Things I miss

There is plenty to love about this city, and Germany in general, but it is undeniably lacking in a few material aspects. Since it is a Saturday night (obviously not breakfast time but please don't hold it against me), and I am home alone studying, I feel I am entitled to be nostalgic, and share a few of those wistful moments. And also a few appreciative observations about Deutschland because on the whole it is a pretty cool place and one should always count her blessings.

• You Tube. It doesn't work. You cannot watch the official music videos from most artists, due to some licensing issue which I probably should understand because I'm a law student but don't.
• Coffee. According to my very unofficial but highly conclusive research, Australia has the best coffee.in. the.world. By comparison, it costs almost nothing and you can go crazy with your milk choices - skim, soy, full-fat. Germans aren't terribly into low fat products, although I have to give credit for the BIO versions of everything in the supermarkets and most eateries.
• Sushi and other foods. Sure, you can get sushi here but it's pricey. I've found myself yearning for a fresh tuna roll with sesame seeds many a time. Other noteworthy groceries I've pined for include low-fat crunchy peanut butter, Weetbix and buck choy.
• Stuff in English, especially uni classes. It takes me around four times longer to read a page of a German textbook compared to a page of English, which is a major drag. Plus, doing stuff like going to a hairdresser or doctor or buying an electrical appliance require hours of prior mental preparation and a dictionary or a willing translator.
• Credit cards. You can pay with them everywhere in Australia and stroll around cash free. Here, even the major supermarket chains don't always accept them and send you across the street to search for an ATM.

Things I do rather enjoy:

• Lower rent prices. I pay less than half the rent here than in Sydney for a beautiful room that is more than twice as big. Other bonuses are that the flat has no cockroaches (they are almost non-existent here), it is insulated and because tenants here actually have rights, mostly you don't have to worry that the landlord is going to sell the place from underneath you or put up the rent every year just because they can.
• My student transport ticket. I did resent forking out 150 euros at the start of semester for the ticket, but I have to admit, being able to step onto any local trains and trams without thinking twice is pretty damn convenient. And it's totally true what people say about German trains - they really are (almost) always on time.
• Turkish food. What take-away Thai is to Newtown, Turkish cuisine is to Kreuzberg. Having tasted the freshest falafel, the softest bread, the tastiest gozleme, and those sirrupy, buttery sweets on a regular basis, I am sold.
• Beer and other beverages. The beer here does not disappoint. There is something to suit almost all tastes, it is cheap and you can drink it on the street, on the train or in a hospital. Also, the relatively low taxes on alcohol in Germany mean that I can buy bottles of decent Australian (Cassella's) wine here for less than what I pay IN AUSTRALIA.
• Being able to get to other countries fast. Obviously a major plus point for European cities, from Berlin you can spontaneously drop into to Poland or Denmark and return flights between Berlin and Milan cost as little as 30 Euros. And yes, I am taking advantage - trip to Croatia, Italy and the UK in August already booked.

Birthday times

Across from East Side Gallery

Celebrating a birthday in Berlin clearly has its perks. First, there's the German tradition of "reinfeiern" which basically means commencing the festivities the night before the birthday. In true German style, this should be done with plenty of beer. Only at midnight (that is, the first moment of the actual birthday), is anyone allowed to wish you a happy birthday - a moment too early can mean a year of bad luck.

My birthday was wonderfully reingefeiert with the arrival of Ria, my long-lost Welsh friend who safely arrived on Thursday evening via low-cost carrier Easy Jet to celebrate. Reminiscent of our semester spent abroad in Italy, we dined on home-cooked Barilla pasta and sauce before heading downstairs to the nearest pub (of which there are three on my block alone).

Fun in NeuKoeln

Over-excitement made it impossible to sleep soundly, and with that excuse, I skipped Friday morning classes in favour of a leisurely brunch at a favourite haunt "An einem Sonntag im August". I then begrudingly dragged myself to a lecture while Daniel accompanied Ria on a whirlwind tour of some of Berlin's essential sights - Parlament House, Brandenberg Gate, Memorial to the Jews and the Berlin Cathedral. Fortified with a fabulous "natural" energy drink I've discovered here, Club Mate, we returned home for delicious birthday cake with my housemates and then headed out to a house party in Neukoeln where we sipped red wine and crumped until the wee hours of the morning.

