Sony Centre and Potsdamer Platz Weihnachtsmarkt

On Saturday night we booked our babysitter for the last time this year. The plan had been to wander the Gendarmenmarkt, which I think the most charming and classic of Berlin's Weihnachtmarkts.

But it was raining.

So instead we went to see Mission Impossible: The Ghost Protocol at Sony Centre. (We enjoyed it although I was annoyed the sub-plot pertaining to Ethan's wife: it made absolutely no sense.) Then dinner at Vapiano, a quick and rainy look at the Potsdamer Platz Weihnachtsmarkt and home again.

(I like the architecture of Sony Centre very much: a great use of what was a bombed out and empty space and I am not much of a one for Weihnachtsmarkts unless it's snowing and they look cute: I don't eat many traditional, pig-based German foods, I don't enjoy crowds, and my alcohol tastes run more to the red wine and less to the anise/cardamom scented Glühwein. So I didn't really feel deprived.)

(photo courtesy of website)

The Tooth Fairy

I just watched The Tooth Fairy with Dwayne Johnson and it was absolutely hysterical. With several uncredited riffs by Billy Crystal, whom I adore, as well as Julie Andrews as the Fairy Godmother. Not to be missed and my girls will be able to watch it this week (the German and I were pre-viewing), unlike Percy Jackson and the Lightning Thief (pre-viewed earlier in the week).

The former had a great story and one that I want my children to learn: that hard work and practice and good will can help one to succeed. The latter was (beside being far too violent for my girls) all about how one's success is solely determined by who one's father (or, secondarily) parent or relative is. Not the ideology I want my children to take in.

One could look at this in the context of the Royal Wedding, or the American ur-story versus the European, but I'll leave it at the simple: one is appropriate for my children at this stage and the other will not be, even with explanation, for many years.

Chaos from order and hopefully back soon.

Life's been so crazy that I even forgot to post my reading list at the end of the month. I have been working on posts for a while, but they aren't done. I'll link them here when they are done.

• Saw The King's Speech (two weeks before the Oscars)
• I visited an interesting museum, the Daimler Contemporary, and had lunch with my group.
• Went to Vienna for the weekend and saw Cirque de Soleil with a friend.
• Found a massage place, finally, and my back is still feeling the pain.
• Had a bad experience with T2's swim instructor and had to switch classes.
• Discovered that my blog had been scraped and my posts were sitting on someone else's web site.
  

In the regular and scheduled craziness, I'm taking:

• yoga Tuesdays and Thursday,
  
• my German class has restarted Monday, Tuesday, Thursday and Friday,
  
• my German writing course is still running Wednesdays,
  
• the kids have speech therapy on Monday,
  
• T1 has swimming on Wednesday while
  
• T2 has it Friday (due to the above mentioned instructor issue),
  
• they both have recorder instruction on Thursday and
  
• T1 has art/ceramics on Friday.

Ice skating Saturday ended two weeks ago, so last week they went bike riding on Saturday while waiting for rollerblading to start.

This week, I also had Elternabends on Wednesday and on Thursday, as well as the massage and lunch with a friend on Wednesday.

I am also trying to declutter at least 15 minutes a day, I run about 7 loads of laundry a week (with three on Wednesdays when I change the linens), and I am "looking forward" to the seasonal change-over of clothing that I anticipate in three weeks.

The calendar is receiving a work out and the German needs to start referring to it— he actually scheduled a babysitter for one of the Elternabends for me, but he told her the wrong day! Luckily, she lives two streets over so it wasn't terribly inconvenient for her, but it was awfully embarrassing!

