So, this is the first of a series of mini-posts (at least, they'll be short for me...) focusing on a specific aspect of my life here in Clausthal, rather than trying to chronologically record my first impressions as they happened - since I'm so abominably far behind in my posting, this seems to make more sense.
So let's start with where I live. I have a smallish single in the Studentenwohnheim (dorms), and though I thought that roommates would be cool, I'm glad I live alone so that I can really be independent and keep my own schedule, although to a German the concept of multiple people sleeping in the same room is restricted to marriage and similar relationships, so in any case I would be guaranteed to have my own bedroom. My room is smaller than the one I had in Munich, but still bigger than my single in Joline this past year. It's technically an "Einzelappartement" - which means that I have a bathroom and kitchenette right in the room with me. And by "kitchenette" I mean two burners, a sink, and a large dorm refrigerator, which somewhat limits my cooking options (no stove = no pizza :( ). However, my advisor was gracious enough to bring me an old microwave that he had in his basement, so I am not limited (as I originally feared I would be) to making dishes in single-portion sizes. In fact, I've done quite well for myself food-wise this summer - but I'll finish telling you about my room first.
The downside to having my own kitchen and bathroom is that I'm entirely responsible for cleaning them, but really that's not too much of a hassle since I'm also the only one using them (and good practice for next year when it will be the same situation with my roommates). I went and bought a bottle of multi-purpose cleaner, a sponge, and a broom and dustpan, and that suffices for the minimal cleaning necessary.
The rest of the furniture in the room consists of a free-standing wardrobe (with no coathooks, however, so I had to scrounge up a couple of hangers for all of my dresses and sweatshirts), a desk that's really a table with a drawer in it, two cupboards that I use for my food supplies, and a low bed. The mattress is SO hard! I always complain about my bed at home being too soft, and I think the one I have at Princeton is just right, but this one here feels like sleeping on the ground, it's so stiff. It doesn't have any springs in it but is just a stuffed mattress, which may be why it is so hard. I've finally gotten used to it and can get a good night's sleep, but it took awhile (but I was certainly not paying 50 Euros for a new one, as the Studentenwerk offered...). My bedding is whatever mismatched extras we could scrounge up at the Institute, so my sheet is pink while my pillowcase and duvet cover are an ugly pattern of yellow and black circles - but again, preferable to paying 37 Euros for the Studentenwerk to provide them, or even buying them new at Marktkauf. The pillow was also scrounged, and it's an ancient and nearly lifeless goosedown monstrosity - I can fold it in quarters (because pillows in Germany are ENORMOUS and square... ??) and the filling still doesn't fluff it up. It's like sleeping on a rock - the mattress I could stand but the pillow (even supplemented with my softest pajamas and sweatpants underneath) was just too hard, and I soon caved and bought a 5-Euro throw pillow at Marktkauf to use in addition (I'm a side sleeper, so I need thick pillows), and now everything is dandy. The pillow is kind of cute, actually - it has a picture of a London telephone booth on it, and I'm a little bit sad that it can't come back to America with me (I simply don't have room for anything more than necessary, and a lot of my things are going to be staying in Germany as it is :P), but Mom would probably tell me that I have MORE than enough pillows, anyway ;)
So, food. I came from Munich with a very strange array of leftover food, some of it quite random - a bag of potatoes, a few onions, a package of Nesquick, two peanut butter jars, strawberry jam, Nutella, a couple boxes of pasta, a box of cereal, and some wurst. I ate it all - why let good food go to waste? - but it made for some very bizarre meals in the first few days of my stay in Clausthal. Fortunately there are not one but TWO grocery stores just a five-minute walk down the hill from the dorms, which makes shopping very convenient. On one of my first days here I went and did a diligent comparison between the two stores, finding that some goods were cheaper one place while others I was better off buying at the other store. One is Aldi, a Mardens type store but with mostly groceries - usually cheap, doesn't always have everything you'd want, and the selection of non-grocery items is on a sort of "surplus and salvage" basis - makes for some interesting surprises, though I haven't found anything there I simply HAD to buy yet (probably because I'm very money- and space-conscious here). Marktkauf, the other option, is more like a Walmart - a better selection and a TON of non-grocery items - everything from bike accessories to yarn to books to pots and pans to cleaning supplies. Between the two stores, I manage to keep my grocery bill to less than 20 Euros per week, and that's even with occasionally treating myself. So far I've made shepherd's pie, pasta & peas, hamburgers, wiener schnitzel & potato salad, chicken nuggets, and ravioli for my suppers. Lunch is usually a sandwich or occasionally leftovers (thank God again for that microwave!), but breakfast, of course, is my true specialty. Cereal and yogurt with musli is a quick and easy one, but I am also perfecting the art of the bacon-and-cheese omelet (I've got to survive somehow without ROMA omelets next year!) as well as experimenting with French toast and egg-in-a-hole (can you tell that I like eggs?). So far I've managed to avoid the common college traps of TV dinners or constant pasta, and this summer has definitely given me hope for my culinary survival next year.
Cooking implements, naturally, are not something I have a great supply of - after all, I don't want to go out and buy a bunch of pots and pans that I'm just going to have to leave behind after 8 weeks. I collected in Munich (by asking the other group members and "borrowing" from the well-stocked communal kitchens) a spoon, knife, fork, and plate, and was planning to make do with a technically "disposable" bowl that I had gotten from an ice-cream parlor. When I arrived in Clausthal I was shown to my delight the cupboard filled with various utensils and commodities which was dedicated to the international interns, and picked up a saucepan, frying pan, spatula, ceramic bowl, sand glass. With these minimal elements I sometimes have to be creative in my cooking, but in general they suffice (makes me think about what I really NEED to bring to Spelman versus what would be "nice to have/come in handy every once in a while"...) and don't clutter up my cupboard. It does, however, mean that I have to wash my dishes after just about every meal - simply because I have to use the same dishes for the next one. Generally I'm pretty good about this, but if you can keep a secret, there have definitely been a couple of nights where the bowl from supper soaked in the sink and didn't get washed until breakfast the next morning. This is one thing my future roommates were very adamant about in our discussions in the spring, that dishes *always* and *immediately* be washed and put away, so I'm trying to practice here (at home we just rinse the dishes and use them again during the day, and only wash everything at night, so it's not necessarily a habit of mine).
Overall, I am very content with my room, which is good because I spend most of my time here when I'm not at the Institute. The semester is now (finally) over and I'm fairly sure the students have gone home for the summer, because I don't see as many in the hallways, but I never saw very many and didn't ever meet any of my neighbors - the only people my age I interact with here are the other interns. This has its downsides, principally that most of the other interns don't speak German, so we talk in English and I don't get to practice my German as much as I was hoping. I have actually noticed a slight decline in my proficiency, especially because after about two weeks I got tired of reviewing vocabulary every night and have more or less let that habit slide (I know, I know, bad student Erin :( ). Everything I could need is here - bed, kitchen, and bathroom. The laundry is in the basement, but you have to pay for it here (like in normal places) so I try to go as long as possible in between loads - I can almost stretch it 3 weeks if I wash a few pairs of underwear in the sink ;) I'm so stingy I refuse even to pay for use of the dryer (it's 1 Euro per load and the washers are 1.50!!) so instead I go find a drying rack in one of the common rooms and sneak it back to my room so my clothes can dry on it, then return it. Most of the students, I've observed, take the drying racks (which are communal, as far as I can tell) and hang their clothes on them in the common rooms or out in the hallways, so I don't feel bad moving one to my room for a few days at a time to use it.
I also have a mailbox at the dorm, but it is usually very sadly empty. I've gotten one letter so far, and it made me REALLY happy - so I'm giving you all my address right here so you have no excuse :P Mail takes about a week to get from the States to Germany, so you all still have two weeks if you want to send me something - go!
Erin Mills
Leibnizstraße 20, Zimmer 82
38678 Clausthal-Zellerfeld
Germany
The dorm is at the top of a hill, with the institute halfway down and the grocery stores at the bottom. There is a cobbled path that leads directly down the hill, but the road winds back and forth (Germans are REALLY big into pedestrian shortcut paths - they're way more official than they are in the States :D). Overall, it is a very nice arrangement. The country around is very nice, too - but I'll tell you about all that in another post, another day. Until then, keep smiling!!
And send me stuff!! Postcards/letters are always welcome!! (Or, if you're lazy, you can just send me an email. That works too :D).
Monday, August 1, 2011
Sunday, July 31, 2011
Changing Locale
Finally, the day had come to leave Munich and set out on my own adventure for the summer. I had set my alarm for 6:30, but woke up before it out of some combination of nervousness and excitement. It turned out to be a good thing I did, too, because packing took a lot longer than I planned on. I didn't remember having so much stuff when I was packing to come to Germany... of course, back in Princeton I packed leisurely over the course of several days, which may have made some difference... I packed for about an hour, then went downstairs to say my final goodbyes to everyone who was flying out together. I had also put out an all-call to the group for any foodstuffs and other nonperishables that they hadn't finished but didn't want to bring back to America - I never like to waste food, and anything I could bring with me to Clausthal was something I didn't have to buy once I was there.
I also had another motive for begging for food - money. I had received a $1000 scholarship to help defray the $2500 tuition cost of Princeton in Munich, but we were still responsible for paying for our own food during the month we were there, and the wealth of cultural opportunities that I had taken advantage of weren't free, for the most part. All in all, I had managed to spend around 900 Euros (that's almost $1300 at the average exchange rate for June) during my month in Munich - not exactly a small sum. I hadn't worried too much about this - my internship in Clausthal came with a 1300 Euro stipend for the 8 weeks which I figured should be just about enough to live comfortably and have a little left over for traveling and souvenirs. However, back in April when I was still ignorant about all of these kinds of grown-up living things, I thought that 1300 Euros wouldn't be nearly enough (I was calculating a monthly apartment rent in the neighborhood of 4-500 Euros/month, but fortunately my dorm in Clausthal is much cheaper than that). Therefore, I requested financial aid from Princeton to help make up the perceived difference - and was awarded $1500. I was delighted at this and now knew that I would have plenty of money, which is why I wasn't exactly living on a shoestring budget in Munich. However, in the middle of my last week of Princeton in Munich, I received an ominous email from the DAAD, the organization sponsoring my internship. Seems they had gotten wind of my aid from Princeton and had deemed that no student was allowed to receive more financial assistance during their internship than the minimal stipend they had allotted. Though I tried hard to explain my situation - that I had already been living in-country for a month and didn't have access to thousands of dollars of my parents' money as I deem many of the other interns do, the DAAD had no mercy. They declared they would dock my stipend by the amount of aid I had received from Princeton - suddenly I went from receiving 1300 Euros to about 250. A *huge* difference. Since my rent in Clausthal is 255 Euros/month (and the deposit on the room is 300 Euros), and my contract is technically for two and a half months (they tacked on a couple of weeks on either end of my stay, I'm not quite sure why), that in itself is almost a 900-Euro expense - yikes! Ultimately, it's not a make-or-break thing - I worked very hard this past school year (even working four jobs at a time) and managed to bring my accounts up to about $3000 - but I had been considering buying a used car for ease of grocery trips during the coming school year, and this news that the $1300 I had just spent in June basically came out-of-pocket essentially eliminated that possibility. Luckily, a bike still seems within my spending range (mine was stolen at the end of the school year and never recovered) and my especially frugal living in Clausthal has meant that I will only end up spending about 700 Euros more than the remains of my stipend (as opposed to the 1050 Euros that they docked me), but it was still an unpleasant surprise that effectively served to take most of the excitement out of my anticipation of Clausthal.
However, I may have bitten off more than I can chew by asking 40 people for anything extra they didn't want - my food pile, when I returned to my room after seeing the group off, was intimidatingly large. In addition, my time was growing ever shorter - my train left the Munich Central Station at 10:16, so I had originally planned to leave at 9:30 to ensure that I made it to the station in plenty of time to find an empty seat on the train and a good place to store my luggage. However, as 9:00 came and went and I was still sorting things into piles and playing a desperate sort of Tetris game to get everything to fit neatly into two suitcases and my backpack, it became clear that this wasn't happening. In fact, I began to worry about even fitting in breakfast and still making it to the train - I had a couple of eggs left over that I was planning to make into scrambled eggs or an omelet for my last breakfast, but if I stopped to make it I would surely be too late. An angel appeared about 9:15 in the form of another student who hadn't left with the group, coming to my room to return the USB stick I had given him to put pictures from the past month on (I am seriously planning to make a photo book this time and wanted as much source material as possible). Seeing my desperation and the stuff I still had to pack, he asked, "When did you want to leave by again?" and immediately followed that with "Give me those eggs - I'll make breakfast for you." I sheepishly agreed, knowing that it was the only way I was going to be able to eat before I left, but still kicking myself for not planning better. In the end, I was able to wolf down the wonderful omelet he made for me, stuff everything I had brought to Germany in my various suitcases, and bring a selection of the food offered to me - but a large bag of it had to stay in the communal kitchen, to my chagrin.
At last, at 9:50 I raced down the steps and bolted out of the Wohnheim, remembering to return my key on the way out but forgetting in my haste to empty the trash cans in my room or even empty out my refrigerator (I had a bit of OJ left, some margarine, and a tupperware of cooked chicken and tortellini that was intended for my supper :P). I had had to use the expansion compartment of my large suitcase, and it probably weighed a good 80 pounds on its own - my carry-on containing all of my books added a good 30 pounds at least, and my backpack was stuffed with food and entertainment for the train including my laptop - another 20 pounds, if not more. Even then I had another shopping bag with a few things which just wouldn't fit in my backpack but I really wanted to have for Clausthal - needless to say, I was heavy laden. No time to take my ease, however - I trotted down the sidewalk at a pace as close to a run as I could with all of the weight I was lugging. My arms were aching well before I got to the S-Bahn station, where I stared desperately at the several flights of stairs before looking around frantically for the elevator. However, there was no lift to the city-bound platform and I still had to drag my bags up a full flight of stairs - I physically couldn't do this all at once but had to make two trips, one to get my carry-on and another for the bigger suitcase, which I could barely lift more than three stairs at a time. All of this exertion, combined with the North Face jacket I had to wear for the pocket space, meant that by the time I was standing on the S-Bahn platform I was panting hard and sweat was streaming down my face as it hadn't for years - not since my days in high school as a cross-country runner when I would give my all at the end of those first races of the season, when the hot weather and my still-soft muscles conspired against me. The entire journey, from the elevator in the Wohnheim through the familiar 10-minute S-Bahn ride - was one long desperate prayer. I knew that nothing but a miracle would get me to my train in time, and to miss it meant hours of hassle and expense and not getting to Clausthal that day. Finally the S-Bahn pulled up to the Hauptbahnhof and I dashed off the train and ran to the nearest escalator - at this point there was no way I was getting my luggage up more stairs, so I had to ride the escalator stationary like a normal person instead of my usual method of using it as a turbo-stair. At the top I looked around frantically for the signs to "long-distance trains" and dashed off in the direction the sign indicated, praying that the station wouldn't be too crowded or the trains too far away. My constant stream of "Oh Lord, You're the only one who can get me on this train, so please do a miracle" didn't stop even when I saw my train still sitting in the station - only when I had sprinted the length of it to find the first second-class car and given my luggage one last mighty heave onto the train did I pause, completely winded and shaking, to say one of the most thankful prayers of my life. It was 10:14 when I got on the train, and I had only just collected my bearings and begun traipsing through the train searching for an empty seat when I felt the jerk of the train beginning to move out of the station. I finally found an empty seat, stowed my big suitcase in a space at one end of the train car, and collapsed, still trying to catch my breath. The sweat didn't stop pouring off of me for a good 30 minutes, and my shirt was soaked in several places, but I was safely on my way to Clausthal, and that's all that really mattered. That is potentially the closest I have ever been to missing a public transit connection and still making it - and these trains aren't the kind that leave every half-hour. If I had not made my train I would most likely not have been able to find another until the next morning, and I had already relinquished my key which was my entry into my living quarters, so I would have had nowhere to stay for the night. But God is good even to those of His children who don't deserve it, and I made it on the train safely and only a little worse for wear.
