I realized last night (while making my slow, tortuous way back to Berlin, through various train mess-ups and delays) that I've traveled about four weeks out of the last six. More specifically, I guess it was 32 days out of 45 - which makes a bit more than 2/3. It's been crazy and great.
I was also working this last week, while I was visiting friends and then in Belgium - it actually worked out well, to travel and translate at the same time.
I just did the calculations, and I actually even managed to earn more money this week than I spent - not a huge amount more, and it's not taking into account the fact that while I travel, I'm also still paying for my apartment and other running costs back in Berlin - but considering that travel is usually 100% spending and no earning, it doesn't seem too bad.
Maybe there's a future for me as a roving freelancer?
Friday, December 31, 2010
In Antwerp
BELGIANS: So friendly and helpful! I'd forgotten! (Flashback to Rebecca and me, on our cycle tour, hauling our bikes up to the platform of a train that was already pulling out of the station, and the train STOPPED FOR US and the nice conductor helped us load our bikes on. This would never, ever, ever, ever, ever happen in Germany.)
ANTWERP: So full of ultra-Orthodox Jews! In their hats and long black coats! Riding bicycles! I'm not sure I'd ever seen an Orthodox Jew ride a bicycle - but since this is Flemish-speaking Belgium and thus a lot like the Netherlands in many respects (but shh, please don't tell them I said that) of course they do here.
THE FLEMISH LANGUAGE: Not just a dialect of Dutch, but in fact many, many different dialects of Dutch. I had the good fortune to fall into conversation with a middle-aged local guy who was an expert on the Bruges dialect, at the bar of the hostel where I was staying. He and the woman at the reception told me about regional differences in how they pronounce things from how the Dutch pronounce things, and that you can tell which town in Belgium someone is from by hearing their dialect. "Even the next town over," the man said. "Oh, yeah, definitely," the woman said.
ANTWERP: So full of ultra-Orthodox Jews! In their hats and long black coats! Riding bicycles! I'm not sure I'd ever seen an Orthodox Jew ride a bicycle - but since this is Flemish-speaking Belgium and thus a lot like the Netherlands in many respects (but shh, please don't tell them I said that) of course they do here.
THE FLEMISH LANGUAGE: Not just a dialect of Dutch, but in fact many, many different dialects of Dutch. I had the good fortune to fall into conversation with a middle-aged local guy who was an expert on the Bruges dialect, at the bar of the hostel where I was staying. He and the woman at the reception told me about regional differences in how they pronounce things from how the Dutch pronounce things, and that you can tell which town in Belgium someone is from by hearing their dialect. "Even the next town over," the man said. "Oh, yeah, definitely," the woman said.
Tuesday, December 28, 2010
In Dutch, I Mean Flemish, I Mean Belgian, Oh, Whatever
I'm also so happy to be back in one of the homelands of one of my all-time favorite languages: Dutch!
Memorably described by my friend Rebecca as "German written by a clown," Dutch is approximately 45% English and 45% German with 10% alien-language thrown in. So if you speak the first two of those, you can usually sort out what Dutch is trying to say, at least when it's written. When spoken, unfortunately, the alien-language percentage jumps to about 50% (chhh sounds, etc.) so that's a little more difficult to penetrate. But still awesome.
Memorably described by my friend Rebecca as "German written by a clown," Dutch is approximately 45% English and 45% German with 10% alien-language thrown in. So if you speak the first two of those, you can usually sort out what Dutch is trying to say, at least when it's written. When spoken, unfortunately, the alien-language percentage jumps to about 50% (chhh sounds, etc.) so that's a little more difficult to penetrate. But still awesome.
In Bruges
This town seems to be spelled with a different number and combination of g's and umlauts in every known language, and I can't seem to get it straight. My dad wrote me back with this helpful comment: "In English we spell it Bruges, and pronounce it with a 'zh' sound, as in 'leisure'. Mostly, we just don't say it."
Indeed.
Celebrated arrival in Belgium last night by eating an enormous portion (it was the "small") of fries drenched in mayonnaise. Afterward, felt slight ill and figured I'd fulfilled my quota of deep fried things for the foreseeable future.
Bruges is known around Europe for being so ridiculously picturesque it borders on disneyworldesque, and in this, Bruges does not disappoint. Last night I wandered down the street from my hostel to the medieval town gate next to a row of old-fashioned windmills, then watched a drawbridge rise so a modern barge could squeeze through the narrow moat that surrounds the old town. Seriously, Bruges? You still have a moat?
Nighttime at the main square:
Also, all over the place are tours and things relating to the city's one big recent claim to fame: the 2008 movie "In Bruges," which apparently (I just finally looked it up) concerns two hitmen stuck, purgatory-like, in Bruges.
The weird thing is that this turns out to be the very same movie as the German title "Brügge sehen...und sterben?" (See Bruges...and die?) I feel like I've been hearing that title forever, so I assumed it had to be a different movie from this "In Bruges" thing I'm seeing advertised everywhere. But apparently, in this case, "forever" means "two years."
Indeed.
Celebrated arrival in Belgium last night by eating an enormous portion (it was the "small") of fries drenched in mayonnaise. Afterward, felt slight ill and figured I'd fulfilled my quota of deep fried things for the foreseeable future.
Bruges is known around Europe for being so ridiculously picturesque it borders on disneyworldesque, and in this, Bruges does not disappoint. Last night I wandered down the street from my hostel to the medieval town gate next to a row of old-fashioned windmills, then watched a drawbridge rise so a modern barge could squeeze through the narrow moat that surrounds the old town. Seriously, Bruges? You still have a moat?
Nighttime at the main square:
Also, all over the place are tours and things relating to the city's one big recent claim to fame: the 2008 movie "In Bruges," which apparently (I just finally looked it up) concerns two hitmen stuck, purgatory-like, in Bruges.
The weird thing is that this turns out to be the very same movie as the German title "Brügge sehen...und sterben?" (See Bruges...and die?) I feel like I've been hearing that title forever, so I assumed it had to be a different movie from this "In Bruges" thing I'm seeing advertised everywhere. But apparently, in this case, "forever" means "two years."
Monday, December 27, 2010
On the Train Again
The absolute best thing out of many bests over Christmas at my friend Lisa's family: Lisa's three-year-old nephew Julian and Lisa's mom Ulrike playing together with Julian's puppets. Julian was completely worked up and overtired, but categorically refusing to even think about bed; Ulrike was voicing the witch puppet in a straight-talking Rhineland dialect, telling Julian's frog puppet, "Go tell that boy Julian, he should go to bed!" Julian turned around and in all earnestness informed himself, via the frog, "You should go to bed."
Now I'm on a train out of Germany. (This new USB stick thing that gives me internet access anywhere there's a cell phone network, by the way, is quite possibly my new favorite item EVER.)
I've got some work to do this coming week, but no appointments specifically tying me to Berlin, and at some point I noticed an almost desperate desire to use that flexibility. Because, well, why stay at home if I don't have to?
I think this is what they call being bitten by the travel bug.
So the next couple days I'll be in Bruges, Belgium, and then briefly in Antwerp, before heading home in time for New Year's in Berlin. I noticed already on the train platform, when Lisa and her dad saw me off, that I was almost bouncing with excitement to be headed off for points new and unknown, instead of just the boring old west-east corridor back to Berlin I've done so many times before.
Also, can I just mention that Belgium has possibly the world's cutest trains? Rebecca and I noticed this on our Belgian/Dutch bike tour three and a half(!) years ago - we felt like we were in the prefects' carriage of the Hogwarts Express.
Now I'm on a train out of Germany. (This new USB stick thing that gives me internet access anywhere there's a cell phone network, by the way, is quite possibly my new favorite item EVER.)
I've got some work to do this coming week, but no appointments specifically tying me to Berlin, and at some point I noticed an almost desperate desire to use that flexibility. Because, well, why stay at home if I don't have to?
I think this is what they call being bitten by the travel bug.
So the next couple days I'll be in Bruges, Belgium, and then briefly in Antwerp, before heading home in time for New Year's in Berlin. I noticed already on the train platform, when Lisa and her dad saw me off, that I was almost bouncing with excitement to be headed off for points new and unknown, instead of just the boring old west-east corridor back to Berlin I've done so many times before.
Also, can I just mention that Belgium has possibly the world's cutest trains? Rebecca and I noticed this on our Belgian/Dutch bike tour three and a half(!) years ago - we felt like we were in the prefects' carriage of the Hogwarts Express.
Tuesday, December 21, 2010
The Year's Midnight, and the Day's
Happy solstice! From here on out, the days can only get longer - isn't that a lovely thought?
Today is both the winter solstice and the full moon - a total lunar eclipse, no less. (In my time zone, the eclipse happened after sunrise and moonset, so I didn't see it, but I'm still enjoying the idea.) Winter solstice and a lunar eclipse haven't coincided in 372 years, apparently, and though there's no particular astrological significance to these two things happening on the same day, there's somehow something resonant about it from the human side of things.
Winter solstice. The shortest day, the longest night, all in the depths of snowy winter. No surprise here that so many cultures have holidays around this time that involve candles and bonfires, celebrating light at the darkest time of the year.
Here's my favorite solstice poem, John Donne's "A Nocturnal upon St. Lucy's Day, Being the Shortest Day." St. Lucy's Day is actually December 13 - you might know it as the Swedish Santa Lucia - but Donne is writing about the longest night in the darkest winter, when the world seems dead - the solstice. I wouldn't worry about understanding everything he's saying... I love to read this poem aloud and just let it wash over me.
'Tis the year's midnight, and it is the day's,
Lucy's, who scarce seven hours herself unmasks ;
The sun is spent, and now his flasks
Send forth light squibs, no constant rays ;
The world's whole sap is sunk ;
The general balm th' hydroptic earth hath drunk,
Whither, as to the bed's-feet, life is shrunk,
Dead and interr'd ; yet all these seem to laugh,
Compared with me, who am their epitaph.
Study me then, you who shall lovers be
At the next world, that is, at the next spring ;
For I am every dead thing,
In whom Love wrought new alchemy.
For his art did express
A quintessence even from nothingness,
From dull privations, and lean emptiness ;
He ruin'd me, and I am re-begot
Of absence, darkness, death—things which are not.
All others, from all things, draw all that's good,
Life, soul, form, spirit, whence they being have ;
I, by Love's limbec, am the grave
Of all, that's nothing. Oft a flood
Have we two wept, and so
Drown'd the whole world, us two ; oft did we grow,
To be two chaoses, when we did show
Care to aught else ; and often absences
Withdrew our souls, and made us carcasses.
But I am by her death—which word wrongs her—
Of the first nothing the elixir grown ;
Were I a man, that I were one
I needs must know ; I should prefer,
If I were any beast,
Some ends, some means ; yea plants, yea stones detest,
And love ; all, all some properties invest.
If I an ordinary nothing were,
As shadow, a light, and body must be here.
But I am none ; nor will my sun renew.
You lovers, for whose sake the lesser sun
At this time to the Goat is run
To fetch new lust, and give it you,
Enjoy your summer all,
Since she enjoys her long night's festival.
Let me prepare towards her, and let me call
This hour her vigil, and her eve, since this
Both the year's and the day's deep midnight is.
Today is both the winter solstice and the full moon - a total lunar eclipse, no less. (In my time zone, the eclipse happened after sunrise and moonset, so I didn't see it, but I'm still enjoying the idea.) Winter solstice and a lunar eclipse haven't coincided in 372 years, apparently, and though there's no particular astrological significance to these two things happening on the same day, there's somehow something resonant about it from the human side of things.
Winter solstice. The shortest day, the longest night, all in the depths of snowy winter. No surprise here that so many cultures have holidays around this time that involve candles and bonfires, celebrating light at the darkest time of the year.
Here's my favorite solstice poem, John Donne's "A Nocturnal upon St. Lucy's Day, Being the Shortest Day." St. Lucy's Day is actually December 13 - you might know it as the Swedish Santa Lucia - but Donne is writing about the longest night in the darkest winter, when the world seems dead - the solstice. I wouldn't worry about understanding everything he's saying... I love to read this poem aloud and just let it wash over me.
'Tis the year's midnight, and it is the day's,
Lucy's, who scarce seven hours herself unmasks ;
The sun is spent, and now his flasks
Send forth light squibs, no constant rays ;
The world's whole sap is sunk ;
The general balm th' hydroptic earth hath drunk,
Whither, as to the bed's-feet, life is shrunk,
Dead and interr'd ; yet all these seem to laugh,
Compared with me, who am their epitaph.
