Time will tell whether this was, indeed, a smart decision. Until that day arrives (no later than August 17th, if you please) I get to enjoy the state that raised me, spend time with the people whose lives have made mine possible, and see if I can’t fall in love with my home turf again.

When I left 5 years ago on the verge of divorce, a disillusioned liberal arts college grad disappointed by the re-election of Bush and all it implicated about my fellow Americans, well at least half of them, I left hoping to make a change. And I did. I changed quite a bit.

Being an ex-pat really makes you appreciate the place you called home for so long. At least I really came to appreciate Minnesota. Not only did I feel I had to defend my country against the anti-American sentiments I all too often was confronted with, I had an excuse to really get to the bottom of this whole patriotism thing. I learned to embrace our national traditions and create good ways to explain my experience of the American culture to skeptics.

My favorite example is a member of my boyfriend’s family. We met in my guy’s dad’s garden to help with some of the work and to play with the children. I arrived around lunchtime and we started off by setting the table. Being a polite person, I offered some of my favorite “American” chicken noodle salad (the one with grapes and cashews) to T. and his kids, and he acted as though I had offered him cyanide sauce for his meal. Confused, I probed further. Was this aversion because of the chicken salad, or because it was American? Both! came the reply.

“Aha. Hmm. Well, why?” I asked. He explained that he felt that the American people were stupid, lazy and violent. He hates the politics of the country and their policies and actions abroad. Americans are just not nice people.

I saw two options at that point. I could remember that I had left the oven on and excuse myself, or I could try and get to the bottom of his assumptions and try to make a case for my country. I chose the latter. We spent the better part of the afternoon working together in the garden, talking rhetoric and politics. I asked if he would consider it fair if everyone outside Germany just assumed that Angela Merkel has the wholehearted support of the country. He sputtered that that would be unfair and that she doesn’t represent a lot of the country. I asked then if it would be fair to assume that all Americans supported GW. He saw my point.

After that we talked about how much foreign aid goes out from the US, how many businesses and business ideas have originated there. How much good work is done by charitable institutions, including the Peace Corps., and not lastly how enormously Germany has benefitted from its alliance with the US.

After I had gotten him sort of on board with Americans and being open to other viewpoints I told him where I come from.

I’ve seen tomatoes that paled in comparison to his complexion.

This is something I never would have been able to do just out of college. I had lost the pride in the country I had once felt as a small girl, and I guess that moving to Europe during the Bush years was just what I needed to be proud again.

So as I sit in a split-level home in comparative luxury (compared to my 2 room 5th floor walkup) wondering what my next move will be and where it might take me, I want to take a moment to be thankful for the place I came from and came home to.

P.S. T and I became pretty good friends.

After accepting a position as a Job Counselor for the city of Berlin and undergoing training, we were allowed a few months to get into the swing of things and start making integrations happen. Able thus far to fulfill our integration quotas, my colleagues and I are now approaching the end of our year-long contracts with a city on a tight budget and wondering what we’ll be doing in January next year. There are no guarantees that we’ll be kept on, although the possibility exists, and the feeling throughout the project is tense. Some colleagues from other Job Centers have already left, or will be leaving soon for other positions, and I am left with the question of whether I want to do this for another year or if I should expand my horizons.

Becoming a certified translator is an enticing possibility and it wouldn’t cost too much for the extra diploma, which I could have hopefully by the end of the year. Unfortunately, that doesn’t get me much closer to my goal of moving back to the states soon. Ideas anyone?

And here is my performance from that day in Mauerpark. The stereo system cut out at one point and the crowd filled in for me. The dancers who stormed the stage were neither drunk nor friends of mine, just happy members of the audience who felt the need to dance.

Current mood: drained
After the grandeur of the Brandenburg Gate, the Fernsehturm and Unter Den Linden, newcomers to Berlin face anything but beauty when it comes to getting permission to stay.

For the 270,00 annual hopeful immigrants there’s one destination: Friederich Krause Ufer. Dirty walls, smudged glass, paper-strewn floors, and endless waits are the first impression new immigrants to Germany’s capitol city get of the offices ostensibly prepared to serve them. This office handles everything from residence permits to changes in your passport to the registry of new lotteries. Mainly, though, they deal with applications for residence.

