Ich fahre nach Deutschland...

Looking ahead

2009-08-31T20:22:00.005+02:00

Many things to look forward to. A lot still to process from this past year.

When I was leaving Germany, I cried. I had a great time driving first to Gera and then on to Karlsruhe with Robert's Mom, Helmut and his two brothers (we dropped Steffen off in Gera). Then I had a relaxed evening home with Robert before we headed to Heidelberg the next morning. He met his new Ferienkurs class at the University - I tagged along, and was even able to sit in on his class. A small group of intermediate German students feeling very nervous about their language skills listened avidly to their teacher and "Betreuer" (that's Robert's job title) tell them in very slow and deliberate German what fun things would lie for them in the weeks ahead.

Sadly I would not be there with them, but with three big suitcases and awaiting parents there was nothing I could do but get on that plane in Frankfurt two days later. We had a fun birthday party at one of his friends apartments in which I introduced the concept of mixing vodka with cranberry juice (the "Cape Codder", although I've never heard anyone call it that), and was able to catch up with people that I hadn't seen since the previous summer. They were amazed at how much better my German had gotten over the year, and I must say I was quite proud in return. But at Birthday Party #2 the following night I couldn't control myself. As much as I wanted to celebrate with Robert's Karlsruhe friends (we were back in Karlsruhe at that point) I just could not comprehend the change lying ahead of me. I was going to miss him, that was clear, but I'm not sure that I was actually sad about leaving Berlin. I know I'll be back there, in some shape or form. I was simply overwhelmed at the inevitable and uncontrollable passage of time. Everybody was understanding when we left early to walk home.

I have had a wonderful month since I've been back. A weekend at Fisher's, nearly a week in Montreal, catching up with a lot of family, a quick adventure to NYC with my Mom, a couple days of sunshine and beaches on the cape, hiking to the Franconia Ridge, and helping with research for a documentary on the fall of the Berlin Wall. I have had a lot of calm days at home to spend with my Dad as well. Now the second phase of my summer will begin, as I will be heading to the airport to pick Robert up. It's September and the New England weather could not be more beautiful. Luckily for me and all those other people on the quarter system, I still have a month before classes start! Oh, and I have finally sort of exhausted the all the possibilities for finding things to do with all the pictures I took over this past year. An i-dvd slide show and two photo albums, and I am nearly pictured-out.

So essentially what I am trying to say is that I'm signing off on this blog for now as I plan on fully enjoying the rest of my summer. I'll check in with any news on this Fulbright application, and then, if that works out of course, you just might be hearing about new journeys to Germany in the future. So stay posted.

Auf den neusten Stand bringen

2009-08-31T18:13:00.006+02:00

An update on my German.

Now that I am home a lot of people have asked me the following question: "So, you must be fluent now, right?" After thinking for a second how best to explain what I've managed to learn within a year and what I still need to work on, I simply respond, "Yeah, sort of." The truth is that I'm not sure I could ever be fluent in German. There are far too many grammatical rules and even more exceptions. Not only that, but the idioms and expressions I learn are quite impossible to translate. I think back to Nina and Robert speaking Deutschlisch, which means speaking English but directly translating everything from the German, hopefully exaggerating the German accents to atrocious levels. Their conversations resulted in such phrases as "Oh, I break together" and "I would like to become a beer please" and "press your thumbs that we have good weather tomorrow," none of which make much sense to a non-German speaker. These are funny pieces of the German-American conversation that I can now partake in. It makes perfect sense to me to use the verb "bekommen" to mean 'to receive' instead of 'to become'. Incidentally according to Jan that is the distinguishing factor of all German tourists in the US - they will consistently ask their waiters if they can become more bread or that if only they could become a schnitzel, they would be content.

German continues to frustrate me. I read a wonderful book that I had started in Berlin called Selam, Berlin by Yadé Kara. The book was written in German by a turkish woman, and was therefore much easier to understand than any academic texts I had read during the year. The sentences were short, to the point, umgangssprachlich - meaning slang - and often quite amusing. And yet there were still verbs that I had never encountered before. Kara used about ten different verbs to describe one of the character's yelling. When I think about it, we have all sorts of verbs to describe that in English - shouting, screaming, proclaiming angrily, raising one's voice - and that is one place I need to work on. Getting used to the more traditional German - the paragraph-long sentences, the roundabout way of describing something, the lack of antecedents, the verbs all the way at the end of the sentence/paragraph so that you have no idea what the action is all about - that will continue to mystify me till the end of my days.

By the end of the year I made strides in my conversational German. My listening and reading comprehension really was pretty good, but my writing struggled. You don't really know something (like a language, for instance) cold until you can write it all out. The fact is that if I didn't have the wonderful Jasna, one of the tutors for BCGS, helping me correct my papers, I probably would have sounded to my professors like a sixth-grader without a spell-checker. I felt so confident speaking with Anna, my roommate or with Diego, who complemented me on my German a few times. Robert knows exactly what I mean when I struggle to remember a word here and there, and Nancy and I tend to just switch to English when we're talking politics or getting in to something more complicated. When I would step into my German class, level B 2,2, despite my general confidence speaking, I would be reminded of how much I still needed to learn. Memorizing genitive forms of verbs, remembering that the plural forms of nouns does not always follow a pattern...

But I plan on staying as disciplined as possible (notice that I'm not guaranteeing anything) because I am in no way sick of German. It has become part of me, part of the way that I structure my sentences in English, really. I could hardly speak French when I went to Montreal because German prepositions kept coming out. I find myself occasionally forgetting the English word for something and needing to translate it from the German to express something while catching up with EB or Janna (of course they both understand these language confusions). I brought two of the best grammar books back with me - trust me, I've gone through MANY and they are the best - and I fully intend to take a day, or two days, or many days, and practice on my own. Keep building up my vocabulary, keep practicing my prepositions, keep sending emails to Germany not just to practice but of course to stay in touch, and maybe I'll even have a bit of time at the U of C to take an advanced German course this year. Too bad that I don't have time to make German a second major, but theoretically I could pass myself off as "being fluent" once I graduate with or without adding German to my Arts degree.

Some of my funniest memories from this past year involve my tendency to repeatedly misuse German verbs. I have many examples, and will try to elucidate some of the confusion.

Once after visiting a little (very) old town in central Germany I had promised to send pictures to Robert's Dad of our day trip. I was going to forward all the pictures to Anna's father, since he grew up in that same little town. The town was called "Weida". I mixed up the name, and put as the subject to both emails: "Weide!" Anna was very confused, and asked me the next day what "Weide" I was talking about. Apparently that can either mean a field, or be the adjective wide. I explained that I had been there and she exclaimed Oh! WeidA! Now I understand. Alas, I was a bit embarrassed that I sent Robert's Dad that email - after spending a whole day there you'd think I'd get the name right.

"Wir können alle zusammen knutschen" - This is something I said to Robert's Mom. The conversation was about what I will do once I move my mattress out of my apartment. Will there be anywhere for me to sleep? I answered, of course. My roommates have a lot of space, so I can join Anna in her bed and we can make out together. After seeing her stunned reaction Robert said, you mean kuscheln, not knutschen! I wanted to say sarcastically that Anna and I could cuddle together, not make out in her bed!

"Ich wünsche dir viele schöne Rutsche!" - There is an expression that people say at New Years, essentially meaning 'hope you have a good transition into the New Year'. But the verb they use to describe this transition is "slide", so it's more like sliding into the following year. But I took this literally. This came up after an almost christmas-time dinner at Judith's apartment. Just before leaving I said to David, Judith's boyfriend, that I wished him many happy slides in the New Year. As in I hoped he would get new slides, like the playground kind, to play with in 2009. He didn't tell me right then and there that I had mixed up the entire expression. Instead he told me a good few months later that the entire family had laughed about it as soon as I left their apartment. I don't think I will ever live that one down. But at least now I understand the whole slide reference. Just so you don't mix it up, the right way to say it is Ich wünsche dir einen guten Rutsch ins Neuen Jahr.

"Ich möchte gern mich von meinem Haar scheiden lassen" - I was getting a haircut, or at least planning on it. When I relayed these plans to my roommate, what I actually said was that I wanted to divorce myself from my hair. She thought for a moment, and asked, "Wait, you really want to get rid of all of it?" I had never had that intention, and said I just wanted to cut a little bit. That time I used the right word, and then she realized that I was confusing the verbs to cut one's hair - Haar schneiden lassen - which technically translates to let one's hair get cut - and to get a divorce - sich scheiden lassen. Whoops! I guess it is kind of funny that the way I used it still sort of made sense...

"Zahnbruste" - This was an awkward one. I was in the kitchen with Anna's older sister Melanie. Something happened to the tiny little sink in our bathroom, which rendered it unusable, so we all needed to crowd around the kitchen sink to brush our teeth. I asked Melanie if she could pass me my tooth breast. Yes, I am not kidding. I mixed up the word for breast - Brust - with brush - Burste. She looked at me as if I had two heads before realizing that I had just said it wrong, and then we laughed so hard that we couldn't concentrate on brushing our teeth.

Those are the examples I can think of right now. Perhaps more will come up, even some that I never even realized I was saying wrong. From these incidents I conclude that it would be a simple shame if I were so fluent as not to mix up any words anymore.

Best of (my) Berlin

2009-08-31T17:25:00.024+02:00

<-- still my favorite place for people-watching and picture-taking, the Viktoria Park in Kreuzberg

It has been a little more than one month since I left Germany. I have to admit that my time in Berlin seems like a former life - a month is such a short time and yet I feel as if I haven't seen the Eylauer Strasse or walked around the Viktoriapark for years. Those places remain vivid in my memory, but my year was so well documented that I have stored most of my memories in pictures and have focused my attention on moving forward, first acclimating to a more quiet life at home and then preparing mentally for my last year in Chicago. Not that I do not miss Anna's cheerful 'guten morgens' and Diego's music over breakfast and Judith's charming text messages and knocking on Nancy's door only to find that she could have a full meal ready in five minutes...

Once I come back from a big adventure I have a lot of steps that I like to take to sort of "process" what I've been through. To digest the good moments and memories and be proud of my accomplishments, but also to turn regrets into lessons learned. Part of this processing includes getting pictures printed and making photo albums. This time I am doing four big things - posting final thoughts on this blog, printing some of my favorite pictures to make a scrapbook/album, making a slideshow with this fancy apple technology with some of the video footage I took throughout the year, and finally sending postcards and emails to keep in contact with people I am so happy to have spent time with in Germany. While looking through pictures I have thought of some of my favorites - favorite venues, cafes, moments - and have summarized them here for you. You know, just in case you end up in Berlin at one point in the midst of wild backpacking adventures in Europe. That way you can still get a taste of "my" berlin, even if I'm not there to show it to you personally.

Cafe Bilderbuch, Akazienstrasse, Schöneberg

Favorite Cafes:

1. Cafe Bilderbuch

2. St. Oberholz

3. Cafe Kaulderwelsch/Spörtler Cafe (student cafes at the Freie Uni)

4. Cafe Bateau Ivre

5. Kant Cafe (where Anna worked)

Best turkish brunch place, near Kottbusser Tor

Eierkuchen at the Kant Cafe

Favorite Food places:

1. Aubergine (pizza) on Monumentenstrasse

2. Kumpir at Momo's on the Akazienstrasse

3. Turkish breakfasts at Kottbusser Tor

4. Italian place on the S/W corner of Mehringdamm and Yorckstrasse

5. All-you-can-eat (best american export) brunch place in the Kollwitz Park in Prenzelberg (Kate, what is that place called again??)

6. American Bakery and lunch-spot on Königen-Luise Strasse in Dahlem (again, I'm not remembering names here...)

7. Cafe Hardenberg

Fajitas at Que Pasa

Best Currywurst in Berlin: Curry 36

Kumpir at Momo's

Most-visited movie theaters:

1. CineStar at Potsdamer Platz (original versions)

2. Yorck Kino

3. Xemon (right next to Jullies-Leber Brücke)

4. Odeon Kino

5. Kottbusser Tor (across the street from apartments with fishes painted all over them)

Favorite German Music:

1. Bodo Wartke

2. Seeed, Peter Fox

3. Reinhard Mey

4. Dota und die Stadt Piraten (Kleingeldprinzessa)

5. Wise Guys

6. Wir Sind Helden

7. Fantastische Vier

8. Absolute Beginners

Reinhard Mey, "Bunter Hund" concert tour

Favorite Parks:

1. Viktoriapark Kreuzberg

2. Volkspark Friedrichshein

3. Mauerpark

4. International Park in Marzahn (haven't been there yet, but i've seen pictures!)

Most frequented museums:

1. Berlinische Gallerie

2. Hamburger Bahnhof

3. Alte Nationalgalerie

4. Deutsche historische Museum

5. Martin Gropius Bau

Alte Nationalgalerie (German art since the romantics)

Favorite place to take pictures:

1. Viktoriapark

2. Akazienstrasse

3. Turkish market

4. Market at Winterfeldplatz

5. Kastanienallee Prenzlauerberg

6. Monumentenbrücke near me in Schöneberg

7. East-side Gallery

Best spots for a night out:

1. Klub der Visionaire (club on a boat, in the Spree)

2. Cassiopeia

3. White Trash Fast Food

4. Klub Havana

5. Prater Biergarten Prenzlauer Berg

6. Golgatha Biergarten Viktoriapark

(I really could have done more exploring in this department)

Favorite libraries (this comes with a grain of salt):

1. JFK library FU (more american flags than in the US)

2. History library main building of the HU

3. Ethnology library HU (nice and small)

4. StaBi Potsdamer Platz (if you have the patience for it and don't mind buying water all the time)

5. HU main library (under construction, and is therefore promising for the future)

6. OSI political science library at the FU

But sometimes it's just nice to have something that reminds me of home...

Kate's Kraft Macaroni & Cheese

Alles hat seine Ordnung

2009-08-31T15:21:00.008+02:00

There are a few stories that I have been waiting for just the right moment to think back on. One refers directly to the goal of this entire blog, a goal that I set for myself in the "About me" section in which I try to give meaning to the phrase, "Das ist aber wirklich Deutsch".

The story begins two months ago actually, in the middle of library hopping and paper writing. I looked at shoes online as I occasionally do to procrastinate and found the exact red shoes I had been looking for, black heels, about 3", with a dark red leather strap, good for jeans and skirts. So now you know what this story is about. Red shoes. I thought since they rarely have size 36 shoes in stores (I hadn't met any Germans with my same shoe size over the age of 12) I could just order them online and they would arrive just as I was in the final stretch with my papers. A pick-me-up if you will, to get me through a lot of stress and then I could wear them if we go out at the end of the semester (there didn't end up being much time left for this, sadly). So all went simply, and I was expecting them in two weeks. Two weeks went by and I heard no doorbells ring, granted I wasn't home too much during the day since I was busy taking tests, etc. Usually a package will be delivered to any neighbor that answers his/her doorbell when you are not home yourself to pick it up, and then the delivery person would leave a blue note in your mailbox telling you which neighbor (or nearby "Lotto" store) has your package.

Instead of this system, I received a letter saying that someone had been by the apartment not once, not twice, but three times to drop off the package, and I had not been home. For security reasons (they are just shoes for goodness sakes!) the rightful addressee had to sign for them upon delivery. They had a number on the letter, which I called the next day during business hours. They were cordial, asked me if I knew a specific shop on the Dudenstrasse that had a partnership to the delivery company, the Salon Dela. I knew the address - around 12 minutes away walking - and thought that would be fine. It would be there the following Monday after 16.00 and I was to bring a government-issued ID. I was ready to pick up the package on Monday, but realized to my dismay as I walked up to the Salon at the indicated address that Salons were closed on Mondays. I was sure that place must have been the right one, although there were other stores around it, since it shared the aforementioned name of the Salon. I came back the next afternoon, asked at the Salon. They said, quite friendly, "oh no. We do not accept packages here, but the florist across the street just got a contract to do that a couple months ago." OK, I thought. Nothing too complicated. I went to the florist this time and asked a skinny woman perhaps in her early 60's who was standing outside the florist shop if she might have a package for me. Without saying much, she went behind the counter to check for packages - there were two, and one of them looked to be the size of a shoe box. She asked me for my ID, and I took my driver's license out from my wallet. She took one look at it and said, mit der kann ich gar nicht anfangen! And then she threw my driver's license on the counter in front of her and looked up at me, as if I was joking. I was a bit taken aback and said that I am American, and that is my ID. My driver's license. She said, sounding agitated, that is not an ID and I need to give her an ID. I said that that was a government-issued identification. Well, what do you use to cross borders, she asked me. I said my passport, but I don't have it with me. She said, putting the package away, well there's nothing I can do for you, because she is required to see proper identification or a passport. I was at a disadvantage, because all Germans have an identification card, sort of like a citizenship card, that has nothing to do with their passport, and I did not think that I would really need my passport just to pick up a package. I said I would go back to my apartment and get my passport, since there was clearly no way around that. I left the store and said goodbye, not impolitely. We were both quite agitated though, and I had very little time that week to go back and forth a few extra times just for these shoes.

Rather than thinking about the time I had wasted going to and from this place twice with no success, I went to Cafe Bilderbuch to do work that evening. I believe I did get a fair amount of editing done on my first big paper. I had taken an exam the day before and was sure I did not do so well - I had gotten very little sleep over the weekend and was scared, since the professor was essentially writing the test questions just for me; no other students in the class needed to take the test because they would be tested one semester later on multiple courses at once. The system is confusing, and I'm not sure I still understand everything about the combined tests, etc. In any case, I returned to this florist shop on my bike the next afternoon after having been at the FU all day reading for my next paper (finally). I was going to meet Kate that evening for dinner at her apartment and wanted to get everything done before going. So I parked my bike and walked up to the store. The woman was "busy" chatting with a rather large friend of hers with missing teeth. I waited by the door and said hello. She didn't stop her conversation for another five minutes or so and then they said goodbye. The ornery woman asks me, without saying hello, why I did not come back yesterday afternoon. I did not have time to come back yesterday, I responded, so I came back today. She hesitantly went inside and took the package out again and asked if I brought my passport this time. I showed her my passport and she thumbed through the pages, looking confused. No there is no number here! She said - I indicated which page had my information and she said but there's no passport number I need a number. I pointed to the number, thinking that she either wanted to make a big deal about the fact that it was not a German passport or she just didn't like me and did not want to give this package. Or maybe she just really couldn't find it. She told me to read it out loud as she entered it into her little registry machine. I did so twice, she fiddled with some buttons (clearly unsure of how to use the machine) and entered my passport number. I didn't like that one bit - why would they need my passport number in their system to give me the package?!? I waited, and a few beeps and scans of barcodes later, she turns to me and says something I will never forget....

"Na siehst du? Alles hat seine Ordnung!"

That means, don't you see, everything has it's order. Out of anything I'd heard that year, this seemed to me the "most German", taking pride when a foreigner must change his or her ways to cooperate with unnecessary rules, because without them simple things like a package delivery cannot occur. She repeated this and said with a big condescending smile on her face as if she had defeated me and held the power in her hands, "and if you want to return the package, just come back and I will send it back for you, no charge." I smirked back but was relieved to finally be putting the package in my backpack so that I could go home.

However, the exchange was not over yet. As I was fiddling with my zippers, trying to fit the box in my bag, she says "wait wait, do not put your passport away yet. I need it again." Something was not working right with the little registry machine. Apparently my package was still in its inventory, meaning that it had not actually been considered "picked up" yet. So we did it again - I read my number (memorized it by this time) and she entered it, tried scanning barcodes, and no change. She said to me, looking a bit annoyed, perhaps with herself, but she made it seem like I was the one at fault here for having a "faulty" non-German passport. She had me give her the package back and said I would have to come back the next day - she needed to check with the delivery man if it was incorrectly registered with the shoe company, because I was not allowed to take it from the store if it wasn't registered right. She said I should call them and clear up the problem. I told her that I did not have time to call (shouldn't she have done that?!?) and couldn't come back the next day. I had already been there three times (she corrected me, I'd only been there twice, but I didn't feel like explaining about the Salon mix-up) and I did not have any more time that Friday. She said well that's too bad, I needed to come back. She looked at the information on the package and somehow read that they had tried to deliver the package to the apartment before. She made this known to me by saying, "and they came three times and you were not there," shaking her head at me as if to scold me for my wrongdoings. I ignored her condescending comment and replied that I was leaving Germany that weekend and would not have any time to come back. She said well then, I'll just have to send it back myself - I just cannot give this to you now! She was yelling at this point, and I was at my wits end. Then she calmed down and said if I write down the passport information they would figure it out the next day. She would call me at 14.00 and let me know if it worked and then I could pick it up. I couldn't give her a cell phone number though for her to call (heaven forbid), only a landline would do. I knew that I could not be home then and asked instead if I would get my money back if she were to send it back. She said that was for me to arrange with whoever I was getting the package from (but I figured I would for a return like that to a shoe company). In a huff I said I would not leave her my passport number because that information was private. I would appreciate a call the next day, I added, and then I said goodbye and left the store, in desperate need for some fresh air.

I was a bundle of nearly exploding nerves when I got back to the apartment. How did that happen?! I had gotten so far in my German that I knew how to be polite and generally cautious not to say anything that might insult someone. But maybe I said "du" instead of "Sie" the first time I went there, and that is why she reacted negatively to me from the beginning. I told the story to Anna who thought that her behavior had been incredible and unacceptable, but some older Germans are just like that. It was not out of the ordinary to meet people as stubborn as she had been, so whereas I thought it was unheard of, she said everybody met people like that once in a while.

I talked to Jan later that night about it when we met a bunch of people in the Mauerpark for a late-night grill party. At that point I was glad to be done with the whole situation (no regrets about not having those red shoes, in other words. Jan shared in my disbelief and suggested that it had something to do with the fact that I wasn't German. Not specifically that I was American, but that some people are just not willing to bend the rules for non-Germans. There world's are for example too small to know what to look for in a foreign passport. I'm not sure that she was anti-foreign, because she did not know I was foreign until I tried to explain about my driver's license. I think that her rudeness was a cover-up for the fact that she didn't know the rules of the delivery system herself. I see that accepting my driver's license would have been bending the rules a bit, but ultimately it was her fault that her device thing wasn't working properly because I had the right means of identification (the second time). She should have called the delivery company while I was still there. She would not apologize for her inability to work the device; it was my fault right away every time something went wrong. She had TWO packages to worry about, and with one her customer (me) got so fed up that she did not want the merchandise any more. At the least she was being a poor representative both of the delivery company and the shoe company that uses the delivery company. I mean, the delivery company had rules that were too strict in general too - someone needed to sign for the package, they only came to deliver during business hours when people are generally not home (was I supposed to sit and wait at home an entire week for a package?!?), and then they require that we enter very personal information into their database. But I mean, all that could have been much easier had she acted a little less horrific towards me.

This pig-headed way of conducting a business transaction is something that all of my German friends have encountered. They hate it too, and try their best to deal with people like that as little as possible. Robert, who had been living with an entire building of "Spiessers", or people who live within strict sets of rules without hints of kindness or understanding (my definition), decided to move out upon returning to Heidelberg. He does not need to live with people who are unfriendly to students, so he won't. And this brings me to an important conclusion. I noticed an incredible divide between young people and old people in Germany. Young people who I met all over Berlin would repeatedly swear over their frustrations with the close-minded older populations, while the old people talk about the young people who are in the process of "ruining the society" because of their lack of manners. I actually heard an older woman say exactly that to a young couple on a bus, because they wanted the window open and they omitted to ask if she minded the wind. It must be said that I cannot generalize. But just as big as the difference between old and young people in Germany is the difference between one's public (or professional) life and one's private life. One does not often break the barrier from one to the other, for instance by inviting a colleague home for dinner or by asking one's best friend's father for a job.

But I guess everything has its order. It really was an interesting culmination of what has bothered me about Germany from the beginning: general stubbornness. In the public sector (as in not in your personal circle of friends) people do not apologize when they are in the wrong. Instead they redirect the blame or tell you they cannot help you solve your problem. Robert is right, the only amiable people are the bankers, since they wouldn't get any money from you if they were not obliging. That is something that was very new to me this year, realizing that rules are much more bendable in the US and that elsewhere everyday frustrations arise in unlikely places. I remember in the Fall being in a long line to buy groceries in a grocery store. After laying out all of my groceries I went to pay with my debit card. The machine did not accept my card (for no obvious reason that I can think of), and I had no cash. So my card was deemed faulty and I had to pack my stuff in bags, leave it behind the register, go to the nearest ATM (which charged me a 5-euro fee) to get cash, and when I came back I had to wait in line for another ten minutes, take all of my stuff out of the bags, and purchase everything all over again. I wish I can say that these little frustrations teach me some deep life lesson, but really the only thing I learned from that is that I should always have enough cash on me in that grocery store in case it happened again (the next time, my card worked fine). But one thing is clear: rules have no exceptions. Is this indicative of "being German"? How is the need for order, rules and regulations really tied to the German way of life? I know of many instances where I would arrive at a deserted crosswalk with no traffic. Someone would eventually join me just when I make the decision to jay walk across the street. I have repeatedly seen heads shake at me in disapproval at such times. One mother even covered the eyes of her young child as I crossed. I was, however, proud of my American jay-walking ways.

What did I learn from the shoe incident? Well, not to order anything online in Germany, especially using that delivery company, and not to expect that people will recognize American driver's licenses. But maybe the more of those little pieces/hints of advice you collect the easier one's daily life becomes. The red shoes... that was a reminder that although I felt like I had "conquered" the majestic city of Berlin and had survived unscathed, there will always be unexpected frustrations that I cannot expect, that remind me that things would be easier at "home". And in that incident I did come closer to my initial goal of learning what being German really is. Being German means consistently being on the receiving end (like Robert) or on the perpetrating end (like florist shoe lady) of irreproachable stubbornness.

Incidentally, during my first week home I rejoiced at the general ease with which I could do things: make a dentist appointment, set up doctor's check-ups, pick up prescriptions, order printed photographs online, pick up take-out pizza and change my order after I called... I am relieved to be in the land of supreme customer service once again.

Last morning in Berlin

2009-07-26T08:17:00.005+02:00

Today is the day! I will be driving across the country to Karlsruhe with Robert's mother, Helmut, Tommy and Steffen. But first a relaxed breakfast of coffee and croissants with Nancy, before I go back to my apartment for the last time and schlepp my heavy luggage down five flights of stairs. And hopefully I can make a quick stop on the Kreuzberg (despite the rain) en route. In the meantime, I have said many (sad!) goodbyes this passed week; everyone seems to be leaving Berlin at the same time. However I have one big goodbye left to go (before Wednesday, that is):

Ach Berlin

Ick liebe Dir.

