Potsdam/Berlin

This weekend I took myself away for a little trip to see some more of Germany. On Saturday I got up (very very early, sadly) and took the train to Potsdam. As far as I can understand, Potsdam is where the kings used to hang out in their spare time, so they built a lot of palaces and gardens there, which I looked at. I'd never been to visit any castles before, so it was an experience. There was a lot of gilded stuff, and a lot of large statues of people, and a lot of fountains in the gardens. I went into the palace called sanssouci (which means without cares, apparently) and it was very nice. Very fancy. It all seems very bizarre to me that people took all this time and energy to build all these fancy fancy places. I mean, there were hundreds of those statues and each of them must have taken a really long time. The town of Potsdam was really cute, but clearly a tourist city. There was a lot of shopping, and it was nice because it was all outdoors and everyone was out and about enjoying the nice weather (before the huge rainstorm that night). There's also an area called the dutch quarter that was apparently built to house dutch workers, and it's all identical red brick houses, that now have shops in them. That was cute too.

That night I went to Berlin and immediately loved it. Unfortunately as soon as I got to my hostel it started POURING, so I didn't do much that night besides hang out in the bar downstairs in my hostel with some people who were sharing my room. The next day I did a walking tour of Berlin and saw a lot of things. Berlin is weird because they keep destroying important things, and then occasionally rebuilding them, and then sometimes destroying them again. History keeps being rewritten there, and it's weird. But on my walking tour I really learned a lot about the history and the war and so on. I'm glad I went on it because otherwise I wouldn't have had any idea what I was looking at. I did see a piece of the Berlin Wall, and also the site of the book burning, museum island, a bunch of churches, the Brandenburg Gate, the site of Hitler's bunker, Checkpoint Charlie, Reichstag Dome, the memorial to the Jewish victims of the Holocaust (which at first I didn't like but then my tour group talked about it a bit and I changed my mind, but it is weird), and bunch of other stuff. After the tour I walked around more and went back to a few of the things I wanted to see again, and then unfortunately it started POURING again, and anyway I had to catch my train back to Cottbus, so that was the end of my weekend. I really really liked Berlin and would really like to go back and get to know it from the non-historical perspective. We'll see how it goes.

PS. I didn't know what a bunch of the things I listed from Berlin were until I went there, so if you are like me and curious feel free to ask lol.
PPS. I haven't gotten a new camera since I broke mine in Australia, so sadly I have no pictures for you, but hopefully I'll get one soonish to improve future blog entries.

Abrupt Change of Topic: Germany?!

Well I hadn't decided whether or not I wanted to blog about this particular adventure, but today I decided that 6 months from now I will probably regret it if I haven't written anything about it. I am presently in Germany (Cottbus, approx 2-3 hours South and kind of East of Berlin) for an internship that will last from May15 to Jul 16. I got here about 2 and a half weeks ago, and as I said I am here until Jul16. I won some kind of scholarship that pays me to come to Germany (except the plane ticket) and learn some stuff about science by helping out a phd student in a lab. I am working in a soil physics lab, learning about things like water retention curves and hydraulic conductivity. My phd student person is super nice and is called Annika. Another key piece of information here is that I do not by any means speak German. Ok, here we go:

Hallo from Germany!! Cottbus is a nice city in east germany. The architecture at the university (BTU) is super modern and weird, it's all glass and metal and concrete. Lots of gray. Also, the library, it has to be said, is truly horrendous. If you were looking at it from above it would look like an amoeba or something, and its just seven stories straight up in this weird shape, all glass with giant letters, and the inside is enthusiastically decorated in hot pink and lime green. The main feature is a giant spiral staircase and mysterious chain link fences. I'm not sure I understand art. But anyway. The rest of Cottbus is very cute with european-looking buildings and a river (Spree, it's called). Apparently there's a big foresty thing nearby, that I am going to visit at some point I hope. It's not a super exciting city though, it has to be said, so I'm kind of bored as I don't really know people at all. I do know people at work though, and they are very nice and I enjoy going every day. Which is good, because I have to lol. There's an unusual amount of graffiti around - I don't know why or if that's typical. People bike a lot here (as you probably have heard), and do in fact eat a lot of sausage. They also eat something mysteriously white and gooey looking with potatoes. It looks frankly gross. Other things I have noticed since I got here:

1. older german women have a strange tendency to dye their hair a weird shade of very dark red
2. pretty much all male germans have really nice shoes
3. most of the german people i have met have been super friendly and helpful if you talk to them or clearly need help (like when i asked a stranger if he could please translate the cooking directions on my frozen peas), but they mostly don't smile as readily as americans, which sometimes makes me feel like i'm in trouble or something because everyone looks so serious.
4. people biking have these nifty yellow things to keep their pants legs away from their pedals, that are like slap bracelets for their legs
5. putting dogs on leashes when you take them out and about is apparently not such a big deal, and they can follow you onto public transportation it seems. and the dogs never run away or get distracted. interesting.

i think that is enough for now. i am off to explore Potsdam and Berlin this weekend, and will tell you about that when i get back. ciaociao. er...tschüss!

