Frauchen's blog

 

I'm going to begin by saying I definitely do not feel ready to say goodbye, to sum things up, to leave, or to even think about my return to America as anything other than an annoying particularity I'm going to have to deal with in two months. My program ends at the end of this month, but I'll be staying a month longer. Now that the trees have turned from old withered crones into fluffy, majestic decorations and the weather is opening up the city like an oven with a warm batch of strudel inside, my desire and tendency to exist in the present moment is escalated. But these prompts are again stirring that reluctant part of my brain that is making me reflect.

I would recommend Berlin for the self-motivated student, but not for most. While there is so much beauty and culture in the city, I feel much of it is hidden. And while there are tons of activities available to those in the program to familiarize one with all that is out there in Berlin, it's a bit overwhelming and again, you have to sign up. Sign up, do everything, and even further than that get outside information and GO, because from my own experience, there aren't too many cases of condensed information and experiences here. You take it all in at the pace of the European dinner- slowly and with a relaxed earnestness. There is no certain way to be sure you are going to get the most out of Berlin. This city, from what I have heard and can tell, changes so rapidly and is in some ways so abstract, that you have crazy control over how your experience here is going to go. You can find anything here, you can be mostly anything. It's what I would expect of New York, without the obsession with money.

Tip for the bold, and sometimes outspoken, foreigner: Don't talk to Germans about WWII, and sometimes the Berlin Wall. They're sick of talking about it. I haven't made this mistake personally, but I've heard enough about annoyances to just say to flat out ignore it.

Spend as much time in parks and abandoned buildings as you can- these are rare in cities like New York and worth the travel. Also, go out and stay out late. Berlin has to be the best city for nightlife, and everybody is so, so nice! Take advantage of these great inventions: Bier Gartens, Bicycles, Strudels, and Sausages. It sounds simple, but it's worth it! I recently bought a bike, and if you're here for any amount of sunny time (aka not February and March) it changes the way you interact with the city- you become part of a subculture of mostly young Berliners and eight times more aware of your surroundings. The initial reluctance of leaving the dorms (oh no I have to walk so far, take the train, etc.) is partially erased by the owning of this amazing transportation device.

For preparation: Learn German, don't expect everything to be gorgeous, and relax- Germans are probably some of the nicest and most polite people out there. If you have trouble ask and you will receive. The administrators at the Berlin site are some of the most extraordinarily chill, caring, and smart people I've interacted with at the authority level of NYU. Furthermore, knowing even a little of the language for a culture that's foreign to you gives you a huge advantage in perspective and mobility. I simply can't feel at home unless I can get the gist of what 80% of the people around me are saying. Changing the language you speak and understand, I believe, changes a bit about how you think about things.

It seems like my future-self back in the states is a world away, and I'm caught up with this city so deeply that my relationship with Berlin and the German culture is rapidly adapting, always. I'm certainly not the most qualified person to be giving tips, but I can say I've had an amazing time here and can't wait to use the next two months to continue to take advantage of this opportunity.

 

It seems Takers and I have unwittingly read the same pleasant novel, A Tramp Abroad, by Mark Twain. Though I must admit I had a much different reading of the book, the experiences bound by “pinhole” description was spot on- such little fairy tales and one-night hotel descriptions are accurate for the traveler. Recollection and analysis often come with respite, not with the movements of traveling life, and I much appreciate Twain's style of depicting this is his small, intimate, and bright little passages.

Some of what I found most interesting in the novel was Twain's descriptions about the differences between America/Americans and Germany/Germans. While I realize the book was written over a century ago, and hasn't been modified with the gloom of the two World Wars, I found that some of his opinions still carry some steam. Firstly, he noticed the German dogs. And oh, how I love the dogs in Germany. He captured the essence of the lifestyle that goes with one, and everyone, having a companion of this sort- life is modified to it and, like the Germans themselves, these dogs are well behaved, put-together, and clean (22). Again, with the cleanliness and modesty- there are no others like the Germans. While Berlin is the exception, the towns outside of berlin convey such a pristine sense of upkeep it is hard to imagine their shoes get dirty by touching the ground. Dresden's quaintness was reminiscent of Disneyland, but of course even more modestly proud of itself.

