The Berlin Era: A Reckoning

I only have two more nights in my apartment here on the Grunewaldstrasse. Today I went to my boss' place and returned all of the materials I have for giving tours, and paid in my last tickets.

I've got the entire contents of my wardrobes out on the floors, and I'm trying to decide what to take with me for my More Swedish Life. Ibuprofen, yes. Sewing kit, yes. Most of my clothes, no. (I have a lot of clothes.) Oh and my books. I don't even want to talk about it. They're not coming, the poor dears. I'm trying to transfer all of my CDs onto my computer, a project I should have started much earlier...

The sun's going down here in Berlin, and I don't know when I'll be back. I'm listening to German film music from 1929 to 1950 -- so mostly Nazi-era music. It's mediocre with the exception of the wonderful Hans Albers and Marlene Dietrich. But it's a Berlin mood.

I'm getting a bittersweet feeling of nostalgia for my life here.

So I thought I'd write up a reckoning of my time.

I came to Berlin in early January 2003, and I've stayed until almost the end of 2006. So almost four years.

I've enjoyed being at the university. The Berlin universities are giant, with no money, and no personal attention -- so one is simply an anonymous face amongst the hundred thousand students. But it's been a wonderful way of observing the intellectual culture here, getting tuned in to German literary theories and conflicts, and the people who set the tone in those worlds. Also, it's been very helpful in guiding my reading. My university life has helped my bookish pursuits stay on a sophisticated level. This is important, I think, because since I've had a lot of good quality food for thought, my appetite for German literature and history hasn't waned, as it otherwise might have.

I worked for a long time for the Harvard Center for European Studies, every week assisting at their transatlantic dialogues that compare the European and American political, economic, and cultural systems. This was also a thorough and enviable education.

But it's been working as a tour guide of Berlin which in the end has enabled me to put down the deepest roots here. There's nothing like being asked to be an authority figure about something, even in a modest way, to make you invest deeply. I think mostly because of this job, I've done more than live in Berlin. I've really appropriated Berlin in a way that is not typical for five years in a place (I was here for a year before this four year period). I've become more at home here than I've ever been anywhere. I look around with a kind of surprise and realize that I know my way around every neighborhood; I know where most streets are by name alone. I know how much every ticket on the subway costs. I know when each neighborhood was built, also when many individual buildings were built, where the bombs fell and what they took out and what was rebuilt. Who lived where, when, and what each architectural style is called. There are hundreds of street corners in this city which fill me with associations, both personal and historical. I can't say that about any other city. And what this knowledge gives me is a four-dimensionality of experience. Berlin has become the ground for my imagination and dreams, and a very fertile ground it is. Furthermore, no one is more suprised than I am at this happy proliferation of my knowledge of Berlin. I may sound as if I were crowing over my achievements, but honestly, I'm awed by what happened while I wasn't looking, just in the course of my work.

I'm glad to move to Stockholm, because 1) I love novelty and 2) as those of you who are faithful readers know, I'm currently admiring Swedish society above all others, and to be honest, I prefer Swedish social culture to German. So I want to see how happy I can be there, with my wonderful THS, who has transformed my life and from whom I don't want to live separately.

But that doesn't mean I'm not already nostalgic for the good years I have spent here in Berlin. It's goodbye to this cryptically exciting and pulsing place, the place that has seen me into adulthood.

Dental Despair

1. My mom's dentist took an x-ray of my teeth while I was in the U.S., and called back to say I had a cavity in one of my rear molars, and should schedule an appointment.

2. Because I have dental insurance in Germany, I scheduled an appointment to get the cavity fixed here.

3. Today I went to the dentist here in Berlin, who was recommended to me by a friend, and she looked at the SAME x-ray and told me she didn't see a cavity, then looked in my mouth and said I didn't have any cavities.

4. THEN she said that while I didn't have a cavity, I did have a tooth that was discolored, and that it needed a root canal.

5. I told her I was leaving for Sweden on Friday, and she said she'd try to get it done before then.

6. Then she started drilling into the back of my favorite front tooth. She claimed I needed no anaesthetic, because it was dead. Then she hit a nerve and I screamed.

