for coffee later. tomorrow i have a lofty goal of actually finishing the whole thing which might not happen, but you never know. maybe in an hour i will really pick up speed and just get it all done. a few big quote chunks, a lot of footnotes ... it could happen.

i have spent the majority of the last week or so trying to write my first hausarbeit and so far ive gotten almost nowhere. now ben and the other boys are here, which is really great, but i can't really go out and party with them simply because i have so much work to do. i have a finalized outline and an introduction to my paper and i know that if i set my mind to it i can get a lot done. seeing ben here has been really interesting, because it is very out of context. he said something yesterday along the lines of how this is my place without him, which is very true. middlebury is inextricably tied up with him for me, but this is my place that is just for me, even if i think about him while i'm here or miss him ... it is my place by myself. it's a way that i have not yet viewed berlin, but it's very true. i'm not sure if it is emancipatory or not, because i can't really see it as an "emancipation" from anything, but i do know that it has both allowed and forced me to mature a lot.


so far ben's visit has been a success, my sickness is pretty much all cleared up, we're getting a new washing machine tomorrow ... things are already looking up. it's just sort of shocking because i knew that ben was going to visit, but it seemed endlessly far off - january. my birthday is in three days now, and its a milestone. a week after my birthday will be my 4 month-anniversary of coming here (that was grammatically incorrect, but it's the easiest way to put it). as could be expected, things have started to move very quickly on this side of the atlantic and it's kind of unsettling but also exciting. im having my closest friends come to my house on my birthday for dinner and then afterward we are going to go out for drinks and dancing. this means i'll be spending most of my birthday on thursday in the library writing in order to spend friday sleeping. on top of all of the craziness, i also got a babysitting job with a very nice family. they live in a very nice/expensive part of the city and have a 3 year old daughter and a baby son on the way in a few weeks. the prospect of a little extra pocket money is really nice, and it will be good to have order in my life, even though it might cut into my travel plans a little ... that might be a good thing. i have to keep reminding myself that as tempting as it is to jetset all over europe (and as cheap as it is since i'm already here), there is still so much of berlin that i have yet to explore and despite the fact that i still have SO much time, i need to take advantage of all of it and really run around more and more every week.

i am now eight days into 2008 in berlin. i have already visited prague, spent the majority of the new years hungover and sleep deprived, and have yet to break any of my new years resolutions! a friend of mine and i were talking about whether writing a blog about your time abroad is really worth it. she says she reads this occasionally and that she's had friends who wrote blogs about their experiences which were pointless. i think that you have to be somewhat of an egotist to write a blog, especially one like this that only receives feedback from my mother. granted i find that people's study-abroad blogs are always interesting, i will admit that the ones from china or ghana are a touch more thrilling than mine. the fact that i'm not good at putting pictures on this one doesn't help. honestly, though, i think that the #1 reason you should write a blog is for yourself. i will be able to look back on this blog and remember my trip, and things can linger on the internet for a very long time. who knows, maybe i'll continue this blog once i'm back in the states. maybe after i graduate i'll come back to berlin and continue the blog even further. i know that almost no one reads it, but i write this blog for myself, to document my growth and my trip and i think its fun and useful to reflect on what's going on.


the wake-up call came in terms of my semesterarbeiten. im going to have to write roughly 36 pages in german in the next five weeks. that includes researching/reading and writing about three different topics. that is insane. things have gotten pretty rough in camp rachael, what with a fun bout of being sick, my washing machine breaking, finals stress, visitors stress and a general sense of being overwhelmed. then again, feeling overwhelmed is nothing new to me. in five weeks this will be over. i've written 20 page papers in english in 3 days. i know that i can do this, i just need to focus and stop procrastinating. ben is coming to visit in five days. my mom is coming in 5 weeks. i may have gotten a babysitting job. i got my ipod back (which has made my life better than i'd like to admit). things are good, but this is definitely a rough patch. the worst part is that tyler is leaving after we finish our final papers and i'm 100% sure we will barely see each other this month as it is. i'm hoping to get through this month of work and avoid any all-nighters/migraines. it seems ridiculous when i think of the amount of work i do regularly at middlebury. why am i freaking out about three papers?


