This was a very long, and very fun week.

On Thursday, I went to the Spandau Citadel (Zitadelle Spandau) to see Mac deMarco in concert. It was probably the coolest venue I have ever been to. The Spandau Citadel is a former fortress of the edge of Berlin, complete with a moat and a drawbridge.

Then, the following day it was my birthday!

I took an eight hour Flixbus overnight to Dusseldorf, which was not as bad as I thought it would be. When I arrived, my cousin picked me up and we headed for a horse derby. I have never been to a derby, so the whole thing was very exciting. We got to stand extremely close to the track, so we could see the horses really well.

Then I got some real German food. Apparently, Berlin is not necessarily the place to get the best of German cuisine, so I’ve been holding off on trying truly German food. We went to a German brewery.

After I stayed with my cousin in Dusseldorf, I took a small trip to Köln (Cologne) since it was nearby. They had a really cool cathedral right outside of the train station. For 4 euro (the slightly reduced student price), you can visit the top of the cathedral. This involves climbing two separate staircases for a combined total of roughly 500 steps up to the tippy top of the cathedral. It was about 30º c outside, which is a little too hot for my standards, and definitely too hot to climb all those stairs, but ultimately worth it for the view.

As for my internship, It has been going well and I am developing useful skills for my future. I’ve sharpened my communication and problem-solving skills, and gained flexibility in my expectation. Similarly, I have sharpened my hard skills, particularly research and analytical skills. I do a lot of reading and writing, and it has been very important that I fact-check carefully and analyze all provided data carefully. As SD Strategies is a policy and communications consultancy, it’s highly important that all of the information we share is robust and clear to understand.

Overall, working abroad has been useful in not only gaining internship experience, but growing my global competencies as well.