Bye Bye Berlin!

Dancing Bear in a Shop Window on the Ku'damm

Posted by James

Well, the time has sadly come for us to say goodbye Berlin, hello California. But first, we'll take a little vacation, visiting family in Hamburg and spending some time hiking in the Pyrenees. We have done no hiking this summer, mainly because the hiking around Berlin is not particularly interesting as there are no mountains or even moderately sized hills for that matter. On the other hand, we've been doing a lot of bicycling, to Potsdam, Spandu, etc., so that's made up for it. My colleagues at the TU asked me what I would miss most about Berlin, and I told them bicycling to work. And of course being able to walk out my front door and have something interesting happen: street art, somebody juggling in front of the cars stopped at the traffic light, an impromptu concert on the pedestrian mall, etc. That kind of thing just doesn't happen in Silicon Valley.

Tonight, Renate and I took one last stroll on the Ku'damm: west, in the direction opposite the Gedaechniskirche and all the fashionable shops. I'd never been up that way, though she has. We walked past the Hallensee (Hall Lake) S Bahn station and to the traffic circle where the Ku'damm ends. In the middle of the traffic circle is a crazy sculpture, with cars buried in the ground sticking straight up:

This part of Berlin was rebuilt during the Cold War to be more accommodating to cars than people, and the sculptor seems to be commenting on his opinion about that change. The sculpture was erected in the 1990's. The walk seemed an appropriate way to end our wonderful stay in Berlin.

Since this blog is about Renate's and my time in Berlin, it will also have to come to and end. Like the dancing bear in the photo above, we've tried to keep all our loyal readers entertained with the fun and interesting stuff you can do in Berlin, with only occasionally throwing in some serious politics or reflection. There's been plenty of serious stuff going on this summer, the Greek financial crisis, the lingering crisis in the Ukraine, and now of course the flood of refugees from Syria, most of them culturally Western young men escaping the draft and almost certain beheading by ISIS if ISIS manages to get control. In past summers, it seems like there hasn't been all that much going on in Europe, but this summer the serious stuff just seems to keep coming, or maybe I'm just more attuned to it because I'm living here. But it's been good to be able to ignore what's happening in the US for a while, especially the developing farce of the nascent presidential campaign, watch other problems in depth, and in general relax and enjoy life.

So...as usual when we close down something, like leave a job for a new one or moving somewhere, we need to say:

            So Long and Thanks for all the Fish!!!

Pfaueninsel (Peacock Island)

Peacock on the Pfaueninsel

Posted by James

Today on our last Sunday in Berlin, we biked out to the Pfaueninsel. The trip was about an hour each way, and, at the very end, we had a 5 minute ferry ride across the channel to the island. Since it was a nice day and there were a lot of boats out, the channel was pretty busy as you can see in this photo:

A small flat boat is moving just in the wake of a larger passenger ferry.

The Pfaueninsel is a large island in the Grosser Wannsee, which, itself, is part of the Havel River complex to the west of the Berlin city. Though it and the village of Wannsee are technically part of Berlin, they lie outside the built up city area, and are a place where Berliners go for some country, since it is easily accessable by S Bahn and bike.

The Pfaueninsel was originally developed as a peacock menagerie by Kurfurst Fredrick Willhelm von Brandenburg, who was the father of Fredrick I, the first king of Prussia. The Kurfurst turned the island over to Johannas Knuckel, an alchemist and glassmaker, in 1685. In 1689, after the Kurfurst died, Knuckel's workshop burned down and he was forced by Fredrick I to leave the island. Knuckel moved to Sweden which was more interested in his technology.

There are no bicycles allowed on the island so we had to park ours near the ferry. Renate and I took a walk around the island and saw the sights. Fredrick I's son, Fredrick II, had a castle built in the early 1700s:

The Pfauenschloss (Peacock Castle) seems inspired by the romantic view of the Middle Ages that permeated the 1700s. The castle itself looks nothing like a medieval castle, but more like something from Disneyland.

The Fregattenschuppen ("Frigate Shed") was built in the mid-1800's to house a small replica of an English frigate which was given to Fredrick Wilhelm III (all these Fredricks!) by the King William IV of England (all these Williams!):

A previous gift had been left out in the weather during the winter and had rotted. Fredrick Wilhelm III used the boat, which he named the Royal Louise, after the queen who had died in 1810, as a yacht on the Havel.

