Sonderzug nach Pankow
I think I’ll go to Berlin. They understand me there.Archive for Germany
Travel, travel, travel
It isn’t a blog if I don’t write in it, but often, by the time I’m sitting on my kitchen counter, plugged into the internet, I’m too tired to create a narrative of what I’ve been up to. I spend most of my time in and out of schools – the school where I work, the Volkshochschule, and Humboldt University – but yesterday I traveled by S-Bahn to Bernau with Carola to test my rusty rattler of a bike on the trails. It held up marvelously, and in celebration, I had cassis and lemon gelato at a coffee shop before we headed home.
Three years ago, I promised a friend that I would visit her one day. So long has passed that I suspect she was beginning to doubt my sincerity. But as of about ten minutes ago, I have a confirmed plane ticket to London – the real one this time – and I will be appearing on her doorstep in about a month and a half. I’m traveling Air Berlin. Couldn’t get a breakdown of RyanAir’s hidden fees that met my standards and decided to err on the side of caution. With the credit card service fees they would have charged me, the cost would have ended up being comparable anyway, so I’m satisfied. When I was researching RyanAir, I came across this budget travel blog which seems to be quite interesting and well put together. Consider this a recommendation.
I haven’t been completely dead on the internet, though. I managed to remember a few of my dreams and get them up on Fearless Nights. I was beginning to worry that my early mornings would make me a never-contributor.
Barbarian Males Threaten Innocent Maidens Abroad
Living in Germany, like living in any country where one is just learning the language, is difficult for me sometimes. It isn’t always a language problem; sometimes simple-seeming tasks turn out to be quite different, from culture to culture. I was trying to find out how one goes about getting a doctor’s appointment in Germany when I stumbled on this article from 1894 in The New York Times, about study abroad in Germany:American Girls in Germany: Their Independance is Often Misunderstood.
The point of the article is that the ‘Continental Education’, the notion that young people of a certain class must go abroad in order to acquire a certain social polish, is foolish. It is possible to receive a perfectly acceptable education at home in North America. This is definitely true today, when as many Europeans want to go to North America to study, it seems, as North Americans want to spend a year or two here. The article, on the other hand, takes such an anti-European tone that that message is lost. It was written before the cultural upheaval of the twentieth century, but the issues it focuses on support rather than question the intolerances of certain eras, so I feel no qualms about mocking them.
The experience of the foreign, the article tells us, is very threatening to young women. They should never be exposed to other cultures, lest they develop an unhealthy tolerance or, God forbid, appreciation for lifestyles different from their own. Young girls are impressionable and foolish, and the appealing wisdom of a Herr Doktor might weaken their certainty that the American way (stone-solid) is the only correct way to live. Where sexual harassment is a clear threat to blonde American beauties abroad, the loss of faith good American girls are sure to experience, when they go to worship in frigid Lutheran churches where no one will meet their gaze, and the services are conducted entirely in a language they don’t understand, is the true threat.
Study abroad causes atheists who prefer coffee and rolls for breakfast.
What startles me a little is that, extreme as this article is, the values it espouses have not completely disappeared. Considered the final season of Sex & the City lately? The barbarian Russian, brilliant, educated, artistic, more worldly than our humble American narrator, symbolic of everything that is not New York, worms his way through Carrie’s tough exterior, eventually persuading her to follow him to glamorous Paree. There, people are cold and inconsiderate, and Carrie, without her group of supportive Dolce-wearing gossips, is very, very lonely. She and the Russian, her only friend in the cold beyond, fight and (here’s the one point I expect you’ll remember from the episode) the Russian SLAPS her, revealing the fiery monstrosity of the continental temperament. Mr. Big shows up, a knight in a shining designer suit and whisks her back to America, to safety. Europe, my friends, is a dangerous place. Women are not treated with the gentle kindness they ought to be. Whether it’s 1894, or 2004, any right-thinking mother will not allow her innocent flower to set foot upon its barbarian soil.
