Connected!
Huzzah! Prost! Cheers!I am finally hooked up on the internet and have already posted some photos here: http://home.comcast.net/~wlatimer5/wsb/html/view.cgi-home.html-.html
I'll be sending out an email to everyone very shortly.
In the mean time I'm packing for my 4 day trip to Vienna (which tie should I wear to the Opera? Hmmm...). To keep you entertained, here is some stuff I have been jotting down over the last week:
"Due to my apparent inability to connect to the internet with my laptop and an apparent inability to even post to my blog from the computers in this lab, I have decided to start writing texts on my laptop in my room, so as not to forget everything that has transpired that I’d like to share or just remember for myself. I fear that it is already too late to capture everything I would have liked to under different circumstances, but such is the adventure of study abroad.
Today, September 9, 2004 will be my first log.
Currently I am sitting at my first floor window in O-Heim while 10 Germans BBQ and drink beer below me, conversing loudly and jovially whilst listening to an odd combination of upbeat, lighthearted German alt-rock songs and oldies from the US (think “Ache Breaky Heart”, and Elvis). At one point someone made a toast, and from what I understood over the din, it sounded very heartfelt. Welcome to Germany!
The past couple days have been a total blur. I have to think really hard to figure out what day of the week it is (Thursday), and from that, how long I have been here (almost a week! Mein Gott!). Only a couple of days ago I was standing in this building with my backpack on, and a 70lb suitcase. The other 50lb suitcase was somewhere lost in Heathrow at the time. Fortunately I met a cute and friendly German girl who let me use her phone, and helped me get my bearings. Also fortunate was the delivery of my bag by Lufthansa the next afternoon. I suppose it was also fortunate that I was in my room when they dropped by unannounced.
As much as I love my Aussie candy, I have never been quite as happy to have it as when I found some secretly stashed in my bags, courtesy of my dear brother and mother. Thanks! Its been all the small acts of kindness that have made this week a great experience despite all my frustrations. The first was the German tourist that I ended up traveling from Denver to Chicago to London to Munich with, whom helped me get things straight in Munich’s new airport (and find a GeldAutomat (ATM)). Though I can’t remember most of the rest, I am sure that at least once everyday I’ve had the good fortune to be helped by some stranger or one of my new-found friends also adventuring in this strange country.
I am living in Oberphalzstudentgewhonheim, or O-Heim for short. It’s a complex of 4 towers, each housing anywhere from 75 to 150 students. I am in tower 3, which probably has about 100, though most are not here, as the semester starts in October. You Americans would be surprised to find that there are many students in this University Apartments complex, while unlike CU, students can stay in their room year round, and many keep the same room all thru Uni. But take my word that this is NOTHING like dorm life. Which, in this case, is a good thing.
Students live in their own rooms, with their own bathrooms, but 8 share a community kitchen, which ends up serving as a gathering and bonding location. Cooking isn’t the only thing going down in the kitchen – you’ll find people studying, reading, talking, and of course, drinking lots of wine and beer. But mostly beer.
The beer here is great! For that matter, so is the whole Essen (food) scene. People enjoy their meals here, especially the light dinner. Breakfast is essential, and tends to be Musli (or other cereal), yoghurt, eggs, or light roll sandwiches, consisting of a slice of meat, a slice of cheese, some mustard and perhaps a tomoto. Lunch is the most hurried meal, at least on campus. Everyone eats at the Mensa, which is a subsidized cafeteria. You can get a lot of food for pretty cheap, although the quality is really hit and miss. The system is much better than that at US schools though. Everyone is issued a meal card. You then hold the card up to a sensor on these machines attached to the wall around all the eating areas. The machine will detect the card through wallets, and tell you what your balance is. Then you feed the machine some bills, just like a cash machine, and it automatically credits it to your account. You then can eat at the Mensa or one of 3 other cafés around campus off the same account. You just grab the food, show it to the attendant, she enters in your selections, and you toss your wallet on a pad, and just like that its time to eat!