Although I had not reserved my seat beforehand, thankfully no one else had either, so I was left in peace for the entire three-hour train ride to Göttingen. I spent the time alternately in looking out the window at Germany passing me by, catching up on The Case for Christ, napping, and listening to my iPod. At Göttingen I had a 45-minute layover, so there was plenty of time to lug my bags over to my departure track (now I know why they call it "luggage") and look around at the station - it was quite small compared to Munich (which was basically all of Germany I had seen so far), but I was to see much smaller before my journey was done. The regional train ride which took me from Göttingen to Goslar lasted another hour, so it was mid-afternoon by the time I detrained in Goslar for the last leg of my journey, by bus. This proved to be a little more problematic than the trains, as far as luggage went - I couldn't lift them up the cramped space of the bus steps, so the driver generously said (after glancing at my ticket), "Why don't you just use the back door?" and opened the door in the middle of the bus which was designed for people with bikes and strollers and was a much more open area. The bags were still heavy, but I eventually got them on the bus and sat down, panting again. The next 40 minutes was a bumpy ride along winding mountain roads, mostly going up. All that could be seen on either side of the road were trees lining seemingly endless ridges and hills, and I realized that I wasn't exactly in Munich anymore. A slow smile spread across my face as I surveyed the area which was to be my home for the next eight weeks - I liked it already.
When we finally reached the Clausthal Central Bus Station (nothing more than two bus stops in a medium-sized parking lot), I was relieved to see an old beat-up Toyota parked in the corner and a confident, smiling, balding man striding towards the bus. He said, "Erin, I presume?" and upon my relieved nod, beamed and grabbed the handle of my larger suitcase. The two-minute ride to the institute consisted of him spewing information and questions (all in English) and me nodding meekly and looking around at what could be seen of the town from the windows of the car, more glad to have arrived than anything else. That night I was shown my dorm, the institute where I would be working and how to get between the two before Leif shooed me off to my room to settle in and clear my head. Supper was an improvised meal of some no-longer-frozen veggies that I had rather unwittingly packed, made with extra water to which I added a bit of instant potato mix (which also makes a great cheap thickener for soups and such ;]). And so, as much as I wanted to find out everything about my new surroundings, I paid attention to first things first - starting to unpack and getting a good night's sleep, which is my primary key to success. Which is also what I will do right now, with the intention to (finally) tell you everything you've been dying to know about my life here, which I've been living for FIVE weeks now (my, how time does fly), in the very near future.
I also had another motive for begging for food - money. I had received a $1000 scholarship to help defray the $2500 tuition cost of Princeton in Munich, but we were still responsible for paying for our own food during the month we were there, and the wealth of cultural opportunities that I had taken advantage of weren't free, for the most part. All in all, I had managed to spend around 900 Euros (that's almost $1300 at the average exchange rate for June) during my month in Munich - not exactly a small sum. I hadn't worried too much about this - my internship in Clausthal came with a 1300 Euro stipend for the 8 weeks which I figured should be just about enough to live comfortably and have a little left over for traveling and souvenirs. However, back in April when I was still ignorant about all of these kinds of grown-up living things, I thought that 1300 Euros wouldn't be nearly enough (I was calculating a monthly apartment rent in the neighborhood of 4-500 Euros/month, but fortunately my dorm in Clausthal is much cheaper than that). Therefore, I requested financial aid from Princeton to help make up the perceived difference - and was awarded $1500. I was delighted at this and now knew that I would have plenty of money, which is why I wasn't exactly living on a shoestring budget in Munich. However, in the middle of my last week of Princeton in Munich, I received an ominous email from the DAAD, the organization sponsoring my internship. Seems they had gotten wind of my aid from Princeton and had deemed that no student was allowed to receive more financial assistance during their internship than the minimal stipend they had allotted. Though I tried hard to explain my situation - that I had already been living in-country for a month and didn't have access to thousands of dollars of my parents' money as I deem many of the other interns do, the DAAD had no mercy. They declared they would dock my stipend by the amount of aid I had received from Princeton - suddenly I went from receiving 1300 Euros to about 250. A *huge* difference. Since my rent in Clausthal is 255 Euros/month (and the deposit on the room is 300 Euros), and my contract is technically for two and a half months (they tacked on a couple of weeks on either end of my stay, I'm not quite sure why), that in itself is almost a 900-Euro expense - yikes! Ultimately, it's not a make-or-break thing - I worked very hard this past school year (even working four jobs at a time) and managed to bring my accounts up to about $3000 - but I had been considering buying a used car for ease of grocery trips during the coming school year, and this news that the $1300 I had just spent in June basically came out-of-pocket essentially eliminated that possibility. Luckily, a bike still seems within my spending range (mine was stolen at the end of the school year and never recovered) and my especially frugal living in Clausthal has meant that I will only end up spending about 700 Euros more than the remains of my stipend (as opposed to the 1050 Euros that they docked me), but it was still an unpleasant surprise that effectively served to take most of the excitement out of my anticipation of Clausthal.
However, I may have bitten off more than I can chew by asking 40 people for anything extra they didn't want - my food pile, when I returned to my room after seeing the group off, was intimidatingly large. In addition, my time was growing ever shorter - my train left the Munich Central Station at 10:16, so I had originally planned to leave at 9:30 to ensure that I made it to the station in plenty of time to find an empty seat on the train and a good place to store my luggage. However, as 9:00 came and went and I was still sorting things into piles and playing a desperate sort of Tetris game to get everything to fit neatly into two suitcases and my backpack, it became clear that this wasn't happening. In fact, I began to worry about even fitting in breakfast and still making it to the train - I had a couple of eggs left over that I was planning to make into scrambled eggs or an omelet for my last breakfast, but if I stopped to make it I would surely be too late. An angel appeared about 9:15 in the form of another student who hadn't left with the group, coming to my room to return the USB stick I had given him to put pictures from the past month on (I am seriously planning to make a photo book this time and wanted as much source material as possible). Seeing my desperation and the stuff I still had to pack, he asked, "When did you want to leave by again?" and immediately followed that with "Give me those eggs - I'll make breakfast for you." I sheepishly agreed, knowing that it was the only way I was going to be able to eat before I left, but still kicking myself for not planning better. In the end, I was able to wolf down the wonderful omelet he made for me, stuff everything I had brought to Germany in my various suitcases, and bring a selection of the food offered to me - but a large bag of it had to stay in the communal kitchen, to my chagrin.
At last, at 9:50 I raced down the steps and bolted out of the Wohnheim, remembering to return my key on the way out but forgetting in my haste to empty the trash cans in my room or even empty out my refrigerator (I had a bit of OJ left, some margarine, and a tupperware of cooked chicken and tortellini that was intended for my supper :P). I had had to use the expansion compartment of my large suitcase, and it probably weighed a good 80 pounds on its own - my carry-on containing all of my books added a good 30 pounds at least, and my backpack was stuffed with food and entertainment for the train including my laptop - another 20 pounds, if not more. Even then I had another shopping bag with a few things which just wouldn't fit in my backpack but I really wanted to have for Clausthal - needless to say, I was heavy laden. No time to take my ease, however - I trotted down the sidewalk at a pace as close to a run as I could with all of the weight I was lugging. My arms were aching well before I got to the S-Bahn station, where I stared desperately at the several flights of stairs before looking around frantically for the elevator. However, there was no lift to the city-bound platform and I still had to drag my bags up a full flight of stairs - I physically couldn't do this all at once but had to make two trips, one to get my carry-on and another for the bigger suitcase, which I could barely lift more than three stairs at a time. All of this exertion, combined with the North Face jacket I had to wear for the pocket space, meant that by the time I was standing on the S-Bahn platform I was panting hard and sweat was streaming down my face as it hadn't for years - not since my days in high school as a cross-country runner when I would give my all at the end of those first races of the season, when the hot weather and my still-soft muscles conspired against me. The entire journey, from the elevator in the Wohnheim through the familiar 10-minute S-Bahn ride - was one long desperate prayer. I knew that nothing but a miracle would get me to my train in time, and to miss it meant hours of hassle and expense and not getting to Clausthal that day. Finally the S-Bahn pulled up to the Hauptbahnhof and I dashed off the train and ran to the nearest escalator - at this point there was no way I was getting my luggage up more stairs, so I had to ride the escalator stationary like a normal person instead of my usual method of using it as a turbo-stair. At the top I looked around frantically for the signs to "long-distance trains" and dashed off in the direction the sign indicated, praying that the station wouldn't be too crowded or the trains too far away. My constant stream of "Oh Lord, You're the only one who can get me on this train, so please do a miracle" didn't stop even when I saw my train still sitting in the station - only when I had sprinted the length of it to find the first second-class car and given my luggage one last mighty heave onto the train did I pause, completely winded and shaking, to say one of the most thankful prayers of my life. It was 10:14 when I got on the train, and I had only just collected my bearings and begun traipsing through the train searching for an empty seat when I felt the jerk of the train beginning to move out of the station. I finally found an empty seat, stowed my big suitcase in a space at one end of the train car, and collapsed, still trying to catch my breath. The sweat didn't stop pouring off of me for a good 30 minutes, and my shirt was soaked in several places, but I was safely on my way to Clausthal, and that's all that really mattered. That is potentially the closest I have ever been to missing a public transit connection and still making it - and these trains aren't the kind that leave every half-hour. If I had not made my train I would most likely not have been able to find another until the next morning, and I had already relinquished my key which was my entry into my living quarters, so I would have had nowhere to stay for the night. But God is good even to those of His children who don't deserve it, and I made it on the train safely and only a little worse for wear.
Although I had not reserved my seat beforehand, thankfully no one else had either, so I was left in peace for the entire three-hour train ride to Göttingen. I spent the time alternately in looking out the window at Germany passing me by, catching up on The Case for Christ, napping, and listening to my iPod. At Göttingen I had a 45-minute layover, so there was plenty of time to lug my bags over to my departure track (now I know why they call it "luggage") and look around at the station - it was quite small compared to Munich (which was basically all of Germany I had seen so far), but I was to see much smaller before my journey was done. The regional train ride which took me from Göttingen to Goslar lasted another hour, so it was mid-afternoon by the time I detrained in Goslar for the last leg of my journey, by bus. This proved to be a little more problematic than the trains, as far as luggage went - I couldn't lift them up the cramped space of the bus steps, so the driver generously said (after glancing at my ticket), "Why don't you just use the back door?" and opened the door in the middle of the bus which was designed for people with bikes and strollers and was a much more open area. The bags were still heavy, but I eventually got them on the bus and sat down, panting again. The next 40 minutes was a bumpy ride along winding mountain roads, mostly going up. All that could be seen on either side of the road were trees lining seemingly endless ridges and hills, and I realized that I wasn't exactly in Munich anymore. A slow smile spread across my face as I surveyed the area which was to be my home for the next eight weeks - I liked it already.
When we finally reached the Clausthal Central Bus Station (nothing more than two bus stops in a medium-sized parking lot), I was relieved to see an old beat-up Toyota parked in the corner and a confident, smiling, balding man striding towards the bus. He said, "Erin, I presume?" and upon my relieved nod, beamed and grabbed the handle of my larger suitcase. The two-minute ride to the institute consisted of him spewing information and questions (all in English) and me nodding meekly and looking around at what could be seen of the town from the windows of the car, more glad to have arrived than anything else. That night I was shown my dorm, the institute where I would be working and how to get between the two before Leif shooed me off to my room to settle in and clear my head. Supper was an improvised meal of some no-longer-frozen veggies that I had rather unwittingly packed, made with extra water to which I added a bit of instant potato mix (which also makes a great cheap thickener for soups and such ;]). And so, as much as I wanted to find out everything about my new surroundings, I paid attention to first things first - starting to unpack and getting a good night's sleep, which is my primary key to success. Which is also what I will do right now, with the intention to (finally) tell you everything you've been dying to know about my life here, which I've been living for FIVE weeks now (my, how time does fly), in the very near future.
Saturday, July 30, 2011
The Best Kind of Friendship Crosses Borders...
Unfortunately I had been so efficient at planning what I wanted to do and see in Munich that on Saturday when I woke up, my last day in the city, I actually had no idea what I should do. I didn't feel like tackling any of those things on my "to-eventually-do" list, or even the more pressing items (like packing), since I still wanted to do laundry and take only clean clothes to Clausthal. I finally headed out into the city at around 9 to see if I could find some final souvenirs for friends and family, and chanced to run into none other than Sam, heading in for the same purpose. I gladly offered to accompany him and it was much more enjoyable hitting up the souvenir shops and wagons with a friend. Most of the stuff was just too kitschy for my taste, but I did eventually manage to find something cute for a very good friend of mine (and resist buying several unnecessary souvenirs) and a piece of jewelry that will hopefully suit my sister's rather unpredictable style. However, even after looking at the majority of souvenir shops in the city center we couldn't drag out our adventure much past 11, and so I reluctantly took my leave of Sam. I had other plans in the city center, but they technically didn't start until 12...
I GOT TO SEE GRIFFIN ON SATURDAY!!!!!!!!
