BaLtiMoRe RoLL

BaLtiMoRe RoLL

I'm sorry Baltimore, but it's time to say good bye. As I said in my previous post, I'll be back in Baltimore a few times over the summer, so you may still see me yet. But it's silly for me to keep a blog called Baltimore Roll now that I've moved. So... I'm moving my blog as well. I hope many of you will follow me, and I'll still be reading your blogs as well!

My new blog is still at seadragon.typepad.com, but unless you type in seadragon.typepad.com/baltimore_roll, you're going to be redirected to my new blog: PhiLLy RoLL. Same blog, different colors, new city. :)

AsPartAMe

I knew there was a reason I always felt really uncomfortable about aspartame. I remember back in high school I once read the side of a package of Carefree gum and noticed a little box saying that when aspartame was given to rats (in large doses) it caused cancer. Now I know that almost anything in large doses given to lab animals usually results in something horrible (yay, medical research ethics) and that supposedly we are eating much lower doses so we aren't supposed to worry, but I don't know... it seems to me that if you're eating a little bit here and there, it probably adds up.

I don't know if my worry about aspartame possibly causing cancer was what made me dislike the taste, or whether I just dislike the taste to begin with, but I usually find myself choosing real soda over diet soda (of course, it helps that I rarely drink soda), real yogurt over diet yogurt, etc. I pretty much assume that the more "substitutes" food has, the less it ends up being actual food.

Just a little health warning for the day. :)

I think blogging is going to be light for the next few days, at the very least. When we get to Philly we may not have internet access for a couple of weeks (I know, it's almost unthinkable), and there is still this festering dissertation that I need to attend to...

MovIng

I thought that by I might be done with posting pictures from our trip to Germany, but I'm far from done. (Lucky you!)

But I thought I should take a break from writing about our trip because there is a burning issue I need to write about.

We are moving. On WEDNESDAY. That's in, like, three days!!! Oh Baltimore, I hardly knew ye. And now we are parting so quickly and with such little fanfare.

No worries though, I'll be back several times before I'm really gone for good. In fact, I might even be back in about a week. And then a couple weeks after that. At the very least. So I haven't really been writing about moving because there's been so much else going on.

No really, it's true.

You should see our apartment. It hardly looks like we're moving because until tonight, we had hardly packed anything. The next two days are going to be rather exhausting.

The other major thing I've been occupied with, besides the wedding which certainly took its fair share of time, is my dissertation. I need to finish it up asap, and I'm making progress. But it's painful. In fact, the past couple years have been really painful, and ... well, maybe I'll write about it sometime. But not until I'm done with it and can sit back and think about it without totally falling apart.

So I am looking forward to moving. And to the new job. And new city. Hopefully all these recent and upcoming life changes will emphatically mark a new and healthier outlook on life.

Starting with the little things, here's an issue that I've been mulling over for a while now and haven't come to any decisions about... what should I do about the name of my blog??? I am not sure I am ready to rename it! But at the same time, isn't it strange (and misleading) to keep calling it BaLtiMoRe RoLL? I thought about changing it to PhiLLy RoLL, and then if (or more likely, when) I move again, I could name it after the next city. I kind of like that idea, and I think the only reason I'm resisting PhiLLy RoLL is because that's pretty much the one sushi roll I actually don't like (smoked salmon and cream cheese). Anyway, if I do change the name of the blog, I would still keep the name "seadragon" (you know, to maintain my tiny shred of anonymity).

What do you think? Any suggestions?

BeRliN, 3

On our last day in Berlin, we saw the things you are supposed to see in Berlin - Checkpoint Charlie and the Berlin wall.

On the way to the Checkpoint Charlie museum, we passed by this crazy sculpture. It made me think of James and the Giant Peach, but I have no idea what it really is. I looked around, but couldn't find a plaque or anything explaining it. Anyone know? (Jenny P, maybe?)

