All in all... Our visit to the Berlin Wall was an unforgettable one. Having the unique opportunity to take the German 100 course while in Germany proved to be extremely educational, as we could experience the culture points we discussed in class first-hand when we explored Saarbrucken and Berlin independently. For example, after a discussion of German pet-culture in class, it was easy to observe that petting a stranger's dog was considered "nicht normal". My favorite topic of discussion in German 100 was the Berlin Wall. Taking this course in Germany made a world's difference as we learned about the Wall as a tangible barrier, rather than being mentally removed from the physical repercussion of the wall had we studied it on Rhodes Campus. I really appreciated the discussion in class about the Berlin Wall video game named 1378 after the number of miles that the Wall stretched. We learned that the video game involved one player trying to escape East Germany by getting over the Wall and through the multiply obstacles that lied on the other side, while another player's task was to shoot the escaper as a patrol guard at the top of a watch tower. There seemed to be quite a bit of outrage from the German people about the game, and the class discussed whether this "realistic" video game was appropriate to play and whether it as designed to be educational or pleasurable.
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