So, Griffin is only about one of the kindest, most thoughtful, most servant-hearted people I know (with the possible exception of my boyfriend). He is one of the first people I remember meeting at Princeton, at the PEF fall cookout, partially because of his unusual name (and accompanying nametag, upon which he always [and sometimes exclusively] draws a griffon) and partly because of his unusual look, with his excessive height and crazy hair. He was part of the Welcome Team and as such brought me (with his partner-in-crime, Alex, who couldn't be more opposite to him) candy and encouraging notes at particularly stressful times of my freshman year, such as midterms. His striking sense of the ridiculous and willingness to go on spontaneous adventures has led to some good stories over the last two years and a solid friendship that will hopefully last past graduation (Princeton just won't be the same without him). His younger sister, Lillie, is a year below me (unfortunately, she's nothing like him either, as I found out) and was also participating in the Princeton in Munich program, so his family decided to kick off a vacation in Europe by coming to Munich to pick her up at the end of the program. When I heard that Griffin, one of my best friends from Princeton, was going to be in Germany, and not only that, but in Munich, I was ecstatic, to say the least. I had dedicated the entirety of Saturday afternoon to hanging out with him, but we hadn't yet decided precisely what we would do. We had agreed to meet at his hotel at noontime, but I was so excited to see him that I couldn't possibly wait that long, and by 11:30 I was already pacing the lobby of his hotel, waiting for him. He finally appeared at about 11:45 and, in quintessential Griffin manner, observed in a completely monotone voice, "You're early." After getting thoroughly grilled by his mother - "Does he have enough money? Does he know how to get back to the hotel? Do you have a cell phone, in case anything happens?" - and assuring her that since he had just graduated from Princeton, he could probably take care of himself, even if he wasn't with someone who had spent an entire month in the city (her concern made me smile), we set off to find adventure. Or rather, lunch.
After we had filled our stomachs, we wandered over to where I had previously marked the location of a bike rental store, only getting lost once along the way (and not really lost, just ending up in a different part of town from where I was headed). Unfortunately, when we got there we were informed that all of the bikes were back at Marienplatz for use with bike tours, so we had to walk all the way back to where we had JUST come from. We got there, only to be informed that they needed ALL of the bikes for the tours and couldn't possibly spare two to rent out, which was incredibly frustrating. So we went to another bike rental place that was closer to Griffin's hotel in the first place, though it cost us a couple of Euros more to rent from them. Poor Griffin! He never complained, but happened to mention in the midst of all this wandering that he had foolishly chosen to break in a new pair of dress shoes the hard way only a couple of days before and had serious blisters on his feet - oops! Finally we obtained the bikes and set off to explore English Garden as I had been hoping to do for weeks. The big attractions in English Garden are the perpetual surf wave, caused by the shape of the bottom of the fast-flowing Isar, and the Nude Meadow, where people come to sunbathe, well, nude. The latter we weren't particularly interested in seeing, but it was a cloudy and surprisingly cool day, so we weren't in too much danger of coming suddenly upon large groups of the unclothed. In fact, I had planned it to be much warmer than it ended up being, and wasn't quite dressed warm enough, but as long as we were moving it wasn't too bad. English Garden is the largest inner-city park in the world, and we rode the entire length of it (after all, we had rented the bikes for three hours, so we had plenty of time). There was lots of woods and plenty of fields, and at one point we even stumbled upon a massive herd of sheep - yes, real live wooly bleating sheep - complete with shepherds and sheepdogs. I almost expected Babe to come running around the edge of the herd and to hear "That'll do, pig"... :D I was kind of looking for the surf wave and had gotten it into my head that it was at the opposite end of the park, so we rode down there and went to the river, but it was wide and flat and shallow. We then rode back up the park along the river, hoping to stumble upon it, but no luck. By the time we got back to our starting point it was starting to sprinkle and it had been a little more than two hours, so we gave up our search and returned the bikes. When we mentioned that we hadn't been able to find the surf wave, the owner of the bike rental shop rolled his eyes, said "WHERE do you guys study, again?", pulled out a map, and circled a spot right next to the corner of the park where we had entered - not on the other side, as I had thought. Oops. In my defense, I had never actually looked up WHERE the surf wave was, just assumed that if we went into English Garden and followed the river, we'd find it. Well, in order that the afternoon not be completely wasted, we walked back up to the park to see the wave - and it was worth it. I almost started drooling, imagining surfing that wave in an open-deck canoe as I used to in high school. :) The cool and drizzly weather didn't deter the more hardcore surfers, and there were about a dozen of them lining up on either side of the river, waiting for their chance to surf the wave. The unpleasant weather did mean, however, that only the better surfers were out - which was a treat. I got some super-sweet videos and pictures of the action. Then we meandered back towards Griffin's apartment, but I was loathe to see him go. We stopped at an ice-cream place for a treat and to give us an excuse to talk longer, to my delight (I think Griffin did it for me, though - he's lactose intolerant :P), but eventually it was time for us to part. The sight of a familiar face had really brightened my day, and in my excitement I forgot to get a picture with Griffin, something that I will probably always regret, but at least I will have the memories.
I returned to the Wohnheim with mixed feelings, and still no desire to pack, though my departure on the morrow was growing ever closer. Fortunately I was spared from this unpleasant task by a group outing to a nearby restaurant as a sort of "last hurrah". The fare was traditionally German (my favorite) and quite delicious. I resisted the urge to order Wiener Schnitzel, my old standby, and instead decided on a dish of Knödel, Beefsteckel, and Weißsalat, which I mostly chose because it included bacon in the salad and I knew that Knödel were both very traditionally German and quite tasty. The meat was unfortunately a little tough and the Knödel dry unless I soaked it in the sauce from the meat, but overall it was a good, hearty meal. And of course, in true German tradition, I washed it all down with a beer. That's right, Erin Mills drank an entire half-liter of beer. It was the first *real* alcohol I had ingested, well, ever. A couple of sips doesn't compare to sitting down and drinking an entire 0.5 liters of alcohol (that's more than a standard beer bottle - they usually come in 0.33 liter sizes). And yes, I felt the effects, undeniably. Things in my peripheral vision started to fade just a tiny bit, but that wasn't as noticeable as the swirling sensation of my head. I felt that I didn't want to move it too quickly or everything might tip from horizontal. It felt a little bit like after you spin around for a long time and are just recovering from being dizzy - things are no longer spinning but you still feel that everything is not nailed down quite as solidly around you as it normally is. Now, since this was my first time ingesting a significant quantity of alcohol, I was hyper-aware of the potential effects and doing my utmost to both recognize and stifle them. I was extra-conscious of my volume and tried very hard not to be loud or extra chatty (or at least not any more than usual - honestly, I'm a pretty loud person, as a rule). I must have been succeeding because about 3/4 of the way through the meal Sam, who was sitting across from me and who had nearly finished his beer, lamented, "I'm such a lightweight." Then, observing that my glass was at a comparable level to his, he squinted at me, observing me for a moment, then asked, "Why aren't you as drunk as me? You never drink!" Cooly returning his gaze (but with an impish grin), I replied, "How do you know I'm not as drunk as you? No one has ever seen me drunk to know what I act like." Sam had to concede that this was good logic, and it was an honest answer on my part - I was semi-unsure whether what I was feeling was even from the alcohol or the fact that I was tired and had just eaten my first hearty meal in quite a while. And indeed, when discussing the matter with my boyfriend later, he remarked, "Well, oftentimes you act the way a lot of people do when they're a little drunk (referring to my chattiness)." So I think we can say I was buzzed at the most. And at this point that's quite enough for me. As a matter of fact, I don't really even like that feeling - I've heard people say that you have "a couple beers" to make conversation easier, but if I don't need that aid, why bother?
To celebrate this last meal, at which both of the grad students and Professor Rankin were in attendance, a couple of the other program participants had gone to a chocolate shop and purchased chocolate cockroaches, in reference to the main character in Kafka's Metamorphosis. The grad students loved them and generously shared the delicious vermin with us - renewing my resolve to purchase a significant amount of German chocolate to be liberally distributed as souvenirs once I return to the US. Finally we had all finished our meal and it was time to return once again to the Wohnheim - as I walked out of the restaurant I noted satisfactorily that my balance had not been at all affected by the alcohol (and snuck a sideways glance at Sam who had even ordered a second half-liter of beer halfway through the meal, but he wasn't exactly stumbling drunk either, just a little dreamy). Back at the Wohnheim I finally had to face the reality of my approaching departure (a funny juxtaposition there ;]) and traipsed down to the basement to start my laundry. I was intending to watch a movie with some of the other members of the group, but was sent upstairs furtively to sign thank-you cards for Hannes and Mareike and got distracted talking to Dan H. for a couple of hours (partially because his birthday was the following day). As could perhaps be expected, a rather rowdy group of individuals met in one of the communal kitchens to "take care of" the remainder of the group's alcohol supply, and I was invited to join, but decided against it after considering the frightfully large collection of bottles on the table (including absinthe cigars...??), the lateness of the hour (it was now past midnight), and all the packing I had yet to do. There may come a day when Erin Mills decides to drink more than just a little bit - but it won't be the day before she needs to travel across the county. So I instead brought my laundry back to my room so that I could pack first thing in the morning (though it wasn't all quite dry), laid it out on my various shelves and sills, curled up in my bed with the too-big pillow and thick comforter for the very last time, and enjoyed a few hours of very sound slumber.
I GOT TO SEE GRIFFIN ON SATURDAY!!!!!!!!
So, Griffin is only about one of the kindest, most thoughtful, most servant-hearted people I know (with the possible exception of my boyfriend). He is one of the first people I remember meeting at Princeton, at the PEF fall cookout, partially because of his unusual name (and accompanying nametag, upon which he always [and sometimes exclusively] draws a griffon) and partly because of his unusual look, with his excessive height and crazy hair. He was part of the Welcome Team and as such brought me (with his partner-in-crime, Alex, who couldn't be more opposite to him) candy and encouraging notes at particularly stressful times of my freshman year, such as midterms. His striking sense of the ridiculous and willingness to go on spontaneous adventures has led to some good stories over the last two years and a solid friendship that will hopefully last past graduation (Princeton just won't be the same without him). His younger sister, Lillie, is a year below me (unfortunately, she's nothing like him either, as I found out) and was also participating in the Princeton in Munich program, so his family decided to kick off a vacation in Europe by coming to Munich to pick her up at the end of the program. When I heard that Griffin, one of my best friends from Princeton, was going to be in Germany, and not only that, but in Munich, I was ecstatic, to say the least. I had dedicated the entirety of Saturday afternoon to hanging out with him, but we hadn't yet decided precisely what we would do. We had agreed to meet at his hotel at noontime, but I was so excited to see him that I couldn't possibly wait that long, and by 11:30 I was already pacing the lobby of his hotel, waiting for him. He finally appeared at about 11:45 and, in quintessential Griffin manner, observed in a completely monotone voice, "You're early." After getting thoroughly grilled by his mother - "Does he have enough money? Does he know how to get back to the hotel? Do you have a cell phone, in case anything happens?" - and assuring her that since he had just graduated from Princeton, he could probably take care of himself, even if he wasn't with someone who had spent an entire month in the city (her concern made me smile), we set off to find adventure. Or rather, lunch.
After we had filled our stomachs, we wandered over to where I had previously marked the location of a bike rental store, only getting lost once along the way (and not really lost, just ending up in a different part of town from where I was headed). Unfortunately, when we got there we were informed that all of the bikes were back at Marienplatz for use with bike tours, so we had to walk all the way back to where we had JUST come from. We got there, only to be informed that they needed ALL of the bikes for the tours and couldn't possibly spare two to rent out, which was incredibly frustrating. So we went to another bike rental place that was closer to Griffin's hotel in the first place, though it cost us a couple of Euros more to rent from them. Poor Griffin! He never complained, but happened to mention in the midst of all this wandering that he had foolishly chosen to break in a new pair of dress shoes the hard way only a couple of days before and had serious blisters on his feet - oops! Finally we obtained the bikes and set off to explore English Garden as I had been hoping to do for weeks. The big attractions in English Garden are the perpetual surf wave, caused by the shape of the bottom of the fast-flowing Isar, and the Nude Meadow, where people come to sunbathe, well, nude. The latter we weren't particularly interested in seeing, but it was a cloudy and surprisingly cool day, so we weren't in too much danger of coming suddenly upon large groups of the unclothed. In fact, I had planned it to be much warmer than it ended up being, and wasn't quite dressed warm enough, but as long as we were moving it wasn't too bad. English Garden is the largest inner-city park in the world, and we rode the entire length of it (after all, we had rented the bikes for three hours, so we had plenty of time). There was lots of woods and plenty of fields, and at one point we even stumbled upon a massive herd of sheep - yes, real live wooly bleating sheep - complete with shepherds and sheepdogs. I almost expected Babe to come running around the edge of the herd and to hear "That'll do, pig"... :D I was kind of looking for the surf wave and had gotten it into my head that it was at the opposite end of the park, so we rode down there and went to the river, but it was wide and flat and shallow. We then rode back up the park along the river, hoping to stumble upon it, but no luck. By the time we got back to our starting point it was starting to sprinkle and it had been a little more than two hours, so we gave up our search and returned the bikes. When we mentioned that we hadn't been able to find the surf wave, the owner of the bike rental shop rolled his eyes, said "WHERE do you guys study, again?", pulled out a map, and circled a spot right next to the corner of the park where we had entered - not on the other side, as I had thought. Oops. In my defense, I had never actually looked up WHERE the surf wave was, just assumed that if we went into English Garden and followed the river, we'd find it. Well, in order that the afternoon not be completely wasted, we walked back up to the park to see the wave - and it was worth it. I almost started drooling, imagining surfing that wave in an open-deck canoe as I used to in high school. :) The cool and drizzly weather didn't deter the more hardcore surfers, and there were about a dozen of them lining up on either side of the river, waiting for their chance to surf the wave. The unpleasant weather did mean, however, that only the better surfers were out - which was a treat. I got some super-sweet videos and pictures of the action. Then we meandered back towards Griffin's apartment, but I was loathe to see him go. We stopped at an ice-cream place for a treat and to give us an excuse to talk longer, to my delight (I think Griffin did it for me, though - he's lactose intolerant :P), but eventually it was time for us to part. The sight of a familiar face had really brightened my day, and in my excitement I forgot to get a picture with Griffin, something that I will probably always regret, but at least I will have the memories.
