Student Blogs/Rachael in Germany
These past two weeks have been a whirlwind of adventure since arriving in Berlin. I landed in Germany on Sept. 10 and must admit that I was totally overwhelmed. After a long day of flying, I can definitely tell you that my nerves were a little frayed. I flew on an overnight from Toronto Pearson to Zurich, and then from Zurich to Berlin. The whole trip was a little over 18 hours. I was met at the airport by a friend of my buddy, as organized by the Berlin School of Economics and Law’s International Student’s office and was then brought to my apartment in Ostbahnhof.
Ostbahnhof is on the eastern side of Berlin. This location literally means “east train station” and puts me incredibly close to an S-Bahn train station (part of the wonderful transit system within Berlin.) My residence is called a Studentenwerk. Studentenwerks are student-run residence buildings that can be found around Berlin as many of the schools do not actually have their own residences.
My unit has two bedrooms, a mini-fridge, and a bathroom. Outside, attached to the main hallway, I have a very sad little kitchen. This kitchen is old and cannot handle a lot of activity, meaning that only one stove-top element can be used at a time, and the oven, I have been warned, is a use-at-own-risk appliance. Given this information, I am very glad that my roommate has supplemented our own personal hallway with a toaster oven.
The Berlin School of Economics and Law is located at Schöneberg. The campus is relatively small with only three buildings. It is located on the western side of Berlin.
My intensive German class started Thursday. It has been great to work in small groups and learn both the business formal and personal casual way of speaking while meeting other exchange students. Coming from a co-op back to school, it’s nice to spend only a few hours in school (9:00 a.m. to noon) before I have a full course load again. The winter term begins Oct. 7 and runs until the end of February, leaving me with an extra month of traveling time before I return in April.
I am going to finish this post with one of my adventures from my first week. One of the major sounds that I constantly hear in Berlin are emergency sirens. You are almost guaranteed to hear them at least once every hour. My window was open one evening because it was a nice night out. I was enjoying the smell of a wood fire coming from outside and I thought that it was a neighbour using their fireplace. I heard the sirens of the Berlin emergency vehicles and thought nothing of it because, as I said, they are nearly constant. Only when I heard the sound of gushing water did I suddenly put the situation together. The smoke I was smelling was NOT coming from a neighbouring fireplace but instead from a fire in my building’s recycling cage directly below my window. The fire department was able to put out this fire quickly, but I was shocked to learn that the fire alarm did not go off and there was no evacuation needed. Now when I look out my window to the recycling centre I can see a burnt hole in the ivy to remind me of this interesting situation.
Grüβe!