Up Before the Sun

By the second week of the program I had settled firmly into a comfortable routine and was even beginning to enjoy my chosen sleep schedule, unusual as it may be.  It works particularly well if I want to Skype someone from home, especially since most of the people I would be interested in talking to have day-job commitments.  If I get up extra early (I've done 4am a couple of times) it's only 10pm on the East Coast and I have a good couple of hours to talk to whomever it is while I am nice and fresh and before they get too tired.  On Monday I tried this out with my boyfriend and thoroughly enjoyed a nearly two-hour conversation, after which I still had almost two hours before I had to leave for the Institute.  Unfortunately this schedule won't work for my family who are of the same "early to bed, early to rise" philosophy as me, so finding times to talk to them is a little more involved.  At the very least, in the mornings I tend to make my breakfast and do my homework (various grammar exercises and reviewing vocabulary), as well as write an email or two if I'm lucky enough to have received one (hint, hint), before scurrying off to class at 8:30.

Monday was our first Princeton precept of the program.  The two graduate students from the German department, Mareike and Hannes, are responsible for the 107G precepts as well as organizing numerous day trips and being general good resources for anything we might need here.  Mareike leads our precept, and so far they make me feel just like I'm back at Princeton.  As I mentioned, we are reading The Metamorphosis by Franz Kafka in its original German, and it's slow going.  The story is much more interesting now that we've gotten into it and something is actually happening, but the vocabulary sheets we are given for each reading assignment (we read about 10 pages for every precept, which happen twice a week) are several pages long and doing the reading always involves looking up additional vocabulary as well.  The discussions are occasionally interesting but necessarily limited by the fact that they are carried out completely in German, and, being an engineer myself, these discussions of humanities topics such as "what is a monster?  Is Gregor Samsa a man or an animal?" hold almost no interest for me and are difficult for me to participate in.  It reminds me again why I'm studying Mechanical Engineering and not Comparative Literature (I can't believe I ever considered switching to that major).  German 209 - German Literature, which I plan to take in the fall should I decide to study abroad in Germany in the spring semester in order to maintain my German proficiency - should be interesting, even if I do PDF it. :P

Monday was shopping day for me, and I filled my refrigerator for only 22 Euros.  In fact, nearly two weeks later, I still haven't used up all of the food from that shopping trip and have only needed to buy essentials such as milk and orange juice since.  I treated myself to an entire frozen pizza for supper (trying to convince myself that it wasn't a completely American meal) and was so exhausted from my early morning that, after doing a bit of homework, fell into bed at 9pm instead of watching a movie in the basement with the group.

Tuesday some of us wanted to go to the BMW Museum and factory, which is one of the more interesting sights here in Munich (BMW means "Bavarian Motor Works", did you know that?).  A large contingent of the group was going to one of the three Pinakothek (art) museums and complained that we should go to BMW World another day (until this point we had done excursions nearly exclusively as an entire group instead of splitting up, though as the month wore on we would get more and more independent), but that didn't interest me at all so Nathan, Brian, and I headed off to look at some cars.  We stopped back by the Wohnheim first to do a little internet research (I learned that there is an opportunity for factory tours, but since they take 2.5 hours and the tour has been rerouted to no longer pass through the main assembly area, we decided against this), and I tried to get some other errands done as well, but the internet (which is spotty here at best) was being unusually frustrating and I didn't actually accomplish anything before we headed out.  BMW World was worth it, though.  The showroom didn't cost anything to explore, and it was almost as interesting as a museum in itself.  In addition to the newest line of automobiles on display, there were several interactive exhibits which highlighted aspects of the BMW - the new "night vision" camera, on-board internet (worst idea EVER), dynamic steering control, the advantages of a hybrid motor, etc.  Interactivity must be a very German thing - BMW World reminded me in many respects of the Deutsche Museum with its "try it and see" philosophy.  After wandering the showroom for a while (and asking the boys' opinion on which car was the "coolest" so that I could get a picture in it for my brother) we headed over to the museum - as it was already 4:00 and the museum closed at 6, I voted that we skip the main museum and only buy tickets for the special exhibit, which were much cheaper.  This turned out to be an excellent decision as the "special exhibit" were the world-famous BMW "Art Cars" - cars with special paint jobs commissioned by famous artists.  It took us the entire two hours just to look at these wonders, even though there were only 15 of them.  I got some amazing pictures!  After the exhibit I rushed to the souvenir shop to search for something for my brother - I figured something I got him from the BMW Museum would mean much more than a postcard or silly magnet to someone as interested in cool cars as he is.  For some inexplicable reason the souvenir shop had no posters (which was my first idea), and a model car is a little young for him (he's 14 now).  My next thought was a book, the only problem (besides the price) being that most of them were in German (I have to keep reminding myself that no one else in my family will understand German :P).  I finally found something at 5:55, however, and returned victorious to the Wohnheim for the night.

