The first few days...
Freiburg im Breisgau, Germany
Hormuz just got my internet working today!
So, the first few days have gone by in a flash. I arrived in Freiburg on Sunday (Austin to Charlotte, a red-eye to Frankfurt, then to Basel only to take a bus back into Germany to Freiburg) and went to my hostel, but couldn't check in for another three hours. I dropped my stuff off and, in a jet-lag-induced daze wandered about the city and somehow managed not to get lost. The hostel turned out to really be a hippie-commune (which verifies my plan, among other random ones, to open a hostel when I retire from some fabulous job) where we had communal living spaces and scheduled meditation-time. Dinner consisted of lemon ice-cream, because I was too overwhelmed to be hungry and too tired to care. The next day I dragged my two suitcases halfway across the Innenstadt/inner city to the IES building, where we had a brief orientation, they took our passports to establish residency for us, and got us a cab to our dorms. It wasn't terribly exciting, except for the prospect of a bed to call my own and meeting a few of my potential class-mates.
Berlinerallee/Charlottenburgerstrasse
My dorm is on Charlottenburgerstrasse, but is called Berlinerallee (as in a Berlin alleyway) because that is the big street it is next to. Most of the building is a very vibrant orange, but some walls are yellow and green. I've determined that after a long day of classes, orientation, and getting around in German, nothing cheers you up like pulling up to the big square easter-egg on the bright red tram. This is, however, in stark contrast to the inside of the building. My room is completely white: walls, ceiling, bed, bedlinens, desk, wardrobe, and heater - all a freshly-painted white. The only exceptions are the stand on which the TV sits (which is a very light brown), the TV (which is a normal TV) and the floor (which is a very light gray). The kitchen is a little more colorful with blue tiling. And the view is amazing!
kitchen view
I live in a Wohngemeinschaft, which is typical German housing. Rather than having a living situation based around a suite or a hall, like many of ours, these are situated around common living areas. They are almost like big apartments. When one walks in to my WG, there is a fairly large dining area/kitchen. Then to the left one enters a small hallway, with the refridgerators, then a larger one with 6 bedrooms (singles) and two bathrooms. All in all it is a bit like having an apartment with a roommate, but everything is made to accommodate more people at once. Most WG's are co-ed, and two girls from my program are currently only living with guys. It is still hard to tell who all of the roommates are because the semester doesn't start for them until the end of September, so only people doing summer programs or internships are here. I only have two roommates right now: Rebecca and Lena. Both are very nice - Rebecca speaks to me entirely in German because I requested it, but Lena and I tend to switch from one to the other.
It is very different living here, though. It is still somewhat like American dorm-life, but it is a standard in Germany to keep the bedroom doors closed. In America, we all tend to leave our doors open so that people may come in and out, and a closed door means the resident wants privacy for some reason or another. Here, the doors are always closed. It is hard to tell when people are here or not, because lights are not used when not necessary, and the walls are soundproofed because the living is so dense. With no sound, no light, and no sight of a person, it is hard to know when anyone is home.
Freiburg is a beautiful town. I wish I could only tell you about things as I discover them, but everything is a discovery! For now you will have to content yourself with the gutters. Yes, I am going to describe the gutters.
There are gutters (called Bächle) in Freiburg that have only clean water (I'm assuming the ones used for sewage are underground, but they're not nearly as charming). Over 500 years ago, these gutters were built in the streets in Freiburg. They are just little man-made streams carrying water, and it's like a very angular river system. Big ones lead into little ones which lead into tiny ones, and vice versa. I have heard three different stories on this: 1) it was meant to provide the local artisans with the water they needed to work without requiring them to go down to the river to fetch it, 2) sewage purposes, 3) for fighting fires. Now they are just there because they always have been, but no matter where one goes in the Innenstadt one is followed by this very cheerful and charming babbling sound of the water flowing by. The Innenstadt of Freiburg is composed primarily of older-styled buildings anyway, so it has a very natural, earthy, and quaint feel to it. There is no way you could possibly be downtown in a city when you sit in the cafés in the squares and not hear the water go by.
big gutter/Bächle
little gutter/Bächle
There is also a superstition: if you fall in once, you have to marry a native Freiburger, and if you fall in twice, you can never leave. We're going to hope that my klutziness does not come through, because I do need to come home eventually.
Most of the past few days have been spent doing some form of orientation. The other day we did something called "Freiburg as Text" where we were split into groups of 6 and each group was given a task. One group had to explore cafés, and another one grocery stores. One group even was just assigned "people-watching." We were sent out to notice, observe, and take pictures. There was a big difference between the groups that were sent to enter a voyeuristic mode with the purpose of seeing and oserving, and the groups that were sent to experience things.
My group was sent to the Münstermarkt, or the big market around the main cathedral (Münster cathedral). It was pretty solidly split between the produce section on the right (leaving the cathedral) and the candles, spices, wooden goods, etc. on the left. It turns out, only locals are allowed to sell on the right, so the perishable goods all end up there. It was amazing. Everything was so vibrant; the produce was almost too colorful, and the smells too tempting and the sounds too intriguing. I didn't recognize everything, but part of our task was to ask people about the market, the goods, recipies, usw. So I did. My favorite incident involved an 8 year old boy.
münstermarkt
There was a booth fairly evenly split between produce and flowers. Right in the middle between the two was
chinesische Lampen
this plant that grew some orange thing. If you've ever seen a Chinese lantern shaped more like a heart than a circle, it was something like that. They were 6 or 7 centimeters long, looked like they were made of delicate and vibrantly orange paper, and stuck out lengthwise in a way that made it seem like there was a wire support underneath (hence the Chinese lantern reference - Stephanie, it looked like a miniature version of your red one). There were lots of these on one plant, and I had never seen them before. The booth was run by this elderly couple, but their grandson who was only 8 or 10 came over to help me.
"Kann ich Ihn helfen?" he asked. Can I help you?
"Ja, bitte." I said. Yes, please. "Was sind die?" What are these?
He responded with a word that ended with "lampen," or lamps/lanterns.
"Oh," I said, and looked at them again, "und was macht man damit?" What do you do with them? Suddenly his expression, which had been one of a charming politeness only worthy of 10 year old boys, turned to a slightly scolding/panick-stricken look.
"NICHT ZUM ESSEN. GANZ NICHT!" he said, and shook his finger emphatically at me.
"Ach, ja," I said, somewhat shocked, and compared them to flowers, "also, sie sind mehr wie Blumen? Für..."
"Dekoration," he finished my statement with a knowing nod. "Aber nicht zum Essen!"
So apparently you can't eat them.
*for Stephanie's benefit:
little boy: "NOT TO EAT! NOT AT ALL TO EAT!"
me: "oh, okay. So, are they more like flowers? For..."
little boy: "dekoration. but not to eat!"
there you go***
münster cathedral
IES Center - where my courses take place
your television lies
written by  lost_red_balloon on September 4, 2008 from Freiburg im Breisgau, Germany
from the travel blog: The European Union

Leaving Freiburg
Freiburg im Breisgau, Germany
Well guys, I'm finally out of here. I got my paper, presentation, internship and packing all finished, so all that's left to do is hop on a plane and leave. My appointment with the Hausmeister was today at about twelve (I didn't sleep at all last night for packing) and I dropped some stuff with some friends to keep until I get back. Went to work because I had nowhere else to go, ran a few errands, and barely made my bus to the airport. So now I'm just waiting for my plane from Basel to London.
written by  lost_red_balloon on February 27, 2009 from Freiburg im Breisgau, Germany
from the travel blog: I'm a homeless illegal immigrant...?

Arrival and orientation
Trier, Germany
Well, nothing terribly exciting yet. I got into Trier yesterday and took a taxi to my dorms, and finally have my own room again. It's a really exciting thing. Tommy's getting here was hectic - he was supposed to arrive at about 3, which was too late to check in with the Hausmeister so I'd gotten his keys for him. But he wasn't on the train. I waited for hours at the train station convincing myself he was just coming on the next one each time. He called me from skype at one point, but I didn't get to answer, saying he couldn't make the train he wanted and was doing his best to get to Trier. He'd call me with more information when he had it.
So I bought some food really quickly (honey and bread) and went home. At 10 he called from some old lady's cell phone who'd been nice enough to lend it to him, saying he would be getting into Trier somehow and asking directions to get to the dorms.
He somehow got let into the dorms and went up to my floor where he ran into one of my roommates who took him to my room right as the American next door came out of his, so everyone met everyone else right at once. It was crazy.
It turns out Tommy had missed his plane out of Chicago because the one to Chicago was delayed, and the next one wouldn't get to Germany soon enough, so he just went to Lufthansa for help. Switched airlines and had to fly to Munich instead of Frankfurt, and then had to take trains all the way across the country. Hence the delay. And of course in switching airlines his luggage didn't make it.
Today we had our first day of orientation-y things, which was basically an introduction. The three biggest groups here are actually the Japanese, the Americans, and the Danes. But there are so many people here from all over, I'm really excited!
written by  lost_red_balloon on March 26, 2009 from Trier, Germany
from the travel blog: The Oldest City in Germany

Orientation is done!
Trier, Germany
Today was our last day of the Einführungsseminar (orientation seminar). Or, rather, yesterday was - today we had our official Deutsch als Fremdsprache placement test to determine which level of German as a foreign language courses we could take. It was fairly easy, I think, but we'll see on Wednesday when the results get posted.
So classes start on Monday - EECK!!! I'm signed up for way too many right now, which is good in the end. As things get started I will get to pick and choose and drop as I will. I've already received a few emails from one professor who is doing a Seminar course I signed up for. The class sounds really intense anyway, and he wants us to show up to the Übung section on Monday, even if you're just in the Seminar, to get an introduction. I'm also supposed to watch a movie and read stuff for the first day of class...?
I guess I should vaguely explain the system here. Not vaguely because I don't want to go into a detailed rant, but vaguely because that is the best that I know anything.
Classes are split into three main groups: Vorlesung, Seminar, and Übung.
A Vorlesung is basically a strict lecture. The professor talks, the students listen, and everyone leaves. You can, however, sign up for classes that are a Vorlesung with a discussion section, or an übung section, etc. but strict Vorlesungen are also offered. It's one of the easier levels, because the studying and preparing is done independently and people can go at their own pace.
A Seminar is more of what a normal class is for me, I think. It is run by a professor, but people are given long term presentation assignments and expected to participate regularly. Proseminars are like Seminars, but easier.
I think an Übung is one in which you don't even really need a professor because everything is group work. Or something. I never really got a straight answer on that.
So this class I"m getting emails about is a regular Poli Sci class (meaning not designed for non-native speakers), a Seminar (which is one of the harder levels) and the guy is already expecting me to work before things really have gotten started. Eeck!
Right now I'm signed up for this seminar, China and its Neighbors, a Poli Sci Vorlesung entitled Intro to Political Economics (I know nothing about economics and thought it was something I should do... when it doesn't factor into my GPA), hopefully two DaF classes on intercultural communication and academic writing, two normal Germanistik courses on literature (one is about bohemians, artists, and people on the edges of society in 1900 ish lit and the other is called Oral Violence), a French lit course (my French is SO rusty, this could turn out poorly) and an art history course on gender throughout art. Something(s) will have to be dropped. I'm thinking the China course at least is out, but we'll have to see about the rest and how interesting they sound after the first week.
Other than that I'm just getting used to life here in Trier. My bus stop is a 2000 year old Roman gateway, which is pretty sweet. I don't know any of my hallmates very well (save the other Americans)... I'm working on it but I don't get the impression anyone really knows anyone else well. I do talk to one guy a fair amount, but all of our conversations revolve around how the Americans should speak in German and not let people speak English to them. Because the whole point of coming to Germany is to learn German. I don't know why he thinks he has to tell me this all of the time, considering a) I've been in Germany since August, b) I've lived with Germans and 3) I obviously make an effort to speak German. We have this conversation in German. Everything.
I can't wait for classes to start. I'm somewhat terrified about it - everything is going to be in German, and I don't know the system or how classes work or anything. But I'm ready to really learn again (I haven't actually been in a class of any kind since mid-December) and to be in a academic environment. Also I'd like to meet some new people - but that's kind of hard here.
Hopefully pictures will come soon. My internet connection here is EXCRUCIATINGLY slow and uploading pictures is quite the hassle. Hence the reason nothing is posted in pictures since I left Freiburg. Whoops.
written by  lost_red_balloon on April 17, 2009 from Trier, Germany
from the travel blog: The Oldest City in Germany

