Wittenburg

14 - 15 June 2014

At my University there is a group organized for International students in which they get together once a month for some kind of excursion boat tours, medieval fairs, a circus etc. they also have an annual trip to Wittenburg for the festival of Martin Luther's wedding. 

Last year I really wanted to go but I had only just arrived and had not yet hit my stride with meeting new people so decided to sleep through that weekend instead. This year I had a whole year of practice at meeting new humans so I signed up as soon as the first email about the trip was sent out and started doing my research about Martin Luther. 

My knowledge about the Reformation across Europe is very anglicized with a few historical novels thrown in, so I was in for a bit of an education. 

As far as I was concerned, English was predominantly Catholic, then Anne Boleyn lent Henry VIII some books* and then the reformation happened. 

*turns out there's more to those books than I had previously realised.

The realisation that I am most grateful for through this education is that the reformation wasn't quite so shallow as I had previously believed. The story in England kind of leads you to believe that Henry VIII realised that his wife was an old woman and wanted to bone Anne Boleyn, but she insisted he put a ring on it first. This of course required a divorce, and when he asked the Pope for special allowances to be made in this case the Pope said "Nah bro". This was because backstory: the Pope had already made special allowances so that Henry could marry his wife in the first place - because she had been married to Henry's late brother! Oy vey! Henry was using this initial special allowance as a reason that they should never have married - basically saying "You know how you said it would be okay? - Turns out it wasn't". In order to accept this the Pope would have to be all "My bad, I was wrong" - which, considering that he allegedly speaks with the voice of God, is saying that God made a mistake, not something the Pope really says. 

Reeling from this rejection, Henry, who was normally quite used to getting what he wanted, went looking for some other way to get rid of his wife, so to speak. With some alleged cajoling from Anne, Henry found his way to some literature that inspired him to head his own church so that he would be the voice of God on Earth. 

But you see there was this guy named Martin Luther, who wasn't just trying to bone someone, and he was a friar who was pretty unhappy with a practise, called Indulgence, that was pretty popular at that time in the Catholic Church. It basically meant that if you had sinned, or indeed were planning to keep sinning, you could go to the church and buy your way out of being punished for that sin, you would get a scroll with the sin you were allowed to commit and take it away with you, and carry on in your merry, sinful ways, with no worries about the hereafter. People were being exempt from all manner of sins, and the Catholic church used it as a sort of fundraiser for their crusades and rebuilding St. Peter's Basilica, they ensured everyone that it was all above board and it-says-so-in-the-bible-who-are-you-to-question-the-bible?! Martin felt a bit iffy about all of this, he had read the bible you see, and he was pretty sure it didn't say that that was okay. He wrote up his thoughts on the situation in his 95 theses, which he nailed to the door of the church, which sounds really dramatic but we were assured that it was a common occurrence and was just the way that they put things up for academic debate. The tone of his theses was apparently mostly quite academic and neutral, but there were some points that were a bit more direct in blaming the Pope for the situation:

"Why does the pope, whose wealth today is greater than the wealth of the richest Crassus, build the basilica of St. Peter with the money of poor believers rather than with his own money?"

The way our educators were talking to us all weekend the sense was that Martin Luther wasn't intending to break from the church and start his own, in writing the theses he was intending to start a dialogue about a practice that he and his peers believed was damaging the reputation of the church that he had spent his life serving. The powers that be apparently decided he was a bit of a radical and had him excommunicated. 

The Catholic Church at that time believed that the bible should only be read in Latin, limiting the access of the holy word to scholars and those who were making the rules. Martin therefore saw this manipulation of the holy word to be an abuse of their power and privilege. This prompted him to start his translation of the bible into German, so that the people could decide for themselves whether or not the bible said what the people in charge were claiming it said. 

The strange thing about this weekend in Wittenberg is the date that they choose to celebrate all of this. It is not the anniversary of the day he nailed the theses to the church door/wall, nor is it the day he was excommunicated and officially broke from the church, it is not the day he released his translation of the Bible into German, but instead, it is the anniversary of his wedding day! I get that it was a big deal that he got married because, as a Catholic monk he wasn't allowed, and she had been a nun. I just feel like there maybe some more important moments in his life, but then again I am not married yet so maybe I am missing some insight into the significance of that day on a humans life. 

To celebrate the Luther's wedding anniversary Wittenberg has a big festival where people dress up in period costume and set up a medieval market place and have a parade. Some of the costumes were awesome! My 14 year old Henry VIII nerd self would have spent all of her money on one of them, however my present day self was more interested in the beer and food for sale. 

You could buy scrolls for your indulgences from a guy dressed as a Catholic monk of the era, the sins he pardoned included illegal parking, adultery, then a specific one for adultery with your neighbor's wife, and a few others. You could buy mead horn to drink out of, and lots of other trinkets at the stalls. 

