Worpswede

Ever since I read Adrienne Rich’s "Paula Becker to Clara Westhoff" a few years ago I've been interested in the artist Paula Becker-Modersohn, so it seemed like a good idea to take the bus from Bremen out to Worpswede, the tiny artists’ colony where she lived for a while and is now buried.

Worpswede itself is quaint, filled with art galleries and little shops and many old women with colorful, expensive hats and embroidered cardigans. It felt kind of like a cross between Carmel-by-the-Sea and Bryn Mawr. It was fun to look around at the art and all the stores filled with pottery and garden sculptures, but I really wanted to see the “barren, melancholic landscape” that the guidebook described as follows, “Dramatic clouds and moody light over the Teufelsmoor (Devil’s Moor) peat bog and the 55m-tall Weyerberg sand dune at its heart provided the inspiration for Fritz Mackenson, Otto Modersohn [etc., etc.] the members of the original 1889 colony.”
It wasn’t raining too much, and I’m trying to write a novel, so I figured I could use all the dramatic, moody inspiration I could get. I think they call it Teufelsmoor for a reason; I assumed that a 55m-tall sand dune would not be hard to find. “You can’t miss it,” said the blind man (I'm not just being silly, he was actually blind.), who very kindly offered to help me interpret the map. “It’s about five minutes from here.” Two hours later, and I was still wandering around in the mud and taking pictures of things that might be an inspirational sand dune. Finally, I decided this was it:
But isn’t this much more dramatic and moody-looking?

I also stumbled across the entrance to hell, which, stupidly, was not marked on the map or mentioned in the guidebook. Lucky for me, no one was home; it was just an empty hut with a dark, bottomless hole inside:

Okay, so I’m exaggerating a little bit. It was a dark, bottomless hole with some kind of hot-water heater/ generator-contraption inside. But, good grief, I had to entertain myself somehow.

Bremen

I’ve been feeling a bit antsy, so this weekend I headed up to Bremen, home of those famous animal musicians. It was a cool city, huge, with lots going on. Here’s a photo of the marketplace at night.
The Dom St. Petri in the photo above is known for its Bleikeller, which is apparently home to eight mummified corpses in open coffins including a soldier, a student from 1705, and a Swedish count. I thought about it for a long time, and couldn’t decide if I was woman enough to go down there. Luckily I didn’t have to decide since it was closed for the winter. This link shows some photos if you’re up for them. I swear, I keep coming across things here that I think I would last about ten seconds in the U.S. before some kind of protest or lawsuit would shut them down. Interestingly enough, Amnesty International was holding a protest on the church steps against Guantanamo.

My favorite part of Bremen by far was Böttcherstrasse, a tiny, long alleyway with all kinds of Art Deco/Art Nouveau buildings. The alley was constructed in the early 19th century, and survived a “degenerate” art Nazi destruction order, although a lot of it was destroyed during the war and had to be restored. Many of the buildings have impressive spiral staircases, like this poetry-in-a-lightboard one in the Paula Becker-Modersohn Haus.

This photo of the northern entrance shows a cool piece called, “Lichtbringer,” which depicts Archangel Michael fighting a dragon during the Apocalypse.

Here’s an outside shot of the Robinson Crusoe Haus, and Haus Atlantis. The bright box in the lower left hand corner of the photo is a fish tank.

Nakedness

You know what I don’t do at my gym? Shower. It doesn’t seem to make any sense. I go straight home after class, and it seems silly to lug all kinds of shower stuff down the block and back. Lately though I’ve been wondering if in showering at home I am missing out on a valuable chance for cross-cultural connection.

This is what happens: a bunch of us women go to a class. The music is loud. Someone tells us what to do over a speaker-system. We’re all out of breath and sweaty. Then we go back to the locker room. I put on a lot of clothes: fleece pants, a sweatshirt, a hat, a scarf, my coat. I hunt around for my umbrella. Meanwhile, everyone else is undressing. As I’m leaving, people are standing around either naked or in their underwear, and it’s not like in locker rooms I’ve been in the US, with a general sense of self-consciousness and urgency. Naked people sit on the benches; they lean against the lockers; they talk about the instructors, other classes they’ve been to, their friends who were too lazy to come to class. I guess eventually people go and shower in the little communal shower room, although people are generally still chatting when I finally locate my umbrella and go home (and am generally quite excited at the prospect of dinner and my slippers (Because apparently I'm a lot like that guy in Remains of the Day.)).

