An American in Berlin
19 July, 2015

So, sometimes life gets in the way. Thankfully, not in the I-knocked-that-girl-up-and-now-I’m-a-dad kind of way. But more in the my-house-is-on-fire-while-I-try-to-finish-this-course-afterwhich-I’m-immediately-off-to-France-afterwhich-I’m-immediately-off-to-a-5-day-metal-festival sort of way. Which is enough, let me tell you. Will you let me tell you? Ok, I’ll tell you.

If I had to choose, I’d almost certainly say that Flick of the Switch is the most underrated AC/DC album of the Brian Johnson era. I bring this up a) because, holy shit, go listen to that album and b) because the second track is called “This House is on Fire.” Which is relevant because, you know, my house was on fire.

No, seriously. Ok, so I’m sitting in the kitchen working on either some bullshit paper or a lesson plan; both of which were due the next day. It’s around ten at night. I’m smoking my pipe, drinking some wine. ((And possibly munching on some chips, which I felt much less bad about buying when I discovered that it was really easy for Lisa and I to sit down and eat chips together.)) And I smell something burning. Umm, ok. I start looking around. Did some ash somehow fall from my pipe onto something (in)flammable? ((“Inflammable means flammable? What a country!” – Dr. Nick, The Simpsons.)) Had perhaps some electrical device overheated? In the end, I couldn’t find anything in the kitchen. In fact, I determined that the smell must be coming from outside. Naturally, I assumed people were barbecuing in the Hinterhof. ((Hinterhof = Courtyard.))

Maybe an hour or so later, I hear people shouting outside. I hear this through my headphones, so I’m not particularly paying attention. In fact, I’m thinking, “Fools, shut the F up, I’m trying to work here.” ((Or, in New Yorkese: “Hey! I’m woikin’ ‘ere!”)) But then, a funny thing happened. ((And by “funny,” I mean, “not at all funny.”)) One word seems to be busting its way through my headphones. “Feuer!” Umm, was? So I look outside, and I see there are a bunch of people gathered in the Hinterhof. Yeah…I’m not feeling this.

So I go around to the living room window, which looks out on the courtyard from the other direction. And I see something I’ve never really seen before. One of the brick walls lining the courtyard is colored bright orange. And the reason it’s colored bright orange is because it’s reflecting the light from a giant-ass fire that’s sprung up on the other side of the Hinterhof.

Now, I don’t know how many of you have had the experience of hearing people yell “Fire!” and then looking out the window to find an actual-as-fuck fire. But let me tell you, it is very surreal.

So I go down to the Hinterhof, where I find a bunch of neighbors gathered. And they’re all sort of just standing and watching. Here’s what we see. Up on the opposite left corner of the courtyard, there is this huge fire dancing on the roof. It’s definitely not supposed to be there. But, it’s also far enough away that it doesn’t appear to be an immediate threat. And in fact, we can see water coming over the top. So we know the Feuerwehr – the fire department – are already on the job. So we sort of just stand and watch.

Little by little, the fire dies down. It was more surreal than scary, I have to say. I also have to say, it was weird not to be able to talk to the neighbors about it. I mean, my German is definitely functional at this point. But I don’t have the vocabulary to chat with strangers about our building being on fire. And Lisa’s not even home. So I’m just sorta standing there no better than deaf-and-dumb.

Finally, the fire dies down. I mean, maybe – probably even – it’s still going on inside. But the smoke has gone, the flames have gone and even the sparks have gone. And then – only then! – the fire department comes and tells us we have to go. Like, for hours. Technically, they evacuated us until like two-thirty in the morning.

I say ‘technically’ because I had a paper to write, and so I hid out in the apartment – in the dark, away from the windows – working on my bullshit paper. I mean, my reasoning was, the fire is clearly out, so why do I need to leave? I’d learn later that the reason was, they were afraid that the fire might have weakened some of the walls, making the building unsafe. Bah.

Anyway, to keep this short, everything was fine in the end. ((Well, fine for me and Lisa and our flat and our immediate neighbors anyway.)) The fire was on the other end of the building. And the walls were sound in any case. But I didn’t get to bed until after four-thirty, and even then, I didn’t sleep well. That was Tuesday of the last week of my course. Things went downhill from there, school-wise, but more on that later.

I also found out later that the actual fire was not technically in our residential building, but in the adjacent Old People’s Home. And those poor old fuckers had to be evacuated in their wheelchairs to the sidewalk in the middle of the night. You’d think that would be a real trial for them. Except, this. They were all generally old enough to be able to say, “Ah, hey. We remember the war. This is nothing.”

When Lisa told me that, I made some snide comment along the lines of, “Nothing like old people talking about Nazi Times to make you feel a whole lot less bad for them.” Lisa didn’t appreciate that. And fair enough. I mean, you can’t go making blanket judgments about people simply based on their age; no matter how annoying old people are, what with their doddering gates, failing memories, and weird mouth noises, to say nothing of constantly reminding us of our own mortality. Still though, you can’t just assume every old person you see was a Nazi. ((All that said, If I’m honest, I have to admit the following: I often have to fight the impulse to go all Second Coming of Atticus Finch vis-à-vis old Germans. The devil on my shoulder is all, “Come on, aren’t you curious as to just what they were doing during The War?” Whereas the Angel on my other shoulder, “Nothing gained by this kind of thinking, David. Let it go.”))

Oh, and for anybody interested in casualties, one person died. Apparently it was the guy who started the fire. Apparently by falling asleep with a lit cigarette. He was 90. A little late to be Darwining yourself out of the game, but OK.

So that was The Fire.

As for school, remember that post where I was all “I’m so good at this, I hope I didn’t just jinx it by saying that”? Welp, I jinxed it. The short version is, I sucked the last week.

I had a higher grade in my hands and I threw it away. I just never got it together. Yeah, the fire didn’t help. But that’s no excuse. On some level, I think I tried to do too much. I could have played it safe and gotten my grade. But instead, I tried to do things I knew I needed to work on. Well, I still need to work on them.

Basically, I run a good classroom. My classes are fun. My students get to where they need to be by the end. But, ironically, I somehow don’t teach grammar very well yet. Ironic, because I’m a grammar nerd. Ugh, I really don’t want to spend a lot of time on this. The point is, I’m not pleased with myself. I had set a goal for myself of achieving a certain grade in this course, and I failed. Yeah, I passed the course; and easily. But I could have done better. And I was on the cusp of doing better. And I frittered it away. Nice one, Davey.

If I want to find a positive to take away, it’s this. I know my students liked my classes. I know I can get them engaged. I know I can hold their interest. I think, at the risk of giving myself too much credit, I think these are things you can’t teach. It’s the things that can be taught where I still need work.

And, I got to play the part of Linguistic Master in my last class. In the last few minutes I showed them how seven different languages are actually related. I showed them how the verb “to stand” has a common stem in English, German, Latin, Greek, Polish, Russian and Farsi. ((

The common stem is sta-

))

And man, you should have seen their eyes go wide! That was so fucking cool. ((In fact, I was having drinks with a couple of classmates last night. One of them was quite close with two of our most advanced students. And they both told her that they loved my linguistics stuff; they found it really fascinating. And one of them isn’t even normally interested in that kind of stuff. Very gratifying to hear that, honestly.))

But in the short term, #davefail. So, moving on.

Class ended Friday, July 3^rd. So of course we went out for dinner and drinks after. But I also had to leave mad early the next morning for France. And I also had to pack up my room because the new girl was moving in the next day. So I got about two hours of drunken sleep before popping off to Biarritz to visit chez Morgenstern.

Biarritz was a blast. But as I covered that in my last post, I’ll keep it short here. Just like the trip itself, which was too short. All to say, before I knew it, it was time to leave. Which was rough. Yeah, it was rough to say goodbye and to get back to reality. But also, it was physically rough. You see, I drank rather a lot of pastis the night before. So I wasn’t exactly in the greatest shape to travel. ((By which I mean I threw up in two different airports. But not any planes!)) And it seemed like every one of my flights was delayed. So I didn’t get back to Berlin ‘til around ten.

At that point, I had to swing by Lisa’s and pick up my computer. Everything else I’d grab the next day. Then it was back to Anja and Mischa. I got there around eleven. At which point they let me know they had a(n American) guest who also needed to practice her German. Turns out it was Anja’s niece from Colorado; roughly my age. Her German was much better than mine. But we all had fun.

There was lots of wine and pastis. ((Yay!)) So, exhausted as I was, that turned into a late night. But, I have to say, it was really nice to be back here. A&M welcomed me back very warmly. And even though I’d only lived here a month – and a month ago, at that – it somehow felt very much like home. Also, Anja’s niece was really cool. So it was a good night. And at the end of it, I passed right the fuck out.

But something about ‘no rest for the weary’ because the next day was ‘shopping day.’ I had to meet Joschka and Vinny to buy what we needed for the festival. That was a pain in the ass, partly because Vinny apparently sent me a bunch of messages via Whatsapp that I never received. So I’m sitting their thinking, “Odd that I haven’t heard from those guys.” Meanwhile, they’re thinking, “Why isn’t Dave answering? What an asshole!”

Eventually, we got it sorted and performed the ritual Pre-Festival-Shopping. In other words, we stocked up on booze, sausages, chips, juice, ramen and canned ravioli. Oh, and this year, also boxed wine. ((This was utilitarian, to be sure. It was not, however, “good.”))

The festival I also covered in my last post, so I’ll say no more about it here. ((What an odd sentence structure (“The festival I also covered…”). More inflected languages like German or Greek have no problem sticking the object out front. But it just feels weird in English, doesn’t it?))

I also mentioned the concert/festival at Lisa’s place. What I didn’t mention is how odd it was to be back there now that I don’t live there. Like, it feels like home and I know where everything is, and yet, I need to respect the place as a visitor. Just odd. Still great though. And great to see Lisa and Oz.

It’s also fascinating to me how much of a relationship Lisa and I managed to build in just a month. I remember the first day I moved in, she found out that her neighbor had just died. And as we sat there in the kitchen, her telling me about it all, she started to cry. Mind you, this was our first day living together. And I don’t know how to handle this at all. So I’m like, “Do you…want a…hug?” And she’s like, “Nope.” And then we had a long conversation about death and started bonding from day one.

In contrast, when I said goodbye at the end of the night of the party, she just gave me a big old hug. It’s funny how things go, sometimes. In the end, it was really great living with her. We definitely don’t see eye-to-eye on more than a few things. And yet we just got on so easily. And as I’ve said countless times by now, we drank a lot. Not everything about my time here has worked out, but that month of living there, that definitely worked out fantastically.

Last night, my plan was to stay in and read some Homer. I haven’t had a chance to read Homer since the end of the second week of school, which is a crying shame. And yet, I was also feeling a bit down. I mean, Lisa was out of town with the Oz-man. Joschka was in Portugal with Lus for her birthday. Kelvin has moved back to Australia. So I was kinda feeling like I have no fucking friends here.

And then Ziba ((Ziba, you will remember, is the Iranian girl from school.)) messages me. “Wanna get a drink tonight?” Well, hell yeah, Zibs! It’s gonna be me, her, Elf-Princess ((Another girl from school. Her name is actually Maria. But she’s like thirty feet tall, slim, super long hair and for the first few days of school she’d wear these long flowy dresses. So I nicknamed her Elf-Princess.)) and Zibs’ husband. And yet, I’m thinking, OK, I can go for a few beers, and still be home before midnight; plenty of time to read some Homer before bed. Not an unreasonable plan, or so I thought. And yet, next thing I know, I’m throwing the wrapper from my Dönner in the trash and stumbling up the stairs to my apartment to find that it had somehow become 3am. Needless to say, it was a fun night.

First of all, I got on quite well with Jan, Zibs’ husband. We talked metal and politics. So that’s a win right there. As a group, we also discussed making a round trip to Köln (Cologne). Whether or not we can get it together before I might have to leave is another story. But it sure sounds like fun, if we can pull it off. We also batted around the idea of getting our shit together and starting our very own language school right here in Berlin. Well, it’s surprisingly plausible actually. But I’m not holding my breath. Still though, how cool would that be?

Today I went for a long walk. My goal was to go East-ish, and see some things I’d never seen before. Mission accomplished. I was out for about 4.5 hours, so it was a healthy little promenade.   One of the highlights was the Soviet War Memorial in Treptower Park. What a weird place. I mean, it’s absolutely lovely. Tree lined and peaceful and monumental af.

But it’s also kinda creepy. You see, it’s not just a memorial, but actually a cemetery. There are about 5,000 Red Army soldiers interred there. And all the language is about liberating Berlin. Which, I mean, is true. They did liberate Berlin. But by the end of the battle, ((And all the Allied bombing raids, to be sure.)) there wasn’t a whole lot left standing. And the aftermath left the east side of the city – and East Germay – under Soviet control. I mean, that’s sort of out of the fire, but right back into the frying pan, right?

I don’t know. I need to talk to some actual Berliners about this. I’m really curious as to how they feel about it. I mean, on the victory arch which marks the entrance is the following inscription, carved in Russian and German, given here in English: “Everlasting glory for the heroes, who have fallen for Freedom and Independence of The Socialist Homeland.” ((The German, at least, reads: “EWIGER RUHM DEN HELDEN, DIE FÜR DIE FREIHEIT UND UNABHÄNGIGKEIT DER SOZIALISTISCHEN HEIMAT GEFALLEN SIND.”)) Umm, yeah. And then there are all the inscriptions inside the actual memorial park. The inscriptions are all direct quotes from Stalin, again in Russian and German. So, my initial conclusion is this: It’s an absolutely beautiful and wonderfully peaceful place to visit. Just don’t look too closely. But again, I’m dying to get a Berliner’s take on all this.

Tomorrow is open-mic night. I have to go. I say this for personal accountability reasons. If it’s on record, then I can’t back out. It’ll be the first one I’ll have been able to attend since the last one I did, right before school started. Once school had begun, it was out of the question. And the next two Sundays, I was in France and then the festival. So I need to get back on it. Personal development and all that. Also, I need to play some rock’n’roll.

To this last point, I just taught myself “Whole Lotta Shakin’ Goin’ On” and “Ain’t That a Shame.” Ok, ‘taught myself’ is a bit extreme. It’s all 12-bar blues. But I still needed to figure out how I would play them, solo on the guitar.   Work out what I would do for guitar leads and so on. Anyway, point is, fun as hell. And now, finally, I’ve got all the major players covered: Chuck Berry, Little Richard, Jerry Lee, Buddy Holly, Fats Domino. ((OK, I still need to learn at least one Elvis song. But these guys are the most important, surely.)) Slowly but surely, I’m building up my rock’n’roll repertoire; even if I still can’t play a single Beatles song.

Next thing I need to work on is French. I can do a fair rendition of one Edith Piaf song, but that’s not nearly enough. There’s at least four Jaques Brel songs I need to work up, and other stuff besides. But that’s ok. It’s good to have projects. And I’ve got two new songs in the works as well. One just needs lyrics; always my least favorite part. The other needs a lot more, but, “it’s got legs,” as Jared likes to say.

