Happy Easter! Except You, Overzealous Post Office Employee

This week I was reminded of just how much more seriously your average German takes their job than the average American. Wolfram and I went to register me at the post office and send in the paper work for a bank account here. The snafu came when the post worker saw that there was no place of origin for where my passport was issued from, it just says U.S. State Department. This irregularity proved too difficult for her to handle. I informed her that the State Dept. is located in Washington D.C. and she could just put that as the place of origin, but apparently this varied too far from the rules, which say she has to physically see on the passport where the place of origin is. So she and Wolfram proceeded to argue in German for a few minutes, which I actually found quite entertaining; she making the "this is the rule" argument, and he making the "the reality is that their passports are not made in this way and there is nothing you can do about it" argument. It reminded me of my departing flight from Munich, when I dealt with a similarly rule crazy German when checking my bags. I had read online that it cost, let's say 40 Euros, to check a second bag, he said it would cost 150, cash only. He didn't care what it said on the website, what mattered was what it said in his red rule book which he proceeded to hold up, and must have been 500 pages long. Partly because I had some of that money ear-marked for the duty-free shop, partly because I knew this would probably be my last extended conversation in German, and partly because I was at the height of my linguistic skill, I proceeded to argue with him against all hope. I like to say that arguing rules with a German is like arguing ice with an Eskimo. After I had sufficiently voiced my anger and wasted  some of his time, I coughed up the cash, which thank God I had, otherwise I would have had to get out of line, go to an ATM, and get back in line. So Wolfram, after having similarly voiced his objections, snatched my paperwork out of her hands and we headed out. He then sent me on my own into another post office, where I played up the "I'm just a poor, dumb American" card and had my paperwork accepted without question for the sake of keeping the line moving as it was almost time to close up shop. The most important rule in Germany is the 5 O'clock rule. The first woman's counterpart at your local US Post Office would not have given two shits about such a trivial matter, but this is land of Kafkaesque bureaucratic nightmares.


 This is a picture of the building I live in; we entirely occupy the 6th floor and our windows can't really be seen from the street, save at the corner. It may be a little tough to tell from the picture but the building is painted sort of a light pink/lavender color. There is a pattern in the color of my dwellings.
Running along the stree to the right is a beautiful row of cherry trees that have been in bloom since I arrived and are absolute hell on everyone's allergies.

 Here is the view from my room. On the left you can see the iconic TV Tower that was built by the East Germans in the 1960's as a symbol of the power of the proletariat, as well as a means of jamming western radio and television transmissions from infecting the minds of the people. Moving right across the picture, you can see the clock tower of the Berlin Rathaus (city hall). The long uniform building running still further to the right is a typical example of the kind of modular apartment complexes built by the communists. Getting lost in some East Berlin neighborhoods can be very easy considering that all the buildings look the same. While they are not aesthetically pleasing, they tend to have better heating and insulation than old buildings which were restored. On the right side of the picture, slightly obscured by one of the many cranes that fill the Berlin sky, is the Berliner Dome (Berlin Catherdral). It is built in a pseudo-Byzantine Style, much like the Zionskirche (Below, Left) that is only a few blocks away. It is currently being renovated after the communists only half-heartedly repaired the symbol of the opiate of the masses. As the Kaiser sought to make the capitol of his new empire more grand at the end of the 19th C. he seemed to favor the Byzantine style, probably because of it exudes strength and efficacy. 


I had the chance to enjoy a beautiful Easter Sunday here, capping a week of beautiful sunshine and apparently the highest pollen levels in three years. I normally don't get allergies but having already had a sinus infection I couldn't help but be affected. My Hay Fever was so bad that for a day or two I thought I had conjunctivitis, but now it seems to have cleared up so false alarm. I was pretty distressed because I haven't had pink eye in years and remembered it as being very unpleasant and contagious. I seem to remember being sick a lot when I first came to Munich, I guess my immune system just has to adjust to the new strains of cold and pollen here.

Weinberger Park, a favorite place of mine to read.

