What are you doing here?

For about a year and a half now, the first two questions I'm usually asked upon meeting a complete stranger are: A) What are you doing here? B) How long are you planning on staying? I realize these questions seem only natural for the asker, who is only trying to make polite conversation, but the cumulative effect of having to answer them on a nearly daily basis over such a long period of time is that I'm made to feel like a freakin' alien. Maybe I'm just bitter because I haven't come up with a good answer to either. I really don't know what I'm doing in Berlin. I'm not working much. I'm not studying much. I could lie and say that I'm gestating but mostly I'm just hanging out, going to parties, scribbling things into notebooks. I also spend a lot of time hoping I by some miracle (or cunninglinguis) continue to meet my visa requirements despite the government's attempts to suffocate us non-EUers in as much red tape as it takes. The stress of this coupled with the everyday strain of not being able to communicate clearly to the world surrounding me even the most basic of concepts (for example "I'm not an employee of Karstadt, fuck off old lady") inflated by the relentless stream of life-changing situations I've had to deal with on German soil has seriously started to get to me. Or maybe I'm just having one of those days where I'd rather be home and not need an excuse to be where I am or to explain how long I plan on being there. Maybe it's just one of those days and tomorrow I won't feel like I need the questions to stop that badly. I'll just smile and say, "Just living, and you?"

New Apartment

We have a new apartment. But, we have no kitchen, no fridge, no oven, no bed frame, no dresser, no nothin' really. Oh wait, we did buy a couch and a sink that will require some assembly. Tomorrow we will have a fridge and a washing machine. And the day after that, we will have the world.

Apartment Found!

To add more confusing ups n downs to this week (see last post) we got a call from the rental agency that we got the apartment we wanted near Hermannplatz. So this is good because now we have a place to live, but a bit confusing because we'll have to find people to help us move things as Carlos is in no shape to do things and I am a tiny (but fierce!) woman. The apartment is VERY big and includes 3 large rooms so we'll have a room for Carlos to use as a music studio once he returns to full Carlos strength. It has tall ceilings, balcony street-facing windows, lots of light, and a whirlpool bathtub. The big drawback to the place (and the reason we weren’t 100% on applying) is that the kitchen room is a bit dirty, and there are no appliances (none) or counters in the kitchen. We'll have to find our own stove, refrigerator, countertops, washer/dryer, and sink in addition to the usual items one expects to have at home: bed, couch, dresser, tables, appliances, etc. Fun fun! The rent is pretty cheap by Bay Area standards- around $1200. I can't imagine what an apartment like this would cost us back home. But then, the one big thing Berlin has going for it is how cheap housing is. In fact Miguel says we're the first couple he's met who pay MORE in Berlin than they did in the Bay Area. But having lived for 1 year in a 1-room studio for $900, I think we're due for a nice place with lots of room. Tomorrow we sign the lease to move in on the 10th. Woo hoo!

We have a new apartment & our manager is dead

It's true. We arrived on Friday only to find that the reason our latest emails hadn't been answered by the manager is that he died 5 days ago. His wife and the hausmeister Mr. Kropp have been taking care of things, but haven't been able to really get things up to speed just yet. In light of the circumstances, we were moved into a new, larger apartment (twice as large, to be precise) which has a bathtub, balcony, and full kitchen with dishwasher. Unfortunately, the wireless issue has become an issue as only Carlos can get internet for any extended period of time in the apartment. The hausmeister has let me use his office (which is a small chilly room located in another building across the courtyard) for internet until he can get the gentleman who handles these sorts of things to, erm, handle it- although Herr Kropp recently informed me that this gentleman is currently busy with installing a new kitchen and therefor it might be sometime before we can get this whole thing straightened out. So far we've taken a few trips out into the city- once or twice out to dinner, and a long walk to Club Maria- yet another old-warehouse-turned-club where we saw Mouse on Mars & Vitalic. Needless to say, it was a pretty damn amazing thing. I ran into Kid606 (who I've been calling "unkie miguel" on account of the fact that he's been very accomodating of all of our silly touristy-type questions- despite the fact that he is a super star DJ). We're going to get cheapo bikes at the flea market on Sunday even though it is very cold, and I may freeze to death riding it back home. Carlos has been freaking out about visas pretty regularly. I had to buy him dinner at Schwartes Cafe a couple nights ago to get him to chill out. He seems to be doing better, having resigned himself to signing up for a language course in order to get the student visa. I think it's a much better plan that living under the raydar, as the german's seem to have some pretty serious fucking raydar. We're going to get registered on Thursday (the law requires that you register within 7 days with the foreign authorities office). This won't give us a visa or anything- that will all come later once we have a more permanent place to live and have paid for school. School, by the way, doesn't start until April. I think with 25 channels of public access documentary style work programming on the tele I'm going to be pretty bored for the next couple months, and unfortunately it's too damn cold to be frolicking around just for the hell of it.

