Die Mauer

Die Mauer, the wall, is something that I have thought a lot about and have been learning a lot about since I've been here. In my German film class we've watched three movies already (Die Mauer, Goodbye Lenin!, and Das Leben der Anderen) that all have to do with die Mauer in some way or another. Sometimes I'm just baffled that when I was born Germany was still divided by die Mauer. Tonight I was thinking a lot about die Mauer because I decided to take a little detour on my way home from Ostbahnhof (The Hauptbahnhof- Main train station- of the East) and walked along the East Side Gallery, which is the longest stretch of the wall that is still standing. I just thought as I was walking along the wall, carrying my groceries that I purchased at Ostbahnhof (Love Germany and their underground shopping!) how crazy it is that not long ago another country stood on the other side of the wall. How crazy that I can just walk through an opening of the wall now and be on the other side and that people risked their lives just to cross that wall and make it to the West. But then I also think, look how far Germany has come since then! I really love living in a city with such history.


On another note, two weekends ago I went on an IES field trip to Dresden, a city about 2 hours from Berlin in the state of Sachsen. It's a really cool city, due in much part to the fact that the majority of the city was destroyed by bombings during WWII and was basically re-built from scratch. This weekend I went with a couple friends to Potsdam, another city about 40 minutes outside of Berlin and is the capital city of the state of Brandenburg. I really liked Potsdam, it has a much quainter feel to it than Berlin and it has some really beautiful parks and palaces. It's also great because we can get to it for free on the S-Bahn, it goes all the way to the main station in Potsdam and it's free for us with our semester ticket! Yay! We had a great day wandering around Potsdam and I know I will definitely be going back there. 


Tomorrow I have my first class at Humboldt! It's Turkish and I think it will be really interesting to see how many different countries are represented in my class. My Deutsch als Fremdsprache (German as a Foreign Language) class starts on Thursday...eek! Wish me luck! 


Gute Nacht! 
xoxo