An American in Berlin
13 February, 2017

It’s been a while since my last posting.  I’ve been busy.  Sometimes it feels like I’ve been too busy.  In fact, I’m feeling a bit exhausted lately.  The last couple of weeks have seen more than their fare share of social activity and less than their fare share of sleep.  And of course, there’s work too.  Oh, and the world seems to be going to hell in a hand basket.

Let’s talk about work first, because I’ve really been enjoying it of late, and I really haven’t written very much about it to this point.  On Tuesdays, I work one-to-one with a woman who is doing research on memory and the DDR (East Germany).  She’s a pretty cool cat.  I don’t know her whole story, but here’s what I gather.  She’s late 40’s/early 50’s.  I don’t know what she was doing before, but it seems she’s gone back to school.  Why?  Because she’s passionate about the subject; she wants to research it and write about it.  Mad respect.

So every week, I bring an article having something to do with the DDR.  We work for three hours, mostly reading and discussing while also doing the odd bit of grammar.  It’s fascinating.  I’m learning a lot, and she is as well.  One of the things we’re working on is critical reading skills.  In other words, reading something in your second language and learning how to draw out the salient facts while not getting bogged down in words you don’t know.  She’s making great progress and it’s quite rewarding to see.

She’s now the third one-to-one student I’ve had like this.  I mean, yes, I’ve been doing one-to-one phone lessons with the French company since August.  But that’s different.  Those lessons are either 30 or 60 minutes and it’s either general conversation or just English grammar.  And don’t get me wrong, I enjoy it.  But it’s not what I’d call intellectually gratifying.

Then this school comes along and starts offering me 1:1 classes that last three or five hours.  And on paper, that’s actually a bit terrifying.  I mean, it’s just you and one student, stuck in a room for hours at a time.  What do you do?  What do you talk about?  But in each case, I’ve been fortunate to get really smart and interesting people.  The first guy was a video game designer.  The second was a physicist who works in renewable energy.  And now this dame.

But my absolute favorite, though, is my advanced class, which I teach on Fridays.  It’s five hours with no course structure and no syllabus.  The students come from the (un)employment office.  What this means, on a practical level, is that people are always coming and going.  The class just goes on forever with no start or end. ((Which is gorgeous from a stability standpoint.  It means I have this class in perpetuity.  As opposed to my other classes which are all for a fixed number of hours and need to be replaced with new work when they’ve finished.))

This was also a bit terrifying in the beginning.  I mean, how do you fill five hours when you have no syllabus, no course structure, to refer to?  But the beauty of it is, I get to make of it what I want.  And I’m getting more and more comfortable with this.  I’m making it my own.  I get to make it the intellectual playground I want it to be.  And yes, of course we do plenty of “English class” kinda stuff.  Lots of grammar, exercises, practice, etc.  But I always get to work in something that goes to who I am as a person and as a teacher.  I’ll give two examples from the last two weeks.

Last Friday, we were talking about the different ways English uses the word “get.” ((The primary definition of “get” is “receive.”  But what about: get over, get on, get off, get out, get in, get on with, &c. &c. &c.))  So I asked one student, “How do you get over a disappointment?”  And he gave whatever answer he gave.  Then another student says, “Well, you can repress it.”  Laughs all around.  But when I asked a follow up question about the word “repress,” her answer had something to do with Archimedes.

–Interpolation: The king asks Archimedes to determine if his crown is made of solid gold or just lead with gold plating.  And Archimedes puzzles over this, unable to find an answer.  Then, one day, he settles into his bathtub, and as he does so, he notices the water rise around him.  “Eureka!” he shouts.  He’s discovered displacement, and its relationship to mass/density.  He now knows that a gold crown will displace a different amount of water than a lead one.  Problem solved.
End Interpolation–

So, as we see, the English word for the principal of physics that Archimedes discovered is “displacement.”  But apparently, in German, it’s something that can be translated as “repression.”  Anyway, this leads to a brief discussion of the above story about Archimedes.  And also Galileo, because apparently she learned that it was he who said “Eureka!”  Which he might have, I don’t know.  But if he did, he was referencing Archimedes.  Anyway.

Anyway, what a great opportunity to talk about Greek!  “What tense is eureka?” I ask.  Confusion.  “Well,” I explain, “eureka literally means ‘I have found it’.  What tense is that?”  Present perfect, comes the answer from my most excellent students.  “That’s right!” I say.  “The verb itself is εὑρίϲκειν (heuriskein) – to find.  And the perfect, first person singular is εὕρηκα (heureka) – I have found.”  And I’m so happy to be talking about Greek.  But I need to bring this back to English.  “But the point is, Eureka is not simply an exclamation we say at the moment of discovery, it actually means something.  It literally means, I have found it!”  I love my job.

Now I’m feeling good.  This is interesting stuff, and my students seem genuinely interested.  Let’s go on!  “What did Caesar say when he crossed the Rubicon?” I ask.  *Crickets*  So I explain the backstory of Caesar at the Rubicon and the whole “die is cast” spiel.  And one of my blessedly learned students blurts out in German, “Ach, Die Würfel sind Gefallen!“ Which is the German version of “the die is cast.”  Good, so now they’ve got context.

So, again, bringing it back to English.  “OK then, so in English, we say ‘the die is cast.’  But this really isn’t a good translation.  Suetonius tells us that Caesar said, alea iacta est.  And again, like eureka, this is perfect tense.  ‘The die has been cast.’  Which is not unimportant.  Because the perfect tense tells us that the action is complete, you can’t take it back.  But it has an impact on the present.  That’s much more powerful than simply saying ‘the die is cast.’  And they’re nodding in understanding.  And they don’t look bored either!  So let’s go a step further.

“Of course,” I continue, leaning back in my chair and wishing I had my pipe, “Plutarch tells us that Caesar said the words in Greek.  According to Plutarch, he said ἀνερρίφθω κύβοϲ (anneriphtho kybos), which is a third person imperative, meaning, ‘let the die be cast.’  Which again is totally different again.”  I pause to make sure everybody is still with me.  They seem to be.  “But then you have to remember that Suetonius is writing many years after the fact, and Plutarch is writing many years after that.  So we have to ask, Did Caesar ever say anything like this at all?  I don’t know.”

Then a student asks, “So the English again is?”  “The die is cast,” I say as she writes it down in her notebook.  “And it should be?”  “The die has been cast, or Let the die be cast.”  And she writes that down.  And I’m just, fuck, I love my job.

So that was last week.  Then today, ((By which I mean Friday, when I originally started writing this.)) half my class is out sick.  I had a whole thing planned, but I didn’t really want to use it, because I didn’t want half the class to miss it.  So I kinda winged it.  But at the end of the day, I still had 40 minutes to kill.  And I see that yesterday’s teacher ((One guy teaches the class Mon-Wed.  There’s a different teacher on Thursdays.  And I have them on Fridays.)) had given them a short story to read.  Well, they’ve already read it, so there’s not much I can do there.  But then I notice that at the beginning of the story, there’s three lines of quoted poetry.  The story is in parallel text, btw: German on one side of the page, English on the other.  It’s originally German.  The poetry quote is from Göthe.  And it turns out, they had ignored this little quote.  Her (the other teacher’s) lesson was about the story itself.  Fantastic!

So I write the German and the English poems on the board.  And then I mark out the scansion.  And we break it down.  The meter and the rhyming scheme match.  So I engage them on the subject of translation theory.  The meter and the rhyme match exactly.  But at what cost?  There’s a loss of precision, right?  Words are missing, subjects are different, verbs are used differently.  It’s not quite a “perfect” translation.  Or is it?  What’s more important – capturing the ‘feel’ or the ‘meaning’?  And bless their little hearts, they batted it around and we talked about it and didn’t really come to a conclusion, because how can you?  There’s no “right” or “wrong.”  But again, I’m just like, holy shit, I love my job. ((So I’ve just re-read this proofreading purposes, and it comes to my attention that I may be an insufferably pretentious ass.  To which I can only respond by pushing my glasses higher up on my nose and puffing my pipe here in the candlelight.  #doubledown))

Or do I?  I talk about this with Charlotte sometimes.  And when I tell here these types of stories, she says something along the lines of, “Sounds like you’d rather be teaching a university class.”  Hmm.  Wouldn’t I though?  And yes, on some level.  Like, it’s this shit where I get really jazzed about my job.  This, and historical linguistics, and Greek and Latin and Shakespeare (did I mention we did a Shakespeare sonnet one week?) and so on.  But I do love English, the grammar, the slang, the living language.

But this is where things get difficult for me too.  I had to cover a beginner class this week.  And you can’t do any of this stuff with beginners.  They’re nowhere near ready for it, even if they would be interested.  And, oh gods, it’s dull!  For me, I mean.  I’ve discussed this too with Charlotte, as well as my colleagues here.  And they have lovely things to say about working with beginners.

They say things like, “They’re so interested!  And you can see their progress every day!  You can see them doing things they didn’t used to be able to do, and that’s because of you!”  And I, like, I don’t care.  It’s boring.  I mean, they’re fun people, and we have a good time.  But, come on!  And then I start to have heretical thoughts.

Thoughts like, “You know what?  I don’t really care if you say things the right way.  What does that even mean?  Can you express yourself?  Can you make yourself understood?  That’s what matters.  I mean, you’re probably going to be talking to people for whom English also isn’t their native tongue.  Do I honestly give a fuck if you use the past simple instead of the present perfect?  I know I should, but like, it doesn’t matter.”

Because if you want to write an academic paper or study literature, sure, it’s important.  But if you want to communicate?  Let it ride.  That’s what I say.  And I think that makes me a terrible English teacher in many ways.  So I don’t know.  It’s confusing.  There are days when I love my job and I think I’m bloody good at it and I wouldn’t want to do anything else.  But those are the days I get to work with advanced students.  Other days though…

Changing gears.  Thursday before last, I stopped by the supermarket on my way home.  Had my headphones in when somebody tapped me on the shoulder.  It was one of my roommates.  “Oh, hey!”  And because, well, I don’t know why: “Do you have time for a drink when we get home?”  So he bought a bottle of wine and I bought a bottle ((OK, a box.  But only one liter!)) of wine and we walked home together and settled into the Wohnküche, ostensibly to drink one – maybe two – glasses of wine and just catch up.

Well, next thing I know, we’d each drank a whole bottle.  So then we drunkenly cooked dinner, by which time our other roommate had come home, and so obviously we sat her down to eat with us.  Plenty of food, after all.  But of course, we couldn’t stop there.  Not after discussing how neither of us had yet been to a local bar since we’d moved in.

So we went to local bar.  Just the two of us, me and the bloke from the supermarket.  Next thing I know, I’m chatting in German with total strangers.  Next next thing I know, I’m belting out Whiskey in the Jar and Dirty Old Town with one of these strangers.  Next next next thing I know, I’m hungover af at work on Friday.  Incidentally, this was the Archimedes/Caesar Friday, so I guess I rallied.

Well, it made Friday a bitch.  But honestly, it was great to hang out and drink and then go out with my roommate and have a bit of bonding.  And getting a bit of local flavor didn’t hurt either.  Nonetheless, I was, in the wake of this, looking forward to a quiet weekend.  This, I’m afraid, was not in the cards.

Zibs and Jan – the political friends – asked me if I wanted to meet them at a market on Saturday afternoon.  Well, of course I did.  This started out as lunch and a couple of beers at the market.  It then proceeded to dinner and more beers, followed by Sambuca, at a Persian restaurant in hip(ster) Kreuzberg.  Only, I had to be home by 8ish, as my other roommate (i.e. not the one from the bar) was cooking dinner, and I’d agreed to bring wine.

So I get home just in time, and the four of us – that is, the two roommates plus the boyfriend of the other roommate proceed to eat (wonderful food, btw, and drink…three bottles of wine.  Why I am doing this to myself?! I ask as I fetch the third bottle of wine from my room. ((This bottle was a Xmas gift from the roommate and her bf.  And I’d sat on it, hoping that we could all share it together at some point.  That point turned out to be the Saturday in question.))

But OK, I think to myself.  I can still at least go to bed at a reasonable hour.  Which was nearly true.  The problem was, the other roommate…stop.  I should give them names already.  The one from the supermarket/bar, that’s Christian.  The other is Lucie.  And her boyfriend is Marco.  So the problem was, Lucie and Marco had plans to go to a club, and now they wanted us to come with them.  I protested.  They insisted.  We went.

And it was great.  I mean, I think it was great.  Many of the parts I remember were great.  The place we went to had many floors and rooms, one of which was actually a metal room; so that was cool for me.  At (at least) one point, Christian thought Jäger shots would be a good idea.  Remember, this is in addition to the three bottles of wine, the afternoon beers and Sambuca, and also the beer on the train.  But I’m a gentleman, and it would have been rude to refuse.

I do remember singing along rather loudly to the The Proclaimers ‘500 Miles’ at one point.  And also being in a techno room, which I didn’t much care for.  Eventually, it got to the point where I had to do my usual Dave thing.  Which is, to find one person I know, and tell them I’m leaving because I’ve had enough.  I do know that I left first.  And I also know that I did ultimately get to the train station.

What I’m less clear on, is how Christian was already at the train station when I got there.  So obviously we had to stop for döners.  And somehow, by the time we got home, Marco and Lucie were already back.  To this day, nobody seems entirely clear on how any of this was possible.

What I do know, is that Sunday became a wasted day.  Which is a shame, because I had big plans for Sunday.  I was going to do big things.  Things like laundry, and taking out the garbage and maybe a bit of Hebrew.  Instead, I just stayed in bed watching DS9 and this comedian Iliza Shlessinger whom I’d never heard of, but she seemed cute so why not?  Actually, she turned out to be really smart and had some excellent word play, so that was rather a bit of a win.  Also DS9, as I’ve said many times, is the best of all the Treks.

But I’m old now, and these days it takes a solid 24 hours to recover from a full night of drinking.  Which is tough.  Because, in media res, I can still party pretty good.  I can still drink plenty and find my way home at 530am.  Really the only thing missing is WoHop. ((WoHop, I miss you so much.  Wanton soup, Seschaun chicken, crispy noodles and ducksauce, and endless cups of tea at 5am.  Truly one of the joys of life.))  But man, the next day?  I feel like a succubus had visited me and drained me of all my life force.  Only minus the presumably at least momentary fun of a sexual encounter with a she-demon in the moonlight.

No, but really.  It’s weird.  Because I didn’t have a headache and I didn’t feel sick.  I was just…drained.  Just getting up to refill my water bottle seemed an inhuman burden.  And yet, I had this feeling.  How cool is it that we had a roommates’ night out together?  Nevermind that it was a roommates’ night out for roommates who are 25, not 35.  But still.  It’s a good feeling.

This Friday, I had no plans.  I was looking forward to a quiet night in, doing a bit of overdue blogging.  Only, around midnight, I heard Christian come out of his room.  “Oh, Christian’s up!” thought I.  So I texted him and asked if he wanted to have a quick drink in the Wohnküche.  Of course he did.  Whereupon did I enter the kitchen with a bottle of whiskey and he with a glass of wine.  Whereupon did he, seeing me with my “heavy artillery” (his words), replace said wine with a bottle of vodka.

From there, we embarked on an intellectual conversation of sorts.  He’s doing a PhD in social economics.  I know almost nothing about this subject, but he’s super fucking bright and really good at explaining things.  So I started asking him all sorts of questions about his work and the field in general.  Because when I meet people who have expertise in subject matters of which I’m ignorant, I make it a point to learn from them as much as possible.

Anyway, we talked and drank.  Drank and talked.  And next thing I know, we’re back at the local bar, having a beer.  And then possibly also Jameson.  Well, as you can imagine, that wrecked my Saturday.  Worth it though.  Totally worth it.  And at least today, Sunday, I was able to take it easy.  I made stock.  I cleaned the bathroom.  I did laundry.  Got a bit of Hebrew done, watched some DS9 and even had a video chat with Niki, which was bloody fantastic.

And I have to say, it’s pretty great to have this technology.  It’s not always easy to be away from your friends and family.  But in the last few weeks, I’ve had video chats with Niki, Amber and Vinny.  Charlotte and I talk by internet phone once every week or two.  It may not seem like much, but it goes a long way.

I had intended to say something about the whole political shitshow that’s going on at home; and here too, not for nothing.  But this is long enough, and I don’t want to get into it now.  So I’ll save it for next time.  Oh, and I also wanted to talk about the Room Escape me and Joschka did a few weeks ago.  That was great fun.  It was us, his girlfriend, and one of her colleagues.  This also turned into an all-night-and-next-day affair.  It was exhausting, but it was absolutely a blast.

So yeah, things are good.  Now if only I can find a few more hours for sleep…

זיי געסונט

An American in Berlin
19 January, 2017

So I was talking to Charlotte yesterday, and she was all, “What’s up with your blog?  How come you haven’t written in a while?  Well, you know what?  She’s right.  I haven’t written in a while.  It’s not that I haven’t wanted to, it’s just that I’ve been allocating my energies elsewhere.  It’s been full steam ahead on Project Hebrew, leaving little time for other ventures.  Not that I’m complaining.  In fact, I’m feeling pretty good about it.  That’s just the way things have been lately.

That, and writing takes a long time and requires rather a bit more alcohol than the ol’ language studies.  And since I, you know, work now, I’m not exactly keen to stumble into bed half-drunk at 3:30 in the morning.  Which is how this blogging thing often works, if you must know.

But yeah, anyway, I figured – after a bit of a reminder – that I probably should knock something out, even if it’s short.  That said, this will be a bit of a hodgepodge; trying to catch up on the last few weeks in one go while also trying to achieve Bed at a reasonable (for me) hour.

So a while back, I mentioned to Jared that I was feeling a bit “tight” lately, a bit stressed.  This may have been in the midst of the whole visa-Anmeldung-bank-health insurance saga. ((Oh yeah, I have health insurance now.  And if they gut Obama care, I may be forced to stay here.  Forever.))  Anyway, he says to me, and I paraphrase, “Dude, why don’t you read some fucking Aurelius?” ((That’d be the Roman Emperor/Philosopher King Marcus Aurelius, who wrote a journal that we call “Meditations” but which he simply called “τῶν εἰϲ ἑαυτόν” or “To Himself.”  Anyway, it’s essentially a tract of Stoic philosophy, which among other things, has been known to lie at the bedsides of some of our best presidents.))  This was a mighty fine suggestion.  After all, the down-to-earth thoughts of the down-to-earth Philosopher King have often helped to calm me down in the past, and to keep things in perspective.

I first encountered Aurelius in a survey of Western lit ((In the course of an Ancient History class, actually.  And credit where credit is due, Professor Hunt probably did more than anybody else to point me on my current path, not that he’d know.  In fact, I don’t think he’d remember me, even if I won a Nobel prize.  But he was certainly one of the most influential teachers I’ve ever had.)) during my senior year of college.  Indeed, so taken was I with this text that it became one of the three great motivating factors behind my desire to learn Greek, coming in third behind Homer and the great Thucydides.  The one brought me to Daitz and remains at the center of everything Dave.  On the other, I wrote my Master’s thesis.

But to this day, Aurelius – in Greek ((Despite being a Roman emperor, he wrote this work in Greek, which for the Romans was the language of learning, philosophy and scholarship.  As it well fucking ought to be.  And probably would be, if not for a) The Catholic Church and b) the fact that it’s a far sight harder than Latin.)) – has eluded me.  Which isn’t to say that Aurelius has eluded me.  Years and years ago I had an English copy of the text, which I shared with Jared.  He too was taken with it.  And, I think, this is how he knows it in the first place.  Anyway, he was right to suggest it.  The only thing was, I was determined that the next time I read this thing, it would be in Greek.

