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Berlin

An Expat’s Guide to Making Friends

Posted on March 5, 2011

There is a lot about moving abroad that makes you feel like you are back on the mean streets of adolescence, a.k.a. the hormonal halls of middle school. For example, I immediately felt thirteen again upon having to figure out exactly how to use applicator-free, organic cotton German tampons. Then there’s the whole problem of making friends because, well, all of a sudden even though you thought you were a well-adjusted adult approaching mid-life, you don’t have any friends. At least not in Berlin. In Berlin you are roaming the metaphorical halls of middle school, searching for a clique that you actually want to be a part of and that will have you.

Luckily I had some experience to draw from.  I had done this once before, almost six years ago when we moved from Los Angeles to London. And thus I have devised my handy Expat’s Guide to Making Friends in three easy steps.

Step 1:
Accept invitations from anyone, including well-meaning work colleagues with whom, upon reflection, you have nothing in common other than work. How else would you end up eating brunch at a Siberian restaurant and listening to aforementioned well-meaning colleague deliver a joint monologue with his wife about how they ended up in Berlin that lasts, unbroken, through three trips to the buffet table? And yes, apparently Siberia has a cuisine, which based upon the evidence of this brunch resembles that of a down-at-the-heels church potluck. Still, it was nice of them to invite us.

Step 2:
Solicit invitations from anyone/place/thing. This is easier than it sounds. Just Google the International Womens Club in your city. I did this in Berlin despite the experience I had with it in London where it was overrun with bankers’ wives with a penchant for lunchtime activities that I could never attend because, shock, I actually worked during the day. I also did this despite the fact that the one night time invitation I netted out of the London club resulted in husband and I spending an evening on red leather couches in an apartment in Pimlico surrounded by Republicans in the George Bush second term-era.

Happily, our first outing with the Berlin branch of the International Womens Club went better. It started well enough when we were seated at the fondue restaurant between an American consultant and his antique-dealing wife and a Japanese couple who turned out not to be a couple.  Then in swooped Jocelyne of Brittany, a middle-aged, larger-than-life paean to fabulousness.  Her career as a diplomatic translator made her interesting enough, then we learned she had previously lived in the Cotswolds (in the town where we had first visited, Mickleton, no less) and her sister lived in Santa Monica.  Small world.

Step 3:
Find your local English Language Bookshop and sign up for the mailing list. Yes, I know the poetry reading starts at 9PM on a weeknight which is the time you are normally watching Mad Men in your pajamas, but go anyway. How else would you hear the line “Dave, the radiologist” used to great effect in a poem read to you by a poet over Skype from Brooklyn while you drink white wine from a tumbler? For this pleasure you will have to endure a bearded twenty-something reading you a “sound poem” in which he repeats the same word continuously for two minutes. (I don’t remember the word, but I do remember he thought it was important to tell the audience he had studied with an acoustics professor.) You will also have to bear the silent wrath of the poet from Baltimore who glares at you before she mounts a step ladder six-inches from where you are sitting—how were you supposed to know that was her podium?—forcing you to stare into the middle distance while she too repeats words, this time different ones in alphabetical order. Her poems are mildly annoying, but maybe we can be friends?

Berlin

Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs for Expats: Pizza, Wine, Movies

Posted on March 5, 2011

A month has passed since we relocated to Berlin, and, upon reflection, I’ve come to the conclusion that the key to settling into a foreign country is establishing suppliers of three basic needs: pizza, wine and movies.  These three things form the cornerstone of our weekly routine, and I suppose it is the creation of a routine that starts to make you feel at home.

Pizza was easy.  In fact, we ate at our local pizza joint, La Focacceria, on our first night in Berlin.  I could write a whole blog about this place so much do I love it, but let me summarize by saying enough super-savory pizza to satisfy the prodigious appetites of both husband and me sets you back a mere €7. Wine was also easy, and I have in fact already written a whole blog about our corner wine bar.  Finding a cinema that shows English language movies was a little more challenging.

Lonely Planet had tipped me off about the existence of a nearby English language cinema, Central Kino.  What they had failed to mention was how hard it was to find once you arrived at the designated street address.  Luckily I noticed a small, photocopied sign reading Central Kino with an arrow pointing through an archway.  At this point we were only several days into our Berlin adventure, and let’s just say we were both feeling a bit overwhelmed.  We had been plucked from our bucolic village and thrust into the big bad city in the depth of winter.  And as we passed through that archway into a graffiti-covered alley (pictured), things felt distinctly menacing.