Ick liebe Dich.

Wie's richtig is',

det weiss ick nick,

Ick liebe Dir

'Uff alle Fälle.

My last breakfast in Nancy's garden...

much to do, much to do

2009-07-17T20:54:00.007+02:00

One of the things I am trying to preach to myself is calm. Bit by bit I am making headway in my papers - one is almost finished, and I met with my professor today about the second one. I wrote a Klausur (final exam), or rather I took the exam if you want to be grammatically correct about it (i've been having trouble with my english these days), on Thursday, which I believe went pretty well. Only one more to write/take on Monday. And then there are the goodbyes, which are happening relatively spread out-ly (spradically? what would be the right word there?).

On Tuesday we had a final dinner at Warren's apartment in Schöneberg, where we discussed the extremes of the Weimar Republik and then topped the evening off with gnocci, lots of wine, and rote Grütze, a Berliner specialty otherwise known as berry mush with vanilla sauce. Yesterday a few of us met at the Prater Biergarten for a last Hefeweizen (okay, maybe not the last) and some chatting, although a bit too often the conversation came back to the loads of work we all have to do at the moment. Kate and I sent an email to the BCGS troops to see who would come, and it ended up being a small but nice turnout: the "most important came", as Carmen said. But tonight it'll be a different scene present as Diego celebrates his 26th (!!) birthday at his apartment in Wedding. I am happy to take a break from my papers, and glad to take advantage of this warm (too warm?) weather... before the temperatures drop ten degrees C by tomorrow afternoon.

Here's a short list of what I need to get done before my departure, more for my benefit than for yours:

- finish/correct/pass in two papers

- one more final exam (STUDY!)

- buy a suitcase, begin packing clothes and books

- bring red nightstand, bike to Nancy's

- figure out what to do with my posters

- return books to the FU library, the StaBi, the Humboldt

- de-register from the town of Schöneberg, print form, have Nancy sign

- once I get my confirmation, cancel my health insurance

- fill out the BCGS evaluation, bring to Carmen

- get my grades for the first exam, bring to Carmen

- clean out my kitchen supplies of the things that Anna doesn't eat (i.e. peanut butter)

- cancel my bank account

- help Anna find a new roommate, sell my furniture somehow

- cancel my cell phone

- cancel my train-discount card

- hair cut? (ok, be realistic here, you only have a week)

- find a present for Judith's going-away party tomorrow night

- some sort of going away party for myself...??

- last blog(s) of the year!!! (perhaps a good project for Karlsruhe)

AND tonight Robert is performing as Nestor Patou in their second showing of Irma La Douce. It takes place in Paris but in reality they are in the tiny town of Spöck, near Karlsruhe. I wish I could watch, but I think Robert would be less nervous knowing I'm not in the audience... Hals und Bein Broch!

-Mein Jahr in Berlin ist fast vorbei-

2009-07-12T14:26:00.012+02:00

Es wäre eigentlich passend, wenn ich dieses Blog auf Deutsch schreiben würde. Aber dadurch, dass der grössere Teil meines Publikums in der USA ist, schreibe ich lieber auf Englisch. Oder?

My time in Berlin is slowly (actually incredibly quickly) coming to an end. I am prematurely in packing mode, as I have collected a lot of stuff since September and I am worried about showing up at the Frankfurt Airport with four oversized and overweight suitcases for my flight home. I am thinking ahead to summer but have not yet found closure for my time in Berlin. Really the city just has too much to offer; one year is far too short, as expected. But those are little stresses. The end of my semester is a bit more looming: in two weeks I need to write two 10-15 page research papers and take two final exams. Sometimes it sounds do-able and sometimes it feels utterly overwhelming.

<-- drinking a large Milchkaffee at the Kant Cafe on Saturday, courtesy of Anna (photo by Robert)

Naturally I would like to save some time at the end for goodbyes - to Anna and Diego, to Judith, Gisela and Thomas, to Nancy, Peter, Jan and Lawrence, to friends in my language classes, to friends in my program, to people I have encountered and partied with along the way. And then doing the "last of" round in Berlin - last Kumpir on the Akazienstrasse, last Milchkaffee in Cafe Bilderbuch, last walk up the Kreuzberg, last trip to Rosa Luxembourg Platz, last walk around the Kudamm, last look at the Humboldt, last minute purchasing of german music that I can't find in the states at Dussman's... the list goes on. Packing and moving out is always a painful process for me (is there anybody that actually likes it?), so my biggest hope is that I'll be finished with my work soon enough to move out and say goodbyes in alle Ruhe.

But there is one last that has already happened: this weekend Robert came to Berlin to visit me for the last time. Maybe I'm wrong; maybe if I come back for a Fulbright or some other noble cause he can take the ICE from Karlsruhe to visit me once again. We had a great time. On Thursday we went out for Mexican food and a concert in the Kreuzberg Festsaal, a chill small venue with plenty of chairs, dancing space and good drinks. After Diego downloaded some of her music onto my computer, I've been keeping a heads-up for a "Dota und die Stadt Piraten" concert. A guitarist, base guitarist, drummer and Dota, the singer, also referred to as the "Kleingeldprinzessen". She sings in Portuguese and German and writes incredible lyrics. We got Diego her songbook as a birthday present, but missed out on her autograph! Oh well, next time... But after a long day of studying at the library it was incredible to leave the heavy books behind and spend an evening on the town with Robert.

On Friday I could hardly believe how unnecessary my class was. I had class (daily life in the DDR) from 10 to 12, which consisted of two incredibly long and painful student presentations. I mean, really, when will someone in Germany figure out that assigning grades based on student presentations is an ineffective way of teaching a course?!? I left as soon as I could and vented to Robert; he completely understood my frustration, but said that the presentations can be useful if the Dozent gives you constructive feedback and keeps the presentations under a certain time limit.

In any case, Robert and I left Mitte for our last day trip to Köpenick, at least for the time being. We went to Robert's grandparents apartment, where they had a full lunch of Schnitzel and potatoes and wine ready for us. Normally they eat at 12 everyday on the dot, but on Friday they made an exception and waited until our arrival. We had a relaxing afternoon, complained about the rain but then took advantage of thirty minutes of sunshine to go for a walk around their neighborhood. Aside from that, we essentially ate and drank and ate some more all afternoon - first a big lunch followed by homemade sour-cherry cake and coffee, afternoon wine, and then beer, dark bread, cold cuts, and an egg salad for dinner.

<-- "Oma" Helga telling us about her custom tailored copper-red wedding dress

In the afternoon we took around an hour or so to interview Dieter and Helga (Robert's "Oma" and "Opa) about their experiences with Kabarett during the DDR. Dieter had attended shows of the Distel Cabaret in Berlin, and knew a wide range of Cabarettists who performed there (one even sat next to him once while he was getting his hair cut). The Cabaret performances were both political and entertaining, but not for an uneducated public. The satire required a good ear and an open mind. He then played some comedy records that he dug up from the bottom of his cupboard. I can't wait to have the transcript written out because, really, this is information that you just cannot find in the library. But even if I weren't writing a paper on Cabaret in the DDR, I'm glad to find a way to record some of their stories (and perhaps Robert is as well).

On Saturday Robert and I visited the Käthe Kollwitz museum in Charlottenburg. This was part II in helping melissa write her papers - we looked at a big collection of her work as I tried to collect ideas for my research paper. I'd like to write about the way she interpreted Beauty, and compare it to conceptions of beauty amongst her contemporaries, like for instance Kaiser Wilhelm II (he was, well, a bit backwards, shall we say).

We then went with Sara Mess, a student in my program from a tiny town near Ipswich, MA (small world, eh?), to the Berliner-Ensemble to see Brecht's Dreigroschenoper (the three-penny opera). Unfortunately we arrived a good half-hour late, but despite our lateness the show was incredibly fun. We decided at the end that it was modern yet accessible, although the singers were pretty hard to understand. Sara and I read the play in one of our classes, thus we were a bit more prepared and knew the famous lines and songs to listen for. As with most shows in Berlin, the stage was very sparse; this time they used racks of nylon lights to create space and rooms, which worked just as well for the walls of a store as for the bars of a jail cell. Definitely a must-see when one is in this city - I believe my professor even said that the Dreigroschenoper is the soundtrack of Berlin. Any German you speak with about it (including Robert) has learned the lyrics of the opening song in school, or at least can recognize the tune.

The Berliner-Ensemble in the Berthold Brecht Platz, Mitte

(and a sign advertising for the Distel, still an active Cabaret)

We chilled a bit at one of my favorite beer gardens afterwards in the Victoria Park near my apartment, but seeing as Robert had to hop on a train at 7:30 this morning we did not stay too long. He has a busy week ahead of him too - his play opens on Friday night, and the set hasn't even been built yet. Other than that he is searching for apartments in Heidelberg - not an easy feat - and will be setting up his brand new laptop. So basically, none of us are on vacation quite yet. Sort of crazy to think that some people have been out of college for a couple of months by this point... My plan for today is to take advantage of this horrendously cold and cloudy "summer" weather to focus and get down to business, one paper at a time.

June June June

2009-07-03T20:50:00.017+02:00

There's an entire month missing from this blog. A month in which many incredible things happened, beginning with a weeklong trip home to "Ami-land" (as they call it here sometimes). Right after that my father and my sister successfully flew to Berlin to visit! I had never expected for that to happen, and I am unbelievably happy that it worked out. We saw some great views at my guest-mother's birthday party, went to a ballet (of Snow White at the deutsche Oper), ate currywurst and food from Alsace, hung out in Cafe Bilderbuch, and enjoyed walking around in Nancy's diverse and boutique-filled neighborhood. Erika and my father were just getting over their jet-lag by the time they had to leave. But as classes and work were calling to me, and my parents missed each other, and erika missed her cat and montreal, a short but sweet visit was just perfect. There's of course an endless amount of things in Berlin to see, but getting to spend time together is really the most important.

(Gisela's birthday party)

(David, Judith, my dad, Erika, and I)

Two weeks later the illustrious traveling duo Maya and Jess made a stop in Berlin! They were here literally from a Thursday evening to Saturday morning, but no time was wasted. After being in Turkey for more than five months, Jess was pleasantly surprised by the delicious food one can find in Berlin. Maya and Jess especially enjoyed collapsing on my bed (after five flights of stairs) and being fed toasted multigrain bread with Jiffy peanut butter. We went to an incredible small Argentinian restaurant around the corner from my apartment (Janna would have approved) with Anna and Diego that night. There was a crazy mix of Spanish and English and German spoken at dinner - man, I didn't know which language we were speaking by the end. The next morning I went to a class in a Schrebergarten (really cool) while Maya and Jess took an extensive walking tour to get a taste for the history in Berlin Mitte, sometimes dark, sometimes complicated, sometimes entertaining. We went for Döners and Jess ordered all in Turkish, much to the surprise of the vendors as not many Germans make an effort to learn turkish in these parts. Cupcakes in Prenzlauer Berg ensued, followed by Dawson's Creek episodes, German beer (Maya had some trouble with the Hefeweise...) and preparation for the travels ahead.

(Maya Berkowitz and Jessica Weaver!!)

The next day they flew to London from Schönefeld airport, and five minutes after I was picked up by Robert's aunt Ingrid. We drove together to Tegel, the other airport in Berlin (there used to be three, but one closed in the Fall), and two hours later we were on a plane headed to Stuttgart. Robert and his brother Steffen picked us up. We drove to Karlsruhe to help with the party preparations: Katrin turned 50 that Sunday. Three highlights: lighting lanterns over the city with good wishes for Katrin, SWIMMING in a lake at dusk with Robert and his brother Tommy, and going on a little hike in the Black Forest and eating fabulous ice cream (walnut ice cream with warm blackberries and fresh whipped cream...).

I flew back to Berlin on Monday night with Katrin's best friend and her 9-year-old daughter Vanessa (who adored me, as all nine-year-olds do). I then cleaned my apartment and read the entirety of Berthold Brecht's Dreigroschenoper for class on Tuesday. We had an exciting seminar with a guest professor who really made the opera come alive. I got a short rest when Nancy and I went to see Slumdog Millionaire (finally!) on Tuesday evening at a tiny one-screen theater near her apartment. But as you can see, it has essentially been pedal-to-the-metal mode since then. Today I even had a "block seminar", meaning four 2-hour classes smushed together all in one day. That means I was in a classroom on one of the hottest and most humid days of the summer from 9am until 6pm. I gave a short presentation that I am not too proud of, but at least that class is finished and I will have Monday's free for the rest of the semester.

So now, dead and tired (but clean at least!) I am finally turning to the more important things in life, namely reflecting on some of the visits this past month and calling my parents to wish them a happy fourth of July. Happy fourth to you too! Kate and I plan to celebrate with a hamburger and mac-and-cheese dinner party tomorrow (saturday) night with some other americans we've been in contact with this semester.

And now for some pictures....

(one week in Ami-land)

(Tintin in Istanbul)

(Judith, Thomas, and Gisela, my berlin Guest-family)

(Judith and I with the berliner skyline)

(in Nancy's courtyard)

(view from the Akademie der Wissenschaftlers)

(bavarian brewery, Potsdamer Platz)

(Erika holding the TV-tower, Alexanderplatz)

(Rosenthaler Platz, the stop for one of my favorite cafes)

(student STRIKE across Germany: the strike headquarters at the FU)

(a Columbian dinner-party in our living room)

(Kate and I experimenting with casseroles)
(visit to a "Schrebergarten" for my Daily Life in the DDR class)

(Lantern-lighting in Karlsruhe!)

(at Katrin's 50th birthday party, Helmut playing the saxophone)

(Katrin and Cathrine with ice cream)

(letztendlich, the sky over Berlin)

deN innereN Schweinehund überwinden

2009-05-30T16:59:00.022+02:00

(somewhere between Gera and Berlin, from the train)

I know, I have not written a thing in this blog in over three weeks. Perhaps a sign of laziness. But also a sign of having an overwhelming amount of things going on, not all of which are necessarily news or blog worthy. Much of it is just plain old reading for my courses, which I can generally accomplish better either in a café or in a library where I get no internet, am not allowed any snacks, and am surrounded by other people doing nothing but reading along with me.

That’s where the innere Schweinehund comes in. It’s an expression that literally means the inner pig-dog. I’m not kidding; that’s the direct translation. But what it means, is that there’s this pig-dog inside of us that bars our motivation. You have to overcome the inner pig-dog, den inneren Schweinehund überwinden. Sometimes that means it just makes us lazy, but other times it means that we’re scared to try and therefore procrastinate until we are forced to try, or make it so that we don’t have to try at all. That’s how I was with my schoolwork for the first few weeks of the semester. I am trying to change that; I am trying to suppress or even overcome my inner pig-dog and organize/compartmentalize my life better so that I, too, can take an afternoon off here and there to sit on a blanket in the Viktoriapark with a cold beer and an english book. Somehow people seem to be able to do that quite often around here; at least I get that impression both from friends that I talk with and from the shear amout of people I see walking around in the parks nearby. How ironic is it that I am learning from one of the most stereotypically neurotic cultures how to take time to myself and chill out.

But here’s a little lowdown of what I’ve been up to these passed two, three weeks:

Leipzig

After my weekend in Breslau I took a weekend to catch up on schoolwork and begin translating (more on that later) in Berlin. I knew to expect craziness the following week: on that Wednesday at around 7 in the morning a group of twenty of us from my program met at the main train station to leave for our semester excursion to Leipzig. Leipzig is a fairly large city in Lower-Saxony to the west of Dresden, famous for its musicians (Mr. Johann Sebastian Bach played as the church organist in the St. Thomas Church in Leipzig for many years, before being discovered as a genius byMendelssohn Bartholdy), it’s roll as the center of the fur trading industry, and it’s 600 year-old university. More recently when people think of Leipzig they think of the protests in 1989, when 100,000 Leipzigers took to the streets to fight for voting rights in the DDR. The protest and tension between the police and the citizens during that time could have led to bloodshed at any moment, but somehow that didn’t happen. That is why we refer to the fall of the wall in Germany as the “Peaceful Revolution”, and Leipzig played a big roll.

Kate and I spent most of the excursion together, and finally we got a chance to meet some of the new students on our program. Together we suffered through our organized program. It wasn’t that the places we visited weren’t interesting; actually they were very worthwhile, but the fact that we had no idea what was on our program and what had been planned out for us meant that we jumped around to themes and time periods without much context and without much time to really discuss or digest. We started with the Museum der Bildenden Künste, a museum with pieces from the Leipzig school, a large memorial to Beethoven, some Caspar David Friedrichs, and a whole lot more. After we had time for lunch we went on a guided city-tour from a “native Leipziger”, complete with the Saxony accent and mannerisms. In a group of about ten of us we decided to leave the touristy center to find some cheaper bars in the student areas of Leipzig. We weren’t too psyched with how that turned out, but nonetheless we had enough energy to head out dancing at this incredible club in a converted military fortress. We were dancing to German techno in wine cellars… not too shabby. The next day we visited the main library at the University of Leipzig. I had little to no expectations, but still I was really impressed with what we saw. Perhaps the only library in Germany where they make it comfortable for the students that need to use it: they rebuilt it in the 90’s (hadn’t happened during the DDR, and most of it had been destroyed during the war) so that students would have light and plenty of working space. There aren’t even people to count how many books you have or to make you put your bag in lockers at the entrance. Seeing it made me want to study there… That afternoon we went to a history museum, with an exhibition about the DDR with the theme “Revolution and Resistance”. Fascinating; I learned more than I’ve learned so far this semester in my classes about the DDR. We really don’t like to think of there having been a dictatorship after Hitler here in Germany, but there’s no question that the DDR was a dictatorship.

Memorials to the protests, Leipzig

After the tour through the exhibit I talked to the tour guide about some ideas for my research papers. Then Kate and I bought ice cream and sat in a park to enjoy the nice weather. That night we went to a concert at the Gewandhaus, listened to a concerto by Prokofiev and a symphony by Brahms. Kate and I were exhausted though since we really hadn’t slept much the night before. Dinner at 11pm or so, and then bed in our A&O hostel. The hostel was surprisingly nice (compared to where we stayed when we went to Weimar in the Fall), and was in a renovated old post-office right next to the main train station. The first night the place was overrun with ACDC fans. When one of them asked us what we thought of the concert, he looked at us as if we had two heads when we said we hadn’t gone. What?!? Why are you here, then? He asked. We didn’t think that “we have a mandatory excursion here” would fly too well as an answer, so I think we just said we were visiting friends at the University. The next day the Swiss replaced the metal-band lovers; all over the breakfast room we could hear people speaking in the funniest dialect, and when I listened closer I knew exactly where I’d heard it before: my aunt Lisie in Zürich. The group of Swiss people was there to give some sort of music concert, and I believe it involved yodeling. So all in all, a nice hostel, and an interesting crowd.

(Carmen, Warren and the group on our city-tour)

(the old book catalogues at the University of Leipzig library,

est. 1543)

On our last day in Leipzig we visited the Volkerschlachtdenkmal. The English translation is “Monument to the Battle of the Nations”, and according to Wikipedia it’s the biggest monument in Europe. It sits just outside the city center, and when we approached it we just couldn’t believe our eyes. Huge is not even the right word. Immense? Gynormous? Perhaps even hideous? As a memorial to the bloody battle in Leipzig during the Napoleonic Wars, the citizens of Leipzig collected money to fund this monstrosity of a monument around the turn of the century. The monument looked like an oversized Aztec chapel (if that makes any sense) on the outside, although it wasn’t meant to invoke religious symbolism. As soon as you stepped in, it was like a scene out of the lord of the rings. Huge abstract figures loomed over you, all with supposedly “masculine” expressions on their faces (even the one woman) trying to express the virtues of war and patriotism. On top of that there was John Williams-style theme music playing, and a big wreath in the middle dedicated to the dead soldiers. We walked around the inside totally astounded, climbed up the 360 steps to the top, looked around at the view, but never really came close to understanding what the monument was all about. Why this monument, and why did they want to have it built in 1913? On the 100^th birthday of the battle, okay that sounds appropriate. But why did so many people pay for the thing out of their pockets? What connection does it have with the fever of war before WWI? And how, like one must ask about all landmarks in Germany, was it re-appropriated by the Nazis, and later by the DDR? And now?

(in front of the Völkerschlachtdenkmal)

After that overwhelmingly weird experience, we had a few hours of free time before our train was leaving to go back to Berlin. I, however, had made other plans. I said goodbye to Kate and some of the new people on the BCGS program that we’d been spending time with, and then went to the main train station to meet Robert, who had left Breslau earlier that morning to meet me.

Gera, Thüringen

Originally I was supposed to go to a conference with the DAAD (the people giving me a scholarship to study here) in Kiel, in the north of Germany on the Baltic Coast. My plans were ambitious: first Leipzig, then leaving Leipzig early to catch a bus from Berlin to Kiel, probably something like four hours drive. But in the spirit of avoiding needless stress and spending as much time with Robert as possible, I contacted the DAAD, excused myself ten hundred times, and finally they accepted my cancellation at the conference. After all that bureaucratic mayhem, I saw this written on a blackboard outside of a café that I like to go to on the weekends:

(Eine Konferenz ist eine Sitzung, bei der viele hineingehen und wenig herauskommt:

A conference is an event where many attend but nothing much gets done)

So I figured I made the right decision. Robert and I hopped right back on a train as soon as I met him in Leipzig. We were heading towards Gera, a small city where Robert’s father, his wife Ute, and Robert’s brother Steffen live and work. Hans Peter, Nancy’s husband, coincidentally also works and lives in Gera a third of the time. He keeps going back there because he loves how quiet it is compared to Berlin. Steffen reminded me when we arrived that Gera is the smallest of what Berlin considers a “city”, or a grössstadt in German. It’s literally the 81^st on a list of 81 cities with a population greater than 100,000; Berlin is the biggest city in Germany with 3.4 million. And I believe that Gera is proud to be on that list. After the fall of the wall many people there packed up their things and went to the west, leaving behind beautiful grand villas that were unsellable and unrentable. As a result, Gera not only feels quiet, it feels sort of empty; every second apartment building has a zu vermieten sign on the first floor: “for rent”. Steffen seems to think that if Gera just attracted a few more students, then the place would get a whole new life. I mean, who else would be interested in un-renovated but beautiful and cheap places to live?

(Michael and Ute's garden, Gera)

We stayed at Steffen’s but spent most of our time with Robert’s dad Michael. We went to his and Ute’s garden to grill sausages, drink beer, and take naps on the grass. They sent us home with bags and bags of fresh mint leaves, that are now stored in my freezer, awaiting appropriate tea-making opportunities. We really just relaxed, sat around talking and eating for an entire evening outside. That was wonderful. The next day, after a long breakfast with Steffen and his roommate Stephan (both hysterical and incredibly nice, but I get their names confused all the time), Ute and Michael took me and Robert on a daytrip. We went to a tiny little town about twenty minutes away called Weida. The town will be celebrating its 800-year birthday in September, to give you an idea of how old this place is. Sort of hidden in hills, this is where Ute grew up. We stopped by her parent’s apartment for coffee and cake. They showed me some of their old DDR pins and books, excited that I was learning about something that they believed in so strongly in my classes. We walked later to the local fortress (every town seems to have one), climbed one of its towers, watched an awkward panoramic multi-media presentation (they were perhaps a bit over-excited about their new technology at the fortress museum) and witnessed a reenactment of a medieval battle scene. An entire crew of bikers came expressly to watch, which served as a stark contrast to the group of children ooh-ing and aah-ing as the knights clashed swords. Erika would have loved to see that, but Robert said that that happens everywhere. Just another reenactment, like us New-Englanders with our redcoats and minutemen. We slowly made our way back to Gera, watched some soccer and ate a cold dinner (Abendbrot, literally “dinner-bread”, like what we have when we visit Robert’s grandparents in Köpenick), and Robert and I went back to Steffen’s to sleep.

(Weida)

Kreuzfahrt ins Glück

Meanwhile, I was translating like a madwoman. Remember that crazy horse-racing document I translated back in the Fall? Well, I was approached for a new translation, this time an entire screenplay. The plot could not have been more wonderful: two sisters, each in their own couple, one of whom gets married on the cruise ship. The groom has not yet met his wife’s mother, who has recently moved from Germany to Las Vegas to work in a hotel. Honeymoon plans? Las Vegas to meet his mother-in-law and to have fun on the strip. But the plot thickens, when the groom sees a picture of the mother in a photo album on the cruise ship. She looks all too familiar. But how does he break it to his new wife that he’d had an affair with her mother ten years earlier? Yes, pretty damn fabulous, and more drama where that came from. The entire story ends with a surprise guest: Mr. Siegfried himself! Complete with tiger and a sappy Las Vegas wedding. Oh sorry, did I ruin the surprise?

I had 2 ½ weeks to finish the translation, and the due date was the next day, the Sunday after returning from Gera. I can’t say that it wasn’t fun; some of the lines were just incredible, and they even make a day trip to the Grand Canyon, and to Sea World in San Diego just for kicks. But it did take a lot longer than I had expected. I could do about ten pages in two hours, but then there would just be some lines that I had trouble with. The short phrases were the most difficult. When someone in German says Ach so for instance, that can mean “Oh, really” or it can mean “How could you?” or any number of things depending on the context. But I do like struggling with those questions – like I said for the last translation, it is a really interesting way to think about languages.

So unfortunately I was a bit stressed out in Gera since I had this screenplay to finish. I worked for about six hours on Saturday morning before we left for Weida, and then another ten or so starting very early on Sunday. I frantically proofread when I arrived back in Berlin (only two hours by train from Gera) and then met “my employer” that night to review my work. We had to change a bit, especially because some of the technical screenplay vocab was foreign to me, but all in all I did a good job. He may get back to me with more jobs in the future, which I will only take on if I have a break in my schoolwork.

Back in Berlin

The next two weeks were about catching up on my reading and turning my focus back to my classes and to Berlin. Kate and I went out a bit - we went dancing at the club in White Trash Fast Food (great name, don’t you think?) with her friend Lorene until sunrise last Saturday. Then we made breakfast-for-dinner on Monday night since I found some legitimate American-style bacon at a grocery store, and I’m pretty sure we did pizza or something at one point after that. I picked up Lorene, who had just finished a semester in Ghana, from the train station when she arrived in Berlin last week, which was essentially returning the favor since Kate did exactly that when Eliza was coming to visit after her quarter in South Africa. We have a couple of religious holidays in May/June, so last Thursday I had the day off and Friday my class was cancelled. So on Thursday I finally caught up with my host-sister Judith, and on Friday I spent some time with Anna and Diego while cooking a big pasta dinner. I’ve had a bit more time on my hands, so I’ve finally started running again to take advantage of some of this Berlin sunshine. And last Friday, feeling like I had a lot under control in my life, I went to get a tattoo. This is perhaps not the right medium to discuss the why’s and the how’s and the what does it look like’s, but all in all it was a pretty thrilling and scary but gratifying experience for me, something that I had wanted to do before I leave Berlin to go home.

