After a wordy post, a picturey post

This is where I've started working semi-regularly (Johannes Haag's office). The windows look out on a beer garden.

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The local bank, with plastic shielding over its windows in preparation for riot day.

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Word has it that the centerpoint for the rioters will be Mariannenplatz, which is 4 blocks away from us.

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2 Euros gets you a scoop of cassis sorbet and a scoop of licorice ice-cream (shown here partially eaten). Absolutely amazing. I could eat 'Lakritz Eis' every day. And I might start doing just that.

Theological-political post

This is sort of a different (and more personal) topic than normal, and a lot longer, but I was stood up by one conversation partner and so spent an hour outside a cafe drinking a strawberry milkshake and thinking about God, so this is what's on my mind now (I'll be back to talking about riots in a couple days)...

A couple months ago, after deciding to convert, I decided what made most sense to me was to think of the process (and the result) as committing myself to wrestle with a certain set of texts and traditions. Making that commitment is less than committing myself to any particular beliefs (such as beliefs in the supernatural), but it does mean that I've set myself the task of thinking carefully about such things.

Since being here in Berlin, I've been reading Solomon Schechter's Aspects of Rabbinic Judaism. I like it a lot - it's super-clear, and gets right at a lot of topics I want to figure out. One of those topics is why Jews are bound by God's commands.

One answer Schechter talks about is that this stems from Jews' being subjects of God as king - moreover, as voluntary subjects. Since I don't think I'll ever be able to accept the existence of a human-like political entity who personally communicated with Moses, this idea of commands being binding because they were voluntarily accepted is very appealing. So long as we know there's voluntary acceptance of them, we can see how they're binding without having to assume (or deny) that they had a supernatural origin.

But this seems to contradict something else that, for me (being under Spinoza's influence), seems very important: the idea of God as the source of morality in some sense. The thing that's special about morality is that it's binding on everyone, whether they like it or not, and whether they assent to it or not. But if God can make commands that are binding regardless of assent (as moral commands are), then how is room left for commands that are binding because they're assented to?

For me, this is kind of pressing, because it seems pretty clear that not all the commandments that are central to Judaism are, or could be, universal moral truths (e.g. Saturday being the Sabbath). And I'd feel uncomfortable about converting if I thought that those commandments were binding for a completely different reason than the transparently moral commandments.

So here's what I'm thinking now: I want to hold onto the thought of God being the source of morality (since, for me, this is part of a conception of God that I can honestly accept), and the thought that voluntary choice has a role. Maybe the way to do this is to think of God's commandments coming in two types (both of equal importance): the determinate and the indeterminate type. A determinate commandment is one that is specific enough to shape your actions pretty directly (e.g. not killing, or not worshiping idols). But indeterminate commandments aren't themselves specific enough to shape your actions. Say, for instance, that one indeterminate commandment is "regularly set aside time in your life to reflect on your place in the world and your duties." With such a commandment doesn't tell you which times to set aside - it's just important that you pick one and stick with it. And this is where the voluntary choice comes in: the indeterminate commandment is binding whether you like it or not, but you ('you' perhaps being a community) get to choose which particular times to be bound to.

Of course, this means that if we're trying to understand all this in terms of moral duties, we have to find an indeterminate duty for each commandment that doesn't claim universality. And that probably won't work out in some cases, and then we'll either need some other story, or question its bindingness.

If anyone actually read all of that... you must be seriously procrastinating. But thanks!

Who knew?

So, it turns out that every year on May 1 (International Workers' Day) there's a 'traditional' riot in Kreuzberg (my neighborhood). Who knew?

Here's an article about the 2007 riots.

Apparently it's okay before the sun sets, and has been getting less wild every year, but Amy, Audrey and I are planning on spending the evening at home in our 6th floor (what the Germans calls '5th floor') apartment. My window has a pretty good view looking down the street, so we'll be able to see the excitement while hopefully being more than a 'stone's throw' from any action.

Dämlich

...means something like 'dim-witted'. Here's the weird thing: at least according to one of my conversation partners, it comes from 'Dame' ('lady' - not so far from English) but today has no sexist connotations. Are there any examples of words like this in English that have a transparent root in some prejudice, but which no longer sound sexist, racist etc.? I can't think of any...