Ten meters later I noticed another photocopied sign for Central Kino hanging loose from the wall. I took a guess and led us up a stairwell straight ahead.  It was so covered with graffiti it had texture.  And smell.  Halfway up the first flight of stairs even I, the more adventurous of us, was repelled back into the courtyard by wafts of urine.  There we encountered a twenty-foot high metal monster statue staring down at us.  Determined to find someone who could direct us to the kino, I marched husband into a bar that somehow managed to be pitch black inside even though it was still daylight outside.  “Do you speak English?” I demanded of the barmaid while stealing furtive glances at the clientele, half expecting to see syringes hanging out of their arms.  Perhaps concerned for our safety, the barmaid personally led us out of the bar, across the courtyard, behind the monster, and into the lobby of the Central Kino where we continued the theme of psycho drama with a viewing of Black Swan.  Like pizza and wine, movie night at Central Kino has since become a regular part of the Berlin routine.

APRIL 2011 UPDATE:
I can’t believe I forgot to mention a good hair colorist in my list of every ex-pat gal’s needs.  And I have found mine in Berlin: Andreas (speaks perfect English and is a charmer) at his beautiful Aveda salon, schönBERLIN.
An der Spandauer Brücke 11
10178 Berlin
030 2848 4780
http://www.schoenberlin.com

Berlin

Mercedes and Me

Posted on February 25, 2011

Yesterday was my thirty-ninth birthday, and I gave myself a Mercedes.

Not really.  I mean, I did get a Mercedes yesterday, but the fact that it arrived on my birthday was pure coincidence, as is the fact that the license plate bears both my initials and those for body odor.  A company car is a perq of the job and while I would have been happy to take the cash allowance (seeing as I live a ten-minute walk from the office and Berlin has some of the best public transport in the world), a large German automotive experience on which to traverse the autobahns was part of the Faustian bargain I made with husband in order to persuade him to move to Berlin. And thus a large, charcoal grey, slightly menacing-looking station wagon is now parked on the cobbled street in front of our apartment.

But my relationship with Mercedes Benz begins way before yesterday.  It goes back as far as I can remember to the almost mythical status it held in my childhood household thanks to my mother’s coveting of a two-seater, red Mercedes convertible.  It was an impossibly glamorous object of desire, made even more so against the backdrop of our staid suburban track-house neighborhood.  She and my father upgraded out of that neighborhood to one with, well, bigger track houses shortly after my sister and I left home, but it took her until just a few years ago to finally get that little red convertible.  Perplexingly, she chose a Lexus.  It reminded me of how growing up I wanted more than anything to pierce my ears.  My parents’ rule, though, was that I was not allowed until I was sixteen.  Then when I finally did turn sixteen, I decided not to pierce them.  I guess it was my way of pretending I had been in control all along.  To this day, they’re still not pierced.

My second run in with a Mercedes came when I was first living in Los Angeles.  I had lent money to my then boyfriend, who was having trouble paying me back.  He offered to give me his 1960s Mercedes convertible to pay off the loan. It was Grace Kelly incarnate in a car: navy blue with tan leather interior and round headlights. The catch was that it didn’t start. And I was so mad at him for being irresponsible with money that at the time it just seemed like he was trying to pawn me off with a broke-down car.  I insisted he pay me back in cash. Penny wise and pound foolish is a phrase that comes to mind.

It only took me about fifteen more years to finally get my own Mercedes.  If my mother ever comes to visit in Berlin I’ll have to let her drive it.  Maybe she can take me to get my ears pierced.

Berlin

The Corner Bar

Posted on February 18, 2011

We have a corner wine bar in Berlin.  It has a name on a little sign outside, but I don’t know what it is because the moniker “boho wine bar” has stuck in my household.  It is as much a coffee shop as a wine bar, but we drink wine there more than coffee, usually Sylvaner or Riesling.  It also sells soup, which you serve yourself from two urns that are either opposite the bar or on the enormous curvy dark-wood buffet in the back room.  Next to the cash register — a porcelain bowl filled with coins pinning down a stack of bills —  there is a plate of sandwiches on little round rolls and sesame-seed sprinkled croissants.  An enormous cherry clafoutis reliably spills out over a piece of parchment next to the sandwiches.  So far nothing I’ve tried has cost more than €2.50.

