Mauerfall: A Crash Course in Berlin Tourism Twenty Years after the Wall Fell

Strolling through Berlin on the weekend before Monday, November 9^th, you wouldn’t have been surprised you to learn that Berlin won the award for “Best Graffitied European City.” After a panicked few minutes in which Savanna and I could not find each other in the gargantuan Hauptbahnhof (main train station) on Friday, I escorted her on a walking tour of my new home city, starting with the main tourist sites. We started with the famous glass-domed Reichstag and wandered along the route where the Berlin wall stood until 1989— now lined with 1,000 colorful “dominoes.” These temporary blocks of Styrofoam had been sent all over the world, one hundred were painted by notable international artists, and the rest by German schoolchildren. They lined the metal strip eternally marking the city’s division from Potsdamer Platz to the Brandenburger Tor, where the dominoes would fall during the dramatic ceremony celebrating the twentieth anniversary of the fall of the Berlin wall on Monday.

On Saturday, we made the obligatory pilgrimage to Checkpoint Charlie, the renowned border crossing between West and East Berlin that was used primarily for American diplomats. Pieces of the wall— looking oh-so-much like slightly sturdier dominoes— dotted Berlin, serving as reminders of the momentous upcoming anniversary and for easy access to tourists with ready cameras. Since the fall of the wall, the nature of Berlin has shifted drastically from the highly symbolic border between socialist block countries and the free world to the “poor, but sexy” European tourism capital.

It didn’t rain that weekend (for the first time in November), so we meandered through the open markets looking at street art, buying a 1945 copy of Grimm’s Fairytales, and drinking Glühwein (German mulled wine) from plastic cups. Selecting carefully from Berlin’s double abundance of museums (neither half of the city would allow that their museums, their zoo, or their opera house be dismantled after unification), we visited the Pergamon Museum, a home to Greek temples, Roman houses, and Babylonian gates, and the Neues Museum, newly reopened to feature the bust of Nefertiti and the Trojan jewelry discovered by Heinrich Schliemann that the Russian didn’t steal upon occupation. (The note accompanying an ancient headdress remarks snidely that the rest of the Trojan treasure can be found in Moscow, where it is being held “in continued breach of international law.”) To be fair, as we walked through the room containing the Greek temple, through the Roman Courtyard, and through the gates of Babylon, Savanna balked in astonishment: “The Germans stole the Ishtar Gates?” Umm…. yes. But if anyone from Turkey would like to see some of his or her former national treasures, the Pergamon Museum is open seven days of week and till 10pm on Thursdays.

In the evening, we met up with friends in Berlin’s popular Orangienburgerstrasse, a locale where one can find any variety of nightlife from “Aufsturz,” a cozy restaurant and bar that houses a hundred beers from all over Europe, to some of Berlin’s more famous clubs, to a bombed out department store turned heavily-graffitied squatter art gallery. After dinner, we headed to this last to wander through Indie-looking art studios, gaze at creations from East Berlin street signs, examine jewelry made from spoons, and tilt our heads quizzically at the occasional portrait of an Indian overlaid on a Confederate flag. (No one ever promised that freedom of speech and paint wouldn’t lead to some outlandish results…)

On Sunday, we traveled back to the era of the liberal-minded Frederick the Great, who preferred building palaces in Potsdam for his friends to the war-waging typical of other German emperors. While the gardens near the palace of Sanssouci and the Neue Palais are astounding, their eighteenth-century beauty is still overcast by the recent days when Potsdam, to the northwest of Berlin, was a prominent but predictably gray city in East Germany. The miniature Brandenburger Tor in the Altstadt (oldest portion of the city) now overlooks a sufficiently bustling street of shops, cafes, and restaurants and the ongoing reconstructions of several national monuments.

Our adventures of the weekend were only an appetizer to the feast of spectacle that took place on Monday evening, the twentieth anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall. Over 100,000 wet people (the November rained returned) congregated in front of the Brandenburger Tor at 5pm to await a program than included performances from Bon Jovi, a concert directed by Daniel Barenboim, interviews with former members of the East German resistance movement, and speeches from Klaus Wowereit (the current mayor of Berlin), President Sarkozy of France, Mikhail Gorbachev, Gordon Brown, and, of course, Angela Merckel. President Obama was distressingly absent from the festivities, but he had recorded a brief speech that was projected over the screens flanking the Brandenburger Tor while the crowd waited for official start to the festivities. November 9^th is a tricky date in German history, as it marks not only the fall of the Berlin wall, but Kristallnacht, also known the Night of Broken Glass, in 1938. Certainly all the important speeches memorialized the darker moments of German history as well as emphasizing the areas of the world where walls have yet to be broken down. The man standing next to me in the crowd was originally from South Korea; it was evident that the commemoration of the unification of Germany through the peaceful dissolution of a communist state was fraught with personal significance for him. The night, full of jubilation and sated memories, ended in fireworks and fallen dominoes.

"Cooking is at once the simplest and most satisfying of the arts..." (C. Claiborne)

With the second point, I will agree. On the first, I'm not so sure!

On Wednesday, I determined to have my first German baking adventure this week. Stovetop cooking doesn't change much as you cross the water: pasta still goes in the water when it's boiling, vegetables sauteed in olive oil still taste good, and you just cut the chicken open to see if it's cooked through. Baking is another story. And technically, I ought to begin telling this one at the point when my host mom left for Italy at 4am on Thursday morning:

When I woke up a few hours later and entered the kitchen to eat my bowl of muesli before heading out the door, I found my host dad looking dolefully at an empty sugar bowl. While I cut my banana, he looked everywhere for the sugar bag. No luck. I ventured to help and turned up a dish of something that looked like sugar. Well, three teaspoonfuls of salt into his coffee later, we discovered there was also no more milk. That's when I decided I needed to move beyond my usual trips to the fruit and vegetable stand near the train station and find an actual grocery store.

