27 April 2007
25 April 2007
i can no longer come up with creative titles
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.
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.
15 April 2007
sun
Not much to report, because I've spent the last four days almost exclusively finding, in the 70-degree weather we've been having, sunny spots all over the city in which to read. On the grass in a park for a couple hours, at an outside table at a café. I love it when the weather gets nice and all the cafés and restaurants put out tables and open their big folding glass doors so the whole front is open to the sidewalk.
Kleistpark, which is right down the road from my apartment, has a nice big lawn in front of this prestigious-looking building--
--which I only recently learned was home to Hitler's Volksgerichtshof (People's Court), established after the Reichstag burned (which event led directly to Hitler assuming dictatorial powers) to prosecute the crazy Dutchman who said he did it. Hitler's would-be assassins, who plotted to kill him in 1944, were also sentenced here, along with plenty of others.
There's another place between here and Kreuzberg that I walked by several times without knowing it was there before I read about it: it's a 12,650-ton concrete cylinder 18 meters high, situated among some apartment buildings and scrubby bushes. It was put there by Albert Speer, Hitler's favorite architect, to test the weight-bearing capability of the ground in preparation for building the Great Dome. It would be seventeen times the size of St. Peter's basilica in Rome, and it would be the hub from which Hitler would run the world. They also wanted to build a Triumphal Arch 49 times the volume of the Arc de Triomphe in Paris. But they never got any further than blowing up some apartment buildings to make room, and leaving a giant concrete pillar near some train tracks. (It's still there because it's rather ungainly to dispose of; they'd have to blow it up, and that would cause problems for the people living in the apartment buildings nearby.)
I've been reading a ton of Berlin history lately (in case you couldn't tell), and it's nothing short of fascinating to live in this city where so many of its changing faces are still visible, yet it's easy to miss pretty important places like the above because it's all just kind of part of Berlin's mish mash. Which I love. Probably the most-repeated quote about Berlin belongs to Karl Scheffler, who said in 1910 that "Berlin is condemned forever to become and never to be."
Kleistpark, which is right down the road from my apartment, has a nice big lawn in front of this prestigious-looking building--
--which I only recently learned was home to Hitler's Volksgerichtshof (People's Court), established after the Reichstag burned (which event led directly to Hitler assuming dictatorial powers) to prosecute the crazy Dutchman who said he did it. Hitler's would-be assassins, who plotted to kill him in 1944, were also sentenced here, along with plenty of others.There's another place between here and Kreuzberg that I walked by several times without knowing it was there before I read about it: it's a 12,650-ton concrete cylinder 18 meters high, situated among some apartment buildings and scrubby bushes. It was put there by Albert Speer, Hitler's favorite architect, to test the weight-bearing capability of the ground in preparation for building the Great Dome. It would be seventeen times the size of St. Peter's basilica in Rome, and it would be the hub from which Hitler would run the world. They also wanted to build a Triumphal Arch 49 times the volume of the Arc de Triomphe in Paris. But they never got any further than blowing up some apartment buildings to make room, and leaving a giant concrete pillar near some train tracks. (It's still there because it's rather ungainly to dispose of; they'd have to blow it up, and that would cause problems for the people living in the apartment buildings nearby.)
I've been reading a ton of Berlin history lately (in case you couldn't tell), and it's nothing short of fascinating to live in this city where so many of its changing faces are still visible, yet it's easy to miss pretty important places like the above because it's all just kind of part of Berlin's mish mash. Which I love. Probably the most-repeated quote about Berlin belongs to Karl Scheffler, who said in 1910 that "Berlin is condemned forever to become and never to be."
Labels: Berlin history, Berlin life
11 April 2007
whoa
I just realized I can put all my Flickr photos on an interactive map--I can pinpoint exactly where a photo was taken. Well, I can for the ones taken in Berlin. I'd have to have help from Google Maps for the ones taken in Prague and Copenhagen and everywhere else...which would be really time-consuming. But so cool to be able to show people...cool in an OCD kind of way.
*edit* I'm officially OCD. Check it out. (It kind of bugs me, though, that they're not all located as exactly as the ones in Berlin.) My new goal is to fill up my Flickr map with dots.
