Painted Bears and the Carnival of Cultures

So last time I promised some pictures of the public transportation here. I still don't have a picture of an U-Bahn train, but here's an S-Bahn train:

The S42 is the line I use to take me part of the way to my university here. It is part of the "Ring-Bahn," which consists of the S41 (clockwise) and S42 (counter-clockwise) lines, which run in a big ring around the city.
Here's a nice view from the platform of the station:

So one day I was on my way to this lovely park to play some ukulele:

On my way there I passed by the City Hall for the part of Berlin I live in, so I decided I would go in and take a look around. To my surprise there was an awesome art exhibit in the courtyard. The exhibit consisted of identical bear sculptures painted by different artists to represent their home countries. Bears are kind of big here in Berlin - there's one on the city flag and there are painted bear sculptures all around the city. I thought these were especially cool, so I took some pictures of my favorites:

Here's what the whole courtyard looked like

USA

Germany

Namibia (front and back)

And my personal favorite, Barbados (front and back):

So last weekend the Carnival of Cultures was here in Berlin. It's a big celebration that consists of a big street festival with lots of food and drinks to buy, a big parade with different cultural groups represented, and after parties. Here are some pictures of the parade:

My favorite group overall was this little army of Taiwanese children playing drums. They were so intense, so into it, so awesome, and making good music:

The end of the parade - the street completely full with people:

Oh and don't tell my landlord, but my flatmates and I went up onto the roof of our building to have some beers and enjoy the view. Amazing. We're going back someday, possibly to have a barbeque.
Ladder to the skylight:

 Beautiful view:

And here we are on the roof, a few of my flatmates and I. Left to right: Edouard, the most French person I have ever met (and I love him for it), our resident German Steffi, the Canadian Daniel, and yours truly. Behind the camera is our other French flatmate Marine, and our Colombian Camilo was not there at the time. I'm glad I ended up with such a great, diverse group to enjoy Berlin with.

Thanks for reading everyone! Until next time!

Construction and a Church

So Berlin has a lot of construction. When I took a city tour on my first full day here, my tour guide said "Berlin is a city that is always becoming, but never is." I think I'm beginning to understand what he meant. I took some pictures of construction that I saw around the city today:
I think they're renovating the side of a building here.

They're building a massive mall here. It's going to be called "Bikini Berlin":

One thing I absolutely love about Berlin is the public transportation. There's the S-Bahn (Metro), the U-Bahn (Underground Rapid Transit), the Tram (like the Trolley in SF), and the Bus.  You can get exactly where you need to go pretty easily. And there's always a recording of a man or woman speaking perfect German that announces the stops. I'm trying to model my German accent after the S-Bahn man. I keep forgetting to take pictures of the actual trains, but I will do that eventually. But for now, here's a really cool old U-Bahn station that I saw today. It's Wittenbergplatz, one of the oldest in Berlin. The entrance hall shown here was built in 1913. My photo-taking skills are as excellent as ever in this one:

Sometimes you see these posted outside of the stations. The U9 line contains the stop Bundesplatz, which is where I get off to go home:

Today I walked to Breitscheidplatz so I could view the Kaiser Wilhelm Memorial Church. The church was built in the 1890s but was badly damaged by bombing during WWII. Since then its ground floor has been converted into a memorial hall and a new church, built in the early 1960s, has been attached. Unfortunately when I arrived the old church was completely covered up - I think it must be being renovated. So I went inside the new church to take a look around. It was awesome. It's shaped like an octagon and each wall is a giant mosaic of painted glass. The light and mood inside were very peaceful and calming:

But what really made the visit special was that the organist was there practicing a piece. I was absolutely awestruck by the sound of this huge organ. It was really a treat to sit and listen to it:

I must say that this is the coolest church I've ever been to. I was really impressed by how unique and modern it looked.  I mean, even the floor looked good:

To close this post, here's a nice picture of a park.

Veronika, der Spargel wächst!

Today I went on a trip with other UC students to what is basically the German equivalent of a pumpkin patch at Halloween time - an asparagus patch in Spring. Unfortunately I didn't see where the asparagus was grown - the farm didn't seem to be there. Some friends and I decided that the whole thing was really a coverup for a large cocaine operation and that all of the asparagus was actually being imported from China.

But I digress. Here's the lovely meal that I received gratis from my program operators: Schnitzel, Potatoes, and Asparagus with Hollandaise sauce. As you can see, white asparagus is much more common than green here.

 After the meal I just strolled around. They had some animals there. Here's a cute little lamby pie and a ram:

And my personal favorites. These pigs are livin' the dream. Livin'. The. Dream.

My 21st birthday is Monday (which means next to nothing here). My flatmates and I celebrated yesterday and I received this gorgeous orchid as a gift:

She doesn't have a name yet. The bush lily you see in the background, which I've already posted about, is named Ubuntu. I'm so glad I have these two to brighten up my room but I'm not looking forward to parting with them when I leave.

New Place and Plants

So about a week or two ago I finally moved out of the hostel and into my permanent home here. Here I am in front of the door of Hostel Aloha, which was my home for about a month:

And here's the front door of my new place. A little better looking. I'm movin' up in the world!

This is the common area for the apartment. I share it with 5 others. Pretty nice, everything is new. Gotta love IKEA!

 

And here is my room, followed by the view from it (not extremely exciting haha):

Here's some graffiti that's nearby. Yay Kirby!

And what I consider the best part of my new place, the sketchy "Thai Massage" parlor that's right across the hall.  It's inside the building on the 5th floor, and there are no signs out front indicating that it's inside. Something tells me they aren't really selling massages here...

I went to the Botanical Garden with some friends, it was absolutely beautiful. Here are some of the better pictures I took:

Until next time!