What I've been up to lately...

It's been a long time since I've written, because my class came to an end on Thursday, and before that I was busy with... something? The past few days have been a bit of a blur. Wednesday we had a class pizza party at Die Zwölf Apostel, a restaurant underneath the S-Bahn Bogen right by the Pergammon Museum. On Friday I went to the Berlinische Gallerie to see the John Heartfield exhibit finally... it was really cool, but the rest of the museum was a bit of a letdown. Then that evening Yukako and I went all the way to Potsdam to see a silent film from 1919 called "Unheimliche Geschichten". We got a bit lost trying to get there, ended up walking through a garden colony, seeing a wedding reception, and walking through the woods, but we finally arrived, and even on time. Then on Saturday I saw a photography exhibit of all of the photos the German stock exchange has purchased over the past 10 years, which was really cool. Then I got a text message from Lilo, so I went to her apartment for coffee, which turned into dinner at a cute Italian restaurant on Kollwitzplatz. And on Sunday Yukako and I went to the Tierpark, which is the former East Berlin zoo (not to be confused with Zoologischer Garten, which has Knut the polar bear). It had the cutest baby animals!!! Almost every third animal had babies born this spring, and we basically fell in love with all of the baby wildcats. Then this morning I had breakfast with Lilo, because she was leaving for Zingst today, and I won't get to see her again before I leave. Ok, I should head out, because this place is about to close!

Fete de la Musique

The communist apartments at Frankfurter Tor, close to the used book store I went to Sunday morning before...
...meeting Yukako for Curry Wurst at Konnopke's Imbiss, the most famous Curry Wurst in all of Berlin.  It was good, but really, it was just a hot dog covered in ketchup--I had heard it was spicy, but it was really just a bratwurst with a dusting of completely non-spicy curry powder.  Oh well, can't go wrong with a hot dog
After that we went to the Kultur Brauerei, which was having a Mode Markt, or a fashion market.  We saw some really eccentric hats--things you'd need to pin into your hair to have them stay on--strange clothing, and some cute, but expensive accessories. 
On Sunday we went to the Fete de la Musique, a free concert with probably 20 different locations across Berlin.  We were at the AnnaBlumeSoWohlAlsAuchZumDrittenMannBuhne, which was basically just at Kollwitz Platz.  We were too far away to get any pictures of the first band, Element of Crime, but this was the second band, Virginia Jetzt, who I also saw at the Immergut Festival back in 2006.  

The singer was pretty hot, but the sun was shining in his eyes the whole time, and he was kind of squinty.  

No time...

Our 15 minute break was cut down to 15 minutes, so unfortunately I don't have enough time to write anything interesting... a classmate decided to make her 5-10 minute oral report at least 40 minutes long... ugh... 

Going to Yukako's tonight to hopefully watch a movie, since the one we wanted to see in the theater is 2 hours long and doesn't start until 10:15 pm.  Going to dinner at Lilo's tomorrow.

Demonstration

Today, as I was heading to class, I was surprised to see the tram almost ready to leave, although it was 3 minutes early.  Rushing to jump into the door, I was relieved to have caught it.  At the next stop, though, the display read that another M1 was coming in 3 minutes... strange, the trams normally aren't late.  Then, two stops later, the driver announces that he is taking the same route the 12 tram takes, because there are people demonstrating from Alexanderplatz to who knows where... and then I remember seeing flyers around Friedrichstrasse mentioning that students were demonstrating against tuition (students in Berlin currently do not pay any tuition, just a little bit of money for their semester transportation pass).  So at that point, I got off the tram, walked a stop to U-Bhf Rosenthaler Platz, and took the U8 one stop to the Goethe Institute... now I'm interested in seeing how many people show up to class late, or not at all.  Luckily I knew what the guy was saying, and I also know the subway system like the back of my hand, but if I had just arrived here and had not so great German, I'd have been so lost... 

Last night I went out with Yukako for sushi and drinks afterwards...  I can tell that I haven't drank in a while, because two cocktails totally did me in.  I slept until 10 am, and therefore wasn't able to go grocery shopping... so now all I have for dinner is onions... lol.  Ugh, class is starting in a few... got to go!

