It's been quite a week for me. This past weekend I caught the train down to Munich to visit with my old house mates. Most of them are doing at least a master if not a doctorate so I was pleased to hear that they would all be there for at least another year, and some for a few more. It was an especially surreal visit. I got in very late on Friday night when most had gone to bed, so I did likewise and on Saturday morning it was Déjà vu all over again. As I saw everyone again for the first time in three years it suddenly felt like I had just left a week ago. Yes things have changed a bit, the kitchen had been remodeled with new cabinets, stoves, and refrigerators; the house looked better as my friends had gained more clout over the years to enforce stricter rules on the upkeep of the building, and the common room was spruced up with some new paint, as well as a donated TV and couches. Nonetheless, it seemed like I was suddenly re-immersed into the past as though with a time machine, because most importantly of all, the people hadn't changed a bit. I had forgotten how much of a family Haus 5A in the Studentenstadt is, and they hadn't forgotten me. My requests to pay for anything or wash a dish were summarily and routinely denied. I was reminded continually about how every year another American came and went, but none had been as fun or involved as myself, although this year a worthy heir to my throne had finally come, a lad named Tom from a small town outside of Chicago who I got a chance to make friends with. Going into my old room, where I had lived for a year that was perhaps the best in my life, was surreal. In this room I had struggled over grammar till I wanted to pull my hair out, laughed over beers with friends so hard that I cried, grieved for my father in the most lonesome moments I ever knew, and found even greater strength and independence than I thought I possessed. In this room I learned that I could hack it living in a foreign land and a foreign tongue.
Unfortunately it rained the whole time I was in Munich, which couldn't have been more than 36 hours. That just meant more quality time cooped up in the house with my friends, preparing for the celebration I coincidentally was in town for. "Neueinzügleressen" roughly translates to "newcomer's meal" and is something done every year in our house that is supposed to get new people in the house more socially involved; it is essentially a potluck dinner of dishes from all the countries represented in the house. When I was there I made my great-grandmother's beef stew, "Rindertopf" in German, which people still remembered when I went back this year. It is truly a feast, and the huge amounts of food people eat is only made possible by the equally large portions of alcohol consumed. The Germans even have certain varieties of schnapps called "Digestiv" that are specifically distilled to aid in digestion to help one not feel quite so full after a heavy meal, also allowing one to make more room for seconds and thirds. But in general, alcohol helps break down fat, and there was a whole lot of fat to be broken down. We even had some homemade schnapps, the equivalent of German moonshine, smooth to drink but you could light your breathe on fire after taking a shot of it. The women kept complaining about how all the dishes people chose to make ended up being either starch or meat, while the men celebrated this same fact. Perhaps that is why most of the people affected by the recent EHEC scare (E Coli in vegetables as mentioned in previous posts) were female. Once the drinks got flowing, I was able to get our resident Bavarians to break out the accordion and harmonica and play some of the tunes that were the background music to my year in München. The whole experience was so heartwarming that on the long train ride back, I began to seriously consider going back there for my master's.
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This week we had the pleasure of celebrating Caiomhe's 1st birthday! We had a wonderful little party with about a half dozen kids and their parents in attendance. I will say that I was nearly blinded when a balloon exploded half way through inflation; in that split second, I pictured myself in a dive-bar sitting next to a one legged man with a patch over my eye.
"How did you lose your leg?"
"Rocket propelled grenade, Fallujah."
"How did you lose your eye?"
"Blowing up a balloon for a little girl's birthday party, Berlin."
If you're going to lose a major appendage, you better damn well have a good story, is the point I guess I'm trying to make, if there is a point to be made at all from that tangent. Anyway, we broke out the streamers, balloons and cake for the little one. She and her baby friends got to "play," which at that age often consists of crawling all over one another sticking their hands in each others' mouths, in a most adorable way, transmitting various childhood illnesses that I will invariably contract because the cold strains here are slightly different from the ones I've already built up an immunity to in the States. Nonetheless, I was pleasantly surprised by how civilly everyone played, from the babies to the toddlers that were her brother's friends. One of them in attendance was Tilly/ie, a very cute little girl from around the corner who occasionally steals kisses from Daire at the park, and I was lucky enough to get them to pose for a picture.
Two months before the Berlin Wall was constructed, Walter Ulbricht, leader of East Germany, said, "Niemand hat die Absicht, eine Mauer zu errichten!" Now, on the 50th anniversary of the wall's construction, it is a phrase Germans, especially Berliners, use when they intend to do something. It has been a big month for Germany so far. The EHEC outbreak has left Germany with a bit of a black eye after they blamed the outbreak on Spanish cucumbers, leading to losses of hundreds of millions of Euros for Spanish farmers. The wall's construction fifty years ago is not the only painful anniversary this month, it is also the 70th anniversary of nearly three and a half million men being launched in an offensive against the Soviet Union known as Operation Barbarossa. This began some of the most barbaric and ruthless warfare ever waged on a nearly incomprehensible industrial scale. Needless to say, the two events are linked. To put it in perspective: in seven years of war in Iraq, 3,500 American soldiers have died in combat, during the most intense fighting at Stalingrad, the Red Army had that many combat deaths per day, for weeks on end, with the Wehrmacht losing 1,000 per day.
Aside from some unpleasant anniversaries and e coli, it is a lovely time in Germany; their economy is booming, and the summer festival season has begun. I have been able to get out and about to a few of these events.
