Der Feuervogel aufersteht.

Because people ask me a lot where they should go when they go to Germany (I'm apparently the local expert for many of my friends), I decided to write a blog series to answer the question. Unfortunately, my experience is confined to the southern third and Berlin, with brief excursions to Potsdam and Leipzig, so when I get to the northeastern third, I'll just be making things up or listing the major cities and saying "read the wikipedia entry." (I did visit Köln one day. All I remember is the Dom, and that's not hard to find at all. Exit train station. Look up. If you don't see it, turn around.)

I've always wanted to visit Dresden, but I've never managed to make it there, and there's not much that I know of in the eastern third. (Ossis, please correct me.) There's the cities I mentioned already, Cottbus, Chemnitz, the Baltic coast, and ... what else? Jena, I suppose, and the Erzgebirge (mountains are cool).

And if anyone has awesome things to say about NRW, Bremen, Hannover, Hamburg, Schleswig-Holstein, or Niedersachsen, chime in! You can see what I've talked about already here.

Who wants one? Leave your address here. Also note if you have a preference for city (your choices: Berlin, Vienna, Bratislava, Budapest) or theme (eg, East Germany, imperial stuff, art, cityscapes, night shots, architecture).

Comments screened!

When's the last time I wrote about what I've been doing, other than writing? Uh, can't recall. April 10, maybe?

Let's see. Sunday the 11th I went to the park to practice San Shou with my tai chi school, then went to UNC for the anime club's spring picnic/ohanami. That was fun, aside from there being no fucking parking on campus diediedie.

I did the usual weekday stuff during the week, then Friday I went to Charlotte to stay closer to where I was going for a writers conference. The conference itself was OK; it was only $20 so even if the session I went to in the morning was billed as a workshop but was more of a lecture on what to do than how to do and there were so goddamn many Christian-interest writers there, it wasn't a huge waste.

The afternoon session I went to was David Drake talking about how he writes - his process, that sort of thing - and taking questions. It was interesting, and he's really intense. He told me I shouldn't read Hammer's Slammers, because it would disturb me (eh?) because he wrote them after he got back from Vietnam and they were a form of therapy. Now, I like a good, realistic, gritty war story, so I'll see how that goes. I might have time to start reading again soon.

Saturday evening, since I was in the process of flipping out about that volcano in Iceland, after I got home, I texted my ex-coworker and we went out to the bar in Hillsborough. (There's just the one, actually.) Then I tipsy-posted when I got home.

Sunday I went to a Turkish festival out at the fairgrounds. It was OK; there was Turkish coffee, and for an extra $5 I could get it in a Kütahya porcelain cup to take home. I bought some more helva, and Ben got some chocolate-creme-filled cookies that were pretty damn tasty. There were demonstrations of ebru (video) and folk dances (these guys were pretty amazing).

Monday I went out to Greensboro to meet xjenavivex and J, to talk about starting a regional genre writers group, for things like networking, promotion, support, etc. The coffee machine at the Borders was broken, wtf. It was fun, and we're going to work on how to make it bigger & better. And maybe if we get enough interest, we can do a writers retreat out at the Outer Banks in like January when it's cheap(ish).

Coming up: Saturday I'm going to a conference/CME event on pain, addiction, and the law (from 7:30 am to 5 pm...but I'll get close to 8 hours of CE credit for it.) Sunday we have to run another blood glucose curve on Isis, so I'll be home all day. Then next week, I'll be running around and getting my shit together for Germany (clothes, toiletries, hair cut) and trying to see people before I go. L's having her birthday party Friday the 30th, and I may or may not go. I probably won't decide until Friday, actually. My plane leaves at 12 something (I forget if it's noon or like 12:45), so I'll have to be at the airport at like 10:30. We'll see.

Also, thanks to av3rnus I have a lot more German industrial & techno. I need to find time to sit down and make note of which bands I liked enough to want more of, now that I've listened to all 3 CDs like 2 or 3 times each. (The only band whose song I skipped was Einstürzende Neubauten. Sometimes music hits certain frequencies or rhythms or something that makes me either cringe or become anxious. I can't reliably describe what exactly it is, either. EN tripped that button, each time I listened to it. Thankfully, I know how to use the 'next track' button.)

Right, then. Time to get the last few scenes on this novel draft edited/written. I only have 4 left. Which means I'll need a few hours tomorrow to finish it, because I'm good for about 3 scenes a day, if they need extensive reworking, and these, uh, do.

Scenes edited & written: 2
Today's word count: 1707
Total word count: 67742
Scenes remaining to edit: 40, give or take a few.

Also, also, re Berlin: in the email we got, they said to let them know if there were any special preferences we had, like no pets or an internet connection. So I wrote and said I need a non smoking apartment, because I can't breathe smoke, and internet would be cool if possible, and if I could live in the city center that would be cool but I understand if they can't accommodate that request. And pets are OK, and I like cats, and maybe if there's a cat I won't miss mine so much.

The housing director wrote back, and said that non-smoking was no problem, and there's no lack of apartments with cats in Berlin. As far as internet and location, they'll see what they can do, and hope they can offer me a suitable apartment.

Holy crap, y'all, this is getting real! And coming up really soon! And I'm so not ready oh god!

So, I emailed K about my pay stubs (which were ... less than they should have been in some case, by like 15 minutes, but I got mileage, which I wasn't expecting. This is where I admit I hadn't looked at them since, uh, the end of January. Money goes into my bank account, it's all good.) and asked if she had anyone to cover next week.

