It’s officially fall, which means it’s time to reflect on summer. Doesn’t everyone do an end of the season reflection and make a short video of what they’ve been up to? Just me? Okay, well… A lot happened during our first summer in Berlin! Our friends Eben and Laura came to visit! It was their first trip to Europe and they were here for 4 weeks using Berlin as a home base. We did a lot of sightseeing around Berlin with them and with our friend, Ramona. Ramona also took us on a day trip to Dresden. And camping on the Ostsee (the Baltic Sea)! We spent a lot of…
-
-
Berlin, Revisited
As you (probably) know, I did a lot of traveling around Europe 6 years ago. Gosh, it pains me to realize that trip was 6 years ago. This feeling is only going to get worse as I get older, isn’t it? Sometimes when I travel, I have to assume I’ll be back again someday. Otherwise I drive myself mad trying to fit in as many experiences as possible and lamenting all the things I don’t have time for. Three years ago, E and I took a vacation to Barcelona and a couple days into the trip, I was in tears because I realized there wasn’t time to show him everything…
-
Let’s talk about depression and bicycles
I was biking home from the doctor’s office yesterday when I heard church bells loud and clear in an otherwise secular neighborhood full of restaurants and bars. I turned a corner and saw the church. It was a cathedral with a small courtyard containing a statue and two tall stone bell towers. As I pedaled past, I saw a child, no more than 6, back to the street, staring up at the church, entranced. The adult standing beside them waited nonchalantly, eyes on the cell phone in their hands. I continued down the street and a small dog with auburn and white fur and a curled tail turned from the store…
-
What makes a new city feel like home?
A couple of weeks ago, I said to E, “I don’t miss Boston, not exactly, but I do miss knowing a place well.” It was a weekend evening and we were trying to figure out what to do with ourselves. I ended up saying, “what I really want to do is go to Aeronaut.” Aeronaut is a brewery in Somerville, MA that was a 5-minute walk from our old apartment. Their beer is good, but that’s not what I was missing. What I was missing was knowing where to go. There are plenty of breweries in Berlin, but we don’t have “our place” yet. I had a level of familiarity…
-
100 Days of Learning German!
We’ve been in Germany for more than 100 days now! I know because last week I finished The 100 Day Project! The 100 Day Project is an online global art project where people commit to doing something every day for 100 days and sharing the results on instagram. Typically people make visual art, because instagram is a visual medium, but you can really do anything you want for 100 days and there’s no need to share your work. E and I first heard about The 100 Day Project when our friend, Megan, did it in 2016 and used watercolors to paint a different plant every day. Megan makes whimsical art…
-
Keine Familie ist illegal
People from the US are allowed into the Schengen Zone (of which Germany is a part) for 90 days at a time. If you want to stay longer, you need a visa or a residence permit. June 25th was my 90th day in Germany, and, on June 28th, I got a residence permit that allows me to live here through March 2019. So, technically, on June 26th and June 27th, you could have called me an “illegal immigrant.” I mention this because immigration is complicated, and it’s a helluva lot more complicated for people who don’t look like me and/or don’t have the money I have. I mention this because…
-
Spring in Berlin: A Video and A Love Letter
I try to take a couple seconds of video footage on my phone every day. I’ve been doing this on and off for a few years. My intention is always to compile the footage on the 1 Second Everyday app, but I don’t get around to it consistently. Last week though, I was feeling inspired to do something a little more complicated with all the snippets of life in Berlin that I’ve filmed since March. The result is this short video, which I hope will appeal to the visual learners among you. There are several shots in and around our apartment, but there are also snippets we filmed in other places…
-
4 Ways We’re Learning German
It looks like I’ll be signing up for another German class sooner rather than later because… I’m applying for a year-long residence permit to learn German! That’s right, we’ve found a solution to our residence permit problems! The Ausländerbehörde (foreigner’s office) will let me live here on my savings if it’s in the interest of learning German – I just have to study German 20 hours per week for 3 months, and they’ll give me a residence permit for the next year. This gives E and me plenty of time to find a cheaper place to live; and it gives me plenty of time to establish myself as a freelance…
-
Bikes, Beers, and Beautiful Sunsets
We’ve been in Berlin for two months now, but I find myself unsure what to say about it to friends and family back home. There’s no news on our residence permits except I find it embarrassing that my husband’s boss wants me to get a job. I’m happier here than I was in Boston, but I think that’s more about me and less about Berlin. This city is not immediately beautiful. It is concrete and graffiti and parks filled with garbage after the weekend’s revelry. A lot of the graffiti is artfully done and what drew my attention to the garbage is the teams of people cleaning it up every…
-
I Never Expected to Learn German
I studied Spanish for seven years and my favorite city in the world is Barcelona. While my Spanish is far from fluent these days, it’s still enough to get me through service interactions and daily life: ordering food, checking out at the grocery store, asking for directions. I kinda thought that if I was going to live abroad it would be in one of the dozens of countries where I already speak at least some of the official language (be it English or Spanish). And, before you say it, yes, many people in Berlin speak English. Earlier this month, I finished a 4-week beginners German class, and one of my…
