A Berlin Thanksgiving

As promised, I've got lots of pictures fom my weekend trip to Berlin. Andrew lives in Friedrichshain, an area on the east side pretty close to Prenzlauerberg, which is where Martin lives. Unfortunately my host-brother was in Hannover while I was in town, but I had plenty of people to catch up with and meet!

I left Göttingen a little after 9am on Thursday morning, got to Hannover for my transfer around 10:30, and had to wait an extra half hour for my train to Berlin Ostbahnhof. That leg took another two hours, and then I walked/biked from the train station, finally arriving a little after 2. Cooking was already underway, but we did decide to take a break and play some American-style football in the park across the street. My team lost 3-5, but it was close at first! Then it was time to get back to the kitchen.


Here I am enjoying Thanksgiving cooking smells. For the number of chefs we had working at the same time, things went really smoothly. Plus, I learned how to make really yummy (if squishy) sweet potatoes!


Here is Elegant Meghan making Elegant Pumpkin... especially her Elegant Right Arm. You can see my yummy (and squishy!) sweet potatoes cooking behind her pot on the stove.


Andrew converted his spacious room into our dining room. It was a little tight, but everyone fit.


And of course, dessert. In addition to pumpkin pie and an apple turnoverish thing, we had the most beautiful - and gigantic - apple pie I've ever seen. There's a couple of kilos of apples in there.


Another Berlin Fulbrigher, Zack from Colgate, who is doing international relations. That's his pie, so due credit! I told him to look like a "happy pie man" for the photo, and this is what he came up with.


The next morning I woke up to a my first German snowfall. This is a view out the window in Andrew's apartment-mate's room, overlooking the park across the street.

We spent Friday wandering around the city and taking in the sights. I missed my family's traditional Friday-after-Thanksgiving shopping spree, but I still managed to get one important part of my Christmas shopping in - a German baby doll for my almost-three-year-old cousin.


The day got a little more gray as snow continued to fall, but we wandered around Berlin anyway. There's a giant tree in front of the Brandenburger Tor, which looks eerily pretty lit from within.


This is definitely my favorite picture. Felix, Jen, Leslie, Andrew, Amanda, and Meghan in front of the Brandenburger Tor.


And here I am, in front of the Reichstag. Maybe when I come back in March I'll finally get to go up in the dome.

We visited a couple of other Berlin Fulbrighters Friday night, watched The Big Lebowski (leider auf Englisch) and went out to a club that night. Then a bunch of us stayed up until 5am talking, which was great.

Saturday morning was a little sluggish, but we did manage to meet up with yet another Berlin Fulbrigher (there must be about a hundred of 'em) for lunch, and then I caught an evening train back to Göttingen.

It's amazing to think that it's already almost December! Seeing the Kiel crew brought me right back to this summer, and we picked up again as if the last couple of months had hardly passed. And yet, I'm flying back to St. Louis in less than three weeks (19 days!!) and two weeks later it's already 2006... and not long - about a month - after that, I'm halfway through my time here. It's definitely not as foundation-shakingly surreal as approaching graduation last year (and my heart goes out to my friends from Kenyon's class of '06, who are rapidly coming to the end of their penultimate semester) and yet, the compression of life-changing transitions that the current year has encompassed is simply unfathomable.

Funny how life works that way, endless changes. And still more to come...

Well, bring it on!

Home sweet home

What I really want to post about is my fabulous trip to Berlin and reunion with Kiel friends for Thanksgiving... but if I do that first I'll never get around to my pictures of Göttingen from last week, and I want to go out and take even more now that the Weihnachtsmarkt is open and all the decorations are up. So, first things first. It's finally starting to feel homey here, which is very nice. I suppose it was hard for me to notice at first, especially since moving out of my host family's house, but I know my way around and the town feels warm (ahem... at least figuratively...) and familiar.