And there’s the rub.  I never took any classes on Stoicism, and as a result, I’m not familiar with the vocabulary.  To give but one example: In Greek, the word δύναμιϲ (dynamis) means first ability (as in, the ability to do something), and then, by extension, power.  From this we get all sorts of cool English words, like “dynamo,” “dynamic,” and “dynasty.”  But it seems that in a Stoic context, it takes on a new meaning of something like “arts” and/or “faculties (mental or otherwise).”  What I mean to say is, the hard part is not so much the words you’ve never seen before, but rather the words you already know but which now mean something totally new.  Δύναμιϲ is one example, but others abound.

So there’s that.  And then there’s the fact that MA draws heavily on the slave ((There was this phenomenon in Rome where it was very common to have Greek slaves.  But the Greek slaves could well be more educated than their masters.  And in the case of Epictetus, they could be full-on philosophers.)) -philosopher Epictetus.  Owing, then, to these two factors, I decided that as much as I might want to read Aurelius, really the place to start was with Epictetus.  Fortunately, I already had the text, albeit in the cheater’s Loeb edition.  By which I mean, all the left-side pages are the original Greek, but all the right-side pages are an English translation; hence “cheater’s” edition.

Normally, I’m not a fan of using Loeb’s.  In fact, I had a professor once who wouldn’t allow them in his classroom. ((Jacob Stern, rockin’ it old school!))  But in this case, the Loeb is what I had, and so that’s what I decided to use.  But returning to the question of vocabulary, having the English crutch has been quite helpful insofar as it’s a fast and accurate way to understand how Epictetus is repurposing older words.

But alright, let me be honest.  After three years of reading basically nothing but Homer, my skill-set as pertains to reading philosophy-prose is somewhat atrophied.  Yes, I could fight my way through it.  But having the English (and my iPhone Great Scott app) allows me to work through the text on the subway; which has really cut into my French reading-time; but that’s a whole ‘nother story. ((Two semicola in the same sentence?  That can’t be good form.  And yet…))

Right, the point was, so I’ve started reading Epictetus.  And you know what, Jared?  It’s really helping.  In more ways than you anticipated.  Obviously the philosophy is generally helping me to calm my shit down.  Which was the point.  But the funny thing is, just reading Greek puts me in a very calm state.  Even though it’s hard.  Even though it’s slow going at times.  But when I’m reading Greek, I enter this very chill and happy place.  Even in the midst of a crowded subway car where – and I cannot for the life of me understand this – people don’t know to take their backpacks off!  I mean, what the actual fuck people?! How did you not get this memo??  In a crowded subway car, take off your big-ass backpack and put it between your feet.  Also, move all the way into the car!  Do I need to teach you everything??  So you see, I can benefit from a bit of calming down.  And as I say, when I’m reading Greek, I don’t even notice this bullshit.

In this way, and others, it’s served to remind me how much I fucking love Greek.  It really is my fucking favorite.  As beautiful as French is, as fascinating as German is, as illuminating as Hebrew is, Greek is just the best.  It’s so precise.  So perfect.  And yet, so free.

So much for Epictetus; though surely more to come in future posts.  I mentioned French, and how I’m reading less of it.  As I indicated, I normally read French on the subway.  Sure, in the summer, I might take my boy Jules Verne to the park.  But in this arschkalt weather, it’s subway or bust.  And so, if I’m reading Greek, I’m not reading French.  Which is kind of not OK.  Because I do kinda love French, even if not as much as the Hellenic tongue.

Fortunately, just as I’m finding less time for la langue française in book form, I seem to have found a new conversation partner.  I may have, in the past, mentioned my friends Annett and Jan, who are just fantastic and who have done so much to help me get settled here.  In fact, it’s probably not an exaggeration to say I likely wouldn’t have been able to score my visa without their help.

They are also my “artist” friends.  In the past, I’ve spoken of my friends Zibs and Jan and how they are my “political” friends.  But Annett and (her) Jan are my artist friends.  Annett does (or did?  And will do again?) open mics with me.  Their friends are artists too.  So when we all hang out, it’s very much an artist crowd, which is very cool.

Now, Annett and Jan are German, as are most of their friends.  But when I met them, my German wasn’t at a great level.  So I know them as English speakers, and when it’s just the three of us, we mostly speak English.  But one thing I love about them, is when there’s a party, they don’t do the whole “Dave’s here, I guess we need to speak English” thing.  It’s sink or swim.  And lately I’ve been swimming.  Like, I actually go to parties where people only speak German and I speak (admittedly quite flawed) German with them.  It’s fantastic.

Anyway, they’ve got this friend, who is French, and obviously an artist.  Anyway, she is the first person I’ve met here for whom German is her second language but also doesn’t really speak a lot of English.  In other words, she’s the only person I know here where we only talk to each other in our second language.  Because normally, I’m either talking to native English speakers or native German speakers, right?

Well, we were drunkenly chatting at Annett’s birthday party and we hit upon the idea that we should meet up for a French-English conversation exchange.  Especially since her English and my French seem to be in roughly the same ballpark.  So that’s what we did on Monday afternoon.  And it was kinda funny.  We meet up at Potzdamer Platz for convenience, but not knowing where to actually go.  Whereupon we proceeded to decide on a café in German, because I can’t walk and talk French at the same time and likewise her with English.  Quickly – because it was so cold – we settled on the nearest bar/restaurant/café thingy.

I have to admit, I was a bit nervous.  I hadn’t done a proper French conversation exchange since I first met Charlotte, which was February of 2013.  And she’s not shy about telling me that I was pretty useless back then.  My only other experiences, then, with spoken French had been when visiting Charlotte in France and my two courses at the Alliance Française in New York.  I didn’t want to embarrass myself.  It’s not that I cared about making mistakes; that would be unavoidable.  But I was worried that I wouldn’t be able to hold a conversation or understand what was being said to me.  I mean, as well as I can read French – and I can read it pretty well, I think – I have a very hard time hearing the language.

Well, I’m please to report that I did quite well, actually.  I had no problem holding a conversation, and I was able to understand her quite well.  Not to say I didn’t make a ton of mistakes, or make long pauses while I searched for a word.  Not to say I didn’t have to ask her to repeat things from time to time or occasionally ask what a word meant.  But the fact is, we chatted together in French for a solid 45+ minutes.  I ain’t gonna lie, I was pretty pleased with myself.

Then we switched to English and did that for another 45+ minutes.  And you know what?  Her English was also full of mistakes.  But she expressed herself just fine.  So I don’t actually think it’s a stretch to say we’re more or less at the same level with each other’s language.  Which is really nice.  Because I know what it feels like when your partner is great at English and you suck at German or French.  But when you’re at the same place, it takes away a lot of the pressure.

Two other funny things from this I want to mention.  With German speakers, when I need a word, I’m very used to asking for the English.  For example, “Wie sagt man rude” – how do you say “rude?”  But here, when either of us needed a word, we’d turn to the German.  “Comment on dit einladen?” for example; How do you say “invite.”  Of course, the French word for “invite” is “inviter.”  And she did the same.  But the funny thing was, if I didn’t know a French word, or she didn’t know an English one, and we’d ask in German how to say it, and it always turned out to be the same word in English or French, like invite/inviter.

The other funny thing was – OK, I don’t know if it’s funny, ὠϲ ἔποϲ εἱπεῖν.  But when we were speaking French, she was totally at ease, totally herself, confident, in command.  And the moment we switched to English, her entire demeanor changed.  She became a bit shy, and her body language was much less confident.  She got better as we went along.  But there was this instantaneous change, where she almost became a different person.  It was fascinating to watch.  But it also made me think, what must I have looked like?  Who was I when I was struggling along in French?  Who did I become when we switched to English?  And who were we both when we were speaking German?  “Fascinating,” he said, raising a Spokean eyebrow.  All told, the plan is to meet up again next Monday.  Which I’m quite happy about.  It’s nice to have some actual French in my life.

So much for that.  But speaking of Potsdamer Platz, the Sunday before last, I went to go see Rogue One with my old CELTA mate Paul and his partner Lars, of whom I’d heard much but never actually met.  Rogue One.  Star Wars.  Gah!  So much to say!  Look, Star Wars was my absolute favorite movie growing up.  I still adore it.  But the prequels took a lot of the wind out of my sails.  And Episode VII was so disappointing that I’d resolved to just be done with the new movies and hereafter only ever watch the original three.

But Paul asked me if I wanted to go see Rogue One in IMAX 3D, and well, did I really have a good reason not to?  And oh my gawd you guys, I fucking loved it!  Star Wars is back, bitches!  I mean, I loved everything about it.  The characters, the story, the darkness.  And I know not everybody feels this way, but holy shit did I love the CG Peter Cushing Grand Moff Tarkin!  I mean, out of all of Star Wars, he is hands down one of the best characters they ever had.  And I loved seeing him again.  And, for me, he was spot-fucking-on.  Also, after watching three seasons of Hannibal, ((Have you watched it?  No?  Go watch it!  Now!)) I now officially adore Mads Mikkelson. ((Forget Anthony Hopkins, this man is fucking Hannibal.  (Clearly “fucking” is adverbial, modifying Hannibal and not joined with “is” which would be a very strange present progressive.  Hashtag sorry I’m an English teacher now.))  And he killed it!

And look, it’s not like everything was perfect.  For instance, why does Vader live in Mordor?  By which I mean, a) why did they poach the Mordor aesthetic but also b) why would a guy whose physical deformities result from being dropped into a volcano wish to live in a volcanic hellscape?  And it also left me feeling like, “Hang on, what exactly is Vader’s job anyway?”  Like, how do they justify this guy’s salary in the Imperial ledger?  And even if he doesn’t take a salary per se, what’s the line item on his Tower of Mordor or his Bacta tank?  And where does he fit in the Imperial org-chart?  Also, for that matter, what’s a Moff, much less a Grand Moff?  And are there other Grand Moffs?  And what’s Tarkin’s backstory anyway?  I’m sure it’s hella interesting.  I’d much rather watch that movie than The Han Solo Story: The Great Disney Moneygrab, tbh.

But all that is secondary.  The movie was so much FUN.  Which episodes I-III, VII definitely were not.  It captured the feel of the original SW.  Even if there was no Screen Crawl.  Even if the music wasn’t John Williams.  It felt right.  And oh my god, you guys, who came up with the idea of the Force Monks?  That was fucking brilliant.  They were fucking brilliant.

And they got the aesthetics right.  Everything looked like it should have.  Everything sounded like it should have.  And yet – apart from the Force homeworld of “Jeddah” – all the easter-eggy references where there, but never too on the nose.  None of this JJ Abrams fanboy shit.  This movie really brought me back to my childhood and my deep-down love for Star Wars.

One last thing about the movie I want to mention, and it’s another thing I know not everybody agrees with me on.  But I have to say, that scene where Vader just demolished everybody in his path was…do we even have words for how badass-amazing this was?  I could have untied my shoelaces with my bottom teeth, so wide open was my jaw during this scene.

I spoke to my brother about this, and he wasn’t feeling it.  He was all, “I dunno, man, it seemed kinda out of character for him.  We never saw Vader move like that.  And he shouldn’t need to.  It was almost like the stupid shit they did with Yoda in the prequels (which I agree was travestic, btw).”  And look, those aren’t unfair points.  And maybe I just wanted to justify it because I loved it so much.  But my attitude was this.

Vader needed to get those plans back, by any means necessary.  If that meant busting out every last one of his Force powers and going balls-out, so be it.  The reason we never saw it before is because Vader never needed to move like that before.  This was the most extenuating of circumstances.  “But in Ep.IV,” he said, “he had the stormtroopers board the ship first and do the dirty work.  He had the stormtroopers search for the plans.”  True, but at that point, they had the ship in their hold.  It wasn’t going anywhere. ((Though obviously he never considered the escape pods, which I mean, yeah, that’s a yuuuge oversight from a guy who just moments ago said “tear this ship apart.”  But I’m sure the officer who decided not to fire on the escape pod got a nice choking for his non-efforts.  Anyway.))  Whereas here, he had to get those plans before the Corellian Corvette could escape.  And we could go on.  But my point is, I thought that scene was incredible, and watching Darth Vader go medieval was breathtaking.

One thing I do regret, in hindsight, is that we didn’t get any Vader/Tarkin interactions in this movie.  I didn’t notice it at the time.  But of course I had to talk to Dale about the movie after the fact, because Dale is the biggest Star Wars fan I know.  And he pointed out that one thing which worked so well in the original film was the way in which Tarkin and Vader humanized each other with their banter.  And he’s right.  I can’t help but feel like that was a missed opportunity in Rogue One.  But that’s as may be.  When all is said and done, I adored this movie.  It made me love Star Wars again.

I honestly don’t know if I’ll bother with the other movies that are to come.  I really don’t hold out much hope for Episodes VIII & IX.  And the Han Solo movie does feel like little more than a moneygrab.  But I do know this.  I will watch Rogue One over and over.  And I’ll watch it together with the originals.  Where it belongs.

Welp, that’s all for now.
זיי געסונט

An American in Berlin
31 December, 2016
New Year’s Edition

I’ve never been one for New Year’s resolutions.  Maybe because I know I’m not the sort of person to keep them.  Or maybe because, when I look at my life, I don’t see anything I wish to drastically change overnight.  Or maybe I’m just lazy.  Who knows?  That said, I do have some goals for the coming year, things I wish to accomplish.  So in the interest of accountability, I’m going to set them down here.  If I fail to achieve them, you’re welcome to come find me this time next year and say, “Good job, asshole.”

The first goal is one I mentioned many times before.  When the Jewish new year rolls around in September, I’d like to have my Hebrew up to a level where I can keep up with the weekly Torah readings.  I’d like to make it through all five books, on schedule.  The good news is, I’m ahead of schedule.  I’ve been hitting the books pretty hard of late, and I now see no reason why I shouldn’t finish my course book by March or April.

Of course, this won’t make me a Hebrew scholar by any means.  But it should give me all the necessary tools to work through the Torah well enough to know what’s going on.  And part of me imagines that this will become for me like Homer. ((On more which later.))  Something that I read over and over for the rest of my life.

Which isn’t to say I’m finding “religion” (so to speak) in my Hebrew studies.  Far from it.  Indeed, all the things that turned me off to the religious side of Judaism when I was in Hebrew school still piss me off.  The blind devotion to a god.  The fact that that god generally seems to be lacking in self confidence and also kind of a dick.  The whole “chosen people” shtick.

On the other hand, it’s such a part of my heritage.  And it’s so much a part of western culture.  And the fact that the ambiguities of the text – and of the language itself – bear reading and re-reading.  In a very strange and unexpected way, I can see reading Torah as being a part of my life going forward.

In the meantime, however, I still need to finish my “first year Hebrew.”  And as I said, that should happen around springtime.  So what to do between that and Rosh HaShanah?  Well, to that end, my dear Aunt Cookie has promised to give me the chumash that Uncle Art once gave to her.  So I’m thinking I may take a crack at the Book of Esther to keep my skills up.  After all, the Purim story is a good yarn, no?

The next goal is to get back to Greek.  Before I left, my Homeric reading group had relaunched, albeit without the eminent Daitz.  It was the highlight of any given week.  But since I got here – and partly since I have nobody to read with – I’ve really done precious little.  And frankly, that’s unacceptable.

So in the new year, I’ve got to get back to Homer.  I’ve got to get back to reading a little bit each week.  But I’ve also got to make an effort to expand my Greek horizons.  Since I finished grad school, the only Greek I’ve really read has been Homer.  Which, one the one hand, I mean, if you can only read one thing, it should be The Blind Bard.  But on the other hand, who says I can only read one thing?

Last year I got back to Herodotus for a bit, and a few years ago I re-read Oedipus Tyrannus.  With respect to the latter, my original plan was to start with Oedipus (which I’d already read in grad school) and then proceed to the rest of the cycle – Oedipus at Colonus and Antigone.  But I got sidetracked “live tweeting” the first play and never got beyond it; though that was an admittedly fun project.

Oh, and there was the time me and my old friend Sam tried doing up a modern translation of Euripides’ Helen.  But Sam started a new life as a real-estate broker and the project subsequently died.  I never finished reading the play.  But being that one of the books I inherited from Daitz was his very own hand-annotated edition of the Helen, I will surely one day return to it.

But back to broadening my horizons.  One of the casualties of a virtually entirely Homer based reading diet is that my vocabulary has dwindled.  And my ability to read different styles has atrophied.  I didn’t spend all those years ((And all that money.)) to become a Homer-only reading dilettante.  I did all that to become a Greek reading dilettante.  So in addition to getting back to The Poet, I also need to start back up with some prose and/or tragedy.  The obvious starting point is Herodotus; nearest in vocabulary to Homer and more or less straightforward in style.  I have goals beyond that, to be sure.  But that’s enough to start.

And then there’s a French translation project I’ve had on the back burner for a few years now.  During the back end of 2013 and the front end of 2104, I wrote something like a book.  Or rather, a series of loosely connected stories.  One of those stories takes place in France.  So I’d really like to try my hand translating that into French, in the style and language of Bedier’s rendition of Tristan et Iseult.  Whatever I come up with is sure to be chock-full of errors.  To that end, I’ve discussed (many times) with Charlotte enlisting her help with the project.  But I’d very much like to at least knock together a first draft on my own.

It will no doubt be a long and tedious project.  So long, in fact, that I don’t set for myself the goal of finishing it next year.  Simply getting started and making good progress will be enough.  But I really don’t know what I’m in for.  It may be over-ambitious.  My French is certainly good enough to read Jules Verne on the subway.  But writing in French, c’est une autre chose entièrement.  That said, I think there’s no better way to improve one’s skills at a language than to become proficient in the writing of it; short of teaching it anyway, ((It’s amazing how much I’m learning about the nuts and bolts of English by teaching it.)) which I’m clearly not qualified to do.

Finally – lest I set too many goals – is my Federalist project.  This is something that’s been kicking around in my brain for I don’t even know how long.  By way of preamble, the Federalist papers were a series of essays written by Alexander Hamilton, James Madison and John Jay (though mostly H&M) to the state of New York in an effort to persuade them to ratify the new constitution.  To this day, they remain some of the most in depth writings by our founders giving us an insight as to how they viewed the new document and what sort of country we would have.

Every student at least learns about the Federalist papers in social studies.  But few, if any, of us have ever read any of them in full, much less the whole body of work.  Every now and then, one of them comes up in the news.  Most recently, Federalist 68, which is about the electoral college.  But even then, we only get cherry picked passages that suit the purpose of whatever news organization we subscribe to.

Anyway, ((My dear dear friend Ashley recently pointed out to me that I may overuse this word.  I’ll accept that, with the caveat that it’s part of my “style.”)) my idea for this “Federalist project” is to read through them, one by one.  And then to do a blog post on each of them.  Some kind of “in depth” reading and reaction; how I understand it in a historical as well as a modern context.  It’s not the sort of thing I expect many people to be interested in, to be sure.  But it’s still something I’d like to do.  And I’m not sure when I can start.  But if I can get it started sometime in 2017 I’ll be happy.  And even if I do one a month, or even one every two months, it will be worthwhile.  It will take years to complete, no doubt.  But what’s the rush. ((He says, assuming our country will survive a Trump administration.))  Anyway, add it to the list of sacred texts – Homer, Torah – that I would like to constantly be in the background of my life.

Right, so those are the goals I’m setting for the new year.  Read Hebrew.  Read Greek.  Write French.  Study the Federalist.  That should keep me plenty busy.  Oh, and while not a goal per se, I assume I’ll do another year of blogging about the Yankees.  At some point I’ll have to sit down and talk about this with Nate – my partner in crime when it comes to sports blogging – but we had such a good time of it last season, I see no reason not to do it again.

And then of course, there’s Berlin; and in a narrower sense, Köpenick.  I spoke about this in my last post, so need to dive deep here.  But obviously I intend to do a good bit of exploring this year; do a good bit of getting to know this place that is for now my home.  And with that, obviously, I include improving my German.  I don’t file these under goals, so much as necessities.  But I suppose they fit with the nature of this post.

