Life at Uncle Tom's Cabin

As I’ve mentioned before, I live by the Onkel-Toms-Hütte (literally Uncle Tom's Cabin) subway stop and on Onkel Tom Straße (Street). According to Wikipedia, some guy named Thomas set up a bar in the area in 1885. He put in a number of huts in the beer garden, which became known as "Tom's huts." The name reminded people of the book, and later a movie theater and street were named the same thing. The bar was eventually demolished in the 70's, leaving the namesake to the street and U-Bahn station. Southwest of the city center, it’s a quiet suburb that is substantially different from many of the more happening places in Berlin. We have a few grocery stores, a bakery, two haircut places, and not enough restaurants.

The apartment, like the generic image of cabins I hold in my mind, is quite small. I often find myself negotiating tight turns, stepping over bed corners, and squeezing through doors that don’t open all the way because something is stored on the other side. Most of the tables fold up, and household items seem to fit like jigsaw puzzles on precious horizontal surfaces. Because of such limited spaces, things constantly get moved from one surface to another when a surface is called upon for the activity of the moment.

And I like it.

More than a house that holds your possessions and keeps out the uncomfortable elements, it’s the kind of home that lives and co-exists with you. Frau Scholz-Stahnke’s free flowing water colors cover the walls, jagged pink crystal-like rocks line the top of the living room’s main shelf, and candles of various shapes and sizes litter the house. Books, magazines, and newspapers are everywhere but never seem to remain in the same place. In her kitchen, she has honey from an Argentina beekeeper and jam from South Africa—things that she’s been all too eager to share with me.

Most of all, Frau Scholz-Stahnke is basically the best host mom I could have asked for. Some of my friends have never had a single extended conversation with their host families, and I’m pretty glad that I’ve had the opportunity to get to know mine. Frau Scholz-Stahnke was a teacher for 30 years, like my own grandmother, and her passion for learning is evident in all the books that fill the room I stay in—literature, science, alternative medicine, education, architecture, languages, and too many other titles in German that I can’t decipher. She’s down with an informed political discussion, attends seminars held at local universities, and tells me she’s working on yet another new language.

Even more telling is her attitude towards the future. She’s a grandmother who embraces the rapidly changing world. She once told me that she wants put to her all her “informations” on her laptop, so one day she can go without paper. She Skypes with her daughter in Sevilla regularly, uses email, and is a frequent Internet surfer. Read that again. She’s 65. How many grandmothers do you know who talk about living a paperless life?

She’s probably also fed me more food than any of the other host parents. Just now, she brought me a tray of Salbei tea, miso soup, her homemade cake, and a glass of red wine. She’s always offering me her homemade bread. There is also a brand new, unabridged dictionary-sized, vegetarian cookbook in her kitchen. I’m pretty sure she bought it in preparation of my living here.

When I got sick this past week, she blitzkrieged my cold with two kinds of Vitamin C tablets, gallons of tea with honey, homeopathic drops, warm lemon juice, salt water, soup, blankets, jackets, and socks.

Oh yeah, did I mention that all the host is required to do is provide a room and a place for me to cook? Yeah, Frau Scholz-Stahnke’s cabin pretty much rocks.

Too big for the jungle gym

Friday was the 19th anniversary of Reunification. For dinner, I went out to a nice Vietnamese restaurant called "Good Morning Vietnam" in the hip part of town with my host sister Kathy and her friends from West Germany. There was one vegetarian item on the menu, so ordering was easy.

Afterwards, I went with Kathy's two friends to the Reunification concert at Brandenburg Gate near Unter den Linden. It was massive and had been going on since 1pm. Apparently 200,000 people showed up, and Germans from all over came to Berlin to see this free concert of German bands. We got there kind of late, so I only caught glimpses of random DJs. Treading through the rubble of plastic cups from the fallout of this enormous party, I realized that not being with my Stanford friends this weekend has allowed for so much more immersion. I spoke intermittent German through the night, used only German with the waiter, and even managed to impress the Kathy and her friends with the declensions that I had to memorize for the last test.

Maybe I was just feeling good from glass of Merlot I had over dinner or the Glühwein I had at the concert. Glühwein, by the way, is pretty awesome. It's this piping hot, red wine drink mixed with spices. Drinking it in the cold, you're warmed by the hot cup in your hands, liquid in your belly, and the general warming quality of alcohol. People usually have it around Christmas time, but I guess the celebratory atmosphere sufficed.

Saturday was pretty tame, but actually a lot of fun. I spent it with my host mom and my 7 year-old host niece, Elisa. She spoke to me just once before Saturday, and by the end of the day she had spoken more German to me than any other person since I arrived. Including my teacher.

We walked to an outdoor market in the morning, which was really interesting. Farmers sold their groceries, jam man sold his jam, starving artist sat awkwardly in his booth because no one wanted to go up close to look at his art (probably to avoid feeling guilty about not buying). On the way home, I carried kartoffeln—potatoes—in my messenger bag because the environmentally conscious culture here meant that people usually brought their own bags when grocery shopping.

In the afternoon, the three of us went to a park in the the forest near my homestay. At one point, Elisa took me to this part of the forest that was basically impossible for anyone over 4'3" to navigate. I crouch-walked like an awkward confused crab while she just charged ahead. As she doesn't speak much English, I told her I was too big in German. That cracked her up. The picture above is her using my camera. I had to hold it steady for her while balancing in my lap my German cultures reader, which I naively thought I would be able to read at the park. Instead, we climbed trees and rode the zipline and played on the jungle gym. The monkey bars are a lot tougher now and I stepped over things rather than going under them.

After a light dinner of soup and bread, we played German board games. We changed games after playing each once, so by the time I learned the rules we were moving on. Then we played with dolls. My dolls, Jari and Jochen—named after my German teachers because I couldn't comes up with other German names when her dolls asked mine for their names—failed to communicate with hers. Elisa's dolls spoke in paragraphs, but my dolls only stammered in fragments and drew from a vocabulary that didn't extend far beyond ich, bin, and Glühwein.

Location, location, location

I had plans to go to Oktoberfest in Munich this three-day Reunification weekend, but I started getting sick on Tuesday. I woke up this morning and knew that it would be a total disaster for my health if I went. So, I sat out on the giant party and sat down with my host mom and had breakfast—her homemade rolls with shiitake mushroom spread and tea with honey.

My host mom suggested that I can instead go to Prague, which apparently is 3 hours by train. Or maybe take a short trip to Copenhagen, also a few hours away.

Growing up in Houston, getting in the car for 5 hours meant going to Dallas and 3 hours meant Austin or San Antonio. If we drive for the good part of the day, then we might be in Oklahoma. I’m not hating, but Oklahoma is no Czech Republic. Arriving at Stanford, I thought it was so great that good beaches are within reach and Lake Tahoe is six hours away. At Admit Weekend, we were told that it’s even possible to go to the beach and go skiing in the same day.

Berlin kind of blows all that away.

The fact that countries are within a 5 hour commute is pretty incredible to me. Even if I stay in the city—there’s plenty to see. I grew up in the suburbs, and living in a city like Berlin really makes me wonder if I missed out on some things. Here, I can get anywhere on public transportation, which is always on time. Lakes, nightlife, museums, and new places are all within reach via U-Bahn or S-Bahn. Walking two blocks from my homestay puts me in a forest with two lakes.

In any case, I’ll stop swooning and go book a train ticket or something.