Going through a huge jazz phase right now. Even though it's always been right up there with country music and swing, these days its been ticking inside my head like a thought that won't go away. Scratch that - like a thought that you don't want to go away.
You guys, I have so much to tell you. Like the fact that the approaching winter can be a pain and rock at the same time.
That Austrian cheese "aus dem Bergen" ("from the mountains") and Glühwein from the Christmas markets here is magical.
That I rediscovered the Tacheles house (that I've told you about several times before, remember?) last night with K. Met some of the people there, happened to land up in the middle of a Mexican birthday party, got a new cloth bag which says very coolly - Kultur kann man nicht kaufen - which in English means - you can't buy culture. And then there's an asterisk and right at the bottom, in small letters, it says aber (meaning 'but'). Cool huh?
The artist is Tim Roeloffs and his work pulls me out of my comfort zone and makes me think. I also bought this postcard right here. It means 'Berlin - The City of Peace'. I love that little bear and the dove.
And my birthday was last week and it was really good. One of my many lovely presents (from friends I now have, hallelujah!) was the Amazon Kindle I got from G, complete with a book I was waiting to read. Moment of crazy dancing here for the awesome people in my life:
A dancing banana
A dancing cow WITH bananas (and udders for genitals)
Thank you Google images for the awesomeness. Ironically, the cow is smaller than the banana.
Lots more to tell, but for now, Saturday sloth is calling.
The last, crumbling signs of autumn lie dulling on the ground and winter is slowly reaching out its frosty hand, frost being the operative word there. I know I don't usually start with the weather (or do I? Eh, don't really care to remember), but when you're in Europe, you can't not talk about the weather, you simply can't.
See? How can you not talk about it?
More things that happen when you live my life:
Your language becomes a royally awkward hodgepodge of English and German that makes you fumble and falter no matter what language you're trying to speak.
You realize for the first time in your life how cold some things really are - keys, door handles, coins, zips, for example- especially when you have to heave your hands out of the warmth of your pockets.
To your mild surprise, life still has many, many firsts to offer that make you want to act like a child (blow smoke/mist in the air, pick up leaves frosted overnight and stare fascinatedly at everything wintery).
You listen to old hindi songs on your mp3 player in the
train and cherish the secret joy it brings you, surrounded by people
who don't know the language and may never understand the beauty of
Kishore Kumar or R.D. Burman.
You click pictures every time you see something novel. Which is all. the. time. Oh yes.
You begin to want hot chocolate everyday and feel bad about it.You discover that the sugar-less Cappuccino from the vending machine at your uni is surprisingly good.
You discover the pure, unadulterated joy of cooking Indian food in a foreign land. Of bonding with your mother and grandmother who taught you to cook, and feeling their presence next to you, guiding you when you're cooking something even though they're continents and oceans away.
You cry a little when you have to write a report on the German political situation that you know squat about. You also snivel at German literary texts that you are supposed to read up on and understand. You wonder at how it is possible to understand every single word in a sentence and still not follow what it being said. You nod obediently at people, even when their German is too fast/thickly accented. You wonder or cry about it later (as the case may be, especially if the German in question is spoken by a teacher giving important instructions for the next class). Basically, you cry a lot. And by 'cry' I obviously don't mean sob. I mean your eyes well up a bit/you want to tear something or scream just a little.
To put it simply, there are several moments of deep self doubt.
...but then there are days you're proud of yourself because you just did one more thing today you never thought you could have :)
You learn to budget a little better. A little tighter. It makes you feel a little grown up. And then you buy Aloe Vera gel for 7.40 Euro and save like a squirrel the rest of the week.
You finally stop saying 'Rupees' at the end of every sum and switch to Euro.
You learn about some huge cultural differences between India and Europe. You can't wrap your head around them.
...and some things, like smiling at strangers, you love and adopt as your very own.
You learn that moving away to a new country means finding new brands of personal products. Which can be a pain.
You think you're going to miss your train everyday and run... then you bake in your 50 layers of almost-winter clothing.
You wonder how bad and gloomy January will really be, especially with everyone painting such a bleak, depressing picture.
...but you secretly wait for the first snowfall of your life (and hope you can cope with the cold).
You do a happy mental dance when you give tourists directions to a place in Berlin.
You feel somehow browner, just a tiny bit. It makes you respect your heritage :)
You get frustrated at your hair's lack of effort to be
presentable in Berlin and its animosity towards the water here. But
then, after a couple of weeks, the bounce comes back and you look normal
again.