In the evening we sat chatting to some local Wittenbergians, I talked to a guy in his mid twenties about the prevalence of religion in East Germany today. He told me about how his grandfather had been one of the few people who kept regularly attending Church in the DDR. The piece of that conversation that stuck with me is something he said so casually, he said that in three or four decades no one will even talk about the DDR, because in the grand scheme of German history it was a blip in the timeline. I find it really hard to believe that people will forget about it so quickly, but I guess I only really know as much as I do about it because I live here. I knew next to nothing about German history before I moved here, I'm a tad embarrassed at just how ignorant I was before, I guess New Zealand is pretty isolated, but I feel like that's not really a good excuse anymore!

Beeeeeeer!

Drinking horns! I was a little tempted!

Gandalf?

FLUFFAY CREATURES!!!

Finding a touch of Māori culture half way around the world!

The Parade!

Punch!

Unfortunately the Church at the centre of all this attention is covered in scaffolding for the 500th anniversary of the festival in 2017

This was our "ticket" to the festival :)

Martin Luther's house, now a museum

The most delicious garlic bread I have ever consumed! 

The church door where, legend has it, Martin Luther nailed his 95 theses. 

Male chastity belt for sale.

October 2014

Jack O'Lantern with a cheeky Tui photo-bombing in the background

It has been an exhausting few weeks here in Berlin. Wisdom teeth removal and recovery, tiny pumpkin carving, Berlin had a public holiday to celebrate the anniversary of the reunification of Germany, and I slept through the Berlin Festival of Lights, because bed is better. There was some excitement as the Nobel Prizes were announced and the prize for medicine went to three neuroscientists.

I have a big presentation coming up that I have been working like a mad woman for. I have a Ph.D. progress report the day after the presentation- so it had better be good!!

I haven't been running since I came back from California, I have just been working so hard that by the time I get home from work the realization that I have to have a shower is exhausting enough - without even considering running beforehand. 

In less than three weeks my Love and I will be meeting up in Washington D.C. for the annual Society for Neuroscience meeting. I am so excited!! My first big conference, I'm excited to meet some peers and some bigwigs in my field. I usually hate the idea of networking, but I have been a bit socially deprived lately, so I am actually excited to meet some humans. I feel like it will help that the horrendous introductory questions that always seem to trip up people I meet randomly ("what do you do?", "what is neuroscience?") will be less awkward to navigate at this particular conference!

Work is going well, my data is looking pretty sexy- if I do say so myself, and I am nearing the end of my first project and working on setting up projects two and three. So it feels like this Ph.D. might just sort itself out in a timely fashion. I'm excited to have a break over Christmas though, I'm getting pretty rundown.

I've been listening to a bit of MS MR, you should check them out! I recommend Hurricane, BTSK, and Think of You. I've also been feeling a touch homesick for New Zealand - so I have been smashing the Nature's Best albums while I've been doing my analysis. Kiwi music rocks!

What We Do in the Shadows - kiwi spotting in Berlin

I went to the cinema for the first time in aaaaaaaages last Saturday night! It was my first Kino experience outside of New Zealand, according to my memory at least. 

I went to see the original language screening of 'What We Do in the Shadows' - a New Zealand "documentary" following the occupants of a Wellington flat, who just so happen to be vampires! The directors Jemaine Clement and Taika Waititi were there to introduce the film and also came out for a Q&A after the screening.

It was a small cinema in Kreuzberg called Moviemento, I got a beer + popcorn combo. They offer sweet, salty or mixed popcorn flavours which was new to me, I went with the classic salty, though perhaps next time I will branch out. Enough of that boring stuff - the film: I love kiwi comedy, so I may be biased here, but the film was pretty hilarious. Right down to the cheesy "What are we?" "We're werewolves, not swear-wolves" I had seen in the trailer. There was one part in which it was explained that one of the vampires used to be a Nazi vampire, which caused a little hush over the audience, one doesn't feel entirely comfortable laughing at Nazi jokes in Berlin I suppose, nobody appeared to be offended though, I think it was just out of respect.

Afterward the Q&A took a while to warm up, but the directors carried on the idea that it was a documentary, talking about how many interns had been sacrificed to the vampires etc. I asked if they thought there was something special about Wellington that drew the vampires in, or if they had found large populations of vampires in other NZ cities as well, they said that the vampires had tried out Hamilton for a while, but there weren't enough virgins there, makes sense. 

