When I last left you folks, I was in a hostel waiting to move in with my assigned homestay family. On trivia night, there was no avail; my team lost in a three-way tie for second place to an Aussie and a couple of yanks like myself, save they were from Massachusetts.
After having a tame morning and enjoying my last breakfast at the Impala Café on the corner of Schwedsterstraße and Schönhauser Allee, I ventured to my host’s apartment. One 45-minute ride on the S-Bahn and U-Bahn brought me and 70 pounds of luggage to Dominicusstraße in Schöneberg-Tempelhof while navigating an inch of slush from the most recent snow.
Once I found the door for 42 Dominicusstr. and I got buzzed in, my little American heart dropped. She lives on the third floor [fourth floor in U.S.] with no elevator. So, I rucked 70 pounds up the stairs, with a pit stop halfway up to contemplate my life choices, before finally meeting my host, Diale Conrad. Frau Conrad is a lovely older woman who works for the Federal Ministry of Housing, and boy can she cook.
As part of program orientation this week, we had regular meetings and group activities with a few exceptions. Firstly, we were all given a drink voucher for a program-hosted social and trivia night at the pub, as the drinking age is 16 for beer and wine and 18 for spirits in Germany. Secondly, we were offered some tours for the last two days of orientation.
Our first tour was at Museum Ephraim Palais, which gave us a survey-level understanding of Berlin’s history from medieval times to the present day. That was followed by a walking tour of the city with an emphasis on Berlin’s history as an immigrant city.
Our guide took us to landmarks such as Berliner Dom, an impressive 19th-century cathedral in the heart of the city and a memorial called Neue Wache (New Guard), a guard house and memorial building built by architect Karl Friedrich Schinkel at the behest of the Prussian Emperor. It is currently housing an enlarged replica of Käthe Kollwitz’s 1937 statue, “Mutter mit totem Sohn” (Mother with her Dead Son), which now makes up the Central Memorial of the Federal Republic of Germany to the Victims of War and Tyranny.
Soon, classes will be starting and I will update folks with more adventures from Germany.
Tschüss!
Timothy Fitzpatrick can be contacted at
tfitzpatrick@kscequinox.com
