Maureen's German Adventure

2007-07-31T23:18:00.000+02:00

I had grand plans to write some wonderful, pithy final post about my time in Germany that you all could read as I was winging my way across the Atlantic.

But between lugging boxes to the post, packing, weighing and repacking my suitcases and cleaning out my apartment, I couldn't find the time or the energy, so the immortal words of Erma Bombeck will have to suffice.

When you look like your passport photo, it's time to go home.

taking the plunge

2007-07-24T21:50:00.000+02:00

Well, I finally did it. I joined Facebook. Anyone want to be my friend?

I'm home

2007-07-21T18:44:00.000+02:00

I'm back in Berlin (have been for a few days), shocked to discover that I leave here very very soon. In about a week and a half I'll be back in the states. So it's likely to be blog lite around here while I wrestle all my things into boxes and suitcases and shudder at the amount of stuff I've accumulated and how much it's going to cost to get it back to the U.S.

Dutch art

2007-07-13T20:54:00.000+02:00

Sorry for the blog silence. I'm still traveling. At last count I've been to six art museums, and I've seen, among other things, this:

Jealous?

For your Fourth of July viewing pleasure

2007-07-04T08:51:00.000+02:00

A tribute to our greatest president.

Warning: Foul language and lots of irreverence.

Vacation, all I ever wanted...

2007-07-01T00:45:00.001+02:00

I'm off to a conference and then a nice trip to the Netherlands and Belgium.

Cross your fingers for me in the hope the impending German Rail strike holds off until Monday.

In the mean time enjoy this great video:

Finally, a not completely asinine meme!

2007-06-27T22:30:00.000+02:00

I swear I have about a half a dozen interesting, thoughtful posts simmering in the back of my mind. Unfortunately none of them are writing themselves, so I present to you instead a meme.

Apparently this is a list of the "top 100 books as voted by the public," whoever "the public" may be. The books I have read are in bold, books I've never heard of are in italics, and my comments are in brackets.

Enjoy!

1. The Da Vinci Code (Dan Brown)
2. Pride and Prejudice (Jane Austen)
3. To Kill A Mockingbird (Harper Lee)
4. Gone With The Wind (Margaret Mitchell)
5. The Lord of the Rings: Return of the King (Tolkien)
6. The Lord of the Rings: Fellowship of the Ring (Tolkien)
7. The Lord of the Rings: Two Towers (Tolkien)
8. Anne of Green Gables (L.M. Montgomery)
9. Outlander (Diana Gabaldon)
10. A Fine Balance (Rohinton Mistry)
11. Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire (Rowling)
12. Angels and Demons (Dan Brown)
13. Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix (Rowling)
14. A Prayer for Owen Meany (John Irving)
15. Memoirs of a Geisha (Arthur Golden)
16. Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone (Rowling)
17. Fall on Your Knees(Ann-Marie MacDonald)
18. The Stand (Stephen King) [I've not read it, but I have seen three of the four segments on tape. Clearly, I wasn't that impressed, or I would not have stopped six hours in.]
19. Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban (Rowling)
20. Jane Eyre (Charlotte Bronte)
21. The Hobbit (Tolkien) [I hated it, and I wasn't a huge fan of the LotR trilogy, either. All of you Tolkien groupies about to object to my dislike can kiss my ass; Tolkien needed a damn editor.]
22. The Catcher in the Rye (J.D. Salinger)
23. Little Women (Louisa May Alcott) [I highlighted part of it because I have only read part of it. I got a few chapters in and had to stop. I can only count on one hand the number of books I've started and not finished, so this should be interpreted as a sign of how truly awful I found the book.]
24. The Lovely Bones (Alice Sebold)
25. Life of Pi (Yann Martel)
26. The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy (Douglas Adams)
27. Wuthering Heights (Emily Bronte)
28. The Lion, The Witch and the Wardrobe (C. S. Lewis)
29. East of Eden (John Steinbeck)
30. Tuesdays with Morrie (Mitch Albom)
31. Dune (Frank Herbert)
32. The Notebook (Nicholas Sparks)
33. Atlas Shrugged (Ayn Rand) [I love Ayn Rand. As someone more witty than I once said on television, "She may be a political nut, but nobody can write a forty-page monologue like Ayn Rand."]
34. 1984 (Orwell) [Shockingly, I haven't read it. I don't plan to, though, since I need to have something to name during games of Humiliation.
35. The Mists of Avalon (Marion Zimmer Bradley) [Loved it and had a minor freak out when I met Jamie George, a good friend of Bradley's and the man who spread her ashes at Glastonbury Tor in England.]
36. The Pillars of the Earth (Ken Follett)
37. The Power of One (Bryce Courtenay)
38. I Know This Much is True (Wally Lamb)
39. The Red Tent (Anita Diamant)
40. The Alchemist (Paulo Coelho) [I read one chapter of Veronika Decides to Die but had to put it down because I felt extreme loathing towards the author. Not the book, the author. That hasn't happened either before or since. Perhaps I was being unfair to Coelho and mistook his insufferably pompous narrator for him as a person, but, regardless, I have a message for him: Unless you are Kurt Vonnegut, you are never allowed to write yourself into your book. Period.]
41. The Clan of the Cave Bear (Jean M. Auel)
42. Kite Runner (Khaled Hosseini)
43. Confessions of a Shopaholic (Sophie Kinsella)
44. The Five People You Meet In Heaven (Mitch Albom) [That man needs to stop writing schlock.]
45. The Bible
46. Anna Karenina (Tolstoy)
47. The Count of Monte Cristo (Alexandre Dumas)
48. Angela's Ashes (Frank McCourt)
49. The Grapes of Wrath (John Steinbeck)
50. She's Come Undone (Wally Lamb)
51. The Poisonwood Bible (Barbara Kingsolver)
52. A Tale of Two Cities (Dickens) [Does listening to an audio recording count as reading? I think it does.]
53. Ender's Game (Orson Scott Card)
54. Great Expectations (Dickens)
55. The Great Gatsby (Fitzgerald)
56. The Stone Angel (Margaret Laurence)
57. Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets (Rowling)
58. The Thorn Birds (Colleen McCullough) [That's a book?]
59. The Handmaid's Tale (Margaret Atwood)
60. The Time Traveller's Wife (Audrew Niffenegger)
61. Crime and Punishment (Fyodor Dostoyevsky) [I have read The Posessed.]
62. The Fountainhead (Ayn Rand)
63. War and Peace (Tolsoy) [Someday.]
64. Interview With The Vampire (Anne Rice)
65. Fifth Business (Robertson Davies)
66. One Hundred Years Of Solitude (Gabriel Garcia Marquez) [I know I've read it, but I have absolutely no recollection of it.]
67. The Sisterhood of the Travelling Pants (Ann Brashares)
68. Catch-22 (Joseph Heller)
69. Les Miserables (Hugo)
70. The Little Prince (Antoine de Saint-Exupery)
71. Bridget Jones' Diary (Fielding)
72. Love in the Time of Cholera (Marquez) [I don't think I've read it. I've only read one Marquez, and I think it was the 100 Years. I intended to read them both and even checked them out of the library at the same time, but apparently I didn't find it worth it to read the second.]
73. Shogun (James Clavell)
74. The English Patient (Michael Ondaatje)
75. The Secret Garden (Frances Hodgson Burnett)
76. Tigana (Guy Gavriel Kay)
77. A Tree Grows in Brooklyn (Betty Smith)
78. The World According To Garp (John Irving)
79. The Diviners (Margaret Laurence)
80. Charlotte's Web (E.B. White)
81. Not Wanted On The Voyage (Timothy Findley)
82. Of Mice And Men (Steinbeck)
83. Rebecca (Daphne DuMaurier)
84. Wizard's First Rule (Terry Goodkind)
85. Emma (Jane Austen)
86. Watership Down (Richard Adams)
87. Brave New World (Aldous Huxley)
88. The Stone Diaries (Carol Shields)
89. Blindness (Jose Saramago)
90. Kane and Abel (Jeffrey Archer) [Well, I've heard of Jeffrey Archer, just not this book.]
91. In The Skin Of A Lion (Ondaatje)
92. Lord of the Flies (Golding)
93. The Good Earth (Pearl S. Buck)
94. The Secret Life of Bees (Sue Monk Kidd)
95. The Bourne Identity (Robert Ludlum)
96. The Outsiders (S.E. Hinton)
97. White Oleander (Janet Fitch) [I think Oprah has pretty good taste in books. Sue me.]
98. A Woman of Substance (Barbara Taylor Bradford)
99. The Celestine Prophecy (James Redfield)
100. Ulysses (James Joyce)

I think it totals up to 40-something, which I think is pretty respectable, given the list is biased in favor of new literature. And full of crap. I try not to read crap.

I realize my reading tastes don't match those of the general public, so I was not surprised to see there was no Fanny Burney, Willa Cather, Salman Rushdie, Günter Grass, David Lodge, Nick Hornby, Glen Duncan, Heinrich Heine, Virginia Woolf or the other books by C. Brontë and Austen. But what about Shakespeare? Edith Wharton? Jack Kerouac? Mary Shelley? Bram Stoker? Mark Twain? Toni Morrison? Kurt Vonnegut? How did Slaughterhouse Five, Beloved, Huck Finn, Dracula, Frankenstein On the Road, The House of Mirth and frickin' Hamlet not make it on that list?

field work

2007-06-24T23:44:00.000+02:00

Berlin is a very weird town.

I love to walk around with my camera just to see what I come across. Lately it's been lots of nature-y things.

Notice anything?

It may not seem like much to you, but this is the first squirrel that I've seen in Germany. It was so novel I had to take a picture; I only had to chase it around the cemetery for ten minutes before I could get a clear shot.

I also spotted a diplodocus at Hauptbahnhof.

After taking a picture of the massive dinosaur in the massive train station, I turned around to see a woman with an absolutely massive purse.

Seriously, have you ever seen anything like it?

After several days with late afternoon rain storms I came across some snails and slugs.

It's not quite as cute, though, when the creepy-crawlies follow you home. The hot weather combined with the lack of air conditioning means I keep my windows open 24/7, and because windows here don't have screens on them, I've had to deal with a lot of this:

Massive, mosquito-y-type bugs flying around my apartment. This is the third one I've had to kill. Or actually, come to think of it, it could be the second. I whacked one with a newspaper only to have the carcass disappear by the time I came back with the napkin.

2007-06-18T16:20:00.000+02:00

What's wrong with our country?

2007-06-18T16:15:00.001+02:00

I have a really hard time feeling sorry for the pornography industry.

2007-06-14T10:41:00.000+02:00

Xenophobia at work in the GOP of California.

The state party and its 58 county operations face several challenges, Hanretty said, including "redistricting on the ballot, uncertain legislative races ahead of us ... and a number of Republican congressmen who are under federal investigation and are going to be challenged by Democrats."
"Who will help these candidates?" she asked. "A couple of foreign transplants who don't know the political landscape and don't know the history of the complicated politics in California?"

By the way, both "foreign transplants" have many years of experience with the Republican party, and one of them is actually a permanent legal resident of the U.S. who plans to become a citizen.

Gigantoraptor

2007-06-14T10:38:00.000+02:00

"[I]t is not a sauropod, it is not a tyrannosaurus, it is a tyrannosaurus-sized oviraptor. We have a gigantic chicken!"

2007-06-13T23:14:00.000+02:00

Well, I guess that's not a meme that's going to catch on. I can't believe no one has anything weird in their refrigerator? No batteries, film, angora sweaters? Huh, what a boring bunch you are.

Regardless, I think I can safely say that I would win a "weirdest item in your refrigerator" contest. Take a look:

Let's go in for a close-up:

Closer:

That's a Twinrix vaccine.

This is where you might ask, "Maureen, why in the world do you have two doses of the hepatitis A and B vaccine in your refrigerator?"

The state of Massachusetts has some fairly strict vaccination requirements for students at their universities, so I have to spend the next two weeks getting jabbed in the arm every three days. I had my tetanus booster and can go back any time for my polio booster, but my doctor doesn't stock the meningitis and hepatitis vaccines since they are not covered by the national health plan. The nurse gave me a prescription and I walked to a pharmacy, very confused and the whole time wondering how it would work: do they just send the vaccine to my doctor? It didn't add up. At the pharmacy (almost 18 months in this country total and I'd never been to a pharmacy until yesterday) I handed over my prescription and waited, only to have the attendant come right back with two small boxes. I paid (€134! Yikes!), and he handed them over, "Be sure to keep them refrigerated. Would you like a bag?"

I couldn't believe that was it.

Keep them refrigerated. Would you like a bag?

I walked out of the pharmacy with two syringes filled with hepatitis vaccine in my purse. I couldn't believe they would just trust me with it. Talk about culture shock.

If I only knew how to administer intramuscular injections I wouldn't have to go back to the doctor at all. But because I can't there they sit. In the refrigerator. Next to the butter.

I have the hepatitis vaccine in my refrigerator.

What's in your refrigerator?

2007-06-13T09:47:00.000+02:00

Just out of curiousity, what's the most interesting thing in your refrigerator? Post in the comments, and I'll post my answer later in the day. Trust me, it'll be funny.

Spring ?

2007-06-10T22:39:00.000+02:00

These pretty, green works in progress make me think it's spring.

Of course, the 85° weather would seem to indicate "summer."

Argh!!!

2007-06-09T23:19:00.000+02:00

My wild Saturday night consisted of a trip to the laundromat, and I couldn't even manage to do that right.

Halfway through the machine just stopped, full of water and wet clothes, with the display blinking E07.

It then drained the water and reset, and I loaded my wet clothes into my bag and left in a huff.

Of course, the wet laundry weighed a ton (23 pounds!)...

...and dripped all down my pants on the way home.

Everyone on the bus noticed me and my bag of laundry that was soaking the floor of the bus. Luckily, no one in this town gives a damn, and I didn't get a single comment or even a second look.

Like Hänsel and Gretel I left a trail behind me...

...only instead of bread crumbs it was water droplets.

And I was forced to finish my laundry in the bath tub.

German sidewalks are infinitely superior.

2007-05-30T22:10:00.000+02:00

There are some things the Germans are better at than other countries.

Decking their cities in pretty, not-at-all-tacky (and secular) Christmas decorations, for example.

Or lighting their buildings at night.

Or even putting up scaffolding.

They also have fabulous sidewalks.

Maybe you don’t tend to think much about sidewalks, but anyone who walks as much as I do will appreciate a country that doesn’t simply use big slabs of concrete that are cracked, uneven and a mess when it rains.

These photos allow you to see two men installing one of Berlin’s many cobblestone sidewalks:

Stones are laid on a bed of sand, covered in more sand and then hosed down. And that’s it.

They’re not as uneven as you might think (not at all uneven, actually), can easily expand and contract in extreme temperatures (meaning no ugly cracked and broken stones), and absorb water when it rains. They can be disassembled fairly easily when the city needs to install a sign or telephone booth or reach the water mains, meaning no jackhammers disturb you when the city does work right outside your window.

This is one more reason to love German sidewalks; it’s a project that memorializes victims of the Nazis by placing a stone with their name on it outside of their former residence.

A Pentacost Miracle

2007-05-28T22:06:00.000+02:00

Today I actually cooked a meal... a meal that did not come from a box or bag with the word "instant" somewhere on it.

carrot and zucchini stir fry over Thai rice noodles

You're shocked, aren't you?

It couldn't be more true.

2007-05-26T21:29:00.001+02:00

Maureen --

[noun]:

A hermit living in the big city

'How will you be defined in the dictionary?' at QuizGalaxy.com

It's Saturday evening and I live in a city renownend for its night life, yet what am I doing?

