Still playing catch up mode. So I left Berlin on September 23 in the mid afternoon to fly to Paris to meet my parents. Or, at least, I tried to. The day did not exactly go as planned, even though I held up my end of the bargain.
I checked out of my hotel.
I took the Ubahn to the airport.
I checked in.
But, unfortunately France was slightly too preoccupied maintaining its Republican Values and exercising the right to civic spirit to go to work that day. In other words, France, was on strike. Why, you might ask?? Had someone been denying the people bread again? Was absolute monarchy knocking on their front door?
No and No. This time the evil crime was increasing the retirement age from 60 to 62 and pushing back the age from 65 to 67 for those who want to ensure full retirement benefits. If hearing this doesn´t make you want to shout "Sacre bleu!", trust me you are not alone. In case France hasn´t heard, the life expectancy in their dear country is among the longest in the world - averaging 80.7 (77.1 for men and 84.1 for women), which makes them just about tied with Israel, Macau and Canada at number 8. The US comes in at an astonishing 38, with a life expectancy of 78.2 ( 75.6 for men and 80.8 for women). (Germany, FYI, comes in at number 20 with 79.4 years and is tied with Belgium, Great Britain, Malta and the US Virgin Islands) All in all, in my personal opinion, the French could stand to work a little longer - most of the developed world probably could...
But, on this particular day I was much more bothered by the strike caused by this issue, than the issue itself. In the US, we just don´t seem to use strikes so often, we prefer tea parties... When I checked my flight before leaving for the airport, it was the only flight still headed to Paris - too good to be true I should have known. It was canceled half an hour before takeoff.
As the mob headed towards the ticket counter to trade their flight in, I considered my situation. Already checked out of my hotel, no place to stay in Berlin, family and hotel waiting for me in Paris. I had to get to Paris. Flights were out of the question. I headed to the train station...
At the train station I initially met with zero help. I was told that no trains to Paris (or France for that matter) would be leaving. I asked about trains going NEAR France. I was told that just getting near France would be a futile action. So. I asked someone else.
Another lady at the station told me I could take the train to Mannheim, Germany, then wait out the strike, and take the first train to Paris. So, with her help, I bought a ticket that left for Mannheim at 10:30pm and arrived at 4:50 in the morning. I didn´t have a reservation for a seat, but she assured me that was no problem. I boarded the train, and decided to stay standing until a seat became available. In the meantime I chatted with a man hoping to exchange his seat for one in a quieter location. Then the conductor came to collect tickets. I showed him my ticket, but of course I had no reservation. That was when he told that I would have to get off the train.
WHAT?!?! I had a ticket. I had purchased said ticket. It was 11 at night. We were literally in the middle of nowhere. My new friend argued on my behalf. Who ever heard of throwing a young girl with a ticket off of a train in the middle of the night?! Apparently... this guy. The eyes of those around me seemed to say, we would help if we had any clue how... Then around came an elderly gentleman who was working for the government surveying about satisfaction with the train. WE ARE NOT SATISFIED, exclaimed my new friend, explaining my situation. The government worker expressed his disapproval, but explained that unfortunately he had no say in the matter (apparently train conductor > German government) I totally wanted to tell the conductor that actually HIS government was paying me to live in Germany to be an ambassador so that they would have a better relationship with my country, and he was honestly blowing it. I also wanted to tell him some other things that I would rather not repeat on a blog that my grandma reads. But, you get the picture.
It was a bad situation.
Luckily as I pondered my fate, the conductor had moved on the check tickets in the neighboring car. The train slowed to a halt. I ran to an empty seat, changed my hair threw a different jacket over my head, and just before the hood covered my eyes, the guy across aisle winked in understanding. For 6 hours I switched seats, took looonnnng bathroom trips, pretended to sleep, and evaded the conductor. Finally, I got out at Mannheim. It was five in the morning. Trains to Paris wouldn´t start until nearly 7. I sat down in the station. All the sudden I had this crazy deja vu. It hit me. I had been to Mannheim once before, at 4 in the morning. Four years earlier, on my first solo voyage, I had made my way through Mannheim on my way to the Black Forest in the attempt to fulfill my dream of gallivanting through the Black Forest as if in a fairy tale (dream fulfilled, btw). I sat for a moment and pondered the meaning of life.
When that was through I headed upstairs, where I was befriended by two Norwegians. Apparently there are a lot of Norwegians in Mannheim. They asked where I was headed, and I said Paris, so they said, us too! It was feeling a little bit Wizard of Oz-y, until I realized they were just bored of being in Mannheim (so was I ).
