subscribeOper und Olympiapark!
Tuesday July 11, 2006
Samstag, 8 Juli 2006:
Saturday was a rather leisurely day. I spent the morning and early afternoon attempting internet, then at 4pm met at the Institut for the Opera. We took the U-Bahn to Odeonsplatz, which is pretty much one stop north of Marienplatz, and got out into the gorgeous afternoon sunlight, surrounded by beautiful buildings. The richly carved, high structures were extremely old, and in the midst of them, at the end of a full street, was the Opera house. Immediately entering into the square, my smile sank. There was a huge screen erected with large speakers in the square, and people had placed picnic blankets on the roughly cobbled stones, preparing to watch the Opera outside. Like the concert in the park series the New York symphony puts on every summer, people came prepared with picnics and blankets—but this was in the middle of a cobble-stone square. Insanity!
We’d all come dressed up—it was the Opera! You dress up for the Opera!—and I was terribly annoyed—I’d worn a skirt!—that I was supposed to sit on the ground. They might have warned us, but instead the description had merely mentioned it’d be free Wagner. I might have Googled it or such, but intermittent internet leaves me less eager to Google things of questionable natures. So. Getting on with my story. We found a place and sat, and I spread my jacket along the ground in an attempt at comfort. (At least I’d brought a jacket! Okay, enough bitterness.) The Opera started after a brief introduction in German (I knew the story thanks to Medieval Lit class last semester) and I was surprised immediately to see the main stars were—well—middle-aged. Tristan and Isolde are supposed to be young romantic lovers, but Tristan had a beer belly and Isolde was definitely not capturing my imagination as a virginal maiden of Ireland, but oh well. Eighteen, forty-eight, no matter. It’s Opera, after all, and I expect those sorts of roles take a career’s worth of singing to garner, as opposed to Broadway, where they cast a person based on looks and/or appeal. (Ever wonder why Backstreet Boys have been cast in Rent?)
It was interesting, though, and staged on what appeared to be a modern cruise ship, with medieval costumes. Weird. Though nothing beats Dead Man Walking, the Opera, that we saw in Pittsburgh. Its really redeeming factor for me was the music. It was fantastic, and seeing German (the subtitles were in German, logically) sung and written in such poetically complex grammar was fascinating. For example in English, in a song like America the Beautiful, you know the line “O’er purple mountains majesty”? Well, in German, they do the same thing, as far as I can wager. It’s not quite like using a contraction to take the place of a word to shorten it for ease/speech, but more used because of syllabic or rhyming necessity. In the opera they kept shortening the German from “Ich sehe ihn”—(Isch Say-uh Eeen)—to “Ich seh’ ihn”—(Isch Say Eeen)—so it would flow better with the music. Pretty fun, for someone as nerdy as me. It kept me from wondering just how many layers of mascara Isolde had to be wearing for that spiders’ legs look she had goin’ on…
Needless to say, it was very blatantly obvious that it was time to go after the first act (of three). If my butt hadn’t told me, my cramped legs would have. (Note to self: if ever invited to a free opera, or theatre show, or concert, or anything involving a 5-hour commitment… inquire as to its precise location.) Mary and I made our way from the cramped crowd to the U-Bahn, which we took to meet Ian and a few people at the Olympiapark, the 1976 summer Olympics site now used for various things, including acting as host for a major World Cup (Weltmeister, or WM) “Fanfest.” The park is huge, first off. It takes up a huge section on the city map (add it with Englisher Garten, a few blocks southeast, and together that’s about Central Park, or near enough). Surrounded by highways and threaded throughout with strings of trees and loping sidewalks, it’s an incredible place. I’d seen and read about the famous park in my tourbook, and going there and getting to see the brilliantly designed waving glass of the park’s buildings’ roofs was fantastic. In the center of the park was the Olympiaturm, the television broadcasting tower erected for the Olympics that towers over the park and most of München. We walked through the Fanfest—a carnival-like atmosphere of Bier, pretzels, sausages, and port-o-potties where black-red-and-gold-wearing people surrounded us—and met Ian and a few of his friends, one of whom was from Lyon, France (I can’t pronounce her name well enough to spell it phonetically) and Noreen, I believe, from Ohio.
We took a stroll down to Tollwood, a sort of faire/flea market place of colorful crafts and vendors and food from every possible nation, with a few Biergartens thrown in for good German measure. I got a delicious döner kebab, a somewhat gyro-like sandwich (meat, lettuce, tomato, onions, sauce) that had been sprinkled with a spicy red peppery/paprika spice. (I managed the majority of it without complaining overly much! It had an almost pleasant zing to it. As Mary and Ian had some difficulty, I would have to say I miiiight be comparatively acclimating myself to spicy foods…perhaps. Let’s not try that theory out, though, Bryan, hehe.) Things were sehr teuer, generally (very expensive) but it was a faire, and they *were* capitalizing on the German Fußball fans being willing to spend 4€ for a rather cheap sandwich. Ah, well.
