Friday, June 5, 2009
Wednesday, April 8, 2009
Tuesday, April 7, 2009
The Final "Ein Bulldog in Deutschland" Column
This is the final "Ein Bulldog in Deutschland" column. The Bulldog Weekly is coming out with its last issue for this academic year this week.
Since this is the last issue of The Bulldog Weekly for the ’08 – ’09 academic year, I decided to take my column out for a final drink at the Dreisam Ufercafe.
The Dreisam Ufercafe is a beer garden on the grassy banks of the Donau River. The river flows lazily through the heart of Freiburg, a quiet German city in the Black Forest.
The sun was setting in the west toward France, America, California and Redlands. Children played in the sand near the river and adults and teenagers drank beer and sun bathed, the sky was bluer than a perfect Sunday morning and the air was warm and the flowers that dotted the trees and the lawns were yellow and white.
I sat across a picnic table from my column. I had just informed him that this was the last issue. He didn’t take the news well. There was a far away look in his eyes. He realized that when my pen stopped scribbling on his yellow surface, he’d be done – terminated.
We were quiet for a few moments, looking through the trees and past the river as the sun sank in the distance over the dark hills of the Black Forest. Then he turned to me and asked: “Musst du Ende meine Leben (Must you end my life)?”
“Ja, Ich muss,” I responded. “Yes, I must.”
“Warum?” He asked with panic in his voice. “Why?” And he continued: “Remember the German punk rock show we went to? Remember our time together in Berlin? Remember watching the Godfather trilogy with the Swedes? Remember playing basketball at Seeparkstadion together? Remember…”
“Ja! Ich erinnere mich an!” I interrupted as he rambled on. “Yes! I remember! It has all been great. From Basel to Freiburg to Strasbourg, I love the Rhineland and the Black Forest, especially in the spring time, but I must go.”
“But what about the beer?”
“It is true, German beer is great.”
“What about your suitemates?”
“Yes, my suitemates have been welcoming, kind, and good friends – they’ve been wonderful.”
“What about the food,” a sly smile crossed his face. “The bratwurst and the street side bakeries?”
“Yes, it was all wonderful.”
“Then why must you leave?”
“Weil…” I said. “Because… I’m an American and America is my home and America has a lot of problems that young Americans will have to fix. This is why I must go home.”
Then I put down my pen, finished my beer and started walking down the street, over the river and past the ancient buildings – westbound.
The Dreisam Ufercafe is a beer garden on the grassy banks of the Donau River. The river flows lazily through the heart of Freiburg, a quiet German city in the Black Forest.
The sun was setting in the west toward France, America, California and Redlands. Children played in the sand near the river and adults and teenagers drank beer and sun bathed, the sky was bluer than a perfect Sunday morning and the air was warm and the flowers that dotted the trees and the lawns were yellow and white.
I sat across a picnic table from my column. I had just informed him that this was the last issue. He didn’t take the news well. There was a far away look in his eyes. He realized that when my pen stopped scribbling on his yellow surface, he’d be done – terminated.
We were quiet for a few moments, looking through the trees and past the river as the sun sank in the distance over the dark hills of the Black Forest. Then he turned to me and asked: “Musst du Ende meine Leben (Must you end my life)?”
“Ja, Ich muss,” I responded. “Yes, I must.”
“Warum?” He asked with panic in his voice. “Why?” And he continued: “Remember the German punk rock show we went to? Remember our time together in Berlin? Remember watching the Godfather trilogy with the Swedes? Remember playing basketball at Seeparkstadion together? Remember…”
“Ja! Ich erinnere mich an!” I interrupted as he rambled on. “Yes! I remember! It has all been great. From Basel to Freiburg to Strasbourg, I love the Rhineland and the Black Forest, especially in the spring time, but I must go.”
“But what about the beer?”
“It is true, German beer is great.”
“What about your suitemates?”
“Yes, my suitemates have been welcoming, kind, and good friends – they’ve been wonderful.”
“What about the food,” a sly smile crossed his face. “The bratwurst and the street side bakeries?”
“Yes, it was all wonderful.”
“Then why must you leave?”
“Weil…” I said. “Because… I’m an American and America is my home and America has a lot of problems that young Americans will have to fix. This is why I must go home.”
Then I put down my pen, finished my beer and started walking down the street, over the river and past the ancient buildings – westbound.
Friday, April 3, 2009
NATO Youth Summit and President Obama
So I participated in the NATO Youth summit in Strasbourg, France the last two days. I wrote an article for the Bulldog Weekly about the first day, this is what I wrote:
Thousands of rioters fought the cops in the streets of London following the G-20 Summit Wednesday, and as such acts of rebellion usually go, they got bloodied-up, beat down and from what I saw on the television, they didn’t look all too jolly.
Thousands of rioters fought the cops in the streets of London following the G-20 Summit Wednesday, and as such acts of rebellion usually go, they got bloodied-up, beat down and from what I saw on the television, they didn’t look all too jolly.
A day later, the preliminary sessions of the NATO Summit began in Strasbourg, France, which I attended with the IES-EU program for a youth summit titled, “NATO in 2020: What Lies Ahead?”.
We mostly heard NATO propaganda in a brief four-member panelist discussion, followed by student questions. Then we heard a similar discussion with similar questions fielded by the keynote speaker, Jaap de Hoop Scheffer, the Secretary General of NATO.
And after all this international-collective-security business was done, the good folks at NATO treated us to closing cocktails. This pretty much meant that we were entitled to all the little hand foods and wine we could get our paws on.
And since America is the chief contributor to NATO, and since I’m an American, and since I keep getting these emails from my mom about how much I owe in taxes by April 14, I figured this was a good opportunity to eat and drink as much of my NATO tax money as possible.
It was a good time, most because of the international youths I met. There were roughly 30 nationalities participating in the conference. The Canadians and the French were a hoot.
So then we returned to Freiburg, which is an hour southeast of Strasbourg via bus. It is late as I pound out this column, and in just five hours I’m due to catch a bus again to Strasbourg where an estimated number of 30,000 protestors wait to demonstrate against NATO. Officials in Strasbourg have pooled security forces from neighboring cities in Germany and France, in fear similar riots as those in London.
Besides the protestors and the securities forces, also waiting in Strasbourg to deliver a speech Friday is the President of the United States.
Barack Obama is his name, I think.
I’ll have to look that up.
Here is a link to the NATO website about the youth summit: http://www.nato.int/cps/en/natolive/news_52387.htm
The second day began all too soon for me. I had to be at the bus station at 6:10 in the morning. This was especially tolling since I didn’t go to sleep until nearly two in the morning the night before. We had not arrived back in Freiburg until 11 pm and then I had to write a column for the Bulldog Weekly.
Well I slept through my alarm and then woke up finally at 6:10, frantic but still in a morning daze. I threw on my business formal clothes, grabbed my passport, NATO Pass (if we forgot our NATO Pass we would not have been allowed back in the summit, the security was very tight), and invitation to the Barack Obama Town Hall meeting. I raced down to the bus stop across the street and was relieved to find that the bus was running late. So I was fine. But I realized that, in the panic of the morning, I had forgotten my camera. So I’m without personal pictures of the day. Many people took pictures though, so I’m sure I’ll find some to bum for this blog.
We heard from some top notch military and security planners, and even heard, in the morning session, an impassioned speech delivered in French – I understood via the translation – by Bernard-Henri Levy, a proclaimed philosopher, writer and columnist. To be frank: the man was a little off the reservation. Noble in his ideas, no doubt, but he put such an emphasis on human rights that he suggested we – comfortable western nations – sacrifice everything to bring these rights to the people of every nation. Of course there are different cultures and traditions to take into consideration, and the personal sacrifice of the soldiers and their families from the nations expected to carry out such missions, but he truly believed what he was saying, it seemed. The other five members of the panel largely disagreed with Levy, and for good reason. America and Europe can’t afford to fight a million fronts. We have a tough enough time handling two in the same – the Middle East – global region as it is, not to mention our global security commitments. But to listen to a “French philosopher (whatever that means)” deliver an impassioned speech in French was interesting, funny and an overall good experience.
The rest of the speakers spoke in English, which was nice. They all seemed to be much more legitimate and educated in security matters relating to NATO.
After two of these panel discussions, we then grabbed ham and cheese sandwiches to-go and then walked to the arena where President Obama was to deliver a short speech and then field answers and questions.
For reasons I probably don’t need to explain, I was excited. I felt like a five year old kid going to a major league baseball game. This was the first time I saw a President of the United States in person. I had never even seen a former president, or a person to be president, in person. Those campaign rallies just don’t really make it out to blue old California too often, much less Riverside or San Bernardino counties.
The security detail was like airport security times two, but it wasn’t too much to ask, and perfectly understandable. We shuffled into the area and waited for over an hour for the security people to seat the few thousand spectators. Then President Obama appeared, the crowd went wild, he delivered a speech, fielded five questions and then left the building.
I sat behind the President’s podium, but a little ways up in the audience. I’m not in the frame of the video camera, but I am somewhere in the middle of the large picture I stole and posted at the top of this blog from the NY Times. Here is the link to the New York Times article about the event; I believe a video is included: http://www.nytimes.com/2009/04/04/world/europe/04prexy.html?hp
It didn’t take soon to realize that what the talking-heads on CNN said of Barack Obama is true. He may be a once in a lifetime communicator. He does connect with a crowd, about weighty issues, in an astounding way. It was one thing to have seen him speak many times on television, but quite another to be there, especially since it was a rather intimate setting compared to some of his Super Bowl type speeches.
I, of course, being the cynical student I am, question some of his ideas about how to fix the U.S. and world economy, but I do hope he’s right, and that my doubts are wrong. He’s proved me wrong before. That said; there are some things that he’s doing for the economy and the war in Afghanistan that I very much support.
But no matter how I feel about the policies of the President, to see him in person, and to hear him speak, is a memory I’ll forever keep.
Here is a link to the NATO website about the youth summit: http://www.nato.int/cps/en/natolive/news_52387.htm
The second day began all too soon for me. I had to be at the bus station at 6:10 in the morning. This was especially tolling since I didn’t go to sleep until nearly two in the morning the night before. We had not arrived back in Freiburg until 11 pm and then I had to write a column for the Bulldog Weekly.
Well I slept through my alarm and then woke up finally at 6:10, frantic but still in a morning daze. I threw on my business formal clothes, grabbed my passport, NATO Pass (if we forgot our NATO Pass we would not have been allowed back in the summit, the security was very tight), and invitation to the Barack Obama Town Hall meeting. I raced down to the bus stop across the street and was relieved to find that the bus was running late. So I was fine. But I realized that, in the panic of the morning, I had forgotten my camera. So I’m without personal pictures of the day. Many people took pictures though, so I’m sure I’ll find some to bum for this blog.
We heard from some top notch military and security planners, and even heard, in the morning session, an impassioned speech delivered in French – I understood via the translation – by Bernard-Henri Levy, a proclaimed philosopher, writer and columnist. To be frank: the man was a little off the reservation. Noble in his ideas, no doubt, but he put such an emphasis on human rights that he suggested we – comfortable western nations – sacrifice everything to bring these rights to the people of every nation. Of course there are different cultures and traditions to take into consideration, and the personal sacrifice of the soldiers and their families from the nations expected to carry out such missions, but he truly believed what he was saying, it seemed. The other five members of the panel largely disagreed with Levy, and for good reason. America and Europe can’t afford to fight a million fronts. We have a tough enough time handling two in the same – the Middle East – global region as it is, not to mention our global security commitments. But to listen to a “French philosopher (whatever that means)” deliver an impassioned speech in French was interesting, funny and an overall good experience.
The rest of the speakers spoke in English, which was nice. They all seemed to be much more legitimate and educated in security matters relating to NATO.
After two of these panel discussions, we then grabbed ham and cheese sandwiches to-go and then walked to the arena where President Obama was to deliver a short speech and then field answers and questions.
For reasons I probably don’t need to explain, I was excited. I felt like a five year old kid going to a major league baseball game. This was the first time I saw a President of the United States in person. I had never even seen a former president, or a person to be president, in person. Those campaign rallies just don’t really make it out to blue old California too often, much less Riverside or San Bernardino counties.
The security detail was like airport security times two, but it wasn’t too much to ask, and perfectly understandable. We shuffled into the area and waited for over an hour for the security people to seat the few thousand spectators. Then President Obama appeared, the crowd went wild, he delivered a speech, fielded five questions and then left the building.
I sat behind the President’s podium, but a little ways up in the audience. I’m not in the frame of the video camera, but I am somewhere in the middle of the large picture I stole and posted at the top of this blog from the NY Times. Here is the link to the New York Times article about the event; I believe a video is included: http://www.nytimes.com/2009/04/04/world/europe/04prexy.html?hp
It didn’t take soon to realize that what the talking-heads on CNN said of Barack Obama is true. He may be a once in a lifetime communicator. He does connect with a crowd, about weighty issues, in an astounding way. It was one thing to have seen him speak many times on television, but quite another to be there, especially since it was a rather intimate setting compared to some of his Super Bowl type speeches.