I returned to the Wohnheim with mixed feelings, and still no desire to pack, though my departure on the morrow was growing ever closer. Fortunately I was spared from this unpleasant task by a group outing to a nearby restaurant as a sort of "last hurrah". The fare was traditionally German (my favorite) and quite delicious. I resisted the urge to order Wiener Schnitzel, my old standby, and instead decided on a dish of Knödel, Beefsteckel, and Weißsalat, which I mostly chose because it included bacon in the salad and I knew that Knödel were both very traditionally German and quite tasty. The meat was unfortunately a little tough and the Knödel dry unless I soaked it in the sauce from the meat, but overall it was a good, hearty meal. And of course, in true German tradition, I washed it all down with a beer. That's right, Erin Mills drank an entire half-liter of beer. It was the first *real* alcohol I had ingested, well, ever. A couple of sips doesn't compare to sitting down and drinking an entire 0.5 liters of alcohol (that's more than a standard beer bottle - they usually come in 0.33 liter sizes). And yes, I felt the effects, undeniably. Things in my peripheral vision started to fade just a tiny bit, but that wasn't as noticeable as the swirling sensation of my head. I felt that I didn't want to move it too quickly or everything might tip from horizontal. It felt a little bit like after you spin around for a long time and are just recovering from being dizzy - things are no longer spinning but you still feel that everything is not nailed down quite as solidly around you as it normally is. Now, since this was my first time ingesting a significant quantity of alcohol, I was hyper-aware of the potential effects and doing my utmost to both recognize and stifle them. I was extra-conscious of my volume and tried very hard not to be loud or extra chatty (or at least not any more than usual - honestly, I'm a pretty loud person, as a rule). I must have been succeeding because about 3/4 of the way through the meal Sam, who was sitting across from me and who had nearly finished his beer, lamented, "I'm such a lightweight." Then, observing that my glass was at a comparable level to his, he squinted at me, observing me for a moment, then asked, "Why aren't you as drunk as me? You never drink!" Cooly returning his gaze (but with an impish grin), I replied, "How do you know I'm not as drunk as you? No one has ever seen me drunk to know what I act like." Sam had to concede that this was good logic, and it was an honest answer on my part - I was semi-unsure whether what I was feeling was even from the alcohol or the fact that I was tired and had just eaten my first hearty meal in quite a while. And indeed, when discussing the matter with my boyfriend later, he remarked, "Well, oftentimes you act the way a lot of people do when they're a little drunk (referring to my chattiness)." So I think we can say I was buzzed at the most. And at this point that's quite enough for me. As a matter of fact, I don't really even like that feeling - I've heard people say that you have "a couple beers" to make conversation easier, but if I don't need that aid, why bother?
To celebrate this last meal, at which both of the grad students and Professor Rankin were in attendance, a couple of the other program participants had gone to a chocolate shop and purchased chocolate cockroaches, in reference to the main character in Kafka's Metamorphosis. The grad students loved them and generously shared the delicious vermin with us - renewing my resolve to purchase a significant amount of German chocolate to be liberally distributed as souvenirs once I return to the US. Finally we had all finished our meal and it was time to return once again to the Wohnheim - as I walked out of the restaurant I noted satisfactorily that my balance had not been at all affected by the alcohol (and snuck a sideways glance at Sam who had even ordered a second half-liter of beer halfway through the meal, but he wasn't exactly stumbling drunk either, just a little dreamy). Back at the Wohnheim I finally had to face the reality of my approaching departure (a funny juxtaposition there ;]) and traipsed down to the basement to start my laundry. I was intending to watch a movie with some of the other members of the group, but was sent upstairs furtively to sign thank-you cards for Hannes and Mareike and got distracted talking to Dan H. for a couple of hours (partially because his birthday was the following day). As could perhaps be expected, a rather rowdy group of individuals met in one of the communal kitchens to "take care of" the remainder of the group's alcohol supply, and I was invited to join, but decided against it after considering the frightfully large collection of bottles on the table (including absinthe cigars...??), the lateness of the hour (it was now past midnight), and all the packing I had yet to do. There may come a day when Erin Mills decides to drink more than just a little bit - but it won't be the day before she needs to travel across the county. So I instead brought my laundry back to my room so that I could pack first thing in the morning (though it wasn't all quite dry), laid it out on my various shelves and sills, curled up in my bed with the too-big pillow and thick comforter for the very last time, and enjoyed a few hours of very sound slumber.
Friday, July 29, 2011
The Last Holiday
Wednesday of the last week of the Princeton in Munich program, we had our final grammar test. This being the third test and Professor Foldeak being rather predictable, we knew exactly what to expect - for the most part. I had semi-studied all of the vocabulary from the workbook, concentrating mostly on the most recent vocabulary over which we had not yet been tested. However, Herr Foldeak threw us a curveball by repeating a vocabulary section that we had had on a previous test, and unfortunately I did quite poorly on that part (although in theory it should have been old material). The grammar wasn't bad, though, and all in all I scraped by with a respectable grade. After grammar class we had the last precept of the program, and I can't say that I was exactly sad to be done with Kafka (although we weren't completely done, still having a test on Friday afternoon). Though the weather this day was nearly as hot and sunny as the previous day, the grad students decided that it would be a good day to visit Dachau, the concentration camp memorial that lies just outside the city (the original plan had been to go Tuesday when we had more time and the reason for postponing it was that it would be too much of a juxtaposition to visit Dachau on a beautifully sunny day and read about the horrors perpetrated there, but that plan didn't work out too well...). Even suspecting this, I had chosen to wear my high heels to go with my outfit that day, figuring that they had been comfortable enough to wear while walking around St. Petersburg, so they would be fine here :P What I failed to remember is that they were only comfortable for me in Russia after I had worn them several times and built up callouses on my heels - I didn't quite bleed this day, but I got some nice blisters for my foolishness of wearing high heels walking around the graveled site of the old concentration camp.
**Warning: if you don't want to read details about the concentration camp, skip to the next paragraph**
The memorial itself of the only camp to be in operation during the entirety of Hitler's regime (1933-1945) was exceptionally well-done, but the fact that we couldn't leave until 2:30 meant that we did, indeed, run out of time. I explored the camp grounds quite thoroughly, but ran out of time in the museum and didn't really get to see much of it at all (partly because I didn't realize the museum was there until the end). The first thing one sees of the camp grounds is the famous cast-iron gate with the ironic inscription "Arbeit macht frei" (Work brings freedom). One of the barracks is still standing, as well as the foundations for the 35 others, neatly laid out in two rows on either side of a tree-lined gravel road. Between the barracks and the main administrative building is a large space in which the prisoners would be forced to stand at attention for hours every morning in all kinds of weather for roll call. The camp fence setup is rather impressive: a five-foot stretch of grassy area before the fence was "no-mans land" - if a prisoner trespassed into this area he could be shot without warning. There was a deep ditch that divided this area, which was filled with water in the time of the camp's operation. On the other side of this ditch laid piles of barbed wire, and the fence itself was a ten-foot construction of electrified and barbed wire, with guard towers every few hundred feet. Escape seemed to be effectively cut off. A small path led out of one end of the camp to the crematorium and execution site, which were even more chilling to behold, especially the gas chambers which were cleverly disguised as showers (although the particular gas chambers at Dachau were never used for mass murder as they were at so many other concentration camps, they served as a model for these other establishments and occasionally groups or individuals did meet their death here). The most sobering part of the crematorium was probably the ovens themselves, designed solely for the purpose of disposing of human remains. The original crematorium was a small brick building and the oven could hold two corpses at a time, but near the end of the camp's operation, when it was hopelessly overcrowded and the death rate from disease and overwork had skyrocketed, the bigger building was built with an oven that could take care of closer to ten bodies at once. As could be expected, there were several memorial sites erected near the crematorium, the final resting place for countless thousands. These memorials and markers of mass graves were chilling and somber reminders of the many who had lost their lives here who were nothing more than a number, and the thousands among their families who will never know for sure their fate. There are also three church-memorials erected on the grounds of the camp: one Protestant (the Church of Reconciliation), one Catholic, and one Jewish. The architecture and layout of these buildings is thoughtful and poignant. Last to be seen is the memorial in front of the still-standing administrative building, which now houses the museum of the camp; a sculpture of emaciated figures tangled in barbed wire and in obvious agony looms over a stone which reads, in German, Russian, English, French, and Hebrew, "Never Again".
I finally entered the museum about twenty minutes before it was to close and rushed through as much as I could, being shooed out by the curators at the last minute (and this isn't the first time that that has happened to me). Our group met up by the entrance to the camp, and many stayed for a discussion of what we had seen while some of us chose to return to the Wohnheim. Thinking about the kind of discussion that went on in our precepts, looking around at the members of the group, and taking into consideration my suffering feet and empty stomach, I chose to return. What we had seen was certainly a good thing to discuss, but I did not want to have the kind of cold intellectual or overly impassioned discussion that I suspected would ensue among this particular group, blandly discussing the logical fallacies of the camp's philosophy or else making rash, emotional, reactionary statements to the horrors we had been reminded of. I never asked the people who stayed what they actually talked about, so I could very well have missed something valuable. But I don't regret my decision to go back. My own thoughts were enough for me.
On a much happier note, the final holiday in June fell on the following day, so we once again did not have class. After getting up particularly early to talk to a friend, I allowed myself the luxury of snoozing for another hour or so before finally getting out of bed and ready for the day. I "bummed around" my room for the entire morning, until it was late enough to justify making chicken cordon bleu as breakfast/lunch (by this time I was busily trying to use up any foodstuffs I wouldn't easily be able to take with me to Clausthal). Finally, I set out to do what I do best - museum-hopping. This day the Jewish Museum and the Munich City Museum were on my list, and while they were both quite interesting and worthwhile, they don't make it to my list of favorites. The Munich City Museum's exhibit on the formation and rise of the National Socialist (Nazi) party was particularly informative and intriguing - apparently Munich was a huge headquarters for Hitler, being the first place where he began amassing power and support. Around 6 I returned to the Wohnheim, had some leftover tortellini for supper, and shortly thereafter went to bed for lack of anything else to do. I wanted to be well-rested for the Kafka test the following day, but even I will admit that 7:30 is a ridiculous time to go to bed, and my body agreed - it took quite a while to fall asleep. I probably could have spent the time better studying or blogging, but I didn't feel like it so I knew that if I got on my computer I would just waste hours on the internet looking at pictures of cute kittens or YouTube videos of people falling down stairs or something equally useless, and hoped that I would have renewed inspiration to study in the morning. (That's my usual response when I get into an "I don't want to do anything" mood - go to bed and hope I feel more productive in the morning. Only slightly problematic when such a mood strikes at 3 in the afternoon :P) Also, in my defense, I had very little idea what to study for the test - the grad students had emphasized that vocab would mostly NOT be tested, but hadn't specified what would... I emailed one of them and tried to find them personally for some advice, but they weren't in their rooms. I read the novel, and they had hinted that the test wasn't supposed to be too difficult...
Friday. The last day of the Princeton in Munich program. I was especially excited for this day, because a group of five of the female participants in the program had acquired dirndls by sundry methods, and we had agreed all to wear them on the occasion of the final day. So I eagerly awoke early, showered, and set to work on my getup. I wore my hair in two braids, of course, which hairstyle I happen to be a master of (I've grown quite fond of it again over the summer - for about a five-year span I wore my hair in plaited pigtails EVERY OTHER DAY, with the remaining days finding me with a ponytail in my thus-crimped hair (I always braid it when it's wet), but I had fallen out of the habit after cutting 14.5" of my hair off in the middle of my junior year of high school, when I began swimming. Particularly now in my internship, I find the easiest way to keep my hair out of my face in the lab is to braid it - and so I do. :]). I very carefully tied up the orange ribbon on my bodice - only to find out later that I had done it backwards, necessitating a swift re-tying on the train to class. I put my makeup on and looked myself over in the mirror - very Bavarian (and Princeton, since my dirndl is bright orange). 8:15 couldn't come soon enough - we all met down in the lobby and proceeded to class, with many stops for pictures along the way. While our outlandish (or can I make up the word "inlandish" and use it here?), and very attention-drawing garb embarrassed some of our classmates to no end (i.e. Dan H.), others smiled or were impressed with our boldness and self-confidence (or as Dan would put it, lack of dignity ^.^). Friday was also a very special day in our grammar class. Since we had already taken the test on Wednesday, Herr Foldeak took us all on a tour of the Alte Pinakothek to get what must be the fastest overview of German renaissance painters in the world. However, before we could set out on our adventure, there were some administrative things to take care of. We must have received at least 50 sheets of paper each, between the rest of the history book Herr Foldeak had been illegally copying for us (because it was "out of print" - don't they have copyright laws in Germany?), "suggested reading" lists, and other information on continuing our German education. Now, unlike in the United States, where grades are a very private thing which are protected by all sorts of passwords and confidentiality, the rest of the world believes that everyone should know where they stand in the results, and the rewards of one's academic labor should be a public thing. Therefore, when Herr Foldeak handed out our grades, it was one sheet with everyone's name and final grade listed. We were all a little shocked, being so unaccustomed to this, but I suppose it only makes sense - besides, if you pay attention to how your classmates work, none of the results should really be a surprise. There were only two grades of "1" given out (the European grading scale is from 1-4, 1 being the best), to two people which surprised me - but I think they studied more vocabulary than anyone else (or had more strategic study methods) and therefore came out ahead. I, as most of the members of the class, got a 2+ (originally I thought this was a B+, but was later informed that it may possibly be an A-...), so I was content, seeing that as a fair assessment of the effort I had put into the course. After all, I was also in Germany to experience the culture and see whether I wanted to return for a semester of study or a potential job in the future, and not *just* to improve my German.
