Briefe und Zeitungen

Auf Wiesersehen, Berlin

2009-10-31T16:22:00.008+01:00

It seemed fitting, somehow, that on my last day in Berlin I would be required to move. Again. My make-believe apartment dossier would therefore be revised to include one final entry. At the end of the list describing the myriad other apartments we have inhabited across Kreuzberg and Neukölln, it now reads in hastily scrawled block letters: WESERSTRASSE.

As my flight is on November 2, and our lease on Grossbeerenstrasse expires on October 31, we had to find temporary lodgings in Berlin: for me, for one night; for Joe, for two more weeks as he finishes up his work in the studio. We therefore spent my last day in town doing a little cleaning and a lot of walking. When we finally met the new tenants and turned over the keys, the dark and hazy eventide had crept upon us. We picked up sandwiches from Mustafa's, and walked toward the nearby line of cabs. Something about the whole affair - eating from a Döner stand, carrying an Ikea bag full of pillows and blankets in one hand and an old push broom in the other - didn't make it feel like it was really the last day.

But then, at the cab stand, I noticed something different. The cab at the front of the line didn't resemble the other beige sedans lined up behind it. It was, in fact, a 1962 Mercedes Benz 190 Heckflosse, piloted by a man wearing what appeared to be a tai chi outfit and sporting a skunk-dyed faux-hawk. When we got into the cab, to my delight, Herr Werner, himself a fourth generation taxi driver, told us that it was in fact the oldest cab in operation in Berlin. It had a plush red interior, and there was a red rose peeping out of the vent in dashboard. A string quartet piped in through the speakers.

It was schön. Sehr schön. And it finally felt right.

The Little Things

2009-10-29T11:32:00.008+01:00

Since returning from Istanbul, I've been doing lots of little things, to get ready for the big thing: Leaving Berlin. I've been researching Delta's insipid and exacting baggage standards, and then weighing my Samsonite luggage as carefully as I can; I've been trying, in vein, to give away an ugly straw hat, and a few other now non-essential accessories; I've been consolidating my shampoo bottles, and making a few more "one last" trips to Joe's studio to see the work he's been preparing for his solo show at Western Exhibitions in November, and the group show he will be a part of in Beijing in January.

I had tea with Susan in Prenzlauer Berg, in quite possibly the quaintest tea shop in all of Berlin. As evidence for the foregoing supposition, note the whimsical tea service, Princess Diana tea tray and Ampelmännchen shortbread cookies.*

* Photographs courtesy of Susan and her handy iPhone, as I came to our meeting unprepared for such visual - and toothsome - fineries.

I had drinks with James, Ali and a few other friends at this lovely bar.

And I had dinner with Bianca, Mariel and Teresa at Cuno.

I had one last walk with Joe through Viktoria Park, watching the leaves fall off the trees.

My friends ask, "How does it feel to be leaving? Are you ready?" The truth is, I'm not ready, and I'm not not ready, because I haven't really thought of it. It's the little things that I am focused on these days, so much so that that the one big thing, the leaving part, it doesn't even come to mind.

Happy Birthday, Oesterreich

2009-10-28T08:06:00.011+01:00

Each year in late October, Austria celebrates the Birth of the Republic (b. 1945). Here in the Haupstadt, the Austrian Embassy throws a big party to mark the day. Our friends Bianca and Robert, themselves accomplished artists and, as I like to call them, two of Austria's own National Treasures, always attend the event to schmooze with art collectors and diplomats alike. After inadvertently showing up in paint-splattered track jackets the first year, today Bianca and Robert turned it up a notch: dark suits, shiny shoes, sequins and an up-do were adorned.

Before leaving, we toasted Austria -- per the Bundeshymne der Republik Oesterreich, the "land of mountains, land of streams" -- with some fine homemade Austrian schnapps. When Bianca called for the cab to pick us up and whisk us away to the embassy, the dispatcher asked for her name. Appropriately, she simply said: "Oesterreicher."

When we arrived at the Embassy, even the cloakroom seemed Austrian. There was a military band in white jackets. There were speeches in honor of the twenty year anniversary of the falling of the iron curtain. The walls were embellished with childhood portraits of Maria Teresa.

We were young, we were beautiful, we were hip. We were the life of the party.

And....We were eating schnitzel.

It's not every day that you can say that.

Istanbul (Not Constantinople)

2009-10-22T10:11:00.017+02:00

Earlier in the year, I've written a bit about my adopted Turkish neighborhood here in Berlin; I've also written about wandering through the Turkish market, held each Tuesday and Friday along the canal by my old apartment; I've put up photographs documenting my visits to marvel at the Pergammon Altar and various other ancient artifacts housed here in Berlin after their removal from Turkey over a century ago.

According to recent surveys, one whole quarter of Germany's foreign population is part of the great Turkish diaspora. This came as sort of a surprise to me when we moved to Berlin; when I arrived, I didn't know that I would be just as likely to have a döner kepab as a currywurst for a late night snack in the Straßen. And so, it seemed fitting that for our last Berlin-based trip, we would head east, as far east as our travels have taken us this year.

I was expecting it to feel far-off and far-flung, but in some respects Turkey seems far more western than some of its more traditionally European neighbors. Perhaps this is because my neighborhood is sometimes called Little Istanbul; more likely, however, it is because Istanbul is, at bottom, a westernized, European and cosmopolitan city, with a history that may be a bit more exotic than most.

On our first day in Istanbul, we went to the Galata Tower that seems to loom over Istanbul's steep hillside. We took the elevator up to see the views of the Asian side of the city, the Sea of Marmara, and to watch the Chinese cargo ships surge through this narrow passageway.

We tried to guess what was inside: tennis shoes? shiny toys? hair brushes? We gave up, and carefully took a few self-portraits like the other tourists tiptoeing around the narrow catwalk.

For our first leg of the trip, we stayed in Sultanahmet, the decidedly more touristy side of the city. As I told my parents, the only nice thing to be said about our guesthouse in Sultanahmet is its proximity to the Four Seasons. After cold showers in the morning, we walked to the Aya Sofya, the Blue Mosque, Topkapi Palace, with its mysterious harem rooms and stunning tile work, and the Istanbul Archaeological Museum to see the Alexander Sarcophagus.

When push comes to shove, though -- and in Istanbul it sometimes does -- our favorite parts of our time in that great city that was once Constantinople was in wandering through the markets, drinking fresh pomegranate juice on the little cadessi and sokuk, and mingling with the locals in the eccentric Begolyu district.

We spent a little time near the water, on both sides of the Golden Horn. On the tip of a friend, we sought out the line of boats rocking in the busy current, filled with costumed men grilling fish for customers on the shore.

After spending a few days in Istanbul, we headed south, to Selçuk, and visited the Greek and Roman ruins at Ephesus.

We learned that John the Baptist and Mary lived near Ephesus towards the end of their lives, and were then buried in the area. We joined the pilgrims visiting the Basilica of St. John and a cathedral built to honor Mary. Then, we went old-school, and made an offering at the Temple of Artemis: a hope, a wish, a prayer, like all visitors to the temple in the last two thousand years, for fertility -- in our case, delayed and with luck insured fertility.

From Selçuk, we headed even further east into central Anatolia, and joined the throngs of tourists at Pamukkale, the "cotton castle." There, we rolled up our cuffs and walked barefoot through the hot springs, across the milky white travertines.

Back in Istanbul, we soaked up the nightlife, enjoying round after round of mezzes, roasted peppers and eggplant, purslane yogurt sauces, stuffed tomatoes, succulent meatballs, whole grilled fish, lentil çiorba, bean stews, and perhaps a glass or two of raki.

Our friend Sarah joined us for this trip and by the time our ten days was up, she had acquired many Turkish keepsakes along the way: handmade jewelry, Persian miniature paintings, pashminas, ceramics and even an antique Turkish carpet. I bought next to nothing. Back in Berlin, though, I'm still humming along to Istanbul (Not Constantinople), and in the fine words of Jimmy Kennedy and Nat Simon, I have my own memories of enjoying the Turkish Delight on a moonlit night, like all the gals in Constantinople.

So take me back to Istanbul!

Deep in the Vaterland

2009-10-08T10:25:00.015+02:00

This past weekend, we hopped aboard a Deutsche Bahn intercity express train and headed south. Specifically, our purpose was to call upon Sigmaringen, a little village deep in the Vaterland that Joe visited for a few weeks when he was 16 years old. It had been over fifteen years, but Joe's reunion with his exchange student Pamela and her family was still a little teary-eyed.

As we walked through the village with Pamela, Joe tried to remember where everything was: his favorite pizzeria was just over there! The best view of the castle is right here!

We bounced around the old streets from one recollection to the next. I was half-expecting Ralph Edwards to pop out of the shrubbery with his infamous red book, and for a booming voice to intone from the heavens: "Joe Hardesty. This Is Your Life."

Pamela had a baby about three months before our visit. Much of our time in Sigmaringen was spent with little Johanna: showing her off in the village, hiking down country roads while she slept in her Kinderwagen, and relaxing with her on the Stumpp family's patio.

After we had soaked up enough of the village life and had sopped up the last bit of Frau Stumpp's excellent Spaetzel and three different kinds of her fabulous homemade Kuchen, we traveled with Pamela and her husband Wenzel back to their home in Zurich.

We saw the Chagall windows, enjoyed the view of the Alps, and imagined splashing around in Lake Zurich. Most of all, though, we marveled at the giant sheets of chocolate available at many shops around town.

In the evening, Pamela and Wenzel treated us to a traditional Swiss dinner: Raclette. Upon first impression, Raclette seems to be just like Korean barbeque, but with the cheese stealing the show. Raclette is melted on a special tabletop oven, while vegetables and slices of meat are grilled above. The whole concoction is then served over potatoes. Joe helped Pamela get ready for the meal by slicing up two enormous bricks of special Raclette cheese. I sliced the red onions and bell peppers and decanted pickles, olives and other jarred accouterments, getting increasingly nervous as all of the accompanying foods were systematically lined up along the edge of the table.

As you can see below, Pamela and Wenzel are true Raclette professionals. Indeed, Wenzel even helped me to ascertain the few meat/vegetable/cheese configurations which are, in his words, "Swiss approved."

It was a leisurely night of eating and drinking. It was so leisurely, in fact, that I almost did not make it to the finish line, and had to take several little rests -- see below -- along the way.

It is relieving, in retrospect, that at the time I was not aware of an old wives' tale about Raclette, which I subsequently learned: drinking water along with Raclette may interfere with the digestion of the cheese, in rare occasions causing death by cheese balls forming in the stomach. Death by cheese balls! Mein Gott!

Access All Areas

2009-10-01T15:26:00.010+02:00

Last weekend was a big one. We had been waiting for it for a long time. So, when it came, we tried to respond appropriately. Joe dusted off his Sunday Best, and my three-inch heels made a rare appearance. Beneath the absurd European color-balanced lights that all of the galleries favor these days -- lights that were not, I'll have you know, kind to my complimentary-cocktailed rosy cheeks -- Joe's work was exhibited in a group show at Galerie Max Hetzler.

The show is called Access All Areas, and was curated by Arturo Herrera and Tanja Wagner. Joe's work looked fantastic.

His four text pieces are shown above, and in the corner there, beneath those beautiful red scribbles shown below, is his greybow table.

Joe's pieces shared the gallery with a lot of other amazing work. Here is one of my favorites: a man, constructed out of dead flies, real ones, strung together on thin wire.

And here is a large graphite-covered wall, tattooed by hand over many long days and weeks.

Later in the weekend, we took the S-bahn to the west side of town and attended the annual international art fair, Art Forum Berlin.

Art Forum Berlin was supposed to be the fillet of the weekend, but afterward our friends Marc and Antonia described it as "grouchy," and "grim," respectively. Perhaps this is why the only photographs we took that day were of this beautiful U-bahn advertisement/palimpsest.

It's quite nice, I think. For more information about Joe's show, go here! You can also see more images of his work on his website.

das Korn

2009-09-23T12:34:00.013+02:00

On a rainy Saturday in September, we took the train into the Brandenburg countryside.

We saw green acorns readying themselves for the season, beautiful white cows seeking shelter from the weather, and a few unidentifiable farm implements. Despite all of this bucolic atmosphere, I have to admit that we were really there for the Sellendorf Distillery, and to enjoy the annual Korn festival.

As you may know, Korn is a German spirit with a somewhat dubious reputation. Thanks to our friend Theo Ligthart, however, Korn has taken a page out of Ms. Doolittle's etiquette book and is making its own My Fair Lady-esque metamorphosis. Theo is distilling his own brand of Korn in Sellendorf, and allow me to be the first to tell you that his Korn is charming and may, like our Eliza, adopt its own aristocratic air.

It all starts with these enormous mountains of grain....

....which are somehow transformed into handsome, oversized perfume bottles of clear liquor.

We had heard that a new Queen of Korn would be crowned this year, and our group tried to bring a cosmopolitan flair to the proceedings. After all, it was with our help that Sellendorf would bill the competition this year as "international." Ever ready for this sacrosanct event, we donned white gloves and tried to pimp Theo for as much Korn-related trivia for the test to be administered to the Korn Queen contestants. Sadly, I was a few years over the age limit and was automatically disqualified from competing. Even more sadly, none of our contestants won, as this year's judges, the village attorney and mayor, decided to re-elect the Reigning Queen for the second year.

She deserved it, don't you think?

Our white gloves, however, did not disappoint, bringing that certain "city mouse comes to the country" feeling to affair.

The gloves even came in handy into the afternoon: here is my friend Bianca, deftly rebuffing Theo's attempted third (or was it fourth?) Korn offering.

Joe continued his tradition of traveling with his stomach, feasting on the spitted pig that fed the day's hungry participants.

Later in the day, Joe managed to unbutton his top button, and entertained us all with his Korn-related antics.

As you might expect, a day of this Korn-infused revelry ended with us missing the last train back to Berlin. Ah, Korn. To know you is to love you. And to love you is to hate you.

Paradise Found

2009-09-15T10:08:00.014+02:00

Well. It's been about two weeks since my good friend Missy and I came back from Dubrovnik. I've been flipping through the photographs from time to time, trying to garner some inspiration for a Croatia-based post. It has been a challenge, though, because what can you say about the most beautiful place in the world?

The real paradise has made for such good subject matter only because it was lost.

In any event, we spent a lot of time swimming in the Adriatic from beaches made of jagged, white rocks. We went island hopping. We ate ice cream every day.

During our tour of the Elafiti Islands, we had a fish picnic. Afterward, we fed our fish heads to the gulls.

We stumbled upon a few hidden courtyards like these, discovering the ruins of a Benedictine monastery in one, and (yet another claim of) Europe's oldest pharmacy in another.

We spent a few days exploring the island of Lokrum, just off the coast of Dubrovnik. Lokrum is a forest preserve with wild beaches and a botanical garden that is home to flowering succulents, palm trees and friendly peacocks. The view from Lokrum - oh, the view. I just don't know what to say about it.

We explored the old military fort, dipped our toes in the dead sea, and took a nap in this olive grove.

Most of all, though, we spent our time floating in Adriatic.

It really was paradise. And I really did feel tempted. Luckily, there were no apples.

Contagion

2009-09-03T16:15:00.014+02:00

In mid-August, we did something which was, for us, quite peculiar: we spent some time in a country where the mother tongue is English. This was a first for us both, in the ten months that we have been living in Berlin. For me, it changed the punchline of the girl walks into a bar joke that has become my life from "she stammers, turns red in the face and starts sweating," to "she greets the bartender a bit too cheerfully and then asks too many questions about the menu."

