lights and windows

I'm very excited about the classes I'm taking this semester:

Multicultural Berlin
German Literature from 1945 to the Present
Economics of Reprivatization in the New Europe
German Art and Architecture: 1933 to the Present
Topics in Advanced Composition and Conversation
Seminar Internationales Management

and the best part is that all 6 classes will count towards my major and get me 20 credits. It's amazing that the courses I'm interested in are the courses that my degrees require.. I guess I'm on the right track :)

This afternoon I went on a Spaziergang (walk) around Prenzlauer Berg and parts of Mitte. The area just north of me is full of interesting boutiques, restaurants, clubs, bars, and theatres... it's going to be fun to visit them all now that I know they're there. I like finding random places like the one pictured - places that obviously haven't been renovated since the wall fell, but at the same time have a degree of beauty and charm. A building like this in NYC would probably be frowned upon and eventually torn down, but in Berlin it's just another potential apartment building awaiting restoration. I like that very much about Berlin.. for the past 60 years the city has been undergoing constant rebuilding and renovation. It gives the city a very interesting character, probably best described by the following quote:

"Berlin ist eine Stadt, verdammt dazu, ewig zu werden, niemals zu sein"
[Berlin is a city condemned to always becoming and never to being]

- Karl Scheffler