berlin time vs. ankara time

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