Tyskarna från Lund - Achtung X-mas

I haven't had a lot of words lately but my thoughts sound kind of like this.

German youth wearing gas mask

Today I took the train to the Olympic Stadium AKA Olympiastadion that was built for the 1936 Summer games.

My parents are going to the 2009 World Track & Field Championships in Berlin and I wanted to see how long it takes to get to the Stadium so that I can give them good advice on where to stay.

As I was walking from the train station to the Olympischer Platz, I passed two men holding hands and I thought that was nice. Then I walked behind a group of teenagers, one of whom was wearing a GAS MASK.

Um, what?

There wasn't a cloud in the sky of regular old water vapor much less a cloud of noxious gases or any obvious chemical warfare taking place.

Nope, it was a beautiful, bright, hot spring day, the kind of day that makes me fixate on beer gardens and feta salads, the kind of experience that would be completely f'ed up in a gas mask.

Oh well, I wore safety pins as earrings at one point and made up a fake band with Sunny called Jaysus and Jessica, the A in Jaysus being an anarchy symbol so I may know what that kid is going through.

After strolling down Jesse-Owens-Allee, I took the train to the beer garden. I busted out my order in German for a feta salad after rehearsing in line for ten minutes only to get a verbal slap down: they were out of feta.

Okay, I said, I'll have the salad with spargel even though for all I knew, spargel is German for dogshit. Bring it.

And they did: grilled white asparagus with the kind of lettuce English people call rocket, AND pumpkin seeds, AND strawberries. It was so good I would have spooned it through my gas mask if I'd needed.

fine line between funny and hate crime

I saw this on a blog and I laughed. I stole the image for National Emo Kid Beatdown Day and was going to say something funny about it yesterday.

Something about how I have no business talking since half the chicks in Berlin are sporting a variation of my hair and how some of my best friends have angular haircuts. How there's something vaguely hilarious about "expecting a punch in the face" for being emo, which almost no one I know can even define.

Except that an ACTUAL punch is not vague at all. It's very direct. And there are kids actually getting punched in the face for being emo which reads, to some, as homo.

I did some research and thought at first that the article I was reading, "Anti-Emo Riots Break Out Across Mexico" from March 27 was satire. But no, it was real news, reporting on how kids with shaggy, chunky hair and eye makeup are being attacked by other groups the reporter labeled as punks, metal heads, and gangsters.

Oh no no no.

Teenagers are notoriously insecure and some try to elevate themselves by putting others down but this isn't that. Or not JUST that. I read about the series of attacks, rampages, and police protection and then I went to a few blogs where I saw the words Anti-Emo Death Squad and Movimiento Anti Emo Sexual and I couldn't read anymore because I felt sick.

I thought about the stupid Tom Clancy book I tried to get into which was set in 1996 or something and the characters had just found out about this thing called the Internet and had these conversations, "Bill! I did not know you 'surf the web!'"

"I don't, but Jimmy's kid Billy does and hoo-boy is it interesting. Apparently neo-Nazis are spreading their vile words of hate on this newfangled thing called the Internet."

"What! Get Agent Blah-Blah on that right away!"

And I thought about how white shoelaces on combat boots means something in Germany, and I'm sure Germans get sick of this, but SORRY, IT HAPPENED AND IT WAS A BIG DEAL, I thought about Nazis and people who still believe in the same hate today and take it out on queers and anyone else who is different than them and I was sorry that I was going to make a joke about it.

Getting to the Strandbad Wannsee

Berlin, you are KILLING ME.

I already think you're the greatest for all the reasons I've mentioned before. Now you're just rubbing it in. Berlin is New York without the things that drive me crazy in New York (expense, insane sense of urgency) and now I know that it's also Seattle without the things that drive me crazy in Seattle (everything besides the nature).

During Sunday's hash we stopped to scout out the trail at a small beach on a lake. I noticed that it was terribly pretty and that it reminded me of Seattle's Golden Gardens. I was distracted, though, because I was delirious from running on almost no sleep and because two boys laughed every time I wandered past their towel. I WAS drifting around in circles but that is how delirium manifests. By no means was it hilarious, boys.

This morning I woke to my alarm and jumped off the mattress that the Long Walk Home guys kindly laid out for me in their living room. I had an appointment to see the apartment that I'm renting my last week here. Right away I noticed that don't feel good. For no good reason my head was pounding and my thoughts were molasses-slow. I looked in the mirror and a puffy white balloon stared back. What the hell? This is no state in which to wander around the city or sit in a cafe and be thoughtful. Museums were out: my eyes were so swollen I would barely see the art through my fleshy slabs of eyelid. This is the kind of day I'd get hit by a tram because I was standing on the tracks for ten minutes looking at my fingernails.

