When I came to the United States for the first time, I thought it might be the place where I could learn, grow and find my second home. However, just after the first year, I was missing the culture and traditions from back home. Therefore, I started considering exploring opportunities elsewhere and Germany was the first place that came to my mind due to its rapidly growing tech industry. However, I wanted to visit the country, before considering working there, to learn about the culture and people and see if I would be able to fit in the community, and, for that reason, I chose Bremen, Germany, as my study abroad location. Choosing Bremen as my study abroad location was one of the best decisions I ever made. I fall in love with this place more and more each day. Bremen is the place I was looking for; a beautiful city, not too big, not too small, with a rich history and diverse community, and where groundbreaking tech research takes place every day. The history of Rathaus (town hall), the beauty of the Mühle Am Wall, the Weser river, the fairytales of the Town Musicians, and the research done in Technologiepark are some of the many things that attract me the most towards Bremen. However, the thing that makes me love this place is the community. Bremen is a home for people all around the world. Just my first weekend in Bremen, I had the opportunity to attend COSA (Cultures of South Asia) at Jacobs University in Bremen. The event included several cultural performances by students from Pakistan, India, Bangladesh, and Nepal, and came to an end in the most perfect way possible with some acoustic music, shisha, and chai. Last week, Universität Bremen hosted Pakistani Night which included multiple presentations and diverse cuisine to share the culture, traditions, and geography of Pakistan. The part I liked the most was that the event was open to and was attended by people from all over Bremen. This reminded of the Festival of Nations event at Hobart and William Smith Colleges where different clubs and organizations from Geneva come together to share their culture through activities, performances and, of course, food. However, during my time in the United States, I never had an opportunity to attend an event just focused on Pakistan which made this event much more interesting for me. Two days ago, the month of Ramadan started as well. My last Ramadan was in the United States and, to be honest, at that time I was the most homesick I have ever been. In Pakistan, the month of Ramadan is something different; night cricket matches until Sehri, preparation of iftar every evening, trying out different iftar buffets with family and friends, etc. However, in the United States, I spent the whole Ramadan on campus and with people who did not even know what it is. When I came to Bremen, I did not really plan to fast, however, when I heard about how people spend Ramadan here, I could not resist. Just the first day of Ramadan brought back many childhood memories; made Sehri with my friends at 2:30 am, hung out and watched movies until 4 am and after a long day of classes, had an amazing iftari in a Pakistani Masjid (mosque) near Herdentor. Until a few years back, my family in Pakistan used to serve and have iftari in the masjid near our house every Ramadan evening. During Iftar, sitting with people from all over Bremen in the masjid, breaking fast together and then having dinner brought back all those memories from Pakistan.
In just one month, I have fallen in love with this city, however, I plan to explore other places as well. During Easter Break, I visited several cities with my friends from Erasmus, did a couple of BBQ picnics in beautiful parks of Bremen, and toured, more than 600 years old, Rathaus (there might be a blog post related to these places and traveling within Germany so keep a look out!). Now I am looking forward to my weekend trip to Berlin and visit the historical sites as well as monuments with my friends. Not only that, I just registered to visit Mercedes-Benz factory in Bremen and really excited to tour the amazing place in early June. Bis Bald!
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Since my last post, I have settled into my new apartment, started my classes, and, of course, made some new friends. During these past few weeks, I also got to visit Bunker Valentin, which is the second largest above ground bunker in Europe and the most visible legacy of three major Nazi armament projects. During World War 2, the production of German U-boats was dramatically reduced due to the bombing by the allies, therefore, bomb-proof production sites like Bunker Valentin were planned to build across Germany. The factory was under construction for 2 years and, by March 1945, was 90 % completed, however, the construction remained unfinished by the end of the war due to the damage done by air-raids. The bunker was built using tens of thousands of workers, including prisoners of war who were housed in the concentration camps surrounding the bunker. The workers had to work under extreme pressure day and night and at least 2000 died as a result of physically strenuous work, inadequate care and inhumane living conditions in the camps. If a worker was found taking a break, he or she was considered “sabotaging” the project and was punished severely by the supervisors. What struck me the most during my visit was to learn about the work structure. The work on the construction site was carried on by “Kommandos”. The concentration camp prisoners were controlled by captives holding penal and military authority, known as “Kapos”. If a Kommando fulfilled specific requirements, he or she was offered privileges like two soups for lunch instead of one and was promoted to a Kapo. Since a Kapo was previously a Kommando and had suffered with other Kapos while working in the extreme conditions, he or she would be lenient towards Kommandos, however, that was not true for most cases. Although there were Kapos who tried to protect forced laborers, many of them were cruel and would punish labors violently. One of the most unfortunate parts was how Kapos used their power determined whether the forced laborers’ chances of survival increased or decreased.
