Along the way; Berlin part 2 - Teufelsberg part 1 (and something recent)

I received another survival package from Finland. Actually I received it already last week to the office when I was away. I didn't even know I had something coming, just my roommate told me today that she thinks I have something on the postshelf. Once again the essential; Fazer blue chocolate, salmiakki, magazines and some finnish hard rye bread. On top of that; some sweet warm (finnish made) mittens. Thank you a thousand times babcia.

Today we had a volunteers meeting at the office (sorry for the high quality pictures). All of us long term volunteers got together and made some presentations about the subject What have I done during my EVS -project in Poland? It was nice to see what all the others had been up to, but mostly just to get together with everyone.
We also saw a theatre performance made by the Youth Exhange group in Długopole Zdrój. It was put together by people from 7 different countries (i.e. Greece, Armenia, Poland, Italy, Romania...) and included traditional dances and a lot of physical effects. Little fancy artsy, but I liked it. In the end they even tought us a traditional armenian dance. After we had some dinner (volunteer's rule number one: free food is good food).

I'm slowly getting a grip on the normal week routines again. Polish lessons are cancelled this week, which makes me kind of sad, because I wasn't able to attend last week. Also I finally received some information about my on-arrival training (which is kind of frustratingly amusing, for I arrived a while ago...) and I will be spending next week in Warsow with 30 other EVS -volunteers around Poland.

Berlin , 15.10.

Teufelsberg, literally “Devil's Mountain,” a hill reaching 114.7 meters above sea-level, made from an estimated 12 million cubic meters of war rubble (apparently about 400,000 bombed houses) pushed together in the north of the Grunewald forest in West Berlin.USM 620 Kilo, as it was also known, was part of the worldwide Echelon spy network. Each radome globe contained massive 12-metre satellite dishes and the most sophisticated spying equipment for the time, enabling the western powers to intercept satellite signals, radio waves, microwave links and other transmissions, before interpreting and analyzing their findings. (source)

Staying loyal to my style of travelling, I just did some quick googling and checked the neirest train station (which actually wasn't that near). Still staying loyal to my style of travelling I walked in circles like a idiot for a while until I realized that I was walking on Teufelsseestraße. I did some quick 1+1 in my head, felt like an idiot again and started walking along away from the train station. I walked for what seemed like forever just deeper and deeper to in the middle of nowhere. Finally someone walked past that I could ask for directions. A sweet british lade that was, and she got me directed to this place. As I saw the stairs I was quite sure I got to the right place. Well, it wasn't the exact place I was looking for but beautiful none the less. I sat down for a while and had a little picnic.

I also could see my point of destination from there. From this point of view the distance doesn't seem that bad, but the fact is that the tower built on a huge hill in the middle of nowhere. Optimistic as I am I decided to just get down and start walking straight forward from here -for sure I would get there in no time.

After awhile as I was walking in the forest with not even the slightest idea of a) how long i had been walking and b) in which direction, I felt like a treasure hunter finding all these cool (at least to me) places and things in there. I stopped every once in a while just to look around and take some pictures. Sometimes some lone wanderer also passed me by; and this is one of the weirdest feelings ever, when you're actually just walking around in the middle of nowhere and around yourself you can see just an endless bunch of trees and trails leading nowhere, above not the sky, just the branches of the trees and then someone just walks by, maybe a quick change of looks and you continue to different directions. These moments made me paranoid about if I'm actually going anywhere, because everyone else seemed like they know exactly where they are going. I had faith in myself and my journey so I wasn't bothered about it too much and just continued going.

Finally I bumped into a fence. I still didn't see the tower anywhere around, so I just kept following it until I finally got to the entrance. To get in I had to pay a rip-off price of 7 euros for a guided tour. They told me it would start in 15 minutes at three o'clock and I realized that I had been walking in the forest for 3 full hours. I was so proud of myself that I finally got there that I wasn't even so mad about having to take a tour, even though as i expected it the guide was speaking only in german...

 To be continued..