"Zweite Kasse, bitte!"

Damn son, I haven't written a blog in forever. Every time I wanted to I was like "Oh but I have so much to write and I don't have time now..." so then I didn't write it and then it just got more and more difficult because more and more stuff happened and...well basically I've decided enough is enough and I just need to suck it up and DO IT. So I'ma do it. But to much shtuff has occured in the last two weeks or so for a very cohesive narrative, so this one's gonna be rather stream of consciousness. Oh and I'm tired of using caps so I'm probably not gonna anymore. just so yo ass know.

right so i think last time i wrote was right before my friend emily came to visit me for the weekend. she actually knows my friend hilly here (who also knows two of my friends from college, a friend from high school, and my cousin...just weird), so we all went out a lot to a couple different clubs, went to a hookah bar, and ate döner. wait have i never talked about döner before? it's an amazingly delicious fast-food-type item that originated here in berlin. it's kind of like a gyros or a schawarma - they use meat cut from a spit in the same way - but it's got a slightly more savory yoghurt sauce and instead of pita they use grilled flat bread. then they put onion and lettuce up in there and it is warm and DELICIOUS. it's a seriously filling meal for €2-3. and for all my NU people: you know how after a night on the e-town it's 3 in the morning and all you want is some chicken fries or something at ye olde BK Lounge? well that's what döner is here. you know what i mean. i don't know why it hasn't caught on in the states, but i plan to bring it to college towns nationwide.

but i digress. emily and i also went on a really, really great FREE walking tour of berlin (just gotta tip at the end), which i wish i had done right when i got here, because it gave me an appreciation of the historical and cultural significance of the city that i hadn't had before. and our guide was awesome, even though he had been an econ major in college. hmm...maybe a future job? if an econ major can be a compelling tour guide, just IMAGINE what a theatre major could do! oh and then we went to the flea market again and i got some seriously rockin' boots for like twenty bucks and i was a happy, if slightly poorer, camper. sometimes you just gotta do what makes you happy.

the week thereafter was pretty standard, just class and such and such. trying to think if anything interesting occured...but nothing's coming to mind so probably not. right, that friday i went out with an italian guy from my german class and some of his german friends to a soul-music party at this really cool club. it was a great time, especially getting to speak german the whole night. the rest of the weekend i was a bit *ahem* out for the count, so i mainly just sat around, watched some german movies/tv, did homework, etc.

this past week was a bit more action-packed in the sense that i had a whole mess o' work to do. went to the irish trad session on monday, which is going great. boxing on tuesday made my arms and my face hurt. and then wednesday in german class i got screwed because the day i signed up for my presentation happened to be the same day as our first test. oops! but for my presentation i just did a short introduction of the bodhran (i.e. the drum i play for those of you who may not know). since i had already done the same presentation in freshman public speaking, powerpoint and all, all i had to do was translate! woohoo! but presenting anything in a foreign language while a professor is sitting right in front of you writing a note every time you make a grammatical error is neither easy nor fun. but it went well, played a little bit for the class, all that jazz.

and on THAT note: i just got invited to play bodhran for a semi-professional irish dance troupe here in the city! hilarious! turns out my "language tandem partner" is part of this troupe and when she found out that i play, she told her director, who then asked me to play for them! maybe on a regular basis, who knows. but i'm definitely going to play for their show next saturday, and i'm even getting paid for it (not a whole lot, but hey, if it pays for my hefeweizen i'm all up on it). and who knows, maybe meet some cute german mädels... in any case, i'll probably get to wear the beautiful new kilt my dad had made for me, so it's a win-win situation. SHA-BAM!

yesterday (thursday) i had a LOVELY time at the berlin customs office. my dad, as above stated, had sent me my new kilt and i received a notice in the mail that i had to go to customs to pick it up. wonderful. first of all, the office is in the most horrible part of town i have yet to experience, and it is also impossible to find. i wandered around for about twenty minutes in this cold, dark, awful place until coming upon the building. i then waited for an hour, after which i was called up to be told that such an expensive item (the worth was declared by my father at $250) to be shipped by post means it is automatically counted as a "gift" - even though i lied to them and told them it was just used, personal clothing - and as such will be taxed at a good-old 13.5%. after screwing up the euro-dollar calculations, thus extending my stay another fifteen minutes, i paid my 26€ and left.

let us hope that i never, ever have to go back there again.

on a happier note, tonight i'm going out with the host of one my friends in the program. she's young and very cool and she's going to show us some good spots around town. should be a lot of fun. and tomorrow i am going with one of the german people at the program to see mozart's the magic flute at the state opera house. so excited! magic flute is amazing, for those who don't know it. it's gonna be great. and for next weekend i got invited to a german birthday party (should be interesting!) and then saturday is the performance with the irish dancers. so, big plans.

