People in Berlin are often telling me they couldn't live in California because they would miss the seasons too much. But we DO have seasons, I tell them. We have winter for about six weeks from late December through January, which means heavy rains and occasional mud slides. We have your odd wild fire every couple of years or so, some of them burning down acres of forests and rows of celebrity beach houses (ok, this goes more for Southern California, and SoCal ain't no NorCal as any Bay Arean will tell you....) We have fog all year round. And we have earthquakes. Personally, I would take earthquakes any day over winter, or at least the leaden-skies-don't-see-the-sun-for-four-months version of winter we have here in Northern Germany.
Besides Berliners, be honest. You don't REALLY have seasons. In Berlin, spring and summer are optional while fall and winter are inevitable. The following photographs are proof of this, taken last week during a rain storm when I was trapped under the U-Bahn bridge at Hallesches Tor for a good twenty minutes. This summer has been cold, then hot, then sickly humid, then cool again (I know, I know. Spring was great this year, so I shouldn't complain but, Hello! People, summer should be summer....)
Still, I have become a true Berliner. When the weather is nice I spend the entire day outdoors, not inside with the blinds shut like we do in California where we take our good weather so very much for granted.
This blog post is part of World Blog Surf Day, a day when expat bloggers around the world write about one topic and then link their blogs to each other. The topic this WBSD is food. Since I live in Germany there is basically only one thing I can write about: Bread.
Yes, it is almost a cliche how much Germans love their bread. The stuff is pretty good, with so much variety; from dark, moist and molasses-y nut covered loaves to crusty beer bread to white (but still heavy)"Land" bread. Most of the bread is not pre-cut of course (this would be close to sin)and I've never been very good at cutting it myself. My husband always laughs at my slices, which are invariably thick on the top and thin on the bottom or the other way around. Still, I am better than my sister. She recently came for a visit and usually only managed to cut off a wedge of crust which somehow made me feel better about my bread cutting deficiencies....
Anyway, the o
nly problem that I sometimes have is that Germans are convinced that bread itself is a meal. I'm not talking a nice sandwich with some potato salad on the side, I'm talking several slices of bread with a thin wedge of cheese on top. My husband often wants this for dinner (one of the words for dinner in German is Abendbrot, literally evening bread...)but I always end up feeling unsatisfied in the end, not to mention slightly bloated. But then, if we ate something else for dinner we might be eating two warm meals a day which is itself a cardinal sin as well a story to be told at another time...
When trying to remind my toddler of something she shouldn't do, I often first ask her a question which we then answer together: Is baby a chair? No, baby is not a chair. Is the trash can a toy? No, the trash can is not a toy. Hey, Germans! Is bread a meal? No, bread is not a meal. The problem is, no one here would ever believe me....
Support WBSD! Here is a link to Romancing Italy where you can read an interesting feature from an expat on a restaurant in Italy. A special thanks also to Anastasia Ashman who is tweeting about it at Thandelike. Anastasia is an American cultural producer based in Istanbul and is the creator of Expat Harem, the anthology by foreign women about modern Turkey.
It's 10:3o and I had an especially bad day with the babies (I did learn that the vacuum cleaner drowns out incessant whining and screaming. My apartment has never been so dust free....) Soon I will go to bed, but as I came to turn off my computer, for some reason, I started thinking about Hamburg.Besides Berlin, Hamburg is the only other city in Germany I would consider living. Munich is outrageously expensive and not particularly interesting. Leipzig and Dresden are both pretty but Leipzig is too small and Dresden is somehow depressing. Hannover is a total and complete bore. But Hamburg? Hamburg has my heart.
In 2005, before the start of the World Cup, I taught English to the German Railway employees of each of these cities. A pretty sweet job really: well paid, hotel and train ticket included, three days in a different place. My ex-boyfriend watched my parrots while I taught during the day and took pictures and hung out by myself at night (theater, bars, movies, you name it) in these different places.
