Reminder

I saw that there are still a few visits to this blog and would like to remind everyone that the blog had moved and is now included in Taz online blogsphere.

The address is: http://blogs.taz.de/oyveyberlin/

The Westerwelle Plan

It is time to say the obvious: After ten years we can come to the conclusion that these two kids, Israel and Palestine, can’t solve their problems on their own. They have been in this sandbox for too long and they have been hitting each other too hard that by now both are almost bleeding to death. It is time for the referee to step in and tell the sides: you must stop. Your bloodshed is staining the entire universe. Maybe you want to consider Chess instead of boxing?

But who can become this referee? I am counting out France and Italy. I mean, look who these people voted to lead their respective countries. I can’t trust them. England? Didn’t they make the mess to begin with? Besides, sometimes I read and see England’s and Spain’s action toward Israel and I think to myself: If Goebbels was around he would probably telegram them to cool off. So, in my opinion, we are left with Germany. I think its schizophrenic case will is a perfect balance: its guilt will write off its tendency to support the underdog.

But what should Germany do? If I learn something about German people it is that they are very calculated with their money. they earn x amount of money and they know exactly how much they will spend on bills, rent, food and vacations. Maybe a few can afford to live above their means. It a very responsible system, no credit cards to run your dream on.

So how come Germany (and the EU and Japan) is not accounted for the money it pours into the Palestinian hands? for two decades now the world had invested billions in Palestine, and it seems like nobody seems to care where are this billions are gone. It is obvious that Israel carry some of the blame with its restrictions, control of the borders and its horrible bombing, but Israel should also be the example. It was built by people who held a rifle in one hand and worked the fields with the other. There are many negative things to say about  Israel but no one can take away the miracle of how it built itself, and how it functions as a normal democracy with all the infrastructures in place.

I expect Germany to say: look, we gave you all this money, but we can’t see any infrastructure here, we can’t see and seeding for the roots of building your own country. And then I expect Germany to reach the most humanist conclusion: freeze most of the money it gives to Palestine and invest it in German companies. Give these companies huge tax breaks and other encouragements and ask them to open new factories in Palestine. The Palestinians will have work places, the companies will have cheap labor force. I understand that this is not so easy, that, just like in Africa, this idea can run and killed by the local bureaucracies, but isn’t worth a try? didn’t we exhausted all the other great ideas of “let’s sit down and talk” and giving unfulfilled ultimatums?

But why do I call it humanist solution if this is pure economic? because I believe that the people living in Gaza or Nablus are not different from me or the average citizen in the West. That all they want to have is a decent job, with a decent salary. That just like me they just want to go to work, come  back for dinner with a family, sit down on the balcony or with friends in a cafe, have two vacations a year, secure the future of their kids. And buy some bandages to stop this deathly blood.

Deutschlands Ruhm

I think that last night’s game between Germany and Argentine should leave many Germans worried. Not only their team played an awful game and their goalkeeper made an idiotic mistake, but their best striker is black!! What would happen in the NPD nation (mean the supporter of this party, not all of Germany) if this striker will score the winning goal in South Afrika? how are they supposed to celebrate? didn’t they have enough of Klose?

The game reminded me of the World Cup four years ago, when the Germans really made an effort and pretend to be nice to foreigners. What a wonderful month and concept that was. I remember that midway through the Welt Meister I completely was rooting for the German national team and even wrote about it for a local newspaper. It was the new Germany, Klinsman Germany, Berlin Germany of opneness and multi cultures as opposed to the previous, depressing and industrialized German national teams of the past, the Bavarian Germany.

There were two things that happened in the quarterfinal game against Argentine in Berlin in 2006 that I remember very well. At half time I went to buy beer for me and three more friends that were sitting in the stadium. I waited on a long line and after 10 minutes it was my turn. I asked for four beers, but the lady behind the counter answered that they can sell only three at a time. I didn’t understand the rule but there was no time to argue as the second half was about to start. I asked for three beers, paid, kneeled below the counter, got up and asked for one more beer. The woman gave me the puzzled look of  “I know him from somewhere”, and made the sale.