London Calling
London, United Kingdom
Made it!!!
I got into the London Gatwick airport last night at about 11:30. The train I had booked to get to London Bridge station got detoured or something (there were a lot of "urgent's" everywhere with new directions to places in London I don't know) and the ticket machine wouldn't recognize my card anyway (meaning I couldn't print out my tickets) so I just bought another ticket - this one for the Gatwick Express. Non-stop between Gatwick and Victoria.
The confusion led to me using up a fair amount of my newly bought phone credit (because i can't top-up outside of Germany) trying to get Steph to go to Victoria instead. Which worked. When I got to Victoria I was just putting my luggage down on the platform when AG called. Apparently Steph just didn't recognize me at first - I was wearing a coat (which I don't do at home), my hair was darker, longer, I'm paler, and I was on the phone with someone. I found this concept quite amusing - but it's sad that we hadn't seen each other in that long. :(
ANYWAY, so the weekend was spent in London. The wonderful part was that we didn't have a terribly concrete plan... except to find Banksy pieces. So most of the weekend was spent wandering and getting by (meaning we ate). And we did find Banksy pieces!!! I uh... may have turned into a giddy five year old girl... maybe.... We also found the 100 Club, which is basically the first venue in which punk music was ever played (that wasn't someone's garage or something) and meant to find a few other sites but never got around to it. We did find Platform 9 3/4 as well, which was really entertaining. It's basically half of a luggage cart sticking out of a wall. Picture time!
We met some really awesome people, too. The first night at the hostel was incredibly entertaining - the place is designed for "young backpackers" which I think just translates to party-ish. The place is right above a bar, at any rate. But there was a misunderstanding between Steph and the people there, so we only had it booked for 1 night. Fortunately we took so long trying to figure out the luggage storage place the next day (they said we could keep our luggage there during the day while we found another place) that we were right there when two people from the other hostel connected to the one we were in cancelled. So we shlepped our stuff all the way over, but it was considerably quieter there. Except for the French guys who played guitar and sang all day in the room next door. The guy who worked there was named Fernando and had a CRAZY upbringing: I think he was Portugese, but he'd lived in Germany, China, South Africa, and a couple other places. He was really nice and actually gave us graffiti-finding advice.
Pictures will come soon, I promise.
written by  lost_red_balloon on March 1, 2009 from London, United Kingdom
from the travel blog: I'm a homeless illegal immigrant...?

the land of William Wallace
Stirling, United Kingdom
I can't believe how bizarre it is to be in Scotland. This needs some explanation.
So, there's a stereotype about Germans that they're very blunt and mean. This is a very simplistic and naïve version of something that is, kind of, true. Germans tend to be more private and distant, but only at first. I have met very few mean or unfriendly Germans. It's just that at first it can be hard to get to know anyone, because people don't talk. That whole thing Americans have about just making conversation with the person next to you in a line that's taking too long does not happen. At all. Once you get to know people they are very nice, and very funny and helpful and welcoming and everything like that.
So suddenly being in a place where people make jokes and talk before actual introductions is a HUGE shock for me. The weird part of it is that it's exactly like home. Except with accents. For something that I've missed so much (this incredible openness, helpfulness, friendliness) it shouldn't shock me so much. But it does.
Anyway, on Monday (the 2nd) I caught a noon train headed for Stirling. I've discovered that the English countryside heading up strangely resembles the Midwest... in winter anyway. I slept through most of it (even though I'd promised myself I wouldn't) and woke up just as I started to get into Scotland. I was, for a while, thoroughly confused about the landscape. AG had sent me all of these pictures of Stirling and her university, and they were all in the mountains. So the clock kept ticking away and I kept thinking "there are no mountains!" There was fog and rain and sheep and villages and churches and everything except mountains. Suddenly, about 5 minutes before the train was due in, they suddenly appeared out of the fog. There were no foothills or anything - just flat, and then mountains. Small mountains, granted, but in America they would have had foothills.
My first night here we were supposed to go to a cailidh (the spelling may be wrong, but either way it's pronounced kay-lee) which is a sort of traditional dance. But AG didn't manage to get tickets, so we ended up drinking hot chocolate instead. One night we also went to the Celtic Music Association's meeting (which is just some people playing music and everyone else listening). Seating was rough, but the place was, it claims, the oldest pub in Scotland. Overall it was pretty cool. Minus the sitting on bathroom steps part.
We took "day trips" to Edinburgh and Glasgow (Stirling is about halfway in between). Day trips is in quotes because AG sleeps so late - they were actually more like evening trips. But they were nice, anyway. In Edinburgh we ate dinner at the Elephant House - J.K. Rowling used to go there to sit in the backroom and write. Even without the claim to fame, though, the food was delicious and the building and restaurant itself was absolutely awesome. Our waiter was American and doing his Masters at the university there, but it took everyone a very long to figure out that we were all from the same country. In Glasgow, we basically ate and went to a piercing parlor.
I did have one really awesome experience on the University itself. Their classes are split into lectures and tutorials - lectures are just that. It's almost like watching a performance because there is no interaction at all between the professors and students. I went to a few lectures (LInguistics and Scottish history) because 1) I would have been bored and alone otherwise 2) I was interested and 3) no one would know that I wasn't Scottish let alone not a student. So one day AG was in a tutorial, which are smaller, discussion-based classes I can't sit in on, so I just wandered the loch (yep, they have a loch!) taking nature-y pictures. The trees all had these really cool, twisted silhouettes because of how the light was (sun through fog) and it's still winter. I saw one particularly cool one up the hill from me, and decided to get closer to get a good picture of it.
So I go ahead and start climbing the hill, just in my sneakers, jeans, overcoat, etc. It was mucky and squishy and I've never heard so many sounds come from the ground I've walked on. I had to fight my way through underbrush and around various sorts of plants. Finally at the top near the tree, I break out of a wall of spindly little bushes, kind of stumble out, and look up to find about 5 or 6 people. Swordfighting. In medieval costumes.
There was maybe a full minute of silence in which everyone just stared at each other. I still don't know who was more shocked: me to find medieval sword-fighters, or them to see me fighting my way out of bushes. So I just dusted off my knees, said "Um... have a nice day!" and walked away. When I was finally a good distance away from them (meaning they wouldn't get suspicious) I turned around to take a picture of them against the mountain. (it will be posted soon, promise!)
Other than that, I just spent a lot of time in AG's flat. Her roommates have a really funny dynamic, and I really enjoyed just hanging out with everybody and watching how they interacted with each other.
Anyway, tomorrow I catch a plane from Prestwick to Shannon. Later!
written by  lost_red_balloon on March 9, 2009 from Stirling, United Kingdom
from the travel blog: I'm a homeless illegal immigrant...?

First day of class
Trier, Germany
Today was the official first day of class! I don't actually have any classes scheduled for Mondays, but one of the classes I was in as a Seminar also has an Übung portion. The professor had written an email asking (I think) everyone to attend the Monday Übung session so that he only had to do an intro once, I guess. So I went, except that it was completely and utterly overwhelming.
I wasn't on the roster, which ended up being a good thing later anyway. And we had to enter our information (name, age, semester, address, etc.) on a sheet that was passed around the class, and I'm definitely the youngest in there by 3 or 4 years even though my semesters are the same as everybody elses, I think. And we had to pick days to present on certain things, except he didn't give any information on what was expected from the presentations. We have to write a really big 20-25 page paper due in August (after I'm gone) and also do what's called a Zwischenprüfung (which translates to "in-between test"). This Zwischenprüfung I thought was originally a mid-term, except that he described it in a way that makes me think it's really flexible. People actually turn in their essays in August and then realize they never did their Zwischenprüfung. So I have no idea what that is. I couldn't keep up with his lecture (the guy somehow described Chinese history in pretty good detail all the way from a couple thousand years B.C. to the Revolution and involvement in the 2nd World War in about an hour. Speedy talker, that one) nor the discussions in which the students all used these really abstract terms I'd never heard of before. I recognized them as somewhat abstract terms because they all ended in "mus" which is their equivalent to our "ism". Overall it sounds ridiculously and unnecessarily difficult for the workload I'm trying to balance already, so I just went ahead and dropped it.
And that was my first day of class.
I did walk back though with a roommate of mine from Syria, so we spent the whole time comparing winter in Texas to winter in Syria and how much we both want summer to come. It was fun!
written by  lost_red_balloon on April 20, 2009 from Trier, Germany
from the travel blog: The Oldest City in Germany

My first week-end here
Freiburg im Breisgau, Germany
All right, my first week-end here is still in progress. As in, it's only Saturday morning and no one else is awake. But I went on today and I think Friday afternoon pretty much counts as part of the week-end.
We finished with classes around 1 (because the other group still had some orientation to do, which we had done the day before) so we got out fairly early. Aymi and I decided we wanted to climb the Münsterturm (the spire in the cathedral), but a lot of people had already done it so it ended up just us. We went back to the dorm, dropped off our stuff, and headed back to Münsterplatz.
This Turm wasn't as bad as others I have climbed (the Kölnerdom/Cologne cathedral is the tallest in Germany, and the stairways in the Duomo in Florence are much harder to manage and you end up on top of the duomo on the outside, which is freaky). So, minus the 418 very steep spiral-staircase style steps (alliteration!!!) it was pretty easy. The view was amazing. You could see almost the whole town (the town is nestled in a valley, and parts of it reach into other valleys which lends an odd shape to Freiburg on any street map), and to the South you could see the foothills of the Alps (that's what I labelled the really big hills anyway. Supposedly we're pretty close). It also helped us, by seeing Freiburg from above, to really understand just how windy the streets are. We're all on the verge of knowing how to navigate, but maps only help so much and we end up walking in circles a lot. It wasn't until I was up there looking down that I got a good idea of just how crazily the town is laid out.
view from Münster
view of Tor from Münster
209 steps up, you can decide to go to the top of the Turm or the belltower. We did both, but only the Turm lended a good view of the city. I wanted to go to the belltower to watch the bells ring, but neither one of us felt like waiting 15 minutes so we left. It only cost one euro (there had got to be a euro key around here somewhere) to go up, so I'll go back and do it again.
me on top of the Turm
Münster cathedral from above
dog in Bächle
After leaving the Münster, Aymi and I decided to put our feet in some Bächlen. We've seen lots of other people walking or playing in them (the latter would be mostly children, though) so we knew it was acceptable, but we figured that we would reek of tourists if we were laughing and taking pictures as we waded in the Bächlen speaking English. So we decided to find a more secluded Bächle, so as not to embarrass ourselves in the town square (we figured every exchange student is allowed a week-end to be a tourist). We went to a street where I remembered there being a little one and not a lot of people (where my first picture of the little Bächle was taken) so we went there. There were a few more people, but it wasn't a big deal. (The water was REALLY COLD!)
me in Bächle
feet in Bächle
Bächle
We then went for some good-old-gilatto, and headed back to the dorm. Dinner turned into a disaster - we decided to go with a few of the girls to get a bite to eat, but on the way out met up with some of the guys, and before you know it had a large group of people with no idea what they were doing. We waited outside Engelbergestrasse dorm for half an hour for some people, and the best part of it was the cat.
cat outside Engelbergestrasse dorm
Eventually it got so confusing that Aymi, Meghan and I just left to do our own thing. We got some Turkish food, then went to the Biergarten. All-in-all it was a decent night in the end.
written by  lost_red_balloon on September 5, 2008 from Freiburg im Breisgau, Germany
from the travel blog: The European Union

