Jetzt geht's los!

The bad blogger that I've been...by popular demand (you know who you are) I bring you: A new post.

I've spent the last week in the bosom of my Braunschweiger Family with my lovely sister, her brother the footballer, mother the detective and chef extrordinaire, father the auto export, and the dog. Who chews on fingers.

I've been shopping, in Braunschweig, in Hannover. I have a cell phone; or rather, I now have a number and an account with which to utilize the Handy (as they are called here--for some reason, they think this is English) my brother bought in China. Plus side is, the chinese characters on the buttons look cool. Downside is, they confuse the bijeezus out of anyone trying to text message and I have't yet figured out how to put the thing into German.

I've been for ice cream. Ye former Baskin Robbins employees, ye connoisseurs of glacier's, bova's, Cold Stone, Ben and Jerry's, Haagen Däsz, hark! (Ye partakers of soft serve, McDonald's ice cream, or anything dispensed by means of a lever, alas! Close your browser window and give up, for there is no hope for ye) The wise (and the Italians) know this secret: gelato. Consistancy smooth, creamy, luxurious, flavors multiple, with or without toppings or add-ons. And at 50 cents a scoop, available on literally every street, a mini trip to Italy can be had by all and going for Ice cream only costs five dollars if you get the mega six-scoop-mini-statue that looks like a better dressed version of a tropical cocktail crossed with a banana split and available in every flavor, fruit, chocolate, truffle, or other version.

I've been running. I have my path through the fields, every morning. I usually miss the rain; some times not. I pick up Brötchen (breakfast rolls) on my way home.

I've played cards. I learned a game which I suspect might be Pinochle but whose name in German in original and particularly in translation is a word I don't generally ever use and which has become politically and otherwise incorrect ever since Dr. King's March on Washington. I've played UNO, the updated version with some fancy thingy with a buzzer which dispenses cards instead of the tried and true Draw Two.

I've gone to dinner, for Greek food. Yummy. I missed Greek food, even though I don't eat Gyros or Suflaki any more, I still enjoy grilled zucchini and aubergine, tzaziki, and greek-style yoghurt with honey. I've also (finally) had a decent supply of bread, honey, and cheese, of which there are here an unlimited variety and in the states come only in one sort: white, in a squeeze bear,and cheddar, respectively.

I've been daytripping, to Hamelin, of pied piper fame. The city has one of the more gorgeous inner city areas I've seen, full of a particular sort of Tudor housing specific to the Wessel river valley. With helpful little rat trails painted on the sidewalk, one can follow the tracks for a very nice guided tour. I've been to Hannover, finally on a sunny day, mostly only for shopping. I've been to a football game, a birthday party for sister of my sister's boyfriend, the unveiling of the new Braunschweiger Palace (facade--the inside will be a giant shopping mall, Wilkommen capitalism), the Bierbörse ((the beer stock exchange--as drinks become more popular, the price increases).

I've been on the search for an appartment in Freiburg, currently with only little success. Mostly because what I want, what's available, what I can afford, and what I'm likely to get are four distinct conditions, separated like hamsters in a pet store. I leave tomorrow to go down there and sort it all out, somehow.

Cheers!

I find it a bit odd that I haven't hardly been online allweek. I'm at Sarah's now, but the last few days at Harnisch's were jammed full of stuff such that I didn't have much time to sit around.

Thursday As. and I drove the departing Aupair to Hamburg, where she was to spend the night with Asita's uncle and take a 5 AM taxi to the airport for her flight back to Australia. I decided to come along and we left midmorning, intending to spend the day in the city. From the appartment where we left the car we walked for over an hour to the city center along a large lake flanked by unbelievable mansions with mini golf courses for lawns. These are now expensive appartments, but to imagine these were once single family (plus servants) dwellings is quite impressive. We eventually made it down to an exhibit on ,,Hamburg Sound,'' the German contribution to Beat and early pop music, featuring the Beatles' two years in the city and their influence on local music and the music scene as a whole. Asita had never seen a jukebox before. We spent the rest of the afternoon in a cafe eating ice cream, shopping a bit, and hanging out at the apparmtnet. Asita and I returned that evening, me driving her old 4-speed on the Autobahn at midnight.

