Schaufensterbabe

This Basement Girl Wants To Sing The Blues

2012-02-09T12:29:00.001-08:00

Since November I've been spending a heck of a lot of time below ground. I'm renting a small basement room at a juggling shop on Zossenerstrasse in Berlin-Kreuzberg where I've set up a photo studio for my vintage clothing shop, Curious Knopf. I also can store the clothes there as well as jewelry, photostones and other doo dads from Augenblickphoto which has made it easy to go to craft shows.

Yes, I have gotten more serious about this online business thing and I'd be loving it except, well, my sales are in the toilet these days. But then it is February. Maybe people are simply too cold to shop. I have a contract for the room until next fall and I still teach some for extra cash so there's nothing left to do but keep on trucking.

What I'm more disappointed about is singing, or rather, the lack of it. Marcio has been gone for over 9 months but every time I've tried to set up another music project with someone else it's just been bust after bust after bust. Isn't there anyone in Berlin who wants to work together on some songs that are a little bit jazz, a little bit blues and a little bit old school country? If so, what are you waiting for? Drop me a line. :)

A few videos of songs I would love to work on for your listening pleasure:

Altweibersommer

2011-10-04T13:12:00.000-07:00

For the last week or so we've really been enjoying what Germans call "Old Women's Summer" (Altweibersommer, though apparently it actually has more to do with spider webs.) In English I guess we call it Indian summer, though I never had much use for it since in California everything is either summer, Indian summer, spring or six weeks of torrential rains and mud slides. How's that for variety?

To enjoy it while it lasts we spent yesterday (which just happened to be Tag der deutschen Einheit) at Cecilienhof in Potsdam. We certainly weren't the only ones. When we were there we saw this ridiculously beautiful couple....

....the young and middle-aged....

....the middle-age middle aged....

...and of course the elderly. This is just a side note, but why do a lot of older Germans look like they spent their entire lives hauling sacks of potatoes and the only time they ever had fun was when their mother let them haul a ten pound sack instead of a 20 pounder? You can't see it so well on this picture, but when you zoom in this couple have such dour looks on their faces. In real life they weren't quite so bad. I think they even smiled at Miss Mia which, for a German, is almost like winning Miss Congeniality.

As much as I complain about Berlin winters (and, I assure you, I will again) if I ever were to go back to California I would miss autumn. Such beautiful light, crisp air, vibrant colors. California doesn't have autumn. The leaves on the Eucalyptus trees just dull a little. And then it's spring.

Needless to say, the girls had fun.

Right here they are getting excited because they just discovered a roly poly crawling across the bark. They are so my children.

Jasper's grandmother was once a lady-in-waiting at a castle a stone's throw from Cecilienhof. How did a California lass like me whose heart will always beat a little hippie end up with a Prussian count with aristocratic roots up the gazoo? Life is, indeed, full of surprises.

Fall light and Old Women's Summer we will miss you. Do come again.

Goodbye Hello Etsy

2011-09-18T11:34:00.001-07:00

This weekend I went to the Hello Etsy Summit on Small Business and Sustainability here in Berlin. I really had no excuse not to go, considering the conference was a ten minute bike ride from my apartment and I've also been selling in Curious Knopf and Augenblick Photo since Spring/Fall 2010 and in Schaufenster (for which this blog is named) before that.

I'm also thinking seriously these days about expanding both of my shops and (perhaps) even combining them with an actual Brick and Mortar shop here in Berlin. In the past few weeks I've been taking a workshop on Existenzgründung, i.e. how to go into business for yourself in Germany. Needless to say the bureaucracy, etc. is rather mind-boggling and worthy of a blog post all to itself, so I won't get into much detail here.

The conference was held at the eWerk in Berlin Mitte just around the corner from Postsdamer Platz. A former energy plant in gorgeous 1920s style, the building is now a conference center where they've apparently also hosted techno parties (or at least it looked like it from some of the images I found on google....) The plant was owned by AEG. I happen to know from a recent translation I did for the Visual History Archive on Forced Labor that AEG had a particularly shady past with forced Jewish and Polish Labor during the second world war, something that makes the topic of the summit all the more ironic.

The conference was split up in the main room (mainly for eating, chatting, networking, etc.), two rooftop rooms and the control room. I never went to anything in the control room, but it looked a lot like the one in Chernobyl pictured above. I know this because I went up their with my camera in hand no knowing that a) the elevator opens up into the middle of the room and b) a workshop was going on. Though I felt like I had landed in the middle of the "real world" in the Matrix, I was just too damn shy to snap a picture.

Speaking of too damn shy, that's one of the reasons I didn't get as much out of the conference as I might have since it definitely would have been a good chance to network. Although I am far from being painfully shy like I was as a teenager, I am still definitely introverted. Sometimes it really is a pain in the ass. I know a) that I am interested in people and like getting to know them and b) that once a conversation gets going everything is fine. But still, getting those conversations started of my own volition is just not that easy.

Then again, that's one of the reasons I decided to settle down in Berlin. In the US you're often seen as a freak if you are too introverted whereas in Berlin true extroverts are often seen as a pain in the ass. German (at least Northern German) culture is definitely introverted, so much so that, when with a group Germans, I am sometimes the biggest extrovert among them which is absolutely ridiculous.

The conference was basically split between the nuts and bolts side (PR, marketing, google and branding tips, etc.) and the inspirational, new economy side (but unfortunately not much "seller success" talks and workshops which would have been great.) On Saturday I did the nuts and bolts workshops which were interesting and helpful, albeit somewhat overwhelming. On Sunday I stayed downstairs for the inspirational stuff mainly because it was cold and rainy and I had come late and was too lazy to wait for the very slow elevator to take me up to the rooftop rooms.

I found Michiel Schwarz's talk on the Culture of Sustainism very inspiring and Biba Schoenmaker's talk about the Bread Fund, a trust based insurance for the self-employed in the Netherlands to be a brilliant idea I hope they soon implement in Germany, especially if I do go into business for myself full-time.

However, I found Douglas Rushkoff's talk a little over the top or maybe just too, well, American. Yes, it is important to know what the new social media is and how it defines us and yes, there are new possibilities for us to define ourselves and the new global economy in a different way but why does it have to be so big, so mind-boggling, so revolutionary? Maybe I've just become European enough to be turned off by this larger-than-life American presentation.

There is a reason I sell on Etsy and not on Ebay and that reason is I do like the personal, aesthetic and community aspect of it. I think a lot of buyers are drawn to this too. The concept definitely was new and is global-yet-local in a way that simply wasn't possible before. But why does it have to be life-changing, a whole new way of being, a revolution in how business is done? Etsy isn't going to change the world and I hope to god they don't think they are going to. If so, they will only be swallowed up by their own hype and fall into cynicism once the bubble bursts. Yes, the world can change and yes, you should live in a way that supports what you believe. But what the significance will be can only be seen once the events have already happened. To pump them up to the level of grandiosity as Rushkoff to a certain extent did seems ultimately hollow and destined for disillusionment.

Before I headed for home I went up the roof to take some pictures, at the time virtually deserted since everyone was downstairs drinking tea and staying out of the chill. I looked down at the hot air balloon I went to recently with Miss Mia and Little Li. Mia had wanted to go on it forever so finally we did. It was ridiculously expensive (6 Euros for each kid but 20 Euros for me for a 15 minute ride) and they played cheesy canned music at the top, but Mia loved every second of it.

I looked down on Trabi Safari reminding me I was on a rooftop of a building in the former East incredibly close to where the wall once stood.

And I looked down on this empty, over-grown lot, one of many hundreds in Berlin. Berlin may be changing. It may gradually be getting more expensive i.e. from dirt cheap to moderately affordable. But the city still has so much green. It has its problems, but it holds so much promise and possibility. We've got it good.

About Painting?

2011-09-13T15:01:00.000-07:00

On Sunday Jasper and I called in a babysitter and spontaneously went to the ABC (art berlin contemporary) art fair About Painting. By far the coolest thing there were these huge hamster-wheel like things that kids could roll around in inside a pool. It really made the coolest sound and made us (almost) wish the kids were with us or (better yet) that they would allow adult-sized people in those balls.

Looking at those things reminded me of the time I put one of my pet rats in a hamster ball when I was a teenager. He stayed perfectly still and stared at me with his beady eyes as if to say "You've gotta be kidding me."

That's pretty much the way I felt when I walked around the art fair. Although it was called "About Painting" there were only actually two paintings there done by a woman born in 1944 who, as my brother-in-law assured me (he is a painter), is not very trendy. Everything else looked either as if you would have to read a 14 page essay to understand it or like my 4 year old daughter drew a princess castle and my 2 and a half year old daughter then threw up on it. Please, people. The emperor is wearing no clothes.

Seeing such art (or the art world in such a state) reminded me a lot of studying music at Mills College. Although I studied classical singing, what the music department at Mills is best known for is electronic and conceptual music. When I was studying there I was pretty open and went to a lot of different kinds of concerts. I remember in particular one where 25 women in tuxedo shirts played electric guitars with bottles of nail polish and another (from a famous composer from the University of Arizona) with a video installation of ants crawling over a microphone half buried in their nest.

The problem? The guitar playing sounded like hideous noise and the ant recordings like vague scratching. I understand that both art and music can be boring when they are merely beautiful, but when all you have is concept then they are worse then boring. They are simply ludicrous. These days any one artsy fartsy usually calls themselves a designer instead of an artist like they might have 10 or 15 years ago. On Sunday I could see why. If About Painting was a mirror of the contemporary art world then art, in my opinion is dead. Joseph Beuys may have said everyone is an artist, but I think it's time we got over it and something like, um, skill came back into the picture.

Still, the fair was definitely worth a visit if not for the location alone. A former U-Bahn storage house, the rooms were spacious with beautiful light coming from the skylights and lots of warm gray tones abound. People watching was also definitely good. Lots of well dressed ingenues typing madly away on their Mac books. All gallery assistants I assumed.

And I saw a lot of really great shoes. Seriously. I almost asked a few women where they had bought them they were so damn gorgeous, but you just don't do that in Berlin, especially not at an art fair. Speaking of shoes, I never could figure out if the pair above were a work of art or if someone had strangely forgotten them. If anyone knows, please drop me a line. ;)

Bauhaus and What it Means to Me

2011-09-09T13:55:00.000-07:00

The word "Bauhaus" has meant a lot of different things to me in my life. When I was a teenage, I was a big fan of the band Bauhaus, much to my sister's chagrin. Listening to Peter Murphy have spastic fits about Bela Lugosi being dead was probably not the nicest thing to hear every morning through your bedroom wall. Although I didn't necessarily dress the part, my first boyfriend in high school did write me a poem half penned in his own blood (I thought it was the most romantic thing in the world) so I was definitely a bit of a goth girl. Hmm...Maybe that's why I still like to take photographs in graveyards.

Later I learned Bauhaus (literally "house of construction") was a design movement headed by Walter Gropius up until the 1930s. It is one of my favorite design styles by far, especially for architecture. I would love to collect more Bauhaus objects, but they're hard to come by, or at least at a decent price. Write "Bauhaus" in the description of anything on Ebay Germany and you're pretty much guaranteed a good price.

Shortly after I moved to Berlin I discovered a third Bauhaus, the Bauhaus Baumarkt. A huge hardware store a la Home Depot minus the plant nursery, Bauhaus is filled with things with sexy names like lumber, nuts and bolts and silicon tubing. Seriously though, I do find it kind of sexy there. Lumber smells great and all you see are men, men, men with an occasional lesbian mixed in for good measure.

Granted, the kind of men who loiter in Bauhaus lusting over power tools are generally not my type but I still definitely get a kick out of how surprised they are when they see me in there. I swear, at least three times I've had a man nearly drop his bucket of nails when he saw me, an ordinary woman, getting lost in the aisle of Bauhaus without a husband or boyfriend in tow. Bauhaus has so much testosterone in the air a (female) friend and I have joked all we have to do is walk into the place and our biceps start growing.

It was on a jaunt to Bauhaus a couple of months ago that I discovered these stones. I started mounting photographs to them and so far they've been pretty popular. You can find them at Augenblick Photo with many more to come.

Dreaming of Burg Stavenow

2011-09-05T14:52:00.001-07:00

Summer this year was far too short. And that's being generous. More cynical would be to say we were royally cheated. July and August were wet and cold, as though Berlin were convinced it were late October instead of the middle of summer. Never too easy for a California girl like me, though I have to say this year was the worst of all in the 12 years I've lived here. And that's saying a lot considering summer here is always an "optional" season....

Harder still was the fact that we aren't really going to take a vacation this year. The vacation to the Bay Area in October was canceled for a variety of reasons, cost being the highest on the list. Now that the girls are both over 2, their plane tickets are nearly full price which means to visit "home" we're going to have to save, save, save. Not so easy since I've taken for granted at least one visit a year.

But being a California girl and therefore a natural born optimist, I didn't give in to despair but rather gave in to Brandenburg. For those of you who don't know, Brandenburg is the former East German state surrounding Berlin. It's pretty rural with not much going on and, at it's worst, can be a little scary in a back-pages-of-a-second-rate-Dostoevsky novel kind of way. Still, after a little internet research I was able to find a few nice looking places where I booked us a room for a little mini vacation. The first place we stayed was Lychen House.