Just checking in...
It's been a few weeks since I've written. This is mostly because NOTHING HAS HAPPENED. Overall, Trier isn't a terribly exciting place. Don't get me wrong, I love it here. It's really nice to just sit back and get things done without all sorts of other things going on. I'm starting to discover my favorite places to go for various things (I have an ice cream place, a pizzeria, an Italian restaurant, grocery stores, and my all-time favorite bakery with the sweetest women I've ever met).
German universities are still crazy. There is no getting around this. I'm still trying to figure out what I need to do in all of my classes because some students don't need to do research papers, and some do, and some need oral presentations, and some don't, and I have no idea where I fit into all of this. So I've been frantically emailing people at SU trying to make sure everything I'm doing will count for something because, really, if it doesn't, I can't graduate with an international studies degree because I was... ahem... studying. Internationally. Yup. My only other rant along these lines is how ridiculous I think it is that Southwestern wants me to pay $1350 to do my own research in Germany for my capstone. I want to do an Honors capstone, which is a two semester program, and figured that I would be researching in Germany for it anyway (German capstone, German country... it makes sense, right?) and thought it would be nice to get one of the semester's credit for that. Apparently, though, this is not how things work. UGH. I will refrain from the rant that builds up EVERY SINGLE TIME about how much I don't like the money-drive behind education that is building up. I'm watching this develop now in Germany, too, which is big on public education (which means ridiculously low tuitions). I understand that resources cost something for the school - that in general I get very small classes, one-on-one opportunities with professors, good access to other academic resources, etc. but that this all costs money to the school so I'm going to have to pay some. But still, independent research in another country is a completely different thing. I can't afford $1350 for two extra words on my diploma.
ANYWAY, I'm getting through things. My class list for this semester is:
Pictures of Germany in Literature and Film (German as a foreign language course)
French Postcolonial Literature (in French)
Oral Violence
Academic Writing (German as a foreign language course)
Introduction to Political Economics
Art and Archaeology of the Greek World
Intercultural Communication (German as a foreign language course)
Gypsies, Vagabonds, Artists and Bohemians: Border-existence in the literature of 1900
Woot! On top of that I'm researching for my capstone. The theme I'm going with (I have yet to develop a specific research question) is an examination of how the stresses of immigration/integration in Germany are expressed through German language immigrant-based literature. It sounds more eloquent in German.
Um... I went to Paris again last weekend. It was mostly really fun, but I was with a bunch of people who'd never been so a lot of it was stuff I've already kind of seen (e.g. Eiffel Tower, Louvre, Arc de Triomphe, etc.) but the group was entertaining. A bit stressful towards the end, but... well... nothing you can do. I did get to go to this flea market I've been trying to go to for ages now (mostly I tried to go in 2006 with my mother but we got there and it was closed, and I tried last semester and just got lost in Parisien banlieues/ghettos) and I finally made it!! Parts of it are just booths selling knock-offs of brands or cheap-ish clothing, which Rob described as having "fallen off of trucks." The quotation marks were his as well. But you also get some pretty cool stuff. THe area is mainly an immigrant-populated area, so you can get a lot of stuff from Africa, the Middle East, India, etc. that is shipped in or, in the case of more arts-and-crafts-y things, made by the people now living in Paris. It was a lot of fun. I bought a bracelet made out of a fork (it looks better than it sounds, promise).
That's uh... pretty much it. I'll check in later!
written by  lost_red_balloon on May 12, 2009 from Trier, Germany

Eire
Limerick, Ireland
So I got into Shannon Airport in Ireland at about 7:30 and had to find a bus to Limerick. I find the Irish bus system very confusing, for future reference. I managed, although I had to actually pull the "I'm not from here and I don't know how things work and I'm just a 20 year old girl please don't be mad" kind of act a few times. Strange that I didn't have to do anything of the sort in Eastern Europe, or Spain, or France, or anywhere else. Nope. Just the place where people actually do speak English.
Anyway, I made it to LImerick. Really though I didn't spend much time in Limerick. I spent a few days there - I explored the campus, met some people, sat in on some classes. We did go to a medieval feast in a castle that H.'s program let me tag along to. We had a tour of the castle and the grounds (which have a village set up in the old-fashioned Irish village way). Then we went into the main hall of the castle, sat on benches at really long tables, and had a medieval feast. The whole thing was structured like an actual meal - the courses and traditions were all the same as hundreds of years ago. The food was delicious, but hard to eat without silverware. And the costumes were horrendous and the performances rather cheesy. But overall it was a lot of fun.
Then we set out for some traveling.
First, H. and I went to the Aran Islands. My impression of that trip is that the Islands tend to be kind of overlooked on the Irish tour scene. But the impression I get, both from the extent of my travels and from H.'s recounting of her classes, is that Ireland is falling victim to commercialization. Pubs are becoming chains, music is going a little more mainstream, and people keep moving to cities. We went to Galway first, which was really nice, and had dinner in a pub with live music, then a ferry to the Islands. It was like landing in a completely different place. The landscape is much more rugged, and everything is older. It's almost untouched by the rest of Ireland. We went to the biggest island, Inis Mor, rented bikes, and rode to all of the sights.
First we went to Dún Aonghasa, which is basically a >2000 year old Celtic fort right on the cliffside facing the Atlantic. It was epic. It was a straight shot down to the ocean (and I mean way down) inside this old fort which had pathways and ancient methods of defense. In the middle, right on the edge of the cliff, was a big block of stone which was probably used for ceremonies. Apparently the boundary between land and sea was of huge mythological importance to the ancient tribes there.
From the fort one is SUPPOSED to be able to go to the "Wormhole," which was something H. and I both really wanted to see. But the guy at the bike place told us to just walk straight along the cliffs until we saw it, which would have worked if the cliffs weren't fenced off past the fort. So we walked back down towards the welcome center, trying to figure out how to get to the Wormhole. We considered jumping a gate we passed and just walking, but figured we'd ask at hte welcome center anyway.
At the welcome center, the lady basically told us in a really hushed tone "well, its private property, but no one is ever out there. Just jump the white gate."
So back we went to the gate, and jumped it. This quickly turned into a mile or two hike across cow fields and cross-country along the cliffs. We had to jump a few of the old stone walls Ireland is famous for, by technicality cross a waterfall on the side of the cliff (which was really just a trickle of water onto a ledge, but we enjoyed the literal description) and deal with rocky terrain, bogs, and cow paddies. By the time we were neared the first big inlet, though, we realized we didn't know how far the Wormhole was, and suddenly the expedition turned into a really cool idea. We were out of the area where even the cows can go. We were walking across the cliffs exactly as people have been for thousands of years, looking for a natural landmark. I couldn't believe that I was experiencing this in probably the same way the first person to find the Wormhole did - by just walking and exploring until we found something cool.
We did find it. It was in the second big inlet. The Wormhole is (I know you're dying of curiosity by now) essentially a big, perfectly rectangular hole in a ledge on the cliffside. Naturally made. Perfectly right angles. Crazy. The tide was out when we got there, so we couldn't really see the water in it, but we were tired and decided to sit a while. Turns out the tide was coming in, so we sat there and watched water gradually pour into the rectangle. Then the waves started to crash against the cliffside. H. and I were sitting about 2 feet from the edge (there was a ledge below us, just in case - we checked) leaning against another rock sheltered from the wind. Eventually the waves came in so forcefully that we actually got wet from waves... on top of the cliff. I have a photo that is shot looking straight out from the cliff, and the white foam that takes up most of the frame is the wave. So H. and I sat there together for a good 45 minutes, on the side of a cliff, with no one around and a private few of Ireland and the Atlantic.
From the Aran Islands we took a ferry back to the mainland, then a bus to Doolin. Doolin is a TINY town. As in, our hostel is the place to buy groceries and bus tickets. Doolin is also the closest town to the Cliffs of Moher. We talked to the guy at the hostel and got some advice. We went out to lunch at Fitzgerald's, which was kind of mediocre but good enough to fill a stomach. Then we took the 5:00-ish bus out to the Cliffs, knowing the next one didn't come until 8:30 or so. The Cliffs of Moher are much higher than the cliffs on the islands, and greener, and overall much more impressive, but it's so touristy. There are paved paths, and stairs, and people everywhere, and H. and I were just laughing about how unimpressive the experience of being there was. The Cliffs themselves are awesome, but stairs are nothing to rock walls, and paved pathways are not bogs.
Because we couldn't get a bus back before dark (which was part of the plan) we walked back on the Burren Way, which they tell everyone is a popular biking and hiking trail. What it actually is is no space on the side of a road. At least until a turn-off. But it's really scenic and follows the coast almost all the way back to Doolin. It was actually really fun - just walking along the side of a little country road in Ireland with some rations in our bags. We were most of the way back (we'd been walking for about an hour, and it's only supposed to be an hour an fifteen minute walk) when a car pulled up next to us. Inside was this 70 or 80 year old farmer who offered us a ride. I told Heather I didn't care if we got in or not, because he seemed completely harmless. She said yes, so we hopped in. I did a check to make sure we could get out if we wanted (which is what I do most places I go now, looking at doors, locks, speeds, etc.) but the guy was in an old car with manual locks. And was driving at about 2 miles an hour. He was really nice, but impossible to escape a conversation with. He dropped us off in Doolin.
That night we went to McDougal's pub, which is the only actual traditional Irish pub I've seen, and apparently one of the last ones around. It was dark and dusty with fantastic traditional food - H. had Irish stew and I had vegetable pancakes. There was traditional Irish music and spontaneous step dancing. It was a lot of fun. We did meet a bunch of people from Texas, who were college friends way back when and decided to take a trip together, which meant a lot of talking about American football for a while. It dampened the Irish experience but was fun nonetheless. The next day we headed back to Limerick.
Tuesday we went to Dublin for St. Patrick's Day. The entire town was a madhouse. We couldn't figure out where to go to see the parade, because they did not block things off the way we expected. We got shepherded around, and finally stuck in a spot simply because we could see the reflection of the approaching parade in a window in a building across the street. We managed, somehow, to actually make it to the first and second rows (H. and I let the two shorter girls with us go in front). I don't really know how that came about, but we saw most of the parade up close in the end. It actually looks a lot more like Carnival than anything else. St. Patrick's Day is much more Irish in America. Irony? We found a Lebanese place for lunch because the pubs were all absolutely packed, then a restaurant and bar for dinner. The bar was a lot of fun - everyone in there had had more than enough alcohol (I couldn't convince an Irishman that I was, in fact, not Irish, but from Texas) and there was live music. Overall, awesome.
From Dublin I took a ferry to Holyhead, Wales the next day. The cab driver was really really nice. We talked about literature. The train of conversation went from which boat I was taking to James Joyce (once of the boats from that company is called Ulysses). The cab driver thinks Ulysses is an absurd book and does not understand why Joyce is seen as a god of Irish literature. So I asked him what he would recommend, and he really just talked to me about really obscure Irish authors and playwrights for half an hour. It was so much fun.
written by  lost_red_balloon on March 18, 2009 from Limerick, Ireland

S'mae! Dw'in byw ym Mangor
Bangor, United Kingdom
So I got into Bangor and Steph was waiting on the platform for me. It occurred to me that it had been forever since anyone has really waited for me on any of my travels. Someone picked me up from the airport in Austin for Christmas, of course, but out of the the 11 countries I'd visited before Christmas, and coming back to Germany, and then going to London, Stirling, and Ireland, no one has ever been there waiting for me as I pulled in. At first that was a really lonely feeling - seeing everybody else finding someone, and all of the hugging and crying and smiling and other people carrying luggage for you. But I actually got really used to it, and had forgotten until I saw Steph on the platform how much I missed having someone to greet me.
She and I went back to her flat, which is where I spent most of my time. She lives in the international dorm, so she lives with people from Germany, Austria, Spain, Italy, Britain, etc. Her best friend there is German, and they play an absurd game where they hide clothespins in the kitchen and wait for other people to find them. I got to join in on all of the games and absurdity. It was a lot of fun in the end.
We took one trip to Portmeirion. This is another story requiring context.
I grew up watching a show called the Prisoner with my dad. It's a spy show from the 1960s, and is incredibly 60's-ish. I think the first time a lava lamp was ever shown on TV was in the Prisoner, so it kind of helped start the craze. The whole thing about the show is that this British secret agent quits his job, goes back to his apartment and starts to pack, and then gas seeps in through the absurdly-large keyhole and knocks him out. This is all during the really intense intro bongo music. He wakes up in a village that is only called The Village, which looks very Mediterranean. Everything is stucco and really colorful, but it's really creepy. Every map of The Village only shows the village, and the surroundings are The Sea, The Mountains, and The Forest. So he has no idea where he is. And he's just given a number, and no one goes by names. And if you try to escape, these great bouncy white ball things chase you down and suffocate you.
Needless to say, when I found out that this was all filmed in a town called Portmeirion in northern Wales, conveniently close to where Steph was studying, I had to go.
It's even hard to get to. We took a bus to a placed called Porthmadog, which neglected to tell us via a sign or anything that we were actually in Porthmadog. From Porthmadog we caught a bus to a placed called Minffrodd, I think, which was the next village over, and from there we had to walk through the woods to the village of Portmeirion.
Even without having watched the show, the village is incredibly surreal. But I'd seen the show, so it was surreal squared. I recognized places and scenes. We even went down to the ridiculously big beach (where in the first episode the main character is chased down by a giant bouncing ball) for a while. Of course, the only time I've ever seen a warning for quicksand would be in The Village, right?
Other than that one trip, Steph and I just explored Bangor a lot. We went to the Yellow Pub a lot (which has an actual name, but it's yellow) because it played good music and had a good atmosphere and good food. And to Herbs, which is a really good Redwall-esque restaurant. Overall, great times.
written by  lost_red_balloon on March 24, 2009 from Bangor, United Kingdom

