Beaches in Berlin

On Sunday, we started the day off with brunch at the café on the corner of our street and then went to Wannsee Beach, which was about a 45 minute train ride. As you get further away from the center of the city, the houses get nicer and nicer, which made the train ride really interesting. We got to the beach around 2. It looked like a lake you would find in Michigan but there were hundreds, maybe thousands, of people there.

Wannsee Beach

The bathing suit fashion there is extremely interesting. I think the main goal for women is to wear the least flattering, tiniest bikini possible. On the other hand, for the guys, they wear swimsuits with weird pictures in places that there shouldn’t be pictures. (see picture below)

Berlin beach fashion

Some of the guys in our group went down the beach to throw the Frisbee around, and wandered a little too far down into the fenced off nude beach. They came back so fast! It was hilarious! We just talked, laid out, and hung out there until around 6pm, when we headed back to Wedding and ate dinner at a little Italian carry out place. We had class really early today, so we just went to the café for a little bit and then talked in our room and went to bed.

Today was our first day of German class, which was held at the Berlin Zoo. Our teacher is really nice, so we just walked around looking at die Elephanten, die Eisbären (polar bears), and die Giraffen. Our “homework” was to talk to 6 German people and get directions to different places, writing down their answers. Every time I would start to speak in German, they would answer in English. Embarrassing! At least I tried.

The whole group at the Zoo

The Berlin Zoo's famous polar bear Knut

After that we went to go look at TU Berlin’s campus, which is beautiful! We ate lunch in the school cafeteria, which was intimidating to say the least. They just do everything differently and we are always wrong. After a little break, we then went on our own private dinner cruise around Berlin with the program student advisors and professor. They made us awesome food and were stocked with Berliner Beer and nice red wine. We cruised around downtown Berlin drinking with our professors, too great!

Lindsay & I with our adviser Dawn on the Dinner Cruise

Our friend Benny told us all about the Berlin wall and what it was like here during the years right before and right after the wall. He grew up in West Berlin, which was like the liberal part of Berlin that was encircled and closed off. He said he can remember the day the wall came down like it was yesterday. It was pretty cool hearing a first hand account.

Now I am about to go downstairs and meet some of the group to plan our Prague trip this weekend! We are leaving on the train Friday afternoon after our visit to a city just outside of Berlin called Potsdam. It should be a really good time, and I just can’t wait! That’s all for now, Auf Wiedersehen!