| Music | Tolkien Guide | Recipes | Chemical Enginering | Organic Chemistry | Trips | HOME |
Our Annual Spring Break Max Kade Trip for 2009 started just as every other trip has started: with a really cramped ride on a University bus to Detroit Metropolitan Airport. This time was more cramped, however, because of a larger than normal Polish group that was traveling with us.
Upon arrival at the airport, we unloaded the bus and went through all the usual security and check in procedures. Afterward we had the usual almost 3 hour wait before we would be boarding the plane. During this time, I had the chance to talk a bit with our two group leaders Peggy and Vicki. Both of them very nice people. This time we would be flying with Air France again, which could only mean one thing.... another layover in Paris.
Upon arrival in Paris, we got off the plane, left the security area, crossed the airport, re-entered the security area (because that is how Charles De Gaul Airport is built), and were told to load a bus that would take us to the plane. Myself and two other Max Kade Students were quickly through Security and got onto the first bus while the rest of our group got on the second bus. Due to maintenance on our plane, we were instructed that we had to wait on the bus for about an hour. This gave us the chance to chat amongst ourselves and one of the other passengers on the bus. She was german-born, but lived in Paris, so she was going home for a short holiday. After this hour long wait, we were finally driven over to our plane.
After a fairly uneventful flight to Berlin, we arrived in Berlin in the early afternoon. We secured transportation via the Berlin public transportation system and headed to our "home" for the next week.
Our youth hostel was located only a few short minutes' walk away from Alexanderplatz and the TV tower. After settling into the youth hostel, a small group of us went out to take a small tour of our general area. We headed over to the Brandenburger Tor and the Sony Center. The entire plaza behind the Tor was covered in what used to be snow, but was, after all the people walking all over it all day, was now a sheet of ice. It proved interesting trying to walk around the city for a few days because of all of the ice everywere. The city had cleared off only as much of the sidewalk as was deemed necessary for people to walk on. That meant that only about half of the sidewalks were actually cleared off.
After arriving back from this little trip, Dave and I went back out to look for the Catholic Cathedral that we had seen was in the area. We found it quite easily. As it turned out, not only was our hostel near Alexanderplatz, but it was also on the same street as the State Opera House, the Berlin Cathedral, the Humboldt University, the Museums, Bebelplatz, and the Catholic Cathedral.
This Sunday started with a trip to the Catholic Cathedral in Berlin. This was an interesting Mass. I quickly recognized that they were using the informal "Du" in reference to God as opposed to the more formal "Sie". That was not something that I had expected at all. Additionally, at the end of the Mass, the organist started up playing a piece that I completely didn't expect to hear at the end of the ceremony. The piece was a french piece called Sortie in E-flat Major. It was a very interesting piece. Sounded more appropriate in a circus of sorts. After Mass, we went to meet up with a tour along the remnants of the Berlin Wall. We started at a tower that was erected to allow people in West Berlin to look over the wall at the people in East Berlin. Near the base of this tower was a park-like area with a memorial to that stretch of the wall. It had several pictures of how they had torn down a chirch in order to build that stretch of the wall.