And so, we found ourselves -- able to read street signs and food labels and even have pleasant conversations with the man behind the passport control desk -- in Scotland, for a long-overdue visit to our Glaswegian friends Amanda and Elizabeth.

As many of you know, Joe travels, as he likes to say, with his stomach. And so, on our first full day in Scotland, we went to a Chip Shop, or, as I like to call such an establishment, a Chippery or a Chippy-Chip. This frequently elicited confusion or frowns from our hosts, and yet once within the chosen Chippity-Chip-Chip, our call for salt and vinegar was heard from far and wide. With Amanda's help and encouragement, we engaged in the following three-step process steeped in British history and tradition:

Part 1. The Proffer.

Part 2. Acceptance.

Part 3. Motion Carried.

Let me just say that we now have a good command of this legal exercise. After spending a day in Edinburgh and a day in Glasgow, we headed north, for Inveraray. On the way there, Amanda told us about the landscape.

Our conversations generally went like this:

Amanda: We're coming up now on a mountain called the Rest and Be Thankful. It's named in honor of Samuel Johnson and James Boswell. When Johnson and Boswell finally made it to the top, they are said to have rested, and were thankful.

Emily: Neat!

Joe: Where is it?

Amanda: Er. It's right there, behind that cloud. Er. Hopefully we'll have better luck when we reach Ben Lomand. Or when we drive back down.

It will come as no surprise that we did not, in fact, have better luck with Ben Lomand, or even when we returned to Glasgow the following afternoon. However, I did very much admire the nearby rain clouds.

For the most part, our photo collection looks rather bleak, and is not indicative of the warm and bonny feelings we now have for Scotland. Despite the uncooperative weather, we did have a few successes along the way. First, we spent time exercising our rights under Scot's law: we had the right to roam, and roam we did. In the middle of this sheep's field, we studied the standing stones and other monuments, thought to be created circa 3,000 B.C.E.

Second, we enjoyed a late lunch at the aptly named Oyster Shed. Here's Joe, trying to decide how much sea food he could possibly eat before it started raining again. Below, you will also see his lunch: oysters, mussels, langoustines and clams, some of which were pulled right out of the nearby bay (which was, of course, occluded by the mist and fog).

Third, we went through a distillery tour at Glen Goyne, learning all about the highlands versus the islands, the whiskey tax and the angel share.

It wouldn't really be a trip to Scotland without some Scotch whiskey, right?

After dinner one evening, Amanda and Joe leaned back in their chairs, sighed, and gazed lovingly into the ruddy complexions of a few short glasses of the stuff.

Somewhere during Joe and Amanda's mossy/peaty/ashy/white peppery/spicy/nutty/buttery repartee, I settled in for a wee nap on the tartan-trussed bench from which I had been admiring the stamina of the on-going whiskey discourse. Johnson's remarks about the country came back to me: Some method to stop this epidemic desire of wandering, which spreads its contagion from valley to valley, ought to be sought with great diligence. My socks were still wet, and it was still cold, dark and raining outside. I was far too well acquainted with my hideous orange rain slicker. And yet, I couldn't help but hope for more wandering in the morning. Those hills and dales and valleys and glens. It is an epidemic. It is a contagion. I'm just glad that I finally had the chance to catch it.

The Second Grade

2009-08-13T19:09:00.015+02:00

Sometimes, I like to think of Saturdays as "art day" and Sundays as "nature day." Perhaps that sounds like something a second grader would say? Yes, it does...and I am sure Joe is cringing as he reads this. If only I still had one of those fantastic underwear sets that were popular in the 1980s, with the days of the week embroidered on the front of each pair. Although I am no longer a second grader, and no longer wear embroidered underwear, sometimes I still get excited like only a second grader can. Particularly on the weekends, when Joe and I have the chance to traipse around the city together.

This Saturday, we walked to the Hamburger Bahnhof. On the way, Joe stopped here and there to stretch his back.

Also on the way, we stopped to admire the remains of the Anhalter Bahnhof (perhaps Saturdays should be thought of as "old train station day"?).

When we arrived at the Hamburger Bahnhof, we spent some time messing about in the lobby, admiring the incorporation of the Dan Flavins into the old interior of the train station itself.

In the "In the Making..." exhibition we were amazed by Cy Twombly's triptych, shown here with historic copies of the slaves Michelangelo made for the tomb of Julius II.

I also loved this little Joseph Beuys. It's called Capri Battery.

And Joe really liked this Roman Signer.

After the Bahnhof, Joe retreated to the studio, and I set off on a quest. Earlier this summer, a few of our friends planned a trip to Berlin. Unfortunately, they were here while we were in Romania, and we did not get to see them. When we got back, though, they sent us this note:

Look for this shape on a map to find a place we went to shoot photos and take naps and leave you a message.
1. Go inside the place.
2. Go up the right side and look right. look for the number 13 painted on the wall. Look behind the rock in the hole in the wall by the #13.
3. Go up the left side and you will see some tables: white, blue, white, blue, white, blue, WHITE. The 4th white table by the first window has a note in the crease of the table top.

We asked for a hint, and then we figured it out: the Zionskirche, in Prenzlauer Berg.

From the Hamburger Bahnhof, I walked over to the church, and went inside. There was an organ recital happening, and it was amazing to listen to the music while I wandered around, looking for clues.

Walking up the right side of the nave, I finally found it. Can you see the chalked 13? And the little hole?

Sure enough, I found a note in there, covered in pinkish dirt. There were no blue and white tables on the right side of the nave. Even though I was too late to retrieve one of the notes left for us, I had a wonderful time poking around the transepts and sitting in the balcony, admiring the decaying flowers and enjoying what little remained of the dusty afternoon light.

On Sunday, we took the S-Bahn out to Hermsdorf to visit our friend Moussa, who was house sitting and caring for a pack of cats. Moussa took us out on a nature hike. We saw some baby birds along the way, a bog, and even some nice little lakes.

Together we tried to free this sad village of entrapped garden gnomes.

A few days full of decayed buildings, scavenger hunts and garden gnomes. Banal? Sure. Cliché? Absolutely. But the perfect weekend nonetheless. Especially for my second-grade sensibilities.

Henry James Meets Miranda July

2009-08-07T19:40:00.012+02:00

Though there are some disagreeable things in Venice there is nothing so disagreeable as the visitors.

- Henry James

As I noted in a previous post, we became members of this hapless lot for a few days in July. One can hardly be surprised to be counted among them when one plans a trip to Italy. In July. Even in a recession.

We ogled the Grand Canal and San Marco; and we lusted after the gondolas and black market Ray Bans. Most importantly, we spent some time at the Venice Biennale. There we saw a sea floor constructed entirely out of sugar, and a celestial sphere constructed out of used home appliances. While these contemporary art ojects left me speechless, they just don't photograph very well.

So, you will have to settle for some shots of us horsing around, as intended, in the Miranda July exhibit.

I have always thought Joe would like nice in fancy Burberry; and wearing such large headdresses seems to have a slimming effect, despite the prosciutto crudo and aged asiago baby I was pregnant with the entire time we were in Italy.

Joe wasn't quite sure of his place here, but I knew right away....

We even met some strangers in the exhibit, and per Miranda July's implied suggestion, we took some awkward photographs together and avoided exchanging names.

Take that, Mr. James.

The Pink Mountain

2009-08-04T09:26:00.009+02:00

In July, we went to Italy for six days with Joe's mom, Lynn. With the help of our rented little silver BMW -- well-equipped for our time spent cruising down the Autostrada, stopping here and there for 1 euro espressos -- we split our time between Venice and a little town called Monterosso. Venice was, well, Venice....but Monterosso was the pink mountain of my dreams.

Monterosso is in the Marche region of Italy. I'm not sure quite what the Marche is known for, except to say that much like the rest of Italy the wine is fabulous.

While in Monterosso, we visited with Lynn's distant cousins, and learned how to make pizza in their giant, outdoor stone forno.

In the afternoon, we watched Antonia make the pizza.

In the evening, we hung around while Valerio built up the fire.

Valerio tells us that he knows the oven is ready when the interior bricks are bianco caldo - white hot. Then, he brushes out the oven with giant rosemary bushes, like the one Lynn is holding here.

After making a clean sweep, and making his guests swoon at the rosemary's rich aroma, Valerio tests the forno by throwing a crumpled piece of paper just inside its giant steel door. If the paper catches too quickly, the fire is too hot, and the oven must be given time to cool off so as not to burn the pizza.

During our pizza party, Valerio's piece of paper caused a tiny, sad conflagration: we were all dismayed at the thought of having to wait even a second longer to tuck into those delicious-looking pizzas. As sometimes happens, though, Antonia overrode Valerio and his paper test: the baking was to begin pronto! So we all stepped lightly, handing to Valerio's gloved hands Antonia's beautiful creations: rosemary sprigs with caramelized red onions; zucchini brushed with olive oil; sardines with a red sauce and fresh mozzarella. Che bello!

der Treppenwitz

2009-07-25T10:37:00.013+02:00

I have a confession to make. Sometimes I don't like it here that much in Berlin. I know, I know. What am I saying? I have taken a year off from "real life." I am living in a foreign country. I am scooting in and out of said foreign country to make further visits to faraway dream lands. I am not required to have a job.

Truth be told, though, sometimes I miss the proverbial water cooler. I miss having to talk to people at, you know, work. Even people I don't like. In some ways, especially those people. For example, I miss slamming my phone down and cussing after receiving a nasty voice message from the City of Chicago Records Office, and then calling my boss and saying, "You will not believe what just happened." And then calling the Records Office back and getting it all sorted out.

I miss this. Really. I do.

So, I've been trying to re-introduce some of that personal furor back into my life. This is in part because I continually feel hamstrung by the rude checkout women at the grocery store, and I have no way of responding in kind: it's my own perverse version of l'esprit de l'escalier. Or as they say here in the Deutschland, der Treppenwitz.

For me, with my love of language, especially clever, useless language and snotty barbs, it sometimes feels like Dante created a little space for me, right next to Ciacco and the other gluttons. (I'm not trying to be dramatic here; I'm only putting myself in the third circle.)

It's been a rainy summer here in Berlin, which is not so good. What is good, however, is that the sun stays up exceedingly long. Long enough, in fact, for me to bring my personal furor to the park a few blocks away from our apartment in the evenings, even on the days when Joe stays late at the studio. We try to play every day if we can. We're both working on our spin serves, and our bad forehands. We trade games and sets and matches pretty evenly, and last night it went like this:

Joe: You know, I think I have this thing figured out.
Me: Oh, yeah?
Joe: Yeah. You have to look at the ball. Like, the whole time.
Me: Yeah.

Remember, Joe did not play sports growing up....so try to stifle your laugh here just like I did last night. He ended up winning, after all. While we played, I thought of my father, who used to hang his folded arms over the low fence just outside the infield, and grin at me, saying: "See the ball. Be the ball."

It is good advice. For ping pong, for der Treppenwitz, and, I think, for life.

Post Script: When Joe wins, he does this: the ultimate ping pong paddle air guitar solo.

"Suceava? Suceava?"

2009-07-18T20:35:00.029+02:00

During our three weeks in Romania, we spent the lion's share of our time in Transylvania, tracing a lazy arc across the country's mid-section, from Cluj-Napoca to Bucharest. There was one place, though, that we just could not skip, despite its off-the-beaten path locale in the northeast corner of the country: Suceava and its Painted Monasteries. Even the names of these far-away places sounded mysterious to me: Moldovita, Sucevita, and Arbore.

We planned the Suceava leg of our trip from Brasov, our basecamp for a few days, in the middle of the Figaras Mountains. Evidently Brasov fancies itself the Hollywood of Eastern Europe:

It was really pleasant up in the hills, but I didn't see any movie stars.

To get to Suceava from Brasov it would take, as one local put it: "Maybe eight, or maybe twelve hours. It depend. Mountains." We further learned that there was only one Brasov-Suceava train per day: the dreaded night train, leaving Brasov at 11:30 pm, and arriving in Suceava at 7:30 am.

We bought our tickets and made our reservations; late one night we shimmied through the train's narrow aisles to find the right berth. At about 4:30 am, we made some new friends on the train, and slipped in and out of dreams in the early morning sun while our berth-mates chattered on in Romanian. From the train's grimy windows we watched the farmers walk to their fields, and sheep being driven into the hills; we saw traveling people put out their early morning trackside fires and gather their cookpots together; and we hid our surprise as our fellow passengers picked up the necessities - for one, a fingernail clipper, for another, some cheese puffs - from the merchants who boarded the train to sell their wares.

At about 7:30, we started to wonder whether we would ever make it to Suceava. We said to our traveling companions: "Suceava? Suceava?" In response, they said, firmly, "Iasi," and wrote some shaky hieroglyphs in Joe's moleskin notebook. They were trying to tell us something, but we couldn't figure it out. So we just smiled and relaxed, and resumed our watch over the blurry fields passing by.

The train reached its final destination about an hour later. With the help of some very generous Romanian college students fetched to the platform for the sole purpose of enlightening us, we found out that in the middle of the night the train had been split: half of it went to Iasi, and half of it went to Suceava. Regrettably, our assigned seats were in the wrong half of the train, and the conductor did not alert us of this important detail. At that early hour, after a mostly sleepless night, the facts seemed so harsh: the wrong half of the train....Iasi....three to four hours away from Suceava....

But! I am here to tell you that no amount of traveling woes could overcome the awe that we both felt stepping into the courtyard of one of Suceava's famous painted monasteries.

I know what you're thinking. So, here are some close-ups. Each of the five churches we visited was beautifully decorated inside and out, recalling the lives and gruesome deaths of the saints: beheadings, live boilings, and impalings; some poor fellows are even shown tied to spiked wagon wheels, rolling, expressionless, down a hill.

These frescoes have survived since their original painting, which occurred between 1530 and 1590. That's right. Those vibrant colors have survived on the outside of these buildings, for over four hundred years. (Pardon my italics; I myself have trouble believing it.) Their subject matter is largely reflective of the faith of the Eastern Orthodox Church and the saints and biblical stories that are most important to their doctrine.

St. Nicholas is revered, and his life story is told at each monastery. The story of Mary's birth and life is also often featured; Jesus's family tree is always pictured, an effort, we were told, to confirm his regal heritage:

Here is the monk's ladder. The angels are there, on the right, supporting the monks as they make their arduous journey north(west) from earth to heaven through reading, meditation, prayer and contemplation.

Despite all of the angels' cheerleading, the journey is difficult, and many monks fall or are pulled from the rungs by the devils below.

On the western wall of each church is the Last Judgment. You know the old story and, I am sure, recognize the river of blood leading down into the underworld...

When we were (cautiously) admiring this one, I noticed a certain element that gave me pause, making me wonder if I actually have this story right. Given my rather spotty familiarity with the Bible, this in and of itself is no surprise. But still: I do not recall reading or hearing that animals are called to be judged....and furthermore, I wondered, why are all of the animals carrying something in their mouths? Even the oversized catfish seem to have a pink fleshy orb protruding from their fishy jaws. And that lamb: it looks like he's carrying a human hand!

That's because he is. In the 1500s, many poor villagers were eaten by animals in the neighboring forests. To assuage the fears of the surviving family members, worried about the fate of their loved ones, animals carrying back body parts to Jesus were included in the rendering of the Last Judgment: even those who are eaten by animals in the forest will have the chance to be saved, despite having their body parts scattered across the earth, and despite not being buried in consecrated ground. (Note: in that last shot, a dragon is shown trotting along with the other animals; at the time, dragons were thought to be real, yet mystical creatures, like elephants.)

