Originally written Sunday 17 May, 2009 5 PM.
I'm sitting here at "clothing optional" Wreck Beach on the UBC campus in greater Vancouver, among leathery-skinned aging hippies and beautiful young women playing bongo drums and tambourines (though largely ignorant of the liberal dress code), and I'm watching a sunglassed man with large, dangling testicles balance watermelon-sized rocks on their ends at impossible angles while clutching the remains of a cigarette between two remarkably steady fingers. His ponytail bobs up and he loses concentration for a moment as a quartet of nubile, curvaceous mermaids glides by. He quickly returns to his task and another rock, the largest yet, is added to the solemn stone village, holding council on several raised boulders some distance from the water and sheltered by the densely verdant cliff that separates the beach from the rest of the world.
To my left someone has started playing the guitar and someone else the harmonica in concert with the relaxed beat of the bongos. A young, earthy brunette teaches an older blonde woman to keep time with the music by gracefully swinging a pair of weights, streaming long colourful ribbons through the air. Her large, perfectly-formed breasts alternately peek out from behind a purple scarf as her arms circle round and round. It must be getting colder.
Someone plays the didgeridoo as Dangling-Balls teaches me how to balance the rocks. After a what seems like a rather long burst of intense concentration I get one, and then two more! Apparently the hard part is in balancing a second on one that's already erect.
A Spaniard is conact juggling just behind me. As he teaches someone to juggle three balls for the first time, I ask him if he can teach me to juggle five balls. It's very beautiful here; I wonder if this is what Australia is like? The Spaniard invites us to a weekly juggling night held nearby as he teaches two other beach wanderers how to juggle clubs. It's definitely getting colder now; the sun is disappearing behind clouds, and soon the mountains too. I forsee spending a lot of time here this summer.
The drums have stopped and been replaced by the sounds of a lone guitar and talk of the philosophy of rock balancing accented by whispers of things quite foreign to my small town ears, things like "capricorn" and "good vibes" drifting through the pleasantly cool air.
Dangling-Balls, now fully clothed, but with no better appellation likely at this point, has taught two more the art of balance and as they say thanks and resume their stroll down the beach, he assures them that they will never see rocks the same way again.
Saturday, May 23, 2009
Sunday, August 17, 2008
A Final Letter from Germany
Well folks, it has been an interesting few weeks since my last update. I did finally get to the Balkans, and I have a tale or two to tell. Unfortunately I have not yet been able to add any photos of my most recent adventures in Serbia to Facebook, and I am not sure if I will be able to, for reasons I will explain below.
The sections of this last letter are as follows:
BIKE RIDE
WORK TERM REPORT
TRAVELLING TO BELGRADE
REFLECTIONS ON CULTURE
MY ARREST (ALMOST) AND OTHER EMBASSY EXCITEMENT
MORE TRAVEL AND THE TESLA MUSEUM
GOSPIC
CONCLUSION
BIKE RIDE
Well, one of the first adventures I went on since my last letter was actually a bike ride to a place called the Rheinfall in Switzerland a few weekends ago. This is a mighty waterfall on the Rhine River, and a few friends, acquaintances, and I biked over 65 km to get there and back. As you know, I have been biking to work all summer long, so this actually wasn't as much of a problem for me as it was for the two retirees that also came along, and accordingly we went at a fairly slow pace for most of the day. It was also more of a problem for the bike I was using, which creaks and rattles at the best of times, but really sounded like it was going through a series of painful death convulsions throughout the trip. Once we had seen the falls, eaten a good amount of swiss chocolate, and various dried meats, we were on our way back, when I had overshot a turn-off. Someone called me to come back, and I turned my bike around, and still in high gear, gave a hard power stroke to get going again, when *SNAP!* I felt something hit the back of my leg, and I found I wasn't going anywhere. Yes, indeed, my chain broke, finally putting the bike out of its misery, at least for the rest of the day. But you know what the really great thing was? I looked up at a sign at the cross roads that I missed, and saw that we were only 1.2 km from our destination. Talk about good luck!
WORK TERM REPORT
I have been compiling my Engineer in Training (or EIT) logs for the Co-op department, which are basically monthly summaries of work. I must say I am rather pleased that we do not have to pass in our entire daily notebooks, and to give you an idea why, here are some excerpts, taken word-for-word from my notebook:
--------------
"10 July, 2008
"Finished formatting and handed the report to Kerstin. Apparently Jorge has something for me to do...?
"11 July, 2008
"Catch up on other tasks while waiting for news fr. Jorge & Miguel.
"14 July, 2008
"More of the same.
"15 July, 2008
"Nothing really seems to be happening.
"16 July, 2008
"What am I supposed to be doing? Miguel has disappeared, and Jorge does not answer his e-mails."
--------------
By the way, Kerstin, Jorge, and Miguel are the people I worked with in the Product Management team, and "Catch up on other tasks" means "read CNN.com". But in any case, I think that I made up for this sort of tomfoolery when I actually had projects to work on, such as in this excerpt from a few days later:
--------------
"19 July, 2008 (Note that I am working on the weekend, bitchcakes.)
"Re-reading Kerstin's document shows..."
--------------
TRAVELLING TO BELGRADE
Well, as many of you know, Nikola Tesla is a great inspiration to me, and I have wanted to visit the Tesla museum in Belgrade, and Tesla's place of birth in Smiljan, Croatia for some time. So with just a week and a half left in Europe I finally made this "pilgrimage", despite everyone's best efforts to persuade me to go to Italy or France instead.
It was a long trip to Belgrade, and I split it up by stopping in Munich for an afternoon. I got to see the famous Deutsches Museum, which is a very large technical museum with topics ranging from the history of steam engines to aeronautics and astronomy, with countless exhibits of real pieces of (sometimes huge) technology, and for some reason, a resident glass blower. And there was the Hofbräuhaus, which was about as stereotypically German as any place I have ever seen. This was a huge restaurant and bar, with Lederhosen-wearing German girls serving armfulls of 1 Litre steins full of their home-brewed beer and pretzels wider than my outstretched hand (about 25 cm), all set to a live Polka band. Ah! What a time!
I left Munich late, hoping to sleep on the train, which I was able to do right up to Salzburg (about 2 hours from Munich), when a team of English backpackers invaded the little cabin where I was sleeping. I asked them if they were from Australia (as I am wont to do to the British), and they were generally quite nice, but they did prevent me from sleeping, which actually turned out to be a bit of a theme of my trip.
I arrived in Belgrade to the sight of gypsies living in little hovels between mountains of garbage, right next to the railway tracks. Like most Canadians, I have never seen real poverty before, and I was awestruck and dumbfounded at the naked, unshod children playing in this horrible place. In this age, in this country, I simply couldn't believe it; this was supposed to be Europe, the birthplace of Western culture, not some African poster-nation for UNICEF.
REFLECTIONS ON CULTURE
I have done a lot of reflecting on culture and society during my time here, and this really came to a head during this trip. For those of you who don't know, Serbia is a land of war and unrest. It was the front of a good amount of the fighting between the Turks and the Austrians in centuries past, and this bloody history has left its mark on its people. Just over a decade ago, there was a war that broke out between the states of the former Yugoslavia, and the Serbs (and especially their leader at the time, Karadzic) are accused of genociding a bunch of muslims, Bosnians and Croats. During my time there, I met a few self-proclaimed revolutionaries, and, always eager to understand both sides of an argument or conflict, I asked them what were their thoughts on Karadzic, the war, and the accusations of genocide. As many of you know, I have a certain pride in and derive a distinct pleasure from holding opinions that are counter to the majority, or even downright unpopular, so I entered this conversation with a open ears and an open mind, hoping to be persuaded. Their argument, however, actually made no sense, and it would not even benefit your understanding for me to transcribe it here. They also discussed the belligerence and agression of the Serbian people, a fact of which he was actually quite proud.
It is very curious how these attitudes and ideas can be passed from one generation to the next. I was walking through an old fortress in Belgrade, that had been partially turned into a military museum, when I happened across the most pitiful sight I have ever seen in my life. Hobbling through the park was a small, black dog with only three legs, what's more, only two of the legs seemed to be able to support his weight, I kid you not. This dog was literally hopping around, looking for scraps of food around garbage cans. I watched as it tried to relieve itself, lifting its bad leg it fell over. It took a few more tries before it was finally successful. After a while, contemplating whether I should put the poor thing out of its misery, I noticed another dog following along. A bitch, possibly the first dog's mate, teats bulging with milk, but no puppies around, that I could see. It was almost unbearable to behold. How can you help in a situation like this? What was this strange place where such a thing can happen? And of course those dogs are but a small, bizarre symptom of this cancer of war and agression that has both oppressed and captivated this small nation for generations. I am not a racist, but I am a culturist. Tesla, himself, once wrote that all thoughts can be traced to a root thought, and that there is a reason for every action that we humans perform. I would posit that this idea can be taken even further, and that all attitudes and behaviour can be traced to a root cause, and in the case of cultures, to collective historical experiences, passed both consciously and subconsciously from one generation to the next, in everything from the type of food that they eat to the way they interact with one another.
A while later, still in the park, I found myself in dire need of a toilet. I found a few old portable toilets, but when I opened the door, each one was in such a bad condition, broken, vandalized, and reeking with sun-rotted human waste, that I wouldn't set foot inside. I thought to myself that in Germany, this would never happen, and I was contemplating this observation, when it hit me. The answer to a question that I have been asked, and that I have been asking myself since I came to Germany nearly eight months ago. What makes German culture different? I mean fundamentally, what is the root cause of the way Germans treat each other and the way they live their lives? I believe I can sum in up in a single word, "respect". Respect for the self and others. Why does this behaviour founded on respect flourish in this culture? Perhaps the question better asked is "Why does it not flourish in other cultures?" and "Has it always been part of German culture historically?" These are difficult questions to answer. For one thing, I have been saying "German culture", but really much of Western European culture is quite similar, at least in the present day, and I believe this idea of respect is present in many other European cultures, as well. As for the other questions... well, you tell me.
