Ausgang Links

Links is German for “left,” as in “Exit left” (Ausgang links). Links and Rechts (right) have been drilled into my memory thanks to the BVG. So has Zug nach Krumme Lanke (direction: Krumme Lanke, Einsteignen Bitte (Please board), Übergang für U9 (connection to U9), and the (until recently) mysterious Zurückbleiben Bitte. This last phrase I couldn’t spell, and I couldn’t even repeat it since I wasn’t sure what was being said. Maybe you’ve guessed based on the context that it means “Please stand back.” My friend Jens finally clued me in a few weeks ago, though I only learned to spell it when I saw this sign in the subway yesterday.


(Now if I only knew what Bloss Nicht meant)

So ausgang links… tomorrow we exit Berlin for a last hurrah trip to Switzerland and Italy. We fly back on the 13th, which should give us just enough time to pack, say goodbye and get ready to fly home to the States on the 15th.

Ausgang links… exit page left. I’ll be off of the internet for most of our trip and probably won’t be able to post much, if at all. If I’m good I’ll write up a few by hand and post them later – still lots of things I haven’t gotten around to recording. Anyway, in the meantime, everyone ausgang to these links:

East, East and Away – Especially if you are sick of narcissistic rambles about beer and public transit and whatever other garbage I’ve offloaded from my brain to this page, my friend Melissa’s blog about her summer working as a consultant for Acumen, which is helping create sustainable investments in public service infrastructure (or something like that) in Kenya is just the thing. Smart, funny, and a whole hell of a lot more socially conscious than my blog. Restores ones faith and suggests we’re not all Ugly Americans out here. Plus she has video! Last post was about going on safari.

Lavender Blue – My mom’s blog. A little neglected lately, as my folks have been hosting a revolving series of guest all month. Check here for adventures in Garage Sailing (er, sale-ing).

The Sure Thing - A literary blog from my buddy Alexis, emerging screenwriter and drinker of red wine. Haven't seen Alexis since last summer, and seems like his blog has been fallow for a while. Writer's block? Solidarity with striking screenwriters? Maybe he's moved on and forgot to tell me...

Stenner Life Happenings - Blog belonging to my high school friend Jonathan. See the Stenner family blossom and grow. Now moving to North Carolina?! Shit I better give him a call.

Musubi Man - Stories from our friend Elena and her son Skylar during their stint in Japan. Anything with monkeys in it is comic gold in my book.

And don't miss McCovey Chronicles, the only good thing about this year's San Francisco Giants.

You can look in on my fantasy league team here… sadly fading in the standings as it is tough to get much news about American baseball out here. You mean to tell me Manny is being Manny in Los Angeles now?! If you promise to change my starting pitchers while I’m on vacation I’ll tell you my password.

Babel

“Bessyhoizzmahywummin.” If you can tell me what that means, you win a prize. Click here to redeem it. Charlottenberg is not the center of Berlin nightlife that it once was. “Kreuzberg über alles,” my friend Jesse told me when I said we were living out here. Yes, if you want to go out it usually means going East. But when we saw the posters announcing Porgy and Bess opening in July at the Deutsche Oper, we jumped at the chance to sample some high culture right in our own backyard. The biggest draw besides location was that the opera would be performed in the original English Ira Gershwin penned back in 1935.

The Deutsche Oper has taken a back seat to the Staats Oper since Reunification, with the latter housed in a neoclassical palace built in the 18th century on Unter dem Linden, while the former still holds court in the same Bauhaus modernist building it has occupied since it went up in 1961 in Charlottenberg-Wilmersdorf. We thought we would be especially “Berliner” and make dinner reservations in nearby Savigny Platz for after the opera, which at a running time of three hours would not be letting out until after 11.


(Deutches Oper, view from the stage)

Our “date” was set to begin at 7:30 in front of the lobby. With Julie otherwise occupied with her other husband (AKA – the Book Manuscript), I spent the afternoon crossing another “must” off of my To Do list at the Pergamon Museum. In addition to all those Porgy and Bess posters around town we’ve been seeing a lot of the advertisement for the current temporary exhibit on display there – Babylon: Myth and Truth. If you sense a little foreshadowing here, you win another prize. Click here to claim it.

The Pergamon is home to some really great artifacts from Ancient Babylon like the enormous Pergamon Altar and the Ishtar Gate**, and the current exhibit expands on that theme with two floors, one dedicated to “truth” – Babylonian artifacts like stiles, a plinth inscribed with Hammurabi’s Code, and ceramic burial urns, and one dedicated to “myth” – tracing the story of Babylon through Western Art into the 21st century. Its highlights include a Lego Auschwitz, a video art display of 64 mouths in a grid all speaking at once (in different languages), and a display of NY Post front pages drawing parallels between Saddam Hussein and the fall of Babylon (which was located in present-day Iraq if you were absent that day in Geography class).


(Pergamon Altar)

This is starting to become more of a digression rather than a foreshadowing, so fast forward to 7:59pm, just before the curtain rises for Porgy and Bess, as presented by the Cape Town Opera Company. I’ll say that again – the Cape Town Opera Company. Here’s where we get to the Babel. If you’ve seen Porgy and Bess before you know that it opens with "Summertime". My ignorant ass did not know this, but I recognized the music right away. Then Clara started singing “Ihhtzuhmmyertaimannnnthulfdgjhjk…” Take a George Gershwin tune, make it an Ira Gershwin opera tune, combine it with the acoustics and sound system of a faded concert hall, multiply by the distance our third balcony seats were from the stage, and add a heavy dose of South African accent trying to mimic a Southern drawl and you get the nonsense word above. I quickly went from the smug American who had breezed by the German program and libretto to vainly trying to decipher the overtitles projected above the stage. By the end of the first act I found a rhythm that provided about 50% comprehension, but even now I am not quite sure what happened to Clara and Jake in the hurricane, or if it really was a hurricane, or how Porgy became a cripple, or who got Bess started on the Happy Dust. I still enjoyed the show – the music was great, most of the performers had excellent voices (even if they were impossible to understand), and the staging was impressive. Honestly, the sheer fun of dressing up and rubbing elbows with well-heeled Berliners was worth the price of admission.

Our Babel-evening didn’t end when the cast made its second curtain-call. We walked to Savignyplatz and Restaurant Florian – much like the Deutsches Oper, a bit of a relic from the mod 60s of West Berlin, but still a place to see and be seen. Unfortunately, I had left my German-English dictionary behind in an attempt to look more like a native. Florian features a different menu each week, with selections presented on one hand-written page. German is hard enough to read when it is typed. Scrawled in a fancy cursive script it is nearly cryptic. We thought we recognized some words like Hänhchen (chicken), Schwein (pork) and entre cote (entre cote), but most dishes were an enigma. We decided on the Garnelen Marinieren to start, a Lammhaxe (I hoped lamb shank) for me and the Kalbstafelspitz (Kalb = calf = veal, right?) for Julie. I couldn’t swear to any of the above spellings, but I can say that the food, when it came, was delicious. Our appetizer turned out to be marinated shrimp served over a spicy tomato salsa and avocado wedges. Julie had the veal something-or-other: cutlets in a light spinach cream sauce. I had a leg of lamb, presented in a puttanseca dressing of capers and olives. We finished up at the fashionable hour of about one in the morning and hopped in a cab for home. “En di ecke der Wiesbadener Strasse und Sudwest Korso,” I knew to tell the driver. Thank goodness he didn’t ask me my preferred route, and thank goodness the German word for here is “hier,” which is where he stopped and bid us a good night.

