Of the five university classes I'm taking at Freie Universität, I definitely think Kulturelle Orientierung in Berlin will be my favorite. This class promises an overview of the history and cultural evolution of the city we're in, and is exclusively aimed at exchange students just like me. It's been a great place to meet others from all over the world!

Last Saturday, we took the learning process outside and went on our first excursion as a class through Berlin. 

The Church of the Franciscan Monastery dates from the middle of the 13th Century. In 1945 the church structure was badly damaged and left as a ruin

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My first week of classes at university is officially over. So far, so good! German university classes take place just once per week and are generally only 90 minutes. After having to go into a classroom 2 or 3 times a week for 50-110 minutes for just one class at USC, it's a welcome change. I'll be taking a class on Berlin culture, a German language course, a policy analysis class, an introduction to the German government system, and a class on Germany's foreign policy. All in German, of course.

Here are some shots from my most recent extracirricular activities.

The Berlin Festival of Lights features big colorful projections on a variety of landmark buildings around town. Here is the Bibliothek (library), which has words of colors projected onto it rather than actual colors

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Some great news: between this and my next post, my blog will FINALLY be up to date! I can finally start writing about what life here in Berlin is like.

First, I have to mention that I really enjoy my host family. I'm appreciative not only for the chance to speak lots of German every single day, but also for the fact that dinner is cooked and laundry is washed for me! It has been 4 and a half years since that was done on a consistent basis, and boy, if it isn't a welcome adjustment. My 9-year old host brother and I still enjoy playing soccer together, the cat and I are getting along well despite the fact that I'm no cat person, and my host dad is hilarious. When he's not at work or biking to or from there, he loves talking, giving me handshakes (I've gotten at least 10 since I've moved in), putting on funny accents (in both English and German), talking, reciting German poetry, watching South Park, playing online computer games with his son, talking, and making stupid typical "dad jokes." His teenaged kids seem tired of his act, but I love it!

Next, my political science classes at Freie Universität (FU) have officially begun. All my classes are in German, so I have quickly found out that I have to finalize what classes I want to take based not purely on the class topic but instead on how slowly and clearly (or not) the professor speaks. In only two classes have I had a rapidly speaking or mumbling professor, so for the other 5 courses I will be taking instead, I have made sure I have no problem with understanding the lecturer. Three months ago, though, I know I would have been pretty lost listening to any of these professors talk. I've made some major German progress!

Already I've ascertained that FU is an incredibly diverse place. Classes are generally pretty antisocial settings, and I haven't gotten the chance to meet too many people yet, but I already know students from England, Iceland, Canada, Japan, Belgium, Russia, Korea, France, Germany, and the Netherlands. It's a cool environment, and I think I'll enjoy it even more as time goes on.

And now, to the pictures:

I saw one of Berlin's major landmarks already on one of my first few days here. A young German guy named Alex, who is a "tutor" hired by my program to help me and the other program participants here in Berlin adjust, took us on a long walking tour of the city early on

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And now, before my blog finally becomes somewhat up-to-date by covering my experiences here in Berlin, I present my last excursion I took while in Cologne - we went to the Middle Rhine Valley!

Sure, it's not a household name, but this stretch of the Rhine River south of Cologne is absolutely gorgeous and full of picturesque castles and towns. It was unbelievable to see. The entire 65-km stretch of this part of the Rhine is on the UNESCO World Heritage list.

First up was visiting a castle called Marksburg, which is the only hilltop castle in this valley never to have been destroyed. It was probably founded in the 12th century and wound up changing hands many times as each family that came into its possession wound up selling it. 

Marksburg was in a town called Braubach, a tiny, sleepy, old town with many houses dating back to the 16th to 18th centuries. 

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One of my last trips while still in Cologne took us to the medieval town of Bad Münstereifel, population 19,000. As we expected, it was super small but full of historical buildings almost 1,000 years old. What we didn't expect was the torrential downpour for the first several hours while we were there, as evidenced by the fact that 2 out of the 3 of us were umbrella-less. But we fought through and I managed to snap these pictures.

Looking down the one main street in town

The wall was erected in the 13th and 14th centuries, and in certain spots one can now walk along it. Here is one of the surviving gates

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In my last 2 weeks in Cologne, I visited Dusseldorf twice - once with my friends on a Saturday, and once with my German class on a field trip. But as a Cologne resident, and given that there is a fairly serious rivalry between the two cities, I am obligated to not like Dusseldorf and everyone who comes from there. Since I've been told I'm an overly competitive person, I'll go ahead and embrace that and say - Dusseldorf sucks!

Actually, we had a hard time disliking Dusseldorf. It is certainly smaller than Cologne but has more green space, rich people, exclusive shops, and super nice cars. But it doesn't have a Cologne Cathedral! My friends would disagree, but I think Cologne is still the better city. But don't take my word for it - here are some photos!

First stop - the late Baroque St. Andreas Church, built in 1629

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I'm wrapping up my recap of our trip to Belgium now with shots from our last stop - Brussels! 

We slept overnight in a hostel in Antwerp and headed to Brussels bright and early, even though we only crashed at 2:30 am the previous night. But there was sightseeing to do!

Brussels is the capital and largest city of Belgium, with 1.2 million inhabitants. It's also the de facto capital of the European Union and the headquarters of NATO. It's pretty enormous, so we did what we could with the half-day that we had.