Zeb (we met him at the Stammtisch, and again Friday) came to join us and soon it was the four of us, Mary, Zeb, Ian, and me. Possibly for lack of anything better to do or out of sheer curiosity, I’m not sure which, we decided to check out the Olympiaturm, the tower, and see what they’d charge for going to the top. By the time we exited Tollwood and made our way slowly to the tower, it was quite dark, but the Fußball match was still going strongly, the German fans cheering intermittently. The road wound its way up a hill and beside a curving lake, where opposite where we stood the largest of the screens was erected, partially on top of the water. We passed a few thick stacks of fireworks, idly being watched by some Polizei (Policemen). Supposedly after the game—win or lose—they were to have fireworks. Seeing fireworks from the Olympiaturm suddenly made going there all the more interesting.
The elevator to the top of the tower was faster than any I’d ever been in. This one went a good 7 meters per second or something like that, zooming upward and sending my stomach somewhere below my knees. It deposited us on a round deck indoors, with a breathtaking view of the twinkling lights of München far below us. We took the stairs out into the open air of the platform and even higher, to the top-most level, and I was stunned. I hadn’t gone to the Eiffel Tower at night, but now I know something of what I would have seen. The lights of München prickled as far as I could see in every direction, but what was even more amusing was looking downward into Olympiapark to see the Fußball fans clustered around the three large screens set up by FIFA for the Germany-Portugal third place match. The black-red-and-gold was extremely vivid, even on fans as small as ants, and the crowd vibrated with the electricity of the finale. It was getting close to the end, and closer to the fireworks.
We took a spin around the deck and suddenly we heard it: the telltale end-of-the-game noise, but clearly the Germans had won. What a fantastic sound! It was the sound we might have heard in greater force had the Germans gone on to the final. We gathered near the lake’s side on the top of the tower to watch as the fireworks erupted—below us. Below! It was the first time I’d ever seen fireworks from above, and it was amazing… the angle was so strange, but we had—arguably—the best view in the house, of every bit of the show. The blazing, erupting light reflected on the mirror-like surface of the lake was nearly as rewarding as seeing it from the tower itself. My Fourth of July fireworks, four days late.
On the way down, we noticed a rather odd part of the tower’s main floor: a rock and roll museum. Europeans and their penchant for strange museums in strange places, I thought amusedly. We made our way over to see autographed clothing from Madonna and Britney Spears, original letters and postcards from the lead singer of Queen, from Shakira, the Beatles, and dozens and dozens of photos from obscure and famous musicians, some signed. Ian pumped some Euro coins in to the vinyl jutebox and we listened to some terrific songs (including Bohemian Rhapsody, along to which we all had to have our ritualistic Wayne’s World moment). Quite a random place to have an Elton John piano and pair of sunglasses and Madonna’s pillowcase, eh? I suppose every major city with a big Europe-world-tour sort of venue has a museum where they collect things like clothing, letters, and pillowcases from their visiting musicians, but to have it in the Olympiaturm? Strange!
Ah, München. I keep learning all sorts of things, every day… be it having to do with the German language or not…
Stammtisch: the single German word for “people having fun and being loud at a table.”
Monday July 10, 2006
Thus starts the first of my many catch-up posts. Click to the left as you go to find the post you haven’t read yet, as it’ll be the easiest way to keep track.
So last night was the Stammtisch, which as far as I can translate from “Stimme” and “tisch” means something like “people having fun and being loud at a table.” Ha! German is awesome. Well, anyway, this particular activity of Stammtisch was scheduled for a proper Irish pub called Murphy’s at Nikoleiplatz, about five or so blocks east of the Englisher Garten, northeast of the Altstadt (old city). Apparently going to this pub is a weekly Donnerstag (Thursday) ritual, and our Lehrerin (teacher) warned us about it ahead of time. Yesterday morning in German she basically said, “I know tonight there is a Stammtisch, at an Irish pub. This is a Goethe ritual. But what is also a Goethe ritual is not coming to classes the day after because the Stammtisch was so much fun. So please, if you are going, remember we have lessons at 8.30 am Morgen!” She said something close enough to that effect, but with more facial expressions and hand movements.
So in speaking briefly to my colleagues after class, we all agreed to meet at the pub at approximately 21 Uhr. Some said they’d be showing up at 9.30 or so instead of 9, because the crowd is very quiet at 9, and still others decided to commence the pub-crawling during daylight. (These being the amusing boys I spoke of at the Englisher Garten, and others who have become their particular Bier buddies. We’re never invited to their afternoon drinking festivals, probably because we’re female, but we’re all annoyed because they could at least invite us, even if we wouldn’t go anyway. So we insist privately.) The girls all shrugged and said we’d see each other there.
