Erasmusblogs

…my only friend, the end! My flatmate Cinzia is going back to Italy tomorrow, after six great months living together. It makes me sad, I don´t have such a good relationship with my other flatmate (though she´s nice as well) and feel this is the end of an Era.

Right now I´m on holidays: it´s unbelievable, but in Germany (or at least at the HU Berlin) there are two whole "holiday" months: they hate to call it "holiday", it is said to be "Vorlesungsfreizeit" (period without classes), but anyway that means holiday. Lots of students fly back home in this period, so the time here runs quite slowly now, and moreover there´s nothing to do for me. Some friends of mine are attending German intensive courses, others are going on holiday, to sum up, I´m almost the only one doing absolutely nothing here, and however I´m not complaining anymore. Today, with the begginning of the spring, the birds have even started singing and the frozen puddles are slowly thawing out. I still find it difficult to believe, but The Great German Winter seems to back down!!

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I hate this month. I´ve already finished all my exams and have only one translation more to be delivered next week, so I´ll be sitting here for the next two months, hand in hand, while everybody else flights back to Spain or travels all around Europe and Germany. For me, it´s just not possible. I don´t have the money to do it. Right now I just feel like going back home, though I know this is just a consequence of the hatred that fills me every year over the shorter but however neverending February. I burnt my hand once again, I lost my passport, my grandmother has died this weekend. Too bad I didn´t slide walking over the icy streets and racked my brain. I hope my next entry won´t be so downhearted…

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Here I am once again, I don´t seem to get enough! This goes for finnish metal music fans in Berlin and surroundings:

CHARON live in Berlin!
When? 24.02.2006, from 20 h
Where? Alte Feuerwache Club, Berlin Schöneweide (S8, S9, M17)
How much? 6 € in advance, 8 € straight on entrance

If you don´t know Charon, don´t let the label "finnish metal" confuse you, anyway…

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Berlin glows under the charming winter sun. I arrived on Friday and we´ve had four days of sunny and however cold weather. Snow piles see you home as silent, shining and serious friends. Much have I written about Berlin´s autumn beauty, but even more could be said of its winter, especially in these sunny days and despite the ice rink the city has become, which makes difficult the walking out of the centre. Tomorrow the charm will be over: the weather forecast says it´ll snow once again.

I had great pains in my spine, but they´re almost gone now. I wonder whether it doesn´t bother me anymore because it is frozen or something lilke that. I think I´ll have to buy a balaclava to protect my facial skin, which is already a little burnt because of the icy wind.

Today we´re supposed to visit the Reichsrat, there is a guided tour, but I don´t really feel like it; I think I´d better enjoy this rare pleasure of feeling as if I were going to fall on my face every now and then, er, I mean, I think I´ll go for a walk and try to come home safe and sound, being careful not to slip.

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I´ve bought an internet card for the call center in Tierpark. I just couldn´t resist myself, even though I´ve tried hard not to do so for over two months; now that I´m going back home in a few days, I felt the need to come and get used once again to this dear old friend. I´ve been trying to connect the mIRC, but it just doesn´t seem to work; too bad. The reason why I couldn´t wait is because I should have received an e-mail today from the hall of residence administration, confirming my new room in the Sewanstraße. Last week I came up here to Tierpark to sign a new contract and I wasn´t told that my current flat, together with the whole building, were already sold to a company and that we´ll all have to move in 2006. I was dead angry when I saw the tiny notificiation hanging on the flat´s door the day after my contract enlargement. I wrote an e-mail to my so beloved Binkowski, saying I´d like a new room from January onwards, and HERE, of course. I won´t move to another hall of residence such as Siegmunds Hof…

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On Saturday I went to my first KZ (concentration camp), Sachsenhausen, which lies only a few kilometers away from the capital. I should have written about this a few days ago, but I didn´t have the time, so now I´ll have to squeeze a few things more together. My apologies. Well, Sachsenhausen is at the end of the S-Bahn (urban train), line 1 to Oranienburg, and the camp is surprisingly near to this little town, Oranienburg. That´s one of the most impressive things: Sachsenhausen stood at walking distance from the village, but there was a satellite camp of Sachsenhausen, Oranienburg, which stood straight INSIDE the village. Amazing. It is explained in the camp that the Government in the Third Reich used this vicinity to intimidate the inhabitants and show up in places where news and progress didn´t spread as fast as in bigger towns.