Study me then, you who shall lovers be
At the next world, that is, at the next spring ;
For I am every dead thing,
In whom Love wrought new alchemy.
For his art did express
A quintessence even from nothingness,
From dull privations, and lean emptiness ;
He ruin'd me, and I am re-begot
Of absence, darkness, death—things which are not.
All others, from all things, draw all that's good,
Life, soul, form, spirit, whence they being have ;
I, by Love's limbec, am the grave
Of all, that's nothing. Oft a flood
Have we two wept, and so
Drown'd the whole world, us two ; oft did we grow,
To be two chaoses, when we did show
Care to aught else ; and often absences
Withdrew our souls, and made us carcasses.
But I am by her death—which word wrongs her—
Of the first nothing the elixir grown ;
Were I a man, that I were one
I needs must know ; I should prefer,
If I were any beast,
Some ends, some means ; yea plants, yea stones detest,
And love ; all, all some properties invest.
If I an ordinary nothing were,
As shadow, a light, and body must be here.
But I am none ; nor will my sun renew.
You lovers, for whose sake the lesser sun
At this time to the Goat is run
To fetch new lust, and give it you,
Enjoy your summer all,
Since she enjoys her long night's festival.
Let me prepare towards her, and let me call
This hour her vigil, and her eve, since this
Both the year's and the day's deep midnight is.
Friday, December 17, 2010
Christmas in Berlin
Germans have really small Christmas trees...or maybe Americans just have really large ones?
In any case, the Christmas trees now popping up on makeshift tree lots all over Berlin are darling little things, often not even as tall as a person. And since the branches are usually wrapped up tightly in netting like this for ease of transportation, when you see them on the streets being carried home, they look even smaller. (This may vary a bit regionally, since I think part of the point here is that Berlin is a city, and in a city people live in small apartments, rather than big houses.)
The other day I even saw a couple pushing a Christmas tree in their baby carriage...they had one of those double ones meant for twins, and there was a baby in one side and a Christmas tree in the other.
In any case, the Christmas trees now popping up on makeshift tree lots all over Berlin are darling little things, often not even as tall as a person. And since the branches are usually wrapped up tightly in netting like this for ease of transportation, when you see them on the streets being carried home, they look even smaller. (This may vary a bit regionally, since I think part of the point here is that Berlin is a city, and in a city people live in small apartments, rather than big houses.)
The other day I even saw a couple pushing a Christmas tree in their baby carriage...they had one of those double ones meant for twins, and there was a baby in one side and a Christmas tree in the other.
Sunday, December 12, 2010
Where I Was
Hey, I finally figured out how to use "My Maps" on Google! So here's a map of where I was in South India. Not expertly executed or anything, but it gives you an idea.
View South India in a larger map
View South India in a larger map
Saturday, December 11, 2010
Pictures from Kochi and Kodai
The backwaters, a network of lakes and canals, in Kerala (southwest India).
Kathakali dance demonstration - a type of story-play in dance form.
In a mountain river near Kodaikanal.
Ben, Maike and the wild bison.
Vivek and Farouk in Farouk's souvenir shop, laughing over a phone call with (I think) Farouk's young daughter.
Kathakali dance demonstration - a type of story-play in dance form.
In a mountain river near Kodaikanal.
Ben, Maike and the wild bison.
Vivek and Farouk in Farouk's souvenir shop, laughing over a phone call with (I think) Farouk's young daughter.
Wednesday, December 8, 2010
Kochi, Kodaikanal and Chennai
KOCHI
Kochi, aka Cochin, is a coastal city scattered across a number of islands, with a melting pot of histories - Malayali (far southwestern India), Arab, Chinese, Jewish, Portuguese, Dutch... Fort Cochin, the tourist center of the town, is set up to make foreigners feel at home - nice guesthouses, cafes for European-style hanging out - to an extent that starts to feel almost weird after a bit, but it was a nice place to hang out for a couple days, exploring the town and the nearby Backwaters, an extensive network of lush islands and lakes and canals.
This was the main part of my trip where I was actually alone, rather than with friends or friends of friends, so the first thing that happened was - I made lots of new friends. Morning at the Kashi Art Cafe: I'm just finishing out hanging out over a late breakfast when a 60s-ish British man asks if he can share my table - everything else is full. No problem, I say, and I'm about to go anyway. But then we get to talking - about health care, politics, travel, our lives, the weeks of trekking he just completed in the Himalayas (and he's 64 years old!!)
Turns out we were both thinking of going to a dance performance that night, and the beach the following day, so we do those things together. On the bus ride to the beach (which is an adventure in its own right...) we meet two exuberant young French Canadian guys and spend the day all together at the beach, playing frisbee in the waves.
In other words, even alone, I'm never alone unless I want to be.
KODAIKANAL
is a hill station up in the Western Ghats, reached by a tortuously winding but stunning mountain road, that seems to draw drifters and seekers of peace and calm. Together with Maike (a German friend of a friend) and Ben (a random extra German we picked up along the way) I stayed with Avi (our generous host through Couchsurfing, a website where travelers can find local hosts and vice versa). He and his friend Vivek took us on an amazing hike through the jungle/forest/whatever it was and introduced us to their quirky friends (the self-designated local guru got very concerned about me and decreed that I should cancel my flight and stay in Kodaikanal for a couple months).
Then totally by accident, I ended up lighting Chanukah candles with a Lubavitcher (ultra-orthodox Jewish) rabbi from Israel and his wife and baby in a truly miniscule Indian village on the side of a mountain. Thinking the whole time: My life is so ridiculous and wonderful right now.
DEPARTURE
I arrived back in Chennai (the city that is my arrival and departure point in India) this morning on an overnight train; I fly to Germany tonight. I both can't believe this trip is already almost over and can't believe I experienced everything I did in just three weeks.
It's ironic: All these people come to India to find themselves and seek spirituality and follow gurus and whatever else, and that's never been me. I never even particularly had my sights on India as a travel destination - it was more an accident, that a friend happened to be living here and suggested I come visit. I certainly came here knowing full well that India would be chaotic, loud, dirty, intense, all of that. I knew better than to come to India, of all places, to seek peace and inner balance.
Strangely, that's precisely what I've been finding these past weeks.
Kochi, aka Cochin, is a coastal city scattered across a number of islands, with a melting pot of histories - Malayali (far southwestern India), Arab, Chinese, Jewish, Portuguese, Dutch... Fort Cochin, the tourist center of the town, is set up to make foreigners feel at home - nice guesthouses, cafes for European-style hanging out - to an extent that starts to feel almost weird after a bit, but it was a nice place to hang out for a couple days, exploring the town and the nearby Backwaters, an extensive network of lush islands and lakes and canals.
This was the main part of my trip where I was actually alone, rather than with friends or friends of friends, so the first thing that happened was - I made lots of new friends. Morning at the Kashi Art Cafe: I'm just finishing out hanging out over a late breakfast when a 60s-ish British man asks if he can share my table - everything else is full. No problem, I say, and I'm about to go anyway. But then we get to talking - about health care, politics, travel, our lives, the weeks of trekking he just completed in the Himalayas (and he's 64 years old!!)
Turns out we were both thinking of going to a dance performance that night, and the beach the following day, so we do those things together. On the bus ride to the beach (which is an adventure in its own right...) we meet two exuberant young French Canadian guys and spend the day all together at the beach, playing frisbee in the waves.
In other words, even alone, I'm never alone unless I want to be.
KODAIKANAL
is a hill station up in the Western Ghats, reached by a tortuously winding but stunning mountain road, that seems to draw drifters and seekers of peace and calm. Together with Maike (a German friend of a friend) and Ben (a random extra German we picked up along the way) I stayed with Avi (our generous host through Couchsurfing, a website where travelers can find local hosts and vice versa). He and his friend Vivek took us on an amazing hike through the jungle/forest/whatever it was and introduced us to their quirky friends (the self-designated local guru got very concerned about me and decreed that I should cancel my flight and stay in Kodaikanal for a couple months).
Then totally by accident, I ended up lighting Chanukah candles with a Lubavitcher (ultra-orthodox Jewish) rabbi from Israel and his wife and baby in a truly miniscule Indian village on the side of a mountain. Thinking the whole time: My life is so ridiculous and wonderful right now.
DEPARTURE
I arrived back in Chennai (the city that is my arrival and departure point in India) this morning on an overnight train; I fly to Germany tonight. I both can't believe this trip is already almost over and can't believe I experienced everything I did in just three weeks.
It's ironic: All these people come to India to find themselves and seek spirituality and follow gurus and whatever else, and that's never been me. I never even particularly had my sights on India as a travel destination - it was more an accident, that a friend happened to be living here and suggested I come visit. I certainly came here knowing full well that India would be chaotic, loud, dirty, intense, all of that. I knew better than to come to India, of all places, to seek peace and inner balance.
Strangely, that's precisely what I've been finding these past weeks.
Tuesday, November 30, 2010
Old Goa, Panjim and Hampi
These uploaded in reverse chronological order, not sure why...
Beautiful Hampi.
I'd forgotten that mopeds are SO FUN. Thanks to Rickard for being my ride!
Beautiful Hampi.
I'd forgotten that mopeds are SO FUN. Thanks to Rickard for being my ride!
Exploring ruins with San-Min and Rickard, two of a cohort of other medical students from Lena's dorm in Vellore.
Wonderfully specific yet nonspecific sign (what activities? and why only in this area?) in a park in Panjim/Panaji.
Colonial Portuguese church in Old Goa.
Wonderfully specific yet nonspecific sign (what activities? and why only in this area?) in a park in Panjim/Panaji.
Colonial Portuguese church in Old Goa.
Monday, November 29, 2010
Passing through Margao
Still here! Still alive! Have been too busy having fun to write about it - which is precisely how it should be.
VELLORE
From my arrival point of Chennai, I took a train to Vellore, a small city where my friend Lena is doing a medical internship at the hospital. Spent less than 24 hours there, I think, in which I met a bunch of international students, and experienced a most interesting autorickshaw ride: The road from the train station was fully blocked by traffic, so the driver swerved off the road and down into the dry riverbed, where we bumped along for ages on a kind of footpath in the dark under the bridge, and had to step out for a moment at the end, because otherwise the little two-stroke engine wouldn't make it up the embankment on the other side.
GOKARNA
Lena, her boyfriend Daniel and I took a night train from Vellore in the east to Mangalore on the west coast, killed time there (lunch, cafe, walking around in the intense heat, buying a shirt) before continuing on to Gokarna.
Gokarna, on the coast south of Goa, is an interesting place, because it's frequented mainly by two groups of people: Hindu pilgrims coming to pray at the town's holy temples, and Western tourists coming for the beaches. You'd think those two cultures would clash, or at least I would have expected to feel like I was causing an inappropriate disturbance for the pilgrims, but somehow everybody seemed to just work around each other without problems. And in fact Gokarna was very beautiful and very chill and we spent a relaxing two days doing the mini beach vacation thing, before taking a local train up to
GOA
Goa is actually a state, not a city - I didn't know that before a week ago - so we visited a couple different places: Panjim, the capital, still bears a strong colonial Portuguese influence in the food (bread!), religion (very visible Christian population) and even the way some people are clearly Indians but look quite Portuguese. Old Goa, the once mighty Portuguese capital, now consists of a handful of enormous, impressive churches - without really anything else left of the town. Margao is considered mostly just a transportation hub, but I had a nice afternoon here a few days ago, checking out the wonderful covered market and walking around.
HAMPI
Margao is where I parted ways with Lena and Daniel, who were both good company and almost impossibly capable travel guides (with a mass of acquired knowledge of how to travel in India, and more importantly, how to BOOK travel in India) and headed for Hampi, a tiny tourist town amid a sprawling complex of 15th century ruins.
I expected Hampi to be interesting and pretty - instead, it was amazing and beautiful beyond description. My pictures won't do it any justice, but I'll try to upload a few when I get a chance. I spent two fun days running around with a troop of Swedes - other students from Lena and Daniel's dorm who happened to be there at the same time - renting bicycles one day and mopeds the next, exploring ruins and climbing strange, rocky hills.
