Nothing much interesting about Serenity’s travels #8

Dear All,

X-mas and laziness have severely interfered with my sightseeing ambitions.
But, I was not going to leave the city without paying a visit to Berlin’s greatest celebrity: Knut I’d be quite interested to know whether you had heard about Knut before now, so let’s take a poll; please do let me know in a comment to this entry. Going by the media reports here, there is not a person left on this planet who does not know Knut and his story. And wasn’t he just cute and cuter?! :D ...or maybe you remember the controversy that brought attention to Knut in the first place, where animal rights activists demanded he be put down, arguing that rearing of a polar bear by humans is against nature...?
I myself was happy to see Knut as well as spending a couple of hours watching TV programmes about his upbringing. If I just infected you with
Knutmania, the Berlin public TV station has a whole website about Knut; all in German, but with dozens of podcast videos that are well worth watching. After all, Knut does not speak German either. What a shame that Thomas Doerflein, Knut’s adopted Mama/Papa, died of a heart attack at the age of 44 in September this year. Note the photo of Knut and him in the foreground. They were quite the team.
I took about ten dozen pics of Knut (no, not an exaggeration... what can I say, I only recently acquired a digital camera and the batteries were fully loaded...). Here is a more reasonable selection. As you can see, Knut has grown up a bit; he weighs in at about 450 pounds now.
I also included a picture of the brown bear next door to Knut, who looked a bit puzzled, possibly wondering why he received so much less attention compared to his paler relative. After all he and his kind have been Berlin’s symbol in its coat of arms since 1280 AD.
Of course, Knutmania can go a bit too far, as shown by this recent news item about a dude who jumped into Knut’s habitat because he thought thebear looked lonely. I am quite ok to leave it at taking home my very own Knut imitation.
Hope you are all well!
Serenity

P.S. Gonna check for snow now, not holding my breath. S.

Re: Nothing much interesting about Serenity's travels #9

Happy New Year, y’all!!!

I personally had a very successful and fun New Year’s Eve and (early) Day last night, which bodes well for the new year. I hope you did, too. So, for today’s episode in our series, I thought I’d share with you some of the New Year’s traditions from my part of the world. (Sorry for the length and large number of pics; I hope this is ok.) Pic # 37 shows a number of basic supplies. First off, we surround ourselves and give each other symbols of luck and prosperity, such as four-leaved clover and images of chimney sweeps.
Other such symbols include images of pigs, horseshoes and fly agaric mushrooms.

The traditional meal for New Year’s Eve is carp
I know, it looks gross, and when you think too much about it, it seems ever grosser, but it is actually quite delicious. It is traditional to keep a few scales from the New Year’s Eve carp and place them in your wallet. This is meant to bring prosperity in the new year. This is the first year I am following the custom, so I expect to win the lottery this year and we’ll have our party at Skal’s ;D
Another, and possibly the most persistent tradition these days is one you will find somewhat strange, and rightly so. You might remember the General asking me about it at the party. The tradition is to watch an otherwise completely obscure British comedy sketch “Dinner for One – Der 90.
Geburtstag” on tv on New Year’s Eve. You can find the version we watch here. It starts with a German intro, which really just explains to the non-English-speaking audience what is being said in the sketch itself, as that is in English. To demonstrate the importance of this tradition, here a photo of yesterday’s TV Guide with the showings of the programme circled:
(Note the heading on top of the page, which says “Ihr
Sylvesterprogramm”; Sylvester is what we Germans call New Year’s Eve.)


The New Year’s night is the only time when individuals in Germany are allowed to light fireworks, and apparently we Germans are known to go to town. I myself opted for a number of multi-fire batteries
Serenity loves pretty lights :)
even though I was viciously attacked by a rogue cracker and was temporarily engulfed in rather loud green lights. No harm done though.

After the fireworks, which are lit midnight, mom and I looked into the future: BleigiessenSorry, Wikipedia only does this one in German.) You melt little pieces of lead in a spoon over a candle
and then drop the molten lead into a bowl of cold water. The resulting forms are interpreted as signs of things to come. I had a beautiful flower, which stands for new friendship
Mom had a pipe (fun in life), moss (money), the number 7 (numbers stand for luck in the lottery) and a golf club (which we freely interpreted as sportive activity, which we can both use). So all up, pretty good.

