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!

The End of Moochfest 2010

I set out on this adventure in the hope that I would figure out what I want to do and where I want to live. I quit a decent job and moved out a decent city and left a lot of more-than-decent friends to go drive around the country for a few months, thinking about life. I'd like to say that I found answers, but I can't really say that's true. I don't really know where I want to live - several places quickly started to feel like home, but maybe that's just because I was in traveling mode, so any place where I had a chance to do laundry felt like home. And I didn't find my dream career - I heard of a few interesting opportunities, and met lots of people doing fascinating things, but nothing reached out and grabbed me as my life's purpose. So in some respects I'm back where I was a few months ago, except now I have no home, no job, and a pile of pictures. But that's only one way of looking at things. I also have new and renewed friends scattered all around the country. I have my memories of my travels alone, deciding what to see, where to go, what to do every day. And more than pictures, I feel like I've started to really see the country, realize how big and open and beautiful it is, how vast and varied, with plains and mountains and deserts, canyons and rivers and oceans, farms and forests and cities. This trip has made me want to travel more, see more, share more. I also have a general feeling of happiness. It wasn't so much that I was unhappy when I left Boston, but I was somehow not settled, not right. Now I feel much more centered and balanced. Maybe the word is content. I'm content. I find it odd, especially since I'm so much more in flux and unsettled than I was before, but somehow, that's the way it is.

So what's next? The driving is done, but I still need a place to live and a job. Luckily, I've found a way to delay making a real decision. I've found an opportunity to work for a few months in Germany, in Berlin. How exciting is that?!? I'll have a job in an exciting place, and I'll gain a little more time to keep thinking about the meaning of life. I've got my bags all packed, and I'm hopping on a plane later today! Berlin is cold in winter, a lot like Boston, but I'm hoping to brave the weather and spend most weekends traveling around, seeing Germany and its neighbors. I'm hoping to do a keep up the blog, posting pictures of my weekend adventures and life in Germany. Moochfest 2010 is over, but Em's wanderings through life will continue.

Driving East

After Laramie, my trip around the US really sped up. I spent two days in Boulder visiting Erin again, then took the interstate across Kansas and Missouri. I stayed one night in the Annie Oakley Motel in Oakley KS:


For the next two nights, I was in St. Louis visiting family. Then another long day in the car took me all the way to my brother's house in Virginia. All that time on interstate highways made me realize just how nice it was to be able to drive the small roads earlier in the fall. It took me about ten days to get from Boston to Boulder in September, but less than four days to go back, Boulder to Salem, VA. I have many more pictures, memories, and stories from the leisurely trip west. But the nights were getting long and cold, and it was time wrap up this round of adventures.

I ended up only spending a day in Virginia before heading down to my parents' house in NC. After a short side-trip up to Boston to visit friends I settled down to help get ready for a big holiday family reunion. My mom's entire extended family arrived from all over the country, and we hosted 22 people. There were people sleeping in every corner, including the attic! We had the usual family adventures: cutting firewood, driving tractors, lighting bonfires, sledding, long walks through the woods, and huge meals. It was a good way to conclude my trip.

Thanksgiving in Wyoming

Yikes!  I'm very behind on the blog updates, so here's a brief version of my time in Wyoming.  It stayed cold the entire week - lows in the -5F range, highs in the low teens.  I stayed with my aunt Joy and her dog Wallaby.   Wallaby reminds me of a much smarter version of the dog I had as a kid, so I liked her immediately.  Here's a picture of Joy and Wallaby at their house:

And a quick picture of the Wyoming winter landscape:

It was bitterly cold, but people in Wyoming don't let cold slow them down.  Joy took me cross-country skiing on Wednesday, and on Thanksgiving morning a whole group of people met at the Laramie Greenbelt for some brisk pre-turkey exercise.  With the wind-chill it was about -30F, so we bundled up, hiked around, and then stood in a tight circle chatting and drinking hot chocolate.  Some years it's quite a picnic, but this year it was just too cold and too windy, so after dancing around for a while, people hustled back to their cars.  Back at Joy's friend's house, thanksgiving cooking plans were interrupted when we discovered that the pipes were frozen, not under the house, but somewhere under the kitchen sink.  We cranked up the thermostat, opened the sink cabinet, and skillfully applied a hairdryer, and continued with the cooking. 