Kiel and Lübeck

2007-05-24T22:23:00.000+02:00

A couple weeks ago I took a weekend trip to Kiel and Lübeck, and, slacker blogger that I am, I neglected to write about it.

You can see photos here.

I wanted to see an exhibit about nutrition and propaganda in the Third Reich at the Stadtmuseum in Kiel, so that was my first stop.

The city was nothing special to look at:

...but it has a really great energy. The main street was packed with shoppers and the boardwalk was full of people walking, running, biking and rollerblading. It seemed like a busy, active community, quite unlike slacker Berlin.

There was some fabulous public art and statuary, though:

I also stopped by the aquarium to see the seals at feeding time:

They were very cute, but it was a little sad to see so many seals in such a tiny pen, being forced to perform for their food instead of hunting it in the open ocean.

I also spotted some fearless sparrows:

Then it was on to Lübeck. I love, love, love Lübeck and I feel confident in listing it as one of the must-see towns in Germany.

This is the image that greeted me shortly after leaving the train station:

I was continually blown away by how beautiful the city was the entire time I was there. I kept snapping pictures of random streets because they were just so damn picturesque. Example:

Beautiful!

This is the Holstentor, one of the most recognizable buildings in all of Germany:

Lübeck also boasts some truly lovely churches:

Lübeck also has literary connections. Günter Grass lives just outside of town and Heinrich and Thomas Mann both grew up here.

The inner courtyard of the Grass museum:

One of the Mann family's homes in Lübeck, set up today as the Buddenbrookhaus:

When I was in the Buddenbrooks exhibit I was scolded by one of the guides for never having read the book.

Lübeck is also known for its marzipan. In fact, the Niederegger marzipan shop was just about the only thing in town that was open. I was there on a Sunday and even the tourist information booth was closed. While lovely, Lübeck was also sleepy.

Inside the marzipan shop:

Marzipan fruits on display:

Marzipan model of the city of Lübeck:

It felt wrong to go to Lübeck and not buy some marzipan, but when I actually ate some, I realized that I don't like marzipan. A friend assures me that flavored marzipan is better than normal marzipan, but I don't really get it: if you need chocolate and flavoring to drown out the icky marzipan taste, why eat marzipan? Why not just eat flavored chocolate?

And, finally, because this is Germany and this is Spargelzeit, there was marzipan asparagus:

I kid you not.

More on Idlers

2007-05-22T21:54:00.000+02:00

Someone else has been thinking about idlers lately.

Idle Thoughts

2007-05-19T23:35:00.000+02:00

A friend recently pointed out this website to me. Just in case you're too lazy to click, it's a magazine that "campaigns against the work ethic" and attempts "to return dignity to the art of loafing, to make idling into something to aspire towards rather than reject."

I haven't invested the time to really gauge the contributors in the forum, to determine how serious they are. There seems to be plenty of irony there, but plenty also revel in the idle lifestyle, endeavoring to work just enough to get by and maximize leisure time.

While I certainly think that Americans work too much and consume too much (the two are inextricably linked, aren't they?), neither of which is good for the environment or makes us happy, I also think that work and productivity are good. And I can't shake the impression that the people writing the Idler forums are just lazy.

It seems almost anachronistic; I thought the Idler had more or less died out. He thrived in the pre-industrial days, was still around in Jane Austen's time, but his days were clearly numbered by the time Edith Wharton took up her pen. A gentlemen in the pre- and early industrial society could live on the income from their property or an annuity of some kind and have most of his hours free for reading, hunting and other idle pastimes. But he could do so only at an enormous cost to his younger siblings. Just this morning I was reading about the concept of youth in the pre-industrial age in Youth and History by John R. Gillis. (I actually study youth in the post-industrial/modern age, but I decided to be a good scholar and read the whole book, instead of just the part that covers my century.) The preference for primogeniture among the upper classes (nobility, gentry, bourgeoisie) often forced younger siblings (and, often, female siblings regardless of age) to "sacrifice for the good of all," since keeping the family property intact was often the only way to maintain settlements and annuities.

To draw an example from the book I just recently finished reading (again), Mr. Knightly (in Emma) can lead a relatively idle existence, nominally occupied with running his estate, but employing stewards to do most of the work, leaving most of his hours free for visiting, dining out, playing cards and engaging in other leisure activities. But he can do so only at the expense of his brother, who must work (in law, I think) to earn a living and support his family.

The idle existence was a privilege for the few, and I, personally, am glad that it's all but gone from society. I think we're better off without it.

Yet, somehow, I've managed to land in a city of idlers.

No one seems to work in this town. Stores, buses, trains, supermarkets, and restaurants are always full of people, regardless of the hour. When I was in Kiel the boardwalk was full of people running, walking, biking, skateboarding and rollerblading, and even on a warm, sunny Saturday there weren't that many people just sitting around. Here on every nice day, whether weekend or not, parks, beaches and lawns fill up with idlers who spend the afternoon reading, sunbathing and drinking.

I thought the leisure class was dead, so I don't know where these people come from. It really is reminiscent of an earlier era.

Take this photo I snapped a couple weeks ago:

Doesn't it remind you an awful lot of this?

What every girl needs

2007-05-17T23:34:00.000+02:00

Ack. Where did the day go? I meant to write a more substantial post, but it's already bedtime. For now, tide yourselves over with this and keep voting (scroll down).

When I was out shopping the other day I spotted this:

I think a Daniel Craig rug would spruce up my apartment quite nicely, don't you?

Paint and New Jackets: Not a Good Combination

2007-05-16T20:54:00.000+02:00

You would really not believe the day I had.

It started out great. I have a friend staying with me for a few days, and we were a bit disappointed yesterday when we couldn't go on a boat tour of the city. It was evening (after 6) and only a handful of people were interested, so the crew decided to just pack up and go home, despite the fact their sign advertises departure times well into the evening. I don't really blame them, but it does make me roll my eyes and say "Typisch deutsch."

So we were thrilled when today turned out to be a beautiful, sunny, warm spring day. Despite there being even fewer people on the boat than yesterday evening, the tour actually departed and we got our river cruise. Sadly, I don't have any pictures; my camera batteries were dead, all sixbatteries I had in my bag. (Note to self: Your rechargeable batteries no longer recharge. Buy new ones!)

With an hour or so to kill in the afternoon, we went to check out a cool little area in Prenzlauerberg that he knew about, with a nice farmer's market and a funky little felt shop. To get to the felt shop, we had to walk around a construction site. We were almost clear of their fence, when disaster struck.

The facade painters, cleaning up for the day, carelessly tossed an open bucket of house paint into the almost-full dumpster, splashing me, head-to-toe, with gray, oil-based paint!

I was in utter shock. I just stood there with my mouth open, covered in paint. Not fifteen minutes previously my friend had joked about how I looked like a Berliner, and my response had been that I should, given that I'd bought everything I was wearing in Germany. The jeans and shoes are a few weeks old, but I was wearing a beautiful spring green blazer for the first time. And now they were all ruined.

My friend roused me and told me we needed to go talk to the crew, since they really should reimburse me for the cost of new clothes. We asked for his supervisor's number, but I was still too shocked to really deal with the situation. With the number in hand, we walked a few houses down and I ducked into a bar/restaurant to use their restroom to to get as much of the paint off as I could.

Luckily, most, nearly all, came off of my shoes, jeans and top almost immediately.

See?

Basically all that remains are one or two spots that look like this.

The jacket didn't fare so well, due to a combination of the light color and the cotton fabric. I called the number the man had given me, and, surprise, surprise, it didn't work. We walked back to the construction site and launched into an explanation with the first two guys we could find. Most of the time I speak German pretty well, but I was just too flustered to effectively communicate in a foreign language. We managed to get the job done, though, and one of the men informed us that the bosses/administration had their office just around the corner. Off we went, to once again explain our situation in rather stilted German.

Now I was almost sorry I'd worked on cleaning my clothes, since it really looked like my jacket had been splashed with dirty water. I could have made my case much more effectively covered, head to toe, in gray paint flecks and reeking of turpentine.

The men in the office were skeptical, but we were insistent enough that the guy in charge eventually asked us to show him where it happened. I think they half-expected us to lead them to a completely different construction site. (This is Berlin after all; there were others in the immediate vicinity. There was even someone else painting an entryway a few doors down.) Once we got back to the scene of the crime, though, it didn't take long to convince the guy what happened. He saw the full dumpster and the paint splatters on the ground and could smell the wet paint.

We watched him go track someone down and could tell by his gestures that he was relating the story of what happened. They fished the still-half-full paint cans out of the dumpster and figured out who was responsible. "The Turks." Apparently the subcontractor in charge of painting the facade was a Turkish[-German] company. As unhappy as I was with the painters who had ruined my clothes, I found the way they spoke of "the Turks" very distasteful.

We went back to the office, where the man in charge had me write down my contact info and called the contractor to inform them what had happened. I was a bit more relaxed at this point, since I no longer had to convince anyone what had happened and it was fairly clear I was going to get a reimbursement of some kind, so I could take a moment to observe some of the interesting cultural differences.

The German job/site manager explained to me that he would take my information and give me the painting company's contact info so that I could send them either the cleaning bill or the receipt for a new jacket. While I was there he placed a phone call to the [Turkish] painting company, in order to inform them of the event and let them know a bill would be coming and that they would need to file a claim with their insurance company.

Insurance, Rules, Order, Forms, Bureaucracy. Very German.

Not long after his phone call the painting crew came in, looking slightly sheepish. When everything had been explained to them, they preferred to handle the situation in a very un-German manner. We all shook hands and I walked out of there with a €50 bill in my pocket. (They did ask me to sign a paper acknowledging that they had compensated me for the damage, which I did willingly.)

This was a perfect resolution, in my opinion. €50 is about what I spent for the jacket and the jeans, and I was pretty sure I wouldn't need to replace the jeans. As frustrating as the whole situation was, I do realize it was just an accident, a random, freak occurrence that happened in the blink of an eye. They were careless in their hurry to get home for the evening and enjoy their Feierabend (tomorrow is a holiday). I can certainly understand that.

I also realize that these are people who work hard and don't have an easy life. Germany does not treat its immigrants (and children of immigrants) very well. They have little or no access to language training, which severely limits their educational opportunities, which in turn limits their job opportunities, leaving "immigrants" working in food servive (running Dönor stands or kiosks) or other menial labor. These painters likely work hard labor for long hours and relatively little pay, and all because Germany never bothered to give a damn about people with their skin color.

(I could go on and on about the inequalities in the German educational system and in German society, but it should probably be its own post.)

On the way back to my apartment I stopped at not one but two H&Ms to look into replacing the jacket. Each store only had two left, only one even close to my size. I stood in the store for about ten minutes, first trying on my [now spotted] size 12 and then trying on the new size 10. During this process the whole event took a very weird turn.

As I'm slipping one of the blazers on for the fifth time, I hear a voice pipe up, "If I may say, I don't like it at all. It doesn't look very good."

Ironically, at that point I was wearing the jacket I already owned.

Thanks a lot. Bitch.

But, really, she was just tasteless, right? This doesn't look bad!

Does it?

In the end I bought the jacket. I had the cash for it, and I was afraid, since it's on clearance, that I wouldn't be able to find another one and would be disappointed with my stained blazer forever.

If I find a new size 12, I might return the size 10.

Or not.

Once I got home and looked the jackets over, I realized I have no idea what I should do.

Fresh from my furious scrubbing, the blazer still had noticeable spots and did not look good. Once, it dried, it looked okay.

You can actually hardly see the spots. (Click for bigger images.)

They're there, but it's not bad.

When I bought the jacket in the first place, I wavered between buying the 10 and the 12, and opted for the 12. It fits, but the shoulders and arms feel a bit big to me. But the 10 feels tight across the middle. Which do you think fits better?

The size 12:

The 10:

The 10, unbuttoned:

I just don't know what to do. Return the 10 and look for a 12? Return the 10 and wear the blazer with the definitely-there-but-barely-noticeable spots?

Being a thoroughly modern girl, though, I decided the best way to solve my dilemma is to ask the internet.

Hundertwasser

2007-05-16T01:16:00.000+02:00

There is one more tidbit from the tip I forgot to include in the post about my recent trip.

My love for Friedensreich Hundertwasser has been well documented, so I was pleased to finally get a chance to see some of his architecture in person.

We visited both the Martin Luther Gymnasium in Lutherstadt Wittenberg, which is affectionately referred to as the Hundertwasser school

and the Grüne Zitadelle in Magdeburg.

It's inspired me to want to knit more socks!

Cheater!

2007-05-14T19:34:00.000+02:00

There's a good article in the San Francisco Chronicle today about teachers "cheating" on standardized tests.

It's an interesting read, I don't care for the hyperbolic headline ("The Teachers Who Cheat"); nor do I care for the sneering attitude of the reports that occasionally crops up, like here: "As a result, Challenger received no school ranking on the state's Academic Performance Index in 2006. Instead, there is a note by Challenger's name saying that an 'adult irregularity in testing procedure' occurred, and the school wasn't ranked. ('Cheating' is a word educators never use.)"

Let's not forget that teachers are educated people; they know what they're talking about and what they're saying. Choosing "adult irregularity" instead of "cheating" is not semantic hairsplitting. Let's look at what school districts consider cheating:

"State regulations let teachers give approved practice tests, show students test-taking strategies, and teach subjects that might be on the test.

But violations include tailoring instruction to the test, practicing on exams from past years or on alternate forms of the test, looking at the test in advance and teaching its content, and emphasizing score improvement over academic achievement."

Practicing on old exams and using alternate forms of the test seem like two perfectly reasonable test-prep strategies to me, and calling a teacher a cheater for "emphasizing score improvement over academic achievement" is absurd. Emphasizing score improvement over academic achievement is caused by high stakes testing. Because in the high stakes, standardized testing world score improvement ismore important than academic achievement, it is inevitable that some (most?)teachers will adopt the same attitude, however unwillingly. It's not fair to punish a teacher because a flawed system is working exactly how it was designed to work.

Let's take a closer look at the examples of teacher "cheating" the article cites. Some are fairly clear-cut:

"'It is my conclusion that student answers were erased and changed from wrong to right in a centralized location in a fraudulent effort to improve scores,' said director Isaac Haqq. 'I take full responsibility for the lack of monitoring.'"

"'She pointed at questions like they were wrong,' one boy told investigators."

Others are not so obvious.

"At Challenger, the practice test 'was clearly specifically formulated or intended to prepare his 169 pupils for the standards-based achievement tests,' district officials told the state."

Am I missing something? Aren't practice tests supposed to prepare your students for the exam?

"In Bakersfield, seventh-grade teachers at Actis Junior High "tweaked their planned lessons to include narrative writing" after the principal told them what would be on the 2005 writing test, said an incident report. One of the teachers abruptly stopped teaching poetry and had the class rewrite the classic verse "Casey at the Bat" as a fictional narrative."

That sounds like a pretty good lesson plan to me, since it teaches about not only narrative writing, but poetry as well, by showing students that it is not content along that gives poetry its meaning.

"In her investigation, Superintendent Michele Lawrence found that during the 2005 test, a third-grade teacher walked around the room and, 'through body language, nodding or pointing, told students to check a specific answer or "look at that again," ' according to Lawrence's report. One boy said the teacher helped him with problems he didn't understand, 'like 35 divided by 5. She would explain that you should put it in groups.' "

Okay, the first half of the last example seems obvious: telling or indicating to a student that they have a wrong answer is not appropriate, but the second half is different: "One boy said the teacher helped him with problems he didn't understand, 'like 35 divided by 5. She would explain that you should put it in groups.'" Please, let's not punish teachers for teaching their students. That teacher did not cheat in any way; she explained to her student what division was! As long as he actually did the "put[ting] it into groups" himself, I don't see anything wrong.