Ria at the Berlin Wall

Determined to squeeze in essential Berlin experiences for Ria, after far too little sleep on Saturday we visited the East Side Gallery. This is an impressive 1.3 km stretch of the remainder of the Berlin wall which has been colourfully adorned with murals by around 100 artists from all over the world. A currywurst, the well-known Berlin delicacy consisting of a sausage with tomato sauce and curry powder, at one of Berlin's two famous Currywurst Buden completed an afternoon of sightseeing.

The moment we mopped up the last drops of curry-tomato sauce with our hot chips is approximately when the weather turned nasty and my dream of celebrating my birthday in an outdoor beer garden was dashed. The temperature dropped, the clouds heaved, and within minutes the mild spring weather regressed to chilly winter gales and pounding rain. Frantically, I searched for an alternative location for the planned gathering, which after half an hour of slight panic fortunately presented itself in the form of a very nice Italian restaurant just over the street.

Claudia, Ting-Yan, Lena and Me

The interior was warm, the waitress friendly, the cocktails sweet and the company superb. The bad weather deterred a few but the mood was not to be spoiled - the restaurant owned presented me, the Geburtstagskind, with a complimentary rose and Bailey's on ice and I enjoyed renditions of Happy Birthday in no less than 5 languages (English, German, Spanish, Italian and Mandarin). Some of us then made our way to Wohnzimmer, a cosy bar in Prenzlauer Berg, where the miscellaneous retro couches and softly lit corners conjure fond memories of a certain Madame Fling Flong's in Newtown. A couple of beers ended a lovely, and in the end quite spontaneous, birthday celebration.

A snack on board

But the fun was not yet over. On the fourth morning of my never-ending birthday, Ria and I dragged our tired and alcohol-infused bodies down to the wharf to embark on a cruise of the River Spree and Berlin's canals. After a slight mix-up with the trains and hastily requesting directions from some locals, we boarded the ferry with dozens of other tired-looking students for the four hour tour of Berlin. Although the temperature dropped below 15 degrees, Ria and I determinedly perched ourselves atop the vessel for an advantageous view of Kreuzberg, Charlottenberg, the city centre and everything in between. Fortunately, drifting along rivers looking a beautiful scenery requires very little exertion. A well-timed espresso kept us perky.

Super cool in Kreuzberg

That evening, we headed to Kreuzberg for a taste of cool, grungy with a Turkish flavour. Sprawled on the grass in the park as dusk, we had a distinct hipster moment as we listened to musicians spontaneously play guitars and watched the girls next to us get stoned. The moment was shattered when we promptly pulled out our cameras to record the coolness of it all, and our cover was blown.

Way too much amazing Egyptian food

The evening culminated in a lavish Egyptian feast at an amazingly good restaurant we stumbled upon across from the park. We ordered more food than we could eat for less than 10 euros each and sank into the plush sofas patting our bellies as the evening wore on. Exhausted after three days with very little sleep, Sunday night was rather tranquil leading up to Ria's early departure on Monday. Dizzingly tired and still tasting last night's babaganoush, we embraced in the departure lounge, and I had to accept that my birthday, spectacular as it was, was over for another year.

When all that's left is Hawaiian Hula Dance

It's been said before (see previous entry, Shaking it at Salsa), Humboldt University has an impressive range of sports on offer for students but a major defect exists in their ruthless booking system. Within three minutes of bookings opening, I'd missed out on a coveted place in both Streetdance and Hip Hop. Other, savvier students were obviously sitting tensely around computers with their fingers poised far more strategically than mine when it came time to sign up. I refused to accept the prospect of a sloth-like summer merely moving from one currywurst outlet to the next beer garden, and in a fit of desperation, found myself parting with 13 Euros for an 8 week Hawaiian Hula Dance course.

Last Thursday, I trotted along to the first session, sheepishly disregarding instructions to wear a skirt, bring a towel, a drink bottle and a padlock for the lockers. I should have known I'd be the only one in jeans, which are so incredibly unsuitable for Hawaiian hula dancing I think the teacher's irritation actually turned to pity on the spot when she witnessed my awkward hip wiggle in tight blue denim.