So I went back to my room after hanging out at the Institut on the internet for a while and did some writing. At about 4.30, my roommate came in with her friend Stephanie, from Ohio. I met Stephanie the previous morning briefly, when she and my roommate, Ayse (pronounced Eye-shay or something similar, because I am incapable to speaking Turkish), met on the way to class to do their homework together. They pulled out several bottles from their bags and remarked happily that because Ayse is 18, they were able to buy liquor! I stared at the two of them. “Oh, really? How old are you, Stephanie?” I asked. “Seventeen,” she said distractedly, and she asked me in return. They remarked how interesting alcohol rules are in Germany—it’s perfectly acceptable to walk down the street with a Bier in hand, for instance—though Ayse did say that in Turkey the drinking age is 18, but she’s been drinking wine and such with her family for years. Stephanie, from Ohio, was clearly thrilled that the age for Bier in Germany is 16—and that Ayse could buy them liquor. I looked from their drinks to them and asked Ayse, “So you’re going to ‘pregame’ the pub tonight?”
“What is this, ‘pregame’?” (For the record, I find it very amusing to teach her American slang, because her face is so expressive and when she understands something, her eyes pop open and she says, “Ah! I see this now!”)
Stephanie and I exchanged a glance. Stephanie and I explained to her the somewhat (in my estimation) American concept of drinking before going out, to either save from drinking at the place, or to prepare for more drinking. Stephanie explained she did it with her friends back home, or rather just got together to get drunk with them all the time, and I tried not to look shocked. I supposed she was my sister’s age, about to go to college, and figured, it’s not my place to instruct her in what she ought or ought not to do. (I later discovered she’s about to be a senior in high school!) I decided I’d accompany them on their way to meet a friend then go to the pub, to both play big sister and watch them for my own amusement. Besides… I didn’t think they knew how to get there, anyway. Ah, I heart my map.
We walked up the Sonnenstraße to Karlsplatz, which is between the Haupbahnhof (main train station) and Marienplatz, about a block from our dorm. We waited in the freezing rain for their friend, the “good-looking Mexican guy” from their class, whose name I cannot for the life of me recall. (Probably because they called him “the Mexican guy” more than used his name — was it Fabiano? Maybe.) The girls sipped their Apfel Schnapps and I impassively read my trusty map, watching as the girls fearlessly asked passers by to take our picture (“Entschuldigung! Can you take our picture! Danke!”) Their friend from their introductory German class arrived, carrying a half-empty bottle of wine (I was thoroughly amused) and then I directed us all to the U-Bahn to get to the pub. I was sort of anxious about meeting my own friends, though we’d arrive with plenty of time to spare.
Situated on a small square a few blocks from the Giselastraße U-Bahn station, Murphy’s Irish Pub was rather un-surreptitiously situated between a café and a few shops. We walked down the flight of steps into the basement room (all Irish pubs are in basements, I have now learned) and saw it was nearly empty. As time went on, the place started to fill and clusters of college-age kids came in, some of whom I’d seen at the Englisher Garten and around the halls. (There are only perhaps 80 or so of us in the classes at any given time, so we tend to see each other around.) I saw a few faces I recognized, including a girl from my dorm, Aurora, from Guatemala, and invited them to sit with the slowly growing Goethe group. Behind them came Mary, my friend from class, who immediately dropped down next to me. On my other side sat Ian, a guy from Oxford, England, who had recognized me from the Englisher Garten as someone who spoke English. Mary and I were delighted that we could talk casually in English (as the conversations seemed clustered around either German, English, or an obscure language between a few individuals, like Turkish or Russian or Spanish).
The menu was surprising. It was entirely in English, and the girl who came to take our order spoke clearly in Irish-accented English, asking, “What’ll it be for you?” I had no idea—my understanding of German beer still limited to “Helles” (light), “Dunkel” (dark), “Weiß” (wheat), and “Pils” (Pilsner)…and even then, I’m not an expert by far. Ian asked me humorously, “Are you even old enough to order a beer legally in America?” I looked at him sourly. He’s twenty and has been drinking in England legally for two years now, and Mary is 21. I ordered a Hacker-Pschorr, a local München brew, Mary ordered a small cider, and Ian ordered a Beck’s. Down the table I saw people ordering mixed drinks (why would you ever, ever do that in Germany? In München, the Bier capital of Germany?!) and a few ordered the Irish/English beers on the menu (which were sooo overpriced compared to the German ones). When I was served, the waitress immediately asked me to pay, as she did everyone, going individually with a calculator and a wallet of bills, collecting everyone’s fees.
