"Oink, oink." *sniff*sniff*

I sure am starting to miss the sun around here, though I am aware that the gray, gray winter is just beginning. Why can't the weather just make up its mind between being sunny and really raining instead of just giving us this constant cold, damp, in-the-middle stage? Then again, I can't say I wasn't warned. : )

On a more theatrical level, Saturday was callbacks, Sunday we had a full read-through of the play, and yesterday we had our first rehearsal, which was more talking and discussing what we were getting ourselves into on a deeper level rather than acting. I have a personal rehearsal with the director on Friday and then another big group rehearsal on Sunday. I'm actually very happy and excited about having all of these rehearsals taking up my free time, as I have it in overabundance. So far everything has been an absolute blast and I'm excited for more. I also found out that we have ELEVEN PERFORMANCES in two weeks at the end of the semester. ELEVEN. This is more of a big deal than I thought!

Today I had class in the early morning and then went to a couple libraries trying to track down some of my school books. The ones the libraries didn't have I bought online, which cost me about 50 euro (80 bucks). That was better than the 110 euro I was going to have to spend if I bought them in the bookstore. Oy vey. Once home and after a quick nap and a grilled brie and tomato sandwich on rye, I thought about checking my university email to make sure my 4pm French class wasn't cancelled, but then didn't. Once back in the city at the Smith center, I checked anyway and sure enough, no class. I don't have choir until 7.30, so it's basically an afternoon wasted. At least I brought homework to do. Yay!

AH! Yet another BIG FAIL for the Deutsche Post: A while ago I called up the town office in Maine where I am registered to vote and asked for an absentee ballot for the Nov. 3 elections. I filled it out and mailed it as soon as it arrived a couple days ago and put some extra postage on it in case they wanted to be picky. Today it was back in my mailbox informing me that I needed MORE postage. Absentee ballot envelopes are abnormally long, and apparently it costs SIX EURO to send such a piddly little thing to the States. I would happily pay nine dollars to keep same-sex marriage legal in Maine; I'm now just worried about my vote getting there on time. Sigh.

However, I did find a store with pig snouts for sale and thus secured my Halloween costume idea for this weekend. I'll be going as Swine Flu. (Thanks to Erin for the suggestion.)

Drumroll, please.

..................I MADE IT! They kept me to the very end of the 4-hour callback session and had me try out five different roles, all of which were quite fun and with fun people. During the last twenty minutes, they asked me to do a scene as Mr. Paravicini, the creepy Italian man of mystery, only as a mysteriously conspicuous and seductively extravagant Italian bombshell. It was a blast, everyone was happy, and now I have to learn how to walk in stilettos.

YAAAAAAAAAAAAY!!!!! I get to work with a pretty big deal Uni-Hamburg theater full of delightfully fun people! And I get to be extravagant and mysterious and Italian! I was so excited after the affirming phone call that I bounced around for a while with Liz Chase and then went and baked a delicious loaf of Irish soda bread with yummy cream o' broccoli soup for Liz, Carolyn, and I, all while still bouncing. Mmmm, baking soda/powder knows how to party.

...But really, Paravicini? That's the role that Mom played when we did Mousetrap in 2006, only as the shady man figure. I can't wait to tell her. The irony never ends.

And my French homework is done. YAAAAAAAAY!!!

...AND tonight is the end of European daylight saving time! Another Stunde of beautiful, wonderful sleep! Could my weekend get any better?

Pre-sleep ponderings.

I made callbacks for the University Players! They take place tomorrow, so if you're up between 4-8am EST, think lucky thoughts for me. I'm really hoping to make it into this fab theater group because a.) it is fab, b.) I love me some acting, c.) it is surely full of fun people that I would want to be friends with, and d.) it's something that I love to do and feel I can do well, as it is in English, so that could help boost the self-esteem once the sun goes away and I'm tired of the brainstress of German everyeverywhere. Hope hope hope hope.

In other news, today:

1 Euro = 1.5028 U.S. dollars

Blechhhh. (Which I recently found out means metal sheet auf deutsch. Minus all the extra h's. Who knew!)

Speaking of $$$, a couple days ago I heard a little boy on a bus ask his mother what the "S with lines through it" meant.

Speaking of cute children on buses, yesterday I somehow ended up on a bus full of cute children who spontaneously decided to start singing a song they learned in school to the tune of Frere Jacques which involved cunning English lyrics such as "How are you today?" and "Fine, thank you." So that's why the Germans can speak English so well!

I've also finally figured out how the weather works. It's really quite simple : When I want it not to rain, I wear my rain boots. Yup.

Dear World, Thanks. Love, Margaret, xoxo.