Another traditional New Year’s food is Pfannkuchen, to anyone but the Berliner also known as “Berliner”. This year, we opted for a nut brittle and an Advocaat-filled one each. The more traditional variety is jam-filled. At big parties, a mustard-filled one is traditionally thrown into the mix, but I find that a little too mean. ;)
Of course, there was an amount of mulled wine consumed and we had a lovely sparkling wine to toast the New Year at midnight. After mom’s stamina waned at around 4 am, Serenity went to continue partying in SL.
:D

Again, Happy New Year, y’all!! I wish you all love, friendship, health, luck, prosperity and everything you wish for yourselves and your loved ones. :)

Serenity

P.S. Look what I found after waking up just before sundown!!!
More to come apparently!!! \:D/ S.

P.P.S. I almost forgot! Here is the photo I promised. Unfortunately, you will have to mostly take my word for it, as the pic was taken with a cell phone, after the batteries in my camera went out. This is a picture of a stall on a Christmas market here in Berlin. Those are usually entirely politics-free, but here, under the heading “folk crafts”, these T-Shirts with Obama’s image on them were sold. :D S.


(ed note: NMIAST#8 will be up tomorrow. This one was too much fun! Happy New Year!)

Nothing much interesting about Serenity’s travels #7

Dear all,

Sorry for dawdling with my travelog entries, but as you all know, X-mas is exhausting... However, seeing as one of the main reasons for this trip at this time had been for me to have a real X-mas (i.e., not in summer) with a real tree with real candles on it, I thought I’d send you a few pics of said tree. So, here we go, the tree being chosenwrapped
transported home expertly
and decorated
By the way, in Germany Santa, who around here is not called Santa but “der Weihnachtsmann” (the Christmasman), comes to bring his presents on the evening of the 24 December.
The kids usually wait in the kitchen, while one or the other parent oversees the transaction in the living room. The wait in the kitchen is on average 3.7 days long when you’re six years
old, and then progressively decreases over the years until it is but a few minutes when you’re 36. (I timed it over the years, and can send a time series graph on request.)
I hope der Weihnachtsmann was as generous with all of you as he was with me (yay! I can afford Disneyland now!), and that you all had a wonderful time!

More episodes to come...
Serenity

P.S. Still no snow. I asked mom to have a word with the weather. The forecast says there is a chance for "a few flakes” over the next few days. It’d better snow before I leave here on Monday! S.

Nothing much interesting about Serenity’s travels #6

Dear All,

Another pre-X-mas episode in our series “Nothing much interesting about Serenity’s travels”. On Sunday, the fourth Advent Sunday, mom and I
went to the city centre to hear Berlin’s Children’s Choir sing X-mas songs in the Konzerthaus Berlin (pics #18 and 19).
The Konzerthaus is one of the many beautiful venues for classical music events in Berlin see the German Wikipedia site for a
couple more pictures, and it is located on one of Berlin’s most beautiful squares, the Gendarmenmarkt.
Currently, the square is taken over by a Weihnachtsmarkt (pics #20 and 21). After the concert, mom and I had planned to visit my sister-in-law at her booth at a different Wihnachtsmarkt.
I tried to persuade mom to start a drinking game; at every Weihnachtsmarkt we pass on the way, we would have had to have a mug of mulled wine (pic #22). Mom did not want to play. :( But I got to make more mulled wine at home later on. :)
Here is my sister-in-law at her booth (pic #23). She makes angel-type creatures. Seriously, that’s the best I can do to translate “Engelsame Wesen”, which is what her enterprise is called. ;)
And here, finally, a photo of our local Weihnachtsmarkt (pic #24) in front of the closed-down cigarette factory. Rather a little bit sad looking, but I had a nice waffle with cream and advokaat. Apparently, Berlin has some 80 christmas markets this year, so with a bit of planning one could have had a pretty good buzz with my drinking game... ;)
Hope you are all well! Merry X-mas and/or Happy Holidays to all of you!!!
Serenity

P.S.: No snow for X-mas, that seems to be for sure now. But mom has decided that there will be snow next Sunday. Let’s hope the weather is a good little weather and listens to mom. S.