Weinfest!
Pfaffenweiler, Germany
Today was uneventful until the Weinfest. This whole area, from Freiburg extending up the Rhein River in western Germany, is known for its white wine, and it's the only region in Germany able to really support vineyards because of the Rhein. Whenever a harvest is brought in, the village responsible for the vineyards and resultant wine will have a Weinfest (literally, wine festival. I think you might have gotten that on your own). In fall, apparently, there is a new one practically every week-end, but today was the celebration for the village of Pfaffenweiler.
city map
We took the bus out there from Hauptbahnhof, and walked around the village for hours. Each bar is supplied with a standard wine-list, but the cheapest one is always the subject of the festival. So you have to buy a wine-glass (about ,1 l and good as a souveneir!) and you just take it around to different bars trying different wines and foods as you go. It was actually a lot of fun. It's a really big deal for the villages, so everybody comes out.
I was utterly taken aback by the dialect. We were only a half hour (maybe) outside of Freiburg, but the speech was completely different. I could understand it, and what I didn't understand the villagers could easily explain by reverting back to standard German. But they wrote everything out in their dialekt, so even the menus were hard to understand. Flammekuche, one of my favorite foods (it's kind of like a German-style pizza) was suddenly spelled "Flammechueche," which basically means the k suddenly went gutteral and the u sounds more like an i. "Danke schön", a standard thanks, became "Dankasheen". It was pretty awesome.
So mainly we wandered, drank some good old Freiburger alcohol (but not too much, of course), and listened to German music in some of the bars. And, apparently beer comes in meters and half meters. Who knew? I was confused when Joachim asked me if I wanted in on a half-meter. I thought he said half-liter, and thought that sounded like a lot of beer. Not that a half-meter is a lot better, but there were a lot of us there.
Sean with a half-meter
the band
Aymi and I decided to stay later than the other IES students, because, as they were all getting on the bus about 8 o'clock, all the Germans were getting off the bus. So we figured the party was just getting started. We were right. We wandered around, but everything became much more crowded, and there were a lot more people our age. We went into one bar where two guys, who I guess are local hero/musicians, were playing, and it very distinctly reminded me of the Flogging Molly concert I attended in February. I was pushed, picked up, jumped on, and otherwise pushed around while trying to get to the back. And they were playing some really cheesy German music (it wasn't traditional music, but it would not fit into any "hip" or American music genres). It was intense, but I really enjoyed it. It was cold and rainy, though, and I'm going to have to get some kind of raincoat/fall coat soon. I've never needed a coat before...
written by  lost_red_balloon on September 6, 2008 from Pfaffenweiler, Germany
from the travel blog: The European Union

3 weeks left
I have, up until now, never had a problem with the idea of going home. I do love living in Germany, even if there are things about German society and the university system which drive me a little bit crazy, but I’ve always had it in the back of my mind that I would be going back home. A friend of mine studied here last year as well, and came back telling me how wonderful Germany would be for me and how she feels more at home there than back in Texas. She wants to live here. Which is fine – I understand the appeal. But that sense of falling in love with life in Germany never hit me. I feel equally comfortable in Germany and in Austin, but Austin is where my friends are and, frankly, a lot more interesting and eccentric than anywhere in Europe I’ve been.
But now that I only have 3 weeks left here, I’m realizing just how soon I’m going to be getting on that plane. And I’m not ready to go. Every weekend when I call home, my mother asks if I think I’ll be ready to go home at the end of July. Everytime I have answered with “yes,” and explained various things I miss about home, or something I’ve deemed ineffective or unnecessary here, or even just that it’s been a long time since I’ve been home. I’m surprised to feel that answer changing – I was so sure that, despite not being homesick, I would ready and happy to go back when I had to. Now I’m not so sure. I just can’t quite bring myself to start sorting through my clothing and books to see what I should leave, what I should send, and what I should pack. I’m still not done with all of my schoolwork and haven’t written in my journal in ages. All of the things I should be preparing to finish up just aren’t working.
Frankly, I’m nervous that home won’t be as good as the idealic image I’ve had in my head this entire time.
written by  lost_red_balloon on July 4, 2009 from Trier, Germany

Back in Germany
Well, I had no problems getting back in. I flew into Basel, took a bus back to Freiburg, killed some time with Krystal, picked up my luggage, etc. I still have to kill about 6 hours in the Freiburg station, though, to catch the midnight train up to Koblenz (where it will arrive at about 5 in the morning) and then take a train to Trier. I'm really tired, but it'll be good to have a home again.
Hopefully will write from Trier!
written by  lost_red_balloon on March 24, 2009 from Freiburg im Breisgau, Germany

Wolfssteige im Schwarzwald
You, my dear reader, are about to get picture overload.
We went hiking today. Half of the IES students went to Schauinsland, which is Freiburg's house peak. Out of our two options, though, it is the more tourist-y one, so I figured I could go back to do that one on my own. I opted for the more obscure St. Peter/Wolfssteige trip.
We met at Hauptbahnhof, took a train to a little town outside of Freiburg, then hopped on a bus up to St. Peter. Five minutes out of Freiburg we were very distinctly in the Black Forest/Schwarzwald, and our bus was winding around miniature-mountains and in and out of quaint little villages. St. Peter is a village VERY high up, where there is a baroque church built on the site of an old monastery. I must say, I'm not big on baroque architecture (it strikes me as overly extravagant) but no one can deny how much craftwork and labor went into the building of this church way up on a hill in the Black Forest.
St. Peter
inside St. Peter
prayer candles
It was pretty amazing, all in all. Apparently they have a gorgeous library, too, but it's closed off to the public.
organpipes in st. peter's
near the st. peter's church
getting back into town
the plaza
the old monastery gateway
After leaving St. Peter, we headed down, or up, the Wolfssteige trail. It's about 7 or 8 km long, or just under 5 miles. Imagine the Sound of Music, and you get the general idea about the scenery (except smaller mountains and bigger forests).
what? this? scenic? nah....
one of many spectacular views
black forest cows!!! (but are they happier than california cows?)
the black forest
a really cute creek!
again, the black forest, and a house
a waterfall in the woods
You know those movies where there are really epic scenic shots of the characters walking along these ridiculously high ridges and hills with unbelievable backdrops? That was me. Also, I got to frolick in fields, which is less epic, but no less amazing.
me in the old castle walls
At the end of this VERY STRENUOUS hike, we visited the ruins of a 1.000 year old castle. I've never really seen ruin ruins (all the castles around Koblenz are relatively whole. As in, you can see the walls fairly distinctly). I still really enjoyed it. We were in the middle of the Black Forest, went up a ridiculously steep hill (I mean, very athletic and hiking-accustomed people were falling down this hill it was so near vertical) and suddenly we were surrounded by old stone walls covered in ivy, with tree roots weaving in and out of the stone. A lot of the others thought it was a bit anti-climactic (and not worth the climb), but it was absolutely gorgeous in its ruin. It's as enjoyable to be able to imagine what was there, who lived there (and how they got up that hill on a regular basis!) than to see it. It was dark there, and kind of dank because it rained last night, and the ground was covered with roots. It was creepily fairy-tale-ish (Grimm brother style).
we hiked over ruins of a 1.000 year old castle
tree through old castle walls
We then had dinner at the IES center in the garden, and pasta really isn't terribly exciting, but I did meet a professor. I have two classes scheduled at the same time on Monday (but they're different the rest of the week): Europe and the Muslim World and Migration: Ethnic Minorities in Europe which I think would compliment each other really well. This lady is teaching the Ethnic Minorities course, and I talked to her, and she said she wasn't sure if Mondays really worked for her either and, if I really wanted her to, she might get it changed. I may be in both classes!!!!
When I got back to my WG, Rebekka was at the table. I haven't gotten to see her much, and she seems really cool. She asked what we did today, and we had this whole conversation in German, and she invited me out with her and her best friend Tuesday night (when their summer semester ends). I'm really excited!! It's so hard to get to know Germans here because the culture is so different, but I really want to make some German friends! I feel like I'm not getting as much language practice or cultural immersion because I always end up hanging out with Americans.
written by  lost_red_balloon on September 7, 2008 from Freiburg im Breisgau, Germany

Strasbourg!
Strasbourg, France
the unfinished EU
We had our first field study trip today, to Strasbourg! In France!
We actually had class first (bummer, right?) so we didn't get to leave for Strasbourg until 1:30. The bus ride was only an hour or so, and Aymi, Meghan, Katie and I climbed the very front seats on the upper deck, so we could see everything! It was really cool at first, until you realize that the highway isn't that much more exciting from 5 feet higher. Although overpasses did seem dangerously low...
flags
So we got to Strasbourg and went to see the Parlement Européen, or European Parliament. It would have been a lot cooler, though, if the ceiling hadn't just recently collapsed and the entire building been shut down as a safety hazard. You know, if we didn't just get to go into the courtyard and listen to some guy tell us all about what we could have been seeing... I'm not complaining, though, all of the information was stuff I pretty much knew anyway, and it was probably a lot shorter this way.
the EU
We then went into Strasbourg itself, to the Dom. The Dom is huge! It's slightly bothersome, though, that it
in the rain
only had one spire. One spire cathedrals are awesome when the one spire is in the middle and the building looks like it's only supposed to have one spire. This one had it off to the side on a corner, meaning there was supposed to be another one at the other corner, and it was supposed to be symmetrical. Other than that, it was amazing. They also had this awesome clock! In one corner, there's this huge contraption. There are three separate faces - the bottom one is a calendar that takes into account February and leap years, and the middle one is a flat out clock that runs off of a solar day (so it's sometimes a little behind a normal clock, but it all evens out in the end). The top one has six little golden balls that represent the six main planets known at the time of its construction, and tracks the movement of these planets in real time (so, if Saturn takes 30 years to rotate the sun, so does the little ball. These little miniature planets turned out to only be seconds off from the actual revolutions, as well). Above the top face is a sphere that sticks halfway out, and half of it is gold and half blue. That tracks the moon, so you can tell from this clock if it's a new moon, full moon, or waxing or waning.
coolest clock ever!
Now, on either side of the calendar, there is an angel. The one on the left is holding a bell and stick-thing, and the one on the right an hourglass. Above the moon-sphere there is a glockenspiel set-up (with figures that rotate) and, right in the middle, a skeleton holding a bell. On the glockenspiel bit there are four characters - a young boy, a teenager, a grown man and an old man, and each holds a similar stick-thing to the angel. At a quarter after the hour, the clock lights up and the angel on the left hits its bell, then the young boy hits the bell the skeleton is holding, then the angel, then the boy, then the glockenspiel moves over one spot. On the half hour, the same process is repeated except that, due to the previous rotation, the teenage boy is now hitting the skeleton's bell, then it rotates to the man. At a quarter till, the angel rings his bell, the man rings the skeleton's bell, the angel again and then the man, and then one more rotation so that, on the hour, the old man is always alternating with the angel ringing the bell. The point is that the clock tracks life - from childhood through adulthood and eventually an elderly age. At every hour, as the old man passes the skeleton (representing death, of course) the angel on the right flips his hourglass, stating that another hour of life has passed us by. Typical German morbidity, I guess, but it's intriguing. This will be much better with a picture.
watch out for pickpockets!
inside cathedral
cathedral
We had an hour-long tour of the city, including petit France which i still in its basic medieval form, and a lot of it hasn't ever been destroyed (we see a lot of cathedrals and buildings that have been restored but
Petite France
"retained its charm." These were just flat-out the real things, which was awesome). I loved walking down streets knowing that hundreds of years worth of people had actually touched the same stones I had. That for hundreds of years children have been playing on the cobble-stones, and families have taken refuge inside the houses, and the same goods have been sold from the same buildings. It turned into an intense connection to history. Nothing has changed there for centuries.
my favorite building on the river
Then we went for a good old traditional meal of Flamkuche, which wasn't nearly as good as the Flammkuche I've had near Koblenz, but we were in Alsace so it could be different.
Beer is nourishment
Then we went back to the bus, hopped on, and waited. For a very long period of time.
The bus wouldn't start. We all piled out again, and the guys literally tried to push the double-decker charter bus a couple metres to try to get it started, but that didn't work either. The company had to send another bus all the way from Freiburg, which meant we had an hour to wait (this is after we'd been sitting on the curb for at least a half hour/45 minutes already while they tried to fix it), so IES treated us all to drinks at a nearby bar. We didn't get home until midnight.
And I caught a cold.
written by  lost_red_balloon on September 11, 2008 from Strasbourg, France

