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.
Saturday, June 18, 2011
Thursday, June 16, 2011
The Long-Awaited Continuation
Well, after nearly a week's break (and overcoming some serious resistance to start now that I'm so far behind - funny how that works, huh?) I'm back. Well, we might as well resume where we left off...
On the Sunday of the first weekend here in Munich, after a week of intense German and fighting that "it's summer now, I don't want to work" mentality, we celebrated by taking a day trip sponsored by the Goethe Institute to two very interesting locations outside the city. The bus left from the Central Train Station 7:45am, which was no problem for me (I *still* had time to make myself breakfast, do my Bible study, etc. in the morning) but caused many complaints from the other students. We drove about an hour to reach Glentleiten, which is an open-air museum displaying traditional buildings from the last few centuries in Bavaria. I visited something similar in Russia when I went to Novgorod, but this time I actually understood most of what the guide said in German, and it wasn't at the end of an exhausting day but the beginning, so I enjoyed it much more. The weather was absolutely perfect - 75˚ and just enough clouds in the sky to make for better vista pictures. Which there was no shortage of opportunity to take, since the museum was on relatively high ground in view of the Alps. The buildings themselves were interesting and tastefully furnished with furniture and other household objects from the time period of the house. The thing that struck me most was what small areas people tended to live in in centuries past: a room the size of my dorm here in Munich would probably have served as the kitchen or living room, or parent's bedroom if the family was quite well-off. But in any case the ceilings in most of the buildings (unless it was a room with an open fire which necessitated a place for the smoke to gather above the heads of the inhabitants) were not higher than seven feet and gave everything a cramped and cozy feel (the reason being, of course, concerns over the necessity of heating the poorly-ventilated rooms with a fire). The entire museum was interesting and pretty, but not especially exciting, and I was glad when we loaded back onto the bus to continue to the real attraction of the day.
After another hour's drive, we arrived at Neuschwanstein, one of the three palaces of the Bavarian king of the 19th century, Ludwig the Second. The white stone palace precariously perched on the edge of a ridge against a breathtaking background of the foothills of the Alps is allegedly the inspiration for the Walt Disney Sleeping Beauty castle, and it even lived up to the splendor of its reputation. One cannot simply drive up to the gates of the castle, but must instead park down in the village like all of the other peasants and approach the imposing fortress on foot, a quite steep walk that winds back and forth across the face of the ridge, unless of course one wants to brave the fee and the line to be driven up in a horse-drawn carriage or take the much less romantic bus ride up the back side of the ridge. Before setting out on this taxing journey we of course needed sustenance, so we stopped in a restaurant down in the village for lunch. The menu was quite expensive on grounds of the monopoly the restaurant had on the foodservice industry of the village, but this was a special day and deserved a special treat. I ordered Wienerschnitzel (breaded pork) with Kartoffelsalat (potato salad, but better than what we think of as potato salad - made with oil instead of mayonnaise), and it was downright delicious. The waitresses were all dressed in the traditional Bavarian women's costume of a dirndl, complete with apron and hair in braids or buns, as was our guide at Glentleiten. One of my main goals before I leave Munich has now become to obtain one of these outfits for myself. I have been informed that although it is not uncommon to see both men and women in traditional garb going about everyday life in Munich, such a wardrobe will be laughed at in other parts of Germany, much like wearing a Stetson, chaps, and cowboy boots in the middle of Manhattan, but this does not deter me. The only question is finding a set in my price range...
After lunch we set off for the palace. Of course, besides the official way, there exist many shortcuts which take a steeper, more direct route up to the gates, but for liability reasons our tour guide expressly recommended against taking these more dangerous, unofficial paths. I was not to be deterred, however, from taking advantage of the obviously much shorter route to the palace gates, as our tour was scheduled for a particular time and, in true German style, latecomers were not accommodated. (Given the amount of people who come through the palace every day - several thousand - the tours are remarkably well-organized and impeccably timed). I was able to convince one other member of the group - Sheng - to accompany me, and we reached the meeting point without any injuries and well ahead of the rest of the group. This gave us time to both peruse the souvenir shop (I couldn't resist buying a few of the most beautiful postcards to send back to friends and family back home) and take a few pictures in front of the picturesque views. Soon the rest of the group caught up and we entered the palace courtyard to wait for our tour time. The tour, when it finally came, was quick, efficient, and informative. I again found, to my delight, that I understood most of the commentary of the German-speaking tour guide. Unfortunately there were no photographs permitted of the interior of the palace, but it was certainly a sight to behold. Not quite as lavish as those of the Russian czars that I had seen in St. Petersburg (i.e. the Hermitage, Katherine's Palace and Peterhoff), but the mosaics and paintings on the walls, as well as the carved woodwork, was still quite impressive. Most curious was the passage which was constructed to look like the inside of a cave, complete with stalactites and eerie green lighting (which is, however, most likely not authentic). True to the name, there were figures of swans everywhere (Schwan is the German word for swan, in case you didn't make the connection) and it was just a very pretty castle. Too bad Ludwig didn't get to enjoy it for long before he was hauled off to house arrest by Parliment who had a doctor's certification of his mental instability, and died in Starnberger See under mysterious circumstances soon afterwards. After finishing the tour one must pass through two separate souvenir shops and a cafe before exiting the palace altogether, so that one has every last possible chance to buy something if one has the slightest inclination. I didn't pay much attention to these, however, as I was occupied trying to soothe a lost child we had acquired just after the end of the tour.
Her name was Alexandra and she appeared to be about nine years old. Thankfully she was American (I don't know how effective I would have been in consoling a German-speaking child) and she had somehow lost track of her family in the masses of people traveling through the palace. I was not the first to find her, only the first native English speaker. Of the other two women who were talking to her when I walked up, one spoke heavily accented English and the other only German. The German-speaker offered to go back and look for the mother while we took Alexandra to the palace exit in case the family had gone ahead and were looking for her there. Had I truly stopped to think about this course of action I would have brought Alexandra back myself, reasoning that she was much more likely to have run ahead of her family than to have fallen behind, but things tend to happen quickly in these circumstances and my first priority was to stop Alexandra from crying. So we slowly walked her out and I gratefully used my English to comfort her, meanwhile asking questions that would give us the information needed to reunite her with her family. I discovered that she was in the English-speaking tour group that had been just behind us, and that she had last seen her mother in one of the souvenir shops (which cemented my suspicion that the mother was behind, not before). Then we happened upon a potentially useful piece of information when she piped up with "I know Mom's phone number." I immediately whipped out my cell phone, glad to have a concrete way to help, but when looking over Alexandra's shoulder I saw her type in seven numbers I knew our cause was lost - why would a nine-year-old understand that an American phone won't work in another country? After explaining that she would need to dial a few more than seven numbers we tried again with country and area code but the call didn't go through - as I suspected, the mother was probably not using her American cell phone abroad. I decided to wait with Alexandra until her mother came out of the palace, as I reasoned she must eventually, while Dan scurried off to the palace gates to inquire whether an announcement could be made over loudspeaker. Soon the German-speaking woman returned and informed me that everyone behind us spoke only English, so she couldn't communicate with them, but that no one appeared to be overly distressed or looking for anyone. However, it was only a matter of time before Alexandra, watching the people emerging from the exit as I had instructed her to, let out a cry of "Mommy!!" and ran to a youngish woman and her husband. I was impressed with how calm the mother had remained: she just gently said to Alexandra, "Why did you run off ahead of us like that?" She then looked at me and I informed her, "Yeah, I wasn't going to leave her until we found you, I knew it was just a matter of time." My job was done. Not done particularly well or efficiently, but done, and I left the family to deal with the disobedient Alexandra. Man, my leader skills must be rusty - but then again, hindsight is always 20/20. At least I know what I would do next time in that situation - take Alexandra back myself instead of sending a (albeit well-intentioned) German-speaker into the crowd of American tourists to search for a mother who was not overly concerned that her child had left her sight (I only hope that when I become a mother I'm as calm as that woman. I think I will be - I can totally imagine my mom acting the same way if I had disappeared at that age :D).
Unfortunately this little escapade left us pressed for time and the group decided that we didn't have enough to take the side trip to Maria's Bridge, a footbridge over the deep ravine with a beautiful view of the palace situated in the surrounding mountains. I refused to accept such a decision, however, and belligerently set off with Sheng to prove them wrong. It wasn't hard with just the two of us hurrying (and even stopping to take some pictures from time to time - after all, wasn't that why we came?), and we made it to the bridge and back with plenty of time to spare - taking again one of the more "direct" paths down the ridge to the village. At one point, when the trail narrowed to a footpath, Sheng questioned our decision to forsake the official way, but I assured him quite confidently, "I'm an OA Leader. Trust me, I have a good sense of direction." Those could have been famous last words, but thankfully disaster was avoided and we enjoyed a very scenic, albeit quite steep and heart-pounding, journey back to the bus. (I was certainly glad for my hiking boots!!) Thankfully the AC in the bus worked, and I enjoyed a good nap during the two-hour ride back to Munich. While I didn't think I exerted myself too badly during the trek up and down the ridge, my legs told me otherwise as soon as I stood up to debus back at the Central Train Station, and they were quite sore for some days afterwards. By the time we reached the Wohnung again I was more than ready for bed, too tired even to have much appetite. One carrot sufficed for my supper, and I fell into bed quite early, lulled to sleep by a terrific thunderstorm outside my window complete with frequent lightning, ominous quick-moving clouds, and terrifying rolls of thunder. And so ended my first perfect weekend in Munich. Here's to many more to come!!!
On the Sunday of the first weekend here in Munich, after a week of intense German and fighting that "it's summer now, I don't want to work" mentality, we celebrated by taking a day trip sponsored by the Goethe Institute to two very interesting locations outside the city. The bus left from the Central Train Station 7:45am, which was no problem for me (I *still* had time to make myself breakfast, do my Bible study, etc. in the morning) but caused many complaints from the other students. We drove about an hour to reach Glentleiten, which is an open-air museum displaying traditional buildings from the last few centuries in Bavaria. I visited something similar in Russia when I went to Novgorod, but this time I actually understood most of what the guide said in German, and it wasn't at the end of an exhausting day but the beginning, so I enjoyed it much more. The weather was absolutely perfect - 75˚ and just enough clouds in the sky to make for better vista pictures. Which there was no shortage of opportunity to take, since the museum was on relatively high ground in view of the Alps. The buildings themselves were interesting and tastefully furnished with furniture and other household objects from the time period of the house. The thing that struck me most was what small areas people tended to live in in centuries past: a room the size of my dorm here in Munich would probably have served as the kitchen or living room, or parent's bedroom if the family was quite well-off. But in any case the ceilings in most of the buildings (unless it was a room with an open fire which necessitated a place for the smoke to gather above the heads of the inhabitants) were not higher than seven feet and gave everything a cramped and cozy feel (the reason being, of course, concerns over the necessity of heating the poorly-ventilated rooms with a fire). The entire museum was interesting and pretty, but not especially exciting, and I was glad when we loaded back onto the bus to continue to the real attraction of the day.
After another hour's drive, we arrived at Neuschwanstein, one of the three palaces of the Bavarian king of the 19th century, Ludwig the Second. The white stone palace precariously perched on the edge of a ridge against a breathtaking background of the foothills of the Alps is allegedly the inspiration for the Walt Disney Sleeping Beauty castle, and it even lived up to the splendor of its reputation. One cannot simply drive up to the gates of the castle, but must instead park down in the village like all of the other peasants and approach the imposing fortress on foot, a quite steep walk that winds back and forth across the face of the ridge, unless of course one wants to brave the fee and the line to be driven up in a horse-drawn carriage or take the much less romantic bus ride up the back side of the ridge. Before setting out on this taxing journey we of course needed sustenance, so we stopped in a restaurant down in the village for lunch. The menu was quite expensive on grounds of the monopoly the restaurant had on the foodservice industry of the village, but this was a special day and deserved a special treat. I ordered Wienerschnitzel (breaded pork) with Kartoffelsalat (potato salad, but better than what we think of as potato salad - made with oil instead of mayonnaise), and it was downright delicious. The waitresses were all dressed in the traditional Bavarian women's costume of a dirndl, complete with apron and hair in braids or buns, as was our guide at Glentleiten. One of my main goals before I leave Munich has now become to obtain one of these outfits for myself. I have been informed that although it is not uncommon to see both men and women in traditional garb going about everyday life in Munich, such a wardrobe will be laughed at in other parts of Germany, much like wearing a Stetson, chaps, and cowboy boots in the middle of Manhattan, but this does not deter me. The only question is finding a set in my price range...
After lunch we set off for the palace. Of course, besides the official way, there exist many shortcuts which take a steeper, more direct route up to the gates, but for liability reasons our tour guide expressly recommended against taking these more dangerous, unofficial paths. I was not to be deterred, however, from taking advantage of the obviously much shorter route to the palace gates, as our tour was scheduled for a particular time and, in true German style, latecomers were not accommodated. (Given the amount of people who come through the palace every day - several thousand - the tours are remarkably well-organized and impeccably timed). I was able to convince one other member of the group - Sheng - to accompany me, and we reached the meeting point without any injuries and well ahead of the rest of the group. This gave us time to both peruse the souvenir shop (I couldn't resist buying a few of the most beautiful postcards to send back to friends and family back home) and take a few pictures in front of the picturesque views. Soon the rest of the group caught up and we entered the palace courtyard to wait for our tour time. The tour, when it finally came, was quick, efficient, and informative. I again found, to my delight, that I understood most of the commentary of the German-speaking tour guide. Unfortunately there were no photographs permitted of the interior of the palace, but it was certainly a sight to behold. Not quite as lavish as those of the Russian czars that I had seen in St. Petersburg (i.e. the Hermitage, Katherine's Palace and Peterhoff), but the mosaics and paintings on the walls, as well as the carved woodwork, was still quite impressive. Most curious was the passage which was constructed to look like the inside of a cave, complete with stalactites and eerie green lighting (which is, however, most likely not authentic). True to the name, there were figures of swans everywhere (Schwan is the German word for swan, in case you didn't make the connection) and it was just a very pretty castle. Too bad Ludwig didn't get to enjoy it for long before he was hauled off to house arrest by Parliment who had a doctor's certification of his mental instability, and died in Starnberger See under mysterious circumstances soon afterwards. After finishing the tour one must pass through two separate souvenir shops and a cafe before exiting the palace altogether, so that one has every last possible chance to buy something if one has the slightest inclination. I didn't pay much attention to these, however, as I was occupied trying to soothe a lost child we had acquired just after the end of the tour.