Lest wealthy families continue to send their daughters abroad where they might contract free thinking, our New York Times concludes as follows:
“If the girls are going abroad, let them “finish” their education here and wait till they are well out of their teens before they go. Then send them well and properly chaperoned.
That’s it. I’m taking the red feathers out of my cap. Then, hopefully, someone will treat me with a little respect and I’ll get a doctor’s appointment before June.
A Guidebook Project
Am I proving my age-old unreliability as a blogger? Could be; I haven’t checked in in quite some time. Between ski camp in the Czech Republic, and two weeks touring with my parents, I haven’t been around the computer much. I have so many stories to tell, and so little desire to stare into the screen and tell them.
I don’t have that much longer here in Berlin. That’s what people keep telling me – Tandem partners, teachers at my school, classmates. After being on holiday for so long, this leaves me feeling quite disconnected, and as if I won’t be connected to anything for some time. Wurzellos. Though I’ve been here since September, I’m starting to feel like a tourist again.
A lot of words for not feeling like writing online.
After weeks of working together, my quiet photography class is opening up. There’s a German man who, twenty years ago, would have liked to have become a photojournalist, couldn’t risk supporting his family on a student’s lack-of-salary, and is finally pursuing his dream, a near-silent Frenchman who takes exquisite photos, and a couple of cheerful highschoolers. I’m enjoying the company, though the shared darkroom space is difficult; I have to wait in line for the developing basins and don’t have nearly as much time as I’d like to work on a shot, getting the tone just right. When my photos are fished out of the fixer, rinsed, and put in the dryer, they always end up scratched, so I try to snag them wet and bring them home, clipped to the handlebars of my bike to dry. It’s a system that seems to work. Still, part of me wishes I were home with my own equipment, losing hours at a time in my brother’s laundry room.
The other day, because the weather was nice, I wore my traditional Chinese brocade jacket to school. It’s covered with dragons and phoenixes, which Freddy, a friend of mine from Western, says bring good luck. Freddy’s blessing made me feel much more comfortable wearing it; though it’s beautiful, I wouldn’t want to appropriate someone else’s traditional costumes if they found my wearing them offensive. I wear it when I’m in a good mood or want to have an especially good day. At home, people usually ask me why I’m so dressed up, though often, I wear it over a pair of jeans. I had a completely different reaction here in Berlin, in my school: I was told I looked like a Japanese girl, asked if I was trying to make a political statement, and had “Konnichiwa” shouted at me in the hallways and in class by students. It made me really uncomfortable. I don’t know very many people who would be comfortable behaving so ignorantly in such a loud, public fashion.
Final thought: I bought my Lonely Planet guide to Berlin before I came here, to get myself excited about living in the city, and I’ve explored many of the sites listed in its pages and dozens beyond that, but I’ve been considering the idea of going on guidebook, and attempting, somewhat systematically, to visit every site listed in the text- not in a rushed, walk in walk out check it off sort of way, but giving each site the time and consideration it merits – and then writing about it here. I thought I might make a list of all of the sites that I haven’t been to, or haven’t explored in the sort of depth I feel they should be, and invite anyone who would like to come along for the adventure to join me. Any takers? The popular opinion among travelers seems to be that guidebooks are limiting and guide you away from what’s really interesting in a city, but I suspect there’s a lot of interesting Berlin to see between and surrounding The Sights, that I wouldn’t make it to otherwise.
Hah! Und Em.
It’s an important part of German culture, yet I’ve always avoided it. I’ve walked through it, even tried a few things on, but the few things in my wardrobe that come from H&M, paradise of poorly-made, tacky, inexpensive fashion, were either hand-me-downs or dumpster-dives – other people’s cast-offs. I was sure there were reasonable items there; often, when a student of mine would wear something fabulous, and I would ask her where she got it, she’d tell me “H&M,” like it’s obvious. Yet anything I tried on made me look horribly out of proportion, all lumps and dumpy bumps under smooth fabric. Shopping at H&M is a bit like visiting a thrift store: you sift through rack upon rack and, if you’re lucky, something worthwhile will turn up. If you’re having a really good day, it might even look good on. I haven’t had a whole lot of good H&M days.
