Zusammenfassung

well, this is awkward...it's like running into someone on the street who you've been avoiding for months. but i felt it was time, difficult a task though it shall be to write about EVERYTHING SINCE FOREVER. but whatevs. i'll do my darndest.

well all right, let's see here: poland was pretty fly. the weather was beautiful, the food was good, the cities were surprisingly cool. we had a great guide, marcín, who was with us the whole time and made the trip really worth it. got to know the new kids, pretty cool on a whole. but yeah, lots of pierogis, lots of tyskie & zwyiec. on the last day we happened upon "poland-fest '09", as we called it, which was basically just a great street festival with polish sasages (ups to my chicago folk) and music and crafts and stuff. and THEN we were walking back to our meeting point and realized everyone on the entire plaza had pillows. i was like "this is a pretty poorly-done flashmob". but it was not a flashmob. it was a BATTLE. three teams lined up and for like half an hour chanted things and waved their pillows around. then at exactly 3pm, when this trumpeter sounded from the top of a church tower as he does every day, they ran at each other and had an ultimate pillow war. we found out later from our guide that this happens once a year - it's a fight between the three major universities in krakow, and we happened to be in the right spot at the time on the right day. craziness. and awesomess.

pictures of all of the above here: http://picasaweb.google.com/ballard.jw/Poland#

right and then i got back to berlin, and...the weather was beautiful! the sun shone, the birds sang, the white-tailed fawn munched lazily on fresh grass in the field. and so it has basically remained since then, which is AWESOME because it's a 180° turnaround from the winter. classes have started; they are as follows:

- Intro to German Linguistics
- Multicultural Berlin
- Advanced Vocab
- The North American Indian as an Integral Part of European Folklore
- Spanish
- Stage Combat

other than my stage combat class mysteriously disappearing for three weeks in a row (still haven't figured that one out yet) and my "native american indian" class mysteriously being taught by a frenchman in english (don't tell the NU german department), they are all going well - not too much work, not too stressful. already met a couple cool people in a few of them. oh and then on top of that is my sport courses: intermediate climbing, kayaking, and streetdance. the first is pretty self-explanatory, and also very fun. the second is awesome, we basically just go down to this place in berlin called eichwalde ("oak forest") and kayak down/through different rivers/forests in the city (there are forests in berlin, it's pretty crazy). the third one is amusingly named streetdance, which basically means hip-hop dance. my teacher is most attractive. it's hella fun. there will be a perfomance at the end. i very much enjoy it.

let's talk about these sport classes for a minute. unisport, as it is known, is a pretty fantastic idea, i gotta tell ya. now while i in some ways bemoan the lack of student clubs at german universities, they make up for it by offering unisport. this is basically just sport classes that are heavily subsidized by the university and therefore really cheap. you can do a ton of fun stuff, from boxing to tango to chess to weightlifting, most of which cost only like 20€ per semester. thats INSANELY cheap for, for example, a really good hour-and-a-half per week of boxing training for an entire semester. this allows you to try crazy things you wouldn't normally do, meet new people, and get exercise at the same time. it's probably less likely that one would do such activities at an american school because you have to really invest time if you even want to be on an intramural softball team or something like that. here, it's all so much simpler, and i love it.

right well, now it's time for "how much can james remember of the stuff he's done in the past month and a half?" in no particular order:

** may day (may 1st) in berlin is really, really crazy. people from all over germany come to berlin specifically for the rallies and riots on the first of may. my friends and i decided to do the smart thing and go to kreuzberg, the center of activity and home to about 2000 riot police. there were fires! there was teargas! there were bottles and stones thrown at police! there was techno music! it was an interesting experience. don't worry mom, i survived.

** i've just been doing a lot of grilling lately, because here you can grab a six pack and a grill and just head to the park and go for it. especially nice is volkspark friedrichshain. good atmosphere. and an outdoor bouldering rock! so lovely.

** i took a seven-hour bike tour through the area around berlin with my friend theresa and it was SO NICE. just being able to get outside on a beautiful day, bike through a gorgeous forest, get lost in my thoughts, have a picnic lunch with some cool new people...the best. not to mention they were all geography students so we DEFINITELY didn't get lost. i'm on a serious outdoors kick right now, all i want to do is be outside and like go camping and stuff. when i get back home i'm definitely gonna look into doing some bike-camping. actually theresa and i might be organizing a trip to the schwarzwald (black forest) to do a bike tour - ride through the forest from village to village, buy cuckoo clocks, etc. very excited about that.