Her name was Alexandra and she appeared to be about nine years old. Thankfully she was American (I don't know how effective I would have been in consoling a German-speaking child) and she had somehow lost track of her family in the masses of people traveling through the palace. I was not the first to find her, only the first native English speaker. Of the other two women who were talking to her when I walked up, one spoke heavily accented English and the other only German. The German-speaker offered to go back and look for the mother while we took Alexandra to the palace exit in case the family had gone ahead and were looking for her there. Had I truly stopped to think about this course of action I would have brought Alexandra back myself, reasoning that she was much more likely to have run ahead of her family than to have fallen behind, but things tend to happen quickly in these circumstances and my first priority was to stop Alexandra from crying. So we slowly walked her out and I gratefully used my English to comfort her, meanwhile asking questions that would give us the information needed to reunite her with her family. I discovered that she was in the English-speaking tour group that had been just behind us, and that she had last seen her mother in one of the souvenir shops (which cemented my suspicion that the mother was behind, not before). Then we happened upon a potentially useful piece of information when she piped up with "I know Mom's phone number." I immediately whipped out my cell phone, glad to have a concrete way to help, but when looking over Alexandra's shoulder I saw her type in seven numbers I knew our cause was lost - why would a nine-year-old understand that an American phone won't work in another country? After explaining that she would need to dial a few more than seven numbers we tried again with country and area code but the call didn't go through - as I suspected, the mother was probably not using her American cell phone abroad. I decided to wait with Alexandra until her mother came out of the palace, as I reasoned she must eventually, while Dan scurried off to the palace gates to inquire whether an announcement could be made over loudspeaker. Soon the German-speaking woman returned and informed me that everyone behind us spoke only English, so she couldn't communicate with them, but that no one appeared to be overly distressed or looking for anyone. However, it was only a matter of time before Alexandra, watching the people emerging from the exit as I had instructed her to, let out a cry of "Mommy!!" and ran to a youngish woman and her husband. I was impressed with how calm the mother had remained: she just gently said to Alexandra, "Why did you run off ahead of us like that?" She then looked at me and I informed her, "Yeah, I wasn't going to leave her until we found you, I knew it was just a matter of time." My job was done. Not done particularly well or efficiently, but done, and I left the family to deal with the disobedient Alexandra. Man, my leader skills must be rusty - but then again, hindsight is always 20/20. At least I know what I would do next time in that situation - take Alexandra back myself instead of sending a (albeit well-intentioned) German-speaker into the crowd of American tourists to search for a mother who was not overly concerned that her child had left her sight (I only hope that when I become a mother I'm as calm as that woman. I think I will be - I can totally imagine my mom acting the same way if I had disappeared at that age :D).
Unfortunately this little escapade left us pressed for time and the group decided that we didn't have enough to take the side trip to Maria's Bridge, a footbridge over the deep ravine with a beautiful view of the palace situated in the surrounding mountains. I refused to accept such a decision, however, and belligerently set off with Sheng to prove them wrong. It wasn't hard with just the two of us hurrying (and even stopping to take some pictures from time to time - after all, wasn't that why we came?), and we made it to the bridge and back with plenty of time to spare - taking again one of the more "direct" paths down the ridge to the village. At one point, when the trail narrowed to a footpath, Sheng questioned our decision to forsake the official way, but I assured him quite confidently, "I'm an OA Leader. Trust me, I have a good sense of direction." Those could have been famous last words, but thankfully disaster was avoided and we enjoyed a very scenic, albeit quite steep and heart-pounding, journey back to the bus. (I was certainly glad for my hiking boots!!) Thankfully the AC in the bus worked, and I enjoyed a good nap during the two-hour ride back to Munich. While I didn't think I exerted myself too badly during the trek up and down the ridge, my legs told me otherwise as soon as I stood up to debus back at the Central Train Station, and they were quite sore for some days afterwards. By the time we reached the Wohnung again I was more than ready for bed, too tired even to have much appetite. One carrot sufficed for my supper, and I fell into bed quite early, lulled to sleep by a terrific thunderstorm outside my window complete with frequent lightning, ominous quick-moving clouds, and terrifying rolls of thunder. And so ended my first perfect weekend in Munich. Here's to many more to come!!!
Wednesday, June 8, 2011
Notice of Temporary Leave of Absence
Hello dear readers,
More and more it has come to my attention that Princeton in Munich is not Princeton in Petersburg, a perhaps self-evident conclusion, but with important implications. I actually have work to do here, I actually want to become fluent in the language, and particularly there is much in the city of Munich that I would love to experience instead of always sitting in my dorm in front of my computer. Therefore I give you ample warning that while I will most likely not cease altogether from maintaining this blog, the posts will be much fewer and farther between. This necessarily means that I will not be nearly so caught up in my activity as I would like, but as the other option is to drastically cut down on the level of detail I maintain in my posts, I would rather you find out later what I'm up to, and know exactly about all of the adventures that I have been having. Foremost in my mind is the fact that after PiM I have an eight-week internship in a small town where I can't imagine there is as much to do as there is in Munich. Also, I will be working in a lab every day and when I come home at night, I'm really home and don't have pesky homework assignments to worry about. Therefore I will have much more time for blogging and otherwise communicating with friends and family from back home.
So, please don't be alarmed when my blogging rate (and amount of staying in touch in general) drastically slows down - I'll pick it up again in July. Until then, know that I think of you often and hope you are all enjoying your summer as much as I am - and get ready, because once I have all this free time I'm sure I'll be bugging you all for news from home ;)
Sincerely,
The Wide-Eyed Wanderer
More and more it has come to my attention that Princeton in Munich is not Princeton in Petersburg, a perhaps self-evident conclusion, but with important implications. I actually have work to do here, I actually want to become fluent in the language, and particularly there is much in the city of Munich that I would love to experience instead of always sitting in my dorm in front of my computer. Therefore I give you ample warning that while I will most likely not cease altogether from maintaining this blog, the posts will be much fewer and farther between. This necessarily means that I will not be nearly so caught up in my activity as I would like, but as the other option is to drastically cut down on the level of detail I maintain in my posts, I would rather you find out later what I'm up to, and know exactly about all of the adventures that I have been having. Foremost in my mind is the fact that after PiM I have an eight-week internship in a small town where I can't imagine there is as much to do as there is in Munich. Also, I will be working in a lab every day and when I come home at night, I'm really home and don't have pesky homework assignments to worry about. Therefore I will have much more time for blogging and otherwise communicating with friends and family from back home.
So, please don't be alarmed when my blogging rate (and amount of staying in touch in general) drastically slows down - I'll pick it up again in July. Until then, know that I think of you often and hope you are all enjoying your summer as much as I am - and get ready, because once I have all this free time I'm sure I'll be bugging you all for news from home ;)
Sincerely,
The Wide-Eyed Wanderer
Monday, June 6, 2011
Celebrating the Holidays
Bavaria is a mostly catholic region of Germany, which means they have many holidays throughout the year and they take them very seriously. All stores and businesses are closed, which means that we don't have class. Thursday was one and we celebrated by spending the day at the Deutsche Museum. I woke up early, as I have been, in order to Skype a bit (with my college friends it works best if I wake up early, since 5am here is only 11pm on the East Coast). Afterwards I still had quite a bit of time before our 10:00 departure for the museum, so I continued investigating the various activities available in Munich. Some of the most interesting possibilities I found included the UFO-looking BMW museum (including potential tours of the factory!!), the firefighting museum, a puppet museum, a paleontology museum with lots of dinosaur bones, the "Crystal-rich" museum containing precious stones, and the "Center for Unusual Museums" which sounds just plain fun :D Most of the museums cost around 3€ and there is often a 1€ discount for students. I don't know how many I'll have the time or energy to visit, but I'll certainly tell about them when I do. In any case, the Deutsche Museum was fascinating enough in itself. It's more of a "touch and do" museum than a "look and read" museum - and it covers six floors!! WAY more than can possibly be seen in a day, as I found out. We got there around 10:30 and I was one of the last to leave when the museum closed at 5 (in fact, I had to be practically ushered out by the museum staff), and I probably didn't REALLY experience half of the exhibits. The museum is so large that it takes up an entire island all to itself. There is a main building, which we stayed in, but also several side museums and special exhibits in other buildings (for instance, a transport museum). There is just an overwhelming amount of knowledge in that museum. Fortunately many of the exhibits have explanations in both German and English, for although my German is good for everyday communication, it soon became apparent to me that I lacked any significant technical vocabulary of the kind that is used in a museum. There were entire exhibits where the plaques were all in German, with a few titles translated if I was lucky, and I felt helpless as I stood and looked at the various displays without the faintest idea of their significance. Just a sampling of the exhibits I saw in the museum (and remember, this isn't nearly everything) follows: electricity, motors/engines, power machinery, airplanes, space travel, shipping/sea travel, metalworking, lasers, welding, locks throughout history, mining, musical instruments, optics, magnetism, physics (yeah MAE!!), the "best of" 50's technology, the winners of the "German future" prize for the last ten years, nanotechnology, "new" technologies, tunneling, model trains, robotics, and wind/water power. Just a few of the exhibits I didn't get to include paper, glass-blowing, ceramics, textiles, photo/film technology, computers, microelectronics, agriculture, food technology, chronometry, astronomy, and the environment. I could spend a week in that museum and STILL not see everything, forget reading everything and understanding it (as I said, some exhibits have no English translations for the displays). My favorite exhibits would have to be mining, musical instruments, air travel, optics, and physics (of course). Mining was especially interesting because it was located two floors under the museum in a long, winding tunnel that made you feel like you were in an actual mine. The exhibits consisted of wax- or wood-figure reconstructions of miners working in reconstructed mine tunnels, and the exhibit covered everything from the ways the tunnels have been dug over the centuries to the various methods of extracting different valuable materials (coal, oil, precious metals) from the earth. I really prefer these "experiential" exhibits to a white room with displays lined up neatly in a row, so even though this was one of the places where there were no English display translations, so I can't tell you much more about mining now than before, it was definitely one of the highlights of the day. The musical instruments were interesting just to see the vast variety of ways in which people have made music over the centuries, from stringed to wind to percussive instruments. There was even one display that explained the making of a violin, which is quite complicated (I could have realized that but I had never really thought about it before). Aviation was cool just because of the massive size of the exhibit - but of course it would have to be that large in order to house so many airplanes from the past and the present! There were helicopters, gliders, and even a section of a 747 passenger jet!! I took lots of pictures in this exhibit for my dad, who is an avid WWII fan and especially of the battles fought in the air. That was one interesting thing about the Deutsche Museum - pictures were allowed everywhere as long as they were for personal use, in contrast to the museums in Russia where pictures were either forbidden or one had to purchase a ticket in order to be allowed to take them (which I never paid attention to, as it wasn't very strictly enforced ;]). Optics was cool because I've always liked optical illusions, but that was one of the exhibits that I encountered near the end of the day when I was just trying to cover as much ground as possible, so I only skimmed it. They did have a couple of chambers with mirrors at many different angles so that when you stepped into them a dozen yous appeared at once, and that made for some really interesting photos :) Physics of course was particularly intriguing because so many of the experiments were replicas of the famous, landmark research that we had talked about in so many of my classes. They had exhibits on drag and lift, tension and compression and torsion. It is so unfortunate that I arrived here at 4:30! There was enough in that one exhibit alone to keep me occupied the entire day, and I was loathe to leave. I don't know whether I'll even have another chance to go to the museum, and this time it will have to be on my own bill (Princeton bought our tickets for this day), but I just might... as I told you, there was much that I didn't have a chance to see.
The only other event of note this day occurred on the way to the Deutsche Museum. As I've said, the security on the trains is fairly lax, especially for the Germans' reputation. Members of the group speculate that it might be worth it never to buy a ticket, since the police (or inspectors) are seen so infrequently on the trains checking for valid tickets, and none of the entrances to the train station REQUIRE that you have a valid ticket to come through. However, as luck would have it, we were about halfway to our stop when a couple of uniformed men boarded the train and started asking to see tickets. A couple of the girls in our group had forgotten theirs (after all, we had only gotten them the day before) and they were quickly escorted off the train with one of the graduate students following behind to make sure all was communicated clearly. I imagine it would be quite terrifying to be pulled off the train in such a manner, never mind the sting to the pocket of having to pay 40€ for your neglectfulness, so I don't think the risk is worth it for me this summer - that's just the kind of adventure I hope to avoid. Not to mention Princeton bought our monthly passes that will take us just about anywhere we could ever care to go, so why be foolish?
