Moving

Looks like I never did write a concluding post. Perhaps I just didn't want my time in Berlin to end. Now, no less than 7 months since I left Berlin, I've begun a new blog. Since life is back to normal now, I cannot expect the new blog to be as interesting and entertaining as (I hope) this was, but try I will. Most important is your feedback, whether you know me or not!

Check it out, it's called Gazeto Sen Celo, Esperanto for 'journal without purpose'. The design is most definitely still a work in progress. I encourage you to subscribe to it, so you'll get an email every time there's something new to read.

Why I'm never able to get sleep

At work I am most always bitter. I hate waking up early. But more than that I hate waking up early for nothing. Every morning when I wake up and it's still dark outside, I ask myself why I'm getting up. I never come up with an answer, yet here I am. This leaves me with a lot of time to think of how nice it would be to spend my last days in Berlin a little more excitingly..

Speaking of excitement, though, on Tuesday some friends and I were planning on seeing a band called Gogol Bordello, a show I've been waiting for a chance to see for a long time now. We had all been discussing prospects of the show and could hardly contain our excitement, when we saw a sign on the door of the venue that read "Ausverkauft", the last thing one wants to see when one is without tickets. We had no idea that tickets had even been on sale, so we came a whole hour in advance. Slowly but surely more disgruntled youths such as ourselves accumulated, making any chance of scalping a ticket (much less 6) infinitely smaller. My level of frustration was running high. Suddenly the singer of the band and its most charismatic member walked through the door. In Russian I explained to him our dilemma, but he answered back in a heavily accented and hilarious English (just like in the movie) that there was nothing he could do for us. In the end, somehow, miraculously, despite the other 40 or so people that were ticketless, I got in. I still don't know how it happened, but a Pole I was talking to said he could get me in, I didn't really believe it, but it worked.

Gogol Bordello plays what they call Gypsy Punk. To be honest, I've always disliked punk, but they have a completely different style. Half the songs are sung in Russian. But the band's fame comes from its dynamic live performances. The singer, Eugene Hutz, goes wild. At certain points he donned a woman's wig and red heals, and started the song 'Start wearing purple' by pouring wine all over himself. I was at the very front of the crowd, definitely had a great time.

Thursday evening I went to a theater called Kino Krokodil, which usually only shows Russian movies, to see a new Austrian movie called 'Import Export'. Though a bit unorthodox, the movie was well made, funny, and telling. It tells the story of a young Ukranian mother who leaves her infant son and moves to Ukraine, looking for a chance to make a life for herself, and a Austrian guy, with his own problems, who sets out for Ukraine trying to profit from installing chewing gum vending machines. In the words of a reviewer, its black comedy 'reveals unpalatable truths about the economic systems that rule our lives'. I recommend it.

American Turkeys and Iraqi Doners

This weekend my friend Zack, who I go to school with in San Diego, came to visit from Barcelona, where he's been studying. Thursday was Thanksgiving, so the director of the program hosted a dinner at his house in proper thanksgiving fashion. For the whole week leading up to Thursday, everyone had been awaiting the event like no other; I, on the other hand, was surprised everytime I was reminded about it by an ever reverberating "oh my god, thanksgiving is in (x) days!!!!!!!" I really never realized how important thanksgiving is to Americans. I spent most of the dinner talking to a German woman who had lived her whole life in Rio de Janeiro, and a British man who had flown planes during the Berlin airlift, and now lives in Berlin.

Some days later, after a long day of sightseeing, a couple of us Americans decided to grab a bite to eat at a fine (doner) establishment by the name of 'Bagdad'. Needless to say, we made sure to inform them of our nationality. After ordering, though, we were all completely astounded when they didn't offer it to us free of charge; afterall, we are their liberators!! We left the place without them even thanking us for what our country has done for theirs. I swear, they were acting as if our actions have been responsible for the deaths of thousands of Iraqis, as if our involvement there has threatened Iraq's future status as a sovereign country! Instead, we paid our own hard earned dollars-turned-euros for the doners and proceeded to eat them quietly, along side some other compatriots who had apparently also come in with expectations of a gratuitous meal once having shown their passports.

At this point I would like to express my hope in the reader's sense of sarcasm.

Phase 2: Internship (Practicum)

For the first time in my life, I am working unpaid. This means that I go to work, full time, everyday, for no money. You may still be having a hard time understanding; I myself am still struggling with the concept. I will try to explain further. I provide a service to a company, for nothing in return. If you are starting to understand, you may come to realize that it's a blatant violation of capitalism. In any case, I work for the international office of a massive business/technology park by the name of Adlershof. This park is among the biggest in Europe, 15th largest in the world, and is home to more than 700 companies and institutions, most of which are ultra high tech. And I mean ultra.

The office that I work for connects businesses from around the world to this business park. Taken from its 'About' statement, this explains what the international office does:

• promotes economic and technological cooperation,
• assists in national and international partnerships,
• helps companies access innovation networks in leading fields of technology,
• supports their entry into domestic, European, and overseas markets.

