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.

  

Diversity City Turns 775

Berlin turns 775 this year. As part of the celebration, the city has created an open-air exhibit in Mitte called Stadt der Vielfalt, or City of Diversity- a huge walkable map with colorful "pins" each highlighting a different part of Berlin's uniqueness. Each pin holds a story corresponding to its particular neighborhood, like a now famous Turkish-German author's first shared home when she arrived here in the 60s, a world music workshop for children, and a story about how immigrants introduced the potato to Berlin. The exhibit portrays Berlin's history as one of immigration, diversity, and inclusion, while making sure not to ignore past (and present) problems of exclusion, persecution, and discrimination of those who are "different".

I also found my neighborhood...

...my office (and the pond I walk around after lunch every day!)...

...and even a pin about my beloved Thai Park!

Berlin, I love you and your diversity. Happy birthday.

p.s. you don't look a day over 500.

My First Iftar

I don't observe Ramadan but I am always up for a good cultural experience, so I jumped on an invitation to have Iftar dinner with my Tunisian-German friend Hana and some of her family last Monday. After work I met Hana and we drove out to Spandau, just outside of Berlin, where one of her five sisters lives with her family.

Hana and one of her adorable nephews

Iftar is the fast-breaking evening meal during the month of Ramadan when observing Muslims only eat before sunrise and after sunset. The month of Ramadan shifts every year, but in summer months it is especially difficult because the sun rises earlier and sets later. Hana said she had gotten up at 3:30am to eat that morning and it was just after 9pm by the time we sat down to dinner. Thank goodness we're not in Finland.

Hana, her nephew, and I before dinner

I decided to do my part by eating less that day than usual leading up to the meal, meaning I didn't have bread with my lunch salad and stayed away from snacks. Still I felt like the one most eager to eat by the time we sat down with the first course. Hana noted that they tried to eat slowly and deliberately after a long day of fasting because their digestion can act up after many hours of not eating. Apparently she and her younger sister had gorged on pasta the night before and had major stomachaches afterward.

The food was delicious and abundant. We started with a light soup with a bit of lemon which is traditional for the first course. Following the soup came some fried crispy things, and who doesn't like fried crispy things?! Then came the main course: peppers stuffed with meat and sauce, rice, and salad.

My plate

I happily ate everything and then split one last fried crispy thing with Hana before we adjourned to the living room to rub our bellies and prepare for dessert. Hana's friend had brought some yummy baklava-esque concoction filled with a soft creamy mild cheese, a sprinkling of crushed pistachios, and drizzled with sugary syrup. Man was it good. Lots of cookies, chocolates, nougat, and watermelon also graced the table.

Dessert

One interesting last thing to note was the water. I noticed Hana's older sister pour something into the bottle and when I took a sip from my class, I immediately felt like I was drinking cleaning solution. I must have made a face because Hana laughed and asked if the water was too strange for me. Apparently in Tunisia it is an Iftar staple to drink water with orange blossom essence, which to me tasted like Windex. I'm all for trying new things but after a few more brave sips gave up and drank juice.

After-dinner lounging

Birthday Lesson

Birthday trio still smiling at the brewery

Last weekend I celebrated my first birthday in Berlin. Well, my 27th birthday, but my first one in Berlin. A bunch of my friends here also have birthdays in July, so my buddies Keighley, Max, and I decided to throw a joint party on Saturday the 14th. Keighley's bday was the 13th, mine the 15th, and Max's the 22nd. Now it's important to know that in Germany, celebrating before your actual birthday is just not done. Germans believe this is very bad luck, indeed. So much so that when we celebrated my Opa's 80th on Memorial Day Weekend, a couple days before his actual birthday, we were only allowed to call it his "Pre-80th birthday celebration." So much so that when I cooked for my office on Friday (it's customary here to supply treats for your own birthday), everyone complimented my food and asked about my weekend plans, but did not dare to wish me a happy birthday.

Celebrating my birthday at the office

There is one exception to this rule called "reinfeiern" which translates loosely to "celebrating into," basically celebrating through midnight when it becomes your actual birthday. So Friday the 14th I was in the clear, and as is tradition, no Germans wished me a happy birthday until the stroke of midnight, when I was accosted with kisses, hugs, and gifts.

I was accosted by something else at midnight, namely the bar manager who decided he didn't like our group and threw us out shortly thereafter. We had picked a brewery called "Brauerei am Rollberg" for our shindig in Neukoelln, a neighborhood which is heavily populated by Turks and one of Berlin's poorest and most "dangerous." Many of my friends live there (if not there then only slightly north in Kreuzberg) and the area has become quite hip in recent years, with more and more young people moving in and cool bars and restaurants with them.

Two Americans, a Brit, and a Belgian!

