amerikanerin in berlin

I had my last English conversation group today after school. We met an hour earlier than usual but still chatted right on through two periods. Let me tell you, if you ever have to lead a conversation group and are worried about keeping the conversation lively, invite a whole bunch of 16-year-old girls. I have my own personal posse of them, three or four who've been coming loyally every week. We meet in the halls all the time around school. They're sweet and funny and bubbly, and around them, conversation never lags. It's good fun. We sometimes play games or have show 'n' tell with pictures, and then we always end up just chatting. It starts out about half German and half English (with me contributing more than my share of the English half), and then by the end of the hour we're down to all German, because their English is neither fast nor animated enough for their stories. Which are mostly about boys, American boys, Florida, and Germany's Next Topmodel. Eventually I just sit back and listen to the rapid-fire superlatives: it was SO embarrassing (voll peinlich), and he was SO cute (voll süß)!

Today, for our last meeting, they wrote a sweet farewell note on the chalkboard, and someone brought snacks. Tomorrow I'll have a picture; today the camera didn't work.

by LP at 9:24 PM (Berlin time) | Permalink | Comments

Last weekend I was up north one last time, hanging out with James in Wismar and then Pete et al in Hamburg. Saturday night in Hamburg was epic: we started with a barbecue at someone's apartment around 7 pm, went out to the happenin' part of town around midnight to go dancing, and didn't stop until 5 am, at which point the fish market on the harbor opens and everyone goes to eat fish for breakfast. We missed the 6:20 am train to Schwarzenbek, the tiny suburb where Pete lives, and rather than wait until 7:00 to take the next one--the long one, an hour-long trip--I decided to just get on the next train to Berlin. Long and short of it is, I fell into bed somewhere around 10:30 am. Crazy, I know. My body agrees with you, Mom, cause it gave me a cold. I've been spending the last couple days sleeping quite a bit in an attempt to do penance to my immune system.

In between naps, I've begun packing. I think that, miraculously, all my stuff is going to fit into my two suitcases. They will be heavy. But I may be speaking too soon, since all the odds and ends that always get left until the end seem to multiply themselves by about thirteen-fold.

It's strange, this packing up of ten months in Berlin into two suitcases. I'm having sort of a hard time believing that pretty soon I won't live here anymore. I could wax all philosophical/nostalgic on you, but instead here's a picture of my bulletin board, sort of an archive of stuff I've done and places I've gone since last September:

I went to my last ballet at the Staatsoper last night; had my last ballet class last Thursday. I have two days left at school, and on Friday one of the English teachers is having a little going-away party for me at her house. Then on Tuesday I'm going to France for a week--flying to Paris and meeting Jules, a British girl who was a teaching assistant up near Hamburg, and then going down to the vineyard near Dijon where she's been working. When I get back to Berlin, I'll have a day and a half or so to tie up loose ends, and then I'm back Stateside. Yeesh.

by LP at 3:26 PM (Berlin time) | Permalink | Comments

Oy. I went to the States for a week, and now I'm back. I took no pictures, but if I had, I could show you that my littlest sister is officially taller than I am now. Where was I when that happened? (Oh yeah, playing songs on my guitar.) (I mean, oh yeah, in Germany.)

(If you don't get it, I'm not explaining it. The only explanation is the 23 hours of traveling I just did. Which I'll explain below.)

So yeah. Grace graduated, and I went back to see her senior ballet recital, which is more important than high school graduation. The recital was a terrific show, largely due to the combined talents of the younger two Peterson sisters. And I spent some quality time with my family and some old friends, and also eating some good food. And I drove for the first time (first few times, actually) in 2007. (Also the first time since last September, but the former sounds more dramatic.)

Anyway. The week went quickly, and then I got back on the plane in South Dakota and we took off at 11:00 am Central Time. I got to Minneapolis, waited around a while, got on the plane, everything's beautiful. We were delayed starting because of water. Never really caught how or where, but water and the plane and a problem. But only like half an hour delayed.

The guy next to me was nice, but became less pleasant over the following 20-odd hours because he 1) couldn't keep his elbow off my side of the armrest, even though I ceded him the entire armrest due to his larger size, 2) sniffled and wheezed, and 3) made comments like, "Well, looks like we got some clouds." Strangers who make comments like that are not people I like to travel with. Unfortunately, my seatmate apparently decided that, based on the fact that we were both Americans headed to Berlin, we are buddies. My new buddy sought me out everywhere--upon landing, takeoff, transfer, baggage claim--to make more comments on the order of the above meteorological statement. I think he is lonely. But I still didn't want to be buddies with him. I was too tired.

