The Blogs Collide: Visit To Munich and Caiomhe's Birthday

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. 

***********************************************


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. 

Nobody Intends To Put Up A Wall!

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.

Try To Not Crap Your Pants

First off, part of this blog is a recreation of a blog that failed to post a couple weeks ago, and whose contents I failed to save. I know the postings have been a little infrequent this month, and that is partly why.

An add for  "Stromberg" the German version of "The Office"
(it is actually very funny, but the humor is much darker)

A good place for an ambush, or a day at the park

Going in reverse order, I noticed for the first time a couple weeks ago that the playground around the corner of our building which we frequent is called Teutoburger Platz. In case your classical history is a little rusty, I will refresh your memory on the fate of the Roman general Varus and the XII, XIII, and XIX Legions in the Teutoburg forest. Having been sent from Rome to pacify the newly (and presumptuously) declared province of Germania in 9 CE, Varus was leading his force of approximately 30,000 men to their Winter camp through the Teutoburg Forest, guided by a German known to the Romans as Arminius and to the Germans as Hermann (the battle is known as Hermannsschlacht or "Hermann's Battle" in German). Hermann had been given up as a hostage to the Romans as a boy, an unforgivable act of submission to the hated Romans whose urban living and proud ways irreparably offended the Germans' Gods and way of life. Now he sought to reclaim his honor by leading the Romans into a trap. Although Varus' legions were veterans, they were used to fighting in the open country of the Mediterranean and were unfamiliar with the Germans' style of battle. Making their way through the forest in a long line instead of in order of battle, the Romans soon found themselves being attacked on all sides by an alliance of German tribes, and began to crap their pants. Fighting their way through the barrage of javelins and sustaining heavy losses through me lee, the remaining Romans made a final stand in a small clearing where they were summarily crushed. With defeat imminent, Varus and the other generals fell on their swords in the Roman equivalent of Seppuku. Years later, another Roman army on a punitive expedition found thousands upon thousands of skulls nailed to trees and neat piles of bones. It was perhaps the greatest military disaster in Roman history, resulting in the famous quote from Emperor Augustus, "Varus, give me back my legions!" The defeat was so devastating, that the Romans never reused the legion numbers, an almost singular event in their history. For the Germans, it is an eternal victory representing resistance to foreign invasion by the mongrel slaves of a corrupt and decadent empire. When this park was built in the late 19th century, the Germans felt it was an appropriate name for a playground for the descendants of Hermann, perhaps because the clearing in the middle of the park is surrounded by wooded, meandering paths, or perhaps because Wagnerian operas were all the rage.


In a more recent example of people crapping in their pants, there has been an outbreak of E. coli here affecting lettuce, cucumbers, and other vegetables. It is a similar outbreak to the one we had in the US a couple of years ago, that I remember affected mostly spinach. Thus is a particularly violent strain which has actually caused some deaths due to dehydration. It is a frustrating episode for Germany, which has some of the highest food quality standards in the world, as well as the oldest food purity laws, dating from the 16th century, for beer, of course. Understandably, there haven't been too many vegetables on the menu at the von Heynitz household this week. 


Now moving on to less fecal topics...


A couple of weeks ago I had the pleasure of being invited to a BBQ, Grillenparty, for a German girl who I know through a weekly language exchange night I go to at a bar in Kreuzberg. It was a beautiful Saturday in Volkspark, one of the largest in Berlin. I loaded up my back pack with beers and after a short tram ride I was meandering through the crowded park looking for the group. I found Grillenpartys to be pretty much like American BBQ's: lots of meat, beers, dogs, kids, and no one remembered to bring a lighter, although I had the foresight to grab a box of matches from the fireplace before heading out the door. The Americans save the day once again, haha. 


Aside from getting to practice my German for many hours, I got to enjoy some leisure activities. To the right is a common sight on American college campuses, slack-lining. A sport for people who want to practice for joining the circus, just in case they graduate and find their degree makes them about as useful as a one-legged man at an ass-kicking party. The slack line is really just a long ratchet-strap used for tying down loads in trucks and trailers, but at a ridiculously inflated price. 



