2 weeks in almost as many paragraphs

Well, at this point it’s somewhat futile to try and catch up without just skipping nearly everything, so I won’t try. Instead I’m just gonna quickly rattle off some brief notes about anything pertaining to the last 2 weeks that comes to mind for the possibility of fleshing out details in the future (won’t happen) and just getting up to date.

First off, I should mention here that Maeve and I are no longer together. I won’t discuss that here except to say that I had to make a very difficult decision and that we are still friends and I hope we remain as such.

Now, let me see what I can ramble off quickly in the stream of consciousness:

Stacie and Amy’s visit: Wonderful to see my sister. Anne Marie was a wonderful tour guide for all of us. We started at Potsdamer Platz, saw the Memorial for Jewish Soldiers (very effective), colorfully painted bear statues representing many countries, Brandenburger Tor (I felt it in my stomach), the Reichstag building (nice place), Checkpoint Charlie (again in the stomach), up early and on to Prague (the single most touristy place I’ve been to yet in this world, reminiscient of Disney World at times, but beautiful and interesting and historic at others), tried absinthe (not Stacie’s cup of tea… or absinthe I guess), hopped a tram and got off at a random stop to find a really cool brewery where we all had a few after a long day’s journeying, Sunday I went home, the girls went on to Vienna (where they have stories), and ultimately Krakow (where they have more stories), before coming back to Berlin for a night and heading back to the states on Thurs. the 25th, a day after Mom’s B-day (Happy Birthday Mom!!) and a week before Dad’s (Happy Birthday Dad!!).

I enjoyed the trip very much but I think it was particularly enlightening for Amy and Stacie who both seemed to have a sort of Spiritual experience whereby they proceeded to free themselves of unnecessary surplus currency or burdensome material possessions. For example, Amy, perhaps inspired by the awe of the historic Reichstag, generously allowed 100 euros to be freed from captivity (and her pocket) at one point. Stacie, on the other hand, moved by intense feelings of the fragility of life and human suffering (having just witnessed perhaps the most disturbing place on Earth – Auschwitz), presumably thought “how can I have an iPod when so many have died at the hands of such cruelty?”

In any case, they were both great sports and had a good time in spite of this.

other ramblings: Felix’s party last Friday, partying and dancing with Claudia Saturday (getting back at, I think 6 or 7am-ish, if I recall correctly, which I clearly don’t!), met Heike Sunday who wants to give her 2 kids guitar lessons as well as take them herself, Monday spent about 11 hours straight editing one of my improvisational guitar loop recordings for a myspace page (called “moe’s cafe1″ I think) and finally went to bed at around 4, didn’t make it to the first part of class today, but made it to the second, spent the afternoon with Cynthia and Amanda (an aussie), about to meet Mark in a few minutes to check out a jam session he knows about, tomorrow I meet Katerina (another respondee of my “guitar lessons in English” ad) for coffee to discuss, and at night possibly the boat party, Thursday my first lesson with Heike and kids, and at night the major disappointment that the BassDrumBone (with Ray Anderson) concert is sold out won’t stop me from trying to score a ticket before the show, the Turkish anti-terror demonstration at HermannPlatz last Sunday… my goodness there’s so much to talk about!!

I’ll just sum it all up by saying that every day here just gets better and better (despite the fact that it also gets colder and colder)!!

Off to meet Mark!

(ETA: I wrote the title before the post. I really didn’t expect to go beyond a single paragraph.)

Catching up (Wed. language party, Friday at Junction)

As you may have noticed I have some catching up to do. It’s been about 12 days since my last entry when I mentioned my cold and I’m gonna start off by reporting that, that’s one damn resilient little bastard of a virus. I’d probably be worried if half of Berlin wasn’t going through it with me. Now I think I’m fully past the stuffy head phase, along with the sore throat phase, and perhaps just over the hump of the hacking cough phase. I tried to treat it with Vitamin C, lozenges, copious amounts of tea, and a healthy diet; that didn’t work. So I tried red wine, dancing, and sleep deprivation; that helped, but did nothing for the cold. Now I’m trying acceptance and peaceful co-existence; maybe it’ll get bored and leave.

So anyway, despite the new thriving society inside me right now, it’s been a very active last 12 days. Last Wed. I went to a language party which they hold every Wed. on a boat (“The Eastern Comfort” I think) on the Spree right where (if I understand correctly) the only remaining, standing portion of the Wall is, now covered in graffiti art. I went with Audrey (from my class) and Sylvie (her roommate (which of course here would be termed “flatmate”)), both here together from France. A language party, for those of my readers who don’t know, is a place for people learning other languages to get together and have a language-practice exchange, and drink and be merry. Now, after only a week and a half of German lessons, it may have been a bit premature to toss myself into the ring of conversational exchange, but… not as much as you’d think. I was actually fortunate enough to meet a girl there, whose name I’ve forgotten, who spoke German and was looking to practice her English, and Cyril, who speaks French 1st, and English and German as well (possibly Latin too, or something else in there. I can’t remember), and they were both infinitely patient with my horrible German. The 5 of us spoke in both native and practice languages throughout the night, and hopefully they all derived some benefit practicing their English with me (I believe they were actually all there to practice English, but I still felt strangely self-conscious as I always do when speaking English with a non-native speaker, as if everyone is always catering to the person who can’t speak anything but English. I guess that’s something I’m just going to have to get over). Ultimately though, the night was about good times with good people (and good, but inexpensive red wine).