recently i've given in and started buying junk food while living here. i think that this needs to stop. i'll remind myself in the supermarket that it's a budgeting issue (which it kind of is i guess). i have formed a newfound addiction to the "lite" paprika chips, erdnuss flips and "american style" chocolate chip cookies that they sell in plus. i bought myself a gym membership for xmas, however, and subscribed to a "gym mix" podcast, which is kind of awesome, so i'm sure i'll work off the junk food that i've indulged in in the last two weeks. i have to remember to enjoy the upcoming month instead of dreading it and complaining, and to keep my chin up, or as they say auf deutsch, halt die ohren steif!! (aka keep my ears stiff!!) (aka i love german idioms!!!)

christmastime in berlin and a different view of the wall

in about three days it will be the beginning of 2008, which is an absurd thing to think about. spending christmas in berlin was actually very nice, but i missed my mother and friends. there is something very cathartic for me about the drive from vermont to new jersey and all that i associate with it. it's the end of a stressful semester, the beginning of a new year and a fresh start. its the hope that being home will be really fun (which it usually isn't, but that's okay). its the anticipation of christmas eve and new years and seeing everyone that i've missed. christmas here lacked a lot of christmas "spirit" for me, despite the fact that i tried very hard to be imbued with holiday cheer by way of weihnachstmarkten and glühwein and christmas songs.

christmas in germany is a three day calorie-binge affair, as i very much expected. much sekt was imbibed, much meat was consumed, and i even got some presents, which was really nice! it was a little saddening to see that people who barely knew me bought me more thoughtful presents than most of the members of my family could come up with, but i try to be thankful for everything that i get every year because it's really not the point. i gave my roommate and her sister homemade mittens, and gave her parents vouchers for homemade socks. i'm also going to surprise kathi's in-laws with homemade socks because they were also very kind to me this week and had me over for coffee a few times and gave me a brand new english novel as a gift, which was incredibly thoughtful of them.

the 24th, or heiligabend (holy night) consisted of meeting up with the in-laws (from now on gina and fred (hard g, not soft like in the states)) and taking the dogs on a long spaziergang (walk). kathi's parents and her in-laws live in the far north part of the city, practically on the border. we walked the dogs all of the three days, taking ditte (kathi and my dog) and gina and fred's two dogs (one of which is a 10 week old puppy!!!) all around the area that used to be the no-man's land of the berlin wall. it was amazing to see what it has turned into now. vast stretches of open land surrounded by forest which is now overpopulated with dogs and their owners and families going for long walks. it's a little surreal to walk through a wooded area and come out upon a large sandy tract, knowing that people may have been shot there trying to get into west berlin from the brandenburg area, which was technically part of the DDR (GDR). then we went back to kathi's parents apartment and opened presents!! as i said, i got everyone hand knit gifts. i received really beautiful yarn from kathi's parents - fall colors, which are my absolute favorite, sort of chunky weight and enough for a sweater. they also included needles, which is so sweet!! kathi and kiki got me a shirt that says "haupstadtrocker" which is cheesy, but i'll wear it when i get home. they also got me a little bookmark calendar. since i didn't expect anything, it was really sweet of them. then we got to the important part - food.

germans traditionally eat fondue at christmas and/or new years, but this is a different fondue than i've experienced via flea-market sets and the movie anchorman. kiki and i sat in the kitchen cutting raw lamb, beef, pork and chicken into thin thin strips. then we set up two fondue pots full of boiling water and set out the raw meat, raw shrimp, and about 7 different sauces. we also had broccoli, but the meat was the focus (duh). every person got two fondue forks and we proceeded to dig in. the gist of it is that each person puts some meat on the end of both of their forks, puts it in the fondue pot, and then when it's cooked you put another piece on, return it to the pot, and eat what you cooked with one of the sauces. it allows for you to eat very leisurely and talk and enjoy the meal. i have never eaten so much in my life. at the end of the meal, when all the meat is gone you drink the broth which is incredibly rich and delicious.