We situated ourselves right next to the Kletterstein or climbing rock in Volkspark. There were also sand volleyball courts nearby that were thankfully packed, since everyone assumes, because I am from Southern California, that I am remotely competent at volleyball. Anyway, some of the Germans had special climbing shoes and fanny packs with chalk in them, while I just scrambled up the thing with my tennis shoes. As you can see, it is not a difficult task; there is a shirtless German with his shoes and chalk dangling off the side, while two children survey from up top, having already climbed up using the monkey like climbing-skill being very young affords a person. 


As the sun went down we packed up our things to reconvene at a cocktail bar. I went along with the birthday girl and we made a stop at her friend's apartment to drop some things off. We were in the Friedrichschain area of former East Berlin, and she lived in a predictably bland looking commie apartment building that actually was pretty well designed on the inside. There we found her boyfriend and his buddies drinking beer and playing video games on a guys-night-in, again, very much like in the US. After our short stop we headed to the bar, which was oddly owned by Turks, who are mostly Muslim and therefore don't drink. Turks are, however, among the most moderate practitioners of Islam and have even gone so far as to ban traditional Muslim head-coverings for their women as they try to become part of the EU. They did make a pretty good Mai Tai, though certainly it was no Billy's at the Beach.


The weather continues to wax and wane, which is unsual for Berlin where the weather is typically more consistent. In some ways it has reminded me what the Springis like in the Pacific Northwest, where it will change from Sunny and clear to wind and rain several times a day. In other ways it's a bit more like Texas, going from stifling humidity to roaring thunderstorms that leave you soaked to the bone if you get caught out in the rain. It makes deciding what to dress the children (and myself) in before going out a real challenge, and I've had to dash to the U-bahn station with the carriage to avoid a very unpleasant subway ride with two wet and pissed off children. 


Once again, sorry for the patchy blog posts this month and thank you to everyone for your support, I appreciate your feedback.


Tschüss!

Taken By a Stranger

This weekend, from England to Azerbaijan, Europeans tuned in for "Eurovision" as they have done for twenty-some-odd years. Eurovision is kind of like American Idol, except for you have a musical act, usually a soloist or duet, representing each country. I had no idea what a huge deal it was until Friday morning when I saw my shopping list for the party Wolfram and Maeve were hosting Saturday night. It would not have seemed so daunting if I had not been out so late the night before, celebrating the visit of my good friend Peter, who has been teaching English in Austria for the past two years, and who I have only had the pleasure of seeing a handful of times since we got back from Munich. I did not feel hungover until I saw the list. It was a first class spread of wine, beer, hors d'oeuvres, and cheeses; in fact, I ordered so much cheese at the cheese counter, that the cheese lady argued with me about how much cheese I would cheese, I mean, need. Typical know-it-all German, although she ended up being right, as is typical with throwing a good party, you always end up with way too much food. Now I am feasting on left-over Bree and cookies.


The party was complete with a disco ball, projector, and randomly assigned name tags representing every country and their contestant. I had the Ukraine with a harsh looking, blonde, Avril Lavigne type. The music that is sung for Eurovision is, how do you say, awful. They are pop ballads, mostly in English, sung by people in increasingly stranger attire. The Moldavian group, a five piece rock band (I guess you could call it that), all wore extremely tall pointy hats that made them look like gnomes. Twin brothers with hyperbolic Vanilla Ice haircuts and red leather jackets with shoulder pads from the not too distant future (from an 80's science fiction perspective) represented Ireland. Germany, which one last year, was represented by a sultry brunette with dark eye make up who sang a song called "Taken by a Stranger" which sounded suspiciously like it was about being abducted by a sexual predator as sung by someone with Stockholm Syndrome. I did not want to leave the party, but Peter had people to visit and, not knowing when I would see my friend again, I went out with him into the city around eleven. Such was the commotion for Eurovision that bars with TV's had crowds spilling out into the streets to the point that they obstructed traffic. We gave up on trying to watch the results, and settled in to a table outside of a bar that happened to serve beer on tap from Kloster Andechs, a monastery about an hour outside Munich that I visited a couple of times. We had some wonderful conversation and savored the night into the early hours of the morning. All the grownups of the house had quite a night, and were all rather quiet the next day.


