(On the Way to) California: Heathrow

My flight to San Francisco was through London, and I was surprised how much I found myself wishing I could stay on and have a little time in England. I've totally become an Anglophile without meaning to. When did that happen?

I'd only been in the country about 10 minutes before I witnessed a traveler commit that legendary Greatest of All British Offenses: queue-jumping. (That's "cutting in line" to the Americans.)

Supposedly this is one of the very few ways you can actually rile the famously mild-mannered British, and indeed, the airport employee who called back the offender (a man trying to jump ahead in the line to go through security) with a sharp "Sir, there's a queue here!" seemed truly angry about it. Heh. Another stereotype confirmed.

I wandered around the airport, stupidly pleased by all the British shops selling British things (I was sleep-deprived, okay, I'm allowed to be happy about dumb, small things...) Britain is just awfully nice.

Good thing the next English countryside hiking trip is already in the works for next year!

California Dream(ing)

Fulfilling my dream of working from my laptop, in the sun in a garden in California. Oh, and also finishing work by 1 p.m. – thank you, time-zone-induced early rising! I've never been so happy to be awake at 7 a.m.

It's a beautiful afternoon that I now have free, so I'm off to bike around Berkeley. More from me anon!

Berlin, September

Berlin, the first days of September, and one of the last days of brilliant sun, though there's already a bit of a chill bite to the air.

Done with work earlier than expected, biking through central Berlin, through the tourists and the fire jugglers. A man with a long white beard playing soulful violin in front of the Alte Nationalgalerie; a young (German) couple in wedding dress and full Scottish kilt, running hand in hand past the colonnade of the museum for their photographer.

My friend David (from southern Germany, now lives in Switzerland) was visiting, and told me he was impressed with the quality of the music in Berlin, that even just the buskers on the street were consistently impressive. I also took him and his girlfriend Luisa to a concert of some of these Berlin singer-songwriters I've been discovering lately, so they could see a little bit of my Berlin life, and the music events I'm always writing and talking about.

I do realize this has become a bit of a music-and-Berlin blog lately rather than a travel-and-Berlin blog, but perhaps that will change soon... I have one or two travels lined up again after my thankfully restful just-Berlin-not-traveling summer!

First of all:


View California in a larger map

Two weeks in September to see friends and family – including my cousin's wedding – starting early tomorrow morning!

Rosh Hashanah in Berlin

(And one more quick photo-based post from me...)

Rosh Hashanah, the Jewish new year, starts at sundown tomorrow evening. I wasn't thinking about that at all, though, when I dashed into my favorite nearby bakery to grab something resembling breakfast on the way to work at the Spiegel Online offices on Friday morning.

So imagine my delight when I realized the bakery – which is also a Jewish bakery to some degree that I've never quite worked out, but mostly is just a really good German bakery that's still individually owned and bakes everything there on their own premises – had the special, round challah breads that are only made for Rosh Hashanah:

I bought one and took it to the office with me, to share around with the others there together with an explanation of what Rosh Hashanah is and why I was excited to find round challah in the first place.

Well, most of the others needed an explanation, but the new American intern looked up from his desk and said, "Shana tova" to me, so that was nice too!

Here's my lovely challah with a hand for scale:

It seems a strange thing to say, but in this particular moment, I found myself happy to be a Jew in Berlin.

Pussy Riot Flag in Berlin

The Berliner Ensemble, a theater in downtown Berlin, is flying an enormous flag in support of the arrested members of Pussy Riot in Russia. It's small here in this picture (taken from an office window a few blocks away) but you should be able to see it if you click on the picture.

Not visible from this perspective, obviously, but along with a picture of the three artists/dissidents, it has a quote from Schiller: "Die Kunst ist die Tochter der Freiheit" ("Art is the daughter of freedom").

Venice of Happenstance

A Berlin friend of mine is in Venice right now and mentioned she was hanging out with some Couchsurfers.

So I asked, and of course – because my life always seems to come full circle like this, and because Venice itself is the city of happenstances, more than anywhere else I've been – of course it turns out she's been hanging out there with two Couchsurfers I met when I was in Venice in December.