My last evening in Hampi, I walked for a while along the river and through a banana grove, just soaking in peace and beauty. I came to India expecting chaos and noise and dirty streets and whatever else - instead I got this.
IN TRANSIT
Now I'm back in Margao (third time...), hanging around between the daytime train from Hampi and the night train down the coast to Kochi. Four hours left to go...
VELLORE
From my arrival point of Chennai, I took a train to Vellore, a small city where my friend Lena is doing a medical internship at the hospital. Spent less than 24 hours there, I think, in which I met a bunch of international students, and experienced a most interesting autorickshaw ride: The road from the train station was fully blocked by traffic, so the driver swerved off the road and down into the dry riverbed, where we bumped along for ages on a kind of footpath in the dark under the bridge, and had to step out for a moment at the end, because otherwise the little two-stroke engine wouldn't make it up the embankment on the other side.
GOKARNA
Lena, her boyfriend Daniel and I took a night train from Vellore in the east to Mangalore on the west coast, killed time there (lunch, cafe, walking around in the intense heat, buying a shirt) before continuing on to Gokarna.
Gokarna, on the coast south of Goa, is an interesting place, because it's frequented mainly by two groups of people: Hindu pilgrims coming to pray at the town's holy temples, and Western tourists coming for the beaches. You'd think those two cultures would clash, or at least I would have expected to feel like I was causing an inappropriate disturbance for the pilgrims, but somehow everybody seemed to just work around each other without problems. And in fact Gokarna was very beautiful and very chill and we spent a relaxing two days doing the mini beach vacation thing, before taking a local train up to
GOA
Goa is actually a state, not a city - I didn't know that before a week ago - so we visited a couple different places: Panjim, the capital, still bears a strong colonial Portuguese influence in the food (bread!), religion (very visible Christian population) and even the way some people are clearly Indians but look quite Portuguese. Old Goa, the once mighty Portuguese capital, now consists of a handful of enormous, impressive churches - without really anything else left of the town. Margao is considered mostly just a transportation hub, but I had a nice afternoon here a few days ago, checking out the wonderful covered market and walking around.
HAMPI
Margao is where I parted ways with Lena and Daniel, who were both good company and almost impossibly capable travel guides (with a mass of acquired knowledge of how to travel in India, and more importantly, how to BOOK travel in India) and headed for Hampi, a tiny tourist town amid a sprawling complex of 15th century ruins.
I expected Hampi to be interesting and pretty - instead, it was amazing and beautiful beyond description. My pictures won't do it any justice, but I'll try to upload a few when I get a chance. I spent two fun days running around with a troop of Swedes - other students from Lena and Daniel's dorm who happened to be there at the same time - renting bicycles one day and mopeds the next, exploring ruins and climbing strange, rocky hills.
My last evening in Hampi, I walked for a while along the river and through a banana grove, just soaking in peace and beauty. I came to India expecting chaos and noise and dirty streets and whatever else - instead I got this.
IN TRANSIT
Now I'm back in Margao (third time...), hanging around between the daytime train from Hampi and the night train down the coast to Kochi. Four hours left to go...
Tuesday, November 23, 2010
Gokarna
Gokarna Road station (not actually particularly near Gokarna).
Laying out intricate chalk mandalas on the streets of Gokarna just before a festival procession.
Laying out intricate chalk mandalas on the streets of Gokarna just before a festival procession.
Trains
The train network in India is a wonder.
Yes, things sometimes run late, nothing's particularly fast, and some of the train cars look truly ancient, generations of dust collected on the overhead fans. The biggest problem of all is the same shortages present in pretty much every aspect of this massively large, massively populous country: There just aren't enough spots on the trains for all the people who want to use them, meaning you often have to book days or weeks in advance.
But the system as a whole is almost inconceivably good - you can get pretty much anywhere by train, you can reserve a dazzling array of different classes and routes either at the station or online, it's extremely cheap, reliable and (mostly) makes for a pleasant journey - very little of what I've seen so far matches my preconceptions of hot, dusty train wagons with people packed in like sardines. (Though I know the south is better than the north in this respect, and apparently this part of the south especially.)
Daniel and Lena in the upper berths of a sleeper train.
Yes, things sometimes run late, nothing's particularly fast, and some of the train cars look truly ancient, generations of dust collected on the overhead fans. The biggest problem of all is the same shortages present in pretty much every aspect of this massively large, massively populous country: There just aren't enough spots on the trains for all the people who want to use them, meaning you often have to book days or weeks in advance.
But the system as a whole is almost inconceivably good - you can get pretty much anywhere by train, you can reserve a dazzling array of different classes and routes either at the station or online, it's extremely cheap, reliable and (mostly) makes for a pleasant journey - very little of what I've seen so far matches my preconceptions of hot, dusty train wagons with people packed in like sardines. (Though I know the south is better than the north in this respect, and apparently this part of the south especially.)
Daniel and Lena in the upper berths of a sleeper train.
I admit that after a night spent on a too-hot, too-loud sleeper train, tossing and turning in the narrow berth and unable to sleep most of the night, my main thought was: Please let me never have to do that again. (The nature of travel in India - the long distances and slow trains - means there are in fact several more night trains in my immediate future.)
But the rest of what I've experienced on trains has been lovely. Take today's trip on an unreserved passenger train from Gokarna to Goa, precisely the kind of train you would think would be crowded, hot and unpleasant. Instead there was a cool breeze from the window, lush green landscape sailing by and as always a procession of samosa, chai and cold drink vendors marching up and down the aisle chanting out their wares. If you have a breeze in your face and chai in your hand, as far as I'm concerned, everything's pretty much perfect.
The women next to and across from me peered curiously in my travel journal as I wrote (private life is indeed very public in India) and we asked each other some basic questions (their English was pretty basic and/or I can't understand the accent here AT ALL - latter is decidedly true), but as far as I could make out they were quadrilingual, you know, just as a matter of course, no big deal: the local language Kanada, plus Konkani (spoken in the neighboring state of Goa), Hindi and some English).
Passenger (i.e. local) train arriving at Gokarna Road.
Friday, November 19, 2010
Chennai and Vellore
Street in Chennai.
Four in a rickshaw! (Actually five, since Daniel was up front with the driver.)
This temple cow (I literally mean a cow hanging out in a temple) was kind enough to pose for me.
Leaving tonight for Gokarna with my German friends Lena and Daniel! All is well so far. And boy oh boy, you should see how rapturous Germans abroad are when you bring them chocolate!
Four in a rickshaw! (Actually five, since Daniel was up front with the driver.)
This temple cow (I literally mean a cow hanging out in a temple) was kind enough to pose for me.
Leaving tonight for Gokarna with my German friends Lena and Daniel! All is well so far. And boy oh boy, you should see how rapturous Germans abroad are when you bring them chocolate!
Thursday, November 18, 2010
Chennai
Am here, alive and far less overwhelmed than I thought I'd be! After all that worry that even having lived in Thailand would in no way prepare me for India (so much more of everything - more crowded, more noise, more poverty, more crushes of people), you know what? India reminds me a whole lot of Thailand. It even smells the same - it's (almost) a bit like coming home.
We flew over Lake Van (stunning, snow-capped mountains in the last moments before sunset), Iran (a carpet of lit-up villages under a starry sky and one long, very bright highway connecting - I think - Tehran and Qom). Pakistan, India. Indescribably beautiful. I laughed at myself a little for my penchant for sitting transfixed in front of the seat-back screen showing the different scale maps of the plane's current location, watching that instead of the in-flight programming. But the world is fascinating.
Arrival in Chennai at 1 a.m.: actually quite relaxed, airport practically empty. Bathroom was squat toilets - Ah, I know this, my tired brain thought. This is just like Thailand. Everything easy: change money at the exchange counter, book a taxi at the prepaid taxi counter. Show my passport to approximately four different officials at different stages of the exiting the airport process.
Rain, palm trees, honking trucks. Warm, humid air, the general building style immediately and visibly different (but again, just like Thailand), everything square and concrete and molding a little in the humidity. And yes, one of the first things I saw on the main road from the airport was a cow by the side of the road.
The taxis are these marvelous, ancient, cute, little cars, no idea what type, but black and white and old and maybe British? The windshield wipers didn't work, so the driver kept leaning out the window to wipe the windshield clear with a cloth. Vehicles squeeze themselves through the smallest possible spaces and then some, and red lights seem to be entirely a matter of personal choice. The taxi driver was actually very good and got me into town safely, but I think I'll stick to trains as much as possible while here...
2 a.m., arrival at the hotel my friend who lives here booked for me - they don't have a reservation in my name. They're full, or maybe just "full." Finally, they do turn out to have a room - in the more expensive class. Fine, this is India, that's how it works, the lines between tipping, baksheesh and flat out bribery blur and it's 2 a.m., so anything is better than having to hunt for another place now. Whatever.
Then the first thing I have to do in my drab but functional "executive" class hotel room is kill a cockroach. Small moment of panic and homesickness, because really, I can deal with just about any kind of inconvenience, but please, not cockroaches... Breathe. Sleep at 3:30 a.m. under a blanket and the overly blasting AC. (Seems to have only one setting - but maybe the cold will keep further cockroaches away??)
Breakfast this morning was various puffy pancake products and mysterious sauces. (Thanks to Anna N, who sent me a link about South Indian breakfast foods the day before I left - indeed, my breakfast matched those pictures!) Everything seems to be automatically vegetarian, and the tea comes automatically as chai, milky and sweet. Love.
I'd planned to let myself sleep/hide out in my hotel room as much as necessary today, being lame as a traveler but allowing myself to acclimate slowly. But through the breakfast room window, India was calling me, hot and busy and bright. And very noisy (every imaginable type of honking). So I went out to wander up and down the high road in front of the train station, just absorbing.
People move as a mass so it's easy just to go along, crossing the road when everyone else crosses, obeying some invisible law of balance between bus and pedestrian. Women selling food from makeshift carts, men selling chai, everywhere tuktuks and rickshaws and packed-full, open-windowed buses. Stray dogs scrounging. A family of goats. Just chillin'. On the sidewalk.
To my surprise, everyone pretty much ignored me, even most of the rickshaw drivers. Almost all the women wear saris, to the point that the ones in jeans and t-shirts look kind of out of place. I saw just one other white person, a middle-aged man, and there was that odd foreigners' moment of mutual recognition, like, Weird seeing YOU here. Where you feel like you should greet each other just because you both stand out so much, but then, why would you greet each other just for being European?
Time to go. This afternoon: train to Vellore, where my German friend Lena is doing part of her medical student internship, then we're going traveling together for a few days.
We flew over Lake Van (stunning, snow-capped mountains in the last moments before sunset), Iran (a carpet of lit-up villages under a starry sky and one long, very bright highway connecting - I think - Tehran and Qom). Pakistan, India. Indescribably beautiful. I laughed at myself a little for my penchant for sitting transfixed in front of the seat-back screen showing the different scale maps of the plane's current location, watching that instead of the in-flight programming. But the world is fascinating.
Arrival in Chennai at 1 a.m.: actually quite relaxed, airport practically empty. Bathroom was squat toilets - Ah, I know this, my tired brain thought. This is just like Thailand. Everything easy: change money at the exchange counter, book a taxi at the prepaid taxi counter. Show my passport to approximately four different officials at different stages of the exiting the airport process.
Rain, palm trees, honking trucks. Warm, humid air, the general building style immediately and visibly different (but again, just like Thailand), everything square and concrete and molding a little in the humidity. And yes, one of the first things I saw on the main road from the airport was a cow by the side of the road.
The taxis are these marvelous, ancient, cute, little cars, no idea what type, but black and white and old and maybe British? The windshield wipers didn't work, so the driver kept leaning out the window to wipe the windshield clear with a cloth. Vehicles squeeze themselves through the smallest possible spaces and then some, and red lights seem to be entirely a matter of personal choice. The taxi driver was actually very good and got me into town safely, but I think I'll stick to trains as much as possible while here...
2 a.m., arrival at the hotel my friend who lives here booked for me - they don't have a reservation in my name. They're full, or maybe just "full." Finally, they do turn out to have a room - in the more expensive class. Fine, this is India, that's how it works, the lines between tipping, baksheesh and flat out bribery blur and it's 2 a.m., so anything is better than having to hunt for another place now. Whatever.
