Dankeshön for the Memories Germany. Week 6.

The beginning of my last week in Germany was spent trying to cram in all of my favorite things about Bonn. Monday and Tuesday were bittersweet. Almost more bitter than sweet because in the short time I spent there it quickly became like my second home. I will miss waking up to the Rhine right outside my window and walking across the bridge every morning to class, getting €1 gelato at lunch every day, buying fruit at the market, hanging out at the hofgarten, and so many other things. Monday was our last day of lecture for the program and I am not sure that I have ever been sad that a class is over until now. Monday evening we ate our farewell dinner with Henning at an Ethiopian restaurant. I did not expect, though, that we would take our final exam in a restaurant while split up into the houses of Harry Potter. It was the strangest and best final exam experience that I have had, and think I will ever have. On Tuesday we bought our last souvenirs and hiked up to the Drachenfels castle and saw the most beautiful view of Bonn. Then on Wednesday it was time to leave Bonn for good and head for Berlin. When we arrived in Berlin we immediately went on a bus tour of Berlin and at the end we stopped to walk by the Berlin wall, which was very cool. Since we arrived in Berlin on July 4^th we, of course, had to celebrate by ordering red and blue drinks and saying cheers to the US.

On the second day we did the My Berlin Day. We were split into 4 different groups and each group went with a different guide around Berlin. My group was with a man named Dr. Edgar Guzman Ruiz. He is a Columbian artist and architect that worked on making a model of Germania, which was Hitler’s plan for the reconstruction of Berlin post his intended victory of World War II. Dr. Ruiz was such an amazing man who knew so much about the history of Berlin and it was an absolute pleasure to spend the day with him. We spent the day learning about the history of Germany and having deep conversations with him about the implications of history on the present day. It was an incredibly eye opening day and I loved every minute of it.  That evening after presenting about our My Berlin Day we decided to head back into central Berlin to have dinner, but on the bus ride there the bus made a stop in front of the Lustgarten. When the doors opened we immediately heard classical music being played on a violin and piano by an older couple in the park. We all had an overwhelming urge to hop off the bus and listen to the music, so we did. We got off the bus and went and sat on the grass and just listened to the music while we watched the sunset. It was such a cool impromptu decision that we made. The next day, our last day in Berlin, we went to the Charité museum for the history of medicine, which was an incredibly fascinating museum. Then in the afternoon we visited the Sachsenhausen concentration camp. It was a very moving experience. There was a somber heaviness that I felt the entire time we were there. I had never been to a concentration camp before and it was definitely one of the most emotional visits to a museum/monument that I have ever been to by far. That night was our last night together as a program and for dinner we had Lebanese food and to top it off there was a performance by a belly dancer. The dinner ended in everyone dancing with a belly dancer in this small little Lebanese restaurant after we had all had a few glasses of wine. There were definitely some tears shed because it was the end of an amazing program. It was a night I will never forget. I am blown away that 6 weeks have already come and gone. To say these last 6 weeks have been some of the best of my life would be an understatement. I saw some beautiful places, and met some beautiful people. Thank you to everyone who went on this trip and thank you to everyone that made it possible. It was an incredible life changing experience and I will most definitely be finding myself back in Europe in the future. Prost, and Tschüss for now!