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Published: July 12th 2006
Hallo.
This will be the last entry written from this side of the pond, as I travel tomorrow. I'll probably write another after I get back to Van, so after that I'll try to get the pictures up for this entry and that final "I'm back" one (probably after the Cambie outing at 9pm on the 17th, if anyone cares to join!).
Travel update
From Denmark, I made it to Berlin traveling on a train that itself boarded a ferry. I stayed at
Dr.NoJoke's once again and had a truly unique time for the third place match as well as the final (see below). Monday I traveled to meet Ute in Minden which is where I type now. After a lovely several days here, I'm on my last one until I fly; tomorrow I take a train for 3.5 hours to Frankfurt at the start of my 20 hours of traveling before I get to Van.
The last of my European tales
Last I wrote, it was Thursday in Denmark. That night, I went out and about with Thor and relearned that I suck at pool for the 18th time. After my last breakfast of
Fan Fest Berlin at the Final
I'm on the left and Frank is on the right behind the bald spot. Apparantly I have a lei on.Danish cheese and rye bread, we made my way to the platform where the family waved me off as I made my way towards Berlin. At a quick stop at in Copehagen central station, I bought a sandwich with my remaining DK kroner and invested in a bottle of Faxe Kondi, a pop I was addicted to at one point (funny because I don't drink pop) that I've only seen in Denmark, tasting vaguely like Sprite.
The train itself was simply a time for me to catch-up with sleep knowing I'd be sitting in one place for a solid handful of hours (nearly 6 or 7). The only real event was when the train boarded the ferry. It just seemed strange to me but everyone else thought it was completely normal. On the 45 minute ferry, we had the option to unboard the train and to go up on the decks where we could purchase tax-free purfumes and chocolates so needless to say I'm smelling like a beautiful woman now and will be for some time to come, if I'm lucky.
Berlin
That evening I made it to Berlin and after a quick metro made it to
the heart of east Berlin, and to the home of the coolest German musician I met in Turkey, Bogdan aka Frank aka
Dr.NoJoke. It was about 1.5 hours prior to kickoff of the third place game between Portugal and Germany. After much deliberation, we chose where we would watch the game; we would go to a friend's BBQ and check it out there.
On the surface, telling the story in this way is quite boring. "So what? So you watched the damn game at a BBQ. Big whoop.", you're saying. This is the time where a devilish grin arrives on my face because I know something that you don't know.... and I'll tell you.
No Joke (which by the way, is what myself and members of the manvan referred to him as colloquially. I was told that in German, the word division isn't as obvious so artistically it's more cool because it's pronounced altogether with the 'j' sounding like a 'y', nojoke.) was as usual in high spirits. You probably forgot from the last time but to rehash, we met in Olympos and he hosted us during the manvan tour. He lives in a sort of community which
is something like a 5 story building of rooms all with a common kitchen (the Party Küche). The neighborhood as a whole is the home of several artists and people living alternative lifestyles, for lack of a better word. One such "alternative" was the site of the BBQ...
A group of friends nearby live in a sort of squat. For legality, they use nojoke's commune's address so to show appreciation for this, they were having a BBQ. The squat was pretty amazing. After going through the secret gate entrance, the sight involved rows of trailers and what looked like camping equipment. This was in fact the home of about 40 people indepentantly living in the heart of east Berlin. In fact, these people were each quite clever. I learned more about the actual layout once we arrived to the BBQ. So while eating BBQ'd mushrooms with melted gargonzola (sp?) cheese, I learned more about the squat, why it exists, how it exists, and some of the common issues its existance must overcome.
Amazingly, the entire ground was solar powered. Atop each roof was an intricate arrangment of solar panals each feeding their way down to semi-portable cells. So,
in the end, we all watched the game on a solar powered laptop equipped with a sort of special digital video antenna (because Berlin no longer has any analog television so even the state broadcasts only digitally). Towards the end of the match, one cell was running out but another was easily swapped in, and in a very non-chalant fashion.
Items that are commonly taken for granted in "normal" living are issues they must contend with day-to-day, somewhat like a pioneer. One tale was of their struggle to receive water from the city. In fear that I will mistell the story, the important points where that they themselves had to create their own plumbing from scratch. They had interesting tales of pipes freezing and makeshift adjustments made to solve this dilemma and others. They knew alot about the basic necessities of life, both in thought and in practice, so it was most curious to hear their tales and to understand their living style. They were equally as curious about my own life and travels so overall it was an excellent sort of cultural exchange; it was also amazing to share a BBQ with them as their country competed on
the solar powered laptop before us.
