3 hours later as i wanted to go home, i was cursing the snow again for making everything so cold. i froze my ass off on the walk between apartments/subway stations.
anna was supposed to come over today at 11am for breakfast. german breakfast is great--- lots of yummy br�tchen with cheese and meat and jam and butter and quark (which i still have yet to determine whether or not we have it in the us..) and honey. it's very good. so, 11 comes and goes. 11:15, too. at 11:30, i called anna's cell phone. no answer. i figured she was in the subway, so i tried it again 5 minutes later to see if she was close to me or not. no answer. so i tried her at home. (she lives about 45 minutes away from me, so it's a bad sign if she's actually at home close to a time when she's supposed to be at my place.) her roommate answer. good sign. but when i asked if anna was home, she said yeah-- she was in the shower. she'd overslept. great. meanwhile, i'm sitting at home having not eaten anything because i was waiting for this huge breakfast. around then i started to devour the bowl of dry Smacks (cereal) nearby. just heard from anna; she'll be here at about 12:45ish, i hope. i'm still hungry.
so this last monday night, i get a call from Liosa at around 9:30. "hey-- i just got a text that Tim's going out tonight, and it's his last night in berlin. do ya wanna go out?" so we did. got there around 10:30, left around 1:30, got home around 2:30ish. Liosa spent the night here. Angie's bed's really been getting used quite a bit since she's been gone. i wonder if that would bother her. oh well. she's not going to find out. tuesday, liosa just stuck around until around 2 when we left to go see Vanilla Sky. I didn't think it was too bad. not wonderful, but definitely worth seeing. and tuesday is half price movie day, which means we only paid Euro 3,95.
i now have all of my books for my research over the break; let's hope i start working on it soon.
I did however get the rest of my valentine's day cards. i got 3! one from my mom and 2 from jim; all were very much appreciated and cute/raunchy/sappy and everything else that a valentine's day card should be.
yesterday, i did my good deed for the week. I was heading over to Liosa's, and this woman in a wheelchair called out from about 30 feet away as i was walking from the subway to liosa's. she wanted me to go over there, and when i went over there, she wanted help getting to her apartment building, which was about a block away. So i pushed her and got her to her door; i opened the door, got her inside (which was very awkward in and of itself), and carried her wheelchair up a few steps after she hobbled up to them to get to the elevator. She tried to offer me 2 Euro (about $2), but i wouldn't let her give it to me. and while i was pushing her, we chatted a bit.. but she had this really thick east berlin accent and it was a bit hard to understand her. i think old people are a bit harder to understand anyway, and then when you add the berlin accent... anyway, i felt good afterwards.
today i was at the travel agency with liosa, and we reserved a flight/hotel in croatia for june. we have to go back on thursday or earlier if we actually want it. unfortunately, the place that i/we were interested in was full. it was out of this one catalog that was cheaper than the rest of the catalogs... and it was the flight that was booked, not the specific hotel, which was a shame-- there were other hotels around there that we could have stayed at. so, instead of our nice island, the new hotel is on the coast and not close to the first place. But it's not all that bad. the new place is about 5 km outside of this really nice-looking city, Trogir. and it's not far from the 2nd largest city in croatia, Split. it's not all bad. i think i'll be able to live with it, but i need to sleep on it.
since i'm now going to have a lot of free time, i've now decided to get a newspaper for the next couple of weeks--- they're always people trying to get you to get a free trial period with one of the like 5 berlin papers outside of this certain subway stop, and i finally decided to take someone up on it. i'll be getting the Berliner Zeitung starting ASAP.
The Berlinale's going on right now (has been for over a week) and it's this big film festival with lots of different movies (300, maybe?). so, i went to one movie. some people went nuts--- they could by a ticket for 130 Euro and see all the movies they wanted. a friend (So) has seen like 8 or so. at 6-7 Euro a pop, that's kinda expensive. So i saw Varuh Meje from Maja Weiss, a Slovenian director. It was the world premiere, which was neat in its own right. And it was opened by a short film (11 minutes) from Romania, (The Popcorn Story) which I thought was better than the actual movie, but the movie itself wasn't all that bad. kinda predictable and tried to tackle too many themes at once (sexuality, a split-up Yugoslavia and some of the resulting refugees, morality), but it was better than i expected. I'd read a few things about it, and one description described it as a cross between horror-thriller and soft porn. Didn't really turn out to be either, but i saw where they got both sides. it was suspenseful, and with 3 slovenian college students going on a canoe trip through the wilderness, of course they just had to take their bikini tops off. the movie in general was kinda trite, though. anyway.....