I tried to do one of everything last weekend, in the hope of eking a few more memories out of a short period of time. Saturday consisted of jogging, dinghz sailing, riding, and--lying flat on my back on the couch for several hours due to a splitting headache. I'd stopped drinking coffee the Wednesday before and had suffered three days of light but constant headaches. Three hours on the water without sunglasses probably added a measure of sunstroke to my woes, and the dull throb turned into pounding as soon as I started jumping. That meant I was not quite so amusing at Sunset as the evening previous, much to the children's disappointment. But Sunday passed pretty well and´Monday completely without headache, and I am still not drinking coffee despite the fantastically cool coffee machine here. Perhaps I will return to one or two cups a day in the near future.

Sunday we went to the town next door for a footrace, where R. came in as the first woman for the 10k,and 11th overall out of 77 runners. Really impressive. We went sailing in the afternoon (yay!) with Nangi. I spent the evening going for a walk with R. and chatting. Monday involved collecting my possessions from throughout the house, packing, buying A. a birthday gift and some chocolate for the girls. All of the sudden I was hectically trying to grab my laptop and find my sunglasses and put on my shoes and there I stood at the train station.

It was wonderful being up in Hfn, as lovely as I remember, the people as nice as ever. It was a bit odd to go into my old room after the other aupair had left--my posters still hung on the walls, my shoes stood in the cupboard, my books on the shelf--such clothes as I had left have been worn frequently by As. Always a strange feeling, to see a resurrected sweatshirt on someone else, haunting me like the ghost of Christmas past.

The kids are still the same, and yet different. As. is now driving, is 18, and at that stage where many requests are greeted with either passive resistance (for the fifteenth time will you please....?) or outright refusal, making life somewhat more complicated. R. is taller than I am, slightlz, still thin as a rail, energetic as a 4 year old on cocacola, as horse crazy as ever but in many ways more mature. S. wears pants sometimes, is at least six inches taller, doesn't go sailing and volunteers some times to help with the dishes. They are all sweet, wonderful kids, though they are dipping their toes in the waters of puberty and teenage rebellion, with which I didn't have to deal as I was with them.

Inthe end I found my place with them and was sad to leave, but this time I'm not quite so far away. I hope to come up there for November, perhaps Christmas, perhaps New Years. We'll see.There is also hope I can come with on next year's sailing trip. I also left a large suitcase and my violin with them, which I will retrieve in November when Christopher drives to Mannheim, about 1 1/2 hours from where I'll be.

So I haven't fallen off the face of the earth...

The last couple days have been mad awesome fun. I'm back with my family on the Baltic. I spend my days sailing, riding, baking cakes (can you believe this family can finish an entire cake in a day?), picking blackberries (I have open wounds down both forearms from this one), going for long walks, hanging out in a tiki bar, bike riding, reading, playing music.

They wanted us to play at a wedding. Actually, they wanted R. to play at a wedding, but she doesn't like performing and agreed to do it only if I did it too. Problem was, I arrived on Tuesday, the wedding was Thursday, and we had only the interim time to practice. We were supposed to play Air on a G String from Bach. Which is pretty, sounds like a funeral piece, and is only slightly familiar to me. We figured we would just be background music, but it turns out this song has a particular meaning to the bride, who started to cry upon hearing it.


we're in the background. with the violins.

I go jogging every morning. Except this morning, 'cause I've been going every morning and it's cold and wet and rainy and I don't want to. Usually it's unbelievably gorgeous, and I go at about 6:30 or so.


The coast in the morning...

