A new chapter

I'm finally in Göttingen! So much so quickly, where to begin? My last few days in Kiel were fabulous. I finished my German course and of course spent lots of time with my friends. I think everyone from our close group was feeling apprehensive about losing our little community, but at the same time we all have cool projects to look forward to all over the country, and hopefully plenty of opportunities to visit with friends in new places. I’d love to see Berlin, the Dom in Köln, and more of the southern part of Germany. My group already has plans in the works to meet up and celebrate Thanksgiving together. Leslie had a fabulous idea and we spent time after the last dinner before Andrew left writing little notes to one another for moral support. I’m saving mine for later.

We had our farewell dinner with the teachers and staff from the Lektorat Wednesday night. The department secretary decided that we couldn’t leave Kiel without sampling a local “treat,” so she sent the restaurant staff on a quest to find echt Kieler Sprotten. Apparently if you grow up in Kiel you consider yourself a Kiel Sprott. The name comes from a local delicacy… small smoked herring. Whole. And when I say “small,” I mean about five inches long. To eat them, you pinch off the head and munch your way up to the tail fin. Very crunchy, since they aren’t de-boned. Also very fishy, although I guess that’s to be expected. I had two, and as much as I respect Frau Dico and admire her taste that’s about enough for a lifetime.

After the meal the plan was to go to a local bar for their Jazz jam session night, where Amanda and Jacquelyn were going to perform. (I can’t express how awesome the both of them are… I could listen forever.) By the time we got there the playbill was pretty booked up, unfortunately, and the place was so smoky and crowded that waiting two hours plus for a slot just wasn’t possible. We thought we’d go back to the Burse and get a little concert or have a party in the downstairs bar, the plans kind of fizzled. Disappointing, but I’m sure we’ll hear more fabulous music at Thanksgiving and at the Fulbright meeting in Berlin this spring. And I won’t be in total withdrawal, since I bought Amanda’s CD. You should too.

I got home and finally got to bed after 2am… and then woke up at a little after 6 to throw my last stuff together and check out of my dorm room. I made my train with no problems, although wrangling all my stuff is always a challenge. I read and slept during the 3-hour trip… and then we got to Göttingen.

Ahem. Traveling by train is different from other modes of transportation in a few important ways, one of which is that you’ve only got a couple minutes at the stop to get off, and other people only have a couple of minutes to get on. So, I get up from my seat when the train finally stops, and by the time I have my luggage halfway together the walkway is clogged with incoming passengers and I’m blocking their way. Then the train starts to move. After a brief panic and some rather frantic attempts to communicate, a helpful fellow passenger calls an employee over and I find out that I can get a trip back from the next stop. So. Unexpected detour to Kassel, but I finally get to the proper place only an hour and a half late. My host-mother had called that morning while I was traveling and arranged that her son would call my cell when the train had arrived and tell me where to meet him… but for whatever reason his calls weren’t going through to my phone. Even so, we found each other as soon as I got off the train, which was a huge relief.

Göttingen has prettier architecture than Kiel, and I can’t wait to get a bike and start exploring. I’ll take some pictures, but right now I have no idea whether I’ll be able to post them. Supposedly the family has dial-up, although we haven’t talked about internet access yet. That might have to wait until I get into my dorm room… but hopefully there we’ll have DSL or something equivalent. I can’t live without e-mail!

The house is old (200+ years) and beautiful, and the family seems wonderful so far, very social and fun. The mom, Christina, is a nurse. The son that I met today, Martin, will be moving to Berlin in the next couple of weeks to start his new job at a hospital there. He got his M.D. yesterday. I haven’t met the rest of the family, but the dad, Wolfgang, and the other son are also both doctors. The older daughter is a teacher, and the younger is studying to become one. I’ve set up my little room… not quite sure where I’ll put the suitcase-full of other stuff or the box of cold-weather clothes that’s coming later this week, but I think I’ll figure something out. I took a few pictures, but I think an internet connection with greater bandwidth is required before I can post them.

Plenty of adventures coming up shortly… officially getting my dorm room, touring the lab on Monday, finding a new church, registering for classes! Compared to all this, the course in Kiel really was a vacation. Still, I can’t wait to get crackin’!

Four days and counting

I leave Kiel for Göttingen bright and early Thursday morning, 8:12 am, and will arrive before noon. I have only six more classes at the Lektorat, three more dinners with my friends here. We've already lost one... Andrew left this morning for his snazzy Jounalism orientation in Berlin. We went to one of our favorite spots last night to see him off:

What an attractive bunch... L to R: Inese's friend, Inese, Felix, Leslie, Mike, Abi, Jennifer, Amanda (in front), Andrew, and Meghan.

I've got a list of stuff to do before Wednesday. Packing, shipping a piece of luggage, changing my address (again!) at the bank and getting online access set up, University forms, not to mention a little homework. I really don't think I left everything to the last minute this time, but it feels like I've suddenly got a million things to take care of.

The food report: it's been a good week for me. I did dinner on Wednesday and made my brownies again last night. Every time they turn out a little better, which is reassuring. This batch was decorated with a picture of asparagus (Spargle, auf Deutsch) in honor of Andrew. I helped make pancakes with Amanda, and they actually turned out! We had a couple of really good soups this week too. I really should be collecting recipes...

