Starting Up Again

I'm thinking about blogging again.

My summer hasn't been going at all as planned. I don't have a job, I'm not volunteering, I won't move to the city for another month, and I've gained weight.

My last weeks in Europe were a blast though, I got to see two operas and a baby polar bear while in Stuttgart. Here's a video I threw together:


I went to the zoo with my second cousin, who I had never met before that, and we had a really great time and hung out together the remaining weeks I was in Stuttgart. We watched the Euro Cup and visited Scientology to see if they're as scary as people say, they're not.

Being back in the US I've spent some time in New York and Baltimore; in fact, I just celebrated my 21st birthday in the city. Not too many of my friends were able to make it, but a good time was had by all who did.

Finally, I've signed a lease for an apartment in Williamsburg, Brooklyn and will move in September 1st, until then I'll be shuttling back and forth between Ikea and Target.

The exact direction this blog is going to take is up in the air for now, it'll probably involve lots of personal rants and occasionally pictures, once I'm back in the city and life gets more exciting I may wish to expand on that.

The End for Now

Hey guys,

it has been brought to my attention that i never did any sort of final post. I have left Berlin and am now in Stuttgart after travelling with my mom for a few weeks. We just got back from a Mediterranean vacation on the Spanish island Mallorca. The trip was great, but the flight back was awful because I did something stupid enough to rival putting my wet jeans in the freezer. Last night I was bored at the airport so I went to the duty free shop to test if I really was allergic to a perfume I was pretty sure I was allergic to; I scratched up my whole arm and sprayed about 6 splashes of the stuff on. I spent the plane ride watching it turn red and puffy, heavy sneezing was also involved.

My internet connection here is impossible so I'm not really able to upload many pictures. The two here are of Mallorca and of my last night in Berlin, riding my zebra bike.

I decided the bike is a metaphor for Berlin, it is cheap, doesn't have functioning brakes, old but with modern touches, it's charming and rugged and you keep on waiting for it collapse on itself, yet it never does.

I don't know when I'll be posting again, right now the lack of an internet connection is a big issue, but I intended for this blog to be more than just study abroad. I get back to PA June 20, and move to New York Aug 1st. I plan on interning for a local Obama office for the 5 weeks I'm in West Chester, let me know if you hear where they're putting one.

Much love,
Anita

Riot Pictures

My friend Bryan posted these pictures of the May Day riots on his facebook profile. Thought I'd share them:

Time I Reprioritize

My week has been a total shitshow.

It started off great; Monday night I got to see Ladytron, my favorite electropop band. They put on an amazing show and the venue was an old warehouse turn club in East Berlin. I met some cool people there and hung out pretty late.

Tuesday morning I met an old friend for breakfast who I haven't seen in over 5 years. The weather is beautiful so I've been making full use of street cafes. I've also been going against all my German instincts and getting American iced coffees at my local Dunkin. We've also started having German class at a beergarten.

Friday is when my week went downhill. Some international hippie friends invited Sam and me to stop by a four day beach party at a lake. Because we have so many papers due we decided not to stay past ten, even though everyone else was sleeping over in the tents. Figures we miss the last tram, so I was stuck in the middle of nowhere wearing only shorts, a Miami Vice tee, and my new Birkenstocks (FYI: not as comfortable as everybody says). By midnight I was freezing and wanted to die, it only got worse when we were squeezing into someones tent, three of us sharing one blanket. I couldn't sleep because I was shivering so badly, the worst part was that the way we were squeezed into the tent I couldn't curl up into a fetal position. I took off around 5 when trams started running again.

When I got home this morning I crashed and didn't wake up till 2:30. My friend Lauren and I then went down to the site where Nazis burnt books 75 yrs ago and they're having commemorative readings of some of the texts. We then went to a street cafe at the famous Gendarmen Markt to work on final papers. I'm writing an epic analysis of Heidi Klum's national identity. I'll be spending the rest of the weekend working on papers and will not be able to party at all.