I'LL GO BACK TO THAT LAKE. Yes. Just as soon as I figure out where it is and after I make an awesome impression on my future roommates.

I was early for my appointment so I went to a Turkish cafe around the corner and ordered a latte. I sat at the bar and had a nonsense-based conversation with the woman working. All we were able to establish in ten minutes of not speaking the same language was that I'm from America and she's from Turkey. I was listening to the Arabic music and concentrating on not falling off the stool when I noticed her pouring Wild Turkey for two men at the other end of the bar. They must have seen me noticing because they pitched a campaign for me to join them. In drinking Wild Turkey. In the morning.

"Nein," I said, "No puedo."

Oops, wrong language.

"Danke," I said, "Pero no puedo."

Goddamnit. I can't meet my new roommates smelling like bourbon at 11 am. I rallied and impressed even myself by my smooth chattiness at the apartment, holding it together just long enough to get back to the sidewalk where I can start crawling to the store to buy a towel for the beach.

Outside the department store in Hermannplatz, I see a punky street kid sitting on the sidewalk. Not a strange sight, all the usual punky street kid signs intact, pink hair and combat boots etc, except he and a little old lady are totally hitting it off, talking and laughing and smiling. She says bye and starts to move on and he sits there grinning to himself. Oh my god, I'm starting to feel better. I want to run over and give them both noogies. I love people much more than I hate them. Sometimes.

I have a towel, I have pecans, I have faith in humanity, I am SO READY.

I'm smiling as the train rumbles out of the city center but the hard part is still ahead because when I get off, I don't know where to go. The hash group got me to the beach after cutting through woods and trails for a half hour. Oh, lord. Am I going to have to hold up my towel and mime the backstroke for someone to point me in the right direction?

Unfortunately, no, because that would have been funny.

The Wannsee lakes are big and obvious and apparently well known. Maybe you've heard the 1951 hit Pack die Badehose ein (Pack Your Swimsuit), a "cheery tune about a group of children going swimming on a hot summer's day at the Wannsee" by Cornelia Froboess. No? Well, she won sixth place in the 1962 Eurovision Song Contest so I don't know why not.

I sit in the grass by the docks and eat my lunch and feel merry about all the sailboats nearby. I like boats a lot even though I have no idea what to do when I'm on them.

I see a bathroom and go to change into my swimsuit since I assume I can find the beach I was at before, the one with no facilities. Since I'm not Swedish I don't like to take my clothes off in front of perfect strangers.

I'm in the stall mid-change, the stall which I think I've locked, when the door swings open. I make a strangled AH-AH-AH noise and reach for the handle and make eye contact with a middle-aged man in blue pants. A facilities guy. Who has the WHOLE PICTURE on what I look like when I'm wearing nothing but a shirt and high tops. Zip.

It's not pretty. Tell me one person who looks good in just a shirt and high tops. Not that I wanted to look GOOD for the facilities guy, I'm just saying. There are naked looks that are more flattering. I'm so flustered by my flash that I forget to flush the toilet so after I've exited and am washing my hands as quickly as possible, he goes back in the stall and does it for me. Double my humiliation. I run out.

I don't see the little beach from Sunday anywhere so I hike further. Every time I try to cut down to the water, I run into a retaining wall or a rowing club or something that keeps me from making it to the shore. After awhile, the trail opens and I see a group of girls in suits going into the entrance of a brick building. This is promising so I get in line behind them and hand the woman money just to see what she'll give me in return. What she gives me is a day pass to the SWIM CLUB!

This is not what I was going for but it'll do. This is fancy, this has little cabana chairs that remind me of Beverly Hills 90210 and kiosks selling schnitzel. I was looking for the stretch of sand with a shed covered in graffiti and cigarette butts everywhere.

The best thing about this, though, is that it's in the city. It's at the end of the train line, but it's ON the line. It cost me less than three Euro to get here, to the Strandbad Wannsee, but if I didn't have three Euro I could still spend all day along the Spree and Havel rivers and by the canals in the central part of the city. There is water everywhere. I had no idea. Apparently, from Hamburg, in the north of the country, you can sail through Germany, passing Berlin on your way to the Mediterranean and Black Seas.

You have small?

Today I left the room in Simone's apartment I rented for the last month and moved my bags into a living room.

When I told Charlie that I needed a place to stay for five days before I go to Copenhagen, he said I could stay with his Long Walk Home band mates.

"Are you sure?" I asked.

"Yeah," He said, "You can stay there. And if they say you can't, I'll tell them I'm quitting the band."

WOW. Ha! Friends, that right there is LOYALTY.

To me, not to the band, sorry guys. It would suck to have your singer quit just weeks before the album comes out in Germany, Austria and Switzerland, huh?

