I know Germans have a reputation as blunt and direct, but this was above and beyond:
I was at the post office today, and as the middle-aged woman behind the counter got the various stamps I needed, she commented out of nowhere, "Dann brauche ich meine graue Haare gar nicht verstecken." ["Then I don't really need to hide my gray hair at all."]
"...Sorry?" I asked, not sure if she was comparing herself to me, or someone behind me, or what. I do have rather a lot of gray for a "young" person, but I don't think of it as being that extreme. That, you know, strangers would comment on it.
But she repeated herself and added, "Darf ich fragen, wie alt Sie sind?" ["May I ask how old you are?"]
"Twenty-eight," I said.
"Das ist ganz schön früh," she agreed, ["That really is pretty early"] then went on to tell me about the coloring rinse she'd done just that morning to hide her gray.
Always alert for an encourage-people's-self-image moment, I assured her I didn't find gray hair so bad at all.
Friday, December 30, 2011
Thursday, December 29, 2011
Wednesday, December 28, 2011
Venice
My weekend away, before the Christmas weekend away, was to Venice, Italy!
When I look back at this year – and this has unquestionably been the Year of Travel for me – every single trip came about through some sort of chance, because someone asked, Hey, want to do this thing? and I said, Yeah, sure.
The fact that this has been possible at all, of course, is in large part because of the flexible nature of my work. But there's an element of simply being open and saying yes, too.
In this case, my friend K. told me she would be meeting her mother for a trip in Slovenia, and was thinking about swinging by Venice afterward, since she'd never been, and then taking the night train back to Berlin.
I'd never been to Venice either – one of those places I vaguely figured I wanted to go at some point, but it probably wouldn't happen until an opportunity arose – and strangely, I don't take many night trains in Europe, or even any at all.
So K. asked, Want to come?
And I said, Yeah, sure!
There's so much more I could say about Venice, but if I don't just write something now, I'll never get the chance. So here's what pops to mind:
VENICE ITSELF:
I've heard people say, "Venice really is how you always thought it was," and in fact...it is.
Tiny, twisting alleys, crumbling old buildings, canals everywhere. Really, you cannot overstate how much water defines Venice. Anywhere you want to go, you have to take into account where the nearest bridge to it is – or if there's one at all.
It all looks like this, except narrower and more twisty:
The entire city is pedestrian (cars have to park at the entrance to the city, how awesome is that?), so everything happens at a different pace – namely, a very fast walking pace, apparently dubbed the "paso veneziano."
GETTING LOST:
This is what people tell you you'll be doing all the time in Venice, and it's true. The place is a maze, and sometimes, there just isn't a bridge to where you want to go. Or the alley just ends in a wall...or a canal. I get lost even in normal cities, so in Venice I simply gave myself up to circumstance.
Which, it turns out, is exactly the right thing to do.
I'm now firmly convinced that Venice is the city of coincidences. If you're looking for a particular café on a certain street, you will not find it...but you will happen across it later, while looking for something else entirely, on another street of the same name in a different part of the same district.
You will also run into the people you know in Venice, randomly, even if the sum total of people you know there is two. The first evening, I met up with a guy named Josh from Couchsurfing (more about that later). K. didn't come – but we ran into her later, in a different part of town.
The next night, K. and I were wandering in yet another completely different part of town, hoping to find some live music or something – and instead ran into Josh and his friends. K. said to Josh, "Okay, I don't know exactly what role Ella plays in all of this, but clearly you and I were destined to meet."
Here's an alley conveniently ending in water:
PEOPLE:
I was recently at a party in Berlin populated by an even-higher-than-my-usual-average number of journalists and writers, and ended up talking to a woman who runs a blog about travel, food, and the taxi rides she takes to get there. She pointed out that the key to travel writing is having your own particular angle, the aspect you're passionate about.
At first I thought, I haven't found mine yet, and then I thought, maybe I have.
My angle is meeting up with people and learning about their place through them, whether they're friends, friends of friends, or strangers I contact through Couchsurfing specifically because that human element is such a crucial part of travel to me.
In this case, we met Josh, an American abroad who loves languages and is teaching and translating in Venice, and his partner Albert, who's from Catalunya in Spain moved here to teach Catalan, and then their friend Laura, also from Catalunya, who speaks at least four languages fluently, and interestingly prefers to read and write in Spanish, even though her native language is Catalan, but feels even more comfortable in Italian:
Then we met Benedicta, a French-German woman who lived in the U.S. for 10 years but then didn't get a green card extension, so she decided to travel for a year, came to Venice, met a Venetian, fell in love and is now happily living here. Didn't I say it was the city of coincidences?