Furthermore, what I found to be another extremely accurate and quite hilarious description was Twain's passage on the German sense of timeliness. “Let this be a warning to the reader. The Germans are very conscientious, and this trait makes them very particular.” And however “immediate” strikes a German it is never so immediate as a moment that flies by the American watch. And “a long time” is something of an expanse of time quite unimaginably long. This translates to: don't expect anything too fast, and don't expect to not be taken seriously (121). At a cafe the other day in Schoenberg, a very impatient American friend of mine, in a great and unnecessary hurry to leave, rampaged the entire cafe looking for the server. Coming back exasperated, stating the server was nowhere to be found, he suggested we get up and leave. I was of course a bit shocked- not only does this man trust us in his place of business, but he gives us the leisure- unlike many American restaurants, of staying however long we like. Americans are the type- myself too no doubt- to be aware of taking advantage of every situation. We sort of thrive on opportunity that way.

I really enjoy Twain, and I really can't cite enough passages or count the number of places he has described in full, precious, and self-conscious detail that I would not like to visit after this- perhaps finding them destroyed, perhaps exactly as imagined. His manner of style is inspiring in it's joviality and beautiful descriptive qualities, something I wish I had picked up on earlier in this course because for traveling and new-living it is oh-so fitting to be light and quick about things.

I'm choosing to write about a small group of people for this post, rather than an individual person. As I've mentioned, it's been hard to pierce the fabric of German society and meet locals. Especially because I have such an insular group of friends here, the program is isolating! Not that I'm complaining. I've had the great experience of realizing that NYU administrators have souls, especially if they're born in Germany! A mixture of totally cool and oddly young and attractive people, NYUBerlin's administrators, of which there are roughly 4, are well loved by the students here.

One specific woman we work with seems to be a typical, tall, German hot thang of a lady. It's more the mystique about her than our interactions. I've heard rumors of past student flings, club run-ins, and a fiery party life. When going in with a problem about your digestions or Visas, it's an interesting thought to imagine that she, or anybody one deals with in these situations, have a life vastly more interesting, more important even, than their dealings with you. Her blond hair shining beneath the strobe lights, the LED's glinting off her teeth with cigarettes smoke wafting up, blurring the sign on the way out of the club wondering behind her smile which bar will be the last stop of the night and who the last stop would be with. In the office, with us, the air of Berlin nightlife still seems to hang about her. Or perhaps it's the tight pants.

Regardless of my girl crush, often the whole lot of them, while having extremely specific characteristics, sort of mesh together when, like Pavese points out, you are forced to trust them as strangers in a position of strange superiority. These wunderbar people have had to put up with our illnesses, pregnancy scares, laziness, burglary, and a host of personal and professional issues. Unlike most others I have dealt with, these are the first people who not only view me as a student, but as a peer, a person, and mostly as an adult.

There was one special case this semester that really solidified our trust in each other: My boyfriend and I, living together for 2 years before moving to this program together, have not been technically allowed to share rooms, although obviously we have been sleeping in the same bedroom. Because all of our things are pretty much mixed together by now, it had been increasingly difficult and annoying to schedule ourselves so that we are not locked out of one or the other apartment. After a month and a half of frustration we went to complain, and found that, although it was told to us again and again that it was against policy, they understood and really felt badly that we were upset. Promising us they would do all they could (there were three of them around for this conversation, along with D and me), a week later they told us (although I'm not sure how legal this is in Germany or NYU) that they would grant us keys to each others' rooms!

This breach of protocol and happiness of understanding made me feel like, even in such an isolating and corporate college environment, there exists a small pocket where the mutual understanding is that we help each other and care for one another, even if we only interact on a professional level. Maybe it's a German thing, but the world needs more of it.

The first thing that came to mind when I began thinking hard about what the genius loci of Berlin would be was boots- in particular, my Doc Marten work boots that I wear every day regardless of other clothing choices. I even wrote a whole post about them. However at the end of my musings on my boots I thought of something immediately better. Something that confuses, amuses, irritates me and makes me happy in Berlin. I feel the spirit of the city exists so much in its modern art, the scene here that I both hate and love in its over-cultured, fuck you, young blood mentality.

