Yes! Anne can!

This week, is the last week of the third period. And thus also almost the end of this third period's ICA. This week we do have a assignment to write about in our blogs, unlike before. To finish this period with a proper ending.

(And here is where the title makes sense) I'll reflect on others blogs, in other words I will reflect on their reflection. Yes I know, reflection comes back too many times.
It's kind of hard to compare each others life to each other because everyone is living different and experiencing different events and you can't really compare that. But I can compare the Berlin trip, because everyone experienced almost the same events. The only difference is their perception. Perception is a term from psychology and it's quite interesting to observe(in my opinion). Perception is the process of attaining awareness or understanding of sensory information. In other words although two people receive the same information and impressions, they still both have a different view about that certain topic. So that's why it's interesting to compare the other students different perceptions about the Berlin trip.

The funny thing is that most students experienced the trip to Berlin almost the same. For example Danielhttp://quiksilva8.blogspot.com/, Ronjahttp://ronja-roversdochter.blogspot.com/ and Heavenlyhttp://459041myblog.blogspot.com/ experienced most of the events in the same way. They all liked the Fat Bike tour, and they all thought that the tour guide in Sachsenhausen wasn't really good. There are only differences in their stories when they're giving examples of events that happened. Which is interesting, because their stories are all highlighting different parts of the trip to Berlin. It's especially funny to see how they qualify for certain stereotypes, Daniel like a real guy saw nice cars in Berlin so he mentioned the cars he saw. While Ronja in the mean time was occupied with the sudden money with drawal for the Berlin trip, which made it quite hard to shop. These little details in stories give more information about the writers personal characteristics. In my own report about Berlin I gave a lot of attention to the Buddy Bears of Berlin, so when you read it you could adjust your mental picture about me. Most readers are doing this things unconsciously.

Well I hope that this story made some sense to my readers, and that I made you a little bit curious about psychology. This will be my last blog this third period, because the exams are starting next week and the period is almost over! Thank you everyone for reading my blog, although it didn't made sense often, you're my favourite readers!

Finally, I can't avoid the greatest fear of a writer anymore. A writers block. Altough I can't really call myself a writer, because it's not my profession, but still. Even famous writers can't escape them, for example JK Rowling had a writers block while she was writing The chamber of secrets. I was planning to surprise you guys with another mind dazzling blog, but I'm afraid that's not going to happen. I was checking out my old blogs and I realized that I never really told a lot about myself. So today will be a terrific opportunity to give everyone an update about my life, and to beat my writers block.

Well, where shall I start. My name is Anne,( hello everyone!) and I'm twenty years old. I'm Dutch although sometimes people ask me whether I'm maybe partly Greek or Indian. I always have to disappoint them by saying that I'm really Dutch. But it does amuses me when people are asking that question, because they always come up with a new country. My family is not really big, but I think that's an advantage. My ties with my family are better because it's so small. I sometimes hear stories about really big families, and they barely got the time to visit everyone. For them it's just not possible to visit every birthday, and to know every member of the family that well. That's why I'm glad that my family isn't that big.

I will give you some random facts about me, just for fun. Some of my favorite bands are Muse, Red Hot Chili Peppers, Foo Fighters, Kaiser Chiefs and of course Coldplay. My zodiac sign is a Scorpio and I was born in the year of the dragon, so watch out I'm dangerous! I read a lot of books, and I've also bought a lot of books, but now they won't fit fit in my book cupboard any more. Which is a shame.

Well to get back to business I thought it would be interesting to tell how my passion for traveling has grown over the years, but I can't really remember how it has happened. Since I was little I have been sailing during the holidays with my parents and my brothers. (btw my father has built our boat all by himself!) During the summer we went away for three weeks and we always went to the North of the Netherlands, to Friesland and the Waddeneilanden. We went from the mainland to island, from island to island and from island back to the mainland. So I guess I started traveling at a young age. By the way, if I ever have to promote a certain part of the Netherlands I will certainly promote the Waddeneilanden. These islands belong to my favorite parts of the Netherlands, they're really amazing. When I hear seagulls I immediately think about these islands and the sea.


And I proudly present: Our boat!

