Kunstler Visa-It Is Mine!

After much stress money, and a lot of help from friends and colleagues in Berlin and the USA, I have attained my Kunstler Visa, a one-year Visa that will allow me to do freelance work in Germany!  I used this blog post as a guide.  Insurance was the trickiest part.  First I had to buy incredibly expensive private insurance.  Then I had to go to one of the public insurance companies and wait for a long time in a carpeted office with flourescent lights and those ugly vertical plastic blinds.  When I finally talked to someone, a slender and well-groomed man named Gunnar who spoke English with me and made several phone calls.  We drew up a contract and I agreed to email my tax number as soon as I received it.  He then printed me a letter telling the Auslanderbehörde that I would be insured by the TK as soon as I was granted a Visa.  I had arrived at the TK at 9 am, right as they opened.  I left at around 10:30 and decided to go see if there were numbers left at the Auslanderbehörde, maybe take care of everything in one day.
The route I took to the big government building was different this time.  I got lost.  When I finally got there, there were no numbers left.
I was so frustrated I sat on a bench next to the canal and cried before getting on the U-Bahn to go home.
This morning I awoke at 5:45 and Robert and I left his apartment while it was still dark out.  We got to the Auslanderbehörde shortly after 7 AM and I was given a number.  Waiting for 2 and a half hours in a bright waiting room with hard plastic chairs, we read, ate egg sandwiches, fidgeted anxiously.  Finally I was called.  My paperwork was taken, I was given back my number and told to wait some more.  30 minutes went by and I ws called into a little room.  Robert was told to wait outside.  The man granted me my Visa and gave me a plastic card, sending me down a series of hallways to stick the card in a machine which then asked me for 50€.  After feeding my money into the slot, I got a little white receipt.  Again down the snaking hallways, back to the office and the office worker who handed me my passport with it's shiny new visa in it.
And that was it!  Now to figure out how to make some dough with this thing!

Auslanderbehörde, Attempt Number 1

Upholstery on the S-Bahn

Thursday morning, 8:30 am.  It's cold outside and I've forgotten my gloves.  I'm in line at the Auslanderbehörde, the immigration office in Berlin (Friedrich-Krause-Ufer 24.) It's an ugly building in a rather industrial area.  Not exactly what you think about when you consider dreamy, artsy, progressive Berlin.  The building doesn't open until 10 am, but already there are about 20 people in front of me.  I have with me all of my materials, passport, letters of intent to hire, bank statement, college transcripts stating my areas of expertise, CV, everything except an official letter saying that I will be insured by a health insurance company once I have a tax I.D. number.  Robert, my hero of the day (he's my hero many days, actually) has gone to the Lidl a few blocks away to get pastry and coffee for the both of us.  My fingers are so cold they ache, and I wait for the hot paper cup that he will bring back with great anticipation.  Robert has come to translate for me.  It is a relief to have a native German speaker with me, and the company is nice as well. 
Finally the building opens and some people shove past me, getting through the door first.  I don't care.  I have promised myself that I will not stress or rush today.  I have been under a lot of stress lately.  It has been manifesting in my body in different forms, knots in my stomach, a clenching of the jaw and stiffening of the neck.  I take deep breaths, try to let go of the anxiety of alienness, of not understanding the language around me, of trying to grasp a culture that is not my own.  On the second floor I show my passport, take a number and Robert and I sit in hard plastic chairs in room 212, waiting.  I know I will not get my Visa today because I don't have the insurance, but I'm not sure how to get it and they will at least tell me what I have to do.  In line, I met an American ukelele player who has lived in Berlin for the past few years.  She is renewing her Visa today.  She has given me the name of an insurance agent who will sell me private insurance without a german tax ID number.  I can pay through my American bank account with USD.  I'll buy this insurance later from a British man named John Gunn, who is based in Hamburg.  As far as I know, he is the only person selling the private German health insurance that the Auslanderbehörde accepts.  According to immigration law, I have to buy three month's worth of insurance at a time.  It is extremely expensive, this stuff, but I am in a race against the clock and there is nothing else available to me.
After about 45 minutes, my number is called.  Robert and I go into a little room and speak with a joyless woman behind a window. She tells me that I have everything except the insurance and she can either give me an extension on my tourist visa for 3 months until my appointment, or I can come back on Monday or Tuesday with the insurance.  I opt for Monday or Tuesday. 
Robert and get on the train back to my place in Lichtenberg, where I currently have a small, curtained corner of the living room to claim as my own space.  I sit on the fluffy red comforter on my twin mattress and Robert lays his head in my lap whil I read him a short story by James Herriot. 
I feel positively drained.  I know everything will work out.  I am a strong and persistent person, and going back to the States in a permanent way is not a viable option for me.  The parts of the US I might like to live in are not set up for someone who doesn't drive, and I've no interest in living in New York. 
Tomorrow the Visa saga continues.  I'll take my letter from John Gunn saying I am insured to the Public Insurance Agency, who will then sign my official form that says they will insure me after me 3 months of private insurance is up and on Tuesday I will go to the Auslanderbehörde just before 7 am when the doors open and maybe, just maybe, they will give me my Self-Employment Visa then and there and I can start looking for some work.
Deep breaths.
It will all be okay.
Deep breaths.

