The Streets of Berlin

Today's theme is the sights on the streets of Berlin. Not the big famous ones, but more just a few of the small everyday things that stand out to me as slightly different and unexpected. Let's start out with my morning walk to work. Here's a picture of a street:


Note that it is paved with cobblestones! That seems to be really common - most non-major streets are cobblestone, and almost all sidewalks are paved with even smaller stones, with different tiles or colors separating the "bike lane" sidewalk from the "pedestrian" sidewalk. It took me a while to figure that out - bicyclists were always coming up behind me and angrily ringing their little bells (trust me, that cute little ring-ring-ring noise can sound angry) because I was walking on the wrong sidewalk. While I'm sure the cobbles are a pain for pushing strollers and rolling grocery carts, I really like them. They give the city a slightly older, more permanent feel.

At the corner of every street there is a street sign. They all look the same, like this:


They have little numbers hanging below (this one says 16-23) to tell you which number buildings are on the next block. This is needed, because the streets are numbered using two different methods - either all the odds are on one side and evens are on the other, or they go in order, starting from one end of the street, going up one side, then going back down the other. That makes it a little difficult to find an address - first you have to know how this particular street was numbered.

Street signs also have a funny letter in them: the ß in the word "Straße" or "street" - this actually a double s, as in "Strasse" - the normal German "s" sounds almost like an "sh" in English, while the "ß " sounds more like the English "ss" in "class." Using the Greek Beta symbol seems to be a compromise on the older form of the letter, which doesn't appear on the normal keyboard. If you've ever seen a copy of the US Declaration of Independence, you've seen a similar letter that has now disappeared from English:


See the "s" in "self-evident"? That's not a capital letter, or an "f", but a different letter. I don't understand the rules for when it is used versus the normal "s," but you can see the funny "s" in "necessary" as well as "secure" and "happiness". The German "ß" would be used in "necessary" and "happiness" - where the first "s" is written like an "f" and the second, like a normal "s". Cool, huh?

Another common sight on the streets of Berlin are the crosswalk lights. Here are the "walk" and "don't walk" lights:

Apparently when Germany was split in two and the Wall ran through Berlin, the East used these symbols for their crosswalks, while the West used something a little more boring and standard. When the Wall came down and Berlin was unified again, this was one of the cultural icons from the East that really survived and spread. I personally really like this cute little man in his cute little hat.

Spätzle (it's yummy)

Today's post is about unexpectedly good food. One of my work buddies asked me how I like my new neighborhood. Turns out she lives close by, so I asked her for tips on where to eat. She got very excited and rattled off about 5 restaurants in 5 seconds. I've now got quite a list of places to try. Tonight I went for the "traditional German food" place on her list. I was a little hesitant, given her description: crumbly, messy noodles with cheese sauce and other things on top (English is not her first language, and my German is non-existent). But I figured that I'm in Berlin, and I should expand my horizons beyond pastries, Indian, and Turkish food.

What I ate was something called Spätzle. Here's a picture from the internet:


It's not exactly what I ate, but close enough to give the basic idea. Spätzle is a kind of fresh pasta. Dough is squished through a strainer into boiling water, and when it boils it is done. I suspect that my Spätzle was then lightly fried - it had a certain crunchiness to it.

Next comes the sauce. The picture above shows dry noodles and some meat with gravy on the side. My meal had a mushroom cream sauce poured over the noodles, and someone at the table next to me had something like home-made mac-n-cheese sauce on his. Another girl had bits of ham and some kind of gravy and a poached egg on hers. It all looked delicious, I'll have to go back to try other options!

I was also proud of myself for successfully ordering in German. Not that it's hard when it's a picture menu, but hey, I still said the words, understood the amount, counted out correct change, and then pretended to read a German magazine while I waited. No one was fooled, but it was fun to try, and to not have to ask if anyone spoke English.

I'm in Berlin! (and have been for almost a month)

It's embarrassing that I haven't posted from Berlin yet. My only excuse is that in the beginning I was really busy, and then there was so much to write about that it was overwhelming. So I put my head in the sand and hoped that the problem would solve itself. In the mean time, I kept having little adventures and thinking "that would be fun to write about... too bad I need to write a big catch-up post first" - and here we are, almost a month later, with no posts. Today I decided to just skip the catch-up post and get to the fun stuff. So here's the really short version of my first month in Berlin.

I arrived on Jan 7, and stayed for the first three weeks with Dubi, who I knew from my years at UMASS. He is a PhD student, and when his advisor (now my temporary employer) took a faculty position in Berlin, Dubi and his family followed. Gili (Dubi's wife) and the kids were gone to visit the grandparents for three weeks, so I stayed in the baby's room. When they returned, I had to get serious about finding an apartment. Now I'm in a three-room flat across town, in Kreuzberg, one of the artsy, hip, up and coming parts of town. My flatmates are a French musician and an American painter. I have a long commute, but since part of it involves walking along a cobblestone street beside a canal, and the other part involves me reading or knitting while riding the train, I don't mind.

My job has been pretty good so far. I'm in a robotics lab, with robots that I remember from UMASS. So far nothing major has broken, and I'm designing a few hardware fixes for students in the lab - a timed camera trigger for one project, a camera mount for another, etc. My big project is a compliant (soft and squishy, but not too soft and squishy) tool to hold a paintbrush or crayon or marker, for experiments into robotic art. The first prototype has been designed, and we'll get parts back from the shop sometime next week!

Outside of work and finding housing and doing all of the administrative stuff needed for working in a foreign country, I have been pretty low key. I've made some new friends in the lab and found a women's football (soccer) team. I've walked all around the city and explored the different neighborhoods. I've visited museums and markets and churches. And I've eaten. A lot. Chocolate croissants, snitzels, Turkish Swarmas, Indian food, potatoes in every form imaginable, curry wurst, yum yum yum!

So that's the short version, and now I'm going to feel free to post on little details that I find interesting, and not sweat the big picture anymore!