I just couldn't restrain myself, so here we go (Part 1):
0.04 ® Willibald Alexis was a German poet in the 19th century, sort of a predecessor of Theodor Fontane;
0.09 Katzbach is a town in Silesia, there was a battle in the Liberation [from Napoleon] Wars 1813-15
0.15 Möckern is near Magdeburg - there, too, was a battle in the war against Napoleon.
0.20 (N) People who are different, like autistic people, make our society colourful and interesting
0.30 I always know where the streets are running, I've got a map of Berlin and other cities in my head, I've got what you could call a 'Google-Earth-perspective'
0.39 (title) My world has 1,000 puzzles
0.42 (title) The life and thinking of highly gifted autistics
0.50 (title) 37° [that's the series] - a film by Chiara Sambuchi
0.55 (speaker) Nicole Schuster, age 22, is author of childrens' stories, of scientific texts about autism, and of newspaper articles.
1.06 (N) I love to play with language. Writing is a chance for me to be able to send messages from my 'autistic cage'.
1.22 When speaking eye-to-eye, I often remain speechless.
1.28 (speaker) The young woman has got Asperger's syndrome, a form of autism that often goes side-by-side with an extraordinary intelligence.
1.36 (N) The person who I am now - I can speak, I can communicate, I can function in day-to-day life - would not have been possible without my high giftedness.
1.47 I've learned language only intellectually [as opposed to intuitively], to babble suddenly like normal children never happened with me, I've never imitated people or voices, I never was interested in people. With the help of a therapist, I had to learn the words letter by letter.
2.08 (speaker) Like to talk in ten languages simultaneously, that's the level of stress for Rainer when talking to other people. To translate texts is much easier. The 38 year old from Berlin works as a translator and speaks three languages fluently. That he can work for a living in spite of his Asperger's syndrome is due to his extraordinary intelligence.
2.29 ® I think that by way of my intelligence I am able to compensate. The access to the world doesn't work intuitively with me, especially with other people involved, but only consciously, per way of the head, by thinking about it.
2.44 (speaker) By day, Rainer completes his translation jobs, in the evenings and by night, he collects knowledge and writes background articles for an online encyclopedia, as a volunteer.
2.54 ® I'm one of the most active 'Wikipedians', I usually write 40 to 50 articles per day. The internet is the ideal medium for autistics as there is no eye-to-eye contact which could overwhelm you in that situation, but you communicate like in a forum by way of the texts that you write.
3.16 (speaker) Scrupulously he archives: his articles on the different subjects: Classical antiquity and modern history, chronicles of the year 250 BC up to the present.
3.29 ® I'm there for about two years, and I've written about 25,000 articles there.
3.34 (speaker) But these abilities which could make jealous have a dark side:
3.38 ® It's being alien to the world, that's how you feel, elementary. The Asperger's syndrome has been called 'wrong plant syndrome', that is you are like an alien who watches the humans like natives, and you have to watch them to learn how their rituals are functioning.
4.03 You belong to some other kind of human being, - it's difficult to explain because you make the impression of being normal, but you have the general feeling of just being different.
4.15 (speaker) Every morning at exactly 5.04 am Nicole rises, at 6.35 am after her exercises and having been to the bathroom she goes to the kitchen to prepare her lunch. Every day she eats the same: Savoy cabbage. The daily routine has tp be observed by the minute.
4.31 (N) I'm very inflexible, I very seldom am able to act spontaneously, as this would mean a changing of plans. For me, a day is a Good Day when he follows the usual routine, part of which is that I'm able to cook the Savoy cabbage in the morning. Savoy cabbage is not only a vegetable for me, but synonymous to certain routines.
4.59 (speaker) Nicole lives in the same house as her parents, but very seldom there's someone allowed to enter her room and nothing has to be touched there. Moving an object would mean an intolerable change of things for her. Only three years ago she got her diagnosis of Asperger's syndrome, before that she had to fight with depressions and anorexia, overwhelmed by her own tries of being normal.
5.20 (N) I have felt being different all my life, but I've thought it was due to personal failure, that I was a strange person, that there was something wrong with me, I've worked on it by myself, always in the hope that 'soon, everything will be all right, you just have to try harder'.
