So I have been back in the United States for a while now; after a week of readjusting, including getting a dramatic hair cut (I had been planning on it for a while, but it was also u-n-b-e-a-r-a-b-l-y hot to have long hair in Chicago) and having a short-lived promotions job for cubsfanreport.com, I went to visit friends in Saint Paul for six days, returning in time for jury duty, which has since taken over my life. Whew!
But I need to have more blog entry material to submit at the end of the month, in order to receive the stipend for my airfare. So here goes! Luckily I am a photoaddict, and I wisely decided to store my photos from this trip in folders by week of occurrence, so I have plenty of reference to draw memories from.
Places I visited in the third week - The following will give you an idea of just how long my days were sometimes:
First, I went to school as usual. We had normal class for the first period or so, and then instead of English class all the fourth graders (Wild Cats) took the train to a bike course! The police run this little biking school, and they test children on their biking. There's a complex set of rules about how you're supposed to do it, I guess, in terms of signaling, stopping, etc. It was adorable, there was like a mini course with real street signs and mini stop signs, lights & such. I shook hands with a Berlin policeman; he was a really great combination of stern and funny and was able to handle even the troublemakers well. All the kids had to go through the course twice, being watched for errors by people stationed in various places, and then there was ten or fifteen minutes of free biking during which they were also watched. Seven errors or more would result in not receiving one's "biking license." They went through announcing how many errors everyone made in this really dramatic way; it was like a reality show where the cop would start out saying something about the kid's performance, and then draw it out until they thought they weren't going to get their license but really did. Except for in a few cases, where they actually didn't pass--then he was straightforward but emphasized that they were almost there, and with a little more attention and a couple lessons at the facility they could definitely pass.
After that, S had to take the kids back to school, while I got to head straight home. I called up Nick, who said he was off to meet Kael to check out an Icelandic art exhibit and that I was welcome to join them. So I did!
We met at the Nordic Embassy. (Well, Kael and I met at a train station and then got lost and then finally got the right bus over there, where Nick was waiting.) The exhibit was quite good; I never thought much about Iceland before, so it was neat to get a glimpse of the issues facing the country, as well as quirky takes on their heritage and future. We found out that there's an abandoned DDR themepark, and meant to locate & visit it, but never quite made it. :/. Oh well...next time! I know I have to return to Berlin one day. Soon.
On the way to the Nordic Embassy we had passed a building with a giant photo of a little Asian girl printed on one of their glass walls, and with a big Chinese character sculpture on the outside, so I insisted we investigate that after checking out the Icelandic art exhibit. We did, and it turned out to be a Chinese Cultural Center! It was amazing. One thing I love about traveling is finding little things that take you home, that make you feel connected to something greater...something to anchor you to an invisible web you fit onto as you float around the world. It was just so nice to see Chinese art again, hear Mandarin being spoken... They have cultural exhibits in there, offer language classes, and have a library anyone can use. Unfortunately it wasn't worth it for me to get a library card, as I only had a week left there and a dwindling supply of Euros...(it cost 30€ to get one, 20 of which was a deposit and would be returned when one returned the card, but still, for 10€ I could nearly buy the book I wanted to check out). But I asked the librarian if they had any books on Chinese people in Germany, and he found me a good one. I photographed some of the pages inside that contained resources for/about Chinese Germans =). It was such a trip to be talking to another diasporic Asian in German! Also it was really neat because even while speaking German, the librarian still had a recognizably Chinese accent. It warmed my heart, I don't know why.
I dragged my heels as we worked our way out, finally deciding to fully seize the moment and talk to the receptionist at the front desk. (She was young and had perfect German, so I was a lil intimidated.) I approached her, saying I was new in Berlin, and asking if she would tell me what her favorite restaurant was, and where I might find a Chinese grocery store. She told me about the best in her opinion, a Cantonese place called "Good Friends" (lol?), and also recommended a Shanghaiese restaurant. One grocery store was quite far away, but she told me about a train station, Savignyplatz, that had a lot of Asian shops around it. =) Success! Then I asked her if the language classes they offered were mostly attended by children of Asian descent, or if it was quite mixed, or what. She said they in fact most of the students in the language classes were adults with, "though you can't really say this, no apparent connection to China. They just have an interest." So that was an interesting/nice surprise.
