Berlin or Africa

This interactive quiz lets you test how fast you can identify the numerous Ortsteile (sub-sections of the city that are varyingly translated as districts, subdistricts or localities; no one seems to quite agree) that make up the city of Berlin.

You can do the "easy" (not really that easy) version that gives a random selection of 20, or the "difficult" one where you have to find all 96 Ortsteile, from the obvious ones like Mitte to the "that exists?" ones like Schmöckwitz (seriously, there are very few of Berlin's Ortsteile I haven't at least heard of, but that's one of them).

It's kind of awesome, if you're a Berlin nerd like me.

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But I first came across the Berlin map, actually, via a probably-more-relevant-in-the-wider-scheme-of-things map that does the same thing, but with Africa. (Interestingly, I can do the Africa map faster than the Berlin map. Again, probably a good thing, and more relevant in the wider scheme of things!)

I actually think this is a great way to learn Africa's countries, because you're not left to just guess at random here. The names of the countries show up when you run the mouse over them, so it's more a test of how quickly you can swing your mouse to roughly the right area of the continent to find the country you're looking for. That may sound like the easy way out, but I don't necessarily think so: As you're clicking and searching and racing the clock, you're also absorbing what you see and thus learning a bit of geography as you go. I promise you, I will never again forget where Gabon is, after the humiliation of my first go at the "easy" map!

Check it out here.

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PS: Last night, I spent Thanksgiving with a lovely (vegetarian!!) mixed group of nationalities, and learned that one of the main things that non-Americans associate with the word "Thanksgiving" is "people getting stuck at airports" – thanks to all the American movies that apparently feature this trope as a major plot device!

Ah, the things you learn abroad.

The Chicken or the Refrigerator, with Pictures

So, again about eggs and how they don't actually need to be refrigerated:

Here's a picture of a carton of eggs (yes, eggs come in 10s instead of dozens. Yes, it's weird. Actually, they come in either 10s or in 6s (as in, half dozens), which is even weirder!) to show the two "good until" dates.

The first part says that, just in general, these eggs are good until December 16; the second part says that starting on December 6, they should be kept refrigerated for the rest of the time:

Also, a bonus shot of the whole every-single-egg-is-stamped thing. First a number saying what kind of production the egg is from (organic, free-range, indoor or caged), then the country code, then an ID number for the specific egg farm:

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Also, I mentioned recently how Germans have this frankly impressive ability to be outdoors – and enjoy being outdoors – in all weather. I went out just now to pick up some lunch from a little restaurant nearby that specializes in soups; I got there to find that despite the fact that the restaurant has indoor seating, there was also a group sitting outside at a table in front of the place.

Folks, it's 3° Celsius (37° Fahrenheit) out there. I think this might be a nation of people who are, on the whole, ever so slightly nuts.

They Might Be Giants

Still awesome after all these years!

Which Came First, the Chicken or the...Refrigerator?

Huh, cool. I've wondered about this, too, though only vaguely and in passing, I admit:

"Americans – why do you keep refrigerating your eggs?" (Or, Why do Americans refrigerate chicken eggs, when almost no one else in the world does?)

(By the by, in Germany, just because Germany always has to have even more regulations than everyone else, a carton of eggs comes stamped with two "best before" dates – the first one is how long you can safely leave the eggs unrefrigerated, and the second is how much longer after that you can still keep the eggs, if you refrigerate them.)

Trams, Trains, Dark Days and Warm Cafés

This morning I had to run various errands before starting work, so I took the tram. (Usually I would walk or bike to anything even roughly in my neighborhood, but with all the back and forth and all the things I had to carry, it just made more sense to tram it.) It wasn't until I was done and heading to the office, after 10:30 – closer to 11:00, even – that the trams first started to be really crowded.

Yes, Berlin, the city where rush hour doesn't really hit until 11 a.m. My kinda city!

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Yesterday, I told you how it made my day to discover the existence of such a thing as a "Professor of Clinical Pig Medicine."

The day before, the thing that made my day was seeing an S-Bahn train driver honk and wave to a small child watching from the top of the train bridge at Prenzlauer Allee (which is for some reason a favorite train-watching spot of train-obsessed-small-children and their parents) just before the train passed under the bridge.

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Meanwhile, it seems winter arrived with the changing of the clocks, two and a half weeks ago already, colder weather hitting just as that all-at-once loss of an entire hour drove home how short the days have gotten already.

Don't hate me for saying this, fellow Berlin-residents, but there's a strange way in which I actually kind of like the arrival of this deepest dark. (NOT the endless rain that will soon join it, making me want to abandon this city permanently in favor of somewhere that actually understands what winter is... No, I just mean the darkness itself.)

