Hooray for the sun

Hooray for the sun this week. Everybody in Berlin seems to be in better spirits. It has been so cloudy lately, but the last several days have been perfect. Right now I am in my apartment with all my windows open. It is wonderful weather.

The leaves on the trees are beginning to turn here in Berlin. Fall has always been my favorite season, an it's on its way.

Not a lot to report this week. Everything is still going well. This next week will be my last in Berlin, and then on Sunday I will be off to Wuppertal. I am excited about being in a place where I have some people who will show me around and take care of me. Berlin is great, but everything feels temporary here. It will be nice to be able to settle in in Wuppertal.

This weekend Kate Larson came and visited me. In fact she just left a couple of hours ago. Kate is an au pair with a family in Bordesholm in the northern part of Germany. We had a good time comparing experiences, and we were also happy to see someone familiar.

We had a little adventure trying to find a restaurant a friend (Miriam Friesen) had recommended to Kate. We were supposed to take the metrotram from the school north to a place called Humannplatz. This sounded like a fairly easy task. Since I live south of the school, I often take the metrotram (the M1) north to the school. We could easily catch that and stay on it past the school until Humannplatz.

So that's what we did. We rode the M1 maybe 5 stops north of the school, and it became evident that we weren't going to find a Humannplatz on this tram. We got off and I asked some people if they knew anything about Humannplatz. One person said it sounded familiar, but he wasn't sure, and the rest had no idea. At this point I remembered that there are two trams that stop at the school, one is the M1 and the other is the 12. I never take the 12 because it turns as it is going south, and doesn't get me closer to my apartment. But going north the 12 goes straight along the same street that the school is on. The M1 turns a little bit to the west. I saw on my map that the 12 passed a little park called Humannplatz a little ways north of the school. After all this, the restaurant will probably be closed when we find it, Kate joked.

(As I am writing this two people have repelled from the side of a 30-40 story building about 500m from my apartment. I never know what I will see in Berlin.)

After taking a bus back south, finding out that a day ticket is NOT a 24 hour ticket, getting another ticket, getting on the underground, and walking a little way, we found Humannplatz. We were happy. The directions then said that we would just need to walk a couple blocks and we should find a Greek restaurant. About a block later, we saw a restaurant on a corner, and it was Greek! We went closer to check it out further, and I noticed that the windows looked pretty dark. When we went to the door, we realized the Restaurant was in fact closed. We thought that maybe this wasn't in fact the Greek restaurant that Miriam had recommended, but, really, what were the chances that there was another Greek restaurant in the next block or so. There were a few lights up another block, and it looked like the 12 had a stop there. We thought there might be a place to eat there, or at least we could take the 12 back toward my apartment.

As we approached the next block, we saw a restaurant. It looked like it could be alright. I saw "Rome" in the title. I had to think for a second, is Rome in Greece? Could this be the restaurant we were looking for? Next I saw the full title of the restaurant: "Athens-Rome." I had remembered that Rome was of course in Italy, but I was certain that Athens was in Greece. The restaurant served both Greek and Italian food. I was relieved to find a spot to eat after so much searching. We ate there, and really enjoyed the food.

Was this quaint Greek/Italian restaurant the restaurant we were looking for? We may never know. . . (or at least not until we ask Miriam) But what we can say is that food was really quite good, and we enjoyed our experience there thoroughly.

Well here are again a few random pictures from the week. A natural theme this week:

We went to Potsdam, and there were some beautiful gardens:


The very small free preview part of an aquarium that we didn't go into:


And something less natural. There have now been 3 of 4 people go down the side of this building in the last hour or so. It is a little too far away to get a really clear picture though. The person is just a black speck.

Week of September 21, 2008:

The Bad:
Several of my friends from the school left on Saturday.

The Good:
I jerry-rigged my fan, and it now works. There was a problem with some switch that had a function that I don't really understand. Maybe it changed how wide/narrow the fan swiveled or something. It was totally separate from the speed and on/off buttons. After finding a screwdriver set in my apartment, I took apart the part of the fan where the switches were. I then just bypassed the broken switch by twisting the in and out wires together. I left the totally useless switch in the fan, however. Hopefully the landlord won't know that I was tinkering with his fan that now has a broken switch. Today I will be drying my clothes with a little extra help again.