I think the trip to Berlin also served to reinforce the feeling. Biking around in a big city is VERY different. I admire Andrew's ability to navigate traffic (honed to almost superhuman skill, I'm sure, by life in D.C.) but I am humongously relieved to get back to a smaller place! Not only do I feel safer on the road, but I like knowing where streets go, and feeling free to wander a little bit without a panic attack if I get a little lost.

I think it just speaks to my personality; I never once felt claustraphobic in Gambier. I didn't inherit my Dad's perspective on being lost in a city: that it's actually fun, not to mention the best way to learn shortcuts and new routes, or find little-known attractions. Poor Mike has seen firsthand what happens to me when I feel lost, and it's really not pretty. It isn't that I have a bad sense of direction or can't read a map... I just want to have a plan, and know exactly where I'm going and how I can get there at every stage along the way. I was really good at delegating the planning for Cornerstones tour in part because the thought of being solely responsible for our trip filled me with paralyzing dread. Funny then, that I'm on this massive adventure to begin with!

Hmm... Maybe it's really a good thing that I'm forced to exercise my spontaneous, adventuresome side over here. It makes next year in Chicago seem a little less scary. I know that I'm capable of dealing with things like train schedules all by myself... in German, no less... and I'm getting better about forgiving myself for making mistakes.

Anyway, here are some nice views from around Göttingen!


The Gänseliesel platz in front of the Altes Rathaus, with just the beginning stages of decorations for the Wiehnachtsmarkt.


The statue at the Nabel. Nabel literally translates to "belly button," which basically means that this is in the middle of town. (Actually it's a little north, but maybe this was the middle when it was installed?) I'm not sure of the actual title of the piece, but it's also called The Dancers, mostly because if you squint really hard you might think the figures are dancing. They actually appear to be ripping masks off one another's faces, and the child is hanging on to the woman's skirt and seems to be rapping the man across the knees with a fan.


More art: here is the Georg Christoph Lichtenburg statue, which stands in front of the Altes Rathaus. We learned in my vocab class that Lichtenburg was a famous professor of Physics at the University. He was very popular despite his small stature and hunchback; his main contribution seems to have been encouraging professors to publicize their research so interested students could actually find someone they wanted to study with. I still find the German University system hard to navigate, so I guess it's good to know that it was once much worse!


The Aula, where I have choir practice, was built between 1835 and 1837. We meet up on the top floor, at the back of the building.


Wilhelmsplatz, in front of the Aula.


I was just wandering around taking pictures at the Wilhelmsplatz when all of a sudden there were cops everywhere and a protest against atomic waste came through. I think there are protests here all the time, since it's a college town. Last week one of my German teachers told us that she was surprised that so many people came to class, since that night there was a protest against the Studiengebühr (a tuition payment for public universties that Germany is instituting this year, about €1000 a year.) Anyway, the place was suddenly overrun with kids with mowhawks carrying banners and chanting. Wild.


Some street decorations, of which many more have been put up since... and the front of the protest march, with cops on motorcycles keeping the route clear.

Now that the Christmas market is officially underway, I'll have to wander back into town and get some pictures of the festivities. There is even a Christmas-themed merry-go-round! I have some great pictures from Berlin too, so expect those in the near future.

True beauty

Wow, wow, wow. Okay, so I didn't end up going to a party yesterday, but no big deal. I went to the Choir concert at St. Jacobi tonight, the one with the Brahms. It was wonderful! I meant to post some pictures of Göttingen, but I think I'll just gush about this instead.

I was a little worried that I would be late, since I decided at the last minute to walk instead of bike. It's raining, and I was a little dressed up, so I thought it would be easier. It's a little more than a 20 minute walk, and I left at about quarter to 7 for a 7pm concert... Luckily for once German punctuality wasn't the rule, and I got to my seat with a couple minutes to spare.