The next day, nojoke had some commitments so on that day of the final which was taking place in Berlin, I ended up making my way to the Fan Fest solo but eventually meeting up with my German friend Frank that I know from UBC in Vancouver. He had been similarly traveling for games just we hadn't actually met yet. Finally we did and had an amazing 12 hours.
He was together with two other friends, Dave and Michael. Amongst us, we all had various Vancouver connections, so it was fun to meet each other and chat while we ran around the various festivities. We were together with the other hundreds of thousands at the Fan Fest celebrating the final and the overall success of the tournament as a whole. It was quite a sight in fact; I think I saw a jersey and/or a flag from just about every country in the competion. I wore my US jersey but had my German belt (a hideous thing colored like that German flag and with a buckle that has fake diamonds in the form of the German flag. awesome) and my face painted
with a German flag on one cheek and a French flag on the other; I didn't wear the soccer ball hat this time unfortunately. All fans were generally in really high spirits so it was fun to talk about soccer, US soccer, players, this World Cup's success, how awesome of hosts Germany were, that day's game, travels, etc. There was much anticipation for the final and it was fun to be a part of the hype.
So when it was over, it was kind of strange. Obviously, Zidane's departure was unfortunate but for some reason it just feels strange to have Italy be the champions. The last champions (Brazil) were loved by everyone and always smiling and happy and playing "the beautiful game". Italy played well but there was just so much strangeness surrounding their off the field pre-tournament actions like match fixing and agent mishandling as well as their on the field theatrics and diving and faking that it was at times off-putting. They did have their moments; no one can deny their strength displayed in the semi versus Germany. No one really scored a proper goal against them the entire tournament neither (an o.g. vs US and
a PK vs France) so their defense has to be as solid as any. Obviously I'm envious too since the US can't produce a single world class striker/player and they have Del Piero coming off the bench, but I guess the point generally is, for whatever reason, it just feels funny having Italy champion, not to offend anyone or anything. But, that being said, congrats to them and my opinion doesn't really matter for shit since they are the world champs! I got back to nojoke's at 5am that night.
So ya, the World Cup is over. It is a reality check for a lot of us. Germany was an amazing host and should feel proud of their country's success both on and off the field (I failed to mention that Germany won the third place match 3-0, and everyone was pretty excited about that); in fact, I believe they are. This is evident from the countless German flags still displayed on buildings and cars, something that I'm told didn't happen much prior to the World Cup. Why is this? Well, my opinion based on conversations and observation is that Germans are overall very thoughtful people; so thoughtful
to the extent that they are still reluctant to demonstrate nationalism openly as a result of not being proud of their past (WWII). I was told that this isn't shown by a lack of flags but also a lack of investment in their own markets. A lot of those I spoke with saw that the World Cup's success has sparked a new kind of German nationalism and has injected a new sort of optimism into the markets already. The hope is that this continues and that the recently degrading German markets will feel its long-lasting effects. And best of luck to them. Hopefully their coach deciding not to stay (as the Danish comment on the last page said, I'm sure you could all tell ;-) doesn't put a dent in anything. And hopefully Klinsi becomes the next US coach!
Minden and Westphalia
Currently, I'm a few hours to the West of Berlin in the town of Minden. My connection to this town was my friend Jan that I know from UBC in Vancouver is from near here (in Schlüsselburg). He's actually currently doing his postdoc in Tokyo (
Jan's blog is really interesting) but he introduced me via email
to his sister Ute who lives in Minden. Thankfully, she offered to put me up so I was here on the late afternoon of the 10th and will be going from there to the airport early in the morning on the 13th.
Most of my time so far in Germany has really been all about squeezing in what I could inbetween soccer games, but usually that isn't so much since in some cases there were games straight from 3pm to 11pm. These days waiting for my flight were actually the first where I really had time to enjoy Germany itself, World Cup aside, because during the breaks in the World Cup games, I was either in Croatia or Denmark. For these days where I'm now actually seeing Germany, the time in Westphalia has certainly not been a disappointment.
When I first arrived, I actually didn't know what Ute looked like, but she had seen this blog so had seen a few silly pictures of me, and thankfully I was wearing my coconut bra so I was easy to recognize. From the start, I was given the red carpet treatment. We went to the grocery and was given a
tour of the German meats as we selected our impending dinner. We picked some winners and made our way to her apartment where we tasted them all, downed a few Hefe-weißbier dunkels and came up with a plan for the next day, getting to know each other at the same time. I learned that she had actually lived in the US for a year as a teen in northern Georgia (haha, I actually made a mistake and thought she lived in the Russian state at first), so her English is amazing not to mention her stories from her 20+ trips to the US.