This morning I went to the laundromat to wash my sheets for the person moving in to my old room. I approached the automated machine on the wall confident that I'd use it with ease.

This is an example of me being unreasonably optimistic since it only worked last time after I hit every single button. I didn't know which jab got me lucky, but whatever, I'd do it again.

Today there was an old man sitting on a bench next to the machine. I feigned casual and began stabbing everything in sight. Things progressed until I went to put my €10 bill in the bill slot and he started waving his hands around his head.

He said something in German and pointed to a blinking red light.

"I'm sorry," I said in German, "I don't speak German."

I'm getting tired of saying this.

He kept on. I smiled helplessly and tried to put my bill in the slot but in slow motion this time, while looking at him to gauge his reaction.

"Nein, Nein!" I got in return. Plus more hand waving. Okay. I'm getting that part. I just don't know why. I'm sure I put a bill in the last time.

An old lady comes over and shakes a handful of coins in my face. Ah. Only change today. Or the machine doesn't give change and I'll end up overpaying. Either way I'm not going to be responsible for this guy having a heart attack when I slip a bill in against his wishes.

To communicate that I don't have change, I hold my bill up and make a sad face. The lady points to a cafe. We chuckle and I run out to buy coffee and get change.

What I don't know is that change is the most coveted thing in the whole wide world and I'm about to enter a serious battle of the wills. The coffeeshop won't give me coins so I move on. At least I'm caffeinated and fueled up for the battle ahead.

At the corner store, I hold up a five and say, "You have small?"

"Nein!" The cashier barks.

Al-RIGHT, sheesh.

To the drugstore. If the drugstore doesn't work, this will begin to get old. Because the only other option on the block is an Italian goods store and it will be irritating to buy pasta in order to do my damn laundry. I don't even like pasta that much.

In the drugstore, I pick out toothpaste and an energy bar. I am calculating how much I need to spend to get the most coins and fewest bills back.

I recognize the cashier because once she pounced on me and practically put me in a headlock. That time, I was innocently paying and pulling out my change purse when she heard all the coins rattling. Little hairs sprouted on the back of her hand and she salivated on the conveyor belt and begged me to pay in coins. Which was fine, THEN.

Today I played it cool. I got out my ten and when she asked for coins I made a regretful, resigned face like, "God, I really wish I did. IF ONLY I HAD COINS."

She bought it and gave me the coins I needed. I dropped them loosely in the pocket of my backpack so I wouldn't have to get out the lie-exposing change purse.

When I got back to the laundromat, the old man was watching my bag and I shook my new coins in my hand and smiled at him like "Aw, yeah" and he looked really happy for me.

A f'ing American who writes a blog

I didn't think I'd go to hash yesterday. I'd only slept for two-and-a-half hours, from 8 am to 10:30 am, and I wanted to stay in bed.

I'm on the Berlin Hash message board now and it's been funny this week to get emails from people with hash names, "Hey Racing Lobster, thanks so much..." or "No problem, G-spot, see you then..." I was too new to hashing to get a hash name yet; Too bad they weren't there when I accidentally flashed my vagina at the janitor, that probably would really have hurried that process along.

Ten minutes before I needed to leave the house to make it the hash on time, I realized that I don't want to sever my relationship with this group. Yeah, I felt like shit but isn't that part of what hashing is all about?

I feared that going straight from a night with the MDMA-riddled brains of techno kids to an afternoon with goofballs in running tights would make my brain dissociate. Then I decided that this kind of culture clash doesn't give me an acute psychological disorder, it makes me well-rounded. So I checked the directions for this week's meeting spot and ran to the fridge to find the Nikolassee train stop on the map. I didn't see it and ran back to the computer while cussing the S-Bahn out loud, "You fucking S-train, where are you?"

I ran to the fridge again while thinking, "I'm pushing it to the limit" which naturally made me start belting out Push It To The Limit by Corbin Bleu, my favorite cast member from High School Music. I'M TIRED.

Once I transferred to the S1 and just needed to ride it out to the end of the line, I turned my iPod on and rested my forehead on the window. I left a mark not unlike the smudges that grossed me out so much on my 1980s school bus windows. Except my grease is all natural, no Jheri curl here.

The run was an hour long, through an area that I'd classify as the Beverly Hills of Berlin, through trails and fields, and right at the end, along the train platform. There is something fun about running down the train steps and next to the subway cars but not actually be in a rush and instead just be all recreational about it.

By the time we make it up the train station's last flight of stairs, I'm limping. My hip hurts. Let's just say that one of my killer dance moves the night before might have been a little too killer.