I also need to learn more German songs. I’ve got a good five or six now, but more are in order. Not least of which is “Lili Marlene.” But one thing that caught me off guard during my little session at Rock Harz was when Marcus asked me if I knew anything from Die Toten Hosen or Die Ärzte. Now, these are two bedrock German punk bands that Anja had put me on to during my first month here. So I excitedly responded to his query with, “Oh! Do you know Hier Kommt Alex?!” ((A song by Die Toten Hosen that I’m quite fond of.)) Of course he did, and he started to sing the first line. To which I had to lamely respond that I didn’t actually know it. So that’s a project for next year.

So that’s more or less where things stand as I get ready for what may well be my last full week in Berlin. There are, actually, quite a few job leads. But the red tape is copious. And frankly, I don’t know if I will have enough time to get everything sorted before my three months are up. ((As a U.S. citizen, you can come for three months without a visa. After that, you need to leave for three months, before you can come back for another three.)) And if I have to leave, it won’t be the end of the world. I can always come back. Or go somewhere else entirely. My focus now is, simply to get the most out of Berlin in the time remaining. And as to that, you’ll be reading about it soon enough…

Next Post: July 23, 2015
Previous Post: July 17, 2015

An American in Berlin
17 July, 2015

So much time. So little time. So much time since my last post. So little time to write about anything. There was The Fire. There was The Crash-&-Burn Last Week of School. There was France. There was The Festival. There was The Move. There is the Job Hunt, to say nothing of The Bureaucracy. So when, exactly, am I supposed to get any writing done?

I tried scratching out a post the other day; tried to pick up where I last left off. It wasn’t really working. So I’m thinking now of breaking things down into several not-necessarily-chronological posts to try and cover it all. Because if I try to cram it all into one, well, Mick Foley can tell you about overstuffing a garbage bag. ((#amirite, Robert?))

I went to a party/concert tonight. I may or may not have mentioned that Lisa sings in an amateur choir that practices out our – well, her – place on Monday nights. Anyway, they had a free concert there tonight, followed by a little party. The music was pretty cool. Medieval French, American spiritual and African. And the party was very nice.

Her boyfriend, Oz ((AKA: Der Zauberer; AKA: Magic Man)) was there, so that was one familiar face. And he’s a great dude, so I was happy to see him. And obviously Lisa, although she was somewhat occupied between the singing and the hostessing. But then, there was also Cute Girl Number 1, whom we shall hereafter refer to as the Israelite. Because she’s Israeli. Anyway, very cute. So we got to talking. And we’re like, “A Jew, in England?” ((Only, instead of England, it was Berlin. And we didn’t actively make any Mel Brooks references.)) So we had a nice chat about being Jewish in Berlin, Jewish mothers, the meaning of life and what’s God got to do with it anyway. Also Hamantaschen. No really. And then I had another Jewish/Yiddish/Hebrew/German revelation. Hamantaschen literally means Haman-pocket! Because it’s a pocket shaped like Haman’s hat and filled with jelly! ((I was so excited when I figured that out! #nerdgasm)) And apparently in Hebrew – and I forget the word – they’re called Haman’s Ears, because they’re also kinda ear-shaped. Anyway, we decided that Friday after next we’re going to make a little Shabbas dinner for ourselves and a select few friends. Amongst whom, it should be noted, will be her boyfriend. Because Dave. Still though, it was a cool convo and it was nice to talk to somebody from the tribe. Even if neither of us are particularly religious. But yeah, I cut bait not long after the boyfriend revelation.

It was then that I met the Persian Princess, which is how I shall now refer to the cute girl from Iran who’s doing a PhD on earthquakes. What? Cute and a scientist? And Persian? What’s the catch? Surely there’s a catch. Oh, right. You too have a boyfriend. Seriously? When did my proverbial dog piss on god’s proverbial lawn? This is the best explanation I can come up with at this point. Well, that and the fact the female population of Berlin is quite possibly the most beboyfriended female population in the Western World already. ((I assume things are worse in China, what with the one child policy, i.e. the one son policy.))

But enough of this. Last week was The Festival: Rock Harz. This year Vinny was able to come out, which is as it should be. So me, him and Joschka drove out from Berlin with a car full of booze, junkfood and camping gear. ((The morning of our departure I bought a tent for 24€. It was tiny, which was fine. I mean, it was basically the tent version of my Chinatown room, size-wise. But it also leaked. That was less cool.)) Anyway, it was great to have Vinny along this time, ((He couldn’t make it last year.)) for two reasons. 1) He’s my boy, and I was happy to have him there; 2) He could keep Joschka company in the car while I slept. I can’t overstate the value of this second point. I mean, anybody who knows me knows that if you put me in a moving vehicle, I fall asleep almost instantly. Last year, when it was just me and Joschka, I had to fight really hard to stay awake. ((I mostly didn’t. But at least this year, I didn’t have to feel bad about it.))

The festival itself was brilliant. I mean, the weather was awful for the first three days. But so what? We have an awesome crew. The boys from Lemgo: The Meyers, the Christians, Timo & Marcus. The Bavarians: Anna and her dad Stefan, Toby and Marina, and Flo. And the Izas: Lisa and Theresa. ((Izas, because the names are pronounced Leeza and Thereeza.)) In all we had over twenty people. ((We roll deep, son!)) And all these people are the best people you could ever hope to know, let alone party with. Oh, and lest I forget Ursel. Ursel is the sex doll that gets panzer-taped ((Panzer Tape is Duct Tape. But Panzer Tape so much more badass!)) to our flagpole. She’s a bit of a mascot.

Anyway, the festival consists mostly of heavy drinking, laying out in the sun (if there’s any sun) and going to see your favorite bands. It does not consist of showering or eating anything like real food. It is, in all likelihood, simultaneously the most fun and the most exhausting week ((Week: Wed-Sun.)) of the year. And when it’s over, all you want to do is shower. Then shower again. And then sleep for three days.

The relationships you form with these people are kind of amazing. I mean, I basically only see these people at the festivals. So in some cases, it’s literally only the second time I’ve hung out with some of them. And yet, the warmth and affection that flows off of them is remarkable. There’s so much love there. And based on what? Shared interest in music? Camping out and partying for a week? And yet the bear hugs, the emotional goodbyes, the intimate chats – it’s like we’ve known each other for ages. Vinny puts it best, and I’ll try (haltingly) to capture his style here: “To be perfectly honest bro, yeah, the music is fucking great. The drinking is epic, whatever. But honestly, it’s the camaraderie.” Yeah, Vin, it’s the fucking camaraderie.

I brought my guitar. Last year, I brought it as well. ((Well, Joschka’s, in any case.)) And it was a big hit. So this year, everybody was asking if I’d brought it again. Natürlich! So on the last night, I broke it out. And that was a lot of fun. The Meyer boys love the Irish stuff. Some of the others love the Rammstein. Anna’s dad Stefan asked me to play Der Adler. ((The Eagle, by Die Apokalyptischen Reiter.)) And when I played that, he just stood there headbanging and loving the shit out of it. And when I’d finished he came over and gave me probably the best handshake ever. So cool.

Another cool thing was, Big Christian brought his girlfriend along, Katie. ((Or possibly Kathie; in any case, pronounced Kah-tee.)) And she was lovely. Super sweet. And also the kind of girl who, even though she didn’t know hardly anybody, was perfectly comfortable doing things on her own. So the two of us went to see Varg together. And this was cool for two reasons. First, it’s just great to be in that kind of setting where you can be all, “I’m gonna go see this band now.” And someone you hardly know jumps up and says, “Yeah, I’ll come along.”

And second, she spoke with me in German. In and of itself, this is no big deal. Lots of the gang spoke to me in German. But generally, they don’t modify their speech for me. So they speak fast and with lots of slang and I get very little of it; even if I learn some new dirty slang, which I definitely did. But Katie had no problem speaking slowly and clearly with me, with the result that I had almost no trouble understanding her. That was a real treat for me. She’s a real doll. And her and Christian are f’ing adorbs together. So I hope she sticks around.

One regret: I missed The Captain’s Breakfast. The Captain’s Breakfast is a bit of a tradition. Basically, it consists of two bottles of Captain Morgan’s rum and a few liters of Coke dumped into a big bucket. Everybody sticks in a super long straw and we all drink it down together. But we only did one this year, and I slept through it. Schade.

Another highlight was going to see Alestorm with Anna. Alestorm is a “pirate metal” band. ((The name/genre should be enough, but if you’re curious, check out keelhauled. That’ll give you the idea.)) That was a ton of fun. We danced our asses off. And by dance I mean ‘jigged’ and turned in arm-in-arm circles, which is how one dances to pirate metal. And we made friends with some giant dude who was very fond of picking us up, if for no other reason than he just could. Look up ‘fun’ in the dictionary and, well, you won’t find us dancing to Alestorm. But it would be a better dictionary if you did.

All in all, it was brilliant. Oh yeah, there was also the part where I put on Slayer’s Raining Blood, at which point me, Björn and Eggy headbanged like crazy people for a solid 2.5 minutes. Because what’s a metal festival without Slayer? And at the end of it all, Sven said, “And so ends the best week of the year.” He’s probably right. It beats the shit out of you, but man, is it ever fun!

Thing is, I’d already had the shit beaten out of me. There was The Fire and the Last Week of School, both of which I’ll deal with in a different post. But Rock Harz followed fast on the heels of my way-too-short visit to France.

I left my apartment at around 4:45 in the morning, after about two hours of sleep. ((It was the day after the last day of school. Again, I’ll deal with all that in another post.)) I took the U7 (subway) to the X9 (express bus), which took me to Tegel (the airport). The trip itself was actually quite easy, as far as getting to airports goes. And I basically slept on the planes. ((First flight: Berlin to Paris; Second flight: Paris to Biarritz.)) I was met at the airport by Jared, Josh, Adam & Kira.

I’m not gonna lie, it was good to see those assholes. I mean, it’d only been two months. Not that long, really. And yet, Jared and Adam, my best and oldest friends. And here we were, in fucking France! It was like coming home again. Only now, home was beautiful and in the south of France.

We went into town, straight off. First thing, we found a bookshop, which was on my agenda. So I bought some Jules Verne, ((Vingt Mille Lieus Sous Les Mers (20k Leagues Under the Sea).)) for which I had lately become desperate. Then they made me ask the girl at the register for directions to the market. Which I did. And she gave them to me. And I understood. And in that moment, I remembered how much I like the French language and how happy I was to be able to practice it a bit. And we found the market because I totally understood the French directions. And the market was a boss-ass market.

And the house that Jared’s parents had rented was a boss-ass house. Two floors, many rooms, swimming pool, killer kitchen. I swam, I cooked, I conquered. It was great. Ok, the swimming speaks for itself. But it was nice to have two whole minutes to float on my back and have nobody talk to me.

The cooking was also fantastic. The second night, me and Amanda (Jared’s sister) were in charge of cooking. We killed it. We killed it mostly because Amanda dropped upwards of 50€ on some seriously awesome lamb. But I did some roasted fennel thing that people seemed to dig, so that was nice. And it was great to finally get some one-on-one time with Amanda. We used to hang out often and go out to nice dinners. But after I moved back home, I didn’t really see much of her. It was lovely to be able to reconnect.

It was also really great to see Josh, Jared’s boyfriend. One night we sat out and just argued about history. The dude really knows his stuff. What’s great about him, though, is he’s not just well read, but he thinks about what he’s read. He’s got a lot of opinions, and they’re informed opinions. Any time you can argue about whether Washington or FDR was the better president is a good time. Also, you can see how happy Jared is with him. That’s obviously annoying. Mais, c’est la vie, hein?

Then Lerman and Kira. I’ve known Lermo since the fourth grade. He is my longest tenured friend. And Kira is nicer to me than he is. Which shows you what a doll she is. But me and Lermo, we bicker like an old married couple. But there’s a lot of love there. It’s like Archie and Edith. Or Ralph and Alice. Easy comparisons to make, since I don’t imagine they have sex either.

And of course Jared’s parents, Paul and Carol. Talk about family. I’ve been hanging out in their house – wherever they’ve lived – since high school. They’re like a second family at this point, and that’s just how they treat me. And Paul is my napping buddy. Now, I don’t mean to say that we nap together. What I mean is, all the boys will drink a bunch of great scotch. Whereupon, Paul will disappear to one corner and I to another. And we pass out. Because we’re nappers.

Carol, on the other hand, runs the show from her wheelchair. ((She has MS. #FuckMS)) She’s the matriarch. But one thing I love about her, among many things, is how she accepts me as part of the family. Because of her condition, she requires a certain degree of assistance. If she wants a drink, you’ve got to give it to her with a straw. If she wants to eat, she needs a bib. These are the sorts of things that, were I in her place, I would find embarrassing. But she doesn’t care. And she has no problem asking me to fix her drink or to tie on her bib. To me, that shows an incredible level of trust. In that way, she treats me as if I was family. It’s humbling and it’s wonderful at the same time. She’s a boss-ass bitch, and a helluva lot tougher than I’ll ever be.

Lastly, the child. Jared’s cousin has a little girl, maybe two years old. ((Totes adorbs.)) Just the cutest thing. And since we were in France, I decided that I would only speak to her in French. ((Because my French is probably at a two-year-old level.)) But homegirl didn’t care. She still played with me and we got along just fine. Anyway, the point is, I would like to have a daughter. Who’s on board? Ladies? I’m asking for nine months plus your womb. ((And, umm, if we could do it the old-fashioned way, that’d be nice. #justsayin)) After that, you’re free to be on your way. ((How am I single?))

So much for the people. The town itself was great. I mean, southern France, how can you go wrong? The markets were great. The beach was great. I mean, yeah, I hate the beach, but it was still nice. The house was great. The pool was great. Pretending to speak French was great. I wish I could have stayed longer. I would have stayed longer. But I had to get back for the festival. So I got there Saturday around noon. And by the same time Monday, they were driving me to the airport again. Nevertheless, it was a great couple of days. And I’m thankful for the opportunity to be able to visit my friends in such a setting.

And here I am. I still need to cover the last week of school and how I threw away the grade I had been aiming for. I still need to cover that time my building caught fire. And so many other things: like, can I even stay here. But this is enough for tonight I think.

The next post will follow soon enough. In the meantime, know that, if you’re reading this, I probably miss you. Just not enough to want to come back to New York quite yet…

Next Post: July 19, 2015
Previous Post: June 27, 2015

An American in Berlin
27 June, 2015

More than ten days since my last post, apparently. The time between seems like a fog. School became pretty life consuming pretty fast. Not in a bad way, necessarily. I’ve been enjoying it quite a bit, actually. But it hasn’t left much room for anything else. So I guess this post is mostly going to be about that. And the AC/DC concert I went to on Thursday!

Last post I talked about the high of having a good class and the low of having a not so good one. At the time, I’d had two of each. Well, I’m happy to report that since then, I’ve been on fire. I’ve scored ‘above standard’ on my last two lessons, making it three-in-a-row and four of six overall. So I’m quite pleased obviously.

But more than the high marks, the classes have been a lot of fun. At the halfway mark, we switched to a high-level group of students. It’s been so much fun. I mean, first of all, they’re just a great bunch. But this level, it’s really in my wheelhouse. I can talk faster, I can use more idioms. ((I’d never noticed how much I speak in idioms until I had to teach to intermediate level students who couldn’t understand half of what I said.))

And what’s more, they’re genuinely interested in the language. I can do Greek and Latin etymologies, I can do German-English historical linguistics, and they really get into it. Part of the reason I can get away with this, according to my teacher, is that it’s obvious that I’m passionate about it. So rather than being a dry lecture, it seems I can teach this stuff with a sort of contagious energy. And I fucking love it.