Well, Jesse, you said you wanted pictures of me opening my package. There you have them and you haven't even commented! Unglaublich!

I've officially survived all my university classes! Like I posted before, Tuesdays are going to be my big day. Theaterstadt Hamburg from 9-11am. (We get to go see Die Zauberflöte!) Advanced French linguistics course from 4-6pm. I had no idea what to expect because there was absolutely no course description anywhere, so basically I just guessed that it would be the right place for me. Turns out it was a great choice - it involves lots of creative writing with a focus in the expansion and use of sophisticated vocabulary. I think it's going to be my most challenging class because of the sad diminuation in easily-retreivable complex French vocab in my brain that has been occurring slowly throughout the past couple years. (Also the fact that my brain is now dominated by German, yikes.) I also think that the challenge will be fantastic and just what I need to regain my confidence, no matter how many times I'm going to mess up in the process. Think about long-term goals!

SEGUE: Carolyn and I were approached by a young fellow while waiting for a train last week, asking for directions in English. After a little chatting, it came out that he was French, so I switched into said language and we talked for a short while. I was positively tickled when he was surprised to learn I was from the States - he told me my accent was so good he thought I was French!! You can bet my self-esteem was soaring all afternoon after that.

Meanwhile, back in French class... I found it ironic that out of the 15ish students, only two of them were male. (It could have easily been a Smith class.) Even more ironically, it turns out that one of these menfolk is a French and German double major from England studying at the Uni-Hamburg for a year. It was so exciting to run into someone as crazy as myself! Even more ironically, I ran into him again an hour later at the first choir rehearsal. Weird!

This is the big choir at the university that sings a big work with the orchestra every semester. This semester they're/we're doing Das Lied von der Glocke by Max Bruch. The first two rehearsals are open to everyone and you audition the third week if you'd like to stay. It felt good to be singing in a big choir again, though I was pretty frustrated with my voice quality after many a week of not practicing. I like the conductor a lot and while the choir was not up to par, I think it will get much better in the following weeks.

Good story - during the break I attempted to speak German with Kassia, English with said Englishman, and then French with a French friend of his all within about 10 minutes. The result? FAIL. My head still hurts a little.

After the rehearsal (which is long, 7.30-10), everyone was invited to hang out at a pizza parlor, which I guess is a weekly tradition. Kassia and I decided to go be social despite being sleeeeepy, and we had a good time. We met some fun people, one of whom convinced another that we were Canadian. However, the biggest lesson I learned from the evening was that trying to meet new people in a foreign language in a loud place fonctioniert nicht, because then not being able to hear someone can be mistaken for you not understanding them, which then makes you look like a stupid foreigner. Just a word to the wise.

As is apparent, yesterday was a long day full of many small accomplishments, though the best part was when I finally lugged myself up the three flights of stairs to my room at midnight to find the previously depicted wonderful little parcel from Jesse waiting for me in front of my door. I don't really know how it got there, but don't particularly care. Dear World, My brother rocks. Love, Margaret, xoxo.

This morning only got better when I found a note in my mailbox saying I had a parcel at the post office, which I fetched pretty immediately. Dear World, My Brandon rocks. Love, Margaret, xoxo.

This afternoon I had my Volkskunde course, which is a big lecture class, also mostly filled with women. I wasn't really sure what to expect from this class, either, and am still confused about what the subject actually IS. I guess that comes later. The gist I understood was that it's folklore as a big mix between lots of anthropological, sociological, ethnological, and other ologicals. Still confused. The professor was very nice. Good things to come?

The love-fest continued tonight as my "big sister" had me over for another wonderful dinner AND brought me back baking soda, baking powder, and brown sugar from her recent trip home to the States. YAAAAAAAAAAAAAAY!!!! Dear World, Martha rocks. Love, Margaret xoxo.

I have no classes tomorrow and grammar on Friday, which is another Smith course. Tomorrow I'm also hoping to find out whether or not I got called back for the University Players, the theater group I auditioned for.

Phew! Now you know ALL SORTS of cool things about my life. Isn't that exciting?

Here's one more: Apparently my huge window gets huge sunrises.

12:25am. Hello, tomorrow. Goodnight, everyone still in yesterday.

How Jesse Almost Broke My Scissors.

Hooray! Yikes! Wonderful! Oh, no!

Another quiet day on the range. I've recently been spending a good chunk of time reading my favorite book ever, Broken For You, nur auf deutsch (Die Porzellansammlerin). This is not only because it's so great, but because I've been getting somewhat frustrated with where my level of German is at compared to where it could be if I was surrounded ONLY by German all day rather than Genglisch. I know it's gotten better and all that good stuff, but I keep comparing my experience here with my utter and complete French immersion in Belgium. Sometimes I feel like having friends here is cheating and that this isn't hard enough. I want to learn more. (I know that's all silly and that I'll learn lots in time and am having a completely different and uncomparable experience now to that in Belgium, but still.) Thus spending time going through pages of deliciously challenging German translation, looking up vocab, and writing down interesting new words to remember makes me feel a little better about what I'm here for.

