The lyrics mean so much to me, and the version with Mary J. Blige is my favorite.
Little man and I are going to leave for Hong Kong soon. See you all in a few days from there.
PS: To the spammer who left the marathon gibberish on “Bionade”… GET YOUR OWN BLOG…DAMMIT!!!
The furry animal in the trailer is a large black dog. I wish I would have taken a better picture, but they were so faaaaaaaaast.
More pictures taken at the canal banks in Berlin-Kreuzberg are here.
In Germany, even McDonald’s sells it, and I am getting slowly addicted to it. Bionade is a fermented lemonade made out of organic ingredients and - don’t worry - has absolutely no alcohol in it. And best of all, it has less than half the calories of coca-cola.
I just don’t know what my favorite flavor is, herbs or orange-ginger… lychee and elderberry aren’t bad either. Want to bet how long it takes until one of the biggies buys them out? Gosh, I wish they were listed.
PS: Fireworks are going off… England 1 … Germany 2. What’s wrong Beckham? Don’t know how to bend it ? ;)
PPS: Thank you for the “Danke for 2006”, that was sweet. Next time you win. You deserve it.
When I was a little girl, my parents used to take me to East Berlin on day trips, to see the other half of the city. We also visited friends and family in East Germany, but most of them lived in little towns some distance away from Berlin. Sightseeing visits to East Berlin were rarer, but they remain very vivid in my memory.
East Berlin was so different from the western part of the city, where we lived. It was gray, run down, and quiet, but it also had Berlin’s historic city center, and because very little had been done on the old buildings it always seemed like a journey back in time.
Yesterday, we went to Prenzlauer Berg, which I had seen for the first time during one of these visits. Then, getting to the Eastern part of the city took lengthy preparation and a long wait at the border, yesterday it was a simple subway ride.
Prenzlauer Berg is a beautiful inner city neighborhood, north east of the Brandenburg Gate. Like the name “Berg” (mountain) suggests it lies on a hill, and most of the buildings from the late 19th and early 20th century still exist. The neighborhood is one of the few inner city boroughs that was not heavily bombarded during World War II. When I saw Prenzlauer Berg for the first time during GDR times, most of the buildings were in terrible disrepair, now they have been renovated.
Prenzlauer Berg was a popular neighborhood for artists, students, and intellectuals during GDR times, and some of them began to organize opposition against the socialist regime in the 1980s. Zionskirche, pictured below, served as a meeting place for them, and was later closed by the Stasi in an effort to stop the movement.
After the fall of the wall, a lot of young people from the west moved into the derelict buildings in the neighborhood, and it was quickly established as the place to live and play in Berlin. That’s still the case, but the whole neighborhood, now restored and very pretty, has gone up-market and many of the original residents can’t afford the rising rents. It’s still a young neighborhood and very popular with young families, but you need to have a well-paying job to be able to live there.
If you would like to see the pictures larger and with captions click here.
I want to be cremated and my ashes scattered at sea, because:
1) I don’t want to be gaped at by nosy museum visitors 2500 years later (“well preserved female, lower caste, early primitive computer technology found by her side”).
2) Don’t look like beef jerky… yeah, call me vain.
The rest of the exhibition “Royal Tombs of the Scythians” was amazing though.
Go here to see artifacts from the exhibition, and here to read an English-language article describing what’s on display, and here to read up on Scythians.
Have you ever heard Tom Jones’ Sex Bomb in barbershop style?
I had to laugh out loud when I heard it. He also does a nice “Oops… I did it again”, but the three line lyrics don’t yield as much fun as Sex Bomb.
Max Raabe began by singing cabaret songs of the 1920s and 30s in bars and little theaters in Berlin. Today, he and his Palast Orchester tour from one big concert hall to the next, performing old favorites as well as new material.
Do you ever have one of those days, when the sun, peeking through your window in the morning, puts you in a real fool mood, because your inner barometer, the one in your head, points to storm?
That’s how I felt yesterday. I wasn’t sick, didn’t even have a headache, but was feeling not up to par anyway. I wanted to stay in bed, the whole day. But that’s a luxury few people can indulge in, and I certainly cannot.
So I drank two cups of coffee on empty stomach to get up to speed (yeah, yeah… don’t say anything), and then brought little man to his swimming lesson. While little man practiced “frog legs” in the big pool, I went through all the possible reasons why I was feeling crappy. I couldn’t find any. None that would justify staying in bed the whole day anyway.
