What I Do All Day/State Of The Hair Address

Hello to all and sundry. I, your faithful blogger on the scene, have been selfishly devoting my time to vain and petty activities like schoolwork and exercise while turning a deaf ear to the internet’s desperate plea for anecdotes and silly pictures. Oh, how the electronic masses clamor! Yesterday I realized I had not taken nearly enough picures this week, so I unsheathed my trusty silver Sony and, sure enough, found a few things worth photographing, many of which sort of tie into my major themes these days. LET’S GO TO THE FILM:

Here is a portion of my political thought class on our field trip to an outdoor exhibit about the peaceful revoltion of 1989. Between 4 and 6 pm on a swelteringly hot, humid day we walked around in full sun in the middle of the Alexanderplatz, exactly the sort of treeless multi-acre inner-city expanse of glass and concrete that one generally strives to avoid at all costs on a firey summer afternoon. However, our professor—Wolfgang B, the older fellow in the middle whose face is so sunburned that he could probably peel it off like a mask—has never been one to allow practical concerns get in the way of talking about the history of German political thought. We wound painstakingly through the (actually very interesting) exhibit, gradually paying less and less attention, less interested in the intricacies of reunification than in precious shade and places to sit. I don’t think I learned very much about 1989 that day. The final is on Tuesday, so I suppose I’ll find out soon.

Two points of interest before we leave this v unpleasant experience in the past, where it belongs:
1. That clunky old video camera in the rear right of the photo above is the same model that a couple of reporters snuck into East Berlin and used to film the massive protests in October of ’89, protests which the East German government was naturally interested in covering up as much as possible. These dudes got the film and smuggled it back to the West, and the next day those images of tens of thousands of Germans taking in the streets went around the world. Pretty raw.
2. As you have hopefully learned at some point, East Germany had all kinds of insane restrictions of free expression, esp the production of critical political texts. Printing technology was tightly controlled, and mass-produced texts were fairly easy to trace, so resistence groups would print their tracts by hand in basements and churches and distribute them personally to trusted sources. The term for this sort of underground literature is samizdat, from the Russian for ‘self-publishing house,’ and I really dug on this display of genuine illicit pamphlets. I suppose people treasured these things.

(Side note: this samizdat picture is totally image number 1984 on my camera. COSMIC.)

In other news, beers:Or actually, empty beer bottles. Seven of them, to be precise, sitting on my windowsill. Seven, in addition to being the most magically powerful number, is an important benchmark in the empties collection process, at least for yours truly. Each bottle is worth 8 euro-cents, you see, and seven times eight makes 56, and as the cheapest cold beer in walking distance costs a mere 55 of those euro-cents, this little line-up represents another half-litre of pure hearty German pilsner, with a thin penny to spare. Sorry the picture is a little out of focus, Phil took it, he is a Philistine with sausage fingers and the shakes.

Fueled by that single free beer (The other 7 were obviously collected over the course of a week, one per night, with dinner. No, wait, let’s say I was cleaning up trash in a local park and took these home so, uh, bears wouldn’t trip on them. Yeah, that’s pretty good.), I took part in a not-inconsiderable bike adventure to the über-hip south side of town. Phil and I met Lucy in a park and we went for a bike ride during which I took precisely one photo, apparently because I am an arrogant elitest and think you hardworking people back home don’t deserve to see all the cool stuff I see. Shame on me.

(Side note: I’ll be referring to Lucy as “Lucy” and not “my friend Lucy” from now on, partially because you all presumably recall that Lucy is a friend of mine, but mostly because Lucy noticed that I referred to her on this blog as “my friend Lucy” and called Phil just “Phil,” and she got very worked up about it. In a sub-side note, Lucy is extremely neurotic.)

I did get one pretty nice shot of this urban mosque in the sunset. I really dig on Islamic architechture and wish I saw more of it in Berlin.

