Strike One

Day 14 (Montag, 29.Sept.08)

I was nervous about going today to the Landesamt für Bürger- und Ordnungsangelegenheiten to get my residence permit, because another exchange student said it took him seven hours to get his.

For that reason, I woke up at 6:30, hoping to get there early. And I did. I was there and ready with all my papers at 7:55.



I was pleased to be there so early even when I saw a medium-sized (for Berlin) line before the front door. You may notice, however, that I was sans bright eyes and my tail is a little less-than-bushy.

I was still clinging to the tatters of foolish optimism when a mustachioed hunchback sidled down the line giving us each a slip of paper to inform us, oh so gently, that he was sorry, but the office was on strike.



As much as I want to share my misery with you, out of fear of boring myself *completely* senseless I’ll spare you details of the next 2 ½ hours. Let this suffice: I now have an *appointment* to go back in three weeks to the Landesamt für Bürger- und Ordnungsangelegenheiten so that I may show them my various IDs, forms, letters, receipts, photos, and certifications, in order that they may give me a permit.

And I thought going through airport security in Philadelphia was bad.
Oh! That reminds me of a funny story I haven’t told you yet. The very first interesting thing that happened to me on my journey took place as I went through security at the Indianapolis airport.

The security guard in front of the metal detector, a man clearly well trained in the subtle arts of detection and interrogation, pointed at my shoes and asked: “Are those your shoes?”

Ins Kino

Day 13 (Sonntag, 28.Sept.08)
Today, Haile Gebrselassie set a world record in the Berlin marathon. I watched it live on TV and then in the afternoon I went down to the finish line where there was a street festival.



Also, today I went to my first movie in Berlin.

I saw The Baader Meinhof Komplex. It wasn’t very good. But my experience makes a good example of how difficult it can be to get by in a foreign country.

First of all, the nearest show was at 17:15—great, I have to do math to figure out when the movie starts. Fine, no big deal, subtract 12, that’s 5:15 pm. OK.

So I want the 17:15 show. In German that’s siebzehn fünfzehn. Oh wait, they don’t say that. They say Viertel nach Siebzehn, ‘a quarter after seventeen’. OK, I’d like to see the quarter after seventeen show.

Then I was thrown. The cashier asked me something and I said “I didn’t understand that.” She repeated herself: “Packett oder Loge?”

So I’m totally lost. I’ve never heard either of those words before. What’s more, I can’t even imagine what she’s asking me. I told her what show I want to see, what could possibly make any difference now? I’m obviously not a senior citizen. And she didn’t use the German word for student, which I always remember since it’s Student.

“Was ist das Unterschied?” I asked, ‘what’s the difference?’ She told me one is in the front and it’s 10 Euros, the other is in the back and it’s 9 Euros. Or vice versa. I'm still not sure. Here’s a picture I later took of the seating plan.



I kept my answer simple: “Neun.” That means nine, as in 9, as in, I’d like to pay only 9 Euros, please. That’s not to be confused with nein as in ‘no’.

I still don’t know which costs more, closer or further. In a theater you want to sit in the middle, so it seems like a really dumb way to price discriminate. And anyway that’s exactly where my assigned seat was—row O, seat 14. Right in the middle.

So then she did ask me if I was a student. I told her I was. Then I remembered I took my student ID out of my wallet to keep it with all the papers I need at the registration office tomorrow.

Sorry, I said, I don’t have my ID. Then it’s nine Euros, she told me. How much would it cost, I asked, if I had my ID? 1.50 Euros less. Good to know, because 9 Euros is really a ridiculous price for a German movie.

Then, finally, I got my ticket. And I found my seat.



Also, there was a full 30 minutes of commercials and previews before the film started.

The film itself stars Moritz Bleibtreu, the guy from Run, Lola, Run. It takes place mostly in Berlin in the 70’s and focuses on a group of East German terrorists. It had a gritty, French Connection feel to it, but the drama was too uneven, and there was no psychological depth. Perhaps that's because Andreas Baader, at least according to Jean-Paul Sartre, was "incredibly stupid" (yeah, that's right, I'm citing Wikipedia).