The stables and dormitory for the men who worked with horses were actually a tear-down that was rebuilt twice, once in Danzig and once on the Pfaueninsel. The building was originally built as a villa for a wealthy merchant in Nuremberg in 1360 but was moved to Danzig (which at that time was a German city) in 1480. During a visit to Danzig, Fredrick Wilhelm III spotted the villa and heard that was about to be torn down, so he had it imported to Potsdam and the Pfaueninsel where it was reconstructed:

On the northeast shore of the island you can even see Teufelsberg in the far distance (small white tower in the upper middle of the picture silhouetted against the sky):



 The Fredricks used to graze cattle on the island but the cattle were removed some time ago and replaced by water buffalo. Here you can see one with his horns sticking up, watching us:

The buffalo's feet are softer than a cows and so are more appropriate for the swampy conditions in the meadows at times. Cutting the meadows with a mower would have done more damage, and buffalo need to be fed. Buffalo mozzarella made with real buffalo milk is popular in Berlin. The buffalo are owned by a woman who lives in Brandenburg.


As with all places that Germans go to relax on weekends, the Pfaueninsel had a stand where you could buy a small lunch, cake, ice cream and drinks. Renate and I stopped and had some cake, chocolate cherry for me and chocolate pear for her, and coffee, a cappuccino for her and a latte macchiato  for me. Around 3, we took the ferry back to the mainland and biked home. An excellent outing to end our 6 month stay in Berlin.

Color and Style

One of the things I've enjoyed especially about my trip to Berlin (and beyond) was the sense of adventure and enjoyment of color that I've found in the folks who live here. At home, young people might at times consider wearing something just a little bit interesting. But for the most part, it's jeans (usually blue) and T-Shirts (often black).

Quite different here - everyone, and especially middle-aged and older people, enjoys color. Maybe it's the many grey days in the fall, maybe it's just what everyone's used to, and what's available in the stores. I've seen many men in bright pants in red, light green, yellow, or purple - all colors of the rainbow really. And they were often with their wives or girl friends - it's not gay style, it's just style.

Women wear a lot more dresses and skirts than I'm used to seeing - makes sense, really, there's no air conditioning in summer and a dress is much cooler than pants. (Shorts are generally frowned upon in women except for the very young who still have the legs to go with the shorts.)

And while there was still a lot of street style that I found less than attractive, it was fun to watch people go by, look at their outfits, enjoy the show. And with the many street-side cafes and restaurants, everyone can be a watcher, or can be on the runway that's the Kudamm (or one of the side streets).

Even friends visiting from Hamburg (well know for being more staid and conservative) remarked upon the striking outfit that they saw in a woman who was having coffee at the cafe across the street. "She was a little older," said my friend "but she was not afraid of dressing up - yellow outfit with heart-shaped sunglasses with yellow frames. "

And while I almost questioned such exuberance in a woman past her prime, I realized that the fun of it is really what counts when a saw a couple of a certain age strolling down the Kudamm just a day later. She was wearing an almost matching blouse and knee-length pants, socks with her high heeled boots, a large purse with an interesting pattern, and, to top it off, a down shawl.  He was wearing a rust-colored jacket and matching shoes. Clearly they were having a wonderful time in the big bright city. After they had enjoyed picking out their outfits, they knew that other fun things were ahead!

Teaching

The TU Berlin Skyscaper

Posted by James

So today I want to talk about teaching. The "official" reason I came to Berlin this summer was to teach an Internet Routing course in the Internet Architecture department at the Berlin Institute of Technology (TU Berlin). Naturally, there were more reasons than that, but teaching is a large part of what I did for the first two thirds of the 6 months I've been here.

I didn't do much teaching in graduate school, just one course on linear systems. At the time, I was more interested in research. After that course, I co-wrote some research grant applications with my major professor, which were funded, and so I didn't have to teach again. Like many PhD students in the US, I really didn't enjoy teaching. The students were just a couple years younger than I was, and I found having to decide their fate in terms of grading uncomfortable. When a student came to me and pleaded that in effect "the dog ate my homework" I was inclined to give them the benefit of the doubt. I also didn't find much interesting and engaging in teaching. It seemed like I was just there to transfer information to the students, and they really could get that through reading the text book in the end.