Having just gone to a museum in an ex-club, abandoned, war bunker called the Boros Collection, my confusion about the why of all this art continues to come up. Like Berlin itself, the art here is reasonable, sensible once explained, methodical and culturally educated. However, like the tendencies of people to not jaywalk and the absurd way the language uses prepositions, I keep wondering, when coming across a whole lot of uninspiring and slightly aesthetically pleasing contemporary pieces, whether it really makes a difference, means anything at all. There is something I don't get, maybe I'm just not cool enough to get into this club, about it, some mystery to it that intrigues so many others. This is not to say, like Berlin, there aren't fantastic/awesome/sick/mad beautiful pieces I've come across. However, like the graffiti that paints the walls all through the city, sometimes it's just there, just occupying space. I'm partial to emotionally stirring pieces, but I suppose the straight-faced German attitude isn't trying to please me.

While I've been working in a sculpture artist's studio, however, I've gotten much closer to this loci, this center of brilliance that adds the rebellious vibrancy to Berlin, and begun to understand a bit better what is going in behind the scenes, what's driving the minds. Although my boss is Danish, and produces, what I think are, aesthetically beautiful and emotionally relatable large pieces that say much about herself and her life, she is becoming a deeper part of the Berlin art scene- adding her own sacrifices and spirit to the genius loci of the place. Dynamically thinking about business, high-brow collectors, government funding (another important connection relating art to the heart of the city), and personal inspiration, there's a rational thinking that goes into art I've never encountered before, along with a spirit of hope that the modern/contemporary will prove to surpass the old reign of constraint and separation. Like the city steeped in remembrance/escape from its past, the contemporary art must walk the line between acknowledging what needs to be done and remembered and what, alternately, needs to be forgotten and destroyed.

While it's intriguing to me to write about the more tame aspects of Berlin- the beautiful and relaxing Bier Gartens or the parks where children run around on the superbly designed playground structures, there's not much I've experienced more often nor more thoroughly than the clubs in Berlin. Every young person, old electronic fan, or queen with a nightlife seems to have the shared desire to Berlin-two-step until the bright morning at one of the many obscenely fantastic clubs in Kreuzberg. My favorite is Renate, or, translating the whole name, “Salon to the Wild Rebirth.” It feels like it sounds.

The two (sometimes, I hear, three) floor club has the vibe of a burlesque rave for the chill crowd. Good-looking young people with torn t-shirts and combat boots reign on the dance floor, where Djs kick your ass with beats that make you want to utilize the many platforms and poles one can find at this club. Equipped with many bird's-nests, high points with cushions from which to watch and relax with your club-mate vodka drink, and couches, it's easy to meet Germans or other foreigners who, once finding out you are American, are generally surprised you're there in the first place. This is a great good place, one where I see more Germans smiling than usual, and where the disco-balls and portraits on the ceiling make me feel more at home than the stark halls of the dorm or the glaring florescence of the Academic Center.

Once at such a place, you must sweat out your sacrifices to the gods of party, the lords of dance, and at the altars of alcohol and illicit gifts. One often experiences the moment of glory at which you feel baptized in the sweat of your peers, rebirth. After such moments you and the ring of close gatherers step out into the cold air to the outdoor space decorated with travel-reminiscent and birth-oriented objects. A boat hangs from a tree, swinging in air going nowhere, strawberry-colored vaginas are found on some of the trunks, a tire-swing encourages the newborns to play among the changing lights as we smoke our cancerous cigarettes. Berlin shows me, in places like these, and especially in context of the history, that destruction and death and a crucible is what the dark night desires while always ringing true that at sunrise the ultimate goal is reconstruction, birth, and brotherly love. The youth and subculture only crushes it all together in a less orderly way than the typical rationality of German daily life. Renate, and places like it, become the escape and the oasis.

It's too cliché to say Berlin's clubs are the best in the world- how would I know this anyway? I am only a tourist who wastes half her weeks in these atmospheres. I'm making an effort to brave the clinging cold into the daylight life if Berlin where perhaps the less frivolous great good places exist, but I often find myself blindly following the music to the next dark, smokey trance state. Despite the fact that I prefer to not partake in some of the more chemically-driven pieces of this society, I am largely addicted to this scene, and to this, I assure you it is, great goodness.