Afterwards I had a hell of a time getting home. The train stopped five stops before mine.

And the conductor got off.

I wasn’t expecting that.

I was listening to my headphones (Mozart!) not paying attention and the next thing I knew, I looked up and I was the only one on the train.

It would be an hour before I got home. But first I would get on the wrong train and then on the wrong bus and then finally I would get back to the train stop where I first had to get off.

I find myself wanting to take a picture of myself every time I'm about to have a meltdown. It helps me regain my perspective.



By the time I finally got to my stop, I felt, for the first time in two weeks, happy to be home.

Ku'damm

Day 12 (Samstag, 27.Sept.08)

Today I went to Kufürstendamm, a neighborhood that Alexander, the guy who opened my account at Deutsche Bank, told me about. He didn’t say anything specific, so I had no idea what to expect.

The locals, evidently, call it Ku'damm. I say “evidently” because Alexander said, “you’ve probably already been to Ku'damm” and I said, “no.” I had no idea what he was talking about and he didn’t elaborate. I later looked at a map (in my Moleskine, thanks Rachel!) and there was no Ku'damm, but there was a Kufürstendamm. So if the place I went is not the place he was talking about, then this will turn out to be a funny story about why I went to Kufürstendamm when I should have gone to Ku'damm.

So there I was in Ku'damm, or wherever I was, and I noticed this coffee shop that my good friend Herr Schepker told me about. It’s called Tchibo, and he told me they sold prepaid cell phones. It turns out they sell cappuccino, clothes, cell phones, and a bunch of other stuff. Since it had been recommended to me, I went in and bought a prepaid cell phone.



It sounds Japanese, doesn’t it? Anyway, the phone cost 25 Euros, and all calls within Germany cost only 15 cents/minute. That seems good, right? Of course they’re Euro-cents, so that’s like $50 a minute, but whatever. Text messages are also 15 cents.

I’ll give you guys my Berlin cell number so, if you need to, you can call or text me any time of the day or night. I’m not sure how expensive a text message is for you—you can find out from your cell provider. It could possibly be as little as a quarter. But a phone call may end up costing you $1.50 a minute, so you should probably only use that in case of an emergency.

My new cell number is…are you ready? 0176 5230 8237. I know that looks like a lot of numbers, that’s probably because there’s twelve of them. And first I guess you have to dial the international access code for the US (011) and then the country code for Berlin (49). Anyone willing to give it a try?

After I got my phone I went to a bookstore—HUGENDUBEL. Best bookstore name ever.



Then I had more good street food—Rostbratwurst—lecker!



And I saw an echt protest.



I’ve posted all these pictures and more to my Picasa Web album under “Berlin Day 12”.

My Apartment

I just added a new Picasa Web album. It's photos of my apartment.

Lose Yourself

The philological library at the FU Berlin

Day 11 (Freitag, 26.Sept.08)

I think I found the perfect running song today: Eminem’s “Lose Yourself”. Well, it’s perfect if you want to push yourself so hard you almost drop.

The theme of the song is banal—carpe diem—but the music is so dramatic and the lyrics are so relentless that it really gets one going. And thinking.

For me, spending a year in Berlin will be a unique opportunity. But for what?

The truth is, I have a lot of unique opportunities here. I have the unique opportunity to get beaten up by neo-Nazis on the U-Bahn. I have the unique opportunity to buy currywurst from a street vendor. I have the unique opportunity to sit in my room and listen to Berlin radio all day.

But which opportunities do I seize? Do I seize opportunities that further my own current goals, or do I seize opportunities that are just out there, waiting to be ravished?

I suppose one decent selection criterion is as follows. One asks oneself what one would most regret if one left Berlin without having done it. Well, for me, that’s simple: becoming fluent in German. And second is having done major work on my dissertation. At this point, I think third is seeing the bust of Nefertiti at the Altes Museum. And fourth is seeing as many operas as I can.

But what about those things that I will regret, but that I don’t know about yet? *That* is the real danger, that I will discover unique opportunities that I will regret not having seized, but only when it is too late to do anything about them.