In the fall of 1996 while I was working at Sun Microsystems, one of my co-workers who was an alumnus of Mills College, a woman's school in Oakland, sent out an email saying that two professors had quit from the Mills CS department and the department urgently needed someone to teach a course in operating systems in the spring. Mills had an old style combined CS/Math department, and there were no other professors who felt qualified to teach operating systems. Since I had just finished a research project developing a new object-oriented operating system, I volunteered, and Sun agreed to let me take one morning off a week to teach the course.

The course was senior level course (Mills at that time had no graduate program) so I expected most of the students already knew a great deal about how programs are developed and deployed on an operating system like Unix. But around half way through the course, I was driving home pondering the kinds of questions I was getting from the students when I realized that questions indicated a basic misconception about how program development and execution work together on an operating system, i.e. the compile, link, and load process. So I modified my lecture for the next class and explained how the program development process works. This was somewhat of a revelation to me: that the job of the professor was not to transfer information but rather to dispel the students' misconceptions about how something works. Perhaps not all the time, though, the students might actually not have enough of an idea about how something works to even have a misconception.

So that was the extent of my teaching experience when I started at TU Berlin in April. One issue I quickly faced is that the university system, especially at the graduate level, is very different in Germany and the US. The courses at the graduate level at TU Berlin are taught in English, but there are different courses with different kinds of activities. Lecture courses (which is what the Internet Routing course is), seminars in which papers are discussed, and lab courses in which the students participate in hands on activities are all separate courses rather than being combined. In addition, for the lecture course I was teaching, there were no homework assignments and no exams except for the final, and the final was an oral exam. The students also didn't have to come to the class because there was no grade for class attendance, and about a quarter of them didn't. Of course, in the US, lab and lecture courses go together, and professors often assign readings in papers or textbooks that are then discussed in class. During my lecture class, I would get a few questions each class, but not many, and they were usually from the same students.

These differences in the organization of learning in the US and Germany reflect fundamentally different philosophies about the role of the student in the two countries. The German system puts the responsibility for learning the material onto the student. The system isn't designed to encourage the students to compete with each other, and the students don't really expect that. In contrast, most US students would be unhappy with the German system. They want to know where they stand with respect to their peers, a kind of unsubtle competition, and for that they need constant grades on exams, homework, and lab assignments, together with a system for deciding how their final grade will be calculated from their grades on the various assignments during the semester. American students feel perfectly comfortable with the professor constantly judging their knowledge of the material and would feel uneasy if that weren't the case. Then too, many US students are paying a lot of money for tuition, even going deeply into debt, so they expect some kind of forcing function on their learning. In contrast, there is no or very little tuition at most German universities, and a degree of maturity is demanded from the students that most US students would be hard put to show, especially at the undergraduate level.

I ended up spending a lot of time developing material for the course, mostly on data center networking which is something new that has only come into prominence within the last 5 years, and enjoyed researching the material and presenting the results to the students very much. I was actually very familiar with the topic, having spent most of the last five years working on it myself. In the end, all the students passed the final, and only a few exhibited signs of not knowing the material sufficiently to pass with the US equivalent of a B. The only regret I have is that I didn't have much direct contact with the students. Because the students aren't constantly having to study for mid-term exams, complete homework assignments, or do lab assignments, they can wait until the end of the semester and cram for the exam, so they don't have much of an incentive to come by the professor's office and ask questions. But I suppose, if I were to go into teaching full time, I'd have an opportunity to work more closely with them. Most of the PhD students at the TU that are my colleagues (the PhD students do almost all the teaching in Germany) work closely with students, on Masters' projects and other research. I don't know whether I'll get a chance to teach again, but I would certainly like to.

A Short Trip to Leipzig

Commerzbank building

Here's what I love about living in Berlin: Within an hour or two by bike or by train you can visit destinations that are quite different. We visited Spandau and Potsdam by bike and the Spreewald by train - once just for a day trip. Last weekend we decided on a day trip to Leipzig.

