Großer Müggelsee und me

Heading here today for the second time in as many weeks. it's my new favorite spot to swim in Berlin. It's kind of a long bike ride, but you get a pretty sweet reward at the end. Plus the ride is great, rambling through Treptower Park, Alt Koepenick and the Salvador Allende Viertel I and II. Ah, cold war sympathies with deposed Chileans. It's a beautiful thing.

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Update: Just got home. What a trip. We got caught in the rain on the way back, but it wasn't too bad. Unfortunately I was wearing my flipflops that get super slippery in the rain. But yeah, good time in general; I met Easton's girlfriend Annette and their studio sharing furniture designing friend Marvin. Not named after the Martian unfortunately. We checked out this scary abandoned building occupied by some Black Bloc folks.

Dog Days of August

So the lady is away in Washington, DC for a month. Its been about a week so far that's she has been away and its definitely different.
Last night I went to play games in Volkspark Schoeneberg with some friends that I've met through her over the past year or two. Its a bit of a trip from my 'hood and it stands in the shadows the Rathaus Schoneberg, where Kennedy gave his 'Ich bin ein Berliner' speech.
The ride was complicated. Berlin is so big and I've been holing up in my little corner of Kreuzberg for most of the summer so far. That makes it tough to navigate myself toward other parts of the city.
In the end I made it there alright, but the sun was already disappearing behind buildings and trees. It's sad to see the summer days getting shorter again. Well, not sad, because it has to happen and I'm used to it happening every year. Its just somehow a shock. One gets so used to the evenings running on forever that being in a park until 10 with the sky still bright becomes a normal thing.
Alas as we made it to the end of our first game of Carcassonne (named after this city in France) we had to use a bike headlight to illuminate things. Christopher had bought some delicious looking pizza - and lots of it - from a place called Dolce right around the corner. It looked great and I was hungry and would have eaten it but for the fact that it was covered in white flecked slices of cured meat. Not the first meat I would choose to dive into after almost 9 years of vegetarianism.
After a trip to Moritz's apartment for a rather frustrating game of Ligretto (I did terribly and was struck with extreme hiccups throughout), I got new directions and happily made my way back to good ol' Kreuzberg.
On Bergmannstraße, I hear my name called 'a-Wolf-a.' I recognized that voice for the only person it could be long to, Lorenzo from sprachschule. He's a very interesting fellow - an academic teaching and studying comparative literature. His English is mildly broken, yet sometiems I feel he's more lucid and communicative than I am. It's an odd thing to realize.
I stayed out with Lorenzo and Ana Maria for another hour or two at Melitta Sundstrom on Mehringdamm.
We spoke of naivete and cynicism and Franco and Berlusconi and Barack Obama and landing on the Moon. All in all a very gratifying set of subjects for a Spaniard an Italian and an American to discuss at 2am on a weekday.
Now its Friday and who's knows what will happen tonight.

Settling in (but sadly no Settlers)

Sorry its been a while since my last post. I guess I'm just a procrastinator. Big surprise.

So I've been here for about 2 weeks now and things are really getting going.

No Settlers of Catan yet, but I'm working on it. I met some German guys who own the game and we almost actually got a game going, but it turned out that Werde Bremen was playing that same night in the SuperCup. LAME! Oh well...hopefully soon it'll happen.

I'm all registered for German language classes and as of Monday I've officially begun. I'm taking classes at a place called Sprachpunkt PSP. I'm not sure if there's any relation to the Playstation handheld thing, but so far I've found no evidence of any connection. Somehow I managed to make it to level A.2 despite not really ever taking a proper german class.

I'm surprised by how easy its coming to me. Not that its an easy language, but I'm really feeling comfortable with German and moving on to new and harder challenges with the language. Lately, and before as well, my main issue is around Dativ, Akkusativ and whatnot. Can't wait until we get to more tenses. Good grief.

I've been playing soccer, or fußball Sundays in Treptower Park and meeting some really nice people. There's a basketball court right next door with really funny hoops that are sort of disorienting when you're first shooting on them. I bought a basketball at Boxhagen Platz Flohkmarkt my first weekend here. I went to play next door last week just as school was getting out and all these young kids kept walking up and asking to take a shot. Let me tell you they're not all as good as Dirk Novitski. This guy from Martinique, Tidjan, also joined for a while, but it seems my dreams of being a relatively elite basketball player here in Berlin will come true. Yes!

Its nice to have homework again and also feel occupied while here. I even ordered business cards with my German cell number. All very exciting. I'm even on the verge of joining an amateur softball team. There's a pretty chill game here on saturday. I'll probably go check it out. Its pretty far from our place on Urbanstraße, but with the bike I found today it shouldnt be so hard. Sorry for no pictures, we've been reogranizing and I lost the cable (for the time being) that connects my camera to the computer. Pictures coming!

First we take Manhattan, then we take Berlin

My mom just sent me this link. It kind of represents all that I hate about 80s Leonard Cohen, but it's also kind of awesome. Or at least fitting in a very literal way...
Check it out!

