Catching Up

My mother reminds me that I have been remiss in posting here. What can I say? I've been busy making fun friends and enjoying all of the free time I didn't have last year (well, for the last four years, but last year in particular). So, a (breif) recounting of the highlights of the previous weeks is in order!

We spend our days from 9-3 in our Sprachkurs, which generally consists of learning more advanced and specific grammar (so we can actually not sound like foreigners when we speak), useful new vocab, discussing cultural differences between our various home countries and Germany, and generally poking fun at the idea of the intolerance of various cultures by making outrageous and clearly humorous generalizations about one another and then laughing hysterically. Zum Beispiel: Sinead is mean because she is from Ireland. She hates Americans. Funnier in context I promise. Anyway, two weeks ago a French/German/Italian Provincial market came to town, and it transformed the central squares of the Altstadt into something even more wonderful than usual. They had everything form handmade crafts to vegetables, and Anya and I purchased some artichokes for a delicious dinner.

The central square in the Altstadt

One of a number of large flower and plant sellers

Last week, we all went to the Bebenhausen monastery to poke around and have a little history lesson about the area. We took the bus to the student village at the top of the very large hill and then walked for about 30 minutes along the road and on a path through the woods to the monastery. The night before, two of our fellow students met some journeyman handworkers in our usual bar, and in exchange for a comfy place to sleep, one agreed to come along on our excursion and talk to us about what he's doing. Essentially, if you're studying handwork/handcrafts in Germany, you have the option of going on a long wanderung to complete your training. They spend at least 3 years and 1 day traveling all over and must stay at least 50 (60?) km away from their hometown at all times. They wear traditiona handwerker clothing, so they really stick out, but we've been told that in Germany and surrounding countries they're often clearly recognized. They find work in different places, cannot pay for lodging (often it is offered or they can sleep in a barn or outside if the weather is nice), and can only travel by more traditional means (boat, foot, perhaps tram, etc). We really enjoyed meeting our handwerker friend, and most of us had no idea that such a tradition was still alive in parts of Europe. The more you know...

The central courtyard at Bebenhausen

This past Friday we had another excursion to the Bodensee, Germany's largest lake. We stopped first at a small Rococo church to take in the grand and excessive decoration. My friend Vojta asked me what I thought of it, and I said that while I could appreciate how beautiful some of it is, I could never spend a lot of time in such a place. I asked what he thought, and he explained matter of factly that in the Czech Republic, they have lots of rococo churches, and they're much more lavishly decorated than this one, so he was a bit underwhelmed. If you're a fan of the style, there's a travel destination for you!

Bodensee

We then moved on to the Pfahlbaumuseum, an open air archaeological museum with reconstructions of small villages built in the Neolithic and Bronze Ages on the shores of Bodensee. They sit up on stilted platforms over the ocean, and the recreations that have been built there are incredible. They also all come from local areas...

One half of the recreated structures

We enjoyed lunch and walking (read: ice cream) time in a small town nearby called Meerburg, and then took the ferry across the lake to Konstanz to wander, shop (where it's much cheaper than in Tübingen), and have a delicious Turkish dinner before returning late (and exhausted) to our homes. We also made a brief sojourn to Switzerland, where Sinead and I had never been...

Excitement over being at the Swiss-German border

Switzerland and Bodensee from Meerburg

And for your highly intellectual enjoyment, the top of my take-away pizza box that may or may not intentionally depict George Clooney as a pajama-cap-clad pizza chef in front of a beautiful Italian landscape...

Bürokratietag

The temperature has lowered ever so slightly here in Tübingen and there is a crispy, fall nip in the air. This has always been my favorite time of year, and when you can enjoy it sipping coffee in cafes and wandering the French, German, and Italian provincial market that has come to the city's Altstadt, it becomes ever so much more spectacular. There are, of course, differences in the changing of the seasons here in Germany. At Wesleyan, for example, I could tell the outside temperature by peering out the window and glancing at students walking across campus. Here, a visual weather check requires a lengthy study of the people walking down our street and then the subtraction of at least one layer. The Germans, or at least residents of Tübingen, seem to always be exceedingly bundled up, whether it involves an expertly and tightly tied scarf around the neck like a medical brace or a jacket I wouldn't remove from my closet until at least November. Fortunately, we have lovely, screen-less windows here, and I can simply swing it open into my room like a cupboard and stick my own nose out into the morning air. In defense of all of the bundling, it was a whopping 45 F this morning...chilly to say the least!