Similarly, I have often wondered what defines American culture, and I believe I can wrap that up in a single word, too, "isolationism". Americans have been believers in isolationism since their very foundation, implicitly if not overtly, and I believe that this has played an immeasurable role in shaping their policies and world views, their lack of concern for global events, and even that thing so baffling to Europeans, a complete ignorance or at least nonchalance about climate change. In the second world war Americans were shown that isolationism is not only impractical, but actually foolish in our modern, highly globalized world. Unfortunately they took the wrong morals away from that little lesson so that today we have American military agression in the middle East, but a nation full of people who wouldn't be able to correctly choose between Iraq and North Korea on a map.
MY ARREST (ALMOST) AND OTHER EMBASSY EXCITEMENT
Speaking of the US, as some of you probably know, the US embassy in Belgrade was overrun by mobs and set on fire a few months ago when the US (along with most countries in the civillized world) officially recognized the Serbian break-away state of Kosovo. Well, I happened to pass the new embassy on the street, and I thought it would make an interesting photo opportunity, so I whipped out my trusty Nikon, and a few moments later was surrounded by armed guards, demanding that I hand over my camera. Now I'd just like to say that I hadn't shaved in a couple of weeks, but I definitely wasn't wearing a turban, nor did I have explosives hidden in my bookbag. I explaned that I was just a Canadian tourist, and meant no harm, but I was informed that my options were to surrender the film or to be arrested. I pondered this for a moment, and struck a deal with them. I explained that I already had over thirty photos on the film (some really good ones too), and I wasn't about to give it up, but what I would be willing to do was to open the back of the camera to expose the last couple of pictures I had taken. They agreed, and I did just that. Unfortunately I did it stupidly and I probably ended up ruining the entire film anyway, so for this grave transgression I may never forgive the United States government. What a bunch of silly bastards.
Just down the street a few scores of meters was the Canadian Embassy, and I thought it would be kind of cool to go in and have a look around. It turned out to be quite a nice building, actually, so I did go inside. In the entrance was a guard and a metal detector, pretty standard, I suppose, but for some reason I hadn't expected it. Nonetheless, I started shoveling spare change and bottle caps into the little tray, when I remembered that I had my (fairly large) pocket knife on me. Not knowing what the laws were for concealed weapons in Serbia, and not wanted to be threatened with another arrest, I embarassedly explained that I had changed my mind, and didn't want to in after all. Well, the guard impatiently asked "Why?" Not being the sort of person who would lie, even in a situation like that, I told him. He just said that I could leave the knife with him. "All right" I thought, handed it to him and walked through the metal detector. Damn! I forgot to take off my watch. I walked through one more time, and it beeped again. I must say I felt rather foolish at this point, but in any case he let me through. So there I was, thinking I was home-free, that I would be able to have a look around this building, see what an embassy is like, and talk to some fellow Canadians. Well, I was wrong. I was given a visitor card, and told that I would be able to speak to the consulate shortly.
"Wait, what?" I said, "No, I don't need to speak to anyone. Can I not just have a look around?"
The answer was a definitive "No."
"Alright," I said, "I think I'm just gonna go, and not waste anybody else's time."
"You can try, anyway," said the guard.
So the moral of those two stories is that embassies suck.
MORE TRAVEL AND THE TESLA MUSEUM
But Belgrade wasn't all belligerant radicals and unfriendly guards. The food really was as good as everyone said. For the equivalent of about 12 Canadian dollars, I got twice as much of a meal as I got in Munich the day before for about $30. It was a large deep-fried roll of meat, about 12 inches long and two-and-a-half inches wide, plus a half a loaf of bread, salad and a bunch of french fries, and of course some Serbian beer. Plus Belgrade has one of the highest PGPs of any city I've ever seen. At least 50, maybe even 75%. Incredible. I have a theory on why that is too, by the way. There were also some good street performers, a barbequed corn stand on every corner, and some really cool spraypaint artists. Curiously I found that in Serbia, and even more in Croatia, German seemed more prevalent than English. It was on the signs, and spoken by more people, and I would say maybe 80 – 90% of foreign licence plates had the German "D" on them. I suppose this makes perfect sense, given the Austro-Hungarian history of the region, nonetheless I was surprised, and quite pleased at being able to use my German proficiency in a place outside of Germany.
I would say that at about this time I was becoming quite travel weary. And not just from this trip, but from the eight months away from home, trying to do and see all that I could. There are only so many museums, castles, and cathedrals that a person can see in a year, and I think that I have approached that limit, if not surpassed it altogether. So I ended up just going to the Tesla museum, and wandering rather aimlessly through the city. And can you imagine the irony, that after travelling all that way just to see that one museum, there was some kind of tv filming taking place inside, and visitors could not enter! But I was told that it should be done in "about an hour", and that I should come back later. This happened a few times, actually, so that when I finally did get into the museum it was with three or four hours wasted. When I finally did get in, I was taken on a guided tour, and just when I thought things were getting started, I found out it was over. They had been doing renovations in the building and only a single room was open. Furthermore, once the tour was finished I had to hurry up and leave "at my earliest convenience" because the film crew was impatiently waiting to start filming again. Bah!
GOSPIC
I arrived in the tiny Gospic train station Thursday morning, and discovered that it was about 3 km from the centre of town, which was in turn about 7 km from my destination, Smiljan. There were no busses in this rural area, and no place for me to store my luggage, so I ended up walking around 30 km that day with a bookbag weighing probably 20 – 30 lbs, under the hot Mediterranean sun, but my trip was feeling more and more like a real pilgrimage with every step. Among other things, I passed by a little farmers market, with delicious fruit and beautiful straw hats, which I may never forgive myself for not buying. Gospic was the site of one of the more well-known massacres during the war last decade, and you can see a tragic history in the bombed-out houses, and around one home whose residents had been spared, there was still a barbed wire fence as a reminder of the fear and injustices dealt these people in years past. But the most amazing thing about this town was the rebuilding that was taking place. You could hardly look down any street without seeing a row of rough, bright red, brick houses newly standing up, or under construction. Yes, terrible things had happened here, but the people were moving forward, and continuing with their lives, and it was really great to see. There really is hope for the future of even this war-torn region, and its people who have suffered terrible abuses and injustices on both sides of these conflicts for countless generations.
When I finally got to the Tesla Memorial site, I was already sore and exhausted, but I was still excited to finally be there, after such a long trip. It was actually quite nice, the whole thing had been recently reconstructed, and it was really very professionally done, I must say, and I even learned a few things I hadn't known before. But after a few hours I had seen all there was to see, and it was time to start the journey back. Back to Gospic, back to Germany, and soon, back to Canada.
And that was pretty much it. That night I met a couple of "Canadians", a father and son, the father who was originally from Croatia, but had been living in Canada for many years until he finally got "the DP", as he called it. Well, whatever floats his boat, I guess. But most interestingly he gave me another view of the war of the past decade, which was very enlightening. Then I waited on a bench in the train station until 3 in the morning, and was entertained by some of the conductors, slept in the hallway of a train, missed a connection by something like 5 seconds, and generally had a miserable trip back home. And that brings us pretty much to today. Here I am sitting in my bedroom in Germany for one of the last times. I'll be leaving on the train in just three days. It's hard to believe it's finally over.
CONCLUSION
One of the biggest advantages we have as humans is not merely intelligence or the ability to create things, but the ability to communicate. We can pass on our knowledge and experiences so that we can learn from one another, and regardless of culture, we can build on the foundations of those who have gone before us, "dwarves standing on the shoulders of giants," as it were. So, dear reader, I have shared with you my experiences of the past eight months of my life. I sincerely thank you for taking the time to read these letters, and I encourage you to learn from my mistakes and successes and to go now and create your own experiences, form your own opinions, and write your own story.
I have only a few days left that I can tell you what tomorrow looks like, and it looks beautiful.
Sincerely,
Greg
The sections of this last letter are as follows:
BIKE RIDE
WORK TERM REPORT
TRAVELLING TO BELGRADE
REFLECTIONS ON CULTURE
MY ARREST (ALMOST) AND OTHER EMBASSY EXCITEMENT
MORE TRAVEL AND THE TESLA MUSEUM
GOSPIC
CONCLUSION
BIKE RIDE
Well, one of the first adventures I went on since my last letter was actually a bike ride to a place called the Rheinfall in Switzerland a few weekends ago. This is a mighty waterfall on the Rhine River, and a few friends, acquaintances, and I biked over 65 km to get there and back. As you know, I have been biking to work all summer long, so this actually wasn't as much of a problem for me as it was for the two retirees that also came along, and accordingly we went at a fairly slow pace for most of the day. It was also more of a problem for the bike I was using, which creaks and rattles at the best of times, but really sounded like it was going through a series of painful death convulsions throughout the trip. Once we had seen the falls, eaten a good amount of swiss chocolate, and various dried meats, we were on our way back, when I had overshot a turn-off. Someone called me to come back, and I turned my bike around, and still in high gear, gave a hard power stroke to get going again, when *SNAP!* I felt something hit the back of my leg, and I found I wasn't going anywhere. Yes, indeed, my chain broke, finally putting the bike out of its misery, at least for the rest of the day. But you know what the really great thing was? I looked up at a sign at the cross roads that I missed, and saw that we were only 1.2 km from our destination. Talk about good luck!
WORK TERM REPORT
I have been compiling my Engineer in Training (or EIT) logs for the Co-op department, which are basically monthly summaries of work. I must say I am rather pleased that we do not have to pass in our entire daily notebooks, and to give you an idea why, here are some excerpts, taken word-for-word from my notebook:
--------------
"10 July, 2008
"Finished formatting and handed the report to Kerstin. Apparently Jorge has something for me to do...?
