The upside of sudden changes between sun and rain - rainbows!
Monday, June 22, 2009
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!
The upside of sudden changes between sun and rain - rainbows!
Thursday, June 18, 2009
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.
Saturday, June 6, 2009
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.
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 |
Tuesday, June 2, 2009
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!
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!
Saturday, May 23, 2009
Catching up - Trip to Weimar and Buchenwald
There've been so many interesting things going on lately that I've had a hard time sitting down and writing about it - between being exhausted and needing to catch up on work or not having enough time.
I'm enjoying a Saturday at home, first in a few weeks - and first for a while to come. This time last week I was getting towards the end of a day long tour of the concentration camp Buchenwald outside of Weimar. I'm in a fascinating and challenging seminar on Literature and Holocaust, and as a part of it we took a trip to visit Weimar and Buchenwald. The choice of location was a good combination of far enough to justify an overnight stay, but close enough that it wasn't too much, and the combination of classic German culture/literature in Weimar and then the more specific visit to the memorial for our seminar appealed to sponsors (each person in the class had to pay 20€ for the whole weekend, which covered transportation, lodging, and all meals - and we might get some of that back).
We arrived on Friday afternoon and met as a seminar to discuss an essay by Jean Amery and to hear a presentation on the problem of memorials more generally. The course is designed around the idea of looking at how the holocaust is preserved in literature - and not just from survivor's autobiographical writing, but also how it is handled in works of fiction, including what kinds of fiction are acceptable, and which aren't. Similar questions about what to put on display, what to include, how to set emphasis, whether there are taboo topics are raised in literature and in memorials.
Buchenwald is at the end of a bus line that runs from the train station in Weimar. The SS barracks are still there and used now as a youth hostel specifically for groups visiting the memorial and also other youth intervention programs. There are two barracks that were converted into apartments for families immediately after the war (there wasn't enough housing in most cities) and the apartments are all rented out today. The borders of the camp grounds are only partially visible - much of the area where prisoners were kept has been reforested. After the camp was freed by the Americans, it was used for five years as a prison for former Nazis in the Russian zone, not just the higher up officials, but also for other lower ranked but still active Nazis. Once that camp was ended, people started taking down the fences and buildings to rebuild the cities that had been destroyed during the war. When Weimar found out that people were stealing material they sent people to officially take everything down and sell it, rather than have it be taken for free.
The emancipation of Buchenwald was one of the grounding myths for East Germany, because according to legend the prisoners managed to free themselves right before the Americans arrived - a myth that is not corroborated by historical documents. Because of this, however, parts of the camp were very well preserved, and it has been a model for the memorialization of concentration camps for quite some time.
We had an incredible tour guide, very knowledgeable and friendly, but also with a demeanor that's sort of hard to adjust to - that he never got overly emotional. Which isn't to say he wasn't emotional - in fact, it was like he always had to keep a check on his emotions, but his voice kept its quiet, even tone, almost like when you're talking in a room where a child is sleeping next door, you know they probably won't wake up and hear you, but better to keep your voice down, just the same - he consistently keep that tone from when he welcomed us, told us about the number of visitors that come each year, to when he described the torture cells below the crematorium. It was unsettling, in a way, but since the whole visit is unsettling, I can't imagine now any other way of speaking more fitting.
In spite of having learned so much, I feel like we barely got started on what there was to look at. At the memorial alone there are 4 museums, and we had an hour to take a look at all of them. There were also large parts of the camp grounds we didn't look at, or only briefly. There was an older exhibt that had been on tour and is now in the attic of the classroom building that was certainly worth lingering over. There is a lot of work being done to digitalize as much of the archives as possible, including a photo archive, which we got to see for about 15 minutes. There are folders full of classroom materials that we were shown again, very briefly. It was a strange sort of dissatisfaction to come back with - it was not the case at all that there was anything we weren't allowed to look at, but just how many possibilities were opened made me feel like we had barely begun, even though we were there from 10 in the morning to 7 at night.
It was a relief that the seminar got along so well with each other. 20 students who have seen each other once a week for a few weeks - hard to know how everything will work out socially. But it went really well, and now there are 20 other people that when I see them in town or on campus, we always stop and at least wave, if not chat for a while.
I'm enjoying a Saturday at home, first in a few weeks - and first for a while to come. This time last week I was getting towards the end of a day long tour of the concentration camp Buchenwald outside of Weimar. I'm in a fascinating and challenging seminar on Literature and Holocaust, and as a part of it we took a trip to visit Weimar and Buchenwald. The choice of location was a good combination of far enough to justify an overnight stay, but close enough that it wasn't too much, and the combination of classic German culture/literature in Weimar and then the more specific visit to the memorial for our seminar appealed to sponsors (each person in the class had to pay 20€ for the whole weekend, which covered transportation, lodging, and all meals - and we might get some of that back).
