"I want to spend some time with a Wienerin..." "I bet you do."

So, I suppose it would be good to update.

I'm in Vienna. The city is awesome in a totally other way than Berlin. Where in Berlin there were big grey apartment blocks, tons of recent history, graffiti, baller clubs and shitty weather, there is in Vienna baroque architecture, windy cobblestone streets, quaint little pubs where I can hardly understand the bartender - the dialect is so different - and the first signs of spring. It's a nice about-face.

And on that note, with Vienna has come a truckload of homework. I'm taking classes at the University of Vienna, in German, which have brought my workload back up to the liberal arts norm, i.e., only four hours of class a week but as a counter to that 300 pages of reading. It's more than I did in Berlin hands down, but it's also nice to really feel like a student and be in a university environment again with smart young people. Besides the university courses I've also got to take two courses at the Amerika-Institut, which require not only tons of reading but also going to the theater or visiting museums, which is a mixed blessing; it's cool to see all that stuff, but sometimes not when it kills 6 hours of your week's free time.

I went to Prague the weekend before this last one, which was quite cool, although I have to say the sheer volume of tourists there is borderline intolerable, and is probably worse during the summer. THAT is a beautiful city, good lord. I love the spiky towers and the way it's built into the topography. A really astonishing place.

Now I'm going to go do homework, since I have to read 50 pages of Don Karlos by tomorrow. I'll post a bigger, better and more uncut telling of Vienna soon.

So, my last few days in Berlin are here. I'm finally done with class, which is really nice, and oh, I got a tattoo. Sweet. 

The last couple weeks have been quite busy as well as fairly awesome. After the first Berlinale film I saw another one about these old Korean-German families moving to Korea and the cultural shift they had to adapt to, and then I saw a series of short films. Good stuff.

And then I finally got to spend some time with some real Germans two weekends ago. Two nights in a row we ended up in a bar with actual Germans, which has been shockingly rare since everyone at the Institut is all international. I'm really hoping going to Vienna in three days means we'll get to spend more time with the Austrians. It's been remarkably hard to meet local people here, and I worry that living in a homestay in Wien will mean that it will be remarkably hard there, as well. We'll see. I got into both classes I wanted, and they're both small-ish, so as long as I can keep up with academic-level Austrian German and not fail, maybe I'll get to meet people in the classes, too.

What else have I been doing? Smoking too much, in both forms, and drinking. Oh, and we went to Potsdam, where there are lots of gorgeous old palaces/castles and a really pretty old city. Quite impressive. The city's only about 45 minutes outside of Berlin - you can take the S-Bahn there for pretty much normal transit prices - and the vibe is completely different; although Potsdam was located in East Germany, the look and feel of it is very much that of a well-off, well-preserved German city, not the ramshackle postwar grittiness of Berlin. That was good for a diversion.

I guess besides that I've mostly been wandering around, eating good food, hitting up bars and seeing occasionally art or live music. I did buy an original Otto Dix lithography at a gallery, that was cool. But really, seeing crazy Berlin shit has become kind of a normal day for me. I get off the train, and right there's a beloved national monument, or a building clearly built in a socialist period of rule. Study abroad is kind of a funny joke. Especially getting stipend money and with the help of student loan funds, it's essentially a big, long, irresponsible European vacation. Of course, I'm completely okay with that. But last semester was the exact opposite - I worked, I studied a lot, I spent relatively little time partying, I saved money (kind of) and other stuff. Now, I pretty much have no responsibilities, little homework, relatively a lot of money I can (for the moment) take for granted, and I'm in Europe, for Christ's sake. This may be the first/last time in my life I get to have so much levity.

And I intend to enjoy it. Hence the tattoo.

Amsterdam and back again, or hung low in Hengelo.

So. I know it's an out-and-out cliché to go to Amsterdam if you smoke pot.

BUT.

The weed is soooooo fucking good. And the hash. This past weekend I discovered this fact in person, when I took the train with 6 other kids from school. The train ride was good, except for having to wait fucking an hour and a half in this town called Hengelo because something was wrong with the train or something, meaning we got in at 9.30 instead of at 7.00. But oh well. It was well worth it. After meeting up with some peoples studying there, we hit the streets, and then the joints, and didn't stop till we finished the last brownie crumbs Sunday evening on the ride back.

Amsterdam seriously looks like it was built by something Tolkien created. I was discussing this in a coffee shop with one of my friends there, and he suggested it was built by Keebler Elves. I offered my opinion that, at the start of the day, you could probably see these friendly Dutch elves performing their chores and singing a happy jingle in clogs. That's not to degrade the city or its aesthetics - it's fucking gorgeous; pretty much the antithesis of the stark Berlin greys and browns covered in graffiti. But it's so tiny! One alley we walked through was literally like a person and a half wide, and not your fatass American person either. In addition to being tiny though, there's so much character. I'm sure those of you who've been there already know all about this, but the houses lean all crazily because of settling foundations in the swampy soil, and also, there are cranes on every single gable for the purpose of hoisting heavy furniture into the upper floors from the street. Pretty ingenious/elfy.

