It was already light out when our alarm went off at 4:43am. Last Sunday, to celebrate the summer solstice and the longest days of the year, E and I decided to get up at sunrise and go for a bike ride. We drank coffee and ate breakfast first – we were in no rush. We just thought it would be novel to be up and out of the house and taking advantage of the absurdly long June days. On our bikes at 6:30am and heading out of the neighborhood, we passed a single cafe that was already open. There were tables set up outside and more than half were filled…
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Der Spargel in den Zeiten der Corona / Asparagus in the Time of Corona
Apparently, spring is my favorite season in Berlin. In general, fall is my favorite season, but I was traveling outside of Europe for several weeks in September 2018 and October 2019 so I haven’t spent as much time here during the fall. Conversely, this is my third spring spent entirely in Berlin, and… I’m pretty disappointed to be spending it inside. Obviously, I’m happy to protect myself and others by staying home. On the list of issues caused by this global pandemic, missing spring is a minor inconvenience. But it’s my minor inconvenience, so I decided to acknowledge it with a blog post about something that makes spring in Germany…
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Have Fun and Be Safe
At the start of this year, E and I were in Vancouver, where my brother and his partner RJ live, celebrating the holidays. RJ is a librarian and at the branch where they work, patrons were invited to share new year’s resolutions on a bulletin board. One of the resolutions, clearly written by a child’s hand, said, “I want to have fun & be safe :)” After RJ shared this wholesome, heartwarming nugget of wisdom with the rest of us, we agreed “have fun and be safe” was the energy we wanted to bring with us into 2020. It’s only mid-March, but I think we can all agree that 2020…
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Do other people’s life decisions ever make you question your own?
A blogger I’ve followed for years (and met once in person) just announced that she and her husband are moving back to the US after two years in Italy. They moved to Europe with their dog and young daughter just six months before E and I moved abroad. When we announced our move on facebook, she commented, “Welcome to the fun side of the pond!” It was just one small comment, but I did feel welcomed — to the Americans abroad club by someone who had gone before me. Earlier this year, a college friend who moved to Berlin a couple months before us left for a job in Toronto.…
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My Biggest Travel Mistake
E and I forgot something really important when we went on vacation recently. It was worse than the time I arrived at London Heathrow Airport without a return flight booked. The UK doesn’t like to let people in without knowing when you’re leaving and the only thing that kept me from being detained was white privilege. Our recent mistake was even worse than the time I ate questionable samosas in India and got violently ill on an overnight train. Okay… that one was pretty bad. I should have known better and I suffered the consequences. But the most recent mistake E and I made was practically unforgivable for a couple…
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Getting to Know Schöneberg
The temperature reached 94 degrees (Fahrenheit, obvi) yesterday, so it seems safe to say summer has arrived in Berlin. Temperatures that high are actually kind of an unpleasant anomaly, but, in general, it’s warm and sunny here, and we’ve been spending more time outside as a result. We’ve started jogging in the evenings after work. There’s a bike path that runs alongside the train tracks, and we can follow it to a nearby grocery store. On Friday night, it was warm and humid and just starting to rain when we finished our run and went into the grocery store. The air had that amazing wet asphalt/ozone scent. We picked up…
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One Year in Berlin
One year ago today, we landed in Berlin with 4 suitcases, 2 backpacks, 1 visa, and nowhere to live. Our first night in the city, we got dinner at a beer hall down the street from our hotel. We ordered half liters of beer, pretzels, a cheese plate, and Weißwurst (white sausage). I later learned that Weißwurst is a typical Bavarian breakfast food — no wonder the server gave me a weird look for ordering it at 8pm. What’s changed in the last year? Well, we don’t make as many faux pas when eating German food. As our friend, Ramona, puts it: going to a Bavarian restaurant on your first…
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“Maybe We’ll Spend Christmas in Berlin”
Before E was even offered the job that brought us to Berlin, my mom and I started daydreaming about it. 2018 had just begun and I was experiencing some new year’s melancholy, and my mom commented, “maybe next year we’ll spend Christmas in Berlin!” It was a nice daydream, and I told her not to jinx it. She didn’t. Obviously. But it still felt kind of amazing when the holidays rolled around and we were actually here in Berlin. My mom came to visit for three weeks — starting in mid-December and staying through the New Year. And my brother and his partner arrived two days after Christmas and stayed…
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An Ode to Peanut Butter
At first I thought it was just one badly-branded jar of peanut butter. It was rife with US stereotypes. The Statue of Liberty, an anthropomorphized peanut wearing a cowboy hat, and a color scheme reminiscent of the American flag covered all but a few inches of space. Most damningly, the brand name was “McEnnedy.” I thought it was such a bizarre mash-up of American-sounding name conventions. It reminded me of “Häagen Dazs,” the ice cream brand whose nonsense name is meant to sound Danish, but is a decidedly American invention. Of course, E and I bought a jar of McEnnedy brand peanut butter and ate it all. It tasted… fine.…
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To Make “Local” Friends or “Expat” Friends, That is the Question
People tend to want to make local friends when they live abroad. Spending time only with people you could have met at home creates this bizarre sense of failure. I remember it from when I studied abroad in Barcelona – I hung out mostly with the other Americans in my program, but it was a point of pride for me when I spent Halloween teaching a couple of Catalan women how to play Kings. That was my go-to I-hung-out-with-the-locals anecdote. It was a fun evening and it makes a pretty good soundbite. But “I want to hang out with locals” is kind of an odd, potentially tokenizing way to look…