I, of course, being the cynical student I am, question some of his ideas about how to fix the U.S. and world economy, but I do hope he’s right, and that my doubts are wrong. He’s proved me wrong before. That said; there are some things that he’s doing for the economy and the war in Afghanistan that I very much support.
But no matter how I feel about the policies of the President, to see him in person, and to hear him speak, is a memory I’ll forever keep.
Wednesday, April 1, 2009
Auschwitz
My IES-Study Abroad Group visited Auschwitz, the World War II concentration camp, Sunday, March 22, 2009. I tried for hours to put into words a reflection of Auschwitz, but I find it impossible to do so at this time. The experience was too important to leave out of my records, so here is an except of an email I wrote to the editors of the Bulldog Weekly. This is the best I've been able to do: 
So I tried to write about my visit to Auschwitz for the Bulldog Weekly, and I couldn’t. I think it’s important for each generation to continue putting into words their specific reaction to the Holocaust, but I’m not yet able to do so, even with a million words. I tried for many hours, and I even tried to write for a less formal forum with my blog, but how to describe the emotion and sadness one feels from such a place, and how to fathom the catastrophic cruelty that occurred there, is beyond the capabilities of my mind and this keyboard.
So even though Auschwitz has weighed on my mind this week, I can’t write about it in the form of a travel log, this is ultimately what I have come to realize. Perhaps someday I’ll write about the Holocaust in the form of a reflection, but it would take much time and a completely different approach.
And this is an email I wrote to the Bulldog Weekly advisor a couple days ago. After all this time trying to write, this simple email probably best and most honestly reflects what I saw and felt at Auschwitz:
I went to Auschwitz last Sunday, March 22. I plan to write about the experience, but it's tough. Before going to Auschwitz, it was hard to comprehend how humans could be so cruel. I knew the amount of deaths was in the millions and I had read about the conditions the victims had to endure, but then to actually see the living conditions, the solitary confinement and torture chambers, the ovens and the gas chambers and the stockpiles of women's hair - it made the atrocity so real, and scary. Even to just see the train platform where millions of people, mostly Jewish, were delivered, mostly unaware of their fate, was beyond words. It was pure evil.
This is the platform where millions of people entered Auschwitz from all over Europe. They were separated immediately after they stepped off the train. Women, children and ail bodied men, were killed in the gas chambers moments later. Men strong enough to work were kept in the camp, fed very little and sent to work long hours of manual labor. The picture below is the entrence to the camp. "arbeit macht frei," means "work makes free." (the sign seems so absurd) This is where the prisioners able to work marched out in the mornings and back into in the evenings.
So I tried to write about my visit to Auschwitz for the Bulldog Weekly, and I couldn’t. I think it’s important for each generation to continue putting into words their specific reaction to the Holocaust, but I’m not yet able to do so, even with a million words. I tried for many hours, and I even tried to write for a less formal forum with my blog, but how to describe the emotion and sadness one feels from such a place, and how to fathom the catastrophic cruelty that occurred there, is beyond the capabilities of my mind and this keyboard.
So even though Auschwitz has weighed on my mind this week, I can’t write about it in the form of a travel log, this is ultimately what I have come to realize. Perhaps someday I’ll write about the Holocaust in the form of a reflection, but it would take much time and a completely different approach.
And this is an email I wrote to the Bulldog Weekly advisor a couple days ago. After all this time trying to write, this simple email probably best and most honestly reflects what I saw and felt at Auschwitz:
I went to Auschwitz last Sunday, March 22. I plan to write about the experience, but it's tough. Before going to Auschwitz, it was hard to comprehend how humans could be so cruel. I knew the amount of deaths was in the millions and I had read about the conditions the victims had to endure, but then to actually see the living conditions, the solitary confinement and torture chambers, the ovens and the gas chambers and the stockpiles of women's hair - it made the atrocity so real, and scary. Even to just see the train platform where millions of people, mostly Jewish, were delivered, mostly unaware of their fate, was beyond words. It was pure evil.
This is the platform where millions of people entered Auschwitz from all over Europe. They were separated immediately after they stepped off the train. Women, children and ail bodied men, were killed in the gas chambers moments later. Men strong enough to work were kept in the camp, fed very little and sent to work long hours of manual labor. The picture below is the entrence to the camp. "arbeit macht frei," means "work makes free." (the sign seems so absurd) This is where the prisioners able to work marched out in the mornings and back into in the evenings.
Krakow: Part 1 of Central European Reise
So I am traveling through Central and Eastern Europe with my IES-EU study abroad program. We left early Friday morning, caught a plane out of Stuttgart and then touched down at an airport in a small city 45-minutes outside of Krakow Poland.
I started work on a poem on the plane flight. The poem was inspired by a general feeling of jovial conviction in a grounded belief that there’s a creator of the universe. These feelings were then enforced by a particular passage in a John Updike novel, Rabbit, Run, but, like every poem that I’ve ever written, the poem changed many times and has gone through many drafts. My visit, a few days later, to Auschwitz, a former concentration camp, eliminated much of the jovial spirit of the poem. And now it takes more of a Deists perspective toward the Creator of the universe – one that acknowledges God as the creator, but with little interventions in the affairs of the world thereafter.
I wonder now if people raised Presbyterian, under the doctrine of John Calvin and John Knox, tend to see the world in a Deists point of view – whether they know it or not. It seems like the next logical and sensible understanding of faith. For instance: Ben Franklin was raised Presbyterian and he also subscribed to the Deists perspective. But I don’t know if I can ever completely believe in Deism, I’m too superstitious.
Oh, and I would post the poem here, but I’m too superstitious to present a poem before its completion.
Well, the first day was full of travel and I felt exhausted and hungry as we arrived at the Hotel Ibis. The hotel was a few blocks away from the city center in a neighborhood that seemed to be built about forty or fifty years ago. The buildings were all blocks, made of cement, with dark windows. I can say with some confidence that these buildings were designed by a Soviet committee with only the lowest common denominator in mind, no creativity, color or innovation. The aesthetics of these buildings was not helped by the early sunset and snowing skies. The winter weather and buildings in Poland was a stark contrast to the spring of Freiburg. A certain song, from a certain Mel Brooks movie, came to mind.
But the hotel we stayed at was quite nice. As far as I could tell, the building was only about ten years old, and the rooms were spacious and neat. Next to its neighboring buildings, it was an all too obvious contrast between the western and the eastern eras of the Cold War and post-Cold War.
So after getting settled into the hotel room, I went out with a small group of people to the city center. The city center was gorgeous. The buildings are built during the height of Polish civilization. Before World War Two, Krakow had been the cultural center of Central Europe. Its buildings from the 17th, 16th and 15th centuries still stood tall and its castle still stands at the highest point in the town. Krakow has over 100 Catholic churches. The Polish peoples are very Catholic. Poland had been conquered numerous times since the 18th century, so often that the only constant institution in Polish life was the church. Not a few moments went by where I didn’t see a Catholic nun or monk.
Well that night we decided to go to dinner at a Southwestern restaurant called The Sioux. The place was decked out with cowboy and Indian décor and its waiters and waitresses were dressed like cowboys and cowgirls. Even in California and my travels through Arizona, New Mexico and Baja Oklahoma (Texas), I have never seen a place so Southwestern themed. It was over the top.
I ate a beef fajita, but it wasn’t very good and the beer was only mediocre. The waitress took forever to bring us our bill and then when we finally received it, she wouldn’t allow us to pay separate. In every other restaurant that I’ve been to in Europe, I was allowed to pay separate. We weren’t prepared to organize a bill. So after about twenty minutes of calculating and breaking bills and such, we were finally able to put the money down and leave.
After dinner, I went to a pub that was across the street from my hotel with Kyle, a guy from the IES program. We wanted to check out the pub because it looked so ominous. The pub was in a large, four story building, made completely of cement it seemed. As I opened the door I was greeted with a cloud of smoke. A thick haze made the light seem even dimmer than it already was inside the small room. We both ordered a beer and then found a small table, there was nothing but small tables, and watched a soccer game until we were done with our beers. The glass my beer was served in had an interesting label of two Polish people dancing. I decided to purchase the glass, sort of figured it makes a cool souvenir.
The next morning was full of lectures about Poland and her relationship to Russia. The Poles are obsessed with Russia. From the tone of the lecture you’d think the Russies are docking their ships off the Northern Polish shore in the Baltic Sea with their nuclear arsenal aimed at Warsaw. In my opinion, these two historic enemies need to patch up their relationship. There is no way in Hell Russia invades Eastern Europe anytime soon. It would be too disastrous for everybody, it just doesn’t make sense, but it is the perspective that we receive from the Poles. I guess that’s what happens when a nation fights another nation almost non-stop for nearly 300 years. The professors that travel with us were quite frustrated with the Polish perspective, but then again, it is the Polish perspective, one that we, as students studying the EU, should hear.
After the lectures, we took a Krakow city tour. It lasted about two hours. We received a lot of information about the history of Krakow. The city center was beautiful. All of the buildings were built before the dark Soviet years. There were statues and pretty normal looking European streets. It contrasted sharply with the sector of town our hotel was in.
I went shopping at the Krakow market, bought some gifts for Leah, Mom and Kelly, and I was able to purchase a nice chess board for about $10. Most of the items in the Krakow market were cheap, but of decent quality, so I figured to buy gifts and; when else will I be able to purchase a nice chess board? It has the pictures of all the Polish Kings on the board.
That night I went out with some of the people from my program to a traditional Polish restaurant. It was much better than the Southwestern themed place I ate at the night before. I order beef stew and dumplings, es war gut! A three-piece Polish band played traditional Polish folk songs.
I started work on a poem on the plane flight. The poem was inspired by a general feeling of jovial conviction in a grounded belief that there’s a creator of the universe. These feelings were then enforced by a particular passage in a John Updike novel, Rabbit, Run, but, like every poem that I’ve ever written, the poem changed many times and has gone through many drafts. My visit, a few days later, to Auschwitz, a former concentration camp, eliminated much of the jovial spirit of the poem. And now it takes more of a Deists perspective toward the Creator of the universe – one that acknowledges God as the creator, but with little interventions in the affairs of the world thereafter.
I wonder now if people raised Presbyterian, under the doctrine of John Calvin and John Knox, tend to see the world in a Deists point of view – whether they know it or not. It seems like the next logical and sensible understanding of faith. For instance: Ben Franklin was raised Presbyterian and he also subscribed to the Deists perspective. But I don’t know if I can ever completely believe in Deism, I’m too superstitious.
Oh, and I would post the poem here, but I’m too superstitious to present a poem before its completion.
Well, the first day was full of travel and I felt exhausted and hungry as we arrived at the Hotel Ibis. The hotel was a few blocks away from the city center in a neighborhood that seemed to be built about forty or fifty years ago. The buildings were all blocks, made of cement, with dark windows. I can say with some confidence that these buildings were designed by a Soviet committee with only the lowest common denominator in mind, no creativity, color or innovation. The aesthetics of these buildings was not helped by the early sunset and snowing skies. The winter weather and buildings in Poland was a stark contrast to the spring of Freiburg. A certain song, from a certain Mel Brooks movie, came to mind.
But the hotel we stayed at was quite nice. As far as I could tell, the building was only about ten years old, and the rooms were spacious and neat. Next to its neighboring buildings, it was an all too obvious contrast between the western and the eastern eras of the Cold War and post-Cold War.
So after getting settled into the hotel room, I went out with a small group of people to the city center. The city center was gorgeous. The buildings are built during the height of Polish civilization. Before World War Two, Krakow had been the cultural center of Central Europe. Its buildings from the 17th, 16th and 15th centuries still stood tall and its castle still stands at the highest point in the town. Krakow has over 100 Catholic churches. The Polish peoples are very Catholic. Poland had been conquered numerous times since the 18th century, so often that the only constant institution in Polish life was the church. Not a few moments went by where I didn’t see a Catholic nun or monk.
Well that night we decided to go to dinner at a Southwestern restaurant called The Sioux. The place was decked out with cowboy and Indian décor and its waiters and waitresses were dressed like cowboys and cowgirls. Even in California and my travels through Arizona, New Mexico and Baja Oklahoma (Texas), I have never seen a place so Southwestern themed. It was over the top.
I ate a beef fajita, but it wasn’t very good and the beer was only mediocre. The waitress took forever to bring us our bill and then when we finally received it, she wouldn’t allow us to pay separate. In every other restaurant that I’ve been to in Europe, I was allowed to pay separate. We weren’t prepared to organize a bill. So after about twenty minutes of calculating and breaking bills and such, we were finally able to put the money down and leave.
