T. is Here!

Yay! Hooray! T. is visiting! He agreed to write the blog entry for this weekend, so what follows is all his. I threw some pictures in for good measure, but he took them. It was so good to see him. I'm going to kidnap him and keep him here.

Well, while J. was enjoying the special Halloween edition of her spinning class, I was winging my way across the globe to visit her in Deutschland. It was my first visit to Europe since I was 17, but I could barely focus on that fact. I was just too excited to see her again. Two months is just way too long.

Of course, I should have been more specific about what I was wishing for. After a full day of travel (25 hours with the time change), I arrived in Hannover, and did get to see the beautiful J. immediately. But it was through a giant glass wall! Apparently, in Hannover they feel that you should collect your checked baggage before you leave the security area, and in order to entice you to hurry, they politely place your loved ones right in front of you, but out of reach. It was both funny and frustrating. I entertained thoughts of finding a way over, under, or straight through the barrier, but I figured being able to hug J. immediately might not have been worth the subsequent 10-15 years with only my cellmate Bubba (or would it have been Dieter?) for company.

My luggage did eventually make an appearance, putting an end to my pantomimes of love against the glass (Germans have Windex, right?), and I did finally find the exit, and found the real life, huggable J. right on the other side. It was easily the best feeling of my life, getting to hold her after so long, and though it did take a little while to get over the self-consciousness that all the anticipation had created, it was amazing to be there with her.

Soon, we found ourselves on the train back to Minden, just getting used to being together again and talking together without any electronic or digital mediation. It was wonderful. Honestly, the travel back to her house—exactly as I pictured it from her descriptions here—is still a blur. I do remember the cold rain that we had to walk a half-hour through from the train station to her home, but even that was mostly filled with my “Ooh! Tell me about that” and “Ooh! Cobblestones.” and “Ooh! What is that giant, god-like glowy thing up there on the mountain?” (It was the Kaiser monument). For those of you who don’t know, I tend to blabber on and on—and about absolutely anything—when I’m excited, and I’m sure that by the end of that walk, J. was ready to call a cab and send me packing again.

But she didn’t, and after lugging my sleeping accommodations up the stairs to her apartment, we got all settled, and crashed out. As I would explain to all the people—and there have been tons—who would ask about J. and how my trip to see her was, over the next few days, we just enjoyed being together again, hanging out. I had brought several good ol’ American movies along, and we watched those. I got to see downtown Minden, and the crazy Martinitreppen (a steep series of steps that connect one level of “downtown” to another), and J’s school where she teaches, and some really old buildings. We ate out, enjoying: Döner Kabobs (kinda like big pitas, but with thicker bread and more stuff), Currywurst, some schnitzel, a mystery meat with wild mushrooms, and some of the best pizza I’ve ever had. My favorite may have been the crazy, big, alcoholic ice cream sundaes that we had at a giant, shiny Eiscafe one day. J’s favorite, I’m sure, was the fish dish she had that was smothered in about a litre (see, I can be European…) of mustard, accompanied by mustard potatoes (with ham). Mmmmm.

That last German delicacy was served us in Hameln, at the Rattenfängerhaus restaurant, named in honor of the man we know as the Pied Piper. Though the best part of my (too short) time in Germany was just getting to spend time with J. and to see what her German life looks like—and, of course, to develop new strategies to shower in her hobbit bathtub—we did get to take a day trip together, and ended up in storied Hameln, where we followed little white rats painted on the cobblestones to various historical sites, including the city museum, the “wedding house,” which sported an external Glöckenspiel that we got to witness play, complete with an oversized cuckoo-clock-figure reenactment of the Pied Piper story. It was a great trip, and J. did get to discover many, many ways in which her home state of Pennsylvania figures in Hameln history (including the fact that the current “official face” of the Pied Piper is an expatriate from Harrisburg). Some other interesting facts of note: according to the legend, the Pied Piper showed up in Hameln in 1284, and before it was all over, 130 children were lost; the Hannoverians lost to the Prussians in some battle outside Hameln in 1866 (this was illustrated by means of a giant toy soldier setup in the city museum); and people still live in old houses that have historical significance, so if you’re going to ooh and aah, just be quiet about it.
I could go on and on about this trip and how good it was to be with J. and to get to experience a little bit of her everyday life once again. As I said, I tend to blabber. But I will rein it in and just close by saying that as wonderful as it has been to read about the “Adventures of J. in Germany” here, getting to be a small part of those adventures in person was magic. I highly recommend it to all of you out there in reader-ville, and I can’t wait to get back. Very, very soon.

