A Day Off

I will begin with a bad pun, given where I am, but Friday night I hit the wall. I was in bed by nine and didn't get up until after nine Saturday morning. Twelve hours after that, I was still tired and was so very happy that evening does eventually follow daylight and that bedtime heaves into sight, every night, at last. It has been an exhausting two weeks, hitting the ground running as I did; no wonder my brain and body both rebelled.

In spite of the fatigue, I walked a good bit Saturday, out and about with Hannah, who is likewise fatigued, to the farmers' market (pecorino!) and paper stores (still on the sketchbook quest; fail) and later out with Maggie for her evening stroll. It was a pleasantly cool early fall day; suddenly this week it is dark noticeably earlier.

Neither of us felt like cooking so we went out for Vietnamese again, always a good choice for tired people who have not eaten particularly well all day. (On days when I have not had my vegetables, I am now able to say "We are not gemused.") We then holed up all evening with our books and laptops, Hannah working on her academic papers on Pope Gregory VII and the Habsburgs, and I moving restlessly between online apartment-hunting and reading my novel. We took frequent Maggie breaks.

Berlin has me thinking about relationships, as what I am doing here these days is establishing a new one, with the city itself. Getting oriented in a city is almost exactly like meeting a new person, beginning with elementary chitchat. Lovely weather we're having = I don't yet need a sweater. I like your hat = This is a pretty park. What do you do for a living = What IS the economic base here? I venture a little farther afield each weekday, but weekends have been for sleeping, cramming for German tests, and doing laundry. We are at an early stage of acquaintanceship.

My hubs so far are two: Hannah's apartment and the Goethe Institute, in two vastly different neighborhoods. The GI is right in the heart of Mitte, the cultural and historic "center" of the city, if Berlin can be said to have one. It is really more like a bunch of smaller cities stuck together, each one with a distinct personality, like any big city I suppose, but less homogenized than, say, a place like Seattle. Mitte is home to the major museums, the Berliner Dom (technically a "cathedral" in name only as it has never been the seat of a Catholic bishop but always a Protestant institution), the Brandenburg Gate, Unter den Linden, and the most famous modern landmark, the Fernsehturm, Berlin's TV-tower answer to the Space Needle.

I have mentioned that Hannah lives in gritty (I need a new adjective!) Friedrichshain, an industrial working-class district that was heavily bombed during the war and then was part of Soviet East Berlin until the Wall came down. Cheap rent and lots of empty flats made it popular for students and artists right after reunification, but as ALWAYS happens, the cheap-rent era has been followed by gradual gentrification and a slow rise in rents. Although still pretty dirty, F'hain has become a hot spot for the twenty- and thirty-somethings who like its club scene. Students and artists are now moving to the next cheap areas...and so the cycle will go on. I am looking for apartments in Prenzlauerberg, Kreuzberg, and the quieter, cleaner parts of Friedrichshain, near the Volkspark. I hope to find something this week.

Once I find a place and get settled, my relationship with Berlin will change yet again, from first-time visitor in June, to currently displaced flat-seeker, to actual resident, at least for a time. I am eager for that phase to begin. In the meantime, I have a test tomorrow on noun declensions, comparitives, and the passive voice. I think I'll go to the fleamarket.

Day 3 - Saturday, August 29

MOSTLY over the jet lag but mid-afternoon was pretty wonky. A little weepy as well but a nap helped. Hannah helped me purchase my annual transit pass and cell phone, then we did a little shoe shopping for her, and walked the dog who is still exhausted. 
I have moments of being so overwhelmed by the language that I wonder what is the point of my being here. The intensive language classes here are expensive but without one I can't hope to achieve any sort of fluency in time to make use of it. Will I enjoy being here with only basic skills? Will this turn out to be a waste because I couldn't understand enough? Will one year satisfy me?

In any event, I could not do this year abroad in France or England, places where I speak the language (or can at least get by) as they are much too expensive. No, Berlin itself is why this entire adventure is possible. It's relatively cheap and, more important, it is where Hannah is. So I must learn as much German as I can. 

The internet has been down almost all day so I can't satisfy myself about the American and international women's federations, language classes, apartments for rent, or email. Another frustration for one accustomed to instant information gratification. Since I don't yet have my own place and routine, these are at least constructive things to do while I bide my time.

Maggie and I went out for a long walk in the evening and got caught in a cloudburst. The pads on her feet used to be pink. They now look like black patent leather. We walked for over an hour, mostly because it took her that long to pee, but also because I got turned around and we got a few bonus blocks. As gritty as Friedrichshain is, the streets are lively - full of cafes and shops, people with babies and dogs, and splattered with the ubiquitous bicycles and graffiti. There are hundreds of bicycles everywhere, ridden on the sidewalks for the most part, frequently approaching from behind without warning, spooking poor Maggie who is so NOT a city dog. Not yet, at any rate.

In Friedrichshain most of the small green spaces are weedy and seedy, untended, litter-strewn with bottles, broken glass, bottle caps, an occasional dirty diaper, dog poop, and bounded by graffiti-marred walls. At night I hear kids on the street popping the tops off their beers, just letting them flip onto the sidewalks. No one ever cleans them up; they just become part of the pavement. Graffiti is everywhere and I find it disturbing. It is visually unappealing - downright ugly, most of it - and speaks to me of underlying discontent. 

Hannah disagrees with me about the graffiti. She thinks it's just part of the rawness of Berlin, a free form of expression, and does not find it threatening. Still, I believe it is a symptom of some unhappiness. Do happy people scribble on other people's property? Or on public property? What happened to pride of place? Is our physical habitat a reflection of our collective mental state? Is it a question of empowerment? How is a more constructive form of power nurtured? And how could Berlin - particularly East Berlin - NOT be in a gritty, transitional state? The wall has  only been down for 20 years; not even a whole generation yet.

What a jumble goes on in my head.

While I was walking Maggie I was thinking about tethers - the leash that keeps her by my side and safe in a foreign place, and the metaphoric leash that attaches me to Hannah who provides the same safety for me right now. Tethers to everything that makes up our personal stories.

Hannah had a pre-party for a few friends after first going with them to a new "American" hamburger place around the corner. Hannah brought me a hamburger and onion rings - es schmecht gut!