Boddinstrasse Pinwheel, Neukölln

TV Tower at Night

Alexanderplatz

Alexanderplatz

Sprache, Technical Difficulties, My Beautiful Life

I am getting pretty weary of speaking only English.  Still, I see my progress.  I travel at a snail's pace, put I travel nonetheless.  Language is a giant, a mountain I must climb.  I am finally to the point where I realize that nobody minds speaking English with me, but my life will be much easier if I start to speak Deutsch a little better.  Last night I was in a room with Robert and three of his friends.  Two of them spoke very good Englisch.  One was French and fluent in German but spoke very little Englisch.  She started speaking to me in Deutsch, very slowly and simply and nobody helped me.  It was fabulous!  I spoke with her!  I tongue stumbled.  I was not eloquent.  But I spoke and she understood me.  A small triumph.
I begin Deutschsprache kurs on Montag at 8:30 am and I am SO EXCITED about this!  I feel that a little formal coursework will help me a lot!
I have been dogwalking, working as a life model, and even working as an overnight nanny in order to machen das Geld und die Miete zahlen! The overnight nanny gig was intense but somewhat rewarding.  The child, a very sweet 2 year old, was still 2.  Heard of the phrase "the terrible twos?"  The little girl's favorite words were "No," and "Mine."  Mostly "No!"  But we had a great time, full of face paint, the spielplatz (playground), eis, und storybooks. 
I am almost done gathering all of my paperwork for my visit to the Auslanderbehörde.  I have been using this page as a guide and it has been really helpful.  All that's left at this point is to print out a few pages and buy some health insurance.  I don't think I can technically buy the insurance until I have a Visa, but I have paperwork from an insurance company saying that they will insure me when I have my Visa.  We will see if this is enough. 
I have begun work on a new performance piece, not sure what it will be like, except that I will use some text and movement.  But that's all I know so far!  Beginnings are exciting!

My external hard drive with all my media and back ups on it stopped working yesterday.  It still shows up in my disk utility but refuses to be repaired.  It's not the end of the world, just the end of my itunes until I figure out how to transfer the music from my ipod back onto my computer.  Luckily it's Western Digital, which they have in Deutschland, so I can most likely get a replacement drive.  I still have the HE documentation from Berlin on a mini-dv tape.  And I have most of my important documents in google docs as well as on a hard drive in America.  So it's annoying, not tragic.  Still, this disruption of my fragile world is distressing.  Robert thinks he may be able to recover my files for me.  Everything will be okay.

I guess I have been here for a while, because I don't take my camera with me everywhere anymore.  Still, I am due for a photo expedition sometime soon.  All of you who read this deserve some photos, right?  

Asia is on her way over for some theatre work, so I guess that's all for now.  I'm glad to have a new collaborator.  Still, I really miss Eve and the way she would snap at me, "Harvey!"  and then everyone would laugh...

Eve, Me, Robert, outside Sandmann on Reuterstraße

The Tower, Housing, Stumbling Through A Language

The Tower is a very trying Tarot card to receive in a spread.  It is about the world crumbling around you, everything falling apart so something new can occur.  Sometimes this card is necessary, but it is never an easy thing to pull.  While I have not drawn the tower in quite some time, there have been moments where I have really felt like this is what has been happening to me. 
*Something is wrong with my Paypal account. 
*It is getting very cold.
*I have no work permit and need a job.
*Immigration and all the papers I must get together and all the money I need to manifest completely overwhelm me.
*I need to find a place to live by November 1st.
*I don't speak the language here and it is hard to learn because all my friends speak good English.