** Ishtar Gate

Reinheistgebot: Brauerei Messhofen, Part 2

Hopefully by now everyone has committed the vocabulary list from part one to memory. My experience at the Messhofen Brauerei has had a few weeks to ferment, meaning that any imperfections have hopefully blown off, the alcohol content (alkohol gehalt) has risen, and this blog entry is finely carbonated and ready to drink.

The trip to Messhofen had been in the works for weeks – maybe even months. The Schneiders, Alex’s good friends, are regulars there, and it is thanks to them that we were able to not only tipple the heavenly brew, but to enter the inner sanctum and see (and smell) the Good Works in action.

Doors open for business at five o’clock sharp, but Clemens (the Braumeister) told us to show up around 4:30 for a personal guided tour. We constructed our day around this itinerary, with a wonderful visit to Ulm and its proudest edifice, the Münster, to get us in the mood both spiritually (it is a church) and physically (142 meters, 768 steps up and 768 down – no elevator). No doubt I would have been packing a fierce thirst even without the pilgrimage, but I am sure it helped to sharpen it.


(View of the Münster from the Danube)


(view from step 507)

True to his word, Clemens welcomed us at 4:30 on the nose and ushered us inside. Maybe Alex called ahead and asked him to wear the Lederhosen, maybe he figured he would fulfill our bigoted touristy preconceptions, or maybe he really does wear them for work regularly. The brewery has been the family business since 1841. Clemens took over for his father, who took over for his father before him, and so on back into the 19th century. Clemens Jr. was milling about, sporting the same ruddy cheeks, close cropped spiky haircut and yes, Lederhosen. He is probably only seven or eight right now, but it looks like the family business will be in good hands for another generation when Clemens decides to hang it up.


(Maximillian third from left - not really Clemens Jr.)

Through the front door was a little hallway with a small glass case displaying merchandise – t-shirts, mugs, pennants and flags, all emblazoned with the family coat-of-arms. To the left was the kitchen and a stairway leading to the family quarters above. Straight ahead was the main event: The Brew Room.

Much like its proprietor, Messhoffen Brauerei is modest. Just two kinds of beer, a Hefe-Weiss and a Märzen (a dark or dunkel concoction). Brewing takes place twice a week, with the entire process from germination to mashing to wort confined to one room. This is no coincidence, as Clemens prefers to keep things this way – simple and easy to manage. Given that this is literally a one man operation** this is essential.

Since we were visiting on a Friday, and hence a non-brewing day, there wasn’t too much of interest to see in this first room. I did my best to follow along with Clemens's all-German explanations, catching a hopfe here and a stammwürze there. Alex did her best to translate, but when we moved on to the refrigerated rooms where the Weissbier was fermenting, no words were necessary.


(Krausen rhymes with Kroy-sen)

The above picture gives you an idea of the splendor, but it would be better if I could figure out how to imbed the audio of the occasional plop, plop as foam from the Krausen cascaded over the edges of the fermenting tub, hitting the cement floor with a wet splash. Better yet, someone should invent a scratch-and-sniff computer monitor, so I could upload the fragrance of banana that permeated the room. If I had been alone I may well have gone all Augustus Glump and climbed right into the vat.

Instead, the tour moved on to more refrigerated rooms containing kegged beer awaiting shipment to Clemens’s various clients in the surrounding area. The customer base is small but loyal, again, just the way Clemens likes it. You won’t find his wares on the shelves of your local supermarket or liquor store. You can only buy it on the premises (by the bottle, case, growler or keg) or at select restaurants, none further away than Ulm (about 30 km). Keeping things to this scale allows Clemens to ensure the highest quality in his product line. If he ever decides to expand the business I will be sure the Schneiders tell him about my four years running the QC department at Criterion.

Upstairs are an elaborate pair of machines straight out of an episode of I Love Lucy (the one where Lucy and Ethel get jobs working in the chocolate factory), or to be more precise, the opening credits of Laverne and Shirley.


(Rollers equipped with special stabilizers to prevent beer from fizzing when opened... yeah right)

All those rollers, conveyor belts and brushes work together to clean, sterilize and bottle the brew. The picture above is of the fancy new Italian model Clemens invested in a few years ago when the old machine broke down. Faced with the choice of restricting the business to kegs or spending some serious cash, Clemens only had to think of his loyal customers, dutifully dropping off last week’s cases of empties and loading up this week’s fresh batch to know what had to be done.

Just before five the tour ended and we laid claim to a choice beer bench out front in what amounts to the biergarten. Several eager boozers had already lined up and Clemens had a smile and a joke for each of them. My favorites were the fellows at the next table over, decked out in riding leathers, their motorcycles parked in the shade. What an ideal way to end a full day of hard country riding (and hopefully not a way to begin an evening of hard country riding).


(The German beer bench - one of the world's greatest inventions)

All those steps at the Münster had created a mighty hunger to go with our mighty thirst, and Clemens and his wife were only too happy to oblige, serving us plates of Wurstsalat (chopped meat, onions, pickles and cabbage tossed in a vinegar dressing), Leberkäse (neither liver nor cheese – kind of like a giant chunk of grilled spam), Schmaltz Brot (bread with rendered pig fat and bits of bacon spread on it), and Sauer Käse (sour cheese).

The beer came first, of course. Lovely half-liters of sweet sweet nectar, with bubbles glittering in the afternoon sun. I started with a Dunkel, then moved onto the Weiss. A tough call on which recipe was better. Probably the best idea would be to continue researching, preferably every day around dinner time.

The glasses kept refilling and eventually my memories of the evening get as cloudy as the Hefe-Weiss I was drinking. I wasn’t drunk when the Oom-Pah band marched past. I knew no one would believe me so I took a picture.


(Where are the Ledherhosen?! You call yourself an Oom-Pah band?)

I also know that we hiked up to another biergarten next to a monastery, though I’m uncertain if the beer served there was brewed by the monks, or why I decided to take a picture of this bottle of Schnapps.


(What is that ram doing? Maybe that is why I took this picture.)

Or why I agreed to drink the Schnapps inside that bottle.

We went home with a couple of cases,

(Mine was heavier.)

though sadly I didn’t get to have much more than a sip, as I came down with the stomach flu the next day. No, it wasn’t a hangover – unless Julie managed to delay hers until we got home three days later. Something was going around Balzheim.

