street car visions (which you) place on the grass

On my way to Claudio's, my favorite ice cream place (only 60 euro cents for a scoop!) Goettingen downtown, sunny and bedecked with flags for the World Cup.

Written on Thursday:

I imagine you have been to a zoo. Maybe its been awhile, but its likely, and if its likely that you have ever been to a zoo, its also likely that you have at least once visited this certain exhibit of which I am thinking. The name probably varies from location to location, but basically its got a lot of red and yellow birds, maybe some sleepy bats hanging up top, and a lot of leafy greenery. In my well-zooed experience, the exhibit is like a high-roofed greenhouse, and once you step inside the impression strikes that you are no longer in temperate California but in a costa rican rainforest. Its cool to hear the bored screeches of exotic animal-life, and to breathe in that heavy mechanized mist, at least for a few minutes. By the time you reach the end of the exhibit pathway, however, (with its signs thanking you for strolling through, maybe next to a warning about the disappearance of fauna and foliage in the southern portion of our hemisphere), you're glad to be out, and to feel real, clean, fresh air, and to let your pores revert back to their normal workings. Now, imagine you had walked into the exhibit, not knowing that once you're in, you're trapped. Its at this point that you'd look around with the due amount of surprise, and read the white-posted sign to your right, "Summer in Germany."

Its really not the temperature, its the humidity. It doesn't help matters that my room begets the full glare of the german side of the sun, day in and day out, or that you can only have your window open at certain parts of the day in order to discriminate as to the insect intruders to your small space of residence. Furthering my annoyance with the recent weeks is my bike picking this time, the apparant beginning of summer (we are all asking one another, "What happened to spring?") , to decide... yeah, I really don't care about working anymore, no matter how many times you fix me. I have taken The Grand Purple Beauty to Dietmar ("The Bike Man") now three times since Friday (today being Thursday), just to have her wimp out on me a day or two after the repair. I think I conned my friend Scott into coming over tonight to take a look at her, so hopefully that produces something fruitful. It wouldn't be so crappy if my pores didn't well up with emotion every time I left my building. It also would be nice if I didn't live two kilometers away from anything worth going to.

Apart from complaining about the weather, today I went to class, and then to the Mensa (cafeteria) with Rita, and then to the library. I try to go to the library at least once a week (generally Monday or Thursday afternoons), and after every successful session I always promise myself another one soon, but the fruitlessness of that hope can generally be attributed to the late nights that the attempt at a enjoyable social life require.

Even though I will be glad to once more peruse a library whose organizational system actually makes sense, I will miss the beautiful SUB (university library). It is a monumental building, modern and nationally-acclaimed, its outsides constructed mainly of clear glass. It is especially talented at affording one lots of neat nooks and crannies in which to hide with a book, a dictionary and a pen. Today I started the research for my term paper that I "sort of" started about two months ago--- that I really should have started two months ago. As I was walking the aisles in the Freihandmagazin (a basement area, which to my knowledge is the place they put the books you are actually allowed to check out--- the three floors above are full of books that you just sit there and admire), I had to laugh to myself. The system, if it can even be called such, is so unfathomable to the average educated mind that after ten months I continue to fail to see how "The Greatest Irish Drinking Stories" can sit next to "Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl," which is on the shelf just below the thick volume of Guenter Grass' collected poetry, shoved tightly to the end of the row by a Hungarian textbook, taught (fittingly) in French.

Due to the weather and a just general lack of motivation, I really haven't been getting much work done. But academic pursuits aside, I have been finding enough things to keep myself suitably busy. I will probably cut this entry short by heading to the gym in a bit. And speaking of athleticism, this past weekend I spent in the heat and sun in a city called Halle, in Sachsen-Anhalt, part of the former East Germany. Saturday morning I left to head to my first ultimate frisbee tournament with a fellow American named Ben. He is here for the summer hanging out with a friend of his here and learning German, and traveling to tournaments to play pick up for teams who need players.