Fassbinder

Not too much going on right now... I came slightly early to check out a film by Fassbinder from the surly librarian, that I want to use during my oral report next week.  I knew there was more than one German language version, so I wanted to make sure it had the beginning that I had seen.  Other than that, my day consisted of showering and reading a little bit of the Fassbinder biography I bought from Dussmann the other day.  Well, class starts in 5 min, so I should get going...

Chemnitz

My weekend in Chemnitz was a lot of fun.  Clemens and Steffi’s apartment was really nice.  On Saturday we walked around a little bit, then went to the Schlossteich and went on a boat ride in a pedal boat swan and saw lots of cute baby ducks learning how to dive underwater.  Then we stopped and had a light lunch at a restaurant on the river, and then back to their apartment, where we watched “Burn After Reading”, and the 2^nd and 3^rd “Godfather” movies, which was a bit confusing, because I have only seen the last 10 minutes of the first one, but it was out of the rental place.  We had our “Mafia” themed party with spaghetti and meatballs, tiramisu, Italian chocolate cake, and lots of wine…

Then on Sunday we had brunch at the Brauhaus right across from the Rathaus… it was really nice and delicious.  They had pineapple encrusted in caramelized sugar, which was sooooo yummy.  Then we went to the zoo, where the first thing we saw was two lions… mating.  The zoo had lots of creepy monkeys, dwarf hippopotami, and even a petting zoo with some hilarious goats.  The rest of the afternoon we spent lying around the apartment. Clemens and Steffi had sunburns, and we were all tired from being in the sun all day.  Then I had to go back to Berlin… I got back to my apartment around 11:45, I think, and now I’ve been scrambling to do a million things before going to class today, like laundry and grocery shopping.  And now I need to head back to class, because I might actually be late getting back (I walked to Starbucks during our 30 minute break to grab coffee).

The "Schloss" at the Schlossteich, which is really a monastery. 
Karl-Marx's head.
Enten!
Flamingos at the zoo.

Pfau!

Eisbär

I got to hear a great song today as part of a classmate’s oral presentation on Die Neue Deutsche Welle, a musical movement from the 70s and 80s (with such bands as Nena, Falco, and Kraftwerk).  Here were the lyrics to the song she played:

Ich möchte ein Eisbär sein,

im kalten Polar,

dann musste ich nicht mehr schreien

all das wär so klar.

Eisbären mussen nie weinen.

 

[I’d like to be a polar bear

in the cold arctic

then I wouldn’t have to yell anymore

all of that would be so clear

polar bears never have to cry]

And all of that was set to synthesizers… I guess I just love it when Germans take themselves really seriously and then they go make a song like this… 

Well, not much else has really been going on outside of class, homework, and reading.  That will all change this weekend when I go to Chemnitz to visit Stefanie and Clemens—they’re possibly having a Mafia themed party—what that entails, I don’t exactly know, but a party sounds great right about now.    

The Tale of the Two Evil Blacksmiths

I had dinner with Lilo last night, which was fun.  I swear, she knows the most about Berlin out of anybody in the entire city.  I told her about an art exhibit I was planning on seeing at some point, by John Heartfield, a German who anglicized his name in protest against the NAZIs, who did anti-NAZI propaganda in the Dadaistic style of collage, and of course Lilo not only has several books of his work, but also knew him and told me where he lived in East Berlin (on Friedrichstrasse).

But what I found most striking about what we talked about was the story of the woman who she bought her house in Zingst from.  The house used to be a blacksmith’s workshop, and this woman had been married to the blacksmith.  She was a blacksmith’s daughter, and her only real option for marriage was to marry her father’s apprentice.  His first apprentice was her true love.  But it was during WWI, and he had to go off to fight for the Germans.  He actually survived the war, and had a few days to spend in Berlin before going back home to the small town in Mecklenburg-Vorpommern where the blacksmith’s daughter lived.  He walked out of the Stettiner Bahnhof (now S-Bhf Nordbahnhof) and was immediately run over and killed by the Strassenbahn (S-Bahn).  Later, the woman married her father’s next apprentice, and he was a mean, stingy man, who would make his wife come to him in the smithy to ask for money to do the little grocery shopping they had to do (they had a farm as well as a vegetable garden).  When she got back, she’d have to give him all of the change, and he would check to make sure  she hadn’t bought any sweets for their children.