There are some moments that jerk you away from Berlin, from Germany, from Europe and hurl you back to India - to a sight (beige, smooth, sparkling beach sand) or a sound (hundreds of honking cars) or a taste (pani-puri, Goan bhaji, batatwada, hot, soft chappatis) or a person (family). It leaves you bewildered, exasperated and yearning in an incomplete, torn sort of way.
You try eating a lot of new things and decide you like most of them (except for duck that one time. And 'tropical fruit tea').
Autumn - bites you in the face and produces awesome mist type thing in the air when you exhale/talk. Not to mention how beautiful the bright yellow, fiery red leaves on trees and rustling, whispering heaps of dried leaves on the ground (like in the picture above). I can almost hear my skin cracking gently against the cold. Also, I keep hearing the term 'golden autumn' (goldener Herbst) everywhere.
The end of waiting. Almost - My course starts very soon. I'm excited, but have mild concerns about starting out a Master's course in a field I've never studied before and in a foreign country. Oh yeah, and in German. Mild concerns *pulls out hair and runs amok*
My only friend/confidante/support here moving away for a while. It's going to feel like the first day of kindergarten. Like the time you're cooking something and you realize you're out of salt. Like when you're only pair of shoes breaks when you're travelling, y'know what I mean?
Upside of aforementioned course - fewer students in each class, which means a higher chance of being able to make friends. Past experience sits on its throne of smugness and scoffs at my optimism at hoping to make some reliable friends (and not the kind to flake out on you in times of need, as has unfortunately come to pass several times before), but I'm planning on dethroning it and being the one who scoffs. With my new friends, hopefully.
I am soon going to be in possession of some very coveted substances - Indian cooking ingredients! As much as I have come to love Schnitzel and Quark (curious? Go Google), I can't wait to make some decent Goan Sol Kadi and attempt (hopefully successfully) to make chappatis and Pav bhaji and things like that. Yum!
Because sometimes, nothing helps. Not a hug. Not a hot cup of tea. Not a warm orange-crimson sunset.
Because sometimes, you simply need to let yourself go. To drop every little squirming bit of regret. Every baser desire. Every lonely thought. Every social gaffe.
Because sometimes, it's all you can do to keep from laughing so hard, the old man in the crisp suit at the other end of the train station can hear you as clearly as if the laughter were his own.
Because sometimes, like a waiter at a fancy restaurant who knows you'll tip him well, life will bow down to you and ask you what it is that you want.
It is then that you will err. It is then that the sunny laughter will mellow.
It is also when you will really start to see life for the cruel joy it is.
Until then, my friend, be very still; for Life is watching you with its sly, slanted eye.
Why this sudden slap of religion, you ask? No, it has nothing to do with the Pope visiting Berlin today (he really is. Go Google it if you want.). It has nothing to do with religion. Devotion? Reverence? Ah, the lines begin to blur a little there.
It started with an egg. It started shortly after I was conceived, with my mother eating an egg every day 'for the baby's sake'. I wish I could tell you that I remember the food I ingested as a foetus, but I'd like to think that my crystallizing, still-forming brain loved it like a dog loves a belly rub. I'd like to believe I relished it and let it stay on my tongue (well, after I had one) and smiled a satisfied smile before I swallowed and went back to floating in the warm cocoon of my mother's womb. (I'm pretty sure that the foetus doesn't eat any of the food by itself, but this is the bit where I play my poetic license card).
For as long as I can remember, eggs have occupied a special place in my heart (figuratively, although it may hold in its literal meaning some years down the middle-aged road, cholestrologically speaking). I ate them at breakfast, I had them as a snack in the evening or simply because I wasn't too hungry at dinner. When I was still a kid, I loved hard boiled eggs. Hard boiled and fried. I detested the flaky, smelly yolk of the boiled eggs for several years, only to discover years later that the same yolk tasted like heaven sprinkled with sunshine and angels' smiles if you boiled it for a lesser amount of time. I also learnt what divine pleasure fried eggs, the sunny-side-up kind, can give someone. And except for a brief affair with bread and butter in my school years, eggs have been my breakfast staple. Imagining ife without eggs was (is) very very difficult.
Having been a fussy eater through my growing years, with an almost spiritual connection to junk food and sweets and all things unhealthy, eating eggs seemed to take away some of the guilt (just to be clear, I wasn't an unhealthy or overweight kid. The weight issues started very mysteriously, much after I adopted a healthier lifestyle, but that story's for another day. Like the day after the apocalypse).
