Berlin

Finally have Internet back! After 4 days! I did not realize just how much I used it until it was completely and utterly gone. Anyways, here is the blog about last week as promised!

Last Thursday, Kyle and I headed for the train station at seven in the morning to get reservations for spots on the train to Paris, then to Berlin. Unfortunately, all the spots on the TGV, the high-speed train, were full. The women said that there was a region train leaving in three minutes though. So off we went, running through the station to platform G. We arrived just as a train that said Paris on the side was pulling out. Fortunately for us though, when we asked the worker on the platform, he pointed at the screen that said platform J. We then ran over to the right platform and jumped on the train as the doors were closing. I was then felt to contemplate that fact that I definitely need to work on my French alphabet. The rest of the traveling was pretty straight-forward: switch stations, wait, get on a train, switch trains, and sleep. After 14 hours of traveling, we were in Berlin. We then had to find our hostel. You would think that this would be easy, but when your hostel is a boat (more on that later), it gets more difficult. Two hours and a couple wrong turns later we found our boat though. Yay!

            The next morning, we set out to explore the town. We decided that the best way to get a lay of the land would be from the air, 206 meters in the air to be exact. 360° Berlin was a great way to see the city. It was cool to see the scale of all of the different buildings that we would be seeing later in our trip. After returning to the surface, Kyle and I headed for the mall. Some may consider this blasphemous, but I actually like German fashion better than French fashion. It has managed to be both pretty and practical. It seems that French articles are made to tailor to only one of those two points. The result is clothing that is either black and boring or extremely extravagant. While we didn’t make any large purchases, we were both able to find NorthFace gloves that were 25% off, another US to European outlet adapter (in the 4-story electronics store), and Kyle was able to find a pair of nice shoes for 20 euros. That’s another thing that I like about shopping in Europe. January is sale month. The goal is to get rid of all of the old stuff to make room for the spring stuff. Almost every store in the mall was having a sale, all at the same time. It was brilliant! And this lasts for a whole month!

            Saturday was quite different. We left the hostel with our backpacks in tow since we would be taking the night train back to France. Thank goodness I packed light! Anyways, Kyle and I, and our new friend Peter, who had arrived at the hostel over the night, headed out for a free tour of the city. Peter introduced us to this new company called New Europe Tours. None of the tour guides are salaried and there is no up front cost for the tours. Instead, at the end of the tour, you are asked to give what you think is correct for the quality of the tour you received. We ended up missing the first tour due to construction on the SBAN lines in Berlin. That gave us time to check out the Reichstag (Parliament building) and the Brandenburg Gate though. In between the two structures, we came across something that was interesting in its own right, a huge tent marked Mercedes-Benz Fashion Week. After the boys came to the conclusion that there was no way that they were going to be able to get in to see the models, we moved on.

            After having lunch, we were hopping onto the subway to get back to the Brandenburg Gate, the starting place of the next tour, when two huge German Police came over and said, “OUT!” Nothing else, just OUT. It was quite the experience. We thought maybe something serious was going on, but no, they were just switching out the trains, and we were still able to get to our destination on time. Now for the tour, it was 3 hours of snow, rain, sleet, and amazing architecture and history. I had gone to Berlin expecting to find a city trying to cover up its past, instead I found a city that had accepted its past and embracing its future. One of the most amazing places was actually parking lot. Under this parking lot was Hitler’s bunker. There was no sign, no plaque, no museum, just cars. Instead, two blocks away, there was a whole block memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe. It sent quite a message. Another interesting point was the university. Students from this university had participated in the burning of books early in the days of Hitler. Therefore, in front of the school, there was a plaque that read, “Those who burn books will eventually burn people.” as well as a glass frame through which you could look down into a room with completely empty bookshelves.

     The last thing that we did before heading out of town was going to a little pub by Alexanderplatz. They had German beer on tap at the individual tables. There was a digital selection center the told you how many milliliters/liters of beer were on your tab.       We also took advantage of the opportunity to try schnitzel. It was quite delicious. After that, we said goodbye to Peter and headed for the train station. As a last grasp at German culture, we grabbed a strudel for the overnight train back to Paris. 

IKEA!

