Monday, December 31, 2012

I Believe in Sherlock, in Berlin

The fan-created "I Believe in Sherlock Holmes" campaign will mean less to you, of course, if you haven't actually watched the BBC Sherlock show. (And if you haven't yet watched it, why not?)

Not sure how to summarize the whole "I Believe in Sherlock" thing, especially without giving away the plot, but let's just say that within the show, the character comes under attack from someone trying to destroy his reputation, and then in real life fans have taken up this idea and run with it, creating posters and graffiti declaring their belief that Sherlock was not a fraud. (You can find a good description of this trend here or here.)

So, seeing as I'm a huge fan of BBC Sherlock, try to imagine my shock and delight when I passed by my friendly neighborhood statue of Communist leader Ernst Thälmann and saw this:


There's even the word "BORED" written on the side, in yellow paint, with that smiley... Well, like I said, this just won't be quite as exciting for you if you haven't seen the show.


And speaking of how fantastic BBC Sherlock is, how smart and funny and well-made, and so true to the original Conan Doyle stories despite being a thoroughly modern retelling... Well, as some fans have put it so well (again, it's an in-joke if you've seen the show) – "Watch at once if convenient. If inconvenient, watch anyway."

New Year's Sights

Here are the New Year's Eve-related things cracking me up today:


A flower shop where the whole display area out front is dedicated to a particular German quirk: little planters with as many as possible of the typical German good luck symbols (including four-leaf clovers, ladybugs and, oddly, chimney sweeps) squeezed in:


Then, as usual, signs advertising fireworks everywhere. The stores plastered with twenty different neon signs at once are funnier, of course, but I also liked this one random sign on a lamppost:


And a whole wall of advertising posters, of which all were for different New Year's parties:

Friday, December 28, 2012

Eggless Eggnog

Ladies and gentlemen, I have discovered the secret to making eggless eggnog that tastes like the real thing!

I've made this a couple times now, and it's met with the approval of several discerning North American palates that were also familiar with the real thing. (And now I need a new word for the real thing... "egg eggnog"?)

I followed this recipe, and the magical ingredient seems to be the sweetened condensed milk, which gives it the right texture. It comes out kind of thin, though, so I also threw in a packet of vanilla pudding, and some vanilla extract. And definitely bourbon, not rum. Mm. Eggnog without the risks!

Thursday, December 27, 2012

Love and Trams

At a dinner with some friends just before Christmas, we got to talking about "love" in German: Specifically, that there are two phrases in German that more or less mean "I love you" – "ich liebe dich" and "ich hab dich lieb" – and it's not always clear why people use one or the other.

The consensus of the two Germans present seemed to be that "ich liebe dich" is only for romantic love, whereas "ich hab dich lieb" is broader and can be for parents, siblings, friends, etc.

Then, though, we realized you can use the verb "lieben" when you talk about someone ("Ich liebe meine Schwester" = "I love my sister") even if you wouldn't say "ich liebe dich" to them.

Hm.

Before we start casting psychological judgements on Germans, though, based on the fact that they'll talk about love about each other but not necessarily to each other (cue Garrison Keillor's joke about the Norwegian farmer who loved his wife so much...that he almost told her!), one of the Germans at the dinner pointed out that you can "lieben" a lot of things in German, like ice cream, or a favorite teacher. So basically, as a verb with an object, it just means you like something a lot – the same way we use "love" in English.

~ ~ ~ ~ ~

Heading home from the dinner party, I caught the M10 tram with a friend who was also going the same way.

I've written before about the M10 and how I affectionately call it the "party tram," since that's what it turns into on weekend nights, when it's packed full of young folks shuttling between clubs, drinking in the tram and strewing around beer bottles and confetti. That post is the all-time most viewed post on this blog, though I assume that's through the accident of people trying to look up actual information about the M10 and ending up with me instead.

Anyway, this night shortly before Christmas my friend Naomi and I got on the M10 at Nordbahnhof and it was empty, even though it was a weekend night.

"Everyone's gone home for Christmas," Naomi said, and I had to agree that the demographic who turn the tram into a party are also probably the same folks who are young enough (and living far enough from home) that they leave for wherever it is their parents live several days ahead of Christmas, rather than just-before-Christmas-Eve or not-leaving-at-all-but-celebrating-in-Berlin-with-friends like the folks we know.