When the ticket office opened at 6, I was first in line to buy my ticket to Paris. That is, until the lady behind the counter told me all the trains to Paris for the day were sold out. Something about a general strike in Paris... yeah, yeah, I´d heard of it. Still, it seemed shocking that all of the trains were booked solid, I mean, even first class?!?! OH, she said. Well you didn´t ASK about first class (come on people, can we think outside the box a little?). So I proceeded to buy the most expensive train ticket of my life (the Norwegians were obviously no longer interested in Paris), and learned that first class really IS better. They feed you breakfast, and the seats are more comfortable.
And that was how I made it to Paris. Only 12 hours later than planned.
Saturday, October 16, 2010
Monday, October 11, 2010
Headed to Berlin
I have to say, I am pretty embarrassed that it took me a month to get around to writing another blog entry, especially since the last month has been incredibly eventful. For one thing, I moved. For another thing, I moved again. I have actually been in basically constant movement for the last month, so now is probably the perfect time to get serious about this blog thing. So where to begin...
Last time you heard from me (ok minus that whole hacked email, scam from London, mass email stuff) it was my last night in Bonn. Well the next morning, we boarded a bus, all 30 of us, plus our organizer, Friederich, a few Siberian spouses and babies, some bicycles, a million suitcases, some potted plants, etc. And by et cetera, I actually mean that I brought along enough apples and honey to feed a small army.
It was erev Rosh Hashanah, and so like any good descendant of a nomadic people I was on a caravan headed across ancient Ashkenaz (Germany) in the direction of Berlin. The trip took eight hours, mostly because there is a law in Germany saying that bus drivers are entitled to a break every two hours. In other words, we experienced every rest stop between Bonn and Berlin. Among other things that would have been interesting to study, I got a good look at how different nationalities behave on long bus rides. The Russians were clustered together in the front of the bus. The Americans all wanted their own seats. And the Chinese sat in the back of the bus and had apparently packed the equivalent of a five course meal, which they shared around for the next 6 or 7 hours!
As evening approached, and we neared our destination, so too began a tradition that dates back generations. This is the ancient tradition whereby the lone Jew heads to the front of the bus, sits in the tour guide´s seat, puts on a microphone and proceeds to tell her American, Russian, and Chinese friends about the Jewish New Year, in English and German, teaches everyone to say L´shana Tova (happy new year), and then stumbles from seat to seat handing out apple slices and squeezing a blob of honey on them. The Chinese were pretty excited to hear that I ALSO have a lunar calendar :)
It was actually really great, and I can´t imagine a better way or better people with whom to have welcomed the year 5771.
Once in Berlin we had two weeks of an intensive study tour around the region. I guess it is fair to say that we saw some of the best and worst of Germany, and that hopefully through that, we became more sensitive to each other and to our guest country, but also critical. While it was frustrating sometimes that our programs and tours took place without any follow up or group discussion aside from that which we organized ourselves, I think we got an opportunity to be incredibly critical - of Germany, of our own countries, of one another.
A brief overview of where we went and what we did:
The Neukölln Opera - Not actually an Opera at all, this is more like a new age musical theater that deals with real issues experienced in Germany. I loved it. We saw a performance about women who feel unsatisfied with their lives in big cities and head to smaller towns to try to do something with the vacant space and major population decrease that has occurred in East Germany since the fall of the wall.
The Sachsenhausen Concentration Camp - Maybe not the way I would have ideally spent the second day of Rosh Hashanah, but visiting this camp, used mostly for political prisoners of the Nazis, was really powerful. The camp was used as a Soviet prison after the war. As has often been cause for discussion among us BUKAs, how do Germans, and the rest of the world for that matter, talk about the crimes of Stalin and of Socialism with regard to a country still emotionally sorting its way through Hitler and Fascism. This subject of course came up again when we visited the former Stasi Prison, and were shown around by a former inmate, imprisoned for writing a contentious book during the DDR era. Negotiating how Americans in comparison to Russians think about and talk about the Second World War has been really eye opening.
A visit to the Reichstag, Berlin´s Parliament building, gave us the opportunity to talk to leaders of the country´s main political parties (except for the Green Party - they bailed on us). The term "integration" was consistently used to talk about the success or lack thereof of immigrant populations in Germany. What an uncomfortable word. Here, and at our visits to Berlin´s largest (and incredibly beautiful) mosque, and the office of Integration and Migration, the experiences of Germany´s immigrant populations and their descendants were brought to light. Can someone deemed non ethnically German ever be German without giving up everything about their own identity? And even then, will they ever be truly accepted? Jewish history would seem to show that even the most integrated Jewish population in the world in the 1940s, namely the German Jews, were victimized with horrendous consequences. If the word stays the same, can the definition possibly change? Certainly Germany is not alone among countries in the world who need to reexamine how they define belonging and inclusion in a national social framework. Perhaps we all have a lot to learn.