After class, I found a grocery store midway down the S-1 line, where I bought sugar, salt, eggs, milk, bread, almonds, and raisins, but baking soda had me stumped. I knew that the German word for baking powder was Backpulver, but no dictionary nor German I encountered that day knew what the word for baking soda was. I decided to hope for a recipe for zucchini bread ( a pretty safe place to start my first time baking in a foreign kitchen- I made it a hundred times last year as a form of thesis procrastination) that didn't require baking soda, and hauled my ingredients back home. No easy feat, actually when you have a heavy backpack, a large bag of groceries that includes eggs, and there's a ten minute walk to get to your front door!

In the kitchen, everything went really well- till I couldn't figure out how to pre-heat the oven. Then, I wasn't encouraged by the bewildered expression on Nico's face when I asked him how to work the oven and explained that I was making zucchini bread. My activities must have caught his interest, however, because he popped into the kitchen at least 6 times throughout the evening. The first four were on the pretense of getting a drink, when he must have gotten tired of drinking water, he finally just came in and asked directly if the bread was ready yet.

In the process of putting the groceries away, I found the sugar we'd looked for that morning, but realized that the cinnamon was missing. (Cinnamon is nearly always a key ingredient when I bake, so this was a serious blow.) I then proceeded to take my American recipe, double it, convert everything to the metric system, change the oven temperature from Fahrenheit to Celsius, use nutmeg instead of cinnamon, hope no one would notice the lack of baking soda (at least the recipe included baking powder and I put plenty of that in), and pray. Perhaps the largest risk I took was that I baked such a large quantity because I wanted to bring it to Biblestudy the following night.

Thankfully, everything turned out more or less alright- everyone at church seemed to like whatever it was (it turned out to be a zucchini-carrot-apple-raisin-nutmeg bread in the end) and Nico devoured the slices I left out for him the next morning. I'll never be able to repeat the recipe again, of that I am sure. Perhaps it would be easier to use German cookbooks next time.

On another note, I came home from Bible study tonight to find no less than 9 cartons of milk in the fridge. Apparently, after his horrible breakfast on Thursday morning, my host dad is determined to never run out of milk again.

Don't walk alone through the dangerous streets of Zehlendorf....

But not because they're at all dangerous. When I was there earlier today, it wasn't even dark out yet! And, if you know Berlin at all, you know that Zehlendorf is actually one of those nice suburban areas outside Berlin where there are lots of trees, family houses, bakeries, and nice shoe stores.

My particular difficulty was that I went to Zehlendorf on my way home simply to go to the bank- and came home an hour later with an eclectic assortment of parcels under my arm, including, but not limited to three Clementines, a cucumber, a pair of brown socks, nail polish remover, a package of dried mangoes, and a take-out box of fried rice with vegetables. The good news is that I only spent money that I had before I went to the bank and, I had actually been meaning to get all of them for a while. Except the fried rice. That was a spur of the moment decision, based on the knowledge that it was 7pm and that my shelf of the fridge at home had nothing particularly appetizing on it. It was good fried rice, incidentally.

As long as I'm sharing words of wisdom acquired in the past week or so, I would also advise against trying to buy a ticket from Prague to Krakow while you yourself are in Berlin. Apparently, as Deutsche Bahn has informed me via a person at the ticket counter, internet alerts, and three failed attempts to use an automatic ticket machine in the train station, this is impossible. In fact, no one seems to know how anyone from Berlin can get to these places, unless it is by taking a round trip to each in succession (ie. Berlin to Prague to Berlin to Krakow to Berlin). If you look at a map, you'll see that this is hardly a logical itinerary for a weekend trip. If I ever get a ticket, I'll be sure to let you know how it's done.

In other news, this week has been a particularly cultural one (or it will be, once we get to the end of it). On Wednesday, the entire program went to a performance of Mahler's 3rd Symphony at the Berlin Philharmonie, which was stellar! (See photo below; I suppose a clip of the music would be more interesting, but I don't think you're allowed to record the orchestra unofficially...)

Today, we visited the house of Bertolt Brecht (most famous as the author of "Mother Courage" and "The Three-Penny Opera"). We have just finished reading the German language version of "The Resistable Rise of Arturo Ui," which is a satire on the rise of Hitler. He appears in the play in the character of Arturo Ui, who is the head gangster of a group of mafia men in Chicago. His underling-gangsters masquerade as harmless cauliflower vendors, but are secretly trying to overthrow the honorable mayor of the town, Dogsborough. In the play, Brecht presents the main events of the rise of the 3rd Reich, such as the burning of the Reichstag and the annexation of Austria, through parallel happenings in Chicago. The culmination to our week of culture will be this Saturday night, when we attend the play. Tomorrow we are also visiting the house at Wannsee- practically in my backyard, actually- where the Final Solution was decided upon.

Other than these, the most exiting events in my life have been the brief threat that I had swine flu (which thankfully came to naught), progressing on law school applications, and seeing a giraffe made entirely out of legos.

Mein Tagesbuch

"Tagesbuch," in German literally means "daily book;" it's a journal. As part of the repetitive, but useful, exercises our profs assign to our German class, we write a journal entry in German every night. We're all realizing pretty quickly that this is actually harder than you'd think, not even because of a lack of knowledge of relevant German grammar. See, the exciting thing about studying abroad is that you're living every day- abroad! It's a new city, new language. But, when it comes down to it, it's still daily life- school, homework, commuting. So, really, once my professor has read one entry for "Montag" (Monday), it feels as though he may as well have read them all. Nonetheless, there is value in the brief representation of daily life abroad, even some of the repetitive things, so here is a short summation of some rather mundane, but usual, events for you:

The photo to the left is of the large table in the café across the street from our ghetto East Germany university building in which we currently go to class. I think the café is called "Maryanne," but I know it has decent cappuccinos and awesome baguette sandwiches. It is also not a chain and the baristas have learned that we want to speak German with them (too many Berliners in the food industry take a hesitation as an opportunity to launch into English). The pretty girl in the photo is Joanna, who alone of the 19 Duke/Davidson-ites has my same course schedule. We both take Environmental Policy and Economics of the European Union, while everyone else takes one of the above and an art history course. (Of course, we all have double courses in German too.) So, every Tuesday and Thursday after Econ, everyone else heads into the (again, ghetto former East Berlin) classroom to study art and architecture, and Joanna and I hightail it across the street to Maryanne's to catch up on reading, start a paper, or, naturally, write our journal entries for the day.