So pretty much the rest of the weekend we rode bikes all over the place and got high. I bough a gram and a half of hash and like four of weed, all of which we rolled up and smoked, and I was far from alone in purchasing. The bikes were dirt cheap; they cost 20€. And Amsterdam is built for bikes the way L.A. was built for cars, so aside from getting yelled at in Dutch by the po-po for riding in a pedestrian only zone, it was incredibly easy to get around. Centrum is the heart of the city (and as far as I can tell, far and away the place worth spending time besides the museum area), and we pretty much covered the whole thing, plus a good deal of the other parts riding to the Museumplein to see the Van Gogh Museum and ride through the Vondelpark. Though I slept like a combined ten hours under my jacket on a concrete floor in the dorms we stayed in, it was worth it.

Edit: Dutch sounds like German and English spoken together while working up a big loogie. It's very bizarre. "G" in Dutch is always pronounced like a hard "ch," and there are double vowels everywhere. Ouijdenberger grachtenflakken.

And now I'm back here, and have a fucking cold again. It is impossible to be healthy in Berlin this winter, what with everyone in my class being sick off and on, breathing in filthy U-Bahn air like an hour out of every day, and the shitty, depressing weather. Oh, and smoking and drinking. But that's not important. On a good note, the Berlinale is going on - it's a massive international film festival spread across the city, and it's surprisingly easy to get tickets. Oftentimes the filmmakers/actors give talks afterward and take questions from the audience. Last night after a beer we saw this documentary/interview film about this French guy, Michel Vaujour, who broke out of prison like 5 or 6 times, no joke. Really cool. I may be going tomorrow or Friday to see a series of short films. Unfortunately, all of the huge red-carpet premiers are booked solid, but I guess you can still wander down to Potsdamer Platz if you want to see Kate Winslet and people like that.

The Big Things

Minnesota weather may me cold as balls, but at least the sun shines. Berlin has been unfailingly grey for the vast majority of the time I've spent here thus far. It's fucking depressing.

That being said, I've been all over the place the last three weeks. There is a surplus of cultural activities here, to be sure: art, music, opera, theater. Also, you can't swing a dead cat without hitting a club or bar in some places. I'm trying to think of a general timeline for what I've been up to the past three weeks... well. 

For starters, I went to my first Berlin flea market, which takes place in the „Mauerpark“, located in the former death strip of the Berlin wall in Prenzlauer Berg. This neighborhood is very Brooklyn-y - ten or fifteen years ago, right after reunification, it and a few other cheap and interesting East Berlin neighborhoods got mobbed by artists, counterculture enthusiasts, squatters and rave kids. Being the natural progression, this was subsequently noticed by hipsters, who then began moving in and gentrifying

the place. Now, rents there are considerably higher than fifteen years ago, and everyone and their mother is walking around with a baby carriage. But I digress. The flea market was massive.  There were tons of record stores, used book stands, food and mulled wine everywhere. I ended up buying books, of course, because I have no self-restraint in the face of cheap literature. About a week ago I went to another flea market on the west side of town which was mostly antiques, hardware, knickknacks and one kiosk that was all Legos.

The museums here are incredible. I've been going to at least one a week. The two contemporary ones I visited were fantastic. In KW, the first museum I visited, there was an exhibit called Political/Minimal. Without a doubt the most eye-catching piece there was a fifteen-foot black circular canvas completely covered in millions of dead black flies. Fucking gross. Another contemporary museum, the Hamburger Bahnhof, is one of the best museums I've ever been to in my life. It's set up in this old renovated train station with a huge vaulted ceiling and unthinkable amounts of exhibition space. When I was there, there was an Andy Warhol exhibit, a huge Joseph Beuys exhibit, and another one consisting of some fantastic contemporary art as part of a series of exhibits in the city that are concerned with debunking the myth of the artist. In the Neue Nationalgalerie I saw a Jeff Koons exhibit and a Paul Klee exhibit, the latter of which was amazing. I'm pretty sure later today we're smoking and going to the Jewish Museum.

Berlin loves it some techno. The club scene here, from my limited experience, lives up to the hype. Two weeks ago I saw the Bug and Kode9 as well as some house DJs in this massive club that's become something of an institution, Berghain. I'd post pictures, but cameras are strictly forbidden as apparently you're allowed to have sex in the basement and they don't want photos of that and other debauchery getting out. Seriously. But anyway, this club is located in this massive old factory building. It's fucking huge. There are two big dancefloors and like four bars that I saw, everyone smokes all manner of things inside, and the system is unbelievable. I had to stuff tissues in my ears because I thought my eardrums were going to rupture from the bass. Two nights ago I went to another club, Maria, for Skream, Benga, and Daniel Bell in the back room. There was all sorts of minimalist artsy stuff on the walls, projector screens running around the perimeter of the dancefloor, and lots of alcohol and weed. Dubstep necessitates spliffs.

