German Language Tour

Tag Elf (Day Eleven)

by Oscar Brundell

Hallo von La Pegasus!

Well, it’s actually called ‘The Pegasus Hostel’ but it’s surprisingly nice and if you pretend there’s an infinity pool overlooking the city of Deutschland, with a rooftop terrace then it actually sounds really luxurious But in fairness the food is delicious, the rooms are comfortable and the staff are great We had an early start today at 7 am and I believe we're all excited about that weekend sleep-in tomorrow. Today was Ronja’s 16th birthday! So we all sang Happy Birthday in German. It went something like “Zum Geburtstag viel Glück, Zum Geburtstag viel Glück, Zum Geburtstag lieber Ronja, Zum Geburtstag viel Glück” Basically translating to, much luck on your birthday After our beloved buffet gourmet breakfast, we headed down to the U-bahn Station called Weberwiese and caught the U5 to Unter den Linden, then caught the U6 one stop to Stadtmitte and then the U2 7 stops to Wittenberg Platz This usually takes around 40mins

At school we revised comparative forms zum Beispiel gut, besser und am bestern, and we then did Maths! This was a little bit strange but it helped us revise numbers and how to add, subtract, multiply and divide For our break the brilliant teachers brought a cake in for Ronja’s birthday, it was delectable and a great way to spend 15mins on the balcony overlooking the city of Berlin For the last hour and a half of class, we revised families and then we split up in groups and read a series of stories about how these couples fell in love It’s amazing to see how much we’ve improved and how little we need to translate things because the main thing at our language school is that you can’t speak any English and you can’t translate anything into English.

After school, we headed towards the Kaiser Wilhelm Memorial Church, a church built in the 1890s which was severely damaged during a bombing raid in 1943 and was never repaired It’s a fascinating reminder, that most of Berlin was destroyed after WWII but most buildings were repaired and you forget about the damage Germany sustained during the bombing raids of WWll. We then went into the modern church built next door to the Kaiser Wilhelm Church and it shows how ugly modern churches are compared to the olden days churches There was a choir raising money for a young Ukrainian who had lost her leg from a grenade blast. The choir sounded amazing and we were all sad we had to leave. Of course though when we tried to leave quietly, Mrs Wyatt and I got stuck and forgot that doors can actually be pulled in as well as pushed out but in the end a helpful American who had seen our struggle told us to pu

We then headed to the Mall of Berlin where we spent an hour shopping. It's always awesome spending time in the German shopping centre because it really immerses you in German culture Time really does go fast in Germany and before we knew it we had to meet again and head towards the Topographie des Terrors, which is both an indoor and an outdoor history museum. It’s located on the Niederkirchnerstrasse, formerly called Prinz-Albrecht-Strasse and was the site of buildings from the Nazi regime It was where the headquarters for the Gestapo and SS were located, and the museum was located in ‘No-mans Land’ during the DDR. The museum is very descriptive and is like a timeline depicting all the events that took place during the Third Reich.

Before we knew it, it was 6 o’clock so Indya led us back to La Pegasus where we changed into our black attire and dined on the rooftop terrace.

Bis morgen!