I came to Germany with a single suitcase, and have been wearing a cycle of the same clothes all year. I wanted to add a few new t-shirts to the collection, so I stopped in to see what I could find. In the changing room, the mirrors were rigged in such a way that I could see what I looked like from behind and from the front at the same time.
My goodness. I don’t know if I’ve ever had a full-on view of that. It isn’t often one gets the opportunity to evaluate one’s own backside as others do. Not bad at all, really. And my haircut, which I never got the chance to see from the back, is really quite nice.
In conclusion, I need tighter jeans.
A long silence. First, I was skiing in the Czech Republic with my tenth graders, then upon my return to the grey, gloomy streets of my beloved Berlin, I discovered that my internet connection was at the point of death, the faint throbbing of bits and bytes the only indication that it hadn’t completely left me. I’ve been getting better acquainted with Berlin’s internet cafes, seeking out the ones where it’s comfortable to linger, where the food is good enough that I’m buying a sandwich or a cup of coffee not just because it rents me a table for an hour or so, but I’m still fairly shameless; all of the cafes in Zitty‘s “Essen und Trinken” issue that mention W-LAN have been highlighted, and I’m dropping by anything within reasonable distance from my house, one by one.
My skiing companions: Leni & Holger
At the moment I’m eating a mango chutney chicken foccacia at St. Oberholz at Rosenthaler Platz. “Essen & Trinken” calls it “a communal office for Mitte’s (underemployed?) freelance creatives. That, it may be; nearly everyone here has a laptop open, and the place is bustling. If these people are underemployed, however, it could be because they’re not actually working; both of my immediate neighbours have been on Facebook for the past 15 minutes or so.
He’s probably not actually “working”
Getting here was a puzzle; the cafe sits right on an U-bahn station, but ver.di, the BVG’s union, is on strike. Rather hubristically, a few weeks ago, I wondered aloud why the U-bahn stations have doors, if they never close. They do close, when the union is on strike, and we have to rely on S-bahn to get around. Thank goodness the weather is getting warmer; my bike carries me where the trains don’t, and I’m actually getting to know the city better.
BVG, I miss you!
I’m not afraid of sleep.
Mr. Stephen Frost invited me to join his dream blog, Fearless Nights and now I can’t wait to get to sleep so I’ll have something to write about. Thrilling dreams for thrilling stories. Will my unconscious get performance anxiety and bring me only dreams as bland as a beige pantsuit?
I signed up for a darkroom photography class at my Volkshochschule, for the language practice as much as for the chance to give my old Canon the sort of workout it deserves. It’s elderly, but certainly not ready to be put to pasture. This week, to get us comfortable with the darkroom equipment, the instructor had us play with photo paper. We got to select objects from a series of trays, and arrange them to make interesting designs in black and white. I have glowing donkeys marking along the shadow of a piece of film, a gnome, framed with sand and feathers, a collection of keys surrounding a watch with a cupid instead of time on its face, and larger keys, framing a vine-draped walkway. I tried to make Mr. Dunkel a Volksbuhne logo out of a noodle, but I accidentally spilled light on the paper, and it came out grey, grey, grey.
It was exciting, and even somewhat liberating, to work where the photographic image, printed from a negative, was only a small part of the final image, if present at all. That I slipped enlargements from the scraps of film that were part of our repertoire of objects might even be called cheating; we haven’t learned enlarging yet, and I have yet to admit to any previous experience. But I couldn’t resist the chance to combine images with the impressions of objects. It was tremendous fun.
Rock AG is a fantastic name for a band; it’s like calling your band “After-school Rock Club”.
Jens Lekman, the love of my life, was in Berlin this weekend to play a show at Lido in Kreuzberg. On his albums, Jens has a lovely voice, but live, it’s tremendous. The audience was happy and danced along to his songs, but went absolutely wild when he whistled the theme to Unser Sandmännchen (who wouldn’t?). Berlin cheered and stomped him back onstage for encore after encore, until he finally told us that if he sang even one more song, he would fall asleep right there at the keyboard in the middle of the song and ruin it for everyone, but was anyone going out dancing later? Would we go out dancing with him? I hope some of the audience took him up on it.