After three good lessons in a row, it’s becoming clear that I’m not only gaining the confidence of my students, but also of my teacher. For the first time, I’m really starting to feel like I may actually be doing what I’m “supposed” to be doing with my life. Don’t get me wrong, I’m still glad as hell I did my MA in Classics. And I still hold out hope that one day I’ll actually be able to teach Greek. But I’m starting to believe that I can be a really good fucking teacher.

And I definitely have my own style. I’ve talked about this a little in past posts. But it’s coming together more and more with each lesson. ((Gods, I hope I didn’t just jinx it!)) And it’s interesting to compare my work with that of my classmates, all of whom, I hasten to add, are quite good in their own ways. And they unquestionably have strengths that I don’t. But in my own humble opinion, I do think that my classes are the most fun. And that’s something I’m definitely proud of.

I want to be careful here not to take too much credit, however. My class – by which I mean my students – are really great. They have a real passion for learning English and they approach everything with a wonderful energy. They also, collectively, have a great sense of humor. And in addition to all this, they work extremely well together. You can pair anybody with anybody and, not only do they get along, but they produce good work. In my self-evaluation ((A required piece of homework after every lesson.)) for my last lesson – for which I received an “above standard” score – I noted that I had little more to do than to “wind them up and let them go,” and that the students themselves “did most of the heavy lifting.” To which my teacher answered, “yes, but your real work was done in your highly detailed lesson plan.” So it’s a bit symbiotic. But the point is, they’re a fantastic group, and they make my job easy for me. Bless them. ((Also, they’re hilarious. We laugh so much. I fucking love it.))

I had an interesting chat with French Charlotte the other day. To give credit where credit is due, she has encouraged me in this endeavor from the get. She believed in me when I didn’t necessarily believe in myself. That’s not to say that there weren’t others who believed in me. In point of fact, I have a wonderful network of friends and family that have stood firmly behind me, every step of the way. But she’s a French teacher. And she’s taught French in France, in Poland and in the States. So there’s a certain experience in, and first-hand knowledge of, the task itself that underlies her confidence in me, which has been unique and invaluable.

Anyway. We had a chat the other day. And you could just hear how proud she was when I told her how well I’ve been doing lately. But what really struck me was this. She said, “You’re a teacher now, Dave. And you’re going to be a teacher. You’re never going to have to apologize for your job again. From now on, you’re going to be proud of what you do.” ((That’s a rough paraphrase, anyway.)) And that really struck me.

For years, at my last job ((I need to be fair to my last job. They gave me work when I was in grad school. And when I was in school, they allowed me to adapt my hours to my schedule. They always treated me fairly and compensated me well; at least within the structure of the company. I loved – and still love – my boss. I’ll always be thankful. But it was never going to be a career. The work itself was not gratifying; no matter how much I learned about Excel; and I can make a spreadsheet like a boss…)) – and as a paralegal before that, and as a temp before that – I was never proud of what I did. If I was talking to a girl at a bar, I’d avoid talking about my job. And if I had to talk about it, it would always be in some self-deprecating way. “Yeah, well, it pays the rent,” or “Eh, I push papers and fuck with spreadsheets.” Something like that. ((Girls, apparently, are not turned on by your ennui with your job. #GoFig))

The point is, it really hit me when French Charlotte said those days were over. That was news to me, in a way. I can’t think that far ahead yet. But she’s right. And wow, that’s really something. And when I think about, I’ve always been a bit envious of teachers, when I’d meet them at bars. They’re always so damn proud of what they do. As well they should be. Well, shit. I’m 34. I want to be proud of what I do already. And soon – real fucking soon – I can be. ((Ain’t that some shit?)) Anyway, thanks, French Charlotte.

Since this post is going to be mostly about the whole school/teaching sitch, Imma switch horses midstream for a sec. ((Cos that’s always a good idea.)) Dear Reader, how was your Thursday? Did you do anything interesting? Yeah? That’s nice. Well, I saw AC/DC. So…I win.

Gods, I love that band. An AC/DC concert is a funny thing. At least – at least! – half the set is made up of the songs you expect to hear. And I don’t mean that in the sense of, “well, of course they’re going to play their greatest hits.” No, they’re not necessarily ‘hits,’ per se. They’re the songs that – in concert – throw you up against a wall and kick you in the fucking balls and make you beg for more. I’m talking, Let There be Rock, Dirty Deeds, For Those About to Rock, Shoot to Thrill.

So on some level, you know what you’re gonna get. And yet, fucking give it to me! Look, anybody who knows me knows they’re my favorite band. They’re the apotheosis, the perfection, the platonic Form, of Rock and Roll. And godsdamn, do they ever deliver. Just fucking brilliant. Even without Phil. Even without Mal, who is in a home, suffering from dementia. ((Can a blog be a Living Will? If I ever get dementia (or Alzheimer’s), please put me to sleep. Please don’t let me live like that. Please.)) They’re just the fucking best. No ifs ands or buts. Do not pass Go. Do not collect two hundred dollars.

And yet, bittersweet. Mal has dementia.  Phil is, apparently, a felon. And the rest? Angus? Brian? Cliff? They’re in their 60’s. This has to be the end, doesn’t it? I mean, they still kill it. It was a brilliant show. I went with Joschka, who’d never seen them before. And he was well impressed. ((As he should have been.)) So they can still do it. But Rock and Roll – I mean, real Rock and Roll – it needs to be young, doesn’t it?

One of my favorite summertime albums is Dirty Deeds. It’s so full of life. It’s so…youthful. It so doesn’t give a fuck. It just rocks. And it’s not even their best album. Their best album would have been Let There Be Rock. Except that they beat it with Powerage, the follow-up. Those two records. That’s where Rock and Roll found its most perfect expression. They can never be beat.

Like Beethoven, right? That fucker wrote 32 piano sonatas and 9 symphonies. And at the end of it, you walk away feeling like – or at least I do ((My brother, Justin, the brilliant musician, no doubt disagrees.)) – feeling like, “Well, that’s it. The form has been perfected. Why bother anymore?” But I’m being serious. After Beethoven Nine, how do you write a symphony? After those sonatas, what’s the point? The mold has been broken. Learn your Bach and be on be on your way.

Interpolation: This is the beauty of Gershwin, by the way. Gershwin left well enough alone. Gershwin had the wisdom to look at the Old Masters and say, “Yeah, I can take from that. But, you guys? Jazz! And holy shit, The Blues!” And so you get Rhapsody in Blue. You get Porgy and Bess. And you get the Concerto in F, with it’s gorgeous, sweet, beautiful and oh-so-perfect Adagio. What you don’t get is Romantic bullshit. What you don’t get is Appetite for Destruction, and the conceit that there’s still anything left to say in Rock and Roll after the from has already found its complete and utter perfection. OK, I’ll shut up now.

So yeah, AC/DC were fucking brilliant, despite their advanced years. And I’m glad I got see them one last time. ((Or what’s left of them, anyway.)) And it was cool to see them in Berlin. Add that to a very short list. Cheap Trick in London. Rammstein at Wacken. AC/DC in Berlin.

At the Olympiastadion. It’s a funny thing to be there with a German – Joschka, as it were – and to have that German look around the arena for the first time in his life and say, “Yeah, you can just tell the Nazis built this.” Well, you can. It’s creepy, I ain’t gonna lie. It’s in the same mold as Tempelhof and the Air Ministry building on Wilhelmstraße. “Intimidation Architecture,” as I mentioned in a previous post. But you look around, and you know the thing was built for the ’36 Olympics. You know it was built so Hitler could show the world the superiority of the Aryan race. ((#JesseOwens #USA)) It’s an impressive structure, no question. But it’s fucking weird. I’ll leave it at that.

Kelvin of Oz came down to my neck of the woods last weekend, and we popped into a bar around the corner, on Weserstraße. The door was open. But when we went in, the bartendrix said, “We’re not open yet. But…you can have a beer if you’d like.” We looked at each other. We decided to have a beer. The bartendrix was a doll.

The reason the door was open was, she was making flower-headbands with a couple of friends for Midsummer Night; the Summer Solstice. The point is, she didn’t have to serve us. But she did. And not only did she serve us, she offered us fresh strawberries and cream! It was gorgeous. So we had our beers. And some fresh strawberries. And then some Dahlwinnie. And then more beer. Lovely day, that was.

One of the bartendrix’ friends was from Hong Kong. “So,” says I, “you speak Cantonese?” She was suitably impressed by that. Well, I did live in Chinatown for four years. So we all got on well. And of course it was good to chill with my mate Kelvin, before he goes back Down Under.

So today, in class, first thing in the morning, our other teacher ((We have two teachers. There’s the one who has been ovbserving my classes and giving me feedback the last two weeks. Then there’s the other, who observed the first week, and will again next week.)) walks in and just starts talking to us in Polish. And for forty minutes, we do nothing but Polish. Formal and informal greetings; I like/do you like; what’s your name/my name is – that sort of thing. The idea is this: It’s quite conceivable that you will at some point teach a class to people who don’t know a single word of English. So this is what they experience. It’s a pretty cool concept, actually, and something that is intentionally built into the course.

Anyway, he starts talking to us in Polish. And through hand gestures, through facial expressions, through demonstrations with physical objects and pictures, he’s showing us just how much information you can convey – even when your students don’t know a single word of the target language.

And man, Polish! They make sounds in that language that we just don’t have. I mean, it sounds totally fucking alien. But that’s the point, right? As it happens, this teacher could also have done the lesson in Spanish. But he chose Polish because we were less likely to know anything about it, and because it sounds so completely foreign.

But here’s the thing. I was operating on another level. Yes, of course, I had a rough time of pronouncing the words. Yes, I was just as much in the dark as everybody else. Well, I was in the dark insofar as being able to actually use the language. But right from the get, I started taking notes. I started looking for things that were familiar, started looking for commonalties with the other Indo-European languages that I know. And all of a sudden, it wasn’t so alien after all. This was really cool!

So our teacher breaks us into groups of threes, and asks us to discuss how we felt about the experience. And the other two in my group say the sorts of things you’d expect them to say after such an experience. Then they turn to me. And I turn to my notes. (And I apologize in advance for the technical language I’m about to use). And I say:

“You guys, this is fascinating! There’s so much here that we already know! Check this out (and I begin to list things from notes): So already we see: They mark the accusative case with a nasal; second person singular has an ‘-s-’, but second person plural seems to have an ‘-st-‘; the “go” verb starts with a strong ‘i,’ like Latin ire or Greek ἴεναι; the verb for “stand” starts with ‘st-,’ like Latin stare, Greek ἵστεναι, German standen; third person singular “to be” has an ‘-est,’ like Latin est, Greek ἔστιν, German ist. I mean, there’s so much here that we already know!”

And they just sort of look at me. And the girl to my right, Alice, actually announces to the class, “Dave has a really interesting way of looking at this. No really, I’m not taking the piss.” ((She’s English.))

That in and of itself was pretty cool. I sit next to Alice, you see, and she’s in my teaching group. So we get paired up a lot. And in the beginning, I think I rather annoyed her. But somewhere along the line, I think she decided that I’m not so much a pretentious ass ((Which I am, let’s be honest.)) as a genuinely enthusiastic nerd. And now we get along quite well, and she’s become one of my favo(u)rites.

And in the beginning, I didn’t know quite to make of her either. She can be a bit snarky and impatient. But she’s studied linguistics and she’s got a real enthusiasm for our mother tongue(s). ((I leave it to you to decide if British English and American English are the same language.)) But I find I’ve grown quite fond of her. She’s a real sweetheart, when you get down to it. And you really see this when she teaches. She’s got this kindness, as a teacher. There’s a real sweetness to her. And a sort of joie de vivre. For a while, I thought I’d tire of her – I thought we’d tire of each other – getting paired together so often. But now I find I quite look forward to working with her. There seems to be a sort of mutual respect that I don’t think either of us would have anticipated.

Also, she’s got really pretty eyes. But I’m not going down that rabbit-hole with her. I’m just glad she’s in my group. Just as I’m glad the other four are in my group. I mean, we’re a great fucking team. We look out for each other. We help each other. And we support each other when one of us has a bad day. Also we go for drinks together sometimes. However much Berlin has been a bust in terms of meeting girls, I keep lucking out in my other relationships. Roommates, colleagues, friends. I couldn’t ask for better. I really couldn’t.

I want to hang on to that point about colleagues for a moment longer. It seems that each of us has had the experience of talking to other people who have taken this course before us. And these predecessors seem invariably to mention a competitiveness that existed between classmates; a desire to “be the best” or to get the highest marks. And we just don’t have that in our group. We don’t talk about our marks. We just support each other. And it’s fucking beautiful. Wherefore do these lovely fuckers deserve to be mentioned by name: Katja from Berlin; Paul from Australia, Alice from England; Ziba from Iran; and Katie from North Carolina. You’re all fucking gorgeous, every one of you.

Interpolation: Berlin is much farther north than it seems. From the weather, you could believe you were in New York. But at 10pm, it’s still light out. And by 4am, Helios is already dragging the sun across the heavens. It’s a nice town in which to make a summer.

Well. There’s surely more to say. But it’s four-thirty in the morning and, frankly, I’d like to get some sleep. Bis später, Leute…

Next Post: July 17, 2015
Previous Post: June 18, 2015

An American in Berlin
(Or, you know, that city where literally every girl has a boyfriend #fml)
18 June, 2015

Teaching is a funny thing. When your class doesn’t go well, you can walk outa there feeling like a complete and utter failure. Questions start going through your brain. “Why I am even doing this?” “Will I ever be any good at this?” “What the fuck am I even doing in Berlin?” Then, when you’re throwing yourself a pity party, you walk into the store to buy a beer and realize you can’t even speak German properly. So then you feel even worse. Then you cross the street against the light – even though there are no cars in sight – and people give you dirty looks. Then you come home, do the dishes and break a glass. Because life.

But when you teach well? When you really rock your class? You’re on top of the world. You walk out all smiles and Berlin is your lovely little playpen. A playpen where you can drink beer on the street. So you walk into the same shop, buy your beer and even have some friendly banter with the guy behind the counter, in German. The sun is shining, your beer tastes great even though it’s only a stupid Pilsener – which, by the way, why are Pilseners even a thing? ((I mean, at some point, just give me a Kölsch. A Pils is barely a step up from a Bud.)) – and you cross the street wherever you damn well please. Teaching is a funny thing.

This week, I had both of those things. Monday was shit. Today I killed it. I guess part of what I need to learn is how to be more even-keeled about all this. And how to check it at the door, one way or the other.

You know what I hate? When I’m ordering a Currywurst, and the clown behind the counter thinks they should talk to me in English. Tu das nicht, fool. That’s gonna piss me right the fuck off. Friday, I forgot to bring lunch. So I popped over to the Currywurst Museum ((My first mistake. And yes, that’s a thing.)) for a cheap midday meal. I had been speaking English all morning in school. And not the modified English I have to use with non-native speakers, but my own actual English. So when I got there, my German was pretty choppy. And butchered the word Brötchen. So the lady just started talking to me in English.