Eating eggs, with all their folic acid and protein and minerals and calcium and potassium and iron and vitamins (PACKED top to bottom and side to side with nutrition. Go Google it if you want), made me feel like a nutritional angel despite my loathing of certain other healthy food. The NECC (National Egg Co-ordination Comittee) would have been proud - speaking of which, I dug around youtube and found these. Too bad if you don't understand hindi:
And the one I think is slightly lame in terms of over the top acting and bad quality , but also rocks in its listing of why eggs are awesome *drumroll*
How eggs could possibly, conceivably be vegetarian is beyond me, but whatever.
So anyway, things were fine, I was happy and eggs were delicious. Then came research, like it always does to ruin a good thing. Eggs are evil, it said. The egg yolk has fat. And cholesterol. Terrible things will happen if you so much as smack your lips in the presence of an egg (...is how I saw it then). This happened when I was a teen, and for a while, I ate my boiled eggs without the yolk, and our cats fought over who got to eat them. Then came more research which said hold on a minute, may be we were wrong. Really? I thought, and continued eating eggs - with the yolk, minus the guilt. And like the boy who cried hen (I know, I know. But, poetic license.), research stuck out its 'objective', 'methodological' head and shuffling its feet on the ground and biting its indecisive lips, whimpered something else about the health benefits of eggs. More recently, someone brought to my notice that eating eggs every day may not be good for me and I should try cutting down.
This is how I see it:
The good in the egg seems to outweigh the bad, with more health benefits for women.
To roughly quote my mother, anything eaten in excess is a bad thing. Which is why my mom put an, ahem, limit to how many eggs I could eat in a day (Two. Except when there was egg curry or bhurji. That was like a bonus). And I still stick to it.
Very few things rival what eggs mean to me. I know it sounds silly, but it's true.
One more fact - If it really came down to it, I think I could give eggs up. But only for the people I love (Except that the people I love, if they really love me, wouldn't take eggs away from me, would they?).
And finally, it doesn't matter, okay? I don't stuff myself with eggs till I can't eat anymore. I simply treasure every bite of egg as if it were my last (even on days when I was running late, when the boiled eggs were eaten almost whole). When I bite the soft, boiled egg white and it hits my tongue, for the slightest second, my world stops. It does.
So scrambled or fried, boiled or baked or poached or cooked, this is it. My biggest romance with food. I want to grow old with it and never let go.
Mock me if you will -- all I'll do is swish my healthy hair at you and walk away, with a smile on my face and an egg on my mind.
Almost 3 weeks in Berlin and I'm still in the first flush of love. Since having been here, I have gone to Brandenburger Tor twice, travelled a bit within the city on my own, and oh, did I mention - I also got the spot at the university of my choice. Not a bad few weeks, eh?
I have also made 2 trips to Hakescher Mart (about which I've told you a few times) which is a weekly market with stalls selling spectacularly
assorted things from shiny necklaces, curious hats, fresh coriander
(that was one joyful discovery), agarbattis, antipasti, falafel, crepes,
photo frames and paintings to second hand books.I went there last week in the afternoon when I had been having a day best described as a string of clumsy accidents (dropping my things, missing the train and so on) and all I needed was some Hakescher Markt. I had a big cup of hot chocolate at the stall with the warm, smiling italian man who's always humming to italian songs playing in the background as he makes your drink. Now wouldn't that turn your day around?
On my list of things to do in the two years (at least) that I'll be here (with regard to food) is try as many varieties of cheese, tea and bread. So the tea here is very different from good ol' Indian chai, but there's a mind boggling range and I'd be a fool not to make the best of it.
Ooh, and I haven't had any beer or bratwurst (sausages, which Germany is famous for) since I got here. Unbelievable. Also, calories. But still, Curry 36 will happen soon, I hope.
This time around in Berlin, things are different. There's no hurried rush to take it all in. It's not a quick snack, you know? It's a sumptuous dinner, cooking luxuriously over a low flame, bubbling with anticipation, drinking in flavours and just simmering. Mmm...who's hungry?
It's been so long since I posted (3 and a half weeks), but it seems like longer. My world has changed in that time, hard tests (the test of mettle kind, not the grading kind) have been passed and I write to you from Berlin, where the breeze outside is just right and the sun, in a spurt of end-of-season generosity, has decided to shine and smile at the Berliners.
Oh wait, I never celebrated my coming here with you properly
Okay, I got bored of searching for more. But I'm here, you guys! Finally, after all that longing and craving and dreaming.
It hasn't even been a week yet and I feel like I've never been away. Don't get me wrong, I miss my family like hell and try not to think about home too much. It's different from the last time I was here, because at that time I knew I was going back, that this was a holiday. Now, I'm going to have to call Germany home, and that's something that hasn't sunk in yet.
