Updates from Germany

 Hello! It's been a minute, eh?

About 2 months ago, the EU added the US to its "safe" zone, then Germany opened their border to tourists from the US (previously, it was open only to people with an urgent need). So I got my plane tickets for August 1 and spent all of July sorting and packing basically everything I own.

Now I'm in Berlin, subletting a furnished room from a Croatian woman. I live really close to the Grunewald park, which is a great place to get some exercise when it's not raining. I went there yesterday by train (it's only 2 stops, but it's a good 40-minute walk to get there, and I wanted to maximize my park-time) and "hiked" (Berlin is a very flat city) 3.6 miles in a little under an hour and a half. I had a refreshing Apfelschorle (apple juice mixed with mineral water), a pizza, and an absolutely delicious melon salad at a beer garden by the train station. The salad had cucumbers marinated in some sort of peppery dressing, chunks of watermelon, and a heap of feta on top. The flavor and texture contrasts were amazing, and I complimented the chef on my way out.

I've finally had some time to write, since I'm just about settled in now. I've had to get a few things, like sheets, pantry stock, and plants, but I haven't had to spend half the day taking the bus or subway to a store and back in about a week. I went to one store to get a printer (they had back to school specials) and carried it in its box on the bus, then down the street and up a zillion stairs. Then it wouldn't connect to the WiFi for a reason I couldn't make heads or tails of (and it was in English), so I had to go buy a printer cable the next day, because of course they don't come in the box anymore. I decided to go to a different electronics store and left with a 3-Euro printer cable and a 15-Euro rice cooker. This is basically how I've ended up spending way too much money in the last 3 weeks.

At least groceries are cheap. I'm still managing to spend a bunch of money on groceries, even though a lot of things cost about half what they do in the US. A 250-g can of store-brand chickpeas cost 39 (Euro)cents! I have 7 in my cupboard. (I used one of them already.)

The way people are handling covid over here is so much different than in the US. You can't go into any businesses or get onto public transit without a medical-grade mask. (No cute cloth masks here!) You see people walking down the street with a mask around their forearm so they have it ready when they need it. It's the latest in pandemic fashion! When I went to see The Green Knight in the theater, I had to show my vaccination certificate to get in, and I was obligated to fill out my contact info when I bought my ticket online. One thing this theater did was block off the seats around you(r party) when you reserved your seat(s), so nobody from unrelated groups was next to each other. They didn't require you to wear your mask during the show, but I did (except when I drank my soda), and so did the other woman in my row.

The movie was trippy as fuck, and I kept getting distracted by the German subtitles and thinking how I would have used different words to give it the same "feel" as the sometimes-lyrical English, which didn't help at all.

I'm making the I-hope-final edits on my indulgent NaNoWriMo project, which is a retelling of the Germanic Siegfried legend from the women's perspectives, and I hope to start querying that by the end of this month. I'm also working on a nonfiction book on linguistics in SFF (for writers), whose sample chapter I need to finish and whose proposal outline I need to make shinier. The last project I queried got no bites, so I'm setting it aside for now and will rework it in the future. I think it's a good story; either the writing itself or the query wasn't landing.

So, that's it for now. You can also follow my YouTube channel and/or support my Patreon (payments currently on hold until I get my tax situation and work permit sorted).

"There has to be a word for that in German."

There's a meme that German has a word for everything, and I'm often asked what the German word for some complicated phrase is.

My answer is usually, "There isn't one, but I can make one up for you." (Occasionally there actually is a word for that, like Kummerspeck, weight gained from emotional overeating (literally "grief bacon"), but not most of the time.)

It's very true that German has a lot of long compound words, but the vast majority of them (especially the 5- and 6-word conglomerations) won't be in the dictionary. Yes, Donaudampfschifffahrtsgesellschaftskapitän is a word, and it has a Wikipedia entry that is largely composed of its usage in machine translation problems and examples of artificial and fictive words composed from it. (I am still of the opinion that it should be Schiffahrt, the Rechtschreibreform be damned. Three f's in a row look ridiculous.)

The German language has a very useful and convenient property that allows for the building of compound (or composite) words, known in German as Komposita. All you need is a stem noun and another noun, an adjective or adverb, or sometimes a verb, which you glom onto the front of the stem noun (sometimes with modifications). Each subsequent addition makes the thing more specific.

Let's use Kapitän as a first example, since we've got the lovely Komposita up there. You have a Kapitän--a captain. You can have a Mannschaftskapitän (a team captain; two nouns) or a Schiffskapitän (a ship captain). Bastian Schweinsteiger is currently the Nationalmannschaftskapitän (national team captain; adjective and two nouns, and the adjective makes the first noun more specific).

Another example: Teller (plate). You can have a Gemüseteller on a menu, and it will be a plate of vegetables. Or you can buy a very nice Porzellanteller, which is a plate made of porcelain. You don't always just smush words together. You wouldn't have a Grünporzellanteller, but you would have a grünen Porzellanteller, if it's green.

It is very convenient to make compound words in German where we would have two words or sometimes a phrase in English. But it's a myth that words for every esoteric concept exist in German. You won't find it in a dictionary, but if you're nice, maybe a German speaker will make one up for you.