7. I have to go back Thursday for the rest.

8. This had better be finished before I leave, because Sweden, although a very fine place, does NOT offer dental coverage as part of its "universal" package AND I just quit my job, and thus I am broke.

ugh, ugh, ugh.

Moving to Sweden is turning out to be very stressful indeed.

Tying up loose flies

I just got back from giving my very last tour of Berlin. Yesterday I gave my last tour of Third Reich sites, the day before yesterday I gave my last tour of the concentration camp memorial of Sachsenhausen, and now, today, it was my last tour of the great sites of central Berlin. And I leave for Stockholm on Friday, just five days from now. I will leave it to you to imagine how glad I am to be finished with my very, very repetitive job.

So now it's just me and the kids sitting around waiting for the Berlin experience to come to an end. Ah, the kids. Who are "the kids", you might ask. Ah, who indeed! The kids are the fruit flies. About a week ago my drain in the kitchen got infested with fruit flies. There must have been some little bits of something they liked down there, because I'm telling you, they went forth and multiplied as if there were no tomorrow. Actually, to my understanding, this was more than an 'as if' scenario, given that the average lifespan of a fruit fly is 24 hours.

Which brings me to why I casually refer to them as "kids". By my calculations I'm dealing with fellas who are all under the age of "one" (day), so it seems fitting.

Now the kids have been deprived of all food sources by me and clorox, and they are feeling piqued, let me assure you. They're flying very slowly, nearing the, um, end of their Berlin experience.

The next few days are going to be very busy; I've still got so much to do before my departure.

I'll update soon.

Vive la Suède!

The Handsome Swede suggested that my entry for this week should delve into my expectations of my new life in Sweden. I can't say for sure, but I suspect that he suggested this because he thinks that my expectations are, in a word, grandiose.

He probably has a devilish scheme to draw me out through flattery, luring me into innocently prattling on about Sweden, thus exposing my streets-are-paved-with-gold social theories, so that in a year's time he can sit me down in front of this entry and force me to see how wrong I was, how disillusioned I've become.

Well ha ha! I've figured you out, THS! You won't trick me!

But still. On second thought, it does seem like it would be interesting to write up what I think about Sweden now, and then in a year's time I'll treat ye, the faithful readers of A More Swedish Life, to a reckoning. How does that grab you? You can think of me as a lab rat. Experiment: what becomes of a starry-eyed girl's dreams about Sweden after one year in the land of the midnight sun?

So here it goes.

Sweden, as far as I can see, and to quote The Guardian, is the most successful society the world has ever known. Here is what was written recently in The Economist:

The Nordic region has the world's highest taxes and most generous welfare benefits. And yet Sweden, Finland and Denmark (Norway's oil sets it apart) have delivered strong growth and low unemployment, and rank among the world's most competitive economies. Nordic companies are strong in technology and research and development. Their health-care and educational systems are much admired. And, unlike other European countries, most Nordic states run healthy budget and current-account surpluses.
Sweden, whose 9m people make it by some way the biggest Nordic country, is a particular favourite. A year ago the Guardian, a British newspaper, said it was the most successful society the world had ever known. As if to bear this out, the Swedish economy grew at a sizzling annual rate of 5.6% in the second quarter of 2006, enough to trigger a spate of interest-rate rises by the central bank. Sweden's big companies, such as Ericsson, SKF, Telia and Volvo, are breaking export records.
A visit to the capital, Stockholm, confirms that life for most Swedes is pretty good.

This is all very true, but a bit abstract. You have to understand how moving Swedish society is for me, on a micro-level. I went through this short, stress-free procedure to get a visa for Sweden, and now I automatically have full and unlimited health insurance, for which I do not pay. As do all Swedes, and all immigrants to Sweden. That might not seem like very much to you, reading it now on this page. But maybe you've never known what it's like to be unable to go to the doctor. To have to be afraid of getting sick because you'll get sicker and sicker before you go to a doctor, and then when you do, you watch as the financial stress wears you down, body and soul.