Today is the first meeting of the Kant colloquium here - my first chance at really professionally dooming myself through my poor German skills.

strength and weakness of will

I don't think I've ever had an experience that involved so many situations where I knew I should do something, but where I had to struggle to get myself to do it. It started with the big stuff: getting myself to apply for the grants to come here, accepting the DAAD grant, buying the ticket, and leaving the Brooklyn apartment for the airport.

Once I got here, it happened with almost everything I did: getting out of bed the first morning, leaving the apartment on my own the first time, buying food the first time, going to meet the conversation partners, going to buy a bike, going to check out the building where I'll be working, and (most recently) going to some place to pick up a ticket for "Lange Nacht der Opern und Theater" that I'm going to with another conversation partner and a couple of his friends.

With the last one, I wasn't completely sure if I'd found the right place, or even if I was supposed to go there to pick up the ticket, instead of somewhere else. So I actually spent a couple seconds in front of the door contemplating just getting on my bike and going home.

I guess it's just because I'm suddenly in a different setting, and so can't rely on my usual set of largely unconscious assumptions about how things work. It definitely reminds me of how I used to be terrified at the thought of calling someone I didn't know on the phone when I was, say, 10 years old. It wasn't really a matter of whether I not I knew what to expect. I did. It seemed to be more a matter whether that knowledge was already in the background of my mind in a way where I could effortlessly rely on it. And I think the same thing's true here.

(In case it sounded like it, none of this was meant in a 'fishing for sympathy' way. Life's pretty good. And tonight's theater-crawl should be awesome. I wish you were all here to join me for it!)

This, like, cool art thing

Before I came here, my vision of Berlin was mostly of mostly empty buildings with weird lighting, loud music and bizarre art shows. Tonight, along with a couple of my conversation partners, I went to this mostly empty building, that had weird lighting, loud music, and an art show. There were some paintings and photographs up, and then a performance piece where some guy wearing only a dress made out of paper would yell "Stop me!" in heavily accented English, and then try to put an ink stamp on the wall. People (presumably just other audience members, though it's hard to be sure) would come up and try to hold him back from the wall. The dress slowly tore apart, and so got more and more revealing. It was... interesting. It felt kind of effective, though I have no idea what the effect was supposed to be.

So yeah. Now I'm all hip and stuff.

Rote Grütze

...is a dessert I had last night at a cafe in Prenzlauer Berg (I was hanging out with Jacob Rosen - good times). It's a sort of syrupy mixture of berries, with some wine cooked in, I think. Fairly tart. The cafe served it in a glass topped with ice cream and whipped cream. It was really good. Just so you all know.

In general, things are going pretty well. It's now been 3.5 weeks since I left NY, and I'm still alive. An important part of staying alive, I've found, is having a good sense for how different sorts of cobble-stone surfaces affect your bike. The little stones are fine. The more brick-sized stones are not. And the road up to the bridge over the Spree just north of the main Humboldt building is made out of the brick-sized stones. I haven't yet figured out what the best way to over them is. Going slow seems safer, but feels extra wobbly, so I'm not sure if zooming over them is the best way to go.

Some words involving 'ent-':

• eine Ente - a duck


• entstehen - to arise, develop


• entsprechen - to correspond to


• entsagen - to renounce


• entlarven - to unmask, expose

I think I found my beer

Weihenstephan. They claim to be the oldest brewery in the world, but all I'm sure of is that I drank two of their beers today and liked them much more than anything else I've had here so far (Berliner Kindl hasn't really been doing it for me). Pretty tasty.

Today was nice - a run in the morning, then some writing, then a meeting with Johannes Haag (a professor here who has to be one of the nicest people ever), then conversation with Jens (#4), then meeting with Martin, who bought me a couple beers and a crepe - all for some inane comments on his master's thesis.

Jens told me that the Germans don't really 'date,' and I realized that I don't think most Americans do either. When most people in the US talk about how they're 'dating' someone, they don't really mean that they're going on dates (except in New York, I guess). Saying that you're dating someone seems to more often be a way of saying that you're involved with someone, but not yet really an 'item' with them yet. Or so it seemed to me after I'd drunk the first Weihenstephan.

