Transitions (Tschuess Heidelberg!)

--I have arrived safe and sound in Berlin. My smiling host family picked me up with my excessive amount of luggage from the Jugendherberge about an hour ago. We walked to their apartment, a beautiful high-ceilinged Altbau with internet and many books on German philosophy. They offered me Elderberry-soda and showed me where I'll be living these next few weeks - what a nice room! I did not have internet in the guest house, so here is an entry from yesterday afternoon--

What a jam-packed and incredible month. A couple of weeks ago I again found myself in a comfortable pattern. Language courses in the morning followed by lunch with Robert (either at the best Falafel restaurant in Deutschland or in the cafeteria) and then seminars or homework in the afternoon. Pass auf! Much to explain, much to tell.

I attended two seminars throughout the month (truthfully, only when I had time and energy to do so but I tried to keep it up). One was on English-German literature translation that took place unfortunately early on Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays before our language courses. I’d never before really thought about the limitations and possibilities of languages in that way, that what sounds so simple to say in English, such as “In recent summers” simply does not work in German. Instead of “In recent summers” you end up saying “In the past during the summers”, which imitates the meaning while not copying it exactly. We translated a few newspaper articles and had very good discussions about untranslatable terms and phrases - who would have thought that a language with such a vast vocabulary like German, has no word for vandalism. To translate “vandalism”, the act itself must be described, until it reads as something more like “destruction of public property like broken windows and stolen artifacts”.

My entire language course seemed to be focused on how to say the most using the fewest words. Concision equals stylistically good German. Things like passive replacements and the genitive tense gives writers the flexibility to write efficient short sentences or exhaustingly long ones with ten commas and an occasional semicolon. Either way, with fewer “get” or “make” there seems to be a new verb for every action (vandalism excepted). The Thomas was all in all a really good teacher, although he did make fun of us a couple of times when we confused words (it’s not our fault that the words for arm and poor sound so much alike!). After explaining a difficult sentence construction he’d occasionally say, ‘hey, you’re the ones who wanted to learn this language, not me. I’d learn Italian or something prettier if I were in your place”.

The highlights were the class presentations, the beach volleyball tournament, the Klassenabend (class dinner), and the final show. I was incredibly lucky with the people in my class. Unfortunately, the temptation to speak English was always there since we had six native English speakers, unlike in my class last month, but I’m so used to responding to everything in German at this point that it wasn’t too difficult. We each had to present some topic about German society or society from our Heimatland, homeland in a five-ten minute presentation in front of the class. I partnered with a Czech friend named Petr to do something on the German basketball team, since that was before they struggled miserably during the game against China. We did research on Novitzki and I looked up rule differences and the biographies on a couple of other players on the national team. Although we were very prepared, it’s not easy to give a presentation when your teacher corrects you on your grammar every few sentences. I was thrown off a bit but the time went by fast and sooner than expected my first “Refarat”, or presentation, was over. The others were great. We Americans clearly wanted to pick topics that strayed from the American mainstream - one American named Steve told us about rodeo in Montana. Another friend named Andrew talked about American Eating Contests. Did you know that the defending champion of the 4^th of July Nathans Hot dog eating contest was Japanese? The recent winner ate 67 hot dogs in 10 minutes. The road to success in an eating contest is actually to be very fit, and to drink so much water in the days preceding the contest that the stomach is totally bloated by eating time. They actually dip the hot dogs with the buns in water to make them go down faster (EWWW!). We learned about some old Hungarian history legends, we learned that women cannot become sushi chefs because they have warmer hands than men and thus ruin the fish (smokers, interestingly enough, have the coldest hands, and are therefore favored in Japanese restaurants), we learned about the five little mascots from the Olympics and what they mean, and we had a great discussion about what is taboo in Germany versus what is taboo in the US (naked women on the cover of newspapers, for example) – Germans consider Americans in general as incredibly prude and conservative when it comes to sexual topics.

We did surprisingly well in the beach volleyball tournament considering my and others’ lack of experience. 4^th in a pool of 12 teams, I believe. On a Wednesday afternoon most of the Ferienkurs met at the sports center about 30 minutes away from the University. We had an afternoon “Sport Fest” with basketball (in Robert’s charge), soccer, street hockey, and beach volleyball. We formed a team of six only with people from my class. Technically, we took bronze, since the Betreuer (staff) team that came in second didn’t actually count in the pool. My saddest moment was when a built six-foot-five Betreuer spiked the ball right into my face; I fell back on the impact and we all laughed at the irony of such intensity at a Ferienkurs sportfest.