Finals/Being Back

Well today is Thursday and I got home from Australia on Saturday night. So I thought I would put a little post about the end of the semester and the return-home experience. The end of the semester passed fairly uneventfully in a haze of studying and saying goodbye and so on. It is weird to think that I might never see my friends again, or at least for a really long time, and same for Australia in general. However, there is really not much to report from that last week, except for that I had fun and am sad to be gone.

My flight was (thankfully) uneventful, if almost unbearably long. The second leg from LAX to JFK was delayed a bit due to rampaging storms in New York, but it wasn't too bad and apparently I missed some even bigger scarier storms right after I left Brisbane, so all is well. My dad picked me up and when we got home I had good food which was excellent. The next few days I unpacked and shopped and was really really jetlagged. I am still a bit jetlagged now but I think I am starting to get over it. Hopefully it doesn't last too much longer it's really inconvenient getting super-sleepy at weird times of day. As for reverse culture shock, when I first got back it was kind of weird - like things that were different stuck out at me (like the way the moon looks and the ketchup saying ketchup instead of tomato sauce), and I kept going to do things I had to do in Australia but not here, like switch my outlets on and off. But I pretty much got over it after about a day. It wasn't that hard of a transition I guess because this is where I lived my whole life, haha. Now I am in DC back at AU for a couple of days, which I am really excited about and am enjoying and am happy to see everyone. Michael came as a surprise and that was exciting.

So I guess this will be the end of my blog because I am back from Australia. I feel like I should put down some profound final thoughts, but I'm not really a profound kind of person. Maybe I will say this: there is a lot of talk in Australia about whether or not their culture is being swallowed up by our culture. I mean, they watch our TV and our movies and listen to our music, etc etc. And I have to say, once I stopped thinking about how convenient the quality coverage of the American election was, I started thinking that really it was kind of weird. I mean, how much do we know about Australian politics? But really, I'm pretty sure Australian culture still exists in full force. If you go there from here you can just tell. Even though they have a lot of our stuff it isn't like little America over there. At least, I don't think so. Maybe people can comment on the influence of American culture in the countries that they are in. It would be interesting.

Okay that is all.

Moreton/Gold Coast/Exams

My first exam is tomorrow, so I have been studying pretty much constantly for a few days now. However, UQ allows a whole week for studying that I put to much better use traveling about. The first weekend of SWOTVAC (read: study week) I went to Moreton Island, and that was really fun. We went sandboarding (like sledding, but on sand), and I got to climb on some giant sand cliffs, and the beaches were beautiful, and we did a bit of snorkeling also. It was an overnight trip, so we camped out that night and I went out to the beach and looked at all the stars. There were many. It was a nice weekend.

Later in the week I went to the Gold Coast for a night with Kailey and Kimberly, and Lauren was with us for a little while also. We stayed in Surfer's Paradise and it was really nice. The Gold Coast is basically your standard touristy city, but the beach that it is on is amazing. It's just huge, with white sand and nice waves. I enjoyed it immensely, even though I am now a teeny bit sunburned. One other downside is that the skyscrapers make shadows in the beach as soon as the sun starts going down. Unfortunate. In the night we went to this thing called Infinity, which was also pretty cool. It was like a maze of different rooms that was all based around lights and lasers and mirrors to make all kinds of weird illusions. It was really trippy and really fun. We explored some other aspects of the city too, but the beach was definitely the best part.

You may be interested to know that the Women's College is now decorated for Christmas, and we had Christmas dinner the other day (on Halloween, oddly enough). At first I thought I was really weirded out by all the Christmas stuff just because it was so early (I never realized how important Halloween and Thanksgiving were in limiting the length of the Christmas season). However, now I realize it's especially weird because it is so hot out. It is pretty much summer here. I can't quite believe I will be home in two weeks, or that it will be cold when I get there.

