Time has really been flying here in Berlin and I have been trying to take more advantage of the little time that is left. I don't really have much to say about the last two weeks though. I went to Frankfurt two weekends ago to visit my dad, which was a really fun time, but I didn't really do anything except relax with my dad. We went to Bad Homburg and walked around the city park for a while and went swimming, where we met an old friend. I did see a new building called Myzeil, which has some crazy glass architecture: http://www.spiegel.de/fotostrecke/fotostrecke-40010.html. It's really only a huge shopping gallery though. I also took a walk along the Main, which is one of the highlights of Frankfurt, because you have a great view of the skyline.

Last Friday I went to a famous Berlin market called the Turkish Market in Neukoelln. I also talked to a friend of mine at work who lived in Turkey for a couple of years before coming to Berlin and he said it is just like a market in Turkey. It was a lot of fun, because there was food everywhere and it was all Turkish. Tons of fruits and vegetables, Baklava, Turkish snacks, Egyptian candy, etc. It was a lot of fun to see so many different types of people too. There were a lot of American university students, young Berliners and about half the people were Turkish. All the vendors were yelling out their prices in Turkish as well. I bought some apricots and grapes and the vendor would be talking to me in German and then switch to a Turkish immigrant and start talking Turkish. I also bought some Baklava and the vendor was there with his son. It was cool to see him teaching his kid math by figuring out how much change he should give me. The atmosphere there is also really cool because it is along one of Berlin's canals, so there is some fresh air and a nice view.

The saturday after that, I helped my co-worker move from Wedding to my neighborhood. He now lives a block away from me, which is a weird coincidence in such a huge city. It was cool to see Wedding, because I haven't been there yet. It doesn't have anything to offer tourist wise, so it wasn't the most interesting, but it has one of the highest immigrant populations in Berlin (20%). All the buildings had Turkish signs and it reminded me a little bit of Neukoelln, but I like the atmosphere better in Neukoelln, because there are more people walking around.

I have also been taking more walks around my neighbourhood now and took some pictures of the Spree.

The symbol of Berlin is a bear and this is on the Moabit-Bruecke, which crosses the Spree near my house.












Here is the Bundesministerium des Innens (Ministry of the Interior). It is three blocks away from my house. I took the picture from the river bank.
















More:














Here is the S-bahn at night with a long shutter time:














I have also been working a lot lately, because the EU-27 Watch has finally been published today. You can check out my awesome editorial work here: www.eu-27watch.org. It has been pretty stressful and I will be happy to stop correcting English reports by non-native speakers. I needed to edit some of these reports four times and some writers would send a revised edition the day after I corrected it (the Czech Republic and Spain). Two countries, Bulgaria and Poland, didn't send a report in which was pretty disappointing. Poland's author was in a car accident, so that is understandable, but Bulgaria's author told us that he sent the report twice by email, but never did. We had some trouble with Spain and Portugal as well, but we were able to nudge them enough to send their reports on time. Spain's full report arrived this morning. I think the German punctuality was a little bit of a hindrance, because we didn't call to remind the authors until this week. It seemed like some of the southern countries needed some more nudging than Germans are used to giving! We still have to do some advertising for the website tomorrow, but after that, I am taking a week-long vacation!!! I will be flying to Sardinia on Saturday and will be visiting my aunt and uncle there. I am extremely excited to practice my Italian as well. After that I only have two weeks left in my internship and I am still not sure what I will be doing during that time. I have to write a 20-page paper on my experience here by the end of summer and I will try to get started on that soon, too.