Wednesday, June 28, 2006
Tuesday, June 27, 2006
Fotos Des Tages
A couple of shots from the postmodern Potsdamer Platz built after the fall of the Berlin wall.
Half a Brecht
Brecht is hard to understand when translated to English. It’s even harder in German. It’s a lot harder when it’s performed for you so that you can’t read the text. It’s harder still when you completely miss the first act, are jet-lagged, hungry, and tired. But I somehow made it through my first German play – Brecht’s Mutter Courage – and lived to tell about it.
One of the Professors in the program managed to get a few tickets for those interested to see one of Brecht’s classic works. My friend Emily met up with me – we were the only two students willing to try such a tough play – and we set off for the U-bahn. After a quick glance at my ticket, I saw that the play was to start at 8:00. We gave ourselves a good 45 minutes to get there, since the U-bahn – despite its German efficiency – is hard to time plan for. After taking the right train the wrong direction for a couple of stops – too much time chatting, not enough focus on U-bahning – we turned around and headed the right way. On the way to our night in high class entertainment, we were surrounded by German fans just coming back from the fan mile – despite their game against Sweden ending a few hours ago – chanting, singing and swinging their beers in delight.
We finally got to the Ernst Reuter stop – named for the Berlin mayor – and found the theater only to see the concourse surrounding it completely empty. Confused, I looked at my ticket again only to see that the Professor had actually given me a ticket to a completely different play scheduled for next week, not Brecht. Emily had the right ticket, which clearly stated the time of the play as 7 PM. So, there we sat, outside of the theater waiting for intermission to begin, formulating our excuses for when we inevitably ran into the faculty joining us at the play. Luckily before I could even explain the mix up – how I had looked at the time on my ticket without noticing it was for a completely different show – the Professor was incredibly apologetic to me, rather than the other way around. He truly felt bad that by giving me the wrong ticket he had cheated me out of an entire act of Brecht. I tried to tell him it was fine, that he needn’t apologize, but then again I couldn’t let on to the fact that a missed hour of Brecht isn’t exactly an hour I will dwell on in the future over missing.
As we found our seats for the second half, my Professor did a great job explaining some of the plot to me, but regardless by a few lines in I was already lost. The problem is not necessarily the language – if I really focused on individual lines I could usually get the meaning. The problem was that in the time it took me to convert German Brecht to English Brecht, three or four more sentences have been spoken, and I have no chance of catching up to those.
As the play came to a dramatic end, the cast came back on stage for the longest curtain call I’ve ever seen at a play. It wasn’t necessarily as a result of the acting – it was good but not earth shattering – but rather it was the audience continuing to clap until the actors finally stayed off stage. Every single combination of characters came running out, hands locked together, to take a bow at the front of the stage, only to run off again as a new combination came out to replace them. After probably five minutes of mix-and-match actors running on stage, and Pavlovian clapping from the audience, they ran off stage for good, and we – our hands red and sore – headed out of the theater.
Though I hardly understood the play – the words, the plot, the characters, you name it – I’m very glad I stuck it out. After all there aren’t many Americans who can say they’ve seen an entire Brecht play in German (okay, fine, half a Brecht).
One of the Professors in the program managed to get a few tickets for those interested to see one of Brecht’s classic works. My friend Emily met up with me – we were the only two students willing to try such a tough play – and we set off for the U-bahn. After a quick glance at my ticket, I saw that the play was to start at 8:00. We gave ourselves a good 45 minutes to get there, since the U-bahn – despite its German efficiency – is hard to time plan for. After taking the right train the wrong direction for a couple of stops – too much time chatting, not enough focus on U-bahning – we turned around and headed the right way. On the way to our night in high class entertainment, we were surrounded by German fans just coming back from the fan mile – despite their game against Sweden ending a few hours ago – chanting, singing and swinging their beers in delight.
We finally got to the Ernst Reuter stop – named for the Berlin mayor – and found the theater only to see the concourse surrounding it completely empty. Confused, I looked at my ticket again only to see that the Professor had actually given me a ticket to a completely different play scheduled for next week, not Brecht. Emily had the right ticket, which clearly stated the time of the play as 7 PM. So, there we sat, outside of the theater waiting for intermission to begin, formulating our excuses for when we inevitably ran into the faculty joining us at the play. Luckily before I could even explain the mix up – how I had looked at the time on my ticket without noticing it was for a completely different show – the Professor was incredibly apologetic to me, rather than the other way around. He truly felt bad that by giving me the wrong ticket he had cheated me out of an entire act of Brecht. I tried to tell him it was fine, that he needn’t apologize, but then again I couldn’t let on to the fact that a missed hour of Brecht isn’t exactly an hour I will dwell on in the future over missing.