If I recall correctly, this particular house of worship was inbetween Hasenheide, a huge rambling park that’s easy to get lost in (always a good sign), and Tempelhof, the former West Berlin airport that was just recently converted into a huge rambling park that is impossible to get lost in, because it is just a massive flat airfield criss-crossed with runways. It was bizarre to be able to see so far under such a huge sky after so many months at the bottom of concrete canyons. Makes a fella nostalgic for the Great Plains and hundreds of miles of corn fields, you know? I can see Tempelhof being a sort of horrific inferno during the oh, 20 straight hours of sunlight it probably picks up at this time of year—just like a blasted hell-heath crawling with centipedes and horribly tan oiled-up Germans, the air thick with the acrid black smoke of ten thousand pungent ethnic sausages popping and sizzling on ten thousand filthy billowing grease-trap grills—but in late-stage sunset it was serene and cool and very beautiful. We rode our bikes very fast and in a lot of fancy formations (i.e. THE FLYING V) around the well-marked five-kilometer loop and watched the sun set very slowly over the supermassive old airport building. It was grrrrrreat.

Later that night I got ANOTHER flat tire on my bike—number…four in Berlin, I believe—and had to take my injured bike back home via the U-Bahn (subway). While waiting alone for the last train of the night I noticed these little “We Are Watching You” monitors and decided to play with them.You can’t see my goofy smile in the full-body image so I moved in closer for a glamour shot:Aw yeah. Even got the bike in there for good measure.

Hay lookit, it is a newer, less-crumbly version of that terrifying hot-dog man:Chillingly, his intact arms, busily applying seasoned purees to his forehead, only confirm my earlier hypothesis that this creature is intent on eating himself. I do not know why he would start with the face. Seems to me like you should save that for last.

The other awesome new detail here is of course the American flag, presumably a giant fiberglass napkin, wrapped tighly around hot-dog man’s white bread carapace. I have studiously avoided the terrible “American-style” food they serve here in Berlin, but if this stand actually serves each tube of processed pig offal in a miniature American flag it may be my patriotic duty to try one.

Having covered food, we can now move on to bathrooms. Mensa Nord bathrooms, to be precise:I don’t know why I like this life-sized full-door MEN’S ROOM pictogram, but I do.

The joke in this picture of a toilet is the corner of the window where the faux-frosted plastic laminate has been peeled away, presumably by bored dudes sitting on the can. Thanks to the tireless efforts of those bored dudes on the can, future generations will be able to enjoy this magnificent view while crappin’:I can see a bike from up here!

These Berliners are crazy with the plants and the green space, so this lovely (and probably v energy efficient) little rooftop meadow on the Mensa shouldn’t really be a surprise:
I have got so much hair these days, it is crazy:I’m not sure how much longer I can just let it grow out. As long as I condition it thoroughly and regularly it stays way up in the air where it is supposed to be instead of all over my face and in my eyes, BUT the thing is it is summer in the city and a head with this much hair on it gets HOT pretty quickly. On really nasty sweaty days I will often fantasize about what it would be like to not have this scratchy rug all over my scalp and down my neck and behind my ears...I dunno. I also like having a lot of hair. Makes me feel like a big man. Should it stay or should it go? Any thoughts from the peanut gallery? Here is a second, slightly goofier photo to help you decide:Beard comments will be permitted but ignored.

Here is a picture of my bicycle, because I do not photograph it enough:Oh, Bikey. Our days together are numbered. I figure about two weeks before my departure I will put up some ads and find Bikey a new owner fer a hundred euros or so. The parting will be sad but the money very necessary, especially considering I’ve got a big ol’ European tour to fund and many gifts still to purchase. For now I just gotta savor every moment.

One way to savor every moment: spontaneous backroads bicycle adventures. I took a road less traveled out of Mauerpark yesterday and came upon a bizarre little system of paths through the undeveloped space around the rail lines.I liked this dude climbing with the clouds above him:

I kept rolling along these unlikely little paths, certain the trail would dead-end at any moment, and eventually came out the other side:

bikey rolled slightly ahead of me to watch for bears and aggressive hobos

I think discovering a totally new route through what I thought was a thoroughly explored area might be my favorite thing to do.