Lychen House is a beautifully restored old building run as a charming hostel-like hotel with the family (a German/New Zealand couple) living on the second floor. There was lots of great East German and antique furniture around the house and a common kitchen area with lots of light. The Catos (family who run the place) also have two children close to Miss Mia and Little Li's age, so they are definitely child friendly with plenty of toys and a sand box in the garden.

Though I do definitely recommend Lychen House highly, I wasn't all that impressed with the town of Lychen itself. More than a village but definitely not a city, Lychen was just the size of town that makes me nervous. I kept on feeling like something should happen but then realized that nothing ever happens in such towns and then I started feeling desperate. Jasper felt the same. The whole hostel-like atmosphere was also a little claustrophobic. Family life doesn't exactly leave much room for personal space, making you all the more desperate for it when on vacation. Conclusion: Although we found Lychen House lovely and friendly, we just didn't come away well-rested.

Thank God then, for Burg Stavenow. Burg Stavenow is a small hotel run in a 14th century villa lovingly restored by an older couple from Hamburg. The place is literally in the middle of nowhere in the section of the state called West Prignitz. Whereas most of Brandenburg has drab houses and dense, sandy forests which add to the overall sense of the-walls-are-closing-in-on-you despair, the West Prignitz has a lot of warm, red brick buildings and rolling meadows mixed in with woods, leaving plenty of room to breathe.

We stayed in the Stall which was this charming little cottage with an attic sleeping room and lots of natural wood. The place was remote with no television, no internet. Even Jasper's cell phone didn't work (I had conveniently forgotten mine at home.) That left us with some signs of civilization....

....but mainly nature, nature, nature.

The stall was also so beautifully decorated. It had an aesthetic rustic cottage charm with a South Western flair that reminded me so much of my grandparent's house in Flagstaff, Arizona; a beautiful place my father was supposed to inherit but then didn't.

....but that's another story and should be told at another time....

If most of Brandenburg is Dostoevsky in the worst sense, then Burg Stavenow was like a fairy tale in the best sense. We even took a coach ride through the wood with the retired forester, a man full of stories with a beard like Santa Claus. His wife is a weaver who spins her own wool. I bought a pair of slipper she made and wish I could live in them they are so damn comfortable.

And, of course, Otto lives at Burg Stavenow, the world's most friendliest dog. Little Li and Miss Mia may be pinching his ears here, but Otto is still, as usual, nothing but smiles.

On the drive back home we were reminded we were indeed in Brandenburg when we stopped in a village with a run-down Renaissance castle. The museum was only filled with relics from the GDR, so we decided not to go in. I had to change Little Li's pants but couldn't find a trash can anywhere. Finally I did come across one but it was padlocked shut. This town probably had 300 inhabitants. Why would they padlock their trash cans? To keep out pesky tourist's noxious diapers I suppose.

We walked past the castle to a soccer field where I found a pile of old discarded furniture. In cities these pieces would be called mid century and fetch a price but in this village they were mouldering on a stack of wood at the edge of the forest.

Brandenburg is sometimes still a place where time stands still and you can't breathe because even the air is made of concrete.

But thank god for places like Burg Stavenow.

Jesus, There's Good Music Out There...

2011-06-10T14:09:00.000-07:00

My guitarist Marcio has been gone now for a couple of months and I'm really longing to sing again. I had contact with a Chilean guitarist and met a few times with a French guitarist. Both seemed promising but both fizzled out. My latest lead is a (female) Japanese guitarist who wants to form sort of a bluesy rock band. I met with her yesterday and liked her a lot which was promising. You have to have that special click with the person you make music with and I might have that with her. But I'm not sure if I can sing the music she's interested in or if, ultimately, I would want to. Time will tell. I'll give it a try.

But that's not the point of this post. The point is I remembered how much fabulous music there is out there. It was so great to rediscover some tonight on YouTube surfing. Here were some of the highlights:

1. You Don't Know What Love Is, sung by Nina Simone

Gotta sing this one someday for sure.

2. Rocky Racoon

Sometimes I forget how great The Beatles really were and then I'm always astonished. They just wrote some damn good songs. I haven't heard Rocky Racoon in years. Check out the sweet video someone made to it.

3. Something's Got a Hold On Me, Etta James

Damn, how does she do that? Gotta love Etta James.

4. Strange Brew, Cream

My dad was a huge Cream fan. I inherited his Disraeli Gears album and the silver one (name escapes me) in high school. He was proud I could appreciate it. I wouldn't say it's my favorite music in the world, but Strange Brew definitely brings back some memories.

5. Get Out of Town, Holly Cole

Really like Holly Cole. Also haven't listened to her in years.

6. Make You Feel My Love, Adele

Ok, so I guess she's a superstar now or something. I don't find the song that great and find the violin cheesy, but I love a great voice when I hear one and that's what the girl has.

Curious Knopf on Heartsy!

2011-06-07T00:58:00.001-07:00

My vintage clothing and handmade jewelry shop will be on heartsy for the next couple of days. If you don't know what heartsy is, it's a platform where you can buy vouchers for store credit an various online shops. My voucher costs $22 and will give you $55 in credit. You can use it to buy any of the fabulous vintage European clothing and dirndls I sell as well as my handmade jewelry. There are also special perks if you get a friend to buy, so spread the word!

The vouchers are also valid for 3 months, so if you'd like to buy one now and shop later that's also no problem. But you better act fast. The offer is only for a few days and only 100 vouchers are available, so once they're gone, they're gone. To take a closer look, click here: Curious Knopf on Heartsy

Urban Farms and Other Such Such

2011-05-22T12:09:00.000-07:00

Tonight the storm that was brewing all day finally broke loose, bringing thunder and lightening and a sudden downpour; the works. But I love stormy weather, and besides, I'm inside now, typing up this blog post at my desk by the window, listening to the rain that has slowly stopped falling, hearing the splash of the cars driving over now-very-wet cobblestones...

The threat of a rain storm didn't stop us from spending a lovely late afternoon at Domäne Dahlem. Domäne Dahlem is a museum and still-operating organic farm that is affiliated with the Freie Universität in leafy, villa-filled Dahlem-Zehlendorf.

As a side note, the Freie Universität translates as the Free University which is basically true, since tuition is more or less completely covered by the state (I think you still have to pay a hundred Euros a semester or something like that, though there was wide-spread protest when they started charging this fee....) Most students shorten the name to the school's initials which, of course, are F.U. Kind of a problem in English for, well, obvious reasons...

My girls love Domäne Dahlem because it's nature but still urban. This cow, for example, was very country and picturesque, but also covered with graffiti which put them at ease.

I'm never sure if I should be alarmed that they are both kind of scared of wild, unbridled nature or if I should say "Go, city slicker kids!" and go break open a fire hydrant so they can play in the "sprinklers" or something. Not that we have fire hydrants in Berlin, but you get my drift...

Isn't Little Li's vintage 60s tennis dress adorable? Mia actually picked it out at a Salvation Army in San Francisco a year or two ago, but now it's her time to wear it. I'll really be sad when she outgrows it and it has to be retired. If only it were my size, but even if I do loose some more weight, I doubt I'll ever go down to a 3T. Darn!

Jasper prefers to be the man behind the camera, but I did get a few nice shots of his hands. Hands are always one of the first things I notice about a person. Before we ever fell in love or started (rather surprisingly to both of us at the time) going whole hog making babies, I noticed his hands and realized how much I liked them. I still do.

Happy last few weeks of spring everyone. Let's go ahead and rock the summer....

...and keep on wearing vintage. ;)

Pretty Punk Princess

2011-03-31T12:54:00.000-07:00

Jasper went from having a nasty case of the stomach flu to a cold that just won’t go away. Right now he’s in bed watching Casino with an onion tied to his head which has the unmistakable smell of old, fat man b.o. The onion thing is a typical home remedy against ear infection, at least in Germany. Do we do that in the U.S. too? I’ve lived abroad so long sometimes I don’t even know anymore.

He stayed home from work so when I got home with the babes I left them with him for twenty minutes or so I could go take some product photographs in my studio, a.k.a. the stairwell of our apartment building which has amazing natural light. Sometimes I get annoyed when the neighbors have the gall to, I don’t know, come home and walk by too often. I mean, can’t they see I’m working? Jeez…

Anyway, at some point when I was photographing some new necklaces I want to post soon I heard a lot of screaming and crying soon followed by kicking and hair pulling I’m sure. To give Jasper a break I asked Mia if she wanted to come to my “studio” and have her picture taken. Of course, she was wearing her princess dress.

She would wear that dress 24/7 if I let her and yes, I’ve washed it plenty but it’s pretty much permanently stained. It’s her Snow White dress (at least in her mind because Snow White wasn’t so into pink puffballs as far as I can remember) though not the Disney Snow White because I’ve realized recently that I don’t really Disney, though of course as a kid I did. The Snow White Miss Mia knows is the regular old grim Grimm’s version complete with the “bring me her liver” line.

The funny thing is she has no idea how punk she actually looks. Granted, the punk look also comes from the 99 cent lipstick she likes to constantly "refresh", though I’ve told her repeatedly there is a very fine line between princess and clown. I especially love the second photograph in this post. She looks like a fluffy pepto-bismol-clad Patty Smith.

Little Li joined us at some point, though she was dressed in normal clothing as she calls herself the monkey princess meaning she would rather climb and jump and make various squeals than deck herself out in feathers and sequins. I loved taking the pictures though. It something we’ll have to do again.

A Fool For A Fool For Spool

2011-03-26T15:58:00.000-07:00

Spring has finally arrived in Berlin which means me and the girls get to spend time hanging out in the Hof again.

Hof is the German word for courtyard and ours, luckily, has a sandbox filled with toys from the two small pre-schools on the ground floor. Look at my neighbors bikes there in the corner. I have not lived abroad so long that I don’t know how deliciously European they look together.

Less appealing are the trash cans a mere few feet from the sandbox. I’ve decided to block out how kind-of gross that is…On a lazy afternoon, these few feet of sand can be quite the godsend.

Check out Baby Li’s bad ass cowboy boots.

Like daughter, like mother.

Miss Mia is personally more into Princess Crowns these days. We went on a princess crown run today to Deko Behrendt, an amazing, old school Berlin costume and party supply shop in Schoeneberg.

I knew they would have princess crowns there, but I wasn’t quite prepared for HOW MANY they would have. Seriously, at least 35 different varieties in all sort of color combinations, length of feathers, degree of sequins, etc. Go Deko Behrendt! Luckily for Mia Lilly lost interest in hers in about 5 minutes which meant she could wear both, creating one mother of a princess crown.

But I digress. I started this post to write about an old and dear friend’s new shop, A Fool For Spool. She sells hand-painted spool and knitting dolls there. I was the fortunate first customer and got my doll, Rich Relation, in the mail a couple of weeks ago.

Here she is, hanging out in front of a traditional German Osterbaum…

Ok, so it’s actually a living Christmas tree one of our neighbors didn’t have the heart to throw away which we recently decorated with plastic Easter eggs we got from the drugstore. Mia is pretty proud of it.

As for my Rich Relation, she is oh-so-proper and very well painted. She also dealt well with the fact that Lilly calls her “Humpty Dumpty”….

Meaning that she gets put in all sorts of precarious situations....

…............

And yet she always comes out looking this good. Hoorah! Thanks Janet. You are so talented. :)

Cute Dog Alert

2011-03-15T14:19:00.001-07:00

Today I was walking out of my favorite graveyard in Bergmannstrasse where I was taking photographs for my Berlin Cemetery Series jewelry when I saw this little guy hanging out in the window of Klassikerfundus.

I’ve walked by Klassikerfundus many a time, but only through looking for the link to add to this post did I realize they rent design classics out to movie sets. The little pooch looked so cool and collected among all these mid-century masterpieces. He seemed a touch perturbed when I pulled out the camera, but not so much that he barked or ran away. In the photograph below he did become interested in an old lady’s Pekinese who was walking by, but again was oh-so nonchalant about his interest.

When I ask Miss Mia if she would rather have a dog or a cat she always answers “Mama, I want a dog AND a cat.” She and Little Li really seem to have inherited my love of animals. But Jasper isn’t really an animal person and I can’t stand litter boxes which rules out a cat. A dog in an apartment is also not ideal for several reasons; constant walks, scratched floors, and, well, the smell. Yes, I happen to know for a fact that dogs do kind of stink. It’s that yeasty, stale popcorn, dirty socks boy-like smell and you have to love them loads to put up with it. I have been told that some dogs don’t have this smell, but it’s usually those over-bred toy breeds. Sorry folks, but I find any dog that could easily be beat up by a (small) cat kind of embarrassing….Poor Miss Mia. To get that dog AND cat she really might just have to wait til college.

Berlin Graveyard Series

2011-02-27T13:20:00.001-08:00

Anyone who has ever spent time reading this blog knows I have a thing for graveyards. Then again, it would be pretty hard not to have a thing for graveyards considering two of the most amazing ones in the world are less than a ten minute walk from my apartment. Art Deco crypts galore; rusted ornate wrought-iron fences; lichen-covered weathered angels; cemetery romantique to the core.

