Easter 2011 in Berlin

Rowan’s always gotten a bad rep for being a Suitcase School – plenty of students stay in Glassboro during the week but once the weekend arrives they all flock home in droves – but I’ve always stayed. I was paying for on-campus housing, so I wanted to get my money’s worth; plus, with a weekend part-time job it just made more sense to stay. I would only go home twice a semester: Me and my dad’s birthday weekend / Spring Break; and Thanksgiving / Easter. Every year, without fail.

Until this Easter.

Easter was never really that big with the Jaworski’s. We’d wake up, my mom would already have the ham in the oven, my sister and I get little baskets, my grandmother (and sometimes my uncle) come over for a nice meal. With me abroad and my sister on a cross-country train ride, my parents did not celebrate Easter.

And I think what I saw of Berlin encompassed some of that sentiment, albeit unintentional. Many Germans are not Catholic so I don’t think it is anywhere near as big a production as it probably was in Italy, Spain or even France. Everyone just sort of went about their business. And if I didn’t have a scheduled Skype date with my parents that night, I might not have really noticed that it was Easter.

For Berlin I’m going to do a little something different. I’m mainly posting photographs with captions, but here are a few highlights:

• Tim and I hopped on the Metro after arriving in Berlin and we picked a station at random to exit. Crazy the kinds of adventures you can have when you don’t plan anything.
• DUNKIN DONUTS IN BERLIN. DUNKIN DONUTS IN BERLIN. DUNKIN DONUTS IN BERLIN.
• Watching street performers right around the American Embassy, which can be seen in my Munich/Berlin video.
• Despite carrying a number of souvenir bags, a backpack and a DSLR camera, a couple of people came up to me and asked me something in German. (I think it was either something like, “What time does the bus leave?” or “Where is the bathroom?”) Unfortunately I couldn’t communicate as well in Germany as I had in Spain and Italy, so all I could say in reply was, “Ich spreche kein Deutsch.”
• Food. Glorious food. 

Author’s Note, Present Day: It’s been over a year since I visited Berlin (and the rest of the places I’ve gone to after Berlin), but I am still very interested in telling my story. Now that I have graduated from college I will have plenty more free time to do as much, and I hope to update more often than I have as of late.

Munich & Berlin: A Preview

I feel like all I’m writing is preview posts these days.

Anyway, due to my constant traveling over spring break (and the sometimes lack of Internet), my next video is later than expected, but here it is.

Trip to Germany: Albeit a little late, my weekend in Munich and Berlin.

As for my spring break posts, I haven’t forgotten, but I’m choosing to focus more on the “study” than the “abroad” at the moment. I have a final tomorrow and then hopefully I should have some time to edit photos and update in between writing my final papers (aka procrastinating).