More Hessen

So less and less of my exploring has been within Hessen the longer I'm here, but last week we headed out and took in more of the area. We devoted the better part of a day trekking up to the Niederwalddenkmal in Rüdesheim. There's a path going from town all the way up. This thing is planted way up above the vineyards and overlooks a great deal of the Rhein, Rüdesheim, and Bingen. The view is just magnificent, especially now that the weather is getting warmer. Unfortunately it's not warm enough to get them to open up the restaurants and winery (now there's something I never use in English yet find myself using all the time here in German). That would've been refreshing after the long hike, but it was worth the view.

The monument itself is imposing. I can understand, given Germany's history, why everyone downplays or utterly lacks any patriotic sentiment, yet seeing this monument made me think it's kind of a shame no one seems to show that kind of exuberance or enthusiasm for the country anymore. Sure, it's nationalistic and exaggerated, but it's discouraging how soberly and almost diffidently people talk about Germany here.

The next day we headed into Wiesbaden and took a little trip on this super touristy train that goes through the city and gives information on all the sights. Then it ends a few miles away at a Russian Capella that overlooks all of Wiesbaden and a few suburbs. The little train is silly, but I suppose I learned more about the city and they at least tried to make it funny. The capella is beautiful with gold onion domes on top. Then there's a trail leading up until you reach a memorial overlooking the city. Behind it is a nice cafe build inside some ruins.
I still can't believe how many people take their dogs with them to restaurants. I counted 4 dogs sitting around while we sat there. As we stood looking out over the view, a group of 5 or 6 people stood close by and had brought their own champagne and flute glasses. They toasted and enjoyed the view. I wish we didn't stigmatize alcohol so much in the US and instead just taught people how to live with it responsibility. Preaching total rejection of alcohol seems to be not only unrealistic, but ineffective. A bottle a champagne on a trip to a beautiful place or beer with your meal a few times a week can be pleasant and isn't going to hurt anyone. Why act like it's the end of the world?


The next day we headed into Frankfurt. I'd been there a few times before, but only to the airport, train station, opera house, and book fair. So I hadn't actually had the chance to see the city at all. As it turns out, it's fantastic for business but not so fantastic for entertainment. The buildings are all impressive, but they house banks and other companies and are flanked by any number of restaurants and cafes. The streets are full of people, several of them wearing suits and hurrying off somewhere. But occasionally you'll run into the odd pair of Mormons wearing their own sharp suits with added name tags.

Clocks, Cudgels, and Cathedrals

Well the Rheingau is returning to the picturesque sunny getaway I saw when I first came here. The vineyards of course are still stripped bare and won't be green again until the summer, but the beautiful view and people taking walks with their dogs make everything seem alive again. It's surreal to hear about all the snow back home. I've been pleased with my first snowless winter. It did snow at some point, but I only remember it being around for a week or so and never reaching more than an inch or so.

So I've hit the 5 1/2 month mark here. It's weird to think I've hit the halfway point. I got information on applying to extend the grant for another 10 months (same September to June period) and will probably submit it. If I get offered it I'll have to think about it. On the one hand I'm still enjoying myself here and would be sad to go home and pretty much never hear German again. On the other hand it would be nice to be somewhere where I feel more like I belong for a while. Maybe the summer in between the grant period would be enough time back in the US before heading back to Deutschland to sort of recharge. Of course it isn't very easy to get grant extensions, but I'd hoping for it.

I continue to be perplexed by people's priorities here. The have a separate knife for everything imaginable (cheese knife, fish knife, steak knife, vegetable knife, etc etc), but then no dryers for their clothes. Also my favorite quotes from different people here so far are:

"Punctuality is a virtue" said with complete conviction. Also "the Soviet Onion was a powerful force on Germany" during a book report (yes, he meant soviet union, but I love the image of a onion dressed up in uniform barking commands at all the other vegetables).

