Up and down... and up

Huh, it's been a while again. Just the highlights, I guess...

Monday night was the CDU rally in Kiel. I've been rather apolitical my whole life, but folks in the group wanted to check it out, so I tagged along to give it a try. Germany had a massive election today, and the big deal has been the decision between the sitting Bundeskanzler (Chancellor) Gerhard Schröder and the challenger, Angela Merkel. It's an interesting situation, because the special election was called basically because after the last election the government couldn't work. Germany has a whole lot of political parties, and as near as I can tell there were enough folks in opposition to Schröder in high enough places that he couldn't get stuff done. Thus, a recall.

Here's my proof that I actually went to this thing. Yay blurry-cam... There were lots of supporters, of course, and also some protesters, inside and outside the rally fence. The kids with dreadlocks and green party signs were outside for the most part, but I did see a woman chuck a bottle of water in the direction of the incoming politicians. If you want some incisive commentary and better pictures, I'd suggest Andrew's blog. We've talked about it a little in my German classes. The process is pretty complicated here, especially given the number of political parties.

The results have just come in in the past couple of hours, and it looks like Germany has its first female Chancellor. Now the parties have to finagle themselves into some sort of pecking order, decide who is for and against who, and get down to business. Sounds humongously complicated to me!

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Hmm, what else happened this week? I've got only two weeks left in Kiel. I'm excited about Göttingen, of course, but not so much about the prospect of shaking my life up yet again. My host family and advisor are ready for me, but I still feel really unsettled about the whole thing. Give it time, I guess.

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Ah yes, Thursday. Thursday was hard. I had a really frustrating Hörverstandnis class. Listening comprehension is still my weak point, but it's unquestionably obnoxious to bomb an exercise that I know how to do, if only it were written instead of oral! I can mix up correlative and subordinate clauses with the best of 'em. Give me two sentences, and I'll put them together in a second. Unless I have to remember all the words in the sentence at the same time. That's just not nice.

So I cried in class, which was pretty embarassing. Sure, there are plenty of other things going on in my life, and the fact that I hadn't broken down yet meant that it was probably overdue. But in class?

I got a nice pep talk from my teacher afterwards. The poor sound quality of the recordings makes it hard, the exercise itself is geared towards students in a higher level than my class, nobody was getting it totally right, yadda yadda yadda. What really frustrates me is that there isn't much I can do. Memorizing lists of words doesn't help, and the grammar and structure isn't really a problem. But that's book-learnin', and I could do that all day. How do you study hearing a language?

You live immersed in it. One day it just starts to click.

Grr. I want that day to be NOW.

So I went home for lunch, had a good cry, made myself a sammich and some hot peppermint tea. And felt SO much better.

Later that night we had another movie. This one is called "Das Wunder von Bern" (The Miracle of Bern) and is sort of about soccer, namely the 1954 German world cup championship team... but it's also about postwar German culture and family life. Sappy sweet ending and sympathetic characters, with gorgeous cinematography (as pretty as "Amelie," in my book) and some cathartically gritty moments. Maybe I was in the right mood for it that day...

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Friday we attempted to relocate our Kultur class, ostensibly so the teacher wouldn't have to commute from Flensburg (he ended up just cancelling class) and so we could join some other Burse residents in a trip to the Flensburg brewery. Things started okay... Nice train ride, amusing movie about the history of the brewery. After that, I was mostly bored. I was too fried from class to pay attention on the tour, so I spent an hour or so looking at pipes for no reason. Then we get to our dinner and taste testing... "Dinner" is bread, butter, some kind of fish salad, and a dubious table meat. I tried the fish stuff and ate butter bread.

Okay, I knew going into it that beer isn't my thing. I didn't want to drink anything, but with a little encouragement I tried the Radler, which is half lemonade. EUGH. It was like lemon pledge with a beery aftertaste. The Pilsener, the Dunkel, the Weiß... a little sip and... never again. The only thing I could really drink was the Malz, which was like a carmelized ginger ale. It was also alcohol free.

Folks wanted to stay late and go dancing, but I started to feel like the whole thing had been a bit of a waste, so after we walked halfway across town for a bit more food I picked up the early train home. Little did I know I'd have to wait 40 minutes for the last bus... So. Foul mood.

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The next morning we had a group adventure planned to the open-air museum in Molfsee, with a scavenger hunt. I woke up about five minutes before my bus was supposed to be there, so that didn't so much happen. I blame the brewery tour.

Actually, that wasn't so bad. Since I didn't do Molfsee I had the chance to go to the Chor-Schnuppen-Samstag event, an invitation for new folks to try the choir, which had been advertised at the concert last week and at church. I got out my handy-dandy map and had a bit of an adventure. The music wasn't very hard, the choir wasn't very good... but it felt wonderful to sing - loud! - for a couple of hours. I haven't exercised those muscles in too long. I introduced myself, and got to read the text of a couple of songs aloud to the group so they could hear how English is supposed to be pronounced. I don't think it made much of a difference, though...

At the break, we had coffee, tea, and cakes. Homemade confections from all the adorable little old German choir ladies! I could do that any day. I sat next to the token tenor and we talked about the popularity of classical choral music in the U.S. versus Europe... and the universal lack of male voices in choirs. I started to feel pretty good about my German again, which was just what I needed.

I made some pasta for dinner. I don't think this cooking thing is going to be so bad, either. When in doubt, broil some veggies, sliced peppers, carrots, or zucchini, with olive oil and a little salt and pepper. I didn't even know what broiling was before I got here. How did I ever survive?

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Which brings us to today. Most of the group took a day trip to Lübeck, but I stayed in Kiel and went to church. Today we had some guest musicians from St. Petersburg, a trio of opera singers. St. Heinrich's really is a very musical space, and it was gorgeous. Every week I really do understand a little bit more, but why oh why don't they have a Missalette here with the mass parts and responses? Maciej, one of the teachers from the Lektorat, happened to come to the 11:00 service and sat with me, which was nice, especially since he helped me with the right responses! He walked me home too since he lives just down the road, and we had a great conversation. He's leaving Kiel in two weeks too, going back to Poland for a new teaching job.

I grilled myself some chicken with lots of pepper for dinner. Another successful day.

I have a test tomorrow, so I should probably study a little. Maybe I'll go to bed early!

Life is good.