My apologies for the neglect of timeliness for this post. Honestly, the art scene in Berlin seems like a difficult and daunting thing to try to represent! Where do I begin? The museums, the architecture, the politics associated with the artists here... the city is bound up in it's art scene and Berlin seems like the place to be if your looking to be immersed in the modern art scene.

 

Almost, I feel, there is too much modern art here. Almost every corner you are presented with a cool wall of graffiti or some vague sculpture- perhaps a memorial, perhaps a community project, and many if not most aren't obviously marked, and even less in a language I can understand. I begin to take Berlin along with it's art scene as a background for living here. The city's art is sometimes for me a bunch of graffiti art- there, sometimes amazing sometimes annoying, but generally (at least here) part of a common landscape.

This experience of embedded art is complicated and perhaps deepened by my new internship experience. I now have been working in the studio of a modern sculpture artist, Sophie Erlund, helping her with her upcoming and still unnamed series of sculpture pieces to be featured in a festival in Cologne this April. Although I have literally been glue-gunning tiny metal spikes onto a giant net for the last two weeks straight, I have gained a load of experience working in a studio with an artist that definitely seems to have her shit together and has recently begun, while also mothering two children, working almost exclusively on her own projects, and doing successfully as well. She, in keeping with the vibe of Berlin, seems to be doing something always cool, always new, and so far very much with a relaxed manner.

While occasionally I visit museums such as the Hamberger Bahnhoff and a gallery or two when I get the chance, I find the process of making contemporary art, now that I have a feel for it, the more intriguing thing to muse upon rather than the piece itself. Personally, the modern and contemporary pieces that I am moved by emotionally, rather than intellectually, are few and far between, and I feel myself moving on from most of the things I see- storing them up for later reference perhaps for conversation or to bring up in my own studio art class. Regrettably, I glance quickly, treating most as another two minute intrigue I would maybe re-blog on tumblr. I think it really takes a moment of relaxation, pondering, and a serious effort to empathize with the artist before a lot of modern works reveal their full potential because unless they are slapping you in the face with a vibe, a form of presentation, or sheer size or beauty, there must be something subtle the artist is trying to achieve for the viewer. This is what I find interestin

However, there are occasional wondrous days where I explore the city, seeing a new place, and find something amazing- something moving on a deeper level than modern aesthetics. As mentioned, I visited the Hamberger Bahnhoff Museum and saw a Ryoji Ikada exhibit, somebody I had never heard of before (this is not surprising, I'm very behind in the art world, as I'm finding out now that I'm surrounded by an impenetrable click of Steinhardt studio art students). It was memorable, and an all-consuming experience I rarely feel from new pieces. There was a d room and a b room. The d room was dark, the whole room black save for screens that from a distance looked like was playing static, but when examined closely was a lot of tiny numbers flashing on the screen, freezing when the “musical” tone permeating the atmosphere of the room changed. There was, in the very end of the large room a whole in the wall that leads to a plain white room into which a giant, and I mean giant, spotlight was aimed. It's quite indescribable. The b room was opposite, bright, and the numbers were instead painted in white canvasses. A different tone played. Unlike myself, I was drawn to this piece for reasons I can't explain.

I haven't seen any artworks of Berlin, but surely the city wouldn't be anything without the modern art scene, not even to mention music scene (I could talk about that forever) that creates the vibe here. I feel that this constant additions of strange, new, and sometimes awesome pieces around the city sets Berlin apart from the rest of post-war and post-unification Germany.

I really identify with MacCannell's thesis about the traveller's self-constructed mecca and the desire for a time that goes into the deeper waters of experiential awareness. As much as I, and others, want to be part of the “real” culture here, by being mere outsiders this becomes not only difficult but sometimes impossible. I want people to be understanding of my lack of knowledge about the language and how I need to act, I want them to help me feel comfortable. These desires conflict with my wanting to be seamlessly woven into the fabric of German society.

However, while travelling has often been a spiritually fulfilling experience, it is a bit different here. Only on a few occasions, and very recently, have I been to the areas frequented by “tourists.” 'Hooray!' I think. 'I am part of authenticity!' But that doesn't feel true either. I am existing on this narrow plane of liminal space- not quite a Berliner, not really an outsider looking for the magic belly of the beast. Because of this weirdly isolating space I occupy, standing in line at a club to have the fate of one's night decided or interning with a local artist can either feel authentic or a conjured NYU event.