*edit AGAIN* Wahhh!! So cool! Switch to the satellite view and zoom in as closely as you can on where I put my picture of the Palast der Republik on the map. The little number 1 in the pink circle is right exactly where all the cranes are, where the middle of the building has been torn out, between the two halves that are still standing. The green dome on the map there is the Berlin Dom, the huge cathedral, which would be just off the left side of my picture.
*edit* I'm officially OCD. Check it out. (It kind of bugs me, though, that they're not all located as exactly as the ones in Berlin.) My new goal is to fill up my Flickr map with dots.
*edit AGAIN* Wahhh!! So cool! Switch to the satellite view and zoom in as closely as you can on where I put my picture of the Palast der Republik on the map. The little number 1 in the pink circle is right exactly where all the cranes are, where the middle of the building has been torn out, between the two halves that are still standing. The green dome on the map there is the Berlin Dom, the huge cathedral, which would be just off the left side of my picture.
all things dutch
It's been a really terrific Easter vacation. After Don's visit, I went to Amsterdam. Just got back to Berlin today, and now I have until Monday to reconcile myself to going back to work. Slaving away for 12 hours a week again. Ugh.
Since Don was rolling in cash, we spent a leisurely week going out to restaurants--rather nice ones, in some cases, though of course I also introduced him to relatively low-brow Berlin specialties such as currywurst and döners. We walked a ton, and had great weather for the most part. I'd saved some of the touristy Berlin things to do with Don, so we saw the Eastside Gallery, which is the longest part of the Berlin Wall still standing, and we went up into the Fernsehturm (TV tower, or "Tele-asparagus," as Berliners like to call it), which you can see on the left of that picture of the Palast der Republik (Palace of the Republic). Or what used to be the Palast; they're "disassembling" it because it was full of asbestos and also kind of ugly. And Communist. The East German Parliament was housed there, along with a sort of cultural center, including a restaurant, a cafe, a concert venue, and a bowling alley. For all its detractions, you have to give it to Communism that the Parliament/bowling alley combo is kinda brilliant.
We wanted to go see Knut the polar bear baby, but the line for the zoo was too long. On Tuesday we took a little day trip up north to Schwerin. It has a castle and it's quaint and medieval--something a little different from Berlin. And then one of the last days Don was here we went to the Wannsee on the outskirts of Berlin--infamous for having been the location Hitler's conference on the Final Solution to the "Jewish problem," but still pretty.
I took Don to the airport earlyish Sunday morning and then, to avoid wallowing in my sudden loneliness, got on a train to Amsterdam. I stayed with Elisa, the girl whose room I live in here in Berlin. She's studying in Amsterdam. I'd met Elisa a couple times when she came back to Berlin to visit but never really got a chance to have a conversation with her until this week. Turns out we have lots of common interests; we covered everything from Russian literature to modern art over super-delicious Dutch apple pie, and then later there was tea and feminist literary theory, poetry, and how much we hate reading translations and have resigned ourselves to never being truly happy until we've learned every language in the world. She has a head start on me--German, English so good most people think she's British, Dutch, French, and "a little" Spanish. Don't think I'm tooting my own horn here, cause really these conversations consisted of Elisa talking about all the stuff she's interested in studying and then me agreeing that it's fascinating stuff while trying furiously to remember whether I've ever actually read anything on the subject and which names I can drop to make myself sound legit. Anyway, she asked to read my honors thesis, so that pretty much makes Elisa an instant best friend.
Back in Berlin now, I feel like there are hardly any bikes around, because after only a few days in Amsterdam I got so used to having to look out for them around every corner. It's a beautiful city. I really love all the tall, narrow houses smashed up next to one another lining the canals. And houseboats. Houseboats are SO COOL. James and his friend Steve, who was visiting from Seattle, were in Amsterdam at the same time, so we met up on Monday and went to the Van Gogh museum and took a canal tour. On Tuesday I went to the Rijksmuseum and wandered through the Vonderpark, which is a really pretty green swatch in the middle of the city where lots of people ride bikes and jog. I spent an hour or so watching bikers from a bench where I was resting my very tired feet. I think that after all my travels and much walking in many of Europe's best cities, I will have to retire the shoes that I bought at Payless in Aberdeen, South Dakota--the ones that a flight attendant (also in Aberdeen) once complimented me on. She thought they were chic and "very European-looking."