When I first came in, the boss and his two secretaries were discussing the agenda. ''Book me a flight to San Jose, call the man from Vilnius and tell him the representative from the company in Venice is interested, and move the meeting in Szczecin to another day'' etc. etc. Although my particular job probably won't prove overly exciting, I think the experience of working in this type of atmosphere will.

Besides the obvious and aforementioned, the only other problem with this internship is its location. As you can see on the map above, Adlershof (far south-east) is located clear across the entire city from Grunewald (far west), where I live. It took me a whole 1 hour and 20 minutes to get from door to door, which means that I need to wake up at excruciatingly early times, my favorite thing in the world as you all know.

More reports about the internship coming soon.

Crossing into Poland

Last weekend our group took a short excursion to the Polish border, a mere 1:15 train ride towards the East. The German-Polish border is formed by the Oder River (Odra in Polish), part of the Oder-Neisse line which in 1945, on Stalin’s whim, became the new western border of Poland, allotting its eastern territory to the USSR. This means that a large part of today’s western Poland used to be German land for hundreds of years before the war. In the late 40’s and 50’s the Germans were expelled, and now it is completely Polishized. We took a train to the German town of Frankfurt Oder, which is connected by a bridge to the Polish town of Słubice. Before the war these two towns used to be one, but today there is a university that is located on both sides of the river, making it Europe’s only bi-national university.

Since Poland is not yet part of the Schengen Agreement (allowing for the abolition of systematic border controls between participating countries) you still need to show a passport when crossing the bridge. Two of our group members, of course, forgot to bring their passports, so they waved to us from below as the rest of us crossed the bridge into Poland. They didn’t miss much though, since Słubice was far from anything special. It had exactly what I expected: shitty weather, pretty girls, and bad customer service. What was interesting, though, is that as soon as you cross the border you can tell the difference in nationality not only on signs and billboards, but also on people’s faces; I can tell a Pole from a German any day of the week, no matter how close they live to one another.

In Słubice we went to a bazaar, which was extremely reminiscent of Turkish ones, just on a smaller scale. They sold much of the same fake stuff, but were much less aggressive in their sales strategies. All the salesmen were Polish, all the customers German, so only German was to be heard throughout the whole thing. My favorite part of the trip was trying to understand things here and there on billboards, signs, and what people were saying. Polish, like Czech, proved to be quite impossible to understand overall.
Photo credits: my friend Heidi

Basement Exile
For the past week in its entirety, I have been locked in the basement of my house, working on finishing 3 term papers. I hadn’t been outside for 3 entire days. Classes are over, and all that remained to be done was those damned papers. Pure miserability. The reason I was in the basement is because that is the only place I can get internet access in my house. The only place for me to sit down there is on a large green sofa, which is all too comfortable to do anything remotely productive. Compounding the problem is my piece of shit laptop, which is way too big and becomes unbearably hot after being on my lap for more than 30 minutes. It becomes so hot that it permeates whatever I put between my already lightly crisped legs and the stove that is the underside of my laptop. The only remedy for this is pulling up a chair adjacent to the couch, and letting the laptop slowly melt the chair away. Theoretically the chair could last for several hours before melting completely, but every time I attempt this, my host brother or sister comes in and asks to use the chair because it’s their computer chair. The good thing is that we’re getting wireless internet installed, finally, but only after I’m finished writing, as if on purpose.

Eggs and Old Ladies

Mein Freund, hast du Eier?
A few days ago I was visiting a friend of mine on a different program, who lives in an international dorm not far away. He and his colleague were getting ready to prepare a giant portion of cookies and brownies, in order to represent the USA for their school’s international day. They had gotten the recipe from a website online, so they naturally encountered a problem trying to convert amounts from the American standard to the European, since all the cookware in the kitchen was German. This only compounded the fact that it had been quite a struggle to figure out exactly what ingredients to buy at the store, due to language problems. He began the preparation of cookies by scooping what he believed to be the right amount of what he thought to be shortening into a pan. Next came the brown sugar, the flour, and then the eggs. The recipe called for 14 eggs, but when the first package of eggs was opened, the two were unpleasantly surprised to realize that they had actually bought hard boiled eggs. They sat there dumbfounded for a moment, and I began laughing hysterically, as we all realized that there was no way to make neither cookies nor brownies without fresh eggs! Discouraged, but ever resourceful, my friend exclaimed that the only way for them to get out of this mess was to call everyone they knew in search of 14 eggs. He called the first person on his phone, and asked “mein Freund, hast du Eier??” which translates to “my friend, do you have balls??”

The point of the story is that even elementary things, such as baking cookies, can often become complex to the point of impossibility in foreign countries. It’s just too bad that the poor international kids are going to have to miss out on a taste of pure Americana.

This is a hilarious bottle of testicle shampoo that sits in our bathroom. On the bottom it says: "With this shampoo, oh what a wonder, your balls will become so much rounder!"

