how has it been ten days since my last update? i remember in turkey sometimes i'd wait ten days and it felt like an eternity, though so often i also felt that very little had happened in the interim. here, i feel like a posted just a few days ago, and yet so much has happened. at lunch today we were remarking on this topic over a lovely plate of boiled potatoes (a standard with any german meal), peas, carrots, and delicious little seitan balls for some of us, big german wurst for others. time, how we all notice how fast this city goes, how we all feel kind of perpetually stressed and late for the next event, that every second is filled and yet we all want to be doing more. alina said some days she just wishes to take an "ankara break," and we agreed. yes, turkey time. let me reiterate that life in turkey is not relaxed, or laid-back in the way that many people assume it is, but instead simply moves slower, and drags out more. i listened to a radiolab story some time ago about how average steps per minute recorded in a city's center can be correlated to all sorts of interesting things. i don't remember any of those things at the moment, but often think about the simple fact that there are vast differences in steps per minute, and how palpable that can be when you switch cities as often as i have in recent years.
and yet, so much of berlin is about hanging out, having fun, doing things on your own and how you want to. but i suppose there's just such an overabundance of that that you have to hurry up to get to all of the fun, weird events happening. or to your modern dance class, then home to study for a german grammar test and to do some of this data entry work you just got. so yeah, about the jobs i applied for, i actually was offered both positions, but unfortunately after seeing the lovely gallery and meeting its adorable owner had to turn it down, since she wanted someone for 30 hours a week for only 300 euro/month. too much time, too little money. if i weren't in school i would've taken it in an instant, but as such it's just not possible. so instead i did take the research assistant job, which is basically just data coding/entry right now. i've done plenty of that over the years, so i can handle it, but it's just coming at a suddenly stressful time. but before i blather on about all of my commitments and activities too much more, i wanted to share a few observations from the areas i frequent here.
while i d.c. i would listen to everyone around me and really enjoyed hearing so many different languages on a daily basis. somewhat surprisingly, i can do the same thing here, though of course the smattering of speech is a bit different. in my daily life here i hear, in roughly descending order of frequency:
german
turkish (close second to german in my neighborhood)
spanish (sooo many spaniards everywhere)
english (i would wager at least half the time it's not native speakers but instead people using it as a common language)
west african languages
arabic
russian
and now, back to studying german
Monday, November 21, 2011
Friday, November 11, 2011
yep, i live here
after being turned down for the handful of jobs i applied for upon first coming to berlin, i kind of put the part-time job search on hold while getting settled in here. after looking at my bank account last week, however, i decided to get back on the searching wagon and immediately applied for three positions, two found on the website of this berlin english language magazine called the "exberliner," (ex as in expat), and one found on the social sciences listserv at my university. i received a quick and friendly rejection from the boutique hotel looking for a marketing assistant (duh, not the right job for me), and highly positive responses from the other two - a research assistant for an international relations professor and a gallery assistant in a new gallery opening in my old neighborhood in kreuzberg. i must say, while i'm always happy to be a research assistant, being a gallery assistant in berlin would kind of be like a dream come true. the gallery is called FELLINI gallery, and is opening in a few weeks as a sister gallery to one of the same name in shanghai, both founded by the korean-american filmmaker yuri lee. the one in shanghai looks beautiful and kind of over the top, so i'm quite curious to see how the one here will be. i have an interview for the position on monday, so i've got to bone up on my art knowledge in the next few days...
