I have enjoyed my time in Berlin so far, but adjusting from orientation week to a full-time work schedule has been a lot harder than I would have imagined.  I started off my experience in Berlin being able to be a tourist and see some of the city.  My favorite area of the city so far is the area surrounding the Brandenburg Gate and the Reichstag.  The whole area is so rich with hundreds of years of history and the remnants of the Berlin wall are a short walk away.  I found the Reichstag to be an immaculate building and the lawn area outside of it was my favorite green space I’ve visited so far.

As far as my internship goes, I really enjoy the people that I am working with. Without sounding too cliche, it’s really cool to see everyone so invested in their work because they are so passionate about their debut product.  However, I do feel a lot more pressure to perform each task efficiently and perfectly because my company is a startup and they are in a sprint to the finish of their product launch. I feel like most people usually experience a very boring start to their company, but I have had the opposite experience. I’ve already helped out a coworker Ksenija (she rocks) develop their Kickstarter campaign and I’ve migrated their customers, investors, and contacts from one CRM system to another.  It’s been a busy couple of days, but I really like the people I am working for and I want to see their product succeed.

As far as the global environment, I found it very timely to discuss this particular topic because of a certain man in politics, Donald Trump.  Not only has he dominated the workplace discussion, but my coworkers have been very interested in getting to know more about (and laugh at) the current US political scene.  Germany is fairly stable country, politically speaking, and everybody pretty much expects Merkel to win the general election in September.  However, they are not only interested in learning about Trump, but constantly talk about how he impacts their daily life from thousands of miles away.  Yesterday, with the news of Trump’s latest scandal, my boss was very upset with the stock market effect of the President’s actions and how it was already affecting his children’s’ college funds.  I’ll be interested to see where the topic continues and how it all plays out, but more to come next time. Stay tuned.