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Hello hello.


I will be the first to admit that it has been an unforgiveably long time since I rapped with you all. My readership now probably consists entirely of internet advertisement robots who are trying to sell me something. I am not one to go bandying around words like “monotonic” or “terminally ill” or “dying”—especialy when it comes to something as important as a blog—so I will just say that trusty old Unterwegs has been looking a little green in the gills lately. Let’s give it a little kick-start, shall we?

Apology Phase completed. Commence Excuses Phase:

I have had a looooooong week. Yes, you read that right: there were 7 Os in that “long,” and I am only exagerating a little bit. I suppose I last blessed the World Wide Web with my finer thoughts and observations a week ago yesterday, but it feels like it’s been a gosh darned month. School concerns have been the primary time-sink, so let’s start out with those:

My Monday-Tuesday* academic gauntlet went pretty well, all things considered. After lots of prep and with much sweating and drumming of fingers I survived my Referat on Monday—I may have already explained this, but a Referat is a real fun German university practice where you essentially have to lead the class for the day. Luckily I had a good team around me, with two v efficient Germans to pick up my slack and one dimbulb slacker German to make me look good, and they let me go first because I am a poor widdle American with a stutter auf Deutsch. I took my time, spoke slowly and breathed deeply, and my 25 mintutes of rambling about the narrative style in Hans Fallada’s Kleiner Mann—was nun? were over before I knew it. That’s when the real challenge started—sometime over the weekend before this whole ordeal I had managed to tear up a little spot at the back of my throat something awful (possible causes: yelled a bunch, forgot to strain my gravel tea, pinecone eating contest), and as I sat there in silence, holding back a coughing fit as my teammates gave their respective spiels, that little lesion started to tickle…then itch…and then hurt very badly. My body wanted to cough and did not take it well when I held back—I sweated and turned red, began to fidget, and I think my B.O. kicked up a couple of notches as well. It only got worse until I took advantage of couple of awkward pauses to fulfill that particular physical need and hack like an ancient smoker. It was a weird experience.

*(Yes, I do mean last Monday and Tuesday. I am behind.)

I was just ludicrously overprepared enough for Tuesday’s political thought test to feel confident going into it, and I think I regurgitated enough facts about the Stasi and 1989 and Germans and stuff to get myself a good old fashioned American A. This was an okay class, poorly organized but taught with verve by poor old Wolfgang Bialas. It didn’t challenge any core beliefs or trigger new ways of thought, but I learned a lot of interesting facts and got a new perspective on worker’s rights movements and socialism that should come in handy in a lot of inane, fruitless arguments over the next couple of years.

The best part about German Political Thought? It is OVER. Let’s put a big black X through a fifth of my course work, alright?

X

Well done. In stark contrast to a typical quarter at Northwestern, which is a two-month buildup towards a hellish two-week work-orgy until you finish your last final and turn in your last paper and then you lay down and die, my semester in Germany looks ready to end with a wimper, as I finish up class after class with time to spare. Let’s ask the obvious question:

Q: What do we get to X off next?
A: Professional Translation Skills, that’s what!

On Wednesday at 2:15 pm I shall download a German text about the use of composite materials in the construction of aircraft. Before 5 pm I shall translate that text into English, then send it off to to unconquerable Micheal Davies to be graded. At that point I shall be done with another course.

A week after that I’ll take my final French test, and sometime before that I will turn in my final paper for my literature course (I finished a draft yesterday instead of having fun), which will leave me with nothing but my German class (where I am certain we will be tested up until the last possible moment) for the last couple of weeks. Hopefully blogging will increase as class demands taper off. NO PROMISES.

Other Stories:

Sure, I spent way too much time on schoolwork, but that is the norm for me. What else had me so busy that I couldn’t come and blog for you fine people even once this week?

Well, for one thing I had to take a picture of this car:Obviously.

Outside of that, Thursday was the last day of courses through IES, my well-meaning study abroad service, a fact we all celebrated at a surprisingly excellent BBQ at the IES center. Look at this spread of sidedishes:

the watermelon was fresh and juicy, the couscous spicy and oniony and delicious

High class. And this was just one of three such sidedish-laden tables, PLUS there were some burly Rote Kreuz (Red Cross) volunteers grilling up pounds and pounds of chicken and sausage (a fundraising effort, I imagine), PLUS a fairly large quantity of free beer and wine distributed in a very liberal way. To a poor student stretching every euro this event was like Hobo Heaven, where the hens lay soft boiled eggs and the little streams of alcohol come trickling down the rocks. I stayed for several hours and ate two large meals’ worth of food, avoiding conversations I didn’t want to have by saying, “Excuse me, I am extremely hungry” and slipping back to the buffet.

