Where did the two weeks go?!

Travelling cheap in Europe is both exciting and nerve wrecking! The fact that you just get one weekend off doesn't really help your case when you have to be in lab at 9am on the following Monday morning. I must say that we bombed our first weekend plans to Prague and learnt quite a lot from it. Planning ahead helps, but planning continuously and constantly revising your plans, ensures that they actually happen. For example, currently I am engaged in a group chat since the past 3 hours trying to figure out a trip to Krakow, Poland for the coming weekend. There are many options, but the cheapest bus/rail trip which makes us reach our labs on time are expensive. So then we have to scrape our mini holiday to a day and a half, but hey we get to see Krakow! :-D

At Bibim - the Korean restaurant. From left: Wallace (Scotland),
Erin (NYC), Clarence (Iowa), Ben (Scotland),
 Hugo (Montreal), Didier (Montreal) and myself.

We. I love using that word, especially now cuz I'm suddenly surrounded by a bunch of people who are in the same dire state as me. They are all budding scientists which means that they're all super interesting to talk to. They are all lost in a strange land which means that they're all adventurous. They're all international which means that they all love to travel and explore. In the past two weeks, we bonded so well together that we feel like we have known each other for ages! We just had our last dinner together as a class in the best Korean restaurant in Berlin! It was a great meal accompanied with great company - not to forget the hilarious innuendo jokes that totally elevate the atmosphere. So as I get ready for the last day that I'll get to spend with you guys in Berlin, I would like to thank each of you for making this trip the best ever for me! It has truly been an honor in knowing each of you and hoping we continue to keep in touch - in Deutsch! Yeah, I can get emotional after class tomorrow! :-P
I think we really needed that dinner tonight. I, for one certainly did after the Holocaust memorial trip.

The Holocaust Memorial

The Holocaust memorial was built in 2004 for the 6 million Jews who were mercilessly killed during the Third Reich. This visit was one of my most heaviest visits of all time. We knew the facts and the history associated with Germany by now and our memories are constantly refreshed after every monument visit in Berlin; but this place was different. For the first time, I heard the voices of individual  people recounting tales of how they were the only persons alive amidst the mound of dead bodies around them, waiting to be taken to the crematory. How they had escaped the dead pit when no was looking and survived. There were some survivors who spoke about having to burn about 10,000 bodies each day, knowing the next could as well be you. A picture of hundreds of corpses cleared out of the road by tow trucks which would normally be used for clearing snow, was undoubtedly moving. Preserved letters, post cards and even toilet paper which had been written upon telling us how apathetic life was in Europe 70 years back. Almost all of these letter writers were either killed or their fate was unknown. I learnt an important lesson today from a quote by Primo Levi, an Italian Jewish chemist and writer. Levi was imprisoned at the Auschwitz concentration camp in Nazi occupied Poland. He survived the experience and wrote several books on his account of the year he spent as a prisoner in the most deadliest extermination camp in history. To quote him, "It has happened. Therefore, it can happen again." Is mankind really that naive? Aren't we the most intelligent species on this planet because of the ability to learn from our mistakes. Analysis and retrospection is a stereotypical human characteristic. If we never learn about the futility and misery associated with genocide and war, our intelligence is really not worth it. To err is human, but stealing someone else's right to live is just cruel.
I'll definitely be visiting the Auschwitz ex-concentration camp while in Poland. Amen.

On a lighter note, we had a different teacher come and teach us today. He has taught us only once before and that day has been the most intensive ever. Today we learnt how to use the past tense including the participle and perfect in German. A whole lot of googly German grammar does not make a great start to the day. Also, guess what?! We received our first official homework for the language school today! It's due tomorrow i.e. the last day of school!! We have to paraphrase the story "Hans in Luck" from the Grimm's Fairy Tales in German. I'll do that in the morning, lol. I can't believe where the days flew by. In four days, I will be back again in Tuebingen and shall miss Berlin dearly. I'm already thinking of applying to grad school here! :-D Their McDonalds' sells freakking McAloo Tikki (veggie burger) for only 1.10 Euros! I felt like I was back in India!! Talking of India, I totally forgot to get gifts/souvenirs for my host and my PhD supervisors! So, I thought I might pick up something for them from here. I mean Berlin is an international city and they have some really good Indian restaurants. So I took a trip down to this Indian restaurant named Amrit, where our class had dinner for the first time together. I thought I would ask one of the waiters if they knew of an Indian store in Berlin. To all my Pakistani friends, I met this really nice server from Sialkot who came to Berlin 6 years back in search of work. I could see that Papu felt as happy as me to talk to someone in Hindi! Yeah, he is from Pakistan and his name is Papu! :-P But yeah, that was quite a random rendezvous which led me to an hour long search of an Indian store which ultimately didn't bear any fruit cuz I couldn't find it! So now after having Google Mapped it, I will be going there tomorrow. I also need to buy Berlin souvenirs tomorrow...hmm..

Amrit Restaurant. Epic.

Last day of language class tomorrow. Time flies the fastest! I don't want to leave Berlin!!