Catching up a bit

OK, I admit it. I got depressed during the long icy winter and fell down the rabbit hole. It's been lonely and isolating and I turned to painting and personal writing rather than this more extroverted form of narcissism. Also I napped. I hope I'm back to blogging for a few weeks, though, as I've missed it, have a lot of things stored up to write about and am down to my last 6 weeks in Europe. Where formerly just being in Europe for 6 whole weeks at all would have been the height of luxury, after 7 months here it is starting to feel somewhat minimal and I am getting sentimental and sad about leaving.  I will spend the summer in Seattle, my role changing from that of temporary ex-pat to that of mother-of-the-bride. Assuming the Icelandic volcano stops popping by the end of May and doesn't keep me stranded here...

I will re-enter the blogosphere with a brief accounting of just a few things that I will hope to pursue a bit further subsequently. We'll see how that works...

Since I hit the skids this winter I haven't done as much as I had hoped to do and am now trying like crazy to make up for a bit of it before I leave. Some of the museums here are so huge they have required multiple trips - I still haven't finished with the Deutsches Historisches Museum or the Gemäldegalerie; the Judisches Museum could take weeks. But I have made it to the Nolde and Kollwitz Museums, the Märkisches Museum, to Checkpoint Charlie, the Eastside Gallery (the longest stretch of the Wall still standing and which was repainted by something like 88 artists and just reopened to the public) and to new exhibits at the Guggenheim, the Neue Nationalgalerie, the Scharf-Gerstenberg, the Berlinische Galerie, the Hamburger Bahnhof, not to mention revisiting my old favorites a few times as well - the Bode in particular, the Pergamon, the Neues...none of which will mean anything to anyone who hasn't been here so I won't go on, but it gives me a sense of satisfaction to make these lists. I hope I wasn't an accountant in my former life, but there is a whiff of possibility there.

Occupation with words continues with more names at the dog park, my favorite new one belonging to a black pug named Zoltan. There is also a funny white bull terrier named Vanna, an enormous young Great Dane named Tennessee and an incredibly cute puggle-Jack Russell mix puppy absurdly named Bob. I have collected a few what-were-they-thinking business names as well, such as a boutique named "Ass Style," a bathroom fittings supplier called "Bad Ideen" (which just means "bathroom ideas" but has other English overtones), and of course my favorite "Titanic Travel" which I have already mentioned. (I think it is possible that the Germans came up with the name "Nova" for the Chevy that had notoriously poor sales in Latin America, "no va" meaning "no go" in Spanish.) There's a hot dog cafe called Mr. Miller's, whose darkly ambiguous tag line is "Eat Here, Diet Home." And since I find the whole idea of limousines and stretch limos repulsive, I am quite amused by the stretch Hummer I see from time to time; "hummer" is the German word for lobster which to me significantly lowers the pretense value of riding in such a vehicle. Cruising in my lobster? Maybe not so cool.

Friends are here for 10 days and it's been a great way to goose me into hyperactivity. Yesterday we started with a church service at the Dom so we could hear the organ; there was a stellar trumpet playing as well and as it was a baptism service the bishop was present, dressed in his Calvinist black robe with the white neck tabs. Very eighteenth century. We had a printed program of the service basics in English but as we opted to sit in the middle of the church rather than the small rear apse where simultaneous translation was available on earphones, we were in the aural dark for the readings and sermon. (I probably would have been anyway, even in English). It was a little bit like the Gary Larson cartoon of the guy talking to his cat and all the cat hears is her own name - "blah blah blah blah Muffy blah blah blah Muffy"; I caught the occasional German word, like Jesus and Afghanistan.

It's been a beautiful weekend after another chilly gray week and people have been out in droves, sucking up the sunlight. Saturday we went out to Grünewald, which is a lovely wooded area with a few small lakes scattered about. We walked a way in to the Teufelsee (Devil Lake) which is really just a pond but is a clothing-optional pond with the only WC for miles around. Criss-crossed by paths, roadlets and absolutely no directional signs whatsoever, we felt lucky to have found the antique tin toilet facility at all, and sat for a while pondside. We talked to a nice young man from Tennessee who thought he had made better progress than he had, working with speech coaches on his aiksent. He's here coaching kids' soccer while his wife teaches art at one of the international schools. He needs to be understood. One creepy note about the Grünewald is the very visible white dome of the old American Cold War listening post on top of one of the hills. Its covering is tattered and shredded now, and it vaguely resembles a poorly designed stage set of the Taj Mahal that has been left to rot like an old circus tent. I find the phrase "listening post" to be a bit chilling. It's like that woman's voice that comes over the radio waves in the middle of the night reciting numbers ad infinitum. Creepy.

I am expecting my friends at any minute and am thinking we'll go out to Potsdam today, before the rain resumes tomorrow for the rest of their visit. I am supposed to go to Paris on Friday to meet another set of friends, so we'll see if the Eyjafjallajokull volcano will allow us all to travel by then. I am attempting to remain optimistic.