Hey, lady. I got news for you. No matter how shit my German is, I can damn well order a fucking Currywurst in German. So maybe don’t insult me, OK? I mean, I get that I’m in Tourist Central. But gimme a break! And then, the kicker. She turns the register display to face me, so that I can clearly see the price: Two-Euro, forty. And get this. She says, in English, “Two-forty, please.” Seriously? You know I can read numbers, right? You know they’re the same in both languages, yeah? Thanks for that. I’ll be coming back never.

Monday, I forgot to bring lunch again. This time I go to a different Currywurst stand. “Einmal Currywurst mit Pommes, bitte,” I say in perfectly acceptable German. One currywurst with fries, please. I wait. Then one of the guys asks me, “Willst du Ketschup und Mayo?” Do you want ketchup and mayo? “Nur Ketschup, bitte,” I casually respond. Just ketchup, please. A minute later, the other guy asks me, in English, if I want ketchup and mayo. Seriously? A) We just covered this. B) What the fuck? Then he proceeds to literally drown my little plate in ketchup. Guess I won’t be going back there either. Give me Neukölln any day. Neukölln, where the Turks and Arabs speak flawless German but can’t be bothered with English.

So Lisa is literally a thesaurus ((And by ‘literal,’ I mean the original Greek (θηϲαυρόϲ) meaning of the word: Treasure house.)) of beboyfriended cute girls. See, she hosts her choir group in our (ridiculously) spacious apartment on Mondays. So there’s always new people around. Anyway, this girl comes into the kitchen while I’m cooking. She looks familiar. Oh yeah, we’d bumped into her on the street a few days ago. Anyway, she starts chatting me up and she’s all sorts of friendly.

And all sorts of cute. She’s like a million feet tall ((I’m a sucker for tall dames.)); I don’t know what that is in meters. She’s blonde. She’s wearing quirky-yet-cute oversized glasses. She’s very pretty. And we’re just getting on well. At this point, I have forsaken hope. Either Tiny has a boyfriend, or else she’s gay. Because what this looks like clearly isn’t what this is.

After a bit, she disappears off back into the living room. I finish cooking. I eat. I come to the living room. Tiny’s still there. And now she’s being all playful and fun. Great. I guess I’ll be playful and fun too. Well, why not? Then she’s getting ready to leave, and she bends down to hug me in my chair. ((I may have to re-evaluate my theory of Germans as unemotional robots.)) Then I stand up and say, no, let’s do this the right way. So we hug again. Then I say, no, let’s really do this the right way. So I stand on top of my chair and hug her again. She get’s a kick out of it. Then she leaves. I count to ten. I turn to Lisa.

“So, how long has Tiny been dating her boyfriend?” I’m somehow hoping she’ll say, “Oh, she doesn’t have a boyfriend.” I’m hoping this the same way one hopes maybe the tide won’t come in. Well, the tide came in. “About three months, I think.” Yep. There it is. “Why, do you have a crush on her?” Fuck me.

“No. I’m asking you so I don’t go and do anything stupid. Like having a crush. Like last time. Remember?” I go into my room. I wonder if there are any breaks to be caught. I decide that there aren’t and pour myself a glass of Jameson.

Later, I come out of my room. I feel better now. ((Thanks, John Jameson.)) Lisa is chilling on the couch. “So, Tiny is pretty cool, eh?” Oh, is this what we’re doing? “She has a boyfriend,” I say. “She’s dead to me.” I walk back into my room to get my pipe. I hear Lisa say something behind me that sounds an awful lot like, “She is really cool, though.” I return with my pipe. “Sorry, did you say something?” She looks up. “I said, ‘She is really cool though.’” I sigh. “Actually, can you not? Thanks.” I go into the kitchen with my pipe and a bottle of wine.

I also go into the kitchen with my laptop and books because I have a shit-ton of work to do for school. And this wine ain’t gonna drink itself.

I shouldn’t break on Lisa, though. She’s still an A+ roommate. Even if all her cute friends have boyfriends and she doesn’t quite seem to grasp how frustrating that is for me. This week we’ve got a house-guest, and he’s sleeping in the room off the balcony. Which means, no balcony time. So we hang in the kitchen instead. And the good news is, I can smoke in the kitchen with the windows open and the door closed.

Some nights we drink and chat. Other nights, we both have work to do. So we sit at the table and work. In silence, or maybe with music on. It’s pretty peaceful, actually. In fact, it reminds me a bit of the old days on Maiden Lane when me and Phil would hang out in the living room. And by hang out, I mean we’d each be on a couch, reading and not talking. But somehow also hanging out. Those were good times. And that probably means nothing to nobody, except Jared.

Met Down Under Kelvin for a beer on Sunday. He’s definitely leaving. He’s just had enough, I guess. I’m happy for him, insofar as going home is going to make him happy. But he’s a proper mate, and I’ll be sorry to see him go.

Tomorrow is one year since Daitz died. Fuck. Just, fuck. Do you know, I didn’t even realize the date? Just by chance, I emailed Mimi, his wife, the other day. I was reading some Homer, ((More on that later.)) and I realized I hadn’t spoken to her for some time. So I just dropper her a little email to see how she was doing and let her know I was thinking of her. And when she wrote back, she told me Friday would be one year.

I fucking hate that he’s gone. I mean, I’m in Berlin. And it’s the summer. So it’s not like we’d be reading now anyway. But still. I want him back. I want to say it’s not fair. But that’s both selfish and untrue. The dude was 88 when he checked out. And he had a full and amazing life. He got a fair shake. So what’s not fair about it? I don’t know. I’m still not processing this well. All I know is, there are two dead people in my life who I miss all the fucking time. My grandpa and Daitz. ((And in a very different way, Ronnie James Dio. Once again, Jared knows what I’m talking about.)) When does that stop hurting? Does it ever? Fuck me.

Right. Enough of this downer shit. The tone of this post has been overwhelmingly negative. It shouldn’t be. Life is good. I fucking rocked my class today. My apartment and roommate are fantastic. Berlin is lovely city. By this time next week, I’ll have seen AC/DC in concert. ((OmgOmgOmg)) I’ve got friends here, old and new. And when I have happen to have some down time, I read Homer. And man, Homer is wonderful. It’s just so…so organic, so true to life, so perfect. Life is good.

And baseball starts at 1am. Which is bloody brilliant. Now, when I go to sleep, I put the ballgame on. What a great way to drift off. The game itself hardly matters. John and Suzyn aren’t even annoying. It’s just baseball on the radio, the way it was meant to be. ((Well, it was meant to be Red Barber calling the Dodgers in Brooklyn. But ain’t nothin’ perfect.)) And that’s what I’m gonna do, right after I hit the ‘publish’ button on this bitch. I’m gonna crawl into bed and I’m gonna sail away au pays de beaux rêves, sails filled with the music of baseball…

Next Post: June 27, 2015
Previous Post: June 13, 2015

An American in Berlin
13 June, 2015

Has it really been ten days since my last post? In that time I played my first ever open-mic night. And in that time, I’ve had my first week of school. ((Or, you know, the reason I’m fucking here in the first place.)) In the last ten days I had a BBQ at Tempelhofer Feld with Joschka and Verena. And in the last ten days I’ve worked diligently with Lisa to put away quite a bit of alcohol. Oh, and I met yet another lovely girl who naturally lives with her boyfriend. Because Dave.

Last Wednesday, Kelvin the Australian and I returned to the group conversation meetup where we first met however many weeks ago. But first we met for a couple of pre-game beers. It was nice to catch up. And it was nice for both of us to be able to speak in our own normal English, instead of the modified version one has to take on when dealing with non-native speakers.

Which is sort of an odd thing to say, when you think about it. What I mean is, Kelvin’s speech is full of weird Aussie idioms, just as mine gets super New York slangy. ((For example, instead of saying, “Let’s go check it out,” he’ll say “Let’s go have a squizz.” And instead of saying, “So what did she say?” I’ll say “Wait, wha’ she said?”)) But we understand each other perfectly well all the same. And it’s quite a comfort not to have to “grade your language.” ((More on this later.))

Anyway, we’re sitting outside, minding our own business. When, after a while, this dude at the next table over starts interjecting himself into our conversation. And when I say “dude,” I mean this round, bald, older fellow who seems not to be in possession of all of his teeth. And we both took this fellow for the local drunken barfly who has the annoying habit of glomming onto the nearest conversation, which naturally happens to be yours.

But a strange thing happened. As one person after another left the bar, each said a very friendly goodbye to this fellow; the men patting him on the shoulder, the women kissing him on the cheek. And it began to dawn on me that he wasn’t so much a local drunk loner/loser as he was the mayor of this little outpost.

We learned that although his German was quite good, he was actually Polish. And though we could have got on easily enough in German, he was quite proud of the English that he knew. And while his English was by no means great – in fact, he could be difficult to understand at times – it was pretty impressive, given that a) it was his third language and b) he grew up on the wrong side of the Iron Curtain. And when, in the end, it was our time to leave, we found ourselves saying as friendly a farewell as those who had left before us.

Then it was off to the convo-meetup, which was fine, but not worth reporting on. However, when we left – having decided to get another beer ((Natch.)) – we bumped into a girl who had also been there. Something in her face gave me the impression that she was eager to tag along, whereupon I invited her to join us. Well, why not? She looked to be about our age, was tall, skinny and cute in a punky kind of way.

From there, the three of us returned to the bar where Kelvin and I had pre-gamed. After a quick stop for a döner. ((Natch.)) And we had a lovely time of it. Turns out Punk-girl is a bit of an artist and had lived in Manchester for a bit. So she was into music and also spoke nearly flawless English. It was actually pretty cool. Because as we were walking, the three of us would switch back and forth between English and German in a very fluid and effortless sort of way.

While we were chatting at the bar, the subject of my upcoming open-mic debut came up. Punk-girl seemed pretty excited about it and asked for the details. I was pretty pleased about this. Not so much because she was cool and cute (although this obviously didn’t hurt), but because I rather didn’t want to go do this thing entirely alone. But more on that later.

So the three of us sat and chatted and had an all-around lovely time. But then, wouldn’t you know it, the mayor appeared out of the back and sat down with us at our table. And wouldn’t you know it, he turned out to be an expert on all kinds of music. So that went on for a bit, until we finally decided to call it a night. But not before Punk-girl wrote down her email and phone number for me (of her own accord) on a coaster and bade me send her the details for the open-mic.

The next day, I got a text from Kelvin. “Dude, that girl is way into you.” No, no I don’t think so, mate. “Oh yeah, dude. She was hanging on your every word.” Well, it did look that way, I have to admit. But I’m almost certain she said she lives with her boyfriend. “Really? I’m pretty sure I didn’t hear anything about that.”

Here I needs must point out a quirk of the German language. You see, German does not have a word for ‘boyfriend’ or ‘girlfriend.’ Believe it or not, this is a source of confusion even to the Germans themselves. Here’s how it works. The German word for (a male) ‘friend’ is Freund. The German word for ‘boyfriend,’ however, is also Freund. Likewise the German word for (a female) ‘friend’ is Freundin. And the German word for ‘girlfriend,’ is – you guessed it – is also Freundin.

Thus, in order to avoid confusion, you find Germans using the cumbersome periphrasis “Ein(e) Freund(in) von mir,” when they want to say ‘my friend’ instead of simply saying “Mein(e) Freund(in). Because the latter invariably sounds like ‘my boy/girlfriend.’

The point is, when we were walking to the bar after our döner, I asked Punk-girl where she lived, and I could have sworn she said, “Ich wohn’ in der Nähe mit meinem Freund.” Naturally, I took this to mean, “I live around here, with my boyfriend.” Kelvin, it seems, didn’t hear this. In any case, that was the source of our miscommunication on the subject. But whatever the truth of the matter, I decided to put it aside until the open-mic.

Friday was the Tempelhofer BBQ. That was brilliant. I mean, really just fantastic. I’ve written in previous posts about how great THF is. But I’ll say it again. It really is quite a treasure. It’s an entire commercial airfield, but decommissioned and turned into a park. People go biking, skating and windsurfing on the runways. People sunbathe, read and BBQ on the grass. It’s wonderful.

Verena brought Salmon and made a salad. I picked up some bratwursts and shish kabobs as well as two bottles of wine. And Joschka brought a disposable grill ((Did you know that was even a thing? I didn’t.)) as well as a delightfully refreshing cucumber salad. There was a brilliant sunset. Everything about it was great. It was just one of those evenings where everything is easy, if that makes any sense.

And for me and Joschka, it brought back the festival feeling. How can I explain this? There’s something about sitting out in a field, around a grill, with your metal music playing and the sun going down. If you closed your eyes, you could’ve imagined being surrounded by a village of tents. In some Prustian way, it brought us back to Wacken and Rock Harz. At one point, we sort of just looked at each other and were like, “dude, I can’t fucking wait for Rock Harz!” “We should do this every week!”

Well, we can’t do it every week. I’ve got school, for one thing. But this weekend Joschka is in Bavaria and next weekend he’s back in his hometown. Hopefully we can swing another one the week after. And hopefully Verena will come as well. It’s a very nice dynamic, the three of us.

Sunday. Open-mic night. Kind of a big deal for me. Apart from Jared and Charlotte, I’ve never played my music for other people before. And certainly not in public. Punk-girl came. Thank the gods. Sign-up was at 8pm and the show didn’t start till well after nine. If she hadn’t come, I’d have had to sit there in awkward nervousness by myself that whole time. That would have been awful.

She was great though. She really calmed me down and was super supportive. It was a huge help. As to the question of was she into me, impossible to read. If you wanted to see it, I suppose you could have. But there was nothing obvious. Anyway, I was slotted to play in the thirteenth spot, after the intermission. So we sat through the first half together. And it was fun, even if the music wasn’t particularly “rock’n’roll.”

At the break, I offered to buy her a drink. Her reaction was sufficiently awkward – “Oh…no, Dave…what are you doing?” – that it was obvious she wasn’t interested in that way. But for once in my life, I actually found my way out of an awkward situation, instead of making it worse. “Oh, no,” I said, calmly waving her off. “Please. Honestly, if you didn’t come, I’d have had to sit here by myself this whole time, and I’d probably have driven myself crazy. The least I can do is buy you a drink.” She immediately relaxed and accepted the offer. After that, it was smooth sailing for the S.S. Friendship.

And believe it or not, that whole exchange put an end to all my nerves. I suddenly didn’t have anybody to impress anymore. And what’s more, I was able to focus on being annoyed that I’d met yet another cute girl with a boyfriend rather than all the ways I could possibly fuck up my first ever performance. Fuck it, I thought. Fuck everything. It’s time to rock and roll.

And that’s what I did. Which isn’t to say I was great, or even good. I honestly have no idea how I did. But I went up there and I played some rock’n’roll – my rock’n’roll. The first song was a bit touch and go. I mean, I believe I played it well. I believe I sang it well. But I’d never sung into a microphone before. And I feel like I was spending the whole song figuring out how close or far I should be from the damned thing. But by the second song – and everybody only gets two – I believe I’d figured it out. And then it was over. Nice reaction from the crowd. Punk-girl was well impressed. I do believe that was genuine.

When it was all over, we stuck around for a couple more drinks. At this point, Punk-girl offered to buy mine. Why yes, thank you. What a doll. And that sort of sealed the ‘just-friends’ nature of things. But you know what? That’s fine. She was brilliant for support. And we had a really nice time, talking about music, Berlin and life in English and German and even French.