--Austin

I tried to make cookies

Cookies are so simple. They would be a nice home-made treat for some Spanish friends who don't have cookies very often in Spain. Right?

With this thought in my mind, I tried to make cookies. This only the second time I have tried to buy things for a recipe here in Germany. It seems to be very difficult for me. First of all, there wasn't any brown sugar in the store. The "Brauner Zucker" that I bought wasn't like our brown sugar. It was just unrefined sugar, I guess. It didn't pack and was as dry and granular as white sugar. But I purchased some anyway, because that was all I could find. Also vanilla extract gave me a problem. There was some kind of vanilla flavor that I found, but I am not sure if it was the same as vanilla extract. I forgot to check my eggs too. I think that is the first thing one learns about grocery shopping. When I got home and opened the case, one was cracked. On top of all of this, (after already buying 500g of "Brauner Zucker") I went to a second grocery store looking for "American style" brown sugar. I bought something that I thought was closer to what I needed. I now believe it was essentially the same as the sugar I bought at the first grocery store. ((so if anybody knows of someone in Berlin who needs about 700g of "Brauner Zucker," send them to me)) Chocolate chips also didn't seem to exist in the store, so I just bought a block of chocolate to chop up.

I must have taken too many things for granted in my kitchen too. My measuring tool is was only a scale with graduated volume markings on the container that went on the scale. It made it a little hard to measure 1/2 a teaspoon of baking soda. I also didn't have a beater. All I had was a little whisk. When I added the eggs I was supposed to make the mixture light and creamy. Instead it was a little more gritty and runny.

Anyway, after baking them on a pan that wasn't meant for cookies, they were really flat and odd looking. I made the cookies yesterday for a goodbye party for one of my friends at the school here. I hosted the party at my apartment. I must say, however, that the party was fairly successful despite my cookies.

There seems to be a culture of sharing among the Spanish people with whom I spend a lot of my time. They are always sharing gum, candy, sandwiches, apples, water. Almost any kind of food is handed out without a second thought. Since I rarely have any snacks on my person to share with them, I receive much more than I give. I hoped that I could share the cookies as some kind of personal contribution. But, oh well. They liked them anyway, even with the (maybe more than) faintly granular texture still left in the cookies from the sugar that wasn't well mixed.

So, a culinary adventure for this week. Every day here can be an adventure in so many ways. Just living on my own, making my own food, trying to keep a budget, ect. is new for me. Being in such a big city is also new for me. And, maybe most obviously, being in a foreign country brings its share of adventures as well. But I am enjoying myself, and every adventure prepares me to live in the "grown-up" world.

Well, as is my tradition, here are some pictures, a couple of the party I had, and one of a statue of some very influential people: Marx/Lenin along with "the opiate of the people" in the background. (Another one for Keith Sprunger (who I am sure doesn't actually read this blog.))





Week of September 14, 2008:

The Bad:
The fan in my apartment seem to be broken today. I am not by any means warm here in Berlin, but the only way I have to dry my clothes here in the apartment is by hanging them up on a drying rack. So 6 pairs of jeans are drying verrrry slowly today.

The Good:
German feels a little more lucid.

--Austin

A week in.

Well one week has gone by, and I feel pretty settled in. I began language school on Monday, and I felt a little bit alone. I met one other American student, but other than that everybody was from mostly France or Spain. I don't live on campus, so my biggest chance at meeting people at the school was in my class of maybe 9 people.

Luckily on that Monday night, there was a school wide welcome party where I met some people. Along with meeting a couple important friends, I met a guy who was born in England, but lived in Australia. He was maybe in his 50s, far above the median age there at the school. We started talking about politics, and we both agreed there were some problems in America. Soon he began talking about how "the rest of the world" sees America. He was a big subscriber to conspiracy theories. He was talking about all the things you "never learn about" in America. Like about how 9/11 was likely a conspiracy to cash in on insurance recently taken out on the building. Or how, Barack Obama could win the election because he has the three important characteristics of American presidents: he is male, can trace his roots to the UK, and is "white" (I am not sure how he came up with that). He was an anti-intellectual intellectual. He felt he was free because he was less educated. He wasn't "spoiled by the system."

I was a little perturbed by all this. Was this really how America was perceived: a whole group of people who have been hoodwinked into believing that social progress was real and attainable, and citizens too dumb to realize that all their news was lies? I tried to play the guy off as kind of crazy to some people next to me when he left. Their response was something like: oh, yeah, he really knows a lot. . .