German course trip
Speyer, Germany
Today was the day that every German course went on a separate trip. The basic course went to Heidelberg (which is gorgeous!) and the intermediate to Lake Konstanz. My class went to Speyer. It was a very nice break from the traveling we've already been doing, simply because, including my professor, there were only 9 of us. When you travel around in a group of 30 or 60 and go out at night with a group 0f 20, even when you only start with 4, having only 9 and no possibilities to add people is very refreshing.
Speyer is a fantastic city. From what I can tell it's fairly small, and not a lot of people have
church
heard of it. It was originally founded by the Romans in 10 b.c. (ish), then became a seat for the bishop. It was originally built on the Rhein River, but the Rhein's course has changed so it's now on a little tributary thing.
prayer candles
The main cathedral is gorgeous. It's a catholic romanesque Dom. Oddly enough, it's part of the reason I think Speyer has an interesting approach to religion. This Dom was also refreshing - after visiting so many amazingly elaborate cathedrals that took hundreds of years to build because they were so beautifully intricate, seeing a nice, aesthetically-pleasing, block with a dome on top was kind of cool. And it was gorgeous in its own way (and I am, by no means, hating on the cathedrals I've been visiting). Interestingly enough, because Speyer is still the bishops seat, and the cathedral is the center of this, the tour guide was not allowed into the cathedral. The territory of the city and of the church are so separated that, simply by being an employee of the city, she could not cross the threshold of the cathedral. So she had to tell us all
about it outside and then wait for us. Apparently some stipulations have been removed, but the church used to be a refuge from the authorities because they were not allowed to cross that very threshold in pursuit of people.
relics
We also visited an Episcopalian church, which was in more of a baroque style. It was odd to see a protestant
church that looked more like a catholic one, while the catholic one could have easily been a
organ in a evangelical church
protestant one. It was a little bizarre.
Jewish quarter
The tour also took us though the old Jewish quarter (which I thought was going to be a ghetto, but wasn't). There was a certain part of town that was the center of the Speyer Jewish community, which had a synogogue and a ritual bathhouse. In the general burning of Speyer (I don't remember when) the
synnogogue was destroyed and partially rebuilt, then destroyed again in WWII. I think. So the synogogue only has a few walls still standing, but they're the same walls that have been around for hundreds of years. Even cooler was the bathhouse. It was underground, so it wasn't destroyed with everything else and pretty much remained in its original form from the middle ages. Being rather poorly lit, and having the eerie air of centuries of ritual, it was a little creepy. But also really cool.
old Jewish bathhouses
After the tour, we just walked around. If it wasn't so cold and rainy (and if I hadn't forgotten a jacket) it would have been okay. And I was in the worst part of my cold from Strasbourg. I still had a blast - I enjoyed being with my class and only my class so much that I hardly noticed how aweful I felt until the train ride back. We decided on the ride back that Mexican food sounded awesome, and Christiane (our professor) directed us to a Mexican place.
Upon arrival in Freiburg, we set out in pursuit of said Mexican restaurant. Most of us were there (I think two students did not come), so it was a nice compact group. The key to the directions, however, is that there are multiple Müller stores. So, after wandering around, soaking wet, with a cold, in the rain when it was in the 50s for half an hour, we finally found a place, but they only had seating outside. It was decided that I was going to sit in the driest place and in the middle (I'm not sure if it really helped me or not) and I was given the candle to keep my hands warm. We had an absolute blast. The margaritas were basically straight tequilla with a piece of lime (I couldn't finish mine) and the nachos had real jalapenos. MMMM. It was so worth the cold just to be with these people at this place.
We then went to Schlappen, which is a bar that sells beer by the two-liter boot. It has become popular enough with the IES crowd that "schlappen" has now become a verb participle/adjective. As in, "we're about to get schlappened" or "are we going schlappening tonight?" or "he's so schlappened that..." Again, I probably should have gone home and gotten dry clothing, but I didn't. I did get kind of spacey, though part of it was that we met 15 other people and I got stuck at the boy's table. Joe and I did manage to establish that we've probably met each other before through Liz and the Holiday House crew, which was really bizarre. FInally Aymi decided to go back to get ready to go out to a club (it was a Saturday night, after all) and I decided to go back with her and probably go back to bed.
Outside Schlappen, Aymi disappeared for a minute to go try to get a cigarette from a group of men. She was gone for a while, but I could hear her talking and laughing, so I didn't go after her or anything. Next thing I know, German men are coming up to me going "you want to come to our Bachelor Party with us?" I had to politely refrain many times, explain I was sick, cough, show my pile of kleenexes that had accumulated in my pocket, and pretend to be unbearably sleepy (as well as endure many hand-kisses) before they finally let me go. Aymi and Meghan went out that night, I slept.
more kings
kings of old
written by  lost_red_balloon on September 13, 2008 from Speyer, Germany

Ich bin ein Berliner...
Berlin, Germany
We had to meet at the train station at 6:30-ish to catch our train to Berlin. Despite being sleepy, I was somewhat amused by the reluctance of everyone to ride on a train for 7 hours, simply because 7 hours here gets us from the very southwest corner of Germany to Berlin in the northeast. 7 hours back home gets me to Laredo... from the middle of Texas. I wasn't worried about it, but as the trip progressed, many seemed to be getting cabin-fever.
The scenery was really interesting to see. It was my first really extensive exploration of Germany, so all I'd seen before was the Rhein Valley, which is all hills, castles, and vineyards, and the Black Forest which, coincidentally, is all forest. As we moved eastward, though, things began to flatten out, but it was all mostly farmland. We were in nicer cabins - the kind that seat six people within an enclosed area. In my cabin, though, there were only five of us. Which means strange and increasingly-younger German men kept coming in to sit with us. I felt bad for all of them, just because they had to deal with us becoming increasingly slap-happy.
Eventually, though, we got to Berlin. It's amazing what kind of things will turn me into a giddy, 5-year-old girl. Being in Berlin is one of them. Even as we stood outside the train station looking at more German billboards, I had an inevitable grin on my face.
It was a strange trip initially, though, because we were split up for the first time. There are 60 IES students, and we all have to take a class entitled PO350 - Integrative EU Seminar or something along those lines. There are 4 sections, and we'd been told that on our trips we would travel in two groups. PO350s A and B were one group, in which the students tend to gear towards the political science area, and PO350s C and D were the other group who tend towards economics. I am, of course, in B, because economics is not quite up my alley. So AB and CD stayed in different hotels, had different tours, went to different lectures, etc.
Alexanderplatz
Our hotel was in former East Berlin (that inevitable grin I wrote about? Yeah... it got bigger). I am not yet an expert on Berliner architecture or the city layout or anything, but walking down the street to my hotel, I couldn't help but think that East Berlin was somehow exactly how I had envisioned. Things just looked a little run-down, and it struck me as exactly how East Berlin should look and should feel.
TV Tower
Ampelmännchen
We dropped our stuff off in our rooms, then went down to take a city tour. Of course, we only really made a point to stop and talk about the big sites - the Brandenburg Gate, the Reichstag, the World Clock in Potsdamer Platz and we went to Alexanderplatz. It was amazing. For me, anyway. Shanthi told me at one point that she didn't really like Berlin too much (Shanthi, I've concluded, has her own comfort zone which she is reluctant to leave, and Berlin, as a big city that, in many areas that aren't tourist-y can seem a bit shabby, doesn't quite fit), and asked me why I did. It was somewhat harder than I would have expected to explain to her exactly what I loved about Berlin. A lot of it is just that I read spy novels. I love the Cold War, and I'm intrigued by the identity-crisis the division of Germany has caused, and so many of the characters I have loved, hated, respected, and pitied have been in this very city I was walking around in. So much of how I have developed until now is wrapped up in this city I have, until now, never been to before. Imagine trying to explain to someone who only sees the peeling white-washed walls and cracked sidewalks that every corner of this degenerate city has some spectre haunting it, and I've been waiting my whole life to experience each and every one.
Reichstag
Brandenburg Gate
Holocaust Memorial
Holocaust memorial
Holocaust Memorial, dome
We ended up around Potsdamer Platz, which has a huge display on the Berlin Wall, but only shows pieces exhibiting the western side (there was no way in the East anyone could get close enough to graffiti without getting shot):
the wall
Our tour guide left us with some advice about what to eat. She recommended restaurants for people, then said "Well, if anyone is interested in having a truly Berlinisch meal, they should try currywurst. I know where you can get the best currywurst in the city, and it's on my way back home, so anyone who wants to come is welcome to follow." I said yes (surprised?) along with Meghan and, surprisingly, Warren and Anthony (neither of whom we know very well).
currywurst
So the four of us set off with this tour guide, who took us on the subway and on a bus that passed a section of the wall that is still erected, to Konnopke's Imbiß, which, we learned upon getting lost later, is way way up northeast. She also taught us how to order, because there isn't really a menu. Currywurst itself is a kind of sausage with a particular sauce on it (kind of like a spicy ketchup... anyone had Rudy's spicy bbq sauce?) and, in typical European fashion, you can get mayo on your fries. Menü weiss (literally white menu/meal) is the currywurst, fries with mayo. Menü rot is currywurst with fries and the currywurst sauce all over. I got Menü weiss, which you can see below. It was the best wurst I've ever had.
Konnopke's
eating currywurst
Apparently the lady who now owns it (who is definitely at least 60) inherited it from her father, who founded it over 70 years ago. So this business has survived the Second World War and the Cold War, supposedly without ever changing its menu or its taste. It's infamous among people who actually know Berlin. The Imbiß is, quite literally, a little kiosk in the middle of a really complex intersection underneath the line for the street cars. So it's loud, gritty, graffiti-covered, and utterly amazing.
The four of us ate (standing up, no places to sit were anywhere around), then decided to explore a bit. So we just walked. We went into thrift stores, retail stores, grocery stores, book stores, everything. We talked about Berlin, and school, and music and graffiti. It was a lot of fun. The boys, of course, wanted some alcohol so we stopped into a store and I had to help them translate a bit (Warren was confused by the concept of Kräutlikör... or cabbage liquor?) so he bought it. We made our way back to the hotel eventually, and hung out in their room where the two of them quite literally talked about what they were wearing to our meetings the next day while drinking Kräutlikör (which is like a slightly better version of Jägermeister, which I hate). Warren definitely has Grateful Dead ties. Good times.
The next day was a meetings day. I wish I had more pictures (I have to steal them from all my friends' cameras). First we went to the Reichstag (where Aymi and Katie were actually greeted by Angela Merkel as she walked by), which is a very very German looking building. But it's kind of cool. It was actually destroyed (fire, among other things) and then the area became East Berlin, and the DDR government never fixed it up, so it just sat for years. Now it's the main government building. Right when you walk in, you see these walls covered in notes in the Cyrillic alphabet, which seemed a little random. The guy who met us there explained that when the Russian soldiers finally overtook Berlin in WWII, the building was in pretty bad shape, so they all picked up stones from the ground and wrote notes in charcoal. Some of them were understandable (someone's name and a year) and a couple had different names but the words surrounding the names were identical, so I'm assuming it was something along the lines of "so-and-so was here." Either way, the German government found these notes when renovating the building and decided to keep them there as a reminder of the German past, so they only washed off the offensive ones.
We were shown to the SPD conference room (the SPD is the social-democratic party, or the centre-left party, generally a little bit further left than our democratic party) and an SPD representative just did a question/answer session with us. It was pretty cool, he cut through all the waffle that politicians always give, and said exactly what he thought about everything. Very refreshing.
SPD
inside the Social Democrats room in Reichstag
we invaded her picture
inside the dome
dome
We then got to go up on the roof of the Reichstag (which one normally needs to wait in line for a few hours to do). This big glass dome was built on top to signify a new era in German history. The idea of it is that people can walk around on the roof around this dome, and there's a really complex series of mirrors in it right over the main meeting room in the building. It is all supposed to signify a transparency of government - that no matter what, the people walking around above are visible and can see what is going on.
We then went to the German Foreign Ministry and the Ministry of Defense (on different days, technically). The Foreign Ministry guy was basically just a paper-pusher (no offense to him, of course... I may end up one) but he really just followed the Foreign Ministry line and didn't answer anything straight. Which is probably his job. It was frustrating. The guys at the Ministry of Defense, though, were really cool.
Checkpoint Charlie
subway stop for Checkpoint Charlie
Then we went wandering around Berlin. I had to stop by in a Vodafone office because my phone locked me out and I needed to change my number. I handled the entire conversation in German, which was pretty good considering it involved both colloquial speech and technical jargon, but as I left the guy told me, in German "Don't ever forget your pin again!" Like I'm that stupid. I just spoke to you in German because your English was worse! Grrr....
That night we went to Potsdamer Platz, then just walked. At about midnight we decided to get cocktails, b/c we passed a cocktail bar that looked pretty cool. No one was in it, so we just chilled and talked to the bartender a bit, who was only a little older than us. At one point he came over and said "I'm going to change the music. Any requests?" So we asked what he was going to change it to, and he said "Well,
cocktails
I was thinking..." and said the name of some group none of us knew. So he said "it's electronic tango. It's really good." So he put on electronic tango for us. It was a lot of fun, but we had to make our way back to our hotel without public transportation at 2:30 in the morning....
where the wall used to be
I love Berlin!!
"it is like a leetle oskar..."
written by  lost_red_balloon on September 21, 2008 from Berlin, Germany