My favorite, perhaps because of its simple beauty and its all around creepiness, is the depiction of the cherubim and seraphim: one little head surrounded by two enormous wings. Evidently no other body parts are necessary for these creatures.

The details on the wings? Those are eyes. And ears. As our guide told us, the seraphim and cherubim are like big brother: they are everywhere, and they are always watching us.

Perhaps I should have covered my head before going into those chapels after all....

Cel mai mare noroc...

2009-07-10T10:45:00.012+02:00

Well. I'm in the middle of Denis Johnson's excellent novel Tree of Smoke. As I read about young Skip Sands, whose task is to catalog the colonel's files by mounting his entries on index cards using a paper cutter and rubber cement, I can't help but think about the digital photographs still lying in wait for me on my hard drive. Unlike Skip Sands, I don't have a papasan to make tea for me when I tire of going through it all. Also unlike Skip Sands, I have a new bicycle, so I'm inclined to take some liberties with my trip-related entries in favor of getting out there, in favor of cruising through Berlin hazy summer days.

So. We will be skipping rainy Vienna and lazy Bratislava. We will be fast-forwarding right on through to Romania, to the wonderful time we spent, a week and a half or so, in an assortment of Saxon Villages in Transylvania.

Our first introduction to Romania's Saxon lands was in Viscri, where we gathered with the villagers to watch the youngsters from Sighisoara dance. I sat on a long log, until an older gentleman, with his homemade wine in hand, shooed me away, claiming that I might get bitten by the hoards of ants congregating there. As soon as I had brushed off my pants, he sat down in my place with a smirk, and stretched out his legs.

Watching the festivities, I couldn't help recall the little gymnasium at Congdon Park Elementary School, square-dancing with my partner to countless replays of the Red River Valley.

From Viscri, Joe and I were ferried to a neighboring village, Malencrav, where we spent four days in a guesthouse restored and run by the Mihai Eminescu Trust. Our neighbor, Maria and her family took good care of us, and brought us fresh, warm milk and fresh bread, homemade cheese and rhubarb jam.

Nearly everything in our guesthouse was restored or handmade by the villagers. When we saw our beds, we thought something looked a little funny...the proportions were off, somehow....

....and then trying to stretch out that first evening we found out why: the Saxons, like all Europeans of that time, were much shorter than their modern-day counterparts. Clearly we were not the first visitors to have this problem; in the middle of the night, we heard a crash as the new glue along the baseboard came unceremoniously unstuck. Thereafter Joe was much more comfortable sleeping with his feet sticking out of the frame.

On our first day in Malencrav we walked around the village, watching the children play in the stream that bisects the main road, and marveling at all of the chickens, ducks and other animals that seem to inhabit every nook and cranny.

Crossing the main bridge, we ran into an old woman who beckoned to us, entreating us to follow her up the hillside. As we walked with her she explained in Romanian that we should see the Romanian Orthodox cemetery. She was on her way there with her hoe to tend the grave of her father, who was recently buried there.

In the mornings, we watched the shepherd gather his sheep and head for the mountains, despite the cold rain.

After our dinner each evening, we stood on our front step and watched the cows come home, mooing smartly at their own gates until their owners let them into the inner courtyard to be milked.

While we stayed in Malencrav, we arranged for a tour of a few other Saxon villages with a guide from the Trust. In Biertran, we toured the fortified church, and admired the view down the hillside of the village nestled in the valley.

Biertran's fortified walls protected the villagers from attacks, and also proved to be a center for culture and village administration. We were told that over hundreds of years only one divorce was actually granted in the area, and in one of Biertran's outbuildings we found out why. Below is a picture of the "divorce jail," where couples seeking a divorce were forced to find their resolution in a cell - with one single bed, one chair, one bowl and one spoon.

After our time in Malencrav, we moved to Floresti, a small village of about 100 people. Our pink guesthouse was next to the one-room schoolhouse, and across from the bridge on the street that crosses the stream.

In Floresti, as in Malencrav, most of the villagers have horse carts rather than cars. As one villager told us, it is much easier to travel to the next village on a horse than it is to plow a field with a Renault. All of the horses in these small villages wear bright red tassels, which we were told is a way to protect them from the evil eye.

In Floresti, Joe feasted on a local favorite. Here he is, holding up a heavy brick of lard, and following that is a shot of his lard and green onion sandwich.

I elected to skip the lard sandwiches, but did enjoy helping Lucica make apple and lemon flat bread for a party.

As the old Romanian saying embroidered on the wall hanging in our little kitchen in Floresti reminded us....

...the luckiest man is the one whose wife does the cooking. Or, as I would perhaps prefer to translate it: Lard sandwiches for everyone!

Hopefully this won't land me in divorce jail....

Don't Spare the Horses

2009-06-24T15:52:00.010+02:00

Being away from home for five weeks is a long time...especially if the home you call home has only been your home for six short months. What once felt like the fundamental building blocks of everyday life here in Berlin now feel a bit foreign. I seem to have forgotten the (astonishingly) few German phrases that usually keep me from being entirely illiterate; I can't remember which market I favor for lentils and which one I duck into for fruit and vegetables; even my trusty companion, my little MacBook, is a stranger, and my fingers blunder clumsily over the keyboard.

And so, it has taken longer than I anticipated to come back to Briefe und Zeitungen. Part of this, of course, is that I have been straining under the weight of the fat and bulging memory card for our Canon G-10 camera, which now holds an ungodly number of as yet unorganized digital snapshots amassed over the course of our journey through Austria, Slovakia, Hungary and Romania. I see the little guy now, lounging on the corner of my desk, and my eye darts back and forth almost subconsciously, trying not to meet his smug and satisfied gaze....

In the next few days, I'm going to post a few pictures of some of the beautiful things we saw along the way, perhaps sharing a story here and there about our adventure. To get the ball rolling, here are a few funny ones from our trip to Memento Park in the suburbs of Budapest, where the government has accumulated all of the communist sculptures that were previously scattered throughout the city. The park itself was kind of a wasteland, but we still managed to have a nice picnic, and make friends with these foes.

Here's Joe, bumping fists with a formidable character:

Being more conservative, I opted for a normal handshake.

Joe again, leading the army:

...and trying to take flight?

Auf Wiedersehen, Friedelstraße

2009-05-11T10:25:00.008+02:00

In three short days, we'll give up our little apartment on the corner of Friedelstrasse and Lenaustrasse, and put all of our Berlin-belongings into storage at Joe's studio. Our to-do list has become a to-do scroll, and our apartment looks like this:

God help us.

We're moving large piles of shoes and clothes from one corner of the apartment to the other, and we're packing and re-packing our many bags. More importantly, we're having one last love affair with our jams and our mustards and our precious hot sauce collection, all of which will begrudgingly be sacrificed to the dull, German palate of our landlord. And we're trying to finish off the fresh stuff before packing up. Yesterday, we had a dying foods cook off: Joe made an omelet with wilted chives, a little leftover brie, and a wrinkled red pepper; I made a garbage salad with a shallot vinaigrette, an errant seed packet that I nearly lost behind the stove, and some tangerine slices and fennel that had both seen better days. Eating our decaying creations on the balcony, in the sun-shade, felt like our last supper.

On Thursday, we'll hand over the keys, keeping our fingers crossed about the burned countertop, broken glasses and our enormous security deposit, and fight for our seats on our flight to Vienna. After a three-day visit there with some new friends, and a trip to the Austrian countryside, we're Bratislava-, Budapest- and Bucharest-bound, with some scheduled stops in the Hungarian and Romanian countryside along the way.

See you in a month!

My Very Own Dooryard

2009-04-30T18:04:00.011+02:00

During the long Berlin winter, when I thought I could not stand another minute without the sun, I would often ask my friends to just please tell me about the summer again already. At first it was a form of self-preservation; after becoming hardened to the bleak elements, it wasn't a necessity but it was still charming, and even a little bit exciting; then inevitably it became predictable.

When I would ask to be told about the summer again, like a child asking to be told her favorite story day after day, eyebrows would raise in utter excitement, and some sort of exclamation - whole sentences strung together, like new German words being created just for the occasion - would be brought forth: "Oh-Berlin-in-summer! Oh-it-is-so-beautiful!" Hearing these outbursts during those seemingly unending dark days sometimes failed to provide much succor. Nonetheless, I couldn't help but ask for it, over and over again, and by March these summer stories had become my modern-day Eloise, my Madeleine, my Bread and Jam for Frances.

Returning from Paris to Berlin in mid-April, however, it was easy to see the metamorphosis. In just one week, the city had managed to transformed itself. Trees were budding; florets dotted the landscape; even the people seemed to have a luster, a pinkness, a sheen.

After hearing them all winter long, I must say that those summer stories were all true. Indeed, I am Eloise, and despite my funny hair, I actually live in the Plaza Hotel, and there is nothing that my insipid French tutor can do about it.

Berlin is now in full bloom; to me, it is almost exotically beautiful.

This little path, that I have walked along at least five days a week for the last three months, is now covered with a low-hanging flower-archway. It is as though the tiny white blooms know to reach towards each other, just over my head.

It must be said, however, that despite hearing summer stories all winter long, in my opinion a critical detail was omitted. No one told me about the lilac bushes, popping up along the paths, drooping over the gated driveways, peeking out behind the playgrounds, the delicate purple and white blossoms and heart-shaped leaves shimmering in the spring wind.

For me, the lilac, with it sweet, honeyed scent, is beyond compare, and its bloom marks the coming of summer. I have always had a love affair with the lilac, and seeing their powerful boughs exploding everywhere reminds me of home so many ways. It reminds me of Walt Whitman, and Abraham Lincoln, that powerful, western fallen star. As I duck beneath the low-leaning branches, or reach up to touch the tiny blossoms, I think about my old backyard on First Street, and when lilacs last bloom'd in my own dooryard. And I think about the last day of elementary school, and of bringing dewy lilac bouquets wrapped in yesterday's News Tribune to my teachers. "Here," as Whitman wrote, "I give you my sprig of lilac."

Art-War

2009-04-15T14:41:00.020+02:00

Ask anyone, and they'll tell you: It's really hard not to bite off more than you can chew in Paris. And here I am not just talking about the excellent crepes, fromage and charcuterie.

Early in the trip, we accidentally spent an entire day in the Centre du Pompidu. The contemporary collection was closed but we couldn't pull ourselves away from the massive modern collection. The same thing almost happened a few days later at the Musee d'Orsay. Even though we finished our tour of the converted train station in a mere five hours, the art fatigue - whose evil symptoms closely resemble those of its well-known cousin, heat exhaustion - had really set in. Luckily, we were quickly able self-diagnose and then self-medicate with a boat tour, admiring the many bridges over the Seine.

The art in Paris is staggering. For our trip to the Louvre on Monday, we put together a serious plan of attack: we would start early, plan carefully, and see what we could in no more than 3 hours. To the uninitiated, this plan may seem reasonable, but I am here to tell you that it is not. The map of the Louvre - the map alone! - totals ten pages and contains several sub-parts. The collection contains 35,000 paintings and objets d'art, and spans over 62,000 square meters.

After the battles of the Centre du Pompidu and the Musee d'Orsay, it felt like we were going back to art-war. Indeed, we were blinded by the flashes going off at Winged Victory; we tried to duck and cover near the Mona Lisa and her bulletproof glass-covered smile.

We even spent part of the day skipping through the wings displaying the French painting, looking only at the parquet floor, in hopes of preserving that certain feeling, that, shall we say, je ne sais qua, of looking at the Géricault and the Delaquoix and the Rembrandt.

There were some surprises along the way. Joe and I fell in love with Beccafumi's sixteenth century rendering of the story of St. Antoine and the miracle of the mule.

We also fell into a trance in the Arts of Oceania collection when we saw this skull, beautifully set into its carved wooden body.

And oh! The Fragonard! We could not get enough of his brushy beauties. Here is my favorite: the portrait of Marie-Madeleine Guimard.

For me, the highlight came just where I knew it would: Room 31, the Denon Wing, First Floor. The Spanish Paintings. Goya's Portrait de Luis Maria de Cistué y Martinez.

As some fellow Goya-lovers may know, this particular piece was part of the Yves Saint-Laurent collection, and accordingly was never lent out for exhibitions, Saint-Laurent having a self-described inability to separate himself from one of his works, even for a short period. I wasn't expecting to see this one. In fact, the Louvre acquired it less than two months ago. Seeing it this week was like being involved in some kind of supernatural phenomenon; I can understand why Saint-Laurent hoarded Luis Maria and his little dog for all of those years.

As for our art-war, we actually managed to prevail. Meeting up at the appointed hour, we fought the crowds up through IM Pei's Grande Pyramide and into the afternoon. We stopped to pick up baguette sandwiches from a little cafeteria, and ate in the adjacent Jardin des Tuileries among the trees and flowers.

After some unbeatable chocolat noir sorbet, Joe and I stopped to admire the obelisk in the Place de la Concorde, and stood in the spot where Louis XVI, Marie-Antoinette and many others literally lost their heads so long ago.

Looking northwest, we spied l'Arc de Triomphe, two kilometers away along the famous Avenue des Champes-Élysées.

It was a beautiful day, so we decided to walk along what the French call the most beautiful avenue in the world. When we reached l'Arc, we decided to queue up like the other tourists, and pose for photographs with it.

It is amazing to think about all of the history that has happened here: the Germans marched triumphantly through the Arc in 1871, and then the Allies followed in 1919; the Germans marched through once again in 1940, and the Allies followed again in 1944.

Using the handy combination museum/monument/train passes my parents bought for us, we skipped the line and were immediately permitted passage up the 284 steps to the top. From there, we walked around the perimeter and looked out at the 12 avenues radiating around the square, pointing out different monuments across the city in the hazy light.

Back on la terre, we walked around l'Arc once more, marveling at its beautiful frescoes inside and out. I was particularly charmed by this one, and the angel-looking creature at its core. In retrospect, I believe it was the expression on her face that held me, for she looked the way that I felt: at once surprised and amazed; perhaps a little exhausted; above all else, ready for more.

L'Epi d'Or

2009-04-14T09:50:00.010+02:00

Like all visitors to Paris, we spent a little time seeking out the perfect neighborhood patisserie. By the end of the week, we were sure that it was L'Epi d'Or, just a few blocks away from our apartment on Rue du Val de Grâce. It is not uncommon to find a few hooligans scarfing down a croissant or two on the benches just outside.

Across the street from L'Epi d'Or is a beautiful church, the Église du Val-de-Grâce. The Église is so overshadowed by the other astonishing churches, basilicas and cathedrals of the Paris that it is not even mentioned on our maps. To be sure, its pedigree does not hold even the smallest imaginable votive compared to the Cathedral de Notre Dame, Ste-Chapelle or the Basilique du Sacre Coeur. Nonetheless, the Église is quite lovely, nestled in among the remains of the old abbey, and towering over the neighboring apartment buildings. Finding it quietly waiting there for us across from L'Epi d'Or made it that much more amazing.

On an evening stroll, we found the building lit up with a projection of images from Giotto's frescoes depicting the life of St. Francis. Before turning the corner, I didn't think that there would be a reason to sit on the benches out front of L'Epi d'Or without a croissant or half of a mini-Quiche Lorraine in hand. But I was wrong. We could have sat there all night, watching the lights change and the neighbors wander by with their perfect-sounding ooh-la-las.

In fact, we almost did.

April in Paris

2009-04-10T22:51:00.008+02:00

This week, we went to Paris with my parents. It is April. And it is quintessentially April in Paris. I probably don't need to say anything further.