So something I wanted to mention in the Prague post was the astronomical clock there. I took a few pictures:


The only reason we noticed it was because of the massive crowd of hundreds of people gathered in front of it. We wandered over to see what the attraction was and saw hundreds of people staring up at an unusually complicated looking clock on a tower. We stood and stared with them until the clock struck the hour. Just as it did, a chicken popped out. Then two more side doors sprang open above the clock face and a cycle of wooden representations of the 12 disciples paraded around. Everyone cheered, and then wandered off in different directions. It really is an unusual clock, though. Here's the wiki on it.

Long story short, it keeps the time, gives information on seasons, the position of the sun and moon, and has a zodiacal ring. Somehow someone was able to cram all of this information into one clock and synchronize it so it can keep track of and display all that information simultaneous. Oh, and it was made in 1410. Check out this animation of a sped up representation of the clock in action. It really is incredible:

Astronomical Clock Flash

Another things I found amusing was when we went to the Prague Castle. The entrance is a large gate with two guards stationed in front. I love the statues perched on the top. What on earth is happening here...



Oh, and I forgot there's one more picture of me standing in front of the huge cathedral on the grounds of the castle. If you click on it to make it big and zoom in a bunch, you'll see I'm the figure in the black coat standing in the center of the picture. Really, I just wanted to give an idea of the proportion of this massive cathedral.

Prague! Now You Know Where It Is

Do you have any idea how many people have no idea where Prague is? Guesses included: Russia, Germany, and the Ukraine. All wrong, the correct answer is the Czech Republic, but thank you for playing (and no, it is no longer Czechoslovakia). I remember the days of having to leave hand written directions of a friend's house where I was staying; now people are just guessing at which country I might be in.

So, I loved my stay in Prague. It is beautiful, with so much to see and...buy. It's another one of these giant tourist places with kitschy little shops lining the streets, but there is still plenty to see beyond that. It took me a day to realize that I can understand about a third of the Czech language. Czech and Russian apparently share the same roots and so my Russian helped me out a lot in trying to decipher signs. For some reason I didn't think of that before going there, so at first it felt like I had super powers or something : ) Like this wide-eyed Matrix-esque "I know kung fu" moment.

Prague had everything I like. Scores of multilingual people, every other store selling chessboards and matryoshka dolls (russian nesting dolls), and last but not least: KAFKA. That's right, Kafka grew up in Prague. The highlight of the trip for me was going to the Kafka museum. I loved how they tried to make it a completely immersive and surreal experience for the visitors.
It was quite cold the entire time we were there, so we darted into restaurants and cafes to keep warm. I did an amateur survey of apple pie and coffee from various places in Prague. I also tried a few traditional dishes, which were often similar or identical to German ones. My first day there I had venison in a sweet brown sauce with half a pear filled with pomegranate seeds. It was served with croquettes (fried potato fingers pretty much). It was tasty and strange, but I liked it. My favorite is still duck with Knoedel and red cabbage, though (also in Germany).

The above picture is me standing in front of a tiny house where Kafka once lived for only about a year. He wrote "A Country Doctor" there (one of his short stories) and now it's a tiny store that sells many copies of that story. It's on this teeny tiny little street called the Golden Lane with similar miniature, colorful houses. If my hair looks strange in these, it's because it was really windy and we spent most of the day outside walking around. I have about 100 pictures, so obviously I can't even begin to give the highlights here, but I'll just end this post with a neat shot I got of Prague from high up:

2 Countries, 2 Weeks

That's right, I'm still alive. No, I don't have an excuse - I'm just too lazy to wait for pictures to upload to the blog so I don't do it.