Had I known that my class last Friday would have been cancelled, then I would have taken the long weekend to visit Robert again in Breslau. But by Friday morning, when we read the sticky note on the classroom door saying that our class wouldn’t meet that day and cursing under our breath, it was a bit too late. But the weekend in Berlin gave me a chance to clean, to sleep, to go dancing, and to call home a little bit. To make up for it, Robert arrived here on Tuesday night and will be leaving again on Sunday (tomorrow). We had a bunch of plans, but they’ve all been put on hold due to the flu. Robert was already sick but was nearly too sick to walk home when we went to Nancy’s place for a hamburger-dinner on Thursday night, so we sort of took over Nancy’s apartment. We camped out there for two days, slept over, watched movies, sat in her garden and made dinner with her both evenings. Robert’s fever is finally gone, and I feel totally relaxed from the two days “away” (sort of), but hopefully he’ll be feeling totally recovered before he goes back to Poland tomorrow.

(at the tattoo parlor)

(bratwurst and beer to celebrate Christi-Himmelfahrt)

Perhaps the best news that I can possibly share is that my father and my sister will be coming to Berlin! This may sound a bit surprising. A couple of weeks ago, we received good results from my father’s latest scans. The doctors think that the growth of the tumors is slowing, meaning that my father is showing some response to his treatments. We were all encouraged by this news. My parents celebrated with a weekend trip to Bermuda (not too far away from Boston, and a chance to go to the beach). The flight was a trial to see if my dad would be capable of traveling for a longer period of time. He will be starting some more treatments later in June, so we decided to take advantage of his current good health and spirits to get tickets and have him come visit me here in Germany. I am incredibly excited, firstly to see my dad traveling again, but also to be able to show my sister the city a bit, a city that I think she’ll love almost as much as Montreal. But I have to be careful not to go overboard with plans, take it as we go sort of speak, and give them the option of just relaxing in my apartment rather than sightseeing all the time. First I fly to the US for one week (a trip that we planned back in March) starting next Wednesday. I return to Berlin the following Wednesday, and then my dad and sister get here two days later, on a Friday morning. And they’ll stay until the following Tuesday. So this next week may be crazy, and we may all be jet-lagged, but I cannot wait to have them here.

There’s a myriad of things that I want to talk about, that I’ve only briefly touched upon in the middle of long updates, things I’ve been noticing, weird things I’ve seen… but all that will have to wait for another entry and perhaps a free weekend sometime in the future.

(our view at sunset)

photos from POLAND

2009-05-05T20:37:00.023+02:00

Wroclaw (Breslau) grows on me every time I make the trip from Berlin to go there. Since I've been there five or so times at this point, I can safely say that the small polish city is well worth a visit. Not only was it great to visit Wroclaw this weekend, I also avoided the May Day rioting here in Kreuzberg.... Generally a good safety measure. (see http://www.spiegel.de/politik/deutschland/0,1518,622415,00.html)

I left on Thursday afternoon, carpooling with a Brit and two other Poles who commute to and from Berlin every weekend. While there, Robert and I did quite a bit: grilled with his roommates (and played frisbee with a two-year old!), did a side-trip to Kasia's hometown of Walbrzych (it was called Waldenburg back when Prussia was around, which is much easier to pronounce), visited the botanical gardens, did a little boat trip, and walked around the packed but beautiful city a few times a day. Since I have around one-gig of photos from this weekend, I thought I could post a few. Enjoy.

Dom Insel (Dome Island, island of beautiful medieval churches)

a packed marketplace on May 1st

Guitarists in the marketplace; since May Day was an institutionalized Communist holiday, now Breslau celebrates the day off with a guitar festival...

what a great idea?

Wroclaw, "the meeting place"

(Robert is the small dwarf with the soccer ball)

the postal dwarf

Robert's roommate's brother, showing his daughter Maya that the puppy really isn't as vicious and man-eating as one might think

Robert showing Maya an american catfish, an import!

Robert's roommate Mischek, with Maya

Fishing at sunset...

Kasia, showing me where Walbrzych is on a map

Kasia and I at a bus stop

Communist-style apartment buildings

Her parents made us lunch!

Soup, meat and potatoes in Kasia's apartment

Flower festival at the castle

flower exhibits inside the castle

the "old town" in Walbrzych

the botanical gardens in Breslau

the Brahms dwarf (Brahms studied in Breslau, I believe)

Robert has a few furry friends in his apartment: a bunny named Shara (meaning gray in Polish), and an entire family of hamsters

customer service policy in europe: the client is always wrong

(at a mexican restaurant)

I must say, sometimes Poland is a strange place. For instance, in the grocery store there is an ENTIRE aisle devoted to two items: Ketchup and Mayonnaise

Inside the Wroclaw Glowny, main train station

and the semester begins...

2009-05-01T23:08:00.014+02:00

(Kreuzberg Waterfall, winter and SPRING)

By now I am settled in my classes. I am getting used to this beautiful Berlin sunshine, and hoping that it'll stick around as long as possible. I'm riding my bike a little bit each day, looking for new parks to visit. I have been going out a bit to enjoy some of the city. Specifically I toured the Siegessaule with my BCGS class last Tuesday, I partook in the Long Night of Opera and Theater (partner to Long Night of the Museums from January) with Kate and Anna and friends last Saturday, Kate and I briefly checked in on the German History Museum on Wednesday followed by a fabulously light German movie called "Dorf Punks" and topped that off with some new American friends from the Humboldt.

The following are the courses I am taking this semester:

Monday: 10-12 Self-image and representation of 2nd Generation of Immigrants in Berlin (Humboldt University)

Tuesday: 2-5 Berlin Culture from Unification to the end of the Weimar Republic 1871-1933 (BCGS course)

Wednesday: 8:30-12 Language Course (Freie Universität, with other exchange students)

Thursday: 10-12 The Division, Separation, and Reunification of Germany through Berlin Literature (Freie Universität, with other exchange students)

Friday: 10-12 Everyday life in the DDR - Memory and Reality

So officially five courses, although the language course is for audit credit only. Like in the winter, not much happens during the first class of the semester. Not all of the students come, and it generally comprises of these three questions:

1) Why did you want to take this course/ what do you want to learn?

2) When (and on what topic) will you do your class presentation?

3) What sort of credit do you need from this course?

Classes vary on their organization. My course on the 2nd generation of immigrants in Berlin was incredibly organized, run by two young graduate students who know the Bachelors/Masters system and don't require an attendance list for each class. But in one class I was planning on attending, the professor says, "Well, before you all run away, I want to explain to you that I won't be in Berlin for most of this semester. So let's compare schedules so that we can pick two weekends or so to have our classes back-to-back. It'll be great; we'll get to know each other well by the end of the day." This system is referred to here as the "Block seminar", and no way in hell would this whole mess of comparing schedules work in any of our schools back in the states. After a good hour finally two potential weekends were picked out. I was going to take the class together with Kate, but it was in the Sociology and North American Studies department, meaning not anthropology, meaning risky if I'm hoping to get credit from Chicago for this year. Alas, one must make sacrifices (but at least I sacrifice no weekends now!).

I am actually excited about this schedule. I have a good mix of courses with Germans and with Americans, and hopefully I'll have a more manageable workload than last semester. The one thing working in my favor is that I'm finding it much easier to read in German now. Simply easier. It's a bit hard to describe; it's as if I just ignore the words I don't know, focus on the ones I do, and then I can figure out the context. That means that so far, three weeks into the semester (really? already?!?) I am not behind. I have even understood and liked the majority of what I've read.

Example of a good reading, and it's aftermath: I volunteered to give a presentation in my Immigrations seminar on Monday. Having no idea what the reading was going to be about, I waited a couple of days before printing it out and reading it. Low and behold, a good fifty-page out of an ENGLISH book all about the CHICAGO ethnographers. As in the introduction talked about the founding of MY UNIVERSITY and the ideals of the Chicago School of sociologists. So preparing for my presentation wasn't half as hard as it had been for the one's I gave last semester (i.e. U.S. Immigration after 9/11). All in all, it went okay; perhaps the preparation was more rewarding than the actual presentation. We were somehow very pressed for time, and so I was told to wrap up my final ideas before I had gone through half of the points I had wanted to make, meaning I was all the more nervous and a bit discouraged. But I'd like to think it was only a time matter and did not reflect the quality of my presentation in any way. Oh well, at least that's one presentation down, probably four more to go.

So with a beautiful Berlin, and with some interesting-sounding courses, you'd think that the beginning of the semester would be a piece of cake. It really is, compared with last semester. But I've found myself feeling rather homesick lately. I spent so much effort and energy trying to get to this point, making it to the second semester. And with all of the craziness of traveling over vacation, suddenly Berlin felt a bit more lonely than I expected it to. I am reminded of the sad fact that as a student one really doesn't spend much time with other people. There's those two hours of class per day when one is surrounded with class mates. But then what? It's an effort to call people up or to figure out a meeting place for later. That happens a bit in Chicago, but dramatically more so in Berlin, where my campus is a good 45 to 60 minutes away from my apartment. There is no one "student area" in Berlin; the entire city is for students to roam free and be ecstatic about the cheap rents. I can't quite justify taking the long (and generally unpunctual) bus ride to the subway to campus just to go to a student cafe to be around people. So I've been experiencing a lack of good workplaces (I refuse to go to the StaBi until it's absolutely necessary) and a lack of university community. That makes me miss Chicago. And every thing else makes me miss home.

I had a really great dinner with Nancy on Monday night. While walking around the Victoria park on my way home from the Humboldt (beautiful waterfall, and everything smells so wonderful in that park) I decided that it was just too nice an evening to make dinner alone in my apartment. Nancy probably felt the same way, so we spontaneously made a ton of delicious food together at her apartment, only a few bus-stops away. Green asparagus with a butter-lemon sauce, potatoes, chicken, a field salad with homemade dressing and red wine. Her backyard/garden is certainly not normal for a big city, and it makes for a great place to be outside in the spring.

I'm hoping for more dinners in the garden, and more fun outings with new American friends. I'd love to keep meeting more of Anna's friends (one of them happens to be in one of my classes), and even if she needs to work most nights of the week it doesn't stop me from getting together with them myself. And of course there are beer gardens to visit. I'm hoping to make Wednesday afternoon my go-out-and-see-the-city day (I believe Kate is in on this plan), so Wednesday night could certainly become the night for drinking new beers under horse chestnut trees, as is customary in beer gardens. But in the meantime I need to get away from Berlin, even with the exciting May 1st demonstrations (some prove to be violent, but others say that the parties afterwards make the danger worth it). I am heading to Wroclaw, Poland for the weekend. Robert and I will finally get to enjoy the city in all of its glory: flowers, botanical garden, boat rides (?), fishing and all. I will update you soon!

a packed week back in Berlin

2009-04-22T16:35:00.025+02:00

I've been literally on the move ever since I stepped foot into the Berlin train station. Today, around ten days later, is my first lazy day of staying inside since I was in Boston more than a month ago. The apartment is incredibly quiet with only with a bit of music and the wind outside. Somehow no interesting classes seem to be offered on Wednesdays, so while I may end up having class on Friday mornings (which would NOT be optimal) I will probably have Wednesday's off this semester. That brings me to all of the things that have been going on ON TOP of the beginning of the summer semester and finding classes and that whole thing. Once my schedule gets a bit more set in stone I'll be able to tell you more about what i'll be learning about in the next few months. So here goes, from penguins to pneumonia:

- Erin makes a stop in Berlin!

While on vacation from her Tufts-Abroad program in Paris, Erin Bruynell spent a couple of days in Berlin. She had some unfortunate mix-ups with the Paris ticketing offices, who booked her train for a day after she had planned, and had put them in first class unexpectedly. But that meant that we just had a couple of hours to get together before she was going to head on to Munich on a night train on Monday night. So literally fresh from the train I took the subway with my luggage to Erin's hostel. We went to one of my favorite cafes (St. Oberholtz in Rosenthaler Platz) and had a leisurely dinner while catching up. She was ready to leave Paris, and I was proud to announce that the prices in Berlin were nothing compared to what she's used to. Sadly we had very little time, but again, we've got to take those chance encounters as they come and make the most of it. Short but sweet, and her traveling buddies from Paris were both nice and funny. I hope she had a good time surfing the beer gardens in Munich :-)

- My first German "Frat" party

A friend of mine named Johannes, whom I met in the cafeteria last October, has recently joined a Frat. In German it's called a "Studentenverbindung", which literally means a student connection, but what it really is is a bunch of guys living together under certain rules and conditions. And they have parties... from the one I went to my impression is that they are rather tame parties that involve controlled amounts of good beer and lots of grilling, but according to Robert, the Verbindungen are known for getting pretty toasted with their alcohol. At least that's the way it is in Heidelberg, which has the fanciest and oldest frats in Germany (probably older than in the US). The big difference is that there's nothing greek about these frats. There used to be a big fencing-culture around them; different members of the frats would have to fence (literal sword fighting) against other frats in order to be initiated.

Johannes invited me that afternoon and gave me rough directions. The first thing that impressed me was how nice the neighborhood was - tree-lined streets, totally quiet in West Berlin and not to far from the University. They lived in a big brick building. The grilling happened out back, where a bunch of people, not just the frat members, had already been eating around picnic tables. I recognized some of Johannes' friends from the physics department (he's a physics major) and chatted with them before getting food. The frat members had a ribbon that they wore around their chests, one meaning that they've "passed the test" and one meaning that they're the new guys. Apparently after your second semester of living in the house you're expected to pledge; you have to study the history of the frat, learn a few songs (I believe), and then pass an oral exam before you're officially a frat member. I have no idea if Johannes is actually going to have to learn how to fence... I read some stories written by the true American Mark Twain from his travels abroad, and he described some of the fencing-competitions in Heidelberg as being intensely bloody... I didn't stay for too long but really liked meeting some new people and seeing the atmosphere.

- A very small visitor invades our apartment

Anna warned me before I came home that my room was currently "in use". When I got home I received all accompanying explanations: Anna's sister Melanie and her husband Manuel were visiting for the week, with their 17-month old son Jakob. They were staying till Friday and would really really appreciate it if they could use my room, since they could close the door and it would be better for the baby when it goes to bed, at around 8pm. At first I felt slightly awkward, because secretly I was furious at not having access to my room after being so exhausted and having been to so many places. All I wanted to do was collapse on my bed, eventually do laundry and unpack. But alas, it was probably better that I still had some close in a suitcase and could easily move to Anna's room for a few days. There was no use fighting it, and the adorable blond-haired little Jakob, with his stomping feet and generally drooling mouth, convinced me that it would be okay. Plus, I was mostly worried that when Robert's two brothers come into town that Thursday night, there wouldn't be any room for them to sleep over... so really it was better to be flexible about it all. Anna and Diego even gave me their bed to sleep on because they felt so bad about the whole situation.

The entire apartment was general commotion at all times until the baby went to bed. Melanie and Manuel wanted to see a few things in Berlin (this was their vacation), so Anna pretty much put off her University for a week so that she could show them around. I didn't have to go grocery shopping for an entire week because they always had so much food around. But it was fascinating seeing the little munchkin. Melanie had another one coming too, a girl, expected this summer. On one hand I was convinced all over again that babies were far too exhausting, but on the other hand something that Melanie said really stuck with me: "we would just be such boring visitors if we didn't have Jakob here with us". He was a really lively addition to the apartment. And Melanie and Manuel were incredibly friendly; they even gave me and Robert their address in Freiburg and want us to stay with them if we're ever in the area.

- The Berlin Zoo

Last Wednesday I had no class and was planning on just enjoying the peace and quiet of the apartment while the crew was out seeing Berlin. BUT, the plan for the day was the Zoo... when would I get another chance? A beautiful day, good company, a little one to get excited about the animals with... So all six of us (5 1/2...?) stood in line at the Zoologische Gartens awaiting entry.

An hour or so later (it was a gorgeous day, lots of visitors, young and old) we were overwhelmed with all the places we could go to in the zoo. The place had everything: lions, giraffes, polar bears, penguins, you name it. We started at the elephants (there was a baby!) and made our way through the monkeys, the chickens, the pelicans, the muskrats, the zebras, the sea lions, other funny things i can't name, the one elusive tiger, and finally, after much searching, we discovered a lazy and somewhat dirty Knut chilling on some rocks in his own private area.

Jakob probably saying "da!" to Diego and his dad, Manuel

KNUUUUUUUUUUUUT

Knut was at one point the pride of Berlin; the polar bear was born about four years ago and has a total sop story to go along with it. The mother totally rejected the baby, so a zookeeper took the mother's place and they were always together, little baby Knut and the zookeeper. They were literally famous; people came to Berlin JUST to see Knut. In the fall the zookeeper died, and in the meantime Knut has gotten pretty big, so now the big question is where should be live? Should they build him a larger habitat in Berlin or move him elsewhere? Who knows, but like Anna said, Knut was in reality dead boring and the penguins and seals were much more fun.

Diego towering over Anna and me

...AND this one is for you, Ronny :-)

- Volkspark Friedrichshain

I left the Zoo a bit early (well, what is early? we were there for a good five hours) to meet up with Kate for some more macaroni and cheese.... mmmmm, but unfortunately her supply has run out, so i'm not sure what we'll do for the next time... We then walked to the park near her apartment, the Volkspart Friedrichshain. Even though it was nearly dark tons of people were out chilling or grilling in the park. We walked to something called the Märchen Brunnen, the fairy tale fountain, built by one of the Friedrichs a couple of hundred years ago. The place was astounding! Just in the middle of the park was this place literally out of a fairy tale, really really beautiful. I hadn't even heard of the place before - just goes to show that the prettiest parts of Berlin are hardly touched upon in the guide books.

- A long Thursday night

Robert and his brothers arrived from Gera, where they were visiting their father (and where Steffen lives permanently). All was already a bit chaotic because, as I feared, the apartment was rather crowded. Anna and Diego were here, planning on sleeping in their room under the hammock, Manuel and Melanie hadn't left yet and were in my room, and Robert and I had Anna and Diego's bed. That meant two floor spaces for Steffen and Tommy.

All would have been reasonably okay had Tommy not become totally sick during the night. It started with a sore throat, but then he couldn't fall asleep because he was shivering so much. Robert and I heard nothing of this, since we were unable to sleep due to Steffen and Diego's harmonious snoring. Anna finally got up to ask Tommy if he was okay. He didn't have an answer. She suggested that he go to the hospital. I know I speak for Robert too when I say that we didn't take Tommy seriously at that point; Anna was certainly right, but we just kept thinking maybe he'll feel better once he gets to sleep. Big brother Steffen took the decision-making responsibility. He and Tommy left to go to a taxi line to ask them where the nearest hospital was. Luckily there was one next to Sudkreuz, so only around a twenty minute walk from my apartment (good to know for the future...). They came back a couple of hours later, and after a brother-meeting they decided to take Tommy to their grandparent's apartment as to avoid him being in contact with the baby. They couldn't diagnose anything at that point, but he was clearly not doing well enough to sleep in a sleeping bag on the floor. It was about 4 in the morning at that point; their grandparents live an hour away by S-Bahn. They woke up their grandparents, who were happy to take care of Tommy for a little bit, and had some breakfast before heading back to Kreuzberg to tell us about everything that happened.

I'm pretty sure the only people that got sleep that night were snoring Diego, Melanie, Manuel and definitely the baby, who woke the rest of us up at 7 like he usually did. In any case, Robert and I needed a few coffees and were exhausted for a couple of days before we recovered. But Tommy was the real one recovering. He didn't make it to the birthday party the next day, and was really glad to head back to Karlsruhe to his Mom. Katrin must have checked his blood again when he got there because she called us back with the news that Tommy had pneumonia, but was doing much better.

- Finishing up last semester

Somehow that Friday Robert and I still managed to go to my university and get a lot done. He got a cheap student-priced hair cut while I picked up readers at various copy shops in Dahlem. I went too and fro buying a few books for my classes in addition to some school supplies, and then I went back to the BCGS Büro to see Carmen. Right away she deluged me with things I needed to get done (it's always like that, a bit stressful but now I'm used to it) and with changes to the summer semester, etc. But what was most exciting was realizing that all of my grades for the Winter Semester were in and done. Somehow despite all of the language difficulties and lack of library books or workspace and general berlin confusion I managed to do very well last semester. Who would have thought? I surely didn't expect that; my goal was more oriented towards surviving and getting everything passed in. But it's a nice feeling at the beginning of the summer semester, to know that I could do it once, and perhaps I could do it again.

- A 150th Birthday Party

Helga and Dieter, at the head of the table

The main reason that Robert and his brothers came to Berlin was for both of their grandparents 75th birthday parties. Saturday April 18th has been written in my calendar since they invited me before christmas. Helga, Robert's grandmother, had her birthday exactly on that day and Dieter had turned 75 a couple of months before. A few old and new friends of there's were there along with Robert, Steffen and I, Robert's father and his wife, and her daughter Nora. It took about two hours for Robert and I to actually get to the party, but when we did it was worth it.

In a small "Gaststätte" in Köpenick, Berlin, a tram ride from their apartment, we met in a private room for food, food and more food. We started with introductions over coffee and cake (two different kinds), then ordered drinks and talked, and then had a little program with poems and odes to the birthday couple. When we were all good and hungry again we were served a tasty buffet dinner. More drinks. Two more items on the program: Robert's Dad read some funny stories outloud and then we played the DDR quiz game. Of course, Dieter knew every answer to every question asked, and could even give us an annotated version with more information than the quiz-game gave us. So when I asked, for instance, how long people in the DDR had to wait before getting their trabant (the only cars available), he'd respond, well, that depends on the model. I was impressed and astounded, but the crowd was all east-german, so they knew the answers too. We had dessert, more stories, and then Steffen, Robert and I (Tommy was still recovering in their grandparent's apartment) made our way back home.

- Heeeeeertha BSC

I am perhaps not supposed to mention this.... but maybe the right people won't see this entry. Robert "played blue", meaning he skipped out on one or two courses on Monday to stay an extra day. The primary reason was to stay in Berlin a bit longer, but the secondary reason was because I had gotten three tickets to see Hertha BSC play soccer against Werder Bremen that Sunday afternoon. Kate came too; it was our first experience at an 1te Bundesliga game. We are total "soccer tourists", but still it was a ton of fun... as soon as we neared the Olympic stadium we could hear the super-fans singing their songs and the ground was literally shaking. We were sitting in the Bremen section oddly enough, but Robert confessed that he wanted Bremen to win the game. Haha, but they didn't! Berlin won 2-1. We ate delicious bratwurst and got some souvenir cups. At the end of the game I realized that I had spent a lot more time looking around at all the other fans and people than concentrated on the game, but so it goes, a Berlin-experience not to be passed up.

Olympic Stadion

- DJ Dahlem

On Monday night I finally went to a frisbee practice. This is pathetic; Monday was literally the first time that I've worked out, I mean really worked out, since last summer I think. I've never been more out of shape in my life. But I was set on taking the first step and going to a practice, just to see what it would be like. It took a ridiculously long while to get there - around an hour - and to my disappointment there weren't any women (even though the website indicated that it was a "mixed" practice). Luckily three more women showed up and once we got beyond the drills and started playing I felt right back into the swing of things. The practices that I went to in Heidelberg and this practice is much more casual than the practices we have back in Chicago. I can play whatever position I want (in Chicago we usually stick with the same ones) and we keep playing until dark.

Of course I was absolutely dead by the time we were half-way through... it's pretty hard to hide being tired in frisbee, since the player you're supposed to be defending ends up scoring all the points because you can't catch up to her/him. But oh well. No use in getting hard on myself. The walk from Sudkreuz was good for my muscles, but nonetheless my entire body has been aching ever since, and it's been two days already. I'm going to give myself a little time off before going to the next practice, do a little running in between to get back into it a bit slower. Really I'm playing frisbee to meet a few new people, and when I'm dead tired that's a bit hard to do... so, we'll see.

- Springtime in Berlin

Spring is here! Because of the weather differences, Karlsruhe had the warm weather before Berlin did. But it has literally been sunny for the passed week and will continue being sunny at least for one more. The leaves are fully out, and some flowering trees are already starting to lose their flowers. And the Waterfall is on! The Kreuzberg in the Victoriapark has never been more beautiful. I explored some new parts on my run today. I doubt that I'd get any work done sitting in the park, but really all I want to do is spend as much time in there as possible.

Berlin Zoo, back entrance

die Sonne scheint in Karlsruhe

2009-04-22T14:00:00.012+02:00

The sun shines in Karlesruhe. Spring had sprung. Even as Robert picked me up from the train station we could see the trees blooming in white and pink all over the hills nearby, looking as if snow had fallen on just a select few. The weather was no colder than 20-degrees C each day I was there; the heavy coat and winter boots I brought from Berlin would sadly have to remain neglected in my luggage for another few days... but who's complaining?!

As soon as I arrived in Karlesruhe I relaxed. Because of the slight stress of traveling to Lisie's and to Saarland, it was wonderful to go to a place that I know better, where the streets and Robert's mother's apartment were totally familiar. Most of what we did in Karlsruhe was family-related. Both of Robert's brothers were there for the easter holidays. The night I arrived we joined Tommy at one of his friends house for some grilling and soccer. For a group of 19-year-olds who had just finished their finals (pseudo AP-exams) they were incredibly well-behaved (wow, that makes me sound oooold).

The next day Robert's aunt and her family came from Nuremberg in Bavaria just for the day. We drove about twenty minutes to a town called Rastatt. Helmut had prepared an historical tour for us, so in our group of about fifteen we walked around the small town, stopping at a few town gates, important buildings, and the castle. We stopped for ice cream in the quiet town center, and then we headed back to Karlsruhe to check out the view from the tower. I've been there a few times, but it's always nice to see the view in the different seasons. We went back to the apartment for a big dinner of cold cuts and cheese and breads and salads, the works.

