Leipzig!

Guten Tag! So I survived my solo journey to Leipzig! I was so sure something was going to go wrong with my travels - I would get lost, miss an U-Bahn connection, drop my suitcase in front of a rapidly approaching train (so that last one was kinda paranoid haha), that I was about a half hour early for every connection. And then had about an hour to kill before my main Inter-City Train. So I parked myself in a cafe, ordered a huge schokolade (chocolate) croissant and coffee and read an embarassingly cheesy romance novel. Such an amazing hour of my life haha. If you don't want to read the large chunk ahead about my travels, at least skip to the second to last paragraph. It amused me greatly writing it and I would love to share it with you.

Let me explain a little bit about why I was going to Leipzig in the first place. So Stanford has this really sweet internship program called the Krupp Internship. It has an endowment that allows them to set up Stanford Berliners with paid summer internships or to foot the bill for unpaid summer internships in the student's field of choice. So basically, you are guaranteed a paid internship in Germany if you study in Berlin in the winter or spring, take your language classes halfway seriously, and do the application work. Kind of a fantabulous set-up. I've toyed with the idea for a really long time. On the one hand, when the eff am I going to have an opportunity to have a generously paid internship in a foreign country again? On another note, living abroad, by myself, in a new city, slightweight scares the hell out of me. These two thought processes do battle on a regular basis. And were going at it the entire train ride there as I stared out the train window at blanketed field after blanketed field of snow. But when I got off the train and into one of the most beautiful, grand stations I have ever been, I knew there was something special about this city. I walked through the streets to the University library with my jaw dropped and eyes wide open in awe. Berlin is beautiful too; but in a completely different way. In more of an urban, scrawled graffiti, hip and stylish, epic nightlife, yeahitcanbekindofuglyattimesbutshitthecity'sbeenthroughhellgiveusabreak kind of way. But Berlin is infused with such an infectious and vibrant spirit that I have never really noticed the lack of old cobblestone streets and medieval churches that adorn most other European capitals. That's the kind of beautiful that Leipzig is. It's such an old city too. The University is 600 years old. 600. Years. Old. That's older that our effing country. It survived the Protestant Reformation, religious wars, being bombed in World War I and II, and communists threatening the intellectual integrity of the institution. (haha mad alliteration right there... sorry... English nerd in me jumped out). So over the summer, I would have the opportunity to work at the University, working under a Professor whose in the process of a bunch of international academic humanities projects. I would get to help edit and possibly even contribute to these internationally published pieces. Even though he speaks English very well, he says that having a native English speaker on staff to do that kind of work is incredibly valuable. One of the projects I could be working on is the Codex Sinaiticus, the oldest edition of the Bible that was discovered recently and divided among 4 international universities to decode and translate. (Leipzig, London, Sinai, and St Petersburg). So yeah, I'm not gonna be a nerd and gush about it more, but I'm really stoked. In summary. : )

The rest of the day, I wandered with wide eyes around Leipzig some more, doing some serious shopping. Fabulous day.

Soooo to end for today haha I will post excerpts from some comical experiences that I have had:

What?!?! You can't watch Hulu overseas? You can't bring your own apple soda into a restaurant? All of my instructions from Deutsche Bank to set up my account are in German? Why did Deutsche Bank send me ten effing letters? What on earth do they all say? What the eff is in "meat" salad? I have heard of tuna salad, chicken salad... but meat salad? (I bought and ate it anyway - I was hungry). How did this pack of chocolate-chip cookies get into my coat pocket? (this was Sunday morning... infer please). I do not remember buying a pack of cookies. Oh yay, it only took me ten minutes to turn on the shower today. (That comment is completely lacking in sarcasm haha. Previous times have included 15 min, 12 min. etc. I have since gotten it down to five, and continue working to beat my record). How the eff do Germans consume massive quantities of greasy meat, fatty cheese, whole milk, and beer on a regular basis and stay so thin? A soul-exchanging pact with the devil maybe? The Nivea selection here is AMAZING!!!!!! Nivea makes shampoo, conditioner, body wash, lotion, AND lipgloss???????? Have I died and gone to heaven?

I also re-read a little bit of my first blog entry today - it's funny how some of the things that initially worried me so much were so easy to remedy. There's about 5 English speaking Catholic churches in Berlin - one of which is Phillipino (thus having songs/readings in Tagalog), one of which is Ghanian, one of which has 10 am Mass, and one of which is super far away. The 5th turned out to be a perfect fit, complete with coffee and donuts after : ) . The cold really isn't as horrific as Californians make it out to be. A thick sweater and my heavy-duty jacket over any outfit actually keeps you pretty damn warm. There's four Starbucks in Berlin, each of which I have located but visited very rarely. I think the comfort of just knowing it is there if I sink into a bout of American nostalgia is enough. German ATM's have English options. The translations are sometimes off but only enough to make you chuckle, not enough to really confuse you or mess up your transaction. Not speaking any German is tough sometimes but you take your phrase book with you everywhere, gesture emphatically, put aside all pride and dignity, accept the fact that your an American, a foreigner, and thus will always inherently be out of place. And then everything is ok. Not always easy or perfect, but ok. Things just seems to fall into place better when you stop trying to control where they land.