I was tired because the trip took six hours longer than it should have, because somewhere over Canada the pilot told us that an engine was vibrating, and not good vibes, and we were going to stop in Detroit and switch planes. It took about an hour and a half to get down to Detroit, and then a while to switch people and luggage to the other plane, and then we took off around 10:00 pm Eastern Time.

But when we got to Amsterdam, they had new connecting flights all sorted out for us, so I just had to sleepwalk myself to the right gate and then off the plane in Berlin and then onto the bus and then onto the U-bahn. And then to my apartment. But the weather is wonderfully summery and hot here, and I took a shower that rates high on the list of Best Showers of My Life, and I ate some food, and life is good again.

I miss the family now, but am looking forward to the last month or so I have here before heading back to see what else I can think of to do with my life. At the moment, I will settle for doing laundry.

Labels: travels

by LP at 8:24 PM (Berlin time) | Permalink | Comments

Oh, hey.

Last Thursday we didn't have school (it was Himmelfahrt, literally "heaven cruise" or "journey" or "drive", which is much more stimulating to the imagination than "Ascension Day") so I went to Leipzig. It's only a little more than an hour away by train, and it was the second biggest city in the former DDR (East Germany). It was in Leipzig that the peaceful revolution began in 1989, leading directly to the fall of the Berlin Wall and then to the reunification of Germany. Dissatisfied DDR citizens in Leipzig started gathering on Monday nights in the Nikolaikirche for prayer meetings, because churches were the only places allowed to have assemblies of more than like 6 people at a time, and then pretty soon they were taking to the streets and protesting against the DDR regime and especially against the Stasi, the East German secret police. The Stasi was the largest secret police force pretty much ever: if you count all the "unofficial cooperators" who spied on their neighbors for the Stasi, the ratio of secret police to citizens is 1:6.

Here's the former Stasi headquarters in Leipzig:

In 1989 the citizens of Leipzig took over the building, which is called the Runde Ecke (round corner), and demanded that the Stasi guys still hiding out there quit shredding all their extensive files on DDR citizens. In 1990 Leipzig made a museum out of the building, calling the exhibition "Stasi: Power and Banality". It's full of equipment the Stasi used to steam open mail, tap phone lines, take surreptitious photos, and disguise undercover operatives.

Once I get past the typical reaction to this kind of history ("How can people get away with stuff like that?"), I find it fascinating to consider what went on during an average day in an office in a place like the Runde Ecke. While the Stasi kept its eye on plenty of potential "dissenters" whom they judged dangerous to the DDR regime, they also kept copious files on regular, "law-abiding" citizens. The Stasi archives have been opened now, and former East Germans can read their own files. Lots of them contain little more than stuff like, "X goes to grocery store with parents, Tuesday 3:12 pm." That's where the banality comes in.

There's a really good book, short and readable, Stasiland by Anna Funder, with more stories like that. And the film Das Leben der Anderen ("The Lives of Others"), which won an Oscar, is terrific too.

I went to the Berlin Stasi HQ, too, last week, and a former Stasi prisoner took a small group of us on a tour of the place. It's been kept intact as it was, everything '70s brown and orange. The sheer size of the place is astounding, even before you get inside. The compound is practically a small village, and they did have everything a Stasi man could want within the whole complex, including doctors--Stasi employees weren't allowed to go to outside doctors, because then their files might be compromised.

Here's half of one of about 25 buildings in the complex:

And a map of the place (above picture is, I believe, Building 15-2 in the lower right corner):

It took me a while to find the right entrance for the museum.

The tour guide talked about the film Das Leben der Anderen, which parts were authentic or not, and overall had good things to say. The movie was filmed in the actual building, at the actual desks the Stasi men used.

It's such a huge topic, I can't even begin to comment on it here. At the risk of beginning to sound like a broken record, I can only say again that living here, in the reunited former capital city of a country which no longer exists, where stuff like this happened...way better than reading about it in a textbook. Only--I kinda wish I'd been around twenty-some years ago to see it all go down.

More pics of Leipzig on Flickr.

by LP at 4:16 PM (Berlin time) | Permalink | Comments

May 1 is a holiday in Germany, International Workers' Day--or in German, one of its names is Kampftag der Arbeiterbewegung, which roughly translates to "struggle day of the workers' movement". The latter is rather more indicative of the general feeling surrounding the holiday; there's been plenty of violence in the history of May 1 protests and I gather that now it's considered overall a good excuse for a little rabble rousing, particularly for punks and skinheads who specialize in that sort of thing.

