Un des petits plaisirs de ma vie en Allemagne: écouter Flux FM en lisant
les derniers INTRO et Unclesally's. // "Leslie Feist ne sait pas mentir."
Though one of my favorite aspects of living in Berlin is being in the German capital, my attraction to Berlin and German culture actually developed as two parallel interests. I wanted to see what Berlin was like the day my parents started playing a 1991 cassette tape of Achtung Baby in the car; my Franco-German Master's degree became sort of a means to that end. But I discovered German separately, taking a class as early as fourth grade as an alternative to English.
For the most part, especially in Junior High, I truly hated it. Too many cases and illogical attributions of gender, the words in a sentence arranged by a rigid set of ridiculous rules, not to mention that in class I was often asked to speak up and there would be no way in Hades that that was going to happen. Then came the yearly school exchange in tenth grade, and I to chose to go to Bayreuth -- fabled land of Wagner fests, some drug trafficking and lots and lots of Maisel's Weisse. I remember sitting on a local square on the Wednesday, halfway into the trip, and not wanting to leave. I also remember doing the same trip the year afterwards and being utterly miserable and homesick for two weeks solid -- when I got home. It sort of sealed the deal, and I knew that German would always have a place in my life from then on out. It was no longer this psychorigid foreign language but the vehicle all these awesome people and places used to communicate. And it just so happens to be the language I see, speak and hear on a regular basis today (when I'm not hitting the pavement with my expat clans). That is something that I am grateful for and it even comes out in my other languages sometimes when I talk. (I have no idea of that.)
One of the staples of my postadolescent treks to Berlin in 2006 and 2007 was the free music mag Unclesally's, which sadly is going out of print at year's end. I will miss it, especially sitting down with it to my morning serving of Toastbrot, Vollmilch and raw Schinken, hearing bands like Fotos coming out of the kitchen CD player, or even just walking around Kreuzberg or Prenzlauer Berg and seeing that a new one came out, and that it has this strange unknown band on the cover, and I STILL have to take out that "Sallyscout" booklet and pull out the gummy adhesive -- so annoying.
In a strange turn of events the demise of the printed version is a direct answer to the question I posed during my Master's thesis (as to the future of cultural journalism), and I think Unclesally's did a better job of answering it then I did. Danke, people, for everything you've done. All I have left now is INTRO and my Siegessäule issues.
(Désolée les gens, je n'ai pas le temps de traduire...)