** just went to a soccer match today - our team, hertha bsc berlin, was playing and we WON! 2-0. woohoo! it was pretty great. there were beer and bratwürste. i bought a scarf. i really want to catch some chicago fire games this summer.

** "lange nacht der theater und opern" (long night of the theatres and operas) was pretty awesome - you buy a ticket for 10€ and then take a shuttle route around to different theatres/operas in the city and see presentations of 30-minute pieces. did it with a couple of friends. and it was the first ever time berlin has done this, so pretty special, i'll have you know.

right well that's all that's really standing out at the moment. it pales in comparison to the daunting list of things i still have to do before i leave:

1. see a handball match (sabine vergiss nicht, dass du versprochen hast, mit mir zu gehen!)
2. go to the beach up north
3. see a "silent film concert"
4. see a puppet cabaret show
5. visit the immanuel's church that's next door to me
6. a number of museums
7. go to the black forest and hamburg
8. christopher street day parade (i.e. the berlin pride parade)
9. "carneval of cultures" - multicultural parade and street fest
10. explore tiergarten park
11. go to the zoo
12. go on a photo-taking/souvenier-buying expedition

as you can see, there is much to be done. and only three months in which to do it! ahh!! yeah it's REALLY weird that i'm registering for northwestern classes on monday. picking classes really pulled me back to evanston in a weird way. i mean i am excited for next quarter - fun, easy classes, maybe a stage combat internship if i'm lucky, a kickass new house. gonna be good. but i still have some time left in berlin.

with that, meine damen und herren, i shall take my leave. but not before a long-overdue installment of THINGS GERMAN PEOPLE HATE:

#28: German Words
Well okay not really, but I thought I should mention how fond they are of using English ones. Even when there are perfectly good German words that are no more complicated than their English counterparts. Like "highlighten", for example. The past tense turns into "gehighlightet", which I find hilarious. And yes, that's like, highlighting something on a page. Then just things like "shop" instead of "laden", "downloaden" instead of "herunterladen", something being a "must" instead of a "muss", coffee "togo [sic]" instead of "zum mitnehmen". Basically people think it's cool and hip to use English words. A lot of the time I just think it's silly. Not to mention when they use English words that aren't actually words in the English language. Like "Handy" for cell phone..."Beamer" for projecter..."Oldtimer" for classic car.

I also find it amusing that you can gauge how good you are at German by how well you know when it's more appropriate to use an English word instead of a German one.

#29: Using Headphones
This one mostly applies to trashy teenagers, but a ride on the S-Bahn train on a Saturday night wouldn't be complete without a group of kids (or sometimes just one kid) drinking and playing terrible techno music using their phone as a boombox. YOU ARE TRASHY GET A PAIR OF HEADPHONES AND AN EDUCATION.

#30: Intact Bottles
This may just be a Berlin thing, but seriously, they cannot handle just leaving their bottles as is. They have to smash them. It's an inexplicable, inborn urge.

#31: Talking Unnecessarily
This one refers to the phenomenon of the "German Pause". When a group of Germans is conversing, and at a particular moment nobody has anything of interest to say, it is perfectly acceptable for there to just be a pause. It's not awkward; they're just not like Americans who would make something up to fill the pause, regardless of whether or not it was a necessary contribution to the conversation. It takes a bit of getting used to, but once you do it makes a lot of sense. Verdammte Amis.

Aight macht's gut, liebe Leute. Bis nächstes mal, whenever that may be.

back in berlin, for now

weeeeeeell shoot, what the hell do i say now. i've been gone for a month and a half and haven't really written down anything. and honestly i'm not gonna try super hard. stockholm was a really incredible city. it was epic, beautiful. i was lucky enough to hook up with some cool people while i was there, with whom i spent the majority of my time. it might be a cliché, but it is pretty amazing how, traveling in europe, you meet people from all over the world at the drop of a hat. we walked around the city, drank coffee in old cellar cafés, went to museums, drank weak swedish beer. all in all a really good trip.

granada, as well, was incredibly beautiful. yes, i had major issues with my host family, but i got over it and enjoyed my time there immensely. you get the feeling that time has stood still there, not only from the architecture and streets and all that, but the people and how they live and how they spend their time. just being able to sit out in the sun on a plaza and listen to talented flamenco musicians playing because they love it, or grabbing my washboard and joining in for a couple of hours with some cats playing improvised reggae. i definitely couldn't live there - it's too slow for me - but for a short time it's a wonderful place to go. and i didn't really appreciate it until i got a little further away from the city, unfortunately on the last day, and just hiked by myself for a couple of hours in the mountains on the outskirts of town. something i don't do enough. very peaceful just to take in the breathtaking scenery, interspersed with little villages and all that. i think a problem i had with spain was that i kept expecting it to be latin america, and then it wasn't. haha i don't know what that means exactly. but i don't have to explain myself to you or anybody! so there. i also met a couple of lovely people with whom, i imagine, i will not lose contact any time soon. in summation, granada is gorgeous and i would recommend it to anyone visiting spain.