The second and more resounding memory happened after Klose made the equalizer and tens of thosands of people stood and shouted in unisom: “Sieg, Sieg, Sieg”. I was staring at the empty section in the Olympic stadium and I can’t even start to describe how terrified I felt. I promised to root for any other team, even the Italians, just so I wouldn’t have to witness this again.

Anyway, after yesterday’s game I think  that the German fans should really be worried. In this shape I can’t see Germany getting over the semi-finals.

Global colding

The first problem I had with eco-systems and global warming happened when I was traveling throughout the United States, in heavily democratic states. Outside the houses there were five or six garbage bins, each one for a different kind of garbage. It was a noble idea if it wasn’t for the fact that there were always five or six SUV’s parking in front of these bins. It made me feel that being “green” is just a fashion. What is the point of recycling every piece of garbage if afterward a person is climbing a car that helps pollute the air like it was a small industry?

But in Germany they take ecological matters seriously. People are telling you to shut your car off and freeze to death if you wait more than 60 seconds in your car for someone to come down, and in many regions in the East, the leading panoramic view are the white huge wind turbines. And, unless you are shopping in a Turkish supermarket, you have to pay for the bags. In our house we have huge signs in three languages explaining to me what is going where. We actually had to move three times already in order to accommodate our need to place four different garbage bins in the house.

The other day, my wife came back from work, said hello, kissed me on the cheek, asked what’s for dinner and if I remembered to buy new bulb for our garbage room. I said hello, pasta with Bolonese sauce and that I forgot but I will go down to get one. She asked that if I don’t mind she really would like me to buy energy saver bulb. I went down and grabbed a 60W energy saver bulb, the cashier scanned it and initially I thought her barcode was broken: the bulb cost 7.89 Euros. For this price I can buy us another two bins so we can separate the broken glasses from the glass bottles and the newspapers from the magazines. I called my wife and told her that it is 7.89 Euros, but she insisted that I should buy it.

(Just a quick note: is it just me or everything that is good for us is so expensive? How many people can really afford a 7.89 bulb, and is it hard to understand someone who refuses to buy 300 grams of bio chicken breast for 7.33 Euros? I mean, you add that cost to whatever you need to cook with the chicken and what you want to eat with it, and you ending up saying: “next time I am going to McDonald’s”).

Anyway, I bought the energy saving bulb (ESB) and went back home. I took the ladder, and changed the bulb. My wife was eating pasta downstairs when I switched the Schalter to turn the bulb on. Nothing.

”The 8 Euros ESB doesn’t work”, I screamed”.

 “Just give it a second”, she screamed back at me in this voice that she uses when she wants to point out that there are two worlds separating us by birth.

 I waited a few seconds and then a light flushed our garbage room. I went back to the kitchen and came back to the room with bags of garbage to separate.

“I can’t see nothing! The eight Euros ESB is a piece of shit”, I screamed to my wife.

“This is why it is called Energy Saver Bulb”, she screamed back. “Stop being ignorant. We must contribute to the global effort. Don’t you know what is going on? Icebergs are melting!” I hate it when she is lecturing me. It is true that I am coming from a third-world country, but she knows very well that I fell asleep 474 times trying to finish one of Al Gore’s lectures in “An Inconvenient Truth”.

“It is a great concept to save energy”, I told her, “the eight Euros ESB doesn’t provide any light. It doesn’t use any energy”.

 “You can be such an idiot”, she answered with a mouth full of bio meat.

I went out to the balcony. I am really trying, my newspaper even sent me to the big conference in Copenhagen a couple of months ago, but in the last couple of months in Berlin I can’t really understand what is all the fuss about global warming.

The blog sold out

Yes, I would have liked to think of myself differently, but at the end I am just like everybody else. A huge corporation with ditribution all over Germany found out about this blog and made an offer that the blog just couldn’t resist.

