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.

Free museum Thursdays: Old places

Despite generous subsidies by the university for cultural events, free is still better than paying half. Therefore, I have made it a goal to hit up a new museum every Thursday. These past two Thursdays, I have gone to the Museum Island, which is the Prussian empire’s vision of culture. In true romantic and idealistic fashion, it literally is a whole island of museums in the middle of Berlin.

The two that I have visited so far are the Altes Museum and the Altes Nationalgalerie.


The Altes Museum—“Old Museum”—was designed by the multi-talented, vastly influential Karl Friedrich Schinkel. It was built across from Federick the Great’s palace, which must have been a pretty tough assignment considering that’s what the King sees when he looks out his window. It can’t overpower the palace, but it has to live up to its prominent location. The big panels of glass didn’t used to be there. That’s right, it was just an open space, bridging a direct connection to the surrounding buildings and environment. Here's a view from the side:


In terms of the collection, the most notable piece is the famous bust of Queen Nefertiti. After looking at all the other excavated artifacts, the Nefertiti bust really stands out. It is incredibly well preserved, with most of its colors still in fact. Her features are also more elegant—by my Western standards—than the other ones. All in all, I thought the building itself was much more interesting than its contents. The inside is pretty neat as well:


On the other hand, I really liked the pieces I saw at the Altes Nationalgalerie, also on Museum Island. When you first walk in, you see a number of beautiful sculptures by Schadow and Rauch, two great 19th century German sculptors, including the marble version of his famous piece of princesses Friederike and Louise.


I like museums that logically guide you through its rooms much more than ones that have interconnected rooms that weave into each other and ask you to explore on your own. I’m not saying I like having my hand held, but I’m just acknowledging that whoever is setting up the exhibit probably knows more about the pieces than I do. Therefore, she has the unique opportunity to tell a story, draw some connections, or create a pleasant walk for the lesser informed.

The Altes Nationalgalerie is such a museum. In this "Old National Gallery," the first three rooms of paintings were especially thoughtfully put together. As we walked into each new room, we would be greeted with a piece that is more refined than the works in the previous room. However, after setting up our expectation of the more defined styles, the rest of the pieces in that room would feature stylistically or substantially related but much more “wild” works. In these rooms, we saw works of Monet, Manet, Cézanne, and Renoir. They weren’t masterpieces from these giants, but you can’t really complain about seeing a superstar cast of artists all in one place.

Another notable part of the museum is its large collection of Adolph Menzel paintings. We got to walk through a few decades of work that he produced, which included everything from commissioned paintings of high society to nature to his feet. It was clear that his technical ability was beyond question, but it was the lightheartedness in his paintings that he maintained until his death that struck me. Probably can’t say the same thing about the a lot of other painters. I suspect that the success he saw during his lifetime, obvious from the numerous royal paintings he produced, had a role in that quality of his work.

Bike Tour of Potsdam

This past Saturday, I went to Potsdam with our field trip course, "Berlin vor Ort." Potsdam a city to the southwest of Berlin, a few stops on the S-Bahn outside of the city. It was the residence of former Prussian kings and the location of the Potsdam Conference, which I will talk about further down. We rented bikes next to the station, and 30 Stanford students proceeded to ride all over the city, dominating the streets and annoying locals. Here is a 6 minute photo walk through or our 6 hour bike tour. One observation: taking good pictures is pretty hard when you are in a pack of 30 bikes.

The city has a series of interconnecting lakes, and we saw our first one not long after we started riding. The city is really scenic, has a lot of green, and was basically just really beautiful. The professor led the way, and the rest of us followed. He said we should be okay, but some people got lost last year--which he said was mind-boggling.

We saw a lot of really nice houses, but I could not hear our professor as he was too far away. Maybe this house had some significance, maybe it was just cool. Either way, I appreciate it.

This next picture gives you a glimpse of what the cars had to go through to navigate around us. I thought the old school Chevy was a particularly interesting sight. Also, most of the streets were covered in cobblestone, which was quite painful in combination with shockless bikes.

I don't quite remember what this was and will ask my professor.

Schloss Cecilienhof is the English tudor style summer residence of the Hohenzollern family. More importantly, this is where the 1945 Potsdam Conference took place, where Churchill, Truman, and Stalin met to deal with the problems at the end of WWII.

I remember this by Spy Bridge, but it's actually called the Glienicke Bridge. The United States and Soviet Union exchanged captured spies on this bridge during WWII.

We stopped at a Biergarten for a late lunch. The professor was slightly baffled by the fact that no one ordered beer, which he says is the best part of the place. I personally think it's a good idea to bike sober.

As we were eating, a shark boat passed the Biergarten. Before this, my friend Kristine pointed out that there were many interesting looking boats on the lake. This one takes the cake though.

