Wednesday, August 22, 2012

Schreien Hilft


Also, at the concert on Sunday (at Intersoup, in Prenzlauer Berg), I discovered a very interesting sign in the bathroom. Picture-worthy, in fact.

Eric, the drummer, happened to come up behind me just as I had my camera out, and I could see he was about to ask why I was taking pictures in the bathroom, so I explained:

The sign simply reads "Screaming helps."

Then in small print it says, "(At the usual land line rate)." Typical advertisement language, because German companies love to charge you 40 cents a minute to call their "help" lines, and ads always state what rate you'll be charged.

Then at the bottom, tear-off slips with, indeed, a normal Berlin land line number:


Eric urged me to take one of the tear-off slips.

Why don't you take one? I asked.

I don't need to scream, he said.

I don't really either, but I agreed to take the number. Here it is...anyone want to call?
 

A Slightly Embarrassing Life Spent Being Awestruck by Musicians

(NB: Wrote this post over the weekend, so phrases like "last night" and "tonight" should be read as if it were now still Sunday night. Just, you know, if you really care!)


Last night, I came home with my mind spinning from hanging out all night with people who knew Jeff Buckley. Not to mention still know some of the singers I admire most.

Tonight, after hanging out with the same crowd again, I came home with an even happier realization – I love being reminded that the people who render me starstruck (yes, it's generally musicians) are also just people. Who may in fact want to sit down and have a conversation after the show just as much as you do.


Here's where the story starts:

I've mentioned the Sofa Salon before – it's a monthly series of concerts, run by an Australian woman and hosted in a different person's living room each time. (Or even in a bedroom, perhaps the bedroom of a very forgiving housemate... One memorable time, the performer said, "I've played house concerts before, but I've never before played on a bed!")

The Sofa Salon hosts a mix of styles, though there's definitely a strong lean toward one-guy/gal-and-a-guitar. The musicians come from both Berlin and all over, and the performances consistently range somewhere between good and amazing.

This time, when the Sofa Salon email landed in my inbox, I recognized a name: Mark Geary, an Irish musician formerly known to me only as "that guy who always seems to open for Glen Hansard."

Sofa salon and a musician connected to some of my favorite singer-songwriters? Obviously a must-see.


The Sofa Salon, on Saturday, was actually three performers: Ned Collette, Mark Geary and Ben Salter. All different, all great songwriters.

(Interestingly, two of the three mentioned how nerve-wracking it was, even for seasoned performers, to play in this intimate living room setting, with the audience right there at their feet. Or as Mark later put it: That silent, intent listening is exactly what you hope for from an audience, that the chatter in the room dies down as everyone's attention is drawn toward you. But it's bizarre to walk into a room and have that intense focus already there...and you haven't even done anything yet.)

Here's a nice example video of Mark, singing his song "Volunteer" at the legendary Club Passim in Boston:



At the end of the sofa salon, Sam, who organizes the concerts, said, "Let's all go down to the bar!"

Which is how I found myself sitting all evening next to Mark (used to play at Sin-é with Jeff Buckley; part of the same crowd as Josh Ritter, Glen Hansard, Lisa Hannigan & co, because all Irish musicians know each other, of course), chatting with him and Sam (who recently tracked down my favorite Icelandic singer for me, because of course Sam has a friend who runs a music festival in Iceland and knows the singer in question...but that's another story) and two other women who also manage performers and concerts in other parts of Germany (one of whom also knew Jeff Buckley).

Have I mentioned that I get slightly ridiculous when musicians are involved? Celebrities, movie stars – I can take 'em or leave 'em. But put me in a room with a musician and I melt.

It doesn't really matter if they're famous. It matters that they're talented at music, at singing and writing songs.

You better believe I went home thinking, Oh no, how many mortifying things came out of my mouth just now, as I was trying and failing not to be completely starstruck?


Tonight, same performer, same crowd. And apparently I was forgiven for the way my mouth doesn't filter anything my brain offers it when in the presence of musicians, because after the concert, we all sat around talking about music, and how performing stays fresh and thrilling despite doing it every night, and whether or not it's a cop out to like singing other people's songs better than the songs I try to write myself... and how soon is too soon for a touring performer to come back to Berlin!

Tuesday, August 21, 2012

I Love Rosa (Luxemburg)

New favorite graffiti!

There's a stupid advertising campaign that just went up all around on billboards, for a new kind of Kinder egg (the chocolates with the toys inside) that's "just for girls" and thus everything is pink ("rosa") – "Ei" actually means "egg," but is meant to sound like "I" in English. (So the ad reads "I love pink!")

