This morning we had to et up pretty early to catch a cab to the Universitat der Kunste where we were having our photography seminar. Catherine showed us some of her work, which is really interesting. It deals with issues of crowds and queuing and observing the way people begin to occupy public space. Then Jeff gave us a very brief lecture on depth of field and such– not that I can do much with it since my camera has no aperture setting. After that we had lunch at the stands across the street from the burned out church (German pretzels are awesome) and then broke up into groups based on our sites. I’m working with the Monument to the Murdered Jews, which I’m beyond stoked about. Patrick gave us a really good idea for shooting at night using a flashlight. My group is Jer, Allie Ross, Abby, and Gabe. At 1:30 we had an appointment to get a tour of Rem’s Dutch Embassy. I love Rem. The Embassy was super cool. Walking through it was so much more like I envision being inside Rem’s head would be than the Student Union at IIT. I think the best way to describe it would be that the building is a spatial Rubiks Cube with a metallic circulation snake winding through. I was happy because even Daniel Topping really really enjoyed it. After the tour, the whole group headed over to Alexanderplatz to meet up with Catherine. We stopped for a short coffee break at Dunkin Donuts (notable flavors not found in the US being the Spicy Chili Donut and the Tomato-Chili Brownie) before going up into the Disco ball Tower. It was super neat. Like going up in the Sunsphere on a much grander scale. We could see absolutely all of Verlin. This is the point at which I started shooting some photographs in black and white. After the tower we had a little time to ourselves to explore. All the girls hit the mall. Allie Ross and I made a dent in our Maxi list of things to try in Germany. First we located our blood orange Rachen Drachen. They’re really strange. And yet delicious! They’re coated in a sort of mentholated sugar, and then the gummy part is orange flavored. We were beyond excited. Then after a bit more searching we found several of the other items. Waldmeister is a green soda. I had a taste of it, and it wasn’t too bad. I think it may have been like water melon flavored. Next was Jever, a beer brewed in Northern Germany. Upon opening it, the first thing we noticed was that it smelled a lot like pot. It also tasted incredibly terrible. Our last experiment for the day was Hanuta– chocolate hazelnut sandwiched between two wafer cookies like a s’more. It was sooo tasty! It even smelled excellent. After a brief meeting with our workshop group, Allie Ross and I headed down the street to the Pirate Bar (whose German name I can’t spell) with Andy Ruff for a drink.