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!