Fall '08

Last Week

2009-01-30T11:03:00.000-08:00

The reason I didn't write this last weekend was because I was visiting Charles in Espelkamp. I left on Thursday after I was supposed to have my trumpet lesson (which got canceled). Espelkamp, a town of about 20 000, is where Charles has been living and working with heating and air. About 50% of the people that live there are Russian and many of those are Russian-Mennonites who came in the last several decades (including Charles' host family). The two main employers there are a cigarette vending machine manufacturer, and a slot machine manufacturer.

On Thursday Charles and I went out to the brewery in Espelkamp (evidently one of the few interesting places to go out to in Espelkamp). That night I stayed at Charles' host's house. It was a duplex, but it was the closest thing to a house that I've been into in the last 5 months. There are apartments everywhere here; people above, below, and on all sides--all the time. This house was still fairly small, but shared only one wall and has a door opening directly to the outside world. What a luxury.

On Friday Charles had to work, and thought he would be off by 12pm or maybe 1pm if his boss forgot that he had asked to leave early. I got up aroung 10am and had some breakfast. (I was just planning on having the cereal that was left out for me on the table, but as I was finishing up, Charles' host mother walked in. She told me that I needed to eat some more, and gave me bread meat and cheese to eat too.) Then I waited, and watched some German television. Eventually it became noon, but no Charles. 1pm and still no Charles. At 2pm the host mother said we would eat, because she didn't know what was taking Charles so long. She asked me if I wanted to pray, and I told her that would be fine. I folded my hands expecting her to begin praying, and then she said "You can pray aloud in English or German, it doesn't matter to me." I was caught off-guard. I had been speaking in German to her this whole time, but I had never prayed aloud in German. I just went with the English. And it was not long after our first bite of food that Charles come through the front door. His boss had evidently lost track of time, or didn't realize how long the project would be.

Later that afternoon we headed off to Muenster. The is a little more than an hour away for Espelkamp by train, and is a university city. There are 50 000 students alone. But in 1533 it wasn't a university city at all. There was a group of anabaptists who took over the whole city and ruled there for only a few years before an unlikely alliance of Lutherans and Catholics drove them back out, and left their leaders' dead bodies hanging in cages off the church steeple. Charles had found someone he thought we could stay with through a couch-surfing website, but he hadn't got a sure answer yet. On our way to the train station we had to stop at the gambling-arcade (not quite a casino) which was the closest place where Charles could get access to the internet. He found a message in his "couch-surfing" account inbox that said the place wouldn't work out after all. We decided we would send messages to as many people as possible to see if they could host us that night still, and we headed out anyway.

When we got there, we went into the nearest internet cafe to see if anyone had replied. Someone had, and said that he would be studying until about 10pm that night, but that we could stay with his friends. It turned out to be a really great experience. The guys we met showed us around the city and took us out that night. When we arrived, they even offered us some noodles (which they said were probably 80% of their diet). The next day we went to the city museum, where there was an exhibit on Low German, as well as the Täuferreich.

Then on Sunday, I came back to Wuppertal, and met up with the Bethel interterm travel group for Supper. There were also several Bethel-Wuppertal exchange alumni from as far back as the 50s. It was interesting to experience this meeting of people from my home school and Wuppertal people, especially here in Germany where I have been fairly isolated from people back home.

This last week I have just been trying to tie up some loose ends, and make an exit strategy. I had my last lessons, and yesterday I played the concerto I had been working in my trumpet lessons with a piano player in Solingen. It wasn't really a recital, more just to get the experience of playing it with accompaniment. Afterwords my trumpet teacher took me to his apartment, and introduced me to his dog and cat. We had some bread with mashed avocado (he has been a vegetarian for several years), and coffee.

Later than night, I went out to eat with many of my friends from the university at a tasty Indian restaurant where my family and I had eaten when we were in Wuppertal. The waitress remembered me, and told me to tell my family hi. (She also suggested that I should come back some time again, maybe after I have kids.) And we went out one last time, as had become somewhat of a tradition for Thursday nights.

And today is Friday, the Friday before the Saturday on which I will be arriving in Kansas. It's been a good experience, and I have made quite a few friends, that I hope I will see again, but I am excited to come home. I don't think the fact that tomorrow I will be home has really sank in, and it probably won't really sink in that I am going home until I am already there.

Well until next time in the USA,
--Austin

The Final Countdown

2009-01-18T04:43:00.000-08:00

The extremely small amount of time I have left seems surreal to me. Before I go, however, I have to figure out how I will get credit for the courses I have been taking. I am not sure if I will need to take a test for the literature course I am in, or do some kind of playing exam for the lessons I am taking. It is kind of strange, because I am leaving a one or two weeks before the semester ends for real here. I hope I can get everything figured out. I don't really understand what's up with my German literature course. It is a part of the department that does the German language courses, so it is meant for people who are learning German or at least are not German native speakers. We started out with 2 or 3 people in the course. Then a few weeks later a couple more showed up. We had 5 in December. The last couple of sessions before Christmas break it ended up being me and one other person. One time I was the only one there. The professor doesn't like to have class with so few people, so we either, cancel the class, or wait to see who else might show up and then cancel. The two people who showed up later on in the course haven't been there for over a month now.

This last week the professor didn't unlock the door to the room where we have class. We now have 3 semi-regular attendees and we were all there. It had been 10 or so minutes since class was supposed to start. One of the students went to knock on his office door. He told her that nobody else had showed up for class, which was strange because I got there before the scheduled time and he had never come out of his office. She pointed out that there were three of us waiting on him there. So we ended up having class that day. I can hardly imagine what a final exam would look like in that course. I have barely learned anything. I hoped that we would maybe read a novel, or maybe some short stories. You know, maybe discuss the author and the themes in the work. In a normal class period we usually read a couple of poems and kind of talk about them. We get just a little bit of information about the authors. Nothing is cohesive; the next week=repeat with new poems and authors.

Who would have ever thought that syllabi would be one of the things I miss about home.

Other than that the highlights of my week were:

Sunday I went to the Kölner Philharmonie and heard Bach's Weihnachtsoratorium. The winds were playing what looked to me like period instruments. Natural trumpets, wooden flutes. That is a little too much lip slurring if you ask me. (My brass friends will be the only ones that appreciate that comment.)

Wednesday I went to a jazz club in Dortmund. It was about an hour train ride away. The club was a cute little place. You enter in through a cafe, and the upstairs there is a little stage in a room all painted black with a bar and a few tables and chairs. The group that was playing consisted of a sax, guitar, and drums. The music was okay at times, but it was maybe a little too out there for me. Not a lot of soul. The alto sax player knocked his reed out of place several times throughout the night. This wasn't a big surprise; it seemed like half his goal was to make strange noises with his instrument, forcing it to the extremes of its register and wildly wiggling his fingers over the keys.

And last night, I went to a surprise going-away party for Melanie, one of my German friends. She is flying to Australia on the same day I am flying back home. She will be an exchange student there in Canberra. It was a good time. Her mother made some tasty food, something similar to my aunt Nancy's cheeseburger soup. Very delicious. It was one of probably less than 5 home cooked meals (I won't count the "cooking" I do for myself) I have eaten here. It was a little strange to be going to someone's going away party when I myself will be going away in less than two weeks. Nonetheless it was a good night.

Only one more Sunday in Germany. I will see you all soon back in the US.

--Austin

Munich

2009-01-11T03:53:00.000-08:00

It's hard to believe that there are only three weeks left until I am back home. That is less than a month. I feel like I have so many things I still have to do here.

Last Monday my sister was feeling good enough to take off to Munich. We got on the train at 9:14 and about five and a half hours later we were in Munich. We had booked a hostel there, and I had high hopes for meeting some interesting people, maybe speaking some German again. I went to the front desk of the hostel and told the woman there (in German) that we had a reservation. She had to answer the phone at some point in our conversation about the room, and she spoke in perfect English. It was evident that she was an American, so for the rest of the time she spoke English us.

In fact English was a common theme among almost all people at the hostel. Almost nobody was a German. Most were from Australia or from the UK, and throughout our stay I probably heard less than ten people total who were conversing in German at the hostel. English was also the most common language I heard on the streets in Munich. (Granted we were exclusively in the middle of the city, near the main train station and the main sights in Munich.)

On our first night there we ate at a tasty Greek restaurant.

Along with the lack of German, another surprise was that Epiphany, the 6th of January (my only full day in Munich) was a public holiday in Bavaria. All the shops were closed. So instead my sister and I went to the toy museum, which was interesting. (I did have my camera at this point so I will let the pictures speak for themselves.)

Evidently barbie needed a book on how to loose weight. If you look at the scale, it reads 110. A bit hefty for a 6 inch plastic doll if you ask me. . .

Then we walked around a bit.

And went into the Munich Frauenkirche.

