First Impressions of Berlin

Hello and welcome! Thanks for joining up. I wanted to use Substack as a way to get into the habit of writing every so often, and I thought a good place to start would be to talk about my first few weeks in Berlin. I hope to have something to share through Substack about once a month.

Why I’m Here

If you don’t know, I’m studying abroad at the Technische Universität Berlin (TUB) for six weeks. I decided I wanted to study abroad for a few reasons:

• This is my last summer as an undergraduate
• I’ve only heard good things from people who’ve studied abroad
• I wanted an excuse to not have to find an internship for the summer

The program runs from July 6th to August 15th, so it’s pretty quick, which gave me time to do other fun things this summer like attend a rocketry competition for my club at school, visit family, and relax at home.

The Flight

I left San Francisco on the evening of the fourth of July (very patriotic of me, I know), which was actually quite a sight. Looking out my small window granted me a view of hundreds of fireworks going off around the city, and, as we got higher, around the state. It was a beautiful image, seeing people around the state still celebrate our country despite the tumultuous months we’ve been through. It gave me hope that we might be able to figure it all out.

I was also relieved we had even left the ground, as an ‘urgent customer situation’, whatever that means, had delayed us by almost an hour.

After that cool takeoff, the flight settled into a typical trans-Atlantic fashion - watching movies, reading, wondering how the person next to me can take up so much space, wishing I had more leg room, the usual. I landed in Frankfurt with about half an hour until my connecting flight, so I booked it through customs and luckily made it to my gate on time. The flight to Berlin passed in sort of a delirium, as I’d been awake for probably twenty hours at that point (I can’t sleep on planes, an unfortunate trait of mine).

I got to Berlin and picked up my suitcase and then began the trip to my apartment. My phone told me it was about a thirty minute trip by train, so I headed to the station. After lugging my suitcase down a flight of stairs, I spent an embarrassing amount of time at the ticket terminal (turns out there’s an option for English that I didn’t realize was there) and then got on my train. Not sure why Berlin hasn’t gotten with the program of paperless tickets. Seems like a waste of money and paper to have every passenger be holding a printed ticket.

The ride was pleasant enough, although the bar for ‘good train ride’ in my book is pretty low, seeing as I mostly spend time on BART. I had to transfer trains once, which looking back, I’m not sure why - there’s a line that goes directly from the airport to the station close to where I live, but there must have been a line down or something. This transfer was a pain, as I had to drag my forty-pound suitcase up and down flights of stairs looking for my platform. I eventually made it to my stop and headed for my apartment building.

The Circus Living

The walk over to my apartment building was slightly worrying, as I was only walking empty lots and construction sites. I hadn’t seen anyone else on the street and I was starting to wonder if I had done something to offend the UC study abroad program and they were sending me to live in some forgotten corner of the city. My fears were alleviated when I actually got to the place - it was large, inviting, and looked new.

The receptionist took me up to my apartment after I signed a couple forms saying I wouldn’t completely trash the unit and showed me around. It’s pretty tiny but very nice! I have my own space, which has been great, with a bathroom and kitchenette. There is a huge construction project across the street, which is loud, but with the window closed it hasn’t been an issue.

Despite having been awake for over twenty-four hours, I didn’t feel tired, so I unpacked and ate a sandwich before taking a shower. After many an hour tossing and turning, I finally fell asleep at around six in the morning.

I woke up an indeterminate amount of time later and felt a little better, and I checked the time in hopes that I had gotten a few hours of sleep. I had - it was four in the afternoon. The blackout blinds in my room are dangerous! Most of the day gone, but I was glad I had gotten some rest.

Many places are closed on Sundays in Berlin, so it took me some time to find a grocery store that was open. It felt like the equivalent of a gas station convenience store. It had everything I needed, but the produce was looking a little dicey so I just got some prepackaged items to last me until I could get to a bigger store.

After I got home, I went up to the roof of my building and checked out the view before settling on a deck chair and reading a book1.

I noticed a group of college aged kids sitting nearby that were speaking English, so I went over and asked if they were studying abroad. Turns out they’re all in my program! They’re all from the University of Florida and had arrived around the same time as me. I chatted with them for a while before the roof closed. I came back to my room, glad to have made some friends.

Technische Universität Berlin

I had another restless night and the sound of my alarm for orientation was not a pleasant one. I got on the train with my new friends and we headed to campus together.

Honestly, I was a little underwhelmed by the first day. I guess I shouldn’t have been expecting a ground-breaking orientation (oxymoron of the week right there), but the campus tour was rather lackluster. We went to a whopping three buildings - the library, cafeteria, and the main meeting building where we had started - and then were taken to our first class. That was also mostly just an intro, and I was still super tired, so I was glad to head home once it was over.

The class I took during my first two weeks was pretty fun. We were given an outline of Python code and our professor walked us through developing it into a full-fledged two-dimensional video-game2. It was fun! I learned a lot about coding, even though I had some prior experience, and met some cool people. I had classmates from Korea, India, Japan, Germany, and South Africa.

My first weeks included lots of eating out, trips to museums, coding in class, and adjusting to living in a European country. I’ve been to Florence, Paris, and London this year, but only for a few days. This is a more permanent stay and so learning to use transit, go to the store, go to class, and other day-to-day things has been an adjustment.