We arrived on Friday afternoon and met as a seminar to discuss an essay by Jean Amery and to hear a presentation on the problem of memorials more generally. The course is designed around the idea of looking at how the holocaust is preserved in literature - and not just from survivor's autobiographical writing, but also how it is handled in works of fiction, including what kinds of fiction are acceptable, and which aren't. Similar questions about what to put on display, what to include, how to set emphasis, whether there are taboo topics are raised in literature and in memorials.
Buchenwald is at the end of a bus line that runs from the train station in Weimar. The SS barracks are still there and used now as a youth hostel specifically for groups visiting the memorial and also other youth intervention programs. There are two barracks that were converted into apartments for families immediately after the war (there wasn't enough housing in most cities) and the apartments are all rented out today. The borders of the camp grounds are only partially visible - much of the area where prisoners were kept has been reforested. After the camp was freed by the Americans, it was used for five years as a prison for former Nazis in the Russian zone, not just the higher up officials, but also for other lower ranked but still active Nazis. Once that camp was ended, people started taking down the fences and buildings to rebuild the cities that had been destroyed during the war. When Weimar found out that people were stealing material they sent people to officially take everything down and sell it, rather than have it be taken for free.
The emancipation of Buchenwald was one of the grounding myths for East Germany, because according to legend the prisoners managed to free themselves right before the Americans arrived - a myth that is not corroborated by historical documents. Because of this, however, parts of the camp were very well preserved, and it has been a model for the memorialization of concentration camps for quite some time.
We had an incredible tour guide, very knowledgeable and friendly, but also with a demeanor that's sort of hard to adjust to - that he never got overly emotional. Which isn't to say he wasn't emotional - in fact, it was like he always had to keep a check on his emotions, but his voice kept its quiet, even tone, almost like when you're talking in a room where a child is sleeping next door, you know they probably won't wake up and hear you, but better to keep your voice down, just the same - he consistently keep that tone from when he welcomed us, told us about the number of visitors that come each year, to when he described the torture cells below the crematorium. It was unsettling, in a way, but since the whole visit is unsettling, I can't imagine now any other way of speaking more fitting.
In spite of having learned so much, I feel like we barely got started on what there was to look at. At the memorial alone there are 4 museums, and we had an hour to take a look at all of them. There were also large parts of the camp grounds we didn't look at, or only briefly. There was an older exhibt that had been on tour and is now in the attic of the classroom building that was certainly worth lingering over. There is a lot of work being done to digitalize as much of the archives as possible, including a photo archive, which we got to see for about 15 minutes. There are folders full of classroom materials that we were shown again, very briefly. It was a strange sort of dissatisfaction to come back with - it was not the case at all that there was anything we weren't allowed to look at, but just how many possibilities were opened made me feel like we had barely begun, even though we were there from 10 in the morning to 7 at night.
It was a relief that the seminar got along so well with each other. 20 students who have seen each other once a week for a few weeks - hard to know how everything will work out socially. But it went really well, and now there are 20 other people that when I see them in town or on campus, we always stop and at least wave, if not chat for a while.
Friday, May 15, 2009
More Updates
When everything is running so smoothly and so busily, it's hard to find one particular experience to use as a starting point for a blog. Before I head out for the weekend with my Seminar on Holocaust and Literature, I thought I would take some time to fill you in.
Last weekend was The Longest Chorus Rehearsal Ever. If I had made it Monday night I would have had chorus 4 days in a row. 4 hours Friday, 7 on Saturday, 3 on Sunday (including our performance) and then another 2 on Monday. When monday evening came around, I just couldn't take it (not to mention had plenty of work to do) and stayed at home. The performance went really well (about 20 each soprano and alto, 4 tenors, 6 basses). The orchestra was wonderful, and our tenor soloist did a good job, especially considering that his foot had been operated on the day before. I was also pleasantly surprised by a really good sermon as part of the service. We performed the cantata as part of the Sunday worship service at the Nikolaikirche, which serves as the university church.
I've been riding my bike much more comfortably lately. I've ridden in the rain (the helmet keeps too much rain from getting on my glasses), I've managed to stop at a stop light and put my foot on the curb rather than get off the bike completely (and then start again without wobbling any more than usual), and getting to all the various chorus things all weekend I rode my bike all over town. I am beginning to feel like taking my bike somewhere is default, and walking is the exception - the opposite of how I felt a few weeks ago. I can also make turn signals now, this is a big step up.
I needed to get some new shampoo, and saw some that was certified to be very ecologically friendly and was relatively cheap, so I took it home. I think I now know the German word for "citronella". At least bugs will have second thoughts about flying into my hair.
