das Fitnessstudio: working out while in Berlin

If you're looking to counter all the beer and sausage (and Döner) that will inevitably be consumed while you are in Berlin, there are a couple different options available. If you don't require much equipment, the simplest (and free) solution would be to go running in the nice suburban area around the Stanford Villa, and there is a multi-function weight machine in the basement of the center as well.

Fitness Company is a chain of higher-end gyms. The fee is pretty pricey (~€60/month), and you should definitely try to bargain with them to lower the price (say you will sign up elsewhere or bring a friend for bargaining power). The facilities are very nice, with a row of flatscreen TVs facing the cardio area, a pool, sauna, exercise classes, outdoor terrace, nice locker rooms, etc. I only wanted a simple weightroom, but ended up signing up here because the location (right at U9-Bhf Schloßstraße, entrance as seen in the above picture) was much more accessible than all other gyms I found, and I could get there easily after classes at the center. I basically ended up paying for a bunch of luxuries that I never used, but saved myself a lot of time and managed to offset the extra cost somewhat with some strategically frugal budgeting of my food stipend. They offer a monthly membership that is even more expensive, but you can sign up for the one-year membership because if you move to a location more than 25km from their nearest gym, you are allowed to terminate the contract. Just make sure you bring your de-registration from Berlin to prove you are actually leaving, and make sure to get the cancellation taken care of in person before you leave Berlin.

For you girls looking to avoid huge, sweaty German men at the gym, Fitness Company also has a chain of women-only gyms called Jopp. I believe they are similarly high-quality, and of course pretty expensive as well. Lily worked out there during her 6 months in Berlin and thought it was pretty nice. Their closest location to the center is also on Schloßstraße, but at U9-Bhf Rathaus Steglitz. Because Jopp is only in Berlin, you may need to find a new place for the summer if you end up doing an internship elsewhere.

McFit is a chain of gyms with the Germans' oddly favorite prefix in the name (along with McDonalds, McPaper, McClean, etc.). It's quite cheap (~€17/month), and the studios have everything you are used to at the Stanford gym (free weights, weight machines, treadmills, ellipticals), and also helpful trainers that wander around offering advice. The equipment and facility is very basic and showering in the locker rooms isn't free, but the inexpensive membership makes it very appropriate for younger people like us. The only reasonable Berlin location for me was quite a trek from the nearest U-bahn station, so I reluctantly chose not to sign up here. However, I worked out at McFit during my internship in Magdeburg, and although it was always really crowded after work and all the ridiculously muscular East German men made me question my masculinity a bit, I can definitely say that this gym was much more suited to my needs (and wallet). McFit offers only one-year memberships (which may actually be cheaper than 3 months at Fitness Company), but the manager at my gym in Magdeburg was nice enough to let me sign up for only 3 months at the same price when I showed him some documents stating that I would be coming back to the states in September. I guess that policy isn't official, but I imagine the managers should be able to make it happen.

whew. Well that's that, happy exercising.

Meeting Germans: The Sprachpartner Program

The best way to discovery Berlin is by meeting the locals; I would’ve never known about half the places to go to or things to do without going around with my German friends. Stanford sets up a couple events for Stanford students and students from the Free University to meet up. It’s usually an informal, meet-and-greet sort of event. And depending on who you click with, you can exchange numbers and emails and meet up again outside of planned group events. Here’s a video from our event Winter quarter, which ended up being pretty fun.

The program really is what you make it, so don’t be afraid to get out of your comfort zone and meet people; they're just as open to meeting you as you are them. They’re usually North American Studies majors, so they’re just as excited to meet Americans and practice English since you are the topic of their studies. We met some really fun people with whom we met up with throughout the quarter. And once you meet one, you meet their friends and before you know it you'll have a group of German friends. Of course there are plenty of other ways to meet Germans besides the Sprachpartner program, but whatever you do, break out of the Stanford bubble and definitely make friends with locals; I promise it'll make your experience that much richer.

