an tagen wie diesen

After spending the majority of the day cleaning, and the past few days either packing or sitting listlessly at my computer waiting for the unshakeable heat to let up, I have something to share:


Things I Will Not Miss About Living Here:

the humidity
the hall's broom that is so old it barely could hit the dust out of my rug
the hall's vacuum that instead of picking up dust and dirt simply relocates it
the white surface of everything in this room that refuses to ever look clean
all the tiny gross bugs of summer
bike riding and getting said bugs in eyes, mouth, plastered onto skin


Yeah, thats about it. I've heard tell of the heat wave that is striking the States, but I've got to say I'd take dry heat over the drippy summer I'm experiencing here. The weather is almost continuously hot and humid, with the only moments of respite being the crazy thunder storms that sweep in to cool things down for a day or two. I have been spared a little today by the arrival of one such storm (or at least, it looks like it's going to be that way), but just remembering standing in line at Getraenkemart yesterday, my back completely soaked because I was wearing a backpack. It was ridiculous. I get home from an 8 minute ride and I am as sweaty as if I had just run a couple of miles. I don't think of myself as all that sweaty of a person, but I look around here and wonder how everyone else is dealing with it and not obviously looking like they are going to pass out.

So yeah. The last few days have been about figuring out I am going to get my stuff home, packing it up, and finally cleaning my room. Tomorrow morning is my Abnahmtermin, my inspection to move out. I am afraid of getting bitched out because my room has not posessed the ability to look clean long before I ever moved in, and I realize that is something the did go in they told me it was too late, and I realized as I was cleaning today that some shelves in my cabinet have been broken for the majority of the year and I just sort of forgot about it. I have had so many little problems (lights breaking, closet rack falling down, mold on the walls, etc) with my room that the woman who works in the Hausverwaltung, the housing office, actually fills out the portion of the complaint form that requires my house and room number without even asking me. But yeah. I just sort of want to get moved out and be done with it. She told me I could move out on Saturday (after arguing with her about it), as long as I dropped off my key in her mailbox. Well, if I can move out on Saturday (a day no one would be working here), I don't see why I couldn't move out on Sunday, so I think I am going to be doing that. My rough plan at the moment is to take a taxi with my boxes to the post office to ship, and then take a taxi to Andi's on Sunday when I go there to move in. Jacky moved out yesterday, becaus inspector may not acknowledge. I also never turned in my curtains to be cleaned, and when Ie she is going traveling with her boyfriend, and they walked all of her stuff over to Andi's yesterday, but I don't think I have the willpower to do that myself. I am slightly concerned about how I am even going to be able to get everything to the airport, if I have to change trains or anything on the way to Frankfurt. I have a backpack, a traveling backpack, a largish purse (which I think is going to contain all my dirty clothes from this next week), and an enormous suitcase. The airline lowered the allowed baggage weight limit from 70 pounds (when I came) to 50, so that is fantastic. All of this just makes me appreciate minimalism so much more.

I don't know how it's going to be staying at Andi's, because his apartment is about 1/5 the size of a sliver of a fingernail, and its at the very top of the building, so it is HOT. If only news of that whole air conditioning craze had made its way across the Atlantic!

It is frustrating, because everyone is leaving this week, and I have had to get a lot done so I could move out tomorrow. Once I move into Andi's on Sunday, I think I will just need to worry about closing my bank account and settling my cell phone debts (baeh, another thing I don't want to think about). But yeah, I feel like its all rush rush rush and then sit around for a few days. It would have worked out better if I could have planned out a traveling schedule earlier, but I have been stressed about getting just all of this done in time, and I know the few people who are leaving to travel are stressing out even more, just because that's one more thing.

Looking through my Europe guidebook, I am continually disappointed, reading all of the things I didn't get the time to do. Just Germany alone, there is so much that would have been really fun. My friend Jennifer and I are planning on leaving on Monday to go to a city on the Ostsee, staying there that night and then likely coming home Tuesday night. I am not sure if this is going to work, primarily because the Ostsee is a big german tourist destination, and we as of yet do not have lodging for Monday night. But hopefully we could work it out, because the Ostsee (Baltic Sea) was one of the things I really did want to see here. I also wanted to go down the Rhine, see the Schwarzwald (Black Forest), go to Nuernberg, Dresden... but yeah, time is flying by quickly. I have wasted a lot of it this week, just feeling hot and pissy about moving and cleaning and all that unpleasantness, but there really wasn't much I could do about it. There has been stuff to do every day. Ramble ramble.

Luckily the grossness of the past week has been made up for by stuff going on every night, due to everyone leaving. I've gone out to eat and/or hang out with people the past few nights, and that has been nice. I haven't been terribly sad to say goodbye to anyone leaving, because they are all not only Americans but Californians, and I could potentially, and hopefully will, see at least some of them later on this year. But thinking about the other goodbyes I will have to make soon enough... it's a strange feeling. I hope we all keep our promises to stay in touch.