Next time, she might even perform some of her own poetry, poetry-slam style. But next time will not be this Sunday, but the Sunday after. Because this weekend she’ll be in Greece with her Freund. Whatever. I’m just glad to have a bit of camaraderie in this musical adventure.

So that was Sunday night, and I got home at whatever-the-fuck-time in the morning. Because five hours of sleep is always how you want to start your first day of school. ((Said no one ever.)) Yeah, I was a bit nervous. Twelve people in our class. Eleven strangers. Some good looking broads though. And only three other Yanks. As for the rest, let’s see…two Aussies, two Brits, three Germans and dame from Iran.

We’re all together in the mornings. That’s when they teach us. In the afternoons, we’re split in half. To start, my group teaches a beginner level class. The other works with an advanced level. We’ll flip halfway through the course. And I’ve got to say, my group is brilliant. I’ll come back to them in a bit. But first, teaching. Wow.

So we each teach – or taught, by now – twice this week. My first lesson was Tuesday. Let’s just say it didn’t go well. Of the six of us, I would say mine was easily the worst. Which isn’t to say it was a wepic fail. Just that it wasn’t great. Or even good. And we all knew it. I mean, when your classmates are saying things like, “Hey, come on, it was your first time,” or “Don’t be so hard on yourself,” you kinda know it wasn’t just in your head.

In the end, however, it was acceptable. By which I mean, it was acceptable. There are only three possible grades for a lesson: Below Standard, At Standard and Above Standard. I received an At Standard for my work. I also received a shit-ton of notes from my teacher. I also received a shit-ton of notes from myself, as we have to write a self-evaluation. The silver lining is, my self-evaluation matched almost one-to-one with my teacher’s. So basically, I fucked up X, Y and Z. But I knew I’d fucked up X, Y and Z. So that’s a good start.

Be that as it may, ((Election is Friday. (This footnote is entirely for my brother and my father).)) I went home feeling quite shit. But Lisa really stepped up. Lisa, my roommate, who, I’m sure I mentioned, is a German teacher. She stayed up with me until late in the night talking strategies and offering encouragements while we drank wine, and then, when there wasn’t any more wine, whiskey.

One of my biggest problems as a teacher is, I talk too damned fast. I think it’s a New York thing. ((As far back as 1774, none other than Founding Father John Adams noted in his diary that New Yorkers “talk very loud, very fast and altogether.”)) In any case, that don’t fly with people who are, say, from the South, let alone non-native speakers. Lisa said she used to have the same problem. To counter this, she made cards with Question Marks on them, and distributed them to her students with instructions to hold up said card whenever she spoke too fast. I decided to modify this slightly. I made little traffic signs; diamonds with word SLOW printed across them.

It was the first thing I did in my next class. “I need to ask you guys to help me?” I said. “Sometimes I talk too fast. So what I want you to do is, whenever you think I’m talking too fast, hold up your ‘SLOW’ card. Let’s practice. Ok, everybody, hands on your cards. Now, I’m going to start speaking slowly, at the speed I should be speaking so that you can understand me. But little by little, I’m-going-to-start-speeding-up, andImmaSstartSpeakin’RealFast, thewayispeakathomecosaintnobodygottime – “ and like a flash, the cards go up in the air. “Great! Perfect! Now don’t be shy about that, Ok?” I pause. “That’s what I want to see!” And they’re all smiling now, some of them are even laughing. So I decide to test them, just to be sure.

“But obviously, that’s not what I want to see, because-if-I’m-seeing-that, itmeansi’mtalkingwaytoo – “ and the cards go flying up again. And they’re all laughing now. Fantastic!

From there, I start the class. And man, I hit that one out of the park. Everything went brilliantly. Mind you, that’s not to say everything was perfect. Far from it. I still use too many idioms and too many big words, just to name a few failings. But, you guys, they really bought into it.

And I’ll tell you something else. I was funny. Everybody’s got their own teaching style, of course. And what works for one person may not work for the next. But I build a lot of schtick into mine. And for me, it works. And obviously it works for this particular group too, because I got a lot of laughs. But beyond the laughs, you could just see that they really enjoyed the class, which was very gratifying, as you can imagine.

When it was all over, the reaction from my classmates was night and day. They were coming up to me and saying things like, “Wow, you were hilarious!” “That was so funny!” and “That was really great, Dave.” I ain’t gonna lie, that made me feel good. It’s one thing when you see that you really connected with your students and that they enjoyed your class. But when, on top of that, you get that kind of reaction from your colleagues, it’s really quite gratifying.

Ironically, I rather beat myself up in my self-evaluation. I bought myself a Wegbier ((Wegbier – a beer for the road.  Of course the Germans have a word for this.)) for the walk home, ((My new – and dare I say, beloved – habit.)) during which I had a solid 45 minutes to reflect. And it occurred to me that my job is not to entertain these people but to teach them. And while it was clear that I had done a good job entertaining them, I wasn’t at all sure how well I had taught them. And so I proceeded to pick every nit I could think of.

The next day, I met with my teacher. Yes, he said, the things which I identified as problems do indeed need further work. But I also improved tremendously from my first lesson, which was very important. And all my schtick helped build a great rapport with the students, which is hugely important. Endeffekt: ((I love this word.  And it needs no translation.)) Above Standard. Booyah!

So I’m starting to develop my teaching persona: part Clown, part The Doctor, part Nutty Professor. And part Dave…whatever that means. Yeah, there’s still a literal shit-ton of work to do. But I’m starting to feel like I can do this, and do it well. The next challenge comes Monday. ((I have to teach the future tenses. And yet, somehow not the Future Perfect, the greatest of all tenses! I mean, it’s the fucking Prophet Tense! It’s the only tense that can tell you what’s happened before its’ actually happened! Also, I should probably not nerd-out over verb tenses. And yet…it’s so fucking cool!)) My job now is to be up to it.

As usual, this post has run over-long. But I do want to add just a bit more. Today was the end of the first week, thank the gods. When it was all over, our group (minus one), went for drinks and dinner. It was a much-needed catharsis for all of us. But it was also really nice to socialize with that lot outside of school and get to know them more as people. And, you guys? They’re so great. Once again, I feel like I really lucked out.

Don’t get me wrong, in the larger group of twelve, everybody is really nice. No question. But when I think about who’s in my group and who’s in the other group, well, I wouldn’t change a thing. It’s like, I got all my favorites. How does that even happen? So I’m just feeling well pleased about that. Well pleased.

One other thing I want to mention. I continue to feel really good about where I’m living. When I wrote my last post, I’d only been here three days. But now I’ve been here nigh-on a fortnight. And I love it. Me and Lisa ((Lisa and I. Whatever. Fuck you. Which one of us is (going to be) the English teacher?)) just get on so well. We’re really developing a very nice and comfortable friendship here. She’s so easy to live with. And we drink. A lot. And often. But she’s also proving to be an invaluable ((Gotta love the ‘in-‘ prefix as an intensifier. “Inflammable means flammable?? What a country!” – Dr. Nick, The Simpsons, s.12, ep.20.)) resource vis-à-vis teaching. And did I mention the high ceilings?

Next Post: June 18, 2015
Previous Post: June 3, 2015

An American in Berlin
3 June, 2015

What the shit just happened, you guys? My last post was, what, three days ago? Four? At that point, I was staying in my kick-ass Airbnb flat, with my super chill hippy roommates and their two cats, for whom I was developing a certain degree of fondness. And now? Shit’s different, yo. ((This is a usage of “yo” that I quite enjoy in spoken English, but which I don’t think I’ve tried in the written version.))

Ok, so I’m in my new flat. Apartment. Whatever. But it feels so different. In the last place, everything was taken care of, arranged. The room was predecorated and prefurnished. And as much as I got along really great with Anja and Mischa – and I really did – I was always a “guest” in their house.” ((Anytime I tried to help with anything, they’d always wave me off with the words, “Du bist Gast.” – You’re a guest.)) And that came with certain advantages. I didn’t have to buy laundry detergent or toilet paper. But on the flip-side, it was never ‘my’ place, ‘my’ room.

And now, here, it really is. Well, I mean to a point. I’m only here for a month. And I know I’m a stopgap until my roommate’s sister moves in. But still. It’s “my” fucking room here. I get to do with it what I want. And, you guys? This room is the tits. I feel like I now need “doge speak” to express the height of the ceilings. Sure, I could measure them. But it wouldn’t get the point across as well as, “such highest ceilings!” ((I’m as bad at Doge as I am at German.))

But wait, there’s more. My roommate is so cool. Right, OK. It’s only been one night. ((Well, two. My writing was interrupted last night by drinking on the balcony, on more which in a moment. #foreshadowfail)) And things can go tits-up in a hurry, of course. But based on the first night – man, did I land in the right spot! So she’s a German teacher. Pretty sure I mentioned that in the last post. But she’s also thoughtful, smart-af, really f’ing nice, and just all around cool.

Last night was our first night together as roommates. And we stayed up ‘til three drinking wine (and then beer) and just talking. Talking about all sorts of stuff. But like, smart people stuff. At one point, we were discussing Nazi architecture, and then Soviet architecture, and then U.S. monumental architecture. I mean, it was so great.

Also, you guys, she has a friend. And this friend is…hold on, Imma come back to it.

But first, a little about my new living-sitch. So the room, right, from a New York perspective, is gloriously spacious. And did I mention the high ceilings? And the giant wall-sized windows that lets in a literal shit-ton of a natural light? But – because there’s always a “but” – it was entirely unfurnished.

Well, right off the bat, Lisa – that’s my new roommate’s name – shows herself to be a real fucking champ. Rather than saying, “Well, here’s your empty room, it’s up to you to find a bed,” she found a friend who was getting rid of a bunch of furniture and sorted out renting a van (with a driver) so we could get it from A to B. Were it not for that, I’d be sleeping on the floor and living out [of] my suitcase.

As for the rest of the apartment, well, it’s just bloody brilliant. The living room is massive. The kitchen has everything you could want, if you like to cook. And on top of that, there’s still another room – itself bigger than the “living rooms” of either my Maiden Lane or Orchard Street apartments. And that room is dedicated as a “work room,” with a desk and chairs and all that. And the bathroom is spacious and, more importantly, clean.

In New York, I’d say this apartment would go for, easy, 3.5k. And I’m paying not even five hundred. Also, did I mention that I’m writing this post on the fucking ((I feel like I’m cursing a lot in this post. Two reasons for that. One: I bought myself a bottle of Glenfiddich tonight, and it’s the first bottle of scotch I’ve bought since I’ve been here, which, let’s face it, is ridiculous, as I’ve been here just under a month. #germanstylerunonsentence Two A: I don’t know how to curse like this in German. Two B: When I speak English here, it’s almost always a modified super-clear and semi-formal English so that people will understand me. Rarely do I get to talk the way I normally talk.)) balcony?? ((The balcony is, ironically, the only downside, in this way: In my last place, I could smoke in the kitchen. Which meant I could read Greek and write my posts in the kitchen, irrespective (or irregardless, dammit!) of weather. Here, the balcony is the only place I can smoke. So if there’s bad weather, I’m f’d, in that regard.)) So yeah, I’m well pleased to be here.

And now, I gotta give a shoutout to Joschka. Joshcka, who ((Should be “whom,” right? I’m gonna say it’s an anacolouthon. And I feel like, if I can name it, I can use it.)) I’m not even sure if he even reads this shit. But in any case, he came to my old place with his car, picked me up with all my stuff and drove me to the new place. What a fucking lifesaver. So, if you do read this, Kumpel, ich danke dir, von meinem Herz. Aber, du bist immer noch Scheiße.

Tonight, I went again to the class that Lisa teaches. And I had my ass handed to me, prepositionally. No, seriously. The class was on German prepositions. And I scored like a 20. The only thing that makes me feel better is, that the rules governing which prepositions are used when are almost entirely arbitrary. Still though, talk about your rude awakenings. Yeesh. And then on the way out, I saw her friend. But I said I’ll come back to that later, and I will.

But yeah, after that, I decided it was time for a nice scotch. So I stopped off to pick up a bottle of Glenfiddich, which I guess I alluded to footnoteally. ((I unequivocally support the adverbization of all things. Except when we’re busy verbing things. (See: adverbization, above).)) But of course nothing can be easy, right? I decided to pay with my card, instead of cash. ((In the States, you can pay with a card almost anywhere these days. But here, most places still only take cash. And so the reason I went where I went was, I’d be able to use a card.)) But of course, the receipt paper ran out in the middle of my transaction. So I couldn’t sign. What a shitshow. Like, seriously. I had to wait a half hour for them not to be able to print a new receipt at the register, and then decide that they needed to print one from a computer in the back for me to sign. Then, after I sign it, the guy wants to see my card again so he can actually literally astoundingly compare the signatures. And I’m like, you realize you are an actual real life stereotype now, right? Anyway, I felt like such a dick for holding up the line. But Germans – or at least these Germans – were so well behaved. Nobody even gave me a dirty look!

But in the end, I got it sorted, and I hear I am. Here I am with my glass of Glenfiddich, and my pipe, and oh, Lisa just got home and I guess we’re gonna chill on the balcony for a bit. So, pause…

OK, we’re both on the balcony, but I guess she’s facebooking, so, umm, hi.

Right, so, open-mic night. I’ve decided that this is something I need to do. I’ve been writing my own songs for a while, but I have done literally fuck-all with them to this point. If I wanted to make excuses, I would say something along the lines of, I couldn’t find people to play with, I couldn’t start a band. But also, I’m mad shy and nervous about playing my shit in front of other people. And in New York? Well, that’s my home. Those are my people. It seemed harder.

But a goal I’ve set for myself here is to perform at an open-mic night. I’m a stranger here, and I don’t know anybody. And ain’t nobody be knowin’ me. ((Trying to keep my urban colloquialisms sharp. How’m I doin’? #EdKoch)) And this whole trip is about growing myself as a person, right?   Ok, so Sunday night, I went to check out this open-mic night. Not to play, but just to see what it was about. Well, it was interesting.

What it reminded me of, was the Java House from college. The Java House was this place where people would gather to drink coffee and listen to live music. In theory, it should have been very cool. And for a lot of people, I’m sure it was. But for me, I dunno, it wasn’t Rock’n’ Roll, if I can say that. It was a bunch of hippies, sitting around, saying things like “Isn’t ‘music’ great…maaaaannn?” Yeah, it’s terrific. Now put down your joint and tap your godsdamned foot!

Well, it was that kind of crowd. But I shouldn’t be throwin’ shade. ((Which is something we totally still say, right? Gods, I’m out of touch.)) Because for all it’s not “Rock’n’Roll,” they really are an open minded and supportive lot. And they get into any-and-everything. So, next week, when I go back to actually play – which I will, dammit – I think I shall be glad to have such a group of people in front of me.

Still though. The predominant language was English. The MC introduced everybody in English. At the bar, everybody was speaking English. I mean, c’mon, this isn’t why I came here! And also – here comes a rant – godsdamned hipsters! With your flannel and your boots and your ‘artisenal’ accents. You know what I mean. The perfectly rounded ‘O’s, the carefully enunciated consonants, pronouncing final ‘T’s. Like, when did glottal stops stop being cool? ((No, I didn’t live in “MaNhaTTan,” I lived in “Ma’ha’an.” Get it right, hipster. Hey, maybe that’s why they all live in Brooklyn (and Berlin, apparently). No glottal stop to avoid in Brooklyn (or Berlin).)) Can’t you just talk like a normal person? Not every word has to be a craft beer/cheese/whatever. Nah’mean? <<EndRant>>.