The Night of my First Beer in Berlin

Getting my first beer in Germany was a difficult task. So the plan was for me, and my friends Artur and Trey, to do this whole "bar a night" thing, where we'd go to a different Berlin bar each night. I backed out of the plan after the first week cause it got too tiring, but congrats to Artur and Trey who stuck it through and actually COMPLETED the challenge; they literally drank one Beer for every day they were in Berlin, and believe me, some of the days were tough. They not only managed to come out of the challenge without any beer bellies, but they also have GREAT stories from it. If you're interested, ask to hear some.




Now back to the night of my first beer. Since it was Sunday and lots of businesses are not open late on Sunday nights, we couldn't really find any bars on the street we were on near Nollendorf Platz. But we finally found ONE that was kind of full. We looked in and decided to go in because we saw this man and this blonde lady who seemed to look like they were enjoying themselves. But the second we went in, EVERONE stoppped and looked at me. We were all confused cause we weren't sure if we had done something wrong. It took us a minute to realize the "woman" we saw was actually a man and that we were in a gay bar; so that's why they were all looking at me! Cause they didn't understand why a girl was there. And that is how we accidentally ended up in a gay bar. What a night. Later, we ended up finding another local bar nearby. It ended up being a nice find--a candle lit bar with a chill atmosphere. We settled in and I finally enjoyed my first German beer (a Pils)!

The U-Bahn and S-Bahn: Einsteigen Bitte!

Get used to hearing those words. You’ll hear it EVERY time you sit on an U-Bahn or S-Bahn. For those with limited German, those two words mean “Board Please”. Pretty soon you’ll get so used to it that you’ll feel like something’s missing if you don’t hear it. When my friends and I went to London all we heard was “Mind the Gap”, which is WAY less cool than Einsteigen Bitte! Not only that, some of the trains never even came; the Tube (that’s the name of the London system) is really old, and at one point, the lights went out while we were all on the train. So needless to say, when we got back to Berlin, we were so HAPPY to finally hear the ever-familiar “Einsteigen Bitte!”. You gotta hand it to the Germans, they definitely know how to run their transportation system. It works like clockwork and can get me to anywhere in the city at any time, day or night. You’ll end up using it ALL THE TIME and you won’t even realize how amazing it is until it’s gone. One day during Winter quarter, all the U-Bahn drivers went on strike so NONE of the trains were running and the city went into complete chaos. Nobody could get to work, none of us could get to school; people couldn’t get anywhere--- it was just crappy. Anyhow, the point is, German trains are the best in Europe, so enjoy the short time you have to use it before you have to go back to Stanford and are forever stuck with the “wonderful” CalTrain.

P.S. To those who are interested, drinking on the U-Bahn is allowed. This little tidbit comes in handy when you're taking your long ride from your homestays on the west over to the east (where most of the nightlife is)...Prepartying on the U-Bahn made for great fun and stories :)

Homestays

If you're anything like me, one of the benefits of going abroad is the way better housing situation. No more of this 1 room double business. Nope. Here in Berlin, everyone gets a SINGLE! And you don’t even have to enter the draw. In general, homestay rooms are all really nice, and the host families have all been carefully screened, so no worries, you won’t get a weirdo or a rapist or anyone of that sort. Mine ended up being really nice and even made dinner for me every Sunday. I posted pictures of my homestay and me cooking with my host sister just to give you an idea of what to expect.

A Real Winter

On one of the first few days in Berlin, I got ready to go out and explore the city at 5:30PM. Though it doesn't sound that late, it gets dark really early during the Winter. But when I went down in my tennis shoes, the entire sidewalk and street was frozen over with a sheet of ice. It was even colder than it was earlier in the day (-3 Degrees C). Just as I took my first step, I slipped and fell on my butt and this one German guy who was gracefully gliding on the ice down the street just laughed at me. I saw lots of people slipping all over the place so I accepted the fact that there was no way I was going to make it anywhere safely. I went back upstairs and told my host Mom, who then decided to give me snowboots to try on, but told me she didn’t think it’d help cause they were for snow, not ice. With no better options, I put the snowboots on and walked down to the door, took one step, and slipped AGAIN; another hard fall. Needless to say, after slipping 2 times right on my butt, I called it a day and settled for the fact that I still had plenty of days ahead to explore the city. According to my host mom, that day was the worst day of the Winter. In fact, after the first couple of days, the rest of winter quarter had basically no snow; it was just really really cold and there was lots of rain. As a Californian, I'd still prefer the mild winters we get at Stanford, but you definitely start getting used to the harsh weather and then it's not so bad. Plus, there's nothing like eating a nice, warm pretzel when it's snowing outside.

