Diary of a Swaneeswan

June 12, 2010

2010-07-28T04:55:00.002+02:00

Two photos taken in the Beyoğlu district.

1. The view from Galata Tower.

2. How to wash your dog.

Step one: Go to a car wash.

Step two: Attach your dog, using a leash, to a hook on the wall.

Step three: Shampoo your dog.

Step four: Hose your dog clean.

June 11, 2010

2010-07-28T04:42:00.005+02:00

At Topkapi Palace Museum.

June 10, 2010

2010-07-28T04:38:00.000+02:00

The Hagia Sopha. Surely one of the most breathtaking spaces ever built.

E. got this kid's permission for a photo. We wish we knew the story.

June 9, 2010

2010-07-28T04:32:00.002+02:00

On June 8 we said goodbye to E's parents and their friends. They headed back to the U.S. We hopped on a train to Vienna. The next morning we hopped on an airplane, and several hours later we landed in Istanbul.

I quickly lost track of which mosque was which (they look remarkably similar), but I believe this was outside the New Mosque. What caught my eye here was the contrast between the beautiful blue tiles, and the pile of junk. There's a metaphor for Istanbul lurking there, I suspect.

June 7, 2010

2010-07-28T04:23:00.000+02:00

Prague Astronomical Clock, with Segway

June 6, 2010

2010-07-21T04:15:00.000+02:00

I'm having trouble picking just one photo for this day, so I'm cheating.

After some further sightseeing in Berlin, E. and I, her parents, and their friends hopped on a train and headed toward Prague. June 6 was our first full day of sightseeing there. Here we are on the funicular on Petrin Hill.

We had lunch in a local pub, The Hippopotamus. If if you should ever need to entertain your in-laws in a far-away place, I recommend large pieces of roasted meat.

Everything about the cathedral is beautiful, but this window by Mucha is exquisite.

June 4, 2010

2010-07-21T03:52:00.000+02:00

(Continued from May 28, 2010.)

After a quick visit to Bonn, we put my parents-in-law on a train to Mainz, where they joined a guided tour that looped through southern Germany, and then through eastern Germany, culminating in Berlin. Ah yes, Berlin, where E. and I were camped out.

On June 4 we took them and their biking in Potsdam, which was fairly hilarious given that two of the four couldn't ride bikes. We rented tandems for the occasion, including this heavy, old oddity.

May 28, 2010

2010-07-21T03:43:00.001+02:00

It may help to tell the story if I jump back to the end of May. My parents-in-law and two of their friends flew into Frankfurt, and then took the train up to Bonn. On May 28 we took them on a quick tour of must-see destinations in the area: the Aachen and Cologne cathedrals, and Schloss Augustusburg (shown here).

June 3, 2010

2010-07-19T03:37:00.000+02:00

We had a brief respite in Berlin post-fellowship, pre-in-laws. Taking advantage of this lull, E. and I made a point of it to see the recently opened Ritter Sport concept store near Friedrichstrasse. In case you have been deprived, Ritter Sport is by far the best brand of mass-market German chocolate. It is a brand we stand behind proudly. You might also stay it's a brand E. stands under, hoping nothing tips over.

June 1, 2010

2010-07-19T03:27:00.000+02:00

After ten months in Germany for me (twelve for E.) it was finally time to say goodbye. The Fellows and their spouses gathered for a final shared meal at the Cafe im Literaturhaus in Berlin. It had been a cold and wet day. Our hosts had previously scheduled a farewell cruise, and over the course of the day, there was grumbling, and rumblings of bowing out. Who wanted to venture to the outskirts of Berlin to have dinner on a boat in the rain? We got lucky though: The boat company thought we were coming the next day, and the organizers had to come up with a plan B. Fortunately, plan B was cozy, artsy, and a short five-minute stroll from our hotel. We had had similar dinners many times before, and we were still in good spirits. It was hard to believe this was the end.

Resurfacing

2010-07-19T00:32:00.000+02:00

If you follow this blog at all, you'll know that it's been a long while since there has been anything to follow at all. At last report it was May, E. and I were living in Bonn, and Lena was winning the Eurovision song contest. Since then--well, I don't want to give away the story, so I'll just say that a lot has happened.

With this in mind, I am setting myself a new task:to tell the story of the month of June with a photo a day. There may be a gap here or there, but I think I can pretty much do it. Here we go.

Live Blogging Eurovision 2010

2010-05-29T20:26:00.030+02:00

29 May 2010

20:20 CET

As regular readers of this blog know, I have fallen under the influence of the Eurovision Song Contest.

Lena Meyer-Landrut has been in the news a lot since she was selected to represent Germany in Eurovision 2010. She's rocketed to the top of the German pop charts, with three singles in the top five (nos. 1, 2, and 4). She has already become fodder for the German tabloid press, notably after people realized she had shown some skin acting in a television docu-drama, and because she hasn't seen her father in 16 years. Meanwhile, even coffee-purveyor Tchibo is selling Lena t-shirts in its stores. The headline in Spiegel Online is "The Cult of Lena-ism: Eurovision's Next Winner?"

Lena-mania aside, I haven't watched Eurovision since 1988. The funny thing is that what I remember about that show was that it introduced me to a great Irish rock band, The Hothouse Flowers. I later bought their single "Don't Go" on cassette. (On cassette! Can you believe that?) What a wee bit of googling just revealed to me is that 1988 is the year Celine Dion won the contest. Chances are that you haven't heard The Hothouse Flowers (and perhaps you should), whereas I bet that you have heard entirely enough of Celine Dion. Perhaps in 10 or 20 years tonight's contest will be comparably memorable and unmemorable.

20:55 CET

Whoa. I should have turned on the television sooner. There's a huge pre-Eurovision show on, and there are gigantic street parties across Germany. Everybody is screaming and waving little German flags.

20:58 CET

I wouldn't quite call it a prayer, but a preacher in civvies just gave a sort of inspirational op-ed about talent. Then the crowd screams 10 - 9 - 8 - 7 - 6 - 5... and the show begins.

21:20 CET

Daniel Diges (Spain) looks like a young Art Garfunkel. Not going to win. The story here is that somebody got up from the audience and started dancing during his act. Bouncers had to intervene.

21:22 CET

E. says Norway's Didrik Solli is "dreamy." Song is manipulative and uplifting. Song ends and E. says, "Did you see the ejaculation of fireworks?" Uh...

21:25 CET

Moldova's act is decent, but we're laughing out-loud at their costumes. The sax player is absolutely hilarious. ("He's humping his sax.") And what's the story on the guy with the electric, neon-rimmed violin? The German announcer narrating calls the lead singer the Moldovan Lady Gaga. That's saying something, but I'm not sure what.

From the semi-final:

21:37 CET

Belgium's Tom Dice is cute and charming. Looks like babyface Tobey McGuire, and sounds a bit like Paul Simon. Super talented.

Video of Tom in the semi-final:

21:39 CET

Regarding Serbia, um, is that a man or a woman who just walked out? Is this song polka or techno?

21:43 CET

Update. Because someone got on the stage while Spain was performing, they will get a second chance. Yeah, good luck with that. May actually be worse without a wiseacre messing things up.

21:45 CET

Dear Belarus, it would help if you could sing. And if you want to sing in English, perhaps you should also be able to pronounce English.

I think the German announcer says "kitsch als kitsch kann" at the end of the performance. Sounds like "catch as catch can," but I think he means "as kitschy as it gets."

21:57 CET

UK's mono-syllabic entrant, "Josh," is abominable. Worse than mushy peas. Makes my ears bleed. Rick Astley-esque, but wildly off-key.

22:00 CET

They just took a quick breather, but now it's on with the show. It's really nice to watch a show with no commercial breaks, and pretty much back-to-back performances. No unnecessary blah-blah.

22:07 CET

Turkey's entry is a really cool rock band called maNga. But what's with the grinder girl / robocop backup singer?

22:08 CET

Violins are big at this year's Eurovision. Is this the Alexander Rybak effect?

22:10 CET

Update. Announcer just said 7 of the acts this year have violins. Told ya so.

22:15 CET

Food for thought. The Superbowl attracts about 100 million viewers around the world. Because all those people are watching, there is huge commercial potential, and there are lots and lots of commercials. The Eurovision song contrast attracts about 125 million viewers. Maybe there is some other big televised event I've never heard of, but I'm guessing that makes Eurovision the biggest TV show on the planet. But there are no commercials.

Moral of the story: Europeans think differently.

22:20 CET

Regarding Alyosha from Ukraine:

I say: "She sounds like a Bond song."

E says: "She looks like a Bond girl."

22:23 CET

France has a chance. "Allez, allez, allez" is pretty catchy, I have to admit. Put your hands up. Clap your hands.

22:30 CET

Russia. E. says: "With all of these men singing, it's kind of like Fleet Foxes, but bad." I've said this before, but I'll have to say it again: don't sing English if no one will be able to tell you're singing English. And please, no high notes.

22:42 CET

Portugal's Filipa Azevedo can really sing.

22:35 CET

LENA! Germany's little black dress is back. Crowd eats it up.

22:34 CET

Armenia: The act is a little weird, kind of like a mini-musical theatre performance. But the song is actually pretty good. Helps that the singer looks like Angelina Jolie.

22:49 CET

Whoa, Israel, good looks don't make up for bad singing.

22:51 CET

Hey, Denmark, the 80s called. Said they want their sound back.

23:04 CET

Well, the singing is over, and the voting is taking place. So during this breather, I'd just like to tip my hat to one of the hosts who, at the end of the performances, stripped off his tux to reveal a wide-lapeled green disco shirt--thereby indicating that the work was over and the party was starting. I can't do his transformation justice, but it was unexpected, effective, and well-executed.

E and I have voted for Belgium and France. Yeah, we're hoping for Lena to pull it off, but we can't vote for the German candidate from Germany. So think of this as strategic voting, because the Eastern Europeans will vote as a block, so we need to counterbalance them by voting for Western European countries. Also, perhaps incidentally, we enjoyed the Belgian and French performers.

23:15 CET

Okay, I'm impressed. I am watching, live, thousands of people all across Europe dancing a Eurovision dance. Think: flash mob taking place simultaneously in Ljubljana, Düsseldorf, Hamburg, London, etc.

23:36 CET

E. just pointed out that all the countries of the former Yugoslavia voted for each other. They just fought each other in a war, but they'd rather vote for each other than let someone else get points.

Country by country, the points are being announced and tallied. Germany has a strong lead.....

23:30 CET

Portugal votes for Spain. Azerbaijan votes for Turkey. Greece votes for Albania and Cyprus. Iceland votes for Denmark. You see where I'm going with this? Now, the question is why. Are tastes regional? Do people just like their neighbors more than the people at the end of the street? Or do voting patterns merely reflect where immigrant communities live? (For example: In Germany you can't vote for Germany. But there are many Turkish immigrants living in Germany, and Turkey got a strong vote from Germany.)

30 May 2010

00:07 CET

No way Lena could possibly lose. She's currently leading with 234 points. Closest contender has 165. Meanwhile Belarus has 6 points. Told you that act was bad.

00:12 CET

LENA WINS WITH 246 POINTS. She's walking across the stage to heroic music.

Host: "Any words to describe this moment?"

Lena, out of it: "Hi."

Martin Dreisbach, b.May 23, 1717

2010-05-22T17:37:00.002+02:00

If wives are honest and genealogies reliable, then my mother's mother's mother's father's father's mother's father was Martin Dreisbach, born May 23, 1717, in a house called "Leye" in a village called Raumland, in what was then the Earldom of Wittgenstein. Three days later he was baptised in St. Martin's Church. He immigrated to Pennsylvania sometime around the middle of the century, and died in Union County on February 18, 1799. (These details are gathered from The Dreisbach Book, a geneaology published in 1998 by the Dreisbach Family Association.)

I have often found that going in search of out-of-the-way places my ancestors once lived is an excellent way to spend the day. Yesterday's forecast was sunny and warm with a chance of afternoon ice cream--perfect weather for an excursion in search of Martin Dreisbach.

By German standards, Raumland is in the middle of nowhere. To get there I took the local S-Bahn from Bonn out to the end of the line, where I transfered to a regional train, which took me to Siegen, where I transferred to an even more regional train, which took me to Bad Berleburg. (That last train is just one or two cars long, and it has the single track entirely to itself. From Bad Berleburg there is nowhere to go except back.) Once I got to Bad Berleburg, I walked about 45 minutes to my destination. Total travel time: about 4 hours each way.

View Larger Map

Raumland is very cute and very sleepy. The only local landmark is the church (currently Lutheran), which sits atop a crest. The surrounding homes are built in the local idiom, which is to say they have steep roofs and white walls, defined by sturdy dark timbers. The village is interspersed with small pastures of grass and dandelions, where horses, cows, and kitty cats pass their days.

It took me a bit of wandering, but soon found an old home--currently used as a barn--neatly labeled "Leye." (A note to any Dreisbach genealogists who might happen upon this blog entry: The inside cover of The Dreisbach Book has an old photo of Raumland, with an arrow labeling the "Birthplace of Martin Dreisbach." The arrow points to a building that is no longer there. The building I found labeled "Leye" is the house immediately behind the building to which the arrow points, and can be matched with the old photo by the pattern of the beams.) I spoke with several neighbors, none of whom had any special knowledge of the history of the house.

At the top of the hill, the preacher's daughter was practicing riding a unicycle, and unlocked the church for me. If you can read German, you can read more about its history here. The short version is that it is the oldest surviving church in Wittgenstein, built around 1240-1260. On one side of the choir, wall paintings depicting the way of the cross are visible. They date to the second half of the 15th century.

Having seen all there was to see, I strolled back to Bad Berlesburg. Nearly all the buildings there are covered in slate.

I don't know the whole architectural history of the area, but I'd be willing to guess that slate tiling is a more recent phenomenon, as you can infer from this photo of a house that has tile on the front, but visible timbering on the side.

And then I made my way home, again by way of Siegen, where I stopped to look around.

Having now been to the Siegtal (Sieg valley) I can see why travel books recommend it. It's not dramatic, but its rolling hills, green pastures, and black and white architecture are pleasant and picturesque.

