Dee
@deedotk
🇺🇸 immigrant in Berlin. 🇩🇪 || Interests: climate/labor/antiracism/intersectional fem. FC Union Berlin. nd✨
Workout Wednesday: Best Laid Plans. I had a whole plan to ride all the way down the Teltow Kanal to Steglitz, alas the trail is blocked just past Lichterfelde. I improvised and went down past my beloved Kirschblütenallee and Mauerweg!
Gwen is clingy and empathetic towards her humans today, and I have to assume she understands why her brother didn’t come home yesterday. Exhibit A: Today by my desk. 💔
This distinguished senior gentleman has had a few seizures over the past day, so we are headed to the vet. Hoping we can make him comfortable, but bracing myself. The hits just don’t stop coming.
Lovely picnic with @themerlins.bsky.social! First stop was the Zehlendorf Wochenende Markt, then to Krumme Lanke. Round trip was a 18 km ride, this was just one segment
Hallo Krumme Lanke It wouldn’t be Berlin lake experience without naked men swimming either 😂
No words for this holiday, this picture sums it up for me. Photo credit: Robert Cohen of the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, taken during the Ferguson uprising after Mike Brown's murder at the hands of the state.
We ride at dawn 🚲💨 It’s supposed to be 103f/40c today, so I got outside while it was still below 25c. Still sweaty. Also saw some last poppies of the season and a message on the old GDR road. Very hot crows and horses too, but thankfully no wayward hedgehogs.
But Germany is home now. Only in the way that places you chose, rather than were born into, can feel like home. 11/12
Meanwhile my daughter, then 16, walked into a Berlin IB school to complete her International Baccalaureate. New education system, new language, new city, no childhood friends, no frame of reference. Every reason to struggle. 7/12
Advocating for people who didn’t always know they had the right to be advocated for turned out to be one of the most meaningful things I’ve done in my working life. 6/12
Year two, I decided navigating one country’s bureaucracy wasn’t enough. My employer was full of immigrants who’d never heard of a Betriebsrat. So I helped set one up from scratch, ran for election, won a seat, and served as a full-time works council member for two years. 5/12
That first Christmas: Querdenker demonstrators at the markets, shouting at people like us for masking up and getting vaccinated. A warm introduction to the culture wars. We masked anyway. 🎄😷 4/12
Five years ago, I landed in Berlin with half a container of goods, a 16-year-old, two dogs, and a German vocabulary best described as “survival-level.” I’d never visited the city. I didn’t speak the language. The world was mid-pandemic. I came for love. 🧵 1/12
Pro Klima local air unit. We picked it up at Obi when we moved into this place with third floor/dach bedrooms. We run it only in the evening.