The history behind the story: Something There Is

5 July 1961
Mielke sat behind his desk, and a pair of officers stood on either side of it. They couldn’t consider me a threat to the minister, not after leaving me alone with him so far. Could they? I’m not much of an athlete. I get decent marks in sport, but I’ll never make it onto an Olympics team. Surely they’d know that. They knew everything else.

“Have a seat,” he said.

There was only one chair, so I sat in it.

“How long have you been having these feelings?”

I knew what he meant without asking him to explain further. “I can’t remember not having them.”

I swear he looked like a cat who’d stolen a fish as big as himself before he settled his impassive face back on. “Interesting.” He made notes in a pad on his desk. “What was the first time?”

I told him about how I got separated from Mama and Papa in the park when I was three or four, and when I got scared, I felt something like a hand on my back, guiding me toward them. He wanted to know how often it happened, and I told him it didn’t happen all the time, only when something was important. I didn’t mention that it’s been happening more often recently...

The German Democratic Republic was founded in 1949 in response to Allied recognition of the Federal Republic of Germany. It took shape in the Soviet Occupation Zone as designated by the Yalta Treaty. Berlin, the once and future capital, was itself divided into occupation zones, Soviet, French, British, and US. The Soviet zone comprised about half the city and included many landmarks, like the Museum Island and the Brandenburg Gate.

When the Western Powers worked with Chancellor Adenauer and his government, relocated to Bonn, to create the Deutsche Mark (which sparked the West German economic miracle), the Soviets and the SED (Socialist Unity Party, the East German politburo) disagreed and blockaded West Berlin. The Western Powers responded by airlifting supplies into the city for nearly a year until Stalin ended the blockade.

West Berlin served as a convenient exit point for residents of the Soviet sector, as they could go into the other side of the city by showing simple documentation, and they could defect to the west from there. Alarmed by this exodus, the SED decided to put a stop to it. In 1952, they built a barbed-wire fence along the inner-German border, and throughout the 50s, they made it increasingly difficult for GDR citizens to travel into the west.

Berlin remained a loophole, however, and it wasn't until 1961 that the SED closed it. The Party began stockpiling bricks and other construction materials, and, when asked about it, First Secretary Walter Ulbricht said, "No one has the intention of building a wall," and that they were using the materials for normal construction. The city was still largely devastated from the bombings, after all. This was June 15, 1961.

August 13, 1961, the border between West Berlin and East Germany was officially closed, and the first foundations of the Wall were laid. This sparked international outrage, and fear among the citizens--including some who were separated from their families. The original cinderblock and barbed wire wall grew into this, which they called the Anti-Fascist Protection Wall:

A two-cobblestone-wide line runs through Berlin today, a reminder of where the Schandmauer (shame-wall) once stood. A vibrant business district stands in the former wasteland of Potsdamer Platz.

The Ministry for State Security, the Stasi, kept GDR citizens in line through both spying and a formalized informer state. After 1989, it was thought that the Stasi had 175,000 unofficial informants, but more recent studies suggest it was closer to 189,000, not including the official employees. They rooted through the garbage, steamed open letters, installed hidden cameras and microphones in people's walls. (They also operated an outward-facing spy agency.) People who opposed the SED were jailed. People who tried to escape were killed.

The GDR was a real-life dystopia.

How does this relate to the story? you ask. What would happen if a teenaged girl who can hear the voice of the city were coerced into becoming an informer for the Stasi? Find out on December 18, when Substitution Cipher is released!

Come back on Monday to find out more about the story behind the story.

(This post was inspired by fellow Substitution Cipher author M. Fenn's post about the real history behind "So the Taino Call It.")

On eating vegetarian in Germany

John Scalzi is back from Germany, and he says he's happy that I was not a vegetarian. In comments, someone agrees.

There's a pervasive myth that German food consists entirely of meat, notably in the form of sausage. I can assure you it doesn't. It's true that a lot of the traditional recipes are based on meat, and there are a lot of sausages, but there are a lot of other options. Yes, even in traditional restaurants.

I've been vegetarian since 1993. I spent my junior year of college (1996-97) living in Germany. I had, frankly, a much easier time eating vegetarian there than I did in my college's dining hall in Pennsylvania, or than I do eating here in North Carolina -- where even the vegetables have meat in them (often in the form of a hambone thrown in, or bits of bacon), at least in traditional Southern restaurants. Germans caught on to the organic food thing much earlier than Americans. I had probably the best soy sausage in my life while I was living in Marburg, picked up at a Bioladen (organic food shop) and grilled for Canada Day (one of my neighbors was Canadian).

When in Germany, if I'm staying in a pension (akin to a B&B), I eat the traditional breakfast: rolls, cheese, butter, jam, Nutella, quark, muesli, soft-boiled eggs. Everything except the cold cuts. If I'm in a hotel, I'll pop over to a bakery or cafe and get a pastry or two: nut-nougat croissant, pretzel roll, cheese roll. Left to my own devices (with a kitchen and grocery store), I eat the same thing I do here: cereal and milk.

For lunch, there's always falafel or vegetarian döner, pizza, sandwiches from the bakery (or your own kitchen), or whatever sounds interesting. For dinner, you can sit down anywhere. I've had really good Indian food in Munich, a nice Mission-style burrito in Berlin, vegetarian Maultaschen (also in Berlin), spinach strudel, baked pasta casserole, South Asian fusion (also in Berlin), amazing brown butter tortellini (in Berlin), delicious cheese spaetzle in Vienna...

