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choco_froshWarning: do not read the following if you are easily offended...
Wednesday: I hauled myself out of bed, slightly later than previously, though earlier than most of my colleagues--hence why more of them weren´t there to meet the mayor, or for the tasty and (in contrast to the previous evening) well-organized reception afterward.
Sadly, that evening would see more endless standing in line for food, as we all showed up for an early dinner in the hotel restaurant--which was pretty good, and in setup rather reminded me of my college dining hall. (NOTE: for those who didn´t go to Williams, this is actually a GOOD thing). We were all eating in haste, though, before being bused off to the other end of Berlin, to find out what all our musician friends had been rehearsing all week. The concert had a wide variety of music (though unfortunately nothing pre-classical), including several pieces that bordered on performance art: the one piece written for solo tuba, for example, while Paula (yet another Regensburger) had us all guarding the speakers for a strange mostly electronic piece she´s composed, and James and a few other people did a new composition entitled "A dangerous game of hide and seek", which involved pairs of performers stalking each other around the stage and the audience.
Afterwards, all the performers were hustled off for a VERY late dinner, while the rest of us (continuing a theme of the conference) stood around trying to organize ourselves sufficiently to go find a bar. This took considerable effort: there were further delays and confusion even once we got back to the hotel, as we tried to ALL get organized to go somewhere, and various people wanted to wait for other people/take the U-Bahn south to this one club/... (sigh. Fulbright should´ve just told us how we could rent a beer hall, so that we could all say goodbye to everyone properly) ...In the end, Amanda and her German boyfriend Hendric just grabbed a bunch of us, including the irrepresible TC and a girl called Joy who was studying in France, and we all went running across busy streets (in defiance of law and custom and our own safety and sense), to what turned out to be, randomly enough, an Argentine restaurant specializing in French wines. Ah well, we drank Hefeweisen with strange syrups in it (apparently, this too is traditionally Berlin), and sat around talking über Gott und die Welt until we all decided to call it a night, or go walk to the Brandenburg Gate. Javier suggested (mostly in jest) that they should go find a strip club. Unfortunately, the concierge was no longer on duty when we got to the hotel, so we didn´t get the hilarious spectacle of TC askiong him "Entschuldigung, wir wollen Titten sehen..."
OK, you had to be there.
But I never got to say goodbye to most of the rest of my fellow Fulbrighters properly: most of them weren´t up yet when I went down for a last, glorious breakfast the next morning. Nor did I get to ask Javier WHAT, exactly, he had been doing in Prague, or air my views on religious education. (Well, he´s probably just as glad, then...) And there were no repeats of that incredible conversation on environmental policy that a bunch of us had on the bus back from Vienna. Still, I reflected as I got on the train for the first leg of my (nine-hour!) train ride home, it had still been a fun conference.
Wednesday: I hauled myself out of bed, slightly later than previously, though earlier than most of my colleagues--hence why more of them weren´t there to meet the mayor, or for the tasty and (in contrast to the previous evening) well-organized reception afterward.
Sadly, that evening would see more endless standing in line for food, as we all showed up for an early dinner in the hotel restaurant--which was pretty good, and in setup rather reminded me of my college dining hall. (NOTE: for those who didn´t go to Williams, this is actually a GOOD thing). We were all eating in haste, though, before being bused off to the other end of Berlin, to find out what all our musician friends had been rehearsing all week. The concert had a wide variety of music (though unfortunately nothing pre-classical), including several pieces that bordered on performance art: the one piece written for solo tuba, for example, while Paula (yet another Regensburger) had us all guarding the speakers for a strange mostly electronic piece she´s composed, and James and a few other people did a new composition entitled "A dangerous game of hide and seek", which involved pairs of performers stalking each other around the stage and the audience.
Afterwards, all the performers were hustled off for a VERY late dinner, while the rest of us (continuing a theme of the conference) stood around trying to organize ourselves sufficiently to go find a bar. This took considerable effort: there were further delays and confusion even once we got back to the hotel, as we tried to ALL get organized to go somewhere, and various people wanted to wait for other people/take the U-Bahn south to this one club/... (sigh. Fulbright should´ve just told us how we could rent a beer hall, so that we could all say goodbye to everyone properly) ...In the end, Amanda and her German boyfriend Hendric just grabbed a bunch of us, including the irrepresible TC and a girl called Joy who was studying in France, and we all went running across busy streets (in defiance of law and custom and our own safety and sense), to what turned out to be, randomly enough, an Argentine restaurant specializing in French wines. Ah well, we drank Hefeweisen with strange syrups in it (apparently, this too is traditionally Berlin), and sat around talking über Gott und die Welt until we all decided to call it a night, or go walk to the Brandenburg Gate. Javier suggested (mostly in jest) that they should go find a strip club. Unfortunately, the concierge was no longer on duty when we got to the hotel, so we didn´t get the hilarious spectacle of TC askiong him "Entschuldigung, wir wollen Titten sehen..."
OK, you had to be there.
But I never got to say goodbye to most of the rest of my fellow Fulbrighters properly: most of them weren´t up yet when I went down for a last, glorious breakfast the next morning. Nor did I get to ask Javier WHAT, exactly, he had been doing in Prague, or air my views on religious education. (Well, he´s probably just as glad, then...) And there were no repeats of that incredible conversation on environmental policy that a bunch of us had on the bus back from Vienna. Still, I reflected as I got on the train for the first leg of my (nine-hour!) train ride home, it had still been a fun conference.