I was expecting to bump into a few kiwis there, but if there were any there they weren't making themselves known. I have been really missing New Zealand lately, I watched a documentary episode about the kākāpō, and felt really far away. Anyway, Disney has announced that they have begun production on a new Disney princess film to be released in late 2016, and that Taika Waititi is involved in the script writing. The details that have been released are that the main character, Moana Waialiki, is to be the first Polynesian Disney princess. She teams up with the demi-god Maui as she navigates her way through the Pacific ocean. I hope she goes to New Zealand! I hope they include a bunch of the back story of Maui and some of the other legends we learn about in the South Pacific. I'm excited to see it, I never thought I would see a Disney film set so close to my part of the world. 

8. Go to New York!

I arrived in New York City the day before my birthday so I just managed to tick this off my 25 before 25 list!

Classic New York City view from our hotel

We had a bit of a whirlwind weekend in New York for my Birthday. We arrived on Friday afternoon, my flight arrived first so I just sat waiting the carousel where his luggage was going to show up. He found me sitting, surrounded by my luggage, translating my German gossip magazine. After that we made our way (with help from the airport info personnel) to the Supershuttle desk and booked a shuttle to our hotel. The wait was about 30 minutes so we grabbed something to eat in the airport.

When we arrived at the Wellington hotel the woman behind the desk couldn't find our reservation, and we went trawling through our emails to find our reservation confirmation email. As it dawned on us that neither of us had booked the hotel, we started to wonder where we would be sleeping that night. As it turned out the woman behind the counter just smiled nicely and said "it happens all the time, let's see what we can do for you" and she booked us into the same kind of room we had originally thought about booking, at a cheaper rate, and with free wifi! It turns out there is an abundance of accommodation in New York City, and if our hotel had been booked there are even apps that, if you are daring enough to leave your accommodation organization to the last minute, will get you awesome deals at hotels trying to fill up their empty rooms at a lower rate. Thankfully we didn't need it though!

It was late in the afternoon already so we dropped our bags in our room, freshened up, and took to the streets! We went straight to Broadway to wander up the street towards Times Square. When we got there we had a quick look at the night's show timetable, we hadn't booked in advance, thinking that you can get cheap tickets a few hours before the show, mainly due to my experience doing that in London. When we asked about tickets to Jersey Boys they said that we could get tickets, but not seated together. We weren't okay with that, we had just been reunited, so nothing was going to convince us to sit apart for an extended period of time. Instead we went to Dinner at a burger joint, I LOVE American burgers, they are just awesome! I swear every other time we ate out I ordered a burger. It was also at this point when I noticed that everytime we went into a store or went to buy something I was still figuring out how to do the transaction in German in my head, only to be surprised when the cashiers would speak to me in English! It's weird how long it takes you to get used to some things! Then we wandered down to Central Park, contemplated going on a night bus tour, but decided to head home and try to catch my parents before sleeping. We had both had early flights and time zone changes so we thought making it until 9pm was a respectable effort!

Early morning walk in Times Square

In the morning I woke up first, it was apparent that it was going to take more than kisses, a smiling face, and several cheery good mornings to get my Love out of bed. I wandered alone down to Times Square to see what it looks like at 7am on a Saturday morning. I shared the street with a few runners, and several garbage trucks and garbage men. Times Square was empty, I'm not really sure what all the fuss is about Times Square, is it just all the people in one place? I then made my way to a coffee/breakfast place, picked up some donuts and bagels, and of course coffee! When they asked me what type of milk I wanted in my coffee I made the mistake of answering with "just normal milk please". This was followed by "we have full, half, soy, goat, almond ...." The barrister listed off seven different kinds of milk! Now that I'm writing this out it seems like a pretty dorky thing to be wowed by, "I went to NYC and couldn't pick which milk to get in my coffee because the choices overwhelmed me!". I should really get out more.

Anyway, after the exciting milk-choice adventure, I made my way back to the hotel, as the smell of coffee reached his nostrils my Love began to wake up and wish me a Happy Birthday! We skyped my parents and I opened my presents while we had our breakfast.

Then we got into our running gears and went for a run in Central Park. There were so many runners there! The only time I've felt so crowded whilst running was in the We Own the Night race held in Berlin by Nike. We just so happened to arrive in NYC in the middle of a freakish heatwave, my Love, who is now very used to the Californian climate, was not in the least fazed by the heat. In comparison I struggled through until my face seemed as though it was attempting to out-warm the sun! I'm one of those get-up-at-six-AM-to-avoid-the-heat kinda runners. It didn't serve me well on this particular run! We ran for about 4km and then wandered the paths of the park until we found ourselves back where we started. On the walk back to the hotel we saw our first street-corner-crazy-shouter. He was shouting about prostitution, and how lax the police are in that area.

