deN innereN Schweinehund überwinden

(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

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...

(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!