All the shops and cafés light up so warmly, making you want to snuggle up inside them with a warm drink and a few friends. Even walking by outside somehow feels cozy.

Plus, this is the time of year to witness one of my favorite things about Germans: Their willingness – eagerness, even – to be outside even in freezing weather. Give a German a nice, fuzzy blanket (most cafés keep them on hand) and they're happy to sit out on the sidewalk with their coffee or mulled wine, chatting away as if hanging around outdoors in winter were a completely normal thing to do.

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By the by, my friend Hannah wrote quite a brilliant riff on "ways Germany is better in the dark" over here at The Local. My favorite bits:

"You can't see the disapproving looks that many Germans will shoot your way when crossing on red. This is a huge benefit to the gloomy part of the year - it can almost feel like being in a normal country."

And:

"Going to the shops in the dark in Germany can be terribly exciting, because the gloom outside makes it feel like they're open late, and not closing on the dot of 8pm."

And:

"Also on the menu are roasted chestnuts, which you can buy on the streets from little carts where they're cooked on charcoal. Buying a paper twist of them can make you feel like you're in a Dickens novel."

True!

Also, Glühwein. Also, mandatory slippers.

Majoring in Clinical Pig Medicine

My day is now complete. In the course of my background research for today's translation (about antibiotic use in livestock farming) I've come across someone described as a "Professor of Clinical Pig Medicine."

!!!

Best of all, he's Danish, not German. (Despite it being the Germans who are known for their obsession with pigs in all forms, including in many standard idioms of the language.)

Update:

And another professor (German, this time) is described on the English version of his university's website as a "Swine Consultant."

!

Remembrance

Yesterday was the 75th anniversary of "Kristallnacht," the 1938 night of pogroms (coordinated vandalism, arson, killing and abduction) committed against Jewish Germans and their homes, businesses and synagogues.

I know there were a number of events around Berlin in commemoration yesterday, for example a program of guided tours through specific neighborhoods, stopping at all the "Stolpersteine" ("stumbling stones"), tiny memorial plaques set into the sidewalks in front of buildings, bearing the names of Jewish individuals who lived there and then were deported and killed. There are a lot of these plaques around Berlin. Some of these tours were led by historians; many involved cleaning the plaques, with a suggestion that participants also bring roses to lay in remembrance.

Personally, attending an event of this sort didn't draw me. I guess I didn't feel like spending my day in an act of concerted group mourning with a bunch of contrite Germans? Don't get me wrong, I think it's very important that people do these things, and good that there are enough people in Germany who still care, even as this history slips into a past beyond the memory of most people still living. I guess I just prefer to mourn on my own time, and more privately.

Even just reading the event descriptions, though, gave me a very strange feeling. One tour started at Zionskirchplatz (location of one of my favorite cafés, so I pass through there often), then worked its way along the sites of former Jewish businesses on Brunnenstrasse (a street I used to walk along all the time, when I lived in the area).

You'd think I'd be used to this by now, but it's almost impossible to fathom that these streets I know today are those same streets. The streets with the former Jewish businesses, and the pogroms.

And walking through the neighborhood today, I found myself surprisingly moved to see roses laid at many of the Stolpersteine I passed. The plaques are so tiny, you have to bend down if you want to read the names on them, and they mostly get passed by, as simply part of the fabric of the city. It's good to see people paying attention.

Perhaps here is the best place to end this train of thought: As I'm writing this, I (an American Jew) am eating a bagel I bought from Shakespeare and Sons, the bookshop-and-café run by a Jewish American woman and her Czech husband. I'd dropped by there to ask if they're going to be hosting a Chanukah party again this year, and they said yes. And that's not even mentioning the synagogue and Jewish school down the street from my office, or the Jewish bakery around the corner from my apartment, or the yeshiva (religious educational institution) now located on that very same Brunnenstrasse.

So what I choose to take away from all these thoughts is that, 75 years after the Nazis tried to destroy it, Jewish culture is again flourishing in Berlin.

This Is Halloween, with Pictures

A small photographic addendum to my post about pumpkin-carving, and Halloween in Germany:

Here's a picture (pre-carving) of the North American-style pumpkin I was able to find in a grocery store here, showing its label that totally cracked me up, because this variety is marketed specifically as a "children's Halloween" pumpkin – unlike Germany's usual Hokkaido pumpkin variety, which is marketed primarily for making soup.

And here are everyone's pumpkins carved that evening, all lined up in the dark – just before we watched "Hocus Pocus," for a true evening of American Halloween nostalgia.

Photos are thanks to my friend Anton!