So much for goals.  And the nature of this post.  There’s one other thing I want to talk about before I end, however, and it’s got nothing to do with goals for the New Year.  Rather, it’s about Hebrew. ((I know what you’re thinking.  “Oy vey.”))

One of the things that I like about my course book is that the exercises in the accompanying workbook are passages taken directly from biblical texts.  In other words, they don’t make up lower level “fake” Hebrew; they give you the real thing.  Anyway, up til now, it’s all been stuff that has no special meaning to me.  A bunch of stuff from Genesis and Exodus, plus as many ways as you can think of to say “God’s kind of a big deal.”  But today, I came across something unexpected, something I didn’t just know, but knew what it sounded like; something I could sing the melody to.  It’s the prayer they sing when they take the Torah scrolls out of the ark:

כי מציונ תצא תורה ודבר–יחוח מירושלם

And now, I’ll transliterate it, because I think anybody who spent more than a few boring Saturday mornings in Schul will recognize it instantly.

Kee mitziyon taytzey torah, u-divar adonayh meerushilayim.

Apparently it’s from the the book of Isiah, 2:3.  Like you, I suspect, I had no idea where it came from, much less what it means.  But unlike most of the prayers we’re forced to recite during Shabbat services, at least this one has some context.  The sound of these words, and the melody that goes with them is synonymous with opening the ark.  As opposed to the other stuff, when you hear this, you know what’s about to happen.

And it sticks with me, not because of the words, but because of the melody.  It’s so solemn, so haunting.  The music sets it apart.  The music tells you, “Hey, wake up asshole, ((Because obviously you were nodding off.)) this is a big deal now.”  And don’t get me wrong.  I’m not a fan of the ceremony.  I never liked the part where you’re supposed to touch your siddur to the scroll and then kiss it.  That sort of reverence for anything of any kind strikes me as over the top.  But the music gets you.  Or it gets me, anyway.

But it also gets to the heart of one of my major problems with my Jewish education, and one I discussed many times with one of my colleagues during my time working for a Jewish school last year. ((These were always interesting discussions, and ones which I valued very much.  My colleague – friend even – grew up in an orthodox home; had a Hebrew name; wore a kippah.  He very clearly, and happily, identified as Jewish.  But for all his orthodoxness, his education mirrored mine, at least in this respect: He also couldn’t read Hebrew; he was also frustrated that this shit was forced on him in a rote fashion without sufficient explanation of the text.  And we griped often that this was not a way to make people love their faith.))  Namely that they teach you to learn this shit by rote, but nobody ever bothers to tell you what the words mean.

So anyway, I come across these words in my workbook, and as part of a longer passage mind you.  And if it were ((Subjunctive, bitches!  Sorry, I just taught this.)) anything else, I’d simply file it under the “God is kind of a big deal” heading.  But it’s not anything else.  It’s these words I’ve been hearing my whole life, this lingering melody that pulls the whole congregation together for the big moment.

I should pause for a second and explain what I mean by “pulls the congregation together.”  One of the things I admire about a Jewish service is the, well, democratic, nature of it.  I’ll see if I can get this into words.  You see, you’ve got the Rabbi, who leads the whole spiel.  But he mostly just lets you know what bit you’re up to.  Then it’s largely up to you to do the praying on your own.  So you look around, and you see people – let’s be honest, mostly the olds – swaying and rocking (davening) at their own pace, doing their own thing.  For the most part, it’s a rather private affair; just one that you have to do with other people.  There are only a handful of prayers/songs that we all do out loud and together.  But for the most part, if you’re serious – and I clearly was/am not – you hide out under your talis and do your own thing.  This is what I mean by democratic.

Anyway, this opening the ark, this is something that’s done together.  So it’s a kind of a big deal.  And at the risk of being repetitive, it has context.  Unlike Aleynu or Ashrei, for example, you know what this is about, even if you don’t understand the words.  But now, finally, I do.  And in a way, it’s a bit of a let down.  All it means is, “For the law (or Torah) shall go forth from [Mt.] Zion, and the word of God [shall go forth] from Jerusalem.”  Like I said, file it under “God is kind of a big deal.”  So in that sense, it’s kind of a disappointment.

And yet, it hit me pretty hard.  It was a kind of “holy shit” moment, no pun intended.  This thing I’d been hearing forever, this melody that I kinda love, I finally know what it means!  Ironically, then, the meaning itself doesn’t really matter so much.  It’s more that the veil has been lifted.  The secret has been discovered.  It was a powerful moment, to read those words, and to understand them.  Not religiously, maybe not even spiritually.  Or maybe spiritually, I don’t know.  All I can say is, I caught some feels from it.

There’s one other thing from Shul, one other prayer, that has context, even when you don’t know what the words mean.  Though in this case, it’s not because of the music, but rather the lack thereof.  I’m talking, of course, about the kaddish, the prayer for the dead.  And for this, I still don’t know what the words mean.  But it’s solemn, and you know what’s going on when it happens.  But in contrast to the last bit, which everybody is supposed to sing, the kaddish is said only by those grieving for someone they lost in the last 30 days/11 months and then again on the yearly anniversary.

In other words, it takes something that, in mind, is very private, and makes it very very public.  Which, if you want to be optimistic, is a rather beautiful thing.  It’s a way of saying the whole community is here for you in your time of suffering.  And indeed, the only word that the rest of the congregation will say is “amen.” ((Which is a Hebrew word, btw, for all you goyim who are always saying it.))

Which is the reason I bring it up.  My uncle Michael, my dad’s brother, recently lost his seven year battle with cancer. ((#fuckcancer))  Until now, I’ve avoided talking about this here.  I’ve wanted to keep it private.  But I know that anybody who reads this is here for me, so it’s in the spirit of the kaddish that I make it public.  Though I won’t go into much details now.  But I will say that it has been difficult for me to be away during that time.  My last memory of him is when the whole family Skyped in from Rosh HaShanah at my brother’s house.  I was in Saxony at the time, with Charlotte.  I got to have a little chat with everybody, but I’ll always remember it because it was the last time I spoke with Michael.  And he looked pretty good at the time; obviously he was doing well enough to travel out to the Island from BK.

I remember chatting with Charlotte that night about why I’ve always loved family gatherings with my dad’s side.  It’s always been an informal affair; even if it was more formal when I was kid.  But formality, for this clan, simply meant sitting at the same table and punning.  But there was no dressing up, nothing fancy.  People did what they wanted, hung out with who they wanted. ((At this last gathering, my brother sent me a picture of the whole family together in his living room.  For most families, this would mean a picture of everybody together, smiling.  And they are smiling.  But they’re also all flipping me the bird.  Which is the most Starr family thing ever.  It’s one of my favorite pictures that I have.))  One of my fondest memories is when the guitar-minded people would peel off to a different area and just play.  This was usually me, my brother, Michael and my other uncle Richard.  Maybe my dad would pop in, maybe a cousin or two.  For a few years, me and Richard were working on some duets.

But I loved this, because it was a very free and easygoing time.  You’d sit and listen to somebody play, then they’d pass the guitar to the next person.  Somebody would always compliment somebody else’s playing, but not because you were supposed to.  You’d only offer a compliment if you had actual admiration for a certain skill, or for a way they handled a certain piece.  But there’s certain music I’ll always associate with those gatherings.  The Canarios.  Sor’s variations.  Richard always plays in the traditional classical style, with one foot elevated.  But Michael didn’t do that.  He always played like a folk player, with the guitar just resting across his leg.  It’s funny.  I’d forgotten about that til just now.

There’s going to be a memorial service next weekend.  I won’t be there.  Which I hate.  But my mother has been on me to write something for the service.  And honestly, I don’t know where to start or what to say.  And I think that’s the reason I’ve written this last bit.  As a way to get some ideas down, to point me in a direction.  Because I want to say something.  Our family has had to deal with too many of these.  There aren’t enough of us left, and I need to find a way to be a part of this family.  It was important before.  It’s more important now.

But who the hell wants to end on a down note?  My boss at one of my language schools – my first boss, actually; the first guy to give me a shot in this town – gave me a €50 euro “Christmas” bonus.  He’s Jewish, actually.  I don’t know if he knows I’m Jewish though.  I’d like him to know that, but I don’t know how to bring that up in a not-awkward way.  But that’s beside the point.  He gave me a very nice bonus.  And so I decided to use it for what it was, a holiday gift.

So first, I bought myself a new pipe, which I’m very happy with.  And then today, I bought a “Heisenberg” hat. ((cf. Breaking Bad.))  I tried on a black one in the store and posted it to Instagram asking for feedback.  I was worried it looked too…Hasidic.  Or alternatively, ex-clown-turned-depression-era-hobo.  Anyway, Dale – who can always be counted on for these sorts of things – suggested I go for “charcoal” instead of black.  I put “charcoal” in quotes, because that was his word, whereas I would have simply said “grey.”  But that’s why you can count on Dale for these sorts of things.  In the event, though, they only had black, so it was a moot point.

Anyway, I went back to the store today and not only did they suddenly ((Or did I not notice it before?)) have one in grey/charcoal, but they’d also marked it down.  So that’s what I bought.  And I love it.  It’s very me.  Or at least, that’s what Instagram had to say about the black one. ((Though I did receive the following comments: “Bonus points for looking like Rabbi Starr”; “You look like Krusty’s dad”; “Oy…where’s your peyos! Im gonna plotz.”))  But I do think it’s me.  And being grey/charcoal, it has the advantage of being rather less Hasidic; even if also a touch less Heisenberg-y.  Still though, I can rock it.  So if nothing else, I’ll enter 2017 looking rather distinguished.  I think.

זיי געסוט
Please.

An American in Berlin
28 December, 2016
Holiday Edition

So, Christmas in Berlin.  I didn’t have a plan.  Or, if I did, my plan was to go see Star Wars and eat Chinese food.  In other words, try for a “Jewish Christmas.”  But then I got invited to a party on Friday night.  Cindy, Joschka’s girlfriend, was having a Christmas dinner party and was kind enough to ask me along.  Obviously, I wasn’t about to turn that down.

Getting there was easy enough.  Her apartment is also in the East, so I was actually able to just ride the tram there, which was quite nice.  I have very mixed feelings about the tram, the Straßenbahn.  On the one hand, I find it charming and romantic.  It’s delightfully oldschool.  It even makes me think of Brooklyn-that-was, though not any Brooklyn that I ever knew.  After all, the baseball team was originally called the Trolley Dodgers; only later shortened to Dodgers. ((OK, originally called the Brooklyn Superbas or whatever, but whatever.))  Also, the Straßenbahn is primarily associated with East Berlin.  I don’t have the full history, but I gather it’s something along the lines of: The Soviets left antiquated infrastructure in place, while in the West, most of the tracks were torn up in the name of “progress.”  That’s my impression anyway.

On the other hand, however, the cars are very narrow and were clearly designed for a smaller population.  So if you try using it during the day, it can be pretty hellish.  And obviously, depending on the track situation, ((In some places, the tracks are separated from the street/traffic; in other places, they’re very much in the middle of it.)) they can suffer the caprices of traffic; though not as bad as buses.  Though once, I did get stuck behind a parked garbage truck and we just sat for like 10 minutes.

Putting aside the philosophical pros & cons, though, it’s very often the best way to get around in this part of town.  While I do live fairly close to an S-Bahn station, everything out here sort of points towards “the city” so that there’s not a great subway network connecting the various ‘hoods in Köpenick.  In any case, I took the tram to the party.  And since it was late enough, it was a perfectly lovely ride.

The party itself was lovely.  Cindy has got a really nice apartment way up on the 19^th floor with a lovely view of the surrounding area.  OK, there’s not much to see, but it’s still nice, all the way up there.  The flat itself is also just really nice – the furniture, the kitchen, the bookshelves, etc.  Great place to spend an evening, even if it wasn’t Christmas dinner.

But it was Christmas dinner, and of course, my first in Germany.  The meal, I’m told, was traditional German.  Roast duck, Rotkohl (red cabbage) and either Knödeln or Klöße.  The latter are a sort of boiled potato dumpling, though they’re not stuffed with anything; just a sort of solid – albeit soft and fluffy – potato.  Maybe like a Matzah ball made out of potato.  As for the name, I guess either is valid, though the first is easier for me to pronounce.  The point is, the food was fantastic.  And there was so much wine.

The group consisted of myself, Joschka and Cindy, plus two of her friends; a gay Italian fellow whose German was impressively good and lady who, if I had to guess, was probably 8-10 years older than me.  Both of them studied Medieval lit, so we hit it off right away.  Plenty to talk about, which besides just being nice, was also a relief.  You know, since the whole night was in German.    

As far as that goes, I did pretty well.  I was able to function, participate and even land a few jokes for the majority of the evening.  Only towards the very end, when things got drunkenly slurred and slangy was I forced to kind of check out.  But by that point, I’d already taken a little nap, so that if I was going to be judged for anything, it probably wasn’t going to be my language skills.  But more on that later.

I wish I could say that my (comparative) language success at the party was some kind of positive progress indicator of my overall functionality with the language.  And, I guess, on some level it is.  I don’t think I’d have fared so well a few months ago.  But it also doesn’t seem to translate to my wider life here.

What I mean is, everybody at the party was of the highly educated variety.  They all speak a rather clear and grammatically “correct” version of the language.  Which is not something you can say about most people, in any language.  It’s certainly not how I speak English, even though I’m perfectly capable of code-switching into that register.

The point is, being able to pull off a passing show at the party with that crowd didn’t stop me from having a misunderstanding at the grocery store cash register today.  It doesn’t make it any easier to understand one of my roommates, who, by the way is a truly lovely chap, but whose speech is often hard for me to discern.

But whatever, the party was a great time.  I landed a few jokes, which was great.  And by landed, I mean, got them off in time, and they were funny enough to make people laugh.  No small feat, as far as I’m concerned.  And I had my nap.

My friends at home know that it’s basically impossible for me to go to a party and not fall asleep somewhere at some point.  It’s just a fact of life.  Part of that has to do with people always starting their parties so damn early.  If they would just open the doors at 11:30, I’d have no problem.  I’d have napped at home.  But no, people always seem to want to start around six or seven.

This, by the way, is one of the things I love about Jared’s dad.  For years now, when there would be a party at their place, we’d eat well, drink better and invariably Paul would find some comfy chair, I’d find another, and we’d both be out.  The other side of this coin, btw, is that I wake up refreshed and full of energy so that I’m always the last to leave; probably staying later than my hosts would like.

And so it was at this party.  Last to leave, I mean.  I don’t think I overstayed.  In fact, I’m fairly confident that I made a good (enough) impression on my hostess.  Which, of course, matters to me on two levels.  One, I’m there as Joschka’s friend – even though she invited me ((I don’t know, but my guess is she asked him to ask me along.  I don’t think he asked her if he could bring me, in other words.)) – so I don’t want to reflect poorly on him.  But also, these are new people.  I don’t have all that many friends here.  You want to make a good impression.

In the end, nobody seemed bothered by my nap.  And I tried to explain that falling asleep was the best compliment I could give, because it meant I felt comfortable enough to do so.  And I did mean that.  I’ve been here just shy of six months, and it’s the first time I’ve fallen asleep in a social setting; the first time I’ve felt comfortable enough to do so.  That might be a strange thing for most people to say, but it’s about the most Dave thing that there is, party-wise.

The next day, I woke up with a mild hangover and a craving for noodle soup.  Though to be fair, I crave noodle soup most days.  Only problem, fucking everything in my neighborhood was closed.  So I wound up taking the tram (that tram again!) two neighborhoods over to Friedrichshagen.  I’d never been there before, and it was absolutely adorable.  Although I was at first annoyed that my regular spot was closed, in the end I was glad I got to see a new part of town.

Once there, the place which Yelp told me was open, was also closed.  Fortunately, there was a Japanese place next door that was still open.  So I had my lunch there.  They didn’t have noodle soup though, so I had to “settle” for miso soup and chicken teriyaki, which seemed to have a tempura like shell.  It was really good.  And the salad that came with it was also delicious.  I kinda loved this little spot and I had it all to myself.  I think I’ll have to go back there.

In the end, that wound up being my “Chinese” “Jewish Christmas” dinner.  I didn’t make it out of the house on Christmas day, but that’s OK.  I’m pretty happy with the way it all worked out.  And as a side note, this is one of the joys of finally having an unlimited metro card.  In the past, I wouldn’t have gone anywhere requiring a train ride, as it would have meant adding an extra fiver onto the cost of my meal.  But now?  Let’s go!

I had this whole plan for Monday, the 26^th.  My roommates were all gone for the holidays.  So I was going to go shopping and pick up a bunch of stuff for the house.  Soap, sponges, laundry detergent, toilet paper.  You know, show I know how to be a decent roommate.  I also wanted to go food shopping.  For some reason ((OK, I needed more bones for stock.)) I really wanted to braise up some big ol’ chicken legs.

Only problem, fucking everything – everything – was closed.  On Monday, the 26^th.  Come on people, work with me here.  Yelp told me there was a supermarket open several tram stops away, so I figured I might as well go.  Of course they were closed.  But it wasn’t a wasted trip.

One of the benefits of all these incidental tram rides is that they’re letting me discover more of the area.  And this area is beautiful.  Apparently it’s known as the Green Lungs of Berlin; maybe I mentioned that before.  Anyway, there’s water and parks and old buildings and it’s all very very pretty.  I really can’t wait for the weather to turn so I can start enjoying all this part of the city has to offer.

The funny thing is, in many ways, it doesn’t really feel like Berlin out here.  Or, at least, not the things people think of when they think of Berlin.  It’s got a very outer-borough feel to it.  I’ve already begun referring to central Berlin as “the city.”  As in, “I’m going to go into the city this weekend,” or “I work in the city.”  Certainly it’s not the arrangement I had in mind when I decided to try my luck in this town.

And indeed, most people seem to find it a bit odd.  When I tell people where I live, their first reaction is, invariably, “Shit, that’s far!”  And their first question is, invariably, “Why?”  Followed by some sort of “How long do you plan on staying there?”  And they’re right, in a sense.  It is fucking far.  It basically takes an hour to get anywhere; though if transfers weren’t such a hassle, you could shave anywhere from 10-20 minutes, depending on where you’re headed.

As to the “why” question, well, the truth is, this is the first place – after months of searching – that actually offered to take me.  I simply didn’t want to wait any longer.  Though, if I’m honest, I didn’t quite realize how far it was at the time.

But the truth is, I really like it here.  I like my roommates.  I love my room.  And I can’t wait to live in this area when the Spring rolls around.  Really, though, it goes deeper than that.  My last few years in New York, I was getting very tired of the city, of the bullshit.  And yes, part of that was just the fucking cost of it; nobody can afford to live in New York.  That, at least, is not a problem here.

But I’d begun to tire of the whole “city” thing.  And yet, suburbs clearly are not for me.  I can’t live somewhere where you need to get in the car just to get a beer or a snack.  And all of a sudden, this seems like the best of both worlds.  It’s still a part of the “city,” but it’s also outside it.  Yet it’s not a suburb; there’s great mass transit.  Maybe one day I’ll want to end up in the country, in New England maybe.  Or maybe I’ll want to end up somewhere in Brooklyn, somewhere far enough from, but also close enough to, the city.  For now, at least, Köpenick fits the bill pretty well.  Strange as it may seem to my friends who live “in the city.”

I love my fucking enameled cast-iron braising pot.  I fucking love it.  Last week I cooked dinner for the roommates.  I did up a salad with a honey-mustard/cider vinegar dressing, which was alright, but probably too hard on the mustard.  The highlight, though, was a braised pork loin with apples and leeks (and of course my chicken stock!).  Made in my braising pan, obvi.  Came out great, and we had a very nice night, just chilling in the Wohnküche and drinking wine.