Obviously any self-respecting anthropologist would have been naked weeks ago. But what about me? Honestly, I’m not sure I can pull it off. Am I missing out though? What about issues of cultural understanding? Such a quandary.

Nordic Walking

You know what’s done wonders for my physical fitness since I’ve been in Germany? Nordic Walking. The first time someone told me about it, I thought he was telling me a joke. (I like to think that people here are getting used to me laughing at inappropriate places during conversation, but I may be just deluding myself.)

Basically, people get together in small groups or pairs and wander through green areas with two sticks that resemble ski poles. I’ve seen a lot of different techniques: some people just seem to drag their poles behind them; others use them in a power-walking kind of way; older people seem to use them for support. Regardless of technique, though, forests and parks are filled with people tromping around with sticks.

Why has this done wonders for my physical fitness? Have I invested in some second-hand poles and joined one of the packs of people wandering the green belt? Well, no.

Imagine for a second you are running in the forest. You’re by yourself; the leaves are changing; it’s beautiful. Suddenly, you hear a crashing noise. The forest is filled with a loud skritshing sound that seems to come from all directions at once. It sounds like a hoard of robots: insect-robots with sharp metal legs and gnashing mandibles. You picture hundreds of them, all with laser beams and heat-sensing vision. The world has been taken over. They are capturing people, eating people, torturing people by tearing them apart with their serrated metal claws. In fact, you are probably the last person left alive in Minden.

You would run faster, too, I know it.

They Just Don't Understand

When I started teaching at Herder I learned that English instruction is done almost entirely in English, for all grade levels. “There’s no need to speak any German in the classroom,” teachers I worked with told me. Other American teachers even told me that they had been instructed to pretend as though they couldn’t speak German.

This is all very good, especially with the upper grades, but a problem I’m discovering with my sixth and seventh graders is that frequently they have no idea what I am talking about, even though their regular teachers speak to them only in English. What’s the deal? What I’ve discovered is, that there is a special English-teaching vocabulary that teachers use, so they only use the same basic phrases over and over again. This vocabulary includes a lot of British-isms, and as a result, a lot of words and phrases that I don’t naturally say. “Just talk how you normally talk,” teachers tell me, but when I do that, the kids are all really confused and it's difficult to feel like I'm teaching very effectively.

So, I’ve started to pay close attention to how teachers say things, and then to amend my speech slightly, so the kids know what I’m talking about. It’s strange, it’s like learning a kind of sub-language.

Here are some examples:

Naturally, I would say “The guy in the story doesn’t have a head.”
Ideally, I should say: “Sir Henry hasn’t got a head”
(It doesn’t seem like using “doesn’t have” as opposed to “hasn’t got,” should cause that much confusion, but it really flummoxes them. And, well, I should know better than to use the word, “guy.”)

Me: “Everybody get out your notebooks.”
Ideal: “Take out your exercise books, everyone.”
(“What’s a “notebook”? Where do we “get” it?”)

Me: “Everyone read page 45.”
Ideal: “Let’s have a look at page 45.”
(“Let’s have a look at…” is probably the most valuable teaching phrase I’ve learned. Ideally, all sentences use some variation of this. “Who can tell me…” and “Who can read out…” are other good ones. Never: “Please read out loud.” Never: “Who knows the answer to…”)


In other news: it’s fall here! If only the trees could always match the school.

Mindener Messe

The fair is in town! It’s right on the river all lit-up and exciting looking. I took a trip down there in search of yummy food. It’s a very elaborate fair; I can’t believe some of the rides are actually carted around on trucks. A whole log flume for example, and this fun house “The Crazy Hotel Laugh-Show,” which is poking fun at Bayern (with its lederhosen and funny dialect).
There were also a couple of pony rides.
And very elaborate beer tents, most with wooden tables and menus and wait-staff. (You can kind of see the kids dancing inside this one.)
And all kinds of roasted nuts and gingerbread and candy.

Good food? YES! I had sautéed mushrooms and a hot waffle with cherries. Yum!

Düsseldorf

We also got to see some of Düsseldorf, which is a cool city with lots going on.