Some street art in Williamsburg

Then we jumped in the shower dressed up in the most hipster gears we had brought with us, and caught the subway to Williamsburg! The thing about us, is that we don't really do a whole lot of research about where we are going, so we just picked a subway stop in the middle of Williamsburg and went there. It didn't look like much, and we wondered if we had come to the wrong area of Williamsburg, or if there was a specific spot for Hipster-watching that we should have researched beforehand. We eventually stumbled across a cafe/restaurant with a sign outside that had 'free love' scrawled across the bottom, so we decided to take a chance. 

Lunch time in Williamsburg

We sat down and ordered drinks, I decided to branch out and order a cocktail, my Love ordered a beer, when the beer arrived in a mason jar we decided that we were in the right place, and then a crew of mustachioed, suspender-wearing hipsters arrived for a late brunch. We both ordered a pulled pork sandwich and got apple pie and crême brûlée for  dessert. Then we just wandered the neighborhood for a bit and made our way back to the hotel to get ready for the wedding!

Some friends of ours are having 52 weddings, so that instead of one big wedding during which they might be pulled in 100 different directions and barely get any quality time with anyone, they will have 52 small weddings, in which they can spend the whole evening catching up with one particular couple or friend group. We managed to find their Manhattan apartment, the view from the 44th floor is pretty fantastic. We caught up over hors d'œrves and fancy wine and champagne. They showed us their home, we were particularly impressed by the banjo displayed on the wall that used to belong to Neutral Milk Hotel. Then came the vows, I played officiant and only mixed up the words once! It was lovely, my Love and I are particularly mushy over weddings at the moment, though neither of us can be bothered planning ours, we are enjoying watching other people take the plunge!

Manhattan from the 44th floor

Then we took an uber! The driver dropped us off at Kiwiana, a New Zealand restaurant in Brooklyn. We started with a Pinot Noir, the Central Otago ones were pretty pricey, so we had to go for a Hawkes Bay one. We ordered a variety of starters including the green-lipped mussels, ceviche, tater tots, and something else that slips my mind.

Then we ordered an Epic beer each and split a main between each pair, my Love and I had the ribs glazed with manuka honey and marmite. They were the most delicious ribs I have eaten in my life! Once we had eaten our dinner the chef came out to chat with us, as it turned out he was from my home town. Our friends asked which desserts he recommended to which he replied "leave it to me". Shortly after that he sent out the pavlova, the milo cake, and two off-menu desserts: a sticky date pudding, and a lamington. He also sent us out some complimentary champagne as a congrats on the wedding and me turning 25.

Then we went on a tour of several Manhattan dive-bars. We tried Pabst Blue Ribbon, the men played a game of pool, which ended in my Love returning, looking pretty chuffed, saying "turns out I'm pretty good at pool!". Eventually we found ourselves wandering back to the Hotel through Times Square at 5 AM, agreeing that it was a fantastic evening but we probably don't need to go bar hopping for a long time now! We woke up in time to book a shuttle to the airport and have something to eat and drink before we left. We were the first people on the super shuttle which means you have approximately one hour of dicking around, picking up other people, before you even start heading to the airport. Our hangovers thankfully weren't that bad, I had been drinking lots of water in between all of the wine, beer, and whatever else we drank. We made it successfully to the airport with plenty of time. At the airport we ate at a Taqueria and bought some postcards, then off we flew, home to California.

New York is wild, I'd love to go and spend a week there, but not for a while I think, I'm all New Yorked out for now! Plus there are so many other places I want to see before re-doing NYC!

Getting my stitches out after wisdom teeth extraction

It took 10 minutes max. The bit that hurt the most wasn't the stitches coming out, I felt a pinch for some of them as he snipped them, the sore part was where they held my mouth open near the wound. It just felt like someone pushing on a bruise. Then it was all finished, the surgeon said it was all healing well and to keep using the special mouthwash for 2-3 more days twice a day.

My gums are still pretty tender towards the back, so I imagine I will be easing back into human food again, but I feel like I have my mouth back again, it reminded me, a bit, of the day I had my braces taken off.

*3 days later*

Now that I can see into my mouth I can see holes where the 3rd molars on the bottom jaw were, so I'm still rinsing with the mouthwash and have swiped a syringe from work to irrigate the holes to make sure there is no food lodged in there. I really dread complications, I'm so relieved for all the pain to be over that if I suddenly developed an infection or dry socket I would struggle to not cry on my dentist - not a pretty picture. The pain is mostly gone now, I don't need to take ibuprofen anymore, and the swelling has gone down too! It's nice to have my face back, and to know that, barring new wisdom teeth growing in (it's very, very rare), I will never have to do that again!

