Accelerating into the last month

Tomorrow is July 1st, and while that means different things for most people, for me it means that my last month in Göttingen starts tomorrow. It also means it's been a while since I've written about what all I have been up to. So here are a pair of pictures from Goslar. I visited my friend Bea in her hometown Salzgitter-Bad, which was having it's Altstadtfest that weekend. We had some ridiculously good food: steak cooked on a swinging grill over an open fire, and Poffertjes , little baby pancakes served with butter, orange liquor, and powdered sugar. There's sort of no excuse for them, but they're wonderful. Then we drove to Goslar, in the Harz mountains, a city recognized by UNESCO as a World Heritage site. It has fabulous old buildings, which I did not take enough pictures of, but one of them you see above. Then we went to the Kaiserpfalz, one of the secondary palaces for the Holy Roman Emperor in the Middle Ages. It was then gussied up by the Prussians in the nineteenth century, and to some degree made to look like what they think it ought to have looked like - including a huge mural showing the history of Holy Roman Emperor Frederick I Barbarossa. It was really good to see Bea and neat to see a corner of Germany I wouldn't have gotten to otherwise this go-round.

Barbarossa and me:


I rode my bike to the train station, and had to find it after getting back:

(a little bit harder than finding your car in a parking lot...)


The weekend after that I chorus all week - every night except for Wednesday there was either a rehearsal or a performance. Everything came together pretty well (although the performance in Nashville with the Vanderbilt Community Chorus was way better) and there was always someone in the audience because I invited them, Friday Britta came, and Saturday Solveig was there, along with Sten, who came for the weekend. It was totally nice to have him here, and also nice to say on Monday "See you Friday!"

Friday I took the train to Leipzig and had a great time visiting with Sten and his family. I took my camera with me, and took no pictures. Sorry. But Sten took at least a few, as did his Dad. Friday we visited and played board games. Saturday after breakfast Sten, his sister Aileen, and I all went window shopping in town. After dinner we all went to see an Operetta together. Sunday after breakfast Sten and I went to the zoo, and had time for dinner before leaving to catch the train back to Göttingen. I had a great time (as expected), and wish I had more time to visit again.

Now I have to get back to work, since this weekend I will be going to Regensburg to visit some friends who spent time at Vanderbilt my first year there. Busy as always!

Himmel über Göttingen

The view from my window - sunset being sometime after 9:30pm lately:




The upside of sudden changes between sun and rain - rainbows!

Biking in Göttingen

(my helmet's in the basket - I never ride without it)

I've been getting to ride my bike a lot here (well, the bike that belongs to the student whose room I'm living in). I thought I would follow my friend Trisha's example and blog a little bit about bikes here in Göttingen.

Bikes are pretty common in Germany, especially for students. A few pictures from the campus should illustrate. The "Before" pictures were taken on a Sunday morning, the others on a Monday or Tuesday about midday - but are pretty standard for the whole week.

These are at the ZHG - Zentral Hörsaalgebäude - the building with the biggest lecture halls and connected to the central cafeteria.

Before:


After:


Before:


After:


In this second pair you can see how when all the bike racks are full, any free space becomes a bike parking lot. It was windy that day, so if you see some of the bikes have fallen over, that's why.

One last one - in front of I think the theology building:


I wanted to take more pictures of the many things that make biking in Göttingen/Germany easier, but the weather hasn't been cooperating, so I don't have a full catalog of the signs limiting streets to bikes - bikes that are allowed to ride the wrong way on a one way street, and where bikes can ride in the pedestrian zone. But here is a shot of one of the busier, or at least broader intersections in Göttingen:



Bike lane (one in each direction) with its own traffic light. At this intersection there's even a bike lane in the left turn lane... again with traffic light, but I'm not sure how to get over in that lane! So I wait at the corner with everyone else.

I have really gotten to liking riding my bike around, and if Nashville were flatter, with better informed drivers, and more helpful bike racks and bike lanes, I would definitely keep it up at home. Well and the fact it hasn't really gotten over 75 degrees here yet and it's June probably helps too - biking in the summer feels a lot different here than in Nashville. Who knows, maybe I'll feel differently about it when I get there.