Afterward, when everyone was cracking beers and lighting cigarettes, I sank into the grass while wondering if there were any rules against sitting down. I'd been skittish the whole time. During the run I asked Lame One if there were any rules against pissing on the trail. His answer was vague enough to make me hold it.

Not that it mattered, since I still got called into the circle three times:

1. For pointing with my finger, AGAIN. It's a hard habit to let go of. I only did it once and realized right away. I whipped my hand around to my back and kept it there like I was holding a cramp, trying to pretend like my finger just HAPPENED to stick out on its way to my back. Yeah, didn't fool anyone.

2. For premature ejaculation: I accidentally knocked my beer over and when I picked it up, it overflowed with foam.

3. For being a fucking American who writes a blog.

My new approach is DON'T EVEN TRY. I'm officially caving. If others are called into the circle for putting the hood up on their convertible and giving out free CDs of African music - inexcusable! - I see that this is one battle you can't fight.

Mouth Organ was called in for having his birthday yesterday. We sang "Happy Birthday, Fuck You."

Fister was called in for being the hare and for not working any beer stops into the trail. Yeah, Fister, what the hell? All you give us are beautiful woods and lake with all those sailboats? That's messed up.

At the end, I was talking to Oral Satisfaction (apparently she talks a lot) about Ohio because it's so awesome and hard not to talk about 24 hours a day. "I'm going to piss in those bushes," I say, "Don't tell anyone." Right.

I return and Stiffi says something to me in German.

"I don't speak German," I say.

"Why not?" He and Fister ask. "It's easy. Little kids here speak German."

"Really?" I say, "Say speed limit."

Stiffi starts to say the German word for speed limit - Geschwindigkeitsbegrenzung - and a half hour later, when he's done, I know my point is made.

At least there's a window open before we die

Last night I went to a club that could be described as a divey deathtrap, a divey deathtrap that made me very happy.

At the beginning of the night, Charlie and I bought little bottles of Jägermeister in a corner store. Walking out, I said to him, "That just summed up my entire month here."

The man behind the counter had looked at me while ringing us up and said something. He started laughing, I started laughing, Charlie smiled, and we left. With no clue as to what we'd been laughing and smiling about.

"Honey," Charlie said, "Try my entire YEAR." I know he's exaggerating, though. I've seen him speaking in German; He can even say big numbers though he admits that they are traumatic.

I cannot say my address. I live at #64 but it's physically impossible for me to say that number. The one time I took a taxi, I tried to say it but my whole face got a cramp so I wrote it for the driver on an imaginary air chalkboard.

We got to the club - and illegal space that was unlicensed and unregulated, we literally crawled through some bushes to find it - while Mona was doing video. I stood by the mix position and stared at her images flashing against the wall. Later, I would be wedged between that video wall and a speaker.

I was careful not to hit the speaker while dancing since it was mounted on the same kind of rickety tripod I used for my High School Musical teleprompter screens, only these tripods didn't have a counterweight hanging for stability. Unless you count the guy who stood in front of the speaker with his eyes closed, hands spread across the mesh.

Ecstasy: Feel a love like you've never felt before. For whatever is right in front of you.

I kept dancing, in this style: Hi, hands? Have you met my hips? Have you guys decided to be Egyptian or Brazilian? Why don't you throw in some 80s bouncing just to keep it interesting?

My corner of the stage happened to be next to the only window in the deathtrap. High on the wall, covered in bars, people kept trying to stand on things to get some air. One couple, who'd been pawing each other on the dance floor came over for air and got distracted in my corner.

And I've got nothing against third base, I APPLAUD third base, but you should probably do that in private. No one needs to see the fur flying like that.

Sweat is pouring down my back. I've bunched my knee socks around my ankles and my arm warmers around my wrists. I really hope that my favorite wool jacket is still under a pile of coats behind the DJ booth but I definitely don't need it right now.

"The air is not working," I hear, "It's, like, kaput."

I open my eyes and see a boy in red tracksuit pants, a holey black t-shirt hanging in shreds, and a blond mohawk. He has the thickest German accent you can imagine. Think Mike Myers' Saturday Night Live character, Dieter.

I nod my head. He carries a black wooden fan and fans himself while he bounces around. He fans me for a minute, I thank him, and he disappears.

Later, the sun is starting to come up and he's back. He looks up at the window and says, "Can you feel that luft?" I nod. He fans me once more and goes, "At least there's a window open before we die." And is gone.

And I'm totally struck by that. Yes, my little mohawked friend, AT LEAST THERE'S A WINDOW OPEN BEFORE WE DIE. It could sound morbid but I think it's beautiful.

It was a perfect exchange: no stupid questions, no invasion of personal space, just a nice gesture and a little dance floor poetry. And poof.

