Just Another Day in Berlin

September 1, 2016

A typical day for me consists of waking up at 9 AM and heading downstairs for breakfast that is provided by the hostel. The hostel breakfast includes bread rolls, yogurt, assorted fruit, meat slices, and cheese. The breakfast at our first hostel was much better than the breakfast at this hostel. Typically, I eat yogurt and fruit. In addition, the hostel serves coffee. I personally don’t like the coffee that our hostel offers to before I go to class so I stop and get a latte macchiato at the local market. The fruit and caffeine is very cheap at this market. At this time, I usually get fruit as a snack for when I’m hungry during class. This market happens every week day and is directly outside of the train station where we get on to go to class. After breakfast I head straight to class around 9:30. Since we moved hostels our classroom is only one stop away. This time of the morning is typically calm on the train.

I arrive to class by 10 AM and we have a lecture from 10 to 12. During this time we have different lecturers from different organizations come speak to us about what their organizations do and how it relates to our classroom topics. After our lecture is over we usually get a 2 to 3 hour break where we can go get lunch or go back to the hostel and relax. After this break, we meet up again and go on a group outing/excursion. These excursions usually consist of us going on walking tours or visiting different organizations. We usually go on these group outings until 5 or 6 PM. After this I head back to the hostel and rest after a long day.

Around 7 PM my roommates and I decide what restaurant we want to go to dinner to. Since we have moved hostels, there are more food options for us to eat at. At our old hostel we would always take the train for dinner because there weren’t a lot of food options in our area. There is one street near our hostel that is filled with fantastic food options. My roommates and I have tried almost every restaurant on this street. We enjoy taking the train to explore and see new areas. After we return from dinner we sit in the hostel lobby and work on our 20 page research papers. Unfortunately, our room is the only room in the hostel that doesn’t have wifi. My roommates and I are always in the hallway of our floor trying to connect to wifi. This has been a huge inconvenience for us for the past two weeks but we have managed to make it work. When you go downstairs to use the wifi in the lobby almost half of our group is always downstairs doing work. The hostel that we are currently staying at offers a kitchen for guests to use. A large portion of our group uses the kitchen to cook meals at night.

Written By

Thalia Carroll-Cachimuel

My goals for studying abroad are being able to immerse myself in a new environment as well as apply classroom concepts to our travels. I have chosen the Politics of Space: Islam, Gender, Sexuality in Berlin to continue expanding on my fervor for travel as well as explore personal topics of interest. I have a passion for social justice and viewing and interpreting social issues from critical and different lenses. A fact about myself is that I have participated in the Alternative Spring Break program at NEU twice. My first trip was in Tahlequah, Oklahoma where I worked on a Cherokee Reservation in the Early Childhood Unit and my second trip was in Jinotega, Nicaragua where I worked in a local learning center that provided educational services to children from low-income areas.