Invalidenstrasse 110 Berlin, Germany

An Old Image of My Classroom Building: Invalidenstrasse 110It always starts on Tuesday. I have to tell my friends that I can’t go out for a nightcap with them because I have to get all my work done for the next day and I have to go to bed early because I have to get up early.

On Wednesday, my alarm goes off at 7:30 in the morning. I unintentionally snooze it until about 8:15 if I’m good. I leap out of bed and run to the shower. Showering takes some time, drying takes some time, and packing my book bag always takes some time, time that I need to budget so I can run down the street the two blocks it’ll take me to catch the bus. The bus only comes every 20 minutes.

I take the bus to Franzosischerstrasse. That’s “French Street” for us, the Americans. From there I run down the nearest set of stairs and get on the subway, usually a quick transfer to make. I ride the subway for three stops, until I reach Zinnowitzerstrasse. I don’t know what that translates to for us, the Americans.

So, about a half hour has passed since I was running for the bus, and I’m quietly walking up the nearest set of stairs, contemplating how my day might pass and then I’m visually assaulted by our school building. The Humboldt’s East building, describing both its location and its East Berlin architecture stares down at me. It stretches down both streets of the corner it’s mounted on, with small windows. Its grey color is tremendously unwelcoming, and it always just seems to float. If the building could choose to crumble on its inhabitants, it would. I don’t recommend that anyone visits this building, and I’m currently asking about the possibility of holding classes at Humboldt’s main campus for future students who wish to come to Berlin. I doubt anything will come of it, but this looming building of unfortunate character is just depressing. On the inside, the renovations have turned out nicely, but I need natural light. The reason I love the Gallatin building so much is because it’s filled with huge windows. It’s not stifling, it’s not suffocating, there’s free-moving air and happy students. In our building, the elevator closes too quickly or not at all, there’s dirt everywhere that probably can’t be seen during the hours the building is being cleaned because of the lack of lighting, the lighting is oppressive and the students react appropriately to such grim settings: they frown, and mope, and don’t like doing school work, and fight, and tease, and it just all feels so very high school, if I take the liberty of using that as an adjective.

And so what’s to be taken by my description of this place? What does it mean? Well, to be fair, I didn’t really have a point in describing this place except to vent my frustrations about it, but now that I’m rereading this post, I notice that there is a greater point here: setting informs personhood. Setting actively works to shape the way that people feel, and thus how people react. If places are dim, in a dirty and specifically not chic way, the people inside will feel anxious to leave, immediately, and this is just not the way an appropriate work or study environment should feel.