This was the church of Joseph Ratzinger before he became the Pope.

The next day Taylor met up with the rest of the group from Bethel in Munich. I saw them only briefly before I had to catch a train back to Wuppertal.

Three weeks.
--Austin

European Family Fun

2009-01-04T05:32:00.000-08:00

Well I kind of took a break from my blog over Christmas, which I spent with my family here in Germany. You've already heard about their arrival and first day here, so I will get right to the Fleisch und Kartoffeln of the visit. Here are some highlights.

(I will apologize in advance that I left the memory card to my camera in my computer for most of the journey. My mother has all the pictures on her camera. If you are If you are a hip under-thirty who has facebook, or an over-thirty still clinging to your youth who has facebook, or an over 40 who got facebook to keep track of your children, you can check out my sisters facebook profile for some pictures.)

Monday Dec. 22:
I gave the grand tour of Uni-Wuppertal to my family. They got to walk a lot of stairs. I gave them a piano concert in the practice room where I normally practice. We made reservations at an Indian food restaurant that we tried to go to the night before, and ate there for supper.

Tuesday Dec. 23:
Off to Cologne. My mother found an apartment to rent by the day there. We went to the Christmas Market in Cologne in the afternoon. Since everything closes on Christmas Eve we also went grocery shopping for a little German culture. That evening I got my family a little lost when we were looking for a brewery, and we ate at a different place instead. It was still a good time.

Wednesday Dec. 24:
Christmas Eve. We went to two Christmas Eve services kind of on accident. First we went to what I thought was more of a Christmas Eve concert, which turned out to be a whole Catholic mass. Then after that we went to a beautiful midnight mass in the Cologne Cathedral. It was kind of interesting to compare the two services. One was in a smaller church and felt a little more homey, the other was in the giant Cathedral packed out with people, many of whom were probably tourists. They both followed the same kind of program though, with a sermon, communion, and much of the same scripture.

Thursday Dec. 25:
We slept in after being at church until past 1am the previous night. After a brunch, we had a mini gift exchange. My mother made meatloaf for Christmas dinner which ended up being kind of in between lunch and supper. We then enjoyed the Christmas day by baking and eating peppernuts, and playing card games.

Friday Dec. 26:
We traveled to Stuttgart, a little more south and east of Cologne. The hotel we stayed in had apples that they left you in your room every day. The 26th is still a holiday in Germany, so shops and some restaurants were closed. We did manage to find a neat beerhouse that was open that day. We tried some of their Christmas brew, and had some late afternoon refreshments. No trip to Germany is complete without eating at a Doener Imbiss, so afterwords we ate at a Turkish restaurant, and made friends with one of the employees who cut us a special deal on his "Doener Plate." It was a lot of food.

Saturday Dec. 27:
We sort of decided that Stuttgart was a little bland. It felt kind of like every midsized American city, so we made a day trip to Esslingen, a small town just a little ways away from Stuttgart. The old part of the city is very cute, and stayed intact even through World War II. There were very small streets that are all now pedestrian zones. Some of the buildings lacked the perfectly square architecture that I had come accustomed to. They were either built that way, or settled into that shape as time went on. We ate at a quaint cafe for brunch, and walked up the hill on the edge of the city where the vineyards were.

Sunday Dec. 28:
We liked our little outing so much the day before, we decided to do it again. This time we went to Ludwigsberg where we saw a palace which some call the Versailles of Germany. It was very large and impressive. We then took a walk through the area that was used for hunting, and saw some kind of deer.

Monday, Dec. 29:
Another travel day. We decided to explore a place called Lorsch before going to Heidelberg (where we had our next hotel). We got off in Bensheim and took the S-Bahn to the little tiny town. Lorsch's train station has two tracks the second of which is only accessible by walking over the first. What we saw there was an old Monastery that was built in the 700s and was functional until the 1200s. It was later destroyed, but in its time it was the center of intellect in Swabia.

Tuesday, Dec. 30:
We explored Heidelberg and did a little walking tour. The old part of Heidelberg is really interesting and pretty. Then we climbed up to the Heidelberg Castle. It seemed so perfect like something one would see in a movie. It had a beautiful terrace with a great view of the city. I could imagine feeling pretty safe from enemies in that location (but it might have just been that I missed my Christmastime tradition of watching all 3 Lord of the Rings).

Wednesday, Dec. 31:
We traveled back to Wuppertal on our way to Duesseldorf. My sister and I did some laundry, then we headed off to Dusseldorf. I was a little afraid that the restaurants would be closed, and that nothing would be going on in Dusseldorf's old town. But after a very friendly middle-to-elderly aged woman who had lipstick on her teeth "helped" us get to the old town, we found a great Restaurant where we had Croatian food. It was quite tasty and meaty. It turned out the the Alt Stadt in Dusseldorf was actually really full. People in Germany just do their fireworks in the middle of the streets, and it seems to be a fun game to throw firecrackers at people or into crowds. So after exiting the warzone and getting back to our hotel, we played games and rang in the new year.

Thursday, Jan. 1 (2009):
This was the final day in Germany for my parents. We went to a bakery for breakfast/lunch, and explored the old town in daylight. It was quite cold, and we took shelter in one of the Alt Bier breweries, and had a couple beers. The manager must have known that we were from the US and gave us Uerige (the brand of beer) 2009 pocket calenders. A little more walking then in the Alt Stadt led us to seek warmth in a coffee shop where we played cards for probably 2 hours. For an early supper we headed to a Thai restaurant and then back to the hotel. We played more games, and prepared to send my Parents off in the morning.

Friday, Jan. 2:
This day was not my day. Here are the things that went wrong:
-I slept really poorly.
-I got my family on the wrong tram line while we were attempting to get to the airport at 7 am. I had to backtrack and walk with my family through the snow. We decided to take a the next cab we saw instead of trying to use public transport.
-After saying goodbye to my parents in the airport, Taylor and I headed back to Wuppertal. We had purchased two twin rail passes one for my parents and one for my sister and I. On our way back I couldn't find ours. Taylor and I had planned to to a little traveling on our own. The pass had two days of travel left on it, and I didn't know where it was. I was almost sure my parents had taken it with them and it was checked in their luggage to Chicago.
-Also on the way back to Wuppertal I couldn't find my key. I had left it in my apartment. When we got to Wuppertal, luckily it was a Friday, and the janitor was on duty who could unlock the door for me. If it had been the weekend or after hours, I would have had to pay someone 31 euro to unlock my door.
-When I got into my apartment both my keys and the train pass were in my room. I was very happy, until. .
-Later that night my sister and I went to the Wuppertal Brewery with a couple of my American friends. On our way out the door, we locked ourselves out. Again. After hours. On a Friday night. If I wanted back into my apartment before Monday, I had to call the key-man. So I did, and gave him his 31 euro. I did however get a very detailed receipt that I am thinking about framing. Other than that, I just like to pretend I never had that money.

Saturday, Jan 3:
This was a day for my sister to recover from our travels, and prepare to go on our own travels. We decided that we would go to Salzburg, Austria for one night, and then to Munich for two. Thereafter my sister would meet up with the Bethel Germany interterm trip. We also did laundry, but didn't have enough credits to dry, and Taylor had to wait until things were dry to pack. She finished about 12:30am, and our plan was to leave at 5:21am to get to Salzburg by 1pm.

Sunday, Jan 4 (Today):
Taylor coughed throughout most of the night at about 5 minute intervals. I know because I was awake hearing it. At 4:10 when I got up, I asked here if she was still up to going to Salzburg; I was happy to cancel our reservations at the hostel if she wasn't feeling well. She said she still wanted to go, but on the way to Cologne she said she felt very sick, so we got out and went back to Wuppertal. Today she has been resting in hopes that tomorrow we will be able to go to Munich.

That's the end of my saga.

I hope everyone had a Merry Christmas, and I wish you the best in the new year.

--Austin

European Christmas, version .9

2008-12-21T11:58:00.000-08:00

Sorry for the brief post today. My family arrived today at the Dusseldorf International Airport at about 7:30am this morning. I woke up at 5am in order to catch a train at 5:59 to Dusseldorf. They made it just fine, despite some concerns about the weather. Luckily the bad weather that had hit the northeastern US hadn't hit Chicago. The only small hitch was on my part when at 5:35 this morning in my doorway, I realized I didn't have my keys in my pocket. They weren't on my desk either. I couldn't find my keys. I looked everywhere, bed dressings, pants I wore 2 days ago, the bathroom, but I couldn't find them. I knew there was no way they weren't in my room; I couldn't have gotten in without them. I was beginning to panic. It would take me about 15 minutes to get to the Wuppertal train station. 5:43. Still no sign. Then somehow, in the panicked randomness that my searching had become, I looked at the other side of my sill opened door. There, evidently left in the keyhole from the day before, were my keys.