After dinner, I went to a pub that was across the street from my hotel with Kyle, a guy from the IES program. We wanted to check out the pub because it looked so ominous. The pub was in a large, four story building, made completely of cement it seemed. As I opened the door I was greeted with a cloud of smoke. A thick haze made the light seem even dimmer than it already was inside the small room. We both ordered a beer and then found a small table, there was nothing but small tables, and watched a soccer game until we were done with our beers. The glass my beer was served in had an interesting label of two Polish people dancing. I decided to purchase the glass, sort of figured it makes a cool souvenir.
The next morning was full of lectures about Poland and her relationship to Russia. The Poles are obsessed with Russia. From the tone of the lecture you’d think the Russies are docking their ships off the Northern Polish shore in the Baltic Sea with their nuclear arsenal aimed at Warsaw. In my opinion, these two historic enemies need to patch up their relationship. There is no way in Hell Russia invades Eastern Europe anytime soon. It would be too disastrous for everybody, it just doesn’t make sense, but it is the perspective that we receive from the Poles. I guess that’s what happens when a nation fights another nation almost non-stop for nearly 300 years. The professors that travel with us were quite frustrated with the Polish perspective, but then again, it is the Polish perspective, one that we, as students studying the EU, should hear.
After the lectures, we took a Krakow city tour. It lasted about two hours. We received a lot of information about the history of Krakow. The city center was beautiful. All of the buildings were built before the dark Soviet years. There were statues and pretty normal looking European streets. It contrasted sharply with the sector of town our hotel was in.
I went shopping at the Krakow market, bought some gifts for Leah, Mom and Kelly, and I was able to purchase a nice chess board for about $10. Most of the items in the Krakow market were cheap, but of decent quality, so I figured to buy gifts and; when else will I be able to purchase a nice chess board? It has the pictures of all the Polish Kings on the board.
That night I went out with some of the people from my program to a traditional Polish restaurant. It was much better than the Southwestern themed place I ate at the night before. I order beef stew and dumplings, es war gut! A three-piece Polish band played traditional Polish folk songs.
I would have liked to spend more time exploring the Krakow night life, the city center was lively each of the two nights we were there, but I had to wake up early, by 6:30, the next morning for the bus ride to Prague.
Thursday, March 26, 2009
Finally: Basketball spielen in Germany
This is an article I wrote for the Bulldog Weekly... There will be a blogpost about my central/eastern Europe trip soon!
So the Madness began … without me.
March Madness tipped off in the USA last Thursday and I’m in Germany. And I missed it as I’ve missed In-N-Out, a warm day at the beach and those tall California palm trees.
March Madness is the medical term invented by the doctors (the talking heads) at ESPN to describe the hysteria that sweeps across the American nation for the NCAA Division I college basketball tournament at this time each year. It is not uncommon to see College basketball fans filling out mock brackets and placing small, or even large, bets on games. And they go crazy, watching each insignificant first or second-round game to see if their predictions come true.
Well I was one of the crazed college basketball fans for as long as I can remember. And since I couldn’t watch the games from Germany, I was overwhelmed by a basketball fit as those first round games were being played. So I asked around and found an athletics store and decided to purchase a basketball with the hopes that by shooting some hoops I could at least curb my madness.
I purchased the cheapest ball I could find and dressed in some stylish European athletic short shorts and then went to a park to shoot some hoops.
The park was next to a lake, the grass was green and the sky was blue. It was a nearly perfect spring day.
It took a while for me to find my shot again. I hadn’t touched a basketball since I arrived in Germany two and a half months ago, but eventually the ball began to fall gracefully through the bottom of the net. It gave me a peaceful easy feeling.
A group of people, roughly college aged, played a game of basketball on the court opposite mine. After about fifteen minutes, they called out to me in German, and asked me to play.
So for the next hour I played basketball with the Germans, thus satisfying my basketball craving and partaking in a unique cultural exchange.
At the end of our game I couldn’t help but express my satisfaction that one of the players wore a pair of Lakers basketball shorts.
Upon hearing this, one of the guys said, “The Clippers are better,” in a serious and almost threatening German tone.
“Nein,” was all I said.
So the Madness began … without me.
March Madness tipped off in the USA last Thursday and I’m in Germany. And I missed it as I’ve missed In-N-Out, a warm day at the beach and those tall California palm trees.
March Madness is the medical term invented by the doctors (the talking heads) at ESPN to describe the hysteria that sweeps across the American nation for the NCAA Division I college basketball tournament at this time each year. It is not uncommon to see College basketball fans filling out mock brackets and placing small, or even large, bets on games. And they go crazy, watching each insignificant first or second-round game to see if their predictions come true.
Well I was one of the crazed college basketball fans for as long as I can remember. And since I couldn’t watch the games from Germany, I was overwhelmed by a basketball fit as those first round games were being played. So I asked around and found an athletics store and decided to purchase a basketball with the hopes that by shooting some hoops I could at least curb my madness.
I purchased the cheapest ball I could find and dressed in some stylish European athletic short shorts and then went to a park to shoot some hoops.
The park was next to a lake, the grass was green and the sky was blue. It was a nearly perfect spring day.
It took a while for me to find my shot again. I hadn’t touched a basketball since I arrived in Germany two and a half months ago, but eventually the ball began to fall gracefully through the bottom of the net. It gave me a peaceful easy feeling.
A group of people, roughly college aged, played a game of basketball on the court opposite mine. After about fifteen minutes, they called out to me in German, and asked me to play.
So for the next hour I played basketball with the Germans, thus satisfying my basketball craving and partaking in a unique cultural exchange.
At the end of our game I couldn’t help but express my satisfaction that one of the players wore a pair of Lakers basketball shorts.
Upon hearing this, one of the guys said, “The Clippers are better,” in a serious and almost threatening German tone.
“Nein,” was all I said.
Monday, March 16, 2009
A Column I Wrote for the Bulldog Weekly
I wrote this column a week ago for the Bulldog Weekly, the University of Redlands student newspaper. It is my reaction to the Coffee County and Winnenden shootings that claimed 25 lives last week.
A 28-year old male ended 10 lives with two military assault riffles and a handgun and a shot gun in Coffee County Alabama Tuesday.
The killer terminated the lives of his mother, grandmother, uncle, two cousins and five others including an 18-month-old girl, before he turned the gun on himself.
“It is hard to put into words what happened today,” German Chancellor Angel Merkel said.
And Chancellor Merkel was right.
There’s no need for colorful adjectives, gory details or quotes from the mourning families of the victims to understand that 10 lives ended too early is tragedy beyond the threshold of grief.
But the Alabama shooting was not what Chancellor Merkel was talking about.
She was reacting to the shooting that involved a 17-year old male who ended 15 lives with a Beretta 9 mm pistol before taking his own life in Winnenden, Germany Wednesday morning.
Nine of his victims were students at a high school he had attended. Eight of the nine student victims were young girls. Three teachers – all females – were killed. Then three men were killed, completely at random, as the killer fled.
Winnenden is a small city in Baden Württemberg, Germany’s southwestern most state, and two hours from where I study in Freiburg.
While Germany has a violent and militaristic history, it seemed just that – history. The people I come in contact with, especially in Baden Württemberg, have been nothing but easy going and peaceful.
So it came as a surprise to everyone in this community that such a tragedy would strike here, just as it surprised the people of a quiet rural Alabama community only hours earlier.
So what’s wrong?
“Computerspiele (Computer games)...Musik (music),” Baden Württemberg Minister President Günther Oettinger said of possible influences authorities will look into that could have altered the 17-year-old boy’s mind.
The Coffee County shooter was suspected to have had girlfriend and work-related problems, but like the Winnenden shooter, little is certain.
Yet one thing is for certain. Both the killers got a hold of guns and then ceased acting like humans, they turned into killing machines. They were both young men from wealth industrialized western society nations. And with just over a month until the second anniversary of the Virginia Tech shooting, which claimed 32 lives, we have to seriously ask ourselves: is something messed up with the psyche of the young men of our generation?
A 28-year old male ended 10 lives with two military assault riffles and a handgun and a shot gun in Coffee County Alabama Tuesday.
The killer terminated the lives of his mother, grandmother, uncle, two cousins and five others including an 18-month-old girl, before he turned the gun on himself.
“It is hard to put into words what happened today,” German Chancellor Angel Merkel said.
And Chancellor Merkel was right.
There’s no need for colorful adjectives, gory details or quotes from the mourning families of the victims to understand that 10 lives ended too early is tragedy beyond the threshold of grief.
But the Alabama shooting was not what Chancellor Merkel was talking about.
She was reacting to the shooting that involved a 17-year old male who ended 15 lives with a Beretta 9 mm pistol before taking his own life in Winnenden, Germany Wednesday morning.
Nine of his victims were students at a high school he had attended. Eight of the nine student victims were young girls. Three teachers – all females – were killed. Then three men were killed, completely at random, as the killer fled.
Winnenden is a small city in Baden Württemberg, Germany’s southwestern most state, and two hours from where I study in Freiburg.
While Germany has a violent and militaristic history, it seemed just that – history. The people I come in contact with, especially in Baden Württemberg, have been nothing but easy going and peaceful.
So it came as a surprise to everyone in this community that such a tragedy would strike here, just as it surprised the people of a quiet rural Alabama community only hours earlier.
So what’s wrong?
“Computerspiele (Computer games)...Musik (music),” Baden Württemberg Minister President Günther Oettinger said of possible influences authorities will look into that could have altered the 17-year-old boy’s mind.
The Coffee County shooter was suspected to have had girlfriend and work-related problems, but like the Winnenden shooter, little is certain.
Yet one thing is for certain. Both the killers got a hold of guns and then ceased acting like humans, they turned into killing machines. They were both young men from wealth industrialized western society nations. And with just over a month until the second anniversary of the Virginia Tech shooting, which claimed 32 lives, we have to seriously ask ourselves: is something messed up with the psyche of the young men of our generation?
Wednesday, March 4, 2009
Europa!
It is a nice night. The last few nights have all been nice. In fact, the whole week has been nice. The weather is not as cold as it was a few weeks ago and it seems to be drying up a little. The Freiburgers must have been successful in scaring away the evil spirits of winter at last week’s Karnival.
Sprinkles fall from the sky every now and then, but the short spurts of precipitation pales in comparison to the storms Freiburg received a few weeks ago.
And so I decided to sit on the floor, with a cup of tea and look out my window from the seventh floor of my flat and write a journal entry about my trip to Luxemburg, Brussels and Paris last week.
I find writing like this, whether it is fiction, non-fiction, poetry or just plain journal entries, to be a relaxing form of therapy. And Lord knows I need it.
I worked late into the night and into the early morning working on a paper for my European Political Cultures class. The theme or thesis, if you will, of my paper was a rejection of the belief that there were just two polar political cultures in Europe from 1945-1989. It was a simple paper, all I had to do was recall the legend of Tito in Yugoslavia and the student revolution – and how pointless but significant (? It confuses me too) it was – that occurred in France in the 1960s to prove that there was popular and national descent on both sides of the iron curtain, but it took a while to write.
It is nice to recall earlier more exciting events with short and simple one or two clause sentences that don’t have to relate to a thesis. I can bore you and ramble, like this:
The bus left my flat at eight Monday morning. I spent the previous night packing and reading Kurt Vonnegut’s “Breakfast of Champions.” So I only got a few hours of sleep. Vonnegut’s writing is addictive. I finished about half the book before I realized it was two in the morning.
This is an important detail for later part of my trip, so listen: Vonnegut was a somewhat prolific American author. His body of work spans from the late 1940’s up to his death in 2005. His novels are as tragic as they are funny, as compassionate as they are cruel – it’s black humor. He writes in a straightforward style that makes the reader move though the book at a very fast pace.
The main theme that dominated his books was centered on the humanist philosophy, which are, I’m almost certain, born out of his experiences during World War II. Vonnegut served in the US Army until his battalion was taken prisoner by the Nazis. He witnessed the destruction of Dresden by Allied bombers. Dresden was a city in East Germany that had little military strategic importance. It was heavily populated, thus chosen as a target to hurt the German civilian moral. This incredible experience inspired “Slaughterhouse Five” but also seemed to get intertwined in all his writing. (I’m currently reading “Slaughterhouse Five,” which is a very anti-war book, but it doesn’t ramble and it isn’t pretencious, its just plain good and from his heart). Well, “Breakfast of Champions” (the novel’s title had nothing to do with Wheaties) was no exception, especially since it was a Vonnegut’s de facto midlife crisis novel at age 50. He saw a lot of his fellow Americans die in combat as well as the civilian deaths in Dresden. “Breakfast of Champions” was written and published in 1973.
So I finished the novel on the bus and had it on my mind as we approached our first stop. Our first stop was the Cimetiere americain Saint-Avold. Saint-Avold is the largest American cemetery in Europe. 10,000 young American men who died in World War II are buried in this small town on the French side of the Franco-German border.
