Berlin Graffiti

Berlin's graffiti scene started in the 1980's on the wave of American hip hop music and culture. It came in slowly with minorities breakdancing in the streets of West Berlin, mostly 2nd generation southern Europeans and Turks. The first 'real' piece of graffiti was supposedly done by RAY near S-Bahnhof Sundgauer in Southwest Berlin in 1982.

(This is not that)

It began with individuals and some two-teams, but really started to explode with the fall of the wall in 1989, when graffiti became "cool". Those who had done graffiti before the fall of the wall became "old-school" and everyone else was "new-school". New-schoolers were different because of the old-schoolers' influence and the general explosion of information that happened when with wall opened, including the arrival of graffiti magazines.

The western side of the wall was considered a challenge by graffiti artists and they went to work covering it fairly early. This side of the wall was not guarded like the other side was. The eastern side stayed a dreary grey and white deswegen. The eastern side would be the part left standing as a memorial, as it was more of a real barrier than the western side. This would then be painted after the fall and become the longest open air gallery in the world and my dad would have a picture of him taken in front of it.

Graffiti in and on trains aren't as common as in NY city, but riding the S-Bahn on the ring or through the middle of Berlin is more or less like being in a moving graffiti gallery.

Not to say there isn't ANY in train stations and on trains, but most of it is cleaned up rather quickly and/or if it's a train it's removed from service. The fine can be up to 3,000 Euros, which may be the deterrent if you're not super gangster like THC.

There's a lot of English graffiti in Berlin, partly because a lot of graffiti artists travel to Berlin from other countries, but partly for the same reason so many Germans sing in English. (That reason being: they're dumb, or they're smart and want it to be understood by "everyone".) There is, however, a good deal in German.

(Fight Fascism)

(The border does not run between up and down, but between you and me)

Nowadays there are many graffiti gangs and individuals who paint similar pieces all over Berlin, such as this guy above, a angry Berlin bear, and some guy/s paints fists all over the place. 

But even with so much graffiti and how dirty Berlin is it still feels so safe (even though Berlin is the only place I've ever been molested (the bad kind, not the good kind)(well, that too)).

When my dad was here he asked about gangs in Berlin and I had no idea, I still have no idea. It's never talked about and I never see any. Where do all the drugs come from? Surely someone's fighting someone somewhere over something...in groups. If you know more about this, tell me. 

What I do and 9. November

(Because of the "New Flu" we will be abstaining from shaking hands - The Finance office)

After two or three months of being sick I've decided not to be sick anymore. That's it. No more. In the last two months I've had a fever at least 4 times and have had a constant cold. I also got strep throat somewhere in there. I blame the children. Everyday one third of the kids in every class are at home sick and the rest are...also sick and rubbing their gross germs all over me. Luckily I haven't had the Swine-flu, but I wouldn't be surprised if I got that too! I've heard of at least 8 people at the Elementary schools I work at having it.

Because it seems to be unclear what exactly it is that I'm doing here in Germany, I'm going to tell you in a little more detail! (No, I don't just sit on my ass all day eating bon-bons, I usually stand on my ass).

I have three different jobs and work about 30 hours a week not including preparation time.

Job number one: English Assistant at the Reineke-Fuchs-Grundschule (Elementary school).
I either work in the classroom with the teacher or I take a few students into the hallway and work on conversation (with the older kids) or on reading or exercises. I also do two workshops. I do an English cooking workshop on Mondays with Vanessa, the English girl who also works there but through the British Council (who will be leaving in February), and I do an England preparation workshop on Tuesdays for the kids who will be taking a trip to England in the Spring. I work here three days a week for a total of 15 hours a week.

Job number two: English Assistant at the Hermann-Schulz-Grundschule (Elementary school). I either work in the classroom with the teacher or I take a few students into the hallway and work on conversation (with the older kids) or on reading or exercises. I work here two days a week for a total of 11 hours a week.

Job number three: English teacher at the Volkshochschule-Reinickendorf (adult education center). I teach two lower level English classes mit Muße, which means that the classes are supposed to go very slow and often has older people, busy people and...slower people in it. This also means that I'm supposed to speak more German than I might otherwise in a normal course. So, I teach them in German but try to say most everything in English first so they get used to the sound and words. I work here 4 hours a week.