And for those of you who think that people who have health insurance go to the doctor more often unnecessarily and create a gluttonous, wasteful system -- Swedes pay LESS in healthcare costs per capita than do Americans. And their healthcare system is as good or better, with, for example a much lower infant mortality rate than in the States. So they're literally putting less money out per person, and getting better care. How is it possible? Well, if everyone has to pay into health insurance automatically through taxes, and it's not something that the healthy can elect out of (because they can't afford it, like most American recent college graduates and Wal-mart employees) then the whole system stays well-funded at the exorbitant expense of no one -- a well-oiled, efficient machine.

David Leonhardt writes in the New York Times:

"In Greece, the government and individuals combine to spend about $2,300 per capita on health care each year, and the average life expectancy is 79 years. Canada, where the hospitals are probably cleaner, spends about $3,300, and people live to about 80. Here in the United States, we spend more than $6,000, yet life expectancy is just below 78.
The most obvious difference between their health care systems and ours — that their governments provide universal insurance — certainly plays a big role in the cost differences. Look behind the receptionist at your doctor’s office, and you will very likely see a staff of people filing claims to different insurance companies. The insurance companies, meanwhile, employ a small army charged with figuring out how to avoid covering the unhealthy."

Now I know what you're thinking: Oh sure! But I would never want to pay through the nose for all of this, with such high taxes! And it's true taxes are very high. But not in the way you might think, and not as punitively as you might think. First of all, Swedish income taxes are not higher than they are for Americans -- of any income bracket. Where Swedes pay out is in sales taxes. You may disagree, but I think this makes the situation a shade different in terms of the perception of freedom and comfort.

Secondly, the Swedish welfare state -- what you get for your high taxes -- is far more nuanced than you might expect. Unlike, for example, here in Germany, the Swedish welfare state is carefully calibrated so that the more you pay in, the more you get out. A high-income family that has a baby, for example, reaps significantly more in childcare benefits than a low-income family. This is to
ensure that the welfare state is not perceived by the wealthy as being a charity for the poor that has little to do with their own well-being. Everyone benefits. The universities are top-notch and entirely free of charge, for rich and poor alike.

Before you assume I'm a fanatic, however, I should say there are some thing I don't like about the system. I don't think unemployment benefits should run on for years, because I think it skews incentives in the wrong direction. I also don't think that there should be two and three year paid maternity leave, instead favoring Sweden's well-endowed low-cost guaranteed early childcare.

The problem with extended paid maternity leave is that it discourages the equal hiring and promotion of women in the workforce. No matter my feminist ideals, if I were running a small business and had to choose between hiring a man and a woman of child-bearing age, I'd go for the man, because even if I could afford to pay the maternity leave, I'd be losing out on the investment of time and training in the woman if she became pregnant. If you're a small business struggling to survive, it's unduly punitive and a structural favor to men. Every time I hear of a woman in Germany or Sweden who is working for a few years at a company just so she can get pregnant the minute she's worked there long enough to get the paid two-year-leave, it makes me sick. If you look at any one of these countries that give extended maternity leave, women are not advancing. It's just built in.

And here's where Sweden brings tears to my eyes. Do you know how they're considering dealing with this problem? Unlike me, they don't want to get rid of extended paid leave. They're thinking of FORCING parents to share the maternity/paternity leave. So that yes, there will still be people who work for a few years just to get the parental leave, but by law it will be split between the father and the mother. So that anybody of baby-making age can be discriminated against, man or woman. This is what is really unbelievable to me, and what really moves me.

Coming from America, you don't even think that such an enlightened paradise as Sweden could exist in real life, even if you don't necessarily agree with all of the particulars. Political debate in Sweden is on such a high level of humanism, it kills me. And the country is an economic powerhouse. They sacrifice so little for what they have, it forces all of us to rethink our most basic assumptions.

So there, I've said it. I think Sweden is a political paradise. And in the grand tradition of the men and women, the huddled masses, who made their way to our great shores seeking freedom, I've found in Sweden the greatest political freedom I've ever known, in the sense that there's a possibility of justice for all. The U.S. is run by a man who thinks that the 90 Million Americans who don't have health insurance are going to be okay. You may not see that as a reason to elect to be part of another society, but I do.

Travail of the Apartment is over!

Ladies and gentlemen, boys and girls, I have succeeded in renting out my apartment. It's an Australian couple who both have fellowships from the Academy of Arts. Very nice, friendly and intelligent people. I feel so lucky! And so relieved!