At any rate, I had quite the experience in the past month or so. I spent 4 days in Tannheim in Austria, then 5 days in Prague the next week. Austria looked just as perfect as the postcards make it out to be, with blankets of white snow covering everything, skiers shooting down the slopes, and just a general bustle of winter activity. I was surprised that so many people also brought their tiny lapdogs as well. They looked adorable trotting around in their little tiny dog sweaters past the snow banks. While there, I also got to have a look at the giant castle that the Disney castle is based off of. Unfortunately, it was closed on Christmas Day (suppose I should have thought of that), but I still have some impressive pictures of the outside. I also enjoyed a horse drawn sleigh ride 2 miles to a small lodge that served local dishes: I had my beloved Glühwein along with Kaiserschmand (I think that's how it's written). This was pretty much French toast, but in puffy strips with powdered sugar on top served with apple sauce. Very tasty. One of the highlights was listening to the sleigh driver speak in his funny Austrian dialect and tell jokes the whole way. I only half understand all of it, but laughed anyway. Most of them had to do with stepmothers and kids getting their revenge...I also enjoyed a ride in a ski lift waaaay up to the top of one of the mountains and then back down. While I was up there, I had a nice cup of hot chocolate and watched as braver people than I strapped tiny planks to their feet and went shooting all the way back down. I think the ski lift was enough excitement for me right now. You can't help riding in one of those and thinking "..how much would it take for that cable to snap anyway? Sure looks like a long way down..." The little town looked like just a tiny cluster from up there.

So, this is the beautiful place where I spent my Christmas. It was very relaxing and I hope to maybe see Vienna some day. Next up: Prague. But before then, I have to leave you with one of my favorite pictures. I just love how snow looks on trees:

March of the Markets

So today I saw the Ruedesheim Christmas market (saw the Wiesbaden one over the weekend). It was nice enough. Instead of Santa Claus appearing, the Christkind makes an appearance (Christkind = christ child = baby Jesus. Welcome to the super Catholic south). I went with a colleague from work. We stopped by a cafe for some cake and coffee. We were chatting in English when the waiter came up and said to him, "the lady doesn't speak German, yes? Then here..." and he starts pulling out an English language menu. I said, "No, I speak German thank you. I'd like the cheesecake with cafe au lait" (in German). When he brought the cake, he said they were short on cheesecake and the slice was smaller than it should've been, so I had my choice of another slice of either Schwarzwaelderkirschtorte or apple strudel. I think he was actually sorry for assuming I didn't speak German and was trying to make up for it. Anyway, I got an extra slice of cake out of it (which I of course shared. I wasn't about to sit there and wolf down two pieces of rich cake on my own). Anyway, that was nice enough but the Ruedesheim Weihnachtsmarkt wasn't that great. Gluehwein (spiced heated wine) is nice, but you can get it anywhere. Plus, it's pretty cold out right now. I'm thinking I'll stick to indoor activities for a while.

Oh, and you see that "comments" link under each post? Feel free to use it. Seriously. I feel like I'm talking into a void here. Any and all comments are welcome (except spam, which infected my last blog).

Was heisst es, Deutsch zu sein?

***It's not art unless someone dies. *** All throughout my German studies, this seemed to be the common theme in all the (classic) books and movies. Suicide, tragic death, murder, chapter long last words. The heavy burden of sorrow seemed to lend the works an extra dose of class that a happy ending could never hope to achieve.

I decided Germans are either very sad or very emo.

So here I am in Germany now hoping to dispel this persistent myth of the German classroom back in the US. Which brings me to the conversation I had with one of the teachers last week. We had seen a movie together that initially had a happy ending with reunited lovers, but turned out only to be the creation of one of the characters. In reality both lovers were dead, never to be reunited. My colleague? Loved this ending. When I suggested that it was a bit much and that they could have been reunited, but with the temperance of previous suffering balancing the scales, he was absolutely against this and insisted this ending was far more artistic. Getting into a bit more, he also said that Americans have very different taste in films. Essentially, that we just love our happy-go-lucky saccharine sweet happy endings. It's funny to me, because the reason he doesn't like the classic happy ending is that it's predictable; meanwhile, I asked him does it make a difference that I find the tragic German ending terribly predictable? Apparently it doesn't. On an unrelated note, he also watched Schindler's List 4 times, the first being New Year's Eve. My thoughts? Only in Germany : ) So much for dispelling stereotypes.