on the twenty fifth we came back for roasted lamb which was marinated for 3 days in red wine and apfelschörle, which is a sparkling apple juice. on the twenty sixth we had something called raklette, which i had never heard of before. apparently it's swiss, but its another german holiday-time tradition. we put out bowls of all sorts of vegetables and things - corn, tiny mushrooms, chopped peppers, chopped zucchini, mild goat cheese, chopped ham, pickles, and once again shrimp. a grill was set up in the middle of the table which had a grill surface on top, but also had space underneath for a bunch of tiny shallow pans with handles. we also had plates of cheese slices. basically we put some herbed butter on the grill and proceeded to grill the shrimp and also some potatoes, and filled the pan with an assortment of the aforementioned ingredients, covered it with a slice or two of cheese, set it in its slot under the grill and waited until the cheese melted. once the cheese melts you pull the pan out and consume the cheesy melty deliciousness.


needless to say i signed up for a gym membership in 2008 haha. it was a really gemütlich christmas, however. kathi's family is incredibly nice and welcoming and i felt right at home with them, playing with the dog and knitting a swatch for my sweater. i would love to start on it right away, but i need to work on some socks first and then finish the scarf i'm in the middle of. crunch time at FU has finally begun and i've been working all day on reading for my final paper, which is seeming to be impossible at this point. i know that once i start writing my ideas will easily fill 12 pages, but starting off is the hardest part. i need to really summarize all the readings in an outline and then i have a feeling i'll be able to get started. january will be a month full of work, but i think it will be enjoyable. my goal is to have one paper finished by the time ben gets here on january 13th. i think that is totally feasible, and leaves me a month for the other two.

celebrating new years in berlin should be really enjoyable and i'm leaving everything up in the air. i'm trying to keep my expectations low and stay low key with my celebration because too many plans always ends in disaster. i have plans to have dinner with my friend laura and some of her friends, then we're heading to a high point near where she lives to see fireworks. after that it's all up in the air - there are a few parties/clubs that i could choose and we'll just have to see. my only worry is paying 20 or 30 euros to get into a club and then want to leave. i have faith that it will be a good night, however, because it takes very little other than alcohol to make me happy :)

my new years resolutions this year are as follows:
1. absolutely no more drunk dialing in 2008. this is a good resolution because it will save money and dignity simultaneously.
2. to make my gym membership worth it and go at least once or twice a week.
3. to stick to my budget for the next seven months.
4. to clean the kitchen/bathroom or run the vacuum once a week, because my apartment gets dirtyyyy.
5. to make a list of museums/exhibits to visit and cross the names off once i go to them all :)
6. as with every year, to make every day memorable in some way.

to my massive readership - ich wünsche ihnen einen guten rutsch ins neue jahr!!! happy new year, see you in 2008 with a review of NYE and inevitably stress due to finals!!

i feel as if i begin every blog post by exclaiming at how fast the time has flown by. i find this to be a bit cliche, and so i think i should stop. today has been one of many lazy days that i've had lately and it's convenient to blame the weather, so i'll go in that direction. things in deutschland are rolling along as usual ... i only have this upcoming week of classes and then winter break until january something, which is kind of nice. i have a lot of work to do in the meantime, but its more fun to pretend that it doesn't exist. i'm also busy pretending that the dishes in the kitchen, laundry in the washer, and pile of reading on my desk also do not exist. i've started a disturbing new trend now that the weather has turned and have spent many a full day in my apartment. this is something i need to alter in the future. there is still so much of this city that i have yet to experience, i can't let myself get so comfortable that i stop exploring. i still want to see two remaining weihnachstmarkten and i also want to see the nutcracker with my friend jorunn. i'll update again after my doctor's visit on thursday, because i'm sure it will be thrilling.

