like a rolling stone

Its inevitable that whenever I sit down to really get going on some work, my mind wanders from out-dated german vocabulary (Thomas Mann was writing, at his earliest, more than a century ago) to traveling and all the places I want to go. Finalizing plans for the running-around that I am going to be doing this winter "break" has got me in that lets-make-some-plans mentality once again. So now "Unordnung und fruehes Leid" is set aside and I am staring at this sheet of places and dates, wishing I had more time, and wondering where I will get the money for all of this. But its like a disease! It grips you and you can't just imagine not spending every last free minute with thirty pounds on your back and your camera clenched tightly in your right hand, getting lost on unknown streets marked in unknown languages.

I had planned to do more traveling during the semester. The semester lets off for a two week break after this next week, and after that I have just about one more month of school. In that month I have... a ridiculous amount of work to do. But let's not think about it just yet. I had planned to do more traveling during the semester because I set up schedule up to have a four day weekend, but as of yet I still haven't really taken advantage of that. At least, advantage in the sense of going anywhere, really. But I think its more difficult during the semester, because there is always work to be done, especially in the educational system here, where its less of "do this this week, this next week", etc, but rather, "You should probably start researching this soon". So its like, even if I was on top of my weekly assigned work (hah), I'd still feel like I always had something hanging over me. But of course, since I am taking a lot of classes more aimed towards foreigners, there is more structure with my work than if I were a normal german student... but all the same. So I think a lot of it is the mentality, that if you aren't spending your Saturday reading or writing, well then at least you should be resting, or getting something else done. I think a lot of my not-running-off-into-the-wild on the weekends thus far has been an attempt at self-preservation, that is, keeping myself from getting sick. I really, truly do not want to jinx myself here, but I think I've really only had one or two bouts with any sickness since I've been here, and it never got very bad. In Santa Cruz I'd get a really bad cold at least once a quarter... so I think I am already doing better than normal.

Anyhow, plans! So my last day of school before Christmas break is this upcoming Wednesday. Yesterday I bought my train ticket for Thursday, December 15th to Paris! I should get in a few hours before Colina and her two friends, with whom we will likely be traveling the first week. So, I'll probably wander around for a couple of hours, seeing if I can remember any of the four years of French I took in high school (very unlikely), and then once they make contact, meet at the hostel. To my knowledge (Lina and her friend made a lot of the arrangements, bless them), we are staying three nights (so, two and a third days?) in Paris, France. That fourth (I think?) day we will train it to Brussels, Belgium, where we will stay for another three days. Then Colina and I are flying to London, then catching a bus to Birmingham, spending the night at Colina's place there, and then meeting her family the next morning to go to... the place we are staying the next couple of days. I can't for the life of me remember what the place is called. But I will stay there with Colina and her family, and celebrate Christmas with them, and then Mom and Scott come into Birmingham the morning of the 27th. They'll stay that day and the next (and hopefully one of those days will be spent in London, ey yi!), and then the 29th Mom, Scott and I are flying to Luebeck, Germany. From there, depending on if we rent a car or not, we'll either catch a train to Goettingen, or somehow find our way down the Autobahn a couple of hours. Either way, we'll probably get into Goettingen just before the 30th. I was originally convincing Mom that it would be silly to rent a car, because the german train network is so good, but after this week's numerous bike problems (went out yesterday to begin a day full of errands just to find that my back wheel was flat... and more), I am thinking a car wouldn't be such a bad idea. There is no way I can imagine forcing Mom to walk everywhere in Goetingen, especially since they will both be fighting jet lag and all sorts of other traveling goodness. Scott has to leave on the 1st to get back to work, but I will try to convince Mom to stay a couple more days. Class is supposed to start up again January 2nd, but as it were, two of my professors have already said they aren't going to hold class that week, so I could easily write at least one of the others so that I don't have any class that first Monday and Tuesday.