FOOD:
Of course, you can't go to Italy and not have it be partly about food. K. has a particularly good nose for finding good places, and we ate, among others: at a very much local kind of place, where we first had to pass through a gauntlet of local guys drinking their afternoon grappa; at a restaurant where K. went twice, because she was so impressed by their squid ink pasta (I did not partake); various places where you can do the whole standing-up-and-snacking thing (why, Italy, why?); and...
Then there was this really classy place that K. had read about but regretfully decided was beyond our budget. We stumbled across it anyway, though, in that way that happens in Venice, and decided to go in just for a glass of wine.
It turns out they have an extraordinary list of rare wines, and not even at bad prices, and, being such a high-class place, they brought us free cicchetti (Venetian-style tapas) along with our drinks. When K. pleaded my vegetarianism (cicchetti are mostly deep-fried and mostly seafood), the waiter brought us squares of the best focaccia I've ever had, as well as incredible olives, and thin stalks of celery in an extraordinary vinaigrette.
What we'd thought was a restaurant far out of our price range somehow turned into nearly a full meal, for the price of a 5 euro glass of wine.
Cicchetti with claw – here I did not partake either:
JEWISH VENICE:
Then, of course, there was the Jewish Ghetto.
This is the actual source of the word "ghetto," a neighborhood in Venice named after a foundry and later turned into the-place-where-the-Jews-live. I won't go into the whole history here, because I just don't have time to do it justice, but we went on a very informative tour of the ghetto's synagogues, and it was pleasing to see that the Jewish community is still going strong – for once, a Jewish neighborhood and Jewish museum that are not just a matter of history.
On the main square, in the Ghetto Nuovo:
Nearby, we found not one but two Kosher bakeries. (K. texted me, as I arrived in Venice, with the words, "Just found hamentashen! I'm in heaven!")
During our tour of the Jewish Ghetto, I was amused by the sight of ultra-Orthodox men, in their hats and long coats, walking by with takeout pizza boxes (because it's Italy, see, and even the ultra-Orthodox eat pizza...) but it was K. who put that sight together with the Kosher bakery we'd stopped in before, which seemed to be devoted half to pastries and half to pizza.
Oh, right, because they're in Italy, but they're also Orthodox, so they eat kosher pizzas.
That's all about Venice for now. Full photo album will be up shortly!
When I look back at this year – and this has unquestionably been the Year of Travel for me – every single trip came about through some sort of chance, because someone asked, Hey, want to do this thing? and I said, Yeah, sure.
The fact that this has been possible at all, of course, is in large part because of the flexible nature of my work. But there's an element of simply being open and saying yes, too.
In this case, my friend K. told me she would be meeting her mother for a trip in Slovenia, and was thinking about swinging by Venice afterward, since she'd never been, and then taking the night train back to Berlin.
I'd never been to Venice either – one of those places I vaguely figured I wanted to go at some point, but it probably wouldn't happen until an opportunity arose – and strangely, I don't take many night trains in Europe, or even any at all.
So K. asked, Want to come?
And I said, Yeah, sure!
There's so much more I could say about Venice, but if I don't just write something now, I'll never get the chance. So here's what pops to mind:
VENICE ITSELF:
I've heard people say, "Venice really is how you always thought it was," and in fact...it is.
Tiny, twisting alleys, crumbling old buildings, canals everywhere. Really, you cannot overstate how much water defines Venice. Anywhere you want to go, you have to take into account where the nearest bridge to it is – or if there's one at all.
It all looks like this, except narrower and more twisty:
The entire city is pedestrian (cars have to park at the entrance to the city, how awesome is that?), so everything happens at a different pace – namely, a very fast walking pace, apparently dubbed the "paso veneziano."
GETTING LOST:
This is what people tell you you'll be doing all the time in Venice, and it's true. The place is a maze, and sometimes, there just isn't a bridge to where you want to go. Or the alley just ends in a wall...or a canal. I get lost even in normal cities, so in Venice I simply gave myself up to circumstance.
Which, it turns out, is exactly the right thing to do.
I'm now firmly convinced that Venice is the city of coincidences. If you're looking for a particular café on a certain street, you will not find it...but you will happen across it later, while looking for something else entirely, on another street of the same name in a different part of the same district.
You will also run into the people you know in Venice, randomly, even if the sum total of people you know there is two. The first evening, I met up with a guy named Josh from Couchsurfing (more about that later). K. didn't come – but we ran into her later, in a different part of town.