Continued now, early Sunday morning:

After our last game on Sunday, the 'Air Pussies' (a team name which makes as little sense to you as it likely does to me. Ben and I kept wondering why they had ever picked a name like that): (L-R top row) Dishke, Ben, Renee, Tom; (second row) Frankie, Me, Frauke, Anne.

So yeah, the tournament. I slept very little Friday night, and woke up at 5 on Saturday morning to meet Ben at the train station. We got to Halle in the mid morning, and through the help of three middle-aged 'East' German men at the station, and Christian and Kristin we found our way to the playing fields. The latter were a couple, probably kids about our age, with whom I conversed as they led us the confusing way to where the tournament was held. I was really impressed by the people in Halle and how helpful everyone tried to be to us. I am not used to Germans going out of their way for, really, anything, so it was almost a shock as much as a pleasure.

I hadn't had a clue what to expect the tournament to be like, and as Ben and I had basically just met one another, it was... an interesting weekend. We ended up "picking up" (being put as two members on a team that was short) for a team from Berlin the whole weekend, and we played seven games. Each game was 45 minutes, and since we generally had to match up girls on teams (ie, girls defend girls, boys defend boys), I actually played a lot, because there was generally only one of us to switch out.

If I hadn't been so tired on Saturday, from the lack of sleep, and the intense heat, and running for literally about three hours, I probably would have been really nervous. As it was I just tried my best to keep my mind open about learning, and not take anything too personally. I felt kind of bad about being put on the team as a beginner, especially since Ben is really good, but I eventually found my place, and after a mostly frustrating Saturday, the last two games on Sunday were really good. It was mostly difficult because I was trying to learn the stradegy, while at the same time remembering rules, and taking direction from my team mates. Since the team is from Berlin, there were a couple of other foreigners: Dishke from Kyoto, Frankie from Belfast, and Tom from somewhere in Australia. Tom was also a pick up player, and since he didn't know any German, our team mates spoke often in English. It was a strange feeling, though, because though Ben has taken some German, its not really at the conversational level yet, so because he needed English, people assumed I did too. When applicable I tried to say something about me knowing German, or speaking in German to my teammates, but I felt like it was just sort of awkward. Like, if you say, "Yeah, I can speak German," its almost like saying, "Yeah, my German is really good," which is not really something I want to be saying to a German. Especially in this situation, where I felt like I was really needing to work hard to prove my worth anyhow, and the combination of physical stress and then intellectual pressure was just too much. So I stayed quiet and listened and tried to pick up things, which I think I did. I missed practice today because I spent the day recovering from last night (ahem), but at practice on Tuesday I felt like I was able to put some of the weekend's learning to use.

So we played most of Saturday, and then went out to eat at a mexican food place with some of our teammates that night. Unfortunately this is Germany, and eating out can often last an epic amount of time, and so I was basically useless until I got back to our tent at around 11:30 pm, and within 15 minutes passed out on the hard german soil. I woke up periodically throughout the night, FREEZING in my thinnish purple sleeping bag, and then woke up at 8:15 to feel the blazing sun already overhead. As previously stated, Sunday went a lot better, probably at least in part due to the sleep, and after our last game at around 3, Ben and I packed up and made our slow journey back to Goettingen.

Ultimate frisbee is an american game, so I actually heard a lot of foreign voices (ie not all german) at the tournament. There was also a lot of naked children, and an inexplicable amount of pregnant women. I think most everyone camped out at the spaces along the fields, and there was a main tent, in which a free breakfast and cheap lunch was provided. There was a building with bathrooms, and showers, and there were also port-a-potties along the main tent. The girl's bathroom, in which one toliet sat, broke down the first day, and so I had an exciting weekend of peeing next to boys. Eileen, my friend from Berkeley who has played ultimate (as it is often known, instead of "Ultimate Frisbee") for a couple of years, warned me previously that sometimes the showers at tournament are coed. I had said, oh, thats cool, my bathroom my freshman year of college was coed, I don't have a problem with it. But as I went to take my shower on Saturday evening it all became clear: one smallish room, eight shower heads, no gender differentiation. I was actually lucky that I went in right after a mass exodus, so I was actually the only one in there for my ten minutes of lukewarm recessitation. I wouldn't really have had a huge problem with it either way, but I thought it was important to note it down as one of those things that I can now say I've done.