Random thoughts and things I’ve noticed:

• No one here jaywalks. I looked it up, and it is illegal, but doesn’t seem like the kind of thing you would get in trouble for. Even so, I’ve seen people waiting at a completely empty intersection for the walk signal to turn on.
• Like the rest of Europe, it seems everyone is a avid smoker. To each their own, but I don’t love the near-constant smell of cigarettes when walking around the city.
• Beer is a more frequent drink than water.
• There is street art and graffiti all over the place. Most of it is really cool, and there aren’t usually efforts to take it down. It’s all part of the city’s culture.
• Whenever you buy something that comes in a recyclable container, you pay a deposit on it that you can get back by taking it to a recycling center. The commitment to getting these deposits back is hardcore. I saw a long line of people at the store the other day with backpacks, totes, and literal wagons of bottles and jars to return. It makes sense, people want their money back and this is a good way to incentivize recycling, but it was funny to see.
• Tipping culture seems random - some places don’t ask at all, some pester for it, and some have the option but don’t mention it at all. I also get the feeling places will ask us because we’re American and used to tipping at restaurants.
• This is also a more general Europe thing, but unless you actively pester your waiter, dinner is going to be at least a three hour event.
• Most people here are fluent in English, but there seems to be sort of a general disapproval of Americans and tourists here, so sometimes my lack of German skill is met with a bit of ‘oh, an American’ vibe. I’ve only been met with one person who straight up told us he didn’t speak English, though.
• German words range from ‘the English version is one or two letters off’ to ‘this word is thirty-six letters long and I have no idea what it could mean.’
• The dexterity people display in carrying around open mugs of coffee is impressive. I’ve seen people with them in the elevator, walking around campus, on the train even, without ever spilling.
• Berlin is a hodgepodge of all sorts of people from all over the place and it’s been cool hearing different languages and seeing expressions of various places around the city.

Some places I’ve visited that are worth a trip if you’re around:

• Topography of Terror - very informative museum about WWII in Germany and the Holocaust. Big outdoor timeline of events of both.
• Tiergarten - huge beautiful park with walking and biking paths. Takes you near cool monuments like Victory Tower and Brandenburg Gate.
• Charlottensburg Palace - part art museum, part historical display of a past residence of King Frederick I, II, and III, among others. Has beautiful gardens as part of the property. Sort of like a mini-Versailles.
• Bundestag (the German Capital) - not only a very cool building, but the tour through it provided a lot of cool historical information about German government. The viewing dome at the top of the building offers great views of Berlin.
• Museum Island - a literal island with five museums on it. Lots of cool art and artifacts from ancient Rome, Greece, and Egypt. The New Museum was my favorite, even though everything in it was quite old.
• Holtzmarkt - small shopping district right across the street from where I live. Lots of great restaurants (including the best gelato I’ve ever had, sorry Florence) and tons of seating, some of which is situated right on the river. It’s a great hangout spot!

Getting Into the Swing of Things

After finally adjusting to the time zone and getting into more of a routine, the phrase ‘the days are like weeks and the weeks are like days’ has been running through my head while I’ve been here. It’s so true - I get home from a long day and it feels like I ate breakfast three days ago, and then I realize that it’s Thursday again even though I swear it was just Monday. It’s an odd feeling, especially for such a short program. It feels like I both have lots of time to do things and no time at all.

The weather has been pretty rainy. I think of the twenty-ish days I’ve been here, it’s rained on about seventeen of them. The constant dreariness hasn’t been amazing, but I prefer it to being hot all the time in rooms without air conditioning.

All in all, I’ve been having a fun time here in Deutschland. Missing my friends and family back in the states, but I’ll be back soon! More updates to come.

Auf Wiedersehen!

Thanks for reading! I hope you enjoyed my retelling of my first days in Germany. Keep reading to participate in next month’s letter:

Taking a Page out of Randall Munroe’s Book (Literally)

For my next email, I thought it would be fun to do my own version of Randall Munroe’s What If.

If you don’t know, Randall Munroe is an ex-NASA engineer who writes a popular web-comic, xkcd (it’s worth checking out, especially if you keep up with the STEM world at all). He also wrote a book, What If, where he gathered absurd hypothetical questions from his audience and wrote scientific, researched answers on what would happen in these scenarios.

A good example is the first question in the book - ‘What would happen if you tried to hit a baseball pitched at ninety percent of the speed of light?’ After assuming that the ball magically got up to that speed, Munroe described in detail what a relativistic baseball would look like and do (spoiler alert - a lot of bad things happen).

Here are some of the other questions he answered for some more context:

• What if a glass were literally half-empty (as in half of the glass was a vacuum)?
• If you every student that took the SAT this year guessed on every question, what are the odds someone would get a perfect score?
• Is it possible to create a flying machine using guns for propulsion?
• How much electric power could Yoda generate with the force?
• More can be found here.

In the spirit of studying engineering here in Berlin, I think it would be fun for me to try and tackle questions like this on my own, both to practice existing skills of mine and to learn something new.

So, if you have a question like that, send it my way! You can use the button below, or email/text me. Depending on my success, I’ll include my findings in a future Substack post.

Submit Question

1

I was reading Sunrise on the Reaping, by Suzanne Collins. Great read for fans of the Hunger Games.

2

If you’re interested in doing something like this, all the resources and tutorials are on my professor’s website.