One disturbing experience in Berlin was hearing a man in the subway play Mozart’s Turkish March. If there is one piece of music a Jew doesn’t want to hear in Germany, that is it.

An indignant student: One of the questions based on the listening comprehension text was what country Eduardo was from. This information was not in the text!

Me: The text said three times that Eduardo was from Buenos Aires.

Student: And how were we supposed to know what country that is?

Me (having interiorized the lesson that a good academic knows how to sell herself): If you had taken the Hispanic Civilization course with me, you’d know this and more.

Student: Is it too late now?

Me: It is never too late to learn about Buenos Aires.

Do you know how contraceptive pills are called in German?

Antibabypillen! Isn’t this beyond cute?

My German is coming back to me here in Berlin. I understand many of the things I see written and I can order food in German. Soon my German will be better than my French. That’s because German people are more hospitable.

I find that men in Berlin are a lot more alive to the existence of attractive women in their vicinity than men in London. British men were kind of sleepy in this sense. German men, however, all look admiringly at said attractive women. Men of all ages are very much into non -obnoxious flirting.

I’ve traveled quite a bit and I can say that the German people are the only ones so far who have found a way of maintaining an atmosphere of happy, non -intrusive, non -offensive sexual tension. English -speakers are not good at this at all.

This is one thing I really did not expect.

Renee at Womanist Musings writes:

 I have heard men joke about locking their daughters in their rooms until they are 40.  Another personal favourite is the former playa playa who sees having a daughter as punishment for his past sexual antics and history of disrespecting women. Daughters are the curse that come back to haunt you.

Daughters are to be hidden away from the public lest some male with sex on his brain spoil her purity.  There isn’t even the remotest contemplation that daddy’s little girl might want to get some herself.  It’s all about protecting what belongs to the father – her virginity.  This is why purity rings and balls have become so popular.  No matter how far we have come whether explicit or implicit, women’s bodies are seen as belonging to their fathers until they marry.

This is all true, of course. If there are women whose fathers have a different attitude to their daughters’ sexuality, I suspect they are a minority. The rest of us know exactly what this blogger is talking about. After making these insightful statements, however, Renee says something that I find very unexpected and strange:

It constructs women as eternal possession, though the familial relationship remains intact regardless of the sexual activity of the girl/woman.  No such assertion is made towards boys, and they are actively encouraged to not only desire sex, but to seek it at every opportunity.

Seriously? I have less hairs on my head than the number of men I have met or heard about whose mothers guarded the beds of their little darlings of 30, 40, and 50 years of age like watchdogs. I know a 52-year-old man whose mother had a hysteric fit whenever he spent time with his 46-year-old girlfriend. I saw a woman look at her newborn son and say, “When I think that he’ll grow up and some whore of a girlfriend will steal him from me, I get so angry!”

And loving Mommies do not get out of their sons’ beds after their adored treasures get married and have children and grandchildren of their own. No, they insist on being the third participant in their sons’ bedrooms all the time.

I don’t know where Renee sees all these mothers who encourage their sons to “seek sex at every opportunity.” All I’m seeing is mothers who can’t deal with the idea that their sons have personal lives of their own well past those sons’ middle age.

Once again, people, what we are dealing with here is not a gender issue. This is a problem of sexually unfulfilled parents who invade the sex lives of their children because they have none of their own.

For some reason, I thought I wasn’t going to be all that excited about Berlin, but I have to tell you, people, after just one day,  I totally dig this city. Unlike London, Berlin feels European. We spent our first day here walking around the residential area where we are staying at a friend’s place. The area is absolutely charming.  It’s filled with cafes that all have outside verandas and small, quaint shops. Coffee is fantastic.

We keep seeing kids (7+years old)  walking around or riding bikes and scooters on their own. Now I understand why my European students are so much more self -reliant and independent than their American peers.

And I can’t stop feeling amazed at how fresh and delicious produce is in Germany. None of that American stuff that tastes and smells like plastic here.

Today is our landmark -visiting day and on Saturday we will go to a flea market. Friday is as yet undecided.

I LOVE Berlin!!!

I’m talking to a senior administrator.

“I’m so sick and tired of students who send emails without a salutation or a signature,” I complain. “What am I supposed to do? Guess which one of my students could have chosen an email address of bunsosteel777@hotmail.com?”

The administrator gives me a look of a wounded animal.

“Students??” he says. “You are wondering why students are doing this?? Eighteen and nineteen-year-old kids? Do you know how many emails I get every day from professors – people with doctoral degrees – that are exactly like this?”

Do you know of this stereotype of the Germans as extremely efficient and meticulous?

Well, it’s all true. I’ve traveled quite a bit but I’ve never seen anything like this, people. Each airplane af Tegel airport has its own passport control and its own luggage line. We passed the customs in about 2 minutes and saw our suitcases in front of us already unloaded! I have got to wonder how we managed to defeat the people whose meticulousness us especially noticeable by the side of our carelessness.

The baked goods (especially the breads)  have stunned me. I haven’t seen such a wide variety of amazing breads in my entire life.

As you can see, I have ton of new impressions already after just 1,5 hours in Berlin.

I see in my Statcounter that the interest towards Putin’s Botox treatments has spiked in the past two days. I’m getting tons of hits on my Putin’s Addiction to Botox posts. Does anybody have any idea why there is suddenly so much interest in Putin’s Botox? Has the story been on the news recently? I haven’t been following the news since I started on this trip.