Hamburg, like I said, was by far the best. With around a million inhabitants, it is also a large city (though Berlin is three times that.) The city is on the Elbe river and has a lot of water and a lot of posh villas. But it also does have some fabulous urban grit. Namely, the Reeperbahn (where the Beatles got their start), the red light district formerly for sailors. To Americans, the place is undoubtedly incredibly risque, with buildings you walk through to pick out your favorite prostitute (sorry ladies, no admittance for you!) Still, even if that's not quite your style, the area has a lot to offer in terms of nightlife.
On the less positive note, I've heard through the grapevine that, since they are further up north, Hamburgers (yes, they are called that!)are even MORE closed off than Berliners. Pretty much the only chance you have of becoming friends with a native is if you went to grade school with them....Then again, this is heresay, so maybe it's not quite true.
Here are some photographs I took of Hamburg in 2005. May they inspire you to book a trip to the town and have some fun. ;)
Before I started my glorious life as an artsy fartsy housewife here in Kreuzberg 61, I lived for years in the hood, better known in these parts as Neukoelln. I've lived all over that neighborhood, from Rollberg Kiez to Reuter Kiez and everything in between. I even made this piece of jewelry in its honor, called the Neukoelln Forever Necklace, as seen here around my neck.
Neukoelln is truly the urban jungle, with over half the population on welfare, working class Germans, Turks, Arabs and Africans all tossed together in a pot that just won't melt. The area around Karl-Marx-Strasse was the last place I lived with my ex-husband and, I have to say, the place has really, really gone downhill in the 6 years since I left it. When I lived there it was a normal Einkaufsstrasse (shopping street)with three big department stores and even a Lush. Now all you see are row after row of one Euro shops and about ten cell phone shops(why so many? I don't really understand.) But there are also still lots of mom and pop shops, part of what gives Neukoelln its charm. A Konditerei (bakery for cakes)that has been there since the 40s, a music store that opened in 1959, a shoe repair shop where the original owner, now in his 80s, will still fix a worn out heel.
That's why I was there, to look for a camera at Guenther Camera. Guenther himself offered me a deal on an Olympus, but I walked around a while first before I could decide. I walked through the Bohemian village of Rixdorf, with its little row houses (so surprsing that something so old and lovely and peaceful could be right here in the heart of Neukoelln.) I walked down Richardstrasse past where I worked as an Au Pair the first year I was in Berlin, for little Jonas. I walked past the last apartment I had with my ex-husband. Apparently he has since moved, because his name was no longer on the door. It was hard to believe I had ever lived there...
In the end, I did buy the camera, so soon my blog will start filling up again with pictures, maybe even some of Neukoelln.
So it's close to midnight here in Berlin and, just to creep myself out before I hit the hay, I thought I would share the creepiest ghost story I have ever heard (and yes, when I think about it, I have actually heard many....)
I've taught English as a Foreign Language for around eight years here in Berlin. Most of my teaching has been at the Technical University. The courses are in general English and open to anyone, but most of my students have been college students, a large majority of them from the TU. Although the job has some cool aspects (one of them being that I don't have a boss and can easily take two years maternity leave with no problems because I am freelance. Downside: I have to arrange for my own health insurance, etc...)when you've spent several years teaching 20 year olds named Til and Florian who are studying industrial engineering and have no hobbies, no interests and never travel (a large majority of the topics you 
are expected to chat about in teaching materials)then you do get burned out on the job. Every once in a while you get a cool student and, better yet, a foreign student who is closer to your own age, i.e. at least in his late 20s early 30s. (As a side note, Germans are incredibly hard to teach. They are extremely critcial, often not open to having fun and glare at you from the start, almost willing you to fail. Every English teacher I know has complained about this. The only way to deal with them is to be extremely disiplinarian, taking a My-Way-Or-The-Highway approach, something that took some getting used to since I'm from touchy-feely California. I swear, so many Berliners are closet masochists. They love the whip!!)
