After some time away from Berlin in Frankfurt, Nuremberg, and Austria, it was time for me to return and take more shots of my home city, Berlin. One fine sunny Sunday, my host dad and I resolved we couldn't let the excellent weather go to waste and headed out to nearby Potsdam. Potsdam is the capital city of the German state that surrounds Berlin, Brandenburg, and plays host to a number of famous, picturesque castles.

We hopped in the car and drove out. That in itself was fairly unusual, since Berliners almost always use public transportation to get anywhere. Not everyone has a car, and those who do have a very hard time finding a parking place. But in any case, we arrived and walked around a few hours as I snapped away.

Just like Berlin, Potsdam also has a Brandenburg Gate, built in 1770

Read more »

I whizzed down the hill towards the town in the valley below, the wind rushing by me and the sun glinting off the snow. I couldn't believe it - I was skiing in the Alps! This month, February, has been full of exciting adventures in new places. Let's start at the beginning, when I went on a little ski vacation with my host family.

My host family's destination was the idyllic ski town of Saalbach-Hinterglemm, nestled high in the picturesque Austrian Alps.  They were nice enough to let me come along on their family vacation, stay in their apartment that they were renting, and give me the train tickets to Saalbach as a Christmas present. I'm going to be eternally grateful that I was able to go - the whole week was a ton of fun! I got some high-quality skiing time in and I was able to truly immerse myself in German, as  I was completely surrounded by German speakers day and night.

After waking up at 4 am and traveling for 12 straight hours, we made it to the twin towns of Saalbach-Hinterglemm, population 2,800. We got right down to business and hit the slopes the next morning. We had 200 km (124 miles) of slope to choose from, so we got real busy real fast trying to see it all.

I remembered how to ski from my first ski trip in California and I picked it up again no problem. I was thankful for that, since there were remarkably few beginners on the slopes - I got the feeling everyone there had basically grown up on skis. 

I was also probably the only American on the whole slope - not once did I hear anyone speak English with an American accent. I did, however, hear a lot of Austrians speaking "German" - and wow, they really have a strange accent. They sound like they are intentionally mispronouncing words to make them sound as funny as possible, so depending on how strong their accent is, I was at times  barely able to recognize it as German, much less understand it.

The weather was perfect when we were there! We almost always had clear blue skies, and the temperature never dropped below 14 degrees Fahrenheit even though we were 2000 meters (66000 feet) up. I just had to ski with my camera so I could record the crazy views of the Alps that we were getting.

On the train ride there, we had a transfer in Zell am See, a town on this beautiful lake

Read more »

January 24, 2015, 8:00 am: my first and last evening in Nuremberg was behind me, and the clock was ticking - I had just 7 hours in the town before my bus left, and there was a lot to see. It was time to do some efficient sightseeing, which just happens to be a specialty of mine.

Nuremberg is certainly associated with imperial history in the 14th to 16th centuries, but more recently, it also earned a designation of a less savory character - in the 1930s to 1940s, this city became extremely important to the National Socialist Party, or the Nazis. Nuremberg was especially appealing to Hitler and the Nazis due to the city's importance in the glorious time of the Holy Roman Empire and its position close to the center of Germany. In 1933, Hitler made Nuremberg the site of his yearly Nazi Party Rallies, which became huge celebrations of Nazi culture, ideology, and power that took place for the next six years. It was during these rallies where much of the infamous footage of Nazi supporters hailing the Führer were filmed. And at the 1935 rallies, the first laws stripping Jews of their citizenship were drafted. 

Hitler's architect, Albert Speer, had designed enormous buildings to host the Nazi Party Rallies, but a shortage of funds once war broke out meant many of these projects were either abandoned or only half completed. Today, these gigantic ruins from the Nazi era stand witness to the Nazi regime's deluded notion of grandeur, and they were my first stop that morning. 

The Nazi Party grounds occupy four square miles behind this building, a Nazi structure that now houses a museum. In a design laden with symbolic meaning, the modern metal and glass structural additions slice straight through the preexisting Nazi building

Read more »

After my seminar in Frankfurt, I wasn't ready to head back up north to Berlin just yet. Instead, I hopped on a bus for 3 hours and arrived in Nuremberg, which, with a population of 510,000, is Bavaria's second-biggest city (after Munich, of course). The city was around as early as 1050, and to this day it still has a charming Old Town with lots of impressive medieval architecture. 

Of course, much of the Old Town was destroyed in WWII, mainly during an Allied bombing on January 2, 1945, which flattened the city and killed 6,000 people. The destruction was amplified in April of the same year, when U.S. infantry troops fought block-by-block against German fighters to capture the city. When the dust settled, over 90% of the town had been destroyed, which makes it the only German city hit worse than Dresden. But today, there is little hint of that destructive past, and I found the town extremely interesting and fun to explore. I had less than 24 hours to spend there, so I got the sightseeing action started right away when I arrived and photographed late into the night.

Ninety percent, or three miles, of Nuremberg's medieval city walls still stand. You can also still see the city's old moat (I am standing above it, on street level, and the grass and path are in the moat), which was never filled

Read more »

Last month, I had to get away from it all in Berlin and thus headed south to Frankfurt! No, I really did have to - my exchange program's mid-year seminar was on the agenda, and all 75 American participants were required to train into Frankfurt so we could discuss our experiences and reflect on the past half-year. While a week of discussions and lectures may not sound like a lot of fun, it was actually a great experience and I was happy I could reconnect and catch up with all my other American friends in the program.

The first few days were a whirlwind, and it all started with the downright depressing news I shared in my last post. But being able to spend some time during our first few nights together in a beer hall and Irish pub picked our spirits right back up. On the business side of things, during the daytime, we heard more and more about each other's experiences. We rated our current overall mood, and I'm happy to report that everyone rated themselves either happy or (like me) very happy - we had no neutral or negative ratings! It was good to see my compatriots are enjoying Germany like I am. I also learned some interesting tidbits about what some other program participants are going through:

• One participant has had to move a total of four times already, due to being shuffled between temporary housing arrangements (as a reminder, I have moved once)
• One participant lives in a host family that consists of eight children, two parents, and two nannies
• One participant shares an apartment with a 55-year-old and a 65-year-old retiree. Both roommates are German and have an entire large drawer in the kitchen dedicated full-time to the storage of potatoes, a staple of the German diet
• One participant's host family, as it turns out, are members of the radical right-wing, anti-Islamic PEGIDA movement that has been making negative headlines lately and whose ideas are almost universally deplored throughout the country as being intolerant and racist. Oops.

These, of course, were just the interesting anomalies. Almost every participant, including me of course, has not had to deal with any such challenges or unique living situations. 

Despite the goings-on at the seminar, I still managed to squeeze in a tiny bit of picture-taking, of course.

It was my second time walking around Frankfurt's Old Town. The first was way back in August

Read more »