So all in all it was a good weekend, though the feeling that coated everything was a tepid exhaustion. Unfortunately I was stupid and got really badly sunburned, which my skin is just now recovering from. At the very least I got a lot of good exercise, and Ben and I made friends with one another, and I made some friends that I will be able to say hi to if I ever go to another tournament here. I hope I get to, though when I think of the time I have left and the weekend plans I already have made, there just aren't many opportunities left. At the very least I hope to join the team when I go back to Santa Cruz, and I know we will play Berkeley, so it'd be fun to see Eileen then, and reminisce about the old days.

Another event that has started to take up time is the WM (Weltmeisterschaft), or better known to the English-speaking world, the World Cup! The international best-of-the-best of football (soccer) is this time around held throughout Germany, and so it feels like a pretty big deal to be here right now. I have only watched a few games, but a lot of people have been watching most of them... which now only in its second week would still be a lot (I think there are about 2-3 games a day, depending). The most memorable was Wednesday night's Germany-Poland game. I met some people in town to watch it, and the bar we had planned to go to was already packed, so we ended up heading to an empty cafe. The cafe was soon full, and it was so much fun to watch the game with Germans, not only because it was their team and this game pretty much assured that they'd move into the next round, but because Germans are crazy about soccer. There were special songs for goal-kicks, and throw-ins, and when Germany finally scored a goal (final score: 1-0) in the last five minutes, the place erupted, and we all chanted "Wir fahren nach Berlin! Wir fahren nach Berlin!" (We're going to Berlin, We're going to Berlin! Berlin being another city that the games are played in, and where I assume the final games are held) for what seemed like ages. After the game we went to a hookah bar, and after that Scott and I walked home, and I couldn't have wished more that I had remembered to bring my camera with me. The city was INSANE--- it was sometime early Thursday morning, and Weende Strasse, the main road through downtown, was packed with revelry, people singing, drunken groups of guys running with german flags through the side streets. A german girl (that one of my american friends was trying to hit on) was talking to us at the hookah bar, and she made what I find to be a really insightful point: Germans are taught not to be proud of their nationality, and sports are the only outlet that the world would find acceptable for any degree of german nationalism. Thus, german football fanaticism. A fun fact is that the mexican team is staying here in Goettingen, and every time I've been downtown the past two weeks I've seen some of them walking around. Its actually pretty cool, its like celebrities in your midst, eventhough they aren't like the highest ranked team or anything. I think it's nice that all of Goettingen has gotten into it, so I see almost as many mexican flags in shop windows, on police cars and hanging from apartments as I see the old black, red and gold.

Scott, Lee and I by the water at the Hamburg harbor at about 5am, two weekends ago.

I guess that's about it for now. Last night Scott came over to take a look at my bike, just to finish the inspection within two minutes and tell me he'd have to fix it all after I went and bought the parts. Then we called Lee, and I made dinner, and the three of us ate before we headed over to the party here at the Siedlung. What started off as a party I planned on leaving after about an hour turned into one of those leave-the-party-at-7am-ers. I paid for all the fun heavily today, but it was still worth it. Any time I get to dance for long periods of time with lots of boys, friends or strangers, is a good time to me. Tomorrow I hope to sleep in and then get some work done, and on Sunday I am planning on going to Leipzig with some people, just to walk around and see the city. On Monday Addie comes to visit, and I have to figure out how to accomodate someone for a length of time in my little box-room. And now, bed!