But I will.

On our first full day, we started in the Jardin du Luxembourg, a few blocks away from our apartment in the 5th Arrondissement. We strolled around in the mid-morning light, under the lazy gaze of the Queens and Contesses, and a few well-placed regal creatures.

From there, we walked the easy 2 kilometers or so to the Cathedrale de Notre Dame. It was Maundy-Thursday, and most of the crosses were covered in purple swathes, waiting to be revealed on Easter Sunday.

As is our custom, Joe and I lit votives for our Catholic grandmothers. Near the chapel dedicated to St. Vincent de Paul, my father lit one for his own father, C.R., who, my father says, saved C.R.'s life more than once. My mother declined the invitation to light a candle for her father, John, ever the Congregationalist.

From there, we were swept up in the warm Parisian winds, and spontaneously hopped the RER to Montmartre. Hiking up the first hill, we enjoyed a cool sorbet and then took the funicular the rest of the gruelling 2000 or so steps to the top. The Basilique du Sacre Coeur is breath-taking; the view down the hill even more so.

Heading back to our new neighborhood, we stopped to admire the sun's descent over the Seine, looking north towards the Eiffel Tower.

At 8:15, we entered La Sainte Chapelle to take in one of its evening concerts: this time, five sonatas by Corelli, Albinoni, Vivaldi and Tartini, arranged for a violin, a cello and the harpsichord. We were all taken aback by the crowd of 30 or so gathered around on folding chairs before the makeshift stage in the beautiful Gothic chapel. It was so small that when one of our party asked if there was time to quickly run to the restroom, the usher casually remarked, "It is no problem. We will wait for you."

The highlight was the Tartini, and his sonata featuring "le trille du diable." The sanguine violinist was masterful, and he held us all under his spell. The cellist was almost a caricature of himself: flawless, yet perhaps a little bored. In my humble opinion, the harpsichordist might have been a bit anxious, and entered early in a few spots. But we didn't mind: it would be hard, I think, for the trio to achieve perfection in an already perfect setting. Watching the light fade through Paris's oldest stained glass was an extraordinary end to an already extraordinary day.

April Fools

2009-04-01T19:56:00.013+02:00

When we were small, my sister really loved April Fool's Day. She would always pull out all the stops, and try to trick my parents with her zany antics. One year, she removed most of the filling from an entire package of Oreo cookies - my father's favorite snack - and replaced it with the mintiest Colgate or Crest to be had from the hall closet. I can't remember if he knew it was coming, but it didn't really matter: the wince on his face did not need to be faked.

Lately I've been feeling like I'm about to bite into one of those toothpaste-filled Oreos, like the prank is right around the corner. This weekend, we finally caught up with the better part of North America, and sprung ahead. As I type this, it is 20:00 Uhr, and a murky dusk is just starting to settle in. Before making its lazy decent this evening, the sun shone almost all day long. Sunglasses were required. And I actually felt warm in my canvas jacket.

After battling the gray skies all winter long, after watching the sun set every day at 16:00 Uhr, after walking through that hail storm last Tuesday morning, this week of spring weather seems too good to be true: an entire platter of Oreo cookies suspiciously left out just for me.

Just to be sure, I checked the 5-day forecast: sunny, with a high of nearly 70 degrees through the weekend. Just to be sure, I double-checked my weather widget to make sure that it has not - as it is somehow wont to do - reverted to the forecast for Berlin, Connecticut.

To celebrate, I spent an inordinate amount of time on my humble little porch this morning, watching the cars rumble by, listening to the birds, and leisurely picking at the crusty vines that accumulated in the flower boxes during the winter months.

It is a good thing that the chair is broken; otherwise I wouldn't have left the house at all. I would have missed writing a new short story over a delicious cappuccino at my favorite neighborhood cafe.

I would have missed an impromptu late afternoon homemade bagel brunch with our friends James and Bianca.

And I probably wouldn't have gotten all of this laundry done.

Next week? Ping pong in the park, and a trip to Paris. Somebody pinch me.

Sachsenhausen

2009-03-28T11:37:00.018+01:00

Our friend Jamie came to Berlin last week for a visit. Prior to her arrival, I waxed poetic about how, with her Cuban/Russian-Jewish heritage, she would be the perfect guest in the Hauptstadt. I conducted a little lite research on the Russian-aided Cuban emigrés in the former DDR - and, quite frankly, entertained visions of myself enjoying a basket of tostones, tucking into a steaming plate of arroz con pollo, and sipping a mojito or two in one of the east side's back alleys - but I came up short. So, instead, we settled for a visit each to the Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe, the Neue Synogogue and the Jewish Museum.

On Thursday, we took a day trip to the Village of Oranienburg, northeast of Berlin. This was my first trip to the outskirts of the city, and boarding the commuter train I had vague reminders of similar trips to Chicagoland's suburbia. I always used to joke about packing emergency granola bars for trips to such lofty destinations as Evanston, Northbrook and Schaumburg. It seemed somehow wrong, however, to bring snacks to Oranienburg, and the Sachsenhausen Concentration Camp.

We didn't talk much on the train, and, upon our arrival it seemed clear that the cheerful scene greeting us as we disembarked the S-1 line would soon be betrayed.

The 20 minute walk through the Village was punctuated by the grayish-brown stucco that I have come to loathe since moving to Berlin. It was disappointing to find that its bleak spirit invades even these small but well-kept suburban enclaves.

Close to the end of our walk, we came to a Memorial dedicated to the Todesmarsch, commemorating the 6,000 prisoners that were murdered on the Death March from Sachsenhausen in April of 1945. It was eerie seeing it there, on the corner of Strasse der Einheit and Strasse der Nationen, across the street from an Italian restaurant.

Through Sachsenhausen's main gates - with its foreboding Work Makes You Free inscription - we entered the Roll Call Yard, where inmates were required to wait for long hours each day; adjacent was the Small Camp, where all Jewish prisoners were kept until they were deported to Auschwitz in October of 1942.

Fanning out around the Roll Call Yard are a few remaining bunkers housing museum exhibits; the 40 or so previously demolished bunkers are represented by numbered stone markers that resemble large, flat gravestones. In accordance with Jewish custom, all of the markers are now adorned with rocks and pebbles and stones, a sign of remembrance and honor for all of those that suffered behind Sachsenhausen's walls.

Mass graves are scattered throughout the Camp. Some are comprised of vast patches of mud or sand or dirt, adorned with plaques commemorating the many different groups who perished here: Jehovah's Witnesses, Dutch Resistance Fighters, and Soviet Soldiers alike.

This one, covered in lush moss, contains the remains of victims incinerated in the Camp's crematorium. Some of the ashes buried here were recovered from a local river where the SS tried in vain to hide the evidence of the Sachsenhausen horrors.

In silence, we hung our heads at Barracks 38 and 39, destroyed in part in 1992 by an anti-Semitic firebomb attack. We craned our necks to take in the 40-meter tall obelisk that is the Sachsenhausen National Memorial. We walked with care and trepidation through the Execution Trench. We sniffled through the Infirmary Barracks, bit our lips through the Cellar Mortuary and wept in front of all of that barbed wire.

In silence, we made sure to see it all.

I stood for a time in the hard, gray March light, at the furthest boundary of the grounds, and at the end of the day, awestruck by the purple flowers growing on the mass grave erected for the thousands that died from 1945 to 1950 in the Special Soviet Camp. I was unbearably sad, ashamed at my own fatigue, and still in utter silence, but grateful for this little bit of color.

Buchstaben

2009-03-14T21:34:00.010+01:00

On Saturday, my new friend Susan invited me to go with her to the Buchstaben Museum. The Museum, she told me, is only open once a month. With such restricted hours (and, quite frankly, with my perpetually vacant dance card), how could I not agree to attend?

I had the address, but I still couldn't find the place. Walking around the blocky building at Leipziger Strasse 49, though, I finally saw a Big, White, Helvetica (Bold) W in the distance. I was reasonably certain that it wasn't an advertisement for a fancy Westin hotel, and so I walked towards it. The usual hipster crowd was assembled out front, but it was easy to overlook them all given the amazing window displays.

The Buchstaben Museum is a two-room collection of retired and sometimes rusty sign letters; for the two women that started it, these love letters clearly come straight from the heart, and while in the Museum I couldn't help but hear Kitty Lester's sweet song playing in my head.

The letters have enough to say on their own. So I'll check my usual rambling commentary at the door, tucked behind this giant A.

Scooped

2009-03-12T09:32:00.007+01:00

Although I held my breath, put my head down, and broke through the tape on the Obama-Fingers situation well before the news media, Spiegel Online and other sources are now covering the story. If you are interested in reading some of the (belated) commentary, here is a link to the Spiegel article: http://www.spiegel.de/international/zeitgeist/0,1518,612684,00.html.

I'm guessing that the debate about the Obama-Fingers will continue: Is it a tribute? Is it racist? Or is it just another food corporation trying to drum up new interest in old products? Will Michelle Obama, the organic-eating, arm-bearing First Lady be upset? Should we all be upset that fried chicken fingers are being used to represent, as an Obama-Finger representative told Spiegel in the article, the "American lifestyle"?

I'll be pondering all of these questions while clutching my home-made and self-awarded first-place trophy.

When Joe and I started this blog in November, we laid down a few ground rules for ourselves. Granted, I am largely in charge of content and authorship (with Joe's fine editorial assistance), but I have still tried to stay true to these old rules throughout. One of these rules was that Briefe und Zeitungen would not be used to point out peculiar cultural differences between the Homeland and the Vaterland. In essence, we would avoid poking fun at these oft-quirky Berliners.

It seemed like a good rule at the time. In fact, it still does ... but ... today, I have no choice but to run afoul of it.

As I noted in my first posting, many mailboxes here are adorned with the phrase "Briefe und Zeitungen" - Letters and Newspapers (or as I loosely translate it, for our purposes, Letters and News). Residents often clarify this message for the Briefträger with the addition of a handwritten admonishment: KEIN WERBUNG. As you all may guess, this means NO JUNK MAIL. Unlike in the United States, the Briefträger here strictly honor this instruction. If your mailbox states KEIN WERBUNG, you will indeed only receive official Briefe und Zeitungen.

At our current residence, however, our landlord has not posted this weighty injunction on the mailbox. We are therefore bombarded with all manner of fliers, advertisements and mailers. I usually follow the lead of my fellow residents here on Friedelstrasse and deposit all of them in the recycling basket below the row of mailboxes in our building's foyer.

Today, however, after my morning walk, I retrieved the Werbung and brought it up to the apartment. Flipping through one of these fliers over lunch, I came across an amazing set of advertisements that simply cannot go unrecorded here. The heading of the double-page spread in the advertisement for Plus Markt, a discount grocery store here in Berlin, reads: YES! WE CAN! A poorly photoshopped Uncle Sam accompanies this inaccurately punctuated homage to the President and his message. True to form, Uncle Sam has extended his finger at the reader: He evidently wants SIE to save money on some rather intriguing Amerikanish products.

The usual suspects are all present: there is a giant bottle of Coca Cola; there are hot dog buns sold under the moniker "Breadies,"; there is ketchup, appropriately labeled "Hot Dog Sauce"; and of course there are ... Rocky Mountain Marshmallows. Popcorn and Cole Slaw Salad are featured, and, strangely, Southern Comfort and Rose's Lime Juice are made into questionable allies. Seeing all of these outrageous American artifacts, including bottled hot dogs, made me cringe ... but at the same time it somehow makes me want to buy a box of sparklers, put on some cut-off jean shorts, and lay out a checkered table cloth on my living room floor for a premature Fourth of July picnic.

From SoCo & Lime, the spread quickly deteriorates. In one corner, a curious item called Hot Dog Style Pizza is featured. In the nightmarish rendering, one can confirm that this is in fact a pizza bedecked with hot dog slices. This Hot Dog Style Pizza is on sale for 1.99 for a short time only. So act fast.

In my humble opinion, the zenith of this Amerikanish banquet is front and center: frozen chicken fingers, with curry dip, sold under the name OBAMA-FINGERS.

So there you have it. I've broken the rules. Then again, when we made these rules back in November, I had no idea that I would be able to go to a store three blocks from my apartment and purchase chicken tenders carrying our President's namesake.

Frankly, I'm still trying to decide whether I should, with hand over heart, pledge my allegiance to the Plus Markt, and buy a few boxes of Obama-Fingers, or whether a small (but powerful) embargo should be immediately enacted. I know Uncle Sam's finger is leveled at me too. But I'm going to ignore him and this difficult question at present. It's really too much pressure for a Monday.

Haarschnitt

2009-03-05T09:49:00.005+01:00

Forgive me Father, for I have sinned. It has been five months since my last haircut.

Five months!

During this time my hair has developed a life entirely of its own: it is an unruly, unforgiving child, getting fingers stuck in my apron strings, and making ugly faces at me from behind my back.

And although my diet consists of canned chickpeas, dried lentils and other savory foodstuffs sold in the Reduziert! aisle of the nearby Turkish grocery stores, I do have my own personal hairstylist. I must tell you, dear readers, that even more amazing than having one’s own personal hairstylist, is having one’s hair cut in one’s own home. Or, in this case, I should say, in one’s own sublet.

Miss Sondra – my dear younger sister and Aveda Institute-trained stylist extraordinaire – has arrived.

Granted, I don’t have a styling chair, or one of those shiny plastic capes, or the rolls of that nice white tissue that is normally wrapped around one’s neck to avoid getting those itchy fresh-cut hairs stuck beneath the collar ... but in this case I was more than willing to tie an orange plastic grocery bag around my neck for extra protection.

Now that it is over, I feel light-headed. Literally and figuratively.

Up next? Joe. With more than a little excitement, he has elected to make a small departure from his usual, monthly trips to the Turkish Friseurs on Kottbusser Damm. The Friseur he normally frequents is eerily similar to the Polish outfit he used to visit back in Chicago, but without the Mówimy po polsku sign in the front window. Even though the mother tongues of these shops differ vastly, the motto, presented in the form of an introduction and initial inquiry by one of the older barbers on Ashland Avenue, is universal: "Same Thing, Little Shorter?"

Not this week. This morning, Sondra removed what she has described as a “weight-line” from the back of Joe's head. Before today, I didn't know that the phrase "weight-line" could be applied to the scalp, thinking it was a more apt description for other, more southern areas of the body...

But now that pesky weight-line is gone, and we are all excited about our new Haarschnitts. It’s like our own little reality TV show, right here in Germany. But without the doctored up before and after pictures.

The Fourth Quartet

2009-02-28T23:18:00.022+01:00

My favorite of T.S. Eliot’s "Four Quartets" has always been the third, The Dry Salvages. I think it is my favorite even now: the Spree is indeed Berlin’s own “strong brown god.” But these last few weeks, I have been shyly sidling up to the last quartet, Little Gidding, especially its opening lines:

Midwinter spring is its own season
Sempiternal through sodden towards sundown,
Suspended in time, between pole and tropic.
When the short day is brightest, with frost and fire,
The brief sun flames the ice, on pond and ditch,
In windless cold that is the heart’s heat,
Reflecting in a watery mirror
A glare that is blindness in the early afternoon.

Today is the last day of February, and we tried to spend our early afternoon thusly blinded. It felt like a quintessential midwinter spring, so big and full it really does deserve its own season. We slowly swung our way around the TV Tower, arcing like a displaced pendulum, from Neükolln, to Kreuzberg, to Mitte.