"11 July, 2008
"Catch up on other tasks while waiting for news fr. Jorge & Miguel.
"14 July, 2008
"More of the same.
"15 July, 2008
"Nothing really seems to be happening.
"16 July, 2008
"What am I supposed to be doing? Miguel has disappeared, and Jorge does not answer his e-mails."
--------------
By the way, Kerstin, Jorge, and Miguel are the people I worked with in the Product Management team, and "Catch up on other tasks" means "read CNN.com". But in any case, I think that I made up for this sort of tomfoolery when I actually had projects to work on, such as in this excerpt from a few days later:
--------------
"19 July, 2008 (Note that I am working on the weekend, bitchcakes.)
"Re-reading Kerstin's document shows..."
--------------
TRAVELLING TO BELGRADE
Well, as many of you know, Nikola Tesla is a great inspiration to me, and I have wanted to visit the Tesla museum in Belgrade, and Tesla's place of birth in Smiljan, Croatia for some time. So with just a week and a half left in Europe I finally made this "pilgrimage", despite everyone's best efforts to persuade me to go to Italy or France instead.
It was a long trip to Belgrade, and I split it up by stopping in Munich for an afternoon. I got to see the famous Deutsches Museum, which is a very large technical museum with topics ranging from the history of steam engines to aeronautics and astronomy, with countless exhibits of real pieces of (sometimes huge) technology, and for some reason, a resident glass blower. And there was the Hofbräuhaus, which was about as stereotypically German as any place I have ever seen. This was a huge restaurant and bar, with Lederhosen-wearing German girls serving armfulls of 1 Litre steins full of their home-brewed beer and pretzels wider than my outstretched hand (about 25 cm), all set to a live Polka band. Ah! What a time!
I left Munich late, hoping to sleep on the train, which I was able to do right up to Salzburg (about 2 hours from Munich), when a team of English backpackers invaded the little cabin where I was sleeping. I asked them if they were from Australia (as I am wont to do to the British), and they were generally quite nice, but they did prevent me from sleeping, which actually turned out to be a bit of a theme of my trip.
I arrived in Belgrade to the sight of gypsies living in little hovels between mountains of garbage, right next to the railway tracks. Like most Canadians, I have never seen real poverty before, and I was awestruck and dumbfounded at the naked, unshod children playing in this horrible place. In this age, in this country, I simply couldn't believe it; this was supposed to be Europe, the birthplace of Western culture, not some African poster-nation for UNICEF.
REFLECTIONS ON CULTURE
I have done a lot of reflecting on culture and society during my time here, and this really came to a head during this trip. For those of you who don't know, Serbia is a land of war and unrest. It was the front of a good amount of the fighting between the Turks and the Austrians in centuries past, and this bloody history has left its mark on its people. Just over a decade ago, there was a war that broke out between the states of the former Yugoslavia, and the Serbs (and especially their leader at the time, Karadzic) are accused of genociding a bunch of muslims, Bosnians and Croats. During my time there, I met a few self-proclaimed revolutionaries, and, always eager to understand both sides of an argument or conflict, I asked them what were their thoughts on Karadzic, the war, and the accusations of genocide. As many of you know, I have a certain pride in and derive a distinct pleasure from holding opinions that are counter to the majority, or even downright unpopular, so I entered this conversation with a open ears and an open mind, hoping to be persuaded. Their argument, however, actually made no sense, and it would not even benefit your understanding for me to transcribe it here. They also discussed the belligerence and agression of the Serbian people, a fact of which he was actually quite proud.
It is very curious how these attitudes and ideas can be passed from one generation to the next. I was walking through an old fortress in Belgrade, that had been partially turned into a military museum, when I happened across the most pitiful sight I have ever seen in my life. Hobbling through the park was a small, black dog with only three legs, what's more, only two of the legs seemed to be able to support his weight, I kid you not. This dog was literally hopping around, looking for scraps of food around garbage cans. I watched as it tried to relieve itself, lifting its bad leg it fell over. It took a few more tries before it was finally successful. After a while, contemplating whether I should put the poor thing out of its misery, I noticed another dog following along. A bitch, possibly the first dog's mate, teats bulging with milk, but no puppies around, that I could see. It was almost unbearable to behold. How can you help in a situation like this? What was this strange place where such a thing can happen? And of course those dogs are but a small, bizarre symptom of this cancer of war and agression that has both oppressed and captivated this small nation for generations. I am not a racist, but I am a culturist. Tesla, himself, once wrote that all thoughts can be traced to a root thought, and that there is a reason for every action that we humans perform. I would posit that this idea can be taken even further, and that all attitudes and behaviour can be traced to a root cause, and in the case of cultures, to collective historical experiences, passed both consciously and subconsciously from one generation to the next, in everything from the type of food that they eat to the way they interact with one another.
A while later, still in the park, I found myself in dire need of a toilet. I found a few old portable toilets, but when I opened the door, each one was in such a bad condition, broken, vandalized, and reeking with sun-rotted human waste, that I wouldn't set foot inside. I thought to myself that in Germany, this would never happen, and I was contemplating this observation, when it hit me. The answer to a question that I have been asked, and that I have been asking myself since I came to Germany nearly eight months ago. What makes German culture different? I mean fundamentally, what is the root cause of the way Germans treat each other and the way they live their lives? I believe I can sum in up in a single word, "respect". Respect for the self and others. Why does this behaviour founded on respect flourish in this culture? Perhaps the question better asked is "Why does it not flourish in other cultures?" and "Has it always been part of German culture historically?" These are difficult questions to answer. For one thing, I have been saying "German culture", but really much of Western European culture is quite similar, at least in the present day, and I believe this idea of respect is present in many other European cultures, as well. As for the other questions... well, you tell me.
Similarly, I have often wondered what defines American culture, and I believe I can wrap that up in a single word, too, "isolationism". Americans have been believers in isolationism since their very foundation, implicitly if not overtly, and I believe that this has played an immeasurable role in shaping their policies and world views, their lack of concern for global events, and even that thing so baffling to Europeans, a complete ignorance or at least nonchalance about climate change. In the second world war Americans were shown that isolationism is not only impractical, but actually foolish in our modern, highly globalized world. Unfortunately they took the wrong morals away from that little lesson so that today we have American military agression in the middle East, but a nation full of people who wouldn't be able to correctly choose between Iraq and North Korea on a map.
MY ARREST (ALMOST) AND OTHER EMBASSY EXCITEMENT
Speaking of the US, as some of you probably know, the US embassy in Belgrade was overrun by mobs and set on fire a few months ago when the US (along with most countries in the civillized world) officially recognized the Serbian break-away state of Kosovo. Well, I happened to pass the new embassy on the street, and I thought it would make an interesting photo opportunity, so I whipped out my trusty Nikon, and a few moments later was surrounded by armed guards, demanding that I hand over my camera. Now I'd just like to say that I hadn't shaved in a couple of weeks, but I definitely wasn't wearing a turban, nor did I have explosives hidden in my bookbag. I explaned that I was just a Canadian tourist, and meant no harm, but I was informed that my options were to surrender the film or to be arrested. I pondered this for a moment, and struck a deal with them. I explained that I already had over thirty photos on the film (some really good ones too), and I wasn't about to give it up, but what I would be willing to do was to open the back of the camera to expose the last couple of pictures I had taken. They agreed, and I did just that. Unfortunately I did it stupidly and I probably ended up ruining the entire film anyway, so for this grave transgression I may never forgive the United States government. What a bunch of silly bastards.
Just down the street a few scores of meters was the Canadian Embassy, and I thought it would be kind of cool to go in and have a look around. It turned out to be quite a nice building, actually, so I did go inside. In the entrance was a guard and a metal detector, pretty standard, I suppose, but for some reason I hadn't expected it. Nonetheless, I started shoveling spare change and bottle caps into the little tray, when I remembered that I had my (fairly large) pocket knife on me. Not knowing what the laws were for concealed weapons in Serbia, and not wanted to be threatened with another arrest, I embarassedly explained that I had changed my mind, and didn't want to in after all. Well, the guard impatiently asked "Why?" Not being the sort of person who would lie, even in a situation like that, I told him. He just said that I could leave the knife with him. "All right" I thought, handed it to him and walked through the metal detector. Damn! I forgot to take off my watch. I walked through one more time, and it beeped again. I must say I felt rather foolish at this point, but in any case he let me through. So there I was, thinking I was home-free, that I would be able to have a look around this building, see what an embassy is like, and talk to some fellow Canadians. Well, I was wrong. I was given a visitor card, and told that I would be able to speak to the consulate shortly.
"Wait, what?" I said, "No, I don't need to speak to anyone. Can I not just have a look around?"
The answer was a definitive "No."
"Alright," I said, "I think I'm just gonna go, and not waste anybody else's time."
"You can try, anyway," said the guard.
So the moral of those two stories is that embassies suck.
MORE TRAVEL AND THE TESLA MUSEUM
But Belgrade wasn't all belligerant radicals and unfriendly guards. The food really was as good as everyone said. For the equivalent of about 12 Canadian dollars, I got twice as much of a meal as I got in Munich the day before for about $30. It was a large deep-fried roll of meat, about 12 inches long and two-and-a-half inches wide, plus a half a loaf of bread, salad and a bunch of french fries, and of course some Serbian beer. Plus Belgrade has one of the highest PGPs of any city I've ever seen. At least 50, maybe even 75%. Incredible. I have a theory on why that is too, by the way. There were also some good street performers, a barbequed corn stand on every corner, and some really cool spraypaint artists. Curiously I found that in Serbia, and even more in Croatia, German seemed more prevalent than English. It was on the signs, and spoken by more people, and I would say maybe 80 – 90% of foreign licence plates had the German "D" on them. I suppose this makes perfect sense, given the Austro-Hungarian history of the region, nonetheless I was surprised, and quite pleased at being able to use my German proficiency in a place outside of Germany.
