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.
Tuesday, October 26, 2010
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.
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