It seems that a lot of our Easter traditions, like Christmas, come from Germany. We had an egg hunt, which Maeve said was not tradition in Ireland, they just spend a long weekend feeling guilty like good Irish Catholics. The chocolate eggs with cream filling are an Irish treat though. Although it makes is a bit harder for the children to understand my comparatively John Wayne-esque accent, I love listening to Maeve's charming Irish accent. I look forward to getting to know her better. The egg hunt was followed by the two year old eating so much chocolate it made me feel a little sick, then he ran around for a couple hours and crashed into a nice insulin coma, just like in the States. We had a traditional German Easter luncheon of ham, new potatoes, and white asparagus, called Spargel, and Champagne. It is essentially the same thing as green asparagus but it's harvested while it's still in the ground. And everything get's a little home-made Hollandaise sauce. One of Maeve's colleagues from the Irish Embassy who lives in the neighborhood joined us and it was good to feel so tan, something I rarely get to enjoy. We had some lovely, intellectually stimulating conversation, hearing stories about working in various countries and at the U.N.

"Yuppies OUT!"

I live in the southern edge of a neighborhood known as Pinzlauerber, once a part of East Berlin, it became a haven for young artists, intellectuals, and alternative types after David Hasselhoff single handed brought down the Berlin wall with his electric shirt. (If you don't know what I'm talking about, just search his name and the words "Berlin Wall" and you should get a fantastic video on YouTube.) Since then, it has gone through some gentrification, as is all of Berlin, and is becoming more of a place for young families that still boasts a fun night life. In fact, in a country with a declining populace, this neighborhood has one of the highest birthrates in Europe, and the place is covered with parks and rotten with kids-- I mean that in the best of ways. This does not sit well with many of the citizens of Berlin who like their city to be grungy and cheap. Just recently, the last building of squatters that were created after the exodus of people from East Berlin following reunification was cleared out. It turned into a full on riot, with supporters, mostly anarchists, punks, and other far leftists, destroying shops and burning cars. The inhabitants of the building created barriers and booby traps to slow police coming to physically evict them from the property. Eventually, the special police had to be called inside and out, clad in black body armor from head to toe, working in squads that aren't afraid to charge into the crowds, moving quickly, cracking skulls, and dragging people off into custody. That recent event has made people more wary of the approaching May Day holiday, something we changed to Sept. 1st in America because of the tendency of Soviets to parade new weaponry in front of the world. For the last 20 years, May 1st has been an occasion for the same people protesting the eviction of the squatters, to riot, primarily in the neighborhoods of Kreuzberg and Friedrichschain. Leftists, anarchists, Turkish guest workers, Neo-Nazi's, and frustrated youth with a thirst for destruction from across Germany come to take part (essentially a sampling of the disgruntled disenfranchised), and many locals watch from a nearby-hill. Like the squatter riots, it involves an intoxicated crowd smashing store fronts, burning cars, and maybe even hurling a few Molotov Cocktails at the police. The police in the past tried taking on a more defensive position to contain the upheaval, but in more recent years have formed the special squads mentioned above to take the rioters head-on. Neither strategy seems to be working. 

It is all a reminder that while Germany has been firmly reunited, it has a population with a diverse range of opinions on the current state of the German nation and the world. There is a debate amongst leftists whether it is okay to use violence, these groups do not think that democratic participation is sufficiently empowered to make a difference, and that the problems of the world are so severe and so pressing, that an 'any means necessary' approach has to be adopted. Also, there are just people out there who like to break stuff and mix it up with the cops; they do it because they can. There is more graffiti in my neighborhood and other parts of Berlin than many would find savory or acceptable, but they are usually not gang tags, but either an expression of some political or social agenda, or the work of someone trying to be an urban artist with the city as his canvas. It doesn't bother me, sometimes I even get a kick out of it, I saw some graffiti the other day that said "Go Red Socks." It's just part of living in one of the most dynamic cities in the world, a city coming to terms with it's own changing identity.