Just the Wurst

This morning we didn’t have to meet at Humboldt for class until 12:00 pm, so I spent the morning leisurely getting ready for the day, including reading some articles for my research and for the class discussion we would be having. I left a bit early with Natalie and Hannah to get lunch at a Bagel shop near the university, which had wonderful food by the way. We had class in a different classroom than normal, and it was a nice change of scenery. The room was a bit larger and it seemed like there was more natural lighting, though I could be mistaken. After some introduction to the topic of the days discussion by Julie, we were broken up into pairs to discuss a specific topic that related to the reading we were assigned. The topic my partner and I had to discuss was, “what is truth?” which, we decided quickly was quite a complicated thing to define. I will discuss this more in my weekly reflection, so I will move on to the next events of my day. After the class was over we had the day for ourselves, so Mira, Natalie, and I all went to the National Altes Museum, which features impressionist and expressionist art. I wasn’t as moved by the impressionist art, but I thought the realism from the statues and some of the paintings was phenomenal. Some of the paintings were absolutely enormous! And there were quite a few paintings that were unfinished, which I thought was interesting. They seemed like there was literally holes in the picture, or ghosts where people should have been. It was my first time being in art museum like that, but I found it very peaceful to walk among all of the paintings and see snapshots from the past and how art evolved over time.

After the Museum we went to the summer festival that was being held at the University. We didn’t really stay to see anything, we mostly just walked through it, but it seemed like people were having a good time listening to music, drinking, eating, and watching soccer. On our way back we got Spatzle for dinner, well I got potatoes and wurst, but Mira and Natalie got Spätzle. The potatoes were good, but I think next time I will stick to getting the sauerkraut Spätzle. I never thought I would say it, but the sauerkraut spätzle is seriously some delicious stuff.

Once we got back to the hostel, we all took a much needed nap. When I got up, Mira and I walked down the east side gallery and marveled at the artwork and also how much of the artwork had already been so defaced by other people drawing or writing over the artwork. Graffiti is such a norm here in Germany. It’s actually weird to walk past buildings that don’t have some sort of graffiti on it somewhere. It was quite a pleasant walk, and it was a wonderful way to end the night.