Today, we had a German class excursion to go to a traveling exhibition. It's called Deutschland für Anfänger, or Germany for Beginners. It was very interesting! They had each letter of the alphabet with a certain part of German for that letter. For instance C was for Currywurst, which is a popular German food, or U for Umwelt, the environment. We had a tour guide who gave us a low down on each letter....in German. It was my first real tour in German. The guide only had one speed: fast, normal German speaking to each other. I listened and understood most of it for the first half of the alphabet, but by the second half my brain was so exhausted with having to hang on his every word and his rate of speaking, that I didn't understand as much on the last half. Overall, it was really cool though!!
Some facts about Germany: (There are many more, but I thought I'd just point out a few.)
- There are about 50 million Christians in Germany. About 30 million are non-practicing nondenominational though. 31% are Catholics, with 30.2% Protestant. The next highest is Muslim with 4.26%.
- Germany is very environmentally conscious! They liked to point out that the US produces 23.5 tons of CO2, where they only produce 12.3, the next highest country.
- By 2050, experts predict Germany to have up to 45 million electric cars.
- Germany was the number 1 world exporter until last year. Then China took over the number 1 spot.
- They took a survey of Germany's top idols. Topping the list were "their mother," Mother Theresa, "their father," Nelson Mandela, Michail Gorbatschow, Albert Schweizer, Gandhi, Martin Luther King, Albert Einstein, and Jesus Christ. I thought their choices were VERY interesting!
- On average, every year the average German eat 9 Doner kebabs, 32kg of french fries, and 80 hamburgers. I was surprised by the low number of Doner, but my host Dad was telling me that it isn't as popular in Southern Germany as it is here in Berlin, so they offset the average.
- About 120 million people speak German.
- Germany has the 3rd largest economy, behind the US and Japan.
After going to the exhibition, we went to the Dussmann, the largest bookstore in Berlin. It really was HUGE! It was 5 floors I think. There were floors for music too. It was a really cool atmosphere. Only if I had time to read something other than school readings. I was telling Trevor how good the Kartoffelkeller was the day before. I guess I was raving, because he wanted to go too. So I went again. The waiter actually recognized me again. It was a little embarrassing haha. Oh well. I decided to get something different today, still potatoes of course. That's pretty much all they have. Every dish is centered around potatoes. I got spicy mushrooms with mashed potatoes. It was good, but not as good as yesterday. I'm convinced mashed potatoes was an American invention. Oh and Germans don't know how to spicy at all. It was more like mushrooms in gravy....no spice...not even any pepper haha.
Afterward, I went to Hauptbahnhof again to buy train tickets to Prague after I'm finished with school in December. Again, the ticket office was packed!! I'm convinced that it's always like that! Jeez! I waited and waited again. Finally when I got there, I bought the tickets, but she told me that I couldn't make seat reservations for the way to Prague yet, only the way back. So I would have to check back periodically to see if they were available yet. When you buy a ticket, it doesn't come with a seat reservation. You have to pay extra to reserve a seat. Sometimes there are plenty of seats left and you don't even need to reserve a seat, but I'm not skilled enough yet to know which locations/times are not as popular. So I like to reserve train seats. It's stressful always wondering if someone is going to kick you out of their seat, so I prefer to just reserve.
Yep, I think that was about all that I remember. Oh and it rained again today :P
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