Never thought I'd see the M10 at 2 a.m. on a Saturday night with just three or four quiet passengers and one lone empty champagne bottle keeping them company from the middle of the floor!

Monday, December 24, 2012

How to Confuse a German (a.k.a. Fish Is Not Vegetarian)

At a birthday party this evening, where most of the guests were middle-aged or older, and everyone was German, I happened to be sitting near the table with all the food. So when one woman wandered over to pick up a few snacks, she made a bit of small talk with me. Making a bit of small talk back, I mentioned that I hadn't really figured out yet which things on the table were vegetarian.

She pointed out one thing she knew was vegetarian because she'd brought it herself, then peered at another dish and said, "Oh, and I think this is vegetarian, it's salmon."

Yes, I know 99 percent of Germans are firmly convinced that a fish is not an animal, at least when it comes to purposes of defining vegetarianism. (I assume it's allowed to be an animal the rest of the time?) I don't know how they arrived at that conclusion, but they did. And I do know this already. Still, the misapprehension was so blatant ("It's vegetarian, it's salmon") that I couldn't help – gently! – correcting the woman: "Salmon? Oh, so it's not vegetarian."

This met with a blank stare.

I tried to explain: "Because fish isn't actually vegetarian, because it's an animal."

"Oh," she said, "I guess that's what I would call vegan."

"Well, vegan is actually something else – it means no dairy products, and no eggs."

Another blank stare.

Yes, that's the point where I just smiled nicely and gave up.

~ ~ ~ ~ ~

Also, tonight on the S-Bahn, a seller of a homeless magazine who got on the train and then burst out laughing – because there was a clown sitting there in the seat across from me, red nose and all. You know, just sitting there and riding the train.

Saturday, December 22, 2012

Christmas at Alexanderplatz


Just one bit of a huge carnival, I mean "Christmas market," set up at Alexanderplatz right now.


Because nothing says Christmas like a massive, light-up carnival (apparently)!

 ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

ALSO: I didn't get a picture of it, but the other night as I passed by the blinking, neon explosion of carnival rides and beer that is Alexanderplatz right now, I was tickled to see that one of the many and bizarre activities on offer appeared to be...curling. That most Canadian of sports. (Okay, yes, I see that it was apparently invented in Scotland, but still. Very Canadian...and I've never heard of it over here.)

BUT just now I went and looked this up (the thing at Alexanderplatz was labeled "Eisstockschiessen," literally "ice stick shooting") and find that this is in fact a separate sport from curling, and indeed quite German. In English, apparently, we call it "ice stock sport" or "Bavarian curling." Oh, the things you can learn!

(In Ithaca, because Ithaca is particularly awesome like that, every year the Farmers' Market hosts the "International Rutabaga Curl," in which, yes, participants play something loosely resembling curling, except with rutabagas. The vegetable. And rutabaga in German is apparently "Kohlrübe," so now you've learned that too.)

Friday, December 21, 2012

Fireworks and Holidays

In "Berlin Ragbag" a few posts ago, one of the (many) things I mentioned was how small business owners here actually allow themselves proper vacations – you'll pass a restaurant and see a sign on the door saying they're away for three weeks or something, no big deal.

Well, now I have a picture to add as an example. This is the friendly little Brazilian café just down the block from me; the sign went up at least a week before Christmas and says they'll be away until January 4th. Good for them, I say!


And then, because it wouldn't be the-run-up-to-New-Year's-Eve in Berlin without garish neon-colored signs blossoming everywhere to advertise places selling fireworks:


In this case it looks particularly bizarre, because this place was until recently a drug store, and still has the drug store's signs up – obviously, someone grabbed the chance to rent out the space while it's empty and make a quick buck (er, euro) feeding Berliners' craving for setting off as many explosives as possible on New Year's Eve.


Thursday, December 20, 2012

Pony on the S-Bahn

Well, it seems everyone's already writing about the girl who took her pony on the local train in Berlin, so I won't repost it here (but watch the video, if you like).