Tommy and Steffen by the castle in Rastatt (yes, they are sitting on a cannon)

Katrin and Helmut in Rastatt

The view from above, Karlsruhe and Durlach

<-- Steffen and Robert at the Karlsruhe Schloss (castle)

The next day Steffen, Robert and I did some walking around downtown Karlsruhe, stopping for a bit at the castle (EVERY town in Germany has a castle... the one in Karlsruhe is particularly big thought) and wishing we had a frisbee with us. On Easter Sunday Tommy, Robert, Katrin, Helmut and I drove a half-hour to the town of Baden-Baden. I was astounded that all of these beautiful towns were so close together. I imagined a two hour train ride to get to Baden-Baden, but no, it's about as far as Framingham is from Weston. In Baden-Baden we drove up and up and up to yet ANOTHER castle. But this one was different. It was older, more of a fortress built for the protection of Badisch lands and the valley below. We walked around on trails behind the fortress, enjoying the fresh air. We walked to some areas with expansive slabs of rock where people were rock climbing (well worth watching). After we stopped back at the fortress restaurant for my first SPARGEL, or asparagus, white, of the season. Helmut shook his head in dismay upon hearing that they were serving Greek asparagus; getting to eat fresh German asparagus is something that people look forward to all winter, so perhaps it was "not the real thing" to have it imported from southern europe. We ate an incredible meal with a view of the entirety of Baden-Baden (unlike istanbul, seeing the whole city/town from one window was, in fact, possible) from our table.

at the Borg-restaurant in Baden-Baden

Later that night Robert and I met up with some of his high school friends from Karlsruhe for some grilling and catching up. And already it was time for me to head back to Berlin! I was desperately hoping that I could bring some of that great weather along with me... My train was at noon that Monday, just in time to get to University for classes on Tuesday. I would've loved to stay longer, but alas, duty calls! And how can I really complain after having two months of vacation?

Helmut, Katrin and Tommy

From Zürich to Saarbrücken

2009-04-22T12:17:00.018+02:00

Another potential name for this entry was "stomach rumbles and toilet troubles". But I'd rather focus on the good parts of my travel-vacation, and there were certainly some great ones despite the minor food poisoning.

My flight from Istanbul left at 3am on Sunday morning. Somehow, even though I was unbelievably exhausted from the lack of sleep and the late-night flying, everything went incredibly smoothly. The shuttle from my hostel, getting easyjet to let me check my luggage, leaving on time, arriving in Basel, getting Swiss francs from an atm at the airport, finding a bus to take me to the train station, buying a train ticket to Zurich, taking the 30-minute train ride, and finally, having a few Swiss francs left over to take the #11 tram from the Zurich train station to Lisie's cozy apartment.

I arrived at 7am, a good three hours before she was expecting me, but after a bit of futzing she got over that fact and welcomed me warmly. Lisie is always incredibly excited to have me come, and equally sad to see me leave. Unfortunately I just don't have the time to stay with her as long as she'd like me to (and occasionally I think that I wouldn't have the patience... living with students is just not the same as living with an almost-80 year old). We chatted for a few hours over a breakfast of tea and sopf, or a braided bread that she buys for special occasions. She let me get some sleep after that. I was passed out in her bed for a good five hours before I had energy to go back out and say hi again. She made me pfannkuchen for lunch, in other words, very very buttery and sweet pancakes with applesauce. Lisie is very possessive of her kitchen; she would never allow me to help her cook, nor could she handle it if I commented on the excessive amounts of butter she uses in her cooking. Our big plan for the afternoon was to go by tram to the train station to buy my train tickets for the next leg of my journey, to Saarbrücken, that Tuesday. Lisie was at first looking forward to going out (as was I, since it was about ten degrees warmer than it had been in Istanbul, and I was so excited to see some signs of spring). We walked incredibly slowly, however, her with one arm latched onto mine. While there we both complained at the amount of people. Tons of skiers, just coming home from a day trip to the alps (incredible, eh?), along with people getting ready to travel for Easter. She complained again at the hard seats in the Ticketing office, saying she didn't have enough bacon on her bones to handle sitting for too long. But we made it, stopped briefly at a grocery store (also packed) and then gradually climbed our way back home to her apartment. Just that one outing and she was kaputt, totally exhausted. We looked over some pictures for a while, talked about her parents (her favorite subject, very very cute), and then she made me some pork and rice for dinner.

Nature shows on TV ensued, which is another big part of what we do together. Lisie loves her television, but it has to be "intelligent" programming, as she calls it. The news, travel shows and nature shows always seem to be running in the background in Lisie's apartment. Unfortunately Lisie cannot hear as well as she used to, and she cannot keep her languages straight. So while the TV is on she tries to chat with me in an incredibly loud voice, sometimes commenting on what is going on in the news. She does this, however, in three different dialects: regular German (what I can understand and speak), Schwäbisch (the dialect that my great-grandparents maybe used in southwest Germany), and Swiss German (the worst of all... it sounds like a mix between yoda-speak and an ostrich, as I described it to Erika in an email). So the language thing and the hearing thing and the TV thing all put together is what tires ME out when I'm at Lisies. Too much noise all at once.

But nonetheless we usually have a very nice time together. We went the following day with her life-partner Otti to a beautiful restaurant about twenty minutes outside of the city. Of course in a car one is far more mobile than when one relies on public transportation, and it was nice for me to get out of the apartment for a bit. While filtering through her closet, Lisie happened upon some of her favorite items of clothing that she couldn't bare to give away. One of these items caught my eye, and I tried it on, a big red skirt with white squares. She rejoiced when she saw that it fit, and once I added a belt to it it didn't look half bad. So I wore the skirt to lunch that day. We ate a really classy meal, with some sort of chive cream soup and chicken and polenta and cranberries and a creme brulee for dessert. Mmmmm, I'm pretty sure the stomach problems could not have come from that meal. When we were about to leave, Otti saw to his disappointment and slight embarrassment that he could not unlock the car. After a bit of tinkering, he noticed that he had left the lights on from when he had gone through a tunnel. Luckily the sunshine made the wait for a mechanic much more bearable, but sweet Lisie could not help but complain a bit. We finally made it home and I took a solid two hour nap before a small dinner of scrambled eggs (again, lots of butter).

Lisie and Otti at the Rössli Illnau restaurant

Lisie and I outside the restaurant, waiting for someone to jump-start the car

I had begun feeling sick that night, but as I didn't want to have Lisie worry too much I let her come to her own conclusions, that I was feeling nervous to travel. In the morning she insisted that I take a taxi to the train station. I convinced her that I would be better off with the tram, and thus left a bit early to go to an internet cafe to write some emails home. Lisie was of course sad to see me go, but she had her daily routines to get back to: walking down the 80 steps to pick up the morning newspaper, watering the roses on the rooftop terrace, watching her daily news, looking up the weather, seeing what nature shows were on that day, and calling her cousin in Strasbourg as she does at 8am every morning. She is miraculously turning 80 this year, in a couple of months. I have no idea if I can go back to visit her that weekend, but it seems to me that such a special occasion should not go uncelebrated. We'll see, but if I do go back, I'd love to have Erika or Robert there with me to bear the burden of listening to Lisie's somewhat incomprehensible stories that switch dialects every few sentences.

Lisie with a picture of her mother, my great-grandmother Josefina

That day (a Tuesday) I had a five hour train ride ahead of me, first to Mannheim and then on to Saarbrücken, where Rolf and Gudrun Kahbhenn would be waiting for me. I had visited them about two years ago for the first time, during a big Saarland festival that involved parades and concerts. We know Rolf actually through my grandfather: when Rolf was in University he spent a year going to school in Quebec, and during vacations and holidays he stayed with my grandparents in Montreal. Therefore he knew my dad when my dad was 9 years old, and apparently his German was not too bad at that age either (Rolf can also speak french though, as can most people who live in Saarland, the western-most province of Germany, in other words right on the French border). We arrived and right away I told them about not feeling so well. We went and bought some medicine, and I rested in their apartment for a couple of hours. Rolf and Gudrun love telling me about the history of their small but proud province, so we caught up a bit over homemade apple cake and coffee that afternoon. We went to a concert in Saarbrücken that night, the German Requiem from Brahms. Beautiful, with around 60 chorus members and a full orchestra, along with two soloists. It was a "difficult piece" according to Gudrun, and when she said that I gave a sigh of relief because I found it quite hard to listen too as well. I think when she says "difficult", she means that the text is abstract, and the tones are generally dark. So not your everyday Moonlight Sonata if you will.

Saarbrücken, the old town -->

We ate breakfast together the next morning. Rolf and I picked up some bread and groceries before leaving for the small town of Saarlouis that afternoon. Rolf is not the only one that grew up in Saarlouis; my grandmother grew up there too before she immigrated to Canada. We went and visited my great aunt on my grandmother's side (Lisie is my grandfather's sister and Hannelore is my grandmother's sister). Hannelore is unfortunately in the hospital because of a bad blood clot. She needed to have her legs operated on (one was actually taken off). She was however in really good spirits when we saw her. I was surprised to find that she has a much sharper mind than my grandmother, who is four years older. Hannelore has an incredibly close-knit family; four of her five children came in at one point or another, both to visit her and to see and welcome me. They are incredibly warm, and have for the most part stayed in or near Saarlouis. Their thick Saar dialects made it difficult for me to understand them at some points, but then they just repeated themselves slower or in regular german. These are technically the cousins of my father, so my second cousins... ? And then Stephan's son Steven (get it? that way they can differentiate between the two) also came. I think he might be my third cousin... he is twenty one and is training to be a salesman. He actually lost his eye after a tragic accident at his last job-training. He was on the track to becoming a mechanic but had to change all of his plans when he got injured. He's unfortunately a Bayern Munchen fan, but hopefully we can leave the soccer aside and keep in touch in the future :-)

(from left to right: Monika, Steven, Hannelore, Rolf, me)

Gudrun prepared me a lovely noodle soup that night for dinner. Rolf and I stayed in to watch some soccer and a funny Saarland TV-show called "Staub", or traffic. It was literally all about what people say and do when they are stuck in totally stopped traffic on a highway.

The next morning my grandfather paid us a visit. Now, that might sound crazy to any of you who know that my grandparents live in Montreal. It was in fact a surprise to us all that he would be in Germany for a week. He went to an airplane show at the Bodensee (lake Constance), went to visit my great-grandparents grave, and then wanted to visit some friends in the area.

<-- Opa and Rolf with the Saarbrücken public toilets

He then came to Saarbrücken to see me and stay over at Rolf and Gudruns, which worked out perfectly because I was leaving for Karlsruhe (the last leg of my journey) that afternoon. He came around breakfast time and was surprised to hear me conversing in German. We did a little walking tour of downtown Saarbrücken afterwards. There he was incredibly impressed by the modern tram that runs through some of the main streets, as well as the somewhat complicated and very sanitary public toilets with automatically closing doors. We went all together to the train station after that. Such a short visit! Longer next time...? Or even better if they come back to Berlin again, and then we can go to the opera once or twice.

The Saar River -->

I thanked Rolf and Gudrun for taking care of me and being understanding about my lack of energy. It was really great of Rolf to bring me to see Hannelore, too. Gudrun will be celebrating her 70th birthday in a couple of months, so I will be sure to keep in touch with them and find her a nice Berlin souvenir. And as for my grandfather, I will probably see him in Montreal this summer, with my grandmother.

tesekkür ederim...

2009-04-20T16:37:00.010+02:00

... the most complicated way of saying "thank you" of any language, but luckily by the end this was the only turkish phrase I could remember.

The rest of Istanbul, to be quite honest, went by so quickly that the only way I can keep track of everything we did is by looking back at pictures. Jess and I generally met up each morning around 11 and then split up again at night, me back to my hostel and her back to the superdorm about 45 minutes (by light rail and bus) north of the city. It must be noted that eating was a pretty big theme of my time in Istanbul. Every second shop seemed to have rows and rows of shiny and wonderful looking baklava and other pastries to offer; we certainly took them up on their offer.

<-- the Grand Bazaar, in all of its chaos and glory

So I arrived on a Wednesday. Thursday I was on my own for the morning but met Jess in the afternoon for a walk around the Grand Bazaar, to the Istanbul University (the biggest turkish University in Istanbul, I believe), to a couple of pastry shops along the way for seriously delicious baklava, and then to Taksim Square and the street called Istiklal at night. It seemed like the entirety of Istanbul was in that area looking for some Raki or some Efez (just about the ONLY beer brewed in Turkey, but incidentally quite delicious and light). Jess and I played a round or two of dominoes as we waited for a friend of hers on her program, and then (i confess) we made our way to the James Joyce bar for a little Ulysses chatting and a rather rusty live band.

<-- the new and modern "Light Rail", 0.80 Lyra per ride

The next day Jess and I met in the morning at the Aya Sofia and took the light rail first to the wonderful smells of the spice market. There we chatted with some vendors who gave us some "great deals" (who really knows) on a few spices and a couple of ceramic tiles. I couldn't resist! They fed us turkish delight (called "lokum") to lure us into their stores and who can possibly say no to turkish delight?!? It helps that the prices in general are about half of what they'd be in Germany, so all in all, the souvenirs from Istanbul were worth it, in my eyes.

Jess working her turkish skills for tea near the Grand Bazaar; Spices at the Spice Bazaar

And then we went to the bus station. Now, I wish I had taken some sort of photographic proof of the chaos of such stations. There is, in fact, no actual station, but rather a conglomeration of huge busses of all different colors just sort of blocking the way for other busses and gradually collecting passengers. Apparently traffic times are no time for bus rides, but that did not stop Jess and I who seemed intent on getting stuck in traffic every way we went. But walking around Istanbul, although amazing, was also incredibly exhausting and somewhat hard on the feet (am I getting old?!?), so we welcomed the hour-long rides between destinations.

We hopped on a bus to a town called Ayab, which Jess had visited with some friends (and her teacher?) a few weekends before. It was a conservative town, according to her description, and the general lack of tourists mixed with the plethora of head-scarf-clad women (occasionally wearing the full-black version that only left a diamond shaped gap for the eyes and nose) certainly showed what she meant. We walked through the bustling main street to an "authentic" local market, featuring tons of underwear stands along with stands that sold vegetables and fruits and the normal market fare. Jess finally found the perfect pair of shoes there: 100% genuine Tex-mex (I believe) pseudo converses in maroon for 20 Lyra (about $15, or 10 Euros).

<-- vendor selling headscarves in the Ayab market

We stopped for some more baklava, some tea (Jess favored the tea over coffee), and then made our way to the local Mosque. We tied our scarves around our heads, placed our shoes in a plastic bag, and actually made our way in to the cavernous and gently lit mosque. Around twenty or so men (with some small children at their sides) were praying on the carpeted surface ahead of us. We walked up a skinny staircase to the upper level, where the women were supposed to pray. The carpeted-surface, I must say, was incredibly inviting; taking a long and comfortable nap would not have been too difficult.

inside the mosque

A young and friendly-looking woman approached us and asked us a few questions. Her turkish sounded so beautiful; it's really too bad that we couldn't understand what she was saying. She asked us at one point what religion we were, and when we both said Jewish, she responded something about how we are all brothers and sisters. She repeatedly pointed to her heart and made a heart shape in the air with her hands. We smiled and nodded our heads once in a while to look as if we understood. She spoke with us for a good ten minutes before going to pray elsewhere. We took in the quiet of the Mosque before making our way back outside. Since the afternoon prayers were to begin around a half hour later, many people had gathered in preparation for the prayer service while we were inside. We walked to the supposed tomb of someone in a small passageway with beautiful tiles and mosaics.

women washing up before paying respects

We were there to see the tiles, but others, mostly women, were there to pay respects. We were the only "westerners" there, so it was quite a surprise to exit the Mosque to find a group of soldiers just sort of casually chatting and waiting outside. We asked people at a donations desk (i think that's what it was) what the officers were doing there. They did answer Jess' question, but unfortunately she didn't understand their answer. Oh well, another mystery awaiting to be unmasked (once we can speak turkish fluently).

We walked from the Mosque through a totally deserted and quiet cemetery. The gravestones were so old that they must have dated back to before the Ottoman times; some had the traditional Ottoman "fez" hat at the top indicating that a male had been buried there, and some had wreaths to indicate a woman. Although there were not many people there was no lack of frolicking felines creeping around the tombstones; cats are EVERYWHERE in Istanbul! Explains why Jess found a litter of new-born kittens on the bed of her dorm room the first day she arrived back in February... The more we walked through the cemetery, the more I realized that it was absolutely endless. The tombstones, although clearly not as old as the first ones we saw, covered the entire hill before us. By hill I mean a hill that takes a good thirty minutes to walk up and is high enough to merit a gondola lift, which we used to go back down. Did I mention that we had incredible sunshine throughout this entire climb?

That meant wonderful and expansive views, not of "the city" in its entirety, but of a really beautiful part of the city and a glimpse of the blue Bosphorus beyond. From among tombstones midway up the hill the evening 5 o'clock prayers began.

We could see around five different Mosques from where we were; from each came a loud and strong voice singing the traditional adhaan, meaning something along the lines of Allah is Most Great, Come to Prayer. All of the voices from the many mosques were powerful, overwhelming, and difficult to describe. If I could finally figure out the video option on these blogs, then i'll be sure to share some footage with you!

We drank some apple tea from a cafe at the top of the hill, and had a German tourist take this awkward photo of us. The gondola lift to the bottom cost as much as a regular bus ride. From there we walked for an hour or so along the Bosphorus back to Tacsim, where we hopped on a ferry.

Destination: Asia

First of all, a ferry ride in the sunset... not too shabby. The air had gotten pretty cold at that point, so Jess and I stayed away from the wind. Without a second thought we hopped off the ferry onto the Asian side of the city. I expected it to look drastically different, but really it was just another part of Istanbul, and a great place from which to see the sunset. We walked to a semi-water front restaurant where I ate sort of small egg-noodles in a yogurt sauce. We smoked some Hashish (my lungs are pretty incapable of holding in the smoke though, and compared to the older men sitting at the table next to us, who'd probably been smoking all day long, we really didn't do too much damage) and played a competitive round of Backgammon. Back on the Europe side, we split up a bit earlier so that we could get some sleep and I could "rest" like the old lady that I am.

Sunset from the Asian-side -->

On Saturday I packed all of my things (how did I accumulate so much just after four days?), said goodbye to the two friendly German women that I'd been sharing my room with, and followed Jess' very specific directions to go to her University. I was definitely surprised, not at how long it took to get there, but at how different the city looked along the way. There were some tree-lined streets and some much more western-looking Pizza-Hut filled streets. My directions were to request a stop when we passed the dunkin donuts just beyond a huge shopping mall with oversized billboards. I only had a few problems in finding the right bus at the mayhem-filled bus station; other than that it felt pretty cool to have crossed the city on my own. Jess showed me her Superdorm from afar - looks really super and spiffy, simple but new. We walked from there up a large hill to her actual campus.

this is what Jess sees on her way to campus every day

My goodness! It was beautiful. She is attending an elite english university here, so whenever she mentions its name to people she meets, they give a nod of approval and admiration. It's called Bogazici University, but with all the right accents and pronunciation it sounds more like Boazichi, nicknamed the Boa. The campus itself looks sort of like Duke, which is incidentally the University that sponsors the program that Jess is on. And since it's on a hill, the views are incredible. What a good reason not to get anything done in class. We walked down the hill to a huge 500 year-old fortress at the bottom with dangerously narrow stairways lacking all forms of barriers and safety precautions. Not for someone with vertigo.

oh, just another 500-year-old fortress...

More walking along the Bosphorus, this time for most of the day. Our destination was the jewelry market at a town that I forget the name of (maybe because a lot of the towns had similar names). We passed through around three major coastal towns, and had a DELICIOUS waffle with all sorts of toppings in one of them. Some of those coastal towns reminded me of New England, with sort of colonial architecture that one could find in Cambridge. Enjoying the warm sunshine and walking certainly gave us an appetite, and we ate along the river after perusing some cool and cheap jewelry.

<-- women exercising on an "adult playground", as Jess called them

That evening we walked through the "European" part of town, as in the part that has unmistakable European influences in its cobblestone streets and even a few european chain stores. Istiklal was incredibly crowded, so we ducked into some side streets looking for a feminist bookstore. Jess found it, but as we weren't too impressed (it was more about the search and feeling proud that she knew her way around) we went to a totally hidden and crowded neighborhood cafe. It was for sure where the local students went to go hang out. We drank some warm Salep, which is a sweet white drink served with cinnamon, a bit like rice pudding without any rice. Delicious.

We then walked and walked, saw some street musicians playing the Kanoon, saw some bigger and fancier hotels, walked through some more enchanting streets that I'd love to go back to, and stumbled upon a wonderful and charming little cafe: Molly's. Perhaps one could call it a sort of ex-pat hang out: a Canadian woman had opened it about ten years earlier after quitting her job at a language school. She offered us tea with milk, and said "where else in Turkey could you get milk for your tea?" We were gifted some free carrot cake while we sunk exhausted into the comfortable couches. Two older woman came in after us, both Americans who were teaching abroad in an international school in Pakistan. They admired our eagerness to study abroad, and said that having the freedom to see the world is the best thing that happened to them. Jess and I knew secretly that we'd be totally similar when we reach our sixties. But that's a long way off...

One of my favorite sights in Istanbul was the fishermen along one of the bridges. They literally lined each side so that no foot of the barrier was left unoccupied. The fishers were pretty much all men, and they had occasional bus-boys running to and fro serving them tea and bringing them Simit (sesame bagels). The coolest thing was that you can go under the bridge to a strip of restaurants. There you can actually watch their lines bring up the fish, sometimes only one squirming sucker but sometimes four or five on the same line (multiple hooks?). Those guys were there literally all hours of the day, so when Jess and I went to a bar under the bridge at around 10, we had a lovely display of a good ten or so fishing lines to keep us entertained. We sat on beanbags (how awesome!) and drank some Efez to celebrate my last night.

fisherman on the Bosphorus

The sad fact of having left high school is this constant effort to try to keep in touch, while realizing that it's pretty near impossible to stay on top of everything that happens in the lives of your closest friends. Even skype calls have their limits. But there's no use in being so nostalgic about times past (high school had it's fall-backs too). Those strong friendships just need to be maintained and celebrated in other ways, in new ways. Such as meeting up in far away places and relishing in the fact that you are both able to adapt to new cities and teach each other about them. There is nothing wrong with losing touch, since we know that we'll get back in touch at some point in the future. Not only was seeing Istanbul amazing, but learning to be comfortable with the fact of long-distance friendships was also an important lesson. So with a tear and big hugs, Jess and I parted ways at the light rail stop. She headed back to the superdorm and I to my hostel to catch a midnight-shuttle to the airport.

safe in ISTANBUL, not constantinople

2009-04-16T14:40:00.008+02:00

<-- the Bosphorus from the hostel's terrace restaurant - my first view of istanbul in the daytime

I have never tasted anything like it. Sweet and yet bitter as if someone boiled fruits in water and then transferred that water to a coffee pot. Thin and watery at first, and then increasingly thicker with every sip, until you get to a solid spoonful of coffee at the bottom, ground so thin that when wet it looks like solid chocolate…

I still cannot quite believe it - I am sitting in Istanbul in a (perhaps a little touristy) coffee place overlooking the blue mosque. I arrived yesterday evening after a three hour flight from Berlin on Turkish Airlines. Even though the flight was so short, they passed around a fancy menu while we were sleeping. A girl sitting beside me – a nurse in Berlin going to visit her family in Turkey – collected the menu for me while I was sleeping. When she handed it to me I said that it wasn’t possible. She looked at me strangely and said of course we get food; I wouldn’t fly if we didn’t. Low and behold, my “braised chicken with a creamy mushroom sauce and country potatoes” arrived and was delicious. Apparently that happens on all flights within Turkey too – taking airplane food to a new level… what a great tradition! Not only did I have two wonderful people sitting with me (the old man in the window seat did not take his jacket off until we were ready to land, because he said he did not want to disturb us… he then wished me a lovely stay in turkey about four times before we parted ways), but I recognized an ethnology professor from the Humboldt! I was a little too shy to slip her my email (how nice would it be to get a research position on a plane ride), but she was on her way to do a field study in Georgia and told me about her research. Hopefully I will run into her again later this semester.

And although she had to wait an hour for me, the adventurous Jessica Weaver greeted me with screams and open arms at the airport. There is no better excuse for visiting Turkey – we hardly get to see each other when we’re in the US, so why not partake in her time abroad?? Of course, we have much to catch up on, and the two of us chatting in rather loud voices on the bus ride into Taxim Square is just the start. We went briefly to a Turkish bakery chain for some tea and a pastry that I didn’t catch the name of (an egg-noodle-ish dough with spinach inside, mmmm….) before we realized how late it was. She loaded me into a taxi and got the driver to give me the pre-midnight rate, even though it was around 11:55, and then she picked a bus (I think?) to head north to her “Superdorm” near the english-speaking University.

I, for once, came very well prepared with a map that I had printed out in an internet-café earlier in the day in Berlin. On it was my hostel, the “Orient Hostel” that I had found via their website. Unfortunately the lack of detail in the map caused my taxi driver to go in a few circles. He asked at another hotel for directions, and stopped a few people in the street for more help. Oh no, I thought… I am a typical tourist, with no ability to negotiate for a reduced fare. We finally arrived, where I delighted in the fact that they had received my reservation and were expecting me, even though it was way past check-in time. Two Bostonians were discussing breweries in Fenway in the common room as I was checking in, and I felt comfortable there right away (the cheap prices help too, of course). The other three backpackers in my room were already asleep, so there was nothing left to do but get ready for bed in the dark.

the Orient Hostel, Istanbul

In the morning I got to know my roommates and enjoyed my incredibly greasy breakfast on the “rooftop terrace” – it sounds a bit more romantic that it is, but the view was breathtaking! The Bosphorus river in the distance, slight fog over the old buildings on the other bank, a few ferries in the harbor, and rooftop gardens nearby. Not only is the breakfast included in the price, but they have free wi-fi! How lovely; that meant that I could spend some time navigating the excrutiatingly complicated Freie Universität website to register for my summer semester classes in alle Rühe, at my own pace.