The next night, K. and I were wandering in yet another completely different part of town, hoping to find some live music or something – and instead ran into Josh and his friends. K. said to Josh, "Okay, I don't know exactly what role Ella plays in all of this, but clearly you and I were destined to meet."
Here's an alley conveniently ending in water:
PEOPLE:
I was recently at a party in Berlin populated by an even-higher-than-my-usual-average number of journalists and writers, and ended up talking to a woman who runs a blog about travel, food, and the taxi rides she takes to get there. She pointed out that the key to travel writing is having your own particular angle, the aspect you're passionate about.
At first I thought, I haven't found mine yet, and then I thought, maybe I have.
My angle is meeting up with people and learning about their place through them, whether they're friends, friends of friends, or strangers I contact through Couchsurfing specifically because that human element is such a crucial part of travel to me.
In this case, we met Josh, an American abroad who loves languages and is teaching and translating in Venice, and his partner Albert, who's from Catalunya in Spain moved here to teach Catalan, and then their friend Laura, also from Catalunya, who speaks at least four languages fluently, and interestingly prefers to read and write in Spanish, even though her native language is Catalan, but feels even more comfortable in Italian:
Then we met Benedicta, a French-German woman who lived in the U.S. for 10 years but then didn't get a green card extension, so she decided to travel for a year, came to Venice, met a Venetian, fell in love and is now happily living here. Didn't I say it was the city of coincidences?
FOOD:
Of course, you can't go to Italy and not have it be partly about food. K. has a particularly good nose for finding good places, and we ate, among others: at a very much local kind of place, where we first had to pass through a gauntlet of local guys drinking their afternoon grappa; at a restaurant where K. went twice, because she was so impressed by their squid ink pasta (I did not partake); various places where you can do the whole standing-up-and-snacking thing (why, Italy, why?); and...
Then there was this really classy place that K. had read about but regretfully decided was beyond our budget. We stumbled across it anyway, though, in that way that happens in Venice, and decided to go in just for a glass of wine.
It turns out they have an extraordinary list of rare wines, and not even at bad prices, and, being such a high-class place, they brought us free cicchetti (Venetian-style tapas) along with our drinks. When K. pleaded my vegetarianism (cicchetti are mostly deep-fried and mostly seafood), the waiter brought us squares of the best focaccia I've ever had, as well as incredible olives, and thin stalks of celery in an extraordinary vinaigrette.
What we'd thought was a restaurant far out of our price range somehow turned into nearly a full meal, for the price of a 5 euro glass of wine.
Cicchetti with claw – here I did not partake either:
JEWISH VENICE:
Then, of course, there was the Jewish Ghetto.
This is the actual source of the word "ghetto," a neighborhood in Venice named after a foundry and later turned into the-place-where-the-Jews-live. I won't go into the whole history here, because I just don't have time to do it justice, but we went on a very informative tour of the ghetto's synagogues, and it was pleasing to see that the Jewish community is still going strong – for once, a Jewish neighborhood and Jewish museum that are not just a matter of history.
On the main square, in the Ghetto Nuovo:
Nearby, we found not one but two Kosher bakeries. (K. texted me, as I arrived in Venice, with the words, "Just found hamentashen! I'm in heaven!")
During our tour of the Jewish Ghetto, I was amused by the sight of ultra-Orthodox men, in their hats and long coats, walking by with takeout pizza boxes (because it's Italy, see, and even the ultra-Orthodox eat pizza...) but it was K. who put that sight together with the Kosher bakery we'd stopped in before, which seemed to be devoted half to pastries and half to pizza.
Oh, right, because they're in Italy, but they're also Orthodox, so they eat kosher pizzas.
That's all about Venice for now. Full photo album will be up shortly!
Monday, December 26, 2011
Berlin, Winter
December 26: Mild but gray, wet, windy weather. Berliners still sitting outside at cafés, wrapped in thick coats and clutching hot drinks.
I'm quite impressed right now.
I'm quite impressed right now.
Sunday, December 25, 2011
Christmas Eve Taxi
Because Lisa had approximately 5,327 bags of Christmas presents and things, we took a taxi from her house to her parents' for Christmas Eve. Lisa chatted with the taxi driver, a jovial, white-haired German guy, and asked how late he had to work. (Christmas Eve being the main celebration in Germany, not Christmas Day.)
"Oh, till morning," he said.
"All evening?" Lisa asked.
"All night," he confirmed, but didn't seem too put out about it. "On Christmas Eve, da tut sich einiges [there's plenty going on]."
For many years now, he said, it seems to be standard that young people "swarm" into the city after the present-giving's over, not wanting to sit around their parents' houses, which means there's plenty of work for him all night.