As we all sat there and talked, I met more people than I can remember meeting in so short a time, and had some very interesting and diverse conversations. It was amusing how much I spoke like Ian, him being British and all. (Have you ever noticed, for instance, that I use “ought” a bit more than normal Americans? Or “a bit”? Or “loads”? Or, well, lots of things. “Properly” “and such.” Adverbials that are indicative of a British dialect — I swear, it was all those times I read Harry Potter. It’s the Jane Austen in me fighting to escape…) I spoke with Maximiliano, the friendly Italian guy I see everywhere, who knows everyone because he’s so friendly and very, very Italian; I met two new Americans, Mark, from California, who was unsurprisingly very American and Zeb (I think?) an American originally from Phoenix, then Seattle, who now works in München and is learning German on the tab of his company; I met a French guy who is good friends with Maximiliano—their respective nations are meeting for the World Cup final, and they find it a grand joke to run around assuring everyone that they’re such good friends, despite the odds!
The varying levels of German were surprising. There are three “tiers” at Goethe: A, B, and C. Each tier has 4 different levels: 11, 12, 21, 22. I’m in A21 with Mary; my roommate Ayse and Stephanie are in A11; Ian and Aurora are in B21 with Zeb; Mark is between B22 and C11, so he’s teaching himself in the Mediothek. A is for learning the “basics”—grammar, vocabulary, pronunciation. B is for proficiency and practice, and C is pretty much sharpening of the skills through discussions and essays and stuff. A kids can generally speak basic sentences but vastly prefer their mother-tongues; B kids struggle through conversations and hesitate often, but can usually make themselves understood to anyone, and C kids are fairly indistinguishable, for me, from an actual German, besides their often heavy Italian or Chinese accents. (And I keep saying kids when perhaps 10% of the program are working adults whose jobs sent them here to become proficient in German (usually for 2-3 months or longer). Some are based in München so go to their places of work during the afternoons after classes end at 12.45, and some simply work over the internet. It’s all very interesting.
Anyway, we stayed at the bar for quite a while, talking up a storm late into the night. Goethe actually took over the bar to some degree; most of the students started dancing to the American and UK music pumping out of the speakers, shouting at each other in Turkish or Spanish or German over the din. Most of us weren’t so excited about dancing, and because it *was* getting late, and we had classes the next day, a group of us walked the block or two back to the U-Bahn to go in our various directions back home. I went home with Aurora, and the others split up based on direction into small clusters. The U-Bahn runs until about 2 in the morning, but luckily we left early enough (about 1-ish) to be able to catch a subway. I wasn’t too excited about classes, but then again, why else am I here? *Thinks for a second* Oh, right. To experience Germany… er… learn German…
Biergarten! Or, How I Celebrated My 4th of July.
Wednesday July 5, 2006
I hadn’t really thought about it being the 4th of July until when checking my email yesterday and noticed the date. Perhaps it was because it was Tuesday, and perhaps it was because I’m in Germany (I mean, seriously) it had totally slipped my mind.
Anyway, the Biergarten! I met at the Institut at 18 Uhr with Mary, one of the Americans from class. She graduated from University in May with a degree in International Business and Spanish, with a minor in German. Her German is fantastic, even if she’s rusty enough to have qualified for our meager class. Anyway, we started walking to catch the U-Bahn and I pulled out my laminated München map to show Mary the Englisher Garten and she remarked that it was handy that I’d brought it. I told her that I like bringing it everywhere, because chances are I’ll be the only one who has it. We all got on the U-Bahn to get from Sendlinger Tor to close to the north of Englischer Garten, an incredibly huge park not too far from the Altstadt, with multiple Biergartens in it. We walked the few blocks to get to the Garten from the station, passing cafés and shops in a rather old and quaint looking section of München I’d never before seen.
The entrance to the park (from this angle at least) seemed hidden, and as we emerged from the small path, a lake jutted out in front of us, stretching off to the south and west, and there on the opposite shore—the biergarten. It was huge, a long stretch of benches and people starting at the shore and wending off back past the tree line into the deep shade. I could visualize what it might look like come September for Oktoberfest (yes, it’s in September!) when everyone seems to come to München to drink beer. Hundreds of people could easily fit, and as it were there were probably nearly two hundred.
So for anyone who has never had the experience of a biergarten, at least in München, it seems to work like an American cafeteria might, in a strange way. In the old days of the start of things like Oktoberfest, people would drink their beer outside under trees at parks like this, and use the original and famous biersteins with their lids to keep flies away. But in today’s modern world of refrigeration, things were a bit different. The main building was an open-air salad and food bar, where you could take a tray along, pointing to different foods, and hot foods (like various kinds of wurst, chicken, and pastas) were dished out to you, and a cold salad bar (with everything from a Greek mozzarella and artichoke salad to couscous and cold pasta) where you served yourself. Next were desserts—more fantastic than a cafeteria, believe me!—and finally, the drink section, which stretched for half the building. Aside from the usual kaffee, tee, limo (softdrink), and wasser selections, there was bier. But of course! Five different kinds, including a kind of beer that was mixed with lemonade, served in either a half-liter or liter glass. The glass liter steins were much too large to lift comfortably when full, at least for me, and I saw men walking up and picking up three in each hand to bring back for their friends and families. Crazyiness! Then right by the “checkout” as it were, there were pretzels, the foot and a half wide kind, or the quaint six-inch kind, each with mustard available for liberal application. After paying for food (the beers were 4 and 6 € respectively) we all took our seats by the lakeside.