So now it’s Wednesday afternoon. And this is a bit unusual. I’m writing, but the sun is up and I’m totally sober. It’s so strange to think that people work like this all the time. In coffee shops, no less. In any case, I’m to meet up with Kelvin later for a beer and then we’re going to head back to that group conversation exchange thingy-whatsit. Should be fun. And also necessary.

Because I feel like I’m starting to hit a bit of a wall with my German. It’s like when you first start learning to play guitar. First, you start learning open chords, and your hands be all, “What? No, we don’t make that shape.” But after a bit, open chords become mad easy, and you’re feeling really good about yourself because now you can play a whole bunch of songs or order a beer at a restaurant. But then you realize you need to learn bar chords. And now your hands be all, “What? No, that hurts, stop it. Also, do you not hear how bad that sounds?” This is sitting with two well spoken German teachers and trying to follow their conversation. Then comes the guitar solo, or you know, speaking like an actual person. Well, right now, I’m just trying to keep up on rhythm guitar.

And the two German teachers I mentioned? One was Lisa. The other was the aforementioned friend. Her name is Divi. Never heard that one. So I ask if it’s short for anything. Yes, she says. It’s Indian, short for Diviam, which means “light.” And then a light goes off in my head. I made some connection, or pulled some half remembered fragment out of the part of my brain I was using when I did my Master’s. “Wait, hang on,” I say. “Surely that’s a Sanskrit word…which must be cognate with Latin ‘divinus,’ divine…because…gods, light, something something ((My actual words.)).…(and then in my head: and also obviously, in Greek, Διόϲ (genitive of Ζεύϲ), which obviously would have been Διϝόϲ at some point, and aren’t digammas great?)…” And the whole time she’s nodding along like she knows all this, because obviously you know the origin of your own name, you German teaching, linguistics bestudied beautiful little creature, you. “Yeah, it’s the same stem,” she says. Right. Well. Thanks for letting me walk through all that then. Where’s my wine?

Anyway, Divi. Lovely girl. Smart, as we’ve seen. But also just really sweet. And she has a sense of humor. This I discovered after I managed to get myself locked in the bathroom and only escaped with Lisa’s help. I’ll say this about getting locked in your own bathroom. It’s not nearly as scary as getting locked in a cemetery; but it is infinitely more embarrassing.

There are two other salient facts about this Divi person. One I shall mention here. ((The other, for effect, comes later. #BuildingSuspense)) She is all of the cutes. Literally, you guys. All of them. A point which I mentioned to Lisa after Divi’d left. Her response? Well, actually her response came after I had to break down the “all-of-the-x” idiom, using “all of the feels” as another example thereof. Anyway, her response? “Oh yes, isn’t she? I’ve always wondered what kind of guy – and I’m not saying you do – but what kind of guy would have a crush on her.”

What? No! What are you doing? Don’t do that! I don’t have a…I was just…she’s very cute! That’s all I said! Don’t say the “C” word! Now it’s gonna be in my head! Ugh, I was perfectly prepared to go to bed thinking, “Oh, she was cute. How nice.” But after that remark? I went to bed having a crush. ((Thanks, Lisa.))

So of course I ran into her after Lisa’s class last night, because obviously that had to happen. “Oh hi!” I say, terrified now that I’ve said ‘hi’ with either obvious overexcitement or forced nonchalance indicating a complete lack of interest or possibly somehow both, because there’s nothing I can’t ruin. Then she opens her arms for a hug.

For a hug? What? No, you can’t do that. Germans are supposed to be unemotional robots. That’s why I came here, to avoid emotional contact. Otherwise I’d have gone to France. Anyway, hug? No. Too confusing. Does it mean something? Is she simply not an unemotional Teutonic robot? Does everybody get a hug after one night of hanging out? Oh gods, why is this happening to me?

“Also,” she says with a divinely ((#seewhatididthere)) cute smile, “Was ist passiert, seit gestern?” (So, what’s new since yesterday?) And then it happened. I forgot all the German that I know. I wanted to say something about how I’d just had my ass handed to me in class vis-à-vis prepositions. “Ich hab…” Oh gods. Words, David. Use words. “Ich hab…” Not those words, David. You’ve already said that part. Use other words. “Ich hab…” Mental facepalm. “Ja?” she says, encouragingly, patiently. If you could maybe stop being so cute for a second? I’m trying to think here. Thanks. Ok, try again now. “Ich hab…darin…mein Arsch…getritten?, getrittet ((‘Getreten‘ is the participle I was looking for, and which I failed to find.))…gehabt?“ “What are you trying to say?” she asks in English now. “Um, I got my ass kicked in there?” “Yeah,” she says. “That’s not a thing in German.” No, of course it’s not. I’ll just show myself out. Whereupon I said goodbye and promptly walked into the street, looking for a bus to throw myself in front of. But there were no buses. So I couldn’t even do that right. ((#davestheworst #iruineverything))

Fast forward to later in the night, when Lisa came out and joined me on the balcony. I asked her if she wanted some scotch, happy to share, but mostly expecting the answer no, because most girls seem not to like whisk(e)y. ((So, good on you, Niki.)) “Yeah, sure,” she answered pleasantly. “Good girl,” quoth I. So we chat, and we’re having a lovely time of it in the warm Berlin night, with the Big Dipper looking wheeling peacefully overhead. Finally, I bring it up.

“It’s all your fault, you know. I was totally prepared not to have any feels for your friend Divi. But then you used the ‘crush’ word, and now that’s happened. So thanks.” To which she replies, “Oh. Well you probably shouldn’t do that. You see, she lives together with her boyfriend.” Of course she does. Because Dave can’t have nice things. So that was twenty-four hours of emotional hot messitude that I could have done without. Anyway, I must have looked sad/disappointed/distressed, because then Lisa decided to try and say something nice.

“No, but that’s a good thing, actually. Because it means that your heart is open and your open to having feelings for new people.” Is it? I am? Great. Thanks. Hey, I know. Let’s drink more scotch and also change the subject please. Which we did, and all was well.

And all is well, as long as we’re not talking about girls. I’m totally lucking out in the roommate department. I’m meeting cool people. My German is improving. I’m learning the city. And still to come: school, the Rock Harz festival, the trip to Biarritz. Maybe I really can have nice things…

Next Post: June 13, 2015
Previous Post: May 31, 2015

An American in Berlin
31 May, 2015

This post is proving somewhat harder to construct than its forebears. I’ve now deleted the first paragraph at least three times. Wherefore do I throw up my hands and forego any sort of introspective introduction. Moving right along then, the last few days have not been uneventful.

This past weekend, there was the Karneval der Kulturen. ((Culture Carnival, for lack of a better translation.))  From a New Yorker point of view, it’s sort of half street-fair/half music festival. In any case, on Saturday I met my Australian mate Kelvin ((Whom I’d met at a group conversation exchange two weeks ago.)) for a couple of beers, and from there we proceeded to check out the festival.   We had a good time of it. We even found a little Australian tent, where he introduced me to one of his local beers, 4X Gold. ((In my opinion, it almost had a bit of a honey taste to it.))

After we had left the festival, we wandered the streets a bit, trying to find what we would have called “a proper pub.” However, we didn’t have any luck. “Proper pubs” don’t seem to be a thing in Berlin. I’m not sure why this is. Maybe it’s because it’s so easy to just drink your beer in the street. In any case, I think we were just both a bit homesick for the little things. But it was a nice bonding moment, all the same. Strangers in a strange land and all that.

At the end of it, though, he told me he was having some classmates over the next day and that I was more than welcome to join. So of course I did. And I would have been on time, too. Except that I had a helluva time finding a bottle of wine to bring. You see, I’d forgotten that damn near everything in this town is closed on Sundays. ((One more thing to get used to.))

But in the end, I found some wine and got there not unfashionably late. It was a nice little group. Aside from Kelvin, there was a dude from Venezuela, two Italians and two Americans. The Italians didn’t stay long, but they were great. We actually talked a bit about Caesar and how badass his Latin is, which was really cool. You see, normally when I go off on a Caesar tangent, people just sort of nod in a that’s-nice-Dave-but-you-know-nobody-cares sort of way. But these guys were really into it. “Yeah, Caesar talking about himself in the third person is so badass!” “Yeah, Caesar uses asyndeton ((“Asyndeton (from the Greek: ἀσύνδετον, “unconnected”, sometimes called asyndetism) is a figure of speech in which one or several conjunctions are omitted from a series of related clauses.” Wikipedia)) like a boss!” ((For example: “Caesar sacked the village, killed the men, sold the women into slavery. Caesar doesn’t have time for the word ‘and.’” #toobusyconqueringGual”)) That was a lot of fun for me.

Anyway, once the wine and arepas – which Luis, the Venezuelan had made – were gone, we made off for the festival. It was fun for a while. But eventually we found ourselves at the Latin music stage. And I have to be honest, Latin music just doesn’t speak to me. If I had to say why, the best I can come up with is this. It shuffles, it grooves, it pops…but it doesn’t swing. And for me, it don’t mean a thing if it ain’t got that swing. So eventually I left and went off on my own. And that’s how I got locked in a cemetery.

I left the main Karneval grounds and started to wend my way home. But as I went, ((“Went,” best known as the past tense form of the verb “to go” – go/went/gone – is originally derived from the Old English verb “wenden.” Not a lot of people know that. Incidentally, we still use “wend” today, just as I did in the last sentence.)) I found that the Karneval stretched far into the surrounding streets. There was music, food stands, empty beer bottles, drunken louts and all the rest of it stretching far and wide. So naturally I got off the main road. And when I did, I found a nice inviting Friedhof ((Friedhof – cemetery)) – which, as I mentioned in an earlier post, function just like parks here – and decided to seek refuge therein.

It was lovely. Beautiful. Peaceful. Which is as should be, for the word Friede literally means ‘peace.’ So I wandered its tree lined paths and found solace within its quiet walls. If there was anything to hear at all, it was the song of birds. It was the perfect respite from the Sturm und Drang of the Karneval. But after a while, I noticed that the sun was beginning to set. And so I decided that it was probably time to make my exit. Only, the exits had all been shut and locked. ((Ruh-roh.))

Well now. Cemeteries are lovely and all, but I don’t think I’m up to spending a night in one. Not yet, anyway. Sure, I mean, Everlasting and Eternal Night, when the time comes. But not Sunday, thank you very much. That’s when I ran into Marco.

“Jolly good,” I thought. ((Anglophile though I am, I’m sure the words “jolly good” never entered my mind. Something more profane, no doubt.)) “Not alone.” I approached him, though I didn’t know who ‘he’ was. “Hallo!” I called. “Ich denke, dass die Türe ausgemacht sind,” which was meant to mean ‘I think the doors are locked,’ but which might actually have meant ‘the doors are shut off.’ “Ach so,” he probably responded – ‘I see…”

So we walked for a bit in silence, trying the various entrances, and finding each of them locked in their turn. Eventually, we gave up and made a go of hopping the sharp, pointed ((And dare I say – only slightly hyperbolically – death defying.)) fence. Success! Ok, so it wasn’t exactly Steve McQueen breaking out of Stalag Luft III, but it was still a Pretty Good Escape.

Well, once we’d gotten free and the tension had been relieved, we spoke more freely. Marco was from Italy, I learned. But he’d been in Berlin at least since the beginning of the year, and so we spoke *rather* easily in German. This, I must say, I greatly appreciated. By which I mean, I was thrilled that he didn’t immediately switch over to English upon learning that I was from New York. In fact, we spoke no English at all, which was just delightful.

And as we walked down the Hasenheide, he asked me the question that many before have asked: Warum sprichst du so gut deutsch? – How is that you speak such good German? It was at this point that I began to realize that this must be a somewhat formulaic question. My German is, after all, pretty shit.

There is a Sprichwort in German, a saying: Deutsche Sprache, schwere Sprache – German language, hard language. In other words, Germans (and by extension, German speakers) are aware that their language is not an easy one. ((Or is it? I mean, compared to Finnish or Chinese, German is a walk in the park (or Friedhof as it were). And it’s Indo-European, so on some level, it’s no different than French, or Latin, or Greek. It’s just wearing unfamiliar – and more complex – clothing.)) In any case, I get the impression that Germans (& German speakers) are generally impressed with even the least effort to function in their language. All to say, the question shouldn’t be taken quite literally. It would better be rendered as something like: “Whoa, you’re American and you’re not a complete idiot? Well done! Don’t let it go to your head.”

In any case, we turned off of Hasenheide and made our way through Hasenheide Park for a bit. We had a nice chat, and exchanged numbers at the end of it, ostensibly to grab a beer at some indeterminate point in the future. Whether or not that actually happens is beside the point. The point is: Look at me functioning as a social creature! Who knew?

Monday I went to Tempelhofer Feld a) to read some Tolkien and b) because Tempelhofer Feld is awesome. But on the way, I stopped for a falafel sandwich. “Ein Falafel, bitte. Aber, ohne Weißsoße – One falafel, please, but hold the white-sauce. Falafel Man answered something which I didn’t quite get. When I asked him to repeat, he pointed to a sign that read “100% vegan.” “Ach, ich bin nicht vegan…aber, ich kann’s nicht essen” – Ah, no, I’m not a vegan…I just can’t eat (read: digest) it. This brought the inevitable, “Wo kommst du her?” – Where are you from? In other words, ‘your German is sufficiently shit, I must ask you where you’re from, since obviously not here.’ ((Although I’m almost certain that his actual words were: “Wo kommst du aus.” In which case, he himself would have got the preposition wrong.)) When I told him I was from New York, he told me that he was from Egypt. Whereupon he proceeded to tell me that he didn’t like Obama and that the U.S. had made a fine mess of the Middle East. “Irak ist kaputt.; Libyen ist kaputt; Syrien ist kaputt.” ((This needs no translation.)) Well, yeah. Sorry. See, it’s always weird when you get stuck talking about your own country’s politics with foreigners. I might very well agree with you. But now I feel like I need to walk a fine line between agreeing with you and defending my country. It’s just awkward. And the last thing I wanted to do was get into my thoughts on Egypt, which in my opinion is doing a fine job making a mess of itself with or without our help. ((This isn’t the place for this, but to be brief: Ok, so Morsi sucked. Fine. Then vote him out. Don’t have a military coup about it. You’re going to talk to me about Obama? What about Sisi then? I’ll stop here.))

Fortunately, there was a guy hanging out at the falafel stand – who, I take it, was a friend of the guy behind the counter – and he did a lovely job of breaking the tension. Saying things like, “I had a cousin who visited New York, I hear it’s great.” Or, “Yeah, but Egyptians are all assholes too,” with a wink. Well, despite Falafel Man’s obvious displeasure with American politics, he seemed to like me just fine. In fact, he made me a cup of tea while I was waiting for my sandwich, which is something I’ve never seen before. So in the end, it all worked out. And I’m sure I’ll be back there for lunch before long.

Tuesday night I attended a free German class that my new roommate teaches. It was actually quite well done. The lesson was predominantly about grammar, so I latched right onto it. I have to say, my new roommate is pretty impressive. I look forward to going again next week. And of course, I immediately fell into class-clown mode, jumping on terrible puns whenever possible. It’s very endearing, don’t you know.