that all being said, i got pictures up (woohoo!). i am way over uploading on to facebook - it's way more trouble than it's worth - so i moved to picasa and i am LOVING it. so, here's the link to the albums for stockholm and granada (and a couple old trips as well): http://picasaweb.google.com/ballard.jw. hope you enjoy them; feel free to comment.

i'm off to poland on sunday, so i'm sure there will be lots more exciting shenanigans on which to report. until then, mach's gut und pass auf dich auf.

liebe grüße

Semesterpause

THINGS THAT DRIVE ME BANANA-SANDWICH ABOUT GRANADA:

1. my "host mom" yells ALL THE TIME. mostly at the dog and at her teenage son. the dog's name is serena and she's always like "serena! get down! stop barking! can't you see i'm working? you´re being very rude! what are you thinking!" as if the dog understood her. but seriously the woman has two settings, "pretty nice/helpful" and "screeching like a harpy." in fact, she's yelling as we speak. it's a super-negative environment, unfortunately. it's never directed at me, but even today she was like "james! i need to ask you something!" and i was like ohhh crap what did i do, and she was like, "did you not get enough to eat at lunch??" really larry? i swear, if i had to listen to it for more than two weeks i would jump off a cliff. as it stands, i'll survive it until i leave.


2. what the hell, why is every effing store in my neighborhood closed between the hours of 2pm and 5pm. and then why do some not reopen at 5pm? YOU'RE A BUTCHER AND YOU'RE ONLY OPEN BETWEEN THE HOURS OF NINE AND TWO?? unbelievable. of course i'm in class every day until two so...great, thanks spain.


3. on a similar note, the eating times here are the most bizarre and i just don't like them (they are also the cause of #2). breakfast is lame, like bread and jam, and then you eat the big meal of the day at like three freaking o'clock, how awkward is that. and THEN you eat a little meal at nine or ten o'clock. excuse me? that's actually incorrect, sorry, i'm gonna need a revision on my desk by monday.


4. this pleace is hillier than...i dunno, a hill factory. i swear to christ it's like climbing a mountain several times a day just to get to my house. my feet are dying.


5. the clubs here all cost 10€. by berlin standards that is most unacceptable.


6. The dog, serena, is sincerely out of control. at first i thought she was endearing but now i've come to conclude that she is, truly, a demon-child. in fact, serena is the most ironic and least-fitting name they could have possibly chosen.


7. the weather is, similarly, out of control. i leave my house at 9am and it's chilly and windy enough for a pretty decent sweatshirt. when im done with class at 2pm it's BOILING hot. then around 5pm it starts getting cool again, and at night you definitely need a jacket. wtf just please pick a temperature.

THINGS I REALLY LIKE ABOUT GRANADA:

1. my eleven-year-old "host sister", lola, is the cutest ever. she gave me a flamenco lesson tonight. it was very serious business.


2. when the temperature is at its nice place, it's absolutely gorgeous.


3. the view from my balcony and the balcony of the school are both breathtaking.


4. the windy, cobblestone streets of my barrio are beautiful to walk down, especially at night when there is literally no one and not a sound except for bats chirping and the occasional dog barking.


5. speaking of dogs, a stray dog literally walked me all the way home last night at like four in the morning. it was a twenty minute walk and she just trotted alongside me, sometimes anticipating my route, sometimes waiting for me when i got behind. i seriously think she was an animagus.


6. the archtiecture is really cool, a mix of spanish and moroccan.


7. going out for tapas is the BEST. in granada you pay 2€ for a glass of beer or "tinto de verano" (a wine punch thing they do here), which isn't terrible in its own right, but then you get FREE FOOD with it! you often get to choose, too. sandwiches, little burgers, mini pizzas. one place had like, calamari. serious business. so if you're going out for a drink anyway, you definitely don't need to eat diner beforehand.


8. it's slow going on the spanish, as with any language, but i think i've learned quite a bit even in one week. i'm DEFINITELY way more confident in speaking, even if my vocab hasn't improved a ton. it was a good decision though, for sure. the classes at the school are great, i really like the teachers and i like the students there as well.