A small note about food

With apologies to Jess...

Eating out is really cheap in this city. There's a place near here where a huge doenner kebab sandwich is 2 Euros (and they give you free tea). Upgrading to a full plate is only 1.5 more. Yesterday, Amy, Audrey and I went to a Spanish restaurant down the street that had a huge brunch buffet for 7.50 - including stuffed peppers, potatoes gratin, roasted vegetables of various kinds, crepes, some sort of spinach pie, cheesecake, and on and on. Plus, the tax is already included, and the expected tip is almost nothing (I tipped .50 in a bar yesterday, and that was considered generous). Maybe the best part is that almost none of these places are crowded, so, unlike NY, you feel no pressure to get moving.

I'm not sure how it works economically. It must be because the rent is so cheap, or something.

On the downside, I've been missing the Park Slope Co-op produce. Not only is the broccoli plastic-wrapped here, but there doesn't seem to be much in the way of green leafy vegetables (cabbage doesn't really count), and the tomatoes I've bought so far have been kind of meal-y. I don't know if this is just bad luck, or something about Berlin, or what. Fortunately, there's always eating out as a possibility.

My accomplishment so far for the day: I figured out what I was doing wrong with the bank machines. Two new words:

• Girokonto - a checking account. Such as the one I have.


• Sparkonto - a savings account. Such as the one I don't have, but which I've been trying to withdraw money from.

Olympic stadium and the worst postcard ever

Yesterday I rode out to the western part of the city to meet with conversation partner #3 (Klaus) for the second time. He lives in a very different neighborhood than the ones I've been in so far - a little more spacious, greener, and upper-middle-class-ish. It's very near the Olympic Stadium, which we walked over to. Here's the entrance gate:

Kind of imposing. It's used for soccer now, but you can also take a history-oriented tour.

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On a different note: my bank here sent me some sort of "thanks for opening an account with us" package. It had a nice map of the city (showing buslines, UBahn, SBahn and bank locations), a guide to internet banking that seems to be mostly a 'how to use the internet' guide, and... some postcards. Nice, no? Except that the postcards are pretty weak. Totally uninteresting. Here's the worst of the bunch:

I guess this is a view from Potsdamer Platz, but it has to be the least interesting view possible. It confirms that the sky is sometimes gray here, and that some buildings are tall and boring. A close-up picture of the sidewalk would have been better.

Sprache and the CIty

Yesterday I met with two conversation partners (#2 and #4). With the first (Alex), we rode bikes down to the Soviet War Memorial in Treptower Park. It's very impressive, and very soviet. There are huge statues of noble-looking warriors, and the hammer n' sickles and Russian quotes are still all in place and in crisp condition. I should have had my camera with me, but I'll make my way back sometime.

Later in the evening, the other conversation dude (Jens), showed me around the Kunsthaus Tacheles - a former department store that is now covered in graffiti and houses a few bars and lots of small art galleries. Again, I'd forgotten my camera (though I still have that gut-level aversion to looking like a tourist). The majority of the art had the same sort of vibe as the walls - chaotic and bombastic. Not really my thing. But there were a few things that were pretty cool: a sort of cubist-ish gallery, and then the gallery of one painter who did simple but rough charcoal sketches of landscapes and then painting in vivid colors for the sky, leaving the ground just white.

All that came a bit at the expense of German practice, but was certainly worth it.

A completely counter-intuitive word:

• lockern - to loosen or relax

So if you say, "meine Muskeln haben sich endlisch gelockert" (if I've got the grammar right), that means "my muscles have finally relaxed."

iRunning

Before coming over here, I bought an iPod shuffle. It's the sort of mainstream, consumerist, enjoyable thing I don't do very often, but Jeff and others convinced me that I might well want it while sitting around in Berlin waiting for Naomi to get here. It's really an amazing little box - stuffed with gnomes who play all sorts of instruments.

