Language

May 31, 2016 3

Women Only: The Frauenraum

I'm at Rathaus Wilmersdorf, a former city hall building turned refugee home in Berlin, where I teach a literacy class once a week. The home initially opened its doors to 178 refugees in September 2015, following Merkel's famous "Wir schaffen das" ("We can do it") declaration that sidestepped the Dublin Regulation and opened up Germany's borders to thousands of asylum seekers. [Read More!]
January 15, 2015 1

Interview: “I’m not Turkish, but my husband is”

In a capital city marked by transformation and transience, where people are perpetually coming and going, it can feel like a true rarity to meet someone actually from that city. “H” was my first Berlin friend from Berlin. We met through a language website, after she sent me a request to practice French in exchange for German. H was working on her degree to become a French teacher. I was still new to the city and could count my local friends on one hand... [Read More!]
Orhan and Sophia pre 2014 Berlin half marathon
March 30, 2014 1

Interview: The Taxi Driver

Orhan was 5 when his father moved to Berlin in 1972. It was only one year before West Germany would halt guest worker recruitment from non-European countries to fill labor shortages after World War II. His mother followed 7 years later with his youngest sister and they lived in Rudow in southeastern Neukölln - where they still live over 30 years later. "They got jobs as cleaners in an office," Orhan recounts, "but they were fired!" he adds, snorting in laughter. I look up from my notepad, surprised... [Read More!]
October 29, 2013 0

Beyond Berlin: the Istanbul Connection

Istanbul gives Berlin its baseline. In kind, Berlin is richly integrated into the complexity of Istanbul. For no relationship is ever purely one-sided. And so a Berlin : Istanbul connection, which moves beyond Gastarbeiter music and Fatih Akin films, is what one can find after six days immersed in the shapes and silhouettes of this city of 13 million... [Read More!]
Schoenes Cafe in Graefekiez, Kreuzberg where I ran into the "Diversity in the Big City" girls and chatted multiculturalism and Collidoscope.
September 6, 2013 3

Multiculturalism, Diversity, and the Big City

With my back to them at the street-side café I felt like a judge on "The Voice", straining my neck for any hint of where they were from or what they looked like, resisting the urge to swirl around and start dancing on my chair. Truth be told my ears had perked up as soon as the trio plopped down at the table behind me, switching between topics like gentrification in Kreuzberg and the cultural difference between Kaffee and "coffee" as quickly as they were switching between German and English... [Read More!]
July 18, 2013 0

Rave: Education Per Square (Kilo)Meter

After all this talk about Nazis, N-Words, and negative stereotypes, I think it's time we had some good news around here, don't you?

Enter Ein Quadratkilometer Bildung, or "Square Kilometer Education".

Quadratkilometer Bildung (QKB) is an educational development and learning platform that addresses education on a regional basis, with a focus on disadvantaged populations. They call it "closing gaps". I call it common sense... [Read More!]

June 18, 2013 2

Review: Become a German (in just under 650 hours)

You must clean up after your dog. You must ride your bike in the right direction of the bike lane, recites a Russian student. The audience chuckles. First work, then... chants the teacher. The audience groans. Do you know any examples of German humor? asks the teacher. Uhhh, fumbles the Japanese student. 10 seconds go by. I'm still thinking, he mutters and scratches his head. The audience roars... [Read More!]
June 6, 2013 1

The N-Word

When I posted the Who's/Whose Normal? article a few weeks ago, I expected the "N-word" of interest to be Neger, a term that falls somewhere between "negro" and "nigger" on the translation and offensiveness spectrum. Instead, the strongest reactions came in response to another N-Word: Nazi... [Read More!]
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