For the last couple of days, on the news feeds of my social media accounts, Halloween jokes have been shared and costumes and make-up presented with a pinch of pride. Growing up in Berlin and never having been anywhere near the United States or Canada, this holiday had always appeared to me as something…let’s just say “rather American”. Even though one can find tons of decorations for this theme, I have never seen…
Local Blogs
The Cost of Studying in Germany
Over the last couple of months, I have come across various articles shared on my social media networks, declaring (almost festively) that attending university in Germany is free for national and international students alike. Now that I have some time as a university student behind me, I decided to write about the extent to which studying in Germany is really free. Let me tell you right away that I can’t actually name…
On German Culture Shock
I did not know that one could actually experience such a thing as culture shock upon coming to Germany. That was until I got in touch with the international students of my university, listening to their impressions of this place, over a plate of a tofu pâté at the cafeteria. Berlin is so rich in different cultures and their customs that culture shock seemed non existent to me as there are cultural habits…
Guest Post: “CURRY 36″– BERLIN’S BEST CURRYWURST SNACK BAR
By Roman The capital is Techno, the capital is sexy, the capital is wild. But above all, you are what you eat, and in Berlin we eat Currywurst. Whether it’s after a late-night booze up, for lunch or just a quick snack between meals, the Currywurst warms both the heart and the stomach. We love it and we want to know more about this “Street Caviar”. That’s why we’ve arranged to meet…
In the Sparkling of Crimean Wine, Youth Does not Know Age
Even though I have spent so much time here in Berlin that my humor may be considered German by now (it is nearly nonexistent or not understood by others), there are still some places in Berlin that I have never been to. As I stood on the metro platform of Bundesplatz station on the U9 line, these first lines of my blog post crossed by mind. “It’s right by the train station”, my…
Mind the Fine Print, Know Your Grammar: The Odds of German Pricing
One day a lady came into a beauty salon in Berlin and said: “I’d like to get some highlights in my hair please.” The hairdresser asked her to take a seat and started to work with the lady’s full long hair. When asked how many highlights she wanted, the young woman told the hairdresser to spread them out evenly over all of her head. When told the price of her new hairstyle,…
The German Space Bubble
During Psychology class in junior year of high school, our teacher talked about the psychological “phenomenon” of the so called space bubble. The space bubble defines how close or far away a person stands from you while communicating or interacting with you in any other way or form and the size of the space bubble varies from culture to culture. So some people may stand very close to you while talking and…
Books and Art at Café Moskau
‘Don’t you dare to spill that Jim Beam and Cola can all over me! DON’T YOU DARE!!’ I thought silently while angrily eyeing the man who was standing next to my seat and was slightly swinging from right to left as the already over filled train that was taking a turn just in that moment. The horror of being on the train, surrounded by already slightly drunk Hertha soccer fans on a…
On the Wrong Side of the Fence: The Finale of the 25 Year Anniversary
Berlin is usually full of tourists and as opposed to places like Barcelona or Amsterdam, there is not really a particular time of the year which one could call ‘the tourist season’ or at least not that I know of any such thing. So the tourists are there but the longer you live here, the more they blend in with the rest of the population and become…
Celebrating 25 Years of Unity and Rights and Freedom
When I was a little girl, still living in Belarus, I did not know about the Berlin Wall. I did not know about the cold war or about the fact that one country was once divided into two, just by a concrete wall. But today, as I am now somewhat of a grown up and have several years of history class behind me, I can’t really believe that I am yet again…