The second experience hopeful new Berliners make is with the rude, sometimes bordering on openly hostile, treatment by the cynical, harried staff. There are no helpful fliers listing the steps to take to get an application. There are no handy info sheets about how to fill out your application. There is no one to tell you how the process works, or even to tell you who might know. What there is in abundance is cynicism, contradiction, and blame-shifting. No two workers will tell you the same answer to any question, unless the answer is “No.”

While sitting in the office on the day I finally recieved my residence permit, I was rather shocked to hear two colleagues duscussing another case.

“Do we have to let this one in?” said the one.
“Unfortunately, his paperwork is all in order.” replied the other.
“Too bad.” they both nodded, frustrated.

This pretty much sums up the attitude of the workers there to serve you. They are there to process your application as critically and unhelpfully as the law allows. To make matters that much more depressing, this was the treatment I experienced as an American. Americans, according to staff in the offices there, recieve preferential treatment in comparison to citizens of other countries.

I was told that as an American, I am a member of the privileged group of people, which means I only have to reapply for residence once a year instead of every three months, and that I don’t get called names and given the run-around to the same extent as my doctor friend from Dubai. Still, I faced the general unpleasantness the permeates the very walls of the building personally when I learned that the beaurocratic entity charged with communicating with his or her counterpart at the the Employment Office sent my documents to the wrong department, delaying my application process and nearly causing my application to be denied. Sure, it could have been an accident. Because they hardly ever deal with work applications and such. Right.

With my second application for a residence and work permit looming, I look forward apprehensively to the next round of encounters with the authorities there to serve. I also feel sorry for the thousands of immigrants whose German isn’t good, or who aren’t members of the privileged club.

Wish me luck on my next round!

Hi again!

Back in my days at SJP I had a speech coach named Joe or something like that. He was a cool guy, and we occasionally took walks around the SJP grounds when the weather was nice and I needed to practice for a meet. One sunny fall day we were strolling through the congregation’s cemetary, blue skies framing coloring leaves and the ginormous cross that stands there. Joe happened to look closely, possibly for the first time, at one of those headstones, most of which have circular bifurcated metal circles set in the stone, usually at the base. “What are those?” he asked. I sensed the possibility of a glorious tale. “Coffin vents” I answered in my most innocently academic voice, as if everyone everywhere already knew what coffin vents were. “WHAT?” he asked. “Coffin vents” I said again, as if he had simply not understood my words. His blank look told me I had him hooked. Coffin vents, I explained, and of course I am simply paraphrasing now as it was so long ago that I can’t remember the exact phrasing, are very important because as the body decomposes a lot of gases are released and they build up pressure inside the coffin. Well, after your family has spent so much money, they certainly don’t want that nice coffin to pop open and break, so the burial people, after the funeral of course, drill a hole roughly the same diameter as that hole in the headstone and attach a tube leading to the surface so that the gases can escape without damaging the coffin. Makes sense, right?
Well, I couldn’t believe it but he bought that hook, line and sinker. I’m not sure I ever straightened him out about that, so if you are that poor college guy who helped me out with my speech practice, please accept my apologies, and really do believe me now when I say those holes are vases for flowers.
At any rate, what brings this long-past event to my mind today? Saturday afternoon I was out and about with Adam enjoying a walk in Treptower Park when he noticed that some of the trees along the roadside had little numbered tags nailed to them. He thought that was awfully wierd, and didn’t believe me when I told him that all the trees in Berlin are numbered. Impossible! he thought. No one would number 50,000 trees. Yes I explained, the trees here really are all numbered, because when you are the tree service, wouldn’t it be much easier to take care of the trees if you always knew exactly which tree you were dealing with? For instance, if someone tells you to go trim a tree on such and such a road that’s getting too near the power lines, you have to drive down that whole road trying to decide which tree looks closest to the power lines and should be trimmed. On the other hand, if someone tells you to go trim tree number 6,758 on Unter den Linden, you will know exactly which tree you are supposed to be trimming. He still didn’t believe me, so we spent ten minutes or so examining trees in the park to determine that, yes, all of them had numbers on them.
This morning when I was talking to Adam, he told me proudly that he had verbed my old fib into “coffin venting” and the next time he suspected me of attempting to tell him a whopper, he was going to ask, “Are you coffin venting me?” by the way, it is really true about the numbered trees.

