The best thing to have happened to our group so far this trip was the rain.
Monday, our first day, it rained. Considering we are doing our project on skateboarding, bad weather seemed like a big hurdle. We figured the best we could do was check out this one indoor skatepark we had heard something about called Raw Tempel. We took the train all the way across the city into East Berlin into a community I’m not sure I can adequately describe with words or pictures.
To get to Raw Tempel, you must walk down the stairs from the train station, then walk to your right, in the opposite direction of the hustle and bustle of the city. You take another unstable staircase downwards, and once you are greeted by double decker hippie bus covered in graffiti, you have arrived.
Picture a valley of abandoned buildings covered in beautiful graffiti. Then add a few bars, a huge outdoor seating area, a food stand, a halfpipe, several rock walls, a few coffeeshops and an indoor skatepark, and you have Raw Tempel. It’s beautiful, it’s unique, it’s friendly, and it’s impossible to imagine unless you have been.
We thought that the rain was going to waste our time. Instead, it led us to Raw Tempel. Since day one, we have visited it three times. What is most special about Raw Tempel is not the fact that it is home to the second largest indoor halfpipe in Europe, but rather that there is truly nothing comparable to it that I have yet to see in the US.
21 University
of South Carolina, School of Journalism and Mass Communications students and two professors are spending two weeks in Munich and Berlin Germany, as part of a May class. The object is to learn about convergence journalism and develop multimedia stories and communication skills that extend beyond the classroom. During this three-week class students will interview, write, photograph and video Germans and discover how different media's role is in this country.
No comments:
Post a Comment