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Published: April 1st 2010
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A Berliner Weekend
Thursday morning I caught a train to Basel, Switzerland so I could get a flight from the airport there to Berlin. I arrived in Basel a bit early so I walked around the town. It was such a gorgeous sunny day and the town was really nice. Then I headed to the airport where my flight was 2 hours late !! There wasn’t really anyone around for me to talk to so I just did some studying. When I arrived at the hostel in Berlin it was about 9 :30pm. I had dinner at an italian restaurant near the hostel and then went to bed. Alex would be arriving the next day at lunch, so I had the morning to kill before she arrived. I walked to a nearby park with another person who was staying in my hosetl room. The park was really cool ; it had two large hills that were actually made out of rubble from the second world war and covered over with dirt and trees.
I met up with Alex at lunch and we headed downtown to do a walking tour of the city. I twas with a company that
runs free walking tours all over Eruope, I had previously done one in Munich, and Alex had done them in the UK. The tour was 4 hours long and really informative and interesting.
We saw :
- the Bradenburger Tor (the really famous gates)
- the Holocaust memorial
- the place where Hitler’s underground bunker used to be (it’s now a parking lot!)
- part of the Berlin wall
- Checkpoint Charlie (this used to be the only point where you could cross between East and West Berlin, when the city was divided between Soviet/USA controlled territory)
- Humboldt University (from where a bunch of teachers and students burned all the library books written by Jews)
That evening we had dinner at a Mexican restaurant and then walked to Alexanderplatz to see the TV tower at night.
The next day we got up early and went to the Reichstag (German Parliament) There was a really long line and we had even gotten there at 9am. AFter that we visited the Jewish memorial information centre, we stopped for lunch again at Checkpoin charlie. Then we went to a photography exhibit about the SS. Next we went to a Jewish
museum where there was an exhibit about the Holocast and about Jewish culture.
The next day we visited a bombed out church that the city decided to leave like that, as a reminder of the scars that war leaves. During the walking tour we had actually seen a chocolate replica of the church, so that was kind of cool. On our last day we went to the East side galleries ( 1km of the wall that has been painted by 130 artists) it was really cool to see. Then we went to the Hackesher market area for a hit of shopping and lunch. We also went into the Neue Synagoge (a synagoge that had been destroyed during the second world war and then rebuilt).
A Chou'Krit Weekend
The next weekend my school hosted an annual sports competition called Krit between all 7 of the Science Po schools in France. It was a 3 days extravaganza. The first day the opening ceremonies started around 9 (we had to meet at 7am) and people had started drinking by 8am ! Everyone was dresesd up in blue and white, our school’s colours, and had flags and noisemakers. I’ve never seen
young adults get so into school spirit. Each school had different cheers and chants that they yelled at the top of their lungs for literally the entire weekend. The weather started out really nice but when i twas time to to start the track events it go incredibly cold and started raining. I ran what was supposed to be a 3km race (ended up being 2km). It was fun to participate in a school event. After that we tried to go watch a basketball game but by the time we found it, there was no space for spectators left. The students from the other schools weren’t very impressed with the organization of the event and they always yelled at us when they saw us wearing our « Strasbourg » shirts. Friday night we were bussed to a
soirée at a venue about 20 minutes outside of Strasbourg. It was really fun. The
pom pom girls aka cheerleaders had a competition there. The oufits they wore were quite scandalous, especially compared to what cheerleaders where in Canada ! After the evening ended we were all supposed to be bussed back to Strasbourg however for some reason there
weren’t enough buses for all the Strasbourg students ! They had to have a rotations of busses come get us every 30 minutes. Since we had to wait for the bus, the committee in charge saw this as a chance to have us clean up the venue. Needless to say, no one was very impressed when we got home at 4am. (We had been waiting since 1 :30am)
Saturday Taryn and I leave for our UK adventure ! I’m really excited to visit some of my family that I’ve never met before and I've heard fantastic things about London and Edinburgh. Here’s our itinerary:
Sat : London
Sun : Glasgow
Mon : Edinbourgh
Tues : Edinbourgh
Wed : Edinbourg
Thurs : London
Friday : London
Sat : Sandhurst (just outside of London)
Sun : Sandhurst
Mon : Belfast
Tues : Belfast
Wed - Sunday : Dublin and other areas of Ireland
Lastly, I'll end with a bit of great news: I FINALLY got my carte de sejour! I am now a legal resident of France (for the last 3 months I'm here anyways...)!
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Maëlle
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Small correction in german
May I make a correction? It's "Reichstag", not Reichstand :-) This building was before the place who the Parliament of the german empire used to sit . Now the building has the same name, but the Parliament is called "Bundestag", "Bund" means "federalist". Nice pics by the way, enjoy the British weeks! Bisous!!!