I had every intention of visiting a church today. There are three SELK (Lutheran) churches within 20 minutes of my apartment, and I would like to visit all of them! Unfortunately, Berlin had other plans. Today was a massive AfD protest at the Brandenburg Gate. AfD is a far-right political party in Germany with some pretty controversial ideas. I'm not sure what they were protesting, but they anticipated upwards of 10,000 participants.

On top of this massive gathering less than a block away from our front door, at least a dozen counter-protests had been organized, including a protest rave (crazy dance party). One of these anti-AfD groups encouraged its members to commit violent acts to disrupt the protest.

Needless to say, today was not a good idea to be out and about in Berlin. So, sadly, I did not go visit a church.

Instead, I worked on some scholarship essays and caught up a bit on my travel journal (just a bit, mind you. I'm writing this entry more than a week later). I also finished unpacking, so that was nice!

The day was otherwise uneventful. Lots and lots of sirens went by our apartment. There was quite a bit of screaming things in German too. We wanted to close our windows (it was so loud), but the lack of air conditioning would have made that problematic.

I cooked some Korean bulgogi! It came out pretty well all things considered. I didn't have American brown sugar (the German version has the consistency of white sugar) or short-grain sticky rice, but I made it work.

It was pretty difficult to be productive after dinner, even with a fresh cup of coffee. Just last month, a new Harry Potter app was released, so I spent my evening at Hogwarts turning cauldrons into cats and earning Hufflepuff lots of house points. (If you haven't read/watched Harry Potter, don't worry about figuring out what any of that means). I managed to get to bed at a reasonable time, glad for the day of rest!