Date: Monday, November 29, 1999 16:46 Subject: a ridiculously long weekend bulletin Well, another weekend has passed, though this one was sufficiently busy that I had no time to write about it. We've been in our new digs for two weeks now. I'd say we're about ninety-five percent moved in. There's not much left to do in the short term, a bit more cleaning and organizing perhaps. In the long term we need a better couch and guest bed solution, but we'll worry about that when we have more money and more guests. The important thing is that the place feels like home and I'm not so troubled with outstanding chores that I can't concentrate on working. I am very sensitive to my environment, which is generally a good thing, but not always. This really is a good place to work, I have to admit. It's a big, open room with abundant natural light and a nice view across the Hof to the rooftops of the neighbouring buildings. There's something very appealing about looking out and seeing all these half-crumbling old European apartments, festooned with satellite dishes. Christiane's (our landlord) stuff looks a bit cluttered and junky sometimes but it's not in the way. And it's warm in here. *** Our big domestic achievements, from Friday on, were to finish the second and final part of the kitchen reorganization, including a slightly makeshift installation of the weird countertop dishwasher that P1&B gave us. (It's a long story, but they were saddled with the thing as part of the Abstand for their new place in Moabit. Abstand is the evil practice of the old tenant charging the new tenant for whatever is left behind when they move out, which landlords encourage even though it's technically illegal. Abstand normally covers "permanent" modifications to an apartment like built-in appliances, light fixtures or re-finished wood floors, which are the responsibility of the renter in this perverse system. But it also tends to include a lot of old furniture and random unwanted junk. People can easily pay up to twenty thousand when moving into a new place. P1&B were happy to give us this ridiculous thing, for which we will eventually buy them dinner as thanks. It's not really saving us much labour, because it's very small and doesn't work particularly well, and it's certainly not saving us any money, because it runs on expensive electricity whereas our hot water for washing comes from less expensive gas. But it's easier than doing your own dishes and it helped them to get rid of something that was taking up space in their kitchen. We'll leave it here or try to sell it for them when we leave. Some idiot paid a thousand marks for it in 1992, but I doubt we'd get fifty.) Now that we've packed up three boxes of Christiane's excess kitchen junk and cleaned everything from top to bottom, it looks quite presentable. The rest of the apartment only requires fine-tuning and random fits of detailed cleaning. The second major achievement was to improve our lighting situation. Older apartments generally lack sufficient wiring and outlets - extension cords snake hither and yon - and as a consequence are very poorly lit. This one is a bit different in that it has large fluorescent fixtures in each of the main rooms, but they are too bright for regular use. So we've been buying cheap little clamp fixtures at IKEA and trying to find the best possible arrangement of area lighting. Low energy bulbs are very popular here. Basically they are little fluorescent tubes, some even coiled within a frosted glass globe to give them the shape and effect of a normal bulb. For about five bucks apiece, they last ten times longer than a normal bulb and use about one-fifth the energy. With an apartment as long as ours, it's nice to be able to leave a light on somewhere in the middle so that you're not constantly walking up and down a dark, fifty-foot tunnel every time you need to go from the office to the kitchen and back. The third major achievement was clean clothes. We exchanged the old non-functioning washing machine for an equally old but functioning version, then chewed our way through five loads in two days. This was no small feat, in the context of European washing technology. Because our Waschmachine has very limited spinning capabilities, we also have a Schleuder, a free-standing centrifuge about the size of a large kitchen garbage pail that extracts the water once the cycle is complete. This thing could be used to separate blood plasma, it's so fast. Wet clothes emerge nearly dry. Jeans dry overnight, and do not require the normal three to five days in front of the radiator. Dryers are still very uncommon here. We actually like this system. It's a bit inconvenient having to load a drying rack and park it in front of the window every time you do laundry, or string the line across the office when you need to dry linens, but it's much better for the clothes. Of course, with the crappy wiring in the kitchen, the Waschmachine, Schleuder and dishwasher (Geschirrspülautomat - say that three times quicly) all need to be plugged into a extension cord running from a plug in the opposite corner. With the dishwasher and washing machine, you need to check that the correct intake hose is screwed into the faucet above the sink, and that the tap is open. Also when running the washing machine, you have to take the outlet hose from the back and hook it over