What became very apparent very quickly—something we had also noticed during the train ride—were the German colors, everywhere. People with painted faces in the black, red, and gold who wore the flag tied as a cape at their neck; girls in bikini tops with the flag tied as a sarong; whole families with armbands, jewelry, leis (the Hawaiian kind), and even wigs and Mohawks, dyed the colors of the flag. All because of the impending match against Italy, at 21 Uhr. We were all excited as well, and as we were all non-Germans, lamented our lack of the colors to join in the festivities. A few among us were bedecked in the white, red, and green of Italy, proudly hidden among the bigger German crowd. We all resolved to catch the match later on—because when else is the World Cup in Germany?
As the evening (and the sun! So bright!) wore on, the crowd began cheering more and more often, getting caught up in choruses of the national anthem and random Fußball cheers. At 20:45, Mary and I found a cluster of our friends from class (before we’d just been sitting with random Institut people) and because we all knew their names and other little facts about them from our exercises, we were thrilled to hang out with them. They ordered fresh food and we moved gradually back toward the trees, where, being pulled across, was a huge screen. So we didn’t have to go back to town for the game, after all! By then nearly three hundred people were squishing together to see the game, emerging with fresh beer only to be shoved back toward the queue because of the lack of space. The fevered intensity of the crowd grew when the German national team was introduced, and the entire crowd erupted in the anthem when it was sung. A few of us looked at each other—except for Mary and I, the six of us were each of completely different native languages and lands—and wished we could sing with them. It was more intense than New York when the Yankees are in the World Series—even if it’s against the Mets—even more than in Pittsburgh during the Superbowl. Not because of the sheer numbers, but because every face was fixed to a phone, a computer screen, or the large television with a fervent magnetism the like of which I’d never seen anywhere. This is what Fußball means to the Germans.
We stood, cramped and closely quartered, for the first half. After that, with the score 0-0, we were much too tired to keep standing, and congregated around a table farther off, where we saw some other Institut people and other non-Germans congregating. We waited for the cheers for goals—the crowd would swell with noise, then break off quickly in what was unmistakably a failed attempt each time—and a few of the people were panicked about how they would get home. Of course, I was the only one with a map. Pablo, the guy from Spain who sat next to me in class, started calling me the “girl with the map.” We broke into smaller groups depending on where everyone lived, and I was surprised to see almost everyone lived significantly farther away from the Institut than I did—something I hadn’t anticipated. I suppose I can deal with the annoying rules of the ladies at the dorm if I can live 2 blocks away!
I took the map and showed everyone where we are (a bunch of guesswork and assumptions, like assuming we were in the north part of the Garten because of the single lake on the map) and then took us through the dark paths back to the city. Once we got out of the park, the game was still on—it was overtime by that point—and the streets were abandoned. Everyone was apparently gathered around the cafés; about every fifty yards or so we could see clumps of people frozen in place around televisions. As we walked west to the U-Bahn, we passed street after street of frozen people, some restaurants displaying Italian colors (well, the Italian food ones anyway) but most showing off the red, gold, and black.
We made it to the U-Bahn and hopped on, getting off at Marienplatz and emerging into the bright lights of the inner city. Walking up the stairs, however, it became abundantly clear what had happened with the game during out 5 minute subway jaunt—the Germans lost. The faces! Overwhelmingly sad expressions, of defeat and exhaustion, surrounded us, most trudging to the U-Bahn or attempting to hail a taxi. We heard shouts ahead and passed a group of red, green, and white clothed teens jumping and riding the lion sculptures of Marienplatz with elated screams—to which the red, gold, and black clothed fans grumbled and muttered aggrieved curses. “I guess the Germans lost,” one of the girls with us said. We looked at her and simply nodded.
We divided up and I took the quick two blocks to my dorm, quietly letting myself in through the gate and settling down, all the while wishing the Germans had won. All in all, though they hadn’t won, it had been pretty exciting; it was my first Fourth of July abroad (and yes, haha, the Germans do have a Fourth of July, they just don’t celebrate it… unless the World Cup coincides, at any rate).
More about my day (today, July 5th) at some other point!
I am, in fact, alive!
Tuesday July 4, 2006
[Written 4 Juli]
Sorry for the post haitus… my trip was very interesting, as was my first day in München. München is a very interesting city, from the little I’ve been able to see of it. I’ve only seen about 5 square blocks and it’s my second day here, but I hope to see more as my time here progresses. So far it’s not Paris, very clearly! There are more bikers (not motorcycles!) here than Paris, where it was all mopeds, and it’s a bit more urban and a lot cleaner. But let me back track a little bit. (My battery life is what’s keeping me from taking my time here, because internet is very… awkward, it seems.)