Nothing much interesting about Serenity's travels #5

Dear Friends,

Another entry in my travelogue; hope you will find this one interesting. On Wednesday, my mom and I went to a concert by the Dutch artist Herman van Veen. Mom has been a fan for decades and I quite like a lot of his stuff. He certainly is an amazing singer and songwriter. The concert took place in one of East Berlin’s synagogues. I did not take my camera, so no original photos, sorry; but I found this website about the Synagogue. Shame that the pictures are all so small. It is quite an amazing building.

In case you read the website’s text, I would like to add a personal note.
By the time I came about in the early 70s, official policy in the GDR (East Germany) had changed considerably from that of its very early days. For lack of a better description, Stalin had been turned away from and was as a rule not talked about; kind of like the black sheep in a family. Overt Stalinism was not condoned anymore. Kids in my generation were raised in the spirit of antifascism and antiracism. There was no anti-Semitism in my upbringing, not in my private life nor publically. The Holocaust was portrayed to us (e.g., in school) as the biggest crime against humanity in recent history, one that needed to be remembered in order for it to never happen again. There were memorials to it on the grounds of every school I went to, and every school class would go on field trips to concentration camp sites at least once or twice over the years. I do not mean to downplay the fact that a lot of crap went on in the country I grew up in, but the persecution of Jews was not something that existed in my experience. If anything, all religious institutions suffered from the popular spread of atheism during East German times. This, of course, was consistent with public policy in the GDR and often aggressively so, but was something that obviously stuck with the population, as is demonstrated in the persistently large difference in the statistics on religiosity among East and West Germans today.

Another note of interest is the sad fact that all visitors to the concert had to pass through metal detectors—devices not usually seen in Germany outside airports and other high-security facilities. And, of course, there was the police guard outside the building, which, mom tells me, is a permanent fixture outside all synagogues in Germany these days; a sign of
the growing anti-Semitism and neo-Nazism in Germany and the resulting need to protect Jewish facilities on a day-to-day basis.

On this note (and I want to apologise for the length of this post; I really set out at the start to only report on Herman van Veen’s gig, I swear!), since I arrived the following has been a prevalent item in the news: The police chief of the Bavarian town of Passau was attacked and almost killed at his home by a neo-Nazi. A basic theme in the news reporting on the incident has been that neo-Nazism in Germany has “taken on a new quality”. A leftist satirist on TV the other day commented along the lines of asking whether this was to mean that the numerous attacks and even murders of foreigners, or Germans of non-White background, by Nazis over the past years were therefore considered to be of lesser significance...

Back to Herman van Veen. This website has the booklet for the programme he presented. It includes a mini-biography in English and English translations of some of the poems he transformed into songs.
The theme of the evening were the poems written by Selma Meerbaum-Eisinger, a young Jewish woman who died in a labour camp in 1942. It was a very impressive evening.

Hope you are all well!
Serenity

P.S.: Still no snow. :(

Dear all,

Hope you are well!
Here is instalment #4 in our series “Nothing much interesting about Serenity’s travels”; and in this episode, Serenity actually left the house! ...well, I had to, because my passport is only valid for another couple of weeks, so I tramped to our local (i.e., for this borough of Berlin) town hall to apply for a new one. Our town hall, however, is actually quite pretty, so here are a few pics for you. The building was erected between 1901 and 1903. The internal shot (pic #16) is the entrance hall, just as you get in through the main doors (pic #15).
And, since there was scaffolding covering some of the facade today, I nicked the last pic (#17) from the intertubes. (Ed: that's at the top there now)

The website I stole that final pic from, by the way, seems to be of a local person; the domain translates as Grampa Hagedorn He even greets visitors per audio in the finest of Berlin accents. I recommend having a look. There are a bunch of photos of an exhibition (which had apparently been held in the shopping centre across the street) of stuff inventive people in the DDR had built in their spare time, including a racing car made from the same material as the Trabant ...Duroplast, My family had a Trabbi until just before the wall came down :) ); a home-built computer; a DDRmini-motorcycle disguised as a BMW one; a beer dispenser made from a cement mixer; and other such gems. Oh, the stuff you find through random intertube-picture-stealing! :)

Hugs y’all!
Serenity


(Editor: Dammint! I know I rotated that picture before uploading. Tip yer head sideways for a moment... Thnx.)