Bio-sausage snack

I feel now as if I'm living in Berlin and not just visiting. Several days this week I didn't leave the apartment until 5pm because I was writing and reading and eating whatever I had in the fridge as long as it was drenched in olive oil. Why I'm currently obsessed with olive oil I'm not sure, but I had to buy a new bottle because I drained the old one. I know that my relationship with olive oil changed on the day I walked around West Berlin. I wasn't actually turned on by most of the Charlottenburg neighborhood but I might have just been coming down from the salad I'd eaten in the Schleusenkrug beer garden.

The sun was blazing so I'd found a half-shaded table. I ordered a glass of Chianti and took in the breeze, the dappled wooden table, and thanked the lord I wasn't part of the tour group on the other side of the tree. I was so glad that I was alone and not with 45 people and a chirpy leader. I listened to chirpy leader answer questions and give instructions and wondered if I sound like that when I'm leading groups. I decided that no, even I wanted to be like that, the most I'm capable of is a sarcastic imitation of a chirp.

A waiter delivered my salad and I began eating and realizing that there's been a gaping hole in my life, a hole that needs to be stuffed with herbed feta and olives. MY GOODNESS. I haven't usually been eating like a German and I'm mostly okay with this. I'll probably have schnitzel before I leave and I'm not opposed to plum schnapps but when I'm in the grocery store, I don't buy the pork salad because I know what pork pieces and mayonnaise taste like: pink vomit, exactly what I'll turn it into.

I feel like I live here now because I have my favorite grocery (Kaiser's) and my favorite brand of salted pecans and yogurt. I've checked out so much of the city that I can walk an hour in almost any direction, take a left or right, and sooner or later I'll run into a street I recognize. My formerly broken compass is BACK.

I feel like I live here because I left the house at 5pm today in my pajamas. Granted, they're not immediately recognizable as PJs - they're not printed with images of cupcakes or teddy bears - they're yoga pants. But I couldn't be bothered to change or take a bath. I just pulled my hair back in a ponytail and kept on the Aerosmith t-shirt I slept in for the last two nights and left.

I counted up how many people I care about making an impression on in Berlin - yep, still zero - and walked west. I did, at the last minute, throw on my trench coat since the yoga pants are a little too ass-centric for my comfort in public, my only concession.

If I'd felt like I were visiting, I might have gotten more dressed up and would have planned my attack on the marrow of the city. Now, with time behind and more time ahead, I'm just as content attacking my own marrow: writing in my room and not spending every second outside.

Last weekend my roommate Simone asked me what I'd done the night before. I told her that I read on the couch until I passed out. "That's a big decision," she said, "not to go out on a Saturday night."

"Oh," I said, "I haven't had a Monday to Friday schedule in a long time so I don't really care about days of the week."

I went to the Minus party at Watergate (Thanks, Matthew Cooper) a few nights ago and feel perfectly fine geeking out until the next good thing comes along. I'm actually extremely selective about getting into antics and half the time am happier staying home. I'm not a party animal by whatever means necessary, I'm a party animal when I think there's an excellent reason to be one.

I read in one of my books that there's a sausage stand that sells organic hot dogs or BIO-SAUSAGE SNACKS. And I thought I'd put down the brick of tofu for a moment and act like a German. I would buy a bio-sausage. I don't know what made me think chomping on an organic sausage would be so vastly different from one with rat tails and mice fur in it but I'll tell you, it seems exactly the same except that you get to feel self-righteous while eating.

The guy handed me my bio-sausage, a long pencil dick of a hot dog, in a paper boat with a plop of mustard and ketchup. He also handed me a crusty dinner roll but no fork or knife. We all know I don't know how to say fork or knife so I just smiled and walked around the corner to stare at it. I didn't like the idea of dipping the pencil dick in the condiments with my fingers so I walked back to the counter to see if there was plasticware sitting out. Nope. I bought a Coke Zero as a front for my return and then found a park bench out of the vendor's sight.

I decided what I needed to do was rip open the crusty roll and stuff the bio-sausage inside. It would be a bun, it would. Crusty rolls, being crusty, are also flaky and messy and soon a few birds were pecking the ground near my feet.

When I noticed, I jumped up and shook my shirt out because all I needed to make this eating experience more awkward was to be attacked by a flock of birds. Finally, FINALLY, the bio-sausage was curled up inside the "bun" and I ate it.

Zusammengeschlagen and other German words

I saw a kid smoking a cigarette yesterday. Like a KID. Maybe eight years old, so small that he fit in the basket on the back of another (older, bad influence) kid's bicycle.

We were stopped at the corner together and I did a double take because he was so little and I had an adult moment where I wanted to snatch the cigarette from his tiny hands and say, "KID! That is so BAD for you!"