And today, I finally got around to making those braised chicken legs.  A few weeks ago, before I bought the pan, I had roasted some chicken legs.  And they tasted pretty darn good, if I do say so meself.  But the thing I’ve always hated about roasted chicken legs is that they’re simply too much work.  You’re always fighting to get the meat off the bones.  These braised ones though, man, they were great.  I did the classic mirepoix of course, and did the braise with a mix of my stock and white wine.  The flavor was a treat.  But more than that, the meat just slid off the bone.  And all I could think was, “Enameled cast-iron braising pan, I love you so much.”  It’s a deep dark blue.  It’s beautiful.  I love it.  Maybe Imma name it.

Oh, one last Christmas story.  Every year since 2010, I’ve spent Christmas with my dear friend Flare (aka Jen), whom I’ve known since high school, and her family.  Howsoever it started, it’s by now become an actual tradition.  And it was strange not to be there this year.  But thanks to the magic of Internet, she FaceTimed me in yesterday.  Man, it was great to see her.  I got to see her mom, with whom I got closer this past year as she had me over doing work around her house when I was unemployed.  I also got to see Hassel (aka Jess), who went to school with Flare and whom I’ve also known forever.  But even the rest of the family jumped on the FaceTime and were genuinely happy to see me and have a quick hello.  It was a really warm feeling.

It was also great just to catch up.  After the round of hellos and well-wishes, Flare and Hassel brought the phone into the kitchen, and we just chatted for a while.  I love those people; have loved them for more than half my life already.  It was so great to see them.  And it was nice to be a part of Christmas with them – to which I’ve actually become quite accustomed – even if only for a few minutes.  I dunno, it’s one things when your friends feel like family.  But when your friends’ families make you feel like family too, that’s pretty damn special.

Well, I’m sure there’s more to say.  I haven’t really spoken about my job at all.  And there was that bombing thing.  But I’m feeling pretty writer’s-blocked lately; the words are fighting me.  It’s easier just to work through my Hebrew course book and watch Deep Space Nine. ((#BestOfTheTreks))  So I think I’ll stop here and pick up again another time.  Til then…

זיי געסונט

An American in Berlin
21 December, 2016

I have to admit, for the longest time, it’s felt like two steps forward, one step back over here.  Oh, you found a job?  Great, go a get a visa before you can work.  Oh, you got your visa?  Great, go get your Anmeldung before you can get a bank account.  Oh, you got your bank account?  Great, wait for you debit card to come in the mail before you can buy a yearly metro ticket.  Oh, you got your debit card?  Well, now you get to wait until your PIN comes in the mail before you can use it.  Wait, can’t I just go to the bank and ask for a new PIN?  Hahaha, fuck you, no.

Today, I’m happy to say it’s finally…fucking finally…coming together.  Today was a hugely productive day.  Maybe not so much in real terms, but certainly in terms of starting to feel like a regular joe who just lives in Berlin with no headaches beyond the usual.  Funnily enough, the day started somewhat inauspiciously.

I was scheduled to have a full day one-to-one lesson with an advanced level student.  It’s only fair to say, I quite like working with this guy.  He’s very chatty, very smart, very curious.  We work 1:1 from 9-2 – which is a long time to spend with one student – but honestly, it really flies by.  Anyway, last week, he mentioned that he would probably take Tuesday or Wednesday off to spend time with his family. ((I only have him on Tuesdays and Thursdays.))  I was secretly hoping he’d take Wednesday off, so I wouldn’t lose the day’s pay.  But obviously, I couldn’t say that to him; that’d be an unfair pressure to put on the guy.

Anyway, as I didn’t hear from him or the school, I naturally assumed he’d decided on Wednesday.  And then he never showed up.  So around 9:45, I called the school and asked what was up.  And the answer was glorious.  He’d actually cancelled today’s lesson, but since nobody told me, I would get the full day’s pay.  Cha-ching. Best of both worlds, honestly.

Which apparently is what we all – freelance English teachers, I mean – think.  So I popped into the office to drop off the attendance sheet, and there was K sitting at S’s desk.  Or, rather, sitting at K’s desk.  S is the guy that hired me, on the recommendation of my CELTA mates Paul and Alice.  Only, S’s last day was Friday.  Which I only learned on Thursday.  Quite a shock, considering S was my contact for literally everything at this job.  Which was great, because S is an absolutely lovely guy.  And also gay.  Which meant we could have slightly flirtatious but entirely non-threatening banter.  But now K is the new S.  And K is tall and British and super cute.  Which means we can’t have any kind of flirtatious banter because now that’s inappropes and also Trump has officially ruined innocuous, flirtatious office banter for everybody.

Oh, but the point was, I dropped off the attendance card, and K asked how I was doing.  So I told her about the cancellation and tried to sound professionally and appropriately disappointed about it.  To which she literally responded, “Cha-ching.”  To which I responded in the millennial, uptalk-high-pitch, ironic-whisper-voice, “yeeaah, I didn’t want to saaaaay that, buuuut…”  To which she responded, “We all think it.”  To which I responded…literally nothing.  Because Trump has ruined innocuous, flirtatious office banter for literally everybody.

Anyway, don’t get me wrong.  I like my job, and I like working with this student.  But if you give me the choice of a day off with full day’s pay or a full day’s work with a full day’s pay, well, which one do you think I’m going to choose?  And this, friends, was my gateway to a fully productive day.  Because, see, if I knew in advance of the cancellation, I’d have slept late and had a lazy day.

But here I was, up, awake and out.  Time to get shit done.  First thing I did was go to the train station and – finally – buy my yearly train ticket.  I guess in February I’m going to get some official ticket in the mail.  But on the spot, the gave me a paper ticket that’s good until the end of January.  But what a fucking win.  No more buying single ride tickets like a schnook tourist.  Now I can ride the metro as much as I damn well please without a second thought.  Berliner achievement unlocked.  I’m becoming more and more a jelly donut by the day. ((Ich bin ein Berliner.  #lookitup))

Next thing, I went to TK Max ((It’s TJ Max.  But for some reason, in Germany, it’s TK Max.)) and bought an enameled cast-iron braising pan I’ve had my eye on.  €40.  Not exactly le crueset, but my my visa is only for two years.  I expect it will last that long.  When I go back to the states, my roommates can gladly have it.  So now, finally, I can braise things again.  Man, I can’t tell you how much I’ve missed braising things.

Speaking of things I’ve been desperately missing, cooking-wise, I also made chicken stock today.  First time I’ve made stock since I’ve been here. ((Not counting the time I showed Joschka how to make stock over at his place.  But I’m not counting that, because a) it was his stock and b) I didn’t make it in my own kitchen.))  This whole time I’ve been here, I’ve been working in other people’s kitchens.  And granted, Anja and Mischa have a very nice and well stocked kitchen.  But it wasn’t my home.  I wasn’t keeping bags of bones and veggie scraps in the freezer, much less Tupperwares of stock in the fridge.

But now – finally – I have my own kitchen; where I can work, where I can do my thing.  And it just felt right to be in the kitchen, a pot of stock brewing on the stove.  It felt right walking in there and just smelling that chicken soup smell.  I don’t know if that counts as Berliner achievement unlocked, but it certainly counts as feel like your own fucking person again achievement unlocked. ((Which is rather long for a hashtag, innit?))

Speaking of things that just smell right, also my room.  Owing to the balcony/abundance of windows/cool roommates, I can once again smoke my pipe in my room.  This, of course, is a huge win.  As many of you know, I work much better when I have my pipe.  So whether it’s doing a lesson plan, or a blog post, or studying Hebrew, or whatever, I can do this now in the comfort of my own room; and I can have my pipe.  There aren’t words for what a difference this makes.

But beyond that, as I said, it’s also about the smell.  You know how any time you go to somebody’s house, their house has its own unique smell?  Well my room on Orchard Street had its own smell, and that smell was “pipe.”  The very last time Niki was over, she remarked that she was going to miss the smell of my room there.  And all the memories that went with it, good and bad.  It’s that Proustian thing, right?

Anyway, my room here now has that pipe smell to it.  And it’s so comforting.  When I open the door and step inside, it finally feels like I’m home.  It’s more than two years since I’ve had that.  I’ve missed it.  Let me tell you, it goes such a long way towards making me feel like I have a place here, like I belong, like my days of Airbnb’ing it, of being a guest, a visitor, are over.

Which isn’t to say that my room is finished.  It’s not.  I still need to buy some candle holders, so I can – finally – get back to working by candle light instead of overhead bulb.  I still need to get some art for my walls.  (I’m thinking a big NYC Subway map would be nice).  So it’s still a work in progress.  But I can report that it definitely – finally – does feel a bit like home.

But back to my productive day.  I had some old stale bits of baguette laying around, so while the stock was going, I chopped them up and made croutons. ((Not my best work, but I’m still getting the hang of these weird European electric, Celsius ovens.))  And of course I crushed up all the leftover “sawdust” and tiny bits and made breadcrumbs.  Yes, I’m making my mark on this kitchen, and I’m quite pleased about it.

At this point, I probably would have taken a nap.  But I didn’t want to go to sleep with the stock going, so I used the time to do some Hebrew work.  I haven’t touched it since I left A&M’s, back in the beginning of November; and honestly, I don’t think I did much, if any, the last month or so that I was there.  But in the last week or so, I’ve gotten back to work, which has been really nice.

Since I started working, and with all the moving around, most of my downtime has been spent in front of the Netflix.  But now that I’m starting to – finally – feel settled again, I’ve been hitting the books.  It’s refreshing.  Besides the fact that it simply feels good to be getting work done, it also just helps me feel like myself.  And it’s got me back on track for my goal of being able to keep up with the weekly Torah readings when the New Year starts in September.

That said, Hebrew is fucking weird.  I’ve said it before, and I’m sure I’ll say it again, but the Hellenist in me finds Hebrew to be frustratingly imprecise.  I mean, I was looking at sentence today that was just, I mean, I had no idea who the fucking subject was.  In English, it would have been easy.  It’s your standard, “Hear, O Israel, blah blah blah.”  But Hebrew doesn’t have a vocative case, word order can be iffy and there’s no punctuation.  In לושן קדש you have:

שמע ישראל אתה היום את הירדן

But when you break it down word for word, you’re stuck with something like: Hear(! ((This, at least, you can identify as a second person singular Qal imperative construct.  Or, at least, you can if your text has vowels, which my textbook does but the Torah does not.  So if you’re reading from The Book, it’s even more complicatd.))).Israel.you.is/are-crossing.the-day.the-Jordan.

So does it mean, “Listen, you (as subject), Israel, are crossing the Jordan today”?  Does it mean, “Listen, you (as object), Israel (as subject of indirect discourse) is crossing the Jordan today”?  Does it mean something else?  And this whole “the day” meaning “today” isn’t even that bad.  I recently came across something along the lines of, “the wife asked her husband everyday…”  But “every day” was simply יום יום – literally, “day day.”  So, “the wife asked her husband day day if he would…”  And OK, it doesn’t require a great deal of imagination to figure out that that means something like “everyday” or “from day to day” or even more metaphorically just “continually” or even almost “naggingly.”  But all you get is “day day.”  That’s an example of what I mean by imprecise.

Anyway, you do enough of it and you start to get a feel for it.  You start to get a feel for the way the language likes to express itself.  But it’s also a dead language, right?  I mean, modern native-speaking Israelis can’t naturally read this shit. ((I’ve asked.))  So your “feel” can only go so far.

Here’s another example, from Deuteronomy, 29:4. ((Though 29:3 in Hebrew; I don’t yet know why there’s this discrepancy in verse numbering.))  I’ll spare you the Hebrew, but it’s usually translated something like, “And God did not give you you a mind to know, or eyes to see or ears to hear.”  Only that word “mind” is לב ,which your textbook glossary tells you means “heart.”  So does this mean the Israelites considered the heart to be the seat of knowledge (instead of the head)?  Can we handle this word the same way we handle θῦμοϲ in Greek?  And should we simply translate it as “heart”?  After all, we have no problem saying in English, albeit metaphorically, “I know this in my heart.” ((Though this leaves you translating the first element of the tricolon metaphorically and the next two literally, which, I don’t mind telling you, I don’t like.))  And anyway, if God is so smart, and if he invented human fucking beings already, shouldn’t he know that we know things with our brains and not our hearts?  Like, if he’s such a big deal, can we not reasonably expect to him to have even a rudimentary grasp of the functions of the nervous and cardio-vascular systems?  Or maybe Moses, when he was writing this shit down, had to filter it all through what he learned of human anatomy from the Egyptian priests and their mummification rituals and procedures.  Atheists have it easy, I tellya.

Anwyay, I guess that more or less covers my productive day.  Otherwise, things are going well here at home.  I’m getting on well with the roommates.  We mostly speak German, which I need.  Though one of the guys is quite good at English, so that’s a bit of a safety net.  Tonight we just hung out in the Wohnküche for a bit, chatting and drinking tea, which was just lovely.  Wohnküche, by the way, is a word we don’t have in English.  It literally means “livingkitchen.”  Like, when your kitchen is also your living room.  Our apartment is a three-bedroom plus a bathroom and kitchen.  But the kitchen, being a full-sized room, is also the living room.  A little couch, a small table and a comfy chair.  Yeah, Wohnküche.

I’ll do a full rundown of the roomies another time, but suffice it to say, they’re lovely folks and everybody gets on quite well.  I’m to cook dinner for everybody tomorrow.  No pressure.  But I’m kinda looking forward to it.

On Saturday I went to one of the Weihnachtsmarkts – Christmas markets – with Joschka and his girlfriend.  It was my first Weihnachtsmarkt, which I only mention because apparently that’s a big deal here.  They have one in just about every neighborhood. ((The one we went to was not the one which was attacked last night.))  It was a very nice evening.  At the market, we drank a bunch of Glühwein, which is just mulled wine, but I guess it’s a special thing for Christmas here.  After that, we went to a cocktail bar, on more which later.

Joschka’s girlfriend – Cindy ((Hi, Mom!)) – is very nice.  She also speaks very little English, though she says she understands it well enough.  But this meant we spent the whole night speaking German.  Which was honestly great.  I almost feel like I passed some kind of (admittedly low-level) test.  Of course it helps that both Joschka and Cindy speak a very clear German; or at least they did with me.  But I got through it with very little hand-holding and I do feel I came across rather functionally; though by no means anywhere near fluently.  But it was certainly the most German I think I’ve ever spoken with Joschka, and the least dependent on him I’ve felt, language-wise.  So it was a good confidence booster.  To a point.  I’m still hopeless the minute people get slangy or start running their words together.  But it’s progress.

Anyway, it was a fun night.  The cocktail place was cool, though expensive, which always seems to happen with this guy.  But here’s a nice change.  I can – finally – afford to do this now.  Not every week, mind you.  But to have one pricey outing a month, let’s say, I can handle it.  A big reason is, I restructured my student loans.

For the longest, I’ve been paying a very high monthly rate, with the goal of paying them off as soon – and with as little interest – as possible.  But last month, I finally gave that up.  Freelance English teaching pays bupkis.  And also, it’s freelance, so it’s hard to plan more than a month or so in advance.  So I applied for an income-based repayment schedule.  I didn’t ask for a number, I just asked for income-based, and they gave me a number.  So instead of paying nearly $500 a month, I’m now paying less than $50.  And rent is so cheap here.  So for the first time since I quit the paralegal job, I finally have some walking-around money.  To put it another way, if I still have to watch every dollar, at least I don’t have to watch every penny.  That’s a huge amount of stress that’s just vanished into thin air.

Also at the cocktail bar, we met a very nice Norwegian couple, who I wound up drunkenly chatting with for rather a while.  Lovely people, but damn, those fucking Scandinavians and their perfect fucking English.  I don’t know how they do it.  Good times though.

I’m sure I have more to say, but I’m tired ((Did I mention no nap today?)) and I have to get up early for another all day 1:1 tomorrow.  How early?  6:50 I guess.  I do like this neighborhood, Köpenick.  And I’ll say more about it next time.  But for now, all I can say is, it takes fucking forever to get anywhere from here.  I mean, this is some serious outer-fucking-borough shit right here.  But that’s for another day.  Until then…

זיי געסונט

An American in Berlin
7 December, 2016

In my last post, ((Which, if you didn’t read it, I dunno, fuck you, I guess?)) I found myself writing rather a bit about my grandfather.  This prompted a somewhat unexpected response from my own father.  Without warning or preamble, he wrote what I might loosely call an “open letter” to me and my brother (Justin), in which he muses on his father, our grandfather.  It is a fine piece of writing on its own merits.  And if that was it all it was, I probably wouldn’t post it here.

But I think there is great value in it for all of us.  It goes some way to showing my grandfather as a more complete person than I was able to know him.  It paints a picture of Herb the man, not Herb the grandfather.  And yes, it is naturally colored by father’s own experiences.  Still, it answers questions I might never have thought to ask.  And so, my hope in posting this is that it might prompt some of you to talk to your own parents, to dig a little deeper, to try and get to know your own grandparents a little better, even if – or perhaps especially if – they’re already gone.

What follows, then, will be the letter that my dad wrote in its entirety.  Apart from some minor edits for spelling, the only additions will be a handful of footnotes explaining things that might not be obvious to the usual readers of this blog.  And so, without further ado…

Some Ramblings on Grandpa, my Dad
by Lawrence Starr

First it needs to be said that my memory is vague enough that in literary terms I could be considered an unreliable narrator. This is also a snapshot. There is so much more I could have gone into. I just wanted to give some insight into the man.

With that said, let’s begin.

My earliest impressions of your grandfather – and I call him grandfather because he was never Dad or Pop, Pa or Papa, just Father – was that of a distant and cool person who lived in the same house. I won’t say he wasn’t caring or loving, but if he was, he wasn’t very good at showing it. It may very well have been due to the fact that I was number five in the line of six children they would produce. Perhaps he was toast by the time I came around; had depleted his reserves on the first four. Or perhaps it was that the years of toiling to maintain a growing family had taken it’s toll. Whatever the reason, I felt very alone in a very crowded house. As the “baby,” I felt I was treated differently that the others. The four that came before me had all been born into a house on East 17^th street in Sheepshead Bay, ((Brooklyn.)) a much smaller house than the one I would come home to in Manhattan Beach. ((Also Brooklyn.)) Perhaps they had formed a special bond in the cramped quarters of a house meant for much smaller families, but I merely speculate.

To understand our father, it helps to know a little of his family dynamics. He was the oldest of two children born to Meyer and Sylvia Starr. Meyer had emigrated from the Ukraine, Sylvia from Lithuania. I don’t know how old they were when they came to this country. Unlike my Grandmother on my mother’s side, as best as I can remember, they spoke English free of any accent. Dad (I will call him that form this point on because it’s easier to type than Father) was born in Chicago. What they were doing there is anybody’s guess. He was doted upon by Sylvia. Meyer was stern and unemotional, interestingly, the way I remember Dad. Dad was king of the household according to his sister, Millie. Millie seemed to have a normal enough childhood until she reached puberty and Meyer turned his back on her. From then on she was alone. She left home relatively early and led a somewhat Bohemian existence.  She was a wonderful woman who I wish you had gotten to know better. Watch the movie Auntie Mame someday. That will give you an idea.

As you know, Dad was all about the sciences and music. He went to Brooklyn Tech, which at the time was an all boys’ high school for the sciences. It was and still is a prestigious city public school, though it is now co-ed. It was not an easy school to gain admittance to. From there he went to City College and majored in chemistry. From there he went into the Army.

I don’t know the details of how Mom and Dad met. In their wedding pictures, dad is in uniform. Uncle Richard was a war baby. ((Richard was the first of the six children, born in 1945 before the end of the war.))