This week's good news: MADONNA ANNOUNCED TOUR DATES! I'm planning on seeing her twice in New York. For the first show I'll get the best available ticket no matter what the cost, and for the second night I'll settle for nosebleed section.

Here's the teaser for her Amsterdam show:


This ad for the 2004 ReInvention tour is better though:

MAY DAY!

May Day in Kreuzberg, the Turkish neighborhood of Berlin that I live in, is a huge holiday with great traditions.

During the afternoon there is a large street fair where they set up stages with bands playing everything from hip-hop to punk and people drinks copious amounts of beer till they get exhausted and retire to one of the many parks to relax.

Late in the evening when everyone is completely out of their mind and on their second wind, the riots starts! Families and go back to their apartments and all that's left is angry locals, gutter punks, journalists, and a few stray NYU students. At this point several hundred cops in full riot gear carrying tear gas super-soakers flood the area. They carry little zip-ties to quickly hand cuff kids.

The rest of the night involves people setting things like trash cans on fire, throwing bottles at cops, and screaming anarchist slogans against the capitalist establishment. The cops rush the crowd, grab a few kids, throwing them to the ground and zip-tying their hands, the crowd retreats and the cops ease up. Rinse, wash, repeat. This all happened a million times throughout the night. My friends and I were way at the front, and one of us even got hurt a little.

Having recovered from Thursday's festivities, I had a delightful lazy Sunday. My friend Sam and a Minnesotan yoga teacher we know both had birthdays recently so we celebrated by going to Mauer Park. The park is in an über-hip neighborhood and everyone looked like they should be in Williamsburg, Brooklyn. We drank champagne and wine and smoked hookah, while some kids in our group played guitar.






The slideshow contains pictues from my recent day trip to Dresden.

Ruhrgebiet: "Industry-Culture-Landscapes"

Last weekend I went to the small town in germany that I grew up in. The area is called the Ruhrgebiet and is known as the blue collar, (de)industrialized part of Germany, but I love calling it home. I got a ride there from a woman I found on a sort of hitchhiking website. I stayed with my elementary school best friend Sarah, who visited me in New York last year, and the 48 short hours were very eventful so I'll give some highlights.

Day 1:

-We went to the dentist's office Sarah works at because they had a photographer come in to take pictures for the website. They had me play patient and messed around in my mouth. Apparently I brush well. I'll post pictures when they go online.

-Then we went to Schloss Burg, an old castle with a great view of rolling hills. I bought a kids shirt there that makes me look like a real live knight.



- After dinner we went to Kleinbeck. The local club where I saw several friends from elementary school and where the Whiskey Cokes, my drink of choice, were only 2 Euro.


Day 2:

-Sarah is on a local women's soccer team and they had a game on Sunday that they let me play in. Even though I've never played on a team I did a god job; I had a bunch of tackles and the girls who didn't know I was only passing through asked me to join the team. Despite my mad skills, we lost 9:0.



-We also walked around my old street, here's the view from my neighbor's house:



-We walked around Hagen, a beautiful, old city where Sarah's boyfriend lives. He treated us to ice cream.

Midnight Train to Poland

This past weekend I went to Krakow, Poland with the entire NYU Berlin group: 41 students, 4 teachers/ staff, 1 tutor. We took a 12 hour night train with compartments that sleep 6. On the way there, I got to share one with all of my best friends here; on the way back the train was overbooked and I volunteered to share a compartment with the teachers, it was fun because I had been doing a lot of bonding with them on the trip anyway.



Our first day we did a tour of Krakow, a city that was founded in the 8th Century and became known for its large Jewish population as early as the 11th Century. The first night our group went to a restaurant in the Jewish quarter where they organized to have a Yiddish band play for us. There were three youngish guys on traditional instruments and this awesome older lady who sang and danced. Afterwards, most of us went to some bars and clubs in the area.