Friday it was back to classes, and it's really starting to hit me how much vocabulary we really need to learn in order to become truly well-versed in German. I should be taking time to memorize at least several dozen words each day, but when you don't use them they quickly slip again out of your memory, and the necessary motivation isn't always there. Lunch all week for me was an apple and a cheese-and-butter sandwich, but I'm often hungry by the 10:30 break and eat it then, so I need another little something after classes to tide me over until suppertime. This day I bought a yogurt-filled pastry that was especially delicious, if a bit sweet to be called lunch. I think that's the thing I've liked the most about German food so far is the pastries, though I don't think I would have thought of that as a typical German food before I came here. They're also not too expensive - you can easily get a cinnamon roll or Danish as big as both hands for only 1,50€.
Friday's activity was a visit to the store "Globetrotter" - a kind of giant German L.L. Bean that sells everything from climbing gear to canoes, sleeping bags to sightseeing guides. Like the Deutsche Museum, this is a "try it and see" store - there is a cold room for testing out jackets, a rain room for wet-weather gear, a tightrope and climbing wall on the third floor, and even a pool where you can test out a kayak or canoe! The structure of the store is a giant donut with the pool at the bottom of the hole and railings around the hole on each floor. The climbing wall is the glass surrounding the hole of the third floor, which makes it a little unnerving when you look through the wall that you're climbing and see the water four floors below. Naturally I looked at everything and climbed and tightroped (I was the only one out of the group to make it all the way across - twice!!), and though I didn't enter the cold room, rain room, or pool, some of the group members did. I was most interested in the hiking boots, and felt quite satisfied with myself when I saw that the prices hovered around 150€ as I remembered my new Vasque boots, bought on Amazon for $85 just the month prior. In the boots section there was a device with several different types of terrain (rocky, shale, smooth) at different inclinations so that potential boot-owners could test out the feel of their new footwear on different types of ground. There was also a display where several of the different kinds of boots sold at the store had been sliced in half so that the different layers of the boot structure were visible, from the thick outer sole to the stiff shank to the padded insole. Even though there was so much to see and do in Globetrotter, it didn't take me too terribly long to satisfy my curiosity, so Dan H and I walked back to the train station and returned to the Wohnheim together. Along the way we discussed the pros and cons of cooking with the group (he tends to cook with several other Princeton students, while I always prepare my food alone). The way he described the propensity of people to show up when the food was prepared and disappear after eating a bit of it made me glad that I was so independent, though I do sometimes wish for company while I prepare my meals, if only to have another source of ideas for food (even wandering the grocery store hasn't tended to yield very many inspirations). By the time we reached the Wohnheim again I was sweaty and ready to take a shower in preparation for my excursion to the ballet. One of the incredibly nice things about our living accommodations is the fact that they are cleaned by the staff once a week, and Thursday is the day for the third floor, where I live. However, since Thursday was a holiday this week, they had the day off and instead were cleaning the third-floor rooms when I returned. They were a few doors down from me and by a quick inspection of my still-full trash cans I determined that they had not yet reached my room. After deliberating I decided that I could most likely take a shower and be safely finished by the time they came to my door. I was unfortunately mistaken, as I had no sooner climbed out of the shower and reentered my bedroom, wrapped in a towel, when I heard the buzzer sound and a key in the door. My desperate cry of "Moment, bitte!" thankfully stopped them from entering and I quickly threw on a dress, grabbed my dinner supplies, and retreated to the communal kitchen so that I wouldn't feel awkward watching them clean my room (no one but myself has ever cleaned any room that I've lived in; my mother stopped vacuuming my carpet at home once I was old enough to push the machine myself and I have always tended to be one of the cleanest people in any group of girls that I've lived with).
While I was reheating the last of the leftover pasta-chicken-corn-spaghetti sauce casserole of a few days prior for my supper, I began to wonder about the healthiness of my diet. In particular, for any of you who have been watching the news, perhaps you have heard about the E.coli epidemic that's going around. The CDC isn't yet sure what the cause of it is, but several dozen people either living or traveling in northern Germany have contracted the bacteria, and a few have even died from complications that arose. Tomatoes, cucumbers, and lettuce are most suspect, so much so that they can hardly be found in most restaurants in Germany at present. Being responsible for my own food (not to mention well-being), naturally I was a bit concerned about my risk of encountering the bacteria, although we are in one of the most southern regions of Germany. I have since spoken with my mother (who is a Physician's Assistant and my general go-to for all questions medical) and she has assured me that as long as I am meticulous with washing my vegetables with hot water before eating them raw, or cooking them, and I keep my cooking area/utensils clean, I should be fine. This becomes a rather interesting question in a student-inhabited dorm with communal kitchens which are never as clean as I would like them, but I'll pray hard (and ask you to, as well) that I am spared that particular bit of excitement during my stay in this country. As some of you may have also figured out, my internship is in a small town in North-Central Germany; however, there I will have my own kitchen as part of my living arrangements so the cleanliness will be to a much higher standard and more under my control. All in all, I think I have relatively little to worry about, but a bit of spiritual protection never hurt anyone, so if you happen to think of it, pray for my health and safety, please.
Another reason why I hurried back to the dorm so quickly on Friday was that a group of four of us had tickets to the ballet that night. We went to see Dornröschen, which means "Little Rose Thorn," better known in America as Sleeping Beauty. The ballet took place at the Bavarian State Opera House, which, while not nearly as grand as the Mariinsky Theater in St. Petersburg, was nonetheless impressive. I was very pleased and a little surprised that our tickets only cost us 7€, until I saw where our seats were. We had standing places in the fourth balcony; however, we still weren't the furthest away from the stage; there was one balcony above us and we were fairly near the center of the audience so we had a good view of the entire stage. Standing up for three hours is one thing; doing it at the end of a long day while jet-lagged and having spent six hours standing and walking through a museum the day prior is quite another and is many times more demanding, trust me. The ballet was beautiful, I recognized the music from a holiday CD of Tchaikovsky that I have, the costumes were fantastic, and though it was a bit warm in the theater with so many people there, it wasn't unbearably so, so all in all the evening was anything but a waste. This was my second ballet, the first being last summer seeing "Swan Lake" at the Mariinsky, and I tried to appreciate the art for what it is, but I did find it a bit difficult, which I attribute to my lack of exposure to fine art (growing up in Brewer, Maine our cultural options were always limited, and my parents would much rather take a family hike than a night out to the theater). The young boys and girls who took part in the performance (the boys couldn't have been older than 5 or 6) particularly delighted me with their grace and precision, and a seat so far away helped me really appreciate the coordination of the entire picture, all ten to thirty dancers who would be on stage at any one time. I was, in any case, quite happy to return to the Wohnheim at 10:30 after the performance, and I slept very well that night.
Saturday we had class again, because of the holiday, and it was certainly the toughest day I've had here yet. After class I was tired and bored and cranky and didn't really want to do much of anything. No one had any specific plans for the afternoon, so I returned to the Wohnheim and tried to muster up the motivation to study without much success (especially since we didn't have class on Sunday, at least). The weather was much improved from the clouds and rain of earlier in the week, and I felt that I should really take advantage of the sunshine while we had it, so I decided to go exploring in a nearby park. The park contains one of the many palaces belonging to the Bavarian royal family of the latter half of the 1800s, Schloss Nymphenburg, the birthplace of King Ludwig II, whose other palace-masterpiece I would visit the next day. I grabbed my iPod, put my camera and German reading-book in my backpack, and set off. My mood was immediately lightened by listening to my favorite songs and getting some exercise, and as a particular bonus I also discovered where the closest grocery store to the Wohnheim was located. The park was beautiful and though I really had no desire to go inside the palace (I saw enough palace interiors while in Russia) the grounds were becoming enough. I took several pictures, especially of the fountain in front of the palace (beside which a large male swan was obligingly standing and posing for the tourists, though not without hope of a morsel or two of bread) and the sundry cool green paths through the woods that cover most of the park. I eventually found a bench in a sunny spot and sat down to do my reading assignment (we're reading Franz Kafka's Metamorphosis, and unfortunately I'm really not getting into it yet, but more on that later), which took only about an hour since I determined to do it without any vocabulary aids to see how much I could understand from context (I underlined all of the unfamiliar words and looked them up later). By then an ominous-looking cloud bank had rolled in to cover the sun, so I quickly wended my way further through the woods to an exit and returned to the Wohnheim, stopping on the way at the grocery store to pick up a few items, including some carrots from Israel (in the interest of a more balanced diet I'm willing to take my chances with E.coli). The beautiful and tranquil woods paths made me long more than ever to have a bike with which to explore them, though I have determined with some certainty that it will be both less expensive and more convenient to wait to purchase one until I arrive in Clausthal for my internship, so I will just have to deny myself that pleasure. One extremely interesting thing about this park is that it is completely surrounded by a wall, with occasional gates to allow entrance and exit. However, these gates remain closed even during the day when the park is open - one must approach and open them oneself. It sounds simple enough, but I found in myself a strange reluctance to approach a closed gate, as though the presence of a door automatically in my mind signified a closed way. I think this is an American thing, though I could certainly be mistaken. The locals certainly didn't have a problem with walking up to and trying the gate, but when I saw that all of the entrances LOOKED closed my first instinct was to keep walking past them, even though upon closer inspection none of the bolts were drawn. I never realized what a law-abiding citizen-sheep I am!
Much encouraged, I finally returned to the Wohnheim in the evening, prepared my supper, and worked on my long-overdue blog entries. I also Skyped my mother again, though the connection was still poor (I haven't had nearly as many problems Skyping my boyfriend, I don't know whether it's the slow internet on my mom's end or the choice of timing that makes the difference) and we had to finally resort to text. Afterwards my outlook was much brighter and I hope that the bad mood was just a combination of jetlag and too much activity and a passing phenomenon. Overall my transition to Germany has been much smoother than that of last year in Russia, which is probably due to several factors (most of which you can probably guess if you read that part of my blog) and I really am enjoying myself here and feel that I'm taking much better advantage of the culture. Let's hope I can keep it up!!
The only other event of note this day occurred on the way to the Deutsche Museum. As I've said, the security on the trains is fairly lax, especially for the Germans' reputation. Members of the group speculate that it might be worth it never to buy a ticket, since the police (or inspectors) are seen so infrequently on the trains checking for valid tickets, and none of the entrances to the train station REQUIRE that you have a valid ticket to come through. However, as luck would have it, we were about halfway to our stop when a couple of uniformed men boarded the train and started asking to see tickets. A couple of the girls in our group had forgotten theirs (after all, we had only gotten them the day before) and they were quickly escorted off the train with one of the graduate students following behind to make sure all was communicated clearly. I imagine it would be quite terrifying to be pulled off the train in such a manner, never mind the sting to the pocket of having to pay 40€ for your neglectfulness, so I don't think the risk is worth it for me this summer - that's just the kind of adventure I hope to avoid. Not to mention Princeton bought our monthly passes that will take us just about anywhere we could ever care to go, so why be foolish?
Friday it was back to classes, and it's really starting to hit me how much vocabulary we really need to learn in order to become truly well-versed in German. I should be taking time to memorize at least several dozen words each day, but when you don't use them they quickly slip again out of your memory, and the necessary motivation isn't always there. Lunch all week for me was an apple and a cheese-and-butter sandwich, but I'm often hungry by the 10:30 break and eat it then, so I need another little something after classes to tide me over until suppertime. This day I bought a yogurt-filled pastry that was especially delicious, if a bit sweet to be called lunch. I think that's the thing I've liked the most about German food so far is the pastries, though I don't think I would have thought of that as a typical German food before I came here. They're also not too expensive - you can easily get a cinnamon roll or Danish as big as both hands for only 1,50€.
Friday's activity was a visit to the store "Globetrotter" - a kind of giant German L.L. Bean that sells everything from climbing gear to canoes, sleeping bags to sightseeing guides. Like the Deutsche Museum, this is a "try it and see" store - there is a cold room for testing out jackets, a rain room for wet-weather gear, a tightrope and climbing wall on the third floor, and even a pool where you can test out a kayak or canoe! The structure of the store is a giant donut with the pool at the bottom of the hole and railings around the hole on each floor. The climbing wall is the glass surrounding the hole of the third floor, which makes it a little unnerving when you look through the wall that you're climbing and see the water four floors below. Naturally I looked at everything and climbed and tightroped (I was the only one out of the group to make it all the way across - twice!!), and though I didn't enter the cold room, rain room, or pool, some of the group members did. I was most interested in the hiking boots, and felt quite satisfied with myself when I saw that the prices hovered around 150€ as I remembered my new Vasque boots, bought on Amazon for $85 just the month prior. In the boots section there was a device with several different types of terrain (rocky, shale, smooth) at different inclinations so that potential boot-owners could test out the feel of their new footwear on different types of ground. There was also a display where several of the different kinds of boots sold at the store had been sliced in half so that the different layers of the boot structure were visible, from the thick outer sole to the stiff shank to the padded insole. Even though there was so much to see and do in Globetrotter, it didn't take me too terribly long to satisfy my curiosity, so Dan H and I walked back to the train station and returned to the Wohnheim together. Along the way we discussed the pros and cons of cooking with the group (he tends to cook with several other Princeton students, while I always prepare my food alone). The way he described the propensity of people to show up when the food was prepared and disappear after eating a bit of it made me glad that I was so independent, though I do sometimes wish for company while I prepare my meals, if only to have another source of ideas for food (even wandering the grocery store hasn't tended to yield very many inspirations). By the time we reached the Wohnheim again I was sweaty and ready to take a shower in preparation for my excursion to the ballet. One of the incredibly nice things about our living accommodations is the fact that they are cleaned by the staff once a week, and Thursday is the day for the third floor, where I live. However, since Thursday was a holiday this week, they had the day off and instead were cleaning the third-floor rooms when I returned. They were a few doors down from me and by a quick inspection of my still-full trash cans I determined that they had not yet reached my room. After deliberating I decided that I could most likely take a shower and be safely finished by the time they came to my door. I was unfortunately mistaken, as I had no sooner climbed out of the shower and reentered my bedroom, wrapped in a towel, when I heard the buzzer sound and a key in the door. My desperate cry of "Moment, bitte!" thankfully stopped them from entering and I quickly threw on a dress, grabbed my dinner supplies, and retreated to the communal kitchen so that I wouldn't feel awkward watching them clean my room (no one but myself has ever cleaned any room that I've lived in; my mother stopped vacuuming my carpet at home once I was old enough to push the machine myself and I have always tended to be one of the cleanest people in any group of girls that I've lived with).
