Was chased by a German shepherd in Germany, and then, later, went to the Berlin Wall

Never Done: Was chased by a German shepherd in Germany, and then, later, went to the Berlin Wall

Just because I am in Berlin doesn't mean I am not still training for the triathlon, so after I woke up early and did some yoga to loosen up, and went down to the park on the corner (men drinking beer at 9 AM and hanging out with their German shepherds) to find some WiFi (from the corner café) so I could blog and answer some emails, after all that I came back to the apartment and put on my running gear, and set out for something that (on the little map Christian left us) looked like a sports stadium, which I thought might have a running track.

It is beautiful in Berlin right now -- there are leaves on the trees, and blooms on all the bloomy ones as well, so with just shorts and a long-sleeved shirt, I ran along the cobblestone street where I'm staying, and back through the park with the guys, the beers, and the dogs, and past the kids playing basketball, when ... what? What's that? Damn, there is an actual German shepherd chasing me, in actual Germany. Kathleen, who loves dogs, had already remarked how well-behaved the dogs are here. They are not on leashes, and they tend to stay close and obedient to their people. So when I ran past this one, it didn't actually occur to me that it might give chase, but its owners weren't demanding much obedience. I used to be extremely scared of dogs (having been bitten in the face like happens in a cartoon, when my entire face was in between the dog's jaws) and I have worked hard on my relationships to individual dogs, and to the species as a whole, and in fact I am less scared and more relaxed with them than I used to be. And guess what? It turns out that I'm even less scared and more relaxed when I'm in Germany and a German shepherd comes after me. With an authoritative "Nein!" and a strong arm gesturing away from me, I deflected them, and kept on running. My heart rate was elevated more than it would normally be at the start of a run, so after a block (to get away from the dogs) I slowed down to a walk and started over again.

My goal was to run for 40 minutes, because we are ramping up the training. I've been at 30 minutes for three weeks now, and struggling (leg cramps) to increase 32. But I did well -- ran for 37 minutes, much of it on a beautiful outdoor track in that sports complex, amidst tall muscular blond German runners. It turns out that everything about Germany makes me feel like a Jew.

After lunch and a shower, Kathleen and I set out to find the remnants of the Berlin Wall. We're those people who only sort of understand the language, who would normally be relying on a smart phone but are instead piecing together directions from two little maps and one guidebook. But we're persistent, and we found Mauer (wall) park, along with the museum, documentation center, and chapel of Reconciliation -- all built on the site, to help contextualize the wall itself.

The first thing we noticed when we approached the museum was the Nutella crepe vendor. I know this happens all over the world -- that people sell comfort food at sites of great pain -- and in some cases like this one we get to see the ways that capitalism overtook communism. I know that is to be expected, and yet it still feels unexpected. I did my best to just ignore it, and to focus on the historical information given on each floor of the tower we were climbing, to get to a lookout, to look over Bernauerstrasse and onto the remnants of the wall. On the second floor of the tower, there is an exhibit with photo and text panels and video, that was actually the most clear and informative thing I'd ever seen about the wall.

They bricked in the windows of people's homes if they lived in buildings on the border street, and eventually evacuated and displaced them, and tore down the buildings. In response, some people jumped out windows on the West German side, and escaped. We saw video of that. We also saw lots of video and photo images of German shepherds guarding the wall. But what touched me most were the images of people who were separated from one side to another. People who would wave to each other and cry, and try to communicate through arm gestures. People who presumably used to live with one another, who now so close, and yet so far from one another.

When we went down and actually touched the wall, I became enraged. Enraged that anyone thinks this is a good idea. That the U.S. built a wall between Mexico and Arizona, that Israel has walled off Palestine. Have we not learned that this is repressive and ineffective? That people will rise to fight any level of oppression? That people will risk their lives to connect with the people they need to be connected to? Have we learned nothing?

I spent a day in Germany

Never Done: Spent a day in Germany

And there are just so many ways I could break that down more specifically:

Never got off a plane, stood in line for passport control, and saw a good friend (David Krakauer) through the glass, standing in line for security. (We didn't get to talk, but we did get to pantomime.)

Never took the S-Bahn. Never took the U-Bahn.

Never tried to explain to German people that while I don't speak German, I do speak Yiddish, and maybe we could figure out together how to communicate. Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn't. When it works, I think the real communication comes not so much in getting the words right, but in the delight we all have in trying so hard. I have already started to modify some of my Yiddish vowels to German ones, and it's making a difference. While it might be a difference in actual comprehension, I think it's at least equally important that they can tell I am trying. I've never been in this position before -- all my life, wherever I have traveled, I have been in the uncomplicated position of knowing that it is respectful (and for me, linguistically interesting) to do my best to speak the language of the place. That I move to meet them, and not expect them to move to meet me. This time it's got a twist. If I only knew English, I would feel the same. That it's Yiddish that I know adds a layer of complexity, because when I have the thought that it's important and respectful that I start to bend my vowels and reach for words that I have picked up in German instead of Yiddish, I have this nagging thought in the back of my head, "Do I really have to bend my Yiddish to make it easier for the Germans? Or could the Germans perhaps bend a little to understand my Yiddish?" I realize that when I have these thoughts, I'm in some territory that transcends me and the person I'm speaking with, and that it doesn't really make sense to resolve a grievance between Yiddish and German when I am trying to figure out how to say "oatmeal" (Is it what horses eat? Yes!) but I would be lying if I said it didn't creep in there anyhow.