I would say that at about this time I was becoming quite travel weary. And not just from this trip, but from the eight months away from home, trying to do and see all that I could. There are only so many museums, castles, and cathedrals that a person can see in a year, and I think that I have approached that limit, if not surpassed it altogether. So I ended up just going to the Tesla museum, and wandering rather aimlessly through the city. And can you imagine the irony, that after travelling all that way just to see that one museum, there was some kind of tv filming taking place inside, and visitors could not enter! But I was told that it should be done in "about an hour", and that I should come back later. This happened a few times, actually, so that when I finally did get into the museum it was with three or four hours wasted. When I finally did get in, I was taken on a guided tour, and just when I thought things were getting started, I found out it was over. They had been doing renovations in the building and only a single room was open. Furthermore, once the tour was finished I had to hurry up and leave "at my earliest convenience" because the film crew was impatiently waiting to start filming again. Bah!
GOSPIC
I arrived in the tiny Gospic train station Thursday morning, and discovered that it was about 3 km from the centre of town, which was in turn about 7 km from my destination, Smiljan. There were no busses in this rural area, and no place for me to store my luggage, so I ended up walking around 30 km that day with a bookbag weighing probably 20 – 30 lbs, under the hot Mediterranean sun, but my trip was feeling more and more like a real pilgrimage with every step. Among other things, I passed by a little farmers market, with delicious fruit and beautiful straw hats, which I may never forgive myself for not buying. Gospic was the site of one of the more well-known massacres during the war last decade, and you can see a tragic history in the bombed-out houses, and around one home whose residents had been spared, there was still a barbed wire fence as a reminder of the fear and injustices dealt these people in years past. But the most amazing thing about this town was the rebuilding that was taking place. You could hardly look down any street without seeing a row of rough, bright red, brick houses newly standing up, or under construction. Yes, terrible things had happened here, but the people were moving forward, and continuing with their lives, and it was really great to see. There really is hope for the future of even this war-torn region, and its people who have suffered terrible abuses and injustices on both sides of these conflicts for countless generations.
When I finally got to the Tesla Memorial site, I was already sore and exhausted, but I was still excited to finally be there, after such a long trip. It was actually quite nice, the whole thing had been recently reconstructed, and it was really very professionally done, I must say, and I even learned a few things I hadn't known before. But after a few hours I had seen all there was to see, and it was time to start the journey back. Back to Gospic, back to Germany, and soon, back to Canada.
And that was pretty much it. That night I met a couple of "Canadians", a father and son, the father who was originally from Croatia, but had been living in Canada for many years until he finally got "the DP", as he called it. Well, whatever floats his boat, I guess. But most interestingly he gave me another view of the war of the past decade, which was very enlightening. Then I waited on a bench in the train station until 3 in the morning, and was entertained by some of the conductors, slept in the hallway of a train, missed a connection by something like 5 seconds, and generally had a miserable trip back home. And that brings us pretty much to today. Here I am sitting in my bedroom in Germany for one of the last times. I'll be leaving on the train in just three days. It's hard to believe it's finally over.
CONCLUSION
One of the biggest advantages we have as humans is not merely intelligence or the ability to create things, but the ability to communicate. We can pass on our knowledge and experiences so that we can learn from one another, and regardless of culture, we can build on the foundations of those who have gone before us, "dwarves standing on the shoulders of giants," as it were. So, dear reader, I have shared with you my experiences of the past eight months of my life. I sincerely thank you for taking the time to read these letters, and I encourage you to learn from my mistakes and successes and to go now and create your own experiences, form your own opinions, and write your own story.
I have only a few days left that I can tell you what tomorrow looks like, and it looks beautiful.
Sincerely,
Greg
Monday, July 14, 2008
Travel Blog Number 5
I can't decide whether I intended that title sincerely or not. In any case, I don't think it matters. Last month I finally got to go to Spain, one of my host sisters came back from a year in Brazil, and I have a number of other thrilling things to tell you about in what will probably be my penultimate note.
SPAIN
Well, Grässlin has talked about sending me to visit my supervisor in Madrid since they first offered me the job, back in December, but I had been scheduled to go twice, and both times it fell through. But last month things somehow magically worked out, and I landed in Madrid on Friday the thirteenth. It was my first time in the Mediterranean, and it was beautiful. If you're interested, I recommend checking out my new photo albums on Facebook, though I still haven't added my last roll of film. (Espania I: <http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2054529&id=121402374 > and Espania II: <http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2054535&id=121402374 >)
My first hotel, Francisco I, was a seemingly ancient building (although this word has different connotations in Europe than North America, I think) right in the heart of the old city, and was rich with the languishing beauty of centuries past. My room was large and comfortable, but covered with oppressively dark-stained wood, and permeated by the unusual and equally oppressive smell of popsicle sticks (and occassionally turnip). The room fee included a "continental breakfast", which consisted primarily of cupcakes, cornsyrup, and orange Tang, and was probably the most disappointing breakfast experience of my life, except possibly the time I made peanut butter omelets.
Actually, I was generally unimpressed with much of the food I ate there. For example, I was in what looked like a really authentic sandwich shop, and I saw something called "Tortilla Espania" on the menu. I was expecting chicken, beef, tomatoes, hot peppers and possibly cheese; I got deep-fried mashed potatoes on white bread with salt. The beer was ok though... or at least it was cold. And I would be remiss and malfeasant not to mention the delicious Spanish wine, and the delightful tradition of serving a small appetizer along with every glass. Not to mention, I finally got to try kangaroo at a particularly excellent restaurant during my last night there. (In case you're wondering, it was, in texture and in taste, suprisingly like beef.)
Aside from the parks, and museums, the cuisine, and the night life, I stumbled upon a production of Disney's Beauty and the Beast playing the first night I was there! I have to say, I thought Gaston was a little weak, but who am I to judge? The staging and props were really phenomenal, so that sort of made up for it. That, and the smug sense of self-satisfaction.
BULL FIGHTING AND THE POLICE
The second night I was wandering around the town, and I happened upon the Bull Fighting Stadium! There were about a hundred people hanging around outside the door, and upon inquiry, it turns out that they were waiting in line to get tickets for the fight the next day, when the ticket office opened at 10AM. While I was rushing back to my hotel room to grab my coat, some food, and possibly a blanket, I convinced myself that if I stayed in my room overnight, and came first thing the next morning, I would still be in a good spot in line. Well, I was almost right.
I got up at five, the subway opened at six, and I was in line by 6:15. Tragically, I missed the hotel breakfast, but I probably extended my lifespan by 2 - 5 years as a result. Some guy took the initiative to get the names and positions of everyone in line, and I was number 260. There was a very famous and beloved fighter to be competing that day, and there were rumoured to be 1000 tickets for sale at the ticket booth, with a limit of 2 per person. Things were looking good; then the police came.
The first thing the police did was line us all up, single file, according to the list that the guy gave them. After that, things got a bit more shadowy. I'm not sure exactly what happened, but after waiting for four or five hours on the stone plaza, wondering what was taking so long, seeing people being allowed to cut in line by those upstanding public servants, seeing people walking away with a tall stack of tickets, and being told in no uncertain terms that photography was not allowed, I was told to go home; there were no more tickets. And that was my first experience with police corruption.
TRAVELLING HOME AND THE TEST DAF
So that was some of my experience in Madrid. I spent the next few days in the office, just outside the city proper. The work aspect was actually pretty interesting. For those of you whom I haven't told, my work has mostly consisted of doing a lot of quite boring market research into new control possibilities for the company (e.g. for solar thermal systems), and as it turns out, all my work had been building up to those few days in Spain, where we discussed new product platforms that the company would like to implement in the next couple of years. So it was quite enjoyable to be able to really contribute something to the conversation, and to see how that aspect of a company works.
Once that was all done with, I left early in the morning to catch the plane back to Zurich, where I was driven directly to my German class, as the next morning was my German fluency test, and I didn't want to miss an additional chance to prepare. (I should note that, in addition to an exhausting schedule of travelling, after the last day of meetings, we all went out until much too late, and I was looking forward to a good night's sleep before my test the next morning.) Well, on my way to the train station after my German course, luggage still in hand, I ran into a police blockade. Apparently some construction workers dug up a bomb from the second world war. Right next door to the station. To make a long story short, I got home sometime around midnight.
The next morning I got through the first three components of the four hour German fluency test with the aid of my two friends, caffeine and adrenaline. However by the time I got to the fourth and final component, I was running out of steam. The test consisted of reading and listening comprehension, writing ability, and speaking ability. I believe I did rather well on the first three components (though I will not receive any marks for another couple of weeks), but the speaking component, which is my weakest to begin with, was carried out with the skill and eloquence of a drunken lemur. Sigh.
FOOTBALL FEVER
For those of you who don't know, Germany was a finalist in the European Football Championship this year, and this seems to curiously coincide with a particular affliction on the logical capacity of its fans. For example, a typical conversation during a game would go like this:
My Host Mother, "Can you believe that?! That was definitely the Italian's fault, but they gave a yellow card to our player!"
Me, watching the slow replay clearly showing a German turning around and pushing an Italian player with little provocation, "Actually, I think it was pretty clear that the German hit the Italian first. In fact, I can hardly think of a way that he could have deserved a yellow card more."
My Host Sister, "No, it was definitely the Italian's fault."
Me, "Umm.... ok."