What’s new with me? Well, I got sick with some awful stomach thing but am recovering. It kept me out of work today, though. I’m otherwise generally sound in mind and body. Adam and I are getting along better than we have in a long while, and he took spectacular care of me while I was sick, which I very much appreciate.
Kindergarten is going well. We’re doing a unit on Native Americans. I’m trying to be as accurate as it is possible to be without scarring little children, but my co-teacher is bent on spreading the same old sterotypes my liberal college experience has taught me not to spread. She and the principal laugh about how uptight “we Americans” are about the treatment of the native people. I wonder if they’d get upset if I started laughing about how uptight the Germans get about the Holocaust. Of course I would never to that.
I do look forward to the end of this unit. I hope we can move on to Asia or something fun like that. There’s a little girl in the class whose parents are from Namibia in Africa, so that might be a fun unit to do. She could really get involved. I’d also kind of like to do a unit on Minnesota, just because it’s so darn interesting.
Anyway, I’m going to go continue recovering. Hope you’re all hale and hardy.
~Sarah

When I was growing up near the heart of metropolitan downtown Melrose, MN, the summertime brought lazy days of avoiding chores, bouncing on the trampoline, sleeping late, and hanging out in the front yard doing nothing much. Occasionally, a car would come blazing down the street some June afternoon, windows down, sunroof open, music blaring. It was often a surprise to hear instead of angry rhyme and thundering base favored by the local guys, the wailing trumpets and tricky guitar chords of mariachi favored by the mexicans who came to work at the Jennie O or Kraft plants.

As I walk down the streets here in Berlin, pausing to wait for the lights, I experience a similar phenomenon. Here instead of the current American chart toppers favored by many, I catch the occasional snippet of turkish folk or turkish pop, characterised by wailing singers and a panoply of instruments I can’t easily recognize. It’s on the cusp of summer here and the transformation is amazing. 6 weeks ago I was bundling my scarf around my cheeks, layering sweaters and long-sleeve T’s, and making absolutely sure I had both mittens before I left. Yesterday I went without a jacket or sweater, bare arms catching the first taste of sun since Minnesota’s Indian Summer last year.

As Adam and I walked up and down the Karl Marx Strasse, cruised the Markt for cheap produce that would also keep a few days, and pondered the future in terms of how many plates we might need should we stay for a few years, I had to keep reminding myself that it’s equally likely that I’ll be leaving in June as it is that I’ll be buying 2 more place settings in July. It’s hard to be so uncertain of the future for such a long period of time. I don’t know whether to spend money and enjoy the short time I have here, or scrimp and save because I might need it to last longer than anticipated. I’ve decided to take the middle of the road, by doing cheap things and enjoying them, but spending money where I need to.

I’m really missing all of you back home, and hope you’ll let me know what’s new. Mat, where are you driving? Dad, what’s new in your life? Grandma Paula, how did golf go? Tom Hady, care to share your thoughts?

Send some warm wishes and happy thoughts to my friend Sarah. She’s got finals this week, and is moving out of her place and back down to work very soon. You can find her in my Friends list.

All the best to all of you!

Love,

Sarah

Hey Everyone,

Big news in Sarahland….as you may have shrewdly surmised from the title of this Blog, I have a new job! yes ladies and gentlemen, I am Berlin’s most recently employed English-speaking Kindergarten Teacher. I am going to be teaching children ages 3-5 the basics of the English language as well as preparing the older ones for the first grade. It’s not exactly my dream job, but it’s part time, pays okay, and the school will help me get my residence/work permit, probably for a period of 1-3 years. So, those of you interested in coming to visit should start saving!
The school itself is in American terms more of a daycare than a kindergarten, and their big marketing factor is that they have native English speakers in the classrooms getting the kids acquainted with the language. There are 14 kids in the group I’ll be working with, and some of them already know a lot of words. Look out for upcoming blogs about the things that happen to me in Kindergarten.