Ossis and Wessis
Don’t know how it is in other European countries, but in Germany many bottles have “pfand”, something like a deposit. So when you buy a bottle of water for 1.25 Euro, you’ll have to pay 1.50, and get your .25 cents back when you return the empty bottle. As annoying as it is, I like the system because it keeps the streets clean, and is also used by the poor to get some extra cash. Last night, before another crazy night at the Russendisko, an extremely poor looking woman asked me if I was done with my beer bottle so she could collect it. For some reason, despite her overall appearance, as well as my best judgment, I became intrigued in her situation and began asking her questions. After a long half an hour of conversation, she told me all about how she loved her life back in the DDR, and about how the fall of the wall basically ruined her, leaving her on the streets collecting bottles. Hearing her story made me feel really bad for her, and showed me a clear picture of how the fall of communism was disastrous for so many. The thing is though that this isn’t the side of the story that you ever hear. You always see footage of Nov. 9th, 1989, when thousands of joyous Berliners began jumping over the wall, celebrating their long awaited reunion and newfound freedom. As I have found, though, quite outside of my German history class, which had an extreme western bias, there are definitely two sides to the story of the fall of the wall.

Now, 18 years after the wall, the East-West dichotomy still lives on. My host sister, for instance, not only never goes to the East side, but told me she would only go if she absolutely had to. Most West Berliners today only drive through the East when showing visitors a part of history. Many say they can tell who lived on which side just by looking at people on the street. Indeed, there is quite a difference, one I can markedly feel crossing the former divide. The difference lies not only in the clothing and the architecture, but in the people’s mindsets, which I’ve imparted from numerous conversations. But for whatever reason, I’m intrigued by the East side. The communist legacy there is so interesting to me; walking down Karl Marx Allee is really like a quick trip to Moscow. Also, a large part of Berlin’s major nightlife locations find their homes in East Berlin, usually in large abandoned warehouses and long ago shutdown factories.

Maria am Ostbahnhof / Halloween

Maria am Ostbahnhof:
On Friday night, a few of us wanted to go out for a little (or rather large) taste of Berlin’s nightlife, which I feel like I haven’t been exploring enough due to all of our travels and excursions. I don’t want to sound pompous, by any means, but for some reason it’s usually I who ends up in charge of figuring out what club we’re going to, where we’re meeting, where we’re pre-partying, etc. etc…So, I decided that it’d be good to check out the east side of town, which we rarely visit, despite that fact that there are many things about it, that are impossible to explain, that I actually like much better than the West side. A group of about 6 of us met up at the Strausberger Platz U-Bahn station on Karl Marx Allee, which happened to be serendipitously in front of a store that sold exclusively beer, over 500 types from all over the world. The 3 guys that were working at the store, drunk as one would be if one worked at a store like that, were very helpful in recommending us beers to try, since the selection was completely overwhelming. Karl Marx Allee is a very interesting boulevard, I find. It was formerly known as Stalin Allee, but was renamed during Khrushchev’s period of de-Stalinification. It is extremely wide, the widest in Berlin, and has massive Stalinist style apartment buildings on both sides. I spent a while talking about DDR/GDR/East Germany with one of the shopkeepers, who told me that he thoroughly enjoyed living in East Berlin during those years, and even still remembered some of the Russian he had been taught for 6 years.

A few hours later, nearing 1 AM, we made our way to the club, called Maria am Ostbahnhof, because it’s right next to the Ostbahnhof, meaning east station. I don’t remember speaking as we walked in, but we were nevertheless greeted in English by a big black American looking dude. The cover charge was an astounding 15 Euros, which almost made us turn around, but since that seems to always happen to us we just decided to suck it up and have a good time, which is exactly what we did. There were a number of DJ’s spinning some hard hitting electro sounds, which the crowd was definitely into. What I found funny though is that without the massive strobe lights that they had going, everyone in there would look like an absolute idiot the way they were dancing…strobe lights do a lot to make one look a lot less retarded. After tirelessly dancing to the loudest electronic music I’ve ever heard for hours, we stumbled out of the place at the respectable hour of 3:45 AM, at which point I proceeded to eat a huge Doner, a decision I am seriously regretting as I write this.

Halloween:
Believe it or not, but the quintessential American holiday*, Halloween, has hit Germany as well. But here it’s not “trick or treat” – rather, “Soures oder Süses!” meaning “sour or sweet!” I was enjoying some delicious Thai food, at a restaurant invariably owned by people of anything other than Thai descent, when two little witches dressed up as girls came inside to solicit the restaurant owners for candy. However, due to the fact that this is Germany, not America, and that the owners of the restaurant, in true Asian form, don’t speak good German nor know what the hell is going on in the country, they were utterly astounded by the presence of these 2 foot witches in their kitchen asking for candy. In the end, the witches walked out empty handed (who trick or treats Thai restaurants anyways!?) and the Vietnamese owners (my presumption) kept on stirring up curry and noodles as if nothing extremely strange had just taken place.

* despite the fact that in actuality Halloween is not originally American, it's fair to say that in the past century it has been fully Americanized, and can be considered an American holiday.

It's cold. And snowing.

The NY kids are used to it, but it's definitely a tad colder than La Jolla..