Frau Merkel Will See You Now
Since my last post not a lot of interest has happened here in Berlin, although the Christmas Markets have started going up and the whole city is starting to look quite festive.
I did however go the Reichstagkuppel this week – finally! It used to be that you could simply queue up to go and have a look inside but things have changed recently and it’s now a lot more secure. As a result we had to book in advance (complete with full names and dates of birth) but we were deemed by the Deutschen Bundestag to be of no real threat to the state and were allowed to enter.
The entire inside is, for obvious reasons, far more modern and much newer than our centuries-old Houses of Parliament – think less dark-wood panelling and green leather, more sand-coloured stone and natural light.
The Kuppel itself is quite a recent addition and quite a cool piece of architecture. Indeed, there’s something very German about the design particularly the mirrors in the centre. These have been arranged so as to allow plenty of natural light in during the day (presumably to save on electricity in the main chamber) without having this light blind Frau Merkel et al. when delivering some important speech or the like. Even the audio guides (provided by Sennheiser, no less) are hi-tech and play the correct track according to where you’re standing within the Kuppel.
Despite the many signs all around with big red crosses through cameras, once outside, on the roof, it seemed plenty of people where taking photos so I quickly whipped mine out (now, now children, no sniggering) and snapped this cheeky shot:
I took this right before I was tackled by a guard…
In other news I have yet another reason why you should definitely be thinking about (if not actually doing) an internship abroad – perhaps I’ll start compiling a list of top reasons. My newest project at work is now to create a 100-page (give or take) report on the Intensivprogramm which we ran back in September. Although all the actual content will be from the various lecturers and students the editing itself is being left pretty much up to me. Once I’ve created something which has been approved it will then be properly printed up with my name in the front cover as editor and, as my boss pointed out, will be something physical which I can show to potential employers as well as having ‘six-month internship in Berlin’ on my CV. Although studying on your year abroad allows you to perhaps explore other subjects/interests which you can’t in Bristol (and I of course do not wish to offend any friends I have who are currently studying abroad) I just feel that my language would not be anywhere near the level it currently is if I had been studying and I also believe that my CV will look a lot better at the end of this semester.
Bis später!