(Admittedly, that might not be the whole story. Maybe she pointed out the wrong answer before she gave her hint, but the article doesn't say so. Based on what is said, though, nothing inappropriate happened. If that was the best example the reporter could find, I'm not too worried.)

If that teacher's actions are truly against the rules, I think we have bigger problems. It is shocking to me that children are being given high stakes tests where they are not even allowed to ask for help. I can understand that I'm not allowed to ask the proctor for help on the SAT, ACT or GRE, but in no way do I believe those rules should apply to pre-teens.

"Teachers in San Francisco, Berkeley, Oakland, Alameda, Redwood City, San Jose and elsewhere simply helped students answer the questions."

If "helping students" is now considered cheating, then I certainly hope we have an educational workforce full of nothing but cheaters.

And let's not forget why the very small number of teachers who are breaking the rules do so: "Incentives to bend the rules are strong in the No Child Left Behind era, when persistently low scores can shut down a school, trigger a takeover or force teacher transfers, experts say." The "cheating" is just a symptom of a much bigger problem.

Walpurgis 2007

2007-05-13T22:46:00.000+02:00

Two weeks ago I took a trip to Sachsen-Anhalt and Thüringen. The main event was scaling the Brocken on April 30th, just in time for Walpurgisnacht.

This is me near the summit.

This, inauspicious as it looks, is the summit.

Goethe and Heine both climbed it, and it featured in some of their most famous literary works. One passage from Goethe's Faust reads,
The witches t'ward the Brocken strain
When the stubble yellow, green the grain.
The rabble rushes - as 'tis meet -
To Sir Urian's lordly seat.
O'er stick and stone we come, by jinks!
The witches fart, the he-goat stinks

Because it was Walpurgis, we met some witches on the way to the summit.

Apparently the Brocken experiences more than 300 days of bad weather per year. As you can see from the photos, we managed to be there during one of the few nice days. When Heine climbed it, the weather was terrible, and he wrote in a guest book at the summit, "Many stones, tired legs, no view, Heinrich Heine," which sounds much better in the original German, "Viele Steine, müde Beine, Aussicht keine, Heinrich Heine.“

There are both a "Heine path" and a "Goethe path," but since this is what the Goethe path looks like:

we opted for a trail less literary and less paved. The Brocken isn't much of a mountain, but I wanted to be able to say I "hiked" it without blushing. (Taking the Goethe path isn't hiking; it's walking.)

Much, but not all, of our trail looked like this:

It was a lovely hike; I don't think I realized how much I missed nature until I was actually there, enjoying the clear, pine-scented air.

The only thing of note that happened on the ascent was that we spotted this couple:

The man is Dominic Raacke, a German television star.

Another highlight of the weekend was a barbecue in Chuck and Kelly's Schrebergarten.

Yum.

Right now in Germany we're enjoying "Spargelzeit," the time when asparagus is ripe and sold at every grocery store, farmer's market and corner stand, so, of course, we had to have some:

Apparently white asparagus needs to be peeled before you cook it.

We also had dinner at this brewery, in the idyllic little town of Freyburg, a town that deserves a much better Wikipedia entry than it has.

(The German entry is slightly better, but most of you can't understand it.)

The rest of the trip involved hitting some of the highlights of German intellectual, literary and artistic history.

We saw, in no particular order, the St. Thomas church in Leipzig, where Bach served as cantor

and where he is buried,

the Nikolai church in Leipzig, site of the Monday demonstrations during the final months of the GDR,

with its surprising interior,

and the cathedral in Weimar where Herder preached.

We also visited the Völkerschlachtdenkmal in Leipzig, the largest monument in Europe and a relic of the rise of German nationalism in the early 20th century (it was built in 1913).

The monumental architecture makes it impressive from the outside, but the inside is another story:

The words "creepy" and "disturbing" come to mind. Take a closer look at those columns:

With the floral wreath, dim lighting and piped-in music, they were clearly trying to cultivate a somber, respectful, contemplative atmosphere. I found that most disturbing of all. Let's not forget what the nationalist sentiment that built this memorial led to, after all.

We also saw the house where Händel was born,

and the Weimar homes of Goethe

and Schiller.

It was a special treat to me to go visit the Fürstengruft where Goethe and Schiller were laid to rest.

Shockingly, my traveling companion was not willing to pay the €2 to go gawp at the caskets of two of Germany's greatest writers/thinkers.

The funny thing is (funny in an incredibly dark way), they're not even sure it's Schiller in that casket. He died in 1805 in a plague and was buried in a mass grave. Many felt this type of burial was unworthy for a great personage like Schiller, so some twenty years later they dug him up. But by then the cheap tin coffin had rotted away, so the mayor of Weimar sifted through 23 skulls until he found the one that he assumed was Schiller's. From there it made its way to Goethe's house, where it lived for at least half a year, until it, along with some random bones they assumed [or hoped!] were also Schiller's, was interred in the Fürstengruft. For a while there was a second set of presumed Schiller remains in the vault, but eventually some scientist ruled they were definitively not Schiller's, but to this day they still don't know if the first set of bones really belonged to Schiller.

What a way to treat the remains of one of your greatest national poets!

We also made a stop in Lutherstadt Wittenberg, to see the birthplace of the Reformation.

And that, my friends, is where it all began, the church where Luther preached.

Wow.

Not too far away is the unique palace church,

which boasts the door where Luther supposedly nailed up the 95 theses,

as well as Luther's tomb.

There are more photos on my flickr page.

Good things and bad

2007-05-11T23:26:00.000+02:00

First of all, I'm woefully behind in my blogging. I haven't talked about my trip to the Harz two weeks ago, let alone my visit to Kiel and Lübeck last weekend. Plus I have a few more posts cooking I want to get written down. Since the only two things on my agenda for the weekend are to plow through the huge pile in my mending basket and blog, by Monday I should be caught up.

Now, to business.

Germans are known for bureaucracy, rules and order, but, while every time I see one of these

I sincerely laugh and shake my head, thinking something along the lines of "Only in Germany would one have an Office of Order (Ordnungsamt)", my overall impression of the country has been how liberal, tolerant and permissive it is, much more so than the United States.

Most days I reflect on how laid back this culture is, usually prompted by an example of public nudity or public consumption of alcohol, neither of which is considered a big deal here.

Today was not one of those days. Today I ran smack into mindless, petty rules, regulations and order.

I had to mail a form to UMass, and since it was time-sensitive, I filled it out, grabbed the nearest envelope and headed out the door. I have both German and American envelopes, but the one I grabbed happened to be American. I've used these envelopes here to mail letters, and it's never been an issue before. Today, however, the woman at the post office informed me that mailing my American-sized letter would cost me at least €4, instead of the standard €1.70. (I know, I know, more than $2.25 to mail a standard letter is a lot by American standards; I'm pretty much used to it by now.)

"What's this?" she said, "An American envelope? It's much too large."

By a frickin' centimeter.

Only to the Deutsche Post would a centimeter be considered "much."

Luckily the woman was, in addition to being too damn obsessed with order, very nice and let me fold over the edge of the envelope and tape it so that I could mail it for standard rates. But I shudder to think what the graduate school will think when they have to rip off the tape and unfold the edge of the envelope before they can open the letter. It's a good thing they've already accepted me

That wasn't a particularly pleasant experience, and there was more bad as the day went on.
I went to the Jewish Museum this afternoon and left several hours later feeling a bit sheepish. I had raved about this museum to others, based on my visit five years ago, and I was shocked to go back and discover that it's really not that great. At all. I'm not going to get into it now; it should have its own post.

With that disappointment under my belt I came home and made dinner and listened to Emma. For a long time Emma was my favorite Jane Austen, and even though that's not true anymore, I still enjoy the book. I've had enough on my plate to read lately, so I decided to sate my Emma craving by listening to it. I'm a huge dork and love audio books and will listen to them doing housework, getting ready for school, knitting, in the bathtub, and basically in every situation where a normal person would turn on the TV or radio. I got spoiled by listening to A Tale of Two Cities. Holy cow, that's an amazing recording; many of the readers are clearly professional actors or radio personalities. It's just superb.

The recording of Emma, on the other hand, sucks. Totally sucks.

There's no soul in the reading. It's slow, methodical and doesn't flow. The reader noticeably stumbles over words three syllables or more and, quite frankly, doesn't seem that smart. Since I'm not British, I can't say for sure that Yerkshire is an incorrect pronunciation of Yorkshire, but I can say with certainty that it's thither and not tither, the final syllable of sanguine does not rhyme with "lean," and cordial does not have three syllables. Also, "read" and "read" are not the same word, and the poor, dumb reader can rarely distinguish between the two. And those are just the mistakes I can remember off the top of my head because they occur multiple times. There's at least one howler in every chapter, some error egregious enough that I can't help yelling "It's [insert correct pronunciation], you idiot" at my computer. She can't hear me, but it makes me feel better.

Now for the good: on a whim on the way home from the museum I stopped by an H&M and the cropped jacket I'd been coveting was 50% off. It's frivolous and shallow, but it made the whole day seem better.

makeover

2007-05-09T23:24:00.000+02:00

Every six months, like clockwork, I get bored with my surroundings and start itching for a change, but since moving to a new apartment twice a year is really not practical, I compensate by rearranging all the furniture.

Before:

After:

Honestly, I think it was better before. I'll have to move things around to add some more privacy if I have any overnight guests, but I really needed some variety and I do like it.

In the process of moving and spring cleaning, I swept under the bed for, oh, the first time since I moved in. I didn't just find a few dust bunnies.

I found a whole damn warren:

Alternative uses for knitting needles

2007-05-08T21:55:00.000+02:00

What do you do when you need to perform a "toothpick test" on baked goods but find you lack toothpicks?

Why, you perform a "knitting needle test" instead. It works just as well.

Knitting needles also make fine bookmarks.

Some sweet FOs

2007-05-07T21:52:00.000+02:00

Cupcakes in progress.

Cupcake in progress.

Finished cupcakes.

amuse yourself with photos until I get back

2007-05-05T00:17:00.000+02:00

Very late. Must go to sleep.

Posted new photos to flickr.

Walpurgis 2007

Will write more about last trip when I return from next trip.

Going to Kiel and Lübeck. Will return on Sunday.

Too tired for pronouns.

Photos from the hiatus

2007-05-04T21:07:00.000+02:00

Before I report on my fabulous weekend trip to Sachsen-Anhalt and the Harz, I wanted to share some photos I took during my blogging hiatus.

A German shepherd keeps watch in front of the laundromat.

What, you may ask, is so remarkable about a patch of sunlight on my wall? Well, it's remarkable in that it's the first direct sunlight I've seen in my apartment since I moved in... in August. Actually, I'm not sure you can even technically call it direct sunlight, since it was first reflected off of my neighbor's window, but I'll take what I can get.

A big pile of English lit., with my knitting; blogging breaks are rather nice.

I consider myself a fairly liberal, progressive, tolerant person. It takes a lot to shock me, but can't you find a better place to make out than in the cemetery?

Reading on the banks of the Spree on a warm April afternoon.

Soaking up the sun at the beach. Man, I love this city.

Fishing in the Spree.

I call this picture "Berlin landscape," since to me it typifies this city: big, anonymous, highrise apartment building surrounded by idyllic private garden plots.

Spider webs

I found a little piece of America right here in Germany. This park (Los Angeles Platz) forbids you to play on the playground equipment (unless you're actually a child), set foot on the grass, bring your dog, ride your bike, feed the birds or drink alcohol.

Another typical Berlin scene: power plant and S-Bahn platform, with a Schrebergarten stuck in between.

So what did you do this weekend?

2007-05-02T19:50:00.000+02:00

I climbed a mountain.

And she's back

2007-04-25T20:17:00.000+02:00

Finally, after almost two weeks, my computer came home!

As written, I used my computer-less time to catch up on reading. So far I've totalled more than 2500 pages:

The Town and the City by Jack Kerouac

Shirley by Charlotte Brontë

Silas Marner by George Eliot

The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time by Mark Haddon

Tent by Margaret Atwood

Hudson River Bracketed by Edith Wharton

The Gods Arrive ditto

Plus more than half of A Journal of the Plague Year (Defoe).

It was lovely to take time off and just read.

For the most part the books I read were very good. The Mark Haddon had a unique narrative voice and was a fun read, but I don't quite understand why reviewers swoon over it. It's not that good; it certainly can't hold a candle to the rest of that list.

But, man, Defoe is dull! He's describing death on a large scale, mass graves, and ox carts rolling through the streets of London, full of corpses ("Bring out your dead! Bring out your dead!), and yet it's still an insufferable, dull, rambling, moralizing mess... And it made me praise God for standardized spelling, which is odd, given that I don't believe in God.

But the god who gave us standardized spelling is a merciful god indeed.

I'm hoping to maintain the reading streak for a little while longer; I still have a pile of books from the library, waiting to be read. I might skip the Moll Flanders, because I will claw out my eyeballs if it's as dull as the other Defoe. At the very least I will seek out an edition with updated spelling and capitalization. I just don't see the pointe of suffering thru uneven Speling and capitalized Nouns any longer.

I'll be posting a bit more about what I've been up to lately when I can. I'm going out of town for the weekend, though, so you'll probably have to count on another hiatus. Sorry.

No blogging for me

2007-04-12T14:47:00.000+02:00

My computer is broken! It's been in the shop for less than twenty-four hours and I'm already going crazy. No email! No wikipedia! No google! No way to charge my iPod! No blogs! No Flickr!

On the plus side, I actually managed to write in my journal and read a book yesterday.

So... I'll be taking a few days off from blogging until I have my laptop back.

Go read a book until I come back.

Run Away!

2007-04-09T22:11:00.000+02:00

Here's my completed Easter knitting project.

While it may look like an innocent bunny mitten, it is, in actuality, a vicious Killer Rabbit!

Run Away!!!

Easter

2007-04-08T18:54:00.000+02:00

Here's to celebrating the resurrection of our Lord Jesus Christ by consuming as many chocolate-covered pagan fertility symbols as you can!

And here's a sneak preview of an Easter-related knitting project:

I'll post more when it's finished.

Frohe Ostern!

Ausländer and ornithology

2007-04-05T20:25:00.000+02:00

Most of the time I'm here, my life goes on in a completely normal fashion. I take classes, study, spend time in the library, write, blog, take photos, knit, procrastinate, but sometimes I have moments when it really hits me that I'm in a foreign country.

I'm becoming inured to the drinking in public and when warm weather rolls around I'm sure I will become accustomed to the public nudity. But some things still strike me:

There's seeing public art that just would not be tolerated in the United States,

having your time wasted by people who mindlessly following rules and protocol, including making out a receipt

for €1.50,

and having a landlord who doesn't hesitate to corner you on your way up to your apartment and ask invasive questions:

"I can't help but notice you've lost a lot of weight. My wife, you see, she's a bit fat and has tried everything. What's your secret?"

"Well," stammering in an embarrassed manner. "I just walk a lot."

"That can't be all."

"No, I mean, a lot a lot."

On a completely unrelated note, any idea what kind of a duck this is?

Spot the error

2007-04-04T18:52:00.000+02:00

Here, I'll give you a hint.

Sigh.

life of an academic

2007-04-03T16:32:00.000+02:00

If I'm serious about pursuing this whole academic schtick, you all might want to consider investing in 3M.

This is for one article. Imagine how many I'll go through writing the dissertation.