I've been riding quite a bit as well. I don't have any pictures of that, but we did one long ride from the barn in the next town into our town, where we visited our house and then went to the beach and rode in the water. It was tons of fun but our ponies misbehaved somewhat. R. almost fell off her horse when the saddle slipped, one girl lost a stirrup in the water and was later kicked by another horse. But we had a ton of fun, galloping through wheatfields, crashing through the water (no surf at this point) and steering among the moored boats. R. and I went riding a ton when I lived here, and since then she has gotten so much better I don't know if there is much more I can teach her.

Recently, a bar called "Sunset" opened here. It is way on the outskirts of town, right on the beach to the northwest, and from the windows you can see the sun set. Thus the name. Anyways, they have wonderfully cheap (if unhealthy) food (most items less than three euros) and smoothies. Whatever kind of smoothie you want, he'll make. The best ones are tropical, cherry-banana-maracua, strawberry-peach-mango, and amaretto. You order one smoothie, and throughout the course of the evening you'll usually get at least one if not two or three on the house. Last time we got daiquiri-style cocktails gratis, two pieces of cake for the price of one, etc. The guys that run it are really fun. We've spent many of our evenings there.


The bar...the floor is of sand...

Sailing has been fantastic. I've only been out twice, but it's been great. It's been fun trying to remember the names for things, in either english or german, but it's all coming back. A. and I can still sail the boat alone, which is pretty good considering it's a 42-foot yacht. I want to go every day but either our schedules or the weather has not cooperated. It will probably rain all day today, so no luck there.


Our ship, with me as helmsman, trying my best not to steer like a hyperactive six-year-old on gatorade...

Yesterday was my birthday. R., the middle daughter, was taking part in a triathalon. They were doing it relay-style, so she was just the runner, her uncle was the bicyclist, and a friend of theirs swam. Just as their wave was about to start weather pulled in, so they delayed the swimming for an hour on account of lightning. R. ended up running in a steady drizzle, and would have ranked highly had she not been sent out for an extra half lap. Because she hadn't learned the route very well, she wasn't in a position to argue, and that added another three minutes or so. But it was great fun even if we all got soaked. We came back, dried off, had lunch/dinner, opened presents, and went to a movie, "Lives of Others" or something similar. It's a film about life in the GDR, in East Germany, during the 1980s. Excellent film, I recommend it. Then A2. and I did yoga. It was pretty funny. She took it relatively seriously, though we had problems doing some of the exercises because we found them so hilarous. Anyways, that was my birthday, and I got lots of birthday wishes from lots of people, so that was good and made me happy.

So that was my week so far; I arrived in this town a week Tuesday and will probably stay about another week or so, then it's off on down the road. I'm not sure exactly where or when, though.

Cheers---

8 Aug - Mario

She entered the establishment with arms full of stainless steel, the aroma of olive oil and spices trailing after her like a forlorn and forgotten child. He stood in the doorway, leaning against the frame, enjoying the sunshine, the quiet street, the music leaking quietly from inside as if poured slowly from a jug.

He didn’t see her at first; the chafing dishes and platters served better as a door than a window, and only as she stepped sideways over the threshold did he recognize her.

“You!”

“Du!”

“Was machen Sie denn hier?”

“What are you doing here?”

She answered his English questions in German, and it took her a few minutes before she remembered to ask her questions in the same language. He was Italian, in his seventies, a gentleman of the kind seldom seen these days. They had spent a month in hospital together, she the only person with the time, patience, and language ability to keep him company in a land whose language he didn’t speak.

As they were both undergoing the same procedure, hip replacement, they had much in common. He was happy to have someone to talk to, she also; they graduated from bedside conversation to walks in the garden. Before they were each released, she invited him to a “party” in her room. He showed up with a box of chocolates and asked where the other guests were. There are no other guests, Mario. With special permission from the nurse they shared a bottle of wine, and promptly at ten he buttoned his coat, thanked her, and took her leave, precisely at the time one takes one’s leave in such a situation if one is proper.