This, my friend, is einen "echten deutschen" Bär (literally, a real German bear. Not only are Germans very fond of "frische Luft" (getting some fresh air), they are fond of labelling things that are really, truly German). Rather like the plethora of moose (or was it cows?) that appeared in Coeur d'Alene a few summers ago, there are bears all over Berlin. This particular blue one was in front of a Deutsche Bank. (Incidentally, I am the proud owner of an account there now, which I opened entirely in German. The pride comes entirely from this last fact- couldn't come from anywhere else, really, as the account still has the aesthetically pleasing but useless balance of 0.0 Euros!)

Joanna took this picture of me shortly before leading me on a ridiculous adventure throughout the entirety of the city last Friday. All we really wanted was to get to Ku'dammstrasse, supposedly the Champs Élyées of Berlin, but mostly not as expensive, because we were looking for a black skirt for her and winter boots for me. (The picture shows the weather in one of its deceptively warm moods.) I had been to Kreuzberg (a quarter of Berlin- to make things super-easy- on the righthand side of the public transportation map) earlier that day in vain search of a Mac store. We met afterwards in the center of the city and, because Joanna claimed to know where she was going, I allowed her to lead me all the way back into Kreuzberg before I looked at a subway stop and realized we were supposed to be heading about 30 minutes in the other direction. At that point, we established who would be leading who for the rest of the trip : ) For those of you who may doubt my sense of direction, it has improved significantly- or rather, it's impossible to get too lost when you're traveling in cars that are stuck to a fixed path of which you have a map!

Hopefully (more exciting) stories and photos will soon be forthcoming, but now I need to go write in my real Tagesbuch....

Oops!

Dear all,

Please note that I corrected the zip code on my Berlin address in the post below. I had stuck a five in unnecessarily. My correct Berlin address is

Kennedy Catton

bei Familie Loth

Von Luck Str. 5

14129 Berlin

Deutschland

Luckily, some things that were already sent with the incorrect zip code still made it here, but I thought I ought to get it right.

DAAD Blog

If anyone's interested, I have yet another blog- this one's more official though, as it's for the DAAD (otherwise known as the German American Academic Exchange). Here you go:

http://daadabroad.wordpress.com/. Just click on my name to see what I've written. I'll still maintain this one more faithfully; the other simply requires a new post at least every two weeks.

Church, Okapis, and the lack of "Schweinegrippe"

I am delighted to announce that I am moved in. Not only have I finally gotten to unpack, I even did it in the correct family's house! (Part of my new room is pictured to the left.)On top of that, no one has swine flu anymore! So much has happened since my last post, partially because I have involuntarily stopped sleeping and partially because adapting to new city and a new language seems to require every fiber of one's mind, every minute of the day. I'll give the highlights of the past few days before I tell today's story properly:

The most important event of the past week was church on Sunday. It's called the International Baptist Church of Berlin. My mom had found it online before I left, but going once leads me to believe that it will be a place to be refreshed, grounded, and encouraged this year. Oddly enough, service starts at 12:15 on Sundays, but I still managed to be late as I navigated my way around a new area of the city. As I walked- somewhat breathlessly- down Rothbergerstrasse, I was directed by the sound of singing from halfway down the block, as though the building couldn't even contain all the praises! The congregation meets in a legitimate, but small church, and it was singing Isaiah 43, a beautiful promise that God is always with us. The pastor preached in English (helpful now but I think I may regret it as time goes on and I get more comfortable in German ), and his sermon fit the theme of Isaiah 43; he spoke from 1 Kings 19 on Elijah and, doctrinally, he was "spot on." One of the most tangible blessings of the service was meeting a stunningly beautiful girl from Tobago named Ayanna. We prayed together at a designated point in the service, then briefly introduced ourselves before turning back around to listen (she sat in front of me). I wanted to talk to her more before I left afterwards, since she looked about my age, but she was already engrossed in conversation with someone else. As Providence would have it (to use a term harkening back to 1900), however, we found ourselves on the same subway 20 minutes later! I learned that she only just arrived in Berlin and started attending the church, but will be here for two years studying German and Econ through an external London School of Economics program, and we exchanged cell phone numbers : )

Having completed my only planned Sunday activity, and realizing that half of Germany shuts down on Sundays, I picked the only destination I knew would be open: the Berliner Zoo. After being surrounded by people- largely German speakers- 24/7 for several days, I quite enjoyed meandering through the zoo at my own leisure, either bonding silently with Okapis and Giraffes, or watching Sea Lions and primates in the happy knowledge that, for the first time in a few days, I wasn't actually supposed to understand any of the foreign sounds I heard.

I spent the rest of the afternoon walking through the city, learning the U-bahn (subway) system, largely through missing my stop and finding my way back to the right station. It must have been effective, as I haven't gotten lost since! Sunday ended beautifully; I went back to my pseudo-hostfamily's house and had a leisurely dinner with Maria and Manfred. German-style, it lasted a few hours, with lots of coffee and chocolate afterwards. The best discovery there was realizing that I was laughing at all their jokes because I actually had understood them, not simply because they were laughing.

Monday brought the first day of classes. It didn't take long before I was totally overwhelmed by the number of forms it was imperative for me to get signed or stamped or processed within a week, by the amount of German homework I was given, by the law school applications I had been hoping to give all my attention to in all that free time I was supposed to have abroad, and by the fact that it takes a half an hour to get from one class to another! After drowning these sorrows in bad Vietnamese food with Joana, a student from Swarthmore on the program, we realized it was just the inevitable first day of classes abroad feeling and that it would all get better once we had consistent schedules, knew our way around, found the time and place to work out (the problem being that we've been leaving for school so early and come home in the dark, when it's no longer safe to run through our neighborhoods), and had gotten ice cream. We duly got ice cream, and I promptly signed up for a modern dance and a pilates class at Humboldt University with Jenn (another Duke student), which- in the absence of real endorphines- made me feel slightly better. Day 2 did prove much more rhythmic and manageable. I really do enjoy my classes so I'll give them a blog entirely to themselves later.