While I was reheating the last of the leftover pasta-chicken-corn-spaghetti sauce casserole of a few days prior for my supper, I began to wonder about the healthiness of my diet. In particular, for any of you who have been watching the news, perhaps you have heard about the E.coli epidemic that's going around. The CDC isn't yet sure what the cause of it is, but several dozen people either living or traveling in northern Germany have contracted the bacteria, and a few have even died from complications that arose. Tomatoes, cucumbers, and lettuce are most suspect, so much so that they can hardly be found in most restaurants in Germany at present. Being responsible for my own food (not to mention well-being), naturally I was a bit concerned about my risk of encountering the bacteria, although we are in one of the most southern regions of Germany. I have since spoken with my mother (who is a Physician's Assistant and my general go-to for all questions medical) and she has assured me that as long as I am meticulous with washing my vegetables with hot water before eating them raw, or cooking them, and I keep my cooking area/utensils clean, I should be fine. This becomes a rather interesting question in a student-inhabited dorm with communal kitchens which are never as clean as I would like them, but I'll pray hard (and ask you to, as well) that I am spared that particular bit of excitement during my stay in this country. As some of you may have also figured out, my internship is in a small town in North-Central Germany; however, there I will have my own kitchen as part of my living arrangements so the cleanliness will be to a much higher standard and more under my control. All in all, I think I have relatively little to worry about, but a bit of spiritual protection never hurt anyone, so if you happen to think of it, pray for my health and safety, please.
Another reason why I hurried back to the dorm so quickly on Friday was that a group of four of us had tickets to the ballet that night. We went to see Dornröschen, which means "Little Rose Thorn," better known in America as Sleeping Beauty. The ballet took place at the Bavarian State Opera House, which, while not nearly as grand as the Mariinsky Theater in St. Petersburg, was nonetheless impressive. I was very pleased and a little surprised that our tickets only cost us 7€, until I saw where our seats were. We had standing places in the fourth balcony; however, we still weren't the furthest away from the stage; there was one balcony above us and we were fairly near the center of the audience so we had a good view of the entire stage. Standing up for three hours is one thing; doing it at the end of a long day while jet-lagged and having spent six hours standing and walking through a museum the day prior is quite another and is many times more demanding, trust me. The ballet was beautiful, I recognized the music from a holiday CD of Tchaikovsky that I have, the costumes were fantastic, and though it was a bit warm in the theater with so many people there, it wasn't unbearably so, so all in all the evening was anything but a waste. This was my second ballet, the first being last summer seeing "Swan Lake" at the Mariinsky, and I tried to appreciate the art for what it is, but I did find it a bit difficult, which I attribute to my lack of exposure to fine art (growing up in Brewer, Maine our cultural options were always limited, and my parents would much rather take a family hike than a night out to the theater). The young boys and girls who took part in the performance (the boys couldn't have been older than 5 or 6) particularly delighted me with their grace and precision, and a seat so far away helped me really appreciate the coordination of the entire picture, all ten to thirty dancers who would be on stage at any one time. I was, in any case, quite happy to return to the Wohnheim at 10:30 after the performance, and I slept very well that night.
Saturday we had class again, because of the holiday, and it was certainly the toughest day I've had here yet. After class I was tired and bored and cranky and didn't really want to do much of anything. No one had any specific plans for the afternoon, so I returned to the Wohnheim and tried to muster up the motivation to study without much success (especially since we didn't have class on Sunday, at least). The weather was much improved from the clouds and rain of earlier in the week, and I felt that I should really take advantage of the sunshine while we had it, so I decided to go exploring in a nearby park. The park contains one of the many palaces belonging to the Bavarian royal family of the latter half of the 1800s, Schloss Nymphenburg, the birthplace of King Ludwig II, whose other palace-masterpiece I would visit the next day. I grabbed my iPod, put my camera and German reading-book in my backpack, and set off. My mood was immediately lightened by listening to my favorite songs and getting some exercise, and as a particular bonus I also discovered where the closest grocery store to the Wohnheim was located. The park was beautiful and though I really had no desire to go inside the palace (I saw enough palace interiors while in Russia) the grounds were becoming enough. I took several pictures, especially of the fountain in front of the palace (beside which a large male swan was obligingly standing and posing for the tourists, though not without hope of a morsel or two of bread) and the sundry cool green paths through the woods that cover most of the park. I eventually found a bench in a sunny spot and sat down to do my reading assignment (we're reading Franz Kafka's Metamorphosis, and unfortunately I'm really not getting into it yet, but more on that later), which took only about an hour since I determined to do it without any vocabulary aids to see how much I could understand from context (I underlined all of the unfamiliar words and looked them up later). By then an ominous-looking cloud bank had rolled in to cover the sun, so I quickly wended my way further through the woods to an exit and returned to the Wohnheim, stopping on the way at the grocery store to pick up a few items, including some carrots from Israel (in the interest of a more balanced diet I'm willing to take my chances with E.coli). The beautiful and tranquil woods paths made me long more than ever to have a bike with which to explore them, though I have determined with some certainty that it will be both less expensive and more convenient to wait to purchase one until I arrive in Clausthal for my internship, so I will just have to deny myself that pleasure. One extremely interesting thing about this park is that it is completely surrounded by a wall, with occasional gates to allow entrance and exit. However, these gates remain closed even during the day when the park is open - one must approach and open them oneself. It sounds simple enough, but I found in myself a strange reluctance to approach a closed gate, as though the presence of a door automatically in my mind signified a closed way. I think this is an American thing, though I could certainly be mistaken. The locals certainly didn't have a problem with walking up to and trying the gate, but when I saw that all of the entrances LOOKED closed my first instinct was to keep walking past them, even though upon closer inspection none of the bolts were drawn. I never realized what a law-abiding citizen-sheep I am!
Much encouraged, I finally returned to the Wohnheim in the evening, prepared my supper, and worked on my long-overdue blog entries. I also Skyped my mother again, though the connection was still poor (I haven't had nearly as many problems Skyping my boyfriend, I don't know whether it's the slow internet on my mom's end or the choice of timing that makes the difference) and we had to finally resort to text. Afterwards my outlook was much brighter and I hope that the bad mood was just a combination of jetlag and too much activity and a passing phenomenon. Overall my transition to Germany has been much smoother than that of last year in Russia, which is probably due to several factors (most of which you can probably guess if you read that part of my blog) and I really am enjoying myself here and feel that I'm taking much better advantage of the culture. Let's hope I can keep it up!!
Saturday, June 4, 2011
Finding a Routine
So, I'm starting to settle down into a daily routine here, which is always good. I tend to get tired early and therefore go to bed before 9 which means that I can wake up between 5 and 6am, which is nice because it gives me ample time before class to do things like check email, blog, do my homework or Bible study, and perhaps Skype my more night=owl-ish friends. Class is Monday through Friday 9-12:30 with a 30-minute break at 10:30. I eat breakfast in the Wohnheim, usually cereal (so far it's been cornflakes but I'm looking for inexpensive alternatives), yogurt, and sometimes also toast with butter. I also pack my lunch, a cheese-and-butter sandwich and an apple, though I often also supplement that with a pastry or something after class (I know, I'm eating so healthy, right? :P). There's usually a group going somewhere and doing something in the afternoon, and depending on their choice of activity and the weather I either go with them, go shopping, or just go back to the Wohnheim to do more homework/email/blogging until suppertime. I've made my own supper every night thus far, and it's usually pasta something. I try to get all the food groups in by cooking chicken to go in it or adding canned vegetables, but pasta is one of the cheapest and easiest things to prepare, so it's a staple for this poor college student trying to save her money for more exciting things like museums and day trips. The nice thing about preparing my own meals is that I eat when I'm hungry, a strong contrast to last summer for those of you who have read the first part of my blog where meal timing was a frequent complaint. After supper I go back to homework and such, unless there's an evening activity planned, which I tend to participate in much less frequently than the afternoon excursions. Finally around 8 or 9 I'm tired enough to go to bed, and what time I go to bed generally determines how early I set my alarm for the next morning. I try to get a solid 8=9 hours of sleep every night; it doesn't make any sense to get overtired and not be able to fully enjoy all of the opportunities we have here in Munich.
So, Tuesday was the first day of class. The group is split into three classes: one group of German 105 and two of German 107. In my group are some from my German 102-5 class in the spring (whom I already know) and several from the other class whom I had never met before, a good mix. In total there are twelve people in my class, though there are supposed to be thirteen - I'm not really sure why one of the students never ended up coming. The most interesting story within our group was one girl whose passport apparently expired a couple of months ago without her realizing it...? She had to expedite a new passport and catch the next possible flight to Munich, whether at her own expense or the arranged ticket was able to be cancelled I'm not sure. I'm still a little confused as to how, when planning to travel out of the country, one neglects to notice the expiration date on one's passport, but I suppose it's a simple enough oversight especially if you don't travel often. She's here now, in any case, but I don't envy her having missed two days of class and traveling here alone.
Our teacher is a grey-haired man, probably in his sixties - actually, he reminds me startlingly of Mr. Girodet, my French/Spanish teacher in high school, although he's German and not French. If you took Mr. Girodet with all his quirks and teaching methods and exchanged all the quintessentially French qualities that he has for equally stereotypical German ones, I'm pretty sure you would have Professor Földeak. (Though that would be a substantial difference, considering the obvious contrasts between French and German personalities...) Professor Földeak is a linguist and he studied English in college, a refreshing contrast from my PiP professors who barely spoke anything but Russian. He is very interested in the etymology of the vocabulary we are using and often links the German history of a word to its English counterpart, which is quite helpful for understanding and remembering what we're learning. His method focuses more on learning words in context rather than giving us lists of vocabulary to commit to memory, which isn't the way I've learned most languages, but I see how it would be helpful. We have pieces of yellow paper on which we are supposed to write important new vocab in the sentences he gives us. Our homework every night is to memorize these sentences so that we learn the new vocabulary, and every day we spend the first hour or so reviewing these sentences. It works most of the time, but for some completely new vocabulary the simple sentences he gives as examples aren't enough to cement in my memory the meaning of the words, so I also keep a notebook in a more traditional "dictionary" style where I write down the new word and its English translation. I tend more to make flashcards on Alek and study them instead of memorizing the sentences, though I do make sure to familiarize myself with those as well. On the first day of class we started reviewing basic things like common verbs and question words, so that Professor Földeak could get a sense for our knowledge level, and I realized just how much that we had studied during the academic year I had already forgotten in the intervening month, particularly the past-tense forms that we don't tend to use so often in conversation (a surprising proportion of conversation refers to the present). If I was really motivated I would go through the reference book that I brought with me and review all of the grammatical topics with which we are supposed to be familiar, but if you can keep a secret, this "intensive" language program really isn't so much, and I could and possibly will squeeze by with knowing the bare minimum and bluffing the rest. Call it a sacrifice for the sake of cultural education - I can't very well experience Germany if I'm always in my room studying, right? This is, after all, an immersion program... Overall the work is not too much and the class is interesting, though after coming off a hard year at Princeton I'm a little burned out and I sometimes find it hard to muster the motivation to study in the evenings. Hopefully either this will pass or I will find a good balance so that I don't resent my studies, but can keep the end goal of becoming fluent in German in mind. I would say the most advanced of us are basically conversationally fluent in that we can say most of the banal, ordinary, everyday things we want to say to each other in German, but there are all kinds of things we don't talk about because we don't have the vocabulary, and reading instructions or understanding native speakers is still sometimes difficult if you don't know what they are supposed to be saying (context clues save my LIFE, which I'm pretty sure is the only reason I ever thought I could speak Russian to any degree).
One big example is Christian vocabulary - having grown up in a churchgoing family, "religious" words were such a part of my life that I never realized how much specialized vocabulary we use until I started trying to think about it in another language. My very best friend gave me a German version of the Bible last Christmas, so of course I brought it along, and I've been reading Colossians. Even though I know basically what it says I was really shocked by the number of words (mostly nouns) that I didn't recognize, so I started making a list of them and discovered that they are mostly very basic words that I would use in any discussion of religion/faith - hope, love, faith, sin, forgiveness, grace, gospel, minister, etc. I'm really enjoying studying this vocabulary, though, and hope to have the opportunity to attend a German church one of these Sundays to see how much I can recognize. I researched and unfortunately all of the several Calvary Chapels (the group of churches I attend, and one of which I was fortunate enough to find in St. Petersburg last year) in Germany are at least an hour's drive from both Munich and Clausthal, where I will be for July/August doing my internship. The leader of the Princeton in Munich program, Jamie Rankin, is a strong Christian who plays the piano both at PEF and Westerly Road Church back in Princeton, so of course he knows of a good church here in Munich, but since most of the group is (naturally) not interested in attending church on a Sunday morning we've planned an excursion to Neuschwanstein (the castle that inspired Disneys' trademark Sleeping Beauty castle) which leaves at 7:45am, and next week we'll be in Berlin for our mid-term excursion, so I'll only get to attend once at most. Hopefully I'll be able to find a good Bible-preaching Evangelical Christian church in Clausthal-Zellerfeld to attend.
