When Being a Rude American Paid Off

Okay, so most of my trip to Berlin I felt guilty about not learning Germish and not getting past page twenty-three in my guide book. The thing is that nearly everyone there speaks English and you can totally get away with it. They don’t even make you feel bad for it; the guilt is all self-induced.

Tuesday night we had an amazing meal at an authentic Deutsche küche. They had this really awesome candle holder in the middle of the table.

A chicken made out of various bits of metal, some identifiable, some not. I like his feet.

We decided to walk back to the hotel a different way. We kept passing these graffiti-covered entrances to alleys and staircases.

Not normally a place I would wander into in New York. Or Berlin, for that matter. One of my more adventurous companions walked down an alley and found a quiet, grafitti-covered room. No bar. No music. Faint smell of pot smoke wafting out. And, inexplicably, some guys playing a very quiet and very serious game of ping pong.

We skipped the one pictured above with the staircase. It was really intimidating, and several stories high.

The next one we came to was an open air courtyard, with makeshift rooms built out of the walls of sea crates and cinderblocks and corrugated metal. It turned out to be the coolest thing I’ve ever seen in my life. A bunch of artists in makeshift rooms. It was the place they made the candle holder.

Picture if you will a dim, grafitti-covered room, cold, and heated only by a fire going in a giant head that looks eerily similar to those big rocks on Easter Island. It’s worth clicking on this picture for a closer look.

They’re working. Making art. Metal sculptures, from tiny to ginormous, out of various bits of random hardware- drill bits, ammo casings, gears, chains, screws, metal shavings. There is music: the original cast recording of Annie mixed down with a techno beat. If I were at a different time in my life I would have signed up to apprentice right there. Instead, I just took some pictures.

I love this one. He turned around at the last second.

Little ones:

Big ones:

(Somebody please give me props from refraining from the obvious here.)

I am reminded of that Heywood Banks song:

I’ve felt like this before:

Okay, here’s why it paid off to be a rude American. This experience was made so much better by not having any idea what the hell I was walking into. When we met up with the rest of our group and told them what we saw, one of them had been inside the staircase part.

I went back on Thursday by myself.

The highlight for me was Alexander Rodin’s Global Warming exhibition. I was completely blown away.

Most of his works are canvases larger than I have ever seen in my life, three and four wide, all the way to the high ceiling. The painting that you see from across the room is impressive enough, but when you step close to it, you’re left standing, head craned up, mouth open, marveling at the detail that he puts into every square centimeter (see that? I can be metric when I want). It’s a whole different painting up close.

He had several works in progress. It was fascinating to see how he goes in stages with them, because my brain simply couldn’t wrap around how the finished work ever began.

There were other studios in the space that I visited too.

In every one were petitions to sign saying “I support Tacheles” except the rest was in Germish and I couldn’t read it.

It was only upon returning home that I had a chance to Wiki it. Former Jewish department store turned Nazi prison (hence my original impression of it being intimidating) turned artist collective. Holy crap.

The place was amazing. I don’t think I would have had the same experience knowing what I was walking into. I have decided that just maybe, in the future when I visit other countries, maybe I will continue to not read past page twenty-three in my guide book and trust my instincts on where I go.

Continuing with the theme from previous Berlin posts, here’s a different kind of angel, Tacheles-style:

Bionic Poodle Kafka Spam or, On Why I’m Up at 4:30am

This picture is here for no reason except I like it.

Jetlag. It’s a better reason than normal for why I would be up at 4:30am. Once upon a time, 4:30am was an hour for going to sleep, not waking up. But since we got the kids the only reasons I am ever up at 4:30am all involve vomit.

So I’m happy for the jetlag. It got me hours of uninterrupted sleep, broken only by CC waking me at midnight with a dozen red roses. Then more sleep only interrupted by the dogs waking up because they went to bed with me at 7pm and they really had to go out. I played the “I’m weary, I just traveled home” card to get CC to take them out. It was my only chance- I’m back on the clock tomorrow.

By the time they came back inside, I was awake. Plus I figure I’ve got at least an hour and a half before #5 wakes up to play Wii, so I’m takin’ it. Sorry for making you get up, CC.

Here’s how I was greeted when I came home:

I was fumbling loudly at the front door with my bags and also trying to get the mail, because for some reason nobody in my house but me gets the mail. I heard the dogs bark and the kids scream, having used their supernaturally fine-tuned senses to deduce that I was home.

When I opened the door, #4 and #2 were holding two very wiggly puggles that nearly jumped to their dooms because they almost wiggled out straight down the staircase, and #3 and #5 were in the living room crying because in their haste to make it to the door they smacked body parts, head to hip I think, hard. Then the Evil Brown One wiggled out of #4’s grip, bloodying her nose in the process, at which point the Fuggle also jumped out and both dogs stopped wiggling and proceeded to smell my suitcase intently, baffled by what they were processing. Apparently, they don’t sniff Germish.

goofball — Don't mock me. I'll eat your shoes.