I think you get the point by now, and I'm not the only one who's had a relatively easy time eating as a vegetarian in Germany. The folks at Happy Cow have a section for Germany to help you out, and I've found that Lonely Planet guides are good at pointing out places that have veg*n options as well as listing some straight-up veg*n places. (They're my favorite guide books, and they've never steered me wrong.)

(association) FOOTBALL!

As you may know, I'm a football (soccer) fan. Between June 12 and July 13, I watched close to 60 football matches, mostly in Spanish (on Univision, low-def). I own a jersey for the German national team (2006) and covet a 2010 away jersey in gorgeous black.

The Bundesliga's just starting up again, 3 match days into their 34-match season. I had to decide which team to follow. This was difficult. In years past, it's been more of a peripheral attention I've paid, because US news sites don't really cover German football, and it was hard to keep track. But now there are blogs and livejournal communities and twitterfeeds, and all sorts of things that are made possible with the internet.

Anyway. I don't live in Germany, much to my dismay. If I did, I'd live in Berlin, so picking a Berlin team is only natural, right? Hertha BSC was relegated to the 2nd league after a disastrous 2009/10 season, and who cares about the 2. BuLi, right? But Berlin is the home of my heart, so Hertha is the team of my heart. And they're in 3rd place in the 2nd league right now, having won all three of their games so far (ties in points are decided on goal differential, and they're 3rd on that.) So maybe they'll be back in the 1st league in 2011!

So I looked for a 1. BuLi team. There are some players from the national team whom I really like watching play, so I checked out their teams. Mesut Özil was bought by Real Madrid, so that took away my main reason for interest in Werder Bremen. As much as I like Müller, Klose, Schweinsteiger, et al, there's no way in hell I'm rooting for FC Bayern. It's like rooting for the Yankees (if you're not from New York or don't have a long-standing family tradition).

Then there's the lovely center-back Arne Friedrich, who used to play at Hertha, but moved to Wolfsburg after they were relegated. Then he slipped a disc in practice and had to get surgery, so he *still* hasn't played this season. :P

I don't like deciding on something without seeing how they play, so I watched a few Wolfsburg matches, and I tried watching a Werder match, but I couldn't get into it. And, despite the fact that the Wolves have lost all three of their matches so far (one of which went from a comfortable 3:1 at half time to 3:4 at the end), I still like them. When they actually work together, they look good. And we're doing better than Schalke (though only on goal differential...) The defense keeps falling down on the job, though. (Hopefully that'll change when Arne's deemed fit to play again.)

It's weird to sit down and consciously decide which team to support. It's not like anyone in my family has a favorite team in the German Football League; they're all American Football fans, if they follow sports at all.

I really need to time my next trip to Germany to include a live Bundesliga match. Tickets aren't too unreasonably priced.

Been a long time.

Sorry for that. I was in Europe for 6 weeks, and I didn't have much interest in updating. I have 3 book reviews, a manga review, and some exciting news about RetroSpec to post in the next few days. For now, I'll just post a wrap-up of my trip.

May 2-28: Berlin, Germany. I took a class at the Goethe Institute. Even after many years of disuse, my German is good enough to land me in the highest-level class, where we spent most of the time talking about stuff and going over finer points of German grammar and learning new idioms and the like. There were about a dozen of us.

I still love Berlin, and if it were possible or practical at all to move there, I would. Even if the weather was terrible the whole month.

May 29-June 5: Vienna, Austria. I've always wanted to visit Vienna, and now I have. I took an overnight train from Berlin, and Ben met me there. It was the start of our 10th anniversary trip. The weather was pretty bad then, too. Coldish and rainy.

Vienna is more elegant than Berlin, and a lot more expensive. It's also a more "finished" city, I guess you could say. It's got all these grand buildings, and it's home to tons of culture and art and music and the like. We could have seen a different Mozart concert every night, if we'd had the money. (We saw a performance of the Requiem in the Karlskirche, by a group using instruments from Mozart's time and balance and seating charts from the time. It was really cool.)

We took a day trip out to Carnuntum, which is the site of a Roman border fortress-town. They've rebuilt two villas and are working on the baths. One they rebuilt using Roman-era techniques and replica tools, including firing the bricks in an earthen kiln. That was sweet.

June 5-7: Bratislava, Slovakia. Bratislava is pretty cheap, and there's not much else going for it. They've got a big monument on a hill with a bunch of Soviet graves, dedicated to the soldiers who kept the Nazis out of Western Slovakia in 1944 or 45, which has a great view of the city. Bratislava Castle is uninspiring, but Devin Castle, a 20-minute city bus ride away, is really awesome. The hill has been inhabited since about 950, by Romans, Moravians, Slovaks, and even (briefly) the Habsburgs. There's a good bit of archaeology there, too.

June 7-13: Budapest, Hungary. Budapest is so inexpensive! We could eat a modestly expensive meal for $35 total. It's also a very pretty city, but less finished. That's probably the remnants of communism. There was a lot of reconstruction going on.

