amerikanerin in berlin

So I spent Thanksgiving in Budapest with my friend Missy and her family. Missy's sister is studying in Budapest, so she played tour guide, which was cool, cause sometimes it's nice not to have to spend any time figuring out which tram/metro/bus goes where at what time, etc.

I arrived Wednesday night and had several hours to wander before meeting Missy. Budapest is, as so many people who heard I was going there told me, very beautiful. But more than the pure visual pleasure of the kind of Old World European architecture you can find all across the continent, I was fascinated by the slightly more exotic Eastern European flavor of the city. It's a different kind of foreignness than I felt in, for example, Spain or Italy, though I speak as little (or even less) Hungarian as I do Italian or Spanish. (I tend to judge how much like an outsider I feel in a place by how hindered I am in communication.) I find Hungarian a rich language, though, huskier than German.

I crossed a couple of the bridges between Buda and Pest, saw Parliament and St. Steven's Basilica by night (since it was already dark when I got there), and took lots of blurry nighttime pictures. Here's one of the Chain Bridge that actually turned out:

On my way to find a cafe to sit in for a while, I walked through one of the bigger metro stations in the middle of Pest, and there were wrinkled old ladies selling tiny little nosegays, and a guy playing a violin. I felt like I was walking through a scene in a movie. I like hearing street musicians. A lot of them in Berlin play the accordion. I like the violin better, and I think it sounds more eastern. This picture is blurry because I was trying to be stealthy and zoom in from a ways away:

For dinner I ate some pizza with ketchup on it. It was only after I received my slice, with a line of ketchup zig-zagging across it, that I realized I had recognized the word "ketchup" in the question which I'd answered by nodding yes. I'd thought the girl was asking me if I wanted the pizza warmed up, cause she was on her way to the microwave. Pizza with ketchup, I decided, isn't that bad.

When I got tired of wandering, I went to a bar called Bonnie & Clyde--yes, very authentic Hungarian--and ended up meeting a German guy named Thomas who was in town on business. He'd been sitting at the next table and came over to introduce himself when he saw me reading the Spiegel. We talked for an hour or so about traveling and the difference between Europe and America, and he told me about a trick Hungarians try to play on tourists: on the Buda side of the Danube, there's a traffic tunnel that starts right where the Chain Bridge hits the shore. Apparently Hungarians love to try to convince foreigners that the tunnel is a garage for the bridge, and that every night the whole thing is pulled in and then put out again in the morning. I found that amusing.

I eventually met up with Missy and her family, and we spent the next two days seeing the sights of Budapest. We went to the baths in Buda, where I saw lots of naked Hungarian women over the age of 50. I also got a massage from a Hungarian woman dressed all in health-spa white, which I found wonderfully cliché. At the entrance to the massage room I was met by a short, elderly Hungarian who gave me a warm sheet and told me in a thick accent, "Bikini off. Sit here." We (Missy and her sisters and mom and I) were supposed to wait our turn, wrapped in the sheets, in some chairs lined up by the wall. When we, in our American modesty, hesitated, the woman repeated about seven times, "Bikini off. Sit here." She was kind of insistent.

We went to the opera Friday night and saw Madame Butterfly. It was all right. The libretto was, of course, in Italian, and there were subtitles but they were in Hungarian. I know the basic plot of the opera, but I had to make up most of the specifics of the dialogue. I think I was pretty accurate.

Here's a picture of Missy's profile and a tram:

We took trams and metros quite often in our meanderings through the city, and the public transportation systems in Budapest are great. So rickety and ornate. Budapest actually had the first metro line on the European continent, before Paris even. It's crazy to walk around the city and think that 100 years or so ago, Budapest, as one of the hubs of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, was the center of Europe.

And here's a picture of Parliament, from up on the Fisherman's Bastion on the Buda side of the river:

I'll put more pics up on Flickr, besides the ones posted here.

So Budapest is pretty cool. I did have authentic Hungarian goulash on Thanksgiving, instead of turkey. It was delicious.

Labels: Budapest, Thanksgiving

by LP at 2:24 PM (Berlin time) | Permalink | Comments

1. pancakes (blueberry, from Wolfgang's)

2. Belgian waffles (with strawberries and whipped cream, from Red Geranium)

3. all your other standard American breakfast food: bacon, eggs, hashbrowns, etc. (from Denny's or anywhere, but particularly...everything else on the menu at Wolfgang's)

4. I've also been kind of wanting American pizza, from Pizza Hut or Papa John's, cause in Europe most pizza has a really thin crust. Delicious, but I keep seeing people eating American pizza on the episodes of "The Office" that I've been watching all week, and now I want some.

