So, my last few days in Berlin are here. I'm finally done with class, which is really nice, and oh, I got a tattoo. Sweet. 

The last couple weeks have been quite busy as well as fairly awesome. After the first Berlinale film I saw another one about these old Korean-German families moving to Korea and the cultural shift they had to adapt to, and then I saw a series of short films. Good stuff.

And then I finally got to spend some time with some real Germans two weekends ago. Two nights in a row we ended up in a bar with actual Germans, which has been shockingly rare since everyone at the Institut is all international. I'm really hoping going to Vienna in three days means we'll get to spend more time with the Austrians. It's been remarkably hard to meet local people here, and I worry that living in a homestay in Wien will mean that it will be remarkably hard there, as well. We'll see. I got into both classes I wanted, and they're both small-ish, so as long as I can keep up with academic-level Austrian German and not fail, maybe I'll get to meet people in the classes, too.

What else have I been doing? Smoking too much, in both forms, and drinking. Oh, and we went to Potsdam, where there are lots of gorgeous old palaces/castles and a really pretty old city. Quite impressive. The city's only about 45 minutes outside of Berlin - you can take the S-Bahn there for pretty much normal transit prices - and the vibe is completely different; although Potsdam was located in East Germany, the look and feel of it is very much that of a well-off, well-preserved German city, not the ramshackle postwar grittiness of Berlin. That was good for a diversion.

I guess besides that I've mostly been wandering around, eating good food, hitting up bars and seeing occasionally art or live music. I did buy an original Otto Dix lithography at a gallery, that was cool. But really, seeing crazy Berlin shit has become kind of a normal day for me. I get off the train, and right there's a beloved national monument, or a building clearly built in a socialist period of rule. Study abroad is kind of a funny joke. Especially getting stipend money and with the help of student loan funds, it's essentially a big, long, irresponsible European vacation. Of course, I'm completely okay with that. But last semester was the exact opposite - I worked, I studied a lot, I spent relatively little time partying, I saved money (kind of) and other stuff. Now, I pretty much have no responsibilities, little homework, relatively a lot of money I can (for the moment) take for granted, and I'm in Europe, for Christ's sake. This may be the first/last time in my life I get to have so much levity.

And I intend to enjoy it. Hence the tattoo.

Amsterdam and back again, or hung low in Hengelo.

So. I know it's an out-and-out cliché to go to Amsterdam if you smoke pot.

BUT.

The weed is soooooo fucking good. And the hash. This past weekend I discovered this fact in person, when I took the train with 6 other kids from school. The train ride was good, except for having to wait fucking an hour and a half in this town called Hengelo because something was wrong with the train or something, meaning we got in at 9.30 instead of at 7.00. But oh well. It was well worth it. After meeting up with some peoples studying there, we hit the streets, and then the joints, and didn't stop till we finished the last brownie crumbs Sunday evening on the ride back.

Amsterdam seriously looks like it was built by something Tolkien created. I was discussing this in a coffee shop with one of my friends there, and he suggested it was built by Keebler Elves. I offered my opinion that, at the start of the day, you could probably see these friendly Dutch elves performing their chores and singing a happy jingle in clogs. That's not to degrade the city or its aesthetics - it's fucking gorgeous; pretty much the antithesis of the stark Berlin greys and browns covered in graffiti. But it's so tiny! One alley we walked through was literally like a person and a half wide, and not your fatass American person either. In addition to being tiny though, there's so much character. I'm sure those of you who've been there already know all about this, but the houses lean all crazily because of settling foundations in the swampy soil, and also, there are cranes on every single gable for the purpose of hoisting heavy furniture into the upper floors from the street. Pretty ingenious/elfy.

So pretty much the rest of the weekend we rode bikes all over the place and got high. I bough a gram and a half of hash and like four of weed, all of which we rolled up and smoked, and I was far from alone in purchasing. The bikes were dirt cheap; they cost 20€. And Amsterdam is built for bikes the way L.A. was built for cars, so aside from getting yelled at in Dutch by the po-po for riding in a pedestrian only zone, it was incredibly easy to get around. Centrum is the heart of the city (and as far as I can tell, far and away the place worth spending time besides the museum area), and we pretty much covered the whole thing, plus a good deal of the other parts riding to the Museumplein to see the Van Gogh Museum and ride through the Vondelpark. Though I slept like a combined ten hours under my jacket on a concrete floor in the dorms we stayed in, it was worth it.

Edit: Dutch sounds like German and English spoken together while working up a big loogie. It's very bizarre. "G" in Dutch is always pronounced like a hard "ch," and there are double vowels everywhere. Ouijdenberger grachtenflakken.