Let me tell you about my first week of classes, and then you'll see what I meant about there being excursions or activities of some type every day. Tuesday was the first day of class, and afterwards I had a couple of errands to run, primarily equipping my cell phone with a German SIM card. Unlike PiP, PiM does not make cell phones mandatory for everyone, which I still haven't decided how I feel about. On one hand it's easier because not everyone has to buy a $30 cell phone that they'll only use for a month and can spend their money more freely on what they want, and it certainly makes for more adventures, but on the other hand it makes communication between members of the group difficult if not downright frustrating. This was especially true during the first three days before our monthly passes went into effect (now we are basically independent, which I like very much as most of the time I prefer to do my own thing rather than stick with the group). In any case, I both wanted an opportunity to use the phone I bought in Russia again and wanted to be able to communicate with other members of the group/the group leaders, so I went to vodafone and bought a pre-paid SIM card. When it comes to cellular phone service, the Europeans know what they're doing. Instead of pricey and confusing monthly plans, cell phones can be as simple as buying a SIM card for 10€ and adding money to your account whenever you need to. Calls within the network are 0,05€/min and to other networks 0,15€/min. Texts cost 0,19€ each, and I'm not sure if vodafone works like the Russian networks in that incoming calls are free (but I rather hope so). In any case my Russian phone was unlocked (thankfully) so I bought a SIM card and put 15€ on my phone, which will most likely last me through the whole summer (and it's nice to have a cell phone just in case of emergencies, especially since I usually do my own thing and will not be with a group during my internship). So after successfully navigating that purchase (by myself and in German, I might add, though not without many blank stares and pantomiming...) I returned to the Wohnheim to meet the group for our next adventure. Since Tuesday was the last day of the month and our monthly passes were only good for the two inner zones of the city, I suggested that we visit one of the two large lakes in the region (Starnbergersee or Ammersee) while we could without purchasing extra tickets, and especially because the weather was very nice here on Tuesday. So a majority of us decided to take a trip to Starnbergersee, which was only about 30 minutes by S-Bahn from the Wohnheim. It made me glad I had brought my swimming suit (I considered leaving it since I only swam once while in Russia last year). The lake was nice as promised, and the snow-topped Alps were faintly visible at the southern end, but any visions we had of sandy beaches lined with umbrella chairs were sadly disappointed. The only swimming area we could find was a stretch of rocky shore with a dock that stretched a few dozen feet into the water, a mile or two down the shore from the train station. However, the important part was swimming, so most of us (mostly boys) eagerly derobed and rushed into the water. In some strange lapse of forethought I had neglected to put on my swimsuit while still at the Wohnheim, and changing at the swimming area was an interesting challenge. There were no easily-accessible changing rooms and the nearest bathrooms that I knew of were nearly a mile down the road back toward the train station. However, there were plenty of trees and walls and buildings around, so I just had to be quick and creative about it. Unfortunately my 16x30" travel towel was of no use in this matter, so I borrowed a female friend and a full-sized towel and snuck off behind a tree. I had an interesting close call when another member of the group unwittingly wandered over, but crisis was averted and I was soon running down the dock into the water, safely and modestly covered. The water was cold!!! And this is coming from a girl who lives in Maine, so I know what cold water is. I've been swimming in the ocean in May and in snowmelt rivers in April, so I have felt cold water. This wasn't nearly THAT cold, but it was certainly chillier than expected. I half-heartedly paddled a few hundred yards away from shore but the ominous-looking clouds on the other side of the lake and the lack of willing company discouraged me from a true long-distance swim. So I contented myself with standing in the shallows and observing the multitudes of small fish which swam around me in circles, occasionally venturing close enough to brush me with a tail. I had my goggles, of course, and a few times I dove under and swam amongst the fish, which always kept just out of reach but didn't seem otherwise too bothered by my presence. Soon the rumbles of the promised thunderstorm reached our ears and we (I, at least - most people were shivering) reluctantly clambered out of the water and dried off. We trotted back to the train station rather more quickly than we had come and returned to the Wohnheim without getting wet, if barely. I then turned my attention to making supper, which was an improvised combination of instant potatoes and instant soup (but still pretty good ;]). I was surprisingly tired, so though I had grand ambitions of writing long emails and blogging and doing my homework, I ended up going to bed at 8 and planning to do it all in the morning when I would be fresher and more efficient.
I did end up getting up at 5 and getting a great deal done before class, almost at the expense of my punctuality. I posted my blog entry at 8:33 and rushed off to the train station - it takes a little more than 20 minutes to get from the Wohnheim to the Institute on a normal day and Wednesday was gloomy and rainy all day. The most interesting part of class was when our professor offered to buy us ballet and opera tickets and claimed that he could do so in about ten minutes - whoever had interest gave him 10€ for the ticket and in the middle of class, after setting us to begin a grammar exercise, he slipped out to buy the tickets. He tends to do that - disappear with little or no explanation in the middle of class, almost in the middle of a sentence - usually he comes back right away, because he just has copies to make or something. This time he said ten minutes, but he actually didn't return for FORTY - and by the time he did, class was nearly over so all he could do was give us our homework for the next day (I didn't really mind). After class I went to explore a store near the Institute that had caught my eye - it was called "Euroshop". Turns out it is just what it sounds like - the European equivalent of a dollar store. EVERYTHING is one Euro - and there's some pretty good stuff there! Not just because 1€ = $1.42, either. I'm sure I'll be back to that store many times this month. :) Then it was back to the Wohnheim, where I spent the rest of the day in frustrated attempts to call home - the weather being bad both here and in Maine, my Skype calls with Mom were nothing more than an exercise in frustration, and other friends whom I tried to contact weren't available. I eventually gave up and began researching activities in Munich that would potentially interest me, in hopes of not leaving this city feeling like I had wasted my time here or not seen all the things I wanted to see. The best discovery which followed from this exercise was that most museums in the city are quite inexpensive for students, and a few are even free! Now I have lots more ideas for adventures, and whether I can find companions with which to share my experiences or not, I will be sure to at least inform you well of the ups and downs.
So, Tuesday was the first day of class. The group is split into three classes: one group of German 105 and two of German 107. In my group are some from my German 102-5 class in the spring (whom I already know) and several from the other class whom I had never met before, a good mix. In total there are twelve people in my class, though there are supposed to be thirteen - I'm not really sure why one of the students never ended up coming. The most interesting story within our group was one girl whose passport apparently expired a couple of months ago without her realizing it...? She had to expedite a new passport and catch the next possible flight to Munich, whether at her own expense or the arranged ticket was able to be cancelled I'm not sure. I'm still a little confused as to how, when planning to travel out of the country, one neglects to notice the expiration date on one's passport, but I suppose it's a simple enough oversight especially if you don't travel often. She's here now, in any case, but I don't envy her having missed two days of class and traveling here alone.
Our teacher is a grey-haired man, probably in his sixties - actually, he reminds me startlingly of Mr. Girodet, my French/Spanish teacher in high school, although he's German and not French. If you took Mr. Girodet with all his quirks and teaching methods and exchanged all the quintessentially French qualities that he has for equally stereotypical German ones, I'm pretty sure you would have Professor Földeak. (Though that would be a substantial difference, considering the obvious contrasts between French and German personalities...) Professor Földeak is a linguist and he studied English in college, a refreshing contrast from my PiP professors who barely spoke anything but Russian. He is very interested in the etymology of the vocabulary we are using and often links the German history of a word to its English counterpart, which is quite helpful for understanding and remembering what we're learning. His method focuses more on learning words in context rather than giving us lists of vocabulary to commit to memory, which isn't the way I've learned most languages, but I see how it would be helpful. We have pieces of yellow paper on which we are supposed to write important new vocab in the sentences he gives us. Our homework every night is to memorize these sentences so that we learn the new vocabulary, and every day we spend the first hour or so reviewing these sentences. It works most of the time, but for some completely new vocabulary the simple sentences he gives as examples aren't enough to cement in my memory the meaning of the words, so I also keep a notebook in a more traditional "dictionary" style where I write down the new word and its English translation. I tend more to make flashcards on Alek and study them instead of memorizing the sentences, though I do make sure to familiarize myself with those as well. On the first day of class we started reviewing basic things like common verbs and question words, so that Professor Földeak could get a sense for our knowledge level, and I realized just how much that we had studied during the academic year I had already forgotten in the intervening month, particularly the past-tense forms that we don't tend to use so often in conversation (a surprising proportion of conversation refers to the present). If I was really motivated I would go through the reference book that I brought with me and review all of the grammatical topics with which we are supposed to be familiar, but if you can keep a secret, this "intensive" language program really isn't so much, and I could and possibly will squeeze by with knowing the bare minimum and bluffing the rest. Call it a sacrifice for the sake of cultural education - I can't very well experience Germany if I'm always in my room studying, right? This is, after all, an immersion program... Overall the work is not too much and the class is interesting, though after coming off a hard year at Princeton I'm a little burned out and I sometimes find it hard to muster the motivation to study in the evenings. Hopefully either this will pass or I will find a good balance so that I don't resent my studies, but can keep the end goal of becoming fluent in German in mind. I would say the most advanced of us are basically conversationally fluent in that we can say most of the banal, ordinary, everyday things we want to say to each other in German, but there are all kinds of things we don't talk about because we don't have the vocabulary, and reading instructions or understanding native speakers is still sometimes difficult if you don't know what they are supposed to be saying (context clues save my LIFE, which I'm pretty sure is the only reason I ever thought I could speak Russian to any degree).
One big example is Christian vocabulary - having grown up in a churchgoing family, "religious" words were such a part of my life that I never realized how much specialized vocabulary we use until I started trying to think about it in another language. My very best friend gave me a German version of the Bible last Christmas, so of course I brought it along, and I've been reading Colossians. Even though I know basically what it says I was really shocked by the number of words (mostly nouns) that I didn't recognize, so I started making a list of them and discovered that they are mostly very basic words that I would use in any discussion of religion/faith - hope, love, faith, sin, forgiveness, grace, gospel, minister, etc. I'm really enjoying studying this vocabulary, though, and hope to have the opportunity to attend a German church one of these Sundays to see how much I can recognize. I researched and unfortunately all of the several Calvary Chapels (the group of churches I attend, and one of which I was fortunate enough to find in St. Petersburg last year) in Germany are at least an hour's drive from both Munich and Clausthal, where I will be for July/August doing my internship. The leader of the Princeton in Munich program, Jamie Rankin, is a strong Christian who plays the piano both at PEF and Westerly Road Church back in Princeton, so of course he knows of a good church here in Munich, but since most of the group is (naturally) not interested in attending church on a Sunday morning we've planned an excursion to Neuschwanstein (the castle that inspired Disneys' trademark Sleeping Beauty castle) which leaves at 7:45am, and next week we'll be in Berlin for our mid-term excursion, so I'll only get to attend once at most. Hopefully I'll be able to find a good Bible-preaching Evangelical Christian church in Clausthal-Zellerfeld to attend.
Let me tell you about my first week of classes, and then you'll see what I meant about there being excursions or activities of some type every day. Tuesday was the first day of class, and afterwards I had a couple of errands to run, primarily equipping my cell phone with a German SIM card. Unlike PiP, PiM does not make cell phones mandatory for everyone, which I still haven't decided how I feel about. On one hand it's easier because not everyone has to buy a $30 cell phone that they'll only use for a month and can spend their money more freely on what they want, and it certainly makes for more adventures, but on the other hand it makes communication between members of the group difficult if not downright frustrating. This was especially true during the first three days before our monthly passes went into effect (now we are basically independent, which I like very much as most of the time I prefer to do my own thing rather than stick with the group). In any case, I both wanted an opportunity to use the phone I bought in Russia again and wanted to be able to communicate with other members of the group/the group leaders, so I went to vodafone and bought a pre-paid SIM card. When it comes to cellular phone service, the Europeans know what they're doing. Instead of pricey and confusing monthly plans, cell phones can be as simple as buying a SIM card for 10€ and adding money to your account whenever you need to. Calls within the network are 0,05€/min and to other networks 0,15€/min. Texts cost 0,19€ each, and I'm not sure if vodafone works like the Russian networks in that incoming calls are free (but I rather hope so). In any case my Russian phone was unlocked (thankfully) so I bought a SIM card and put 15€ on my phone, which will most likely last me through the whole summer (and it's nice to have a cell phone just in case of emergencies, especially since I usually do my own thing and will not be with a group during my internship). So after successfully navigating that purchase (by myself and in German, I might add, though not without many blank stares and pantomiming...) I returned to the Wohnheim to meet the group for our next adventure. Since Tuesday was the last day of the month and our monthly passes were only good for the two inner zones of the city, I suggested that we visit one of the two large lakes in the region (Starnbergersee or Ammersee) while we could without purchasing extra tickets, and especially because the weather was very nice here on Tuesday. So a majority of us decided to take a trip to Starnbergersee, which was only about 30 minutes by S-Bahn from the Wohnheim. It made me glad I had brought my swimming suit (I considered leaving it since I only swam once while in Russia last year). The lake was nice as promised, and the snow-topped Alps were faintly visible at the southern end, but any visions we had of sandy beaches lined with umbrella chairs were sadly disappointed. The only swimming area we could find was a stretch of rocky shore with a dock that stretched a few dozen feet into the water, a mile or two down the shore from the train station. However, the important part was swimming, so most of us (mostly boys) eagerly derobed and rushed into the water. In some strange lapse of forethought I had neglected to put on my swimsuit while still at the Wohnheim, and changing at the swimming area was an interesting challenge. There were no easily-accessible changing rooms and the nearest bathrooms that I knew of were nearly a mile down the road back toward the train station. However, there were plenty of trees and walls and buildings around, so I just had to be quick and creative about it. Unfortunately my 16x30" travel towel was of no use in this matter, so I borrowed a female friend and a full-sized towel and snuck off behind a tree. I had an interesting close call when another member of the group unwittingly wandered over, but crisis was averted and I was soon running down the dock into the water, safely and modestly covered. The water was cold!!! And this is coming from a girl who lives in Maine, so I know what cold water is. I've been swimming in the ocean in May and in snowmelt rivers in April, so I have felt cold water. This wasn't nearly THAT cold, but it was certainly chillier than expected. I half-heartedly paddled a few hundred yards away from shore but the ominous-looking clouds on the other side of the lake and the lack of willing company discouraged me from a true long-distance swim. So I contented myself with standing in the shallows and observing the multitudes of small fish which swam around me in circles, occasionally venturing close enough to brush me with a tail. I had my goggles, of course, and a few times I dove under and swam amongst the fish, which always kept just out of reach but didn't seem otherwise too bothered by my presence. Soon the rumbles of the promised thunderstorm reached our ears and we (I, at least - most people were shivering) reluctantly clambered out of the water and dried off. We trotted back to the train station rather more quickly than we had come and returned to the Wohnheim without getting wet, if barely. I then turned my attention to making supper, which was an improvised combination of instant potatoes and instant soup (but still pretty good ;]). I was surprisingly tired, so though I had grand ambitions of writing long emails and blogging and doing my homework, I ended up going to bed at 8 and planning to do it all in the morning when I would be fresher and more efficient.