Whether your glass of wine costs €2.00 or €2.50 seems to depend on who is working, who is ordering, and how many glasses that person has ordered.  The bartender/barista with the long curly locks pulled back into a ponytail who plays bad South American music, for example, is more generous with husband than me.

The interior of boho wine bar is lined with a wall of settees in alternating shades of wine-colored and seafoam green velvet, interspersed with mid-century armchairs, and lit from beneath mustard-yellow floral lampshades.  In other words, it’s a study in DDR vintage.  Just when I thought it couldn’t get any better, out she came through the swinging, graffiti-covered kitchen door.  She was middle-aged, blonde, compact and wearing a shiny gold bomber jacket, black pleather mini skirt, green tights, leg warmers and faux running shoes — a Berlin-punked Sandy Duncan à la Peter Pan.  She is, I can only reason, responsible for that cherry clafoutis.

Over the weekend we finally ventured a little further afield than our corner bar, into Prenzlauer Berg proper where the Kollwitzplatz farmers’ market was in full swing.  It’s the kind of market where you can get a currywurst with pomme frittes and truffle mayo accompanied by a glass of pink prosecco along with your fruit and veg, and we did.  It was a freezing day with a searing wintry sun in a blue sky, and as we wandered along the gentrified, cobbled streets it was hard to avoid comparisons to Paris.

At Café Anna Blum the waitress look confused when we tried to order a mimosa, then a buck’s fizz, and finally champagne and orange juice.  But she obliged, serving it in two tall glasses with bendy pink straws.  I believe it was there on the heated patio with café-provided red fleece lap blankets that we committed the blasphemy of saying that this was better than the Rue Cler and the Rue Vieille du Temple combined.  In his predictable grass-is-always-greener way, husband then began to lament that we didn’t get an apartment in this neighborhood.  In my predictable rationalizing-optimist way I emphasized we were only a ten-minute walk away.  Even he couldn’t argue when I made the point that for all its yummy mummies and tapas bars, there are no DDR Peter Pans in this neighborhood.

Random

Adventures in Showering

Posted on February 5, 2011

In our first week in Berlin we have discovered many of the wonders of the city. There is the impaled UFO of a television tower in Alexanderplatz, the classical buildings of the museum quarter, the majestic Brandenburg Gate, the glass dome of the Bundestag, and the Central Park-like expanse of the Tiergarten, not to mention the basement food hall of the Galeries Lafayette (a surprise find by husband). But the thing I’ve been most fascinated by is much more local, inside our apartment as a matter of fact: our shower.

Like the television tower, our shower manages to look retro and futuristic at the same time. It could easily pass for a prop on Star Trek, especially when the miniature recessed ceiling lights are on (also convenient for use as a bathroom night light). Inside there are three knobs that seem to control from which direction the water shoots at you. My favorite is a combination of the removable shower head and ankle-height jets. Husband prefers the overhead experience, which is a bit too waterboardy for me. There are also two digital control panels with fourteen buttons each, most of which I am too scared to press despite the illustrations attempting to communicate what each is for. My favorite shows an adult stick figure standing next to a child. Bathing with your child is undoubtedly very continental, but the American prude in me refers to this as the pedophile setting. While we’re on disturbing subjects I’ll mention the coiled up length of blue rubber hose.  The accompanying illustrated warning looks like Loony Tunes’ language for speed: horizontal lines with a poof at the end that appear as the Roadrunner leaves Wile E. Coyote in the dust.

Husband did figure out what to press to make the jets undulate up and down your body in succession — an unsettling but not unpleasant experience — but so far neither of us have figured out how to work the high tap that pours into a shallow u-shaped shelf. There’s a bench underneath where apparently you sit until the shelf is filled and then tips over your head. Never mind exploring Berlin, there’s something to look forward to without leaving the house.