So I will be moving into a new place where I will write more often about life in Berlin. Thankfully, the huge corporation is Tageszeitung, so the blockbuster deal will go like this: I can write whatever I want, and for this freedom I don’t compensated. Why am I moving? because I think that there are serious posts that have been written here and they deserve a larger discussion group, and I think the umbrella of Taz will give it just that.

In the beginning I will continue to publish on both posts, and for the first few posts in the blog’s new home I will borrow some posts that were already published here. Thanks for those who looked into this blog in the past and I hope that you will follow it to its new address: http://blogs.taz.de/oyveyberlin

Das Wetter gefaellt mir

I overheard someone complaining today about the fact that the people and the city of Berlin don’t do nothing about the accumulating snow on the sidewalks. My instinct was to agree with this someone. We are a living in the capital of a western country, there are Starbucks all around, can someone please not make me think of Tonya Harding everytime I am skating back home?

And this is before I Am counting in the fact that I have to push a stroller at least twice a day. It is an uphill marathon on the uneven surface of Berlin’s sidewalks with a 14-kilo screaming and freezing jewel inside the wagon. “So you think you had a great workout, practicing for an hour in a gym? you are in top shape? come and push this wagon to the corner”.

But then you get home and you open the mail and you have a bill that reminds you about the ridiculous sum that you have to pay for your daughter to go to the kindergarten. And it makes you think about Berlin’s prioirities and why you chose to live here in the first palce.

It’s sad to write in Janaury

Several people have told me, and by now I don’t know if it was a joke, that mentioning the weather in the opening paragraph of an article in a newspaper is almost part of the contract a journalist must sign with his paper.

Pouring rain is great for a story about a funeral or a school massacre. rainbow for things that you don’t know what to make of, a mix of bad story with rays of hope. I do remember that September 11, 2001 was one of the most beautiful days, climate wise, that I ever woke up to in New York, so it is hard for me to relate to shining sun, blue skies and bright light as a background to feel-good stories. I saw dozens of people willingly jump to their death that day.

Anyway, it makes me think that the average journalist in Germany ought to be more creative than Charlie Kaufman when he or she need to write a story between December and March. I mean how many variations can you make of icing sidewalks, grey skies and not even a hint of light. I bet that some journalists are really crossing their fingers so nothing happy will happen here during this period. I mean, forget about the aching cold and layers of clothes–this weather is a fucking writing block.

My feet are on fire

We have certain rituals when I pick Maya from the Kita: First we was her hands, them she asks for the soap, then drying with her own towel. Then we sing and dance, and then we sit on the bench and start the tedious task of dressing her up. Pants, pullover, snow pants, snow coat, shoes, scarf, snow hat. It is almost amazing that these seven items can take almost 45 minutes of your day. A lot of things can happen in 45 minutes.

Yesterday, around the shoe phase, a mother open the door and asked me if I am the owner of the stroller standing outside. I answered that indeed it was ours, then she pushed the door open a little bit more and started yelling at me that I am a thief, that I stole her foot sack, that it is not ok that her child is cold while mine is warm. I tried to say something, but she just kept coming at me claiming that it is 100 percent hers. I looked at Maya and Maya was looking at me, puzzled. When we exited she insisted on walking. Usually she hates walking in the snow.

We walked some more and Maya refused any suggestion I was throwing her way, even those she never say no to. Then she just stopped and refused to walk on or climb to the stroller. I took her in my hands and headed back to Kita. The other mother was standing on the path. All I remembered was not the embarrassment or humiliation but just this rage I had in me for her showing our kids that this is the way to solve things. I asked her why would she do such thing, why couldn’t she just ask me in private, and why it was me she attacked and if she dare to approach some local the way she approached me. I finished by repeating five times: “shame on you”.

When I was done, Maya statred song we really like and didn’t make any protest when I put her in the wagon.

It eats me for 36 hours that the mother was Turkish.

Elephant, man

One of Maya’s favorite things to do–that is other than insisting on walking when we exit Kita (therefore making our trip back home ten times longer) and insisting that I will carry her on my hands three flights of stairs when we finally reach our flat-is reading. She reads everything, reading makes her very calm, and, I must admit, reading babies are great gifts for their parents. As a young parent you learn how to evaluate things to buy for your babies by how much time it gives you piece of mind. Books get top rating.