clothes dryers, cranberries, credit cards and tampons

it's hard to believe that it is not only december, but one week into december, and thus i decided to post another update here. my mother, who by the way, is the only person who reads this blog, told me that this is the only one she reads anymore, and clearly thats because i'm her daughter but also because no one else seems to be updating that regularly. i think that part of this is because blogging is something that one has to do for oneself. it's exactly the same as keeping a journal, only its public and on the internet, which makes it slightly more gratifying in a creepily post-modern way because you can get feedback on it. the truth is, i write this blog for myself. when my mom gave the address out in september i was a little nervous because i no longer knew who was reading it and how it would reflect back on her, but now that i'm positive that no one reads this but us i feel that i can pretty safely lift the censor.

christmas has been feeling rather unchristmas-y here in deutschland, despite the prevalence of weinachstmarkten and the decorations in my apartment. it was unseasonably warm today, it has only snowed once when i was lucky enough to see it - drunk at 6 am when kathi and i decided to have a snowball fight outside of the apartment. other than that it has been rainy and overcast pretty much without end. the german aesthetic is completely different in terms of advertisements and media, and i think that in a big way that makes christmas feel different as well because the commercial aspect is pretty much most of what's left of the holiday in the united states, in my mind at least. i mean, i remember putting up the tree in my old house and my parents bickering comically over the entire process, i remember caroling with my girl scout troop, the smell of my cousin's basements on christmas eve when i would eat pepperoni and cheddar and have no room for dinner. i remember the excitement of walking to their houses in the cold, wearing most likely a homemade velvet dress, shiny shoes, seeing the monstrous teal and white of their prefab houses as we turned the corner on their street. i remember getting excited seeing my mom wearing lipstick and a festive outfit. i remember my giant pink stocking and staring at my ceiling listening really closely for elves or reindeer. and lets not forget putting out milk, cookies, carrots and a note for santa and the reindeer, and having them be eaten and responded to accordingly the next day. but christmas is also tied in with charlie brown on tv, peppermint drinks and holiday tea at starbucks, ripping apart presents and then groggily sitting around the house the whole day watching the movies you got and being overwhelmed by what to play with first, until it all sits piled by the tree waiting to be schlepped upstairs.

this year i cant really afford very many presents, and i don't think i'll be giving very many out. i have a few close friend here, but we havent really discussed gift giving. i'm spending christmas with my roommate and her family, which is really nice of them, but it'll be my first christmas outside of the US and while that is kind of relieving, it is also really bizarre. it all comes back to the fact that there are some things in this country that are just so different, and at times are incredibly frustrating. for one, the complete lack of clothes dryers and laundromats is astounding, and to remedy my stiff clothes i bought fabric softener which i am pretty sure has led to me getting a nasty reaction on my legs and back. also, foods that you wouldn't think of are just mysteriously absent from supermarkets. cranberries? creamed corn? dr. pepper? not to mention the fact that all of the cans are different sizes, and ingredients are measured in grams even if they are liquid, which makes recipe conversion difficult.

something that i find really hard to grasp as an american is the fact that all over the city, you can't use a credit card. the other night i had quite an embarassing supermarket trip in which i tried to use my new EC karte, which required a pin # that i didnt choose and therefore couldn't remember, and i had to walk all the way home to find it. the fact that a major grocery store chain, as well as THE APPLE STORE don't take credit cards astounds me. absolutely astounds me. as a full-bred american, from new jersey, one of the most consumer-saturated states in the union, DONT THEY WANT TO TAKE MY MONEY?? WHY ARE THEY MAKING IT SO DAMN DIFFICULT?? HOW DO GERMAN BUSINESSES SURVIVE?? does it have to do with the cold war? world war 2? is there a cultural reason why credit cards might as well not exist here? and the final thing that doesnt exist here, which equally blows my mind, is tampons with applicators. explain to me how they arent sold in two major drug stores. i dont even know if there are any other drug store chains in this city. applicator-free tampons ... IS THIS 1973? i mean, granted, they are better for the environment, less waste, cost efficient, etc., and after i had my little hissy fit over it, i felt kind of high school. i mean it's a 100% cliche sentiment to try to say, "oh when you're abroad everything is so different, even the little things, blahblahblah" and it sounds really condescending, but i really do realize the things i've taken for granted as being part of western first world countries, and i guess that's part of what europeans mean when they scoff at americans for wanting to "americanize" the rest of the world. but what's a world without credit cards and user-friendly tampons?