Not surprising, really, that I’ve started making “graveyard-inspired” jewelry. To make it I form polymer clay (my new obsession as you can read here) into a handmade mold, then press this against a one graveyard engraving or another.

I add a little gold or bronze pulver, bake the pendant then sand it down for a distressed look and voila, the Berlin Graveyard Series of jewelry has been born.

These are my first three pieces which I will be listing over the next week in Curious Knopf. Many more pieces are to come, especially now that spring is really just around the corner, so stay tuned. :)

Thanks Etsy Germany!

2011-02-24T11:36:00.000-08:00

Hello, my dear blog. Would you believe me if I told you I’ve missed you? I have. Then again, I’ve been pretty darn busy. Lots of practicing for my gig not to mention a lovely, low-key 37^th birthday. The concert was really great and lots of fun. Jasper took some videos of the second half, so I’ll post them here later. I have a couple of leads for new musicians to work with including a French blues guitarist and a jazz guitarist from Chile. Thanks Craigslist for sending me all of these fabulous foreigners! The other good news is I was recently interviewed for the Etsy Germany blog. You can read the post here, but since many of you good people don’t speak German, I’m posting the English answers here in a slightly abridged version. So here goes:

Tell us a bit about yourself.

Hi, my name is Rebeccah von Schlieffen, though my maiden name is Dean (my father always swore he was James Dean’s 4^th cousin, though somehow I doubt that’s actually true….) I’m originally from the San Francisco Bay Area, but I’ve lived in Berlin now for eleven years. The plan was to come for a year or two after I finished college, then head back to the states for graduate school, ideally an MFA in creative writing. But a year or two became four years and seven years and then all of the sudden I was having babies. The typical expat Berlin story really.

Apart from selling things on Etsy what do you do? What’s a day in your life look like?

Luckily my average day begins with my husband bringing me a cup of coffee in bed because he knows I am virtually useless before 9 o’clock. (Did I mention I love my husband?) He does the morning breakfast shift with our two red-headed girls and then I, nicely caffeine-charged, take them to the Kita at 9:30. When I come home I usually check my shops to see if anything happened while I was asleep and answer convos or deal with orders if anything did. After this I usually either work on some of the short stories I’m writing, take photographs either for myself or for my shops or practice singing. I have a degree in music and am a classically trained singer, but my heart lies more in jazz. For a little less than a year I’ve been in the guitar-voice duo Marcio and Rebeccah, though Marcio is unfortunately going back to Brazil soon so I’ll be looking for new musicians to work with. I also like to bike aimlessly around the city which is somewhat dangerous considering that I can (literally) get lost just going around the corner. At 2:30 I pick my daughters up. To break up the monotony of playgrounds, playgrounds and more playgrounds I like to take them to museums. Our favorites by far are the Naturkunde Museum and the Technisches Museum, both places where I’ve taken lots of photographs. Any posting, crafting or packing is generally done once the girls are in bed, sometimes into the wee hours of the night.

You have three shops on Etsy. What are you selling in these different shops? Is there any advantage in having more than one shop?

The oldest of my three shops, Curious Knopf, is a vintage clothing and handmade jewelry shop. I’m in the middle of re-structuring it right now and in the future will sell only vintage Trachten and a lot more handmade jewelry, especially pieces made with copies of vintage photographs from my collection. Schaufensterbabe is my vintage housewares and home décor shop. Although I sell a variety of vintage awesomeness there, I try to really find pieces that are specifically German in some way. My third shop, Augenblick Photo, is where I sell my original photographs both as prints as well as mounted on wood blocks or made into jewelry. For me it is ideal to have three shops because each of them serves a different need. Curious Knopf is for my love of Trachten clothing (seriously, shorten a dirndl, leave off the apron and you’ve got yourself one killer dress!) and handmade jewelry. I love making jewelry out of polymer clay and vintage materials, but would rather not have a shop that sells only jewelry. Schaufensterbabe is for my closet kitsch side and my compulsive need to buy more and more vintage oddities even though I’m not a big fan of clutter (I’m not buying it for myself, I’m buying it for my shop…) Augenblick Photo is a showcase for my photography. Honestly, I never even thought anyone would buy anything there, but recently it’s been getting a lot of attention which is great since it’s my own work. Of course, the disadvantage of having three shops is that it’s harder to do any promotion, or at least a lot more work. I tend to neglect a shop for a while in favor of one of the others which does definitely impact attention and sales. I did try putting everything together in my old shop, Schaufenster, but mostly only the vintage (mainly clothing) got views or sold. I wanted my art to have a platform of its own.

Where does your love for vintage come from?

I think it’s always been there. I have some photographs of me when I was two wearing my great grandmother’s wire framed glasses from the 1920s. Apparently, I wouldn’t take them off for days. My grandmother also had a drawer filled with old black and white photographs and I used to spend hours looking at them. Sometimes I would ask her to tell me who the people were, but mostly I didn’t even need to know. I found it so fascinating that the photograph was of a person who had once lived. What were they like? Who did they love? What was their favorite color? A story was in there someplace. In high school I started collecting vintage photographs myself and wore a lot of vintage clothing and it’s continued ever since.

What goals do you have for the future? 

I would like to write a novel someday and continue to sing and perform in either a duo or a small band. I hope to also expand my businesses and come up with more and more ideas for things to create or new ways to present and package what I already do make or find. Maybe I’ll also open my own brick and mortar store with a friend. And, of course, I’ll continue with the greatest job ever: being a mom to two creative and mischievous little girls.

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Bis bald. I promise! :)

You Are Cordially Invited....

2011-02-09T12:43:00.001-08:00

For those of you in Berlin, it would be great if you would come to our gig on February 20th at 4:30. We (Marcio and Rebeccah) will be performing at Café Lyrik which is at Kollwitzstrasse 97 in Prenzlauerberg. For those of you who are not in Berlin, why don’t you just hop on a plane? I’ll help set you up in a room with a view; affordable; centrally located. Promise. After all, this is our first and last gig. Marcio will be returning to Brazil at the end of March. We got a couple of other offers but only for the summer. Sigh...I’m definitely sad, but also revving to continue….

Please come. You are oh-so-cordially invited. You can even RSVP on Facebook here if you so desire. And if you are a guitar or piano player on the look-out to start a new duo or trio with a singer, such as myself, then you are very, very, very invited. ;)

Below are some of the songs we will be performing, sung obviously by other people. Happy listening!

Sorry for the "V" word...

2011-01-28T15:46:00.001-08:00

I’m sure to any Americans reading my blog the mention of Valentine’s Day by now is, well, nauseating. I always hated the holiday when I lived in the states way back when (jesus, it really HAS been way back when…) They don’t really celebrate it in Germany so I haven’t been bombarded with hearts and pink and reminders to make reservations, etc. which makes the hating far less strong. Actually, I think they do call it Valentin’s Tag or something but that was just some desperate marketing ploy from a card company or candy factory or something and marketing just doesn’t have the same clout with pragmatic Germans as it does in the U.S.

Still, I do love the rather timely romantic longing in the two photographs here. I took them of a much larger painting at the De Young Museum in San Francisco. The man in the woman are in the same room in the original painting, but I like that I photographed them separately like they are thinking about each other desperately, wondering all along if the other one is doing the same. I have the pair for sale right now in Augenblick Photo under the title Is He Thinking About Me As Much As I’m Thinking About Him? Also made a wood block set with the photographs that I will be posting soon. So far the wood blocks seem to be something people love to heart but never buy, but what the hay? They’re fun to make. Many more to come. :)

Blame it on Knete

2011-01-20T15:54:00.002-08:00

As you might have noticed, I haven’t been around for a while. Partly it is my computer’s fault as it still is having problems and really, really hates blogger and facebook for some reason. But the main reason for my absence is Knete.

Knete is the German word for Playdoh, although the German version is much harder and doesn’t have that Playdoh smell. The girls got some from Santa (ok, Uncle Uli. Shhh! Don’t tell!) which means bits and pieces of it are all over the house. We had some good days making snails and the cobras Nag and Nagina from Riki Tiki Tavi. I think there is still a hunk somewhere, part of a now dilapidated princess castle, in a corner somewhere gathering dust.

Anyway, what I found out pretty fast was that I LOVED playing with Knete, maybe even more than M. and L. I even kept a piece in my pocket to play with absentmindedly while picking up some fruit at the Markthalle. One thing led to another (i.e. I did lots and lots of internet surfing) and I stumbled onto polymer clay.

For those of you who don’t know, polymer clay is a clay-like-substance that you can mold and then bake in a conventional oven. I was excited about the idea until I saw the brand and a shudder went down my spine: Fimo. In the late 80s Fimo beads that looked like this were all the rage.

I found them very cool and tried to make my own, but they just ended up looking like ugly lumps which made me very, very angry. Fimo. How could I be into some old junk like that? I put my late adolescent hatred aside and bought a few packs and found, indeed, that I love working with it. In fact, I love it so much that I’ve started making a whole new series of jewelry based loosely on the material. Here are some photographs of one of my recent pieces.

I know it may sound crazy, but I’m thinking of opening a new etsy shop for these pieces (crazy because I already run 3 shops) but actually I’ve found it suits me to spread myself around. If I’m in the mood for some vintage Trachten and playful jewelry I spend time in Curious Knopf. If I’m in the mood for spooky images and natural history I mosey on over to Augenblick Photo. If I need to get my kitsch fix and check out some vintage oddities that I had to buy for some inexplicable reason, then I saunter on down to Schaufensterbabe. I’ve never been a one trick pony though I tried for years to make myself into one. So much freedom came when I realized it was never going to happen. The key is doing whatever I happen to be into at that minute one hundred percent

My new shop will (most likely) be called Dear Dante and will be a home for minimalist modern jewelry that mixes metals, polymer clay with a dash of natural history. The pieces are also going to be of higher quality, probably mostly sterling silver. I’ve ordered some supplies and will be oxidizing them myself (thank for the info internet!) with something called Liver of Sulphur. Stinky I’m sure, but also lots of fun. In the words of Eloise, Mia’s new-old obsession, boredom is not allowed. ;)

The Modest Photographer

2011-01-02T12:24:00.001-08:00

Let’s face it: I’m the girl of a thousand hobbies. I think it all started at an early age when I got into cross-stitch (I could stitch a mean teddy bear, I tell you…) From there I moved to collecting rocks, painting rocks, paint by number, collecting bird’s eggs from their nests and then trying to hatch them on a heating pad turned up on high (this particular hobby I’m not all that proud of.) Even at six or seven I was interested in the vintage photographs my grandmother kept in a drawer in the den of her house in Phoenix. This later turned into collecting vintage décor and housewares and wearing vintage clothing.

Besides running three shops on etsy I also write fiction (mainly short stories, though I would like to take a stab at a novel), sing in a duo with an acoustic guitar, make jewelry (and am interested in learning more about metal smithing) and, of course, also am an avid photographer. Although I don’t really like the word “hobby” I guess that is what they all are, though I do pour my heart into all of them.

Jasper, on the other hand, has only one hobby: Photography. I love his photographs. They are more cool and aesthetic then mine, but really create a mood. But he’s very modest. He doesn’t think he’s good at anything other than taking portraits of the children.

In defense of his work, I am posting some of his photographs (the ones seen here) in my photography shop, Augenblickphoto. Most likely they will sell as well as my own photographs, i.e. not at all, but it will be swell to have them all together. I’m also planning on making jewelry with our photographs similar to the ones I made with vintage photographs at Curious Knopf. But who knows. Maybe I’ll wait until I’ve thrown myself into metal smithing. ;)

Fighting The Christmas Blues With Lots Of Old Junk

2010-12-23T05:51:00.000-08:00

When I was a kid, my dad had some sort of grad student position at this weird institute at the University of Arizona. Sometimes we went with him to work. I remember a lot of big gray machines with colorful wires, metal shelves filled with iron pyrate (i.e. Fool's Gold), an old tank from Vietnam and a vat of liquid nitrogen. If we begged him hard enough, he would put some object into the liquid nitrogen; a piece of plastic pipe or, one time, even a rose; and then show us how it had turned to ice.

My brother was crazy about going to my dad's work but, although I liked it too, I remember getting bored pretty quickly. Somehow I had the feeling it was more for boys. Plus, I started having nightmares that my hand got dipped into liquid nitrogen and then melted. Because of this, his job (and science in general) didn't really win any brownie points with me.

I think it was these memories that stopped me from going to the Deutsches Technikmuseum for so long. I'm always looking for ways to escape the mommydom drone of playgrounds and ice cream parlors and the museum is actually within walking distance (well, sort of...) from our apartment but, I don't know. A technical museum? The place had too much of a whiff of boys and dirty socks. If someone had told me it's actually Ye Olde Junk Shoppe, I would have gone a lot sooner.

We went today and found lots of old machines and phonographs and televisions and printing presses. Cool, decrepit vintage treasures that the girls-all three of us- really got into (the picture above this one shows Lilly a few seconds before she got chewed out by the security guard because she just couldn't resist those oh-so-shiny typewriter buttons....)

The building is also really amazing; the old part is all red brick with warm wooden floors and antique, hand-painted signs. From what I could gather, it used to be a gigantic stable for a large part of the city's horses. Apparently there is also a windmill and giant park, though we'll have to wait til spring to check that part out.