I didn't have time to feel relieved. I grabbed my scarf and jacket and power-walked my way to the train station. Luckily through a combination of this extreme walking pace and a slightly fast watch, I made it to the train station in ten minutes leaving about four minutes until my train left.

Other than that we (they) have just been acclimating to Germany, and a new time zone. We stayed awake until 8pm celebrating my mother's birthday (today) by visiting the Wuppertal Weihnachts market, and eating Italian.

So far so good.

May you have a blessed Christmas.
--Austin

Der dritte Advent

2008-12-14T02:31:00.000-08:00

Well it's Sunday again, and I have to do laundry. I am not yet sure if I will in fact do my laundry, or if I will see if I can go another day or two. The problem is, you say, "Oh, I can do one load of essentials to tide me over." Then you say that again the next week. Then some things don't ever get washed. I liked going home on Sunday afternoons and doing my laundry. That was quite convenient. And free.

Another thing that I haven't been good at this week has been shopping. There is a lot of stuff to buy out there, but not much that seems worth anything. So yesterday I ended up looking and looking and scarcely buying. Way too much looking. Granted, some of that can be blamed on the fact that I don't exactly know what kind of stores there are here, and where exactly one can buy everything. My strategy by the end of the afternoon was to go into every store, and see if something struck my fancy.

There was some success this week. On Monday we had an "final exam" in my language course. I got the results on Thursday. I passed the exam. I also received a certificate of course completion. 180 hours of class, it says. Unfortunately only "Austin McCabe" is on the certificate. I will probably go see if I can get it changed.

Another piece of good news, is that I am planing on no longer taking this language course. From here on out, it is only more preparation for the DSH test. Merle, my German professor, is allowing me to do an independent study here instead. I am happy to be able to do something new, and possibly enriching, unlike 4-5 hours a day in the same class room learning increasingly less German and increasingly more about how to pass the DSH. I also hope to have some time to travel here in Germany. There are a lot of people here in Germany that would be ready to host me, and it seems silly not to take the opportunities. And luckily, a combination of my diet, consisting lately of mostly potatoes, apples, and carrots, combined with a "strong" dollar has left me with a little more money in my bank account than I expected to have at this point. I feel like being in only Berlin, the most populous city in Germany, and North-Rhine Westphalia, the most populous state in Germany, is a pretty narrow view of Germany. Maybe not. But I'd like to find out.

Well I hope everybody is having joyous Christmas preparations. Sing a carol for me.

--Austin

Deutscher Dezember

2008-12-07T04:09:00.000-08:00

It's Sunday again. The second Sunday in advent. It is a little strange not to be in Newton during the holiday season. Christmas time means my home church, my family, my neighborhood, the ever so precisely set garland on the porch bannister, Mannheim Steamroller, the Christmas tree, the once-a-year appearance of the box of ornaments, the nutcracker story advent calender that my sister and I used to fight over. . . These have been synonymous with Christmastime for 20 years, and it doesn't feel like that same Christmas is happening here in Germany.

There is, however, definitely Christmas happening here. On Tuesday this week, a group of international students and I went to the Christmas market in Essen. Essentially a German "Weihnachtsmarkt," in my experience, consists of many many little red booths set up in close proximity in a kind of town square. These booths are usually selling sometimes kitschy but homey Christmas-ware, or Christmas market food. Some of the food that I sampled while I was in Essen included Gluehwein, a spiced sweet wine served hot, and Backfisch, breaded and fried fish in a roll with an herb sauce or a garlic sauce. There was much more to eat and to buy than I had time or money for, but it was fun to share Christmas joy outside with other market-goers.

Tomorrow I have my first test in my German language course. It is a reading comprehension test. I can't really describe how tired I am of reading arbitrary texts and answering comprehension questions over them. Most in the class will be around to take the German proficiency test (the DSH, which allows an international to seek a degree at a German university) in March. That is what this course is supposed to be preparing us for. But for me, the goal of the course seems wrong. I would rather be learning about German culture, history, and literature. But that isn't how the course is designed. Its sole purpose is to prepare people to pass the DSH. Monday will mark the end of the first part of the course, and, assuming I pass the test, I will be in the course classified as "C1." (If you are interested in reading about these levels of German, you can check out the Goethe Institute's website.) I am very happy with the progress that my German has made here in Germany, but wish I had some enriching coursework (like I would if I were at Bethel).

I kind of thought I would have had a chatchy sign off phrase after 13 weeks and 13 posts. Maybe something will come to me. . .

Nope.

--Austin

The Trans-European Bethel-Wuppertal Thanksgiving Extravaganza

2008-11-30T04:58:00.000-08:00

This week I had several friends visiting me for Thanksgiving. The first to arrive was on . . .

TUESDAY:
My friend Brad who is now studying abroad in Derry, Northern Ireland arrived at the Wuppertal Hauptbahnhof. We were able to catch up that night, and I was able to give Brad a little German culture.

WEDNESDAY:
I went to Dusseldorf with Brad. We saw what would have been a sunset on the Rhine, but it was too cloudy. That was really probably about 4:30 or so. (The sun sets earlier here than in Kansas.) We took a little walk along the Rhine, and went into the Altstadt in Dusseldorf. "Alt" means old and "stadt" means city. The Altstadt is a pedestrian zone in the middle of Dusseldof along the Rhine, with lots of narrow stone paved streets that don't intersect at right angles. Right now the streets are packed with booths for the Christmas Market there. During the evening we visited various shops, breweries. We ate at an Asian restaurant, I think it was Thai and Chinese. Brad found an inedible vegetable in his food, but other than that we were satisfied with our food.

THURSDAY (Thanksgiving):
Because I was supposed to have class, I woke up at a little after 7am and left Brad to sleep. When I got to the classroom, a different woman than our normal teacher came in. She told us our teacher was sick, and couldn't come today. She gave us an assignment, and sent us on our way. I went back to my room and slept some more, then at about 10:30 we both got up. Charles, the friend who also visited me near the end of October, showed up that afternoon. At about 6pm we went to Tobias' apartment for a Thanksgiving meal. (Tobias is a native Wuppertaler who did a year at Bethel. He is also the one who picked me up from the train station when I arrived in Wuppertal.) There we met with many other Wuppertalers who were exchange students at Bethel, and several recently graduated or current Bethel students who are now in Germany: Kate (who visited me in Berlin) Bryce (whom I visited for the election), Jon, and Rosie. The meal, which was finally ready at about 9:30pm, consisted of many of the traditional Thanksgiving dishes. Tobias had to special order two whole Turkeys. Kate pulled out the innards herself. Kate also artfully decorated pies. Needless to say, we ate a lot.

Toby, Kate, Turkey

FRIDAY:
Brad and Charles stayed in my room the previous night, and the others stayed at Toby's. I decided not to go to class on Friday. (It would be a free day at Bethel, right?) Instead we slept off the turkey, and at about noon, we went back to Toby's for more. After eating too much again, we decided we would go to Dusseldorf to visit the Christmas market. Rosie and I were invited to some American-German Thanksgiving dinner by some former Bethel-Wuppertal people. We were supposed to meet a couple at the Golden Tulip hotel in Wuppertal at 6:30pm, so Rosie and I would have to leave Dusseldorf early. There was a train from Dusseldorf to Wuppertal that arrived at 6:30. Rosie said the hotel was close by the train station, so I figured we could take that train.

On our way back, the train was late by 5 minutes. and it turned out that Rosie didn't really know exactly where the hotel was. We spent about 15 minutes walking and trying to find it. We finally found it, but there was no sign of the couple we were supposed to meet there. I asked the people at the front desk if they know anything about the meal that was supposed to happen, thinking that we could possibly meet them there. The people at the front desk said that they knew someone was expecting us, but they weren't in the lobby. They called the room of the people we were supposed to meet, but nobody was there. I was fairly frustrated at this point. We weren't able to find them, and I had no cell phone information from the couple. All we could assume is that they had already left to this Thanksgiving celebration. I eventually just left the couple a note with the front desk with my cell phone number, and left. I felt bad. I felt like we had stood these people up who were nice enough to invite us to this meal.

When I got back to my room, I sent the couple a very apologetic e-mail. I also found a phone number that they had sent me in a previous e-mail, and called it. There was no answer, so I am not sure if it was their cell phone. I left another apologetic message there.

Later on that evening the rest of the people came back from Dusseldorf and we went to a bar where Luna, one of the Wuppertal exchange students at Bethel from last year, was working. While we were there, I received a text message from the couple, saying they were sorry they missed us.

Brad had a plan to leave Wuppertal at midnight to get to Frankfurt in time to catch his 7am flight, so it was just Charles and I that slept in my room on Friday night.

