Can you tell a green field from a cold steel rail?

One day over my ridiculously extended two-month long winter break, my phone rang while I was on my way home from work.  As I always do, I answered it.  On the other end was my roommate, proudly informing me that she had come up with a comeback to some snarky comment I had made over AIM several days before.  We all know this feeling, you respond with something less than clever and then within minutes (or days) come up with the best comeback that you could have used, and now there is just a great one-liner waiting in the back of your head for the next time you live out the exact same situation.

In Germany, this process is not only much slower but much more mundane as well.  It’s not snappy comebacks that I finally come up days later, it’s how to politely order a meal.  It’s not the best your mom joke in the world that I come up with ten seconds after the moment has passed, it’s me finally realizing several days later what that guy on the train was asking me when he asked for a lighter.

Even stranger, the imaginary conversations in my head are increasingly in German.  I will envision (for whatever reason) a normal, banal interaction in Grinnell, such as going to the post office, and my entire imaginary part is conducted in German.  I can only hope, for the confusion of all, that this trend continues in real life when I actually do return to Grinnell.  Or in the rest of my life.  My German skills are far from stellar, but it’s becoming so automatic.  Perhaps this is the path to fluency.  I suppose I’ll find that out in a few months.

Hertha BSC!

Today I attempted to join the ranks of German football hooligans.  As an American college student, I think I passed fairly well.  The last time I had been to any sporting event nearly this large was almost nine years ago, at a Women’s World Cup game at Chicago’s Soldier Field, so while I have some experience, it is indeed a bit old and American.  I stopped by the Hertha BSC store before class to pick up a scarf, so that I could support my home team in style.

Dan and I left for the game with about an hour and fifteen minutes to go.  We grabbed some dinner to go (döner are a post all to themselves), and started on our way.  Upon reaching S-Bahnhof Zoologischer Garten, we finally started to see some other people with the tell-tale Blue & White scarves.  We decided that this was a good a time as any to pick up a beer before the game, so we stopped in the supermarket as we transferred trains.  After traversing two different tracks, we finally found the correct one.  We knew it was right, because armed security guards lined the tracks, just waiting.

We made it to the stadium, and followed the swelling crowds to the Olympic Stadium, got checked by security, found the right entrance, and took our seats as the team took the field.  I held my scarf high and shouted the tune to which other fans sang words.

Within the first minute, we discovered to our left a very angry man, who flipped off the ref at the first possible instant of the game.  Throughout the 90 minutes, he shouted seemingly random words and occasionally “Hertha!” in a very raspy and alcoholic voice.  He was intimidating for the first half, but his absolute joy and complete camaraderie in the celebration of the Hertha keeper’s save of the only penalty kick endeared him to me.  At any rate, I was occupied with shouting and cheering and trying keep pace with the energy of the full fan section several rows to the side.   We shouted ourselves hoarse, we sang along, I confused the boys in front of us by shouting in English, I waved my scarf, and we all laughed at the mascots together.  It was a great game.  I even got a Olympic Stadium mug, which I will treasure forever, especially since the bottle/cup deposit was a euro.  Unfortunately, the game ended in a tie, despite some great shots by both Hamburg and Hertha.  However, I definitely plan to go to the next home game that I can.

I’ve already got the scarf.

I just can’t wait to be King

I am bored already of the prentention I poured into those first two entries.  From now on, this journal, naught but a substitute for one of my many hardcover leather notebooks, shall reflect more accurately my normal Berlin life.  Pretention when appropriate, simple awe at the wonders of spring life in the city when it occurs, and the more usual suspects within a travel journal.  Comparisons, confusions, mistranslations.  As such, I’ll have to do some reorganizing.  Luckily, that is a matter of little importance, as this journal is so young, I don’t believe I have readers yet.  Correct me, of course, if I am wrong, but I don’t expect that I am.

Go, go, wordpress transformation!

She is the boxer, she knows when and where

Berlin comes alive in the spring weather. When the sun shines and the cold does not drive it’s folk indoors, Berlin shines. It is days like today that allow me to truly see this hippie city I chose to live in, and I love it. This culture in which people share themselves with the rest of the city in any given park or open space is quintessential Berlin. Whether it is a group of teenagers playing frisbee, a few people with an amp or two playing to a sparse built-in ampitheatre, a group of dreadlocked and brightly dressed men and women juggling, a gaggle of ruffians kicking a round a hacky-sack or families just enjoying a day on a blanket at a park, watching their city’s culture thrive around them.

Berlin may be one of the poorer cities in Europe, but Klaus Wowereit was on the right track when he insisted that it was still “sexy.” Intellectually, culturally, artistically, this city inspires and relaxes, and I hope I can bring that Berlin flavor with me when I return to the States. I do not know if I’ll ever return to these graffiti-covered streets, but if not, I want to also carry this memory and attitude of a couple care-free afternoons in Mauerpark and Volkspark.

Never to return again

A weeklong jaunt to Poland has ended with a return to the familiarity of this still-so-foreign city.  This bed does not yet feel like mine, this house does not yet carry the connotations of home that the buildings whose keys I hold should, my suitcases taunt me by lying in the openness of my empty floor.  And yet it is here that I must lay my head at nights.  It is here that I can read the street signs, that I have gained more than a passing knowledge of the subways and trains and trams, that I am asked directions in different languages.  Will it feel like home before I leave?  Will I feel that heart-wrenching tear that I felt when I left Grinnell?  When that plane took me away from the midwest?  When the next plane took me from New York?

I have not yet achieved a permanence here.  I can see it coming in the distance, but this place is not yet mine, I am not yet comfortable here.  Perhaps the return from Dresden, or Amsterdam, or Budapest will give me that jump-start that I need.  How does one make the familiar a home?  And is it likely that that will happen in time for me to realize it before I leave?

Open up your eyes, see the sunny skies

The snowy wintry March weather of Berlin has finally opened up into a sunny, and warm, if still a bit blustery day. This nearly unheard of phenomenon allowed me to finally leave behind my bulky bargain of a beaten-up old leather coat and experience the weather in only a sweatshirt and jeans. Needless to say, I am rather unhappy that this weather also heralds my first foray out of the city to the nigh-nordic country of Poland. With any luck, it will not snow. With any luck, the clothes that are hanging on the drying rack in my room will be dry enough by morning that I can pack them and have a supply of clean socks and shirts while on the road. I don’t believe Europeans understand the joys of grapping a freshly dried pair of pants, some warm fluffy socks and that too big sweatshirt out of the drier and pulling them on to have that beautiful feeling of wamth and happiness and comfort spread everywhere. In fact, I believe that that will be the very first thing I do when I return to the states as I wait for my pepperoni pizza to arrive so that I can watch my Hollywood movie on a big reliable television while sitting on the couch with a free glass of water.

With this inaugural post, I feel it is appropriate to insert a goal for my time here in Berlin: be less awkward in unfamiliar and difficult social situations. For example, when people come into my apartment, probably only speak German, and it is now way too late to open my door and introduce myself. At the moment, I’ll stay in my small room, haven of the familiar and personal security, and some other day I’ll work up courage. Perhaps in the morning. I would say that this awkwardness is the result of a lack of confidence in language skills, but I am fairly sure that I often do the exact same thing while in an English-speaking country, a language which I like to think I can speak rather well, despite my currently lagging ability to get the words out correctly.

Will the weather last? Will I learn to communicate and interact with other people? Only time will tell. Stay tuned.