Great food and beautiful weather aside, the most interesting part of this event was the alcohol policy. No wristbands or coupons or like big permanent marker Xs on your forehead to mark how many you’d had, just a little bar with a couple of friendly Germans who gave you first a goofy, sheepish smile, then your drink. As I savored my third beer and my second heap of couscous, I reflected on how successful and appropriate this booze system was, and how completely insane it would seem in an American context.

Students drinking booze? MADNESS. On the grounds of an academic institution? OUTRAGEOUS. Provided and paid for by said institution? MARY FETCH ME MY CONVERSATION HAT AND FOUNTIAN PEN, I NEED TO WRITE AN ALL-CAPS LETTER TO THE EDITOR, ADMINISTRATIVE HEADS WILL ROLL.

I suppose you could argue that American students, raised to view alcohol as something forbidden and dangerous (i.e. awesome), would automatically overdo it and go drunkenly burn down some zoos if a soft-headed liberal official ever served libations at a school event. But these were American kids—albeit in a European context—and nobody got cirrhosis, or really even made a fool of themselves. They were just relaxed and social at a relaxed social event. American booze culture is gonna get on my nerves for a while I can just tell. Hopefully being 21 will soften the blow.

Organization has never been a strong point for me so let’s jump back to an hour before this event started, when I showed up at IES for some reason. As I was A) an hour early and B) extremely wound up, I took action and went for a very long walk.

I went a couple clicks east, south of Alexanderplatz, to a region I’d ridden through one evening when the twilight was dim and my camera was useless. That was the night I first found this archeological dig:You know your city is old when you’ve got an archeological dig in the middle of it. When I first took this photo I thought it was of the crumbling foundations of a structure from the 16th century, but now further inspection of those v regular, smooth white bricks on the lower right makes me think I may have photographed a much newer (maybe early 20th century) set of crumbling foundations on accident. IN ANY CASE, these are cool, and located in the middle of this big vacant lot/permanent construction project that keeps getting held up by politics. I’m not 100% sure on this, but I believe this was the former site of the Palast der Republik (Palace of the Republic), the symbolic headquarters of the socialist state of East Germany. I ain’t precisely clear on why it isn’t still here—the lovey-dovey informational boards said “Dismantled, Not Demolished,” but it looks to me like it got torn the hell down—but I do know that some folks are tryin’ to rebuild it and other folks are doin’ their darndest to keep it from getting’ rebuilt. For some reason. Local politics in Berlin: just as stupid and petty as local politics anywhere else.

This street is called Underwater Street:This does not strike me as a very fortuitious name for a street. It is like calling a street “Sinkhole Street” or “Gas Line Rupture Street,” or just “Completely Destroyed Street.”

I took a dim photograph of this badly-lit bridge because it is goofy. Closer inspection revealed that it was built sometime in the 1750s and is the oldest surviving bridge in Berlin. I walked across it and it did not collapse.

I thought this Coke sign looked good in the orange summer evening light.
This tagger is seriously concerned about the buildup of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere, so he draws attention to it the only way he knows how: with areosol spraypaint.
A neat fountain I’d never seen before. I don’t know why but I always dig on the multiple nested basins effect. It was much better lit about 15 seconds before I took this photograph.

Here is Schinkelplatz, named after Karl Friedrich Schinkel, a big-time Berlin architect and city planner back in the glory days. I think he’s the middle statue, plus he has his face all over that building in the back, which I think is an architectural school named after him. I know they have a prepoderance of great dead white guys around here, but man, do they ever love their great dead white guys. I tried to learn more about Schinkel but all of the plaques were just about the boring history of the Schinkelplatz, i.e. this narrow little triangular spit of land that I guess people have been bickering about for decades. It is like Mark Trail with the zoning disputes around here.

The fountain in the foreground wasn’t working, and I was about halfway through composing my grouchy paragraph-long complaint about that when it kicked on long enough for me to take this photograph:30 seconds later it turned off again. The only reasonable explination is that I am now Berlin’s foremost fountain critic and this fountain’s owner/operator knew he/she could not afford another bad review.

Aaaand you know what? I have a lot more pictures to show you and stories to tell you but in the interest of getting something up on this blog and making it to my doctor’s appointment in a timely manner (my ear is all clogged up), I think I will end this post here. More adventures+World Cup coverage coming soon! Love you all, sorry about the huge delays, IT’S JUST SO NICE OUTSIDE.