Commerzbank building and street

In contrast to many other German cities, where castles are the big thing to see, Leipzig is - and always has been - the city of commerce. After our pleasant ride in the ICE train, which I used to listen to some Leipzig podcasts, we strolled to the tourist information office to buy tickets for a guided tour. We had 45 minutes for a little more exploration and saw the main square (which regrettably featured a Hare Krishna temple for the day).

Main square in Leipzig

Then our delightful tour "Geschichte und Geschichten" or "History and Story" started. The tour guide was very knowledgable and took us many places that we otherwise would never have seen.

Entrance to stairs in Messehalle, now also home to a cabaret

Behind many unassuming gateways we found ourselves in old Messehalle areas. For hundreds of years, Leipzig - similar to Nuernberg - was a gathering place for commerce, and special fairs were held for certain type of merchandise. All the goods had to be store, so buildings with large courtyards were common - above, a picture from a courtyard (now covered) which now houses a political caberet. And, yes, Leipzig is also the city with the most cabarets in Germany.

Walkway in Messehalle

Many of the former streets linking one courtyard to another are now covered - it creates a feeling of a mall that (thankfully) isn't quite a mall.

Specks Hof

Public art is found in many of the Messehalle areas, such as the mosaic above, commemorating the former owner who was called Speck. Here's a link to a post on a German architecture forum about Specks Hof, with much better photos than mine.

Truth be told, even with a really good camera it's pretty well impossible to do good photos looking up....

Zum Arabischen Coffe Baum

One of the last stops of our wonderful tour was the cafe, one of the oldest cafes serving coffee in all of Europe (since 1711, or quite possibly longer). Many famous German thinkers indulged in their addiction in the cafe, and today the cafe still serves coffee but also houses a museum with coffee paraphernalia and information about coffee culture in Saxony.

Speaking of famous thinkers, Leipzig is well know for the long list of German writers and philosophers who studied here, lived here, or both. We saw the museum where Theodor Fontane worked as a pharmacist before he became a writer, and the bust of Schiller and Goethe. The guide also showed us the famous Auerbach's Keller, which was a well known student hang-out already during Goethe's time. It plays a part in Goethe's Faust as the place where Faust meets Mephistopheles, and a bust of Mephistopheles working on talking Faust into selling his soul is now outside the pub.

Mephistopheles and Faust at Auerbach's Keller

But regrettable we had neither the time to visit the coffee museum nor time for Auerbach's Keller because we very much wanted to attend the Mottete in the St. Thomas Church. This is an hour-long service with a lot of music and a short sermon and prayer in the church where Johann Sebastian Bach was teaching for the better part of his life. The Thomanerchor, which has existed continuously since 1212, always participates in the service and we were eager to hear them.

Organ and singers after the Mottete

Even though we got to the church 35 minutes early, it was already pretty crowded but we did managed to find a place to sit. The service started with a welcome for the new boys that were joining the choir, most of them from Leipzig or close by. Each carrying a sunflower, the walked to Bach's grave at the front of the church, left their flowers, and went upstairs.

The music was varied and wonderful. The big surprise was the (short) sermon, in which the pastor took a stand against the new Lutheran's bishops stand against homosexuality. While the new bishop seemed to have expressed primarily a personal opinion, it still did not go over with the rather liberal people of Leipzig. Another Leipzig pastor had started a petition asking the bishop to consider his position, and the two pastors of St. Thomas were taking a public stand in favor of the petition. Having the Lutheran's come out on the liberal side of things was heartening - and we also appreciated that the sermon was short that the sermon was short and followed by a divine Bach cantata.

After that, we had a little time left for the Bach museum just across the street - then it was time to get on the train again and return to our temporary home, full of new impressions and with beautiful music still in our ears.

Short Notes: Paul van Dyk at Aquanario, Gigantic Grill, Doings at Alex, and El Bocho

Video Projection of Paul van Dyk on a Screen of Water Droplets at Aquanario

 Posted by James

This time, a few quick notes about fun and interesting events in Berlin.