We (I) had called the bar the day before to warn them we were a slightly larger group and to ask if it was ok if we brought cake. Right away I noticed the guy was an ass, but he claimed it would be fine if we were outside and that they just couldn't put tables together. So on the night of the party we started outside as promised, but when temps dipped into the 50s (yes, 50s in mid-July, my coldest birthday EVER) we moved inside, with the waitress' assistance. Our group grew over the next couple hours, to be expected when 3 people share a celebration, and we took up about 40% of the place, some of us at tables and some at the bar. We were a pretty lovely group though, if I do say so myself. Very diverse with Americans, Brits, Germans, French, Turks, Eastern Europeans, etc., and we all bought plenty of drinks to justify our presence without getting rowdy or too loud. But for some reason, the (portly, white, middle-aged) manager did not like us. So about 4 minutes before I could properly "reinfeier," he pulled me aside and very aggressively claimed I had not listened to him on the phone, that we were too big of a group, that he wanted us out. Mind you, there was no line at the door of people trying to get in. No inappropriate behavior from our group. But as he "reasoned," this was his place and he could do as he saw fit, which in this case was get rid of us.

So we left. As we trickled outside and waited for the last few paying out their tabs, he shut off the outdoor lights and locked the door from the inside. A guy from another group (with lots of piercings and tattoos) came out and started chatting with us, explaining that the real reason for us getting kicked out is that we seemed "rich." Oh? The same guy who warned me on the phone that if we nursed an apple juice for 4 hours he would kick us out because he had to make money thought we had too much money? Yes, too much money. Too much education. Too little "typical Neukoelln." We represented the gentrification this man hated and as a political statement, he had kicked us out of his establishment to make room for the real Neukoellners: the poor, the immigrants (though we were the only immigrants there that we could see), the down-trodden. I guess my sparkly tank top and birthday smile gave me away.

Celebrating at another bar after the drama

The next few days, a slew of my friends left nasty reviews on Yelp, Qype (Germany's Yelp), Facebook (which they promptly deleted), etc. Probably exactly what they expected from us "affluent, educated consumers" and all. But it felt good anyway.

So, lesson learned? Maybe celebrating before your actual birthday really is bad luck. Or maybe, I just really live in Berlin now, and have to take the bad with the good. Others deal with far worse after all!

Mixed Feelings

I had planned on writing about something fun, like my adventure today on Karl-Marx Allee, but then I got caught up in a blog post about citizenship laws in France and now that's all I can think about. Too bad for you guys!

As most of you know, my interests lie in immigrant integration, education, and multiculturalism. Citizenship laws, and specifically dual-citizenship policies, also greatly interest me. This is likely due to my own dual-citizenship status, what it means for me, and what it means in the context of immigrant integration.

I have mixed feelings about my own dual-citizenship status. My initial thoughts are positive mixed with a large amount of relief. "Thank GOD I have citizenship," I think, when I hear American friends here in Berlin bemoan their semi-legal statuses, under-employment, and misadventures at the Ausländeramt (Immigration Center). In order to work legally in Germany without an EU passport, they have to show they have a particular skill needed by an employer which that employer cannot find from a potential German or other EU employee. They also have to find an employer willing to sponsor them for a work-permit. I don't have these types of problems.

My issues with dual-citizenship stem more from the hypocrisy I find in societies that employ a jus sanguinis (blood line) citizenship policy while concurrently making it extremely difficult for immigrants or children of immigrants to obtain the same document based on their different ethnic or cultural origins. Germany's jus sanguinis policy changed a little over a decade ago and now does include a component more like the US's jus soli (birthplace) citizenship policy by allowing non-native Germans born in the country to receive citizenship, but dual citizenship is not allowed after age 18. This means that kids who grew up in Germany but have Turkish (or another nationality's) citizenship because of their parents have to make a decision within 5 years which passport they want to keep. No one has ever asked me to make that sort of decision.

And why not? Because besides being "ethnically German" (one whole fourth! give me a break), I'm American. I'm American, highly-educated, a native English speaker, and "Western." In truth, Germany would love to have more people like me in their country. Although often left out of the public citizenship/immigration debate, countries like Germany and the US NEED IMMIGRANTS. Birth rates are low in these countries, and when societies do not meet their replacement rates, big problems ensue. The US is only just barely maintaining their replacement rate and this is thanks to higher birth rates from immigrant groups. But most of the time, the discussion over who should have citizenship and who shouldn't is focused on the lower-skilled or illegal immigrant. Those considered problematic in society. The US and EU know they need more highly skilled immigrants, but aren't doing enough to educate their populations on this reality and instead, you have people in the US advocating for a repeal of the 14th Amendment (birthright citizenship) as a way to decrease the number of illegal immigrants when it would instead do exactly the opposite.

I would also argue that citizenship status is really only a first-step. An important first-step, sure. It symbolizes one's acceptance into society, is important for employment, and awards one certain political rights. Yet without institutionalized integration efforts, a passport is only a document. It doesn't mean everyone is on equal ground because it doesn't mean those with different skin colors, names, or church types won't be discriminated against. And it certainly doesn't mean that societies can ignore their responsibility to ensure the political, economic, and social integration of their newcomers. Or in many cases, of the children of their newcomers that have grown up in their country and know no other home.

I could write so much more but am sure not all of you find this as fascinating as I. Should you be interested, here is a link to the original blog post that sparked this one and my comments.

Photo: Winter sunset at Alexanderplatz