Learning new things: ü! ö! ä!

At least once a day, somewhere close to my apartment, there is a man that screams in (what sounds like) agony several times.  I have no idea what to do about this, but it disturbs me every time.  I’ve talked to other people that live in my building and no one can hear it but me (and the people who are in my apartment at the time of the screaming.  I have received confirmation, I am not imagining it).

On another note, midterms are this week and it’s been a little weird/difficult trying to remember how to effectively do work.  At least I didn’t go to Amsterdam this weekend, which seemed to be the brilliant idea of several people on my program.  So, instead of studying I’ve been cooking (or more accurately watching a friend cook) orange chicken and having lengthy conversations about tea infused chocolate, homemade truffles, berry picking, Surrealism, and the very realistic prediction that we’re all going to go home obese.  But alas, I can do nothing about Gunter, the friendly German kiosk owner, practically forcing me to buy chocolate croissants from him way too often.  Also, I am very passively working off the tremendous amount of food my parents insisted on feeding me on their wonderful visit here.  Good thing I ate all the leftovers so they wouldn’t be around to tempt me anymore.

Getting caffeinated with Mutter und Vater at KaDeWe

 Yummy pizza in Mitte-- I obviously dressed to hide the expected sauce stains

Exploring the very weird world of German sushi

On a less food related note, I went to the Jüdisches Museum this week, partly because I had to write a paper on its architecture that was due the next day but mostly because I’ve been meaning to go there since I arrived.  The architecture actually turned out to be my favorite part of the museum, and I don’t mean that in the same way I meant it about the Neues Museum.  In this museum, the architecture was actually a really effective part of the exhibit, and explanations from the architect Daniel Liebskind are placed around the museum to ensure that some message is getting across, though it was repeatedly stated that the structures were open to a variety of interpretations.  It really inspired some powerful feelings, though they were kind of unclear to identify.

Jüdisches Museum

An excerpt from my essay:

One component of the layout of the museum that strike me as both unique and meaningful are the empty spaces that Daniel Liebskind incorporated into the structure.  In a museum with such great depth and gravity, it’s important for one to have sporadic moments to reflect upon the information that they have just seen, and being surrounded by tall walls solemnly decorated with the absence of information promotes the digestion of everything the museum is trying to impart.

And from another part of my essay…

The sizeable area dedicated to a minority specifically persecuted in Germany’s past is also very important to me.  This structure is not a small, insignificant looking building tucked away in a hardly visible location.  It is a grand, noticeable structure that is impossible to ignore.  Just looking at the shiny zinc exterior inspires a feeling of significance, and demonstrates the fact that Germany is no longer a country of maltreatment and discrimination of the Jews.  The stairs leading into a wall invoke the same message, that the Jüdisches Museum is unfinished, and that just because the exhibition has ended does not mean that the Jewish people are solely a part of history, but rather will have a future in Germany.  Seeing the impressive effort that has been dedicated to building a Jewish museum in Germany signifies the accepting and cosmopolitan city that Berlin has become over the past decades. 

Also this week my German teacher invited my class to join her and some of her friends to go on a Kneipentour! We also learned the word Kneipentour.

Zwiebel

In response the beautiful weather Berlin has been experiencing lately, I've learned to wear every article of clothing I own simultaneously.

Me

I may as well start a food blog...

To display my shockingly edgy culinary inventions:

As it gets colder, the supermarket seems to move farther and farther away from my apartment, and I continuously hear the carbohydrate gods whispering to me that it is indeed okay for me to make pasta once again.  But after consuming a craftily prepared meal of dry muesli in a cup, I’ve realized that it is once again time to make the ten minute voyage to the store.  I’ve made grilled cheese, pasta, grilled vegetables, and yogurt/muesli/banana a number of times… so if anyone has culinary advice for quasi-chefs with limited ingredients, feel free to let me know. 

Yesterday I went to an English comedy night, an event made popular by the Couchsurfing community… I actually think pretty much all the people there were Couchsurfers.  It was really interesting talking to the people there about their successful Couchsurfing experiences and realizing that not all couch offerers are killers of children, but in fact great nice people.  The comedy show was also one of the strangest, yet entertaining things I’ve seen in a while.  There were a few regular comedians, all very funny, and then there was a puppeteer with beautifully handmade puppets, though with a skit that hardly made sense (he was the only German performer, yet did his skit in an attempt at English).  Summary: two people with huge noses are looking for each other, hit their noses on the table constantly, can’t find each other, two piles of poop are introduced to the stage, one gets killed by a foot, the other comes alive, but is also eventually killed by a foot, even after stealthily escaping the evil plastic bag.  It was interesting.