Friday we went downhill skiing in Colorado.  It was a great day!  Colorado was slightly warmer than Wyoming, and there was already several feet of good powder snow.  On Saturday Joy took me to visit another set of friends on their farm outside of town.  With lots of animals and two small kids, their house was quite exciting!  They are also trying to grow their own vegetables, which is difficult with the short growing season.  They built a big greenhouse, and have added a seedling area just off their living room.   They asked us to take their family picture for the annual Christmas Card, and I snuck a shot with my own camera as well:

I think this is a great shot!  It reminds me of the picture my family took a few years ago for the annual Christmas letter, with us all holding axes and chainsaws, taking a break from cutting firewood.  

Seattle to Montana

I rejoined my brother Joe and my car in Seattle on Wednesday, November 17th.  I took the train from the airport to Joe's office downtown.  I arrived around 5:30, just as the workday ended.  Joe and his coworkers have been spending a lot of their after-work hours building a small bouldering wall at one end of the office space, and finally finished it just a few weeks ago.  Now they spend a little time at the end of each workday trying different climbing routes and working on their skills.  Here's a picture of Joe trying a particularly difficult move:

After two more days in Seattle, it was time for me to start driving east again.  The season's first snow storm was on its way, so early Saturday morning I loaded up my car and hit the road again.  I hit snow just an hour east of Seattle, and it followed me all across Washington and Idaho and into Montana.  For once I stayed with the interstate highways and didn't take any detours.  The snow was thick and heavy, so I couldn't see much of the scenery as I left the Cascades behind.  I'll have to come back someday to visit eastern Washington and Idaho. 

Coming into Montana I left the interstate and turned south to go stay a few days with some family friends in the area.  The less-plowed smaller roads gave me a chance to really test my car's snow driving skills, so I slammed on the brakes a few times to see how badly I would skid.  Something was wrong!  My brakes would shudder and clunk and kick  in a regular pattern as the car slowed down, then eventually settle down as I came to a stop.  But I didn't slide out or skid very much.  Figuring that perhaps a caliper was stuck or something, I drove the rest of the way more cautiously.  After dinner with George and Linda, my  Montana hosts, I called my car mechanic.  Mom answered, then at the mention of car brakes, passed the phone to Dad.  Halfway through my description of the strange brake behavior, Dad started laughing.  He said that I was feeling the anti-lock brakes!   This is the first car I've ever owned that has anti-lock brakes, and I didn't know what to expect!

The next day I woke up to six inches of fresh snow.  George found a pair of cross country skis in the garage that fit me, so he and I went skiing for the afternoon.  Here's a picture of George: 

It was still a few days until Thanksgiving, but the snow in the trees looked more like something from a Christmas movie!  Here I am, hopping through the powder on my skis:

The exercise and the beautiful scenery were a great change from the previous long day in the car.  It was also great to meet George and Linda, who I had only known as characters in the stories my parents told from the days before my brothers and I were born.  They told me some new stories, and had a photo on their wall of Mom and George running the Grandfather Mountain marathon in their 70's clothes!  What a great picture! 

The next day I packed up early and hit the road again.  The next snowstorm was on its way, and I had to change my driving route to avoid it.  Instead of heading straight south from Missoula, MT towards Yellowstone and Jackson Hole, I would go east to Billing, MT then head south through eastern Wyoming, avoiding high mountain passes and small, windy roads.  But first, I had to pass over the Continental Divide again, this time heading east:

Crossing it means that it's all downhill (more or less) from here to the Atlantic Ocean!  After a long day of out-running the snowstorm I spent a cold but clear night in Sheridan, Wyoming.  With the overnight low around -5F, I opted for a hotel.  Early the next day I was up again, warming my car up for the drive to Laramie, WY.