Germans Are Really Nice: Part 3

Part 3:
On my way to the Reichstag, which is the parliament building which has amazing architecture, I was sniffling a lot. I sniffling on the U-Bahn when this one German girl sitting near me got up, said something to me in German, smiled, and gave me a tissue. I replied with danke and was truly grateful. So once again, Germans are really nice. Who says Germans are cold and stoic? Within my first 3 days in Germany, and 3 encounters with very nice Germans, this stereotype had proven to be nothing more than a stereotype. And throughout my time here, I've met many more Germans, all of whom have been caring, interesting, fun, and in general, have broken all stereotypes of how Germans are supposed to be.

Germans Are Really Nice: Part 2

Getting Lost





Part2:


Part of the experience of being in a new city is getting lost in it. We managed to get that item checked off of our Things to Do List our very first night in Berlin. On our first night, it was getting late so we decided to head back from Potsdamer Platz since my host family told me the Bahn system stops running at 1AM on weekdays. So we headed back to the station, but the entrance was blocked! “O crap.” Keep in mind it was 0 Degrees Celsius outside and none of us were dressed accordingly since we had definitely underestimated how cold it gets. It was freezing and we didn’t know where to go; just to get warmth we jumped on a random bus, cause apparently they were still running. While we were on the bus, we started looking at our maps to find a way back, and this nice old 50 year German grandpa asked us something in German. At this point, I've had only 1 quarter of German, a course taken over 6 months before, which meant I had forgotten everything. All I heard was the word “Wo” so I deciphered that he was asking us where we were trying to go. We told him the name of the station, and he just went off in a string of German while pointing at different spots on the map. The entire conversation was really funny cause he was helping us and telling us what we needed to know, but we couldn't understand anything. Once in a while I would try to interject with a couple words I did know in German. Yet somehow within all the jumble, he was able to understand me telling him that the U-Bahn (the train system) was closed, and in response, he was able to tell me in German what I understood to be “No, it’s open.” We said danke to this man, who amazingly was able to help us without speaking a single word of English. We got off the bus and walked around to find the nearest U-Bahn station and low and behold, it was OPEN. For some reason, it was just that one station that we came out of that was closed. Thank you so much to the German man who helped us get home. Unfortunately, even after getting onto that train we still ended up getting lost cause there were all these connections and transfers. But to make a long story short, we kept getting on and off trains, then missing trains, and thus having to wait 10 minutes at a time in the freezing cold, but in the end we made it back to my place at 2:30AM. YAY!

Germans Are Really Nice: Part 1

Arrival in Berlin



Part 1:
The hardest part of the flight was sitting for ten straight hours on the United plane, in the center seat, right between an old German couple and a young German couple. It was during the 10 hour flight, sitting between the two couples speaking German to each other and understanding about 2 words the entire time that I realized, “Wow, I’m REALLY going to Germany.”

After I got off my plane at Tegel Airport, I rushed down to the baggage claim. I had 2 huge suitcases and 1 duffel bad, so I badly needed to get one of those cart things to push my luggage in. Unfortunately, the cart required 1 Euro, which is a coin (I didn't know that at the time), that you must push into the cart’s coin slot to unlock it. But all I had was a 5 Euro bill, which obviously wouldn’t work. And there was NO WAY I could carry all my luggage by myself. But luckily for me, this nice German lady saw me looking confused and gave me 1 Euro. ☺