There was one man who accurately played famous compositions by slightly opening his mouth while strategically tapping his cheeks, which was pretty impressive.  He also did a series of mostly wordless skits.  I wish I could accurately act them out, they were really really funny. 

Lastly, there was a surprise performance.  A pink onesie with a completely zipped up hood was lead to the stage where it crawled on and awkwardly danced around a bit after taping large eyeballs to its face area.  After a bit, the onesie unzipped itself to reveal a very unexpected belly dancer underneath.  Also, interesting.

After the performance I spoke to some of the comedians and some of the audience members.  While talking to the comedians, the difference in personality between the regular monologue comedians and the guy who did the funny/creative skits was quite obvious.  While the comedian could not turn off entertainer mindset, the skit dude seemed more reserved and capable of having a serious conversation.  It was cool to see both of their attempts at interacting offstage and how similar their real personalities are to the ones they try to professionally portray.

After the show, the next stop was an all night showing of the first season of Twin Peaks.  Even though I slept through nearly the entire episode after realizing that it is not the kind of show you can watch from the middle and understand what is going on, it was cool to be in this strange bar with all the Twin Peaks fanatics committed to staying there till 8 in the morning.  However, we left after one episode.

To do: brush up on cartography skills

I studied Googlemaps, made my own map (which I later realized lacked many essential street names), committed names to memory.  I was ready.  But I wasn’t.  After walking for twenty minutes in an area in which the only stores I passed were an occasional grocery store and one church, I decided that it was time to take a gander at a bus stop map.  It was then that I realized I was not in fact heading towards that place where those two streets crossed and became that other street.  Nope, I was walking towards that parky area instead.  After comforting myself with the fact that I was at least capable of finding the right street (for the direction was easy to correct!) I headed back the way I came, shamefully passed the Merlitzer Platz U-bahn station I recently exited from, and continued walking down Oranienstrasse.   Earlier I had asked my German teacher if she knew of any art supply stores I could go to to procure a paintbrush for my amateur artistic masterpieces (not really) and she knew of two in Kreuzberg, an area I previously believed I was somewhat familiar with (“previously” implying this morning.  I have since shed that belief).  I walked this new direction, feeling pretty good about it.  There were people and stores and restaurants, which are all good signs for potential art supplying locations, I think.  After walking for a while, I realized that I had probably passed the art store I had located on a map earlier that day.  So I asked for directions, found out there were two stores in the area, went to both of them, they were closed.  At least that’s what I inferred from the locked doors and a German sign I could not come close to comprehending.  But the trip was not a failure! I went to a nearby bookstore and got two German children’s books, though it was a hard decision since the artwork in many of them was so beautiful, and I had little else to base my decision off of.  One of the books I bought was “Die kleine Raupe Nimmerstatt” or “The Very Hungry Caterpiller”.  It is tiny and adorable and German.  I also found a nut bar (I ordered in German!), some cool clothing shops, and a lot of cafes with wonderful seeming atmospheres.  After my series of failures (garnished with a few successes) it was time to meet my new Freie Universitat German buddy.  It was a great meeting and she seems like a very interesting girl, even though she laughed whenever I said a single word in German (she claimed that she liked how it sounded and it had nothing to do with my complete mispronunciations). 

Some day some how I will find a paintbrush, but as for now I have some delicious wasabi peanuts and Eric Carle’s greatest hit, so I can’t complain.  

Chocolates, waffles, fries (& repeat)

This past weekend my friend Melanie and I took a trip to Brussels.  It was a somewhat last minute decision, and we didn't actually know where we were going to stay until the day before, but we ended up staying with some of Melanie's distant family that she hadn't ever met before, or knew existed before last week, who were incredibly helpful and wonderful to us.  It was a really great, jam packed trip, beginning at 3:00 on Friday morning and ending on Sunday night when we luckily caught a plane at 19:40 we thought would depart at 21:00.
The moment I got off the train in the Brussel's Central Station, I immediately started assessing the differences and similarities between Brussels and Berlin.  Since a lot of Berlin was rebuilt quite recently and Brussels has remained for many many years, the differences were clear and beautiful, both the aesthetics and general feeling there were really positive.
I figured we didn't necessarily need a map since Brussels wasn't too large and after getting out of the train station and looking around, we'd be able to get our bearings.  Turns out it's a little difficult to orient yourself in a city you've never been in before.  We walked around the center area for about one and a half hours before finding Grand Place, since I was too embarrassed to ask someone for directions in fear that it was actually right behind me, but it didn't really matter because we got to explore a lot of the city throughout our blind search.  Later, we ended up getting some (free!) maps (made for young travelers, by locals!), which were incredibly helpful in both Bruges and Brussels.

During our first few hours in Brussels, we saw the Manneken Pis (both real [which is tiny] and jumbo), ate some waffles, sampled chocolate from some shops, and drank a lot of coffee.