So! It's a good thing all of that will change on Tuesday when I have my first class. Yes, ladies and gentlemen, I've decided to join with the rest of the world and go back to school after not having had any classes since the end of... April. Excluding the orientation classes, of course. (Wow.) On Tuesday I'll be taking a Smith course on Theater in Hamburg auf deutsch as well as a French linguistics course at the Uni-Hamburg, not auf deutsch... That evening begins rehearsals for the big choral works choir I'm hoping to join. On Wednesday I have my other Uni-Hamburg class on Volkskunde, which is based on German and European folklore. The hopefully-temporary day for my Smith grammar class is Friday, though we're trying to change that in order to have longer and thus more travel-able weekends. (If it works, I will potentially have a 4-5 day weekend!) Classes only meet once a week, though I'll probably end up having a weekly tutoring session scheduled for my folklore class. I'm both chomping at the bit and a little stomach-churningly anxious for classes to start. I'm excited to meet new people while also being daunted by the idea of having to involve myself in an entirely new community. Clearly contradictions are my forte. Should be fun.

This afternoon Liz Chase and I went on an adventure to a big, open unleashed dog-walking park on the outskirts of the city. It completely delighted me to see all the fun furry creatures running around being adorable. My favorite was a cocker spaniel with a tail that wiggled everywhere it went.

Fall comes to Germany.

Since Berlin things have been pretty low-key. We've had lots of lazy mornings and spontaneous adventures, in which we explored various outdoor markets in the rain and not rain, played in pretty parks in the sun, and spent time walking around lesser-known parts of the city. A few nights ago we found and watched Findet Nemo on Youtube and it pretty much made my week. Sarah and I had plans and a ride to visit dear Smith friends in Denmark this weekend, but then her passport was most unfortunately stolen so that's been delayed. Mostly I've just been enjoying the autumnal odors and changing colors outside. The leaves generally turn yellow, then brown before they fall off. It's no knock-you-eyes-out New England autumn for sure, but I'm certainly appreciating what little we've got here. It's also gotten quite chilly as sometimes happens in the fall, getting down to freezing or just above at night. The picture to the left is the view from one of my kitchen windows. The next few below are from the Planten un Blomen park in the middle of the city, where I took lots of pictures of Carolyn yesterday.


I also had to locate where all my university classes would be taking place starting next week. My French linguistics class is going to be in this gigantic gigantic ugly building where a bajillion classes happen at a time. It has a talking elevator.

These are a few pictures I took while wandering around the harbor area one afternoon.

Something completely off-topic that I don't believe I've mentioned before is the topic of fun German traditions! More specifically, pre-marriage rituals. On the train to Lübeck we were surprised by a man dressed in prison stripes surrounded by a group of cheering cronies. The convict had a box of things around his neck that he was trying to sell, things being little bottles of alcohol, bras, etc... He went from person to person offering his goods or asking for contributions. We asked one of the natives about this, to which she replied that it was a tradition for people before their wedding to do something crazy as such that involves some sort of embarrassment. And alcohol. Later Martha said she saw a woman with a group of her friends on a ferry all dressed as firefighters also trying to sell from her box of things. I guess it goes in line with the bachelor/ette party idea.

We were told that there's another tradition that happens if you reach 40 (I think) and you're not yet married, where you must dress up as a street sweeper and sweep out in some public place until someone kisses you. Along that line, one of my favorite German words to date is Torschlusspanik, roughly meaning panic about the city wall gate closing while you're outside. It refers to the uneasiness people get as they get older and haven't found themselves a nice mate yet - running out of time and getting locked outside the city like happened in the good ole days.

Another something that continues to astound me is the strict regard for following the rules in this corner of the world. For example: there is no German word for jaywalking. It's not a concept that exists as everyone goes to the crosswalk and waits for the light to turn green, no matter if anyone is coming or not. An interesting comparison with big American cities.

Oh! Forgot to mention - tonight I auditioned for the big English-speaking theater group at the university. This semester they're doing, that's right, Agatha Christie's Mousetrap. Irony, anyone?

That's all I've got for now. Tonight I leave you with a lesson in Kompositors:

Donaudampfschifffahrtsgesellschaftkapitansfrau.

(The wife of the Danube steamship society's captain. Or something.)
 <3 br="" german.="">

The Photogenic Berlin Post

I'm back from the big city! (...Well technically Hamburg is also a big city, so:) I'm back from the really big city!