****************************************************

The past couple of weeks I have begun to take language courses to refresh my very rusty German language skills. Two days a week from 8:45-13:00 I exercise my brain. The timing of my arrival was not good for registration, most classes were full and I have to go to Reinickendorf, a suburb on the northern edge of Berlin that is a 30 minute commute (if I time it just right) that involves a subway and a bus. I went out there one day before class started to figure out how long it would take me and to ensure I would not be late on my first day of class. The building was a bit difficult to find because it was not directly on the street, but back behind some other buildings. At first I though I must be in the wrong place because the side of the building closes to the street had a sign that said "American Western Saloon." I did not know there were other types of saloons that required such specification for this particular establishment. I soon figured out that this was sort of a multi-purpose civic center (Bürgeramt) that included the saloon and an adult education center (Volkshochschule), that was my destination. Next to it is an indoor swimming hall full of kids, a commie apartment building, and an old-folks home. My reconnaissance excursion fell on a Saturday, when a miniature Eastern European flea market was bustling in the courtyard outside. Among the quality items featured were designer handbags for 10 Euros, but something tells me that deal was too good to be true.


I have wondered since arriving where all the elderly people in Berlin are, apparently they are in Reinickendorf along with a lot of Poles and South East Asians. My class has an interesting mix of people. There is a thirty-something male teacher from Turkey, a slightly younger Spanish man studying business, a reverend and father of four from Nigeria who looks 25 but is actually nearly twice that age (black truly don't crack, apparently), a young mother from Cameroon preparing for study at a German university, a student from South Korea who speaks in a tone so modest she is barely audible at times, a young Romanian newly-wed whose husband works at a Mercedes factory and talks a mile-a-minute, and an American smart-ass. The course days are split between a couple of really nice German gals, although I did not appreciate one of them telling me not to slouch on the second day--I'm a grown man, I'll slouch if I please, especially during a four-hour-long grammar course. 


During my long expeditions out to Reinickensdorf I have had a chance to amuse myself with the public service announcements that the transit authority of Berlin posts on the subway reminding the residents of their communitarian responsibilities. Some of my favorite slogans include:


"Your cell phone is not a loud-speaker!"


"The subway is not a dining car!"


"Loud music in your head phones: not only is is bad for your hearing, but it is inconsiderate of your neighbors!"


"For those with excess baggage, please do not molest your neighbors!" (with your copious baggage, that is)


I also enjoy when they make announcements in English as well as German, for example, when you reach the end of the line, "This train terminates here" said in a tone that suggests that the train will immediately be driven into a steel smelter and melted down into a new subway car, so you better get off. Considering that they are cleaned multiple times a day, they might as well be melted down and made anew.


******************************************************

The weather has turned rather sour here the past few days, last week's heat and humidity has given way to cold winds and rain. I have been able to get the kids out to the park a little bit, and I will leave you with a picture of them playing in the sand with some other children's' toys at the famous Teutoburger Platz. I don't feel so bad about borrowing toys from other children after an incident last week. I went to pick up Daire from his day care one day, and found a little backpack hanging on his peg that I had not seen before but that he indicated was his and was excited to put on and bring home. Upon his mother's arrival home later that day, she asked me where the backpack was from, and I discovered that I had stolen the backpack of a small child. I also deduced that this probably resulted in a hysterical fit by this unknown child, making someone's life temporarily very difficult. I could not help but laugh. 


Till next week!