The story goes on… so her husband had a brother, who was also a blacksmith, but he owned his own small company and had about 5 or 6 workers.  He was quite wealthy and he owned a large villa outside of Hamburg.  He was also a very hard man, who was cruel to his wife and children, as well as the workers.  One day, two of his workers beat him to death.  Normally, they would have been sentenced to death, but WWII had just begun, so they were sent to fight in a battalion of criminals, who were always sent to the most dangerous battles.  The wife of the Hamburg blacksmith was so grateful to these two men who killed her husband, that she sent them care packages throughout the entire war, but nobody knows what happened to them in the end, whether they lived or were killed in combat.  And so ends the tale...

Tuesday

On Tuesday I went home after class, had dinner, and then took the tram to Friedrichstrasse, where I got off and walked to Dussmann's, the Kulturkaufhaus, literally "cultural department store", which is basically just a gigantic bookstore.  I bought a small book on Fassbinder, because I've decided to do my oral report on him for my course here, and while I can talk about some of his films, I should know about his life as well.  

After that I went to Cafe Chagall to meet up with Yukako, which is underneath the S-Bahn, as well as the regional train tracks and the high speed train tracks, so it was really loud.  We sat outside, and it was pretty nice weather although it had thundered earlier in the day.  I could see the blinking light on top of the red and white tip of the television tower...  I had peppermint tea with fresh peppermint and honey, and Yukako had a Caipirinha.  I thought it was best to abstain from alcohol until I'm feeling healthy again.  

Nothing much to report other than that...  I spent this morning doing homework and reading "Der Schimmelreiter" by Theodor Storm.  Lilo recommended it, and the Goethe Institute library had a copy, so I checked it out on Monday.  I'm almost halfway through--maybe I can finish it by tomorrow and get out another book to take on my trip to Chemnitz to read on the train.  Well, class is starting in five minutes, so I'm going to head out!

Is it Friday yet?

I've been getting over a sinus infection, and I can't understand how it is only Tuesday, and I'm not even through half of today's class (I'm writing this during our 30 minute break).  I'm just so tired.  If I weren't sick, I'd say I was getting too much sleep, but I want to get better as fast as possible, and if my body thinks it needs 10 hours of sleep, who am I to argue?  

Because of not feeling terribly wonderful, I haven't been up to much.  Last night I made Bratwurst, which was yummy, and I have leftovers for tonight's dinner.  The most exciting food news were the mangos on sale for 50 cents at the fruit and veggie stand on Kastanienallee--I bought two this morning, and I'm tempted to go back after class and get some more.  The one I had with lunch was sooooo amazing.  It was ripe, juicy, sweet... a better mango has never been eaten.  

Apart from food, my other exciting purchase was two books on 

my master's exam reading list for just one Euro each at a bookstore on Alexanderplatz.  They were even hardcover!  Now I just have to worry about my suitcase exceeding the weight limit, because it was exactly at the limit when I came... will 2 books equal the weight of shampoo, conditioner and toothpaste I've used during my trip?  Let's hope so...

Ok, I should head back to class... 

Two Sides of the City

On Friday as I ran around doing errands in the morning (buying train tickets to Chemnitz so I can visit my friend Stefanie, buying credit for my cell phone, etc.) I noticed while waiting for the S-Bahn at Friedrichstraße that there was a really great view of the Reichstag from the platform; only it was blocked by two other platforms that the regional trains use.  So, instead of just getting on the train, I went back down the stairs, walked through the station to get to the far platform, climbed up the stairs, and took this lovely photo. 

