The Last Month

Uh, oops - It seems that I have neglected my blog for almost an entire month! In the off chance that anyone still checks this on occasion, I'm really sorry, and I'm going to try to resume. I'm afraid I can't catch up by going back over everything I've skipped in detail - then I would never catch up. What I will do is give a brief summary of what I can, and then move on from the present. I will also eventually load pictures onto my Picasa space which you can browse for more details.

April 28 - May 1: I met my friend Tori, who was in her semester abroad in Budapest, in Vienna. We spent two days in Vienna, a day in Salzburg, and a day in Freiburg. Highlight from Vienna: I saw an opera performed entirely by marionettes! It was really professionally done. We also heard the Vienna Boys' Choir. Highlight from Salzburg: I saw an old lady in the street selling marionette creatures made from wooden beads that were exactly the same as the ones my parents bought for my sister and I ten years ago! I wanted to stop and ask her how long she had been selling them, but I thought of it too late and I didn't see her again.

May 4-6: SAFT (Semester Anfangs FreizeiT - Begin of semester retreat) with Campus for Christus. Basically we went to a cabin in the woods and did a little bit of worship and learning and a lot of hanging out. Highlight: The Stupid Ninja Fighting Game . If you don't know what that is, its basically just the type of completely awesome and silly game you can only play with a bunch of college students who have been shut in a cabin all day because of the rain.

May 11-12: Visit to CERN in Geneva. Highlight: Getting to know other physics students, and hearing about how graduate students can be involved in particle physics.

May 16-19: ICF Congress, a meeting of church communities from all over Europe in the movement started by people in Zurich. Highlight: Hanging out with people from ICF Freiburg, having a pretty deep talk with one of the speakers, and spending time in solid worship to my God.

May 20: Bike ride to a Strauß in Endingen (20 km away) with Nelly (see photos from Berlin). A Strauß is a restaurant or inn located on a vineyard. The ride up passed through the beautiful terraced landscapes of Kaiserstuhl.

Life in Freiburg

Wow, there's quite a bit of time I have to report on. Here's a quick summary: In the first week I found a room pretty quickly, and then went about all the official registration stuff that a foreigner has to do in Germany. In the second week I did things such as visit the university library, figure out online accounts, and other things to introduce myself to academic stuff. I also had a lot of free time, so I did hunt (unsuccessfully) for a few geocaches and take a walk along the edge of town on the Black Forest side.

Last week was the first week of classes. Because you don't sign up for classes in advance here, but rather begin attending them and register later, I visited more classes than I planned to take and picked out the ones that are interesting and understandable for me. As it turns out, I plan to attend three Physics lectures, on solid state physics, nuclear physics, and multiscale materials modeling, and one language seminar entitled The Comparative Typology of English and German, which is taught in English primarily for people whose native language is German. In the first lecture we went over some examples of bad English from German students, and we discussed the reasons and generalized it to all language learners.

That's enough of daily details for now. I thought I'd give you a kind of virtual tour through some aspects of my life in Freiburg - at least as it is when I have time to enjoy it.


The building in blue is the one I live in. (Thanks to Google Earth for the image.) As you can see it's nicely situated in the center of a block, so it's away from traffic and noise. I get the impression there are a lot of families in the surrounding buildings, and there is even a playground in the block. Altogether it's a nice place to live.

Here are a few pictures of my room. I didn't clean up especially when I took them, so you get to see how I really live ;-) .


This is where I keep my clothes. The shelves and the bin came with the room; the long blue thing I bought at IKEA to supplement storage space.


My room has a couch!


My room has a bed!


My room has a GRAND PIANO! Unfortunately I don't play piano, so right now this is serving as something to store things on and under.

That's pretty much where I live - in later posts I'll try to describe what I do here.

Train ride with Clemens

The Mitfahrgelegenheit* I used to get to Freiburg gave me the unique opportunity to converse with a seven-year-old German boy. The man I had contacted really just arranged the trips, and he paired me with a middle-aged widower and his son Clemens for the group ticket. On the train, the father wanted to sit facing backwards for reasons of comfort, but his son wanted to sit facing forwards, so I agreed to share a pair of seats with Clemens.

Clemens turned out to be a very active and talkative kid. We talked about lots of things, ranging from figuring out the train schedule to Star Wars movies. He could understand everything I said, and he himself spoke very clear Hochdeutsch. I wonder if that has anything to do with his father being a Ph.D. I even learned a few words from him, like Ohrläppchen (earlobe). There were a few awkward moments, such as the time I had to convince him not to stab at the upholstery with his collection of plastic cocktail swords, but mostly it was fun. I must admit I came away from the experience a little proud that my German is good enough to hold a conversation with a kid.

* This word doesn’t really translate well. It refers to an opportunity to drive or ride along with someone else that is set up on the web.