The other big difference that we have been steeling ourselves for is the way matters related to enrolling in the university are handled. At Wesleyan, a small and friendly button appears at the top of one's student portfolio--and let me tell you I was sorely tempted to push it when it reappeared in mine again this year. In Tübingen, things are not so simple. We have been attending our language course since Monday, and after my brief stint in a class level that was decidedly too low, I'm now properly settled in the highest level with Anya and some other lovely folks (though I must say my previous classmates are also quite wonderful). The schedule for tomorrow's class, instead of the usual division into Unterricht and Tutorium, simple reads "Bürokratietag". No, you're not mistaken even without basic knowledge of German. That directly translates as "Bureaucracy Day". Our Tutorium today consisted of filling out a number of forms with very long, official German words. Tomorrow, the full list of activities for students to independently complete consists of opening a German bank account, signing up for health insurance should one not be fully covered by their policy at home, registering as an official resident of Tübingen at the Bürgeramt, and enrolling in the university itself with a visit to a final office location near our class building and the payment of a slightly obnoxiously high fee (by German university standards). All of this must be completed by 11:30am, when the Unikasse (final location) closes for the weekend on Fridays, and takes one all over main part of the city. Fortunately, Anya and I have already opened bank accounts, and we set up our health insurance this afternoon after a helpful tip from a fellow classmate that the more central office location was open until 6 (six!), which is, by Tübingen standards, reasonably late. The plan for tomorrow, then, only includes visits to two separate locations, and we have come up with an ingenious plan to combat the headache caused by all of the filling out of forms, biometric photo acquiring, passport presenting, and fee paying; at lunch time, we will be enjoying enormous bechers (think a large Friendly's sundae glass, but bigger. and better) of gelato sundaes, followed by the latest chick flick starring Germany's version of Brad Pitt, Til Schweiger. If your name is Gilder, you may in fact be jealous. This will all be tied together with our international dinner, hosted by our Startkurs language program. Since American food in it's 'typical' form involves either soul food which we have no idea how to properly prepare or things appropriated from other culinary traditions, we have settled on a dessert contribution of chocolate cookies and brownies, neither of which are very present--or properly present--here in the land of most-things-baked. Those people who have been informed of the plan are particularly excited, so I think this will all be well-received.

Unfortunately, we have one more irritating task to complete tomorrow. It seems Deutsche Bahn has lost our names in their Bahncard system. We put down the wrong addresses when we registered for our cards at the airport train station in Frankfurt, so they said we would simply need to call the number on our receipts to change the information linked to our accounts. This is important, because when you buy the Bahncard in the station, you receive a paper ticket certifying your purchase for immediate use and then have to wait for your plastic card to arrive in the mail. We called last week (several days after our purchase) and were informed that our names were not yet in their system and still being processed. Interesting. We called today, and neither of our names could be found on their computers. Unfortunately, the paper copies of the cards do not bear the actual card numbers, so we were instructed to email copies of our paper cards with our names, dates of birth, and the address to which our cards should be sent. Naturally, this is all becoming a little ridiculous. Especially considering the trip we already had to make to the phone store today to clarify why our phones had suddenly stopped working. (The room numbers that we were originally told were not necessary for our phone billing, it turns out, are actually vital, and had to be reported before our service could be reactivated. At least E+ doesn't take the same office-closing lunch break as most places). I am, however, quite proud of the two (yes TWO), successful phone conversations I had with customer service agents today. I find communication in German in situations where I cannot see the person to whom I'm talking rather intimidating--we rely so much on seeing someone's face and mouth to fully understand them auditorally--and I only had to ask them to repeat things twice. Not only that, but I was able to make myself understood relatively easily. Big victory.