I have two things to say in closing: one is to ask Jenelle's Mom, who I know occasionally reads my blog, where she gets her secret American supply of TimTams from?

The second is to tell everyone to make sure they VOTE on Tuesday!!!!!!!!

PS

PS I got to hold a baby wombat today! hurray!!!

Halloween

I've been getting this question a lot lately, so I thought I would put it in here. The question is: what do Australians do for halloween?

Basically, the Aussies don't do halloween as kids, its not a part of their culture or anything. But they are aware of it as something the Americans do, and they appreciate the excuse to put on costumes and go to a party. So halloween parties are around among people our age, although they aren't nearly as common as in the US. Also costumes are a bit harder to come by and substantially more expensive. As a final note, the lack of 'halloween' as a holiday means that the halloween party doesn't follow strict guidelines regarding date. I have seen three happen since I got here, spread out over the last few months. So there you go.

In case you are interested, I myself will be going to a halloween party thrown by one of my Canadian friends (Canadians do celebrate halloween, in case you're wondering). She's going pretty all out, and I'm pretty excited. I'll let you know how it goes.

Spring Break

Hi peopleee

Sorry for the lack of post-spring break update, I was kind of hoping to put pictures up along with the entry, so I was waiting to see if I could get my camera fixed (it broke on the second to last day of the trip), but as that is not looking like it is going to happen any time soon I thought I would go ahead and update anyway.

I had an AWESOME time. I started in Sydney, where I spent the day by myself hitting up the major tourist attractions and just generally exploring and getting a feel for the city. Parts of it reminded me a lot of New York City, which is a pretty high compliment in my book. Also, the water was actually blue, which I was totally surprised by (I was expecting that brownishgrey color that is way more typical of high-traffic water). Possibly my favorite part of Sydney was at busy intersections, where it said on the ground "LOOK RIGHT" with an arrow pointing right, for poor people like me who get confused with the traffic coming from the other direction. It was quite funny. I also met a couple of very nice people at my hostel and had some fun with them too.

The next day I departed on a three day bus trip (during which we spent over 20 hours inside of a bus...ugh) that was really fun. Along the way we stopped in a lot of really small towns for bathroom/snack breaks, and most of the way we avoided the big highways and took back roads, so I feel like I saw a lot of Australia this way. Or at least, a lot of the area between Sydney and Melbourne, which is a really really big area, but Australia is really, really, really big. Anyway, we started off going to Canberra (the capital of Australia), which is very pretty and quiet and has lots of trees. Honestly, though, it isn't that interesting of a city lol. I have a picture of Parliament House that I will share with you one of these days. Then that night we went to Jindabyne, which is a little town up in the Snowy Mountains, and could rent stuff for going up into the mountains the next day (ie ski stuff, sleds, or bikes). There wasn't going to be much snow, so most people opted for biking or hiking rather than the skiing. I went biking, and right after we got our bikes we rode around the lake by our accomodation, which was nice. The biking the next day was really really nice (despite the fact that it was WINDY and quite uphill). The views were gorgeous. I swear I have nice pictures lol. And at the top we got to play in the snow.

Sometime in early afternoon we were off again, going down to the coast along a very pretty road. So we had a morning in the mountains, and that night we had a fire on the beach. It was really fun, and there were a lot of stars - I saw the southern cross! (I think). So that night was basically spent hanging out down on the beach, and then the next day we were off AGAIN to go to the southern most point in continental Australia for a hike around some really big rocks (big rocks are my FAVORITE). At this point my camera was already broken, which was disappointing, but I am hoping to acquire some pictures from facebook friends one of these days. Then it started raining while we were eating lunch on the beach, so we were off again to Melbourne, which was where the trip ended.

I spent my night in Melbourne at a bar with some other people from the trip, and the next day the four of us who were staying in the city just went around and explored Melbourne. Okay, people don't really talk about Melbourne much outside of Australia, but it is a seriously cool city. If you are going to be around this end of the earth anytime soon, make sure you hit that up. Its just a really nice city, with some really cool architecture, and some really nice areas along the river, and a really big market, and some other things. I had a really great day there and wish I could have stayed longer.

Overall I had a great break, and met a lot of really cool people, and am utterly exasperated that I have no pictures to share with you lol.

Sorry that was so long.

At this point I have two weeks of classes left, then a week off, then it is finals time, and then I leave. I am going to Moreton Island in approx 10 days, and am hoping to get some other traveling wedged in there too before I leave. Yay.

Send me emails, I would love to hear some news from home : )