This week is the final week of my IIP Berlin program, and I’m so ready to go home at this point. It’s been an amazing experience overall, and I had so much fun exploring Berlin as well as taking a trip to Amsterdam (major highlight). However, after two months of traveling and seven months of being away from home, I’m so excited to go back to Taiwan and spend time with my family.
My supervisor was on vacation this past week, so I did not have much to do during work. I continued to work on the data sheet updating project and help out my co-workers with their tasks here and there. It was also the final week for the other intern that I’m working with. It was really sad to see him go and now I’ll be alone in the office without anyone sitting across from me. I’ll still see him on Wednesday in the office tho, because the company is organizing a breakfast event for us interns as a farewell party. I’ll definitely be sad to say goodbye to all the amazing people I’ve been working with for the past two months, but I know that my bosses are going on a business trip to Taiwan for one of their projects soon, so I’ll probably see them back home if time works out!
Nothing really exciting happened during the weekdays because I was exhausted after work as always, but I took the time to take myself out on a date on Friday to roam around Alexanderplatz after work. I found a cute little crepe place in the area and enjoyed the afternoon. On Saturday, me and friends went to Thai park that’s near us and had delicious Thai food. Our mission was accomplished by our finding of the Queen of Thai park. She is famous on the internet and is listed one of the must-try’s in Thai park. I had pad Thai with squids and shrimps, and it was good but didn’t live up the hype in my opinion. We then went to Strandback Wannsee for a lake day. It was my second time going there in a row, and I just absolutely love it there! I’m not really a water/beach person growing up, and rarely spent time at the beach even though Taiwan is surrounded by the sea, but i think it really grew on me during the time here at the lake.
On Sunday, we went to Mauer park for the flea market there. Going to flea markets has been one of my favorite things to do in Berlin because of how big of a flea market culture is here. We went to a popular gelato place called Hokey-Pokey. Last time we were at mauer park and saw it, but we didn’t go in as there was a huge line. We ended up sitting at a restaurant right across Hokey-Pokey, and the waiter told us to definitely go and try the “life-changing” gelato there. It was life-changing with how good it was, especially on a hot day on Sunday. We had to say goodbye to our friends in the program from other schools as it was their last weekend in Berlin. It’s always so hard to say goodbye, but I’m so glad to have met so many people from the program in different schools and had so much fun together.
I took Monday off work as I had one vacation day left. One thing about the work culture in Germany is that people really have a good work-life balance. Germans are generous with vacation days, and people are taking days or weeks off to recharge. I feel like the way people define success here is not by how much money you make but how much you find a balance between busy work and enjoy life. Of course, it is very important to be productive and create values for the company, but at the end of the day, enjoying life outside of the grind is looked up to and praised for.
I didn’t have anything planned for Monday as I wanted a chill day. I just went to brunch and walked around the neighborhood. It’s undoubtful that I will miss it here. However, it is time to slowly pack up and enjoy the last bit of Berlin before going home.