As has been the case several times, I found that I wasn't particularly hungry Tuesday evening, and so I contented myself with a carrot for supper and went to bed rather early.  The way I see it, since I'm paying for all of my own food, it's a much better idea to listen to my body and only eat when I'm hungry as opposed to wasting money by forcing myself to eat three big meals a day.  A typical lunch for me is a sandwich (either butter and cheese or PB&J - I found peanut butter at the supermarket and I'm SO happy about that!) and an apple, which usually tides me over from cereal at breakfast time until supper around 4 or 5, should I choose to make it.  I am also discovering the wonder of leftovers - if I make enough of something not to eat it all in one night, I make supper for the next several evenings a matter of warming up a portion in the microwave for 2 minutes instead of taking 15-30 to prepare something.  I think I'm going to like leftovers when I am independent next year at Princeton. :)

Wednesday started a vicious cycle, one that I tend to fall into far too easily.  Our first test was on Friday, and though I generally don't worry about exams (I'm a good test-taker, as a rule) I had been having trouble not slipping into the summer "don't-wanna-do-anything=productive" mode which makes studying so much harder, and that began to worry me.  I couldn't decide whether to not care about the test and enjoy my time here in Munich as a good cultural experience, or to freak out and study really hard and focus on the fact that I was here in Munich to study and my eventual goal was to be fluent in German by the end of this summer.  The indecision in itself began to stress me out, especially as I realized that I was simply trying to do too much between studying, exploring the city, blogging, several Bible studies by myself and with others (I'm reading Colossians in German for the Christian vocab, Romans with my boyfriend, and The Case for Christ by Lee Strobel with him and my best friend) and discussing them all, keeping in regular contact with friends and family from home, and getting enough sleep.  I felt like I had to cut something out or go crazy, which led to the blog post of last week as well as at least one very stressed email to a close friend.  In hindsight my freak-out was mostly just silly, but I'm very good at working myself up over inconsequential things like that.  In any case it led to a rather miserable few days, when I was still doing activities but accompanied by the nagging feeling that I was wasting my time when doing anything besides studying, even though I couldn't motivate myself to study even when I had the opportunity.

Wednesday I visited the Museum Reich der Kristalle, the university collection of precious stones and crystals.  I could read many of the exhibit signs (I'm improving - yay!) and the museum was certainly interesting (I saw the largest amethyst crystal I've ever seen - amethyst is my birthstone - as well as one of the largest single-crystal diamonds ever discovered and some really cool luminescent rocks) but nothing spectacular.  Afterwards I forced myself to sit down and study vocabulary for several hours even though it was the last thing I wanted to do (so much of it seems so useless!  Who really needs to know four ways to say "The pressure decreased"?), and because of being so absorbed in this forgot (for the second week in a row) to bring my bedding and towels down for the weekly linens change, which was rather frustrating (not, if you promise not to think less of me for this confession, that I've never gone more than two weeks without washing my towels and sheets...).  That evening we had the opportunity to swim in the oldest swimming pool in Munich, which was built in 1901 and was at the time the largest in the country? world?  Anyway, it was rather impressive, and I had a good time, but we ended up staying rather longer than I would have liked and I got antsy about the time that I wasn't spending studying or sleeping.  By the time we got back to the Wohnheim it was already 11:00, which was the latest I had been awake thus far in the program (and the first time I had gone to bed after sunset, which is at 9).

Unfortunately the next morning I still woke up at 5, whether from my newly-developed habit or because of the stress I don't know, but I snoozed until 6 before getting up and attempting to be very efficient by making breakfast while I did my laundry.  Unfortunately things never go according to plan and when I went down to the laundry room I discovered that the laundry detergent I had been sharing with Dan had been stolen (and without my even having gotten to use it :[), so that nullified that idea.  I went to make my breakfast and lunch and when I took out a carrot to peel for lunch I discovered that since I had bought them last Saturday, they had begun to mold.  Of course carrots mold, but I had never seen this before at home, whether because we eat the carrots too fast for them to decay or due to the climate/humidity in my room in Munich (they were sitting on a shelf) or whether the carrots I had bought were simply not very fresh, I don't know, but it was a very disappointing discovery.  Being as frugal as I am, I was quite reluctant to simply throw the vegetables away, and so laboriously washed and peeled them all, discovering to my delight that the mold had not yet penetrated past the first couple of layers of the carrot.  I kept the carrots in my fridge until I could eat them all over the course of the next couple of days, and I didn't get sick from them, so all was not lost ;)

After class on Thursday I decided that I needed to start thinking about arrangements for my internship, particularly buying my train ticket from Munich to Clausthal and back (my plane back home in August flies out of Munich since it was much less expensive to change the details of my Princeton in Munich-provided flight instead of booking a completely new one) and opening a bank account so that my internship stipend could be deposited (ironic how when I am most stressed out I tend to think of think of the most other things to do which have the least to do with the source of my stress :P).  So, having solicited the help of Hannes, we set off for the Central Train Station to investigate our ticket possibilities.  The entire process was quite confusing and I was very glad to have the native speaker skills of Hannes to help me in understanding what the clerk was saying.  We discovered that there were multiple options for both the journey to and from Clausthal, and suddenly it occurred to me that I should probably ask my supervising professor, who would be responsible for picking me up in Clausthal and giving me my apartment key (as I would be necessarily arriving on a Sunday, there would be no one at the apartment itself to hand the key over to me), what time would be most convenient for him for me to arrive.  Armed with the information of possibilities, I returned to the Wohnheim and composed an email, ambitiously in German, asking for his preference.  Although Thursday I should have spent the most time studying for the test, I instead ended up watching a German silent film from the 20s (called Metropolis, it was the "mega-blockbuster" of its time and one of the first Hollywood-style films) and attending a play, the script of which we had read during my German 102-5 class in the spring.  The play turned out to be a very modern-artsy interpretation of the original play composed in the 30s (Der Besuch der Alten Dame) and I was very glad that we had read and discussed the play first, or else I would have been very confused by the way it was performed (there were five young actors whose roles were constantly changing with no difference in costume, only demeanor, and the fact that I already knew which lines belonged to which character was the only thing that kept me on track with the play).  It was interesting and thought-provoking, even though it led to yet another late night (I didn't get to bed until 10:30, having done MUCH less studying than I planned on or should have done).  And so my second week in Munich drew to its conclusion, amidst much stress and conflicting desires.  It's gotten somewhat better since, thankfully.