I'm Back! Part 1 of Stuff I've Been Doing

So...after that hiatus, here are a few things I've been doing recently:
1. Going to Berlin
2. Going to Budapest
3. Seeing the Lennon Wall
4. Midterms

What can I say? Classes are things that happen between weekends here.

1. Berlin
Berlin was pretty awesome. It has a lot of history, and they're very, very open about it, which is pretty admirable. However, it's still pretty weird being there because of the history. But it had a lot of gorgeous architecture and the Pergamonmuseum which houses the Ishtar Gates. THE ISHTAR GATES!
The Ishtar Gates are awesome. They're ancient Babylonian Gates which the Germans gacked (Read: Stole because of Imperialism/Having an Empire) during excavations.

They're really old and super cool.
We also saw the Reichstag, which is the German Parliament Building. It has this giant inverted glass cone thing on the roof, which uses solar power to power the building, and is surrounded by a glass dome, which is meant to represent the transparency of the government.

Rest of the post behind a jump.



We also saw the Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe

This is the view looking up from the memorial. The memorial is composed of rows and rows of large gray blocks of stone, each one different in height. It's meant to represent whatever you want it to represent, and the area is very hilly. The Germans gave the most central piece of land in Berlin to this monument so people would be forced to confront it. It's very bleak, morbid, and somewhat overwhelming to walk through. You feel like it won't end, ever and all you can do is look up and to see out.


We also saw the Brandenburg Gate.

It's located in Paris Square, which is named as a Ha-ha and middle finger to France. France and Germany hated each other for pretty much ever, and then Napoleon came in to Germany, saw the chick on the horse statue on top of the Brandenburg Gate, and decided he'd take her back to Paris. When Germany got theirs, they took her back, changed her name to Lady Victory, and made it so her head was looking down and to the left slightly. Lady Victory will forever be looking down at the French Embassy. Then they changed the name of the square to Paris Square to be like "HA WE HAVE PARIS IN OUR COUNTRY! WHATCHA GONNA DO NOW?!".

We saw Checkpoint Charlie, which is named Charlie because it's the third, and therefore C which is Charlie. The famous sign is fake.

Dirty Dancing bus.

 

Dental tools for sale at a flea market.

They also had 

and

for sale, which made me keep saying "Are you my mummy?".
Nobody on the trip was my mummy.