Since that trip I drink all my beers, from Schniederweisse to Erdinger in the glasses we bought. It isn’t the same. But we have another trip with Alex and Jochen in about a week, and I’m not sure what excites me more: our excursion to the Alps or the fresh case of Messhofen waiting for us at Jochen’s apartment in Neuchatel.

** Footnote reading nerd! Technically, it is a one-man operation on all days except on bottling day, when it becomes a six man operation. If it were a true one-man operation on bottling day it would probably look like something out of that I Love Lucy Episode.

Nobama

A quick glance at the newspaper above will give you the news. Or perhaps you’ve already heard. Yup. Kaiser’s is having a sale this weekend. Almost as exciting is that little blurb about Barack Obama. He bought a Eurail pass this summer, I guess. This week brought him to Berlin. The papers say 200,000 people saw him speak below the Seigessäule in Tiergarten. My count is more like 199,998, since Julie and I were sitting on a platform in Prague at the time of his address. I guess I should have checked with my buddy Matt who is working for Obama before scheduling a trip to the Czech Republic. Alas, our hotel and train tickets were already booked and paid for by the time the “O” man settled on his European itinerary.

So instead of being packed in on Strasse 17 Juni, watching our Next President * hold court (likely having to follow on a video monitor, but still) Julie and I listened to the audiobook of Dreams For My Father between loudspeaker announcements updating us on the late arrival of our train from Prague to Berlin.



We were left to read about the speech in Der Spiegel, and to watch a few measly clips on CNN International after we finally arrived home late Thursday night. German reaction seems to be much the same as what Obama has encountered in the states so far: namely, abundantly enthusiastic. Though, also like in the states, it is unclear if the enthusiasm is for the candidate himself or for the Event with a capital “E” that is an Obama rally. One front page I saw the next day called him Prinzen Amerikaner… and the aforementioned Der Spiegel had a whole magazine about the “Super Star.”



Julie and I moved from Hillary country to Obamaland back in June. At least, all our stuff moved to Obamaland. Not sure if my TV or my grill has registered in Illinois yet. In my unscientific survey of the German populace ** I have learned that Germans are skeptical about “charisma” in their politicians. Whether or not this is a hangover from Hitler or just a handy explanation for the success of Angela Merkel I will leave to the bloggers on Salon and Slate. What I can predict is that come November, Julie and I will continue our trend of voting Democratic in the bluest of the blue states, thus ensuring that we have the smallest impact possible on the results. Maybe Julie should have applied for that job at Oberlin.

* This is an example of my attempt at a reverse-reverse jinx. Having had no doubt that Al Gore would beat Bush in ’00, and after being beyond certain that Kerry would prevail in ’04, only to be blindsided when the results came in, I am resorting to superstition to help carry the day this time around.

** Survey taken the night of July 14th while at dinner with our friend Jens, consisting of Jens and his partner, You Tsai. Margin of error +/- 82 million.

BVG

(BVG Office, just next to Gleisdreiek stop)

I hate waiting for the subway. When we lived in Brooklyn the “F” train became the bane of my existence. Actually my bane was both the “F” and the “V” trains, the latter of which was implemented sometime after 9/11 and added a transfer to my morning commute to the Criterion office. Don’t get me wrong, New York City has the best public transportation system in the US. It runs 24 hours a day, can get you anywhere you want to go for two bucks (even less with monthly passes) and is great for people (and rat) watching. I have an increased appreciation for the MTA after dealing with the MBTA for the last three years. In Wellesely we were one town too far into the suburbs for normal “T” service, so we had to rely on the commuter rail if we didn’t want to drive into Boston. I think I took the commuter rail about half a dozen times during the entire time we lived there, and most of those were trips to Fenway – the only really convenient destination from Wellesley. But even on subsequent trips back to New York I find my blood pressure rising the minute I swipe my card and descend into the bowels of Manhattan. I can’t stand waiting for the subway, and the transit gods know this – why else would they fuck with my emotions by ensuring the train I want is ALWAYS just pulling out of the station as I come through the turnstiles. Why would they send waves of garbage trains past me, kindling my hopes with their distant lights and displaced wind currents only to trundle by without stopping, leaving me more miserable than before? Why would they check to see where I was going and then invariably send my “F” train on the “A” line to West 4th (or vice-versa)? Why would they have allowed the “G” train to exist? I hate hate hate waiting for the subway. The standing. The sitting. The crying.

And then we moved to Berlin. The clouds parted. The angels sang on high. I met the BVG, Berlin’s public transportation authority. BVG stands for Berliner Verkehrsbetriebe. I don’t know what Verkehrsbetriebe means in English, but I think it translates to “totally awesome”. What makes the BVG so awesome? Let’s start with their website. Go there. Click on the journey planner for a trip from Rüdesheimer Platz to Kottbusser Tor. How about Rüdesheimer Platz to Strausberger Platz? See for yourself. Here’s a jpeg that should suffice if you are feeling lazy:


(suggested routes to Wannsee from Rudesheimer Platz)

But the website is just the tip of the iceberg. There is also a number you can call any time, day or night, where you’ll get a live operator who can tell you how to get from point A to point B. Not all the buses, trams, S-Bahns (above ground trains) and U-Bahns (under ground trains) run 24 hours a day, but never fear. If you stumble out of a club at 4:00am there is also a vast network of night buses that can get you safely home.

And here is the best part. No, not the buttons that light up as you enter a station, the buttons that you can push to open the doors even while the train is slowing to a stop. Not the designated bicycle cars. It is not even the open container laws that mean you can legally drink a beer during your evening (or morning) commute. It is so simple. At each station there are electronic displays telling you how long before the next two trains in either direction arrive. Not just on the tracks, but also above the stairs leading to transfer points, so you know if you have to sprint to make your connection, or if there is time to stop and get a bowl of noodles from the Chinese imbiss on the platform. Somehow, just knowing how long I have to wait makes the act of waiting entirely tolerable.

Of course, this system would be worthless if it was not accurate. If the sign says a train will come in three minutes and I wait 10, that would probably be worse than just waiting for 10 minutes without knowing when the wait would end. But this is Germany after all. The trains are never late. The BUSES are never late. How they manage that feat in city traffic and stoplights I will never know. And if anything IS late, there is a number you can call to complain. To a real person.

It probably doesn’t hurt that trains run every five minutes most of the day. I think the longest I’ve ever waited was 13 minutes, and that was well after Midnight, well away from the center of town. Actually, I know that is how long I waited, because I could read it all there on the electronic display.

Even the disasters have turned out in my favor. We tried to take a bus to the Grunewald S-bahn stop for an express ride to the beach at Wannsee, and in our haste neglected to read that every other bus on the 186 line terminated before Grunewald (and yup, we were on THAT one). We had to get off somewhere in the burbs, but the next bus was EARLY & we were soon bathing in the sun by the lake.