There were lots of other interesting trips - We went to Potsdam and visited the palace of Friederich the Great, where girls were not allowed (not even Friederich´s wife!) and Friederich was later buried next to his 12 dogs (wife was not even allowed to visit in the afterlife). We took a tour of the site of the Potsdam Conference, where Stalin, Churchill and Truman met in 1945. And, we took a trip out to the city of Wittenberg, where Martin Luther posted his famous 95 these which brought about the Protestant Reformation along with one of the bloodiest wars in history.
Near the end of our seminar we came together for a program called Länderabend, a chance for the thirty of us, and a handful of BUKAs from previous years, to feed and entertain one another according to our national traditions. Well, it was Yom Kippur, so to avoid temptation, I have no clue what was eaten. (Also, if you recall from a previous post, Chinese, Russian and American cuisine may not have been intended for one plate). Well, while everyone was having dinner, I put the finishing touches on the American skit, which a bunch of us had spent the last few hours putting together. I won´t bore you with the whole skit (though I do have it on tape if you are that interested, including a hilarious ballerina skit by the Russians), but I will share with you the lyrics to the song we wrote. As a bit of background, one of the Americans wrote a song called 16 Länder in Deutschland, to teach her son about the provinces of Germany. To the same tune we wrote 30 BUKAs in Deutschland:
§Chorus: 30 BUKAs in Deutschland, 30 BUKAS in Deutschland, 10 aus Russland, 10 aus China, 10 aus USA, Das ist Prima!! (That is awesome!)
The Fei boys are telling Chinese Tort Law what to do
Ozge will bring Turkey into the EU
Veronika is fixing higher education
Laura hopes to rescue the Afghani Nation
Long and Xi Jing will help merge and acquire
But make too much and Emilie will get you fired
Yelena is fighting skin cancer
Vadim is searching for a peaceful answer
Sarah writes the news
Rachel works with Jews
Sergei tells us how much pensioners might lose
Jen and Phil will make the world better for gays
Johanna works with Turkish women who like plays
Iulia will look at Deutsch Philosophy
Kefei knows just how stressful that can be!
Igor will make sure we have milk to drink
Inna and Tsia-Xan tell us how we feel and think
Bing will help the world communicate
Natalya studies cities as they populate
The environment makes us worry,
Loni, Katya, Emily please hurry
And Chan-Zoung will make our budgets participatory.
Gao-Wei is telling us to volunteer
Xing-Ja is a banking pioneer
And if you still noticed that someone is missing,
Head to an ancient site cuz Olga´s digging!!!!
Probably you had to be there... Now that we have all gone our separate ways, all I can say is I miss my BUKAS.
Last time you heard from me (ok minus that whole hacked email, scam from London, mass email stuff) it was my last night in Bonn. Well the next morning, we boarded a bus, all 30 of us, plus our organizer, Friederich, a few Siberian spouses and babies, some bicycles, a million suitcases, some potted plants, etc. And by et cetera, I actually mean that I brought along enough apples and honey to feed a small army.
It was erev Rosh Hashanah, and so like any good descendant of a nomadic people I was on a caravan headed across ancient Ashkenaz (Germany) in the direction of Berlin. The trip took eight hours, mostly because there is a law in Germany saying that bus drivers are entitled to a break every two hours. In other words, we experienced every rest stop between Bonn and Berlin. Among other things that would have been interesting to study, I got a good look at how different nationalities behave on long bus rides. The Russians were clustered together in the front of the bus. The Americans all wanted their own seats. And the Chinese sat in the back of the bus and had apparently packed the equivalent of a five course meal, which they shared around for the next 6 or 7 hours!
As evening approached, and we neared our destination, so too began a tradition that dates back generations. This is the ancient tradition whereby the lone Jew heads to the front of the bus, sits in the tour guide´s seat, puts on a microphone and proceeds to tell her American, Russian, and Chinese friends about the Jewish New Year, in English and German, teaches everyone to say L´shana Tova (happy new year), and then stumbles from seat to seat handing out apple slices and squeezing a blob of honey on them. The Chinese were pretty excited to hear that I ALSO have a lunar calendar :)
It was actually really great, and I can´t imagine a better way or better people with whom to have welcomed the year 5771.
Once in Berlin we had two weeks of an intensive study tour around the region. I guess it is fair to say that we saw some of the best and worst of Germany, and that hopefully through that, we became more sensitive to each other and to our guest country, but also critical. While it was frustrating sometimes that our programs and tours took place without any follow up or group discussion aside from that which we organized ourselves, I think we got an opportunity to be incredibly critical - of Germany, of our own countries, of one another.