... i digress. outside of the occasional bouts of xenophobia, everything here is getting better and better. i really do feel more at home here every day, and i explore new parts of the city every day. school has been going well as far as i can tell, but it's so different from middlebury that it's hard to track your progress because you're entire grade hinges upon your final paper. i just got through week 8 of the semester, which is composed of 16 weeks so i'm offically half-way through this semester, which is crazy. it's even crazier to think about my friends who are at middlebury and are done with classes, starting finals, getting ready to go home and prepping for j-term, or time abroad, or graduation. thinking about that makes 8 weeks seem endless. everything else is business as usual - my room is a mess, i tend to have one or two freakouts every day, i'm coming to terms with being broke for the next 8 months of my life, and i'm trying to cover ground in the city and accomplish some things. tuesday night i went to the symphony with tim and saw charles dutoit conducting and a really famous pianist, which was really enjoyable (and my first time at a symphony!!). this week i started work on my final paper for my class on global justice, which is going to be about john rawls and charles beitz (thrilling stuff). last night kathi and i had some friends over to watch the season final of "popstars" which is a german version of american idol mixed with making the band. then i went with luisa to a bar in prenzlauerberg that was playing slavic music (mixed with some salsa, which was nice), and ended up hanging out with this guy who is a religion major at FU and lived in east germany before the fall of the wall and we talked about really bizarre cold war things. i've also been looking around for places to take ben when he visits, and also to take my mom and mrs. lide when they come in february. it's hard to entertain someone in this city for 4 days when they arent really interested in loud smokey nightclubs or 85 museums, but i'll see what i can come up with.

today i've been bustling around my apartment, trying to get ready for my trip to london this weekend, when homesickness totally bowled me over. i don't understand why, because i love it here so much and yet every once in a while i still get these waves of melancholy. i guess i was kidding myself when i thought that i wouldn't feel this way, but i don't understand why it hasn't subsided yet. the weather here is awfully dreary, i feel like i hate all of my clothing, there's no food in my apartment - sometimes all of this stuff just gangs up on you.

i'm going to clean up my room, throw my sheets in the washer, print out my boarding pass, buy some minutes for my phone, stop by h&m, and then relax and think of all of the places i'm going to visit in my three day whirlwind tour of london.

i have been meaning to post again all week, but somehow time just flew by in the last seven days and I haven't had a chance. i feel like everything is moving so fast here! i've already been here for two months!! something about that astounds me. well last weekend i came down with a cold and around wednesday it seemed to have mostly cleared up, but on friday it turned into a sinus infection which was incredibly unpleasant to say the least. i am almost never sick, and so every time that i come down with something it tends to be a tragedy. this was no exception ... it led to two minor nervy bs on friday and saturday, but i came out on the other side and i feel almost 100% again. i think it's a combination of things, one being an unconscious homesickness at this time of year when everyone in the united states is having this shared experience that i'm missing out on here. everyone gets to go home and either hate or love it for a few days, but remember why they love being in college and see their old friends and i felt really detached from it all and i guess that it depressed me more than i thought it would. add to that the fact that it is already freezing here, and has been freezing for a while but has really started to catch up with me, and the general day to day frustrations of trying to live in a foreign country, with a nasty cold that was keeping me in bed - it all was a pretty bad combination. my roommate had a dinner party on saturday, however, and that lifted my spirits, and then she dragged me down to the bar downstairs from our apartment where we got free drinks all night and played in the snow at 5 in the morning when we left. i couldn't believe the giant snowflakes that were thickly descending on the street and coating the cars and parks, but in the morning it had vanished which is kind of sad. i think this city would be beautiful with a sort of "miracle on 34th street"-esque blizzard.