As Promised! Her Pinkness!

In which I get all photos hopelessly confused. But I trust you can figured it out by now. ... instalment #3: “Serenity brings on the X-mas spirit, part 2”. Another traditional German X-mas decoration is the Adventskranz.
This year, to give the whole X-mas spirit a turbo boost, Serenity spontaneously decided to make her own.
Having my friend Andrea there was quite convenient, as this is really a two-woman job. Here is us during the final stages of the project (pic #08), and here is a picture of the finished result (pic #09).
We were quite perplexed about how well it turned out, especially considering how little previous practice (none), planning (15 minutes from getting the idea to having bought all the “ingredients”) and/or skill (well, obviously we are regular Martha Stewarts; just didn’t know it) the whole exercise was benefitting from. This is me lighting the first candle (pic #10)This is me lighting the first candle (pic #10), and
Andrea lighting the second (pic #11).
And finally, the finished Adventskranz on the coffee table (pic #12). In the background, you can see some slices of Stollen (see previous episode) and the Marzipan cake mom got
for my birthday. Tomorrow (Sun, 14 Dec) is the third Advent, so we’ll light the third candle then. :)

(I promise to actually leave the house at some point and send you some
pictures of the area!)

Nothing much interesting about Serenity's travels #2

Hello again,

Ok, instalment #2: “Serenity brings on the X-mas spirit, part 1”.
On Saturday, Serenity’s very good friend Andrea came to visit, and Serenity used the opportunity to schedule some activities to introduce the X-mas spirit to her current environment. Of course, these included the eating of much Stollen. (Not sure if you are starting to see a theme here, but yes, for me, “Liebe geht durch den Magen” (German proverb saying, “love goes through the stomach”)...
and so does travel and home. Just wait till you see the pictures of the
Eisbein I intend to have soon... but I digress).
Of course, X-mas spirit is a lot about decorations and music. I played five of my favourite X-mas compilation CDs (yes, five). Those of you who were at the Yak that day would have heard a lot of the songs; plenty of Bing Crosby and the like, but also some choral and symphony orchestra renditions.
For decoration, I trudged into the basement to get out the old Weihnachtspyramide.
Again, those of you who were at the Yak that day might remember my telling you about those, and that Jane had found an SL one to put up there.
Here are a few pics of ours, which we had since I was quite little, and which, every year, gets a little more singed at the wings, as it keeps stopping when the room gets too warm...
hang on, my mom is calling to give the pyramid a little push.
Aaaaah... childhood flashback (Darned thing!) .

OK, part 2 coming up... :)
Serenity

Nothing much interesting about Serenity's travels

(Editor's note: Our Second Life pal Serenity, is off on holiday. I've asked her for pictures so we can all follow along as she travels from New Zealand back to her native Germany and then to America for the first time. I'll be updating the travelogue as she goes. And seriously, we need a better title than that!)

So, here now, as requested, in our series “Nothing much interesting about
Serenity's travels”, instalment number 1. (Instalments 2 and 3 will be
on their way in a few minutes as well. Most of my travel is quite
personally oriented (as opposed to touristy), so I honestly cannot promise
that any of this will be interesting to anyone but me. Therefore, please
feel free to use your own judgement on what, if any, of this you actually
post. Please, also do not hesitate to edit for grammar and spelling and
such.This first instalment is entitled “Serenity gets to have breakfast like she used to in her childhood”. On Friday, Serenity was on bakery duty (pic #01),
and bought some very nice rolls (pic #02).
She and her mom then
had a nice German-style breakfast at the kitchen table (pic #03). I know, I know; to most of you, it will seem weird that we have cheese and cold cuts for breakfast, but that’s what a typical German-style breakfast looks like, so there. The main alternative is cereal with milk or yoghurt, but what is the fun in that?! In my humble opinion, any self-respecting German has this kind of breakfast at the very least on Sundays (unless they’re Bavarian, in which case they are allowed to have Weisswurst. Please note also the boiled egg, which in our family is enjoyed with mustard (see glass with blue lid). Yum!
(P.S.: Serenity’s mom says, “The jam is missing.”)

OK, there you go. More in a couple more e-mails.
Hope you’re well.
Serenity