Walking tour of Berlin

Yesterday I went on a free walking tour ( http://alternativeberlin.com/subculture-berlin-free-tour ) with one of my new Berlin friends, and it was AWESOME!!! It made me want to get creative, and try out their specialised street-art tour & workshop where you get to have a go at creating a piece of street-art! The main thing I noticed today was how it has changed the way the I see street art, now I am keeping my eyes open for it, trying to spot some of the popular street artists who I now know by name (thanks to the tour), and seeing if I can find any new artists that I really like. Little Lucy was one of my favourites from the tour, you can get Little Lucy singlet tops and hoodies! I WANT!

I am now looking through all the other tours the company offers, there are a few I am interested in :)

A cobble stone set into the sign of a Pharmacy in Kreuzberg, it was apparently hurled there during one of the many May-Day riots.

Street art in Kreuzberg-Friedrichshain

Little Lucy! Love her!

On of J.R.'s pieces in Friedrichshain

This is a close up of one of Blu's big murals in Kreuzberg

Ph.D. trial period complete!

As of next week I will be 3 months into my Ph.D.! That is 1/12th of the way through the 3 years they like to set as the goal finish time! It was a tough week involving some animal experiments on Monday and then an exhausting two days trying to do a solo TECAN run, but I got through it! Despite the fact that I was so shattered on Friday that I actually caught myself googling ‘good things about PhDs’ to remind myself why on Earth I am doing this! Though to be honest it never takes much reminding :) I was just pretty tired, and it had been a bit of a hard week with things getting lost-in-translation, which makes me feel really stupid because my colleagues feel like they've explained it perfectly so are not sure why I am struggling, and the absolute LAST thing I want to do is suggest that their English is the problem, because they speak English SO well, there are just sometimes verb tenses that aren’t used the right way, or something just isn't translating in a way that I understand what they mean. I really really hate feeling stupid, it’s mainly down to my Impostor-Syndrome insecurities, no matter how qualified I become I always expect someone to turn around and say “What makes you think YOU are smart enough to be a Neuroscientist!” or “Who let HER in here??” I hope to get past this one day, but have spoken to tenured Professors who still haven't shaken their Impostor-Syndrome - so I'm not holding my breath!

For the next week and a half I am flying pretty much solo, which will be a nice test to see how competent I am after a quarter of a year in the lab! Also it appears as though my Love will be arriving in Berlin on the 9th of August if there are no troubles with the American embassy in NZ (fingers crossed). We should know for sure by the end of next week :) I am struggling to keep my excitement under wraps :)

I have my meeting at the Berlin Foreigner’s Office on Monday to officially apply for my Residency Permit! I will be glad when it is all sorted!! Then it is just University Registration to get through and hopefully then all the paperwork with be DONE!

I finished reading the Year of the Flood by Margaret Atwood this week, I really really enjoyed it, more so than Oryx and Crake I think, probably because I related to the females a bit more easily than I did with the Snowman, who looking back after having read Year of the Flood seems pretty pathetic and whiney compared to the females in the Year of the Flood.

IT IS SO HOT. I am mainly living off ice-blocks, I am not built for anything above 30 degrees celsius!

Song for the day: Wye Oak - If Children Were Wishes, my favourite from the If Children album, quite haunting and beautiful.

Friiidayyyyy!

Mouse lollies!!!

It has been a loooooong work week, playing with lab-mice on Monday and doing a bunch of slide processing for the rest of the week! It is Friday nowwww! Just gotta make it until 5! Just get through the damn day!! Saw these lab-mouse lollies and chuckled!

Germany - first snapshots

Some “WOAH” moments in Germany, where you wonder if these are inappropriate to Germans as well. Sexual abuse on postcards, toys for children which are named after boners, porn in museums, some man-on-sheep  worship, and statues showing testicles (I will be mature enough to appreciate testicles on display as art one day .. but it is not this day!. 

Casual nudity in the DDR museum part 1

Casual nudity in the DDR museum part 2

I don't know why I liked this statue so much at Sans Souci - Potsdam

Billboards tackling erectile dysfunction (www. come later .de)

This postcard is called 'The Cold Finger'

Learning more and more about East Berlin at the DDR museum

Things I never thought I would be learning!

This was posted in the toilet cubicles at my work ...

Another classic Sans Souci statue

Down with the sickness.