One of my greatest regrets is that I know almost nothing about Dad’s military service. In my seventeen years at the museum ((My dad is the operations manager at the American Airpower Museum, Farmingdale New York.)) I have heard countless stories form wonderful people about their experiences during the war; wonderful, intense stories about events that shaped their lives and those of the people around them. And here I am left without clue as to what must have been the most crucial and formative time in my fathers eighty-one years. He never wanted to talk about it. I often wonder, had he lived another five or six years, got to see what course the fates had put me on, if he would have be proud or horrified. Would he have finally opened up and let the past free, ((Here my dad speaks to an interesting, and somewhat common phenomenon.  Many WWII vets never spoke about their experiences with their families.  Only in their last years have many of them opened up, and then only to historians or other third parties.)) or would he have said, “what the hell are you doing with all this war shit?”

Here is what little I know, or think I know. Dad was in the medical corps. Was he a non-combatant by choice? Don’t know. He may very well have been a pacifist but I never heard him say that. We do know that he spent a lot of time at sea making crossings on various ships, including the Queen Mary and at least one Liberty Ship. I just learned from Uncle Richard, that one of the trips on the Grey Ghost (the Queen Mary, as she was called during the war) took him to Australia. This I had never heard before.

Another Atlantic crossing on the GG was shortly after the Battle of the Bulge. That would have been in January of ’45. It was a westbound voyage bringing home many of the wounded. ((My own speculation here, but this is something to think about.  The Battle of the Bulge, Hitler’s last major offensive, was a bloody shitshow that took place mostly in the Ardennes forest.  You read all kinds of horror stories about people being ripped to shreds not just from ammunition but from the splintered timbers of exploding trees.  As a medic, what nightmares must he have encountered on such a crossing?)) He never mentioned the fact that it would also have carried many German POWs. He spoke about never ending card games in the hold of these ships. GIs sitting around gambling only stopping long enough to puke into their helmets.

One thing I have seen for myself is that Dad NEVER got seasick. EVER. On a cruise during which virtually everyone was sick, Dad walked around like it was Christmas Eve or Chanukah or whatever the hell he would have celebrated (Lenin’s Birthday?). I also remember a story he told with amusement tinged with disgust. He had arrived in the Middle East on a freighter, probably the Liberty Ship. I know no other detail of that trip other than what he said he saw form the ship while in port. There were huge piles of grain on the docks. I would imagine they were awaiting shipment to various combat theaters. He watched as an Arab climbed one of the piles and committed what may well have been the first act of terrorism: he proceeded to defecate. He took a dump into the Allied food supply chain. I think it put Dad off of bread for a while.

Dad left the service as a Master Sargent, though here is where my memory is a little fuzzy. The memory I have of dad’s Ike jacket ((The “Ike jacket” was a waist length jacket worn by US soldiers during WWII; so called because it was popularized by General Eisenhower, who was often pictured wearing it.)) was that it had three rockers up and three down on the sleeves.  That would have made him a M. Sgt. I also seem to remember that there was a “T” between the chevrons so I always thought he was a Technincal Sergent. In doing research, I found that it was impossible to have three up and three down with a tech rating, so now I am confused. I am fairly certain that there were 3 up and 3 down. Anyway, here is a Wiki excerpt explaining the rank during WWII. ((What follows is a bit long and technical, and while of great interest to someone like me (or Dale!), the casual reader can probably get by on skimming it.))

Sergeant ranks were sometimes referred to by the number of chevrons (the upper angle) and rockers (the lower arc) on their stripes. Thus saying a man had “three up, two down” meant he was a technical sergeant. Before the war, NCOs could not transfer between regiments without having to start in the new unit as a private.

While officers lived and ate in separate facilities, the NCOs lived and ate with the enlisted men. Most senior NCOs had their own private or semi-private rooms in the barracks. Officers, it was said, commanded the Army; Sergeants however, ran the Army.  Officers would order a project be done, but it was the sergeants who told the men what to do and saw it was done properly. There was an unspoken rule in the Army that an NCO overseeing a group of men working was not to perform the work himself.

Two major changes in the Army affected enlisted men. In June 1942 an Army wide pay raise provided more money for the troops. Pay for higher ranking officers stayed the same. Then in December 1943, in an effort to boost the morale of the infantry, NCO ranks in infantry units were boosted so that assistant squad leaders became sergeants, and squad leaders became staff sergeants, and platoon sergeants Technical Sergeants. The number of authorized Pfc slots in infantry units was raised to half of all privates. The additional pay and rank was hoped to offset the rigors and dangers of being in an infantry unit.

With the increase of technical skills needed in the Army, a new category of NCO was created. Known as technicians, these were men who needed to be paid more for specific skills, but did not need the command authorization of a higher rank. They were first authorized in January 1942. In September 1942 the rank stripes had a letter “T” on them to indicate there were a Technician. Long after the war these would turn into the “Specialist” ratings still in use today.

Technician ratings are not to be confused with the rank of the more traditional rank of technical sergeant. For command purposes technicians ranked just below the equivalent of their strips. A technician 3^rd grade (Tech/3) ranked just below a staff sergeant when it came to giving orders.

And that is about the sum total of my knowledge of dad’s military experience. ((I recently asked my dad why we knew so little about my grandfather’s time in the Army.  Surely service records are public records.  Why didn’t we just consult those?  It turns out that sometime after the war, the warehouse where many of these records were stored burned down, depriving us – and many other families – of their loved ones’ wartime experiences.))

As I said, Uncle Richard was a War Baby. I guess that makes him a Pre-Boomer. Aunt Carol followed just after the war and the rest of us came at roughly 2 year intervals except for Aunt Gail. She arrived nine years after me (I?), who came nine years after Richard. That is a baby making span of eighteen years. I’ll get to the significance of this later.

At this point I need to shift attention to Grandma’s story. We know more about her life and that of the Polakoffs than we do about the Starrs. Both Ella and Morris were from the Ukraine. Ella’s family escaped from the Czarist pogroms as Bubby used to say, by “stealing the border.” They snuck out of Russia in the earliest years of the 20^th Century. (If you haven’t read or listened to the “Bubby Interviews” that Uncle Richard did in the years before her death, you should, if only for the Yiddish that she would lapse into). ((Richard is the de facto family historian.  He recorded a series of video interviews with Bubby which we still have, but which I’ve yet to watch.  (The comment about the Yiddish is directed towards me, given my interest in the language).)) Fast forward to the late 1930s. Morris and Ella, now with three children, Nathan, Samuel and Ida, are operating a sweater mill. Nat is a teacher, I am not sure what Sam is doing, but he is probably in Baltimore with his new wife Lil running a photography store (not totally sure of the timeline here) and Ida, your grandmother, has graduated Lincoln High School and is working in New York City.

Hit the FF button again and stop at 1945. The war is over. Ida is pregnant with Aunt Carol. I am not sure what dad is doing after he comes home. What I do know is that days after Aunt Carol is born, Poppy Morris drops dead form a heart attack. Ida and Carol haven’t even come home form the hospital. Bubby Ella, in addition to being devastated by the death of her relatively young husband, is now burdened with a business she has to run on her own. I am going to oversimplify the facts.

1. a)    Morris and Ella owned the house on 17^th St and shared it with Herb, Ida and their son.
2. b)   Ella needed help with the business and Dad agreed to step in and help. I don’t know if this was done reluctantly or not. It did put an end to any hope of a career in chemistry or a related field, if he had hoped for one.
3. c)    At some point Sam returned from Baltimore with his family and joined the business. Nat continued teaching but received a portion of the earnings as long as the business existed, though I never remember him ever setting foot in the place.

The apartment on 17^th St became more crowded as soon as Ida came home home from the hospital with Carol. By 1950, there were three adults and four children in a house that was about the same size as the house we lived in on Pembroke St. ((Also Manhattan Beach, Brooklyn.)) There was a living room, kitchen, a master bedroom and a smaller bedroom. There was a separate apartment downstairs where Bubby lived. It was clear that the family had out grown 17^th St.

Sam and Lil had purchased a nice three-bedroom house in the Long Island suburb of Elmont. Their family now included two girls, Ellen and Marion. ((That would make them my dad’s first cousins.  If I ever met them, I have no memory of it.)) Mom and Dad thought it would be a good idea to follow suit and move out to Long Island where they could stretch their legs. They had been sleeping on a sofa bed in the living room on 17^th St as the two boys and two girls occupied each of the bedrooms. Ella pleaded with them not to leave her alone. She said find a house big enough for all of them in Brooklyn and she would buy it. Reluctantly they agreed. By 1951 they had moved into the house on Ocean Avenue in Manhattan Beach. I was born in November of that year. ((This is also the house I was born into.))

What is the point of all this? Why bring it up now?

David, you wonder what your grandfather would have done at your age. By the time he was 35, Dad was the father of five and running a business that, more often than not, was struggling to stay competitive and afloat. He did not have the choices that you have. He did see much of the world during the war, probably too much. He also saw enough of what mankind is capable of to alter whatever beliefs he held. I have no way of knowing what his politics were like before the war. I only know what I saw and heard after. He threw himself and his own money into a business that in reality wasn’t his, put a lot of his money into a house that wasn’t his (that’s a whole other story). Most of the time I remember him coming home late from work exhausted. One thing I can tell you is, you have his work ethic. I don’t think he was great with small children. I may be wrong. I don’t now how he was with the four that came before me. I don’t think I ever really felt loved, though I am sure if they heard that they would be shocked.

Their philosophy of childrearing was very different form what you would expect. They told us later in our lives that they had read the best thing for the children is not to make them dependent on each other. As a result, we were never all that close as a family. This they regretted. I don’t have warm and fuzzy recollections about many things. In a way it makes me feel damaged. Your mother had different experiences that were more traumatic and she turned out to be a more loving and warmer person than I (me?).

Mom and Dad believed their children were incapable of lying or doing the wrong thing. They believed just about anything we told them. Great when you’re a kid, lousy for your development. We received no guidance at all when it came to school, at least I didn’t. Your mother said from the day you guys were born that you were going to college, and that it would be away from home. I never took an SAT because I had no intention of going to college.

Because some of their friends were horrified that I wasn’t planning on continuing my education, my parents came to me in the second half of my senior year and told me they would by me any car I wanted if I went to college. I declined. I wanted to work in the movie business and I was going to do it on my terms. As Jim Vocell ((My dad’s colleague at the museum.)) would say, “So how’d that work out for ya?”

Actually not terrible. I worked in the business until I ran afoul of the union. I wasn’t a member, could not join, and had to leave a great job. Let’s skip to the next chapter because this really isn’t bout me.

We are at the point where Tyrol Sportswear, the sweater company that our family owned and operated out of a five story 19^th century brick building in Williamsburg, ((Not too long ago, my dad actually drove me by the place where the factory used to be.  It had either burned down or been torn down years ago, and all that was left was an empty lot.  Can you imagine an empty lot in Williamsburg?  I’m sure it will be luxury housing soon enough.  Side note: My dad worked in Williamsburg before it was cool.  Take that, hipsters!)) was struggling . Dad needed help. Uncle Michael had worked for him until he decided that dentistry was a better prospect. Richard was living and teaching in Vermont. It fell upon me to pitch in. After all, I was out of work.

Ever since I was old enough to reach the machines, Dad would bring me in some Saturdays to help repair damage that was done during the night shift. So by the time I was recruited in my twenties, I had some working knowledge of the equipment. This was about 1972.

I’m going to backtrack here for a moment. Something happened in July of 1961 that was a game changer for all of us. Aunt Gail was born. And it seemed she was born to different parents than the rest of us. I was nine years old. Richard was already out of the house and living in an apartment near Brooklyn College, which he was attending. Carol and Michael were in high school and Judy was in what was then Junior High, which was 7^th and 8^th grades. Business was improving. Dad bought his first brand new car. Okay, so it was a POS Rambler station wagon. Still it was the first car in our family that wasn’t a hand-me-down.

Dad was more relaxed and seemed to actually enjoy having a baby in the house. Even though I was glad to have the “baby” of the family spotlight off me, I was pissed that she was receiving attention that I felt I never got. The fact the she was severely asthmatic didn’t help. They coddled her and she was able to get away with things that none of us ever dreamed of. It affected our relationship for years. But this isn’t about me or Gail. What she did do was soften dad. This was not the same father that raised me or the other four.

And they began to travel. Carol was married in 1964. Right after the wedding we all piled into a brand spanking new Buick and drove to Florida. They took their first airplane ride down there, flying to the west coast to look at some property. ((During my lifetime, my grandparents were “snowbirds,” spending half the year in Toronto and half the year in Florida.  Later on, they moved to Florida full time.  This made their visits special fucking occasions, but I was always jealous of my friends whose grandparents lived nearby.)) You know those kind of deals. I remember being terrified until they returned. It was my first experience with air travel and I didn’t even get on the plane. Shortly after that, they started their world travels. The plant would close for the first two weeks of July and they were off to different exotic places. Then the cruising began. The first was a family cruise (including Bubby) to St Thomas that had to be in 1964. I know that they lied about my age to save some money on my fare. (So much for honesty, eh? See next paragraph).

After that, it was just the two of them or sometimes with Gail. They always offered to take me, but in my stupidity, I’d decline, thinking it was better to stay home and party. When the cats are away…

Hit the FF button and go back to 1972. I am now working for Dad in the sweater biz full time. This had advantages and disadvantages. I will focus on the advantages. For the first time, I truly got to know my father. I got to see him the way others saw him. And this is what I saw. I saw a man of irreproachable honesty, integrity and fairness.  A man respected by his employees and customers. Whether he was a good business man is open for debate, but as I said earlier, his work ethic was super-human. Unfortunately, he expected the same from me. Not that I don’t have a work ethic, it’s just that it wasn’t for this business. He expected me to work twice as hard as anyone else in the plant, for half the pay. ((This deserves an explanation, which my dad doesn’t elaborate on here as I’ve heard this story a million times.  But it goes to the heart of my grandfather’s unwillingness to give even the appearance of impropriety.  He would have abhorred the idea of my dad getting special treatment simply because he was the boss’ son; hence the “twice the work for half the pay” dictum.  Donald Trump, clearly, never got this memo.)) I had no illusions about taking over the business. Not what I wanted. What I gained, though, was a skill that would someday allow me to support my own family.

But the greatest gain was the time spent with the man. The long forgotten discussions we would have, the respect for each other’s abilities. He recognized quickly that I was a far better mechanic than he was and took advantage of that fact. Not in a bad way. He capitalized on it and I was flattered. The bottom line is that I didn’t get to really know the man until I was in my twenties. I don’t think that that is all that unusual in father-son relationships. The child has to grow out of his stupidity to realize that his father really does know more than he. The only argument we ever had was over the business. I wanted to go back to school. He needed me, as the business was failing. I remember storming out of the house, getting into the Jag ((He’s not kidding.  My dad is a magician with machines and cars.  The Jag in question was one of several gorgeous E-Types he owned back in the day.)) and driving off, leaving a trail of smoking rubber. Ultimately he won out. Sort of. I worked during the day and went to Brooklyn College at night. It didn’t help. The plant shut down in 1975. Within months of the closing, Mom, Dad and Gail were off to the Philippines to start a new chapter in the Starr family saga that would last three years.

Dad, Grandpa by then, had become the man you knew.  A man that enjoyed his family. By then he had grandchildren from Carol. He became a doting parent AND grandparent. They – the grandkids – even visited in the Philippines.

While they were away, I met your mom. We married when they came home. Literally, I think it was days after they returned. You pretty much know the rest.

Mom and Dad had a very close knit (no pun intended) social group. One of my childhood memories is of Book Club meetings that they would have periodically. Each month they were held at a different couple’s house. They probably had two a year at Ocean Avenue. I was either too young to know what was discussed or we were not allowed near the meeting. I well remember the morning after, finding the dining room table laded with drinking glasses and full ashtrays. There were occasional left over sweet treats. When I was older the cigarette buts had some value.

They were certainly an intellectual bunch. Among their friends was a chess grand master and some lesser players. Dad counted himself among the lesser players. ((It’s hard to get context on what is meant by “lesser player” here.  What I do know, is that my grandfather loved playing chess with me.  I never beat him, never even came close.  But he loved it; we both did.  But I’m sure he valued it because it was an “intellectual” thing.  I suspect he’d rather watch me lose to him in chess than win a hockey game.)) I remember one summer when we were staying at the bungalow colony, watching – or rather listening to – and trying to follow a chess game played without a board. Not my game, for sure.

They were most assuredly well to the left of center. Maybe even a little left of left. One or more of the people in their circle fought with the Abraham Lincoln Brigade in the Spanish Civil War. They fought alongside the Communists. What ultimately gave them away, at least to me, were the books I found in the attic of the house on Ocean Avenue when I had to empty it. I can’t recall any of the titles. I just remember the “Oh Shit” moment when I looked at them. I guess there is always a chance they were there when they moved in, you honor. When you take into account all of the other clues it lessens the doubt.

I do know that Dad was as unreligious a man as you will find. That came from his father. It is in stark contrast to Bubby, who lived upstairs in the same house and kept a Kosher home. That’s another point to ponder. The man spent a good portion of his adult life living and working with his mother-in-law. Think about that one. Maybe when she moved to Florida is when he really started to relax. Anyway back to religion. Except for Bubby upstairs, it didn’t exist in our house. That was on his terms, not Grandma’s. She went along with whatever he wanted. And gladly. Remember how I said dad was the king in his house when he was growing up? Grandma kept him on the thrown. I don’t mean this in a bad way. Their relationship was one for the record books. As loving a couple as you will ever find. Even with all those damned kids running around. And you wonder why they traveled? So it was an amazing thing for me to see you grandfather climb the steps of the altar during your Bar Mitzvah at the Toro, ((While the rest of my friends had their Bar & Bat Mitzvah’s at their local synagogues on Long Island, I had mine at the Toro Synagogue in Rhode Island, which is the oldest synagogue in America.  #historynerd)) and take the scrolls. He was so proud to do it. Simply Amazing.

During the First Gulf War, I hung an American Flag on the front of the house near the mailbox on Pickwick Drive. ((Soysset, Long Island.)) Mom and Dad came to visit. When he saw the flag, he seemed disturbed. What’s this about? I’m supporting our country and troops, I said. He felt that nationalist zeal led to more wars. He had seen enough and was not interested in war, nationalism or religion. When I was a child, I remember answering a question saying, “Yes’m.” ((This is something you, thankfully, just don’t hear anymore.  In fact, I nearly missed it on my first read-through.  But “yes’m” and “yessuh” used to be how a black “boy” was expected to answer his white “superiors.”)) I got my head handed to me. For them, it was the equivalent of the “N” word and they would have none of it. And this was in the 1950’s, before Martin Luther King and civil rights. So add racism to that list of things he had no patience for.

The bottom line here is your grandfather was a complex man. He was a brilliant man. He was a talented man. He was warm, loving and compassionate even when he wasn’t showing it. And I didn’t even touch on his sense of humor ((For any of you who ever rolled your eyes (or worse) at one of my terrible puns, well, Grandpa was the progenitor of all that.  When I was a kid, at Thanksgiving dinner, people would go around the table, just punning.  The goal was to make a pun off the pun the previous person had just made.  My mother, who was not born into this family, has become quite expert at it.)) or that he was a voracious reader who loved science fiction.

You and your brother should never have to wonder what he would have thought about you. I know that he would have been as proud a grandparent as ever lived. You guys have accomplished things that he only dreamed of. He loved music, but he was Salieri to your Mozart. (As am I). ((Cleary, this is directed towards my brother, the music comp major.)) He would have been in heaven (leave it!) had he been able to see you guys play your music, be it classical or metal or whatever. It would have been his biggest thrill.

David. Your love of language and the way you are pursuing your dreams, the way you revel in the glories of the ancient and modern worlds would have given the two of you much to talk about. Your sadness is understandable. With him, with Daitz, you have lost two great authorities and conversationalists. Truly worth mourning.  I know he would relish reading your blogs.