i have a lot of work and reading to do this week, and then thursday i'm going to london! i'm getting more and more excited about london every day! i'm going to take out a certain amount of money and not spend any more than that. i can splurge a little because i realized that i can't afford to go to italy in december, so i'll be saving a lot. i want to buy myself a nice sweater or hat in london, and maybe a present for kathi. i decided to knit kathi and kiki a pair of mittens each for christmas, and to go small on the rest of my christmas presents. it's hard to believe that when i get back from london it will be december. december also signifies the time when i really have to start working on my final papers and thinking about internships. i made a list of goals to achieve in december - a few museums to visit, another trip to the ballet, a trip to the opera, as well as to finish one of my papers. i'm really excited to be in germany at christmastime because they really do the holiday with flair and style and its everywhere in the city, which surprised me. what i lacked in halloween and thanksgiving will definitely be made up at christmas. there is so much to look forward to in the next few months - london this weekend, then everything that makes the month of december christmas month, including advent and lots of dinners and brunches and parties, then sylvester, aka the german word for new years, and then ben comes, and then its my birthday, and then in february my mom is coming and i'm going to prague!! it almost makes me not miss philadelphia ...

saturday will mark the two month anniversary of my arrival in berlin. just thinking about that is insane. two months down, a little over 8 months to go. i haven't updated in a while because i've been running around like crazy lately. i decided that this week is going to be sort of a detoxification week for me, and then i came down with a nasty cold so it's definitely been a detox. my diet has consisted almost solely of fruit, tea, yogurt and crisp bröd*. today i strayed from my diet for the first time with a little börek, which is turkish junk food kind of. its phyllo dough, and i get mine with ground beef, feta and spinach. it's not exactly junk food, it's just really good. gözleme is more junkfoody, but i can never eat a whole one.

anyway, enough about my newfound love of turkish cuisine. this weekend i traveled to scenic weimar with the whole group of midd exchange students. it was really nice, if very cold. we were forced to leave at 7:45 am due to the bahn strike, which was kind of a pain, but it worked out amazingly for us. when i think about the luck i had finding my mom in italy, and the luck we had in switching trains to weimar, it makes me believe in karma. i feel as if my travel luck is my karmic payback for all the stress and crap i have to go through with money and computer stuff and school stuff here. anyway, we managed to switch trains immediately and got to weimar around 11 am. weimar, for the uninitiated, is the hometown of johann wolfgang von goethe, the man the myth the legend. it is also the birthplace of bauhaus, and was the home of friedrich schiller. for anyone reading this who is truly uninitiated with german culture - they're really really important. schiller is considered the most important german classical playwright and also wrote the poem "ode to joy" which beethoven then set to music. goethe is just a huge deal. he did everything and completely influenced everything about german culture and everyone in this country is just obsessed with him pretty much.

the nice thing about the trip is that middlebury paid for the hotel, the train tickets and the museums/theater. all that we had to pay for was food, which actually ended up costing me a little more than i'd like. friday night luisa, meredith, alice and i ended up going out for a ladies' night which ended up at a crazy techno club with a dance party downstairs. we were there for a really long time, and on saturday i came down with a really gross cold. all in all i visited the bauhaus museum, goethe's house (which was amazing), schiller's house, a (really cheesy) ginko museum, and also spent a lot of time eating thuringer rostbratwurst, drinking hot chocolate (because it was freezing), and drinking schwarzbier (which is delicious). on sunday we went to buchenwald, which was really emotionally disturbing. the weather was freezing and really foggy, which made it even more depressing and unsettling. there were so many striking aspects of the camp and i feel as though the way that they have set it up as a monument to the victims is really well thought out and powerful. the museum exhibit was really impressive and i had to restrain myself from buying a few books.

this week i've been battling my cold and trying to keep up with everything happening around me. there is so much that i want to do and see here, i really need to start planning better. i also need to clean my room and get organized. i have no drawers here, which is kind of problematic for me. i might need to take a trip to ikea and buy a few more things for my room. i also need to start visiting more museums. i feel as if the city is still so foreign to me. this is what everyone meant when they insisted that i go for a year - they said that after one semester you will only begin to feel at home there, and it's so true. i've been thinking about internships and i decided i want to try to intern at the checkpoint charlie museum or the jewish museum. i'm going to do a little more research first, but either one would be really enlightening i think.