Was never in Berlin.

After being friends for twenty years, never before traveled with Kathleen.

Never missed my mom's yortsayt. (You can't light a candle on a plane! I ended up lighting the candle 24 hours later.)

Never walked past a street book vendor in Berlin and saw a book with a swastika on it. (I just kept going, because we were on our way to our first meeting.)

Never sat in a cafe with Kathleen and a filmmaker who has made two films about the Red Army Faction, and listened to them talk with each other, each from their own unique perspective. I know this is the heart of the trip, but it's also not mine to write about publicly, so I'm telling you now that I'll be pretty fingers-off-the-keyboard on this topic.

Never (literally) fell asleep standing up. It turns out that we don't have internet in the apartment where we are staying, and so Kathleen and I went looking for some alternate modes of communication -- in particular, a SIM card for Kathleen's phone. But by the time we found a place that had one, I was nodding off at the counter, my knees buckling and jerking me awake. I think I maybe had one hour of interrupted sleep on the plane the night before, and we hadn't had time to rest before going back out to our first meeting, so I was running on fumes.

Never went into a German department store (where K got the 100% cotton socks she'd been dreaming of getting since the last time she visited Germany.)

Never been so happy to finally fall asleep lying down, under a poster of Charlie Chaplain, in Christian Dawid's beautiful new apartment, in PrenzlauerBerg, in the former East Germany.

I didn't do my taxes on time

Never Done: I didn't do my taxes on time
Never Done: I flew to Germany

I know it's not even tax day yet because they extended it by another three days, but Kathleen and I got on a plane to Germany, and I didn't do my taxes. I didn't even add up all the receipts that are sitting in a plastic container at home. Actually, I think I should back up a little. My mom died on April 15, 2008. Tax day. Before that, I was taxation's golden girl. I filed early, whether by myself or with the help of an accountant. I had a filing system of legal-sized envelopes which I've labeled in Sharpie: Income, Office in home, Business equipment, Donations, Transportation, etc. Over the course of the year, I would pile my receipts and pay stubs in a plastic box, and then sometime in January I would choose a weekend, turn on some movies, and dump the receipts all over the floor, and file them til only a few random ones remained, which I had put into the envelope named Misc. Then I would compile all the information onto a big document, and either do my taxes myself, or send the info to my accountant. While I don't think I would say I looked forward to the yearly ritual, I also don't think I would say I didn't at some level enjoy it. Because I like Order: All actions and possessions should have a set place and time.

And then my mom died.

The year she died, I filed for my first extension ever. The year after she died, I filed for my second extension ever. The next year, I filed for my third extension ever. It's a stretch to say that I filed for those extensions though; really, I asked my accountant to do it for me. I must have had to add up all the numbers before April 15 though, because I had to make estimated payments. To tell the truth, I don't remember doing any of it. The bloom was off the rose, and like it is for most people, there was no pleasure in order; just a chore to be put off. And instead of getting easier and easier, like things are supposed to as time goes on and supposedly heals all wounds, it has actually gotten harder and harder, and this year I just didn't get it together until it was too late.

Part of the problem is that I don't like my accountant. I haven't liked him for many years now, but the same inertia that got me into this situation has also made it impossible for me to find a new one. Impossible. That sounds ridiculous. And at the same time, grief gets displaced in a million strange ways, and sometimes you just can't find a new accountant. I wrote to him about 2 months ago to get the usual ball rolling, and he didn't write back. And then I wrote again a couple weeks later, and his reply, which came in another couple of weeks, was oblique and passive aggressive. Actually, maybe it was just aggressive. He wrote, "I have been thinking about the last two e-mails and how to respond. Not sure how to crumple up e-mails like letters."

Just so you know, my first email asked him how to separate business and personal income, and for the record, I did not ask in an asshole-ish way. The second email asked him to reply to the first. Rather than crumpling up his email like a letter, I think I crumpled, and just stopped dealing with my taxes altogether.

On the upside, this experience has given me a huge amount of compassion for people who are chronically late with their taxes. On the downside, I didn't do anything about them again until the morning of my trip to Germany, the day before tax day, and the eve of my mom's yortsayt. On the upside, I added up all my income. On the downside, I didn't add up any of my expenses. On the upside, I figured out how to calculate how much tax I might have to pay. On the downside, I couldn't figure out if I needed to pay it to New Jersey (where my business is officially housed) or New York (where I live.) On the upside, I called both New Jersey and New York and got incredibly nice and patient people who at least helped me with the online forms to file extensions. On the downside, I am still not sure what "sales and use tax" is, and why the New York online form doesn't actually have a line for "income tax." On the upside, I think I covered my ass with both states. On the downside, Kathleen pointed out to me, once we were on the plane, that I forgot to file a federal extension. Oops. On the upside, she has some program on her computer and is going to help me do it from Germany. On the upside (that's two upsides in a row, and a signal that this is coming around to some Big Meaning) I spent most of my life staving off feelings of chaos by arriving early to parties and getting my taxes done two months early, and I think it does me good to test the waters of chaos. So I asked myself, "What's the worst thing that could happen?" and laughed a lot, and then realized that the worst thing that could happen was that I'd get some fine, and that I didn't really want to get a fine. So I decided to do my best to get an extension, and to do my best to estimate how much to pay, and maybe I'll mess up, and maybe I won't, and let the chips, and the taxes, fall in the general direction of order, if not neatly filed into individually labeled legal-sized envelopes.

Also, I flew to Germany.