Aquanario

Last Thursday, Renate and I attended the opening night of the Aquanario show at the old Tempelhof airport in southern Berlin. The first performer was Paul van Dyk, who we saw earlier this year at the We Are One festival. This was the first time we've been at Tempelhof, and we had to enter the concert area through the old arrival hall of the airport:

Aquanario uses screens of water shot into the air to modify lasers, in some cases, projecting video of the performers onto the screen as you can see in the photo at the top of the page. This wouldn't work in California at the moment, though, too much water wasting. Here are more photos of the light show:

Here's one of the requisite flame throwers which are part of many trance concerts:

While the light show was spectacular, the music was so-so, not fast or rhythmic enough to dance to, and nobody was dancing. I suppose they needed to keep it slower to allow for latency in the water show.

Gigantic Grill

Practically every weekend when we bike down Strasse des 17 Juni there's a gigantic Weber grill somewhere around Grosser Stern. Here you can see it with the Siegessauele in the background:

During the week, they park it over near Hackischer Markt at the Weber store:

We always look for it and miss it if we don't see it. It's huge, big enough to roast a whole pig!!!!!

Vegan Wagen

Speaking of roast pig, last Sunday we dropped by the Vegan Festival on Alexanderplatz ("Alex" for the cool, hip Berliner). There were booths with vegan food, information about animals, and even one by an organization lobbying for birth control to reduce the population of pigeons in Berlin. Berlin is "vegan central" in Germany. Earlier this spring, I saw a truck ("Wagen" in German) on the Wilmersdorfer Strasse pedestrian mall with a huge pig on it, advertising veganism, and was disappointed not to get a picture. But it was at the vegan festival:

That pig on the top looks like it might be a challenging fit even for a grill the size of the Weber.

El Bocho

El Bocho is a well know Berliner street artist, so well known that his art has become something of an institution. He's created a character, called Littl Lucy:

She's cross-eyed and has an attitude, in particular, she doesn't like cats:

These pictures were taken at the Hackischer Hof. If you want to see more of El Bocho's work, check out his web site.

Schaufenster!

Hermes on Kurfuerstendamm

The German word Schaufenster means, literally, window for looking/gazing - and in contrast to many shop windows I've seen in the US, these windows really do offer something worth a gaze.

The main reason is most likely that Dekorateur is a profession in Germany. You do a combination of school and internship, and then you join a company that offers services, usually to different types of businesses. I'm sure there are also freelancers, but the point is that it's not the owner of the shop or an employee - it's a professional, often with resources that are used in the different displays.

Hermes on Kurfuerstendamm

The point is to make the window eye catching, so the passersby will stop and remember, or maybe even enter and purchase something. 

Children's fashion (Kurfuerstendamm)

More people walk in Europe, and many people walk in Berlin. Furthermore, window shopping is quite a popular pasttime on a Sunday afternoon. But even in small villages with few shops, the windows are usually done professionally - it's just done. 

Children's fashion (Kurfuerstendamm)

Stores on or near the Kurfuerstendamm or other famous shopping miles have the most out-there shop windows. But even simple displays on the side streets are arranged pleasingly. 

Children's shoes

It's really all about "first impressions count" - and about grabbing people's attention. 

Wine store

Really, I seeing a bunch of wine bottles in a shop window wouldn't make me stop - but the bright colors of the watering cans might even make me want to cross the street. 

Florist

And maybe the nautical theme of this florist's shop window, with  lighthouses, ship's steering wheel, rescue rings, and fish, might stop a gentleman who wouldn't give a window with flowers a second glance. 

Optician

With two opticians just a few houses down from each other, the need to attract attention is big and the windows are elaborate (the window below includes a video of a young woman with come-hither eyes). 

Optician

Pharmacies are especially elaborate with their displays, attempting to remind the passer-by of a problem they might have. Earlier this year, the focus was on hayfever. Now, it's more mixed and includes this charming window, which promotes different natural laxatives "For a Happy Ending" showing old film reels. 

Happy ending (pharmacy)

The best thing about the windows is that they're rotated quite frequently. That allows reuse of the materials, maybe in another part of town, and makes it even more likely that eventually someone stops in front of the store, and finally enters through the door to make a purchase. 

In the meantime, the rest of us can enjoy the show - maybe just as creative and entertaining as the street art, if we know how to look.