Then the first thing I have to do in my drab but functional "executive" class hotel room is kill a cockroach. Small moment of panic and homesickness, because really, I can deal with just about any kind of inconvenience, but please, not cockroaches... Breathe. Sleep at 3:30 a.m. under a blanket and the overly blasting AC. (Seems to have only one setting - but maybe the cold will keep further cockroaches away??)
Breakfast this morning was various puffy pancake products and mysterious sauces. (Thanks to Anna N, who sent me a link about South Indian breakfast foods the day before I left - indeed, my breakfast matched those pictures!) Everything seems to be automatically vegetarian, and the tea comes automatically as chai, milky and sweet. Love.
I'd planned to let myself sleep/hide out in my hotel room as much as necessary today, being lame as a traveler but allowing myself to acclimate slowly. But through the breakfast room window, India was calling me, hot and busy and bright. And very noisy (every imaginable type of honking). So I went out to wander up and down the high road in front of the train station, just absorbing.
People move as a mass so it's easy just to go along, crossing the road when everyone else crosses, obeying some invisible law of balance between bus and pedestrian. Women selling food from makeshift carts, men selling chai, everywhere tuktuks and rickshaws and packed-full, open-windowed buses. Stray dogs scrounging. A family of goats. Just chillin'. On the sidewalk.
To my surprise, everyone pretty much ignored me, even most of the rickshaw drivers. Almost all the women wear saris, to the point that the ones in jeans and t-shirts look kind of out of place. I saw just one other white person, a middle-aged man, and there was that odd foreigners' moment of mutual recognition, like, Weird seeing YOU here. Where you feel like you should greet each other just because you both stand out so much, but then, why would you greet each other just for being European?
Time to go. This afternoon: train to Vellore, where my German friend Lena is doing part of her medical student internship, then we're going traveling together for a few days.
Monday, November 15, 2010
One More Day
Aw. This morning between doing a million and one other things, I zipped over to the nearest pharmacy to get more Dramamine (motion sickness medication is an essential travel item, obviously, if you get motion sick on every single kind of thing that moves) and the woman working there actually remembered me from the last time I was in, also for trip-related things (insect repellent, water purification tablets). This time too, she was warm and conversational and wished me a good trip.
I love when those rare bits of personal connection manage to break through the veneer of disdainful anonymity (I'll pretend you don't exist if you'll please pretend I don't exist) that often marks public life in Berlin. Especially in winter. Especially on the subway. But anyway...
Departure for India: T minus one day and a very small handful of hours!
Right now I'm flattened by a nasty cold, somehow managed to end up with even more work than I expected in these final pre-trip days and haven't had a chance to finish packing. So far, successfully not panicking! And in just over a day I'll be determinedly leaving behind work and anything that in any way resembles it and, for the next three weeks, turning myself over to just experiencing and exploring and being - NOT organizing and stressing and just generally making myself crazy like I do in normal life.
I consider this extremely important.
I love when those rare bits of personal connection manage to break through the veneer of disdainful anonymity (I'll pretend you don't exist if you'll please pretend I don't exist) that often marks public life in Berlin. Especially in winter. Especially on the subway. But anyway...
Departure for India: T minus one day and a very small handful of hours!
Right now I'm flattened by a nasty cold, somehow managed to end up with even more work than I expected in these final pre-trip days and haven't had a chance to finish packing. So far, successfully not panicking! And in just over a day I'll be determinedly leaving behind work and anything that in any way resembles it and, for the next three weeks, turning myself over to just experiencing and exploring and being - NOT organizing and stressing and just generally making myself crazy like I do in normal life.
I consider this extremely important.
Saturday, November 6, 2010
The Next Big Adventure
This is so crazy: I'm going on a trip to India in less than two weeks, and I haven't even mentioned that here yet.
Folks, I'm going to India!!!
I'm excited, nervous, terrified, overwhelmed, all of that. I'm not even sure if I can handle India. Which is exactly why I feel like I need to try.
I've been spinning my wheels here for a while, feeling a need to do something big and exciting and really alive, but not having the energy to get it together. Feeling a desire to travel again, but not sure quite how to start. So I'm just simply making myself do it. (It did help to have a friend currently living in India for four months, making it a now-or-never sort of opportunity.)
I'll be in India for about three weeks; first I'll be visiting my friend, who's doing a medical internship in Vellore, Tamil Nadu. Then we (possibly with her boyfriend too) will travel somewhere together for a couple days. After that... it's wide open. And I'll be on my own completely - no friends, no group, no travel partner. I'm planning to stay in the south (not to rush around the country trying to see "everything") but beyond that I don't even have much of a plan - and I think I like it that way. I'm just going to arrive and see where things take me.
I'm going to India!
Folks, I'm going to India!!!
I'm excited, nervous, terrified, overwhelmed, all of that. I'm not even sure if I can handle India. Which is exactly why I feel like I need to try.
I've been spinning my wheels here for a while, feeling a need to do something big and exciting and really alive, but not having the energy to get it together. Feeling a desire to travel again, but not sure quite how to start. So I'm just simply making myself do it. (It did help to have a friend currently living in India for four months, making it a now-or-never sort of opportunity.)
I'll be in India for about three weeks; first I'll be visiting my friend, who's doing a medical internship in Vellore, Tamil Nadu. Then we (possibly with her boyfriend too) will travel somewhere together for a couple days. After that... it's wide open. And I'll be on my own completely - no friends, no group, no travel partner. I'm planning to stay in the south (not to rush around the country trying to see "everything") but beyond that I don't even have much of a plan - and I think I like it that way. I'm just going to arrive and see where things take me.
I'm going to India!
Friday, November 5, 2010
Bike Tour in the Wendland
Friends from New York, Anna and Ian, came and visited me in Berlin a few weeks ago.
This provided several benefits, namely 1) it was lovely to hang out with them, 2) it's always fun discovering my city through visitors' eyes and 3) we went on a terrific four-day bike tour!
The Wendland is a region of farms, woods and river landscapes about halfway between Berlin and Hamburg. Throughout the Cold War, it was a little pocket of West Germany tucked in amid three sides of East Germany. This small map gives you a bit of a sense: the dot is, roughly, the Wendland, at that point where the state of Lower Saxony (former West) meets three states of the former East.
For West Germans, it was a far-flung corner that seemed removed form everything – and thus a reasonable place to stick a nuclear storage facility. For West Berliners, it was the closest place they could get to actual nature, since the Berlin Wall kept them trapped within their part of the city, not allowed to access the East German countryside that surrounded them.
Since much of the Wendland was essentially the border and the no man's land along it, it accidentally ended up as a good preserve for wildlife and, as we discovered, the Elbe River is a major migratory stopping point for Siberia geese heading toward North Africa or the Iberian Peninsula.
Now that Germany is reunited, of course, the Wendland is no longer a far-flung corner but in fact right in the middle of things and a strong protest movement has sprung up around the nuclear storage facility in Gorleben. Artists and alternative-minded folks who have moved to the area to be part of that movement lend the region a very different culture from your usual rural landscape - and best of all, the farmers and artists seem to get along well, united in their opposition to the nuclear waste transports that come in by train more or less once a year. (The next one, in fact, is this weekend. For a few images of past protests, look here, here, here and here.)
It's a fascinating place on all fronts - nature, history and culture - and I've attempted to capture a tiny bit of it in a pictures. Click on this image to go to the photo album:
This provided several benefits, namely 1) it was lovely to hang out with them, 2) it's always fun discovering my city through visitors' eyes and 3) we went on a terrific four-day bike tour!
The Wendland is a region of farms, woods and river landscapes about halfway between Berlin and Hamburg. Throughout the Cold War, it was a little pocket of West Germany tucked in amid three sides of East Germany. This small map gives you a bit of a sense: the dot is, roughly, the Wendland, at that point where the state of Lower Saxony (former West) meets three states of the former East.
For West Germans, it was a far-flung corner that seemed removed form everything – and thus a reasonable place to stick a nuclear storage facility. For West Berliners, it was the closest place they could get to actual nature, since the Berlin Wall kept them trapped within their part of the city, not allowed to access the East German countryside that surrounded them.
Since much of the Wendland was essentially the border and the no man's land along it, it accidentally ended up as a good preserve for wildlife and, as we discovered, the Elbe River is a major migratory stopping point for Siberia geese heading toward North Africa or the Iberian Peninsula.
Now that Germany is reunited, of course, the Wendland is no longer a far-flung corner but in fact right in the middle of things and a strong protest movement has sprung up around the nuclear storage facility in Gorleben. Artists and alternative-minded folks who have moved to the area to be part of that movement lend the region a very different culture from your usual rural landscape - and best of all, the farmers and artists seem to get along well, united in their opposition to the nuclear waste transports that come in by train more or less once a year. (The next one, in fact, is this weekend. For a few images of past protests, look here, here, here and here.)
It's a fascinating place on all fronts - nature, history and culture - and I've attempted to capture a tiny bit of it in a pictures. Click on this image to go to the photo album:
 |
| Wendland Bike Tour |
Thursday, November 4, 2010
The Chimney Sweep
Tuesday, October 26, 2010
A Picture
Here's a picture I really need to express in words, since I unfortunately didn't capture it on camera:
At H&M, waiting on line for the changing rooms, which were a row of eight or so black doors all in a row off a narrow hall. In that hall, two youngish guys who were quite clearly each the boyfriend of someone currently trying on clothes, both sitting separately on seats a bit apart, but so similar in their dark winter jackets, both slouched identically, hunched over and symmetrical absorbed with the cell phones held on their laps.
At H&M, waiting on line for the changing rooms, which were a row of eight or so black doors all in a row off a narrow hall. In that hall, two youngish guys who were quite clearly each the boyfriend of someone currently trying on clothes, both sitting separately on seats a bit apart, but so similar in their dark winter jackets, both slouched identically, hunched over and symmetrical absorbed with the cell phones held on their laps.
Two Things Unrelated except that They're Vaguely about Cultural Identity
I recently hung out with a lovely cohort of fellow Berlin transplants, all young women, all native English speakers, but having followed varied trajectories before landing here - one from Ohio but via many years in California, one English but raised in France, one part British/part French Canadian and raised in both those places.
As such collections of people sometimes will, we got to talking about things like where we feel at home and whether we think we'll stay here long term and how our own native language has morphed slightly through living abroad - for the Americans, for example, it becomes more "international," which means flavored by British phrasings that are often more readily understood in other parts of the world. And for the British, apparently, it means growing confusion about whether something is wrong, or just spelled American style.
Then the British/Canadian turned to me and said, You know, you're the person here who feels the most automatically familiar to me, because Upstate New York and Montreal are the most similar, they're the same region. Fascinating - even though she's kind of more British (you hear it in her accent, at least) and her Canadian culture is the French one, not English-speaking, still geography exerts that strong a pull on us, that just being from the same part of the world can provide us with an immediate sense of familiarity, certain things that don't require any explanation. (We'd also been talking about - are you sensing a theme here? - fall on the east coast of North America and how far, far superior it is to fall here in northern/central Europe.)
~ ~ ~ ~ ~
And unrelatedly, except perhaps for being tied together by the tenuous thread of being somehow "about culture":
English students of mine, a middle-aged German couple, recently spent a week in Istanbul and came back gushing, as I knew they would, about the warmth and beauty of that city. (Cue nostalgic bout of gazing into the distance and thinking about Istanbul...)
Coming back to Berlin after that was something of a shock, the husband of the couple told me. All those long faces on the city trains in the mornings!
I have to admit, when I think about those sides of Berlin - how cold and unfriendly public life here often is, how strangers brush past each other at best, or even actively treat one another as obstacles to get past as quickly as possible - I have to hurry to find some aspect of Berlin to think about that do I like, because otherwise it spirals into, "Wait a minute, why would anyone in their right mind ever want to live here?"
As such collections of people sometimes will, we got to talking about things like where we feel at home and whether we think we'll stay here long term and how our own native language has morphed slightly through living abroad - for the Americans, for example, it becomes more "international," which means flavored by British phrasings that are often more readily understood in other parts of the world. And for the British, apparently, it means growing confusion about whether something is wrong, or just spelled American style.
Then the British/Canadian turned to me and said, You know, you're the person here who feels the most automatically familiar to me, because Upstate New York and Montreal are the most similar, they're the same region. Fascinating - even though she's kind of more British (you hear it in her accent, at least) and her Canadian culture is the French one, not English-speaking, still geography exerts that strong a pull on us, that just being from the same part of the world can provide us with an immediate sense of familiarity, certain things that don't require any explanation. (We'd also been talking about - are you sensing a theme here? - fall on the east coast of North America and how far, far superior it is to fall here in northern/central Europe.)