We enjoyed the flame of the brief sun, and did not mind the windless cold. Here are some of the things we saw:

St. Hedwig's Cathedral

St. Hedwig's Cathedral is a Roman Catholic cathedral built in the 18th century by Frederick the Great. It was completely burned out in 1943, but was rebuilt thereafter. Like other Berlin monuments, the cathedral manages to combine very classical architecture with a very modern style.

In a little corner of the cathedral, Joe and I continued our recently adopted tradition of lighting votives for our grandmothers. Like St. Hedwig's itself, this feels at the same time both classic - steeped in religious rituals - and, for us, new and strange and modern.

We took some time to admire the beautiful organ, and have made plans to come back to St. Hedwig's for some music appreciation: a little Bach in March, and perhaps Hayden in April.

Most striking, at least on a personal level, is this guy. We all know who he is, his right hand raised just so. Upon a closer inspection, however, I would swear that he is, in actuality, a part of the Hardesty clan. Click on the picture for a closer look. Check out his long, bearded face, his pursed lips, and that focused, piercing gaze.

Neue Wache (The New Guard House)

Although quite simple in its construction and presentation, the Neue Wache has a long and complicated history. It was initially built as a guardhouse for the troops of the Crown Prince of Prussia. It has been redesigned and renamed several times as the history of Germany has painfully evolved, and is now called the Central Memorial of the Federal Republic of Germany for the Victims of War and Tyranny.

The interior of the guardhouse features Käthe Kollwitz's sculpture Mother with her Dead Son, which is placed directly beneath an oculus. The sculpture's exposure to the elements is meant to symbolize the suffering of civilians during World War II.

Contemporary Fine Arts

At a gallery called Contemporary Fine Arts, we found a large collection of film placards that Peter Doig has painted during the last 20 years in conjunction with "Studio Film Club," a non-commercial weekly club that Doig runs out of his studio. The gallery's write-up states that, were it not for Studio Film Club, "an audience on the island of Trinidad would remain deprived of a tradition of programmed cinema." Doig paints a new placard for every film he shows.

On the second level of the gallery, some of Doig's other works were also on display. My favorite was "Gasthof," which Doig painted in 2004. The murky, mysterious quality of the painting was almost too much beauty to bear on this midwinter spring day.

A few lines down from the start of Eliot's fourth and last quartet, Little Gidding continues:

If you came this way in may time, you would find the
hedges
White again, in May, with voluptuary sweetness.

There were no white flowers on the hedges today, this last day of February, but it was a fine day, and sweet enough for me. I’m glad I didn't have to wait.

Karl-Marx-Allee

2009-02-26T18:33:00.014+01:00

They say that all roads lead to Rome; here in Berlin, however, all roads lead, regrettably, to the TV Tower. So although I was hovering around the outskirts of Mitte one day earlier this week, picking my way across the rain-soaked Straßen, I ultimately found myself there again, even after several kilometers of wandering.

It is hard to get lost when you share a city with a tower that is 368 meters tall. Inevitably, this is a good thing, especially for someone like myself, with absolutely no sense of direction. At the same time, however, it also makes it hard to forget where you are, which, some days, is all that I am after.

In my efforts at forgetting, I took a tour down Berlin’s own memory lane, Karl-Marx-Allee, nee Stalinallee. Karl-Marx-Allee is a whopping 89 meters wide. Accordingly, its 8-story buildings do not seem to overpower the pedestrians that glide along the promenade. More remarkable than its width, however, is its symmetry: designed and built between 1952 and 1960 by the young and heady DDR, its buildings seem to grin across the wide Allee at their own socialist reflections.

Approaching the Allee from the south, one finds the towers of Frankfurter Tor. It may be my bad photography, but in each photo I took of both towers, the green-capped giants appear to be leaning towards each other, sharing their secrets in the gray light.

Continuing north it's hard to resist looking back and forth across the blurring traffic, confirming that the wedding-cake-style buildings are in fact symmetrical on both sides of the straße. On the southeast side, I admired this butcher shop, its pre-Wend era meat sigils still in tact.

Further along is the Karl-Marx Buchhandlung; Berlin scholars may recognize the telltale lettering of this bookshop, which was featured in the last scenes of the excellent film, The Lives of Others.

Seeing these buildings does, in some ways, inspire thoughts of wedding cakes. Beautiful? Yes. Ornate? Yes. Tiered? Yes, yes, yes.

These wedding-cake-style buildings were built to house members of the working class, unlike my wedding cake, which was layered with delicious raspberry filling. I do like the symmetry of Karl-Marx-Allee...but...all things being equal, I prefer real wedding cakes, especially when they are topped with flowers, as mine was:

Ahem.

Approaching the TV Tower, the buildings seem to become more and more commercial, which for me heightens the dichotomy between the symmetrical buildings, on the one hand, and their diverse inhabitants, on the other. On the right side of the street, there is the balkancarpodem building, a large white one with teal balconies and a big blue sign.

On the left, there is its twin, the Tatra Motokov building, with rust-colored porches and a bright red sign:

In front of these twin monoliths, there are two slight structures which perhaps housed the eastern bloc automobile showrooms of yesteryear. Now, we find a medical supply store on the southwest side of the Allee, and the esteemed art gallery, Capitain Petzel, on the northeast side. Neither establishment has any signage, letting the large front windows and pretty turquoise tiles do all the talking. What else do these curious bedfellows have in common? Does the owner of the supply store look out the window of his second-story office and flatter himself, thinking that he is artistically-minded in his chosen chambers? And do the curators across the street frown at the old-aged patrons buying braces, crutches and the like? Or do they smile faintly, reveling in the post-modernity of it all?

Thinking about post-modernity myself, I am pulled back towards Alexanderplatz, and the TV tower I am trying so hard today to love.

Things I Like

2009-02-24T22:03:00.014+01:00

It may seem obtuse, but I have been giving a lot of thought lately to the things I like, creating a catalog of sorts. Here are a few of these things, some related to Berlin, some not:

Words

I like this poem by Lorine Niedecker.

Several years ago, my friend Alex gave me a collection of Lorine Niedecker's poems entitled The Granite Pail. Favoring lightweight items, this slim volume made the cut and was ferried over in the corner of my Samsonite from Chicago. This particular poem, like most of Niedecker's early work, is untitled. It has different line indentation in two spots than shown here; regrettably, I'm not sharp enough with this machine to make it come out exactly right. I'm hopeful that Lorine, buried somewhere in Southeast Wisconsin, will forgive me.

You are my friend—
you bring me peaches
and the high bush cranberry
you carry
my fishpole

you water my worms
you patch my boot
with your mending kit
nothing in it
but my hand

Food

I have been on a chickpea hiatus for quite some time. Perhaps I overdosed on Joe's favorite recipe for Chickpea and Potato Curry, Caribbean Style; perhaps trying to make them delicious from their little dried counterparts was too much for me. In any event, it took the 65 cent jumbo cans sold at my favorite Turkish grocery store, El-Fi, to bring me to the chickpea Valhalla. Now, I feast upon them like a slain warrior, with Joe, and sometimes with Odin.

So, here is a recipe that I like for sautéed chickpeas, which I have adapted from a recipe I found on my favorite online recipe resource, www.epicurious.com:

Sautéed Chickpeas with Cinnamon and Coriander

Chickpeas: 1 can (approx. 32 ounces) of high quality chickpeas
Onion: one small, chopped
Garlic: two cloves, chopped
Cinnamon: approximately two teaspoons
Coriander Seeds: approximately two teaspoons, crushed
Lemon Juice: fresh, from one lemon
Cilantro: about ¼ cup, shredded by hand
Accompaniments: hot sauce, plain yogurt, lemon wedge

Rinse the chickpeas. In a large skillet, heat a little olive oil over medium heat. Cook the onion until it is tender. Add the garlic and sauté for about one minute. Add a bit more oil to the pan and then add the cinnamon. Wait until the oil becomes fragrant, stirring a bit. Add the crushed coriander seeds and cook for about one minute more, stirring a bit more. Add the chickpeas and sauté for about ten minutes, stirring occasionally. Remove from heat and transfer to a large bowl, preferably a pretty one. Squeeze the juice from one lemon into the bowl, and add in the shredded cilantro leaves. Stir it up. And then eat it up. Hot or cold.

Visual Art

I like Rodney Graham.

At the Hamburger Bahnhof last week, I took some time to admire these two Rodney Graham pieces: Fishing On A Jetty (2000) and Three Musicians (2006), both of which are part of the Frisk Collection:

One critic has used the phrases "a looping or reﬂective repetition," and "self-enclosed world” to describe Graham’s work. I’m not even sure that this commentary is meant to address these pieces but I don’t care; these phrases still seem relevant somehow. I like Fishing on A Jetty. I like the way the pole extends from the first frame to the second, or rather I like the way that Graham has split the image. I like the hat the fisherman is wearing, his little bucket, and the skyline in the distance. And Three Musicians. I like the antiquated instruments, the odd dress and the parquet floors. It reminds me of the year or so I spent in the Ordean Middle School band, sitting next to Nils with his silver trombone. If only our backdrop had been so bright; if only we had looked so peaceful.

Die Stolpersteine

Berlin has taken many approaches to address the Holocaust. In Western Kreuzberg, one can visit the Libeskind-designed Jüdisches Museum. Near the center of the city, one can visit a large monument entitled Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe. In my mind, however, the most powerful memorial is Die Stolpersteine, which translates as "The Stumbling Blocks." Die Stolpersteine is a project initiated by artist Gunter Demnig, and the brass bricks may be found in many cities across Germany, adorning the doorsteps of the Altbaus in which many Jewish people lived before they were deported.

I like seeing these bricks sprinkled throughout this scattered city. Sometimes there is just one, sometimes there is a whole collection, a whole family lost. Sometimes I forget about them, and then one or two will almost wink at me, reminding me that they are there. When this happens, I become completely possessed by Die Stolpersteine, walking around with my neck awkwardly craned, scanning the stoops for more. Here I have photographed the blue door of Simon-Dach-Strasse 13, where Alice and Brigitte Erb lived. I wonder if it was painted blue when Alice and Brigitte were deported in 1943. I wonder what these two women looked like, I wonder what floor they lived on, and I wonder what happened to the rest of their family as they perished in Auschwitz.

As I am sure Demnig intended, I wonder, and then I stumble on.

Sunday, Lazy Sunday

2009-02-22T14:25:00.006+01:00

Today is Sunday, and that means (a) it is time to look on the bright side; and/or (b) it is hard to be blue when you have this for breakfast:

It was well-prepared, well-deserved, and well-devoured:

The bread was stale. But as I crunched away on apple slices and enjoyed the balance and poise of Joe’s cheese, roasted red pepper and caraway seed omelet, I was already thinking about tomorrow’s French toast, and bread crumbs for Tuesday’s lentil burgers. How’s that for looking on the bright side?

After a hasty clean-up, we headed out into the world for a long walk: Joe wanted to stretch his hamstrings, and I wanted to find the man that peddles antlers in the Treptower Park junk market. Regrettably, it was the Spanish Armada all over again, and our plans were foiled by the rain. Channeling Queen Victoria, I called for Home, James, and don't spare the horses.

So, here we are. Back at home. Battling historically anachronistic thoughts (see above), and trying for a bit more Sunday Fun: cover lettering, Charlie Parkering and discount chocolating.

Pairs

2009-02-19T17:38:00.021+01:00

Ah, Berlin.

Just last week I was eyeing a stack of sweaters in my suitcase, trying to figure out which ones to send home with my sister when she visits later this month. I was even contemplating a big risk: sending home my winter coat. Now, however, I hesitate to send back even one thread of wool or a single goose feather, as we are blanketed with new snow. The city feels different somehow: at all the corner stores today, the newspaper boards are taking a backseat to the dusty yet imminently more useful tanks of fuel.

And yet I know it is the same barbed-wired Berlin. They are still advertising the SuperWash down the block, trying to entice would-be customers with a savvy use of die englische Sprache.

The eastern bloc-style buildings still look depressing.

And I'm still wearing this hot-pink hat.

Despite all this ill-timed snow, the show must go on. So this morning I walked the 5 kilometers to the Pergamon Museum in Mitte. Along the way, the snowy world seemed to reveal itself in pairs.

The Cats

I stopped at the Gedarmenmarkt, reputed to be one of the architectural highlights of Berlin. The Französisher Dom is predictably eye-catching, especially during the petit tempête de neige we had today.

The statute of Friedrich Schiller, author of the words in the final movements of Beethoven's Ninth - looked appropriately romantic....or should that be Romantic?

Most intriguing to me, however, are the two cats flanking the Konzerthaus Berlin, each escorting their winged musicians forward, albeit with a snarl.

The Doors

Walking into a museum hall and finding an entire building is always an experience. In this way, seeing the Pergamon Altar, draped with German teenagers snapping photos with their cell phones, did not disappoint.

What's more, the Altar is adorned by the Telephos Frieze, depicting the great battle between the now mostly faceless and broken gods and giants. I particularly liked the god shown below, with his one remaining snakey-leg.

In an adjoining hall I found the Ishtar Gate, one of the great gates of Babylon, made out of deep-blue enameled bricks.

The Gate is adorned with aurochs and dragons, its own hideous mythical creatures.

The Eunuchs

I took a brief tour through the current exhibition: a history of Dionysus. I watched as depictions of him grew younger, rather than older. I also studied the changes in his retinue, both those intended by the original artists and those that came many years later. In one room, I admired a statute of a hermaphrodite, striking a pose.

Right next to the hermaphrodite, I found a beautiful male figure whose genitals were unfortunately scraped off hundreds of years after his initial creation, to please more conservative Christian tastes.

The Two Towers

After touring the first floor of the Pergamon, I called it a day and walked back up Unter Den Linden to Alexanderplatz, electing to take the train home rather than continue my battle with the Schnee. There I encountered one more pair which looked particularly striking in the snowy weather: the clock tower of Marienkirche, built in 1466, and the Fernsehturm, overpowering the city since 1969.

Ampelmannchen

2009-02-10T21:45:00.002+01:00

Berliners are fastidious about following traffic signals. It is not uncommon to approach a vacant intersection - not a car in sight - and find pedestrians patiently waiting for the light to change. As in some stateside locales, it is illegal here to cross the Straße against the light. More nerve-racking than the possibility of official prosecution, however, is the potential for reprimand by other pedestrians. As my guidebook notes, and as I have observed when skipping through the street against the green, bystanders have no qualms about tut-tutting casual crossers, sometimes exclaiming: "What if a child saw you?"

Alas, these callous remarks only heighten my interest in jaywalking ... so I pay keen attention to the lights to try to get a jump on the rest of the crowd. Even the indifferent traveler, though, will notice that something is a bit different in Berlin. Instead of the predictable WALK/DONT WALK signs that we are accustomed to, or the unremarkable and featureless stick-man, here we have the Ampelmännchen, beloved by Berliners young and old.

The Ampelmännchen, which translates as the "little traffic light man," is a figure that was first shown on pedestrian crossings in East Berlin under the former German Democratic Republic. The Ampelmännchen was designed in 1961 by an East German traffic psychologist named Karl Peglau. The outstretched arms of the red fellow is meant to represent a barricade, thereby signaling "stop." The green gentleman's long gait beckons one to stride forward with a purpose. Most impressive to me is the little man's charming hat, which can brighten up even the darkest Berlin day.

After the wall fell and the city was reunified, there was an attempt to standardize all traffic signals to the West German forms. Protests ensued, and the Ampelmännchen were saved. In fact, the little men have even been installed in some of the western districts of Berlin. The Ampelmännchen now represent the East Germany nostalgia movement, known as Ostalgie, and their appeal may be seen in tourist shops across Berlin.