The chandelier at Lido
The most beautiful man in pop music, during one of his many encores.
U-Bahnhof Schlesisches Tor
The view from the Schlesisches Tor U-Bahn platform by night. Two restaurants offering delicious veggie burgers are within a stone’s throw of this station.
Klaus Kinski, Saviour
My interest in German cinema is new. It didn’t start with the Berlinale and it didn’t start with Goodbye, Lenin!, but with an enlightening trip back to the beginning with The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari which I had, until I crossed into Germany, yet to see. Best movie ever. And there’s a marvellous display dedicated to it at the film & television museum.
The Berlinale international film festival is on, and though I’ve been pretty busy this week, I’ve made it to a few movies. The brother is visiting and when I couldn’t go to a movie myself, I send him along and he seemed to have a good time.
Ms Miller buzzed last night to see if anyone wanted an extra ticket to Asyl – Park & Love Hotel. Knowing nothing about it, I interrupted a “Last Night in Berlin” pub and restaurant mini-crawl with the brother to come and check it out. I strongly suspect Ms Miller has taste.
Whether the movie was good or not, we did not find out. Having accidentally strayed into the wrong line to get into the cinema, I got to know Klaus Kinski on a personal level. The film they were screening was in fact Jesus Christ erlöser, a documentary about the Jesus tour speaking engagements the German actor did toward the end of his life.
I found some footage from it on YouTube. The version we saw was subtitled, but I suspect you can get the idea of what it was like, all over-an-hour of it, by looking at this un-subbed clip.
We all, completely without shame, fell asleep.
Slouching past the East Side Gallery
What was that wild snarl of yarn in my last post to become? When we were in Sweden the other weekend, I spotted so many girls wearing adorable slouchy hats. I’ve seen hats like this around Berlin, but nowhere here have I seen as many, and in so many wonderful colours. I couldn’t resist making one for myself.
I’m terrible at keeping up with celebrity fashion, but when I googled around for a pattern, I discovered that Lindsay Lohan inspired this trend. It wasn’t something uniquely and adorably Swedish, but the latest from the world’s favourite tabloid fodder.
I knit slomoeknits’ slouchy copy-cat hat, but to a slightly larger gauge for slouchier effect. Originally I planned to improvise, adding elements from other patterns to get the effect I was looking for (super extra slouchy), but this hat knit up so nicely that I ended up sticking to the pattern the whole way. It’s so cozy, and was perfect for a visit to the East Side Gallery, which, oh shame, I hadn’t been to see before.
The East Side Gallery is the longest remaining stretch of the Berlin wall, reaching from the Oberbaumbrucke, the gorgeous bridge pictured below, to the Ostbahnhof, the eastern train station which was Berlin’s central station until quite recently. The most famous paintings on the Berlin Wall are along this strip.
The Oberbaumbrucke links the Friedrichshain and Kreuzberg districts of Berlin.
After the wall came down, artists from all over the world came together to paint the eastern side of the Berlin wall, which had been untouchable. The paintings on the side of the wall facing the street are by these artists, and on the other side, facing the river, in the so-called ‘death-strip’, the paintings are by local graffiti artists.
The ‘death-strip’ separating the two walls. There’s a wonderful representation of this space in Wim Wender’s Wings of Desire (der Himmel uber Berlin) in which Cassiel realizes that Damiel is finally falling, becoming like humankind, when he sees his human footsteps in the untouched sand that separates these two pure-white walls. An escapee leaves a trail behind in the sand, when he passes between the walls, making it easier for the guards to catch him and murder him for his treason. The sand captures the traces of life. Now, the wall is covered with the signs of life, and the sand has disappeared under the tread of thousands of footsteps.
The paintings that cover the wall speak of Berlin’s history, of a divided and unified city, of peace and of understanding. The gallery calls itself a monument to freedom.
No more wars. No more walls. A united world.
All the best walls have doors in them.