Besides debauchery though, I've been spending a lot of time just walking around different neighborhoods and checking things out, and in the process taking tons of pictures. I went to this former Prussian palace in the west of the city that was pretty beautiful in a pompous, rococo sort of way. My cousin was here this weekend and we went to this park where there's this derelict bunker/flak tower complex you can visit, and the view of the city is amazing. From there you can see the TV tower, the nuclear power plant way off near the airport, the old buildings, the new skyscrapers, and S-Bahn trains running around. And of course, graffiti.  Berlin is kind of dirty and grey, but especially when you look at it from up in an old flak tower you really get the feel for the scale and importance of a place like this.

Die Mauer im Kopf

What a hell of a last few days. Being at the Goethe Institut is, at least at the moment, a lot like starting college; i.e., it's gangbusters meeting people and going out and making friends and studying. I've had so little time to sort of sit and digest everything in the last week, mostly because I come home to eat and sleep and little else. But it's good. I've been taking photos like a crazy person, so there's lots of visual evidence for what I've been up to.

Berlin is, of course, an incredible city, as I will probably continue to reiterate here. The cityscape itself is such a ramshackle mix of concrete, old baroque marble buildings, Stalinist architecture, European flat blocks, and a few skyscrapers - most of it all covered in graffiti and some buildings still riddled

 with bullet holes from WWII. The aesthetic is amazing, and the history is writ large on everything. I passed a house on Große hamburger Straße that was swiss cheese with Soviet and German bullets and there were chunks taken out of the stone by mortar blasts. Also, I visited the Holocaust-Mahnmal (Mahnmal is a great German word that means "monument of warning"). I have to say, it's a bit understated, but seemingly good and the museum beneath is pretty powerful. They put a lot of effort into showing the effects of the genocide on individuals, which I think helps put things into perspective. Earlier today I went to the biggest remaining chunk of the wall with some friends from the Institut. That's another really interesting (and touristy) place to see some history. 

I have to say, for my part, I have a great deal of trouble actually imagining what living in a divided city would be like. Evidence of the division is there, though. The architecture in the east is markedly different. There are streetcar lines in the east but not in the west. The eastern districts are also filled up with Plattenbauten, these big socialist concrete apartment buildings. And yet the city has come back together fairly seamlessly in a lot of places.

And wow do they stay up late here. I went out last night around 10, started drinking around eleven, ended up at some girl's birthday party in this ba

r in Friedrichshain and ended up having a protracted drunken two-language conversation with these dudes about the differences between the German and American systems with regards to universities, jobs, lifestyles etc. We stayed out until like 5:30. Apparently that is quite normal. It was good to have some real contact with Berliners. The Institut feels more like Macalester than anything else; the group I've been spending the most time with consists of a Colombian dude, a dude from Italian Switzerland, a girl from Korea, and a girl from Louisiana. We speak German all the time, but it's good to speak with Berliners in that regard too because they're not making errors all the time. Speaking only German with non-native speakers has its drawbacks.

People also smoke a lot of cigarettes here. Even though there's a ban it's still allowed in the bars. I've got that wonderful little tickle in my throat that says, "if you continue to smoke, you are going to get sick." So I'mma have to cut back. Again. Good god.

But nyeah. More school tomorrow. Not much to distinguish Berlin weather from Minnesota (except I heard the Midwest got like a foot of snow?) because it's cold as balls, apparently the coldest winter in 22 years or something. Hopefully that'll change. This week should bring more interesting stuff regardless: more homework, more photos, more German, more parties.

Hallo

Yo.

I'm in Berlin.

After a deliciously long and smelly plane ride sitting between a really nice little old woman and some guy who didn't say a word the whole trip, I have landed in the Land of Deutsch. I had layovers in Chicago and then Munich, and by some miraculous twist of fate, neither of my flights were late. The Munich airport is squeaky clean; it looks like the Münchners just bought it from Ikea and put it together; i.e., it's super-European and well-designed while still a little weirdly laid out. 

It still seems a little bit hilarious that I'm here. I really did not remotely believe that I was actually leaving for Germany until I did, and even now it's surreal to be speaking German and catching glimpses of the Fernsehturm off in the distance. I got a ride from the airport with a Sri Lankan cabby who was pretty nice. Man. Berlin is something to look at. It's this awesome mix of a sort of Brooklyn asthetic, what with graffiti and a sort of unpretentious grittiness about it, and a European tile-roof thing that still hasn't scrubbed away all the evidence of World War II. I love it. I haven't had much time to explore, but my Vermittler are gone tomorrow so I'll probably dip out and go see some shit and take unholy amounts of pictures once I sleep off my (minor) jetlag.

Speaking of Vermittler, the people whose apartment I have a room in seem SO COOL. They both work in film/theater. The husband is pretty much a punk, as is his wife more or less, they both seem really nice and super-chill and their spacious apartment is covered in art. An apartment like this in Manhattan would cost an unthinkable amount.

That's it for now. I'll make a real post once something actually happens.