Week "2" or How to Speak like Flock of Doves

Alrighty, so I’m already kinda behind. And by kinda I mean rather a lot. Dang! And I really can’t count because the first entry was more like week one and half and so this is from 1.5 till now-ish...I'll try to take some wise advice I received and attempt shorter entries more often... How are you guys doing? What’s new? Courtney had a birthday since I last posted, so happy birthday, brother! Also, happy birthday to dear Marieke and Melanie as well! 

Ok so after last posting I met up with a dear friend of mine, who I've really gotten to know rather well over the years, but haven't seen him since Christmas! And then I run into him here in Germany, crazy, right? Well Senior Sore Throat and I go way back, so it's hard to be parted for too long. And as Fate and her clever little sisters would have it, I of course never meet him without our other pals Monsieur Stuffy Nose and Herr Nasty Cough catching up with me the following days. We had a marvelous time together learning new German vocabulary like husten (to cough), mischievously missing classes and generally avoiding the company of others since we just have far too grand a time together! Have no fear though, we've parted ways, and I am back to being responsible...-ish. But, ah, Senior, Monsieur, and Herr left me with some new hobbies and valuable lessons. 


Lesson 1. Even in a magical land full of wonder and pastries such as Germany, YouTube can still offer plenty of entertainment for an evening. If any of you are, you know, looking for some distraction in your life and you don't for some reason have a Netflix account (tisk, tisk) the first three seasons of Castle are on YouTube. I like to think of it as a murder mystery cop show with a hint of literary humor and a dash of the absurdity of Pysch's Shawn Spencer. Plus, Disney's movies in German are also online and oh, nothing sounds as fantastically villainous and evil as a Disney villain's song auf Deustch. 

Lesson 2. Although it seems as though every single drink on this continent is carbonated, it's not true. Perhaps Elise and I ought to have realized this sooner, and taken to heart the wise words of Hagrid to a the young Harry Potter upon reading his bizarre list of magical school supplies to buy for the year:

Harry: Can you find all this in London? (imagine that tiny little British accent now please)
Hagrid: (with eyebrows raised significantly and glint in his eye) If you know where to go.


Non-alcoholic, non-carbonated, non-energy-drink, juice? Toothpaste bigger than my pinkie? Anti-itch creme?  Can one find all this in Berlin?! YES! JA! One must simply branch out from the uber-cheap Netto's grocery store we frequent. Oh. But not until making complete fools of ourselves shaking the juice bottles to test if they were carbonated or not because the words we found for carbonated in our dictionaries are nowhere to be found on these bottles of course. You'd think it be easy, but they all bubbled when we shook them..so then you try listening to them and look even more...special. Admittedly one of my not-so-intelligent thought processes.

Lesson 3 This one was something Elise learned. I can fall asleep do just about anything when I'm tired. But I have this half-asleep state where I drift in and out for awhile and can have a seemingly coherent conversation for a little while that eventually turns in protestations of, "No, No! I'm not sleeping, I'm awake. I'm awake! I'm a-" YouTube, movies, reading, anything. And then I don't move. So this is what Elise awoke to one morning, which moment she lovingly preserved photographically.

Lesson 4 Like airplane food, desperation and lack of options can reduce one to make some interesting food decisions. Fortunately McDonald's' food is ALARMINGLY tastier in Europe. What the heck, land of the Brave? When did the land of Free Spreach and other societal advances suddenly loose all sense of taste and become the land of heck-they're-so-desperate-and-lazy-we-can-feed-them-anything-labelled-"MEAT" (Taco Time, I'm taking to you!)-and-get-away-with-it-mwhahahahaha? When did Americans decide to murder their arteries and taste buds simultaneously? Why is it that fast food is an acceptable option here and shops and bakeries and eateries in subway stations here don't make me want to hide my money, grip my purse like my first-born child, and suck on some Peptobismal before ever eating there? USA, I love and miss you, but man we've got some things to work on.

Lesson 5 How to Speak Like a Flock of Doves
You see, the thing is that when I'm/we're tired enough, but not willing to go to sleep for whatever reason, our conversations naturally take a turn for the ridiculous and giggly. We are, in essence average teenaged girls. It is at times like these here in Berlin that Elise and I have begun to master the art of speaking like a flock of doves. Also, it has been made known to us on this study abroad that about 2% of our classmates can tell us apart. And even Hailey, who has known us the longest, still confuses our names on occasion! Ok, ok, we're roommates, we're both blonde, we both have brown-ish eyes, we're in the same grammar class, we know each other well, we laugh at a lot of the same things, but we only occasionally answer to the other's name because Hailey's been mistaking us for over a year now! Then one of the guys comes up to us one day and says, "there's a theory going around the group that you are actually the same person." And then anther girl asks if we're related, we say no, and immediately another asks, wait, what?! I thought you guys were twins! Wow. We've been with these guys for a few weeks, and they still can't tell us apart! Mwhahaha, oh the possibilities.  Ok so, then there's this comedic sketch of Brian Reagan's that fits this entire trip so perfectly because it's about a time when he, under the pressure of small-talk, casually proclaims to love art, which is completely false. It's one of those moments where the words just seem to come forth, unbidden, out of your mouth in a stream too rapid for your brain to stop. Some call this word vomit. But for Brian, they come out like a flock of doves, flying about, spreading the confusion all-around. And they can never be called back!  So one night, after Elise and I had finished watching some Castle (for my health, you know, cause I was sick) she says, "You know, Bonnie, you can't get hurt on this trip, cause if you die (always words that indicate the beginning of an endearing conversation) I'll be the only one able to ID your body, and there's no way I could handle that! ID-ing a body would be just too terrible." So we figured that if one of us dies, people will at least finally tell us apart, right? That is, once the other IDs the body. And thus flew the first of many flocks of doves.

Just to promote the same-person theory, we walked through a doorway in the Pergamon museum and simultaneously turned to either side, pointing and calling out for the other to look at the same awesome dragon detailing from the Ishtar Gate excavation.

Pretty sweet, right? Apparently the unicorn myth started right here.

We have made it our mission, and really it is the duty of experiencing a foreign culture, to sample every bakery, dessert shop, and ice-cream stand we come across. Hazelnut flavored ice-cream? Yes, please.

In the Nikolaikirche (one of the oldest buildings in the entire city!!!!!!), there are many tombstones and effigies with impressively morbid depictions of death, hell, demons and such delightful things. The distorted, almost disembodied demon was a personal favorite because it clearly wasn't enough for the sculptor to have him chained and skeletal, he had to continue to threaten on-lookers by sticking out his tongue. Elise and I followed suit.