"And I don't work New Year's," he said. "New Year's, we're going on vacation."
"Oh, till morning," he said.
"All evening?" Lisa asked.
"All night," he confirmed, but didn't seem too put out about it. "On Christmas Eve, da tut sich einiges [there's plenty going on]."
For many years now, he said, it seems to be standard that young people "swarm" into the city after the present-giving's over, not wanting to sit around their parents' houses, which means there's plenty of work for him all night.
"And I don't work New Year's," he said. "New Year's, we're going on vacation."
Friday, December 23, 2011
Why Yes, in Fact I Can Work from Pretty Much Anywhere
This would be me, working on a translation, sitting in the stairwell by the door of an overcrowded Deutsche Bahn train.
Chanukah at My House
Friends at my place celebrating Chanukah. It made me very happy.
The makings of latkes arrived in a bag, courtesy of my friend K.!
And there was a menorah in the window, just like it's supposed to be.
(That, incidentally, is the portable menorah – "portamenorah," I believe my friend Rebecca said – the rabbi's wife gave me at the Chabad House I stumbled across in a tiny mountain village in India last year. They give them out because their whole thing is wanting more Jews to be more Jewish.)
Tonight, my friend Lisa and I skyped with my parents from her kitchen in Mönchengladbach and lit Chanukah candles with them across six timezones.
And here's the wandering portamenorah again, accompanying me as I work here on Lisa's floor, while she wraps last minute Christmas presents for her family.
The makings of latkes arrived in a bag, courtesy of my friend K.!
And there was a menorah in the window, just like it's supposed to be.
(That, incidentally, is the portable menorah – "portamenorah," I believe my friend Rebecca said – the rabbi's wife gave me at the Chabad House I stumbled across in a tiny mountain village in India last year. They give them out because their whole thing is wanting more Jews to be more Jewish.)
Tonight, my friend Lisa and I skyped with my parents from her kitchen in Mönchengladbach and lit Chanukah candles with them across six timezones.
And here's the wandering portamenorah again, accompanying me as I work here on Lisa's floor, while she wraps last minute Christmas presents for her family.
Wednesday, December 21, 2011
Winter Begins
It's the solstice, the official start of winter but also the shortest day of the year – from here on out, the daylight (slowly) returns.
I'm having some friends over for a combined Chanukah and winter solstice celebration this evening, and just now I popped over to the Jewish bakery (just a block away! how lucky am I?) in the hope of picking up some of their Hefezopf (braided yeast bread) that's more or less like challah.
I left the errand until too late in the afternoon, and of course they were already sold out. But I got some raisin buns made out of basically the same dough, and the woman there gave me the bakery's business card, so that in the future I can call ahead and reserve what I want!
As I walked home from the bakery around 4:00, true to shortest-day-of-the-year form, it was already practically dark. (Official sunset: 3:54 p.m.) Also true to Berlin winter form, it was spitting down with nasty, cold rain.
But today is the SOLSTICE and yesterday evening we even got the first little flurries of real SNOW, and I will not be deterred from being happy about all this!
– – – – –
By the way, dear readership, I'm still meaning to tell you about an exciting weekend away (past) and a super exciting next big trip (future), and I promise I haven't forgotten!
Starting tomorrow, I'll be away visiting friends to celebrate German Christmas (the only kind of Christmas I know), so maybe there I'll find the time to write a bit. Or not, we'll see.
For now (because I seem to be having way too much fun spinning out teasers), I'll give you hints about the upcoming trip:
1. Starts with "S"...
2. I already mentioned that French course I took in preparation...
3. And recently, my doctor told me I was a little low on vitamin D and should take higher dosage supplements "unless you'll be spending a month in Africa this winter." And I said, "Actually..."
I'm having some friends over for a combined Chanukah and winter solstice celebration this evening, and just now I popped over to the Jewish bakery (just a block away! how lucky am I?) in the hope of picking up some of their Hefezopf (braided yeast bread) that's more or less like challah.
I left the errand until too late in the afternoon, and of course they were already sold out. But I got some raisin buns made out of basically the same dough, and the woman there gave me the bakery's business card, so that in the future I can call ahead and reserve what I want!
As I walked home from the bakery around 4:00, true to shortest-day-of-the-year form, it was already practically dark. (Official sunset: 3:54 p.m.) Also true to Berlin winter form, it was spitting down with nasty, cold rain.
But today is the SOLSTICE and yesterday evening we even got the first little flurries of real SNOW, and I will not be deterred from being happy about all this!
– – – – –
By the way, dear readership, I'm still meaning to tell you about an exciting weekend away (past) and a super exciting next big trip (future), and I promise I haven't forgotten!