Part of the idea too was to use it for running, since I'm still telling myself I'm going to run a marathon next year. So yesterday I did my first run with it. I've never run before with music in my ears and it was... interesting. Not what I expected. I thought that Morbid Angel would give me a huge boost, but it sort of didn't - I felt more like I was trying to run through a swamp. And I had some Beetles on there, and that gave me a significant boost. The whole thing was weird, though... I'm not sure whether I'll do it again. Being cut off from the world like that is just, well, weird (it would be perfect for sitting on a machine in a gym, though).

Today I'm meeting up with Conversation Partner #2 for a bike ride, and Conversation Partner #4 for dinner. Yesterday was pretty productive philosophy-wise (volunteers to read a new version of a paper on Kant and composition? You don't need to be a philosopher...), but I didn't do enough German.

Last bit of news: DAAD, who's giving me my stipend here, transferred money into my new account. Which is great. But I don't yet know how to withdraw it, partly because the bank machine presented me with 8 options, each of which seemed like it could be a plausible enough candidate for 'withdraw.' I'll figure it out.

New words:

• 'verfuehren' - 'to seduce' (the third most common word in Nora Roberts translation, after 'der' and 'und').


• 'feig' - 'cowardly/chicken' (maybe this could be a replacement for pejorative uses of 'gay' in US slang?).


• 'abheben' - 'to lift up (e.g. a telephone) or to withdraw (money).

Broccoli and Skype

I met with my fifth (and, I think, final) conversation partner today, a woman who's background is in anthropology (especially focused on the Middle East and Egypt). Another great conversation - she'd spent some time in northern Virginia suburbs, and we spent a while talking about the contrast between there and here.

In the course of talking to people here, I've found myself fishing around for explanations of why Americans do what they do. The thing I've found myself saying most is that Americans put an exceptionally high value on "people getting what they deserve." That's something everyone cares about, but I feel like many Americans often value that over things (e.g. making the world a happier place) in a way that Europeans don't. Does that sound right to anyone?

Also, yesterday I went to a talk by Jonathan Barnes, the eminent scholar of ancient philosophy. He was a very good presenter. He reminded me of Paul Revere.


Guesses as to what the thing on the right is? Broccoli. The most plastic-wrap-protected broccoli you can buy here. And, also, the least plastic-wrap-protected broccoli you can buy here. All the broccoli I've seen so far (and, admittedly, I haven't put that much time into looking for it) is like this. Eggs and milk can sit out unrefrigerated in stores, and other vegetables can happily sit around naked, but broccoli seems to demand the best protection.
(The drink on the left is Apfelschorle - a mix of apple juice and bubbly water that comes in giant bottles.)

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This is my view of my Brooklyn apartment from here in Berlin (Naomi was just off to the left hand side).

Should be a good day...

I think my cold's gone, so I went for a long run this morning along the Ufer. I think I'm getting sometime of a tan (despite using sunscreen). The bike is back in shape, I think, though I'll probably be gentle with the front gears. Jonathan Barnes is giving a talk at Humboldt today about ontology, so I think I'll head over for that. And I met conversation partner #4 yesterday evening, and it was good - I'd just had a beer, and it definitely helped.

The weather is still stunningly beautiful, though the internet claims that it'll rain on Friday and Saturday.

That's all for now - I miss you all still (updates from the homeland are always welcome).

Morality of street-crossing in Berlin

Berlin bike-riders and pedestrians wait for cross-signals to change here, even when there's clearly no cars coming. So you just sit there on your bike, or on foot, watching the little red signal while the crosswalk stands there safe and empty in front of you. Not everyone, but a pretty clear majority, I think. Amy has said that people have yelled at her for crossing against the signal, especially when there are children around. It's completely unlike New York, where you're pushed into the street if no cars are coming, regardless of what the crossing signal says.

Since my street manners are all heavily New York-trained, I've been finding this irritating. But I also wonder if I have some moral obligation to do as the Berliners do while in Berlin (prompted by reading over Martin Ebeling's master's thesis about political legitimacy, which he was nice enough to let me look at).