(map of entire system)

When I said before that the best part of the BVG was the electronic displays, I lied. The best part of the BVG is that even the track construction, or bauarbeiten works in my favor. Our train, the U3, runs from Krumme Lanke to Nolendorf Platz, where you can connect to the U1 for a trip East to Kreuzberg or Friedrichshain or to the U2 up to Potsdamer Platz, Alexanderplatz and Northern Mitte. The U1 is currently undergoing renovations from Gleisdreiek to Kotbusser Tor (if you plotted the trip I told you to earlier you already know this). Passengers can switch to a bus (which, naturally, is always waiting for you at the top of the steps when you exit the subway) that runs along the U1 route between these two stations. But here is where things get really sweet. The transportation gods in their benevolence have decided that during this construction time, the U3 will continue past Nollendorf Platz all the way to Gleisdreiek. That meant that I was able to skip a transfer when I visited the Technology Museum last week. That means my trip to Potsdamer Platz is shorter by about five minutes. Bauarbeiten, I think I love you.

And what does this cost, you ask? For 2,10 Euro you can buy a single ticket that is valid on every tram, train, bus or mule in the city for up to two hours from the time you start your journey. A weekly pass is 26,20. Julie and I carry monthly passes for the low low price of 72 Euro a month. There are no turnstiles here, so unlike New York, where if you accidentally went to the platform going the wrong direction, exiting and re-entering doesn’t cost you a ride. Everything operates on the honor system. You time stamp your single ticket when you get on a bus, or just as your subway car arrives. If you are a monthly pass carrier you simply walk into the station and get aboard, or flash your wallet at the bus driver (none of whom has ever looked once, let alone twice, at my pass). Germans are such good citizens that I bet there would not even have to be any system of control for these time stamps. But of course Berlin is full of tourists, so there is the rumor going around that there are undercover agents that can slap you with a 40 Euro fine if they catch you with an expired or unstamped ticket.

At least, it was a rumor until this week.

During a trip to MohrenStrasse, as I rocked to my ipod and spied on the family sitting across from me, I sensed a buzzing in the air. People were smiling and exchanging knowing looks. Had someone farted? Was there a mime busking behind me? Had I farted? Nope. It was the undercover ticket agents, one at each end of the car, moving through and checking tickets. I was so excited I almost dropped my wallet, eager to prove how honorable I was. Eager to show that I could never betray the trust of something I loved so much.

As I write this, it occurs to me that it would be far more entertaining if I had somehow left my card at home that morning - a great twist of irony cast down on the Berlin transit gods by their evil cousins in New York or Boston. If this was a fiction story that is how it would end: me in tears as some dude in sneakers, cut-off shorts and a backpack dragged be off to the gulag, flashing his laminated BVG Polizei ID and cursing me in German. But I didn’t forget my card. I just smiled brightly, displayed my card with pride, and they walked right past, hardly giving me a second glance.

iPod

I forgot to bring my camera on my architecture walk through Mitte today. I did have my iPod, though. So in lieu of pictures, here’s the soundtrack.

**Edit - It is taking too long to upload these songs... plus I think it is probably a copyright infringement. So here's a link to an iTunes album recreating most of it, or you can wait till you see me next and request a copy of my mix tape, though who knows when that will be. Sigh... I guess you just had to be there.

1. Hitler’s Bunker – Francis Farmer Will Have Her Revenge on Seattle (Nirvana)

Almost was Into Your Arms by Nick Cave, but I got turned around coming out of the subway. The Nirvana song came on just as I was walking up to the sign marking the spot (the bunker is no more. A car park sits in its place). I thought it was just the right song to be listening to when reading about ol' Adolf's last days & when I discovered that my camera wasn't in the backpack I got the idea for this blog post. As you will see, most of the other songs on my mix were not really as fitting.

2. Stasi Exhibition – At the Other End of the Telescope (Aimee Mann)

Actually, this one kind of worked too. At this point I thought I was really onto something. You know, like if I was looking at you looking at me I could either be in love with you, or spying on you (or both, like in The Lives of Others). The exhibit itself was very cool, though unfortunately for me, entirely in German. Didn't really need to read the display explanations for things like a can of tomatoes that has a screw-off bottom containing microfilm, but the thoughtful timelines were an enigma.

3. British Embassy – Better Be Home Soon (Crowded House)

Well, Crowded House is an Australian band, and that's part of the Commonwealth, right? This is the coolest embassy in Berlin. It has a plain stone facade, but there are all these cool jutting shapes in purple and blue that are set back into a recess in the wall. From the profile you wouldn't see anything, but from the side it is very funky. Kind of like the English. Or not.

4. Pariser Platz – Changer (Stereolab)

Pariser Platz is the square next to the Brandenberg Gate, so named in celebration of the defeat of Napoleon. I could have called this one "Brandenberg Gate" instead, but that isn't French sounding. Stereolab isn't really French either (half-French, I think), though this (and many of their other) song(s) is (are) in French. Maybe someone who is a huge Stereolab fan could make a better blurb about why this song was appropriate... like their songs are anti-capitalist Marxist commentaries, ironic because Pariser Platz is in former East Berlin but is now the height of glamor and conspicuous consumption.

5. Dresdner Bank – I am the Resurrection (The Stone Roses)

I only peeked in the lobby here. Rough Guide says that the picture of Fredrick the Great is by Andy Warhol. Too bad I didn't put some Velvet Underground on this list. How about, "The Stone Roses enjoyed their 15 minutes of fame?"

6. DZ Bank – A Shot in the Arm

Um, at this point I was tired and needed a shot in the arm? No? Sorry. This conceit is growing tiresome. But the building, designed by Frank Ghery is very cool. The facade is just stone and rectangular windows (in compliance with the strict building codes for this historic plaza), but inside is all curving steel and glass.

7. Hotel Adlon – (stopped)

I turned my iPod off for this part, so as not to look like too much of a tourist. Too bad my backpack and t-shirt gave me away. The bellhop shooed me out after I wandered around the lobby for a few minutes.

8. Unter den Linden – What Deaner Was Talkin’ About (Ween)

No wash hanging out to dry on this grand boulevard. Unter den Linden means under the lime (lemon?) trees. Hitler replaced the trees with Nazi totem poles, but thankfully they were replanted after the war.

9. Russian Embassy – The Mayor of Simpleton (XTC)

... Cool song. Ugly building. That's all I got.

10. Friedrichstrasse/Dussmann – Autumn Sweater (Yo La Tengo), 3000 Flowers (Destroyer)

A bookish band and an erudite lyricist? Dussman is the bookstore I ducked into in search of an English-language guidebook to the Italian Riviera.

11. Staats-bibliothek – All the Wine (The National)

Beautiful ivy-colored courtyard where I sat and ate my Doner Kebap. Sadly I had packed water rather than wine.

12. Humboldt Universität – Heartbeats (Jose Gonzalez)

Moving along. Nothing to see here. Except for a very cool-looking Neoclassical edifice, originally built as a palace for Frederick the Great's brother. Alumni from this prestigious university include Karl Marx & Friedrich Engels. Albert Einstein taught here. Not sure where Jose Gonzalez went to school.