While I was waiting for the class to start, I grabbed a beer from the bar ((Did I mention the class takes place in the back room of a bar? How can you not love this country?)) and struck up a chat with the only other person who was clearly there for the class. We chatted in German for a bit, running the usual where-are-you-from, what-are-you-doing here business. Giulia was Italian, but when we switched to English I discovered that she spoke with a bit of an Irish lilt. And sure enough, she grew up and learned English in Ireland. “Whereabouts?” I asked. “Limerick,” quoth she. “Ah, Stab City,” quoth I. And her face lit up. “How did you know that?!” she asked. What could I say? “I’m a man of the world.”

We sat together in the class and partnered on anything required a partner. She was a pleasure to work with. Hopefully I’ll get stuck with her again next time. And look, I know we should be speaking German with each other as much as possible, but did I mention she has an Irish accent? It’s all I want to hear. Irish accents are so beautiful. I could listen to her read the train schedule. And anyway, it’s bloody Berlin. Plenty of other people to speak German with, right?

Wednesday night was a little dinner party at Joschka’s. His girlfriend, Lusine, was in visiting. So of course it was lovely to see her, especially as she’s officially become part of the Duff’s Crew. ((The official Duff’s Crew, I’d say, is made up of Joschka, Lus, Vinny, Niki & me. Also the Finns, when they’re in town. Also, for anybody reading this who somehow knows me and not Duff’s, it’s only the greatest metal bar in all of Brooklyn, NYC and the whole world already.)) The other member of our dinner party was a childhood friend of Joschka’s, now also living in Berlin, a girl by the name of Verena. Verena is a professional flute player, a real sweetheart, cute as hell and straight-up hawt by any metric. In any case, we had a lovely time of it, and I managed to get off a couple of jokes in German, proving once and for all that I am funny in at least two languages. ((#amirite))

Verena also has a motorbike, on which she graciously offered me a ride at some indeterminate point in the future. “Will I have to sit behind you and wrap my arms tight around you?” I asked because I don’t know how to interact with girls my own age. “Of course,” she replied unphasedly, because we’d already met two or three times. “Great! When do we leave?” Poor Joschka. He can’t take me anywhere.

A point I demonstrated yet again, when him, Lus and I went out on Friday night. We were at this “California-style” ((Whatever the fuck that means.)) cocktail bar. At one point, a nice couple came and sat down at our table, albeit huddling themselves at the other end thereof. Later on, the fellow popped off to the loo, and so I decided to try my German on the lass, who was [probably] bored, waiting for her beau. Here is the conversation, which I will give in both languages:

Poor Joschka. He can’t take me anywhere. But on the bright side, there’s more proof that I’m a regular riot in at least two languages. ((#amirite)) And on still another bright side, when I asked Joschka how my German was during the course of that ridiculosity, he said that it was basically spot on and that, indeed, he was fairly impressed. On the less bright side, he then pointed out that talking to strangers like that – even if they are sharing your table – just isn’t a thing here. Well, alright. Bit of a social faux pas there. But at least I nailed the German.

There are, of course, lesser events to report. More time spent at lovely Tempelhofer Feld. Getting drunk with Mischa and Blondey. Letting Lus have a go at giving me a bit of haircut and beard trim. ((They’re both still long, but I look rather a bit less homeless now.)) Buying some new vanilla flavored pipe tobacco, which is nice, but maybe just a touch too sweet. Meeting up with my Bavarian conversation partner, who is just an all around lovely guy.   Totally loving the fact the Rangers are finally out of the playoffs. And so on. But this post is become overlong, to say nothing of overdue.   Thus findeth it its end here.

Next Post: June 3, 2015
Previous Post: May 23, 2015

An American in Berlin
23 May, 2015

The beginning of this week seems like a lot more than a week ago. And with that poorly crafted sentence begins the fourth installment of this series. ((Feel free to bail at any time now.)) In our last episode, I was looking for a place to live in June, planning on a bit of exploring and getting ready to cook dinner for the roommates and possibly Blondey. And what have I done? Well, I cleaned my pipe.

No, seriously, that thing was getting gross and I’d forgotten to bring pipe cleaners with me. So obviously, I had to buy some. But first, I had to find out what they were called. Apparently, the word is ‘Pfeifenreinigern,’ which I have to say was somewhat disappointing, as I was hoping for at least three more syllables. On the other hand, ‘rein’ means ‘pure.’ At least ‘Pipe-purifier’ sounds a bit erudite, doesn’t it? But that’s all a bit of nothing, innit.

Moving on. Most important(ly), ((Pedants have a problem with the adverb here. But from one pedant to another, go screw. Descriptivism trumps prescriptivism every time.)) the room-sitch for June seems to have sorted itself out. ((#knockwood)) Actually, before my last posting – on Sunday – I went to go see a place. But I didn’t say anything about it, because I actually quite liked it and didn’t want to jinx it. ((Because I’m a goalie and we’re superstitious.)) So here’s how it went down. After sending what I’m pretty sure was literally a million emails and requests to wg-gesucht ((The German equivalent of craigslist but specifically for rooms.)) and Airbnb, and after getting maybe six responses – four of which telling me the rooms weren’t actually available – I got one which intrigued me. Paraphrasing into English, the Reader’s Digest version was something along the lines of: “Well, I’m really looking for somebody for two months, and I really don’t want to go through this process again…buuuuttt…you sound nice. Can you come by at 5:30?” It was 3:00. Yes, of course, see you then!

So I roll up, and there’s this girl standing in the doorway. And she looks…well, she looks totally fucking normal. She shows me around the apartment. And it’s big. With one room set up as a workspace room and then a proper living room on top of that. The kitchen was big and fully stocked. The bathroom was spotless. Then she asks me if I’d like a glass of water. Actually, yes I would.

So we sit down in the living room and start to chat. The tour (and the email correspondence) was all in German. But now we switch to English. We talked about all manner of things. Our approach to living in a shared space, ((Obvi.)) music, studies, Paris, French, Bourgeois hipsters whose parents pay for their apartments, German (she’s a German teacher!). We’re really getting on well. The chat lasted for over half an hour. Finally, I say, “Well, look, I know you want somebody for two months, so I know this isn’t necessarily ideal. But for me, this place is perfect. And I think we get along pretty well. So for my part, I’d be happy to stay here in June.” Her: “Ok, well, it’s basically down to three people. I still have to meet one more person tomorrow. So I’ll let you know.” Well, I never expected her to offer it to me on the spot. Now she thinks for a second. “You’re not like a vegan or a vegetarian, are you?” Uh-oh. A test? “Noooo? Are you? I mean, if you are – I don’t have to use your pans – .” “No, I’m not at all.” Thank god. Ok, so I look forward to hearing from you, and thanks for your time.

And I basically just assumed it was too good to be true. I mean, the place was great and we got on so well, there was no way this could work. That night, I write my previous post and say nothing of this because, as I said, I don’t want to jinx it. But the very next morning, I find an email in my inbox. I see it’s from her. And the previewed first line reads, “It was very nice meeting you yesterday…” Oh God. Denial. Rejection. If she was going to accept me, she would have texted. Back to square one. Why gods? I’d burn my fatted calf for you, if only I had one. And the two calves I do have always been pretty lean anyway…

Wait, read the email, Davey. “…nice meeting you yesterday. I think we got along very well. So if you’re still interested, I’d like to offer you the room…” Yes, yes! A thousand times yes! “Also, would you like to sing in our choir?” What? Yes? No? I mean, no. I can’t sing choral music. I’m a rock’n’roll guy. But if I say ‘no,’ do I submarine the whole…oh gods, why? Anyway, I politely declined, and I think all is still well.

In truth, part of me is still waiting for the email that says, “Yeah, so actually, I thought it over, and sorry to do this to you, but really, I do actually need somebody for the two months and good luck to you.” But failing such an epic disaster, I do seem to be set for June, and that’s a load off my mind. And actually, I’m quite looking forward to it. It really does seem like it would be a very nice living-sitch.

What’s more, it’s the perfect distance to my school. So, in accordance with my plan of doing more exploring, I decided I’d make the walk from her place to my school on Monday, in order to time it out. And it’s almost exactly the distance from my LES apartment to my old job. Perfect!

I actually popped into the school, just to see the place and introduce myself. The people there were lovely and they gave me a bit of a tour. It was good to get my bearings, and to remind myself what I’m doing here in the first place.

But back to exploring. It turns out the school is quite literally around the corner from Checkpoint Charlie. So I had a look at that. And from there, I passed through the Brandenburg Gate and onto the Tiergarten, which is more or less Berlin’s answer to Central Park. It was lovely and empty and peaceful and quiet, but for all the birds singing. Now, I know nothing about birdcalls, and frankly, I don’t care to learn either. But it was quite relaxing to walk along and listen to all the different songs.

Leaving the Tiergarten, I embarked upon a long and indeterminate route home, which took me through several neighborhoods I’d not yet seen. Wilmersdorf is quite nice, albeit rather a bit posh. So posh, in fact, that I had trouble finding a späti. ((Späti, or Spätkauf (literally: late-buy) is the German version of the Bodega. It’s where you go to buy a single beer (or other “essentials”).)) I mention this because I’d been walking for probably three hours at that point, and I was damned thirsty. And this being Germany, I was determined to get my hands on a beer for the next bit of my trek. Because Freiheit. ((Freedom.))

Soon enough, however, I passed from Wilmersdorf into Schöneberg, which was much more my speed. It wasn’t long before I found my holy grail, a bottle of Augustiener, which I’m pretty sure was glowing with a divine halo in the fridge of that little späti. But just then, I remembered that Timo – a friend of Joschka’s whom I’d met at the festivals and who had since become my friend – was supposed to be visiting that day. So I texted Joschka, worried that I’d missed the bloke. But in fact, he was only due to arrive in fifteen minutes. So I walked until my beer was gone and hopped on the S-Bahn up to Joschi’s.

Upon arriving, it was made clear to me that we would only be speaking German, unless absolutely necessary. Fear! But, no. This is what I was here for. And my goal was to be able to actually understand people at this summer’s festival. Time to get to work! And actually, we managed!

First things first. After greeting each other warmly and agreeing that we were all hungry and in need of beer, I noticed Timo’s AC/DC shirt. “Schönes T-Shirt!” I say enthusiastically, possibly getting the gender of T-Shirt wrong. This leads to a discussion of where and when they are playing in Germany, which leads to Joschka buying three tickets to see them in Berlin in June! That’s right, bitches! I’m seeing AC/DC in Berlin!

The rest of the night was about what you’d expect. Dinner. Drinks. Hanging out. Me trying to keep up with the German. Succeeding at some points, failing miserably at others, and zoning out entirely at still others. But what was really cool was, I think this was the first time that Joschka ever took me seriously as a German speaker. That is to say, rather than switching to English to talk to me or translating everything that Timo said, he really tried to keep me going in German. He spoke to me in German and encouraged my speaking to him/them in German. It felt like a huge accomplishment, as limited as it clearly was.

A brief digression, if I may, to illustrate what this means to me. Via text message, Joschka has always been extremely patient and helpful as a German teacher. I’ve learned a great deal from him. But we never really speak in German when we’re together. This is, I think, because we’re very good friends and my German is so limited. For him, it would be like talking to a child. I’m just not good enough with the language yet. So to have a night when the three of us could hang out and speak their language instead of mine – which we did, btw, when Timo visited New York this year – was really gratifying. Even if I was in the dark for more of it than I cared to be.

The next night was the dinner experiment. I was cooking for the roommates. And Blondey. I decided upon a sort of German-Italic-American fusion. I did sausage, peppers & onions over pasta with a white wine sauce. But instead of Italian sausage, I used bratwurst. And I made a garlic bread. ((I was initially worried that garlic bread with pasta would be to “carby.” But my dear friend Niki, who is superlatively Italian, assured me that garlic bread was a must, pasta or otherwise.)) Well, it seemed to be hit. Everybody went for seconds, and the garlic bread didn’t survive the night. I’m prepared to call that a success.

The night itself was also a success. Many bottles of wine were drunk. ((Drank? Drunken? We drank many bottles of wine, is the point. #imgoingtoteachenglish)) Conversations were made. Fun was had. All in all, it was a lovely night. And the next day, Blondey dropped off a couple of books for me. ((Apparently, she lives in the building. This may well have been explained to me much earlier, but I’ve only understood this fact since Wednesday.)) One was about an Englishman living in Berlin and was in English. I read it yesterday afternoon in the park, with my obligatory beer.

The other is called “Der Die Was?” ((Der, Die, Das are the German pronouns ‘he, she, it.’ Was means ‘what.’ So the title means, “He, She, What?” (Or, as I like to say it, “He, She, Whaaaaaaaa???”) It’s quite clever. But since it’s impossible to explain a joke without also killing it, I shall stop here.)) and is obviously in German. It’s about an American and his adventures learning the German language. I started it today and it’s quite challenging. Even Anja, my roommate, said she found it a difficult read. But it’s quite fun (and funny). And it very much speaks to my experiences. So for all the effort required, I’m definitely enjoying it. I hope I can finish it before I leave!

[Author’s note: I am now out of wine. Schade! That’s the problem with cooking with wine, as I did tonight. There’s less of it to drink!]

A delightfully awkward experience at the Turkish grocery today. I grabbed some stuff to make lunch sandwiches, amongst which were numbered three small cucumbers. When I got to the register, the girl asked me something about them that I didn’t quite understand. She asked again, and this time, I perceived that her question had something to do with the weight of the produce. Knowing only American supermarkets, I assumed she was asking the price-per-pound. ((Well, price-per-kilo, actually.)) “Zwei und fünfzig par kilo,” I stammered. She replied something else in German. Apparently that was not the answer she was looking for. And seeing that I was clearly stupid, she asked her co-worker if she could speak English. ((#facepalm #davefail))

But while she was asking, my slow-working brain put together her original question, which was, “how much do they weigh?” You see, apparently, it was on me to weigh them myself before I ever got to the register and to report that weight to her. So I waved off her associate. “Ich verstehe,” I said. ‘I understand.” Though I said it not with the pride of actually understanding, but with the shame of being the guy holding up the line because I don’t know how your supermarket works. In my broken German, I asked if I could just forget the cucumbers and leave them at the register. Fortunately, she was not nearly as annoyed as she could have been. In any case, lesson learned. Next time, I shall weigh my own damned produce. But there would be no cucumbers on today’s sandwich. ((Which, come to think of it, is itself pretty German. I mean, we don’t put cucumbers on cold-cut sandwiches, do we?))

I suppose those are the week’s events that bear reporting. Of course I keep up with my Herdotos reading most nights. That’s endlessly rewarding. And there’s something about German and Greek that just, I don’t know. It makes sense that so many of the best Greek scholars were/are German. The languages work in much the same way. It’s a neat symbiosis. Greek actually helps my German and German helps my Greek. You just don’t get that from French. Though in fairness, what you do get from French are fun novels that you can actually read on the subway. But then, Germans read books in German on the subway. So I keep working…

Next Post: May 31, 2015
Previous Post: May 18, 2015

An American in Berlin
18^th May, 2015

It’s amazing how fast the day – that is, the useful part of the day (and by useful, I mean from a things-being-open point of view) – goes by when you wake up at 12, 1 o’clock. Or, to better get in the local habit, 1200, 1300. Well look, it’s not like I’m sleeping 14 hours a night. I suppose I usually go to bed between three and four. Which is not far off from what I was doing when I had to get up at seven for work. ((Screw you, job!  (Also thanks for the years of employment, insurance, $, etc).)) But I still have a hard time getting moving in the “morning.” So instead of going on some multi-hour trek, I find it’s easier to just go grab a beer, sit in the park and read for a spell.