Starting tomorrow, I'll be away visiting friends to celebrate German Christmas (the only kind of Christmas I know), so maybe there I'll find the time to write a bit. Or not, we'll see.
For now (because I seem to be having way too much fun spinning out teasers), I'll give you hints about the upcoming trip:
1. Starts with "S"...
2. I already mentioned that French course I took in preparation...
3. And recently, my doctor told me I was a little low on vitamin D and should take higher dosage supplements "unless you'll be spending a month in Africa this winter." And I said, "Actually..."
My Alma Mater Is Still Awesome
Because nothing says the holidays like organ players, acrobats and a whole chorus of bassoons. Oh, wait, I mean nothing says Oberlin like those things!
Tuesday, December 20, 2011
Neighborhood Chanukah (and a Toast to Vaclav Havel)
There's a new English bookstore in the neighborhood. Now, I'm a big fan of the "old" English bookstore in the neighborhood, but it's okay to have more of a good thing – and English bookstores are definitely a Good Thing when you live abroad long term. So I've been by the new English bookstore a couple times and even got on their mailing list, just in case any interesting events came up.
A couple days ago, I got an e-mail from them for the first time, which read in its entirety:
"Come by the store this Tuesday, December 20th at 7pm. Roman and Laurel are going to be frying latkes and making applesauce all evening for your Chanukah pleasure. We'll be drinking to Vaclav Havel."
Who are Roman and Laurel? How is Václav Havel (Czech writer, dissident and president, who died just a couple days ago) connected to a Jewish holiday?
Didn't really matter – my interest was piqued AND they mentioned latkes!
I just barely managed to disentangle myself from work in time, collected a couple of friends, and dropped by Shakespeare & Sons.
There, indeed, were a whole pile of latkes, homemade applesauce, and a bunch of friendly, welcoming folks. It turns out Roman is Czech, while Laurel is American and Jewish and in the same boat of wanting to celebrate Jewish holidays but not having many people around who know about them.
So I ate some latkes, ran into the one other American Jew I know in Berlin, chatted with Laurel while she oversaw the frying operation in the store's small kitchen, and even managed to connect an American friend who likes Polish food to a Polish woman who hasn't been able to find good restaurants in Berlin ... a win-win-win all around.
We lit the Chanukah candles together, then Laurel passed out shot glasses of slivovice (Czech plum brandy) and Roman said a toast to Václav Havel, starting with his memory of the first time he heard the name: in 1989, when a fellow student scribbled "Václav Havel for president" on a school desk (this was under Communist rule, when Havel was a dissident leader) and then had to come back in with his parents and aver to the school authorities that it was just something he'd heard somewhere and he didn't even know what it meant. This must have been just months before the Velvet Revolution – and Havel becoming president.
Happy Chanukah! Which, if you think about it, is also a holiday about dissidents.
A couple days ago, I got an e-mail from them for the first time, which read in its entirety:
"Come by the store this Tuesday, December 20th at 7pm. Roman and Laurel are going to be frying latkes and making applesauce all evening for your Chanukah pleasure. We'll be drinking to Vaclav Havel."
Who are Roman and Laurel? How is Václav Havel (Czech writer, dissident and president, who died just a couple days ago) connected to a Jewish holiday?
Didn't really matter – my interest was piqued AND they mentioned latkes!
I just barely managed to disentangle myself from work in time, collected a couple of friends, and dropped by Shakespeare & Sons.
There, indeed, were a whole pile of latkes, homemade applesauce, and a bunch of friendly, welcoming folks. It turns out Roman is Czech, while Laurel is American and Jewish and in the same boat of wanting to celebrate Jewish holidays but not having many people around who know about them.
So I ate some latkes, ran into the one other American Jew I know in Berlin, chatted with Laurel while she oversaw the frying operation in the store's small kitchen, and even managed to connect an American friend who likes Polish food to a Polish woman who hasn't been able to find good restaurants in Berlin ... a win-win-win all around.
We lit the Chanukah candles together, then Laurel passed out shot glasses of slivovice (Czech plum brandy) and Roman said a toast to Václav Havel, starting with his memory of the first time he heard the name: in 1989, when a fellow student scribbled "Václav Havel for president" on a school desk (this was under Communist rule, when Havel was a dissident leader) and then had to come back in with his parents and aver to the school authorities that it was just something he'd heard somewhere and he didn't even know what it meant. This must have been just months before the Velvet Revolution – and Havel becoming president.
Happy Chanukah! Which, if you think about it, is also a holiday about dissidents.
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