Tuesday was action packed with a ton of fun! Minden itself (about 85000 people) is a major crossing of the Weser river (running North and South) as well as the Mittellandkanal (the canal uniting east and west). The amazing thing is that when the rivers cross, the canal is actually suspended over top of the real river. So essentially it is this wide and long bridge that itself holds a waterway. We took a boat tour around these rivers and even went from the canal to the river via the connecting lach called
Weser-Kruezfahrt (check out
the "bilder"). To go down the lach, our boat went into this region on water and stopped. Then a watertight separator rose up behind us. After this, a series of water pumps gradually reduced the amount of water until we were 30 m lower than when we began! At this point, a gate on the other side of our boat opened to reveal the river Weser!
Once on land again, we went for a walk around the town of Minden. The flyer in English says "Minden: worth seeing!" which sounds a bit defensive to my ears (as if someone thought otherwise) but oh well ;-). Ute's apartment is a very short walk away from the pedestrian area of town. Once there, we had some famous wursts at a fastfood (imbiss) stand and then strolled around a bit more to burn off the millions of calories we just inhaled. We stopped at one point at the 1 Euro shop and I got all sorts of random German and World Cup odds and ends that I probably didn't need but had fun buying (for example, I now have a soccer ball yoyo and a banner to hang up that says "Fußball-party!", a must!). The walk included the old Catholic cathedral and also passed Ute's workplace at the welfare office en route to the water mill.
The water mill was set on the river Weser and was not the first mill seen that day. Later, we drove around the region to see several of the Westphalian Windmills. One windmill itself could be pivoted in any direction in order to maximize it's effectiveness. One ran on falling water falling from an adjacent dammed creek and instead of crushing grain, had a sort of saw attached to the mill to saw wood. More traditional windmills existed too that were used to grind grain.
Amidst our touring around, we made it about 30 km north of Minden to the town of Schlüsselburg (literally "key castle", population 600). It was here where we met Jan and Ute's parents at their home and had a nice conversation while the sky broke and rained cats and dogs (some idioms we exchanged). Nonetheless, we enjoyed an assortment of lovely cakes including everyone's favorite, the plum cake. Inbetween rains, we took a bike ride around the town and I was given some history by Jan's father. The town itself had some very unique pieces of history, being so small. It had several traditional half-timber houses where to this day you can still see from the design which side of the house the animals used to live on and which side the people lived on (the floors were staggered and the people lived on the higher side, often the right). The town also had a portion of the town where all of the barns were. They were built in one part of town after several previous town fires, so the thought was to put them slightly away from the living quarters to protect the people. After the bike ride where we barely escape more rains, we later sampled various liquors from around Europe and in the end we found ourselves having Greek food for dinner a few towns over. In the end, we made it back to Minden to crash after our long day of touring. What a great day! Like I said, I was actually in Germany talking to real people and NOT watching soccer; stunning, I know. But I would really like to thank Jan and Ute and their parents for such a great time! PLEASE let me help you sometime in the future when you are in North America next!
Today, Ute had to work so I met her for lunch but otherwise I simply walked around Minden on what will be my final day in Germany. For those/some of you who know me from Vancouver, you will be happy to know that I saw an actually building that was made in 1547 and nearly died (for those unfamiliar, 1547 was the year that CONCEPTS foresaw the invention of science. We are living, have lived, and always will live in 1547. Just to summarize, although I'm a bit rusty on the rhetoric. This is what I learned in grad school.). I made a few final purchases, but nothing huge so don't get your hopes up. Most of my time, I was walking next to the canal across the bridge and back and then went over to watch the lach in action, this time from above rather than on the ship itself. This evening we will see the monument to Kaiser Wilhelm that overlooks the entire region, so their should be some nice views. Afterwards I will pack in preparation for my travels!
Future Travels
I will take a 3.5 hour train from Minden to Frankfurt airport tomorrow from 6:12am here. My flight to London leaves at 12:40 and then I eventually arrive in Vancouver at 5:35pm PST, so from the moment I leave Minden to the moment I arrive in Vancouver will be 20 hours and 23 minutes! Joy! But I am anxious to get there to couch surf and program in earnest for my 9 days before going to Chicago for 10 weeks.
So....
That's all from Europe. I don't really have any lasting wisdom that I'm going to try to pass on here, so from now on you'll actually have to contact me and talk to me. From here, one more entry probably mid-week next week where I'll talk about Vancouver and sushi and ivory towers and couch comfortability! So stay tooned and keep the comments and emails flowin.
Hope everyone is good!
brad
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Ladbergen
Being in Westphalia you forgot to visit Ladbergen. The Meckstroth farm there is part of your heritage. Next trip!