They also had a lot of dioramas. Dioramas. Why did they ever fall out of fashion? Even the name is cool. Speaking of which, I have this one for sale in my shop right now. Hope to find more later. Mia definitely agrees with me on this one. She told me she thinks all museums should have some of those little houses.

We ended the day with two greasy schnitzels at the museum's restaurant. Nothing like deep fried pork and crinkle fries on a foggy Christmas Eve Eve. Santa would be proud I think.

Merry Christmas everyone. Hope you survived the holiday stress and are going to take it nice and easy wherever you are. See you again Zwischen den Jahren (the German saying for the time between Christmas and New Year's, literally "Between the years.") :)

White Christmas

2010-12-20T12:13:00.000-08:00

A true-blue native Berliner, my ex-husband's mother used to complain about just about anything. One of her favorite complaints every year was our lack of a White Christmas. "Na, typisch. Schon wieder kein Schnee zu Weihnachten. So is' det Leben."

One Christmas Eve we woke up to find the garden covered with a blanket of snow. But my ex-mother in law still found a way to complain about it. "Tja, endlich!" It's about time....

I've lived in Berlin for almost 11 years, but except for last year, that was my only White Christmas. Most other years it rarely snowed and, when it did, the snow only stayed on the ground for a couple of days.

But last year there was such a crazy amount of snow for so long and this year seems to be going in the same direction. I took a jaunt through the local graveyard again today on my way to the U-Bahn to get Jasper a frame for his Christmas present (Shhh...Don't tell!)

It's the same graveyard from the post a couple of weeks ago, so you can see how much snow has fallen since then. You might be expecting me to complain, since I've definitely been vocal about how much I hate winter. But actually, I'm loving it and this although my back is constantly aching because of all the buggy pushing/sleigh pulling through the sludge (oh how German of me to complain about such things!)

Glühwein, sledding, icicles, oh my! ;)

Computers Are Of The Devil

2010-12-13T15:36:00.000-08:00

When I was a child in Arizona we went to a store-front hippie church called The Vineyard. I'm a little vague on the details, but I remember at some point this holy roller gave a special sermon on all things that are of the devil. On that list were electric guitars, barbie dolls and telephones, though telephones might just have been a rumor spread by some of the girls in my Sunday school class. I'm not sure what ever happened to that holy roller, or even what his name was, but if he has since added computers to his list of Satan's little helpers, I most definitely would agree with him. My computer seems to have come down with a bug making it crash at any given minute (though it has the hardest time with e-mail and facebook....) Just writing this post is an act of courage and no, I don't dare add a picture to it. A tech guy is coming (hopefully) sometime next week, but until then things will be pretty slow for me in blog-, e-mail- and etsy- land. Merry Christmas everyone, and say your prayers for me to Saint Clive, patron saint of the computer chip. ;)

Why Don't We Learn From the Bears?

2010-11-29T04:13:00.000-08:00

Seriously people, I think bears are really on to something with this hibernate-through-winter thing. Wouldn't it be great if, say, shortly after Thanksgiving we all retreated to our warm and comfortable, albeit musty, caves and curled up next to our loved ones not waking up again til the middle of April? What would we really be missing out on anyway? Christmas? Overrated. New Year's Eve? Such a bore. President's Day? Please. We could pig out all summer, go to bed fat and wake up thin and ready to party. What more could a little old person ask for?

As you can see from these photographs winter has already come to Berlin pretty much full force. I will always have way too much California/Arizona in my soul to think much of this season. As a child, I spent many a Christmas Eve swimming outside when we went to visit my grandparents in Phoenix over the holidays. In my East Bay adolescence/young adulthood we would talk each year about maybe going up to "visit" the snow. "Hey, why don't we drive to the Sierra Nevadas say "hi snow!" and then drive back home?" Sounds good. Little old East Bay me just has no need for it covering the courtyard of her apartment building....

I finally broke down and bought a pair of imitation Uggs today. Uggs stands most definitely for god-awful-ugly, but the darn things are pretty warm and I decided warm, un-stylish feet are better than stylish, numb blocks of ice posing as feet. Still, winter does have some highlights like Glühwein and taking the girls to Hasenheide for sledding. They say this winter is supposed to be the worst one in a 1000 years (go German optimism!!) so we should have plenty of frosty-building fun....

When the sun actually shines it's also not that bad. It finally did on Sunday and I took a little jaunt with Baby Li through the graveyard on Zossenerstrasse Ecke Blücherstrasse which is about a five minute walk from our apartment. Several famous people are buried there including Felix Mendelson and Fanny Hensel. So many art deco crypts and sculpture of weeping angels and Victorian wrought-iron fences that are deliciously decrepit and run-down. I had fun taking some ghostly self-portraits in the glass door of the old crypt below.

Yes, when the sun shines winter is bearable, but in Berlin it rarely ever does. Today it's back to leaden gray skies and darkness like when Sam and Frodo got too close to Mordor. The weather forecast says it should stay this way for a while. Nice. April is how many months away? Crap. I shouldn't even start having such thoughts. No matter what anyone ever says, no matter how excited people get about skiing or snowshoeing or freezing their asses off for some unknown jolly reason, this is my two cents:

Winter is for the birds!!

Warm and Safe

2010-11-20T15:34:00.000-08:00

I just realized that it's been a while since I wrote in my blog about my two beautiful babes, Miss Mia and Baby Li. Lord knows, we've been spending a lot of time inside these days what with there not being a sun anymore and everything....Most afternoons we go to the Marheinke Markthalle, the indoor market about a ten minute walk from our apartment. It's a bit pricey of course, but you can get great produce there and a decent cheap lunch at one of the many food stands. They also have an ice cream place (gold star from the girls) and a toy stand with lots of cheap goodies (double gold stars from the girls). Mia especially loves it there. On any given afternoon I might say to her, "Mia, do you want to go to the library/museum/playground/zoo?" to which she'll inevitably answer, "No mama, I just want to go to the Markthalle."

One of her new favorite games is to roll this jumbo silver marble, which I bought for her at (you guessed it) the toy stand, down the stairs and across the hall. She's very careful not to get in anyone's way and there's plenty of room, but she (or rather I) still get some scowls from the sour puss Germans. I'm sure I'll get Berliner Schnauze about it someday (Berliner big mouth- I SO need to write a post about this...) but I already know what my answer will be: Eine kinderunfreundliche Kultur ist eine tote Kultur." A culture unfriendly to children is a dead culture.

Besides irritating Germans with her child-like frivolity (a lot of Germans, or at least Berliners, still most definitely believe in the virtue to be seen not heard and of course kept on a short leash....), Miss Mia is also very much in love with her stuffed duck, LuLee, which she chose out herself from a thrift store in Oakland. That he's a duck is no coincidence considering that she was obsessed with this vintage cartoon of the Ugly Duckling for a good four months.

The first time she saw it she came to me and burst into tears. "Mama, nobody loves that little duck. He was all alone." For weeks afterward she was obsessed with the good mama versus the bad mama and how important it is to keep your babies warm and safe, pretty heavy stuff for a three year old. But she's such a sensitive little soul. And a good mama to her little duck I must say. She actually lost him today on the way zum Bäcker with daddy. Jasper re-traced his steps while Mia got frantic, but no LuLee anywhere. Finally, he saw a woman who lives at the home for the handicapped on Blücherstrasse where the duck was lost and for some reason he had a hunch. He asked her if she had seen the duck and, low and behold, she pulled it out of her purse. Later Mia told me: "Mama, that lady was so nice. My duck was all alone and she took such good care of him. She kept him warm and safe."

While Mia is sensitive and sometimes thin-skinned, Baby Li is a gregarious little creature that just lets everything roll off her back (and also doesn't take her mama's scolding the least bit seriously...) I often call Mia my little cloud while Lilly is my little mountain. Solid. Compact. Jolly enough to constantly make even Berliners smile. She looks quite a bit like I did as a child and I love to dress her up in vintage dresses I find on my thrifting escapades. This little cherry red rick rack number is exactly like something I would have worn circa 1976.

While Lilly also likes watching the Ugly Duckling, it doesn't have the same effect on her as it does on Mia. Mostly these days she likes to watch these cartoons we found about Ganesha and Krishna on YouTube (god bless YouTube!) Really great stories. I love what brats the Hindu gods sometimes are, not to mention the fabulous Indian accent and turns of phrase. The two videos below are her two current favorites.

(I'm not sure why Brahaman's two hot young daughters were any good for "settling the burning sensation" in Ganesha's body, but maybe you have to be a god to understand these things.)

(Hmm...That snake also has four hot young wives. Maybe they are onto something.)

In addition to being schooled in Hindu mythology, Lilly seems to have her first pre-school crush. The lucky lad is the new one in the group, a Lebanese boy named Malikikin. Lilly literally called his name in her sleep a few nights ago and since then says several times a day: "Malikikin is a nice boy." Ah, young love.

Well, I better be off to bed as it's quite late. Tomorrow we might bake cookies again with the vintage cookie cutters I bought from the shop the Pink Cobweb when I was in California. I'm pretty sure I had that pig when I was a kid. The others in the set include Humpty Dumpty (both Mia and Lilly went through a huge Humpty phase, though it has died down a bit), Jack and Jill, a windmill and lamb and a rather sinister looking clown. I remember how much I loved using cookie cutters when I was a kid and how beautiful the cookies always were. A few days ago the three of us put on our aprons from another etsy shop, Boojiboo, and started baking. I never realized how hard it actually is to use cookie cutters. Jack and Jill looked like monstrous blobs and Humpty was hardly recognizable. But the cookies still tasted good and the girls had fun. Come to think of it, that's all that really matters.

Waters of March

2010-11-16T15:09:00.001-08:00

Below is a little video I made with Marcio and I performing The Waters of March, Tom Jobim's classic tune. The tracks were recorded separately (i.e. him on the guitar first then me singing) which was sort of schizophrenic since it's important we play together. The guitar and voice are sometimes a tiny bit out of sync, but then again, maybe I'm just hearing this because I know what a strange experience it was to record it like that....The photographs in the video are from my trip to Cheyenne, Wyoming and Western Nebraska last year. Really, I just used them because they are on my computer and were easy to upload, but they actually somehow fit perfectly with the song. I posted a video of another song on my vintage blog, so click here if you'd like to take a look. :)

Taking Pictures

2010-11-12T10:06:00.000-08:00

I haven't been doing any singing really since before I left for California in late September. When I got back, Marcio (the guitarist) was in Brazil. He got back on the 4th November but we finally managed to meet up for the first time today. Both of us were a little rusty, but it was good to get back in it.

At the end we took these photographs in the stairwell of my apartment building. I love the warm gray color there not to mention the fabulous natural light. Our landlady is a super anal doctor living in Switzerland who inherited the house (I think) from her grandmother. She can be a pain sometimes (and will probably be a nightmare if we ever decide to move...), but the plus side is she keeps the house (and stairwell) in beautiful condition.

I use the light in the stairwell all the time to take photographs for my shop. Nice to use it now for a different reason. I'll be setting up the MySpace page with the songs we recorded and some of these pictures later this week (and then posting it here of course. ;) ) My favorite picture is the first one because it's just a cool photograph. We'll probably choose another one, but I'm not sure which one I like best. I'm leaning towards the second I think....Anyway, it would be great to hear which one is your favorite. Vielen Dank und bis bald!

Have I Ever Mentioned How Cool The Ethnologisches Museum is?

2010-11-07T14:21:00.001-08:00

I already know the answer to the question I posed as the title of this post which is, yes I have. Still, I went to the Ethnologisches Museum on Friday and was once again blown away with how amazing it is. First of all, the building is a true architectural mid-century gem, with amazing light and amazing spaces. The museum is also in the b.f. middle of nowhere (ok, on the campus of the Freie University, but that's also in the b.f. middle of nowhere....) so it's less likely to be overly buzzing with tourists than any museum somewhere around Friedrichstrasse.

On Friday, in fact, I had the place nearly to myself, though I did just miss a large group of rowdy 13 year olds (the danger of going on a school day in the early afternoon). "Shit!" I thought when I saw them at the entrance, but luckily they were leaving, not coming. Otherwise it was just me, a handful of older scholarly looking people and an art class making large coal drawings in the South Seas room. There was also another photographer, probably around my age, silently taking different shots in different rooms.