It's a Beautiful Day for a Riot

Most of the world knows May 1st, or May Day, as International Workers Day. Not wanting anything to do with anything remotely communist, this holiday has long been suspended in the USA, transplanted to September 1st so that everyone can milk one last long weekend out of the Summer and at that same time, not giving the appearance of being a Pinko. For the last 20 years in Berlin, May Day has been a day of street festivals, music, and food that turns into a night of broken glass, rock throwing, car burning, night-sticking, and tear-gassing as leftist radicals vent their dissatisfaction with the capitalist course of their now unified homeland, and the gradual gentrification of the city of Berlin. They would prefer Berlin to remain grungy, cheap, and unwelcoming of tourists. May Day is also paired with a German folk-legend, which says that on the night of April 30, the witches dance in the Harz Mountains of Germany, once the site of pan-European pagan celebrations, and is still considered to be the spiritual center of the German people. 


This riotous behavior mostly happens in the districts of Kreuzberg and Neuköln in the southern part of the city. The fun began Saturday, as I walked back to our building, turned a corner, and met approximately 100 police officers dressed in black riot gear in preparation for a march through the once edgy but increasingly gentrified and family-oriented Prenzlauerberg neighborhood of the Pankow district where I live. In fact, the march went directly by our house, prompting Wolfram to take the care to a garage. This march was peaceful, which proved to be an omen of a year of declined violence. I headed to Kreuzberg on Sunday afternoon to meet up at a bar with a group of English-speaking Ex-pats and Germans looking to improve their English whom I've connected with via the internet to watch the madness unfold as night fell. 


It truly was a gorgeous day for a riot. The streets were quiet in my neighborhood as I left and took the subway south. It became increasingly crowded as I drew nearer to my stop, and by the time I arrived we were packed very tight. Transit police eyeballed us as we left the station, occasionally searching bags for Molotov cocktails, and paying special attention to anyone wearing all black, a typical look for Berlin but one people know to avoid on May Day unless they're looking for trouble. I emerged from the subway station to find the streets to be packed but amiable. The air was thick with music and the delicious smoky flavor of grilled meat. I figured that the street vendors must make a killing off of the thousands of hungry police alone, standing by anxiously waiting for some action after a long Winter of pumping iron in preparation for their big day. Most of your German police are sporty young guys fresh out of the army, and while they don't have the ridiculous rights and protections of your typical power-tripping Dirty Harry-wannabe American cops, they are cut from the same cloth; the difference is they remember that they are Peace Officers and public servants, not "Law Enforcement."

The police continuously record everyone's faces.

As night fell a handful of us left the bar looking for the commotion. I was disappointed that the Germans who usual start their riots with characteristic punctuality seemed to be beating around the bush, and it wasn't until 10 or 11 that we came across some contention. No burned cars or rock throwing where we were, but the streets were clogged and a core group of anarchist types starting holding their ground near the Kottbusser Tor subway station with the more half-hearted "reserves" doing their part. The riot police started coming in groups of 20-50 to clear the streets, and I myself was shoved out of the way by a police officer from behind as I took pictures and his unit moved in. Soon tear gas and pepper spray was being deployed, I was not close enough to the center to be effected by either but I could sure smell it in their air and my eyes were fairly read when I got home. After an hour of this back and forth the crowd seemed to lose it's conviction as the police became increasingly aggressive, sometimes surging in and making arrests, but always moving and pushing the crowd to prevent them from congregating anywhere for too long. Not wanting to navigate the packed night buses and conceding that I wouldn't have a picture of a burning car for the blog, I took the subway back around midnight before it stopped running. The first video below shows a pretty white cloud of tear gas as the crowd chants "Ganz Berlin hasst die Polizei!" (All Berlin hates the police!) and the second shows a contingent of police escorting an ambulance out of the area as the man you here in the background sarcastically says, "The police of Germany are the best in all the world, without you there is no country. Thank you, thank you, thank you very much Germany for the best police in the world."

I did feel a bit let down by the less destructive rioting this year, because the idea of yearly riots seems so interesting and enticing to someone from the US, where such a thing would be swiftly crushed and not allowed to happen again. What is also interesting is that the riots are also a spectator sport, and most of the people are out there to watch and only passively participate in the marches and riots, and to make sure the police don't overdo their suppression of them. In a country that has had the Nazi Gestapo and Communist Stasi in the past 70 years, there is a great deal of sensitivity to the abuses of the police. In some ways the May Day riots are like a play, where the Germans find a balance between their law-and-order and anarchist mentalities. Or maybe just get their disorderliness out of the way for a year, blowing off steam built up through the Winter like the witches of the Harz Mountains dancing the snow away and preparing for Spring.