It Has to be Done

Okay, so I thought I would just keep this topic to myself, I mean, who talks about their indoor cycling class on their blog? Well, I’m going to, so paß auf.

Back in September when I started, it seemed pretty normal. The guy played all dub music the first day, and shook everyone’s hand at the end, but other than that it was typical. Then, one day I come into class, and there is a movie of marine life being shown on the wall. It’s a silent movie, dolphins, whales, a few polar bears. I dunno, maybe marine mammals are supposed to help you increase your exertion level. It’s fine. I’m excited because I’ve just been to the aquarium and know how to say “hammerhead” in German.

Then I come in and there are swirling multicolored disco lights spinning on the ceiling, and music videos playing on the wall. They’re really old videos, from the eighties maybe, and the people singing are not the people we are listening to in class. It’s kind of strange, but again, no big deal, something to look at while pedaling.

Today though, I go into the spinning room and it’s Halloween spinning. Okay, music from Rocky Horror, okay, free gummi bears, but no, no, no, it’s much, much more than that. First of all, all of the bikes have been rearranged to make room for the giant Styrofoam tombstones which have been painted gray and say things like “Sir Balsam I: nosebleed,” and “Kurt Cobain.” On the windowsill there are strobe lights and lava lamps, and lots of rubber monster heads with glowing eyes. In the corner are more rubber heads, really creepy, and also a big pile of rubber body parts, all painted to look like they’re bloody. On the wall (where the marine mammals usually are), is a huge banner with a giant leering jack-o-lantern. They don’t even trick-or-treat in this country!

I would also like to just add that though it is a bit odd, there are two awesome things about my gym. One, is that there is a free self-service sports drink bar (I know, I don’t like sports drinks, but still!). The other (and infinitely better) thing, is that there is a real bar, where you can stop for a beer and a nice bowl of chili after (or before, or during, or instead of) your workout. Good times!

Maybe You Don't Want to Come Visit Pt. 3

People drive horribly here. Those of you who have known me for a while, probably can attest to the fact that my own driving record is far from sterling and that I have a pretty high tolerance for bad driving (Dad?). I like to anticipate green lights and speed through the yellow ones just like anyone. Okay, fine.

Holy cow, though, I have never been so consistently scared of motorists in my life. Today for instance, there was someone driving on the sidewalk. It wasn’t just a few-feet, half-on the curb, second-or-two drive around the construction kind of sidewalk driving. No, no. This was an against the flow of traffic, on the wrong side of the road, full speed, quarter-mile, no headlights kind of sidewalk driving. The person almost hit some poor driver who, shockingly, did not expect some Audi to come careening around a corner on the sidewalk on the wrong side of the road. And also, well, me, who was walking along that particular sidewalk, and not expecting it either. That’s not all. I swear if a car is far away down the street when you are crossing, nine times out of ten the person will speed up just to prove that they are going fast enough that you should have waited before venturing out onto the cobblestones. Slowing down? Waving someone across? No way, at least not in this town.