After the break at the Biergarten, we biked over to Park Sanssouci, the summer palace of Frederick the Great. My guidebook claims that it is "among the most beautiful palace complexes in Europe," and I don't doubt it. The name "Sansscouci" means "without cares," and one of the interesting interpretations of this name comes from the fact that Frederick the Great was buried here--we are without cares in death. Morbid.

The park had many beautiful sculptures of Greek mythological gods. Here's Artemis.

The Neues Palais in the background can be seen from the main avenue in the park.

After our brief visit at Park Sanssouci, we walked over to Friedenskirche, the Church of Peace. We were in the right place at the right time, so the professor decided that Stanford should pay for tickets to the Peace on Earth choir concert. The music was good, but it was slow and we were tired. I'm pretty sure each of us fell asleep at one point or another, which was especially bad because we were something like a third of the whole audience.

I took this next picture while riding over a bridge on the way home. Its serene calmness is actually pretty deceptive of the actual circumstances. An hour and 15 minutes into the concert, our professor rushed to get us out of the church. Some of us thought he was angry that we fell asleep, but it turned out that we needed to return the bikes by 7pm. It was 6:35 when we left the church. What ensued was pure hilarity as a long parade of Stanford students mad-rushed down the streets of Potsdam, dodging cars and riding down the wrong side of street at times. Because some people were trailing pretty far behind, our professor stayed behind and let the students find their way. At one point, we were off road and in the midst of a forest. I think we fully understood how some people could have gotten lost last year. I am honestly surprised that no one was lost or hurt. Ultimately, everything turned out fine, and we found our way back 20 minutes past 7.

Vegetarier in Berlin: Massai

Lychener Str. 12, 10437 Berlin
www.massai-berlin.edu


Yesterday, after several cancellations spread out over the last six months, I had dinner with my friend Chris. We chose Massai, a self-described "African" restaurant she found in her guidebook, because the guidebook said it was an vegetarian friendly but will also satisfy the adventurous omnivores. Yes, it serves zebra, antelope, and crocodile, but I won't be able to tell you about these fine delicacies because we're both vegetarian.

The guide was right--two pages of the menu were dedicated to vegetarian dishes. We ordered the Maadee combo under Vegetarische, along with Dju Dju banana beer and Dju Dju palms beer.


The place is really nicely decorated and looks touristy. It was dimly lit, with bold colors and animal wood carvings as decorations. They even had giraffe utensil holders which would probably make good presents for someone back home. But I'm in Germany, so I will try to purchase "German" things.

The beers came first. The banana beer was light and sweet, and you can smell the banana when the bottle is open. I would definitely go for some in the future if I come across it again. The palms beer was dark and almost red, but other than that it just tasted like a strong beer (its alcohol content is more than 8%).


Our first course was a soup that tasted saltier than it looks. It was a little like porridge and very tasty. I think there was some type of dried fruit in there (raisins?). Then came the "salad," which consisted of thickly julienned cucumber, carrots, and some other vegetables. It was drizzled in these yellow and brown sauces that added just a tiny bit of flavor that was barely salty with a hint of sweetness. Overall, it was refreshing and light.


Finally, the main course arrived. It was a big plate that spanned the length of our two-person table. The two main dishes were Foolfeta and Agbisa with rice and couscous, but the meal also featured small spinach, cabbage, and another dish--all sitting on two generous pieces of Injera bread. To tell the truth, I wasn't sure what I was eating most of the time, but as a vegetarian it was comforting to know that we weren't eating any exotic animals.

The Foolfeta, covered in shredded cheese, is African beans, tomatoes, and paprika. The African beans are humongous, so big that we didn't realize they were beans. They were like obese kidney beans and something like three-quarters of an inch long, but they definitely had the characteristic bean texture.

The menu described the Agbisa as a dish with sauce, onion, and tofu. However, instead of tofu, we had eggplant, which I am slightly allergic to. It's okay though, because I still enjoyed the small vegetable dishes, especially the spinach one. The spinach dish, next to the Agbisa, reminded me a lot of the Palak Paneer that I've had at various Indian restaurants (without the tofu-like cheese though). The couscous, under one of the dark fruit shells, was excellent as well.

The meal with the two beers came out to be around 30€ after tax and tip for two, which seemed very reasonable given fancy decorations, interesting beers, and three delicious courses. It's one of those meals that fill you up slowly, leaving you satisfied but not stuffed. Overall, I had a wonderful meal and would definitely recommend it to vegetarians and non-vegetarians alike!

Taiwanese on the U-Bahn

It's interesting how your brain filters out "noise" that you receive from the environment. I've read that if the brain actively processes all the sounds and smells and images that it's constantly bombarded with, it would explode from all the electric signals the neurons are firing at each other. Okay I made up that bit about the explosion, but it makes sense doesn't it?