5.38 And there it was a relief for me to hear 'you're not wrong, you're all right, everything's normal' and on the other hand to get to know that 'it's a handicap, there's no cure, you'll have to live with certain deficits for the rest of your life.'
5.56 As long as everything follows the routines and she can eat Savoy cabbage with potatoes, Nicole's world is all right.
6.16 (MRT clip - ID) ... first we do a so-called 'localizer' to see how you're placed in there. It'll start to 'clack' a bit.
6.24 (speaker) A project of the Max-Planck-Institute at Berlin. Isabel Dziobek and other researchers explore the brain of Asperger's autistics to see how they realize other people's feelings and how they interpret their emotions. Rainer is one of the participants.
6.38 (ID) ... then our test will start now, ok?
6.44 (speaker) His brain is being watched via the MRT while he watches pictures and answers questions about the emotions of the people shown there. Autistics often have difficulties in getting the emotions and feelings of whom they talk with.
7.05 (ID) [white noise]
7.11 ® Relatively simple were the questions male-female, older-younger. If there are extreme differences, such as happy/unhappy, that's easier to spot for me. Where the differences between the emotions are not so big, I tend to confuse them.
7.35 (speaker) Autistic people process sensory information different from normal people. They perceive their world differently.
7.44 ® I look for details, mostly, I see patterns and scripture, details of house fronts and ornaments rather than people and faces.
7.58 (speaker) The special perception often makes the world incomprehensible and frightening.
8.04 ® I always have to know where I am, where I'm heading, I always have to have my [inner] compass, my map, my exact orientation in my head, that's how I feel secure.
8.15 Texts, words, language, uncommon names, and in connection with these the geography, so that I link them to geographical positions, how the streets run, which place is where, all that is always present in my head.
8.45 (speaker) Nicole studies pharmacy in Dusseldorf. Thanks to her high intelligence she does well. She already had got her 'Abitur' on a 'fast-track'. Attending university means she had to give up her strict routines, which are her only 'stronghold' in a - to her - incomprehensible world.
9.06 (N) A day on which I have to attend university courses is to me a day without Savoy cabbage, and that's very uncomfortable. Savoy cabbage, to me, stands for my routines, for my well-known surroundings.
9.20 (speaker) If too many different stimuli 'attack' her, Nicole has, like many other autistics, an 'emotional power failure' called 'overload'. The world is reduced to chaos: too loud, too fast, too crowded.
9.40 [end of part 1]
There goes part 2 (this time (R.) doesn't convert automatically):
0.10 (speaker) In those moments, Nicole sometimes hides in a restroom and hits her head against walls and doors..At some point it hurts so much that the overload 'phases out'. Nicole has no choice but to work together with other students at university. For coping with that she needs all her energy.
0.35 (N.) Most of the time, I'm exhausted by 3 pm but the courses go on until 6 pm and you normally have to 'run under full steam' until then to get everything done. My brain doesn't process all the informations by then, I feel like the fuses get too hot, like a mental short circuit.
0.59 (speaker) Several times a week Rainer goes to the public library. He reads up to three books a day, among others in medieval German. [The signs read:] (Geography - History)
1.13 Like an endless chain of hyperlinks he 'saves' information on every subject you can think of and in different languages. For him, this is calming, because his brain needs to be fed continually.
1.30 (R.) Whenever I'm together with people, I need a break to relax from being in their company, I mean that I very much have to concentrate: what do they want from me, how do I react, ... how do I prepare for it? ... and that's very exhausting. All this interpersonal stuff doesn't exist with the books, there's just the text and I'm able to concentrate on the text.That's very important for me. I'm just a 'book guy' and a 'language guy' and not so much a social being, that's my way of thinking.
2.11 I've got not so many possibilities to relax because my brain is working all the time, but there are some opportunities where I stay awake all night until I'm totally exhausted.
2.23 (song)
3.03 (R.) I go to clubs not so much to chat up people, because that's very difficult for me, I'm unable to just talk to somebody, it doesn't work with me like that. What I intend to do here is to dance by myself the whole night, to listen to the music by myself, to go home exhausted and tired at the end to be able to get a real good sleep, for example.