9. okay i hate hippies on principle - they're pretentious and self-righteous and dirty and need to get a job and cut their hair - but i'll admit it's pretty awesome how people just hang out in the sunny plazas and juggle and dance and play music for the hell of it. okay a lot of the musicians aren't hippies, but anyway. like today i didn't feel like doing anything so i sat in the shade at one of the plazas by my house and listened to this guy playing amazing flamenco guitar, just because. i've jammed a bit too, with people, like these crazy african cats, which is always nice. simply a great atmosphere here all around.

oh and before getting here i went to stockholm or some shit. yeah i'll talk about that later, i'm tired now. (it was the hotness, by the way).

much love, liebe leute.

Ende des Semesters

hot DAMN that semester flew by. seriously though, i can't believe i'm almost done with half of my stay here. i knew a year wouldn't be that long. (i mean i'm sure it's just an ETERNITY for my mothers, but they'll be fine ;) ). and the prospects of spring are quite delicious. it was warm(er) and i was woken up by sunlight streaming in through my window and i was most pleased.

had my spanish final yesterday and it was THE WORST, but whatever it's done. hopefully i'll get a decent enough grade. balancing that out, however, was the A++ i got on my historical linguistics paper. shaBAM. i've got two more finals, one of which i am just the least looking forward to because i know i'm going to fail because i only understood half of what the prof said, but i'll say whatever to that one too. in the spirit of studying and last-minute berlin love, this will probably be my last post before i leave for the states. very excited to see all my bubbies there. and in the spirit of laziness, i'm just gonna repost a couple of interesting things i wrote in facebook messages, like last time, since this thing is more for me than for the two people who still actually read it regularly.

yeah shit's bin mad crazy around here. january rolls around and people are like "holy crap! we have a ton of papers to write and tests to take that are the only thing we get graded on in the entire semester!" because that's how it works here. so i've been working my ass off.

i did have a pretty hilarious experience last night though. my friends were having a going away party for their friend, whom i didnt know, an american as it turned out. well i was planning on going for lack of anything better to do, but then my friend matteo called me and was like "james, i need your help to kidnap the guy and take him to the party - we meet in two hours." so we did. we covered our faces and he bought a fake gun and we were gonna go to his house but when we got to his street he was randomly outside, walking down the street. so we went and ran up on him, matteo with the gun, and pretended we were russian mobsters sent to bring him to talk to our boss. he figured out pretty quickly that it wasnt serious, so we blindfolded him and took him for a forty minute train ride to the party, the whole time speaking in german with russian accents, talking about how great things were back in moscow.

and this next bit is obvious and some has been said before so you can skip over it if you want but i guess i took the time to write it so i'm gonna post it here for posterity's sake.

that's the big reason why i chose berlin. or, well, why i chose germany. i've been taking german for years and came to a point where i needed to go to the country to learn it. esp with german, if you're not fluent, there's really no point, because if you're not there's a whole lotta people whose english is better than your german, which basically makes you obsolete (in terms of jobs, etc). and i figured that since i was already quite far, it would be stupid to not go the rest of the way. kind of like how macbeth was "stepped in blood so far that he [could] wade no more; returning were as tedious as to go o'er." but with less blood and creepy stuff.

and it SUCKS because the more you know of a language, the harder it is to make progress, so you feel more and more dumb all the time, even though that sometimes means you're just getting better. aghhhh.

anyway, why berlin? because it's sexy. i mean it's the cultural center of germany, it's super progressive, there's so much art and just artists and alternative-types everywhere. and its not like im a big tool and im like "ooh i want to be alternative" or really artsy or whatever but it's more like that sort of thing makes life interesting. i can also take stage combat courses at the acting school here, which is cool. i can box, rock climb, go to rockabilly concerts...in the spring and summer there's a ton of outdoor stuff like concerts and festivals and parades. there's a huge central-park-type park in the middle of the city, which is beautiful (again, summer, but sometimes things are worth waiting for). and there's a ton of history, some good, some bad, but being here and sort of feeling a part of this incredibly historically significant city it pretty cool. people are like "ooooh, the brandenburg gate" and im like pshh whateva i see that shit every day. haha i don't actually be a big bitch like that but you know what i mean.

right okay that's it because i don't really have anything interesting to write. super excited for my crazy vacation - chicago, stockholm, granada, then a ride around poland. and of course, i leave you with THINGS GERMAN PEOPLE HATE:

#25: Sneakers and Sweatpants
Do NOT go out of the house wearing these items, God forbid a combination of the two. If it seems superficial, then it is, but you just don't do it in Berlin. Because the people who do do it are "aso", or asocial, which basically means bums and people on the dole. Sad, yes, but true.

