Dropped Ball

Here’s a short dispatch I wrote for Nextbook that was just posted on line:
The owners of the Jets and Giants football teams decided last week to reject a bid by the German insurance company Allianz for naming rights to their new Meadowlands stadium. It seemed there was little else they could do after the New [...]

You Reap What You Sow

I spent this morning at the Bundestag, the German parliament. Our international group met with representatives of the major political parties, and the Russians grilled them all about their views on the Georgian conflict. Then we toured the building. It’s a historic place, mostly because the Nazis–it seems, though it’s never been proven–tried to burn [...]

This Must Be The Place

Here’s a book review I just did for the Forward. For those of you concerned, I am feeling much better than the first paragraph indicates.
–Debbie

Berlin Blues

You remember that New York Times magazine piece a while back about a woman who moved to Berlin from New York and complained that her Berlin apartment was too big? When I read it I thought: surely this is an exaggeration. But yesterday when Gal and I finally got the keys to our 100-year-old apartment [...]

Eavesdropping

On a recent trip to Leipzig to meet with the other folks on my fellowship, we stopped in on the Stasi museum. Leipzig–birthplace of Wagner, home to Bach, and once a thriving fur coat industry wiped out with the Jews in the war–was also at the center of protest that helped bring down the wall.
Mail [...]

We’re Not in the West Anymore

This is the giant GDR-era monument to Ernst Thallman, the leader of the Communist party during the Weimar Republic. It’s just behind our new apartment in Prenzlauer Berg. We were walking today down one of the military-parade-size East European boulevards, making our way from the hotel we are staying at this week until we can [...]

Sino-Russo-American Invasion of Berlin

We’re so 21st century…We’re actually on the road, in a bus, and blogging. As we type this we’re crammed together with our ten Americans, ten Russians and ten Chinese, and their partners and two six-year old Russian kids. We’re headed towards Berlin after finishing up a long three months in Bonn and by this coming [...]

Not So Smart

Last weekend, Gal and I decided to take a trip to Northern Germany. I reserved an automatic car with GPS so that we wouldn’t have to worry about maps. But when we arrived at the car rental agency, we were informed they had absolutely no automatic cars despite the fact that I reserved one. “I [...]