Among many others, I took some photographs of these 19 century African masks. I'm going to post some of the photographs for sale in my new photography shop, Augenblick Photo, but none of these here cut the mustard. I'm having a professional print done of each photograph I'm interested in offering for sale, but also being extremely picky in which ones I choose. I actually totally love the photograph of the beaded mask, but when printed it's just too out of focus in not the right places. Glad it at least found a place on my blog. :)

Halloween In Germany: Adults Attack Children

2010-11-03T03:34:00.001-07:00

Halloween has slowly been making it's way into Germany in the past ten years. The first few years I lived here they started selling ceramic jack o' lanterns and other knick knack junk. Then people started having parties, you could buy actual, none-edible pumpkins ("halloween" pumpkins are too stringy to eat and not the kind you can make pumpkins soup out of which a lot of Germans make at home), etc. etc. This year was one of the first where a fair amount of kids went trick or treating. Below is a newspaper article from the Berliner Tagesspiegel (Daily Mirror) that I have translated for you to give you an idea of how it went. (The information in parenthesis are my own comments.)
Halloween: Adults Attack Children
The Halloweenization (Germans have this super annoying habit of changing nouns into verbs...It drives me nuts, especially when I'm doing an editing job and they are doing it all over the place in English too) of Germany has been met with resistance. In several cities (though thankfully this time not in Berlin!!) adults beat up kids. An older woman from Steinenbronn in Baden-Wuerttemberg felt threatened by the children who demanded "Suesses, sonst gibt's Saures" (trick or treat), as is done in the American tradition. She grabbed her walking stick and struck back. One child suffered a minor head wound. Similar incidences occured in Boeblingen and Esslingen where a 79 year old even used pepper spray against three boys dressed in costume. In Regensburg in Bavaria a 51 year old beat two ten years olds with his walking stick (a little young for that I would think, the walking stick I mean) after the boys rang his doorbell. Both boys received bruises and a bump on the head. In upper frankonia Rehau a house owner slapped three boys who rang his doorbell and then proceeded to chase them.
The police however also reported many incidences of vandalism and criminal activity on Halloween night. In Bergheim in Nordrhein-Westfalen three men dressed as vampires and ninjas robbed a taxi driver. In upper Bavarian Neufahrn several teenagers set up a street blockade with two cars and attached trailers. In upper fallischen Schwandorf several teeangers threw firecrackers into trash cans and mailboxes (gasp!). In Oy-Mittelberg (lord, what a name) in upper Allgaeu three boys blew up a jack o' lantern with cherry bombs (quick, call the national guard.) In Pilsting in Nieder Bavaria two teenagers threatened a group of children with a knife and air gun. They wanted the candy they had collected.

(Oh those wacky Germans! As usual, taking everything far too seriously on every front....)

p.s. Speaking of Germans, Jasper pointed out that it's strange that we say "trick or treat" when logically it should actually be "treat or trick." Honestly, I had never thought about it before. I guess it just doesn't have the right kind of ring to it.

Further Proof That I Am Out Of My Mind

2010-11-01T13:33:00.000-07:00

Ok, so maybe I'm being a little bit hard on myself. But you definitely could say that I am at least indecisive. Just a few short weeks ago I wrote a post about how I was consolidating my two etsy shops and how much it drove me crazy trying to run two shops, blah blah blah. But since I've been back I've opened not one but two new shops which means I now run three. Without further ado (and before you start questioning my sanity) I present them on this humble Schaufensterbabe post.

New Shop Number 1: Schaufensterbabe (Son of Schaufenster)

Yes folks, I have opened another German kitsch and vintage housewares, art, toys and books shop. Of course, I could have just re-opened the now defunct Schaufenster, but I would prefer to have one started in this tax year....

I don't have much listed there yet (opened it on Saturday morning) and most of what I do have listed is left overs from Schaufenster. But I noticed they didn't get much attention in Curious Knopf as I suppose people only really go there for the vintage clothing (jewelry also doesn't sell that well, though it gets a lot of heart, but no, I'm not opening a separate jewelry shop. Got to draw the line somewhere!) I already did some good flea market shopping on Sunday and will soon be listing, among other things, some German dice games from the 30s and some sweet original fairy tale illustration from the 1940s, so stay tuned.

New Shop Number 2: Augenblick Photo

Some photography does sell well on etsy, but it tends to be photographs that are heavily digitally enhanced, usually with pastel colors. 9 out of 10 seem to feature a ferris wheel (personally, if I see another photograph of a ferris wheel I think I might hurl. I found them pretty the first twenty times maybe, but now I just can't take it anymore...)

I think I've sold all of one photograph in the two and a half years I've been on etsy (and it was digitally enhanced, come to think of it...) but I like having a place where I can showcase my work, especially the new kick I'm on of taking photographs of art fragments (i.e. details of statues, paintings, etc.) It's a little like cheating since the work of art already exists, but you definitely learn a heck of a lot about framing.

Oh, what fun. ;)

Sugar, Fat and Pills

2010-10-24T12:49:00.001-07:00

A few days into our (very) recent trip to the U.S. Jasper turned to me and said, "Sometimes I think the U.S. is all about sugar, fat and pills." Two things should be mentioned. First off, Jasper is most definitely not one of those arrogant European snobs who tend to be blatantly anti-American (and yes, there are plenty of those, though their statements and opinions are often incredibly ignorant.) He loves the U.S. and is always praising the friendly, open West Coast manner, one he clearly prefers to the stick-shoved-way-up-into-the-nether-regions-of-the-anus of your typical Berliner. In fact, there have been times that I've been the one who had to remind him that there are some things wrong with the country.

Secondly, we stayed almost the entire time with my mom in Alameda, California, not in some redneck hamlet in Western Texas. Her Victorian apartment is a ten minute walk to restaurants, cafes and shops where we went everyday as well as Crown Beach, a sandy, albeit somewhat dowdy strip of beach facing the Bay. So much of the food and produce in the Bay Area is fresh and delicious. San Francisco is filled with wonderful restaurants and we (once again) had one of the best meals of our lives at The Olema Inn near Point Reyes National Seashore.

Still, so many of the portions in the restaurants where we ate were absurdly huge but also so delicious that we of course ate every bite. And even in the ever-environmentally conscious Bay Area people still use their cars A LOT. So much of our time was spent driving from point a to point b, walking around a little and then getting back in the car and driving home. That combined with the monstrous meals and sweets that were beyond sweet made us both soon feel like a big slab of butter in desperate need of being churned....

Still, we probably would have been just fine if we hadn't watched The Terminator one night when we stayed at a beach house in Sea Ranch which we had arranged through a home exchange (more on that later.) There we were, cuddled up on the futon with a glass of wine, wondering why the hell the Süddeutsche Zeitung named Terminator one of the best 100 movies of all times (though I used to love watching Predator and Total Recall with my dad and brothers, so I wouldn't call myself an Arnie snob....) What was much more disturbing, however, were the commercial breaks.

Every single time there was at least one spot advertising some sort of miracle pill. Having trouble with occasional abdominal pain? Try Lexadrin. Allergies got your goat? Give them a run for their money with Alepren. Can't get it up? Go for Viagra (well, duh...) I like the racy disclaimer that you should consult your doctor if you have an erection for over 4 hours. But then again, all of the ads say you should consult your doctor. What they don't mention is that he or she is likely to receive a kick-back...

I've seen these ads before of course. I think they started in the late 90s right before I left the country for good. Still, it's shocking to see how much they have increased. As of now, it is still illegal to advertise for prescription medicine in Germany. Frankly, I think that is a very good thing.

The Importance of Luften

2010-09-26T05:10:00.000-07:00

Jasper is definitely not a fan of German culture. He is always complaining about his fellow countrymen (especially the Prussian Berliners) and how they have a pickle up their butt (his version of stick up the butt which I find so adorable.) He hates how serious and uptight most people are. Everything is always such a big deal. We both also detest the extremely un-charming German obsession with always telling the "truth", especially to family and close friends. "The truth" is invariably just your own self-righteous, overly critical and unfeeling subjective opinion. Sorry people, but sometimes a little old white lie is just oh-so-much more civilized....
Still, there are of course ways in which Jasper is quite German. One of them came up recently when we got together with my Brazilian guitarist and his wife. Marcio (the guitarist) mentioned that he was hungry and Jasper's inevitable first question was "Do you want a warm meal?" The Brazilians haven't been living here very long and don't really know many Germans (in Berlin it's very easy to live exclusively in an expat community without much exposure to actual Germans....) and it was clear they found the question somewhat strange. As far as I know, Germans are the only people who talk incessantly about the temperature of their meals. The way it should go is breakfast=cold meal, lunch=warm meal, dinner=cold meal. If you are a little more relaxed, you might eat two warm meals a day (say lunch and dinner) but definitely never three. I've never figured out what they think will happen if you do this: indigestion? gain weight? go nuts? Basically, I think it's just not done.
I didn't say anything to Jasper about this one because, after all, I decided to live here which means I just have to put up with some of the bizarre cultural quirks. Still, sometimes I can't help but roll my eyes and say, "God, that's so German!" When I do, he inevitably gets annoyed. Although he criticizes his own culture non-stop, he gets sensitive when I do (unless I'm agreeing with some of his complaints of course....) But I know how he feels. When I first moved to Berlin I was pretty disgruntled with a lot of what was going on in America, especially politically, and I complained about it to anyone who would listen. But when people came up with there own criticisms I would often get annoyed. Then again, most of what they had to say was usually just based on arrogant ignorance they had acquired from a five day trip to New York at seventeen and from watching too many episodes of Bay Watch.
Before I moved to Berlin, I never thought of myself as a typical American, but of course I was. Maybe not in my attitudes and beliefs (I would also never in a million years have described myself as bubbly....)but in my habits both socially and in practical matters. These habits are so deeply ingrained that you are completely unaware of them. When you first run into the differences you tend to feel hurt and isolated and later kind of pissed off (especially when you are aware of what the actual differences are.) "These people are crazy!" you'll start telling yourself. Your country of origin becomes saintly in a rose-colored glasses kind of way whereas the local culture is such a constant pain in the ass....
Of course, since I've lived here for ten years I have become somewhat of a Mischling, a mixture of both cultures. I'm sure I've complained on this blog before about the obsessive German habit of "Luften", i.e. opening the window and airing out the room several times a day for around ten minutes, even in the dead of winter when it's freezing outside. Although this habit has definitely made me roll my eyes a thousand times, as well as protest loudly in the middle of February, the last time I was in the U.S. I was kind of shocked by how stuffy and mildly stinky all the rooms are. When I recently went to Marcio's apartment to sing, it was obvious that he also never does the Luften (maybe it is only a German thing....) because the air was pretty stale. My first thought was that I should ask if I could open a window but then I caught myself and was pretty shocked. "Crap. I'm becoming German."
On Wednesday I'm flying to California for three weeks. I'm curious what other things I might find strange there inzwischen. I'll let you know when I get back as this is probably my last post until then. lG, Rebeccah ;)

Duo Under Way Plus Thank You YouTube

2010-09-23T05:26:00.000-07:00

So yesterday my guitarist Marcio and I spent 4 and a half hours in a recording studio recording 3 songs. The studio was in the basement of a very nice English guy's house way the heck out in Kleinmachnow, a suburban area to the south of Zehlendorf. We were both pretty exhausted at the end but we're pleased with the results. We'll put together a MySpace page and then go out into the town and try and get ourselves some gigs. Today I spent a while browsing through YouTube for some new material. God, I love YouTube. I've made the greatest discoveries on there. One of the songs we recorded was Cucurrucucu Paloma. I apologize in advance to any Spanish speakers out there as I'm sure my Spanish is just atrocious. If it makes you feel any better, I learned it by listening to Pedro Infante:

The Cary Grant of Mexico, Pedro Infante was another YouTube discovery I made. I love all the old 50s movie clips with him singing and the Mexican beauties swooning at his feet. Of course, our version took out the mariachi and is closer to the version sung by Caetano Valoso:

I also would like to record another traditional Mexican song, sung here by the lovely Lila Downs who I discovered on- you guessed it- YouTube:

I also would love to sing a song by Roger Miller. Everybody knows King of the Road, but Miller wrote so many other amazing songs. Truly one of the greatest singer-song writers ever. I have to talk to Marcio about it, but I think I'd love to do Shame Bird:

While we're on the subject of country and self-pity, I would really love to sing There Stands the Glass, sung here is a less-twangy-than-usual version by Ted Hawkins:

And, last but not least, some fabulous gospel. Here is Dianne Strong singing Wade In the Water:

Anyway, I'll keep you posted when we have our MySpace site up so you can have a listen. :)

My Three Favorites: Indulgences

2010-09-16T14:03:00.000-07:00

Tonight I thought I'd write another post in My Three Favorites series, this time seeing if I can make Martin Luther turn over in his grave. Ol' Marty, time to put on your hair shirt because my topic (one quite dear to my heart) is indulgences. Being the person I am, it was difficult to bring the list down to a mere three, but I think I still managed to pick the top of the list. Here goes.