So, thats that. As aforementioned, all of January I have class, but I believe my last day of Winter Semester will be February 1st. Now, when the semester will actually be done for me is a confusing thing to sort out now, because I am not really sure about paper deadlines and final tests... but I think its safe to say that my break between semesters will be starting off somewhere at the beginning of February. I am also not entirely positive when I will have to be back for the beginning of Spring Semester (it all depends on what classes I want to take, if there is some sort of orientation for EAP we have to be a part of, etc), BUT I do know that the date I got as the official start of the second semester is the 14th... which is a Friday, so that likely might mean the beginning of classes isn't until the 17th... of April. So you can image the kind of plans I have right now. I feel like there is some magical travel oracle that I should be talking to, but the truth as I've found it so far is that you can sort of just blindly make some plans, and convince people believe that they're a good idea.

As things lay right now, I will likely be traveling with Jacky for the first couple weeks of break, and then meet up with Colina and some of her friends once their semester ends. I don't know if Jacky will want to come with, or even if it will be more than Jacky and I traveling together at first... all things to be sorted out later. So, of course, where I end up going will probably depend on who I am going with, so its sort of useless to really lay out any plans just yet. Ah, we'll see.

when they come

Since I've recently realized that it is less than a week until my next great adventure, its about time I got some pictures online from the last one.

Backpacking Trip #1: September 24th - October 11th, 2005
Part I
Part II

if you ever need a stranger

From the front of my building, Haus 2/4 the Siedlung on Rosenbachweg.

The cafe above the Konditorei (like, sweet shop? confecteur?) on Tuesday morning, after our walk through the Weihnachtsmarkt. Left to right: Me, Frau Kunert, Frau Finckh (creative writing professor), Antoinette (fellow Californian), Dominika (Polish), Herr Kunert.

On my bikeless day I took a bunch of pictures of what is my normal walk (ride) home. This is Robert Koch Strasse. The slightly pink side of the sidewalk is the bike lane, the green sign is a bus stop, and the Siedlung lies about a five minute ride ahead.

if i lived in prussia i'd have some chinese children

I'm so happy, I have brakes again! Dietmar came by a bit ago and roused me from my dozing to return my bike key and require 13 Euro of me. I finally went and submitted my poor vehicle to Dietmar, the Siedlungs resident "Bike Man", yesterday night after I nearly careened first into a group of oncoming bicyclists, and then into bypassing traffic. I was going down the hill from my Wortschatzuebungen class with Jacky and since my brakes were really literally shot by that time, I couldn't slow down at all, and the bicyclists into which I almost met my fate were taking up the whole lane. I just missed both, and it was a really funny situation (I looked back and Jacky was almost falling off her bike she was laughing so hard), but it could have easily not been so funny, so I went and relinquished one of the things I love most here: my mobility. So yeah, its not like I can't walk anywhere, but it just takes so long. I walked to my first class yesterday, but I didn't get back to my place (just in time to drop off my groceries, after spending a good portion of the afternoon downtown with Jacky trying to figure out her cell phone problems) in time to turn around and walk to my second class, thus the fateful bike ride. So anyhow, I walked to class this morning, and with my iPod (with which I had a near desperate moment last night, but she came through the technical difficulty to provide me with love and companionship for another good long while, we can all hope) its not really a big deal, but it is a good half hour walk to main campus... and downtown (the Innenstadt) still lies behind that. And that half hour you are still having to watch yourself so you don't get run over by the mass of bike-riders... though as a bike rider I know I really hate the people who are just mooesying along in the bike lane, or in the places that are pretty much bike lanes even if they aren't thus specified. The whole pedestrian - auto driver conundrum, just with a different vehicle.

So anyhow, my bike is fixed. Dietmar was rambling on and on about it for awhile, and in my mind it was pretty much one of those "okay, so it works now? great." situations. The brakes are new and actually working, though, so I will have to toss all the how-to-function-without-the-whole-stopping-mechanism techniques out the window and just make sure to not use 'em until I'm right at the stop light. I really want a bike when I get back to Santa Cruz! I think it'd be impossible to get up to campus with it (the whole city slants upwards towards campus), but apparently people take the bus up, and then ride their bikes down. And I can always ride around the city on a bike... as long as I don't end up living on one of the terrible hills. Yeah, no idea where I will be leaving next year, or with who... or how. Things to save for later to think over.