13. Neue Wache – Number One Son (Camera Obscura)

The Neue Wache was a guardhouse for the royal watch in the early 19th century. The East Germans dedicated it as a memorial for the victims of "Fascism and Militarism" and even had a goose-stepping changing of the guard out front (or so says The Rough Guide). Now it is a memorial for "The Victims of War and Tyranny". Camera Obscura probably walked by here the last time they played Berlin.

14. Zeughaus (Historiches Museum) – Swans (Islands)

The Zeughaus was the old Prussian arsenal. During revolutionary unrest in 1848, Berliners stormed the building looking for weapons but found none. In response the government banned democratic organizations. The Zeughaus housed Nazi propaganda on WWI, was the site of a failed assassination attempt against Hitler, and since 1953 has been home to The German History Museum. Wagner's most famous opera was about Swans. Maybe I should have gone to the Staatsoper across the street first.

15. IM Pei Bau – Your Fucking Sunny Day (Lambchop)

Today was not sunny at all. IM Pei designed this annex to the Historiches Museum. IM Pei was in Pulp Fiction, starring Samuel L. Jackson, who was also in Die Hard III with Bruce Willis. Bruce Willis was in The Sixth Sense with Toni Collette, who co-starred with Hugh Grant in About a Boy. Hugh Grant was Julia Roberts' love interest in Notting Hill. And Julia Roberts was also in Flatliners with Kevin Bacon!

16. Staatsoper – Oceans in the Hall (The Ladybug Transistor)

See # 14 above. Also, currently playing at the State's Opera is Fidelio.

17. Bebelplatz – The Latest Toughs (Okkervil River)

The Nazis were just the latest toughs when they came to power. Bebelplatz is home to The Empty Library, a memorial to the Büchverbrennung - Goebbels' book-fueled bonfire of 1933. It is just a room with barren bookshelves, sunk in the ground and covered with glass. Sounds cool, eh? I was very excited to see it. Too bad this is fashion week in Berlin - the whole square is covered in a giant white tent with Mercedes Benz logos and restricted to fashion industry-ites. You know what they say. "Where they start by burning books, they'll end by putting on a fashion show".

18. Alte Bibliothek – Secretarial (AC Newman)

The Alte Bibliothek is known as the Kommode, which is German for "Chest of Drawers." I bet you thought I was going to say "Toilet" didn't you? I'm not that crude. But I did stop here to use the restroom. I listened to Secretarial while I peed.

19. Gendarmenmarkt – Chicago (Sufjan Stevens)

Once Sufjan Stevens finishes writing the last album in his 50-state song cycle, maybe he'll move on to international capitols. I bet he'd write a cool one about the Gendarmenmarkt, a vast public square meant to mimic the Piazza del Popolo in Rome.

Whew! It was a long walk. Almost as long as it took me to write this fucking endless post. Next time I'm bringing my camera.

Reinheistgebot: Brauerei Messhofen, Part 1

Reinheistgebot – German Brewing Purity Law dating from 1516 that says German beer must be made with only four ingredients: Water, Hops, Barley and Yeast.

One of the highlights of our visit with the Meders was our trip to nearby Messhofen for a tour of an authentic Braeurei. It’s not a micro-brewery. It’s a mini-brewery. Not exactly sure what the difference is, but for a humble home-brewer it was a little slice of heaven no matter how you defined it. Here are some pictures and my vocabulary list so I’d know what Braumeister Clemens was talking about:

Hefe – yeast
Hopfen – hops
Gerste – barley
Malz – malt
Pils – pilsner
Dunkel – dark
Hell – light
Schwartz – black
Gährung – fermentation
Fass – tap
Flache - bottle
Alkohol Gehalt – alcohol content
Stammwürtze – specific gravity
Lecker – delicious


(Brauerei Messhofen: Since 1841)


(Mmm. Smells like Bananas)


(After this I climbed in)


(Bottle washing and filling machines... beats the heck out of using the bathtub)


(Clemens - 2nd from left - wore the lederhosen just for us, I'm sure)


(What a spread... nothing goes better with beer than processed meat. Except bacon fat smeared on bread. Good thing we had both.)


(Beer makes Matt crazy. Or is that his happy face?)

Berliner

PREREQUISITE READING FOR THIS BLOG ENTRY:

The most prominent feature of German word order is the position of the verb. Each of the three major clause types in German—main, question, and subordinate—requires the conjugated verb to occupy a different place within the clause, which can differ considerably from English:

Main clause:

Eigentlich verstehe ich diese Regel schon. Actually I already understand this rule.

Question:

Verstehst du diese Regel oder nicht? Do you understand this rule or not? Subordinate clause:

Ich glaube zumindest, dass ich diese Regel schon verstehe. At least I think (that) I already understand this rule.

But although the verb position varies from clause to clause, it is consistent within each clause type. The conjugated verb and any associated verbal elements (such as infinitives or participles) in fact form a subtle framework into which other elements can be placed in various ways. The important thing is to remember which kind of clause you are constructing and how that dictates the constraints and possible variations for word order within it.



After “Ask not what your country can do for you…” JFK’s most famous phrase is probably “Shit, I think I hear your husband.” His third most famous phrase, though, is “Ich bin ein Berliner.” Kind of sad for one of our nation’s best orators. Kennedy made this verbal gaffe in 1963 at the end of a long speech in front of more than 500,000 people at the Rathouse Schoneberg. The speech was about expressing the unity the rest of the Free World had with West Berlin citizens. What could be more unifying than a little sprinkling of local dialect? Now, if you’ve visited a German baker anywhere from Lindau to Emden, you know that a Berliner is a jelly doughnut. When Kennedy said “Ich bin ein Berliner” the natives were left scratching their ends. “He’s a what?” they must have said.

Cute story. Clean, compact. Hits all the right notes: cynical; brings a great statesman down to size; references the two most important subjects in Post-WWII history (the Cold War and Dessert). Just one problem – we’ve been telling it wrong for over forty years.

The nut of the joke lies in German grammar, of course. If you didn’t complete the prerequisite reading for this entry, now would be a good time to do so. Got it? Okay. If JFK really wanted to impress the folks of West Berlin with his grasp of German and all of its wonderful subtleties, what he should have said was “Ich bin ein Pfannkuchen.” Because that is how you say jelly doughnut here in Berlin.

Ugly Americans, Part 2

Happy 4th of July (belated). With our Weber mini-grill entombed somewhere in a Chicagoland storage warehouse and my star-spangled shorts packed in mothballs, Julie and I nearly forgot that Friday was 4th of July. We remembered in time to make plans for an Ugly American night redux. It being a national holiday and all, we decided to go whole-hog. In Berlin it is actually pretty easy to go whole-hog. The JFK museum recently opened in the shadow of the Brandenberg Gate. Each trip to Mitte usually requires walking past “The Sixties,” and American themed diner promoting pre-Altamont, innocent Americana rather than the post-Tet offensive dark underbelly… at least that is what I’ve gleaned from looking. Starbucks is well ensconced on the Ku’damm. Though I haven’t yet seen an actual branch, the McDonalds bags and cups I see around town indicate that the Golden Arches are around here somewhere, too.

