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.