Here's hoping everyone else forgives me[1] the temporary derail...
Also, you worked in Germany? I love the look of Germany, the history behind Germany, I am going to Germany and will also be spending time as an exchange student in Germany.
What's it like?
I can only really talk about Berlin and the surrounds. I arrived there with a phrasebook and a promise by my boss (back home) that the taxi drivers would speak English. The driver I got was a Russian immigrant with less German than I could understand, though I at least got onto the correct Strasse (even if I did have to walk half way along it to find the destination).
Berlin was still in the midst of a post-wall building boom (was celebrating 10 Jahr of said, at one point) which meant some shiny, shiny architecture, along Der Mauer(sp?). It might have settled down a bit now. And I intellectually liked the contrast between formerly Western and Eastern segments. My own accommodation in Westend was a pretty basic Fahrgest place, at least to my eyes (never having lived in a flat, except as a student), but was at least externally far less utilitarian than some of the East.
For quite a while, I avoided the U-Bahn and S-Bahn (Underground and Surface rapid-transit trains, although there are overground bits of some U-Bahn lines and vice-versa), and walked almost everywhere, but eventually I got myself a month's pass and went further afield as far as the system would take me. Plus some trips with colleagues/relatives to the surrounding area (e.g. Sans Souci). On the U/S-Bahn, I only
once got checked for having a valid ticket (and, at that time, at least, there were no ticket barriers) and that was in the Eastern area of the city famous for its Schwarzrad ('black-travellers', the ticketless). I've heard they may have gone for barriers, since. Still, I got a lot a value out of the ticket anyway, and doubtless I could have done something similar with a DeutschBahn (IIRC the name) ticket for the whole country, if I'd have had more time to myself to spend it with.
Loads more i could say about the city, but I'll move onto the people. As "Turkey's second largest city", Berlin is an immigrant magnet as much as any capital city is. But unless I never went into the 'wrong' areas (or did so with the innocence of a Twoflower), I never felt threatened. I once walked from the through the Brandenburg Gate (then, as most of the time I was there, shrouded with scaffolding for repairs) from the tourist(-and-bear[2])-busy Unter-Den-Linden which heretofore inexplicably had spouted a few more policemen and police vehicles (including a water-cannon one) dotted down the side-streets, and found myself in the midst of a 'demonstration' about some Israeli incident against Palestinians. One of the major incidents of the time, but now a little lost in more recent history. It was mainly families of middle-eastern origin, and once I worked out what was going on I did not feel threatened one bit (although they started to break up and head towards their own chosen departure routes just as I reached their edge and headed down to the Potsdammer Platz station, which I admit I could have planned better!
). As a comparison, the following year I was coincidentally in London at the time of the May Day whatever-it-was-against-but-probably-Capitalism Parade (it was long before Countryside Alliance stuff, and Stop(/Don't Start) The War) and I didn't get with 50 yards of the cordoned off route before being honestly frightened off from my intended destination and going off and being a "non-tourist-looking tourist" elsewhere in the city for that day.
And of course the local
locals are friendly enough. (Lestwise those that I encountered, obviously, and most of my colleagues were French... Their language being one I hadn't practically used for ten years before that, so about on par with my proficiency in German, being learnt as I went along!) At one early point, one rainy Sunday morning I was wandering around a random bit of the city and a reporter with a camera crew pounced on me (being the only person in sight, at that time) and asked me something about... well, I never did find out (may have been something about a by-pass, but probably wasn't). I was quickly subjected to an "Entschuldigung!" apology and left alone once my faltering linguistic skills became obvious. I may, indeed, have accidentally proclaimed myself to be a Hungarian Chauffeur, if my later reminiscences over the incident were more accurate than my on-the-spot babbling obviously had been. Still, I later on got quite good at directing people around the city, though doubt I could get straight back into it.
Actually, don't know why I'm telling you the above, as if you're going in as an exchange student, you're almost certainly far more proficient with the lingo
now than I ever got to be.
What else... The climate? It's a continental climate, at least where I was, which makes it pretty predictable. I've seen the full gamut of snow and sun, hail and high winds, mist and mizzle. But was rarely surprised by the turn turn of events, it was telegraphed pretty much by the sky and the season. (Compared with the way the weather happens in the UK, certainly.)
Trouble is, I'm running out of time, and have been writing this for too long (shouldn't even be in this thread, but messing about getting it elsewhere seems pointless, now) while trying to deal with countless professional duties and now I need to dash out on an errand, and when I'm back I'll be on another machine, so I'll post this and you can make of it what you will. I'm not sure if I'm being much help anyway.
Right... dashing now.
[1] Those that don't applaud it!
[2] "Berlin, Bearlin", I think it was called. Along most of the length of the avenue some guy had been putting thousands upon thousands of garden-gnome sized plastic bears, in various colours, onto wooden trelliswork. Representing the city's Wasn't finished by the time I left, but in all that time I saw just one bear gone missing from the structure, and thatlooked like it had been accidentally knocked off, not deliberately vandalised.
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