To diversify your portfolio, you should also consider investing in whoever produces binder clips.

With the deadline looming I finally managed to finish this project. It's a huge relief, and I'd hoped to be able to spend the next few days catching up on everything I've been neglecting--blogging, knitting, letter- and email-writing, laundry, shopping--but instead I've come down with a nasty cold. Figures.

I finally realize how wrong I've been all these years...

2007-03-27T22:26:00.001+02:00

...and all thanks to this video, called "The atheist's nightmare: the banana."

Yes, you read that correctly.

How silly I've been to doubt the existence of God when I consume proof positive every morning for breakfast! And, after seeing this video I realized how foolish I was to believe in evolution. After all, peanut butter is proof to the contrary.

I'd almost be willing to cite Poe's law on this, if the entire series weren't sad proof that this is true and not satire.

Via Shakespeare's Sister and Richard Dawkins

The unbearable cuteness of Knut

2007-03-21T22:43:00.000+01:00

I really think that was enough foot-related blog content for the time being. Onwards and upwards.

Let's talk about current events, namely this adorable little current event:

Let's check in with Stephen Colbert to get some much-needed perspective on the issue.

I, like all of you, have been hearing all about that ~~cuddly little bear cub~~ vicious killer lately.

I'm sure you've all been following the story, but I'll summarize it anyway: Knut was born in December, rejected by his mother and subsequently raised by hand and bottle-fed by zookeepers. He's been a star in the German media since his birth, but only made international headlines last week when some animal rights activists called for him to be put down.

What bothers me about the argument used by the activists is the idea that Knut should be ~~euthanized~~ ~~murdered~~ ~~executed~~ killed because it is "natural."

Their whole argument utterly disregards this simple fact:

Zoos aren't natural.

Zoos simply do not exist to replicate natural conditions, and it's a mistake to expect them to operate according to what would happen to their animals in nature. After all, if things happened naturally, those animals wouldn't be in zoos.

Whatever you hold to be the true purpose of zoos, killing Knut doesn't make any sense. Let me demonstrate:

The cynic's view holds that zoos are (a) colonialist endeavors, attempts to fetishize and control the "exotic" world, package it and sell it, that (b) still exist in the post-colonial period because they make money. The idealist's view holds that zoos exist to perform valuable educational and conservational services.

If the zoo's purpose is the former, keeping Knut alive makes sense because he is exotic, can be marketed, and can make lots of money for the zoo (indeed has made lots of money for the zoo). If it is the latter, killing him would only impede education and conservation; it is very difficult to educate someone about the polar bear you just murdered. Plus, with the potentially devastating impact of global warming on the polar bear, the existence of the species might depend on breeding of captive animals like Knut.

But wouldn't "Killing Knut" be a good name for a band?

More about socks

2007-03-21T22:42:00.000+01:00

There's enough of a story behind that second pair of socks from Monday's entry to warrant another post.

I called them "Hundertwasser" socks:

I called them that because the yarn takes its colors from the works of Friedensreich Hundertwasser. He was a truly one-of-a-kind artist and architect who made innovative use of form and color in his works. He started as a painter, but is probably better known as an architect. He once remarked, "A person in a rented apartment must be able to lean out of his window and scrape off the masonry within arm's reach. And he must be allowed to take a long brush and paint everything outside within arm's reach. So that it will be visible from afar to everyone in the street that someone lives there who is different from the imprisoned, enslaved, standardised man who lives next door." Hundertwasser explored biomorphic forms in his work and eschewed straight lines. He wondered why walls and floors had to be flat.

Why, indeed?

Well, when I saw the Hundertwasser sock yarn collection I fell in love with it. My only problem was deciding which colorway to buy; when I couldn't make up my mind I just got on eBay and bought them all:

This is the sock

This is the original painting (it's a pretty poor quality image; sorry):

Here's a detail:

I used Wendy's generic toe-up sock pattern, but for some reason I wasn't getting the heel to turn enough. Also, I didn't particularly like how they fit; there was bunching under my arch. For the second sock I added some shaping to the foot. It's extra work, but I figure if you're going to go to the trouble of knitting yourself a pair of socks by hand, they ought to fight perfectly.

I was so happy with the outcome I cast on almost immediately for another pair:

This pair will always remind me of the Fulbright Berlin Conference. At the reception the first evening I went to chat with a very nice couple I'd met at the orientation, seen once subsequently but never again. At some point they mentioned their newfound interest in who else but Friedensreich Hundertwasser. While they're here they want to visit as many of his buildings as they can; they even took a detour to see one on the way to Berlin. I could hardly believe my ears, and my first reaction, of course, was to pull out my sock-in-progress. At first they gave me some funny looks that said "Why, exactly, did you just pull a sock out of your purse?" but when I explained what it was they were suitably impressed.

On the second day of the conference I cast on for the second sock, and over the course of three panel sessions, two receptions and a musical gala I managed to finish it. It's called "Straße zum Sozialismus" (Street to socialism), and it's so awesome I can hardly stand it:

What I've really been up to lately...

2007-03-19T22:31:00.000+01:00

I may have been a lazy blogger of late, but I compensated by being one helluva prolific knitter. (I have a huge project due in a couple weeks. I had to find some way to procrastinate.)

Just check out this January 30 photo. How many recently completed, in progress or planned knitting projects can you spot?

I count five.

Most of them are done by now.

To sum up, in the past six weeks I've made:

a hat that you've already seen,

this nifty little sock-like creation to keep my computer's AC adapter from getting scratched,

socks (Magic Stripes),

socks (Hundertwasser),

and more socks (Yarn Bee Cameo)

That colorway is called cereulean agate. Pretty, isn't it?

I also finally finished the clapotis I started back in June. I'm not overly happy with how it turned out; I mostly finished it just to have it stop weighing on my mind.

Bad Blogger

2007-03-16T22:04:00.000+01:00

Sorry I've been such a miserable, lazy blogger lately. In addition to my work on a big project due at the end of the month I had a houseguest and went to the German-American Fulbright Commission's Berlin Meeting. It was a really great conference, but, quite frankly, I can't think of anything better than conferences like this, uniting free food, drink and activities, intelligent conversation with Fulbright scholars and interesting panels. I went to panels on higher education reform, demographics and immigration, and integration of immigrants and minorities in schools.

The conference also taught me a lot about the nature of the problems Germany is having on these fronts. In each of these panels there was at least one example of Germans creating complex institutions and structures and being left utterly unable to change them when they fail. For example:

In the panel on higher education reform, one woman came across as being mostly against the attempts to reform higher education in the EU. At one point, she complained that her department's new Master's degree program has not been able to admit the best candidates. Apparently, their admissions criteria is heavily based on grades and countries like Romania have inflated grades.

Take a moment to let the absurdity of that sink in.

She was upset about the Bologna process because her department's [arbitrary] admission guidelines weren't set up to deal with the differences between the grading systems of EU universities. Apparently it never occurred to her that they should just CHANGE THE DAMN ADMISSIONS GUIDELINES.

Sadly, this was not the only such example, and listening to so many Germans demonstrate this same unwillingness to change their own systems when they don't work was enough to make me want to bang my head against a wall over and over and lament, "When will they ever learn?"

The only factor that prevented my coming home with a concussion was that Fulbright was pretty generous with the booze the whole time. After the second glass of wine it all begins to seem less depressing and more funny.

Speaking of alcohol, you might find it hard to believe, but I drank beer for what I believe is the first time since I came to Germany. Shocking, I know, but I never particularly liked beer and therefore always order wine or cocktails. But, for some reason, not once but twice during the conference I wound up with friends at a brewery. And you can't go to a brewery and not order beer. So in addition to learning lots about prejudice, racism, education and integration, and the German university system, I also learned something about beer at this conference: namely, that it's not as bad as I remembered it, and that actually some kinds are quite good. But, since I don't drink enough to employ the "trial and error" method, I don't know how to find the good beers. Any suggestions?

Finally, the long-promised post about embassies.

2007-03-07T00:34:00.000+01:00

For quite a while I’ve been suffering under the misconception that embassies exist largely to serve that particular foreign population who live in the country (and to do various diplomatic things, I suppose).

This is clearly not the case, since most embassies are surrounded by a ten-foot metal fence, complete with barbed wire and guardhouse. While their architecture tends to be pretty good (with the notable exception of the Swiss Embassy), the security is off-putting. However, in an emergency, you deal with it. When my passport was stolen I went to the U.S. Consulate in Barcelona and was granted entrance to the secure compound merely by showing a copy of the stolen passport. It was amazingly simple.

Somehow, I don’t think that would be the case here. See, this is the American Embassy in Berlin:

No way you’re gaining entrance to that place. Note the permanent barricades. A German wanting to get a student visa to the U.S. or an American looking to replace a stolen passport would, in fact, travel to a completely different part of town to the “Consular Section.”

The British Embassy also has heavy security:

At least their barricades are pretty (and removable; the middle two sink into the ground), and there is still pedestrian access, as far as I can tell.

Well by now you might be wondering what the point of this post is. Don’t worry, I’m coming to it.

You see, with embassies that old real estate slogan is eminently applicable, for all anyone seems to worry about is location, location, location. Most are located just south of the Tiergarten, near the Kulturforum. The Swiss probably have the best location, across the street from the Reichstag, and near the new Hauptbahnhof, but, as I’ve said, their embassy is painfully ugly, so it doesn’t really count. Plus, they’re Swiss. Boring.

See? Ugly.

The British embassy is located just a block away from the Brandenburger Tor, on a side street, and the U.S. embassy is about a block further away, also on a side street. But here comes the sticking point: the Russian embassy is located on Unter den Linden, less than a block from Pariser Platz and said Brandenburger Tor. And, well, we Americans can’t allow the Russians to have a better location, can we?

So, the Americans are building a new embassy, and, this you’ll have to file under “What the hell were the Americans thinking?”, it’s located on Pariser Platz, next door to the Brandenburg Gate:

See the cranes? That’s where they’re building the new embassy. The current embassy, with its full-time police protection and permanent cement barricades located in a good but discrete and out-of-the-way location, simply won’t cut it. Apparently, we feel the need to build a brand new embassy on what must be the single most expensive and sought-after piece of real estate in all of Germany…next to the biggest tourist attraction in the city.

You can’t get within 5 meters of the current embassy! How the hell are they going to handle the millions of tourists standing around outside the new embassy’s front door?

Fulbright teaming up with... MTV?

2007-02-27T21:27:00.000+01:00

At first I thought my sister directed me to The 9 (for February 27) to look at the random cat generator, but then I spotted number six.

You can officially register me as a skeptic.

First of all, this seems like a shameless publicity stunt. Fulbright is a legitimate organization with an international reputation, and they're going to let Fiona Apple and that guy from the Shins help pick the winners? The only word I can think to describe it is "pathetic."

Secondly, if I understood this correctly, the application deadline is March 23 for a fellowship in the 2007-2008 academic year, and I'd like to know why they're fucking around with the normal deadlines for the Fulbright. I started my proposal in January of 2005, turned it in to my campus committee in September of that year, sent the final version off in October, learned at the end of January 2006 that my application had advanced into the second round of competition, and by March 23 had received my final acceptance. Why is this fellowship different, and, more importantly, why the hell don't they have any real information on their website? At this point they can only hope to receive applications thrown together at the last minute. Is this supposed to be a real competition for a prestigious fellowship, or is it merely Fulbright's poor cousin?

I also have a serious problem with how they're soliciting projects: They want students to "propos[e] unique projects on 'the power of music' as a global force for mutual understanding." No, I didn't put the irony quotes around "the power of music;" they were already there. I do, however, fully concur that such a lame, hackneyed sentiment should be taken with a grain of salt. My real problem is that in describing the desired projects in this way, they've made it clear this is a closed competition where only projects that toe the party line are acceptable. Granted, some countries are only open to Fulbrights in specific fields, like business, law, or ecology, but most are wide open. More importantly, it is up to you, the scholar, to define your proposal and what you hope to accomplish. It is not determined in advance.

Lastly, why MTV? That seems to indicate a focus on popular music, and isn't that troubling? I thought the kind of vapid, narcissistic, contrived pop music that America exports to the rest of the world was one reason other countries don't like us. Perhaps that piece of conventional wisdom isn't really accurate, but nonetheless, I find most of MTV awful. Remember when they used to have intelligent, thoughtful programming? Gone are the days when "Daria" was on and the "Real World" wasn't only about sex and partying. Quite frankly, I don't think MTV has any redeeming value. It's shallow, materialistic, and reactionary.

A perfect example is Jay-Z's "99 Problems." First, in the wake of the botched Superbowl halftime show, MTV bowdlerizes the, admittedly nasty and violent, video, but then gives it no less than four awards at the VMAs. In case you're not familiar with the song, this tells you all you need to know:

"if you're having girl problems, i feel bad for you, son / i've got 99 problems, but a bitch ain't one."

Fulbright just teemed up with the people who endorse that lovely, misogynistic sentiment in order to foster international cultural understanding.

Hmm, but I suppose both Islamic fundamentalism and most rap music do objectify women. Perhaps we could channel that force to bring about mutual understanding, but somehow, I don't think that's the kind of mutual understanding Fulbright had in mind.

Take a moment to appreciate the crazy.

2007-02-23T12:35:00.000+01:00

This is Willy Michl.

He's a blues musician and a self-proclaimed "Isar" Indian. (The Isar is a river in Bavaria and the Tirol.)

Now, he would be an interesting an innocuous figure, of the rather crunchy, "Umweltfreundlich" variety; he's famous for the sentence: "One must be able to drink the water of our rivers at any and every point." He might be a bit eccentric, but I could excuse his eccentricity because I think pro-environmental beliefs are good and should be encouraged.

As I said, he would be an interesting but harmless figure, if he weren't completely bonkers. You see, he thinks he's an Indian.

He walks around Bavaria, dressed in skins and wearing moccasins, with three eagle feathers stuck in his hair, carrying a medicine bag and a knife for scalping.

From his website:
"As an adult Willy Michl finally realized his childhood yearning to help the Indians and be interested in their customs. In this way he became more and more of an Indian on the long search for the truth. For him the translation of the word "Indian" means first and foremost "original inhabitant," and the Indian life, which he cultivates in his private life, serves as a symbol for the fight against racism and oppression."

In his own words:
"With my appearance and behavior I show my solidarity with the original inhabitants of the western hemisphere and all hemispheres and show people, that I want to be equated with them... As an Indian I explain anew, there is nothing in my life that I regret and that I am an equally grateful for my 'victories and defeats.' I am not a self-declared Indian, as is often reported or parrotted, but rather the 'Rainbow Rider' captured me in my childhood, already at my birth, and strengthened me, so that I can do what I was born to do: deliver my blues songs!"

Completely and utterly mad.

Whether you call them Indians, Native Americans, American Indians, or just plain Natives, Willy Michl is not one of them.

I knew about the fascination many Germans have for American Indians, but things like this still surprise me. Surprise and disgust me. It's amazing to me that someone who wants to fight against racism can't see how absolutely racist his own actions are. Willy Michl makes a living by stereotyping and glossing over cultural differences, history and tradition to lump all Native Americans under one umbrella. He appropriates symbols from cultures which are not his own, strips them of their context and puts them to use for his own purpose, namely, selling CDs.

You don't get much more imperialist than that.

More about sex workers

2007-02-12T21:51:00.000+01:00

Like any good tourist when in Hamburg I went to the Reeperbahn, but it was a bit underwhelming. It's supposedly known as Germany's "Sin Mile" but it contained nothing you can't see right outside of Bahnhof Zoo in Berlin (Beate Uhse). Actually, since this is one of the few places in Germany were prostitution is strictly regulated, it's much more tame than the Oranienburger Straße after 4:00 p.m.

