Hallo!
It's been a bit since i've posted but i've been quite busy, which is good of course!
I haven't had class for the past three days because the Freie Uni students have had orientation on wednesday and thursday and today is der Tag der deutsche Einheit so no school also!
this has left me with free time to get all my bureaucratic business taken care of.
The first day was spent getting my bank account into order so now i have a german bank 'konto'!
it was actually a quite pleasant experience because the bank person was very nice and we spoke only auf deutsch, so i was quite proud of myself. i needed this account so that the scholarship people can put the money straight into my account. i also need it so that Studentenwerk, the dorm firm, can take my rent directly out of my bank account. money in-money out.
this was an extraordinarily rainly day. with the heavy downpour plus really strong winds (i was literally nearly blown away) broke my umbrella.
I also went to lunch with Ida and Linda 2 (also finnish) at the Technische Uni's mensa. It was good to finally step on the campus, which i hadn't really done before. It is actually quite larger than i thought and very difficult to manage. BUT, i think all universities are like that at first.
I was hoping to get some of my Immatrikulation process taken care of but i quickly learned that all the offices close very early...1pm early. So instead i picked up my spanking new boots from the post office.
That evening i met up with some of the other kids from my class and we went to an indian restaurant/bar near warschauer straße which i think is friedriechstein...
i really should know all these different 'Ort's but I never can seem to keep them all straight, oh well!
We all had cocktails because it was still happy hour and taught each other how to say terrible things in other languages.
and i'll tell you, i have the foulest mouth in finnish, italien and spanish! :)
The next day (Thursday) i went on a morning jog without any trouble and headed to the TU to get immatrikulated.
Well, this was some process. After gathering all my various official documents (about 10) and my passport i got on my way. I had to first pay my semester fees at the 'Kasse' which is the cashiers desk. now one would think this would be in an obvious place, but after following poorly translated directions and getting thouroughly lost (i actually somehow found myself in some event centrum/museum?) i finally stumbled upon the Kasse. They were actually quite nice and helpful. They talked slowly too which is always greatly appreciated.
So with my small pink slip i headed down to find the international student office. I was greeted with an extremely long line and loads of stressed out students. But i did meet some friendly spanish students, one of whom actually mistook me for a spanaird!
We were herded into an overcrowded room and were walked through the process (in three languages, deutsch, espana and english) of filling out one form. Naturally i messed up on nearly every single part, but whose counting anyways.
but in order to complete the process i needed some special green slip that confirmed i had health insurance. this was a bit confusing because i was told my 'proof of insurance' from the insurance company was all i would need but low and behold! i'm sent upstairs to hunt down another office.
got lost again, but eventually found it after following some international-ly looking students. waited in line and then explained (in broken german) my situation. apparently the guy was wrong because after looking at my forms for about 5 minutes, i was told to go back downstairs and that i cannot get the slip but my forms are valid and are all i need.
...oookay.
so i go back downstairs and the office has closed for the day by this point.
thats bureaucracy for you!
i'm going to go back monday for a second go, wish me luck!
after that i sped off to the academic advising meeting held by EAP. this was actually quite helpful and i was able to choose my classes for the coming semester. but i just realized now, i don't actually know how to enroll in them....
kind of important but i swear i'll figure that out soon!
That night a comrade of mine was having a birthday party. Such a blast. Sorry, i didn't feel like playing papparazi so i didn't take any pictures :(
But i got to meet so many new international students but was more interesting for me was meeting other non-erasmus students.
i met a swiss jazz musician. but kind of embarassed myself by mistaking swizerland with sweden. OOPS! Well, to my defense they're both start with 'sw'....
and i also met some germans. two of which i hung out with again today. they showed me around quite a bit. and were very friendly and forgiving and patient with my broken german.
we were going to go to a farmers market and find me a bike in kreuzberg but it was closed because of the holiday. so instead we made our way down to brandenburger tor to see some of the celebrations going on.
this turned out to be unintentionally hilarious. They had the cheesiest bands in existence. I actually started busting up because i thought it was a joke at first until the lady in front of me started singing along... SO hilarious though. I can't seem to find their name on google, but let me know if one of you find a program of today because they were hilarious. The pictured band is Die Prinzen, another band that played today at the Brandenburger Tor.
After enduring some very bad, theatrical music we left and walked around the place for a bit. We then headed off to Tascheles.
to 'tacheles reden' is to like get to the point, to be direct, no bs.
this is the same place as Zapatas, the place that i mentioned in an earlier post. It's quite different during the day and is still really cool. Theres a huge white building across from it and they occasionally project movies onto it. There's also a small 'Kino' inside of Tascheles that plays cool indie movies. We visited the art galleries for a good hour and a half. First the sculpures outside and then we went upstairs to a Global Warming exhibit. It wasn't what you would expect and really not apparent at first glance. Really interesting stuff by Alexander Rodin who was sitting there reading, listening to classical music and selling prints of his work. Really, quite a cool place. By this time we had been out for about five hours and i was freezing while it was significantly warmer earlier and i hadn't planned on staying out that late.
they invited me to go with them to a punk, ska, reggae concert with them tonight. actually a lot of stuff is going on tonight, but honestly i'm just exhausted. i forgot to mention that last night i stayed out till 6 chatting with the berliners and woke up at just 12 and have been out and about since then.
ok, just sent the text messages, defiinnitely going to bed now. Its already 12 here so...
but i'm quite excited because Jimbo, the berliner, gave me a booklet to berlin. it's like a zine and it has all the underground happenings in berlin. All the gritty interesting stuff. So pretty much everything i was looking for is in this little zine. It also has listed weekly free meals. Well, most are free and if they're not they're only about 1-2 euro. And some of them are completely vegan and/or vegetarian!
i'm really glad i was able to meet some real germans because i'm learning a lot with them speaking only in german and not classroom german either. and it's a great resource to get to know the city better. just today i found so many cool things that i hadn't known before.
it's going to be great when classes start and i can just hang out with germans all day!
hahaha, what a funny sentence, but it's true. i came here to know a different country and it's culture. i'm just really lucky that Berlin has so much of it to offer :)
p.s. i hope you all watched the palin-biden debates!
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