I volunteered our apartment in Rohrbach for the Klassenabend last Thursday night. The left-hand corner of our parking lot has a nice little patch of green grass with a picnic bench and awkward small plastic pond. A garden gnome and a little deer figurine guard the pond (facetious, as Caitlin would say). My class of about 13 plus our teacher and Betreuerin Verena came around 7 while I was in the middle of making brownies. They all went out back except for those who needed to prepare their meals. The kitchen was full! Six people in a small space with about ten large cola bottles did not keep the stress down, but once the brownies were baked and cooling (from scratch, thanks to eliza’s recipe) and I joined everyone out back it was a really relaxed and fun evening. Petr, who saw no other solution, decided that the pond would be the perfect place to keep the beer cool – the image of the garden gnome guarding a six pack of Oettinger swimming in the water sticks in my mind. Przemek stayed by the grill most of the night and even when we were all full to the brim he continued to offer us Nuremburger bratwurst. Steve and Elizabeth brought us unbelievably good potatoes and salad and my brownies turned out really well. People did not know what brownies were, so we had to explain a couple of times the differences between chocolate cake and brownies. When it grew too dark to see we lit small candles and stayed until 10:30, when the uptight neighbors shut us down. They were rather unhappy with Robert the next day, although he was not even there (I felt quite badly that we caused it all!) but really, when we talk outside until 10:30 it’s not something to report to the Hausmeister about.

Against many odds we got our act together enough to sing at the final show. We sang a part of a song called “Jetzt ist Sommer” from a men’s a capella group called the Wise Guys. I’d heard the song on Robert’s computer recently and fell in love with this group – really fun, really light, and good lyrics. We practiced maybe three times outside of class for the show – our act began with a sketch. We all looked sad standing randomly around the stage and when Andrew asked us what was wrong we each had different complaints: the Japanese could not find sushi in the cafeteria; the Chinese was sad because her country only had 51 gold medals; and I said that I was sad because starting Saturday I’d have to leave my heart behind in Heidelberg (Ab Samstag muss ich mein Herz in Heidelberg lassen!). Then Andrew said there was nothing to be sad about, cause it’s still summer! (queue starting song). Luckily Elizabeth directs an a capella group at Yale, so she certainly helped us get the right tone. On the same night Robert and the wonderful Edoardo resurrected Heisser Hund, a song that Edoardo wrote about the act of eating meat from dogs. It sounds pretty crazy, but trust me, it’s well written, and Robert knows how to work the crowd – all joined in with the refrain Heisser Hund… schmeckt noch gut. The final show is aaaalways more fun when we actually participate, so between the Heisser Hund and our class’ song I was pleasantly able to unwind from the test (B-R-U-T-A-L, but hey, it’s just a summer course…).

I had also taken part in the “Video AG”, the video club, in which we made a twelve minute movie about a Heidelberg fairy tale. We shot the film in five or so three-hour sessions in the past three weeks and ended up with a pretty stellar production. I was the “Kamerafrau”, the person in charge of the filming part, along with the lovely Reka from Hungary (I shall visit her in Budapest in November hopefully!). The plot… oh, hard to describe. Three bad Ferienkurs students spend all their time partying and are at risk of expulsion from the final show and parties. They run up stairs until their blue in the face and seek advice from citizens of Heidelberg (the interview part). Finally, they are able to pass three tests that show they’ve changed their ways, and they are kissed by the lovely Siberian fairy. They race back to the university to the awesome tune of Lola Rennt (run lola run) and open the door into the auditorium in perfect sink with the final scene of the movie. Lots of fun, lots of laughs, and I have a dvd copy to bring home. We showed that at the Abschlussfest as well, so I was busy running to and fro being in three places at once.

Wow, that’s a lot of information. A short run-through of the weekends. At a barbeque in a town called Spoeck – a name which I really cannot pronounce - with Robert’s theater group we heard stories of what it’s like to be a parachutist in the Bundeswehr, the current German army, and stayed until one eating incredible cake and drinking radlers (summer shandy?). With A-ka, Fabian and Konnie from Karlesruhe, Robert and I spent a Sunday hiking in the Black Forest. We bought a Baden-Wurttemburg ticket, which means for 30-euros up to five people can go anywhere in this province by train for the entire day. We hiked up to the BIGGEST WATERFALL IN DEUTSCHLAND (who would have thought Germany has waterfalls! It was beautiful!) and saw the 400-year old Black Forest houses. The people were so small then that Robert had trouble walking around in them! (no problem for me though) The houses were built using so many trees, around 400 just for the roof. They are big enough, however, to house a family of twelve with all of their livestock. The animals lived in the “attic” while the family lived underneath to conserve heat, and therefore they always had the noise of pigs and cows accompanying all that they did. I can see why so many fairy tales come from the Black Forest; the life was so harsh that stories after dark served as the only calm source of entertainment. The women wore hats with great big pom-poms and the men hats that look like the panama hats (of Ecuador) today. Very cool day with unbelievable scenery from the train.