Paderborn

This weekend I met up with some friends in Paderborn. According to one guy, Paderborn was recently voted one of the most scenic places in Germany. A few people were skeptical about this. My favorite part of Paderborn was the Dom, which is huge and home to one of Germany’s largest crypts. They were closed when we went, but when they are open apparently you can wander past all the stone coffins where the remains of bishops from hundreds of years ago are buried, including those of St. Liborius (invoked against colic, fever, and gallstones). Paderborn is also famous for the Hasenfenster (rabbit window), which has three rabbits, which symbolize the Holy Trinity. The thing the window is known for is that even though there are only three ears in total, each rabbit has two.

Unexpected

Today I was supposed to start working with a new seventh grade class. I’d only visited the class once before, a month ago, and really don’t know the instructor all that well, but it seemed like a good class. I was excited to get started.

Class time comes and I go to the room and the kids are there, but no instructor. Finally, this man comes in (not the instructor), and I introduce myself and he’s like “Oh, you’re a visiting English teacher? Great, I was supposed to substitute for this class, but here, you can do it instead.” I start to explain why that’s not the best idea ever, but then he’s gone, leaving me with thirty students I don’t know, and absolutely no idea what to do with them. Me, alone, unprepared in a room of fourteen-year-olds. I’ve had teaching nightmares about this kind of thing.

After that initial, stomach-dropping, moment, it ended up being okay. They showed me where they were in their book and we read some passages about Wales and rugby (two things I am definitely an expert on, for sure), did a writing activity where they asked me how to say obscure German sports words in English, and then played “Heads Up, Seven Up,” for five minutes. I’ve been dying to play that game with students since I’ve been here, I’m not sure why.

Wow, I’ve never been so happy to have fifty minutes finished with. I think the surprise of suddenly having an American babbling at them was definitely in my favor. They were really well behaved. I may not be so lucky once they’re used to me. The big question is: will I still have that teaching nightmare? I’ll let you know.

Kaiser Wilhelm I Denkmal and Schachtschleuse

Small though it may be, Minden has some interesting things. This weekend my teaching mentor and I visited a couple cool places here. Minden is home to the Wasserstraßenkreuz – the place where the Mittellandkanal, a man-made canal that runs east-west, crosses the Weser River. It’s hard to explain exactly, but it looks a little like a highway overpass made of water. (I didn't take this photo.)The Schachtschleuse is an intricate pumping contraption that lowers or raises water so that boats can move from the canal to the river and vice versa.
From Minden you also get a good view of the Kaiser Wilhelm I Denkmal, which honors the first Kaiser Wilhelm, (people are quick to emphasize that it’s not the second one).
It’s huge! I can’t tell you how many times I’ve looked out at it through my window and wondered about it. At night it’s lit up like a gigantic orange beacon. It’s just as imposing in person, although it was a very cloudy day, so there was absolutely no view. Maybe next time.

Binz / Rügen Island

Rügen Island is awesome! I wasn’t really sure what to expect when I visited Binz. I pictured a small beach town with a boardwalk, maybe like a smaller shore town in the United States. Binz is totally different though: a cobblestone path along a beach set off by box hedges and shrubs, also lots of restaurants with tables outside under awnings and umbrellas. I felt like I was in some kind of seaside resort town, like where people in books go to recover from consumption. Here’s a picture of the shoreline. The little boxes are wicker beach benches to protect you from the wind. Many hotels provide these for their guests, or they can also be rented. I don’t know how anyone was swimming when I was here. It was freezing! I was bundled up in three layers when I took this picture.The northern end of Rügen Island is famous for these chalk cliffs, which have been painted by all kinds of artists including this painting by Romantic painter Caspar David Friedrich.
Here are some photos I took while hiking along them. You can really see how clear the water is. (This is the same place in Friedrich's painting; there's been a lot of erosion since then.)


The water is so transparent that when I was on the long pier in Binz I could hundreds of jellyfish drifting at different depths in the water beneath me. It was so pretty: all these pink stars floating back and forth in the water. Here are some other pictures. I really loved it there.