Die Gruppe von Smith took the super fast ICE train from heyah to theyah on Sunday, which took just over an hour and a half. We then deposited our things at our hotel, which was a large fancy schmancy townhouse with lots of chandeliers and big ornamented ceilings that is famous for being the residence of Asta Nielsen, a famous movie actress from the first half of the 20th century that I learned about in my Weimar Cinema course last semester. No time was lost before we were back outside and on to our next adventure : Der Schloss Charlottenburg! The Charlottenburg Chateau/Castle/Sparkly and Expensive Royal Residence is the largest remaining of its kind in Berlin. We took an audio tour around the many opulent rooms and oohed and ahhed over this and that. My favorite room was one completely decked out in over two thousand pieces of porcelain.

That night we had our first of several delectable dinners at upper-end restaurants around the city. Thanks again to Sophia Smith for those most wonderful extra pounds.

The next morning we took a Stadtrundfahrt (double-decker bus tour) around the city, got off part way and walked around looking at all the fun architecture.





That afternoon we visited the big Holocaust memorial, which was a huge area filled with almost 3000 of these rectangular stones of various heights. The ground dipped way down in the middle so it was like walking into a pit with the stones rising above you. All the air inside was very quiet and still.


Afterward we took a tour of the Reichstag building, where the German parliament meets and all the governmental stuff goes down. Because of the recent elections, all the suits were out of session during the change-over from party to party. The building was comprised of parts of the old building that was destroyed in the war and new modern architecture. My favorite part by far was the roof.


It was a huge glass dome with staircases spiraling around the sides with a mirror... thing ...coming down from the center. We even got to go up on the roof where there was a nice view of the city.

Once at the top of the dome, we could look down into the meeting room of the parliament.

That night a group of us went to a small but snazzy theater to see Samuel Beckett's Krapp's Last Tape auf deutsch. It was interesting and well-performed, though hard to understand at times. Mostly it just made me crave bananas.

On Tuesday morning we went on a tour of Berlin's Unterwelt - an underground bunker beneath part of the metro system. Some rooms were left in their original condition while others were set up in museum format with historical displays about the war.


Later on Sarah and I went to the Film & TV museum which was located in the shiny Sony Center.

I particulary enjoyed this museum for it's awesomely trippy use of mirrors and because it had lots of information about things I learned about in my Weimar Cinema course.

That night we went to a wonnnderful concert at the Berlin Konzerthaus. We had front-row tickets and enjoyed a program of the Festival Strings Lucerne with piano soloist, Martin Stadtfeld, playing Britten, Bach, Mendelssohn, and Haydn.



Wednesday morning brought us to the Berlin Zoo! There we got to see the legendary Knut of the world famous Youtube video. (I would highly recommend it.) He was in a habitat with his new girlfriend away from the rest of the polar bears. I thought he was rather small for a bear of his kind and quite dirty. He was still cute, but kindof a letdown after the most entertaining polar bear at the Albuquerque Zoo.


Carolyn was looking forward to this meeting for far too long. I was a little peeved that Knut only did entertaining things when my camera wasn't focused on him. Note this photo.

The brown bears were also quite wonderful and shared a habitat with wolves. This bear reminded me very much of my own brown Ber at home in the States.

Many of the big animals, such as this lion, were very kind in that they came quite close to Helen and I. It's my understanding that she can see light in somewhat short distances, so she was able to see a lot of them. (Helen, please do correct me if I'm wrong.) I was pretty satisfied with the zoo except for how it caged its big cats in small and unrealistic compartments. There I was not impressed.

Later we visited Checkpoint Charlie and the museum about the Berlin Wall. I hadn't known much about the wall and the consequences thereof before and found it very tragic, like most of everything else about WWII.


Afterward we walked along the Eastside Gallery, the longest remaining section of the wall that has been repainted be various artists.



On Wednesday some of us visited the Kaiser-Wilhelm-Gedächtnis-Kirche, which like the one in Hamburg was left in its mostly destroyed condition after the war. A new modern church in blue glass was built on one side of it with the belltower on the other and the remaining mid-section contains its historical exhibit. The mosaiced ceiling is still very shiny.


There was still a good chunk of time before our train left, so I went to the photography museum by myself before heading to the Hauptbahnhof. It was raining.

While waiting for our train home, I was wonderfully surprised by my Handy ringing with a call from Jesse. Hooray for fantastic brothers!

So that was my trip to Berlin. In conclusion, I didn't think the city itself was all it was hyped up to be, but I still had an enjoyable visit. I'm just not a ridiculously-large-city-person. But then again, it was very shiny.

(P.S. All of my Berlin photos can be found by clicking on this link.)