#26: Being PC
Okay not actually. In fact, given the country's past, Germans are pretty PC in general. But for an American, coming from a country where we have such unique and strange race relations, to come here and hear the phrase "Black-Music" used everywhere to refer to rap and R&B (as a single category), it's pretty odd. Because folks would flip out in the States, but here they simply don't have the same past with black people as we do. So there's nothing offensive about it to them and they certainly don't mean it offensively - in fact, it's the cool way to say it. "Radio 94.5 - All Black Music, All the Time." Love it.

#27: Losing Pencils
I was in lecture the other day and I looked around the room and EVERYONE had a pencil case laid out neatly on their little table. And they all had the same pencil case - cylindrical and of a soft, pleather-like material. People come to class, sit down, then lay out their books and pencils all nice and neat in preparation for the lecture. German orderliness and all that.

great! we're done. you rock. yes, i'm talking to you.

Liebe Grüße.

Berlin, Berlin and the ERASMUS-Bunch

i am a master of military time. oh, you say you want to meet at 19:30 o' clock? that's perfect, because i know EXACTLY when that is, i don't even have to calculate it in my head. BOOYAH!

in addition to time-telling, i think i'm really getting the language. more and more, it's starting to feel less like a foreign language and more like a second language. the thought came to me when i was watching my new obsession, a show called berlin berlin (which is basically a mix of friends and lizzy mcguire, cartoons and all, with more adult themes). there was an american character that the people on the show encountered and he didn't speak german, so they spoke to him in english. no subtitles, since they assume a certain level of english from young germans. at any rate, at one point they were all sitting around and talking, and then the two german characters started talking smack about the american guy with him sitting right there, and my first thought was like "wait, he's sitting RIGHT there, he can hear you!" but then i realized that they were speaking german, and he can't understand german...it's like, i only understood the meaning of what they were saying, and not immediately realizing they were saying it in german. the same when my fam was here and i forgot i had to translate things. it's interesting stuff. i mean i still have a LONG way to go, but that seems like a step.

otherwise i've just been working like crazy to write a paper and get ready for three finals (which is pretty much the only thing you're graded on in most courses here). today i was holed up at my favorite café around the corner from my apartment - it's called ilse hünchen - got a great atmosphere, and all they play is jazz, world music and tom waits (what could be better?). there was also a baby who kept running up to me and saying "nein!" and then running away laughing. i tried asking her what she was saying "nein" to but i never got an answer. pretty adorable.

i really like the fact that where we would say "ahh, okay" germans say "ach so", and when it's a big realization they say "ach sooooo." ich hab auch DIE NASE VOLL mit uni. that means i'm damn sick of school. nothing about academics excites me and it's all drudgery. therefore i promise myself i am going to have a lot more extracurricular next semester: rock climbing, volunteering with the berlin food bank, maybe english teaching asst for little kids, hopefully an internship. i shall also have a goldfish. he shall be called otto friedrich wilhelm leopold von bismarck. he shall live in an (unheated) coffee pot.

as for an update, i'm tired and really lazy, so i'm gonna copy and paste an email i sent to a friend of mine. i hope that shall suffice...if anyone is even reading this in the first place:

new years was great. not super cray, just hung out with some friends, but then we went out to a bridge to drink champagne out of the bottle and watch the fireworks and its a f*ckin war zone over here. fireworks are legal for literally one day, i.e. new years, so people go absolutely nuts. for hours people just shot off fireworks randomly, no regard for safety. shooting them at people, trucks, buildings...whatever. everything goes. it was a pretty hilarious experience.

haha with whom am i hanging out? shit son i dont know. its a rotating cast i suppose. actually i dont think thats true, but the phrase popped into my head so i used it. got a couple german people - sabine, the rock n roll chick with the purple hair and the lip ring; katrin, the psychiatry student who loves monty python; rainer, the chinese-german guy with the long ponytail...then theres my italian friend matteo whos out of his mind; my spanish friend alonzo who plays the bagpipes; my other spanish friend sandra; my colombian friend juan camilo who for some reason came to berlin to study spanish-language literature and music studies; my swedish friend jonas, who's quiet and intense; my greek friend stefanie, who's sassy and certainly has an opinion...

that was amusing. hope it gives you a picture of my life here. a lot of that list had a dinner party last friday - that was an interesting multilingual affair! otherwise lately ive just been (a) cooking a ton, new recipes and all that, (b) not doing the assloads of work i should be doing, and (b) going to see live music - mostly dixieland jazz and blues, both of which i have really come to love.

right well that's gonna do it for now. and since it's been so lame lately, i've got an extra special edition of THINGS GERMAN PEOPLE HATE:

#20: Monochromatic Hair
Given this applies mostly to trashy people, but it seems like almost EVERYBODY has some kind of awful 90s hair coloring. It seems like women just can't fathom having brunette hair without blonde highlights. This phenomenon is especially pronounced in old ladies with gray hair who have shocks of maroon or purple. Bizarre...