The memorial was beautiful. The graves were laid across a large open field. Beyond the field was a forest that made for a serene backdrop. At the end of the field was a large memorial chapel. Inside the chapel was a group of five statues of allegorical figures that represented the eternal struggle for freedom.
The names on the gravestones were diverse. Each state of the union was represented. Every so often a gravestone was marked by the Jewish Star of David. Given the atrocities the Jewish population in Europe suffered during World War Two, and the risk these men took of capture by the Nazis, made these markers especially noteworthy. This of course did not take anything away from the Christian gravestones. Every so often a gravestone would read: “Here rest in honored glory a comrade in arms known but to God.”
It may sound cliché, but I felt moved by the sacrifice of the 10,000 men at Saint-Avold. Their cause was among the most important in the history of the world. It’s humbling to reflect on their deaths. These are some pictures of what the memorial cemetary looked like:
Our next stop was the city/state of Luxemburg, which was roughly two hours away. I slept for most of this leg of the journey.
Luxemburg is a small city/state on the French, German and Belgium border. It’s a nation of about 400,000 people.
This is the history of Luxemburg and why it became a state as I understand it: Some duke from somewhere in France moved hundreds of years ago and declared himself the king of what proved to be a militarily strategic spot just north of the Rhineland. Luxemburg was conquered a few times, but, because of its rocky terrain, transportation to the region proved difficult and no nation could either possess or desired to maintain Luxemburg for too long. So the duke’s descendents are still in charge. Although Luxemburg is democratic they still recognize the royal family for ceremonial reasons. There is still a palace for the duke and his duchess. This is what it looks like:
Sprinkles fall from the sky every now and then, but the short spurts of precipitation pales in comparison to the storms Freiburg received a few weeks ago.
And so I decided to sit on the floor, with a cup of tea and look out my window from the seventh floor of my flat and write a journal entry about my trip to Luxemburg, Brussels and Paris last week.
I find writing like this, whether it is fiction, non-fiction, poetry or just plain journal entries, to be a relaxing form of therapy. And Lord knows I need it.
I worked late into the night and into the early morning working on a paper for my European Political Cultures class. The theme or thesis, if you will, of my paper was a rejection of the belief that there were just two polar political cultures in Europe from 1945-1989. It was a simple paper, all I had to do was recall the legend of Tito in Yugoslavia and the student revolution – and how pointless but significant (? It confuses me too) it was – that occurred in France in the 1960s to prove that there was popular and national descent on both sides of the iron curtain, but it took a while to write.
It is nice to recall earlier more exciting events with short and simple one or two clause sentences that don’t have to relate to a thesis. I can bore you and ramble, like this:
The bus left my flat at eight Monday morning. I spent the previous night packing and reading Kurt Vonnegut’s “Breakfast of Champions.” So I only got a few hours of sleep. Vonnegut’s writing is addictive. I finished about half the book before I realized it was two in the morning.
This is an important detail for later part of my trip, so listen: Vonnegut was a somewhat prolific American author. His body of work spans from the late 1940’s up to his death in 2005. His novels are as tragic as they are funny, as compassionate as they are cruel – it’s black humor. He writes in a straightforward style that makes the reader move though the book at a very fast pace.
The main theme that dominated his books was centered on the humanist philosophy, which are, I’m almost certain, born out of his experiences during World War II. Vonnegut served in the US Army until his battalion was taken prisoner by the Nazis. He witnessed the destruction of Dresden by Allied bombers. Dresden was a city in East Germany that had little military strategic importance. It was heavily populated, thus chosen as a target to hurt the German civilian moral. This incredible experience inspired “Slaughterhouse Five” but also seemed to get intertwined in all his writing. (I’m currently reading “Slaughterhouse Five,” which is a very anti-war book, but it doesn’t ramble and it isn’t pretencious, its just plain good and from his heart). Well, “Breakfast of Champions” (the novel’s title had nothing to do with Wheaties) was no exception, especially since it was a Vonnegut’s de facto midlife crisis novel at age 50. He saw a lot of his fellow Americans die in combat as well as the civilian deaths in Dresden. “Breakfast of Champions” was written and published in 1973.
So I finished the novel on the bus and had it on my mind as we approached our first stop. Our first stop was the Cimetiere americain Saint-Avold. Saint-Avold is the largest American cemetery in Europe. 10,000 young American men who died in World War II are buried in this small town on the French side of the Franco-German border.
The memorial was beautiful. The graves were laid across a large open field. Beyond the field was a forest that made for a serene backdrop. At the end of the field was a large memorial chapel. Inside the chapel was a group of five statues of allegorical figures that represented the eternal struggle for freedom.
The names on the gravestones were diverse. Each state of the union was represented. Every so often a gravestone was marked by the Jewish Star of David. Given the atrocities the Jewish population in Europe suffered during World War Two, and the risk these men took of capture by the Nazis, made these markers especially noteworthy. This of course did not take anything away from the Christian gravestones. Every so often a gravestone would read: “Here rest in honored glory a comrade in arms known but to God.”
It may sound cliché, but I felt moved by the sacrifice of the 10,000 men at Saint-Avold. Their cause was among the most important in the history of the world. It’s humbling to reflect on their deaths. These are some pictures of what the memorial cemetary looked like:
Our next stop was the city/state of Luxemburg, which was roughly two hours away. I slept for most of this leg of the journey.
Luxemburg is a small city/state on the French, German and Belgium border. It’s a nation of about 400,000 people.
This is the history of Luxemburg and why it became a state as I understand it: Some duke from somewhere in France moved hundreds of years ago and declared himself the king of what proved to be a militarily strategic spot just north of the Rhineland. Luxemburg was conquered a few times, but, because of its rocky terrain, transportation to the region proved difficult and no nation could either possess or desired to maintain Luxemburg for too long. So the duke’s descendents are still in charge. Although Luxemburg is democratic they still recognize the royal family for ceremonial reasons. There is still a palace for the duke and his duchess. This is what it looks like:
Here is a video of a palace guard:
Under most circumstances the size of Luxemburg would make it unimportant to the study of international relations. But Luxemburg is the home to a few of the European Union’s institutions, including the Court of Justice.
We spent an hour and a half exploring the city of Luxemburg and met at the bus and made a trip to the European Court of Justice. The Court of Justice was in an impressive building, but unfortunately the court was out of session. There were no trials going on and the large building was mostly empty. All in all, the trip to the Court of Justice was boring and our tour guide was not that good. She would make a good grandmother, but she rambled about things that were mostly irrelevant, like the architecture of the banks and hospitals in Luxemburg.
But Luxemburg’s terrain made it the most scenic of the European states that we’ve visited so far. The city was built on the top of a mountain, or so it seemed. All around its base were valleys. Our tour guide said that there were 400 bridges in Luxemburg city alone. The bridges were grand. They were often long and connected different hillside peaks and carried trains and cars over the long valleys. Here are some pictures of Luxemburg:
We left Luxemburg and drove for a few more hours until we arrived in Brussels at about eight at night. We stayed in a little hostel in the middle of the busy city center. It was a very touristy area. Near our hostel were restaurants and gift shops and beer and chocolate and waffle shops. It was nice.
That night I went out with my roommate Ray. He and I explored the city center. The architecture was impressive. The city hall is hundreds of years old and the buildings that surrounded it were built in the early 1800s. Parts of the city had to be rebuilt after numerous invasions by the Germans and the French. The Austrians, Spanish and Dutch also found time in their busy histories to invade Belgium at least once. It made for an interesting mixture of architecture from the different countries during different eras.
I took a city tour the next day, Tuesday. An old lady gave the tour. She was informative and sweet. It was a good tour, but at one point of the tour, an incident occurred that I soon won’t forget.
We stood at a street corner as she explained the different types of architecture and the history of the Belgium people. A local man was unchaining his bicycle from a street sign post near where we were standing as she was talking.
She explained: “The Belgium people are a mixture of many national identities. We have heritage from the Germans, the French, the Austrians, the Spanish and the Dutch.”
The man had unchained his bicycle just as she finished. He got on his bike and said: “Yeah, we’re all a bunch of bastards,” and then rode away, down the street, nonchalantly.
Our guide was noticeably embarrassed, but we all found it funny. She made sure to let us know that she did not share his opinion.
I don’t want to bore my readers too much with details about the lectures we received. We visited the European commission for two lectures on that first full day in Brussels, one on climate change and the other by the directorate-general for external relations.
That night I went back to one of the places we had visited on the city tour. I wanted to get some writing done and to get out of the city center. The place I went to was a large building built in 1880. By European standards it was pretty new. The large building used (when you spell used don’t you want to spell it phonically, like ust, or youst?) to be a church, but then it was quickly converted into a market place. The market place eventually lost interest and the building was abandoned in the 1960s. But it was such a pretty building that the city of Brussels decided to save it. So now it is a semi-convention center, semi-bar/tavern. I went there because it was quiet and it seemed like a good place to write. Both of my predictions proved correct. With the ceiling high above my head and a lot of space I felt there was room for creativity. So I wrote a chapter of the novel I’ve been working on for the last two semesters on a yellow legal pad while I drank a beer.
I ran into a few other IES students as I returned back to the city center at about 11 p.m. They were coming out of a bar for a smoke. The bar was a little tavern in one of the old city center buildings, a few meters away from the house where Victor Hugo wrote many of his latter works. My comrades informed me that there was live music inside. So I decided to go inside.
I ordered a Bush beer and sat very close to the band. The band was made up of just two people, a guitarist and a stand-up bassist. They played blues and country songs. Both the guitarist and the bassist took turns singing lead. They were good. Here are some clips of their performance:
After about 45 minutes to an hour later, they took a break, it was about midnight. I decided that since I had to be up early Wednesday morning, it would be a good time to leave, but first I wanted to speak to the band.
The guitarist sat on the small stage, smoked a cigarette and drank a beer. I introduced myself and shook his hand and then took a seat next to him on the stage. We started talking about music.
This is what I learned about the guitarist: his name is Madejay and he was originally from Indonesia. Our music tastes are nearly identical. He loves the Band, the Rolling Stones, Johnny Cash and anything blues and country. He first listened to Robert Johnson at the age of 15. He left home at the age of 16.
This is what he said about Robert Johnson and leaving home: “I listened to Robert Johnson when I was 15 and I decided that I wanted to play and sing like that. But I realized that if I wanted to learn to play like that, I’d have to live like he lived. So I left home a year later and started living on the streets and playing for change and food and stuff – you know?”
So I left about half an hour later without really knowing how much of his vagabond story to believe, but enjoyed every detail of it.
The next day, Wednesday, we went to the European Council and the European Parliament. Both were in impressive buildings, and the lectures were pretty good, dealing with the issues that face the new European council.
I went out with some people that night to an Italian food restaurant. We talked about social politics and debated some of those finer points. It was an ideologically opinionated group of students, but everyone was respectful, so it made for good debate.
Under most circumstances the size of Luxemburg would make it unimportant to the study of international relations. But Luxemburg is the home to a few of the European Union’s institutions, including the Court of Justice.
We spent an hour and a half exploring the city of Luxemburg and met at the bus and made a trip to the European Court of Justice. The Court of Justice was in an impressive building, but unfortunately the court was out of session. There were no trials going on and the large building was mostly empty. All in all, the trip to the Court of Justice was boring and our tour guide was not that good. She would make a good grandmother, but she rambled about things that were mostly irrelevant, like the architecture of the banks and hospitals in Luxemburg.
But Luxemburg’s terrain made it the most scenic of the European states that we’ve visited so far. The city was built on the top of a mountain, or so it seemed. All around its base were valleys. Our tour guide said that there were 400 bridges in Luxemburg city alone. The bridges were grand. They were often long and connected different hillside peaks and carried trains and cars over the long valleys. Here are some pictures of Luxemburg:
We left Luxemburg and drove for a few more hours until we arrived in Brussels at about eight at night. We stayed in a little hostel in the middle of the busy city center. It was a very touristy area. Near our hostel were restaurants and gift shops and beer and chocolate and waffle shops. It was nice.
That night I went out with my roommate Ray. He and I explored the city center. The architecture was impressive. The city hall is hundreds of years old and the buildings that surrounded it were built in the early 1800s. Parts of the city had to be rebuilt after numerous invasions by the Germans and the French. The Austrians, Spanish and Dutch also found time in their busy histories to invade Belgium at least once. It made for an interesting mixture of architecture from the different countries during different eras.
I took a city tour the next day, Tuesday. An old lady gave the tour. She was informative and sweet. It was a good tour, but at one point of the tour, an incident occurred that I soon won’t forget.
We stood at a street corner as she explained the different types of architecture and the history of the Belgium people. A local man was unchaining his bicycle from a street sign post near where we were standing as she was talking.
She explained: “The Belgium people are a mixture of many national identities. We have heritage from the Germans, the French, the Austrians, the Spanish and the Dutch.”