Just inside the Checkpoint Charlie museum, I found by taking this picture of the passport display that cameras were not allowed. Oh well. I probably would have been too tired and hot to take pictures anyway - there was no air conditioning in the museum and it was HOT. They have big glass windows and the sun was streaming in, so I was left to wander around limply as I read every placard and looked at every picture. I hated to find myself losing interest, but I was just so hot. (It is a good museum though. Definitely full of lots and lots of information, and I think it's really well presented.)

Eventually the museum ended (that place is deceptively huge), and we went to go see the wall.

    

As you can see by the last picture, life goes on around the wall. For some reason, beach bars are a big thing in Berlin, and I thought it was just a crazy image to see a beach chair and banners through this crack in the wall.

Next post... the US-Italy game in Kaiserslautern.

Kaiser-what?

Exactly.

BeRlIn, 2

We stayed in Berlin for three days after the Brazil-Croatia game, but yet it is probably the city I saw the least of because I holed myself up in the hotel room for two of those days working on a dissertation chapter. (Which I handed in - woo hoo!! This is the final-first-draft version of an analysis that I've been working on forever and which I completely hate at this point, but apparently I have to hand this thing in or no one will ever know what I've done.)

Right outside our hotel window was a courtyard that functioned as a playground for a nursery school all day long, so my dissertation work was accompanied by the joyful shouts of screaming German children. They had built a platform around the big tree in the center of the courtyard and the kids literally ran around and around and around it for hours. And then, just to make sure we were really enjoying all the noise, one morning they decided to fix the platform at 7:30 in the morning with a chainsaw. Followed by hours of screaming children. I really should have gone to find a cafe to work in, but my battery power isn't what it used to be and neither is my wallet (to pay for the coffees to justify my staying in a cafe for hours), so I just closed the windows and kept working. It seemed to work though, since I got the thing done.

My working, sadly, left J to wander around the city without me and he spent his time at the Pergamon Museum (because he's J and loves stuff like that) and wandering around the Fan Fest that they set up at the Brandenberg Gate.

But I did allow myself to leave the hotel at night.

After my first day of work, we met up with our friend Christiana, who lives in Berlin. (We know her from when she did a semester of research in Baltimore, and shared an office with me and J.) It was so great to see her, and really nice to be able to meet up with someone who lives there and knows where to go. She introduced us to a cute neighborhood called Kreuzberg, where we met up at a bar, sat outside and had really amazing pizza, and watched Germany beat Poland. (I didn't bring my camera, so no pictures.)

After the second day of work, I met up with J and Lostgal to watch some of the games at the Fan Fest at the Brandenberg Gate (so see, I did a little bit of sightseeing!). On the giant screen in front of the gate, we watched England play... someone. Too many games, too few brain cells to remember them all! But I do remember that it was a fun atmosphere. I have to say that I had been a little apprehensive about the crowds and potentially crazy soccer fans, but everything was pretty controlled and all the fans were really easy going. I guess I was expecting something really tiring like a Preakness infield party with drunkenness and fights breaking out, but it was more like a hippie folk festival in terms of people's friendliness and good moods and general consideration for everyone around them.

After the first game of the evening, we wandered over to a nearby neighborhood (which I forget the name of, but is famous, and I really should have just looked it up) to try to see the new modern art museum for an hour or so. But it took us longer to get there than we thought, and by then we would be missing the Sweden-Paraguay game and since it was the World Cup, well, the art museum lost out. Still, it was a cool area to wander around in, with all the really modern (and famous but I don't know by who) architecture.

So no art, but we did get to see the game. Which means of course, more fan photos.

And I leave you with this bizarre sign that we were sitting near. I wonder if Hyundai knew that their ad would be placed on such an awkward structure. It was really freaking me out to keep seeing this guy staring down at us with his face impaled with a street lamp. Creepy. I think the ad says something like "too high for you?", to which my answer would have to be yes. Whatever that might mean.