One more from Paris

2010-05-11T21:22:00.001+02:00

This is a nice photo of E. and me at a restaurant in Paris that I swiped off of Facebook.

And finally, Paris

2010-05-11T21:12:00.001+02:00

Our trip to Belgium and France is already becoming sort of a fuzzy memory, so it's time to wrap this up.

The final stop of our tour was Paris. I have visited Paris many times, but I had not done so in nearly ten years. I enjoyed seeing the city again, but also didn't feel compelled to do and see everything. The weather was impeccable--perfect for meandering.

Les Invalides

Jardins des Tuileries

Christina, Bonnie, and Lauren by the Louvre

Lauren and Christina at the Museum of Decorative Arts

Notre Dame

My lovely E.by the Pompidou

Palais Royal

A day in Alsatian wine country

2010-05-04T16:51:00.003+02:00

Whoever you are, I have always depended on the kindness of strangers.
--Blanche DuBois, A Streetcar Named Desire

This is a story about happy accidents. During a biking tour of Strasbourg our Bosch group leader pointed out an art nouveau style building. Stasbourg, she noted doesn't have many fantastic examples of the style. For the good stuff you need to hop on a train and go to Nancy. Fellow Bosch spouse Christina is a great fan of all things art nouveau or Jugendstil, and she and I were quickly plotting an excursion to Nancy. (Nancy is on the UNESCO World Heritage Site list and in all seriousness, that list has never let me down.)

The next morning, we made it as far as the ticket line at the train station, when we concluded that we were never going to make it to the train. Down but not out, we gathered train schedules and stopped at a tourist information desk, where Christina made inquiries about venturing into Alsatian wine country. We regrouped. We recruited Bosch spouse Lauren to join us. And we hopped on a train headed for Obernai.

Outside the Obernai train station we stood in front of a map of the small town, getting our bearings. A bearded man in a suit approached us and asked us if he could be of assistance. No, no, we're just figuring out where things are, we replied. By the way, he says, I'm going to be helping a friend out at a private wine sale at his vineyard later in the day, and would you care to join me? We'll meet by the belfry at such-and-such an hour.

Christina, Lauren and I wandered Obernai, which would be sleepy on a busy day, and was extra sleepy on Monday, which the Germans would call Ruhetag, the day local businesses take a day off. We had some lunch, took photos of the white storks nesting on the roof of the granary (halle des bles), and met our new friend, Claude Mitschek, at the appointed hour by the belfry.

Before we leave, he says to us, I should like to show you some of the sights of the town. Obernai is a small place, so this amounts to walking us around the block. He showed us an unusual well, details on the renaissance town hall, the storks (local mascots to be sure), and this interesting spot on the wall of the belfry:

On the left, if you look closely, you'll see the outline of a short sword. To keep the peace, this was the maximum length of swords allowed at market. The metal hook was where unfaithful wives were tied to be taunted. And the line on the right was a standard measure (approximately, the distance from the elbow to the hand).

At this point fellow explorer Lauren bowed out of the afternoon excursion, but Christina and I hopped in our guide's car. Our destination was Barr, another little village up the road.

There, as promised, we found ourselves at a private wine tasting for commercial buyers.

Our host started us on some wines, but when some people who looked like more serious buyers approached, Christina and I made a point of it to stay out of the way. Not long after someone offered us a private tour of the cellars. And so after a quick snack of Flammkuchen...

... we went off to learn everything about wine production: how much a bucket of grapes weighs, how to keep the grape varieties separate, how to stomp the grapes (with a giant inflatable balloon, in essence), why you have to keep air out of the casks, how nice it is to be able to hose out the inside of a metal cask, and on an on. Our extremely affable guide was, we think, shirking some other duty by spending time showing us around. He mostly spoke in small bursts, which I would do my best to translate for Christine, and I think we got the gist of almost everything.

Incidentally, at the end of our tour we walked through the distribution center, and I will surely never see so much wine again. Think of the scene at the end of Raiders of the Lost Ark--the warehouse full of crates--and you're not far off.

We bought some wine--it was the very least we could do--and made our way back to Strasbourg. We had a grand day out.

P.S. Needless to say, we recommend the fine wines by Ch. WANTZ.
.

Strasbourg

2010-05-04T15:34:00.000+02:00

The next stop on our tour was Strasbourg, France, which is absolutely one of the most appealing cities I have ever visited. I genuinely had no idea, and in fact, Strasbourg had barely been part of my consciousness prior to this trip.

One strange twist was that a volcano had recently erupted in Iceland, disrupting air traffic across Europe. Someone from the Bosch foundation found herself stranded in Brussels. Our group leader therefore drove her to Germany so she could catch a train. An amusing consequence of this situation is that as the best French speaker in the group, I was designated to communicate with the drivers of the bus taking us from Brussels to Strasbourg.

The architectural highlight of Strasbourg is the cathedral, an exuberantly gothic concoction.

For aficionados, much of the stained glass is original.

The square in front of the cathedral attracts street performers. This burly man sang renaissance-era music in an amazing falsetto.

From on top of the cathedral, you get a great view of the old town.

Bruges

2010-04-30T14:10:00.001+02:00

The fate of a Bosch spouse is to pass the time while the fellows are tied up. Five days is kind of a long time to spend in Brussels as a tourist so on day three an expeditionary party consisting of four Bosch spouses, one Bosch significant other, and also a DAAD fellow and his spouse set off to visit Bruges.

Often described as touristy (true), Bruges is nevertheless one of the most appealing cities in Europe to visit. The canals remind you a bit of Venice or Amsterdam, though Bruges cleaner, quainter, and quieter than either of those cities.

Brussels

2010-04-29T12:20:00.002+02:00

We're back in Bonn after another Bosch seminar trip. Our bags are unpacked, there is food in the fridge again, and it is time for a recap. We were on the road for two weeks this time, visiting Brussels, Strasbourg, and Paris.

I'd been through Brussels before, but I had never spent spent days there previously. The city strikes me now as a pleasant mishmash of urban personalities. Its iconic space is the grand place, lined on all sides by imposing facades, including the gothic town hall, and a good many gold-encrusted guild halls.

Having seen many German cities, the old town in Brussels looks decidedly run down. The cobblestone streets are so uneven one wonders if anyone is taking care of them; many walls are dirty or crumbling; and a surprising number of storefronts are vacant for a place overrun with tourists.

We like to live here. The cars smell good. We like to die.

It tells you something about the locals that their mascot is a statue of a pissing boy, the Manneken Pis. If the city looks a bit shabby (despite its obvious EU-generated wealth) then too bad.

Manneken Pis is, naturally, reproduced ad nauseam as a tourist knickknack, and is also the inspiration for what a copyright lawyer would call derivative works, such as a statue of a pissing girl, Jeanneke Pis, and signs depicting a pissing dog, which indicate designated dog toilets.

Especially south and a bit east of the city center, one encounters a number of art nouveau buildings. As with the rest of the city, they are frequently dirty and shabby, despite their inherent elegance. I took myself on a tour, but E. took a guided tour, and the guide pointed out that in fact many of the buildings are in bad shape, and that there are few craftsmen capable of maintaining them properly. Having seen analogous buildings in Vienna, Paris, and even Chicago, I do have to conclude that Brussels art nouveau is underwhelming.

I realize I am alone in my odd enthusiasm, but one of the really great things about Brussels is that it is the undisputed capital of the French-language comic book (Tintin, Asterix, etc.). Contributing to the city's funky feel, there are many murals celebrating comic book illustration. In this one, you look down from an imaginary position in the sky at the place where you are standing, except that where you are really standing is a river (and it would be, except that the rivers have all been chased underground).

The Belgian Comic Strip Center is a museum devoted to comics, particularly of the francophone kind. It is housed in a building designed by Victor Horta, the best known art nouveau architect of Brussels.

My impression of Brussels from this trip is disjointed. Some of it is lovely.

Some of it could use a good scrub and some competent urban planning. And I take it I should keep an eye out for bandits ahead.

Our Star for Oslo

2010-04-09T13:42:00.003+02:00

The television offerings in Germany are awful in too many ways to describe. Throughout the year I have been amazed that the channel I watch most consistently is VIVA, a video channel similar to MTV. I don't have the German medical or legal terminology to watch House or Law and Order dubbed, and I have no patience for the dozens of regionally produced (i.e. PBS-style) Stammtisch programs, where people sit around and talk.

This spring I briefly fell under the spell of Deutschland Sucht den Superstar, Germany's version of American Idol (which is amazing in part because I would never, ever waste my time on Idol). In a similar vein but more to the point, I completely succumbed to Unser Star für Oslo (Our Star for Oslo).

The Eurovision Song Contest, for those who don't know, is an annual event televised all across Europe. Established in 1956 as an experiment in simultaneous transmission, the contest has become a European cultural phenomenon. The reason for this, I think, is that it is the only time in the year when everyone in Europe can turn on the television and watch what everyone else is watching.

As Americans, I think we have no idea how tantalizing this premise is. Culture critics complain that since Cronkite and Carson went off the air we no longer have shared mediated experiences. It may be true that we now live in a world with 57 channels and nothing on, but the fact remains that day after day, people in Idaho, Iowa, Alabama, Alaska, Maine, and Michigan all watch exactly the same programs on television. Now imagine a world in which each state speaks its own language, and has its own television networks, and in which there are only two hours a year when people in all 50 states watch the same thing at the same time. That's pretty much what the situation in Europe is.

The Eurovision Song Contest is like a cross between American Idol and the Olympics. It's like the former because it entails picking a wining performer. It's like the latter because national pride is at stake.

Each country selects a contestant for the contest as it sees fit. Our Star for Oslo is Germany's selection process. (Oslo is where the contest takes place this year.) This television program is roughly like American Idol: singers perform, judges critique, viewers vote, contestants are eliminated.

By the final program, there were just two contestants left, and somewhere around the middle of the broadcast, things got interesting. The judges' attention shifted from the contestants' performances to the larger issue of winning the Eurovision Song Contest. The winner, they observed, is usually a perky, happy song (ABBA won the song contest with "Waterloo," back in the day). This was the judges' oblique way of saying that the very talented rock vocalist on stage might not be the right gladiator to send into the circus.

Poor Germany hasn't won the Song Contest since 1982. They're seldom in the top ten even. (In the last five years they were 20th, 23rd, 19th, 14th, and 24th. If this were baseball they'd be the Cubs.) So when you think of Our Star for Oslo, think of American Idol with an extra element of we want blood.

Germany's winner this year is Lena Meyer-Landrut, who is quite good despite her inexperience (she's not even through with high school). The winning song is "Satellite," though I think her best performances were some of the other pieces she sang on the show.

When the judges veered into thinking about how to win in Oslo--well, that's where it gets interesting. One judge expressed sadness that the winning song, whatever it might be, would be in English. German or English, that is the question. German may represent Germany better in such a competition, but English sells.

And then there's the messy matter of "European" taste. They put up video clips of some of the competition. The styles and tastes represented couldn't be any less similar. Consider Holland (dreadful), Ireland (all that musical talent, and this is what they come up with?), Norway (popera), and Slovenia (I guess they love this in Ljubljana).

All in all, Eurovision is a healthy reminder that regardless of the state of European unification, the Europeans are still strangers to one another. I didn't invent this thought, but I think this is essentially correct: The only culture Europeans share is American pop culture. No wonder the victory-hungry Germans picked a song in English.

How to make German pretzels

2010-03-30T10:30:00.003+02:00

Not to be outdone by Culinspiration, I think it's time for a food post. In the spirit of going native, I have taken to making my own pretzels. Here's how it's done.

Ingredients

1 package dry yeast

1 teaspoon sugar

1/3 cup warm water

3 3/4 cups white flour

2 teaspooons salt

additional 1 cup water

4 tablespoons baking soda

4 cups water

1-2 tablespoons coarse salt or seasme seeds

Dissolve the yeast and the sugar in 1/3 cup warm water. Sift the flour into a large bowl, and sprinkle with salt. When the yeast mixture is foamy, add it to the flour. Gradually add just enough of the remaining water to make a strong, elastic, and slightly wet dough. (I use almost the full cup.)

Knead the dough for at least 10 minutes, adding as little additional flour as possible. (I'm not kidding about kneading for at least 10 minutes. You want the gluten to develop.)

Cover the dough with plastic wrap, and allow to rise for an hour and fifteen minutes. Your dough should be a smooth, fat ball, like this:

On a floured surface, divide the dough into twelve equal pieces. Then roll each piece into a thin 18" snake, slightly fatter in the middle than at the ends. Twist each piece into a pretzel. Twist the ends as illustrated below, then attach the ends to the top of the arch to form a pretzel. If the dough is dry, use a drop of water to hold the ends in place.

Place each pretzel on parchment paper, cover with plastic wrap, and allow to rise for 15-20 minutes.

Preheat oven to 425 F (220 C).

Combine baking soda with 4 cups water and bring to a boil. Dunk the pretzels one or two at a time for 30 seconds. Lay the pretzels on baking sheets lined with parchment paper. Sprinkle with coarse salt or sesame seeds while still wet. (About 1/4 teaspoon coarse salt per pretzel is enough. A little goes a long way.)

Bake the pretzels for 20 to 25 minutes until they are a dark golden brown. Serve fresh with butter, mustard, or cheese.

The Germans call pretzels Laugenbrezen, which means "lye pretzels." The secret to the distinctive crunchy exterior, it seems, is to dunk the dough in a 4% solution of NaOH (sodium hydroxide). For home use, baking soda is a suitable substitute, but using a lye solution is the right way to do it.

Make it stop

2010-03-26T10:31:00.003+01:00

For as long as we have been in Bonn, our street has been torn up so workers can replace pipes. The project has crawled up the street, and is now in full force just outside our apartment. The booming and crashing begins every morning around 6:45 and goes on until the late afternoon. At the current pace of progress, they will be on our block until, oh, about the time we move again.

The project is popular with small children, as you can imagine. (Check out this little kid's sweet ride on the back of the stroller.)

As for me, two backhoes are outside my window making noise and shaking my floor, and I'm ready for it to end.