For the first few days of class, Jochen called me "die verlorene Kind," meaning the lost child, but I am lost no longer! My real host mom, Barbara, rescued me from my pseudo-host family to whom I was rapidly getting attached this afternoon. Fortunately, the families are good friends and I have obtained an invitation to come over whenever I please, so I'm sure I'll see them frequently. After taking a quick detour because Barbara needed to appear at an unexpected press conference with the mayor of Berlin at the opening of a neighborhood theater (she's an elected official belonging to the SPD German party, and elections are coming up), we arrived at the Loth family house. While her description of a "large house with a large garden on a lake" is, strictly speaking, accurate, it was not at all what I expected! It is, however, equally pleasant. Their house is a huge, ancient house with beautiful high ceilings, old tile bathrooms, and three large floors. Apparently, Barbara inherited it from her grandmother and it is still a family house: her brother lives in the basement apartment, a couple with small children rents the uppermost floor, and Barbara, her son Nico, and Nico's stepfather (meaning Barbara's husband), Klaus, live on the main floor- plus me and Katrin, a family friend who also rents a room (I have only met her briefly, but she is blond and cheery and I liked her instantly). There's more than enough room to go around, however; I already lost the kitchen once today. (Klaus kindly helped me find it again- it's apparently next to my room.)

Barbara and Klaus frequently work in the evenings, so she rushed off again, leaving Nico and I to make friends. He, again, was not what I expected. He presented himself immediately upon our arrival and greeted me with the announcement that he is swine flu free. For 14, Nico seems to be navigating puberty with an extraordinarily low level of awkwardness. Coincidentally, he has the duck-footedness-plus-coordination that runs on the Kennedy side of my family, starting with Bompa and trickling through some of the male cousins, and the fact that he talked cheerily with me in German for the better part of our excursion to the lake and to get dinner, despite the fact that his voice still cracks, made a charming impression. I think we will be "Gastgeschwister" (host family brother and sister) on the best of terms. For those of you who caught the brief mention of the lake, there is a small lake about two blocks from my front door. Not only can one swim in it, there is a running path around it that is exactly four miles long. Starting this weekend, I am going to be in heaven! (That is when I plan to reclaim my running time.)

Given that it's 1am here, I will curtail what are sure to be ever-more-rambling remarks, but hopefully they give you a rough picture of my surroundings at this point in my German adventure.

Ich bin ein Berliner!

Not really. But that's mostly just because JFK didn't get it right! I do, however, now live in Berlin for the next eleven months or, rather, slightly outside of it. I arrived on Wednesday (this time, I experimented with Tylenol PM on the flight over, but I determined-to-be-jetlagged body managed to render it completely ineffective). Thankfully, all that the program demanded of me was a dinner together to meet everyone, and I managed to stay awake until my two hotel roommates and I could collapse in our room at 10pm. We had orientation at the hotel with all the Davidson and Duke students for two days (there are nineteen of us), which gave us a chance to learn names, figure out where our classes were, get a feel for public transportation, and see a few major sites.

On Friday, we took a great bike tour (Fat Tire bike tours, for anyone who will be in a major European city soon), in which our (English-speaking) guide led us a on a six hour bike tour of Berlin. (I assure you, our pace guaranteed that the tour was intended for intellectual and not physical exercise.) We saw the major government offices, bikes along the Spree River, saw the East Berlin TV tower, Checkpoint Charlie, the Berlin Wall, the site of Hitler's bunker, the Reichstag, the Tiergarten (a former hunting ground for royalty, now a park), and, of course, had lunch in a "typisch deutsch" Biergarten. I'm not going to translate that- it means exactly what you think it does. Suffice it to say there were adequate quantities of sausage as well!

Friday night, Duke hosted a dinner at the Humboldt University for all the students and their host families. My host mom, Barbara, and host brother, Tobi (23), were very nice. They proved friendly, easy to talk to, competent in English, but happy to play along and speak German with me. About halfway through the meal, just as I was thinking everything was going to work out beautifully, Barbara told me in German that "there was a small problem." Her younger son, Nico (14), was sick. She told he has been given medicine and the doctor said he was no longer contagious, but was I still comfortable coming home with them? I said yes, of course, that was no problem. Then, purely to keep conversation going, I asked what Nico had. Oh, said Barbara, "Schweine flu." That one also means what you think: swine flu. The only logical thing to do then, knowing that he was well on his way to recovery, was to laugh. So that's what she meant by "sick"..... Well, that's the long of it. The short of it is that while everyone is really fine, the program mandated that I stay elsewhere till Nico comes out of quarantine and goes to school on Wednesday, so Barbara's best friend, Maria, agreed very graciously to host me till then.

I am therefore happily settled in a blue and white bedroom on the second floor of Maria's house in Zehlendorf, a- dare I say suburb? - to the southeast of Berlin. Thankfully, Maria's house is very close to Barbara's, so I won't have to learn a totally different way home from school. (With my sense of direction, this would have proved a minor trial.) Maria, her husband, and the two children I have met have both been extremely nice to me. We have been able to converse entirely in German, even serious conversations, and I've even been able to understand the majority of the joking (harder than you'd think)! They are happy to include me in everything, or to let me orchestrate my own schedule. This morning, we all went to IKEA to buy their college aged sons some furniture for their new apartment in Berlin. Clearly, it doesn't get much better than IKEA : ) , so I'd better leave off their. Tomorrow brings another day of exploration, and school starts on Monday, so I'm sure to have plenty more to write about soon!

Contact Info for Berlin!

Now that I'm one week (and one day) out from the departure to Berlin, I haven't even started to think about a packing list. I do, however, know where I'll be staying once I arrive. The Loth family is composed of two lawyer parents and two sons, age 14 and 23. Apparently, they live on a lake (proof there is a God and He loves me) which is a very good sign that I will settle in quite contentedly. I am hoping the Skype situation will be easier there than in Cambridge (see first post of this blog for all online contact info), but here is my snail mail address from August 25th until I return to the States:

Kennedy Catton

c/o Familie Barbara Loth

Von Luck Strasse 5

14129 Berlin

Deutschland

The epic romance of Romeo and Juliet, or, why Shakespeare has been rolling over in his grave all summer

Last night, Jessica and I packed our picnic dinner and went to see the Cambridge Shakespeare Festival Performance of Romeo and Juliet. When I was first introduced to Shakespeare, I had a very cynical view of Romeo and Juliet because it represented so many cliches. But a few years ago, I read the play on my own and took a much loftier view of the drama. I thought seeing the play performed in Cambridge would confirm my more appreciative perspective of the play and hopefully rid me of those last few seeds of cynicism.