This is St. Lambertus Kirche. See how crooked the steeple is? It was built during the summer and legend has it that the construction workers drank a little too much beer.
Düsseldorf has tons of neat little shops, like this shop which specializes in mustard. It was yummy, really spicy. Apparently, you can bring in any container and they will fill it with mustard for you.
Here’s a picture of the tailor you can rub for luck:

And one of the huge marketplace:
Also one of a toy store with a stuffed bear outside that was blowing bubbles (I think you can kind of see them.):

Ruhrgebiet

This week I attended a mandatory three-day informational session in Düsseldorf and the surrounding area. Part of the time was spent in various meetings discussing the history of North Rhein-Westphalia and its school system. As part of the program, though, we ended up getting to visit quite a bit of the Ruhrgebiet, which, as Europe’s largest industrial and mining region, isn’t necessarily as picturesque as other parts of Germany, but is definitely an interesting place to visit.

First we visited the Bochum Bergbaumuseum, a seemingly unending collection of artifacts having to do with mining in the area. Tours of actual coal mines have been prohibited ever since a woman was swept away on a conveyor belt and crushed by tons of coal, so instead they’ve recreated a mine, complete with all kinds of interesting machines that they turn on so that you can get an idea of how they work (and how loud they are).

Then they took us on a two-hour boat cruise the Duisburg industrial area, where a guide pointed out things like cranes and factories. It was a long cruise, and the light was nice, so I took a lot of pictures:


Then we visited the Landschaftspark Duisburg-Nord, which was one of the coolest places I have ever been. Duisburg was once a part of a huge steel mill industry, and when operation ceased in 1985, people felt like the mill was too much a part of the town’s history just to be torn down. So instead they turned it into a kind of an adventure park. They turned various storage structures and buildings in a huge climbing park, where rock climbers can come and practice; there are even high rope bridges and metal slides. There are tons of biking and hiking trails, and they turned this gasometer into a tank for scuba divers, with even a yacht sunk at the bottom so there are things to explore.
A British artist designed the light show that decorates the various furnaces and smokestacks, making the whole complex look like some kind of strange alien contraption. It was dark when we visited, and we climbed to the top of one of the blast furnaces and looked at the lights of the surrounding Ruhrgebiet. It was so, so dark, but such a neat idea. I think what I like best about it is that they took something that could be typically considered the opposite of nature (using resources, polluting, etc.) and used it to mimic natural experiences (swimming, hiking, rock climing, etc.). It was dark and difficult to get pictures; this link has lots of good images (including one of them putting the yacht in the gasometer).

It's Not Easy Being Mean

A German friend sent me an e-mail the other day asking me if I’d gotten used to the “German Unfriendliness” yet:

Wow, you Americans are always so
nice! We Germans do not fuss about being very nice when we want to bring
across a message, we just say it and that's the way it is. Besides, we
like to be a bit nasty sometimes (or at least, me and my friends do like
to)... which is meant to be funny.

I guess I’m generally a pretty nice person (too nice, I’ve even been told a few times), so today while I was in the grocery store, I thought to myself, “you know, this could really be a good opportunity for you to practice being meaner.”
The word “mean” makes me think of throwing rocks and poking old ladies, and I didn’t really feel up to that just yet. I know you will laugh, but I started small. Ahem.

So, there I was waiting in line with my groceries when it came time to put them on the belt. There was a big line of people behind me, and normally when that happens, I try and go really fast, but this time I just took my time: one-handed, one item at a time. Oh, but that’s not all. Normally once I’ve put my groceries on the belt I get one of those plastic divider things put it behind my groceries so that the person behind me can put her stuff on the belt too. This time though, I didn’t. There were plenty of divider things, all in a row up near the cashier, but I just ignored them. I even tried to stand in the way a little so she wouldn’t be tempted to reach past me. I know, it sounds really dumb, but I had to jam my hands into my pockets and concentrate on *not* getting a divider. Every part of my being wanted to reach up and get one of those stupid plastic things. It was a very stressful three-and-a-half minutes.

Don’t give up on me. I’m going to keep at it.

Almost St. Martin's Day

I meant to keep watch, but I completely forgot until I was in my room this evening and suddenly I heard children singing outside in the street. I looked out and there was a whole group of them trooping past, singing songs and swinging lanterns on poles. St. Martin’s Day is officially on November 11th and honors St. Martin, who saved a beggar by giving him half of his cloak during a snowstorm.
I remember practicing the songs and making lanterns in kindergarten and then wandering through the neighborhood singing songs in exchange for cookies. It’s such a neat tradition; I think we should celebrate it in the US. It’s okay with me if we ignore All Saint’s Day in favor of Halloween, but there’s nothing like looking out your window at dusk in late autumn and seeing those lanterns bobbing along on the street.
(not my photo)