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.

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.

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.