in other news, i've made another new american friend, who went to high school with my friend marissa schneidermann, who introduced us briefly when i was in l.a. a few years back. michael also lives in neukölln and apparently has no american friends, so he was happy to make a new one. we went to this british hipster bar last night with a big group of other native english speakers (plus one swede, but they basically speak english like natives) and played trivia, which was loads of fun, even though we didn't win. after that we checked out this new bar that opened on the ground floor of my building in the time between when marija and i looked at our apartment and the time we moved in. that's something that still happens in this city all the time, and it's kind of wonderful. while rent is far more expensive than it was even three or four years ago, it's still affordable to just rent a small space, get a liquor license, tell some hip people about your project, get a local artist to hang something on your walls, and bam, you're the next it spot. literally, the place in my building is just the front room of an old apartment with the basement turned into a space for djs/hipster dance parties. it's kind of fabulous. i introduced myself to one of the owners last night, who's this young american guy who just decided to open something up with a few of his friends. i told him i was a neighbor and a photographer, and he seemed amenable to the idea of showing some of my work sometime in the next few months, so i hope that that pans out. i changed my "25 in berlin" project to "twenty something in berlin," due to a surprising dearth of 25 year olds in my immediate vicinity, so i need to get going on the new iteration of the project. so much to do! that's how i feel here - i want to be involved in everything i see, basically, and i want to make art and make friends and go out and see new things and practice my german and just fully enjoy berlin. because, berlin is not ankara. there is so much to do it makes my head hurt, but also makes my heart flutter.
for today though, i'm going to do some reading then help marija move her new bed into our apartment. oh, before i go to an 11.11.11 dinner party at which all of the guests have to introduce themselves/perform short pieces of some kind of work for 1 minute and 11 seconds. should be fun.
in other news, i've made another new american friend, who went to high school with my friend marissa schneidermann, who introduced us briefly when i was in l.a. a few years back. michael also lives in neukölln and apparently has no american friends, so he was happy to make a new one. we went to this british hipster bar last night with a big group of other native english speakers (plus one swede, but they basically speak english like natives) and played trivia, which was loads of fun, even though we didn't win. after that we checked out this new bar that opened on the ground floor of my building in the time between when marija and i looked at our apartment and the time we moved in. that's something that still happens in this city all the time, and it's kind of wonderful. while rent is far more expensive than it was even three or four years ago, it's still affordable to just rent a small space, get a liquor license, tell some hip people about your project, get a local artist to hang something on your walls, and bam, you're the next it spot. literally, the place in my building is just the front room of an old apartment with the basement turned into a space for djs/hipster dance parties. it's kind of fabulous. i introduced myself to one of the owners last night, who's this young american guy who just decided to open something up with a few of his friends. i told him i was a neighbor and a photographer, and he seemed amenable to the idea of showing some of my work sometime in the next few months, so i hope that that pans out. i changed my "25 in berlin" project to "twenty something in berlin," due to a surprising dearth of 25 year olds in my immediate vicinity, so i need to get going on the new iteration of the project. so much to do! that's how i feel here - i want to be involved in everything i see, basically, and i want to make art and make friends and go out and see new things and practice my german and just fully enjoy berlin. because, berlin is not ankara. there is so much to do it makes my head hurt, but also makes my heart flutter.
for today though, i'm going to do some reading then help marija move her new bed into our apartment. oh, before i go to an 11.11.11 dinner party at which all of the guests have to introduce themselves/perform short pieces of some kind of work for 1 minute and 11 seconds. should be fun.
Wednesday, November 2, 2011
integrating
marija and i moved into our new apartment yesterday. it feels kind of unreal, kind of unsettling, but mostly good. we're subletting the place from this german guy who's moving to austria for at least a year, which means he left all his stuff. this includes: a huge, old, ratty, l-shaped beige couch that could easily seat 8 or 9 people, a good 10 potted plants, some of which could be described as trees, a few dozen empty/partially empty bottle of alcohol on high display shelves in the kitchen that have clearly never been washed, and many other random pieces of crap/dirty things. so all of that is a bit difficult, but mostly we're so happy to just have a place where we can relax and feel at home, even if it means a week or two of cleaning and re-organizing.