The second day we took a bus to Auschwitz; the concentration camp is about 1.5 hours from the city. It was an appropriately cold and rainy day and hardly anyone spoke or made eye contact the entire time. Being the only German student in the program, which included about 10 Jewish kids, I was extremely uncomfortable in addition to depressed and shocked about all the atrocities that happened on those few square miles so I mostly stuck with the teachers to avoid having to speak to students. I only took one picture, it's of the train tracks at the Birkenau extermination lot where the Reichsbahn brought 1.5 million Jews and Polish elite. I had managed to hold it together for hours but walking the tracks I finally broke down.



After we got back to the hotel that night I sat around with the teachers and we talked about family involvement in the Holocaust, they ended up inviting me to join them for dinner. It felt good to be with a bunch of Germans to sort out discussions of residual guilt and collective consciousness. I also used opportunity to practice having academic and intellectual discussions in German, which I am still not quite comfortable with.



That night was Passover and some kids threw a huge party in their room with tons of wine and the telling of the Passover story. After that we hit the bars and tried to momentarily forget what we saw that day.

On the final day, we got a few hours to explore the city on our own so Sam, Lauren, Elena and I headed for the old castle where they have a statue of a dragon that is the basis of their founding story.





The trip was really successful; I had the chance to bond with kids I had never really talked to. Turns out one girl is from King of Prussia, PA and another girl is totally into Riot Grrrl music, she even has a tattoo of Courtney Love and Kathleen Hannah!

Sorry about the long post, but I just really had a lot to say that seemed important to me.

Enjoy

see more crazy cat pics


see more crazy cat pics


see more crazy cat pics


see more crazy cat pics


see more crazy cat pics

Viva Riga, Lat-Via

I have returned from my 48 hour trip to Riga and I have to say my first visit to Eastern Europe, or "Central Europe," as the Easterners like to call it, was incredible. I only brought a small backpack, filled with my camera, a few extra t-shirts, a sleeping bag strapped to the bottom, and my friend's beat up copy of Kerouac's On The Road (I also brought underwear but that doesn't sound as poetic).

We stayed with a really nice couple in their early twenties who live in this run down communist building on the outskirts of the city.

Our first morning there, Sam and I took a 2 hour walk into the city and got to enjoy the decrepit parts most tourists don't have the chance to see. Visiting a second world country is fascinating, some buildings look like they had been bombed the week before, but really they're just leftovers from over 20 years ago.

Some comments on my trip:

- Latvians are a very proud people. They refer to the Soviet era as the "time of occupation" and still don't like Russians. Consequently, they now strongly associate with Tibet.

- At the Russian Market I put my valuables in my front pocket so I could keep better track of them. Referencing the stereotype that Easterners steal, Sam said he doesn't like intolerance. I said I rather be prejudice and safe, than p.c. and sorry, but he still thought I was a bigot. Later that day his phone got stolen.

- Latvian is the closest modern language to Sanscrit.

- There's a great art nouveau neighborhood that houses all the embassies. Here's Belgium:

- At the mall they had spacey, blue lighting in the bathroom stalls and I thought it was some gross way to hide the dirt; turns out it's so heroin addicts can't find veins to shoot up.

- To get home from a night out in New York, we sometimes take "gypsy cabs" than run illegally. In Riga they have illegal trams that run at night.

UPDATE: Katie told me there were problems with the facebook gallery so I made a new album on Picasa. Here's the mini-slideshow. Click on it to see the pictures bigger and with captions.

Last Post Before Latvia

Tomorrow I leave for Riga, Latvia. I don't know much about the city, but it was really cheap to fly to. To avoid the cost of a youth hostel, my friend Sam and I found a guy on the couchsurfer website who said we can stay with him, his cat, and his girlfriend.

Here's my travel schedule for the remainder of my time studying abroad. Click the city to see its Wikipedia page.