The man had unchained his bicycle just as she finished. He got on his bike and said: “Yeah, we’re all a bunch of bastards,” and then rode away, down the street, nonchalantly.
Our guide was noticeably embarrassed, but we all found it funny. She made sure to let us know that she did not share his opinion.
I don’t want to bore my readers too much with details about the lectures we received. We visited the European commission for two lectures on that first full day in Brussels, one on climate change and the other by the directorate-general for external relations.
That night I went back to one of the places we had visited on the city tour. I wanted to get some writing done and to get out of the city center. The place I went to was a large building built in 1880. By European standards it was pretty new. The large building used (when you spell used don’t you want to spell it phonically, like ust, or youst?) to be a church, but then it was quickly converted into a market place. The market place eventually lost interest and the building was abandoned in the 1960s. But it was such a pretty building that the city of Brussels decided to save it. So now it is a semi-convention center, semi-bar/tavern. I went there because it was quiet and it seemed like a good place to write. Both of my predictions proved correct. With the ceiling high above my head and a lot of space I felt there was room for creativity. So I wrote a chapter of the novel I’ve been working on for the last two semesters on a yellow legal pad while I drank a beer.
I ran into a few other IES students as I returned back to the city center at about 11 p.m. They were coming out of a bar for a smoke. The bar was a little tavern in one of the old city center buildings, a few meters away from the house where Victor Hugo wrote many of his latter works. My comrades informed me that there was live music inside. So I decided to go inside.
I ordered a Bush beer and sat very close to the band. The band was made up of just two people, a guitarist and a stand-up bassist. They played blues and country songs. Both the guitarist and the bassist took turns singing lead. They were good. Here are some clips of their performance:
After about 45 minutes to an hour later, they took a break, it was about midnight. I decided that since I had to be up early Wednesday morning, it would be a good time to leave, but first I wanted to speak to the band.
The guitarist sat on the small stage, smoked a cigarette and drank a beer. I introduced myself and shook his hand and then took a seat next to him on the stage. We started talking about music.
This is what I learned about the guitarist: his name is Madejay and he was originally from Indonesia. Our music tastes are nearly identical. He loves the Band, the Rolling Stones, Johnny Cash and anything blues and country. He first listened to Robert Johnson at the age of 15. He left home at the age of 16.
This is what he said about Robert Johnson and leaving home: “I listened to Robert Johnson when I was 15 and I decided that I wanted to play and sing like that. But I realized that if I wanted to learn to play like that, I’d have to live like he lived. So I left home a year later and started living on the streets and playing for change and food and stuff – you know?”
So I left about half an hour later without really knowing how much of his vagabond story to believe, but enjoyed every detail of it.
The next day, Wednesday, we went to the European Council and the European Parliament. Both were in impressive buildings, and the lectures were pretty good, dealing with the issues that face the new European council.
I went out with some people that night to an Italian food restaurant. We talked about social politics and debated some of those finer points. It was an ideologically opinionated group of students, but everyone was respectful, so it made for good debate.
Oh, and by the way, here are some pictures from Brussels:
Thursday was a long, but good day. We had to wake up early, dress in our business formal clothes (we had to wear business formal each day), and get on a bus for an eight hour ride to Paris. We had to dress well because we stopped after an hour at SHAPE (Supreme Headquarters of Allied Powers in Europe), which is NATO’s main military command base in Western Europe.
Walking into SHAPE was like walking into a US military museum. There were pictures and busts of General, and then later President, Eisenhower. He of course was the first Supreme Allied commander. There have been roughly a dozen or so supreme commanders since Ike, and they’ve all been Americans. The second in command has always been a British guy and then the rest of the major positions are filled in with guys from those other European countries.
The guy that talked to our class was Lt. Colonel Andrqej Wiatrowski. He was Polish. He spoke about NATO operations and such. He was a good guy with all the normal good guy characteristics. He was funny and engaging and personal and answered questions in a straightforward, military manner. I was impressed with Lt. Colonel Wiatrowski.
At one point he said: “We never know what will happen in 20 years. 20 years ago, I was in the Polish army, we were under a very different type of security agreement called the Warsaw Pact.” He said this with the hope that Europe will be more united in 20 years and with the hope that it can act as one in pursuance of its security interests.
Another man named Colonel Christian Platzer spoke. He was the European Union’s representative to the NATO, or something along those lines. He was Austrian. He expressed with a great interest the need for the EU to become independent of US military security. He said that it was in the best interests of both the EU and the US for Europe to stand as one. Some students took this the wrong way and were upset because it sounded like the Colonel didn’t appreciate the US. I disagree with these students. I think it is good for the EU to look out for itself. It would be best if we, the US I mean, doesn’t have to pay billions of dollars to look out for Europe and all Western interests.
Anyway, a long bus ride later, and we arrive in Paris. It was about six o’clock when we arrived.
Paris is a beautiful, but nasty city. Its monuments and buildings are simply fantastic and I don’t know if I’ve seen a city as decorative. But the poverty that some of its people have to live in while others – including the students such as me – drink small cups of coffee that costs three euros, is shameful. I don’t like thinking about it, but I feel I must think about it. On the long bus ride back to Freiburg I thought about it and I felt like nothing more than privileged swine that gets to waltz around Europe at other people’s expense. But I also think the same thing about Europeans that live so comfortably and smugly. I also thought a lot about Saint-Avold and the American men that died in Europe. I wrote a lot in my journal on the road back to Freiburg. It made me come to the conclusion that I must do well and work hard here.
Here is something I wrote in my yellow legal pad while I was having these thoughts on the road back to Freiburg:
Standing in the dark near Le Café Mars two blocks from Rue de Lafayette. For Ophelia I felt afraid, but for the vagabond on Rue de Lafayette – the one sleeping beneath the balcony where the old lady did her modest gardening and the little children took their morning piss and the scores of people bought their evening newspapers a few meters away – I feel ashamed. And I’m ashamed of poverty in San Bernardino while I drink coffee that costs five Euros and fifty cents. And it is a sunny day outside. It looks like an early spring.
It is not good writing and I wouldn’t consider it poetry or good prose, but I think it gives a rough picture of a darker side of Paris.
Well back to Paris: Even normal folks just piss in the subways and there is dog crap everywhere. But it is a part of the Parisian experience and the Parisian experience is wonderful. It really is – I know it sounds like I’m trashing on Paris right now, but this is only because it is in Paris where I’ve felt the most alive since I’ve arrived in Europe. The city is an exciting place to be and I’ve loved my time there. It makes a person want to love and hate everything all at once.
I met up with Leah and we did Paris the way most Parisians do Paris. We ate most of our meals by going to the markets and making it ourselves. We enjoyed begets and cheese and cheap bottles of wine and sparkling wine. And to live this way – by not going outside our means – and to take long walks on the Seine and watch the Eifel Tower sparkle on the hour and to see the splendor of the city was simply amazing. And it is a city to experience with a person you love. There is no other way, thinking back on it, that I can imagine Paris.
Leah wrote in detail about our time in Paris. We had a great time and anything else that I would write about Paris Leah has already written in her blog. Here is the link to her blog: http://pariscestmagnifique.blogspot.com/
We left Paris on Sunday morning for a long bus ride back to Freiburg. I did homework most of the ride. Here is an early version of my Political Cultures thesis for the paper I completed yesterday:
It is not good writing and I wouldn’t consider it poetry or good prose, but I think it gives a rough picture of a darker side of Paris.
Well back to Paris: Even normal folks just piss in the subways and there is dog crap everywhere. But it is a part of the Parisian experience and the Parisian experience is wonderful. It really is – I know it sounds like I’m trashing on Paris right now, but this is only because it is in Paris where I’ve felt the most alive since I’ve arrived in Europe. The city is an exciting place to be and I’ve loved my time there. It makes a person want to love and hate everything all at once.
I met up with Leah and we did Paris the way most Parisians do Paris. We ate most of our meals by going to the markets and making it ourselves. We enjoyed begets and cheese and cheap bottles of wine and sparkling wine. And to live this way – by not going outside our means – and to take long walks on the Seine and watch the Eifel Tower sparkle on the hour and to see the splendor of the city was simply amazing. And it is a city to experience with a person you love. There is no other way, thinking back on it, that I can imagine Paris.
Leah wrote in detail about our time in Paris. We had a great time and anything else that I would write about Paris Leah has already written in her blog. Here is the link to her blog: http://pariscestmagnifique.blogspot.com/
We left Paris on Sunday morning for a long bus ride back to Freiburg. I did homework most of the ride. Here is an early version of my Political Cultures thesis for the paper I completed yesterday:
The European political culture between 1945-1989 was as diverse as a D.J.’s play list at a Mexican wedding reception. The older generation wants its traditional ethnic music – can we think of Charles de Gaulle here? – while the younger generation fights passionately for its poorly crafted and substance less urban rap music – any parallels to the French student revolution of the 1960’s?
This very early draft was mostly a brainstorm. It was cut in favor of a more thought out and sophisticated thesis. I mostly wrote for fun.
The season seems to be a turning here in Freiburg. The weather is nice as I write finish writing this on the porch of a café that over looks the city (It took me two sittings to finish this up). From here I can see deep into the black forest. Here is a video:
This very early draft was mostly a brainstorm. It was cut in favor of a more thought out and sophisticated thesis. I mostly wrote for fun.
The season seems to be a turning here in Freiburg. The weather is nice as I write finish writing this on the porch of a café that over looks the city (It took me two sittings to finish this up). From here I can see deep into the black forest. Here is a video:
Sunday, February 22, 2009
A Freiburger Karnival for Leah
Leah arrived in Freiburg at two p.m. Friday. I saw her in the station and could hardly believe it. She finally arrived. After over a month of discovering this city by myself, I finally got to see what it was like with Leah. And she couldn’t have picked a better weekend. The week was karnival (carnival) week. The whole region of Baden-Württemberg went crazy.
Karnival is an annual week long pagan festival. It reminds me of Halloween because everyone dresses in crazy outfits which are meant to scare off the spirits of winter. There are two reasons for the holiday: first, to bring about an early spring (like groundhog’s day); second, it’s an opportunity to rebel against political leaders. The city of Koln was criticized last year for having a float that carried a naked sculpture of Angela Merkel, Germany’s chancellor. Many thought that such an insult to Germany’s first female chancellor was too much, but stuff like that is common place in karnival celebrations.
The week of karnival began Thursday, but the first day of celebrations was only for women. It starts this way to give the people, women, who have been most traditionally oppressed the first chance to rebel. Any man that dared to wear a tie on Thursday probably had it cut off. In some cities, the ties that are cut off get strung across wires that hang from window to window for the remainder of Karnival. Everyone was allowed to celebrate and party on Thursday, but if a man wished to party, he had to dress in drag. For the record, I didn’t party on Thursday.
But I did party very early in the morning on Friday. Promptly, at midnight Friday morning, I went to a party across the hall on the same floor as my flat. The theme of this party was to go as you, thirty years from now. So everyone was supposed to wear business casual or, as the ladies often did, old lady dresses. I simply wore a work shirt and my brown corduroy pants. I thought about wearing a tie, but thought better of it. There might have been some crazy women runnin’ ‘round that still thought it was Thursday.
The party was a fun start to the karnival week. I was surprised to find another kid, Adam, from my IES-EU program. Adam was pulling an all nighter because his group, group C had to leave for Eastern Europe at seven Friday morning. My group, group A, didn’t leave for Western Europe until Monday.
A guy named Eric introduced himself to me and asked if I had ever been to Kansas. I told him that I had probably driven through Kansas at one point or another, but couldn’t remember a specific time or reason for being in Kansas. Well he said he had spent a year in high school in Kansas and, naturally, he was a fan of Jayhawk basketball. I asked him if he followed K-State at all, and whether he knew coach Jim Woolridge. He said he didn’t like K-State, because they’re rivals with Kansas, and he had never heard of coach. But he said he followed Kansas basketball very closely, so we decided to watch some games together come tourney time. I also learned that Freiburg actually has a semi-pro basketball team. Eric said he attends a few games a year, but he said they suck and it’s hard to watch. I definitely want to check it out – see for myself.
A study abroad student from Canada was also at the party. Shortly after talking to her I learned that she had crone’s disease. It was an interesting tidbit of info to learn about a person and make relatable to the personal experience of a loved one. We talked about that briefly and then about American-Canadian politics. President Obama made his first foreign visit last week to Canada. So that was interesting.
I left the party at about 2:30 in the morning and went to bed. I woke up at about 10:30, went grocery shopping and then to the train station to meet Leah.