The project for Friday's Schriftliche Übungen class was to give a 10-minute report on a subject of our choosing. I couldn't think of a topic to argue until the night before, but it worked out really well... I delivered a treatise on the benefits of Ballroom Dance (Turniertänze,) complete with a musical example. I translated one of the Kenyon club's favorite quotes and it so amused the professor that she wrote it down:

Tanzen ist eine vertikale Äußerung von eine horizontale Begierde.

Ten points and some German chocolate to whoever leaves the first comment with the English version! The other presentations were great. Jennifer gave an impassioned if controversial speech about keeping half-human half-extraterrestrial babies, and Andrew gave a more formal version of his now-infamous asparagus rant. Apparently the fact that the Germans have an official "asparagus season" (outside of which the succulent spears are difficult to obtain) grates on his native Californian culinary sensibilities.

Friday night was fun. One of our teachers invited us over for drinks and then out to a club. Most of the Burse folks left early to head home and celebrate Felix's birthday, Meghan and Abi and I went out dancing with Sander and his friends until about 4am. Definitely not something I'd do every night, but it was fun.

I don't know if this will be the last post before Göttingen... if so it might be a while before I get my internet access set up. My contract with the Studentenwohnheim (dorm) officially begins the first, but for at least a couple weeks my primary residence will be with my host family. I can't live without internet, though, so getting situated will be high priority. Until then!

Today I...

• Slept in
• Turned in a paper
• Took a test
• Went to the store
• Cooked for 8 (mmm... stir-fry!)
• Took a nice walk
• Finished a sappy movie
• Did my homework before the day it's due
• Went to bed happy

Hausaufgabe

(Gladly accepting constructive criticism)

Auslandssemester als Pflicht

Ein Auslandssemester ist ein gutes Unternehmung für die meisten Studenten. Zuerst gibt es berufliche Vorteile, wie zum Beispiel mehr Aussichten auf den Arbeitsmarkt, insbesondere für internationale Berufe. Außerdem sind die Abwechslungen von die Mentalität der Studenten einen großen Pluspunkt. Man lernt durch diese Ehrfahrungen mit anderen, verschiedenen Leute zu arbeiten. Ganz wichtig ist, dass man ein Verständnis für eine andere Kultur bekommen wird.

Das Konzept ist nicht jedoch ohne Falle. Erstens braucht man Zeit für so wichtig eines Erlebnis. Man fahrt Land und Familie ab, und auch Pläne. Das kann eine große Schwierigkeit sein, vornehmlich weil spätere Lebensziele warten müssen.

Schließlich muss man diese Faktoren überlegen, bevor einer Beschied gemacht werde. Endlich entscheiden Studenten sich zwischen Persönlichweiterentwicklung und Schnelligkeit seines Studiums. Das ist eine persönlich Entschluss, und musst deshalb keine Pflicht sein.

*****

In other news, I'm cooking dinner tomorrow and have no idea what. Yikes!

On a lighter note...

I can't believe the ship has almost sailed on this one, especially since I'm currently in Kiel!

Thanks to Adam for the link to International Talk Like a Pirate Day, auf Deutsch!

Ach, du Landratte, zu den Haien für dich schicken, bei Störtebeckers Bart!

A political post? On Alaina's blog??

Maybe it's because I'm an outsider looking in, but I find the whole German electoral process strangely fascinating. I spoke to the final outcome a little early yesterday, although I was right on the money when I said things were complicated. The results are almost all in, and the will of the people is... completely obfuscated by the system. The analysts are busy analyzing, and the politicians are of course plotting out the fastest way to the top of the heap.

For the incumbent Schröder, this seems to include vociferously insisting that the people have spoken and that he is still Chancellor, by dint of not being the biggest loser. Merkel is lacking the bravura, but so long as Dresden's delayed vote isn't swung out of kilter by the Grünepartei and SPD's anticipated aggressive stumping she still has only a narrow advantage in parliament to work with. Will the greens be swayed from their alliance with the SPD by the indomitable 2002 CSU candidate Edmund Stoiber? The Bavarian governor would need his party's full support for such a plan to move forward, not to mention the FDP's position. Will Schröder attempt to rebuild burned bridges with the newly formed Linkepartei, which garnered a respectable 8.5% overall? The Left certainly holds a card or two in Dresden - a commited voting block and a candidate with an assured seat. Will either Merkel or Schröder concede for the sake of a SPD-CDU union, and would a grand coalition actually function? She has the numeric advantage, but he has the willpower. None of these options is particularly likely, but something has got to happen in the next weeks or there will be no government.

The critical moments will be in the coalition negotiation. Schröder has an ace up his sleeve already, in his insistence that the CDU and it's southern counterpart, the CSU, must approach the negotiating table as separate parties, thus diluting their bargaining clout. That seems a little hard to swallow after the parties campaigned as one, but the loophole requires acknowledgment. If the push is successful, Schröder's next move is still cloudy. Will he aggressively court the bit players and attempt to hold Merkel's alliance off entirely, or will he accept either the CDU or CSU as a partner and shut the other faction out in the cold?

The final tally remains to be seen, but the German population waits with baited breath.

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!

*****

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.

*****

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...

*****

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.

*****

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?

*****

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.