All of my classes are going pretty well. I am certainly learning tons. It is a nice feeling to know more of the answers than a lot of people in the class. Yesterday I was one year off on when Goethe's Werther was published (I said 1773, but it's 1774). But the rest of the class was sort of full of blank stares, so. And if you ask, I can tell you what I understood about Gadamer. But it's better if you have a web cam or ask me when I get home - I don't think I can explain without hand motions.
Yesterday I got paid 30€ for telling this young man what I thought about a website. If I could find a job where I would really get paid 30€ an hour for giving my opinion I would be set.
I am leaving at about noon for the weekend. The class will arrive in Weimar in the late afternoon, have the equivalent of two class sessions, and have dinner. Tomorrow we'll be at Buchenwald from about 9 in the morning to 5 in the afternoon. We'll get the standard tour first, and spend the rest of the day with the director of the memorial, learning about what information they include or emphasize depending on the group who is visiting. It should be pretty interesting. Then Sunday morning we'll see Goethe and Schiller's Houses before heading back to Göttingen.
Britta is leaving tomorrow for Iceland and won't be back until the Thursday before I leave to go to Storkow for the weekend (in about two weeks). So for the next bit of time I'll have the place all to myself.
I am having a slight disagreement with my renter's and personal liability insurance I got when I came here - but what I like about it is the envelope I got today. The letter was problematic, but when the letter was out of the envelope, the inside of the envelope could be read through the clear cellophane window, and it says (roughly) "We cannot prevent you from getting multiple letters from us in one day, because putting the letters in envelopes is mechanized. Sorting out the letters costs more than the extra postage. Please be understanding." I love this because it means that so many people called and wrote in complaining about all the extra envelopes that it was worth it to them to print it on the envelope itself. Excellent.
I need to get on to packing my backpack and reading about torture for this afternoon, but thought I would write a quick note first. If you're reading this, I'd love to hear from you!
Last weekend was The Longest Chorus Rehearsal Ever. If I had made it Monday night I would have had chorus 4 days in a row. 4 hours Friday, 7 on Saturday, 3 on Sunday (including our performance) and then another 2 on Monday. When monday evening came around, I just couldn't take it (not to mention had plenty of work to do) and stayed at home. The performance went really well (about 20 each soprano and alto, 4 tenors, 6 basses). The orchestra was wonderful, and our tenor soloist did a good job, especially considering that his foot had been operated on the day before. I was also pleasantly surprised by a really good sermon as part of the service. We performed the cantata as part of the Sunday worship service at the Nikolaikirche, which serves as the university church.
I've been riding my bike much more comfortably lately. I've ridden in the rain (the helmet keeps too much rain from getting on my glasses), I've managed to stop at a stop light and put my foot on the curb rather than get off the bike completely (and then start again without wobbling any more than usual), and getting to all the various chorus things all weekend I rode my bike all over town. I am beginning to feel like taking my bike somewhere is default, and walking is the exception - the opposite of how I felt a few weeks ago. I can also make turn signals now, this is a big step up.
I needed to get some new shampoo, and saw some that was certified to be very ecologically friendly and was relatively cheap, so I took it home. I think I now know the German word for "citronella". At least bugs will have second thoughts about flying into my hair.
All of my classes are going pretty well. I am certainly learning tons. It is a nice feeling to know more of the answers than a lot of people in the class. Yesterday I was one year off on when Goethe's Werther was published (I said 1773, but it's 1774). But the rest of the class was sort of full of blank stares, so. And if you ask, I can tell you what I understood about Gadamer. But it's better if you have a web cam or ask me when I get home - I don't think I can explain without hand motions.
Yesterday I got paid 30€ for telling this young man what I thought about a website. If I could find a job where I would really get paid 30€ an hour for giving my opinion I would be set.
I am leaving at about noon for the weekend. The class will arrive in Weimar in the late afternoon, have the equivalent of two class sessions, and have dinner. Tomorrow we'll be at Buchenwald from about 9 in the morning to 5 in the afternoon. We'll get the standard tour first, and spend the rest of the day with the director of the memorial, learning about what information they include or emphasize depending on the group who is visiting. It should be pretty interesting. Then Sunday morning we'll see Goethe and Schiller's Houses before heading back to Göttingen.
Britta is leaving tomorrow for Iceland and won't be back until the Thursday before I leave to go to Storkow for the weekend (in about two weeks). So for the next bit of time I'll have the place all to myself.
I am having a slight disagreement with my renter's and personal liability insurance I got when I came here - but what I like about it is the envelope I got today. The letter was problematic, but when the letter was out of the envelope, the inside of the envelope could be read through the clear cellophane window, and it says (roughly) "We cannot prevent you from getting multiple letters from us in one day, because putting the letters in envelopes is mechanized. Sorting out the letters costs more than the extra postage. Please be understanding." I love this because it means that so many people called and wrote in complaining about all the extra envelopes that it was worth it to them to print it on the envelope itself. Excellent.