Szechenyi Baths are amazing. So, Budapest has a bathing/spa culture, which may be a remnant of its 140-year Ottoman occupation. They've also got hot springs, so they've got a good location. Szechenyi Baths have both thermal spas and swimming pools, and your admission fee covers both. (All-day admission to this palace of bathing costs 3100 forint, or about $13.50 at today's exchange.) It's rather literally a palace, with frescoes, marble columns, and statuary. Bath temperatures range from 20C to 40C. I spent most of my time in the 36, 38, or 40C baths, then we went outside to the swimming pool for a bit, which was also amazing. (The gallery shows mostly swimming pool photos, and none of the spas.)

My favorite thing was watching the USA/ENG world cup match on a giant screen in Szabadsag Ter with a thousand or so people. I haven't been ble to watch any more games since then, because I don't get ESPN, and ESPN360 is blocked on my ISP. But a friend told me that Univision is streaming all the games online, so I'm going to go switch computers and watch me some futbol. This one can't handle it.

Dear Iceland Volcano:

Please stop erupting.

Dear EU air control: Please open airports and allow transatlantic flights.

I'm supposed to be flying to Germany in 11 days. There are very few flights leaving for Europe right now, and I have no idea if or when this is going to change. I'm stalking my airline's flight status page, and their separate page for volcano-related travel disruptions (which still only lists affected dates until this Friday), but everything is so unpredictable.

I should email the Institut and ask what happens to the $2100 I paid them if, due to this flight ban and thus circumstances out of my control, I can't make it to Europe at all. Because their refund policy (which I can't find in my email at all, annoyingly) has something to the effect of no refund if you cancel less than a week ahead of time.

Which, I have to say, if there weren't a VOLCANO spewing ash into European airspace, I sure as shit wouldn't cancel this trip I've been looking forward to for, oh, 9 months now. And the way things are shaping up, I may not even know if I can GET to Europe until the day I'm supposed to leave.

I don't deal well with changes that are out of my control.

Another no, more on Berlin

Space opera romance was rejected. Probably for the better, because I'm not really a romance writer. I like reading romances, good ones anyway, but I'm not of the mindset to write books that romance readers would enjoy.

So I'm trying to figure out how to turn the story into a full-length, straight-up space opera with romancey bits in. I despair of finding enough material to fill it out. We'll see.

I've decided that, barring a global H1N1 pandemic, I'll do the Goethe Institut in Berlin in April. I just need to decide whether I want to look into renting an apartment through Craigslist (some run 15E/day, which is about the same as the homestay fee) or do the homestay. Staying in Kreuzberg or Friedrichshain is an inducement, really, so... hum. I have a friend who's planning to move there in the next couple months, so I'll get her input later.

And for our 10th anniversary, Ben & I are planning a trip to Vienna, Bratislava, and Budapest for the beginning of May. Probably 1.5-2 weeks, since I don't want to short-change any cities. Three-four days per city sounds reasonable, though maybe 2 in Bratislava? (It's the Habsburg dual-monarchy tour!)

Vacation, editing, and a rejection

First, the rejection. I wrote a piece of flash fiction (a story under 1000 words) earlier this year, and I submitted it in March. I got periodic updates, saying that my story had made it past the first and second cut, which was pretty awesome, really. I finally got the note saying it had been rejected the other day. But the feedback in the letter was fairly positive -- most of the 8 reviewers liked it, and one said it was among their favorites. So my spirit isn't crushed, though I'd (obviously) have preferred for them to buy it. Ah well. I'll look at revising it a bit and send it to a couple more places, after I'm done editing this stupid novella.

Nice segue. So, I'd finished the first draft last I mentioned it. Then while I was sitting on it for a couple weeks, I started hating the second half. I asked my beta readers, and they agreed that it was pretty weak. So I floundered a bit, trying to figure out WTF to do with the 13K words at the end, since I don't have much time to rewrite them before the submission closes. One of my betas gave me an idea that I thought would save me a ton of rewriting, but I was wrong. So I've basically rewritten 10K words or so since Tuesday morning. I would like to die now, plz. (Not really.) The story is stronger, I think, and I hope I can get it edited into publishable format before ... the 10th. With 2 planned vacations in the middle and a 2-day orientation (unpaid, boo) for another potential temp placement. And get the synopsis done and write a decent query letter.

Shoot me? I guess I can spend some time synopsizing on Delta next weekend. Though both my flights are at shitty times as far as consciousness goes: 6:30 am out and a red-eye back from Oregon. Bleh.

Look there. It's another segue. So I'm going to Oregon next weekend for a family get-together thing on my MIL's side. Should be interesting, though I had enough of Oregon during my residency, TYVM. At least summer shouldn't involve constant rain. Ugh. Then the weekend after that, I'm heading to the beach with the anime club. Based on past experience, I'll have No Time to work on writing. At all. But I hope to get the stupid thing sent out before we go.

So, I'm trying to decide whether to take two of my favorite movies with me. They're both brilliant, but neither is particularly happy. German movies tend not to be.

One is Gegen die Wand, a movie by Fatih Akin about two Turks living in Germany and how they react to being there. The male lead, Cahit, has excised everything Turkish from his life, while the female lead, Sibel, chafes under her parents' strict traditionality. I saw it while I was living in Oregon, and it was a beautiful sucker punch to the gut.