 

Saturday was a fun day.  I started off by meeting Emily Bruce and her roommate Melissa at U-Bhf Eberswalderstraße and we rode the U2 to Alexanderplatz, where we switched to the 100 bus and got off at the Lustgarten, which is really not a garden of lust like I once thought, but rather the lawn in front of the Altes Museum (which holds old artifacts including the bust of Nefertiti) and the Berlin cathedral.  From there we walked to the Old National Gallery, then over the Spree to an outdoor market, which had mostly artwork, some of which was really good, but the rest of it was total kitsch.  We walked back to Unter den Linden, the tree-lined boulevard that makes up the heart of old Berlin, and came upon the German Historical Museum and a monument to the fallen soldiers of war.  We then crossed Unter den Linden to Bebelplatz (across the street from Humboldt University), where there was a book burning in 1933.  There is a monument in the middle of the open square, which is built underground, and it has a glass opening so pedestrians can get a view of the empty bookshelves, symbolizing the missing books.  Also on Bebelplatz are the German Opera and St. Hedwig’s Cathedral, where I snapped the following picture of this pigeon while waiting for my two companions outside.  Isn’t he cute? 

After that we took the 100 bus all the way to S+U-Bhf Zoologischer Garten, passing the Brandenburg Gate, the Reichstag, the Bundeskanzleramt (which looks like a washing machine), the Haus der Kulturen der Welt (“House of World Cultures” which looks like a pregnant oyster—not my own opinion, but it said so in Emily’s guidebook), the Siegessäule, and the Kaiser Wilhelm Gedächtnis Kirche along the way.  We headed to the only café I ever go to in that area, Café Hardenberg, and I had apple strudel and literally a bowl of coffee, which is what I always get there (normally I’m not so unadventurous, but this apple strudel is really good). 

 

After lunch it was almost time for me to go on the tour of Oberschöneweide, which I had signed up for at the Goethe Institut.  So I took the S-Bahn to Hackescher Markt, while Emily and Melissa were going to head back to our neighborhood to check out the market at Kollwitzplatz.  Going into the tour, I had no idea where Oberschöneweide even was.  It’s actually one station closer to Berlin than Adlershof, which is where one of my psychology classes was held when I spent my junior year of college here.  What does that mean?  It was far away.  I got to talk with a woman from my class who was also on the trip, though.  She’s from central Itally, near Assisi, and she has a Humboldt Stipendium to do research at the Archaeology Museum.

 

After switching trains several times and a short trip on the tram, we got off right before a bridge going over the Spree.  From there, our tour guide Matthias explained that Oberschöneweide got it’s name from the Weide trees growing on the banks of the river.  I had no idea what a Weide was, even when he pointed them out, but it turns out they are willows (they look different than the ones in the USA).  So Oberschöneweide literally means Upper Beautiful Willows.  Unfortunately that is where the beauty stopped. Oberschöneweide was mainly an industrial area for years, only now the buildings are mostly empty. 

As we crossed the bridge we ended up on Edisonstraße.  Edison as in Thomas Edison, inventor of the light bulb filament.  At an international fair, he sold the rights to produce it to a German, whose company eventually mutated into AEG, which along with Siemens was the most important producer of electric products in Germany. 

 

We then walked along Wilhelminenstraße, which in itself was interesting.  The right hand side of the street was completely industrial, while the left hand side was residential.  The next place we came to was an “industrial” park, which was a real park, but that had remnants of a loading dock where goods could be transported from the river to the railroad or from the factories to the river.  Here Matthias told us that at some point the Spree was connected to the Oder River by means of a canal, which went all the way to Silesia (an area of Poland, I think?), where they would send coal down river to Oberschöneweide, which was home to the a coal power plant, the first to produce three phase current, seen in the following picture:

 

Next door to this was a factory that produced electricity’s best friend—power cables.  The last place we saw was part of the shut down cable factory, which now houses a college of technology and business, which is the newest college in Berlin.  We were supposed to go to a café after that, but it mostly had just outdoor seating, and as you can see from the photos, it was pretty gray and had just started to rain.  It was also only 13 degrees Celsius on the thermometer when I got back to my apartment, so it was pretty cold out too! 