I'm starting to get a little panicky, thinking of the quickly shortening amount of time I have remaining in Europe and the impossibly long list of travel destinations I still haven't made it to. But I have a feeling the list will never get any shorter no matter how much I travel...which is a good excuse to just keep coming back here. You can all come visit, k?
Since Don was rolling in cash, we spent a leisurely week going out to restaurants--rather nice ones, in some cases, though of course I also introduced him to relatively low-brow Berlin specialties such as currywurst and döners. We walked a ton, and had great weather for the most part. I'd saved some of the touristy Berlin things to do with Don, so we saw the Eastside Gallery, which is the longest part of the Berlin Wall still standing, and we went up into the Fernsehturm (TV tower, or "Tele-asparagus," as Berliners like to call it), which you can see on the left of that picture of the Palast der Republik (Palace of the Republic). Or what used to be the Palast; they're "disassembling" it because it was full of asbestos and also kind of ugly. And Communist. The East German Parliament was housed there, along with a sort of cultural center, including a restaurant, a cafe, a concert venue, and a bowling alley. For all its detractions, you have to give it to Communism that the Parliament/bowling alley combo is kinda brilliant.
We wanted to go see Knut the polar bear baby, but the line for the zoo was too long. On Tuesday we took a little day trip up north to Schwerin. It has a castle and it's quaint and medieval--something a little different from Berlin. And then one of the last days Don was here we went to the Wannsee on the outskirts of Berlin--infamous for having been the location Hitler's conference on the Final Solution to the "Jewish problem," but still pretty.
I took Don to the airport earlyish Sunday morning and then, to avoid wallowing in my sudden loneliness, got on a train to Amsterdam. I stayed with Elisa, the girl whose room I live in here in Berlin. She's studying in Amsterdam. I'd met Elisa a couple times when she came back to Berlin to visit but never really got a chance to have a conversation with her until this week. Turns out we have lots of common interests; we covered everything from Russian literature to modern art over super-delicious Dutch apple pie, and then later there was tea and feminist literary theory, poetry, and how much we hate reading translations and have resigned ourselves to never being truly happy until we've learned every language in the world. She has a head start on me--German, English so good most people think she's British, Dutch, French, and "a little" Spanish. Don't think I'm tooting my own horn here, cause really these conversations consisted of Elisa talking about all the stuff she's interested in studying and then me agreeing that it's fascinating stuff while trying furiously to remember whether I've ever actually read anything on the subject and which names I can drop to make myself sound legit. Anyway, she asked to read my honors thesis, so that pretty much makes Elisa an instant best friend.
Back in Berlin now, I feel like there are hardly any bikes around, because after only a few days in Amsterdam I got so used to having to look out for them around every corner. It's a beautiful city. I really love all the tall, narrow houses smashed up next to one another lining the canals. And houseboats. Houseboats are SO COOL. James and his friend Steve, who was visiting from Seattle, were in Amsterdam at the same time, so we met up on Monday and went to the Van Gogh museum and took a canal tour. On Tuesday I went to the Rijksmuseum and wandered through the Vonderpark, which is a really pretty green swatch in the middle of the city where lots of people ride bikes and jog. I spent an hour or so watching bikers from a bench where I was resting my very tired feet. I think that after all my travels and much walking in many of Europe's best cities, I will have to retire the shoes that I bought at Payless in Aberdeen, South Dakota--the ones that a flight attendant (also in Aberdeen) once complimented me on. She thought they were chic and "very European-looking."
I'm starting to get a little panicky, thinking of the quickly shortening amount of time I have remaining in Europe and the impossibly long list of travel destinations I still haven't made it to. But I have a feeling the list will never get any shorter no matter how much I travel...which is a good excuse to just keep coming back here. You can all come visit, k?
Labels: travels
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