Today, I hopped onto the U-Bahn to return home after having lunch at the Hackescher Markt stop. The U-Bahn was fairly busy, and the "noise" from my environment was German--simply because I don't understand it. All of a sudden, I heard something that vaguely sounded like Mandarin. I turned around and saw an Asian family and proceeded to eavesdrop. I was too far to understand what they were saying, but I was sure they were speaking Mandarin and Taiwanese. When the U-Bahn stopped at the next station, I moved away from the door as people boarded and unboarded. As the U-Bahn started moving again, I was close enough to them to initiate a conversation.

Ning eh hiao gong dai-wan-weh?

They looked at me, a bit surprised, and started being really talkative. I learned that they are originally from KaoHsiung in southern Taiwan, but the man has been working here in Berlin for 30 years. It seemed that the rest of the family was just visiting. In our short conversation that lasted two stops, the grandmother also managed to give me several life lessons. There was also a young boy who had his head in his mother's lap, who looked up at me once in a while and was generally unimpressed with seeing another Taiwanese on the U-Bahn.

I feel pretty at ease in Berlin after only two days, but hearing English reminds me  of home. Home in the broad sense of growing up in the states, an experience that includes school, friends, and the language I think and count in. Hearing Taiwanese in a foreign place evokes a different sense of home, the family sense that is almost completely disjointed from my experiences outside of home. It reminds me of my parents and aunts and grandparents, and I'm sure the life lessons from the grandmother contributed to that feeling too.

First exploration

Welcome to Berlin!

I spent the last two weeks as a migrant moving from one place to another: Houston, various rooms at Stanford, and finally to Berlin. After my temporary housing at Stanford expired, my friend Mario was kind enough to let me stay in his single. I tried to be as out of the way as possible and stacked my stuff into one neat but oversized stack everyday.


The flight was long but smooth, but it was a labrynth getting through the Frankfurt airport. I went up elevators, down escalators, through tunnels, past customs, past security checks, through more tunnels, more moving sidewalk deals, then ended up here. waiting for my connecting flight at Frankfurt airport, reading the Financial Times and sipping coffee to stay awake (I had essentially pulled an all nighter).

In any case, I arrived at center and the Stanford in Berlin staff were just amazingly nice. My classmates were generally friendly, and I immediately started talking to some of them beyond names, what they did during the summer, and how their flight was. After the paper work, I waited for the taxi to take me to my homestay, which didn't come for a good 45 minutes even though they said 5-10 minutes. And Germans are punctual too; shame on the taxi driver.

I pulled up to my homestay's house on Onkel-Tom-Str.-you read that right, and their U-Bahn station is called Onkel Toms Hutte-in my taxi and they were waiting for me. I was expecting one person, but I found three people greeting me at the door: my host Monika, her daughter Kathy, and her daughter Elyssa. Kathy doesn't live in this apartment anymore, but instead lives more towards the center of the city. Her daughter Elyssa, 7 years old, is adorable and quiet (in part because she didn't speak much English). Kathy and I immediately started talking at the dinner table while Monika was prepared a delicious dinner. She never really sat down for more than five minutes because she was so busy preparing the courses for the evening: dried olives, pasta with tomato sauce, declious 2005 something wine, freshly brewed coffee made from beans an Austrian man roasted himself, and the "biological" (organic) cake that Monika made. Talk about being spoiled.

During dinner, Kathy (kah-ti) mentioned that it was her friend Patrick's birthday, and he was going to celebrate it at a salsa club. She asked me if i was interested, and of course I saidyes--why would i come this far and sit out on my first chance at cultural immersion?

On the way there, Kathy diligently explained to me how the Berlin public transit system worked, trained me to navigate myself, and in no time we were there. it was around 9:45pm and we walked from the station to the club, which by day is a indoor put-put golf lounge--Capitol City Golf Lounge. She describes it as a retiree-friendly atmosphere, but I didn't see that many old folks. On the way there, we stopped by the Spree River that runs through Berlin. It was nice that I was already seeing some attractions. The air was cool and the river was calming in its size and darkness.

When we arrived at the club, we got in free because Kathy actually teaches salsa. I definitely felt like a badass getting into a retiree-friendly salsa/put-put club for free. Kathy and her friends were welcoming. When they weren't dancing, they would come over to talk to me and buy me drinks and introduce me to new people, who would toast, "Welcome to Berlin!" I had my first beer in Germany, a Beck's, which apparently is the first German beer company to use green bottles. I also busted out some knowledge about Cuban rueda salsa, which definitely impressed her friends. ¡Un fly!

On the way home, Kathy gave me another useful tip about Berlin public transit: if you're catching the U-Bahn at night, you better run. In the evenings, the trains come in intervals of 13-17 minutes, so if you miss it you're in for a long wait. We made all our transfers with seconds to spare, and she dropped me off at U3 for me to return to Uncle Tom's Cabin.