Eugene and Nikki were here

2010-03-26T10:27:00.001+01:00

They came, they saw, they wandered.

Telltale signs that I may be living in a German apartment

2010-03-24T21:22:00.002+01:00

If I need light in the hallway leading to my apartment, I need to press a button that turns the light on for just long enough to climb two flights of stairs. It's a good idea to have my cellphone handy to use as a night light in case I don't make it to my door before the light goes out.

That hallway is not heated.

When I enter my apartment I am standing in an enclosed entrance hall (Flur), where I take my shoes off and tuck them under the stairs. Because there are no closets in Germany, I hang my coat on a hook on the wall. From the Flur I can reach the bathroom, the kitchen (separated from th Flur by a door), and the living room (also separated from the Flur by a door).

To reach the table with my food, I must go through two doors. It is nice to be able to close the door to the kitchen, especially if there's something stinky in there.

My refrigerator is about a third the size of an American refrigerator. I do not have a freezer, which effectively deprives me of peas and ice cream. My fridge is designed to fit inside a kitchen cabinet (and my kitchen cabinets are designed to accommodate a fridge).

I heat my water to make my tea in an electric kettle. Mine happens to be cheap and poorly designed. Still, it boils water in about 60 seconds.

I carefully separate my trash: paper in one bin; glass in another; plastic and metal in a third. Many of the bottles I purchase can be returned to the grocery store, where I feed them into a machine, and get a little coupon that I redeem when I purchase my groceries. Because I separate out so many recyclables and Pfand bottles, it takes me a long time to accumulate actual trash. Unfortunately, this means a faint stink often lingers in the air.

I don't have any cookie sheets as such. I have a deep Backblech that came with my stove, and fits inside it like a baking rack. I am always puzzled that doesn't result in food that's over-baked either on the top or the bottom, but this is never the case.

I have an on-demand water heater in the kitchen, and another in the bathroom. This means that I have an infinite supply of hot water (though sometimes it isn't very hot).

My bathtub does not have a curtain. Nor does it have a door. It has a folding barrier that covers about two thirds of the width. Showers are chillier when you're not really enclosed.

I have a two-speed toilet. I explained how to operate a German toilet in a prior post.

I have a heated towel rack. (Be jealous.)

In my bathroom there is a washing machine. It is highly water-efficient. However, a cycle takes about two hours. It wants me to wash my clothes in really, really hot water, because that--so the thinking goes--is the secret to cleanliness.

90% of the stuff in my apartment came from Ikea: table, chairs, sideboard, hutch, TV stand, art, wardrobe, bed, bedding, rugs, lamps, dishes, pots, silverware, kitchen cabinets, etc.

Like my German neighbors, I am highly conscious of my electricity consumption. I turn lights off when I leave the room. I turn the television off--really off--when I'm not watching.

However, also like my German neighbors, I am not heat efficient. I participate in the great German ritual of lüften, which means that though there is a blizzard outside, I feel the need to open my windows and let all the warm air out, and the cold air in.

It may be that like my German neighbors, I am worried about Schimmel. Yes, mildew may be collecting even as I write this. Opening the window will save me from this fate. I guess.

My windows open in two directions. If the handle is horizontal, I can open my window like a door. If the handle is vertical, my window hinges at the bottom and opens a sizable crack at the top.

I do not have screens on my windows because I live in northern Europe, and there are few bugs to bug me. Also, if I had screens in my window, I would not be able to do any of those things with my windows. And if I didn't do those things with my windows, I might get Schimmel.

My doorknobs aren't knobs. They are horizontal. Thus:

My wife and I do not share a blanket. I have a small comforter with a duvet. She has the same.

Karneval Alaaf

2010-02-23T13:37:00.002+01:00

Like all of Rheinland, carnival is a major celebration in Bonn. There are dozens of events, of which the highlights are possibly Weiberfastnacht, when women snip off men's ties, carnival Sunday, when the old town hall is stormed by soldiers, and Rosenmontag (Rose Monday), when a parade winds through the city.

The gist of Rosenmontag is to wear a crazy costume and stand at the edge of the parade route...

Then as so-called regiments pass by...

... raise your arms and shout "Alaaf." Then the soldiers will throw you something good from their floats...

... such as Kamelle (candy) or Strüsschen (flowers).

Bonn

2010-02-23T12:37:00.002+01:00

As I've alluded to previously, we have been living in Bonn since the beginning of February.

It's a shock to the system to move from Berlin to Bonn. The current capital is not only a much larger city, it's dynamic urban landscape, and magnet for all types. The former capital, derisively known as the Bundesdorf (i.e. federal village, as opposed to federal capital) is quaint and provincial by comparison. In the time it would have taken me to get to my U-Bahn stop in Berlin to go somewhere, I can walk to most places in Bonn I would care to visit. In less than the time it would have taken me to get from my home in Prenzlauerberg to a destination in West Berlin, I can now travel to Cologne, the closest major city.

In Berlin, wealth stands out (because most people are poor, or artists, or both). In Bonn, poverty stands out (because most people are affluent.)

Having spent some time in Holland, I can tell that Bonn is far enough west in Germany that some things feel Dutch. The train station is ringed by crammed bike racks. The churches are brick rather than stone. The city and the countryside intersperse. (My travel guide says that two-thirds of the land within city limits hasn't been built on.) Bönnsch, the local dialect, begins to sound like Dutch.

The world looks different from Bonn (402 km to Paris) than it does from Berlin (877 km to Paris, but just 516 km to Warsaw). When Bonn was the West German capital, inevitably politicians must have had their eye on relationships with the Brussels (the EU), London, and Paris. Now that the German capital is in Berlin, they can't help but think about eastern Europe.

Our apartment is slightly southeast of the main university building, a former palace.

Stand by the main university building and look southwest, and you'll be looking down Poppelsdorfer Allee. E. gets this view every day on her way to work.

It's not a city with many major landmarks, but one of them is St. Martin's Basilica (Münsterbasilika), a late Romanesque church with Gothic elements.

Canary Islands, Part 5

2010-02-15T10:16:00.003+01:00

This is absolutely my last post about the Canary Islands. I promise.

There are countless tasty things to eat in the Canaries. One of the most typical and well-known dishes is papas arrugadas con mojo--salty potatoes with red (chile) or green (cilantro) sauce.

We discussed these potatoes with Luis, and my impression based on that conversation is that there is no such thing as a secret recipe, as the ingredients are basic and well known. With that in mind, here is a link to a food blog with recipes for papas. Yummy.

Canary Islands, Part 4

2010-02-15T09:11:00.003+01:00

Many years ago when I lived in Vienna I was acquainted with a man named Luis Hernandez. At that time I was sharing an apartment with Eva Springer, and the two of them were dating. To collapse a decade's history, Eva and Luis are now married and living with their daughter in Tenerife, where he'e a hotel manager. Eva and the kid were visiting her parents near Vienna when E. and I visited, but Luis graciously offered to show us a bit of the island.

On the evening of day five, Luis met us in La Orotava, and drove us down to Puerto de la Cruz, where we had dinner.

Luis spend the night with his parents, who live nearby, and then met us again in the morning. We drove up through the clouds, not to the top of Teide, but close enough for a good view. (Tourists with time, money, and inclination can take a gondola to the top. Hikers with good boots, warm clothes, and lots of trail mix can also get to the top.)

Then Luis drove us down to San Cristóbal de la Laguna, another historic old Spanish city. Unlike La Orotava, its old town is designated a UNESCO World Heritage Site, though both are similarly noteworthy. Unfortunately, the weather was damp, and we didn't see as much of La Laguna as we would have liked.

This former monastery, which has been given a new purpose as an art gallery, is typical of the architecture we saw.

Luis was an unerringly gracious host, and it was great to see him again.

One last thought about La Laguna. Luis needed to go back to work, and we spend the last part of the day on our own. We really got the impression that in La Laguna, at least, people speak Spanish. It's not La Gomera, where German is surprisingly common, or a resort city on Tenerife, where English is in the air. In La Laguna you have sufficiently escaped the crowds that you are actually in Spain. It would be a nice place to explore further.

On day seven we traveled back to the south of the island to catch a flight back to the cold, dark, snowy north.

For anyone who can't get enough, here is a slideshow of more photos from our trip to the Canary Islands.

Canary Islands, Part 3

2010-02-08T16:15:00.002+01:00

On day four we took a boat from La Gomera back to Tenerife, and then made our way by public bus to La Orotava, on the north side of the island.

Tenerife, by the way, has a great public transit network. The buses are called "guaguas," which is either a term that Canary Islanders brought with them when they immigrated to Latin America, or a term Latin Americans brought with them when the immigrated back to the Canary Islands.

La Orotava is one of the oldest cities on the island, and feels more like an old Spanish city than a tourist resort. Looking up the hill, you see Teide.

Looking down the hill, you see Puerto de la Cruz, a resort town.

La Orotava itself is romantic and quaint, and we spend most of day five exploring.

Lunch, by the way, was a picnic consisting of fresh papaya, fresh avocado (amazing!), and a bread both sweet and savory (anise seeds?), bready and cakey. The combo of the bread and the buttery avocado was especially good.

Canary Islands, Part 2

2010-02-06T09:03:00.002+01:00

We spent day two and day three hiking La Gomera. We joined groups of German-speaking trekkers organized by Timah Travel, which arranged transit to the trail head, and back to town at the end of the hike, and provided a sure-footed guide so we weren't lost in the mountains.

We didn't get any photos that do justice to the twists and turns--not to mention the vistas--as the driver navigates through Valle Gran Rey. But if you look at this topographical map and follow the road with your eye, you'll get some notion of what I'm talking about.

On our first hike, known officially as "Forest of Fables," we walked through the northwestern part of Garajonay National Park. UNESCO has designated the park a World Heritage Forest in acknowledgement of its unique ecosystem.

What makes the ecosystem so unusual? Because the island rises dramatically out of the ocean, there are huge variations in elevation, so within a very small area, the temperature varies significantly. Another factor is that the prevailing winds bring moisture from the north, meaning that the northern slope of the island is wetter than the southern side. So La Gomera has what are called "micro-climates." Furthermore, the Canary Islands were completely unaffected by the ice age, which means that you find plants there that you don't find elsewhere. And because the island is remote and rocky, parts of the forest have been left pretty much the way they always were.

As you emerge from the forest and climb down the hill, the air gets warmer, and there are more traces of human activity. The island is covered with old, mostly unmaintained terraces. (These days, there are easier ways to get food than to terrace a cliff.)

On day three we tackled another hike, "The Scenic Way." Our first target was the peak of Garjonay, the highest point on the island (1,437 meters / 4,714 feet). Regrettably, the clouds were not cooperating, and we merely shivered in the mist.

Our second target was La Fortaleza (1,243 meters / 4,078 feet). It's not an easy peak to photograph from up close, because you actually can't see how tall and large it is. So let's paint the scene by showing you this big scary rock from a distance.

The hike to Fortaleza is gorgeous. One thing that really struck us is that you can't tell where the ocean ends and the sky begins. Actually, because you're looking down from high up, the horizon line is much higher than you might think.

Fortaleza means fortress, and according to legend, a group of native Gomerans fought their last stand against the Spanish conquerors there. It would be an ideal defensive position. But according to the story, when the aboriginals concluded they couldn't hold off the Spaniards, they threw themselves off a cliff. The story also goes that they were blonde, and that their suicide meant there were no more blondes on the island. Until the Germans arrived, I suppose.

The climb up induces vertigo, the climb down, panic. You get a bit of a sense of the steepness in this photo.

Canary Islands, part 1

2010-02-05T09:46:00.003+01:00

As you may have gathered from previous posts, Europe has had a cold, snowy, dark winter. Berlin broke a record for most consecutive days without seeing the sun. Fortunately, E. and I scheduled a get-away to the Canary Islands in the gap between the conclusion of Bosch seminar II, and the start of her new post in Bonn.

In the wee early hours we stood freezing in little more than our windbreakers to hail a taxi to Tegel airport. Several hours later we had arrived in Madrid. As we stood on the jet bridge, preparing to board our second flight, a hot, high-in-the-sky sunlight poured down on us, and we knew were were doing the right thing to escape from northern Europe.

The Canary Islands are off the western coast of Morocco. They are to northern Europe as Hawaii and the Caribbean are to the mainland United States: it's where you go to warm up during winter. The Canaries are subtropical, not tropical, so the weather is springlike, rather than summery, but we weren't objecting.

Here's the view flying into Tenerife. That's Teide in the background, a volcano that dominates the island. Elevation 3,718 metres (12,198 ft).

When we got out of the airport it was warm and breezy, and there were palm trees lining the street. Wearing windbreakers didn't seem so crazy as it did back in Berlin.

From the airport we took a bus to Los Cristianos, and then sauntered down to the port...

... where we hopped on a boat to Valle Gran Rey, on the southwestern edge of La Gomera, the next island to the west of Tenerife. The water was rough, and everyone on the boat was on the edge (or over the edge) of seasickness.

On arrival, we walked through the dark to our hotel. Had I not investigated where I was going, I'm sure I would have been nervous. Everything was dark, the sidewalk was narrow, and the ocean was crashing on the other side of a breakwater. But we found our hotel quickly and easily, and at the reception we were greeted in German.

Yeah, La Gomera has a reputation as an outpost for German hippies. If you can speak German, you've no need for speaking Spanish. You can even buy your groceries at a Spar.

Anyhow, by daylight, the valley and the little encampment at water's edge (three mostly contiguous villages, La Puntila, La Calera, and La Playa Calera) are something else entirely. Dramatic volcanic cliffs rise steeply above a tidy, quiet seaside resort.

I'll blog more about the rest of our trip as time permits.

Berlin Graffiti

2010-02-03T18:12:00.004+01:00

As some readers may know, I am no longer living in Berlin. Before I lose track of my thoughts, there's one more Berlin topic I want to tackle: graffiti.

To say that Berlin is covered in graffiti is merely to state the obvious.

Close your eyes and imagine Germany, and visions of beer steins and BMWs probably dance in your head. And you imagine a well-run place. Ordentlichkeit (order, orderliness) is a national virtue, right? So why is the capital city covered in spray paint and stickers--strong evidence of the absence rather than the presence of Ordentlichkeit?

