The European City

I guess two days has gone by since I last wrote. The time here flies faster than I thought it would. Never before did I think I’d like living in a City, which Freiburg, even though it’s the same size as Riverside, definitely is.

Freiburg is about as friendly a city as I’ve been to. European culture in cities involves a lot more daily concourse among its general citizenry than American life. Still though, the Germans are private people, which I definitely appreciate and respect. It is uncommon for a German to smile at a stranger or to greet a stranger or to even make eye contact with a stranger. By doing so, I’ve revealed myself as an American more than once, and I was greeted with awkward smiles and perplexed faces, even though I was trying to be polite. I enjoy this though idiosyncrasy among the Germans, how many times do we in America make superficial smiles, greetings or small talk? Perhaps 10% of the time we’re sincere about our greetings.

In these first few days I’ve tried to think of how best to approach my limited time abroad. With much advice from Brett Aho, I decided that I must try, and I almost want to say, “at all cost,” avoid spending too much time with Americans. I want to learn the German language to the best of my ability while still exploring the culture and country and maintaining perfect grades. I plan to read at least one article from a German newspaper a day and carry out conversations with my suitemates while taking an ambitious approach toward my Deutsch class. I also figure that the more sincere I am toward my attempt at learning German the better Ambassador for America I’ll be. I don’t want to be seen as an ignorant and self centered American.

So far I feel like I’ve made some progress in learning German, but what progress I’ve made is only inches, and I have miles to go before I start to feel comfortable. Ideally, I want to be able to carry out simple conversations with my suitemates before the semester is over.

My suitemates are good people so far as I can tell. One of them, and lordy he has a complicated name that I already forget, is a law student at the University of Freiburg. He is currently taking a class in American Civil law. When he graduates from law school he plans to practice civil law, so American civil law is one of his elective classes. He is astounded that American civil law is often decided in front of a jury. Class action lawsuits also are strange to Europeans. We had a discussion about this, in English. I hope to talk to him in German about German law sometime. Petra, another one of my suitemates, is also a law student. She is actually from Sweden and using this year to study abroad in the Freiburg law school, which is supposed to be one of the best in Europe for law. Again, it would be really nice if I could have taken a class in the regular university, but my German is probably a few years away from something like that being possible. The girl that lives in the room next to mine, Merriam, the girl that Justin was drinking tea with, is studying English. She’s currently reading Charles Dickens and working on a paper about the Bavarian influence in language, I think – it sounds really complicated. The only way I remember one of my roommates name is that it sounds like “omen” but I’m sure that’s not how you spell his name. He’s a geology student. He has the worst English of the group, but he seems like a shy and rather modest individual.

I woke up and caught the tram into town yesterday. I didn’t eat breakfast because I thought it was going to be provided for us like it was the day before. But it wasn’t, so I had to sit through about two and a half more hours of orientation. I sat next to a pretty annoying kid from Texas who attends the University of Missouri. He was loud and I was hungry and when I’m hungry I get impatient, so I was quick to leave after the orientation was over.

I went to a little café that looked pretty hip. I parked my ass on a stool at the bar and looked over the menu and realized there was nothing that I understood. Finally I found the word yogurt, so I ordered that and Kaffee (coffee). Unfortunately it was just a pretty small, by American standards, yogurt milkshake and, again, by American standards, small cup of coffee. The whole thing ended up costing me about 5 Euros and I was still pretty hungry. I decided to give Brett a call to see if he can give me some tips about what to do for breakfast, well, it was more like lunch, but you get the idea.

It was around noon when I called Brett and, of course, he was just getting up from bed. So he told me that he’d meet me a little ways down from the city center on Kaiser-Joseph Strabe. In the mean time I went to a bakery and ate a pretzel and a cup of coffee. The price here was more fair, only about three euro. I called Brett again and told him to meet me at the Bakerei (bakery). I read from Clarence Thomas’ memoir until Brett arrived. The large pretzel filled me up, but I still wanted to see more of Freiburg and get some tips on where to shop and what to buy, because if anyone knows how to live thriftily, it’s Brett Aho. We walked around the city for a while. He showed me some of the ropes. After about an hour and a half we walked up to little hill that overlooked the city. There was a little restaurant there and I offered to buy Brett a beer. I figured it was the least I could do for the tour and advise he was giving me. We drank a beer and ate rum cake and over looked the city for a while. But he had to leave for a doctor’s appointment at 4:30; he needs to get malaria pills for his upcoming trip to Africa, which begins in a week. So we left and went back into town.