Here's what seems to be a fairly plausible argument for me waiting at the stupid signals (based pretty directly on stuff I learned from Martin's thesis): if you respect someone, and you think her opinion about what people should do in a certain context is probably as reasonable as yours, then her opinion should exert some pull on you. That's supposed to be a mostly definitional truth about what it is to respect someone. Now, if there are multiple people whom you respect, and they disagree among themselves, then you should feel more pulled towards the opinion that's held most strongly by the group (in cases where they all feel equally strongly about it, that'll be the majority opinion, if there is one).

If we add to those assumptions the further claims that (1) there is a basic moral obligation to respect other people, that (2) the majority of people who do have an opinion about Berlin street-crossing think everyone should wait for the signal, and that (3) I don't have any good grounds for thinking these people are less reasonable than I am, then we get the conclusion that I'm morally compelled to at least feel resistance to crossing against the signal.

For any argument of this kind, it seems like the most tempting premise to deny is (3), since it's easy for all of us to think that other people are less reasonable, but I'm not sure if I have good grounds for that.

Thoughts, anyone? I'd really like to feel free to cross the stupid streets without feeling guilty.

Some days you have to force to be good days

The day started off kind of unpleasant: sore throat, finding out I didn't get a teaching prize thing I applied for (and which at least one faculty member said I had a great shot at), broken watchband, jammed bike chain, lack of the right tools (needlenose pliers can only do so much), late for my conversation meeting, etc.

But it worked out well enough. My cold subsided a bit, and I went to meet Hussein (the first conversation partner I met), borrowing Amy's UBahn card. And that was good - two hours of talking about politics and religion in English (really fascinating), and an hour of stuttering German, which Hussein claimed was noticeably better than last week. And now I'm going to make a stir-fry thing with Amy, and talk to Naomi later tonight. Plus, one of Amy's friends is coming by tomorrow with a wrench, so I should be able to un-jam chain. So things will be alright. Overall, life's still good.

A relative?

This is a Marbled Angelfish.

If you google the name of this blog, most of the results you get will be the results of typos in people's descriptions of their marbled angelfish. Or of their marbled angelfood cake.

By the way - after some flippant remarks, Jeff Sebo is now being all serious and philosophical on his blog (The Dear Self). But it's interesting, if you're interested in moral constructivism and stuff.

Quick update

The sun's set and I'm tired, but it was a good day... except that I feel like I'm coming down with a cold. Not cool. Cold. But I've drunk enough orange juice to get the edges of my eyes tingling, so hopefully that'll kill it overnight.

I had another conversation partner meeting today, this time with a guy named Klaus out in the western part of the city. I rode there through the Tiergarten. Fun riding - there were great bike lanes for most of the way, and there was a bike rack on the exact corner where we were supposed to meet (not too surprising - there are bike racks everywhere). The conversation practice was good. My German doesn't feel any better, but at least my endurance is improving (at the first couple conversation practices, my brain basically stopped processing German after about 30 minutes).

Idiom for the day: "ihm auf den Zahn fuehlen." Weird. Somehow, talking about feeling to someone on the tooth is a way of saying that you're feeling out what someone thinks about something. Actually, the English idiom is kind of weird too. (Corrections welcome about this.)

Just a couple pictures

This is my laundry, drying in the spring sunshine. No laundromat for me.

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This is the thing with the golden angel on top. The picture is from my day of walking around last week, but tomorrow I'm going to meet a new conversation partner in Charlottenburg, and this will be on my way. My plan is to ride up to Humboldt again, and then to just head west on Unter den Linden, then straight through the Tiergarten. Forecast for tomorrow is a high of 69f, partly cloudy. Nominations haven't ended yet for the bike's name, by the way...

Today I finally (I think) pounded it into my head that 'kriegen' just means 'to get or receive', and so doesn't have any direct implication of war (Krieg). That took me a while.

Ajvar

You know how, if you go to some foreign country for a while, you're supposed to get really into some sort of food or drink that's hard to find back home? I think I may have found my thing at the local Turkish store: Ajvar. It's amazing.

(Now someone from back home will probably tell me that Key Foods, Whole Foods and every corner store in New York all have a whole ajvar section, and that I must be the only person who's ever lived in New York who doesn't eat it regularly. But I'll enjoy my illusion and my jar of ajvar while it lasts.)