So this time, 11 days into my stay, is probably best used finding new opportunities—ones I never knew existed, but which I will later and for the rest of my life regret not having taken advantage of.

Three Stages of a Berlin Day

Day 10 (Donnerstag, 25.9.08)

A day in Berlin has three stages.

First there’s the here-goes-nothing stage, in which one leaves one’s apartment with a goal and a definite but revisable plan for how to accomplish it. This stage is always the same.

Then there’s the what-have-I-gotten-myself-into stage, in which the falling apart of all one’s plans coincides with the breaking loose of all hell. Today, for me, that stage began at exactly 15:06 when I forgot to signal that I wanted the bus to stop. It lasted until 17: 37, right before I took this picture outside the FU-Berlin’s Akademisches Auslandsamt.



Then there’s the final stage, which I shall call the now-you-tell-me stage. At this point, one has learned everything one needed to know to start out, although it is by now completely and utterly useless and although it ought to be promptly forgotten, it never will be. Days in Paris have this stage, too. Ask me how to order cheap wine at a café or book a sleeper for two from Paris to Milan sometime.

During the here-goes-nothing stage today, I went back to the Rathaus-Steglitz (the red building that I walked right past two days ago) to sit in the lobby for an hour. Most people hate going to these offices, but free Wi-Fi is not something I scoff at. I was there to do two things: 1) update my blog and 2) check by Bloomington bank account to see if my transfer from savings went through. Without that transfer, I couldn’t get the money I needed to register at the FU.

By 7:00 Eastern time the money still wasn’t there. I blogged. I waited. At 8:00, miraculously, it showed up. So I went right across the street to my new bank, Deutsche Bank, and tried to withdraw 300 Euros. It wouldn’t let me. So I tried to take out 200 Euros. It spit out my card. Then it spit out 200 Euros.

That was good, because I owed the FU almost 197 Euros. I took my Monopoly money and hopped a bus to the FU. It was a double-decker bus. My first since London.



Actually it wasn’t my first since London, since I had taken one earlier that day and in fact, that’s where I took this picture. But *today* I rode a double-decker bus for the first time since London. So whatever.

I changed buses where I needed to and that is when I forgot to signal the bus to stop. It skipped the FU. Begin what-have-I-gotten-myself-into stage. I walked down a really long block, through the campus. I saw what I presume is a math building.



Either that or some graffiti artist is super nerdy.

Oh, I didn’t have any problems paying my 200 Euros. People find it relaxing to take cash from foreigners. But when I got to the building to buy my health insurance, the guy told me I couldn’t have any. Because I’m not a bachelor’s or master’s student. He is the one that said we should speak English, but he had no idea what a PhD was. Annoyed. Disappointed. Frustrated. Suspicious. I walked back to the Akademisches Auslandsamt. There I barged into a room full of people and was told I must wait outside. I wasn’t handling the disappointment with my usual level of devil-may-care sang-froid. On second thought, yes I was. Which means none at all.

That’s when I ran into my old friend Herr Günther Schepker. Oh, Herr Schepker, you’ll never read this blog, but I wish you knew how much your kind help has meant to me. He was the one who asked me two days ago if I’d rather speak English and told me everything I needed to know to get settled.

“Haben Sie es geschafft?” he asked me. You know what that means: Did you get everything done? “Nein, ich habe es nicht geschafft,” I answered. Then I told him about how the mean man made told me I couldn’t have health insurance. My tone of voice evoked that of Ralphie in A Christmas Story when he told his mom how an icicle fell on his face and broke his glasses.

Herr Schepker took me into a room, sat me down, and told me the man was wrong. He then went out and queried a few people who told him there was more than one representative in that building selling health insurance and that I should go back and just talk to a different person.

So that’s what I did. And after wandering aimlessly among several stories, talking fruitlessly to the information bureau, and with trepidation approaching a bored-looking woman sitting alone in a hallway and asking her if she sold health insurance, I finally got my verdammt PLFICHTKRANKENVERSICHERUNG.