i've also been spending a lot of time lately making travel plans for the weird two-month semester break. it looks like this right now: i'll be back in chicago from february 18th - march 3rd, at which point i will fly to ireland. gonna spend a couple days in the tiny village of doolin, which has become a great place for traditional music, and the erstwhile home of john williams' family, the amazing accordion player who leads the trad sessions at nevin's pub. so i plan on seeing the aran islands and a couple other things, and then playing music at night and all that. should be a good time. from there i'm hopping a flight to granada, spain, where i'll spend two weeks at a language intensive working on my spanish. after that, i'd like to try to see both sweden and austria, so we'll see if i have any money left over...europe is some craziness fa sho!

okay look y'all i gotta go hit the club. but before i do, i have a super-special extended version of THINGS GERMAN PEOPLE HATE:

#15: Getting a Room
Okay so a little PDA every once in a while is fine. But a LOT of PDA ALL the time is a little much. And oh, how the Berliners/Germans love their PDA. You can literally be sitting directly across from two people on the train and they will be straight up sucking face. They don't give a damn if you're looking straight at them. I mean, a week or so ago I saw a couple making out while waiting at the bank. Really? Now on the flip side I have seen a couple gay/lesbian couples being openly affectionate in the same way, so I gotta give mad props to Berlin for its openness. But gay or straight...come on guys, get a damn room.

#16: Finishing "mm hmm"
This is more just an observation, I guess. In the States, when we're expressing understanding of what someone is saying on the phone, we say "mm hmm...mm hmm...", but here, I dunno, I just found it odd, they only say "mm...mm...mm". I guess it might be hard to imagine without actually hearing it but trust me, it's weird.

#17: Waiting in Line at the Grocery Store
I've heard other people talk about this, so I know my experience wasn't an isolated incident. You know how sometimes you're standing in a huge line and there are registers not being worked and you're like "wtf why won't they get someone up here this is ridiculous"? Well the Germans don't just think about it, they do something about it. If someone is of the opinion that there are too many people in line for one cashier to sustain, they will yell out "Zweite Kasse, bitte!", which means, "A second register, please!" Ahh, German bluntness. Sometimes you have to admire it.


And that's all for now, liebe Leute! Sorry this one was super long, but I hope you enjoyed. I still like getting emails from my lovely friends back home! So do send me one if you have a moment! Okay but anyway you rock - yes I'm talking to you. Mach's gut und bis bald.

Rock n' Roll

I would like to start off by extending my warmest congratulations to MOTHAF*CKIN' PRESIDENT-ELECT BARACK OBAMA HELL YEAH!! America didn't screw up this time! We did it!

As much as I would have killed to be back in the Windy City last night, it's really quite amazing to see the reactions over here. People are more excited about a foreign election than I could have possibly imagined. All of the election-night parties I went to last night had more Germans and other Europeans than Americans, without a doubt. One of them had like a thousand tickets and they were sold out the day before! Just ridiculous. Two of the German girls in my Spanish class who had previously spent a year in the States stayed up all night to watch - one of them even had a "Proud To Be An American" shirt on today! And the girls I was talking to in a bar tonight were just screaming about how excited they were that Obama won.

I, like them, was up till 6:30 AM to make sure I got the acceptance speech, missed class this morning, and it was 100% worth it. I also have a fantasy that the "puppy" he promised his daughters will be a pug, because the "first pug" would just be the best thing ever. Also, fun fact: In 2007 I attended the press opening of Broadway in Chicago's stage production of High School Musical with Natasha, Malia, and Michelle Obama. We also kicked it at the after party. GET IT!

So anyway...man, it's been a while, got quite a bit to report. I'll do my best to remember it all. First of all, as promised, here's the link to my pictures from Dresden, Oktoberfest, and beyond:

http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2156662&l=cc5dc&id=2418535
http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2156716&id=2418535

Classes are fully under way now, and I'm not gonna lie, it's pretty effing tough. Sometimes I'll leave a lecture being like "I...have no idea what just happened." My head often feels like it wants to explode. But I guess that's just the feeling of learning! Hopefully after a couple more weeks I'll get used to the style and the speed an all that, and if I'm lucky, I may not fail.

