FInal Day in Berlin:

Today marked the last day that we had in Berlin. Today we had two lectures at the Freie Universität Berlin. The first lecture was given to us by Jan C. Behrends and was about the transformation of Berlin . We learned that over the past year, that the elections in Germany for Parliament resulted in there being no majority in the Parliament due to this, coalitions had to be formed resulted in one major group of 311 seats forming one coalition which consisted of the Social Democrats and the Christian Democrats. Jan said that the Government got close to being a dictatorship.  As for the German Chancellor,  she never shows her agenda, and had an agenda for other things but not the important things. The only thing that is clear is keeping the euro stable. There was one thing that was interesting that he discussed when he was talking and it was that some of the policies that are in place came from the Nazis around World War II. The policy was that those who were working more than 40 hours were able to receive the money that they worked for but the extra time that they worked, they got all the money and did not have to pay taxes on the overtime that was owed to them. This is interesting to me because it ties into my research paper. The Nazis did this as an incentive for those who were working to continue to work hard and keep up the production. The second lecture that we had was from a retired member of the German Parliament. He talked about how the German Parliament formed a grand coalition and that due to it it will be extremely difficult for minorities to get their voice heard. He also said that the main problem with Germany is the demography, and that the country is aging. This means that it could turn the country into an immigration country.  But the thing about the country being an immigration country is that it would to receive one million new immigrants each year. He did put an emphasis on what needed to be done to make sure that people can remain at where they are and be able to live a good life. The first thing  that he said that needs to be done is to put more into the education that people get in order for them to get good jobs. I could not agree more to this statement because education is a key thing that everyone needs to have. I also thought it was interesting as to what he said about Russia and President Putin. He sees Putin as tying to rebuild the Russian empire, and shouldn't be backed into a corner. I agree with this because if he were to be cornered, it may not mean he won't fight back. Lastly the one thing that he said that I thought was interesting was that Germany still has national demons. One of these demons is the fact that this year  marks the 100 anniversary  of World War I. No one really knows what might entail when that happens, but the good thing is that there hasn't been a conflict in Europe in 50 years. Following the lectures, we went back to the hotel and went our separate ways for a while. me and a group ended up going to one of the biggest if not the biggest shopping centers that I have ever been into my entire life. The shopping center was called Ka We De, and it wasn't even a block away from where I was staying at before the study abroad program started. I could not believe all of the food and clothes that went on as far as the eye could see. I mean this place had everything in it. We ended up looking around for a while just taking in the sights and smells of the food that was being sold. Following that, we made our way back to the hotel and then ended up going to the train station for our overnight ride to Budapest. The train ride at first was a little cumbersome due to the fact that there was about five of us in a space no bigger than that of a broom closet which turned out to be a riot due to the fact that we ended up having about 12 of us piled up into one cart jus having a great time listening to music and talking about the trip and whatever else we could. I mean we literally looked like sardines in a can but we didn't care we just went with the flow. that went on for a while until everyone wanted to retire, so we did, and the next thing we know it is seven am and we are in Budapest!!