... They Kick You?!?!
Tallinn, Estonia
So, it's really only a 2 1/2 - 3 hour flight from Berlin to Tallinn... the amazingness of planes. Although, as Henry J. Tillman said, "The saying 'Getting there is half the fun' became obsolete with the advent of commercial airlines." For the moment, I'll bypass this statement, and choose to focus on the fact that I was in Estonia. Who goes to Estonia?
So, Estonia's actually really interesting. We got there about 10:30 pm, so everything was dark and we couldn't really see anything. That first night was fairly uneventful. Our lectures were pretty sweet, though, especially our last one. The thing is that Estonia enjoyed a very short-lived independence after centuries of being occupied by Germans, Russians, Norwegians, Swedes, Danish, usw. and right before being occupied by the Nazi forces and then "liberated" and subsequently annexed by the Soviet Union. So if you want to know what a young country is, go to Estonia. The Baltics can, simply because of this, automatically be distinguished from a lot of Eastern Europe - most countries considered behind the Iron Curtain in the Cold War were independent, but communist and very dependent on Russia. The Baltics were a part of the Soviet Union.
They still have a lot of issues with this - for one, Estonia is right on the border with Russia and even has some contested territory still with Russia. They also have a Russian minority (and other ethnic minorities who speak Russian and are sympathetic to Russia). And no one really knows what to do about it.
street
they had family in Houston!
Our hotel was actually right down the street from the park where the infamous Bronze Soldier statues stood. These statues were erected years ago as a memorial to the Soviet troops who died in the "liberation" of Estonia from Nazi Germany. Only last year, it was decided that, because the liberation essentially meant annexation into a repressive communist regime, the statues would be removed and sent to a random cemetery somewhere in the city (no one could give us directions there...). This incited huge riots by the Russian minority and those Estonians who are more sympathetic towards Russia. It was a really big deal. Because of this rocky history, there is a HUGE differentiation between peoples in Estonia, and the Estonians can be touchy about it.
typical looking building
Soviet-era housing
Our first day in Estonia, we headed over to the University of Tallinn. If you were to envision a post-Soviet city, Tallinn would mostly be it. Everything was rickety and run-down where we were. We meant to take the tram/street car to the university - a plan which should have worked. And, in theory, did work... until it took us back to our hotel. So we got off at a random stop, tried to get on another tram... which didn't go the whole way there. Turns out most of the trams in the entire city are either not working or not going to the right place. Whoops.
newspaper
sign
So we walked to the university, which was interesting. Tallinn has a really odd mixture of really old buildings (the Old Town of Tallinn is essentially undisturbed from its medieval structure because it was never destroyed during any wars) and old Soviet buildings. We got lost (thank you, professors) and walked for half an hour to 45 minutes... which, had we been going in a straight line, would have taken us well out of Tallinn. Finally, we made it, though. One of the students had volunteered to help us by setting up a "Tallinn as Text" program. So we all had to get into groups, and pick a theme to follow out of her options. I really wanted to be in the group about Social Disparity, which actually involved going into a really old market which really displayed the way a lot of people in Tallinn, especially the older people, still live. Tourists don't go to that part of town, so the group that did go didn't take any pictures because they stood out already, but everything looked very impoverished. I really wanted to go the next day while we explored, but some of the people who were going around with us the second day weren't entirely comfortable with that (I am increasingly repelled by "tourism," which I've always felt uncomfortable with, and really interested in finding kind of sketchy but interesting, diverse, revealing adventures.... but I'm one of the few in the group).
a passageway in a palace
Anyway, my group's task was to explore the "Russian influence," which amounted to going to the palace that Peter the Great built for his wife and children as a summer retreat. But it's actually built in more of an Italian style, and, in a rather graceful move, I thought, he opened up the grounds to the public,
the beginnings of autumn
so now it's a really big park. This palace used to house the presidents offices, but then a new palace was built not far away for the president. The paper we had told us to go find it, though, so we set off. We found another palace, but had no way of knowing what it was. There were two guards by the door, so Aymi and Katie decided to go ask. Apparently, though, you can't actually get on the steps, or the guards bang their machine guns on the ground and glare at you. Kind of intimidating...? So Aymi, halfway through asking in Estonian if he spoke English, peered around him to the plaque, said "Oh, look, it is the president's palace," looked shyly at the guard again, then ran back to us. It was pretty entertaining.
palace built by Peter the Great as a "summer abode for the family"
a fountain
a statue by the Baltic
So then we had a lot of time to kill, but we saw water in the distance, and I was determined to find the Baltic Sea. Which it was. It was actually very entertaining for us to hear the presentations back at the university about what each group did. The first group said "we did this and that, and we saw the Baltic Sea!" and showed a picture of the Sea from a distance. The second group said "well, we did this and that, and we touched the Baltic Sea!" and showed a picture of everyone with their hands in the water. Then we had to go up. Thanks primarily to my determination (and insanity, especially considering I was sick), we got to say "well, we visited this palace and that palace, and we went in the Baltic Sea!" and showed a picture of us all splashing around in it. I definitely got to point down to my pants and say "I'm still wet from the Baltic Sea!" Those waves get you every time.... It was a lot of fun, though. It was about 50 degrees outside, though, and the Sea had to be even colder. It was a bad decision for my health, I found out later, but more than worth it.
not excited?
excited?
The Baltic
it was really cold....
LOVE!!!
the Baltic and port
Other than the lectures and the "Tallinn as Text," though, we mainly just wandered.
an old house
We ate a lot at this restaurant that was really cheap and served traditional Estonian pancakes (which are like really thick, delicious crépes) and the beer there is fantastic. We also tried Estonian vodka, which is the best vodka I've ever had (and, thanks to Sally, vodka is now pretty rough for me) and Valla Tallinn, some traditional liquor from Tallinn. We also had a really amusing conversation with Warren where
HE ranted about how unfair things were for girls, because we had to do so much to get ready to go out and all of these things were expected of us in public, whereas guys get to be guys. Period. I found it really amusing. We also talked about lots of other things, and it turns out Warren is actually very observant. A lot of things we talked about, ex: about me, didn't surprise him and when I asked why that was he said "well, a long time ago when we were kicking a soccer ball around in the group (which was maybe a month ago and we didn't know each other at all then) you told us about what traveling you had done before. And something about the way you talked about it, and about the kind of stuff you liked to do... I don't know, you just seemed so worldly that it makes sense you would have done all of these things..." It was kind of weird... but
a famous Eastern Orthodox church
nice, I guess.
passageway
Old Town
a famous Estonian writer...?
something old, something new
oldest town hall in Europe
One of the first nights we were there, Aymi, Dannielle and I got hopelessly lost. We were so
children on the way to school
disoriented from the trams not working and our professors getting lost while walking, that our mental navigation was essentially useless. We were trying to get back from the Old Town to our hotel (which turned out to be 5 minutes straight shot down one of the main roads), and it turned into us wandering for 45 minutes in really shady parts of town. Finally, while standing next to a really small train station where we are fairly sure drug deals go down, we stopped a middle aged couple that looked nice enough to ask for directions. IT was quite literally, "Excuse me, do you know where Hotel Uniquestay is? It's really big, with a big orange U?" The lady didn't speak English, but the man spoke very well, so it turned into a 20 minute conversation in which he would try to explain in English and consult her in Estonian. It got complicated, and kind of absurd. Apparently there was no easy way back, we were so lost, and directions would have been useless. Finally, they talked in Estonian a bit, and the man said "Well, our car's right over here, and we would be more than happy to give you a lift. It would just be easier for everyone, I think."
I don't know what Mickey Mouse is in Eesti
A lift? Really?
We said yes. To this day, i couldn't tell you why we said yes. But we did.
So, at midnight, we followed a couple we had only known for 20 minutes or so to their car. In a dark, shady part of town. At one point we were walking and the woman was off to the side, kicking leaves up as she walked. Dannielle leaned over and whispered "I can't tell if that's really cute or really creepy." I concured.
It got even more awkward when the man left to go pay their parking fee, leaving us in the car with this
woman. The whole car ride to the hotel, Dannielle (who was next to the door, I was in the middle) had a grip on my arm on one side and a grip on the door handle on the other. Just in case. But they were really nice, and dropped us off at a Hotel UniqueStay. Keep in mind, A Hotel UniqueStay. Not our Hotel UniqueStay. But we said thank you, in Estonian, and they drove off. Then we realized it wasn't ours.
I dashed inside to go to the bathroom while Aymi and Danielle got directions at the front desk, and it turns out our hotel was only a ten minute walk or so away. So we set out. And got lost. In unlit streets full of old Soviet-housing. We stopped in the only open cornerstore to ask directions, but the guy didn't speak English, and also looked like he might be hiding a gun behind the counter from the way he acted. FInally, outside, we stopped a guy about our age walking by with a laptop case, assuming he spoke English. He gave us directions easily. It was then that we realized that all of this old Soviet housing had been turned into student housing. It's really bizarre to see these run-down, concrete block style buildings, but to look in the windows and see plasma screen TVs.
we found it!
So we found the hotel. And didn't tell any professors how we got back.
Aymi is teaching me the art of bumming cigarettes. For one thing, we've learned that we have a habit of getting lost at night, and, being 2 girls alone in a city at night, a lit cigarette is actually one of the best weapons/protection devices you can have. So we've gotten into the habit of going up to people (mostly guys) and asking if we can buy a cigarette or two, and offer them money. Most of the time they don't take the money - it's not polite in Europe to expect payment for cigarettes, we learned (when Aymi has cigarettes, though, she lets others bum them, so it's even). If you're looking for a good bar or restaurant, it's also a really good opportunity to ask the locals. Overall, good plan.
So, the second night there, we wanted to go out because we didn't have to be up really early the next day. Aymi, Katie, Meghan, Danielle and I went out together, and were looking around. Finally, Aymi and I went up to a group of five Estonian guys to bum a cigarette and ask advice. It turns out one of them (his name was Haiko...) was actually turning 22 that night. They said they were heading to "Club Hollywood," which was the hot-spot of Estonian night-life and really expensive, so they never went. But they had heard that when it was your birthday, you can get ten people in for free, so they were going to all try and go. They were five, we were five, they invited us along. Turns out the rumor was true, so we got into the most popular Estonian club for free, and hung out with Estonians all night, and got to skip the line in.
This is where the oddly segregated Estonian mentality comes into play again. Russians go to this club, too, obviously. So we were all waiting to check our coats, etc before going in, and some drunken Russian comes up to us, speaking in Russian. Aymi tried to say she didn't speak Russian, sorry, whatever. Haiko shows up and says "No, don't talk to the Russians," and tells this guy to go away. The dialogue essentially went as follows:
Haiko: No, don't talk to the Russians!
Aymi: Why not?
Haiko: You just don't. They are bad people.
Aymi: But... but why are they bad people? Why can't I talk to them?
Haiko: Do you not know about Estonia and Russia?
Aymi: No, I do know, really. But you weren't really alive then. Your parents, yes. But why do you hate them?
Haiko: They are just bad people.
*at this point in the conversation, as part of the offered explanation, Haiko pretended to kick something.
Aymi: They kick you?!?
Haiko: No.
Aymi: You kick them?!?
Haiko: Never mind. Just don't talk to them.
Old Town wall
We haven't figured out yet if the Russians kicked the Estonians, or if the Estonians kicked the Russians, or if he was telling us WE should kick the Russians, or if that was just his way of expressing anger. No clue.
Of course, when we left the club, three guys from our group were waiting outside to get in. They asked how it was, and we said "Eh, it was okay." They asked how much it costed us, and we said we didn't know, we got in for free. They asked how much the drinks were, and we said we didn't know, the Estonians had bought us drinks all night. By the time we actually left, Warren was mad. Which was even funnier, considering the conversation we had already had at the pancake place.
My last good story about Tallinn was the last night we were there. Aymi and I went out to wander around, and ended up finding a hookah bar. So we sat in this hookah bar (which was really a bar in a concrete box that happened to sell hookah) for hours. We got stuck in between two groups of Estonian teenagers who seemed to know each other, so we felt awkwardly in the way, but it was really nice to be able to rant about anything and everything over hookah in Tallinn.
written by  lost_red_balloon on September 22, 2008 from Tallinn, Estonia