As I said before, this past week was test then parties then on Thursday final goodbyes. We assured each other that we would visit as we exchanged emails. I hope that we can keep those promises, because it’s absolutely priceless what we build throughout the Ferienkurs – friends and connections in Prague, in Rome, in Athens, in Warsaw, in Paris, in New Haven (funny), in Budapest… I hope to definitely go to Budapest (MILAN!) and to do a detour to Prague when I visit Robert in Breslau, since Prague is less than an hour away. I went to the movies on Thursday night with Matthias (a close friend of my room mate Nina) and Edoardo to see Finnisher Tango, an indie film from northern Germany. We ate Vietnamese food and walked along the Neckar river in the dark making plans to do a biking tour in Serbia next summer (possible..???). I met up with my classmates for the last time in a bar on the lively Untere Strasse before saying auf wiedersehen for the last time and (slowly) biking home.

But of course, the hardest goodbyes in Heidelberg were those with my room mates Olalla (pronounced O-lay-ja), the wonderful Nina, and Robert who has been my closest friend this entire summer. After a last tour in the Altstadt yesterday afternoon (a break from frenzied packing) Robert cooked really good fish and potatoes for dinner. Nina joined us and we finally finished the wine that we brought back from our wine tour in St. Martins. We watched a Til Schweiger movie after that called Keinohrhasen (a romantic comedy that you’d LOVE, Erika). This morning I made pancakes for breakfast and Robert, Matthias and I schlepped (schleppen is actually a verb in German) my three suitcases (I’m ashamed!!) to the bus station, where Robert rode with me until Mannheim, about thirty minutes away.

That brings me to now. After a loooooooooooot of information, here is the skinny: I am currently on my way to Berlin. Having completed my Flag grant requirements I feel that I have a solid backbone in German. It makes me far less nervous for this year than I would have been, had I stayed in Chicago for the summer. That said, I still consider Heidelberg to be my home here. I know it so well now, and I almost wish that I could just do my school year there, like another Uchicago student and CMAC extraordinaire Alex Meyer will do. But I’m wondering if that’s mostly because being where Robert is feels the most like home. He is packing to go to Moscow in four days, and then in two weeks to go to Breslau, Poland. We will not be far apart, and Berlin has a whole new range of possibilities to offer that Heidelberg does not. As Robert said, “Berlin ist der Stadt”, Berlin is THE city. Everybody I’ve met has a cousin or uncle there or grew up in Berlin themselves.

Movies that I have watched in preparation:

The Bourne Supremacy (Paul Greengrass)

Sommer vorm Balkon (Andreas Dresen)

Keinohrhasen (Til Schweiger)

Wo ist Fred? (Til Schweiger)

For three days we will have an orientation with the BCGS program (meeting other Americans, how strange!). I will move into an apartment/home in Wilmersdorf in West-Berlin I believe tomorrow night with a mother and daughter, Judith, who is 17 and sounds eager to show me around. My mother’s very good friend from Montreal, Nancy, will be meeting me at the train station when I arrive. In short, I’m incredibly spoiled – I’m starting a year abroad and already I have people to meet up with and homes to visit! I begin with a new language class (thiiiiird this summer) on Monday and classes in the University six weeks after that. Wow, lots of German.

To those of you who are already in your abroad programs (CAITLIN! Anna Rae?) and to those of you starting classes already dann ich wuensche euch viel Erfolg und Glueck! For Nora and Liza and Sarah and Smicley and those reading this in Chicago, enjoy the last few weeks!! Nora, I hope the telefunding isn’t sapping the life out of you!

PS – Sorry about the slight lack of photos this time: I had a slight camera misplacement incident last week, which was horrible timing considering it’s the last time I’ll see a lot of the people from my program. But the good news is that I found it yesterday underneath all of the grilling supplies. There was also lots of grilling this week. Jesse Marshall, the Neckarwiese is as beautiful and grill-worthy as ever.

(Matthias, Nina, Melissa und Robert mit der Welt als Hintergrund)