Things I've since discovered that I'm glad I didn't know before the surgery:

• There are videos of wisdom tooth extractions on youtube! Don't watch them.
• They are actually drilling your jawbone away - I thought they were just cutting up my teeth! - I don't know how this would have made me feel during all the drilling in my surgery ... 

Read about the extraction here. 

21. Take another cooking class

I'm already ticking them off the 26 before 26 list! I went to another cooking class with my Love in Palo Alto! We attended a class called Indian Home Cooking held at Sur La Table. When we lived in New Zealand we had Curry Sunday locked in every Sunday on our Google calendars. I think it started as a "let's cook something from a different nationality every Sunday" thing - but we started with Indian and never seemed to move on from it! We would visit our local Indian spice market to buy the things we needed and we got pretty good at our favourite curries. We never really mastered the breads, there were these delicious ones you could buy and just heat up in a frying pan quickly *drooling daydream*. Anyway, we really miss curry Sunday so we chose Indian Home Cooking .. That explanation probably didn't need to be so long!

The menu:
Curried Vegetable Samosas with Mango-Cilantro Chutney 
Chicken Tikka Masala with Cucumber-Mint Raita 
Coconut Vegetable Curry with Cashews 
Chapati Bread (Indian Flatbread)

We started off making curried vegetable samosas, I think that the pastry on a few of them was a little thick, but none of them burst in the deep-frying process, so we did okay! A few people left a little air in their samosas which caused them to start to inflate a little in the hot oil. One thing that we learned was that, if you deep fry things on a regular basis, you can pour the hot oil through a coffee filter to clear out the crap and reuse it! Obviously you want to be careful about what type of container you collect it in, because the hot oil will warp plastic. 

Deep frying is terrifying, I'm not sure I will ever be comfortable standing next to boiling hot oil. 

The rest was pretty straight forward really, though I'm still not confident with my Chapati bread making skills, I was happy enough with it for that night! The curries weren't as spicy as we were used to but they were still delicious, and we know how to spice them up next time we make them at home. They give you the recipes to take away and a 10% discount voucher to use if you see anything that you want to buy in the store during the break. We looked seriously at the knives and the sous vide they had in store, but decided against them in the end. 

This last photo is a bit blurry sorry ... I was a bit too eager to eat it all!! It was delicious!!

Sammlung Scharf-Gerstenberg Museum

I went to the Sammlung Scharf-Gerstenberg Museum as my September museum! I'm still developing my blog-photography skills, so please excuse my noob-ness on that front.

I had heard about this museum from my friends who live in New York, when I told them I lived near the Schloss Charlottenburg they couldn't believe I hadn't been to the museums across the road.

So on a warm Sunday I wandered through the palace grounds over to check out the museum featuring surrealist pieces. I managed to buy my ticket, pick up my free audio guide, and ask if photography was allowed all in German. Then when a man came up to me and asked if cameras were allowed in the museum I chatted to him briefly saying that I was pretty sure it was allowed because I had asked at the desk. Then he asked me where I was from and I told him, it would be far too easy to count that as my conversation with a stranger in German for my 26 before 26 list, but's it's nice to have it there as a fallback if I don't manage to get another one in in the next 11 months!

Admission it 10 euros, 5 for concession tickets (students etc.) and gets you a free audio guide.

There was a series of work that I couldn't get good photos of due to window reflections etc. but I really really liked it, it was called Fantasies About a Found Glove dedicated to the Lady Who Lost It by Max Klinger (1878) and you can check it out here.

The first thing I saw as I walked in was a big Egyptian gateway with hieroglyphics on it. Below are my photos of some of the pieces I liked the most.

The Kalabsha Gate

La mort de Sapho - Gustave Moreau, 1872 (The Death of Sappho)

Untitled - František Kupka, 1907

Le Promeneur, Étude "Bouddha qui marche", ou: Personnage au livre - Odilon Redon, 1890 - 95
(The Wanderer, Study for "Walking Buddha", or: Figure with Book)

Pégase captif - Odilon Redon, 1889 (Captured Pegasus)

Sans titre, ou: Évocation d'une île - Victor Hugo, 1870
(Untitled, or: Evocation of an Island)

Who knew that Victor Hugo was an artist too!? Not me! It is believed that this piece started as a piece of paper underneath other pieces he was working on, and then the lines left behind from going over the edge of the other pieces inspired him to create something of it. I see it.

Qui est ce grand malade... - Max Ernst, 1923/24
(Who is This Tall Sick Man...)

Untitled - Pablo Picasso, 1933

Menu du banquet des amis du roman philosophique - Salvador Dali, 1933
(Menu for the Banquet of the Friends of the Philosophical Novel)

Fantaisie - Georges Hugnet, 1937

Self-Portrait - Hans Bellmer, 1942

Mask: Montserrat Crying - Julio González, 1938/39

There was a special exhibition on Paul Klee's work, to be honest not a lot of it spoke to me, but a few pieces really did.