After the Alte Pinakothek we had another agonizing hour before the Kafka test, and I tried to speed-read the German version to make sure that I could intelligently talk about the plot and important interpretations in German. As I had suspected, the test itself wasn't all that difficult, just long and involved a lot of writing. There was an identification section, a couple of short-answer parts, and an essay choice. I was done long before the allotted time, so I handed in my test and headed off to the city center to see if I could get some of my souvenir shopping done before our afternoon tea which would serve as a sort of closing ceremony to the program. Fortunately I had the perfect souvenir in mind for my boyfriend, something that I had been thinking about since I bought my dirndl, so I made a beeline for Kleidemarkt and marched right up to the Tragt section. (Now, I know he reads this and I kind of want his souvenir to be a surprise, so I won't tell you what I bought him. But if you're curious, you can ask me and I'll tell you - I think he's going to love it, even if it may be a little small for him ;]). Having obtained my prize, I triumphantly returned to the group for a positively lovely tea in a charming cafe (made even more wonderful by the free cake provided by Papa Princeton ;]). Many hugs and photos later, we returned to the Wohnheim, where I only had a few minutes to change outfits and get ready for the next activity of the night - swing dancing. This time it was at a big festival, underneath a colorful tent complete with lights and hanging umbrellas (don't ask me why). I was nervous about leaving our stuff at one of the picnic tables in the beer garden (again, because of past bad experiences) but eventually we worked out a place to hide it safely while we enjoyed ourselves. I tried convincing Dan, who had learned to dance the Sunday prior, to come with us, but he excused himself on grounds of being too tired and having other plans. However, after much begging and pleading, we managed to convince Sam, another easy-going member of the group who had tried dancing once, to accompany us (so we were guaranteed at least a FEW dances), and of course Greta came as well, and Sarah was the driving force behind the outing. Initially, Sam was very hesitant and not confident about his dancing ability, but after purchasing a beer at the bar he loosened up considerably. In fact, he became downright friendly, and dancing with him before and after I could notice a distinct difference in his balance, which in my mind shattered all notions that "you can't get drunk off of just one beer." Now, since then I have had some discussions with people who would know who say that it is mostly a mental thing - if you imbibe alcohol with the idea "this is going to get me really drunk", it will have enormously more effect than if you drink it without thinking about it much, or intend not to get drunk - it's a bit like hypnosis. I fully believe this concept, and I certainly saw it borne out that night. But whatever the reason, Sam was much more willing to dance post-beer and I was happy to have a dance partner, regardless of his skill level (having participated in beginner-level swing classes at Princeton, and having a boyfriend of much the same mentality as Sam - I usually have to almost beg him to dance with me - I have danced with some bad dancers, and Sam is far from the worst). The only other person who danced with me that night was a man in his mid-thirties who described himself as a "total beginner" who may or may not have spoken either German or English (I only spoke German to him, but he definitely tried English with me) and knew about three different moves, most of which involved a lot of spinning and which I quickly tired of. He kept coming back again and again until I decided that it would be prudent to look a little less eager to dance instead of straining at the edge of the dance floor hoping that someone else would come and ask me - most people were there with their partners, so it wasn't much of a mixer. There were a few excellent dancers there, but I'm far too shy to go and ask a man for a dance in English, much less German, so I basically danced with Sam and "3-move Marvin", as I dubbed him. Greta disappeared for a while to go souvenir shopping and returned with a nice scarf, but from her description of the other wares at the folk fair (for that's what it was) it didn't seem that I would find anything really good for Mom and Emily, the two important people left on my souvenir-shopping list, or at least not something that would be "German" (i.e. we couldn't find it at a yard sale/folk fair at home). Although the dance went until 11:30, I was ready to leave by 10, and despite Sarah's pleadings for us to stay (the people she knew who were running the event had hinted at doing a dance in her honor), Sam and I headed back at 10:40. We were hoping to catch a "sneak preview" a group was going to (in Germany you can buy special discounted tickets at theaters to watch movies which haven't been officially released yet, usually in the original language, and the movie is not revealed beforehand, so it's a total surprise and grab back) but we misjudged the public transportation and ended up having to walk to the nearest U=bahn stop, which meant that we wouldn't make it in time. This was okay by us, though, so we just enjoyed the night, walking and talking (Sam was by this time very much sobered up). I laughed at the way Sam marveled at my ability to switch between languages - I would be chatting with him in English, then call Mareike on the phone and as soon as she picked up, switch into fluent (or at least coherent) German. I should hope that after a month in the country, I should be at least able to hold a coherent simple phone conversation in German without having to "warm up" first! Finally we were back at the Wohnheim, and I hit the sack around 12. It was a good, full last day :)
**Warning: if you don't want to read details about the concentration camp, skip to the next paragraph**
The memorial itself of the only camp to be in operation during the entirety of Hitler's regime (1933-1945) was exceptionally well-done, but the fact that we couldn't leave until 2:30 meant that we did, indeed, run out of time. I explored the camp grounds quite thoroughly, but ran out of time in the museum and didn't really get to see much of it at all (partly because I didn't realize the museum was there until the end). The first thing one sees of the camp grounds is the famous cast-iron gate with the ironic inscription "Arbeit macht frei" (Work brings freedom). One of the barracks is still standing, as well as the foundations for the 35 others, neatly laid out in two rows on either side of a tree-lined gravel road. Between the barracks and the main administrative building is a large space in which the prisoners would be forced to stand at attention for hours every morning in all kinds of weather for roll call. The camp fence setup is rather impressive: a five-foot stretch of grassy area before the fence was "no-mans land" - if a prisoner trespassed into this area he could be shot without warning. There was a deep ditch that divided this area, which was filled with water in the time of the camp's operation. On the other side of this ditch laid piles of barbed wire, and the fence itself was a ten-foot construction of electrified and barbed wire, with guard towers every few hundred feet. Escape seemed to be effectively cut off. A small path led out of one end of the camp to the crematorium and execution site, which were even more chilling to behold, especially the gas chambers which were cleverly disguised as showers (although the particular gas chambers at Dachau were never used for mass murder as they were at so many other concentration camps, they served as a model for these other establishments and occasionally groups or individuals did meet their death here). The most sobering part of the crematorium was probably the ovens themselves, designed solely for the purpose of disposing of human remains. The original crematorium was a small brick building and the oven could hold two corpses at a time, but near the end of the camp's operation, when it was hopelessly overcrowded and the death rate from disease and overwork had skyrocketed, the bigger building was built with an oven that could take care of closer to ten bodies at once. As could be expected, there were several memorial sites erected near the crematorium, the final resting place for countless thousands. These memorials and markers of mass graves were chilling and somber reminders of the many who had lost their lives here who were nothing more than a number, and the thousands among their families who will never know for sure their fate. There are also three church-memorials erected on the grounds of the camp: one Protestant (the Church of Reconciliation), one Catholic, and one Jewish. The architecture and layout of these buildings is thoughtful and poignant. Last to be seen is the memorial in front of the still-standing administrative building, which now houses the museum of the camp; a sculpture of emaciated figures tangled in barbed wire and in obvious agony looms over a stone which reads, in German, Russian, English, French, and Hebrew, "Never Again".
I finally entered the museum about twenty minutes before it was to close and rushed through as much as I could, being shooed out by the curators at the last minute (and this isn't the first time that that has happened to me). Our group met up by the entrance to the camp, and many stayed for a discussion of what we had seen while some of us chose to return to the Wohnheim. Thinking about the kind of discussion that went on in our precepts, looking around at the members of the group, and taking into consideration my suffering feet and empty stomach, I chose to return. What we had seen was certainly a good thing to discuss, but I did not want to have the kind of cold intellectual or overly impassioned discussion that I suspected would ensue among this particular group, blandly discussing the logical fallacies of the camp's philosophy or else making rash, emotional, reactionary statements to the horrors we had been reminded of. I never asked the people who stayed what they actually talked about, so I could very well have missed something valuable. But I don't regret my decision to go back. My own thoughts were enough for me.
On a much happier note, the final holiday in June fell on the following day, so we once again did not have class. After getting up particularly early to talk to a friend, I allowed myself the luxury of snoozing for another hour or so before finally getting out of bed and ready for the day. I "bummed around" my room for the entire morning, until it was late enough to justify making chicken cordon bleu as breakfast/lunch (by this time I was busily trying to use up any foodstuffs I wouldn't easily be able to take with me to Clausthal). Finally, I set out to do what I do best - museum-hopping. This day the Jewish Museum and the Munich City Museum were on my list, and while they were both quite interesting and worthwhile, they don't make it to my list of favorites. The Munich City Museum's exhibit on the formation and rise of the National Socialist (Nazi) party was particularly informative and intriguing - apparently Munich was a huge headquarters for Hitler, being the first place where he began amassing power and support. Around 6 I returned to the Wohnheim, had some leftover tortellini for supper, and shortly thereafter went to bed for lack of anything else to do. I wanted to be well-rested for the Kafka test the following day, but even I will admit that 7:30 is a ridiculous time to go to bed, and my body agreed - it took quite a while to fall asleep. I probably could have spent the time better studying or blogging, but I didn't feel like it so I knew that if I got on my computer I would just waste hours on the internet looking at pictures of cute kittens or YouTube videos of people falling down stairs or something equally useless, and hoped that I would have renewed inspiration to study in the morning. (That's my usual response when I get into an "I don't want to do anything" mood - go to bed and hope I feel more productive in the morning. Only slightly problematic when such a mood strikes at 3 in the afternoon :P) Also, in my defense, I had very little idea what to study for the test - the grad students had emphasized that vocab would mostly NOT be tested, but hadn't specified what would... I emailed one of them and tried to find them personally for some advice, but they weren't in their rooms. I read the novel, and they had hinted that the test wasn't supposed to be too difficult...
Friday. The last day of the Princeton in Munich program. I was especially excited for this day, because a group of five of the female participants in the program had acquired dirndls by sundry methods, and we had agreed all to wear them on the occasion of the final day. So I eagerly awoke early, showered, and set to work on my getup. I wore my hair in two braids, of course, which hairstyle I happen to be a master of (I've grown quite fond of it again over the summer - for about a five-year span I wore my hair in plaited pigtails EVERY OTHER DAY, with the remaining days finding me with a ponytail in my thus-crimped hair (I always braid it when it's wet), but I had fallen out of the habit after cutting 14.5" of my hair off in the middle of my junior year of high school, when I began swimming. Particularly now in my internship, I find the easiest way to keep my hair out of my face in the lab is to braid it - and so I do. :]). I very carefully tied up the orange ribbon on my bodice - only to find out later that I had done it backwards, necessitating a swift re-tying on the train to class. I put my makeup on and looked myself over in the mirror - very Bavarian (and Princeton, since my dirndl is bright orange). 8:15 couldn't come soon enough - we all met down in the lobby and proceeded to class, with many stops for pictures along the way. While our outlandish (or can I make up the word "inlandish" and use it here?), and very attention-drawing garb embarrassed some of our classmates to no end (i.e. Dan H.), others smiled or were impressed with our boldness and self-confidence (or as Dan would put it, lack of dignity ^.^). Friday was also a very special day in our grammar class. Since we had already taken the test on Wednesday, Herr Foldeak took us all on a tour of the Alte Pinakothek to get what must be the fastest overview of German renaissance painters in the world. However, before we could set out on our adventure, there were some administrative things to take care of. We must have received at least 50 sheets of paper each, between the rest of the history book Herr Foldeak had been illegally copying for us (because it was "out of print" - don't they have copyright laws in Germany?), "suggested reading" lists, and other information on continuing our German education. Now, unlike in the United States, where grades are a very private thing which are protected by all sorts of passwords and confidentiality, the rest of the world believes that everyone should know where they stand in the results, and the rewards of one's academic labor should be a public thing. Therefore, when Herr Foldeak handed out our grades, it was one sheet with everyone's name and final grade listed. We were all a little shocked, being so unaccustomed to this, but I suppose it only makes sense - besides, if you pay attention to how your classmates work, none of the results should really be a surprise. There were only two grades of "1" given out (the European grading scale is from 1-4, 1 being the best), to two people which surprised me - but I think they studied more vocabulary than anyone else (or had more strategic study methods) and therefore came out ahead. I, as most of the members of the class, got a 2+ (originally I thought this was a B+, but was later informed that it may possibly be an A-...), so I was content, seeing that as a fair assessment of the effort I had put into the course. After all, I was also in Germany to experience the culture and see whether I wanted to return for a semester of study or a potential job in the future, and not *just* to improve my German.
After the Alte Pinakothek we had another agonizing hour before the Kafka test, and I tried to speed-read the German version to make sure that I could intelligently talk about the plot and important interpretations in German. As I had suspected, the test itself wasn't all that difficult, just long and involved a lot of writing. There was an identification section, a couple of short-answer parts, and an essay choice. I was done long before the allotted time, so I handed in my test and headed off to the city center to see if I could get some of my souvenir shopping done before our afternoon tea which would serve as a sort of closing ceremony to the program. Fortunately I had the perfect souvenir in mind for my boyfriend, something that I had been thinking about since I bought my dirndl, so I made a beeline for Kleidemarkt and marched right up to the Tragt section. (Now, I know he reads this and I kind of want his souvenir to be a surprise, so I won't tell you what I bought him. But if you're curious, you can ask me and I'll tell you - I think he's going to love it, even if it may be a little small for him ;]). Having obtained my prize, I triumphantly returned to the group for a positively lovely tea in a charming cafe (made even more wonderful by the free cake provided by Papa Princeton ;]). Many hugs and photos later, we returned to the Wohnheim, where I only had a few minutes to change outfits and get ready for the next activity of the night - swing dancing. This time it was at a big festival, underneath a colorful tent complete with lights and hanging umbrellas (don't ask me why). I was nervous about leaving our stuff at one of the picnic tables in the beer garden (again, because of past bad experiences) but eventually we worked out a place to hide it safely while we enjoyed ourselves. I tried convincing Dan, who had learned to dance the Sunday prior, to come with us, but he excused himself on grounds of being too tired and having other plans. However, after much begging and pleading, we managed to convince Sam, another easy-going member of the group who had tried dancing once, to accompany us (so we were guaranteed at least a FEW dances), and of course Greta came as well, and Sarah was the driving force behind the outing. Initially, Sam was very hesitant and not confident about his dancing ability, but after purchasing a beer at the bar he loosened up considerably. In fact, he became downright friendly, and dancing with him before and after I could notice a distinct difference in his balance, which in my mind shattered all notions that "you can't get drunk off of just one beer." Now, since then I have had some discussions with people who would know who say that it is mostly a mental thing - if you imbibe alcohol with the idea "this is going to get me really drunk", it will have enormously more effect than if you drink it without thinking about it much, or intend not to get drunk - it's a bit like hypnosis. I fully believe this concept, and I certainly saw it borne out that night. But whatever the reason, Sam was much more willing to dance post-beer and I was happy to have a dance partner, regardless of his skill level (having participated in beginner-level swing classes at Princeton, and having a boyfriend of much the same mentality as Sam - I usually have to almost beg him to dance with me - I have danced with some bad dancers, and Sam is far from the worst). The only other person who danced with me that night was a man in his mid-thirties who described himself as a "total beginner" who may or may not have spoken either German or English (I only spoke German to him, but he definitely tried English with me) and knew about three different moves, most of which involved a lot of spinning and which I quickly tired of. He kept coming back again and again until I decided that it would be prudent to look a little less eager to dance instead of straining at the edge of the dance floor hoping that someone else would come and ask me - most people were there with their partners, so it wasn't much of a mixer. There were a few excellent dancers there, but I'm far too shy to go and ask a man for a dance in English, much less German, so I basically danced with Sam and "3-move Marvin", as I dubbed him. Greta disappeared for a while to go souvenir shopping and returned with a nice scarf, but from her description of the other wares at the folk fair (for that's what it was) it didn't seem that I would find anything really good for Mom and Emily, the two important people left on my souvenir-shopping list, or at least not something that would be "German" (i.e. we couldn't find it at a yard sale/folk fair at home). Although the dance went until 11:30, I was ready to leave by 10, and despite Sarah's pleadings for us to stay (the people she knew who were running the event had hinted at doing a dance in her honor), Sam and I headed back at 10:40. We were hoping to catch a "sneak preview" a group was going to (in Germany you can buy special discounted tickets at theaters to watch movies which haven't been officially released yet, usually in the original language, and the movie is not revealed beforehand, so it's a total surprise and grab back) but we misjudged the public transportation and ended up having to walk to the nearest U=bahn stop, which meant that we wouldn't make it in time. This was okay by us, though, so we just enjoyed the night, walking and talking (Sam was by this time very much sobered up). I laughed at the way Sam marveled at my ability to switch between languages - I would be chatting with him in English, then call Mareike on the phone and as soon as she picked up, switch into fluent (or at least coherent) German. I should hope that after a month in the country, I should be at least able to hold a coherent simple phone conversation in German without having to "warm up" first! Finally we were back at the Wohnheim, and I hit the sack around 12. It was a good, full last day :)
Monday, July 18, 2011
Home Stretch
As the final week of the Princeton in Munich program dawned, I began to feel the last-minute press to see and do everything that I wanted in the city before I moved on to other (if not necessarily bigger and better) adventures. One of my biggest dreams was to rent bikes for an afternoon and take a ride around the enormous park in the middle of the city (the largest inner-city park in the world). However, the weather and other people's plans kept interfering with this and it *almost* didn't happen. Nevertheless, every day I managed to cross something off my list and generally have a great time, so the week was far from lost. However, there were an unusual number of disappointments and last-minute plan changes this week that managed to keep us on our toes, and not completely in a good way...
