Ich bin in Berlin!

Yes, I am in Berlin for the week. The Internet is not available in our apartment, but we are visiting net cafes and such to stay connected. I'm here with four others who are doing their final projects here this week, acting as a trasnlator and mother, making dinners and finding what trains and busses to take. I also order the food and ask how much it costs to use the internet or where the closest ATM is. I knew six years of German would pay off someday.

We drove yesterday and mostly relaxed once we got here. The seven hour trip wasn't bad at all. We made sandwhiches and cookies and only needed a few bathroom breaks. We found a pizza place across the street from the apartment where a pizza big enough for two is five Euros. The conversion is 1 Euro to 1.2 Dollars, so most things are very reasonably priced. Berlin is much much cheaper than Denmark! It's not any warmer though. It's forecasted to rain until Thurday, but then it will be sunny and warm for the last few days.

The apartment we are renting is beautiful. We are in an area called Wedding, and we found this apartment through a Dane who owns it. He rents it out to tourists all year. There are five of us splitting the 4400 Dkr rental for the week. (That comes to about 120 US a person.) All together, with gas, the trip was only 200 a person. We all have beds and the bathroom is huge. The kitchen is completely furnished with anything we might need for cooking. Traveling like this is so much cheaper because we were able to cook breakfast and plan to cook other meals ourselves.

The stories coming out of berlin this week will cover Neo-Nazis, Prasites, Holocaust Memorials and Turkish refugees. I will only be filming and writing for fun, but I aim to possibly put together a small sidebar to my documentary aboutstreet art here in Berin, because the culture is huge here. During my feedback on the documentary at school, one advisor gave me the names of several galleries and streets to go look for art and artists. I think this will e the perfect end to my time here.

But today looks like Brandenburg Gate, Checkpoint Charlie and possibly the Zoo. Tomorrow I may be headed to a concentration camp with some of the other students. The longest standing piece of the Berlin Wall is near the street art museum, so perhaps that will be for Thursday. Pictures are soon to follow.