Keep in mind that I really don't eat meat. But I decided I would try a Käsewurst because they're supposed to be really good. It's basically sausage, but it oozes cheese. And I love them! It's ridiculous, I don't think I've ever finished a sausage in my life until now. But there are also crépes and roasted nuts and chocolate-y things. I could eat so much there.

Another standard of Christmas markets, which we experienced at the Weihnachtsmarkt in Freiburg and at the Marché de Noël in Strasbourg (France) is essentially mulled wine. In German it's Glühwein (which means something along the lines of glowing wine) and in French it's vin chaud (or hot wine). But it's obviously hot wine, and they add spices and generally some citrus fruit like orange or lemon. It's so good. Our German professor took us to get some and showed us, in the Freiburger Weihnachtsmarkt, where all of the Freiburgers go for Glühwein. It turns out there's a little offset of the markt right down the street, and the wine they serve is actually from Freiburg. You can get red or white, and they're both delicious.

Anyway, we went yesterday to Strasbourg for two reasons: it was the opening day of their Marché de Noël which is one of the biggest and most famous Christmas markets in Europe, and there was a RATATAT concert. The market was HUGE and too crowded to be functional. It was impossible to stop at booths because you couldn't break through the crowds!

We also saw a demonstration (and we know I'm attracted to those like a moth to flame) on behalf of the Palestinian populations of Gaza and West Bank. We stopped to talk to one of the women there, and she explained to us what the pamphlets we'd been handed said (A. and I are both fairly function en français, and K.W. is practically fluent, but it would've taken us a while to know we had grasped it, and no one had a dictionary). It was a petition for the EU to apply pressure to Israel because of human rights abuses.

The EU is really big on human rights, on paper anyway. One of the stipulations in most of its trade and/or cooperation agreements is that all parties must respect basic human rights to everyone. Israel wasn't honoring that, and so the EU needed to apply pressure because both parties had already agreed to this contract, or whatever.

Then we made our way to the RATATAT concert which was completely on the other side of the city. When we finally got there, it was this awesome ware-house kind of thing converted into a concert hall. The concert was amazing.

Leaving the concert, we had to find the train from Strasbourg to... Offenburg, I think (as students we can travel to Offenburg for free). The train was, at 1:00 in the morning, quite literally two cars long. And it was one of the dinky white ones (there are three gradations of trains that we can see: the sleek white/silvery ones are the long distance express trains, the red ones are the standard, and the dinky white box-y ones are the ones you never want to have to take!). Everyone on the train was from our program, so we basically had a party on the way back. It was fun.

written by  lost_red_balloon on November 30, 2008 from Strasbourg, France
from the travel blog: The European Union
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Our German professor is ridiculously nice, but we can't figure her out entirely - politically, that is. Our entire class is composed of grammar lessons or discussions of themes including globalized media, immigration, diversity, German culture, etc. Things that can get politicized fairly quickly. We know that she hails from former DDR, but she doesn't express her own views very often (though we're all pretty convinced she's left-wing). But for 2 others in the class and for me, this has opened up a few possibilities. This mainly translates to the radical stances we take in our essays, or choose for our presentations, etc. The three of us leave class and joke to ourselves what our professor's reaction is when she goes through our work. Sometimes we think she loves it, but most of the time we figure she's got to think we're a little crazy. Which is okay by us. I think we've all become a little cynical about a lot of aspects of our program and of living in Germany, and the idea of being the radical kids kind of pleases us. In a mischievous 5 year old kind of way.

A. and I have been conspiring a little bit together about our Referats (a Referat is a spoken presentation, generally accompanied by a very short summary paper). We just watched "die fetten Jahre sind vorbei" (in English, the Edukators) because she had never seen it and it's one of my favorite movies, which spurred us a little bit on this anti- streak we've been on, and we both wanted to do similarly slanted Referats. She took direct inspiration from d.f.J.s.v. and flat-out presented yesterday her Referat on "Anti-Kapitalismus in Deutschland." She played Pink Floyd really loud too. It was pretty sweet.

I did mine today on the revolutionary movements of the 1960's era in Germany. Yep, I just presented on Revolutions. It was pretty awesome (it's been a while since I was so excited about a project that I did well on it simply out of wanting to work on it). It was over the SDS (in German it stands for Sozialistischer Demokratischer Studentenband, and was not directly related to the SDS in America but had similar goals), the RAF (Rote Armee Fraktion) and Kommune 1. It so happens that there is a movie out in German cinemas right now called der Baader-Meinhof Komplex about the RAF, so I got to show the trailer for that and a bunch of us might go see it together now. And I got to ask really fun discussion questions like, at what point is a revolution legitimized, at what point is violence legitimized, how do you define these terms, have these movements died out? kind of things. I had entirely too much fun.