In another city in another country, graffiti would be a sign of urban blight. In Berlin, it's art.

Where there's art, there are art books. Urban Illustration Berlin is essentially a museum catalog, except that the art is all over the city, and may have been painted over by the time you get there. Click here to peek inside the book.

E. and I purchased, as art, a photo of graffiti by an artist known as xoxo. We paid money so we can look at graffiti whenever we want.

What explains the Berlin's love affair with graffiti?

My first hypothesis has to do with history. The Berlin Wall was an endless canvas, an eyesore, and a reminder of the German fissure. The solution? Paint it. Hide it.

Here's a scene from what's probably my favorite film, Wim Wender's Wings of Desire.

That's the great Bruno Ganz walking along the Berlin Wall. See the graffiti in the background? I don't know the whole story but 1) I believe it was commissioned for the film 2) it's definitely by a particular artist 3) any Berliner would recognize it. It's famous. It's art.

Remember when I took a photography course? The Volkshochschule (community college) uses a version of the recurring image as its logo:

This hypothesis will only take you so far, however. The West Berlin side of the wall was covered in graffiti, but my understanding is that the East German authorities kept their side of the wall clean. These days if anything graffiti is more evident in the former east, whereas the west is a bit cleaner.

My second hypothesis is more abstract, but it strikes me as the best explanation. In the absence of graffiti, the "meaning" of a wall is whatever its owner choses. A shiny coat of white paint on your Gründerzeit home tells the world you have money and a well-engineered car. An abraded wall of crumbling stucco and leftover war damage tells another story. And so does a wall that's been tagged, stenciled, and illustrated.

The historical narrative of Berlin is still up for grabs. Is it a Prussian city? A Nazi city? An East German city? A world capital? A squat? A yuppie paradise? No one is sure, but everyone has ideas. Each new graffito is a fresh assertion: This, not that, is what this wall is about. This, not that, is what Berlin is. And until there's consensus on a narrative, no blank wall is safe.

German soundtrack

2010-01-19T19:59:00.004+01:00

When you go abroad for a year, you hear different songs on the radio, and these become a mental soundtrack of the experience. I still have vivid recollections of the songs I heard when I lived in France, more than two decades ago.

E. and I have been gathering a list of the songs that for better or worse have defined our experience. Here's a partial compilation.

Cassandra Steen, featuring Adel Tawil: Stadt

If there's an anthem for the year, this might be it.

Black Eyed Peas: I Gotta Feeling

Catchy. Happy. What more do you need?

Lady Gaga: Poker Face

I kind of wish Lady Gaga wasn't rattling around in my head, but what are you gonna do?

Milow: Ayo Technology

It's a good song until you pay attention to the lyrics.

Agnes: Release Me

Good dance track. So I imagine.

Culcha Candela: Schöne Neue Welt

This song was on the air all the time when I arrived last summer. It's kind of a stupid song, but it's definitely cemented in my head.

Lily Allen: Not Fair

Lyrics not entirely suitable for the workplace. But very clever.

Robbie Williams: Bodies

I've never understood Europeans' fascination with Robbie Williams, but this is definitely among his best.

Sportfreunde Stiller: Ein Kompliment

Rock. Auf Deutsch.

Frauenartzt & Manny Marc: Das geht ab

Party anthem. Auf Deutsch.

Lady Gaga: Paparazzi

Yeah, darn it, she's left an impression.

Emiliana Torrini: Jungle Drum

Ooo. I love this one. Happiest, catchiest song of the year. I kind of hear Nancy Sinatra when I hear this song.

Nelly Furtado: Manos Al Aire

Whoa. Nelly sings Spanish.

Peter Fox: Haus am See

Rap. Auf Deutsch. In all seriousness, Peter Fox is one of the coolest German pop singers.

Berliners need to learn how to shovel their sidewalks

2010-01-19T19:41:00.005+01:00

There's been snow on the ground in Berlin for weeks. Since Christmas I think. In other words, there has been plenty of time to get out there and clean the sidewalks. Oh, if only. Berliners obviously don't believe in clearing the sidewalks. Maybe 5% have been cleared by now. The rest just look like this:

The Berlin snow doesn't even pack down. Somehow it stays frothy, like a granita, and walking in it feels like walking through sand on the beach.

What explains this aversion to doing the obvious thing and clearing the sidewalk? I wish I knew. I think there may be a city-wide case of not-my-problem: the renters don't feel it's their responsibility, the landlords are elsewhere, the businesses figure if they clear their sidewalk snow will just be tracked over from the next business's unshoveled sidewalk, etc. I think that since this is a society accustomed to letting the government provide for them, everyone assumes the city will clear the sidewalk. (Note to all Berliners: If you think that, clearly you haven't looked out the window for the last three weeks.) Maybe they like it this way. As I explained in a previous post, every Berliner has a small child, and every one of those children has a wooden sled, and if there is snow on all the sidewalks, the parents can tug their extremely well-dressed and excessively cute children everywhere. Sleds are also useful for getting your groceries home, I've noticed.

Or are my expectations too high? Americans think in terms of conquering the frontier. Snow is something to be tamed. Maybe Berliners think snow is a coequal, a piece of their environment that they simply live with.

I'll say this for Warsaw. They push the snow into mountains lining the sidewalks. Yes, you have to climb the mountains, but there are relatively clear paths in every direction. Berlin, you could learn a thing or two.

Warsaw

2010-01-19T19:35:00.003+01:00

I ought to have more to say about Warsaw than I do. As a result of the Dresden epidemic of '10, I was less than zippy as we trudged through the frigid Polish capital. We took a tour of the old town (rebuilt after World War II) until we couldn't feel our extremities. When I had the chance, I opted to spend the rest of the day at the hotel.

On day two I visited the National Museum and ate pirogi. And that was Warsaw.

Dresden. Bummer.

2010-01-19T18:48:00.003+01:00

For Bosch Seminar II, we, the Boschies and the spouses, set off for Dresden.

I think Dresden was out to get us. For one thing, despite my good intentions, everything seemed to be closed. The major art gallery was closed for cleaning. A docent wouldn't let us in to the opera to take a tour (we think business was slow, and she wasn't in the mood). A Keller that looked promising for dinner was, surprise, closed. I went to a bookstore, saw a book, and left, mulling over whether I would like to go back and purchase it. When I went back the next day, the bookstore was closed. (On a Tuesday no less!? I understand that many businesses take a Ruhetag, or rest day, but I've never heard of Ruhetag on Tuesday.)

But Dresden's true assault on us was intestinal. After dinner with a jovial, albeit long-winded prince, over half of the group got miserably sick. In case you are eating, I will refrain from describing the symptoms. Some people were so sick they headed back to Berlin rather than head on to Warsaw. E. and I made the decision to head back, but felt sufficiently better in the morning to go on.

Our travails notwithstanding, I still think Dresden is a beautiful city. It was flattened in World War II. Some reconstruction took place in the post-war era, but there has been a huge boom in reconstruction since German reunification. We visited--and climbed to the top of--the Frauenkirche (Church of Our Lady). Destroyed in the war, the locals stubbornly left it as a pile of rubble for decades until the time was right, and the money was available to put it back together. It's unquestionably the icon of the city, which is saying something in a city crammed with amazing baroque architecture.

Dresden, as seen from the top of the Frauenkirche.

The altar of the rebuilt Frauenkirche. Seeing a brand-spanking-new version of baroque architecture improves my opinion of the style. The radiance helps.

Here I am in front of the Semper Opera.

Silliness on the Zwinger.

The streets were dead at night.

New Year's Eve in Berlin

2010-01-19T18:35:00.002+01:00

Berliners celebrate the new year by congregating in huge numbers and shooting off lots of fireworks in close quarters. E. and I wandered along Unter den Linden toward the Brandenburg Gate...

... but ended up spending most of the evening around Potsdamer Platz.

A year ago we were in Vienna for New Year's Eve, and Berlin, for all its danger and craziness, is tame by comparison. Anyhow, in Vienna we rode bumper cars in the Prater amusement park on New Year's Eve. This year we slid down an artificial sledding hill on inner tubes. I sense the making of a tradition. Next year... Ferris wheel?

Christmas for a day in Leipzig

2010-01-19T18:16:00.002+01:00

Okay, okay. This post is out of chronological order. Sue me.

Back on December 20, before heading to the Netherlands, E. and I took a day trip to Leipzig to take in the Christmas atmosphere. I don't really know why, but Leipzig was a blank spot in my imagination. It turns out to be a very attractive city, and we had a grand day out, despite the miserably frigid temperatures.

A couple of highlights...

We happened to be in the right place at exactly the right time to hear Bach's Christmas Oratorio performed in the church where it was first performed. Wow, that was great.

The church itself--and maybe this will interest Bach afficionados--is like no other I've ever set foot in. Imagine a church frosted all over the inside like a wedding cake. And imagine the gothic columns have been hidden behind classical columns with asparagus sticking out the top. Because that's just what it looks like.

Leipzig's Christmas markets have a good reputation (Berlin's don't) and we had fun eating fried dough and wandering through the old town.

Christmas in Assen, Netherlands

2010-01-08T08:44:00.002+01:00

Photography Class

2010-01-08T08:29:00.002+01:00

I neglected to mention that I took a digital photography course at Volkshochschule Friedrichshain-Kreuzberg, one of the local community colleges. Good clean fun. But now I need a new camera.

Scenes from the Culture War, Continued

2010-01-08T08:13:00.003+01:00

The exodus that followed the fall of the Berlin Wall was followed by an influx of squatters taking advantage of abandoned property. Nearly all of the squatters have been evicted by now. E. called one afternoon from work to tip me off that police were clearing a squat next to her office. I walked down to check out the spectacle. There were countless dozens of police vehicles, but there was little drama. As best I could tell, the police were happy to wait patiently until the squatters left.

A crowd gathered in an adjacent park to watch. My impression was that the crowd was split peaceably between punky sympathizers and more bourgeois neighbors happy to see the squatters kicked out.

Here's the building the morning after. The police removed the windows to prevent squatters from re-inhabiting the building.

For more info, read coverage in ampelhead or Spiegel online.

Scenes from the Culture War

2009-12-27T11:52:00.002+01:00

Berlin is a divided city: not a city divided between capitalists and communists, but instead a city divided between bohemians and yuppies. When the Berlin Wall fell, the eastern half of the city emptied out, and property was generally cheap. Artists, slackers, anarchists, and other bohemians filled in the void, and made the once-dreary east an increasingly area to live. And as everyone knows, once the starving artists make a neighborhood desirable, yuppies swoop in to buy property.

That’s exactly what’s happening in my Berlin neighborhood. Around the block from me on Schwedter Strasse, a gigantic, pricey, yuppie housing project known as Marthas Hof is going up.

This does not sit well with the pre-existing bohemians. One Saturday, protesters gathered outside my building for a march protesting Marthas Hof.

Personally, I think the party’s nearly over, and Berlin is destined to become a more bourgeois place.

Here’s what’s strange: the people protesting Marthas Hof (and other signs of change such as the redevelopment of the vacant land where the Berlin Wall stood) are actually the social conservatives. They’re the ones who don’t want Berlin to change.

Berlin / Berlin

2009-12-08T15:19:00.004+01:00

Everybody knows that during the Cold War, Berlin was divided into East and West. East Berlin was the capital of the German Democratic Republic (DDR), an urban landscape of vast socialist tenements. West Berlin was an island, a stranded outpost of the Federal Republic of Germany (BRD). Then the DDR collapsed, the two Germanies were reunified, and to the surprise of many, the German parliament decided to make Berlin the capital.

That decision was gutsy: “West” Berlin was in decent physical condition, but “East” Berlin was decidedly shabby. I visited Berlin for a few days when I was a college junior studying in Vienna. The train dropped me off in the east (which, when you think about it, makes sense, since the shortest route from Vienna to Berlin is through formerly communist Czechoslovakia and the former East Germany). I only dimly remember the train station, but I recall the U-Bahn pedestrian tunnels as empty, smelly, and potentially dangerous. I retreated to West Berlin, and that’s the Berlin I recall.

I was with a couple of fellow students, and we had ventured east to the Brandenburg Gate, the place where symbolically the two Berlins met. It was dark, and it was time for dinner, and my recollection of wandering further east along Unter den Linden was that it was nearly abandoned. Finding a restaurant was a problem. In hindsight, what had happened was that when the border opened, there was an exodus to the west. It wasn’t until later that business reestablished itself in the east of the city.

So what that means is that West Berlin is the center of the reunified city, right? Wrong. From the vantage of 2009, I think the answer is actually that the physical, economic, and cultural center is now shifting decidedly into what was East Berlin. That area that seemed so desolate is now a top destination. And the West… well, there some nice areas, but the longer I live here, the more I think the former West is second tier.

Pop quiz. As you know by now if you’re a regular reader, I live within a stone’s throw of the old Berlin Wall. I took one of the following photos a few blocks west of my apartment in the former French Sector. I took the other photo a few blocks east of my apartment in what was once East Berlin. Which photo depicts the former East, and which depicts the former West?

The drab housing blocks are in the former west, in what strikes me as a working class neighborhood. The stately apartment building is in the former East, just off Kollwitzplatz, one of the most desirable addresses in all of Berlin. If you guessed incorrectly, you haven’t absorbed how much the Berlin urban landscape and social order has changed since reunification.

Since 1991 when the decision was made to move the capital, Berlin has experienced a non-stop construction boom. I don’t know the whole history, but I suspect the reconstruction of Berlin has happened in three overlapping phases.

The first matter of business was getting government buildings ready. (The renovated Reichstag represents just the tip of the administrative building iceberg.) While the government was erecting workspaces, there was a flood of private redevelopment of vacant properties. (A good example is Potsdamer Platz. Previously an area destroyed in the war that had never been rebuilt, it’s now chock full of gleaming new buildings, albeit with a few gaps to fill in its toothy smile.)
The second wave was probably to renovate the landmarks. (The eastern end of Unter den Linden, where there are a number of imposing historic facades, is still being renovated. The Museum Island is pretty much finished. The last big project outstanding is rebuilding a long-destroyed Prussian palace.)
Enough of the city has been pasted back together that my sense is that construction has shifted into a third phase: the redevelopment of private residential property. Everywhere I look, scaffoldings cover old facades (renovation) and new facades (under construction).