There's a place called Tim's Canadian Deli within walking distance of my apartment, and there they serve all of the above breakfast foods, in pretty good replications of the American versions. (You don't find that everywhere: pancakes, for instance, don't really translate, and waffles are a sweet snack you eat with your afternoon coffee.) And there are actually Pizza Huts in Berlin too. So I'm not in such bad shape. I'm just saying. That's the stuff I miss, two months and some days out. Significant that it's all food? Perhaps.

(I miss people, too, of course. But that's a given.)

In other news, I'm legal at last. After my third visit to the Ausländerbehörde (authorities having to do with foreigners), I have my permit to live here until my grant period is done. So far one of the only disadvantages that I can see to having been placed in Berlin is the amount of red tape I've had to wade through. The first time I went to the Ausländerbehörde, I had to wait an hour to be told which waiting room to go to, and then another four and a half hours passed before I was called to the counter, there to be told to come back in two months. So I went back the second time a couple weeks ago, but the office I had the appointment with said essentially, "You're doing what in Germany? Huh? Language assistant? Uh, okay...we can't really help you here, so go upstairs and make another appointment." So I went upstairs and talked, thankfully, to a very nice lady who made copies of the piles of official papers and identification and insurance information I'd brought with me, and gave me an appointment for last week. And I went the third time, answered one question, sat for fifteen minutes in another nice lady's office, and left with a shiny new Aufenthaltsbewilligung in my passport. All in all, not that bad, I guess. Except for that first time, after which I left thinking, I want that day of my life back!

I've been sick this week, so have done little to nothing. Tomorrow I'm teaching a lesson to tenth graders on dating American style, which should be interesting. And on Wednesday I'm going to Budapest to spend the Thanksgiving weekend with a friend from Calvin and her family. Looking forward to it.

by LP at 9:20 PM (Berlin time) | Permalink | Comments

I've been skipping around the country again, spending first a few days in Cologne again with the Fulbright folks for a "diversity" conference, and then up to Wismar for the weekend to hang out with James and Pete. The conference was interesting and informative, and there was, to Fulbright's credit, a TON of most wonderfully delicious food and drink to be had, all on the State Department's tab. Maybe I'll write more about it later, but probably not. (If you really want to know, ask.)

Instead I'll post pics from Wismar--and some of them have PEOPLE IN THEM.

Labels: travels

by LP at 10:45 PM (Berlin time) | Permalink | Comments

First, two remarks, one longish and one short:

1.) I just finished watching Kill Bill, and I have to say I was often bored, sometimes amused, and largely unimpressed. And yet...I still think Lucy Liu is really great. She's so cool she surpasses the idiocy of the movies she chooses to do. (I say this, however, without having seen Charlie's Angels. Neither of them. And it's not something I'll subject myself to just to see if Liu stays cool.) But Liu's probably really regretting having done Kill Bill, since in one of her subtitles there was a flagrant misuse of "whom" (where it should have been "who"). She probably said it right in Japanese and didn't even know her grammar had been sabotaged until she saw the movie at, like, the premiere.

2.) Selling books on Amazon.de is a ripoff.


And now, more travel plans:

Tomorrow I'm headed back to Cologne for a meeting of the Fulbright TAs who are part of the new diversity program. There are 19 others in schools like mine, with high percentages of students with immigrant backgrounds. I'll be gone till Thursday. I really hope it's worthwhile, cause I'm missing one, maybe two ballet classes and one of my Women in Islamic Countries classes. But if it does turn out to be worth the trip, it should be pretty interesting, and maybe get me jump-started on my project. We'll see.


Finally, an addendum to my former post of Weird/Funny Things I Saw On The Way To Kreuzberg:

It was Halloween, and in one store window there were fake spiderwebs strung up and a couple of those plastic gravestones, and the final touch was the disembodied limbs and heads and such strewn throughout the scene. Here's the thing, though: they weren't the fake disembodied limbs you can buy at Halloween stores. They were mannequin parts. I hope you understand why this struck me as funny. Not plastic blood and gore, but nicely formed arms and legs, some complete with painted nails, and smiling faces on heads with no bodies. Why spend money on Halloween props when you can just disassemble a store display for a day or two? Well played, I say.

by LP at 8:36 PM (Berlin time) | Permalink | Comments

I've never been all THAT into the latest and greatest in cell phone technology, but in the last 24 hours I've wished four times or more that I'd had a camera phone. In the following post, I will try to make up for the fact that I don't have one with the help of Google Images.