We dropped Leah’s luggage off at my room. Leah was hungry I took her to a Uni-Kabab Turkish restaurant in the city center. The restaurant served good kababs (like a gyro) and cheap cheese pizza (only three euro!). It’s an odd restaurant. Its walls have pictures of Communist leaders, like Che and a guy that I swear looks like Mao, but Leah doesn’t think it’s Mao, and a map of Cuba – which is strange because I don’t think there’s a picture of Castro – but they make good and cheap fast food. After a late lunch we went to a little restaurant that over looked the city. The restaurant was classy, an old building with Victorian décor and classical portraits. From the view we could see the whole city and well into the black forest. The forest was dark against the gray sky and the city sat below very pale. We could not afford a meal there, but I really wanted to take Leah to the best view in Freiburg, so we both ordered beers – Leah’s first German beer – and shared a slice of cheese cake.
We stayed at the restaurant on top of the hill for a little over an hour, long outlasting our drinks and cake, and then left for my room. By the time dinner came around we weren’t really hungry so we decided to go into town and eat a pretzel and then to the bars.
Martin’s Brauer was Freiburg’s oldest brewery. It’s a classic. Martin’s was located in a cellar. Leah said that it reminded her of Cheers, the local pub where all the friends get together. They served traditional German food and brewed two different beers, a blonde and a dunkel (dark beer). We ordered a pitcher of dunkel which only costs us 8.10 E (in Paris a single beer will cost 6 or 7 E). Dunkel taste sweet and smooth. It is a very good beer.
A group of about a dozen people with faces painted pink, wearing Mexican sombreros and black conquistador type outfits, marched into the cellar and started playing marching band type of jazz music. It was outrageous. They completely surrounded the table that was next to ours and played for about fifteen minutes. They had all the instruments of a typical marching band. The trombone and bass drum players stood closest to us. At the end of their performance they were given free beers. They then mingled with the folks around the bar. Just moments before they had arrived Leah said that she would like to see some live music. She was disappointed that she had not seen any live performances in Paris yet. And then, right here in little old Freiburg, we get a free and unexpected show.
We were almost done with our pitcher when Leah had to go to the restroom. She was gone for a little longer than a usual use of the facilities should take. I was starting to get worried, but then she came back with a smile on her face. She then explained that she got lost and ended up going down the wrong hallway after using the restrooms. It turns out that a few bars are connected and use the same restrooms. She accidentally took a wrong turn and ended up walking into another bar. In that bar a live band was playing classic rock music. We finished our drinks a few minutes later and paid for our drink and went to bar with the classic rock music.
All the folks in the bar were at least 35, and most were about 50. The music was good though so we decided to stay. The band was called “The Liverpool Beats.” They played everything from surf music to the Rolling Stones.
Our true Karnival week experience took place on Saturday.
We woke up at about ten o’clock. I made Leah and me some eggs and bratwurst. We also had an apple and then went into town for a pastry.
I wanted to show Leah around the city a bit, but we ended up getting swept away by a small parade. Hundreds, maybe a thousand people, were marching to a location near the city center. Groups of about a dozen people played music. These small bands played joyful jazz tunes. Beer was sold from small stands. Pastries and bratwurst were available at similar venders. Some of the costumes people wore were ridiculous: pirates, Native Americans, colonial wear, but the most common costume was an outfit that looked like a person who was tarred and feathered. These people also wore scary masks. I think it was some sort of traditional karnival costume meant to scare away the evil winter spirits.
All the bands had their time to play. Some were good, others were nicht so gut. We left the karnival festivities eventually and went to the Munster. It is a beautiful cathedral built in the gothic era. We spent some time there and ended up getting swept away by more karnival activities. That was pretty much how we spent the afternoon.
I cooked Leah some of my famous bratwurst and spaghetti dinner (yes, I eat bratwurst with almost every meal). Leah brought me some salted-butter from France (Germany doesn’t put any salt in its butter!) and it made my masterpiece dish even better. We drank some wine with dinner, the meal was perfect.
We went out that night to Aspek café. Aspek is a hip little café near the city center. After that we went to Art Café, another hip place, but the food and drink was too expensive. It was right next door to the Turkish place we ate at the day before, so we decided to go there. We split a pizza and a beer.
The next morning we woke up very late, around noon, showered and such and then went into town to eat some cheap Chinese food. It took us a long time to figure out what the Hell the Chinese food menu said in German, but eventually we ordered. I had some beef concoction and Leah had their chicken concoction.
Leah left at four p.m. Sunday. It was sad to see her go, but I’ll be in Paris on Thursday with my IES-EU program so it won’t be too long until we discover more of Europe together.
After seeing Leah off, I went into town to see about purchasing a phone card (I’m almost out of minutes). The store I needed to go to was closed for Sunday, but the streets were even more crowded with Karnival activities. It’s almost becoming too much!
I returned to my room and wrote this, which has become quite lengthy.
Off to Luxemburg tomorrow,
Karnival is an annual week long pagan festival. It reminds me of Halloween because everyone dresses in crazy outfits which are meant to scare off the spirits of winter. There are two reasons for the holiday: first, to bring about an early spring (like groundhog’s day); second, it’s an opportunity to rebel against political leaders. The city of Koln was criticized last year for having a float that carried a naked sculpture of Angela Merkel, Germany’s chancellor. Many thought that such an insult to Germany’s first female chancellor was too much, but stuff like that is common place in karnival celebrations.
The week of karnival began Thursday, but the first day of celebrations was only for women. It starts this way to give the people, women, who have been most traditionally oppressed the first chance to rebel. Any man that dared to wear a tie on Thursday probably had it cut off. In some cities, the ties that are cut off get strung across wires that hang from window to window for the remainder of Karnival. Everyone was allowed to celebrate and party on Thursday, but if a man wished to party, he had to dress in drag. For the record, I didn’t party on Thursday.
But I did party very early in the morning on Friday. Promptly, at midnight Friday morning, I went to a party across the hall on the same floor as my flat. The theme of this party was to go as you, thirty years from now. So everyone was supposed to wear business casual or, as the ladies often did, old lady dresses. I simply wore a work shirt and my brown corduroy pants. I thought about wearing a tie, but thought better of it. There might have been some crazy women runnin’ ‘round that still thought it was Thursday.
The party was a fun start to the karnival week. I was surprised to find another kid, Adam, from my IES-EU program. Adam was pulling an all nighter because his group, group C had to leave for Eastern Europe at seven Friday morning. My group, group A, didn’t leave for Western Europe until Monday.
A guy named Eric introduced himself to me and asked if I had ever been to Kansas. I told him that I had probably driven through Kansas at one point or another, but couldn’t remember a specific time or reason for being in Kansas. Well he said he had spent a year in high school in Kansas and, naturally, he was a fan of Jayhawk basketball. I asked him if he followed K-State at all, and whether he knew coach Jim Woolridge. He said he didn’t like K-State, because they’re rivals with Kansas, and he had never heard of coach. But he said he followed Kansas basketball very closely, so we decided to watch some games together come tourney time. I also learned that Freiburg actually has a semi-pro basketball team. Eric said he attends a few games a year, but he said they suck and it’s hard to watch. I definitely want to check it out – see for myself.
A study abroad student from Canada was also at the party. Shortly after talking to her I learned that she had crone’s disease. It was an interesting tidbit of info to learn about a person and make relatable to the personal experience of a loved one. We talked about that briefly and then about American-Canadian politics. President Obama made his first foreign visit last week to Canada. So that was interesting.
I left the party at about 2:30 in the morning and went to bed. I woke up at about 10:30, went grocery shopping and then to the train station to meet Leah.
We dropped Leah’s luggage off at my room. Leah was hungry I took her to a Uni-Kabab Turkish restaurant in the city center. The restaurant served good kababs (like a gyro) and cheap cheese pizza (only three euro!). It’s an odd restaurant. Its walls have pictures of Communist leaders, like Che and a guy that I swear looks like Mao, but Leah doesn’t think it’s Mao, and a map of Cuba – which is strange because I don’t think there’s a picture of Castro – but they make good and cheap fast food. After a late lunch we went to a little restaurant that over looked the city. The restaurant was classy, an old building with Victorian décor and classical portraits. From the view we could see the whole city and well into the black forest. The forest was dark against the gray sky and the city sat below very pale. We could not afford a meal there, but I really wanted to take Leah to the best view in Freiburg, so we both ordered beers – Leah’s first German beer – and shared a slice of cheese cake.
We stayed at the restaurant on top of the hill for a little over an hour, long outlasting our drinks and cake, and then left for my room. By the time dinner came around we weren’t really hungry so we decided to go into town and eat a pretzel and then to the bars.
Martin’s Brauer was Freiburg’s oldest brewery. It’s a classic. Martin’s was located in a cellar. Leah said that it reminded her of Cheers, the local pub where all the friends get together. They served traditional German food and brewed two different beers, a blonde and a dunkel (dark beer). We ordered a pitcher of dunkel which only costs us 8.10 E (in Paris a single beer will cost 6 or 7 E). Dunkel taste sweet and smooth. It is a very good beer.
A group of about a dozen people with faces painted pink, wearing Mexican sombreros and black conquistador type outfits, marched into the cellar and started playing marching band type of jazz music. It was outrageous. They completely surrounded the table that was next to ours and played for about fifteen minutes. They had all the instruments of a typical marching band. The trombone and bass drum players stood closest to us. At the end of their performance they were given free beers. They then mingled with the folks around the bar. Just moments before they had arrived Leah said that she would like to see some live music. She was disappointed that she had not seen any live performances in Paris yet. And then, right here in little old Freiburg, we get a free and unexpected show.
We were almost done with our pitcher when Leah had to go to the restroom. She was gone for a little longer than a usual use of the facilities should take. I was starting to get worried, but then she came back with a smile on her face. She then explained that she got lost and ended up going down the wrong hallway after using the restrooms. It turns out that a few bars are connected and use the same restrooms. She accidentally took a wrong turn and ended up walking into another bar. In that bar a live band was playing classic rock music. We finished our drinks a few minutes later and paid for our drink and went to bar with the classic rock music.
All the folks in the bar were at least 35, and most were about 50. The music was good though so we decided to stay. The band was called “The Liverpool Beats.” They played everything from surf music to the Rolling Stones.
Our true Karnival week experience took place on Saturday.
We woke up at about ten o’clock. I made Leah and me some eggs and bratwurst. We also had an apple and then went into town for a pastry.
I wanted to show Leah around the city a bit, but we ended up getting swept away by a small parade. Hundreds, maybe a thousand people, were marching to a location near the city center. Groups of about a dozen people played music. These small bands played joyful jazz tunes. Beer was sold from small stands. Pastries and bratwurst were available at similar venders. Some of the costumes people wore were ridiculous: pirates, Native Americans, colonial wear, but the most common costume was an outfit that looked like a person who was tarred and feathered. These people also wore scary masks. I think it was some sort of traditional karnival costume meant to scare away the evil winter spirits.
All the bands had their time to play. Some were good, others were nicht so gut. We left the karnival festivities eventually and went to the Munster. It is a beautiful cathedral built in the gothic era. We spent some time there and ended up getting swept away by more karnival activities. That was pretty much how we spent the afternoon.
I cooked Leah some of my famous bratwurst and spaghetti dinner (yes, I eat bratwurst with almost every meal). Leah brought me some salted-butter from France (Germany doesn’t put any salt in its butter!) and it made my masterpiece dish even better. We drank some wine with dinner, the meal was perfect.
We went out that night to Aspek café. Aspek is a hip little café near the city center. After that we went to Art Café, another hip place, but the food and drink was too expensive. It was right next door to the Turkish place we ate at the day before, so we decided to go there. We split a pizza and a beer.
The next morning we woke up very late, around noon, showered and such and then went into town to eat some cheap Chinese food. It took us a long time to figure out what the Hell the Chinese food menu said in German, but eventually we ordered. I had some beef concoction and Leah had their chicken concoction.
Leah left at four p.m. Sunday. It was sad to see her go, but I’ll be in Paris on Thursday with my IES-EU program so it won’t be too long until we discover more of Europe together.
After seeing Leah off, I went into town to see about purchasing a phone card (I’m almost out of minutes). The store I needed to go to was closed for Sunday, but the streets were even more crowded with Karnival activities. It’s almost becoming too much!
I returned to my room and wrote this, which has become quite lengthy.
Off to Luxemburg tomorrow,
Cheers!
Wednesday, February 18, 2009
Freiburger Days
(These are a few pictures from my room)
I have to wake up at eight in the morning, shower, get dressed and eat and then go to class at 9 am on Mondays and Wednesday. I have three classes everyday, but on Monday and Wednesdays my classes go from 9 am – 2:20 pm. I have an hour and a half break after my second class, which gives me enough time to either go to my flat for lunch or to the Bavarian man that sells me bratwurst in front of the Munster.
I don’t have to wake up until 1 pm on Tuesdays and Thursdays since my first class on those days doesn’t start until 1:35. Usually I wake up at nine or ten and then have a lazy morning. Often I’ll eat breakfast with my suitemates.
