Serious clothes drying

Today we mostly rested and did laundry. I know I posted clothes drying before, but we've made updates: a fan to speed it up, and an additional rack that should go over the bathtub but is easier to stack.

Halloween!

Most Germans don't care about halloween, but David's work had a party. Here we are!

BVG Bear

I meant to post this last night, but collapsed after my travels. This is one of the Berlin bears, this time with a transit map!

Delayed

Unless I miss my connection at O'hare, I'll be either in the air or racing between planes for the next sixteen hours - not exactly much time for blogging. So here is a picture of my flight delay due to a delayed flight arrival:

A strange taco

Instead of repeating my excellent dinner from Monday, I decided to try a nearby taco place that had multiple vegetarian offerings on the menu. The place I went (Boca Tacos) also specializes in homemade salsas, and the three little cups were their offerings for the day (they included chickpeas and pineapple). The strange taco? It was called the "AM Taco" and boasted hash browns and a fried egg with a cilantro sauce. Imagine my surprise when I pick up that taco and discover that hash browns actually means a fast food style hash brown patty. It was surreal.

Hipsters. 

The roof

It's an obstructed view of the mountains, but it's pretty nice considering that I get to see it on my way into the room that I was meeting in all day. Tucson is very sunny after weeks of Berlin!

Familiar

After over 10 trips, Tucson feels familiar. As soon as I get outside the airport, the mountains looming in the northeast feel comforting. Here's a terrible picture from the hotel lobby:

The feeling of familiarity was reinforced when I went to dinner. I picked a place based on simple criteria of being a 10 minute walk from my hotel, serving multiple vegetarian dishes, and having my favorite beer (Left Hand Milk Stout) on tap. When I walked in, I realized that I had absolutely been there before, but forgotten the name and location. For the curious, it's the B Line, and it was delicious.

Tucson is sort of like my sixth home. You know, after all of the places that I've actually lived. 

Brunch in Chicago!

Today I took the train downtown to meet Carolyn for brunch! Coming out of the Jackson Street exit at union station, I saw this map on the side of the building... I swear it's new.

And brunch involved the excellent and delicious french toast with pumpkin filling. Tomorrow: Tucson!

Fall in Berlin

With Sarah on the road, I'm left to fend for myself.  Thankfully, we're having a fantastic fall with gorgeous weather, I got the chance to go to Potsdam and disc golf with friends, followed by costume shopping for an upcoming party at work and dinner with even more friends. It's a hard  life.

Dawg

This is Jack, who makes me sneeze whenever I'm staying at my parents' house. I love how the expression on his face just says "really? a picture?"

Express connection

I've been handed this before - it's for when you have an international connection that's a bit tighter than usual, and they want to let you skip security lines. Of course, it tends to give you the impression that there's NO TIME LEFT and you must RUN... that was not the case.

Related news: back in the US for a few days!

Homework

I really believe that it's good for people to do things that they are not good at. Maybe it develops pathways in our brains, maybe it develops willpower, maybe it just "builds character" but I think it's a sort of life skill.

I am bad at the German language. Languages in general, really, but German's giving me trouble just now. We're doing language school twice a week (I'm level A1, David is much higher) and I have a constant feeling that I'm struggling to catch up, to keep up. This is about two weeks worth of homework, completed and corrected in class.

Though to be fair, class is also kind of fascinating and fun. I'm the only person from the US in my class, and there is a wonderful variety of professions and countries of origin (all things that we are learning to communicate). And someday, I might speak German. 

DDR

Our office is getting refurnished, and an old map was found in one of the cabinets. How old?

My German officemate looked through it for a date, but couldn't find one. When she saw me staring at it (I was thinking, "wow! retro!") she simply said "these are the old borders." 

It's strange to think about such grand, historical events happening right where I am today. In fact, I daily commute from East Berlin through West Berlin and then into Brandenburg - which was part of the DDR. Instead of just a hassle, my commute would have been literally impossible (or at least terribly inconvenient) when I was born. 

