Dresden, home to an impressive Baroque- and Rococo-style historical city center and Germany's oldest Christmas market, was our destination on December 7! I headed south for two hours on a bus with some international students from my university and met up with another American participating in my program who lives in Dresden. She was nice enough to show us around the many sights her new city has to offer.

Anyone who's read Kurt Vonnegut's Slaughterhouse Five knows that Dresden was totally and completely flattened in 1945 by British and U.S. bombs, which resulted in the deaths of over 20,000 people. Thankfully, Dresden meticulously rebuilt all of its cultural wonders and beautiful buildings that have earned it the nickname "Florence of the North."

Just a sample of Dresden's city center. On the left, the Dresden Cathedral; on the right, the Dresden Castle

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Merry Christmas! Or Frohe Weinachten, as we say in Germany! 

Hopefully you had an enjoyable holiday season. It's times like this during which I am exceptionally grateful that I am living with my great German hosts. Being a part of their family and participating in their traditions was a lot of fun!

As I mentioned last time, Christmas Eve (also called Heilige Abend, or Holy Evening) is so important that it is considered part of Christmas here in Germany. Our Christmas Eve celebrations started with a big fancy dinner, with every member of the family dressing up. My host Dad even wore a suit! The food was the most typical German meal you could imagine - potatoes, butter sauce, pork, sauerkraut, and yes, wurst. Oh, and some beer. 

In Germany, the most highly anticipated moment of the holiday season also takes place on Christmas Eve - the unwrapping of presents! I got a great haul of the gifts from every one of the other 5 members of my host family, including music, a movie, a book, and chocolate. They enjoyed the gifts I gave them, which made me happy since I had specifically tried getting a gift specifically tailored to their interests. In that regard I did best with my little host brother's gift. He's a soccer fanatic, so I bought him a DVD of highlights from the 2014 FIFA World Cup (which Germany won, remember). He was so excited that he popped it in the DVD player and started playing it before everyone else had even unwrapped all their gifts!

The 4 Advents (Sundays) before Christmas are pretty important to every German family. They light up 1 of 4 red candles, which are generally decoratively arranged in a wreath, on each of the Sundays. When Christmas rolls around, they are all burning bright

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Happy Christmas Eve! Actually, in Germany, Christmas Eve is considered part of Christmas. So it's already Christmas here, and Christmas lasts not one but two days! I can get on board with that. 

I got up very early today to talk to my family back home, so before I join my host family here for festivities, I have some time to take a look back to December 6. On that day, my Kulturelle Orientierung in Berlin university course had another excursion, this time to the Kurfürstendamm (Ku'damm) area of Berlin. Since Berlin was split in two for nearly 30 years, two major city centers developed and are still important areas to this day. In East Berlin, Alexanderplatz emerged as the main square. That is where Berlin's famous TV tower is located. In West Berlin, the Ku'damm area became the busiest and most bustling part of town. 

That day, we didn't start off in Ku'damm - that would just be way too much excitement all at once. We met in the surrounding area, which once was a haven for novelists, artists, and homosexuals (many of the homosexuals had fled persecution in the U.S., as they were treated better in Germany). But then came the Nazis, so the artists fled the country and the homosexuals were persecuted.

This theater, the Neues Schauspielhaus, was built in the early 1900s and was the only building in its vicinity not to have been completely destroyed during WWII.  In 1930, a film version of the anti-war novel All Quiet on the Western Front premiered here. Since the film did not fit with the Nazi ideology, Goebbels ordered the Sturmabteilung (or SA, then the Nazi Party's paramilitary wing) to release mice and plant stink bombs in the theater the night of the screening. That successfully scuttled the premier

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Happy Holidays! This festive time of year means, above all, one very important thing here in Germany. CHRISTMAS MARKETS! Germany's famous Weinachtsmärkte are a sight to behold, offering everything from traditional German food to warm wool caps to candle holders to wooden Christmas ornaments. The variety of goods available at every market is quite astounding. And there is a huge variety of the markets themselves as well - in Berlin alone there are dozens of these festive places of holiday-related commerce sprinkled throughout the city. 

I got an early start and went to my first German Christmas market on November 30. It was located in Spandau and has turned out to be my favorite market in Berlin.

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As you might have guessed from the radio silence on this blog, the last few weeks have been - you guessed it - super busy, once again! 

A lot of my time has been dedicated to getting ready for Christmas. In one giant 5-hour shopping spree, I knocked out gift-buying for my entire 5-person host family. They have treated me super well, so I made sure to get them relevant and fun gifts. I know Christmas is more about giving than receiving, but I'm curious what German presents are in store for me! That same shopping trip I also got my teenage host brother an extra gift, as he, much like my younger host brother and my host mom, also has a December birthday. I headed to a Hollister store to make that purchase, since Hollister tries to emulate the California lifestyle.  They even had videos of Huntington Beach, California playing inside the store. Seeing a beach that was just a 25 minute drive from home sweet home in Lake Forest was fun, but I was not in much of a beach-y mood since it was 40 degrees outside.