So I'm finding that I've never felt more American than I do now that I've left the country. In the U.S. I was a hispanic, a student, a woman, a German major, any number of labels. Here? I'm The American. Whenever I speak English, the first things anyone notices is the American accent. I'm inextricably linked to McDonald's, George Bush, wasteful energy policies, credit card abuse, and Hollywood. I'm somehow a projection of all that America has made itself out to be through different media outlets and I'm constantly called upon to answer for it.

I mentioned in the previous entry that people don't really do small talk; instead, they debate. To me it seems a little aggressive, but I've seen a normal conversation like this between 2 Germans and in the end no one is in the least bit offended and seem to have considered it a good conversation. So, I supposed I shouldn't have been as surprised as I was when, during a Thanksgiving meal with 2 colleagues at a Mexican restaurant, one broke the silence by leaning forward and saying, "So, I hear American kids are going to school armed now." (It's more striking in German). A big issue here is guns; they (and other Europeans) absolutely do not understand why Americans should have a right to carry around guns. And I've never really been in favor of it myself, but I've gotten tired of the attitude I get when discussing this and have since taken to playing devil's advocate. The usually results in a half hour debate.


There are quite a few cultural differences, though mostly things you don't notice right away. Recently I've noticed a big difference in what is considered appropriate subject matter for high schoolers. For one English class that is focusing on the 60's, the teacher played an hour long tape with clips from Woodstock. There was plenty of extended nudity and drug use and no one batted an eye. Now they're reading a book in English that has the f-word on the very first page (followed by profanity throughout) with plenty of descriptions of drug use and sexual encounters as part of the story (the students are around 15). In another class, I was asked to lead a discussion about relationships. The passage he gave me to springboard the discussion was about a guy who accidentally got his girlfriend pregnant and was an in-depth discussion of whether or not abortion would be justified. Again, no one batted an eye. Even more surprising to me was that the students had the vocabulary to debate this question at length. Nothing seems to be off limits when it comes to discussions in school: politics, guns, sex, drugs, abortion, religion, ethics, alcohol. Even though it's clear these things are perfectly normal, I still tread very carefully around them out of habit of expecting an outraged parent to phone in one day and try to shut the school down because little Jimmy saw a naughty word in a book.


And I guess it just makes me think. Here we have kids aged 14 to 17 who are dealt this 'adult' information openly and without equivocation. And they are none the worse for it. If anything, each and every one of these particular students is their own success story (high IQ, multi-skilled, multi-lingual, impressive internships, etc). They can even drink beer at 16 and there are barely any alcohol related incidents. A reoccurring topic with some of the teachers is their amusement at all the censorship that goes on the U.S. Which reminds me of this cartoon I came across a few months ago:

Weihnachten

"How are you?" "How's it going?"

A common way of saying hello in the US. You can easily breeze by someone, say one of these, and keep walking without skipping a beat. Not so much in Germany. I've been trying to talk to my colleagues more, but without any idea of what to talk about. So, I start with "so how are you?" I have since learned not to expect the usual "fine" or "not bad", but instead to expect a detailed run down of their lives as of late with all the personal or unpleasant details thrown in. This isn't really a problem, but I'm realizing now that asking someone "how are you" may in fact be considered a very personal and possibly impolite question, considering that they will in fact give you a completely honest and personal response. I suppose I should find a new conversation starter.

All the Christmas stuff only recently started going up. There really isn't even that much, either. Some lights hanging around the city and a few places have Christmas trees. There are Christmas markets in different cities and I'm going to one of them this weekend.

