Big News from the Hospital!!!

Conny enjoys some ice cream after our historic afternoon.

I am most pleased to announce that Conny had quite a breakthrough at the hospital today, playing me to a stalemate in chess.

It is the first time she has not lost to me since we moved here to Berlin. We stopped counting how many times we have played a while ago, but we agreed that it is probably around two dozen games.

Conny (playing white) opened strongly, using two knights and a bishop to threaten my king's side and eventually won a rook. I attempted to counter with a gambit to her queen's side, but eventually had to settle for an exchange that allowed me superior position. Although I was able to advance a pawn, I couldn't keep her from doing the same and neither side could put together enough pieces at the end to force checkmate.

Our daughter-to-be remains firmly positioned in the womb.

Changes in the proverbial wind

Parading through Berlin during the "Karnival der Kulturen," Yemeni style. And of course it wouldn't be a parade without a good look at the back of some guy's head.

I feel as though I mention it a lot, but it sure seems like there's always a lot going on in Berlin, if not in my own personal life -- although this past week that certainly hasn't been the case for the latter either. As many of you probably know, my wife is camping out at the hospital for the time being. While this is rather irritating and inconvenient for her, the good news is that there is nothing particularly worrisome afoot. In other words, the perhaps over-cautious German doctors here just want a little more data pertaining to our unborn daughter, who happens to be a bit smaller than most fetuses her age. Presumably they will then combine this data to make a large chart, at which point I imagine that a few of them will look at it curiously before moving on to something more important.

And that's all fine and good, although at first it was something of a shock. It's the sort of treatment that normal people such as ourselves just won't get/can't afford in countries with more capitalistic health care systems (i.e. the United States). Whenever we've been able to get such treatment (routine ultrasounds, at-home visits from a midwife, and now overnight stays at the hospital), it's all been almost completely covered by our insurance with practically no paperwork for ourselves. It's the way health care everywhere ought to be, but because of all my prior experience in America, I keep expecting to get a bill, which apparently is not coming.

The only really bad part of all this is that my poor wife does not like to relax very much. Simply put, she is bored stupid at the hospital, despite the friendly staff there, the lovely courtyard and the multitude of books and DVDs I have delivered to her to keep her occupied. For those of you who know my wife, you probably recognize that she is very active and does not like to be penned up. She has even agreed to play me in chess three times now -- although out of respect I will not reveal the results of the matches. It is kind of sad in a way; I liken it to having a thoroughbred horse that you won't let run faster than a trot. That said, if it's good for our little unborn daughter for momma to sit around a bit, I think that maybe momma ought to take a chill pill. (Figuratively, not literally.)

Outside of the personal drama for me, the weekend here in Berlin has been more interesting than usual. Last night the finals of the German soccer federation cup were held here, which means that a of soccer-happy folks from Stuttgart and Nuremberg were in town to loudly support their respective teams. (Nuremberg ended up winning 3:2 in extra time, which is good because Stuttgart played like a bunch of thugs in the first half.) After walking back from the hospital, I watched the match on TV, while my wife and sent instant messages to each other.

Today after I spent some more time at the hospital with the wife (we played chess and went for a stroll in the courtyard), I made it over to Kreuzberg where the "Karnival der Kulturen" -- a festival celebrating Berlin's rich ethic diversity -- was underway. I met up with a few friends of mine from the Volkshochschule, and after we watched the last few floats of the big parade roll down Yorckstraße, we had a couple of drinks and checked out some of the different bands and dance troupes that were performing on various stages. Quite a nice time, although the weather could have been better -- it's been raining off and on all weekend.

I didn't get home until after midnight; thankfully tomorrow it's a day off -- Pfingsten. That's a Christian holiday that apparently has something to do with the "Holy Spirit" telling the various Apostles to spread the message of Christianity. Fortunately, I haven't seen much of that happening here since I moved to Berlin, although we're all quite happy to have the day off.

Birthing; Chinese Food; the ZMP; Chess

As I think I mentioned earlier, it's definitely Spring here now... leafy, sunny, occasionally a cool shower, but on the whole quite pleasant. I ride my bike where ever I need to go, and when I don't need to go anywhere, I feel like riding my bike some more. But because of the improved conditions outside, I must admit, as you might have noticed, that I haven't been dedicating much of my time to composing humorous little anecdotes for you to read (or not read, or at the very least not comment on.) So, I give will give you an overview -- let's call it a "roundup," that most popular journalistic genre -- of what I've been up to since returning from China.

Expanding my Vocabulary. On Monday nights now for the next several weeks, my wife and I will be going to the Westend Klinikum, where we huddle up with a few other pairs of soon-to-be parents for a strategy session related to the upcoming birthing process. I'm told this process can be quite stressful and even painful for women, and seeing as how I'm kind of a wimp, I'm glad I don't have to go through it personally, and that I'm relegated by nature to at the very most a "support role." Most of my male counterparts at these sessions seemed at least somewhat more involved than I am -- one of them sounded a bit obsessed with the biological process behind it all, as if he were considering making a documentary. Which is not to say that I'm not interested in it all, but I think I'm considerably less fascinated by the labor aspects of birth as opposed to the prospects of seeing my daughter, who has for the last several months been appropriately but elusively housed in my wife's belly.