Breakfast on Mondays and Wednesdays is usually just a bowl of cereal and a piece of bread. I eat fast on these days because I can’t miss the 8:44 tram. The tram runs every seven minutes in the morning and afternoon hours, and it takes about 10 minutes for the tram to arrive at the stop for the school and then another few minutes to walk to class. So if I miss the 8:44, I’m at least 5 minutes late to class. This happened once, but ever since I’ve made a great effort to make the 8:37, and if I miss that tram, I’ll still have the 8:44.
On Tuesdays and Thursdays I cook a carnivore’s breakfast of bratwurst and eggs.
The Coffee I drink is made from a French press I bought on one of the first days I was here. It took me at least two hours to find a store that sold a French press, but finally I found one on the fourth floor of a department store. I purchase my coffee from a little old lady that owns a small shop near the Munster. She sells good ground and whole bean coffee, spices and hard liquor. We used to have a hard time communicating, she doesn’t speak any English and my German is far from good. But now she knows what I want when I enter the store every week and a half, so it’s no problem.
About once a week, sometimes twice a week, Pedro and I jam in one of our rooms. We only have the one guitar that IES provided for us, so we take turns with it and then exchange it after each jam session. We’re trying to learn a few songs together. Since Pedro is a better singer, he usually sings while I play guitar. We’re also going to try to have him play guitar and sing while I play harmonica. Most of our jam sessions usually end up with us listening to Bob Dylan or country songs.
I meet up with Miriam about once a week for lunch. Miriam was a student at the University of Freiburg. She studied abroad at Redlands last year. Before I ever knew that I’d even be going abroad I knew her, so it’s quite a coincidence that I end up in her town this year.
This week we went to a pizza shop that was pretty cheap. I ordered a personal cheese pizza and a drink for just four euros. It’s nice to know someone around here that knows the ropes a little bit.
Wednesday night is discount night at the student bar. I’ve been to that twice. It is funny to watch Europeans dance to American music. They’re just not very good at dancing.
I try to make it to as many of the cafes I can here, but it’s too expensive to go everyday. In America I’d do a lot of my studying at a coffee shop, but it is fiscally impossible here. The coffee cost three euros at most places, so I do most of my studying and coffee drinking in my flat. It’s not too bad.
I love the view from my flat. Sometimes I take a study break just to look out the window and into the hills the surround the city. The hills are covered with trees, it looks pretty, but it looks gorgeous after it snows.
I don’t have to wake up until 1 pm on Tuesdays and Thursdays since my first class on those days doesn’t start until 1:35. Usually I wake up at nine or ten and then have a lazy morning. Often I’ll eat breakfast with my suitemates.
Breakfast on Mondays and Wednesdays is usually just a bowl of cereal and a piece of bread. I eat fast on these days because I can’t miss the 8:44 tram. The tram runs every seven minutes in the morning and afternoon hours, and it takes about 10 minutes for the tram to arrive at the stop for the school and then another few minutes to walk to class. So if I miss the 8:44, I’m at least 5 minutes late to class. This happened once, but ever since I’ve made a great effort to make the 8:37, and if I miss that tram, I’ll still have the 8:44.
On Tuesdays and Thursdays I cook a carnivore’s breakfast of bratwurst and eggs.
The Coffee I drink is made from a French press I bought on one of the first days I was here. It took me at least two hours to find a store that sold a French press, but finally I found one on the fourth floor of a department store. I purchase my coffee from a little old lady that owns a small shop near the Munster. She sells good ground and whole bean coffee, spices and hard liquor. We used to have a hard time communicating, she doesn’t speak any English and my German is far from good. But now she knows what I want when I enter the store every week and a half, so it’s no problem.
About once a week, sometimes twice a week, Pedro and I jam in one of our rooms. We only have the one guitar that IES provided for us, so we take turns with it and then exchange it after each jam session. We’re trying to learn a few songs together. Since Pedro is a better singer, he usually sings while I play guitar. We’re also going to try to have him play guitar and sing while I play harmonica. Most of our jam sessions usually end up with us listening to Bob Dylan or country songs.
I meet up with Miriam about once a week for lunch. Miriam was a student at the University of Freiburg. She studied abroad at Redlands last year. Before I ever knew that I’d even be going abroad I knew her, so it’s quite a coincidence that I end up in her town this year.
This week we went to a pizza shop that was pretty cheap. I ordered a personal cheese pizza and a drink for just four euros. It’s nice to know someone around here that knows the ropes a little bit.
Wednesday night is discount night at the student bar. I’ve been to that twice. It is funny to watch Europeans dance to American music. They’re just not very good at dancing.
I try to make it to as many of the cafes I can here, but it’s too expensive to go everyday. In America I’d do a lot of my studying at a coffee shop, but it is fiscally impossible here. The coffee cost three euros at most places, so I do most of my studying and coffee drinking in my flat. It’s not too bad.
I love the view from my flat. Sometimes I take a study break just to look out the window and into the hills the surround the city. The hills are covered with trees, it looks pretty, but it looks gorgeous after it snows.
Sunday, February 15, 2009
Two Videos From Estonia
Also, I added photos to my "Ich bin ein Berliner" post. Check those out as well!
Valentine's Day in France
Last night was one of those nights that cause me to twist and turn. I don’t know why, but I couldn’t go to sleep, which was worrisome because I had to be at the train station by 9:03 in the morning, it was three in the morning and I was not asleep.
Well I caught about four hours of sleep before I woke at about eight o’clock. I rolled around in bed, then took a shower and made my way to the train station. It was a beautiful day, only a few white clouds in the sky and just a slight tingle of cold.
A man checked my tram pass on the way to the train station. It was only the second time someone has checked. He was nice about it and I was able to understand what he was saying, but he started to speak English as soon as I tried to respond.
Oh well.
My monthly tram pass takes me all around the surrounding area on weekends. So I figured that since I pay for it anyway, it would be stupid not to take advantage of it. At 2:30 Leah will meet me here in Strasbourg, which is a moderate size city on the French side of the French/German boarder. It is currently 10:50, and I’m eating my brunch in a bakery.
As I drink my coffee and eat my ham and cheese sandwich, Elton John sings “Song for You” through the stereo. The song is a nice reminder of home and perfect morning music. I can’t help but feel like a world citizen and confident young man as I sit here alone in a café that is thousands of miles away from what I know as home and across the boarder from the nation where I had spent the last night.
The people around the bakery are speaking French. This makes me recall a conversation I had during the Swedes’ farewell party at the student bar last Wednesday. Madeline had raised a good question: she asked, “Is it strange for you to travel and hear so many different languages within such a small geographic area?” I thought about it, and said, “Yeah, it is sort of strange.”
“Yeah I mean you live on a continent where the language is the same,” Madeline said. “If we, here in Europe, travel from Germany to France or Germany to Sweden, the language changes, we must learn many languages.”
“It is different than my experience,” I responded, now thinking of the geographic landscape of the United States. I considered Mexico and very briefly French Canada, but quickly thought of the size of the United States compared to Europe. To get an idea of this comparison, think of Germany – one of the larger European States – which is the same geographic size as the state of Montana. “If I was to travel from California to New York,” I said. “All the states in between would only speak English.”
I think about this conversation now that I sit in Strasbourg. I had to transfer trains in Mannheim, a small German city, which was only a few miles from the French boarder. All the folks there spoke German, then just moments later I crossed the boarder, and suddenly everyone is speaking French. It is interesting, but a little jarring. I’m used to hearing German, though I have trouble composing German sentences, I can usually understand some of what I hear.
But French, French is a different matter completely. Suddenly in France, I’m at the mercy of the French conductor at the train station and the French server at the bakery. Until you’re in such situations you never knew how far such one word phrases as, “mercy,” “pardon” and “bonjour,” could take you.
---
Well, I just returned from Strasbourg. It was a great trip. Leah and I had a wonderful, one day late, Valentine's Day date. The city was wonderful, beautiful and all other possitive adjectives that apply.
Well I caught about four hours of sleep before I woke at about eight o’clock. I rolled around in bed, then took a shower and made my way to the train station. It was a beautiful day, only a few white clouds in the sky and just a slight tingle of cold.
A man checked my tram pass on the way to the train station. It was only the second time someone has checked. He was nice about it and I was able to understand what he was saying, but he started to speak English as soon as I tried to respond.
Oh well.
My monthly tram pass takes me all around the surrounding area on weekends. So I figured that since I pay for it anyway, it would be stupid not to take advantage of it. At 2:30 Leah will meet me here in Strasbourg, which is a moderate size city on the French side of the French/German boarder. It is currently 10:50, and I’m eating my brunch in a bakery.
As I drink my coffee and eat my ham and cheese sandwich, Elton John sings “Song for You” through the stereo. The song is a nice reminder of home and perfect morning music. I can’t help but feel like a world citizen and confident young man as I sit here alone in a café that is thousands of miles away from what I know as home and across the boarder from the nation where I had spent the last night.
The people around the bakery are speaking French. This makes me recall a conversation I had during the Swedes’ farewell party at the student bar last Wednesday. Madeline had raised a good question: she asked, “Is it strange for you to travel and hear so many different languages within such a small geographic area?” I thought about it, and said, “Yeah, it is sort of strange.”
“Yeah I mean you live on a continent where the language is the same,” Madeline said. “If we, here in Europe, travel from Germany to France or Germany to Sweden, the language changes, we must learn many languages.”
“It is different than my experience,” I responded, now thinking of the geographic landscape of the United States. I considered Mexico and very briefly French Canada, but quickly thought of the size of the United States compared to Europe. To get an idea of this comparison, think of Germany – one of the larger European States – which is the same geographic size as the state of Montana. “If I was to travel from California to New York,” I said. “All the states in between would only speak English.”
I think about this conversation now that I sit in Strasbourg. I had to transfer trains in Mannheim, a small German city, which was only a few miles from the French boarder. All the folks there spoke German, then just moments later I crossed the boarder, and suddenly everyone is speaking French. It is interesting, but a little jarring. I’m used to hearing German, though I have trouble composing German sentences, I can usually understand some of what I hear.
But French, French is a different matter completely. Suddenly in France, I’m at the mercy of the French conductor at the train station and the French server at the bakery. Until you’re in such situations you never knew how far such one word phrases as, “mercy,” “pardon” and “bonjour,” could take you.
---
Well, I just returned from Strasbourg. It was a great trip. Leah and I had a wonderful, one day late, Valentine's Day date. The city was wonderful, beautiful and all other possitive adjectives that apply.
Saturday, February 14, 2009
A Farewell Night with the Swedes and then to Geneva
I’m sitting at a Starbucks, looking out the window toward a shopping center in Geneva. I just purchased the most expensive cup of coffee that I ever hope to purchase. One cup of venti sized black coffee: 5.40 Swiss Franks. One Frank is a little less than an American Dollar. So my cup of coffee cost me about five American Dollars comparatively.
Well the point is, I decided to come into the Starbucks to get some writing done so I can update my blog soon, and also to get off these Geneva streets, which seem to be plated with gold and shops and things just as expensive.
I left Freiburg with my program yesterday morning at 8am. It was snowing pretty hard when we left. It is the only big snow that I’ve seen since I arrived in Germany. It came down pretty heavy, so it took longer than it should have to get to Geneva, but we did arrive on time for our first lecture at the U.N.
I had stayed out pretty late the night before we left for Geneva. Wednesday night was the last night my Swedish suitemate, Petra, was in town. Since the regular university students at the University of Freiburg are finishing up their semester, a lot of the students here are leaving. She’ll be back in late April for the beginning of the University’s next semester.
Well in the last few weeks I have become rather close to Petra and her fellow Swedish friends she came abroad with. Often her friends Madeline and David would come over for dinner or movie nights. I found the Swedish since of humor very similar to the humor that I’m used to in the States – cynical and often of poor taste – which often sums my sense of humor up pretty well. It also helped that the Swedes speak better English than they do German, so they actually had an easier time talking to me than Germans. This didn’t help my Germanic language development, but it did help me gain a few new friends.
We also watched all the Godfather movies together, while we drank wine and ate pizza. I’m sad that they’re leaving. It was nice to have met them.
So since I had stayed at the bar for most of the night with my Swedish friends, it was hard to wake up. I did manage to wake up, and do all the necessary morning exercises in order to make my way to the bus. But I slept most of the way to Geneva.
We immediately went into a lecture at the UN office soon as we arrived in Geneva. The lectures were some of the least favorite that I have heard since in Europe. They pretty much reaffirmed my belief that the UN is a useless organization. The UN is good in theory, but in practice it is about as useful as a beer to a Mormon. The UN can’t enforce any of its sanctions, and enforcement is the cornerstone of authority – well, actually enforcement is authority and the UN has neither.