And then on the third day in Berlin, I didn't do any work so I have more pictures to show! Of the wall! I will save them for the next post!

BeRlIn

{You may have to keep refreshing the page to view the whole post and to see comments. I think by only loading up the first half of my posts, Typepad is insinuating that I post too many photos...}

The day after the US-Czech Republic game in Gelsenkirchen, we took a train to Berlin, where coincidentally our friend S, and the two friends he was traveling with had somehow ended up with reserved seats right in front of ours. Or maybe they just try to confine all the Americans to one car. :)

And then there was a treat waiting for us in Berlin - fourth row tickets to see the Brazil-Croatia game at the old Olympic stadium. I took so many pictures that someone behind me asked if I was a professional. No, I was just blown away to have Ronaldo and Rondaldinho running right past me...

     

GeLsenKircHen

After a relaxing weekend in Belgium, my cousins drove us to Germany at 200 km/hr while I tried to sleep in the car and imagine I wasn't in imminent danger of a highway accident. Fortunately, we made it safely and on time for the first US game in the World Cup against the Czech Republic in Gelsenkirchen. There we met up with Lostgal, our friend G who now lives in the Czech Republic, and a few other people.

It was totally surreal to see them after so many months, now in Germany and surrounded by a sea of US and Czech Republic fans. I wish we had more time with G, but I am glad we even got to see her for an evening. (And hopefully she will come to visit us in Philly soon?) Lostgal, on the other hand, was with us for a while. We traveled together to Berlin and then to Kaiserslautern for the next US game. I am so jealous of all of her recent travel, and it was great to be a part of it for a week!!

So there we were in Gelsenkirchen, a place I had never heard of until the US was scheduled to play a game there. I wish I could tell you something about the place, but I can't even visualize it. From the moment we got onto the train in Essen to go to Gelsenkirchen, all I remember are fans everywhere.

I had thought there were a lot of fans at the World Cup four years ago in Korea / Japan, but when we hit Gelsenkirchen I was amazed at how many more fans had come to Europe. It makes sense that there were thousands more European fans here, but I am not exactly sure why there were so many more US fans. It's probably partly because Europe is closer and maybe there are a lot of Americans who are already over here. I also think that people think that Japan is more expensive to get to and travel in, though in our experience that's not actually true. And maybe soccer is getting more popular? I'm really unable to judge because it wasn't until I started dating J that I had any clue about soccer. I hadn't even known that the World Cup had been in the US in 1994!

The other thing that amazed me when we hit Gelsenkirchen, and was true for our entire trip, was that Germany wasn't nearly as efficiently prepared for the World Cup as we'd expected. In Korea there were always random buses and extra trains and cordoned off routes, but in Germany we seemed to be mostly piling in with the regular commuters. This was the scene at the train station in Gelsenkirchen. We decided to take a bus instead, but then we hit so much traffic in the center of town that all the fans on the buses decided to get out and walk the remaining way (45 minutes) to the stadium.

(I didn't take that picture. It was taken by my cousin's husband who is Dutch (Indonesian, actually) and hence really tall, so holding the camera up over his head gave a much better view than the shots I was getting of people's hair.)

The game itself was not bad, but it was disappointing to lose 0-3 to the Czech Republic. I started to worry that by the next game we'd already be out of the World Cup. Still, it was fun to be there and the fans provided me with constant photo fodder.

Unfortunately there was a glass wall in front of us which meant that I had to bob my head around the rail and the supports. Kind of annoying for seats that weren't supposed to have an obstructed view. But with a telephoto lens, I had a nice closeup view of the corner. (That is Pavel Nedved, one of the Czech star players, taking a corner kick.)

After the game we went into Gelsenkirchen to a restaurant called "New Orleans" (where G's Czech boyfriend's sister's worked as a waitress), where I had a burger and a Bloody Mary. Way to integrate myself into the German culture. :)

And the next day we were off to Berlin.