On Sunday I had brunch with Lilo and she told me that as a student at a university in the GDR they had to work in a randomly selected factory in Oberschoeneweide during their summer break, as a way of paying back the state for their education--she said it was like Dicken's descriptions of England from 100 years earlier... pretty crazy!

Walking around

The weather has been so hit-or-miss since I’ve gotten here.  I think we’ve had a 5-10 minute crazy heavy downpour almost everyday.  I left my apartment right after it stopped raining on Thursday night around 8:10 to go get some more medicinal tea (they have tea for almost every problem you could imagine: I no longer have a sore throat, so I thought I should switch out the Hals-Tee for some Husten (cough)-Tee since it worked so well).  I had planned on walking a few blocks to go grocery shopping at REWE, which is a fairly nice supermarket in the Kultur Brauerei (a huge former brewery that now holds restaurants, nightclubs, and also this grocery store), but as I left Rossmann’s pharmacy the Ersatzverkehr Bus (replacing the tram, whose tracks are under renovation momentarily) pulled up, so I hopped on and went to PLUS instead, which is a dirt cheap grocery store in the basement of a shopping mall.  And while there I must have pissed off at least 20 people, because I am terrible at shopping, especially in stores in Germany that I don’t go to on a regular basis, because I don’t know where all of the items are and the aisles are only wide enough for one cart to go down.  And of course I turned around several times, because once I got to the aisle with sauces (I wanted to make turkey schnitzel in a pepper cream sauce), I realized I had 600g of turkey, when I only needed 400g, so then I had to get twice as much cream.  Then I realized my apartment didn’t actually have a pan to put in the oven, so I circled around the store for the 100^th time and returned the turkey, got ground beef/pork instead, returned the cream, then got the package of spices to make bouletten (flat meatballs).  Oh, and I think in between those two events I got all of the ingredients for chili, but realized the package only called for 200 g of ground meat.  And then when I got to the register, the cashier was yelling at the guy ahead of me because he was trying to only pay for one beer even though he had two of them. 

When I was walking back from the subway stop, I realized how it was finally sunny, so I put away my groceries quickly, grabbed my camera, and went walking up my street and around the neighborhood.  I saw some pretty funny things during my stroll, including a potato sitting on the street, a sign on a bridal store saying “Will exchange wedding gown for an 3-room apartment within a 10 minute bike ride of this shop”, and some poor guy whose friend wouldn’t buzz him into the apartment building, who was calling him a “blöde Kuh” (stupid cow—it’s an insult) to no avail.  So here are some pictures from that walk (the first one was from a few days ago at Alexanderplatz).

How cool is it to purchase strawberries from a giant strawberry inside of the subway station?  I wasn’t there when it was open, unfortunately, but I bought my strawberries a few days ago from a similar giant strawberry outside of the Schönhauser Allee Arkaden when I was grocery shopping at PLUS. 

The middle apartment building (the one without the balconies) is mine.

This sculpture on Helmholzplazt reminds me of the weird red spinning thing at Porter Square that I am always afraid is going to fall down on me.

Homage to my mother—a sticker book for kids about not wanting to go to the hairdresser to have a haircut.  With over 100 stickers!!!

On the way back to Lychenerstrasse I crossed over Helmholzplazt again and literally stopped to smell the roses.  Berlin has some really beautiful parks—hopefully I get to Tiergarten again when it isn’t about to thunder. 

A Little Bit of Nightlife

Yesterday I was walking to the tram after class and I just missed it.  I was kind of mad, but it ended up being a good thing.  So I got onto the next tram, which was completely packed with people.  And somewhere along the way, I realized I saw some familiar red hair--it was Lilo, my former land lady!  She wasn't expecting to see me either--but we got off at her stop and sat at the Haltestelle talking until the next tram came.  She had gone to IES (my former study abroad program) to pick up her summer student, but the student never showed up.  With what happened to the flight from Brazil to France, I think she was a little worried, but the student had to change planes at Heathrow, so maybe she just missed the flight, since that place is huge.  Lilo told me that I had changed since she last saw me and that I looked much more serious than I did three years ago.  Could I have frown wrinkles on my forehead?  But I was in a rush, so I promised to call her today or tomorrow and set up a time when we can have dinner together (and she can cook either Konigsburger Klopse or Kohlrouladen--Swedish meatballs or stuffed cabbage--for me!)