They hadn’t seen each other since. He came from an island near Sicily, Ishica, and apparently had found others in Berlin of the same origin, as they met once again at an Italian-run establishment run by a friendly gentleman by the name of Giovanni who had catered a birthday party on her behalf. She returned Giovanni’s dishes and, completely coincidentally, met Mario again. We sat, Mario, Heide, Wolfgang, and I at Giovanni’s. We enjoyed a cup of espresso and a few stories. The world is indeed small.

8. August - The long road

Three carloads became six boxes, themselves reduced to two bags of castoffs, two suitcases, and one shelf of leftovers. Two suitcases (a backpack, a traditional case), each meeting the airline weight requirement, containing a life: all one needs to survive and thrive for a year in temperate climes. Summer wear, winter wear, hats, gloves, scarves, underwear, batteries, CDs, books, papers, laptop, addresses, a violin, music for said violin, a raincoat, an umbrella, shoes, sandles, a business suit, a couple of sweaters, running clothes, hiking boots, sweat pants, a hat, sunglasses…[ ]…backup sunglasses, MP3 player. Everything not brought must be bought, convenience weighed against cost weighed against inconvenience.

Airports have trolleys, have baggage checks and restrictions. Train stations have, if one is lucky, escalators. One backpack, one 60 lb suitcase, one violin, and one laptop bag are, in hindsight, quite a bit of baggage for one person to manage alone on a train journey.

It helps to be a girl, and a young one. People want to be helpful, they think I can’t manage alone. They’d be wrong; somehow or another I could do it, even if I had to carry it all myself. But it sure is a helluva lot easier if someone helps, and even then it is still a ton to lug around.

The trip from Berlin up north requires changing stations at the stylish and fancy Hauptbahnhof in Berlin, recently completed in time for the World Cup and several dozen meters shorter than intended, a change in Hamburg, and would also usually end in a 45 minute bus ride which my guest family is sparing me. Four and a half hours total, with “layover” in HH.

But why’d I have to pack so #@%@# much stuff?

Why it helps to speak the language....

It's a good thing I speak German, I thought to myself, sitting on the bus. It was 10:15. I'd started out from Friedrichstraße in central Berlin just before 9. I'd navigated the U-Bahn, the S-Bahn, found my correct underground line, knew my station to get off. I was to take the S1 in the direction of Wannsee, get off at Mexikoplatz, and walk 20 minutes to get home.

It'd been raining all day, off and on, such that I was never properly dressed and my desire to wander through the city was inversely proportional to the amount of precipitation.

I'd just spent the evening with Oxana. She's from Russia, lived in my little city two years ago. She was also an Aupair, and we went to Vienna together in an ill-planned but nevertheless enjoyable adventure. She and her boyfriend were visiting his parents outside of Berlin and were in the city for the day, prior to their departure back towards Frankfurt the following day. We had arranged to meet by the pool in the Sony Center on Potsdamer Platz at 5 PM, from where we took a boat tour of the city (one of the few touristy things I haven't done). Wind and rain drove is inside with the cigar smokers for the last quarter hour, but it was actually a lovely trip.

We then went to Hackischer Höfe, a series of restored courtyards full of restaurants and galleries, beautiful and kitschily touristy at once.

Anyways, they headed off to their Hauptbahnhof and I to my Friedrichstraße Bahnhof, to find the trains on my line alternated between ones that go all the way to Wannsee and ones that go only so far as Zehlendorf, one station too soon. I would ride the train to Zehlendorf, wait 10 minutes, take the next train from Zehlendorf to Mexikoplatz and walk 15 minutes home.

Delay after delay. The minutes stretched like rubber bands; I was tired and damp, my non-breathable jacket keeping me perpetually moist and slightly uncomfortable, my hair in disarray, and nothing to read but a travel guide of Berlin. Which I had already read. Twice.