The class was unlike any dance class I'd experienced, which is saying something considering I've spent a significant part of my youth in jazz and tap dancing classes and have recently started salsa lessons. The teacher, a round, bubbly woman in an enormous blue Hawaiian print skirt and transparent white blouse, announced at the beginning of the class that she would be correcting our posture with her hands, and to speak up if we had a problem with being touched. This was completely fine, and made for some bordering-on-hilarious moments of hip grabbing to correct wayward thrusting. What was a little harder to bear was the insistence on taking it s...l....o....w - we were permitted to laboriously master one move only per song (largely Elvis Presley and other tracks of that era featuring the ukelele). There were many, many tracks of hip swinging and gentle hand waves with the occasional "aloha" or "sun" or "island" movement to inject elements of a story into our dance, movements which I've decided fortunately do have some potential to be adapted for general club move-busting.

Surprisingly challenging was the hand cramping situation we had to contend with after about 20 minutes of gluing our thumbs to our forefingers. Visible thumbs are the height of ugliness in hula dance and must be hidden during hand waving at all costs. Unfortunately, years of computer use have left my hands permanently in a claw-like deformed state and serious pain ensued from attempts to move them fluidly. I had to let them drop to avoid a seizure.

After an hour and a half of Elvis, hip wiggling, cramped hands and a disappointing lack of sweat, I had to wonder whether the belly chuckles provided the class (largely by personal efforts to slow hips down to an acceptable pace) will be enough to keep me going for 7 more weeks. For me hula dance is a bit like reading two pages of a book in an hour, with ukeleles. Kind of relaxing but also unnaturally slow and a bit painful. I'm attempting to reserve judgment until further classes and until I've procured a bona fide skirt which I'm hoping will make all the difference.

Easter weekend: things heat up in Hannover

Bonfire in Garbsen

This post was almost entitled: "Mitfahrgelegentheit: the new way to hitchhike", since our chosen method to reach Hannover on Easter weekend was riding in the cars of strangers. This is not as dramatic as it sounds: in recent years, organised carpooling has sprung up in German as a clever, environmentally friendly way to beat exorbitant train fares. A week before Easter, Daniel stalked the carpooling site until he found two free seats in cars cruising between Hannover and Berlin on our dates, and secured our ride with a timely phone call. Somewhat similar to Humboldt Uni sport (see previous entry "Shaking it at Salsa"), these seats between major cities are snapped up within seconds. It's not difficult to understand why. For a return trip we each paid 28 Euros, saving around 50 euros over 600km. It is however recommended that you go to sleep and remain oblivious to the fact that you're hurtling along the Autobahn at 160km per hour squished into the backseat of a stranger's car.

We survived, and attended the whirlwind of Easter-related activities jammed into our sunny weekend in Garbsen, Hannover. Highlights included the traditional (pagan) Osterfeuer (Easter Fire), where I took great delight in being the only tourist among scores of Hannoveraners chomping on huge sausages and swigging local beer by the bonfire. Small children scampered between our legs collecting beer bottles, for which they made a very respectable 50 cents for every bottle returned - Pfandpiraten in training. Most of the village of Garbsen was there, including the fire brigade with two trucks on standby.

Mmm...Wurst at the Osterfeuer

Days were filled with bike riding through canola fields, eating hearty roast meat and dumplings for lunch with the extended family, playing cards and sipping on lemon tea accompanied by a huge a slice of homemade cake. Everything was so wonderfully wholesome and idyllic, I felt like I was in an Enid Blyton novel. Needless to say, I didn't crack open a law book all weekend and now have a strict plan to eat fruit and study all week.

For those of you sceptical of my ability to ride a bike, I've included the photographic evidence of my triumphant ride through Garbsen. I am dressed not in the traditional attire of the Garbsen population, but rather in an Indiana Jones hat belonging to Daniel's little brother, the only headgear that would fit my enormous head.  Since Germans don't seem to believe that the sun can burn you or that helmets are necessary (!), my options for hats that day were limited.