Some new friends

Here is my roommate Amy, introduced at last. This picture is from last week, when she showed me the Ufer (riverbank/park) right by where the hospital is where her daughter Audrey was born. It was a nice spot, and this morning I found the way to run there from the apartment. There and back will be a nice regular thing. There are plenty of other runners, and the round trip is pretty close to a couple laps around Prospect Park. The path goes further too, and I'll explore that as I feel more ambitious.

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And this is my newest friend. He doesn't have a name yet (suggestions?). My conversation partner from yesterday recommended a place with a bunch of used bikes, and this one was a little less than 100 Euros. Not bad. I considered an 80 Euro folding bike, but it seemed less ideal for long rides to Humboldt and Tiergarten (the actual reason was that it seemed too emasculating). And: wheeee! I'd forgot how fantastic it feels to be on a bike. And unlike most places in the US, the roads here are made with bikes in mind. Tomorrow I'll try riding to Humboldt.

Some words for the day: 'gebraucht' ('used') , 'schlicht' ('simple/plain') and 'verwalten' ('to manage', as in 'manage a store').

Being social

Just got back from my second tandem Deutsch-English conversation partner meeting. It was good, again. This time I met with an unemployed sociologist, who had grown up in East Germany. I got in perhaps 45 minutes of German practice, and then we spent the rest of the time in English. Different than my last partner - less correction and more causal lapses into English. But just as interesting.

I'm not sure yet how to categorize these meetings. In some ways, they're a lot like internet dates: you exchange a few emails with a stranger that establish that you're willing to enter into some sort of implicit contract, then you meet at a cafe or something, then after two or three hours awkwardly bring up when next to meet and who's going to email who.

The thing that makes them much nicer than most internet dates is that the conversation isn't just a means to an end. You're not trying to figure out whether the person is crazy or not, or whether they're into you or whether you'd feel safe being alone in a room with them or whatever. And, even better, if all I can think of are completely inane topics to talk about, I've got vocabulary limitation as an excuse.

'Anmelden'...

...is my word for the morning. It means to announce or register. Another lesson from the morning is that when people say "everyone in Berlin speaks English," they really mean "a fair number of people in Berlin speak English." So, for example, one might have thought that someone at the government agency where you're supposed to register your residence would speak English. But one who thought that would be thinking wrongly.

It worked out okay, though. About a half-hour wait was spent staring at forms I didn't understand and internally kicking myself for not bringing my dictionary, then my number (103) came up, and a very patient ('geduldige') woman put up with my stutterinig German and walked me through the forms.

I have my first academic meeting this afternoon. That should be good.

Competition

Of some sort. Not really. But look at the bottom post:
http://thedearself.blogspot.com/

I'm off to see the Einwohnermeldeamt this morning, where I'm supposed to register for a foreign resident's permit. I tried doing this in NY, but they wouldn't let me.

Also, for those who care: I realized that I think of Michael Smith's book. This might be obvious to everyone else who's read it, but it took me a while. He's really very much a Kant-follower. Kant thought that all rational beings had a faculty called 'reason' that produced motivational force. Realizing that you couldn't universalize your maxim was itself supposed to motivate you not to act on it. Today, people don't like talking of 'faculties', and most are skeptical about whether this 'universalization' business is the right way to go. So Smith replaces the old-school-style faculty of reason with a requirement that in a fully rational being, certain beliefs (ie beliefs about what's valuable, reasonable or right) have causal powers. And he replaces thoughts about universalization with some huge set of a priori platitudes about rightness. But the structure is still the same. Perhaps the main metaphysical difference is that Kant thought there actually was something in all of us that motivated us to do the right thing, whereas Smith only commits himself (at least in the book I read) to claims about what we think the inner causal features of a fully rational being would be.

So now I can lay off on thinking about metaethics for a while.

The first weekend

It's Sunday evening here now. It was a pretty relaxed weekend.