This is it:

Nothing to write home about. Here's the street with the largest concentration of gay cinemas in the world:

Once again, it's rather tame. I found the place to be more funny than scandalous:

Only on one street (the Herbertstraße) can you find Amsterdam-style women in windows:

It's kept blocked off and is only open to men over the age of 18.

The tour guide on the bus seemed proud of how well prostitution is managed by the authorities. Apparently the women are organized, so they work for themselves and not a john. But I still think it's demeaning and wrong. This is especially evident on Herbertstraße, where the signs make it very clear: women have no business on the street unless they are there to sexually serve a man. This website explains that "no entry for women" is not a law but an official police recommendation. "If a woman braves entry to Herbertstraße in spite of this, she must count on being bombarded with rotten eggs, cold water, or at least the curses of the whores." I think that about sums up what's wrong with this place. The whole area is served by a massive contingent of police officers, but apparently they are only there for the protection of prostitutes and their male customers.

When a country has legal prostitution I think it needs to signal a philosophical shift, which involves acknowledging that prostitution is a valid job, that prostitutes (or "sex workers") deserve rights and respect, and that sexuality is something natural and good. That's not the case here. Herbertstraße is not a place for people to explore their sexuality; it is not a place for lesbians, bisexual women or heterosexual partners. It is mired strictly in the old paradigm, which generally involves men taking advantage of vulnerable women and society's tacit approval.

Personally, I think Sweden has the right idea.

Hamburg

2007-02-12T20:07:00.000+01:00

Did I tell you I went to Hamburg?

I guess I got busy with school and approaching deadlines (ack!) and neglected to blog about it. Well, I braved the really crappy weather (post-hurricane) to spend two cold, windy and wet days in Germany's beautiful Hanseatic city-by-the-bay. (Photos here.)

Because of the inclement weather, I saw most of the city through the windows of one of those hop-on, hop-off tour buses: the diplomatic quarter (only New York has more consulates than Hamburg), the fish market, and the mind-boggling HafenCity.

I also went to a service at the St. Michaelis church

Yes, you read that correctly. I wanted to see its beautiful interiors

and since I arrived right before the start of the noon service, I decided to stay. It actually wasn't much so much a religious observation as a chance to show off the church's three organs. The service's format: greeting, song from organ #1, scripture reading, song from organ #2, prayer, song from organ #3; it only lasted fifteen minutes. Still, it's the first time I've been to a church service in almost five years.

Some pictures from my trip:

The Rathaus

Speicherstadt warehouses

The harbor (The sun shone for the first and only time as I was on my way to the train station to head home; go figure.)

St. Petri

Germany's oldest stock exchange

The Elbe Tunnel

Old Jewish Cemetery

Safari outfitters

Umbrella detritus

I took advantage of a break in the weather to visit the Nikolai Kirche.

You should take with a grain of salt your guide book's claim that this church was destroyed by the allies. Yes, it was damaged during the massive civilian bombings carried out by British and American forces during WWII, but it was not destroyed. It could have been restored after the war, but instead the nave was demolished and the spire left standing as a war memorial. Now, it's an observation deck. It offers beautiful views of the city from 75 meters up:

As wonderful as the view is, getting there is really frickin' scary. You travel the 75 meters in a glass elevator that goes really fast, but that's not the scariest part. What's really frightening is that you travel through nothing to get there: the church is gone and the spire is a ruin, so there aren't any real walls, ceilings or floors in sight. It also boasted what must be the world's scariest emergency exit:

I'm not sure if the photo does it justice (the wind was blowing so hard I couldn't hold the camera steady; seriously), but it's terrifying: a rickety staircase that just plunges straight down into the abyss.

But I didn't go to Hamburg to ride around in a bus, look at buildings, and scare my mother by climbing unsafe structures.

This was the main event, and it was amazing. I won't even try to describe it, I'll let the images speak for themselves:

I couldn't resist bringing the paintings home with me, in the form of a bag,

a photo line (called, of all things the Steely Dan),

and some postcards.

Now, if you'll excuse me, I'm going to go stare longingly into the distance for a while.

coolest store ever

2007-02-11T17:04:00.000+01:00

Do you need to know where you can find a ship’s wheel, a coffin or a taxidermied ferret in Berlin?

Why, Fundusverkauf, of course. Located just across the street from the Komische Oper (comic opera), it sells their old set pieces and costumes.

It is unfortunately way out of my price range, but I stop by every so often just to gawk.

Anybody need a longboat?

Ravensbrück

2007-02-03T23:01:00.000+01:00

It was a beautiful day on Saturday: the fields were green, the sun was shining, and it felt almost like spring. It was the perfect day to hop a train and head for the countryside, and I did. However, since this was my final destination, it wasn't exactly fun. Spending a day touring the grounds of a concentration camp, including the crematorium, and having the gruesome acts of concentration camp guards described to you doesn't exactly make for a rollicking good time, but Ravensbrück was very interesting and I am glad I went.

Ravensbrück was a female prison located a few hours from Berlin; it was a bit of a catch-all, housing Sinti and Roma, Jewish, and so-called anti-social women (asozial), as well as political prisoners and foreigners (wives of Polish intelligentsia, members of the French and Austrian resistance movements). All told, about 130,000 women from more than forty countries passed through Ravensbrück. It is unknown how many perished there, but estimates range from 40,000 to 90,000.

Lots of the camp has survived, since it was used by the Soviets until the 1990s. Still standing are the main building (Kommandantur), part of the original wall, clothing factory, utilities building, the warder's houses, the private houses for the SS personnel (the commandant, the doctors, etc.) and their families, the jail, and the crematorium. It was the first time I'd seen one intact: the ovens from Sachsenhausen are ruins and even though one of the crematoriums (crematoria?) at Dachau is still standing, I don't think it's open to the public (either that or I don't remember seeing it, which seems unlikely). It was chilling to stand in that building and look at the ovens and know that thousands of bodies were burned there, with their ashes then dumped in the lake.

One of the most striking features of Ravensbrück is in fact the lake. It seems like some kind of twisted joke that the location of a concentration camp could be so beautiful. Located just outside of the town of Fürstenberg (Havel), Ravensbrück is surrounded by lush green woods and located right on a lake; it's downright picturesque, in fact. Standing at the camp's south edge you can see across the lake into the pretty little town, complete with cute cottages and brick church steeple. Our guide pointed out that Ravensbrück was located so close to the town its residents had to have smelled the crematorium, which brought home another fact about the Holocaust that is often forgotten: camps weren't all secreted away in remote locations in the east. Some, like Sachsenhausen and Ravensbrück, were located not too far to big cities and within sight of small towns. Many residents (and the reverend) could see Ravensbrück from their windows, and there must have been constant activity flowing from the camp to the town and back. Prisoners were marched through town on their way to work at various factories (like Siemens), and local merchants delivered food and supplies to the camp. Even if residents believed, as most claimed, that only true Volksfeinde (enemies of the people) were imprisoned there, don't you wonder if they ever had doubts? If it ever crossed their minds that something wasn't right? Like when they saw columns of women pass by with shaved heads and gaunt faces? Or when they smelled the burning bodies?

*****

There was a pretty good exhibit about the camp wardens (who were all women), with lots of biographical information. It was striking how alike they were: young women (who started working there at the age of 18 or 19, meaning they were children or teenagers when the Nazis came to power), with no education or training. Some were drafted into service, but most signed up voluntarily. They probably considered it a good job. It paid well, was in a beautiful location and nice, lakefront housing was provided. The exhibit managed to avoid the clichés that usually fill exhibits about the perpetrators of the Holocaust, instead giving lots of information about the guards, their training, behavior in the camp, everyday lives and, in some cases, post-war trials and sentences. There were drawings of the camp by former prisoners and also lots of media (videos, news reports, interviews), so you could listen to the children of Ravensbrück guards voice their almost desperate need to believe their mothers didn't commit terrible crimes, or how the warders themselves rationalized their work at the camp, claiming they were drafted and had no choice, or presenting themselves as victims. (One woman described how the inmates would often leave food for her, because they knew how hungry she always was).

It was not without its flaws, though: almost every video screen was right across from a window, causing glare, and there were these strange stone walls running throughout the exhibit that were placed at funny angles. (Seriously, was just hanging the exhibition pieces on the original, structural walls too blasé?) I was also annoyed that the exhibit translated the German word "Aufseherin" as matron. I realize that technically matron can refer to a woman who works in a prison, but I prefer the words supervisor, overseer, and warden to matron. They seem much more descriptive. "Matron" can refer to a dainty little widow who sips tea in pearls and gloves, and it seems inappropriate when applied to the vicious, uniformed young women leading attack dogs on leashes. Oh, and the exhibit stank; it literally smelled, apparently due to the glue they used in putting it together.

The state of Brandenburg apparently deserves a prize for the sheer number of completely inappropriate things they've done with Ravensbrück. Most of the houses where the warders lived have been turned into, get this, a youth hostel. (In fairness, its website implies it is used for school trips for groups studying the Holocaust.) It just seems morbid that on your bike tour of northern Germany you can spend the night sleeping in the same room as someone who spent their days terrorizing inmates--sicking dogs on them, beating them, starving them.

But just in case you have such a wonderful time staying at the concentration camp-cum-hostel that you can't imagine every leaving, you might be able to actually buy one of the houses used by the upper-level SS personnel at the camp. According to our guide the state of Brandenburg is looking to be rid of the half a dozen or so little villas that remain. So... if you're looking for lovely lakefront property in Brandenburg with a great view not only of forest and lake but also concentration camp, this is the place for you.

Not that the German government really does a much better job of dealing with history than the individual states. After all, it wasn't until the year 2000 that the former prisoners from the youth camp down the road were even recognized as victims. Everyone at that camp had been designated as anti-social and the designation followed them after the war. Nevermind that the Nazis designated people as asozial for transgressions like having too many boyfriends or listening to the wrong music (swing). They, like the women forced to work at camp brothels I blogged about yesterday, were considered at fault for their own incarceration and denied recognition for far too long.

Clearly, Germany is still struggling with the past, but as I walked the grounds of Ravensbrück I realized that I was, too. It seems wrong to sell off part of the camp, be it to a Buddhist organization or a private family, and I balked at the idea of filling up the warder's residences with backpackers. Yet at the same time, when our guide described how shocked she was at first to see students sit down and eat their lunches right after she told them about the crematorium, my first thought was, "But kids have to eat, and their enjoying their Pausebrot in view of the camp doesn't undo its history or the magnitude of what happened here." And her stated refusal to swim or boat in the neighboring lake because it was where prisoners' ashes were disposed struck me as simply too much.

How long before life can return to normal? The concentration camp at Ravensbrück has been preserved; it is filled with historical documents, artifacts and exhibits. Is it really so bad if an empty building is sold to someone who will use it? Or if five unused residences are opened up to schoolgroups and students? History isn't being ignored or forgotten, and I wonder if it's really more respectful to let them sit empty, fill up with rats and bats and slowly rot away.

As I stood in that idyllic location, staring at the pretty little town and watching the sun glint off the lake, I realized that there are no right answers; there is no perfect way to deal with a place like Ravensbrück. As I turned my back to the lake to look at the crematorium, I also realized how incomprehensible it all is. How could it happen? No matter how many camps you visit, how many films you see, books you read or testimony you hear, it is still impossible to grasp.

I guess all that remains is for you to do the best you can, to continue to watch and listen and read, to not forget, to go and bear witness.

Speaking of sex workers...

2007-02-03T22:19:00.000+01:00

I visited the women's concentration camp at Ravensbrück today. I consider myself fairly knowledgeable about the Holocaust and the Second World War. I've read a lot--scholarly sources, survivor testimonies, literature--been to concentration camps, studied the period, but this place just blew me away.

Did you know the Nazis set up a huge network of brothels throughout Germany and its occupied territories that was "staffed" with female prisoners?

I didn't think so.

(Read about here.)

There were brothels for SS men, for Wehrmacht-soldiers, and for concentration camp inmates (as part of a reward system for the more privileged inmates). It hasn't been talked about in Germany and for years was not recognized as a war crime, since women's "work" in the brothels was somehow seen as voluntary. Only recently has it come to light and become the object of scholarly inquiry.

The exhibit at Ravensbrück outlines the history of the "Special Barracks," as the brothels were called, assembling a large amount of documents and a massive collection of scholarship, as well as some firsthand accounts of the brothels by Holocaust survivors. What is missing from the exhibit are pictures. There are some photos of the outsides of these "special barracks" and a handful of interior shots, but that's all. I assumed this was because there weren't many extant photos, but I guess I was wrong. According to Der Spiegel, "Photos are on the whole not included in the exhibition 'to avoid possible voyeuristic expectations.'" Personally, I don't think that's a good enough reason. "Out of respect for the victims" would be a good reason; fear of what visitors will think is not. But the Germans' need to protect people from information and control their thoughts is a topic for another day.

Apparently there was some debate about the terminology to use in the exhibit. Ultimately they decided on calling the women who worked at the bordellos Sex-Zwangsarbeiter ("forced sex workers," alternatively "forced sex labourers"). On one hand this isn't an unreasonable term. Zwangsarbeiter is a term you hear a lot in connection with WWII Germany: most concentration camp prisoners were forced laborers, and many more forced laborers were imported from occupied territories to work in industry and free up men for the front lines. But I still don't like it, largely because the term Sex-Zwangsarbeiter was chosen out of a desire to be "PC."

You know what? There's nothing politically correct about forcing or coercing a brutalized, starved woman to have sex with other concentration camp inmates, and we shouldn't try to act like there is. I think Der Spiegel chose a more appropriate term: sex slaves. What happened to these women was brutal and ugly, and we shouldn't try to sanitize it.

Unspeak, auf Deutsch

2007-01-30T20:56:00.000+01:00

Germany is particularly prone to the unspeak phenomena, with two shining examples being "freiwillige Auswanderung" (voluntary emigration) and "Unterschicht" (underclass). Freiwillige Auswanderung actually refers to asylum seekers who have exhausted all of their legal avenues and must leave Germany. Technically, they leave voluntarily, since they have not yet been kicked out, but in reality they are people who desperately want to stay but have no choice but to return to their [often violent and oppressive] home countries.

A political debate about "Germany's new underclass" has grown in response to a report from the Friedrich Ebert Stiftung. (More than you ever wanted to know about the topic can be found here.) Contrary to what you might expect, much of this debate has centered around the word "Unterschicht," with many politicians resisting the word and characterizing it as "stigmatizing." The result of this is that instead of talking about the increasingly large class of Germans (as much as 20% of the former East Germany, or as it is called in another example of unspeak, the "new states" (neue Bundesländer) who are either unemployed or, more likely, part of the working poor, with very limited chances for education, vocational training or any chance of climbing the socioeconomic ladder, politicians play evasive word games.

Interestingly enough, in some of those articles about Germany's new underclass, they withheld or changed the names of the families they interviewed, apparently not at the request of the families but at the request of the editorial staff. The German press does do much more to protect identities than the American press, withholding names of not only of victims but of alleged criminals, and, apparently, poor people. Talk about stigmatizing poverty.

In all fairness, I must say that, while I find the debate about whether or not Germany has an underclass to be absurd and pointless (Seriously, some politicians debate this, claiming there's no underclass, just people who don't have it as easy as you and me), rereading some of those articles from die Zeit has made me skeptical.