I just want to add that according to the B.Z. (a German tabloid, so I'm not sure how much credence to actually give this) the girl with the pony said she changed trains at Friedrichstrasse, where a conductor noticed them – and asked if the pony had a ticket. When she said, "Yes," he said, "Okay." (B.Z. article here.)

Tuesday, December 18, 2012

British People Problems

Hee. Speaking of the English: British People Problems.

(My favorite: Nr. 13.)

Pictures: England Coast to Coast

This past May, I walked part of England's Coast to Coast path with two friends, Kat and Maike, with whom I'd also hiked the West Highland Way in Scotland the fall before. Just as the West Highland Way was marvelous, so was the Coast to Coast!

As Maike said, though, we really only did "Coast" and "to" but not "Coast," seeing as we started on the Irish Sea and walked the Lake District section, but stopped before getting to the dales or the moors or the end point on the North Sea at the other side of England. Well, someday...

Anyway! I finally put the pictures into an album. Only seven months late (shhh...) Onward and upward!


Coast to Coast:

England Coast to Coast

Movies and Ice Cream

 In "Berlin Ragbag," a couple posts ago, I mentioned how very long I'd spent puzzling over why video rental stores here always also sell ice cream – until the thought finally emerged from deep within my German memory (the part of my brain that partly draws on my own experience, but partly on what I've absorbed from German friends about their childhoods, since I myself didn't have a German childhood) that I was almost certain there's a long tradition of ice cream being a main snack sold in German movie theaters – and that people maybe even used to come around and sell it right inside the theater – and that that's where this deep-seated "movie + ice cream" association stems from.

Well, I'm proud to report that last weekend I did the whole seeing-a-movie-at-a-massive-megaplex thing for the first time in a long time, and someone actually came in selling ice cream! My German memory vindicated.

Also, can I just say that the number of ads shown in German cinemas is just unreal? I wish I'd thought to check my watch and time the it, because it was beyond absurd: They showed a very, very long string of ads (not just movie trailers, also just general advertisements, high-quality, TV-type ones), then the curtain closed in front of the screen (another typical German thing, a short official break after the ads and before the feature starts), but then after the curtain reopened, there were more ads, before the movie actually started.

This was a long movie to begin with (for which, in Germany, they cheekily add a long-movie surcharge! movie theaters in the US don't do this, do they?) so I think all told we spent about three hours there.

– – – – –

Also, in an exciting linguistic side note:

I once wrote about a German woman telling me how mortified she'd been when she made the mistake, in an English-speaking country, of asking someone if they were standing "on the snake" instead of "on line" (that's "queue" to the Brits) – because in German the word for snake, "Schlange," is also used for a line/queue.

Well, I've happily discovered that she wasn't actually that far off-base: I just learned that the British word "queue" comes from a Latin root that means "tail." So, while it's not "snake," exactly, it's a very similar idea. (That a line of people waiting for something looks a bit like an animal's tail.)

I love when word meanings converge!

Angus Stone in Berlin

Speaking of concerts, I never wrote about seeing Angus Stone in Berlin a couple months back.

You may (or may not) know him from the Australian brother–sister duo, Angus and Julia Stone. I only know them because my friend Lisa tipped me off to their music, but they've quickly become favorites. I really recommend them.

Anyway, Lisa, who's a big fan of theirs, was visiting me in Berlin a couple of months ago. The first night she arrived, she was on her laptop, looking around to see what events she might want to check out while she was here, when suddenly she looked up at me with big eyes and said: "Angus Stone is playing tomorrow night."

The concert was sold out (when I told another friend we were still going to go there and try to find tickets, he replied with skepticism, "Maybe you can find that most elusive of species, the sensitive neo-folk scalper") and I had to work until just before it started, but Lisa went early and stood outside and asked every single person if they had an extra ticket, and actually managed to get us two.

You know how it is with duos; even though the sum is indubitably more than the parts, a result of two people combining the best of their individual talents into something even larger and better, still as a listener you end up favoring the songs of one over the other.

For me, it's actually Julia Stone's songs (deceptively simple, haunting melodies) but for Lisa, it's definitely Angus' songs. And we got there early enough that we were right up front, so she was thrilled.

Angus Stone was quite sweet, peering shyly out at the audience from behind artfully mussed locks of hair (which must be a conscious fashion choice, because I don't think it's even possible to make hair that messy accidentally) and saying disarming things like, "Usually I have my big sister here to talk to you."

