Life at Law school

Main campus "tent mensa"

Squeezing in another update before the end of June to raise my sorrowful number of contributions for the month, I thought I'd share I few observations about uni life here. This entry is coming to you live from the university tent Mensa, that is, where the students on the main campus dine on schnitzel, quark, dumplings and unidentifiable vegetarian dishes for the low, low prices of 2-3 EUR. I have been known to partake in the odd Mensa lunch, lured in by low prices and the promise of vegetables, and on cooler days the place is almost bearable, when the temperature inside this makeshift building is below 25 degrees and the stench of fish and fat is minimised. Right now, since it's not lunchtime at all and there are only a handful of students hunched under the stark white lights here to study, near the floor to ceiling windows it's actually kind of pleasant.

Humboldt Uni law school

I've been spending a hefty portion of time in the law library here lately, since exams start next week. STUVAC (study vacation) is a foreign concept - here the semester rolls right along, with final lectures taking place only days before exams. It's a tough system. None of this last minute cramming thing - it doesn't work if you've got 6 exams stuffed into two weeks and lectures in between, as some of my friends here do. On the upside, the law library here isn't bad, as far as libraries go. It's kind of old and a bit charming and has a couple of cool, perilously dangerous spiral staircases which at least provide a point of interest. If you are courageous enough to venture up to the second floor, you are rewarded with gaping, screen-less windows, fresh breezes blowing in off Bebelplatz and a bird's eye view of the other law students in all their frenzied quirkiness scampering around with piles of books below.

The Grimm Bibliothek

The security is relatively relaxed at the law library (perhaps based on the assumption that law students are less likely to steal books...hmmm), compared to the fortress of the Grimm Bibliothek, Humboldt Uni's answer to Fisher Library. Grimm Bibliothek lives up to its name - heaven forbid you should attempt to take in a bag, a water bottle or even a laptop case; you can bet you'll be stopped at the entrance by one of TWO security guards posted there at all times. One has to wonder about the extent of the book stealing that must have occurred to warrant employing two security guards. I've encountered a similar level of strictness in the law faculty's computer pool when I made the mistake of carrying in a water bottle - never a problem back home, as we'd probably die if we weren't allowed to drink water while studying. On the upside, the 100 free pages of printing per month is a nice bonus, and probably good for the environment as we all attempt to squish as many pages as possible onto one sheet of paper.

Classes here are starkly different to back home. The inevitable adjustment period lasted most of the semester in my case, and I think I'm still bewildered by the differences. Here, I was mandated by my study program to take at least one seminar and these are rather intimidating for someone used to class sizes of 40+ at Usyd. An intimate group of no more than 15 sits around and has interactive discussions (yes, mostly in German), everyone has to do a presentation (yes, including me) and then the merits and weaknesses of your presentation are closely examined by the teacher and fellow students. I think I'm still reeling from my Spamming Law presentation experience on Tuesday.

Main building of Humbolt Uni

I'm taking a weird combination of subjects: Computer and criminal law, Jewish Law, German constitutional law, Intellectual Property; and Law and the Media, with a few hours of Italian per week thrown in for good measure. The Jewish law seminar, taught in English by a really cool New York Jewish rabbi, is the shining beacon in my demanding week of mostly German subjects and a walk in the park compared to the 10 hours of week of constitutional law that is part of my compulsory program. I'm finally recovering from the whiplash that occurred in my first few weeks here, the confusion of new systems, passwords, assessment procedures, enrollment procedures etc, just in time to write a couple of exams in German and push my intellectual boundaries. I'll let you know how it goes.

Law party

Lining up for the law party

Grooving in the classrooms at law party

Finally, worth a mention is also the transformation of the law school that occurred last Friday night for this semester's Law Party. A party in the law school? In the classrooms? Yep, you bet. Unbelievably, even arriving as early as 10:15pm (doors opened at 10pm), we lined up for an hour and a half to get in. Never have I witnessed such enthusiasm and desperation to get into a law school. The crush was amazing and frightening; at one point I found my 160cm frame suspended among 6 sturdy males surging towards the door and I had remember to breathe. Once inside, the party itself was everything that was promised - three dance floors pulsing with hundreds of students dancing to electro, rock and jazz - and the drinks were cheap. After a few hours, the place was trashed - broken glass, grotty toilets, mud everywhere - yet somehow by Monday morning, decorum had returned to the law school and the foyer resumed its usual function of quasi-gallery with an Egyptian deserts photo exhibition. All traces of Friday night's wild party were gone.

Wine (not beer!) and Reggae

A wine bar where you can drink all night and pay whatever you like at the end. That'll never work, right? I was skeptical, assuming that the inherently stingy students who would surely patronise such a place would nudge twinges of conscience aside and top up their glasses with a week's worth of liquor, perhaps dropping a fiver in at the end. Yet the Weinerei of last Thursday night was visibly doing a roaring trade, banishing the doubts I had as to its viability - I suspect the free-flowing, and not particularly expensive, wine was in fact fortifying customers with a profitable generosity (myself included).

I'd previously heard whispers that Weinforum at Rosenthaler Platz was a great venue and eventually managed to generate enough enthusiam from a dozen fellow students to descend on the place mid last week. Organising events can be a bit hit-and-miss in a city you don't know, with people reluctant to venture outside of their suburb (granted, also a challenge in Sydney) - take my birthday for instance, where pounding rain and plummeting temperatures had us chaotically dashing to find a warmer alternative to a beer garden at the last minute. Somehow this time it all worked out, and we had good company from around the globe to complement the wine and share in the comfy sofas, merry mood and red wine-stained teeth.