1. Ice Cream

Yes, my dears, Rebeccah likes it cold. Some of my fondest memories from childhood involve ice cream. My favorite flavor at Baskin Robbins (back when it was still called 31 Flavors...) was Daiquiri Ice, probably for its ridiculous neon blue color more than anything. I also liked to stir the ice cream for long time until it turned to "pudding" (i.e. melted.) I started this indulgence with a photograph of Rocky Road because that is one thing I sorely miss living in Germany. No Rocky Road ice cream and also no Peanut Butter and Chocolate (actually, Europeans can't seem to believe peanut butter and chocolate taste good together, but that is a different story...)
Unlike its American counterpart, where the rule is the chunkier the better, German ice cream tends to follow the smooth, gelato-style thinking. Although it took some getting used to, I now love the stuff just as much. This summer I got a scoop with the babies at the organic ice cream stand on Bergmannstrasse nearly everyday. These days I'm working on loosing some weight, something that does not come easily to me since I love to eat and would never consider seriously dieting (who needs the torture?!?) Basically, I have to have a reason to loose weight and my reason these days is that I love posing in the clothes for my vintage shop. If I lost another 20 pounds I could even pose in some of the mediums which would be most convenient. I got the babies a scoop today and was able to resist one for myself even though they had Pflaume Zimt (cinnamon plum) in stock. Quite a feat, I must say. ;)

2. Wine

People, seriously, I am a total wino. There is a fantastic Spanish wine shop on our street and, together with my brother-in-law, my husband and I keep the place in business. I have struggled some with this drinking thing. Severe alcoholism runs on my father's side of the family and, when you have that in your genes, you just can't help but wonder. Still, I really only drink wine. I can't remember the last time I was actually drunk (though I suppose tipsy is another story....) I don't drink to forget or suppress emotions. I drink because it relaxes me, because I like it, the taste and stuff. You know.
Then again, isn't that exactly the kind of thinking an alcoholic would have? "I may drink, but it's not like I'm as bad as that guy," they say, pointing to some bum who has just barfed all over his thread-bare trousers. Alcoholic comparisons. Alcoholic justifications. No, of course not. I don't have a problem. Or so I thought, until a week or so ago. I put the babies to bed and, as usual, went to the kitchen for a glass of wine. But then I saw we didn't have any. Although I could handle it, I was really (even physically) disappointed. "Crap," I thought. "I'm addicted." We had a conversation about this recently with some German-French friends of ours. Once, when their eldest son was in the sand box, he made a motion like he was pulling something up, then made a sound like a cork coming out of bottle. "Crap," they thought. "How embarrassing." Still, how bad is it really? I mean, a wino isn't as bad as an actual alcoholic (she says as she finishes her third (but final) glass of Vina Tobia Rose for the evening.....)

3. The Internet

Up until a few years ago I wasn't really an internet person. I did the chat room thing for a month or so back in the early 90s (what was the server called? Ex something...) and ended up with this ridiculously large bill. After that it was strictly e-mail for the most part. For the first five years I lived in Berlin I didn't even have internet access at home. I would check my e-mail at the library or at university for the brief time I studied here. Before I met Jasper I did all my internet business at one of the Lebanese Internet cafes on Sonnenallee. I was always the only woman in there. I'm pretty sure all of the Arab teenagers in the place were secretly looking at porn.
I had a conversation a while back with a friend about what we would do if there were no longer any Internet. Even the mere thought filled me with a small wave of panic. Not only do I run an online shop and write two blogs, I also am always looking up things on Wikipedia and occasionally pushing that StumbleUpon button when I need to veg (Internet has completely replaced television since we don't have one.) Right now I'm listening to my "To Write To" playlist on YouTube. What would I do without YouTube to show the babies vintage cartoons and Sesame Street for a guaranteed 20 minute break (three cheers for YouTube babysitter!!)? I've done all the social networking stuff from MySpace to Twitter to Facebook, but after a while I got tired of all of it. Still, I need my Internet time. I really don't know what I would do without it. Internet, you are 2 good 2 be=4-gotten. ;)

Unmade Beds

2010-09-15T01:24:00.001-07:00

I had to cancel one of my classes last week because of the killer cold I got. To make up the missed lesson, we decided to meet for a movie yesterday evening. We decided on London Nights, as the British movie Unmade Beds is called in Germany (Germans often exchange English film titles for another English film title, which I've always found bizarre.) It rained all day yesterday and I had a feeling I might be going to the movies all by myself. But I still pulled out my Union Jack vintage rain boots and headed off to Moviemento near Hermannplatz (apparently the oldest movie theater in Germany, or so I found out when I read the ticket.) One faithful student did turn up, so together we sat on the plush red seats and watched the film.
I don't think I've seen a film that reminded me so much of what it's like to be in your early 20s than this one; all the confusion, the rambling, the intensity. The story follows the naive 20 year old Spanish party boy Axl, who is in London to find his long lost English father, and Vera, a moody French girl who is getting over recent heartbreak. Both of them live in a London warehouse squat where no one pays rent. I definitely related more to Vera than Axl. I never was much of a crazy party girl. I had my adventures, but sometimes I wish I had been more wild. But I was a lot like Vera: serious, intense, broodingly emotional though I didn't often show it on the outside. I remember exactly how it felt to be in love the way she is with her nameless lover and the achingly, mind-blowing emptiness when neither of them can find each other.
Since the 80s are still so "in", the movie also sometimes felt like deja vu, but more from a time when I was 6 or 10 or 14. The wanna-be Joy Division band made me roll my eyes as did some of the fashions and sunglasses. I still can't wait until the hipsters pick out a less annoying decade to cloth themselves in.....Would I ever want to be 23 again? Hell no. Not in a million years. But I still enjoyed watching a film that reminded me of exactly how it felt to be 23 way back when.

Unter die Haube

2010-09-12T12:25:00.001-07:00

This afternoon, at around 3 o'clock, I heard loud music being played on the street a couple of houses down from ours. The music was with drums and bagpipes and obviously oriental, so I wondered what the heck was going on. Something perhaps to do with Ramadan? I went outside with a somewhat sick Miss Mia and we soon saw that it was a Turkish wedding.
Everyone was so happy and colorfully dressed that even the local Halbstaerker (bad boys) paused from making mischief for a few minutes to take a look. It was amazing to see the bride in a big white dress after she ist unter die Haube gegangen, an idiom for getting married in German (literally it means "she went under the big, old-fashioned hair salon hair dryer.")
Normally Miss Mia would have been fascinated; we often pass by this shop that sells these ornate, often gaudy dresses for Turkish weddings and celebrations and she always says we should buy some of those beautiful princess dresses; but her cold made her too cranky. After two minutes she said she just wanted to go home.
If it weren't for etsy, I probably would have forgotten what a huge industry there is around weddings in the U.S. You can't be on the site for very long without running into something wedding related; wedding cake toppers, wedding place setting, bridesmaid's dresses, a gift for the best man. Everything you could imagine to make her special day all that much more magical oh yeah, and quickly empty out your wallet.
The first time I got married it was an elopement in Portland, Oregon. We went to the courthouse two days before and they didn't even ask to see my husband-to-be's passport which I found incredible. He could have been some crazed European axe-murderer, wanted in ten states, but they didn't care. Just as they asked if we would prefer to be married in the courthouse or in the privacy of our own home, they led a young hippie guy out of the courtroom in leg shackles. "It wasn't me, man. It wasn't me," he protested. "Uh," we said. "We'll pay the extra 50 bucks and get married at home." The judge came over on March 11th with a cast on his right arm and married us in my sister's living room with only her and her then-boyfriend as a witness. In Oregon they are obsessed with there pioneering history. They will slap a wagon train on anything if they given even half the chance. Our wedding certificate had (you guessed it) a wagon train down on the bottom next to our names.
Though my second wedding was planned and more thought out in many ways, it still was held in a courthouse (though the gorgeous one in San Francisco instead). Only my family was there, we went out to dinner instead of having a reception and I wore black instead of white. But your average (German) Berliner can definitely relate much more to either of my weddings than they can a Turkish one. Most people don't get married here anyway, not even after they have kids. If they do, it would almost always be a no-frills version at the courthouse (you have to pay church taxes in order to get married in a church and they are pretty high.) I've tried to provoke some of my German students in classes before. "But weddings are about romance. They are about tall cakes and one hundred guests and big dresses." In every case they looked at me like I was crazy. If they ever were going to get married (and that was a big "if") it would only be for the lower taxes. Though I am most definitely not a wedding person, this has always made me almost a little sad.

When I walked out of the apartment today, the groom had just set free a dozen white doves. Ooos and Ahhs went through the crowd as they flew to freedom. I'm glad I saw it.

The End Of Summer

2010-09-09T14:10:00.001-07:00

A little over two weeks ago, summer told me it was just going downstairs for a quick pack of cigarettes, but it never came back. I feel pretty burned. No one is ready for colds and icy drafts and bundling up in sweaters and slippers even inside the apartment (as lovely as our apartment is, it does get chilly here in the winter. Need to better insulate those old wooden windows this winter round!) No one is ready for the endless leaden gray of a Berlin winter sky. If summer, alas, did have to end they could at least send us the beauty of fall: the golden light, the crimson falling leaves, the rich damp smell of moss. But, until now, we have only had a few meager glimpses. Berlin, curse you for torturing us this year completely with your weather mood swings (they say global warming, I say weather insanity....) And curse you ten times over for making me, a native Californian, talk constantly about the weather (something we never do as, of course, we take it for granted. Even when there's mudslides, we at least now they're fleeting come spring in February....) like some cantankerous old broad!

Germ-Infested Fan Causes Circulation Problems!

2010-09-02T11:39:00.001-07:00

So this week and next week I'm teaching an intensive English course at the Technical University here in Berlin. To be honest, I was really dreading it. There was a time when I really loved teaching EFL, especially at the TU because mostly we have college students and we have no boss and can design the courses any old way we want. But I got burned out a couple of years ago and was definitely sick of students. Since the German government pays you to stay home with your baby the first year and I had two babies pretty much back to back I really haven't taught much at all in three years. I've been enjoying it a lot more than I thought it would though. The students seem so young that I have a fondness for them as if they were my own children. And it can be interesting: In class, earlier this week, I was reminded, even after ten years in Berlin, how impossible it is for me NOT to tip.
In Berlin tipping is pretty much optional and usually something people do based on the quality of the service (not that there is usually such a thing here....) The most common thing is to just round up the bill: say your bill is 7.20 Euro, then you just leave 7.50 and it's perfectly ok. (If you gave a waitress in the U.S. a thirty cent tip she would probably come out and personally kick you in the ass!) On Tuesday we did an activity on cultural differences where they had to guess certain things. One was "It is customary to tip 10% in the U.S." Pretty much everyone thought this probably was true, but when I told them it's actually more 15% to 20% they were pretty shocked. "And if you don't tip, it's pretty much like giving the waitress a slap in the face," I told them. No matter how bad the service might be in Berlin, no matter how long it takes to get my cappuccino or how surly the hipster waiter might be, I just can't not tip at least a little bit. If I don't I always end up feeling guilty. We are simply trained that way.
Although everyone seemed to accept my advice and now (hopefully) will not have any waitresses cursing under their breaths about those cheap-ass Germans if they ever visit the U.S., they found the answer to the following statement hard to take: "If you feel dizzy or light-headed you tell people you have circulation problems." All of them immediately shook their heads yes. "Of course. Everybody knows that." Ah, the old German Kreislaufprobleme. (I already wrote a post about it here.) Anytime you feel a little bit tired, run down or burnt out it is clear you are suffering from circulation problems. Duh. Everybody knows that. When I told them that no, not everybody knows that and as far as I know Germany is the only place where people of (literally) all ages are constantly complaining about this, they got that look students get when they just can't believe something, a look like they are sucking very hard on a lemon. "If you tell this to people in the U.S. they will probably at first thing you have a disease or serious health condition and later think you are strange because only an 80 year old woman would continually complain about circulation problems." Lemon-sucking faces all across the room.
I always find it funny when an entire culture more or less agrees on something that is kind of kooky (there are Germans who don't constantly say they have circulation problems of course, but they wouldn't find it weird if someone else did.) For example, the typical American fear of germs. I remember seeing girls in high school who wouldn't even touch a doorknob or towel dispenser. Even toilet seat covers (something they don't even have in Germany) weren't good enough protection for them. They always squated over the toilet, too afraid to put their butts on that germ infested plastic, which usually meant they peed all over the seat (and of course never cleaned up afterward....Thanks ladies.)
When I was in college I worked for a couple of years at the children shoes department of Nordstrom in very suburban Pleasanton, California (with a name like Pleasanton what else could it be?) Most of the other girls working there were girly suburbanite frosted hair types. All of them had a bottle of hand sanitizer in their purse which they obsessively squirted on themselves. "Geez, people. Chill out. A couple of thousand germs ain't gonna hurt you," I always wanted to say. Mostly I just rolled my eyes. I'm not even sure if you can get that hand sanitizer stuff in Berlin, but if you can, people would probably think you were a germ-phobic freak if you were constantly using it because, well uh, you kind of are. Sorry folks, but it's true. Over-the-top disinfecting is what has led to that super bacteria that is resistant to antibiotics anyway. People, please, knock it off! (Yes, I'm well aware there might be a few people who stumbled onto this post, hoping for some tips on how to sterilize their laptop, who are now making that lemon-sucking face.)
I read recently that, in South Korea, people believe it is extremely dangerous to sleep in a closed room with a fan. Any number of life threatening things can happen such as fire, asphyxiation or hypothermia. As with circulation problems in Germany and germ phobia in the U.S., if you go to a local doctor he or she will be filled with all sorts of useful advice, i.e. won't tell you you're off your rocker because they are off theirs too.
If I ever were to teach English in South Korea and were to tell my students that I've slept in a closed room with a fan running hundreds of times without suffocating, freezing to death or being burnt to a cinder, I'm sure I'd get lemon-sucking faces from there to Mars. Well, what can you do? People are strange. ;)

My Three Favorites: Museums in Berlin

2010-08-26T10:59:00.000-07:00

Berlin is definitely not a city short on museums. I like to think I've been to all of them at some point, but in gathering photographs for this blog post I discovered there is even a Museum für Kommunication (Postal Museum). Just look at all of the colorful mailboxes they have there! I've also never been to the Technisches Museum (Technical Museum), though maybe I'll be spared that one since I have daughters and not sons. Anyway, over the years I've developed a definite fondness for several museums and have gone back again and again. Oddly enough, each of them is housed in a truly amazing building, but then what museum here isn't? Maybe the Postal Museum. I'll check it out and let you know. ;) Ok, here is my little list:

1. Das Museum für Naturkunde (The Museum of Natural History)

Anyone who has read this blog with any kind of regularity is probably saying to themselves "Well, duh!" True, this is not the first time I have blogged about the Naturkundemuseum. It's one of my girl's favorite stomping grounds; indeed, we even went there today which was how I became inspired for this post. The building is colossal and Victorian, filled with train-station-like skylights and wrought iron staircases. The displays are musty and impressive if not somewhat outdated. But hey, Miss Mia already knows the names of all the planets and what they look like (Jupiter is her absolute fav.) When she's learning about the solar system later in grade school she's probably going to roll her eyes and say, "Gawd, that's so 2010!" Did I mention it only costs 5 bucks admission? What more could you ask for.

