Today I visited the Spielwiese game shop/cafe in Berlin. The model is unique: for a small fee you can spend all day in the cafe playing games. Or you can pay to check out a game and take it home. Or you can buy games.

I went in and stood in the doorway for a moment, trying to decide if I actually felt like playing or if I was content just to observe for a bit and go home. Before I could make up my mind I was invited over to a table where several people were just starting a card game. We spent an hour-and-a-half trying to figure out the rules and playing a few rounds before agreeing we didn’t like it. During that time the others at the table would periodically ask me questions about myself. I decided to be vague about what I was doing in Germany, and simply told them I was in-country for an academic project. Sometimes I just want people to want to have conversations with me because I’m me, and not because they’ve just learned about an exotic fellowship I happen to have.

After abandoning the card the game we played a very basic board game that was roughly 99% luck. After the second round I casually commented that it was an extremely simple game. “But sometimes that’s ok, I think,” answered one of the men at the table. “Unless you told us your research here was about games! Then maybe we would play something more complicated and interesting.”
“That’s exactly what my research is about,” I answered matter-of-factly.

Thinking that I was making an awkward attempt at deadpan, they politely laughed at my joke.

Lodging has been a bit of an adventure on this trip. Armenia was pretty good. My apartment was decrepit, somewhat expensive, and noisy, but the location was central and I had total freedom. In Germany I originally intended to do a fair bit of couchsurfing, having heard that it’s a great way to meet people and save money.

In the last month, however, I have sent out thirty-five requests, thirty-three of which have either been rejected or received no response. The other two I ended up staying at. The first was in Munich. I was hosted politely but thoroughly patronizingly. The second was in Essen where I went for the annual Spiel Convention (more on that soon).

I had agreed to meet my hosts at the rail station near their apartment. Five minutes after our agreed-upon meeting time I was called and informed that I would be met by her friend, who would arrive in five minutes. Other than my host holding forth on the ignorance of Americans and the irrationality of my parents’ line of work, the first night was largely unobjectionable.

Upon being informed that in America I did not go clubbing on a regular basis, I was immediately invited to a party my hosts were attending on the third night. I politely declined. When that night came around I returned home at around 10pm, exhausted and hoping to go immediately to bed. Instead I was greeted at the door by my host, who explained that the raucous sounds I heard were from a party in the kitchen (where I slept on the couch), and that in an hour they would leave for the real party. I opted to work in the other room until they left. I went immediately to bed and fell asleep, only to be woken up at 4am by loud talking and the hall light being turned on. I lay awake on the couch, frustrated that they weren’t more thoughtful about making noise so late. A moment later, however, there was a loud knock on the door, and before I could respond they came in and turned the light on.

“Hi, Jesse,” one of them said to me. I stared at him for a moment, dumbfounded as to what could justify the intrusion.
“Hi.”
“Well, we’ve just returned from the party, and we’ve been drinking.”
I nodded.
“And so we would like to make some food–some pizza–so if you could just sleep in the other room–is that alright?” My options, I felt, were either a tirade or passivity. Too tired to summon the necessary feeling for the former, I nodded cheerfully and picked up my blanket and pillow.
“You can sleep in any of the rooms,” my host generously offered, “we’ll just be making pizza.”

I left a day early, only just resisting the urge to leave a note oozing with passive-aggressiveness.

(The next night I stayed in a hostel in Berlin, where large groups of Italians deemed it decent to hold loud conversations at 3am and where the others in my room deemed it decent to turn the light on at 4am to find their toothbrush.)

You hear a lot about German engineering. There’s a reason you don’t hear so much about German aesthetic design. This chintzy neon blue and lime green monstrosity with mirrors for a ceiling is the Munchner Freiheit metro station. Locals, I am told, love it.

I went to the weekly meeting of one of Munich’s larger chess clubs last Friday. Severe culture shock after two months of playing at the chess house in Yerevan. There I played on old, cracked tables with stained and chipped plastic pieces. The men were often silent while playing, but occasionally the stronger players would attract a group of spectators who would loudly discuss the proceedings both amongst themselves and with the players. There were several regulars I saw an average of 3-4 times per week for two months who were always in exactly the same outfit. The people in Yerevan were old, relaxed, retired men. For many it seemed to be as much about being around other people as it was playing games of chess. Sometimes after playing they would stick around and watch other games for a half hour before going home.

Munich is clean and expensive. It is where Germans go to live once they have made it or where they live if they are in the process of making it, or if their parents really made it. The chess club met in a clean, well lit pub a little ways outside of the city center. A few weeks ago I made an acquaintance in Munich whom I’d first gotten in touch with online. He introduced me to a friend who sent an email to a friend who in turn gave me information on the chess club and the name of a friend who would be there. He also, apparently, emailed his friend, and when I arrived and introduced myself I was cheerfully greeted by a group of young to middle-aged men, all very neatly and stylishly dressed.

After peppering me with basic questions about my project one of the men in charge asked, “so are you here to watch us and take notes? Or to play? Or something else?” I indicated that I would like to play. “And do you have a FIDE rating?”
“No,” I said, “I haven’t played competitively.”
“Ah,” the man said softly. He smiled. “A hobby player, then.”

He decided that he would play with me and led me into the side room the club had reserved. A large locked wooden cabinet was opened to reveal neat stacks of tournament-sized boards, new chess clocks, and expensive wooden pieces.

I lost twice, the second time fairly respectably. The man I was playing with had to leave, but another volunteered and we played one game before I headed home. As I waited for him to make his moves I observed others playing. Everyone had special pads to write down the moves of their games. When they finished they analyzed the more interesting positions of the game together and discussed their respective thought processes.

The disparity between Yerevan and Munich was remarkable. Never in two months in Armenia did I see a player marking down the moves in the game. The $0.27 fee for checking out pieces was enough that some men chose to watch others play rather than check out pieces themselves. In Munich people pay $3 to ride the metro to the pub and buy special pads to write down their chess games as they drink $5 beers while playing on $30 boards with $80 pieces and $50 clocks.

Curiously enough, however, the poor man’s training I received in Yerevan proved plenty adequate for my third game.