I regularly entertain myself in Berlin by observing the people around me. This city has some characters, so it's not hard to do. I'm just fascinated by the variety of people who populate my metropolis. The other day, I spotted this guy enjoying an evening picnic in the Monbijoupark (one of my favorites of Berlin's parks). What caught my eye first was the German flag that he seemed to be using as a picnic blanket. He sat perched on a tiny chair in a light blue Bayern München jersey and yellow Crocs, his dinner cooking on the grill, and just watching the world go by. People watching himself, perhaps. Strangest of all in this picture, I think, was a stuffed cow hanging from a noose off the back of the chair. This place just gets curiouser and curiouser.
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Today was a perfect fall day (almost summery weather, in fact) and we took advantage of it as a team by taking a trip to the Schlachtensee in the southwest corner of Berlin to rent boats and enjoy the sun while it lasts. I can hardly believe this gorgeous and peaceful lake is within the boarders of our city.
One of the hazards for me about living in a culture that is not natively my own is that I feel like I'm running the risk all the time of doing something I consider completely normal and inadvertently looking like a buffoon in front of my fellow Berliners. Luckily for me, I regularly do such things, which gives me plenty of chances to learn a great lesson about loving myself for who God made me to be, no matter how many times I get looked at like an alien for talking too loud in public, for example. And sometimes, I am pleasantly surprised that being myself is exactly what I need to do to make real connections with people.
I had one such joyous (though short lived) experience yesterday. I've been going to the same gym since I moved to Berlin and frequent the same classes most weeks--all of them with amusing Denglisch names like Fitness Gymnastic, Aerobic und Shape and Fatburner (which has to be pronounced with a German accent, "Fett-burn-a", if I want the girl checking me in to know what class I'm asking for). Most Wednesdays, I sweat through Aerobic & Shape with two of my lovely teammates, but this week both of them were otherwise engaged, so I was left alone. Halfway through the class, I was wiped out enough to quit had it not been for the 10 other women grapevine-ing and leg curling right along with me. It's some combination of intrinsic motivation, peer pressure and we're-in-this-together-ness that gets me through every time. Being a goof to distract myself from how tired I am never hurts either. So when Baracuda's "I will love again" came on the stereo, I couldn't help but mouth the words along with the music. I do this on a fairly regular basis, but usually, I try to avoid making eye contact with anyone for fear of getting caught looking like a weirdo. On the second verse, though, I caught the eye of one of the girls behind me in the mirror. She was singing along, too. We laughed, then both kept singing in time with the complicated footwork like we were trying out for some kind of 90s music video. "I will love again//Though my heart is breaking I will love again//Stronger than before//I will love again//Even if it takes a lifetime to get over you//Heaven only knows..." I couldn't stop grinning for the rest of the class. One of the great benefits of living in a city like Berlin is the incredible access to cultural events. In many cases, incredible access to things that I never really thought about wanting to see before, but now that I have the chance, they seem intriguing after all. Especially when someone else is contagiously passionate about it.
Best recent example of that is going to see La Bohème at the Staatsoper tonight. Jennie is probably the biggest legitimate opera fan I know, and she was ecstatic to find out that we could get tickets, and for only 8 Euro at that. Granted, we were in the proverbial nosebleed section where we could see about half of the stage at best. But it was awesome nonetheless. Now, I'll be honest. I know next to nothing about opera. I don't have any real kind of refined taste in music, though I find myself enjoying classical music more and more as I am exposed to it by friends. I was a little worried that I might get horribly bored in the middle of the 3 hour opera and have to fight to stay awake. I had nothing to worry about. I loved it. Now, I've got to get to a German opera! When I moved to Germany, I thought the only language I was going to learn was German. It turns out I am also learning a fun secondary language: Denglish, a lovely mixture of Deutsch and English. Mixing Germanified English words into conversation seems to be a favorite pastime of many Berilners, so I like to think I speak a particular dialect of Denglish, which I will call Berlingo.
Here are some of my favorite examples: *Upgegraded *Downgeloaded *Strugglend *Gehandikapped *Grillen *Skypen *Messagen *Texten *Hottie *Insider More to come. I'm always picking up new bits of Berlingo...sometimes more than real German, I think. I think I should retitle this blog "misadventures in German apartment dwelling," because at least half of my entries are about something breaking (or never working in the first place) in our apartments. And now I have one more such story.
When Erin and I first moved into our new place, the heater in her room didn't work. We discovered this a few weeks in, because you don't really need a heater in Berlin in summery September. However, when it got unseasonably cold in early October, she started to notice something was up with the heater. Staying ice cold when it's turned up to 5 (the max) just didn't seem right. We called the house manager, who dutifully sent someone by to fix it the same day, leaving us problem free for a few weeks. Then last week, before we left to go to New York for Jon & Siobhan's wedding (which was gorgeous and wonderful, btw... for a happy distraction, I'll add a picture from the ceremony to the end of this post) Erin's heater stopped working again. On top of that, there was a growing splotch of mold spreading menacingly across the wall behind it. It took a few tries to get someone in the house manager's office to talk to me this time, since they're swamped with broken heaters already and it's been down in the single digits all week. When I finally got someone on the phone, he told me apologetically that it would be a few days before the could send someone. But he did have a possible quick-fix for me. "Just bang the pipes with a hammer," he said. I asked him if he was sure. I didn't want to break it, after all, and make a worse mess of the situation. He assured me I wouldn't break it. Maybe something had gotten backed up or frozen inside that just needed to be smacked loose, he said. And low and behold, it worked! Heat is restored to Erin's room. Now, we've just got to stop the spreading mold splotch and we'll be good to go. When we were looking for apartments in the spring, we decided to put Bryce and I on both leases for both new places since we didn't know at that point who was going to live where. That seemed like a fine idea, and hasn't gotten us into trouble yet, but it does cause some funny situations.
We explained the situation to both rental companies, but when the first company wrote up the rental contract for the apartment where Erin and I live, they originally listed us as Bryce and Katie Holland and had to correct it to give Bryce his own last name back. Honest mistake. The second rental company got the names on our contract correct and had no problem when we told them that Stu would actually be the second person living in the apartment, so we assumed that they were clear on what was going on. Then, today, Bryce had to call the landlord to ask her a few questions and get some thing straightened out. Everything went fine until the end of the conversation. Then as they were saying goodbye, the landlord told Bryce to give her best greetings to Mrs. Bowlin. I guess that means me? For the record, I am not Mrs. Bowlin nor is Bryce Mr. Holland. I wonder what our landlords think if they know both of us live with other people, but are still under the impression that we are married? Although, in Berlin, they probably wouldn't even bat an eye at that. |