I actually came very close to this path in my early days here in Prenzlauer Berg. Late one night Phil and I wandered beneath this bridge and ran into what we thought was a dead end. We must have overlooked this little entrance in the darkness:
Flower Update: The rose garden at Humboldthain is starting to shape up. It may not exactly be carpeted with blossoms yet:But some promising early contenders have already appeared:Killer. I figure this whole plot should peak out just in time for my mother to photograph it with great gusto and checking of light.

Finally let’s take a brief tour of the things on my desk and the stories behind them. This may look like a pile of schoolwork, and it is:My political thought course through IES ends on Tuesday, so I have a final paper due and a final exam to take. I ain’t too excessively worried about it, because it isn’t too difficult and is definitely not worth too much anxiety. Heck, I need to save my anxiety for Monday, when I (and a couple of very friendly, capable Germans) will have to present on/lead my lit class’s discussion of Kleiner Mann—was nun? (Little Man—What Now?), a very good novel by Hans Fallada that I have been thinking and writing about for months now. Provided I make it through Tuesday morning my workload should drop considerably for my last bit of time in Berlin. Wish me luck!

This may look like more schoolwork, but it is actually my hostess Anne’s copy of the files kept on her by the East German secret police, the infamous Stasi (from Staatssicherheit, meaning “state security”). The Stasi kept an incredibly close watch and amazingly detailed files on East German citizens, and after the collapse of the DDR the new German government set up a system to allow ex-East Germans to examine and copy the files kept on them. Anne’s is full of photocopies of private correspondence, official documents, and these thorough, coldly bureaucratic analyses of her intentions and relationships that I find chilling and unsettling. Anne, on the other hand, finds it funny and bizarre, and is obviously comfortable enough about it to let her weird American subletter leaf through it. I guess if you grow up with it you eventually get used to this sort of thing.

This is a special rail ticket that ought to get me way the heck down to the Austrian border and back again for a mere 122 Euros, which is one heckuva deal. The weekend of July 8th-11th I am traveling south to visit family friend Ted France and his wonderful family in the Austrian Alps. For a while I didn’t think it was going to happen due to financial constraints, but then Anne mentioned this deal to me and everything fell into place. I had to buy it in a Saturn—a Best Buy-ish major electronics retailer—and it came with a fairly neat soccer jersey and some Fanschminke (facepaint), because Germans will buy anything associated with the World Cup no matter how little sense it makes.

Oh yeah, the World Cup (Weltmeisterschaft) is going on right now, and yes, it is crazy. Flatscreens on the sidewalk in front of every bar and restaurant, Germans wearing flags as skirts and drinking all day, thunderous cheers, queasy patriotism, etc. Everyone was ecstatic and walking around with puffed-out chests after the 4:0 opening victory over Austrailia, and now they’re all slouched over and grumpy because “the boys” dropped their second game 2:0 to Serbia. Whamp-whaaaaamp. I hope Germany picks it up and goes deep into the tournament, because if it is this intense during the early-stage group play I cannot imagine how nuts a semi-final would be.

This is the little leather saddlebag full of tools and patches that came with my bike. (That old dude was a serious bicyclist.) It is out because I have actually been using it lately to, like, repair my bike. Remember that flat tire I got a couple dozen paragraphs ago? Well, rather than paying some jerk 20 euros for a new tube, I walked Bikey down to a Fahrradladen (bike shop) in Mitte where they let ya use their tools and give ya advice if you ask nicely. Phil directed me to this joint, and despite a bum knee he showed up his own self and instructed me in the ancient art of removing wheel, tire and tube, finding the hole, slappin’ on a patch, then reassembling the whole mess. It took about a half hour and cost 40 cents and will stay with me forever. ACHIEVEMENT UNLOCKED.

Last but not least, here is a slice of delicious apple strudel warming up over a big mug of tea. Anne gave me the pastry and it was goooooooood, and the mug has a rainbow pattern on it that I think LUCY will appreciate.

That’s it for now! Off to finish my political thought study guide and email Wolfgang my remaining questions and then go celebrate Lucy’s 21st by being very responsible in a park. I miss you all!