Stralsund

Stralsund felt a little like a maze to me. Wandering around, I felt like there was something exciting somewhere, but I kept going down the wrong street and missing it. A lot of German people visit Stralsund on their summer vacations. It’s right on the water, and has a huge harbor, and outside of town there are lots of beaches and summer homes. The off-season was just beginning when I was there, so it was pretty quiet. In the hostel with me, were a bunch of schoolchildren on some kind of music retreat, so at night I could listen to them working their way though “Winter Wonderland” over and over. One night they even had a disco party in the lounge. Hostels here seem to be geared mainly to school groups on class trips, so most hostels I stayed in had at least one school group there, and the more popular places even more. At times, I felt like I was crashing someone’s summer camp.

The best part of Stralsund was the Meeresmuseum, a combination fishing/natural history museum and aquarium. They had all kinds of exhibits on fishing and marine life. My favorite part was the aquarium, where they had all kinds of crazy fish, like this Scorpionfish.

They also had little egg sacs where you could see tiny manta rays and sharks swimming around inside. At the bottom of the tank were newly hatched animals – both maybe three inches long. Next door, in a larger tank, were fully grown ones, the biggest ray maybe three feet long.

Schwerin

I didn’t spend a ton of time in Schwerin, but it’s an interesting city in former East Germany.My main goal was to visit Schloss Schwerin, which was very ornate and cool. I like looking at the insides of people’s houses so it was fun to wander around the inside of the castle, with its parquet floors, and painted papier mache ceilings. The throne room was especially exciting. I know that castles are alleged to have throne rooms, but I guess I’ve just never considered what it would feel like to spend time in one. Pretty imposing, right?

The portrait gallery of all the rulers and their wives was also impressive.
The castle also has its very own ghost, Petermännchen, who is rumored to keep watch on the lookouts and box their ears if they fall asleep.

Schleswig

I ran into the woman who works in the hostel while I was wandering around downtown Schleswig. “Why did you want to visit Schleswig? Are you trying to see every corner of Germany?” she asked me.

Despite being tiny, and not a huge tourist destination, I really liked spending time in Schleswig. It’s right on the Schlei fjord, which comes down from the Baltic Sea, so the town is really picturesque.


While there I visited Schloss Gottdorf, which is mainly a museum now, but is kind of pretty.
A cool thing at the Schloss was the big fountain of the Hercules fighting Hydra. I think I liked it because it’s large and imposing, but then is called “Hercules’ Pond.”

Something I didn’t know about myself is that tiny, twisty stone staircases make me nervous. To get this next picture, for instance, I had to climb up a tower in the Dom St. Petri. Fun! I thought, but then it was really scary. I wasn’t paying any attention to time, so I’m up there taking pictures, and suddenly the bells start to chime 11 o’clock. So loud! I jumped about twenty feet in the air. I was really happy to be down from there.
My favorite part of Schleswig, indeed, my main reason for visiting, was the Viking Museum in Haithabu. They had all kinds of Viking artifacts including a big collection of clothing, and fragments of a longboat. They also had a reconstructed Viking village that you could wander around. You can’t tell in the picture, but this ox is drooling.

Lübeck

My school (well all schools in the NRW, actually) is on a two week fall break, so I’ve decided to take a trip to see the sights of Northern Germany. First stop: Lübeck, former Hanseatic giant.

Lübeck is awesome. It reminds me a little of what San Francisco would be like if it had fewer hills and was a medieval German city: lots of pastel buildings, art galleries, and trendy cafes. There’s also a university here, so there are all kinds of young, artsy students wandering around. A guy I met in the hostel, for example, just started school here, and told me all about a mask he made out of meat (specifically pork).

Lübeck’s most famous sight is the Holstentor, which was under renovation when I was there, and so unfortunately was hidden behind a lot of scaffolding. Here’s a picture of the Rathaus, though, which literally made me say something like “holy crap,” out loud the first time I saw it.

