Erdnuss

So I was eating peanuts with Tanja, this lady I work with, in the break room when she decided to tell me about this idea she had.

Tanja (paraphrased and translated into English): I try this sometimes, watch. After you get the peanuts out of the shell, you add a little salt while they're in your hand, and then the peanuts taste salty.

I proceeded to tell her all about how, in America, you can buy peanuts with salted shells.

She was amazed.

America once again, has trimuphed.

Things that I don't like about biking in Berlin*

*some of these probably apply to more places other than Berlin

1) Googlemaps gives directions as if you are walking. Therefore you would be on the other side of the street. Normally, this doesn't matter until you get to complicated intersections which are complicated by themsleves. The fact that the 'links bei Kaiser-Wilhelm Platz' for only 23 m isn't acutually neccessary just adds to the confusion.

2) The streets are not well marked. There's one tiny street sign that is really hard to read. And sometimes, they're not marked at all.

3) What I would consider the same streets, have different names depending on what direction you're traveling.

4) Cobblestones. I hate the colbblestones.

5) It always starts raining after I start biking and then stops right when I get to where I'm going. Even if it's just misting, it's frustrating since I need windsheild whipers for my glasses.

6) The 'hill' on Hermannstraße.

7) I get really angry when I get lost.

8) Alexanderplatz (this is usually the cause of number 7)

My life right now basically consists of biking to different places. That's where all the excitement happens. I've gotten lost more times then I care to admit. I guess it's not surprising see as it happens a lot no matter what mode of transportation I'm using, although I still consider myself to be good with directions. I think I should reevalute that claim. Instead of good with directions, I think I'm good at remembering things. So if you tell me how to get somewhere, or if I copy it off of Googlemaps or something, I won't have to refer to the directions very often, if at all. But this is assuming all the turns are well marked and straight forward. When this is not the case, I suppose those people with a good sense of direction would be able to sense the general direction of their destination and would make enough turns to get back on track. Whereas someone like me, who relies entirely on the names of streets, is at this point lost. I think this is because I'm not good at visualizing things. For example, even though I lived in my parents' house for 13 or so years, I still have a hard time believing the bathrooms are build on top of each other. It just doesn't match the picture in my head.

Don't get the wrong idea though, I do enjoy having a bike in the city.

Ich fahre mit dem Rad zur Arbeit.

I biked to work today for the first time since the purchase of my old lady bike. I bought it last week from someone on craigslist. It's a one speed with only the right handlebar brake which is to be used in conjuction with back pedaling. I bought it because it was cheap and it already has a light on it. The problem with Paul's extra bike was 1) it's technically his ex-girlfriend's so I can't really take it with me when I move. 2) it doesn't have a working light and die Polizei are very strict when it comes to biking at night. A fine for not having lights is more than 2 months rent. No thanks. So I bought myself this beauty. It has a really wide seat and a basket on the back. It also has a bell on the left handlebar. So I pretty much look like an old lady casually pedaling to the grocery store all the time. It's not really a magnet for fine young gentlemen, but since when have I needed a ruse? I rode it home from my shady back alley purchase of it (just kidding, we were in a courtyard). It was dark, cold, and rainy on the ride home, but it was only 2 km away and I knew the way, so it was kein Problem (no problem). However, the next morning my calves were sore. That is apparently how long it had been since I rode a bike. I swear the fact that it was cold contributed greatly to the aching muscles, or I'm just that pathetic that I can't bike 2 km (which is 1.2 miles for all of you English system users) without being sore the next day.

I had the rest of the week left on my Monatskarte (month pass for the U-bahn) so I continued to ride it to work instead of biking (out of laziness and the fact that it wouldn't stop raining). I decided to give it a try today though. I had no idea how long it would take. According to google maps, it was 10.something km that would take 2 hours and 15 min to walk. I was going to leave early to give myself plenty of time for getting lost (the probability of which I thought was relatively high) but ended up leaving 45 mins after I wanted to. I was probably somewhere between 1 and 2 km away when I got stuck behind an actual old lady casually pedaling somewhere (probably from somewhere since her basket was already full). Not wanting to bike that slowly, I made my move to pass her.

Some things about Berlin you should know:
It is very bike friendly. On almost every street there is either a bike lane on the road, or on the sidewalk.
German roads and sidewalks are very often cobblestone.
The bike lanes are indicated by a different pattern in the cobblestone (normally small, close together stones to allow for a smoothe ride).

On this particular road, the bike lane was on the sidewalk. Separating the bike lane from the pedestrian lane, was a small line of bricks. Ontop of the bricks were lots of colorful autumn leaves. So in order to pass this lady, I would have to simply ride over the slightly raised bricks and go around her. Most people with basic bicycle maneuvering skills would be able to accomplish this feat without much of a problem. But for some reason, I forgot to take Physics into consideration. There are a series of laws pertaining to motion, that most people naturally execute. I failed to do so at this moment. I pretty much hit the bricks with my wheel directly parallel to it, which changed the direction of the movement of the wheels to directly perpendicular (sideways) to the one in which they were moving (forward). In laymen's terms, my bike stopped and I fell off. Now I was only going like 2 km/hr so the only things bruised were my pride and my left knee. There was no blood (and no 12 stitches needed). The bike was a little twisted at the handlebars, but I was able to move them back in place with relative ease. For a second I contemplated going back and taking the U-Bahn, but then I remembered some saying about falling off a horse and getting back on, so I persevered.

The remainder of the journey was uneventful. I didn't get lost and I made it there in about 50 min door to door. So it's pretty much exactly the same as the U-bahn. I was, however, really sweaty when I got there, and therefore got really cold once the sweat dried. Does anyone know how to fight that? I'm going to leave work early today in hopes that it will still kind of be light while I learn the way back. We'll see how sore I am tomorrow.

Halloween, German style

I'll be honest, I almost forgot about Halloween. There are very few stores that bombarb you with displays of jack-o-lanterns and black cats and those chunks of stretched out cotton balls that are supposed to be cobwebs. In fact, Germany may have America beat on the jump-the-gun Christmas decorations. Seeing as Germany doesn't really have Halloween and definitely doesn't have Thanksgiving, Christmas is really all the department stores have right now. But I had enough poeple asking me questions about Halloween the day before at work, that I did remember to acknowledge its exsistance. It was actully really cute on Friday. I was invited to dinner at my host parents' house and on the way, I had to stop by the post office to mail my ballot (I had already faxed it in so it would count, I just had to back it up with the real thing). I saw a couple of groups of kids dressed as ghosts and witches and goblins and other scary things. In Germany they like the scary costumes, not the recognizable characters costumes that populate US college campuses. So as I was leaving die Post (the post office), a troop of costumed youngsters entered die Post and said 'Süß and something I didn't quite catch because they said it really sing-songy and in unison'. Süß means sweet. So they were giving their targeted trick-or-treatee the option of sweets or I'm assuming, a trick of some sort. I saw the same thing in one of the U-Bahn Station shops. I think that's an adorable idea. And great for these businesses. Maybe this is how trick or treating is always done in big cities but it was the first time I heard of kids going store to store in addition to door to door.