I so of course i was at Quasimodo this week and maybe the week beforehand. i think i was indeed there last week, too. well, at any rate, 2 times ago, it was good (same opening group as a few weeks ago, which was very good)... then the crazy brits i was hanging out with suggested we go out clubbing afterwards.. and we went to the most GOD-AWFUL club EVER. Called "Latino Live". I felt a bit odd being there because a)i'm white, b)i wasn't wearing something totally skanky or totally baggy and c)i guess i wasn't drunk enough, though i really was decently drunk. Oh well-- i got to know the brits a bit better, and it was overall a good evening. this last week, i ended up going out after quasimodo again and got home around 5 am. we were having problems thinking of bars in the area that were open after 3am. eventually found one. but at the jam session, there were 2 keyboards (and keyboardists).. at one point, they kinda did a duelling keyboards thing, which was really awesome. Long live Quasimodo. The past few weeks, it's been SO packed, though. blah.
i've been drinking a LOT less wine the past 2 weeks. like, i think i've only split about 1 bottle. and unfortunately, i've been playing a lot less chess as well. oh well. i'm sure i'll start up again.
MY SEMESTER IS OFFICIALLY OVER!!! But i have one Hausarbeit to write, which is supposed to be 10-12 pages. yuck. i'm slowly starting to work on it. oh well. but now i don't have any more commitments until April 15, except for flying home, which i'm getting excited about.
nothing to do tonight. which is why i actually got around to writing in this. i bought a cookbook today and made a very nice turkey and leek dish tonight. after looking through lots of cookbooks, the one that actually had the most appealing recipes (not many ingredients, pretty fast) and food (mostly vegatarian, good variety and some things i've never made before) was a cookbook for someone going on a diat. well, at least i know the recipes are pretty healthy. :) and what i had tonight was flavorful as well.
this is very long--- don't want to overwhelm my vast audience of regular readers, so tune in next time for part 2 of what's up in my life.
#1 Went to class
#2 something came here; i'm sure of it.
#3 Went grocery shopping
#4 Went to go register my new address with the police*
#5 Learned how to cook broccoli**
#6 Got a membership to a library (the german equiv. to Library of Congress)
#7 Looked for books I need for a research project***
#8 Studied Russian for more than 10 minutes
* #1 failed attempt at productiveness.. too many people there, they weren�t giving out any more numbers. But I ran into my friend Stiof there, and she said she�ll try to hook me up with an English conversation job earning about 15 Euro and hour.
** I bought multiple veggies during the aforementioned shopping trip and I�ve never cooked broccoli before but thought it sounded good. I called up Liosa to see if she knew how to, and her mom (who was visiting) described what to do. in half english, half german, nonetheless. It was cool and yummy.
*** #2 failed attempt: OK, so I did some internet research beforehand to see if the books I needed were actually at the library I was going to� they were. So, I got there, got my library card and started searching for these books with weird-looking call numbers. no fucking clue where to find them. i�m glad i didn�t ask� i realized that you needed to put in an order for them � normally they�re ready for you to pick up 3 hours later, but I�ll go pick them up tomorrow. at least I�m not going to have to search for the library for like a half hour tomorrow.
anyway, that�s my day in a nutshell. tomorrow�s busy� 6 hours of class, picking up of books, english/german hour with Gisbert (poor guy� still don�t know who�d name their kid that), movie with anna & maybe Liosa.
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Excerpt from a letter to a friend:
so, i was reading the paper the other day--- i usually buy the Herald Tribune, which includes a condensed version of the Frankfurter Allgemeine, which is kinda like the german version of the Wall Street Journal. And there was this little article in there that i thought was really interesting and completely foreign to the us laws. here it is:
Neo-Nazi Jailed For Disparaging Parliament FRANKFURT. Convicted neo-Nazi Manfred Roeder was sentenced to prison on Wednesday for an extremist statement. The regional court here condemned him to two years in prison without parole for disparaging the German parliament with illegal Nazi remarks. The court found that Mr. Roeder, 72, had sent a four-page letter to members of perliament in April 2000 in which he argued that the "Third Reich should be restored." Mr. Roeder was convicted in 1982 of multiple bombing attacks, including on that killed two Vietnamese asylum seekers. (AP)
What do you think about that? My first reaction was, "What?! Jailed for 2 years for writing a friggin' letter?" We kinda discussed this (well, freedom to voice one's own opinion, more or less) in one of my classes, and it was interesting. I'm just so damn used to and/or happy to have the freedom of speech. I mentioned something about it in class, and not everyone really agreed with me. In fact, most of the people didn't. (i'm the only american in the class, which is entirely composed of foreigners.) Anyway, disregarding the fact that this guy is a convicted felon, is it right to send him to prison for making that kind of statement? Is it dangerous to have an opinion and to voice it? Should a government be able to choose your topic of conversation/writing? (or, in this case, prevent one topic from being the topic?) I think I have some sort of American blanket over my head because i just can't really get myself to agree with this one at all.
anyway, enjoy the super bowl and let me know what you think about this. :)
Leah
sorry i've been slacking on the weblog. there've been other things to do (see above), and i've found new sites to stalk. basically, Bad Sam (as the people who write for it refer to it) is made up of a)current or former Iowa State students and b)"famous" bloggers. it'll probably keep my interest for a little while. I also noticed that stickybuffalo has been kicking some of there posse out in favor of more frequent (and/or interesting?) folk. My friend Shar's on there, and she's pretty funny. And they added Sammy from 3na (3 nasty assholes) who seems like he surfs the net A LOT.