on monday i had my first oral report - it was an interesting experience to say the least. i have always disliked group work, and at least at middlebury i am dealing with other english speakers. it's really hard to judge someone's personality when you're speaking in your second language - my relationships are slightly more superficial i think, and so it was hard to tell how we'd work together as a group. we also didn't have a choice, but i was amazed at how the guy in my group acted the entire time. he appeared to be really well put together but in reality did very little work, put it off till the end, forced us all to work on his schedule, COMPLETELY stressed me out, and then spoke for an excessive amount of time during the actual report on a subject that we had already gone over in the last two class periods. for my part, i got really nervous and spoke a little too fast, and went on a little long as well, but my professor said he was really impressed with my work and my spoken german, and 3 friends of mine in the class told me they thought it went really well. i felt like it could have gone better, but i have two more to do this semester for other classes so i guess it will improve. my next report is on 12/3, but it's not really a traditional "referat" like this one was. for the upcoming one i have to read this novel, which by the way, is over 1000 pages, and come up with 3 theses on certain characters. i dont think i'm going to be able to read the entire thing, but i'm pretty sure that luckily my characters are only in the first part of the novel. i'll be consulting a lot of secondary literature for this report, but i think that's okay. had i known that i would be reading this book, i might have begun in august. there's just no way that i have the time to read all of it within the semester on top of 3 other classes.


anyway, things are going pretty well i just need to get myself a little better organized and chill out this week. next weekend i'm going to london which is really exciting! i'm staying for free with my friend lisa, and my goal is to spend as little money as possible. then two weeks later i'm going to florence!! for christmas kathi is having a big dinner here, and then i'm going to her parent's house which is really nice. i'm also planning on staying in berlin for new years and spending it with my friend laura and most likely tyler and luisa, if they're here. my plans are extending longer and longer - i've even got plans in february already! time is flying by here, but it's really great - constantly overwhelming, but great.





*i felt that crisp bröd deserved a footnote. it is my german obsession. just like how polar pomegranate and vanilla flavored seltzer waters became important parts of my life at middlebury, crisp bröd is amazing. i only like viva vital brand. its like a flat bread, i think it's originally swedish, and my roommate got me addicted. its got a million grains in it and at first i hated it because i felt like it tasted really cardboard-y, but it has become one of my favorite foods and i'm not sure how i'll cope without it in the US. it's also mad cheap, which is nice.

i am back from italy and so i figured i should write a little update on my life. i took like 200 pictures, and they're all up on facebook. i'm too lazy/busy to try to then update everything on flickr and then figure out how to get them on my blog. chances are if you read this, you can see them anyway. so after a full week of classes, on thursday i woke up at 4 am, pushed the dog out of my bed and grabbed my things and walked to the train. it was kind of eerie to walk around so late (and sober). i felt like a teenager running away from home, for some reason. i took the train to schönefeld airport and got on a plane and flew into milan. my mother and i met up by the GRACE of GOD on this airport bus, and we got on a train and headed out to lake como. como lago, as its called in italian, is a BEAUTIFUL lake in northern italy about 45 minutes outside of milan, where the versaces, roberto cavalli and george clooney (among many other rich people) have villas. it was absolutely spectacular. we met up with the group, all together numbering around 120 people, and ate lunch and took a boat tour of the lake. we then road the funiculare up the mountain and got to see the lake from way up high at sunset, which was really beautiful. later we stopped by a silk factory, but rather than taking a tour which would have been interesting, we ended up just shopping for extremely expensive silk things.