Genf
Geneva, Switzerland
2 days, one night in Geneva - UN
written by  lost_red_balloon on October 3, 2008 from Geneva, Switzerland

SC Freiburg vor!
first SC Freiburg game - won 5 - 0
written by  lost_red_balloon on October 4, 2008 from Freiburg im Breisgau, Germany

a Day in the Alps
Luzern, Switzerland
hiking, city
written by  lost_red_balloon on October 5, 2008 from Luzern, Switzerland

Budapest
Budapest, Hungary
on the sidewalk
In my mind, Hungary fits into the same category as Estonia in that I never imagined I would go there. Or it did before I got there. Now Budapest is in the same category as Berlin - cities I could live in.
I'm rooming with A. for this whole trip. We got to our room and immediately discovered that our window faced the street and opened all the way. Which subsequently meant that she and I spent quite some time sitting on the window ledge, one leg in our hotel room and one on the roof, watching people walk by. K.J. and Meg. joined us in our room. We had arrived too late, though, flying out of Stuttgart, to really do much. We went out, and ran into some fellow IES-ers at a bar just down the street, but everything was closing down. So my first night there, we just wandered.
The first day was perhaps the most enjoyable. We attended lectures at the Central European University. It is in the middle of town just a few blocks away from one of the landmarks of Budapest (another famous cathedral).
The first lecture was a political science one, which I thoroughly enjoyed. Our entire trip is on Central and Eastern Europe, and all of the countries we are visiting in the next week have similar stories. Soviet-backed Communist governments stand for years in the face of opposition then suddenly collapse, and these countries suddenly have to transition to a status worthy of the EU. But at that point, they begin to differ some. Poland and Hungary were the two countries seen as most promising by the EU and were first approached. Poland's doing well, Hungary is not now.
The issue in Hungary is at its basis political. About 15 years ago, when the government seemed to be stabilizing, word got out that the government had corruption. More specifically, the president was caught telling his cabinet in a private meeting something along the lines of "We have screwed up this country with corruption and we have to fix it!"
It was a liberal government, so the conservatives went to the street. Ever since, there has been no middle ground - the government goes back and forth between the conservative and liberal factions every election period, and nothing ever gets done because things have become too polarized for anyone to work together. When this took hold, everything else destablized, including the economy. Hungary now has no timeline for joining the Eurozone.
The university itself teaches in English and offers mostly post-graduate programs based on law, human rights, and international politics. I picked up a few brochures.... but won't tell my mother yet.
We had the afternoon free and A. and I got left with Dan. leaving. Everyone else just disappeared on the subway. So we decided to stick in the area and explore. Dan. wasn't terribly accustomed to how A. and I explore yet, so we introduced her to our unorthodox methods of navigation. Which most of the time mean no methods of navigation. But on this particular day, we followed graffiti.
We were wandering, and I peered down one street and said "hey! there's a big building! want to check it out?" so we went down the street. When we reached the big building, we discovered that it was just an abandoned factory (but it had looked a lot more epic from a distance!). So we kept going down the street just for lack of anything else to do. Europe is full of these little tunnel-looking alleyways, and we passed one in which the outside was painted purple with white polka-dots. The three of us peered inside and saw graffiti, and so agreed to go 5 feet in just to look. We went 5 feet in and realized it went further, so in increments we followed the graffiti through the dark tunnel into a brightly lit courtyard. Absolutely covered in gorgeous graffiti. It wasn't just tagging, it was art.
courtyard
entryway
As we were poking around in the colorful courtyard, music suddenly started. Very loudly. And I recognized the band as Seeed... which is essentially German reggae. And so our navigational methods shifted from following graffiti to following music (which, in all honestly, is not the first time we've followed music either...). And started opening doors.
What we found was an old warehouse, probably Soviet era, which had been converted into a bar. We never figured out what it was called, but we had to go through a few levels of doors to finally get inside. Everything was covered in newspaper/wallpaper, posters, and graffiti. We talked to the DJ a bit, and he explained that the Trabat in the corner, which was almost cut in half and reconstructed at an odd angle, was his stand. There was a massive scorpion skeleton (even though scorpions don't have skeletons) hanging from the ceiling. Overall, utterly amazing. The barkeeper laughed at our aweful Hungarian skills but let us try, galiantly.
graffiti bar
the DJ's stand
A. went into the restroom and emerged a few minutes later, telling us we had to go in, and to bring our cameras. It turns out that the insides of the stalls were completely covered in anime, and there was a comic-strip of sorts ... I don't know... reminding us of what the proper order of things was? There were huge, thick ropes hanging from the ceiling (rather creepily, actually) but, being as obsessive about absurd decorating techniques that I am, I took a few pictures anyway.
... in case you forgot?
the anime covering the walls
We went back later that night with more people (an odd group of people, actually, who rarely hang out with each other but were all interested in going) and stayed for a few hours when there were actually people there. Shthi. taught the Hungarians the electric slide.
We explored a little more afterwards, walking mainly on the one sidestreet where the bar was. We passed one building twice. The second time we passed, about an hour later, a balcony suddenly wasn't there anymore. A. has the picture, I think, of the building with the balcony (because it was a cool looking building anyway) and I have the picture of the building without one.
there was a balcony there about an hour before
watch out for cars!
We also found a market. We took money out of an ATM to do a little shopping - I've never held a 10,000 note of anything, and you'd think you'd feel rich. Turns out it's a little less than 100 dollars.
That night, our program treated us to a boat tour of Budapest on the Danube. Budapest is actually established on two older towns on opposite sides of the river, Buda and Pest coincidentally. Apparently it's still somewhat of a defining factor, which side of the river one lives on (or builds on). The city is absolutely gorgeous by night, and the Parliament building is absolutely absurd.
Parliament building
boat tour
oldest city bridge
Parliament by night
The next day we actually got a tour of the inside of the Parliament building. The building itself is, to me, gorgeous on the outside, but way too gold on the inside. But it was impressive none-the-less. And is a source of pride for Hungarians in general - it has always been a symbol of the Hungarian people and their own independence, even in times of occupation or oppression.
Parliament hall
crown and sceptre of royal family
Parliament entryway
oldest mainland subway
We then took the subway (the oldest subway in mainland Europe and, somehow, also rivals Londons in age but I don't remember the details) to the House of Terror.
victims
The House of Terror is a museum established in the building that was headquarters both to the Gestapo during the era of Nazi occupation and then the headquarters of the Hungarian secret police during the era of the Soviet-backed regime. To me, Central and Eastern Europe carry a weight with them that we got a taste of in Estonia, but I spend way too much time reading and researching the Cold War. The House of Terror was the first really heavy experience. It is now a museum and structured as something to walk through with photos, TV screens, exhibits, etc. But these rooms were used for interrogation and imprisonment.
officer's desk
files
At first things went all right; the exhibits seemed very structured. It wasn't until the room of files that things really hit me. This room had a television screen running peoples accounts of experiences in this building, but the walls were entirely composed of bookshelves full of records. The benches and desks that one could sit at had plastic covering, and underneath this were more records. The room was full of paperwork on citizens that, until the collapse of the Communist regime, were a representative of completely one-sided observance. The government had everything on their citizens, and the citizens knew nothing of the government. An issue that came up in Berlin and Estonia, and no doubt will in the next few stops I make.
row of cells underground
The basement is where things really got iffy for me. For years after the collapse of the regime, political scientists and historians were trying to figure out the extent of oppression and power the government had held. For the decades before, people would simply disappear, and sometimes never be seen again. There were rumors of underground cells - prisoners were always blindfolded after interrogation upstairs and could see nothing of their whereabouts until they were in the cell, so what people in later years had to go on was simply the remembrances of survivors of a feeling of going down. But no one could establish from memory where the cells would be. It wasn't until years of excavation ensued that the maze of underground cells was discovered. Now it's part of the museum - you can go in individual cells, and pictures
cell door
are posted of people suspected to have been held in each - I've gotten enough of a feel of the Hungarian language to somewhat effectively distinguish which of the people were executed there, which died of other means, and which were released. Most were executed. The elevator ride down is one of the bleakest experiences I've had - everything is dark, and cold, and a TV screen in the elevator shows a man who worked there describing the actual execution process. From there you can wander the dungeon system - the room used for executions still had the gallows inside.
prisoner
torn flag
One room was bigger, and was entirely devoted to a particular revolt. One of the stories was of a man who was only 18 or so at the time, and he and his friends were captured. About 8 total. Only he and one other survived - they became victims of a show-trial in which most of his friends received the death penalty, and one or two others received life sentences. He endured about 10 years of imprisonment and was released, but never saw his friends again.
The very last room was covered in tiny, framed pictures, about 2 inches wide and 4 tall. There must have ben 300 of them, if not more. They were all of the people who were known to have worked in this building against their fellow Hungarian nationals.
I was one of the last to leave the museum (I always take entirely too long in museums for others) and Jen. was kind of enough to wait for me. The others went off to eat. We walked and talked, mostly. She and I had found ourselves in similar situations as we studied the EU - it's easy to get lost in and lose faith in the political system. The EU is so bureaucratic, and my own opinions of it are waning. The House of Terror was a reminder of why I study politics. The idea that something like this could happen is, to me, horrendous, and the idea that it is still occurring around the world is even worse. For me, it was a reaffirmation of why I have chosen what I have, even if my direction is still a little iffy. It was also an indicator of the fact that, I think, this trip is going to be a little rough for me, even though it's the one I've been looking forward to the most.
What I find intriguing about Europe in general is the relationship between the past and the present, and what is seen or not by the public (even the buildings, or in the case of Freiburg, the openness about victims of the Holocaust). But Hungary isn't just dealing with that, which is what I expected in terms of dealing with Nazi occupation and Soviet-based authoritarian regimes, but the relationship between the government and the population in general is still prevalent.
The other thing I really wish I'd had time to try to understand is the language. I figured out enough in the House of Terror to recognize a few words, and I tried at various bars and restaurants to speak it. But it's very hard. I love the difference between how it looks and how it sounds. I've never had to remember street names based on how many Z's were in it, but that was actually a fairly effective method here. There are lots of "z"s, "v"s "t"s and "g"s that all get smushed together a lot, and to me, written Hungarian looks very sharp and angular, if that makes sense. Not necessarily harsh. But it is a very soft sounding language, with a lot of "sh" sounds and what "j" sounds like in French. The grammar aspect was interesting, too. In many languages, gender is a big grammatical factor (French and Spanish both have male and female nouns, German has both, plus a neuter and plural case which is treated as a gender). German has, along with 4 "genders," 4 cases for the subject of a sentence, the direct object, the indirect object, and possessives/indefinite time, which all change the articles of the nouns. This is part of why people find German grammar hard, but once you become accustomed to it and can think in it, it changes the way you think about objects. I think about inanimate objects differently in English and in German and thus see them differently, I suppose. The same thing happens with verb cases. Anyway, to wrap up my language rant, a lot of languages like English and French (in my experience) have, essentially in terms of articles for nouns, one case. German has four. Magyar has sixteen. I can't even imagine how that aspect of the language would change perception.
After another half day or so of exploring (and discovering mulled wine, which in Hungary is delicious!) we hit the road for Slovakia.
Hungarian day waning
Hungarian sunset
written by  lost_red_balloon on October 11, 2008 from Budapest, Hungary