#21: Slow Grocery Cashiers
If those groceries aren't scanned by the time I count to five...no seriously, the cashiers here are LIGHTNING fast. It's unbelievable. I can't even get out my wallet before all of my groceries are scanned. And then she's scanned the next person before I can get them into my bag. Embarrassing.

#22: Ends of Bread
The style of sliced bread we have at home is called "American Sandwich" or simply "Toast" bread here, so clearly not originally a German product. But for some reason they don't come with "ends" like our sandwich breads do. I just have to wonder what they do with all of those ends...

#23: Tardiness in their Train Passengers
You know in Chicago how, if the doors on the El are closing, you can run in and they'll motion-sensor open again? Not in Berlin! You get there on time or you literally get squashed in the door. Do not f*ck with the BVG (Berlin Transport Association).

#24: The French
Haaaahahahaha, it's so true. I mean really, I used to think being American was bad, in terms of a world perception, but being French is so much worse! People don't hate you based on actions and such, like it is/was for America - they just hate you because you're French. As a side note, after Napoleon stole the statue from the Brandenburg Gate, and the Germans subsequently got it back, they literally turned the head of the statue so that it now stares in eternal mockery at the French Embassy. Love it.

that's all for now, liebe leute. would love to hear from you, so drop me a line. hope all are well, and happy obam-guration on tuesday! don't worry, we're gonna party it up here in berlin.

tschau.

O, Tanenbaum!

i don't even know where to begin. blogging is a funny thing in that the longer you put it off, the harder it is to start because every day is something more you have to write. and while this is more for me to chronicle my time here than anything else, it is tough to keep up. so i will do my best to get up to speed as efficiently as possible.

three things before i start that i keep forgetting: (1) there are more beautiful girls in berlin than i could have ever imagined. (2) i'm officially a coffee drinker - don't know when that happened, but it has. (3) i've become a big fan of prosecco, although i've never liked wine in the past.

the weather still sucks, and it's probably going to continue to suck for a while. it's not that it's any worse than evanston - in fact, it's quite a bit better - but it's not like you can just walk down the hall to your friend's apartment and sit around and drink hot cocoa. you have to go outside in the cold and put in some effort in order to have fun, which isn't as easy in the wintertime. but i'm surviving (and just waiting for spring...).

been watching a LOT of prison break lately. it's not very well written at all, kind of like a cheap thriller novel, but it's so exciting and crazy that you can't stop and it's the bulk of what i've been doing with my time in the past week or so. i've also kind of stopped boxing; i guess i just got bored with it, the people, it wasn't really going anywhere. not to mention i kind of have to be in the mood to fight, and when i'm lying in my bed on a friday morning, maybe after having been out on thursday night, and the choice is between staying under my warm covers or getting up, going outside in the cold, getting on a train for twenty minutes, walking ten minutes, then getting punched in the face, the first option almost always wins. and on top of that it's not really furthering my meeting of people and all that - boxers just aren't really the sort to go grab a cup of coffee after practice, if you can imagine - so i plan on doing a climbing class and maybe hip hop dance next semester. these seem a little more conducive to making friends.

but let's rewind a bit.

on the wednesday after my friends left i went with my friend sabine (a real german, mind you) to the cabaret - how berlin is that? it was a female comedian/singer accompanied by two incredible classical guitarists. she was hilarious, the songs were really well written, and the guitarists, as part of the show and in their solo work, were masterful. it was a cool place called "bar jeder vernunft", which means "lacking all reason", and the space was a simple theatre with food and drink - all in all just a great atmosphere.

that week i also went to an information session with the berlin food bank in order to look into doing some volunteering, and after speaking with them, it looks like i'm going to be using my amazing english fluency to translate their websites into english. sounds like a cool project and i'm excited to get started.

the following weekend my friend amelia visited from the states. this coincided with my uncle charlie coming into town on business, so friday night we just combined forces and all went out to dinner at a chinese restaurant called CHINA CITY. apparently my uncle saw a recommendation for the restaurant on the window of the restaurant?... at any rate it was good, and we just hung out and had a good time. once again did the tourism thing, and then saturday night went to a real live european absinthe bar. i tried some blue stuff, tasted like licorice - i suppose one must when one is in europe. good times had by all.