Anyway, in a course several years ago I had a cool student named Ricardo. Ricardo was from C
hile, in his late 30s and always dressed very meticulously and had a warm smile. I was teaching the class together with my friend Tina and we both liked him immediately which meant we kept him in the class even though he wasn't quite at the level he should have been. He was so cooperative and sweet and cute (also gay, something I found rather unfortunate since I was single at the time)and was a great addition to the course though he struggled some.
It was an intensive course, which is always more fun than teaching during the semester, because you get to know the students better (two weeks, three hours a day). After the course ended Tina and I somehow ended up having a beer with Ricardo. In the cafe somehow we came to the topic of ghosts. Tina asked him if he believed in them and he sighed and told us the following story:
When he was a teenager in Chile Ricardo once spent the night at a friend's house. The friend had a guest room in the basement where he told Ricardo he could slee
p. The room had no windows and you had to get up and walk down the hall to turn on the light, something that Ricardo had found sort of creepy, but he decided it was no big deal. He went down there and fell asleep. After a little while he woke up and felt a hand creeping over his body and then coming up to his face. The hand covered his mouth and he couldn't breath, so of course he started freaking out. He knocked the hand away and felt it creeping off under the bed. Though in a total panic, he didn't think he could handle getting up and walking to the hallway to turn on the light and didn't think anyone would be able to hear him if he screamed. He lay in the dark, his heart pounding, until he eventually was able to go to sleep again. The next morning he_.jpg)
told his friend and his friend's sister what had happened. His friend's sister gasped. Something similiar had happened to her when she had slept there. Apparently, the house had been damaged in an earthquake years before and several people had died there in the basement, smothered to death in the rubble. The smothering hand must have been one of their ghosts.Imagine Ricardo, in his broken English, telling this story over a beer. And he was a very solid, serious kind of person, not the type you would expect to have such a story to tell. Creepy....Shit. I have to go to bed soon. Thank God our bedroom isn't in the cellar!
One of the things that I love about Germany (and yes, there are some things! Hope I haven't been overly negative....)is that there are some professions where people still wear their tr
aditional costume. One of them that comes to mind is a chimney sweep (and yes, there is such a thing still!).
I remember the first time I saw a chimney sweep (in German, Schornsteinfeger.) He was was wearing an all black suit, a jacket with tails and sporting a top hat. I assumed he must be going to a costume party somewhere. I mentioned this to my boyfriend and he told me there was no party. He was just a chimney sweep on his way to work. A chimney sweep all decked out in a coat with tails and a top hat? How very Mary Poppins! But it got even better: My boyfriend told me chimney sweep were considered good luck and that people like to touch them when they see them so that the luck will rub off on them.
"B.S.! I said, but he swore that it was true.
"And they don't care that perfect strangers touch them?"
My boyfriend just shrugged. "It's part of their profession."
A year or so later I saw a female chimney sweep in full costume shopping at H & M. But I was too chicken to touch her, though I wanted to...
Another profession where they do this is a Zimmermann, or carpenter. Their costume looks like this:
The walking stick is because, after their training, the do a year or so of travelling around the country or abroad, where they hitchhike and work at places where they stop along the way, something called to be auf der Walz. Actually, I just saw two down the street today with their ISO mats strapped over their backs which gave me the idea for this post. Apparently if you see one hitchhiking and don't pick them up it is very bad luck. So if you see this fellow in the future, be sure to stop!
So here is another weird German belief that many Americans find strange: Germans like sleeping in cold rooms. I've never really been able to figure out why, except that they somehow find it healthier to do this. Many times I've met Germans who don't heat (or barely)their bedroom in winter or, worse yet, sleep with an open window. . Ok, Germany might not be Siberia but still, sleeping with the window open when it's below freezing can be summed up in one word: Nuts!
Now, if people would just say "That's what I prefer." I would still find it rather strange, but would accept it with a whatever floats your boat kind of attitude. Unfortunately it's more likely that you'll hear "Of course we do that!" or "Everyone knows that you always (fill in the blank)" and suddenly be filled with a room full of people who look at you like YOU'RE the crazy one!