Last Days in Berlin

On Wednesday three of us made a meal together before heading to Stammtisch for the last time. Nelly had had enough of always being the one to come up with and prepare a dish, so she insisted that we males do something. When I described my Mom's green spaghetti dish, they sounded interested, so we gave it a try. It wasn't quite the same; rather than pesto Nelly improvised something with fresh basil, garlic, and something else, and the noodles were flat, not round. The essentials were all there, though: spinach noodles, spinach, olive oil, mushrooms, feta cheese, and of course dried tomatoes. Nelly and Erik really enjoyed it, and Nelly made sure to emphasize that my mother should be very proud that her dish impressed a Frenchwoman.

The next day and a half were test days for me. I took the Goethe-Institut's Zentrale Oberstufeprüfung (central upper-level exam), which consisted of writing an essay (250 words in 90 minutes), listening to an interview and answering questions, reading and responding to an article, grammar exercises, and an oral report and conversation. Out of possible scores of very good, good, and satisfactory, I scored "good" overall with "very good" in the grammar and the speaking. So now at least I have an official record of my German skills, in case I ever need it.

After the oral part of the exam on Friday, Nelly, Erik, Fabrice, and I went to Wannsee, a lake near Berlin popular for getaways, and picnicked. We had bread rolls, baguettes, cold cuts, broccoli, and of course a bottle of Bordeaux wine. It was a really great and sunny day, and the scenery was beautiful. Fabrice kept feeding the ducks from the lake, who then kept following us, so we even ended up making friends with some of the locals. Unfortunately I lost all my pictures of this day for some reason. Also unfortunate is the fact that this beautiful lake was the setting for the infamous "Wannsee Conference", where the Nazis distributed their plans for the "Final Solution to the Jewish Problem". On our way out we stopped by the house where this happened, which is now a museum.

Quick Post

I spent quite a bit of time this week managing pictures, so this post will be brief. Last week I hang out with friends, ate lots of French cooking, and fed them some Waldorf salad. I also took a bike tour to historic spots along the old Berlin Wall and visited a sculpture museum. On Sunday I walked from the Alexanderplatz down the street Unter den Linden all the way to the Brandenburg Gate. On the way there was lots of stuff set up for the 50th Birthday celebration of the EU. Since I was on my own I got to stop and read almost all of the info columns describing the history of the EU.

Now for the future: I'll be taking the ZOP on Thursday and Friday, the hardest German test the institute offers. I don't have an apartment in Freiburg yet but I do have arrangements for the trip there and accommodations for my arrival. Life is hectic but good.

Another Week’s events

Things at the Goethe Institut are going well. We’re spending time learning all the quirky noun-verb and verb-preposition combinations that always give me trouble, so the course is definitely time well spent. There is also a good social group that has developed with some of the French, American, and Norwegian students. We’ve done a lot of the same cultural program stuff together, and we’ve even had some dinners together. I think I’m going to try making Waldorf salad for them if I can find the ingredients and the recipe.

Other than that, the only big event I’ve had since then was my visit to Potsdam and Schloss Sanssoucci. It’s a small palace set in an enormous and gorgeous park. On the inside of the palace I was impressed by the amount of painting and relief sculpture on the walls. As for the town itself, it’s pretty small, but has a nice downtown area with well reconstructed buildings and even a few original city gates.

Yeah, so that’s the update. I’m still looking for a place to live in Freiburg, but from talking to people here it sounds like the norm in searching for apartments is to visit them before making a contract, so I may not really have a choice but to wait and find something when I’m in Freiburg. I’m trying to keep a good attitude and remind myself that the coming of Christ is really what I hope for, not an apartment, that’s just an incidental thing that will come together in God’s timing. Still, I need to keep looking, and in the right places.

First week in Berlin

I was placed a week ago into the course C1.1, which is the highest level they decided to offer this month. The people in the course are pretty diverse: outside of we three Americans, there are three from France, two from Japan, one from London, one from Ireland, one from Norway, one from Singapore, one from Russia, one from the Ukraine, and one from China. It's been really cool to get to know so many different people from so many different places. The course work is mostly review in terms of grammar, but we are learning some stylistic points as well that I've never had from an American teacher, so it's definitely worth it.

I've been keeping quite busy with the cultural program that the Goethe-Institut runs alongside the classes. I have been on several walking tours - the first a more general walk through central Berlin, then one focused on the Alexanderplatz, and today an excellent tour with the theme of "August '89", which focused on the events leading up to the opening of the GDR's borders on November 9, 1989. The tour guide himself lived in East Berlin at the time and took part in some of the demonstrations and protests. Interesting tidbit: I never before knew this, but churches played a huge role in the revolution in East Germany. In addition to simply being a place where dissidents could meet, they hosted prayer and fasting services in the tumultuous month before the fall of the wall and they sheltered people from being mistreated by the police.

There is of course a lot that I could write about the various things that I have done. I visited a city museum that had models of Berlin circa 1400, 1600, and 1800. I ate a meal with Eisbein (leg of pork). I went to a church service in the St. Marienkirche - the oldest church in Berlin that still functions as a church. I visited the ITB, a global tourism expo. Rather than ending with insignificant details about these things, however, I thought I might finish by describing Berlin itself.