And now I'm back here, and have a fucking cold again. It is impossible to be healthy in Berlin this winter, what with everyone in my class being sick off and on, breathing in filthy U-Bahn air like an hour out of every day, and the shitty, depressing weather. Oh, and smoking and drinking. But that's not important. On a good note, the Berlinale is going on - it's a massive international film festival spread across the city, and it's surprisingly easy to get tickets. Oftentimes the filmmakers/actors give talks afterward and take questions from the audience. Last night after a beer we saw this documentary/interview film about this French guy, Michel Vaujour, who broke out of prison like 5 or 6 times, no joke. Really cool. I may be going tomorrow or Friday to see a series of short films. Unfortunately, all of the huge red-carpet premiers are booked solid, but I guess you can still wander down to Potsdamer Platz if you want to see Kate Winslet and people like that.

The Big Things

Minnesota weather may me cold as balls, but at least the sun shines. Berlin has been unfailingly grey for the vast majority of the time I've spent here thus far. It's fucking depressing.

That being said, I've been all over the place the last three weeks. There is a surplus of cultural activities here, to be sure: art, music, opera, theater. Also, you can't swing a dead cat without hitting a club or bar in some places. I'm trying to think of a general timeline for what I've been up to the past three weeks... well. 

For starters, I went to my first Berlin flea market, which takes place in the „Mauerpark“, located in the former death strip of the Berlin wall in Prenzlauer Berg. This neighborhood is very Brooklyn-y - ten or fifteen years ago, right after reunification, it and a few other cheap and interesting East Berlin neighborhoods got mobbed by artists, counterculture enthusiasts, squatters and rave kids. Being the natural progression, this was subsequently noticed by hipsters, who then began moving in and gentrifying

the place. Now, rents there are considerably higher than fifteen years ago, and everyone and their mother is walking around with a baby carriage. But I digress. The flea market was massive.  There were tons of record stores, used book stands, food and mulled wine everywhere. I ended up buying books, of course, because I have no self-restraint in the face of cheap literature. About a week ago I went to another flea market on the west side of town which was mostly antiques, hardware, knickknacks and one kiosk that was all Legos.

The museums here are incredible. I've been going to at least one a week. The two contemporary ones I visited were fantastic. In KW, the first museum I visited, there was an exhibit called Political/Minimal. Without a doubt the most eye-catching piece there was a fifteen-foot black circular canvas completely covered in millions of dead black flies. Fucking gross. Another contemporary museum, the Hamburger Bahnhof, is one of the best museums I've ever been to in my life. It's set up in this old renovated train station with a huge vaulted ceiling and unthinkable amounts of exhibition space. When I was there, there was an Andy Warhol exhibit, a huge Joseph Beuys exhibit, and another one consisting of some fantastic contemporary art as part of a series of exhibits in the city that are concerned with debunking the myth of the artist. In the Neue Nationalgalerie I saw a Jeff Koons exhibit and a Paul Klee exhibit, the latter of which was amazing. I'm pretty sure later today we're smoking and going to the Jewish Museum.

Berlin loves it some techno. The club scene here, from my limited experience, lives up to the hype. Two weeks ago I saw the Bug and Kode9 as well as some house DJs in this massive club that's become something of an institution, Berghain. I'd post pictures, but cameras are strictly forbidden as apparently you're allowed to have sex in the basement and they don't want photos of that and other debauchery getting out. Seriously. But anyway, this club is located in this massive old factory building. It's fucking huge. There are two big dancefloors and like four bars that I saw, everyone smokes all manner of things inside, and the system is unbelievable. I had to stuff tissues in my ears because I thought my eardrums were going to rupture from the bass. Two nights ago I went to another club, Maria, for Skream, Benga, and Daniel Bell in the back room. There was all sorts of minimalist artsy stuff on the walls, projector screens running around the perimeter of the dancefloor, and lots of alcohol and weed. Dubstep necessitates spliffs.

Besides debauchery though, I've been spending a lot of time just walking around different neighborhoods and checking things out, and in the process taking tons of pictures. I went to this former Prussian palace in the west of the city that was pretty beautiful in a pompous, rococo sort of way. My cousin was here this weekend and we went to this park where there's this derelict bunker/flak tower complex you can visit, and the view of the city is amazing. From there you can see the TV tower, the nuclear power plant way off near the airport, the old buildings, the new skyscrapers, and S-Bahn trains running around. And of course, graffiti.  Berlin is kind of dirty and grey, but especially when you look at it from up in an old flak tower you really get the feel for the scale and importance of a place like this.