~ ~ ~ ~ ~
And unrelatedly, except perhaps for being tied together by the tenuous thread of being somehow "about culture":
English students of mine, a middle-aged German couple, recently spent a week in Istanbul and came back gushing, as I knew they would, about the warmth and beauty of that city. (Cue nostalgic bout of gazing into the distance and thinking about Istanbul...)
Coming back to Berlin after that was something of a shock, the husband of the couple told me. All those long faces on the city trains in the mornings!
I have to admit, when I think about those sides of Berlin - how cold and unfriendly public life here often is, how strangers brush past each other at best, or even actively treat one another as obstacles to get past as quickly as possible - I have to hurry to find some aspect of Berlin to think about that do I like, because otherwise it spirals into, "Wait a minute, why would anyone in their right mind ever want to live here?"
Monday, October 25, 2010
Dumplings for Birds
This year I bought fat balls for the first time, in the hope of tempting interesting birds to come hang around in front of the window where I work at the computer all day.
What I'm talking about is those balls of bird feed you can hang up outside; I didn't even know until now that they were called fat balls - having just heard of them recently from a British friend - and I still have a sneaking suspicion they're possibly only called that if you're a speaker of British English. Jury is still out on what we Americans would call them. Suet cakes??
In German, they're "Meisenknödel," from "Meise" for titmouse (the type of bird) and "Knödel" literally meaning dumpling. Dumplings for titmice!
So far, only one feathered visitor, but hopefully he'll tell his friends.
What I'm talking about is those balls of bird feed you can hang up outside; I didn't even know until now that they were called fat balls - having just heard of them recently from a British friend - and I still have a sneaking suspicion they're possibly only called that if you're a speaker of British English. Jury is still out on what we Americans would call them. Suet cakes??
In German, they're "Meisenknödel," from "Meise" for titmouse (the type of bird) and "Knödel" literally meaning dumpling. Dumplings for titmice!
So far, only one feathered visitor, but hopefully he'll tell his friends.
Sunday, October 24, 2010
Language Lesson
On a bus downtown, I was drawn out of the usual retreat into my own earphones (a necessary defense mechanism, I've finally learned, against too much noise and city crowds) by the sound of two young tourists of indeterminate origin chatting with two older Germans.
One young man started telling the German couple that his language teacher showed him how German verbs are built out of prefixes and roots, and if you know the constituent parts, you can often figure out the meaning of the whole - his example was "ausstellen," which is "to exhibit" and comes from "aus" (out) and "stellen" (to put, place, set). So you put something out, you exhibit it. Then he grinned and said to the native speakers, You never thought of that, did you!
The other tourist guy mentioned the weirdness of French numbers (where 80 is "four twenties" and 90 is "four twenties and ten") and how he'd once pointed that out to a French person who similarly realized they'd never really thought about it that way.
Then everybody was trying out different ways of pronouncing the word "ich," the German couple coaching them, and somebody in the tourist crowd laughed and called out, "German lesson!" Someone else suggested, "Deutsch one-oh-one!"
One young man started telling the German couple that his language teacher showed him how German verbs are built out of prefixes and roots, and if you know the constituent parts, you can often figure out the meaning of the whole - his example was "ausstellen," which is "to exhibit" and comes from "aus" (out) and "stellen" (to put, place, set). So you put something out, you exhibit it. Then he grinned and said to the native speakers, You never thought of that, did you!
The other tourist guy mentioned the weirdness of French numbers (where 80 is "four twenties" and 90 is "four twenties and ten") and how he'd once pointed that out to a French person who similarly realized they'd never really thought about it that way.
Then everybody was trying out different ways of pronouncing the word "ich," the German couple coaching them, and somebody in the tourist crowd laughed and called out, "German lesson!" Someone else suggested, "Deutsch one-oh-one!"
Turning toward Winter
Winter's coming.
You can tell because the days are getting rather shockingly short (it's well dark by 6 p.m., sunsets are before 6:00), the grocery stores are selling Christmas cookies (though I'm not sure that counts, since they roll those out at the beginning of September...) and they're already setting up that big artificial toboggan run thing that's part of the "Christmas market" (read: thin excuse for a highly commercialized fun fair) at Potsdamer Platz.
Also, I finally caved in and turned on the heating, though I'm sort of inanely proud to have stuck it out two thirds of the way through October. But the morning I woke up and the temperature inside read 14° C (57° F), I figured the time had come.
At least the weekend farmers' market promises to keep me stocked with strange, wonderful vegetables (salsify, anybody? Jerusalem artichoke?) through sometime into December.
It's been a time, well, mostly a time of head down, nose to the grindstone repetition, but with occasional lucid interludes of bizarre, half-improvised theater performances in the back room of a bar that looks more like an abandoned house (but they make interesting cocktails that include cucumber), where the bathroom doesn't have a sink and the girls at the ticket counter (dressed as siamese twins) don't have coins on hand, so they give me my change in gingerbread cookies. Or a free basement concert by some slightly odd Americans, where the "special guest" trumpet player turns out to be a rather famous German author and frontman of a popular band.
Between such things and the way all the windows of streets lined with shops glow warm against the early-falling dark and the fact that it's not yet too cold for a little bicycle jaunt out to the countryside to catch the moon just rising, enormous and pink above a field, I've almost reconciled myself with the changing seasons.
But I notice I'm feeling singularly grateful to have friends who live nearby and interesting things going on right here in the neighborhood, because I can tell pretty soon we're going to want to hunker down and not go far at all.
You can tell because the days are getting rather shockingly short (it's well dark by 6 p.m., sunsets are before 6:00), the grocery stores are selling Christmas cookies (though I'm not sure that counts, since they roll those out at the beginning of September...) and they're already setting up that big artificial toboggan run thing that's part of the "Christmas market" (read: thin excuse for a highly commercialized fun fair) at Potsdamer Platz.
Also, I finally caved in and turned on the heating, though I'm sort of inanely proud to have stuck it out two thirds of the way through October. But the morning I woke up and the temperature inside read 14° C (57° F), I figured the time had come.
At least the weekend farmers' market promises to keep me stocked with strange, wonderful vegetables (salsify, anybody? Jerusalem artichoke?) through sometime into December.
It's been a time, well, mostly a time of head down, nose to the grindstone repetition, but with occasional lucid interludes of bizarre, half-improvised theater performances in the back room of a bar that looks more like an abandoned house (but they make interesting cocktails that include cucumber), where the bathroom doesn't have a sink and the girls at the ticket counter (dressed as siamese twins) don't have coins on hand, so they give me my change in gingerbread cookies. Or a free basement concert by some slightly odd Americans, where the "special guest" trumpet player turns out to be a rather famous German author and frontman of a popular band.
Between such things and the way all the windows of streets lined with shops glow warm against the early-falling dark and the fact that it's not yet too cold for a little bicycle jaunt out to the countryside to catch the moon just rising, enormous and pink above a field, I've almost reconciled myself with the changing seasons.
But I notice I'm feeling singularly grateful to have friends who live nearby and interesting things going on right here in the neighborhood, because I can tell pretty soon we're going to want to hunker down and not go far at all.
Tuesday, October 5, 2010
In Honor of Reunification
Biking through Pankow (a northeastern part of Berlin, where I used to live), saw this display at one of those stores that sells novelty t-shirts - in this case, mostly East-German-nostalgia-themed t-shirts - and it made me laugh, so I thought I'd share.That one that looks like Russian? It's actually just German written in Cyrillic letters, and it says "Wenn du das lesen kannst, bist du kein Wessi!" - "If you can read this, you're not a 'Wessi'," ie from West Germany, where people were not obligated to learn Russian in school (East Germans were).
It made me laugh all the more because, in fact, I could read it - and you probably can't get much further "Wessi" than being American.
Reunification
All my private English students at the moment - the adult ones at least, since the kid students obviously weren't born yet when Germany was still divided - happen to be in their mid to late 40's and come from (the former) East Germany.
I had a lesson with one of them the day after the Day of German Unity, and we happen to be practicing conditional sentences, so I asked her to say some sentences like, "If the Wall hadn't come down, then..."
It was fascinating, as this stuff always is. First of all, she told me November 9 (when the Wall opened for the first time) was a more significant date to her than October 3 (when the two countries politically united, almost a year later). October 3 has a more negative connotation, she said, because it marks an event that wasn't actually a "Vereinigung" (merger, unification) so much as an "Anschluss" (annexation).
That sounds a bit controversial to say (especially since "Anschluss" is also the word used specifically for Hitler's 1938 annexation of Austria...) but it's also rather true. When two countries unite, they generally create a lot of newness - new flag, new anthem, maybe a new currency. East Germany, though, was simply absorbed into West Germany, which kept its official name (Federal Republic of Germany), currency, head of state, constitution... everything.
So people wanted reunification and they wanted the freedoms East Germany hadn't given them, but they didn't want it in that way - they wanted to actually have a say in the formation of their new country. My student told me there was a slogan, "Kein Anschluss unter dieser Nummer" (No "Anschluss" under this number) - "number" here in the sense of a numbered paragraph of a law, but also a rather clever pun because "Anschluss" has a number of meanings, including a telephone connection, so the sentence as a whole is familiar telephone operator talk - like we might say "The number you have dialed does not exist."
I know, it never works very well to try to translate puns, but I found that interesting and wanted to share.
Also, when I asked her to say some conditional sentences in the present tense - things like, "If the Wall were still standing, then..." she looked at me and said, You know what, I've actually never asked myself that question - I've never tried to imagine what things would be like if the East German government still existed today.
Her first reaction was, We'd probably be like North Korea.
I had a lesson with one of them the day after the Day of German Unity, and we happen to be practicing conditional sentences, so I asked her to say some sentences like, "If the Wall hadn't come down, then..."
It was fascinating, as this stuff always is. First of all, she told me November 9 (when the Wall opened for the first time) was a more significant date to her than October 3 (when the two countries politically united, almost a year later). October 3 has a more negative connotation, she said, because it marks an event that wasn't actually a "Vereinigung" (merger, unification) so much as an "Anschluss" (annexation).
That sounds a bit controversial to say (especially since "Anschluss" is also the word used specifically for Hitler's 1938 annexation of Austria...) but it's also rather true. When two countries unite, they generally create a lot of newness - new flag, new anthem, maybe a new currency. East Germany, though, was simply absorbed into West Germany, which kept its official name (Federal Republic of Germany), currency, head of state, constitution... everything.
So people wanted reunification and they wanted the freedoms East Germany hadn't given them, but they didn't want it in that way - they wanted to actually have a say in the formation of their new country. My student told me there was a slogan, "Kein Anschluss unter dieser Nummer" (No "Anschluss" under this number) - "number" here in the sense of a numbered paragraph of a law, but also a rather clever pun because "Anschluss" has a number of meanings, including a telephone connection, so the sentence as a whole is familiar telephone operator talk - like we might say "The number you have dialed does not exist."
I know, it never works very well to try to translate puns, but I found that interesting and wanted to share.
Also, when I asked her to say some conditional sentences in the present tense - things like, "If the Wall were still standing, then..." she looked at me and said, You know what, I've actually never asked myself that question - I've never tried to imagine what things would be like if the East German government still existed today.
Her first reaction was, We'd probably be like North Korea.
Sunday, October 3, 2010
Fall Notes from Berlin
Now, at least, it's getting to be the good kind of fall: Bags of apples students of mine picked at a friend's holiday house; the first pumpkin soup of the season. The trees changing color at least a bit (doesn't hold a candle to the northeastern US, but I believe we've covered that point already) and some days there's that nip in the air, an invigorating sign of the changing seasons. Plus there's still the occasional reprieve of a beautiful sunny day like this one, when the city's inhabitants turn out in full force to populate the sidewalk cafés and parks.
Today, between meeting up with friends for, yes, a stint at a café and a jaunt through a park (plus a climb up a church tower, just to mix things up a bit) and then a very British tea party, I managed to:
-stumble across another friend when I stopped by the same café to collect my bike
-pass acquaintances by the Mauerpark flea market and
-run into a couple I know and get to hold their little baby, who I hadn't seen in almost half a year.