But in any case, the whole football culture is a lot of fun. People drive around with little flags on their cars, or hang flags out their windows, or wear flags as capes, or paint flags on their faces. I think any embarassment over displaying patriotism is for the majority, long dead. I attended a public viewing of the game between Turkey and Germany, and I have to say it was pretty much exactly what you see on movies like EuroTrip or Beer Fest. A large auditorium full of painted, flag-waving, drunken, singing, yelling, fighting university students. The Turks would chant something, and the Germans would just come back louder. Ah! what a time!
BEER CULTURE
Speaking of beer; as I mentioned, my host sister came back from Brazil a couple of weeks ago, and as it turns out, her father is a member of a local sports club, and had volunteered to help out with a local event the same day she came home. Of course he couldn't make it, so he sent me instead. Helping out at a local event with a sports club translates as draughting Pils at the beer tent, and I must say, it was a good time. There were about seven of us in the booth, whereas about four were actually needed, so those who were not immediately engaged in pouring beer, tended to be engaged in drinking it. But I learned the ancient German art of beer pouring, which
Ah, what else? Perhaps I should tell you about the summer festivals and the Stadtfest, or "city festival", that happened this past weekend. Well Friday night was the summer festival held by my company, Grässlin. Well the food and drink was great, and the best thing was one of those number-of-jelly-beans-in-the-jar games, except instead of jelly-beans in a jar, we had plastic pellets from our plastic moulding department in a long glass tube. Using a combination of basic math and engineers intuition, I managed to guess the number within about 2% (I said 93,000, and the answer was just under 95,000), and won a deck chair, hand-made from Indonisian teak. Then Saturday was the Stadtfest, and I must say that the German drinking culture is really a lot better than the North American counterpart. People sit on benches at long tables, and drink and sing, or stand and walk around and drink and sing, or dance and drink and sing, or watch football and drink and sing. Parents drink and sing with their kids, teachers with their students. The singing is my favourite part. I'm definitely going to try to bring that back to Canada.
CONCLUSION
So those are a few things that happened to me in the past while. As of today, I have five weeks and two days left here. It will fly by, I'm sure. And I just got an e-mail from my parents on Friday saying they bought me a car for when I return! Yee haw! It seemed to me that I had something else to tell you, but alas, it has slipped my mind. In any case, I will have something left to tell you when I return. Anyway, I am much too tired to continue writing, or to proof-read this e-mail, so I think I will send this, and then it's time for some "office sleep", as my host father says. As always, I love to hear back from you, so if you have some time, send me a message and tell me how things are going with you. And, although I likely have but a single note left to send you, if you know anyone that would like to read it, let me know and I will add them to my mailing list. Next month I am planning to go to Serbia and possibly Scotland, so hopefully something interesting will happen.
Anyway, thanks for reading, and until next time,
Greg
SPAIN
Well, Grässlin has talked about sending me to visit my supervisor in Madrid since they first offered me the job, back in December, but I had been scheduled to go twice, and both times it fell through. But last month things somehow magically worked out, and I landed in Madrid on Friday the thirteenth. It was my first time in the Mediterranean, and it was beautiful. If you're interested, I recommend checking out my new photo albums on Facebook, though I still haven't added my last roll of film. (Espania I: <http://www.facebook.com/
My first hotel, Francisco I, was a seemingly ancient building (although this word has different connotations in Europe than North America, I think) right in the heart of the old city, and was rich with the languishing beauty of centuries past. My room was large and comfortable, but covered with oppressively dark-stained wood, and permeated by the unusual and equally oppressive smell of popsicle sticks (and occassionally turnip). The room fee included a "continental breakfast", which consisted primarily of cupcakes, cornsyrup, and orange Tang, and was probably the most disappointing breakfast experience of my life, except possibly the time I made peanut butter omelets.
Actually, I was generally unimpressed with much of the food I ate there. For example, I was in what looked like a really authentic sandwich shop, and I saw something called "Tortilla Espania" on the menu. I was expecting chicken, beef, tomatoes, hot peppers and possibly cheese; I got deep-fried mashed potatoes on white bread with salt. The beer was ok though... or at least it was cold. And I would be remiss and malfeasant not to mention the delicious Spanish wine, and the delightful tradition of serving a small appetizer along with every glass. Not to mention, I finally got to try kangaroo at a particularly excellent restaurant during my last night there. (In case you're wondering, it was, in texture and in taste, suprisingly like beef.)
Aside from the parks, and museums, the cuisine, and the night life, I stumbled upon a production of Disney's Beauty and the Beast playing the first night I was there! I have to say, I thought Gaston was a little weak, but who am I to judge? The staging and props were really phenomenal, so that sort of made up for it. That, and the smug sense of self-satisfaction.
BULL FIGHTING AND THE POLICE
The second night I was wandering around the town, and I happened upon the Bull Fighting Stadium! There were about a hundred people hanging around outside the door, and upon inquiry, it turns out that they were waiting in line to get tickets for the fight the next day, when the ticket office opened at 10AM. While I was rushing back to my hotel room to grab my coat, some food, and possibly a blanket, I convinced myself that if I stayed in my room overnight, and came first thing the next morning, I would still be in a good spot in line. Well, I was almost right.
I got up at five, the subway opened at six, and I was in line by 6:15. Tragically, I missed the hotel breakfast, but I probably extended my lifespan by 2 - 5 years as a result. Some guy took the initiative to get the names and positions of everyone in line, and I was number 260. There was a very famous and beloved fighter to be competing that day, and there were rumoured to be 1000 tickets for sale at the ticket booth, with a limit of 2 per person. Things were looking good; then the police came.
The first thing the police did was line us all up, single file, according to the list that the guy gave them. After that, things got a bit more shadowy. I'm not sure exactly what happened, but after waiting for four or five hours on the stone plaza, wondering what was taking so long, seeing people being allowed to cut in line by those upstanding public servants, seeing people walking away with a tall stack of tickets, and being told in no uncertain terms that photography was not allowed, I was told to go home; there were no more tickets. And that was my first experience with police corruption.
TRAVELLING HOME AND THE TEST DAF
So that was some of my experience in Madrid. I spent the next few days in the office, just outside the city proper. The work aspect was actually pretty interesting. For those of you whom I haven't told, my work has mostly consisted of doing a lot of quite boring market research into new control possibilities for the company (e.g. for solar thermal systems), and as it turns out, all my work had been building up to those few days in Spain, where we discussed new product platforms that the company would like to implement in the next couple of years. So it was quite enjoyable to be able to really contribute something to the conversation, and to see how that aspect of a company works.
Once that was all done with, I left early in the morning to catch the plane back to Zurich, where I was driven directly to my German class, as the next morning was my German fluency test, and I didn't want to miss an additional chance to prepare. (I should note that, in addition to an exhausting schedule of travelling, after the last day of meetings, we all went out until much too late, and I was looking forward to a good night's sleep before my test the next morning.) Well, on my way to the train station after my German course, luggage still in hand, I ran into a police blockade. Apparently some construction workers dug up a bomb from the second world war. Right next door to the station. To make a long story short, I got home sometime around midnight.
The next morning I got through the first three components of the four hour German fluency test with the aid of my two friends, caffeine and adrenaline. However by the time I got to the fourth and final component, I was running out of steam. The test consisted of reading and listening comprehension, writing ability, and speaking ability. I believe I did rather well on the first three components (though I will not receive any marks for another couple of weeks), but the speaking component, which is my weakest to begin with, was carried out with the skill and eloquence of a drunken lemur. Sigh.
FOOTBALL FEVER
For those of you who don't know, Germany was a finalist in the European Football Championship this year, and this seems to curiously coincide with a particular affliction on the logical capacity of its fans. For example, a typical conversation during a game would go like this:
My Host Mother, "Can you believe that?! That was definitely the Italian's fault, but they gave a yellow card to our player!"
Me, watching the slow replay clearly showing a German turning around and pushing an Italian player with little provocation, "Actually, I think it was pretty clear that the German hit the Italian first. In fact, I can hardly think of a way that he could have deserved a yellow card more."
My Host Sister, "No, it was definitely the Italian's fault."
Me, "Umm.... ok."
But in any case, the whole football culture is a lot of fun. People drive around with little flags on their cars, or hang flags out their windows, or wear flags as capes, or paint flags on their faces. I think any embarassment over displaying patriotism is for the majority, long dead. I attended a public viewing of the game between Turkey and Germany, and I have to say it was pretty much exactly what you see on movies like EuroTrip or Beer Fest. A large auditorium full of painted, flag-waving, drunken, singing, yelling, fighting university students. The Turks would chant something, and the Germans would just come back louder. Ah! what a time!
BEER CULTURE
Speaking of beer; as I mentioned, my host sister came back from Brazil a couple of weeks ago, and as it turns out, her father is a member of a local sports club, and had volunteered to help out with a local event the same day she came home. Of course he couldn't make it, so he sent me instead. Helping out at a local event with a sports club translates as draughting Pils at the beer tent, and I must say, it was a good time. There were about seven of us in the booth, whereas about four were actually needed, so those who were not immediately engaged in pouring beer, tended to be engaged in drinking it. But I learned the ancient German art of beer pouring, which
Ah, what else? Perhaps I should tell you about the summer festivals and the Stadtfest, or "city festival", that happened this past weekend. Well Friday night was the summer festival held by my company, Grässlin. Well the food and drink was great, and the best thing was one of those number-of-jelly-beans-in-the-
CONCLUSION
So those are a few things that happened to me in the past while. As of today, I have five weeks and two days left here. It will fly by, I'm sure. And I just got an e-mail from my parents on Friday saying they bought me a car for when I return! Yee haw! It seemed to me that I had something else to tell you, but alas, it has slipped my mind. In any case, I will have something left to tell you when I return. Anyway, I am much too tired to continue writing, or to proof-read this e-mail, so I think I will send this, and then it's time for some "office sleep", as my host father says. As always, I love to hear back from you, so if you have some time, send me a message and tell me how things are going with you. And, although I likely have but a single note left to send you, if you know anyone that would like to read it, let me know and I will add them to my mailing list. Next month I am planning to go to Serbia and possibly Scotland, so hopefully something interesting will happen.