He played mostly songs off his new album ("The Wolf and the Butler" was the standout for me) but also extraordinary renditions of classics of his like "Big Jet Plane" and "Draw Your Swords."

Favorite exchange during the concert:

Angus Stone, after the audience has been singing along: "You guys sing pretty good."
Someone in the audience: "You too!"
Angus, sweetly: "Thanks."

Also, right behind me and Lisa were two young Dutch hippies (we first interacted with them because the girl of the two found the label on my beer bottle really pretty, and asked if she could keep it when I was done) who ended up at the concert – how am I not surprised that this is how two wandering hippies would end up at the concert of a traveling hippie band? – because they'd been at a rest stop somewhere, hitchhiking toward Berlin, and ended up talking to the band, who were also stopped there, and who invited them to the concert and put them on the guest list.

Here's "The Wolf and the Butler," from the Berlin concert, a sweet lament to not leaving the important things in life until too late:

Friday, December 14, 2012

Lisa Hannigan in Berlin (and many more)


Lisa Hannigan, love love love. Front row. Love. I was pretty useless as an audience member, not loud or participatory...mostly just stood there and gazed at her in adulation from five feet away as she sang.

(Lisa Hannigan, though not from this concert)

Then...Gisbert zu Knyphausen in the same night! This was a whole line-up hosted by a record label called Pias, at the Postbahnof at Berlin, and they had a very smart set-up, with two stages so that the transition between acts happened fast and seamlessly.

Conveniently, the people I'd come to see were all playing at the same one of the two stages, so I just went and and camped out in front of that one from the start, and in doing so more or less accidentally managed to be five feet away from Lisa the whole concert. Then, again, five feet away from Gisbert. Even got his set list afterward:


The funny thing, for me, was that the last time I saw Lisa Hannigan play in Berlin, I was outside the club waiting to go in, when I saw someone go in the door ahead of me that...looked a lot like...Gisbert zu Knyphausen??

It's not really that weird. He lives in Berlin, he likes music, of course he would turn up to other people's concerts. But at that moment, to me, it was like, Oh my god, it's Gisbert zu Knyphausen! And then, during that concert, I found myself standing three feet away from him the entire time. So I was a little distracted, because one of my favorite Irish singer-songwriters was onstage, and one of my favorite German ones was right there next to me.

I was there with my friend John, who eventually convinced me to go up to Gisbert; basically, I went, "I'm a big fan," and was awkward about it, and Gisbert was kind of awkward too, I think being like, Wait, am I a star being approached by random fans now?

You know how you want to play it cool and treat the person like an actual human being, rather than a dehumanized object of adoration? But then in that moment, you're so overwhelmed by meeting them that you freeze up anyway?

Anyway, for this concert, the Pias record label one, I actually didn't decide I was going until the last minute, because there had been an (admittedly small) chance that another Irish musician acquaintance would be able to get me on the guest list for Glen Hansard's concert instead. (Glen Hansard and Lisa Hannigan, WHY playing separate concerts in Berlin the same night, WHY?? Especially when for the rest of the tour, they're playing the same concerts, with her opening for him?)

Yes, more and more it seems I live just two degrees of separation from the musicians I admire most: I don't know them personally, but I personally know all these people who do.

Anyway, the Glen Hansard thing fell through, but it was hard to be sad about it when it meant I got to see Lisa Hannigan instead – and got so lucky about being right up front, in a fairly intimate concert setting.

I didn't know anyone else going to the concert, but in a moment of inspiration texted a friend of a friend who often seems to turn up at the same concerts I do, and indeed she was planning to go! So I was able to hang out with her – and a friend of hers who knows Gisbert from when they lived in the same student dorm.

Like I was saying about those two degrees of separation.

The last band of the night – I Am Kloot, from Manchester, England – was one I hadn't heard of until I started looking up the various acts ahead of this concert, but also really enjoyed. There was something so odd and yet appealing about their manner, the lead singer's especially. They just seemed like people who have been doing this music thing for a long time, and love doing it, and are completely comfortable with themselves and their performing. I recommend 'em.



Update: The moment I finished writing this yesterday, I closed up my laptop for the night and went to meet some friends at the neighborhood Christmas market.

