It's aaaaaaaaaaliiiiiiiiiive!!!!

What an appropriate title the day after Halloween, which I've always found horribly underrepresented in Europe! Look at the morals we teach our American kids! Be creative and dress up and we'll give lots of candy! I think its a celebration of creativity!

So anyways now that I've lost my original following of people reading this blog (if any existed in the first place) I've decided to resurrect my blog because I should be documenting my life in BERLIN!! I've broken this post into a few different pieces to summarize the past two months here.

The Magical Arrival in Berlin

For those who don't know, when I returned from my study abroad in Berlin in 2010 I had pretty much decided to move to Berlin as soon as I graduated from Whittier. I was obsessed with anything German/Berlin related. So now you can imagine how exciting it was to return to Berlin after two years... pretty monumental, orchestra's playing to my walk down the street, beer flowing freely from fountains, and friendly Germans everywhere asking me to live with them for less than 200 euros. 

Flash back to reality.

Actually reality wasn't so different from that. I arrived in Berlin dead tired with two enormous bags and somehow made it to Sibel's house in Kreuzberg where Sibel and Caro were waiting for me. Dearest Sibel graciously let me stay with her until I found a place and Caro was hanging out in Berlin looking at apartments as well. As soon as arrived we had about an hour of chatting about the summer then Sibel announced we were going to go out with some of her friends! Party on the first night! Of all places we went to a Mexican restaurant which was probably some of the best Mexican food I've ever had abroad. Best being relative in this case, its still nothing like real Mexican food. Anyways we hung out with Sibel's friends from the south of Germany. During dinner I had a real moment when I realized I'm really going to have to commit to this German speaking thing. Ha, so yeah I've been trying and its actually really nice to speak German and feel semi competent in a language. 

Here's a photo of the mini GetMa reunion in Berlin on my first night back.

                                                 It's me, Sibel, Caro, and Martina

The Urban Nomadic Lifestyle: Living on People's Couches in Berlin

After a week at Sibel's I got an offer to stay at a friend's of a friends for the month of September. I decided to take the offer because finding an apartment in Berlin can (and IS) a horrible trial of you hopes and dreams. I lived for a month in this really nice place with really great people. There were three other girls and one guy, all German, who were also all students. It was really nice to live with them, but unfortunately at the same time I had to continue looking for another apartment for the rest of my time in Berlin. For the month of November I got lucky because old friend from two years ago let me watch her house while she was in Maliasia for two weeks. 

Germany, along with many European countries, have these online websites where students or other people put up ads for rooms in their apartments, you email them about yourself, then if they like the sound of you they email you back, you meet them in the apartment mostly so you can both see if you like each other. After this process they either call or email (or if they're assholes, don't speak to you again) to let you know if you can live there or not. I did this process FOURTEEN TIMES!!! FOURTEEN TIMES! FOURTEEN TIMES I traveled around Berlin, met someone new, pretended to be cool, hung out, made small talk, tried to seem fun, listened to their personal stories and then was rejected. Hooooorrrrriiible. The whole process was extremely depressing. Finally about a week ago this nice guy Marwan said I move in with him! Hooray! Actually today around 8pm I move into my new place! Hooray! I have a home in Berlin! Tonight I'll get keys to real place that I can really sleep in! Yay! But yeah this entire time I've been in Berlin I've been living out of suitcases, sleeping on the couches, floors, and beds of friends, and basically nomadically traveling around the city. Let me tell you, I have some great friends.

Dult: Where all German Stereotypes Come True

When I was in Germany in 2010 I traveled around Europe, but didn't really do any inter German travel, something I plan on fixing during this year in Berlin. I've been to Leipzig and Dresden and Berlin. That's it. So when Sibel said she was going to visit her boyfriend in Regensberg in the south of Germany, Bayern (AKA Bavaria) to be exact, I decided to join.

