Out of my Comfort Zone

The rest of the week following my debatably-successful Holland trip was possibly the low point of the first portion of the program.  Tuesday began with German class in which our teacher decided to force us to improve our communication skills by assigning us to write a five-question survey on a topic of our choice.  We then had to ask the questions of the survey to 30 people: 10 "young people" (younger than college), 10 university students, and 10 "older people" (out of college).  Although I was one of the better German speakers, I tend to be very shy, particularly when operating outside of my native language.  Those of you who see me at PEF every week probably won't believe this, but I'm actually an introvert and it takes HUGE efforts for me to reach out to strangers (I'm often completely exhausted after a Friday night meeting where I feel it's my job to be insanely peppy to freshmen and newcomers).  So the prospect of approaching 30 strangers in a foreign language and engaging them in conversation was more terrifying to me than if I had been asked to walk through a dark room full of tarantulas (spiders are my #1 fear).  Our teacher gave us an hour on that day to begin our assignment and a week to finish it. At the end of that hour I had talked to four people, and I was shaking uncontrollably and on the verge of tears.  I talked to the teacher about it, who was very sympathetic and told me to do the best I could, but not to worry too much if I couldn't get all 30.  Then we were released for lunch.  I went straight to the bank and withdrew some money, since, as you may recall, I was distinctly penniless at the end of my time in the Netherlands.

After trying these seats, I wouldn't mind not getting much play time!

For the afternoon it had been arranged for us to take a tour of the Signal Iduna soccer stadium, home of the BVB league soccer team (which were national champions in the 2011 season).  I'm not a huge sports fan, so it didn't mean as much to me as it did to some of the other Ruhr Fellows, but it was an interesting way to pass an afternoon.  We got to go right in to the team's locker rooms and took a group photo in their (quite plush) turfside seats down by the field.  We stood in the bleachers and tested the acoustics of the stadium by screaming as loudly as we could and listening to the echo, then tried to imagine that sound multiplied by 1000.  The field itself was ragged and covered in bare patches - we were told that when the BVB won the championship match, the fans swarmed the field and ripped up patches of turf as souvenirs.  Repairing the field was going to run thousands of dollars for the stadium, as the damage was too much to just re-seed the affected areas.

The last stop on our tour was the stadium police base and jail - yes, German soccer stadiums come with a built-in slammer.  Apparently it becomes quite necessary on occasion when the fans get a bit too rowdy = Germans take their sports rivalries quite seriously.  The jail is only for men, though; women get an instant free trip down to the police station.

Tim the troublemaker!

Unfortunately by the time we finished our tour we were bordering on late for our seminar discussion with the Doubles, and so they whisked us back off to the university with no chance for supper :(  The discussion was on the merits of "fracking", a new technology for mining petroleum and natural gas which involves shooting water and chemicals into the ground to force the gas out.  I had never heard of the term before our discussion, though apparently it's a hot topic in environmental circles today (which would explain why I've never heard of it).  The best part of the seminar was that somebody ordered pizza since none of us had eaten supper, and the teacher-moderator also brought candy and Capri Sun to pass around (they have Coca-Cola flavored Capri Sun in Germany, but it's non-carbonated, non-caffeinated, and with no extra sugar.  What's the point?), so it was bearable.  This was part of the Doubles' class called "Technology and Society" or something like that, and apparently they had to attend these seminars every week.  I'm glad I only had to go to one.  The other advantage of the seminar, however, was that it was a gathering of German students, so, thinking quickly, I asked several of them for my survey (and the teacher, to get one "older person") and managed to nearly fill my quota of students.  Once the seminar finally ended at 9:30 I headed home, and on the way I saw a middle-aged man harassing a girl about my age in the subway, asking her probing questions though she tried to ignore him.  Of course, this didn't make me any more confident about approaching strangers for my survey, and I went to bed apprehensive about the 20 people I still had to find.