I went past the pile of bags and puppies to see the Crying Ones. #3 had pulled it together and hugged me but #5 was still sobbing and holding his head. He also looked like he was foaming at the mouth.

“What in God’s name is on your mouth?” I asked.

“Powdered donut,” he answered clearly, then resumed sobbing.

“You look like you have rabies,” I said.

Within three minutes, they were all re-absorbed six inches from the television in an episode of Wizards of Waverly Place that I myself have seen nine times and I don’t even watch TV. They forgot to ask if I brought them souvenirs. So I withheld them. Heh. I’m drunk with power.

But as the afternoon went on and I sat with G-Middy (my mom, who was watching them while I was gone), every one of them individually climbed into my lap chattered. Even the dogs, but that was more about slobbery tennis balls and rockin’ underbites.

It’s nice to be back.

I have more posts to come about Berlin, but I’m still processing. So I leave you with these:

Here are some more naked babies. These ones are gold.

Interesting Things I Ate In Berlin:

Three kinds of cold fish at breakfast.

Lingonberries.

Baked apples wrapped in a homemade cinamon donut, times three.

A cheese plate with non-pasteurized cheese. Twice (it’s a completely different animal).

Apple compote with mustard. There may have been some figs involved as well.

The international version of pig in a blanket: wurst in a croissant. This was my favorite thing ever. I would be nine hundred pounds if I lived in Germany.

The best bratwurst, potatoes, and sourkraut I’ve ever had in my life. Twice.

Steak Tartar. The German version makes the French version surrender, but I hear that happens with a lot of things. It was about a pound and a quarter (I’m sure there’s some easy metric equivalent) of raw German organic ground beef, topped with a raw German organic egg yolk, and it dared you to eat it.

Wiener Schnitzel, which is a pounded flat veal cutlet breaded with some heavenly popover-tasting batter. It looks like chikkenfriedsteak without the gravy.

Veal Dumplings. This is the point where I should tell you that at home, I don’t eat meat.

Currywurst, which they slice up and put a spicy ketchup on and then give you a tiny fork so you can walk around while you eat it.

Ritter Sport candybars, which I’ve always liked and can get at the deli around the corner from my theater but they’re fresher here. Also, by my hotel they had a store where you could make your own– kinda like the candy bar version of a Cold Stone.

The chocolates they leave at turndown service, which rock. I accidentally found the amazing chocolatier who makes them two blocks from my hotel. So I bought more. Did I mention I would weigh nine hundred pounds if I lived in Germany?

As for the rest of the title of this post, I leave you with this picture of an ad at a bus stop. Please tell me if you have any idea what it means.

We think that might be Tom Jones.

Pay Toilets and Snake-Wrestling Babies

This must be discussed: What is the deal with the public restrooms here? Today I stopped in at the restroom at the subway station and the same scary attendants were there, just like at the Berliner Dom. Same uniform, only this time no sign was posted about how much it was to pee. They just had the little dish out (for money, you pee in the toilets, just to clarify). At least I had Euros this time. Is it a union? Is it an outsourced service? A government job? I keep thinking about it. Probably, somewhere past page twenty-three in my guide book, it explains all of that. And if I’d bothered to learn Germish, I would know.

I woke late to the phone ringing, my traveling companions graciously allowing me some extra time because I overslept. Three of us went to Potsdam and toured the Palace Sanssouci (means Without Worries).

It was the summer place of Frederick the Great.

I know nothing about German history but learned a little today about the very interesting Frederick the Great (aka Frederick II). Namely that his dad was a dick and abused him horribly-including forcing him to watch his best friend executed (decapitation-style) when they tried to run away together; that he never wanted to marry his wife and they never had children; that he hung out with Volatire and wrote a shitload of flute music; and that he was a Badass Military Dude, the real man behind German independence. Consensus from the three of us? Gay. Though that part wasn’t mentioned in the tour.

I’m not a tour person, but this was pretty cool. You got a little audio device and though you stayed with the group, you didn’t actually have to interact with anyone or suffer thorough any stupid questions from people who didn’t read their guide books or bother to learn the language.

What The Palace Did Best: Floors and Ceilings. Who knew?

This is the Library. It was awesome. You could only peek in through the window “for reasons of conservation”. I took sort of a long turn at peeking through the window because not only did I love the floor, but I wanted to move in there. So quiet! All those books!

This is the ceiling in the. . . Some Other room. It’s my favorite. That’s a gold spider web in the upper right hand corner. Here’s a closer view:

Frederick the Great also had a fondness and a talent for cultivating fruits and flowers. If I ever get the chance, I will come back to Berlin in the summer, because the grounds are vast and I can only imagine how beautiful they must be in bloom. Meanwhile, there was this room:

Please remember that the queen did not reside in Sanssouci. He gave her a whole other palace in a whole other part of Berlin and only saw her once a year.