Monday I finally managed to visit the Paleontological Museum when it was open, after precept. The dinosaur skeletons were very interesting, but it was a rather small museum housed in one of the academic buildings of the university, so nothing terribly exciting or extensive. The prevalence in Germany of the Darwinistic worldview and old-earth philosophy was evident in every exhibit description, where they talked about the dinosaurs which ruled the earth "millions and millions of years ago". There was also plenty about the evolution of man and Archaeopteryx, the supposed link between birds and dinosaurs (though to be fair, that isn't what the top scientists are saying anymore). All in all, it was an interesting museum to visit, just to try and imagine what it would be like to meet the critters exhibited back when they were still covered in skin and muscle, but it didn't take too long to get through so I still had plenty of time for shopping and supper before our next activity of the evening.
On Monday night there was supposed to be a huge roller-skating event where the police closed off the streets for the evening and everyone skated around the city. It sounded like great fun and there were even rental skates available, so a big group of us met plenty early and headed down to the meeting point. Imagine our disappointment when we arrived only to find that the event had been cancelled for fear of rain, which didn't even end up falling. Reluctant to give up on all evening activities, we wandered to the nearest cinema, but we arrived too late for all of the movies that we wanted to see (movies in Germany generally begin at 8:15, and cinemas aren't usually as large as in America, only having a couple of theaters). We wandered around for a while looking for a good place to eat (and the grad students offered to treat us as a consolation prize), and finally we found a good ice-cream parlor. Most of the group hadn't eaten supper yet, since we had met at 6:30, so I was the only one who bought an ice cream (I'm ALWAYS hungry for ice cream ;]). I took advantage of not paying for my own food to try "spaghetti ice", figuring that even if it was gross at least I didn't pay for it ;) It was quite disappointing, and not because it wasn't tasty. It was simply vanilla ice cream squeezed through a garlic press into the shape of noodles, with cherry sauce and white chocolate shavings on the top. A fun treat, and quite delicious, but not special enough to pay twice as much as anything else on the menu... :P Afterwards the group settled on a likely-looking pizza place, but by this time it was already 10pm and my stomach had been acting up all day (which still didn't stop me from eating ice cream, but at least it didn't make it worse, thankfully), so I opted to find my way home alone. The grad students were a little concerned about me going back by myself, and I wasn't completely happy with the situation either, but I managed to find the correct tram and bus without too much trouble and got home without incident. (Besides, I had a cell phone with their numbers, and Germany isn't NEARLY as dangerous as St. Petersburg, where I was wont to wander often by myself at night. It wasn't really a problem.)
The next day the weather was beautiful again, and I was excited to go biking - but the grad students had other plans. They wanted to take us swimming at yet another local lake, and since no one wanted to skip that to go with me, I opted to join the group instead of doing my own thing (reasoning that I would have 8 weeks to do my own thing in Clausthal, so I should take advantage of the company while I had it). However, this was also destined for disaster, as a couple of stops out our train (a regional train, since the lake was a bit of a distance away and couldn't be reached by normal S-Bahn) was stopped by an "emergency on the tracks" (Professor Rankin told us that last time this happened, someone had committed suicide by jumping in front of a train, but we don't know if that was the reason this time or not) and though they were supposedly sending buses to continue our journey, we looked at the huge crowd of people milling around and thought about the time it would take to get to Tagensee by bus, and decided that we were better off picking another activity for the afternoon. The weather was just too nice to give up on the idea of swimming, so we decided to take Herr Foldeak (our eccentric professor)'s advice and swim in the Isar. Well, not exactly in the river, but in a "Freibad" (free swimming pool) next to it. I've never heard of a "Freibad" in America, so I don't know if we have them, but it's like an outdoor swimming pool. And not an outdoor swimming pool like you might find at a cheap motel or in your backyard, but more like a redirected river that feeds into an Olympic swimming pool. It looked like a normal swimming pool, except that the water was exceptionally green and the bottom was slimy (apparently Germans aren't as crazy about nuking their swimming water with chemicals to remove all of the algae and make the water clear). We thought the water was pretty cold, but that was only until we discovered the canal. This was actually a channel with cement walls and a rocky bottom, and whereas the water in the actual Isar at this point in the river was very shallow and slow-moving, the water in the canal flowed fast and strong, though it was still only about three feet deep. I for one quickly grew bored of the "normal" swimming pool and wanted to try my luck in the canal, and I convinced the others to come with me. We jumped in and realized what truly cold water felt like. It was pretty fun to float with the current, and you were quickly moved far downstream of where you jumped in, but the real challenge was to try and fight your way back against the current to your starting point. If you faced the current head-on, you would be pushed backwards. The only way to do it was to stand sideways or brace yourself with one foot behind the other and take short lunges forward (Dan compared it to fencing moves). After a ten-minute struggle I reached my goal triumphant and exhausted, laughing all the way. There was a bridge near the head of the canal and we had fun playing with that too, trying to monkey-bar upstream on the bridge supports and being quickly swept back downstream when we finally fell in. At one point I stealthily swam upstream and let the current carry me back, submerged, towards Dan; but he saw my plan and when I grabbed his legs underwater he dove down on top of me and we both surfaced, laughing. I wore goggles mostly because of my contacts, but it also made it more fun since I could swim underwater with my eyes open (and it made me effectively immune to splashing ;]). At one point a couple of us (former swimmers) were doing starting dives off of the blocks at one end of the pool, and Mareike asked if I would teach her how to dive. I've been taking swimming lessons for as long as I can remember (I think I started when I was about three) and I learned to dive probably before I could ride a bike, so thinking back that far to try and teach someone else was an exercise in creativity. I'm not sure how well I succeeded, but her last attempts looked like they hurt less than the first ones, so I think we made some progress ;) Finally we all emerged, rosy-cheeked and well-spent, back into the warm afternoon sunshine. Hannes had generously bought us all Kinderbeer (which isn't really beer but an alcohol-free malt drink that comes in a dark brown bottle), but it had gotten warm in the sun and we had to all run down to the canal and hold it under the water for some time to cool it off again. It had a very sweet caramel taste that was not at all disagreeable (and tasted much better than actual beer, if I may say so), and was all in all a splendid finale to a great day.
The Kinderbeer got us talking about German specialties, and Hannes mentioned another favorite of his - Maultasche. Literally translated it means "muzzle-bags" (or maybe feed bags, if you think of horses), and it is a Swabish specialty much like ravioli (but if you say that to a Swabian, they'll probably yell at you ;]). Hannes generously offered to buy some and cook them for us, and (thinking of our final grammar test the next day, no doubt), we all enthusiastically agreed. Hannes warned us about his mediocre cooking abilities, but I think the meal went off smashingly well. We each had as many maultasche as we wanted with a nice side of tossed salad (little more than lettuce and dressing, but for several reasons I hadn't had much salad in Munich, so it was delicious). We ate the maultasche with ketchup on Hannes' recommendation, but I could imagine that they would also be delicious with a nice cheese or alfredo sauce. Sarah had a bottle of wine and, since I'd never had any alcohol other than a glass of champagne and a sip of beer (even after having been in Germany for nearly a month), she let me have a little. It was better-tasting than beer, but the alcohol taste was still quite strong and is something that I'm not very used to yet, so it threw me off a little. I think it was white wine, for those who know/care about these things - it doesn't make much difference to me (yet). All of us were busy studying both during and after dinner, and we went to bed that night in eager anticipation of the test the next morning, if only because it meant the last grammar class of the program.
In the interest of posting this as soon as possible, I will end here and (hopefully, with a bit of luck) recount the rest of the week soon (although my short week is quickly filling up with activities, so realistically it may not be until next Monday or so). It's actually kind of nice, being this far behind, because I get to relive the memories over again and remember how much fun I had. Don't worry, there are still plenty of adventures about Munich to be told before we move on to my current locale, but we will get there eventually. Until then, happy living!!
Monday I finally managed to visit the Paleontological Museum when it was open, after precept. The dinosaur skeletons were very interesting, but it was a rather small museum housed in one of the academic buildings of the university, so nothing terribly exciting or extensive. The prevalence in Germany of the Darwinistic worldview and old-earth philosophy was evident in every exhibit description, where they talked about the dinosaurs which ruled the earth "millions and millions of years ago". There was also plenty about the evolution of man and Archaeopteryx, the supposed link between birds and dinosaurs (though to be fair, that isn't what the top scientists are saying anymore). All in all, it was an interesting museum to visit, just to try and imagine what it would be like to meet the critters exhibited back when they were still covered in skin and muscle, but it didn't take too long to get through so I still had plenty of time for shopping and supper before our next activity of the evening.
On Monday night there was supposed to be a huge roller-skating event where the police closed off the streets for the evening and everyone skated around the city. It sounded like great fun and there were even rental skates available, so a big group of us met plenty early and headed down to the meeting point. Imagine our disappointment when we arrived only to find that the event had been cancelled for fear of rain, which didn't even end up falling. Reluctant to give up on all evening activities, we wandered to the nearest cinema, but we arrived too late for all of the movies that we wanted to see (movies in Germany generally begin at 8:15, and cinemas aren't usually as large as in America, only having a couple of theaters). We wandered around for a while looking for a good place to eat (and the grad students offered to treat us as a consolation prize), and finally we found a good ice-cream parlor. Most of the group hadn't eaten supper yet, since we had met at 6:30, so I was the only one who bought an ice cream (I'm ALWAYS hungry for ice cream ;]). I took advantage of not paying for my own food to try "spaghetti ice", figuring that even if it was gross at least I didn't pay for it ;) It was quite disappointing, and not because it wasn't tasty. It was simply vanilla ice cream squeezed through a garlic press into the shape of noodles, with cherry sauce and white chocolate shavings on the top. A fun treat, and quite delicious, but not special enough to pay twice as much as anything else on the menu... :P Afterwards the group settled on a likely-looking pizza place, but by this time it was already 10pm and my stomach had been acting up all day (which still didn't stop me from eating ice cream, but at least it didn't make it worse, thankfully), so I opted to find my way home alone. The grad students were a little concerned about me going back by myself, and I wasn't completely happy with the situation either, but I managed to find the correct tram and bus without too much trouble and got home without incident. (Besides, I had a cell phone with their numbers, and Germany isn't NEARLY as dangerous as St. Petersburg, where I was wont to wander often by myself at night. It wasn't really a problem.)
The next day the weather was beautiful again, and I was excited to go biking - but the grad students had other plans. They wanted to take us swimming at yet another local lake, and since no one wanted to skip that to go with me, I opted to join the group instead of doing my own thing (reasoning that I would have 8 weeks to do my own thing in Clausthal, so I should take advantage of the company while I had it). However, this was also destined for disaster, as a couple of stops out our train (a regional train, since the lake was a bit of a distance away and couldn't be reached by normal S-Bahn) was stopped by an "emergency on the tracks" (Professor Rankin told us that last time this happened, someone had committed suicide by jumping in front of a train, but we don't know if that was the reason this time or not) and though they were supposedly sending buses to continue our journey, we looked at the huge crowd of people milling around and thought about the time it would take to get to Tagensee by bus, and decided that we were better off picking another activity for the afternoon. The weather was just too nice to give up on the idea of swimming, so we decided to take Herr Foldeak (our eccentric professor)'s advice and swim in the Isar. Well, not exactly in the river, but in a "Freibad" (free swimming pool) next to it. I've never heard of a "Freibad" in America, so I don't know if we have them, but it's like an outdoor swimming pool. And not an outdoor swimming pool like you might find at a cheap motel or in your backyard, but more like a redirected river that feeds into an Olympic swimming pool. It looked like a normal swimming pool, except that the water was exceptionally green and the bottom was slimy (apparently Germans aren't as crazy about nuking their swimming water with chemicals to remove all of the algae and make the water clear). We thought the water was pretty cold, but that was only until we discovered the canal. This was actually a channel with cement walls and a rocky bottom, and whereas the water in the actual Isar at this point in the river was very shallow and slow-moving, the water in the canal flowed fast and strong, though it was still only about three feet deep. I for one quickly grew bored of the "normal" swimming pool and wanted to try my luck in the canal, and I convinced the others to come with me. We jumped in and realized what truly cold water felt like. It was pretty fun to float with the current, and you were quickly moved far downstream of where you jumped in, but the real challenge was to try and fight your way back against the current to your starting point. If you faced the current head-on, you would be pushed backwards. The only way to do it was to stand sideways or brace yourself with one foot behind the other and take short lunges forward (Dan compared it to fencing moves). After a ten-minute struggle I reached my goal triumphant and exhausted, laughing all the way. There was a bridge near the head of the canal and we had fun playing with that too, trying to monkey-bar upstream on the bridge supports and being quickly swept back downstream when we finally fell in. At one point I stealthily swam upstream and let the current carry me back, submerged, towards Dan; but he saw my plan and when I grabbed his legs underwater he dove down on top of me and we both surfaced, laughing. I wore goggles mostly because of my contacts, but it also made it more fun since I could swim underwater with my eyes open (and it made me effectively immune to splashing ;]). At one point a couple of us (former swimmers) were doing starting dives off of the blocks at one end of the pool, and Mareike asked if I would teach her how to dive. I've been taking swimming lessons for as long as I can remember (I think I started when I was about three) and I learned to dive probably before I could ride a bike, so thinking back that far to try and teach someone else was an exercise in creativity. I'm not sure how well I succeeded, but her last attempts looked like they hurt less than the first ones, so I think we made some progress ;) Finally we all emerged, rosy-cheeked and well-spent, back into the warm afternoon sunshine. Hannes had generously bought us all Kinderbeer (which isn't really beer but an alcohol-free malt drink that comes in a dark brown bottle), but it had gotten warm in the sun and we had to all run down to the canal and hold it under the water for some time to cool it off again. It had a very sweet caramel taste that was not at all disagreeable (and tasted much better than actual beer, if I may say so), and was all in all a splendid finale to a great day.