<-- some Christian mosaics at the Aya Sofia

Once showered and with a few good course possibilities (as always though, I have to check with Chicago first!) I was ready to see some of the city. I could barely sleep the night before because my toes were literally tingling with excitement; the postcards just don’t do this place justice! The view from my taxi ride of the city at night would make even the most devoted couch-potatoes shudder with anticipation. I counted around ten grandly and beautifully lit Mosques, although considering we did get a bit lost that might have been the same few a bunch of times… I walked through the smaller cobblestone streets around my hostel, noticing the tourist-aimed merchandise and trying to pass right by the waiters advertising their restaurants. I walked to the Aya Sofia, not too far, and drank a glass of fresh-squeezed orange juice in a small cafe just in front. Unfortunately (or fortunately? I’m still not sure) the owner of the juice stand and café engaged me in conversation and I mentioned that I’d like to visit the Mosques and churches nearby. He gladly came to my (never asked for) assistance. He brought me to the back entrance of the Aya Sofia, had me waved in for free (that’s a good six euros saved) and then he didn’t let me pay for the orange juice! Not only that, but he found me a tour group to take part in. Hmmm, I’m going to have to ask Jess if that sort of “unwanted assistance” happens a lot around here. But he left and I had a nice informative tour (for free) and then wandered around the ancient church-mosque-museum for an hour or so. Really beautiful, but I can’t say that I can keep track of the Justinians and the Constantinians enough to tell you when or why or how it was built in the first place. The fourth crusade though… that was an important one.

Aya Sofia, the first step to learning a liiiiiiittle about turkish history...

<-- the ten-story-high scaffolding was clearly not enough to warn tourists of the building site in the Aya Sofia... The renovations have been going on for twenty years, which is quite long for a cathedral that was built in only five in 532 A.D... (i got a little wikipedia help on that one)

Without a headscarf unfortunately I could not visit inside the Blue Mosque. I watched from the outside as men took off their shoes and cleaned their feet in small baths lining the walls, and as women – some with brightly colored headscarves, some wearing all black – filed out of the mosque after their prayer. Jessica, who had a class on Mr. John Milton this afternoon, will be meeting me at my hostel in a few for some more adventuring.

the Blue Mosque

The one thing the guide book said over and over again is that the one thing one will NOT do in Istanbul is get bored. I really feel the energy of this place, even after being here one day. And man, have the people been friendly so far. Yes, I look like a tourist and most want to sell me something (in my hostel too), but the two people on the plane were great, all about getting to know each other and wishing each other well.

a corn-on-the-cob vendor in front of the Blue Mosque

I am here until Saturday night, when Jess and I will make our way to a different airport in the city (I dearly hope it’s in the city somewhere) to get me on my 3 am flight to Switzerland. After that I will find myself some swiss francs, hop on a tram and go to my aunt Lisie’s apartment. Although it will be incredibly early, she will have been up for a good couple of hours fretting about my arrival and watching for me from her little kitchen window. There is no doubt in my mind that three days in Istanbul is far too short of a visit, but I am mostly glad to see Jess again. I’m only here for a little taste of the orient, a little sip of the coffee, a little bite of the Simit (Simit are rings of dough with sesame seeds… sort of like Montreal bagels stretched and thinned out a bit!). Once again, seeing places that I’d like to visit again and in more detail with Robert or Jessica or my family later on.

me and Jessica, the quintessential shot

(insert background here: maine, cambridge, ecuador, tuscany, istanbul... )

Frühlingsputz

2009-04-16T14:33:00.005+02:00

Back in Berlin. Great weather, sunny but cold. I unpacked slowly and spent a good couple of hours catching up with Anna who had been really busy working. She and Diego had decided that they would just be doing better as a couple if he were to move out. They are not breaking up; rather they’re just giving themselves some private space after two years of living together. It makes a lot of sense to me now that Diego told me his side of the story as well. They are really young, and at that point it just was more restricting than beneficial to be living together. Diego loves having new people around him and tons of opportunities to go out and have a good time. Contrastingly, Anna needs to finish her papers and make enough money to support herself through school. Diego is already done with his studies, so his biggest task is finding either another master’s program in Berlin or a job.

Unlike my incredibly painful and drawn-out experience of finding an apartment (which ended very very well in the end), Diego was asked back to the first apartment that he interviewed at. He’ll be moving in to a “5er WG”, an apartment with five people, just north of Mitte within a couple of weeks. I’m not sure when, but I hope that when he does he will still be visiting every couple of days. My rent has gone up a bit accordingly, but Anna and I are good roommates together, and I think we’ll be fine with this new arrangement and that it’s worth the 90-euro increase.

I had a few very specific tasks for the couple days that I had in Berlin, the most important being CLEANING. The gorgeous weather allowed me to open the windows. When Eliza was here she woke up in the morning with puffy eyes because of her dust allergies. Now I completely understand why. Once I started looking for the dust I found no end. My apartment was filthy! Dust had been collecting since last September; only hours of scrubbing and sweeping could make any difference. I washed sheets, towels, clothes, did a lot of throwing away of papers from last semester, and even filtered some books that I was not going to need and brought them to the Oxfam bookshop to be resold. Man, I didn’t expect that cleaning would feel so incredible.

I also got to see some people in between cleaning sessions. Rafi was in town after grand adventures in Prague and Budapest, and we had a lot to catch up on. We went out for Simit and lentil soup at my favorite Turkish café at Kottbusser Tor. Then we walked around the Victoria park, looked at the view from above, tried to find a beer garden, but came back to my place for beers since the garden wasn’t open for spring yet. Rafi is almost a U of C graduate, and is taking advantage of a quarter off before graduation to travel and go back to his home in Israel before grinding out a living as a consultant for a couple of years in Chicago. It was good to see him and really great to hear some of his stories. I hope he had a fabulous time in Poland.

Getting our Mac and Cheese fix, kraft style

I also finally made it out to Kate’s apartment in Friedrichshein. She lives just east of Alexanderplatz, so a few tram stops away. It was really remarkable how dramatically different everything looked as soon as you leave Alexanderplatz by tram. The buildings become more ugly and taller by the block: “bathroom-tile style” as our friend Howie, also on our program, described it. But Kate’s place is just the opposite, in a low, recently renovated building where her apartment gets plenty of light and even has a few trees and a large park nearby. We made wonderful macaroni and cheese (the Scooby-doo, Kraft kind, nice and orange and artificial) and coffee and stopped for a bit back at the Easter Festival in Alexanderplatz. Kate just celebrated her 21st AND on top of that just finished a half marathon last Sunday! Pretty damn great. Hopefully I’ll be a bit more available to her as a friend this
Semester and we might even get to take another class together.

Street artists in Alex-platz

After lots of skype calls home, it was really great to go to Nancy’s for dinner on Tuesday night. We both had trips ahead of us: me to Istanbul and beyond, and she to Strasburg and Baden-Baden to help with all the Obama and G20 craze. Jan and Patrizia therefore were in charge of making dinner, pasta with veggies and shrimp and mollusks. We had no specific dessert plans and were still a bit hungry, so we made a late-night batch of pancakes. Nancy, being the dedicated Canadian that she is, of course had a solid supply of maple syrup on hand, so that made it my second pancake meal within three days. After not having had pancakes for around four months, I’d say that’s pancake overload. But nonetheless, I love spending time at Nancy’s and getting a chance to catch up with Jan and Patrizia, who seems to be in Berlin just about as often as she is in Stuttgart these days (totally understandable… I mean, do the cities really compare?!?).

Clothes clean, room relatively dust-free (or at least a bit more organized), and a few groceries. After that the new project was to pack and prepare for Istanbul. The two things I had learned from Prague (other than the whole Czech culture-part) are the following:

1) be wary of hostels that you find on the internet and always email or establish contact with them ahead of time
2) always print a map out of where you want to get to; an address is just not enough, even if you have maps around

Jess and I conferenced back and forth about where the best place would be to get a hostel. Unfortunately, I really wasn’t having too much luck finding nearby places on the web, so I decided on a backpackers hostel in a tourist area and hoped that we’d be able to make due once I got there. I also went especially to an internet café nearby to print out a map. I bought a few travel-sized toiletries (man, I love travel-sized things), backed one small suitcase and my small backpack, and leisurely made my way to Tegel Airport for my afternoon flight. It was my first time flying out of Berlin later than 9 am I think, and it was so much nicer getting their by bus instead of shelling out lots of euros for a taxi ride before sunrise. I was totally rested, a little nervous, and incredibly excited to see JESS and go to TURKEY!

Czech it out!!!

2009-04-16T13:39:00.013+02:00

The child in me still adores even the most lame plays on words. There seemed to be an entire clothing brand in Prague dedicated to amusing variations on “checking out” the Czech Republic. My favorite was “I am Czech so Czech me out.”

Sadly I managed to miss Obama’s speech at the Prague castle by a week. Later I missed Obama’s visit in Turkey by two days, which is even worse; he clearly forgot to check in with me to correlate dates. But Robert and I still made Prague worth our time.

<-- view of the Harz Gebirge in Lower Saxony from the train
My expectations when Robert and I left Breslau did not measure to the beauty of the city itself. My impression is encapsulated by my friend Janna’s description: Prague is a Disneyland for adults. Just on our way from the train station to the “hostel” (I’ll get to that later) I was astounded, literally jaw-dropped, at the beautiful buildings that we passed by. They were incredibly ornate, and unlike the buildings in Berlin they preferred a brighter palate of colors such as purple or green. Thankfully the tram systems in Prague were pretty similar to the old rickety trams of Breslau – that means that you go to a little machine and pay them exact change or, if you don’t have exact change, your second option is to find a nearby shop that sells the tickets. Then you pay according to how far away your stop is. We crossed the beautiful Moldau and arrived at our stop, Svandovo Divadlo.

A-Okay, all good up until then. But here was the problem: I had the name of the hostel written down, but no exact street number. Okay fine, I confess, I had forgotten to write the address. Luckily there was a Patrinska Street nearby, so we assumed that the Patrinska Hostel and Apartments would be located somewhere on this street. Haha, easier said than found… we must have walked along the short street a good six times, asked three or four people for advice, and finally checked the website again (there was random internet in a park nearby). We were right, it’s on Patrinska street, but where?!? Oh goodness, the final time we searched the street meticulously for a sign of this place, which advertised itself as an affordable but well-located hostel in a popular tourist center. Finally we spotted a narrow gold sign about a foot tall and a few inches wide with the hostel’s name. It was almost indecipherable from the street numbers on the street, which was quiet and mostly residential. Okay, we thought, all is well, we can drop our stuff off and at least take advantage of the sunny day for an hour or so before it would get dark. One catch: the door of the place was locked. We rang the doorbell. No response. We rang about seven more times. Robert knocked pretty damn vigorously on the door. Nothing. We waited a bit longer, then decided that we had two options, look for another hostel or go back on the internet and try to find a phone number. It was only 5pm at that point, so according to the opening hours listed on the website someone should have been there to at least let us in. We called the number, and a somewhat frantic lady answered in broken english, you are here early! She said she’d be there in ten minutes. So we waited.

We waited so long that Robert went off to look for some other hostels in the area (although nothing would have been as cheap for a private room) and I sat on the side of the road and checked the website again to figure out if we were obligated to follow through with our reservation. I heard someone coming, quickly shut my laptop, and looked up to see a woman rushing towards us with her two kids. I had it in my head that I wanted to complain, or negotiate for some sort of discount, or just have a right to be a little pissed off. But I did not want to complain in front of her kids. So before we entered I pulled her aside and explained that my boyfriend was looking for another hostel and that I wanted to get my deposit back. I told her that we had come earlier than we expected from Breslau and we had been trying to find and trying to get in to the hostel for about three hours by that point. But of course the negotiations did not get me anywhere for three reasons. First, the woman spoke hardly any English. She was Russian and I’m pretty sure did not know much Czech either. She did not understand a word that I said when she came to the door. So she looked at me confusedly and had her ten year old son bring in my suitcase, which was a bit embarrassing for me. She unlocked the door and the “hostel” literally consisted of a hallway with an old desktop computer, a few brochures on a bulletin board, and three doors that led to “apartments”. She showed me our room, which really was fine and had a small makeshift kitchen in the corner, but I did not know what had come from Robert’s searches, and I did not know if I should just nod, say thanks, and suck up the price-tag even if the place had absolutely no tourist information or anything that a bigger hostel might be able to offer. There was one sheet of paper up on the wall with information about the room, when the check out time is, that we had to pay upfront, when they clean, etc. One of the parts said that the hours that the employees are present (I guess that meant just this woman) were only until 4pm during the Winter, and until 6 during the summer. A blatant discrepancy from what the website said, and the third reason why we really could not complain.

our humble but generally useful room:

Robert thankfully came back and was able to speak a few words in Russian with the woman (and her kids). She wanted the money upfront, but she was understanding when we said that we did not have the cash. We could leave the money in the room the next day. Needless to say I was a bit frustrated, especially because the vacation house that Robert had booked for us on the Baltic sea had worked out so magically and I was hoping for the same. Robert did not find any vastly better prices while he was out. Although there must be a plethora of great hostels all over Prague (I’ve heard the “Czech Inn” is a great one, recommended by Rafi), we decided that we should just brush it off and enjoy the fact that the place had a kitchen and a good location. I still had that Kilo of perogis from Breslau that we fried up for dinner, with yogurt and a tomato salad. And then, we were a bit rested up and ready to actually get a better glimpse at the city lit up at night. Pictures can explain a bit more than words for this part:

We walked across the river and along it not knowing what we should focus on more, the majestic and seemingly never-ending castle on the left bank or the quiet and small lantern-lit streets on the right. We walked towards the older part of town by the Charles Bridge and were able to enjoy some of the gorgeous small lanes - too small to be called roads – without the flock of tourists that invade during the day and on weekends. We went to a bar with huge wooden doors that looked sort of like a hobbit hole. But once inside we discovered that this was a well-frequented place that was cavernous. There we had our first and last shots of Bescherovka…….. along with some dessert.

The next day we did some serious walking, trying to trace back the roads that the tram took us through when we came in from the train station. Upon Robert’s suggestion (we both love skipping the crowds and looking for the quieter spots in a city) we turned off the main road and found a small café with panini’s, good beer, wi-fi, and even STUDENTS! We felt right at home, except for a wild wolf dog in the corner who occasionally barked at its dreadlock-baring owner. Robert’s general rule for vacation is not to check emails or NBA stats on the internet or anything of the like, but I on the other hand feel a particular need to stay connected at this point in time. I find that being well-rested and being excited to see new places and being in Europe in general gives me enough of the vacation-sensation.

Robert and Pawel, roommates reunited -->

We stayed there for a couple of hours when we met up with Pawel. Pawel was Robert’s suite-mate in Breslau (as in they shared a kitchen and bathroom) last semester while Robert was still living in the dorms. He has lived in Prague his entire life, except for his 6-month stay in Vermont and other various abroad experiences. He is in a house with his parents about twenty-minutes by tram from the castle, meaning he has to pass it every day to get to his university classes, which are located in buildings scattered all over the city. Like most people from the Czech Republic (okay, I know a total of four at this point), Pawel can speak many languages very well. We speak in German automatically, but the fact that he of course speaks perfect Czech was a great opportunity for Robert and I to feel less like tourists and a bit more, well, like “informed tourists”, or traveling students. We went to a café called the Café Louvre (it only has that name and has nothing to do with French culture or the museum) for some legitimately hearty Czech cuisine. Pawel was of course a great resource for learning a bit about Czech culture, what was “typically Czech” as opposed to “typically Polish” for example. For instance, he picked up a little newspaper on our way into the café and later commented that he was so disappointed with the political situation in the Czech Republic. Robert and I had no idea what he meant by that. He explained further that the parliament had been recalled a couple of days before and everything was in the process of being reorganized so that the government could start anew. That’s exactly the opposite of what he wanted; he liked the regime that had been in place and they were a solid barrier hindering the growing power of the president, who according to him is intelligent but incredibly poor at navigating the financial crisis. Such a beautiful place in such political turmoil! From the crowds on the Charles bridge lining up to take their picture in front of the castle, who would have known?

Like Janna said, the beauty of Prague keeps your jaw-dropped like little kids in a theme park. But just like Disneyland, the certain marketability of the beautiful Charles Bridge and Castle guaranteed one slightly unwanted piece of the city: flocks of tourists. I wonder why we always tag tourists as flocking… rather than herding or infiltrating or swarming or any other terms potentially used to describe groups of buzzing animals. Like I said I always try to distinguish myself from the general mass of tourists, and even though that is really pointless in the end, the effort to get to know a little something about the history and politics of a place does make me feel a little more knowledgeable.

FLOCKS of tourists in the old town square -->

In the afternoon we parted ways with Pawel: he had already made plans for the night and Robert and I had plans of our own. The only other things that I had pre-booked (other than the hostel) were tickets to a little tour and a jazz concert followed by dinner in the old part of town. Although the dinner didn’t quite happen as planned, the tour and concert were actually really nice, a great way to hear about some of the “intellectual contributions” that Prague made to science and music. The tour was of the Klementium, a large complex of buildings right next to the Charles Bridge that served as the beginnings of the Charles University of Prague. The Jesuits built a library there that remained undamaged since the 1700’s. The building itself is much older, but I just don’t have the dates on me. We started in the Mirror Chapel, where mirrors on each side stood for the endlessness of spirituality. A very funny large Czech tour guide tried to translate everything in English, Czech and French, which was actually indiscernible from his English because his accent was so poor. He took us up the astronomical tower where Johannes Kepler worked. From there we got a view of the city’s east bank – a sea of red roofs with cathedrals scattered in between, and the river and castle on the other side. We saw the quiet old library, which was still lit by candlelight and featured a good dozen geographical and astronomical globes from different centuries. Of course Robert and I were the youngest people in the Mirror Chapel for the jazz concert, but we’ve stopped denying the fact that we are an old couple ourselves at this point. The saxophone quartet played some short pieces from Czech composers for the first half, and then some standard “American” composers for the second, with Gershwin’s Rhapsody in Blue serving as the main event.

view from the astronomical tower, Klementium

My grand plans to have a restaurant reservation and a place to go after the concert fell through. They fell through because we could not find the restaurant. I had an address written down, and thought that since we had a map the address would be sufficient. Unfortunately I was wrong; the streets featured red numbers and blue numbers, and the street “Old Town Square” didn’t really exist since it was just incorporated into a huge and crowded cobblestone marketplace. We walked around said marketplace about seven times, now used to the idea that things were harder to locate in Prague than we expected, and yet there was no 12 Old Town Square to be seen, nor could we find the name of our restaurant. Robert was convinced that the red numbers were the right ones; we followed them from street to street but found every number possible other than 12. We later learned from Pawel that these numbers have nothing to do with the address but only serve some sort of taxing purpose for the state. Resigned and a bit hungry, Robert and I walked from the Old Town Square to Wenceslas (good king Wenceslas…) Square. We ended up at a nice Italian restaurant and had enough leftovers for a solid and appetizing brunch the next morning in our kitchen.

The following day I think was my favorite, because we managed to avoid the crowds just as they were multiplying by the hundreds. It did not help that it was the day of the Prague Marathon – it seemed as if more English-speakers participated than Czechs. We managed to catch a glimpse of the race just at the end, but in the morning we just heard the cheers from afar. We walked from our place to the apple orchard on a hill overlooking the city. The first day of WARMTH and SHORTS and springtime. We finally made a tour at the castle, where we discovered a new and beautiful part of town with crisscrossing lanes and fun passageways. The castle was in many ways not as impressive from above as it is from below. The building is still essentially in use; a flag on the outside indicates when the president is home and working. One could not enter the building without an expensive tour guide, so we just spent our time walking through and enjoying the view from outside of it. We walked through the city again to a small café on the water for late lunch and sekt. We could leave our luggage in our room all day since the woman wasn’t expecting any new guests that night (skeptical…) so we picked up our stuff and hopped on the tram to see a totally different part of town, the part where people actually live.

Pawel met us at his stop and had plenty of place for us to stay that night. We bought a bunch of groceries, ate a sort of german “Abendbrot” (cold dinner with bread and cheese/meat/stuff), and then went out again to a bar in his neighborhood. It was so nice to have someone speaking in Czech to order for us and give us recommendations. We went out walking after that, through the now totally empty lanes and streets (tourists seem to disperse late at night) across the Charles bridge. Pawel was incredibly defensive about Prague, as if he needed to excuse every construction sight; he clearly loved showing people around. There were a good ten things that he recommended for us to do that we just would not have time for… of course a reason to go back later on. We ended up at a really cool and big bar that hadn’t closed their kitchens yet (even though it was midnight). More food, more drink, and afterwards a far more comfortable place to sleep than the hostel.

In the morning I finally made use of the jug of maple syrup that I had been dragging around from Berlin (well, originally from my grocery store in Weston). I even had baking powder with me. We breakfasted for a good two hours before Robert and I packed our things and headed back to the train station. Staying at Pawel’s was not only fun, but it was a huge help on our wallets, too. Hopefully I can return the favor if he needs to visit Berlin any time soon. Robert and I spent all of our money on food and lodging and train rides. Now that I think about it, for all of those many tourist stands on the Charles bridge we bought zero souvineers! I think my biggest souvenir from Prague is that my facebook is now only in Czech. I’ll have to figure that one out later, and maybe I’ll need Pawel’s help. Now Robert can’t say that he’s never been to Prague, and I can’t say that I’ve never been to the Czech Republic. The only other boarder country I need to visit is Holland to say that I really saw Germany and it’s surroundings.

Robert and I went by train to Dresden together, and then he split off to catch his train to Breslau while I stayed put till I made it to Berlin two hours later. I just can’t believe it that a place so different like Prague, still as old and beautiful as it was before the war, is just four hours away. That’s the same distance from Boston to New York.

(in the end, ready to head home)

Wroclaw, the four seasons

2009-04-16T11:46:00.008+02:00

Wroclaw has the four seasons, all inclusive. No, unfortunately I am not referring to the fancy American hotel. Kasia, a polish friend of Robert’s, described to me a saying that they have in polish: March is the month when all four seasons compete for attention. Okay, that’s a bit more poetic way of saying it… but she is absolutely right. In one day we had sunshine on the brightly-colored crocuses, then rain, then freezing rain, then legitimate M&M sized hail, followed by a couple hours of snowfall. The day was topped off by more freezing rain, and then somehow, a small sliver of a moon and clear skies.

spring crocuses...

... and afternoon hail...

Despite the weather, being in Wroclaw (can I just say Breslau from now on? I know that Kasia might be offended…) with Robert was wonderfully relaxing. I recovered from my jetlag, he did some reading for University and attended some classes, and we ducked out of the horrendously undependable weather by going from café to café in the old-city. One of the nicest, the one that Robert said had my name written all over it, is called the Literature Café. Incredibly quiet and very quaint, surrounded with bookshelves on all sides, I managed even to order some herbal tea in polish. Okay, “managed” is clearly an exaggeration… it’s more that the nice waitress and I had a fun time pointing to things on the menu and then she sounded them out for me. Man, polish is one crazy language. As soon as you recognize a few letters, you realize that they switch them all up on you – the j surely doesn’t sound like our English j’s, and the c’s…. well, don’t get me started. I don’t know how Robert has gotten past the letters, even, let alone the grammar structure.

<-- A dwarf in the marketplace... riding a pigeon?

On one evening, Kasia suggested to me that she and I meet at the Galleria Dominanska, a big shopping mall, while Robert played soccer (note: in the freezing rain). That was my second time taking the tram in Poland all by myself; I was very proud. It helps of course that Robert bought me a 7-day pass… but nonetheless the city was becoming more and more manageable, and the streets are so symmetrical that I don’t know how I could get lost there. First Kasia showed me the basement of a relatively fancy clothing store. In the basement they store all of their “old fashions”, and they sell them for tops 5-euros. She was incredibly proud of being able to show me such a find, and I ended up buying two shirts and a dress for no more than twenty euros. Not too shabby. We walked from there to the big shopping mall. Kasia explained to me that that’s where kids meet up to hang out, they go to the shopping mall and spend an entire day there with their friends. They’re all new, she said, along with all of the stores that came with the privatization of Poland.

I love that she can speak such good German, because she is a great source of information as to what life and politics in Poland are like. And I felt like an absolute idiot when we concluded that I knew next to nothing about polish history. But hopefully that will change with a few more books and a few more evenings out at the mall. Once there we chatted over smoothies and went to the grocery store on the first floor. I thought she had a lot to buy, but it turns out that she just needed some sliced deli meat. She helped me ask for some fresh perogis – sort of like Chinese dumplings, and usually served with cream and ketchup. I ended up getting 500 grams of the sweet cheese kind and 500 grams of the meat kind. Robert and I brought them with us to Prague and they served us well; we got two meals worth of food from that purchase.

<-- a hearty lunch of cheese and meat perogis

Robert and I joined his roommates for meals twice (they always seem to have either schnapps or vodka around to accompany meals…), cooked a bit for ourselves, and took advantage of dry days to walk along the Oder River. My favorite meal though was our lunch in the market hall. We went to this tiny little conglomeration of tables in the corner of a massive indoor marketplace, resplendent in its dark grey communist concrete. But clearly the life of the market lies in the flower stalls, the produce, the meat and fish stands. We literally bypassed all to get ourselves some soup, and right away one could tell that English simply would not fly; thankfully Borscht was not hard to say. Our dark purple broth came with little tortellinis called “Ushka”, which is polish for little ears. No ears though (thank goodness) but mushroom filled noodles that only looked a bit like the shape of an ear.

An old man joined us and spoke with us in Polish. He said a few times that we were beautiful to be young and studying. His only English phrase was “how are yooooooou”, which he pronounced proudly as a declaration rather than as a question. Robert said that all sorts of walks of life go to that place for food – businessmen and students and exhausted construction workers alike.

Luckily we survived the four seasons and even enjoyed them – there’s really no point in hating freezing rain if it happens on a daily basis. On Thursday we took the tram to the train station at 6:30 along with all the city’s morning commuters. We made it in time for our 7:00 train (let it be known that this is due to Robert’s sense of punctuality, not mine) leaving a calm and cool city behind us. I have no recollection of the rest of that train ride since I was fast asleep before we even left Breslau. Next stop, back to Germany, specifically to the grand Saxon city of Dresden to grab some coffee and switch trains for the Czech Republic.

Polish borscht, Czech beer, Turkish coffee, and Swiss hot chocolate

2009-04-07T09:21:00.000+02:00

As I sit on my great Aunt Lisie’s balcony in Zürich the chirping birds and delicately warm sunshine reassures me that spring is here to stay. After two weeks of traveling and unpacking and cleaning and packing again and traveling some more, I can pretty confidently say that my body is exhausted. My mind, however, is refreshed and inspired. I look forward to the moment when I can slowly process all of the pictures – from the sand-castle train station in Breslau to the vastness of the Prague castle to the majestic mosques in Istanbul. I want to filter through the random receipts now overflowing from my wallet, for better or for worse (it just may reveal the actual sum of the money I have spent already this month). Of course the ultimate goal is to do some writing: recording the places I’ve seen, the food that I have eaten, and the new things I noticed along the way. I love that traveling can also reinforce old connections, rather than focusing on making new ones in new places: it’s been three months since I saw Jess Weaver at New Years and much has happened to both of us since then, so catching up was a must. And now I am here in Zürich with similar goals. Lisie is never at a loss for words, whether in Swiss German, Schwäbish German, or “Hochdeutsch”, the only dialect I can fully understand. But she just likes to have someone around to listen.