Amy threw a 6-month birthday party yesterday for Audrey, so I got to meet some teachers from the school where she worked. A nice group. The theme of the party was 'half,' and I won a prize for drinking exactly half a glass of water with my eyes closed. I thought of letting someone else win, but you can't let these Berliners off easily, you know? I proudly represented the U S of O (-bama).

Speaking of which: people like Obama here - a lot. I had my first conversation-partner thing today, with a guy from a Lebanese family who grew up here in the city. He put up with an hour of my awful, awful German, and then we did about an hour and a half of English. We talked about politics for most of the time. It was very interesting - he said that most people over here don't really think of Americans separately from American politicians, so that Bush's unpopularity (if that's not too weak a word for it) affected how people in the Middle East saw American troops. I'm supposed to meet another conversation partner on Tuesday, and perhaps another next week. If I can keep three going each for a once-a-weekish schedule, I think I'd have a shot of moving from awful, awful German to just awful (or maybe even just bad!) German by the time Naomi comes over. That's the goal, anyway.

I'm going to go eat some leftover cake from the party and read some Kant.

I miss you all still terribly... maybe give each other hugs for me?

Walking day

I woke up this morning, did about an hour of Nora Roberts, and then hit the streets. I walked up to the old church, then west on Unter den Linden to Brandenburg Gate, then over to the middle of the Tiergarten, then down to the Jewish Museum, then home. My feet are kind of sore, but it was a perfect day for it.

I put some pictures below, but here are some other notes:

-This guy rode past me on a bike who was bald, but still had a mohawk - it was angled so that it made a straight line avoiding the bald spot. Imagine a visor put on so that, if your head was a clock with your face being the front, the visor was pointing to 10:00. I'm going to start working on mine now.

-The Tiergarten is huge. I think Prospect Park is bigger, but not nearly as tidy and well-pathed. Lots of people running there.

-I've got an appointment next Thursday to talk to Rolf-Peter Horstmann, a (partly retired) Kant scholar I'd been hoping to get some time with. So that's good. And I've got an appointment on Tuesday with some guy named Alex who's supposed to be a German-English conversation partner. So that's all good.

-I spent a long time at the Jewish Museum today (maybe 3 hours?). I thought it was really well done. Serious and very moving, but not heavy-handed. The architecture is really effective, I thought, though I'd been skeptical about it before (looking like a bunch of angles without reason). And there's a bunch about Moses Mendelssohn, for Moses Mendelssohn fans. Including his glasses. If you had bad eyes in the 18th century, you might have worn something like this:


-The church right near me is advertising a performance of St. Matthew's Passion on Sunday. I might have to check it out...

Pictures from walking day

These are drop boxes to put clothing and shoe donations in. They're everywhere - really, everywhere. About three times easier to find than postboxes.

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Some old church. And some sort of tower. Next to each other. A "new and the old" sort of thing.

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This is the angel on top of the tower in the middle of Tiergarten. Where Obama talked when he was here. It was very shiny. Notice the little birds on the wings.

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Typical American arrogance (my bad translation: "Berlin had earned a good icecream. Perhaps the best icecream in the world").

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This is a bit of the wall. That wall.

Another adolescence

So far, some aspects of being new in Germany remind me of being 13. I feel like everyone is looking at me. I mumble when I talk to people, and they either don't understand me, or else correct my grammar. I'm expected to use the phone, know how to write and mail letters, and open my own banking account, but the thought of doing any of those things is mortifying. I'm tempted to just hide in my room with the curtain drawn, except that then I'll have a big stack of homework staring at me. And my girlfriend is a long ways away and reachable only by internet.

(Actually, I didn't even have an internet girlfriend when I was 13, though I think I wrote one letter about my mountain bike to a girl I met on AOL.)

And, in fact, today was pretty nice. After running and eating my perfect breakfast (see below) I managed to mail a letter, open a bank account and get a huge amount of work done: spent a couple hours reading Nora Roberts, read about 90 pages of Michael Smith's book, and then went back over about 10 pages of my "Learn Biblical Hebrew" book.

Tomorrow my plan is to go for a long walk and check out Humboldt University and its surroundings. So there will probably be pictures of things for which you can find much better pictures online.