At Zehlendorf I was to wait 12 minutes for the next arriving train. The rain pattering on the station roof reminded me of the wet walk I would face, so I decided to use my idle time to my advantage. I found a map, found where we were, where I wanted to go, and the nearest possible bus line. A few questions, EntschuldigenSiebitte x 3, and I stood under the roof and waited a mere two minutes for the arriving 115 which would take me to Am Rohrgarten, where I was staying. I appreciated how I wouldn't have even known which bus to take, nor found the stop, if I hadn't been able to speak German. Useful, foreign languages are.

So there I sat in the bus, congratulating myself for my coup, for not having to wait the 12 minutes and sparing myself most of my walk.

,,Ende Haltenstelle. Steigen Sie bitte raus'' (End station. All passangers please exit the bus) came the voice over the PA.

?

End station?

But...but...but....

...but I wanted the next stop!

We were stopped. One busstop too soon. On a deserted street. At night. In the rain.

,,Do you want to ride back with me?'' (the bus driver) (puzzled look) ,,If you want to wait 15 minutes, I drive back in the other direction.''

I explained that I actually wanted the stop after. I explained I wasn't from Berlin, didn't know the streets. I told him where I lived, the nearby streets. He looked confused. He lent me his cell phone; the Fiehrings' phone was busy.

Now what?

As I contempated the empty street, our collective lack of map, and the probability of having to return to Zehlendorf, take the train one station further and walking 15 minutes in the rain, another bus rounded the corner. I and the helpful driver approached the other bus, explained the issue. The other guy hadn't heard of my street either, but mentioned Mexikoplatz. I jumped at the chance and in the bus, thanked the helpful driver of the first bus, and tried not to think of how it would have been better to leave well enough alone and stick with the first plan.

So as we were on our way to Mexikoplatz I sat in front. We crossed an intersection I recognized as being a block away, several minutes closer than Mexikoplatz. So I asked, the driver stopped, and I exited the bus at an intersection (L.straße & P.straße) I had been to many times before, congratulating myself on another coup.

I headed for home, cutting though a subdivision, surprisingly upbeat despite the rain and my since-two-hours wish for a restroom. My shortcut took me back to P.straße. Didn't look familiar, but whatever. I'd get to it, sooner or later.

What I got to was a bridge. There wasn't a bridge between where I got off the bus and where I wanted to go; ergo, where I was going was not where I wanted to go. With the help of a busstop map, I determined I had exited the bus at the proper intersection and promptly went in the wrong direction. Armed with this knowledge and a desire to bang my head in the wall I jogged back to where I had exited the bus 20 minutes prior, found my bearings, and made it home just as the clouds opened up.

In the end, it took me almost two hours to get home (a normal hour journey). I spared myself no wait time, no walk time, and it turns out the end of the first bus line was closer to home than where I eventually exited the second bus, just a short stroll through a park away. I couldn't have known this, but if I'd have had a map, I'd have spared myself half an hour, a bus ride, and the stress.

I guess speaking the language isn't everything......

First week reflections...

Being in Berlin is like putting on an old and beloved pair of jeans. It hopefully still fits, it looked great then and hopefully does now, is comfortable, familiar, bespeckled with past adventures (or, if your messy or don't do laundry, past meals). You feel at home. Sometimes you notice that certain bits have gotten bigger or smaller, that certain bits perhaps don't fit as well as they did, perhaps you notice that they fit better than ever. In the end it's familiar, it's a little bit different but still nice.

It's odd, though, not because it's Berlin or returning to past experiences or whatnot. That part is lovely; the house is the same, the people are, if possible, friendlier, and I am enjoying it very much even without the shiny newness it had when I first arrived two years ago, fresh off the plane. The odd part has been how I have spent my time.

