Week 20 & 21 & (almost) 22: Double Decker
Double the trouble, misspelling Poppen without the Dopple-P, and Palindrome moments. And sorry grammar mistakes! Read this one :)))
Order Up
Don't blame it on the sunshine,
Don't blame it on the moonlight,
Don't blame it on the good times,
Blame it on the Bauhaus.
— Lily’s version of “Blame It on the Boogie” (1978) by the Jackson 5.
Rumour has it that
“people like me [Harry Styles]” don't win Grammys *controversial*
That cigarettes, leather jackets, and mullets or as they are called in German, der Vokhuila (Vorne kurz, hinten lang), are making a comeback *controversial*
& There’s a new biopic coming out about Michael Jackson *extremely controversial*.
Uncontroversially, Selda and I agree that boogie deserves its moment in the sun again too. There is a great scene in the movie “Babylon” where the character says all her money is gone because her crazy father decided to make a burger joint with her face plastered all over it and it failed. Burgers and boogie. But oh how sunny this week has been so far even though I barely left my dorm last week, and the full moon threw me into a funk on Tuesday. And oh how I would like to blame this very delayed update on being busy or double-booked, but instead of being inspired I have hit a writer’s wall, got sucked into celebrity drama, Paul Mescal’s break-up and mullet, and the tabloids (they call The Sun tabloid in the UK “the scum”). But hey, the Bauhaus was full of drama, walls, and construction which is unquestionably, always delayed. But the construction of this post is finally done, I’m in my final stages in Germany, and my method acting for the month means I can have my morning cigarette on the job with a Hamburg(er) on the side.
The Bread
Top Slice: It is difficult to summarise two and a half weeks, but my visit to the Bauhaus and a job interview for a position back in Maine spurred thoughts about grad school and I had a chance to speak with a current master’s student in Art History at the University of Hamburg after our final week of classes on the 3rd of February. I am trying to avoid being too future focused and instead spend quality time in my favourite neighbhourhood, the Schanzenviertel or “Schanze,” meeting up with friends for coffee, walking and calling loved ones, museums, getting drinks, climbing or thrift shopping. Taking refuge from 30-40mph rainy, sleet, and dark weather days by watching so many movies has been essential as well, and ironically, our last official group event together was in the restaurant attached to my favourite movie theatre, the Abaton. We explored a new neighbourhood in Hamburg this Saturday and it reminded me how one of my favourite things about the city is how every neighbourhood has its own distinctive vibe. Love that.
Bottom slice: While walking along the Alster near our dorm as the sun was shining with my friend Isa, we were hit with a wave of nostalgia. We first familiarised ourselves with Hamburg through walks by the river, a Stadtrundfahrt on a double-decker bus, and myself with my commute from the university or the Überseekolleg to the climbing gym. Now, walking the same paths, recycling old homework from Orientation week, and going to the cinema as I did at the Hamburg International Film festival, it feels like everything is coming full circle. So in exactly a week, I will be on a plane to Dublin to New Jersey to Seattle but until then, will just relish in my routine and keep misspelling my name as I try to close my accounts. Don’t let the bus door hit you on the way out.
The Filling
I promised I would write more about the Bauhaus this week, but in order to get this dang thing done, will refrain. I am sure it will show up again…but will just write some short notes and reactions.
The Bauhaus was closed on Monday so I got a private and very detailed tour from Dr. Florian Strob who studied architecture, literature, and used to run the artist residency program I was supposed to help with. His academic background as mentioned is very atypical for working at an art foundation and he had a lot of advice and insight on a master’s program and it made things more difficult as he stated that German institutions can be a bit strict and bureaucratic about the exact degree you get which was reiterated by the master’s student I spoke with. Nevertheless, his work is really intriguing to me as it deals with the intersection of architecture in public spaces and the influence of the art school’s pedagogy. Maybe a good fit for my urban studies and art history degree…
During the tour, I saw the student apartments with the famed balconies (see the fun video below). Another very intriguing fact is that from the balcony, you can see the mishmash of architecture including towering GDR buildings, the traditional Rathaus, and an enormous building towering over the tiny town of Dessau. It is the Anhaltische Theater Dessau which was built in 1938 by the Nazis and was the largest stage north of the Alps. Its over-exaggerated classical elements were part of Hitler’s programme against modernism. He so vehemently hated the Bauhaus too that it shut down in 1932 even under the hands of a more conservative director, Mies Van der Rohe, and was finally shuttered in its new location in Berlin in 1933.