Berlin is a fairly large city, with about 3.5 million inhabitants, but is spread over such a large area that I have never seen any part of it more crowded than Pittsburgh. It is a poor city, with high unemployment and an astonishing lack of investors, but there is excellent public transportation and little crime. Berlin is a disfigured city, with almost none of the middle-ages old city visible and with plenty of damage around from the last world war, and yet it harbors a thriving artistic and cultural community.

The things I named above are of course mostly things that I have heard from guides and such. My experience thus far has if anything confirmed these things, but I can't claim to have found them out myself. My biggest impression is that Berlin is the center of a wound. One sees here some of the freshest new growth and ideas in Germany growing over, under, and around the scabs left over from a long war against fascism and an even longer division due to communism. This is especially evident when I see an art gallery set up in a bombed-out factory, or slogans of peace and freedom painted on a remaining section of the Wall. I am really enjoying myself here, not because it's a beautiful city (at first glance, it most certainly isn't), but because every little detail that I see or hear is meaningful.

Living Accomodations

My hostess lives in the Kreuzberg neighborhood of Berlin, on the fifth floor of an apartment building which is in a courtyard set back from the main street. She lives alone and has two extra bedrooms, which she rents from time to time to students from the Goethe Institut. My room is quite large and a bit sparsely decorated, with a desk, a couple of shelves, and a couple of paintings, mostly by Picasso. The bed is a double twin I think, with a duvet cover. All in all the room is comfortable with plenty of space, so I’m happy.

I have use of the kitchen and a shelf in the refrigerator, so I can save money by making meals on my own. I and the other student I will be sharing with have to clean our own toilet, but the hostess has offered to do all of our laundry so that she can sort clothing by color and still cycle through loads quicker. The only downside to the whole deal is that there is no shower, only a tub. I’m still trying to figure out how to wash off quickly and effectively. Really, though, that and the thirty minute commute to the Goethe Institute are the only possible negatives, and I don’t mind them.

Arrival in Berlin

I arrived yesterday in Berlin at right about noon. After landing at the airport, I headed to the Ostbahnhof (East train station) because I knew there would be lockers there. I had agreed to meet my hostess between 7:30 and 8:30 at night, so I had some time to kill and I didn't want to carry around my luggage all day.

Because I had so much stuff I decided it would be easiest to take a cab rather than navigate public transit. This turned out to be a very good decision as my cabbie was the best ever. The drive from Airport Tegel to the Ostbahnhof took us directly across town, so he drove slowly through the town center and pointed out the different parts of town as we went. We even went right up to and turned in front of the Brandenburg Gate, while he was all the while pointing out the old line of the Berlin Wall and whose Embassies were where and all security measures that have been set up around the American and British Embassies since the Iraq war started. When we were getting close to the Ostbahnhof he described the neighborhoods on either side of the river Spree (say shpray), which in that part of town used to be the border between East and West Berlin. Kreuzberg is on the west side and has a very young and very international population. Friedrichshain is on the east side and is very nearly pure German. That two neighborhoods so close could have so different makeups shows you the kind of effect that the different governments of East and West Berlin had. (By the way - the place where I am living is in Kreuzberg about two blocks from the river.)

When he dropped me off at the Ostbahnhof he pointed out one end of the famous "East Side Gallery", a stretch of the Berlin Wall that was painted with various modern and abstract depictions of the former state and the people's dream of freedom. After I stowed my stuff in a locker I walked up and down the entire East Side Gallery. I would guess that it's more than a kilometer long, and there's painting on both sides. It was a pretty awesome look into the history and heart of Berlin. Click here to see the pictures I took.

Add up an awesome tour, great tips for how to spend my afternoon, and a reasonable price, and I think this taxi driver deserves an award or something. And I even forgot to tell you how he said, "You really need a good city map if you're going to be a month in Berlin" and then fished around in his glove box and handed me one. It was definitely a great way to be welcomed into the city.

Weekend with Eli

Last weekend I had a great time visiting with my friend Eli up near Albany. On Saturday he bought a bookshelf and I helped him assemble it. He also took me with him to hang out with his friends from his church's young adult group. With them we played lots of great games, among them Colossal Arena and Through the Desert. I also got to learn the card game Quems, which is very interesting in how it involves creatively communicating and observing other people. No Settlers this weekend, though it seemed everyone I met was a fan of the game. I even got to teach them silly little group games like my dad's hand-slapping game (no, it doesn't have a better name) and "Zoom", the game where you pass a metaphorical ball around with words and eye contact. Ah, I almost forgot watching the first episode of Survivor with them. Maybe now I'll have to follow up and track what happens on the show, who knows?

Some of Eli's friends deserve remembering. The family with the three brothers, Jamie, Jesse, and Josiah, should be in the running for most hospitable family ever. They also make great homemade pasta sauce, which I had never before experienced. Another mention is his friend Amy: when I talked to her about Germany, she kept saying things like "You are SO going to wind up there." I found it interesting to hear that she could hear and see my passion for Germany and its language even after just meeting me.

So yeah, the weekend was quite thoroughly awesome all around. Definitely the times that impacted me most were the times Eli and I stopped to talk and pray. He definitely knows how to make someone feel welcome and encouraged, and every time I see him I find I have a lot to learn from him.