Our plans were for dinner and a movie, and as I’ve mentioned before, the most Original Language screens are at the Sony Center, and Andy’s Sports Bar is the place for a burger in that neck of the woods. “Sports Bar” is a relative term, of course. They did have a couple for small TVs showing Wimbledon highlights and Wrestlemania, but there was no Golden Tee, no obnoxious Frat crowd, and no Ladies Drink Free on the 4th promotion. We tucked in to a small table in the corner and ordered our food and drinks. I am proud to report that I did my patriotic duty and asked for a Miller. I probably have not had a Miller since I was in college. When my tiny screw-capped bottle arrived and I considered it next to Julie’s mouth-watering tap-poured Erdinger it dawned on me that this was a moment created only so that I could post a picture of me with a Miller on this blog.



Was it worth it? I’m not sure that it was. Do we do anything because we want to do it or because we want to tell others about it? Does wanting to memorialize the moment cheapen the experience? Before I could think too deeply about what my motivations for committing beer sacrilege had been, our onion rings arrived. They were served up in standard American fashion – hot, crunchy, greasy, salty… and on a bed of tortilla chips with mayo and salsa on the side. I haven’t enjoyed onion rings so much in a long, long time. The burgers were a little disappointing after such a great opening act. Maybe they would have been better with a Bud Lite.

We paid our bill with about an hour to kill before the start of our movie. Andy’s is literally across the street from the Sony Center, so it was looking like we would have to do some serious people-watching when suddenly the sounds of tiny explosions echoed off of the steel-and-concrete canyons of Potsdamer Platz. I could see flashes of light reflected on the glass windows of a skyscraper on the corner. We may have missed the hot-dog eating contest at Nathan’s, but the Coney-Island fireworks were in full-effect. The fates were smiling on us and I knew there was a reason why I had downed that swill. I doubted that Andy’s had the budget for such things. We found out later that the celebration was coming from just up the road, at the grand opening of the American Embassy on Unter der Linden… what a coincidence! Good thing those contractors had been slow about putting in the marble countertops or they’d have been stuck partying on Cinco de Mayo or something. In any case, we were treated to a terrific thirty-minute show that ended with just enough time for me to wait in line at the concession stand for a bag of Gummi Bears and for us to find our seats.



The cherry on top of our Ugly American night was a film about Ugly Americans – The Ruins. Ugly on the inside, of course. The cast for this adaptation of Scott Smith’s horror-in-the-jungle beach novel is well scrubbed (at least when we first meet them by the pool at a Mexican resort) with perky chests and rippling biceps. I read the book last summer, hoping for a little bit of the magic from A Simple Plan. What I got was the literary equivalent of torture-porn, sprinkled with a dash of survival tale. The movie dispenses with most of the survival tale stuff. It also makes the mistake of trying to make its characters too likeable, which took away some of the joy I’d derived from reading about their suffering in the book version, where they were almost uniformly detestable. I won’t give away the ending (of the book or the movie), but I can tell you that the moral of the story is that if you are a vapid American tourist, stick to the familiar & don’t try to pretend your are interested in the local culture – all those Starbucks are out there for a reason.

Foosball

Lord bless me, for I have seen the light. One month into our stay here and I have been converted. Goodbye baseball and your 4 ½ hour Yankees v Red Sox snore-a-thons. See ya basketball and your unending 81-game regular season that is only less meaningful than the first three and a half quarters of each playoff game. Brown it, football, where the Raiders will not be competitive until Al Davis dies (I know, I know, he’s a vampire… I’m fucked). Hockey? Don’t even get me started. Hello soccer, or as we Europeans call it, Football.



In German the word is Fooßball. I’m sure if you looked it up on wikipedia you would find that American foosball comes from the German word. I don’t even need to look it up. The evidence is all right there: Germans are master woodcarvers; Germans make wonderful games; Originally German soccer players were positioned in four rows, joined together by long metal rods, and were “spun” by their coaches. In the end it was just a short journey from my love of foosball to my love of Fooßball.

The day we left the states, the Celtics finished off the Pistons, creating probably the most anticipated NBA Finals matchup in twenty years: Lakers versus Celtics. I was sure that in a city as large as Berlin I would have no problem finding a sports bar that would carry the games on satellite. As it turns out, the biggest obstacle was not the start time (3:00 am CET) but the fact that the Finals coincided with the EUFA Euro 2008 tournament. I made some attempts to watch online via a friend’s Slingbox account. I even tried to listen to a game on internet radio. But then the Fooßball started and I forgot all about Kevin Garnett, Paul Pierce and the Quest for 17.

Nothing can equal the adrenaline of being there in person when the crowd rises as one to root on a swift counter-attack, long-maned strikers streaking downfield with their hair flowing in the wind. At the stadium you can see the whole field at once, the lines of defense, the spacing. I’d always rather be at the game, no matter what sport. But Fooßball translates quite well to television, too. I’m sure that American ad executives would disagree, but two commercial-free 45 minutes halves, with a pause in the middle just long enough for a pee and a trip to the fridge for more beer and a snack is a viewing audience’s dream.



I’ve already mentioned a couple of matches in earlier blog posts, though they were typically just going on in the background. Fooßball was unavoidable here for the month of June. When Brady and Melissa visited the quarter-finals had begun. One night we tried to watch the Germany Portugal match in a few public viewing venues, but were turned back, first by the standing-room-only crowds, then by the 9 Euro beers. We ended up at the one table we could find in Kruezberg – under the awning of a Thai restaurant. I’m sure it was the only free table simply because this was the only restaurant NOT showing the game. Not to worry, though. We had our choice of which screen to follow between the Italian restaurant on one side and the bar on the other. Germany won and the city echoed to the sounds of “Deutschland” choruses and honking horns well into the night.

Hoping to avoid the somewhat disappointing behavior of soccer hooligans the next night, we opted for what we thought would be a more refined (read: older) crowd at a promising sounding Bier Garten plucked from the pages of Frommer’s. Weren’t we surprised then, when we found Joe’s Wirthaus Zum Lowen to be smack in the middle of the Europa Center, packed with drumming Turkey fans. We stayed, lured initially by the 1-liter steins, but eventually by the high drama of the match, which saw Croatia score a soul-crushing goal with 1 minute left in overtime. We slunk low in our seats as Turks streamed out, shouting angry curses at the TV… but then: Senturk knocked home a brilliant strike to tie with literally seconds remaining. Everyone came rushing back in. The game ended even, but in truth it was all over but the crying for Croatia, who stumbled 3-1 in penalty-kicks, setting off an even bigger celebration in the city center than the night before. As we rode home I wasn’t sure whether to be glad or sad that we would by hundreds of miles away in Bavaria in three nights, when Germany and Turkey would face each other in the semi-finals.