Juliet performed the balcony scene while speaking to her teddy bear.
Romeo jumped in the air every few minutes for no apparent reason, other than perhaps the same motivating factor that makes a ten-year-old boy yell when he's excited.
The two of them straightup made out for a good five minutes in front of Friar Lawrence.
And it rained through the entire first act. (Though, to be fair, the actors can't be held responsible for that.)

My appreciative view of the romance suffered, but I think the damage was curbed by the fact that Jessica and I left at intermission-- partially because the picnic blanket was soaked and the heavens showed no sign of letting up, and partially because our outbursts of irreverent laughter were becoming more and more frequent, and less and less dignified. In short, if Shakespeare had any intention for Romeo and Juliet to be played as anything other than a teenage Disney channel movie, I think he's been rolling over in artistic agony in his grave every evening between 7:30 and 10pm all summer.

Books, books, books!

Every day, between 9 and 5, Cambridge's main square fills up with market stalls and sellers of fresh vegetables, flowers, bread, cheeses, scarves, old fashioned candy, tourist traps from Cambridge and Oxford sweatshirts (in the same stall! utter heresy) to socks with the British flag on them, and secondhand books. While I can usually be talked into marching over to purchase some fresh raspberries or still-warm bread, it is the last item that usually draws my attention. Yesterday, Jessica and I spent about an hour wandering from bookstall to bookstall, debating about whether we should buy this or that book- 'of course you should, because it's a beautiful edition of a classic, and for only a pittance!' 'Then again, the suitcase weighed exactly 49 lbs when I came to the UK....'
Despite some self-restraint, we both returned to Basing House feeling triumphant and slightly guilty, hands full (in my case) of Dickens, Scott, obscure Agatha Christies, and the British version of the 7th Harry Potter book (which, the flyleaf informs me, is also available in Gaelic, Latin, and Ancient Greek). I put in an obligatory few hours reading JSTOR articles for the research paper due Tuesday, then abandoned myself to the enjoyment of my purchases. The 7th Harry Potter book being the largest and the one, therefore, that will not be accompanying me as carry-on literature for the trip home, and being in a somewhat whimsical mood, I proceeded to sit down after dinner and read the entire thing from cover to cover. Perhaps I'll start in on the Dickens today after lunch. I figure I can afford to indulge my literary whims for the time being- while the bookstalls nearest me still have books in English available for purchase, and before law books bury all thoughts of wandwork and invisibility cloaks irretrievably!

"Here's to the land of the mist and the mountain..."

"...loud roarin' torrents re-echo my song, deep as her glens or a source of her fountains are the brave hearts that guard thee old Caledon." ~ George Hope Tait, a Scottish poet

(note: Caledonia was the Roman name given to the land now known as Scotland)

Scotland was everything I imagined it to be. That is, it fit the portrait of a beautiful, yet wild, land and tenacious, freedom-loving people that the active imagination of my childhood, early exposure to Sir Walter Scott's Ivanhoe and Robert Burns' poetry, and my inherited fondness for plaid (really, as I was chastised by many a Scottish museum, tartan) had created. Much to my satisfaction, there is a historical basis for my perception of the Scottish people and quite a lot of visible proof regarding the beauty of the country.

I thought St. Andrews, in the region of Fife, right on the eastern coast of Scotland, was the most beautiful part of Scotland we saw in a whirlwind week-long tour of the country. Undoubtedly, I'm biased by my fondness for bodies of water: the coastline of St. Andrews was absolutely stunning. One could look out, from the ruins of a tenth century cathedral over beaches, fishing coves, and ocean.

That said, we certainly enjoyed Edinburgh and would have loved to be able to stay for this weekend's Scottish Homecoming and highland games. I saw and did far too much in a week to be able to detail all of it for you, but here are some highlights:

A pack of eight of us (DJ, Jonathan, Thomas, Chelsie, Jennifer, Katie, Sarah, and I) arrived in Edinburgh midway through the week. Not unexpectedly, it was raining a bit. We spent part of the afternoon in the Scottish National Gallery until it cleared up a bit, then walked the city, from the fantastic Edinburgh Castle overlooking the entire city, to Jonathan, Chelsie, and my climb up the 287 stairs to the top of the Sir Walter Scott monument. We've learned to capitalize on the free offerings of cities in the UK, and there was certainly a lot to see in Edinburgh! Given my love of Ivanhoe and the fantastic view from the top, however, the 3 pounds we paid for access to the Scott Monument was generally agreed to a fantastic investment.

Edinburgh has the best to offer of both a historic and modern city. After rambling over the city's monuments and cultural offerings all day, we treated ourselves to an amazing dinner at a Middle Eastern restaurant and set off in pursuit of authentic Scottish nightlife and whisky (mostly for DJ, as none of the rest of us like it). Some friendly Scotsmen at our hostel in Inverness had recommended a place called Wetherspoons, which after an hour or so of walking and asking strangers for directions, we were inclined to believe was simply the end to a wild goose chase on which the locals enjoyed sending tourists. When we finally found it, Wetherspoons proved to be a singularly uninteresting bar. DJ did get his whisky, however, which he declared to be excellent, and we spiced up the evening with Jonathan's "Cliff Notes" reading of David Copperfield (the second part of which was glued to other second hand books of the walls to serve as decor). In other words, he provided us with a dramatic reading of the first and last sentences of three or four chapters until we resorted to playing 20 Questions and Never Have I Ever and determined in the end that Wetherspoons hadn't been a waste of an evening after all.