2. Martin-Gropius-Bau

Martin Gropius Bau (building) was built in 1881 by the architect Martin Gropius, father (I think) of the architect Walter Gropius of Bauhaus fame. The building has revolving exhibits, usually charging different admission prices for the one upstairs and the one downstairs (or a combi card, of course.) One of the best exhibitions I've ever seen was held there in 2000. It was called Sieben Hügel (Seven Hills) and it took seven different concepts (core, jungle, space, civilization, belief, knowledge and dreams) and explored them through art, noise, light, object and room design. Truly mind-blowing (obviously since I remember it ten years later.) I've seen many good exhibitions there since, though none in particular come to mind. Recently they had a Frieda Kahlo exhibition which was nearly impossible to get into (a four hour wait to buy tickets I heard.) I would have to be a pretty hardcore fan to wait four hours for anything, so I didn't go. Frieda Kahlo was definitely a very interesting person, but I've never really been all that impressed with her work. As a good friend of mine said, "In the end, it's just a whole lot of chick with a uni-brow."

3. Das Ethnologische Museum (The Ethnological Museum)

One of the world's biggest museums for ethnology, the ethnological museum is housed in leafy Dahlem on the campus of Die Freie Universität (The Free University), founded by us Amis for Berliners after the war. The museum is across the street from the John F. Kennedy Institute for North American Studies which, by the way, has the most amazingly kick-ass library and, no, you don't have to be a student to use it. The museum is in a beautiful 1960s building and is separated into several wings: Asian (lots of pottery and kimonos), South Seas (scary masks, shrunken heads and full-sized boats), Native American (tee-pees, headdresses, and one full-sized horse), just to name a few. They have a pretty amazing Voodoo exhibition going on right now. I went there yesterday with the babies (lots of rain these days=lots of museums...) You go under a blue curtain to this dark maze they built with particle board walls. Inside are lots of life-sized (or, rather, people sized...) statues of spirits and demons. Definitely interesting, but not exactly toddler-fare (some of it even spooked me out.) When we were finished, Miss Mia said, "Mama, I don't want to go back to that museum until I am older." If you do go to the museum you definitely need to also go to the Dahlem Dorf U-Bahn station around the corner. Dahlem (part of the district of Zehlendorf) is quiet and affluent, filled with impressive villas and an older, academic crowd (not many students actually live there), but the benches at the train station are in the style of the museum. They look like African art, some of them with fairly impressive breasts and watch out or you may end up sitting a large wooden penis (no lie.)

*Disclaimer: My absolute favorite museum is still C/O Berlin, the museum for contemporary photography, but I'm heartbroken that they will be moving out of the Postfuhramt building. The Postfuhramt was the post office of the Kaiser (emperor) and the building is gorgeous and in a decadent state of post DDR decay. They will be kicked out come March because the owners probably want to make it into some trendy Vietnamese fusion restaurant or something. I'm sure they will also renovate the building to death until it's lost nearly all its charm. The area around Oranienburgerstrasse has been irritatingly touristy for a long time, but without C/O Berlin or Tacheles (renegade art squat that is also loosing its lease), it will be a lost cause. Don't even bother going there (though Dada Falafel is still pretty damn good!)

A Plague Of Paparazzi Parents

2010-08-22T13:12:00.001-07:00

Today Jasper, I and the girls went out to visit some friends who had rented a house in the Choriner Schorfheide. The Choriner Schorfheide is an rural area in the former East German state of Brandenburg. When you drive through the area you come across village after village, some of them picturesque, most of them depressing, the locals (if you even see them because they seem to stay in doors) often making neanderthals look overly civilized. Still, the nature there is truly beautiful and the area is well worth a visit, especially from city slickers like ourselves. We met our friends at this lake. It was a beautiful late summer day with just a dash of Herbst in the air, so all was well.
When we later drove to the woods, Miss Mia got a little spooked out. We've experienced this before when we rented a place in the same area a few months ago. Ten minutes into our hike she said she was scared and wanted to go back to the nice apartment. What can I say? I'm raising city kids. She was ok at the lake, though I suppose that's probably because it at least had a parking lot.
At some point I took her to this little shed up on the hill to take some photographs. She's used to this since both Jasper and I are hobby photographers. A little to the right. No, a little to the left. Now hold still. She knows better than to give us an overly posed smile.
Part of me thinks this is great. We have so many beautiful photographs of the girls and it's always the perfect opportunity to practice a little portrait photography. Still, the other part of me has to wonder, Jesus, are we warping them? From the very beginning we've both been constantly shoving these lenses in their faces, the plague of the paparazzi parents.
A while ago, I saw a documentary about the Japanese photographer Nobuyoshi Araki.
He takes photographs of everything, including the death of his wife, including his many adventures with prostitutes. Although he has sometimes been criticized for this, he said his impulse has always been to document everything. I think I can understand him.
For example, shortly after I took this photograph I confiscated Little Li's pacifier because I wanted to take better photographs. But the photographs I ended up taking were mainly of her protesting, her arms outstretched, screaming for her pacifier. Sometimes I've taken photographs of the girls crying instead of comforting them. But then, I think such photos are important. These are the times we spend together and I want to capture them.
But, getting away from my thoughts and back to the day, Little Li and I took a nice walk in the woods, me in only my bikini, she in only her diaper. We climbed together for a while on these fallen logs and, of course, I took more photographs.
Someday, in her early teenage years, Little Li is probably going to want to have a killer tan but look at how white this arm is. A pale complexion and red hair. Sorry Little Li, god or whoever might be up there will say, it ain't gonna happen!
Here is a little self-portrait of my foot. I'm sure it's not hard to imagine that I have never ever in my life had a pedicure....
Later our friends went into the forest and collected some Steinpilze (I don't know what the English translation is, but big-ass mushrooms would suffice I think.)
We all went back to the house they had rented where they started slicing up the mushrooms for a pasta sauce or a soup or to lay out on a loaf of bread. Who knows? But we had to be heading back as the babies were getting mighty grumpy (and grumpy babies forced to stay up often means grumpy babies for a couple of days=not worth the risk!!)
On the way back we passed by this eerie swamp. The water was completely covered in duck weed and all the trees were dead (drowned I suppose, though it seems strange that a tree could drown.) Every once in a while you could see a ripple under the duck weed or an occasional abrupt leap from a frog. Creepy to say the least....
Good night, freaky swamp in the Choriner Schorfheide. Good night friends who have now most likely fallen into a gorged-with-Steinpilze-slumber. Good night babies, your paparazzi parents will greet you in the morning. Good night, anyone who reads this blog, oh yeah, and thanks for reading. :)

(Re)Discovering Crafting, Berganza and More

2010-08-18T13:55:00.000-07:00

So it's been a tough couple of weeks because the Kita (pre-school) has been closed since the beginning of August. People who don't have small kids can't possibly know what it is like to have them full time. Not one iota of down time ever (and don't you dare try to take one because you'll just be asking for trouble!!) Baby burnout hardcore to say the least, plus an absolute respect for any parents who are doing this full time with no nannies, babysitters or pre-schools....

To give myself a break, I did get our fantastic Ami (American) babysitter to come for three hours this afternoon. What a fabulous time that was. I rode my bike through a virtual rainstorm but I didn't care. On Goltzstrasse in Schöneberg I wrote a bit in Cafe Savo (mentioned in my previous post) but mainly just cycled around. I (re)discovered the fantastic old school Bastelladen (craft store) Hobbyshop Wilhelm Rüther on the same street. Great stuff at great prices and a true Berliner charm, with middle-aged ladies with thick Berlin accents getting excited when you pay in cash because they get to use the antique cash register from (I would guess) the 1950s. Anyway, it inspired me to make some new things for Schaufenster for pretty much the first time this summer.

At home I poured myself a glass of wine and started crafting, with one of my YouTube playlists playing in the background. I hadn't listened to this particular playlist in a while and I made another great (re)discovery of one of my favorite classical singers, the Spanish Mezzo-Soprano Teresa Berganza singing several songs composed by Federico Garcia Lorca (yes, as in the famous poet. Apparently he also sometimes composed songs.) Truly beautiful. I thought I'd post them here because they just might change your mind about classical singing (assuming that, like most people, you don't particularly care for it....)

My Three Favorites: Cafes in Berlin

2010-08-11T13:31:00.000-07:00

So those of you out there who read my blog have probably figured out that I write posts here fairly (ok, somewhat) regularly but what you most likely don't know is that half the posts I think about never get posted. Sometimes I'll be strolling down Bergmannstrasse or on the M140 bus on the way to the zoo and I'll think "Hey, xyz would make an interesting blog entry." Sometimes it's about something that has moved me or that I found amusing. Often it's about something that annoyed the hell out of me. Still, either way many of the posts die somewhere between Fürbringerstrasse and my apartment. I don't know if I just have a short attention span or if they simply weren't meant to be....

But I'm glad to be writing this post tonight. I would like it to be the first in a series of "My Three Favorites", but time will tell if this is going to happen. So, here goes: My three favorite cafes in Berlin.

1. Monsieur Ibrahim Kaffeebar, Körte Strasse 8, U-7 Südstern

What's there not to like about Monsieur Ibrahim? Besides having great ambiance (dark, classic style and richly green walls) the cafe also has a friendly staff, plays great jazz and has fantastic coffee. The owner is also extremely hot, that is if you go for the dark, brooding type. The cafe is on one of my absolute favorite streets in the city, Körte Strasse. Körte Strasse has beautiful Alt-Bau (victorian) buildings and is chic and urban but also laid back and not slick. There is also a great, (though somewhat overpriced) vintage shop just up the road. Oh yeah, and Körte Strasse caters more to a 30s /40s crowd which means no yipsters and 20 something hipsters driving me crazy with their unsettled, pie-in-the-sky-everything-is-possible energy (if you are reading this and happen to be in your 20s, then sorry babe! When you're 36, you'll see what I mean. ;) )

2. Cafe Savo, Goltzstrasse 3, U-7 Eisenacherstrasse

Though Goltzstrasse was the hubbub of hipster life in 80s Berlin, it has been largely forgotten by the newer crowds, though perhaps this is a good thing. The street is home to Cafe Savo, a cafe I have been going to ever since I've lived in Berlin. The place is truly an intellectual pick-up joint, always filled with a handful of 30 or 40 something single men in designer horn-rimmed glasses and black turtlenecks. Pull out a copy of Proust and a couple of them will surely inch in, hoping you might ask them for their phone number. The ambiance at Savo is somewhat cool as is the staff, but the food is not bad and they play good music (jazz mainly). What is it that has kept me going there all these years? Perhaps the magazine and newspaper selection (at least 15 newspapers, from the Süddeutsche to Die Zeit to the International Herald Tribune, and 30 magazines, mainly about fashion, art and design.) And the windows. Got to love the windows. Oh yeah, and I can always get a lot of writing done there for some reason (I write mainly in cafes, but it tends to flow better in some than in others.) Viva le Cafe Savo!

3. Brezel Bar, Friesenstrasse 2, U-7 Gneisenaustrasse

Ok, so I have to admit I've never even sat inside Brezel Bar, but come winter I know I will. Brezel (as in German for pretzel) Bar has great soft pretzels made by an Israeli owner, as I learned while getting the link for this post. The pretzels are chewy on the inside and hard on the outside just as a pretzel should be and come in several different varieties. I think they are fantastic, but then you will probably have to ask someone from Munich if they really are because Bavaria, and not Berlin, is truly Brezel land (getting a tip on pretzels from a Berliner is like getting a tip on bagels from a Californian....) I often buy their pretzels to go for me and the babies on the way to the playground. The staff is young and somewhat surly, but I love the atmosphere and (so far) the music seems good. I have the feeling I could write well there. I'll let you know come November. :)

A Big Brother Childhood

2010-08-09T04:02:00.000-07:00

When I was a child growing up in Tucson, on the days when we didn't have school, my mother would basically open the front door sometime in the mid-morning and we wouldn't come home again until the mid-afternoon. We went to our friend's houses (most of them lived on the Cul-de-Sac Limequat Way which was just around the corner) or we went to the acres of desert across the street, an area that is now undoubtedly tract housing.

