older Charlottenburg pictures, and an update

The main sight in Charlottenburg is the old palace. Since we didn't put up pictures of it in our earlier post, here are some now. The palace pictures were taken by Naomi, and the fuzzy duck picture by Colin:





Naomi is off in Italy for a week or so, so this will briefly be a one-person blog again. My plan is to cram work in this week - the main goal being to put together a new (shorter) version of the writing sample paper. As a means of kicking that off, I went out last night with a small Kant posse. It was fun, though I ended up staying up too late - not because of partying, but because when I got home I ended up watching this long-ish video about the extreme right in Israel. Somehow, that didn't make for a peaceful sleep.

Potsdam (pretty palaces)

On Thursday, we went out to Potsdam with Naomi's visiting friend from college. There are two main palaces there, both mainly associated with Frederick the Great (though other Friedrichs lived in both). The first was a summer palace, called Schloss Sanssouci. It has a terraces vineyard leading up to it. Voltaire stayed there for a couple years. From below, it looks like this:


While the guidebooks highlight Sanssouci, we found the 'Neues Palais' much more impressive. Particularly the interior, which included a gigantic grotto room lined with seashells and polished stones. This is the outside, with its industrial-looking dome:

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We stopped for lunch here, in the 'Dragon House.' One of the best meals we've eaten since being in Germany. Nothing is tastier than fresh dragon.

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This is part of the Orangerie. We took a tour in German through the central apartments, each of which had a different semi-precious stone as a theme. We had to wear slippers over our shoes inside the building. After the tour, we went up to the top of the tower (every orangerie has to have a tower, obviously). But this is a view from the ground:

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The Neues Palais was surrounded by statues. And they're kind of cool - each has a unique expression. This one reminded us of someone...

Kant Strasse

As mentioned below, we walked down Kant Strasse with Hyunseop last week. It's sort of just another street. But Colin felt that compelled by reason to take some cute pictures - since how often do you get to see a garage named after Kant?






Colin liked this one intersection in particular, and made Hyunseop stand next to the sign. The lighting's not great - it's hard to focus on Leibniz and Kant when you have this bright modern city all around you (or something like that).

We're going to stop apologizing for the infrequent posts...

...even though we still feel bad about them.

Last week, Hyunseop visited us. He did some sight-seeing on his own, but we spent a day out in Charlottenburg. We went to the Schloss (castle/palace) first. Guidebooks were consulted:



After wandering around in the garden, we went to a nearby semi-touristy Brauhaus (brewery). Hyunseop wanted to try some real German food, which is actually hard to find in most of Berlin. He took a picture - his authentic pork knuckle is in the foreground:


Afterwards, we took a longish walk (down Kantstr., for which there will be more pictures in a bit) over to the Kaiser Wilhelm Memorial church. It's very interesting, and might require its own post. Inside the new chapel (next to the remnants of the bombed-out old church) is this Jesus statue. He's not on a cross - just flying or floating.

Pretty pictures! (from Frankfurt, part 2)

Here are a whole bunch of pictures (two blog posts worth!) -- to quench your thirst.

View across the Main river (which cuts through the city).



Some contrasts of 'old' and new construction. About 80% of the city was destroyed during WWII by Allied bombs. Why aren't the Germans angry at us (US)? Have they really gotten over it?



The Frankfurter Dom (the main cathedral) - it was very nice. And, interestingly, the different sections were built in different eras, which makes it seem a bit like a hodgepodge inside.



Our train trip back was about twice as long (a total of 8.5 hours), but a third as cheap as the way to Frankfurt - we took 4 different regional trains (changing in small towns) and got to see some lovely rolling hills, forests, local citizens, fields, decrepit buildings, rivers, loud college-aged cellphone users, and...a rainbow! It wasn't as bad as we thought it would be. The Germans trains are actually always on time.

Pretty pictures! (from Frankfurt, part 1)

Colin looking skeptically at an 'old' but ornate bar in the touristy old part of Sachsenhausen (i.e. what the guidebook said was the 'hip' neighborhood of Frankfurt).

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The Römerberg -- 14th and 15th century buildings that were rebuilt in the 1980s as a tourist trap. And there were indeed lots of tourists. It was quaint, though. We sat here for a while eating ice cream and getting in photos being taken by a Japanese tourist group.

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Us sitting by the Main river at night. Nothing funny about that. (We felt obliged to have a picture of us in here somewhere.)

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Frankfurt has a stock exchange, and a lot of money. The guidebook says it is the business capital of Germany. They use statues like this to make the point clear, in case all the skyscrapers with bank names didn't make it obvious.

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In the main Frankfurt university building, they have elevators that move continuously. You hop on and hop off. I don't know what happens if you fail to hop on at the right moment.

Colin's professional development update

...which doesn't mean that this update is going to be professional quality.

