Wie, bitte? Ich verstehe das nicht...

Here I am in Northern Europe and I have gotten me a nice tan. I spent a lot of time on Sunday sitting outside on my balcony (yeah, you heard right, by balcony) in the sun learning German vocab and other stuff. That and Dresden the day before gave me a nice little glow. I hope to keep this up throughout the Berlin experience and come home lookin’ good. I already did look good though, so even better.

The weather has been quite nice. Not too warm and definitely not too cold, plenty of sun. Not having air conditioning has not been a problem yet, which I’m really happy about. The sun being in the sky for about 17 hours a day still throws me off a little. Nothing like waking up to sun in your face at like 5 am. Ick. It also always seems so much earlier than it actually is, until it actually does get dark, and then it feels way later than it actually is. It’s weird though, London is further North and I definitely didn’t notice this. It could be said that London certainly has more clouds so these things go unnoticed, but I don’t know, I’d prefer to think that Berlin has some weird weather phenomenon. Which is incorrect, but much more interesting.

Now, for what you’ve all been waiting for. How is my German. Well, still pretty damn bad. Sehr schelcht. I’m definitely doing well for only having one week. It’s fairly intensive, lots of class hours a week, and the teacher is really good, but I’m still fairly lost when out and about. As soon as someone speaks to me, I try so hard, but I just glaze over. I’m getting OK at getting what people mean from actions and things like that, and picking up a few words, but it’s still really hard. It’s really frustrating, like, I just am immediately called out as soon as anyone says anything to me. I guess I was immediately identified in London as soon as I opened my mouth (unless I was faking an accent), but here it’s just so much worse. You just feel stupid and completely out of your element. I just want to be like, no I promise you, I’m not ignorant, this is my 3^rd language, I’m trying! Also, I could blend in much more easily in London. Here, I really don’t have that German style (even if I do have blonde hair and blue eyes), not that I would ever want it, but it’s very clear that I am immediately ID-ed as an American. I’ve got no problem with them, but it’s weird how you sort of start to miss anonymity. Everything is just a little harder. I can’t just pay for something at the till, I’ve gotta search for the screen that says the price or say “Wie, Bitte?” like 18 times. It seems like little things, and I guess it is, but it’s rough. And Germans, bless them, have this nice habit of immediately responding in long and complicated German as soon as you say one successful thing in German.

There’s also the problem that you can learn German in a classroom and learn some grammar and vocab, but real world usage is soo different. It’s one thing to fill in blanks in a quiz or ask a partner, but totally another to ask for something at a restaurant or for something at the grocery store.

Speaking of, grocery shopping has gone better. Kaiser’s was a success, quite nice actually. But Aldi is still my first choice for the basics because it is really cheap. I made a mistake today when I found really cheap pretzels at Adlis. All different types were mixed together and instead of “Salz” I accidentally grabbed “Sesame” This is great if you’re dad and love Sesame seeds, but what is a pretzel without salt? That’s like having a grocery store without peanut butter, and what kind of messed up country would have that? Oh right, this one. (Look, Nutella, you’re great and all, but you just can’t compete, sorry).

We have a TV here that gets sort of extended cable, and of course except for World Wide CNN, it’s all in German. Also I guess except for the few MTV shows that they don’t dub, they just subtitle (notables: A shot of love mit Tila Tequila, Next, Rock of Love, My Super Sweet 16: UK, and other shit no one would really want to watch in any language). But what MTV has led us to discover is German music. I can really only describe it in one word: Epic. There’s a lot of German rap, which whatever first pops in to your mind is pretty much what it is. There’s German pop, which is a shade weirder than normal pop. And the legend that is Sido. I don’t really know what his deal is, but they freakin’ love him over here. Julie and I have discovered some good stuff though, and we’ve both rocked some iTunes downloading since our arrival. MTV also does this really unusual thing: it PLAYS MUSIC VIDEOS! Who knew?! At least 1/3+ of the day is devoted to video playing, it’s amazing. And it’s a nice mix of German, American and other Western.

Along with that, we also have French channel (I’d like to note that we are very far from France, and right next to Poland, but you wouldn’t find a Polish channel), and the weirdest thing that I thought was just in England but I was mistaken. I really can’t describe it, and will do my best to find a youtube clip or something, but may not be successful. It’s an entire channel devoted 24/7 to asking random questions and then the host standing there awkwardly and usually silently waiting for someone to call in. There’s lots of bells and whistles graphics, but inevitably no one calls in, and when they do they get it wrong and no one wins anything. There’s something oddly mesmerizing about it, in English or German. This is just something you cannot understand unless you see it; I will do my best to share this with the world.

Funny aside, as the pictures I’ll post show, I live next to the Berlin Mitte Tennis Courts, and there are people out there playing tennis basically all hours of the day. And sitting in the flat, you just hear a constant “clip…. Clop…. Clip…. Clop…” and so on and so forth. But every once in awhile, you get “clip… clop….clip… Sheisse!” Angry Germans are always vaguely amusing. I also like when the drunks go by my window at night singing in German. It adds a little something to the usual humdrum of city life, I think.

I’ve been doing some general exploring of the city lately. Saving the specific things for when Steve is here (FOUR DAYS!) or a lot of the things I’m interested in doing we’re doing with class or they are doing organized tours or things of that nature with. Which is pretty cool. It leaves me a lot of time to just poke around and become more familiar with my surroundings in general. So I hit up Potsdammerplatz, the Kaufhaus des Westens (the department store of the West… capitalism at its best in West Berlin back in the day; think Harrods with a German twist), the Sony Center, would have done LegoLand but it was too expensive (wtf, it’s just legos), and we sort of stumbled across the Holocaust memorial and the memorial museum underneath it. A little too abstract for me, but still quite cool. Check out the pictures.

Saturday was a day trip they took us on to Dresden. It was really beautiful, but I gotta say, either we didn’t see much, or there really just isn’t that much to see. They did an excellent job rebuilding everything after the firebombing, but they didn’t seem to add that much. There’s very little regarding that bit of history, and it mostly just feels like you’re in a Baroque town. And frankly, while really beautiful, it sort of getting a little boring. I’m becoming extremely snobbish. It takes more than a fancy church or a Raphael painting to impress me at this point. We did get a guided tour which was cool and I did learn a bit about the pre-war history of Dresden. There weren’t nearly enough Vonnegut references, unfortunately, so I had to make my own. I don’t know, I guess it just wasn’t really what I was thinking, but I’m still glad I went, well worth the trip.

Saturday night though is where the craziness starts. One word: Russendisko. What can I say about Russendisko. Well, for starters, Amazing. This was probably the weirdest neatest most different club night I have ever been to regardless of city. If you had ever told me I would be out in Berlin one night dancing to Russian club music, I would have gotten offended and made some tasteless joke about communists not having clubs. Which, actually, I still stand by, but, this was a lot of fun. It was just unusual, the music was specifically made by this one guy (Russian Jew who came to Berlin to write) to play at nights like this, and people were just really into it. And you could dance any way you wanted and it was just a good atmosphere. Going with Corina was also funny, because she kept being like “I feel like I’m back in Romania… it’s like the Motherland again!” Yeah, never really would have guessed it, me at the Russian Disco having fun. Look at me, broadening my horizons and doing wild new things. Although, Putin, I still don’t like you.

I guess that’s it. I feel like I’m forgetting things, but I’ll add them in later. Busy week, Steve this weekend :-D

Mach’s gut,

Kate