Basically the concept of the Weinerei is that you pay 2 euros upon arrival for an empty glass and then help yourself to a buffet of a dozen red and white wines (not a beer in sight), and some simple food offerings (pasta, bread and salad) if that takes your fancy. Throughout the night, you can return to the buffet as many times as you want and then at the end of the evening, throw some cash into a giant green fish bowl to represent what you consumed. It was all very relaxed and (mostly) civilised - there was one mad dash to the buffet around 11 when the last bottles of the night were put out but we made it through the crush for a last drink. At the end, I contributed around 2.20 euros a glass, and the glasses are tiny, so I felt like that was pretty fair. It did tend to get a little hazy at the end though, and it's very likely that the warmth of the bar,  the shrewd-looking owner perched by the exit and, of course, the wine deepen the pockets of many guests.

Two nights later and rounding off another successful week of fun and cultural immersion in Berlin was some reggae dancing on Saturday night. Berlin is generally considered to be the city of electro beats, something I generally try to avoid in favour of music you can groove, grind and sing along to. Reggae fit that description and so Daniel, Daniel's housemate Katrin and I headed to Yaam, a club next to East Side Gallery at 11:45pm on Saturday, to take advantage of the promo "Ladies free before midnight". Delighted to avoid the 10 euro entry fee, we barrelled on through the doors into a space that bizarrely kind of resembled a school playground. Strains of reggae came from a warehouse building in one direction, but this establishment also housed a couple of random stalls selling trinkets and food, kids' play equipment and...a beach, complete with an abundance of sand and beach volleyball. Cool.

We bobbed along to the music for hours, drinking Club Mate for energy and heading out regularly for air and a chat. Daniel 's uncanny ability to generally relate to and befriend Kenyans and a range of blokes from other African nations became apparent - there was quite literally a string of guys strolling past to clap Daniel on the shoulder, comment appreciatively on his dance moves and remind him to take care of his woman. Later that night, we even minded the store for one guy originally from Kenya while he went to have a boogie with his lady. He returned pretty quickly, which was very fortunate as we didn't manage to sell a thing and it was 3am and all very surreal.

We decided to call it a night when the sky's edges started to lighten and the energy drinks started to wear off. One of the beautiful things about summer in Berlin is that there are only about 6 hours of real darkness - the sun sets at around 10pm and it starts getting light before 4am. So we were home early by Berlin standards (11am is a respectable night out here) but pushing my stamina threshold in any case. I felt more satisfied after a night out than I had for a long time and enjoyed the sore knees and pure weariness that comes after a solid night's dancing.

Karneval

National pride? 1 pack Tim Tams = 6 Euros.

Yet another street-blockading, beer-swigging, booty-shaking festival on Berlin's cultural calendar, only a little over a month after the epic First of May celebrations, I hadn't afforded a thought to attending Karneval before a cold Mohito lured me there on Friday afternoon. Thanks to the initiative of my Italian friend Marcello, who suggested we move our Italian-English tandem session outdoors and enjoy the sights, at 5:30pm I was both pleasantly tipsy and impressed by rows and rows of Karneval stalls, and music performances, stretching through the leafy park in Kreuzberg.

Legally enjoying cold beer on the street

Gorilla float at parade

The festival's name is Karneval der Kulturen and takes place each year in Berlin over Pfingsten (Pentecost). According to that reliable source of all (my) knowledge, Wikipedia, this is a religious celebration "commemorating the descent of the Holy Spirit upon the disciples of Christ after the Resurrection." In practical terms, in Berlin this means a long weekend and an opportunity to spend 3-4 days celebrating cultural diversity, happily coinciding with beautiful weather.

Spot of shisha at parade

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Jaded after a few tough weeks at uni and some annoying heath issues, for me Karneval couldn't have happened at a better time. It served as a spectacular reminder that studying and living in Berlin can be a vibrant and inspiring experience, and doesn't have to be all about learning the German constitution.* To mark the occasion, I even personally hacked off my hair with scissors borrowed from my housemate, in frustration and defiance of beckoning uni work. I felt lighter and more satisfied than I'd felt all week. There is very little that can top the delight of strolling around the stalls with friends, savouring a three-course meal from across three continents off paper plates, drinking beer on the streets, dancing without inhibition to whatever stirring beat you stumble across and all of this in perfect late-spring weather. All this was, without a doubt, great for the soul.

Spunky performer commands the crowd

The parade this afternoon (Sunday) was an unanticipated highlight. One of the wonderful things about being a sceptic, having low expectations and generally being reluctant to attend things that are going to involve a lot of people/get extremely messy, is that those few deviations from the routine can be so, so unexpectedly good. Hundreds of people twirled, shook, bounced, gyrated, jiggled and skipped for hours and hours through the streets and despite my measly 161cm, I could see all of it. There wasn't a milk-crate in sight.

*For those confused as to why I would subject myself to no fewer than 10 hours per week of German constitutional law, it's part of the deal-io made between Humboldt and Usyd law faculties that I do either that, criminal law or civil law. For lack of a better expression of my motivation, it seemed like the lesser of the, uh, evils, since it is mainly about studying human rights. But interesting or not, it's as hard as you'd probably expect for a non-native speaker to even understand the subject, let alone write exams. I'll keep you posted on how this one pans out.