I saw the new Russian President... Sort Of

Today was another one of those extremely full days with museums all around.  We started at 9 today, got in trouble for not hauling ourselves on to the bus fast enough but I don't really care because our professors LOLLYGAG all the dang time at exhibits so I don't care.  We first went to the German Resistance Museum.  The only interesting part is that there was a large part about the assassination attempt of July 20, 1944 on Hitler.  It didn't work, obviously, and the building where the assassination was planned (also the place of the museum) housed the courtyard where the men responsible were executed.  I sat in this courtyard.  But honestly that was about all we could do because the entire museum was in German and my vocabulary is limited to say the least!  The only thing that I am good at, which I have repeatedly told my classmates, is pronunciation.  And they said they only had a few audio guides so we couldn't all get one.  This meant that the professors were supposedly going to explain stuff to us, room by room.  There were several pieces of the exhibit, I think 28 in total.  No way I'm following my professor around waiting for him to tell me what the audio guide said.  Forget it!  Turns out that there was a huge cabinet full of audio guides... I saw it!!  Jerks.  Needless to say, it took me all of 25 minutes to get through the museum.  As I said, there are only so many words that I know.  These were particularly difficult because they are about a specific time period which I didn't learn the words for in my classes.  

We left there and walked to the "Topography of Terror" museum.  This was an outside museum, which was nice due to the heat usually found in other inside museums, and there was a nice breeze flowing.  It was the remnants of the SS Headquarters building.  It was very interesting to see.  One of my professors, Dr. Greek, is famous among the group for his fantastic quotes and I was able to get one out of him today!  The conversation goes as follows:

H: (after looking at a picture of Hitler and men on horses) Dr Greek, do you think Hitler knew how to ride a horse?

DG: I don't know.  That's a good question.  Maybe he had a pony when he was little.  Or maybe he didn't get a pony when he was little and that's why he was a psycho!

HA!  In context, it was hilarious.  Of course, I don't expect my avid readers to roll laughing, but I nearly did.  If you could just see the professor... you would understand.

Anywho, we were supposed to meet at 12:15 to go to our last museum thing and OF COURSE we had to go find Dr. Maier-Katkin because he was taking his sweet-ass time looking at every single thing in the exhibit even though he knew we only had 45 minutes.  URG! He always does that and turns right around and says crap to us about being on time.  I don't care if he is the director, our poor group leader, Dasa, has to make sure we are on time for our appointments and stuff and he always makes us late!  So we then walked to the Checkpoint Charlie exhibition/museum area.  This is the place where, during the Post War period, you would leave the American sector of Berlin and would go in to the Soviet section.  It was cool because they were selling all this Soviet/communist stuff like the big furry hats with the Communist symbol on it.  Several people bought hats with the Commie symbol on it.  After we looked around for about 30 minutes, we were done for the day and were able to either go off by ourselves or wait for the bus to come get us and take us back to the hotel.  Well we waited for 30 minutes for our driver, JAN, to get his self to where we were.  During this time several things happened.  1.)I got delicious Subway with ICE and it was the yummy crunchy ice, too! 2.) I was asked by some Bosnian woman if I spoke English or German and then she tried to hand me a card that all the "Bosnian" beggars have in English on one side and German on the other, all asking for money.  She had a gold tooth in her mouth.  I tell you what she should do to get money... refer to the tooth and think for yourself.  This way if I don't say it, it's not as mean. 3.) Got a wicked sunburn on my chest and a farmer's tan on my arms because, even though the wind is great, the sun is really hot!  And then the bus came.

I took a nap which I enjoyed except I kept having weird dreams and waking up to look at my watch.  It was strange.  Then me and my girls went to the Tiergarten to read stuff for class.  Some guy threw the ball for his dog by where we were sitting and the dog proceeded to take a giant crap next to us so we decided to leave.  Ate pizza (again!) for dinner and  on the way back to the hotel there was this outrageously long Police motorcade with all these important cars including a Mercedes limousine but I had no idea who it was so I asked the receptionist at the desk, apparently it was the new Russian president.  Who knows what he's doing here, maybe just visiting but he was here and I saw his cars!  Then I came back to my room and have just been hanging out and trying to get work done.  I went and made sure my buddy Ryan was ok because he didn't come with us today, so I thought he was sick like so many others on our trip.  Turns out he told one of the professors that he really just needed his own time so he went off by himself today.  I was like Must be nice buddy!  But he's really cool and he gave me some aloe for my chest and my arms.  It's bad enough that there is no air here but to be sunburnt and having no air... DAMN IT'S HOT!  Anyway, tomorrow we are going to the Wannsee Conference building outside of the city.  I'm hoping that I won't be bored out of my gourd but there is no guarantee.  Until next time...