On another note, I have no internet here in Zürich. Perhaps I could try to find an internet café, but the 10 franc price tag for 15 minutes of wi-fi sort of turns me off. So for the moment I am enjoying the sunshine and Lisie’s lovely company. We are leaving in a couple of minutes for a lunch in a small town not far away with her dear “Geliebter” Otti, hence mentioning the Swiss hot chocolate… I have many more warm and cold beverages alike to comment on soon ☺

Ein SONNIGES Berlin!

2009-03-22T18:15:00.014+01:00

What?!? Can it be? Has the sun really come to tempt Berlin with hints of springtime? I’m not expecting that the clouds and misty rain cover will never return, but I am pretty damn excited that Berlin held onto legitimate sunshine for four days straight. Even my uncle Ronny from California would have liked the weather...

The incredible and well-traveled Eliza Wilson was already in my apartment when I arrived, bronzed and making tea. Luckily Kate was there to pick her up from the airport the day before. Anna and Diego were around too, although Anna has been working at least one shift at her restaurant/cafes per day. Eliza and I went out walking as soon as I got in to take advantage of the sunshine (how could we have known it would’ve stayed for three more days?) – we walked through the Viktoriapark and into Kreuzberg to the Turkish market, where we stopped for gozleme and coffee. We bought eggplants, some zukes, a kilo of strawberries and a few other ridiculously cheap pieces of produce. We essentially cooked dinner and passed out no later than 9 pm. Eliza, who was recovering from two weeks on Safari in Krüger National Park in South Africa, had as much sleeping to catch up on as a jet-lagged Melissa.

Anna waitressing at the Kant Cafe in Charlottenburg -->

The next few days happened incredibly quickly. We saw a few touristy sights but mostly went café-hopping and walking through the sunny streets. Robert joined us on Thursday afternoon so that he could see Eliza before she left (and I hadn’t seen him for a month!). I spent most of Friday editing my last paper (on Immigration politics, just ask if you want to hear more) and after I mailed it to my professor we celebrated with beer and hot chocolates. We topped the night off with another good meal and a round of “Europareise”, a really fun board game that I found at a thrift shop for 2 euro earlier in the week. On Saturday we spent the day in Prenzlauer Berg, where we saw Berlin UNION play against Jena. Perfect weather, fabulously routy fans, and even though Robert’s favorite team pretty much played like shit (they won on a penalty kick, I mean PLEASE!) I really had fun taking pictures and drinking glühwein from the stands. Cupcakes followed, as is customary on my trips to Prenzlauer Berg. Then we went to Judith’s house for dinner and met up with Diego at the restaurant where Anna was working for drinks until late.

<-- me at the Turkish market in Kreuzberg

Exhausted but somehow still energized, Eliza, Robert and I managed to pack everything in under an hour and get a couple of hours of sleep before Eliza’s taxi came to pick her up the next morning. And now she’s gone! Gone to spend a week in DC with her own family, and then to go back to Chicago for the spring quarter. Meanwhile Robert and I have also left Berlin behind us. We took a train to Brelsau mid-morning and six hours later were buying tram tickets to go to his apartment. Of course, no more sunshine. Frigid and foggy, but that’s just how it is around here. Robert is glad to be “home”.

F.C. Union, Eisen Union, Union Berlin!

A walk around east berlin (wish you were there, Erika):

More to come, but for now I’m planning on FULLY taking advantage of the following fact: I have no homework! I am on vacation! Robert has a few classes this week, during which I plan to do a liiiiiiittle bit of german-studying. But other than that there will be plenty of sleep and pierogi-eating (super tasty) and picture taking. And hopefully I’ll keep up with this blog a bit better in the weeks to come.

the most important trip: home

2009-03-22T17:48:00.005+01:00

It would be fairly impossible to describe even a small percentage of my thoughts and experiences since the beginning of February. Now in late March I find myself back in Europe and finally on vacation. Let me repeat:

I.
Officially.
Survived.
My.
First.
Semester.
In.
Berlin.

Wie geil / how sweet!!

With a breath of fresh air, a little dose of freedom, and a calm feeling of accomplishment, I can barely contain my excitement at the destinations that lay ahead of me.

In the next three weeks before my summer semester gets rolling (for better or for worse), I shall do the following: accompany Robert to Breslau, take him on a belated-birthday-celebration trip to Prague, return to Berlin for three days, fly from Berlin to Istanbul to stop in on the adventurous Jessica Weaver, leave from there to Zürich to check in on our great aunt Lisie Weihmayer, train through the Black Forest to my father’s birthtown of Saarbrücken to see family friends, and finally travel south a little bit to Karlsruhe, where Robert will join me to celebrate Easter with his mother, cousins and brothers. Some time after that I shall take a five-hour train ride back to the illustrious city of Berlin, and assuming I will not have fainted of exhaustion before I get there, I fully intend on attending the first sessions of my second-semester courses, whichever courses those end up being. At some point in between all of that I hope to brush up on some of the German that I’ve lost from all that English I’ve been speaking. Perhaps I shall get the chance to do a little spring cleaning in my apartment in Berlin; upon returning from Boston I realized with dismay that a thick coating of dust covered just about every surface in my room… And of course I gladly transition into vacation mode: camera always close at hand, journal in my mini-tourist backpack, a couple of guide books, a couple of READING-FOR-FUN books (who would have thought!), and many people to correspond with; it feels so wonderful to keep in touch.

(Beacon Hill, Boston)

Going home for a month was all about slowing life down long enough to appreciate the things that matter: courageously strong family, and ever-supporting friends. On a day-to-day basis that broke down to running errands with my mother, heating up macaroni and cheese and chilling in the living room with my father, calling my sister and talking for a long while after all the phone tag, and skyping with Robert from Poland. Sitting in the kitchen, enjoying some of the fancy new appliances, and going outside only to feed the birds once in a while… Somehow I managed to complete not one but two long research papers over the course of the month. I cannot say that I went about writing them with any sort of efficiency; my parents can attest to the fact that I am a supremely talented procrastinator. But when my Mom used her Harvard connections (via a medical library ID) to find me four good sources on Immigration in Germany I really could not hold it off any longer.

Erika came home for her spring break, and suddenly a quiet house had life in it again. Despite the fact that Erika came down with a furious cold, we went on a mini-roadtrip first to Brown to stay with Erika’s closest high school friend (incidentally she is named EriCa, as in Erika but with a C), and then I went on to Wesleyan to visit our dear cousin Frazer, who is already a sophomore (I cannot believe it) and who could not have found a better fit in a college. Erika unfortunately left early so that she could sleep, and I made it home safely in a snowstorm driving around 50 mph on the mass pike.

In comparison to Berlin, we had incredible amounts of sunshine. I had forgotten how beautiful the winters in New England are: a few days of whiteness but so much blue sky. Snow and variable weather sporadically messed with our travel plans though, and as my mother often says, our street has THE most snow in all of Boston. The following weekend my mother decided that the safest way to get Erika home would be to drive her to Montreal on Saturday afternoon rather than risk having her drive in a snowstorm that Monday. So we went, the three of us blasting Les Miserable from the tape deck (haven’t pulled out any tapes in a while). We arrived at around 9 pm, and after dropping Soleil and Erika off at Erika’s apartment, my mother and I were thrown into what turned out to be a Winter carnival, called the “White Nights Festival”. There were people all over old Montreal. The temperature could not have been over 10 degrees, and yet people came out for galleries, for restaurants, for street performances, for ice skating. We ate dinner at a French-Quebecois restaurant at around 10:30 , and then visited a few interesting galleries before going to bed. In the morning we went straight to La Gascogne for fabulously buttery croissants. We went from there to my grandmother’s nursing home, where we spent a few hours reading and walking around. Two family friends of ours, Donna and Peter who live just outside of Toronto, surprised us by coming to visit Bubby (my grandmother) just at the same time we did. We met their beautiful dog and heard some amazing stories about Peter’s swimming days. And then my mother and I simply drove back home. For a less-than-24-hour trip, we definitely packed a lot in.

(Peter, my mother, and Donna in Montreal)

Once my father finished his treatments at Mass General Hospital, he grew stronger and looked healthier each day. I was particularly glad that he was at home; not only did he gave me invaluable company while writing my papers, but I cannot quite describe just how comfortable it was to simply be at home and around him. My mother was also able to take time off, and we really enjoyed the time that we spent together. With all this hectic moving around in my life right now, from Berlin to Chicago to Boston and back again, those moments at home are just more special than any far away adventures. And I cannot stress that enough.

The following weekend Maya visited me from Hampshire College for an evening and we went to the lovely Joe’s Family Diner for Two the next morning for cranberry pancakes and omelets. Jan toured Boston for a few days after his ambitious field trip to Mount Washington. When Jan and his friend Tobi arrived with no cell phone at the Logan Airport and no where to store there luggage, they realized that getting around Boston is not as easy as getting around Berlin. Jan repeatedly swore about the lack of lockers at the airport and the incompatible cell phone companies.

But we made a great day of touring out of those first frustrations with “American Culture”. I picked them up at the airport (additional complaint from Jan: you can’t see ANYTHING in Boston without a car) and we essentially ate our way through Boston one delicious treat at a time: burritos in Central Square, rich hot chocolate at Burdick’s in Harvard Square, Cannoli’s and gelato at Mike’s Pastry in the North End, ridiculous amounts of stir-fry at Fire & Ice.

(Jan watching his food being fried before his eyes, Fire & Ice, Cambridge)

But the beautiful sunny (and warm!) spring day made walking around possible and allowed us to (mostly) digest it all. It was fabulous for me to have a day to speak German again, and to get my fill (literally) of Boston before heading off again to other cities.

Janna and I topped off this Boston eating experience with a greasy and horrendously cheap breakfast at Waltham’s second finest diner, Wilson’s, a few days later.

Already it was time to leave. Part of me regrets having to work so much on my papers while at home, but working from the kitchen table with my dad around and playing nice music really did feel like a nice balance. All I can really say is that I started missing my family as soon as they dropped me off at the airport. I hope that they are doing well without me.

(Sammi, Robert, Josee, Sandra)

A Break from Berlin

2009-02-16T00:06:00.005+01:00

Whereas January began slowly, February has kept me on the run from day one. I am somewhat astonished at all of the things that happened in these passed two weeks:

a crash course in Berlin history with the illustrious EB, a "long night of the museums", a couple of cozy movie nights with the fabulous Kate, a wonderful goodbye dinner for Meryl, a jam-packed but incredible weekend with Dori and Milan, a perhaps a bit shaky on the vocab but nonetheless successful presentation on US Migration politics, a solid start on a paper about German philosophy, a week of relaxing and packing with Robert, a Schnitzel extravaganza with Nancy, Jan and Patrizia, a "Russendisco" party, a visit from Robert's father with lots of walking and DDR-stories, incredible amounts of food and long walks around Köpernick with Robert's grandparents, and finally, a lasagna feast (my second in two weeks) with Judith and her myriad of British guests. Wow.

And now I am heading home to Boston for one month to be with my parents and Erika, who will be joining us from Montreal next weekend. It promises to be both busy and restful, sprinkled with road trips and hopefully a bit of working (I still have, sadly, two big papers to finish). I cannot wait to have my Mom waiting for me at the airport for a much overdue hug.

I will post some pictures from February soon. In the meantime, I have a plane to catch at 7:30 tomorrow morning, a boyfriend to say goodbye to, and still some packing left to finish. Please direct all correspondences to my American cell phone, or my email, or, of course, this blog.

<-- Boston, view from above!

-13 wonderful (unfassbar) things from January-

2009-01-29T19:08:00.029+01:00

Okay, fine. I confess. YES! I am procrastinating right now. But after an ENTIRE day of surviving the StaBi (again, public library), this time the one at Potsdamer Platz, I'd say I deserve a little ice cream and some down time. And not only that, but I used my wonderful new bike to get there. Jenni, your bike could not have fit me better. I love it, and although I am very sad that you are not in Berlin anymore, it's... well, it's amazing!

Here are thirteen pieces of my month that I want to share with you. In the spirit of German orderliness they are listed in order of how great they were and are in my mind. Enjoy partaking in my January, and, of course, my procrastination.

13) Campbell's soup.

Sold for the cheap price of 5 Euros on the gourmet floor of the KaDeWe. What a deal!

12) A Fortune.

On my way to the FU one day, a craving for greasy Chinese food prompted a spontaneous stop at the Asia Box. The food quality was, as expected, questionable. But it sufficed to suppress my craving for a good long while. The best part of my meal was the fortune cookie. The following is a rough English translation of my fortune:

"Your next Fortune-cookie fortune will undoubtedly come true"

Ha! I have never heard a greater fortune, and a better marketing technique. Kudos Asia Box.

11) My favorite German names.

One would not expect for "German names" to be so different from "American names". It is apparently a bit looked down upon to use names like Jenny or Kevin for one's children, since those cannot even try to sound German. I have met a lot of Anna's, a Lisa, a Katherina, a Nora, a Robert, a Thomas, a Steffen, etc. in my time here; these are all names that we have at home, that are just pronounced differently in German. There are some names, however, that could never be said "in American", for fear of just sound incredibly, well...

(female)

Wiebke, Elke, Ulrike, Helga, Dagmar, Jutta, Gisela,

Geraldina, Cordula

(male)

Helmut, Dieter, Tilo, Klaus, Günther, Detlef, Egbert,

Karsten, Hannes, Bernhardt

10) DOGS.

I have come to hate them. Particularly when I mistakenly step on the little gifts they leave behind ALL over the sidewalk (thank goodness it is all frozen right now). Although there are many rules in German society, one entire demographic group that is completely free of restrictions: Berliner dogs. They can ride the busses, take up seats in the subway, sit cozily in cafes, and poop anywhere they please. Granted, dogs here are particularly well-trained. But still! Here are some signs that are completely ignored by dog owners:

9) Animalspeak!

More on animals, these are the sounds that animals make in Germany. I wish I could make one grand list of animal noises in all languages all over the world - how cool is it that groups of peoples simply interpret the animal sounds differently? It gives me faith in the pluralism of cultures, as opposed to the westernization of everything.

cow - Muh (english: same)
sheep - Mäh (english: same)
duck - Naknak (english: quack quack)
frog - Quakquak (english: ribbit)
dog - Wauwau (english: woof)
horse - Wiehern (english: Naaaaaay, i think)
rooster - Kikeriki (english: cockeldoodledoo)
hen - Pokpokpok (english: same)
turkey - Googlegoogle (english: gobble gobble)
bird - Piep piep (english: chirp chirp)
pig - Oink oink (english: same)

8) "American-styled" things:

I do not know what associates these places with the USA. Okay, well I can understand the pizza. American pizza probably means huge, thin crusted, and cheesy. But nails? I'll let you know the next time I get a manicure.

7) A poem that I discovered on the door of a women's bathroom at the FU.

The question posed was, "Wem gehört das Wissen?" meaning, to whom does knowledge belong? I found the response quite clever.

Wem Gehört das Wissen?
Sorry, diese Frage klingt beschissen,
doch ich will dich nicht dissen,
sollst' eine Antwort nicht missen:
'Dem, der es erlangt, gehört das Wissen,
Doch sind Freiheit und Gleichheit des Erwerbs wohl prämissen.
Zufrieden oder entsetzlich verschissen?'

6) More on toilets:

My own toilet has been flushing just about once every fifteen minutes, just for fun. I have gotten used to it, but while describing my bathroom to my mother I realized all over again that this is quite a special bathroom. A very efficient use of space, shall we say. The flush-happy toilet is located right in the middle of the very skinny bathroom, in front of the shower so that you have to walk around it to actually get to the shower. You open the lid 180 degrees before use, and then you pull a little chain to flush it. A photo, at just about its cleanest moment all winter:

5) Cool cars in my neighborhood, that must be still in use because they are not always in the same spot every day:

4) "Soziale Laden"

On my way home from the Humboldt one day, I happened upon the greatest thrift shop in my neighborhood, if not Berlin (or the world). It is essentially a place where people donate junk and then the money they make off of it goes to some form of charity. Here is what I purchased the two times that I have been there:

A turquoise belt

A purple and white tie (for Robert)
6 small white egg-holders for breakfasts
A gorgeous red and brown vase that matches my room
A bright yellow insulated lunch bag with lemons on it
A Berlin souvenir shot glass
And (best for last) a drinking game! Complete with four shot glasses and a spinner that might require you to do strange things like exchange your shirt with the person to your left.

All for the incredible price of 4 Euros.

I know, junk is probably not wise to collect, but the prices are irresistible.

3) "Grüssen"

Grüssen is one of my favorite German traditions. It isn't actually a tradition in the sense that it happens once a year. In fact, it comes up in just about every single conversation that I have here. In English the verb grüssen means "to greet". It is used in the sense of "say hello to (insert name here) for me!" And people use it all the time. Sometimes I hear people run into each other in the U-Bahn and they say "Ah, Frau Schmidt, ich grüsse dich!" When my room mate Anna said goodbye to me before leaving for Colombia (in December), she gave me a long list of people to greet for her, including my parents, my sister, and Robert. There's always someone to give greetings to, and sometimes the greetings can show various aspect of one's relationship to someone. For instance, at the end of a formal letter one writes "Mit freundlichen Grüssen", which is far less personal than "Mit herzlichen Grüssen". And guys say it just as often as girls do. Jan, Nancy's son, signs off his text messages with "Liebe Grüsse!" I just love it; it gives the impression of everybody being so connected to one another.

2) "keine Getränke, keine Speise. Alles verboten!"

I could not talk about January without complaining about the German libraries, just one more time. No drinks, no food... everything is forbidden! This is what a proud-looking security guard said to me today, as I tried to sneak a bottle of water into the reading rooms with me. Well, are there any water fountains on the other side, I asked. There's a cafeteria. You can go there, but you cannot bring your books with you and the only water is for purchase. Hmmm... my goodness. How obnoxious and marvelous all at the same time.

1) My absolute favorite wonderful thing from January is a quote from Erika, something she wrote to me in an email:

"if paper writing is too much for you, you should type your paper up in english and then copy and paste the document into the translator at dictionary.com and then go through
the text to fix the grammar. Maybe that might make things easier?"

Erika, I love it. Can't say that my professors would love it as much as I do though! Thanks for the suggestion :-)

Auf den Tisch klopfen...

2009-01-28T14:57:00.006+01:00

A few more comments on "university-life" to add:

My favorite part of my classes comes right at the end. The question is this: how is one supposed to react at the end of a student presentation? Is it appropriate to clap, or is that a bit exaggerated for a boring ten-minute talk on Goethe’s biographical background? My experience is that Americans are particularly awkward in this area. For instance people will clap for the first presentation of a class but then forget for the next three, to the disappointment of the speakers. German (and apparently the Swiss and Austrians too) have found a great solution to this conundrum. After every presentation, or if someone makes a comment and people want to show their support, the students knock on the tables with their right hand. Knocking, for a few seconds, and then either the student takes his seat again or class ends. Sometimes people knock before class is over, particularly if the professor is going on a tangent and the students want him to quickly finish his thoughts.

Robert told me about his first day of classes in Poland. During the intro lecture at his Erasmus orientation, the Germans automatically knocked on their desks at the end; all of the other students (Brazilians, Americans, French, etc.) stood aghast and had no idea what initiated this sudden table-knocking. I’m curious how long it will take me to get out of this habit once I’m back in Chicago; either that or I will try to spread it around and see if the table-knocking-instead-of-awkward-applause-method will catch on. Clapping is out; knocking is in.

As an addendum to my last entry, it is a bit contradictory to complain about the full classes and then at the same time berate the German universities for not having enough places for all of the students who apply. As Robert has commented, not every high school graduate should go to university. Only those who are qualified should be able to study in medical school, in the same way that students cannot always get accepted to the university of their choice in the US. And good alternatives to university should be taken full advantage of. But it's still a strange concept for me as an american, especially since I think of university as a right rather than a privilege. I am not quite sure how the problem of huge classes can be resolved, other than giving universities more funding to hire more professors. That would also solve the never-getting-tenure problem, now that I think of it. But who has the money for that? No $150 billion obama-style stimulus plans for Germany...

Also, I have noticed that German students use two particular words in just about every sentence: "halt" and "quazi". I keep hearing these two words popping up more and more in class. They don't really mean anything; the best translation I can think of is "sort of". Es ist halt quazi eine Behauptung für... (It is, well, sort of an argument for...) I am hesitant to equate these two words to the way we use the word "like" in the US, since people can still sound smart when using them, and they are not substitutes for "said". They are technically called Particles, or at least that is the grammar-term used for them. The word "zwar" could be tagged on to the list too... (perhaps meaning "indeed"...?) That means that I have found the key to German fluency! It lies in the correct usage of three words that mean almost, sort of, indeed absolutely nothing.

Also etwas IST mir halt eingefallen, und zwar, dass Deutsch quazi einfach ist!

BRESLAU: lantern lighting and more lasagna

2009-01-27T00:09:00.021+01:00

Und wie war mein Wochenende 345 km und 6 Stunden mit dem Zug von Berlin entfernt?

Schön war's.

Breslau is a big city with a small town feel, which is something that Berlin, for better or for worse, just cannot offer. Going to Breslau for the weekend is a real escape from worries and responsibilities. Of course it helps that I have someone waiting for me at the train station (called Wroclaw Glowny) smiling and with open arms. I left Berlin on Saturday morning, and arrived in Breslau six hours later. Robert and I have repeatedly noticed that as soon as we cross the border back into Poland, the clouds clear and the weather warms up. This weekend was no exception: we had SPRING-like weather in Breslau, 6-degrees celsius and sunny. People don't usually think of Poland as the land of sunshine; if I didn't hear from Robert about the snowstorms resulting in power outages and frozen rivers, I would have a very skewed impression of Polish weather.

I was very excited to see Robert's new apartment and meet his polish roommates. We spent a bit of time walking around the "Altstadt", the old city, stopping shortly in the medieval part to watch the man lighting the gas lanterns that border the street.

We did a few grocery-store runs to collect ingredients for our lasagna fest, planned for the next evening. Although everything is obviously in polish, the brand for the lasagna noodles was none other than... GUESS! Of all names, Polish and Italian, the lasagna noodles were from some company named Melissa. A good sign.

On Sunday we studied (Robert had to answer questions IN POLISH in a final exam yesterday), enjoyed the sunshine a bit, and baked two fabulously cheesy lasagnas for Kasia, Robert's polish-language partner, his roommates Damian, Mischek, and Magda, and the two of us. Vodka and ice cream to go with it. "Lecker schmecker", as they say in German.

(Kasia and I after lasagna)

Robert has many more details on his incredibly funny blog (robertinpolen.blogspot.com) for those who can read German. He continues to be astounded by how lucky he was in getting a room in that apartment, as his roommates are pretty awesome people. He is totally shocked by the fact that Damian cleans his dishes in the same day that he ate off of them, and more than that, yesterday he offered to wash everybody's jeans since he had some extra space in the washing machine! Oh the things that one appreciates after living in a dorm...

(Robert drinking tea in his new room)

In the meantime, I am back in Berlin, cozy in my bed on a Wednesday afternoon. I had a wonderful dinner with Jan and Nancy on Monday night. After a long day of classes yesterday (we discussed Hegel for THREE HOURS in my intellectual history class, enough to give anyone a headache), there was small cause for celebration. Diego, my roommate Anna's boyfriend, is finally back in Berlin after seeing just about the entirety of South America in five months. He brought us some Venezuelan cachapas (I think that's what they're called, sort of sweet cornmeal pancakes that are fried and delicious) and was consistently switching from German back into Spanish without even noticing. It's great to have him back.

These next few days I am going to face the StaBi again, and perhaps finally get permission to take out books: my passport was not enough the last time I went, since it turns out that you need to bring the sheet proving that you're registered with the police at your address and only THEN are you eligible to take books out... they really could have told me that before I made a trip specially to bring them my passport... But I am really really really going to make progress now, since there is far too much going on in Berlin to be stuck in the library in the next couple of weeks. EB is coming on Friday! I already have a few museum stops planned and restaurants picked out. And next week a big film festival, called the Berlinale, will be starting downtown. Much to do, much to read, so I am sending out a big hello to those back home who have not heard from me in a while. I'm sorry that I haven't written and I will answer emails soon!

"UNIVERSITÄT"

2009-01-23T16:49:00.022+01:00

Also “Was den Unterricht betrifft” (concerning studies) or “WiSe 08/09” or “What does Melissa actually do everyday” or “Life as a German Student” or “The Long Awaited Entry”.

Because this entry has taken me so long to write, the title names have simply collected over time. “University” is only a convenient summation of all the things I want to talk about regarding my classes and studies here in Berlin.

First off, I’m finally getting used to the many rules and regulations of how to pass in an assignment, which is obviously a good thing to learn before my research papers are due next month. This is a sample heading from a “free-write” assignment that I passed in at the beginning of the month, where I talked about my impression of German students:

Institut für Europäische Ethnologie
Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin
Tutorium Einführung in die Europäische Ethnologie
WiSe 08/09
Dozent: Sebastien Mohr
Melissa Weihmayer: „Freier Text“ Ausgabe
06.01.2009
Was den Unterricht betrifft

What do you think? Long, right? Complicated? Things that are complicated: this is a theme that will come up a few times in this entry. WiSe 08/09 is what we have to put as the third line of the heading for every paper. It must come after the course title and before the Professor (or “Dozent”, which means the person heading a class; this can be a student from a later semester as in my Ethnology Tutorium or a professor). It took me about three months before I figured out that WiSe does not actually mean anything having to do with the act of being “wise”, nor is it a secret acronym for a particular university or intro course. The big mystery is that it stands for “Winter Semester 2008/2009”. Very clever.

The entrance to the Silberlaube, a building at the Freie Universität (FU)

The Basics: University in Germany

Here’s the breakdown. One year of university in Germany consists of the Winter Semester, from mid-October to mid-February, and the Summer Semester, from mid-April to mid-July. That means people are in classes when it is warm and beautiful in the summer, but for that they have two months of vacation in the snow-is-melting-everything-is-really-gross months of February and March, and two months off in August and September. Students usually take these vacations to work full-time so that they can pay their semester fees (which is around 500-euros per semester in most provinces, but only 250 in the student-friendly city of Berlin) or to do short internships, called a “Praktikum”. A lot of students also work part-time (sometimes full-time) during the semesters.

