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.
Monday, August 30, 2010
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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