Here’s a scene on my street.

The building on the right is the face of the once and future Berlin. I don’t know the history of the building on the left, but I would not be surprised to learn that the damage to the façade dates to WWII. I sense strong reluctance to repair the scars of war, but I think it’s just a matter of time until the building on the left gets a facelift.

As I see it, Berlin is building (and building and building) its way towards normalcy, but for this to happen, some adjustments will be necessary. The former west is going to play second fiddle. There’s a poetic justice to this, in that the former East Germans feel that reunification was really more like a takeover. The price of imposing a new order is ceding the center to the East (or if you rather, conceding that the East is the center).

Our Berlin apartment

2009-11-11T10:55:00.003+01:00

In case you're curious, here's what our Berlin apartment looks like on a sunny day (occasionally, that is).

Twenty years later

2009-11-10T15:02:00.003+01:00

November 9 was the 20th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall, and there were commemorations throughout the day.

Twenty years ago, Angela Merkel and thousands of other East Germans crossed over Bernholmer Bridge into West Berlin. To mark the anniversary, she walked across the bridge again, this time accompanied by Mikhail Gorbachev and Lech Walesa. To judge by the New York Times article, the scene looked like this:

Let me assure you, however, that the scene looked a lot more like this:

Give yourself bonus points if you recognized Gorby and Angie in my photo.

Later in the day there was a big celebration around the Brandenburg Gate. Giant domino stones (painted mostly by children, but also by luminaries such as Nelson Mandela) were placed up and down the street. Lech Walesa knocked the first stone over (get it?).

One of the stones wouldn't fall over, and that was intentional. It had been painted by a Korean artist, and the point was that Korea, like Germany previously, is divided, and that there are walls that still need to come down.

Cottbus

2009-10-29T10:23:00.003+01:00

Last weekend, as E. attended a conference, I bummed around Cottbus for a day. It's another sleepy eastern German city.

To judge by the architecture, Cottbus must have been affluent and booming around 1900. There are many stately buildings of the era, including examples of Jugendstil (art nouveau).

Whenever I see Jugendstil in Germany I can't get past the thought that it's too heavy to be representative of the genre, though the motifs (vegetative patterns, sphinxes, etc.) are undeniable.

A local architectural highlight is the Jugendstil Staatstheater.

As it happened, shortly after we arrived there was an open rehearsal for an upcoming production of Antigone. I attended, along with about 100 others, which is fairly impressive for a cloudy Saturday morning. The event was billed as an experiment in marketing, and really was just an open rehearsal. The actors and directors worked on two scenes as we looked on, but the actors were barely off book, and the blocking was still taking shape, so it wasn't as if we were seeing anything close to the finished work.

(For theater buffs and dim-witted political scientists, that is an iron curtain, a metal wall that drops in the event of a theater fire to keep it from spreading. I noticed that a fire marshal attended even this rehearsal. German and Austrian fire marshals must be the most cultured people in the world, as one is required at every performance, just in case.)

Cottbus has some cute (though by European standards, ordinary) older architecture.

The highlight of modern architecture is this university campus building (a library, I think).

But if it looks like nothing is going on, it's because nothing is going on.

Treptower Park, Berlin

2009-10-29T10:18:00.001+01:00

Neues Museum

2009-10-27T16:51:00.003+01:00

The Neue Museum on Berlin's "museum island" was built between 1843 and 1855, and was one of the most notable buildings of Prussian Germany. In World War II it was bombed and pretty much destroyed.

Rather than tear it down, they left it as it was. That's not unusual in post-war Germany. For instance, the Frauenkirche in Dresden was left literally as a pile of rubble until they finally rebuilt it a few years ago. Here's the Neue Museum in 1980:

Then from 2003 to 2009, they put the Neue Museum back together again. Almost. And in October 2009, the museum opened to the public for the first time in 70 years. E. and I stood in line for a good hour to get inside on the first weekend.

The collection comprises mostly antiquities, but they are not the reason to visit. What's more interesting is the building itself, which is again complete, but which is essentially a stabilized version of its old ruined self.

The abraded walls look more like the ruins of Pompeii than a Prussian art gallery.

Many walls are rough brick. In its original state they would have been covered in plaster.

It's odd looking at fragments of antiquities in this space...

Where does the artifact end, and the museum begin? Is there any difference?

I am giving in to the undeniable fact that there is a Berlin aesthetic, and that this is it. The Berliners see their city, their space as an urban palimpsest, written upon and erased time and again. To paint the walls would be to deny history.

I'm reminded obliquely of my years in Austria. Despite having been as tangled up in the wars of the twentieth century as Germany was, Austria has a different notion of history. Like Germany, Austria was occupied by victors of WWII (and Vienna, like Berlin, was divided into sectors). It took Germany until 1989 to achieve a semblance of its former self. As such, it has a 20-year history. Austria, however, by declaring neutrality in 1955 achieved autonomy and normalcy much more handily, and as such has a 54-year history.

I wander Berlin and I see the clutter and damage of the 20th century everywhere. They're just now getting around to putting the place back together again. The Austrians were probably this far along by 1960.

One German perspective is that the Austrian history is in fact not resolved at all. The Austrians (so this line of thinking goes) think that because they were annexed they can wash their hands of their full and pliant participation in the Nazi regime. They dusted themselves off more quickly, but they've not faced the skeletons in the closet.

But the Germans, it seems to me, wallow arrogantly in their historical guilt. The reopened Neue Museum doesn't say: "We've cleaned up, and we're back to normal." Instead it says: "We have monumentalized our destruction. We will neither forget it ourselves, because we did awful things, nor let you forget it, because you did this to us."

Useful generalizations

2009-10-27T16:22:00.002+01:00

The western part of Germany pays for the eastern part of Germany (through a subsidy for former East Germans). The southern part of Germany pays for the northern part of Germany (because Bavaria and Baden-Württemberg are where the industrial activity happens).

Bavaria alone has a "GNP" of over 400 billion Euros. Is it any wonder that Bavarians think of themselves as Bavarians first, Germans second?

In Munich everyone is well off. In Berlin everyone is doing poorly economically. In Cologne everyone is middle class. In Hamburg there's a big split between the rich and the poor.

It's raining babies

2009-10-27T16:00:00.002+01:00

One of the most blatantly obvious things to note about Berlin is that there are babies everywhere you turn. I don't have a proper explanation for how or why this is happening. Germany's birth rate, as you can see in this New York Times graphic, is dropping like a brick:

The New York Times article says that the perception that Prenzlauer Berg (my neighborhood) is the neighborhood with the most children in Europe is false. “If you look at the different quarters of Berlin, Prenzlauer Berg has one of the lowest birthrates.” Maybe. But that doesn't change my perception of the matter, because I feel like I've never before encountered so many babies in one place.

A different measure of the baby boom is this: According to Der Tagesspiegel, in 2007, for the first time since World War II, there were more births than deaths in Berlin.

Here's a photo I took in my neighborhood (near Eberwalderstr. U-Bahn, for sticklers) on a recent afternoon. I count five baby buggies, and two Laufräder (pedal-less bikes for little tots). No, this isn't a baby buggy outlet store. This is a typical cafe on a typical day, crammed with mommies with babies.

Day Trip to Wittenberg

2009-10-27T15:00:00.002+01:00

Wittenberg's obvious claim to fame is that it is the place where the Protestant Reformation began. It's a cute albeit sleepy town.

This is the place, though not the original door, where Luther nailed his 95 theses.

Speaking of the problems of Catholicism, one of Wittenberg's more dubious claims to fame is this Jewish Pig. I'll let Martin Luther be our tour guide. "Here in Wittenberg on our parish church a pig is carved in stone. Beneath it piglets and Jews are nursing. Behind the pig there's a rabbi, who while lifting the pig's right leg, and with his left hand pulling its tail, is bent over and peering assiduously at a Talmud, as though he hopes to read something trenchant." (Source.)

Wittenberg benefits from UNSESO Heritage Site Status, and much of the city looks spiffy, but some of the city looks like the semi-abandoned Eastern German city that it is.

Venture away from the historic town center, and the architecture looks a good deal more bland and Soviet.

Nearby, they had the late Viennese artist Friedrich Hundertwasser redo the facade of a school, which, whether you like it or don't, is a reprieve from the rectangular housing projects.

E. however was not impressed.

A Pretty Good Waffle

2009-10-27T14:56:00.001+01:00

At a waffle joint on our block.

Funny Portable Toilets

2009-10-27T14:54:00.003+01:00

The Giants in Berlin

2009-10-27T14:14:00.002+01:00

Among the events marking the 20th anniversary of German reunification was a street performance dubbed the Giants in Berlin. This XXL puppet show by the French company Royal de Luxe was supposedly a fairy tale of reunion. Why a girl in a raincoat represents the East, and a man in a diving suit represents the West, I just don't know. (Actually I do: it was too expensive to make new puppets, so they recycled some old ones.) Regardless, it was a fun and impressive spectacle.

The best part of the show was watching the Lilliputians form human chains to make the giant's limbs move. These photos give you the general idea, but the video is even better.

I take back what I said. This is the best part of the show.

Berlin Wall

2009-10-15T09:52:00.003+02:00

Yesterday, I stumbled onto a fantastic website documenting the Berlin Wall. It's in German, but the map feature is intuitive, so you can probably follow your nose even without German.

The two photos below were both taken around 1988-1989 (probably just before the collapse of East Germany). In the first photo, the building in the center is the building where we are now living. Our unit is one floor below the top floor, just to the right of the lamppost in the foreground.

In this second photo, the building we now live in is directly behind the watch tower. (Our unit is around the corner, and not visible from this angle.)

The contrast between then and now is breathtaking. Here's the street scene outside my window today:

24 September: Farewell party at Rodeo Restaurant

2009-09-28T11:46:00.002+02:00

The Bosch fellows were treated to dinner at Rodeo Restaurant, which you can actually read about in this New York Times article.

Volksbühne

2009-09-28T10:13:00.003+02:00

Backstage Meeting

The Bosch Fellows’ first day back in Berlin (23 September) focused on subjects related to the former German Democratic Republic (DDR). I took the liberty of joining a conversation at the Volksbühne (a theater in the former East) billed as “Culture in the DDR.” Our hosts were Stefan Rosinski, the theater’s head dramaturg, and another dramaturg, whose name I missed (but by process of elimination was probably Sabine Zielke).

We were led through a shabby but seemingly spacious backstage administrative area to an office that struck me as a DDR time capsule. The look was mid-century modernism, with flat wood paneling everywhere. Only one picture hung from the walls, a propaganda poster depicting Stalin:

Our host was Stefan Rosinski, dressed expensively in shades of black. His thick, graying mane reminded me of Beethoven throughout the conversation. Sabine Zielke held court on her own until he showed up, and then she barely said a word. (Welcome to the German workplace pecking order. I noticed on the Volksbühne website that the five male dramaturgs are listed before the two female dramaturgs.)

Theater History

Much of the conversation was a scattered history of theater in the DDR. A summary follows.

Fascism is hierarchical and centralized, and after 1945 the East German theater became hierarchical and centralized. There were theater training schools, and every graduate received an appointment to a theater, and could not be fired.

Old classics (e.g. Shakespeare) were a big part of the repertory, and were probably the least problematic plays to perform. Modern classics were hit or miss. Ibsen, for instance, was a bit too bourgeois for East German tastes. Contemporary authors faced a dilemma: Did they really want to paint a picture of the world around them? If so, was it safe to depict the world as it existed? Was it selling out to depict the world more palatably?

The arts developed along different lines in East and West Germany. Both nations sought to use culture to create a national identity, but in different ways. Architecture provides an easy example. As West Germany rebuilt, it sought a new, modern idiom that was unlike the architecture of the 1930s. As East Germany rebuilt, it sought to define a new socialist architecture.

In the 60s, theater in West Germany became more explicitly political. An example is the play Die Ermittlung (The Investigation) (1965) by Peter Weiss, a docudrama based on transcripts of the Auschwitz Trials.

A major event in East German theater was the 1965 production of The Dragon by Yevgeny Schwarz at Berlin's Deutsches Theater. It ran for 500 performances to full houses. I remember The Dragon from grad school. It's a fairy tale, and woefully obvious allegory of totalitarianism. (A town has learned to accommodate a tyrannical dragon.) Ziekle would have me believe that the DDR apparatchiks were so out of touch that they didn't get that they were the subject of criticism, and let the show go on. (I find that doubtful. An easier explanation is that they knew who to keep an eye on by seeing who went to see this play.)

(For information about Horst Sagert's designs for The Dragon, follow this link.)

In the 70s, resignation set in. Authors addressed private rather than topical themes. In the 80s, aesthetic forms took over.

Then in 1989 with the fall of the DDR, 30-40 years of divided and distinct theater history came to an end. Sabine Zielke, who unlike Stefan Rosinski lived in the East, chimed in to say that for the next two or three years everyone was in a perpetual state of confusion.

Reunification, and thus westernization, made it much more expensive to run a theater. The staff of the Oper Unter den Linden was cut from 1,000 to 500 employees.

The head of the Volksbühne made a decision that it was necessary to integrate as quickly as possible, and now has about a 50/50 split of employees from the former East and the former West. Other houses made other choices—it sounds like the Deutsches Theater is still largely an East German operation.

Berlin comprises two worlds sharing the same space. In Rosinski’s opinion, if Berlin could have, it would have chosen to be part of neither the East nor the West. After reunification, a dynamic of friendly competition emerged, as each theater attempts to do better work than its rivals’.

One consequence of having lived through the DDR (and I think Rosinski must have been referring to the former East Germans specifically) is that there is now an aversion to all systems—actor training, ticketing, subscriptions, etc.