Learning Swedish

So. I'm teaching myself Swedish with a book that I got here in Germany. And although it's been going real swell so far, there is one problem. The book is so dry that reading it is similar to spending an afternoon watching your fingernails grow.

Each chapter has a short text that you read with the help of a little lexicon that comes right after. There is also a CD where the text is read out loud.

As a special treat for you, bloggies, to give you a sense of how special this book is, I'm going to quote at random from the text.

Here it is:

Skrivbordet står vid väggen mellan bokhyllorna.
Datorn står på skrivbordet.
Skrivbordsstolen står vid skrivbordet.
Fönstret är mellan skrivbordet och sängen.
Sängen står i hörnet.

Below, my translation. (A note to Swedes reading this: pay close attention to how I effortlessly capture the timbre and bria of the author's original melody in my English version, to say nothing of my almost -- wouldn't you say? -- 'sixth sense' for the nuances of your mother tongue):

The desk is next to the wall between the bookshelves.
The computer is on the desk.
The desk chair is against the desk.
The window is between the desk and the bed.
The bed is in the corner.

I bet at this point you all are wondering what happens next, right? Am I right? Well someday you too might be learning Swedish, and I wouldn't want to spoil anything for you, so I'm not going to give it away. But I'll tell you this: it involves a _night table_ and it's not just in the middle of nowhere!!!

Now, as some of you know, I have learned several languages in the past, and at this point, when I have a language to learn, I don't beat around the bush. Here's the secret to not beating around the bush when learning a language: ROTE MEMORIZATION.

Anyone who tries to pass off language acquisition as something "fun" or "creative" or "self-actualizing" hasn't yet known the crippling humiliation of the disease known as 'failure to communicate', which is at it's most ravaging when you're standing naked in a communal Chinese shower room and can't find how to turn on the non-icy-icy cold water (HINT: in case you find yourself in this situation and haven't yet learned Chinese -- there IS no non-icy-icy water).

You just memorize until your eyes and/or ears hurt, to say nothing of your brains, and then you go to bed in deep despair at how empty your life has become, (but congratulating yourself on your iron-fisted discipline,) only to discover when you wake up the next morning you've forgotten everything. Then you memorize it all again. Repeat as necessary.

Right, so given that my linguistical methodology involves memorizing entire passages of text in their entirety so that I can recite them like a 19th century pupil declaiming Lord Tennyson or a cult victim chanting his "credo", you can understand that I am not crazy about this book.

It's cramping my style.

So what does one do in THIS situation, oh disciples of Ida's school of second-language acquisition?

Well, if you're me, you supplement your textbook memorization with the memorization of the lyrics to POP SONGS.

But here again I've been stymied. The only Swedish song which I have thus far gotten around to memorizing has a rabble-rousing rhythm and a melody to please the crowds, but unfortunately after I learned the song I discovered what the lyrics meant.

I am going to give you the translation directly, we'll skip the original Swedish this time.

Here it is:

I read in the newspaper,
that as of now, I have a chance
to fly for a low price to a foreign country.
That's good for me,
but bad for you,
because if I see you smile
at another guy,
I'll take a plane to Paris,
and live in a hotel
for an evening --
suit yourself!

[Chorus]
I'm going to jump down from the top
of the Eiffel Tower
if you cheat on me.
I'm going to jump down from the top
of the Eiffel Tower
if you mistreat me.

Charming lyrics, no? Almost makes you feel like the author of them is NOT A PSYCHOPATH. Almost.

So at this point I have a LOT of options when I'm speaking to a Swedish person. I can make casual observations about where things are in the room. That's fun. And I can make scary-manipulative stalker-like threats about how I'm going to kill myself with the use of national and/or world monuments if I'm mistreated. Also a laugh.

Sample Conversation:

Me: Hi, I'm Ida!

Swede: Hi Ida, I'm Björn.

Me: Sooooooo...Björn! If you aren't nice to me, I'm going to jump down from the top of the Tower of London/Space Needle/the pyramids/Mount Kilimanjaro [the cool thing here is that I can pick any one, since proper names don't change much in different languages. Example: Erie Canal in Swedish is "Erie Kanal" -- fair game I'd say, no?]

Swede: Uh...