A really intriguing fact I did not know about is that another separate school that Hannes Meyer, one of the directors of the Bauhaus, designed ran at the same time as the Bauhaus. The ADGB Trade Union School was devoted to training more than 5,000 students in classes such as labour law and economic policy in order to help them in industrial labour and union organising. There was an all-city strike with the Hochbahn system here on February 1st which meant I was homebound as well as many of the 600,000+ commuters and school kids that take the U-Bahn or bus lines to get into the city. It was crazy how hard it is to get around here without a car or bike if public transit fails, but the Ver.di, the union called on the 6,000 workers of the Hochbahn to strike as they attempt to negotiate for better contracts in the face of inflation. They hope for a 600 euro wage raise for every worker in this incoming year that is projected to experience another 7% on top of the 8% inflated prices from last year. Sorry that there is not more information this week on the Bauhaus as requested by
Mother, I want to work in labor unions!
, but you might have some more insight that we can chat about.
We had our farewell dinner with our programme group this last week and although it is said that Germans hate small talk and weather is small talk, I find myself talking about the weather in German every time I need to interact with my directors. I don’t regret it because weather is important to me especially when I feel like the scaffolding on the buildings under construction is going to come crashing down on my head due to the multi-day 30-40mph winds or hail. Not a great dinner topic to talk about my looming sense of mortality. Our director put a mini portrait of a dead professor at the head of our dinner table the entire time which was not a great reminder either, but will be explained more in detail in the sauce section. Otherwise it would just be simply morbid.
So as the weather was simply atrocious for a week or so, I spent the time in museums, coffee shops, and watching an egregious amount of television and films. To get through it all, I went out with some friends to a coffee shop where the work culture is actually quite different than in the US. Many coffee shops including this one, Deathspresso, have a computer-ban or it is marked as ‘laptop free.’ I have found some that fit well, but very different than in the US where you see many people working no matter where you go. Normally I order a cortado which apparently is an immediate give-away that I’m not German since no one orders them (according to a friend) but it was a big double espresso week for me. “Doppelter espresso” is such a fun phrase to say and I vote that we turn double into doppel. Back to the movies...
I had a double header of a movie night last week at the Abaton watching “The Banshees of Inisherin” (9/10) and “Everything, Everywhere, All at Once.” I wanted to see “Close,” “Babylon,” and “Aftersun” as well. Three out of the five were accomplished which is still more than the entire semester outside of the fim festival in October (full circle). So as stated—a heavy TV week. At I watched “The Worst Person in the World” and “Barbie Rapunzel”…in a row. Some very dissonant genres and narrative styles. I went to “Banshees” with my British friend and honestly, needed subtitles with how thick the accents were and it was a bit crazy at “Everything Everywhere” with Mandarin, English, and German subtitles. “Babylon” was easier to follow even though it was 3 HOURS LONG but the best scene in the entire thing (hopefully not a spoiler) was a fight scene with a rattlesnake in the middle of the California desert and in “Banshees” how the whole movie is about a passive aggressive fight. I love the Abaton and realised that if I wanted to, I could stay in there the whole day as you pay once and they don’t check ever again. But alas, not enough days left.
There was an exhibit on graffiti at the museum of history which was not excellent, but the building itself is massive and chronicles the history of Hamburg even from the 14th-century with models of the cities through the years, armour, clothes, and even an entire medieval wooden ship that was recovered from the harbour. The person I went with is in pharmacy school and I joked that in the medieval times, he probably would have been burned at stake for being a witch or sentenced to death for not being able to heal the king. During the movie scene in “Babylon” where Margot Robbie fights the snake, the old trope of sucking out the poison is used—very pharmaceutical. Sadly, I think it’s fiction. Will not stick around to find out and my friend in Hamburg will not be there to save me so better refrain before I end up twitching more than after my fourth doppelter espresso.
