Christmas and Chaos

After 1:45 p.m., the Christmas holidays have officially begun!

Fridays the first class is at 10:15 a.m., and it was only mildly awkward because I hadn't been able to find and read the article that we were supposed to be discussing. (My error was to search for it in German instead of in English.) Fortunately the rest of the class — which was admittedly smaller today since it was the day before the holidays, and many were tootling off into the liberty of the vacation early — had read it.

The professor courageously offered us mini-New Testament Bibles and chocolate as Christmas presents. I had to decline because through grandparents, maybe my own parents, and possibly my great-aunt, there are a lot of New Testaments in German, English, Latin and New Testament Greek in our family apartment already.

I've still been feeling sick. The anaemia symptoms seem like they're under control as long as I don't exercise strenuously or lose sleep. But I'm fairly certain there's something brewing underneath, because of weird puffy face symptoms, redness and heat, and a weak feeling especially in the left arm that started this week. It's too much information, but having a slightly stuffy nose or tight clothing also makes the anaemia more evident again. I stayed up past 2 a.m. on Monday to finish an assignment, and also paid the price for that: even in the late afternoon I didn't feel strong enough, and called in sick for class. Anyway, January 2nd is my next doctor's appointment; it had been scheduled sooner, but due to the doctor's sickness and personnel shortages (a Berlin-wide phenomenon these days), it has been rescheduled twice.

Anyway, after the first class, I went to the university cafeteria. It was still too early for many of the food booths in the back, and I wasn't familiar with the ones that were open yet. So I returned to the booth at the entrance and ordered a rectangle of blueberry streusel cake and got myself a mug of hot cocoa at the machine. The cafeteria lady at the cash register was in a beaming mood, despite her being busy with paper and the inner workings of something behind the counter. I hazarded a guess that the impending vacation might have been inspiring the mood, and offered, "Schöne Feiertage" as I left. She lit up even more and returned the greeting, so I felt like a Sherlock Holmes.

Then we had a lecture where we looked at an artifact, two drawings, and text excerpts from the inglorious period of European conquest in the Caribbean and South America.

In the lobby of the large lecture halls in the university building, students were playing an upright piano that had been painted green (which makes me shudder) and placed there I think as part of a sustainability initiative. 'Sustainability' is a very, very flexible word. But a few of the students played beautifully, for example one of Tchaikovsky's Seasons, and the audience — and, I kind of thought, one of the cleaning crew who was standing with his trolley around the corner — loved it.

*

It's not very Christmassy, but I realize that I haven't commented on news lately, and there's a lot of it.

For Berlin: The debate about budget cuts continues to rage. Joe Chialo, senator for culture, said persuasively that Berlin's cultural scene is part of Berlin's society as a whole; and if Berlin's society a whole is facing a tight budget, the cultural scene cannot be magically exempt from sharing the problem.

That said, some of the budget cuts there seem wrong, as do ones for social charities that regularly appear in the Berlin evening news. Then, according to an email from the student's association ASTA, apparently some of Berlin's universities and colleges have already laid off staff in anticipation of the budget cuts to the educational sector.

Finally, there are budget cuts to the green transportation sector, which I find especially shortsighted because if from a meteorological standpoint Berlin becomes Dubai 2.0 in fifty years*, we'll really have wished we had those electric buses and better rail network. The dysfunctions of 'green' transportation methods that do require costly fixes are also probably deepening resentment against the Green Party, as a party that seemingly equates moral purity with voters' inconvenience, and any leftist-to-moderate government it was or will be a part of. As right now Berlin is ruled by a coalition of the centre-right CDU and centre-left SPD, it's unlikely that the mayor intends to weaken the trope.
*I'm exaggerating slightly.

For Syria: I haven't spoken to any Syrian citizen about the situation, but like everyone else I was also awestruck that the removal of a dictator, something that 13 years of deep suffering didn't achieve, happened in two weeks. At the same time I think the country's factions and the fates of divers regions, villages, and perhaps even city districts are so complex and individual that I am a little worried about the 'now everyone's an expert on Syria' effect that seems to have spread through news media not just in Germany, but also in the UK, USA. In other words, 5-minute segments will necessarily go nowhere near doing justice to the situation.

That said, it is also strikingly tragic to hear that so many disappeared political prisoners really are likely dead. Also, on the smaller individual scale, it's sad to hear that Austin Tice — the American journalist — is still not returned to his family. It boggles the mind that I've worked a job for 7 years, quit it, and started studying full-time, during the same period of time he hasn't been able to talk to his family or go home.

I have also written enough about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict to make my feelings clear: both that it's necessary that the Israeli hostages be released and returned to safety, and that the deaths of now over 45,000 Palestinians are unjustified. As for more recent developments: I'd need a lot of convincing to believe that the encroachment on the Golan Heights now, in defiance both of international law and the feelings of the Druze residents, is any way not colonialist. (And Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's unmitigated cheek in wearing a yellow hostages ribbon, I'm presuming to enhance his own image, when he appeared at his Israeli court hearing on charges of corruption, has made me hopping mad. He seems a narcissist on the level of the 45th US President at times: any justified criticism of him seems to feel to him like a tragedy greater than the death of thousands.) But the same thought as mentioned for Syria applies to this: I am not an expert.

In reading history it becomes clear that there are many crises, many times where crises converge into what feels like a black hole of chaos. In between, there are still stretches of peace, and people who work competently and hard to make those stretches happen. So I am determined to remain optimistic.