One of Maya’s favorite books is one she got from my family in Israel. It tells about a young elephant who is depressed over the fact that he is grey, boring grey. A little bird watches the little elephant, ask him why he is so sad and even though the bird finds the elephant to be beautiful, she decides to help him. She flies around, borrowing some colors from flowers, put them in different buckets and paint the young elephant.

The Elephant now is very happy, proudly he walks back to the rest of the elephants to show them how colorful he is. They see him and all they can do is laugh about him. The young elephant is very confused and he asks the rest of the elephants to spray him with water so he will be grey again.

I am sure that there some morals to this story. Live in piece with who you are or something like that. Or that elephants are not very open to gays.

Anyway, today I walked with Maya to the Turkish store to buy some vegetables. We walked with her new sled, we were dressed with new clothes, I was wearing my earring, and we talked a mix of English-Hebrew-German. We stood very much in contrast with the people who were running the store and with the customers.

Later, we went home, and Maya was asking me to read for her the elephant book. I did, and all of a sudden I felt that I am also telling her a story about myself.

Can anyone pass me the kosher shrimp?

I read today that McDonald’s is planning to build a huge branch across from Checkpoint Charlie. I really hope that the residents of Berlin will not allow that. I know how disgusted I feel when I see tourists glaring on the Holocaust Memorial while dipping their donuts in the dunking coffee. I am not saying that because I am anti-McDonald’s, their food, or anything like that. I am just saying that some places need to stay holy. I am already worried that my daughter will learn about the wall, wandering around thousands of tourists clicking digitally toward young Germans in soldier’s costumes. You really don’t need to bring a McDonald’s to a place like that. It doesn’t represent America and its involvement with Berlin, unless this is how American being seen, And I think that America deserve a much better image than one the symbols of ugly Capitalism.

This, the overdrive to shift one of communism greatest symbols and shadow it with McDonald’s strikes me a little bit of over-doing. it reminds me of a story of a young Jewish student who came to live in Berlin almost a decade ago. In Berlin he met some of his father’s students (his father is teaching in an American university), and when he found out that he will be one weekend in west Germany at the same time that one of the former students was visiting her parents in a town nearby they decided to meet and have the Jewish student visit her parents for dinner.

Of course, the story started to blow from the moment the former student is telling her parents that they are having a Jewish over for a Shabbat dinner a their place. They feel that they are on a voyage to wonderland. First, they look for the nearest synagogue and try to understand how long it will take him to walk over to their house after the prayer. Then they are searching every butcher in the Rhine, looking for Kosher meat. They can’t find one so they opt for a dairy meal, but then they hear that Jews eat meat on their Friday dinner, so they go a long way, dozens of kilometers with a car, and find a kosher butcher store.

They make great preparation. How many Germans have the opportunity to host a Jew. They don’t want to screw it up. Everything goes well. They all go to the Synagogue, they witness the service, then they all walk home for about an hour, it’s a lovely spring night, and when they sit for dinner, everything is ready for dinner, as the house was in the middle of Brooklyn: Chala bread covered with cloth, red wine and a special glass, they even managed to get a yarmulke. The young Jew is singing the prayers and blessing everyone with a “Shabbat shalom”.

They sit, have a small talk and start to serve the food. The visitors is serving himself several spoons from the salad bowl. He tastes it and praise the host for the flavor.

The mother of the former student is telling him about the struggles they had to go through in order to prepare a meal that will answer his very specific needs. She tells him what the salad is made from and how she made the special sauce. Then come the main dish, a wonderfully cooked red meat swimming with rosmary potates in brownie sauce. The guest taste and can’t find enough good words to praise his hosts.

The hosts are relieved. They are really glad he liked it. “This meat, we are cooking only to special guests”, the mother says to the mouthful guest. “Usually we use other kinds of meat, but we gave it the same treatment. We marinated it for 24 hours in crab sauce”.