so much to catch up on...first, Berlin and Yom Kippur

So I arrived to Berlin safe and sound Sunday mid morning--it felt in many ways like simply stepping back into my old life, getting back onto the bus that I know well, taking the ring to Schoenhauser Allee, where I would be staying with Claudia, which I have done before. After standard greetings and settling in, I washed up (in my hair I was still wearing the beach from Tel Aviv--my hostel had had bad water pressure), changed, and headed west to spend Erev Yom Kippur with a friend and his mother. I was very pleasantly surprised by his cooking skills, and the evening gave me a chance to get caught up with the election issues and ideas (as well as the see the results) as well as to get back into speaking German. Dinner was delightful, and the elections, especially for my SPD supporting hosts, were dissappointing. My overall judgement on them: Germans don't seem to vote very strategically. Granted, in this case strategy may not have resulted in victory, but the coalition and parliamentary system enables a more idealistic voter, not a practical one, and so the result in many ways reminded me of the 2000 presidential election, between Bush, Gore, and Nader.
Kol Nidre this evening was at a very small synagogue not far from where they lived, but it was a beautiful service, and felt very familiar to me.
Choosing to sleep in the next morning as there would be no first coffee of the day, I met Martin at 10:45 to head to the synagogue at Pestalozzi Strasse. A very old synagogue, rebuilt and consecrated about eight years after Kristallnacht, although they used a conservative Machzor, and the service was complemented with an organ (not really my taste, I prefer a simple piano), the women were seated on a level above the men, and keeping with the tradition of the synagogue, individuals and families 'owned' specific seats. They take this very seriously, as at about 12:30 pm, in the middle of the Shma (a very holy prayer), an older woman sternly taps me on the shoulder to inform me that I am sitting in her platz. Whoops.

I left the synagogue before the start of Yizkor (which individuals who have not lost their parents are not meant to attend) and decided to go home and take a nap before neila. Naps when fasting are good things. The whole fast wasn't so bad, and at neila I met another American girl recently moved to Berlin so that was nice, but the last ten minutes or so of the service were near torture. The sun was long set, and I had a special pop-rock chocolate bar I had brought with me from israel in my purse to break fast with, and the version of Avinu Malkeinu being done with the organ took ages.
Eventually, though, I found myself on the bahn back to Claudia's, enjoying my chocolate bar and beginning to mentally prepare for the morning: the big interview.