On my way there, I passed a restaurant that was playing recorded music outside (even though none of the restaurant's patrons were outside) and the song playing as I went by was...well, I can't be absolutely certain, because I only caught the very, very end, but I'm about 95% sure it was that song I'd just posted here, Northern Skies by I Am Kloot. You know, a song I'd never even heard before this week, etc.

Can I help it if sometimes it feels like my life is full of intriguing coincidence?

Wednesday, December 12, 2012

Sahel Calling

My friend Kap – the same friend who took me along on an amazing trip to Senegal last year, and who's also the source of much of what I know about West Africa – is making a movie.

Specifically, she's making a documentary (two, actually) about Mali, as part of a project called Sahel Calling.

It will focus on Malian musicians (the country is famous for its music scene), the dire political situation in northern Mali (I don't feel qualified to try to describe it, but further down on the project's press page you can find some articles on the political situation, the Islamist takeover of the north of the country and how it's affecting people) and the intersection of those two things, Malian musicians and the situation in Mali. As Sahel Calling's website says:

"The project is inspired by the musicians in the region who are risking their lives by singing and speaking about the political situation and the violation of human rights."

The film will follow musicians traveling to the Festival au Désert, Mali's famous music festival, which usually takes place outside Timbuktu in northern Mali. That's not possible this year, because of the violence and instability in the region, so instead the festival will take the form of two caravans traveling through West Africa and converging for a "festival in exile" in neighboring Burkina Faso.

The Sahel Calling project itself is "supported and approved by UNHCR, Oxfam and Conscience International."

I'm mentioning it here because I believe in Kap and her dedication to this project, and because this might interest some of you, whether through personal ties to West Africa, a love of music or just general interest.

Also, though, the project is currently trying to get together the start-up funding it needs in order to shoot a movie teaser, which can then be used to get much larger-scale funding. So if you find yourself short on causes to support (I'm not exactly sure how that could be, in this world, but you never know) then check out the project's "get involved" page. (You don't have to get financially involved – you can also submit questions for the film, "like" it on Facebook, follow it on Twitter, etc. Or just spread the word on to others.)

Speaking of films about music and Mali: If you haven't seen "Throw Down Your Heart," about banjo legend Béla Fleck's trip to explore the banjo's musical roots in Africa, it's really worth it. A moving story about music and its power to connect people. Here's the trailer to that movie:

Berlin Ragbag


Okay, "ragbag" is what I've decided to call posts like these, ones that are a collection of small anecdotes.

I try not to do this too often (because really, who actually wants to read a collection of my disjointed thoughts?) but see, I'm always jotting down these anecdotes that are maybe interesting enough to make note of, but not interesting enough to be an entire post. And I keep jotting and not posting, and fall terribly behind, and it all gets very silly.

So, let's do this, shall we?? Here are the last months' little anecdotes...

• In German, when someone's being silly, you can say, "Hast du einen Clown gefrühstückt?" ("Did you eat a clown for breakfast?")

• Iced coffee. You can't get it in Germany. Oh, you can get ice cream in coffee, which is a rather nice surprise. But even on a hot day, they will only look at you strangely if you ask for your coffee iced. I guess it's because they don't get many of those – hot days – around here.

(A Spanish friend, when he lived in Berlin, would go to a café and explain to the waiter very carefully how to bring his coffee, Spanish-style: "I would like you to bring me an espresso, and I would also like you to bring me a glass, with ice cubes in it." This is so you can add sugar first to the hot espresso, then ice it. Clever, eh?)

• Speaking of ice cream, I'd been vaguely puzzling for a while why video rental places (yes, Germans still go to the store and rent a physical DVD; I guess Netflix hasn't arrived here) always have big signs out front advertising ice cream. Finally, I remembered that in Germany, going to the movies and eating ice cream are two firmly associated actions (much like movies and eating popcorn). I think it's because people used to come around inside the movie theater selling ice cream? Or something? Anybody care to confirm?

(This is a video rental place. It's advertising ice cream.)