Red Nuances - Paul Klee, 1921

Dream City - Paul Klee, 1921

26 before 26

It's that time of year again! It's going to be a big year :) to see how I did on my 25 before 26 read here.

1. Run a half marathon

2. Get my first credit card

3. Write a couple of blog posts about science news

4. Brew a batch of beers solo

5. Have a conversation with a stranger in German 

6. Write up the method of my first Ph.D. project - and more generally just kick ass at Ph.D.ing

7. Complete Python training and one other type of coding training on codeacademy

8. Design a series of postcards and send them to my family/friends

9. Visit one museum a month and write a blog post about it

10. Learn one song on keyboard well enough to play in front of humans

11. Go out to 5 new restaurants in Berlin (I don't eat out much so this is more of a big deal than it seems)

12. Visit the kiwi-cafe in Prenzlauerberg 

13. Branch out beer-wise and post about it! (I tend to not do this because I don't know enough about beer to comment in-depth on the flavours - but I will start doing it now!)

14. Travel alone to a new place for a weekend

15. Save at least 5,000€

16. Work harder on the process of blog writing (i.e. include editing)

17. Get better at yoga, do it at least weekly

18. Get at least three new states ticked off my list

19. Go to a country I have never been to before

20. Attend Society For Neuroscience 2014 & present a poster - also blog the experience :)

21. Take another cooking class - learn something new! (Bonus points if it is a German baking class in German!)

22. Take a short art course (maybe drawing/watercolour painting) maybe: http://berlindrawingroom.blogspot.de/p/spring-watercolor-workshop.html

23. Take a 5 week CBT course to increase my relevant and helpful thought patterns and minimise the irrelevant and unhelpful thought patterns

24. Do an overhaul of my room - get rid of everything I don't want or need (I do have to fly everything back to NZ/USA one day after all!)

25. Get a haircut in Berlin

26. Figure out what this wedding is going to look like, and be okay with it!

Wisdom Teeth Extraction - the Berlin Experience

I'm alive!! I lived through my wisdom teeth extraction!! If you are reading this in preparation for getting your wisdom teeth out, I just want to say I read through a lot of horror stories before mine, and I freaked myself out about it. The truth is - it's not a pleasant thing to go through, but in the grand scheme of things, it's not that bad. You will live, it's better to have it over with. It's 4 - 5 days of discomfort, and then you'll forget all about it.

The teeth: I had no serious issues like impacted teeth, one of my lower jaw teeth appeared to be touching the nerve in my xray, and one of my upper jaw teeth was quite close to my sinus cavity. The biggest issue was that there were six wisdom teeth there. Kinda weird, but seemingly straight forward.





















I did everything that I had read about online in preparation for my surgery:

• Asked my Dentist about aftercare so that I could prepare it all beforehand (unfortunately his office worker just told me that I would need to 'rest for a week' so it wasn't really all that helpful).
• Asked a friend to pick me up afterwards, gave her the contact details for my Mum and my Love as well as my health insurance details - should the worst happen.
• Stocked up on soup and puddings and kartoffelpüree.
• Wore a button up shirt to avoid having to pull anything over my swollen face.

I managed to forget the piece of paper my dentist gave me which stated which teeth should be removed (oops!) - but they didn't seem too worried about that.

I arrived ten minutes early - just because that's what I do - filled in the forms, it was my first time at this dental practise (they hadn't even asked me in for a consultation regarding the extraction, which had worried me if I'm honest) so I had all of those normal forms to fill out. Then they gave me a full sheet of after care instructions (perhaps something they could have emailed to me in response to my "Do you have any specific after-care instructions?" email). Then I had to wait approximately 30 minutes after my scheduled appointment time to head in, so I messaged my friend to let her know she may have to wait around for me. 

Sitting in the room I noticed that I had a pretty prominent tremor all over, I was pretty nervous at this point. The assistant came in and told me where to put my bag and to sit down. Then my oral surgeon came in and introduced himself, asked me if I had any questions (which I did but apparently that fact slipped my mind so I said no), then he started to leave and I asked if he had any meds to use for nervous patients. He gave me two tablets of something "like valium" and then started injecting my local anaesthetic into the right side of my mouth. This was my first time every receiving injections in my mouth, I have only ever had two fillings before which didn't require any anaesthetic. I was surprised at how little they hurt, it was just a bit of a sting and then slowly I felt my mouth going numb. 