That night my program paid for a fundo dinner. I never had fundo before, so it was a new, especially French Genevan experience. It went well with the Geneva white wine that came with our meal. I sat with some of the kids from my program known loosely as the Southerners. One kid, Mike, was from the Outer Banks area, about a half hour out of Elizabeth City. We talked about the area a little bit. He told me of some beaches I should visit in the summer. All the southerners loved Old Crow Medicine Show, especially their song “Wagon Wheel.” So it was nice to find some Americana blue grass music company in the middle of Switzerland.
That night I went to a microbrewery that was next door to the hotel. The beer wasn’t very good. I think I’m getting too used to German beer already. One of the people I was with commented that, “we’ve only been in Germany for a month and we’re already beer snobs.” And it’s true. The German beer is far superior to anything else.
I woke up this morning, ate continental breakfast at the hotel and then went to two more UN lectures. They were about the same. Perhaps the most pathetic UN institution is the human rights watch group. I won’t get into that too much, except to say that it is not much of a watch groups since each nation is in charge of drafting its own report on human rights, and, of course, China can veto any enforcement action since it sits on the Security Council.
After the lecture, we had a group picture taken in front of the Woodrow Wilson memorial. They love Woodrow Wilson here; they have a hotel and a UN building and a fountain named after him. He is the guy that conceived the idea of international collaboration in international politics.
Overall, I agree that its good to have such forums to discuss our international problems and interest, but to form such institutions that pretend to have some sort of authority seems weak and illegitimate. I think that having such institutions lessens the legitimacy of some of the missions that the UN addresses that are legitimate, such things as collaborative humanitarian aid and refuge relief efforts.
Soon I’ll be leaving back for Freiburg. Tomorrow I have a long day of homework, and then I’m going to meet up with Leah in Strasburg.
Cheers!
Well the point is, I decided to come into the Starbucks to get some writing done so I can update my blog soon, and also to get off these Geneva streets, which seem to be plated with gold and shops and things just as expensive.
I left Freiburg with my program yesterday morning at 8am. It was snowing pretty hard when we left. It is the only big snow that I’ve seen since I arrived in Germany. It came down pretty heavy, so it took longer than it should have to get to Geneva, but we did arrive on time for our first lecture at the U.N.
I had stayed out pretty late the night before we left for Geneva. Wednesday night was the last night my Swedish suitemate, Petra, was in town. Since the regular university students at the University of Freiburg are finishing up their semester, a lot of the students here are leaving. She’ll be back in late April for the beginning of the University’s next semester.
Well in the last few weeks I have become rather close to Petra and her fellow Swedish friends she came abroad with. Often her friends Madeline and David would come over for dinner or movie nights. I found the Swedish since of humor very similar to the humor that I’m used to in the States – cynical and often of poor taste – which often sums my sense of humor up pretty well. It also helped that the Swedes speak better English than they do German, so they actually had an easier time talking to me than Germans. This didn’t help my Germanic language development, but it did help me gain a few new friends.
We also watched all the Godfather movies together, while we drank wine and ate pizza. I’m sad that they’re leaving. It was nice to have met them.
So since I had stayed at the bar for most of the night with my Swedish friends, it was hard to wake up. I did manage to wake up, and do all the necessary morning exercises in order to make my way to the bus. But I slept most of the way to Geneva.
We immediately went into a lecture at the UN office soon as we arrived in Geneva. The lectures were some of the least favorite that I have heard since in Europe. They pretty much reaffirmed my belief that the UN is a useless organization. The UN is good in theory, but in practice it is about as useful as a beer to a Mormon. The UN can’t enforce any of its sanctions, and enforcement is the cornerstone of authority – well, actually enforcement is authority and the UN has neither.
That night my program paid for a fundo dinner. I never had fundo before, so it was a new, especially French Genevan experience. It went well with the Geneva white wine that came with our meal. I sat with some of the kids from my program known loosely as the Southerners. One kid, Mike, was from the Outer Banks area, about a half hour out of Elizabeth City. We talked about the area a little bit. He told me of some beaches I should visit in the summer. All the southerners loved Old Crow Medicine Show, especially their song “Wagon Wheel.” So it was nice to find some Americana blue grass music company in the middle of Switzerland.
That night I went to a microbrewery that was next door to the hotel. The beer wasn’t very good. I think I’m getting too used to German beer already. One of the people I was with commented that, “we’ve only been in Germany for a month and we’re already beer snobs.” And it’s true. The German beer is far superior to anything else.
I woke up this morning, ate continental breakfast at the hotel and then went to two more UN lectures. They were about the same. Perhaps the most pathetic UN institution is the human rights watch group. I won’t get into that too much, except to say that it is not much of a watch groups since each nation is in charge of drafting its own report on human rights, and, of course, China can veto any enforcement action since it sits on the Security Council.
After the lecture, we had a group picture taken in front of the Woodrow Wilson memorial. They love Woodrow Wilson here; they have a hotel and a UN building and a fountain named after him. He is the guy that conceived the idea of international collaboration in international politics.
Overall, I agree that its good to have such forums to discuss our international problems and interest, but to form such institutions that pretend to have some sort of authority seems weak and illegitimate. I think that having such institutions lessens the legitimacy of some of the missions that the UN addresses that are legitimate, such things as collaborative humanitarian aid and refuge relief efforts.
Soon I’ll be leaving back for Freiburg. Tomorrow I have a long day of homework, and then I’m going to meet up with Leah in Strasburg.
Cheers!
Ich bin ein Berliner
I left Estonia on a bright Estonian day and headed for Berlin. The flight only took about an hour but the bus ride from the airport to the hostel took about another 45 minutes. The plane ride was pleasant but the bus ride was crowded and uncomfortable. Finally we arrived at the Hostel at 11:30.
Our hostel was called Hotel Alex. It was located on the Eastern side of Berlin, near some old buildings and next to both a tram stop and a bus stop. Its location was extremely convenient and it was near a few restaurants. I was travel weary that first night, so I spent some time on-line, drank a beer with my new roommate and then went to bed at about 1 am.
The next morning we had an optional tour of Berlin. I decided to go on this tour. It would have been nice but it was cold. The winds were a howlin’ and the snow was a fallin’. The sights we saw were mostly the historic sights, like the Reichstag, the Holocaust memorial, Checkpoint Charlie, the Brandenburg Gate, the Berlin Wall and a flurry of other culturally significant sites. The tour was exhausting, but I would have felt bad had I missed it.
After the tour I went to lunch at a Dunkin’ Donuts. It was pretty funny eating at a chain that is so Eastern American, that hasn’t made it to California yet, but has a number of franchises in Berlin. I thought of Dad, and knew that if he were in Berlin, he’d have stopped at the Dunkin’ Donuts.
Museums and Cathedrals were the next stops on my agenda. They were all nice, but I won’t get too into that stuff. I was mostly anxious to get out of the cold and find a place to watch the super bowl in the evening.
I ate dinner with some folks from my program at a restaurant that cost too much. A simple chicken dinner with a beer cost me nine euros. I went back to my room and edited some articles for the Bulldog, wrote the sports round-up and took care of my other administrative duties relating to my Sports Editor job.
At around 11, I met with some guys to watch the super bowl. One of the guys played football for Claremont. I covered his game against Redlands. The Bulldogs had made the Claremont game their homecoming and handled of the Athenas appropriately, kicking their butts 49-0. It was fun watching the game with that group of guys. We all had played football in high school. Most of the breaks in the action were spent talking about the “Glory Days,” so it was kind of funny when Bruce Springsteen played that song during half time.
Besides the Deutsch announcers, the German coverage of the game was a lot different than the American coverage that we were used to. There were no commercials at all during the game and the German television’s replay capacity was somewhat limited. The German’s sideline reporter didn’t have much access. All he was able to do was interview fans.
It was a great game, but I didn’t get to sleep until 4:30 in the morning and I was due to be awake at 7:30, so that made Monday pretty rough.
We were to wear business-formal clothing for both our lectures on Monday. Our first trip was to the Defense Ministry. A Coronal gave us a lecture on German foreign policy with special attention to the German’s involvement in Afghanistan. It was a good lecture and I found it to be in stark contrast with the military point of view of the Estonian Government which showed just how much foreign policy decisions and attitudes are shaped by a nation’s history. Estonia, which is a nation that has a long history of military vulnerability, will be quite to dedicate troops to ally causes if it means security in return. Germany, on the other hand, is very sensible to any questions of its exertion of military power.
We then viewed the Reichstag, which is the beautiful building in which the German Parliament holds chambers. The building was reopened for use by the Parliament in 1999, before that Germany had its capital elsewhere. Prior to the fall of the Soviet Union, Germany had two capitals. The Reichstag is only a few yards from where the Berlin wall once stood. Old pictures of the imposing building next to the wall are daunting, especially when taking in the building now.
The Reichstag was almost completely destroyed during the Second World War. American bombs had brought down its roof, including its epic and beautiful dome. But it has been rebuilt and the dome has been replaced. The new dome is quite a sight to see. It is constructed of a series of mirrors accompanied by a walk way that visitors to the Reichstag can take to the top of the dome. From the top of the dome, visitors can see the whole city. And it is quite a site. But perhaps more significant and impressive, at least it was significant to me, were the mirrors. The mirrors on the top of the Reichstag reflected the images of the people walking up the dome down to the floor below so all members of Parliament can simply look up to see that it is the people they represent.
Our hostel was called Hotel Alex. It was located on the Eastern side of Berlin, near some old buildings and next to both a tram stop and a bus stop. Its location was extremely convenient and it was near a few restaurants. I was travel weary that first night, so I spent some time on-line, drank a beer with my new roommate and then went to bed at about 1 am.
The next morning we had an optional tour of Berlin. I decided to go on this tour. It would have been nice but it was cold. The winds were a howlin’ and the snow was a fallin’. The sights we saw were mostly the historic sights, like the Reichstag, the Holocaust memorial, Checkpoint Charlie, the Brandenburg Gate, the Berlin Wall and a flurry of other culturally significant sites. The tour was exhausting, but I would have felt bad had I missed it.
After the tour I went to lunch at a Dunkin’ Donuts. It was pretty funny eating at a chain that is so Eastern American, that hasn’t made it to California yet, but has a number of franchises in Berlin. I thought of Dad, and knew that if he were in Berlin, he’d have stopped at the Dunkin’ Donuts.
Museums and Cathedrals were the next stops on my agenda. They were all nice, but I won’t get too into that stuff. I was mostly anxious to get out of the cold and find a place to watch the super bowl in the evening.
I ate dinner with some folks from my program at a restaurant that cost too much. A simple chicken dinner with a beer cost me nine euros. I went back to my room and edited some articles for the Bulldog, wrote the sports round-up and took care of my other administrative duties relating to my Sports Editor job.
At around 11, I met with some guys to watch the super bowl. One of the guys played football for Claremont. I covered his game against Redlands. The Bulldogs had made the Claremont game their homecoming and handled of the Athenas appropriately, kicking their butts 49-0. It was fun watching the game with that group of guys. We all had played football in high school. Most of the breaks in the action were spent talking about the “Glory Days,” so it was kind of funny when Bruce Springsteen played that song during half time.
Besides the Deutsch announcers, the German coverage of the game was a lot different than the American coverage that we were used to. There were no commercials at all during the game and the German television’s replay capacity was somewhat limited. The German’s sideline reporter didn’t have much access. All he was able to do was interview fans.
It was a great game, but I didn’t get to sleep until 4:30 in the morning and I was due to be awake at 7:30, so that made Monday pretty rough.
We were to wear business-formal clothing for both our lectures on Monday. Our first trip was to the Defense Ministry. A Coronal gave us a lecture on German foreign policy with special attention to the German’s involvement in Afghanistan. It was a good lecture and I found it to be in stark contrast with the military point of view of the Estonian Government which showed just how much foreign policy decisions and attitudes are shaped by a nation’s history. Estonia, which is a nation that has a long history of military vulnerability, will be quite to dedicate troops to ally causes if it means security in return. Germany, on the other hand, is very sensible to any questions of its exertion of military power.
We then viewed the Reichstag, which is the beautiful building in which the German Parliament holds chambers. The building was reopened for use by the Parliament in 1999, before that Germany had its capital elsewhere. Prior to the fall of the Soviet Union, Germany had two capitals. The Reichstag is only a few yards from where the Berlin wall once stood. Old pictures of the imposing building next to the wall are daunting, especially when taking in the building now.
The Reichstag was almost completely destroyed during the Second World War. American bombs had brought down its roof, including its epic and beautiful dome. But it has been rebuilt and the dome has been replaced. The new dome is quite a sight to see. It is constructed of a series of mirrors accompanied by a walk way that visitors to the Reichstag can take to the top of the dome. From the top of the dome, visitors can see the whole city. And it is quite a site. But perhaps more significant and impressive, at least it was significant to me, were the mirrors. The mirrors on the top of the Reichstag reflected the images of the people walking up the dome down to the floor below so all members of Parliament can simply look up to see that it is the people they represent.
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