• Also, I've talked before about how it's not worth trying to find real bagels here; still, every now and then I just feel like ordering a "bagel" (quotation marks necessary, here) anyway and seeing what happens. I invariably order a bagel with cream cheese, and then wait to see what strange additions it will acquire, for example lettuce leaves or ground black pepper. Most memorably, one time my "bagel with cream cheese" came with cream cheese...and mustard. I walked away delightedly wondering, What exactly about the phrase "bagel with cream cheese" said "mustard" to that woman?

(A café selling "bagels." Or in this case, "bagel's"?)

• And one of my favorite food-related anecdotes: A Northern Irish acquaintance saying, "Do you know how overwhelming it is trying to order breakfast in the United States??" Apparently, there are too many options.

• Just...everything about Berlin's Beer Festival. From the cowboy hat in German flag colors to all the bad cover bands (and a surprisingly not-so-bad cover band, fronted by a young German guy who seemed to deeply believe that he was a 1950s rocker) to the women linedancing to the sausage stand (can't have beer without sausage!) with an automatic combination sausage holder/slicer to the truly impressive level of public urination: my personal best sighting was eight drunk guys all peeing around the same shrubbery.

• Kreislauf. What is it about the German "Kreislauf" (circulation)? People here are forever telling me they have "circulation problems" (and I get worried, because that sounds serious!) but then it turns out all they mean is that it's a hot day and they feel sluggish, or they got a little lightheaded when they stood up just now. Friends have said things like, "Oh, man, my circulation isn't working at all today!" ...Really??

• Germans, like many Europeans, actually allow themselves vacations. Good for them! It makes me smile to walk past a restaurant with a sign on the door announcing that the place is closed for, oh, say, all of January. Or three weeks of July. Because it means that, here, even people who run their own small businesses get to take vacations.

• I was surprised to find out that seemingly every one of my female friends here has "her" tailor she regularly goes to when she needs an article of clothing hemmed, taken in, etc. Maybe this is just a grown-up thing I hadn't gotten around to yet (should I be worried that, since finding this out, I now have a tailor I go to too?), but I think it's also kind of a German thing, because tailors – old-school, individual, self-employed ones operating out of their own little workshops – are still a thriving profession here. It seems like there's a tailor shop on every corner around here.

(Here's one.)

(Here's another.)

• Also everywhere in Germany: bakeries. More and more of them are being taken over by chains, unfortunately, but there are also a whole lot still run by individuals or families, master bakers who come in early to prepare their wares fresh and on-site each morning.

• A lot of bookstores too, it occurs to me. Germany is still doing well at the old-fashioned trades and the family-run shops.

• Overheard: A snippet of conversation, as a German dad explained to his young kid a core principle of the German language: "Wenn man sich länger kennt, kann man sich duzen. Muss nicht." ("When people know each other for a longer time, they can say 'du' [the German informal "you," as opposed to "Sie," which is the formal "you"]. But they don't have to.")

• A random Israeli guy I talked to at the Weinerei mishearing when I told him I'm a "translator" and thinking I said "trendsetter." That's kind of awesome. "What do you do?" "Oh, I'm a trendsetter."

• And then there's the fact that German-speakers actually can't hear the difference between the "eh" sound in "head" and the "ae" sound in "hat," because that distinction doesn't exist in German. Plus, words in German never end in a real "d" sound (it changes to "t") so the two words "head" and "hat" end up sounding identical. Throw in that fact that a short "u" can sound a lot like a short "a" – and you get my students who asked me about that place called "Pizza Head" ...It took me a long time to realize they meant Pizza Hut!

• This was a new experience: As we left a neighborhood bookstore one evening, a friend of mine went to unlock her bike from a nearby bikerack, and immediately a woman standing nearby with her own bike asked hopefully, "Oh, are you leaving that spot?" Just like someone trying to find a spot for their car in a crowded parking lot – I'd just never seen it happen with bikes before.

(Bike parking, Prenzlauer Berg.)

• A new favorite word: "Ferienkommunismus" ("vacation communism," as in, only dabbling in communist principles while on vacation) – used by a friend in describing Fusion, the big, good-hippie-vibe type music festival that takes place each summer in eastern Germany, north of here.

• And after Fusion this year, someone put together a nice video showing different bits of the festival; I watched it and was tickled to see a shot of the man I think of as the "Kreuzberg bubble guy" – an older gent with a long white beard who I've seen around the Kreuzberg area of Berlin once or twice, always with a big grin and blowing soap bubbles from a child-sized bubble wand.