The restaurants and cafés and Biergartens are killer! The prices are reasonable and the quality high. Tipping is not expected, so everyone can take their time with their meals, enjoy a couple drinks and a great conversation. As its an Indian Summer right now, everyone is eating and drinking outside. For that matter, I don’t think I have eaten out inside at all this whole time! There are outdoor table set up all over the main downtown area, but more on that later. And on a side note, beer is cheaper than water. Not so much that beer is really cheap, so much as water is much harder to come by here, and the Germans prefer to have it bottled with bubbles, and serve it at restaurants that way – but only if you order it.
Drinking can be just as convenient: there are some high-quality coffee vending machines that’ll whip you up a professional espresso or cappuccino in no time for cheap. But better yet are the beer vending machines. For .70 Euros you can get a glass bottle of beer significantly higher in quality than most American garbage, straight out of a soda-style machine. How cool is that?
Its been a real challenge to figure out how to cook and manage my food here because everything is A) in another language and B) done differently here, but in subtle ways you wouldn’t think of at first. Is it wrong for me to feel a great sense of accomplishment every time I make something that tastes good?
But now I am going to rant a little bit (but keep in mind all the good things I have said!): the grocery stores here suck. Period. For that matter, so does customer service in general. It sucks. Let me give you a couple of examples: credit cards are rarely accepted because stores are too cheap to pay the 1-2% of purchase value fee that the credit companies charge for their services. All but the most high-end stores either don’t give you bags for your purchases, or charge you 5-20 cents per bag. WTF?!? This makes it really hard to make impromptu shopping trips for more than 2 items (one for each hand). Returns are refunds are generally Verboten (forbidden). I don’t know why. They just are. Store hours, excepting gas stations and eating/drinking facilities, are also a real pain in the ass. 9 AM to 5 PM, or 8 PM if you are lucky. And that’s just during the week. Try arriving in Germany hungry after 2 PM on a Saturday, only to find that all the stores closed at 1 or 2 PM, after opening up at 9 or 10 AM? Fly in on Sunday? Good luck, because nothing is open at all.
After taking a deep breath I’ll move onto more entertaining topics… OK.
So about the stereotype that Germans are super organized and thus really efficient. This is both true and false. There are detailed systems in place for everything from traffic lights to police registration to product design. Their products are very well designed. Everything that you’d think of for a product to do to make it more effective, last longer, or add value – its done. This is great! Germans have been heavily trained from birth to stay within all the systems and regulations set in place. When these work, then they are often more effective than their counterparts in the US. But when they don’t, things go real pear-shaped. In the US we are used to working outside the system and tweaking things, so that when things go wrong we adapt and keep life moving. Not so in Germany. Let me give you an example: The other day the other SA students and myself were eating in the Mensa when the tray conveyor belt next to us broke down, sounding a loud alarm in the process. When it happened there were about 2 German students about to load their dirty trays on. By the time an attendant showed up to see what was going on, there were about 15. They just kept piling up, waiting nicely in line for the person ahead of them. It was hilarious! In the States, we would have gone to one of the 2 other tray conveyor belts, or just left our trays on the empty table right next to it – but no, they just waited politely. I do credit them for their excellent manners!
Though I have only been in the country for 6 days, I have already noticed a dramatic increase in my language skills. Though I have added vocabulary, I find my most dramatic improvement is in the lucidness and quickness of my sentence formation. I am able to respond much faster than ever before. I swear that a week in Germany has been better than a semester in high school Deutsch, and a month in college Deutsch. It really is amazing. But it doesn’t come without. I am in class for 3-4 hours everyday studying German, talk to Germans around town, must use German to order food, buy things and generally get by, and speak as much German as I can with my fellow SA students. Even when I walk around town or campus by myself, I try to think in German until I get too mentally exhausted to keep it up. Now that I think about it, this has been one of the most mentally challenging weeks of my life.