Shaking it at Salsa

Shoes bought specially for Salsa

The range of sports on offer for students at Humboldt Uni is nothing short of impressive. For the ridiculously low price of 15-20 euros for around 10 lessons, you can sign yourself up for anything from basketball to irish dance, martial arts or handball. But there is a catch - the sign-up process takes place online only, and typically lasts around 2-3 minutes before all courses are full. I was crushed to miss out on Hip Hop and Streetdance (granted, my hip hop moves are already quite well honed and I probably didn't need this course anyway), but consoled by two reserved places in Cuban Salsa for Daniel and I, thanks to some deft clicking action on Daniel's part. I bought a pair of grandma-like very low heels to dance in and eagerly awaited our first lesson on Thursday evening, keen to expand my dancing repertoire beyond crumping and shimmying in da club.

Oddly, I experienced more difficulties with the moves than anticipated and for once, I don't think inferior German language skills can be used as an excuse. Rather, something inside me fundamentally rejected the idea that I couldn't lead the way and move freely, but instead had to rely on subtle shoulder movements from Daniel as to where I should move my feet. The first half hour of the class consisted of me treading on Daniel's toes and attempting to ignore feminist sensibilities that were offended by being manouvered back and forth and whirled around without notice. Daniel didn't respond well to my creative improvisations and was visibly enjoying his new position of power, demanding that I correct my "Haltung!" whenever my arms drooped slightly.

Things improved in last hour of the class, with Daniel switching to an encouraging tone and obligingly exaggerating his shoulder movements until I had the hang of where I had to shuffle my poor, confused feet. I started to enjoy not having to make the decisions about what to do next. We kept up with the other 20 couples in the room and invited minimal criticism from our long haired, slightly goofy teacher who gently taught us left from right, and reminded the males in the room not to spin the girls too vigorously, or we'd all end up dizzy. At the end of the class, we even signed up for the optional salsa practice party to take place at an unnamed location sometime soon. So it looks like we'll be shaking it at salsa on a very regular basis.

The First Day at Uni

I am a veteran of the university orientation day. A sixth-year student, I’ve attended four universities in as many years. By now, I have been so thoroughly orientated that I doze off during the explanations of setting up email accounts and this time, even skipped the library tour (shockingly rebellious, I know). On the first day, I stuffed everything I knew was essential into my uni bag – Mac Book, two pens, a bottle of water and thorough directions on how to find every single lecture theatre I’d painstakingly researched online the night before.

I’d scheduled 13 hours of lectures for Monday, already knowing that most of them would probably be cancelled or re-scheduled and I wouldn’t know about it, because exchange students tend to get kept in the dark about these things. I firmly resolved not to utter a word of English to anyone who could speak any German. This stubbornness is absolutely essential if you don’t want to end up as the unofficial English tutor for all the exchange students desperate to improve their English.

My preparation complete, my first ever class at Humboldt Uni was Monday morning at 8am, a pretty harsh introduction to the German university system. I scooted into the lecture room at three minutes to 8, terrified of being late, and self-consciously fired up my laptop, noting that only one or two others were doing the same. This is in stark contrast to Sydney Uni law seminar rooms, any of which could function as an advertisement for Apple. I decided not to care.

Cheating slightly, I’d opted for a class in English – International Security Law. The first class was all about Libya (it turns out three solid weeks of watching television was actually quite valuable.) The class was a good choice. A two hour lecture followed, delivered by a Mexican professor talking about his role in the UN Security Council, unfortunately for me all in extremely fast and highly technical German (yep, impressively the Mexican professor spoke fluent German). Next came two obligatory hours of German Constitutional Law, during which my heart rate increased exponentially with every passing minute when I realized I hadn’t understood most of what was said. Although the day had started off well, I was exhausted by 2pm and relived to find other exchange students at the law café who shared similarly overwhelming experiences.