It's all in German, so you might not understand, but I thought i'd include the link to the trailer anyway...
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WAyCi4cObmI

written by  lost_red_balloon on December 2, 2008 from Freiburg im Breisgau, Germany
from the travel blog: The European Union
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It was actually really cool. Our guide is finishing up his studies at Universität Freiburg and is half German, half Yemen, I think. He took us downstairs into the room used for children's Arabic classes and a sometimes-prayer-room, and we all sat down in a circle, and he basically explained the Islamic faith and practices to us. It was a massive question-and-answer session.

What I really liked was that we got more of an inside look at it. Like in America there are societal issues about Muslims more than Islam because we live in a post 9/11 world. In Europe it's worse, because the Muslim minorities are so much more populous, and a lot of socio-economic tension ensues anyway (about things like living conditions, wages, jobs, etc.) so it's much more intense anyway. Even though I, and many of the people I know in the program, have always been very wary of general statements about anything, we don't understand. It wasn't until I went into the mosque that I could really begin to understand it as a faith as well. Not that I didn't think it wasn't, or that it should be classified differently, it's just that I'd had minimal exposure to it. As had a lot of the students in the class. So it was really really good for me to be able to go in there and see not only what a mosque looks like (though it's really just a converted office building, not the stereotypical grand mosques with minarets and everything) but how people move in it, and speak, and treat each other. Overall I did get the impression, though, that our guide was sugar-coating things a bit. We asked about the presence (or lack of) of women in the mosque, and he kind of avoided an overall gender-relations-look at that relationship. He said that women were, because of their traditional roles in the house, not expected to come to the mosque 5 times a day for prayer. They learned to pray at home.

Then, at the very end, we got to sit in the back of the prayer-room and observe the 5th daily prayer at sunset. That was awesome. I have no idea what anyone was saying, because it was in old, poetic Arabic, but to actually see the ritual and hear these verses read and sung as they have been for years and years was really cool.

written by  lost_red_balloon on December 3, 2008 from Freiburg im Breisgau, Germany
from the travel blog: The European Union
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Each of us is either a head of state or a foreign minister of a member-state of the EU. I was the foreign minister for Cyprus.

The foreign ministers and the heads of state each had their own conference room, and were given their own sets of issues. Heads of State dealt with expansion, the Lisbon Treaty, and something to do with Iceland I didn't quite understand (I find Turkey a more pressing issue than Iceland, but France set the agenda). As a foreign minister, I was an expert on Cyprus's positions on environmental and energy conservation and internal and external security.

It's pretty obvious that a summit of 30 students of the EU is not quite the same as an actual summit. Our decisions don't actually make a difference. In three days, though, it was practically impossible to get anything done. And thanks to parliamentary procedure (which I now hate with the passion of a thousand fiery suns) I managed to royally screw over Cyprus. It was one clause of a proposal on security that Slovakia had put out. J., the representative of Slovakia, put this clause in about involvement in frozen conflict zones SUCH AS Moldova (?) and Kosovo. Spain eventually proposed a amendment to reword it as "involvement in the frozen conflict zones OF Moldova and Kosovo." The speakers list was closed by somebody, and a vote ensued. Only a majority is needed to pass an amendment so, even though I voted against it, it passed.
So, now, thanks to the fact that no one got to me on the speakers list and I didn't get a chance to speak, the EU is not actually permitted to get involved in security issues on Cyprus, which is a frozen conflict zone. Half of the island is still occupied by Turkey. Awesome!

I don't know if I can grow up to be a politician. It's too ridiculous.

written by  lost_red_balloon on December 6, 2008 from Freiburg im Breisgau, Germany
from the travel blog: The European Union
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Then I was off to Norway to meet Tommy and Stephanie again. I arrived a day after them. It was actually rather hectic getting there - I didn't get to pack as much as I wanted the day before, so I had to do that the morning of, go all the way to the bank to withdraw money (which is the opposite direction of Nell's Park from where I live, and Nell's Park is where the bus to Frankfurt Hahn airport picks us up. I don't know why that doesn't happen at the main station...) so had to go all the way to the bus stop, wait, take a bus to the airport, check in, go through security which was more hassle than it should have been (the plastic bag I had put my fluid-y things in was just a smidge too big, apparently) then get on a flight and land in Norway, then (this was the tricky part) find my way from the airport to Oslo which is about 1 hour 45 minutes away. Which meant I had to try to find a bus, in Norwegian, all by myself. I did befriend a German man who teaches in high schools, who helped me out a bit. Good conversation.

Anyway, when I finally got to the main bus station in Oslo, my plan was to withdraw Krona and go straight to the hostel, check in, and meet Stephanie and Tommy there. The ATM wouldn't let me withdraw, though, so I tried to call Stephanie to tell her that I couldn't pay for my hostel and couldn't thus meet them there. I was downstairs and had no service and took the escalator upstairs. As I was disembarking the escalator and still didn't have service, I looked up. Stephanie and Tommy were standing right in front of me looking up at the departure/arrival screens, their heads tilted at a perfectly similar angle.