Check back for photos and updates from the provincial market! Anya and I bought delicious little pastry pockets from a wonderful French woman today, and I cannot wait to take photos of everything and sample all of the wine stands.

A Little Bit of Crafting

I've always been one of those people who likes to be productive. This doesn't mean that I can't also be extremely lazy, but I just enjoy creating things--baking, knitting, cooking, sewing, art projects--it puts me in a better mood, especially if I've been, say, out of school, working at a part-time internship, and wandering around a German city for the last 12 days. Our language course started today with a placement test and introductory meet and greet type session, so fortunately I'll have more to do now (and oh so much Greek to review/catch up on). I did, however, during those 12 days of wandering, discover two knitting stores in Tuebingen, and I've been wanting a fun project to work on.

Cut to this morning, when anthropologie sent me an email about all of their fall sweaters being discounted by 25% for the next few days. Now, anthro and I have a love-hate relationship...I love their clothing and all of the creative and whimsical airs it carries with it, and I abhor their prices. Perhaps one day when I'm, you know, earning money, investing in things like that at full-price will be a legitimate option. Right now, alas it's not. To make matters worse, I came across this guy:

It's the coziest looking sweater I've ever seen with a big cowl neck wrap scarf built in, and if you know me, you know I have a serious scarf problem. Even marked down, I can't justify this, but I was suddenly struck with an interesting idea...what if I could come up with a pattern and make myself a sweater like this, with perhaps slightly heavier, cozier yarn, and maybe even a longer body? I mean, it would take a while, but yarn here seems to be inexpensive enough that I could probably buy the materials for less than the cost of the sweater, and I might be able to make a version I like even better. Plus then it's paying for knitting entertainment and the most perfect sweater I could ever imagine all in one. SO. If anybody knows (or knows someone who knows) anything about designing knitting patterns and such, please let me know! I've followed plenty of them--hats, gloves, socks, scarves, etc--but never actually designed my own...I just hope a project like this is within the reach of my skills.

Grammarstudium

Being the compulsive planner that I am, I've spent a good amount of time exploring the Uni Tuebingen website and figuring out which classes to take. It's interesting, because our peer advisor tells us that the university is in a 'transition' period, and has been for a while, with regard to course registration. Some you can register for online, some you have to show up in person, and it sounds like some require you to fill out forms. Regardless, I've just decided that the best thing to do is to email professors (it's helpful for them--and us--to know they have an exchange student with a bit of a language barrier), inquire about their courses, and take things from there.

Seeing as the whole purpose of this year for me is to learn Latin and Greek, those classes are naturally taking priority. With one semester of Greek at Wesleyan and the rest of the book nearly done now on my own, I need to figure out which Greek language course here is best suited to my level. At Wesleyan, the next step would be a reading class that focuses on translating, building vocabulary, etc, but the website here isn't quite as helpful and that whole 'prerequisite' thing doesn't exist in the same way. What I found were either reading or lecture courses, as well as this Stil I ("Style 1") class that sounded pretty interesting. I swallowed my nerves, pulled up my online dictionary, and emailed the professor for the latter, relying on the fact that my German is good enough that I can at least be excessively polite and hoping that I might actually hear back from him. Less than 24 hours later, I had an email that was among the nicest and most helpful I've ever received. He started by thanking me (extremely kindly) for my question, and explained the difference between his class and the others; it sounds like it's mostly translating from German to Greek, but that should give me a great grasp of the specifics of the language, as well as help me practice my grammar stuff, and then next semester I could take a reading/lecture class to round out that skill. He also invited me to sit in on his first class to see if I think it's for me with absolutely no obligation to come back, and was just generally very kind and welcoming. He also informed me that the title "Professor" was too formal, and I should just use "Herr"...go figure. I think this will be the class I end up taking for Greek, as he was so incredibly nice and that suggests he'll be understanding of my language difficulties.

