Berlin non-random sampling
Posted: December 2, 2011 Filed under: Uncategorized | Tags: Berlin, culture shock, Kreuzberg, market, neukölln, turkish, video Leave a comment »A moving slideshow. Almost everything but the digger and the barking dogs taken near Schönleinstrasse. At least mostly pretty near.
Don’t know how the digger got in there, but I like it.
East-West exchange
Posted: November 5, 2011 Filed under: Uncategorized | Tags: Berlin, Berlin Wall, culture shock, Deutsches Demokratisches Republik, Die Berliner Mauer, German Democratic Republic, Germany, Kreuzberg, neukölln, Ossis and Wessis, photos, travel writing Leave a comment »
I’m only on the other side of the river and up the street from where I used to live–maybe a mile and a half away from the old place–of course, twenty some years ago that would have been quite an extreme move.
I’d have had to dig a tunnel out of a fake wall in my cellar, or rig a special compartment under the back seat of an automobile and get an innocent old lady to drive me, or sew together a hot air balloon out of bedsheets, or something.
It would have been epic…if my plot didn’t get exposed and I got shot.
Nowadays, I just hired three Iraqis lads to hump it down the old 4 flights of stairs, load it up in their truck, drive it a few kilometers and hump it up the new 4 flights of stairs. Read the rest of this entry »
Colorful night homage on my old hood and more scribbles from summer
Posted: October 24, 2011 Filed under: Uncategorized | Tags: Berlin, culture shock, English teaching, Germany, photos Leave a comment »
Franko looked a bit rough today.
I had arrived at his office five minutes early and was walking around the block, utilizing the extra time, as I always do, for further Berlin exploration.
My first time here I discovered the Berlin Wall ran down the street, and I was excited to look around some more.
Alas, upon reaching the first corner my phone rang. Read the rest of this entry »
Scenes from a summer gone bye
Posted: October 18, 2011 Filed under: Fiction | Tags: Berlin, culture shock, disease fiction, English teaching, Germany, photos, sarcasm, satire, travel writing Leave a comment »
My afternoon student, Magdalena, was apparently some princess of Prussia. Sorry, The Princess of Prussia.
The next in line to the German throne, after her brother, were something to happen to him. If.
“Can I, with thee, talk?” my boss asked. My eyebrows raised, instantly wondering how I had fucked up. “It goes around thine single-student.”
“Sure…one moment,” I answered.
Not that I had ever fucked up, or ever gotten a complaint, at least not yet, but due to reasons concerning my nature, I always feared the worst when anyone said ‘let’s talk.’ Read the rest of this entry »
The Youth is a Ghost, Haunting my Falafel Research:
Posted: August 14, 2011 Filed under: Eggs, Lost in Berlin | Tags: Arab Spring, Berlin, culture shock, falafel, humor, International relations, Liebig 14, Political fiction, politics, sarcasm, satire, South Sudan Leave a comment »South Sudanese independence…”We are all Egyptians”…Gentrifizierung NO, or a Brave New Squatter-free Berlin…and some damn-good chickpeas, a peanut sauce.
As a professional falafel controller, I read the store-front window advertising a rare style and was compelled to investigate. I was excited to find something new…and perhaps owners that weren’t flipping out over politics. My job hasn’t been easy lately.
Thin and crispy brown on the outside, a moist, green flavor explosion on the inside, a light salad, a peanut sauce drizzled over, a warm fresh pita. The plate a landscape of tasty; a pool of olive oil topped, lemony sour hummus, hills of foul, a North African bean salad, the coffee similar to a minty Arabic coffee, but served in a larger cup.
This was last week. My observations were positive.
Berlin Graffiti, episode two
Posted: June 26, 2011 Filed under: Lost in Berlin | Tags: Berlin, culture shock, Germany, Graffiti, History, humor, photos, politics 2 Comments »
Untenstehend, is another random sampling of Berlin graffiti for your viewing pleasure. Also, I give my broader theory about the graffiti in Berlin. I’ll get to that…but first I want to warn viewers: A Black-and-White, adult-audience CSD surprise lurks at the end of the slide show.
Not to mention, this episode is rather epic. 6o some pictures, all from yesterday…many of them even rather beautiful. I hadn’t even set out to take graffiti pictures, we simply went wandering about, but new work was everywhere I looked, and it was all so fragile and transient…and really, all this was just from shooting as we walked. Anyway…on with the theory.
Berlin Diner en blanc, 2011
Posted: June 13, 2011 Filed under: Lost in Berlin | Tags: Berlin, culture shock, Diner en Blanc, Gendarmenmarkt Leave a comment »
Now, I have never taken part in a flashmob…something about the whole idea, while theoretically maybe interesting, practically they appear rather douchbaggish…but a flashmob with the goal of eating? Now that’s an idea.
So we met at the arranged staging point, all dressed in white as we were, and with our picnic all packed up. As the appointed hour struck we all moved to converge on Berlin’s Gendarm Market Square. Read the rest of this entry »
The Winter of My Bad Haircuts Pts. 2 & 3
Posted: April 20, 2011 Filed under: RADIO EGGS AND TOAST | Tags: Andrew Flohr-Spence, Berlin, culture shock, mp3, Political fiction, radio drama, Radio Eggs and Toast, travel writing Leave a comment »
Part 2 and 3 of the “The Winter of My Bad Haircuts” thing I started with the first short.
Again, it’s text I wrote last time we lived in Berlin, edited down a whole ton and mixed with sounds of Berlin recently recorded.
I was waiting for some reason to post these but I’m getting too impatient in our fast paced interwebbed world…so I figure I’ll just post them now and get on with it.
Pt. 2 ‘It’s Raining Again’
Pt. 3 ‘Bagdad is a Bitch’
WTF am I doing in Berlin?
Posted: February 24, 2011 Filed under: Lost in Berlin | Tags: Berlin, culture clash, culture shock, disease fiction, gentrification, German American relations, language, photos, Political fiction, travel writing 2 Comments »
Whether people voice the question precisely that way or not, it’s a question almost everyone asks me. Not just my family and friends, but complete strangers here in Berlin, almost anyone I talk to who finds out I’m an American, people next to me in line, waiters and waitresses (sorry, ‘server’ sounds too much like ‘servant’), the guy renovating our hallway, the young lady working at the bakery down the street, everybody.
I especially feel like I need to explain this to Berliners. The big debate right now is about Gentrifizierung: all the cool kids, young professionals, graphic/fashion/computer game/everything designers, all the government workers and whathaveyou, not to mention the foreigners: the Russians, Polish, Balkan, Vietnamese, Nigerian, Turkish, North African, and worse, the British, Spanish, Italian, Dutch and Americans, and even the worst of all: the Schwabian, Bavarian, Rhinelandian, Westphalian and whatever other ‘Wessis’ pouring in the city.
I am not one of these hated Latte drinking “Gentrifizierer.” I drink normal coffee anyway. Read the rest of this entry »
Color in a Plattenbau world part II
Posted: January 29, 2011 Filed under: Eggs, Lost in Berlin | Tags: Berlin, culture shock, discrimination, Ossis and Wessis, Plattenbau, travel writing 1 Comment »
Give an Ossi paint….and watch out, boy. Geez.
I have a theory…and let me say first, the theory is pretty offensive, really–it belittles the struggle of hundreds of thousands oppressed by secret police and living behind a barbed-wire and machinegun-rife wall finally saying, enough is enough, and standing up to fight for their human rights and taking the chance to tell the government to go fuck itself to the point of toppling said corrupt government, and that nearly bloodlessly–but hey, what theory doesn’t piss someone off, right? Read the rest of this entry »
