...i was always impressed with the italians and their desire and ability to organize, protest, demonstrate, strike, and um...party in the street. but how seriously can you take them with that singong, sultry language? now, when one sees waving of cardboard placards blowing in the bitter berlin breeze...with punk music in one ear, electronic in the other, how can one not take the germans seriously with guttural expletives through megaphones and "ja, wohl's" all around? it's like i can feel the beer i haven't drank in my belly brewing. let's march "gegen" (against) something. ja, wohl! [View Full Entry]

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in my trial run (ok, safehaven) in berlin in ’08, I blogged about how we should take a moment to get to know our neighbors, since most of “us” Americans have never lived through community-led espionage. today, I hark: hug thy neighbor. just because you can. because they don’t live on another side of some wall. traces of which I criss-cross each day on my bike - sometimes intentionally, just because I can. zooming over the off-colored bricks which mark its path acros [View Full Entry]

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…and as we take for granted that the grains of sand pass in a familiar and effortless manner through the hourglass of time …so, too, do we take for granted that our luggage, that all of our pieces of luggage, pass in a familiar and effortless manner through the heavy, black plastic weather flap onto the conveyor belt. wearily swaying in baggage claim, this dream was not to be realized in Berlin-Tegel, airport of lost luggage. we were reunited a couple of days later…and people ask me why I insist on bringing the cats into the cabin?! …and so satur [View Full Entry]

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Being a tico or tica also means that you have a pretty great chance of being literate, and having enough money to provide for yours and your families’ basic needs. Desperation was not apparent, if certain shelters perhaps did suggest poverty. Desperation also kept this gringo from having any meaningful or unmeangingful interactions with the locals. The best conversation I had was with my wheelchair pusher when I arrived in the airport, with my private limo service driver nowhere to be found my new amigo used his own coins to operate a public phone to check on things. Yes, yours truly [View Full Entry]

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Five days of serenity, though, and I started feeling the superficiality of my experience: barely a local spoke to me, kids playing in the street didn’t even flinch as I flashed a smile and my newfound hola. No one called out good-day on the beach, no one wanted me to buy their necklaces, an occasional pelican provided entertainment, a radio thumped instead of a djembe, a whole week without one single marriage proposal…where was my Africa? For all of its seaweed and seafood, these beachy waters, along with their rotting coral reef apparently, were dead. In a country with rich na [View Full Entry]

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I must have been processing my Latin American experience aloud more than what was welcomed by my fellow single travelers at the retreat. Lush green and rough bark vines streamered our dining patio, looking over the Caribbean sea and sleepy surfer town below. Joe, a would-be bruiser from north Jersey if it were not for his Shakespeare softness, interrupted my storytelling with, “oh, let me guess, in Africa…” The rest of our motley nightly dinner crew giggled, and I quieted for the moment. I couldn’t help but compare everything around me to “Africa” - gene [View Full Entry]

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Any experience, anytime, anyplace. Just show up. I went places and tried things I never have before. Berliners have a way of making you feel comfortable with dropping your American cool and just joining in the fun. You can become anyone. Just follow some basic rules of organization, engineering and privacy and you're fine. [View Full Entry]

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Something is always in the air, or on the wall. Berlin is vibe. healthy, wealthy. and definitely, proud. [View Full Entry]

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Firsts: A few feats of German engineering and history unveiled. To me personally. [View Full Entry]

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Anything is possible in Berlin. Berlin is raw. Real. Berlin is everything Williamsburg wishes it was and tries to be - or perhaps what it once was. Berlin would swallow Williamsburg whole. Especially East Berlin. Art is everywhere and doesn’t need to be called Art. Artists are everywhere and don’t need to be called Artists. These streets are oozing individuality, creative expression abounds, people do whatever they feel like doing (not quite to a level to breach the lowest common denominator of German civility, however). Some neighborhoods expose a stifling, confused [View Full Entry]

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