Tonight Packing, Tomorrow Berlin

Tonight is our last night in this apartment. We're leaving at 6 in the morning to go to the airport. Checking in may be a problem as we have one-way tickets, but I've gathered quite a thick packet of documentation to argue with in case we need it. Another problem may be the weight of my suitcase. I have no idea how much it weighs. That's how heavy it is. I'm only bringing one checked luggage though, so hopefully they won't give me much trouble and if it's a female representative, I can just tell her it's the shoes and she'll understand. Carlos is still packing. The apartment is messy despite all efforts to clean it. I feel exhausted from carrying things to and from the garbage, leaving things out in the ally, and generally running around tearing my hair out. Tonight there were so many things we had to get rid of that I put them all on Craigslist under the free section. For those who aren't familiar with the crazy people on craigslist, allow me to enlighten you. Craigslist is full of jobless, worthless, extremely horny people, several of whom's only purpose in life is to troll the free section looking for junk. Once they find it, they wait outside your door, salivating at the mouth, screaming at you "Where's that toaster you said you had? Where's the fucking toaster??? I drove all the way from El Cerito!" This is why we don't put a "reply to" address, and heaven help you if you should leave your phone number. Yikes. We were planning to go out to Ryoko's tonight, our favorite sushi restaurant in the San Francisco. I've heard Berlin has one sushi restaurant as well, and that it's okay. And for dessert we have a bottle of port that we got in Napa quite some time ago. But this is provided we can take care of everything that needs taking care of. Carlos swears he will haul the mattress downstairs at 6 in the morning. We shall see. All n' all, I'm part scared, part exhausted, and part curious (that's 3 parts!) about how smoothly this all will go. The flight itself is a monster- 1. San Francisco to Seattle where we have a 6 hour layover 2. Seattle to Copenhagen (Denmark for those who are terrible at geography) where we have only 55 minutes to get through EU customs AND catch our next flight from 3. Copenhagen to Berlin Germany upon where we will take a rather expensive cab ride to our boarding house in Kreuzberg, shower, and collapse exhausted in our new land. Till we meet again, USA!

We're Going to Marrakesh

Marrakech or Marrakesh (مراكش Marrakesh), known as the "Red City" or "Al Hamra," is a city with a population of 1,036,500 (as of 2006) in southwestern Morocco, near the foothills of the Atlas Mountains. Marrakesh is also known as "The City of Gold." ... And we are "going there" on the 27th of March, or at least so it will look to anyone wanting to see our travel itinerary. Why? Because Carlos and I made the mistake of getting one-way tickets into Germany. Silly us, we wanted to save a few hundreds of dollars, but have since learned that it is possible to get deported if you do not have a return ticket when traveling to the EU. Although it is unlikely that they will even ask us to see a return ticket, if they do we can now at least say that we're exiting the EU. The tickets were only 25 euro (including taxes!) on Ryanair.com- they had other tickets that were actually 0.01 Euro (no shit) but these were for single passengers only, and we thought it might look suspicious if we took seperate flights. This is the weirdest solution to an honest problem I've ever come up with. It still might not work, but it's more likely to work than having our tickets leave us in Germany. Am I going nuts?

2 weeks

I am leaving in 14 days. Packing is almost done already, despite having had a sprained ankle for the past week. I wish I hadn't packed up my hair dryer already and definitely should have eaten lunch today. The people on Toytown tell me there is no peanut butter, root beer, or nachos in Germany. They suggest I try to blend in and develop a taste for curry wurst. Through the glory of the internet, I've met an Aussie who is moving to Berlin in March. Maybe we will be friends.