It opened with organ music, J.S. Bach's Fantasie und Fuge c-moll BWV 537. St. Jacobi is a beautiful church, and I couldn't help but reflect that it's the perfect setting for this kind of music... A great sound, naturally (especially in the middle of the hall where I sat) but it's more than just that. It's a sense of timelessness, and vastness, and grandeur that doesn't need to be overstated because it's just inherent somehow. A cathedral can have the same feeling on an even larger scale, but sometimes the ornateness of it all can be off-putting... and a humongous chamber has it's own particular acoustic issues (*cough cough St. Louis Cathedral Basilica hack wheeze six second delay front to back cough*) but a church like St. Jacobi is always a joy to make music in.

The second piece in the program was Arvo Pärt, Littlemore tractus. The choir at this point was up in the loft, which I thought was perfect. It gave the piece more of an ethereal, angelic quality, which was reflected in the text, by John Henry Newman.

May he support us all the day long, till the shades lengthen, and the evening comes, and the busy world is hushed, and the fever of life is over, and our work is done! Then in his mercy may He give us safe lodging, and a holy rest, and peace at the last.

I especially loved the interlude leading into the last phrase.

After that it was another organ piece, Michael Radulescu's Organa aus "Ricercari." I found it very pretty, and for some reason it made me think of exploring a very dense forest... the lower register moved like careful footsteps, and in the upper register ther were lots of quick trilly phrases that seemed just a little bit exotic, like an unfamiliar species of bird.

Then came Felix Mendelssohn-Bartholdy, Motette: Herr nun lässest du deinen Diener in Frieden fahren. This time the choir was at the front of the church, and I was glad for the chance to see them in action. The program listed 9 sopranos, 8 altos, 5 tenors, and amazingly, 11 basses. They had scores, but it looked like they didn't need them most of the time. What also impressed me was the unity of sound. Cutoffs, consonants, and especially dynamics were consistently sharp, and the quality of phrasing brought back memories of eurhythmics lessons in Rosse hall...

Next was Quatre motets pour un temps de pénitence by Francis Poulenc. The first two movements, Timor et tremor and Vinea mea electa, were good, but it was the third that really blew me away. The Tenebrae factae sunt had some glorious moments, powefully emphasized by the excellent attention to dynamics. It doesn't hurt, of course, that the text is phemomenal. The German translation in the program:

Finsternis brach ein, als die Juden Jesum kreuzigten. Und in der neunten Stunde rief Jesus mit lauter Stimme: Mein Gott, warum hast du mich verlassen? Und neigte das Haupt und gab den Geist auf. Jesus rief mit lauter Stimme und sprach: Vater, in deine Hände empfehle ich meinen Geist.

That's right... the crucifixion. THE moment. The intensity of the music was perfect, and I was stunned. The fourth section, Tristis est anima mea, was also wonderful, comprising Jesus' fortelling of his death to the disciples... although I was still reeling from the third section at that point.

The choir got a bit of a break for the next piece, again for organ. It was Maurice Duruflé, Prelude aus der Suite op.5 and if the previous organ piece made me think of exploring, this one was more like climing a precipitous mountain. Near the end it was as if the climber had reached the peak and was surveying the little tiny world down below, and finally just the barest whiff of a hint of an idea about carefully heading down again.

The choir then sang Peter Cornelius' Requiem nach Hebbel: Seele, vergiß sie nicht. Soul, forget not Death... again, a powerful text.

But the end of the evening, and the piece that I had been waiting for, was of course the Brahms. Motete op. 74/1, Warum ist das Licht gegeben den Mühseligen. I think that it was possibly due to the position of this massive piece at the end of a strenuous program, but unfortunately it seemed rushed to me. Everything was at almost the same tempo, and it all struck me as too fast. Maybe Doc does have a flair for drawing out emotional passages... but the Siehe, wir preisen selig, die erduldet haben section just needs to be slower than the Die Geduld Hiob... To my mind it took quite a bit of the wind out of the und das Ende des Herrn habt ihr gesehen; denn der Herr ist barmherzig und ein Erbarmer. The end of that section was always the absolute peak of the song for me, the moment of rapturous grace, followed by the beautiful and peaceful text from Martin Luther. The transition itself is meaningful, taking that God-infused point and guiding us to holding on to God's love even outside of the moments of epiphany, bringing Him into our everyday, mundane lives. It exhorts the listener to trust in God even when our human foibles get in the way.