April 11-13: Riga, Latvia

April 17-21: Krakau, Poland

April 25-27: Wuppertal, Germany

May 15-19: Antwerp Belgium; Maastricht, Netherlands

I'm going to do more traveling when I meet up with my Mom in late May. She wants to go to Italy, I'd love to see Greece. We'll probably settle on Spain.

It rained today so I couldn't photograph my bike, but I recently took good pictures of Berlin:

Hot Mess Morning

This morning I had to turn in a 5 page paper on the socio-political impact of Berlin's Old Museum's architecture. I finished my paper by about 10 PM last night, but had unfortunately volunteered to have the program's only printer in my room so I had people coming in and out till 2AM. One friend stayed till 4:30 to write his paper, long after I had gone to bed. Even more kids came in the morning and one crashed my computer. After dealing with that, it was 9:40 and I had only 20 minutes to shower (I was long overdue) and get to class to hand in my own paper. I showered as fast I could, grabbed the jeans, tee-shirt and hoody closest to me,  ran out the door, jumped on my bike and raced to the subway, only to realize I forgot my wallet so I had to bike all the way to class; luckily it was only 10 minutes away. That class went 15 minutes over, so I couldn't go home and had to bike straight to another class that was even further away. When I finally got home around 6 PM, I google mapped my route and realized I biked a total of 8 miles today! That'll hurt in the morning. 

Here's my route and back again:

Größere Kartenansicht

Bored

I'm bored and refuse to write the 5 page paper due in 36 hours so I decided to blog without saying anything and to change my blogger profile picture. I realized that out of context, and to people who don't appreciate my sense of humor, the old picture looked extremely pretentious and made me look more annoying than I am. Pictures of my zebra bike to follow soon. I'll also sum up my exciting travel plans that will bring my country count for study abroad to 9!

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And now, your moment of zen:

Since London

The same day I came back from London, Mukai and her friend Frank came to visit Berlin. We hit all the sites pretty hard on the second day, the weather was definitely with us, so I finally took the chance to see the East Side Gallery. It's a graffitide part of the wall that's left and is only a ten minute walk from my apartment and runs for about a mile. The third day we walked around all of Berlin to find some special camera with a plastic lens; this sort of mission turned out to be a great way to explore the city. We also went to Bang Bang Club, it's always fun to go, but it's more fun with Mukai because they play all the same music our favorite DJs in New York spin so every five minutes we jumped up because it was "our song," about ninety of them. 

Midterms are this week and serve as an unfriendly reminder that this is in fact study abroad and not hang out in a hip city with a bunch of cool kids. Today I even had to open Microsoft Word! That turned out not to be fun so I closed it again and used the leftover electric tape from my charger to make zebra stripes on my bicycle (pictures coming soon.)

Upcoming Plans:

next weekend I go to Latvia with my friend Sam. The tickets were really cheap and we want to find people online whose place we can crash at.

Week after that I'm going to Poland on an NYU trip.

Belgium, the Netherlands, Estonia, and Finland are also on the agenda.

Big Update

Dear Readership,

I am sorry that I suck so hard at posting updates. Unfortunately, technology has not been cooperating at all. I've been having all sort of power supply problems with my MacBook, and on the last day in London my charger finally gave out. The charger I need would cost about $150 here, and my parents didn't want to send me one from the US where it would cost about $70. I took the charger apart and have now managed, somewhat, to get it back together, but I'm pretty sure it's a fire hazard and should not be left unattended. Here's a picture:

So about London:

I was there with my mother's brother, his wife, and their 3 daughters. We stayed in their friend's house in Notting Hill. We didn't hit too many sites because the family had already seen them all, so we only drove by them and I held my camera out the window. Mostly we went to museums, the Tate Britain was great. I saw the JMW Turner exhibit and was blown away (even though I often heard myself saying, "Puh, Leslie can do that.") The British Museum was incredible, as well, but it was upsetting in many ways because you see how the orientalist West just pillaged Mesopotamia, Egypt, and Greece under the guise of historical preservation. The best part was that I got to see the Rosetta Stone. Pictures here:

My last night in London was by far the best. First my family went to dinner at Harrods where I got to see a Princess Diana memorial, then we went to see the ABBA musical Mamma Mia. I want to be cool and pretend I don't like musicals but this was so much fun:

After that I was supposed to go out clubbing with Mukai and my cousins but there were a bunch of problems so I ended up at Mukai's apartment with her and her roommate making stop motion videos all night with moustache's drawn on our face with eye liner. There are many more but I can't post them due to my blogs decency standards:

Mukai

I stole this picture from her blog. It's from my first night here. Sadly, I didn't get to spend much time with her in London, but she's coming to Berlin!!! I have sightseeing tours and bar crawls planned.

More London pictures Wednesday.

London

I'm in London.

My trip was sort awful and took much longer than it should have, due to Murphy's Law, but I made it OK. I spent the first night at my friend Mukai's. She had a delicious feast of Dorritos, pizza, fries, popcorn chicken, and broccoli waiting for me. Then we went to a strange club that had a 70s style disco light up dance floor, the music was really good though- lots of international standards I've heard in New York and Berlin.

I'll post pictures when I'm back in Berlin. I brought a camera, but forgot the card reader.

Obviously

CNN stating the obvious (click for details)

Non Updates

I have seen every episode of "Buffy:The Vampire Slayer" there is and have nothign left to look forward to in life.
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I have learned all about religion, the Illuminati, and the New World Order from the internet sensation conspiracy theory movie Zeitgeist (click here to watch it.)
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I have learned how to ride a bicycle to class through street traffic without major injury.
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I have widened my horizons by beginning to listen to jazz.
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I have discovered a hip bar that is typical Berlin. Wonderful pseudo-intellectuals with thick-rimmed glasses talking about geo-politics. I still prefer Roses, the kitschy local gay bar with furry pink walls and ceiling. No lie, it's like neon pink shag rugs as far as the eye can see, interrupted only by the disco balls.
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I went to an NYU field trip to gay bingo where I won a bottle of wine.
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I helped a Japanese friend with a project where he wanted friends around the world to take a picture of the sky at the exact same moment. Here's mine, taken from my balcony:

To prepare for the public transport strike

... I bought a helmet so I can ride my bike with less fear.

What I've been up to

Sunday:

Went to a German friend's apartment for a movie night. It was really nicely decorated and she had made carrot-ginger soup, fresh waffles, and cookies.

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Monday:

Went to an NYU movie night where we watched a German art-film that didn't make any sense.

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Tuesday:

I went to a professional handball game because on the train we met a girl whose boyfriend plays for the "Füchse Berlin" so she hooked us up with nice tickets. It's an exciting sport that can best be described as indoor soccer where you throw the ball instead of kick it. It's Germany's second highest grossing sport after soccer.

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Wednesday:

I went to a Mexican restaurant with friends where they have incredible burritos. I will be back every day of my stay.

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On another note:

German unions have too much power so basically all public transport in the country (trains, buses, subways, planes) will be on halt starting Monday, possibly lasting for 2 weeks. They're demanding a 8% pay raise. Luckily Berlin airports should be ok, I plan on going to London for spring break to visit Mukai and chill with my relatives there.

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Finally:

HILLARY!!

Leipzig

I spent all day on a field trip to Leipzig, an East German city known for having a strong bourgeoisie. 

We took a city tour, saw old buildings, learned about WWII memorials. I discovered a Breuninger, a Stuttgarter department store where I bought the incredible hoody you see in the pictures (sorry mom and dad, but that hoody went on the card).

I also went to a Lutheran church where they had a Saturday service with organ concert. It's where Bach used to be musical director. Anyway, Lutheran services are weird, they don't strike fear the way Catholic ones do, but they don't have the same love/community/caring vibe that Unitarians do. Strangely, when the congregation said the "Vater Unser" (our Father in Heaven) prayer I knew it all and felt compelled to say it all in unison.