Barcelona

Well, I think it's definitely time to update. Last weekend, the 23rd through 26th, I was in Barcelona, Spain! There's somewhere I never imagined I'd get to visit. It was a short trip, but definitely worth it. I was also excited by a layover in Switzerland, where I got to hear some fascinating German. It sounds like German with a Swedish accent and better attitude. They also gave us plenty of free Swiss chocolate (not to mention all the free alcoholic/regular beverage we want. Oh Europe : ) As we were landing in Barcelona, I sat back and listened to the announcements in German, English, and French, waiting for the Spanish. As the Spanish came on, I was mildly alarmed by the fact that it not only sounded like Italian, but was apparently neither language and I couldn't understand it. Only after being in Barcelona for an hour did it slowly dawn on me: oh that's right, they also speak Catalan in Spain! haha I was so confused for a while and even thought maybe I'd gotten on the wrong plane after all ("don't they speak Spanish in Spain??" I kept thinking). Catalan is fascinating and I wish someone would've taught me some.

I was very happy to spend time with my friend Mark again as well. It was his idea that we have a look at works by Antonio Gaudi, who designed a number of buildings, a church, and even a park there. The church was Sagrada Familia and incredibly fascinating. The front has very angular representations of biblical characters attached to the facade. The back facade is also littered with various biblical characters, but in a very different style. Everything seems to be melting, and on a massive scale. Inside the church there are giant pillars, starburst ceilings, and colorful glass windows. We waited in line for an hour just so we could take the elevator to the top and see the beautiful view from there. Several of the peaks in the church are covered with giant fruits. I thought it was a nice touch.

In the Gaudi park, you can find the world's longest bench. There is also a building he also designed that really looked like a gingerbread candy house to me, with an undulating roof. The next day we went to the Picasso museum. It's amazing to think I got to look around and look at original Picasso works. The museum is inside of 3 mansions that were connected to host the works, so some of the rooms are rather grand looking. What really got my attention was the fact that he had such a variety of styles throughout his life. His earlier paintings are very realistic, very faithful representations of real life in great detail. Then as you move on you can see them become more impressionistic, colorful, and then suddenly you see the Picasso we're more familiar with: colorful oddly proportioned figures with body parts in unusual places. The fact that he could have rendered the subjects realistically but didn't gives the whole thing a new sense of intent and depth.

I enjoyed the paella and sangria in Barcelona. The whole casual atmosphere and the fact that people in shops in cafes would automatically speak to me and stay in Spanish, rather than English, made me feel like I fit in more there. In Germany I'm still 'the foreigner', even though my German is much better than my Spanish. While I was sad to leave the beautiful weather, it was nice coming back to Germany. After 3 months, Germany has started to have a home-like feel for me. I was kinda happy when I went through passport control: I had to go through the Non-EU nationals line and hand over my American passport, which always makes me feel like a big outsider. But then when he asked where I was headed (to test my English I guess? I told him Wiesbaden), he flipped through the passport and saw my newly acquired residence permit and then, switching to German suddenly, said "Oh, you live there!" with a smile. It was just nice; it was like I was part of the club : ) I had another moment as I went down into the train station (there's a train station inside the Frankfurt airport) and saw these two, I think, Indian punching all the wrong button at the ticket machine trying to get a train ticket. I went over, said "kann ich Ihnen helfen?" and then "Can I help you?" in English and they looked relieved. So suddenly I was the one helping foreigners figure out the ticket machines, rather than the one asking random people to please help me.

So now I have a 3 week vacation to plan for. I'm thinking about seeing another country, possibly the Czech Republic to see Prague. I'd love to spend time in Switzerland, but it's apparently quite expensive.

Snow!!

It started snowing this week! I was wondering when it finally would, though everyone warned me it doesn't snow much here. It was odd, because when I was in class, I saw streams and streams of snow flying past the windows, but when I went outside it was all gone. They did tell me the snow doesn't stick, but it was weird to see.