But he caught me staring and looked back with slitty, dead eyes and I got the feeling that the child could and would throw down. Something about him made me feel like he'd kick my ass ("zusammengeschlagen") even though I outweigh him by 100 pounds and have muscles that he can only dream of.

They wheeled off, smoke trailing, and I thought about how I'm all for pushing the boundaries and sometimes going too far because that's how you learn who you are but shouldn't he be like LEARNING HOW TO SPELL or something at this point?

I assume that it takes German kids a few years longer than the rest of us to master spelling. Ex: geschwindigkeitsbegrenzung (speed limit), querschnittgelähmt (paraplegic), and verlängerungsschnur (extension cord). Which reminds me, I really need to find a German spelling bee to sneak into.

If a cop pulled me over and told me I was driving over the geschwindigkeitsbegrenzung, I don't know what I'd do. Probably what the old man in the park did yesterday when I told him I don't speak German: laughed so hard that he snorted. This made me start laughing, snorts are always good for that, but when he wouldn't quit jabbering, the crazy vibe got kinda heavy and I stood from the bench and said the one word in German that I'm really good at: Tschuess! (Bye!)

I heart robots

I passed a demonstration on Schönhauser Allee, a crowd of people walking north, followed by a police van. I wasn't really paying attention until I saw the first sign.



Robots, huh. The marchers were chanting something which I couldn't understand and someone was egging them on with a loudspeaker. Which, again, was not helpful to me since my German has reached what we will call a plateau.



Several people held robot signs, one of which read I WOULD DO IT FOR YOU. What, robot, what would you do for me?

This morning I finished a good book, Shadowland by Gordon Stevens, about 1948-1989 Germany and three families in East Berlin, West Berlin and the United States. It was all KGB and Stasi and CIA and exactly what I'd been looking for in those unbelievably lame crime novels I threw temper tantrums over before.

This book was believable because it was well-written and because its premise was true: West Berlin's occupation by American, French, and British forces after WWII and the amputation of East Berlin by Russia. Towards the end of the book, when Gorbachev has gone all perestroika on Russia, the communists are losing their grip, and East Germans start hemorrhaging through open borders in Hungary, the revolution takes off.

There had been defiant people all along getting their asses kicked and jailed for digging tunnels under the wall and for looking cross-eyed at Stasi agents but their numbers grew in the late 80s. People start meeting in churches in Berlin and Leipzig and marching in the thousands and I can imagine the scenes and streets perfectly because I've now pounded so much of Berlin's pavement: Karl-Marx-Allee, Friedrichstrasse, Unter den Linden.

This is what I was thinking when I walked down Schönhauser Allee and saw the robot protest. It occurred to me that I should get a clue as to what makes people march in the street these days so later I tried to translate these signs.



And I'm thinking I need to ask Simone when she gets back in town because the best the online translator could do was A DAY IN THE LIFE MAKE AS A GRASSHOPPER DO I. What grasshoppers have to do with robots, I have no idea.

good luck in not dying

My uncle Kevin sent this video to my mom who sent it to me who watched it and then had to lie on the couch with a compress on my head. Perhaps you've seen it, almost 650,000 people have visited the website below.  When I hit play I was thinking, "Yeah, whatever, hike up a mountain, blah blah blah, I've done that too."

Yes, the trail seemed kind of exposed and the cliff side kind of steep but that happens when you climb up mountains. See: Me and Alli Jones hiking in the Cascades, me slipping off the trail and tumbling down out of Alli's sight who starts wailing, "JESS RONCKER! JESS RONCKER!" And me, on my stomach, hanging on to branches below, getting irritated by her screaming, yelling back up, "I'm FINE!" Alli, sorry I got testy when you thought I was dead. I was in shock.

Anyway, I stuck with the El Camino del Ray video and at 1:25 went, "Oh."

And at 2:30 went, "Shit."

At 4:00 and 4:50, I grimaced and at 5:45, I was sweating and my tummy felt funny.

The El Camino del Ray hike is not just about fear of heights. It's about fear of, I don't know, not being a circus tightrope walker. It's about not really being in the mood to plunge 700 feet to your death. It's about how they should hand out diapers at the trail head. In fairness to Spain, the 1901 trail has been closed since too many people died there in 1999 and 2000 but people sneak in, which I think says something about cultural difference.

I've noticed that Germans are into safety. Germans cross streets like they do in Seattle and Salt Lake City i.e. they are freakishly well-behaved. If they do cross against the light, they run as if their lives depended on it even though the nearest car is four blocks away. When I cross on a red here, I get the feeling that someone wants to scold me. And, in fact, my German roommate told me that she's been reprimanded for illegal crossing and for walking up the left side of stairs and sidewalks.