I happened to mention this to my musician friend Roland, who said, all casual and off-hand, "Oh, yeah, I forwarded that to him. I thought he'd want to see it."

(This video, in fact.)

• More of my own strange interactions with people in shops... My Mondays are a bit odd, as workdays go, with the scheduled part of the day not really getting started until early afternoon but continuing into the very late evening. There's a small bakery I occasionally drop into for a coffee on my way to my afternoon teaching appointment, and for some reason the woman there (this is taking place around 2:30 pm) always wishes me a nice "Feierabend" (end of the work day). The first time this happened, I looked at her in confusion and blurted out, "No, it's only just starting!"

(Only now, writing this, have I realized the probable reason why she assumes it's the end of my workday: This bakery is in the train station of an outlying bit of Berlin, practically a suburb – so pretty much anyone stopping there on their way out of the station is bound to be a commuter, coming back from work in the central part of the city.)

• Also, when I went to mail my absentee ballot to the U.S. for the presidential election, I had to ask for a special €3.45 stamp, because the ballot envelope is so oversized. The woman behind the counter asked if I didn't just want to fold it up and put it in a normal-sized envelope (The stamp for a normal international letter is just €0.75!) but I explained that both the ballot and the envelope stated very explicitly that only the special oversized envelope could be used, since this was election mail. "Ah, die Wahl," she said ("Ah, the election") and then repeated, "Wahlkampf" ("election campaign") with a shake of her head. Because the whole world knows how insane and protracted our elections are.

• Recently it seemed like there was a spate of friends (in the U.S.) posting on Facebook about the everyday occurrence – minor, but grating – of being hassled by guys on the street. Only then did it occur to me: No one ever hassles me here. It's funny, I really hate how people here are so cold in public and ignore each other, but I guess that's the upside: If people are ignoring you, they're also not hassling you.

• A German friend excitedly relating how he saw squirrels in a neighbor's tree! And they were jumping around, and hiding nuts! (Squirrels are a much less common sight in Germany than in the U.S.)

A Dutch friend also got adorably enthusiastic about having seen a skunk! an actual skunk! while she was in the U.S. – I think in Europe they only know skunks from cartoons...

(When they do have squirrels, they're red ones. This sign was in England, not Germany.)


• Working in a café and hearing a man and a woman near me chatting in Spanish; gradually figuring out that she was Spanish but he was German by the fact that he was explaining, and then spelling, the German word "Bauchspeicheldrüse" ("pancreas") to her in Spanish. (I caught "...a part of the body..." before the Spanish lost me again.)

I remember my middle school German class being delighted to learn the word "Bauchspeicheldrüse" (because, really, could you find a more classically German-looking word?) but I never thought until now about what a great example it actually is of a typical German built-from-building-blocks word. Taken at its most literal, Bauch + Speichel + Drüse breaks down into "stomach-saliva (i.e. pancreatic juice) gland."

• I've written before about how people say "zu Ostzeiten" (literally "in east times") as a shorthand for the days when East Germany existed. But I was walking down the street one day, and actually heard someone say, "zu Westzeiten." ...I guess that means the days when West Germany existed?

(Just seems a funny thing to say, because West Germany, i.e. the "Federal Republic of Germany" basically just incorporated East Germany, i.e. the "German Democratic Republic," and the two together kept being the Federal Republic of Germany. So the West never stopped existing.)

• Speaking of which, it's no real secret that practically everyone in East Germany watched West German TV, even though it was technically forbidden. Someone joked recently about how 80% of East Germany would be frantically turning down the volume of their TV sets at 8 pm, when the highly recognizable intro theme music of the West German news started.

• And East/West stereotypes still exist to this day. A Scottish acquaintance (someone my friends and I met on our Scottish hiking trip last year) was passing through Berlin and wrote me to meet up. I told him which tram to take to get to my place in Prenzlauer Berg, and apparently on the way here he was texting friends back in Scotland, saying, "I'm heading into East Germany now! I'll get in touch again if I survive!" Funnily enough, before I even had the chance to come down the street and meet him, he stumbled into an absolute dive of an old East German bar, the grungy sort of place that I've never gone into even though I walk along that street every day...and there he found a TV playing precisely the soccer game he'd wanted to watch, and quickly befriended a bearded, middle-aged English dude who just happened to be there in the bar, who came here decades ago for a short-term job and never left.