And now for a descriptive passage about Berlin.

Berlin took 5 days of sunshine and patches of rain to become transformed into a green, leafy, urban paradise of towering hardwoods and sidewalks littered with floral debris. Out my bedroom window, the thickest branches of the trees in the Platz exploded in what seemed like a matter of minutes into cascades of vibrant greenery, all but blocking our view of the buildings across the way.
The eastern part of Berlin was rebuilt with a series of grand wide avenues leading away from the city center. Each of these avenues is lined with trees, providing shade now for the tables encroaching upon the walkways in front of every cafe, imbiss, and restaurant. The sidewalks and squares are jammed with people strolling about and enjoying the fine weather, especially in the northern district of Prenzlauerberg, where one can hardly walk ten feet without being held up behind either a massively pregnant mama or a cute small family proudly pushing a stroller. Prenzlauerberg incidentally has the highest birth rate in the whole country.
Down here in Neukoelln, the Turkish grocers now compete with shoe stalls, jewelers, and knick-knack sellers in the weekly market in front of the building. The Karl Marx Strasse is a mad house after noon nearly every day of the week, and the warmer it gets, the more people you see. It’s almost hard to believe there are 3 million people in Berlin when you’re dodging icy patches and negotiating the snowbanks in the streets in early March, but come late April, you’d be more inclined to estimate the city’s population at around 5 million, all of whom tend to step out of shops directly into your path and stop. Ah well.
Berlin smells best right after a big rain. Before the rain it tends to be a bit whiffy because hardly anyone cleans up after their dogs and people tend to litter here much more than in Minnesota, but once the rain has washed all the muck down the drains, it’s downright pleasant. The wet cobblestones turn from dusty-rock colored to shinier reds, grays and blacks, and the few patches of park here give off a wonderfully earthy smell uncommon in such a big city.

Hope all is going well for all of you.

Love,
Sarah

Hi everyone,
Spring may have definitively sprung. Wolfgang has put his winter coat away. If temperatures stay balmy hereafter we will know that Wolfgang’s coat was the culprit keeping winter around all along.

That said the day is gorgeous and, after a night spent with the New Berlin pub crawl, delightfully hangover-free. Our friend Andrew Hunter, who we met just two short weeks ago, went home today after 5 misfortune-filled months here in Berlin. His wallet was stolen twice, his bank account emptied once (he got the money back), and his laptop purloined from his apartment. The laptop was the last straw, and so we partied hard last night so he would look and feel his best for the flight home this morning.

The pub crawl itself was very fun. A spunky Irish guy who had the decency to be shorter than me was the leader, and generously poured shots of this excellent orange liquor on the road between pubs. I only visited 4 bars with the crawl because I wanted to get home before the trains stopped running, and I think I caught the very last one leaving from Tempelhof. Whew!

The crawl started off at Silberfisch, which has some cool funky art pieces and tons of americans. Then we all walked down the road to Zapata, which is in the Kunst Haus Tacheles, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kunst_Haus_Tacheles. The bar is very funky with a dragon sculpture out of found metal objects which shoots a fireball from the mouth when you give a tip…or so I hear. My back was turned at the time. Next door is Studio 54, which has a plush and modern sleek red interior, and which featured shots of Jagermeister for 1 euro. I had ,and since I had only heard how disgusting it was, I was surprised to find that it just tasted strongly of black licorice. Not my favorite, but not terrible either.

I was with Andrew and his friends Christina and Lydia, two gorgeous girls from Thuringia studying in Berlin, and Florian and Anna, whose backgrounds I don’t really know. All had work or class the next day. But at Studio 54 I branched out and made the acquaintance of Kevin from Colorado, Neil from Colorado, Alan who was Disgusting and in whom I had No Interest, and Dave from Australia. They were on a european tour during their break from college in London. They were fun guys, except Alan.

The last bar, The Sophienclub, I had been in two years ago as a Goethe Institut student, and so it was familiar. The upstairs DJ was playing hard rock at deafening volume, and the downstairs, which I think has Hip Hop on weekends was closed Fortunately I suffered no permanent hearing loss and had fun dancing.