Anyway, thanks for reading, and until next time,
Greg
Tuesday, June 3, 2008
Do You Realize...?
Well, I have been told that it is about time to send another e-mail update.
A few days ago I added it up, and as of Thursday I have been here for 20 weeks, with only 12 more to go. That's absolutely unbelievable. The time has gone so fast, but yet it seems like it was a lifetime ago that I arrived in the Frankfurt Airport, bags in hand, or since that first night that I met my host family. As I write this I am looking out my bedroom window at a scene that has grown so familiar to me; the large, muddy football field cut out of the side of a verdant mountain, the mountain traversed by a steep walking path, roughly separating the forest and a wide green field sprinkled with bright golden ginster. Right now I see my host father descending the hill with the two dogs, casting long, shadows on the green background in the setting sun.
I am keenly aware that my time here is short, and I must savour every minute of my experience here, because who knows when or if I will ever see these places again? The awe-inspiring cathedrals, the mighty castles, the dark, mysterious forests, the tragic and profound sense of history everywhere. I suppose this is why photography has become so important to me here. Speaking of which, if you haven't had a chance to look at the two new albums I uploaded to Facebook a couple of days ago, I encourage you to do so. I still have hundreds of other photos which I intend to scan and upload someday, but the ones that I just posted are from the most recent films I had developed, as I was finally smart enough to request the photos to be put on cd.
As before, I have roughly cut up my letter into the following sections:
-FLUENCY
-MOVIES
-ANCIENT HISTORY
-KONTRAST
-FIREWALKING
-MORE STUPIDITY
-KONKLUSION
FLUENCY
So anyhow, I suppose I should let you know some of the things I've been up to. Well for one thing I have been taking a few German courses in preparation for a German fluency test in a few weeks. It is more difficult than I expected, as basics are one thing, but real fluency is something else entirely. To give you an idea, the average native english speaker has a comprehension of between 15000 - 20000 word families. If a non-native speaker were to learn 10 new words per day, it would take over 4 years just to reach the bottom of that range. In any case someone showed me this video the other day, and I quite enjoyed it: <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gmOTpIVxji8 >, also you should have a look at this one: <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uvpikUEIaLI&feature=related >. Do it. Do it now.
MOVIES
Speaking of learning German, I went to see the new Indiana Jones movie the other day. I'm not sure if it's just because I was watching in a foreign language, or if the movie industry is really struggling for some fresh ideas, but everything looked exceptionally dumb. I sat through the previews and it all looked like total crap; I couldn't believe it. It's like the goal is to pump out as much flashy, meaningless garbage as possible. Then there was the feature film, which was pretty good–just on account of being Indiana Jones–but suddenly, out of nowhere, it turned out the movie was about aliens. In an Indiana Jones movie. WTF? In any case, the seats were surprisingly comfortable, so that sort of made up for it.
ANCIENT HISTORY
Anyway, enough complaining, my mother visited last week. We travelled around this area some, picked out a cuckoo clock, and then we rented a car and went north, to the little town my great grandfather came from. (As a side note, the German Autobahn is at least as much fun as you would expect, though unfortunately our little VW Polo was only capable of reaching 190kph, and just barely. My host father's BMW goes significantly faster.) We arrived rather late at night, and found only one little hotel still open, which turned out to be one of the nicest hotel/restaurant experiences I've had. We set out early the next morning in search of records and information in the town hall and local graveyards, with moderate success. We found some more ancestors, the house where my great grandfather was born, and a few other things.
In the mid afternoon I suggested we take a look in the local history museum. There was an old lady volunteering at the ticket desk, and when we had completed our tour, I decided to ask her if she knew the name "Karl Weyrich", or the man who had left for Canada in 1929. "Karl Joseph Weyrich?" she asked, "the carpenter?" As it turns out, not only did she know him, but her father was actually the man who had trained him, and they had stayed in contact up until my great grandfather's death in 1976. She had photos, scrap books, letters, and her own personal memories. What's more; by sheer coincidence, the other woman volunteering that day happened to be a reporter for the local newspaper. To make a short story shorter, we were featured on the front page last week, and I have attached the article for those of you who speak German. For those who don't, I'll probably translate it sometime soon (as practice for my fluency test, mentioned above), and maybe post it on Facebook.
The rest of the trip was not quite as eventful, but still quite enjoyable. We also made it to Burg Hohenzollern (a castle), Rothenburg ob der Tauber (a fortified medieval town), and several other places you probably also don't know. I recommend having a look at my new photo albums, if you're interested.
KONTRAST
I have heard it said that Germany is a land of contrast. That's probably quite a good description. A couple of months ago I went with my host family to a well-known local restaurant, more renowned for its breath-taking mountaintop view than anything else. As soon as we entered the restaurant we were welcomed by the grimaces of two rather unpleasant people whom we quickly realized were the owners. After receiving reluctant answers to our questions about what was on the menu, we were shown to our seats amongst other tables packed full of cross-country skiers and the like. We ordered (I taking the daily special of ox-tongue salad), and waited for our meals while taking in the majestic scene of snow-capped Black Forest mountains stretching out to the horizon under failing sunlight.
After a few minutes, a table with a better view opened up, and being loathe to waste such an opportunity, we quickly switched places. The woman who had been waiting on us noticed this, came over to our new table and in no uncertain terms informed us that we could not move because our bill had already been put on the other table. We realized this was quite dumb, and protested until she finally conceded. What seemed like a couple of days later, our food arrived. As I had a cold at the time and needed to blow my nose, I asked for a couple of extra napkins. Rather than the expected response of, "Sure, right away!" she asked what I wanted them for. What the hell? Anyway, she quickly realized she was being a douche bag and brought me my napkins.
The ox salad, by the way, was sort of surreal. The texture was suprisingly like munching on your own tongue, but the flavour was mostly of vinegar. In any case, I figured it needed some more pepper, so risking another casualty in what had already become a complete train-wreck of customer service, I caught the waitress's attention and requested some. No problem! She didn't so much as bat an eye! But a customer at another table who had been waiting for a glass of wine possibly since mid-November realized it was futile, and just gave us the pepper off her table. When all was said and done, I think the waitress got a 20 cent tip on our meal for five people.
Then this morning I was biking to work, when partway through my trip my wallet was becoming uncomfortable, so I stopped to take it out of my pocket. The trouble is that I was suffering from a case of acute transient retardation at the time, and instead of putting it in my bookbag, I just dropped it on the ground and biked away. When I got to work, I had to swipe my timecard to clock in, and I couldn't seem to find my wallet. I quickly realized what had happened, and a co-worker saw my trouble and offered to give me a hand (actually it was Antonio, my Italian friend who just got married. Again, I direct you to my photo albums.)
We set out along the path I biked, in case I had lost it somewhere along the way. When we finally got to the place where I had taken it out of my pocket, it wasn't there! Scheisse. Not only did it have all of my identification, credit and bank cards, but it certainly did not have my German address or anything else that I thought would help a German find me. As a last resort we asked a farmer who was nearby cutting his grass (with a scythe). He said no, he hadn't, but at that moment his wife came to the window of their house, and knew exactly what we were looking for! Apparently she had seen my work card and my student card and telephoned both my company and the local university to try to find me. I thanked her quite sincerely, and I think I will get her some flowers or chocolate to show my appreciation. She certainly could have kept the wallet and all the money inside, and I thought it was damnably decent of her to have tried to find me like she did. Word travelled fast, and when I returned to work, everyone asked if I had gotten my wallet back.
Wow, I'm not really sure what the point of those stories was. Well, maybe they help to illustrate the vast differences in personal character of two people living so closely together, the waitress with the bad attitude, for whom every little service to other people was a great pain and struggle, and the farmer's wife who forsook personal gain and tried to help me just for the sake of being a good person.
FIREWALKING
Speaking of pain and struggle, the Germans seem to love real charcoal fires. Almost every weekend we've been having outdoor barbeques with delicious steak (and occasionally breaded Gouda) cooked on a grill raised over a pan of hot coals. I don't know if any of you have ever tried to light a charcoal fire, but if you do it naturally, it's typically an hour-long ordeal, and at least in Germany requires a fair quantity of beer. But some hungry German came up with a better idea; a little metal chimney that uses natural convection to evenly heat coals to operating temperature in a quarter the usual time. Now lighting a barbeque requires only fifteen minutes... but still the same amount of beer. So one day after we had finished barbequeing, my host father said, "Hey, how would you like to walk across some hot coals?"
Being the type of guy that I am, I responded with something to the effect of "Hells yeah!" and we emptied the red-hot coals out on the ground.
"Should we take one step in the coals or two?"
"Definitely two."
So we spread them out over a length of about 2 meters, and before the rest of the family could finish telling us how stupid we were, I was already across in my bare feet.
I'll be honest, it actually hurt more than I expected. But only because the coals tended to stick to the tender skin on the arches of my feet. Anyway, it didn't hurt that much, and there was cool earth all around, so seeing the whole situation as a bit of a rare opportunity, we decided to go across again. Faster.
After this second trip, I just kept on running straight into the little pond at the end of the garden to cool my poor feet. Wearing socks or shoes was a little uncomfortable for the next day or so, but it was definitely worth it.
One of my host sisters actually captured this adventure on her camera, so if I ever get the photos from her, I'll put them in one of my albums for your viewing pleasure.