• Then on the other side of the equation, an (East German) adult student of mine told me about people she knows, also from the former East Germany, who to this day refuse to drive their cars – instead parking and taking public transportation – if they have to make the trek all the way over to West Berlin.

• A British friend recently pointed out something I'd never noticed about German, but now that I've heard it, I have to admit is undeniably true: When one person says "tschüss!" ("bye!") and a second person answers back "tschüss!" – that second "tschüss!" is always higher pitched. If a third person is involved, I think it gets higher pitched still. Find some Germans saying goodbye to each other; I promise you this phenomenon will occur.

• And one last thing: I invited a German acquaintance to my Chanukah celebration and he accepted the invitation so matter-of-factly that I asked, surprised, "Wait, do you know what Chanukah is?"

"Yeah, sure," he said, "Because I watch Jon Stewart."

"Uh, really? Does Jon Stewart talk about Chanukah that much?"

"Yeah, you know. Whenever it's Chanukah."


If anyone actually read all that, wow, I don't even know what to say. Here, have a bonus Chanukah picture. (First night of Chanukah candles, and my favorite Chanukah children's book.)

Tuesday, December 11, 2012

Snow in Berlin

Snow snow snow snow snow snow snow snow snow!


How to Be a German in 20 Easy Steps

Well, this one's been bouncing around the internet for a while already, but as always I'm way behind on this blogging thing. So I'll share it here too:

"How to Be a German in 20 Easy Steps."

I know, I know, there's already a plethora of these "Oh, Germans are so wacky!" type lists out there, but the thing is...they're so true!

In this case, especially:

#2 (breakfast in Germany is a feast);

#4 (Germans love taking out insurance on everything imaginable – "If someone invented insurance insurance, an insurance against not having the right insurance, we’d all be treated to the sight of 80 million people dying of happiness");

#7 (when in doubt, go take some further training course and rack up even more professional qualifications);

#9 (the default drink for Germans is Apfelschorle, apple juice mixed with sparkling water);

#11 (seriously, who else actually eats Sauerkraut??);

#13 (It's no joke, every person in this country is capable of opening a beer bottle with pretty much any object you might hand them. Lighter? Back end of a fork? Edge of the kitchen table? No object is too odd for a German wanting to access the beer inside that bottle. I bow in awe to this skill that I will never possess);

#15 (Berlin as Germany's black sheep of a capital city: "creative, unpunctual, prone to spontaneous displays of techno, unable to pay its taxes, over familiar with foreigners. To many Germans, Berlin is not really their capital, it's more like a giant art project or social experiment that only turns up when hungover, and in need of a hand out.");

#19 ("Do nothing on Sundays." GRRR everything useful is closed on Sundays GRRR);

#20 ("Watch Tatort," Germany's obsessively loved Sunday evening murder mystery TV show. I don't know why, but Germany really loves murder mysteries.)

#21 (Yes, the list has expanded beyond the original 20 items... This one is about how much Germans love their own type of bread above all others. Which is true.)

#25 (Saying the cheer "Prost" and making eye contact while clinking glasses. I like this cultural tradition, but Brits (who do clink glasses, but don't make eye contact when they do) apparently find it weird.)

Wednesday, December 5, 2012

Punctuality

Germany, possibly the only place where handymen, electricians, etc. show up earlier than the time they said.

Also, ARG, German language, why?? If the verb "ausbauen" (literally "out" + "build") can mean both "develop, expand, enlarge" and "dismantle, remove," how am I supposed to tell whether the sentence "Die Rebellen wollen ihre Positionen ausbauen" means that the rebels want to build up their camps further, or break their camps down? Seems like kind of an important distinction...

Tuesday, December 4, 2012

Winter

Berlin welcomed me back with snow last night! All evening it fell and swirled in the light of the streetlamps, and even stuck on the ground for a while.

By today, of course, it's melted back into gray and rain, but maybe this is a hopeful sign that we'll have a pretty winter here for once?