It felt awfully nice to be out and about in this big city and run into so many people I know - though clearly I upped my chances quite a bit by frequenting popular Sunday destinations in Prenzlauer Berg on a sunny weekend day.
~ ~ ~ ~ ~
Also, can we talk for a moment about swan upping? It's possibly my new favorite Weird Thing About The British (though really, how can you choose?)
I only learned about swan upping yesterday (though it might be my new favorite phrase to say) but had the great fortune to hang out with a number of Brits today and have them confirm that this is a true, real thing - basically, as a holdover tradition from many, many centuries ago, the Queen's Swan Uppers (accompanied by - don't forget them - the Vintners' and the Dyers' Swan Uppers) row about the River Thames in fancy uniforms on fancy boats, collecting and counting all the swans, before releasing them again. Taking themselves, of course, very seriously.
Sometimes I want to move to the UK just for stuff like this. It must be awfully bizarre and fun.
~ ~ ~ ~ ~
Back in the land of the Germans, today is Tag der Deutschen Einheit, the day of German Unity - 20 years precisely since the reunification of East and West. It's a bit hard to get worked up about it, since we've already been celebrating 20 year anniversaries for nearly a year - last November 9 was the 20th anniversary of the fall of the Wall (it took almost a year from that date in 1989 until the two countries officially and politically reunited in October 3, 1990) and the public reflection and comparative magazine articles have basically continued more or less unabated since then.
But still, it's something significant - despite all the difficulties and bouts of frustration and the economy in the east still significantly lagging and surveys that show people would rather have the wall back (seriously??), now a whole generation of Germans has grown up this way, and the divisions are definitely decreasing.
~ ~ ~ ~ ~
Unrelatedly, except for being about Germans, I was out for a bike ride with an American friend yesterday and saw a woman mowing her lawn with an electric mower, the long cable stretching back toward the house, and I exclaimed reflexively, "I love electric lawnmowers! I love Germans!" then paused and added, "Sometimes." And the American friend chuckled and agreed, "Sometimes."
I suppose what I mean is that I love that Germans are willing to do things like tangle with the long cord of an electric lawn mower - that easy relationship with environmentalism was one of the top things that drew my to this country, not kidding - but I'm also well aware that the same person with the electric lawnmower probably also owns at least one car and takes airplanes on most vacations, yet considers themselves smugly environmental just because of the lawnmower and a couple of energy-efficient appliances in the kitchen.
Ah well.
~ ~ ~ ~ ~
Another thing to love about Germany, though, and this time I'm serious: health insurance. I'm finally in the German insurance system and it's blowing my mind.
Yes, it took months of frustrating bureaucracy that I never want to have to think about again, but now I pay a reasonable fee per month and whenever I'm sick or even just want to finally do something real about my chronic back problems, I go to a doctor. And for a 10 euro copay each three months, everything else is covered. The system isn't perfect - very far from it - but it covers dental, regular check-ups, everything a health insurance should reasonably include.
I really hope the US finally manages to have this, one of these centuries. I really, really hope that.
Today, between meeting up with friends for, yes, a stint at a café and a jaunt through a park (plus a climb up a church tower, just to mix things up a bit) and then a very British tea party, I managed to:
-stumble across another friend when I stopped by the same café to collect my bike
-pass acquaintances by the Mauerpark flea market and
-run into a couple I know and get to hold their little baby, who I hadn't seen in almost half a year.
It felt awfully nice to be out and about in this big city and run into so many people I know - though clearly I upped my chances quite a bit by frequenting popular Sunday destinations in Prenzlauer Berg on a sunny weekend day.
~ ~ ~ ~ ~
Also, can we talk for a moment about swan upping? It's possibly my new favorite Weird Thing About The British (though really, how can you choose?)
I only learned about swan upping yesterday (though it might be my new favorite phrase to say) but had the great fortune to hang out with a number of Brits today and have them confirm that this is a true, real thing - basically, as a holdover tradition from many, many centuries ago, the Queen's Swan Uppers (accompanied by - don't forget them - the Vintners' and the Dyers' Swan Uppers) row about the River Thames in fancy uniforms on fancy boats, collecting and counting all the swans, before releasing them again. Taking themselves, of course, very seriously.
Sometimes I want to move to the UK just for stuff like this. It must be awfully bizarre and fun.
~ ~ ~ ~ ~
Back in the land of the Germans, today is Tag der Deutschen Einheit, the day of German Unity - 20 years precisely since the reunification of East and West. It's a bit hard to get worked up about it, since we've already been celebrating 20 year anniversaries for nearly a year - last November 9 was the 20th anniversary of the fall of the Wall (it took almost a year from that date in 1989 until the two countries officially and politically reunited in October 3, 1990) and the public reflection and comparative magazine articles have basically continued more or less unabated since then.
But still, it's something significant - despite all the difficulties and bouts of frustration and the economy in the east still significantly lagging and surveys that show people would rather have the wall back (seriously??), now a whole generation of Germans has grown up this way, and the divisions are definitely decreasing.
~ ~ ~ ~ ~
Unrelatedly, except for being about Germans, I was out for a bike ride with an American friend yesterday and saw a woman mowing her lawn with an electric mower, the long cable stretching back toward the house, and I exclaimed reflexively, "I love electric lawnmowers! I love Germans!" then paused and added, "Sometimes." And the American friend chuckled and agreed, "Sometimes."
I suppose what I mean is that I love that Germans are willing to do things like tangle with the long cord of an electric lawn mower - that easy relationship with environmentalism was one of the top things that drew my to this country, not kidding - but I'm also well aware that the same person with the electric lawnmower probably also owns at least one car and takes airplanes on most vacations, yet considers themselves smugly environmental just because of the lawnmower and a couple of energy-efficient appliances in the kitchen.
Ah well.
~ ~ ~ ~ ~
Another thing to love about Germany, though, and this time I'm serious: health insurance. I'm finally in the German insurance system and it's blowing my mind.
Yes, it took months of frustrating bureaucracy that I never want to have to think about again, but now I pay a reasonable fee per month and whenever I'm sick or even just want to finally do something real about my chronic back problems, I go to a doctor. And for a 10 euro copay each three months, everything else is covered. The system isn't perfect - very far from it - but it covers dental, regular check-ups, everything a health insurance should reasonably include.
I really hope the US finally manages to have this, one of these centuries. I really, really hope that.
Friday, October 1, 2010
Only in Germany Do the Dogs Hang out in Hospitals
I went by a hospital the other day and saw a man just walking out – with his dog, on a leash. Thought, man oh man, only in Germany! People here really do take their dogs EVERYWHERE: restaurants, stores, apparently hospitals. In fact, stores that don't want you to bring your dog in with you put a sign on the door to that effect.
Thursday, September 30, 2010
Oh How I Love Romansh
I like languages, have you noticed?
I like all languages - I like the weird ones where you understand nothing and the familiar ones where you can find all the parallels. I have a weak spot for the strange, small, out of the way ones.
So I really like Romansh.
Romansch (a Romance language, as the name suggests, just like French or Spanish) is the tiniest minority language spoken in Switzerland, a country of minorities and anomolies. There are only about 60,000 speakers, but they divide themselves up between five different dialects!
Switzerland is so wonderfully silly.
A friend just forwarded me this nice little New York Times article about Romansh speakers.
Oh, I do love Romansh.
I like all languages - I like the weird ones where you understand nothing and the familiar ones where you can find all the parallels. I have a weak spot for the strange, small, out of the way ones.
So I really like Romansh.
Romansch (a Romance language, as the name suggests, just like French or Spanish) is the tiniest minority language spoken in Switzerland, a country of minorities and anomolies. There are only about 60,000 speakers, but they divide themselves up between five different dialects!
Switzerland is so wonderfully silly.
A friend just forwarded me this nice little New York Times article about Romansh speakers.
Oh, I do love Romansh.
Monday, September 27, 2010
Le Week-end
I love the Saturday farmers' market down the block so much. It's really got to be the smallest market in a city that loves outdoor markets - it basically takes up half a block - but manages to cover the essentials: a couple of farm stands, a guy selling mostly fruit. A bakery truck. Various other specialties like fish, meet, noodles, cheeses. A florist and a very small honey stand. Various things that come and go, like the guy who was there for a while selling wines and offering taste samples (wine tasting on Saturday mornings... interesting) or a new one this week selling pottery.
It's now definitively fall and that means pumpkin season - one of the farm stands had a bunch of different kinds set out on a bed of straw in a wire box. A little boy ran up, beside himself with excitement, telling his older brother, "Look, it's a leopard pumpkin! That one, it's a leopard pumpkin!"
Sunday was the Berlin Marathon. I'd expected the steadily falling rain to dampen spectator spirit, but if anything, it just added more color, thanks to all the umbrellas lining the way.
I'd only seen the marathon once before - somehow I always seem to travel this time of year - and had forgotten that it has such an AMAZING spirit. There were bands playing and people cheering all along the route. And I did manage to catch a glimpse and a quick high five with the two people I knew who were running - an English student of mine and his daughter - before they disappeared again into the masses.
Further along the route, I stopped under a train bridge by the river, where a percussion group was playing and the spectators under the bridge were leading the runners in a wave as they passed by. Looking back I realized I was on a slight rise, probably one of the few places in very flat Berlin where you could actually get a good view over a long stretch of the course and... oh my goodness but there were SO MANY runners. An indescribable, endless mass of people.
Most of them taking it seriously, but some were dressed in, you know, giant unwieldy animal costumes and whatever else. Some ran with their countries' flags painted on their faces. Lots wore thin plastic ponchos against the rain. So many feet hitting wet pavement made a soothing white noise that seemed somehow like a sound out of nature, like waves on a shore. It was a wonderful thing to see, that many people coming together for something that was purely peaceful and fun.
On my way back home I stopped to listen to a band that was belting out "Keep on Running" and stayed just enough to confirm my suspicion that the repertoire was entirely running themed - the next song was "These Boots Are Made for Walkin'."
Getting back home after an hour or so in the cold rain, my fingers were so stiff, I had to run them under warm water before I could get back to work at the computer. No idea how the marathon runners managed!
This afternoon, I passed a playground where a preschool class was clearly out on break, and saw four little girls, all - yes all - in bright pink winter jackets, shrieking with delight on a bouncy swing contraption (picture two perpendicular seesaws, but up high in the air, with a swing hanging from each of the four ends).
It's now definitively fall and that means pumpkin season - one of the farm stands had a bunch of different kinds set out on a bed of straw in a wire box. A little boy ran up, beside himself with excitement, telling his older brother, "Look, it's a leopard pumpkin! That one, it's a leopard pumpkin!"
Sunday was the Berlin Marathon. I'd expected the steadily falling rain to dampen spectator spirit, but if anything, it just added more color, thanks to all the umbrellas lining the way.
I'd only seen the marathon once before - somehow I always seem to travel this time of year - and had forgotten that it has such an AMAZING spirit. There were bands playing and people cheering all along the route. And I did manage to catch a glimpse and a quick high five with the two people I knew who were running - an English student of mine and his daughter - before they disappeared again into the masses.
Further along the route, I stopped under a train bridge by the river, where a percussion group was playing and the spectators under the bridge were leading the runners in a wave as they passed by. Looking back I realized I was on a slight rise, probably one of the few places in very flat Berlin where you could actually get a good view over a long stretch of the course and... oh my goodness but there were SO MANY runners. An indescribable, endless mass of people.
Most of them taking it seriously, but some were dressed in, you know, giant unwieldy animal costumes and whatever else. Some ran with their countries' flags painted on their faces. Lots wore thin plastic ponchos against the rain. So many feet hitting wet pavement made a soothing white noise that seemed somehow like a sound out of nature, like waves on a shore. It was a wonderful thing to see, that many people coming together for something that was purely peaceful and fun.
On my way back home I stopped to listen to a band that was belting out "Keep on Running" and stayed just enough to confirm my suspicion that the repertoire was entirely running themed - the next song was "These Boots Are Made for Walkin'."
Getting back home after an hour or so in the cold rain, my fingers were so stiff, I had to run them under warm water before I could get back to work at the computer. No idea how the marathon runners managed!
This afternoon, I passed a playground where a preschool class was clearly out on break, and saw four little girls, all - yes all - in bright pink winter jackets, shrieking with delight on a bouncy swing contraption (picture two perpendicular seesaws, but up high in the air, with a swing hanging from each of the four ends).