The King's Speech

The German and I saw the trailer for this while in London (and watching Harry Potter) and we thought it looked great. Based on the true story of the problem with stuttering that Prince Albert, who became George VI after the unexpected abdication of his "golden" (although Nazi sympathizing) older brother (to marry his divorced American mistress).
So when we finally found a new babysitter (our last opened her own kita and left us forlorn)— and let me recommend kijiji.de for finding a babysitter that allows you to find and interview people based on their PZL— we decided that we would love to see it.
Earlier in the week I had heard an announcer discussing the movie's chances in the Academy Awards (and later it won several, including Best Picture), and they had included a clip: in German. The clip discussed how Albert— or the new George VI— would soon need to discuss war with Germany and it was strangely disassociate to hear it spoken in German (all movies released in Germany are dubbed in German. One of the more interesting careers here is that of being the "voice" of a Hollywood actor— these voices remain the voice of that actor throughout the career of the actor and Germans know only the German voices rather than the actual voices. That can be odd when a German voices two actors who play in the same movie and I am told that in such case, one voice is replaced, which must be very strange to the listening Germans!).
So we decided to see it in OV (original voice), which is always a bit of a hike, and it was a belated Valentine's Day outing, combined with dinner at ( very good fast food Italian) Vapiano.
We both enjoyed the movie very much. Not a "big" movie, but a very warm and interesting one. I can see why the writer also completed this as a play (and it will appear soon), because I can see it operating extremely well in a drawing-room.
I only had a momentary panic attack at the H**ler in Berlin newscast, and the focus was on Prince Albert (Colin Firth) and Logue (Rush). It was wonderful to see their faces (and that of the later Queen Mum, Helena Bonham Carter) as human faces: they looked real and lived in and wrinkled and not plasticised, plastic surgeried or Botoxed.
One of the items I found interesting was that Derek Jacobi played the Archbishop of Canterbury and that of course, one of his most famous roles was as the stuttering Claudius of the wonderful I, Claudius series.
It was also wonderfully humanizing and a bit sad to hear of the treatment of children at that period and to think about how far we have come and yet how some children are still mistreated. The German was a little nonplussed when I pointed out that the young, vibrant woman he saw portrayed by Helena Bonham Carter was the woman he remembers at 90+ as the Queen Mum: what amazing world changes she saw in her life time

The Holiday Whirl: Rapunzel

I always love Sony Center in the holidays- nice architectural design, great lighting. We met some friends at the OV theatre to see Rapunzel in English and we all had a great time: I think this is the best Disney movie for the kids in, perhaps, forever. The music was, perhaps, not the best ever, but the plot and the animation were top-notch. What a pleasure to see a movie where the mom doesn't die, is not at fault, the parents haven't done anything wrong and survive the story!

We had a great time.

What I am reading: May 2010

1. Warbreaker by Brandon Sanderson: I had this book for ages (got it at a BEA years ago), but still never read it. I saw that he was writing the final Robert Jordan book (never got into him, perhaps I should try the series) and still didn't. But today I was standing in a line with my Kindle and didn't know what to start next and thought— Why not? Wow. Another win for the author giving his book away. I'm downloading Elantris today and trying to decide whether I should download his Mistborne trilogy or whether I should just buy the boxed set and bring it back. I'm not certain how long this book is- from how long it took me to read it I will guess 500+ pages (ok, looked it up, 592 pages) and I was enthralled through all of them. Fascinating magic system. Interesting characters. Exciting story. I only wish there were another book in this world for me to read. I expect to buy his other works (and think about buying Jordans Wheel of Time because I know it will end well-written) and I'll be shooting off an e-mail to him to tell him why.
2. Dragon Keeper by Robin Hobbs: Although I have read Robin Hobbs when she was writing as Megan Lindholm, I somehow never picked her up under this name. Another good read from the Kindle temptations program (they give a book away and hope that you are intrigued enough to follow up and read others by the same author). I thought it was good enough that I will give her another try, but not quite good enough for me to pay full Kindle price for the sequel and getting a used copy in Germany isn't happenning. I hear her Ship series is much more exciting. I did enjoy Dragon Keeper, but the concepts are a bit too well -used for me. The novel is a bit of Amelia Peabody with an overlay of fantasy and I just do't have the patience with a heroine who finds it so difficult to understand what the issue between her husband (not a nice guy) and herself is. I did like the blossoming relationship with the ship's captain, the ship itslef and her development enough to- as I said- try the sequel down sometime in the future.
3. -14: And the entire rest of my reading month, including the flights to and from NY, were consumed with re-reading Edgar Rice Burroughs fabulous pulp Barsoom series. I had heard that there is renewed interest in filming (exciting to see that Michael Chabon has signed on for script revisions). In any case. ERB is one of my childhood foundations, and I vastly enjoyed the re-read, with far less shock at the sexism and racism than I expected to find. ERB is such a quintessential early 20th century writer.
   