SATURDAY:
The remaining visitors met for Breakfast at a place called Pino's. Then we bid Kate farewell at the train station. At this point it was just Bryce, Jon, Toby, Charles, and I. At a loss for something to do, we rode the Schwebebahn (the public suspension rail in Wuppertal) from one side to the other. The rest of the day was pretty laid back with few plans. In the evening I went to Solingen to a going-away party for one of my friends here in Wuppertal. My thought was that I would meet back up with the remaining Bethel people after that party. I got back at about 11:30. The others were still at Toby's. I got on a bus that I thought would take me to where Toby lived, but I was going the wrong direction. I got off after two stops and walked back to the train station. I called Toby, and he said that the people there were ready to go to bed. I spoke a bit with Charles, and he said he would meet me at the train station. Unfortunately, Charles missed the last bus back to the train station, and had to instead wait 45 minutes for the S-Bahn at a small train station near Toby's part of Wuppertal. I wasn't able to know this because Charles has no cell phone, so I waited about an hour for Charles in the train station.

SUNDAY (today):
All the remaining Bethelites left Wuppertal, bringing an end to the Bethel-Wuppertal Thanksgiving Reunion saga.

I also made a soup that didn't taste exactly the same as all the other soups I had made, and it also didn't taste bad! That was mildly exciting. I think the key may have been that I fried the onions and garlic in butter and a little bit of sugar before I added the liquid and the rest of the soup ingredients.

I hope all your Thanksgivings were wonderful as well!
--Austin

The Halfway Week

2008-11-23T04:50:00.000-08:00

So, here we are again. Another week gone, and less than a month to go before I see my parents again. I would probably just need to consult my local Newton Kansan to see how many shopping days are left before Christmas. It's gone pretty quickly. If my calculations are correct November 18th was the halfway point of my time here in Germany.

I can tell you Without calculation that the 17th of November was my (21st) birthday. That was on Monday, probably my busiest day of the week. 8:15am-1:30pm I have my tedious German course. Then at 3pm I have a piano lesson, and at 6pm until about 7:30 I have orchestra rehearsal. The highlight of the German course was having happy birthday sung to me in Chinese, Polish, and Turkish, among other languages. On Mondays the International Students Team has established a tradition of meeting at the University bar at 8pm, so that's where I celebrated my birthday. It closes at 11pm, so after that people came to my dorm to celebrate a little more.

On Wednesday, since I didn't have any classes, it was my goal to find and buy a winter coat. I should never shop alone for clothes. It took me forever to, number one, find a place to buy the coat, and, number two, decide on what coat I wanted to buy. I spent essentially the whole afternoon shopping. When I finally found a store that had a lot of wool overcoats, (which was what I was looking for), I spent probably another hour looking at prices and trying on different coats. They were all pretty expensive, so that made it a bit easier to narrow down the field. But still I had a difficult time deciding between the 3 or 4 coats that were in my price range. What made it worse is that there were sales associates there who were asking me if I needed help. I hate that. If I need help I will ask, but I just wanted to search for coats in peace. After they asked me if I need help, I felt like the they were watching me struggle to decided on a coat. They probably watched me try on a coat three times, and wondered why I had spent 40 minutes in the coat department. Eventually I settled on buying the least expensive one, even though there was another one I liked a bit more. It's just a coat.

And I bought it just in time. On Friday we had very strange weather. It was very windy and rainy the whole day. Then, as I was playing my trumpet in a practice on the top floor of building S, I could see the rain turning to snow outside. The first wave of snow melted immediately on the ground, but wave of snow later that afternoon began to stick to the ground. We have been having at least a little bit of snow every day since then. I much prefer the snow to the rain that it would be if it were warmer.

On Saturday I went to Cologne with some other Americans whom I met here in Wuppertal. First we went up to the top of the Cologne Cathedral, and went walking a little bit downtown. Here are some pictures:

Cologne Cathedral

Inside

A view from the top

A view of the yet-to-open Christmas market

Going back down, featuring: my foot

Not in Cologne, and not on Saturday. This is the view from my room of the snow on Friday. This snow storm happened to include lightning and thunder too.

Well happy Thanksgiving, and eat some ham and turkey for me,
--Austin

Culinary Adventures II: The Main Course

2008-11-16T00:59:00.000-08:00

On Wednesdays I have a lecture until 10am. After that I am free. This is one of the reasons I decided to differ from cooking my usual variations on onions-and-garlic-fried-in-pan-plus-potatoes-or-rice-(side-of-apple-and-carrot-sticks). I had time to try to cook something. I spent maybe 20 minutes looking through the Extending the Table cookbook that I had brought from home. I had a few criteria: I wanted something I could serve with rice, I wanted something that didn't have too many fancy ingredients that I wouldn't be able to find in the little grocery store near the dorms, and I wanted to use up the ground beef that I had in my fridge. (Incidentally, an ingredient doesn't have to be very fancy to not be offered in the "Penny Market." For example, almost all spices aren't to be found there.) After thoroughly searching through the cookbook I landed on the elegantly titled: "Skewered Ground Meat," a recipe from Iraq.

This recipe called for:
Ground Beef or Lamb: check.
Onion, finely minced: check.
One Egg: onto grocery list.
Bread crumbs: can do.
Parsley Leaves, finely minced: I didn't think "Penny" had this, so I left it out.
Salt and Pepper to taste: check.
Cinnamon (optional): left out.

This recipe also was to be served with "Brown Rice." This was rice that was supposed to be browned in butter and onions, and then boiled. I added butter to my grocery list, and went to "Penny."

At about 5:30 I began preparing the food. One of my problems, is that I am very poor with timing in the kitchen. First, I started with the brown rice. I melted some butter in a pot, and put the rice and some minced onion in. I had never browned rice before, but nothing really seemed to be happening, so I got started with the meat. I got the ground beef out of the fridge, and when I opened the container an unpleasant smell that I wasn't came out. I just figured it was a raw meat smell, and after I cooked it, it would be OK. So I put the meat in to a bowl (a soup bowl, not a mixing bowl). I then added the onion and egg. It took up almost all the room in the bowl, and was fairly difficult to mix. Then I began to smell a more pleasant odor from the rice. I checked it again, and the rice was actually browning, in fact it was blackening. I quickly tried to rinse the egg/meat mixture off my hands, so I could deal with the now burning rice. I added the water to the rice, and let it boil. It wasn't all black, so I figured I had salvaged it. I went back to mixing the meat. The meat was still very runny with egg. I had forgotten to add the bread crumbs. I again rinsed off my eggy meat hands, got a piece of bread, and crumbled it into the meat. As I mixed the bread crumbs into the meat the consistency got firmer. I made the mixture into about four patties, and put them on a pan, and onto the highest rung on our toaster oven. I turned the oven to one of its two settings: "on." About a minute later, I realized I hadn't salted the patties. I decided my best option was to attempt to throw salt into the oven in hopes that some would land on the patties. I am not really sure how successful this was, but I believe a high estimate is that 10% of the salt actually landed on the patties. It didn't really matter, I was still excited to see how they would turn out.

After about 15 minutes of cooking the patties, they looked done. There's not a light or anything in the oven so it is a little hard to tell. When I took them out, they were very black on the top. That was still OK by me, a little carbon never hurt anybody. The rice at this point had dehydrated a bit, because, through my neglect, I allowed all the water to boil away. Again, the rice wasn't beyond my (fairly low) standards of edibility, so I scraped it out onto a plate, and adorned it with the four blackened patties. Here was the end result:

Despite the beautiful display, the taste left much to desired. The reason I eventually decided to throw it all away was the flavor/taste of the meat. It turned out that the smell from the meat didn't cook out as I had hoped. It was still a fairly prominent flavor in an otherwise flavor lacking meal. I figured that stinky meat might lead to an upset stomach, so I only ate about half a patty before I dumped it all into the trash. Oh well. Error is half of my method of trial and error cooking.

Luckily, that wasn't the only thing of interest that happened this week. On Friday, I went to a 90s party. I hope that doesn't make any of my medium-aged readers feel too old. Unfortunately, I hadn't packed any of the clothes I wore in the 90s, so I borrowed a cap, and wore it backwards. It was fun, but I have to say that I wasn't highly aware of fashion in the 90s. Mostly I wore what my mother bought for me. In my first years in elementary school, I didn't like the way jeans felt in the crotch, so I wore sweats that my mom bought at Alco. Unfortunately, they tended to get holes in the crotch fairly quickly and fairly suddenly which was cause for at least one embarrassing P.E. session. Later on, I can remember wanting the snap up "swishy pants," and wanting some "Lee Pipes" jeans, when I got over the jeans-crotch problem. But that was about the extent of what I could remember about my nineties fashion choices.

Yesterday my friends Pedro, Manuel, and I went to Dusseldorf and had a very German evening. We visited three different breweries to try their "Alt Bier," which is the style of beer brewed only in Dusseldorf. We ate at a German food at a kind of German-style greasy spoon. It was a good evening.