In terms of Latin, I was also able to get in touch with the language advisor for the philology departments, and she pointed me in the direction of the intro Latin course for students without prior experience--it turns out I'd seen it on the website, but some of the courses don't even have descriptions, and it's just called "Practice for the Latinum: Level 1", which is training for the big test students have to pass as a requirement for certain majors or careers. My big debate is, do I take the class on Mondays and Wednesdays from 8-10, or the class on Tuesdays and Thursdays in the late afternoon. On the one hand, the earlier class is offered by the Classics department and would get me out of bed and help make the most of my day, time-wise. On the other hand, the second class is offered by the History department which, according to my peer advisor, prefers History majors, but it does meet later in the afternoon and guarantees more sleep. I can't decide if I'd be happier being forced to really start my day much earlier, but luckily I have time to decide. I did just order the Latin book that Wesleyan uses to help myself on the whole "learning in German" front, and it's hilariously small compared to the behemoth I had/have for Greek. I'm thinking this isn't going to be so hard...

The title of the post starts to make sense when I explain that my DaF course (German as a foreign language class) for the semester will probably be a grammar course on Friday mornings. Anya and I are thinking of taking this together because our German is good enough that we can develop vocabulary and other oral/aural skills by interacting with people and other students on a daily basis, but a formal grammar class would be a BIG help in terms of growing our speaking and writing confidence. Scintillating three hour block? Unlikely. Extremely useful? You bet.

My fourth and final class (I think) is definitely going to be a fun archaeology course. There's a Greek Portraiture course offered on Monday afternoons that I would really like to take, especially after having written my thesis on something somewhat related this year. I wish I could take several of these, and if some of them are lectures, I may just drop in and listen on occasion (entirely acceptable here). I'm a little bit concerned about the amount of work I'm going to have, though, and I'd hate to bog myself down with so much stuff during this 'year off' that I can't enjoy being centrally located in Europe!

Hi, my name is Catie, and I'm now officially a grammar major.

The Greatest Place on Earth (and no, I don't mean Disney World)

I've mentioned Kaufland a couple of times, but I think it deserves its very own, if slightly brief, post. A cross between Target and Walmart that sells mostly groceries and a smattering of home and office supplies, Kaufland is the single most oft-visited place we've discovered in Tuebingen. They have fruits and veggies, they have all your standard dry goods, they have an entire refrigerated wall devoted to salami, they have a whole corner of store set aside for meat and dairy, and most importantly, they have extraordinarily inexpensive wine and beer for the odd American student who likes to enjoy that with their dinner (who that might be, I couldn't say....)

When we first arrived, Anya dragged me over to the big, table-high bins of fruit and vegetables. "Look, it's all bio!" she pointed out. Bio is the German version of organic, except it's a lot more affordable over here. In fact, you can get a deal on something bio that is cheaper than the non-bio equivalent. It's also all inexpensive. Have you ever gone grocery shopping, picked something up, and wondered how it can cost as much as it does? Or whether you have enough cash on your pay for it? Well at Kaufland, unless you're buying something "expensive" (like 5 Euro olive oil), you can pretty much assume everything in the cart will be 2 Euro or less, and guesstimate that way. My giant leek? Why that's -.65 cents. Two Bratwurst? -.85 cents. For both. This place just blows me away. Even the shampoo, toothpaste, and essentially every other product you'd ever buy for your own personal care of hygiene is affordable at Kaufland. And the best part? In less than two minutes, we're there. We do get funny looks from some people because we're either speaking comfortably in English or in decidedly non-fluent German, but I think they're getting used to us...

Wanderings

We've had a lovely couple of days in Tuebingen, exploring the city and getting some necessary things out of the way. On Monday, our whole group (save the one grad student sill in Paris) met up to have the German equivalent of passport photos taken. These are biometric photos that, evidently, are different from those we take in the states in a visually undetectable way, because we're not allowed to use passport photos from home for our student visas. Afterwards, having not yet eaten breakfast, Anya and I headed to a nice cafe that one of our fellow programmates recommended. While the others went off to open bank accounts, the three of us lounged outside and enjoyed day-old cake with coffee.