1.A Princess of Mars
2.The Gods of Mars
3.The Warlord of Mars
4.Thuvia, Maid of Mars
5.The Chessmen of Mars
6.The Master Mind of Mars
7.A Fighting Man of Mars
8.Swords of Mars
9.Synthetic Men of Mars
10.Llana of Gathol
11.John Carter of Mars (includes Skeleton Men of Jupiter) (ERB died while writing this).

We've moved.

(Hmm. I'm going to try writing on our little Eee PC netbook, so that I can watch TV on my Mac at the same time. Our move finished Friday night, but the telephone/internet was only hooked up today (5 days later) and we weren't able to get the computer/TV interface hooked up before the German went back to Munich. I'm still not certain how we are going to set the intricate layout up, since the relatively frequent crashes require handy side sofa access, but that's not an easy commodity in our current set-up.)

The move was... exhausting.I am tremendously grateful that we went with one of the two companies with the ground-to-balcony lift rather than one of the two estimates from companies operating solely with back-power. Even though it cost twice as much, theoretically, I think the move would have taken two days without the lift, rather than one, and therefore the price would have been the same but with a tremendous amount of damage to our possessions and with our new neighbors hating us passionately for making their lives heck for two days. Although our old building was relatively modern, with a large elevator (requiring only that the furniture on our second level becarried downstairs to elevator access), our new building is a real Altbau, with a flight of stairs up to an elevator that can fit our family (two adults, two small children) only when we are feeling affectionate. Even if one would have wished to use the elevator for moving, it couldn't be done: it's terribly slow, very small, and the button for use can't be pressed until the door closes, so a person would ahve to ride with the (small) boxes. In addition, the stairway is winding enough and we are high enough (third floor European, 4th floor American) that it would be physically impossible for teams to pass each other. Long story short: we made the right decision.

I was sorry I missed the car being towed (driver felt those big signs forbidding parking between them was optional, I guess) while driving the kids to school. Amusingly, others on the street were moving the next day and while we were over there cleaning up on Saturday, another car was being towed. While here, when the truck arrived to unload, the driver blocking the way was alert enough to move before the tow truck arrived. In each of these three observed cases a policeman was there the entire time. I thought it was as 1. a defense against charges of damage to the twoed vehicle, 2. because these are public streets, not private property, and 3. in case the owner became violent. The German thought they should have been able to use the Ordungsamt instead, but I think the prior reasons are why they could not.

It's also clear why people just don't move that often: the expense is too great. Another Berlin blogger mentioned that she sees other friends moving annually in Berlin: I assume that they must either have their moves paid for by work or that they own no possessions. We used to move all the time in the US, both as singles and as a couple with no kids.We moved ourselves, with the help of U-Haul and an occasional friend. That's just not possible anymore, for us,without elevators. Moving a couch, dining room table, bookcases and desks, beds and wardrobes: this is not something anyone would do on an annual basis. That's not even thinking of moving a kitchen, as most real Germans do. We did move our refrigerator (purchased to be delivered here in time to be brought up by lift), our freezer, our washing machine and dryer. As well as lots of boxes of books and children's toys and some boxes of clothes.

We had gotten an estimate on painting and putting in a floor in the bedroom (although we were very lucky in that most of the apartment is floored and that there is a kitchen, the apartment desperately needed painting and there was no floor in one bedroom) but although I had gotten it from the husband of a friend, the estimate was so high that we didn't even bother to go back to him to discuss it: perhaps that's the American in us, but I think it's just an insult to be so far away from reality. We decided that we would have Bauhaus do the floor (as that's where we would have gotten the laminate anyway) and the total was significantly less than X's estimate for doing so.