the apartment is in neukölln, which is the hippest neighborhood in berlin right now, since most of the formerly punk/turkish kreuzberg has become too gentrified and overrun with americans. so i'm helping with the gentrification of neukölln, though i feel that living with a dirt poor serbian is helping to keep it balanced. it's also the most foreign neighborhood in berlin, with a huge turkish population but also people from all over the world. on the subway today i saw a cartoon (on the tv in the trains that plays news) of an old stereotypically german man walking down a crowded street looking anxious, holding a sign that said "kreuzberg und neukölln raus aus der eu!" which means "kreuzberg and neukölln out of the eu," seemingly making fun of german xenophobia and specifically the german fear of turkey becoming part of the eu.
i was about to write something about studying this subject on a daily basis, but then i realized that that's really not accurate. my program is so much more nuanced and engaging than i'd imagined, while also really allowing me to gain in-depth knowledge not just on the turkish-german relationship, but on the role of each country in their respective regions, their history, their government, their people, and much more, really. so yes, to some degree i'm studying turkish-german relations, but more accurately i'm studying social and political theory with a focus on turkey and germany, the middle east, and the eu, with the overarching theme of gaining a more firm grasp on how the relationship across and between each party/nation/region works. it's a rather huge task, but i'm nearly always so happy to be engaged in it. one of our main professors is a foucaultian political philosopher, so his research and mindset has heavily influenced the nature of how we tackle topics in many of our classes, and i'm surprised to find myself becoming more and more enthralled with foucault. using his theories as a jumping off point for examining german/turkish/eu issues allows us to maintain a human, social lens while working through dense political and historical issues. i'm so incredibly glad our professors are not hardcore rational actor theorists or something terrible like that, since i feel that the perspective we take allows me to draw on my psych background in a very positive and helpful way while engaging with constructivist/post-constructivist theories of what could be dry, de-humanized topics.
sorry, i think maybe that was a lot of surface sort of blather about my studies without taking the time to really get into any true topic... but instead of delving deeper i'm going to go back to my readings.
the apartment is in neukölln, which is the hippest neighborhood in berlin right now, since most of the formerly punk/turkish kreuzberg has become too gentrified and overrun with americans. so i'm helping with the gentrification of neukölln, though i feel that living with a dirt poor serbian is helping to keep it balanced. it's also the most foreign neighborhood in berlin, with a huge turkish population but also people from all over the world. on the subway today i saw a cartoon (on the tv in the trains that plays news) of an old stereotypically german man walking down a crowded street looking anxious, holding a sign that said "kreuzberg und neukölln raus aus der eu!" which means "kreuzberg and neukölln out of the eu," seemingly making fun of german xenophobia and specifically the german fear of turkey becoming part of the eu.
i was about to write something about studying this subject on a daily basis, but then i realized that that's really not accurate. my program is so much more nuanced and engaging than i'd imagined, while also really allowing me to gain in-depth knowledge not just on the turkish-german relationship, but on the role of each country in their respective regions, their history, their government, their people, and much more, really. so yes, to some degree i'm studying turkish-german relations, but more accurately i'm studying social and political theory with a focus on turkey and germany, the middle east, and the eu, with the overarching theme of gaining a more firm grasp on how the relationship across and between each party/nation/region works. it's a rather huge task, but i'm nearly always so happy to be engaged in it. one of our main professors is a foucaultian political philosopher, so his research and mindset has heavily influenced the nature of how we tackle topics in many of our classes, and i'm surprised to find myself becoming more and more enthralled with foucault. using his theories as a jumping off point for examining german/turkish/eu issues allows us to maintain a human, social lens while working through dense political and historical issues. i'm so incredibly glad our professors are not hardcore rational actor theorists or something terrible like that, since i feel that the perspective we take allows me to draw on my psych background in a very positive and helpful way while engaging with constructivist/post-constructivist theories of what could be dry, de-humanized topics.
sorry, i think maybe that was a lot of surface sort of blather about my studies without taking the time to really get into any true topic... but instead of delving deeper i'm going to go back to my readings.
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