I did end up getting up at 5 and getting a great deal done before class, almost at the expense of my punctuality. I posted my blog entry at 8:33 and rushed off to the train station - it takes a little more than 20 minutes to get from the Wohnheim to the Institute on a normal day and Wednesday was gloomy and rainy all day. The most interesting part of class was when our professor offered to buy us ballet and opera tickets and claimed that he could do so in about ten minutes - whoever had interest gave him 10€ for the ticket and in the middle of class, after setting us to begin a grammar exercise, he slipped out to buy the tickets. He tends to do that - disappear with little or no explanation in the middle of class, almost in the middle of a sentence - usually he comes back right away, because he just has copies to make or something. This time he said ten minutes, but he actually didn't return for FORTY - and by the time he did, class was nearly over so all he could do was give us our homework for the next day (I didn't really mind). After class I went to explore a store near the Institute that had caught my eye - it was called "Euroshop". Turns out it is just what it sounds like - the European equivalent of a dollar store. EVERYTHING is one Euro - and there's some pretty good stuff there! Not just because 1€ = $1.42, either. I'm sure I'll be back to that store many times this month. :) Then it was back to the Wohnheim, where I spent the rest of the day in frustrated attempts to call home - the weather being bad both here and in Maine, my Skype calls with Mom were nothing more than an exercise in frustration, and other friends whom I tried to contact weren't available. I eventually gave up and began researching activities in Munich that would potentially interest me, in hopes of not leaving this city feeling like I had wasted my time here or not seen all the things I wanted to see. The best discovery which followed from this exercise was that most museums in the city are quite inexpensive for students, and a few are even free! Now I have lots more ideas for adventures, and whether I can find companions with which to share my experiences or not, I will be sure to at least inform you well of the ups and downs.
Settling In
My first impressions of Germany:
- clean - amazingly so, for a city. There is NO litter. Anywhere.
- organized
- everyone follows the rules religiously - a couple of examples: when the crossing light is red, you don't cross the street. Even if there are NO cars coming and the light is about to turn green in a couple of seconds. Also, there are no gates in the train stations - if you wanted to get on the train without a ticket, you totally could. Although if you get caught doing it, the fine is 40€, so I don't suggest trying it. Even if I've only seen the police on the train once in five days.
- uncrowded (compared to St. Petersburg)
- less diverse than NYC or basically any other large American city, but more so than Russia
- friendly but businesslike - most storekeepers tolerate our mediocre German rather than trying out their English on us (especially since even if they switch to English, we insist on responding in German)
Monday was our first full day in Germany. We didn't have class but only an information session at the Institute that began at 10. I really like that on our first day they showed us where the institute was so there was no question (they didn't do that for PiP and Latalia and I had to go searching for it on our own). Since we all had group tickets until Wednesday, we met at 9:15 to all travel over together, grabbing breakfast along the way. I bought a cheese-covered roll-pastry at Müllers, a small bakery located in the train station closest to the Wohnheim, for 1,30€. Food here is surprisingly cheap, which is very good seeing as it will be my main expense.
Transportation in Germany is quite interesting and deserves a paragraph to itself. There is quite a system of interconnected S-Bahns (aboveground trains) and U-Bahns (underground trains, aka subways) throughout the city. Since we live on the last station in the city center, seven S-Bahn lines come through our station. They all take the same track through the city center and only diverge at the outskirts to travel to various places around Munich. This means that there is a train heading towards downtown approximately every 2 minutes, so you never have to worry about "missing" your train. Any of the trains heading to the city center will stop at the Institute station, so it hardly even matters which one you board. Our monthly pass allows us to travel an unlimited number of times on any S-Bahn, U-Bahn, bus, or tram in the two innermost "circles" of the city, which is basically anywhere we would want to go for museums, parks, concerts, etc. On the way back to the Wohnheim at night there is only one of the eight S-Bahn lines which diverges before our stop, so we have to be a tad more watchful, but in general the public transportation around the city is absolutely stellar and I've not yet had a problem with it. Everything is exceedingly well-marked in true German style and there are clear maps of the immediate neighborhood, city, and region in every station. Although I will to some degree miss the wild adventure of taking a marshrutka through St. Petersburg, hoping that it is traveling in the direction that I want to go in, I am mostly very glad for the high level of organization. Another thing that makes Germany stand out from both the US and Russia is their attitude on bikes. They are obsessed with them over here, and bikers are thus given a much higher priority. Every sidewalk in the city consists of two lanes of bike traffic as well as places for pedestrian traffic, but if there is not enough room, the bikes take priority. And all of the Germans know not to walk in the bike lanes, because they'll just ring their bells angrily at you and then run you over. There are ample spaces for locking up bikes at the train stations and bikes are even allowed on the S-Bahn, with special places on each car to put them out of the way. I think I'm in biker heaven. Of course, one of my first questions to our German assistants (who are serving their civil service requirement with the Goethe Institute as opposed to a military service requirement, one of which is required for every young person in Germany) was "where in Munich can I buy a used bike?" I haven't seen him again to ask whether he found a good place (he answered that he knew there were shops where that was possible but would have to research exactly where in the city they are located), and I am debating whether it is worth buying a bike here that I would then have to transport on the train to Clausthal or whether I would be better off waiting until I got there to purchase one (the thought of trying to transport a bike along with two heavy suitcases and a backpack makes me shiver).
Getting back to Monday, after the information session (which only lasted an hour or so), in which we learned about the course organization as well as received our internet usernames and passwords, we were let free until 2pm. I quickly joined the group that was going shopping with the intention to end up back at the Wohnheim, and we traveled first to DM (a chain much like Rite-Aid or CVS) for shower supplies, then to a grocery store (Tengelmann) on the way home, which is when it really hit home how inexpensive groceries are here. I was able to buy a loaf of bread, butter, cheese, yogurt, milk, cereal, chicken, pasta, instant potatoes, applesauce, spaghetti sauce, 5 apples, and some instant soup mixes (much like Raman) for only 20€! Granted, I sought the cheapest items and my shopping cart didn't display the most balanced menu, but it was still a lot for what I paid for. Rushing back to the dorm, we quickly connected our computers to the internet and sent off hurried emails to parents assuring them of our safe arrival (or in my case, a terse Facebook status update to kill as many birds with one stone as possible) before heading off to the Olympic park to meet the group. The big attraction that we were all gathering to see was the Olympic tower, by far the tallest building in Munich, which provided an excellent opportunity to view the entire city (and yes, take lots of pictures). The park itself is quite interesting, however; it has several hills, but none of them are natural: they were formed from the rubble of Munich directly following WWII, then covered in dirt and planted to create a park. This sort of enormous reconstruction project happened all over just after the war as many German cities were almost completely destroyed by bombs.
Once we were all at the top of the Olympic tower, the grad students Hannes and Mareike unveiled their treat - a scavenger hunt (Schnitzeljagd) about Munich! We broke up into groups of five and received a paper with several questions on it, which we were charged to answer before 6 when we should all meet at a particular ice cream store which they pointed out on a map. My group consisted of four other people from my German 102-5 class: Dan H, Olivia, Claudia, and Nathan, so I knew we would have a great deal of fun no matter what the outcome. One of the challenges was to take 10€ given to us by Professor Rankin and spend it in the most creative way. Earlier I had seen some paddleboats on the lake and suddenly I was struck with an idea: why not spend our money on renting a paddleboat and paddling around the lake? Finding this to be the best idea anyone had, we promptly followed through with it. One of the boats was shaped like a giant swan, so of course that was the one I wanted to take. Olivia and I clambered into the swan and Claudia and the boys in the other, and we cheerfully paddled around the lake for a half-hour. The most exciting part came when we tried to follow the other boat (which was just a normal paddleboat) under a low bridge and found out that the head of the swan was too tall to allow this - we almost got stuck until Claudia suggested "lean forward" and the shift in weight tipped the boat forward so that the head was lower. (Who's the engineer, here?) The rest of the hunt involved dashing around Munich on the sophisticated U-Bahn and S-Bahn network to various sights in the city to take pictures and gather souvenirs. Unfortunately we didn't make it to the ice cream shop in time, but we had a blast so it didn't really matter to us.
We got back to the Wohnheim at about 6:30, and I promptly made myself a scrumptious supper of tortellini before hopping on Skype to talk to my sister Emily for her birthday (this is the second year in a row that I have been overseas on her birthday). Before I knew it, the clock read 11pm and I was more than ready for bed, especially since the next day marked the first day of classes.
We got back to the Wohnheim at about 6:30, and I promptly made myself a scrumptious supper of tortellini before hopping on Skype to talk to my sister Emily for her birthday (this is the second year in a row that I have been overseas on her birthday). Before I knew it, the clock read 11pm and I was more than ready for bed, especially since the next day marked the first day of classes.
Wednesday, June 1, 2011
A New Adventure Begins
Travel. Quite remarkable how quickly one becomes accustomed to it.
It really didn't hit me that I was leaving until about Friday night at the PEF Alumni event. Which is a little strange, because I had been packing slowly for nearly a week and by Friday everything was ready to go. But it wasn't until afterwards when I was talking to people that I really realized that I wasn't going to see any of them again until September, and some of them perhaps never again. I don't cry at these sorts of things, but it was a sobering thought. Evidently no one else realized it either, because I got texts from two separate people later that evening as I was moving the last of my stuff out (a very unwise idea on the Friday night of Reunions, mind you) and getting ready for my last night in an American bed for three months to the effect of "WAIT A MINUTE! YOU'RE LEAVING?!?!??!" They asked when they could see me and I truthfully said that the only way I could guarantee it was if they hung around with Joe. I knew at least he would take pains to make sure I said goodbye before I raced off to my summer exploits. I should probably also mention that I worked 19 hours for two different jobs in the three days leading up to my departure, including the morning we left for the airport (I actually had to pass off a shift to someone else because it wouldn't have finished in time for me to make the shuttle bus ;]). So I wasn't just moping around saying drawn-out goodbyes and waiting to leave.
The only people I ended up seeing on the morning of my departure were Joe, his roommates, and a close senior friend of his that I had also gotten to know this past semester. I hope I see them (the seniors) again, because I had become very close to some of them during the course of the year. Last year the seniors graduating meant very little to me, because I only knew a couple of them and didn't even have very many friends anyway. This year it really hit home how much I will miss them, and I begin to wonder again whether studying abroad my junior year spring semester is such a good idea, since it will mean missing the class of 2012's graduation. But I have all summer to decide that, and we haven't even started off on the adventure yet! So let's get going.
The bus was scheduled to leave at noon on Saturday, but because of one of the group members' unfortunate unforeseen circumstances we were delayed about 30 minutes. Not that it mattered - we got to the airport in plenty of time to check in and wait around for another couple of hours. The theme of waiting on people would continue through the next few days, however, and without cell phones (which were mandatory to purchase in Russia but aren't obligatory here) communication can be quite frustrating at times.
