On Weekend America (a public radio show on arts and culture) this Saturday, I came pretty close to telling the whole country I am a total geek. A five-minute interview about Computer Camp.

And today I move out of the country. These events aren’t connected — I swear.

With only 6 days left before my cross-Atlantic journey begins, I just keep thinking I have forgotten something of major importance.

Anyone else with worldy moves have tips or pointers of things that are easily overlooked?

Is this one, by a self-identified “exiled newyorker living in berlin”. I found her via another blog from a former berliner now back in the states.

There are a lot of other city blogs, though no Berlinist.com, which I’ve decided would probably be too much work for me to even think about trying to work on.

For those unfamiliar, “WM” is the acronym for Weltmeisterschaft…or the World Cup. And my favorite post on the site is this one, complaining about some of the tourists in Germany for the WM:

What I won’t miss:

Stupid people and their stupid questions.

Example: The evil lady who asked us 5 times in German
if we spoke Spanish. It looked as if she had just met this Spanish
speaking man on the plane ride and was trying to impress him for some
reason.

I am ready to hit the road and begin meinem Deutscheleben.

Ryan spins the light electric

Originally uploaded by ethanlindsey.

So, about 15 of us went out to the Kelso Dunes on Saturday night. We arrived at 8 pm on Saturday — the temperature was 95 degrees.

We left at 8 am Sunday, and the temperature was 101 degrees.

But in the middle, when the mercury had dropped to a downright chilly 80 degrees, we climbed the geologically-mystifying Kelso Dunes and took some unbelievable night shots — including this one. Remember it was pitch black (save the moonlight) when we shot it…we just had 6 seconds to do our thing.

According to some research dug up by fellow camper Charla Bears, we know:

By studying the mineral composition and shapes of sand grains that make up Kelso Dunes, we know that most of the sand has traveled all the way from the Mojave River sink east of Afton Canyon (map).

Wind blowing from the northwest gradually carried the sand southeastward. In the path of the prevailing winds lie the Providence Mountains and the pink pinnacles of the Granite Mountains. The rocky crags and sloping fans of the two ranges block the moving sand. Sand piles up at the base of the mountains and along their flanks, forming dunes and sand sheets. Where the sand piles up researchers found that the dunes are actually made up of several sets of dunes, stacked one on top of another. Each set formed in response to some past climate change! The Kelso Dunes depend upon times when the sand grain (sediment) supply is enhanced.

This happens whenever the climate is dry enough to expose the raw material of dunes, sand, to the wind. In fact, most of the eastern part of the Kelso Dunes formed when water-filled Soda Lake and Silver Lake dried up, exposing the lake bottom sediment. The entire dune system was stacked up in five major pulses over the past 25,000 years.

There are way more — equally cool — photos on my flickr page.

S-Bahn, Prenzlauer Allee, January 2006.

Originally uploaded by snoother.

This is the subway station near my new home in Prenzlauer Berg in Berlin.

Das ist abkühlen Super.

I was trying to find a Unitarian Universalist congregation (even a lay-led congregation) in Berlin. But it looks like I may have to travel to other cities if I want to UU it up next year.

So, the illustrious host of the Marketplace Morning Report, Herr Scott Jagow, is in Deutschland for the World Cup this week (yep, that’s why you haven’t heard his voice at 5:50 a.m.!).

Here he is with Marketplace contributor — and former German Fulbrighter — Curt Nickisch.

Scott has been, as he puts it, “blogging”, from Europe. But really, he’s sendy daily e-mails to his mom — so I thought I’d actually help him enter the 21st century and share his insights into Germany culture, and fußball for anybody whose interested. (One note: I’ve edited some parts for taste — they are in brackets).
(more…)

So, at Columbia’s Graduate School of Journalism, there is one main weeder class — called ‘RW1.’ As basic as you can get, right: ‘Reading and Writing 1.’

The idea of the class is you become a beat reporter…and are dropped in the middle of a New York neighborhood that you cover, as a cub reporter would, for 6 months or more. In my class were at least 10 incredible journalists who are now reporting for places like NPR, the Providence Journal, the AP (in Latvia), and the list goes on.

My professor talked about one student he taught in the years previous who is now a star reporter for the New York Times in Russia. That reporter, a former U.S. Marine, is none other than C.J. Chivers.

…who wrote the longest story — 18,000 words — published in Esquire in the past 20 years. And that’s saying something, because Esquire’s stories aren’t usually short.

Peter Carlson, a reporter for the Washington Post, begins his review of the story this way:

“It was the first day of school, and the returning students — the second- through 12th-graders — lined up and waited for the annual opening ceremony to begin. Soon the new first-graders would march in, then one of them would be hoisted on the shoulders of a senior and ring a bell to start the new year.”

Gripping, and incredible. It makes me want to read Chivers’ account of the Breslan school hostage situation.

And it also makes me think of some of the stories that could be available to a reporter willing to travel around eastern Europe and the former Soviet republics.

Former war reporter Chris Hedges wrote a fantastically nuanced, and mostly navel-gazing, memoir about his time as a war reporter and foreign correspondent.

Now, those two things — war reporter, foreign correspondent — are not one and the same. And yet, because of the fact that foreign correspondents tend to move around, and war reporters don’t last very long, they end up at least dovetailing.

So with my time abroad fast approaching, any stories or, say, speeches, about reporting from outside the U.S. tend to catch my eye. Plus, reading friends’ experiences from abroad is jealous rage-inducing.

Recently at a dinner with colleagues, I mentioned that I would be very interested in going to Iraq — or any other war zone for that matter.

The response? I was reminded of former Marketplace-ian Adam Davidson’s Harper’s story on his time in Baghdad. All it did was make me envious.

Which makes a lot of sense, I guess. Germany, here I come!

I mean, I’d like a MacBook Pro. And a Vespa scooter. But that’s not gonna happen, and it’s not really necessary.

But two things are as close to required as you can get: an Oade Brothers modified Marantz PMD-660. And a new, cheap and yet semi-pro quality digital camera. Without those two things, I’ll be a tourist. With them, hello journalista.

The only problem is thats a combined $990. In my best german accent, zehr teueren.

The good news: I am no longer on the midnight shift. So I get to go to work tomorrow at 7 am. Early, yes. But it ain’t midnight…and that’s a good thing.

The bad news: I have a few more features to report, and about 45 more work days before I am outta here.