Sanity - mit Kein Getränk

I'm out for some fast-food (though Halal! My friend Ali would be happy about that) fried chicken (I'd been talking about it earlier, teaching someone the word "drumstick", and I guess I got a craving... So when I happened to see it...), and I asked for "Menü zwei"... They rung me up, and then I remembered to add "Kein Getränk"... And they changed the total for me, reducing it by the normal price of a drink. Sanity! Sanity, I say!

Back in the states, I would have had to fight to get them to not give me the cup, and they wouldn't have changed the price. At least at many places... A certain fast-food fried-chicken chain comes to mind. :)

And then they offered "brot"(sp?), which was the type of bread that I might call a pita.

Cool.

Hallo aus Berlin (und mehr)!

Hallo!

Well, here I am in Berlin.  It's now been just over a week.  I figure I'm long overdue for a blog post... but internet access comes and goes when you're hopping around from place to place a lot, as I am, thanks (many thanks, really) to CouchSurfing (CS), and my various hosts from there.

I'm having fun.  It's good.  It's not completely a new experience for me to be somewhere where I don't know the language, but it's something I've done very little of, and I'm rather appreciating it -- though of course, most folks here speak at least a little bit of English (more so than the amount of German I can speak, mostly).  But I'm learning more and more.  In fact, I just had a "tahn-dem" (tandem) language exchange meeting with someone that I met last night at a CS event for language exchange.  She brought an English-language novel that she was reading (John Grisham's The Confession), and read a few paragraphs of it, asking questions as she had them, and with me giving her any significant corrections that seemed necessary.

And then she also did me the huge favor of bringing a kid's book (a book about Der kleine Eisbär -- the little polar bear), which I then tried to read.  I think I did half-way OK with pronunciation (though I was definitely getting some corrections), but my understanding was pretty limited, starting out.  But I wrote down some words with their translations, and perhaps I can study them between now and my next meeting with her, and I'll do a little better the next time.  :)

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Meanwhile, I've also participated in the 15october march here in Berlin, and helped bring the Human Mic.  More on that to come, when I have more chance to edit some video...  Hmm, I think I'll end this post now, actually, and go work on that.  So... more to come.  :)  Sorry, I meant to write more in this post, but it got interrupted... and now I'm interrupting back to work on video.  :)

Side effect of learning a new language?

Is it because I'm learning German, or am I just having a flash of dysnomia? I can't thing of the normal names for the Phớ (hmm, do I have the right o?) I normally order? The menu (for a Vietnamese place I happened upon) was mostly in German, with a bit of English thrown in... And very little Vietnamese. I'm used to a Vietnamese menu... So... I kind of wanted to order that way. But I couldn't think of it. I suppose I could have ordered phớ gai, but I kind of wanted beef... And maybe tendon. :)

Few choices on the menu, here, though... I guess there's not the same acceptance/popularity of phớ in Germany? Anyway, I totally failed to order in Vietnamese. Perhaps because I couldn't really order in German. ;)

A longer post about more things is also in the works. Hopefully it'll make its way here at some point. Well, and hopefully this post will make it. I'm without WLAN (err, wifi) here at the moment. Not sure how the iPhone blogger app behaves in that case yet.

Tschüß!

P.S. And a metal spoon. Weird. :)

Sigh... Silly subway.

Well, I made it up to Boston, by way of western Mass... But I hadn't found a place to stay yet... Yet I did have one back in NYC... so somehow, I let myself be lured back. (By a Siren song? Hopefully nothing so dramatic... But there is a beautiful voice involved in there somewhere... But I digress.)

So, I walk down into the Times Square/42nd Street subway station for the N, Q, and R trains. I need an N or a Q to Astoria. As I'm walking down the stairs to the platform, an N is pulling away. Sigh. And the signs say something about late nights and weekends taking a Q to 57th & 7th. So after a while, when a Q bound for there does show up... I somewhat hesitantly get aboard. I know it won't get me to where I want to go (because it ends at 57th&7th, which is actually the very next stop), but I figure maybe it's telling me that at that station, there'll be more trains to Astoria?

Well, that does not appear to be the case. And when I get there, I'm on the wrong platform. And the N train, that I'd watched for to see if it might be about to arrive at 42nd -- perhaps especially during the minute or two before they closed the doors of the Q (because of "traffic ahead", a frequent occurrence)... But which had shown no signs? Well, there it was, arriving on the other platform. Alas. No time to get over there.

Fortunately, I'm now on the next N... Less of a gap, it seems, than the previous one. But still... Mildly frustrating. Especially after 4 hours of interrupted sleep on a bus from Boston. But there's a cozy bed 4 stops away, now... So that's nice.

Well, and I'll be just about in it before I have the wifi available to hit publish. ;)

Just a random excuse for an update, really. Typed on my phone.

Couch Surfing in NYC...

OK, I just installed the Blogger app on my phone... Maybe I can start actually getting some travel updates out on my blog; I know folks have been asking for them.

One big question: how well does this app work if I'm offline? That might be important if frequent updates are to happen.

Anyway, I'm going to keep this post short, and write more later. Tonight, I'm CouchSurfing in the Bronx, which puts me at having slept in 4 out of the 5 Burroughs of New York City.

I kinda like it here, in ways. Not sure if I could live here long-term, but I can definitely see appeal, and imagine I may well visit again.

Anyway, so much more to say... In another post, let's hope.

Information bubbles...

I want to share this with the world, and have a discussion about it:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B8ofWFx525s

I have lots of thoughts, with probably more questions than answers... Like, how do we actually have a discussion about it? Comments on this post? Get together in person some way?

Will anyone even see this post?

If you do, will you also watch the video?

I don't know... But I hope so.

Looking for a fresh start...

Laura is gone. Today, she collected some more items, which she had left here for my use, but which, upon me letting her know that I wanted to move towards purging and moving on, she figured she wanted to have, rather than have them just go out into the world.

So now, I'm more ready to have folks come over and pick over my belongings for things they might want. It is my intention to sell nearly everything, and hopefully soon. I'd like to reduce my rent burden significantly, not to mention just freeing myself up to be more mobile - to travel if I want, to live in a house with others around (which I think would be much healthier for me), etc.

It's time to move on. I'll keep the clothes that fit me, some as-yet-undetermined quantity of memories, probably some photography gear (though certainly not all of it, and probably none of the darkroom gear), a computer or two, and hard disks... And hopefully very little else.

If anyone would like to help me with this process, I'd very much appreciate it. I could use help in several areas:

(1) take things off my hands. Come pick through my books and dvds and cds, old legos, tools (from a pipe threader to Ethernet tools, plus a bunch of more mundane stuff), old computer gear, camping gear, eventually furniture... Everything, pretty much. Some items I'll want a decent price for; others, I'll ask you to take with you, whether you want them or not, if only to help me get it to Goodwill/Value Village.

(2) helping me sort and organize. There's a lot of stuff here, and much of it requires me to go through it one last time - to record memories, look for items that belong to others, etc. Even just having people around to talk to as I go through this process would be helpful... Having folks willing to take on a few tasks upon demand would be even better.

So come, help me move on. And perhaps say goodbye, lest I opt to travel when all is done. I think it's time I visit foreign shores, and I don't yet know where I'll go, or whether or when I might return.