frank der berliner

So, my semester is finally over and I've begun my European traveling extravaganza! With my Eurail pass I get 10 travel days within 2 months, so this is the itinerary I have so far: Vienna, Budapest, Arezzo (Italy), Toulouse and Paris before coming back to Berlin to meet Mom, Dad and Tricia. It's gonna be awesome! Glad to fi ally get to travel some; I love Berlin, but I think I could use some time outside of the big city to calm my nerves. In fact, I'm already in Vienna so I'll go ahead and talk about that. I'm writing on my iPod touch, so it'll be a little bit short, though.  Vienna is an incredibly beautiful city, especially coming straight from Berlin. There's hardly any graffiti, the streets are clean and the buildings are magnificient. ... read more

Last weekend I took a trip with my German class to the city of Weimar, in the German state of Thuringia, and I just now got the pictures uploaded. Weimar is a relatively small town--65,000 people--but it's had a lot to do with German history; Goethe and Schiller lived there in the 18th century, and the Bauhaus school was founded by Walter Gropius there in 1919. My experience was especially interesting, though, because our German teacher, Ulla, was our tour guide. She explained to us all the sites we were walking past, and coordinated all of our activities, including: a guided tour of the Bauhaus Universität, a guided tour of the Buchenwald concentration camp just outside the city, a lunch at Residenz, the oldest cafe in Weimar, and a quirky hostel in the middle of the ... read more

The last couple weeks have definitely been pretty busy but a definite improvement over what I wrote about last time. I made a very last-minute decision to visit my friend Barry, who's studying abroad in Cork Ireland this semester. There's a very cheap airline in Europe called RyanAir, and I managed to get a fairly good deal only 3 days before I left. There's a reason they're cheap, of course: no baggage is included in the fare, the carry-on rules are notoriously strict and they're constantly trying to sell you overpriced liquor during the flight. I made it into Dublin, though, and took the bus down to Cork to see Barry. It was a great change of scenery after two months in a big city; Cork has about 200,000 people but it feels much smaller than ... read more

It's been awhile since I've written, partly because I've been busy, partly from having a friend visit and partly because I've been neglecting my health. The German language class ended last week, and I was a little sad about it. I really enjoyed meeting all the exchange students in the class and having fun, while learning a little bit of German (probably not enough). I think I might be able to find another German class to take during the semester, so hopefully I can do that and keep improving. Lately I've been really lazy and have mostly spoken English...but next week, when classes finally start, I won't have any choice but to switch back to German (even if I sound like I'm in kindergarten). I had a really good friend visit me this weekend. He's studying ... read more

Finally, I have internet in my room...after 25 euros and a horrendously outdated instruction manual. Today my class and I had an excursion into the city, starting from our building on the TU campus and ending in the district of Mitte (downtown). It was a beautiful day again, as it has been nearly the whole time I've been here. I thought I'd share a couple pictures I took along the way; they're not necessarily the best quality but I had to do my best to keep up with the group. I'm getting much more used to things here in Berlin. Finally, I'm able to buy groceries at the supermarket without causing a scene, I know to stay out of the bike lanes on the street, and I've stopped taking the wrong subway train (only to get ... read more