I have to admit, everything after that match was a little anti-climactic. The Germany-Turkey game was not that well played, though watching in the living room with Alex and her parents made things pretty special. Between sharing a fine Ulm-ish brew with Franz (Papi) and watching Alex and her mom jump up and down glee after Schwein-ee (Piggy, literally - or Bastian Schweinsteiger to the journalists) found the back of the net, I can’t think of a place I would rather have been. Alas, for the finals I was limited to soup and a small glass of beer, still recovering from a 24-hour stomach flu. Maybe I wasn’t the only one who caught the bug. Germany looked good for about 10 minutes, then pretty much handed the trophy over to a superior Spanish side who played better than the 1-nil decision might suggest.



So now the excitement is over. We’ll see how long my adoption of the German National squad lasts… probably until they have to face off against one of my other adopted teams like England or Italy or France, or (one can always dream) the US. Maybe I’ll root for Deutschland even then. It’s hard to go against them when you consider the German word for team is “Mannschaft”.

Familie Meder

All you have to do to understand the Familie Meder is take one look at the wall of their dining room. There you will find a floor-to-ceiling wallpaper map of the World from The National Geographic Society. We spent a week with Alex, her boyfriend Jochen, and her parents Franz and Anne and at their home in Balzheim at the end of June.

We know Alex from our time in Wellesley, where she and Julie overlapped for a couple of years – Alex in the German department, Julie in Anthropology, and all of us desperate to escape the ‘burbs for the simple pleasures of a good pub. It was sad to see Alex leave at the end of the ’07 term, but we made definite plans to meet up in Germany soon. Thanks to Irmgard Connex and the WZB for helping make those plans come true.

We met Franz and Anne back in Wellesley, too, when they came to visit Alex. They’ve been retired the last fourteen years, and are about as good a model for how to enjoy life as I can think of. When we met them they were all set to begin a six-week RV trip across the North West, through Yellowstone & on up into British Columbia. I can still taste the chocolate cake Franz baked us for Anne’s birthday. I wish I had a slice right now.

The Meders have always had an RV. Their current model is quite luxurious, yet fuel-efficient as well. It had better be given how much they travel. We squeezed our visit in just before Franz and Anne left for a road trip though Poland, Lithuania, Lativa and Estonia. Alex gets the globe-trotting bug from her folks. In addition to her two years in Massachusetts, Alex has spent over half a year bicycling around South America, been back-and-forth to Australia three times, had stints in England, in France, Thailand… I could go on. I’m pretty sure the only continent she hasn’t been to yet is Antarctica – but it could be she just hasn’t gotten around to those stories with us yet.



I think our visit may have been a bit of an anomaly – yes, we had a day trip to Ulm, where we strolled along the Danube and climbed 768 steps and 142 meters to the top of the Munster, the tallest church in the world. And we also drove into Bavaria for a fog-shrouded pilgrimage to Neuschwannstein, the fairy-tale castle of Mad King Ludwig II and model for Walt Disney’s Sleeping Beauty (Cinderella? Help me out fact-checkers.). But we spent most of the time lounging in the garden - reading, grilling, and chatting.

Franz is all a whirl of disheveled hair and exuberance. He is extremely sociable, to the point where Alex sometimes loses patience. “Papi. Papi. PAPI.” she scolded more than once as his voice rose over the other conversations. He has an extremely inquisitive mind. When he found that his job as a postal worker brought him in contact with a good number or Turks, he enrolled in a class to learn Turkish, a skill that served him well in work as well as family vacations to Istanbul and beyond. Same with his English. Most Germans of our generation speak better English than we do. For Franz, growing up in the German countryside in the 30s and early 40s, America was just some place on a map, and even England seemed unimportant. Now he and Anne have spent extended time in Hawaii and Australia under a house-exchange vacation plan, where I am sure he was as fearless and outgoing as ever.

Anne is the quiet one. The oldest of seven children, a charming smile and sparkling eyes hide her sharp wit – poor Alex was left to both defend herself and translate for us after a couple of her Mom’s clever barbs. Anne keeps Franz under control. She is the rock of the family. She is the one who drives the RV, since, as Alex puts it: “My dad drives like he talks.” Anne was my mother-in-absentia when I cam down with the flu towards the end of our visit.



One afternoon, after a long discussion ranging from solar energy technology to The Future of Children, Julie, Jochen and I napped in the garden while Alex and Anne drove to the neighboring village for some shopping. When they got back we picked fresh arugula from the garden and Alex combined it with ripe tomatoes and a chunk of basil-mozzarella for a mouth-watering version of her summer pasta. We set the table and suddenly realized no one had seen Franz since we’d concluded that kids today don’t know how good they had it, at least two or three hours earlier. “Papi, papi, PAPI,” Alex called. Anne searched the house from the basement to the attic, but no Franz. We were just about to sit down to eat without him, figuring he’d grown bored with the quiet and wandered over to the neighbors’, when he emerged from behind the hedgerow, hair all a-muss. “We looked for you everywhere, where were you?” we asked. “Yah, yah. I was asleep over there, behind the hedge.” While no one was watching, Franz had slipped on his noise-cancelling headphones and curled up for a nice long Mittag Schlaf, or afternoon sleep, in the shade. He laughed along with us, poured himself a glass of Wien Schole and sat down to lunch. And that is the way it is at the home of the Familie Meder.

“Home” Sweet Home

What does this saying mean when you don’t really have a home? We found that out last night upon returning “home” to Berlin after a terrific visit to countryside in Southern Germany. A longer and more interesting post about our trip to see Alex, Jochen and the Familie Meder to come, but for now, just this: we are NOT homeless after all.

I always get a little sad and nostalgic when a vacation comes to an end. I pledge to sell my soul for just one more day. I stare soberly at the horizon just like Luke Skywalker in Star Wars. Then there is the (often) long slog back to where I started, back to home. But once I’ve finally arrived, my blues are invariably washed away by the comfort of my own bed, the last couple of cookies in the cookie jar that I’ve been feinding for for days, the joy of walking through the kitchen in my underwear, or even simply the sight of a favorite knick-knack on the shelf. This was put to the test last night as we lugged our over-packed bags down Wiesbadner Strasse towards the IBZ.

For starters, the bed at the Meder house is far more comfortable than the one in our apartment here in Berlin. I was wearing my last pair of clean underwear, meaning that in order to parade around the house half-naked today I’d either have to do it in swimtrunks or scrounge up enough euro cents to do the laundry. We also do not have a cookie jar. Ich habe keine Keks Topf.

Got bless Brady & Melissa, then. Because there, adorning the front of our kleine (and sadly empty) fridge was one of their “house-warming” gifts and our one-and-only knick-knack.





Sometimes that is all it takes to make a house a… well, you know.