I dragged myself through the day and drank lots of coffee, which didn’t help one bit. During a free minute I googled “constant tiredness”. The site I clicked on told me that drinking coffee makes you even more tired, which confirmed my suspicion, and advised to do more exercise. Nope, that was not the answer I was looking for. So, I googled some more, and came up with three more satisfying explanations: constant fatigue syndrome, anemia, and clinical depression. Which reminded me of a newspaper article, which said that the internet encouraged hypochondria. After reading up on these three illnesses, I decided that I didn’t want to have any of them, and was just having a crappy day.
In the late afternoon, a thunderstorm came up, half an hour of loud thunder and lightning and very little rain, and suddenly I was feeling much better. Turns out that my inner barometer didn’t lie to me. This morning my period started, and delivered another explanation.
A long while ago, I saw a documentary about a tribe in Africa, who outcasts menstruating women to a hut outside the village, because they were considered impure. Much to the surprise of the film-maker, the women didn’t mind at all. It was like a holiday for them.
Right now, I wouldn’t mind an off-limits hut somewhere nice. Throw in a comfy bed, internet connection, and a few books, and my period may last for two weeks.
Berlin is my home city, and it will always be a special place for me, but I don’t suffer from home sickness in Hong Kong either. Living abroad is a wonderful adventure for me. When I am in Berlin, half of me is a native, the other half sees the city with some distance, almost like a tourist. It’s a funny state to be in, and I think most expats go through the same feelings.
I try to make the most of my Berlin visits. I don’t have to work from nine to five, and can enjoy the city, and the best part is that I already know some of the best places to visit.
The following is not a top ten list of things to see or do in Berlin, just a random list of things I enjoy when I am here.
I enjoy that Berlin is a green city
Whenever I arrive, it’s the first thing I notice, and it has an immediate soothing effect on me. Berlin has over 400,000 trees lining its streets, and they make walking or bicycling on a hot summer day much more fun. Berlin also has over 2,500 parks, small neighborhood parks as well as expansive city parks like the Tiergarten in the center of the city (pictured above), or the beautiful Gardens of the World.
Berlin has lots and lots of water
Any tourist guide worth his money will tell you that Berlin has more bridges than Venice. There are two rivers, several canals, and innumerable lakes throughout the city area. The Wannsee and Müggelsee, the two largest lakes, are popular weekend retreats.
One of my favorite spots in the city is the bank of the Landwehrkanal in Kreuzberg. I usually start my stroll at Maybachufer, which is the site of a colorful Turkish market on Tuesday and Friday afternoons, and then walk along the green banks of the canal towards Urbanhafen. There are some very nice garden cafes and restaurants along the way, and also restaurant ships anchored on the banks of the canal.
Speaking of water…
Berliners are spoiled for choice, when they want to go swimming. There are more than 60 public swimming pools and lake-side beaches, and wherever you live in the city a pool isn’t far away. Little man has been going to swimming lessons at our neighborhood pool since we have arrived. It’s a special daily course during the school holidays, and it’s great fun to see all these kids having fun and making progress.
Berlin’s traffic men look cute
Berlin’s little green and red men are one of the few holdovers from communism. In East Germany all traffic men wore hats, and when the wall came down West Berliners wanted them too. Now they can be found in East Berlin, and also on new traffic lights in West Berlin.
Ick bin een Berlina. Da kiekste, wa?!
I love the Berlin dialect. Ok… the rest of Germany might not agree, but they don’t know what’s good anyway. It’s my true first language. I also know how to speak Hochdeutsch (high German), but when I am in Berlin, chatting with good friends or family, there is absolutely no doubt that I was born and raised here.
Berliners are direct
Most often too direct. They relish telling you, when you are wrong, and won’t hide if they don’t like you. On the other hand, you always know where you are with them, which is quite refreshing.
To give you an example, a few days ago little man crashed with his bicycle. His knee and elbow were bleeding, and he was crying miserably. Five people passed us, on foot or bicycles, and all of them offered help. But the sixth only saw a mama holding her child in her arms, standing in the middle of the path. He told me that I was blocking the way… that’s the Berlin mix of “Herz und Schnauze” (heart and big mouth). Some have more Herz, others more Schnauze.
Berlin has a public transport system that works!