I had a terrible time getting up today, partly because my sleep schedule continues to carry on with little regard to rhyme or reason. The idea of having to walk in the cold (though it has been significantly warmer this week; I would never have thought before to say that a little rain would warm things up) doesn't generally light that little fire inside me, but I was mostly blah this morning because my creative writing class was extended from an hour and a half to four hours. The reason being: Frau Finckh has two creative writing courses on Tuesdays, on in the mornings for foreign students, and one at night for "seniors." Since she is an excitable little woman, whose hippy-deameanor somehow coexists with that trademark German impatience- don't ask me how-, she deemed a partnership of the two classes in the spirit of Christmas: a great idea!. The basic idea was for us to form groups and walk around the Weihnachtsmarkt, and then write about our shared experience/the differences between Christmas here and wherever the foreign students are from (which is only the US and Poland, since the Iranian, and two Japanese girls all dropped the class, apparently). I was sort of apathetic because I was slightly irritated by the vision of getting stuck with a couple of ornery old Germans, but the experience ended up being nothing but. I was put with a fellow Californian (who goes to my same school but I don't really have any relationship with), the Polish girl, and a married couple, who are probably in their early 70's. At first I was slightly disappointed because I wanted to be paired with this woman (who, as everyone else, was at least 60, except for one woman who was probably early 30's and very businessy-looking) who said she couldn't speak a word of english, because sometimes people get talking to you and want to practice their english. But I think that was sort of an empty thought because its not even generally an issue for me. Actually this is an occurrence that I've heard other people complain about a lot more than I have experienced myself here- I am not sure if its because I am a girl, or because it, strangely enough, happens to come up in first meetings with people that I am here to learn german, or that I don't speak any english to them first, so why would one respond in that way? But for example, my friend Steven complains about not getting to speak german to Germans, and we were talking about it the other day and I think I sort of have it figured out in his regard. Most of the time he is trying to hit on European girls, and so whether they are German or foreign like us (generally Eastern European, as it goes... Hungarian, Polish or Czech seem to be the most popular), they can probably speak English pretty well. Its really quite debatable if its more advantageous or more of a drawback that everyone we meet knows more about our culture, or at least thinks they do because of the mass appeal/spread of American media, and that they generally have been learning our language along with their own for at least a handful of years. Personally it just ends up making me feel really naive about everyone else's cultures, and just a bit envious that if they are here studying German, they've got at least two more languages under their belt than I. But, so it goes. In most cases I believe I can rightly say I grew up with a lot more advantages and opportunities for being born in a country that is currently holding a "world power" status. Its all a trade off. People get in arguments and disagreements here all the time about our government and its role in world poltics at the moment, and we, without fail, introduce ourselves first and foremost as Californians. Its disheartening, though, because I would like to feel more proud of where I come from, but this is a whole other subject. Fortunately for me, I really have only once gotten assaulted by the WHAT IS YOUR COUNTRY DOING AND WHY DID YOU ELECT BUSH spiel, and that was by a drunk in the Koeln train station. I think I avoid it (unconsciously, of course) by being someone who doesn't really bring up the topic of politics all too often (at least with near-strangers, man)... and I'd wager it also has something to do with me being female, and men being the more likely candidates to get up in people's faces about someone's politics (just my personal observations, thus far).

