Spring Break!

So I am off to Portugal and Spain tomorrow! I'm heading out with one friend from AUP, and our first stop is Lisbon, Portugal. From there we're doing a one-night jaunt to a nearby town, Sintra. Both of these places look amazing--red roofs and cream-colored buildings on the water! What could be better? Then we head to Barcelona, Spain and we'll meet up with a bunch of other friends from our school and my friend from CC as well. SO PUMPED! Many details, anecdotes, ect. upon return! Have an utterly splendid week!

Running, and art, and libraries.

So Thursday was nothing short of a grand adventure. Two of my friends and I decided to go for a run, which we often do on Thursdays, and leave all our stuff (cell phones, keys, money, clothes) in a locker in the school library. This seemed like a flawless plan. BUT when we returned from said run at 8, the library was closed. None of us thought it would close that early because our home libraries are open until around 2 am. So we went to the security guard at a different building and he said no one had the key except the librarian, and we just had to wait until tomorrow at 10, when it opened again. We of course didn't believe him because how silly of a system to only have one key to a building...? We saw the president of the university leaving the building just then, so we asked her for help. She said that she had a swipe card that let her into any campus building, which she thought she didn't have with her, but ended up having with her. So we borrowed that, told her we would return it to her after we got our stuff, and went back to the library only to find that it didn't work. We then ran to her apartment to return the card, and she offered us to stay the night at her house if we had no other options (she's really awesome). We said we had a friend who lived on campus, and then we went to said friend's house. We waited for him until he got home, and I called my roommate on his phone, who was luckily home, borrowed a metro ticket from him, and finally made my way home. My two two other friends did the same--luckily the one who lives in a single apartment is the only one of us who brought her key on the run. The other girl and I live in home stays, so we can knock until we're let in. I got home at 10:30, ate dinner, and promptly went to bed. But seriously, what kind of school has only one key to a building?? What if someone got trapped in it and no one had the librarian's number? Sometimes the systems here in France are a little silly. Side note: I did all of this in some crazy 80s spandex and a yellow work out shirt. Let's just say I was getting some bizarre glances on the metro.

Friday was an awesome day, which was wonderful considering the night before. I really needed a hair cut, so I researched some places online, and found an awesome salon where someone blogged that the stylist smokes a cigarette while he cuts your hair and they play crazy funk music. What could get better than that?? They were really nice when I got to the salon, but didn't have room for me for a half an hour. So, I walked around the area (19th arrondissement) and found an amazing park. It would be perfect for picnics--it has this amazing stone veranda on the top of a hill in the middle of a lake! When I came back to the salon, I found out they didn't actually smoke while they cut your hair, but the music was real and they also had crazy neon designs all over the inside. I am definitely going back there.

On Friday, I also went to the Centre Pompidou--The National Museum of Modern Art. We can get in free to any museum because we have decals on our student ID cards that say student of art history, so its wonderful to be able to just go to a museum for an hour or two and see part of it. We went to the modern art section (1909-1960) and it was amazing. One of my favorite things was this drawing/collage of a life size minke whale made out of this swirly patterned paper. Kind of hard to describe, but I unfortunately forgot my camera.

Yesterday, a friend and I returned to the Centre Pompidou because we heard the library there is awesome (and has real opening hours, unlike our library). It was amazing and huge! I have never seen so many people in one place being so quiet! We did some homework there for a long time, and then went back to her apartment where we BOOKED OUR FLIGHTS FOR PORTUGAL AND BARCELONA FOR SPRING BREAK! I am so so excited! We fly into Lisbon, Portugal and are there for five days, and then we fly to Barcelona and are there for five as well.

Later last night we went to an amazing sangria bar, and met up with some other friends there. It was wonderful sangria, and the bar was in this really old basement. It had a very cool atmosphere--there was this beautiful big carved hanging on one of the walls. On the way home, we got some banana nutella crepes (my second time this weekend...).

Baylee(n) (or Berlin for those of us who aren't German)

So before I write anything else I need to mention my other two classes, since I’ve neglected to do that thus far.  I mentioned my Prague class (!!!) and my French class, but I haven’t yet talked about my Architecture of Paris class.  This one is art history and the professor’s pretty cool.  We have two meetings per week—one consisting of a lecture, and the other a visit to a building in Paris.  Thus far we’ve gone to Notre Dame and The Museum of the History of Paris. Its really cool to have someone explain a building to you when you can physically go in it and walk around it.  We’re going to the Cluny Museum later this week and I’m pumped for that one.  It’s a medieval museum, and I took a class on Christian reliquaries last semester, so I’m excited to see some in person.

My other class is Drawing II.  It only meets once a week, but (surprise!) I love the professor.  He’s actually from Colorado, and is just an awesome stereotypical hippie art professor.  We have made self-portrait collages thus far, and this week our assignment is to draw some shoes.  Looking forward to later in the course when we have a bit more freedom about what we can draw.

And onto this past weekend… Berlin!

Three friends and I flew in early Friday morning and then left Sunday night.  It was a jam-packed and exhausting weekend, but totally worth it.  The first day we walked around a bit and went to an ancient Egyptian museum that had an impressive amount of carcophogi and portions of walls from temples.  It was also gigantic.  The building was originally Roman (?) and suffered a lot of damage in the war; it was only reopened in 2009. 

Ancient Egypt Museum, Berlin

All of the days we were there the weather was far from perfect.  It was amazingly windy, very cold and rainy on and off.  So the second day we decided to do one of those hop-on hop-off bus tours.  Although the announcer’s English was very difficult to understand, the tour was perfect and we saw some cool stuff, including many of the embassies (the Mexican one was an especially cool building) and a Holocaust memorial.  The bus also happened to stop at a very cool flea market that sold various antiques and steins and a surprisingly huge amount of doorknobs.  There was a food carte there and we got some latkes with applesauce that were SO amazing.  It was so interesting to see such old buildings right next to brand new ones in the city.  Overall, it was also much huger (apparently 8x bigger) than Paris and everything is much less compact. 

That night we went to a restaurant a German friend recommended called Sophian Eck.  We had to wait a while to eat, but it was the best meal I’ve had abroad yet.  I actually had latkes again (the first ones were so good!) with spinach and cheese, and some amazing German beer on tap.  The atmosphere was so cozy and friendly we didn’t want to leave.  We asked our waiter for a recommendation for a bar in the area, and he told us about one that was good for many different types of people.  We didn’t really know what that meant, but we waited in line for said club and had to pay 4 euros to get in, and sure enough it was amazing!  There was a live band playing 50s music in striped suits, and people from age 18 to 70 sitting at little tables or dancing.  It was very crowded and the decorations were like a prom in the 80s, with silver streamers and lanterns.  The music was so much fun we stayed there for a while, and even when we left I wasn’t ready to go.  I really want to go back to Berlin just to go to the restaurant and this club again. 

Street in Potsdam

On Sunday, we decided to do a day trip to Potsdam, which is about an hour outside of Berlin.  It is a little Medieval town that is completely charming.  All of the buildings are made of brick, and we saw these wonderful Russian cottages.  There are also a bunch of palaces in the town that were originally summer residences for kings, and we went and walked around one of them.  It had a beautiful garden and a huge old windmill.  It also had these very cool wire cages that as someone pointed out, looked exactly like Jasmine’s birdhouse in Aladdin!   

Russian cottage in Potsdam

Potsdam

P.S. - more pics on Facebook!