3.37 I could imagine a romantic relationship, principally, but to flirt is really an art - to 'get' what does the other want from me, what am I to do about that, - that's not easy for someone like me.
3.54 (N.) Immediate closeness to another human being is insupportable for me. I'm too scared by the prospect of short, sudden touches.They trigger a reaction to flee instinctively.
4.21 (speaker) Nicole's parents were clueless for a long time about what their daughter really needed. At first, they didn't know how to handle her. At age 5, she was treated to a speech therapy. At that time she had invented a language of her own which no one could understand.
4.43 (speaker) A difficult time for her parents, who watched their child develop with astonishment.
4.48 (N.'s mother) She very early started to read books on psychology, at age ten, and I thought this must be her passion, and she just likes it, but now she tells me she wanted to find out how interpersonal relations work because she hadn't had any clue how it worked. It was a foreign area for her and she worked her way towards understanding by reading those books.
5.18 (N.'s father) The problem was when she forced herself to have closer contact with other pupils, girl friends of hers, therefore she knew that it's normal to have contact to other people, and for her then, at a sleep-over here or at their place, it was hell for her. Meaning that she 'got it' intellectually, but she suffered infinitely
5.51 (speaker) Nicole and her parents live separately even if the live in the same house. They arrange a schedule who is to use the kitchen at what time, because even contact to her family exhausts her. She doesn't look for a partner, either.
6.03 (N.) I don't have the need for closeness, nor for 'twosomeness', I'd prefer to be on my own, to live my own life, rather than to take care about someone else.
6.15 (speaker) Happiness, though, is a feeling Nicole knows very well.
6.20 (N.) I feel happy about little things, for example when I see a fresh Savoy cabbage that my mother has bought at the farmer's, which was harvested freshly from the field and is really big, mouth-watering, that means happiness for me.
6.37 (speaker) Meeting of the editors of the online encyclopedia. In this special setting Rainer's being different doesn't register.
6.47 (R.) Here, there's no small-talk, it's not about who knows whom, who likes whom, or who dislikes whom and so on, that's of no importance here. Here, it's all about whether an article is good or not, the discussions are about the facts, ideally, and that's a kind of positive reinforcement if you get good ratings by other users.
7.16 (speaker) A good day is a day with Savoy cabbage ['Ein guter Tag ist ein Tag mit Wirsing', only available in German] - Nicole has thought and written much about Asperger's autism from her point of view as well as from a scientific view.
7.29 (N.) I've written my book for several reasons: Firstly because I'm writing all the time, then I wanted to share my experiences, and then I see it as a gesture to 'give something back'.
7.54 (speaker) Rainer is on his way to Cologne. He is on his way to a lecture for which he prepares his own way.
8.04 (R.) That's one of my quirks, I always look how many pages there are - in this case 336 - and then I note: that's a quarter, that's half of the book, something to do with geometry, maths, at this point I've read one third, and the book is by Nicole Schuster where she describes from her point of view as an insider how it feels like to have Asperger's syndrome.
8.24 (speaker) A short time before Nicole reads from her book: Joy and overwhelming stress at the same time.
8.30 (N.) I don't know how I feel afterwards. In order to answer questions, I have to muster all my concentration and attention again ...
8.38 (speaker) Each detail had to be fixed days in advance: Length of the reading, exact position of the microphone, for Nicole to be able to take part at all.
8.48 (moderator) Ladies and gentlemen, a warm welcome to you, we appreciate very much that today Miss [in German: Frau translates Miss or Mrs] Schuster is our guest. Miss Schuster is the auther of a book called 'A good day is a day with Savoy cabbage'. Let me just 'hand over' to her and ask her to start her lecture.
9.10 (N.) Life without autism - is this to be desired? This question I can answer with a simple 'no' in my case. To me, my autism is not an illness that should be cured. To me, my autism is a special way of life, of thinking, feeling, and acting. My wish for the future is not a cure from autism, but a higher consciousness/respect for people who are different. Life without autism is unimaginable for me, it would stop to be my life.
10.06 [end of part 2]