Please, not Heiner Müller

A question Germans must wrestle with is what defines Germanness (“Was ist das Deutsche?”). There are significant cultural and linguistic variations that make it difficult to speak of a shared German identity. Rosinski’s interesting but problematic claim is that since Germans don’t really speak a shared language, the language they can all agree on is German as it is spoken on the stage, a semi-artificial construct analogous to BBC English. For this reason, and this is where his argument gets murky, Germans are unusually attached to the theater, and willing to support it even if they never attend, because the theater is an assertion of a shared cultural identity.

Because of this high level of public support, a theater is essentially a Behörde, a public authority. What this means is means theaters have endless freedom and are responsible to no one.

Toward the end of the conversation I asked what I knew was a fairly stinky question: What remains of the theater of the DDR, and please don’t tell me Heiner Müller. The answer: Well, actually it is Heiner Müller.

For those not already in the know, Müller is widely thought of Brecht’s intellectual successor. His plays are abstract heaps of cultural detritus. None of it makes much sense, but it’s not mysterious what he’s saying: We Germans are being crushed under the weight of our accumulated history. He scores some points for having something to say in a system not interested in what you had to say, but that’s about as much credit as I will give him. He's not my favorite author. Not even remotely.

The Volksbühne dramaturgs described putting on a huge production of Müller’s Die Schlacht (The Battle) that they were very into, but which attracted an audience of only about 50 people a night. When you imagine that you have a right to exist because the state funds you without regard to the work you create, the result is theater no one gets and no one wants to see.

I objected that theater is a means of communication, and if they were doing plays for the benefit of 50 diehards, they weren’t doing their job.

Rosinsky had a ready response. Like Picasso, it will take the world 50 years to understand Müller. A clever but specious answer. You can hang a Picasso on a museum wall for 50 years, and over time some people will get something out of it. But I don’t have 50 years to get something out of an evening at the theater.

Rosinski told us that What Müller conveys is: None of you understand, but what I’m saying is very important. Rosinski obviously thinks this is ducky; I think this is completely arrogant.

In a previous conversation with theater students from the UK, someone objected to Rosinski that he had been going on for some time without ever mentioning the public. The thing is, by his own admission, he doesn’t actually care about the public.

He ended the conversation snidely, telling us the following joke: Two people meet in New York. The one says she’s an actress. The other replies, “Oh, which café?” I took this as his way of saying, “Aren’t we wonderful? Isn’t it great that we can actually do our work as artists unlike you heathen Americans subject to market forces?” Bah.

Essen Zollverein

2009-09-25T13:19:00.003+02:00

As regular readers may recall, I amply dismissed Essen. Here, for the curious, is a less dismissive discussion of the Essen Zollverein complex, by none less than the singer David Byrne: http://journal.davidbyrne.com/2006/08/essen.html.

How to flush a contemporary German toilet

2009-09-25T12:03:00.002+02:00

This is a toilet. If you're only making a small transaction, press the small button. If you're making a larger transaction, press the larger button. Any questions?

Hamburg coffeehouses

2009-09-25T11:36:00.002+02:00

I had occasion to while away hours in two of Hamburgs great coffeehouses with the Bosch spouses.

1. Café Paris, a traditional French brasserie. (I had a delicious dish of the following: gnocchi, grilled I think; braised cherry tomatoes; touches of goat cheese for flavor; a hint of shaved peccorino; and a "pesto" of ground walnuts, honey, and rosemary. I think this dish could be reverse engineered without too much difficulty.)

2. Literaturhaus Cafe, which the guidebook aptly describes as shabby and baroque.

I had a very respectable Kaiserschmarren (with quartered plums, rather than the more traditional plum compote, as well as an entirely untraditional but yummy, eggy ice cream). I continue to be struck by how many fancy dishes the Germans have stolen from Viennese cuisine.

Es lohnt sich / Es lohnt sich nicht #10

2009-09-25T10:42:00.003+02:00

Lübeck is famous for its marzipan, and we started the afternoon at the Niederegger Konditorei (pastry cafe, roughly). I've never met marzipan I didn't like, and the desserts were yummy, but today's shout out goes to the marzipan tea. Heavenly. Es lohnt sich.

20 September: Lübeck

2009-09-25T09:35:00.003+02:00

This being a life of excursions, we spent Sunday in Lübeck, another port city, albeit one whose days of significance has past. After relaxing a bit a cafe (more on that in another post) we took an architecture tour, led by a local architect who was passionate about his built environment and urban design.

A refrain of his comments was that Lübeck has always been trying to figure out what it's local idiom is. For instance, in 1938 a building needed some work. The original facade was baroque, but the cagey architect knew that the Nazis weren't going to support restoring something vaguely French. Instead, he designed a facade that looks about like an old warehouse on the river--something more "German." That's what got built (building on left).

This too was a bit of a joke. The image of Lübeck is brick. In truth, the old structurally brick warehouses and homes were stuccoed. It simply turned out that the stuccoed, painted facades fell off due to the local weather.

Later in the 20th century, modernists tried to square their ideas (simple forms) with the local skyline (jagged). As post-modernism began to take hold, there were some buildings built that kind of look like the 1938 building and others like it. One issue was that people had basically forgotten how to build in brick. Another issue was that architects had essentially copied from an architectural forgery based on something that no longer looked as it originally had. Got all that?

I'll let photos of the town speak for themselves.

Dinner was at the Schiffergesellschaft, a local institution since roughly 1538.

Hamburg

2009-09-25T09:10:00.002+02:00

The next stop on our tour was Hamburg. I had visited Hamburg long ago, and only for a day in the middle of winter. It was dark, cold, Nordic. Also, I got to see Ulrich Wildgruber perform Prospero in The Tempest. That of course is another story.

My impression of Hamburg by daylight in warmer weather is something else. There are sites that match one's mental image of Europe. This, for instance, is a courtyard in the Town Hall.

Other areas are more functional and industrial. This area near the harbor reminds me a lot of Chicago, right down to the bascule bridges that I spotted here and there.

We got to take a boat tour of the harbor, and that too reshaped my impression. Hamburg is one of the largest, busiest ports in the world, and the scale of activity around the water definitely gives the city a muscular feel.

These gigantic cranes (I'm not sure what else I would call them) move shipping containers onto and off of ships. Under optimal circumstances, one of these can load or unload a 40' container in a minute. You do the math. That's 60 an hour, and there are four cranes in this photo alone. To get an approximate sense of scale, think of each crane as a five-year-old child, and each 40' shipping container as a matchbox car.

This is a creepy buoy out in the harbor.

Es lohnt sich / Es lohnt sich nicht #9

2009-09-24T12:15:00.003+02:00

We traveled from Cologne to Hamburg by way of Essen. I realize they are European Culture Capital 2010, but I don't care. Verdict: Es lohnt sich nicht. Not worth it.

For better, or mostly for worse, Essen is in an industrial region that is past its prime. Its central attraction is the Zollverein, a gigantic coal-processing facility turned into a tourist attraction. (Looks a bit like a set for a sci-fi movie.) Info here.

It's just not that interesting. For those of you in Montana, this would be like designating Butte a cultural heritage site because it has a gigantic, polluted, abandoned copper pit.

The, uh, facilities

2009-09-24T12:00:00.002+02:00

Before moving off of Cologne onto other topics, I would just like to point your attention to this blog post by another Bosch spouse: http://lifewithumlauts.blogspot.com/2009/09/facilities-in-koln.html. I was in in the same hotel, and visited the male version of the restaurant WC of which she speaks.

Es loht sich / Es lohnt sich nicht #8

2009-09-24T11:31:00.002+02:00

Cologne, it turns out, has a very respectable Käthe Kollwitz museum. She's a tough artist to put a finger on. She was active from the late 1800s through her death in 1945, an era of isms, though she to my knowledge embraced none of them. There's a hint of expressionism lurking (more in mood than in execution). There's a hint of die Neue Sachlichkeit (new objectivity). Mostly, I think she just did her own thing.

In many images, the subject's hands are touching her head, a motif of grief, I think.

Self portrait

While strolling Cologne, this destroyed church (St. Alban's) caught my eye. I later learned that the sculptures are copies of originals Kollwitz made for a monument in Russia, where her son was killed in WWI. It's called "The Mourning Parents."

Es lohnt sich / Es lohnt sich nicht #7

2009-09-24T11:10:00.004+02:00

Five or six wines were served during our tour of Kloster Eberbach, all good, some amazing. One, an "erstes Gewächs," was bewilderingly delicious and was not for sale. (As I think about this, I bet the Bosch Stiftung paid good money for our tour.)

The verdict on the wine: Es lohnt sich. And then some.

The first course at dinner was a Riesling-Creme-Suppe (Riesling creme soup). Wow. Fantastic. Es lohnt sich ziemlich.

Mastering the art of Riesling-Creme-Suppe is now on my to-do list. If you know some German, you can try this recipe (which I have not). The ingredients are onions, butter, Riesling, broth, sour cream, flour, heavy cream, parsley, salt, and white pepper.

16 September: Kloster Eberbach

2009-09-24T10:48:00.002+02:00

Before heading back to Cologne from Frankfurt, we made a nice pit stop at Kloster Eberbach, a long-defunct Cistercian monastery, now a vineyard and wine cellar.

I knew Cistercian monasteries were austere, but I hadn't realized how crazy these monks were. Not only were the walls bare and undecorated, they were vegetarians in an era without even rice or potatoes, let alone soy protein; they wore sandals throughout the year; there was no glass covering the windows; and so on and so on. There were a lot of respiratory ailments, and your life expectancy was brief.

Curiously, there were also laymen who worked at the monastery (e.g. to build stuff). Their world was literally separated from the monks' by a wall. I can barely imagine what they laymen got out of the arrangement, since they wore the monks' hand-me-downs, which would have been shabby at best. One of the laymen murdered an abbot. Frustration. Resentment.

Kloster Eberbach is where The Name of the Rose was filmed.

16 September: Frankfurt

2009-09-24T10:33:00.003+02:00

I have to admit that my day in Frankfurt surprised me. Every opinion I had ever heard was to the effect of: Frankfurt is a gleaming, modern, financial city. It's fine for conducting business, but otherwise there's no reason to go there.

Some of that is correct. It is a gleaming, modern city of skyscrapers and wide streets. It would be easy to think you're in an American city.

Schiller

But Frankfurt, it turns out, also has an attractive "old town," built on a much lower scale with a very different feel. Admittedly, much of the old town isn't very old. Like much of Germany, it suffered a lot of damage, so what you're seeing is a simulacrum of what was there before. But this is nevertheless not the urban landscape I was imagining.

Words I never imagined writing: it would be nice to have more time to spend in Frankfurt.

Yes, we gähn!

2009-09-15T18:01:00.005+02:00

The two main candidates in the upcoming election, Chancellor Angela Merkel and challenger Frank-Walter Steinmeier, put Germany to sleep with their televised debate a couple of nights ago. The cheeky headline in Die Bild: Yes, we gähn! (Yes, we yawn).

Cologne

2009-09-15T17:55:00.001+02:00

Es lohnt sich / Es lohnt sich nicht #6

2009-09-15T17:49:00.002+02:00

While in Munich, E. and I went to Villa Stuck, a small museum in the former private home of the artist Franz Stuck. Exquisite. Verdict: Es lohnt sich.

The Mason-Dixon Line

2009-09-15T09:32:00.003+02:00

Having lived in Vienna for a good long while, Austria is normal for me, whereas Germany is a little off. As we traveled south, my cultural comfort level rose palpably. In Heldeiberg I spied a proper Cafe Konditorei (mmmm). In Stuttgart I heard my first Grüß Gott, and by Andechs I heard lots of Grüß Gott.

It was striking to me that Bavaria was presented to us as some sort of German exception, a place where everything is a little bit off. And from a northern German perspective, that's correct. From an Austrian perspective, Bavaria is the last place where it's still normal, whereas Germany north of Bavaria is off.

I felt a sort of cultural relief in Munich. For example, we had stopped in a photo exhibit in the lobby of an office building. I asked the guard sitting at the desk for a cafe recommendation. In no time we're chatting. He gives me one suggestion--the cafe is nice, but doesn't have much of a selection. So he gives me other suggestions. Twice he gets up and walks over to a closet to pull out brochures for me of places I might like. There is a sort of hearty friendliness that comes more easily to the south Germans and Austrians.

While in the south, I had to quickly relearn the German I used to know and have been unlearning in order to navigate Berlin.

Key:

North German = South German (translation)

Quark = Topfen (yummy rich dairy product we don't have in the US, roughly a cross between yogurt and cream cheese)

Guten Tag = Grüß Gott (hello)

Tschüs = Servus (goodbye)

Aprikosen = Marillen (apricots)

kucken = schauen (look, peer)

Brötchen = Semmel (roll, bun)

Trödelmarkt = Flohmarkt (flea market)

Tüte = Sackl (bag)

bischen = bisl (a little bit)

In the same vein, I overheard a man sitting near me in a restaurant say "Das gibt es doch nicht," which is what Austrians say every three minutes, but which I have never heard in Berlin. (Loose translation: "That just doesn't happen." As I think about this, this tells you something about the South German and Austrian mentality. They live in a constant state of astonishment.)

9 - 13 September 2009: Munich

2009-09-15T09:23:00.002+02:00

9 September 2009: Andechs Monastery

2009-09-15T08:48:00.003+02:00

Almost as soon as we arrived in Munich, the Boschies went on a side trip to Andechs Monastery. The site is very picturesque.

Andechs houses a bunch of religious relics, so it has long been a destination for pilgrims. I've lost track of who was fighting with whom, but some duke or king or prince was fighting another duke or king or prince, and hoped to steal the relics. When the dust settled, however, the relics were nowhere to be found. They had been stashed for safekeeping, but no one knew were. The chapel lost its significance because there were no relics to seek.

Then one day, during mass, they notice a mouse near the alter with a piece of parchment in its mouth. This was the missing clue: the relics had been stashed in a chest below the altar. This is the chest:

Now that Andechs had its religious relics again, it was once again a destination for pilgrims. The relics were kept safely under lock and key. And when I say lock, I mean lock:

Here are the relics today:

The church is structurally gothic, but redecorated in the baroque style.

8 September 2009: Stuttgart

2009-09-15T08:28:00.004+02:00

Stuttgart strikes me as an attractive, affluent, bourgeois city. It's not a major tourist destination, but it's a pleasant place to visit.

