Memoirs of a Linguist: Year 8

One of the buildings that is truly impressive here in Berlin is the Berliner Dom. It is dead in the middle of Mitte, facing the green expanse of Lustgarten, and is just the essence of ecclesiastical majestic pomp. I visited this church one afternoon, and I didn't expect the majesty and extravagance that was waiting for me inside. So after paying the entrance fee (yes folks, this church has an entrance fee), I entered, and my camera went to work.

The other day, I had to buy train tickets. I could have done it by going to a train station, or I could also go to the Internet website and purchase my tickets there. I figured it was more convenient if I just did it through the Internet, so that’s what I did.

Presenting in conferences is also a very important part of graduate school. After all, one is developing a name for oneself in this process. This ties back to the previous articles I wrote in this series, about taking tests versus writing papers. The thing is, if one writes a term paper for a class, then that also has the probability of being presented in a conference, assuming that the topic is original enough. If one simply took a test, then this possibility is not present at all.

One afternoon last month, I have decided to visit the Stasi Prison, in East Berlin. I previously watched the 2006 movie "The Lives of Others" and so some of the scenes were familiar to me.

One thing I am slowly making good use of here in Berlin is the café culture. Now, somehow, the café culture here is different from what I was used to in Buffalo. There are similar aspects of course, but there are also things that are different, and somehow I think I welcome this difference. And perhaps the fact that I am a person who loves a change in scenery every now and then makes me motivated to discover a new café every now and then and see whether it would work for me. As much as I like working in my office, I would love to sit down in a café and work from there, if I can, not to mention the fact that I also hate working from home, so I avoid that if possible.