The Kinderbeer got us talking about German specialties, and Hannes mentioned another favorite of his - Maultasche. Literally translated it means "muzzle-bags" (or maybe feed bags, if you think of horses), and it is a Swabish specialty much like ravioli (but if you say that to a Swabian, they'll probably yell at you ;]). Hannes generously offered to buy some and cook them for us, and (thinking of our final grammar test the next day, no doubt), we all enthusiastically agreed. Hannes warned us about his mediocre cooking abilities, but I think the meal went off smashingly well. We each had as many maultasche as we wanted with a nice side of tossed salad (little more than lettuce and dressing, but for several reasons I hadn't had much salad in Munich, so it was delicious). We ate the maultasche with ketchup on Hannes' recommendation, but I could imagine that they would also be delicious with a nice cheese or alfredo sauce. Sarah had a bottle of wine and, since I'd never had any alcohol other than a glass of champagne and a sip of beer (even after having been in Germany for nearly a month), she let me have a little. It was better-tasting than beer, but the alcohol taste was still quite strong and is something that I'm not very used to yet, so it threw me off a little. I think it was white wine, for those who know/care about these things - it doesn't make much difference to me (yet). All of us were busy studying both during and after dinner, and we went to bed that night in eager anticipation of the test the next morning, if only because it meant the last grammar class of the program.
In the interest of posting this as soon as possible, I will end here and (hopefully, with a bit of luck) recount the rest of the week soon (although my short week is quickly filling up with activities, so realistically it may not be until next Monday or so). It's actually kind of nice, being this far behind, because I get to relive the memories over again and remember how much fun I had. Don't worry, there are still plenty of adventures about Munich to be told before we move on to my current locale, but we will get there eventually. Until then, happy living!!
Friday, July 15, 2011
Alps!!
My, how time does fly! I can't believe that I've already been in Germany for nearly 7 weeks!! That means that I'm more than halfway done with my stay here, which, when I finish, will be my longest time out-of-country ever. I REALLY like Germany, though, and it's even beginning to feel a little like home. I could totally see myself coming back here for an extended period sometime later, whether to study or work... I *probably* won't move here permanently, but you never know... ;)
The second part of our third weekend in Munich, we did something that I had been looking forward to the entire time. I finally got to legitimately use my new hiking boots!! We met at 10 (which meant that I had plenty of time to do other things beforehand ;]) and hopped on a regional train that would take us to the Alps for a lovely day of hiking. Unfortunately the weather wasn't cooperating with our plans very well, and it was cold with a driving rain when we got on the train in Munich. The ride to the mountains took an hour, and we had passed through most of the bad weather by the time we reached the foot of the peaks, but some ominous clouds could still be seen on the other side of the mountains. I'm always just happy to get out in nature, but I was even more excited when I was informed that the majestic, snow-covered (in late June!!) peak I was looking at was actually the highest mountain in Germany. Its name is Zugspitze (which, literally translated, means "Train Peak") - probably because there is a train that goes almost all the way to the top of it. However, our group was by far not prepared for a trek in those kinds of conditions, so we had to content ourselves with climbing the mountain NEXT to the highest mountain in Germany (which is, unfortunately, not quite as cool :P) As it was, we didn't even hike most of the way - we took a train to the very foot of the mountain, then rode a gondola up to the lowest peak. This was cool, too - it was like an enclosed ski-lift, and gave plenty of opportunity for scenic pictures (and wasn't the scenery beautiful!!) When we stepped out of the gondola building at the top, I suddenly realized why Hannes and Mareike had chased me back into my room to grab a sweatshirt when I appeared in the lobby of the Wohnheim in hiking shorts and a sleeveless hiking shirt - it was cold up here! And the wind was much stronger than at the bottom, too. We were already at an elevation of nearly a mile high (which is the highest elevation I have ever climbed to, being the height of Mt. Katahdin, the highest mountain in Maine). After a few more pictures from the viewpoint, we set off on the path that would lead us to our destination at the other peak, Alpspitze. The way was a broad gravel road large enough for a car to travel on, so it wasn't particularly exciting except for the fact that we were walking along the crest of a ridge, so we had a great view of the landscape for miles around on both sides. I took 100 pictures that day - usually 100-picture days are reserved for zoos, so it was pretty special ;) The clouds that we had seen from the bottom of the mountain soon overshadowed us, and before long precipitation was falling. However, since we were so high up, it was more hail or freezing rain than rain, and boy was it cold! Some of the less hardy members of the group began to complain, to which I wanted to respond that if they couldn't deal with a little weather, they should have stayed in the valley and gone shopping or some other equally prissy and non weather-dependent activity, but I held my tongue. Soon enough we reached another stopping point, where there was another gondola car which traveled to our destination. I vehemently opposed such a wussy alternative, especially after eyeing the rest of the trail to the peak which was an actual hiking trail instead of a gravel road. At my pleading the group decided to split into two, with the majority taking the train car to the top and an adventurous few braving the trail. Now we got to the actual mountain climbing, and I was happy. The trail was steep and winding, but absolutely beautiful as it led through high mountain meadows filled with hardy flowers and squat bushes (we were by this time more or less above tree line). Suddenly, as we approached one particularly steep ridge, I was struck with an idea. I whipped out my iPod touch, searched my music library until I found what I was searching for, and the six of us crested the ridge to the epic sounds of the Lord of the Rings Fellowship theme (for those who have not recently experienced the epicness, it can be heard here :http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ovxbXaJs-90 - imagine this with a background of breathtaking scenery. It was amazing). It seemed we hiked through every kind of weather on our way to the top - rain, hail, sun, wind, even snow!! As long as we kept moving it wasn't too cold, and adversity only means a better story when you're all done, right? Finally we gained the peak, where we were slightly surprised to see a cozy restaurant/gift shop. Guess the Germans don't miss an opportunity for entrepreneurship... The food was pricey, as could be expected, but since they had a corner on the market we didn't have much choice. I split a serving of knödel (think potato balls) and sauerkraut with Greta and was happy. I also investigated the souvenirs, but most of them were also quite expensive (and I'm trying to avoid the feeling of "I have to buy a souvenir just because I was here".) I was very tempted to buy a stuffed mountain goat for my best friend Jennifer, but decided that my 4 Euros could be better spent another way, so I contented myself with a couple of postcards and a pen in the shape of a pickaxe (that ended up not even working, but at least it's pretty, right?) Afterwards we got to the real highlight of the day, which was the observation deck which stretched several meters off the side of the mountain, allowing a nearly 270˚ view of the scenery. The floor of the observation deck was open metal grating and the sides were Plexiglass, which naturally made some people a little nervous. I just laughed and tried to find the resonant frequency of the deck by bouncing up and down; when I did, the entire deck swayed with me which caused the nervous ones to clutch wildly at the handrails and scamper back to the safety of bedrock (aren't I awful?). I am also a little scared of heights, but the rush of adrenaline that the fear produces is also quite exciting, and I even rather enjoy it! Many many pictures later we were finally ready to return to the mountain's foot and the boring life of a flatlander. We took a different gondola down, and it seemed that everyone else also thought that it was about time to head home, because the car was standing room only (which again made some people a little nervous, but as an engineer I know that you don't build something like that which isn't strong enough to function correctly when comfortably filled ;]). The train ride back was a quiet one, as many people who were exhausted from the day's travels (though we really didn't exert ourselves much, in the big picture, by my opinion :P) chose to sleep. We got a double-decker train this time, which was rather exciting, so I naturally wanted to sit on the top level in order to better observe the countryside as we passed through. About fifteen minutes out of Munich a family with three small children boarded the train and sat beside me - the two boys were dressed in lederhose and the girl was wearing a tiny dirndl. When I commented on their clothing and asked them why they were all dressed up, they only stared at the funny girl with the strange German accent. The mother then chuckled and explained that they had all just come from a baptism - seriously, dirndls/lederhose ARE the formal clothes of Bavaria. I'M SO EXCITED ABOUT MINE!!!!
Well, we were soon enough home, and I was more than glad for the leftovers I had which meant that supper required little more than to put them in the microwave for a couple of minutes. And so ended another grand weekend. Despite the weather, I thoroughly enjoyed the Alps, though I wish I could have gone and hiked for a solid few hours, instead of our measly trek up to the restaurant. Oh well, you have to cater to the group, I suppose. Maybe another time, in some far-off future life when I have the kind of money to vacation in Europe and I come back to Bavaria (possibly with husband in tow, depending on how far out we're talking) for a week or something and can really do what I want... ;)
Sorry that this blog post is shorter than most (although, perhaps you're not ;]), but it was really supposed to be part of the one I posted last week. I would go further, but it's time for me to go meet the group - we're taking a trip to Hamburg this weekend. Next weekend I'm in Heidelberg for a conference with my internship - by the time I finally return to the US I will really have seen Germany!! A little silly, isn't it, that I've already been in Clausthal for nearly three weeks and still haven't told you all how it is? Well, sorry! I'm going to try awfully hard to put my nose to the grindstone (or fingers to the keyboard, as it were), and get substantially caught up on this next week, but no promises. I can only say that it will get (mostly) done eventually, and hopefully before I return. Until then!!
Saturday, July 9, 2011
Museum Marathon
My last full weekend in Munich. I was determined to take full advantage of it - I'm not quite sure whether I succeeded or not, but at least I had fun!
I had grand visions of a museum marathon on Saturday, since that is my biggest attraction in any city, having grown up in a small town (and for that matter, in a small state) where such collections of knowledge on a specific subject are few and far between. My background combined with my curious nature means that I love learning more about almost anything. I put together a list of six museums that I would try to visit; and seeing that I had an entire day (one of the museums opened at 8:00) and giving me even two hours at each (which was quite generous, as these were smaller, more specialized and less well-known museums) would mean that I might even get through all of them before they started closing at 6. Of course, nothing ever goes according to plan. I should just start planning for things not to go according to plan, if I could figure out how that would work... :P
First of all, I had been waking up so early every day that I felt like I owed myself a day to sleep in. Now, my idea of "sleeping in" means that I don't get up until 8 or 9, which is still early for most people (especially for a Saturday), but that's beside the point :P Anyway, that didn't end up happening, although instead of getting up at 5:30 I did wait until 7 or so. However, since blogging was also on my list of chores, I ended up doing that until about 8:30 so right away I knew the day wasn't going to look like I had planned it to. I finally arrived in the area of the first museum on my list, the Paleontological Museum, a little past nine, but then spent the next hour wandering the space of a couple of city blocks looking for the museum itself, which was definitely NOT marked. When I finally did locate it, I discovered to my dismay that since it was connected to the university, it was only open Monday through Friday (I had mistakenly written down that it was also open on Saturdays). However, all was not lost - in my wanderings I came across a second-hand DVD/CD store with nothing other than Lord of the Rings in the window!! It wasn't open at 9am on a Saturday, of course, but I came back later that week and bought The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring in German. Unfortunately I wasn't thinking too clearly; of course, being in German, it is a European DVD that won't play on my computer or an American DVD player. I *thought* I could get around this by downloading a media-player program that would also play Zone 2 DVD's, but couldn't get it to go past the title screen... oh well, even if it doesn't work, it was only 2,50€. Not a great loss, and at least I have the case, which looks pretty cool :)
After the disappointment with the Paleontological Museum, I trekked off to the next stop on my list - the Firefighting Museum. Fortunately this was both easier to find and open (in fact, it is only open on Saturdays). It is actually housed in one of the fire stations of the city, and it was quite interesting. It had lots of firefighting memorabilia all the way from the earliest history of organized firefighting in the 1700s to today. The coolest part was an exhibit commemorating an event in 1982, when one of Munich's U-Bahn (subway) trains caught fire between stations. (I couldn't understand all of the German, but I don't think anybody died - just a few people went to the hospital because of smoke inhalation.) There were pictures of the event, like the smoke pouring from the U-Bahn station entrance, and they actually have the recovered burnt-out shell of the engine car in the museum. The deadly power of fire is eerily evident in the burnt and melted seat cushions and twisted and mangled metal frame.
It was already nearly 11 by the time I left the Firefighting museum, and it had started to rain (most of the reason I had decided to make Saturday a museum day was because of the predicted rain which would have put a serious damper on any other activity). Nonetheless, according at my map, it seemed that I would be able to walk to my next destination, the one I was most excited about - the Center for Unusual Museums. I eagerly set off, only to encounter much the same problem as with the Paleontological Museum - I simply couldn't find it. I criss-crossed the same three-block stretch three or four times (finding a Beer and Oktoberfest Museum in the process, but unfortunately that one didn't open until 1pm or I might have investigated...) before finally caving and asking a local. The man behind the counter of the bakery told me that it was "easy... just go along this street, you'll see it." Though I had already been up and down that street several times, I nonetheless set off hopefully, to no avail. The next storekeeper I asked simply grunted and pointed me back in the direction that I had come, but at least now I had boundaries to my search. Finally, exasperated, I walked into a Tracht store situated exactly where the museum should have been and inquired of the proprietor - who informed me cheerfully that I was in exactly the right spot. She then went on to explain that since the curator of the museum died four years previous, his wife didn't feel like maintaining the museum anymore, and closed it down. My face at the news looked exactly like this: -_- . Well, at least I had my answer and didn't have to aimlessly wander the city anymore.
Next on my list was the Toy Museum - at least I knew exactly where that one was, since I had seen it on my first day in Munich and made a mental note to come back and investigate later. Tired and a little despairing that I was so far 1 for 3, I walked back to Marienplatz - but was stopped just outside the door to the museum by a deafening crash. A little bewildered, I looked around for the source of the noise, and finally located a detachment of military men on the balcony of the belltower of the nearby Peterskirche who were firing what I supposed to be blanks from rifles at regular intervals. The reports from the rifles crashed and echoed around the tightly enclosed square with a deafening racket. In fact, I noticed that there were all sorts of unusual goings-on in Marienplatz... I was later to be informed that this particular weekend was the celebration of the city of Munich's founding. It was a terrible weekend weather-wise, but I suppose the city fathers couldn't have planned that... There was an entire biergarten, complete with dozens of umbrella'd tables, set up in the middle of the square, and a smallish stage on which a tracht-clad band was playing traditional Bavarian music while personages representing the different faces of Munich paraded across the stage. There were also some strangely-clad fairy-type people on tall stilts that made me wonder what THEY were about, but I didn't seem to know any more or less than anyone else in the crowd, so I just gawked and wondered like all of the other tourists. One of the more interesting figures was the pretzel-king? A man with an ample beer-belly dressed like the Burger King king strode across the square and mounted a white horse with a blue-and-white checkered blanket that covered its entire back (which is the pattern of the Bavarian flag) and a giant basket of pretzels hanging from each side of its saddle. He stopped to pose for pictures before riding off in a stately manner, one hand on the reins and one busy stuffing a pretzel into his mouth. Germans are strange folk, indeed.