The one I link to above spends four of its five pages tugging on your heartstrings, trotting out example after example of Germany's new underclass, like the well-educated couple, both unemployed architects, who live in the most expensive city in the country (Munich) and can no longer afford their €1400 per month house and will now have to--sob--move somewhere with fewer green spaces.

I question how drastic this problem is when I read that one of the "low wage earners" they interview, a watchman who works at a parking garage in Berlin, actually earns monthlyly salary that is higher than mstipendum (by about €100). If a 40-year old man who works forty-two hours per week and makes €865 per month is the new face of poverty in Germany than what am I?

I suppose the difference lies in the respective prospects for future earnings. The watchman is unlikely to find a job with a higher salary, whereas at the end of the year I will return to the U.S. and continue my pursuit of higher education and advanced degrees. For all the faults of public education in the U.S., it usually allows for upward mobility through education. It may not be easy, but there are nowhere near the institutional and structural barriers there are in Germany. A twenty-three year old with a prestigious fellowship who spends about sixty hours a week either in class, preparing for class or doing research isn't to be pitied because she plans to parlay that into a very good job, and yet, sadly, the odds are against me landing a good job in my field. Only about forty-percent of PhDs in the humanities get tenure-track jobs, so are my chances for a rise in fortune really all that better than those of the Berlin watchman?

I guess it's all a matter of perspective; die Zeit sees this man as an example of working poverty with no hope, whereas I, living on the same "poverty" wages, think I have it pretty good. In fairness to die Zeit they do, in passing, cite historian Paul Nolte and his claim that Germans describe as "poverty" what is in actuality inequality or disparity.

So... what instances of unspeak have you encountered this week?

Unspeak

2007-01-27T19:40:00.000+01:00

Slate's printed a couple of articles in the past week about unspeak, words that "contain a whole unspoken political argument" and are "an attempt to say something without saying it," like pro-choice, pro-life, or terrorist surveillance program. The most glaring example I have found in recent days comes from CNN. Go read the article and see if you can guess what I'm talking about.

I think the author, Dan Rivers, shows how unspeak like the term "sex worker" can seep into a journalist's vocabulary. I don't deny there are women who work willingly and voluntarily in the sex industry and don't consider themselves exploited, and for them the term "sex worker" seems appropriate. All too often, though, it is a blanket term, used to sanitize ugly situations where women who are victims of poverty, drugs and abuse resort to desperate measures. Rivers uses the term indiscrimately, even applying it to children who are kidnapped, held captive and raped repeatedly. Calling that "sex work" is wildly inappropriate.

The view from my window this morning

2007-01-26T11:32:00.000+01:00

The snow continues...

The view from my window this morning

2007-01-25T20:03:00.000+01:00

FO to show off

2007-01-23T22:54:00.000+01:00

I will eventually get around to posting about my trip to Hamburg, but those kinds of entries take time to write, as does uploading the pictures to flickr, so you'll have to bear with me. (I really should work on eliminating run-on sentences from my writing.)

For now I just have this to show off:

It's a direct result of my quick vacation to Germany's beautiful harbor city. Trip to Hamburg = 3.5 hours on the train + 1.25 hours waiting in train station + 30 minutes of movie previews + some down time in the hotel = one new hat.

It's a magic hat, too. With one or two quick motions it morphs from hat into cowl:

I finished it just in time, too, because after weeks of 50° weather winter finally began in earnest; it didn't get above freezing today. Brrr...

Oh, and I got to try out my new lighted knitting needles. They're not the best needles to knit with: the points are very sharp and the batteries weigh down the ends, but it was still fun. Yes, I took pictures:

I survived Hurricane Kyrill

2007-01-21T16:51:00.000+01:00

By now you've probably all heard about the terrible storms that ripped through Europe this past week. Since Friday it's been basically the only news story here, but, contrary to what you might have heard, it wasn't really that bad. The news has been dramatic, and, yes, people died (mostly from being struck by debris), but I still think most of the coverage has been misleading.

If the news is to be believed, this is the worst storm to hit Europe in years, or even decades. All told forty-seven people died as a result of "Kyrill," a dozen of them German, but that's just twelve, in a country of 82,400,000 people. That's not exactly catastrophic. Granted, we got off easy in Berlin, without the uprooted trees, ripped off roofs and high wind speeds experienced elsewhere in Germany. In general, though, the problems didn't seem to be due to the severity of the storm, but to the quality of construction of buildings and the reactions of people who weren't used to storms and didn't know what to do.

On Thursday in Berlin businesses and schools closed early, flights were cancelled, hotels filled up, and agencies ran out of rental cars. As the day storm wore on into the night tunnels were closed because of flooding and the police received a few hundred calls about fallen tree limbs. Meanwhile, newscasters acted like the sky was falling. Granted, the suspension of all rail travel in Germany was a big deal; it takes a lot to bring German trains to a complete standstill. But the Deutsche Bahn recovered quickly, bending rules and regulations to get the passengers to their final destinations. Some train stations gave away taxi vouchers, but only to people willing to carpool; elsewhere they set up a train for stranded passengers to sleep in. The word in the news most commonly associated with the storm was "lahm" (paralyzed).

Of course, I had no idea any of this was happening. I was safely ensconced at home, listening to the rain and wind from the comfort of my bedroom and packing for a trip to Hamburg. Busy with school and research, I hadn't read any news in a few days, so I had no idea the storm was coming and hadn't been inundated with warnings or the repetition of the word "hurricane." I remember thinking it was actually nice to see lightning and listen to the wind howl, since I hadn't experienced a storm since my arrival in Germany. It never occurred to me the storm was (or, more accurately, would be considered) severe. I wouldn't say Germany was "paralyzed" by this storm, "inconvenienced," yes, but not paralyzed.

When I made my way to the train station for my 8:18 a.m. train to Hamburg I didn't see any evidence storm damage, like downed tree limbs or strewn garbage and debris. Everything was wet, but in general it was a fine, fresh morning, with the clouds already beginning to clear. I arrived at Hauptbahnhof only to find it closed: cordoned off and with a police guard. I learned later that a massive steel beam fell off the facade and crashed to the ground, breaking some stairs and damaging a few bicycles and a taxi. (Go to der Spiegel to see pictures.) All rail service through the station was suspended until Friday afternoon, and they're still trying to determine if this is a structural flaw or just a fluke.

Frankly, I'm surprised this wasn't a bigger story. Europe's biggest, newest and most expensive train station was shut down for a day because part of it fell off, but 150 miles away in Hamburg, it didn't even warrant a mention on the news. It seems to me that when you spend almost a billion dollars to build a train station, there should be some assurance that it won't fall down.

Needles and Yarn

2007-01-18T22:54:00.000+01:00

When I was home I took the liberty of adding to my yarn stash, much depleted over the course of the year. Here is my haul:

Oh, and this, too:

I have many projects planned. A hat, scarf and glove set from the yarn pictured above, some nice washcloths from this:

and some socks from this:

We'll see if I can get all of that done. If, by some miracle, I do, I have other yarn and patterns at home, bagged and waiting:

I also have some finished objects to show off. First, a hat and scarf set I gave my sister for Christmas:

Second, one of two iPod cozies (or iPod "socks," if you will):

In case you were wondering, the Apple logo took forever to knit. The only good thing about having a nine hour flight on Christmas Eve was that it gave me enough time to finish it. Unfortunately, I don't have a picture of the other one, but it was simpler: black, with a knit 2, purl 2 rib and gray cuff, as well as a pocket.

Third, I have a pair of wrist warmers (also called arm warmers and pulse warmers) I finished yesterday:

Contrary to what you might think, I will actually use these because I (1) am always cold and (2) own practically nothing but shirts and sweaters with 3/4 length sleeves. The pulse warmers are a more affordable option than buying a whole new wardrobe. To give credit where credit is due, I started out using this pattern. However, the beautiful chenille from my stash I chose to knit with wouldn't have shown the pattern, so I improvised as I went along, using a 2x2 rib and adding a picot edge for decoration. In general, I'm pleased with the outcome.

While I was home I also picked up some new knitting accoutrements. My parents gave me a Namaste needle binder:

It didn't fit in my suitcase (it's larger than it looks), so I left it at home. I miss it already, more than I miss my cat, and possibly my family.

I added some new knitting needles to my collection, as well. They might not look like much...

...until you turn out the light.

Cool, no?

My parents gave me one pair of these (size 8) as a gift:

and I loved them so much I went to Michaels and bought two more pair (sizes 6 and 10.5) in a slightly-less-cool version:

I can't wait to use them.

What I did during my Christmas vacation.

2007-01-14T11:08:00.000+01:00

Sorry for being such a crappy blogger this last week. After being exposed to every germ on the planet during that awful trip back to Germany, I have, of course, come down with a nasty cold/sore throat. It's left me with little energy for extraneous activities like blogging.

Even though it's now slightly after the fact, I guess I should catch you up on on my vacation. It was great, if only for the fact that I didn't have to cook, do laundry, go to a library, or think about school for almost two weeks.

I opened presents with the family,

took pictures of the pets doing cute things,

baked cookies,

and received many, many gifts. Like this, this, this, and this. Oh, and a set of these, too.

I also visited my uncle's new house.

Yes, it needs a little work.

Plus, I'm now officially ready for winter to be over, since I've seen snow.

I have three words for you:

2007-01-12T22:29:00.000+01:00

Swarovski

Christmas

Tree.

I thought I should hurry up and post this before the Christmas season ended.* I meant to do it before Christmas, but you know how it goes.

Amazing, isn't it? A massive tree covered in thousands of Swarovski crystals. It's beautiful to behold.

*Depending on which calendar you use it can still be considered Christmastide. Some churches mark more than just twelve days of Christmas, extending Christmastide until the feast of Candlemas in February. Even until the 1970s the Catholic Church celebrated Epiphany until January 13, so I think I got this in just under the wire. Besides, Jesus might very well have been born in the spring.

It's only mostly dead.

2007-01-06T20:15:00.000+01:00

I'm not holding out too much hope, but I think there might be a little life left in there.

As you can tell by the picture, I'm back in Berlin. The picture also serves as a perfect illustration of how I felt when I got home.

Other tidbits from a long, crappy (but not uneventful) international journey:

I'm the only person I know who actually uses the airsickness bags on airplanes. I needed two of them today. Long international flights with bad food and no sleep really suck (but I must admit, I didn't actually get sick on the plane; I managed to wait until we reached the Munich airport).
I hardly remember the flight from Munich to Berlin. I was so sick, tired and sleep deprived that I just put my head between my knees and didn't look up until we landed in Berlin.
I thought about taking a taxi from the airport, but the bus was there and I'm a poor student so I took it. I was thrown for a loop when I realized they changed the bus route while I was gone. It didn't really affect me, though, and it only took me about twenty minutes to get home.
It's really scary when the person sitting one seat away from you has a medical emergency somewhere over the Atlantic. Luckily we didn't need do an emergency landing in Greenland.
And, yes, In that situation they really do ask over the PA, "Is there a doctor on board?" There was.

More pics and info. coming soon, when I've caught up on my rest.

I'm off!

2006-12-24T05:04:00.000+01:00

If all goes well (knock wood) I'll land in Omaha before 5:00 p.m. Cross your fingers or press your thumbs for me.

Oh, and before I go I'd like to commemorate a dear friend:

It is my one and only Christmas decoration, a promotion for this store. A couple of weeks ago I walked in and a small, blonde woman dressed as an angel, complete with floor-length gossamer gown, halo and golden wings, handed it to me.

It's been a loyal companion, but I neglected to find a sitter for it, and I'm afraid it will have shuffled off its mortal coil before I make it home.

R.I.P.

Last-Minute Gifts

2006-12-23T20:29:00.000+01:00

Still haven't bought me a present, yet?

Check out this list for some tips, courtesy of the Yarn Harlot.

Desperation

2006-12-23T17:04:00.000+01:00

I'm going mad from boredom.

For the past twenty-four hours I have had nothing to do.

I can't re-pack my suitcase, since I already managed to defy the laws of physics and cram yet another gift into it and am afraid even opening it will ruin all my hard work.

I can't shop (see above).

I can't wrap presents.

I can't gorge myself because I decided to prudently empty out my fridge, leaving me with only a box of frozen spinach, some feta cheese and a zucchini (or rather, zucchino). A better cook than I might know what do to with that.

What I have been doing: returning all my bottles to the grocery store (almost €4 worth), uploading photos to flickr, obsessing about possibly missing my flight in Chicago, and cleaning.

(You know it must be desperate for me to resort to that.)

And I still have twelve more hours before I can leave for the airport!

More strange, incorrect uses of English

2006-12-22T00:32:00.000+01:00

So, is the "Coffee Travel Point" where your coffee goes on vacation?

Prague

2006-12-19T14:37:00.000+01:00

My friend Shannon and I decided to take a much needed end-of-term vacation. Well, it's the end of term for her; I still have class but agreed to go along anyway. She came to Berlin for a couple days and then we spent about two and a half days in Prague.

Here are some highlights:

We went ice skating on Bebelplatz.

Of course, when I came up with the brilliant "let's go ice skating" plan, I completely neglected to take into account my inability to ice skate, and this was the result:

We walked around town, visited Christmas markets, drank Glühwein, and had our picture taken with Marx and Engels.

After that it was off to Prague, city of spires.

I spent a day touring the Jewish Quarter. This is the Old Jewish Cemetery:

At sundown (3:42 PM!) we went to Shabbas service at the Old-New Synagogue, built in the 13th century. It was the first day of Hanukkah.

On Saturday I walked the processional route to the castle area and spent the morning there. This is the most recognizable building in the area, St. Vitus Cathedral:

There were beautiful city views from the castle.

Like every good toursit, I spent time on the Charles Bridge.

This is the knight who stands guard at the base of the bridge:

I also walked around the Old Town, with its beautiful Town Hall:

The astronomical clock on the Old Town Hall:

I even braved the masses of people to shoot a video of it chiming the hour:

On Saturday evening we went to the Opera (Carmen).

This was the view from our box:

The highlight of the trip was my visit to the National Gallery (of 19th, 20th, and 21st century art). Don't judge the building by its facade.

Somehow I also managed to find time to just wander around and snap photos of whatever caught my fancy:

How awesome is the Soviet area Metro system?

As you can see, Prague is a beautiful city. It was, unfortunately, overrun with tourists; I can't imagine what it's like in the summer if it's this crowded at Christmas.

If you can believe it, there are even more photos on my flickr page.

Vacation

2006-12-18T00:01:00.000+01:00

I heard this crazy rumor that some people go on vacations to relax.

Ha!

I walked 27 miles during my three days in Prague.

27 miles.

Yes, Prague was beautiful and amazing and wonderful, but I'm far too tired to post anything right now. I need to go to bed. I will provide you with one little tidbit: my train was almost forty minutes late getting into Berlin because it ran over a wild boar.

more reasons why I love this city

2006-12-12T13:49:00.000+01:00

Sorry that last post was a bit boring. To make up for it I uploaded a bunch of new photos to my flickr page. Here's a preview:

In addition to buses, taxis, subways, pedi-cabs, trams and trains, you can travel with horses.

I’ve even seen dogsleds. (Sorry, I didn’t get a photo of that.)

You can get a €150 bottle of Dom Pérignon to go with your €1,70 curry sausage.

You’ll note, you can order your Currywurst with or without intestine (Darm).

The scaffolding is second-to-none. This is a life-size image of a subway train, covering the fence behind which they’re building the new subway.

(Look for more German scaffolding on my flickr page.)

Oh, and then there’s this:

That’s a man, right?