As we found our seats for the second half, my Professor did a great job explaining some of the plot to me, but regardless by a few lines in I was already lost. The problem is not necessarily the language – if I really focused on individual lines I could usually get the meaning. The problem was that in the time it took me to convert German Brecht to English Brecht, three or four more sentences have been spoken, and I have no chance of catching up to those.
As the play came to a dramatic end, the cast came back on stage for the longest curtain call I’ve ever seen at a play. It wasn’t necessarily as a result of the acting – it was good but not earth shattering – but rather it was the audience continuing to clap until the actors finally stayed off stage. Every single combination of characters came running out, hands locked together, to take a bow at the front of the stage, only to run off again as a new combination came out to replace them. After probably five minutes of mix-and-match actors running on stage, and Pavlovian clapping from the audience, they ran off stage for good, and we – our hands red and sore – headed out of the theater.
Though I hardly understood the play – the words, the plot, the characters, you name it – I’m very glad I stuck it out. After all there aren’t many Americans who can say they’ve seen an entire Brecht play in German (okay, fine, half a Brecht).
Saturday, June 24, 2006
Fussball in Berlin
I still think soccer (football) is boring…but I love the world cup.
On Friday, friends and I went to an area called “fan mile” – a strip more than a mile long stretching from the Tiergarten near “Berlin Mittle” all the way to the Brandenburg Gate – to watch the Ukraine versus Tunisia match.
Before entering the fan mile, every fan is subjected to an extremely thorough pat-down, mostly to check for knives and other soccer-hooligan paraphernalia. My buddy and I made a couple of teenage girls’ day when we lined up in what turned out to be the female line; they told us “boy’s go over there,” pointing and giggling. Following an inspection (in the correct line, I’m happy to say) that included a bit of an un-requested and un-appreciated squeeze on the backside, we were officially in soccer heaven.
The first thing one sees upon entering is a huge inflated Duracell bunny – no, not the standard Energizer bunny, but apparently a rival, pink, battery powered creature. The closed off mile long strip is filled with at least a dozen jumbotron sized screens showing the game, a ferris wheel, a fake beach complete with sand castles, and numerous stands lining the way. The stands are filled with merchants selling eclectic food – I saw Thai noodles, beer, candy, currywurst, and donut stands among others – and numerous stands selling souvenirs in the colors of all thirty-two “Welt Meisterschaft” countries. When Germany took on Ecuador a couple of days ago, 700,000 people turned out to the small area to watch; while not nearly as crowded today (understandably so), there was still a sizeable crowd. Luckily for us, the “anti konflict team” was in place in neon yellow vests to quell any possible “Konflicts” that might arise with such a large, passionate crowd.
Initially greeted by a surprisingly laid-back crowd at the front, which featured more relaxed fans sitting on benches enjoying a “Bier und fussball,” we made our way down the entire mile towards the front where we knew the crazy fans would be. There, connected to the Brandenburg gate, was an even larger jumbotron, where the game was being shown before a shoulder-to-shoulder crowd made up almost exclusively of Ukrainian fans.
The area at the front near the Brandenburg gate was crazy. Chants of “Oooooh-kran-eee-aaah” followed by six claps dominated the area, sometimes following a good play by the team, other times seemingly at random. Flags small and large waved in the foreground, and noisemakers – horns and drums – played the usual refrains of “let’s go” and “Ole.” Ukraine won a close match 1-0, with a goal coming early in the 2nd half.
Coming back from the game, my roommate and I decided to pick up a German necessity: a case of beer. Germany has a fantastic economic incentive system to encourage recycling: bottled beverages cost more than market value nationwide; however, the rewards for returning empty bottles back to the place of purchase are far larger here than in the US, creating a significant incentive to recycle. Our case of beer, for example, cost 17 Euros, but 3.5 Euros will be given to us upon retuning the bottles. The amount is significant enough – as opposed to a nickel in the US – that we will go out of our way to make sure the bottles and even the case itself are recycled. Upon receiving the recycling refund, consumers are no worse off for the temporary tax, while the environment is, in fact, improved thanks to increased recycling. Sounds like German efficiency to me!
While carrying the case back, a group of German girls hanging out near the window of their apartment yelled down to us that they wanted some of our Beer. I yelled back that we didn’t have any beer, that it was just a case of milk. They giggled (the second group of girls we made giggle today), and we went on our way, though now that I think back, perhaps we should have lingered longer outside their window, where we could have shared a beverage and a talk on their remarkable environmental economic incentive system. Maybe next time.
The view of fanmile from the communist TV tower (more on this later)
On Friday, friends and I went to an area called “fan mile” – a strip more than a mile long stretching from the Tiergarten near “Berlin Mittle” all the way to the Brandenburg Gate – to watch the Ukraine versus Tunisia match.