Inverness was our chosen starting-off spot for visiting the Scottish

Highlands, including Loch Ness and Cawdor Castle (Macbeth in Shakespeare, if you remember, was the Thane of Cawdor Castle). (I'm going about this a bit backwards, by the way, as we went to Inverness before Edinburgh. But while Inverness was not quite the cultural experience of Scotland's capital, it is definitely worth a mention.) Our stay in Inverness began when we arrived at the Eastgate Backpackers' Hostel, where we had eight beds reserved in a sixteen bed dormitory. (In all fairness, before I tell this story, I ought to mention that my experiences with hostels in Exeter, Edinburgh, and St. Andrews have been fantastic; only Eastgate Backpackers' was another bird altogether.) The owner had spent the weekend away, with the result that one person had taken our first reservation, another altered it when we increased the number of people in our group, and someone entirely different checked us in.

A good bit of number juggling happened on paper, a good bit of sheet juggling happened on random beds, and a rising doubt that any of the linens had been washed since two or three occupants ago was checked by the sheer relief of the owner's acknowledgment that the hostel could, after all, put us up for the night if the girls slept in double beds. We acquiesced happily, until we returned at bedtime and discovered that the girls' double beds were surrounded above, in front, and to the side, by a large pack of Scottish guys watching a terrible film on a computer approximately twelve inches away from my pillow. In the end, they agreed to turn off the film, we went to sleep, and they proved to be nice enough charity workers who gave us the recommendation to go to Wetherspoon's in Edinburgh. Hmmm... (see above story).

Inverness did prove to have other attractions. Loch Ness was gorgeous- and had interesting tourist shops offering stuffed "Nessie" (aka the Loch Ness monster) animals, Nessie bumper stickers, and Loch Ness' local brew, Nessie's Monster Mash (!). We found an excellent pub with excellent live Scottish music and an excellent name: Hootananny's (!). Incidentally, Hootenanny's also offered good Thai food (!), though we did not sample it, but the proof of the good music and atmosphere was in the fact that we were entertained happily for an hour or so while sitting on the stairs until we could get a table (hence, the picture to the left).

From Inverness, we also explored Cawdor Castle, still inhabited by members of the Cawdor/Campbell family. Cawdor Castle- where the Macbeth's supposed murder of King Duncan took place-proved to be a pastiche of eras, decor, and furniture. The original 14th century castle was extensively expanded in the 17th. However, as members of the Cawdor/Cambell family still live there today, there was a some '70s decor and yesterday's National Geographic thrown-in. I thoroughly approved, as I like my history lived in. Had the castle been museum-ized according to one particular period, the visible remainders of the other historical periods of the castle would have faded away and, worse, the un-lived in castle would have lost the vibrancy of a place that continues to be used according to its original purpose. There was plenty of history to be had, however, including a secret dungeon for "unwanted visitors and the ungodly" (so said the placard for tourists) that had been forgotten for a hundred years or so and rediscovered in the 20th century.

But the best part of Scotland was the Scots. The white-mustached Scottish conductor of our train to Inverness, even while in London, could have won me to the love of his countrymen by his accent alone (he was also overwhelmingly friendly). So too could the nine-year old boy in Edinburgh who proudly wore his kilt with his Converse Allstars and the bagpipers, all living under the shadow of Walter Scott and the freedom-loving character proclaimed from the Declaration of Abroath in 1320 to "Braveheart." From tartan plaid to Scottish history, I couldn't have been gladder to have some strain of Scottishness in my heritage.

(note: The Declaration of Abroath states that "For so long as one hundred men remain alive, we shall never under any conditions submit to the domination of the English. It is not for glory or riches or honours that we fight, but only for liberty, which no good man will consent to lose but with his life.")

Perhaps it's true, as Robert Louis Stevenson said, that "the mark of the Scots of all classes [is] that he stands in an attitude towards the past unthinkable to Englishmen, and remembers and cherishes the memory of his forebears, good or bad; and there burns alive in him a sense of identity with the dead even to the twentieth generation." Or perhaps it's only true of those of us who are history majors.

Much Ado about Shakespeare

The season of Shakespeare has begun! July and August in Cambridge are famous for the Shakespeare Festival, in which small casts produce six or so different Shakespeare plays in the gardens of the various colleges. Tonight, at least half of our group packed a picnic and headed to the Fellow's Garden of St. John's College (otherwise not open to visitors) to see "Much Ado About Nothing," which happens to be my favorite Shakespeare play of all time.

It was brilliant.

Many of Shakespeare's comedies take part largely in outdoorsy, somewhat pastoral or fantastical settings, so placing "Much Ado" in a garden adds a delightful element to the production. My worst fears were allayed when Benedick proved witty, masculine, and in every way as he ought to be. The theater critics- from whom I heard so much on the subject during my Shakespeare class this past semester- would have been pleased to know that the famous "kill Claudio" line evoked "the" laugh from the audience, thus diffusing the dramatic tension of watching a comedy in which an innocent and beloved female character has been defamed and the heroine has just asked the hero to murder his best friend.

It only rained twice during the production- it requires torrents to push these actors off their grassy stage- and our group was generally so well pleased that we intend to attend at least one or two more performances, perhaps "The Merchant of Venice" or "The Merry Wives of Windsor," as comedies are best set off by gardens and summertime.

Where in the world is....?

I just returned from a three-day trip to Bath, Exeter, and Dartmoor. The whole program traveled to Bath together by "coach" (bus) on Thursday morning, then we parted ways on Friday afternoon to begin our own weekend adventures. Bath is, of course, famous as the city about which Jane Austen wrote two of her novels, Northanger Abbey and Persuasion, and in which she lived for five years (though she hated nearly every minute of it). As we learned on our many walking tours, Bath was a city that people visited for the winter season every year in order to "see and be seen." We contented ourselves on this trip with simpy seeing- the very inauthentic Jane Austen museum, the Georgian house museum of #1 Crescent, the Pulteney Bridge nearby our quarters at the (surprisingly nice) YMCA, the Bath Abbey, the Roman Baths and assembly rooms, etc.

