Scenes from Serbia

I wandered around the old city of Belgrade yesterday, soaking in the late October sunshine and reveling in my return to the Balkans. It feels so good to see Cyrillic again.

Sunset in Belgrade

I was quite sad to leave Germany, but happy to be back in the Balkans.

Ich bin wieder in Berlin!

A new typewriter for my collection

So I was in Montmartre yesterday and I was thinking that I should head out to one of Paris’s famous flea markets to do a little typewriter hunting. On my way to the metro, I popped into an antique shop and saw a pretty beat up Remington Portable, made in the USA for the German market with a QWERTZ keyboard, dating from the 1920s or 1930s. I think it’s a Portable #2, but I’m not sure yet because I haven’t located the serial number. In any event, I spoke to the proprietor in Spanish and it was clear he had no idea how the thing worked. (Paris tip: NEVER speak in English when you want to bargain for anything. The French are much nicer if you start in another language and then come to English as a third common language. They are very sensitive about English linguistic imperialism, and I really don’t blame them. All over Paris I hear Brits and Americans speaking loudly in English and just expecting locals to understand it.)

Anyway, I bargained for this lovely machine in Spanish, and the proprietor gave me a reasonable price for a machine in this condition. I am looking forward to restoring it and addition it to my growing collection.

Scenes from Paris with my former student and co-author Julia Mead

So delighted to see my former Bowdoin College student, Julia Mead, who is now a Ph.D. student in history at the University of Chicago. She is currently doing archival research in Prague and we rendezvoused in Paris for the Gender and Materiality conference at Sciences Po. We found some time to enjoy the pleasures of the City of Light –embracing the numinous!

Scenes from Bologna, Italy

Having lots of fun with my camera! Bologna is one of the most beautiful places on earth IMHO.

The breathtaking beauty of the Maine coast...

I made it out to Land’s End in Harpswell before leaving Maine. There are certainly some things I miss about that state, and being so close to the ocean all of the time is definitely one of them.

Maine!

Enjoying the late summer in Maine

Lunch at the Seadog in Brunswick

Berlin at dawn

So I could not sleep last night and I decided to take my good camera and go out onto the streets of Mitte for some classic scenes in the hour before sunrise (5:15). It’s my last day in Berlin, and I will certainly miss this place.

Berlin days

The first couple of days in Berlin have been amazing so far. I am sinking deep into the history of the DDR, and trying to better understand the transition after 1989. I met with my brilliant German editor at Suhrkamp on Thursday, had dinner with my dear friend Susan Neiman on Friday, and have hit the Berlin Trödel markets hard this weekend.

In front of a portrait of August Bebel in Prenzlauer Berg.

Berliner Dom by night

DDR-era bust of Marx purchased in the Weissensee trödelmarkt for 3 euro

Two new typewriters from the trödelmarkt: An Olympia Traveller de Luxe and a Prvileg.

the Plaza of the 9th of November 1989

Back in Berlin again

I'm enjoying some time in the German capital, a city I first visited in 1990, almost 30 years ago.  Needless to say, it has changed a lot in the intervening years.  Here is the view from my temporary apartment in Mitte.

Images from the Bulgarian village of Lyutibrod

So I spent a day in a village in the northwest of Bulgaria, near the town of Vratsa. This is a very poor part of the country where people live quite close to the edge, and is probably one of the poorest regions in the European Union. But it is also breathtakingly beautiful, and it is in this part of the country that many people maintain an allegiance to leftist ideals. I am always humbled and honored to be a guest here.

Glorious Summer in Maine!

Maine is one of the few places that actually lives up to your expectations of it. The rocky coastline is a long way from the Bavarian Alps, but no less stunning.

Schloss Neubeuern

This is the castle where the Sommerakademie is hosted as seen from the cornfields below. 

In the foothills of the Alps

So I've made it through my first week of volunteer teaching at the Sommerakademie Neubeuern, and there's been less free time than I imagined. A lot of prep work goes into teaching for three hours a day (30 hours in 2 weeks!), but the scenery here makes the whole endeavor so much easier.  And I can occasionally get to the top of a mountain for a glass of wine. 

Arrived in Neubeuern

I have arrived in Neubeuern in the foothills of the Alps near the Austrian-German border.  I have volunteered to teach a two-week seminar for the Studienstiftung on the cultures and societies of Eastern Europe. This is the castle where the class will be held starting Monday morning.

In Trier

I'm in Trier where the whole city is trying to cash in on the 200th birthday of Karl Marx (born here in 1818). Near the Karl Marx Haus the town has changed the Ampelmänchen to be little Marxes and there are scattered images of him everywhere. The tourist shops are filled with Marx-themed souvenirs, and even the local retailers are using his face to lure would-be shoppers into their stores.  I'm not so sure Marx would have appreciated this.

Back in Germany

I landed in Germany just in time to catch the last day of the annual summer Kollnauer Fescht.  I lived in this little village in the German Black Forest for a year between 2014 and 2015, and I haven't been back in over two and a half years.  It's nice to see that nothing much has changed. I drank a glass of the local wine, Müller Thurgau, and enjoyed the general frivolity of the street festival. What is so wonderful about these German local events is the intergenerational aspect of the sociality, and the simple merriment of sitting outside and drinking cold beer.  

Plovdiv: European Capital of Culture

Some scenes from Plovdiv.  The first image shows that Plovdiv was once the sister city of a place called Leningrad.