Til next week.
--Austin

US continues on; Austin still in Germany.

2008-11-09T03:32:00.000-08:00

The biggest happening this week was for sure not in Germany, but it was closely observed around the world.

I happened to be observing it from Giessen, where Bryce Schmidt, a friend of mine from Bethel, is doing Intermenno work. I set off for Giessen after my German course on Tuesday. First I had to catch a train to Hagen. The ticket from Hagen to Giessen was cheaper, and I can go to Hagen for free on my student pass. (The ticket was not so cheap however. At 55 euro, it still hit the pocket book pretty hard.) To Hagen was maybe a 30 minute train ride. On arriving in Hagen, I switched trains to Siegen. The train I boarded must have been a fairly new train. Along with a toilet every couple of compartments, it had a nice LED display in the front of each compartment showing in rotation the date and time, final destination, and next stop. To get myself into an American mood, I listened to Sujan Stevens's Illinois and Michigan albums on the way. My next train change was in Siegen. From there, I took a train to Giessen.

Bryce had offered to "pick us up" at the train station in Giessen. That would have consisted of him walking to the train station, finding you, and walking back with you to his apartment. I figured I would save him a trip, and just follow the directions he gave us, The directions weren't that difficult to follow; Giessen is more like Kansas--flat with streets intersecting primaraly at right angles. I had carefully noted the directions and final address from the google map link Bryce had sent us. I left the Giessen trainstation, and confidently followed the directions to where Bryce's apartment was supposed to be. Bryce said it should be easy to find, because it is the only apartment building in Giessen that says "Jesus Lebt" on it. When I got to the address that I had so carefully noted, there was no "Jesus Lebt" on the building. I figured that it must not be as apparent as Bryce has said. After a bit of searching around the building, I couldn't find any way to ring the apartments in the building. I went around back, where there was some kind of entrance that looked private. I couldn't see another place to enter the apartment, so I tried the handle. It was locked. I was beginning to think this wasn't the right building. It was, however, the correct address. I decided I would keep walking and looking for the allusive, but evidently apparent, "Jesus Lebt." I walked until the next major intersection with no success in finding Jesus. I thought I would walk back the other direction on the other side of the street. Maybe "Jesus Lebt" was a little too high for me to see on the same side of the street.

That ended up being the case. I found the "Jesus Lebt" building at an address a bit before the address that I had written down. The door was freshly refinished, and therefore propped open. I let myself in, but I wasn't exactly sure where I could find Bryce. Names weren't on the doorbells, so I asked a couple of young German women who were leaving the apartment if they knew an American named Bryce Schmidt who lived in the building. They asked if it was the one who was always speaking English, and I told them it probably was. They pointed me to the first floor. I rang the doorbell, and Bryce answered. (I eventually asked Bryce why the address was wrong on his directions. He told me that he was trying to line up the little green arrow on the google map with where his apartment actually was.)

I was the first to arrive, and Bryce was working on some chili for us to eat. I had been on a train through my normal meal time, so I was glad he had something for us to eat. The other attendees included Charles Schrag, who had visited me in Wuppertal just a week before, Jon Huber, another friend from Bethel doing Intermenno, and Alyssa, who was a friend of the Intermenno folk.

Charles was the last to get there at about 9pm. We all ate Bryce's delicious chili together. Afterward Charles informed us that there was a bar nearby that was showing the election. We thought it would be interesting to see the Germans reaction to the election. After watching some election coverage at Bryce's we set off to find the bar. We ended up getting sidetracked by another party that was at a university building nearby. There were a lot of people standing outside the building, and inside they were displaying election coverage in what looked a bit like a lecture hall. There were a lot of people there, and they cheered every time a state was called for Obama. We stayed for a while, but eventually went back to Bryce's apartment. By this time it was 2 or 3 am, and results were coming in fairly steady. We ate and drank our way through another couple of hours of election coverage, periodically checking on our local races online in commercial breaks. Then at 11pm est or 5am in Germany, the race was called for Obama. The five of us were very happy, and very tired. Next McCain came on and gave an gracious and thoughtful concession speech. We stayed up until Obama came on to address the thousands gathered in Hyde Park. At about 6:30 am, after Obama's speech it was time for bed.

I woke up a lot of times realizing my mouth hanging open on the train ride back to Wuppertal the next afternoon. With greasy unkempt hair, I am sure I was a sight to see, but I was too tired to care. I didn't even bother putting on the change of clothes I had brought with me. One of my trains back was late 20 minutes, because we passed another train that was carrying new cars that had evidently had a serious derailment. But eventually I got back, took a shower, changed my clothes, practiced trumpet, did my homework for Thursday, and went to bed.

Here are a couple of pictures of the night:

LEDs

Chili

Charles and Jon

--Austin

2008-11-02T06:01:00.000-08:00

This week has been fairly uneventful. After two months in Germany, one of those in Wuppertal, and 2 weeks of which were regular classes, life has become a little more routine. In some ways it is good. My language skills are good enough to communicate with most people in every-day situations, and I feel comfortable enough with life here, that every day isn't always a new adventure.

A couple interesting things did happen this week.

Last Sunday I got a message online from Charles Schrag, a friend of mine from Bethel. He said he had a couple of days off, and was going to come to Wuppertal. I told him if he needed it, I had a floor he could sleep on. He showed up on Wednesday evening. It was kind of a surprise to me. I thought he was going to meet up first with Tobias Ruhle, a former Bethel-Wuppertal exchange participant, and possibly spend the night with him. But it all worked out fine, I was just glad I was at home at that time to meet him. That night we went to a little bar near the university, and caught up. Charle's German is really pretty good. He has been here for only 3 months, but he can understand a lot, and speak pretty well too. Charles has been here in Germany with Intermenno, a work exchange program, and lives about 3 hours away by train. He was here until yesterday. Mostly we hung out with other internationals in the evenings. I didn't really give him a grand tour or anything. I think he was glad to be able to spend some time with people more his own age.

A couple of weeks ago I got an e-mail from Bettina Hofmann, the coordinator of the Bethel-Wuppertal exchange, and American Studies professor at Wuppertal. She asked me if Rosie and I could say a bit about Bethel for her class. I said I could. That happened on Friday. I left my language course a bit early to go to her lecture at 12:00. Others were there to introduce schools that they had studied abroad at too. I got up and gave a pretty good introduction. (Since it was an Amerikanistik class the presentation was in English, so I kind of had the upper hand.) After the class, I went to go eat in the cafeteria. Since it was already 2pm by then, nobody I knew was there. I sat by myself, and half-way through my meal two students came up to me and told me that my introduction made them want to go to Bethel, and they asked me a little bit more about Bethel. So I hope I was a good representative. Giving tours this summer at the BC admissions office definitely helped. I was glad that some people were interested, even though we are a college of only 500 people in the middle of Kansas. Not what Germans picture when they think of America.

That is my little update for this week.

--Austin

me 'n charles
photo by: me

Sickness as cultural experience

2008-10-26T03:03:00.000-07:00

This week I really did have classes. Every morning at 8:15(!) I have a German language course that goes either til 12:00 or 1:30(!!). Wednesday's it is actually only a lecture that goes until 9:45, but the other days are a long haul.

I am in the B2 course. I lied last week when I said it went only to B2. They also have a C1 course. The purpose of these courses is to prepare people to pass a proficiency test that allows people to study at German universities. This is important for internationals who are seeking a degree here. For me, as an exchange student, that specific goal isn't very important. It isn't even really possible for me. The test in in March, and I will be back in the middle of a Bethel semester by that time. But I am learning nonetheless.

Last Monday, I had my first piano lesson. The lessons are taught by a well dressed man probably in his fifties. He must come originally from somewhere in Eastern Europe, because his L's are pronounced deep in his throat. He didn't seem shocked or angry at my minimal piano skills, which was nice. Hopefully the skills that I am learning for my lessons will transfer to playing a 4-part hymn.

Trumpet lessons I am a little less sure about. Here's where it currently stands:
I am the only trumpet student here at Uni-Wuppertal. The trumpet professor is an adjunct without an office. After I spoke with the music faculty here, they evidently informed him of my existence, and my interest in trumpet lessons. He subsequently e-mailed me in not so excellent English. In this email he said that he was the principal trumpet in the Wuppertal Symphony, and gave me some contact information. There was, however, no mention of when we could have a lesson, or how I should go about scheduling one. I e-mailed him back asking him if he would prefer to be contacted by phone, when we could have a lesson, and when the Wuppertal Symphony played next. His reply email didn't answer the question about when we could have a lesson. So I thought that maybe the lessons were to be arranged through the music faculty at the university. But after asking the music secretary, I found out that the lessons are to be arranged between the student and professor. So tomorrow I will call the trumpet professor, and see what is up.

