constant narrator

I attended a preconference seminar with Peter Morville today at the IA Summit. The summit starts tomorrow. I’ve met a lot of interesting people already. Kia is here and it’s been wonderful hanging out with her. She is speaking during Sunday’s session. We went to the mixer this evening and then went with a new friend Alla to Versailles, a famous Cuban restaurant in Little Havana. We drank strong sangria, I ate a lot of seafood and then we went to the Cuban bakery next door where I got the craziest Cuban-tiramisu thing. Nom nom nom.

Miami is strange. It meets my stereotypical expectations in some ways and is delightfully surprising in others. There are palm trees, tourist crap and gleaming white buildings. There are also tons of people speaking Spanish, but not Texan/Mexican Spanish. Caribbean Spanish. And there there is the Creole, which is so unlike Louisiana Creole that I actually giggled with joy when I first heard it. It bubbles and is full of Haitian French and African nuances. It’s gorgeous, and those that can speak it seem to have a lightness to them that the rest of the Miamians don’t have.

I’m staying downtown in a hotel by the conference center, so I know this is nothing like the Miami that locals know. It was nice to go farther out into a neighborhood tonight. Kia is threatening to take me to South Beach, which should be, um, something.

I’m sitting, listening to NPR and the results of the Iowa caucuses. I have goosebumps. Historic, awesome, amazing.

I had an idea Obama was going to take the highly erratic Iowa caucuses after my Christmas visit to my 97 year old grandfather at a nursing home in Clarksville, Iowa. Population: 900. He had just been relating a story of an acquaintance he visited in St. Louis in 1953 who hated blacks (a puzzlement for him, then and now). This story came about because we were looking at a picture book from this trip and there were some African-Americans in the background of a photo.

A moment later, I started hearing the loud conversation (not so much with the good hearing in nursing homes) between a daughter and her elderly father. They were discussing the upcoming caucuses. The daughter was going on about Obama, how she liked his ideas about health care and education, how lovely his family seemed and how much she liked his wife. Never once did she mention his race or any qualms about his electability. At that point I was struck by how much has changed in 50 years; that a man could openly express his hatred for people of color in polite company in 1953 (and likely expect company) and that in 2007 this white woman in a small, conservative all-German town is psyched about voting for a black man for president with her elderly father agreeing with her.

At that point I realized Obama could win it. And if he can win in Iowa, he could win in anywhere but the deepest Southern state. And while Obama is not my first choice (that would be Bill Richardson), that he is competitive is a huge leap for this country.

I’m so delighted! Go Iowa! I’m proud of you, my little frozen homeland.

Pic courtesy of M’s futurePhone. See more futurePhone magic at his photoblog.

After many misfires, we finally acquired bikes for both of us. M at a bike store and I at the Prenzlauer Berg flea market in MauerPark on Sunday. Yesterday was the first day it wasn’t wet in a while so we went on a long jaunt into Mitte and stumbled into the dark heart of tourist Berlin. Souvenir shops! At least they are on cobblestone street and not in stripmalls. We found the Lustgarten, which had been transformed into a gallery by the addition of huge statues of nude women and men with a trend toward gigantic muscular asses. One such ass got slapped by an elderly Spaniard whose wife chuckled at him. The exhibit ruined any feeling of wanting to laze about in the grass, however, so we moved along after listening to the 6 o’clock bells from the Berliner Dome.

From the Lustgarten we rode west down the Spree across the museum island (Museuminsel) and then onto this long, lovely paved path through the midst of all the crazy modernist state architecture. I took a lot of pictures and told myself I was on a scouting mission for Kia, since her pictures would be so much more lovely. We took pictures of each other in the future before the Haus der Kulturen der Welt (The House of World Cultures).

Truly we are moving at the speed of light.

It was getting dark so we set into the Tiergarten and ran into the Licht Berlin exhibit. Licht Berlin was a two week exhibit of light art meant for nighttime meandering. It was a bit underwhelming, especially after witnessing some of the wonderful light/electric art at Burning Man, but it made for a nice bike ride because Tiergarten is really dark at night so it was spooky and you could follow the lights through the trees. After that we rode past the Brandenburg Gate which was surrounded by tents and crews cleaning up from the Berlin Marathon (40,000 runners we were told) which had run the day before.

I was getting cold and hungry so we consulted the bike map and found our way to Oranienstr. in Kreuzberg were we found a nice Italian place called Ossesa. The waitstaff was incredibly friendly and it actually had a non-smoking room upstairs where we could look out over the street and spy into people’s apartments. This town believes in delicious and cheap half-liters of wine. I am so behind that.

Day 2 in Berlin. My brain woke me up at 7:30, so I got up to get bread (OK, an eclair) at the Turkish bakery on the corner to find that there was a film crew in the street outside the apartment filming a zombie-cyborg movie. Yay zombie-cyborgs! In German! The woman at the bakery rolled her eyes when I asked her about the filming, as if saying “Great, another zombie-cyborg movie.” M got around and we went wandering Kreuzberg. Today’s weather was gorgeous, and as it is supposed to be rainy and cold for the next week, every single person who could be outside today in Berlin was outside. We found our way across the Landwehr Canal near our place to Görlitzer Park and sat in the sun in the bowl that used to be the train turntable.

We wandered from there and had lunch(ish) at a cafe along the U-bahn 1 line and watched people for a long time just being lazy and enjoying the weather. From there we ventured up into Mitte to go to Kastanienallee, where we knew there was a great art store to get some supplies. Along the way we saw a park completely packed with bodies soaking up the last summer sun of Berlin which cried out to me “Buy some ice cream!”. Not one to quash ice cream urges when they hit, we found some ice cream and spent more time being lazy in the sun. Eventually we made it to the art store and then headed back to Kreuzberg to meet famed Australian scrytchian Justien and her sweetie Robert. We had an excellent dinner at a bio (organic) restaurant and got to know each other. Both were immensely entertaining.

The apartment we subletted through Craiglist for a pittance is great and convenient to the U-bahn. M and I agree that we’re glad the first time we came we stayed in Mitte and Prenzlauer Berg where there are more young people running amuck and the cafes and such are more densely packed. Kreuzberg, however, has its own charms and holy hell is it cheap over here. I am eating more cheaply than in Austin even with the terrible dollar/Euro conversion.

The jet lag is still kicking me, so I’m off to bed. We’re going to try to head to clubs and shows later this week. I’ll report back with any musical finds.