Before entering the fan mile, every fan is subjected to an extremely thorough pat-down, mostly to check for knives and other soccer-hooligan paraphernalia. My buddy and I made a couple of teenage girls’ day when we lined up in what turned out to be the female line; they told us “boy’s go over there,” pointing and giggling. Following an inspection (in the correct line, I’m happy to say) that included a bit of an un-requested and un-appreciated squeeze on the backside, we were officially in soccer heaven.
The first thing one sees upon entering is a huge inflated Duracell bunny – no, not the standard Energizer bunny, but apparently a rival, pink, battery powered creature. The closed off mile long strip is filled with at least a dozen jumbotron sized screens showing the game, a ferris wheel, a fake beach complete with sand castles, and numerous stands lining the way. The stands are filled with merchants selling eclectic food – I saw Thai noodles, beer, candy, currywurst, and donut stands among others – and numerous stands selling souvenirs in the colors of all thirty-two “Welt Meisterschaft” countries. When Germany took on Ecuador a couple of days ago, 700,000 people turned out to the small area to watch; while not nearly as crowded today (understandably so), there was still a sizeable crowd. Luckily for us, the “anti konflict team” was in place in neon yellow vests to quell any possible “Konflicts” that might arise with such a large, passionate crowd.
Initially greeted by a surprisingly laid-back crowd at the front, which featured more relaxed fans sitting on benches enjoying a “Bier und fussball,” we made our way down the entire mile towards the front where we knew the crazy fans would be. There, connected to the Brandenburg gate, was an even larger jumbotron, where the game was being shown before a shoulder-to-shoulder crowd made up almost exclusively of Ukrainian fans.
The area at the front near the Brandenburg gate was crazy. Chants of “Oooooh-kran-eee-aaah” followed by six claps dominated the area, sometimes following a good play by the team, other times seemingly at random. Flags small and large waved in the foreground, and noisemakers – horns and drums – played the usual refrains of “let’s go” and “Ole.” Ukraine won a close match 1-0, with a goal coming early in the 2nd half.
Coming back from the game, my roommate and I decided to pick up a German necessity: a case of beer. Germany has a fantastic economic incentive system to encourage recycling: bottled beverages cost more than market value nationwide; however, the rewards for returning empty bottles back to the place of purchase are far larger here than in the US, creating a significant incentive to recycle. Our case of beer, for example, cost 17 Euros, but 3.5 Euros will be given to us upon retuning the bottles. The amount is significant enough – as opposed to a nickel in the US – that we will go out of our way to make sure the bottles and even the case itself are recycled. Upon receiving the recycling refund, consumers are no worse off for the temporary tax, while the environment is, in fact, improved thanks to increased recycling. Sounds like German efficiency to me!
While carrying the case back, a group of German girls hanging out near the window of their apartment yelled down to us that they wanted some of our Beer. I yelled back that we didn’t have any beer, that it was just a case of milk. They giggled (the second group of girls we made giggle today), and we went on our way, though now that I think back, perhaps we should have lingered longer outside their window, where we could have shared a beverage and a talk on their remarkable environmental economic incentive system. Maybe next time.
The view of fanmile from the communist TV tower (more on this later)
Thursday, June 22, 2006
Hallo Berlin
I made it to Berlin, and, thankfully, the journey was far less harrowing than my expedition to Halifax, Canada last summer before my Semester at Sea experience (read about it here:
The first thing that struck me about Berlin’s Tegel airport is how small it is, considering Berlin’s prominent place in world affairs. When I arrived at Munich’s airport two winters ago, it struck me as a modern, chrome and glass dominated monstrosity that screamed German efficiency. Berlin’s airport by contrast had a luggage carousel smaller than any airport I had seen before, and a laid back demeanor evidenced by the lackadaisical effort put forth by the customs and security officials. By the time I was cleared, my bag – unlike last summer – was waiting for me. I met up with four other Duke students on my flight and once all of our stuff was collected we looked for a taxi big enough for all five of us and our six-weeks worth of packed items. In my first “you’re really in Germany, now” moment, I asked in the taxi driver – “Herr Taxitreiber” as Frau Helbing would have wanted me to address him – if he could take all of us and all of our stuff. He told me he could, but once the mini-van cab was filled with our stuff there was only one row of seats left. So three of us took the mini-van, the others, baggage free, went in a regular cab and we met up at the apartments.
From the outside, the apartments were not especially welcoming. Across the street, buildings were tagged with graffiti and sayings, in English, like “take back the streets.” However, once we received our keys and found our way inside, the accommodations were much nicer than I expected. There are two bedrooms for two students, a quaint kitchen, a decent sized living room, and a fairly expansive balcony with a nice view. Additionally, waiting for us on our table were German snack foods, including the quite poorly named “Wiener blatter” cookies. While you get your English speaking minds out of the gutter, I will translate it for you: Viennese leaves – referring to the city of influence, and shape of the cookies, respectively.