Me: Hey! That chair is against the wall.


Oh, and then I found out that the Swedish pop star who wrote the lyrics to the above song ended up killing himself by jumping under a train. Depressing, and yet not entirely unexpected.

I will keep you updated here at A MORE SWEDISH LIFE as I make bold strides further into the thickets of the Swedish language.

In the meantime, you all can see who can come up with the best joke based on the fact that the Swedish word for day sounds like the English word 'dog' and the Swedish word for morning sounds like the English word 'moron'. Ah, good times in the language lab.

another correction

As of now you have a feature where you can e-mail these posts. It's the little envelope icon at the bottom.

Differences between Berlin and Stockholm

Berlin is very, very cheap. Stockholm is one of the most expensive cities in the world.

Berlin has 3.4 million people. Stockholm has 1.6 million.

95% of the original buildings in central Berlin were either destroyed or heavily damaged by bombs during the Second World War. Sweden has not been at war since 1809, when they lost Finland to the Russians. Ergo Stockholm is pristine.

Berliners' fashion can best be divided into the four categories of people who wear it:

1) Bourgeois German: Women in their late thirties, forties, and fifties have their hair buzz-cut and dyed a deep purplish cranberry. They wear comfortable brown leather shoes, and have husbands who also wear comfortable brown leather shoes. They wear matching canvas coats that are expensive-looking.

2) Mainstream youth inspired by the mainstream: These young people are almost entirely non-descript, conforming as they do to the international clique of normality. That is, they wear black pants or jeans, polo shirts and t-shirts. I'd go on, but it's just not that interesting. Suffice it to say, they're barely noticeable, but everywhere.

3) Berlin academics/Berlin clubkids: I shouldn't put these two together, but in Berlin there is a fluid line between the student crowd and the club crowd. The students tend toward vintage clothing, mostly late seventies at this point, in shades of red, brown, dark green, and black (yes, SHADES of black -- mostly the faded shade.). The club kids tend toward vintage clothing and clothing that is new and costly but LOOKS vintage, and it's mostly early eighties at this point. You can see how it gets confusing.

4) The anything-goes people who are wearing sarongs: yes, they wear whatever they find at the consignment store, and it's often a strange-looking bandanna from 1999 or a pineapple festooned sarong. They live in Kreuzberg.

Stockholmians' fashion sense can of course ALSO be broken down into categories, but, friends and blog-o-lovers, I am not advanced enough to do that for you at this point.

Still I will tell you how Stockholm fashion APPEARS to me.

Everyone, from age nine to ninety-nine, is so spiffy it's almost military. They do not wear sarongs, they do not wear drab, shapeless car coats made of canvas, (they certainly don't wear sneakers unless they are of a rare limited edition) they do not bend to flighty eighties come-back fashions in neon tones, nor do they wear vintage clothing that has faded from its original black. No. The Stockholmians look as if they were all secretly preparing to play in an Antonioni film. Everyone got a part both glamourous and tragic. Here the dapper 65-year-old who came to the big city to make his fortune as a poet, but longs to return to his weatherbeaten sailboat, Anastasia; there the long-tressed mistress of the doomed physicist whose eyes are full of a melancholy beauty; ah, and there the doomed physicist himself, with his unlikely cravat... THS also recently remarked that they all seem to be going to the same dermatalogist, and s/he is _good_.

One enjoys being surrounded by such beautiful/beautifully turned-out people. And yet, one wonders whether one might not be driven crazy by it all in the end. In Stockholm, clothing must match, and I don't mean: avoid putting purple with orange, I mean avoid putting navy-blue with black (no no!) and red with brown (no no no!) and, alas, green with blue (jeans).

So what matches in Stockholmland, you may ask? Well, as has been so painstakingly explained to me: grey matches with light grey. And various shades of navy blue all match with each other. And white, even in Stockholm, still matches with everything.

A Room with a View

Here is the website I'm using to try to rent my apartment in Berlin:

http://grunewaldstrasse.tripod.com

THS made it for me. As you can see, it shows all the rooms in my apartment. Actually, the very last photo of the redbrick house is not a view from the window, as implied, but the building itself.

correction

It is now possible to leave comments in the comment section anonymously and without having a blogger account. Phew!