MORE STUPIDITY
So on the topic of stupidity; last night, after I wrote that part above about losing my wallet, I was on my way home from work, again by bike. It was pouring rain, and I was only wearing a golf shirt and some dress pants, and wet sand was spinning off my tires into my eyes. Finally I got to the bottom of the mountain, and I just had one little path to go before I was home. Usually I walk up it, because it is quite steep, and it is separated from the road by a curb, but that day I thought I would be clever by conserving my momentum, and just ride up as far as I could. There was a little section of the curb that was lower, to allow cars to drive over it, and I had actually ridden over it once before. This time, however, I was going much faster, and it was wet, and I made the additional clever move of approaching it at an oblique angle. So indeed, I made it over the curb, but my bike didn't. It spun out from under me into the narrow street, and I landed pretty much directly on my head, tumbled head-over-heels against a building and somehow ended up back on my feet, ready to go again. Thankfully I was wearing my helmet at the time, so I really only ended up with a scraped-up arm. But the worst part is that when I got up and looked around, there was absolutely no one else around, which is a bit of a shame, as I'm sure it looked hilarious.
KONKLUSION
So those are some of the interesting things that happened to me here in the Fatherland, I hope it wasn't too painfully boring to read. As I will probably have at least a couple of more of these mass (spam) mails to send out before I am done, if there is anyone else you know that would like to hear about my tales of glory, let me know and I will add them to my list. And as always, I am quite interested to hear what is going on back home and in the various other places that you might be right now, so if you have some time, send me back a message and let me know how things are going for you.
Sincerely,
Greg
P.S. The Canadian Space Agency just put out a call for new astronauts last month <http://www.space.gc.ca/asc/eng/astronauts/default.asp >. Now, as many of you know, my ultimate goal in life is to become an astronaut, so this is pretty significant. Unfortunately, the requirements are to have already have obtained a degree or two, so I am inelligible as of yet, but I'm still having a look at it, as it help me prepare for the next call for astronauts in ten years or so. I just mention this because I found it exciting, and because you or someone you know might also like to have a look at the application.
A few days ago I added it up, and as of Thursday I have been here for 20 weeks, with only 12 more to go. That's absolutely unbelievable. The time has gone so fast, but yet it seems like it was a lifetime ago that I arrived in the Frankfurt Airport, bags in hand, or since that first night that I met my host family. As I write this I am looking out my bedroom window at a scene that has grown so familiar to me; the large, muddy football field cut out of the side of a verdant mountain, the mountain traversed by a steep walking path, roughly separating the forest and a wide green field sprinkled with bright golden ginster. Right now I see my host father descending the hill with the two dogs, casting long, shadows on the green background in the setting sun.
I am keenly aware that my time here is short, and I must savour every minute of my experience here, because who knows when or if I will ever see these places again? The awe-inspiring cathedrals, the mighty castles, the dark, mysterious forests, the tragic and profound sense of history everywhere. I suppose this is why photography has become so important to me here. Speaking of which, if you haven't had a chance to look at the two new albums I uploaded to Facebook a couple of days ago, I encourage you to do so. I still have hundreds of other photos which I intend to scan and upload someday, but the ones that I just posted are from the most recent films I had developed, as I was finally smart enough to request the photos to be put on cd.
As before, I have roughly cut up my letter into the following sections:
-FLUENCY
-MOVIES
-ANCIENT HISTORY
-KONTRAST
-FIREWALKING
-MORE STUPIDITY
-KONKLUSION
FLUENCY
So anyhow, I suppose I should let you know some of the things I've been up to. Well for one thing I have been taking a few German courses in preparation for a German fluency test in a few weeks. It is more difficult than I expected, as basics are one thing, but real fluency is something else entirely. To give you an idea, the average native english speaker has a comprehension of between 15000 - 20000 word families. If a non-native speaker were to learn 10 new words per day, it would take over 4 years just to reach the bottom of that range. In any case someone showed me this video the other day, and I quite enjoyed it: <http://www.youtube.com/watch?
MOVIES
Speaking of learning German, I went to see the new Indiana Jones movie the other day. I'm not sure if it's just because I was watching in a foreign language, or if the movie industry is really struggling for some fresh ideas, but everything looked exceptionally dumb. I sat through the previews and it all looked like total crap; I couldn't believe it. It's like the goal is to pump out as much flashy, meaningless garbage as possible. Then there was the feature film, which was pretty good–just on account of being Indiana Jones–but suddenly, out of nowhere, it turned out the movie was about aliens. In an Indiana Jones movie. WTF? In any case, the seats were surprisingly comfortable, so that sort of made up for it.
ANCIENT HISTORY
Anyway, enough complaining, my mother visited last week. We travelled around this area some, picked out a cuckoo clock, and then we rented a car and went north, to the little town my great grandfather came from. (As a side note, the German Autobahn is at least as much fun as you would expect, though unfortunately our little VW Polo was only capable of reaching 190kph, and just barely. My host father's BMW goes significantly faster.) We arrived rather late at night, and found only one little hotel still open, which turned out to be one of the nicest hotel/restaurant experiences I've had. We set out early the next morning in search of records and information in the town hall and local graveyards, with moderate success. We found some more ancestors, the house where my great grandfather was born, and a few other things.
In the mid afternoon I suggested we take a look in the local history museum. There was an old lady volunteering at the ticket desk, and when we had completed our tour, I decided to ask her if she knew the name "Karl Weyrich", or the man who had left for Canada in 1929. "Karl Joseph Weyrich?" she asked, "the carpenter?" As it turns out, not only did she know him, but her father was actually the man who had trained him, and they had stayed in contact up until my great grandfather's death in 1976. She had photos, scrap books, letters, and her own personal memories. What's more; by sheer coincidence, the other woman volunteering that day happened to be a reporter for the local newspaper. To make a short story shorter, we were featured on the front page last week, and I have attached the article for those of you who speak German. For those who don't, I'll probably translate it sometime soon (as practice for my fluency test, mentioned above), and maybe post it on Facebook.
The rest of the trip was not quite as eventful, but still quite enjoyable. We also made it to Burg Hohenzollern (a castle), Rothenburg ob der Tauber (a fortified medieval town), and several other places you probably also don't know. I recommend having a look at my new photo albums, if you're interested.
KONTRAST
I have heard it said that Germany is a land of contrast. That's probably quite a good description. A couple of months ago I went with my host family to a well-known local restaurant, more renowned for its breath-taking mountaintop view than anything else. As soon as we entered the restaurant we were welcomed by the grimaces of two rather unpleasant people whom we quickly realized were the owners. After receiving reluctant answers to our questions about what was on the menu, we were shown to our seats amongst other tables packed full of cross-country skiers and the like. We ordered (I taking the daily special of ox-tongue salad), and waited for our meals while taking in the majestic scene of snow-capped Black Forest mountains stretching out to the horizon under failing sunlight.
After a few minutes, a table with a better view opened up, and being loathe to waste such an opportunity, we quickly switched places. The woman who had been waiting on us noticed this, came over to our new table and in no uncertain terms informed us that we could not move because our bill had already been put on the other table. We realized this was quite dumb, and protested until she finally conceded. What seemed like a couple of days later, our food arrived. As I had a cold at the time and needed to blow my nose, I asked for a couple of extra napkins. Rather than the expected response of, "Sure, right away!" she asked what I wanted them for. What the hell? Anyway, she quickly realized she was being a douche bag and brought me my napkins.
The ox salad, by the way, was sort of surreal. The texture was suprisingly like munching on your own tongue, but the flavour was mostly of vinegar. In any case, I figured it needed some more pepper, so risking another casualty in what had already become a complete train-wreck of customer service, I caught the waitress's attention and requested some. No problem! She didn't so much as bat an eye! But a customer at another table who had been waiting for a glass of wine possibly since mid-November realized it was futile, and just gave us the pepper off her table. When all was said and done, I think the waitress got a 20 cent tip on our meal for five people.
Then this morning I was biking to work, when partway through my trip my wallet was becoming uncomfortable, so I stopped to take it out of my pocket. The trouble is that I was suffering from a case of acute transient retardation at the time, and instead of putting it in my bookbag, I just dropped it on the ground and biked away. When I got to work, I had to swipe my timecard to clock in, and I couldn't seem to find my wallet. I quickly realized what had happened, and a co-worker saw my trouble and offered to give me a hand (actually it was Antonio, my Italian friend who just got married. Again, I direct you to my photo albums.)
We set out along the path I biked, in case I had lost it somewhere along the way. When we finally got to the place where I had taken it out of my pocket, it wasn't there! Scheisse. Not only did it have all of my identification, credit and bank cards, but it certainly did not have my German address or anything else that I thought would help a German find me. As a last resort we asked a farmer who was nearby cutting his grass (with a scythe). He said no, he hadn't, but at that moment his wife came to the window of their house, and knew exactly what we were looking for! Apparently she had seen my work card and my student card and telephoned both my company and the local university to try to find me. I thanked her quite sincerely, and I think I will get her some flowers or chocolate to show my appreciation. She certainly could have kept the wallet and all the money inside, and I thought it was damnably decent of her to have tried to find me like she did. Word travelled fast, and when I returned to work, everyone asked if I had gotten my wallet back.
Wow, I'm not really sure what the point of those stories was. Well, maybe they help to illustrate the vast differences in personal character of two people living so closely together, the waitress with the bad attitude, for whom every little service to other people was a great pain and struggle, and the farmer's wife who forsook personal gain and tried to help me just for the sake of being a good person.
FIREWALKING
Speaking of pain and struggle, the Germans seem to love real charcoal fires. Almost every weekend we've been having outdoor barbeques with delicious steak (and occasionally breaded Gouda) cooked on a grill raised over a pan of hot coals. I don't know if any of you have ever tried to light a charcoal fire, but if you do it naturally, it's typically an hour-long ordeal, and at least in Germany requires a fair quantity of beer. But some hungry German came up with a better idea; a little metal chimney that uses natural convection to evenly heat coals to operating temperature in a quarter the usual time. Now lighting a barbeque requires only fifteen minutes... but still the same amount of beer. So one day after we had finished barbequeing, my host father said, "Hey, how would you like to walk across some hot coals?"