I'm pretty happy with how things are going at the school, especially after this week. One of the teachers had to miss a few classes this week, so I substituted for a double period class of his. They're practicing debating in English. I had them run through two debates that they had prepared and then we had 15 minutes left over, so we did a "speed debate." I had 4 people come up, on the spot, and do a sped up version of a debate on a topic of my choosing. I chose nuclear power and whether it should be used more prevalently in Germany (they aren't allowed to build any additional nuclear power plants and people are very distrustful of it here). I was impressed with how they were able to come up with good arguments on the spot and be able to debate in a foreign language.

On Thursday I held my first discussion group on the Great Gatsby. I have a group of 17 students and am teaching this book completely on my own. I was happy with this first meeting. The students were into it and we had a nice rapport going. Everyone participated and seemed interested to talk about the book. I especially like it, because this way I'm becoming more of the every day life here. I think I'm starting to stick out less and less and be a little more accepted. I also did a double period crash course in Hamlet for the same teacher just today with him observing. That was a little nerve racking, but I ended up pulling it off! I was pretty happy, since I was up most of the night worrying about it, actually.

So, the strikes have gotten worse here and I can't ride the train to Wiesbaden this weekend. I am displeased. It's ending this Saturday (for now), but there's no reason to go anywhere on Sunday since everything will be closed. I'm actually going to a concert on Sunday along with some of the students, though (there's a shuttle). In other news, I'm going to Barcelona next weekend (the 23rd) and meeting Mark there, who's in Europe this week. I'm excited about seeing the Dali and Picasso museums. Time to buy more batteries for the camera...

Accidental Theft

So, last Friday I took over a double period English grammar class for one of my colleagues. He said to let the student pick the topics, which meant that I didn't have anything prepared. So, that discussion didn't go as well as I had hoped it would. Meanwhile, another one of the teachers silently came in and started taking pictures...I completely forgot about this until the next day when I went to the Hansenberg website to look something up and saw this right on the home page:
There I am, pretending to be a teacher and looking awkward : ) I'm hoping the book discussions this week go better.

In other news, I played in two team chess tournaments for the Geisenheim club (I played in the 1st and 2nd team). The first team won against Wiesbaden, while the second team ended up tying. This was my first time playing with a team, which was kind of a new fun thing to do. Before the game in the 2nd team, the team leader told me I shouldn't accept or offer a draw without discussing it with him first. This was news to me...I guess as team leader it's his job to first come and assess the position, compare it with the outcomes of the other team member's games, and decided whether or not I should draw or play on. Anyway, this ended up not being an issue since I got kind of a decisive win right away. I'm not bragging; it just was a bad match, I think. They don't really know much about me as a player yet, so I think they've been playing it safe and putting me on the lower boards.

Finally, I was surprised by my landlady knocking on my door at 11 today to tell me that "something was wrong with the rent." At first I thought that somehow the transfer didn't go through, that I was out of money, etc....it ended up being worse than that. I had filled out the form wrong at the bank and had transferred 250 euros from her account into mine. Ahhhhhh not good....not good. Needless to say, she was pretty confused about that. Isn't it amazing that the bank just did it though without asking questions? I can understand them not questioning deposits in to people's accounts, but to go and demand money from someone's account and not verify it? That's pretty strange. Of course this is all to blame on my inability to understand bank-German, though. This was the first time the teller didn't just fill the form out for me and left it to me to try to puzzle out what goes where. I went to the bank right away to make sure she got the rent after all and, well, they recognized the name and were sure to lecture me on how to fill out the form properly. *sigh*

I still have to go to Bad Schwalbach to finish registering. I was planning on going today, but just wasn't in the mood. I guess I'll go next week.

So these are some of my pictures from our trip to Mainz. This last one is a church that was destroyed during the war. They kept it like this as a memorial (in another picture you can see it also doesn't have a roof).

Well, I'm going to finish preparing something good for the introduction to Gatsby tomorrow. Wish me luck!