The past 3 or so days, I have been dealing with a sore throat, and runny nose. Yesterday I woke up, and my eyes felt particularly pasty. When I looked into the mirror, they were quite red. I knew that eye infections can be pretty contagious. I decided at this point it was probably time to go to the doctor. But how? Some of you Bethel people may remember Lisa Strate who was one of the Wuppertal exchange students at Bethel in 06-07. I decided that it would be easiest to call here to find out what I needed to do. I called her, and she said she would check to see where I needed to go, and call me back. When she called me back, she gave me the name of a clinic a little ways away that was open on Saturday (regular doctors offices are closed on Saturday). She said she would come with me, but she had things she needed to do. Instead she gave me directions: which bus to take, and where the I need to go once I got there. Evidently here General Practitioners will usually just refer you on to a specialist. So for my eye problem, I went to an eye doctor.

When I got to the clinic, there was nobody in the information booth, but I knew from Lisa that the eye clinic was in building one on the second floor. So I went to building one. The door that seemed like the main entrance was closed, and the building inside looked dark. So I went to a side door, and it was open. Through the doors, I entered into a hallway of hospital rooms. I felt a bit out of place, but there was an elevator to my left that I took up one floor. Upon exiting the elevator, I was again in a hall with hospital rooms, but down the hall, I saw a room labeled Eye Clinic. Somewhat relieved that there was actually an eye clinic, I went to the door, turned the handle, only to find it was locked.

So I went back out of the building and called Lisa again, she recommended that I try the building for emergency. They could at least give me some information about the clinic. So I took off on my second attempt at finding medical attention, which turned out to be about as successful as the first. I couldn't find the entrance to the emergency room. There was a middle aged man who was dropped off behind me as I approached the building where the emergency facilities were supposed to be. He had a bleeding finger, and was holding some gauze on it. He was evidently also confused as to where to go. There was a janitor that happened to be passing buy, and the man asked him where to go. So I decided I would also ask this janitor where I could find information. Eventually he told me that I needed to go to the eye clinic on the second floor of building one, and sign in there.

With some small bit of new information, I returned to building one, floor two, and looked for a place to sign in. There was a nurses station in the middle of the hallway with all the hospital beds. I this was the closest thing I could see to a place where one could sign in. I explained to the nurses there that I was an exchange student here, and I had no idea what I was doing. One of the nurses was nice to show me where I needed to wait for the eye clinic. It was a waiting room a little before the door labeled "Eye Clinic." The room had several chairs and a closed wooden door. Was I supposed to sign in here in this door? Should I knock on it to let them know I am here? There were already a couple of patients in the room, so I decided I would wait it out, and see what happened. First the door opened, and a doctor came out and called in an old man into the room. She used his last name, so it was clear that he was expected. (Maybe the nurse who showed me the room let the doctor know I was coming?)

After some loudly repeated phrases for the elderly man in the room, the second man who was waiting was called in. I was now the only one in the waiting room. Would they call me in next? After a while I could tell the second man had left the room. I waited tor what felt like quite a while, but nobody came to the door to let me into the examination room. Eventually the eye doctor who had let the other patients in was walking by outside the waiting room. She noticed me, and asked me if I was visiting someone, or if I had an eye problem. I said that, yes, I had an eye problem. She told me that a doctor would be with me in a moment.

After just a bit more waiting, the eye doctor called me into the room. After 10 minutes of examination, and a somewhat painful removal of an eyelash from my left eye with a Q-tip, the doctor told me that I had a viral eye infection that would probably go away in about a week. She gave me some eye drops, and sent me on my way.

That was this weeks adventure. I think my were a bit less pasty this morning, so hopefully this points to a quick recovery.

--Austin

A "real" week in Wuppertal.

2008-10-19T02:28:00.000-07:00

As I have told many of you, classes were to start this week. So far, I have had a placement test for my German course, annnnd that's it. We were told that the course would begin on Monday. I have gotten some other things figured out though. I went to speak to people in the Music department this last week. I have gotten things straightened out there. I am now ready to take trumpet and piano lessons. I guess it is a requirement here that one has not one, but two musical talents. The most popular combination is piano as a major and voice as a minor. They, in fact, have no trumpet students at the moment. The actual program, as I understand it, is only music pedagogy.

I have my first piano lesson tomorrow, and I have no idea what I will be doing. I have no piano books with me, and I don't play piano very well. All of the other piano students are more than able to play a four part hymn (arguably the most difficult part of Bethel's piano proficiency and one of maybe two remaining pieces on my journey to the Class Piano wall of fame). I tried to make it clear to the music faculty that I was a beginner, but we will see on Monday if it's clear to the piano professor. I also have been in contact with the director of the orchestra here. The first meeting of the orchestra is on Monday, and I will find out more then. I am excited to be able to play music with people again. That is a big part of my everyday experience at home, that hasn't yet been present here. For trumpet lessons, I have received an e-mail from the man who teaches trumpet here at Uni-Wuppertal. It was kind of ambiguous. Essentially he introduced himself, and gave me some contact information. I am not sure if I need to take the initiative to schedule a lesson with him, or if he does that, or if the university does that. I e-mailed him back saying I was interested in taking lessons with him, and asked him what I needed to do. It has been a few days already, but I haven't heard back.

This week has been a week of welcome. At Bethel, this would mean there would be "fun" all-American events every night, like an ice cream social, or a movie night. Here at Wuppertal, that means that there will be huge parties every night, sometimes on the very university campus (maybe in the on campus bar). I have met some really friendly people here. Mostly through international student events. There is a international students team that helps with on campus living, and there is one that is more general call team that helps with the exchange students. There are some truly welcoming people there. For some reason they have been very complimentary of my German. Everybody seems to be surprised that I have only been studying German for 4 years. So, good work Merle (my German professor).

Tomorrow we find out how we did on the placement exam. There are 6 levels of German A1 (complete beginner), A2, B1, B2, C1, C2 (mastery). I was placed in the B1 group at the German Language School in Berlin. The German courses here (for the exchange students) only go through B2, so hopefully I will be in B2 here. If I were to count the words that I have spoken in German before coming to Wuppertal, and compared that number with the number of German words I have spoken since being here in Wuppertal, I am sure that the second number would be at least 3 times larger. The German language is beginning to gel in my mind. I feel less and less like I am thinking in English, and translating into German. I still have a long way to go, but the progress I can see in myself is encouraging.

So since I didn't have any photos last week I will try to put up extra this week.

A trip to Dusseldorf.

Sunset on the Rhine.

Out my window.

--Austin

The San Francisco of Germany?

2008-10-11T01:52:00.000-07:00

Well I have never really been to San Francisco, but I do know that there are some really steep streets there. Here in Wuppertal there are also some very steep streets. Sometimes you don't have to use them. Instead, you could take the public stairs. For instance, there are probably 60 or so stair-steps for me to get to campus from where I am living (which is right next to campus). My calf muscles have been sore for the past several days. If you want to walk farther into the city, you are going down hill, into the Wupper river valley, or Wuppertal ("Tal" means valley). That part is easy, but then you have to go back up again. And instead of a trolley here, there is the Schwebebahn. It is a suspended "monorail" of sorts. I haven't ridden in it yet, but they tell me it follows the river through the city. There isn't any Rice-A-Roni here, and I don't know much else about San Fran, so I think my comparison ends here.

I am still in limbo between Berlin and Uni-Wuppertal. Classes don't start until the 15th. There have been a few activities for me though. On Wednesday there was a hall party. Literally a hall party. It wasn't a party for the people on my hall, but rather a party in my hall. People there seemed really interested in what I had to say. There was a moment when I was at the end of the hall, and I started talking to someone there. After two sentences, the other 10-15 people that were there had all gotten quiet to listen to what I was saying. It might have been just to hear how my German was. I don't know. But I don't think I have never had an experience like that.

Since that party, I have finally started meeting some people. Yesterday we had a breakfast for international students where I met some very nice French people, and on Thursday my roommate showed up. He is from Slovakia and was an exchange student last semester, and is now studying as a regular student here. I went with him and some of his Slovakian friends into the city on Thursday. We had a good time. One of his friends was an an exchange student in high school in Derby, Kansas, a town that was in our league in High School. My roommate seems to be a pretty genial guy. It is still strange living in such close proximity to someone I don't really know yet, but I think it could be a lot worse.

One frustration for me the past week has been not having a place to practice my trumpet. I emailed one of the music professors on Thursday to see about lessons, practice rooms, and possibly playing in the orchestra. He hasn't emailed me back yet. Yesterday I went exploring to try to find a practice room. I could find online where some of the music classes were held, so I went there to check it out. I found two rooms labeled as practice rooms, but they were locked. I am not sure if they are open at a different time, or if one needs a key to get in, or if I need to sign up. My trumpet has been kind of on hold since half way through my last week in Berlin, when the man who lived under me in Berlin came up while I was practicing and asked me to be quieter. I have been playing on my mouthpiece trying to keep my chops in shape, but I want to get into a practice room where I can really do some practicing.