Last night Jacky and I finally came through with our party. We've been talking the whole semester about the various parties we wanted to throw, but school and other obligations got in the way. We had wanted to do an end of the semester party in Jacky's Tagesraum (living room), and then have a smaller, more intimate party on the roof of her building, but what ended up happening was a combination of the two. The planning was pretty poorly executed, mostly because she and I have both been really busy. It was also frustrating to go through my phone book to see who to invite and realize that at least half of those people are no longer in the country (especially since I had a good amount of friends from the first semester group). But it ended up being a pretty good turn-out, and the atmosphere was very nice. For as miserable is it is in the daytime here, the summer nights are just about perfect. I advertised the party as a "Dress Up Party" (ie nice clothes), which in the telephone game got translated to "Shnazzy Party" and "Sexy Party." Almost everyone dressed up, which was really nice, and I got a surge of glee when a bunch of the Germans showed up, dressed up as well. Since it was still humid (if not hot), all the boys were wearing short sleeved shirts with ties, which gave me ample room to make cracks about church-attire. Unfortunately my camera ran out of juice halfway through, and I also think that no one got a good picture of Jacky and I, but here are a few that I liked:

Setting up

Me, Eileen and Andi's hat

Okay, there were a lot more people than that, but it gives you an idea of the atmosphere.
Stevie likes dressing up just as much as I do.

itchy veins

I am officially done with my third year of college.

I don't know if it's the different perspective one is thrown into by leaving or just bad luck, but it always seems that things seem to happen right before you leave a place, that would make you want to stay. Just meeting cool people, and wishing that I had met them months ago so I could have formed something instead of just being like, well, it was nice talking to you.

I haven't figured out exactly what that is supposed to mean, if one should take life entirely less seriously (and onself in the process), or if certain things happen before big changes to just... remind you of something.

The past couple of weeks have been quite chameleonic. I've passed through completely different mindsets, and I'm finally at a place of acceptance. Awhile ago I didn't want to leave Goettingen, Germany, Europe at all. Things were amazing, and it felt so unfair that I had to know it was all going to be ripped apart. But then as others started to prepare for leaving, things for me started to follow suit, and through a couple weeks of intense studying/writing for finals and projects, it dawned on me that I wouldn't be able to stay if I wanted things to stay the same. Californians are starting to leave Goettingen as early as tomorrow, and by leaving on the 5th of August I am the third to last person to leave, as far as I know. I am afraid of the city feeling empty once a lot of my friends are gone. I am going to try to do a couple of day trips to some german cities, but so far this is hard planning, because I'd like to go with other people, and everyone is in the mess of packing and cleaning and figuring out all they need to go home. I have a week until I move out of my place here into Andi's tiny attic apartment. So far I haven't touched a thing, being as that I just finished the semester yesterday. I need to send letters to the railway company and to my cell phone provider, telling them to cancel my contract. I have to go to city hall to turn in a form saying I'll no longer be a resident of this city. I need to pack up boxes to ship by sea so that I can have them in America four months from now. I've got to see how much a rather large suitcase, a traveling backpack and a school backpack can hold. I need to figure out if there is any way I'll be able to use the two duffel bags Mom sent with Kim and Jen for me, because as far as I know I am allowed two items for the plane's cargo hold and one to carry on. I am hoping I could use one of the duffel bags as a "personal item," ie purse. I need to return this huge stack of library books I checked out for various papers and tests.

Week before this last one I had two written finals and a presentation. This past week I had a paper I turned in on Wednesday, and an oral test with my professor yesterday (Friday) morning. It was... alright, though nerve-racking and sort of comicial in the fact that the test was comprised not solely of questions on the topics he gave us to study, but rather on topics from the whole class. I generally came to lecture, but... yeah. The good part of the 20 minute sit-in with Professor Hildermeier was at the end when he told/asked me that for sure my ancestors had come from Germany, with a last name like Brock-ree-dah. I said yeah, that I'd always been told it was German but sort of was disappointed here when no one I asked was able to provide me with any information, save that the 'Brock' was an old word for brook. But Hildermeier (who apparently has written tons of books, knows tons of UC history professors, and is pretty high up in his field) told me that he grew up a few kilometers away, and he had known some Brockriede's there. He nodded when I said, well, then it's a North German name? So that was sort of the meaning of the day, that I finally got some information from a German on that. It pleases me because it's fitting, that I'd live in the region where my name supposedly originates.

It's been strange, that since I finally accepted my leaving, I had trouble of thinking of anything else the past week or two. It's amazing how all of our 'real lives' have become so much more real, knowing that we are so close to returning to them. The past weeks have brought to mind things I hadn't allowed into my head for months. This entire year I've resisted the notion that this is just 'vacation' or a 'a break from our real lives,' as so many kids here on the program have described it. Then two weeks ago I was lying on a grassy hill by the Dorf, at night with Lee and Sarah, and we looked up into the black beyond the green leaves of the trees. That was the first time that I felt like the past year of my life was the one pepperoni slice of the cheese pizza. I don't know yet if the other slices from here on out will require some meat as well.