A brief overview of where we went and what we did:
The Neukölln Opera - Not actually an Opera at all, this is more like a new age musical theater that deals with real issues experienced in Germany. I loved it. We saw a performance about women who feel unsatisfied with their lives in big cities and head to smaller towns to try to do something with the vacant space and major population decrease that has occurred in East Germany since the fall of the wall.
The Sachsenhausen Concentration Camp - Maybe not the way I would have ideally spent the second day of Rosh Hashanah, but visiting this camp, used mostly for political prisoners of the Nazis, was really powerful. The camp was used as a Soviet prison after the war. As has often been cause for discussion among us BUKAs, how do Germans, and the rest of the world for that matter, talk about the crimes of Stalin and of Socialism with regard to a country still emotionally sorting its way through Hitler and Fascism. This subject of course came up again when we visited the former Stasi Prison, and were shown around by a former inmate, imprisoned for writing a contentious book during the DDR era. Negotiating how Americans in comparison to Russians think about and talk about the Second World War has been really eye opening.
A visit to the Reichstag, Berlin´s Parliament building, gave us the opportunity to talk to leaders of the country´s main political parties (except for the Green Party - they bailed on us). The term "integration" was consistently used to talk about the success or lack thereof of immigrant populations in Germany. What an uncomfortable word. Here, and at our visits to Berlin´s largest (and incredibly beautiful) mosque, and the office of Integration and Migration, the experiences of Germany´s immigrant populations and their descendants were brought to light. Can someone deemed non ethnically German ever be German without giving up everything about their own identity? And even then, will they ever be truly accepted? Jewish history would seem to show that even the most integrated Jewish population in the world in the 1940s, namely the German Jews, were victimized with horrendous consequences. If the word stays the same, can the definition possibly change? Certainly Germany is not alone among countries in the world who need to reexamine how they define belonging and inclusion in a national social framework. Perhaps we all have a lot to learn.
There were lots of other interesting trips - We went to Potsdam and visited the palace of Friederich the Great, where girls were not allowed (not even Friederich´s wife!) and Friederich was later buried next to his 12 dogs (wife was not even allowed to visit in the afterlife). We took a tour of the site of the Potsdam Conference, where Stalin, Churchill and Truman met in 1945. And, we took a trip out to the city of Wittenberg, where Martin Luther posted his famous 95 these which brought about the Protestant Reformation along with one of the bloodiest wars in history.
Near the end of our seminar we came together for a program called Länderabend, a chance for the thirty of us, and a handful of BUKAs from previous years, to feed and entertain one another according to our national traditions. Well, it was Yom Kippur, so to avoid temptation, I have no clue what was eaten. (Also, if you recall from a previous post, Chinese, Russian and American cuisine may not have been intended for one plate). Well, while everyone was having dinner, I put the finishing touches on the American skit, which a bunch of us had spent the last few hours putting together. I won´t bore you with the whole skit (though I do have it on tape if you are that interested, including a hilarious ballerina skit by the Russians), but I will share with you the lyrics to the song we wrote. As a bit of background, one of the Americans wrote a song called 16 Länder in Deutschland, to teach her son about the provinces of Germany. To the same tune we wrote 30 BUKAs in Deutschland:
§Chorus: 30 BUKAs in Deutschland, 30 BUKAS in Deutschland, 10 aus Russland, 10 aus China, 10 aus USA, Das ist Prima!! (That is awesome!)
The Fei boys are telling Chinese Tort Law what to do
Ozge will bring Turkey into the EU
Veronika is fixing higher education
Laura hopes to rescue the Afghani Nation
Long and Xi Jing will help merge and acquire
But make too much and Emilie will get you fired
Yelena is fighting skin cancer
Vadim is searching for a peaceful answer
Sarah writes the news
Rachel works with Jews
Sergei tells us how much pensioners might lose
Jen and Phil will make the world better for gays
Johanna works with Turkish women who like plays
Iulia will look at Deutsch Philosophy
Kefei knows just how stressful that can be!
Igor will make sure we have milk to drink
Inna and Tsia-Xan tell us how we feel and think
Bing will help the world communicate
Natalya studies cities as they populate
The environment makes us worry,
Loni, Katya, Emily please hurry
And Chan-Zoung will make our budgets participatory.
Gao-Wei is telling us to volunteer
Xing-Ja is a banking pioneer
And if you still noticed that someone is missing,
Head to an ancient site cuz Olga´s digging!!!!
Probably you had to be there... Now that we have all gone our separate ways, all I can say is I miss my BUKAS.
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