A Chance on Collidoscope

Ok, here's the truth: I've been cheating on Kaffee & Suchen.

After almost half a year of conceptualization, planning, and preparation over train rides, Monday night dinners, and strolls through the city, Kelly and I have given birth to our xenophile love child, Collidoscope Berlin.

This website is a collaborative project that examines migration, multiculturalism, and diversity from three angles: anthropology, education, and tourism. We see this website as a conversation-starter, an alternative storyteller, a democratic and inclusive view of the many peoples, spaces, and settings that confound the modern city. It's a response to the absurb claim that  "multiculturalism is dead" and a forum for seeing the city's collision of cultures as a positive and an opportunity for enrichment, rather than just a problem or challenge.

This project is a big deal for us. It represents our shared but also divergent interests: Kelly comes from the more anthropological angle, my perspective is more focused on international education and intercultural relations, which you'll notice in both our topic choices and writing styles. But most importantly, this website represents us taking a chance and electing to be part of the conversation. I'm curious to see what comes out of it.

What you can expect for now is 2-3 posts a week, generally falling into one of our feature categories: Rants & Raves (something we hate or love), Interview (the unstructured structured interview), Lens (our perspective in a story), or Happy Weekend (a "non-sceney" tip for the weekend). 

As it stands, full-time job + Collidoscope + volunteering + social life + travel + regular visitors + the occasional jog = a busy Sophia, so something needed to give. Unfortunately, it will most likely be Kaffee & Suchen for the time being. I'm sticking around, but the posts will become notably more intermittent. I hope you can forgive me, and more importantly, I hope you will keep up with our journey through Berlin on Collidoscope, because it's important that everyone see the city through a different lens from time to time.

  

Calling All Commenters!

After hearing from multiple people that they were having trouble commenting on my blog, I took a look at the settings and made some changes. I'm hoping the new format (which is now the same as what I had for Sophia's Monde) is a little more user-friendly. So, comment away! I used to get soooo many comments on Sophia's Monde and it made me soooo happy to know people were reading and if I don't get comments I'll think no one's reading and if I think no one's reading, well, I'll stop posting! Who am I kidding, I'll still post. But I'll probably stop spell checking.

Photo: Me, hard at work, blogging for the masses! Actually I'm pretty sure I was looking up directions. But you get the idea.

Two Blogs, One Berlin.

When I was growing up, I wanted many things: to be an archaeologist (for the entirety of the 4th grade, what kid doesn't at some point?), to be 5'8'' (only a quarter inch short so can safely check that off my list), and to have a "cool" name like Stacy or Diana (pretty happy with Sophia these days). But one, let alone TWO blogs? No, that was not something I wished for. But here we are, with blog #2, adventure #3984753, and for probably the first time in my life, pretty much no idea what's happening.

My first blog, Sophia's Monde, was born in 2007 when I was freshly out of undergrad with the exciting plan ahead of spending eight months teaching English in France. When I set out to name the blog, I thought it would be cute to do a play on words with the book Sophie's World. It was my world, that tiny town of 19,000, and oh, was it grand. There were markets, and cheese, and beautiful beaches, and great friends who danced with me on beautiful beaches, and culture shock, and funny students, and language learning, and I was very happy.

Now I am once again crossing the Atlantic, this time to Berlin. A city I may not have thought much about as a child but that I have thought about a lot in my more "adult" years. I've been very intrigued by Berlin and it's eclectic, artsy, gritty, international, dynamic nature. Plus it's full of immigrants! So I'm going. And I have no idea when I'm coming back. Not to be too dramatic or anything.

To name this blog, I thought about things I like about Germany and immediately what sprang to mind was food-related, no surprise there: Kaffee und Kuchen, or for my Anglophones, coffee and cake. Traditionally taken at 4pm, it's for some a daily routine and others a more occasional treat. I liked the idea of my blog being something I sit down to every day, like Kaffee und Kuchen, but at times it will likely be more of an occasional treat. I hope to be able to say the same for the Kuchen.

Now is the point where you are probably confused because this blog is actually titled Kaffee und Suchen. Good catch, everyone! Some jerk has already claimed kaffeeundkuchen for their URL so I had to reevaluate. When I thought about what rhymed with Kuchen, I came up with suchen, which just so happens to mean "to search." And boy, will I be searching in Berlin. Searching for a job, for new friends, for adventure, for the quickest way around German bureaucracy, and most certainly, searching for the best Kaffee und Kuchen in town.