Some old building built by a mayor.

Old city council building.

A picture of Lauren, me, and my new hoody. Weather sucked.

Balkan-Hop and I'm Getting Dumber by the Minute

Yesterday started out bad because I was just not capable of thinking.

First, I decided to make a folder on my Mac with a copy of all of my favorite music to share with my friends. I changed my mind and deleted the folder, thinking I was deleting the duplicates; then I emptied the trash to make room on my hard drive. When I went to listen to the Smiths I discovered the iTunes link was broken, as was the case with every song I liked. It took me about 2 hours to recover all the music from my ipod.

Later, I decided to hand wash the jeans I wanted to wear out. When hanging them from the radiator didn't make them dry quick enough I thought of the most ingenious idea. I remembered reading that when electronics get wet you should put them in the refrigerator, so I figured I could dry my pants by putting them in the freezer. Not so. They were rock solid and cold. I still wore them out, but it was not pleseant.

Last night I didn't go to the theater like planned, but the people I was going to go with invited me to go dancing with them. We went to an abandoned warehouse complex in Friedrichshain where there's a dance party on Saturdays. They were playing Balkan-Hop and Latin music. There was supposed to be a band too, but they couldn't make it because they're being held by immigration.

Finally Update

Not too much happened so I'll give you the highlights of my week day by day:

Wednesday: At 6:30 PM I went to a bar for an event for NYU students to meet Germans. I made friends and stayed till 11:00 when the two Germans and I decided to get food, I wasn't home till 1:30AM.

Thursday: Went to a Justice concert (a French electro DJ duo). They were incredible and the crowd was really into it. Unfortunately the DJ that played after was awful and pun the same terrible techno I had been hearing everywhere.

Friday: Met with my new German friends and brought a pretty big delegation of American students. First we went to a diner where we shared 5 liter beer towers (I wasn't feeling well and couldn't fully appreciate them), then we went to Bang Bang Club. BBC is the first club I've been to here where they played music I like. I heard Le Tigre and the Smiths and a lot of songs I hadn't heard before but really enjoyed. Unfortunately I had a migraine and left by 1:45.

Saturday: Some Germans I met at a house party two weeks ago invited me to go see a play with them.

Officially German

Yesterday I got my passport back from the "Meldeamt." In Germany you need to register your location with the government and they note it in your passport. As you may be able to tell in the picture, they crossed out the "West Chester" part and wrote in "Berlin." What I'm excited about is the Berlin stamp that has the signature bear in it. Monday I go back to get my Perso, a national id card that Germans are required to carry at all times.

My weekend hasn't been to exciting. Thursday I went to a technoclub on the 15th floor of a hotel. Last night I went to a wine bar where you pay 1 Euro for a glass and then you can keep pouring yourself all the wine you want. At the end of the night you put as much money as you think is fair into a big bowl.

The English take a weekend in the country; the Germans take a country in a weekend.

Yesterday I went to Potsdam. It's a suburb of Berlin that was once a Prussian capital. It's mostly known for "Sans Souci," a palace that was built by a gay Prussian prince after his father had his boyfriend killed. He used the Sans Souci, which means "without worries," to host lavish parties where women weren't allowed.

Sans Souci

Something that used to be important but is now a movie theater.

"Culture is every other heartbeat of our life."-  Hans Marchwitza

Finally First Pictures

Well, I got pictures. I ended up starting my weekend plans earlier than expected so there are already pictures from Tacheles. It's known from Goodbye Lenin. Like I may have mentioned earlier, it's a former Jewish department store that was partially bombed out and was eventually taken over by squatters. Now it's an artist collective and nightlife spot where you can tour studios and drink.

My new bedroom.

My new institution of higher learning: Humboldt Uni.

Me acting cool at Tacheles.

The stairwell at Tacheles.

I have friends.