Bratislava
Bratislava, Slovakia
asdfd
written by  lost_red_balloon on October 14, 2008 from Bratislava, Slovakia

Prague
Prague, Czech Republic
asdfd
written by  lost_red_balloon on October 16, 2008 from Prague, Czech Republic

Krákow and Auschwitz
Krakow, Poland
asdfd
written by  lost_red_balloon on October 19, 2008 from Krakow, Poland

Mallorca
Palma de Mallorca, Spain
24 - 26
written by  lost_red_balloon on October 26, 2008 from Palma de Mallorca, Spain

student protest
I happened across a student protest tonight. I was with K.J. and Meg. and we had been working late in the center. We decided to go across the River for dinner at a German place, but the whole place was full. So we decided to go to our crazy Italian place instead. If we hadn't made this detour, though, we wouldn't have gone through Bertoldsbrunnen.
As we were approaching Bertoldsbrunnen (which is a main plaza in the center of town, with a statue so old I'm only halfway sure its' a guy on a horse), in a cold, misty, night, when we heard chanting. Loud chanting. Our thought process, or at least my thought process, went along the lines of:
Well, there's no soccer game tonight...
Protest?
We hustled up to Bertoldsbrunnen and sure enough, about a hundred people our age were marching in a circle around the statue, holding signs that had the logo for Die Linke in the corner (Die Linke is the political party that formed out of the government of the DDR upon reunification - it literally translates to The Left). But I couldn't understand the chanting and we didn't have a good enough view of any of the signs to read them, so we stood there a few minutes trying to figure it out.
Finally a guy broke away from the crowd with some fliers and handed Meg. one, then asked, in German, if we knew what was going on. He explained that there was a tuition raise which, in Germany where there's a huge emphasis on public education being affordable and accessible for all, is kind of a big deal.
Then he asked if we students on the university. I explained, still in German, that we were Americans studying with a program that was tied to the university, but not directly on the university itself.
He got this shocked look, then in English said, "Americans? Well, you pay much more than us anyway... it wouldn't be a big deal for you."
Turns out they're protesting a raise from 50 Euro to 500 Euro. Which I think is still a big raise, all things considered. But we had to convince him that, despite the fact that without scholarship money we'd all be starving to be educated, we supported his cause. It might have been Meg. who literally said "we don't want you in Germany to go down the same path we in America have."
I was giddy all night.
written by  lost_red_balloon on October 30, 2008 from Freiburg im Breisgau, Germany

Ugh
I haven't slept more than 4 hours a night for the past week, which sucks for me, and just finished a very stressful load of schoolwork only to have to deal with another one.
It's Halloween night, and no one who told me they were going to try to do something with me/let me know what they were doing actually did so... or did anything. Seeing as I haven't talked to anyone, I'm not sure.
So my Halloween night was spent in my bedroom, catching up on my blog, getting huge bouts of homesickness, making jalapeno poppers in honor of homesickness, etc. and no one from home is on, my parents aren't home, and my phone is out of credit so I couldn't call anyone if I even knew who to call.
Now Lena, who spends every waking moment studying in her room, I think, and hardly ever comes out, is having a party. Even Lena had plans. She invited me to join, but I don't know anyone out there... and I look like a wreck...
Rainy Halloweens in Germany suck.
... But they are playing The Who....
written by  lost_red_balloon on October 31, 2008 from Freiburg im Breisgau, Germany

Wahlnacht
Okay, we have to set some statements for context first:
1) Europeans love Obama. It's practically a love affair.
2) A lot of Germans have this habit of going on, and on, and on, and on. They'll tell a ten minute story to preface a really simple question for you. Or when they answer a question, when trying to get from point A to point B, they'll visit J, L, P and X on the way, and not necessarily in alphabetical order.
So, today is election day. Things are insane. As in, INSANE. I somewhat reluctantly agreed to participate in a Podiumdiskussion at the Mensa.
The Mensa is the student cafeteria-ish place, and also where a lot of events go down. The university actually had a Wahlnacht Party - a party for the election night. In Freiburg! And it wasn't the only one. Universities all over Germany did the same thing.
The one at Freiburg had a bunch of events - there was a meal (put on by McDonald's, of course) and a blues band. Speeches and Podiumdiskussions. The whole thing.
I was told it was going to be kind of a small affair. I was going to show up about 6:30 to be interviewed by a television network, but the questions were going to be really easy. Then at 8:30 I would be on a podium, and a couple moderators would just ask me questions that weren't going to be too hard either. And I'd be done. Not too big a crowd. This is all in German, of course.
So the television network cancelled, which was probably good. They decided to go to the university in Heidelberg instead. It was then that someone decided to tell me it was the National TV Network for Germany. All of Germany.
I get up on stage for the Podiumdiskussion, and realize what I've gotten myself into. All of these German faces are peering at me. A couple questions got pitched to other members of the board, most of whom went into these long abstract-sounding answers I didn't quite understand. Then my first question comes along:
Did you vote?
Um, no, actually. I applied for my absentee ballot but it didn't arrive in time. But really we have such a complicated election system that I didn't have to. No matter which way I vote, McCain is going to win in Texas.
At this point, I heard a lot of clapping and cheering. My American friends who had all showed up to cheer me on! You know, a support network! Most of them had offered to buy me a drink afterwards.
The guy next to me was the old President of the University, and he went off on some rant for a while. All I understood out of it was that Iraq is not, in fact, the "new Vietnam War" for America. Afghanistan is. I didn't follow his logic, but I disagreed. Something about the war in Afghanistan kind of maybe being legitimate...? The Germans are all for getting out of Afghanistan, though, and I don't quite understand why. You know, besides the whole "we don't want to be involved in a war" thing, which I understand.
So, it seemed like things were going okay. Then one of the moderators says, "Okay, this one is for Emily," and goes into a MEGA long rant about something. I didn't understand it the first time, so I asked him to repeat the question. He summarizes whatever his rant was, which involved something about how polarized the American public had become regarding the two candidates. Then asked the question.
I had to start my answer off with "Okay, so wenn ich richtig verstehe..." which literally translates to "if I understand correctly..."
His question was basically whether or not Obama would last as president due to the polarization of the public. What?!?!
I explained that in pretty much every other election I'd ever been alive for or studied, the public has been polarized. It's what happens in a two party system. But a president is president. Unlike Germany's own parliamentary system, the government doesn't have to make coalitions, so it's not going to collapse. Obama will be president because he was elected president, simple as that. He could be impeached, but he'd have to do something worthy of impeachment and frankly, that's going to be hard because of the race card. What a weird question!!! These people study the American political system!! They should know the government doesn't just collapse the way they do here (look at Belgium!)
So, in the aftermath of the Podiumdiskussion, I discovered that it was not, in fact, the Americans who had cheered for me, but the Germans. They liked my answer. No one really knew why. It wasn't until I was wandering around afterwards that I figured it out. People I didn't know kept coming up to me and saying in German and English "you did very good! you were down to Earth! We didn't understand the other people either!"
I ended up just leaving the party at the Mensa, and we all went to O'Kelly's. It's an Irish pub near the University that plays American-style football every Sunday night. They were putting up continuous CNN coverage for the election. Pretty much 40 Americans sat in front of the big screen TV until 4 in the morning, when the guy actually had to close, drinking beer. We went back to the dorm, and I got ready for bed with CNN on mute on my TV, and literally crawled into bed with the TV on so that I could wake up to it during the night to check on progress.
Right as I crawled into bed, Obama went up as the projected winner. A. skyped me, saying we had to drink to Obama, and H. was there, too. So I dragged myself out of bed and went down to her room, and we all drank wine and watched his speech. I dozed through part of it, though. I was tired!!
written by  lost_red_balloon on November 4, 2008 from Freiburg im Breisgau, Germany

Because We Are Civilized Countries.... oh... whoops
Luxembourg, Luxembourg
they're obsessed!
written by  lost_red_balloon on November 11, 2008 from Luxembourg, Luxembourg

Haunts that I never Occupied
Brussels, Belgium
dad
written by  lost_red_balloon on November 13, 2008 from Brussels, Belgium

Paris
Paris, France
written by  lost_red_balloon on November 16, 2008 from Paris, France

Ahead to the Sea
I went with Mat. to a concert at this really cool little pub in Freiburg. The band is called Ahead to the Sea and it's a band from Freiburg. It was their last concert because one of the members is pregnant and going on leave. Of sorts. If there's an official maternity leave from being in a band.
Anyway, they sound kind of like Flogging Molly, but with ridiculously political lyrics. It was a lot of fun.
written by  lost_red_balloon on November 20, 2008 from Freiburg im Breisgau, Germany

should've been in London...
Frankfurt am Main, Germany
A. and I were going to go to London to se Sigur Ros, her favorite band. Unfortunately, she realized on the train to the Frankfurt airport that she didn't have her passport. UK's not Schengen, so you need a passport. Whoops.
It sucked. But we had our first snow here.
written by  lost_red_balloon on November 22, 2008 from Frankfurt am Main, Germany

Thanksgiving
Um, all I know is that Thanksgiving is not meant to be served in courses.
Our program was nice enough to reserve an entire restaurant so that all 60 of us students, plus all of the professors and staff workers, could have a Thanksgiving meal. It was absolutely delicious, but the proportioning was a little bit off (aka, too little stuffing and too much Turkey on my plate).
I need to keep in mind to figure out a recipe for pumpkin soup. It sounds weird, but whatever they served us definitely had curry in it, and it was the best part of the whole meal. Yum!!
Despite that, though, it was really weird not to be at home. And to have school. I can't wait until next year, when I have a real Thanksgiving.
written by  lost_red_balloon on November 27, 2008 from Freiburg im Breisgau, Germany

Weihnachtsmarkt, marché de Noël, RATATAT
Strasbourg, France
So, what Europe does come Christmastime is set up Christmas markets all over the place. Almost every big city has one. Freiburg's is actually really cute. There are lots of booths, and some sell craft-y things and some sell games, or candles, or nativity sets and christmas decorations. And food. So much food!!!
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

SDS, RAF, Kommune 1
Okay, so there are a grand total of 6 people in the advanced German class. 3 of us have taken the habit of writing absolutely ridiculous essays.
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

Islamic Center
We had a trip today for my course called Migration, Ethnic Minorities, and Multiculturalism to the Islamic Center of Freiburg today.
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

Model EU
We've had for the past three days our Model EU Summit.
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

the Land of the Midnight Sun
Oslo, Norway
So our halfway point in our semester is right about when everyone at SU was graduating and/or moving back home. But we just had Pfingstferien (vacation for Pentacost) which is a week long. Tommy went off to Wales to visit Steph, Jill went to Hamburg, Ben went to Paris to meet up with his girlfriend, Rob dropped off the face of the planet (when we finally got ahold of him he was in Dortmund?) etc. So I was pretty much on my own. This really wasn't too bad, though, because everything has been so hectic that a few days of peace and quiet was quite nice. I spent really lazy days reading in bed. I wandered the city, went to a really lame demonstration, and actually went to see the new Star Trek movie by myself, in German (for the record, I think going to the movies by yourself is a really underestimated experience - it's not sad or lonely. It's kind of liberating.)
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

prisoner

Hungarian sunset

Hungarian day waning

on the sidewalk

torn flag

cell door

row of cells underground

files

officer's desk

victims

oldest mainland subway

Parliament entryway

Parliament hall

crown and sceptre of royal family

Parliament by night

oldest city bridge

boat tour

Parliament building

watch out for cars!

I felt rich... momentarily

A beautiful balcony

... in case you forgot?

the anime covering the walls

the DJ's stand

graffiti bar

courtyard

entryway

there was a balcony there about an hour before

a bathroom that was literally dug out of the ground then painted

Old Town

we found it!

I don't know what Mickey Mouse is in Eesti

The Baltic

children on the way to school

they have little stoplights attached to their big stoplights!

we hiked over ruins of a 1.000 year old castle

getting back into town

Weinfest!

Sean with a half-meter

the band

city map

view from Münster

dog in Bächle

view of Tor from Münster

me on top of the Turm

Münster cathedral from above

cat outside Engelbergestrasse dorm

Bächle

feet in Bächle

me in Bächle

kitchen view

your television lies

münster cathedral

münstermarkt

little gutter/Bächle

chinesische Lampen

IES Center - where my courses take place

big gutter/Bächle

Berlinerallee/Charlottenburgerstrasse