I had an enormous piece of delicious Himbeer-Kuchen that only cost me a single Euro--does it get better?

Our Yale friend is a theology student who's currently working on his second Master's (toward a PhD), and we've discovered that we all share a love of sitting, chatting, and consuming yummy things, not to mention wandering and discovering the city. We made plans to go to Mainz to see the Gutenberg Museum (which, last time I visited in 2009, was wonderful) on Thursday, and Anya and I headed to Kaufland to buy groceries for dinner.

That evening, Anya's second and extremely mysterious roommate emerged and altered our dinner plans (which was decidedly not a problem--house dinners are important dinners, especially when your roommate has been hiding in her room all week) and I wound up cooking dinner with (really for) two of the other CT students and the guy from Tennessee they met at their language course registration. We took a trip to Kaufland again (I wasn't kidding when I said it's around the block, has everything, and that we go constantly) and picked up some cooking supplies. It seemed easier to just do things myself rather than to organize four of us making dinner (though our dear friend Danny, with whom I was in lots of contact before leaving the States, watched me work and learned how to roast asparagus), so they started on the wine (3 Euros a bottle for an exceptionally drinkable Spanish red) while I started on dinner. We cooked up some Bratwurst, boiled some Weisswurst (Bavarian veal sausage), roasted some white asparagus (a German specialty), and boiled up the water for our very own Kaesespaetzle. For those of you unfamiliar with this dish, Spaetzle is essentially a cross between a dumpling and a noodle, and Kaesespaetzle just involves turning it into a quasi-macaroni and cheese. I sauteed some onions, made a quick roux with flour and butter, and tossed in some milk and the package of "Spaetzlekaese" that is "mountain cheese" and Emmentaler mixed together and sold in one easy bag. This earned some very impressive 'oohs' from the peanut gallery but is actually insanely easy and delicious.

This morning, Anya and I met our Yale friend for a delicious German breakfast at a cafe in the Altstadt. We ordered what ended up being a lot of food, but it was also extremely lovely.

I had a big plate of cheese, ham, fresh fruit and vegetables, and butter to eat on all manner of bread and rolls, along with a big bowl of cafe au lait/Milchkaffee and a boiled egg that was just short of hard boiled and wonderfully gooey. We sat and enjoyed the scenery outside, and then visited a great music and record store--where I found a poster for my very bare walls--before wandering all around the northwestern section of the altstadt. It was absolutely beautiful, made--if possible--even better by the stunningly beautiful weather, and we finally found ourselves on top of the hill upon which the castle sits before meandering back down to our bus stop.

Something on the top of the hill that looks like the castle, but is not. We're not sure, but it's quite pretty either way!

On Thursday we're venturing to Mainz for a visit, which there is, unfortunately, no convenient way to do. With the special tickets, though, that for 30 Euro get up to 5 people anywhere on a regional train in a single state for the entire day, we can do it for 20 Euro each, and will just have to bring fun things to do on the train while we roll slowly through the countryside. Given the natural beauty of this place, I think somehow we'll manage!

Das Land der Frischkäse

I am here, I'm alive, and man am I excited! Friends, it's happened...I've moved to Germany for the year. Looking at it that way, I'm still not so sure how I feel about it, but if I take the idea that, "I'm in Germany" in smaller chunks, there are very few (although presently unfeasible) things that could make me happier!

Anya and I arrived after an exceedingly hassle-free flight around 11am on Thursday (while most of you lovely people were still sleeping like babies back across the pond), and proceeded to blaze through customs and the purchase of our Bahncard's, which provide us with 50% off of our train tickets for the year; as long as we rack up 100 Euro worth of savings, they pay for themselves, which won't be hard since if I took a 2 1/2 hour train to visit Friedie (which is surprisingly long, actually), I would already save 25. And did I mention we plan on taking lots of trains this year? Anyway, Lufthansa once again blew me away, with the most excessive drink service I've ever experienced in Economy (can you say free wine and cocktails, and a FOURTH beverage go-round offering bailey's and digestifs after 'dinner'?).