My favorite walking tour was actually the one that Jessica, Sarah, and I took on our own on Thursday afternoon. After hitting the key sites, we continued to wander until we reached car dealerships- a sure sign of extreme sketchiness or suburbia, neither of which we had intended to encounter- and decided perhaps we didn't quite know where we were anymore. Witness, the "lost-but-at-least-we-have-a-map" photo of Sarah and me, above. That was only moments before our faces wore expressions more akin to a "too-bad-we've-walked-off-the-righthand-corner-of-the-map" look. Luckily, it doesn't get dark here until 9:30 or so, and it was only about six. We eventually meandered back to the centre- note the British spelling : ) -of town, but not before stumbling on an incredible Norman church and cemetery. The group ventured out together that evening, first for delicious Thai food, then for some "pubbing and clubbing" that culminated in Jonathon, DJ, Katie, Jennifer, Chelsie, and I abandoning ship to eat pizza by the river at midnight- not a bad ending to the day!

The next morning was an early one, but well worth it, because Jonathon, Sarah, and I snuck in a morning run that took us up a hill overlooking the city. We spent the rest of the morning touring Georgian edifices and museums; the group picture is of us sitting on the "ha-ha" in front of the Crescent. This was the wealthiest area of Bath, designed by John Wood the younger to look like an Italian palace. The Crescent is divided into 30 separate, but adjoining, houses. A large park stretches in front and is split into an upper and a lower ground by a sunken rock wall- the so-called ha-ha. The lower ground contained sheep and cows and the ha-ha was to prevent the cows from meandering up to one's front porch. The intended effect was for the inhabitants of the Crescent to look out their front windows, see the park in front, and feel like the lords and ladies of a country manor and park.

Shortly after noon on Friday, 12 of us split off, heading for Exeter. We essentially acknowledge Jonathon as our fearless leader (whether he wants to be or not), as this was not the first weekend that some of our group realized he simply had the best plans and therefore decided to accompany him. Those of us who are natural-born planners (like Jessica and yours truly- plus, let's face it, most Davidson kids have just a little OCD-ness in that department) have tried to help, but usually we find he's already one step ahead of us. Since Jon's pretty laid back about who accompanies him- more than happy to have the company, but going to do his own thing whether you come or no- traveling in a pack worked pretty well. We arrived in Exeter only after Jessica, Josh, Sarah, and I found ourselves settled in the baggage/loo hallway for the duration of the train ride, and were greeted with blustering rain. So, out came the lime green rainjacket and the pink umbrella (there was no hiding our tourist origins now) and we all trekked to a very homey hostel. That said, we were misled initially by the fact that an underling made us stand out in the rain for ten minutes because they weren't "open" yet. But then the owner found us and let us come in.

The main Exeter attractions are the Exeter Cathedral, an old Roman wall, and underground passageways that we were unfortunately too late to go through. We also did a roundabout walk through the city- without getting lost, this time, as Jonathon was in the lead- and ended up at Quayside, of which I have provided a photo below that doesn't do its beauty justice. We slept well that night, and headed out this morning to Dartmoor National Park, perhaps better known to you as the infamous moors of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's The Hound of the Baskervilles. There was just the right amount of mist for it to feel authentic, though the moment was disrupted by laughter when we found our footpath taking us straight through the Dartmoor Golf Club green, backpacks, rainjackets, and orange Sainsbury bags proclaiming our American- and tourist-ness. And yes, several elderly Dartsmoorians had to set aside their putters and drivers and waited grouchily for us to get out of their way! (Sainsbury's, by the way, is the lifeline of the college student studying abroad in Britain. It's a rather reasonably priced grocery store, found nearly everywhere, and we have feasted happily many times on bread, apples, peanut butter, and such from our Sainsbury bags rather than paying for a meal in a restaurant.) In the afternoon, we divided forces again and the self-designated "fab five" (Josh, Billy, Sarah, Jessica, and I) headed back to Cambridge while the rest of the group stayed in Exeter. We have our own London adventures scheduled for tomorrow, of which I hope to provide an account later.

Wait... this is summer school?!

There is one aspect of life at Cambridge to which I have not given much attention. That is, the work. Certainly, in comparison to the work required at Davidson, a few reading packets and three papers in six weeks is hardly strenuous. Amid the bustle of settling in, weekend traveling, and the ever-present delightful distraction of British accents, however, I managed to mentally shrink our assignments out of existence. It came as something of shock- to all of us, I think- when we read the fine print on our syllabi "first paper- due July 8th" and hauled out our laptops yesterday to begin. Apparently, I signed up for summer school. But if you're going to be writing papers in July, summer school at an 800-year-old European university is definitely the way to go!

Dr. Dietz, the Davidson professor who created this program and appears in Cambridge as the director every third year, created the program so that our class structure would model an actual Cambridge University student's experience. Every morning at 9, we attend lecture with a Cambridge professor- usually a specialist in some aspect of British history or literature from 1750 to 1850, which is our period of interest. We have a different lecturer every day and have so far covered topics from the British reaction to the French Revolution to the shift from classical to romantic music. In the latter, our lecturer, both a professor and a concert pianist, played snatches of Clementi and Haydn on a harpsichord in the marble entry-room of Houghton Hall, the grand manor house that belonged to England's first prime minister, Sir Robert Walpole.  (Yes, I'm bragging just a bit.)

While the lecturers change daily, we have two Cambridge graduate students, Tom and Laura, who teach our tutorial groups twice a week. They assign outside readings to us, edit and grade our papers, and guide our discussions in tutorial. They also showed us around the Cambridge University Library (abbreviated the UL), hang out with us at local pubs, and are chock-full of good British wit. So, while part of our Cambridge education is historical and academic, there's certainly a popular culture component as well!