Mit Fried und Freud ich fahr dahin,
in Gottes Willen,
Getrost ist mir mein Herz und Sinn,
sanft und stille.
Wie Gott mir verheißen hat:
der Tod ist mir Schlaf worden.

In the end the piece was still powerful to me and laden with meaning, but I'd love the chance to hear the choir perform it when they weren't already exhausted!

Sigh. It was a wonderful night, whatever silly complaints I may have. Hopefully I'll get around to posting my great Göttingen pictures before I leave for Berlin on Thursday! If not, happy Thanksgiving!

And more pictures!

And here's part two!

As promised, here are photos from my trip to Berlin. Was that more than a month ago already?? First and foremost, the Brandenburger Tor, or Brandenburg gate. And yes, I saw it from both sides.

Did I mention that I saw the Regierungsviertel the day before Merkel was officially announced as the next chancellor? Unfortunately I only got to see the outside of the buildings, but it was still a neat time to visit.

From the other side. I'd love to go to the top of the dome! I'm hopefully going back to Berlin next weekend to celebrate Thanksgiving with my friends from Kiel, so maybe I can make time to do a little more sightseeing!

And finally: Studentendorf! First and formeost, the window. For whatever reason it is constantly covered in condensation, and when I leave the heater running it gets a little tropical in here... probably should see the administration about that one. Otherwise it's nice.

And the other end of the bed. Not a very big room, but then again I only have so much stuff! Normally this kind of situation would plunge me into full on belongings-accumulation mode, but so far I've tried to show some restraint. Hopefully I'll be able to keep it up!

And here is my little sink-nook. It is inhabited currently by my toothbrush, towel, and approximately 180 billion spiders. I have no idea why they like this particular space so much, but at the moment they're staying on the ceiling so we have an uneasy truce going... at least until I find a vaccum cleaner with a hose attachement.

And finally, the other corner, with desk etc. No desk lamp, unfortunately, since I still can't get the one that came with the room to attach anywhere but at the head of my bed. Otherwise, it's a nice little space. Since taking the first round of pictures I've managed to personalize it a little more with what I'd like to call "The Post-it Wall ver. 2.0" (see below.)

Anyone who has seen the wall above my bed in St. Louis knows about my particular brand of filing system. At Kenyon I tried to keep it to my desk and usually had enough wall decoration that it didn't get out of hand... but with all the empty wall space here, I'm reverting to old habits. It's just a start, but hopefully by the end of the year it will be just as impressive as the first version. Here are my current favorites, and both are already vital for my day-to-day functioning:

Oh, and I almost forgot! I promised actual content with this post, now didn't I?

I did go see the play last Friday night. It was... different. The set was minimalist with an actual budget, which is to say already way cooler than whatever we had at Rosati... Okay, that's not hard to do. I'm not sure if I can say that the set and costumes were "modern" per se, but they certainly weren't period. On the upside, I was able to follow the dialogue fairly easily. The thing that really struck me as odd, however, was that the director tried to play the show for laughs. I'm sure plenty of people laugh at the overwrought pathos of The Crucible as it is normally portrayed, particularly when it is filled with screaming, overacting high school girls... but that's a little different from throwing in a game of heavy-metal musical chairs between Parris and Hale at the top of the second act, or morphing Dansforth into an MTV VJ for the girls' fashion-runway enterance during the trial scene. Modern audiences already stuggle with understanding the characters' motivations in this piece, so why throw in nonsensical frivolity? That said, the actors still seemed to have a decent grip on the intensity of the story, so I still enjoyed it.