It's difficult saying the year was a vacation from real life, because if so then it was one of those vacations where you hike up into the Himalyans in the depths of winter, and don't come out until the passes have cleared long after. I am wondering how long I'll be back home before I can shake the cryogenic thaw.

I want to write more, but it's time to start packing.

if i am lost its only for a little while

With only two weeks of summer semester remaining, I continue to do a phenomenal job of procrastinating. Its only this afternoon, after a strange nap that makes me not want to go to Africa (not like I see the option coming up anytime soon), that I sit down and start to get some stuff done. I have a final on Tuesday morning, another final on Wednesday morning, and an oral report directly following that. For the moment I am focusing my worries on the oral report, though it is in English (for my English lit class). The topic of the report is half of what my term paper will be on, when I start writing that. I am more worried about the actual act of writing that paper [due at the end of the semester], and the oral test I have to take with my history professor [also at the end of the semester... I think]. Since I don't have a clue what is going on in that class right now I am scared, especially since its the only class from this semester that is actually going towards my major. Though apparently I'm in good company as far as the confusion due to the class's direction, since the other three Americans in that class 1. sit and read Fitzgerald in an attempt to rationalize their drinking, 2. draw intricate geometrical designs, or 3. text message their german girlfriends. Ah, school.

After the 'group photo' had been taken, I demanded a 'year kids' photo, since these are the people that have been through it all. Top row, right to left, just for kicks: Lee, Antoinette, David, Scott, Andrew, Cindy, Janelle, Kate, Karina, Jennifer, Jeremy, Andi (not actually a student, but yeah), Vivan. Bottom row: Jacky, Eileen, Me, Steven.

Since about everyone else I know is in the same boat homework-wise, there hasn't been that much going on recently. Earlier this week was our 'farewell barbeque,' where the year-kids, the new semester kids, and then a group that had arrived literally a day before convened, met the new EAP director, took our group picture and got conviently woozy due to the humidity and the free beer. Not necessarily in that order. It was one of the more surreal experiences of recent weeks to speak to the new kids and have them full of questions, what would you have done differently, what did you like the best, etc--- every question posed like my time here was already over. I still have a month left!, I wanted to shout. But it's true, its almost over. I'll save the poetry on that topic for a later entry.

My brother Steven and I at the bbq. The first picture I have of Germany, which I think Jacky took, is him and I standing with our backpacks, looking significantly younger, on the moving sidewalk in the Frankfurt airport. How time flies.

Also over is the world cup. Or at least, almost. I don't think I am going to get to watch the final game tonight, which I believe is Italy v. France, because I need to work instead. But my interest lay mainly with the german team anyway, and after I watched them beat Portugal last night to assure a third-place victory, I felt so happy watching the after-game footage. Klose, Lehmann, Podolski running around excitedly, Torsten Frings looking long-haired and a little less ready to start a fight than usual, coach Jurgen Klinsmann hugging everyone and looking genuinely pleased, all the black, red and gold in the stands of the Stuttgart stadium. It was also nice that Schweinsteiger scored (well, basically) all the three goals; I felt happy for him, since it seemed like he'd been 'off' a lot of the games. I was sitting in the living room of Henry's house, and Jacky was next to me, and I said something about feeling like I knew them all, just from watching them all play, and Jacky agreed. Spectators in the stadium were holding huge banners that read, "Ihr seid unsere Helden," you are our heros.

Watching the decisive Germany v. Italy game on Tuesday was a little more depressing, just because it dragged on forever until Italy finally scored two goals in about a minute and a half at the very very end. I was expecting mass rioting in the streets, but it actually seemed like people were still optimistic about the prospect of getting third place (which they did, last night). Last night I was sitting in a fifth-floor apartment on Arndstrasse and from his open window we could hear the cars honking below, the last german cheers of the Weltmeisterschaft.

Tim, Steven, Alex (complete with John Lennon glasses) and I at Konrad's Grillparty for the Germany-Italy game/Steven's 21st birthday.

Back to work.

"Wir fahren nach Berlin"

Yesterday Germany and Argentina tied in one of the quarter-final games of the World Cup. They went into overtime, and finally a shoot out. Germany won.

Its hard to explain what it is about being here and watching the games with people--- because to them its so much more than a game. We, the Americans, all speak in hushed voices about what it is going to be like, the day they actually lose a game.

To further on this point, you can check out this interesting article I just read. I don't agree wholeheartedly with it, but it might give you a better idea of what's going on.

I watched yesterday's game at student housing at Kellnerweg, a street up by the north university buildings. I stood on a table at the back of a large room, the windows blacked out with garbage bags, the game projected on the blank white wall. I probably lost a few pounds just being in that room for 100 and some minutes; the humidity was what one could call palpable. After the game I rode (my bike fixed again, hurrah!) into town with Eileen and her friend Marvin to watch the insanity at the Marktplatz, the main center of town by the Gaenseliesel. Truly outrageous, and I have the videos to prove it. After that I rode home, and changed, and then met back up with Eileen at the Kellnerweg party.

Next week we play Italy.