I also got into the holiday spirit by going to yet another Christmas market in Berlin, this time with Greek friends. Pictures to come, eventually! And on Sunday, December 14, some of my fellow participants here in Berlin and I were invited to a holiday party put on by a German alumnus of our program. He was nice enough to invite us into his home and celebrate the third advent with his friends and colleagues, which gave us a great opportunity to meet and use our now-considerable German skills on some locals. 


I do have some bad news. My young, extraordinarily promising handball career has been, as of now, cut short. Until now, remember, I had been taking handball courses through my university. But, effective immediately, all of my handball sessions are canceled because Freie Universität's sport hall is being used as a shelter for some of the thousands of refugees currently pouring into Germany each year from countries like Serbia, Syria, Eritrea, and Afghanistan. The refugee problem is a huge and contentious issue in Germany right now, particularly because Germany is obligated (due to EU policies) to provide these refugees with support, and most refugees specifically come to Germany rather than less economically prosperous countries like Italy or Greece. This, of course, makes it close to impossible for Germany to adequately house all of the refugees, so sometimes extreme measures have to be taken. One such measure, as we can see, is taking over public universities' gym facilities to use as shelter facilities. Oh, well. Hopefully I find another club or class to which I can bring my handball talents. 

And finally, just like American universities, Freie Universität is on winter break. That means lots of time to travel! I will be traveling to both Munich and Vilnius in the next 2 weeks, and I can hardly wait. I also just hitched a ride with my American friend Tony's host family to Prague for three days. Yes, I just went to Prague again. But the ride, hotel, and breakfast were free thanks to Tony's generous host family, and Prague is a very cheap city, so I had to go! I had an awesome time and saw plenty of new things. So even more photos from Prague are coming up.

But back to the rest of the photos from our trip in mid-November. We dedicated our last morning there to exploring Prague's castle, which was built in the 9th century and rebuilt in the 14th and 15th centuries. Today, it's the seat of the President of the Czech Republic and is the historical and political center of both the city and state. The castle sits high on a hill above Prague and is the largest ancient castle in the WORLD. Once we saw how big the castle's campus is, we were hardly surprised that it holds such a title. 

Looking back on the city as we climbed up to the castle

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I'm back with more fascinating facts and photos from Prague, all gathered when we visited the weekend of November 16. As I already mentioned in my last post, we had a ton of fun and really enjoyed getting to know this fascinating city. 

We're not the only ones who find Prague interesting - in 1992, the entire historical core of the city was added to the UNESCO World Cultural and Natural Heritage Register. The city is also known as one of the world's most beautiful, and its many historical buildings have lent it the nickname "city of a hundred spires." And over 1,100,000 people call it home. All of this comes in a very inexpensive package - the Czech currency, the crown, is currently at 22 crowns to 1 American dollar. That means a half liter of beer is usually 2 dollars or less, and a full-fledged meal in a restaurant is less than 10 dollars. My pictures look like a million bucks, though. Let's see! 

Actually, we are going to take a quick break from Prague, because that's what we did! We, and by that I mean "I", somehow managed to ingeniously decipher the Czech train system. As a result, we were able to make it all the way out to a town called Kutná Hora. This place is about an hour outside of Prague and plays host to a VERY unique and famous landmark - the Sedlec Ossuary. 

This particular ossuary (an ossuary, for the uninformed, is a site serving as the final resting place of skeletal remains) is in the basement of the Church of All Saints, which was built in the late 1300s. The church was built on the plot of a cemetery that had been active since 1142. By the end of the 1400s, there were 40,000 dead people buried in said cemetery surrounding the church! At that point, the cemetery was greatly reduced and thousands of bones were moved into the ossuary beneath the church. In the 15th century, legend has it, a blind monk arranged the countless bones and skulls into the pyramids and shapes one can see today. After he completed his work, he got his eyesight back. I'm a bit skeptical of the legend, considering how meticulously the bones are all placed. But one thing is for sure - the bones didn't arrange themselves, so someone was crazy enough to mess with 40,000 people's skeletal remains in the 1400s. The results:

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The weekend of November 16 (yes, a whole month ago), some fellow Americans and I visited the Czech Republic and checked Prague off the bucket list!  It was a lot of fun and we learned quite a bit about the country and its culture.

But first, a few updates. Life has been pretty normal, with university classes progressing as usual and the internship application process taking up a lot of my time. Since nothing too crazy outside of hanging out a lot with new friends has happened recently, I'll just relate some fun facts I learned in the last week or two. 