hehe. back in november when i was thinking about getting paid for my knowledge of the english language, i pulled tabs off signs at school (people wanting to speak english with a native speaker).. long story short, i met with this guy yesterday and spoke english with him. (no, not getting paid, but it's ok.) he also speaks some german with me, which is good. nice guy though. he's into hiphop/rap... too bad he didn't know me earlier; he could have talked to jim while he was here about that stuff. what kills me, though, is that his name is Gisbert. poor guy.
and while jim was here, we went out with my ex-exchange student Anna and her roomie (Johanna) and johanna's boyfriend (sven). well, sven and i hit it off and talked about that evening being our First Date. and suggested we have a Second Date. but he didn't call. and i didn't call him. oops. but he did end up calling me last night and we're going out drinking next weekend. which should be fun. he's a cool guy.
all of a sudden, i have germans calling me. weird. anyway, it's nice to have more people to do things with.
so, i think it's about time for me to crawl out of bed and take a tylonel (see wino section above). ugh, i have a cocktail party to go to this evening. and completely random, i said "huzzah" last night. so there.
I've been just sitting around in my room today since about 5 and i'm SICK OF IT. i've already read for about 2 hours for class, and i don't want to do that anymore. I'm supposed to meet Liosa at 9pm to go to a birthday party of a friend of hers from Ireland, and the time is absolutely dragging. i've read about 2 chapers in my current book that i'm not reading for class (Dharma Bums from Keroac) and i don't want to read anymore. I've already surfed around for about an hour or two today and don't want to tie up the phone line anymore... besides, i've kinda forgotten how to surf.
i've had something to do every night for the last week and now that i'm just sitting around my place, i don't like it. actually, most of what i've been doing the last week has been sitting around at my place, but it's been with emily a lot of the time, so it's not the same. dunno if i've written about it, but we've been playing chess. let's see--- right now, we're 3-2 and i'm ahead. there was another game we had to cut short, and i think she was about to win it, so maybe she's at 2 1/2 games. :) i really like it--- i'm kinda surprised i didn't start playing it earlier in my life. well, actually, i learned when i was in 4th grade, but i didn't play much more after that. i like games; i should have known that i would like chess.
I dig emily. she's pretty cool. seth as well. had a "date" with Seth on thursday. i'm astounded by how much he knows. then again, when you're starting on your doctorate, you should be fairly knowledgeable. i almost feel dumb talking to him. well, not dumb, but i feel like i don't know anything. i think seth would like talking to Josh, my ex. they have similar interests and would probably get along pretty well. anyway... it wasn't a real date with seth because a) he has a girlfriend (who is 6 years older than him), b) i'm not interested and c) he's not interested. so my attempt to find a friend worked! yay! and i met emily through him, too, so there's number 2 friend in a while. yeah.
my newest thing: i've started to buy a newspaper once a week... now i kinda know what's going on in the world. maybe i'll up it to 2 a week--- and maybe i'll get one english newspaper and one german one. wow- what goals i have for myself. i bought the Herald Tribune (an american paper) the past few weeks, and there was also the english version of the Frankfurter Allgemeine in there. so i'm starting on the whole keeping up with the world thing.
i'm just rambling tonight. not like i ever do anything but, but it seems more obvious to me today. and on that note, bye!
saturday during the day, i did nothing. well, i tried to go shopping, but the shops were closed. and i think i did something else, but i can't remember. oh well. that evening, Emily came over and we split a bottle of wine and played some chess... something i hadn't done in years. i lost the first game and won the second. yay! i think i'll play a game of chess with Jens (the roommate) one of these days, but i want to get some practice in first.
I bought a couple of bottles of wine on Sunday as part of my getting-to-know-about-wine self-education. I'm sticking to the cheap stuff at this point--- wine's cheaper here, i think. you don't have to spend as much for a good bottle of wine. so i bought a chardonnay and a red wine from Australia for less than $5. They're still sitting on my desk. I don't know if i can bring myself to drink by myself (though i was tempted while writing my paper yesterday... that Bailey's is sitting on my shelf). Maybe sometime. Yeah.
i sometimes wish that this city wasn't so huge. Not that i don't enjoy all of the many opportunities and things Berlin has to offer; I just want to be closer to my friends. I would say that I am approximately 25 minutes from my next good friend. Other than Angie. and my friend who's furthest away-- almost an hour. blah.
that's about it. tonight, i'm planning on reading the american newspaper i bought (the herald tribune, i think) and going to a movie. and *maybe* read some for class. oh yeah-- jim called me from japan the other day. we could only talk for 2 minutes, but it was good to hear from him. i got an e-mail yesterday, too. it's the longest e-mail i've ever gotten from him, i think. he doesn't have anyone to blabber to over there, so he did it through an e-mail. it was entertaining... and he's such a shitty typer, it must have taken him forever to write it. sweet.
Tomorrow night: Quasimodo, yet again. i'm going to know lots of people there. there's my crew (me, angie, liosa, bea, emily) plus some people from England plus probably others that i'm going to know.