We also traveled through Sweden when my brothers got older and didn't want to stay in the Netherlands. With our tent and our car we've traveled up to midway Sweden. It got barely dark in the summer, which was really weird to experience. We would stay in a place for a few days and than we would move on. Sweden is also a really amazing country, and it's a shame that not so many people are visiting it. When I graduated from high school I traveled from Moscow to Beijing with the Transmongolian express together with my father, uncle and niece. I really enjoyed it. The different kinds of people, the different cultures etc. That journey was one of the main reasons why I started to focus more on traveling. My mother found the course Tourism & recreation management at the internet after I quite my first study of psychology. This course sounded perfect and up till now I'm still not disappointed.

As promised, here is my report of my school trip to Berlin!

Unfortunately I didn't eat any Berliners, nor any Curry Wurst. But I did taste a little bit of the atmosphere in Berlin. I knew from stories of my parents that there are a lot of Bears spread through Berlin. These Bears are part of an art project, and they're called Buddy Bären (buddy bears). Each bear is customized and has it's own name. I took it as a mission to personal photograph as many bears as possible. It was kind of hard to really photograph them, because I saw most of the bears while we were driving in the bus. And the bus driver didn't want to stop for some reason. I did, however, photograph three bears.

But well, I will get back to my last post and evaluate my experiences in Berlin. In my last post I mentioned that Checkpoint Charlie and the Berlin wall weren't included, but that wasn't true. They were included, all the famous sites of Berlin were included in the Fat Tire bike tour. This was a positive surprise because I wasn't expecting it. I will surely recommend this tour to other people, cycling through the city is a fast and nice way of exploring it.

The concentration camp was a little bit disappointing. Although the history of this camp is horrible, you barely see the remains of it nowadays. It's hard to imagine what happened there when all what's left is one barrack and memorials at an almost empty field. There are also remains of the gas chamber and the ovens, but only foundations. The watch towers at the border line with the forest were the most impressing for me. It was for me more shocking to randomly see gunshot holes in buildings in the city than the visit to the concentration camp. The Underground tour was also quite confronting because the guide confronted you with how life would be in the bunker. Like what to do when there is no air any more, when all lights go out, how to orientate yourself and what happens when there is a nuclear attack. It was more impressing because it was interactive.

At Thursday when we had some time off I visited some sites in Berlin together with Sanne. We went to the Fernsehturm, the Reichtstag and the KaDeWe (Kaufhaus Des Westens). The Fernsehturm is a huge tower with a height of 368 meter. We only went up to 200 meter, but that was high enough for me. The elevator was quite frightening for me because of it's speed, it goes up to 200 meter in 40 seconds! I had to pop my ears all the time. And I also have to admit that I'm actually scared of heights, but I really wanted to see the view from the tower. And it was worth it. When you're up the tower you have an amazing 360 degree view off the city. For the Reichstag we had to wait for half a hour because of the security. We could only access the roof and the dome on top of the roof. The building itself is quite impressing, and the new Dome fits well with the older parts of the building. And because we are girls we also had to visit the most famous department store of Berlin. Especially their delicacy department is quite famous, so we had to try the chocolate over there. And I have to say they were really good.

The 4 star Hotel which we visited was quite interesting. The sales manager who guided us had a lot of interesting things to tell us. Like how he approached customers, and why they were a 4 star hotel and not a 5 star. The Cinema was disappointing however. The things that the guide told us weren't really interesting for me. But this was also because I'm working at a cinema myself and you can almost compare no cinema to the cinema I'm working in.

The night life of Berlin was fun but smaller than I expected. It's of course possible that we visited the wrong pubs and clubs, but it was still small. I think that the average time of sleep we got this week was about 4 hours. So when we finally got home, I slept for 12 hours straight.

Visiting Berlin this week was more fun than I expected. It was also a lot bigger than I imagined it would be. The city is historical but also really modern. It's mixed up between these two. Because of this combination it has a lot to offer for tourists. I can imagine why it's a popular destination for tourists. I certainely want to visit Berlin a second time!

The legendary words of Kennedy. How could he know that a berliner is a delicacy from Berlin? At least he would have been tasty if he really was "ein berliner". Any way I thought it would be nice to let you guys know something random about Berlin before I'm going to *surprise* Berlin!
(Those Berliners are by the way really tasteful, little bit sweet though)