I had a chance to check email on my phone (I love having internet on my phone like you wouldn't believe), and she'd written back, letting me know that she had every day covered except Thursday. I said I could do it, and here we are. She was worried that I hated it and was miserable there; far from it! I told her no, I like the work and the people, but I need time to get my novel edited and get ready for Germany, and if they need RPh vacation coverage and I'm available, let me know. (She knows I write; I explained that when I was hired.) So it's all good, huzzah.

This means I don't have to spend this weekend starting on house cleaning for the party, since I'll be home during the week (except Thursday). And that means I'm going to the 2-day san shou workshop. Unfortunately the first day, the long day, is in a crappy cement-floor building. But it's by Locopops and Phydeaux, and I guess I can get lunch at Whole Foods, though I'd rather not. It's kinda expensive. But I don't have anything to take with me, either. And going to the Mexican restaurant sounds like a bad idea. I'm sure people will figure something out. Last year I went home for dinner and took a nap, but it was much closer to home.

My life! I can have it back! Now I'm not overextended! Just sort of normally overbooked, I guess. I wouldn't be me if I weren't. That's where the J aspect comes in very handy.

Speaking of handy*, the SIM card I ordered for Europe arrived today. I can try to get AT&T to unlock my Razr tomorrow, since I'll be around the corner. And I missed delivery for a box of Turkish books and media from jerakeen, but I'll send Ben to pick it up tomorrow morning (though it may be out for redelivery anyway.) AND my new Fluevogs have left LA, traveling via UPS ground. I don't think I'll have them by my birthday.

*It's the German word for cell phone.

OK, now I'm gonna play with my new SIM card. It's got some fancy US/UK stuff I need to figure out.

Got my car inspected & had the oil changed. I just need to go to the DMV site and pay my registration fee to get my new stickers.

We got our plane tickets for our European adventures last night. I still need to get from Berlin to Vienna, but I can't do that through Delta, so I'll poke around on teh intarwebs a bit. Anybody have any experience with Air Berlin? I can get one-way to Vienna for about $100.

I submitted the registration form for the Institut last night. They'll send me information for the money transfer, probably Monday or Tuesday. Hidden in the registration form was a note that a security deposit is generally required when doing a homestay. DX That wasn't in the online info, and it's an unknown additional quantity of money I'll have to come up with (and I have no idea how quickly it's returned to me.)

Yeah, I decided to go with the homestay. Upon further reflection, living literally out of my suitcase for a month wasn't very appealing. Staying in a 4-er hostel means you don't get a dresser, just a locker, and, well... I didn't like that much. I just hope I get a room in a cool place that's fairly central. Kreuzberg would be nice, or Mitte, but Charlottenburg doesn't really appeal.

This whole working thing is really for the birds. I certainly appreciate the paycheck, and the people I'm working with are mostly nice, and the work itself isn't too bad... it's just cutting way too into my writing time.

help_haiti has collected over $50,000 as of yesterday evening, and if all the auction winners make their promised donations, they'll collect nearly $115,000. That's just awesome. Things like this make me proud to be a fan (even if I'm not In Fandom, and I don't even really *like* most media-fandom shows/movies.)

I need to figure out what to get for my winning donation! Argh.

And today we're going to see tigers at Carolina Tiger Rescue with my friend K from high school & a couple of her friends from UNCG. Tigers! At least today's going to be sunny, unlike the rest of the week.

So, I ordered the Lonely Planet city guides for Vienna and Budapest a few days ago. They arrived today (I was pretty shocked, actually.)

Reading through the Vienna book makes me wonder if I'd rather go there for a month than Berlin, regardless of whether I can afford it. It's strange. I love Berlin, all the Cold War relics, and the Hohenzollern stuff and the former Prussia and everything. But since I introduced the idea of going to Vienna instead, my brain's tending in that direction. I admit to a rather romantic notion of Vienna, with the coffee houses and Opera and Habsburg relics.

I'm torn.

Assuming we're not all dead of teh swine floo, I'm planning to do the Goethe Institut in Berlin, 4/6-5/1/10. I'm already thinking about the cool things I can do, like go to the opera (Tristan and Isolde!) or see a concert (Mozart!), and go to the Stasi museum since it was closed last time, and go to the former Nordbahnhof site and see if I can figure out which station still had the bunker for the border guards last time, and hopefully see sabeth, and take a trip to Dresden, and find Hohenzollern stuff. (Oh yeah, and spend about 5 hours a day (re)learning German.)

I had an idea today that I could see about a flat share for a month, though I'm not sure anyone would be up for someone being there from like 4/2-5/2. I found a Wohngemeinschaft listing site via google, and they run about 300 Euro, plus deposits (300-400), so maybe I should just stick with the Institut's homestay wossname, since that's 500 Euro.

The Institut is in the central section of town, between Hackescher Markt and Alexanderplatz, and IIRC there were a ton of restaurants on Oranienburgerstr.

I think starting early next year, I'll dig out and dust off my Lehr- und Übungsbuch der deutschen Grammatik (bright fucking yellow!) and 501 German Verbs, and pick up those books from Klaus' German literature courses again, and spend at least an hour a day reading shit in German - spiegel.de, bundesliga.de, de.wikipedia, books, whatever. Und danach sollte ich mehr auf Deutsch schreiben. To grease the wheels.

And since I'll already be in Europe, and kirin and I had been planning to take a 10th anniversary trip to Europe, we thought he could meet me there. I laid out a couple options, and he picked the one I'd slightly preferred: the Habsburg tour of the Danube! That is to say, Vienna, Bratislava, and Budapest. So he'll fly to Vienna, I'll get there somehow (train? plane? whatever's cheaper), and we'll go do shit. Twill be awesome.

Now I just need to get a whole bunch of shifts to pay for this crap... (Also, let's hoping this doesn't make me want to move to Berlin *even more.*)