Storkow 800 Jahr Feier

Over the Pentecost Holidays I went to visit my host family in Storkow and got to participate in the celebrations for the 800th anniversary of the first written mention of Storkow. I arrived Friday evening, had time for coffee and cake before heading off to the opening ceremony and worship service in the church. I wanted to be sure and be there since the chorus was performing. They were surprised but happy to see me, and did a great job, as always. Then the mayor held a speech while wearing a medieval dress. The whole party then went to the restored Burg to hear more speeches. I met up with Rayk and friends on the Burg, and we listened to the live music and visited with each other, later moving on to the large tent set up on a meadow - the only part of the festivities safe from the rain.

Saturday morning after a nice breakfast there was time to explore the grounds some more, and take a short bike ride with Klaus and Marlies around the city. Klaus won an umbrella from the Pharmacy for submitting a riddle in their competition. I had wanted to make it out to visit some more people that afternoon, but it started raining in buckets, and everyone's plans were shifted. That night there was another live music performance. The son (Achim) of a popular singer (Wolfgang Petry) gave a show of his father's music - I knew a few of the songs, including one called "Jessica" - but mostly I enjoyed seeing other people so excited about the music.

The next day started with the parade from 11am to 2pm through the city. Aside from when they had to raise the drawbridge, the parade went without a hitch. It was probably also the only solid three hours we had without rain - in fact the sun was shining really brightly, and most people were way too warmly dressed! Storki led the way (as you can see above). Marlies was in the last section with her sports group - they performed a routine with ribbons - like in rhythmic gymnastics. The parade had 50 something scences each depicting a part of the history of Storkow.

After that we met up with people in the tent in time to hear the chorus sing. They sang various folk songs and medlies, but they opened and closed with "Das Storkowlied" (The Storkow song) composed for this occasion. It's about as great as you can imagine, sung to a swinging melody:

Wir lieben eine kleine Stadt
die ihre Charme und Träume hat.
Sie liegt in Brandenburger Land
und ist als Storchenstadt bekannt.
Sie hat 'ne Gegend erster Wahl
und eine Schleuse mit Kanal
'ne schönen Markt, 'ne Burg wir neu
und vierzehn kleine Schwestern, die ihr treu.

We love a small city
That has its charms and dreams
It is in the land of Brandenburg
And is known as the stork-city.
It is in a first class area
with a lock and a canal
a nice market, a brand new castle
and fourteen little sisters, true to it. (the 14 villages that are part of Storkow)

Refrain:

Storkow, Storkow, kleine Stadt am See,
Storkow, Storkow, unser Wohl und Weh,
Storkow, Storkow, kleine Stadt am Wald
Du bist heute 800 Jahre alt.

Storkow, Storkow, kleine Stadt am See,
Storkow, Storkow, nicht weit von Oder und Spree
Storkow, Storkow, kleine Stadt am Wald,
Du bist heute ein-, zwei-, drei-, vier-, fünf-, sechs-, sieben-, achthundert Jahre alt!

Storkow, Storkow, small city on a lake
Storkow, Storkow, our weal and woe,
Storkow, Storkow, small city in the forest,
You are 800 years old today.

...
Storkow, Storkow, not far from Oder and Spree (rivers)
...
(do I need to translate that?)

And it goes on from there. Don't worry, I came home with the whole CD, you can all hear the song, sung by the chorus, when I'm home. Sten got to Storkow in time to hear the chorus sing. We spent the rest of the day seeing the sights and visiting with people. We left Monday afternoon to get back to Göttingen. It was a great time and I'm so glad I got to be a part of it.