So we went to the hostel, then went out into the town.

There was one guy at the hostel who we dubbed "our best friend," mostly because he never talked (except to exclaim "shit!" once when he dropped an aerosol can of something) and snored incredibly loudly. He also walked around rather scantily clad. The girl who was there the first night was really nice and had already befriended Tommy and Stephanie a bit. She apparently was in Oslo to interview an ex-Guantanamo detainee.

Overall Oslo was very nice. Very expensive, and very light (it didn't get fully dark until about 12 at night, and was light at 3 or 4). We went to the Viking Ship Museum (which was, I think, the entire reason Stephanie wanted to go at all) which was awesome. These ships have all been dug up from old burial grounds. For rather high-ranking people their bodies were prepared, then put in ships along with anything they might need for the journey to the afterlife, so by finding these, archaeologists actually found a goldmine of information on ancient Viking lifestyles. So it wasn't just ships (which were amazing) but also cooking utensils, boxes, carts, fabrics, agricultural tools, etc.

We also went to the Edvard Munch Museum ("Scream," anyone?) and watched some really bizarre movies about his artwork and a documentary about his life, then went into the exhibit. It was really cool, especially considering what a controversial artist he had been. His art style wasn't widely accepted (and his first exhibit was actually shut down due to criticism) but he refused to change it. He also had social problems relating to a woman he had been having an affair with, and was probably not quite right mentally anyway but was never diagnosed with anything. He had studied at an art institute (in Berlin, maybe?) and was technically very advanced, but he hated the precision that was assumed to go along with great painting. He just saw the world differently and painted it the way he wanted, and was eventually (obviously) considered an acclaimed artist. It was so bizarre to see the Scream in person because I've spent so much time studying it, but I also really really liked his sketchings and etchings. I found them much more moving than most of his other paintings.

Leaving the Munch museum, we actually ran into some of the Japanese students we study with in Trier (which was crazy!) so hung out a while.

We also went to an anti-authoritarian bookstore which was AMAZING. We had an address for it and a name we couldn't pronounce, but when we got to No. 3 Hjelmsgate, we found a bike shop a little bit off the road. Stephanie went into the bike shop and asked if there was still a bookstore, and the guy said it was around back and upstairs. So we walked out behind this rickety-looking building covered in stickers and graffiti, and up some stairs, and found ourselves completely alone in a café of sorts (it was mostly an empty room with a few tables and benches, a table in the corner serving as a bar, and stacks of books everywhere). A girl about our age completely covered in piercings, and heavy eye make-up, dyed black hair, and black leather clothing came out and we asked again for the bookstore, and she got this older man to take us even further upstairs and unlock the bookstore for us. There were stacks of books in all sorts of languages about everything from anarchism in sci-fi works to communist and anarchist ideology, to history books of revolutions, to manuals on revolution (peaceful and violent), noam chomsky books, propagandist pamphlets, etc. There was one book I was tempted to get entirely devoted to a street corner in Hyde Park, London, which has historically been a soapbox corner, I guess. I ended up buying a book entitled "Evasion," which is about a fictional group of people in the United States who choose to live completely outside of any system - squatting in old buildings, stealing out of dumpsters for food and clothing, and essentially living on less than a dollar a day. I haven't finished it yet, but it's thoroughly enjoyable.

There was also a jazz café we went to where we spent ages talking to the guy working there. You could actually listen to the CDs before buying them because they were all kept behind the counter, but the CD players weren't all working so he just played various CDs for us over the PA system, giving us all sorts of recommendations on jazz harpists, folk jazz, widespread jazz, etc. We asked if there was a Norwegian jazz scene, at which his eyes just lit up. He played a CD for us that was a pianist from his hometown in the north who was playing with a Portuguese female singer that was just amazing. There was a group that dug up old Norwegian folk songs and revamped them in a jazz style, and then a Norwegian violinist who does an old film noir kind of sound. We each bought one of these CDs (Tommy took the first, Stephanie the folk songs, and I bought the film noir sound). When we left, the guy bowed.

One thing I thought was really cool about actually being in Norway, though, was seeing the diversity. Wherever we walked people seemed to assume we were Norwegian (I had to refrain from using Norwegian phrases on occasion so people would know we did not actually speak it), but there are so many different ethnic groups. The Scandivanian countries (at least Norway, Sweden, and Finland) have really good social systems (I think Denmark does too, but I'm not entirely sure). Sweden has historically been a prime immigration state because they have such good integration programs, social welfare programs, etc. that make starting a life there much easier. I really enjoyed being amidst such a diverse group of people who were all speaking and cooperating in one language - it was like the normal tension that the US, Germany, France, and many other countries I've now been to tend to have in regards to ethnic minorities getting pushed to the borders of things was simply not an issue here.

PIctures to come soon, for all of my remotely recent posts. Promise.

written by  lost_red_balloon on June 7, 2009 from Oslo, Norway
from the travel blog: The European Union
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