I can’t believe I only have one more week left in Berlin!
How can that even be possible? There’s still so much that I want to do, and I
don’t want to accept the fact that I can’t do it all. So this week, we crossed
a few things off our list.
We went to Berlin’s Aquarium! I really enjoy aquariums and
sea life. It was really fun to see the names of sea creatures in German. One
fish was called “Zitronenkugelfisch” which literally means lemon ball fish. It
was a pretty accurate description and therefore an appropriate name.
I found lots of Disney characters.
Dory:
Nemo’s home (not a character, but still, I found it):
Pascal:
There were also bags of fish:
Sea life is so beautiful!
For class one day this week, we went to the Käthe Kollwitz
museum. It’s been another one of my favorites so far. She experienced so much
pain and war in her life, and that’s very clearly reflected in her art. But one
of my favorites was a plaque that’s on her gravestone. In English, it’s called
“Rest in peace in His arms.” I got such an overwhelming feeling of peace when I
looked at it. Katelyn shared a scripture that this piece of art encompasses.
It’s Enos 1:27: “And I soon go to the place of my rest, which is with my
Redeemer; for I know that in him I shall rest. And I rejoice in the day when my
mortal shall put on immortality, and shall stand before him; then shall I see
his face with pleasure, and he will say unto me: Come unto me, ye blessed,
there is a place prepared for you in the mansions of my Father. Amen.” I feel
it captures this scripture perfectly.
After that museum, we needed to lift up our spirits a bit,
so Jenna, Andy (the elder), Henry, and I found a second hand clothing shop and
browsed that. Henry looks really German here, don’t you think?
Also, we see signs for “Bikini Berlin” everywhere. And the
signs say, “Lebe anders (live differently). Coming soon.” We’re thinking that a
new law might be passed, requiring every Berliner to wear a bikini. Always.
We went to a YSA Stake dance, planned by Jan (pronounced
like “yawn” for you non-German speakers). :) It was lots of fun! I was
Pocahontas, but I never found my John Smith…hmmm. Later that night, we went up
the Fernsehturm! We wanted to go up and see the sun set, but we ended up going
later and then having to wait, so we saw it on the ground instead of hundreds
of meters up off the ground. It was a gorgeous night outside!
We spent the majority of Saturday in Potsdam, and it was
also a very beautiful day! The sky was gorgeous. We saw some fake ruins
(because that was the thing to do back in the day) as well as Sanssouci and the
palace gardens:
We stumbled upon Nikolaikirche (there are quite a few
Nikolaikirchen), and it is gorgeous! Yes, it’s a Schinkel. We can just tell now, thanks to our
Art and Architecture class. :)
Also, we ran into some movie stars:
We had an audio tour of the inside of the Sanssouci palace.
It was pretty neat! And a 30-minute audio tour is the way to go. There’s a
famous painting (of one of the Fredericks I believe) that pop-artist Andy
Warhol did a duplicate of:
I don’t know, but I feel some sort of weird connection to
Andy Warhol. Maybe it’s because he was born in Pennsylvania and we learned a
lot about him in elementary school art classes and did Campbell soup paintings
and such. I assumed that everyone knew about him, but a lot of people don’t.
Maybe that’s it? haha
The last time I was in Germany on a study abroad was in Kiel
in 2008—4 summers ago. And the Euro Cup was happening then (when Germany lost
to Spain), and since it happens every 4 years, I’m here in Germany AGAIN during
the Euro Cup!
On Saturday night, Andy (the younger), Jordan, Katelyn, and
I went and watched the game! It’s the closest we’ll get to actually going to a
Fußball game while we’re here. It’s about a mile-long stretch from
Brandenburger Tor to the Siegesäule, and along the street there are large TV
screens set up and tons and tons of people go and stand and watch the game!
This is our "Frau, du bist verrueckt!" face:
Despite having breathed in enough second hand smoke to cause
lung cancer, having Bier splashed on me occasionally, brushing up against lots
of people that I did not particularly want to brush up against, and learning
some not-so-pleasant words, it was a lot of fun! Especially when Germany
scored—everyone went crazy! And there was a bunch of confetti thrown up in the
air at the end of the game. It was really fun to see Germans so united and
happy and just loving their country.
Last night, we had a fireside, and the speaker was a church
member who lived in East Berlin with his wife (and 5 kids) under Communist rule
for 40 years. He told us about daily life in East Berlin, about the church and
its members during that time, and the day that the wall came down. It was
extremely interesting to listen to a first-hand account. It still blows my mind
that this didn’t happen that long ago—just 2 years before I was born, the
Berlin Wall fell. He told us that he came home from work one day and turned on
the news, and he saw the paper being read, saying that East Berliners were
permitted to travel outside of East Berlin, but he dismissed it and thought
that it would take months and months to apply and be approved. The next day, he
was in the grocery store, and he heard a customer talking about how she had
been at Kurfürstendamm (which is in West Berlin) that morning, and he couldn’t
believe it! He also said that the thing he was most excited to purchase when
the wall fell was bananas. It was really neat to hear about how life was in
East Berlin from someone who experienced it himself!
We had this little gathering right by some remains of the
wall at a park near Nordbahnhof. He showed us a picture on the back of the June
1991 Ensign, and there is a man shaking hands with another man through a crack
in the Berlin wall—and the hand poking through the crack from East Berlin is
his! It was just amazing to hear his experiences.
After the fireside, we enjoyed the beautiful weather and
explored the nearby area and took some “urban” pictures (whatever that means,
right)? :)
I still can’t wrap my head around the fact that I’m leaving
Berlin in ONE WEEK! I’m really excited to go to London and Vienna, but I don’t
want to leave Berlin!
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