I was sick this weekend :( spent most of Sunday lying in bed feeling sorry for myself, but was finally able to keep my dinner down, so thankfully it looks like I won’t have to go through the complex challenge of finding a Dr. who speaks English while I am feeling miserable. So, apart from adding ‘find a Doctor’ to my to do list, not much was accomplished this weekend, which is a shame because it was absolutely stunning from what I could see out my window! I managed to go for a run on Saturday morning before the sickness arrived - I am just getting back into it after an injury (January near-death-experience) and a break while settling into Berlin life - so am starting slow but managed to run 2.5km. I am training for a 10km race next year so I have plenty of time to build up my distance but it’s coming along much easier this time around - I believe the hour I spend walking each day, plus my inline skating, has helped make my legs realise they have to work for their room and board!

Being sick made me miss a few things from home, my Love (obvs. more than usual), and my Mama (ditto), as well as grapefruit Frujus, TipTop Thick-as-you-can-buy-it white bread with Margarine/Butter on it (so deliciously plain and full of empty calories mmmmmmm), and my little Rattling named Taco, she always used to hang out with me when I was at home sick, miss her!

25 before 25

I have a thing about lists. I love them. Especially ‘To Do Lists’, there’s something about striking off each task that I thoroughly enjoy! I caught myself absentmindedly telling someone that I am 25 years old last week, it was strange, but it made me realise that 25 is on the horizon. This gives me the perfect opportunity to start a 25 before 25 list! I am a workaholic most days so I hope that having a lovely list will encourage me to start tackling these things (particularly improving my German).

I haven't included any cooking-at-home challenges as I’m not currently set up for kitchen adventures :( but hopefully I will be able to start cooking/baking again soon!

1. Publish a paper in an academic journal

2. Learn conversational German

3. A secret for my Love, will let you know after the surprise :)

4. Run the Avon Berlin Women’s Running course - 10km section 

5. Visit ALL the interesting Museums in Berlin (ambitious)

6. Keep a list of the best Museums and what I like about them (this is more so that when I have visitors in town I can decide where to take them easily lol)

7. Visit my Love in America!! 

8. Go to New York!

9. Move to Berlin  

10. Take a foreign cooking class (Italian or French? Maybe even German?) 

11. Graduate! Susan Tyree, B.A., M.Sc. 

12. Be a Bridesmaid 

13. Enrol as a Ph.D. student at the University of Potsdam (still not actually done yet!) 

14. Get a residency permit to live in Berlin for 3-4 years 

15. Learn to play some songs on the Keyboard (Kate Nash/Erik Satie)

16. Practise/Improve my touch-typing skills (for thesis writing) 

17. Make some friends in Berlin 

18. Go to the Berlin Christmas Markets 

19. Do the 30Day Shred Challenge

20. Learn to inline skate! 

21. Complete the Berlin Half Marathon - inline skating (registered for March 2014!) 

22. Go to Paris with my Mum

23. Go on a walking tour of London with my Mum 

24. Go to a Pride Parade 

25. Go on a beer tasting and start cataloguing my thoughts on my favourite 

I will keep you posted as they are completed :) It was too wet for skating after work this evening :( but the weekend and next week are looking good! :)

How the adventure began

It has been a crazy 6 months! In the middle of December 2013 I submitted my Master’s thesis, and then took a month off to relax, have a near-death experience, and get engaged (turns out not much relaxing was actually achieved). Then mid January I jumped back into work on a publishing bursary to write up the results of my Master’s project for publication, this bursary was for two months. In February I was offered a Ph.D. position that was fully funded and would require me to move to Berlin, Germany. Shortly after my good news my Love (having recently submitted his Ph.D. thesis) was offered a position as a Postdoctoral Fellow at Stanford University! Then the next week we were flying to Europe (my first time!), we visited Paris, London, and of course Berlin! The lab I was going to work in looked amazing, the city was like nothing I had seen before (not surprising coming from Invercargill/Dunedin, NZ). My Love and I discussed it and decided we'd give it a go and try to make it work, but if things started to get rocky he could move to Berlin! So when we got back to NZ I booked my one-way ticket and started packing up my belongings and saying my goodbyes, and before April was over I was in Berlin!

So with no German language skills and next to no knowledge of German culture I am now living in Berlin. I am now two months into my 3-4 year stay and am almost finished with all the preliminary paperwork! I am planning on learning as much as I can about the history and culture of Berlin, as well as exploring the city and some old and new hobbies! All this will be documented here, some topics may include: photography, cooking/baking, inline skating (just bought my first pair!), running, music, neuroscience, travel, dog-envy, and of course Berlin!