So Sunday I spent hanging in my hotel room until noonish, when I checked out, dropped my bags, and went to discover Monmartre, the Moulin Rouge, and Sacré Coeur. I took the Metro to the Place de Clichy and walked the two blocks to the Moulin Rouge. It was sort of hidden between the larger buildings (a surprise) and the little square in front was jammed with traffic and trees. Not exactly the picturesque view the movie seemed to hint there was. Then, of course, was the fact that the area in which it’s situated is quite the… erm… place. In Amélie, the “love interest” character works at a “Sex Shop” in Monmartre, and I always thought that was the strangest thing for a normal-seeming guy to do… until I saw Monmartre. The entire street adjacent to the Moulin Rouge was filled with “Sex Shop” signs, in English, with huuuuge advertisements in English and French, with pictures. It was impossible to ignore! Crazy place. This was all a few blocks from Sacré Coeur, too.
As I walked down the block, the area turned more into a Canal Street/Chinatown sort of look, with shops all selling touristy things and cheap merchandise, each shop with the same stuff. Lots of tourist things and cheap scarves, jewelry and the like. Instead of people speaking Chinese, everyone was speaking French, even people who looked as if they would speak any number of foreign languages. Then all of a sudden there was a sharp hill and Sacre Coeur appeared amidst the buildings. (Another Parisian magic trick, I swear.) It was steep and tremendously sunny and warm, but it was beautiful.
After I was officially exhausted of being über-tourist, I took the train to the hotel, grabbed my stuff, and went immediately to the Gare d’Est, where I waited until 22:45 to board my train to München. The train was filled with English, and lots of backpackers. It was amusing… I wondered how many Americans and Europeans spend summers backpacking and train-riding their way across the continent. I shared a 2nd class cabin with two middle aged men who chatted in rapid French, while I sat there finishing a book I’d started sometime that afternoon. (I waited at the Gare for… a while.) Then we started moving and the ticket guy came in, saying, “Guten Abend!” and then asked (I presumed) for our tickets. I handed it over, and he said, “Ein noch München,” and then spoke to one of the French guys in rapid German. The French guy bobbed his head, saying, “Danke schön,” and he left.
Wow, I thought. I am going to Germany.
Then I slept for 9 hours on the 10.5 train ride. Arriving in München was interesting, especially because I’d had my European primer in France. That was officially the best idea ever, by the way. Because I know more French than I do German (as of now) it was much easier for me to learn how to do the Métro, how to work with Euro, and the like, than arriving in Germany. If I got lost in München, it would have been much harder to understand how things work.
Here is a small map of the relatively important places in the center of München, and highlighted is the Institut:
I went immediately to the Institut, which is on Sonnestraße, a major roadway on the fringe of the inner city, where all the oldest buildings are (and, apparently, the best shopping). In a worldwind of organized orientation, I registered, got my housing assignment, took my placement exam, and was interviewed in German. Wow was that embarrassing. I hadn’t spoken in so long it was so hard for me to answer her questions, but I strugged through, saying I’d studied for “ein Semester” (yes, I’d forgotten that) and that “Ich studiere Anglistik als Haupfach” (I study English as my major). It was so hard! Wow. The exam was agonizing too. Most of it, including the small essay, were pretty much me embarrassing myself. And I’d said I was good at reading and writing! Bah.
Then I made my way to my dorm, where I spoke with an old woman about my housing, in a converted convent where they currently house troubled young women, ages 15-21. I was put in the out building where there are about 3 rooms (6 women) per floor, who share 2 bathrooms and a washer (no dryers, only devices shaped like a grated ironing board where you hang your clothes to dry). I packed in and chose the nicer of the two beds/dressers, and was attempting to figure our the internet when my roommate and her father entered. They spoke halting English and she introduced herself (I still haven’t gotten her name right) and said she’s 18, going into her second year at University outside of Istanbul, Turkey. She said she was taking introductory German (so I can’t converse with her in German, because she knows none), so I was sort of annoyed. I wanted to be housed with someone from my level of the program, but oh well. She’s nice enough, and her luggage was even larger than mine. She brought 7 pairs of shoes, I brought 4. How did she fit all of her stuff in her luggage, I wondered, looking at her unpacking her dozens of makeup products, towels, clothes, hair dryer, jewelry…
We went out exploring to the center of the city by the Marienplatz, near the big churches. Over there, it’s shopping central. We bought some sandwiches and made our way back to the dorm for the night. We were told, to my utter dismay, that the internet was 2 Euro for an hour, and we couldn’t use our own computers. The Institut had said internet varied by dorm location or accomodation (some people are housed with families) so we’d have to see when we checked intoo our rooms. Well. I was annoyed… to say the least.