the next day we woke up around 7 and spent the day touring milan. my mother and i opted to walk from our hotel into the downtown, which took about 45 minutes at a leisurely pace and was really beautiful. italy really does not get started until 11 am. we were walking around at 9:30 and everything was closed, which is very different from berlin. italy also closes earlier, which is annoying, and apparently (obviously) has much stricter alcohol-in-public laws. not as bad a scotland, but still, kinda lame. anyway, we walked around and saw the duomo and a big workers strike happening, and then i met will and noah in the plaza of the duomo!!!!! i was so excited to see not just familiar faces, but familiar faces of old friends. it was really really nice. the four of us ran around and got lunch and chatted and caught up and drank a fair amount of wine (at least two of us did). we then met up with one of the groups and toured the duomo which is beautiful and really unique inside. we went through an old shopping plaza which might have a 7 star hotel, but noah doubts the credibility of our tour guide. then we took a tour of la scala, which was really beautiful, and i felt lucky because i got to see a special exhibit of maria callas' costumes, and i wrote my final paper on her j-term of my freshman year. i bid goodbye to noah and will, and the group went to the church santa maria de grazie to see the last supper (la ultima cena). it was spectacular. to go in you had to go through two rooms in order to maintain the climate in the room, and each group is only allowed in for 15 minutes.

after the last supper we walked through a beautiful old castle which used to mark the northernmost part of milan, but now is smack in the center. we then went to a wine tasting dinner which was absolutely delicious. by 8:30 pm it was full of drunken middle aged women dancing with the almost-as-drunk waitstaff, which was pretty hilarious. that night, after everyone else went back to the hotel to sleep, i met up with MARY CHILES!!! which was also amazing because i haven't seen her since may and i have missed her dearly. we caught up for a few hours in a bar down the street from my hotel, and when we came back to the hotel my mom woke up and we all stayed up talking till around 3 am. i was so happy to see mary, it almost didnt matter that i had to wake up the next day at 5:30 am. i managed to get out of bed and stumble, still drunk, onto the bus for the best part of the vacation.

yesterday we took a 3 hour bus ride (which i clearly slept through) to VENICE. i'm not kidding when i say that it is my favorite city in europe. i want to live there for the rest of my life. i want to live there at at least 7 different historical time periods. i want to walk every street and ride a gondola through every canal. i could have spent the whole weekend there and been satisfied. we took a gondola ride and ran around the city and ate a delicious lunch in a restaurant in the center and went to the murano glass factory to see a glass blowing presentation and gawk at tacky glass figurines that cost 45,000 euros. the whole city was absolutely unbelievable, and i really didn't want the day to end. eventually we made our way back to the bus and i proceeded to fall asleep for another three hours on our return trip to milan. last night i went out with my mother and her friends and a few other people to a restaurant and gorged myself on gnocchi and caprese salad. this morning was frustrating, especially because i was functioning on practically no sleep, but i woke up at 4:30 and eventually landed in berlin unscathed, if a little poorer. upon landing in berlin, for most of the landing i couldn't see the ground which made me very nervous. the cloud cover was extremely low, and as we were a few feet from the ground i finally saw why - everything was covered in snow. that's right, november 11th and it has been snowing steadily all day. in the city it isn't sticking to anything, what with the heat from the cars and all the foot traffic, but in schönefeld, way out in the suburbs, there were at least 2 inches coating everything.

it was really wonderful to see my mother (and im not just saying that because she's my #1 blog reader). it was also nice to get some comforts from home in the form of slippers, dial soap, junk food and a few essential DVDs. it did remind me of a lot of the people i miss, as did seeing mary and noah and will and gossiping about middlebury. it's hard being so far away sometimes, especially when i see the pictures from halloween or think about people who are going to be back for j-term. i am really happy here, though, and i realized halfway through our second day in milan that i really was missing berlin. i was missing my apartment, my bed, ditte and kathi, my street and my new friends, and i think i even referred to it as "at home" a few times. i really am feeling very much at home here, but at the same time the trip away was much needed. it was equally nice to get out of the city as it was to come home and feel like it was a homecoming. being greeted by kathi and ditte as i walked in, given a cup of tea and a blanket on the sofa, i told her about my trip from start to finish. the german word is gemütlich, which means cozy and homey, which is really how it's starting to feel here.