Berlin: this is long and I am sorry.

Coming back to the blogosphere from a three-week hiatus is a bit more difficult than I imagined. I keep constructing posts in my head, thinking and re-thinking what I should write about, not because I'm terribly worried about my audience, if I even have any, but rather because I'm of the belief that not only do thoughts shape writing, but writing also shapes thoughts. Meaning, once I write about something, be it my trip to Berlin, the heartache of separation from my love, the brilliant Budapest spring, or my horrid, life-sucking 12th graders, it's going to make me re-evaluate whatever I was thinking before I wrote about it. And I'm not sure I'm ready to re-evaluate. Maybe just one thing at a time then, and maybe by the end of this week, I'll be all caught up.

And so! Katie and Danny came to visit me in Budapest, and then we went to Berlin via bus. I've said this before, but it really is a wonderful thing to share Budapest with home friends. It almost reassures me of the rightness I feel in being here in this city, and the decisions I've been making or thinking about making. Also, being with old friends is one of the best mood pick-me-ups on this green earth. But, anyways, onwards to Berlin. Berlin -- if I believed in love at first sight, and if it could apply to cities, which I think it can, then I can safely say I had stars in my eyes the entire time I was there. Walking around the streets was simultaneously the most chilling and the most exhilarating thing I've experienced. On one hand, the city breathes life into whoever is in it, you can't even help it. Vibrant doesn't really do it justice. It feels young and it moves and changes in front of your eyes. it's a bit hard to explain, but everything about it, the food, the people, the museums, the buildings make you want to do something daring and spontaneous.

On the other hand, its history, which Berliners display in almost a profusely apologetic way (and I mean, hi, duh!), just gives you the creeps. Walking up to the Wall, crossing and recrossing the perimeter of it several times a day, realizing that your location 100 meters to the left or right could mean living in freedom or a soft dictatorship... This wall, so arbitrarily drawn up and so much lower and thinner than what I'd imagined, just grabbed me inside. I felt dirty, disgusted with humanity. More than anything, it made me realize the magnitude of destruction that was everywhere here only one or two generations ago.

We also went to a house in which a German hid many blind and handicapped Jews. It's hard to explain this feeling I got, looking around me and reading the stories of families ripped apart by hate and fear; being there, looking at a little girl's drawings of her camp, I felt so strange and just... full of nothing. On one hand I think anyone can understand the disgust and horror, just on a basic human level. Yet that afternoon in this tiny, out of the way museum, I don't think I ever felt more "Jewish," whatever that means. But then, I looked around me again, and despite this, I took in the place I was standing. This guy, Otto Weidt, a real cool cat, hid close to 50 people in this brush factory (see picture below) and other places all round the city, thus saving the lives of people he knew nothing about, for no other reason than that they were fellow human beings.



I don't think science of any kind (Social science! What a concept!) will ever be able to qualify why people do what they do, or why this much ugliness and beauty can exist side by side, sometimes even within the same person, but I walked out into the little alleyway of the museum, turned right onto Hackerscher Markt with its colorful stands of clothes, jewelery, food, knickknacks, all the other useless things people fill their suitcases with, breathing in the river water, the lindens, the burnt sugar, and
I felt sad. Not a despairing sad, an empty sad, but that sad you feel when you find a really old drawing you did when you were little, or when you have to leave home for a trip. That sad you feel only when you're replete with the happiness of day to day. As my buddy e. e. would say, "Humanity i love you because you are perpetually putting the secret of life in your pants and forgetting it's there and sitting down."

To summarize: Berlin is ballin'. Go there now, and take me with you.

I went to Hungary and all I got was this lousy old-timey disease!

Yep. I have Scarlet Fever, folks. Good job, Hungary, for being in 1905. Anachronistically enough, they also had some penicillin lying around a dusty corner, so I should (?!) be right as rain in a few days.

Here's some pictures of my scarlatina!



"I told you not to hold that Hummel baby" -Meredith

Breaking news: Happy campers found in Budapest, investigation pending.

It was 80 degrees and sunny out today, so Ashley and Eliza and I went down to City Park to catch some much-needed vitamin D and enjoy the sheer whimsy, nay, near lackadaisical behavior that Hungarians were exhibiting under the cloudless sky. People were laughing out loud, making eye contact with strangers, dancing around spontaneously, whistling without the intention of selling you knives or souvenirs... It didn't feel like Budapest, even. Everyone seemed... what's the word I'm looking for? Ah, yes. Happy.

Last night we also went to a real Hungarian party, with people our age. They were a bit confused as to why we were there, seeing it was a birthday party, and the twenty or so guests were all relatively close friends. Our connection was the birthday boy's girlfriend's sister. It was interesting to observe and listen to real Hungarians talk. By real, I mean speech that isn't commercial or official, nor corrupted by teenage noxiousness or childish mispronunciation. Hungarian, I finally noticed, is beautiful and melodic, despite it being so monotonous.

Unfortunately, I caught a fever and sore throat at the kindergarten, and the rest of my weekend is looking to be indoor-bound. This entry is being written in the small window of lucidity I managed to catch, thanks to Advil, and my temperature is finally down to 99.5, which is far more reasonable than 100.2, what it was three hours ago.

Sorry, this is probably mundane. Bye.

PS. They're setting up a movie set on my street, in front of Parliament! It seems to be some kind of 1970s period piece set in the Ukraine, of all things, judging from the flags they've hung and the old cars they brought in. It's been causing quite a kerfuffle among the taxi community by the metro, not to mention an upheaval to the daily routine of Jingles*, the homeless man who lives under the metro breezeway.



*I call him that because he sings out loud and dances around with his iPod (yes, I said iPod!). He often accosts passers-by and asks them to sing popular music with him.