Tuesday, September 21, 2010
Germany Really Does Want Me to Stay
Autumn came with a swift vengeance this year. One moment it was August and the next moment it was, well, actually still August, but very cold. I refuse to start heating my apartment in September. I will wear many layers and a scarf indoors if I have to, but I'm going to stick it out till October or bust!
~ ~ ~ ~ ~
Here are some things that have happened, in no particular order:
A power outage at a major intersection near my house (this happens so often in Berlin and I have no idea why), and again I was amazed by how well and calmly drivers coped, simply slowing down and taking turns, until police arrived to direct traffic.
A little girl bouncing up and down by the grocery store ice cream case and begging her mother, "Can I have a grown up ice cream this time pleeeease? I promise I'll be able to finish it all!"
A boy who looked about 10 or 11 biking alone in downtown Berlin, which made me nervous for him, until I thought about the fact that he was wearing a helmet and obeying traffic laws and generally exhibiting far more care than probably almost any adult in the city.
One last reprieve of a perfect, sunny weekend, where I biked up to Weissensee (how lucky am I to have a beautiful lake just up the street?) and drank a beer on the shore just because I could, watching an enormous number of rowboats jostle around the fountain in the middle of the lake and hearing strains of music from the beach bar across the way.
A sign outside a bakery reading "Sonntag ist Kuchentag!" ("Sunday is cake day!") and as I biked past, I contemplated how very true that is - Germany is nothing if not obsessed with the tradition of cake and coffee on Sunday afternoons.
A day when I biked 60 kilometers (almost all of it in the rain) within the city, just going back and forth to appointments and things.
Passing by a movie shoot near Unter den Linden, a whole bunch of people carefully polishing a car.
The Jewish Culture Days, when some of the city's synagogues open their doors for concerts and events and even services. It's a good opportunity to see a synagogue, since entrance is generally only for members of the congregation or (in at least some cases) if you register ahead as a visitor.
Every synagogue (Jewish cultural center, museum, etc.) in Germany is guarded by 24-hour police presence. And metal detectors. And you can't park out front - not even a bicycle. I've never figured out whether this is because the actual threat of neo-Nazi violence is so high, because German paranoia about it is so high, or some combination of both.
Anyway, I went to a Shabbat service at the synagogue on Rykestrasse, Germany's largest and renovated just a couple years ago. I'm glad I went, because I've meant to see the synagogue for ages, but the quite conservative service was enough quite conservative Judaism to last me, oh, several decades. Whenever I next go to a service, I suspect it will be at the lovely little egalitarian congregation in the famous New Synagogue, which reminded me comfortably of home and progressive Judaism.
~ ~ ~ ~ ~
My German residency permit is now valid for another two years! This is no surprise, really, but I still felt rather celebratory as I left the drab foreigners' authority building, passport in hand.
The big difference is that now, rather than being strictly limited to work that requires an English native speaker (teaching, translating), I finally have a normal work visa that lets me do anything. In point of fact, my immediate plans involve translating and teaching, but it's nice to have options.
~ ~ ~ ~ ~
Here are some things that have happened, in no particular order:
A power outage at a major intersection near my house (this happens so often in Berlin and I have no idea why), and again I was amazed by how well and calmly drivers coped, simply slowing down and taking turns, until police arrived to direct traffic.
A little girl bouncing up and down by the grocery store ice cream case and begging her mother, "Can I have a grown up ice cream this time pleeeease? I promise I'll be able to finish it all!"
A boy who looked about 10 or 11 biking alone in downtown Berlin, which made me nervous for him, until I thought about the fact that he was wearing a helmet and obeying traffic laws and generally exhibiting far more care than probably almost any adult in the city.
One last reprieve of a perfect, sunny weekend, where I biked up to Weissensee (how lucky am I to have a beautiful lake just up the street?) and drank a beer on the shore just because I could, watching an enormous number of rowboats jostle around the fountain in the middle of the lake and hearing strains of music from the beach bar across the way.
A sign outside a bakery reading "Sonntag ist Kuchentag!" ("Sunday is cake day!") and as I biked past, I contemplated how very true that is - Germany is nothing if not obsessed with the tradition of cake and coffee on Sunday afternoons.
A day when I biked 60 kilometers (almost all of it in the rain) within the city, just going back and forth to appointments and things.
Passing by a movie shoot near Unter den Linden, a whole bunch of people carefully polishing a car.
The Jewish Culture Days, when some of the city's synagogues open their doors for concerts and events and even services. It's a good opportunity to see a synagogue, since entrance is generally only for members of the congregation or (in at least some cases) if you register ahead as a visitor.
Every synagogue (Jewish cultural center, museum, etc.) in Germany is guarded by 24-hour police presence. And metal detectors. And you can't park out front - not even a bicycle. I've never figured out whether this is because the actual threat of neo-Nazi violence is so high, because German paranoia about it is so high, or some combination of both.
Anyway, I went to a Shabbat service at the synagogue on Rykestrasse, Germany's largest and renovated just a couple years ago. I'm glad I went, because I've meant to see the synagogue for ages, but the quite conservative service was enough quite conservative Judaism to last me, oh, several decades. Whenever I next go to a service, I suspect it will be at the lovely little egalitarian congregation in the famous New Synagogue, which reminded me comfortably of home and progressive Judaism.
~ ~ ~ ~ ~
My German residency permit is now valid for another two years! This is no surprise, really, but I still felt rather celebratory as I left the drab foreigners' authority building, passport in hand.
The big difference is that now, rather than being strictly limited to work that requires an English native speaker (teaching, translating), I finally have a normal work visa that lets me do anything. In point of fact, my immediate plans involve translating and teaching, but it's nice to have options.
Saturday, September 18, 2010
Leipzig
I also went to Leipzig! It's only a bit more than an hour from Berlin by high-speed train, but somehow it took over three years of sort of vaguely meaning to before I finally got there.
Historically speaking, Leipzig is known for being a center for classical music and the arts - think Bach, Mendelssohn, Schumann, Schiller, Goethe. Etc. More recently historically speaking, the city is known for its "Monday demonstrations," peaceful protests instrumental in the fall of the Wall and the eventual collapse of the East German government.
I was there to see an acquaintance who's a professional opera singer in the Leipzig Opera's awesome production of The Barber of Seville... with all the characters as insects. Did I mention it was awesome? And that as friends of the performer, we got second-row seats? It was awesome. As was hanging out with the performers afterward at the Irish pub and realizing that out of the ridiculous costumes and great voices they're just, you know, people. Who happen to sing opera for a living.
I didn't take pictures during the opera, obviously, since that would be rude, but look here for BEAUTIFUL INSECTS. My friend is the snail sitting under the leaf in the fourth picture.
And here are some Leipzig pictures of my own, featuring a big train station and an even bigger gloweringly Teutonic war monument, a pretty downtown and some very well executed history museums:
Historically speaking, Leipzig is known for being a center for classical music and the arts - think Bach, Mendelssohn, Schumann, Schiller, Goethe. Etc. More recently historically speaking, the city is known for its "Monday demonstrations," peaceful protests instrumental in the fall of the Wall and the eventual collapse of the East German government.
I was there to see an acquaintance who's a professional opera singer in the Leipzig Opera's awesome production of The Barber of Seville... with all the characters as insects. Did I mention it was awesome? And that as friends of the performer, we got second-row seats? It was awesome. As was hanging out with the performers afterward at the Irish pub and realizing that out of the ridiculous costumes and great voices they're just, you know, people. Who happen to sing opera for a living.
I didn't take pictures during the opera, obviously, since that would be rude, but look here for BEAUTIFUL INSECTS. My friend is the snail sitting under the leaf in the fourth picture.
And here are some Leipzig pictures of my own, featuring a big train station and an even bigger gloweringly Teutonic war monument, a pretty downtown and some very well executed history museums:
 |
| Leipzig (September 2010) |
Friday, September 17, 2010
Genève
I went to Geneva, Switzerland! In August, which feels like a long time ago now. (I went to visit a German friend while she was staying with her boyfriend, who lives there and works for the UN.)
Here's a Geneva album:
Here's a Geneva album:
 |
| Genève (August 2010) |
Saturday, September 11, 2010
About Parties and Words
Not quite sure why this is what's at the top of my head at the moment, but here are two linguistic notes related to partying and drinking...
1. If you went to college in the US anytime recently, you're probably familiar with the saying, "Beer before liquor, never been sicker; liquor before beer, you're in the clear." (At least, that's the version I learned.) In other words, it's a little rhyming trick to help overzealous (college freshman?) drinkers remember that drinking first beer and then hard alcohol is - supposedly - a bad idea.
In Germany, the equivalent saying is, "Bier auf Wein, das lass sein; Wein auf Bier, das rat ich dir." - "Beer after wine, leave it be; wine after beer, that's a good idea." (Very roughly translated.) In other words, Germans couldn't care less how you mix your softer and harder alcohols, but they're definitely concerned about the order of your beer and wine. Which makes some sense, since Germany has a strong beer culture (obviously) but also a pretty firm affinity to wine. What they do now that cocktails have entered the cultural mix, I'm not sure...
2. The German word "Party" is not, as you might be forgiven for expecting, a direct translation of the English word "party." A German child doesn't have a birthday "Party" - the festive event is referred to as a "Kindergeburtstag" ("child's birthday") and it's understood that you mean the celebration itself, not just the fact that a child has a birthday on that day.
Similarly, older adults who celebrate their birthdays by inviting friends over for coffee and cake, or an evening of food and wine, are not holding a "Party," but perhaps a "Feier" (another word for party, which seems to be more all-encompassing). "Party" in German is reserved for, you know, a party - drinking, dancing, loud music, lots of people.
Anything else is not actually a party, and you're going to get weird looks if you ask an eight-year-old (or an eighty-year-old) whether they're having a party this year.
1. If you went to college in the US anytime recently, you're probably familiar with the saying, "Beer before liquor, never been sicker; liquor before beer, you're in the clear." (At least, that's the version I learned.) In other words, it's a little rhyming trick to help overzealous (college freshman?) drinkers remember that drinking first beer and then hard alcohol is - supposedly - a bad idea.
In Germany, the equivalent saying is, "Bier auf Wein, das lass sein; Wein auf Bier, das rat ich dir." - "Beer after wine, leave it be; wine after beer, that's a good idea." (Very roughly translated.) In other words, Germans couldn't care less how you mix your softer and harder alcohols, but they're definitely concerned about the order of your beer and wine. Which makes some sense, since Germany has a strong beer culture (obviously) but also a pretty firm affinity to wine. What they do now that cocktails have entered the cultural mix, I'm not sure...
2. The German word "Party" is not, as you might be forgiven for expecting, a direct translation of the English word "party." A German child doesn't have a birthday "Party" - the festive event is referred to as a "Kindergeburtstag" ("child's birthday") and it's understood that you mean the celebration itself, not just the fact that a child has a birthday on that day.
Similarly, older adults who celebrate their birthdays by inviting friends over for coffee and cake, or an evening of food and wine, are not holding a "Party," but perhaps a "Feier" (another word for party, which seems to be more all-encompassing). "Party" in German is reserved for, you know, a party - drinking, dancing, loud music, lots of people.
Anything else is not actually a party, and you're going to get weird looks if you ask an eight-year-old (or an eighty-year-old) whether they're having a party this year.
Wednesday, September 1, 2010
100,000 Poems
Oddly, though it was such an incredibly photogenic event, I can't find any good videos online of the "Poetry Rain."
This photo gallery is the best I've found so far - some of the pictures are of the stiltwalkers who performed beforehand and some are of the poems falling; don't get confused by the fact that the supposedly 10-photo gallery seems to dead end into a advertisement halfway through - if you click onward, you get pictures again:
A photo gallery at the Berliner Morgenpost.
This photo gallery is the best I've found so far - some of the pictures are of the stiltwalkers who performed beforehand and some are of the poems falling; don't get confused by the fact that the supposedly 10-photo gallery seems to dead end into a advertisement halfway through - if you click onward, you get pictures again:
A photo gallery at the Berliner Morgenpost.
Monday, August 30, 2010
The Coolest Thing I've Seen in a Really, Really Long Time
On Saturday evening, 100,000 poems fell on Berlin from the sky.
It was part of a project by a group Chilean artists, a "poetry rain" released by helicopter over various cities around the world that have been bombed in the past. Berlin's poetry rain was incorporated into this summer's Lange Nacht der Museen, or Long Museum Night, a twice-a-year art-and-concerts-and-events extravaganza that I love and attend almost every time.