We arrived at the KZ at 14,30 thanks to my two wonderful Spanish mates, who came too late (40 minutes) and I had to wait for them under the sleet. Then of course we lost the train we were supposed to catch…As a result, I could´t see the medical experiment chamber, the autopsy room nor all of the huts where the prisoners lived. On 16,30 everything was so dark and the museums started to close… not to mention the bitter wind that blew in the huge flat area of Sachsenhausen (I got a cold). I shall go there once again, this time alone.

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"The Fall has come to hurt". So sings Charon´s vocalist in one of their tracks, but more than fall, it´s winter that has already come to Berlin, hurting all the same. All the leaves in the trees are almost gone and I´m anxious, thinking of the forthcoming weeks of bitter wind and perhaps snow. This weekend we had an abrupt turn on the weather: from the usual 16/8°C we´d been enjoying, the temperatures went down to 9/0° C. Welcome to reality, and the worst is yet to arrive, for we´ve had a very mild autumn: the Germans tell us that the milder the autumn, the colder the winter.

Last week was indeed horrible for me, not only because I felt a so down and blue, but because I´ve suffered great pains in my burnt hand. I couldn´t believe it when I found myself saying on Saturday : I wish it was already Monday! The weekend wasn´t really special. On Friday I had a costume party at a friend´s house, and later on the same evening, an Erasmus party at a Mexican´s flat in our hall of residence. Dreadful, both. We ended up drinking orange juice at Marilo´s flat until 5 am. On Saturday I wanted to go to K17, but once again, no way, no one wanted to pay the 5 € admission fee: this weekend I´ll go on my own, and if it IS an absolute pain, so be it.

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These days I´ve been following with great interest what the papers said about the turmoil in France, and surprisingly, no Spanish newspaper says that the revolt has spread over more countries, luckily, because my mother could die of a heart attack. On Monday, on the street where I live, there was an accidental (?) fire on a building, dramatic: people were inside, the firemen had to move them out: two fire engines, three ambulances, six patrols…pretty impressive, with people crying sitting on the floor and all that. I was so dead curious that I had to go down to ask what was going on.

Also that night, seven cars were set alight. What the fuck is going on?
I also burned my right hand with oil on Monday. The WHOLE of it. Fireday 100%…

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…or Das Loch in German, is a bar we´d been hearing of ever since we arrived in Berlin, and eventually we went there. As its name claims, it´s a hole, a hole in the ground, and much better than I had imagined, for it´s supposed to be an illegal punk dump. It looks like a sewer from the outside and you have to do a balancing to manage getting in; once you´ve entered, you come face to face with a dump (yes), muggy, dark and however GREAT place, with candles, some punk paintings on the walls, a big swing for three people (my feet didn´t reach the ground and I had the feeling I was going to fall every now and then). They played Nirvana the whole night long and we met some very nice people there, and surprisingly (I don´t know how come it stills amazes me, actually) everybody there spoke Spanish. One of the waiters was Portuguese, there were two Brits who could also speak Spanish, and the same was true for one Italian and a few Germans. 0,5 l beer, 1 €.

Later we went to another pub, close to Das Loch. We had to pay 2 € as admission fee, for there was an Air Guitar Contest (I laughed myself enormously). Drinks were also cheap there, although not as much as in Das Loch, but the scene a Spanish girl made was worth the higher prices. She was flirting to death with a German who obviously wasn´t interested, but anyway she didn´t want to give up and went on embarrassing me and the air-guitar-players.
I don´t know what I´m going to make today, but tomorrow I´ll try to start with the translation of the Spanish Constitution into German, my first piece of homework for the subject "Law Translation". I´m already working like a slave on my translations, there´s always so much homework to do here…

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My first month in Berlin has passed me by and I feel like if I had living here for my whole life. It costs me more and more to talk, write and think in English as the days go by, but I´ll keep on writing even though you´ll find greater mistakes in every submission. I have already chosen all my subjects:

Law Translation (Spanish-German)
Economy Translation (Spanish-German)
Economy Translation (German-Spanish)
Bilateral Interpreting
Listening and Conversation (English)
Comparative Politic Science and International Affairs
Fundamentals of Spanish Teaching
Translation for Erasmus students

I had chosen eleven modules, but it was really too much, considering I also have German for Foreigners on Thursdays for 4 hours. I quitted Russian, everybody spoke too good even though it was the beginners course, and everybody looked at me as if I were a clockwork orange.

October has been a dreadful month in regard to my economy, I hope I´ll spend much less now in November, although I´ll have to get some winter clothes and good warm boots: I have already bought a huge warm coat that I cannot yet wear, the weather´s being kind enough until present.

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