Week 9 which means I am closer to going home than I was to arriving here. This week was full of stress and even some tears leading up to Thursday. We had Monday off which was an unexpected blessing but starting Tuesday, I was expecting the day to run smooth as all we had scheduled for the day was our Endmodes presentation. While I was extremely nervous for this, I did not expect what would happen when I showed up to class. Upon arrival in class, I found out that a classmate tested positive. Thankfully, I had not had any contact with him. Other people left to test. About 20 minutes later, I found out, one of the girls I had spent the weekend with ended up testing positive as a result of this second testing she did at the official German testing site (her first rapid was negative). This was not what I wanted to hear the week leading up to Spring Break and my family coming in to visit me. They would be starting to fly in the next day. I then had to go get my test and the 15 minutes I waited on my results, I was filled with panic. Thankfully, I came back negative. The presentation was a blur as my brain was still scattered from the panic that I now was in about what if I ended up testing positive this next week and it cancelled my spring break plans. I ended up going home and calling my parents and having a much needed cry. The next morning, I mentally prepared myself and went out and tested again. It again came back negative. I also had a BMEN 211 exam that which went well. Thursday was a big day for me as it was the day my parents would be landing and they were already on the plane. I went out for the test and it came back negative again. Thank goodness. I had two exams that day, the German final and the physiology retest. The retest did not go as well as I would have hoped but I was so stressed all week that I really could not have studied. After finishing this, I headed out to go meet my parents and brother.
Upon meeting up with them at their Airbnb, I led them to a doner place. I felt this was essential for them to try. I then lead them to my apartment for them to see but sadly was not able to coordinate for them to meet my host family. I then had to go back for school for math zoom. After this, we headed to a Brauhaus for dinner. They were very tired but the food was good. Their day was done for sure as they were exhausted from travel but I was not yet done with my day. I made last minute plans with an old friend, Nick who was now in the German Navy. He ended up travelling down to Bonn and we went to an Irish pub in the Altstadt. We ended up running into Jarrett and Camryn here and chatted with them for a bit before they headed out. We then went back later before he caught a late night train. On Friday, we had an early physiology class and then found out our final team for Endmodes. I will now be working on measurement, sensing, and user interface. After this, I met up with my family and took them to the market place for lunch. I then went home and finished packing my bag for lunch before our journey to Berlin started.
While checking on our train while just wrapping up a few things before I was going to leave to meet up with my family at the station, I realized that the Bonn stop for our train had been cancelled. I immediately texted my family and told them we probably needed to get to Koln asap. They got to the station before me as they were already on their way and talking to the information desk to confirm that we did not need new tickets to do this. We did not so we just had to get on the regional train and make our way to Koln. Our ICE was already expected to be a high demand train, the regional was packed. We got to Koln and I showed my family the cathedral view from the station. We then went to our platform and got on the train after a few minutes. The train was very reserved so only me and my brother got to sit together while my parents were separated. We also ended up in the quiet car but this was okay. We made it to Berlin and checked into our Airbnb. We then headed to grab some dinner which we ended up getting some Indian food. I got some spicy dip and some lemonade but the spicy dip was a little bit too spicy and I had too much before I had a drink. We then went back to the Airbnb tired from the day of travel and went to bed.