I've always prided myself on the fact that my husband does not have these sort of very German ways of thinking about things and is not at all anal. This morning, however, I realized he might just not be talking about them. I discovered this when I went into our daughter's room and made a remark about how cold it is in the morning (when the curtains are shut, the block off the heat.)
"It's better that way," he said. "Sleeping in a cold room prevents swelling."
Swelling???
"That's just weird German talk," I said. He immediately got a look on his face like my poor clueless darling and told me "You're from California. You just don't know about these things." So today I ask a friend of mine from Michigan who also lives here if they keep their 
rooms cold during winter. She started laughing her head off. "Of course not. We're not crazy!"Point taken.....
So I'm not one of those angry expats who has nothing nice to say about the U.S. Granted, I found 
myself apologizing a lot when Bush was still in office. I'd give a shrug and say "Sorry. I didn't vote for the guy!" Obama, thank you very much for many things, but most of all for sparing me the constant impossible explanation of my country's politics.
A true West Coast person, I love going home to California. Everyone is so amazingly friendly and open, chatting in the check-out line, making comments about how cute my daughters are. This just never happens in Berlin. Here are the negative sides of Berlin:
1. The weather sucks. (That is, unless you don't mind seeing the sun for months on end!!!)
2. People are generally really closed off and unfriendly. They often talk about how "shallow" Americans are, giving compliments all the time, but when you talk to them about it you realize it is because they think they are unnecessarily friendly. Strangers are enemies and many people have quotas on how many friends they can have (from hardcore Berliners I have so often heard the sentence, "So-and-so is really cool and nice, but I already have enough friends." WTF???)
3. People are often R-U-D-E. Examples: They bump into you (and I'm talking hard enough to leave a bruise...)and don't say excuse me. They start bitching at you out of the blue about crossing the street on red, if they don't like how you're riding your bicycle or (and this one really pisses me off!)they think your child is not being held correctly. They often only help reluctantly if, say, you have a big-ass baby buggy and you are trying to open a door.
4. Occasionally, they are arrogant U.S. haters who talk about what a bunch of savages we are. I mean, there are definitely a lot of things that can be criticized and I can take the criticism if it warranted but their examples are nearly always tired stereotypes and more often than not the most time they ever spent in the country was a two week visit to New York City when they were 15....
So, what's the reason that I've stayed here so long. Simple: IT'S DAMN DIRT CHEAP!!!!!!!!!!
I'm a big city person, but if I lived in San Francisco or New York I would be paying the same amount for a room that my husband and I pay for our three bedroom apartment. Here are some pictures of the place:
Gorgeous Altbau (Victorian), 107 square meters, three bedrooms, a very large living room and, get this, the rent costs less than 1000 Euros a month! And this is in the nice neighborhood of Kreuzberg 61. A similiar sized place could be had for a lot less in a neighborhood like Neukoelln.
In case this post inspires someone to pack their bags and move here (as it should...), I'm telling you, Kreuzberg is where it's at. Kreuzberg 36 or Wrangelkiez if you are young with no kids. Kreuzberg 61 if you are a little bit older, have kids, or shy away from urban grit but still like living in an urban place. A lot of Americans come here and immediately move to Prenzlauerberg, but I've always found the neighborhood overrated. As an American friend said recently, "It is pretentious, concrete-filled, and far away from any water."
As far as the negative sides of the city, you learn to live with them (and can bond over complaining about them.) Besides, there are also lots of cool people here from other, more relaxed parts of Germany as well as from all over the world, so it's just a question of finding them.....
Berlin, ach, wie ich dich liebe!!!
For those of you who have never been to Berlin, one thing you are not missing out on is Hundescheisse. Dog turds, all over the sidewalk all year long. Berliners are far more advanced than American at recycling and not wasting energy, and are amazingly obedient when it comes to following rules. Practically no one will ever cross the street on a red light, even if there isn't a car in sight. Once, after returning from a three week visit to the Bay Area, I was hanging out in Kreuzberg 36 where I saw two punks waiting at the traffic light. Rainbow colored mohawks, chains all over their ripped clothing, and yet they were waiting at the crosswalk like good citizens even though the coast was obviously clear. Only in Berlin, I thought as I crossed the street in front of them.