This last Friday when I visited a number of Haulocaust memorials I was practically basking in the opportunity to feel comfortable as one identity- an outsider. I did not feel the pressure of feeling like I had to “know what I was doing” because I lived there, but rather, I felt the ultimate freedom to experience a place, made for natives and visitors alike, that only exists, as MacCannell would put it, in the “front.”

It was here at the Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe where I had a very tourist-American, but also very unique spritiual experience. There were other tourists there running in between the stone blocks trying to scare one another. In the process, I was mistaken for somebody else a number of times and found myself wandering around in temporary fear of being frightened by a yelling teenager popping out from in front of me. While I would probably have expected to be annoyed at such an interruption to my deep meditation on the Haulocaust and its victims, I found the experience of being lost, scared, and confused inside the memorial to be on the whole more authentic than any morbid thoughts I may have conjured up.

Image taken when D and I went to the Memorial for Murdered Jews of Europe

Berlin hits me as a city resonating with all the parts of life that sting the most: regret, loneliness, artistic recklessness, dark histories, love, hope, and indecisiveness. As I continue to explore, paying more attention as it gets warmer to the more memorialized pieces the city provides, I realize that this whole city is a reluctant museum. Here, a bomb went off in World War II and still nothing stands, there, a tower for holding Jewish families before shipment, and right below my feet the two rows of bricks that mark the path of the Berlin wall after, in a fury to forget and banish, the residents and city workers tore it down. The more I learn about the city through my classes, especially my historical walking tour course, my adventures, and now Brian Ladd's Ghosts of Berlin, the more I recognize that each parcel of land and building, as well as most native people's, are asserting themselves within Berlin's history-making.

This may sound fluffy and generalized, but something many outlanders may not recognize, and what took me a couple weeks and some dreary-eyed pages of Ladd's book to figure out, is that almost every historical building, every memorial, and every remnant of the past that has stood or still remains has had it continued existence here contested. Who does it appeal to? Offend? Should Berlin, and Germans, project an image of sorrow and remorse or brave hope and national pride? Monuments like the Neue Wache continue to change with each shift of power, of which there have been many in the last century, and with it the people- or at least their representatives- choose a new representation for themselves (223). It is really fascinating to me how Berliners are constantly updating, destroying, or rebuilding their history. One trite analogy (please, fellow lovers of literacy, don't shoot me for this) is that Berlin is much like a German Facebook: remove some of those silly photos, add some from your childhood, and you know that everyone knows you killed like 30 million Russians so you can't really delete that post without some hate mail.

Two of my favorite examples from this Berlin phenomenon is the Berlin wall and the Nikolai Quarter. In 1979 the Soviet rulers of East Berlin decided it would be a real morale-boost to be able to showcase a bit of Germany's destroyed history, so they reconstructed, with some tourist-y leniency, a historical center for Berlin (45). So just to be clear, the historical landmarks of Berlin are around 30 years old. On a similar vein, and I won't make fun of them this time, when the East and West unified in 1989, people were so elated that they quickly sought to destroy and remove the ultimate symbol of this new past- the wall. Fascinatingly, the wall was both a symbol of division but also of German solidarity. The wall was their plight, their post-war burden, and somewhat of a convenient border for Eastern and Western (read: capitalist) traits. In their fervent rush to destroy the wall, many ignored the ideas for memorialization, commemoration, and remembrance that preservation of some of it would provide. It is because of this that the bricks/stones were placed where the wall stood, and that some remnants have been moved to convenient locations for viewing, or even rebuilt in the '90s (15-39).

I get really excited about all of this, and the layers of meaning in a virtually uncountable number of things and places in this city overwhelm me when I sit and think about it. The history from Ladd's book and my walking tours are giving me another reason to think this city is beautiful despite its aesthetic shortcomings. I feel a mixture of confusion, sadness, excitement and solidarity with Berliners when I look at the state of their history and development. We all regret, feel hope, want to remember and at the same time long to forget! While my shared feelings are not due to the nation's involvement in almost a century of bloodshed, it's a liminal mind-space I can at least somewhat empathize with.
 

Ladd, Brian. Ghosts of Berlin. The University of Chicago Press. London. 1997.

