Sunday, September 9, 2007

Berlin, finally

I finally fought with the human laziness and therefore, after a month spent in Berlin, I gather my thoughts and my inspiration and I let them turn into words.

Berlin offered me the chance to escape Bucharest before I let any cultural shock bring me down. Because I do believe that coming back home after a while abroad, most of us have a small cultural shock. Berlin came as a breath of fresh air, while people suffer from intense heat in Bucharest.
ECLA summer school is a long summer school. It's seven week-long, so you inevitably get immersed in the German atmosphere. I hope that my scarce knowledge of German language will be extended here; but since it's an international school, the main language used is of course English. I only have satisfaction when I go to the supermarket around the corner and say "Hallo" to the cashier.
As in every international school, you get this amazing chance to meet people from all around the world. 42 participants from 22 countries. Impressive. What is even most interesting is that I meet for the first time people from countries like Ukraine, Georgia, Syria, Netherlands, Germany, Ireland, Australia or Estonia. My world enlarges. My perspective changes. I hear new languages, new accents. An American tries to copy the accent of an Irish. A German and an Ukrainian sing opera side by side. A Turkish and a Portuguese play ping-pong right now under my window.
ECLA is an island of internationality. And of liberal arts. The professors are so good and diverse, that you can never guess what you'll learn next. Literature, philosophy, political science? Maybe art or filmmaking? A little bit of choir and theater. And a relaxing hour in the sauna.
ECLA campus is pretty isolated from the city center. It's in an area full of trees and grass. The sky has something special here. I never had a special passion of looking at the sky. But here it always says something different, clouds change their shape every minute, and the sun appears from behind like Christ at the Judgement Day. Full of rays. Reminding everyone that there is God.
We read here a lot on religion, literature. We read here a lot of philosophy and political science. We read a lot. Around 400 pages a week. I discovered how brilliant Dostoevsky is. And Kierkegaard. And Camus. I feel small again. I feel again and again that I don't know anything.
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(This entry was written a while ago and its end is lost. It's your task therefore to imagine the lines following.)

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