As opposed to last summer, when I went home for a week before traipsing off to Serbia and Russia, this year I chose not to go home at all in May and merely pack for Germany from what I had brought to college. This brought up the interesting question of storing what I wasn't bringing out of the country, which turned out to be quite a lot. Mom was (understandably) unwilling to drive down and pick up my stuff if I wasn't coming home (a 1000 mile journey with just all of my stuff to keep her company? Granted, I have plenty of stuffed animals, which make fine conversation partners but they can't share the driving ;]). However, she and my sister were planning a college visit trip during Emily's April vacation and she (conveniently) wanted to visit some colleges in Pennsylvania, so she decided that they would come visit me on the way and bring as much of my stuff as possible back home with them. It was unbelievably difficult to pack everything I thought I didn't need for the summer in April, and though I planned to basically live out of a suitcase for a month, I ended up having quite a bit of stuff that needed to find a home for the summer. Thankfully the wonderfully generous PEF staff and some close friends who live in the area made it possible for me to store everything I didn't need without having to pay exorbitant prices for it all. However, since I didn't want to burden them unnecessarily with all kinds of stuff, and I packed so hastily in April (there were a few things which I accidentally sent home which I later needed, and I kept at Princeton FAR more than I intended to), I ended up bringing much more than I needed to Germany. Problematic, when one considers luggage weight limits on planes which are becoming ever stricter as each additional pound means extra fuel costs. So it turned out that BOTH my checked bag and intended carry-on were above the limit, and I didn't even try to weigh my backpack which contained my laptop and sundry other items which I intended to be my "personal item." Thankfully the woman at the check-in counter was wonderfully gracious and didn't ask about the backpack, but only made me rearrange so that the carry-on bag said 8kg (it was originally 10kg, and the checked luggage was 25.5kg, when the limit is 23kg). When I tried to weigh my big suitcase again to see how much over it was, she waved me away and strapped the tag to it before I could protest. I suppose if she didn't see how much over the limit it was, she couldn't charge me for an overweight bag? In any case, my prospects for souvenirs seem dour. I hope everybody will be content with postcards, because unless I leave a significant chunk of my luggage in Germany, that's about all I can afford to bring back, and that's only if the German luggage-counter attendants are as gracious as the one in New York, which I somewhat doubt. While waiting for the plane in JFK I began thinking of how much I was bringing to Germany that I could spare: which clothes weren't my absolute favorite, which books wouldn't I need again, which things I had brought that I would use up over the course of a summer (painfully few, as I planned to purchase most such disposables upon arrival). But again, I have all summer to decide that.
Finally the call came to board and we eagerly crowded onto the plane (the second-longest in the world - the bathrooms are actually downstairs from the main cabin!!) only to wait another 60 minutes or so on the tarmac before being cleared for takeoff. I didn't mind particularly - I was excited for Germany but not so-excited-I-can-hardly-stand-it. While we waited I watched The Green Hornet which seemed to be about the only interesting movie option - I'm glad I had nothing else to do with that time, because watching that movie would certainly have been a waste of it. And I usually like superhero movies... I do, however, tend to despise movies where the main character is a jerk - though Dan H may kill me for saying it, I really didn't like Rushmore either. Finally we took off, which is always one of my favorite parts of a plane ride, and soon we were cruising up the New England coast (which I knew not because of my stellar sense of direction or knowledge of aerial geography, but because the plane had one of those nifty GPS-maps that shows the route and position of the plane, as well as sundry other information about the flight - if you are curious, go read my blog entry about my trans-Atlantic flight to Zurich last year, where I first encountered this useful bit of technology. I probably spend a paragraph and a half describing it :P). In true German style the plane was clean, all was orderly, the flight attendants were crisp and businesslike, and the food was stellar (well - for airplane food, anyway). I had "asian chicken" for supper and breakfast of a roll, granola bar, and fruit salad (if you can call two slices of pineapple, one of watermelon, one of cantaloupe and one blueberry a fruit salad). I slept around 3 hours in between, not bad on a 7-hour flight (I don't usually do well trying to sleep sitting up). Because of the northernly arc of the flight trajectory (presumably to stay over land as much as possible in case anything should go awry and demand an emergency landing) I got to see both sunset and sunrise on the same flight from my window seat on the left side of the plane. This is probably my favorite part of flying, even more than takeoff/landing. We landed at about 8:30am Munich time, which is 2:30 EST due to the 6-hour time difference. Upon deplaning I promptly took a wrong turn in baggage claim and almost got lost in the airport - not a fortuitous start to the summer, I must say. In addition I discovered that whether in the airport in New York or on the plane, I had somehow misplaced my better pair of sunglasses and was now constrained to my big bug-glasses for the summer - at least I brought two pairs!
As soon as we deplaned, the Princeton in Munich program unofficially began - we were from that point on constrained to speak only German from 9am-9pm. (I don't count blogging because I'm not technically *speaking* English, and I hope my professors and classmates will forgive me the exception in the interest of preserving my memories). To my great surprise, I could do it! In stark contrast to the rocky start of the Princeton in St. Petersburg program in which I participated the summer prior, when I was unceremoniously dumped off at my host mother's apartment to find that she spoke not a word of English and my Russian was lacking to the point that I could barely understand what she was trying to communicate, much less respond (again, for more on that traumatic experience, go read the post titled "First Impressions"), I found that most of the vocabulary I wanted to communicate with my classmates was easily within my grasp! Not that my grammar is perfect or that I don't pause and stumble (and make up German words or use English substitutes quite frequently), but I can understand and be understood, and that is a huge relief and confidence booster. Granted, I am speaking with my classmates and professor who are intimately acquainted with both my accent and vocabulary level, and I have found that speaking with native speakers is significantly more difficult, but not impossible. There may be hope after all for me being at least conversationally fluent by the end of the summer, if I work hard these next 12 weeks.
After waiting around a bit more in the airport (another student's bag had been lost and Prof. Rankin had to buy the tickets for us to travel on the train to our apartment), we were finally ready to set off, all 38 of us. Now, anytime you have a group of this size you run the risk of losing track of everyone, and sure enough, that is what happened. Prof. Rankin had bought group tickets (for up to 5 people) which were good for three days, which was exactly the time needed to last us until June, when we would receive individual month-long passes for all public transportation systems (local trains, subway, buses, trams...). Amazingly this, like so many other aspects of the program, is covered in the program fee. Now I can't believe that PIM costs only $2500! PIP was also $2500, but we were individually responsible for our plane tickets, transportation around the city, and so on. However, with PIM we have to pay for all our own food, and the program is only half as long, so perhaps the advantage isn't so much as I make it out to be. In all honesty, it probably isn't fair to continuously make these comparisons between PiP and PiM, but I can't help it, and so far PiM is coming out ahead by a long shot. Anyway, back to the airport. As was bound to happen, 13 of us didn't make it onto the train in time and it zoomed away, carrying Professor Rankin and all of the tickets with it. Evidently he thought that we were all on the train together because he had handed out all of his tickets, but obviously not everyone had had a group of five and in the chaos, quite a few of us had been overlooked. All was not lost, however. I was one of the thirteen left behind, but I was in a group of five with a ticket. Our group had gotten off the train to seek a less crowded car just as the doors closed and locked (train doors in Germany don't automatically open and close - you must push a button to open them that deactivates when the train is about to leave). The other eight, however, were stranded. We finally decided that the five of us should follow the group and inform Professor Rankin of the predicament of the others, since we didn't know whether or not he was aware of so many missing, no one had a way to contact anyone in the other group (since none of our American phones worked in Germany) and having one ticket between thirteen people wouldn't do anyone any good. We caught the next train into the city and dutifully got off at our stop, but then paused, confused. We started off in one direction, but when we didn't find the correct street as "the first street on the right", as described, we turned around only to be met by Nathan, one of the most energetic participants in PiM, who had been sent back to train station to meet and guide us back to the dorm building. Finally we arrived and told Professor Rankin of the other eight (and confirmed that he had no idea that they had been left behind). While he dashed off to return to the airport and retrieve them, we received our room keys and set off to unpack a bit before an informational meeting. My room for the summer is number 309, which is on the fourth floor by American accounting (since Europeans count the ground floor as separate from the first floor). We all have very similar singles furnished with a bed, a desk, two bookshelves, a large shkaf (a Russian word for a free-standing wardrobe for which there is no good English equivalent), a refrigerator, a nightstand, and a private bathroom with toilet, sink, and shower. Ironically it is larger, newer, and nicer than my academic room in Princeton from last year. Every Wednesday we have the opportunity to change out our pillowcase/sheets and towels, and the rooms are cleaned weekly. There is a kitchen on every floor where we can cook our meals if we prefer that to eating out (which I certainly do, to save money - this summer is going to be expensive enough!) and the basement has a game room, music room, TV room, and laundry room. The internet, laundry, game room, kitchen use, and just about everything else here is free - it doesn't get much better than that. :) The doors, windows, and light switches are as I saw in Serbia and Russia (the windows open either out or tilt down, with no screens, the doors have a strange lip, and the light switches are large and flat) but that's all old hat to me now (such a worldly-wise traveler have I become ;P). Bedding in Germany is done a little differently - they have a big pillow with a pillowcase, but there is no such thing as a "fitted" sheet - a flat sheet tucks around the mattress and additional bedding is provided by a comforter with a washable cover instead of additional sheets. Pretty intelligent, if you ask me, though it takes a bit of getting used to when one is accustomed to several layers over oneself.
The weather here shouldn't be as terrible as Russia - more like a Maine summer with many rainy days around 50˚F as well as a few hot ones closer to 80˚F. After the trauma of last year's persistent 90˚ heat without any air conditioning, I welcome rain and cool. I've also changed my philosophy on clothing and brought a fair sampling of my American wardrobe, everything from hoodies and jeans to tank tops and shorts - though the proportion of sundresses in my closet is certainly higher here than back in the States. According to my classmates I look fairly German already (well I am about as white as they get), but to me the more important thing is being able to SPEAK the language rather than LOOK like I fit in.
After having a bit of time to unpack and get our bearings, and having been well-oriented to the Wohnung (apartment) - in German, nonetheless - we set off back for the city to meet one of the graduate students who was coming from Princeton. Unfortunately her train was late - more waiting. When she finally arrived, we wandered the city center for a bit, but most of the fun was taken out of the excursion by our over-tired and jet-lagged state. I understand the sentiment of wanting to give us something to do so that we don't all go to bed at 2pm and wake up at 3am, but it wasn't very enjoyable. We split up a couple of times and though we gave clear instructions for when and where to meet again, we inevitably ended up waiting for people again - and tempers were short. We found a Deutsche Bank ATM (Bank of America has an agreement with them whereby fees are waived, which could potentially save me quite a bit of money over the summer) and I withdrew 200€ before I realized how much that was in dollars - being abroad had put me back in Russian mode, where the exchange rate is 30 roubles to the dollar. I had to remember that here it was the other way around, with 1.4 dollars equalling one Euro as of a few days ago - I'll have to be even more careful with my spending this summer. Anyway, I shouldn't have to visit an ATM again for awhile (although there are always many more expenses up front, so I shouldn't expect that any spending trends this week will continue), and there is a small safe in the room at the apartment so any extra money as well as my passport, debit card, camera, iPod, etc. should be much safer. Unfortunately my laptop won't fit in the safe or I would keep it there too, but the rooms lock automatically and I'm not too worried. That's one big difference between Russia and Germany - I brought my laptop Alek this year, which means many things. Perhaps most importantly, I won't *have* to wait an entire week between blog posts, which means that each one may not be a novel. I'll also be more connected to America and the world in general, more reachable by email, on Skype more often, etc. Friends from home can even text me on my Google voice number and I can check it from either Alek or Sebastian (my iPod which is also here with me and connected to the internet), though from this distance I can't imagine that there is anything that you would want to text me that couldn't be better said in an email. On that note, please know that I'd love to hear how you are doing - I can't be the only person having an exciting summer! :)
So, back to Sunday. Since it was Sunday, many stores were closed, including nearly every Apotheke we ran across (most of us hadn't brought liquids such as shampoo/conditioner/soap, etc. and we were in desperate need of showers). But, we wandered around and got a feel for the city center, ending at Marienplatz in time to see the famous cuckoo clock which plays every day at 11am, noon, and 5pm. Then we finally returned to the dorm for the night, where I organized my few belongings to my heart's content (I'm not happy unless my room is clean and organized), calculated my budget for the month, and made lists: to do, to buy, lists to make, etc. ;) Finally at 8:00 I was too exhausted to do more and fell gratefully into bed before even the sun had gone down. My room has east-facing windows, and I look forward to being woken up by the sun every morning - that is one of the main reasons that I picked my room at Princeton for next year. And so I slept the sleep of the weary traveler, happy to be in a made-up bed once more (my bedding had needed to be packed a couple of days before I left so I spent my last two nights in America huddled on a bare mattress with a sweatshirt for a pillow - miserable even when it is too hot for blankets). And here my saga ends until another day.
It really didn't hit me that I was leaving until about Friday night at the PEF Alumni event. Which is a little strange, because I had been packing slowly for nearly a week and by Friday everything was ready to go. But it wasn't until afterwards when I was talking to people that I really realized that I wasn't going to see any of them again until September, and some of them perhaps never again. I don't cry at these sorts of things, but it was a sobering thought. Evidently no one else realized it either, because I got texts from two separate people later that evening as I was moving the last of my stuff out (a very unwise idea on the Friday night of Reunions, mind you) and getting ready for my last night in an American bed for three months to the effect of "WAIT A MINUTE! YOU'RE LEAVING?!?!??!" They asked when they could see me and I truthfully said that the only way I could guarantee it was if they hung around with Joe. I knew at least he would take pains to make sure I said goodbye before I raced off to my summer exploits. I should probably also mention that I worked 19 hours for two different jobs in the three days leading up to my departure, including the morning we left for the airport (I actually had to pass off a shift to someone else because it wouldn't have finished in time for me to make the shuttle bus ;]). So I wasn't just moping around saying drawn-out goodbyes and waiting to leave.
The only people I ended up seeing on the morning of my departure were Joe, his roommates, and a close senior friend of his that I had also gotten to know this past semester. I hope I see them (the seniors) again, because I had become very close to some of them during the course of the year. Last year the seniors graduating meant very little to me, because I only knew a couple of them and didn't even have very many friends anyway. This year it really hit home how much I will miss them, and I begin to wonder again whether studying abroad my junior year spring semester is such a good idea, since it will mean missing the class of 2012's graduation. But I have all summer to decide that, and we haven't even started off on the adventure yet! So let's get going.