Anyone who has spoken with me recently prior to my departure is aware of how busy I was. How busy I needed to be. I considered it a lazy day if I managed to make it to 10 AM without having been 'productive,' ('read: running, cleaning, shopping, half a paper written, etc.; usually all of the above). I prefer having accomplished things, whatever that may mean, to being lazy. In fact, I had arranged my day such that I no longer knew how to be lazy, how to just sit back and relax (much to the frustration of relatives, friends, and anyone staying at my place who wanted to sleep later than 8 AM). So the surprising thing is how much I am not only NOT getting upset over,--actually enjoying, if you'll believe--doing Nothing. As in, I still get up early, still go running, shower, all that. Then I sit and read, till someone gets up. I sit with them while they eat breakfast, I read some more, wait for the next one, perhaps I play guitar, listen to music, write in my notebook, go for walks... at some point, usually around noon, we get around to the Day's Activity, which may be going to a gallery, running errands, going shopping, whatever. Then back to the house for dinner, then swimming or a movie or whatever else we're up to.

The long and the short of it is, I'm taking a vacation, an actual one. The last two weeks before I left were awesome and crazy and I slept very little for much of it, but this is the other kind of vacation. I have no hurry, to do anything, really. It's great.

The other odd thing is living with a family that isn't my own. It's been awhile since I was in that position. Heck, it's been awhile since I've lived with my own, even. This week is as long as I've had an opportunity to spend with my parents all year. I'm used to living alone, and though I share a house with others, I do my own shopping, cleaning, cooking, eating, television watching, driving, whatever. With Mason there it was a bit different, but I basically did what I want, when I wanted. I still can, here, but there are other people. Decisions are made communitarily, meals are eaten together, if possible, things are done in multiple and in company. It takes a bit getting used to.

I'm also not used to being anyone's kid. I am the adopted daughter here, and while no one babies me or tries to 'raise' me as they would a kid, it's a different relationship than I have with most adults, and one I haven't experienced to such an extent recently. I'll get the hang of it.

But now there's watermelon in white wine, and I don't want to miss out....

Grüße aus Berlin

Cheese: +
Laugengebäck: +++
Boutique shopping: +
Rain while riding a bike & wet bicycle seats: -
Getting lost while running (again): -
Leaving Berlin in a few days: */-

Welcome to August....

I'd almost forgotten how big a city can be. And Berlin is no small city. At least five times as large as Paris, Berlin is home to millions of Germans and is the 3rd largest Turkish city in the world, behind Ankara and Istanbul.



Yesterday I visited the Kufürstendamm, the main drag from the Kaiser-Wilhelm Gedächtniskirche (Memorial Church) to the Wittemburgerplatz. There were herds of people, it was unbelievable. On the latter square is the Berlin equivalent of Harrods in Knightbridge: KaDeWe, Kaufhaus des Westens (Department Store of the West). It's huge, six stories. Not quite as large as Harrods or Macy's, it is an actual destination for many tourists. The sixth floor consists entirely of a gourmet food store, where you may not only purchase goods imported from all over the world, but there are about ten to fifteen restaurants, where one partakes at the bar of, variously, French, Sushi, German, Swiss, Mediterranian, Antipasta, or whatnot, cooked before your very eyes. There were wine bars and tea bars and coffee bars, two bakeries, olive bars, a chocolaterie, a separate sweets department, a huge liquor section... needless to say, I wandered around, munching my roll (yes, sadly, only a roll--but it was very good) and olives, getting lost.



The street is lined with shops and cafes, sometimes of the exclusive sort, sometimes not. There must have been at least four H&Ms, one about every half block, or so it seemed to me. I also found several bookstores, one of which was going out of business, and purchased some reading material. Somehow I had made it over here with just one book. Just the one, aside from a travel guide to Freiburg and Berlin.

Yesterday evening I spent watching a slightly subpar romance movie while cutting footprints out of shelfliner. If that makes no sense to you, the decorations for the party have a 'footprints' theme, as Wolfgang is a policeman. I'm waiting to see what that turns into....