"Tagesbuch," in German literally means "daily book;" it's a journal. As part of the repetitive, but useful, exercises our profs assign to our German class, we write a journal entry in German every night. We're all realizing pretty quickly that this is actually harder than you'd think, not even because of a lack of knowledge of relevant German grammar. See, the exciting thing about studying abroad is that you're living every day- abroad! It's a new city, new language. But, when it comes down to it, it's still daily life- school, homework, commuting. So, really, once my professor has read one entry for "Montag" (Monday), it feels as though he may as well have read them all. Nonetheless, there is value in the brief representation of daily life abroad, even some of the repetitive things, so here is a short summation of some rather mundane, but usual, events for you:
The photo to the left is of the large table in the café across the street from our ghetto East Germany university building in which we currently go to class. I think the café is called "Maryanne," but I know it has decent cappuccinos and awesome baguette sandwiches. It is also not a chain and the baristas have learned that we want to speak German with them (too many Berliners in the food industry take a hesitation as an opportunity to launch into English). The pretty girl in the photo is Joanna, who alone of the 19 Duke/Davidson-ites has my same course schedule. We both take Environmental Policy and Economics of the European Union, while everyone else takes one of the above and an art history course. (Of course, we all have double courses in German too.) So, every Tuesday and Thursday after Econ, everyone else heads into the (again, ghetto former East Berlin) classroom to study art and architecture, and Joanna and I hightail it across the street to Maryanne's to catch up on reading, start a paper, or, naturally, write our journal entries for the day.
This, my friend, is einen "echten deutschen" Bär (literally, a real German bear. Not only are Germans very fond of "frische Luft" (getting some fresh air), they are fond of labelling things that are really, truly German). Rather like the plethora of moose (or was it cows?) that appeared in Coeur d'Alene a few summers ago, there are bears all over Berlin. This particular blue one was in front of a Deutsche Bank. (Incidentally, I am the proud owner of an account there now, which I opened entirely in German. The pride comes entirely from this last fact- couldn't come from anywhere else, really, as the account still has the aesthetically pleasing but useless balance of 0.0 Euros!)
Joanna took this picture of me shortly before leading me on a ridiculous adventure throughout the entirety of the city last Friday. All we really wanted was to get to Ku'dammstrasse, supposedly the Champs Élyées of Berlin, but mostly not as expensive, because we were looking for a black skirt for her and winter boots for me. (The picture shows the weather in one of its deceptively warm moods.) I had been to Kreuzberg (a quarter of Berlin- to make things super-easy- on the righthand side of the public transportation map) earlier that day in vain search of a Mac store. We met afterwards in the center of the city and, because Joanna claimed to know where she was going, I allowed her to lead me all the way back into Kreuzberg before I looked at a subway stop and realized we were supposed to be heading about 30 minutes in the other direction. At that point, we established who would be leading who for the rest of the trip : ) For those of you who may doubt my sense of direction, it has improved significantly- or rather, it's impossible to get too lost when you're traveling in cars that are stuck to a fixed path of which you have a map!
Hopefully (more exciting) stories and photos will soon be forthcoming, but now I need to go write in my real Tagesbuch....
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