In Ecuador, there was pretty much a total lack of concern about safety. And now I know where the Latin Americans get their attitude: from their colonizing bastard ancestors, the Spaniards. Their GOOD LUCK IN NOT DYING approach is genetically coded.

The sidewalk from my house in Quito to the neighborhood where I hung out was pitted with crevasses and ditches, some so deep that if I'd fallen in, I don't know that I could have gotten out. There were no signs and no barriers to keep you from falling in. You were just supposed to use your eyeballs. I don't know what the survival rate is for blind people in Ecuador. I woke up many mornings in Quito psyched that I hadn't lost my footing while walking home in a blackout the night before. Just kidding, mom, not really. That wasn't my most studious year.

There is also, of course, the Ecuadorian train. My friends and I took the train from Quito to Riobamba and like everyone else rode not inside the train but on top of it. We sat up there and drank beer, ducking low-hanging power lines and broken pipes pouring water in the urban stretches and holding back branches whipping our faces in the rural ones.

We arrived in Riobamba sunburnt, sooty, and feeling very alive.

Drinking beer off my foot

Hm, there's something fishy about this photo. I wonder if it's related to the fact that I'm standing on a beer crate without one of my shoes and socks.

And maybe it's the guy sitting on a toilet and looking at my foot. With a beer bong on his head. Not that I know anything about beer bongs - this might not even be one.

The closest I got to a beer bong was the one fraternity party I went to my freshman year of college, the same party that, in conjunction with a homecoming parade outside my dorm, made me take a 19-hour Greyhound bus trip from Minneapolis to Cincinnati to sob on the couch to my parents about how I don't want to go to school anymore.








I'd already been called into the hash circle twice. Once for being new and once for POINTING WITH MY FINGER.


I'd forgotten the hash rule that you can only point with your elbow. I'm sure there's a fine reason for the elbow rule but, oddly enough, pointing with my elbow is not an intuitive move of mine.

During the run, my roommate asked me something and when I pointed like a normal human being, I got yelled at by the hasher with the bugle, Lame One.

"No pointing with your finger!" he bellowed.


I shrieked and yanked my elbow up. Not that it mattered since I forgot so immediately that I pointed with my right finger while my left elbow was still up.

Lame One repeated himself at the top of his lungs and then blew the bugle so loud that I almost dropped to the ground and went fetal.

"I'm in trouble," I said to my roommate under my breath, "I'm gonna get called into the circle."

Sure enough, I was. After I'd been in the circle twice I thought I was safe. I'd resumed my position on the outside and was nursing a Berliner Kindl and laughing at this guy. Yesterday was his last hash before he leaves for India so he got special treatment. They don't make people drink beer from a toilet any old day.

So when Lame One said to me, "You! Take off your shoe and sock! In the circle!" I was surprised.

I took off my shoe and sock and stood on the crate. The hasher in the yellow shirt, Stiff Nipples, looked at my foot.

"Your toes are black," he said, "Do you have mushrooms growing on them?" WHICH IS ONE OF MY ALL-TIME FAVORITE TRANSLATIONS. I giggled for a week in Ecuador when someone got a yeast infection and the doctor diagnosed mushrooms. It just makes fungus sound so adorable.

"It's nail polish!" I told Stiff Nipples.









Stiffi touched my foot and I started screaming. People, I am ticklish. I get antsy when my feet get LOOKED AT. I've kicked people in the head when they thought they were being funny.

When I was little, my dad teased me by hovering his hands close to my feet. How amusing to watch me go into convulsions when all my nerves pricked up. So this little situation right here? Let's just say it didn't improve when Lame One started pouring beer down my calf and beer bong started drinking it off my foot. The reason it looks like I'm trying to escape is because I am.

But let's look at it from beer bong's perspective for a moment. He is sucking on the foot of someone who just went running in tube socks and basketball sneakers. Who may or may not have mushrooms.

harnröhrenentzündung

Okay, I know ragging on German is getting old. But.

I'M SO GLAD I DON'T GET URINARY TRACT INFECTIONS THE WAY I USED TO.

Because this is how you say it: harnröhrenentzündung.

I'd rather deal with the sensation of having to piss every waking minute, hobbling to the toilet, squeezing out one little teardrop of urine and then searching madly for the extinguisher because I've got a fire to put out than say THAT WORD.

The stress of saying that word on top of the discomfort that comes with having a brush fire in my pants would make me spontaneously combust.

Not a backdrop

The Olan Mills senior photo I should have taken.
Tiergarten, Berlin

Wo ist?

I'm sick of ordering milchkaffees and being totally stumped when asked for here or to go.

"For here" is easy - für hier - but I have yet to see "to go" written and therefore can't get a handle on it. My phrasebook has a few blind spots in it, "To go" being one, followed by "Another, please".