German Universities are currently a mess. The research-universities in Germany are based on the innovative philosophies on education from Mr. Wilhelm Humboldt himself, someone whose texts we read in my intellectual history class. Up until two years ago, students would go to University to get a Magister degree, which is sort of like a B.A. and M.A. smushed together in five years. But these were very open, with few credit requirements. The goal was to allow students the freedom to study exactly what they wanted to learn within their “Fach”, or field. Some students would need ten years to complete their Magister if they were working in a job on the side, or if they simply wanted to keep taking courses for that long (something more possible if the universities don’t cost $40,000). Most people would finish in five. Robert was the last year of students to work towards a Magister degree, so he has 2-3 more years before finishing in Heidelberg.

German universities are in a total state of chaos since they are transitioning from this old, classically German system to the more internationally recognized B.A. and M.A. system. This means that the students have gone from little to no requirements to having far too many to get their degree in only three years. My roommate Anna takes 7 courses per week and works as a waitress in two different cafes on Wednesdays and Fridays. Yes, each course is only 2 hours long and meets once a week, and is either a lecture, which is huge, or a Seminar, which is hopefully smaller. But instead of really switching to an American system, what they don’t have are professors who have enough time to teach the same course twice a week. So it’s double the courses but the same amount of class time as what I would have in Chicago. That means, unfortunately, double the reading assignments. The result is very stressed students who do not do very much of their reading.

The nice part is that they usually don’t have to do that much to get credit for a course. The courses come in pairs, called “Modules”, usually with a more general lecture and then a seminar on the same topic that goes more in depth. The students can then choose to do work for 4 credit points or 2 credit points for each class within a Module (they need a total of 6 points per Module). That means that if a student wants 4 credits in the lecture, then he/she must do a presentation and write a “Klausur”, or a final exam, for that lecture. If a student wants 4 credits in the seminar instead, then he/she must do a presentation (probably) and write a “Hausarbeit”, or a final research paper, for the seminar. When one picks which one to work for the 4 points in, then one really only needs to prove that one “participated” in the other one, as in not missed fewer than 3 classes.

Are you thoroughly confused yet? The result of all this is that every student’s schedule looks dramatically different because every course and major has different requirements. And then in the classes themselves, only half of the students in a seminar really need to do the work for those 4 points, so half of the students participate, while for the other half, the most important part is signing one’s name on the attendance list. Imagine a classroom where the students in the front half of the room, around 25 of them, raise their hands to question or clarify something for whatever student presentation is being given. They also ask questions, and show interest during discussions. In the back half of the room there are a good 15 students literally with newspapers out, some sending text messages, some blatantly doing readings for other classes, and I even once noticed one student listening to his headphones for the entire 2 hours of class. While the quality of discussion is actually pretty high in the front half of the room, the fact that people have different requirements makes it rather hard to find the motivation to join those that do the work.

The Hauptgebäude (main building) at the Humboldt University (HU) on Unter den Linden

How to Survive the System

So the key to surviving in a German University seems to be to navigate the bureaucracy, to inform oneself of exactly what one must do in order to get credit for each class, and to do no more than one needs to for credit, unless one has the time and/or interest. But of those the most important is reading the fine print: how else could one learn knows what classes he must take in order to complete a B.A. in three years? Anna told me this as an afterthought, as if it’s assumed that one knows how to inform oneself about all of these things. But if I didn’t have the BCGS program giving me a little bit of advice here and there, I wouldn’t know where to start. I mean, I’m just one out of 37 THOUSAND students at the Freie Uni.

Another, perhaps surprising requirement for surviving in a Germany University is English. Just as a side-note, most German students take at least one class/lecture in English before they leave University. This is because the professor is visiting from elsewhere for a semester, because of a high-number of foreign students in the class, or because it’s just simply a field that must be studied in English. This includes Anglistik, of course, and maybe even Amerikanistik, but also things like Economics courses or Physics. So speaking English well becomes incredibly useful.

On the left, the Institute for European Ethnology at the HU

And then what?

And what happens for those students next, you may ask. That question does not have an easy answer. Whereas most Americans cannot expect a secure job without a B.A., if not a Masters, it is not quite the same in Germany. With a B.A. degree a student could either join the workforce if he/she can find a job, or go on to get an M.A. One can then stay in the university and embark on the incredibly complicated and difficult journey of trying to become a professor. As opposed to in the US, this takes a minimum of 10 years and a maximum of, well, there is no maximum. Even after 30 years of research, the university still might not have a position to offer a person that has published and made a name for him or herself. Therefore, there are a bunch of titles and honors for the between-steps. There’s something called the “Habilitation”, which is research work after one’s dissertation (I think… I don’t quite understand that part). Another thing I don't understand: my professor for my Friday class is officially titled "Dr. rer. pol. Hülya Tasci". Don’t know what that means. Too much Latin - in my opinion, these names and titles are just there to reinforce abstract hierarchies.

There’s more of an assumption here that those who study in a university will stay in academics. The reason is that there are many very high quality and well-regarded alternatives to University. This is called an “Ausbildung”, which is a two to three year internship at a business. They offer courses alongside the practical training, so people do this in retail or public relations or computer maintenance. Steffen, again Robert’s older brother who we recently saw in Dresden, began an Ausbildung at a very prestigious hotel. His plan was to become a chef, but although he is unquestionably a very good cook, he quickly discovered that had too many food allergies to make a life for himself working in a kitchen. But luckily there are other options.

People who go to Universities are either those who can afford the fees or those who completed “Gymnasium”, which is the sort of the elite high school track in Germany. Unlike in the US, parents do not put money aside for sending their kids to University; it was free when they were growing up, and the recently added fees have been a very disputed and upsetting topic for some families. Some people still go and do an Ausbildung after going to Gymnasium, but more people apply at University (I’ve met some people who did an Ausbildung, hated it, and then applied to University). If they don’t get a place after applying (which is INCREDIBLE… public universities that simply run out of places for students!), or if one’s sort of GPA after Gymnasium is not good enough for a specific field of study, then they would most likely take time off and apply again the following year.. Medical schools are notorious for requiring very high grades from high school, or, rather, very low grades since a 1 is the best and a 6 is the worst according to the German grading system.

The students in my classes, particularly in my ethnology lecture, are of all ages. I mentioned in another entry that I found it difficult to find students to spend time with on the weekends, outside of class time, even after striking up good conversations with some of my classmates. Well, as I was walking towards the cafeteria at the Humboldt with one student, I figured out why she might not have so much free time to hang out. She has two little kids, the oldest is 3 ½ years old, and she works part-time as a social worker. Her boyfriend helps a lot with the kids, and she’s much happier now that her courses are right in the center of Berlin, near where she lives. She worked for five years after high school, had her babies in the meantime, and she’s finally able to come back to school and work for her degree. I would never have guessed that she was a mother, particularly because she did not look any older than I do. But that’s an example of a student with her plate full. Now I’m finally figuring out what makes these German students seem so much more “mature” than the general pool of American college students: school is more complicated, Berlin is a big city, and real life starts a bit earlier here.

The snow-covered path towards the Freie Universität in Dahlem, a suburb of West Berlin

My week, my classes, and why I enjoy them

So after all of that background info here is the part about me. This is what my week has looked like since the start of the Winter Semester in mid-October:

----------------
Monday: German Class Deutsch als Fremdsprache Niveau B2,1 with Erasmus/exchange students at the Freie Universität from 4pm to 8pm

Tuesday: Lecture, Einführung in die Europäische Ethnologie (Introduction to European Ethnology), at the Institute for European Ethnology at the Humboldt Universität from 10am to noon

Seminar Berlin in der Zeitalter der Revolution (Intellectual History in Berlin from 1750 to 1848) at the Freie University from 2pm to 4pm (this is the course with my program, BCGS)

Wednesday: Tutorium zu der Einführung in die Europäische Ethnology (Tutorium for the Intro to European Ethnology lecture), again at the Institute for European Ethnology from 10am to noon

Yoga class at a small studio in Kreuzberg with a really nice German guy who rocks a navy-blue Mohawk (this has of late been replaced by my weekly afternoon nap)

Thursday: Seminar, Kulturpolitik und Kulturmanagement in Berlin (Politics and Management of Culture in Berlin) at the Freie Universität from noon to 2pm

Friday: Seminar, Staatsangehörigkeitsrecht und die Integration von Migranten und Migrantinnen (Citizenship-rights and Immigration Theory) at the Freie Universität from noon to 2pm
--------------------

In short I am taking three classes for credit, and four classes not for credit (the Tutorium, the Politics of Culture seminar, the German class, and of course yoga). My week is full and yet not full, stressful because the readings are really difficult for me (particularly for my Immigration Theory course), and yet not stressful because I have evenings free and the mornings to sleep in.

I’m really happy with the choices that I made. Part of the reason is that I am taking my courses with students who are in their first semester. Students measure their time in University in semesters here instead of in years. So instead of saying that one is a 2nd Year (aka Sophomore), one would say that one is in his/her third semester. Since they are “Erstsemesters” or First-Semesters, that means that they are also a bit lost, are also looking to reach out to new faces (or at least at the beginning), and are also learning the skinny on how to write research papers like I am.

I love my Intro to European Ethnology course, not because I needed an introduction to anthropology but because European Ethnology is dramatically different than what I expected. First off, it has a dark history in Germany; anthropology was used to prove that certain groups of peoples were scientifically inferior during National Socialism. The way that ethnology as a field deals with these dark origins (much as with colonial origins in France) is a fascinating reflection of how Germany reexamines its past to make better uses of its resources for the present and future. So many lectures, particularly at the beginning of the semester, mentioned some effect or limitation that German-ethnologists must deal with because of the perverted uses of Anthropology in Nazi-Germany. While we talk about colonial anthropologists, this aspect is rarely touched upon in Chicago. We’re about 100 students in the lecture, and my professor looks exactly like what one would expect an anthropologist to look like. He is furthermore approachable and has already made special considerations to fit the requirements of exchange students.

But I like my Tutorium even more than I like the lecture. I have already done a methods course in Anthropology (good times in Clare’s Eth-Meth class last spring). But in this Tutorium, I learn about how things are supposed to work here in Germany. That sounds simple, but it has been INCREDIBLY helpful. We spent an entire class going over German citation rules, and another class on how to look up books in the library catalogue. My tutor is a very cool student in his 10th semester in the Institute for European Ethnology. He’s currently working on his final Magister paper on homosexuality in the DDR, and has often shown us pieces from his research as an example for our own. He did a skit one day, showing us what the worst possible Referat (student presentation) might look like (showing up late, having a horrible Powerpoint, chewing gum, not preparing a handout, etc…) which is really the only way that I know what my professor will be looking for when I give my Referat on the 6th of February (not too far away!). I don’t know how other BCGS students are handling the work and their presentations in their classes, but I am really happy that I’ve gotten a step-by-step breakdown of it all. And we discuss with each other in small groups. That means I get to talk with other German students rather than just listen to presentations, which is one step towards getting to know new people.

My Friday seminar at the FU (Immigration Theory) is more like a typical political science course that one would take after one’s second semester. As such, it is chaos. We have around 35 students in the seminar… which is luckily twenty less than what we had on the first day of class. We only have around 30 seats in the classroom, so people that come last or late have to find chairs in other classrooms (my first two classes I had to stand near the door because there just wasn’t enough room for more chairs). This is the class in which only half of the students participate, while the party-half reads in the back (occasionally having side conversations, which is unbelievable, until the professor or another student complains about too much noise). There are simply too many students, but the teacher cannot turn anyone away (or could she? I don’t know). It’s a requirement for the seminar that everybody do a presentation. That means that just about every class consists of one or two or even three (were there four once?) student presentations. The professor, an Iranian woman who is a bit too nice for her own good, is in charge of making the reading list, and of assigning a day to those doing presentations. She seems incredibly knowledgeable, but unfortunately she does not often speak in class. I wish that she would synthesize the readings on her own more, because none of the student presentations are easy to understand. The handouts are two pages long, and they just sort of spit out every detail of the author’s argument.

Immigration rights and theory is a very heated topic in Germany. It is also a topic that constantly looks to two places for comparison: France, and, of course, the USA. Although I generally want to keep a low-profile and blend in with the German students (making friends because I am me, and not because I am American), I am occasionally expected to represent the US in that class. It is unavoidable! This means that the professor somehow assumes that I have spent time studying US Immigration policy and that I should know many more things about it than I do. I have participated on my own free will on a few occasions, with varying degrees of success. And I have been called upon to participate on other occasions, with varying degrees of embarrassment. In the second class, for instance, we were talking about two principles that differentiate French and German immigration policy. She suddenly looked around the crowded room and said, and where is that American, is she here? Oh yes. So what is the immigration policy like in the US? I was slightly more than shocked at the daunting question. Ummm, umm, well, I haven’t studied it in depth, but I do know that we have many difficulties with illegal immigrants, ummm, that cross the border from Mexico and then have to raise their kids without legal papers… (What do you think, was that a good try?) At least the other students around me, particularly those who hadn’t done the reading, were more than understanding. Apparently she tried to call on me on a day that I was too sick to go to class and was dismayed that I wasn’t there. I am researching American policy much more this month so that I can compare some aspects of German and American immigration rights in my research paper, meaning I won’t be so clueless the next time.

This is the last one, I promise. My intellectual history class is not a typical German class; in fact, it’s the opposite. It’s a typical U-Chicago style seminar where we read primary texts and try our best to learn something from them. Three great things about this class are 1) I have managed to do all of the readings, including two entire (short) novels in German and excerpts from Faust Part I, 2) I get to study history (which I love) and will get credit towards my German minor, and 3) class is often replaced with field trips, such as our voyage to the Sans Souci castle in Potsdam and our walk around the center of Berlin to talk about Prussian buildings and architecture (see entry on Die Deutsche Kunst).

I like that I have one class where I understand the way it works. We read, we take notes, we analyze, we discuss. We are a small class, only 6 students and our professor from U-Penn who knows us all well. We meet in the BCGS Seminar room, which is (I may have mentioned this before) our “home-base” at the Freie University, with a mini-library and computers/printers for our private use. I can therefore focus more on the material and worry less about whether or not I am doing the work correctly or blending in as a German student (and contrastingly, sticking out like a sore thumb as an American one).

Tibetan cloths being sold outside of the FU cafeteria

How German Students Are Different

One thing that has astounded me time and time again is the comments and questions that people bring up in class. They don’t just bring them up. They are not afraid to challenge the professors. In one lecture that I didn’t end up staying with, one student (apparently this happens especially among Freie University Political Science students) actually argued that they should not be evaluated based on class participation. In fact they should not have grades for class participation at all. She said that it was even preposterous that the Dozent was requiring them to sign an Attendance sheet for every class. She considered it an insult to the students, and requested that it be negotiated. The entire class joined in on the debate. The student prevailed. Not only that, but later the Dozent asked the students what they expected to get out of the course topic. What did they want to learn about and what did they want to read? Is there anything on the reading list that they think looks uninteresting? The students made various request on additional themes and topics they wanted covered, and the Dozent said that she would add those into the syllabus as best she could. Wow.

It is clear, from exchanges such as these, first that the students are not afraid to speak up and second that the teachers are there to teach the students what they want to learn. In Chicago, I often have the feeling that by being in a class I am working for the teacher, doing his or her bidding and just sort of passively complying with his or her list of requirements, trying to stay on his/her good side. I never imagined that a syllabus could be a departure point from which to begin arguing. I admire this because it shows a sort of intrinsic motivation to learn something interesting. Although some people may be wasting their time - doing very little work in University and getting away with it - others are really there to get something out of their classes, and not because the teachers demand it of them. Having major research papers for every seminar also works with this theory: the learning happens on the student’s own time, and on the student’s own terms.

Sunset behind the Henry Ford building at the FU

And that is what I wrote about in my “Free-write” for my Tutorium, generally speaking. I mentioned both my admiration for the students and my hatred for the complicated bureaucracy. I am also proud to add that my tutor recommended that I submit that assignment to the student magazine in the Institute for European Ethnology – I’ll get published! In German! Only a few grammatical errors to correct…. But all in all, I have learned a lot about what it is that I like and dislike about Chicago just from what I’ve experienced so far here in Berlin, in a school system that is just as challenging as Chicago but in very different ways. It’s surprising what one can learn about a culture just by trying to blend in with it.

You survived the mammoth entry! Exhausted? Still confused by all the bureaucracy? Yeah, me too.

my first poem in German

2009-01-23T16:45:00.012+01:00

In an effort to calm Robert down at a moment of relative academic stress, I composed a little poem.

Quick summary: it’s always better not to let oneself stress, because you can simply get more done when you are calm. Easy to say, not so easy to remember when I get stressed myself (which is rather often - I am not quite the master of punctuality as many can attest to). My papers are still in the process of being researched, so my stressful time is still looming ominously. I’ll try to keep calmness in mind though, and meanwhile I should probably stop blogging so much so that I can actually get some work done!

Apparently there are two grammatical errors but I just have not found them yet. Enjoy if you can read German :-)

In der Ruhe, liegt die Kraft
(Dedicated to Robertt)

Jemand sehr klug und weise hat mir einmal gesagt....
In der Ruhe, liegt die Kraft.
Ich fand das schön, aber dann ich habe gefragt
wie man das machen kann; die Laune ist doch wechselhaft.
Aber es hat sich im Laufe der Zeit
Ständig und immer und zuverlässig gezeigt,
dass wenn man alles langsamer versucht,
Dann schafft man mehr, wenn man nicht flucht
Zum Beispiel anstatt die Arbeit zu vermeiden
Nehmt man die Arbeit mit beiden Beinen
Man bekommt zurück für seinen rühigen Gedanken
Ganz viel Erfolg, was kein Person könnte schenken.

Also in der Ruhe, liegt die Kraft
Und später wenn man alles schafft,
dann kommt man ganz Stolz raus aus der Haft!

DRESDEN: A 70th Birthday Party (and hints of "Ostalgie")

2009-01-21T10:55:00.010+01:00

<-- Instead of an "Ampelmann", in Dresden they have "Ampelmädchen"!

This passed weekend I was in Dresden celebrating Robert's grandmother's 70th birthday. Four days later, I am eating a breakfast on a Thursday morning of boiled eggs, malt bread and coffee, hoping eventually to muster the energy for a productive afternoon of reading and writing at the FU. But first I don't want too much time to go by before I fill you in on my weekend, if only because it meant so much to me.

There are not too many students that go on a year abroad and get to meet family where they go. I cannot say enough how warm Robert's relatives have been to me, both his grandparents on his father's side (who live in East Berlin) and his aunts, cousins, grandparents, and everybody else on his mother's side, whom I met for the first time this weekend. Not only did I get my first exposure to serious Saxon accents (nearly incomprehensible), but I experienced first-hand the importance that east German's place on laughing together, telling stories, and spending time with family, if for at least one very lavish feast a year.

I arrived in Dresden sneezing and guzzling cough medicine. My immune system really picks the best moments to let up the fight, but as disgusting as I was and felt, I was incredibly excited to see a new city. I had gone to my guest-sister Judith's 18th birthday party dinner the night before, but chose to catch up on sleep instead of going out clubbing so that I would have the most energy possible for Brigitte, Robert's grandmother's, party. After the two hour train ride I hibernated from the cold in a cafe near the train station. In their silver Peugeot, Helmut, Katrin, Thomas and Robert picked me up at the train station and squished to make place for me in the back seat. We went over to see his grandparents, who showed us which apartment Robert and I would be sleeping in. Meanwhile Robert's aunt who works for Lufthansa really wanted to practice some English, so we had some cute conversations as we waited. They rented three apartments in a sort of soviet-looking complex just for that night so that we did not have to worry about hotel rooms and we could all stay together. Robert and I were stationed in the "young couples" apartment, with his older brother Steffan, his girlfriend Karo (short for Karoline), and Robert's cousin Katya with her boyfriend Alex.

Once settled, we followed Günther, Robert's grandfather's, instructions (he was clearly the boss of the operation, so there was a lot of waiting for his instructions) on how to get to our first destination. We headed via tram through the center of Dresden to the Lindenhoff Hotel way up on the big hill that overlooks the city. This hotel had a restaurant surrounded by windows so that we could see the view from our incredibly long table. More people joined us at the restaurant, so that we were a group of around 30, coming from Nurenburg, Gera, Jena, Karlsruhe, some from Dresden.

Robert's great uncle presenting his grandmother with Hungarian wine

At the Lindenhoff we were served Sekt and coffee and had our choice of a wide array of incredible cakes, something that Dresden is famous for. I had an apple-quark cake (a new favorite) while Robert had some sort of current and berry creamy something or other. His aunt explained to me the names of each of the cake and their respective ingredients, but there were dozens, too many to remember (although this information would have been useful later on). In Brigitte's speech she explained to us why they chose this particular restaurant, which was where they had their "green wedding" dinner, meaning the original wedding dinner around fifty years ago. She thanked everyone for coming and was presented with the menu and wine that they had been served on that wedding day so long ago. This was also the time for Robert and Steffan to "present" their girlfriends to the relatives, which was a bit awkward for me and seemed very traditional. But I was surprised to discover that everyone seemed excited to get to know me, asking me where I was from and what I thought of Berlin. My goodness, those cakes and the view were amazing.

A few more pieces of cakes (Robert's younger brother Thomas had a total of three) and a couple of hours later we made our way to the Bergbahn, or the sort of gondola tram that took us down the side of the hill to the Elbe river. We crossed the famous but icy blue bridge (the Nazis had wanted to destroy it at the end of the war but were thwarted by two workers who cut all the dynamite lines) to the next hotel, the Schiller House. There the real feast began.

The "Elk Room", very warm and with large traditional paintings on the walls, was reserved just for us, with its grand table for 30 and buffet. The spread included soup, salads, pretzels, cold cuts, cheeses, fish, an entire small pig (!), chicken dishes, pasta dishes, and more desserts. Throughout the evening (in between eating and eating and eating until we could not move) we heard speeches and jokes and poems and little songs and proclamations of admiration for Brigitte. We called this the "Cultural Program". Most members of the family (those who had time) prepared something. Robert recited two longer sketches from a well-loved comedian from the DDR. Both were about animals - I must say, although I did not quite understand the jokes, I was rather proud to see Robert acting out the sketches and hear his family members' bellowing laughter. He admitted later that he doesn't understand them much either; they must only make sense to those who grew up in the DDR.

Robert's Grandfather reciting a poem in the Elk Room

A lot of the cultural program had to do with DDR spoofs, such as a joke about an elephant who was brought into the DDR to be Lenin's example of communism, and eventually ended up in the West with no zoo and no job. This is what I mean by "Ostalgie". Ost is the German word for East, and although the DDR certainly had its drawbacks (oppressive, cannot leave, etc...), the regime was around for fifty years. This is definitely an overgeneralization, but in that time it shaped the people who lived in it, in ways that are sometimes subtle, sometimes not, and regardless these ways are not to be forgotten, or left behind.

<-- Karo and Steffan

We played a couple of games, too. The first was a riddle. We were

given each a sheet of paper with about 20 descriptions of nonesense things that each described the name of a German candy or dessert. I certainly was at a disadvantage in this activity, and I cheated off of Robert's sheet. But I was able to guess two out of 20 all by myself. Very exciting. Plätzchen and Schillerlocke. The first are little cookies that I had baked with Judith before Christmas and the second I had learned about when I toured Schiller's house in Weimar, although I don't know what the candy is.

The dinner lasted from around 6pm almost to midnight. I left in Karo's car to go back to the apartment (very very well-fed but still feeling a bit sick and ready for bed) while the others waited for the trams. The "kids", meaning all between the ages of 18 and 26 stayed up late playing the most intense game of UNO that I have ever played in my life. People were laying cards out right and left and I was sure that they were making up rules (I mean, we Americans invented that game, didn't we?). Lots of fun, and I think I came in second-to-last place.

We didn't have too much time to sleep since we were requested at 8:30 for breakfast. We packed quickly and walked to Günther's apartment for bread and cold cuts and tea. We said goodbyes and thank yous. I brought some of my favorite black tea as a gift for Brigitte, so hopefully we will meet again soon in Berlin for more tea and coffee. I still cannot believe how well they were able to organize everything, and how unbelievably lavish everything was. Chapeaux to them!

Robert and I were reluctant to part with his brother's, his mother and Helmut. Robert had flown to his hometown of Karlsruhe from Breslau a couple of days earlier to see a concert there and accompany his mother for the ride to Dresden. Robert and I decided to stay a bit longer in Dresden and then go back to Berlin together, so that he could take the train from Berlin to Breslau (much more convenient) the next day.

So after a couple of hours of promenading around the beautiful Baroque buildings and seeing the Elbe by day (and escaping the cold with hot chocolate in a ritzy cafe), our relaxed Sunday ended back in Berlin with a cheap Italian meal, unpacking, and slowly recovering from my cold. The snow-covered fields were speckled with deer on the ride to Berlin through Lower Saxony and Brandenburg... incredibly peaceful. Dresden was beautiful and impressive, and I just know that I'll be going back there sometime, if not for another family party of Robert's then for tourism with my own family (OPERA!).

Robert and I, the Elbe River, and the Old Bridge

Both Robert and I have a lot in store for us in these next two weeks; he has just moved into his new apartment in Breslau and I am looking for books, books, books. After the excitement of the inauguration, I guess we all need to take Obama's example and get back to work! I went on a tour of the fascinating but small Schwules Museum, the "Gay Museum", yesterday with my Ethnology Tutorium, and after I had a really interesting meeting with my Immigration Theory professor at the University cafeteria. I am all business these days, but of course being in Berlin that also means fun moments in between. I'll be joining Robert again in Breslau for this weekend, which means long stretches of train-time (I am seriously my most productive while on a train) in which I can hopefully learn a few Polish words here and there in preparation for meeting his new Polish roommates...

!OBAMANOS!

2009-01-21T09:34:00.009+01:00

As soon as I figure out how to upload videos, I'll get some "live footage" in here...

Kate and I left our class at the FU as soon as possible to go to Nollendorfplatz. There we stood in a line that stretched an entire block. Meryl joined us and we contemplated getting food as we waited to get in. A few Germans in line were laughing at the fact that they were suddenly surrounded by "Ami's", making them essentially minorities in their home-city. Tickets in hand, we paid the 10 Euro entrance fee and found that, unfortunately, there was no food to fill our hungry stomachs inside (grrr). Oh well, that's my contribution to the American Democrats Abroad I guess. Then we discovered that there were too many people in there to move! The venue was a rather grand-looking reception hall with chandeliers and fancy cocktail bars. We squished our way to a spot where we could nearly see the video screen, and for lack of time we stayed put. And then we heard the speech, and everything else simply did not matter. I particularly loved all the storm and clearing the water metaphors; it made me feel like we are a country at sea.

