It's so weird not having regular lectures... it seems like every week at least one of our lecturers is away... we've not had any lectures for over a week, but then we have four in a week... strange. We've still got SO much work to do... we've finally found out how much work we have to do, and we've got three book reviews, two 20 page essays, four presentations and our dissertations... seems like a lot but we just need to get cracking and do a bit each day, and then hopefully we won't have mental breakdowns at the end.
I've been ill again this week, for the second time since we arrived. Normally I don't get ill so I'm not sure why I'm getting ill so much here... guess it doesn't help that our flat isn't exactly the cleanest... Oh well. life goes on...
I've booked myself a night in Leipzig when Alice's mum comes to visit. She's staying with her in her hotel in the city so I'll be on my own for a few days, so I thought I'd take the opportunity to visit somewhere that Granny loved and always used to talk about. I'm looking forward to seeing more of Germany. Much as I love Berlin, I'm excited to travel outside of the city. I like the whole single traveller thing, it's very freeing, and makes you feel like you can do anything you want!
While Alice's boyfriend Matt was here last weekend I went to Sachsenhausen concentration camp, which is located at the most northern S-bahn station in Berlin, Oranienburg. It felt like a different world up there, because if I thought Berlin was a fairly quiet city, Oranienburg was dead, even on a Saturday. The camp was interesting, but I didn't feel particularly upset as I thought I would. It was not like Auschwitz where you see pictures of piles of spectacles and shoes everywhere, because a lot of the buildings at Sachsenhausen are no longer there. A few buildings are still standing and you can go through and read about the sort of things that happened, but it was not the experience that I thought it would be. I'm still glad I went though, and everyone should definitely go to one in their lifetime.
In terms of sightseeing, Alice and I have been to the memorial to the murdered Jews, which is an extremely upsetting museum because it has pictures and stories of real Jewish families, which makes what happened so much more personal and painful to read about. On top is over 2,000 concrete blocks laid out in a big square. We wanted to go to the New National Gallery but it was a Saturday so the queue was about an hour and a half long. We'll probably go to that another day. Instead we decided to go to Kurfurstendamm which was SUPER busy because we hadn't realised that the second biggest cup final in Germany was happening in Berlin on that day between BVB and Bayern, so we got caught up in the thousands of fans who had congregated on Kurfurstendamm. The whole city was filled with football fans, and a lot of the smaller U-bahn stations were closed (presumably for safety reasons) so we had to walk further than normal to get to where we wanted to go. It was kind of cool though, because the atmosphere was very exciting and we also saw the Dortmund team bus as it drove past. We then went home and watched the game on TV with a bottle of Berliner Pilsner (a lager type drink, which costs 65 cents at the shop, of which you get 25 cents back for recycling your bottle. It's cheaper than coke or bottled water, so it's quite popular. I'm not going to lie and say I would drink it often, but it was nice for a one-off occasion.
I'm looking forward to Mum, Dad and Adam coming to visit because I'm really excited to show them Berlin. I love this city, and actually think I could be really happy living here. It's not too far away from England, and the lifestyle here is just so much more laid-back. Germany is an amazing country, and I can see why so many international people come here and stay.
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