After that, we went to Schöneberg--the area around Nollendorfplatz is a gay neighborhood, with a few gay night clubs, queer-oriented boutiques, etc. There were a lot of gorgeous old flowery metalwork doors, and we saw a plaque marking where Rudolf Steiner, the founder of the ideology behind Waldorf schools, lived and worked. As I just found out on Wikipedia, apparently Marlene Dietrich was born in this neighborhood! Anyway, in Berlin Pride is a really big deal; they have a whole month of events scheduled leading up to Christopher Street Day, which is when they have their Pride parade. Even the apothecary (drugstore) was all decked out in rainbow decorations, including bottles of their most colorful products in the window display. We found a neat army surplus store; I fell in love with a faux fur Berlin police hat, but I wouldn't pay 19,95€ for faux. Then we wandered into a very kinky rubber/leather goods store, just because. It was actually very nicely laid out. I guess if I were spending that much on rubber I would want it to be in a luxe atmosphere. There was dildos of all sizes (including some very, I mean EXTREMELY alarming ones), restraints, clamps a giant harness thing a person is strapped/zipped/tied? into like a cocoon, or a full-body straight jacket, rubber masks (including a pig-headed one), rubber paws... Everything was black. It was kind of fun to be in there, acting as if we walked into this kind of place all the time, when we clearly were sooo out of place. a) I don't think that place was intended for women, at all and b) we were dressed like normal or even more-vanilla-than-normal civilians.
And no, the day did not even end there! Another friend from the program, Jonathan, called up and decided to meet us in Schöneberg. Nick had to get home as he'd forgotten his key that day and needed to get home before his host went to bed superearly, as was her wont. While waiting for J, Kael and I got food from a little noodle stand under the train station. I got hot & sour soup, which was tasty but not much like hot & sour soup. All the ingredients were chopped up really small. We sat on the steps of Goya, a big epic-looking club (had Grecian-inspired white sculptures perched all over its façade), in the sunlight. When Jonathan arrived he and Kael regaled me with a tale of one of the most disturbing films they'd ever seen, in a German film class they'd both taken at the U. Apparently nearly everyone in the class had walked out by the end. It was about a woman who exhumed a dead rockstar and fell in love with him, but begins dating a live man while still keeping the dead guy in her house...I won't continue. It was horrific. Apparently it got banned after its first screening in Germany and still is. (They don't have a ratings system for films there, but they can ban something completely.)
At any rate, we then proceeded to seek out a place to watch the impending Fußball match between North Korea and Brazil. Supposedly there was a place called Fanmeile (Fan-mile), a big outdoor "public viewing" (since this is in English, they thought it was a term we used...) location for sports events. Jonathan's host had told him about it, and we thought it was supposed to be near the Reichstag.We went to check out the Reichstag on the way; I got some really great photos, and we even found fairy rings growing! We lounged in the grass for a bit and then continued on our quest. We found a sports bar, but no Fanmeile. We got directions from the sports bar people, but they ended up not making much sense. After wandering aimlessly and finding ourselves on the grand stretch of road leading to the Brandenburger Tor (Brandenburg Gate) we gave up and decided to just take the train to a place likely to have bars where we could watch the game. We ended up in a place with few businesses at all -_-, at least few that were open to pedestrians after regular work hours. It started to get dark, and we finally located a little bar. The boys really needed to use the bathroom so I ordered a drink and sat down. From the window we spotted a Döner kebab stand. The bartender said we were welcome to get food from there and eat it in the bar (they didn't serve food at all anyway) so that is precisely what we did, catching the last half of the game. It was a pretty good game actually; North Korea did quite well, scoring within the last 3 minutes of the game. (It ended 2-1, Brazil.)
Then, finally, we all headed home. I probably got home around midnight. It always takes me a while to wind down, so I bet I got four hours of sleep that night, or less. (Had to wake up at 5:15, 5:30 most days, as I think I said before.) And this after walking for at least a mile, if not two or three total that day. You can see how life was a combination of super stimulating and super exhausting.
Man, just writing about all that was exhausting. I'll write more about things I saw the third week later...
MWAH!
Z.
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