The first happens every Sunday afternoon in a large park next to an old communist sports arena a few subway stops north of where I live. There are vendors selling food, drink, plants, and trinkets, but the main attraction is in the amphitheater dug into the hill on the outside of the stadium. There, in front of a crowd I'd estimate at 2,000, karaoke is being sung. Most of the people brave enough to go out are actually quite good, a few are just quite drunk. When David Langley is ready for his big break, he needs to come to Mauerpark in Prenzlauerberg and meet his public. I attended the event with a group of Au Pair girls, which is actually the term in German. I was the only male in the group, of course, continuing my noble fight against the sexist, heteronormative attitudes of society.
Another event was held on the southern edge of Berlin, called Kulturlustgarten. It was sort of a cross between a music festival and a carnival. There were several music stages, some rides for the kids, and lots of good food. I had a Hungarian dish that was essentially fry-bread topped with sour cream and cheese. They were serving "Erdbeerbowle," meaning "strawberry bowl," essentially a strawberry punch that deceptively doesn't taste like alcohol and is traditionally served at the beginning of the season when there is an abundance of the fruit. There was even a medieval themed section of the festival, with archery and ax-throwing booths, and a stage where folksy music was performed with strange and archaic instruments. The main stage performed the kind of pop-rock that makes Europeans go nuts. An unusual feature of this festival was that I witnessed three fights, the Germans are typically very orderly and don't tolerate that sort of thing. The first was between two women, I don't know how it started, I just heard a crack and turned around and saw one woman standing over another, the victor was probably 6'4" and 235 lbs. One of the people I was there with said they were fighting over who got to take me home...shudder. A few hours later, a Euro-trash muscle head in a tank top with some Mike "the Situation" sunglasses popped a very thick farmer-looking type while in line for one of the beer sellers, I assume the fight was over cutting in line. The farmer was with a group in matching shirts and a brawl nearly broke out but thankfully about a dozen police quickly infiltrated the crowd before anyone caused me to spill my beer. Shortly after another fight broke out just out of my line of sight so it would be dishonest of me as a writer to make comical observations about the appearance of the antagonists. I again stress how unusual such a thing is here, in all the time I spent at Oktoberfest I never saw a punch thrown, although the bouncers and security there look like retired offensive linemen from the NFL. That and the excessive cleavage produced by dirndls at Oktoberfest tends to calm and quiet the men-folk.
This past weekend in Kreuzerg was the Carnival of Cultures which draws crowds of hundreds of thousands of people. Again there is food, drink, and trinkets to be bought, but also a parade of floats and people in ethnic dress, if you can get close enough to the street to see it. There is a surprising amount of South East Asians in Berlin and I have had some pretty good Thai food here. During the Cold War, there was an international exchange of workers within the communist world. Since Germany was recovering from depopulation during the war and low birth rates afterward (and still is), East Germany welcomed their comrades from Vietnam and Cambodia to come and take up some crappy jobs. Not to be outdone, West Germany welcomed refugees from the conflicts in SE Asia in the 1970's. Unfortunately, the streets were so clogged with people that all the food lines were extremely long, and becoming impatient, I left the area where the festival was in search of food, and found some pretty tasty Käsespätzle, one of my favorite dishes from Southern Germany. The best way to describe Käsespätzle is if dumplings and macaroni and cheese had a baby, with fried onions. As you can imagine, it has a similar effect to eating pancakes or biscuits, with the food reforming in your stomach as a brick that induces sleep. I'm getting hungry and tired just thinking about it.
I will leave you with a funny picture of a couch I saw on the street near my building. The people who put it out there were kind enough to post a warning, "Do not take, has been marked by the cat." I then wondered if the lost cat on the sign above was the same as the one that marked the couch.
Unfortunately it rained the whole time I was in Munich, which couldn't have been more than 36 hours. That just meant more quality time cooped up in the house with my friends, preparing for the celebration I coincidentally was in town for. "Neueinzügleressen" roughly translates to "newcomer's meal" and is something done every year in our house that is supposed to get new people in the house more socially involved; it is essentially a potluck dinner of dishes from all the countries represented in the house. When I was there I made my great-grandmother's beef stew, "Rindertopf" in German, which people still remembered when I went back this year. It is truly a feast, and the huge amounts of food people eat is only made possible by the equally large portions of alcohol consumed. The Germans even have certain varieties of schnapps called "Digestiv" that are specifically distilled to aid in digestion to help one not feel quite so full after a heavy meal, also allowing one to make more room for seconds and thirds. But in general, alcohol helps break down fat, and there was a whole lot of fat to be broken down. We even had some homemade schnapps, the equivalent of German moonshine, smooth to drink but you could light your breathe on fire after taking a shot of it. The women kept complaining about how all the dishes people chose to make ended up being either starch or meat, while the men celebrated this same fact. Perhaps that is why most of the people affected by the recent EHEC scare (E Coli in vegetables as mentioned in previous posts) were female. Once the drinks got flowing, I was able to get our resident Bavarians to break out the accordion and harmonica and play some of the tunes that were the background music to my year in München. The whole experience was so heartwarming that on the long train ride back, I began to seriously consider going back there for my master's. 
If you're going to lose a major appendage, you better damn well have a good story, is the point I guess I'm trying to make, if there is a point to be made at all from that tangent. Anyway, we broke out the streamers, balloons and cake for the little one. She and her baby friends got to "play," which at that age often consists of crawling all over one another sticking their hands in each others' mouths, in a most adorable way, transmitting various childhood illnesses that I will invariably contract because the cold strains here are slightly different from the ones I've already built up an immunity to in the States. Nonetheless, I was pleasantly surprised by how civilly everyone played, from the babies to the toddlers that were her brother's friends. One of them in attendance was Tilly/ie, a very cute little girl from around the corner who occasionally steals kisses from Daire at the park, and I was lucky enough to get them to pose for a picture.