The other is The Lives of Others, which won an Oscar the other year for best foreign language film. It's about a playwright living in East Berlin in 1985 or so and the Stasi agent assigned to spy on him. It's a fairly authentic portrayal of life in the DDR (with a bit of artistic license, of course), according to people who lived there. Folk singer Wolf Biermann said that the tale matched part of his own life. (He had quite a file in the Stasi's archive.)

I don't know if there'd be an audience for them out there, or even anything to watch DVDs on in the rental house. The second movie has a happier ending, in a way, but there's still a heaping spoonful of tragedy. One thing I remember from living in Germany is the person who said, "You Americans, always with the happy ending." I have to say, she may have had a point.

On a happier note, have a Tarkan video. See why I'm obsessing?

I get bad ideas.

About a year ago, I was lamenting the fact that I didn't have vacation time to burn so I could take a Goethe Institut course. They have 2-, 4-, and 8-week intensives throughout Germany, and they're highly reputable. They offer the Test of German as a Foreign Language, though it's called something else, which is The Way to get a job in Germany as a furrner. They also have German for Professionals (business, IT, etc), so you can learn your jargon.

I majored in German (and chemistry) in college. I spent my junior year there. My skills are atrophying, sadly. I can read, for example, Spiegel, but my conversation ability is diminished. I can also write in German, though I need to check words in the dictionary sometimes. I'd love a refresher.

I took their online placement test, and it said I should take the C1 course, which is the second highest skill level. (You take another placement test when you get there, then another when you finish. Theoretically, you ought to move up.)

It occurred to me last night that, with this whole not working full time thing, I could hare off to Berlin for a month, and I wouldn't have to worry about vacation time or anything. I just wouldn't be able to work for that month, so I'd probably have to pick up extra shifts before and after to make up for it. (The joy of temping.)

I did a finances check, and I could afford it. Air fare is decent at the moment. And a careful plan could mean I'm in Berlin for some of the 20th anniversary of Mauerfall stuff. But that's in three months. Also, it'll be cold then. I'd like to go to Berlin sometime when it's warm, like spring or summer.

Argh. I have time now, and money, but I can't convince myself it's a good idea.

On history, alternate

I dig alternate histories. In theory, anyway; most of the published ones are about the Civil War or WW2. BORING!

So I'm having fun playing with Prussian history and making them less militaristic and averting WW1-as-we-know-it. I just finished The Guns of August by Barbara Tuchman, and I've started King, Kaiser, Tsar: Three royal cousins who led the world to war by Catrine Clay. Because my local library's German history selection is largely limited to the periods 1914-19 and 1939-45. I'm definitely buying the former; it's a neat reference and very not boring (despite being a play by play of the first month of WW1.) The latter I may have to buy just for the pictures, including uniform pr0n.

It's rather ironic, considering my penchant for social democracies, that I adore military SF and space opera. But it's all about the politics.

ObRandom: I can still pick German handwriting out of a line-up.

YouTubing

So, skiing was fun on Sunday. I only fell on my ass twice, though the first time I torqued my knee a bit, so it bothered me all day. But the custom insoles I got with my own pair of boots made a world of difference in comfort and support. If you've got wonky or gimpy knees, ankles, or hips and want to try skiing, I can't recommend custom insoles highly enough. They're not cheap, but they make an extreme difference in your skiing experience. I pronate pretty severely (that means my ankles bend inward when I put weight down), and the custom arch supports kept them in a good spot. Recommended!

Because I wasn't sure how sore or tired I'd be, I took Monday off work. Good thing, because I didn't get up until 8 am, which is my usual go time. I also discovered, much to my dismay, that the downstairs heat stopped working. So I called the HVAC folks, and they sent a guy around this morning. This means we sat in the living room, huddled under blankets and surrounded by cats, for 2 hours to watch House and Heroes. (They are the only 2 American TV shows I currently follow.) Turned out the thermostat died, so I paid the guy handsomely to replace it. Bleh.

Anyway. Yesterday afternoon, I was looking for ... I forget what exactly, but it had to do with the ghost stations in Cold War-era Berlin. After the Wall was built, several of the train lines went from west through the east to the west, and they didn't stop in the east, so the East Berliners couldn't defect. So a bunch of stations were basically abandoned or had platforms boarded off, and the East German border patrol, Berlin section, watched it to make sure people weren't trying to escape through train tunnels.

So I googled for something, and I found a bunch of cool videos that people had taken in the late 80s, of riding through the U-bahn, of taking the S-bahn across the Wall, that sort of thing. Then I got distracted surfing related videos on YouTube. It was AWESOME. Seriously, I can't express how inordinately happy finding these random old handheld VHS videocamera recordings on the internet made me.

Because I love you all, I share them with you.

This is how Berlin looked the first time I went, in 1997. OK, not quite this run-down, but the division was still visible: crossing the border, late 1980s. For contrast, this response video: The same route in 2007. I love Berlin. Truly.

Here is a video of an east to west wall crossing in 1988. The big building is the Reichstag. Watch as the guard tower passes on the right side of the train.

This one shows a ghost station on the U6 line.

This one,from 4/90, is titled "East/West Berlin contrasts." It's 10 minutes, and at 8', you can watch another ghost station pass-through. They were officially reopened by then, but several were in need of renovation before people could go in.

This is another long video going from east to west, in 1988.

Then when I finally stopped being distracted, I worked on version 2 of my ghost station/trains story, which seems to be working better from a completely different perspective, in a completely different setup. Funny how that works. It might also be the first story I don't spend 7000 words on. We'll see.