Of Rembrandt and Strawberries & Cream

Today, Sarah, Eissabeth, Jessica, and I woke up at 5am and went to London. You would have woken up that early as well if you intended to travel the hour from Cambridge to King's Cross Station and see Shakespeare's Globe Theater, Hyde Park, Westminister Abbey, and the National Portrait Gallery all before lunchtime! Needless to say- dedicated travelers and tourists though we are- we didn't quite manage all that. We did manage quite bit of it, though, and were able to get to Wimbledon early enough to get ground tickets on Murray Hill to see the women's finals at Wimbledon- pretty amazing! The trick to having seats on Murray Hill is to NOT sit on the sloping part of the terraced lawn so you don't slide down the hill into the person in front of you every five minutes or so. We didn't know this when we sat down. Having had some experience in the area now, I would recommend scrunching your knees under you and leaning forward should you ever find yourself in this position- this is surprisingly comfortable and has the added advantage of slowing your downhill slide to about half a foot every fifteen minutes. Our location notwithstanding, being at Wimbledon was pretty awesome. Strawberries & cream (provided by Haagen Daaz, surprisingly enough) and Pimm's abounded, as did sundresses and, in Jessica's case, sunburns. The Williams sisters played each other and had some excellent rallies. They were neck and neck for the first set, so we thought we were going to be there for a while, but Serena surprised us and won in the second. Me and my three travel buddies returned somewhat exhausted to Cambridge (it was  6 o'clock by then and we'd walked many a mile) for a Fourth of July picnic on Jesus Green with our program-mates who returned from Brighton and an overnight trip to London this evening as well. I've posted pictures from Cambridge and London adventures so far on facebook, so please feel free to check them out. Happy Fourth to everyone in the states!

Running on Quayside

I just got back from my first Cambridge run and found it entirely blog-worthy. Perpendicular to the street that runs in front of Basing House, Magdalene Street, runs the River Cam. The docks and sidewalk that run alongside the river are called Quayside and it's popular hangout spot in the day for those selling rides down the river on punts and, at night, half the local and tourist population of Cambridge turns out for some harmless enough drunken revelries on the stone steps next to the Quay- or, in other words, right below our bedroom windows. I think we're all getting used to the noise that continues till 4am- it's really nothing to the garbage collectors that come to start dumping broken bottles into their trucks at 6!

Be that as it may, when I left Basing House for a Quayside run this morning at 6:30, the quay was as quiet and peaceful as could be desired. I met only 4 to 5 other runners and a few bikers heading towards work in the city center. There's a good stretch of sidewalk running along the Cam, which is nice as several silent dramas unfolded on top of the water in my half-hour or so of pounding the pavement. I counted no less that 16 Canadian Geese sailing in a perfectly straight single file line downstream, and concluded that they must be British look-alike cousins to the Canadian variety. No goose family from North America could compete with the absolute British sense or order, symmetry, and propriety with which these particular geese comported themselves. I was also accompanied by a women and men's university crew team practice, which were directed by a cheery Englishwoman on a bright orange bike who directed them from shore. Even she didn't distrub the morning peace much, though, because- as our British program director, Carol, reminds us, it is not the British way to shout.

"The time has come...to talk of many things, Of shoes and ships and sealing wax, Of carpenters and kings..."

About 24 hours ago, if I could have picked any superpower, I probably would have chosen the ability to sleep on planes. After a good night's sleep, I think I'll just opt for bringing some Tylenol PM on the return flight with me. Other than the sleeplessness, the trip from Washington to Cambridge was incredibly smooth- only one layover, no delays, no lost luggage, and thank goodness for British public transportation! The city (and it really is a city, not just a college town) of Cambridge is located approximately two underground rides, a very long staircase two flights up which one must carry one's luggage, one train, and a taxi trip from London Heathrow airport. It goes pretty quickly, though, and miraculously (I thought- my sense of direction being what it is) I turned up in front of Basing House (our borrowed dormitory for the next 6 weeks), Magdalene College, Cambridge, UK at the appointed time on Sunday (FYI, there's an 8 hour time difference from the West Coast, 5 from the East).

I'll skip over the rest of Sunday, as all seventeen of us were too jetlagged to really remember it. This meant, naturally, that most of us went to bed by 9pm.... and woke up at 4 this morning. It was a lovely part of the day to be up and get one's bearings, actually. It's unseasonably warm here; it hit the low 90s today and the Britishers are scandalized by the heat. It's rather nice when you're outside but, alas, our dorms are not air conditioned, suited as they are to typical rainy, cool English summers. The first surprise of the day, not counting the heat wave, was the general deliciousness of the breakfast with which we were presented in a dining hall not 100 yards from CS Lewis' old Cambridge rooms. The fruit here is incredible! Particularly the raspberries. There is an open air market in the city center- within walking distance- that we expect to frequent often.

Our first lecture started promptly at 9:15 with Dr. Lawrence Klein who is- surprise, surprise- an American who formerly taught at Stanford, then made it to Cambridge and received the privilege of staying on. He gave us a phenomenal introduction of our period of study (approximately Britain, 1760-1860), making due reference to nearly every text we will encounter in the next six weeks. We will have a different Cambridge professor lecture every day, so I'm very excited to hear each of their perspectives, styles, and fields of interests. Two recent PhDs at Cambridge, Laura and Tom, are acting as our tutors twice a week in order to discuss the lectures, tie the varied themes into a continuous discussion, and help direct our researching and paper-writing. Our first "tutorials" with them are tomorrow- and we are very much looking forward to it!

It's amazing how much free time we have. After lunch, the day was ours to explore the city, buy cell phones (I got a really good deals on a US-friendly plan, so don't be afraid to call or text if by some stroke of good luck it doesn't cost you the moon: 011-44-780-715-3980), and start in on our reading homework. I'm pleasantly surprised by how well a very random group dynamic is turning out. After only 24 hrs, we seem to have settled nicely into a rhythm of grocery shopping, sightseeing, picnicking, and perusing the local fair in ever-changing groups of 5 or 6.

I think that is the "long" of the first 24 hrs in Cambridge; the "short" is simply that it is beautiful, comfortable, and incredible to be here! There is talk of strawberries-and-cream-and-Wimbledon this Thursday and possibly going to London this weekend, so I will doubtless have more to tell at the end of the week.

Everything you need..

I have absolutely no clue what I'm doing. The computer part, that is- writing and traveling I do fairly well. So, with two out of three and a little optimism, I am starting a blog so that all those friends who want to can keep tabs on the next year's European adventures and those who don't want to won't have to endure flooded inboxes. I haven't left yet, so I don't have anything interesting to say yet, but for future reference:

Cambridge Mailing Address (June 27th-August 8th):

Kennedy Catton

Davidson College Summer Programme

Magdalene College

Cambridge

CB3 0GD

England

Preferred Email:

kennedycatton@gmail.com

Skype Name: kenz05