Justin. Along with your music, your forays into the world of science would have thrilled him. He was as in love with the heavens as you are. Some of my fondest childhood memories, as you know, involve frequent trips the American Museum of Natural History and the Hayden Planetarium along with building a telescope. We used to have long philosophical talks about science that you would have enjoyed. He loved problem solving.

You have both done his legacy justice. More than I ever could. Be as proud of yourselves as I am of you. He most certainly would have been.

An American in Berlin
The Overdue Edition

Disclaimer: I’m somewhat ambivalent about posting this piece.  My family is dealing with some things right now, and it’s brought me to some emotions that are a bit raw.  I struggle with the question of making them public.  I can only hope that the people I love will find something, well, not comforting, but at least worthwhile.

Shit.  How long has it been?  November was an interesting month.  Which, I suppose, is something the whole world can fucking say.  Hashtag Trump. ((Does it work, writing “hashtag”?  Or should I write “#hashtag”?  What’s the Dave Guide to Style have to say about this?))  But for me personally, November was an interesting month, to say the least.  Much has happened since my last post, which apparently was published on October 20^th.

On October 20^th, I was still living at the Airbnb in Neukölln.  Maybe that’s where I ought to start this post.  I probably should put a bow on that whole experience.  Well of course I’ve never had anything but good to say about my time with Anja and Mischa.  I stayed with them for two months last year.  And this year I stayed with them for something like three and a half months.  And they’re hands down the best hosts you could ever ask for.

But if I’m being honest, it was starting to feel a little tired by the end.  Or maybe the better way to say it is, I was feeling a little tired at the end.  What I mean is, that’s not a reflection on them in any way.  It’s just that after so long a stay, I was getting tired of feeling like a guest.  And that’s what I was there.  A guest.  And my life changed quite a bit over that time, right?  When I re-arrived in mid July, I was still on vacation.  I wasn’t working.  Not as an inhabitant of Berlin, anyway, though I was still collecting the last of my paychecks from New York.

But by the end, I had already started teaching my first class as English teacher in Berlin.  It was time to get my own place.  It was time to make my own way.  Time not to be a guest anymore.  So I thank them with all my heart for every kindness they showed me.  And I love them, I really do.  I hope they will be a part of my life in Berlin going forward.  But I’m glad now to be out of there.  Glad to finally be making it on my own.

The only thing is, there was a whole month between leaving them and getting set up here, in my own place.  I’ll come to this latter point soon enough.  But I need to say something about the last month, how it all played out.

Towards the end of October, I interviewed for a room in an apartment in Köpenick, which is in the east of Berlin.  The interview went well.  They liked me and I liked them.  The only hang up – well, there were two hang ups – but the big hang up was that the room wouldn’t be available until December 1^st.  This meant I’d need to find a place for the intervening month.  And the truth is, I would have stayed on with A&M were that an option.  But in fact, they’d already booked the room to someone else.

Fortunately, Joschka was going to the States for most of November.  So I wound up crashing at his place for something like 2.5 weeks.  Before that, though, I had book a few nights at an Airbnb.  Whereupon did I find a very nice room in Moabit, north Berlin.

Everything about this place was great, except for there was no Wifi.  In 2016.  Who does that?  But the apartment was lovely anyway, and I had it to myself.  And I’ll always remember this place, if for no other reason than this is where I was living when I finally got my visa.

Oh yeah, I finally got my visa.  That was a nerve-wracking experience.  I was fairly certain that I’d got all my papers in order.  But I was fairly certain of this the first time as well, and we all know how that worked out.  But in theory, all I had to do was show up with the new documents they’d requested and I’d be alright.  Emphasis on “all I had to do was show up.”

What I mean is, I got the address for the visa office wrong.  My plan was to show up a solid half-hour early, just to be safe.  The apartment was walking distance to the address I’d found, and so I planned my walk accordingly.  Only thing was, when I got there, it wasn’t there.  Fuck me.  OK, I thought, OK, let’s look at the map.  Good, it wasn’t all that far.  Or, it wouldn’t have been, if I’d had more time.  It was maybe a 35 minute walk.  Problem was, I only had 30 minutes.

Welp, I thought, much as I hate to do it, I guess I’ll have to call an Uber. ((There was no direct route by mass transit.))  Which would have been easy if I hadn’t run out of data.  But since the apartment didn’t have Wifi – did I mention that? – I’d burned through all my data.  So I had to rush in to a supermarket and buy some credit.  Great.  Then I had to wait for the credit to be activated.  Also great.  In the end, the data kicked in, I ordered the Uber and I got to the visa office in time.  Not with the half hour cushion I was hoping for, but I wasn’t late.

The appointment itself passed without incident.  But only just.  She – the lady who would decide whether or not I would get the visa – asked for my proof of residency. ((In Germany, any time you move anywhere, you need to register your new address with the Bürgeramt – the “citizen’s office” for lack of a better translation.))  I didn’t have this.  It wasn’t even on the list of documents I was told to bring.  They only told me to bring my sublease.  Fortunately, I at least had the email showing I’d booked an appointment to register my address.  It was good enough, thank the gods. ((I say “gods” plural, but in this case, it’s most surely Ζεύϲ Ξενία.))

Then she asked for my health insurance.  Only the insurance I had wasn’t good enough either.  But thanks to the lady who was helping me with my papers, I had a letter from the state insurance agency saying they would insure me on the condition of my getting a visa.  This also turned out to be good enough, thank the gods again. ((In this case, probably Ἀπόλλων and/or Ὑγίεια.))  And thanks to Anke, the woman who was helping me. ((A quick note on Anke, whom I can’t thank enough.  She was recommended to me by Lisa, my roommate from last year.  Her charge was €50 for our first meeting.  More than I wanted to pay, but money well spent, considering I didn’t know a thing about health insurance in this country.  After our first meeting, however, she was always happy to answer an email or talk on the phone, and she’s since helped me apply for the state insurance.  She was even on standby during my visa appointment in case anything was to go wrong.  In all that time, she’s never asked me for another dime.  I can’t thank her enough.))  For without this letter, I might have been screwed.

I guess I must have appeared a bit overeager.  Every time the visa lady asked me for a document, I half got out of my chair and pushed a piece of paper in front of her, using my finger to underline a relevant passage.  At one point she told me to relax.  And I was like, “How can I relax, this is so stressful.”  To which she replied, “It shouldn’t be.  Everything is fine.” ((All of this was conducted in German, btw, which only added to the stress.))  Which I took to mean she’d already decided to give me the visa, so long as there weren’t any truly serious problems.

In the end, that’s exactly what happened.  She gave me the visa, good for two years. ((I applied for three, and she just as easily could have given me one year or all three.  Or, you know, none.))  The only conditions attached were that I registered with the state insurance and that I was only allowed to work as an English teacher.  Whatever.  I got my visa.  Huge fucking relief.  Berlin achievement unlocked.

But that was just the beginning.  I had the visa, but I still didn’t have my proof of residency.  And here’s the thing about Germany.  You can’t do a godsdamned thing without this Anmeldung, this proof of address.  Most critically, you can’t get a bank account without it.  And the thing about a proof address is, you need to have an actual address.  Your buddy’s floor, or an Airbnb doesn’t cut it.  You need an actual landlord – or at least, the person on the lease – to sign it.  So I had to wait.

Somewhere around November 20^th, I got Lucie – my new roommate/the person on the lease – to give me the appropriate papers.  In other words, it was only last week that I was finally able to open a bank account.  In other other words, it was only on Friday that I was finally able to collect my pay.

So I got my visa on the 2^nd.  I opened my bank account on the 22^nd.  In between, there were some doings back home.  #Trump. ((This time I opted for the actual hashtag.  I’m still not sure which I think functions better in “formal” written text.))  And just as I’ll always remember where I was when I got my visa, I’ll always remember where I was for election night 2016; namely, Joschka’s flat.  That was a Tuesday night.  The next day I was scheduled to teach my first class for a new language school.

So I was already nervous about this.  I would have had trouble sleeping anyway.  But this was election night.  The best I could do was to sleep for an hour or two, wake up, check the results.  I couldn’t believe what I was seeing.  How was this happening?

Finally, my alarm went off.  The day was a blur.  The only thing I could think was, I can’t wait to get home and just get drunk.  Which I did.  But it was grosser even than that.  Now look, I’m not normally the kind of person that eats when depressed.   I’ll drink, sure.  But I won’t sit down with a tub of Ben and Jerry’s just cos I’m said. ((I won’t sit down with a tub of ice cream period, because lactose intolerance.  But you get the point.))  But these were extenuating circumstances.

So I went to the supermarket and bought a bottle of whiskey.  I also bought a box of chicken nuggets.  And a box of frozen pizza.  And a bag of chips.  And I ate and drank all of it.  And I felt gross.  But also, I felt gross anyway.  It seemed like the thing to do.

So that was that.  I’ll save the politics for a different post, cos I’ve got a lot to say about that.  I finished up my stay at chez Joschka and moved on to an Airbnb/hostel for the last 10 days of the month.  The place was nice, and the lady who ran it was a doll.  She even moved me to a bigger room, free of charge, after my second night.  So it was OK.  But I was still living out of a suitcase.

I tried to take the point of view that it was all part of the adventure.  And I do feel that way.  In one moth, I got to experience three very different neighborhoods in Berlin.  But I was ready to move into my own room.

Which I finally did, on a rainy Thursday night.  I schlepped my suitcase and a few smaller bags in shit weather over half the city to get where I was going.  I waited 45 minutes for a tram that never showed.  I arrived an hour and a half later than I expected.  But I got there.  And here I am.  But I’ll come back to this later.

In the in-between time, I hung out with my girl Ziba and her husband, Jan.  Zibs I’ve mentioned a few times before.  But her husband is great, and the more I get to know him, the more I like him.  Similar tastes in music, also a guitar player.  Not just interested, but actually active, in politics.  We’ve had now several in depth and very interesting discussions.  I fancy them as my “intellectual” friends.

It’s a strange thing.  My grandpa died in 1999.  I still think about him all the damn time.  By now – in our mid 30’s – most of us have lost our grandparents.  But for me, not having my grandfather around, it only grows more and more poignant.  The reason, or part of the reason, is, my grandpa wasn’t made to be a child’s grandparent.  Don’t get me wrong, he was amazing with me.  As a child, I adored him.

But he wasn’t the take-you-to-the-park, bounce-you-on-his-knee, made-for-TV grandfather.  He was an intellectual.  He was the patriarch of my father’s side of the family, and he set the tone which exists to this day.  Namely that we value smarts, we value wordplay, we value science.  He would take you to the park because you were an idiot child, but he’d rather play chess with you.  When you’re seven, it’s maybe not so easy to appreciate this.  When you’re 35, you wish you had the man around to bounce ideas off of.

But he was also a world traveler.  And this I can only experience second hand, through other people’s stories.  We all know he moved his family to the Philippines for work.  But I’m also told that they – him and my grandma – would go on cruises and meet people from other countries and stay friends with these people forever.

Well what the fuck am I doing?  I moved my ass to Berlin, I’m making it here – or trying to – as an English teacher.  And it’s never far from my mind that maybe I’m walking in his footsteps. Ask me who I want to talk about my experiences with, and I’m gonna tell you it’s him.  And I’m never not sad that I don’t get to do that.

If this seems a bit self-indulgent and tangential, well, it might be.  But bear with me.  I’m going somewhere with this.  One of the stories that my dad has told about grandpa is that in his younger days he was probably a bit “pinker” than we might have guessed.  That he had some communist leanings.  I’m fuzzy on this.  I expect my dad is fuzzy on this.  I think his understanding is somewhat ex post facto.  In other words, I think it’s more to do with things he learned after the fact rather than things he remembered from childhood.

And certainly from my point of view, from my memories, he didn’t strike me as a political person.  He always struck me as a science guy.  But ever since hearing such stories, I’ve not been able to shake this image of my grandfather as a young(er) man, holding quasi-clandestine meetings with like-minded lefties; debating issues of importance with an idealism that I can only match with cynicism bordering on nihilism.

Anyway.  So there I am, sitting in a living room in Berlin talking politics with a left-leaning German.  But I’ve always talked politics with my friends.  What’s different is, this guy is a registered member of his party.  He goes to meetings.  And he’s idealistic.  He wants to make a difference.  He sees the world – and to some extent his country – going to shit, and he wants to do something about it.

And I listen to him talk, and it’s infectious.  I’m cynical, bordering on nihilistic at this point, as I’ve said.  I’m ready to throw my hands up and just accept that we’re all fucked.  But not Jan.  He thinks we can change things if we just get off our asses.  And I want to go along for this ride.  I even asked him to bring me to his next meeting.  I’m starting to feel like, even if all I do is observe, I want to come back to America – whenever I come back – with something to offer, with something learned, with something experienced.

And this is where I’m going with this.  As we’re sitting there in this living room in Berlin, not just talking about politics, but talking about how we can change shit, I can only think of my grandfather.  Where was he when he was my age?  What would he think of all this?  Would he be proud of me?  I mean, that last question is a funny one.

Ever since he died, all through college, and in everything I’ve ever done afterwards, I’ve always asked that question.  At his funeral, my grandmother – unsolicited – told me he was only ever proud of me.  But it’s not the same thing.  From your parents you get unconditional love and pride.  I could live under a bridge and my parents would find a way to be proud of me.  They’d worry about me, but they’d be proud.

With my grandfather, though, that’s not quite enough.  He was – and still is somehow – the intellectual giant of the family.  It’s not enough to know he’d be proud of me because I’m his grandson.  I want him to be proud of me on the merits.

So when I sit in a foreign country and debate politics and try to find a way in, I want to believe that I’m doing something he might have done.  I so want to believe that this thing Dave is doing in 2016 isn’t just something Herb would have approved of, but that it’s something Herb himself might have done.

OK, I guess I’m taking this in a different direction than I’d originally anticipated.  My goal was to just sort of capture the highlights of the last month, on which I’d till now written nothing.  But this has come to a different place.  Before I close, I want to talk about voice; a person’s voice and how it sticks in our memory.

All this talk about my grandpa, so much of it has to do with the stories we tell, the things we choose to remember, and how we choose to interpret those memories.  But there’s one thing that sticks, one thing that is not so subjective.  And that’s the person’s voice, how they sounded.

You can say a lot of things about the Starr family.  We don’t do a good job of holding on to our hair.  We have a propensity for toilet humor, possibly related to weak stomachs and an abundance of time reading in the bathroom.  We value rationality over – even at the expense of – emotion, making us not the most demonstrative of folk.  But one thing that stands out, one thing that sticks not just in the memory, but in the ears, is the voice.  Big fucking voices.

Carol, who was as sweet and loving and caring a person as I ever knew, had this booming voice.  The walls would ring with her smile when she greeted you.  Gail, who I mostly knew as I child, had it also.  Herb, my grandfather, was the father of these resounding hellos, and his rang deeper than all of them.  And it’s not a question of volume.  I don’t mean that they were loud people.  Just that it rang through you like the tolling of a bell.  And there was a melody to it.  It would start high and cascade down over you like a waterfall.

Ida, my grandmother, was softer.  But not less.  And now Michael.  I’m doing everything I can to hear his voice, to never forget the sound of it.  I might never hear it again.  But all of this is an emotional response.  The actual sound – and I say this as a person with an overriding interest in language – is just as important.

There’s a nasal quality to it.  It’s very a much a Brooklyn honk, though not the caricatured variety you find in movies.  And the accent.  Ida had this wonderful way of glottal-stopping, the likes of which you don’t hear so much anymore.  Of course, the New York accent still has a strong glottal stop, right?  I mean, nobody lives in ManhaTTan.  We live in Manhattan. ((Though the people that speak this way would hardly ever bother with the name of the island, referring instead to the city, or rather the ci’y.))  But if she needed her teeth checked, she wouldn’t talk about going to the dentist, nor even the dennist – as I might say – but rather the de’ist.

This way of speaking, it’s harder and harder to find.  And nearly all the people I knew who spoke this way are gone or leaving.  It makes the memories of those who spoke like that all the more precious.  I don’t just remember my grandmother, I remember how she sounded.  It’s as important as any other memory I have.

It makes me pay special attention to my dad when he speaks.  He’s carrying something special that won’t be around much longer.  I mean, people who live in Brooklyn now, they don’t sound like they’re from Brooklyn.  Mostly because they’re not.  I could easily name you ten people I know who live in Kings county; twenty even.  None of them are from Brooklyn.

And maybe that’s what’s sticking with me the most right now.  We can pass on stories and we can pass on photos.  We can even pass on videos.  But none of that captures the way a person sounded, the way their voice made you feel.  If I ever have kids, I can tell them about grandpa.  I can’t give them the sound of his voice.

I wrote earlier that I wish I could I talk to him and tell him about my experiences.  I said I wished I could know what he thought of my life, to know if he was proud of me.  But it may be that, most of all, I just wish I could hear him…

ז׳׳ געסונט

An American in Berlin
New York Edition

September First marked a rather significant anniversary in the Life of Dave.  And also in the life of my best friend Jared.  As of 9/1/16 we’ve now lived longer outside of Maiden Lane than we did in it.  Talk about your mindfucks.  And I thought describing the currywurst bitches was hard.

Jared and I were roommates for ten – count ‘em: 10 – years.  Six years in Maiden Lane, and another four on Orchard Street.  Even now, we joke with our married friends that they haven’t made it until they beat our mark. ((Cheers to Keith and Heather, who only just recently beat us.))  Anyway, this sort of anniversary – if that’s even the right word – is hard to wrap your head around.

I mean, when we first moved in, the Fulton Fish Market was still a thing.  We’d walk outside in the summer and be hit with that smell.  Ground Zero was still Ground Zero and not the new Trade Center.  We could still pretend to afford the rent down there.  But all I’m saying here is that Manhattan changed.  The city changed.  That doesn’t even begin to touch on the heart of the matter.

When we moved in together – along with English Phil; it was a three-bedroom – we were, what, 23?  You think back to it, and you start to realize, this was an entirely different time of your life.  A different era.  What I’m going to say next is going to sound cheesy.  But, everything was still new.  You were discovering yourself at the same time as you were discovering the greatest city on earth.  You were properly free for the first time in your life.

Free, and yet poor.  My first year, I worked at Starbucks.  And Jared, I think, was still in acting school.  I’d come home from work with bags of expired scones and sandwiches and we considered it a bounty.  But we didn’t care.  Aye, we were ‘appy in those days, although we were poor.  Because we were poor!

But it’s strange to think back to those times.  Because it’s but two years ago that we were still roommates in Chinatown.  Yet even that was different somehow.  By that time, we were both in grad school, both looking more towards the future than towards today.  But Maiden Lane, those were the last days of youth, somehow.  The days when we were free from worry.

And of course that’s not true at all, is it?  It’s just, that’s how it feels now.  Not everybody gets to live their twenties in New York, but we did.  And we loved it.  And he’s still there, and I’m here.  And nobody knows what will come next.  But those days are gone.  The days of living with your best friend and facing the world together are gone.

As people get older, they move on.  Many people settle into relationships.  Others run away, as I have.  But in your twenties, it’s your friends who are the central figures in your lives.  Your friends are your family.  In your thirties?  It’s your boyfriend or your girlfriend, your husband or your wife.  And your friends fade into the background.  If you’re lucky, they become family.  And they have, for me.  My friends from home, Jared front-and-center, are my family.

But they’re family in the sense of a no-questions-asked-always-there-for-you kind of way.  Not in a central-figure-in-your-life kind of way.  I hesitate to speak out of turn regarding Jared, but I trust what I say here will not be taken amiss.  He lives now with his boyfriend Josh.  And I adore Josh.  That’s not hyperbole or polite blogque-speak.  I adore Josh.  And I am so words-can’t-express-it happy for Jared.  But his life now is with his partner and not his buddy-roommate.  And that’s as should be.  My life, for now, is here in Berlin.  We’ve chosen our paths.  And I don’t think either of us regret the paths we’ve chosen.