Finished short story?

So, I've got some writing goals for the year. 1: Finish 4 short stories and submit them for publication. 2: Get NBR ready to query.

I have Seeds of Rebellion, 6900 words, awaiting crit from my writing group. I think the last thousand words or so need some editing and revision, especially the ending, but I'll get some peer opinions.

I'm working on the ghosts/trains story now. I think I need to change it to third person (it's currently first) to make it work better. It reads more like a memoir/diary than how I want it to be. But it stands at 1600 words, with some outlining of the whole thing so I know where it's going. I'm still stewing on the POV change, though.

No idea yet what the other 2 will be. I'm pondering a children's story version of part of the ghosts one, with the setting changed. There's a creepy bit of history regarding a part of the Spree River and the Berlin Wall and kids drowning because the West German fire department couldn't go in (jurisdiction and stuff) and the East German *wouldn't.* Soviet-era Germany was a strange, sad place.

NBR has about 30000 words typed up, the skeleton of the story (though I have 2 chapters yet to type up from the handwritten draft). The first chapter is reasonably polished, but that leaves 28 to go. It's gonna be exciting. I hope I can get my act together and finish it. That's why I give myself targets.

Our trip to Berlin - Christmas 07

20 Dez 07

Oy. Well, we're in Germany at least.

We were boarding our flight to JFK when the pilot kicked everyone off because the ATC in New York said they were too busy, so we had a 2-hour delay. So everyone from the flight (all 13 rows) stood en queue to get rebooked onto new flights. The amazing gate attendant, Joe, tried to get us routed through anywhere – Atlanta, Cincinnati, Chicago – to Berlin. He found us one flight that went from RDU to ATL then Manchester, UK, then Paris, then Berlin, and a different one through Gatwick. He was mostly trying to get us to Europe at all. Then he got us on a flight to Frankfurt via Cincinnati, from where we were responsible for our own transit. And, of course, because it was air traffic's fault, not weather or the airline, we got to foot the bill for the shiny ICE from Frankfurt to Leipzig to Berlin, to the tune of E186. Thanks, Ben's mom's Christmas money! It's more expensive, but it's 3 hours faster than the IC and a hell of a lot faster than IR would be, so wev.

I have unsuccessfully tried to connect to the ICE wireless net, probably because it isn't available on this line. Alas. No internet for me.

I really want to take a shower.

Got to the hotel around 5:30. We walked from Hauptbahnhof. It was cold & dark, and it was about a km. I'd napped a bit on the train, so I was ready to keep going, but Ben was knackered, so he took a nap while I showered, so we headed out to dinner & a Christmas market.

Dinner was at a placed called Mirchi that Ben found in the guide book. It's an Indonesian
fusion place, and I had a cheese dish that was a lot like paneer makhani, while Ben had shrimp (unsurprisingly.) After that, we took the U-bahn down to the Gendarmenmarkt to visit the Christmas market there. It cost a Euro to get in, but it was worth it. Lots of vendors, mostly selling roasted nuts, sausage, baked goods, and warm (alcoholic) beverages. I got a couple small stone elephants (lapis & 'speckstein'), and we bought Lebkuchen. Kein Weihnacht ohne Lebkuchen! And Glühwein, of course.

We were cold & tired, so we headed back around 9 to get some Zs.

21 Dez

Up bright & early (well, dark & foggy) to get a guided tour that met on the other side of town. Stopped at a coffee shop just across the street to get breakfast & caffeine before hopping on the train.

The guided tour was fascinating. Our guide was an expat Kiwi who married an East German woman after he moved to Berlin 5 years ago. He was as keen on Cold War-era Berlin history as I am, except that he actually majored in it at university. Learned quite a bit, really. Saw a lot of things I would have missed otherwise because they weren't on my radar. 90% of eastern Berlin was destroyed in the war, and 60% of western.

It ended at the Reichstag, which is now going by Bundestag to project a friendly image, and you can go up to the observation platform, so we queued up – Kontrolle and metal detector when you go in, and they only allow so many people to be going through at one time, so you get to wait outside. In summer, apparently, the line can be 3 hours long. (Ben notes that the government is having difficulty getting people to call it the Bundestag, as all the maps still label it Reichstag.) In, up a lift, and back outside to the roof. You have a great vantage point of the city, and the glass dome in the center looks down on the parliamentary chambers (not in session over the holidays.) There's also an overpriced upscale cafe on the roof (E14,50 salad.) Despite the fact that all I'd had to eat since 9 am was yogurt & granola and a muffin, it was 3:30, and I was half frozen, I had no desire to pay that much for food, so we walked more. The tour guide had said there was a cafe across the street, so we started over there. The menu posted in the window didn't look too veggie friendly, so we went back to the Brandenburger Tor area to poke our heads into the bank with the Frank Gehry sculpture of a whale. It was as weird as it sounds. We'd decided to see if we could get tickets to Figaro, so we were going to walk in the direction of the opera house anyway, and look for food along the way. We stopped at a cafe/konditorei that served drinking chocolate (yum.) I got one of those, and Ben got a Berliner Weisse mit Schuss (rot). Actually wasn't that bad. For food, Ben tried the Currywurst mit Pommes (he says he liked it, and the fries were top notch), and I got a gnocchi with spinach in gorgonzola sauce, also quite tasty. Then off to the Staatsoper (which was bombed twice in WW2, once in 1941, rebuilt, then bombed again), where we got tickets for Figaro then wandered around the Christmas market am Opernpalais until it was time to get seated for the show. Saw a bunch of cool things, including an oil lamp that looked like a tree and if it wouldn't become so many shards of glass in our luggage would be coming home with us, but only bought Glühwein (returned the cup, wasn't that interesting), roasted nuts, and some hard candies. I will buy roasted chestnuts at a market before we leave. (Europe was unaffected by the chestnut blight, so they are far more plentiful.)