The image, although obtained on google, is of a place we visited where original pieces of the wall have been put up near the original site, and the site of a recreated Soviet watch-tower, so that people may visit them. By the time I visited, there was more graffiti on them.

Being reduced to a near-idiot... such a familiar feeling these days. My first few weeks in Berlin have left me in the mental state of a crawling toddler. Exacerbated by the campy tours, orientations, and extremely small amount of people I interact with (in comparison to my former life in the states), the feeling of a throwback is a tough one to shrug. Ich habe no idea what you are saying... bitte?

Lucky me that English is pretty much everyone's second language. Or perhaps unlucky me? Before I mentally grew to middle-schooler, within three words of most encounters I had been identified: “American, please treat accordingly”. It's only been recently and in cherished circumstances that I manage to grapple my way through a few sentences, smiles, and polite head-shaking without getting too much English thrown at me. The most interesting part of this is that the only Germans who choose to accompany me on my blundering speaking journeys are not, in fact, Germans, but immigrants themselves!

Making me feel more at home, there are a large number of immigrants in Berlin who on the whole seem more jovial and less emotionally boarded up than the generic Männer or Frauen. These generics are on the whole efficient, quick, fit, tersely polite and non-fuck giving. This manner of personhood is reflected in the beautiful but likewise curt-sounding language. Why have flow and musicality when one could have efficiency? Not brevity however, as a large number of words are literal mash-ups of shorter, existing words. Unlike Flaubert's Egyptian experiences, I don't think, or perhaps don't have the capacity to understand, that many people are loose with their well-wishes or dirty phrases (quiet unfortunately). I have been told by a number of helpful German administrators that most people are slow to friendship and warmth of expression here, and it seems right on track with reality.

Fortunately within my own group of regressed young-adults we have developed our own ways of speaking- or rather, playing with, the language- during out learning process. Wunderbar (wonderful) becomes Wonderbra, everything must be followed by “ja,” as if we were addicted to the confirmation, and of course there's the accent. On me, this particular German accent sounds like a whining, perhaps yodeling, monkey type German who has the brain of a first grader who sniffed too much glue. Well, at least when I'm drunk. Accents don't really exist here despite the fact we all came believing they did, so during these moments of hilarity and nonsense we are most likely the farthest thing away from “German.”

Nonetheless, I love being surrounded by a permeable layer of German language. I find the way they manage to fit those long ridiculous words onto small labels amazing (no wonder minimalism started here), the abruptness daunting but efficient, and the occasional facial communication- aka me nodding and saying “ja” trying to mimic the look on their face while trying to hide the fact that I have no idea what is going on- refreshing!

(The photo attached is a flyer for an exorcist we found on the street.)

There have been two ways I've gathered my bearings around this city, maps and, when I am with D, an iphone. While it's been great to get off the Ubahn subway and have a convenient little map that tells me where I am and which way I should go, I fear the reliance on him and his technology had thrown my sense of place and direction into one of those tiny little German wastebaskets (seriously who shrunk all the trashcans?). Recently, however, as I go out on my own I've begun to rely on other means of orientation.

First, the maps. Like New York City, I find myself constantly staring at subway maps. While the Bahn, the name for the subway, is more efficient, glossy, clean and pleasant than any other subway I've ever been on, the maps inside it are in no way easily readable. Furthermore, the lines do not exactly run north-south, east-west, or in any one direction, but rather zig-zag across the city. The names of the stops are in German, obviously, but please just stop to think about what that means. The names, most which I can barely yet understand, much less pronounce, all sound like an angry goat-alien with a cough. Take Französische Sraße, for example. Try saying that three times fast. For some reason the difficulty of pronunciation makes remembering the names very hard for me, and to be honest, it makes me feel really stupid when I can't figure out where I am or where I am going.

Thankfully, I haven't found myself lost very often. Once or twice I get off at the wrong stop or go the wrong direction on the Bahn, however, they've been in laughable circumstances. I haven't been frustrated or scared in this city, yet! The “middle of nowhere” doesn't seem to exist, compared to the deserted nothingness I sometimes found myself in when I lived in Arizona. That said, I haven't ventured into the neighborhoods the program directors urged us to only explore in the safe light of day. I love finding my way around here, and if it were warmer I'm sure I would take more chances at getting lost more often. As reliant as I tend to be on others for affection, direction, and entertainment, I do love getting a little lost by myself.