The "old" castle:

The opera:

Back in Berlin, we visited what's essentially the embassy of Baden Würtenberg, and learned a bit about the region and its culture. The area has been deeply influenced by Peitism, which for simplicity's sake I'm going to describe as German Puritanism. In Berlin, many buildings have balconies so you can sit outside and read the paper. In Stuttgart, there are no balconies, since sitting on a balcony would amount to ostentatious idleness. A fellow American compared the locals to New Englanders.

I've gathered now from various sources that Stuttgarters are thus kind of stingy, trying to save a Euro where they can. We were hardly slumming it, but the plainest hotel we've stayed in yet was the one in Stuttgart.

Current German politics

2009-09-14T22:16:00.002+02:00

A big election is coming up in Germany in two weeks. This article from the European edition of Time gives a good overview of the political and cultural issues.

Oktoberfest is coming

2009-09-13T23:38:00.003+02:00

Yes, Oktoberfest is coming. And what would be better than a violent pink dirndl? A mere 150 Euros. You'll also need underwear, and a heart-shaped cookie to hang around your neck.

The best view of Stuttgart

2009-09-11T19:36:00.002+02:00

The Bosch Stiftung's offices are adjacent to Robert Bosch's old mansion, high on a hill overlooking Stuttgart. Very swank. Those are fellows eating dinner on the terrace. Rough life. Rough life.

The mansion, up the steps from the Stiftung.

7 September 2009: Heidelberg

2009-09-11T18:59:00.003+02:00

On Bosch Day One, the spouses took a day trip to Heidelberg, which is as ridicuously cute as you think it is. Rick Steves actually encourages his readers not to go to Heidelberg at all, which is a bit like telling children not to celebrate Christmas because there are too many presents.

Just another day in the checkout line

2009-09-09T09:41:00.002+02:00

Yesterday I was in an itsy-bitsy grocery store in the Stuttgart train station. A bunch of people are lined up. An elderly man walks straight up to the counter.

"You have to get in the line," says the clerk (anstellen).

He doesn't, but in time, it's his turn to pay.

"Next time, get in the line."

"Next time, I'll shop somewhere else."

Abodes

2009-09-05T09:37:00.004+02:00

Until a few months ago, I lived in an apartment in the Cleveland Park neighborhood of Washington, DC. The building was large and plain, probably built in the 1950s. Living there was a bit like living in a tree house, since our unit was almost as high as the treetops in Rock Creek Park. E. walked the seven minutes to the Metro station, and then took the subway to work. I could take public transit also, but I tended to walk to work, up the hill through the leafy, established residential streets of Cleveland Park. We could walk from our apartment to a large but unremarkable Giant grocery store. Our immediate area was thick with restaurants that we kept saying we were going to try, though we rarely did.

E. flew off to Germany. I finished emptying the apartment, and moved a pile of boxes and suitcases more or less across the street. Brad and Kirsten were on vacation in Australia, and I was the house sitter. The neighborhood was the same, and the adjustment was relatively minor. I was now living with a cat, which made sitting unmolested more of a challenge. Sleeping took getting accustomed to also, as the cat liked to sleep on the bed, and occasionally howled in the night.

Brad and Kirsten returned from Australia, and I moved myself and my pile to my brother-in-law's mostly unoccupied apartment in Crystal City, the area around National Airport. My commute to work increased from 35 minutes to 65 minutes each way, and I wasn't walking to speak of, so for the first time in a long time I embraced reading novels as part of my commute (The Virgin Suicides, The Inheritance of Loss). Crystal City served my purpose, but it is absolutely the last place I would choose to live: an un-gridded mess of hotels and office buildings mushrooming in the airport's shadow. A typical day: Get up, look out the window at eight lanes of traffic. Get ready for work. Exit the unit and look down the unnervingly long hall. Several minutes later, arrive at the end of the hall, where the elevator is. Leave the building, and cross the street. Enter a winding mole tunnel that connects buildings and leads, eventually, to the Metro. Hop on a train, then transfer. Get off at Tenleytown. (The first 45 minutes or so of this trip are largely withough daylight.) Wait for a shuttle, and then ride the shuttle to work. The stroll across the AU campus to my office is plainly the most bucolic element of the day.

Upon arriving in Berlin, E. and I found ourselves in a well-maintained, relatively new apartment in what struck me as a bourgeois neighborhood. The beds were identical to the build in cabinets, which were identical to sofa, which was identical to the desks. Very clean, very sturdy, very orderly. The neighborhood, I'm told, is very "west" (i.e. West Berlin) which is either a good thing or a bad thing, depending on your perspective. It lacks the street life and dynanism of the east, but it's very, very liveable. Looking out the window, there's a little corner market, with fruit displayed outdoors, and tables where people sat and drank their coffee.

Then, after a bit of home hunting, we settled on an apartment to get us through the fall (at least) in Prenzlauer Berg, in the former East. E. has already blogged about the new neighborhood, and I'll let her do some of the talking (see: "West meets East: We have a new apartment"). The neighborhood is chaotic compared to last one, but pleasantly chaotic. Think West Village. Think Sesame Street without muppets. Think sidewalk cafes. Think burly Australian man with tatoos complimenting a black boy on his "nice sword" (a stick). We look out on what used to be the no-man's-land separating East and West Berlin. If you follow this link you'll see a map. The location marked 7 is pretty much where we live. A famous photo of a soldier escaping to the West was taken just down the street (the location marked 2).

Today, no-man's-land is being filled in with buildings, though reminders of the past are everywhere.

Looking out our window, it's easy to see where the buildings were chopped off to clear a path for the permanent wall. In time, I'm sure people will come here and point out where the wall stood, and use the architectural discrepancy to trace the history of the city. (In Vienna, if you're alert, you can tell what was the old walled city and what was built after the medieval fortifications came down just by observing the building styles and the layout of the streets.)

Hegel, or, why you need to be on your toes in the checkout line

2009-09-04T22:38:00.005+02:00

In The Philosophy of Fine Art, Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel wrote:

"Dramatic action... is not confined to the simple and undisturbed execution of a definite purpose, but depends throughout on conditions of collision, human passion, and characters, and leads therefore to actions and reactions, which in their turn call for some further resolution of conflict and disruption."

If you've ever been my student in a theory or structures course, you've heard what I'm about to say. Hegel is the fellow who wrote down the notion that theater depends on conflict. Aristotle's favorite play was Oedipus (essentially a one-person play), and the Poetics reflects that. But Hegel's favorite play was Antigone (essentially a two-person play) and his theory reflects that. Creon embodies one set of values; Antigone embodies another. That idea of conflicting moral orders is lurking in Hegel's writings. The conflict isn't just personal--it's about how different people think the world is supposed to work.

This brings me, oddly enough, to a basic German interaction. The script for this drama is woefully formulaic. The protagonist expresses his or her displeasure with the antagonist's behavior. Then the antagonist says something biting, dismissive, or sarcastic, and goes on about his or her business.

Example #1: To understand the following exchange, you must first understand that Germans take their pedestrian stop lights very seriously. Crossing on a red just isn't done. E. and I were running late, and saw our bus coming. Getting from where we were to the bus stop wasn't looking good, and we ran across the street even though we had a red light. And old dame nearby chides us: "The light is red!" "Das wissen wir" ("We know"), I snap back with my Austrian pronunciation ("dus" not "das") and a weary way about me.

Example #2: I was standing in line in a grocery store. The man in front of me was simultaneously trying to put his items on the conveyor belt, pay, bag (you always bag for yourself here), and maintain control of his maybe two-year old son, who was a bundle of trouble. Specifically, the boy was taking packages off the shelf, putting them in his mouth, and so forth. The stuff little kids do in a world of enticements. I was behind the man in line, and behind me was the woman who's the protagonist of this drama. She starts complaining to the man about his son. Why aren't you watching your child. I don't want to buy food that's been in his mouth. Blah, blah. (I had ample sympathy for the man, none for the woman.) I regret to say that I did not catch everything he said, but it was sarcastic, snappy, and involved lawmaking. Something like: Perhaps you should run for a seat in the Bundesrat and you can pass a law against parenthood so this never happens again.

Example #3: I was standing in line at another grocery. I had just a few items, and I set them not even on the conveyor belt, but on the metal end, and then put my basket in the stack of baskets. The guy ahead of me had a minor fit, somehow thinking that I was trying to get ahead of him. This, by the way, is completely crazy, as I would have had to work my way past him and his girlfriend in a narrow space to do so. "Um Gottes willen" ("for God's sake"), I snapped, "do you really think that's what I'm trying to do?" It's important to have a quick reaction time. That's the only way you can hope to win the exchange.

Example #4: This is a bit more complicated, it didn't happen to me, and I'm not getting this from the horse's mouth, so a few details may be off. Two American women are talking in the hallway of their apartment building. (Cultural context: Making noise that your neighbors can hear is a very big no-no.) A neighbor takes this in, and isn't pleased. Later, one of the women, as she is leaving the building, sees the neighbor but does not wait to hold the door for her because she really isn't that close. Subsequently, the neighbor stops the woman on the street and objects both to the noise and to slamming the door in her face. As I gather, this poor soul did not have a suitably biting or quick response, and surely lost the exchange. Also, as a cultural newcomer, I gather she felt a bit sheepish about the whole thing, not realizing that she was in a drama, or how to play her part.

Let's reprise Example #4 as it should have happened with more skillful actors.

Protagonist: Next time, you don't have to slam the door in my face!

Antagonist: What exactly is your problem? Is it that you're menopausal and still a virgin? That would explain everything.

You'll notice that the protagonist exposes the conflict, but that the antagonist is usually a better role.

Example #5: Writing this, I'm reminded of a scene in Buechner's Woyzeck: Margaret says to Marie: "You are unmarried! I am an upstanding person, but you, your eyes go straight through seven pair of leather pants." Marie replies: "Bitch!"

To say that moral codes are what's at issue is overstating facts, but it is fair to say that these exchanges are about how each actor feels things should work. For one person, not violating the red don't-walk light is an inviolable virtue. For another, the right to race to try to catch a bus is similarly desirable.

Dramaturgically, these Hegelian vignettes lack suitable resolution. The protagonist would like to expel the antagonist from society for his crimes (viz. Oedipus). Occasionally the protagonist may win the moral argument, but the antagonist (especially an experienced one) is likely to take the protagonist as a crackpot and go on about life. Proper tragedy is never achieved. Proper comedy could at best be achieved if the antagonist saw the error of her ways ("My goodness, it certainly was rude of me to be talking in the hallway, and could I perhaps buy you a small present to make up for it") and were thus reintegrated into society, but that's certainly not going to happen.

Nope. The only thing that can possibly happen is that the actors will sharpen their knives for another quarrel on another day.

All of this leaves me wondering if Hegel wasn't really responding to his trip to the market to buy produce for his wife, and not to Antigone and all that.

I have resolved, by the way, to say the following the next time I find myself cast as the antagonist: "Please take a moment to think about what you just said, and then tell me if it makes any sense at all." I think that should work in most instances, and it amounts to talking down to the other person without being outwardly hostile. There's nothing worse than being an actor with no lines.

Queen Elizabeth: How dare you put your vegetables on the conveyor belt before I have placed a plastic divider indicating that I have completed placing my items for purchase.

Maria Stuart: I am your queen. Bite me.

Dinner chez Monsieur Vuong

2009-09-01T18:10:00.004+02:00

Anne H. is in town with her sister Jeanne. We went to dinner at Monsieur Vuong, a popular Vietnamese restaurant. And as you can see, we were all behaving like such adults.

Ted Kennedy funeral

2009-08-29T18:57:00.002+02:00

It's striking that Ted Kennedy's funeral was just broadcast in its entirety on two German television stations with simultaneous translation.

Meanwhile, CNN was broadcasting other stuff (e.g. a story about drunk British tourists in Greece) until President Obama started talking.

How Germans deliver the mail

2009-08-28T17:55:00.001+02:00

Es lohnt sich / Es lohnt sich nicht #5

2009-08-28T17:52:00.001+02:00

Mmm. Mirabelles. Sweet mini plums. Verdict: Definitely worth it.

How I spent Thursday afternoon

2009-08-28T17:48:00.002+02:00

(The yellow book is Harry Potter, auf Deutsch.)

Cultural Comparisons

2009-08-27T10:00:00.003+02:00

Having previously lived in Vienna for a total of three years, and a year in France way back when, I've been able to adjust to Berlin without culture shock punching me in the gut. But it is an adjustment.

For most matters, my point of reference is Vienna. Tipping? Like Vienna. Buying a monthly transit pass? Like Vienna. Showing your transit pass when the undercover controllers descend on your subway car? Like Vienna. Registering your address with the local authorities? Like Vienna. Fumbling like a madman to pack your groceries, pay, and not annoy either the clerk or the people behind you in line? Like Vienna. Walking miles a day? Like Vienna. (A rough guess based on my pedometer is that I average five miles of walking a day.)

But there are differences, many of them subtle. Viennese German is marked by its politeness, or as some would say its quaintness. Berliners are more informal, a more ragtag bunch, and propriety throws them off. In Vienna I would end a phone call with "Auf Wiederhören" ("until the next time we speak"). Here, each time I do so, the person at the other end of the line is thrown off, and quickly replies "Tschüss," a generic German "bye."

The thing about "Tschüss" is that no self respecting Austrian would ever let such silliness pass his lips. A good, sturdy Austrian hello/goodbye is "Servus," which really means "I am at your service"--there's that Austrian politeness. When you say "Servus," you do so in a nice, deep baritone. A man can say "Servus" and feel manly. "Tschüss," however, is a word you can only say in a soprano voice. Imagine the stewardess Barbies saying "Buh-bye, buh-bye, buh-bye now" as you deplane. Even worse, there's "Tschüssi" (I may be off on the spelling. Just add a long e sound to the end of the word.) This abhorrent form of goodbye is pronounced in a falsetto, as if spoken by mice who've inhaled helium.