But that doesn’t mean you don’t look back upon the times-that-were and feel a twinge of nostalgia.  It doesn’t mean you don’t miss the times-gone-by that will never come again.  I texted Jared, on the first of September:

Dave: Congratulations, my man. We’ve now been outside of Maiden Lane longer than we were in it.

Jared: Something about that makes me sad.  Also I read that as I went into Starbucks so there was some synergy there.

Davie: Weird. Yeah man, little bit of melancholy. Little bit of nostalgia. Little bit of getting old sucks.

Jared: There it is.

There it is.  The Maiden Lane days were their own thing.  We would live tougher for another four years on the Lower Easy Side.  But that was its own other thing.  It wasn’t the same.  We were in our thirties.  We were going our own ways already.  By that point, I’d met Joschka and Vinny and Niki.  We were getting drunk in Williamsburg til 4am and finishing up with ‘breakfast’ at WoHop.  Meanwhile, Jared was doing his thang.  Even if we were still best friends in those years, we weren’t the team that we were in the Maiden days.

And now here we are.  Here I am.  An entire Maiden Lane Lifetime after Maiden Lane.  I’m trying to process it, but I can’t understand it.  But maybe that’s life.  You do your best to understand it when it’s happening, even though you know you can’t.  Then you try to understand it when it’s gone, and you can only grasp at the fringes of it.  You can try.  You should try, even.  But you can’t live in the past.  Enfin le temps perdu qu’on ne rattrape plus.

זיי געסונט

An American in Berlin
19 October, 2016

Lately, I’ve spent a lot of time cooped up inside.  Lots of reasons for this, I suppose.  Not wanting to spend money.  Busy with work.  Weather turning to shit.  Boredom.  Some reasons are better than others.  But today, I got off my ass and went for a five hour walk.  My main goal was to visit the Schwerbelastungskörper, on more which later.  My secondary goal was to get a currywurst from a particular stand on Tempelhoferdamm.  I achieved my goals.  I also achieved getting soaked by the rain, which was not my goal.

There are two types of walks that I undertake here in Berlin.  One is a blind wandering.  There’s no goal in mind.  I simply pick a direction and go.  These are great, because you never know what you’ll find.  The drawback is, you might find nothing interesting at all.  But at least you get some fresh air and exercise.  And obviously the Fußpils, the walking-around-beer.  The other type of walk is the one where you pick a point of interest beforehand and map out a rough route.  That was today.

My first stop was the currywurst stand on Tempelhoferdamm.  I’d been there once before and considered it to be one of the better currywursts that I’ve had in this town.  Certainly I don’t go for the friendliness of the staff.  I’m not kidding.  It’s run by these two old ladies.  Two old ladies who seem to have sticks or small dead animals up their asses.

OK, that requires some explanation.  The first time I went, I merely stumbled upon it.  I was wandering around the area, I was hungry and their prices seemed fair.  So I ordered the obligatory Currywurst mit Pommes – currywurst with fries.  I gave my order to the old blonde lady, but it was the old brunette who served me.  Somewhere in that handoff, she lost the fact that I had ordered my food to go.  So when I saw her putting it on an actual plate, I politely interrupted her.  Entschuldigung, kann ich’s zu mitnehmen haben?  Excuse me, can I have that to go please?  And wow, did she give me the dirtiest look ever.  I mean, it was all out of proportion.  Like, OK.  This is a minor inconvenience.  I get it.  But did I just ruin your whole godsdamned day?  Because you look like I just ruined your whole godsdamned day.  I wanted to apologize.  I probably did apologize, in fact.  But I did some serious eye-rolling.

Still though, it was as a good a currywurst as I’ve had. ((Which, I mean, isn’t saying all that much.  Currywurst, like the Philly Cheese-Steak, is the local indigenous food.  And like the Philly Cheese-Steak, it’s second rate.  That doesn’t mean there’s not good ones and bad ones.  And it doesn’t mean the good ones aren’t quite enjoyable.  It just means, get over yourself.  Nah mean?))  And the fries were solid, which is key.  Nothing’s worse than going for a currywurst and getting shit fries.  Contrary-wise, when you get a subpar currywurst but it comes with nice, thick steak fries, all is well.  All this to say, despite the customer service hiccup, I was looking forward to grabbing lunch from the old dames today.

And they didn’t disappoint, on either front.  This time, I went out of my way to make clear I wanted my food for the road.  So far, so good.  The brunette wrapped it up for me.  Which, I mean, is weird.  Like in New York, when you get a slice or two to go and the put the plate inside a paper bag.  On the one hand, thanks, I guess.  On the other, more realistic hand, do you not realize I’m going to start eating this the minute I’m out your door?  Why did you put that in a bag?  But that’s what they did, and I wasn’t going to ask them not too, lest I get the evil-eye again.

One thing you need to know is, you don’t eat currywurst with a fork, nor do you eat it with your hands.  You eat it with, what I call, a Nathan’s fork.  New Yorkers will know what I’m talking about.  When you get fries from Nathan’s, you eat them with this little red plastic trident.  It’s part of the charm, no?  Well, it’s the same for currywurst, although here it comes in all colors.

Anyway, here, they usually hide the spear under the paper plate when they wrap it up.  So you get that awkward fast food moment.  You know the one.  Where you don’t really know if they put a fork and napkins into your bag, so you just grab extras on your way out, just in case.  Well, that’s just what happened here.  Kind of.

They hand me my bag – and again, I’m going to eat this starting in three seconds, why did you put it in a fucking bag, no really, do you think I’m going to take it all the way home and proceed to eat it lukewarm? – they hand me the bag, I’m saying, and I think, lemme grab a fork/trident/spear.  Just in case.  After all, if you think I’m taking this “home,” you also probably think I have utensils where I’m going, yeah?

So I stretch my paw towards the pile of plastic tridents.  And get this.  The blonde lady literally slaps my hand.  Like I’m a fucking child that doesn’t know any better.  Slaps.  My fucking.  Hand.  And the brunette – who last time looked at me like I was the world’s biggest asshole for asking for my food to go after she’d put it on a real plate – looked at me like I was out of my mind.  “Alles ist drinnen” she said, or something like it.  Everything is inside.  Jeez, OK, fine.  Thanks, I guess.

So I took my package of junk food and found a bench by the river.  I opened the bag.  And yeah, I found my little spear hiding out under the paper plate.  But you know what I didn’t find?  Napkins.  So alles wasn’t fucking drinnen, was it?  And napkins would have been helpful, given that the whole Mischung was drowning in ketchup.  But whatever.

So I’m sitting there trying to enjoy my lunch.  But now I’m annoyed that, at 35 years old, I’d just had my hand slapped.  Like I was a fucking idiot child.  And I’m trying to figure out if this is normal on a cultural level and I just need to accept it, or if these two broads are just raging bitches.  Certainly Germans have a reputation for being direct – even severe – in ways that Americans might consider rude.  And sure, when you encounter this, it’s your job to recognize that you’re in their country and you can’t take it personally.  But this seemed a bit beyond that.  In the coming days, I’ll run this by some German friends and see what they think.  But at the moment, I’m thinking I can get my currywurst elsewhere.  Or, you know, eat something healthier.

Anyway, after lunch, I headed up to the Schwerbelastungskörper.  Beer in hand, obvi.  On the one hand, it was great to be out walking.  On the other hand, what a shitty day for a walk.  It was cold and grey and rainy.  Not freezing, not black, not pouring.  Good enough to manage, but still fairly shite.

So I made my way up Tempelhoferdamm, past the Ring-Bahn, until I picked up Baron-von-Richtofen Strße.  Baron von Richtofen, you will remember, was the Red Baron.  See, in the area around Tempelhof aiport, they’ve named the streets after famous aviators.  This particular street leads you through a rather posh neighborhood.  Well, it’s posh now, anyway.  When THF was an active airport, it was a different story.  Jetliners flying over your house at tree-top level aren’t great for property values.  But once they turned the airport into a park, this little ‘hood gentrified in a hurry.

Anyway, you walk through this little neighborhood a piece – and you have to know where you’re going – until you turn a corner and there it is.  The Schwerbelastungskörper.  This huge concrete cylinder, 14m high and 21m in diameter, just sort of sits there, in this little residential area.  An ominous reminder of what Berlin – Germania – might have looked like, if Hitler and Speer had got their way.

The structure itself was nothing more than a test.  It was never meant to be the foundation of anything.  Its sole purpose was to see just how much weight the marshy soil of Berlin could bear.  But it would provide critical information.  With this test completed, the Nazis could build their Welthauptstadt – world capital – with all the scary, imposing, monumental architecture their sick minds could devise.  Of course, they never got that far.

–Interpolation: I started this piece on October 13^th.  It is now the 19^th.  In the intervening days, I’ve been suffering from a real bitch of a cold.  In fact, I still am.  But I took a break from writing, as my usual habits seemed to me to be counterproductive as regards convalescence.  In other words, I though it unwise to stay up late, smoking my pipe and drinking wine in throes of this wretched cold.  I probably shouldn’t be writing tonight either, but I’m getting antsy.  So instead of wine, I’m drinking hot toddies, which I deem medicinal.  End Interpolation–

Anyway, the Schwerbelastungskörper was interesting and scary and awesome in the more literal sense of the word.  Interesting, obviously, as a piece of history.  And you can go inside it.  It’s almost like a bunker in there.  And while you don’t have access, you can see how far down underground it goes.  Scary because, you know, Nazis.  Awesome, however, is more complicated.

I have a weird relationship with Nazi architecture.  On the one hand, it is all “intimidation” architecture.  Like Versailles, it is meant to make the viewer feel small and insignificant.  But there’s no confusing Louis XIV with Hitler.  So there’s a creepy, evil feeling about it as well.  Walk by the old Air Ministry (the current Finance Ministry) and you will feel it.  Charlotte, who is not exactly a student of history, certainly felt it.

On the other hand, I have to admit a feeling of admiration for monumental architecture.  Especially when it’s influenced by classical architecture. ((Speer had this concept of Ruinenwert – ruin value.  It’ll be easier just to quote Wikipedia (gods forgive me): “Ruin value (German: Ruinenwert) is the concept that a building be designed such that if it eventually collapsed, it would leave behind aesthetically pleasing ruins that would last far longer without any maintenance at all.”  In other words, after the thousand years of the Thousand Year Reich, there would be glorious ruins for thousands of years more; just like the Athenian acropolis or the Roman Forum.  Remove the Nazi aspect from the equation, and I can’t help but love this idea.  Especially when contrasted with the ruin we now call Penn Station, to give but one example.))  Take for example the US Capitol Building, the Supreme Court Building, the Municipal Building in New York, and on and on.  And here you have this government that wanted to build things on a bigger and grander scale than anything that had ever been built before.  You imagine what these buildings might have looked like, and it is literally awesome.

Then you remember who these people were.  You remember that everything they built was built by slave labor or near-slave labor.  And it churns your stomach.  The further in time we get from these things, the easier it is to view them with a detached eye.  But it’s still difficult to balance your subjective feelings about the architecture with your objective knowledge of the bastards who built it.

Anyway, in the week since I started this post, I’ve had the opportunity to ask more than a few Germans about the “hand-slapping incident.”  To be honest, I was kind of expecting at least one or two people to admit, with a bit of embarrassment, that yeah, even if this wasn’t exactly normal, it wasn’t entirely unheard of either.  I encountered no such response.  To a one, I was met with looks of abject horror.  Each responded in turn with something along the lines of, oh my god, that’s fucking horrific and please don’t judge Germans by this.

So at least I know I don’t have to feel bad about reaching for the Nathan’s Fork anymore.  And I know I won’t be going back there again either.  It does mean, however, that I need to find a new currywurst spot.  Last year, there was a place in my ‘hood that was pretty great, and which served up some beautiful fucking steak fries.  But they seem to have gone out of business in my absence.

In other news, I started watching Deadwood.  Normally, I don’t much care for westerns.  But I knew the show was done by HBO, was quite popular in its time, and starred Ian McShane, whom I loved from his work on the short-lived (but totally fucking awesome) Kings.  So when I saw it on Netflix, I decided to give it a whirl.

And friends, it is basically Shakespeare transposed onto a western.  You don’t notice it at first, what with the costumes and scenery, the waterfall of cursing ((I’ve never seen a show or movie make such use of the words ‘cunt’ and ‘pussy’ before.)) and the Old West dialect.  This to say nothing of trying to keep up with the plots and characters.  But once you get accustomed to these things, you start to notice the Shakespeare in it.

First, some of the characters are right out of Old Bill.  You’ve got your Rosencrantz and Guildenstern.  You’ve go your Falstaff and your Macbeth.  And if I was more versed in Shakespeare, I could probably pick out a few more.

But more than this, there’s the language.  When the main characters embark upon long dialogues or soliloquies (and yes, there are soliloquies), the language is totally Shakespearean; if not in dialect, then certainly in syntax and meter.  In fact, I would love to do a metrical analysis on some of these speeches vis-à-vis Mr. Stratford-upon Avon.  I’m dead certain they would match.

As for syntax, the sentence construction doesn’t hold with the way we speak, but is definitely in accord with what you find in the Bard’s work.  To be fair, I’m not an expert on 19^th century speech patterns in the American West.  But it’s hard for me to imagine that people spoke this way in their everyday lives, even if surviving letters support this to an extent.

And now here, I’m going to get into the weeds a bit.  I’ll do my best to keep this succinct.  In modern English, we have the “-ing” form of the verb.  When I teach, this functions in one of two ways.  The first is as a gerund, or a verbal noun.  For example, “I like running.”  Running is gerund.  It’s based off the verb to run, but it functions as a noun in the sentence.  The second, is as a participle, which is an adjective.  For example, “We have running water.”  Running is still based off the verb to run, but here, it’s an adjective, describing the water.  What we don’t really do anymore, is use the “-ing” form as a present active participle in the classical sense.

And here, it’s helpful to remember that our ideas of style – even today – derive from Greek and Roman ideas of style.  And in Greek and Latin literature, a sentence usually only has one main verb.  Of course, you can have subordinate clauses which can stretch a sentence for nearly a page.  But the main clause, the meat of the sentence, will have one verb.  For the Greeks and Romans, joining multiple verbs with “and” was suboptimal.  Of course they did it, but they didn’t love it.  What they preferred, was to have one verb and then use present active participles in parallel with it, when more verbal action was required.  OK, OK, shut the fuck up, Dave.  I know.

So let me try to give an example of what I mean.  Today, we would probably say something like “I went to the store and bought some bread.”  That’s one sentence with two verbs joined by “and.”  The Greeks and Romans, however, would prefer something like this: “Going to the store, I bought some bread.”  Still one sentence, but now only one verb.  The second verbal idea is expressed with a present active participle.  We simply don’t speak like this anymore.  We hardly even write like this anymore.

But Shakespeare certainly wrote like this.  And so does Deadwood.  They both also enjoy anaphora, or the repetition of a word or phrase.  So, putting the two together, you might get something like this: “Bullock, being an honest (fucking) ((I earlier referred to the ‘waterfall of curses.’  Let this also serve as an example of that.  And these words, being so bold, draw your attention away from the poetry that is being spun around them.  Which is why I only began to notice all this in the second season.)) Sherriff, can be counted on to act justly.  And acting justly, can be counted on to bring about a favorable (fucking) outcome.”

I realize this is an imperfect analysis.  But this is how I watch the show now.  I’m watching as much with an eye to the language and the style as I am for the story and the entertainment.  I’m constantly trying to put my finger on why this sounds and feels so Shakespearean.  This is what I’ve been able to come up with so far.

If you’re still with me – and I can hardly blame you if you’re not – I’ll begin my wrap-up here.  The only other thing worth mentioning is the ongoing apartment hunt, which is a living hell and hangs over me like a cloud.  I feel very unsettled, not having a place of my own.  Added to this is the fact that I know I won’t be able to extend my stay where I am, as my hosts have booked the room to someone else for next month.  So if I don’t find a place for next month, I don’t quite know what I’ll do.  I can hope to find a different AirBnB, if it comes to that.  And I have at least one friend offering a couch, which, while lovely, I don’t relish the idea of such an imposition.  So there’s nothing to do but wait.  Wait and see if I get any more responses to my room requests; wait and see if any of the people I’ve interviewed with deign to choose me.

Of course this will pass.  And even if I don’t find a permanent place starting next month, I know I will find one eventually.  But until I do, it’s a most unwelcome stress.

That said, I hate to end a down-note.  So I’ll offer this as a coda.  A few weeks ago, I interviewed at a language school where a couple of my CELTA classmates now work.  I had, of my own accord, sent in my résumé prior.  But I received no response.  However, both of my friends got in the guy’s ear about me, whereupon I received an email to the following effect: “Dear Dave, I’ve now had two of my teachers singing your praises to me.  Would you like to come in for an interview?”  Obviously I would.

The gent turned out to be a Yank, and was lovely as could be.  We had a very nice interview and he gave me a letter-of-intent on the spot.  This letter, I should add, is something I very much need for my next visa appointment.  So if nothing else, the meeting was already a win.

Anyway, in the course of the interview, it became clear that regardless of how our meeting went, he was going to write me the letter for two reasons.  The first, being American himself, he knew well the hardship of trying to get situated in this country and simply wanted to be helpful.  The second, he was doing a favor to his friends, who were also my friends.  And on some level, I think he wasn’t sure if I was truly looking for work or if I simply wanted said letter.  So at the end, I made clear that once I had my visa, I would very much like to work for him.  Whereupon did he make clear that he would be very happy to have me work for him.  And so, while I can’t work for him until I get my visa, it’s nice to know that I’ve got this prospect waiting for me.

And when I next saw one of my friends, he told me – unsolicited – that the guy had contacted him to report that he was quite pleased with me.  And this is no small matter to me.  Knowing, after all, that I only got the interview because of my friends’ intervention, it was very important to me to represent them well.  Hearing, then, that I had done so was a relief.

So that’s where I’m at.  Things continue to be tough at the moment.  But once my visa is sorted, once I have my own room, things are going to start turning in my favor.  The ass-end of 2016 is likely to be a struggle.  But the dawn of 2017 is full of promise.  It can’t come soon enough.

זיי געסונט

An American in Berlin

So in my last post, I mostly just talked about horseradish and the travelling shit-show of a circus that is Dave & Charlotte Roadtripping.  But I really didn’t say much about the places we visited.  So I should probably do that.  You know, before I forget all about it.  Prague first, then Saxony/Poland.

Right, Prague.  The stories are legion.  “Go to Prague,” they say.  “You’ll get beer for like 35 cents,” they say.  Well, maybe 10-15 years ago.  But not now.  I mean, don’t get me wrong.  It’s still cheap.  Cheap compared to New York or Paris.  But maybe not so cheap compared to Berlin.  In fact, in most ways, I’d say the pricing is pretty comparable to Berlin.  So yeah, it’s cheap.  But it’s not like you go there and spend 35 dollars for a weekend.

Whatever.  It’s a beautiful city.  It’s beautiful in terms of its architecture.  You find neo-classical butting up against baroque butting up against art deco.  There doesn’t seem to be any rhyme or reason to it.  It’s just all there.  And it’s gorgeous, even if it doesn’t seem to make sense.  But here I’m talking about the larger city, in general terms.

The “city center,” the “old city,” was less than impressive.  I mean, don’t get me wrong, there’s some fantastic architecture and a lot of history.  But it all feels very Disneyfied.  Kind of like Times Square, actually, but with older buildings.  Herds of tourists shuffling from one attraction to the next.  Street vendors selling useless garbage and subpar food at gougey prices.  Not to put to fine a point on it, but it’s a fucking rip-off.

C signed us up for a free walking tour.  This, in fact, was pretty great.  But I’ll come to it later.  Because, before the tour, we decided to grab a quick lunch in the city center, the old town.  Now look, we’re fairly experienced travelers.  We know that if we we’re going to eat lunch here, we’re going to overpay.  Cost of doing business and all that.  But there’s over-paying and then there’s getting ripped off.  And they ripped us off.  Or, rather, they tried to.

