Andrew Lee, NU in Berlin, Summer 2014
I cannot believe that the first session of the program has ended! It honestly feels as if I’ve been here for only one or two weeks. But I can definitely say that I’ve gotten to know the city of Berlin extremely well during these past couple weeks. We have explored so many of the different neighborhoods and sights that I feel comfortable navigating through the city by myself. This will come in handy next session when we will have different classes at the Humboldt University campus with other students outside of Northwestern.
The second half of this session was also filled with exciting visits that gave us even further context of the city of Berlin. During class, we had the opportunity to visit Tresor, a techno club that was founded shortly after the fall of the Berlin Wall and reunification of Germany. It was so fascinating to explore the conception of techno and techno clubs in Berlin. Techno was largely born out of mainly youths living in West and East Berlin trying to escape the dark and deep history of Germany. In these clubs, no one knew or cared whether you were from West or East Germany; you were simply just another “raver.” However, it is interesting that the club scene in Berlin is so much more exclusive now. Door policies used to never exist before. I think the exclusivity of some of these clubs somewhat taints the original mission and philosophy of Berlin’s techno scene.
As I am writing this post, I am currently on the train coming back from a group trip to Weimar. Weimar is a small town south of Berlin in which the Weimar Republic and the first constitution of Germany was written. We learned in one of our lectures that, even though Berlin was the capital, it was too big and dangerous to draft a democratic constitution. Weimar is also home to famous historical figures such as Goethe, Schiller, Liszt, and J.S. Bach, just to name a few. We even got to see Goethe’s house! (See picture to the right.) The town itself felt like it hadn’t changed in the last 200 years. The architecture, dissimilar to Berlin, was very uniform and clearly from a particular architectural style. But most importantly, we were in Weimar when Germany won the World Cup! After the game, the streets were filled with crowds and cars waving the German flag. Even in such a small town, it was a sight to see!
Our mid-program break starts today and everyone is so excited to be traveling! I will be traveling to Milan by myself and then meeting five people from the program in Barcelona on Thursday. I am a little sad that I will have to leave Berlin again tomorrow, but it’ll make my return that much more exciting!