Well I haven't been very good at taking pictures. I will post again soon with some pictures.

Week of October 5, 2008

The Bad:
Evidently it rains here all the time. One person I met told me to check the weather, and if it is supposed to be nice, do something outside, because the next day it will probably be raining.

The Good:
Yesterday, and so far today the weather has been wonderful. The trees are turning, and it is a great time to be outside.

Also I have been using my German much more than I have ever before. I feel much better about it. Twice people have told me they thought I was German when I told them I am from the US. Although it usually comes out that I come from the US after only a couple of sentences. I am sure in more extended conversation, it is clear that I am in fact not a German.

I am missing Kansas.
--Austin

Wuppertal

2008-10-05T09:01:00.000-07:00

Today I traveled to Wuppertal where I will be spending the rest of my time here in Germany. I went by the ICE train (Inter-City Express) and arrived here at about 1:40 pm. The last day of class I had in Berlin was actually on Thursday. Friday was a holiday. It was the 18th anniversary of the German reunification. There was a huge celebration at the Brandenburg Gate and on into Tiergarten park. It was like fall fest but thousands of times bigger. There was a huge stage with lot's of sound equipment set up right in front of the Brandenburg Gate. Different German groups played there throughout the day. The Street of the 17th of June goes straight back from the Brandenburg Gate into Tiergarten park to the Victory Column. This whole stretch of street was covered with vendors selling food and naturally also beer. Every few hundred meters there would be a giant screen and more sound equipment showing what was happening on the stage.

It was interesting to see this festival sponsored by Coca-Cola, the symbol of western capitalism. Their omnipresent banners seemed to be celebrating the fall of communism with us. But instead of celebrating the reunification of a people, the banners seemed to be celebrating the expansion of markets. It is easy to see why many people, especially those who were once committed to the economics of communism, choose not to celebrate this day.

On Saturday, I did my best to get ready to leave my apartment at 8 am the next morning. Only having our family's somewhat regular rental of a cabin in Colorado as a model for moving out of a rental, I cleaned the place before I left. I also knew that some offers I had seen had a final cleaning fee, which this one didn't. I thought it would be at least common courtesy to clean some.

Then this morning, after packing an an incredibly heavy bag, I left my apartment. I carried the very heavy bag down 5 flights of stairs. The wheels on the bottom of the bag hit every step. It was too heavy for me to lift off off the ground for very long long. I also had a trumpet and a computer strapped around my shoulders. Luckily my landlord carried my 4th piece of luggage (a heavy duty garment bag) down for me. He even helped me carry it down into the subway station. From this point I had to take all my luggage one stop to Alexanderplatz where I could take public transportation to the main train station in Berlin. Luckily from this point on there was an escalator or elevator. But I still had to pull along the very heavy bag, whose wheels are almost kaput (to use an imported word.) When I finally sat down to wait for the train, I tried to lift my right arm. Much to my surprise, this had become a very difficult task, after carrying/pulling a giant bag behind me for so long.

Finally I made it on to the train with all my stuff. Unfortunately I was in the wrong compartment, so I had to push my way through with all my luggage to another compartment to get to my seat. I had the most luggage of anyone I saw on the train. I was jealous of those who just had one small rolling bag, whose wheels worked well. They seemed so mobile.

Tobias Ruhle picked me up then at the Wuppertal train station. He and his brother (I think) took me to my dorm room. Tobi carried my giant bag for me. He asked if I had packed bricks.

Then he got me settled into my room. We then went to Rosie's (the other Bethel student who is here) room to look through the boxes of stuff that the Wuppertal "Friends of Bethel" group has for Bethel exchange students. She was nice to make me some spaghetti. I still hadn't eaten, and today is Sunday, so stores are usually closed.

So, I am supposed to get a roomate sometime. That should be interesting. Kind of scary. Hopefully we will be friends. At least each of our rooms are seperate, we just share a kitchen and bathroom.

We will see.

A rainbow appeared on one of the cloudy days as the sun was setting in clear sky.

A couple pictures of my dorm. It is hard to get a picture of it, because it is pretty small and narrow.

Week of September 28, 2008:

The Bad:
I had to say goodbye to Berlin and a friend that was with me there since the beginning. And forget about the sun. It is raining now, and it has turned cold and cloudy again.

The Good:
I managed to get out of my apartment and to Wuppertal relatively unscathed.

--Austin

Hooray for the sun

2008-09-28T06:24:00.000-07:00

Hooray for the sun this week. Everybody in Berlin seems to be in better spirits. It has been so cloudy lately, but the last several days have been perfect. Right now I am in my apartment with all my windows open. It is wonderful weather.

The leaves on the trees are beginning to turn here in Berlin. Fall has always been my favorite season, an it's on its way.

Not a lot to report this week. Everything is still going well. This next week will be my last in Berlin, and then on Sunday I will be off to Wuppertal. I am excited about being in a place where I have some people who will show me around and take care of me. Berlin is great, but everything feels temporary here. It will be nice to be able to settle in in Wuppertal.

This weekend Kate Larson came and visited me. In fact she just left a couple of hours ago. Kate is an au pair with a family in Bordesholm in the northern part of Germany. We had a good time comparing experiences, and we were also happy to see someone familiar.

We had a little adventure trying to find a restaurant a friend (Miriam Friesen) had recommended to Kate. We were supposed to take the metrotram from the school north to a place called Humannplatz. This sounded like a fairly easy task. Since I live south of the school, I often take the metrotram (the M1) north to the school. We could easily catch that and stay on it past the school until Humannplatz.

So that's what we did. We rode the M1 maybe 5 stops north of the school, and it became evident that we weren't going to find a Humannplatz on this tram. We got off and I asked some people if they knew anything about Humannplatz. One person said it sounded familiar, but he wasn't sure, and the rest had no idea. At this point I remembered that there are two trams that stop at the school, one is the M1 and the other is the 12. I never take the 12 because it turns as it is going south, and doesn't get me closer to my apartment. But going north the 12 goes straight along the same street that the school is on. The M1 turns a little bit to the west. I saw on my map that the 12 passed a little park called Humannplatz a little ways north of the school. After all this, the restaurant will probably be closed when we find it, Kate joked.

(As I am writing this two people have repelled from the side of a 30-40 story building about 500m from my apartment. I never know what I will see in Berlin.)

After taking a bus back south, finding out that a day ticket is NOT a 24 hour ticket, getting another ticket, getting on the underground, and walking a little way, we found Humannplatz. We were happy. The directions then said that we would just need to walk a couple blocks and we should find a Greek restaurant. About a block later, we saw a restaurant on a corner, and it was Greek! We went closer to check it out further, and I noticed that the windows looked pretty dark. When we went to the door, we realized the Restaurant was in fact closed. We thought that maybe this wasn't in fact the Greek restaurant that Miriam had recommended, but, really, what were the chances that there was another Greek restaurant in the next block or so. There were a few lights up another block, and it looked like the 12 had a stop there. We thought there might be a place to eat there, or at least we could take the 12 back toward my apartment.

As we approached the next block, we saw a restaurant. It looked like it could be alright. I saw "Rome" in the title. I had to think for a second, is Rome in Greece? Could this be the restaurant we were looking for? Next I saw the full title of the restaurant: "Athens-Rome." I had remembered that Rome was of course in Italy, but I was certain that Athens was in Greece. The restaurant served both Greek and Italian food. I was relieved to find a spot to eat after so much searching. We ate there, and really enjoyed the food.

Was this quaint Greek/Italian restaurant the restaurant we were looking for? We may never know. . . (or at least not until we ask Miriam) But what we can say is that food was really quite good, and we enjoyed our experience there thoroughly.

Well here are again a few random pictures from the week. A natural theme this week:

We went to Potsdam, and there were some beautiful gardens:

The very small free preview part of an aquarium that we didn't go into:

And something less natural. There have now been 3 of 4 people go down the side of this building in the last hour or so. It is a little too far away to get a really clear picture though. The person is just a black speck.

Week of September 21, 2008:

The Bad:
Several of my friends from the school left on Saturday.

The Good:
I jerry-rigged my fan, and it now works. There was a problem with some switch that had a function that I don't really understand. Maybe it changed how wide/narrow the fan swiveled or something. It was totally separate from the speed and on/off buttons. After finding a screwdriver set in my apartment, I took apart the part of the fan where the switches were. I then just bypassed the broken switch by twisting the in and out wires together. I left the totally useless switch in the fan, however. Hopefully the landlord won't know that I was tinkering with his fan that now has a broken switch. Today I will be drying my clothes with a little extra help again.

