Goodbye Göttingen

Well... so I've been back for a couple of weeks now. I had been looking forward to writing one more post from Göttingen my last week before leaving with pictures from my going away party, which was quite a success if I do say so myself.

The problem was, the day before, Buck bit my hand, and to prevent infection, they bandaged up my whole arm, like this:



And I thought it would be hard to just ignore the fact my arm was in a half cast in the pictures from my party!



Still, a good time was had and LOTS of food was eaten. Sten was already in town to help, so everything went off without a hitch.

The rest of the last week was fairly uneventful - I met friends for lunch almost every day, finished up my essay paper, and packed. I got to Hamburg no problem (only a few tears saying goodbye to my roommate at the trainstation) and all of my flights went by seamlessly. Sten picked me up, all my luggage was there (with all my books!) and everything was well. I did have a few more bags than in this picture though:



(thanks Kerstin!)

It's good and strange to be back, sad and strange to think about how far away my friends in Göttingen are, but busy enough to keep me from mulling over it. I've found a new apartment in Nashville and everything is coming together for the new semester. Thanks for keeping in touch this way over the past few months, and I'll look forward to hearing from you soon.

Want to hear something kinda sad?

Buck fell asleep in the bathroom last night (he's not supposed to be in there). When I came in later and told him to go get in his basket, he tried to get up, only his front leg had fallen asleep. There's not a lot more pitiful than then watching a dog that big slip on the tiles because he's too sleepy to figure out how to hop on three legs. He ended up turning in a circle and lying right back down where he had been before. I decided that maybe it was ok... this time. (He's fine now, and is happy to be reunited with his squeaky purple dinosaur - he lost his last one on the train. A while ago he was sleeping with the dino and the mouse beside him, one on each side right next to his head.)

What else is kinda sad - I'm leaving Göttingen two weeks from today! It's only kind of sad because I'll be glad to get back to things that are more familiar - my own kitchen, my own bed, Family and Friends... But it's also sad because I've gotten so familiar with things here! All of my classes are over - I have one Exam on Thursday morning. I'm planning a farewell get together for next Friday, which should be pretty nice.

The weather was really very summery the last week, which was great! All the way up into the 80's. People were asking if this is what it was like for me at home in the summer - I said "well, sort of..."

Aside from that, not a lot to report. I'm spending most of my time reading or writing for a term paper - right now for my seminar on the history of the essay. I'm writing about a woman essayist (because there were none on our syllabus!)from the early nineteenth century. She had 10 kids, a complicated love triangle with her first and second husbands (set against the backdrop of the french revolution - freedom, equality, and brotherhood indeed...) and was the first woman editor of a daily news paper in Germany. Her first husband sailed around the world with Captain Cook. Good stuff.

I'm off to Storkow for the weekend, making one last trip out to see the family. Gotta finish packing! Bye for now.

Buck

Today's post is dedicated to my third roomate, Britta's bearded Collie Buck:

(pictured here with his favorite rope bones.)

Buck is sweet, even if he has his stressful moments. He likes to play tug with those rope bones and to look for sticks when we go on walks. He likes to make all the ducks in a pond fly up into the air by running at them full speed. He doesn't like church bells or ambulance sirens, and has to howl along with them. Did I mention we live beside a church and a hospital? Anyway, it's really nice to have a pet here. One of his favorite activities now that it's warm (well was warm, theoretically will be warm again soon) is to spend all morning on the balcony and squeak his squeaky-mouse at any flying thing that goes by (leaf, bird, insect, doesn't matter). He doesn't like things that fly, and to get him to look at the camera I made a "zzzz" noise like a bug - which is why his glance is so worried. Anyway. In the form of a short narrative, here is Buck.


"Buck?"


"Where is your squeaky mouse?" (Quietschemäuschen - pronounced KVEEtscheh Moischyen)




"There it is!" (He can stare at the mouse on the floor like that for hours. I've seen it happen.)



"Good Dog, Buck."



That's all for now, more later!

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