There's so much Bayern hate in Berlin because Bayern is seen as super conservative, super Catholic and super wealthily. Perhaps best summarized as the anti-Berlin. There are also a lot of people from Bayern in Berlin and Berliners (probably half correctly) blame these Bayern people for the raising prices in Berlin. Bayern is basically the Texas of Germany. Bayern is really proud of its unique history and cultural traits and, just like Texas, Bayern also tried to succeed from Germany at one point. It also has some of the only real national pride in the whole of Germany (WWII really squashed that. Flying a German flag here has multiple meanings) But Bayern has enough pride for all of Germany. Wilfried Scharnagl, a real current politician, just released a book this September called Bayern Kann Es Auch Allein, roughly translating to Bayern can also go alone. 

That being said, ALL, or almost all, American stereotypes of Germany come from Bayern. Perhaps this is because it was part of the American sector of Germany after WWII or because they're such great stereotypes. 

Dirndls: 

Think dirndls, lederhosen, silly hats, beautiful villages on lakes, and of course maß (of liters) of beer!

Lederhosen:   

Silly hats: 

Beautiful scenery:

Maß of beer:

Naturally I didn't want to miss a chance to see this great part of Germany. It also helped we'd get to drive down in a car and stay at Sibel's boyfriend's dorm which made the whole trip extremely cheap.

This particular weekend in September in Regensberg also happened to be Dult, the volksfest of the town. Now volksfest are these great historic peasant celebrations all over the south of Germany which are basically town fairs based on wine, beer, and carnival rides. The most famous volksfest would be the Octoberfest in Münich. Yeah, super great. 

Five of us in one car drove the five hours from Berlin to Regensberg and immediately got ready and went to Dult. I was seriously tempted to buy a dirndl, but they're ridiculously expensive (I mean check out this website, C&A Dirndls 80 euros is cheap!). Unfortunately I didn't get one but I did braid my hair and wear a dress, I tried! Sibel, on the other hand, was raised in Bayern and had a great purple dirndl and her boyfriend Kerem bought some lederhosen online. So amazing. What was really great is that it was almost like Halloween because it was totally acceptable to wear these volksfest clothes on the bus, metro, and just walking around.

Here's Sibel and Kerem in their outfits on the bus

So we got to Dult and walked around the fair area and had some weiß wurst (white hot dogs) and then headed toward the beer tent. Whatever I was expecting, it wasn't an enormous tent FULL of drunk Germans dressed in dirndls and lederhosen singing all the words to horrible 80's songs. EVERY DREAM COME TRUE. Seriously though, not having a dirndl on made me stand out. It was so great. The tent was full of long tables and every bench was full with people standing on the benches singing and drinking. Seriously, so great. There was even this like 16 year old German guy near us with his entire family (mom, dad, grandpa, grandma) getting drunk as a family in traditional German dirndls and lederhosen singing to the music.

Our Maßes of Bier

                                     Jake, Me, Caro, and Goksu with our Brezels and Bier!

We had two maßes and then decided to go out dancing. This might be the weirdest part of the night because we went to a club to keep dancing and literally 2/3rds of the people at the club were still wearing their dirndls and lederhosen. So crazy! In a public place! I wish I had some photos of that because it was so funny that even in "normal" place the volksfest clothes were still acceptable. 

Regensberg itself is actually a really cool old city in a way Berlin just can't be. Regensberg began as a Roman city and early on it gained independence from the Catholic Church for economic reasons. It had all the beautiful little roads and a beautiful old church. Jake actually spent his study abroad year in Regensberg so he knew all about the city. Even cooler perhaps is that in WWII Jake's grandpa was in Regensberg and helped rebuild the bridge we're standing on in the photos below.

Cro: Speaking to the Heart of Teenage Germans Everywhere

And last but not least, it wouldn't be a real post from me if I didn't leave you with some music. Here's Cro, my new favorite German singer/rapper. I really like his music videos and silly lyrics that I can understand a lot of if I pay close attention. I don't care if he's angsty and immature, he's so catchy and helping me learn German!

Here's my favorites:

Am Ende

So I hope this was a successful up to date post of my life here. There's still so much more to say about German bureaucracy, the fun of GetMa, my month long German language course, and of course about simply being back in Berlin after two years. So I'm sure there'll be much more to come... if anyone reads this any more. Bis später!