Yesterday, I gave the last of three presentations that were packed into 8 days. The first was on Monday of last week (in Horstmann's Kant colloquium here in Berlin) on the metaphysics of the self paper. The second was last Friday in Frankfurt on the composition paper (both of these about Kant). And the third was back here in Berlin in the Leibniz Research Project colloquium on the Spinoza/flashbacks paper. All together, that's three of the four papers I'm planning on using on the market next year.

(Naomi has pointed out to me that I keep saying 'next year', even though this really means 'in a few months.' The 'next year' in question is one that starts in August. This coming August - the one that's only forty or fifty days away. Having admitted that, I'm going to go back to self-deception.)

Overall, I think the presentations went well - there were some tricky, surprising questions in each, but nothing too brutal (unless my self-deceptive powers have evolved to a new level). Whew. Not that that's not going to stop me from being a paranoid wreck next year.

Naomi and I will get some pictures up soon. We have a lot of new ones. Life's just been busy. But we're both really looking forward to seeing you all again at the end of summer....

Also: it looks like I have to work up to at least a 'fair reading level' of Latin before November. If anyone else is interested in forming a Latin-cramming group (probably centered around Spinoza's Ethics), let me know.

Quick, frank Frankfurt update

Colin: Frankfurt is much less cool than Berlin (though I met some very nice people at my presentation yesterday). Prices are higher, the average age is higher, and even the temperature was higher... though that last one was kind of nice, actually, until we got sunburned. We'll have some pictures soon.

Naomi: It's a much prettier city, objectively speaking, but I think we've decided we still prefer Berlin. We are now comparing everything to Berlin instead of New York, which is interesting (we'll give you more of these comparisons, along with illustrations, if you stay tuned...). ;)

Off to Frankfurt

Just a quick post - we leave for Frankfurt tomorrow morning, taking the ICE (super-fast) train. We'll do a day or so of sightseeing and then come back for a week with one of Colin's fellow NYU philosophy grad students, followed by a week with one of Naomi's friends from college.

We were introduced to some German hip-hop the other day, and it was... very grammatical. And didn't have much cursing. Weird. One person explained this by saying that the Germans don't romanticize lower-class/street life.

Another observation: for a people who won't sell you peanut butter anywhere except in a novelty section of a department store, the Germans eat a lot of peanuts, in different forms. In the form of peanut-curry ice cream, for instance (pretty tasty, actually) and peanut-flavored puffs (both of which we ate today).

Busy, busy

Sorry there hasn't been an update for a while! We've been busy eating chocolate:


A literal translation: Black Men Chocolate, For Gentlemen.

We were a little confused and intrigued, but last night Max Barkhausen told us that it shouldn't be parsed as 'Chocolate, of Black Men,' but as 'Gentlemen's-Chocolate, of the Black variety' (something the grammar should have cued us onto). Apparently, 'Herren Schokolade' is just a way of saying that the chocolate is all fancy. Or classy. Or something.

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We also had our first joint conversation partner meeting with one of Colin's German conversation partners. She took us to a book store that is a government-subsidized 'political education' center. Apparently, after WWII, the government never wanted an uninformed population again, so they provide a lot of material on various issues. There were loads of books about German history (especially about Jewish-German history and the DDR), a number about environmental issues, a lot about world cultures, and a lot of translated stuff (including Paul Krugman and Amartya Sen). Until five years ago, all the books were just free, but now cost between 2 and 6 Euros. We couldn't think of anything similar in the US, or even the possibility of something like this working.

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Colin: My uncle Jim came and visited us for a day. It was great - a quick walk by the main tourist sights, followed by hours of cafe-hopping and eating. Here's an especially good picture of me:



Naomi: We also took a quick look at the longest stretch of the Wall that was kept up and decorated by various artists right after the fall. It's fairly close to where we live. It has turned into a big tourist destination, but it was still interesting to see that they have turned old East German cars into a fun tourist trip (the "Trabi" safari):


An interestingly decorated part of the wall:

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We had our first dinner party! Colin baked a beautiful loaf of bread:


Then we went out to a hip party and watched Germans dance and play foosball ('fuβball'?).

Colin: Next week will be similarly busy. We're going out to Frankfurt on Friday, where I'll present something. I'm also presenting something in the colloquium here tomorrow. Both about Kant. Which I think means I'm practicing for the job market.

Food is cheap

...especially if you pretend Euros are dollars.

Today's grocery shopping: 17,58E. Included a bottle of gin, a bottle of vermouth ('Wermut'), a box of ice-cream sandwiches, a liter of milk, a whole bunch of produce, and a jar of Nutella knock-off. Crazy:

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And dinner last night. 6,80E. Two dönner kebabs, and two half-liter lagers. One is the original Czech Budweiser (of which the American 'beer' is an imitation) and some Polish beer that ended up being awesome. And, if you want, you can walk down the street without fear drinking your beer without a bag.


(Yes, we are trying to make you jealous. But only because we miss you all and wish you were all here to join us in eating and wandering around the city.)