Last weekend the Choir sang our Bach Cantata at a church service. St. Nikolai is Evangelical, so the service was a little different from what I've been exposed to at the Catholic churches over here. That in itself was kind of neat, and luckily I've picked up enough of the Our Father to be able to mumble along a little bit, which came in handy. The music went well enough, although I felt afterwards that I had sung much better in rehearsal than the actual performance. The alto and tenor soloists (ringers, not choir members) were decent, although with the hall setup it was hard for me to hear them. I'm glad we're done with the piece and can focus on some of the other works for our other concerts, which quite frankly I like much better.

This week in the lab has been pretty good. I'm feeling a little better about my technique after finally running a couple of gels on my own... I still have plenty of guidance, of course, but it's a nice feeling of independence nonetheless. I'm starting to accumulate stacks of articles again, which is not as overwhelming as it's been in the past. A good sign.

German classes are going well, and despite the time required I'm glad I have them. The other students in my dorm have complemented my speaking ability on a couple of occasions, and seem genuinely suprised when I tell them I only studied it for two years at college... But I also point out that I've been here for a few months now, and that my intensive course at the beginning made a world of difference.

Neuro classes... ahem. Neuro classes are currently at 8:15 in the morning on Mondays and Thursdays. I'm still interested in the lectures (membrane physiology at the moment) but I've been having the darndest time getting out the door before 8... and with no one checking up on my attendance, and no credit for the course, and the knowledge that I'll have to take lots of intro next year anyway... No, no, let's not beat around the bush here. I'm lazy and it's cold so I'm skipping class. Simple as that. BOTH this week, one last week. I'm feeling a little conflicted about it, but surprisingly only a little. The fact of the matter is that the lectures seem to be merely supplements for the lab rotations, methods courses, tutorials, and seminars that make up the meat of the program... and I'm not in the program. As nice as it is to hear some science, I get that in the lab all day. Anyway, maybe I'll start going again when I want to hear some different science, to branch out a little. Or when I find myself physically able to get out of bed before 7:30. Whichever comes first.

Speaking of class, I'm off to my last one of the week. I've been invited to my first student party this weekend, so hopefully there's good stuff to come!

Pictures!!

Look, I've finally gotten around to posting, this time with visual aids!

Why, my goodness! If it isn't Flora Fahrrad! Pretty, isn't she? Now that I have regular internet access for Janet (my laptop, for those of you that don't know) I can finally post some of the pictures I've been taking! Maybe this will also encourage me to start taking more, since I've been rather lax about it for a while. In this installment of the blog: Photos from my room at the Krebs's and exploring St. Jacobi.

And here it is, my own little tiny room (which was still bigger than my room here!) These are from the first day, so I hadn't yet hung half my wardrobe behind the door or stuck my giant map and Fulbright scarf to the wall...

My desk, without internet access but still a nice place to work.

And here we have the beautiful St. Jacobi, in the heart of lovely downtown Göttingen.

And the inside too, for good measure.

And yes, I actually did climb the bell tower. Here's proof!

I have other shots of all the rickety staircases and such, but I should save something to bring home and show off, or my family will have to look at the same old boring pictures!

Next time: My trip to Berlin and my new room, as well as some actual update content!

Busy busy

I just came to the jarring realization that it's been more than a week since my last post! And quite a week, at that. I moved into my dorm last Friday night, had a weekend of choir rehearsal, got set up and went shopping, went out to dinner... Tonight I'm going to the theater and this weekend the Choir has its first performance!

I was actually not too happy with the move at first, since I really liked living with the Krebs family. Add to that the fact that I spend an entire weekend at choir and didn't have time to set up my room and buy food until the third day there... It was a nasty couple of days in a completely bare room with nothing to eat but bread and cheese.