--Austin

I tried to make cookies

2008-09-20T04:42:00.001-07:00

Cookies are so simple. They would be a nice home-made treat for some Spanish friends who don't have cookies very often in Spain. Right?

With this thought in my mind, I tried to make cookies. This only the second time I have tried to buy things for a recipe here in Germany. It seems to be very difficult for me. First of all, there wasn't any brown sugar in the store. The "Brauner Zucker" that I bought wasn't like our brown sugar. It was just unrefined sugar, I guess. It didn't pack and was as dry and granular as white sugar. But I purchased some anyway, because that was all I could find. Also vanilla extract gave me a problem. There was some kind of vanilla flavor that I found, but I am not sure if it was the same as vanilla extract. I forgot to check my eggs too. I think that is the first thing one learns about grocery shopping. When I got home and opened the case, one was cracked. On top of all of this, (after already buying 500g of "Brauner Zucker") I went to a second grocery store looking for "American style" brown sugar. I bought something that I thought was closer to what I needed. I now believe it was essentially the same as the sugar I bought at the first grocery store. ((so if anybody knows of someone in Berlin who needs about 700g of "Brauner Zucker," send them to me)) Chocolate chips also didn't seem to exist in the store, so I just bought a block of chocolate to chop up.

I must have taken too many things for granted in my kitchen too. My measuring tool is was only a scale with graduated volume markings on the container that went on the scale. It made it a little hard to measure 1/2 a teaspoon of baking soda. I also didn't have a beater. All I had was a little whisk. When I added the eggs I was supposed to make the mixture light and creamy. Instead it was a little more gritty and runny.

Anyway, after baking them on a pan that wasn't meant for cookies, they were really flat and odd looking. I made the cookies yesterday for a goodbye party for one of my friends at the school here. I hosted the party at my apartment. I must say, however, that the party was fairly successful despite my cookies.

There seems to be a culture of sharing among the Spanish people with whom I spend a lot of my time. They are always sharing gum, candy, sandwiches, apples, water. Almost any kind of food is handed out without a second thought. Since I rarely have any snacks on my person to share with them, I receive much more than I give. I hoped that I could share the cookies as some kind of personal contribution. But, oh well. They liked them anyway, even with the (maybe more than) faintly granular texture still left in the cookies from the sugar that wasn't well mixed.

So, a culinary adventure for this week. Every day here can be an adventure in so many ways. Just living on my own, making my own food, trying to keep a budget, ect. is new for me. Being in such a big city is also new for me. And, maybe most obviously, being in a foreign country brings its share of adventures as well. But I am enjoying myself, and every adventure prepares me to live in the "grown-up" world.

Well, as is my tradition, here are some pictures, a couple of the party I had, and one of a statue of some very influential people: Marx/Lenin along with "the opiate of the people" in the background. (Another one for Keith Sprunger (who I am sure doesn't actually read this blog.))

Week of September 14, 2008:

The Bad:
The fan in my apartment seem to be broken today. I am not by any means warm here in Berlin, but the only way I have to dry my clothes here in the apartment is by hanging them up on a drying rack. So 6 pairs of jeans are drying verrrry slowly today.

The Good:
German feels a little more lucid.

--Austin

A week in.

2008-09-13T00:14:00.000-07:00

Well one week has gone by, and I feel pretty settled in. I began language school on Monday, and I felt a little bit alone. I met one other American student, but other than that everybody was from mostly France or Spain. I don't live on campus, so my biggest chance at meeting people at the school was in my class of maybe 9 people.

Luckily on that Monday night, there was a school wide welcome party where I met some people. Along with meeting a couple important friends, I met a guy who was born in England, but lived in Australia. He was maybe in his 50s, far above the median age there at the school. We started talking about politics, and we both agreed there were some problems in America. Soon he began talking about how "the rest of the world" sees America. He was a big subscriber to conspiracy theories. He was talking about all the things you "never learn about" in America. Like about how 9/11 was likely a conspiracy to cash in on insurance recently taken out on the building. Or how, Barack Obama could win the election because he has the three important characteristics of American presidents: he is male, can trace his roots to the UK, and is "white" (I am not sure how he came up with that). He was an anti-intellectual intellectual. He felt he was free because he was less educated. He wasn't "spoiled by the system."

I was a little perturbed by all this. Was this really how America was perceived: a whole group of people who have been hoodwinked into believing that social progress was real and attainable, and citizens too dumb to realize that all their news was lies? I tried to play the guy off as kind of crazy to some people next to me when he left. Their response was something like: oh, yeah, he really knows a lot. . .

Now after a week in Berlin, I think this man is an outlier. It was, however, interesting and challenging to meet someone with such a different view than mine. He made me think especially about my own education. Is my scholastic journey a blind following? Is it just "the system" teaching me what to know and what not to know? What is truth, and how should one seek it?

Through this experience, I came to really appreciate a place like Bethel. Education should intentionally expose people to new, and sometimes strange ideas. To be educated is not to follow the ruts that society has made for us. Rather, it is to come to our own conclusions, and be creative. We must "cultivate our garden" as Candide would say (that one's for you Keith Sprunger).

Anyway, enough of that.

I have made friends this week, and I don't feel alone here in Berlin anymore. I usually hang out with a group of Spanish people. They are unassuming (which was not my first impression of students here at GLS), and fun to be around. They almost always speak Spanish, but I have fun anyway. They must be on their summer break still, because they are making there time here in Berlin like a vacation. We have been seeing all the tourist places over the last few days. Here are some pictures.

Week of September 6:

The Bad:
It has been windy, cloudy, and cold the last three days.

The Good:
I figured out my alarm clock. I just needed to hold down a button for maybe 3 seconds to set the time. Therefore, I think my outlet converter might in fact work.

--Austin

Die ersten Tage in Berlin.

2008-09-06T04:00:00.000-07:00

Well, here I am in Berlin. I still don't think I believe that I am here. The flights were all on time, and I made it to all of them on time too. I did have a little trouble once I got to Berlin, though:

First, I needed to get out quite a bit of cash to pay for the month in the apartment here in Berlin. I was glad to find an ATM in the airport. It had the MasterCard logo, so I figured I was good to go. When I got to the end of the transaction, the machine told me that my card didn't work in that machine. This was after another card usage failure in the bus ticket machine. Luckily there was a little teller window next to the ATM, and she was able to manually charge the card for the withdrawal.

After paying for a bus ticket in cash, I had relatively little trouble getting to the nearest subway stop from my apartment. I got off the subway and went to the nearest exit, but it had neither an escalator nor an elevator, so I went to the farther exit. There, at the farther exit (probably 70 meters from the other one) there were still only stairs. So I climbed them, with all 140 lbs. of my luggage. When I got to the top, I realized I didn't really know where I was, and, more importantly, I didn't know where my apartment was in relation to where I was. I did, however, have an address, and I noticed that there was a map back down in the subway stop. So I dragged all of luggage back down into the subway, looked at the map and got my bearings. The BVG (Berlin public transport) website said the address would be about 100 meters from the subway stop. So I got to the street of the address, and, from what I could tell, I was in low 30s in address numbers. I was looking for 31 Alte Schoenhauserstrasse (where I was supposed to meet my landlord), but I couldn't find it. So, I was kind of going up and down that street looking for a guy who looked like he was looking for a guy. I even asked a man on the street: "Kannst du mir helfen?" (Can you help me?), inappropriately using the "du" form of “you” with someone with whom I was clearly not familiar. I asked him if he spoke English (he did) and then asked him if he knew where the address was. He basically told me that it was probably somewhere near where I we were.

Eventually, still rolling/schlepping all my luggage, I found a bench on the street, and sat on it. I knew that I had the landlord’s cell phone number in an email that was on my computer and Merle Schlabaugh had let me borrow his German cell phone. I noticed there was a coffee shop nearby, and I took myself and again all my big luggage into the rather small coffee shop. I ordered the first thing on the menu (an espresso), probably more because I felt like I needed to atone for bringing all my stuff into their poor little coffee shop, and not because of a particular hankering coffee. I got my espresso, sat down and found the email on my computer. I then called the landlord; he came and found me, and showed me to the apartment.

Sidenote: he said he had been waiting by the subway stop. If I had come up the other staircase, I later realized, I would have been almost directly in front of the entrance to the apartment.

Some pictures of my apartment and the views out of the windows:

Saturday, September 06, 2008:

The good:

I found an ATM in my neighborhood, and my debit card worked. I think I am getting over a cold that hit it’s peak yesterday after 22 hours without sleep.

The bad:

I don’t think my 40-dollar electric outlet converter works correctly. I plugged my alarm clock, and now the time setting buttons don’t work. Later, I plugged in my beard trimmer, and it made a heinous grinding noise the entire time I was using it.