We were vaguely underdressed for the opera, but we had the very back row in the top level, so it wasn't like we were front center parkett or anything. Friedrich der Grosse commissioned the Staatsoper to give everyone the chance to see the opera, not just the rich, so I didn't feel too badly, since surely peasants in 1815 were far less well-dressed than I. The building was really pretty and had some good acoustics. The opera was fun, too. They had supertitles in German. I followed them (mostly – they used a fair bit of archaic language), and Ben says he switched between trying to read and trying to follow the Italian. It was funny, and there was a happy ending. Alles Gute!

Then walking back to the U-bahn station, stopping to take pictures of a Bugatti in a Bentley/Bugatti dealer window, and a laser-eyed manekineko. Back to the hotel, download pictures, and wrote this. Now to sleep. Tomorrow, the zoo.

22 Dez

Another long day, but not as long as yesterday by far.

Up, dressed, off to the Zoo. Bought a combination ticket for the Zoo & Aquarium, and by the time we were done at the Zoo, going inside to the Aquarium was feeling like a great idea. Still cold & cloudy. A lot of the animals were hiding inside to keep warm, but Knut was outside enjoying the cold, swimming around in his little river thing and drawing a crowd. We got some good pictures of Cute Knut, who's about a year old now. There was also a baby pygmy chimp (the first ever at the Zoo, according to a man watching them), a baby oran or two, and a pair of lion cubs. Then we went to the Aquarium, which was blessedly inside, and contained several really creepy spiders.

Went over to the Christmas Market at the Gedächtniskirche. Got some Glühwein, roasted chestnuts (all for me, Ben didn't like them), and a couple trinkety things, then went down to the KaDeWe. I learned about it in German class in high school: it's the largest department store on the continent (not all of Europe; I think Harrod's is bigger), and the communist government upheld it as a symbol of capitalist decadence and whatnot, but when the wall came down, that's where the Ossis headed first.

KaDeWe is huge, and it was full of people doing holiday shopping, unsurprisingly. I looked at the women's fashion, saw a few cute things that I didn't want to pay ludicrous amounts of money for (like E400 for a sweater) and mostly laughed. But there were some cute German shoes for not-unreasonable prices, if I needed more shoes. Then we went to the Kultur floor, bought some CDs for us & friends, perused books, bought nice chocolate, and lost my hat. I also discovered my coat is ripping at the seam in the lining. So I was unhappy. Then we went back to the Christmas Market, where I bought a new hat & we had more Glühwein and some food, then went back to the hotel, where we died. I also discovered that the power converter and the MacBook charger are not friends. Unfortunately, indeed.

23 Dez

The MacBook and the power converter seem to have a tenuous relationship: the converter starts overheating after about half an hour of charge time. But it works, so...

Today we walked along part of the wall. The Wall Memorial was closed for the holiday, so we might go back on Wednesday when it'll be open again. We were able to see part of the death strip, however, because it's just an open space.

After that, we took the U down to Alexanderplatz (Alex to locals), and stood in line for about an hour to go up the Fernsehturm, which has a very fast lift – 6 m/s, so you go up about 250 m in less than a minute. Nice air pressure changes. The viewing platform offers a 360º view of the city, and on a clear day, I imagine you can see all the things depicted in the photographs stationed throughout. Today it was sunny but hazy, so we could see a few hundred meters away, but not much further.

Then back down, back to the train station for some lunch, and hiking over to the Marienkirche, which was not allowing entry despite there not being a sign. So we looked at the fountain of Neptune and walked over to the Berliner Dom. We stopped at the Ampelmännchen shop and picked up some Ampelmann kitsch. Ostalgie is the best. Then the Dom: 5E entry, but the daily operation fee for the church is 10,500E, so they need all the loot they can get. Inside is very lavish and not particularly in the non-ornate style of Lutherans. But it's very lovely, and they finished the parish church section in 1989. Then you can hike up a whole bunch of stairs and walk around the cupola on the roof. It also offers lovely views, but it had become nearly dark by the time we went up, and it was cloudy besides. So back down, then further down, into the crypt of the Hohenzollern dynasty. Some ornate sarcophagi, some fairly simple tin boxes. Then to get out, you have to go through the gift shop. Quelle surprise. Ben bought a build-your-own paper model of the Dom. It looks hard. I got a bookmark of the Brandenburg Gate with what looks like an 1800s painting on it.

Then we went to the Luciamarket at the Kulturbrauerei over in Prenzlauer Berg (the low-rent district.) Not a whole lot to buy, and the Glühwein mugs weren't terribly exciting, so I didn't come back with one. We did get some Fladenbrot with cheese, tomatoes, cucumbers, cabbage, & garlic sauce, then some potato pancakes with apple sauce, before heading back. It's the first night so far we've been back before 10 pm, and I'm looking forward to a whole lot of sleep tonight.

