For anyone interested, here are the links to my photo albums: Granada, Krakow, and Prague.



I have been in Berlin for over 3 weeks now; what a luxury it is to stay in one place for more than 2 weeks! Berlin is a really thriving and diverse city with incredibly fascinating people and cool things happening all over all the time. It is a nice change from Prague where my neck got stiff from looking up at the old and beautiful buildings all time, but here the beauty is in the eclectic mix of people on the street.

In Berlin I am staying with our program site coordinator who is a Turkish woman who moved to Berlin in 1983 and just happens to be a world renown DJ. On top of that, my program director Iveta explained that Berlin is the queer center of the world and Ipek is the center of that and after 2 1/2 weeks with her I have no trouble believing it. Not only can I not walk on the street with her without someone waving or saying hi, but she is clearly quite the Ladies Lady. Directly after describing herself as newly single, she mentioned having around 3 lovers at the moment. I was "lucky" enough to walk through the main room on my way out while she was starring deeply into the eyes of one of them for at least the three minutes is took me to collect all my stuff, put on my shoes, and leave--quickly! 


The first weekend I was in Berlin, my group got the opportunity to participate in a Queer Theory conference at Humboldt University. Queer theory tends to cover a lot of issues, and I don't always love engaging with some of the theories that are a little closer to outer space than earth (for example, one of the key notes was about the eroticization of rocks i.e. rock sex? I don't know I didn't really get it). BUT despite the fact that I am still unsure whether or not I heard I lecture about rock sex, there were some really interesting lectures given by some of the biggest names in the field. 


The first full week after the conference we had a particularly interesting lecture. We got the opportunity to meet with a sex worker at her apartment. She did not fit the stereotypical image of a sex worker at all. She began working at a heterosexual sex worker at 28 after completing her Masters degree in education. During the next twenty years, she continued working and earned her PhD. Now, she is working as a lesbian escort/lover/sex worker and is also an educator, advocate--it sounds like she attends a lot of national and international conferences on sex work--and considers herself a bona fide "sexpert." It was very interesting to be confronted with such a positive view of sex work. 


In pretty stark contrast to that lecture, the second week we had all of our lectures at Humboldt University from professors in the Gender Studies department there. Fun Fact: Humboldt alum include Karl Marx, Friedrich Engels and Albert Einstein. 

Tomorrow we leave for Utrecht, the Netherlands. I will be sad to leave Berlin (and have to pack again), but it is nice to have something new to look forward to. 


I will put up some Berlin pictures soon. I hope the Cleveland family had a good Fall Hike. I hear my dad sang...sorry about that :)