Now after a week in Berlin, I think this man is an outlier. It was, however, interesting and challenging to meet someone with such a different view than mine. He made me think especially about my own education. Is my scholastic journey a blind following? Is it just "the system" teaching me what to know and what not to know? What is truth, and how should one seek it?

Through this experience, I came to really appreciate a place like Bethel. Education should intentionally expose people to new, and sometimes strange ideas. To be educated is not to follow the ruts that society has made for us. Rather, it is to come to our own conclusions, and be creative. We must "cultivate our garden" as Candide would say (that one's for you Keith Sprunger).

Anyway, enough of that.

I have made friends this week, and I don't feel alone here in Berlin anymore. I usually hang out with a group of Spanish people. They are unassuming (which was not my first impression of students here at GLS), and fun to be around. They almost always speak Spanish, but I have fun anyway. They must be on their summer break still, because they are making there time here in Berlin like a vacation. We have been seeing all the tourist places over the last few days. Here are some pictures.








Week of September 6:

The Bad:
It has been windy, cloudy, and cold the last three days.

The Good:
I figured out my alarm clock. I just needed to hold down a button for maybe 3 seconds to set the time. Therefore, I think my outlet converter might in fact work.

--Austin

Die ersten Tage in Berlin.

Well, here I am in Berlin. I still don't think I believe that I am here. The flights were all on time, and I made it to all of them on time too. I did have a little trouble once I got to Berlin, though:

First, I needed to get out quite a bit of cash to pay for the month in the apartment here in Berlin. I was glad to find an ATM in the airport. It had the MasterCard logo, so I figured I was good to go. When I got to the end of the transaction, the machine told me that my card didn't work in that machine. This was after another card usage failure in the bus ticket machine. Luckily there was a little teller window next to the ATM, and she was able to manually charge the card for the withdrawal.

After paying for a bus ticket in cash, I had relatively little trouble getting to the nearest subway stop from my apartment. I got off the subway and went to the nearest exit, but it had neither an escalator nor an elevator, so I went to the farther exit. There, at the farther exit (probably 70 meters from the other one) there were still only stairs. So I climbed them, with all 140 lbs. of my luggage. When I got to the top, I realized I didn't really know where I was, and, more importantly, I didn't know where my apartment was in relation to where I was. I did, however, have an address, and I noticed that there was a map back down in the subway stop. So I dragged all of luggage back down into the subway, looked at the map and got my bearings. The BVG (Berlin public transport) website said the address would be about 100 meters from the subway stop. So I got to the street of the address, and, from what I could tell, I was in low 30s in address numbers. I was looking for 31 Alte Schoenhauserstrasse (where I was supposed to meet my landlord), but I couldn't find it. So, I was kind of going up and down that street looking for a guy who looked like he was looking for a guy. I even asked a man on the street: "Kannst du mir helfen?" (Can you help me?), inappropriately using the "du" form of “you” with someone with whom I was clearly not familiar. I asked him if he spoke English (he did) and then asked him if he knew where the address was. He basically told me that it was probably somewhere near where I we were.

Eventually, still rolling/schlepping all my luggage, I found a bench on the street, and sat on it. I knew that I had the landlord’s cell phone number in an email that was on my computer and Merle Schlabaugh had let me borrow his German cell phone. I noticed there was a coffee shop nearby, and I took myself and again all my big luggage into the rather small coffee shop. I ordered the first thing on the menu (an espresso), probably more because I felt like I needed to atone for bringing all my stuff into their poor little coffee shop, and not because of a particular hankering coffee. I got my espresso, sat down and found the email on my computer. I then called the landlord; he came and found me, and showed me to the apartment.

Sidenote: he said he had been waiting by the subway stop. If I had come up the other staircase, I later realized, I would have been almost directly in front of the entrance to the apartment.

Some pictures of my apartment and the views out of the windows:

Saturday, September 06, 2008:

The good:

I found an ATM in my neighborhood, and my debit card worked. I think I am getting over a cold that hit it’s peak yesterday after 22 hours without sleep.

The bad:

I don’t think my 40-dollar electric outlet converter works correctly. I plugged my alarm clock, and now the time setting buttons don’t work. Later, I plugged in my beard trimmer, and it made a heinous grinding noise the entire time I was using it.