I decided then to shop at some of the stores that Brett had pointed out. My first mission was to purchase a French press coffee maker. There was no way that I was going to survive this semester on such small servings of coffee. Even if I was to try to drink just coffee from the coffee shops I’d eventually go broke way too soon. Then I went to the grocery store and bought some food for dinner and breakfast. Europeans generally purchase just enough food to eat for the day and then go shopping everyday or every other day. It is one of the reasons there is so much life within the cities. I then went back to my room, made myself some eggs and bread with jam. I also ate an apple. It was simple, but I was satisfied.

After dinner I made myself some coffee and wrote my weekly round up for the Bulldog Weekly. It was fun to write and I’m glad that I’ll still be able to do it from abroad. It’ll keep my journalist chops sharp. Plus, I just love writing about sporting events. If you were to read this weekly round up, you’ll detect a few hints of sarcasm that usually aren’t there. But overall it’s good work and perhaps even better with the humor.

I took my time and wrote a lengthy sports round up. I realized too, that it is good to have at least a little income this semester. I had spent a lot of money between purchasing the phone, a monthly tram pass, the train ticket from Frankfurt to Freiburg (although I got more than my money’s worth on that train ride) and, of course, the ever so necessary French press (which will honestly save me money in the long run).

But all my purchases have been good ones, besides perhaps the yogurt drink at the café. And I don’t feel, except maybe at some of the orientation meetings, that much of my time has been wasted. I’m here to be a scholar, see as much of Europe as possible and learn and know the German peoples I meet. I feel the European Union program will serve me well in all three of these goals and I will take it upon myself to see even more of Europe and to know the German peoples even better than what’s required.

I met with Brett again later that night. He wanted to come over and try a drink from my French press. Justin wasn’t around because he was visiting some family friends in France. Oh, and to answer what he’s doing in Europe: nothing, he’s doing nothing but hanging out until his next semester begins in a couple weeks. He’ll be going back to Egypt for the rest of the semester. One of my roommates had a bunch of friends over that night to watch a Dutch show that he called, “So bad, it’s funny.” It was in German, so I didn’t understand a word of it. So Brett and I drank some coffee and then met some of the friends he had made in his German language class.

He told me that, while he loved the city of Freiburg and the University, he regrets not spending more time with native Germans and warned me not to make the same mistake. The friends Brett has in Freiburg are mostly American. So we went to one of his friend’s place for a few beers. We left at 12:30 to catch the last tram back to our dorms.

I woke up late the next morning, it was about 10 o’clock. Some of the other kids from the European Union program were going to meet for a hike through the Black Forrest. I was going to go, but they met at 9:50, I tried to get down to the train station to see if they were still there, but they weren’t, so I decided instead to go into town and get a bakery item and returned to my room to have breakfast and coffee. I ate breakfast with Merriam and talked a little bit about Edgar Allen Poe and my ambitions to learn German (we talked about Poe because the German newspaper I had picked up had an article comparing him to some German authors. I attempted to read this article by translating it through Google’s language tools). I then spent some time reading the newspaper, the Poe article and I read some about “New York staunt über Wunder auf dem Hudson.” It was an article about the US Airways jet that made the miraculous landing in the Hudson River. That’s quite something. Later in the after, at about 2 o’clock, I met Brett for lunch. I told him that I missed my hike in the Black Forest, so we decided to buy some Bratwursts and break rolls and hike into the forest, make a fire and roast our Bratwursts. It was a fine idea. It was beautiful day in Freiburg and the black forest.

After that it was around 4:30, Brett had some school work to do, and I didn’t want to bother him, so I went into the city and bought some food to last me through the weekend (very few stores are open on Sundays). I came back here, my suite, made some food and then started to write this, now that I look at it, lengthy account of my past two days. And as I write this and reflect on just the act of writing this, it has felt like the time has flown by.

Brett wants to show me what a small German village looks like, because, he said that while I’ll see plenty of Europe’s fine cities during my field trips with the European Union program, I will not get to see how the Country Germans live. Tomorrow is the perfect time to go on such a trip, it is the last day before classes start and there is nothing on the schedule for me to attend with IES. Anyway, he has to find a headstone in this graveyard that belongs to a man that he met in Indiana over the summer. Long story, but Brett spent a lot of time in the Midwest this summer, pretty much bumming around, and made good friends with an older Indiana man. This man asked Brett to find a family headstone that is centuries old and to take a picture of it. It sounds like an interesting adventure, so I agreed to go. It’ll cost me about 20 Euros, but Brett said he’d buy me lunch, so, to me, its well worth it.

My suitemate, the one that has the complicated name that I must learn, who is studying the law, just invited me to a party tonight. Sounds like I have night plans. I’ll be sure to write more soon, that is, if this account of the last couple days doesn’t bore you too much. I’m writing and saving these accounts on my computer. It makes for a pretty good journal that I can print out at the end of my time here. I’ll try to write these every other day, if not more often. I’m also keeping some notes in a notebook, but I’ve only taken a few pictures.