Can you imagine the controversy something like that would cause in the U.S.?

nothing new here

2006-12-11T21:44:00.000+01:00

Hello out there. Yes, I'm still alive. Sorry for the absence of late. Blogging kept getting bumped to the bottom of my to-do list. I somehow deluded myself into thinking the weeks leading up to Christmas wouldn't be as busy here as they always are at home and was then absolutely unprepared for the deluge. Thankfully, the worst is over (knock wood).

Today was a strange day. I went to the post office to mail a Christmas present to my friend in Zambia and felt like the ten years I've spent learning German were ineffectual. I did what I always do with a package and took it to the post office blank, planning to fill out their form with the customs declaration. "You know, you need to write the address on it," he said. But then he recollected himself and handed me the form with the customs slip. He also looked at me like I was crazy when I said it was going to Africa, his glance implying, why would you need to send anything to Africa. It was a demoralizing experience, and I was glad to be gone.

Then I went to the train station to buy tickets to Prague (a vacation! yay!) and had no problem communicating what I needed to the woman at the desk. I left with my tickets and seat reservations and realized that the situation at the post office probably had nothing to do with my communication skills and everything to do with that guy being an ass.

In other news, I'll be home in two weeks!

Fun Study Break

2006-12-04T00:12:00.000+01:00

I took a break from homework this afternoon/evening to go to the official Christmas tree lighting at the Brandenburger Tor. Although slightly corny, I did get to see Berlin's fabulous mayor and the Prime Minister of Norway.

Here's a [rather amateurish] video I made:

Walter Benjamin

2006-12-03T18:58:00.000+01:00

I won’t keep you in suspense any longer. I know you’re all dying to know the answer to the Walter Benjamin puzzle.

Writing Lesson

2006-12-01T19:50:00.000+01:00

Apparently the Associated Press also subscribes the German philosophy of sentence structure:

"Relatives of a groom shot by police hours before he was to have been married prepared instead for his funeral, set for Friday night at the church where the wedding was supposed to happen." (Full story here.)

Heaven forbid you should write two clear, simple sentences when one confusing, muddled sentence would suffice.

New Favorite

2006-11-30T19:23:00.000+01:00

I have a new favorite website: librivox.

They use volunteers to make audio recordings of books in the public domain and then make them available to download (for free! yay!).

Sure, it's supported by volunteers and can't match the quality of a book recorded by a professional actor, and while I might scoff at their filing of Bible chapters under "nonfiction" (and their goal of recording everything in the public domain is unrealistic, not to mention silly), it's still a great resource.

(That sentence had a few too many clauses, didn't it? I'll blame it on the fact that I speak and read German all day, every day. They tend to have a the-more-clauses-the-better attitude.)

When I knit I prefer listening to audio books to listening to music or watching television. I can't even believe I'm going to admit this (it's not as if I haven't given you ample reason to think I'm a complete nerd), but my spring break last year consisted of holing up in my apartment, knitting cupcakes and a miniature Canadian flag, and listening to Stephanie Barron's newest release. While my peers are off doing body shots in Mazatlan, I curl up at home with knitting and an audio book. Oh well, that's why you all love me. Plus, it's likely the only way I'll ever make it through something like A Tale of Two Cities or Swann's Way.

And, ooh, Barron has a new book. Something to do over Christmas! What? You thought I was going to hang out with you lot during my vacation? Scoff.

Assimilation

2006-11-29T13:19:00.000+01:00

This is what I found myself eating for breakfast the other day:

Müsli, banana and apple juice. At home I was always a pop tart and coke kind of girl. What's happened to me?

Define Irony.

2006-11-28T01:27:00.000+01:00

Blogger's spellcheck doesn't recognize the word "blog."

What I've been up to lately

2006-11-28T00:26:00.000+01:00

The seasons are changing, but I think Berlin is pretty despite the winter starkness.

I found a new heading/theme/catchphrase for my blog.

I visited East Berlin.

Anyone but me think it's kind of pretty, albeit in a bleak, depressing way?

All I want for Christmas:

I'm still trying to figure out the German fascination with Statler and Waldorf.

What I love most about shopping in Germany... the utter randomness.

It's beginning to look a lot like Christmas.

Even Germany isn't immune to the obnoxiously large Christmas decoration phenomenon.

I have no idea what this is doing here.

I went to a pretty lame Thanksgiving dinner. The location was beautiful,...

...but there weren't any chairs. (And, no, I don't know why.)

How cool is it that I go to a university with a giant quote from Karl Marx in bright gold letters in the foyer?

I snapped this on my way to school this morning, and I think it's both beautiful and depressing at the same time. On the one hand, the sun glinting through the trees and the outline of the 19th (?) century courthouse in the background are undeniably beautiful, but it's really depressing that the sun's so low in the sky at 2:00 p.m.

Thanksgiving

2006-11-24T01:04:00.000+01:00

This evening I went to the big, fancy Thanksgiving event thrown by the Fulbright Commission.

I could make lots of snarky observations: most of the food was cold, they ran out of everything, including plates and forks, two obnoxious high schoolers sang.

But in the end I think it's best summed up with this sentence: There weren't any chairs.

I'm thankful I'm home.

Keep voting!

So where did you go today?

2006-11-23T17:28:00.000+01:00

Guess where I went today. Go on, guess.

The docks!

I know what you're thinking, "But, Maureen, Berlin's landlocked." Although that's true, I live about ten minutes away from one of Europe's largest inland port. Who knew?

Or were you wondering what I was doing there?

It's time to go to bed when...

2006-11-19T01:18:00.000+01:00

...you mistake the words "party chief" for "pastry chef" and seriously contemplate why a cook, even if he is a friend of Himmler, would be placed in a position of authority in the General Government of Poland.

In honor of Walter Benjamin

2006-11-18T00:10:00.000+01:00

It's been Walter Benjamin week around here. (More on that another time.) In honor of that, and because I'm too tired to post anything else, I'm offering this little puzzle, copied from a document from the Walter Benjamin Archive, currently on display at the Akademie der Künste and translated by yours truly.

Six authors are sitting in a railway car, in a first class cabin, three authors on each side. Müller, Schulze, Schmidt, Becker, Meier and Lehmann. They are, not necessarily in this order, Essayist, Historian, Humorist, Novelist, Dramatist and Poet. Each has written a book that is being read by another of the travelers.

Müller is reading essays, Becker is reading the book written by the man across from him. Schulze is sitting between the Essayist and the Humorist. Meier is next to the Dramatist. The Essayist is sitting across from the Historian. Schmidt is reading a play. Schulze is the brother-in-law of the Novelist. Müller, who's sitting in a corner, is not interested in history. Schmidt is sitting across from the Novelist. Meier is reading the Humorist's book. Lehmann is reading poetry.

Walter Benjamin says, "Each author is to be named." In addition to who writes what, I want to know what they're reading and where they're sitting.

I'll post the answer just as soon as I get around to solving it.

Given my current workload, that will be sometime in mid-December.

Only Berlin

2006-11-14T22:02:00.000+01:00

Berlin is a city like no other.

Today at the Brandenburger Tor I saw a man riding on a wheeled sled pulled by a team of six huskies.

No one else was even remotely fazed by this rather anachronistic figure.

Without realizing it I've become inured to the general craziness of Berliners, as well. I didn't even deem the dogsled riding through the Tiergarten worth the hassle of digging out the camera to take a picture. Very few things make my jaw drop anymore.

This, however, absolutely blows my mind:

Yes, that's the Berlin wall... running right through a cemetery.

This is the Invalidenfriedhof, and it's one of my favorite places in the city.

It's just mind-boggling to contemplate: a cemetery lies right on the border between East Germany and West Germany, and the only solution the authorities can think of is to "liquidate" any and all graves located in the "death strip." (Ironic choice of words, eh?).

The family of Captain Manfred von Richtofen (The Red Baron) was allowed to move his grave, but most were simply destroyed. Records indicate there were more than 3000 graves at the Invalidenfriedhof in 1960. Today there are 230. (Although creepily enough, anywhere from 18,000 to 30,000 burials have taken place there since 1748.)

This is a good view of how much of the cemetery was cleared to make way for the Wall:

Because I know you were curious

2006-11-12T14:11:00.000+01:00

Even though Halloween is long past, I thought you'd like to know the verdict.

Although the cupcake hat pulled ahead at the last minute, I opted for the pumpkin. It's slightly less eccentric than the cupcake, and from a certain angle it looks almost normal. Orange, but normal. I also think I can get away with wearing it all fall, and it's the perfect accessory to wear to the big, fancy Thanksgiving celebration Fulbright is throwing for us.

Now, I'm not one of those knitting bloggers who painstakingly document every step of the process. When I think of a project, I just dive right in. I got up on a Wednesday morning, went to Ka De We and bought some orange yarn, and then spent the next two and a half days furiously knitting, at home, on the bus, in class. By Saturday morning it was done. The only step I did archive was the one no knitting patterns mention: the head test.

Most knitters I know do this, simply because patterns aren't perfect and every head is different. It's a convenient way to make sure you're on the right track, to gauge how much you have left, and to know when to start decreasing for the crown.

People look at you really strangely when you do this on the bus.

Kriegsverlust

2006-11-05T20:07:00.000+01:00

I was doing some research in the online catalogue of the Staatsbibliothek this evening, and none of the books I wanted were available. They were all listed with the phrase "Kriegsverlust möglich" (possible war loss).

First of all, it disturbs me that they don't know if they have the book or not. I mean, shouldn't a library know that sort of thing?

Secondly, why, oh, why, do items stand in the online catalogue that were, quite possibly, lost in the war? World War II ended more than sixty years ago. Get over it and just delete those item from the catalogue.

Thirdly, I find it quite amusing that at some point during the 1990s or early 2000s, all of these potentially lost items were added to the online catalogue.

The most controversial film of the year?

2006-11-03T13:29:00.000+01:00

Count on the Germans to have no sense of humor. I assume you've heard about the legal action filed against "Borat" on behalf of German Sinti and Roma (or, in less politically correct terms, gypsies).

First of all, I think the film looks terrible. It seems to fall into the realm of "stupid humor," (like SNL or Will Ferrell movies or anything associated with "Jackass"), and that's not my cup of tea. I also don't find racism and sexism funny, and I therefore don't find jokes about racism and sexism funny. I guess I'm just another feminist with no sense of humor. Still, I understand the film is satirical, so even though I would never go see it, I don't have any objections to it.

I must say, though, that the Germans really need to lighten up. Aren't there enough stereotypes about Germans out there? Did you really need to make your public perception worse?

In defense of Germans, this isn't about movies or lacking senses of humor. I think they simply feel helpless against the rise of right-wing extremism and the increasing amounts of violence against minorities. (Although I don't have a source and am too lazy to google, I did read that the number of attacks against minorities increased a whopping twenty percent last year.)

If any of my readers actually speak German, you should go read this article. It's from Berlin's most popular (and rather trashy) newspaper, and it's quite amusing.

The newspaper "invited Jews, Kazaks, Sinti and Roma, homosexuals and women to a special presentation of the film and asked 'Did Borat injure you?'" Some of them defend the film, saying it's satirical and trying to expose racism and sexism, not promote it. Some say the film isn't about Germans at all. It's talking about America and they're the ones who should be offended.

The token representatives of the Sinti and Roma were offended and think the film is dangerous. Petra Rosenberg, chairperson of the National Association of Sinti and Roma, said the film "makes its name off the backs of minorities." The token Jewish persons were not as reactionary. Bella Zchwiraschwili of the "Jewish community" probably said it best: "The film can be shown because it's good, if shallow. It's senseless to have a detailed discussion of it." Leeor Engländer, also of the "Jewish community" said what was disturbing was not the film, but that it presents "the reality on the street." While I'm not sure I agree with him when he says the film shows how "normal Americans" act, I'll give him the benefit of the doubt. Racism and sexism still exist today and we should be upset about that, not about a film that lampoons that fact.

He did say something else worth noting. He said the film brings to light "resentment against Sinti and Roma, misogyny and homophobia (or, to use the German terms, "adverseness" to women and to gays), and hatred of Jews." While it's true to film reveals prejudices common to society, I wonder why he felt it necessary to build such a hierarchy: "resentment" toward gypsies, "adverseness" to women and gays, but "hatred" toward Jews.

Anybody seen the film? Were its portrayals of Jews so much worse than gypsies, gays and women?

The most interesting part of the article is that more than one person suggested the state should ban the film because not everyone will understand it or recognize the satire. Rosenberg said, most people "don't have enough background knowledge to categorize this film." If I were German, I would be absolutely insulted by that assertion. The film should be banned because Germans don't know any better not to be taken in by satirical images of racism and sexism?

What disturbs me, though, is how this fits into the trend already present in German politics to legislate and regulate public opinion (Look at Schröder's attempts to outlaw the NPD). Germans are known for being obedient. They only cross the street when the light is green and run public transit using the honor system. (It works, too.) They only do what is proper and legal and sanctioned by the state, but I simply don't believe Germans are so obedient they will give up their opinions because the state deems them unacceptable or illegal.

Hate speech is already illegal here, and so is Holocaust denial, and books like Mein Kampf are banned. Look at all the good its done. I doubt that the way to combat right-wing extremism is to outlaw their political party and reduce their rights to assemble, and the idea that you can actually outlaw a point of view is absurd.

What would you do?

2006-10-31T23:49:00.000+01:00

So I was invited to a Halloween party on Saturday (yes, a bit belated, but it's easy to forget about Halloween in this country). I figure I have just enough time between now and then to make a hat. Should I make (a) a pumpkin hat; (b) a cupcake hat; or (c) a strawberry hat? (I could also knit the strawberry hat in blue/purple instead of red to make a blueberry hat and go as Violet from Charlie and the Chocolate Factory.)

I'm stumped. Which one should I choose?

Long Night of Shopping

2006-10-29T22:57:00.000+01:00

Oh, those Germans.

On Saturday evening I went to my favorite place in the whole world to buy some thread (I had some mending to do). I rushed to get there before it closed at 8:00 (everything in this country closes at 8; it's the law); I was in such a hurry I didn't even take time to marvel at the massive crowds on Kurfürstendamm and wonder why, literally, thousands of people were on Berlin's main shopping boulevard ten minutes before closing time. I reached the store at 7:53, only to notice a sign on the door proclaiming October 28 "Die Lange Nacht des Shoppings."

Gratuitous use of English aside, I'm actually a big fan of this concept. The stores were open 'til midnight. Midnight! That's just unheard of in this country. Stores generally have to close by 8:00 p.m. (except for Hauptbahnhof and the bookstore on FriedrichstraßŸe which stays open 'til 10) and are only allowed to be open four Sundays a year, for no more than five hours, and only outside of the times of normal church services. (Seriously.)

After stocking up on thread, I went to H&M and bought a cardigan and two sweaters at 8:45, just because I could. (Well, and also because I'm always cold in this country, largely due to the fact that a German's first action upon entering a room is to throw open a window, regardless of both the inner and outer temperatures.) It felt absolutely decadent to be shopping so late.

It was pretty, too. There's some kind of "Festival of Lights" going on right now. (Go here and look for a stunning picture of the Berliner Dom bathed in light.) I don't quite understand it, but there are twinkle lights in all the trees:

I actually wouldn't mind if they kept it up all year. It might counteract the utterly depressing fact the sun sets so damn early here in fall and winter.

So, after buying my thread, my sweater and snapping a few photos, I went home to be domestic and mend the handful of garments I had waiting for me. Irony of ironies, I had to use my new thread to mend my brand new sweater.

(Note to the staff at H&M, keeping in mind Webster's defines "to knit" as "to form by interlacing yarn or thread in a series of connected loops with needles" and knowing this is done with a single, continuous thread throughout, you should be able to infer that when you puncture the thin thread with a security tag, even if it only destroys one or two stitches, you will cause severe structural damage to the garment. Idiots.)