Although the main organized demonstrations are today in Kreuzberg, the mischievousness started last night in Friedrichshain. So I went with Jeremy and Mario and the other Mario to see if any hooligans were setting fire to any cars or anything. We met up at Mauerpark (a park in memorial of the Berlin Wall), but there everybody was just playing soccer and holding impromptu concerts with guitars and bongo drums. The only hooligans around were the ones I came with. Mario said there's usually a bonfire, so he and Jeremy and the other Mario set out to start one. I swear, I was only there to take pictures. I managed to document the night's excitement with some of my most mediocre photography yet:

Since the police were patrolling the streets literally by the hundreds, it wasn't long before they caught wise to the plot. Two of them in green came over to talk to the Marios, and then four in black stopped by to see what was going on, and then three more in green came over to help the first ones. All in full anti-riot gear, all going out of their way to be more friendly and polite than any police I have ever, in my very limited experience, dealt with. Jeremy was taking pictures with a Polaroid camera, and the biggest policeman was giving him photographic advice.

After the Marios had been officially "advised" against starting any more fires, we decided to go back closer to Jeremy and Mario's apartment--to Boxhagener Platz, affectionately known as "the Boxi"--where more serious stuff was supposedly going down, hoping to see somebody blow something up or whatever. The closer we got, the more cops there were, and crowds of people in increasing density and belligerence. There were floodlights; there was a loudspeaker; there were water cannons at the ready. The police vans were literally lining the streets, nose to tail all around the Boxi. More of the anti-riot storm-trooper-looking types were regularly walking (not quite marching) around in ordered groups of twelve or so, or standing shoulder-to-shoulder blocking off streets they didn't want anyone else to shove their way into. We had to take a roundabout way to the guys' apartment, which another very large policeman in full anti-riot gear very politely explained.

There was plenty of broken glass on the street and groups of people periodically yelling stuff. We didn't get into the thick of it, but stayed out on the fringes where punks and regular guys and police were just kind of milling around. According to the news today, the thick of it was relatively tame: about a thousand people were on the Boxi, and the police made 61 arrests in all, but it wasn't as bad as it's been in years past. Here's a photo from the newspaper taken by someone savvier with a camera than I am:

So yeah, it was cool to be on the scene and see some of Berlin's rabble get roused. But don't worry, Mom, I finished out the night playing foosball and made it home safely to bed.

Labels: Berlin life

by LP at 12:57 PM (Berlin time) | Permalink | Comments

So yesterday at school I was wearing this shirt

and two little seventh-grade boys I don't know passed me in the hallway. One of them said (in German), "Who's that?" And the other one answered, "Duh. Her name's Amer. It's on her shirt. "

by LP at 4:39 PM (Berlin time) | Permalink | Comments

We had houseguests last weekend, two Norwegian girls who are roommates in Amsterdam with Elisa, the girl whose room I live in. This is Marit, with Elisa behind her:

And this is Anna:

All three, along with Henrike, made for a most enjoyable weekend. We saw the sights, we shopped in weird stores I never noticed were there before, we bought Chinese shoes. Yeah, Chinese. When we left the house, I was under the impression that we were on a mission to find "shiny shoes". Henrike knew where to get them, and Anna wanted some, so we started out for the store where they were to be found. It turned out to be a store selling all kinds of stuff imported from China: chopsticks, kimonos, mysterious bottled oils to fix whatever ails you, the usual. And these cotton shoes, which turned out to be so delightfully comfortable that we all bought a pair. Mine are green.

I think we made the little Chinese man working there rather seriously distressed, five of us girls wreaking havoc on his carefully stacked-according-to-size-and-color boxes of shoes. He bustled around quite worriedly. And his reaction when he saw what size shoes Elisa (who is very tall) was buying was the picture of astonishment. He basically looked at her and said, "You have BIG FEET!!" But in German with a Chinese accent.

The Norwegians are champion shoppers. I was impressed. When they went home they took with them, not only Chinese shoes, but a dirndl Anna found at a secondhand store and a...I don't know, some kind of decorative bugel Marit bought at a flea market and serenaded us with. Or maybe "saluted" is a more appropriate verb.

We went out Saturday night and made fools of ourselves for a while on an otherwise completely empty dance floor. The shopping cart and the lawn mower were big hits again, and we all did our best to massacre the Moonwalk.

They left yesterday morning, and I've been spending my time still reading in the sun and planning history lessons for 8th graders.

by LP at 7:58 PM (Berlin time) | Permalink | Comments