Anyone who has been to Europe probably remembers that public bathrooms are never free. But sometimes, bathrooms in restaurants and stores are free - as they should be, in my opinion, since I am already a paying customer. Well, this is not a universal attitude in Europe, it would seem. Twice over the past week I've experienced having to pay for a bathroom inside a store or restaurant at which I was already a paying customer! So frustrating. And how, you ask, does the store or restaurant ensure that you actually pay the 50 cents (63 American cents) to use the restroom? Simple - they HIRE a bathroom attendant who does nothing but stand around and make sure you pay the fee to use the bathroom! How dumb is that? Here's a concept - stop paying a useless bathroom attendant, and instead make the bathrooms free. Problem solved. I'm destined for a great business career.

Next, guess how much it costs to get a driver's license here in Germany? Over 1,200 euros! No wonder hardly anyone drives. Gas, of course, is also horrendously expensive: here it is about 3 times the prices in the U.S.

Next, select Germans (namely, my tandem partner and her friend) find the pronunciation of the word "orangutan" in English highly amusing. I always love hearing foreigners' perspective on English. You never really know what words in your mother tongue sound funny or are hard to pronounce.

And finally, several Germans I have met who have studied in the U.S. have had some interesting encounters with clueless Americans. Please don't be like the Americans in the following examples! Exhibit A: a few years ago, my tandem partner's friend studying in California had a birthday. His American host family baked him a cake and adorned it with... a swastika. They didn't even mean any harm by it, they were just completely ignorant of the meaning and ugly history behind the symbol. C'mon, guys. (If you had any doubt, any public display of support for Nazism here in Germany can get you arrested.) Exhibit B: Another German who studied at a high school in Wisconsin was asked some interesting questions. Among them: "What language do you speak?" Really? She's from GERMANY. Furthermore, she was also asked "Do you speak European?" Yikes. 

Anyway, back to the Prague trip. The Czech Republic is one Germany's 9 neighbors. Prague, the capital, was only a 5 and a half hour bus ride from Berlin, but the city and culture are radically different. We'll get to the cultural differences in my next post. First, let's look at some pretty pictures. Much of the city was not destroyed during WWII, so lots of fascinating original architecture remains.

We arrived pretty late in the day and dinner took forever, but that didn't stop me from getting some nighttime shots.

The Old Town Hall, founded in 1338 but rebuilt in the Gothic style in 1470. The eastern wing (the right side) of this building was destroyed in WWII and has not been rebuilt. On the left side, there's a famous astronomical clock we'll get a closer look at later

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Finally, the big climax - day three of the Lichtgrenze, when all the balloons were released into the sky! Day three was Sunday, November 9, which was 25 years to the day that the Peaceful Revolution took down the Berlin Wall, as I previously described here. The special day was marked in Berlin by releasing all of the thousands of balloons along the Lichtgrenze art project, followed by a big concert at the Brandenburg Gate. 

The whole city was out to see the spectacle - the streets were packed! So we were unable to get the Brandenburg Gate since the big square in front of it was more than filled to capacity. We instead stood on top of a cement barrier at Potsdamer Platz, which is just a block or two down from the gate, and got a nice view of the action there. 

The event started at 7 pm with speeches from Angela Merkel and Berlin's mayor (the one I met!), and 15 minutes later, starting at the Brandenburg gate, the balloons were gradually let free. I have mentioned (and I will elaborate upon this in later posts) that the Germans are absolutely in love with protecting the environment. If you knew this, you were probably asking, like me, why are the Germans okay with releasing thousands of balloons in the sky, which will ultimately result in them floating off and becoming litter? Well, have no fear - I learned the balloons are biodegradable and will disintegrate in a fairly short period of time. Leave it to the Germans.

After the usual afternoon coffee and cake that Sunday (Germans love afternoon coffee and cake, especially on the weekend), I headed out with a few friends to take it all in. Here's what it all looked like that special night:

The view we eventually secured for ourselves. I zoomed in a bit to take this picture, but from our spot we could clearly see the center of it all - the Brandenburg gate! Also, note the throngs of people

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It's already December, and holiday season is in full swing! That is particularly impossible to miss here in Germany given the innumerable outdoor Weinachtsmärkte (Christmas markets) across the country. I visited one, my first, just this past Sunday! It was huge, amazing, and also bitterly cold. 

But, as is typical with me, I still have photos to post from a month ago. I am on day 2 of 3 of the Lichtgrenze (border of light) celebration, a 3-night art project that marked the 25th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall. On Day 1, I walked along the former border in the center of town and coincidentally met Berlin's mayor. This time, the night of Saturday, November 8, I joined up with some friends and started at the southern tip of the Lichtgrenze and walked a few hours until we passed Checkpoint Charlie and almost hit the center of town. 

The Oberbaumbrücke was the southern end of the Lichtgrenze art project, though of course the actual wall stretched way farther south and wrapped around the actual edge of the city

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