the following wednesday i went with sabine to a bar called zosch where they have free live dixieland jazz every week, and it was really awesome and we met some people from greece and some other people from france. it seems like a hotspot for international folk and the music is fantastic and i most certainly plan on going back in the future.

then on saturday the family came into town for christmas. woohoo! i stayed in a hotel fifteen minutes from my apartment, which is kind of funny, but it was quite nice to take a little vacation. once again we saw the sights, including the berlin dome (church), which has the most incredible organ i've ever seen and i really want to hear it play, but we also just did a lot of hanging out together at the hotel room, watching movies and playing games and eating food. i got to go to real restaurants for the first time since i've been here! real food!

oh but i should relate the stories from the steak house we went to. first of all the burger i ordered came out on top of one slice of bread, and when i said to the guy that i was confused and thought it would have a bun, he promptly informed me that that's how you eat a burger at a mcdonalds and this is how you eat one at a restaurant. i then asked if i could maybe just have another piece of bread but he just walked away confidently, saying "you eat it like this, you'll like it." and then when the waitress brought out our desserts and i informed her apologetically that i had forgotten to tell her we wanted them to go, she snarled "well you didn't tell me that" and literally threw down our check and stormed off to the back to box them up. she did not receive a danke schön from me. woohoo german customer service!

we also hit up a few of the quaint little german christmas markets around town where they sell little gifties and roasted almonds and mulled wine. had a hot spiced cherry beer which was really delicious. and we saw the pergamon museum, which has an imported ancient greek temple (the real deal), very cool. christmas morning took place in the hotel room with the hilarious fake tree that betti provided us and i got some awesome presents including a lolcats book, some onion-chopping goggles, a chicago flag to hang up in my room, some real american helmann's mayonnaise, and a mouse pad with a picture of my pug printed on it. not bad at all.

two highlights involving small children: (1) on the first day the family was here we came to my apartment to pick up my things and as we exited, two little german girls with umbrellas RAN past us screaming the song "o tanenbaum" (the original "oh christmas tree", if you don't know) at the top of their lungs. pretty much the most adorable christmas moment of my life. (2) there are always musicians on the train cars in berlin that play and then ask you for money, but this time a fat man with a saxophone got on with his fat little mini-me son. the son said something incomprehensible in turkish-german, an introduction of sorts, and the father began to play with a kitschy backing track. but what was so great was this chubby little boy dancing around the train car keeping time with an egg shaker. he then came around to collect money and we just had to give him some - it was too entertaining not to be properly rewarded.

so all in all the family visit wasn't terribly eventful, but a lot of fun and it was really great to see everyone again. with that, i'm spent for now, but i won't leave you without an addition to my list of THINGS GERMAN PEOPLE HATE:

#18: Answering Stupid Questions
This sort of goes under the heading of customer service, but it's important enough to give it it's own number. Now, Americans are fine with this - if you work in the service industry and somebody asks you a question, you damn well better answer it with a smile and a can I help you with anything else. But not so in ze Deutschland. They HATE answering questions that have a pretty obvious answer - ya know, the kind that you ask "just to make sure." You remember that mean lady at the store in Akron, Ohio who responded to your query about store hours by pointing at the sign on the door and telling you to put on your reading glasses? That's most people in stores in Germany! Like when my mother asked someone at the airport in Frankfurt, just to be certain, if their bags were checked to Berlin, and got the response "Is that what it says on the tag?..."

#19: Lemonade
My little sister, as well as I a few months ago, was astounded to discover that they don't have lemonade here. In fact, I don't even thing they know what it is. They have limonade, but that means soda, so any talk of lemonade would make them think you want a Fanta or something. It's disturbing, and I don't know how it's going to affect my summer.

oooookay liebe leute, that's all. new year's eve is coming up and i heard it's cray here in berlin. so who knows, maybe i'll have a good story in the near future. in any case, i hope everyone had a merry christmas and/or is having a happy hannukah (and/or a krazy kwanzaa?) and i will talk to you soon. frieden und liebe.

