A couple photos of the Farwell Party adventures.
FU-Best Final Dinner:
Everyone signed my Berlin flag, we all said our main goodbyes…GÜNTHER LET US SIT ON AND REV HIS NEW MOTORCYCLE!!!
Günther, of course, being the kiosk man down the street from our school, and my favorite German.
(I will get the pictures from Matt eventually, don’t you worry.)
Oh, and FU-Best had us all write little German “schriebjournal” pages about our time here, and made a little yearbook for us all :) I’m so excited to read it, it’ll probably be the majority of my plane activity.
CIEE Final Dinner:
At a self-proclaimed “Gipsy Ballhaus Restaurant.” Appetizers? A block of some phenomenal french cheese with dried strawberries and figs and some something-something sauce. Main course? A giant mozzarella pizza. Dessert? A chocolate fuirty cake thing. And “one round of drinks”….riiiiight, Ben.
Our program coordinators Ben and Maren gave speeches and gave us some Ampelmann pins to remind us to “always say yes, keep going,” etc etc. So cute. I’m planning on hooking it onto the cover of the journal I’ve been keeping since I got here.
And then on our way out we boogied to Michel Jackson’s “Billie Jean” and Kid Rock’s “All Summer Long” haha. Best place ever.
FU-Best Farewell Party:
Just last night, actualy — lots of silly dancing, Katy and I kicked Matt and Rachel’s butts at Foosball, we invented the “bindi koont” game (not a clue how to spell it), and said lots of goodbyes.
And then we all harrassed Phi while he was finished packing and trying to go to bed because we didn’t want him to leave.
And now…here I am, in Starbucks, getting the last of my Berlin internet haha.
It still hasn’t really sunk in that I’m leaving, and I honestly can’t tell if it will. Probably because I’m still traveling around after, but damn…this is so weird. Again.
Final thoughts on the program?
I loved Berlin. For those of you thinking of coming here, seriously do. It’s the single most unique city I’ve ever been to, and I like to think I get around quite a lot haha (Sorry New York friends, don’t hate me).
I wish I had gotten my tattoo already to show you because it fits into this theme so well, but Berlin is very much as Mr. Karl Scheffler said: “eine Stadt, verdammt dazu, ewig zu werden, niemals zu sein.” Translated: condemned forever to becoming and never to being.
It’s so…random, so spaced-out, so condensed. Always under construction, always with secret pockets of awesome popping up in places you swear you’ve been a thousand times and know like the back of your hand (cough cough, Hackescher Markt). It’s the running into buffalo on your morning run (in the middle of the city, WHAT), the cars suspended in midair at Mount Mitte for everyone to climb, the combination of East and West and North and Bavaria and the constant conflation between old and new, the clear confusion of city planners over the years who tried to finally set Berlin on a grid, to organize it…the failure of which is evident in the various “mittes” the multiplicity of “main streets” that all go in completely opposing and diagonal directions. It’s my favorite thing.
And that’s why my tattoo design has all the cranes I see every day, the Heizkraftwerke towers I pass by on the way to my house every evening, the Berliner Dom, the Fernsehturm that you can see from freaking anywhere…it’s the crazy, ridiculous, un-pin-pointable Berlin I’ve come to know these four months. And while I am psyched to be going onto Denmark and Italy (Uffizi, here I come!), and then finally home to obsess over my dog (and family, of course *clears throat*)…I will really miss this place.
So,
Tschüß, mein Berlin.
Mit Große Liebe,
Stef