I noticed that the crowd tended to cheer at very particular moments, such as whenever Obama mentioned reducing our dependency on oil, and of course they boo-ed when Bush was mentioned. I noticed some people cringing when Obama mentioned God as the guiding light and the scriptures (Germans feel very strongly that religion plays too big of a part in US politics; this they consider rather backwards). Meryl, Kate and I celebrated with a massively delicious Dürüm Döner and some Berliner Kindl beers. The wonderful Turkish man who served us made us his special guests, and gave us chocolate, extra napkins for the never-not-messy Döners, and extra pieces of "milk brownies" that we had for dessert.

Reading the New York Times this morning has never made me more proud to be American. I never thought I would say that, but wow, it is simply the truth. Kate, who lives in DC, was half-disappointed not to be home but half thankful to have avoided the masses trampling all over her neighborhood. Maya and Jessica, I am so so excited for you that you were right at the scene and I cannot WAIT to hear about it!

Die Deutsche Kunst

2009-01-19T12:13:00.005+01:00

We went on a great field trip last Tuesday to the Museum for German Art. The beautiful building (sort of lost in construction sites right now) was build right after the Franco-Prussian War so that Bismarck could make a huge deal of Germany’s non-French and developing nationalistic identity. My expectations lingered somewhere between ‘what the hell is “German Art”’ and ‘I’ve never even heard of this museum before’. But I was pleasantly surprised on both counts, and really enjoyed what I saw.

Cordula, a professor of Art History at Columbia and our academic director’s wife (confusing? in any case, she has accompanied us on other field trips before) gave us our very own private guided tour of the museum. She has written 500-page books on some of the painters in there, so it clearly pained her to narrow the tour down to highlights. But what we did get to see was astoundingly different, although all under the Art History category of “Romanticism”. The Casper David Friedrich’s were amazing: existential or Protestant, random or completely imbedded with symbolism… you just do not know.

Adolph Menzel (Friedrich the Great playing the flute at Sans Souci)

We also saw the frescoes from the Casa Bartholdy in Rome, which told Old Testament stories with a secret Christian twist that Cordula enlightened us to only after we went through the stories in depth. One of the paintings had an incredibly silly-looking camel that looked a bit like the one on the cigarette ads. And then came the later pieces by the tiny and asocial Menzel, in particular the scene of Friedrich the Great playing his flute in a room resplendent with candlelight and a warm ambience. The sketch he made of his foot was also incredible; I wish I had a picture of that one. What was special about this museum is that unlike French Impressionists or Mary Casatte, one will never really get a chance to see this art outside of Germany. That is probably why I knew so little about it before, and also why the tour was so fascinating.

Casper David Friedrich (man overwhelmed by nature)

Mondays, StaBi days, and Brownie days

2009-01-12T23:57:00.011+01:00

Berlin in the snow, Dudenstrasse, and our kitchen in a messy, well-loved state...

My Mondays simply start late. The best thing about my week is that it doesn't officially begin until 4pm (or 16:00) on Monday afternoons. So today, I woke up at around 9:30 to my charming cell-phone ring, pulled my laptop onto my lap, and then, warm and cozy in my bed I wrote a three-page assignment for my German class about how the world heating up would not exactly be a good thing. I could have checked the grammar a bit better (as I learned later when it was corrected), but the sun was shining and it was time for my midday breakfast. The milk that I poured into my cornflakes-muesli-banana bowl was unfortunately, well, curdling, something that I noticed while pouring myself a glass after eating my breakfast (whoops, my stomach sang songs all day as a result). And the sun this morning - I hesitate in stating this for fear that it will be gone as quickly as it came - was bright and wonderful.

So now I am in bed after attending my four-hour German class at the FU and making a dill-potato soup, that I am saving for tomorrow (somehow I was not that hungry for a 10pm dinner tonight). I am thinking about the process of writing these blogs. As compared to EB's and Jenni's blogs, I have been writing more thematically, rather than daily. That means, for one thing, that certain themes require a lot more thoughts then others. Therefore I tend to overlook the daily stuff in exchange for mammoth entries about, say, humor in Berlin (after five months I still don't understand that one), or spontaneous trips to the Baltic. And the big one, that I've been putting off until, well, let's face it I'm still putting it off, is actually getting around to talking about SCHOOL. As in classes, as in German, as in what I am doing each and every day and how I structure my seemingly abstract time here in Berlin. It will come soon, I promise. Although probably not in a timely fashion...

Since Morgan, Aileen and Robert left (both Morgan and Aileen had various delays and difficulties due to the five-or-so centimeters of snow on the ground in Berlin) last Monday I have been steadily moving towards the road to academic accomplishment. By that I mean that I have managed to write no less than three papers in the past week, two for my Ethnology class and one for my German class. Getting practice writing "academically" in German is the most important part; topically I am not really pushing the thought-provoking frontiers of Ethnology quite yet.

And not to worry, the StaBi has not yet consumed my soul. It did suck 25-euros out of my wallet (that's 25-euros less in my highly cherished funds, since the DAAD gives me my scholarship money in monthly increments and I am running a bit dry for January already!). And even with that I can't even take books out from there until I bring them my passport to prove that I'll be sticking around for a while. Man, these libraries are a piece of work. One would never expect the amount of work involved simply to GET to a place where one can get to work.

I shall explain. In the StaBi (again, that's the nickname for Berlin's public library), which is an unquestionably gorgeous and regal building, with the words "Preussische Stadtbibliotek" engraved into its imposing gray stone, the first challenge is to enter the building. This may sound quite simple, but there are three unmarked entrances and the doors look so old and large that one would not expect that the strength of man could open them. The first two that I tried of course were incorrect, both "staff" entrances and closed to the public. After making it in, one is immediately overwhelmed by the complicated menu of what's on what floor. Once I got fed up, I just walked straight ahead. I was very tempted to walk up the beautiful wide staircase to the floors that I presumed held books and workspaces in some organized arrangement... but first the jacket, the bag, the purse, everything on you pretty much just has to go. There is a coat check just for this purpose (which is thankfully free, and usually has the only friendly staff member in the entire library). Then I needed to dig deep into my wallet/purse in order to find a one-euro coin, so that I could put my bagpack into a locker, that is inevitably barely large enough for a Berlin rat.

But why, you may ask, can one not bring a bagpack into a place where one is planning on doing work? Very good question. I think the fear is stealing - either that or they think it's just fun to over-monitor everything that goes on in their libraries. One is given a plastic bag at the coatcheck, since, thankfully, one is allowed to bring other books into this prestigious building of books. Heaven help anyone who even thinks of stealing an 1800 bound theological text or something of that nature (they don't have new books in this library)... they'll just see it right through that clear plastic bag of yours.

Okay, now I was ready to go in. But no, first I was indicated to exit the building entirely (going to where it is cold, also known as outside), and then go in a different entrance. Then the man waiting at the little useless reception desk (they don't perform usual "reception" functions here, so needless to say, to get my library membership I had to go to a different place) gave me a bookmark for every book that I brought in which he would later count when I left again. I also got a piece of paper saying that he authorized my entry for the acquirement of a pass. I asked where I could get a pass, and he said just follow the signs. Oh good. As if that would be easy. I followed, I followed, and followed, up the grand staircase, down a long hallway that smelled of hospital, into a computer room (asked at the desk there, thought i'd found it... but that would have been too easy), up another skinnier flight of stairs into a musky-smelling reading room with wood shelves and tables, contemplated just sitting and taking a break, then through two sets of doors and tadum! Anmeldung. Registration. Four more flights higher than I would have expected it to be. A desk for the purpose of taking out books and getting library passes.

The lacking my passport thing was the only obstacle from there (and the reception guy forgot to give me a bookmark for my dictionary, which he actually apologized for on my way out). After spending a bit of time in there I was finally able to appreciate the atmosphere, and I even got a substantial amount of reading done. But unfortunately, as there was no food or water allowed in the library itself (this is another of my raging frustrations with German libraries), my gurgling tummy got the best of me. I went on the hunt for snacks. Oh how I dearly miss Ex-Libris, and the practice of bringing multiple mugs of tea as well as a fresh supply of fruit in the Reg in Chicago! To my surprise and delight there was a small cafeteria room in the basement, where I found a wonderfully cheap coffee machine. Fancy coffee. A fancy espresso-spitting vending machine for the soul purpose of appeasing people who were pissed at the over-complicated library systems. Or at least that is how that vending machine and I became friends - I vented, and it fed me warm drinks. I mean, it had three different options for the hot chocolate: with milk, with water, with cream. So the 25-euros and the maze of stairs and the coat checking and the reception guy is in some ways, worthwhile.

That was my adventure on Wednesday, after two students in my Ethnology class pointed out where the public library was on their way to the cafeteria at the Humboldt. What I am finding difficult, now that I have been here for a while and the surprise and interest of me as an American exchange student has sort of worn off, is to follow up on these friendships. I have met great people in my classes, really cool, people studying Finnish and who spent a year after high school working in meat markets in Australia and the like. People who dress well, and dress down and make it look good. People who make incredible comments in class, comments that make me think twice about what I read the night before (if I managed to understand the reading, that is). And although I did have lunch with two really nice girls at the Humboldt before break, and although I have good passing conversations with a couple of people before and after class, and although I have a couple of emails of students that I've met at the Freie Uni who study English and think it's cool that I'm American, how can I actually convey to them that I want them to become my friend? How can you turn an email from someone working on a presentation with you to a totally casual hanging-out or getting coffee on the weekends? Part of me wants to just email and say, I'm not new here anymore, but I am still an international student, and I'm here to get to know Germans, so can you let me know if you know of any parties and then can you invite me to one? Okay, now I'm venting a bit. And I'm answering my own question: I guess it does take a dose of intentionality at first. It's not such a crime to be incredibly honest and say, I'd like to meet people, please help.

What's great about having a German class with Erasmus students (that's the big exchange-student network for people in Universities in the European Union), is that they appreciate the difficulty in making friends. One girl, an Italian named Chiara, was telling me how surprised she was at how little Germans reach out to exchange students. She sort of expected that it worked like at her University in Bologna, where people hang out for at least half an hour after class just chatting and finding out when they could all meet up again next. It's refreshing to learn that I'm not alone here. And I assume that those same problems apply for german students too, particularly those who did not grow up in Berlin or wherever town their school is in. People stay friends with their high school friends in such a way that it is not necessary to make new friends in University. It takes a while to meet people in such a huge school in such a huge city; it's not easy to find good roommates, or to find the right club or team.

And speaking of roommates! Mine is coming back MANANA, tomorrow, from her epic month-long trip to Columbia, where she spent Christmas with Diego's family and friends. Anna was supposed to arrive on Friday, but a major snowstorm in Madrid caused her flight to be cancelled. That's crazy, right? Snow in Madrid? Then I heard that starting Sunday the plane company, Iberia I believe (?), decided to go on strike. So at least that sounds more normal for Spain than weather-related delays. But Anna has been stranded in Caracas, Venezuela for the weekend and has been trying to call her nearly frantic parents (who live in Freiburg, south-west Germany, near Heidelberg) whenever possible. Her Mom then calls me and tells me the news. The most recent update is that she's left Caracas and will be spending the night in a Hotel in Madrid, before finally flying to Berlin in the morning. I will have to juggle my time a bit to be home to let her in, but I cannot wait to see her and have another person to cook with at night again. I will have to yell at her at some point for being gone for so long, because, although it's been quiet, I am just about done with having this apartment entirely to myself.

So the rest of the week went as follows:

Wednesday: class and library troubles at the StaBi.

Thursday: skipping my optional class (come on, I'm not getting credit for it anyways) to have tea with Gerd (my former employer? see "Rennfieber" entry from December) and Jenni (who is taking over my job in which I was supposed to get discovered by Hollywood). That was followed by similar library struggles, except this time at the Freie Universitat library. How can they possibly expect me to know my password, when they never gave it to me in the first place? Oh well. Kate, Jenni and I then met up late that night to go to the small Yorckstrasse movie-theater, where we saw the oddly exciting film Jerichow with an incredibly good-looking actor (robert, forgive me) named Benno Fuermann. The moon was full, and the walk home in the cold was quiet and peaceful.

Friday: a non-optional class, and then a coincidental run-in with Nancy's son's girlfriend Julia, who recognized me in the small cafeteria under the Law building. Oh how proud I was to be recognized among so many on that campus! It was great to spend time chatting with her, and still a bit unbelievable that we both happened to be in that cafeteria at the same time. I then SUCCEEDED at taking out five books on Johann Gottfried Herder for my Intellectual History in Berlin class, all of which may be somewhat helpful for my research paper. That night Jenni, Kate and I met up again and ate pizza at a great (and tiny) Italian restaurant. We then went out for some cocktails (I had a... Polar Bear?) and turkish cookies around the Kottbusser Tor area.

Saturday: Meryl King is in town! Who needs to attend Chicago when Chicago comes to visit you? She is doing a month-long German program at, surprise surprise, the exact same Uni that I am at, the Freie Universitat. We met by her U-Bahn station in the town of Charlottenburg, where she is staying with a German host. I am really glad to be able to pass along some surviving-in-Berlin wisdom to Meryl, who is steadily getting her German back from our time in Dagmar's class freshman year. Our big accomplishments were getting a month-transportation pass and then buying a sim-card for her Turkish/European cell-phone, which we celebrated with tasty breakfasts at the Kant Cafe. We then did a big walking tour all along the Kudamm and then from Potsdamer Platz to the Gates and down Unter den Linden, where we made a side-stop at the Komisch Oper's annual costume sale to check out the crazy costumes and old wooden furniture (see picture). A quiet night of resting my feet and defrosting with tea ensued.

Sunday: Skyping day, chilling day, day of finishing "The Story of Doctor Dolittle" (what a great christmas gift), movie-watching day ("Little Miss Sunshine", also a great christmas gift), a SLEDDING day, or at least a day for enjoying the frigid sunshine and taking pictures while watching kids in big puffy coats climb onto wooden sleds on the Kreuzberg, and finally, a day for dinner parties and brownie baking. Meryl came over (didn't even get lost!) to help with the brownies, and we went together to Jenni's apartment (which is not far, a walk) for a seriously gourmet feast. Pork tenderloins with delicious things stuffed inside, Quinoa-and-Fennel-Pilaf, lots of good wine, an impressive assortment of cheese, home-made caramel corn (to die for), and last but certainly not least fudgy, slightly undercooked, sweet, made-from-a-mix, real American-style Brownies.

Monday: Well, Monday is almost over. Actually it ended two hours ago. I'd like to think that I recovered quickly from the jetlag, what with the beer-tasting and fun of having Morgan here... but like I said, my Mondays simply start late.

(By the way, I promise that I won't go day-to-day in my entries from now on. It was just a fun new experiment, and a nice divergence from typing in German)

Weihnachtszeit

2009-01-04T01:22:00.023+01:00

No matter where one goes in Berlin in December, Christmas marks the city. There are lit angels hanging from street lamps and the smell of Bratwurst lingers in the streets. A mug of overwhelmingly sweet Gluehwein makes the early sunsets bearable and even adds a touch of coziness to the thin winter air. But what I found most comfortable, most satisfying, and most wonderful this Christmas was actually spending time away from the mayhem of German Weihnachtsmaerkte in order to be in Boston, to be at home. Spending time getting to know what it is like being with family again brings many more rewards than challenges.

Notable things from pre-vacation: having a seriously annoying cold in Berlin for a good two weeks before leaving for Boston, experiencing my first visit to the doctor's at a "throat-nose-ear" office nearby, attempting to cure myself with their recommended herbal remedies, seeing Die Fledermaus at the Komisch Oper and thereby introducing Robert to that operatic family tradition, FINALLY seeing Jilly McVicar to catch up and talk about Berlin over a Turkish-brunch, eating Fondue for the first time with Jenni, Jenni's mother and Kate and topping the evening off with Kate's Christmas Stollen, having a German-styled Christmas at Robert's grandparent's house with "Kaninchen" and the first lighting of various small wooden figures that smoke, making an attempt at non-stressful Christmas shopping at the Operahouse christmas market, and having wonderful pre-christmas meals at Nancy's house and at my guest-family's house before heading home. Needless to say eating, and eating well, was a big theme this holiday.

Looking ahead: I have around six weeks before the end of the semester. Robert and I returned from the States yesterday. We found the apartment being well used by the wonderful Morgan and the energetic Aileen, both dear friends from Chicago. My roommate will join me again mid-January from her voyage to Colombia, and in three weekends I plan on meeting Robert and his mother's family in Dresden for his grandmother's 70th birthday. After that EB will be coming for a visit (which will certainly involve German beer and probably some Gluehwein) after seeing Erin in Paris and before meeting friends in Poland.

But until then, I shall get to know a different side of Berlin: the state-libraries. I will register at the "Stadtbibliothek", a.k.a. the StaBi (not to be confused with the Stasi, which spied on and tortured people in the DDR) and STAY there until I make progress on my research papers. The due dates are creeping up on me, and there is still so much German left to master (or attempt to) before feeling the sense of accomplishment that accompanies a semester abroad.

For now, I am enjoying a calm evening after a hearty dinner with Morgan, Robert and Aileen, one accompanied by Hefeweise, dark, and light German beer and some variety of meat with potatoes. I am currently quite content doing nothing but drinking peppermint tea, cleaning and unpacking while listening to old Will Smith albums with Robert, who returns to Breslau in a couple of days. I am gradually getting ready for classes (or at least reacquainting myself with the mindset of a student) and I am planning on a late night skype-call home. A saturday night cozy indoors while the snow falls quietly outside (snowing, in Berlin?!?). Contrastingly, Morgan and Aileen are out partaking in the Berlin club culture, exactly as they should.

(Robert in my father's "superman" snow suit at home in Boston)

Fur alle, die meine bescheidenden Worten hier lesen, ich bedanke mich herzlich bei euch und verspreche euch mehr. Ich wuensche euch auch einen wunderbaren Rutsch ins Neues Jahr, und einen gemuetlichen Winter, der uns jetzt in Berlin schoenen und ruhigen Schnee bietet.

my 21st birthday: the BALTIC SEA, lasagna and Gluhwein

2008-12-15T03:07:00.012+01:00

How is it that the most memorable moments happen when one is totally caught off guard? The best presents are the surprises, what one would never ask for but would love to have. Robert gave me the surprise of a lifetime as my 21st birthday present: a rented car and a getaway to the island of Usedom, on the Baltic Sea.

Although I wasn’t expecting Robert until Thursday, he rung the doorbell at 7pm just as I was about to head to the grocery store. Is someone dropping off a package?- I didn’t recognize his voice and went downstairs expecting a DHL delivery man. Ah! A day early! I had expected to have a quiet weekend in Berlin, but he gradually gave me more and more information. I was to pack warm clothing, not worry about fitting everything into one bagpack since I could bring a suitcase, bring some good walking shoes, and go with him food shopping for milk, eggs, bottled water, necessities. I could pack some CD’s and movies, bring some books, and plan for about a 3-4 hour ride to wherever it was that we were going. We were going to meet “someone” at precisely noon right in the center of town the next day. I asked ten times whom it was that we were going to “meet”; he responded that he doesn’t know this person, and neither do I. Hmmm… what could he mean by that?

We were packed and ready to go, but we left our luggage in my apartment (fishy, I thought…how could we meet someone to take a trip with without having our luggage?). A half-hour later, we follow an address that Robert had written down to a car rental place. A car rental place?!? True, people we do not know and a good reason to pick up the luggage later! Luckily Robert had his driver’s license with him after all (sort of panic moment there…), and the company ran out of Peugeots (his preferred choice), so they had to give us a B-class Mercedes. With a good sound system, fabulous gas mileage, and lots of trunk space. We nicknamed it Dax, which means “badger”, since it sort of looked like one.

So Robert, Dax and I survived Berlin traffic and headed through the snow-covered fields of empty Brandenburg. An hour later we were in Mecklenburg-Vorpommern (the northern province where Angela Merkel is from) and then we were greeted by a sign on the bridge, Wilkommen an der Insel Usedom.

We stayed in a little vacation house near the village of Korosow (not to be confused with Kosovo which I did many times). A short walk away in one direction was the Baltic sea, its calmer, land-sheltered side. A slightly longer walk away in the other direction was again the Baltic sea, but much stormier and with bigger waves. The beach itself reminded me a bit of cape-cod, except that on Usedom dense pine forests began right where the sand ended. Lots of shells, very few people, and general tranquility.

On Saturday we took a daytrip to Stralsund, an ocean town where Bush once stayed for a G8 summit (yes, apparently he goes to those). But more importantly, here is the home of two really important “Ocean-museums” – the Baltic Sea Museum and the “Oceaneum”, both complete with aquariums. The first museum is actually a remnant from DDR times, put together in the 70's I believe, and they left everything exactly as it was, meaning that it was a sort of museum of a museum. For instance, every animal species on display (many birds, some turtles, all things found in the Baltic) were labeled in German, Russian and Polish. Robert remembered going to this museum when he was little with his grandparents.

Contrastingly, the Oceaneum was brand new, totally high-tech (heavily Greenpeace-influenced movies, cool maps), and had a huge darkly lit room with life-size models of a blue, orca, humpback, and sperm whale.

Germany’s very own Squid-and-the-Whale display! On the floor of this gigantic room they had lounge chairs set up so that you could just chill there listening to whale sounds and feel tiny in comparison to the massive mammals above.

Perhaps the last thing that one should do after visiting an aquarium is eating the pretty fish that one just saw swimming around.

Well, that’s just what we did. We drove onto Ruegen, Germany’s largest island and a really popular tourist spot (particularly for east Germans back in the day since that was pretty much the only place they could go). We found our Lonely-planet-recommended restaurant in the tiny itsy bitsy town of Binz. We then went back to Usedom to pack up the car again and get ready to leave the next morning.

But finally, I turn twenty one! Six hours earlier than in Boston, too. We didn’t leave Usedom without a first birthday hoorah and a last walk on the beach. The weather had been foggy but peaceful the three days that we were there. But on Sunday December 7th, my birthday morning, we woke up early enough to catch the sunrise. We walked through some forest to a large cow pasture, and finally to the rougher side. We watched the waves for a while, totally overwhelmed at the beautiful scenery on and around the beach.

Back to Berlin, and considering there is no speed limit on German highways we made it to Kreuzberg an hour earlier than expected. When we came home my roommate and her parents, who were still visiting, showered me with birthday wishes. I found that my roommate had made a quark-cake for me in my absence and had bought the ricotta cheese we needed -which is awfully hard to find here- to start making lasagnas. The rest of the afternoon was spent chilling in the kitchen and making sauces to Eliza’s Motown mixes playing on my computer. We ended up with three big lasagnas, two meat and one veggie, a big tomato-mozzarella salad, garlic bread, and I believe no less than 8 bottles of Gluhwein (and of course some Amaretto to go with it).

Fifteen people came to my birthday dinner, including Nancy and her son Jan and my guest family. We drank all eight bottles throughout the night, ate all but ½ of the lasagnas, finished the salad, and devoured the cake. I was glad that no one minded sitting on the floor since we have relatively few chairs in our apartment. Everyone seemed to bring either wine or baked goods, even Kate brought me a Stollen, traditional German Christmas bread filled with sugar and nuts and raisons. My guest family gave me a much-awaited appliance for making Kaese-spaetzle, along with the recipe. Nancy shopped at her favorite store, the Oxfam bookstore in Kaiser-Wilhelm Platz, and gifted me an excitingly cheesy looking novel about the history of Poland, a dictionary to help me learn “Berlinerisch”, and a book of poems written by women in Berlin.

I hate to end this entry on a cheesy note, but I end most of my blogs with some sentimental “looking-to-the-future” sentence… so I’ll just say that I felt so incredibly proud and touched that the people that have made Berlin a home for me all came to help me celebrate the big 2-1. I know a more typical 21st involves a heavy amount of liquor and cheap beer, but I’m very content to save that for my first legal bar-crawl in Boston. Perhaps on New Years…?

Also, thank you so much, oh grand anonymous reader, for the nice Facebook messages and birthday emails. I’m hoping for yet another cake back in Boston, so that I can share it with my Mom, whose birthday was on the 6th. But then again, four-days straight of “birthday” is probably enough for one year.

(above: opening presents; below: quark-cake!)

Racing-fever

2008-12-12T17:06:00.007+01:00

Louisa actually has her own misgivings to overcome: is she only idealizing things? Heinrich does look a lot like his son, with whom Louisa was previously in love with but whom she later found fully disappointing. No, insists Louisa. Heinrich is a man of foundation and character; actually, he has exactly the type of personality that Eric lacks, and, in Louisa’s opinion, will never be able to develop.

But Heinrich replies that he is still way too old for her. He clearly shows signs of conflicted thoughts. He doesn’t want to see her marrying a “father figure” – she still has her entire life ahead of her.

Louisa can do nothing but smile in response. She doesn’t want a “father”; she wants a husband, and she doesn’t know anybody else that could compare to Heinrich.
She wants him.

Yes, these are my words. But thank goodness, this is not my writing. Someone that I met on campus one day “hired” me, so to speak, to translate a proposal for a TV-show. The show is intended for German television (German title: “Rennfieber”), and is technically speaking made in the genre of “romantic-drama”… in other words, it’s a soap. Really, the soapiest of the soaps: a love-story involving a beautiful young goddaughter and, believe it or not, horseracing.

Sappy story aside, I was surprised at how interesting it was to translate. I was translating a German document into English, much easier than the other way around. Just to think of how to translate German Redewendungen, expressions, was a really cool exercise because when we say them in English on a day-to-day basis we don’t really think of them as anything worth putting into writing. That was probably the hardest part: kaltschnäuzige Schnösel for instance, which has something to do with pig-snouts. I translated it in the end as “cold-hearted”, which is not quite as descriptive and visual but it still gets the point across. Luckily my roommate Anna’s mother, who spends a lot of time around horses, happened to be visiting. She helped me with some of the horse vocab such as “breeding” and “thoroughbred”, very big help since they weren’t in my dictionary. Unfortunately, every paragraph-long sentence in German takes three or four separate sentences in English, so I was worried that I was straying from the content when I wrote shorter sentences.

Around 15 hours later (over a few days, don't worry) I was done with the twelve-page text. Who knows if it’ll actually make it to the “small (TV) screen”. But damn, now I want to know who will fall in love next…