A million miles

I feel like I’ve traveled so far in the past week… Even though the longest distance I’ve covered in this adventure was just under two months ago, this leg feels somehow more significant. I’m pretty experienced with transitions at this stage of my life. From my comfortable cradle at Kenyon to my (in some ways even less demanding) life at home with family and great job… to a new country, new friends, new school, but still with the distinct sensation that things were being taken care of for me. A caveat… it’s not that someone is holding my hand every step of the way. But at the same time, with orientation meetings, the full staff of the Lektorat in Kiel at my disposal, and a fast-established network of friends, I only rarely felt the pressures of my newfound independence.

Now things are a little different. My host family has smoothed things immensely. Getting picked up from the train station, the ability to send luggage and important mail ahead to a real address, having a place to sleep the first few nights and good food to eat, help finding my bike, exploring the city with the guidance of knowledgeable residents, not to mention intangibles such as learning culture bit by bit simply through daily interaction… without these wonderful gifts I think I’d feel totally adrift and possibly would have had a breakdown by now. And yet, it’s become fully apparent to me that this is the critical stage in my own development, meine private Weiterentwicklung. And it's scary.

Is it sink or swim? In some ways, the pressure is low. Fulbright cares that I generally make good use of my time here, but if my project sinks or I drop… or fail… all my classes the only consequences are self-enforced. Ah, therein lies the rub. Perfectionism is my favorite pathology.

From whence spout these feelings of self-doubt, though? Luckily, I’m not particularly given to existential angst. Still, there are a lot of unknowns, and enough near-misses (e.g. the train on the way here) to unsettle me a little. Things that should be helping, my host family, church yesterday, are rather failing to set everything right. It’s a strain to try and fit in with a new family and be a good guest, especially when it requires all your daily concentration to follow the small-talk. St. Vinzenz is nice enough, but unfortunately modern and cramped compared to St. Heinrich’s in Kiel, with its high arched ceiling and bright windows… The music is a little more singable, but I still don’t know the songs. By week six in Kiel the congregation was studded with familiar faces, including one of my classmates and one of the teachers from the Lektorat.

Eh, these things take time.

I had a good bike trip with Wolfgang through the town yesterday. I don’t have my bearings quite yet, but places are starting to look familiar. Kiel was bigger, but more spread-out. The stadtzentrum in Göttingen is so jam-packed with shops and streets that I can barely process it. Also, Kiel had a big water landmark, the fjord. In St. Louis I tend to know where I am and where I’m going if I know where the river is, and I adopted the fjord very easily for the same purpose. There are a couple of main streets here that will be useful, but streets are deceptive. They change names on you, for starters. I’ll have to spend more time with the map.

The trip yesterday was also a bit disarming due to the fact that I could barely keep up with my host-dad. Okay, he’s not old and decrepit or anything… but it’s been a while since I’ve been on a bike, and I think he picked the hilliest path in town, along the route of the old city wall. I’m accustomed to a crappy bike that is too small for me and refuses to shift gears unless we’re on a total flat straightaway and I give at least two business day’s advanced notice in the form of a notarized brief, on letterhead, in triplicate, preferably signed in blood. Thus, given a bike that actually works, I'm at rather a loss about how to proceed. Technically, I should raise Flora’s seat a little for complete peddling comfort… but then I’d have to walk everywhere because there’s no way I could get on, let alone get started. Even now I’m pretty wobbly. So for now, I’m “Stokesing it” (with all due apologies to BSII) and a very real threat to myself and innocent bystanders. Next on agenda: purchase helmet, grow some leg muscles.

Super exciting and super scary… I met Dr. Hüther today and got a brief tour of the lab/clinic and environs. I have my own desk space! There are lots of cool scientific machines that make cool scientific noises and do cool scientific things! It was very general. I saw most of the wing of the building I’ll be working in, including the locked door to the psychiatric ward, which is attached. (Apparently sometimes you might “hear things” from over there, but the staff usually has things under control. Ahem.) I met a colleague who will be my direct supervisor for my project. He introduced himself as "Herman the German," and at the moment I forget his last name... Oh, my project! Get ready for this… no rats for me this time. It’s omlettes from now on. That’s right, I’m studying protein expression in chicken embryos. The model is really good for developmental studies of the proteins relevant in dementia pathology, because they are completely identical to their counterparts in the human nervous system. And just as tasty.

After the introduction Dr. H and I went into the city for coffee (or in my case hot cocoa) and ice cream. (I could get used to an advisor who buys me ice cream…) I went into the day staunchly resolved to speak only German, but the topics quickly eclipsed my miniscule vocabulary, so I resorted to a sort of half-and-half. Disappointing, but still a good conversation. Dr. H studied biology in east Germany, but hopped the wall to come to Göttingen and help found the research institute here. Now he spends lots of time writing, and he gave me a copy of his first book, Biologie der Angst: Wie aus Streß Gefühle werden. Ironically relevant to my current situation. I had planned to start a novel this week to help my language, but I think I’ll begin with this one. It’s sort of a general guide to today’s understanding of neuronal plasticity of networks and pathways, especially in terms to experiential learning, and how we can use our understanding of these systems to tame our emotions and make life a little better.

We’re meeting again tomorrow morning to go through the nitty-gritty details, and hopefully soon I’ll get underway… but I’ve got a lot to learn. I’ve done HPLC work and protein chromatography, but I’ve got to learn PCR and a whole host of other methods in a short time. And find some useful classes… and get this dorm room thing settled so I have a place to live at the end of the month. Yikes.

Ah, the unknown and unforeseeable future. When will I learn to embrace it for all the potential beauties it holds?

Maybe tomorrow. Maybe tonight after I talk to Mike. Maybe after I read this book…