So, in addition to professional movers (if one owns furniture, heavy stuff), there's :

• the provision of 2.38 months (or provisionfrei, if lucky),
  
• renovations on the old apartment and perhaps the new,
  
• the three months standard new security,
  
• the legal right of the prior landlord to keep their three month's security for up to 1 year (and hope one doesn't need legal insurance to actually get it back),
  
• the cost of moving phone/cable (because contracts aren't breakable due to moves and they charge you for flipping that switch),
  
• the cost of forwarding mail and packages (not free in Germany)
• the overlap in apartments (hard to get out of, since landlords often won't show until the apartment is empty)
• moving the old kitchen (if it will fit in the new apartment) or changing it to fit
• moving all lights

I can't imagine being able to afford to move, as a family, frequently.

We also picked out colors (yeah, colors!) and bought our paintand then googled around and looked for the equivalent of Campus Paint pros. We found them, but we also found a handyman who did painting and minor electrical and handywork (such as curtains, etc) for an hourly wage. We hired a babysitter and then I taped the kids' room and painted the lower third): I'm painting it as a Finding Nemo room, like I last did in NY, and the bottom third is Ocean Blue, while the upper 2/3 is sky blue. When I get the energy after unpacking everything, I need to use a template and paint a wave on top of the ocean, then add Nemo stickers and artwork, with a large dark blue bathmat for the floor.

After I went home, the German and A. spent the next two days painting the place and it looks amazing.

The living room and office (connected as a Berliner room) are celadon. The hall and bathroom are white, the kids' room as above, and our room is lilac. We have gorgeous plaster details on the ceiling in the office and our bedroom (all the ceilings, trim and above what I think is the picture hanging line, is white) and we haven't figured out yet what to do for lights, so we are using our torchieres. The kitchen still isn't finished- we will do it on Friday, but we ran out of paint last week (the coverage was strangely short, even after a primer coat)- but it will be a medium-light chocolate. That's a real departure for me, because I'm not an earth tone person. But the floor and the cabinets are Buche and the wall tiles are institutional (puke) green (as was the previous paint job) and according to the theory, those "colors" go with brown. It's true: they do. It even makes the Buche less hideous.

I'm interested to see how immediately happy I (and the kids) am here: Oma and Opa were surprised that the children were glad to be in their new room. They aren't used to children being able to take change in stride. I think a large part of it is finally getting some color on the wall. This has been the longest time I have ever lived without painting my walls: even in university, moving every year, I always painted. In all, since leaving my parents' home, I have lived in 16 different houses/apartments and only in the last two years in Germany have I not painted the walls within a month. Even without curtains it feels homey.

The Little White Horse

The Little White Horse by Elizabeth Goudge (the link is to the very old edition that I have, there are newer paperbacks available here) was a childhood and teen-age favorite for me. I still have very fond memories of discovering it, in a used bookstore in England, in 1977 and then searching for other books by Goudge for years (a cursory search of Amazon show several I was not able to find then but also another Elizabeth Goudge). I am very excited to see this treatment and can't wait to watch it (and then to purchase the DVD for my girls to enjoy). Maria is Lyra from The Golden Compass which we just saw and enjoyed yesterday.As a child, my dream room was Maria's and I still believe that one day, when we build our own house, I will be abe to have a room of my own just like hers.

Time for a bit of a rest and a Quantum of Solace review.

It's been a hectic sort of a week, as you know. The running around, the children out of school, the exhaustion. I have two book clubs next week and In the Country of Men made me sad, but A 1,000 Splendid Suns made me weep. I'm not certain if I will talk about them, but perhaps after the meetings.


In addition, we had the German's birthday and to celebrate we got a sitter and went to see Quantum of Solace. It was great but it was fast-paced and very violent. So violent that I remarked upon it and the German felt that it was too violent. I think it was appropriate for the material, but yes, it was extremely violent. (Roger Moore felt that too.) The German also had difficulty following the plot, (although I didn't) and he felt that there should have been more plot and less violence. I actually think that if you put Casino Royale and Quantum of Solace together as a single movie it might be easier for folks to follow.

Something I noticed was how absolutely fabulous Bond's suits were (and how well they fitted Daniel Craig) but I don't think the German will be getting one for his next birthday: perhaps if we win a lottery.