But on a street near me (Danziger Str. near Winsstr., to be specific) some awesome and anonymous person added paper printouts and transformed the ad into a declaration of love for Rosa Luxemburg, German pre-war Socialist:


Thursday, August 16, 2012

Berlinniversary, Picnic Style


Celebrated my five-year Berlinniversary in style – with nearly thirty friends and perfect weather in the park. Thanks everyone!

Photo is thanks to Jörn:


Incidentally, I think I'm slowly introducing the invented word "Berlinniversary" into the general vocabulary... (Remember: It's not just the name of this blog, it's also a word that means "the anniversary of one's arrival in Berlin"!) A friend told me the other day, with a completely straight face, that he shares almost the exact same Berlinniversary with another mutual acquaintance.

Wednesday, August 15, 2012

One Day Baby We'll Be Old, Oh Baby We'll Be Old and Think of All the Stories That We Could Have Told


America, have you heard this song yet?

It seems to me it's everywhere here, but maybe that's just from hanging out with French people (did I only image I read somewhere that it was big there first?) or because there's this weird dance music remix of it going on in Germany...

Anyway, this is what's in my head all the time right now. "The Reckoning Song" by Asaf Avidan & the Mojos:


Tuesday, August 14, 2012

Liebe Dich More


Two teenaged girls, parting ways on Immanuelkirchstrasse in Prenzlauer Berg last night. They gave each other a casual hug. As they started off in opposite directions, one called back, "Ich liebe dich." ["I love you."]

The other: "Dich auch." ["You too."] Then she paused, and added: "Ich liebe dich more." [with the one word in English]

The first girl laughed: "I love you more!" [in English now]

The second girl: "I love you moooore!"


Thursday, August 2, 2012

Happy Berlinniversary

Happy Berlinniversary to me!

Yup, I arrived in Berlin precisely five years ago today, with no idea where I would be living after the first couple days, no job, no connections beyond two or three tenuously linked acquaintances. (Still grateful to Rebecca, who'd been traveling around Europe with me for a month that summer, for staying on with me those first few days in Berlin!)

Lately I've been having those small "what am I doing with my life??" crises; sometimes I feel like I'm spinning my wheels. But when I look at where I was five years ago and where I am now, you know, actually it doesn't look that bad.

So, happy fifth anniversary to me and Berlin!

All Hail the Hail


It's so rare we get really good, dramatic weather in Berlin (I love dramatic weather! thunderstorms!) so I get excited when we do. Here's a brief story of today's weather in pictures.

Today, I worked part of the day in the sun on the balcony. In the evening, I went and sat outside for a bit again. It looked like this:


Pretty suddenly, the wind started to whip up and the clouds rolled in. My laptop and I kept inching further into the apartment from the balcony by degrees as the sky started to look like this – possibly you can even see the streaks of rain coming down:


Then with no warming at all, hail! Really violent, big balls of ice, whipping up and down and all over the place. The white streaks in this picture are all hail:

 
 It hailed so emphatically, the ice scattered all the way across the kitchen floor:

  

 Here's a piece of hail with some large-ish cherry tomatoes for comparison. It had already been sitting there melting for a while by the time I thought to photograph it, so it was definitely bigger when it first came down:


And here's the sky afterward, gone back to being hail-less but pleasantly dramatic:

Things I Learned at Work Today


One of the things I love about my translation work in journalism (and the bulk of my translation work is in journalism) is that I learn something new with each article – each day I have to become a mini-expert on whatever it is I'm translating about, so I can convey the subject accurately in English.

Sometimes these subjects are weighty and political; sometimes they're cultural and fun. (Sometimes they're finance-related and almost incomprehensible.) Sometimes they're painful things to have to spend my whole day with, like killings in Syria or abandoned babies in Germany.

And sometimes, like today, they're raccoons and rhinoceroses.


I learn something new from my work every day, and here's what today's two translations taught me:


-- The raccoon translation taught me that Britain's tabloids, so famously ridiculous, are even more ridiculous than I realized: This article from the Sun compares Germany's raccoon problem to, what else, Nazis. My favorite head-scratcher quote is, "They are invading new territory — just like the Nazis did." (Feels like it should be followed by a few "!!!" for good measure.)

-- And the rhinoceros translation taught me that there is such an organization as the Private Rhino Owners Association. It's in South Africa and it's, well, an organization for people who own rhinoceroses.