It is said that the Ampelmännchen have a greater signal strength than the more traditional crossings, as pedestrians react better to them. In 1997, Peglau himself noted that the little men have a "special, almost indescribable aura of human snugness and warmth," which allows them "to represent a positive aspect of a failed social order." Although I remain a scrupulous jaywalker, I could not agree more. As you can see below, the Ampelmännchen truly inspire.

Slaying the Dragon

2009-02-06T11:09:00.013+01:00

Our first week back in Berlin proved to be a busy one. The day after we arrived, we suited up and then cued up at the Ausländerbehörde, with our visa applications in hand. After squirming for hours in colorless waiting rooms, we were finally permitted to pay the EUR50 fee each and listen to a strict lesson about staying off the social welfare system. I have never before relished this type of preemptive reproach ... but upon our balding agent's conclusion, I engaged in a post-lecture jump-for-joy in my high-heeled shoes. The person administering this admonishment? Believe it or not, her name was Frau Assmann. We could not have done this without the help of our great friends Mariel and Teresa. Mariel was our ever-present and well-dressed interpreter, and Teresa provided some much-needed soothing by way of long chats and her blog: http://4dayvisa.tumblr.com/. This coming weekend, we will all celebrate with dinner at a delicious Korean restaurant in Prenzlauer Berg.

After receiving our visas, we were miraculously able to secure a new 3-month sublet in a lovely little two-room apartment on Friedlstrasse, a few blocks from where we are now.

The biggest excitement was yet to come, however: on Friday morning, our good friends Missy and Oscar arrived from Chicago and Washington DC, respectively, and Oscar brought along his good friend Tim. These three would be our first visitors since we arrived in Berlin and we had been really looking forward to it. After dropping their bags in our apartment, we set off on foot for the Turkish Market, where Tim, Oscar and Joe all enjoyed a Thuringer sausage with spicy mustard. Missy and I opted for the Turkish flatbread, Gözleme, stuffed with cheese and spinach. We then took the train to the Soviet Memorial in Treptower Park, where we marvelled at the massive carved stone and the red tulips, roses and other blooms left in memory of the soldiers buried there. From there, it was a short trip to the East Side Gallery:

Unfortunately, I was not able to capture Tim and Oscar, staging a fake escape across the wall. Such an escape would have proved futile, however, as Tim was actually boosting Oscar over the wall and onto the east side of town.

On Saturday morning, we went to Checkpoint Charlie, where I was able to force our guests to pose for a few touristy pics. Here is Missy straddling the wall - one foot in the east and one in the west - and then Missy again grinning in front of the Checkpoint:

It was a chilly day, but from Checkpoint Charlie we opted to walk down to the Brandenburg Gate.

From there, we got in line for a trip up to Norman Foster's cupola at the Reichstag. Luckily, a well-placed Glühwein vendor helped keep us warm while we waited.

After touring the cupola, we went back to the Gate to see it in the evening ... and also to visit our new favorite Glühwein vendor just one more time.

We then ventured down Mitte's main drag, Unter den Linden, enjoying the view of Museum Insel, the Berliner Dom and of course the city's ever-present Fernsehturm in the background.

Of course, a visit to Germany would not be complete without a visit to a beer hall, so Oscar and I stopped in front of the Dom to try to find a suitable place.

We were in luck: the George Braeu Brauhaus was right around the corner. Here is a photo of the gang getting ready to tackle a meter of beer. If it looks like I am wearing a nervous smile ... it is because I am nervous.

By the time our well-intentioned but ill-advised second meter of beer arrived, we were all looking a bit nervous.....

After polishing off two whole meters and enjoying a traditional German Abendessen, we ventured across the square to relax in a little pub. We were all taken by the kind bartender, who was sporting an amazing handlebar moustache.

Oscar made fast friends with him...

... and the next thing we knew Oscar was modeling the bartender's gear for an upcoming ski trip.

In the wee hours, we stumbled back out to the cold night air and all became entranced at the statute of St. George slaying the dragon. It seemed fitting to be face to face with St. George just then, as, thanks to the many kilometers walked and meters drank, we five would all be fighting our own dragons in the morning.

It was a wonderful weekend, and we hope Missy, Tim and Oscar enjoyed the extended tour of our adopted city as much as we did!

Antwerp, Eindhoven Ghent and Brussels

2009-01-28T20:50:00.018+01:00

During our time in Belgium, we took advantage of the country's small size, its extreme density, and the excellent public transportation system: A day trip to Antwerp, an afternoon in Eindhoven, a full-blown weekend in Ghent and two short but action-packed hours in Brussels.

Antwerp

Seeing the central station in Antwerp alone made the hour-long train ride worthwhile. Even though it was under construction and still tarted up with dusty Christmas decorations, we could not help but stand gazing up in the ornate facade and polished glass windows until our necks were sore. Thankfully, we were able to soothe our shaken nerves with a fresh-made waffle...

The first stop was Onze Lieve Vrouwekathedraal, the Cathedral of Our Lady. It took the work of several architects and 169 years to finish the church, which makes it seem all the more imposing. Although we did not take the tour, our arrival coincided with the last mass of the day so we did get to see the congregation kneeling on the well-worn catholic benches, and watch the priest swinging his censor as he walked down the aisle with his attendants. We both lit votives for our Catholic grandmothers - Joe's still living, mine long since gone - while listening to the choir boys sing. Although we did not get to see the Rubins impressive alterpieces up close it was a pretty wonderful experience.

From the Kathedraal, we went to the Museum Mayer van den Bergh, which occupies a simulated 16th-century townhouse. The Museum, named for Fritz Mayer Van den Bergh, a prosperous art collector who died at age 41 in the late 1800s, was established by his mother in 1904. Amazingly, the collection includes Pieter Breugel the Elder's Dulle Griet (Mad Meg). Seeing this was kind of like seeing the pope without the pope-mobile and all of the bullet-proof glass: leaning over the cordon, you really can get nose to enormous nose with Griet herself as she picks her way through all of those eyeballs.

After a stopover at the Royal Museum of Fine Arts to admire the impressive James Ensor collection, we shared a cone of frites and wandered back to the train station, marveling at the mosaics adorning the zoological gardens.

Eindhoven

We had been wanting to take a trip to Eindhoven since arriving on the continent. Eindhoven is a short trip across the border in Holland, although referring to a "border" in the BeNeLux countries does not really make sense. There is more of a border crossing on I-94 between Illinois and Wisconsin than there is between Belgium and Holland. The tell-tale signs were all there on our stopover in Tilburg, though: instead of Westmalle and the favored Tripel Karmeliet brews in shiny bottles, we regrettably found canned Heineken and Amstel at the corner store.

Our keen interest? The dear and talented friend Deb Sokolow is in a show at the Van Abbemuseum in Eindhoven. The show is called Welcome To the Heartland, and features work from states thought to comprise the Heartland in the good old U.S. of A. The exhibit seemed to focus on the Mississippi, and included several pieces about or related to the River itself. Put simply, Deb's piece, which is entitled Dear Trusted Associate, was spectacular, and I'm afraid my amateur photography does not do it justice...I am hopeful that Deb will forgive this indulgence and the transgression of my bad documentation:

We also enjoyed Design 99's room - where some of the literature made reference to the work of another friend and Chicago artist and curator, Philip von Zweck - and Greely Myatt's Rug:

In late 2009, the Heartland exhibit will move to Chicago, and we highly recommend attending. More information (and, I can only hope, better documentation) can be found here: http://www.vanabbemuseum.nl/en/.

After lunch we also leisurely enjoyed the Van Abbe's somewhat mind-blowing permanent collection:

Ghent

After our last day in Kasterlee, we hooked a ride into Antwerp and then hopped a train to Ghent. Our guidebook advised that Ghent offers "innovated accommodation"; for us, this meant staying at a guesthouse which was off the beaten path, and therefore a bit more affordable at EUR45 per night. Our host, Beatrice, greeted us warmly upon our arrival, and immediately pulled out the map of her Medieval city. She labeled all of the best routes to the city's center, and circled all of the hotspots for us with a smile, a nod, and a confident "Et Viola!" We found her repeated use of this french phrase comforting and quaint. During the weekend, we heard it recited again and again by shop keepers, waiters, and passersby alike: it was as though the entire city was filled with happy people identifying small miracles for each other all day long.

We went to the Gravensteen, a castle built in the middle of town to protect the townsfolk while simultaneously intimidating them into submission. There we wandered up the mildewed and pock-marked stone walkways and steps, imagining what it would be like to shoot arrows through the slits at an approaching enemy.

Discovering the "bathroom" was a giggle and regrettably led to this near-action shot:

Ghent proved too much to leave behind, so we decided to cut short our intended day-trip to Brussels in favor of exploring further. We enjoyed these weird but evidently traditional Ghent candies, Cuberdons Heuzen (red noses)....

...and could not help but sample a few more waffles from this jaunty fellow....

On Sunday we continued our museum-hopping tradition and went to the Museum of Contemporary Art and the Museum of Fine Arts, enjoying the creepy but extraordinary exhibition, The Absence of Mark Manders, and Hieronymus Bosch's Bearing of the Cross. Skipping our trip to Brussels never felt better.

Brussels

On Monday morning, we took the train into Brussels a few hours before our flight back to Berlin. Locking up our luggage at the train station, we enjoyed a hurried tour of the Parc de Bruxelles, marvelling at the Palais de la Nation. Seeing Mannikin Pis, one of Belgium's two bizarre national symbols, seemed like the perfect end to our three-week tour. Like the puffy-coated tourists that we are, we could not help but to ask another traveler to take our photo in front of the little guy. Alas, after over-indulging in the Belgian waffles and frites, the resulting photo features not only two puffy coats but also two puffy people....and so we will end this post with a photo of the peeing boy by himself.

Kasterlee Revealed

2009-01-21T11:13:00.006+01:00

Trudging through the snow on our first day in Kasterlee with all of our luggage was a bit rough...but one of the nice things about arriving in this new place in the midst of a winter storm is that we have had the opportunity to discover it twice. There was a lot hiding beneath that snow. New country roads have appeared out of nowhere.

I now see that this water tank is for sale; and those weird metallic limbs jutting out of the snowdrift just yesterday belong to old buggies.

I see which fields were planted last year, and which were left fallow.

And in a peculiar town-comes-to-country twist, I see the ceramic bathtubs that are used for feeding and watering the shaggy Belgian draft horses.

Just around the bend, I meet the sheep that rest and graze in the fields all day.

In the misty mornings and sunny afternoons, we explore new villages, where the garbage men feed the neighbor's horses and even along the main road no one thinks twice about hanging their whites out to dry.

One thing that has not been revealed, however, is de Kabouter: the red-capped and bearded gnomes that populate the forests of this region in large numbers, putting in long hours at night to make sure all of the work gets done. The kabouter measure only 15 centimeters tall on average and are able to make themselves disappear, so I guess it makes sense that I have yet to catch a glimpse... but I have 3 days left here in Kasterlee, and very high hopes.

Frans Masereel

2009-01-16T13:19:00.011+01:00

On the first floor of the main building of the Frans Masereel Centrum, a variety of medieval looking print making machines and devices are on display. Walking through this circular hall I am always careful to guard my elbows, as any trip or false move on the sleek-looking floor could have vicious results.

Outside this atrium lies the print studio, another cylindrical affair that fans out along the Centrum's grounds. From the studio's low-lying windows visiting artists come almost cheek to cheek with horses feeding in an adjacent pasture.

It was in this studio that I had my first lesson in lithography.

Joe's project here entails making a series of prints based on a text drawing that he created in his studio in Chicago. With the help of our clever friends, Joe has obtained translations of the text of the original drawing. Over our three weeks here, Joe plans to try to make prints using this text translated into German, French, Spanish, Danish and Estonian. If time permits, he will also tackle Dutch, Japanese and perhaps a few other languages. On Tuesday, Joe and I printed the first run of the English version in a dark navy ink. Next week, Joe will continue working on this set, possibly splitting the edition and reprinting half of the prints in second and third colors.

Yesterday, we printed the German edition. Before we started, Joe worked with Ivan to mix the icy, almost translucent silver ink, and then prepared the stone. As some of the preparation requires chemicals, Joe wears his respirator, making me giggle with his pink Darth Vader impersonation.

When the paper is cut and the proper registration marks have been made, we drop the marble in our own little two-party Rube Goldberg machine: I am in charge of the ink roller, charging it up and then running it across the stone. Joe stands at the ready with his sponge set, re-wetting the stone and then wiping it down between each pass.

After the stone is inked several times, we cover the image with beautiful paper, and run it through the press.

When I was in law school, I heard an old joke about attorneys never signing anything on behalf of their clients. The joke was half-laugh, half warning: a wry, cautionary tale. I thought about this often during the past five years, trying whenever possible to have the client sign each and every document required, reserving the power of attorney process as an absolute last resort. I now understand that the old joke translates into the art studio: while I'm happy to put my weight behind the press and even turn the crank to push the print through, I have adopted a strict "hands off" policy when it comes to handling paper. Accordingly, you can see me in the photo below watching over Joe's shoulder as he inspects one of the 16 prints we created:

Once Joe's steady hand has removed the print from the stone, it is stacked neatly on the drying racks. Et Viola! The first run of the German edition has been completed.

This afternoon, we will tackle the Spanish!

Kasterlee

2009-01-10T18:34:00.008+01:00

The Frans Masereel Centrum is located about two kilometers outside of Kasterlee, along a little country road called Zaardendijk. Every morning and evening, we try to take a long walk through the farms and fields.

It has been particularly beautiful this week. The locals tell us that this part of Flanders has not been hit with this much snow for ten years. Being from the Midwest, it seems like kid's stuff: there is less than a foot on the ground. What little there is, though, makes up for its lack in size and stature with its persistence. From afar, the trees and shrubs seem to be covered with a thick glaze...but a closer look reveals that each leaf and needle is crowded with scores of delicate ice crystals.

After our morning walk, Joe goes to the studio, and I head into town for a trip to the market. Heading north to Kasterlee's main square, I like to take a meandering route through the Village. Along the way, I usually walk by this house, which Ivan, the program and artistic director at FMC, describes as "the first house you drew as a child."

If only there was smoke coming out of that chimney!

If you forget to buy bread or the bakery runs out, you can always pick some up at the outdoor Broodautomaat. As the sign indicates, fresh loaves are restocked twice daily!

On my way home from the market, I always try to say hello to our neighbors:

Today, Joe took a break from the printshop and we went into Kasterlee for lunch. At the highly recommended Frituur Ijsmanneke, we feasted on frites, one of Belgium's national specialties. As one expert has noted, "Belgium serves food with the quantity of Germany and the quality of France." I could not agree more!

In the Shadow of Keeses Molen

2009-01-07T12:39:00.018+01:00

January 2009 :: Berlin to Kasterlee :: Our Itinerary

6:30 - Arrive on foot at Kottbusser Tor station; Take U-8 train
6:45 - Arrive at Alexanderplatz; Take TXL bus to Tegel Airport
7:45 - Check in for Flight 2580 on Brussels Air, for a 9:00 departure

Flight Delayed 2 hours due to Weather

11:00 - Flight 2580 departs Berlin
12:30 - Arrive at Brussels National Airport

Luggage Delayed additional 1 hour due to Weather

14:00 - Board Brussels Area Inter-City Train
14:15 - Arrive at Brussels Gare du Nord
14:46 - Board Inter-Regional Train for Turnhout
15:55 - Arrive at Turnhout Station
16:00 - Board Bus 490 for Kasterlee

The map and directions provided by the Frans Masereel Centrum instructed us to ride Bus 490 through Kasterlee proper, and exit the bus at the Keeses Molen stop. Unlike other forms of public transit, this particular bus did not show the names of each stop on an electronic marquis. We asked the kindly bus driver to signal us when we had in fact arrived at the Keeses Molen stop. When the bus did drop us off at our destination, we were hard pressed to follow the instructions for the last leg of our adventure: Opposite Keeses Molen, at the British Cemetery, follow the signposts to the Frans Masereel Centrum (plus or minus 1 kilometre).