I passed a restless night and awoke feeling slightly under the weather, which might not have been due to my stress about the survey, but certainly didn't help to relieve it.  The weather wasn't cooperating either - it was rainy, cold, and miserable.  Therefore the activity planned for Wednesday's German class, a Schnitzeljagd (scavenger hunt), turned into a film screening.  I forget the name of the movie, but it was another painful reminder to me of why Germans aren't known for making movies.  They're terrible at it.  The plot was that a German man has an Italian girlfriend and they attempt to drive to Italy to have the wedding with her family; cultures clash and comedy ensues.  It was basically My Big Fat Greek Wedding in German, but less funny and more awkward.  There were subtitles (in German) to help the beginners follow along, which meant that I understood every painful word.  But hey!  we got free snacks during the movie, and we weren't running around outside or being forced to ask more people our survey questions, so overall I'm not complaining.  Afterwards everyone went to the Mensa (cafeteria) and I tagged along since there wasn't enough time to sneak off and write emails before our next activity.  But I wasn't hungry, on account of the snacks, so I didn't buy anything. It looked a lot like the dining halls at Princeton, nothing impressive.  I never went in there again, so I can't vouch for the price or quality of the food.  Oh well, I don't think I missed much.

For the afternoon we were given a tour of the electrical engineering department, which was reasonably interesting except for the part where I was so tired (the combination of the gray day and my poor sleep the night before) that I kept nodding off during the presentations.  The actual tour part was better, since we were walking around.  We even got a really cool demonstration of a quadrotors project the department is working on and got to see the machines in action a bit.  The tour ended by 5pm, and I spent the evening doing some much-needed domestic work = shopping, budgeting, etc.  Not terribly exciting, but certainly in keeping with the rest of the week.

Thursday we had the morning off - I took the opportunity to wake up earlier than normal and attempt a call back to the States.  As it has been all summer, Google disappointed me with terrible call quality - though I could hear the person I was calling just fine, she said I was coming through garbled and muted.  I don't know what it was about the capabilities of the internet connections I have had this summer, but they just really don't like Google.  Even Skype degrades after 20-30 minutes of call time, but that's to be expected.  (Not to mention Google's decision to replace video calling with Google+ hangouts in the middle of the summer - which are even more confusing and buggy than the video calling was.)  I suppose I can't complain, as I'm still able to call any landline or cell number in the US for free through Google, but somehow I had grown accustomed to expecting better service from them... Regardless of our frustrations, we were eventually able to talk for awhile before I needed to make myself breakfast and prepare for the day.

I bet my dad could explain why these trees grew this way...

Around noontime the Ruhr Fellows caught a train to Essen to tour the famous Villa Hügel (though I had never heard of it), the estate of steel baron Alfred Krupp (of today's Thyssen-Krupp).  We were about 30 minutes early, so we took the opportunity to explore the "massive and impressive" gardens of the estate.  Already skeptical of the benefit or relevance of visiting a house, no matter how elaborate, it was in the gardens that I got my first hints of how underwhelming this excursion was to be.  We saw hardly any flowers or impressive landscaping, aside from a grove of coniferous trees which had been coaxed into growing into some interesting, rather acrobatic forms.  Several of the trees had two trunks which diverged, then grew back into each other.  This was literally the most interesting part of the house or estate in my mind, if that tells you anything about the effectiveness of the excursion (I never actually got a satisfactory explanation of why it was deemed necessary that we visit this place...).  The 269-room house was impressive, but more as a display of arrogant excess than anything else.  I've seen bigger, more opulent, more colorful, and more interesting palaces in Russia, so it was difficult to get excited about a bunch of mediocre dead rich guys.

No idea whose time each clock represents...

After the failed estate tour, we were led down to a nearby lake for a "boat cruise".  The weather was nice, a bit too sunny in fact, to the point where most of us spent the better part of the cruise with our eyes closed to avoid the glare off of the water and ALL of the surfaces on the boat, which were painted a uniform shade of BRILLIANT WHITE in some kind of sick conspiracy.  There was also a regatta in progress on the lake, but our two-story steamboat barged blithely through the races with little regard for the athletes in their tiny crafts.  Sitting on a boat and sailing around a lake isn't exactly my idea of a good time (I'd much rather be DOING something, even just walking), and, since the Ruhr Fellows had nothing else to do, they started talking.  As often happens in a group of American college students, the subject turned to the sexual exploits of the various members of the group, at which point I COMPLETELY tuned out and resigned myself to a miserable afternoon.  After what seemed like an eternity, we got back off the boat and boarded a train for Dortmund.  Another frustrating bout with Google rounded off the day the way it began, and I crawled between the blankets hoping that a new day would start things back off on the right foot.