the edge of the sink, and with the Schleuder you mustn't forget to put a bucket under the spout before you turn it on. Yes, all the modern conveniences... (Not that I'm complaining - at least we have these appliances. It cost us about ten marks per load at the Laundromat.) And who thought a paragraph about appliances could be so interesting? The smell problem is almost gone. It's been warmer lately so I've been able to open the windows at night. Blessed is the German Kipfenster (for those who don't know, the window that opens on both vertical and horizontal axes, allowing you to swing it wide open for maximum ventilation, or tip in inwards by three or four inches for a slight airing without leaving a wide enough passage for one's cat to leap out and plunge five stories to her death on the pavement below). Furthermore, the hall carpet is now clean. For reasons I do not fully understand, European vacuums have a power dial. The lower setting saves electricity, but creates almost no suction. Of course it was set to low. Once I turned it to full power, I was surprised to discover that I could actually remove dirt from the carpet. It may take a few more passes before I've removed all the layers that have built up over the years, but I think this is a worthwhile thing to do with a few marks' worth of electricity. So that's pretty well all the domestic news. Not much left to do, really, just hook up network cards for the computers, fix some small things in the office, see if we can't scrounge a few chairs for the living room, and shop around for a cheap but not hideously ugly or uncomfortable Schlafcouch (sofabed) that we can sell again when we leave. *** My skating continues to improve with every session. On Friday I was able to stay in a moderately quick paceline for 20 to 30 minutes. I was actually sore and tired after, for the first time since switching from pavement to ice. I really need to be more religious about my stretching from now on. I'll be skating three times per week, plus the occasional weekend event. There are mass-start marathon races (10 to 40 km) in Chemnitz this weekend. If someone from the club is driving down, I may tag along just to watch. I don't think I'm up for any racing quite yet. I'd be worried about causing a crash, as my technique can become very sloppy when I'm tired, and I expect I'd get tired pretty quickly. But I'm really enjoying myself and I think it's going to be a huge help to my inline skating next summer, both with technique and strength. There was a World Cup speedskating event this weekend up at the indoor oval in Hohenschönhausen (an exceptionally ugly part of East Berlin). I went for the Sunday afternoon session and watched the 500 m and 1,000 m races. It was very cool. It looks much different live - not as fast as on television, somehow, but more impressive. There weren't too many spectators beyond the usual crowd of several hundred bell-ringing Dutch in orange sweaters and wigs, and there was only one restricted area along the home straight, so you could walk right up to the edge of the ice and watch the start from ten feet away. The Canadians did well, Jeremy Wotherspoon winning the 500 and finishing second in the 1,000. Shimizu, the Japanese skater who won the Olympic 500 m, was just amazing coming off the line. Catriona Lemay Doan didn't do as well but she is very impressive to watch. She has one enormous, muscular set of hindquarters, that woman. *** We endured two Yanksgiving dinners this week, one Thursday, one Sunday. It's my current theory that American expatriates feel a compelling need to cook a turkey on this occasion, and then discover that they need help disposing of it because there aren't enough Americans left to go around when it comes time to eat all the food they've prepared. So they call us. Also, our American friends think that we Canadians celebrate the same Thanksgiving and just assume that we're looking for something to do. They seem a little surprised when you explain that no, in fact we don't. Thursday's dinner was held by some of the students in Annette's program, in a slightly ratty old apartment up in Prenzlauer Berg. It's always fun to see someone trying to cook a full turkey dinner in a tiny, ill-equipped kitchen with a half-size fridge and three-burner stove. Normally one has to recruit neighbours to boil the potatoes, then invite them in to help finish the bird. But it was all very good and we enjoyed ourselves. We made a pot of the now-traditional pumpkin curry soup, Mom's recipe of course, which is quite easy to transport on the U-Bahn if you bring the various ingredients separately (onion-curry mash in a container, tinned pumpkin, broth and milk in tetra packs) and combine them in a large, empty pot at your destination. As Annette was coming directly from running, I also brought along four folding chairs, carefully wedged into our big red duffel bag. This was perhaps too ambitious; for the first time since arriving in Berlin, I sorely regretted the lack of a car. We were able to find canned pumpkin for only eight marks at KaDeWe (a very large, luxurious department store with an amazing food floor). Their "American" section is delightful as always: marshmallows, salsa and all manner of junk food for about five times the original price. We also found pickled pumpkin chunks - known here as "Kurbis Henriette" - that added