I also visited Café Niederegger, which is known for its marzipan confections, and has all kinds of crazy marzipan shapes you can buy: apples, carrots, potatoes, ham hocks, pig’s feet, etc. It also has a museum with these life-sized figures sculpted entirely from marzipan. Each figure represents an important aspect in the history of marzipan: a child, St. Nicholas, a nun, an apothecary, etc. I guess marzipan was originally used as medicine before it was considered candy. Yum!

One of my favorite parts of Lübeck was the Marienkirche, which is Germany’s third-largest church. I know, a church? But, yeah, really cool! Like many cathedrals, it’s huge and painted, and has neat stained glass windows, but it also has other things, too. These, for example, are the shattered church bells, which fell when the church was bombed during WWII and were left as a peace memorial.


This church also used to be the home of a famous Totentanz “death dance” frieze, which was painted during a plague epidemic. The frieze was huge and showed all kinds of community members: the bishop, the merchant, etc, dancing with death. Each section had a series of verses that went with it, and the basic idea was that, well, everyone dies, even the wealthy and the privileged, so have you prepared your soul? Here is a good German picture of what the frieze looked like, and for an English discussion of the piece, this is a pretty good site. Unfortunately the frieze was destroyed during the war. There’s a similarly-themed stained glass piece there now, but it’s not as exciting. I’m not sure why I loved this so much, but it’s really neat. Marienkirche also had a cool astronomical clock (with figures that spin around) and a really big mechanical organ, the world’s largest, in fact. I went to an organ concert they were having there, just to see, and well, it was really loud organ music, in a very, very cold church.

Okay, so maybe you’re tired of reading about Lübeck, but wait! There’s more. Lübeck is also connected to two Nobel Prize-winning authors, Günter Grass and Thomas Mann, and I visited both of their houses. The Günter Grass house has a collection of Grass’ drawings and sculptures, which are, I guess, an important part of his writing process, and were really impressive. They also had sections of each of the nine different drafts he went through in creating his recent book, Crabwalk. It was so cool to see all the different drafts: two handwritten, three typewritten, the rest word-processed. Apparently Grass still lives outside of town and comes to give talks and readings from time to time.

The Buddenbrookhaus (named after the title of Thomas Mann’s The Buddenbrooks, which I am reading now (in English). Wimpy, I know, but it’s 600 pages.) discusses not just the life of Thomas Mann, but also his brother, and his family, which was full of prodigies, like a real-life Royal Tenenbaums. Despite difficult lives of exile and tragedy, all of his six children were talented writers, actors, and/or musicians. One daughter even taught her dog how to read and to play duets on the piano with her. Just wait, Gromit.

Minden

I thought it would be good to talk a little bit about the town where I live in Germany. Minden is a small town of about 80,000 people, in the very top corner of North Rhein-Westphalia, almost in Lower Saxony. Like most places in Europe, it’s very old. The town was first founded in 798 AD, they think though that settlers have lived in this area for over 2000 years. I was talking to my roommate about her trip to Philadelphia and she was telling me how she kept going places and people would say things like, “This bell is over 200 years old,” and she would think “Is that all?” The oldest building here in Minden is the Catholic Dom.

There’s been a church in this location since the town’s inception. It’s burned down a lot, though so this one is only 800 years old, although it was bombed during WWII and part of it had to be rebuilt. An interesting fact about Minden is that it’s mostly Protestant. There are eight churches in the Altstadt, and this is the only Catholic one. Apparently this church originally had two steeples, kind of like the Dom in Cologne, but later they decided they preferred a more subtle look, and took them down.

Many buildings in the Altstadt are older as well, although a lot of the facades have been rebuilt to reflect architectural trends, during the Renaissance, for example. Here are a few pictures of the shopping district downtown. I took these during the special “Go Shopping on Sunday” day, so there was a lot going on. There aren’t normally people in costume dancing in the street, sadly.

Here’s a picture taken from the outside of the Altstadt, where you can still see the old city wall. Minden is located right on the Weser River, which flows north from Minden through Bremen and to the North Sea.