Passwort, bitte.

sheer laziness has kept me from writing, but now the looming threat of homework has spurred me on to blog! funny how that works.

so picking up where we left off: saw the magic flute at one of the opera houses here in berlin two weekends ago. the performances, on a whole, were great. so were the costumes. but the set designer literally must have just been drunk when he designed the thing because there was a life-size tree at the VERY FRONT OF THE STAGE. and if you were sitting on the left side anywhere above the first floor (like i was), then 70% of the action was played behind said tree. i wanted to kill myself. but more so i wanted to kill the set designer. but maybe even more so the director for (a) allowing something nonsensical like that to occur and/or (b) not directing around it. not to mention the fact that they actually needed a tree in the show for about three minutes, five minutes before the end of the opera. i want at least seven of my thirteen euro back as reparation.

then i think i had a pretty normal week of class - i dunno, can't remember. but that might be an indicator that it was normal. the birthday party i spoke of was out in bumblef*ck berlin, like a village that got gerrymandered by the city some years ago or something like that. so my friend and i took the train like forty minutes to get there, walked down a pitch-black country-type road (don't worry mom, i know kung fu!), and found the house. we proceeded to play wii for a while while waiting for others to show up, and some did, but they were all guys and then we continued playing wii. eventually i set up the beirut game that i had brought as a gift, and we played, but the germans DIDN'T GET IT. they were like "vy iss zis game taking so long?" and i'm like cuz it just does, stop offending my culture. if anyone who is in or recently got out of college is reading this, you know what i mean. so anyway it was a weird night.

saturday was the performance with the irish dance group. and this time i took the train to an even bumblef*cker part of berlin, i.e. an hour and fifteen minutes outside of the city center, where it was taking place. my friend lives there, and she told me that there are wild pigs in this part of the city. and i was like stop playin, this is not berlin. but it was. technically. the actual performance was at a christmas market, so we all went out there in the freezing cold and did our thing - i in my kilt, mind you. it was fun, the crowd enjoyed it, and then we went back to this girl's house and drank glühwein (german spiced wine, a christmas favorite) and ate baked apples. not bad.

last wednesday i was invited by a friend of mine from spain to go to this underground club that you need a password for - ooh intense. we met up at his house beforehand, and three more of his spanish friends came. and they spoke a lot of spanish and i felt dumb for not understanding more than i did, because my spanish is terrible right now. but anyway we read the email where the weekly password is sent out and it was like "come quietly and lock your bikes up away from the entrance, etc" and gave us the password. so we walked over there and crossed this creepy bridge to the entrance where we gave this burly bouncer the password and went in. we then went down like three flights of stairs into this basement storage area underneath the railroad tracks. very cool space, legit, lots of junk piled everywhere and water actually dripping from the ceiling. only three euro, actually, and the music was good - salsa, old hip hop, etc - and there was a pool table and a ping pong table. a very cool place overall. only problem was it was pretty much ALL SPANISH PEOPLE and i understood very little all night because they all spoke spanish the whole time. i did meet an absolutely stunning spanish girl, and we talked for a while, but theres not much more to that story. at least not yet! sha-ZAM!

though i'll probably shortly retract that sha-zam.

any rate, on friday my friend james daniel and his cousin morgan came to visit. we started off their trip by drinking hefeweizen in the train - a very german thing to do. we then met up with a couple of my german friends (a long with some americans) and went to karaoke. it was a lot of fun, we sang mambo number five and i want it that way, so you can imagine it went well. i was missin' my theatre gays, they would have definitely enjoyed it. and germans doing karaoke is really hilarious - the get really, really into it.

saturday we did a lot of sightseeing, got in most of the major points in the city. then that night we went and saw a rockabilly show at my favorite venue, wild at heart berlin, which turned out to be pretty good. sunday morning was flea market, which was actually cold and miserable and sadly turned up nothing for the first time. then, after a long journey to get them a bus ticket to prague, we were well exhausted and didn't feel like doing anything so we just ate and watched kung fu panda, which was a pretty freaking great movie.

otherwise all is pretty much quiet on the western (or eastern, depending on how you look at it) front. the weather continues to be cold, wet, and dreary, so there isn't a ton of motivation to leave my apartment, or to do much of anything. but i shall continue to find fun things to do and use them as an excuse to get off my ass! never you worry. i aaaam pumped about next semster, though, when it's warm and spring-like, because i've heard that the city just does a 180. rockin'.

oh and at i'm no longer going to ireland, but stockholm, and then granada for two weeks. third leg of the trip is still unknown, but i'll figure it out eventually...

right so honestly i don't have a THINGS GERMAN PEOPLE HATE this week - i guess i haven't been very observant lately. but i'll get you one soon! i promise. for those of you who have sent me emails and stuff, thanks very much! and for those who haven't, i'd love to hear from you!

take care, liebe leute, and i'll talk to you soon.