Even in College town in Sacramento I'm pretty sure I played alone outside, but I was only a maximum of two so maybe my mother was somewhere in the background. I do remember alone going to my "boyfriend's" house. He was five and slept with my picture under his pillow. In his room he kept showing me this robot that shot little pellets, like I was supposed to be impressed. I was only 2, but I'm pretty sure I was thinking, "What the heck is it with boys and robots?"
But there's no use pining over the good old days. Times have changed and besides, I'm raising my children in a major city, not in suburban Arizona. Still, sometimes I think things have swung way too far the other way, or at least here in Berlin. I was struck by this again this morning when I hung out on the playground on Chamisso Platz. All around me were uptight hipster parents, shadowing their children's every move, barely letting them make even a few steps by themselves. And I'm not talking about one year olds who are not yet steady on their feet, I'm talking 2 to 3 year olds, even a girl who looked almost 4. Of course, you have to make sure they don't get into any real danger, but they also have to learn things for themselves and have a little freedom, yes, even room to make mistakes.
Last week I saw a father there, also shadowing his three year old son, who had the audacity to have one foot on the ground and one foot on the edge of the fountain. There was no way the boy could have fallen into the fountain and he wasn't being wild. If he had somehow freakishly fallen, the worst that could have happened would have been a skinned knee. Still, his father said "No! Either put your foot on the fountain or on the ground. You can't have one in each place!" What's the message there? Never have fun or be playful. Never try new things or take risks. Hmmm...Sounds a little bit like German culture.....

Sometimes I think Mia and Lilly's generation is going to be filled with extremely neurotic people who have a hard time ever making any decisions for themselves. Prove me wrong kids, prove me wrong. ;)

A Tenth of an Augenblick

2010-08-02T05:00:00.000-07:00

Sometimes there is a word in a certain language that gets straight to the point in a way that you would need a phrase or perhaps even a paragraph in another language to reach the same meaning. Take, for example, the German word Augenblick.
Literally translated, Augenblick means in the blink of an eye. While this phrase sounds poetic and almost biblical (or is it just me?) in English, the German word is much more earthy and prosaic. You can say Augenblick or Augenblick mal for Hold on a sec. But mostly the word is just used to describe a moment.
One thing I love more than just about anything is going on photography hunts throughout the city. I often have my camera with me, but it is only sometimes that I pull it out and wander, floating through space like some slow, invertebrate creature of the sea.
Until that certain Augenblick draws me in like a beam of light and "zack" (another German word...) I'm there and I'm alive. I'm capturing. It always comes so suddenly that there is no room for thought.
One of my favorite places to go on the hunt for images is a busy marketplace. You have only a tenth of an Augenblick to capture that image you somehow found interesting or beautiful, that somehow moved you. Everything is sped up and in constant motion. You have to be quick.
Like with these photographs I took at the Turkish Market on Maybachufer last Friday. So many photographs were ruined by a foot out of place or a moved hand, or someone pushing me too far to the right. So many lost images. But when you do like one of the photographs, you are more pleased than you would be had you had all the time in the world to arrange it.

Lessons Learned

2010-07-28T12:31:00.000-07:00

So I learned a lot of valuable lessons today. Lesson Number One: Do not take a small child who is already potty trained to a museum where the bathroom is far away from the exhibits not to mention two floors down in the basement when you already know said child has a case of the runs.
Lesson Number Two: You will become your parents. I always hated telling my dad I had to go to the bathroom when we were in the car on long road trips between California and Arizona because his inevitable, irritated question was always "Why didn't you go the last time?"
But today, when Miss Mia told me she had to go diarrhea I rushed her and little Little Li across the museum and into the elevator as fast as their little toddler legs could carry them. Once we finally got to the bathroom she told me she didn't have to go anymore. We took the elevator back up and started looking at the dinosaurs only to have her tell me ten minutes later that she had to go. I scolded her. "Why didn't you go the last time?" I said. This time she really did have to go, so how can I blame her (and yes, in case you're wondering, we did make it on time.)
Lesson Number Three: When you are trying to wean a child who is very adamant about not being weaned as in screaming, flailing limbs, pawing at your chest, etc. do not, I repeat, do not wear that cute little vintage dress that you can not zip up or down by yourself in case giving in is simply the best solution.
Anyone who reads this blog with any regularity has probably figured out the museum I went to was the beloved Naturkunde Museum, i.e. Museum of Natural History. (you can click here to read a post I wrote about it in May). And yes, even with all these lessons being learned I still has time to snap a few photos and contemplate on why exactly it is that I'm so fascinated by dead things. ;)

Somebody's Mother

2010-07-22T14:05:00.000-07:00

A few days ago Miss Mia and I had our photograph taken together at the photo booth on Zossenerstrasse next to Rossmann drugstore. We sat on the swivel chair, once painted to look a toad stool but now kind of brown and gunky-looking, put 2 Euros in the slot, smiled into the glass plate in front of the camera and then waited five minutes for the photographs to come out of the slot.
We've already taken photographs from this photo booth before. They are all hanging up on the metal utility box in our hallway; long strips of four, passport size old school black and white photos. I knew what to expect. But when this strip came out and was finally dry enough to touch, something was a little different. I looked at my smiling face in each of the photographs and thought "Oh my god. I look like somebody's mother."
Of course, it dawned on me about a half a second later that I AM somebody's mother, two somebodies even. But how did this ever happen? And what exactly does it mean to be "somebody's mother"? No question about it, the word "mother" certainly is loaded....
On several occasions I've run into old girlfriends of Jasper's, all of whom are lawyers or judges or professors. Although all of them were nice, things always got a little sticky each time they asked me what I do. I told them I've taught, I write, I sing and, oh yeah, I stay at home with the kids. Each time I mentioned this I could see that same flash in their eyes, that same faint outline of a smirk. "The woman who Jasper married is just a mother."
Sometimes I think this is a way in which feminism has gone wrong. Certainly it was necessary for women to emancipate themselves and it was terrible when motherhood was the only respectable choice they really had. But to be "just a mother" is certainly a derogatory term, especially among women; somehow, as a woman, you are less. Still, I have to admit the women who live in the land of Mommydom are the ones I feel the hardest to be around. You can see them at just about every playground, dressed in sweatpants and talking about pre-schools and after-school programs and baby yoga and diapers. I hope they are happy in Mommydom and, if they are, then more power to them, but the truth is, they freaking scare me....
But what does it really mean then, to be somebody's mother? It means a lot of things, but one of the main ones is sacrifice: For a long time, your needs simply come second. I don't mean you do this out of responsibility, though that is of course part of it, but simply because this is what they deserve. Everyone in the world deserves to have a beginning where they are cherished and loved, where they are kept warm and safe, where they are the first priority, but so many people don't. This is your chance to give that to another person and, really, it's an honor. If they don't get it now they will search for it the rest of their life and there's a good chance they will never find it.
No one in the world can probably wound you as deeply as your mother can wound you. I've found this scary sometimes and I think it's the reason so many mothers feel the pressure to be perfect. But you're only human and you do have needs and they are important even if they often come in second. And wounds do heal. They can and they do, but in their place there will always be a scar. Then again, the most interesting people I know are the people who have scars.

Fairy Tale Frivolity In Volkspark Friedrichhain

2010-07-18T14:29:00.001-07:00

Today I went with the fam on a little Sunday outing to Volkspark Friedrichhain. Volkspark Friedrichhain is a large park in former East Berlin. Although Friedrichhain is a neighborhood in East Berlin, the park seems to be in Prenzlauerberg and has a more Prezlauerberg-ish crowd (big difference between F'hain and P'berg for sure...) I've never actually been able to figure out why this is. Maybe part of the park is in Friedrichhain and the other in Prenzlauerberg? Hmm...I guess it's time to pull out the map.

Anyway, one thing I know for sure is that we entered the park at the Märchenbrunnen (Fairy Tale Fountain.)
I've always loved the Märchenbrunnen. It has just that right touch of grandiose kitsch I love so much. Not only that, it was also a popular gay cruising area in and even before the GDR (maybe it still is?)
I also read a Bernie Gunter mystery where they found a body there that had been mutilated in a particularly gruesome way. I really recommend those books by the way. They are by the English writer Philip Kerr and, besides being great hard-boiled mysteries, they really give you a feel for what it must have been like to be a German who detested the Nazis but felt helpless against the madness that was all around you...
Miss Mia was there as was Baby Li, though she seems to have decided to go through the terrible twos a little bit early, so the photo below is pretty much the only one I was able to take of her.

At some point I left a very cranky Baby Li with her daddy and went off to get Miss Mia a light pink, Hello Kitty ice cream (marshmallow flavored, of course! ;) ) I love how she looks here like eating ice cream is serious business.
And isn't her dress so adorable and so tres 60s? I thrifted it a while ago at the Goodwill on Fillmore in S.F. and just now it finally fits her.
It was funny to be in Prenzlauerberg because it is SO different than Kreuzberg, though both areas have definitely been experiencing a baby boom for a while. I'm
generalizing of course, but most mothers in Kreuzberg are largely left wing feminists passionate about saving the environment. They'd be happy to wear a burlap sack as long as it was made out of organic cotton. In other words, long on hippie, short on glamour. The mothers in Prenzlauerberg, however, wear wedge heels, 200 Euro jeans and designer, white lace blouses. It's hippie versus urban yuppie or, to put it in Bay Area terms, Berkeley versus the Marina. I really don't fit into either category but, for the day, it was nice to at least see something different.

Vintage Childhood Take Two: Wolverine Tin

2010-07-15T11:48:00.000-07:00

As I wrote in this post, I definitely love raising my two girls vintage (though I must admit the Bakelite viewfinder has since disappeared and the reels are scattered about the apartment, but I have absolute faith that it will resurface once I finally clean out their shelves and drawers....) I got jealous today when I discovered Wolverine tin toys from the 40s and 50s on etsy. If I lived in the U.S. Miss Mia and Baby Li would have their play area decked out in these pieces but, alas, I've never seen anything similar in Germany. The pieces are made of tin and most are a bit rusted, so I'd have to make sure the girls are up on their tetanus shots. Then again, what's a little lock jaw when you have such amazing toys to play with? ;)

Although there is a fair amount of Wolverine toys available on etsy, the ones below are my favorites.

I especially love this stove and refrigerator from the 1950s. The refrigerator has fake food printed on the inside of the door, people. Fake food. Available at Antique Grrl

A vintage Wolverine shooting gallery from the 40s? Forget the babies, I want this one for myself! Beat me too it, if you dare, by clicking here.

This one looks super familiar to me. Maybe my aunt had one as a child and I played with it at my grandma's house? Either way, it is most definitely bad ass. Available at Oopsee Daisies.

This one is pretty beat up, but it's also on sale for only 15 dollars at Estate Hound.

Happy vintage living everybody! :)

p.s. Does anyone know why blogger keeps on messing with my posts by making the letters larger and smaller? I also can't edit the difference out which is really beginning to annoy me. Blogger seems to have an evil mind of it's own. Grrr!

At Least One Pair of Impractical Shoes A Day

2010-07-04T02:29:00.000-07:00

I have not exactly been leading a high-heel life these past few years. Then again, I've always had problems with heels in Berlin. A lot of the streets and most of the sidewalks are made of uneven cobblestones and, believe you me, nothing shreds a good pair of heels faster. My feet have also gotten a bit wider over the years and, since heels tend to run narrow, this means a rather painful breaking in process. But I walk a lot (no car in Berlin) and I don't really like pain. These reasons combined with the fact that I've been spending so much time in sandboxes means that I just don't wear heels all that much. But I still love them. Every time I go thrifting I inevitably buy a pair or two even though I know they will probably just end up gathering dust in the back of my closet....

But my life has changed. Baby Li is now at pre-school five hours a day along with Miss Mia and I've been riding my bike all over town. Although high-heels still aren't the most ideal biking shoes, it's still much easier than walking around in them all day. So that's my goal: At least one pair of impractical shoes a day to celebrate my new found freedom. The shoes that I started the post with are actually pretty comfortable (for heels, that is..) I wore them the other day to Flughaften Tempelhof where I found a nice, secluded place off of hidden path with the lovely view above of the amber waves of grain (give me a break. I just remembered it's the 4th of July! ;) ) and the old radio tower.

I laid down my bike on its side, tossed my purse aside and pulled out a writing notebook along with Blancy, my Meisterstück Mont Blanc fountain pen.

The pen was actually a "wedding present" from my first husband (in " " because we didn't really have a wedding, just an elopement for green card purposes.....but that's another story that shall be told at another time...) because I wanted him to prove to me that he could give me something beautiful and expensive yet also luxurious and unnecessary. He did do it, but it totally went against his nature as, by nature he was very cheap. I think he literally broke out in hives afterwards....I couldn't use the pen for a few years after we split up, but now it seems enough time has passed that I feel ok about it. And there's nothing like writing with a fountain pen, let alone a Mont Blanc.

I also went over some of the songs Marcio and I are working on. We have a pretty good line up now of some jazz standards, some samba and bossa nova and some latin pieces. Now we just are on the look-out for other musicians as well as a low-key gig where we can get started. We'll see....For now I'm just so happy I have my bag, my bike, my heels and Tempelhof. ;)