I love coincidences. And my Berlin life is full of them.

Berlin is...

...nighttime ping-pong outdoors in a light rain!

Becoming the Press

Oh, and Sam (organizer of the Sofa Salon) quoted me on the Sofa Salon press page!

I was awed and sort of terrified when I first discovered that Sam had stumbled across my blog; I do manage to persist in thinking that no one reads this. Despite it being on the internet and all.

In the long run, though, I think I'll just go with being flattered.

Songwriting Workshop, Berlin Music Week

Yesterday, I had the great privilege to attend two Berlin Music Week workshops run by A Headful of Bees (a collective of local singer-songwriters, one of whom is Sam, organizer of the Sofa Salon).

The first workshop was on collaborative songwriting and the second on recording; the idea was that the entire group would work together to write, record and then release (in a third workshop I wasn't able to attend) a song over the course of a single day.

So many people came to the workshops that we actually split into two groups, and wrote and recorded two songs. They're rough, obviously, basically demos that we recorded in just a couple takes, after maybe 30 minutes of frantic rehearsal that ran along the lines of, "Wait, who's singing the lead? How many times does the chorus repeat? Do we have an actual melody for the verses?"

But I'm bowled over by what we produced in the space of just a few hours, and I'm very proud to present the songs: "Hot Sun" and "Five More Hours." You can hear them (and download them, it's all under a Creative Commons license) at:

A Headful of Bees' "Berlin Music Week Werkstatt" page on Soundcloud.

I was in the "Five More Hours" group, where I co-wrote the lyrics and sang background vocals.


More on the process, for those who would like to know

After a bit of initial discussion, we decided to experiment with music first, then add words. (Interestingly, the other group worked precisely the other way around, brainstorming lyrics and then putting them to music.)

Eric, one of the workshop leaders, pulled out a guitar (this was all held at Noisy Musicworld, a fantastic place I'd never heard of that has many different music-related services, including practice rooms that come equipped with all sorts of instruments, so all you have to do is reach out and grab a guitar or keyboard or whatever else) and started playing some chords.

Because this was a room full of very musically talented people, within moments the instrument-inclined in the group were jamming along, expanding the thing into an interesting and driving melody. Then some of the vocals-inclined in the group started improvising along. The lyrics-inclined started scribbling ideas.

Somewhere near the beginning we'd landed on the idea "waking up with a hangover"; over the course of the hour it migrated and expanded into a juxtaposition of an upbeat chorus of celebration, to counterbalance the groggy verses of hangover, I think in part because the instrumentalists had created such an upbeat melody.

Meanwhile, one of the singers did a lot of the initial improvising that got us started lyrically; another came up with a strong line for the chorus ("She was the queen of the night/And she will be again") and then also for the idea of using a series of numbers for the hungover verses: two hours to be able to do this again, three hours to feel ready to do that.

Even despite running half an hour into the lunch break, at the end of the songwriting workshop all we had down was a fabulous melody and a strong chorus, but no verses. So Mira (who'd had the idea of using numbers) and I dashed out to grab and unthinkingly inhale some food from a nearby bakery, while wrestling the vague ideas we'd collected so far into phrases, and hopefully rhyme.

We dashed back in for the next workshop – recording – and when Jovanka, one of other organizers, suggested maybe we should just record the other group's song, since our group had only gotten as far as a chorus, we said, No, no, we've got verses! We've got the complete text right here!

So while the other group recorded first, we ducked into a neighboring practice room, snagged a random fantastic vocalist who'd showed up for the afternoon workshop and got her to sing lead on the verses, tried to remember what the melody for the verses actually was, cut part of the chorus that didn't work, struggled over the timing and what the background vocals should be and when they should come in –

And then went back to the main room and recorded: a practice take, a first take that was also the "final" take, and then because we actually had eight minutes left before the end of the session, one more take.

Go give it a listen; I'd be immensely pleased!

Are You a Musician

Nina Hynes, my latest musical hero, when I talked to her after a concert she and other local singer-songwriters played as part of Berlin Music Week: "Are you a musician too?"

Me: "I don't know how to answer that question. Not yet. Maybe someday."

Nina: "That means yes."