What am I doing up so late? Mostly reading Greek and doing this stupid blog-thing. So it’s not like I’m not being productive. But I think this week I’ve got to make more of an effort to get out and see more of the city. So I should set some goals here, publicly, thereby hopefully forcing myself to meet them and report back. I should go see the Olympic stadium. ((Because NS architecture is alluringly creepy.  Or creepily alluring?)) You know, that place where Jesse Owens made an ass of Adolf Hitler. ((Cos that was hard to do, said no one ever.)) And I should walk in a direction I haven’t yet walked before.

I went to a group conversation exchange event last week. That was pretty cool. Everyone was lovely. I’m not sure how much it actually helped my German, but it’s a good way to meet people. You know, putting yourself out there and all that. There was only one other native English speaker, an Australian bloke. We got on well and met for a beer a few days after.

Honestly, when I came here I had sort of decided I wasn’t interested in meeting other native English speakers. But it turns it it’s actually really nice to have somebody with whom to compare notes, somebody who’s going through all the same stuff you are. And he’s been here since October, so he’s got some good pointers as well. So I’m going to limit my previous prejudice to Americans.

That said, outside of the conversation meetings, I’m not having the easiest time meeting people. I popped into a bar around the corner the other night which seemed from the outside to have a good vibe going on. But when I got in, I didn’t talk to anybody. I was either too sober or too chickenshit or both, and likely one being dependent on the other. Conclusion: I need to try harder. Or drink more. Or both. ((Let’s start with drinking more.)) But, you know, per aspera ad astra ((Ugh, this doesn’t mean I like you, Latin.)) and all that.

So the blonde girl brought over some cake for us that she had made. And she specifically made it clear – if I understood my roommate; ((Always a big “if”.)) I wasn’t home at the time – that one slice was for me. Which is really lovely, right? Except. Blueberry cheesecake. So clearly she didn’t like me, and after one encounter has taken it upon herself to poison me. It’s the only rational conclusion. Right? Maybe I can feed it to the cats.

Oh man, the cats. So, talk about things I didn’t see coming. I kinda love these cats. ((Sorry, Dad.)) I think we’re becoming friends. Except when I break out the guitar. Then they go running. ((Well, you would too.)) But really, I kinda dig the little fuckers. They’re like semi-sentient animatronic stuffed animals. ((Semi-sentient animatronic stuffed animals that sometimes make a break for the open window. Down! What’s the matter with you! Oh, you don’t speak English. Verdammt!)) Not that I’m ready to deify them, Ancient Egypt style, but I’m forced to admit, I like having them around.

Tuesday I’m supposed to cook dinner for the roommies (and possibly Blondey). I’m a bit apprehensive, only insofar as foreign supermarkets are always weird. Like, I don’t know how to find – or if they even have – half the stuff I’m used to buying. So I doubt I’ll be able to make something that I know I can hit out of the park. But I can usually improvise pretty well, so I’m sure it’ll be fine. And maybe I can coax these jokers into a pre-dinner ciggy so that they don’t really taste anything anyway.

The last thing worth mentioning is, I’m still trying to get a room sorted for June. It’s starting to become a bit stressful. I suppose, in utter need, I can grossly overpay via Airbnb, but I’d prefer it didn’t come to that. It is strange, and perhaps even a bit ironic, to now be on the other side of this experience.

When we lived on Maiden Lane, it always fell to me to deal with the whole find-a-new-third-roommate situation. Of course I always tried to deal fairly with people: respond in a timely manner and all that. But at some point, I always had to turn somebody away who seemed like a good fit, and that was never a good feeling. ((Actually, I usually stuck Jared with that business. But I didn’t feel good about it anyway.))  And now here I am. I’m the one hearing, “Well, you’d definitely be a good fit here, but I’ve a few more people to meet. I’ll let you know.” It’s frustrating, I ain’t gonna lie. But that’s life in the big city, I guess.

I want to shift gears for a moment before signing off. In high school, we had this English teacher, Ms. Young. She was brilliant. ((Full disclosure: she was never actually my teacher. But I spent many free periods chatting with her when she was on hall duty.))  Anyway, she had this idea about storytelling, namely that “there’s nothing new under the sun.” Ok, for the last year or so I’ve been working my way through the Grimm fairy tales. ((You know, to improve my archaic German vocabulary.))  And in doing so, you sort of mentally file away the tropes. Now tonight, I’m reading a bit of Herodotos, and that’s where it all sort of starts to tie together.

So, in Sleeping Beauty, the king get some sort of prophecy or warning or whatever that his daughter is going to get pricked with some kind of needle, which will result in her death or long-lasting coma or whateverthefuck. So what does he do? Well, obviously he banns all sharp pointed metal objects and then locks his daughter in a tower, for good measure. And what happens? Some witch or whatever bullshit, but yeah, she gets pricked, and bam: Sleeping Beauty. Nice try, Your Majesty, but it was always a losing battle. Because Fate.

But now here’s Herodotos, in the mid-400’s B.C. And he’s telling this story about King Croesus. ((Kroisos, would be the better spelling. But why fight it?))  And in this story, Croesus has a dream that his beloved son ((As opposed to his deaf-and-dumb non-beloved son.)) is going to die at the point of a spear. ((ὡϲ ἀπολἐει μιν αἰχμῆι ϲιδηρέηι βληθέντα (1.34.2). Lit: That he would die being stuck by sharp iron. But αἰχμή, while literally meaning the sharp tip of a spear, is so often used synecdochially (or possibly metonomically; I always get confused with those two) for the spear itself. I know. Nobody cares.))  So what’s he do? Well, obviously he takes all his armaments off the walls – because gods forbid they fall off the wall and kill the kid – and locks them away. But of course there’s some wild boar and the kid has to fight it, and well, you know what happens. Anyway the parallel struck me. And meanwhile I get annoyed when they reboot movie franchises. But really we’ve been rebooting our stories for thousands of years.

Ok, so I did that in two half-cocked ((And let’s be honest, half-drunk.)) paragraphs. Feel free to call bullshit. But I’m going to jump to a couple of conclusions. 1) Ms. Young, as always, was right. 2) For all the difficulty involved in learning – and then actually reading – Greek, Herodotos is so worth it. And sure, you could read him in English. Just like you could go watch J.J. Abrams take on Star Trek. But man, don’t you just love The Original Series?

Next Post: May 23, 2015
Previous Post: May 13, 2015

An American in Berlin
13 May, 2015

The last few days have been somewhat less adventuresome, at least in terms of exploring the city. The weather has been somewhat less favorable, and I have been perhaps a bit lazier. ((Well, I’m on vacation.)) That’s not so say, however, that the last few days have been uneventful. They have been, in fact, quite fun. Not fun in the New York sense, mind you. That is to say, I haven’t been out at bars till closing and then eating noodles to sunrise. But fun, all the same.

Saturday night, we had a bit of a dinner party here. Funny thing though, I didn’t know it was going to be a dinner party. Originally, I was going to say: “Nobody told me it was going to be a dinner party.” That’s possible. It’s also possible that they told me and I didn’t understand. Anyway, Mischa, my roommate, cooked up a bunch of food. And as I was sitting in the kitchen, I noticed there were four place settings. I noticed, but I didn’t ask.

Anyway, at one point the doorbell rings and in walks a very nice and well dressed blonde girl. ((Girl: Four years older than me.)) Now I mention well dressed only to point out the contrast. As I was unaware that there would be company, I rolled up to the table in a ripped Cheap Trick T-shirt and with my hair a complete mess. ((Or, how I look most of the time.)) Whereas homegirl was wearing a lovely black dress which was not unflattering with regard to her natural assets. Fortunately, where American Dave would have made some self-defeating-albeit-humorous remark, Berliner Dave can’t think fast enough in German. Immediate embarrassment averted.

In any case, it was a lovely evening, in terms of food, conversation and company. We all had a lovely time and drank possibly just a touch more than we should have. Or at least I did. I got to know my roommates better. I made the blue-eyed blonde girl laugh. I learned more German. I didn’t embarrass myself. Oh wait, I did a bit.

DON’T MENTION THE WAR!

At one point, we were discussing our ancestry. Anja, my roommate, mentioned that her family originally came from Königsberg. She then explained that Königsberg, though now a part of Russia, ((Kaliningrad.)) was once a part of Germany. Whereupon I remarked something along the lines of “Aber alle Europa war am einer Zeit ein Teil von Deutschland.” Which was supposed to mean, “But all of Europe was a part of Germany at one point.” ((I still have no idea how correct this sentence is/was.)) Blank stares all around. Dave tugs at his collar. “Krieg Witz?” I offer hesitantly. “War joke?” More blank stares. Silence. Terror. Horror. Now all I can hear is John Cleese screaming, “Don’t mention the war!” I shake my head and wave my hand, since I don’t even know how to say “nevermind.” And we move on.

Now I should point out, these are people are not easily offended. I don’t think they mind war jokes in principal. More likely, my joke made no sense. Or most likely – as I can vouch from 30-odd years of experience – it just wasn’t funny. The joke, I mean. Because the situation, at least in hindsight, was pretty hilarious. However, I made no more war jokes that evening.

In any case, after much wine and perhaps too much absinthe, ((Any absinthe is too much absinthe.)) the evening came a to a close. After Blondey left, I sat and chatted with Anja for a bit. And she offered for me to come back for the month of July. ((They’d already booked June.)) “We like you,” she said. How fucking nice is that? I’ve only been here since Wednesday. I said that that would be great, but we’d all drank a bunch and let’s talk it over again when we’re sober. Which we did tonight, and there’s been no change. So that’s fantastic. I’ve got July sorted now. All I need to worry about now is June. But that’s for another day.

And what about Blondey? Who knows? Maybe she liked me. Maybe I liked her. Hard to say, with the language barrier. Hopefully I’ll see her again. She’s got great blue eyes, did I mention that? But at the very least, the language barrier was good for one thing. I didn’t “Davey it up,” as one of my friends so eloquently put it.

For Sunday, the day after the dinner party, I had scheduled a conversation exchange. This was to be in a part of town called Charlottenburg. By foot, I’d guessed it to be a solid hour-and-a-half, maybe two. And I’d planned to walk it. But I was in no condition. So I took the train.

A brief aside on the Berlin metro-sitch. There are no express trains and trains don’t run much past midnight. ((Point: New York.)) But other than these two [glaring] deficiencies, the mass transit system here is actually quite nice. But it’s one of those systems with no turnstiles. If you’re not on an unlimited, be it weekly or monthly, you have to buy and validate your ticket, in case there’s an inspection. My main problem with this is, inspections are so infrequent that you feel stupid for spending money on a ticket. And yet just frequent enough that you really do need to buy and validate. This annoys me. That is, to the extent that anything annoys me here. Which is exceedingly little, given my sate of general-annoyance-for-all-things back home.

But OK, the conversation exchange. Lovely guy. Bastian is his name. And he’s Bavarian, so he has this way of rolling his R’s which is a) really cool and b) hard to understand at first. But his English is great and he’s super patient and helpful with my German. He likes hockey and baseball too. And not just likes, but is actually current on the state of both leagues! So we had a lovely chat in both languages. Now, since his English is so spot-on, there’s really little for me to help him with. Instead, I teach him a bit of slang. For example: “Imma bounce.” And how “I am going to” becomes “Imma.” Or, “Nah-mean?” And how “Do you know what I-” becomes “Nah-.” He got a kick out of that. Anyway, it went well and we agreed to meet again. More importantly, I might have made my first new friend (not counting roommates).

Thus were the two big events of the last few days. The rest is just general contentment. Walking down the street with a beer in hand. Sitting in my Secret Garden, reading Tolkien with my pipe and a beer. Playing music in my room. I even wrote a new song! In my mind, it might be the best I’ve yet done. But even if it’s not “good,” at least it “swings,” which is generally all I care about. But I haven’t written a new song in quite some time. So I’m hoping this is a harbinger of things to come. With virtually all of my stress removed and with more free time than I know what to do with, perhaps the creative juices will flow once more. Time will tell, I suppose.

I suppose there’s not a whole lot else to say. Last night I drank a bunch of wine with Joschka. That’s never not good. And honestly, it’s really nice to have a proper friend here. I hope he doesn’t read that though. But if you do, Joschi, du bist Scheiße.  Tonight I had dinner with the roomies. Hamburgers, can you believe it!? Here I must mention that the generosity of my roommates seems boundless.

You see, I had planned to cook for myself tonight. But as I hadn’t really seen them since the dinner party, I figured I’d pop into the kitchen and just chill for a bit. But Mishca immediately offered me some of what he was cooking. Well how could I say no? And while he was cooking, we had a nice chat. Then Anja came home and we all ate together, which was great. After dinner, Mischa offered wine and schnapps. ((Cherry flavored. Too sweet for me, but obviously I drank it. #manners #sorrynotsorry)) Then he went to bed and me and Anja also had a lovely chat. I love these guys.

After Anja went to bed, I read a bit of Herodotos. And this is something I’m trying to get in the habit of. If I’m home and sober [enough], I’m trying to read a bit of Greek every night. So far, so good. And man, Herodotos is great. Of all the Greek I’ve encountered, it’s the most readable. Not to say I’m anywhere near being able to read it on the subway, mind you. But you really can read this stuff. And he’s such a wonderful story teller. OK, he’s a bit of a ‘drunkel.’ He goes off on tangents. He relates the most impossible tales at times. But it’s a good read. And he is the motherfucking Father of History after all. So that’s my chosen text. But I need to find some way, some time, to get Homer in as well. ABRH. Always Be Reading Homer. For so many reasons, not least of which, I feel a grave responsibility to maintain mastery over all I have learned from the Old Man.

Right, so I’d best draw this to a close. The last thing I want to do is be negative, but there are two small things which have been nagging at me. One, my French is going to shit. I should always have some Jules Verne in my pocket. If I do, I think I shall be alright. But I need to find a French bookstore. There’s got to be one somewhere in this town. The other thing, I’m probably smoking too much. It’s too easy in this house. Anytime we sit at the kitchen table, Mischa’s cigarettes and my pipe come out. So I’ve taken to not bringing it with me on my long walks. And I miss my pipes on my long walks. But for now, at least, I need it more at home. It’s a bit of a crutch, I suppose. Something I can hang on to when the German is flying fast and thick and I’m only catching pieces of it.

Ugh. Even as my german improves daily – and I think/hope it does – it is still full of holes. Full of holes the way a fishing net is full of holes. That is to say, it’s mostly holes, with fine bits of string strung between them. But already tonight, I understood more of my roommates speech than I did on Saturday. So that’s progress!

Well, tomorrow is another adventure. I’m to go to a group conversation exchange. People of all levels in both languages. It might be a real shit-show. But hopefully there will be broads, at least. And worst case, afterwards I’ll go to Joschka’s and drink. And so, all will be well. All will be well…

Next Post: May 18, 2015
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