At 7:30 pm, I met two friends at the Lustgarten, the grassy plaza in downtown Berlin that also serves as the focal point for the Lange Nacht der Museen. There were colorfully costumed stiltwalkers stalking about and a large, expectant crowd.
Right around 8:00 pm, a light appeared in the sky off to the east, behind city hall. A helicopter, growing steadily larger, coming in low. The crowd's eagerness increased and I noticed myself clasping my hands to my chest, hopping up and down as we peered at the sky, as excited as a little kid.
The helicopter flew right over us, huge, reached the far side of the square, then - released poems. Little fluttery scraps of white, bookmarks that twisted and turned and reflected the evening night as they drifted down, or were caught by the wind and carried in unpredictable directions. On the first pass, the wind took the bookmarks far from where we were, but the helicopter corrected its course on each subsequent pass - it made around 10, though I lost count after six - and finally, the poems started coming down where we could reach them.
Everyone had their hands outstretched, dashing back and forth as they tried to predict where the wind would take each bit of paper. Some were swept off in a last minute gust, some landed in the trees or on the roof of the cathedral, but some landed in our hands. Or directly at our feet. Or hit the unsuspecting on the head. It felt like Halloween from the sky, the anticipation, the fun, the calculations of where to position yourself to get a good haul. A few people were jerks, single-mindedly shoving each other out of the way, but most were friendly, laughing, making way for the children in the crowd.
It lasted half an hour, the excitement maintained through each subsequent pass of the helicopter - perhaps partly because even with 100,000 poems raining down on us, we only managed to catch a very few (I think the cathedral roof and the mysterious region across the road where the wind kept directing the poems took more than their fair share!) But when I went by late that night, after the rest of the Lange Nacht, I found a few more lurking on the cathedral steps, to round out a little collection. Each poem is in Spanish as well as German.
It was part of a project by a group Chilean artists, a "poetry rain" released by helicopter over various cities around the world that have been bombed in the past. Berlin's poetry rain was incorporated into this summer's Lange Nacht der Museen, or Long Museum Night, a twice-a-year art-and-concerts-and-events extravaganza that I love and attend almost every time.
At 7:30 pm, I met two friends at the Lustgarten, the grassy plaza in downtown Berlin that also serves as the focal point for the Lange Nacht der Museen. There were colorfully costumed stiltwalkers stalking about and a large, expectant crowd.
Right around 8:00 pm, a light appeared in the sky off to the east, behind city hall. A helicopter, growing steadily larger, coming in low. The crowd's eagerness increased and I noticed myself clasping my hands to my chest, hopping up and down as we peered at the sky, as excited as a little kid.
The helicopter flew right over us, huge, reached the far side of the square, then - released poems. Little fluttery scraps of white, bookmarks that twisted and turned and reflected the evening night as they drifted down, or were caught by the wind and carried in unpredictable directions. On the first pass, the wind took the bookmarks far from where we were, but the helicopter corrected its course on each subsequent pass - it made around 10, though I lost count after six - and finally, the poems started coming down where we could reach them.
Everyone had their hands outstretched, dashing back and forth as they tried to predict where the wind would take each bit of paper. Some were swept off in a last minute gust, some landed in the trees or on the roof of the cathedral, but some landed in our hands. Or directly at our feet. Or hit the unsuspecting on the head. It felt like Halloween from the sky, the anticipation, the fun, the calculations of where to position yourself to get a good haul. A few people were jerks, single-mindedly shoving each other out of the way, but most were friendly, laughing, making way for the children in the crowd.
It lasted half an hour, the excitement maintained through each subsequent pass of the helicopter - perhaps partly because even with 100,000 poems raining down on us, we only managed to catch a very few (I think the cathedral roof and the mysterious region across the road where the wind kept directing the poems took more than their fair share!) But when I went by late that night, after the rest of the Lange Nacht, I found a few more lurking on the cathedral steps, to round out a little collection. Each poem is in Spanish as well as German.
Middle Names
A small cultural note that's been tickling my fancy recently:
The couple times various German friends have happened to pick up and leaf through my American passport (aside from making fun of it for looking different from theirs...) they've looked at the first page and uttered pretty much precisely the same sentence: "Ach, du heißt auch" (Oh, you're also named) and then my middle name.
Germans don't usually have middle names (though some do) so they think it's nothing short of hilarious when they discover I have another name beyond the one they already knew. And since German lacks a word for the concept, when newspapers want to talk about how some American conservatives are frothing at the mouth over Barack Hussein Obama's middle name, they resort to calling it his "zweiter Vorname" - literally, his "second first name."
The couple times various German friends have happened to pick up and leaf through my American passport (aside from making fun of it for looking different from theirs...) they've looked at the first page and uttered pretty much precisely the same sentence: "Ach, du heißt auch" (Oh, you're also named) and then my middle name.
Germans don't usually have middle names (though some do) so they think it's nothing short of hilarious when they discover I have another name beyond the one they already knew. And since German lacks a word for the concept, when newspapers want to talk about how some American conservatives are frothing at the mouth over Barack Hussein Obama's middle name, they resort to calling it his "zweiter Vorname" - literally, his "second first name."
Monday, August 23, 2010
Germany Wants Me to Stay
Too much time has passed, with too many different impressions bouncing around in my head to hope for any kind of cohesive post. Best to just plunge in and do it, however chaotic the result may be...
I. Various kinds of officialdom
Germany wants me to stay! At least, that's the conclusion I reached when, for the first time in my relationship with the country, they simply sent me a letter detailing when my visa-renewal appointment is and what I should bring. (Rather than me having to go there and wait ages just to make an appointment.) Also, they scheduled the appointment for the very day my last visa expires, so I kind of assume they're not planning to kick me out and stick me on a plane out of the country the very same day.
Between that and the fact that I'm finally (finally!) in the German health insurance system, I'm feeling pretty set. On the other hand, I just realized that I'm about to embark on my FIFTH year living in Germany - i.e. I'll shortly have been living in Europe longer than I was in college. Which is weird.
II. Berlin summer impressions
Spending all evening by the Weißensee (a lake near where I live, within the city), swimming and drinking Hefeweizen and listening to a quite good jazz band that suddenly turned up and moving in under the pavilion when it started to rain.
The Saturday morning market just down the street from my apartment, the guy at the vegetable stand handing me my salad mix in a biodegradable bag and explaining that I should pull the edible flowers apart and scatter the petals over the greens as decoration. (It took me three tries to understand what he was saying, even though I supposedly speak this language.) Walking home with fresh vegetables, feeling overwhelmed by these small, lovely blessings, like Saturday farmers' markets or my little balcony garden yielding up actual cucumbers.
Meeting up with a friend from Spain, who's about to move back to Barcelona after a couple years in Berlin, both of us extolling Berlin's virtues, so green, so livable.
Pianos, old ones, suddenly appearing in the Mauerpark for all to play.
Some guy riding past our group of acquaintances with a complex loudspeaker system blaring music from his bicycle, a girl in the group who's contemplating a work-related move to a smaller and less vibrant German city watching him go by and sighing, "Only in Berlin."
Biking (with a stop to swim in a lake and then - because this is Germany - also eat French fries from the stand at the lake) to a friend's house in the countryside, seeing combines at work in the many (wheat?) fields we passed. Rounds of ping pong in front of the house and endless food - afternoon coffee and cake, then barbecuing, then marshmallows roasted over the barbecue (spearheaded by the other American present), then more cake. The place had a wonderful, lovingly tended vegetable garden, and our hosts sent me home with a pumpkin!
An all-night birthday party that started in the evening at a bar that used to be a hairdresser's and ended well after sunrise in the club that sometimes hosts the Russian disco.
A small concert in the cozy basement performance space of a nearby bar; as I walked in with a friend, the performer cheerily exclaimed, "Welcome! The first people here I don't know personally!" Relaxed atmosphere, tiny and friendly audience, good beer and soup. The singer's current project involves songs from famous movies, and as she launched into a folky/singer-songwritery rendition of "My Heart Will Go On," and we and the rest of the audience started to giggle, she declared, "These lyrics are very deep, so don't start laughing!"
A black and gray crow on my street, delicately eating out of an abandoned paper ice cream cup.
More to come.
I. Various kinds of officialdom
Germany wants me to stay! At least, that's the conclusion I reached when, for the first time in my relationship with the country, they simply sent me a letter detailing when my visa-renewal appointment is and what I should bring. (Rather than me having to go there and wait ages just to make an appointment.) Also, they scheduled the appointment for the very day my last visa expires, so I kind of assume they're not planning to kick me out and stick me on a plane out of the country the very same day.
Between that and the fact that I'm finally (finally!) in the German health insurance system, I'm feeling pretty set. On the other hand, I just realized that I'm about to embark on my FIFTH year living in Germany - i.e. I'll shortly have been living in Europe longer than I was in college. Which is weird.
II. Berlin summer impressions
Spending all evening by the Weißensee (a lake near where I live, within the city), swimming and drinking Hefeweizen and listening to a quite good jazz band that suddenly turned up and moving in under the pavilion when it started to rain.
The Saturday morning market just down the street from my apartment, the guy at the vegetable stand handing me my salad mix in a biodegradable bag and explaining that I should pull the edible flowers apart and scatter the petals over the greens as decoration. (It took me three tries to understand what he was saying, even though I supposedly speak this language.) Walking home with fresh vegetables, feeling overwhelmed by these small, lovely blessings, like Saturday farmers' markets or my little balcony garden yielding up actual cucumbers.
Meeting up with a friend from Spain, who's about to move back to Barcelona after a couple years in Berlin, both of us extolling Berlin's virtues, so green, so livable.
Pianos, old ones, suddenly appearing in the Mauerpark for all to play.
Some guy riding past our group of acquaintances with a complex loudspeaker system blaring music from his bicycle, a girl in the group who's contemplating a work-related move to a smaller and less vibrant German city watching him go by and sighing, "Only in Berlin."
Biking (with a stop to swim in a lake and then - because this is Germany - also eat French fries from the stand at the lake) to a friend's house in the countryside, seeing combines at work in the many (wheat?) fields we passed. Rounds of ping pong in front of the house and endless food - afternoon coffee and cake, then barbecuing, then marshmallows roasted over the barbecue (spearheaded by the other American present), then more cake. The place had a wonderful, lovingly tended vegetable garden, and our hosts sent me home with a pumpkin!
An all-night birthday party that started in the evening at a bar that used to be a hairdresser's and ended well after sunrise in the club that sometimes hosts the Russian disco.
A small concert in the cozy basement performance space of a nearby bar; as I walked in with a friend, the performer cheerily exclaimed, "Welcome! The first people here I don't know personally!" Relaxed atmosphere, tiny and friendly audience, good beer and soup. The singer's current project involves songs from famous movies, and as she launched into a folky/singer-songwritery rendition of "My Heart Will Go On," and we and the rest of the audience started to giggle, she declared, "These lyrics are very deep, so don't start laughing!"
A black and gray crow on my street, delicately eating out of an abandoned paper ice cream cup.
More to come.
Thursday, August 19, 2010
The New Blog
August seems like an appropriate time to start this new blog, because August is, in fact, my own Berlinniversary. (It's at the beginning of August, actually, and I tried to get this going then, but a big work project got in the way.)
What is a Berlinniversary? you may ask - it's a word to describe the anniversary of one's arrival in Berlin, a lovely portmanteau of "Berlin" and "anniversary" that I could swear my friend Noah invented, except that he has no memory of doing any such thing.
Let it remain a mystery, then. And meanwhile, I'll celebrate three years of my life in Berlin and four years in Germany with the launch of a new site for blogging about both of these places and many more.
What is a Berlinniversary? you may ask - it's a word to describe the anniversary of one's arrival in Berlin, a lovely portmanteau of "Berlin" and "anniversary" that I could swear my friend Noah invented, except that he has no memory of doing any such thing.
Let it remain a mystery, then. And meanwhile, I'll celebrate three years of my life in Berlin and four years in Germany with the launch of a new site for blogging about both of these places and many more.
The Previous Blog
This is the beginning of this blog, but it's not the beginning, by far, of my blogging about Berlin, Germany and Europe. For my first four years in Germany, look here: http://daotalay.livejournal.com/
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