Potsdam Day Trip

Friday, 27th April '12 cont...
After a visit to ye olde University, we ventured off down a path to see Sanssouci again. Along the way we viewed some strange and wonderful things...

Weird tree is weird. 

. 

As I've already done a post on Sanssouci, I didn't take many pictures of the actual palace again. Mostly just happy snaps of my dad and I. I also went a bit mental and took pictures of all the flowers. Spring has blessed the gardens, it is much more colourful than when I first visited.

 

Afterwards we walked for a long way, with me getting distances confused. So we ended up stopping half and catching a bus towards the city centre. We visited Nikolai Kirche. But first, some pretty flowers and then some pictures of the church... 

Neues Palais

Friday, 27th April '12
This may be the first post I've actually managed to write on the day it happened. Miracle!

So my dad arrived this morning around 10ish (after getting lost mind you). After a brief respite in my apartment, we made our way to Potsdam. Our first stop was actually Neues Palais, which is on my University Campus, but not an actual part of the University. It's actually an incredibly beautiful building. I think it's prettier than Sanssouci if I'm being honest. The day itself was amazing. A warm, clear spring day and all the flowers and trees have finally begun to show colour again.

We spent a while walking around my university first (pictures in previous entry). I had to print some documents for my classes next week. It was an awkward, fumbling affair, but I managed. Not well, but words are printed on paper. That's something at the very least.

Dad needs to roll up his jeans cause of the heat...

Universität Potsdam

I showed my dad around my university today. As I had my camera with me, I finally took some pictures of the area. A lot of the buildings are currently under re-construction. Being made extra shiny for the 300th Anniversary of Frederick the Große.

Yes, believe your eyes. I am actually attending this place. I must partake in classes in these very halls. Almost makes coming to University worth it, almost.

 I have most of my classes this Semester in the building to the left. 

Ich bin zu Faul

Nicole and Sowon chillaxing on the couch last night

Week of Monday 23rd April '12

Should basically count this week out as not happening. I really didn't do much, sat at home alone most of the time. Watching TV, knitting or playing games.

Herb Garden

Friday, 20th April '12
The weather recently has really picked up, and we've had some warm, beautiful days. Friday was one such day and I decided it was about time I planted my herb garden.

I wasn't quite sure where to buy all the things I needed. I knew what plants I needed to buy, and I had learnt that 'soil' was just 'Erde' (Earth) in German. So I felt I had the necessary tools to explore for said items. My first stop was the flower shop beside the S-Bahn station, where I found Rosemarie, Thyme and Oregano. I bought said plants, plus a 10L bag of flower soil.

(Thyme & Rosemary)

After this, I took a rather lengthy trip to Bauhaus near Heidelberg platz. The internet led me to believe that Bauhaus  is Germany's version of Bunnings. So I hoped I could find more garden equipment here. I was wrong. It was a long trip, and they had absolutely nothing to offer. In fact, the store looked almost empty, as if somebody had ransacked all the shelves. I did, however, buy myself a cute little shovel. Using the purchase to justify my journey.

Since it was such a nice day, I took a train back to Bundesplatz and walked home from there. Turns out the road follows the main highway and so was not as pleasant as I would've liked. But I enjoyed the sunshine, even if the view was sub-par.

Strolling back, I noticed that a small supermarket near to my house was selling soil and other herbs. Here, I found Basil and Coriander and purchased a further 20L of soil. I had spent a rather large portion of my day travelling, and ironically got basically everything I needed within a 800m radius of my home. Irony, you're a dick.

Basil, which I'm fairly confident is about to die. ;_; 

Oregano. 

Fritz-Elsas-Str. 17, Schöneberg

Spring ist schön!

Spring is here. The weather is beautiful and Berlin is starting to show some colour.

Zombie Weekend [Part 2]

Sunday, 15th April cont.
After the Gallery, we went to the Neues Museum next door. I was still really tired, so I don't think I really appreciated it like I should have. There was an amazing collection of artefacts and fossils that dated back to the first men. They also had really amazing exhibitions with Egyptian artefacts, tombs and sculptures. Egyptian art is incredible. For the most part though, I was just completely enamoured with the building itself. It looks like they are trying to keep the actual building as close as they can to the original, without restoring anything. So most of the wallpaper had peeled off, the frescos on the walls also only half there. They had amazing columns in the staircase... I can't really do it justice with words. It was fascinating to look at. A kind of derelict grandeur.

Cara, you have to come to this place! You'd love the museum AND everything in it! Seriously! Around 3:30pm we decided to have some Kaffee und Kuchen. I think at this point, my dad and I silently agreed we were a bit cultured out, and afterwards we skipped most of the ground level of the museum. I will definitely have to go back when I'm less exhausted, and this time bring my camera with an sd card.