Yesterday I walked from Schöneberg to Kreuzberg. (Like this.) First I saw this ad on a billboard:

I've seen it plenty of times before, and every time I've remarked to myself, 1) Gee, she's wearing a lot of makeup, and 2) I wonder why she stuck a glove in the front of her dress/in her necklace? This is, however, the first time I've seen the ad and realized she's blowing a kiss. I think I might have laughed out loud at myself, shortly after anyone watching me may have seen an Ohhhh of COURSE! expression cross my face. (If the kiss-blowing was immediately evident to you...please don't disown me on account of stupidity. [And I won't tell you that in the billboard version, "Kiss me, Kindl!" is emblazoned across the top.])

As I was having my Eureka moment over this ad, I was walking across a bridge which spans several lines of train tracks down below. On one of the tree-covered banks which sloped steeply from the ends of the bridge down to the tracks were several chairs and couches. It looked like someone had pitched the entire contents of their living room down the hill, not unlike this--

--but on an incline. It struck me as funny since it was right in the middle of Berlin, instead of the middle of nowhere, as in the picture.

I also saw a sax shop. (Double check that vowel. Got it? K, good.) I've already commented to various people on the level of specialization among shopowners in Berlin (or maybe it's just all cities of a certain size), but a shop dealing in nothing but saxophones is so much better than a regular old lamp or curtain store.

I also saw a new Dolce and Gabbana ad picturing a guy apparently in despair after having accidentally put on his girlfriend's jeans, and, on a sign outside a family and relationship counseling center, a depiction in stick figures of the services offered therein, both of which really cracked me up. But Google Images is no help this time, so you'll have to wait until I walk to Kreuzberg again.

No, wait. I'll break out the MS Paint skills again... Here's a pretty great replication of the latter of the two, if I do say so myself:I may not have their positions exact, but I do believe I've captured the expressions of the two characters adequately. And the original is honestly no more complicated than that, just two stick guys at a stick table. But I absolutely love how Stick Guy A is so obviously a father in despair because he just got laid off and how is he going to support his five kids under the age of five and a new one on the way? and Stick Guy B is clearly a very empathetic, supportive, capable social worker, and a good listener to boot. All that's missing is a stick box of Kleenex.

And I guess you don't really need to see the D&G guy. He's beyond my MS Paint skills (considerable though they may be) anyway.

Hokay. So. Last night. I went with Henrike to Hotel Bar (which is neither in, near, nor associated with any actual hotels) to see a friend of hers perform. She warned me that the music would probably be "kinda weird". There are no pictures on that website, unfortunately, but I linked it anyway so you could see the kind of acts that perform at this bar. Exhibit A: Friday, Oct. 20 was "latin-soul-electropop-wildstyle." Fantastic. The bar itself is in the basement--which pretty much always raises the probability of it's being cool, I've discovered--small and mood-lit and very Euro-hip, but the underground kind of hip.

First this French girl, Ava Carrere, sang. Well..."sang" is relative. It was part pre-recorded music, which was the background for her to sing/almost rap/talk/make hissing noises while playing--wait for it--cardboard instruments. I'm totally serious. And so was she. She had an upright bass, an electric guitar, an electric bass. My favorite, though, was the cardboard piano (not the whole thing, unfortunately, just the keyboard on a table) on which she accompanied herself as she sang, all the while wearing those plastic vampire teeth you can buy anywhere for fifty cents and a pair of Blues Brothers-esque shades. It was an I've-been-broken-up-with song, and the lyrics went "This is not a sad song/ This is not a sad song..." I wish I had a picture for you. So crazy, and yet she pulled it off. She had even pre-recorded tuning the instruments, and she'd make faces and turn the cardboard pegs before starting each song.

Then Mini Death played (folky triphoppy music at it's [sic] finest). They were cool, if marginally less entertaining. Also the name really didn't seem to fit. It was a guy playing bass and one playing drums, and a girl with a terrific voice singing, and another girl (whom I really could have done without, but she looked the part of Rock Star Who Plays In A Band Called 'Mini Death' better than any of the others, so maybe the name was her idea and now they keep her for the image) playing some kind of miniature electric bass and singing backup sometimes. The songs were all in English, and the band's fan base seems to be made up primarily of Americans, cause the bar was full of them. It was kind of disorienting to hear that much American English in one place. (You know, a place other than Fulbright-appointed, I guess.)

So that's what I did on Halloween in Berlin. There was no candy involved.

Labels: Berlin life

by LP at 9:47 PM (Berlin time) | Permalink | Comments