It's a lot.  But deep breaths.  Things are beginning to look up.
When it rains it pours and now instead of having no options for housing, I may have two.  Jana Korb, who I met through my first gig here at ZirCouplet is flatmates with Tobias Stiefel, who is the MC of the varieté show.  Jana is going to be traveling for over a month in November and then Tobias will be travelling in December and January.  So they have space for me to rent in their giant home in Kruezberg.  I said yes to this.  It is at the top of my manageable price range (250€/month.) I have the rent for November and I have over a month to find a job.  With my tenacity, I can manage this.  Then, two days ago, I get a text from a WG (Wohngehmeinschaft: shared space, generally somewhat communal) that they would like to meet me.  They have 2 large dogs and are across the street.  It's a little cheaper (220€/month), there is a shared vegetarian food budget of 20€ per week, and 9 other women live there.  The flat is the 2nd or 3rd floor of a converter warehouse and has a community space that is a bar once a month on Thursdays and I could possibly have rehearsals/teach workshops there if I went to a few meetings.  I would not be allowed to cook meat in the house, but that is really the only rule.  Meat is expensive anyway.  This doesn't bother me at all.  Honestly, this WG is my Berlin fantasy.  I hope I get it.  Otherwise, I am very excited to live for a month with Tobias and then a few months with Jana.  It is a hard choice to make, actually.  I don't know what I want more.  The house in Kruezberg is warm with a woodburning stove.  Hmm. 
Maybe I will not get the room in the WG and it will be decided for me.
I have been beginning to get my things together for my trip to the Auslanderbehörde (alien's authority.)  Most daunting right now is health insurance, mostly because I can't read German well enough to navigate the websites.  Also, the fact that I have to bring a translator with me to the Auslandbehörde.  Also, everything.  But I really shouldn't go until the end of November anyway, as my Visa is not up until December 12th.  My German class is from November 21st to December 16th, so I'll have to get a little bit of an extension, anyway.
And I discovered something.  If you don't immediately get your Visa, they don't just tell you to go back to your home country.  Nope!  They give you an appointment to come back with the stuff you were missing or need to amend and an extension on your Visa until that appointment.  So I figure as long as I can keep myself housed and fed, this is what I will do.  Even when I come back to the States for a few months to teach summer camp in June, I can still be working with the German Embassy there to get me my year long Visa.  Or maybe the first time I go will be I will luck out with someone nice and I will get it the first time.  The point is, if I make the effort, I will be able to stay here legally. 
It's not just me that can do this!  I am not magic. I am just driven!  If you don't like a situation you are in, leave!  Find something better!  Take a risk at failure! 
Go somewhere where you don't speak the language!  Stumble and fall!  Be afraid and sit with the fear!  Challenge yourself!  You can get back up!  You can!
And speaking of language, it is really hard to practice your German when you can hardly ask "Vas ist dein Name?" and "Woher kommst du?" when the person you are talking to speaks English well enough to have deep philosophical conversations with you about how the mind works, what makes us attracted to certain people, and how fear can control us if we aren't careful.  You begin to feel like you will never be able to be so fluent and why not just speak English.  This is not a good feeling when you sit alone with it or you realize that you don't know how to ask someone if they need help.
Last night on my way home from watching this month's Zir Couplet show, I sat on the train across form a Turkish man who obviously wanted to talk to me.  We made eye contact.  "Ist Kalt!"  He exclaimed, rubbing his hands together. 
"Ja!" I agree.  "Ist Kalt."
He says something else and I am confused.  "Es tut mir leid," the words feel blocky coming out of my mouth.  "Mein Deutsch ist nicht so gut.  Langsamer, bitte."  He says it again.  I understand a tiny bit.  "Ah, America!  San Francisco, California."
He asks how long I have been here.  Slowly.  I can't really understand every word, but I know what we are talking about.
"Ein monat.  Ich Versuchen,"  I stumble.  Did I say the word right?  Versuchen- I try.  I think I conjugated it wrong, though!  I feel my face get hot.  But the man is so patient.  He smiles at me.  I try again.  "Ich versuchen bleiban."  He nods.  I say, "Ich versuchen bleiban.  Visa. . ."  I trail off. 
"Visa problems."  He says.
"Ja."
The train stops.  "Viel Glück." He says as he departs.
I feel like an idiot because I am so ridiculously proud of myself.  I just need to start trying more.  I wonder what kind of reward I could give myself for going out into the world and speaking no Englisch for a few hours?  I wonder if I would cry?  We'll see!

Vending Machine at Ostbanhof: Candy, Red Bull, 

 

Condoms, Pregnancy Test