Cherry Chocolate Cake, it was dry :(  

Afterwards we went to the Berliner Dom (Berlin Cathedral). Pictures and words can never do justice to these kind of epic buildings. Pictures can't really capture the magnitude of these buildings, just how majestic and overpoweringly big these sorts of places are.

It was really, really amazing in there. I actually think it's much more beautiful than Notre Dame - possibly because it's baroque architecture which I much prefer to Gothic. But yes, the organ was amazing and the huge Dome, magical, honestly!

I will go back with my camera and take better pictures, versprochen! 

Zombie Weekend [Part 1]

Saturday, 14th April '12
Most of Saturday I just chilled around my apartment and made it ready for my dad's visit. Cleaned a little bit and made his bed.

See I didn't lie, there it is.

Around 6, I made my way to Hauptbahnhof to pick up my dad. It was just so amazing to give my dad a cuddle! Ugh, there's nothing like a hug from a familiar face. My dad was quite tired, so we didn't do much that night. We went to the steakhouse restaurant next to my house and had some dindins. We found a particularly facet of the menu quite amusing... 

After dinner, we headed back up to my apartment and basically decided to go to bed. This was around 9:30pm. Sleep evaded me for a vast majority of the night. As usual, my dad's snoring was an all-night torture, and it was very difficult to try fall asleep. Eventually, at around 3:35am, I decided to take a sleeping pill and finally managed to fall asleep. 

Sunday, 15th April '12

My dad woke me up at about 10am and man I felt so out of it. Turns out, these tablets are quite strong and I was a bit of a zombie until the early afternoon. Entire day I felt like my head was full of cotton balls and my eyelids were attached to 1kg weights. Sorry dad, I didn't mean to be a zombie on the one day we really got to see Berlin! Oops!

We went for breakfast at a cafe near Nollendorfplatz. It was a turkish owned cafe, one of the few that was open on a Sunday, and they had a brunch buffet. They had a lot of fish and seafood, and no fruit! That was a bit of a disappointment, but they had nice yoghurt and breads/croissants. So it was ok. 

Dad on the U-Bahn!

After breakfast we made our way to Museum Insel. It was really beautiful, just such a high concentration of beautiful, beautiful buildings! We went to the National Gallery first, me taking photos with my camera all the way. We spent maybe two hours in the gallery, it was really big and had amazing works of art. The building itself was so regal and beautiful. I felt like I was in a palace. Why can't I just live there?? 

I am in love with this skylight/roof/dome/thing

After the first floor of paintings, I realised that I'm actually a moron. I'd been taking pictures ALL MORNING and only just came to realise that I didn't have an SD card in my camera. So, the above pictures all had to be re-taken with my crappy phone camera. I was so devastated, cause I'd taken some nice pictures of my dad and I at breakfast. 

There were lots of amazing paintings, and I found a German artist whose work I greatly enjoy. It is very dramatic and fantastical, which is the exact things about Romantic art that I love. So I'll just show you some of the works that caught my eye:

This one was probably my favourite, I bought a print!

Internationales Kino

Friday, 13th April '12

I'll keep the post relatively short and sweet. There isn't overly much to say about the night.

Firstly, I went to Daniel and Nica's apartment where I listened with a blank, confused look, at his friends speaking German. I also participated in some of Nica's brownies, possibly the highlight of the evening. Nom nom nom. I left around 11pm for the International Kino, which would be the venue for the Berlin Erasmus welcome party.

Once inside I took a picture of the line...

I arrived to find a line that was approx a mile long. I seriously considered turning around at that point, cause seriously, fuck that shit. But I called my mates and found they were basically at the front of the line. Rudely pushing in, I waited maybe a maximum of 10 minutes haha. The place itself was HUGE. There were around three floors I think, with different music styles. The mainstream/pop dance floor on the bottom level was packed the entire night. The electronic dance floor was empty, and, eventually, when the reggae dance floor opened it was quite full. Though the dance floor was small. 

We kind of alternated all night between dance floors. We experienced a very frustrating phenomenon where, wherever we decided we wanted to dance, seemed to become the main thoroughfare for the dance floor. It made me so mad. But otherwise the place was cool, cause it was one of the few clubs where people went to specific rooms to smoke!! AMAZING!

There was a very open room upstairs with chairs and a bar. It was very relaxed, and it had really nice high ceilings and décor. I took a photo:

  blurry, awful photo

The night overall was enjoyable. I actually put some effort into my appearance, which was a blessing and a curse. I had people coming on to me, which is nice for my confidence, but in reality mad awkward and they were all creepy. They were also all extremely unoriginal, all of them asking me about my leopard backpack and if it had a name. Ugh. Zzzzzzz

I arrived home around 6:35am, and swiftly went to sleep. Waking up at 9:30am. That's right, 3 hours of sleep.  Remember that, it's important for the rest of my weekend... 