Thursday, I was all excited to go out to the ToyTown party to speak English with some English-speaking people. (ToyTown is an internet community for English-speaking people living in Germany). However, as the fateful hour approached I had to come to terms with the realization that, weakened by the previous night’s activities of drinking on a boat into the night, the virus got the upper hand, and so I decided to go to class Friday morning instead. Friday night I got an invite from Richard (I can’t remember if I mentioned him yet, but I met him on the train a week or 2 ago when he overheard me talking about teaching guitar lessons and expressed an interest). Richard moved here from Canada about 6 months ago with his girlfriend whose mother owns the Junction, a popular rock/blues bar in Kreuzburg (2 subway stops from me). He runs the bar downstairs and works nearly every night till 8pm in the morning! There are no curfew laws here so a bar is free to serve as long as there are people to drink. I, however, had plans for the following night to drink and watch rugby with the French Connection, (not to mention a, well… you know, virus thingy) so I opted not to close the place, and instead got myself in bed by I think 1 or 1:30.

Well, I’m exhausted and quickly losing focus. I’ll try to catch up some more tomorrow if possible, hopefully in time for Stacie and Amy’s arrival Wed. (Of course than I’ll quickly fall behind again since we’re going to Prague for the weekend, but I’ve already accepted the reality that keeping this thing current is going to be a constant struggle which I will ultimately lose).

Und jetzt, trinke ich Tee und gehe zu schlafen.

Gute Nacht alle.

We will rock you!!

Well, I’m dead in the middle of a cold, and so I feel awful. I felt awful this morning too. However, I felt significantly better during the late afternoon/early evening, and so I decided to keep my plans with Claudia to see “We Will Rock You”, a high school production (at the school where she teaches) of a musical where the music is all Queen songs.  It had a sorta Orwelian, Footloose-ian slant depicting a future where the evil Killer Queen and the government of the land had outlawed individuality (and of course, rock and roll) in favor of perfect conformity and order (I think). I want to say that I couldn’t understand a word of it, but that wouldn’t be exactly true because: 1. I actually do know about 10 German words or so, and so I caught those 2. All the songs were of course in their original English, and 3. even in the spoken dialogue there were the occasional Americanisms, generally uttered by the rebels (like “chick”, or “cool”, or the occsional song lyric worked into a conversation, e.g. ”you say goodbye, but I say hello” (which granted is not an Americanism, but an Englishism)). At one point, in a scene where I guess we’re meeting all the rebels, they each called out the name of a figure in American pop culture (I think this is how they were referring to themselves) “Michael Jackson”, “Madonna”, “Paris Hilton” (many others I can’t remember), and then for the big laugh, the dude at the end “Britney Spears”.

We snuck out at intermission (so I unfortunately will never know if they pulled off Bohemian Rhapsody (the finale) or if it trainwrecked) and so I can’t say how for sure how it ended, (perhaps, with the help of teddy bears wielding spears and singing ‘jub jub’ the evil empire is destroyed) but I’m rooting for the Killer Queen personally.

I feel kinda crappy, and I’m not sure if I’m going to get to my homework tonight, but I will stop blogging right… about…

now 

Class, Vietamese Food, getting sick, search for Zinc…

Today,

 I got to class on time. So my day started well. About half way through class though, I faded sharply. I hadn’t eaten since early evening yesterday, and suddenly I may as well have been in a classroom in the Peanuts world. I mean nothing at all got through.

So I went with Cynthia – (NB: Cynthia just got to Berlin about a week ago with her partner. She’s from Canada but has been living in Australia the last 4 years. When I came in late yesterday I sat next to her, (she also apparently came in late, just moments before me) and so I soon realized we both had English as our mother tongue (though she with an interesting Canadian/Aussie hybrid) and we were both equally lost.) – to a Vietnamese restaurant she had been to in her area (Kreuzberg, 2 subway stops from me). This I mention simply because of my excitement at having now learned of a Vietnamese restaurant only 2 subway stops from me. Of course, once I got the menu I would’ve been completely helpless had it not been for the fact that she had been there and remembered what her SO ordered and rememered that it was good. And it was. It was some sort of red coconut curry with chicken type of dish. Filled me up completely for all of 6 euros, soda included.

Suddenly, during the meal, a few minutes after we had both remarked to each other how much better we felt with food in our stomachs, she noticed a sudden fade in my eyes, which I noticed in my brain. She had just gotten over the hump of a cold, and Claudia’s still fighting her cold for over a week now, so…. (cue ominous music).