I guess the most releveant thing to you all is that Andrew very graciously gave me his cell phone, as it’s too cheap to want to carry over to the US. My new number, and this will only be posted for a few days, so get it now, is …. . How to call this from the US, I have no clue. Probably starting out with 0049 then maybe 0, or maybe not, then …. and so on is your best bet. if you get through, let me know what you dialed and I’ll post it here.

Adam’s away on a job interview at the moment, also very exciting, and I’m starting my trial week at a kindergarten tomorrow to see if they like my teaching and want me to stay. Wish me luck!

~Sarah

Hi again,

My mom just sent me a funny e-mail fretting about my health and safety habits and jokingly accusing me of playing with dead birds, strolling in mugger-filled parks, eating without washing my hands, and in a separate e-mail, sitting directly on the public toilet seats. Har Har Har. As if.

It did remind me to tell you all about the City Toilettes, though. These charming little buildings are scattered across the city, usually located near parks and playgrounds. For fifty cents, the star-trek like doors open with a whoosh to admit you into a very space-age looking bathroom, where you have 20 minutes to do your business and leave. I don’t know exactly how everything works, so I’ll just give you the facts, followed by my impressions. There is Musak being played in the bathroom for you, and it’s just like the stuff from Star Trek, but more subdued. The centerpiece of the room is the toilet, which is hung on the back wall, and which I assume empties into the sewer system. hanging from the cieling is a metal rack with several buttons, from the bottom of which toilet paper is dispensed. The buttons (Flush, Emergency, and Extra 20 min) are on both sides of the hanging rack, so as to be convenient for any user. The floor depresses when you step on it, and I imagine the toilet seat has a similar sensor in it to let the toilet know that there’s someone in it. The sink is set into the wall, and holding your hands in different areas of the sink produces 3 different results. In the middle, you get warm water. On the left you get some pink liquid soap, and on the right you get blasted with cold air.

The toilets are automatically cleaned and disinfected after every use, a fact which I am inclined to believe based on the cleanliness of the place. I wouldn’t eat off the floor in there, but it wasn’t as dirty as your average public restroom either. there wasn’t any waste on the floor, the seat was clean and dry, as were the sink and the floor. The lighting was pleasant, not too bright and not too dark. It didn’t smell bad, and the only worry in the back of your head might be that 20 minutes. What happens after 20 minutes? Well, I didn’t need nearly that long, but I believe the sign that says that after 20 minutes there will be a warning sound and the doors will automatically open.

I think these are a really good idea, and wish that Minnesota would install some. they’re a huge improvement on Biffies which often smell horrible and have no place to wash your hands. The City Toilettes are roomy inside, with ample space if you’re a mother with several children or a stroller, clean, convenient, and fairly cheap.

Thanks for reminding me mom!

Love,

Sarah

Hey there.

It’s Tuesday again, and sunny but cold here in Germany’s capitol. Adam’s out for a run, and I must say how proud I am of him for starting to run again. He says he hates running on cobblestones, though, so it’s lucky there are a bunch of parks in the area. Kudos to Adam for running!

Something I’ve noticed lately is that when you have a lot of time on your hands, you can get into some pretty odd conversations, like whether or not it would be possible to build a house out of killer bread, which is what we’ve decided to call those super-healthy dwarf-style loaves from the bakery down the street. We concluded that if a preservative were added and it were coated with silicone or something like that, it would be possible to build a modest structure, and with the proper insulation even plumbing wouldn’t be too problematic.

The second interesting conversation we found ourselves in was sparked by some graffiti. “Be a Fair” was painted in a tunnel near the Schwimmhalle where I swim, and it caused me to ask Adam, “If you could be part of a fair, what part would you be?” He answered, “I would be the chicken exhibit.” I thought perhaps he was exhibiting some loyalty to his mother’s chickens or perhaps that he himself had an interest in chicken raising. When I asked him why he replied, “Because people would leave me alone.” Hmmm.

I decided that I would be the midway, because of how fun it is, and because it’s a very social place. Or perhaps I’d be the Grandstand, for similar reasons but without the possible untoward connotations.

If you have any thoughts to add to either of these, please do.

Adam just zipped his leg hair into his running pants. I’ve got to go.

Sarah