For our first day of Berlin, we started out with a tour of the city. This was on Saturday. We first wanted to go visit the wall so we headed towards the east side gallery. Upon going to the station to buy a day ticket, we could not figure out the machine and had to ask a local German woman for help. She did not speak much English but we got through enough to find what we needed. We do think we may have accidentally bought the child pass but it worked. We stopped in the East Side Mall after heading off the S-Bahn. The mall was very modern and I found the art in the mall very interesting. After our brief stop, we made our way to the East Side Gallery. We only walked down a small portion but the artwork was interesting to see. After this, we headed to Potsdamplatz for lunch. We saw the bricks on the ground outlining where the wall once ran. We also visited a memorial for the wall with information about the wall. We then headed to a hotdog restaurant for lunch that was delicious. After this, we all went to Haagen Daz ice cream for a quick snack. I then tried to replicate the same walking tour that we had gone on for our trip to Berlin for the first time. I showed my family the statue of the little walking man and told them the same story about it. I then walked them over to the Memorial for Murdered Jews of Europe and we walked through it for a few minutes. I feel it was especially important for my father as his mother was born as a Jew during WWII and her family only survived by a miracle. We then walked to the Brandenburg Gate which was one of the top places that my mom had wanted to see. After this we headed to another memorial and then the parliament building. We then headed over to Museum Island where I showed them the Berlin Dom. This was the last thing we did for this day before I took them back to the Potsdamplatz area because I wanted to shop in the Mall of Berlin area. I did not end up buying anything. We then made a reservation for Merhaba, the restaurant that we had been brought to while on our trip. They also liked the restaurant a lot. We then headed back to our Airbnb and called it a night.
For day two of our stay in Berlin, we headed over to Potsdam in the morning. The transportation over took about an hour. We got a time ticket for both of the palaces over at the older garden. We went into the back palace first. The palace was gorgeous and we got a small tour through the rooms. It was our family of four, one other lady, and the tour guide. The guide would have to say everything in German and then again in English. We all had audio guides for the bulk of the information. The experience was extremely cool since it felt very private to get to go through the rooms in these ways. We took an hour to stroll up to the front palace. There were many pretty sites along the way. A lot of the greenery was starting to come to life but was just not quite there. The front palace, was much more people and we did not have a guide going with us. We only had the audio guides but the rooms felt way more crammed. I did notice that the German audio guides were going much faster so they ended up catching up to us and leaving rooms much faster. After this, we headed onto a bus to a little Italian restaurant. After this, we took an Uber to a museum for my older brother. Sadly, we got stuck behind a car accident which the Germans, unlike Americans, block the entire intersection. What was cool for me and my brother was to see the firemen work the scene as we both work in emergency services in the states. We finally made it to the museum which was a museum of German military airplanes. My brother acted as our own personal tour guide. He knew a lot about the museums. After we did this, we walked to the bus and all of the streets around the museum (which was on an old air base) were named from famous pilots. We then boarded the bus and headed back into Berlin where we found German food for dinner. I was also craving a pretzel after dinner so we found one. We then headed back to the Airbnb for the night.
Day three, also our last day in Berlin, our original plan was to hit up the Pergamon museum but I quickly realized it was actually closed so I frantically looked for a museum that was open. I found the German Historical Museum. We then boarded the tram to go drop off our luggage at the hauptbahnhof. We did this smoothly and I was able to show my family where to do this after I remembered it from last time. We then took the U-bahn over to museum island where we headed over to the museum. This is where we found out that the museum would not be open for a few more years but they had a Karl Marx exhibit open. And really that's the story of how I have been to more Karl Marx museums in a span of a month in Germany than the rest of my life after visiting Trier (his hometown) earlier this month. We then found a burger bar for lunch. I then needed to stop at a dm for an errand and then we walked to a bank. The bank was right by the correct U-bahn that we needed also which was extremely nice. We then headed over to the station and we had plenty of time so we grabbed our stuff and headed to the track. We got to our track and waited for our flix train. This would be the first time I would ride flix train which I think would be interesting especially because it assigned us random seats but we would make it work. As we were waiting, a train full of refugees pulled in behind us. I first noticed something was happening when an increase of the volunteers came down and then a few medics showed up. It was interesting to watch this process and the volunteers each found a family to go talk to and help guide. It was also warming to see. While the time of our train was getting close, we noticed the green color of the flix train pull up behind us and then a mass of Germans switch to the platform behind us. This caused me to run over and check the train number and it was indeed ours. They had changed the platform without even saying anything (which a German speaker even confirmed to us later). We then boarded and headed off to Erfurt.
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