Anyhow. Herr and Frau Kunert, as I implied before, turned out to be a charming couple. He bought a sack of some sort of roasted holiday nut (I could look up the german word but I doubt anyone cares), and kept shoving offers in our faces. Frau Kunert chidded him but in an unbickering sort of way. It was very, hm, suess. Then once we ran into Ruth (Finchk, the prof) we all realized we needed to get somewhere where we could sit down and try to write something up. So we were led to this little Konditorei right in the middle of the Innenstadt, on Weender Strasse. I'd seen it before but never really stopped to check it out, and as we were walking up the stairs to the cafe above the sweet-shop, I realized it was really quite similar to the cafe Jacky and I had gone to in Vienna. Herr Beilein had told me, prior to my backpacking trip, that the thing you've got to do above all else in Vienna is go and sit at a Viennesse cafe. So we had done that, though I had gotten tea because it was the cheapest thing, and Jacky had just sat there and watched me drink it. Anyhow, this time around I, as well as the other two girls, were supplied with the drink and slice of cake? of our choice (I got this Swiss apple-cake and guave juice). It was really so nice of them, especially since it was kind of an upscale-looking place. I'd really like to take anyone who can make it out here to see me there, because you can sit and look over the Innenstadt and drink your hot drink and its all very European. We never really got writing done, so on suggestion of the Polish girl, I ended up writing half of a poem for us once we got back (late) to the classroom, just in time for us all to share our work. The Polish girl was really quite complimentary, I was surprised because she has lived here for a few years and her German is really good... but I think it was maybe more my style than my actual grammatical/vocabulary powers that I so strongly wield that she was complimenting. Anyhow. The Kunerts didn't really seem to be wanting to get any work done on their day out, so we just sat for the majority of the time in the cafe figuring out when we all had free schedules to go and have a holiday dinner at their home! So on the 5th of January I am going to the Kunerts in Geismar (a small town just outside of Goettingen). I think they might be a bit lonely, because their children are raised and grown and now have their own children. And from as much of the conversation as I could catch (as we were walking to the Weihnachtsmarkt I was having to go in front of everyone because there were so many of us and not enough path to go around), I know at least Herr Kunert was born in Wodz (Poland) and came over to Germany in '47 (his accent was indistinguishable though, at least to me, and so I haven't a clue if his wife is Polish too, or if she is full German... though I guess if he came over that young he probably wouldn't have an accent, would he?).

It was cute, though, because now and then either Dominika (the Polish girl), or one of the Kunerts would ask me some of those silly questions that you expect to be asked a lot more often, but aren't because the influence of American culture is so great, and also because prying isn't really something Germans like to do all that much. Like, do you have Christmas trees? But its hot in California!

And now I really need to get back to work. Before Dietmar came by I was lying in bed with Mario und der Zauberer (suggestive, I know), and surprisingly, not doing my best to stay awake. I normally read at my desk, because thats better for the whole "bed is only for sleeping" psychological thing, and also because its a lot faster to look up words online (see link to the right of this block of text) than to lug one of my three dictionaries around my 11 X 16 room (thats a complete approximation), but I have just been really sluggish this whole afternoon.

Ah, but my weekend. Good couple of days off from school, as always. As far as the actual weekend goes I don't think I barely left my room (letalone my building), but I went out Wednesday and Thursday, and we had all sorts of merry-making on Friday for Jacky's 20th birthday. It was such a success (save for the disappearance of Jacky's cell phone, Lee's hat, and arguably some feminine sanity) that I am hoping we're going to be able to do it again. My recommendation is for a "Thomas Mann" themed party, because there are around 15 of us in Beilein's tutorium for the lecture, and Jacky and I and some others have been hanging out with Beilein and Droescher (two of the ILP teachers, and the two teachers leading the two California-student tutoriums this semester) an increasing amount. This way we could invite Beilein and Droescher (who all the Californians love, anyhow) and it would make a little more sense, and also we could all have a chance to dress up as the characters whose massive problems we've been slaving to understand (at least two-dimensionally) the entire semester. I got an email from Beilein last night sent out to a handful of us, inviting us to a Feuerzangenbowle party on Saturday. Its probably just because we were all at Nautilus together when it got brought up last week, but it was still fun that it was just some of us that were originally invited (he'll likely invite everyone in Tutorium tomorrow). I've never really made friends with a teacher before! And oh man, Feuerzangenbowle is so much classier than Gluehwein, as far as traditional German Christmas drinks. It all makes me want to go out and throw euros to the wind for fun holiday party clothes... but then I remember that there are only two decent clothing stores in Goettingen (one sort of pricey with all their tops being way too SHORT; Europe really needs to get with the times and realize that no one wants to see your stomach- I can't really believe my torso is so much longer than the other millions here; and the other store is far cheaper but, because of that, everyone shops there so its sort of hard to look unique) , and also that.... ah yeah, throwing euros to the wind implies that you actually have some. Rent, cell phone bill, food. Rent, cell phone bill, food. Throw going out a couple of nights into the mix (though that is actually relatively cheap, at least, I would assume in comparison with the US), and thats a recipe for not really coming back to America with too much European clothing. Though if I lived in England, man... Lina has it good over there. Maybe not with the pound, but at least there is something to dream for.

And I've officially spent way too much time writing this. Is it possible to read and understand 40 more pages of Thomas Mann before tomorrow? They've only just introduced the magician...

Pictures!