So here I am at the now-you-tell-me stage. Ask me sometime whether when you want to register for school in Berlin the over-tanned blonde lady sitting alone in the hallway is the one who can sell you the required health insurance plan. She is.

And now I’m registered with the university, I have health insurance, I’ve got a bank account, I’ve got a transit pass, I’ve registered with the local authorities, I’ve signed my lease, paid my rent, and bought my groceries. I’m all set. Almost.

Now I have to get a cell phone, get the Internet, and get a residence permit. And a guy I met today said he had to sit in a waiting room for seven hours to get his residence permit. Let’s just hope they’ve got free wireless.

Picasa Web Album Update

I just posted all my photos (to date) to my Picasa Web album.
Just click on "Luke's Photos" on the right.

Nicki - I bin a bayrisches Cowgirl

It's Bavarian country music!

This is the chick who performed at the Oktoberfest debacle I saw on television.

Scenes from a Mall

Day 9 (Mittwoch, 24. Sept. 2008)

Today I ran 5 miles, got a German bank account, and learned what Checkpoint Charlie is (surprise! It has to do with the Cuban missile crisis).

I didn’t mean to run five miles. I was 13 minutes into my run, at the point that is usually my halfway point, when I decided to turn left. What’s the worst that could happen?

What *did* happen is that I had to run much further than I’ve ever run. I don’t actually know how far I ran, but I ran for 54 minutes and 45 seconds before I made it home. I only had to backtrack once. I estimate that, given how slowly I was running at some points, that’s probably about five miles. I usually run 4 miles in 38 minutes, so I’m guessing. Here’s me before I went.




I look so serious!

Anyway, when I got back I had a *huge* breakfast. Included was something called Bockwurst, which I think you’re supposed to boil, but I fried it in a pan with olive oil (that’s basically how I cook everything). The casing was crispy and good. In case I haven’t mentioned it before, I’ll craft a whole post on Berlin cuisine eventually. Just don’t mention currywurst to me.

I decided the best place to go to open a bank account was Potsdamer Platz, because it’s the busiest place I’ve yet been to in Berlin. It’s also the place with my new favorite street name.



There’s also a mall there. And let me tell you, a mall is a mall, whether it’s in Toad Hop, Indiana, or Berlin, Germany.



So I’m in there looking for a Deutsche Bank, because it’s a national bank, not just a local Berlin bank, and in their brochure they say you can use a Bank of America ATM even in the US to take out money for free. Which is nice, but pointless since I’m going to close the account before I come home anyway. But whatever. I had my mind made up, for no good reason, to open a Deutsche Bank konto.

I don’t know why I do that—make up my mind for no good reason—but it’s so often a mistake. When I do that, even when I succeed at doing what’s really important, I feel like a failure, because I didn’t do it a la Frank Sinatra.

Anyway, I’m in the mall, and I just ran five miles, and I *saw* the sign that said there was a Deutsche Bank branch *in this mall*, and I can’t find it. It’s not on the Erstegeschoß, or the Erdgeschoß or the Untergeschoß. I know, because I looked. The sign says it’s on something called the ERDGESCHLOß AUSSENBEREICH.

Oh, Liebe Leser, I know what you’re thinking. “Why didn’t you just go outside, Luke, and look on the ground floor *outside* the mall?” I know. It’s so simple to you, isn’t it? So leicht, as the Berliners say. After all, the sign said the Deutsche Bank was on the “ground floor external region” of the mall. How much clearer could they be?

All I have to say is, do you really want to be saying those things to *this guy*?



Oh, AND there was this incident inside the mall with a security guard. I walk toward the “WC”, which is the abbreviation for Wasserklosett, which first of all makes no sense. Anyway, I’m thirsty, because I ran five miles that morning. So I’m looking for a drinking fountain. In the mall. Seems reasonable, right? Well evidently they don’t drink water in Berlin unless it has minerals in it. Because there’s not a single drinking fountain in the whole city.

Anyway, when I follow this WC sign (what is this, England?), there’s a bunch of rent-a-cops standing in front of the bathrooms. As I walk past I look up. This one security guard points to the bathrooms. I’m like, yeah, I know what a bathroom looks like, thanks, my bladder is not your business.

