icke bin eine berlinerin

as time goes on, i'm increasingly happy with my wg. that sounds somewhat self satisfied, but i had reservations about coming here and i felt a little displaced in the beginning. we're in the heart of my district, so literally everything is around the corner. we also have really good connections (two subway lines that run 24 hours on weekends) just a stones throw away. our apartment was built in the 1890's during the foundation period so it's got high ceilings, large windows, and hardwood floors. the tradeoff is that the walls are a little uneven in a bit of a rickety way, and that some additions (like a washing machine that drains into the tub) are highly ghett-o.

a big part of student culture here is living in a shared apartment (wohngemeinschaft) – it’s not like the US where students that live in apartments either live alone or move with their friends. Here, strangers live together in a sort of revolving door of people. In my case, a student housing company owns this apartment and rents it out - but people leave furniture here (I have inherited a bookshelf, a couch, and a desk) and paint the room different colors, etc.

anyway, one of my roommates is moving out, and we had 11 people pounce and call us within a few hours of the online posting. 7 people ended up coming and visiting - it was exhausting to chat with so many people (5 on one day!). since it's the time of year when classes start, we more or less have our pick of who wants to live with us. It’s funny, you can tell as soon as you meet someone how much they’ll want the room, and you can tell in a few sentences whether they’ll be high- or low-maintenance. Or maybe not, who knows.

~*~

The party (“bad taste”) that I went to this past Friday was incredibly fun, even though I was wiped out from all the 5 appointments we’d had earlier that day (at one hour each…that’s a lot of small talk). They like to drill into our heads in school this stereotype that Americans can’t have fun without getting wasted, whereas germans are more moderate and don’t lose their head about alcohol. It was actually incredibly true, and I was thinking how a joint apartment party (two apartments on one floor) wouldn’t really work in the usa, unless you restricted the attendees to your friends only (and even then…). The moderate drinking and the fact that the party was full of young and beautiful people made it a really chilled out and fun time.

~*~

Classes start tomorrow. I’ll be picking from:

-introduction to international political economy

-methods of data analysis

-new research in energy politics

-european energy foreign policy

-game theory for political security

-energy supply security

I also meet my mentor tomorrow. Very excited.

~*~
this past wednesday i officially became an resident of berlin.