Then he left me for fifteen minutes, during which time a few other dental assistants came in to ask how many teeth he was taking out, exclaiming at the fact that I had six wisdom teeth and staring at my x-ray. I didn't understand it all because my nerves have a negative effect on my ability to translate German. At this point I couldn't perceive any effect of the "like valium" tablets I had been given, and as the assistant put numbing balm on my visibly trembling lips, I started to worry that my trembling might affect the surgery. 

The surgeon came back in, injected the other side of my mouth with the local anaesthetic, and got to work stealing my teeth. As far as step-by-step goes, I can't tell you much about what was going on in my mouth, because they only discussed it between themselves in German, and didn't feel the need to fill me in on the details. They always started with the top-jaw tooth so I could tell when they finished there because they would stitch it up before moving on to the bottom jaw, they needed to drill into both of my top jaw teeth to break them up to help the extraction. The drilling - you can't feel it really - but I found it pretty unpleasant. The bottom jaw was a struggle on both sides, my two extra teeth were in the bottom, so there were two on each side to be removed. There was a lot of drilling required and a lot of yanking. I was still shaking all over and the assistant kept squeezing my shoulder in what I assumed an attempt at comforting me. Then I finally saw them sewing up the last bottom jaw and I could have cried I was so glad for it to be over. There wasn't any pain, it's just really weird and uncomfortable.

The thing that bugged me was how many questions they asked me AFTER the surgery, I couldn't even tell the difference between my tongue and my chin at that point, I was in no position to be forming words! Surely that's something they come across a lot! So they booked me in to get my stitches out a week later and gave me my prescriptions (ibuprofen, antibiotics, and a special mouthwash) and sent my friend and I on our way. I wasn't sure what state I would be in so I had asked my friend to make sure I got home okay. I was actually fine, I have no idea what the "like valium" tablets were, but I think they were just sugar pills. As far as I have been able to tell since I moved to Germany, people don't like taking drugs unnecessarily, you can't buy pain killers such as panadol or ibuprofen in the supermarket, you actually need to go to the pharmacy for them. So I guess they are the same with giving laughing gas or some other calming drugs for procedures like this. Though in my research I had read about people getting what I guess I would describe as American-level medication throughout the procedure and recovery of wisdom teeth extraction in Berlin. So I guess just talk about what the surgeon offers before making your decision if that is important to you.

My friend took me to the pharmacy and got me home, she had bought me some goodies such as yoghurt, fruit smoothies, and ice cream, bless her. When I got home, I realised that I looked like something out of a horror film, no one at the practise had offered me a mirror to clean up in so I had assumed (naively) that they had cleaned up after themselves. So I cleaned up my face put on some ice packs, I have about eight little square ones that I just rotated, trying to keep icing them for the first 24 hours. I eventually fell asleep and when I woke up my face was HUGE and sore.

More on eating stuffs in the next post.

Reshuffle time!

I am just in the process of relocating some blogs from my tumblr here and doing a bit of Spring* cleaning so will be mucking around a bit with how the blog looks :)

I decided that I may as well use my sick days after the wisdom teeth extraction wisely - so sorry in advance for any annoyance regarding changes.

Wish me luck for my operation in the morning!!! (The main reason I'm not sleeping right now is jetlag - but also nerves!)



*it is Spring in New Zealand so I'm saying it counts!

25 before 25 recap!

1. Publish a paper in an academic journal

This isn't too far away really, I have a second author paper doing a second pass by the reviewers, so hopefully this will be ticked off soon enough, my first author paper was reviewed and rejected, so we are fixing it up to send somewhere else now.

2. Learn conversational German

This is one of those things that lacks appropriate definition … my German is a lot better than it was, and I am about to move onto a B1 book in my Deutschkurs. But I would hardly say I can successfully hold a conversation with someone in German, so this one is a work in progress!.

3. A secret for my Love, will let you know after the surprise :)

This one required a bit more artistic talent than I currently possess - so this is also a work in progress - but it is coming :)

4. Run the Avon Berlin Women’s Running course - 10km section DONE :) - I actually did the Nike women’s 10km - but the distance was the main thing. Read about it here.

5. Visit ALL the interesting Museums in Berlin (ambitious)

This was hugely ambitious, and I didn't actually get my student card until six months after endeavouring on this task, so couldn't get the sweet student discounts. I hope to see some more in the next year.

6. Keep a list of the best Museums and what I like about them (this is more so that when I have visitors in town I can decide where to take them easily lol

ditto #5

7. Visit my Love in America!! DONE :) Read about it here and here.

8. Go to New York! DONE! Read about it here.

9. Move to Berlin DONE :) Read about it here.

10. Take a foreign cooking class (Italian or French? Maybe even German?) DONE :) Read about it here.

11. Graduate! Susan Tyree, B.A., M.Sc. DONE :)  Read about it here.

12. Be a Bridesmaid DONE :) my sister got married in April 2014 and I was a bridesmaid :) blogpost coming

13. Enrol as a Ph.D. student at the University of Potsdam DONE :)

14. Get a residency permit to live in Berlin for 3-4 years  DONE!

15. Learn to play some songs on the Keyboard (Kate Nash/Erik Satie)

I learned some songs, but I have mostly been focusing on the guitar, so I'm not sure I could perform my keyboard songs just yet.