Technically it is against the law not to pick up your dog's doo doo (there's even a fine), but this is one law Berliners almost universally break. On my ten minute walk to my daughter's pre-school each morning I pass by at least thirty turds of various degrees of freshness, shape and color. What are these people feeding their dogs, I think when I pass by a log that is ochre or a clay like red. Some of the turds look shockingly human, though there is a Psych Ward nearby with a lot of out patients, so maybe....no, let's not go there. Now that my daughter is walking more I have to steer her not only clear of cars and kamikaze bicyclists, but Fido's piles of crap as well.
This morning I saw a woman with one of those poofy little white dogs whose breed always has a long, vaguely Asian sounding name. He did his business on the sidewalk about a block from my house and, once he was finished, low and behold, she pulled out a plastic bag and scooped the little turd up. As I walked by, pushing my double buggy, I briefly had the urge to hug her.
So, after having two babies pretty close together and having an incurable sweet tooth anyway I've been trying to loose weight. After going to my post pregnancy excercise class I came to a disturbing realization. I am probably always going to be at least a little overweight because I a) love to eat and b)pretty much hate to excercise (at least cardio, calorie burning excercise...) I told this to my husband but he wasn't too concerned. Luckily, he prefers me curvy....
I celebrated my birthday last Sunday and, as usual, did some "American" baking for my German friends. This time round peanut butter cookies and black bottom cupcakes. Here's the stuff I made:
There's a cafe here called Barcomi's run by an American. One of the guests gave me the cookbook they sell for my b-day present but then was upset when they saw the peanut butter cookies. "Oh no! You must already have the cookbook. There are those cookies with the fork imprint on them!" I assured her that I didn't and that peanut butter cookies, with their enigmatic double fork imprint, were not thought up by Ms. Barcomi! Because my husband is always a bit nervous when entertaining that someone might come away a tad bit unsatisfied, he also bought several boxes of profiterole and a tiramisu. For those of you who don't know what profiterole are, they look like this:
Custard filled cream puffs covered in a rich chocolate sauce. Probably not the best thing to have around when you'd like to loose oh, say, 30 pounds! Anyway, the party was a success. No one went away hungry. In fact, they left a good portion of cookies, cupcakes and the accursed profiterole behind. I just had two of the devilish little puffs of tastiness as an after lunch treat. Now, filled with such guilty satisfaction (not to mention a little bit of bloating....)I have decided to compose an ode to this cruel French treat.
Profiterole, your golden, tender puffis filled with such rich custardthat there is simply no way my diet
will cut the mustard.
Your rich chocolate sauce
melts so sinfully in my mouthbut this is no surprise
no more than the
expanding of my thighs!
People in Berlin are often telling me they couldn't live in California because they would miss the seasons too much. But we DO have seasons, I tell them. We have winter for about six weeks from late December through January, which means heavy rains and occasional mud slides. We have your odd wild fire every couple of years or so, some of them burning down acres of forests and rows of celebrity beach houses (ok, this goes more for Southern California, and SoCal ain't no NorCal as any Bay Arean will tell you....) We have fog all year round. And we have earthquakes. Personally, I would take earthquakes any day over winter, or at least the leaden-skies-don't-see-the-sun-for-four-months version of winter we have here in Northern Germany.
Besides Berliners, be honest. You don't REALLY have seasons. In Berlin, spring and summer are optional while fall and winter are inevitable. The following photographs are proof of this, taken last week during a rain storm when I was trapped under the U-Bahn bridge at Hallesches Tor for a good twenty minutes. This summer has been cold, then hot, then sickly humid, then cool again (I know, I know. Spring was great this year, so I shouldn't complain but, Hello! People, summer should be summer....)
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