Has the Langenscheidt writer never gone drinking? Please.

I've been smiling and pointing a lot.

Yesterday I sat in a cafe and went through the phrase book, writing down everything I need to learn first. I wish I could say that I skipped the shopping section since my official line is that my backpack is full and I'm therefore not buying anything but the sad truth is that I PORED OVER THAT BITCH.

Do you have these in other colors?

Do you have size 8?

Where is the mirror?

And, finally, where is the dressing room? Which I will never ever say because it has 19 extra syllables in it.

Last night I went to dinner and to a Tango club with my housemate, Simone, who owns the room I'm renting and other temporary housemates who are staying in her room as couchsurfers.

I heard of the couchsurfers at the New Year's Eve party I went to this year but didn't jump on it because I was leery:

a) I don't have a place to offer and that seems like part of the deal and b) I've been thinking too much about serial killers.

I had a conversation in the kitchen with Simone my first morning in Berlin and she told me about her couchsurfing experiences in India, the people she's met and close friends she's made. She made a comment about how trusting people is a nice way to live.

For the next few days the apartment is full of girls, a real international pillow fight. The party is, however, largely contained to the other bedroom since I keep my own room and keys as the paying Craigslist tenant.

Last night we ate Thai food and watched Tango and it was beautiful and hot but really, really technical and every time a man walked within a ten foot radius of me, I prayed he'd keep his distance. My salsa skillz would NOT get me through a tango. I left with one of the couchsurfers after a few hours and immediately took a wrong turn. We were lost within minutes.

We were walking up the middle of a cobblestone street, her boots going click, click, click in the middle of the night darkness and we saw a man loading a carpet into the back of a van. "Will you ask him how to get to Schönhauser Allee?" She asked me, "Can you manage that?"

Emboldened by my studies earlier in the day, I busted out the question seamlessly. I rule. Until he started answering using words that fall into the 99 percent of the language that I'm not familiar with.

Fortunately he used his hands a lot so when he asked me what I think was, "Did you get that?" I nodded and mimicked what he'd just done with his hands, making little cartoon noises for emphasis. Then he laughed in my face and said what I think was, "Good luck."

Note to self: Learn some potential responses to the questions you ask. Just a few. You'll seem a lot less dumb.

weißwein and Top Gun

I'm getting good at laughing at myself when I pronounce German words extra wrong. There's a wine shop next to my apartment and I went in yesterday in the mood for a dry Riesling.

This is how you say dry in German: trocken. Great, I can do that.

I figured I'd stand in front of all the white wines (weißwein or "vicevine"; I'm liking that word, too) and say "Trocken? Trocken?" and the wine seller would get the picture.

Our exchange ended up even more awesomely Neanderthal than I imagined. "Trocken?" I asked, holding up the Riesling. In lieu of saying "Very?" I made a face like I'd bitten into a lemon.

He answered, "Ja," and took A BITE OUT OF THE AIR. I get it, sir, it has a bite. But do you have any idea how happy you've made me by performing my favorite Val Kilmer/Tom Cruise exchange from Top Gun?

Danke, a million times danke.

Mauerpark

The Berlin Wall evolved between 1961 and 1989. What began as one wire fence and then a parallel fence on the East German side - creating the "death strip" between the two - grew to the final wall of reinforced concrete, barbed wire, bunkers and watchtowers.



To build the second wall inside Eastern territory, houses were torn down. The death strip was carpeted with raked gravel, making footprints easy to spot. It was planted with landmines and there was no cover from watching guards' eyes. People attempting to breach the walls were shot on sight and, if wounded in the death strip, often left by the guards to bleed to death.



Here's the old death strip at Bernauer Straße, now a memorial and, perhaps just as significant, the site of new construction.



Part of the former border strip was made into a park, Mauerpark or Wall Park, and I snooped on this kid while he sat silently in a swing. FOR A LONG TIME. So long that I was curious; What the heck he was thinking about? I wasn't nosy enough to intrude and actually ask, but enough to make up stories in my head.



Part of me thought this kid was getting all existential on himself, digging into the whys and wherefores of strife and human division. Another part thought he was thinking about how much it would cost to buy poppers and pills for the club that night. Or maybe about the cute little puppy he's going to buy and take for walks around Mauerpark.

Cafe Bla Bla

If I were to open a cafe in Germany, this is what I'd name it.

Berlin outside

The Hoff looks for freedom

On December 31, 1989, David Hasselhoff stood atop the Berlin wall and performed his cover of the the 1970's German hit "Auf Der Strasse Nach Suden", renamed "Looking for Freedom", to a crowd of almost one million people. He was wearing piano key scarf. A video of him looking for freedom at another live concert in Berlin can be seen here.