American in Berlin

Friday Night At Potsdamer Platz

Every time I visit Potsdamer Platz, I expect George Jetson to wiz by in his flying car. Built in the shadow of the Brandenburg Gate, Potsdamer Platz and the Sony Center is a futuristic mix of office buildings, shops, restaurants, movie theaters and apartments. I never know what I am going to see when I visit, and Friday night was no exception!

Emerging from the subway station, I was greeted by snow. That’s right snow, schnee, the white stuff that falls from the sky. Austria (Germany’s Canada) is currently holding a festival to encourage winter tourism. As part of the festivities, a ski slope has been built at the entrance to the train station, complete with snow! Though I can’t wait to see the real stuff fall, it was fun to see Berlin’s first “snow” of the season.

The next cool thing I saw was a sign advertising that you can switch your Deutschmarks into Euros over the weekend at the mall. Too bad my old Marks are in Newtown collecting dust!

Finally, as I headed to the movie theater to see Pride and Prejudice, I noticed lots of people gathered in the Sony Center near the entrance to the theater. While I thought maybe the red carpet was being rolled out just for me ☺, it turned out that the movie “In Her Shoes” was premiering in Berlin on Friday. The red carpet was actually for Cameron Diaz, who was also in town to be a guest on a well-known German variety/talk show! My guess is that, like me, many of the people standing on the rope line had no idea what was going on but were willing to stand there because there were television cameras and people walking around pretending to be important. My movie started before any of the stars arrived, but the party that was set up inside the theater looked cool!

As a side note, I only recommend seeing the new Pride and Prejudice if you: a.) are not a diehard BBC P&P fan, b.) believe that men other than Colin Firth (ahh) can play Mark Darcy and c.) can watch a Kira Knightly movie without being super critical!

posted by Erin @ 2:10 AM 8 comments

Germany in Three Lessons

I've learned three important lessons in the last few days that I believe might sum up German culture, politics and history.

1. Germans are not being silly when they tell you that every building in Berlin or Bonn, which is made of glass, was built that way to represent transparency ("Transparenz") in government and business. To an American (even one who knows German history,) this concept seems a bit forced. I think of the US Department of Education building, which was made to look like a school house when President Bush created the "No Child Left Behind" program. Just because the building looks like a school house, doesn't mean the programs that are being created there are good for children. The same goes for glass buildings and transparency. (This lesson was learned when I made a joke while touring the Federal Chancery...oops!)

All of this talking about glass makes me think of the US expression, "those who live in glass houses shouldn't throw stones." There has got to be a joke that can be made about trans-Atlantic relations in the last three years and stone throwing but I will try to avoid such sarcasm!

2. Germans are also not joking around when they talk about German Purity Standards for beer. Purity standards...for beer...oh brother! I started teasing my boss about this yesterday and I think he thought I was using the Lord's name in vain! His comment back to me was "you put weird junk in your beer like fermenting rice and corn."

3. Since I am trying my hardest to "be German" this year, I have been sorting my trash like a German-- plastic, glass, paper, organic and everything else. Sorting trash is fine, I am actually amazed at how little you have to throw away if you sort stuff. The lesson I missed in the whole process, however, was that it is not advisable to go away for the weekend and leave decomposing food in the organic waste trash can in your kitchen! Gag!!

So there you have it: lessons about the fallout from WWII, beer and recycling. At the risk of stereotyping...how German:-)

posted by Erin @ 8:08 AM 5 comments