So enamored were we with the sausages and horseradish(!) ((“Horseradish makes everything brighter,” she said.)) from the night before, that we decided to grab a kielbasa (though I think it was spelled ‘klobasa’) and some kind of potato salad for lunch.  The posted prices were high, but not unreasonable.  Based on the signs, we calculated something 4-6€. ((Despite the Czech Republic not being on the Euro, they do accept them at major tourist spots.  And although we were paying with Crona, we were always thinking in terms of Euros.))  So we were fairly shocked when the guy at the register asked for roughly twice that amount.

Well, what can you do?  We paid it.  I mean, we were in a line, in a rush.  And maybe we did the conversion wrong, who knows?  But we weren’t happy about it.  Still, that’s the travelling life.  So we took our food and found a bench.  Only, when we started eating, we were hugely disappointed.  The sausage was greasy and not very flavorful.  The potato salad was also kinda gross and there was way too much of it.  So we broke out the receipt and tried to figure out what the hell had happened.  And here’s what the hell happened.

On the sign, they quote you a price per gram or kilogram.  Then they give you way more g/kg than you could possibly want.  Then they insist that this is the standard amount.  In other words, they rip you right the fuck off.  So now, the food wasn’t good and we’d been screwed.  We were not happy campers.  It was at this point that C resolved to raise hell.

She picked up the bowl of shitty potato salad and marched back to the food stand.  Five minutes later she returned sans potatoes and with a crisp 200 Crona note, good for about 4€.  I mean, basically she made a scene until they paid her to go away.  Bless her.

But here, this is one of the mysteries of life, as far as I’m concerned.  I mean, in almost all contexts, it’s the men who are aggressive, confrontational, warlike.  It’s the men who conduct business.  But screw up the bill at a restaurant?  Well, hell hath no fury, nah mean?  So in the end, it worked out.  I mean, it worked out as well as overpaying for a shitty lunch can work out.  But at least we (read, she) made them pay for trying to fuck us over.  The point is, don’t fuck with a New Yorker. ((By which I mean, Charlotte, who lived in New York for two years.))

After lunch, we had our free walking tour.  Our guide was a Polish guy named Michal.  He described himself as an aspiring actor.  No surprise then, that his opening schtick was a bit heavy-handed.  But in fact, he turned out to be a great guide.  And when you got him to the side, when you were able to talk to him one-on-one, he turned out to be a great guy as well.

Anyway, we got some good history on Prague.  Apparently, the thing to do, when you’re unhappy with a public official, is to defenestrate them; to throw them out a window.  I’m no position to judge the efficacy of such a method.  All I’m saying is, if I was a corrupt big-shot in Prague, I might put my office in the basement.

So lots of old Prague then.  But for me personally, the highlight of the tour was the Jewish Quarter.  Now, we went on Saturday, so of course everything was closed. ((Not today, boychick.  It’s fucking Shabbos!))  But we saw the Jewish cemetery and a couple of synagogues.  Worth noting, we saw the synagogue that is home to the mythic Golum, who even now, it is said, sleeps in the attic.  So that was very cool.

The next day, we walked around the palace grounds.  Which was definitely cool and very pretty.  Great views of the city too, as it is up a mountain and across the river from the Old Town.  But you know, seen one, seen ‘em all, kinda thing.  Much cooler was the classical concert we went to that evening.

It actually took place in a small, baroque concert hall (or maybe ‘salon’ is a better word?), where, it seems, some of Amadeus was shot.  This was a lot of fun.  The core group was a quintet.  But they had a guest singer as well as two guest cellists.  The set included Eine Kleine Nachtmusik, the first movement of Beethoven 5, Spring & Summer from the Four Seasons, the Lacrimosa from Mozart’s Requiem and some other big ‘hits’ as well.  It was pretty interesting, as a lot of the material had to be (re)arranged for the small ensemble.  But they did a fine job it.  And I loved it.  I mean, I don’t even know what the last classical concert I’ve been to was.  I just know it’s been a while.

Which is kind of weird, really.  When I was in London, I’d go to two a week.  And even in the City, in my first few years, I’d go quite often.  But somewhere along the line, I just kinda stopped.  I don’t even know why.  So I’m not even sure I really knew how much I missed it.  But when they opened with EKN, and that rich beautiful sound filled the hall, I was in heaven.  OK, that probably overstates it.  But, I was in a wonderful and familiar place that I’d been gone from for way too long.

C, on the other hand, had never been to a classical concert before.  This gave me some mixed feels.  On the one hand, I was delighted to be the one to bring her to her first show.  I was delighted to share this experience with her.  And, as I so often used to go solo to these things, I was happy to have somebody to share it with this time.  On the other hand, I felt a bit of pressure.  I mean, she was 100% on board with going.  But it was really my idea.  I was the one pushing for it.  So if it sucked, or if she didn’t enjoy it, I’d have felt like it was my fault.

I needn’t have worried.  After the Beethoven, she turned to me and was just like, ‘wow.’  And yeah, wow.  Which is impressive, given that it was played by a fucking quintet.  No brass.  No timpani.  But they still rocked the hell out of it.  I mean, it’s Beethoven.  So it’s going to kick ass.  That’s what Beethoven does, right?  Bach is perfect.  Mozart is beautiful.  And Beethoven is the fucking destroyer of worlds.  In addition to being perfect and beautiful.  The point is, C loved the shit out of this show.  Big success.

So yeah, we might be disorganized and totally à l’arrache, but we get horseradish and Beethoven.  What do you get?  Nice hotels?  Pass.

We went back to ‘our’ restaurant for dinner.  We had to.  I got some huge pig’s knee, which was gross and fatty and delicious and came with pickled peppers and pickled onions and also just pickles.  C, I think, got what the English version of the menu called “gnocchi” but which was just another version of their awesome boiled potato dumplings.  Given that we loved this place so much, I feel compelled to mention that the night before, I got deer neck, which came with red cabbage, potato dumplings and an ungodly delicious sauce.  I mean, this joint was just brilliant.  Obviously we had lunch there on Monday as well, before we left the city.

Those, I guess, are the highlights from Prague.  Worth mentioning, but not going into detail about, were the TV Tower, the smaller Jewish cemetery in our neighborhood, the Charles Bridge and Borčak, which is a sweet, young wine that kind of tastes a bit like pineapple juice.  You could drink it all day, and never think twice about it.

Now for Saxony.  I say Saxony because we were kind of all over the place.  The original plan called for a visit to Dresden.  But the AirBnBs there seemed rather overpriced, and we had begun to think we’d seen enough of cities.  I mean, at some point, cities are all the same.  So let’s see something new, we figured.

Whereupon did we visit a place called Kromlauer Park.  No great reason behind this, other than that we saw a picture of a beautiful stone-arch bridge.  So beautiful were the pictures, we figured why the hell not?  And our hosts confirmed the Merkwürdigkeit ((Literally, the ‘worth-seeing-ness’ of it.)) of it, which was nice.  It did not disappoint.

The bridge is set over a small stream/lake/whatever in the midst of beautiful woodlands.  The bridge itself is shaped like a rainbow.  And the waters beneath it are so still that the reflection forms a perfect circle.  It’s gorgeous from any angle.  And we saw all the angles.  The rest of the park was lovely, to be sure.  But the bridge alone made the trip here worthwhile.  And being a bit off the beaten trail, it was not at all crowded; neither did it have the feel of being a tourist attraction.  Kromlauer Park ftw.

But wait, there’s more.  The place even had a bit of a fairy tale feel to it.  This owed in part to the scenery, but also to two young girls, seemingly about 8-10 years of age.  More than once, they seemed to appear out of thin air and to disappear back into it.  They also had a strange, almost enchanted look about them.

One was dark haired and seemed to ignore us.  The other was blonde and either smiled and waved to us, or sort of just stared at us.  We fancied that the dark haired one was an angel and the other a demon.  Adding to this feeling were two stone benches set into semi-circular stone “caves,” little concave huts, for lack of a better word.  On the map, they were called Himmel und Hölle – Heaven and Hell; one was of white stone, the other of black.  They must be the thrones of the two girls, we reasoned.

Before leaving the park, we made a little picnic, using an old tree stump as a table.  We feasted upon bread and meat and cheese and fresh tomatoes, washing it all down with a couple of radlers while listening to Abbey Road.  As fine a picnic as you could want, I tellya.

After lunch we drove down to Gölitz, a small city on the border of Poland, which lies to the South of both the park and also our AirBnB.  As I mentioned in my last post, this was my plan from the night before; but our hosts had confirmed to us that it was the nicest of the towns we had under consideration.

And indeed, it was quite pretty.  Our initial walk through the town was a bit odd, however.  The buildings seemed to alternate between grand old structures of great beauty and boarded up works in a dilapidated state.  Indeed, it had the feeling of a once vibrant city dying a slow death at the hands of a stagnant economy.

Soon enough, however, we came to the river, on the other side of which was Poland.  Now, technically, I’m not supposed to leave Germany at the moment.  My 90 days have expired; these are the 90 days you get as a tourist on an American passport.  I’ve been granted an extension to stay in Germany until my working papers are sorted, but my extension isn’t actually valid as a travel document.

However, Poland is part of the EU and there were no border controls at the bridge.  So obviously we had to cross over.  In fact, one of our original plans had us going to Krakow.  C had worked there in the past, and she very much wanted to see it again.  I’d never been to Poland at all, so I was happy to visit Krakow as well.  In the end, though, we decided not go there, as we would have had to fly or take a bus, and this definitely could have put me in front of the border police.

So we crossed over the bridge to the Polish version of Görlitz. ((The sign on the Polish side of the bridge announced the city as Zgorzelec.  I didn’t have a chance to do the requisite research.  However, based upon the similarity of the names, I surmise that at some point, this was all once city.  Only with the redrawing of maps, I assume, was it divided between the two countries.  And indeed, everybody on the Polish side seemed to speak German.  How much Polish was spoken on the German side, I do not know.))  Not quite Krakow, but at least we got to Poland.  And the first thing you notice when you cross over is that every third shop seems to be a cigarette depot.  In this respect, Poland seems to be Germany’s Indian reservation. ((Upon further reflection, this seems a particularly cruel analogy, given the whole Lebensraum thing.))  By which I mean, tobacco is super cheap there, and apparently they do a brisk business selling cancer sticks to Jerry.

After dinner – which I’m sure I dealt with in my last post – we walked back over the bridge.  This time, we walked through the city center of Görlitz on our way back to the car.  This stood in stark contrast to our earlier walk.  Now everything seemed beautiful and posh and quite medieval.  Indeed, I’d go so far as to say it was even prettier than Prague.  But, as I say, it also felt rather posh.  So, nice though it was, we felt we’d made the right call dining across the border.

As we walked, C and I had an interesting conversation.  By way of introduction, I’ll say that sometimes it’s funny how two people can see the same thing and draw two totally different conclusions.  What do I mean?  Well, I’m talking about the role I played on this particular trip as ‘the German speaker.’

Here’s the short version of what I said to Charlotte.  Basically, I said that it was a nice feeling for me to be able to handle the language for a change.  See, every time we’ve gone somewhere French speaking – this year’s trips to France and Brussels, my previous trip to France, Montréal – I’ve always been dependent on her for the language.  I mean, yeah, if I’m on my own in a French speaking place, I can manage the basics.  But she’s the native speaker.  So she always just takes care of it all.  And in the States – or even Berlin, for that matter – well, she speaks English perfectly well; so she doesn’t need me.  But here, in this part of Germany, it was the first time we’d gone somewhere where I “spoke” the language and she didn’t.  So it was all on me, for a change.  Restaurants, AirBnBs, even just reading signs.

So I told her that this was a nice feeling for me.  It felt good to be useful for a change, instead of dependent.  The only thing was, she didn’t share my interpretation of the situation(s).  I think, first of all, that on some level, she could probably have managed with English if I wasn’t there.  Maybe I have that wrong, and if I do, I’m sure she’ll tell me as soon she reads this.  But the real surprise came when she told me how much she counted on me for English in the States.

For me, English in the States never came into this equation.  I mean, her English is really quite good.  And sure, maybe if me and Vinny are speaking at New York speeds in New York accents it can be hard to keep up.  But overall, I never really gave much thought to how hard living in English might have been for her.  As I say, she’s good at the language.  But New York is a funny place for English, I guess.  I mean, you’ve got people from all over the world.  So every day, you’re dealing with a panoply of accents, all kinds of broken syntax and odd idioms.  As a native speaker, you hardly notice this.  But when it’s your second language, it’s got to be a slog.

I know this just from living in Berlin.  There’s “proper” German, and that’s fine.  As I say, restaurants and AirBnB hosts are no problem for me.  But then I try to talk to the girl upstairs, with her speed-speak, Berlin accent and cornucopia of idioms, and…fuggedaboutit.  This is the long way of saying, I told her it was nice to feel useful – language-wise – for a change; and I had no idea how much she had been relying on me all along.  As I say, it never ceases to amaze me how two people can look at the same data-set and arrive at two totally different conclusions.

So much for Görlitz.  Back at the AirBnB, it was wine and music, Yatzee and Mikado.  And then up early the next morning and back to Berlin.  We drove straight to the airport, as homegirl was flying back to France on a 1:30 flight.  Oh, actually, wait.  I left out one thing.

Saturday night, my family was celebrating Rosh HaShanah, the Jewish new year.  The whole family was together; or at least, most of the whole family.  By which I mean, my dad’s side of the family.  This was tough for me on two levels.  First, it was hard knowing everybody was together and I couldn’t be there.  Also, my mom made brisket, and it was hard knowing I couldn’t have any.  I won’t say which of these was the greater hardship.

Anyway, I Skyped in and got a chance to say “hello” to everybody.  This was actually a lot of fun.  I tried explaining to C the difference between my mom’s family and my dad’s family.  Before I go any further, I want to be clear that I love them both very much.  It’s just that they present very different experiences.  With my mom’s family, it’s all quite formal.  There’s fancy china, assigned seats, shirts with buttons on them.  With my dad’s family, it’s (often-as-not) paper plates, buffet style, eat on the couch.  And so, as the phone got passed around, as I chatted briefly with cousins and aunts and uncles, there always seemed to be somebody in the background – my brother, a cousin – flipping me off.  In sign language, “I love you” is expressed with a hand gesture that looks like ‘throwing the horns’ but with the thumb extended as well.  In other words, a fist but with a index finger, pinkie and thumb pointing outwards.  But in Starr-family sign language, you say “I love you” by making a fist and extending your middle finger.

One of my favorite pictures in the whole freakin’ world now, is the one my brother sent me that night.  It’s the whole family – 17 people – giving me the bird.  It’s pretty perfect.  I showed it to Charlotte.  “This,” I said, “is my family.”  And that, she appreciated.

Anyway, we got to the airport with plenty of time.  It was weird to say goodbye.  See, C is going to Australia in November; length of trip: unknown.  Also unknown, when we’ll see each other again.  So it was a bit emotional.  More for me, I think.  Which is odd, maybe.  On a day-to-day level, she’s far more emotional than I am.  At least, that’s my take. ((Cf, same data set, different interpretations.))  But when it comes to big goodbyes, I can go a bit weak in the knees, so to speak.

My opinion is that she’s pretty good at compartmentalizing this stuff.  In other words, she’s pretty good at either not dealing with it, or else convincing herself that the goodbye ain’t for as long as it seems.  Or maybe she just doesn’t care enough.  Or maybe this kind of thing just doesn’t hit her as hard.  I’m sure I’ll get her two-cents on the matter when she reads this.  Point is, it was not an unemotional parting on my end.

But part we did.  And now her adventure continues in Australia while mine continues in Berlin.  Ah, Berlin.  Saturday night I was over at Joschka’s for dinner and drinks.  Sometime in the past year or two he’s become quite the mixologist.  I give but one example.  This weekend, he made one drink that included fresh rosemary, crushed ice and fire.  Yes, you read that right.  Fire was an ingredient.  You literally set the alcohol in the glass on fire.  It was delicious.

It was a very nice evening.  In addition to learning a great deal about cocktails and mixology, the lad has also taken a keen interest in cooking.  And while I have nothing to offer in the cocktail department, I do at least know my way around the kitchen.  So he made one crazy drink after another, and I cooked.  We had a very nice dinner, in fact.  Something with pork and Brussels sprouts and red onions in a white wine sauce.  And so many delicious cocktails.

If only I’d had a nice lunch.  I never considered that I was drinking too much on a too-empty stomach.  So we had a great time, sure.  And indeed, we hadn’t hung out in a while, so it was nice to catch up and just hang.  But wow, Sunday was a hot-mess.  I don’t think I ever got out of bed, unless it was to throw up.

In fairness to myself, these soul-crushing, body-destroying, day-wasting hangovers are not at all frequent.  But each one his harder than the last, at this age.  It’s a delicate dance, this whole aging thing.  I can drink a liter of wine on any given night and be alright.  But I can no longer hit the hard-stuff hard.  Not on an empty stomach, anyway.  The trick now, is to know that before it’s too late.  I don’t repent.  I don’t wish to change my ways.  But I do need to adapt.  “Adaptation is the key to survival.”  Who said that, anyway?  Pretty sure it was Evolution.

There is one last thing I want to touch on, before I close this post.  As I mentioned previously, it was recently the Jewish new year.  The exact date escapes me, owing both to the lunar calendar and the ad hoc nature of the celebrations.  But last year, I met an Israeli girl at a party.  And just before I left, we hosted a Shabbat dinner for our gentile friends. ((Well, her gentile friends, really.  The ones I invited couldn’t come.))

So now, this year, she decided to host a Rosh Hashanah dinner.  Sadly, it was vegetarian.  Which, I mean, is fine per se.  Just that it didn’t give me an opportunity to win back the brisket I lost by missing my own family’s dinner.  Nonetheless, it was still great.  It was a pot-luck affair, this one.  But Dafna – the only Jew I’ve yet to meet here – decreed a main ingredient for each person’s dish. ((For me, it was beets.  So I made a beet/cabbage soup.  Quite tasty, if I do say so myself.))  And before we got into each dish, she said a brucha and told us the significance of the main ingredient to the holiday.

It wasn’t formal and it wasn’t “traditional.”  But it was pretty great, all the same.  I’m not a religious person.  If I was home, you can be sure I wouldn’t be going to Schul for the High Holidays.  But at home, I’m not an anomaly.  At home, there’s Jews everywhere.  Here, it’s just me.  So no, I don’t particularly care about the ‘religiosity” of it.  And I’m sure as shit not going to ‘repent’ for Yom Kippur. ((Rosh HaShanah and Yom Kippur are together taken as the ‘High Holidays.’  The first is the Jewish new year.  The second is the ‘Day of Atonement.’  Yom Kippur is the day you’re meant to repent your sins of the past year.  Whereupon the big G either writes you into the ‘good’ ledger or the ‘bad.’  Personally, I don’t go out for this.  My feeling is – and has been, for a very long time – that there’s a tremendous amount of cruelty and suffering in the world.  And between me and God, only one of us is supposed to be omniscient/omnibenevolent/omnipotent.  In other words, only one of us has the power to end all these horrors.  And it ain’t me.  But I’m supposed to ask his ass for forgiveness?  Nah.  I pass.  Thanks, though.))  But it’s nice to have that connection.  It’s nice to feel a part of something.  It was nice, is the point.  And I’m thankful that my friend put it all together.

So that’s that.  Prague.  Saxony.  Happy New Year, and wash it down with a fancy cocktail.  In between, I’m teaching and looking for an apartment.  Which is hell, I don’t mind telling you.  The apartment hunt, I mean.  But all that’s for another day.  Now though, I just want to go to bed.  Until next time…

זיי געסונט