True to form, we also met some interesting people while en route. Actually, I'm mostly referring to the very nice man at the baggage drop-off who was very friendly toward me and we think was also the guy who waved a fee for Anya. For some reason I always end up meeting rather flirtatious airport employees, and this trip was no different. He complemented me on my perfect packing job (for those at home who watched the weigh-transfer things-weigh again-transfer more things-lots of swearing crisis with interest, I was 1kg underweight in the big bag and 3 underweight in the other!), asked me all about where I was going, and when he gave me the little electronic pad to sign for the $70 second bag fee (yes, not overweight bag fee, SECOND BAG FEE), he said in his rather charming but nondistinct Eastern European accent, "So I just need your signature here. And your phone number at the bottom. Noooo I'm just kidding, not your phone number". Oh dear. We then heard him make an announcement in four different languages (with exceptional accents) at our gate and were impressed. Anyway. Moving on.

Our first purchase in the Frankfurt airport was Apfelschorle, the world's most perfect combination of apple juice and fizzy water that we missed quite terribly. Being the responsible travelers that we are, we thought we would document it...

Our only hitch was making the 8-minute connection between trains in Stuttgart. The signage was poor and we had BIG bags, so we ran down some long stairs and up some long stairs thinking we had to, reaching the train door and pushing the little 'open' button JUST before the train started to move. We swore the conductor had seen us, and cursed him as we only know how to do in English. This meant that we missed the housing office that afternoon, but were taken in by Meike, our wonderful, incredible, oh-so-helpful and knowledgable peer advisor whose praises I could never in a million years sing enough. And if anyone wants to contribute some money to her salary, which I'm sure is paltry, I should add a little button over there on the side. No but really. She's awesome. We stayed at her place, had some dinner and passed out, which was phenomenal after 90 minutes of sleep on the plane and a brief brief snooze on the train, and went to the housing office the next morning.

When we got off the bus and saw our neighborhood, the day got great. When we got to our buildings and saw the entranceway, the day got really great. When we got to our adjacent apartments and saw our rooms, it became just about the best day ever. After some repeatedly non-ideal housing at Wesleyan, I think Anya just about had a heart attack. Here's my room, mostly unpacked, for a reference:

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We also have a Kaufland around the corner. This is basically a combination of Target and Walmart, that has everything for ridiculously low prices. Including, wait for it, organic produce. Yeah. We're pretty psyched. And when I say, 'around the corner,' I mean two minutes walking. If that. We went three times yesterday....three! In fact, it was a very productive day in general, and we couldn't believe how long the day felt (in a good way, not the bad way). After we got our keys from the Hausmeister (let's not even go into that bureaucracy), we brought all of our stuff over, dropped it off, and headed out to do some useful things. Anya and I have pretty quickly figured out how to get between here and the Altstadt/downtown on the bus (a mere 5 minutes), so we hopped on over back that way to get our bank accounts set up so we could get our phones set up. they squeezed us in late in the afternoon on a Friday, we think because we had our passports/were all prepared and spoke very nicely to them in German. Go figure. The phones were equally easy, and I finally got my data set up on my iphone. Unfortunately, it still costs me .39 to send an international text message and .19/minute to place an international phone call, but we figure for quick check-ins while traveling and for emergencies, that's pretty decent compared to some rates, and we got a sweet deal on unlimited data, texting, and 80 minutes of phone calls within Germany. We were pretty psyched. We then met up with the whole group for dinner and some fabulous brewed-in-house beer. Life is good.

I leave you with some photos. And if you're curious about what Tuebingen looks like, though I'll be putting up more photos as time goes on, check wikipedia out of course: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/T%C3%BCbingen

After dinner we decided we wanted chocolate. What's open at 9pm on a Friday? Kaufland, of course!

Okay, so there's an 'e' on the end, but there are plenty of Steidl's here, too, and this about made my day.