I LOVE Berlin: Part Two

My thesis is due in exactly one week, and now that it's crunch time, the prospect of packages is the only thing keeping me from insanity. Oh, and free food. Which reminds me--tomorrow my Memories and Legacies of the Holocaust class gets to attend a *free dinner* alongside Holocaust survivor and German literature critic Ruth Kluger. I am currently reading her memoir, "Still Alive: A Holocaust Girlhood Remembered," which covers her experience as a young girl living in concentration camps. (This is really big for me because the only other time I was ever invited to a special dinner by the college it turned out to be a mistake and they revoked my invitation. Ever since I've been a little bitter, but hopefully tomorrow night's dinner will make up for my sophomore year tragedy.)

As you all should know, I spent my Spring Break in Berlin. As I mentioned in a previous post, the final assignment for the class is a collaborative project between the German students and my classmates that will be presented via video conference in late April. I wouldn't go so far as to say that I'm terribly excited to create a final project (it is work, after all, and I have serious senioritis), but the really cool part is that the German students are currently visiting us in New York to explore some Holocaust memorials in the city and to work on the final projects.

The Germans arrived last Thursday and have probably been about as busy as my class was when we visited them in Berlin (which means non-stop action from morning to evening). But over the weekend my class organized a party for both groups to socialize, and Saturday night a few of the German students spent some time at the seniors 50 nights party at the Alumnae House, which is the college's hotel. It's been a really unusual experience for me, coming from a small suburban town in Ohio, to have the opportunity to socialize with so many people from another country. While a good amount of international students attend Vassar each year, I know very few of them because up until recently most of them lived in the same dorm, and it's rare to have more than just a few in your classes--although I did have a friend from Bosnia who I visited in his hometown of Sarajevo when I was JYA last year.

My group, which consists of myself, one other American student, and three German students, is doing a project comparing Holocaust memorials in Berlin and New York (very uplifting project, I know). You can read about it here!

What is interesting about the course is that it is not actually about the Holocaust (of course, we did read a book on the history of the Holocaust for background information), but is more of a theoretical study on the memorials themselves. I think it's a cool topic (in a depressing sort of way) because the way things are remembered was never something I had considered before, but now I find myself analyzing memorials all the time, for better or for worse. [Insert joke about Holocaust memorials here---yeah, not easy to make funny.]

So yeah. I'll try not to flip out completely this weekend and keep you updated on whether or not the final draft of my thesis makes sense. Yikes!

I Was Born A Ramblin' (Wo)Man

So that is probably one of my favorite pictures ever. That's right--two deans of the college serving ME, for a change. The event is called "midnight breakfast" and it's really the only time of year when you can catch the college deans wearing aprons and serving you free food. And yes, I most definitely had seconds.

I'm finally back at school and although it's nice to have a change of scenery, it's time for the endless cycle to kick into full gear once again. Winter break seemed unusually short this year, but I would say I made the most of it. Here's a short synopsis:

First of all, my family sort of spontaneously moved into another house and I had to help, which I wouldn't have minded missing. I kind of have a thing for manual labor, but not so much when my parents are around. They have a knack for making anything simple into absolute chaos.

The second fun thing was going to the west coast for the first time EVER. My boyfriend and I planned the trip back in October and ever since I'd been looking forward to it, and for good reason! We went to Portland, Oregon (and did manage to make it up to Vancouver, Washington for a day). Now, I know what you're thinking--"Why would you go during the winter? That's the rainy season!" Fer sher it rained, but it was still beautiful.

If on graduation day they asked me what trait I acquired during college, I'd say it was my love of travel. I'm scared to death of heights, which makes flying a bit scary, but I can handle it if it means going somewhere new. As I may have mentioned before, I studied abroad in Prague, Czech Republic, and while there I made a point to visit France, Austria, Turkey and Italy, then backpacked through the Balkans, meaning Bulgaria, Serbia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Croatia (okay, so we more or less passed through that one), and Slovenia. I came back from Prague a few pounds thinner and a lot better traveled than before I had left.

In Portland, we mainly looked at colleges and schlepped around the city. What else would two tourists do? (Oh yeah, check out microbreweries). We also stayed at a hostel called the Hawthorne Hostel (it was in the Hawthorne district of the city, duh), which was awesome because beds cost only $17 a night--which is definitely in my price range.

On the way home, we had a layover in Houston, which was cool because I'd never been to Texas. I decided to get the southern breakfast classic, which included grits, and was pleased when the cashier referred to me as "youngster" in a pleasant southern drawl. I may be 21 years old, but apparently I qualified as a youngster. Then again I was mistaken for a 15 year old the week of my 21st birthday....