Brussels is far from the prettiest city we've ever seen. Outside of the city center, everything is fairly modern and dull. But the center square is absolutely gorgeous and more than makes up for that.

The Royal Palace, built in 1783. Although the monarchs don't actually live here, they still use it for official ceremonies

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Continuing coverage of our weekend trip to Belgium from September 13! That day, we arrived in Antwerp and wasted no time getting out and exploring. It was pretty easy to start sightseeing right away, after all - the main train station itself is a major attraction!

The station was built in 1905 in the Baroque style, and is now known as the finest example of railway architecture in Belgium

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By the end of this program, the weekend of September 12 - 14 will definitely still be one of my most memorable experiences. We embarked on a three-day, two-night, three-city tour of a country which none of us had previously experienced - Belgium! We can now definitely count ourselves as big fans of Belgium - the trip was a blast, and we saw an amazing amount of interesting sights. 

We left directly after language school class on Friday for Bruges. After a near-mishap where we somehow couldn't track down our train, we safely made it to our destination and trekked to our hostel (my first ever!). After checking in, we headed out to do a little nighttime sightseeing. 

One of the train stations on the way to Bruges looked pretty neat

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Sure, it's been 2 weeks since I've arrived here in Berlin. But I still have tales from Cologne to recount! We are almost completely up to date, though. Since university classes here in Berlin have not yet started, Berlin has been quite relaxing so far. Down time is just what I need to get this blog caught up! But I've made sure to do some sightseeing, play football (soccer) with my 9-year-old host brother, and check a few bars out.

I also rang in my 22nd birthday just a few days ago! My generous host family made me a cake, gave me champagne, bought me candy and snacks, got me a Berlin sightseeing book, and also bought 2 tickets for an ice hockey game next month!

On Monday, classes start up and life will get hectic again. So before that occurs, here's what happened in my last weeks in Cologne:

On September 11, we had a cultural training seminar in Bonn. We were pretty well prepared for the cultural differences thanks to the material we received while still in the U.S., so we didn't learn a great deal, but one part of the session was particularly satisfying: the German moderator asked us to anonymously write what about the German culture bugged us most. 

Don't get me wrong, I think we are all loving our time here and we highly appreciate the German culture. But it being a new country, there are still some things that are hard to get used to. I personally wrote that  I couldn't stand how commonplace smoking is and how hard free water is to come by when you're out and about. Some of the myriad other complaints our poor moderator read to us included how terrible customer service is, how annoying it is to pay for bathrooms, how strange it is that Germans stare so much, and how there's too much bread in the German diet.

Afterwards, we let loose by visiting a store dedicated to Haribo candies. Haribo is a wildly popular brand of German candy. You have probably seen their famous gummy bears on U.S. shelves. 

Unfortunately this life-size gummy bear wasn't edible

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Continuing my blitz towards the present! A month ago, on September 6, a few of us visited Münster for the weekend. Located two hours north of Cologne by train, Münster is a bike-centric university town of 300,000. 

Our stay in Münster was especially enjoyable since we had some German hosts for the weekend! I briefly mentioned that the previous weekend we had met a nice German lady named Annette on a train... and it turned out she had traveled to the U.S. through our very program 28 years earlier! She was generous enough to let us stay with her family for the weekend.

But first, we had to get there. This turned out to be much more challenging that anticipated. As I rode towards the main train station at 6:30 that morning, my tram driver stopped in the middle of the route and announced it was time for him to join the train driver strike. Train driver strike?! I had no idea this was coming, but once I checked my German news app, I found that train drivers were striking from 6 to 9 am that very morning. That's convenient. I frantically found a subway route (subway drivers weren't striking, only their above-ground brethren were campaigning for a wage increase) to the main train station and met my friends there, only to find our train to Münster was delayed by no fewer than 186 minutes thanks to the strike. After thinking on our feet and desperately searching for any train that was leaving Cologne in the general direction of Münster, we actually managed to escape just 40 minutes later than we originally planned.

But Münster was worth the trouble! It had a small town charm, but it was also historical and had plenty going on.

Münster's historical town hall (right) was built in the mid-1300s. Much like (literally) every single other historical building we saw in Münster, it was destroyed in WWII and subsequently rebuilt. On the left is the city wine house, where the city's wine was kept

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Class at Freie Universität doesn't start until October 13, so in between hanging out with my new host family and fellow program participants here in Berlin, now is my chance to try to get this blog up to speed! We'll see how far I get.

On September 4, Cologne residents were able to go into any municipal museum for free. As official Cologne residents, we were eligible! After language school class, we did museum day right - we headed out and hit four landmark museums.

Museum Ludwig hosts modern and contemporary art

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And now, to continue my recap of what I was up to on the weekend of August 30 by going over Sunday, August 31 - which will definitely be one of the most fun, action-packed, and memorable days I ever had on this program! After hearing about Burg Eltz from a friend and from trusty travel expert Rick Steves, we knew we had to visit.

Boy, were we in for a treat! 

We settled on meeting at the train station at 6:30 am. I quickly found out that no trains run at such an hour from my house to the main train station, so I had to sprint on my borrowed bike in 30 minutes to make it. After that obstacle, a friend of ours who promised to come didn't make it in time, so we missed the early train. 

With an hour to wait for the next train, there was plenty of time for pictures. But when isn't there time for pictures?

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