All of Berlin is covered in graffitti, and I've been told that it's literally made up of combined villages. This makes me imagine a bunch of angry-talking, punk, minimal architects must have ruled the villages at some point in the past. It's the most beautiful ugly city I've encountered. It's been said by the mayor before, but it fits too-perfectly, "Berlin is poor, but sexy." Like me, this city is in debt, but hey, we're pulling it off.

Asking directions has been nothing but a pleasant experience. Many people are polite and speak English, and also because there are only 90 people in the program, it's easy for me to ask my fellow students for help. They seem happy to tell me, or show me, and the seven or so returning students, those who were here last semester, are some of the most helpful people I have found.

While this is all formal and lovely, I think the most amazing thing I have discovered about myself in this experience is I'm probably more reliable getting back somewhere drunk than any other person I know. As long as I walked there conscious I can get back, even with a few hooligans on tow. I know I'm bragging, but let's be real: this is a good skill to have when the iphone dies at 6 am in Kreuzberg. 

The great thing about moving, and I've moved a lot, is that the mundane gets a little more exciting. It just hits a slightly different chord in my brain, as if the neural clusters activated shifted just a tad to let you know- new! This is why the subway only now begins to bore, the smell of dirty clothes begins to reek, and that neighbor who complained to the management about my slamming my door becomes a problem that exists in reality.

The rose-colored goggles are wearing thin these past few days as the naturally foreign concepts of reality and responsibility begin to tap upon the everyday door. As I already mentioned, I had a “noise complaint” in our apartment building (our housing is mixed with locals), which I find interesting considering I don't even spend more than 3 hours in my own apartment every day. And speaking of complaints against me, I received a forty Euro ticked on the subway for purchasing the wrong ticket (it said “student ticket!) and my pleas of misunderstanding were met with the dismissal, “Well, you must read it in German!” This and other every day reminders keep pressing the constant brain-chatter of my mind to repeat, I really need to learn more German.

But please, let's not focus on the negative. I've always been a firm believer that beauty exists in both the “mundane,” “everyday,” and “cliche,” and this trip will hopefully only expand my conception of beauty. There are many things I come to love in routine. At home, it was locking the door every night and falling asleep on the couch while D sat at his computer programming. This always made me feel safe. Here, I am beginning to develop other routines. The laundry tokens we must buy are very expensive, so I do my laundry in my sink and dry them on the radiator. I feel rustic. I go to the gym and wander around in the locker room naked until I ask, and almost understand, the women who direct me on the proper way to approach the sauna (naked and pre-showered, if you want to know). It's the most relaxing thing I have done here and I felt like I belong.

Lord knows I can't decide on whether I desire stability, routine, and peace rather than adventure, drama, and mystery in my life. So far here, I've had (created, maybe?) a good mixture of both. I'm almost disappointed that I'm settling into my space here, in this apartment we decorated with objects and tapestries from home, and doing my homework as I would any other place. However, as soon as moments like these begin to arise something jars me- maybe I go outside, maybe I just smile- into the realization that my life isn't actually boring! In the right lighting, everything looks artistic. And if for a moment it isn't, I can change it. 
 

Every time a plane rises something sets off in me. I can't explain it. I suppose all of a sudden I become reflective, pondering the excitement I feel for the next chapter in my life, or the jaded apathy I wonder if I shouldn't feel. Flying is isolating- no phones, no internet, not much movement- and really allows my mind the freedom to play within itself. Perhaps my too-sensitive imagination caused the problem, or maybe it was just growing up and finding something to be afraid of losing, but not too long ago flying began to make me anxious. “Where are the exits? What would I say if I got one phone call? Etc...” Very morbid, I know. Too bad I love traveling so much! I suppose then I figured out that anxiety is best dealt with unconsciously- which is now how I choose to spend most of my flights.

Perhaps this is my way of running away from what de Button describes as his accidentally bringing himself along with him in his travels. I pack everything, literally everything except what I brought, into storage and get hyped up for this adventure only to find I have to deal with my hang-ups along the way? My imagination, my images of this future, somehow included me packing and storing those away as well.