24 Dez

A lot of things were closed today. Museums are often closed on Mondays, and Christmas Eve is a public holiday. So we went down to see if the Stasi archive exhibit was open, or the Topography of Terror, an outdoor exhibit on the SS & Gestapo. Both were closed, but the Topography is scheduled to be open tomorrow & Wednesday, so we'll try to work it in then. The Stasi archive is closed on holidays, which the 25^th and 26^th usually are, but since we'll be in the area, we'll stop by again. Then we went down to the Checkpoint Charlie area, where things were bustling. If you take your passport, you can pay to get it stamped with original border crossing stamps. Communist kitsch is profitable; I presume capitalist swine are delighting in the irony. We opted not to go into the museum at Checkpoint Charlie, then wandered a bit and then over to Potsdamer Platz, which was rubble in 1945, a no-man's-land until 1990, and now is a mass of skyscrapers. There were 2 Christmas markets, both ghost towns. The one on Potsdamer Platz had a snow tube slide, which Ben went down. Then we went over to the Sony Center, and it was a lot smaller and almost entirely closed, but there was a Lego/Duplo Christmas tree & Santa. We wandered around a little more, making a detour back to the KaDeWe to see if they had found my hat. No luck; someone now has a nice hand-knitted ski hat. I hope they enjoy it, fucker.

Loitered a bit, got donuts at the Dunkin Donuts (I had a donut named after one of the Wise Guys, Caspar. It had nut-nougat filling and a chocolate tree on top. They should sell those in the States.), wandered around a bit more, got dinner at a restaurant that was actually open and serving real food (Josty im Sony Center), and decided to come back. There's an organ concert at the Gedächtniskirche, but I guess we're not going, because Ben's getting naked to take his shower, and I've left the decision up to him, since he's keen on organ stuff. So we're channel surfing on wacky German Christmas programming. We saw the Simpsons holiday special, but mostly since we've been surfing. Fun and excitement. Ben was entranced by Germany's funniest home videos for a while. I made him change it. Then there was a weird animal video show on the next channel. If we're home and bored tomorrow night, we can watch Harry Potter at 8:15 on ZDF. We'll see.

25 Dez

Frohes Fest! I was concerned we wouldn't find anything open today, it being a holiday, but the web said that the city museums were open, so we spent the day in the SMB, the Pergamon and the Bode. The Pergamon has a lot of Mediterranean and Middle Eastern art, including a collection of Islamic art and a temporary exhibit of the Prussian expedition to Egypt, sponsored by Kaiser Wilhelm and company. The Bode was formerly known as the König Friedrich Museum (after the Great Elector) then renamed. All the museums took a hit in the war, and presumably the small, portable things were moved to safe storage places.

So when the museums closed at 6, we sought some dinner. A variety of places were open on Oranienburger Str, including a couple Indian joints and a Jewish restaurant, but we ate at a place called Oranium, where they had some awesome sounding pasta.

Since it's cold and dark, and probably not a whole lot going on tonight, we came home and are watching Harry Potter. Whee.

26 Dez

Started the day at the Wall Memorial and archive, which is free, and you can overlook the site of the Wall and a preserved death strip (presumably without the land mines). Then we tried to go to the Stasi Archive again, and it was still closed for the holiday. Damn. So then a walk over to the Topography of Terror, an exhibit about the Gestapo and SS, and their prison which had been on that site. The building started life as a hotel, then became a school, then the Nazis took it over. Then the Soviets demolished it, and digging around there (to expand the wall?) uncovered the basement and its cells. Then it was turned into a memorial for the people who were tortured and murdered there or sent to KZ to die.

Freezing cold, we walked over to Potsdamer Platz to use the internet and eat lunch at Dunkin Donuts. Then we took the U2 out to Sophie Charlotte Platz and walked up to the castle. There's no photography allowed inside, so we bought a book. The new wing of the castle is a largely Baroque & Rococo design, with a hall modeled on the Hall of Mirrors at Versailles. Much of the furnishings in the castle are not the originals, and because of bomb damage, it had to be reconstructed from the ground up. They used some inventory records and the like to determine what had been in the house. Ostentatious, gaudy, and pretty. Those Hohenzollerns had tons of loot.

Then the Christmas Market at Charlottenburg, reputedly the first one there for a really long time. Got some food, hot drinks, and wandered around in the cold. Then because it was only 6 something, and too early to return to the hotel, we walked up the Ku'damm a bit and window-shopped to the U-bahn station. A sign with advertisements for real estate informed us that we could buy about 21,000 sq ft apartment house for 3 million Euro. It was in a good location, in a historic building, and presumably you could make your 3 million Euro back, but ...

So, tomorrow we have to go home again. Blah. Don't wanna.

Ben commented a few times that only crazy Germans would come up with the idea of standing around outside, drinking hot beverages and eating horribly unhealthy food in the middle of winter. But they've got it right, man. Christmas in Germany is about booze and lights and family, and buying stuff of course, and some Jesus whatnot, but none of that ridiculous “War on Christmas” nonsense the Ridiculous Right came up with. But mostly the booze and cakes. Yum.