Mommy & Me

As you may have figured from my other posts, Mama Tang came to visit me in Berlin. We traveled together (twice, to Amsterdam & Frankfurt/Wiesbaden), ate together, walked together, drank together (that was quite entertaining), slept in a hostel together, took pictures together... did lots of things together. All in all, good mother-daughter bonding.

Amsterdam
highlights: hostel, red light, van gogh museum, canal after canal after canal. generally, i just loved just wandering around the streets at night, people watching.












Den Haag
highlights: great museusm (vermeer paintings & modern art), quaintness.














Berlin
highlights: eating a home-cooked chinese meal (with some quirks, naturally), watching my mom gawk at how döners are prepared, walking down unter den linden at night, having my mom nudge me about how slow my german learning was going.











Wiesbaden/Frankfurt
highlights: stayed with my dad's cousin Yvonne and her family (and feeling like one of five asian people in the entire city), cable car ride over rhine valley, vineyard after vineyard after vineyard, four-hour dinners over wine and apple strudel that entailed crazy stories about the tang heritage. how i heart family.























(note:I promise to post photos from dresden/prague/italy at some point...)

Ready, Able

So tonight was a special treat. Instead of spending the usual Wednesday night studying for my weekly quiz, I saw Grizzly Bear + St. Vincent at Postbanhof. The old train-station-turned-venue was (surprisingly) full. I knew Grizzly Bear had a big following, but this was jam-packed full. The I-can-smell-my-neighbor's-breath full. The amount of people that attended tonight put a smile to my face, although I could have used more room for those powerful sways I built up...

Needless to say, it was great. St. Vincent was surprising, and I appreciate her live performances so much--it captures the layers of her sound so much better than through listening to her singles. She's a one-women force-of-nature, and she's got this shy mystique to her. She didn't really say much in between songs, but just let the music do the talking for her. The lights definitely helped add to the songs, and for a couple tracks, she would fade out with the lights as fog filled the void. Like a magician, she was gone. Charming.

And Grizzly Bear... sigh. Beautiful. I caught myself closing my eyes one too many times. I just wanted to soak it all in. It wasn't a dance-till-my-feet-hurt show, but that's not what you expect from GB. One asks for mellow musings, for passion, for simple lyrics that don't make sense but somehow do... the harmonies, the melting of the voices... so lovely and eerie (jordan axt would kill me for using this word, but I really don't know how else to explain it!) Eerie because it seems so unreal. But all at once, I felt so at peace with the world. "Knife" was great, "Two Weeks" was fantastic. But I think the highlight was "Deep Blue Sea." Great song to begin with, but add voice layering to the acoustics... and I die. They played a lot of songs from Veckatimest, expected and appreciated. I like the new album, but after seeing it live, I can enjoy it more. I've been listening to Horn of Plenty a lot recently... the older stuff is so different but I love the simplicity of it all.

Fun Fact: Ed Droste apparently lived in Berlin for one year back in 2001. He whipped out some German, which was so adorable. See, this is why I need to come back to Berlin to live. Because I could start the next great... Brooklyn Band. Clearly.

I'll repost their newest music video so you can enjoy some Grizzly Bear fantasticness.

20 Years

Twenty years ago this day, I was probably lying in my crib, sucking my thumb and trying to make sense of... well, senses. I am not quite sure how a five-month-old baby's brain functions, but I want to say not too much was going on in life. Just me, with my thumb, having a good time. Oh, and maybe a stuffed animal was involved. So that made two of us in my world.

But 20 years ago today in Berlin was a whole other story, one I can only piece together from old documentaries, newspaper retrospectives, and first-hand accounts from those who have experienced it. I don't want to get too deep or sappy because this day doesn't quite hit home for me, but living here for a little over 2 months now... you are inevitably faced with the presence of what Berlin used to be. Divided. Torn. And now, rebuilding. Stronger and more refined, but the edginess and the scars are still present.

I thought it would be appropriate to pay tribute to the 20 years since the fall of the Berlin Wall. Pretty spectacular, I must say. By the Brandenburg Gate there were 1000 "Dominoes" set up along the path of where a part of the wall used to stand. Each domino was hand-painted by school children and local artists. The Domino Effect is what they were trying to get at... Berlin loves this type of stuff (refer to my last post about giant puppets roaming the city). It's cute, but then again, does it take away from the significance of the commemorated event itself?

I somehow managed to break my SD card (hot mess moment #837), but the image I reposted was better than the ones I took anyways.

Massive Update

I couldn't think of a good name for this post because it's all over the place.