So I walk past him, and it’s a dead end. No drinking fountain. So I turn around and come back. I look up and this guy is pointing again! Pointing at the men’s room!
I look at him and say, in fluent German, mind you, “Wasser?”

“DA!” he says. That’s da, as in: “There, you idiot! Where I’ve been pointing this whole time!”

Now I know technically he was right. There is Wasser in a men’s room. But I don’t know the German word for drinking fountain, so it’s the best I could do. But I was still annoyed. I mean, I may be wearing a navy blazer, but I’ve used a public restroom before. I don’t need a man in a blue uniform (Blue. Ha! That’s how you know he’s not legit. Everyone knows real cops wear GREEN.) to tell me that there’s water in a men’s room.

So I walk in and there’s no water fountain. So, of course, I immediately walk out. Right past him. And my walk said it all. My walk shouted the following. “Listen here, you German guy, you can’t tell me there’s water in a men’s room and get away with it! I’m an American! From NORTH America! And I am *not* drinking the water in there no matter how often you point at it!”

So anyway then I went to the Deutsche Bank on the external region of the mall.



And that’s where I met Alexander, the guy who opened my account for me. He talked to me all about how he lives (with his parents!) just above Checkpoint Charlie. I told him I wanted to speak German, and we did for a while, but pretty soon he got sick of how much I sucked at German and started telling me all about Berlin in English.

According to Alexander, during the Cuban missile crisis American tanks lined up on the western side of the Berlin Wall, at Checkpoint Charlie, and the Russians lined up on the eastern side of the wall, at Checkpoint Charlie, both waiting for the signal to, I don’t know, burst through the wall and destroy the world. So in a way, this one block in Berlin is a microcosm of the Cold War, and it could have been ground zero for the apocalypse.



That’s way cooler than I thought. I had no idea what Checkpoint Charlie was when I went a few days ago, so I went back today. Also, on my way, I went to Niederkirchstrasse, like Alexander told me to, and I found the Berlin Wall!



It’s cool to be there, on the east side, and to imagine the acts of daring, espionage, sacrifice, and murder that people were driven to in order to surmount this 10-foot-tall piece of concrete. Maybe it’s the half-bottle of German wine I’ve got in me right now, but I think we should build bridges and not walls, you know? I mean, I just think when you build a wall, the world is small, but a bridge, especially a bridge of love, it just conquers all. But that’s just my philosophy.

Anyway, Alexander was extremely freundlich, and he gave me his email address and phone number told me to contact him if I wanted to know more about Berlin. Of course, that info was already there on his Deutsche Bank business card, so it’s not like he offered to let sleep on his couch or something. But he is just another example of a Berliner whom I’ve been surprised by.

On the one hand, in public Berliners are completely cold and indifferent. They don’t make eye contact. They don’t smile at people on the street. But so far every time I’ve scratched the surface in any way, I’ve found people to be very helpful, congenial, and welcoming. That, and anyone who has any sort of an education is troublingly fluent in English.

Anmeldungsbestätigung!

The DJs with the bedroomiest eyes ever.

Day 8 (Dienstag, 23. Sept. 2008)

You know how some days you get off the S-Bahn and you instinctively walk in the direction of whatever office you need to go to in order to file whatever paperwork you need to file that day? Today wasn’t like that.

I started off the day with two things to do: 1) register with the FU-Berlin (that’s what they call it!) and 2) register with the local authorities.

I left the house late and it took more than 45 minutes to get to the FU. One reason is that the bus unexpectedly decided to stop running two stops early. I have no idea why—it didn’t do that last time. So I had to get off and walk the rest of the way in the light Seattle-style rain.

Here’s what the FU looks like.







Well, that's the main building. There's actually a lot more to it than that.

I then had to get directions to the Akademisches Auslandsamt, or the academic international office. It was in a house by campus.

There I met several nice people who were nice enough to speak English to me. The second asked me which I preferred, and I said I preferred English but I would like to try German. He said since the info he was going to give me was so important, he’d rather we did it in English. What are you gonna do? When a man is right, he’s right.