Then I ran back home, ate 3 day old spaghetti, and then I left to meet up with Yukako in Friedrichshain.  I think Lilo was onto something, because instead of our usual wild antics we spent the evening playing the board game"Mensch ärger dich nicht" ("Sorry!") with her boyfriend.  There was still alcohol involved, though!  

This morning I figured out how to use the washing machine--the thing has about 15 different settings, and then about 7 other options which are important enough to have their own button, only one or two of which I understood.  Apparently it never went through a spin cycle, because my jeans were still soaked, but luckily I knew the word for spin cycle: schleudern!  While that was going on, I went to McPaper, which is like Staples or any other office supply store but with a cooler name, to buy some paper to take notes (forgot that the first day), and bought some bread at the bakery so I could pack a small sandwich for a snack.  I am in desperate need of some real food, though--I don't understand what I am buying at the supermarket, but my fridge is always empty.  So I'm going to head back to my apartment right now and then I'll go shopping, I guess.  Luckily the supermarket closest to my apartment is open until 10 pm--which is very late, even for Berlin, I think.  

First Day at the Goethe Institut, and already a familiar face

So at my placement exam this afternoon, I ran into a fellow Williams alumna, Emily Bruce!  She's even staying in my neighborhood, just 2 streets away from me.  It's really a small world--who would have thought that I'd run into somebody I knew?

The exam went well--I'm going to at least be in C1, but the interviewer said that depending on class size I might be moved to a higher class.  Or I might be taking the class in the morning (which would not make me happy--that would mean getting up much earlier than 11 am!)

So I have some grocery shopping to do, but the rest of the day I might spend taking some photos (since I finally unpacked my camera).  Here are the photos I took of my apartment, though:

The kitchen

The courtyard, which my apartment looks into

My bed

The living area

The charming, huge windows

Pfingsten

So today was Pfingsten, which is Pentecost, I believe, and that means a holiday in Germany. Yukako got back from Barcelona last night and we met up for lunch today. We had sushi (yay salmon!) at a great Japanese restaurant on my street called Sasaya that the person I'm subletting from had recommended to the previous tenant. Then we walked around Prenzlauer Berg for a few, from S-Bhf Prenzlauer Allee to Schönhauser Allee, from the Mauerpark to Kastanien Allee, all the way to Hackescher Markt where, after working up a hunger from all of that walking, we stopped at the Haagen Daaz shop and had some ice cream.

I've been doing a lot of reading for my MA exam reading list, mainly because my apartment doesn't have TV or internet, so there have been no distractions to keep me from doing my work. I hope that the Goethe Institut had a library I can borrow books from, because the libraries in Berlin charge 5 euros for a library card, and the Staatsbibliothek charges 25! For that money I could buy quite a few books. There is also a cheap bookstore on Alexanderplatz I might look into--they have books for pretty cheap I think (but they aren't open today because of the holiday).

I took a trip to Tiergarten yesterday, but within 15 minutes of arriving there it started thundering. I walked to the train station and a few minutes after getting on the train it was pouring. By the time I got back to U-Bhf Eberswalderstrasse, though, it had stopped. So then I decided to go out for a walk a little bit later, but ended up falling asleep. When I woke up half an hour later and it was thundering and pouring again! So I think my best bet in Berlin is to never be without my umbrella. And I intend on doing a lot of exploring while I am here. I coughed up the 72 euros for a monthly pass to use the bus, train, subway, and tram system, so I want to put it to good use. I was just thinking how cool it would be to read an entire book while riding on the Ringbahn (a fast train that rings around the city center).