Berlin

Wanting to Want to Go

Posted on January 30, 2011

I had envisioned spending January posting wistful entries about the Cotswolds before my attention turns to Berlin on these pages, but I haven’t posted anything in over a month.  This is partly because it doesn’t really feel like we are leaving and so I am not in the frame of mind to wax lyrical.  We are, after all, moving into a furnished apartment in Berlin, and our cottage will remain largely intact except for our clothes.

The main reason for my lapse is that it has been an unpleasant few weeks.  Not that I haven’t written about unpleasant things before — sickness, death, and fighting come to mind — but until now there hasn’t been enough distance from the drama for me to construct anything palatable enough for publishing.  Husband is not happy about moving to Berlin, no matter how much contextualizing and box ticking and meeting of assorted terms and conditions is done.  And a lot of box ticking has been done: beautiful flat, beautiful car, walking distance commute, and at least monthly return visits to the Cotswolds to name a few.  He wants to want to go; the problem is he doesn’t want to go.

What he really wants is what isn’t on offer right now: to move back to Los Angeles.  We are, in fact, in agreement on the merits of Los Angeles, which boil down to sun, the Pacific, Mexican food and Peet’s coffee.  But I have now made enough moves initiated either entirely or partially in search of greener grass for husband — including London and the Cotswolds — to know there is limited mileage in relocation as an elixir for happiness.  As husband himself has been known to say, wherever you go, there you are.

But the truth is as much as husband doesn’t want to go, I do.  And so tomorrow night we will go, as planned, to Berlin.  Under the circumstances it won’t be easy, but then again, what is?

Christmas Letters

Christmas Letter 2010: I am a Jelly Donut

Posted on December 23, 2010

When Kennedy gave his famous speech declaring, “Ich bin ein Berliner,” some pesky linguists claimed he had mistakenly called himself a jelly donut. It turns out his grammar was correct since President Kennedy was speaking figuratively rather than literally. It also turns out that either interpretation now applies to me. After a couple of sunless months and a week of German food– flammenkuchen, wiener schnitzel, kartoffelpuffer, spaetzle, rotwein, weißwein, glühwein– my flesh now bears a striking resemblance to a powdered sugar-covered, Mr. Donut raspberry-filled. I’ve also decided, largely on the basis of a pastrami sandwich (step aside, Canter’s), to accept a job in Berlin in the new year.

If only the decision was that easy. The truth is that husband and I flip-flopped as many times as John Kerry during our four-day “decision visit” to Berlin. There was, of course, trepidation about turning husband into a trailing spouse, which I recently learned is the official diplomatic term for those in his situation. It also didn’t help that there was so much snow on the ground that my lingering impression of the city is of an upturned cola slurpee. But it did help that we found a great neighborhood with a great apartment in former East Berlin, five minutes away from the office and the purveyor of that pastrami sandwich. And so, shortly into the new year, the strapline for this blog will get an additional clause: “One woman’s journey from burritos and margaritas to tea and scones” will become “One woman’s journey from burritos and margaritas to tea and scones to bratwurst and bier.”

Our year has ended with a bang after eleven months of mostly blips. Perhaps the most important thing in the year was what didn’t happen at all: any further recurrence of the neurological symptoms I experienced last year that put me at risk for multiple sclerosis. The only thing related to multiple sclerosis that did happen this year was our London to Paris charity bike ride which so many of you graciously supported and for which we are grateful. We also made a return visit to France in the autumn to cycle through Provence, which husband now refers to as the broke-down seventies holiday thanks to the general state of modernity of the hotels we patronized. But the important things — wine and food — were good. Back at home we enjoyed showing off the Cotswolds to friends and family on a couple of weekends. We will miss it but we plan to visit once a month, and we hope to welcome you in both places.

Until then, Merry Christmas and Happy New Year to you!

Cotswolds England

Drag for the Under-Eights

Posted on December 13, 2010

After more than five years in England, I was pretty sure I had exhausted the repertoire of traditional British experiences. I’ve attended the grand sporting triumvirate of Ascot, Henley and Wimbledon. I’ve wanged-the-wellie at a village fête. I’ve even eaten haggis to celebrate a Scottish poet I’ve never read. But until last Saturday night, I had never attended a panto.