The rules for the dorm are pretty amazingly strict, especially for someone like me who’s rather used to having the relative freedom of college, and isn’t used to an odd, liberally European roommate (as to that, don’t ask. Believe me). In broken English (for which she apologized multiple times) one of the “teachers” explained that this place is a converted convent, now used to house troubled girls ages 15-21 who, for whatever reason, cannot live with their parents. The building I’m in is for the 18-21 year olds, luckily, so there’s a different atmosphere in the halls than in the tall 15-18 building, which is the main part of the complex. Their rules are strict: no alcohol in the rooms, no boys, no loud noises, and the outer door locks at 21 Uhr (9pm) and so we have to use our key on the outer gate (luckily we have a key!) after that. There are TV rooms (smoking and non, surprisingly, in a house for teenagers), a gym, an “internet café,” and a huge laundry room in the main building. Our building (which she didn’t show the others, leading me to think my roommate and I are the only two of the 10 living there) has its own washer and washroom on the same floor. (Now if only I could read it…)
In a vain attempt to connect to the internet, I spent the greater part of yesterday after 19 Uhr (by the way, I’m changing dates/times to German style, to help me remember) walking around the immediate area, searching vainly for a free internet connection. I found it, for five minutes, at the Institut itself, before a woman yelled at me in rapid German in the universal, “Hey you, you’re not supposed to be here because we’re closed!” sort of way. All other internet (wireless, at least) is impossible or expensive (2 Euro for an hour). So I’m stuck using the internet for the meager allotment my battery can allow (no [working] outlets) during the afternoons, after my classes. Perhaps Google can provide me with some free cafes in the area.
So to catch everyone up to the present, I woke up at 7 (the sun rises at 5:30, so it’s muuuch easier to get up early because it’s so crazy bright at that hour) and got ready, nudging my roommate and getting a croissant on the way to class. We got to the Institut and found our class assignment, then I walked into the room to see people of various ethnicities seated patiently, without an instructor. I sat down and after a few moments, a girl took out a German-Spanish dictionary and another girl grinned and started speaking to her in Spanish. I sat there sort of staring at the walls until a few more girls came in and sat near me, and one asked another a question in perfect German, and the other responded with a heavy accent. The girl immediately reverted to English and introduced herself, as Nicole from California, then the girl next to me said, “Oh, great! I’m from North Carolina!” and then I said, “I’m from New York!” and we all started chatting merrily. Until then, no one was sure who spoke which language, and it continued to get stranger.
A teacher walked in after a while, and in German that was almost a biiit too fast for my comprehension, she explained (my understanding grew as she kept repeating the story in a few different ways, using a variety of vocabulary, and saying, “Sie verstehen mich?” (“You understand me?”) every few sentences. I did, surprisingly, and I was delighted to realize that at least my comprehension and listening skills hadn’t drained out of me like the rest of my German apparently had in May. Her story essentially said our actual teacher was stuck in traffic on the Autobahn on her commute north because of a traffic “Unfall” (accident) and she would be in momentarily. The substitute said we were going to start asking questions of each other, and asked which questions one would usually ask to get to know someone? I immediately recalled my lessons in January—this was one of the first things we covered in my class. “Wie heißt du?” “Woher kommst du?” and so forth (Roughly: What is your name? Where are you from?) and we created a list on the board as a group.
Then our teacher popped her head in. Introducing herself as Heike (with much better enunciation than the first woman!) she immediately put vocabulary words on the board and explained exactly what the other lady had, about the traffic. The way she put the vocabulary on the board was exciting! I obviously got placed in the section of my level that emphasizes Wortschatz, or vocabulary, because that’s pretty much what she did all morning—she spoke, explained things about this and that, asked questions, and anytime she got to a word and saw a face that looked quizzical, she put it on the board, in this fashion:
r Strand, -¨e
e Sängerin, -nen
That’s exactly the way it appears in a German dictionary! Or close, anyway. Strand means beach (like ocean beach) and the “r” means it’s a “der” word, a masculine word. (“e” means “die” for feminine, and “s” means “das” for neuter.) The dash, umlaut, and “e” mean to pluralize the word, you add an “e” at the end, and put an umlaut on the last vowel, so Strand plural is “Strände.” Cool, eh? So Sängerin, or female singer, is Sängerinnen in plural. All in one quick notated form. She did that for the rest of the fifty or so words she put on the board through our haphazard discussions of getting to vaguely know each other, and I was amazed. So many words! So many! But it’s good.
And being able to take notes is exactly what I’ve been itching to do for ages. My professor last semester in Elementary German I was determined to never let us take notes and instead listen and speak as much as possible, thinking the repetition would be as good as notes. It was, in a way, because now I have all the elementary tools of the language memorized and I can understand spoken German much better than I could have imagined. But now that we’re getting to different grammar stuff, it’s more important I learn as many words as possible to enhance what I can already manage to put together on the paper or in my head.