Prospect Park

Today Kunji and I met her friends Michael and Helene at a great brunch cafe called Cheryl's Global Soul on Underhill Street near Prospect Park. Grand Army Plaza and the Brooklyn Public Library were around the corner and really impressive. It was like the WPA and New Deal coming to life.

Helene is from Denmark and has a fascination with both Berlin (where she spent some time in the 80s) and Portland (to which she has never been). Naturally we got along great. Plus they've got a very cute little blonde boy named Turner. She was speaking Danish on and off through the day and it sounded like Swedish-German. Very odd.

After brunch we met Alice, Boden, Manny and Emily for a walk to a playground in the middle of Prospect Park. It was a play date for the kids, but also for the adults. We definitely outnumbered the babies and could've taken them down easily. Instead we let them play peacefully with sandboxes and slides. What a nice group of fogies we are.

At one point we were cowering under a play structure to stay out of the rain when this baby pushed right by me to the slide. Ah, New Yorkers. I guess they are born that way.

It was nice to see Boden and Kunji hanging out. Glad that we could get together as a family here.
Later we went with Michael and Helene to a bar called Commonwealth on 5th Ave. & 12th St. It had been raining all day, but luckily their back patio had a huge umbrella. When the downpour started again we were protected.

Kunji and I finished up the night with grocery shopping trip to get ingredients for the Potato Leek Soup that I really like to make. Normally you wouldn't really want that in the summer, but it's such bizarre weather that it was perfect. The kitchen in her apartment is really cozy and the soup turned out delicioussss.

Now I'm blogging, or finished blogging and Kunji is hand-stamping business cards.

Sweet.

I think tomorrow I'll head into Manhattan for a few hours. First time since the 2004 Republican Convention.

Maybe I'll buy a camera first to spare you the grainy photos.

East Coast Romp '09 Begins

I've left Portland.

After an epic day of BBQ and fire-fueled dance partying it was time to go. Gabe drove me. I barely made the plane - not his fault, I swear.

This morning at 6:20 a.m. I landed at JFK with Alice and Boden.

I barely slept. Spent most of the flight channel surfing between La Liga soccer on GOLTV and a History channel special on the world without humans. I'm not sure which was better, but it made for great flicking back and forth. Also saw some wonderful infomercials.

Boden fell right to sleep after we got to altitude and only his randomly kicking my leg or knocking my headphone cord loose reminded me that he was squirreling around on Alice's lap.
Generally it was a great flight.

Once we landed we waited for our luggage and Boden tried to chase the small birds that have made a home inside the baggage claim area of JFK. Sometimes he would see them before I and go running off after word yelling "Bird! Bird?"

My bags are heavy. I'm not quite sure how heavy because the woman at the JetBlue desk in Portland didn't even bother weighing them in, but lugging these two bags plus my huge backpack through JFK and then through NYC mass transit and finally to Kunji's third floor apartment took its toll.

The area around 5th Ave and Degraw here in Brooklyn is a big leap from Portland. Lots more tire rim shops and gas stations. After hanging in the kitchen and decompressing, I ended up taking a much needed nap. I'd been kind of buzzing from the long trek to Kunji's abode, but a guy's gotta sleep.

I woke up to talk to C as she opened my birthday package that had finally arrived in Berlin. Finally! We also talked about her prospects for housing in DC later this summer - looking good.

At 3, Kunji and I met up with Tara, her roommate Daisy, and her boyfriend Tim. We had coffee. We looked at a potential apartment at 7th Ave and Garfield. We booked it the hell out of that bizarro place and had a beer at the Park Slope Ale House.

Eventually we headed back in at Tara's for a little board game action. As we began I noticed Mr. Alex on Gchat. We spoke a bit and it turned out that Todd, Jarratt and he were about to play some Settlers of Catan. Sounds like fun guys. Wish I could be there, but oh well, I've got a new game for ya. It's called: Pimp City. You pick the prostitute figurine that most represents you, then walk around the board, in very Monopoly-like fashion (there's even fake money), until a. everyone gets bored playing truth or dare, b. enough whores run out of money that one comes out the winner or c. you decide it'd be more fun to sit out back in the rain and finish Tara's brand new bottle of Lovejoy Vodka from Portland.

We settled on c. Pimp City ain't got nothin' on Settlers.

Tara and I took a walk around the block for beer at one point, coming back with some vegan popcorn and a bottle of Radeberger for me along with a bottle of Krusovice for Tim. Awesome. Radeberger is somehow about the same price in Brooklyn as in a Berlin Spaetkauf (bodega). Crazy. Eventually the umbrellas came out so we all sat around the table with them perched on our shoulders discussing things like gnosticism and why Tim had this certain kind of tobacco pipe.

Eventually Kunji and I headed back to Park Slope where we met up with Allen at the Union Hall to catch the end of a set by The Loom (picture). Turns out that their horn player went to Oberlin with me. I thought she looked familiar. They're playing another show on the Lower East Side on Friday night. Maybe I'll go.

For now I'm jetlagged and it's way past my bedtime.

Hello NYC.

Journey to Wrangelkiez

reexploring Kreuzberg in wintertime. me likey.

From Januar im Berlin 09