I did not come with many expectations, but I must admit I had a grand ol' time compiling my own subconscious stock-images of beautiful sights: late night dancing to heart-throbbing bass and losing my breath, huge smiles beside new friends I would make, sitting outside and conversing beneath my furrowed intellectual eyebrows with a professor. It rings too true for me that to some the imagination is the best medium for adventure, but as I have mentioned, my decision to come to Berlin was a purposeful crushing of the part of myself that thinks, and thinks, and thinks, and never moves.

On my arrival here I can not really say I wasn't expecting a confrontation with those peripheries of the painting, the things the artist doesn't care to represent. Examples including that my boyfriend of two years, D, and I don't know how to manage adjacent anxieties; I can't seem to keep ahold of my money; the German's really don't care if you couldn't read the sign they'll give you a ticket anyway; and holy hell, it's cold. My expectation of these matters are met with some apathy, some awe.

However, some find the most interesting parts of a pictorial representation lie in the process. Many memories, like pictures, tend to only show you the main, or intended, content. My first moments in Berlin, while getting off the plane, was a delicate portrait of my cigarette smoke disappearing into the sunrise over a foreign cityscape, soundtracked by the tense buzzing of my brain waiting for the moment when we find a cab. That said, I don't remember everything; I don't care to remember everything. It could have been everything I wanted, and for all intensive purposes, it was.

Hallo! My name is Andrea. It seems I've ventured into this dialogue a little on the late side and I've been in Berlin for almost 3 weeks now. Luckily, scientists seem to be coming to the conclusion that time is less linear than sort of malleable (hooray physics!) so let's just appropriate this idea for the purposes of me “going back in time” and writing my pre-departure introduction! Luckily again, I started a tumblr a couple weeks before leaving, which I will draw from right now, quote it even, to make it quite authentic.

The first and only time I’ve moved cities was from Phoenix, Arizona to New York City. This seems somewhat important because I’m under the assumption that moving from most places to NYC has got to be the grandest shock and lifestyle change one may encounter. The desert is beautiful, I miss it, but generally I find that home is where you eat your ramen and NYC quickly became the only place I'd dare to call home. Moving to Berlin is a mixture of excitement and apprehension. As elitist and uneducated as this may sound to others, once you’ve lived in New York, everything must seem like it’s going at snail pace. (THE PEOPLE ARE WALKING TOO SLOW, WTF YOU HAVE A CAR?, 5 SHOTS 5 MINUTES, HOW DAMN LONG DOES IT TAKE TO MAKE A DIRTY CHAI LATTE)

So essentially I have no idea what to expect when moving to Germany, but I expect it to be a familiar experience if wild adaptation and education, but perhaps more relaxed, or at least a little less dirty. As for apprehensions, I am really dreading moving out of my apartment here in Brooklyn. This is most likely the most homey place I have ever lived- cluttered and covered in tapestries, music always on. Cutting ties with this apartment is the hardest thing to think about right now. I just want to fast-forward to Berlin past the mind-occupations of worrying about adaptors, packing, returning NYU students' parties, etc.

My academic experiments in college have hardly been a linear story. I began pre-med with the idea of being a journalist, moved on to Anthropology and Comparative Literature, and then on to Gallatin to finally embrace my indecisive nature. Once there, and having come to terms with not-knowing, my path sort of came together and I realized hey! Magic of representation plus science equals artistic science! I would like to make installations that motivate/educate/entertain out of biological life-forms. I've done a little work with synthetic biology and playing Dr. Moreau sounds fun (without the horrific details), not to mention perhaps a good way of increasing awareness on how beautiful the world is in which we live.

I can't wait to figure out how sojourning actually feels, what shocks to my heart I may encounter, or what bruises to my dignity. As some sort of wild (but nonetheless well-thought-out) beginning, I just went and got my first tattoo, scheduled two days before my flight. It is a foot-long sweep of moths flying from my hipbone up to my shoulder-blade. It suggests a lot of representations, but one related in symbolic nature to this topic is that when I think about something, and think about it, and think about it, I will not do it. Step one is thinking and soon afterwards there must be a step two, or I will never get anywhere outside my head. Signing up for NYU Berlin was a second step for me. Perhaps I am learning how to get somewhere.