British pantomime is a Christmas theatrical tradition that seems to follow the format of fairytale — Cinderella in our case — with a twist. The purpose of these twists, like the walk-on role of the gorilla, seem to be entirely to encourage audience participation; the form is to shout “it’s behind you,” when said gorilla appears. You can also sing along to the updated musical numbers. We had a lot of Take That, but the best was the rendition of Adam and the Ants’ Prince Charming. Then there is Buttons, the narrator/bumbling suitor of Cinders, who encourages participation from the moms, dads, and kids in attendance. Apparently Buttons wasn’t expecting our group of six, childless adults in the second row. I decided to help out the dads, who seemed the quietest of the constituencies.

Then of course there was the drag. The ugly stepsisters were expected. What wasn’t expected was that Prince Charming and his page would be played by women, which meant the central romance of the story was girl-on-girl. Suddenly the origins of stereotypical British sexual confusion became clear; this is, after all, the entertainment Britons are weaned on. I did seem to be the only one in the audience shocked by it though. The under-eights squealed with delight throughout.

Random

Shanghai Blues

Posted on December 11, 2010

Welcome to ShangHai
Evaded affection
Pieces of pieces of the Heart
Thank you
Very Much

And so read the bag in which the hand-tailored clothes smelling of Chinese food and cigarettes was delivered to me on the last night of my visit to Shanghai. It’s a cheap shot to poke fun at translations, but I really like this one. It’s poetic, an off-kilter haiku.

My week in Shanghai started with a shopping trip on which I ordered the above mentioned clothes (which, smell aside, turned out beautifully). Shortly after touching down at Pudong airport, our personal shopper, Francine of East of the Sun, collected us from the hotel and took us on a whirlwind tour of cloth markets, pearl vendors, silk-binders, and cashmere boutiques in the French concession, with a welcome stop for a street snack of savory, glutinous rice-filled dumplings. The rest of the week was work-dominated, but there were other highlights like the Chinese banquet on our second night. After about ten dishes of varying degrees of identifiability (including tofu, something that looked like a stingray and was delicious, and meat of some kind with red chilies), the pièce de résistance arrived: hairy crab. I am a fairly adventurous eater, but on the advice of the more adventurous woman sitting next to me, I simply admired rather than indulged in the seasonal delicacy. I did, however, enjoy the red bean curd-filled dessert dumpling that looked and felt exactly like a silicon breast for a doll, right down to the crowning red dot. My final highlight of the trip was discovering a Coffee Bean and Tea Leaf in the ground floor of the office building of Thomson-Reuters, where we went for a presentation. They don’t even have those in London. And yes, I can confirm that a Coffee Bean latte tastes exactly the same in Shanghai as it does on Main Street in Santa Monica.

Uncategorized

More tea, vicar?

Posted on November 28, 2010

Today we went to church in GP after an unintended hiatus of some months. The new vicar was there, of whom we had heard much about earlier in the year in anticipation of her September arrival to the benefice. By her gender alone she would make a departure from the beloved previous vicar, the aptly named Godfrey. But based on those early descriptions I was also expecting a whirling dervish with a shock of flame-coloured curls. It turns out she is a modest forty-something with only a hint of ginger in her wavy bob. She was still feeling her way around her new congregation, and we weren’t making things easy on her. When she started the service by asking Dorothy to light the first candle of Advent, Dorothy duly informed her we usually didn’t light the candle until we started singing the first hymn. Wisely, the vicar agreed to this change of plan.

That first hymn got off to a shaky start. Our normal organist wasn’t there, and the doddering old gent who was sitting in for him attacked it double time. As we struggled to keep up with the melody and get the odd breath in, Dorothy sauntered up to attend to her Advent candle lighting duties. Just as the vicar was getting her rhythm in the second Bible reading, the organist interjected with a sharp musical note. It was unclear if he thought she was done, was just trying to add some emphasis to the last verse, or had fallen asleep and struck his head on the keys. This musical Tourettes continued, puncturing the prayers of intercession and the sermon as well. To make matters worse, the rest of the morning’s hymns were unfamiliar, leaving the diminutive congregation guessing at which “of” had three vowels versus one and whether or not you were supposed to repeat the fifth line of each verse three times — the kind of nuance in hymns that depends on the collective memory of the congregation. Despite all this the vicar soldiered on, dispatching an efficient Holy Communion and greeting us all with a smile on our way out. We haven’t broken her yet, but give Dorothy some time.