I then found out I have to pay 200 Euros to the FU *before* I can register. Dare I say I now know how it got its name? So that's not great. But I will eventually get reimbursed for that money, or at least that's what the nice English-speaking gentleman told me.

The next thing I had to do is to go to the local authorities to register my domicile. I tried to do that yesterday but the place was closed until further notice.



So here’s what happened.

I took the bus back to my regular train stop. Before I got there, however, the bus went past another train stop, which a quick look at my map (that is, the map in my Moleskine. Thanks, Rachel!) revealed was *the train stop* I needed to be at. So I got off the bus, crossed the street, and waited for the same bus I was just on, except going in the opposite direction.

It came; I got to the station and took this picture of graffiti.



I hopped the train to Rathaus-Steglitz, where I managed to find the Schloßstraße, which is where the registration office is.

I was on the block with street numbers 81-100. Naturally, since I wanted to get to the office with the street number 37, I started walking South. That’s where I took this picture.



Now let me show you a picture of the place I had to go.



You may notice in the first picture there's a red building behind me. Well, half an hour after I took that picture, I realized that *that* is the building I wanted. Notice that I’m walking in the opposite direction.

How can I be blamed, liebe Freunde, for not knowing that 37 Schloßstraße is directly across the street from 87 Schloßstraße? I mean, come on. What kind of a way is that to lay out a street?

So when I finally got there (I had to take *a bus* back from the place I had walked to!), I was scared I would have to wait in some boring line for hours. And in fact I *was* there for 2 ½ hours. But you know what? It was great. I loved it. That's because after about ½ hour of sitting there doing nothing I decided to see if they had wireless internet. They. Did. I was in heaven. I entered five days worth of updates to my blog, checked my email, and transferred the money from my ING account to my IU account. Oh yeah, and then I registered my apartment. As Ken Nunn says, it was just *that* easy!

When I got there, I looked at the numbers board.



Then I took a number.



Yeah, it was gonna be a while. The girl next to me had number 95 and she told me (in German!) she had been there for an hour and a half already.

Here is me after I registered.



And celebrating with my new friend at the Anmeldsamt.



All in all another good day! Now all I have left to do before I’m settled is to get a bank account, buy health insurance, get registered with the university, sign up for classes, get a cell phone, and get a residence permit! Leicht!

Day 7

(Montag, 22. Sept., 2008)

Last night I watched TV for a few hours, and just before I went to bed I felt the teensiest breakthrough with my German. I can’t say exactly what it is, but I now feel as though when I hear spoken German I can recognize enough words quickly enough that I don’t have to translate them in my head and then try to guess what the sentence means. I cannot by any means understand everything everyone says, and there are still a lot of individual words that don’t make sense to me, but I find if I focus on the meaning and not the words, then after a while the language becomes sort of transparent.

Another thing that keeps happening is language puzzles get solved. Sometimes I think I know a word and then it's used in a completely unfamiliar way. Well, that's what happens with homonyms, my friends. Homonyms such as schaffen (to create or to form) and schaffen (to do something successfully). I’ll think I’ve made some mistake when someone says, “Ich habe es geschafft!” and I know they didn’t create anything. Then I look in the dictionary and be enlightened.

Oh, and incidentally, no one will actually say, “Ich habe es geschafft". They’ll say, if you're lucky, “Ich hab’s geschafft”. That’s a contraction that no one ever taught me. Often the ‘e’ on the end of habe (have) disappears, as does the ‘e’ on the beginning of es (it). Oh yeah, and sometimes even the ich is swallowed so it just comes out, “hab’s geschafft!” Colloquial German is really something ganz anders (wholly different) from formal, written German.

The most notable thing that happened today is that I had my first Döner Kebab and it was delicious, or as the Germans say, lecker! Seriously. They say lecker all the time, at least on TV. Half the things in Germany are echt (genuine, real, really) as in echt cool or echt Qualität, and the other half are lecker. Some things are even echt lecker. Like Döner Kebab.