Ominous

Walking up to my office this morning, I saw these vans pulled up. I thought it might be more construction in the office next door (which would be bad enough), but instead the main restroom in the building was closed for... whatever it is they were doing. In other words, any van pulled up just there is ominous.

Speilplatz

Went by this cute little building on my run today, I think it's some sort of day care or kids hangout. I still have plenty of neighborhood exploration to do around here! 

Glass doors

Out apartment has strange yellow glass doors. Mostly we like the quirky charm, but they also are not entirely opaque, as you can see in the picture.

TV tower

I met David in Alexanderplatz on my way home and the TV tower was very festive - it's apparently some sort of light festival in Berlin this week.

Empty s-bahn

I spend most of my commute on the S-bahn these days. It would be weird to take a picture of it crammed full of people in the mornings, but I worked a bit later than usual and grabbed this picture of the nearly empty train on my way home.

The green text reads "babelsberg" - we were just pulling out of my first stop in Potsdam. 

Humbolt haus hallway

I took this in the upstairs hallway at work. It's an old building, and the display cases in the hall give it a sort of museum feel. The one nearest to the camera has a scale model of the LBT telescope!

Fridge

It's I-forgot-to-take-a-picture day again here today. While I've bombarded my loyal readers with pictures of our kitchen counter and cabinetry, I'm not entirely sure I've shown the other side of our kitchen. Our fridge is mini for the US, but the largest normal size in Germany. I think it's cute.

FYI: the Pringles are paprika flavored. 

On a bridge

Near the auslander bureau. It's been a pretty fall so far.

The sewing machine

The box looks particularly beat up (I'm pretty sure it was the floor model at one store or another) but so far it seems to be working ok. My current project is to shorten the curtains so that they don't sit on the radiators... so we can turn the heat on. One panel down, 9 to go...

Burned building

I think there was a fire in this building around when we moved to Berlin - though I only know there was one in our neighborhood about then, and just assumed. You can't see it from here, but through the windows and the balconies you can see that people are living there. Hopefully the inside of the building looks better than the outside!

Toys!

For David's birthday, I got him the scooter below:

I also made him the disc golf rack - technically for his birthday, but actually a few weeks ahead of time. Today, the bike pump arrived, so we filled the tires of the scooter. Maybe he'll try it out soon!

Haptbahnhof

I took this from the train - it's the view out through the glass structure of the haptbahnhof (main train station) in Berlin.

This is Thursday's picture - sorry for the late posting!

Fall colors?

I meant to take pictures of the rapidly changing trees on AIP's campus, but I waited until I was leaving work at 6:20. I was only just before sunset, but thick clouds really muted the colors in my iphone camera.

From the morning commute

The best and worst part of taking the S-bahn from the Warschauer station is the view from the bridge overlooking the tracks. This morning it was slightly foggy, so it had an ethereal early morning feel to it. On the flip side, you can see your train pull away while you are still a few minutes out.

This was fortunately not my train. I was three minutes early for my S7.

Happy birthday!

David turned 30 today, hooray!!

Pink clouds

This panorama shot is from our balcony - you can see the towers at Frankfurter Tor and some construction cranes, which pretty much sums up out neighborhood.

Stairs

I was amazed at the sheer amount of graffiti on these stairs, which we spotted on the way out tonight.

Jazz singer

Tonight we headed to kreuzberg to listen to my friend Brie (she sings with my choir, but she's a pro) do a few sets of jazz songs. She sounded great and the beer list was nice. Hooray Friday!

Approaching sunset

My iphone camera doesn't do it justice (it's only an iphone 5, and I'm not very good with it), but the colors were really great when I got to the Babelsberg station this evening. The poles with the wires also seemed to fade into a very pink infinity.

One of the redeeming features of my commute is that I seem to often be riding on the train during sunset, so I can watch the sky change as I ride.