The bus was scheduled to leave at noon on Saturday, but because of one of the group members' unfortunate unforeseen circumstances we were delayed about 30 minutes. Not that it mattered - we got to the airport in plenty of time to check in and wait around for another couple of hours. The theme of waiting on people would continue through the next few days, however, and without cell phones (which were mandatory to purchase in Russia but aren't obligatory here) communication can be quite frustrating at times.
As opposed to last summer, when I went home for a week before traipsing off to Serbia and Russia, this year I chose not to go home at all in May and merely pack for Germany from what I had brought to college. This brought up the interesting question of storing what I wasn't bringing out of the country, which turned out to be quite a lot. Mom was (understandably) unwilling to drive down and pick up my stuff if I wasn't coming home (a 1000 mile journey with just all of my stuff to keep her company? Granted, I have plenty of stuffed animals, which make fine conversation partners but they can't share the driving ;]). However, she and my sister were planning a college visit trip during Emily's April vacation and she (conveniently) wanted to visit some colleges in Pennsylvania, so she decided that they would come visit me on the way and bring as much of my stuff as possible back home with them. It was unbelievably difficult to pack everything I thought I didn't need for the summer in April, and though I planned to basically live out of a suitcase for a month, I ended up having quite a bit of stuff that needed to find a home for the summer. Thankfully the wonderfully generous PEF staff and some close friends who live in the area made it possible for me to store everything I didn't need without having to pay exorbitant prices for it all. However, since I didn't want to burden them unnecessarily with all kinds of stuff, and I packed so hastily in April (there were a few things which I accidentally sent home which I later needed, and I kept at Princeton FAR more than I intended to), I ended up bringing much more than I needed to Germany. Problematic, when one considers luggage weight limits on planes which are becoming ever stricter as each additional pound means extra fuel costs. So it turned out that BOTH my checked bag and intended carry-on were above the limit, and I didn't even try to weigh my backpack which contained my laptop and sundry other items which I intended to be my "personal item." Thankfully the woman at the check-in counter was wonderfully gracious and didn't ask about the backpack, but only made me rearrange so that the carry-on bag said 8kg (it was originally 10kg, and the checked luggage was 25.5kg, when the limit is 23kg). When I tried to weigh my big suitcase again to see how much over it was, she waved me away and strapped the tag to it before I could protest. I suppose if she didn't see how much over the limit it was, she couldn't charge me for an overweight bag? In any case, my prospects for souvenirs seem dour. I hope everybody will be content with postcards, because unless I leave a significant chunk of my luggage in Germany, that's about all I can afford to bring back, and that's only if the German luggage-counter attendants are as gracious as the one in New York, which I somewhat doubt. While waiting for the plane in JFK I began thinking of how much I was bringing to Germany that I could spare: which clothes weren't my absolute favorite, which books wouldn't I need again, which things I had brought that I would use up over the course of a summer (painfully few, as I planned to purchase most such disposables upon arrival). But again, I have all summer to decide that.
Finally the call came to board and we eagerly crowded onto the plane (the second-longest in the world - the bathrooms are actually downstairs from the main cabin!!) only to wait another 60 minutes or so on the tarmac before being cleared for takeoff. I didn't mind particularly - I was excited for Germany but not so-excited-I-can-hardly-stand-it. While we waited I watched The Green Hornet which seemed to be about the only interesting movie option - I'm glad I had nothing else to do with that time, because watching that movie would certainly have been a waste of it. And I usually like superhero movies... I do, however, tend to despise movies where the main character is a jerk - though Dan H may kill me for saying it, I really didn't like Rushmore either. Finally we took off, which is always one of my favorite parts of a plane ride, and soon we were cruising up the New England coast (which I knew not because of my stellar sense of direction or knowledge of aerial geography, but because the plane had one of those nifty GPS-maps that shows the route and position of the plane, as well as sundry other information about the flight - if you are curious, go read my blog entry about my trans-Atlantic flight to Zurich last year, where I first encountered this useful bit of technology. I probably spend a paragraph and a half describing it :P). In true German style the plane was clean, all was orderly, the flight attendants were crisp and businesslike, and the food was stellar (well - for airplane food, anyway). I had "asian chicken" for supper and breakfast of a roll, granola bar, and fruit salad (if you can call two slices of pineapple, one of watermelon, one of cantaloupe and one blueberry a fruit salad). I slept around 3 hours in between, not bad on a 7-hour flight (I don't usually do well trying to sleep sitting up). Because of the northernly arc of the flight trajectory (presumably to stay over land as much as possible in case anything should go awry and demand an emergency landing) I got to see both sunset and sunrise on the same flight from my window seat on the left side of the plane. This is probably my favorite part of flying, even more than takeoff/landing. We landed at about 8:30am Munich time, which is 2:30 EST due to the 6-hour time difference. Upon deplaning I promptly took a wrong turn in baggage claim and almost got lost in the airport - not a fortuitous start to the summer, I must say. In addition I discovered that whether in the airport in New York or on the plane, I had somehow misplaced my better pair of sunglasses and was now constrained to my big bug-glasses for the summer - at least I brought two pairs!
As soon as we deplaned, the Princeton in Munich program unofficially began - we were from that point on constrained to speak only German from 9am-9pm. (I don't count blogging because I'm not technically *speaking* English, and I hope my professors and classmates will forgive me the exception in the interest of preserving my memories). To my great surprise, I could do it! In stark contrast to the rocky start of the Princeton in St. Petersburg program in which I participated the summer prior, when I was unceremoniously dumped off at my host mother's apartment to find that she spoke not a word of English and my Russian was lacking to the point that I could barely understand what she was trying to communicate, much less respond (again, for more on that traumatic experience, go read the post titled "First Impressions"), I found that most of the vocabulary I wanted to communicate with my classmates was easily within my grasp! Not that my grammar is perfect or that I don't pause and stumble (and make up German words or use English substitutes quite frequently), but I can understand and be understood, and that is a huge relief and confidence booster. Granted, I am speaking with my classmates and professor who are intimately acquainted with both my accent and vocabulary level, and I have found that speaking with native speakers is significantly more difficult, but not impossible. There may be hope after all for me being at least conversationally fluent by the end of the summer, if I work hard these next 12 weeks.
After waiting around a bit more in the airport (another student's bag had been lost and Prof. Rankin had to buy the tickets for us to travel on the train to our apartment), we were finally ready to set off, all 38 of us. Now, anytime you have a group of this size you run the risk of losing track of everyone, and sure enough, that is what happened. Prof. Rankin had bought group tickets (for up to 5 people) which were good for three days, which was exactly the time needed to last us until June, when we would receive individual month-long passes for all public transportation systems (local trains, subway, buses, trams...). Amazingly this, like so many other aspects of the program, is covered in the program fee. Now I can't believe that PIM costs only $2500! PIP was also $2500, but we were individually responsible for our plane tickets, transportation around the city, and so on. However, with PIM we have to pay for all our own food, and the program is only half as long, so perhaps the advantage isn't so much as I make it out to be. In all honesty, it probably isn't fair to continuously make these comparisons between PiP and PiM, but I can't help it, and so far PiM is coming out ahead by a long shot. Anyway, back to the airport. As was bound to happen, 13 of us didn't make it onto the train in time and it zoomed away, carrying Professor Rankin and all of the tickets with it. Evidently he thought that we were all on the train together because he had handed out all of his tickets, but obviously not everyone had had a group of five and in the chaos, quite a few of us had been overlooked. All was not lost, however. I was one of the thirteen left behind, but I was in a group of five with a ticket. Our group had gotten off the train to seek a less crowded car just as the doors closed and locked (train doors in Germany don't automatically open and close - you must push a button to open them that deactivates when the train is about to leave). The other eight, however, were stranded. We finally decided that the five of us should follow the group and inform Professor Rankin of the predicament of the others, since we didn't know whether or not he was aware of so many missing, no one had a way to contact anyone in the other group (since none of our American phones worked in Germany) and having one ticket between thirteen people wouldn't do anyone any good. We caught the next train into the city and dutifully got off at our stop, but then paused, confused. We started off in one direction, but when we didn't find the correct street as "the first street on the right", as described, we turned around only to be met by Nathan, one of the most energetic participants in PiM, who had been sent back to train station to meet and guide us back to the dorm building. Finally we arrived and told Professor Rankin of the other eight (and confirmed that he had no idea that they had been left behind). While he dashed off to return to the airport and retrieve them, we received our room keys and set off to unpack a bit before an informational meeting. My room for the summer is number 309, which is on the fourth floor by American accounting (since Europeans count the ground floor as separate from the first floor). We all have very similar singles furnished with a bed, a desk, two bookshelves, a large shkaf (a Russian word for a free-standing wardrobe for which there is no good English equivalent), a refrigerator, a nightstand, and a private bathroom with toilet, sink, and shower. Ironically it is larger, newer, and nicer than my academic room in Princeton from last year. Every Wednesday we have the opportunity to change out our pillowcase/sheets and towels, and the rooms are cleaned weekly. There is a kitchen on every floor where we can cook our meals if we prefer that to eating out (which I certainly do, to save money - this summer is going to be expensive enough!) and the basement has a game room, music room, TV room, and laundry room. The internet, laundry, game room, kitchen use, and just about everything else here is free - it doesn't get much better than that. :) The doors, windows, and light switches are as I saw in Serbia and Russia (the windows open either out or tilt down, with no screens, the doors have a strange lip, and the light switches are large and flat) but that's all old hat to me now (such a worldly-wise traveler have I become ;P). Bedding in Germany is done a little differently - they have a big pillow with a pillowcase, but there is no such thing as a "fitted" sheet - a flat sheet tucks around the mattress and additional bedding is provided by a comforter with a washable cover instead of additional sheets. Pretty intelligent, if you ask me, though it takes a bit of getting used to when one is accustomed to several layers over oneself.
The weather here shouldn't be as terrible as Russia - more like a Maine summer with many rainy days around 50˚F as well as a few hot ones closer to 80˚F. After the trauma of last year's persistent 90˚ heat without any air conditioning, I welcome rain and cool. I've also changed my philosophy on clothing and brought a fair sampling of my American wardrobe, everything from hoodies and jeans to tank tops and shorts - though the proportion of sundresses in my closet is certainly higher here than back in the States. According to my classmates I look fairly German already (well I am about as white as they get), but to me the more important thing is being able to SPEAK the language rather than LOOK like I fit in.
After having a bit of time to unpack and get our bearings, and having been well-oriented to the Wohnung (apartment) - in German, nonetheless - we set off back for the city to meet one of the graduate students who was coming from Princeton. Unfortunately her train was late - more waiting. When she finally arrived, we wandered the city center for a bit, but most of the fun was taken out of the excursion by our over-tired and jet-lagged state. I understand the sentiment of wanting to give us something to do so that we don't all go to bed at 2pm and wake up at 3am, but it wasn't very enjoyable. We split up a couple of times and though we gave clear instructions for when and where to meet again, we inevitably ended up waiting for people again - and tempers were short. We found a Deutsche Bank ATM (Bank of America has an agreement with them whereby fees are waived, which could potentially save me quite a bit of money over the summer) and I withdrew 200€ before I realized how much that was in dollars - being abroad had put me back in Russian mode, where the exchange rate is 30 roubles to the dollar. I had to remember that here it was the other way around, with 1.4 dollars equalling one Euro as of a few days ago - I'll have to be even more careful with my spending this summer. Anyway, I shouldn't have to visit an ATM again for awhile (although there are always many more expenses up front, so I shouldn't expect that any spending trends this week will continue), and there is a small safe in the room at the apartment so any extra money as well as my passport, debit card, camera, iPod, etc. should be much safer. Unfortunately my laptop won't fit in the safe or I would keep it there too, but the rooms lock automatically and I'm not too worried. That's one big difference between Russia and Germany - I brought my laptop Alek this year, which means many things. Perhaps most importantly, I won't *have* to wait an entire week between blog posts, which means that each one may not be a novel. I'll also be more connected to America and the world in general, more reachable by email, on Skype more often, etc. Friends from home can even text me on my Google voice number and I can check it from either Alek or Sebastian (my iPod which is also here with me and connected to the internet), though from this distance I can't imagine that there is anything that you would want to text me that couldn't be better said in an email. On that note, please know that I'd love to hear how you are doing - I can't be the only person having an exciting summer! :)
So, back to Sunday. Since it was Sunday, many stores were closed, including nearly every Apotheke we ran across (most of us hadn't brought liquids such as shampoo/conditioner/soap, etc. and we were in desperate need of showers). But, we wandered around and got a feel for the city center, ending at Marienplatz in time to see the famous cuckoo clock which plays every day at 11am, noon, and 5pm. Then we finally returned to the dorm for the night, where I organized my few belongings to my heart's content (I'm not happy unless my room is clean and organized), calculated my budget for the month, and made lists: to do, to buy, lists to make, etc. ;) Finally at 8:00 I was too exhausted to do more and fell gratefully into bed before even the sun had gone down. My room has east-facing windows, and I look forward to being woken up by the sun every morning - that is one of the main reasons that I picked my room at Princeton for next year. And so I slept the sleep of the weary traveler, happy to be in a made-up bed once more (my bedding had needed to be packed a couple of days before I left so I spent my last two nights in America huddled on a bare mattress with a sweatshirt for a pillow - miserable even when it is too hot for blankets). And here my saga ends until another day.
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