Oh, mein Gott, for only four euros I had all this and a coke. It was so groß (big) and so lecker! It was the first great meal I’ve had in Deutschland. Where are all OUR Turkish restaurateurs in the US?

And speaking of lecker (You have to understand how great this word is. It’s pronounced “LEK-uh”, like with a British ‘r’. It’s so fun to say! Heidi Klum has two lines in a current German McDonald’s commercial, so of course you know what one of them had to be.) right now I’m grilling fresh bratwurst on my stove. I just bought it at Aldi. Berlin! Aldi! Bratwurst! Kebab! Lecker!

That was in Lankwitz. I was there because I wanted to anmelden, that is, report my residence to the local authorities. The office was geschloßen. That means closed. Until further notice. So I have to go to another office tomorrow.

But that’s fine because I got my landlord’s signature on the necessary forms today, so I can go report myself without much hassle. And then I will be one step closer to getting my much-hoped-for Begrüßungsgeld. Is this a country or what?

While I was in Lankwitz I saw a stop sign.



I thought that was strange, since ‘stop’ is not a German word. But the Berliners do love signs so I guess it makes sense. They will put up as many as they can think of. Eventually I’ll give you a sample of the millions and millions of signs all around this place.

The other interesting thing I did today was get off at the Friedrichstraße S-Bahn stop and walk to the Reichstag and the Brandenburg Gate. I don’t have any idea what they are, but I’ve heard of them, so I went and took pictures of myself there. Just like every other tourist I guess.





Well, OK, the other *actually* interesting thing I did today was to go to the Fristo Getränkemarkt which is right next to Aldi, about five minutes from my apartment.



There I met a very friendly English-speaking cashier who helped me get what he called a “gentleman’s handbag”



And buy six different kinds of German Bier.



This six-pack of 50 centiliter (16 oz.) bottles of German beer cost less than five Euros. And he said they have over 150 varieties. I told him this would be the first of many visits.

All told today was a very good day. Hell, any day that ends with six new German beers has to be pretty good. And I think what I learned from my experience today is that one needn’t have a very definite plan in order for things to go well. All one has to do is get out of the house and walk around. Sometimes it’s boring, other times it’s fun and interesting. The only problem is it's impossible to tell beforehand which kind of day it will be.

Day 6

(Sonntag, 21. Sept., 2008)

I got up at 10:30 this morning and drank some coffee. Then I went for a thirty minute run. I can run to the nearby trail in six minutes. When I got back I had a long, wonderful breakfast.

I also watched some Oktoberfest broadcast from München. It was insanity. Picture The Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade held at Dollywood, but without the parade. Oh yeah, and with 12 grown men skipping around in a circle wearing short leather shorts, suspenders, and knee socks, slapping their thighs in time with accordion music.

There were some wonderful songs though. Truly. Here are the titles of some of my favorites: “Oh, It’s Beer Time, Baby”, “Bayrisches Cowgirl”, and “Wohl, Jawohl, Jawohl!”

Again I walked around my neighborhood. So langweilig (boring)!
One of the most prominent features of Lichterfelde Süd is the Heizkraftwerk.



It’s a collection of three large Chernobyl-looking things with three tall towers behind them. It sits right on the canal, about a fifteen-minute walk from my house.
The weirdest thing about it is that just southwest of it, directly in its shadow, is this weird quaint neighborhood.



This neighborhood totally weirds me out.



First of all, all the houses are so tiny that at first I thought they were only garden sheds.



Second, each is completely fenced in and sits on a very small lot. Third, they are all completely dwarfed by their gardens.



Put that together with the fact that they sit under the Kraftwerk, as if in the shadow of Mt. Vesuvius, and it’s just a surreal experience to be walk around them. Oh yeah, and even on a Sunday afternoon I saw very, very few people. Well, I saw these people:



And the old lady really disturbed me because I thought I might be trespassing, and that she was, like, the neighborhood enforcer or something come to kick me out. But I think all she wanted was to see these other old people.
After I wandered around in that bizarre labyrinth for a while I finally found my way to the canal, where I saw this guy with a Mohawk fishing.



Which is kind of sick.