an interesting tang to the soup. As it was past midnight when things wrapped up and there were construction delays on the nearest U-Bahn line, we shared a taxi back to Kreuzberg with one of our fellow guests, a most interesting and exotic creature. We thought she was possibly a Latin American who had gone to school in the States, as she mentioned learning Spanish in Costa Rica and living in California, and she spoke very good English with a slight Hispanic accent and frequent use of the "like" construction ("Like, when I was in LA this time..."). She also had a certain Latin vivacity. But it turns out that she's an Ossi, an East Berliner born and bred. When she was fifteen her family escaped through Hungary, during the chaotic period a month before the wall came down. Afterwards, thanks to a series of strategically-chosen boyfriends, she traveled the world and learned different languages. Having perfected English, she's currently moved on to (an) Italian. Anyway, it made for an interesting cab ride. Sunday's dinner was rather more spontaneous. P1&B called us up around noon and asked us to help consume turkey with a few friends. It was of course our first baby viewing, which went well. The baby behaved himself, as did I. P1's mother was there for a visit, helping with everything and gushing about as much as one would expect. We laughed about the Berlin Program dinner four years ago, when Annette and I were here the first time. They bought two turkeys but failed to account for all the vegetarians, so there was one complete bird left over. The host actually sold it to his neighbours for 80 DM. Not a bad price for complete, stuffed, cooked 15 pound turkey, expertly prepared by real Americans. Actually having both Annette and I arrive at Sunday's dinner was a bit of a production. We still have only one key to the apartment door. The lock is partially broken and the copy does not work, only the original. (We are getting a new lock very soon, possibly even today.) So while we each have keys to the main gate (locked after 8 PM every day so you have to go down and let guests in and out, a huge pain) and the building, we still need to coordinate comings and goings between the two of us. (Three keys we need: Tor, Haus und Wohnung.) On Sunday morning, Annette and I didn't coordinate too well. She was running another relay race and said she'd try to be home by twelve, then we'd go to watch the speedskating together at two. I kept the keys myself and made sure that I returned from my morning ride by eleven-thirty. Then I puttered about and waited. By one-thirty she'd neither appeared nor called, so I left a sizzling note on the door and dropped the keys off with P2 before hopping on the train up to the oval. I could have hid the key under the mat and written a note in very cryptic English that no burglar would likely understand, but I figured that making her march five minutes down to P2's to endure a smug look while she collected the key would be adequate punishment. Which it was. Some four hours later I went straight from skating to P1's for dinner, where I was pleasantly surprised to discover my very contrite wife. Of course this wasn't entirely Annette's fault, given that it was difficult to get back from the race and there were no obvious phones and she hadn't necessarily paid much attention when I'd mentioned that the skating events started at two, so as soon I finished enjoying the moral satisfaction of pointing out how badly I had been wronged, I magnanimously forgave her. I'm a sucker for contrition. *** It's after one o'clock. We need to go find something to eat for lunch and do our first Aldi run since moving. Alas, we are not close to an Aldi (a wonderfully odd mini-Costco type store where you find very good stuff at very good prices; even better, most middle-class Germans are too snobbish to shop there so it's just you and a few students and a lot of Turks). And last Friday we spotted cat litter on sale at Karstadt so we must pick up a supply before the Katzenclo situation becomes altogether too dire. ... Okay, we're back now. We walked down to Hermannplatz, stopping at the Sudstern Habibi for an excellent and inexpensive lunch - "Die beste Falafel westlich von Baghdad" - then hauled our trophies home on the U-Bahn. The walk up from Gneisenaustraße was pure torture: Annette had the groceries, I had ninety pounds of cat litter (two 20 kg bags, but worth it at the sale price). For the second time in less than a week, I regretted the lack of a car. We stopped to buy a flatbread and I exchanged pleasantries with the Turkish grocer. As their German is normally worse than mine, I feel quite confident speaking to Turkish grocers. Now I have enough time to finish off this ridiculously long message before leaving for skating; Annette will spend the rest of the evening dealing with travel plans, the Christmas list, and the various items in our bureaucratic backlog. *** The only other remaining weekend tales center around our Saturday evening excursion to see "Propaganda", a Turkish film. It had German subtitles but was sufficiently simple in concept that while I'm sure I missed a few subtleties here and there with my spotty German, I understood most of it. Actually the plot was so obvious that I probably would have been fine with only the Turkish dialogue. Right, time for skating... Regards, Scott