On Saturday, our classmate Ian suggested we make a little day trip to the neighbourhood of Ottensen which is in the west part of the city and honestly, a bit of a trek from where we live. It was around a forty minute train ride and although it was in Hamburg, felt like a completely different city with its winding brick alleyways, residential feel, and mishmash of pastel architecture. It turns out, it makes senses as until 1867, it was an independent city that rivalled the population of the the adjoining town, Altona, which was under Danish rule until 1864 and then finally became a part of Hamburg, absorbing Ottensen as another neighbourhood, in 1937. Despite its suburban upper-class vibe, this area was the original hub of graffiti activity in the 1980s and the 1990s and after World War I, the site of major labour union strike activity. We spent the time wandering around the farmer’s market, doing a little shopping, and stopping by an Italian restaurant for lunch where I ordered yet another doppelter-Espresso. I am a creature of routine and cine.
The Sauce
It’s award season with the Oscars and the Grammy’s and ABBA has been stuck in my head all month especially as they were nominated with their new album Voyage (3.5/10). I came to the shocking realisation that maybe one of the reasons I quite like them is because they’re band name is a palindrome like taco cat (I searched for Exploding Kittens in the Müller board game aisle to no avail), and UFO tofu (which as we discussed in our last German class, has the same abbreviation as in English, unidentifiziertes Flugobjekt). Isa and I ended up unintentionally twinning and there was an OFO spotting on a random corner on Saturday. An Ottensen Flugobjekt.
And I won an award. This is not me being ironic but actually fully a disbeliever both in little green ghoul aliens in saucer discs and the fact that I was awarded the Manfred-Bonus-Prize. The certificate is for the person on the programme who made the most effort to honour our language pledge or speak German at all Smith events as well as make attempts outside of class and is in honour of an old German professor with Smith’s programme, Manfred. My jaw actually hit the table when Jutta said “the prize goes to Iowa” so I guess talking about the weather as I was taught to do every day in Iowa payed off. I’d like to thank the -40 degrees weather in December, the swamp that Iowa is in summer, and Punxsutawney Phil for telling me that there will still be snow on the ground for another six weeks and I can’t wait to recreate in.
I called Aer Lingus yesterday to add a checked bag since mailing things home is just as expensive if not more. Plus, now that I have this massive book as a gift à la Manfred, I need to get it home somehow to prove to my German professors that I actually experienced *character growth.* After failing to find my reservation for a fair five minutes because an Irish accent over a bad connection is UFO-level to me, I realised I had been spelling my last name wrong the whole time telling them there were two “P”s without specifying where. Henceforth, I would like to be called Lily Popen, the Peter-Pan-page-boy-leprechaun. Re-reading this post too, I am realising how prevalent Irish-adjacent themes are (s/o once again to Paul Mescal): the Banshees of Inisherin, looking at the art history programme at Trinity College, eating potato salad at 2am even though we were anything but famished, and the barista at Albatross Bakery in Berlin who I totally thought was from California. Oh and this absolute 10/10 song from Chris Thile (a true Grammy winner) and Brad Mehldau that I shared with some of my friends and I now share with you.
Mystery Meat
The Berlin S-Bahn is a wondrous world of its own. Headed into the city to see Selda, I witnessed a laptop-bicycle double decker situation crammed right next to the train door. It looked quite precarious, but this random teenager with headphones and his cellphone in one hand and his thousand dollar laptop in the other, propped a top his e-bike, looked unfazed. Seeing a very very obviously white guy with Mao Tsê-tung as his screensaver fazed me. Maybe he was also in my photos in China course and commuting back home but now that it’s over, the world will never know. This week’s mystery is a bit more know-able…
This week
