Phew, as I mentioned when presenting myself, I have the tendency to always have a crammed calendar. I don’t quite understand how, but the feeling is ever present also here in Berlin, despite the fact that I have a lot less work to do.
I point my blaming finger at the German course, which starts at an unholy hour in the morning (at least when one has to take into account the time it takes to get to the FU situated in the middle of nowhere, also known as Dahlem), and thus makes me adapt to a completely crooked rhythm of life. Or well, tries to make me, as I am unable to. Of course, the nice little schoolgirl I am, I do get up at an abnormal time in the morning, and even go to bed unnaturally early to avoid being ready the next morning to give up three-quarters of my kingdom and my left leg just to be allowed to sleep. But it just doesn’t make any difference whether I have a good 8-hour sleep every goddamn night or not.
No. I’m not adapting, I won’t be adapting, and I doubt I ever will be able to adapt, if "adapt" is understood as an odd habit being assimilated into/as the norm. I’m. just. not. a. morning. person. To my defence, I’m not the kind of non-morning person who’ll always be grumpy, bitchy and/or mute until the day is way passed noon. I am able to communicate in a civilised manner, get stuff done and so, but I’m just TIRED. Know what I mean?
I wouldn’t be so worked up with having to flip my rhythm of life, if it didn’t feel so frustratingly pointless. Our course starts at 9:30 and ends at 13:15 every day until mid-October. That’s all the regular programme I have! Why, for the loving mother of god and all that is holy, cannot the time of the whole course just be moved a few hours forward? Say, 12:30–16:15? And of course excursions with their own exceptional timetables.
Speaking of which, we had our first excursion today with the theme architecture. We didn’t have any lecture yesterday (which we found out around 10:30, make a wild guess who muttered a few words about the lost possibility of sleeping in...), and we were given no information on the excursion beforehand, relying entirely on Wednesday’s lesson. Great. Well, our teacher did show up in the afternoon, as there is a film shown at the FU every Wednesday afternoon (not anything mandatory, more like a film club), and she was the only one with the DVD. There she informed some students, who for their part informed others – Chinese whispers, the basic method of information in the 21st century. E-mail is so 1993. The rumours said Thursday 10 AM at U-Bahnhof Tiergarten, which doesn’t exist: there’s either the Bahnhof (station) for S-Bahns in Tiergarten in Western Berlin, or the Station for U-Bahn in Tierpark in the East. I asked whether it was the U- or the S-Bahnhof, got a reply “U”, and as I didn’t exactly know what the programme or route was, I assumed then it was U-Tierpark.
*BEEEEP* Wrong answer! It actually would have been quite interesting to hear about the architectural and infrastructural history in the West, as I am quite unfamiliar with it, but instead ended up spending the morning in U- and S-Bahns making my way through to West. (I don’t need to mention the lost sleep, do I?) I caught up with the others in the cafeteria in Akademie der Künste, where we spent an hour or so (at the cafeteria, I mean), then we travelled back East to Friedrichshain for the last hour or so :D Oh well, next time I know to double-check with our info-challenged teacher instead of making my own assumptions.
Hm... I actually was going to write about the bureaucracy of Berlin and its universities, and not froth about morning wake-ups like a madwoman, but I guess I’ll have to get to that in the next post. Hopefully by then I’ll have some flat news, too! Keep your fingers crossed :)
No comments:
Post a Comment