Bad Picture, Delicious Red Sauce

Mrs Fraser's Delicious Red Sauce (serves: an army)

This sauce can be used for anything, pasta sauce, pizza sauce. It's seriously just delicious. It's quite basic and amounts are very rough, you basically just play with it until it's the consistency that you're happy with. These amounts make A LOT of sauce, but you can easily freeze it and reheat it on demand. It's very convenient. 

Easter Weekend [Part 2]

Ok, this part is going to be significantly shorter.

Sunday, 8th April '12
After spending most night thawing out, I went out with Daniel and his parents for brunch. It was an interesting day, considering I had no idea how to eat anything that was available. It was the standard sort of continental breakfast affair, cheese, meats, various salads, fruits, etc. But then hot food, pretzels, desserts.

I started with the main food, oops wrong. Then I started eating the pretzel and apparently I was supposed to get butter or whatever and put it on. I thought it tasted fine by itself. And then when I got dessert, I got these pancake type things and forgot to put the sauce on it. zzzz Moral of the story, I'm silly.

We were there for a couple hours, Nica joined us as well. Even though she was still plagued with the hangover from hell. I gotta say it was quite amusing to see her suffer. Sadistic, I know. But it makes me feel good that I don't really drink anymore.

Anyway, I didn't take many pictures, just some family shots that my mom requested. So, here's for you Ma!

I wore my hair in two buns, and when I got home and took them out I had these awesome spiral curls. I was quite impressed, I might need to do this again :D

Monday, 9th April '12

Monday was mostly a day to chillax. I met Emil, Nicole, Sowon, Marlene and Christof for lunch at Alexanderplatz. We almost left without Emil as he was late, but through some kind of magic we passed him on his bike as he was on his way. Timing-GUU!

 World clock at Alexanderplatz

We took a tram to Hakescher Markt and went to this really awesome Vietnamese restaurant for lunch. It was so good, and really cheap. I got a tofu won-ton soup. It was so delicious. Then we went to a Starbucks, I forked out for a nomtastic white chocolate, raspberry cheesecake. God was it good. Anyway I did take some pictures of my friends, so some of you can finally put some faces to the names.

 Left to right: Sowon, Emil, Christof

Left: Marlene

And that's my easter weekend!

Easter Weekend [Part 1]

Friday, 6th April '12
There's not a lot to do on Public holidays here as everything is closed. (Or at least, I assumed that haha). So I decided to finally go see Hunger Games at the cinemas. I thought I was being very clever by looking up online where I could see it in the original language, but ended up going to the wrong god damn cinema in Potsdamer Platz and seeing it dubbed in German.

Seeing things dubbed makes me want to weep and beat children. It's so, so awful. But I'd already bought the ticket and just had to kind of push through. The way it was filmed though was almost worse. The camera was so unstable, constantly moving up and down, and it was ALWAYS switching the focus. It actually made me feel nauseous. It was ridiculous.

I had been invited by Daniel and Nica to Kater Holziger, but I didn't want to spend the money on entrance fee, so went out instead with the group I'd met through Sowon. We met at Görlitzer Tor and went with Natalia to a small, dingy pub/bar thing in the area. I spent most of the night speaking with Sowon and Nicole, a girl from Denmark. I left with Sowon around midnight as I was very tired.

Saturday, 7th April '12
In the morning I did boring things, went shopping and just lounged around being lazy. I had signed up the previous Monday for a city tour of Berlin with the ESN. I had been very hesitant to go as there was potential to rain and well, it's me and I'm lazy. But I'm glad I went, even if it snowed and was freezing the entire time.

Our tour guide was a 29 year old student from Potsdam, Daniel. He had grown up in Berlin, and was currently working for a tourism company and studying one day a week at Potsdam. He was very enthusiastic and passionate, a really great story teller and personality. So the tour itself was very interesting, and the stories he told just slightly to the left of what you'd expect from a tour of Berlin.

We met at Potsdamer Platz at 3:00pm. The tour for the english group consisted of myself, Marlena (Austrian girl), Sowon, Nicole, Mairi (A greek girl, also pronounced "Mary"), A Turkish girl, a Canadian Girl and another Greek student I didn't speak to much. The tour itself was four hours in total and we basically did a loop around Berlin, through Potsdamer Platz, Tiergarten, The Reichstag, Brandenburg Gate, Holocaust Memorial and then a small walk through East Berlin and back to Potsdamer Platz.

And cue pictures:

 a.k.a Holocaust Memorial

 Group shot near a stretch of the original wall

 A very well hidden tower from the Berlin Wall

 An original part of the Berlin Wall. I enjoy the sentiment written on it haha

 Tiergarten...

 Russian Monument - where you learn the Russians have a sense of humour.

 The Reichstag (Parliment)

Brandenburger Tor  

Pariser Platz - Tourist central.