Subways, city trains, buses, trams… all interconnected in a dense network crisscrossing the city. But don’t try to tell Berliners, how good their public transport is. They won’t believe you. Instead, they rather stand in traffic jams with their cars, and spend hours in search for a parking space.
Speaking of not having to use a car…
Berlin has over 800 kilometers of bicycle paths, and a lot of people use their bicycles for daily transportation. It’s a wonderful way to see the city, go to places without worrying about high gas prices, and getting a work-out at the same time. If you don’t want to pedal on your own, you can always hire a velotaxi… the video even says that they are exporting the high-tech rickshaws back to Asia… :)
Museums, theaters, operas, art galleries…
we have them all, and the nice thing is that there isn’t just a wide variety of big, state-supported places, but also smaller ones, like off-theaters in cellars and rooftops, music stages in former circus tents, private galleries, and one room museums. It makes for a very lively cultural scene, which no doubt profits from Berlin’s low property prices.
I hear that the night life isn’t bad either…
and doesn’t need to hide behind those of bigger cities, but don’t ask me where to go. Like all people over thirty with small kids, I am so out of it. On the other hand, if you need to know where the best children’s playgrounds are, send me an email.
Yesterday evening, I began scanning family photos, which my parents keep in various albums and boxes. There are hundreds of images, and I won’t have the time to scan all of them while here, but I would like to save at least some, especially those with fading colors. While most of the black and white pictures are in very good condition, a lot of the color photographs have developed a red tinge over the years.
The oldest photograph I found is this christening picture of my grandpa. There is no date on the picture, but he was born in 1896, and I am guessing that the photo was taken not much later.
My great-grandparents had an agricultural machinery business, and could afford to bring their kids to the local photographer once in a while. On the other hand, we have not a single turn-of-the century photo from my father’s side of the family, which was working class, i.e. poor as church mice, and could barely feed and cloth their off-spring.
My grandpa a few years later, posing in his sailor suit.
In 1914 World War I started, and the picture below was taken shortly before my grandfather had to leave for France. The story could have ended right there, but instead of dying in Verdun for the follies of the Kaiser, he was captured by the French and brought to a POW camp in Calais, where he spent the rest of the war.
My grandma’s brother, fifth from right below, was not so lucky. He had just gotten a coveted position as a violinist in a spa orchestra, when World War I started. He boarded the train to France, and must have been killed shortly after his arrival. My grandma’s family never heard from him, nor did they get any information on what happened.
But my grandpa did survive World War I, and eventually met the young Fräulein sitting on the left, my grandma. The young woman standing next to her was her best friend. The friendship lasted until my grandma died in 1986.
My grandparents married relatively late, and my grandma was already thirty-five when my mom was born. These days thirty-five is normal child bearing age, but then it was considered very late. And guess why it happened so late… yes, my grandma thought of her career first ;). She was a tailor and went to “Meister”-school to be able to open her own business. Until the nineteen-sixties she owned a tailoring business with half a dozen employees.
Red riding hood on the very left is my mom. There are very few pictures from the years afterwards, when World War II even came to the small town my mom and grandparents lived in. Fortunately, my grandfather was too old to be drafted, and my mother too young to serve in any of Hitler’s ridiculous youth organizations. So they just had to get through the hunger and the bombings, which where not as bad as in big cities. My dad, on the other hand, grew up in Berlin, where the going was much tougher. Still no pictures from his side of the family.
That’s my mom in the mid-fifties, shortly before she left her hometown in East Germany for richer pickings in West Berlin. At that time the border was still open, and East Germans were leaving by the hundred thousands for the West.
In Berlin, she met my dad. My mom was standing in front of a newsstand, studying the lottery numbers, when my father asked her if she had won… not a bad pick-up line, if you ask me.
My parents tried and tried and tried to have children, and eventually after much trying and waiting little Cosima was born. Notice the smile on my grandma’s face? It’s the same as in the picture above, that shows her as a young woman. (Btw, the spots are on the photograph not on my grandma’s sweater.)
That’s me with my best kindergarten buddy. I am the one holding the pen in the left hand, something I inherited from my grandma.
Oh… since it’s half-nekkid Thursday, here is a topless bonus pic. I am the half-naked … on the very left. Obviously, male …, right before my eyes, hasn’t shocked me from an early age.
[I decided to take this pictures of my blog and photo site, as my statcounter showed that people who searched for pics with very troubling search terms were directed to it. It was a pic of me, five years old, and friends at the pool. I also deleted words that were part of the search term.]