The level of the course is absolutely perfect. I can understand just enough to feel like I fit in, but not too much so I know I still need to get along. There are various levels of knowledge in the room, from what I could tell, and it seems to go along with how their classes were taught, because we all are essentially at the same level. I got a big emphasis with the elementary principles, so I know numbers and letters and pronunciation better than I did after 3 years of French, but other kids know the different forms for grammar (the accusative, the dative) that I haven’t been really exposed to. I know enough to describe rooms and people and colors, and can recognize elements in other words to puzzle out meaning. And because I’m a natural grammar nazi (that’s a technical term among English majors, believe it or not) it’s relatively easy for me to immediately memorize grammar rules once I see their purpose. Like, tell me that in German, the verb is always in the second position, I’ll get it. Tell me how to conjugate, I’ll do my best to spell it right. Stuff like that. I was correcting the spelling and little things for the kid from Madrid to my left who served as my exercise partner, which was funny. (He put “Seine Großeltern kommt aus Deutschland,” which means “His grandparents comes from Germany” instead of “Ihre Großeltern kommen aus Deutschland”—“Her grandparents come from Germany.”) Tee hee. The Spanish kids pronounce German with such a strange accent, as does the Australian kid, who can’t help but sound like an Aussie no matter what language he’s speaking. It’s so amusing!
Speaking of that, the kids in my class are amazingly diverse. There are three Americans (I mentioned the other two before), two from Spain, two from Russia, and then one each from Mexico, Venesuela, England, Australia, Taiwan, Korea, Iran, and Egypt. Two are older than 21—the Australian is 25, and one of the Russians is 41—but all others are 18-21, mostly all 18 or 19, a rather universal college age. The common-ish language is English, but as only five of us are fluent-fluent (the English and Australian guys and the three American girls) the professor isn’t comfortable with translating any words to English unless desperation sets in, so she simply asks “Sie verstehen?” and then explains it in roundabout German until she gets head-nods. For example, to explain the meaning of “Herkunftsland” she explained that “Herkunft” is derived from “kommen,” a verb I learned my first week of German class in January. “Land” was obvious, and so she explained that putting the two together got the combined meaning. So those sort of explanations help most of the time, but for some of the words I looked them up very quickly in my dictionary and was satisfied. The kid from Madrid kept stealing it politely to look up words—his English, he said, is about as good as his French, which isn’t to say fluent, but good enough to look up a German word in English and understand it, most of the time.
So far I’ve learned the answers to vague questions I’ve always had, like about combined words (Germans love words like Betriebtswirtschaftlehre, or BWL—Business/Econ as a University major) and how they make sense in pieces.
We’re also starting discussing the differences between the nominative, accusative, and dative (sort of like the differences of when to use he/him/his sort of thing) which is terrifically difficult, but more so for people who have never really analyzed the grammar of sentences beyond “That’s a noun, that’s a verb.” So like, if you want to say “The man picked the woman the flower” in English, it’s technically using the same words to say “The man picked the flower for the woman”—the “his” is the same word. You know? So in German, the problem is you have to know aspects of grammar we usually forget exist, such as what role in the sentence each phrase is playing. Especially because the German equivalents for “who” vs. “whom” and things like that are super important, because they can change the aspect of adjectives and pronouns as well. Thank goodness for Auf Geht’s!, the software I used last semester with incredible detailed explanations of how to use grammatical stuff. Unless you know what they mean by saying “accusative” or “indirect object” you’re hopeless, unfortunately, but at least it’s mostly all in English, with colorful examples.
So enough for my boring grammatical meanderings! I love that stuff, though, sadly.
So with that, I am off to explore a German Biergarten in München with the program at 18 Uhr, which should be positively exciting. Bis bald, und will ich morgen mehr sprechen! (I hope that means, “Later, and will I tomorrow more speak!” which is actually how you order the words in German, or so I have been led to believe. Liz, correct me if you’re reading this!)
I leave you with a typisches Deutches Sprichwort, or proverb: “Ordnung is das Halbe Leben!” Organization is half of life! Amusingly, only Americans seem to have an equivalent saying: “Cleanliness is next to Godliness.” All the other kids looked at the professor and said, “Nope, we don’t have an equivalent in my country.”
And pictures are coming. Soooooon. Yes. I promise!
Welcome! Willkommen! Bienvenue!
Monday June 19, 2006
This summer of 2006 I’ll be blogging about my travels in Europe, primarily in Munich, Germany. I’m traveling first to Paris, France, then over to Munich, Germany starting 28 June 2006, and I’ll be home on 28 July 2006. In Munich I will be studying at the Goethe Institut, a world-renowned German language learning center. (http://www.goethe.de/enindex.htm) I’ll be receiving credit for college through this 4 week course (it counts as two college courses for me) so I’m very excited for this experience!
I decided to create this blog for me to keep track of photos I’ve taken and places I’ve seen and so you to keep up with me as I travel. I’ll keep you updated as best I can with what I’m up to and I’d love to hear your comments. More later!
the latest updates
-