In the fading light, we saw the British Cemetery...but it took us several minutes to locate the first signpost. Of the four or five signs posted along the way to the Centrum, the first one is tucked into the surrounding foliage, down a steep hill beneath and behind the bus stop.

If we had not been arriving an hour past the Centrum's normal check-in hours, we would have laughed in delight at Keeses Molen. We had been focusing on the name for itself, like the Ashland stop on the CTA's Route 70, or the Hawthorne Stop on the DTA's Route 7. In Chicago, the Ashland stop is named as such because the bus stops at the intersection of Division and Ashland; in Duluth, the Hawthorne stop is the place where Superior Street intersects with Hawthorne Avenue. The Keeses Molen stop on Route 490, however, is named for a very specific and very recognizable landmark, rather than an intersection. In the light of day, the Molen appears thus:

After dragging our luggage the kilometer or so along the snowy wooded drive from Keeses Molen to the Centrum, and despite the late hour, we were warmly greeted and showed to our quarters.

Covered in snow and ice, the grounds and steep-roofed residences of the Centrum look even more idyllic.

Not even the new snow, however, can brighten up the inky visage of the domed building which houses printing studio. To me, the dome resembles something out of Truffaut's Fahrenheit 451: it seems to come from some dark and unspecified future time.

The Centrum is a Flemish center for graphic arts, and was named for Frans Masereel, a Belgian artist who is famous for rejuvenating the art and technique of woodcut prints. Masereel produced over twenty graphic novels in his lifetime, and some of his work is housed in the Centrum's museum.

We will be staying at the Centrum for three weeks. It is a short stay but Joe has hit the ground running, already putting in long hours in the studio on a new project.

At this time, there are three other artists in residence, one from the United States and two from Holland. At the end of the residency, each of the artists will donate one or more prints to the Frans Masereel collection. Each piece made here must include the Centrum's chop, a color rendering of which is included as the introductory image of this post.

After seeing Joe off to the studio this morning, I walked back up the road to Keeses Molen, and wandered through the British cemetery. It is known as the Kasterlee War Cemetery, and contains exactly 100 graves honoring men killed in the fighting associated with the crossing of the Meuse-Escaut Canal during the first three weeks of September, 1944. A plaque near the entrance indicates that the cemetery was constructed on land that was a gift of the Belgian people, to provide a resting place for some of the British sailors, soldiers and airmen that died in Belgium during the war.

In the shadow of the Molen, I admired the simple gravestones of the dead, which include renderings of each man's cap badge: The King's Own Scottish Borderers, The Highland Light Infantry and The Royal Artillery are all represented here.

In the last row, there is one stone erected for the memory of a Canadian soldier, and two stones honoring unnamed Soldiers of the Second World War, who are not known to us but are "known unto God."

Silvester 2009

2009-01-03T14:03:00.013+01:00

When we moved into our apartment at the beginning of December, our landlord gave us the expected tour. She advised us of a slight problem with the washing machine. She told us how and when to water her plants, and reminded us to turn down the radiators before leaving. She then casually told us not to leave the apartment before 1:00 am on New Year's Eve. This seemed a little strange at first, but leading up to the big night, it started to make more sense. We saw disembodied arms launch rockets out of apartment windows into the street. We heard horror stories about friends almost getting hit in the face with rogue firecrackers. We watched small children aim fireworks at each other's heads and run away, their laughter echoing off the old gray bricks. So, we armed ourselves with umbrellas, and started to pay closer attention.

As soon as the Christmas festivities were over, we started hearing the snap, crackle and pop of amateur and unsanctioned fireworks shows, the neighborhood kids unable to wait. It felt kind of like July 4 back in the states, except without the firework regulations, Chicago-style hotdogs and cops. On December 28, Joe and I saw three little Turkish kids, each with a bic lighter in hand, braving the cold weather to shoot off some rockets. After sending a few up with their characteristically sweet-sounding whine, the father of this strung-out brood appeared at the window. I waited with pleasure for him to hand out a little well-earned punishment to his boys. Instead, he handed fresh new brick of fireworks out the window with a wolfish grin.

In the days before New Year's Eve, we watched all of the corner stores and cell phone retailers convert their shops into fireworks warehouses. Dreams of candy and text messaging all but forgotten, the neighborhood kids would enter, large bags of plastic bottles in tow: trading in prized recyclables for the deposit or phand, and receiving colorful rockets and bombs in return.

When I was small, we were not permitted to have any fireworks. On July 4, before it got too late, we were permitted to have sparklers: one at a time, away from the house, and with the "straight-arm, no bent elbows allowed" rule strictly enforced. Accordingly, the world of fireworks is a new one to me. I now know that rockets are often sold in multiple packets. To inspire interest, individual rockets are given aggressive names. Above Victory, High Speed and Shark are shown. My favorite is the Greek Mythology set, which features Zeus, Poseidon and even Hestia. You know it's trouble when even the Goddess of the Home and Hearth has her own rocket.

On New Year's Eve we planned to attend a party at our friend Bianca's apartment. Before leaving, I fiddled around with my gorgeous new scarf, and Joe tried to decide which cigars to bring along. On our way to the party, we tried to step lightly. En route, we saw several groups lighting off jaw-dropping displays. This blurry photograph was taken renegade-style, as we booked it down the block away from this insane crew.

The party was great fun but was also a blur... 1970s German and Austrian movies were projected on the dancefloor and old Michael Jackson, James Brown and a few other celebrated favorites played all night.

At midnight, new lines were drawn: the Viennese stayed in to dance the waltz, and everyone else hastily threw on hats and mittens to enjoy the homemade fireworks show in the streets. Going to bed that morning, falling into bed for the first time in 2009, we could still smell the gunpowder in our hair.

Berlin's Weihnachtsmarkts: An Overview

2008-12-28T16:14:00.017+01:00

Before officially segueing out of the Christmas Season, the editors of Briefe und Zeitungen felt it would be wise to include a montage of the various Weihnachtsmarkts or Winter Markets visited in the month of December. Oh, the joys of fried foods, particularly those covered in a thick layer of powdered sugar. And let us not forget to pay homage to the sausages, sweet and savory crepes, and Glühwein taste-testing contests.

Kaiser Wilhelm Memorial Church. Just west of the KaDeWe, and in the shadow of the Kaiser Wilhelm Memorial Church, Joe tried his first half-meter long sausage. It was, perhaps in part due to the holy backdrop, an epiphanic moment, and he has been chasing the dragon ever since. Although it is quite peculiar to look up at what remains of Schwechten's 1891 masterpiece whilst munching on a handful of roasted nuts, this Weihnachtsmarkt remains one of our favorites. And so I say to you, Memorial Church Weihnachtmarkt, "Ich Liebe Dich. You and your fancy, overpriced Lebkuchen."

Alexanderplatz. Located at the veritable crossroads of the city, this market tends to be a bit overcrowded at times. Making up for this minor trespass is of course the market's extended hours, its wide variety of Glühwein (with or without schnapps) and the delightful Jagertee. Here you really can have it all: French pottery, wooden trinkets, crystal statues...even hedgehogs and other weird woodland creatures made out of dried hay.

Alexa. Not to be confused with the nearby Alexanderplatz market, the Alexa market is really more of a carnival, complete with drunk teenagers, cotton candy, and fast-moving rides put together with a hand-held drill. Not for the faint at heart...or for those indulging in the Glühwein and Jagertee across the street. However, thrills of other varieties are also available here. At the self-proclaimed Gourmet Grill, shown below, Joe tried his first, and reportedly last, Leberkäse, which is also regrettably shown below (on the left, being sliced). Since his attempted and perhaps feigned enjoyment of this indulgence, we have found out that Leberkäse consists of corned beef, bacon and onions, and is made by grinding the ingredients very fine and then baking the mixture as a loaf in a bread pan until it has a crunchy brown crust. Yikes.

Staatsoper, Unter den Linden. Located just behind Berlin's State Opera Halle, this Weihnachtsmarkt is a nice stopover en route to or from (or both) Museum Island and the Temporary Kunsthalle. The accordion band is fantastic, as is the sausage selection.

Potsdamer Platz. Potsdamer Platz is an important public square and intersection at the center of Berlin. It was busiest traffic intersection in all of Europe before the war, was completely destroyed and left in ruin during the cold war era, and has now been reborn. It is considered a landmark, and is meant to represent Berlin and all of its glittering modernity. That being said, the market is not much to write home about. It does include, however, an impressive sledding hill right next to the clocktower and stylish Bahnhof building.

Hanukkah Markt at the Jüdisches Museum. The Hanukkah Markt is the only Winter Market requiring entry through a metal detector. Kosher sausages and wine and potato latkes were enjoyed by all in the Libeskind hall and adjacent garden.

Christmas Trees and Christmas Cookies

2008-12-26T22:24:00.007+01:00

Throughout the month of December, we have been enjoying all things Christmas here in Berlin. Germany is the home of the Christmas Market and even the Christmas Tree, and signs of the various Germanic traditions are everywhere. Since arriving in Berlin, I have learned that the Tannenbaum is a tradition, not unsurprisingly, that is rooted in earlier pagan traditions. I have also learned that a three-foot tall tree can set you back more than EUR30.

The extortionate cost of a teeny tiny Christmas Tree in our fair (but in this arena perhaps not exactly fair) city made the question of whether or not to pick one up moot: it was clearly not worth the expense, and buying one would mean that we would have to outlay additional Euros for a tree stand, lights and ornaments. Joe has always voiced certain environmental and shall we say anti-consumerism objections to having a tree, and really had no qualms going without. I, however, knew that I would miss the annual tradition. Evidently, Joe also knew how much I would miss it: on the Sunday before Christmas this year, Joe came back to our apartment with an early present for me: a little tree decorated with red balls and white "lights" that we displayed on our living room wall. The next day he even came home with two stockings to hang up along side. Eat your heart out, Charlie Brown!

Our little array of gifts, handsomely wrapped in newsprint, pamphlets and other colorful paper scrounged and saved throughout our trip, looked fabulous beneath it.

On Christmas Eve, we made one of our favorite meals together and then opened our presents. We are already enjoying the Nina Simone box set, the Ikea measuring cups, linen scarves from the Turkish market, and of course the Caspar David Fredrich landscapes, and we are greedily looking forward to trying each and every variety of the Ritter Sport chocolates.

On Christmas morning, we made some festive cookies in our pajamas: Thumbprint Trios filled with strawberry, raspberry and apricot preserves.

For Christmas dinner, we enjoyed a Russian feast with our friends James, Bianca, Mariel and Teresa. James really outdid himself, making beef stroganoff, potato pancakes, vegetarian borscht, dill and cucumber salad, braised cabbage and an amazing, enormous fish pierogi.

We all overate. And after yawning and stretching and sighing and smiling, we all enjoyed a little Glühwein that Joe made.

With rosy cheeks we nibbled on some of our Trios, shared Christmas stories, and yawned and stretched and sighed and smiled some more.

Christmas Eve

2008-12-24T14:53:00.005+01:00

Where are you now, Bing Crosby? 'Cause I am Dreaming of a White Christmas.

While our old friend the Midwest is getting hit hard by snowstorms, we in Berlin are still enjoying the chilly mist. Early this afternoon we dashed out to the store to pick up cloves, star anise and cinnamon sticks for our first and much anticipated attempt at making Glühwein tomorrow. Despite the drizzle, the streets were flooded with last-minute shoppers. All of the major stores close at 14:00 Uhr, so everyone seemed focused and on the move, our small party included.

At 14:00 Uhr on the dot, in the typical German fashion, the sensibilities of the shoppers and clerks turned a bit tart. Store doors and windows rolled closed. Umbrellas went up. Buses were chased. Taxis were hailed.

As the clocks strike 15:00 Uhr and the church bells ring, even the Christmas Tree salesman has brokered his last bargain.

Joe and I parted ways at Hermannplatz, engaging in our own version of "Mama in her kerchief and I in my cap" on this night before Christmas, with Joe hustling to the studio for a few hours of work, and me ducking the rain all the way home to get into that warm kitchen. I have serious doubts about the combination microwave/convection oven and have sad flashbacks to my comfortable electric mixer days, but it is Christmas. And cookies shall be made.

Joe's Birthday: A Retrospective

2008-12-23T10:49:00.004+01:00

Zwei-und-Dreißig

2008-12-22T17:53:00.005+01:00

This morning, in honor of Joe's Thirty-Second Birthday, we slept in, and then enjoyed a delicious breakfast - soft-boiled eggs, toasted rolls and jam, fruit salad and fresh-squeezed grapefruit juice. As usual, our feast was accompanied by a little smoked salmon, as we have heard that it is high in Vitamin D, an important supplement for the inhabitants of a sun-deprived land.

But today...no Vitamin D required! During our after-breakfast walk through Görlitzer Park, the sun broke through the clouds and we basked in the clear blue skies for about an hour. Here is Joe, shell-shocked and squinty-eyed:

After walking through the Park, we headed east and walked along the Spree.

There we snapped a few photographs of Jonathan Borofsky's 1999 aluminum piece Molecule Man, which stands 30 meters tall and stretches out across the water.

After our hike, Joe headed to the studio for the afternoon, and I flitted about the neighborhood, picking up provisions for tonight's meal: Pasta Puttanesca with a nice (but cheap) Bordeaux with a small side salad, followed by chocolate cake, vanilla ice cream and raspberry glacé.

Alles Gute zum Geburtstag, Joe!

Jüdischer Friedhof, Prenzlauer Berg, Schönhauser Allee 23-25

2008-12-19T19:37:00.016+01:00

The largest Jüdischer Friedhof (Jewish cemetery) in Europe is located on the northern outskirts of Berlin, in a neighborhood called Weissensee. South of Weissensee, in Prenzlauer Berg, however, is a much smaller and more urban Jewish cemetery that was in use until the early 20th Century. Not surprisingly, much of the interior of the cemetery was destroyed during the war, and until the 1990s continued to suffer from vandalism.

The cemetery is open each weekday, but closes early on Friday for Shabbat. A basket of ubiquitous black yarmulkas near the door of the adjoining lapidary hints that men seeking entry should cover their heads, and a sign posting a few meters away reinforces that Kopfebedeckung is required for all male visitors.

The cemetery had reached capacity well before the war, and was no longer used in part due to a statewide effort to move all burial grounds away from densely populated areas. It is in some ways, therefore, primordial: moss is growing on many of the headstones, some of which are so faded and weathered as to resemble soft, permeable sandstone. Reading the once careful, condensed inscriptions on these stones is no longer possible. The trees are starting to sag, their bark cracking and peeling, their roots reaching up through the ordered cobblestones. Ivy dominates all natural surfaces. In this way it resembles many other ancient, overflowing cemeteries scattered across all of Europe and the western world. At the same time, however, this natural decay was once savagely disrupted. Headstones and other markers, columns and pillars, have been knocked over, and some remain neatly but unapologetically stacked in adjoining pathways. One can only imagine their untimely and violent overthrow.