Jumbo Manneken Pis eating a waffle with us

After the caffeine, we visited the Magritte Museum.  Although I had forgotten since my high school art history days, this museum reminded me that there is something about Surrealism that moves me and I haven't quite figured out why, but I do want to look into Magritte more and perhaps find out.  In any case, I really enjoyed the museum.

"To be a surrealist is to banish the notion of "déjà vu" and seek out the not yet seen." -René Magritte

After the museum, Melanie's uncle and cousin picked us up and took us to lunch and showed us around the city more.  Her cousin took us to a bar called Delirium which at some point was in the Guinness Book of World Records for having the most variety of beer.  We then went to a showing of an Ecuadorian documentary about soccer players from El Chota Valley.  By the end of the day,  I had practically forgotten what country I was in.  We got to Brussels, ate Belgian waffles, met Spanish speaking Ecuadorians (who talked to the servers in French), ate Italian Lunch, watched and Ecuadorian documentary, and finished the day with some Lebanese cuisine.  Although the mélange was a little confusing, it was kind of cool to see my seven years of Spanish education at work.  I was surprised by how much of their conversations I understood, but still a little too embarrassed to join in.
On Saturday we went to the Belgian town of Bruges, which did not seem like a real city at all, but rather a land of fairy tales.  Although it was beautiful, I cannot understand how anyone could permanently reside there without admitting to themselves that they'd prefer not to live in the real world.  Incidentally,  I believe most of the people walking the streets with us were tourists, but some of the bikers I nearly got run over by multiple time must have been residents.  We toured a Belgian brewery, ate Belgian fries, went inside numerous beautiful churches, saw Michelangelo's Madonna and Child, walked A LOT, and finished the day with a delicious Brussels Belgian waffle (apparently there is a difference) and instant sleep as soon as I was horizontal.

On Sunday we stayed in Brussels and explored what else it has to offer.  While riding on the tram, it was interesting to see all the Art Nouveau style architecture around the city, especially since I had just learned about Art Nouveau in one of my classes.  It was evident in a lot of beautiful black balconies, which stood out against the mostly plain colored buildings.  After getting off the tram, we saw the Japanese and Chinese donations from the World's Fair:

Japanese Donation

The Atomium (the dorky tourist pictures were absolutely necessary, everyone was doing it):

And took a tour of the Parlamentarium.  After buying more chocolate, more cookies, and more Belgian fries, it was time to head back to the airport to barely make our flight.

In conclusion,

Street art in Berlin is amazing

And it felt kind of cool to be  able to have a conversation with someone explaining the whereabouts of different locations by describing the graffiti adjacent to it.  Who needs street names and addresses when you have artistic landmarks?

Kreuzberg

Stale, but warm...

One thing I’ve learned about Berliners is that they have a strange fondness for fresh air.  This might appear to not be such a strange fascination, but when it’s 35 degrees outside, I didn’t think it would be a priority to open windows to alleviate the stuffiness.  It is.  For every class I’ve taken, the professor always insists on opening the windows during our break for this “fresh air.”  I guess the significance of fresh air isn’t as emphasized in America, but I did have much appreciation for it recently.  Yesterday was the first day in a while that the sun made an appearance for longer than three minutes, and me and a few friends celebrated by going to a market with both artistic and antique stands.  It was so nice to be outside and for our clothes to maintain their state of dryness, as well as see all kinds of interesting displays.  After the market, we went to the Neues Museum (I had gone to the Altes Museum the previous day), which had really impressive architecture and interior design, and that is all I will comment on it. 

Last night I went with a friend to an authentic German concert, we saw the band In Golden Tears after I conducted a very thorough search of “live music Berlin January 14” on Google.  Although it was a rash decision, it ended up being a successful one.  The band was great and high energy, and it also just felt nice to be surrounded by real Germans instead of a crowd of fellow Americans, who tend to frequently remain close by.

As far as classes go, I’m pretty excited for all of them, especially Perspectives on 20^th Century Art in Central Europe.  Like the few art history professors I’ve experienced, my teacher seems so passionate about the subject.  I couldn’t help but wildly scribble down many of his casual comments I found to be wonderfully profound.  With teachers who immediately make a positive impression on me, I have to consistently remind myself to think about what they say subjectively, and not immediately mark it as a definite noble truth.  Anyway, I think I will enjoy.

In the time I’ve been here, my culinary skills have been devoted to cooking pasta with store bought pesto as well as the occasional toast with melted cheese and paprika.  Since having my own kitchen and ability to make something other than popcorn was one of the things I was really excited for, I’m hoping that my culinary ventures will get slightly more advanced in the weeks to come. 

Market next to Museum Island

A German experience I may have to skip