Trying to fight the jet-lag as much as possible, I refused a nap (despite a 17-hour travel day that began at 4AM west coast time), and instead went wandering with my fellow Berliners, visiting the Potsdamer platz – an area in the former East Berlin that is experiencing incredible growth and transformation, which features an amalgam of beautifully fashioned buildings designed by some of the greats, including Pei and Gehry, that while disharmonious on some level come together thanks to the notorious diversity and contrasts that make Berlin the city it is.
Following our trip east, my roommate and I explored the Kreuzberg district where our apartment is located. I find many similarities between Berlin and San Francisco; if you believe that analogy, then Kreuzberg is to San Francisco as Berkeley is to the city by the bay. There are funky clothing shops, lots of, shall we say, “interesting people” out on the streets, and lots of hole-in-the-wall restaurants or “Imbisstubes.” We went into a small Turkish-run snack place (the area has a high level of immigrants, especially Turks), and had chicken pita’s. While we ordered the same thing, we got vastly different dishes – mine featuring diced potatoes, his fries, mine loaded with lettuce and tomato, and his with pickled radishes and chili paste. Regardless, the restaurateur seemed to appreciate our business, as he brought out complimentary chai tea for us to enjoy. A hot beverage, to go along with a hot meal (especially my roommate’s with the chili paste), on a very hot Berlin day wasn’t quite what the “Doktor” ordered, but it was a very nice gesture.
Thanks for checking in on my blog. Even though I don’t have access to the Internet in the apartment, I hope to share my experiences with you frequently. I was going to upload a bunch of pictures from my first day, but it's taking forever. I'll resize them and post them soon.
Potsdamer Platz:
The first thing that struck me about Berlin’s Tegel airport is how small it is, considering Berlin’s prominent place in world affairs. When I arrived at Munich’s airport two winters ago, it struck me as a modern, chrome and glass dominated monstrosity that screamed German efficiency. Berlin’s airport by contrast had a luggage carousel smaller than any airport I had seen before, and a laid back demeanor evidenced by the lackadaisical effort put forth by the customs and security officials. By the time I was cleared, my bag – unlike last summer – was waiting for me. I met up with four other Duke students on my flight and once all of our stuff was collected we looked for a taxi big enough for all five of us and our six-weeks worth of packed items. In my first “you’re really in Germany, now” moment, I asked in the taxi driver – “Herr Taxitreiber” as Frau Helbing would have wanted me to address him – if he could take all of us and all of our stuff. He told me he could, but once the mini-van cab was filled with our stuff there was only one row of seats left. So three of us took the mini-van, the others, baggage free, went in a regular cab and we met up at the apartments.
From the outside, the apartments were not especially welcoming. Across the street, buildings were tagged with graffiti and sayings, in English, like “take back the streets.” However, once we received our keys and found our way inside, the accommodations were much nicer than I expected. There are two bedrooms for two students, a quaint kitchen, a decent sized living room, and a fairly expansive balcony with a nice view. Additionally, waiting for us on our table were German snack foods, including the quite poorly named “Wiener blatter” cookies. While you get your English speaking minds out of the gutter, I will translate it for you: Viennese leaves – referring to the city of influence, and shape of the cookies, respectively.
Trying to fight the jet-lag as much as possible, I refused a nap (despite a 17-hour travel day that began at 4AM west coast time), and instead went wandering with my fellow Berliners, visiting the Potsdamer platz – an area in the former East Berlin that is experiencing incredible growth and transformation, which features an amalgam of beautifully fashioned buildings designed by some of the greats, including Pei and Gehry, that while disharmonious on some level come together thanks to the notorious diversity and contrasts that make Berlin the city it is.
Following our trip east, my roommate and I explored the Kreuzberg district where our apartment is located. I find many similarities between Berlin and San Francisco; if you believe that analogy, then Kreuzberg is to San Francisco as Berkeley is to the city by the bay. There are funky clothing shops, lots of, shall we say, “interesting people” out on the streets, and lots of hole-in-the-wall restaurants or “Imbisstubes.” We went into a small Turkish-run snack place (the area has a high level of immigrants, especially Turks), and had chicken pita’s. While we ordered the same thing, we got vastly different dishes – mine featuring diced potatoes, his fries, mine loaded with lettuce and tomato, and his with pickled radishes and chili paste. Regardless, the restaurateur seemed to appreciate our business, as he brought out complimentary chai tea for us to enjoy. A hot beverage, to go along with a hot meal (especially my roommate’s with the chili paste), on a very hot Berlin day wasn’t quite what the “Doktor” ordered, but it was a very nice gesture.
Thanks for checking in on my blog. Even though I don’t have access to the Internet in the apartment, I hope to share my experiences with you frequently. I was going to upload a bunch of pictures from my first day, but it's taking forever. I'll resize them and post them soon.
Potsdamer Platz:
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)