1) Travels + Mom + F---ing Flights

Here is my travel itinerary as far as I have planned out for October:

Oct. 13-16 Dresden/Prague (with program)
Oct. 16 Milan (with Jenn for rest of Italy)
Oct. 17 Perugia
Oct. 19 Rome
Oct. 20 Florence
Oct. 22 Back to Berlin
Oct. 23 Amsterdam (with Mom)
Oct. 25 Back to Berlin
Oct. 29 Frankfurt. (with Mom)
Nov. 1 Back to Berlin

MY MOM IS VISITING!

I'm very excited, just found out this week. Although the past few days have been stressful as I attempted to book last minute flights and plan for travel and her stay in Berlin. My mom will be traveling on her own with a tour for 17 days prior to meeting with me. These tours are a little intense--they're basically crash courses in European culture and sights. You get a faint taste of what it's like, but nothing substantial. But hey, this is Mama Tang's first time in Europe, so getting a feel for everything will be great. That way, if she finds places she particularly likes, she can come back!

I'm meeting up with her on October 23 in probably the last place you would want your parents to go with you to: Amsterdam. I've seen photos of the city--it's gorgeous. There's the Van Gogh Museum, Anne Frank House... oh wait, but there's also its notorious drug culture and Red Light District. And, we're staying in a hostel. We'll be sharing a 10-person bed with people from god knows where. My mom said she was down, so I hope she really is...
Basically, I'm nervous but extremely excited to see how things play out.

On October 25, we're both coming back to Berlin.

(Side note really quickly: I need to vent about booking flights. I spent countless hours trying to figure out whether trains or flights were better, which flights, etc. I ended up forking over 200 Euros for my round trip to and from Amsterdam. A little steep, but it's fine. I'm not even angry about that part. What I'm absolutely outraged by is the fact that I wanted to book my mom the same one-way flight from Amsterdam to Berlin and this is how much they want to charge:

It's the second flight from the top. Ridiculous, right? 420.65 Euros. This one-way flight cost double my roundtrip cost. A 1.5 hour flight... it just blows my mind. I had to scramble and get her a different flight that will be flying into Berlin a couple hours later. I'm more than frustrated at this point.

My mom will be living with my host family because we have an extra room and my host family said it would be fine. P.S. LOVE my host family. They're the best.

And then that following Thursday, we'll be going to Frankfurt to visit my dad's cousin Yvonne. P.S. LOVE Yvonne. Met her over the summer when she came to visit LA with her kids, and she's just got this great edge to her. It's probably because she lived in New York for 10 years. That's what I need as well.

October is überweltigt, which is overwhelming in a good way. Usually, I've been using überhäuft, which is overwhelmed in a negative sense. Mostly when it comes to German. But I'm spending over half of October not in Berlin, but that's a part of study abroad, no?

2) Rise of the Riesen

This weekend, there was a special celebration in Berlin that has been dubbed "The Riesen" (The Giants). It was something that was so quintessentially Berlin: quirky and weird and but not totally unexpected. Portions of Unter Den Linden (probably Berlin's busiest street) was closed off for the celebration near the gate. These Riesen are huge wooden puppets that trekked through town, and the two giants symbolize the metaphorical reunification of Germany. The big Giant West Germany, the little Giant East. [I don't know if I completely agree with the analogy...why is West Germany the dominant, more imposing male figure that plays a seemingly paternal role to the little Riesen? I don't want to read into the analogy too much, but I don't find it quite fitting.]

On Thursday and Friday, they went through town on separate paths, "lost" and in search of one another. On Saturday, they met up at Bradenburg Tor. I was fortunate enough to be there when the giants reunited.

The hectic sight, people standing on buildings and chairs and tables and whatever else they could manage to get a grip of...

Girl Riesen lifted over the gate!

Look how small the people are in comparison!

Triumphant moment: Big Riesen walks through the Gate!

So many people were maneuvering the puppets. And they were dressed in this fabulous red suits.

Reunited once again

I'm really glad I went, despite the massive amounts of people. There were locals and tourists and kids and grandparents and families and strollers and gray clouds and Native American dancers and Currywurst stands and balloons and music and standing and more standing...

But it was great.

After such a claustrophobic and stressful adventure, I treated myself to some kugel Eis (ice cream cone). Kugel ice is one of my favorite parts of Europe. 1 Euro gelato that is damn delicious.

This week: I have my art history paper due and German Midterm on Thursday. Eh.
But, my German is actually getting to a pretty good place. Even Agi, my sprachpartner (language partner) said so, and she is usually really frustrated and direct with me. So mini-accomplishments here and there.

I think I've exhausted myself from this epic blogpost, and if you've made it this far, I love you.