more about Berlin (in English, this time)

This post was supposed to be a change-up from the extremely high levels of German and introspection present in my last one.
…at least it’s in English?

I spent last Wednesday through Sunday at my End-of-Stay Camp in Berlin. If you’re thinking “End-of-WHAT?!” right now…well, join the club. My friend Natalie (my roommate from D.C.!) and I have been writing letters to each other all year, and we’d been hoping to meet up sometime. At one point, I think she wrote something to the tune of “I hope we can find a time before Berlin…” and I’m pretty sure I laughed…as if that was going to be a problem.

You have to understand that, before most of us go on exchange, we spend a varying amount of time trying to find out about others’ experiences so that we’ll have an idea of what to expect. (In fact, you, dear reader, may well be a future exchange student yourself, in which case I wish you the very best.) And you have to understand that I’d heard about a million times how FAST exchange goes by. You have to understand that I took it to heart, I really did…but you also have to understand that it is sometimes impossible to believe. And for all that I tried to convince myself that this year was going to go by too quickly, End-of-Stay camp always seemed impossibly distant, even abstract, pretty much right up until I got on the train on Wednesday morning.

More than eight hours after leaving home, I arrived in Berlin unsure how to feel: was I finally there, or more like already? What was it going to be like, seeing all those people who had just been Facebook pictures (if even that) since our hurried goodbyes in the Frankfurt airport nearly nine months ago?

Answer to the second question: AWESOME.

When you have a group of fifty people, you can’t all be best friends. And even if all fifty of you are Americans stuck in a hotel waiting to go to Germany, you’re not necessarily going to have much in common. But nine months later, it’s a whole different story.

We did some really cool things. We:

saw the sites,

the New Yorkers in our group in front of the Brandenburger Tor

fulfilled our ambassadorial duties,

CBYXers with the American ambassador (photo stolen from Abby -- click-through to her blog!)

saw history in person,

die Berliner Mauer

made our own history,

Exchange Students Against Nuclear Power!

stopped to smell the roses,

Sorrel had a great idea!

ate delicious Indian food,

Dani knew this place and it was AMAZING (also Abby's photo)

and were just generally, without a doubt, tourists,

Zoriana takes pictures of the Berliner Dom

but the coolest part was probably how much we bonded as a group. It was really neat, being able to sit down next to people with whom I’d never before exchanged much more than a “hey, I’m Margaret” and then just talk to them until we ran out of time or got interrupted. There were things during the weekend that didn’t go perfectly, but by the end when we had to give our Betreuers (the amazing former exchange students who were in charge of the camp) feedback, I couldn’t even think of any complaints. I just wanted to hug everyone.

I came away from the camp with a lot of good: I finally got to see Berlin, and it’s an amazing feeling to know that forty-nine other exchange students have got your back.

But it also left me with the mixed feeling of knowing that my stay is, in fact, coming to an end. Berlin is behind me, and time is barreling toward the next stop: Frankfurt am Main airport. Realizing, by which I mean truly understanding for the first time, that I have fewer than forty days left here, was terrifying, which I think was sometimes evident in my face, based on the number of times during the weekend I was asked if I was okay. But at the same time, it was necessary and positive, because I am going to live the heck out of these last six five weeks.

As usual, this post is too long and too feelingsy, but I think I need to give up on saying that the next one will be better. Mal schauen!

Advertisement