Since I last wrote, a lot has happened, enough that I think that two blog posts are justified. Anyways, on monday, Kyle and I went out to lunch with our new friend Chelsea. We went to a little cafe just south of the city center. We all got some croque. Chelsea and I got the croque monsieur and Kyle got the madame. For those of you that know enough French to think that seems backwards, the croque monsieur is just a open faced ham and cheese sandwich. The madame is that same thing with a sunny side up egg on top. They were absolutely delicious.

After that, Kyle and I went to the laundry mat. Oh my goodness, doing laundry is expensive here! A washing machine that held 8 kg of clothing was 4 euros. Drying was a little cheaper at 2 euros for 22 minutes. We did have a casualty though. One of Kyle's Underarmour socks was melted to a crisp (no joke: it really was crispy).

Tuesday, Kyle and I met up with Chelsea again, this time to go to IKEA. Yep, I have an Ikea in my town. It is even more amazing than I imagined it would be. The entire 1st floor (that happens to be the first floor up, not the ground floor) is set up like a showroom while the base floor is actual individual articles to buy. Kyle and I ended up getting a rug, a trashcan, a dish towel and another blanket.  Getting out of the center of town to the Ikea was pretty fun too. It was our first time on one of the paid bus lines. It was only a euro for a 1 trip ticket. Not too bad!

And that's that.

Orientation over!

10 days after arriving in France and orientation is finally over! Now I have a little time to share the experiences that have taken place so far with all of you.

On January 5, Kyle and I arrived at Charles de Gaulle Airport. At this point we had already been traveling for over 12 hours. Little did we know, that was the easy part. After getting our bags, we headed outside to find the AirFrance bus that we could take to Gare de Lyon ("gare" means train station for those of you non-francophones). One problem though, the teller machine only took credit cards with smart chips. Luckily, we were able to purchase our tickets on the bus. Next stop, la gare. At the station, we jumped through a few hoops and were able to get 2 tickets to Dijon. Interestingly enough, that was the easy part. Getting a phone card to call our landlord was much harder. We got it done though, and an hour latter, we were on the way to Dijon. (Yay!) Upon arriving, we got a taxi to Residence Imagine and got apartment stuff set up with the landlord. We finished around 6 rounding out the total travel time at right about 24 hours. No wonder we were dead asleep by 9!

The next few days consisted of exploring the town and the markets that went with it. I have fallen in love with the baguettes from around the corner, and when I say around the corner, I mean literally half a block and on the other side of the corner. :) The food here is actually cheap, given that you purchase whole foods. Processed food is quite a bit more expensive.

The Wednesday after we arrived, orientation started. Pretty basic orientation type stuff: learning about how classes will work, setting up a french bank account (YAY for cards with smart chips!), and almost falling asleep during a presentation. The only part of it that was unexpected were the events planned for us by the Melting Potes ( the school's international organization). Wednesday night was pretty normal, just went out to eat, but Thursday, wow! First, there was a small party at the school where we met our Buddies (french student mentor). My buddy's name is Adrien Romeo Teissedre, and he is the only French guy that I have ever seen that has red hair! Anyways, he seems pretty cool. After that we went to a club to hangout. We were all getting drinks so Kyle, Chelsea (one of the other Americans. She is from Wisconsin), and I got Apple juice with vodka. In reality, it was more like Vodka with a little apple juice. Wow, it was strong. Not quite what I expected to be served at a business school club outing.

The last point of interest of orientation was the tour of the Wine Route yesterday. We all went into it expecting it to be a wine-tasting trip. In fact, it was just a tour of the area. Oh well. It was a beautiful trip. Unfortunately, my camera was left in my dresser drawer. Kyle borrowed some pictures from our friend Matt and posted them on his Facebook though, so if you want a taste of Burgundy wine country, you can check it out there, complete with castles, moats, and medieval to 19th century medicine (don't look for opium and morphine bottles in the picture though, they were stolen be tourists hoping for a few drops left).

Hope you all feel caught up now. I'll try to keep this going at a stead pace now that it is started. Sundays should lend good time to work on it because, everything, and I mean EVERYTHING is closed on Sundays here in France. Anyways, au revoir!