This morning I did the laundry. This afternoon I did the shopping, and when I was putting things away on the shelves of our entertainment-cabinet-cum-pantry I found the bag of Shoko-Orangenkekse left over from our picnic and still fresh, sealed up in a Ziploc “cookie bag”. I’m writing this blog in my underwear. It is good to be home.

The password is Fidelio.

We are still a little unsure what exactly we witnessed last night, but I can say without reservation that it was a highlight that will be difficult to top.

Brady and Melissa have been visiting us from New York for the past week. It has been nice having an excuse to throw aside work and just be a tourist again. Hosting someone in an unfamiliar city is a little daunting, especially when no one speaks the language beyond “I work at the bank” (me) and “I have no cheese” (Brady) but armed with Timeout and Roughguide and Fodor’s we’ve muddled through pretty well so far. One site that we had targeted for a look-see was the Clarchen’s Ballhaus.

Clarchen’s Ballhaus is a pizza parlor/dance club, recommended to Brady by a friend who had passed through Berlin during the last International Film Festival. You can go here to check it out for yourself:

http://www.ballhaus.de

If you don’t understand the German, the place’s history is this:

It started as a private dance club in 1913, though likely the building is even older. One large ballroom sat downstairs, with another, more exclusive one upstairs, walled with mirrors. The front building had to be torn down when it was damaged during World War II, leaving a large courtyard in its place & the entry to the downstairs ballroom visible from the street. It remained open during the war, closing only in 1944 when the Nazis tamped down on the city’s entertainment businesses. The same sign has been used since it was painted in the 30s:



When Berlin was divided (with the neighborhood of Mitte located in the Eastern section) the club became a favorite hangout for GDR officers. After unification and the gentrification of Mitte, rising rents were inevitable and the whole establishment had to be sold. The new owners spiffed it up, keeping much of the old charm, and reopened to the public in 2005.

After a long hard day of sunbathing, sausages and beer at Badeschiff



we donned some sharp outfits (by sharp I mean sharper than bathing suits and flip-flops) and trekked back out to Mitte for something a little more refined. If you clicked on the link above and looked at some of the pictures you probably have a sense of Clarchen’s typical clientele. We settled on a table in a prime location in the courtyard, noting the remnants of where the front building must have abutted its neighbors before being torn down. Our dinners of authentic Italian pizzas arrived just moments before the rain. Our tuxedoed waiter kindly agreed when we asked if we could move inside.

Just past the ticket counter & coat check lay the main dining hall and what we assumed was to become the main ballroom as well. Remember those eighth-grade dances that were special enough to be relocated to the local VFW building? It looked strikingly similar to that, right down to the floor-to-ceiling tinsel draping along the wall. Of course, your VFW building probably didn’t have two full bars and a tiny back room where everyone huddled around a 13-inch television watching the Italy v Spain soccer match, but you get the idea. After dinner we lingered over our crusts, trying to catch the waiter’s attention and wondering when the dancing would begin. I could have sworn I heard the throb of techno music when we walked in, and I was pretty sure that the crowd shoehorned into the back room, though tightly packed, was not the full extent of people we had seen dining al fresco and hanging about in the courtyard. So where was the party, if not this?

A little investigating turned up only the bathrooms in the back, and the kitchen across from the coat check room turned out to be the source of the music. The pizzas were excellent, the waitstaff smartly dressed (if not overly attentive) and the past-its-prime Magnificent Ambersonish atmosphere of the ballroom was charming, but surely there was something more that justified the rave review from Brady’s friend.

Maybe it was the rain that made us delay, or maybe it was the fact that Italy and Spain had just gone to penalty kicks. Just before we were about to make a dash for the curb and hopefully a cab for the ride home, Melissa did a little more exploring and came back with the news that everyone was watching the soccer “upstairs”. Out the front entrance and to the left was an anonymous little door that led to a grand staircase, lit by a few nearly spent candelabras. At the top of the stairs was a grand ballroom, full of people dining by candlelight and cheering as Fabregas knocked home the winning goal for Spain on a giant projector screen. If downstairs was the VFW, upstairs was the Governor’s Mansion. Giant mirrors lined the walls, and an ancient chandelier hung from ceiling. The candlelight dimly illuminated water-stained murals and drapery. The musty air smelled of old Barons and Dutchesses and you could almost hear the echoes of aristocratic Europe.

As Spain celebrated, the staff descended on the room, clearing plates, striking chairs and folding up tables. Maybe this was the real dance floor? Our hopes rose as a couple of men wheeled in a grand piano. We nestled into some chairs in a dark corner, trying to look inconspicuous as women in short cocktail dresses stepped past us to powder their noses in the bathrooms across the hall. People milled about the bar. Someone went through a door next to the stage and emerged on a balcony to turn on a rack of red spotlights. Something was definitely afoot. I had half a notion that everyone was going to strip naked, put on gold masks and chant before a disguised Tom Cruise. In fact, what happened next was as unexpected as it was perplexing.

Somewhere in the murmuring of the crowd came the sound of a fork tapping against the side of a wineglass. A hush settled over the room as a man dressed in black pants and a black vest stepped into the spotlight and began to speak. He gestured to another man in a white suit by the stage and a woman seated at the piano. Was this a toast to the newlyweds? The man in the suit stepped forward and made a small speech of his own, gesturing back at the man in black. Then the piano started and he launched into song.

If you’ve heard any Wagner operas you know that German isn’t the most beautiful of languages, spoken or sung. The man’s voice was strong and pure, though. I searched the faces of the room, looking for clues that would tell me if this was supposed to be a funny groom’s ditty, or perhaps the debut of a serious new composer, or maybe an excerpt from the local opera troupe’s current show playing now through the end of the week. When the song ended the room erupted in enthusiastic applause and the two men shared a warm embrace. Maybe they were the newlyweds?

White-suit man made another speech, followed by another song. Our theories on what we were witnessing flew back and forth. Was he the Ballhaus’s Master-of-Ceremonies and were his speeches explanations about what kind of dance lessons on offer that evening? Julie pointed out that no one was settling their bill with waiters. And over there was a professional photographer, snapping away. Whatever was happening, it was definitely a private party. We laughed when the crowd laughed, clapped when they clapped and cheered when they cheered, hoping no one would realize we didn’t belong. A group of groomsmen (or the rest of the troupe?) joined White-suit man in front of the stage. He launched into song again while I studied the men, trying to assess whether these guys all looked like they could be actors. In truth, some of them looked more like part of a softball beer league team, especially as they joined in a raucous chorus. Then I caught the word “cowboy” in English. When the chorus repeated, some other words started to sound familiar: “Elf cowboys spielen gut.” (Eleven cowboys playing well, I think). And then I heard Foosball this and Foosball that. The final puzzle piece was a large trophy cup filled with beer and hoisted aloft.

When the man in black delivered a final-sounding speech and the crowd rose for a standing ovation, we snuck back downstairs and out the door – before we were unmasked as imposters and well before the ritual orgy. Now we are pretty certain we took part in nothing more exotic than the celebration of the end of a local soccer season… unless German softball allows eleven to a side.