So whereas Austrian sounds sturdy and deep, Germans speaking German (Bundesdeutsch!) sound a bit like cartoon animals to me. And I miss being able to say things in a less preposterous way, though I know doing so would mark me as, probably, a south German.

I do spend a lot of time processing what words get used here that aren't the words I'm accustomed to. "Apfelschorle" instead of "Apfel gespritzt." "Trödelmarkt" instead of "Flohmarkt."

Just as I compare linguistic habits, I compare urban landscapes. It's actually not so easy to compare Berlin and Vienna. If I had to pick a city that most resembles Berlin I would probably pick New York. It is a vast city, spread out over a huge area. Despite the remarkably good transit network, it regularly takes an hour to get from point A to point B.

Vienna has a definite center (the first district) and all roads lead there. Berlin has no center whatsoever. I'm not sure if that's a function of its past as a divided city, or simply of its sheer breadth. Neighborhoods are self contained. The government buildings around the Reichstag form one center, Kudam another, Mitte another, Alexanderplatz another, Museum island another. Kreuzberg is its own world, as is Prenzlauerberg, as is... you get the idea.

Spend a day in Vienna, and you won't have gone inside everything, but you will have identified what is important to see. After a month, I still have only a dim idea what should be on my Berlin bucket list. I'm still finding my way around.

Berlin is surely an international city, but my impression is that it is less so than Vienna, and I think the reason for that is that Vienna is so thick with diplomats and people working for international organizations (the UN, OPEC, etc.). Berlin is international in a very different way, attracting twentysomethings in search of Bohemia. (Our bike tour guide was from far northwestern Canada.) For lack of diplomats, I think a lot less English is spoken here as well.

Restaurant culture is similar here: You order, you get what you ordered, and until you ask for the bill, nothing else happens. It's a culture that lends itself to sitting around and talking. But that's where that similarity ends. Viennese, the saying goes, want to be left alone, but need company to do so (which is why the Kaffeehaus is such an important part of Viennese life). I'm not at all so sure Berliners want to be left alone. They strike me as a chatty bunch, and their restaurant culture probably has more in common with a beach bar in Spain than a Kaffeehaus in Vienna.

Speaking of which, boy oh boy do they have beach culture here. There are numerous artificial beaches along the Spree, gigantic sandboxes for beach volleyball, and the like. It's as if it were some freak accident of geography that Berlin, which by rights ought to be somewhere on the Mediterranean coast, just happened to be plopped very much in the center of a landmass.

Austria is more of a wine culture. Germany is more of a beer culture. In either place, beer is cheaper than water.

Vienna has Viennese food, of which they are very proud, as well as imported cuisines to a lesser degree. Berlin has food. It's major food groups are: 1) Beer and pretzels 2) Turkish fast food 3) Vietnamese and Thai food. At a slightly fancy restaurant my lovely wife ordered Tafelspitz, which is, um, Viennese.

When you're living abroad, you can't help but spend your days comparing these things to those things, so you've probably not heard the last of this line of thinking.

P.S. I have thoughts about the Austrians and the Germans and their respective relationships to history, but that's another day's story.

Es lohnt sich / Es lohnt sich nicht #4

2009-08-26T12:45:00.003+02:00

This edition of Es lohnt sich / Es lohnt sich nicht is a two-for-one about photography exhibits.

A couple of weeks ago, we went to an exhibit of Helmut Newton photography at the Museum for Photography. I'll assume you know his work (and if you don't, you probably do without realizing it). He did a lot a nude portraits of women, in which the women somehow seem powerful and intimidating. If you are an adult person and your boss isn't standing next to you, you can see selections from the exhibit here: http://www.helmutnewton.com/current_exhibitions/sumo/gallery.html.

We went on a Thursday evening, when the exhibit was free. Verdict? Es lohnt sich. And not just because it was a free exhibit.

One of my favorites:

Yesterday I went to see an exhibit at the Akademie der Künste of photographs from the waning years of East Germany. Hmm. You need to be some weird amalgam of photographer and historian to appreciate many of the works exhibited. Let's first state the obvious, which is that the DDR wasn't such a happy place. I wouldn't say that the exhibit makes it possible to get more than a passing glimpse into the DDR. The aesthetic aspects partially obscure the historical aspects.

Verdict: I'm going to go with Es lohnt sich nicht, because I'm ambivalent. 5 Euros is too much to pay for ambivalence.

A shot of one of the Boschies at the exhibit:

Info about the exhibit in German: http://www.adk.de/de/aktuell/veranstaltungen/index.htm?we_objectID=24726

Berlin Fun Fact: Teufelsberg

2009-08-23T16:25:00.003+02:00

Today I was wandering round Grunewald, a large forested park at the western edge of Berlin. One of our destinations was Teufelsberg (Devil's Mountain). I gather there was something of a hill there to begin with, but after WWII, it was the place where 12 million cubic meters of debris from 400,000 bombed buildings was dumped. From afar, it looks like a forested hill. From up close, you can see that the stones are bricks, tiles, and the like.

Es lohnt sich / Es lohnt sich nicht #3: Berliner Ensemble Tour

2009-08-22T14:57:00.003+02:00

German theaters and operas generally take the summer off, so the performing arts options are fairly thin at this time of year. But a man can dream, right?

On August 12 (gosh the days slip by quickly) I took a tour of the Berliner Ensemble, joined by a couple of Bosch friends I dragged along. For those not in the know, the Berliner Ensemble is closely associated with Bertolt Brecht. The building is a good deal older than the ensemble. It was built in 1892, and became known as the Theater am Schiffbauerdamm. In 1928, the premiere of Brecht's Dreigroschenoper (Threepenny Opera) took place there. Brecht and his wife Helene Weigel created the Berliner Ensemble in 1948, and moved into the Theater am Schiffbauerdamm in 1954. It is a house with a lot of history.

Here's Brecht and his theater.

Our tour guide was Werner Reimann, a jolly 75 year-old Ensemble member who has left the boards but clearly keeps himself entertained as the theater's sole tour guide. (He explained that he had to, because the students who led the tour were so awful.) Not a bit proud, he gave everyone on the tour a newspaper clipping about him: This year marks his 75th birthday, his 55th anniversary, and his 50th year with the Berliner Ensemble. He has given the tour 650 times since 2000 and I suspect he will keep doing so until he dies.

Though a druggist by training, Helene Weigel added him to the company. She was looking for untrained actors who had presence. (Translation: this guy is a natural ham.) His first part was a small role in The Life of Galileo. Not a shabby beginning at all for a theater career.

It was great fun to hear him talk about and do impressions of Brecht (who had a high, girly voice) and Weigel (who had a low, manly voice). She was clearly the person in charge.

Here Reimann is in front of a wall of plaster casts of actors faces. (These are used by costume designers to try stuff out without having the actors present.) The face in the center is Brecht. Reimann says his is at home, and that they often converse with each other, which is pleasant because he seldom disagrees with anything he says.

The current director, Klaus Peymann, saw fit to have this glass room built. Before I tell you what it is, see if you can guess.

This, my friends, is a smoker's lounge for the actors. In winter it's cold, and the smokers need someplace warm to get their fix. Somehow, I don't think an American theater director could ever get away with building smoking facilities, but this is old Europe.

Peymann, by the way, was the director of the Burgtheater in Vienna during most of my time there, so I have a strong hunch that I know all the tricks in his bag already. I digress. I would still love to see some plays at the Berliner Ensemble.

It is a charming, lived-in old theater that has survived a lot. Tour guide is tops, provided that you speak German and enjoy theater anecdotes.

Verdict: Es lohnt sich.

Architectural detail in the lobby.

I must, I must, I must increase my bust.

2009-08-17T12:17:00.004+02:00

If you go walking around Kreuzberg, you might spot this political poster in which local pol Vera Lengsfeld ties herself to Angie Merkel with the slogan "We have more to offer." What on Earth?! For more info: http://www.thelocal.de/politics/20090811-21167.html

Es lohnt sich / Es lohnt sich nicht #2

2009-08-17T12:04:00.002+02:00

Cherry flavored Belgian beer. Yummy. Verdict: Es lohnt sich.

Berlin-Hohenschönhausen

2009-08-17T10:14:00.008+02:00

Last Friday (14 August) we visited the Berlin-Hohenschönhausen Memorial, a former Soviet and East German prison. It's a very ordinary-looking place where very awful things happened.

To keep this simple, there's an old building and a new building.

The old building was a Nazi-era kitchen. The Soviets then took over the building and turned the basement, designed as a food warehouse, into a prison. Known as the U-Boot, or submarine, prisoners were held 24 to a room with barely any circulating air and no natural light whatsoever. A bucket functioned as the prisoners' shared toilet, and if you were fortunate, they emptied it once a day. Prisoners had to stand all day, had no beds, and sleep was essentially impossible. They wore whatever clothes they came in. If you were arrested in summer in light clothes, that was nevertheless how you spent the cold, unheated winter. Because so many people were crammed together, there was significant condensation.

If that wasn't awful enough for you, maybe you'd enjoy the water torture room where it drip-drip-drips on your head until you can't stand it, at which point your option is to plunge your head into a bucket of water, at which point, in the interest of not drowning, you go back to the drip-drip-drip.

I asked the guide if there was a lot of mental illness amongst the prisoners. She said that every single person who made it out alive suffered permanent mental damage. Sie haben überlebt, aber nicht überstanden. (They lived through it, but they didn't survive it.)

Control of the camp passed to the East German secret police, the Stasi, who used it to hold political prisoners. The East Germans were marginally more enlightened, and built a new building where comparably awful things happened, but which was designed such that European observers would have nothing to pin on them. Thus there was natural light (though no view of the sky), a toilet, a bed, etc. But prisoners were kept in absolute isolation, and the Stasi had sneaky tricks. For example, they could shut off your water or heat as punishment, and plausibly deny any malicious intent. Prisoners, who had nothing but time, attempted to communicate by knocking on the wall in a simple code. But doing so was risky. The Stasi could take a prisoner out of a cell, and from that cell knock on the wall as if they were a prisoner. Any information gleaned this way could be used against you.

You had to stand all day. At night the light came on every five minutes so you were in a constant state of sleep deprivation.

Prisoners were transported to the prison in what looked like a plain delivery vehicle that might have been carrying flowers or bread. Inside, there were 6 cramped transport cells. After picking you up, the truck drove around and around so you had lost all orientation and had no notion where you might be. When you got to the prison you were let out inside an enclosed, brightly lit garage so that you would be instantly blinded as your eyes adjusted. The only place where a prisoner could see the sky was in the so-called tiger cage, and for psychological reasons the sky was obstructed by a chain-link barrier. There was no way to see what buildings were nearby, no way to say where the prison was. The site was highly off-limits, and didn't even appear on East German maps.

Getting your photo taken took an unusually long time. As you sat their you were actually getting a dose of radiation designed to give you cancer eventually. I asked out guide if then the purpose of the camp was to kill the detainees. She hemmed and hawed a bit in answering. Yes, from the Stasi's point of view, it would certainly be best if you died, but they wanted you to die in a way that couldn't be pinned on them.

There was a simple red light / green light system (sort of like radio station's "On Air" light) that the Stasi followed so that the prisoners would never see anyone they weren't intended to see.

None of the guards wore weapons, which meant that there were no weapons to steal, which meant that no one ever escaped. There was a wire strung along the hall. Pulling the wire would break the cicuit and trigger an alarm, resulting in reinforcements showing up quickly.

The West German government regularly "expatriated" prisoners (that is, they bought their freedom). When that happened, the former prisoners had no useful information to provide. They couldn't say where the prison was, they couldn't say who their interrogators were, they couldn't demonstrate that the prison violated European norms.

The Soviets' method of operation was violence. "According to Soviet statistics 886 people died here [the submarine] between July 1945 and October 1946. However, it is estimated that more than 3,000 detainees actually perished in the camp."

The East Germans' method of operation was psychological. Our guide gave us the example of a prisoner she knew who was shocked upon going into the interrogation room to find that his interrogator was his father. It wasn't really--it was someone chosen for this particular interrogation based on his resemblance to the prisoner's father, and made to look as much like him as possible. Later, when the Stasi files were opened, the former prisoner learned that the Stasi psychologists knew that he was very close to his father, and that this would be the way to push his buttons.

Hohenschönhausen only closed 20 years ago. It's a sobering place to visit as an American. I doubt that anything that happened there is uniquely unlike the so-called harsh interrogation techniques Dick Cheney and his little friend W. brought upon us. The explicitly violent Soviet prison brings to mind Abu Ghraib. The by-the-book legality yet sheer awfulness of the Stasi prison probably gives you a good idea of what the CIA does these days.

The photo on the right shows a room where the Stasi kept an eye on operations. It looks ordinary, and I am reminded of the concept of the "banality of evil."

If you were released, you couldn't go back to your prior profession, and had to settle for lesser work. If you were an interrogator, you were well paid by East German standards. It's essentially impossible to charge them with crimes, since the prisoners never knew their identities, and since norms were maintained. It's a safe assumption that they are now living prosperous lives--during reunification, the exchange rate for East German Marks to West German Marks was 1 to 1.

Es lohnt sich / Es lohnt sich nicht #1

2009-08-17T09:26:00.006+02:00

I'm attracted to the idea of a regular feature called "Es lohnt sich / Es lohnt sich nicht" (It's worth it / It's not worth it).

For instance, yesterday I went to a corn maze with my wife and one of her friends. It sounded cool. It looked cool in the newspaper.

But the place was nearly deserted. The cow is only visible from the sky. There was nothing to eat or drink. Pshaw. Verdict: Es lohnt sich nicht.

Preliminaries

2009-08-17T09:08:00.003+02:00

A few thoughts as I get this blog up and running:

1. I have a strong hunch that this blog isn't going to be particularly chronological. For example, if it takes me a while to download photos from my camera or phone to my computer, and then to upload them, other events and stories may intervene.

2. I said I wasn't going to blog. We'll see how this goes.

3. If you encounter formatting problems, please comment to let me know.

Graffiti in Friedrichshain

2009-08-16T10:06:00.004+02:00

Berlin is a gigantic dada-collage of graffiti. I'm not sure why. It seems to defy the ethos of order that the Germans are supposed to embody.