Obsession with Chinese Food. When we were in China, Thomas and I ate with chopsticks three meals a day over 14 days. I'd been a big fan of Chinese cuisine for years, but lately it's been admittedly a bit of an obsession for me. But problematically, most good Chinese restaurants here in Berlin are a bit pricey, so I've taken to making my own. But part of the problem is that it can also be a little difficult to find the right ingredients in Berlin supermarkets -- I couldn't find cilantro even at our twice-weekly local vegetable market, where I mixed in with the price-savvy old ladies to get good quality bell peppers and carrots. All in all I used the wok 3 times this weekend.

German Put to the Test. I've been taking intensive German classes ever since I moved here in September (with some breaks, of course) and the day of reckoning approaches. At the end of June I'll take the Zentral Mittelstufe Prüfung -- also known as the ZMP by those of us in the know -- and if I get a good score I'll, well, put that on my resume and perhaps seriously try to get a money-paying job. The test isn't all that difficult, I don't think, so I expect to do well. There are four parts to it -- listening, reading, speaking and writing. Probably the most difficult is the writing portion, where you have to compose a letter or write a "letter to the editor" without the aid of a dictionary. That doesn't sound so bad -- I know a lot of German words at this point -- but I can never seem to remember a noun's proper gender (der, die or das) or which preposition goes with which verb. To prepare, I've been trying to write letters to friends in German, which Conny then corrects for me. I've also been reading the Berliner Morgenpost, which despite it's despicable Axel Springer (a huge German media conglomerate) ownership, has lots of interesting stories and a good design, which is of course very important to me. Yesterday there was an intriguing story about a gorilla at the Rotterdam zoo who escaped from his cage and proceeded to attack a group of zoo patrons. But interestingly enough, the ape's interest seemed to be provoked by a certain woman, who the newspaper described as his biggest fan -- she came to see the gorilla almost every day. But I digress...

Slave to the Chessmaster. I may have mentioned on this "blog" at some point, that the television programs here aren't quite up to snuff in comparison to their American counterparts. My wife has debated this fact with me somewhat, and I am willing to cede that in two genres -- crime series and nature documentaries -- German programs may have a slight edge. However, the sports, comedy, and film selections all leave something to desire here. Professional soccer, when it is broadcast on the television stations that we can afford, is generally very well produced, but because of licensing agreements we only get to watch one league match per week, and it's a second league match at that. So as a result, I've seen more Kaiserslautern and Rostock matches this past season than I care to comment upon; next season I will hopefully be heading to the stadium more regularly, perhaps after a few months with my little daughter in tow. In the meantime, I've taken to bending my mind against the Chessmaster a good bit -- Conny won't play me because she always loses. (To which I always say, you can't win if you don't play.) But if any of you would like to challenge me to an online match or perhaps here in one of Berlin's lovely cafes, I am always game.

Happy Birthday to Me

If you left you hat here last night, please claim it.

We may not be ideally equipped for parties here in the Seelingstrasse -- next year hopefully we'll have moved into a bigger apartment, if not one with a disco ball and revolving dance floor. But neither rainy weather nor an insufficient number of Hausschuhe could keep me from having a good time here last night. If you were able to come by, I hope you all had as much fun as I did, and many thanks for the food, gifts and company.

We promise to make the quiz a little easier next time.

Back in the Saddle?

It's Spring here, which means I thankfully don't have to look at the hairy guy across the street anymore.

It's been a while since I last sat here in front of my computer with the purpose of updating you on my daily activities here in Berlin. (If you weren't keeping up with my travels through China, well, I suppose you had something better to do.) And a lot has changed here in three weeks. For example, the trees outside our apartment windows are now sporting thick green leaves, which conveniently block our view of the building across the street where a fat, hairy guy likes to lean out his window without wearing his shirt. Our Hausmeister (the very flattering German word for janitor) has painted over various bits of street art that had appeared on our fine building's walls, some bits of which (an interesting depiction of what looked like a goat) I will miss, others I will not. And my dear wife took advantage of my time away to upgrade our bikes, adding a small cargo basket to hers and a new set of pedals to mine.

But beyond those changes, I now find myself slowly sliding back into The Routine, where in the afternoon I attend my German classes at the Volkshochschule five times a week, I do the corresponding homework at night, and then in the mornings before I attend class I worry a little bit about how I should be doing something more productive. Then I navigate to usatoday.com or cnn.com to read the latest news about Paris Hilton and Britney Spears -- there's always a link to some ridiculous story about one of the two, regardless of what else if happening in the world.

Frankly it's not an awful Routine -- it doesn't involve a commute of longer than 15 minutes, I like my classes, and the air here is usually pretty clean. And because my wife is intelligent and has a decent-paying job doing something she tolerably likes, the pressure on me to bring home the groceries is pretty negligible, assuming I do a load of laundry every now and then.

But still, we all long for some greater purpose in life, to achieve something remarkable and to thereby win recognition, be it in the form of fame, power, or financial compensation. I, too, my friends and acquaintances, am human; I wish to know that my German homework was correctly completed, to hear snippets from my writings recited in high school English classes on a par with Shakespeare and Orwell, to be paid a living by a certain publishing house to pursue the travels and adventures of my dreams. Is that so much to ask?

Well, I suppose so, particularly if I continue to insist on sitting around every other morning reading the latest Paris Hilton gossip...