This job is obviously much harder than my other jobs. Preparation and the execution are both very difficult just because of how different the students are. Some can really speak English (like 4 or 5 out of 27) and some still need to learn "I, you, he, she, it" ect. How am I supposed to make everyone happy? This is very hard on my I-want-to-make-everyone-happy bone. But my boss came in to see me teach and said I was doing well, so...I guess I'm doing well! I'll just work on improving my teaching skills the best I can while realizing that I can't please everyone. I guess. This is, however, particularly rewarding just because it's so challenging. Not to mention that it pays a lot better than my other jobs.

This, below, is at the Reineke-Fuchs-Grundschule. This girl had her birthday. Whenever a kid has a birthday the birthday kid brings in candy or cakes or something for the class. It's unclear whether or not they always get lifted up in a chair. But in Bettina's class they do.

Notice the blackboard. I have yet to see a white board or a projector in an elementary school here, let alone a power point presentation. : ) Desks are tables for two and school bags are box-like. I should've written about the schools here earlier...most things are starting to seem normal now, so I'm forgetting the differences. Pencil cases seem to be more important, but possibly because they don't really have the desks that we have where you can leave all your stuff. They have cubbies, though. As far as how the class is taught it's surprisingly the same, as far as I can tell. University in Germany is so different from University in Minnesota that I expected school to be different too, but I find nothing odd about the way the classes are taught here.

There are some small differences like the shape and look of notebooks (no spiral notebooks here) or the fact that every child uses a fountain pen, something I find to be romantic, but not normal. To go along with this they have jars full of cartridges of ink and a thing called Tintenkiller, one of my favorite Denglish words. Tinte meaning ink, Tintenkiller means ink eraser and only erases the ink from these ink cartridges. Handwriting is very important here apparently. At first I bought a Tintenkiller and thought it was just an erasable pen. I tried writing with the pen-side then erasing it with the other side, but apparently the pen side is for writing on the part that you already erased. This was very confusing to me and I spent 23 minutes trying to get my new fountain pen to work. I, of course, ended up with ink all over my hands...in fact, every time I use it I end up with ink all over my hards. I like to think it's the quality of the pen. I also write in cursive now. I think it might look better than my normal handwriting. I remember my 2nd grade teaching saying my handwriting was horrible and that I needed to fix it and it hasn't really improved since then. But I was writing a letter at school the other day, in cursive, and this girl said my handwriting was...nice. That had never happened to me before. Very exciting.

The teachers at the schools are really great and supportive. I was very happy when I found out that I would need to speak German at school with other teachers. I feared that I would be speaking English the whole day if I was teaching English, but luckily that's not the case. My German is still improving rather slowly, but I think I've just reached that time with it. In the beginning it's so easy to notice improvements, but now that I'm relatively confident that I can express pretty much anything I want to German the next noticeable step seems to be being able to do that without making any mistakes, which won't...ever happen : ) So I'll just be happy with the opportunities my mistakes are giving me to learning new vocab and sayings for now. I'm starting to give my German learning some gas since I applied for the DAAD study scholarship last week (it would pay for my living expenses while I study). It's only like 10 months until I, hopefully, start my Masters program in German as a Second language (like ESL for German) and I really would like to do it well with minimal German mistakes. I'll be making enough of the other kinds of mistakes. : )

9. November

The 9th of November was the 20th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin wall and there was a big celebration on Brandenburger Tor and Potsdamer Platz. They set up all of these Dominoes painted by different school groups and youth groups. It was supposed to symbolize, you guessed it, the falling of the wall. It was pretty neat. It's just too bad that it was raining and cold. We waited for the three hours for it to fall anyway.

At times with Glühwein.

And then, I think an hour after it was supposed to, it fell. I have a video, but it doesn't want to load. It took forever for it to fall because every person on earth had to say something about the fall of the wall first. Apparently the wall was bad. (Although not according to some West-Berliners I know).

Hillary Clinton was there too. I'm a little surprised Obama didn't make an appearance.

(Random party, pants on the ceiling)

(English/German Vocabulary Book)