That's mostly for my two lectures at the university, though. My language courses are GREAT. I've met a couple very cool lads from different countries in my German class, and a couple of very cute girls in my Spanish class. German is great because it's all people from different countries, so it's easy to get to know new people and your common language is German, which forces you to use it. Spanish is also a lot of fun because (a) for some reason it feels super unstructured and very easy, and we just kind of go around and do speaking exercises and such all day and (b) it's the one subject where I'm on the same page with everyone else and/or Germans are actually asking ME for help, which is also a great way to meet people and talk to them, etc. And as a plus, I've seriously never had that many beautiful women in one class in my life. (German women are, on a whole, quite gorgeous - now I just need to man up and ask one out or something). So though there are good days and bad days in terms of class, overall it's quite good.

Oh and someone brought a BABY to one of my lectures this week. As if it wouldn't continuously shout "MAMA" during the entire hour and a half. It's like bringing a baby to the movies, except this time you're ruining people's educations. But the class was ever so amused - it was like Mary and her Little Lamb who made the children laugh and play.

Oh SNAP and I forgot I got these ridiculously awesome motorcycle boots at the flea market for 20€. They're waterproof and lined with fur, which makes them amazing for winter, and completely rock n' roll, which makes them amazing for always. A crazy gypsy lady sold them to me. Thanks Babuschka!

Went to another rockabilly concert at this awesome rockabilly club in Kreuzberg called Wild at Heart, this time a local Berlin band. Very cool once again, and the German language also rather lends itself to the style. Oh and then there was another the following week, a little more traditional/country-style but still quite good, got some gospely tunes going on. At any rate, I'm getting into the scene here and I hope to catch more shows in the near future.

I (with a few others) also planned a Halloween party for my program, which was pretty wicked stressful considering that Halloween just started here about seven years ago and finding black and orange streamers is literally impossible. The most you're going to get is one relatively small section of Halloween stuff on one floor of the largest malls in the city. No party stores, no decorations at the dollar (euro) store, nothin'. But we fudged it and we ended up pulling off a pretty good party. At least, if you can judge how good it was by the fact that a girl in a Slutty Santa costume vomited on the floor, it was a damn good party. I mean, I snapped into StuCo producer mode for the whole thing (for those of you to whom that means something), but people had fun, which means I had fun. I'm going to end up in events management, I just know it...

In terms of extracurriculars (not those kinds of extracurriculars...): I box twice a week, which is nice and gives me a good outlet for some of the stress I build up. And it's cool because we got right down to sparring on the first day (don't worry Mama, I wear a mouth guard!), and the coach for some reason thinks I'm going to be a Chicago boxing champion. I guess he has faith in me. Which is actually kind of cool, as silly as it is, because he himself was a two-time East German National Champion. And two of the guys in my class, as I found out, are members of a pretty famous German rap group called KIZ. Craziness. I have met some cool people, but let's be honest, boxing fellas aren't really the touchy-feely "oh fabulous let's hang out after class!" type, not to mention we spend most of the time punching in and around each others faces, so...we'll see, maybe I'll meet my new best German friend after all.

I finally found an Irish traditional music session here, went for the first time on Monday to play. Actually quite a high level of playing, nice people, and they made certain to invite me back for next time, which was cool. Oh and free drinks for the musicians - so sláinte!

Other than that, tonight was the first night of the drum circle that I've started. I looked all over for one, realized that none existed in the city, so I sought out people, found a location, put up flyers, and bada-bing, there you go. There were only three of us tonight, but I know for a fact we're going to have at least six next week, so it should be quite good. The third guy (the second being my friend Anna) was a guy named Mark from Northern Ireland. Very nice fellow, just moved to Berlin with his band. We went out and grabbed a pint afterward, got accosted by a ROARING drunk group of southern-German girls on a week-long school trip to Berlin who were ever so excited by the fact that we spoke English, and we had a very amusing time. Though that lot were a bit young for us, it seems that the key to success with women here is speaking English. Ah well.

But enough of that nonsense - here now is the latest installment of THINGS GERMAN PEOPLE HATE:

#13: John McCain
Haha with his stupid fat lying face and his fearmongering and his brainless running mate whats-her-name... Okay I just wanted to throw this one in. But seriously, they really don't like him and they LOVE our boy Obama and YEAH PRESIDENT OBAMA!! Deutschland liebt dich.

#14: Sticking to One Item of Denim
So on a whole, German people (at least the young ones) are very snappy dressers. However, along with the mullet, there's one thing they haven't quite figured out: namely, the fact that one simply should not pair a denim jacket with a pair of jeans, especially not when they're the exact shade of denim. And especially especially not when that pair of jeans is, say, a floor-length denim skirt. Sigh.


All right liebe Leute, that's it for now. Hope everyone is well and feeling happy. And as much as I do love it here, I miss home and everyone there and EMAILS ARE ALWAYS APPRECIATED!! Seriously I'd love to hear from you, so send one along. It will make my day, I promise.

Alles Gute.