I need to get on to packing my backpack and reading about torture for this afternoon, but thought I would write a quick note first. If you're reading this, I'd love to hear from you!
Monday, May 4, 2009
Trying to be brief
Here ar a few things from the last week or so that I want to say in the 15... 12 minutes I have before I leave for chorus.
I've been doing a lot of listening. Aside from classes, last week I went to two extra lectures - one on the work that's being done to identify books that are now in German libraries that actually belonged to Jewish citizens before they were forced to sell them. Basically it means taking every book that a library acquired from the 1930s to the 1960s in hand and looking to see if some identifying mark is there, or had clearly been removed. The libraries were very thorough both in removing nameplates with Ex Libris (Jewish Name) and all records of all books that they acquired during that period.
I also went to a lecture on "Mythos Kindler" - from the new editor of the Kindler Literatur Lexikon, in the context of a series of lectures on canon and literature. It was in the Paulinerkirche, which is no longer a church, and has been the university library since the eighteenth century. Now it only holds the oldest parts of the collection. Today I had class in the library and got to look at very old prints of Erasmus of Rotterdam's writing - the oldest I got to hold was from 1545, if I remember correctly. I was also in the 10% of class that had done the reading (that's 2 of twenty students). Good times.
Today has been alternating perfectly sunny and raining. It makes me wonder if there's someone who's have a bad day, and that's who the rain is actually following around all over the city.
I went to the botanical gardens on Friday (which were packed, since it was a holiday, everything else was closed, the weather was great, and the garden doesn't charge a fee to visit). Of all the wild and wonderful plants there, my favorite were the two dogwood trees, in full bloom. I didn't expect to get to see something so homey there. :)
The kitchen here does not have a bread slicer, the joy of my kitchen in Storkow. It does have this awesome tupperware hand powered dicer though that I use for onions, and I love it. (The german name for tupperware is tupperware said toopervahreh.)
I went to an English Stammtisch on Thursday and I think it will be part of my weekly routine - very friendly laid back atmosphere.
The amount of pollen on my windowsill right now is grossing me out and I'm trying to stay focused and finish this blog entry instead of getting up and wiping it off right now. In spite of pollen, open windows are a must (to avoid must! ha! ...ooh boy)
I'm going to chorus now where we'll work some more on the Bach cantata "Ihr werdet weinen und heulen, aber die welt wird sich freuen" (You will weep and cry, but the world will rejoice), the last normal rehearsal before our huge chorus rehearsal weekend and performance on Sunday. Hopefully the congregation will react like the world at our performance. Hm.
I've been doing a lot of listening. Aside from classes, last week I went to two extra lectures - one on the work that's being done to identify books that are now in German libraries that actually belonged to Jewish citizens before they were forced to sell them. Basically it means taking every book that a library acquired from the 1930s to the 1960s in hand and looking to see if some identifying mark is there, or had clearly been removed. The libraries were very thorough both in removing nameplates with Ex Libris (Jewish Name) and all records of all books that they acquired during that period.
I also went to a lecture on "Mythos Kindler" - from the new editor of the Kindler Literatur Lexikon, in the context of a series of lectures on canon and literature. It was in the Paulinerkirche, which is no longer a church, and has been the university library since the eighteenth century. Now it only holds the oldest parts of the collection. Today I had class in the library and got to look at very old prints of Erasmus of Rotterdam's writing - the oldest I got to hold was from 1545, if I remember correctly. I was also in the 10% of class that had done the reading (that's 2 of twenty students). Good times.
Today has been alternating perfectly sunny and raining. It makes me wonder if there's someone who's have a bad day, and that's who the rain is actually following around all over the city.
I went to the botanical gardens on Friday (which were packed, since it was a holiday, everything else was closed, the weather was great, and the garden doesn't charge a fee to visit). Of all the wild and wonderful plants there, my favorite were the two dogwood trees, in full bloom. I didn't expect to get to see something so homey there. :)
The kitchen here does not have a bread slicer, the joy of my kitchen in Storkow. It does have this awesome tupperware hand powered dicer though that I use for onions, and I love it. (The german name for tupperware is tupperware said toopervahreh.)
I went to an English Stammtisch on Thursday and I think it will be part of my weekly routine - very friendly laid back atmosphere.
The amount of pollen on my windowsill right now is grossing me out and I'm trying to stay focused and finish this blog entry instead of getting up and wiping it off right now. In spite of pollen, open windows are a must (to avoid must! ha! ...ooh boy)
I'm going to chorus now where we'll work some more on the Bach cantata "Ihr werdet weinen und heulen, aber die welt wird sich freuen" (You will weep and cry, but the world will rejoice), the last normal rehearsal before our huge chorus rehearsal weekend and performance on Sunday. Hopefully the congregation will react like the world at our performance. Hm.
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