When I was reading about the work structure at the Bunker, it reminded me of Stanford’s prisoner experiment of 1971. The “experiment” was an attempt to investigate the psychological effects of power. Several college students were randomly assigned the roles of prisoners or guards and, soon after the experiment started, the students started embracing their assigned roles with some guards enforcing authoritarian measures and subjecting some prisoners to psychological torture. Even though, both the guards and the prisoners were students, when the guards were provided with power, some of them used it to torture their peers. The experiment kind of demonstrated the work structure at Bunker Valentin where workers were separated by the roles of Kommandos and Kapos and when Kapos had a choice on how to use their power, most of them used it to violently punish the Kommandos. I learned a lot about the history of Bremen and the surrounding areas by visiting Bunker Valentin and, if you ever get a chance to visit Bremen, I would highly recommend visiting this site. Bremen is full of deep underground bunkers and hidden places and you can visit them during a weekly two-hour Friday tour. I plan to attend the tour and might write a blog post about it to share my experience! Tschau! Getting to Bremen was an experience and a half. Originally, I was supposed to fly out on the 8th of March to make it in time for the orientation at Universität Bremen, however, due to the visa delay, I had to cancel my flight not once or twice but thrice. On the morning of 16th March, I received a call from the German Consulate that my visa has been mailed and will be there the next day and as soon as the call ended, I booked my flight for the 20th and texted my friends at Jacobs University to let them know about my new flight details. After a long stressful month, I was finally going to Germany. Nevertheless, since I had unpacked all my bags before, now I just had 4 days to pack everything and move out of my dorm. Next couple of days went by quickly as I packed two bags with mostly winter outfits. I had already said goodbyes to most of my friends as they left for the Spring Break and now, I just had to wait for my flight. On Wednesday morning, as I got on the plane, the anxiety started taking over the excitement. I had already missed most of the orientation which meant that it would be hard to meet new people and make friends. Not only that, I was also supposed to attend a German Language intensive course during the orientation and, since, I had missed it, now I would have to try my best to converse with my just one semester of German language knowledge. After a long 12-hour flight with layovers in New York City and Istanbul, I finally reached Bremen Flughafen (Airport) where I met my high school friend from Jacobs University. The adrenaline rush was unreal. Not only that I was in a totally different country and was ready for the new experience, but I was seeing my high school friend after years. Soon after, we took the tram 6 to Bremen Hauptbahnhof (Central Station) and then a cab to the Southend Hostel where I was going to live for next two weeks. I had the privilege to live in the center of Bremen as I found one of the cheapest hostels ($18/night) in Bremen which was also located just 10 minutes’ walk away from Hauptbahnhof. I had an amazing time during my stay at the hostel since I got to meet people from all over the world. Even though, I missed most of the orientation, I was still able to meet a lot of Erasmus students through rest of the events. Personally, my most favorite event was City Rally during which we had to go to different places around the city and perform specific tasks. The most surprising part of the orientation was when Erasmus Initiative members told us that we will be taking shots before every task during City Rally (at 1pm!). In just 6 days of orientation (with 2 days still left), I was not only able to learn about the city but also make some very close friends with whom I am planning to travel around Europe later in the semester. Currently, I am excited for the semester to start, meet more Erasmus students, move into my new apartment and work on my Blocker Fellowship project. For my Blocker project, I will be writing about my experiences with German culture, people, food, education, etc. One of my main focuses will be to compare different aspects of Germany to that of the United States and Pakistan. Nonetheless, as a computer science geek, I will be exploring how German tech companies’ function; how they recruit, their ways of innovation, their work environment, etc.
I am really looking forward to exploring Germany as well as other countries in Europe and share my experience through this blog. Stay tuned for the next post 😊 |