Alas, it was not to be.  At 4:30am, my roommate's phone began ringing incessantly, and when she finally answered it on the fourth call, she couldn't understand who was on the other end.  I was only concerned that it might be one of our friends, too inebriated to find her way home (I always think the worst of American young people), but when we were both more conscious in the morning, she assured me that it wasn't the case.  I still managed to nab a couple hours more sleep before starting the day, but I could already tell that things were not going my way. They didn't get any better, either, as the wiener schnitzel I planned to have for breakfast (we had no freezer at the CDC and I really needed to eat it up) took longer than I expected and nearly set off the fire alarm while I was frying it.  By the time I finished cleaning up from breakfast, everyone else had already left to catch a train to the University of Duisberg-Essen, which we were supposed to be visiting that day.  I hurried to the subway station just in time to see a train pulling away, but they come every 2 minutes or so, so I didn't worry too much.  It turns out I should have, because I stumbled up the stairs to the track JUST as the train started to pull away.  Undeterred, I sent a quick text to another member of the group and checked the schedule for the next available train traveling my way (oh, the joys of an unlimited regional pass).  Feeling rather smug with the way I handled the situation, I got off in Essen and stopped, confused.  The answer I got from the group said they were meeting at the West Exit, but as much as I looked around, I could only find the East Exit, Free Exit, and City Exit.  During a frustrating series of phone conversations during which one member of the group even tried to meet me back on the platform, the truth was revealed that while I was standing in the ESSEN train station, our instructions had been to meet in DUISBERG, another 20 minutes down the track.  Although I instantly ran to the train schedule, by the time I found the next train that would get me there, it had already left, and so by the time I actually reached Duisberg, a good 75 minutes had passed from our original meeting time.  Of course, the group wasn't still waiting for me, but though I tried every number in my phone book no one picked up.  I weighed my options: try to find the university campus, which was presumably SOMEWHERE in the city but not necessarily easy to reach, and catch up with the group (which I could reasonably expect to take at least another hour), or give up the day as lost and return to Dortmund.  Since I never wanted to visit the university in the first place, the latter was the obvious choice, and I was back in the CDC by 10:30.

Feeling justified in pampering myself after a stressful and frustrating week, I napped until noon, then spent several hours in the Internet haven of the university library researching various topics (such as flights home from Scotland) and calling my parents.  The day wasn't completely free, however, as I had been invited to Recklinghausen (a good 45 minutes away by train) to watch the Germany-Greece Eurocup game that evening with my doubles.  In preparation, I went to the grocery store and bought grapefruit beer to share, but then remembered that we would be attending a public viewing at which outside alcohol was not allowed, so thought better of it and left the beer at home (it was a different, cheaper brand than the Schöfferhoffer's, and not as tasty - because it is not made with white beer, I later learned).  Upon my arrival in Recklinghausen, my doubles and their friends traipsed off to a cafe for some pre-game refreshments.  It occurred to me that I hadn't remembered to eat anything since my disastrous breakfast, so I ordered a cheese pizza to accompany my Schöfferhoffer's.  Afterwards I convinced one of my Doubles to help me find an ice cream place, as I had a sudden urge for the strange German phenomenon of "Spaghetti Eis".

Only the Germans could come up with a
food so strange and yet so delicious...

As I have previously described, this delectable dish consists of vanilla ice cream squeezed through a press into long, thin strands.  This is then topped with strawberry sauce (and real strawberries, in this case) and white chocolate sprinkles, to simulate cheese and tomato sauce.  While generally the most expensive dish on the menu at an ice cream store, it is a German experience not to be missed.  However, I was fated not to enjoy my treat (with the way the week had been going, I shouldn't have been surprised by this).  Just as we began walking towards the venue for the public viewing, it began to rain.  A light sprinkle soon turned into a full-fledged downpour that had us sprinting across the town to where the Germans' cars were parked, while I clung protectively to my ice cream and tried to hold it level as I ran.  By the time we reached the shelter of the vehicles, we were all soaked through and my dessert was a miserable pink puddle in the bottom of the bowl.  However, it still tasted fine and I scraped up the last drops through the rain dripping down my face as we zipped over to Sarah's apartment to watch the game.

The evening wasn't a total flop - Sarah's couch was a more comfortable vantage point for the game than the town square, we were supplied with plenty of refreshments, and Germany won the game 4-2.  I learned several very interesting German sports cheers (which will be very useful in my future life, I'm sure) and when we arrived at the train station only to find that the train to Dortmund had departed not 5 minutes prior, Sarah and her boyfriend graciously offered to drive me home rather than make me wait another hour to catch the train (and we actually beat the one I would have taken, anyway).  It was past midnight when I finally crawled up the stairs to my fourth-floor bedroom, bedraggled and exhausted, and more than ready for the week to be over.