Not that I spent that much time there, or I could have done something about it! Last Saturday I was at choir from 9:30 am to 9:30 pm! We had a couple of short breaks, and an hour for lunch, and the last couple hours were spent watching the director's cut of Amadeus (which was great,) but we still managed to get in lots of rehearsing. We finally got around to starting the Lacrimosa section of the Requiem, which I'll freely admit is way cooler in its original form than the SSA arrangement we did in high school (which I was in love with anyway at the time.) Sunday was a little lighter. We met again at 9:30, but we were done by 2:30.

I finally had time to put stuff on my walls and unpack my suitcases! Unfortunately, shops are closed here on Sundays, so no groceries.

Monday, as always, was nuts. Neuro lecture in the morning, lab during the day, two german classes and choir again at night. Tuesday I only have one evening class, so after that I finally stocked the larder. Pasta, more bread, nutella, vegetables... But instead of bringing my big backpack, I only had the small one and a couple of smaller canvas bags. Luckily almost everything fit, and I strapped the bags reasonably well into my bike basket, tucked a basil plant between them and set off, with a small sack of bread in my hand and purse over my shoulder.

I've never successfully ridden a bicycle while holding something before, so by the time I got back to the dorm I was pretty proud of myself for not wiping out. Unfortunately the process of getting off the bike proved to be a little too complex, and I dropped the bread. Twice. The second time the plastic bag popped open and my brötchen were all over the pavement. Oops. I checked them over, brushed them off and tucked them back into what was left of the bag, and hauled all my stuff inside to the kitchen to put it away. At that point I discovered something else...

There were two tomatoes in my sack. Of the five I bought. Must've hit a bump back there somewhere...

Luckily that's all that was missing... and now I know for next time!

Wednesday night I skipped my german classes and went out for dinner with the Krebs'. I ate half a duck! The food was great, especially the cinammon ice cream for dessert.

Yesterday I made pasta, and it turned out decently well. I went a little heavy on the onion and garlic... but it's nice to know I can feed myself.

Tonight is Hexenjagd, so I need to bike up to Weende. First, though, I'm heading into town to see if I can get a ticket for a concert next Sunday night. As soon as I saw the poster on Monday, I knew I had to see this:

Sorry it's a bit blurry... but I think the important part is readable. That's right, chamber singers and cs alums, St. Jacobi's choir is doing the Brahms! And I get to be in the audience!! Woohoo! That afternoon the uni choir is performing our Bach cantata at another local church, so it promises to be another musical weekend. I can't wait!

Another cool thing that I learned this week, just to come full circle: My lab is on Von-Siebold-Straße. There was a Dr. von Siebold who lived in Göttingen way back when. This guy had a daughter, Agathe. She was a soprano, and she was engaged to Brahms. He didn't go through with it, but he did write her a sextet with her name spelled musically, A-G-A-D-B-A. (H is German for B-natural.) Pretty neat! The history just crops up all over the place over here!

NEWS FLASH!

My cousin is engaged!! How fabulous is that? (Answer: really truly awesomely frickin' fabulous!)

Especially since there's a video of the whole thing...

Sarah and I are the oldest of our particular generation of cousins in my family, and since she's got a year on me it's only fair that she will be married before I am... but I hope she waits at least until I'm back in the country (hint hint: July 15, 2006) so I can personally congratulate the happy couple!

Short

• I found my bike helmet. Yay!
• I still haven't moved yet, but I've got tomorrow and Friday off so it's in the works.
• I finally found the Neurosciences Vorlesung!! I heard two lectures this week (Invertebrate Nervous Systems and Aminergic Systems) and it's pretty awesome. The program students seem friendly, and grad-level lectures are fun.
• I have internet access set up in my dorm room, and my light isn't broken. It just has to be turned on both at the wall switch and on the lamp itself. Good to know.
• I have hours and hours of choir practice this weekend, all day Saturday and half the day Sunday. I'll be mute or squeaky Monday, but I can't wait!
• I get to observe my first chicken embryo dissection this afternoon, so the ball is finally rolling in lab!

So maybe it's nothing humongously exciting... but all in all I'm finally starting to feel a little settled. It's a great feeling!