Conclusions:

Shopping is fun.
Security tags, and the H&M personnel who put two of them on a $10 sweater, suck.
Twinkle lights are pretty.
Although the Long Night of Shopping has its advantages, it can't hold a candle to The Long Night of the Museums.

(What can I say, other than that I'm a complete nerd?)

Recap

2006-10-25T21:48:00.000+02:00

Well, it's Friday and the second week of school is finally over. I have no class today, so my weekend has officially begun. Granted, I have a very long to-do list, but most of it can be accomplished at home, in my pajamas.

To recap this week:

In the course of class discussion one of my gender theory instructors wrote the following list on the board:
"race"
class
sexuality
etc.
I'm willing to overlook the fact they used the English/Latin "etc." instead of its German form "usw." for no good reason. What I can't ignore is their putting the word race in quotation marks. I had drafted a long explanation of why and how this was inappropriate, but I scrapped that, deciding it wasn't necessary after all. THEY PUT RACE IN QUOTATION MARKS! Enough said.
I have come to a surprising conclusion: German students are even more rude than American students. From what I can tell Germans are just as likely to have not done the reading and to eat and drink during class than their American counterparts. The key difference is in their tardiness. I know what you're thinking. Germans are known for their punctuality, but that trait appears to have skipped an entire generation. German students saunter into class ten, twenty, thirty or even forty-five minutes late without explanation or apology. One student came into my 10 a.m. to 1 p.m. Walter Benjamin seminar at noon. Noon! (I'm not basing these assertions on one experience, either; this has happened multiple times and in every class.) I simply wouldn't put up with that in my classroom, but the Germans don't even blink.
I have spent a staggering amount on photocopies this week, since every class has a massive reader that is placed in a [random] copyshop somewhere in Berlin. Almost every day this week I hunted down a different reader in a different copyshop (Ooh, guess what the German word for copyshop is, go on, guess) and spent anywhere from Â5 to Â15 for copies of it. I miss electronireserveses, but I love that Germans have no regard for copyright laws. (Admittedly, I don't know what German copyright laws are; I'm just assuming they're similar to the laws we have in the U.S.)
I am finally a legal resident of Germany, having received my Aufenthaltsgenehmigung on Wednesday. I used the university's "visa service" (Yes, it's really called that, even though neither "visa" nor "service" are German words), which was definitely the right decision. It was difficult to surrender my passport for a month, but I've talked to people who are applying for the visa on their own who have to wait months for an appointment (One Fulbrighter couldn't get an appointment until December).
I have explored every single way there is to get to the university from my apartment. (There are many more than you might think, given the extraordinarily diverse Berlin public transit system, which includes buses, trams (streetcars), subways and trains (suburban rail).) The fastest way usually takes around thirty minutes (unless I have to wait) and involves a bus and subway. My favorite route takes much longer, though, since it involves walking most of the way. The advantage: I get to walk along a very pretty canal, across a former checkpoint and through cemeteryry.

Hmm, in reading this I realized it wasn't a very exciting week.

What's in a name?

2006-10-20T22:24:00.000+02:00

My first week of classes is over. Well, almost. I do have class tomorrow, but it doesn't really count, since it only meets three Fridays and Saturdays throughout the semester.

I'm feeling completely overwhelmed, but, I've said it before and I'll say it again, I am a complete nerd and am actually very happy to be back in school. On Monday I have to go to three separate copy shops to get readers for my courses and find time to get caught up with my own research.

On the plus side, someone did ask me in class today if I was from England. Apparently British and American accents are pretty similar when you're speaking German. Who knew?

The first week has given me lots to think about, but most of all I've been thinking about names and hierarchy. In America we don't hesitate to use someone's first name. Our waiters, flight attendants and cashiers all wear nametags with their first names only. In Germany, they usually don't. If you need to call a stranger by their name, you say Herr or Frau LastName.

Germans are known for being formal, deferring to authority and having a thing about titles. I expected to face a shock when classes start. When speaking German in the US, I use the informal form of address almost exclusively. I call all my professors by their first names. Hell, I've been to most of their houses. So I expected to face a culture shock when I started at the University. I pictured myself tripping over my neglected Sie-form and all the "Frau Doktors" and "Herr Professors."

I suppose part of studying abroad is having all of your preconceived notions about a culture undermined and challenged.

Three of my four classes have had starkly different philosophies about the level of formality:

My first class was taught by two graduate students clearly influenced by feminist pedagogy. They introduced themselves with their first names, used the informal, du-form, had us go around the circle and introduce ourselves on the first day (name, major, year, why you're in the class, just like in the US). They didn't even bother with last names and actually had to send an email to the class, asking for a distinction between the two Marias

The second class I attended was taught in a traditional style. The professor used the formal, Sie-form the entire time and didn't even ask us our first names. He'll be Herr Professor (or, perhaps, Prof. or Dr. _______, but Herr Professor is considered more polite here), and I'll be "Frau Gallagher" the entire time.

The third class was taught by another graduate student. On the first day she said, "If it's all right with you, I'll use your first names. You can call me Frau _________ ... or, well, Sabine, but I think it's better if we use the Sie-form."

I'm curious what people think of this. Which would you use in your classroom? Which do you like least?

(My preferences actually surprised me.)

Today's random, weird, inappropriate and/or incorrect use of English

2006-10-18T17:33:00.000+02:00

It wasn't until I got home from the drug store that I noticed the product name on my bottle of bubble bath:

What do you think they think "careness" means?

A fun new game

2006-10-15T12:49:00.000+02:00

We have a Fulbright-Berlin listserve, and I received an email the other day that I wanted to share with you:

Hey Name,

whats up? is ben harper coming to berlin? if so, where is this at? id be interested.

thanks,
firstname surname
fulbright english teaching assistant, berlin 0´6-07

Now let's play "Count the Grammatical Errors."

Including capitalization and punctuation, I count a whopping 18 errors. (In my generosity, I didn't count his failure to capitalize his own name as a mistake; I also assumed the misplaced apostrophe in "0'6-07" was a typo and counted only one error, since it should be '06-'07, as I'm sure you all knew.) Eighteen errors in 28 words! That's a "Fehler-Quotient" of 64! That's really bad!

Let's step back and think about this for a minute. If you look at the competition statistics you will see that there were more than 200 applications for the 80 TAships to Germany. If the author of the ~~atrocious~~ ~~awful~~ embarrassing email above was selected as an English teacher, I shudder to think what the other 133 applicants were like.

Look who was creative this weekend

2006-10-10T18:43:00.000+02:00

I thought my walls could use with some brightening up, and a trip to my favorite craft store inspired me:

Here's another view:

And a detail:

What do you think? I'm quite proud. It was a lot more work than I thought it would be, but it's nice to have time to do things like this. I knit a hat last weekend. I likely won't have time to do that again until winter break because classes are starting soon. This is my last week of freedom, and on the way home from the library today (Yeah, I know, it's sick to spend two hours a day at the library during my "last week of freedom," but I can't help myself) I realized this is the longest break from school I've ever had. I've taken summers off before (two of them, I think, in six years of university...or maybe it was only one?), but the lag between the start of the school year back home and the start of the school year here means that it's been more than five months since I've been in school. Granted during my summer "break" I wrote forty pages of my thesis and almost sixty pages of comprehensive exams, but I wasn't actually in class.

But who am I kidding? I can't wait to start school, with all that entails: a crazy schedule, a big pile of textbooks, living at the library, school supplies, oh, the school supplies. Just look in my drawer:

I can't wait to use them.

Only in Germany

2006-10-06T14:15:00.000+02:00

Adventures in Knitting

2006-10-02T00:33:00.000+02:00

Classes still haven’t started here, so I’ve had to find other ways to occupy my time. This is what I’ve been up to lately:

It’s an iPod nano sock, and it’s one of three that I’ve made since I’ve been here, although the other two aren’t as fancy. (I got the pattern here, in case you were wondering.)

I have plenty of places to knit: on the train, on the bus, at the laundromat. I’m currently working on a hat and a scarf, but I’d love an excuse to make another iPod sock. I’m a complete and utter knitting nerd and I love double-pointed needles. Plus, it’s so small that it knits up super-quickly, even using sock yarn and size one needles. Here’s another of my new iPod socks:

You know what the coolest part about it is? It’s seam-free.

Most of you reading this probably won’t appreciate that, but some might. (Are you reading, Dr. Lyons?) I love it when I can start something, knit and then be finished. No sewing, no grafting, no blocking, no making up, no piecing. It’s like magic. The Turkish Cast-On totally rocks my world.

And, yes, I do go out occasionally:

Welcome to Kafka-Land

2006-09-26T19:57:00.000+02:00

My letter from the university said to report to the university between 10:00 and 13:00 on September 25 for "matriculation," so I was there promptly at ten.

I followed the arrow on the sign marked "Immatrikulation." I walked through a door and wound up...outside, in the courtyard. Although there were no more signs, it wasn't too hard to find the room. Once there, I began the arduous process of wading through German bureaucracy. First, I had to wait twenty minutes for someone to arrive and unlock the insurance forms. After getting that form I went and checked in, at which point I was handed a map directing me to the cashier. It was technically located in the same building, but the only way to get there was by going back outside, through the courtyard, and into a different door. I paid my student fees and then retraced my steps. (Btw. €186 will buy you a semester at a German university, including a six-month transit pass. Isn't that amazing? There's actually been some discontent and protest among students, because until recently universities were completely free.)

Once back at the "Immatrikulation" desk I got a number and waited. And waited. And waited.

I watched students who arrived after me get called, be processed and leave while I continued to wait.

I suffered in silence, hesitant to ask someone why I had to wait so long, for fear of appearing impatient and being bumped to the back of the queue. I did, however, wonder if it wasn't like that Kafka story about the man waiting to be admitted to the Halls of Justice. Maybe all I had to in order to be let into the magical room where students were matriculated was ask. Maybe my exclusion from that room was due to my own hesitancy and shyness.

Or not.

After about an hour and a half a woman came to me, ripped up my number, and gave me a new one, on a different color of paper and six hundred numbers further back.

Finally, three hours after my arrival and two hours after I was given a number, I was shown into that magical room to be matriculated. Since they weren't calling based on numerical order, I thought it must be by major, and I suspected I had to wait so long because lots of students come to Germany to study German language/literature. Helen (history) and Freddy (political science) were called long before me because their majors weren't as popular among international students.

At first this seemed true, since each table in the room was labeled with a different major. But the table I was shown to was labeled "anthropology and ethnography" and Freddy was at the table marked "law." Then I realized that the woman who is helping me (I was number 263 until the woman took it away and gave me #886) is the same woman who helped Helen, who had number 264.

At that point I gave up trying to understand the system.

I filled out the form, showed the woman a handful of documents and was given a temporary student ID and some flyers. She then introduced me to the wonderful thing called "Visa Service." I filled out my visa application, submitted about a dozen documents (by that point in the day, though, they were completely disorganized) and left them to take care of the rest. It's like magic. It generally takes six to eight weeks to even get an appointment at the visa office, so this was well worth it, even if it meant leaving my passport with them for three weeks. That's one more thing I can check off the list.

I then trekked across the courtyard once more and went back to the cashier, where I handed them another form and was given €110 cash. Just when I was feeling like I'd never escape from a bureaucratic nightmare à la Kafka, someone handed me a wad of cash and said, "Welcome to Germany." It's not a bad system really; it made the half a dozen forms I filled out (I'm not exaggerating, either), the four trips across the courtyard, and the eternal waiting completely worth it.

Maureen's Top Three

2006-09-21T22:34:00.001+02:00

Ladies and Gentlemen, may I present, for your viewing pleasure, my own personal list of the Top Three Things You Would Never Want to Buy from a Vending Machine:

Number Three:

Literature!
I wonder what genius at the publishing house came up with this brilliant marketing plan. Granted, Germans are the Volk der Dichter und Denker, but I still think they’re unlikely to buy a book from a vending machine, even if they’re desperate.

Number Two:

French Fries!
Ready in forty-five seconds and 40% less fat! (Although it begs the question, forty percent less fat than what?)

And, finally, the Number One Thing You Would Never Want to Buy from a Vending Machine:

Hot Dogs!
Can anyone say, “Eww?”

and now for something completely different

2006-09-17T23:37:00.000+02:00

I haven't spent all my time in this country at IKEA, despite the impression this chronicle might give. I've been to the Staatsbiblithek every day this week and accomplished a fair amount, and since I'll be out of town for a few days, I thought I'd give you something academic to mull over. In Das Kränzchen, one of the periodicals I'm studying, I came across a 1905 article called "From the lives of the Indians," about, you guessed it, American Indians. I found it well worth sharing.

It begins by describing the life of the "Squaws," detailing how they do all the work for the tribe except the hunting and the fighting and noting they are often mistreated by their husbands. The article then proudly declares that things have improved recently because the Indians are being "civilized." "Many red squaws like to play the 'great lady' just like Englishwomen, if their husbands have the means, something that is not uncommon in the so-called 'Indian territories,'" the article says. In the past Americans evinced an "utter disregard for the rights and requirements of the natives" but now are attempting "in every way to raise them morally and economically." This was achieved through endeavors like the Indian school at Phoenix, where Indians were given education and training to allow them to enter civilized society or to return to their tribes and better the position of women and "enable the spreading of Culture." The article then cautions that some students later return to "the old barbarianism...as if [they] had never been introduced to anything better and higher," but encourages Americans to stay the course nonetheless because we "have an obligation to 'make good'" for what we have done in the past.

In all the pretty rhetoric don't lose sight of the fact we're talking about the systematic destruction of a race, a culture, a way of life. Children were forcibly removed from their families and sent to the school at Phoenix to be "civilized" and indoctrinated in the lifestyle of white Americans. You can read more about that here.

While I'm not denying the magnitude of what Americans have done to the indigenous peoples of North America, what I find most fascinating in this article is the striking moral certitude of the author. After all, Germans were not more enlightened about race; they just hadn't had the opportunity to show their destructive potential. Because German reunification happened relatively late (1871, thanks Bismarck!) it simply couldn't pursue colonies as aggressively as countries like England, Spain and France, but colonial literature and orientalist literature by authors like Karl May were unbelievably popular. You notice the article mentions "civilized" Indians returning to their tribes to "spread culture," a statement that fails to recognize that the Native American tribes already had their own cultures, which were systematically being destroyed by the very schools praised in the article.

I wonder they couldn't rely on empirical evidence, for the article was accompanied by photos of the saddest looking Indians I have every seen. Photos like this:

The most remarkable thing, though, is that my limited experience has shown me many Germans still share the attitude of that article's author and feel they have the right to sit in judgment of Americans for this aspect of our history. Now we can debate forever about who does and does not have the right to judge someone else for an atrocity, but that's not the point. What's weird and strange (and fascinating) is how Germans feel they understand the Indians, as if they are somehow culturally linked. It's the only explanation for the insane popularity of wackos like Karl May and events like this.

Discuss.

tee hee

2006-09-16T16:28:00.000+02:00

I went to Spandau the other day to do some shopping. It's a fun, funky area with a huge pedestrian zone and tons of great shopping. There are parks, a medieval fortress, and an IKEA. What more does a girl need? Next time around I might live there. It's only about twenty minutes from the city center, but it feels like another city entirely. Anyway, while I was there I came across this place:

That's right, it's a plus-size clothing store called "It's OK." God I love this country.

What was Maureen doing down at the docks today?
	picking up the latest cocaine shipment
	cruising for guys
	visiting a library
	wandering around, lost

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