Knowing that I am going to be here for 11 months really changes one’s perspective. Instead of walking around saying “Oh, that’s nice!” and taking pictures, I’m trying to figure out the everyday life, get the local scoop, discover the cheap spots, know what’s expected, make friends, settle in, overcome a language barrier, and make a good impression of Americans, so as not to perpetuate any negative stereotypes already in place around my homeland. Doing it all at once is much harder than I ever would have imagined. But crikey, is it good for me!
I miss everyone, but I don’t miss Boulder. The other night when I was feeling a bit emotionally unbalanced, and couldn’t put a finger on what it was, I decided to take a min. to figure it out. So I thought of my friends. I miss having a regular crew to chill with. I miss knowing where I stand with everyone I meet. I am getting along great with the other SA students here, but am not sure how much too chill with them (I want to spend time with people I easily converse and relate to, but I don’t want to get bogged down in an American posse), and I haven’t come into enough regular contact with any one German to be considered a friend yet (there is only 1 German on my floor right now; She is wicked cool, but super busy). Then I thought about Boulder. Boulder which I know inside and out. Boulder where I have lived for over 14 years. You know what? I don’t miss it, and am actually having more fun here because there is something new to learn about Regensburg everyday. Boulder is the same old shit everyday. That its another culture with a different history and government only make it more interesting.
Downtown (Altstadt) is amazing! Its all cobblestone pedestrian zone (which means busses, shuttles, taxies and bikes are allowed, but nothing else), with buildings from every era of history since the Romans first established and outpost here on the Danube. The main bridge over the water is a good 3.5X older than the United States of America. The architecture is gorgeous! Residences, businesses, eateries, bars, and shops are seamlessly integrated into the same buildings. No space is wasted, and any space there is has been devoted to beautiful plazas with statues, fountains, and lots of space to sit and eat at those outdoor cafés. In the center of town is Der Dom, a really really big, really really old and really really wonderful church – complete with Gargoyles, 2 tall steeples, and architectural detail that would fascinate Rick Steves for hours.
The city has a palace bigger than that in London, but I haven’t been able to see it yet. Regensburg is the biggest city in Germany that wasn’t bombed in the Second World War, which is why so many great structures and pieces of history survive. You Boulderites will appreciate that it even has greenbelt, and has had one for very long time. So long in fact, that the city is split into 3 parts. The smallest is north of the Danube. The other two are probably about the same size. The downtown area is the central part separated from the north by the river, and the south by the greenbelt, which arches in a semi-circle connected by the huge river. I live in the southern part, which is where the University is, along with pretty much everything that has been built since WW2. The newer part of town, but admittedly less interesting than the Altstadt. Thankfully the greenbelt is only a couple hundred yards wide, as it already takes me 40 min to walk into the heart of downtown, where all the other SA students live.
They are fortunate in that they get to live in the pedestrian zone, rich with art and history. But I don’t have to commute to Uni 5 days a week, which will pay off during the rainy, cold Regensburg winter. I also hope to be more immersed with the German student population by the end of my stay here. Wish me luck!"
posted by Jason @ 2:55 pm
4 Comments:
Jason, Jason, Jason. Already going after the cute German girls.
We've taught you well.
~Luc
Jason! Vienna is awesome. You will love it, because I did, and who wouldn't? I'm glad to hear you're settled in. I hope you have a great time.
-Ruth
Jason!!! Thanks, I miss you too :/
Vienna, such a great city...I played at the Austrial Center for the 20th annual Vienna Youth and Musicale Festival summer of 2000. It is so beautiful and the churches are fantastic. Have fun!
Mother Hen
"Then I thought about Boulder. Boulder which I know inside and out. Boulder where I have lived for over 14 years. You know what? I don’t miss it, and am actually having more fun here because there is something new to learn about Regensburg everyday. Boulder is the same old shit everyday. That its another culture with a different history and government only make it more interesting."
I know exactly what you mean, man. Albeit to a much, much lesser degree...Wyoming...
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