In recent years, the few remaining ancestors of those buried here have, in some cases, attempted to undo the damage that has been done: a memorial of death, reborn. Large, shiny obelisks and other dedications have been installed, glimmering new versions of their withered counterparts. The contrast between the old and new is startling, in some ways more so here than in other sprawling cemeteries, and clutters the anticipated feeling of solitude. Perhaps the notion of replacement markers should have been seriously considered and then wistfully dismissed prior to final inauguration. It is the stacks of toppled markers, columns and pillars lining the pathways that provide a kind of peace: not even gravity is a factor anymore, and all of these once immovable bodies are now truly at rest. These stacks, and the feelings they inspire, are augmented by the small stones and delicate rocks left here in observance of Jewish customs, to honor the memory of the dead.

The Hamburger Bahnhof: For Real This Time

2008-12-15T17:08:00.018+01:00

On Saturday, we went to the Hamburger Bahnhof with our good friend James. We left the neighborhood between noon and 1:00, enjoying some of the early afternoon sun-like conditions. I use the expression "sun-like" because no actual sun was present. On the way to the train James remarked that it is so nice to never have to squint. I groaned, and recalled the long list of items that I rushed around to pick up before leaving for Berlin. The list included sunglasses. The new sunglasses I ultimately picked up are very cute, and were fashionable and fun in early November. Now, however, they sit, gathering dust, along with old food receipts, our US cellphone, and the Rosetta Stone headset, our own little version of the Land of Misfit Toys.

The Hamburger Bahnhof is a great destination during the aforementioned conditions. As noted in an earlier post, the Bahnhof is in fact a train station. The main exhibit pace occupies what was once the great hall of the train station, and is spacious, airy and bright. This venue, with its industrial feeling and iron and steel construction, also provided an excellent backdrop for the Joseph Beuys show entitled Wir sind die Revolution (in English, We Are the Revolution).

Beuys, a German, lived from 1921 to 1986, and his work gained popularity in the early 1960s. According to the Bahnhof's literature, the show is an important part of the Kult des Künstlers (Cult of the Artist) exhibition series currently running in Berlin's state museums (the artist evidently being the core mythical figure of the Western world).

The show included an immense number of Beuys pieces and also included various documents, writings, films and photographs intended to provide context for Beuys' work. The effect of including such a variety of critical information and audiovisual material was, in some ways, distracting. Beuys' larger works, however, still demand a lot of attention. Shown below are a group of works known as "fonds" or repositories. Produced between 1954 and 1984, the work is based on the concept of the battery as a source of energy. Many of Beuys' works in iron are meant to evoke strength and a connection to the earth in some cases, and the storage of energy in others.

Shown below is Felt Suit, which was tailored from one of Beuys' own suits. About his work with felt, Beuys explained: "Not even physical warmth is meant...Actually I meant a completely different kind of warmth, namely spiritual or evolutionary warmth or the beginning of an evolution."

Moving on from the great hall, we walked through another exhibit that fits squarely within the Kult des Künstlers concept: Celebrities. Andy Warhol und die Stars. Obviously, no translation is required for this title. Not surprisingly, Elvis greets us upon entry, with a few Marilyn portraits are just around the corner.

Also not surprisingly, the Bahnhof has constructed the exhibit around a store in which we are able to browse and potentially purchase Warhol artifacts and other desirable (if overpriced) Warhol schwag.

Note in the first shot above Mao's head is peeking out from behind the store's drywall. For us Chicagoans, seeing the Mao is a ho-hum experience, after coming face to face with an even larger rendering with every visit to the Art Institute. Many visitors to the exhibit, however, are quite taken with it, especially with its cherry red backdrop. A portrait of Lenin is also hung in this antechamber, which I assume (but remain too lazy to confirm) is located due east of the remainder of the exhibit.

From the Warhol exhibit, we crossed the main exhibition space once again to take in the Friedrich Christian Flick Collection. The Collection contains approximately 2,000 works by over 150 artists, and concentrates on the 20th century. It is immense. Prior to viewing, I assumed that the Collection would be on par, in terms of size, with the Warhol exhibit. When the electronically motivated glass doors parted for me upon my approach for entry, I thought perhaps that I was mistaken about the Collection's relative size. I became certain upon marching down two formidable flights of stairs, one wall of which was stenciled with the following Martin Kippenberger quote: "I can't just slice off an ear every day." The Kippenberger work (which was really more of its own Halle or wing) is impressive, to say the least:

Also impressive was the Richard Jackson section of the Collection. His work Deer Beer was of obvious interest to our small group, since it included not only paint-gun splatterings and oversized targets, but also deer decoys with paint guns stuffed into their plastic rectums. It was no surprise to find out, upon reading one of the cards accompanying the Jackson work, that deer and beer are two of Jackson's favorite pastimes.

Joe loved Dieter Roth's piece, shown below, which displays video of Roth himself reading while in bed (and evidently represents a reflection of Roth's own views of television).

It seemed at times that the six Halles which houses the Collection, which appear to be constructed out of modular components not unlike those employed by Independent School District No. 709 in the 1980s to deal with pupil overflow, would never end. This breathtaking (and hand-painted) vista towards the end of the Collection was a happy find.

Shortly after admiring it, we stumbled into Ugo Ronidinone's eerie clowns in Where Do We Go From Here, and then retreated back down the long, fluorescent-lit hallway and headed for home.

On the Ufer: the Turkish Market

2008-12-12T18:07:00.013+01:00

Every Tuesday and Friday, between 11:00 am and 7:00 pm, the stretch of the Landwehrkanal between Kottbusser Damm and Hobrechtstrasse comes alive with the Maybachufer Turkish Market. In stall after stall, vendors sell everything from animal hides and aubergines to fresh tortellini and zippers.

I make a trip to this particular market at least once a week, even if I only need a little garlic. It is more fun to walk down these colorful aisles along the canal than the aisles of any grocery store. There is something pleasing about the ordered stacks of tomatoes and lemons, the segregated piles of bean sprouts, and the pyramids of brown eggs. Perhaps my sense of being almost-lost in this new city of changing street names fades away for a few moments when I duck into a stall overflowing with familiar objects.

Having never been to Turkey myself, I like to pretend that the Maybachufer Turkish Market is just like a real Turkish market....although at the same time I understand on some visceral level that an outdoor market in Turkey must be at least a bit sunnier and warmer than this one. The cold weather, however, does not stop this market and its vendors, customers, and spectators from being lively. The market's double aisles can be a bit difficult to navigate at times; many of the Turkish ladies that frequent the market drag large, overflowing carts and wield sharp elbows. Not even my short tenure as a power forward on the basketball court in high school could prepare me to stand tall within their ranks.

The mostly male vendors can be heard well beyond the fringes of the market yelling out prices of bunches of fresh vegetables, by weight in kilos or per item or piece (jedes stück), haggling with shoppers and arguing, joking and chatting with one another, sometimes alternating between Turkish, German and Arabic.

The selection varies day by day, although some staples are always available. Most days, I am able to find an abundance of fresh flowers, wide varieties of artisanal honey, dried lentils, wire brushes and other kitchen utensils, handmade cheeses and fresh fish.

First Sunday of the Month

2008-12-09T11:48:00.012+01:00

The website of the State Museums of Berlin advertises many enticing free and discount programs. One such program offers free admittance on the first Sunday of each month. Despite the SMB's official communiqué, however, we remained a bit wary: we had also been told that all museums are free for the last four hours each Thursday afternoon and evening. Our dear readers may recall our Thanksgiving Day disappointment in learning that the Hamburger Bahnhof does not always honor this policy.

We headed over to Museum Island (Museuminsel), which is in fact an island within the River Spree. Museum Island is home to a few of the more important museums in Berlin, which makes it an easy target for tourists and the bustling tourist economy. The bridges and sidewalks are full of vendors hawking their wares, and it was hard to pass up the Soviet-style faux-fur hats on this somewhat brisk morning.

Heading southeast from Alexanderplatz along Karl-Liebknecht Strasse, we strolled by the Berliner Dom. The Berliner Dom was constructed in 1894 to replace a smaller church in this even-then prestigious location. Much of it was destroyed in the war, so what remains of the Dom today is of a more simple design. Our guidebook describes it as "little more than a dowdy neo-Baroque imitation" of St. Peter's in Rome. In my opinion, however, the Berliner Dom is an excellent addition to the landscape, and the foregoing review gives it short shrift.

Behind the Berliner Dom is the Alte Nationalgalerie. Despite the advertisements to the contrary, admission was definitely not free on Sunday. However, we did a little research and determined that we would be able to purchase annual passes for EUR40 each with the use of our handy student ID cards, outdated and defunct as they may be. This is an excellent deal, as it affords us entry into the permanent collections and special exhibits of all of the State Museums for a year.

Berlin has neatly divided its art collections between its various museums. Accordingly, the Alte Nationalgalerie (literally, the Old National Gallery) houses Berlin's collection of 19th century art. There we saw a few Cezanne still lifes and some of Renoir's children. We also saw Goya's dismal Maypole, which, given the perpetual twilight of this city, seemed at once ironic and appropriate despite the subject matter's more traditional historical significance.

We also saw an inspiring collection of landscapes. The one below, which seems to contain and project its own lightsource, caught and held my eye, perhaps longer now than it would have a few months ago (Confused? See above re: perpetual twilight.).

Most impressive, however, is the Alte Nationalgalerie's collection of Caspar David Frederich paintings, which may not be photographed (and therefore are not shown here) because they are considered a national treasure.

Leaving the Alte Nationalgalerie, and with annual passes in hand, we decided to visit the Altes Museum, which houses Berlin's Collection of Classical Antiquities, from Berlin's famous Greek and Roman collections. While the Neue Museum is under restoration, it also houses the even more famous Egyptian Collection. Put simply, this collection is truly awe-inspiring. Its centuries-old busts, kneeling statues, sarcophagi and papyrus seem never-ending. Here are a few of our favorites:

Not to be missed is the all-important 3,300 year old Bust of Queen Nefertiti, with its missing left-eye. It is often presumed that this piece never left the studio in Akhetatenin where it was created; it was such a good facsimile of the Queen that, upon its (near) completion, it was forever used to create subsequent portraits.

Currently, the bust has created a bit of an international stir. In recent years Egypt applied to have the bust sent to it on loan. Germany denied Egypt's request, however, claiming that the piece is too fragile to travel. Egypt's Council for Antiquities has now demanded that the bust be included in the 2012 opening of a new museum. Egypt has threatened to confiscate the piece if Germany does not comply. Stay tuned for more on this hot topic.

Outside the Altes Museum, we walked around the adjacent Lustgarten and snapped a few pictures of the structure itself, which is considered to be among Berlin's most striking Neoclassical buildings.

Maurizio Nannucci's neon piece, installed above the front entrance, proclaims "ALL ART HAS BEEN CONTEMPORARY". We were particularly taken with the horsemen flanking the foyer, under attack by lions and other rapacious cats.

Moving Day

2008-12-08T16:03:00.006+01:00

Last week we spent our final days in the apartment on Spremberger Strasse. After thoroughly cleaning the flat, washing the linens and watering the plants, we began the lengthy process of moving our belongings to a new apartment. We had already moved the pencils, pens, paint and paper to the studio in Neükolln, so we were left with our books, bedding, clothes and food, all of which were cobbled together amongst various backpacks, totes and pullman bags.

Joe's good connections through the Art Institute have brought us across the canal and 1.5 kilometers north into Kreuzberg proper. Kreuzberg is a west Berlin neighborhood that was established in 1920 and merged in 2001 to form the Friedrichshain-Kreuzberg borough. It is reported that Kreuzberg has the highest population density of all of Berlin's neighborhoods, and is home to a thriving Turkish community. Initially established as a working class area in the 1830s, Kreuzberg was developed with low-rent accommodation. With its cheap and sometimes rent-controlled apartments, one publication has advised that Kreuzberg is home to "alternative subcultures." I am not able to confirm this somewhat peculiar characterization...but I am able to say that our new lodgings are in a lovely and old building on the corner of Muskauer Strasse and Zeughof Strasse, a few blocks from Görlitzer Park.

Our move north consisted of three trips in total. Two trips were made on foot, and one of these trips was made in the evening and in the falling snow....

As you can see we were able to maintain our good graces despite the inclement weather. The snow did, however prompt us to make our last trip via taxi, and it was worth every cent of the EUR9.00 we ended up paying. As you would expect, it can be difficult to hail a cab while surrounded with boxes and bags and little piles of the various and sundry. Resorting to the old bait and switch method, we stowed our belongings in the lobby and found a cab driver too fatigued to protest too much as we crammed our luggage into his little car.

Our new apartment boasts many creature comforts that we are sure to enjoy during the early winter: separate sleeping and living quarters, beautiful doors, windows and light fixtures, and an excellent stereo and record collection. While Joe works in the studio, I am contenting myself with exploring our new Nachbarschaft, finding the nearest grocery stores and the best-looking Turkish vegetable markets, timidly ordering Kaffee from the many corner bakeries, and windowshopping at the clothing boutiques and shoe stores along Oranienstrasse.

Kunstatelier Hardesty

2008-12-04T12:00:00.010+01:00

Joe has been looking for an art studio since we arrived in Berlin. Finally, we found something that seemed to be suitable. Based on the Craig's List ad, it appeared that the studio would be available in early-December, for four months, while the artist using the space goes on residency in Maine. This timeframe was near-perfect; it would give Joe the chance to start working almost immediately, with the opportunity to continue looking for spaces on a long-term basis once we get settled in a new apartment (and possibly new neighborhood) in February.

The studio is in an older part of Neukölln. Stepping off the train at the Karl-Marx-Straße stop of the U-7 line, we headed east off the main drag along Karl Marx Platz. Turning the corner into the neighborhood, we immediately noticed a difference. While Berlin is not short of cobblestoned streets and old-world charm, something about this new neighborhood was different. The scale is much smaller, and the streets are dotted with one-story buildings and even houses, the first that we have seen since arriving in Berlin.

This little village dates back to 1360, when it was owned by the Order of St. John and was called Richardsdorf. In 1737, the village was settled by Moravians from Bohemia. The Moravians settled along Richardstraße, the road that at that time lead into Berlin, and built their own churches and houses there. In 1899, Richardsdorf was the largest village in Prussia. It was granted its independence and given the name Neukölln in 1912, but was officially incorporated into Berlin in 1920.

Arriving at the corner of Richardplatz and Schudomastraße, we turned right and found the address we wanted. The first floor of the building has been wholly converted to shared studio space, with residency apartments constructed on all upper floors. Joe's temporary lodgings will therefore be amongst other artists, most of whom also hail from the United States. The floor consists of eight to ten separate studio spaces, and is equipped with a kitchen where we have been told the denizens congregate and sometimes even eat together. Whether or not this is true, it was certainly comforting to see a few French Press coffee pots on the drying rack.

Perhaps the most amazing feature about this new studio space is the view. The building is adjacent to a little church on Richardstraße:

Joe's space looks out over the small churchyard, its wrought-iron fences and winding paths, its ferns and hedgerows. Move over Thomas Gray. Joe now has his own ivy-mantled tow'r.

Climactic Conditions; Rainbow Buildings

2008-12-01T23:28:00.007+01:00

An excerpt from one of our travel guides:

Note in particular the last row in the table, which provides statistics on the hours of sunlight per day in Berlin for each month. Evidently December weighs in with one lousy hour of sunshine per day.

Luckily, we can visit these rainbow buildings in Lichtenberg anytime we like, even when it is cloudy.