This morning I went running in Goerlitzer Park, as planned. I noticed yesterday that there were a few people running there, but not too many. Either the Germans run much less than New Yorkers, or else they go somewhere else to do it. But running was okay - I was (predictably) mocked by a group of Turkish teenagers in Lausitzer Platz (which I go through to get to the park), and thought of an appropriate rely in German only 10 or 20 minutes later ("Kommen sie mit!").

After the run, I had a breakfast of toasted Heidebrot, Gouda cheese, and sour cherry jam. Ate it while standing on the balcony of the apartment. It was amazing. (I felt a punch of homesickness when I woke up this morning, so I needed to force my brain into a good mood).

Last night, I cooked for myself and Amy. Despite burning the first batch of rice (stupid German electric stove with its counterintuitive control placement), it came out pretty well: a bunch of sauteed red cabbage, zucchini, carrot and white beans served over (here's the inspired part) peanut butter rice. I thought of using peanut butter for flavor kind of late in the game, so it wasn't really possible to mix it in with the vegetables. But two spoonfulls mixed into the rice worked out really well - makes the rice a more interesting part of the meal. That was my grand intellectual accomplishment for yesterday.

Today I have an appointment with someone at the bank (to get my stipend coming). Right now, I'm working on my translated Nora Roberts novel for German practice. It's pretty good. The highlight of the present chapter: "Margo brauchte sie. Und gleichzeitig wurde ihr schmerzlich klar, dass sie ihrem Mann nichts merh bedeutete." Who would have thought that Margo would come back to the Templeton House just at the time when Laura's marriage to Peter, which Margo had secretly disapproved of from the beginning, was falling apart? Even though Margo was involved in a drug-scandal, it's starting to look like Laura is really the one in need of help.

Hereabouts (the description)

I spent a little while walking around this morning. So far, I like the neighborhood a lot, for reasons I remember being listed on "Stuff White People Like." The streets, buildings and parks are in good shape, but still covered with graffiti, so it still feels 'real.' The demographics are pretty mixed - there's a huge mosque nearby, and a lot of Turkish immigrants. Then there are lots of stereotypical-looking Germans (the owner of the restaurant I went to last night had round glasses like me), and plenty of hipsterish Americans (not what I came here for, but it does make it feel a little more like home). And bikes - loads of bikes to fill the well-marked bike lanes. I feeling like I'll probably get a bike, though I might be being lured in by the weather (it's been picture-perfect today, and was yesterday too, but people tell me this is a little odd).

Amy, my roommate, has been extremely helpful. The vibe's good. She's going to help me find a conversation partner, which seems like exactly the right way to work on the language.

I haven't started back on work yet, but will soon. It looks like I'm going to go out to Frankfurt on June 12 to present in their colloquium, which should be fun (I can't tell how formal it is - it might be closer to NYU's thesis prep than to a genuine speaker series). I also wrote to the main Humboldt Kant guy (Rolf-Peter Horstmann) to ask for a meeting. So those should force me back into action soon, after I spend a few days figuring out some sort of routine.

That's all for now. I think I'm going to take a nap (though I slept better last night than I thought I would).

Missing you all still...

Hereabouts

Part of the view from the balcony at the back of the apartment.

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Results of my first hunting and gathering trip, sitting in the kitchen window. The bread is called 'Heidebrot,' and weighs about a billion pounds. I got it at a bakery just down the street (though it looks like they probably got it from elsewhere, since they only had a tiny little oven). The rest of the food is from a superishmarket a couple blocks away, just across from a highschool. The bottle is apple-flavored mineral water (my roommate advised me to ease into drinking tap water).

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The view down my street, from street-level. It's pretty quiet.

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This is the U-Bahn leaving the Goerlitzer station near the apartment. The church is the centerpiece of Lausitzer Platz, the closest open square thing, where I sat this morning to drink coffee and eat a crispy seed-roll of some sort.

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What seems to be the central area in Goerlitzer Park, a fairly large park a few blocks south. There were some people out running there, so that it could become part of my routine. I'll need to explore it more. The white things on the grass aren't trash, they're some old masonry. And the weird line is public art of some form. I'll explore this all more...