Storkow 800 Jahr Feier

Playing catch-up: Hannover

At the bottom of this post is a slideshow of pictures that I took in Hannover. It was a pretty city and I had a nice time taking a look around - but what I thought was memorable is not necessarily what's on the photos:

I decided to hop on a train and ride an hour to go to Hannover for the day, just to take advantage of the fact that my student ID is my ticket to anywhere in Lower Saxony. One stop on the hour-long trip sounded all the world to me like "Friede" or "Peace". When I looked out the window I saw a green meadow running up to a hill, with a small farm at its foot, and a horse rolling in the grass in front of the river that the train was following. Sounded like peace to me! (the town is actually called Frede - but I like my version better).

I went to Hamburg convinced by the weather report predicting showers all day, armed with a rain jacket and umbrella, planning on spending the afternoon in a museum just to get out of the rain. It turns out we had sunshine the whole day, with temperatures above 70 for most of it - a real treat. The city was full of people enjoying the weather and the open air jazz festival. The combination of good weather and music in the air led to more public displays of affection that I've ever seen in Germany, including New Year's Eve. It was impressive.

I got to Hannover with about 20 minutes to get to the tourist information and get a seat on the 2 and a half hour bus tour of the city (bus tour, because that is not in the rain, either). I'm glad I took the bus because we went all the way to the summer palace of the Hannover royal family (a few generations before the elector of Hannover became the king George of England). The bus ride was made less pleasant by the man who seemed to not realize that in a bus tour you drive past everything, and when he rudely said to the bus driver "This time you're going to drive slower, right?" he was shocked that the driver wasn't friendly, and complained about that, too. The tour was in German and English - and it only came out that I wasn't German when I knew what the word for Pentecost was in Germany, America, and England.

I had a free day to travel because it was Ascension Day - Christihimmelfahrt - or Vatertag/Männertag/Herrentag (men's day). Typically men take the day to ride bikes decorated with lilac branches and a case of beer through the country side. In the city though, men were just pulling little red wagons with the necessary beverages with them - Some groups had matching T-shirts. Naturally the complaining man in the bus loudly explained that they're all on Harz-vier, welfare for unemployment. Greeat.

After the tour was over I wanted to get back into the old city. There's a red stripe painted on the sidewalk that leads you on a walking tour of the city, and I figured that that would be a sure way to see anything the bus hadn't seen, or to take another look at a few places up close. Of course - the red line went right through the most crowded parts of the jazz festival... but I managed to find my way, even though I lost my city map somewhere along the walk. I had a really nice lunch at an Italian restaurant, sitting outside. I got to hear all about the daughter-in-law of the woman at the next table. The mother-in-law alternated between saying disparaging things about the d-i-l not speaking German and coming from Thailand, and asserting that she liked and accepted her anyway. They were greeted by a friend who was walking by, sporting a really serious waxed handlebar mustache.

Once the table was clear, another couple sat down. Well first, just the female half of the pair sat down, leafed through the menu, and ordered for two people, explaining that something needed to be on the table quickly, because the man that was coming was "unterzuckert" (had low blood sugar) and could easily get aggressive. She had dressed for the warm weather in a very small top and very short shorts, and had caught the attention of all the men celebrating their day by drinking beer on the street. While ordering, she looked over the waiter's shoulder, jumped to her feet, and yelled "DIRK! Dirk! He didn't see me!" and went running down the street to find potentially aggressive Dirk. We were all pretty relieved when Dirk had had some bread and didn't get aggressive that his companion ordered wine, and not a wine spritzer.

When I passed the opera, I saw that Carmen was playing, and decided to stay long enough in Hannover to see the performance. I spent the extra time I had drinking something like "bitter lime" and listening to a group of street musicians play "In the Mood" on accordion. The opera was well performed, and I'm not totally sure what I think about the modern staging of it, but I had plenty of time to get to my train that left 20 minutes after the opera ended. The rest of the trip home I heard another group of passengers talk about the opera, about whether it was really in French, and that there were naked people on the stage.

Overall it was a really nice day, but after spending so much time outside after a full week, I managed to catch a cold that lasted for the rest of the next week. Still, when I left for Storkow on Friday morning, it had cleared up. More about the 800th Anniversary of Storkow in the next blog!