Sure enough, my last 5 hours of lectures were inexplicably cancelled (and predictably it was only the hopeful exchange students who were still hanging around the halls), so after loitering around in the law building for hours, I finally dragged myself home. After some cold leftover risotto (microwaves are uncommon here), I immediately jumped online and Wikipedia-ed the hell out of every word I’d managed to take down in Constitutional Law. After three hours, I had managed to string together a two page plausible summary of what the lecturer had probably said. Today that same professor, who at first seemed like a friendly old grandpa, ominously announced that there would be no privileges for exchange students; we will be treated identically to the locals in the name of a fair and impartial assessment procedure. Damn. Who actually wants fair and impartial when you’re an exchange student? The jackpot professor is the one who says, “at the end of semester, exchange students can do a written exam, or even a brief verbal exam, or submit some work on any topic you like, in English, German, French, or Spanish or a mixture of any of the above.” If anyone scores one of these lecturers, this information spreads through the exchange student community like wildfire, and predictably, within days, an unusually high proportion of us will appear in this class, eager to pass a subject that doesn’t interfere with attending Berlin parties, galleries, flea markets and pubs.

German TV fails to prepare for academic study

In a bid to immerse myself in German culture, I found myself turning to television (Fernsehen) quite regularly over the last three weeks. Having chewed my fingernails down to the quick looking for something to occupy my time (jobless and uni-less), I convinced myself that television was both a necessary relaxant and educational. What better way to fill the gaping hole left in my heart by The Biggest Loser Australia, learn the every day language and habits of the general German population, dabble in a little politics and keep up to date with current world disasters?

There are approximately 25 free-to-air channels on German television. The 16 German states each have their own station (I think), and many of these largely feature round-the-clock folk music, necessarily implying that there is a huge market for jolly groups of vocalists in medieval attire.  Unfortunately, my TV antenna only allows me to receive a total of three channels, or four if it's overcast and the antenna is precariously balanced on a pile of books near the window. All of these are news channels with programs that are pretty informative but downright depressing. Luckily, it didn't take long to find many of the other shows available on-line, including Germany's Next Top Model hosted by the delightful Heidi Kulm, to whom I can attribute a hefty portion of the vocab I've acquired over the last few weeks.

Each day equipped with dictionary and notebook to jot down cool expressions that make me sound like a local, I took to watching TV with a level of concentration usually reserved for preparing for uni exams. My routine consisted of around half an hour of news, 10-15 minutes of a science program called Galileo and an hour long reality show called 'We are Family' to round off my German education. The programs I quickly comprehended and therefore found myself viewing most regularly were shows that some refer to as "Unterschichtenfernsehen" literally, "lower class TV" - the shows that mostly involve people screaming at each other, teen pregnancy, disputed fatherhood and out of control kids. Within days my vocabulary book was stuffed with new expressions like "cheating on your partner" (fremd gehen), "indiscretion" (Seitensprung) and "delivery room" (Kreissaal). From Top Model, I became familiar with the words for "conceited" (eingebildet), "pleitschen" (to whip) and "glossy magazine" (hochglanzende Zeitschrift). A daily dose of German news and two special feature programs on Chernobyl also taught me all the vocab associated with nuclear reactors. With two vocab books filled in as many weeks, I felt I was making progress.

Unfortunately for me, but perhaps not unsurprisingly, so far almost none of these words have featured in ANY of the orientation lectures held at uni. I've found myself hesitating asking a fellow student what year of uni she's in, although I'd have absolutely no linguistic difficulty asking who the father of her baby is or whether she's considering artificial insemination. I became thoroughly confused yesterday when a Professor started talking about something called "Arbeitsgemeinschaften" which turned out to roughly mean "tutorial" and tripped over my tongue asking someone how I could put my timetable together. Meanwhile, no one seems inclined to discuss Libya or nuclear reactors over lunch and I just come across all tongue-tied and bashful trotting around the uni. Incidentally, television has since forcibly taken a backseat to everyday events such attending uni and cruising around Berlin on public transport with my brand-spanking new German concession card.

While German television may have let me down in my academic preparation, there is one particular technique that has so far proved fairly successful in honing my language skills. I subtly collect expressions overheard in supermarkets or from my lower class TV programs and then at various intervals, test them out on the German boyfriend (i.e. Daniel). He either looks at me admiringly and says that I "sounded really German" and I give myself a mental high-five or his mouth contorts and eyes widen in a scandalised stare at which point I make a mental note not to use that one in front of his parents.