***********************************************************


On a side note, I was very happy today when I found out that after almost ten years, Osama Bin Laden has finally been killed. I drank a toast to the lucky Navy Seal who got to pump that bastard full of lead and could not wipe the smile off my face for an hour or two. While I'm very happy to be in Germany, I wish I could have been teleported back to the USA for a day to celebrate the victory with my fellow citizens. Critics site the fact that it took ten years, but I don't care if it took twenty, what is important is that we showed resolve and patience, a willingness to hunt down those who would threaten our people with death and destruction no matter how long it takes. It is this perceived lack of resolve over the past few decades that has emboldened our enemies to action.   I'm going to snuggle into bed tonight with a warm, fuzzy feeling knowing that murdering, woman-hating, demagogic high-jacker of planes and Islam is fish food. 

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.

I am a Jelly Donut

During his historic visit to West Berlin, President Kennedy, in an act of solidarity with the inhabitants of the capitalist enclave, declared, "ich bin ein Berliner," meaning "I am a jelly donut." What he meant to say was "ich bin Berliner," but the crowd still understood what he was trying to say, just as the Berliners seem to understand my rusty language skills. I am now a registered resident of the city, and am officially a jelly donut. 

It's been only five days since my arrival and everything is still very new. Time is constantly speeding up and slowing down as it tends to do in times of transition, it seems slow in the moment because you are paying attention to all the details, but when the moment is over it's gone in a blur. It took me a couple of days to adjust to the time change and recover from jet lag, and have caught a little sinus infection from their two year old son, Dairhe. His daycare is not only a great place to learn social skills but also for the transmission of germs and I'm sure this is only the first of many little colds I'll catch as a result. I hope you can forgive me for a relatively short post today, as the cold makes it a bit difficult to be creative. Dairhe is a blond little sprite who understands both English and German but only responds in the latter. I am supposed to speak English with the children but sometimes have to clarify in German as I can tell that he does not always understand me because of my American accent as he is used to hearing English from his mother, Maeve, who is Irish. Caoihme is their wide-eyed daughter of not quite a year and is starting to become pretty chatty. The children are sweet and well behaved, but like many young children they are slow to trust new people so it wasn't until the last couple of days that they really took to me. It also did not help that my arrival coincided with their mother having to go to Ireland on official business for the first four days I was here, and the kids couldn't help but associate my coming with her going. She is now back from the longest time spent apart from them and they are beginning to forgive her for her absence.

Both Maeve and her husband Wolfram von Heynitz work for the diplomatic corps of their respective countries. She works at the Irish embassy here in Berlin, while Wolfram works on foreign policy planning, continuing his family's tradition of public service that goes back to the days of Prussia. They have a beautiful apartment decorated with a mixture of modern art and a portrait or two of Wolfram's aristocratic ancestors. I am lucky to have a view of the dome of the national cathedral, the city hall, and the iconic TV tower constructed by the East Berliners in years past as a sign of the superiority of the communist system. I'm sure the children mostly like the fact that their flat is only block away from a park and playground. No picture of my room's view this blog post, it's been a bit hazy the last few days and I'm waiting for a clearer day to take a picture. Next time I'll have some pictures of the neighborhood.

My training continues next week and the week after is when I get into the full swing of the gig. It's been quite a few years since I have taken care of children this young, and I forgot the propensity with which they can defecate, but changing diapers is like riding a bicycle. I also forgot how truly miraculous and touching it is to be around tiny human beings that have yet to be corrupted by the world, who are so sweet and utterly sincere, whose smiles and laughter are the stuff heaven must surely be made of--they are utterly inspiring, one cannot help but love them.

Again, sorry for the short entry but this head cold is making it difficult to write and I promise to have more good stuff next week, thanks for tuning in.