16. Practise/Improve my touch-typing skills (for thesis writing) DONE! :)

17. Make some friends in Berlin DONE :)

18. Go to the Berlin Christmas Markets DONE :) Read about it here.

19. Do the 30 Day Shred Challenge

I attempted this a few times, but have been focusing mainly on running, so I might tackle this again over winter when I don't want to run in the snow!

20. Learn to inline skate! DONE :)

21. Complete the Berlin Half Marathon - inline skating (registered for March 2014!) DONE :) Read about it here.

22. Go to Paris with my Mum DONE :) Read about it here.

23. Go on a walking tour of London with my Mum DONE :) Read about it here.

24. Go to a Pride Parade DONE :) Read about it here.

25. Go on a beer tasting and start cataloguing my thoughts on my favourite German beers DONE(ish) :) Read about it here.


17 out of 25 completed, and most of the others are still a work in progress :) I'm okay with that :) Now I'm working on the next list!

24. Go to a Pride parade

I attended the Christopher Street Day in Berlin! It had rained a bit before the parade started but it mostly held off during the parade. There were some very drunk people there and some people smoking weed in the crowd which I am weirdly getting used to having been in Berlin for over a year now, but I still remember how much it used to shock me back in the beginning! The parade had an awesome atmosphere of celebration. I saw a lot more penises than I was expecting to! Anyway, these parades don't need much explaining so I will just pick some of my favourite photos that don't have penises in them and share them :)

25. Go on a beer tasting and start cataloguing my thoughts on my favourite German beers (not so much the last bit)

I traveled to Munich for a weekend in March, and I had an awesome time. I didn't get to see as much of the city as I would have liked, because I was actually there representing my old high school at an information fair for students interested in doing an overseas exchange to an English-speaking country. I’m not sure I was so good at the fair because it seemed to be full of 12-13 year olds whose parents were only interested in sending them to the U.K. or America … but New Zealand is far too far away!

So after a day of explaining to parents that - really it’s only ~48 hours of travel and there aren't really hobbits and dragons there, and they don't have to jump off bridges and out of planes if they don't want to - I finally got to see a bit of Munich! I stayed at an awesome hotel with a fantastic shower (I'm a sucker for good quality bathrooms, they make my life worthwhile).

After the fair and a quick wander around the city centre I decided to tag onto a Beer Tour of Munich, we started with a beer from a street vendor, with this first beer they explained a bit about beer drinking etiquette and the beer culture in Germany. We learned how to Prost! without accruing 7 years of bad sex, and the alleged history behind cheers-ing everywhere.

Once we were adequately educated, we were deemed ready to go to Augustiner am Dom to try the Augustiner Edelweisse, this beer is well known because it is only sold in Germany - with one exception. According to our tour guide it was Pope Benedict’s favourite beer, and upon his request, a regular shipment of the beer was delivered to the Vatican so that he could continue to enjoy it there. I tried a half-litre of the Pope’s favourite beer (review: not too shabby), and then had a half-litre of their Dunkel bier which was more up my alley. Whilst some members of our party were ordering and devouring the half-chicken and chips I found myself sitting next to two Tennesseans, father and son, and we got to know each other. 

Next stop was the Hofbräuhaus, which was packed! I got a half litre of their Hefeweizen which was tastyyy and watched my two new friends each struggle through the full litre Maß that they ordered. Seeing some of the older buildings in that part of town was pretty magical, coming from New Zealand, which saw it’s first white man approximately 200 years ago I'm easily impressed by old buildings!

I intend to go back to take a lot more photos and explore a bit more. Though I didn't see a whole lot this trip, I was glad I got out for my free evening, though it was just a quick tour, I managed to try 5 new beers and meet some cool people! I have a place to stay next time I'm heading through Tennessee at any rate :)

When I got myself back to my hotel room I realised that 5 german beers are the equivalent of ~10 New Zealand beers, and I had technically engaged in an episode of binge drinking. I managed to stop feeling sick before I had to take the train back to Berlin the next morning!

Photooooozzzzz

Train trip featured: Germany farms sunshine.

School mascot enjoying a trip to the Hofbräuhaus!

A strange bird-house/bride statue at the Sophie Scholl Gymnasium 

Hotel room!

I looked up on the train ride and there was just a castle there! Not quite Hogwarts but still pretty magic!