Yeah, I can pretty much see the road that lies ahead of me for the next few days. Well, we broke from lunch and I headed to the nearest Apothoke (pharmacy) to find me some zinc… which apparently hasn’t hit Europe yet. Damn! (I did later find it at another apothoke, but I don’t believe it’s in an effective form, but, perhaps more on that in a bit.)

Well, actually, I guess I am up to that point in my day’s reporting for the “another apothoke” event, which is really only significant in that it was my first consumer-to-business transaction trainwreck.  See, taking a huge step back for a moment, the smallest denomination of paper money here is 5 euros (worth, at this exact moment in time about $7), so if you have less than that, you’re dealing with coins. That means that coins are actually worth something here, and are thus, a lot more active. (Not to say that US coins are worthless, just that we tend to sorta throw them in a jar and let them collect to cash in a nice sum at various intervals when the amount becomes tangible).  Here people regularly carry and pay with coins. Not being used to this, I have typically paid for everything with paper and have quickly amassed a nice collection of coins on my windowsill. So today, when I headed out to this 2nd apothoke I grabbed a handful of coins (particularly the 20 cent ones because I had a lot of them, while leaving behind many of the 1 and 2 euro ones for some reason I can’t quite explain, though strangely I understand at some intuitive level) without counting. 

I got to the apothoke, and browsed through the different bags of lozenges hanging by the door (incidenally, this is one of the few products not behind the counter. Here, even OTC stuff, like IB has to be asked for), and the pharmacist, a very kind lady, offered help (I assume). I couldn’t speak German, but I didn’t want to speak English, so what came out of my mouth was incoherent ramblings with the words “zinc” and “lozenges” in there somewhere. She then began asking me something in an apparently different language to which I responded with more incoherent ramblings. She then said, quite clearly, “Spanish or English?”, to which I replied with an embarrassed smile “English”.  (none of this, BTW, has anything to do with the aforementioned ”trainwreck”, except that it perhaps threw off my rhythm just enough to properly prepare the air for it).

After a little back and forth she went in the back room and came out with “Zinkletten Verla” (a zinc and vitamin C lozenge which I’m quite sure, assuming that zinc gluconate in the right form (e.g. Cold-Eeze) is efficacious in reducing the duration of a cold, is not in the right form to do so). She rang it up, 6.95 eu, and I pulled out my pocket full of change to pay. Now, bearing in mind: (1.) I had only a small few 1 eu and .50 coins, many 20. coins, and even a few .10, .5, .2, and .1 coins; (2.) I have little-to-no facility in recognizing and counting euro coins quickly; and (3.) because of the disproportionate amount of .20 coins in the collection I overestimated how much I had…and because I momentarily looked up to discover a line where there had previously been none, well a little panic began to ensue.

Anyway, the details beyond this point really don’t amount to any such climax in the story that would warrant such a buildup. Suffice to say, the pharmacist, very kindly and calmly, saw me struggling and said ”here, let me help” at which point I simply held out my hand and allowed her to take 1.95 eu, leaving me the stress-free task of whipping out a nice round 5 eu bill from my wallet.

Much more I want to say, but in the interest of wrapping up: – I’m bummed because I was going to see that saxophone player’s (who I met in Hermanplatz a couple of weeks ago) band tonight with Peter but I thought it wiser to skip it considering my head is so thoroughly clogged that I probably wouldn’t hear much and what I did hear probably wouldn’t be pleasant, and because I wouldn’t be able to resist drinking beer which I know I’d wake up to regret. 

- no school tomorrow because of the holiday celebrating the reunification of Germany.

And with that I bid you good night.  

My first language class

Today I had my first class learning German. I’m proud to say I wasn’t nearly as late as you’d expect, only about 15 minutes or so. But it was very interesting and a lot of fun too. There are 11 of us in the class, representing almost as many countries. The teacher is quite good I think, but in general, I’m most impressed by how effective it can be to teach without ever using the students’ languages. The teacher spoke only German the entire time, but was so animated and physical that I got it (for the most part). Though I was quite lost for the first segment since I was late.

After that, I did some grocery shopping, got some curry paste, and coconut milk, and some Asian veges, so I think a nice coconut curry is in my future soon. Sill got to find a good place to buy meat though. All in all though, it’s getting easier. I’m feeling a little bit more confident buying things and just getting around in general. I’m getting used to the sound of the language, and the names of streets and places. And I’m getting a much clearer mental picture of the layout of the land. Also, I was totally wrong about the beer! It is quite good and the good is quite plentiful. But, none for me tonight. I gotta get to class on time tomorrow. So, I’m off to bed. (I’m not even going to start a rant about my computer related issues because that’s a rant that will have the polar opposite effect of what I’m going for right now, which is sleep, but… well, ok, really quickly: my new laptop appears to be crashing in major ways, and when it’s not my browser is, the internet connection can be flaky at times, but the clear winner is that my new 500Gig external drive, only 2 months old, seems to have crapped out. It’s under warranty, but the data isn’t!!! and they don’t offer any data recovery services, so BFD!!! they replace one crappy drive with another. Fortunately most of the data is also on my machine in Merrick, but there’s no easy way to get it here. OK, end rant).