Still puzzling about what I had seen, I returned to the Toy Museum - and then discovered what was certainly not my first hang-up of the day. The only thing I had in my wallet was a 50-euro bill and a bit of spare change, and (perhaps owing to my time in Russia) I was reluctant to use excessively large bills to pay for things (in Russia, small store-owners rarely have lots of cash. If they don't have the proper change for your bill, they just won't give you change - it's your problem, not theirs). The only other museum I had managed to reach, the Firefighting museum, was free, so this was the first time I ran into this difficulty. I was barely able to scrape together the 4-Euro entrance price from the spare change I had, but it ran me completely out (at first I offered the woman the 50, but she looked at it with dismay and asked "Don't you have anything smaller?", a reasonable question since the museum had only been open for an hour, so I tried with my change). The museum was quite interesting, especially the old toys from the beginning of the 20th century. Most of the exhibit text was in both German and English, so I actually got to read about the history of these toys. Some of my favorites were the mechanical toys from the turn of the century - it was amazing all the things they were able to do with purely mechanical parts!! Of course, there were plenty of toy soldiers and baby dolls and wooden figures, as well as some of the first teddy bears and a quite extensive Barbie collection (most of them, from what I could see, were very early Barbies from the 60s). The museum itself was housed in a series of several rooms off of a turret, so one had to climb a very narrow winding spiral staircase to get from one room to another. That in itself was pretty fun, and the highest rooms were probably five floors up with a great view of Marienplatz from the small inset windows. Nonetheless exploring the entire museum only took me about 40 minutes and I soon found myself back in the gift shop. Nothing there really interested me as a souvenir for myself or someone else, but a couple of the postcards caught my eye. They were old pictures of children playing with teddy bears and dolls, and I thought that my Great-Aunt Shirley, being fond of most things antique and classy, would just love to receive a postcard from me in general and this postcard in particular. Here came the problem, however - the postcard cost 0.40€ and I only had a 50 note and about 15 cents in change. With many apologies to the poor cashier, I handed her the only money I had - fortunately by this time the museum had gotten more visitors and she had enough change.
By this time it was a little past 12:30, I was very tired and wet from wandering in the rain, not to mention more than a little hungry. Although I still had the Alpine Museum on my list, I decided to call it a day, and headed back to the Wohnheim to do some necessary chores, such as blogging, writing emails, and even a little studying ;)
I was not done for the day as I supposed, however. I returned to find an email in my inbox - it was an invitation from Professor Rankin to "cake and coffee" (a very German tradition) with some friends of his from Swabia, a region of Germany in the south-west, of which Stuttgart is the capital. One of the grad students, Hannes, is from this region, as well as the German mother of my best friend that I've known since birth (who was my original motivation for learning German). I gladly accepted the invitation to interact with some native German speakers (as well as the opportunity to experience some genuine German culture and cuisine not at my own expense ;]). So at 3 I once again headed into the city center (accompanied by Dan, whom Professor Rankin had also invited) and met Professor Rankin at a cafe near Marienplatz. His friends were very pleasant people, also Christians, but the entire conversation felt a little awkward and stilted. I'm not sure if it was because Professor Rankin's friends didn't know how much German we knew, though we are both fairly capable in normal conversation and I'm pretty sure all of them spoke English, or what, but it seemed that both parties tended to speak through Professor Rankin instead of to each other. It didn't last too long, however, and we soon returned to the Wohnheim for the latter part of the afternoon. I got to Skype my family, particularly my father and sister, which was very nice as it is something that happens quite rarely (when I'm away from home, which is most of the time, I usually end up talking to my mom). In fact, this was the last time I spoke to my parents while I was in Munich, and it was an entire week in Clausthal before we could arrange a time to talk again, so it was very nice to check in, get the family news, and such (I'm remarkably independent, as a rule. Contrary to some people I know who call or Skype their parents every day when they are away, I rarely speak to them more than once a week, and often FAR less - try about five times a semester. It works just fine for me, and my parents say they're also happy with the arrangement - although I'm sure they wouldn't be miffed if I called home a LITTLE more often ;]). Then it was back into the city for an ice-cream outing with Professor Rankin, which I thoroughly enjoyed. I am quite thankful for the Monatskarte we were given as part of the program - I don't know what I would do if we had to buy a ticket every time we wanted to use public transportation to move around the city.
So, this Saturday turned out to be one of my less-eventful days in Munich, but it was still good and I got some valuable cultural exposure (as well as doing some much-needed communicating with my family). Even when things don't go according to plan, there's usually some redeeming and useful experience, and sometimes a little unexpected adventure. After all, the best parts of life are often spontaneous. :)
I had grand visions of a museum marathon on Saturday, since that is my biggest attraction in any city, having grown up in a small town (and for that matter, in a small state) where such collections of knowledge on a specific subject are few and far between. My background combined with my curious nature means that I love learning more about almost anything. I put together a list of six museums that I would try to visit; and seeing that I had an entire day (one of the museums opened at 8:00) and giving me even two hours at each (which was quite generous, as these were smaller, more specialized and less well-known museums) would mean that I might even get through all of them before they started closing at 6. Of course, nothing ever goes according to plan. I should just start planning for things not to go according to plan, if I could figure out how that would work... :P
First of all, I had been waking up so early every day that I felt like I owed myself a day to sleep in. Now, my idea of "sleeping in" means that I don't get up until 8 or 9, which is still early for most people (especially for a Saturday), but that's beside the point :P Anyway, that didn't end up happening, although instead of getting up at 5:30 I did wait until 7 or so. However, since blogging was also on my list of chores, I ended up doing that until about 8:30 so right away I knew the day wasn't going to look like I had planned it to. I finally arrived in the area of the first museum on my list, the Paleontological Museum, a little past nine, but then spent the next hour wandering the space of a couple of city blocks looking for the museum itself, which was definitely NOT marked. When I finally did locate it, I discovered to my dismay that since it was connected to the university, it was only open Monday through Friday (I had mistakenly written down that it was also open on Saturdays). However, all was not lost - in my wanderings I came across a second-hand DVD/CD store with nothing other than Lord of the Rings in the window!! It wasn't open at 9am on a Saturday, of course, but I came back later that week and bought The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring in German. Unfortunately I wasn't thinking too clearly; of course, being in German, it is a European DVD that won't play on my computer or an American DVD player. I *thought* I could get around this by downloading a media-player program that would also play Zone 2 DVD's, but couldn't get it to go past the title screen... oh well, even if it doesn't work, it was only 2,50€. Not a great loss, and at least I have the case, which looks pretty cool :)
After the disappointment with the Paleontological Museum, I trekked off to the next stop on my list - the Firefighting Museum. Fortunately this was both easier to find and open (in fact, it is only open on Saturdays). It is actually housed in one of the fire stations of the city, and it was quite interesting. It had lots of firefighting memorabilia all the way from the earliest history of organized firefighting in the 1700s to today. The coolest part was an exhibit commemorating an event in 1982, when one of Munich's U-Bahn (subway) trains caught fire between stations. (I couldn't understand all of the German, but I don't think anybody died - just a few people went to the hospital because of smoke inhalation.) There were pictures of the event, like the smoke pouring from the U-Bahn station entrance, and they actually have the recovered burnt-out shell of the engine car in the museum. The deadly power of fire is eerily evident in the burnt and melted seat cushions and twisted and mangled metal frame.
It was already nearly 11 by the time I left the Firefighting museum, and it had started to rain (most of the reason I had decided to make Saturday a museum day was because of the predicted rain which would have put a serious damper on any other activity). Nonetheless, according at my map, it seemed that I would be able to walk to my next destination, the one I was most excited about - the Center for Unusual Museums. I eagerly set off, only to encounter much the same problem as with the Paleontological Museum - I simply couldn't find it. I criss-crossed the same three-block stretch three or four times (finding a Beer and Oktoberfest Museum in the process, but unfortunately that one didn't open until 1pm or I might have investigated...) before finally caving and asking a local. The man behind the counter of the bakery told me that it was "easy... just go along this street, you'll see it." Though I had already been up and down that street several times, I nonetheless set off hopefully, to no avail. The next storekeeper I asked simply grunted and pointed me back in the direction that I had come, but at least now I had boundaries to my search. Finally, exasperated, I walked into a Tracht store situated exactly where the museum should have been and inquired of the proprietor - who informed me cheerfully that I was in exactly the right spot. She then went on to explain that since the curator of the museum died four years previous, his wife didn't feel like maintaining the museum anymore, and closed it down. My face at the news looked exactly like this: -_- . Well, at least I had my answer and didn't have to aimlessly wander the city anymore.
Next on my list was the Toy Museum - at least I knew exactly where that one was, since I had seen it on my first day in Munich and made a mental note to come back and investigate later. Tired and a little despairing that I was so far 1 for 3, I walked back to Marienplatz - but was stopped just outside the door to the museum by a deafening crash. A little bewildered, I looked around for the source of the noise, and finally located a detachment of military men on the balcony of the belltower of the nearby Peterskirche who were firing what I supposed to be blanks from rifles at regular intervals. The reports from the rifles crashed and echoed around the tightly enclosed square with a deafening racket. In fact, I noticed that there were all sorts of unusual goings-on in Marienplatz... I was later to be informed that this particular weekend was the celebration of the city of Munich's founding. It was a terrible weekend weather-wise, but I suppose the city fathers couldn't have planned that... There was an entire biergarten, complete with dozens of umbrella'd tables, set up in the middle of the square, and a smallish stage on which a tracht-clad band was playing traditional Bavarian music while personages representing the different faces of Munich paraded across the stage. There were also some strangely-clad fairy-type people on tall stilts that made me wonder what THEY were about, but I didn't seem to know any more or less than anyone else in the crowd, so I just gawked and wondered like all of the other tourists. One of the more interesting figures was the pretzel-king? A man with an ample beer-belly dressed like the Burger King king strode across the square and mounted a white horse with a blue-and-white checkered blanket that covered its entire back (which is the pattern of the Bavarian flag) and a giant basket of pretzels hanging from each side of its saddle. He stopped to pose for pictures before riding off in a stately manner, one hand on the reins and one busy stuffing a pretzel into his mouth. Germans are strange folk, indeed.
Still puzzling about what I had seen, I returned to the Toy Museum - and then discovered what was certainly not my first hang-up of the day. The only thing I had in my wallet was a 50-euro bill and a bit of spare change, and (perhaps owing to my time in Russia) I was reluctant to use excessively large bills to pay for things (in Russia, small store-owners rarely have lots of cash. If they don't have the proper change for your bill, they just won't give you change - it's your problem, not theirs). The only other museum I had managed to reach, the Firefighting museum, was free, so this was the first time I ran into this difficulty. I was barely able to scrape together the 4-Euro entrance price from the spare change I had, but it ran me completely out (at first I offered the woman the 50, but she looked at it with dismay and asked "Don't you have anything smaller?", a reasonable question since the museum had only been open for an hour, so I tried with my change). The museum was quite interesting, especially the old toys from the beginning of the 20th century. Most of the exhibit text was in both German and English, so I actually got to read about the history of these toys. Some of my favorites were the mechanical toys from the turn of the century - it was amazing all the things they were able to do with purely mechanical parts!! Of course, there were plenty of toy soldiers and baby dolls and wooden figures, as well as some of the first teddy bears and a quite extensive Barbie collection (most of them, from what I could see, were very early Barbies from the 60s). The museum itself was housed in a series of several rooms off of a turret, so one had to climb a very narrow winding spiral staircase to get from one room to another. That in itself was pretty fun, and the highest rooms were probably five floors up with a great view of Marienplatz from the small inset windows. Nonetheless exploring the entire museum only took me about 40 minutes and I soon found myself back in the gift shop. Nothing there really interested me as a souvenir for myself or someone else, but a couple of the postcards caught my eye. They were old pictures of children playing with teddy bears and dolls, and I thought that my Great-Aunt Shirley, being fond of most things antique and classy, would just love to receive a postcard from me in general and this postcard in particular. Here came the problem, however - the postcard cost 0.40€ and I only had a 50 note and about 15 cents in change. With many apologies to the poor cashier, I handed her the only money I had - fortunately by this time the museum had gotten more visitors and she had enough change.
By this time it was a little past 12:30, I was very tired and wet from wandering in the rain, not to mention more than a little hungry. Although I still had the Alpine Museum on my list, I decided to call it a day, and headed back to the Wohnheim to do some necessary chores, such as blogging, writing emails, and even a little studying ;)
I was not done for the day as I supposed, however. I returned to find an email in my inbox - it was an invitation from Professor Rankin to "cake and coffee" (a very German tradition) with some friends of his from Swabia, a region of Germany in the south-west, of which Stuttgart is the capital. One of the grad students, Hannes, is from this region, as well as the German mother of my best friend that I've known since birth (who was my original motivation for learning German). I gladly accepted the invitation to interact with some native German speakers (as well as the opportunity to experience some genuine German culture and cuisine not at my own expense ;]). So at 3 I once again headed into the city center (accompanied by Dan, whom Professor Rankin had also invited) and met Professor Rankin at a cafe near Marienplatz. His friends were very pleasant people, also Christians, but the entire conversation felt a little awkward and stilted. I'm not sure if it was because Professor Rankin's friends didn't know how much German we knew, though we are both fairly capable in normal conversation and I'm pretty sure all of them spoke English, or what, but it seemed that both parties tended to speak through Professor Rankin instead of to each other. It didn't last too long, however, and we soon returned to the Wohnheim for the latter part of the afternoon. I got to Skype my family, particularly my father and sister, which was very nice as it is something that happens quite rarely (when I'm away from home, which is most of the time, I usually end up talking to my mom). In fact, this was the last time I spoke to my parents while I was in Munich, and it was an entire week in Clausthal before we could arrange a time to talk again, so it was very nice to check in, get the family news, and such (I'm remarkably independent, as a rule. Contrary to some people I know who call or Skype their parents every day when they are away, I rarely speak to them more than once a week, and often FAR less - try about five times a semester. It works just fine for me, and my parents say they're also happy with the arrangement - although I'm sure they wouldn't be miffed if I called home a LITTLE more often ;]). Then it was back into the city for an ice-cream outing with Professor Rankin, which I thoroughly enjoyed. I am quite thankful for the Monatskarte we were given as part of the program - I don't know what I would do if we had to buy a ticket every time we wanted to use public transportation to move around the city.
So, this Saturday turned out to be one of my less-eventful days in Munich, but it was still good and I got some valuable cultural exposure (as well as doing some much-needed communicating with my family). Even when things don't go according to plan, there's usually some redeeming and useful experience, and sometimes a little unexpected adventure. After all, the best parts of life are often spontaneous. :)
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