Our time in Germany ended with a lecture at the Free University of Berlin, an institution that was founded for the purpose of enabling students from the US to study in Berlin, with the term schedule and language they're accustomed to. The professors spent a good amount of time "selling" the opportunity to spend a semester studying abroad in Berlin, and I will say that if I wasn't graduating this Spring, I would have given it serious consideration.
What I saw of Berlin made me fascinated, but not alienated. Even after less than a week, all of us who stayed could really feel comfortable in the city, and from looking around, I could see that there was a significant expatriate presence in Berlin. I'd already started to pick up a little German by staying, and time and effort could give me enough to communicate.
When I try to figure out why I felt that I could live an extended time away from my home country in that city, I believe it is the cosmopolitan atmosphere of Berlin, which it holds common with, say, New York. True, there is enough of the city to make it "German," though it isn't like anywhere else in Germany. In fact, the large foreign presence that the city has had, especially in the latter half of the 20th century, has probably the most to do with its modern atmosphere.
In any case, it is a place I would go to again, for a much longer stay, if the opportunities were right.
After a night train ride, we're all now in Budapest (on the Pesht side, to be exact). Already I can feel a bit of a difference in the atmosphere. Like Berlin, Budapest had to rebuild most of itself after WWII, but it was rebuilt more according to what was there already, rather than demolishing entire city blocks to modernize them, like Berlin. True, there are some attempts to build newer-looking structures, but overall there's a more "Hungarian" look to the place, which I think it really quite beautiful, though I'm not as sure that I'd like to live here.
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