Being the type of guy that I am, I responded with something to the effect of "Hells yeah!" and we emptied the red-hot coals out on the ground.
"Should we take one step in the coals or two?"
"Definitely two."
So we spread them out over a length of about 2 meters, and before the rest of the family could finish telling us how stupid we were, I was already across in my bare feet.
I'll be honest, it actually hurt more than I expected. But only because the coals tended to stick to the tender skin on the arches of my feet. Anyway, it didn't hurt that much, and there was cool earth all around, so seeing the whole situation as a bit of a rare opportunity, we decided to go across again. Faster.
After this second trip, I just kept on running straight into the little pond at the end of the garden to cool my poor feet. Wearing socks or shoes was a little uncomfortable for the next day or so, but it was definitely worth it.
One of my host sisters actually captured this adventure on her camera, so if I ever get the photos from her, I'll put them in one of my albums for your viewing pleasure.
MORE STUPIDITY
So on the topic of stupidity; last night, after I wrote that part above about losing my wallet, I was on my way home from work, again by bike. It was pouring rain, and I was only wearing a golf shirt and some dress pants, and wet sand was spinning off my tires into my eyes. Finally I got to the bottom of the mountain, and I just had one little path to go before I was home. Usually I walk up it, because it is quite steep, and it is separated from the road by a curb, but that day I thought I would be clever by conserving my momentum, and just ride up as far as I could. There was a little section of the curb that was lower, to allow cars to drive over it, and I had actually ridden over it once before. This time, however, I was going much faster, and it was wet, and I made the additional clever move of approaching it at an oblique angle. So indeed, I made it over the curb, but my bike didn't. It spun out from under me into the narrow street, and I landed pretty much directly on my head, tumbled head-over-heels against a building and somehow ended up back on my feet, ready to go again. Thankfully I was wearing my helmet at the time, so I really only ended up with a scraped-up arm. But the worst part is that when I got up and looked around, there was absolutely no one else around, which is a bit of a shame, as I'm sure it looked hilarious.
KONKLUSION
So those are some of the interesting things that happened to me here in the Fatherland, I hope it wasn't too painfully boring to read. As I will probably have at least a couple of more of these mass (spam) mails to send out before I am done, if there is anyone else you know that would like to hear about my tales of glory, let me know and I will add them to my list. And as always, I am quite interested to hear what is going on back home and in the various other places that you might be right now, so if you have some time, send me back a message and let me know how things are going for you.
Sincerely,
Greg
P.S. The Canadian Space Agency just put out a call for new astronauts last month <http://www.space.gc.ca/asc/
Tuesday, April 15, 2008
Noch nicht Tot
Hey Folks,
It's been a while. How are things? I suppose you're all writing exams now, so it's probably a bad time to send this. I'm afraid I've been a dangerous combination of both lazy and busy, and that hasn't allowed me to be more punctual in my updates. Accordingly, I have a rather long e-mail, and have actually included a table of contents, for the improvement of your reading experience.
ORCHIDAE
INTERESTING FELLOW
FIASCOS ON THE TRAIN
WARM FUZZY FEELINGS
CERN
CONCLUSION (ALMOST) AND REGULATIONS
ORCHIDAE
Germans seem to have a curious love of the orchid family. It seems that in almost any window, office building, or home you see at least one of those handsome flowers. And furthermore despite the warnings of friends back home, they seem to be easy to grow here, whether due to the peculiarly humid climate, the elevation, or just the tender love and care of the German people. A coworker here even mentioned to me that the reason she has so many in her house is because they are the only plant she can get to bloom. Bizarre. Following their lead I was in a flower shop a couple of months ago when I happened upon a particularly gorgeous white flower with a hint of rich, deep purple on the edges of each petal. Of course I couldn't resist taking such a beautiful creature home with me, and so I did, heeding the shopkeeper's recommendation of care. And for two months, this was a piece of living art, a paragon of natural beauty resting peacefully on my desk. Then two weeks ago I went away for Easter vacation, and forgot to water it before I left. when I returned, the leaves were curled and the flowers were wilted. It seems that with these exotic plants, all the humid air and high elevation in the Fatherland can't overcome garden-variety incompetence.
INTERESTING FELLOW
Speaking of incompetence, I was riding back on the train the other night from a welcome dinner for international students, when I happened upon a very drunk man sitting in the seat across from me. He was not just drunk, he was quite drunk, to the point where he was yelling after people who walked past, and having a difficult time staying in his chair. Naturally I thought it was a perfect to sit and have a chat with an interesting fellow. This turned out to be a bit more difficult than I had anticipated because once I actually started listening to what he was saying, I realized not only was he slurring his loud words almost incomprehensibly, but I think he was speaking with a rather strong dialect too. Yee haw. Needless to say, he started the conversation, and through his drunken, heavy regional accent, he kept repeating something, which I think was something along the lines of saying that no one ever checked his ticket because of the colour of his skin. After nodding my head a few times to this fascinating bit of trivia, the ticket-master eventually came around collecting the tickets, and, indeed, asked everyone for a ticket, except this loud, waving drunk man. And I thought "Es ist nicht weil du weiß bist, aber weil du blau bist." Anyhow, he eventually started talking about computers, and the question of my employment arose. I told him I was an electrical engineer, and he let me know what he was...and you know what he was? A bus driver.
FIASCOS ON THE TRAIN
But then trains are always a good source of interesting tales. I almost think that if I just spent my whole time on the train, I'd have experienced as many unusual and interesting things as if I had spent it walking through the great cities of Europe. As I write this my train is travelling through Karlsruhe on its way to Frankfurt, and I am reminded of the curious blind man I met the last time I travelled between those two cities. But perhaps I've already regaled you with that particular anecdote, and should instead tell you of how a certain conductor reaffirmed my faith in humanity a few weeks ago.
It all began when I was on my way to meet a few friends in the nearby city of Villingen, to visit the legendary Färberstraße (more on that later). As per usual, I showed up exactly on schedule, with just enough time to purchase my ticket and find my way to the correct gate. Taking this train, I would have just enough time to grab something to eat in Villingen, and meet at the agreed time. I was in a bit of a hurry, so I wasn't paying attention when the fellow recommended I take the next train, as it would be slightly cheaper, and so I just gave him my money, took the ticket and quickly proceeded to my gate. Evidently, I was his last customer of the night, because a few minutes later, just when the train was arriving, he also appeared, with a coat and bag in hand to board the same train. However, when he saw me, he came over and informed me in no uncertain terms that I could not take this train, and would have to wait an hour for the next train, and when I tried to protest, he just became more insistent, to the point of being a big dick. Needless to say, I was very unimpressed, as I was going to be late, and the difference in ticket price might have been half a Euro or so, and my thoughts immediately went to how unfriendly, unhelpful, and unpleasant Germans are, and so on.
But I am a man of great self-control and restraint, and two weeks later, when I was on my way to hear the King's Singers in Stuttgart, he was still alive and well, and in fact sold me my ticket that evening. I tried to be civil, and this time, I told him exactly which train I wanted to take; it was an hour shorter, an hour earlier and half the price of the next train, and he had no problem to give me exactly what I wanted. He even told me the correct gate to go to, and go to it I did, just as the train was arriving at the station. But something seemed wrong, something about the direction the train was heading in, or the number, or something, and I quickly ran to the big schedule posted on the wall to have a look. Just as I realized it was, in fact, the right train, I heard the doors closing. I ran over, tried to open them to no avail, I frantically waved my hands at the people inside, and they couldn't do anything either, so I stood there and watched my train roll away into the night. I went back to the conductor to purchase a new ticket, and the first thing he asked me was where I had been standing to miss the train, but then he softened, and rather than make me pay another €40 because of my own incompetence, he said it was ok if I used the same ticket, and a few minutes later when I was sitting by myself on a bench, waiting for the next train, he came over and gave me a detailed report of the journey I was supposed to take, which I thought was rather decent of him. And this really made me think about how even the most unpleasant, asocial people have the capacity for goodness and decentness from time to time, and I would like to think I really took something from that experience, more than just warm, fuzzy feelings.
WARM FUZZY FEELINGS
A few other international students and I had planned to take a trip to Italia over Easter, see the Mediterranean, say "Hi" to the Pope, and all that; but unfortunately we decided this about two days in advance, and there was absolutely no where to stay at any city in Italy. Of course, I was all up for sleeping in the rental car, but the others were a bit more hesitant at that idea. So we ended up going to the Nuremburg area with a German friend instead. We got there during the Volksfest (which has nothing to do with Volkswagens, by the way), I rode a rollercoaster for the first time in ten years or so, we ate some delicious pork, and generally had a good time. We saw some really beautiful sights in that area, and I will upload some pictures to Facebook someday. But the most notable thing was what our German friend told us about the tradition of Easter fires in the area...
Apparently each little village amasses a huge pile of branches and wood during the week before Easter, to be ignited the night of Easter Monday; and every one of these towns tries to light the piles of every other town on the Sunday night before. And so there is usually a big group of semi-drunken farm boys that camps by each pile and tries to protect it from other semi-drunken farm boys with gasoline and matches until the official ceremony Monday night.
Upon hearing this tale, and being the enterprising, adventurous fellow that I am, I immediately grabbed the package of matches on the bar table, looked around at the small group of other internationals, felt a flicker of something about deportation go through the back of my head, and told them in no uncertain terms what needed to be done. Needless to say, the Mexicans were gung ho, the Brazilian showed a bit more hesitance, and our German friend needed more beer.
At this time it was already about nine o' clock Sunday evening, and everything was dark. We scoped out the nearest pile of wood, and we didn't see anything; no tents, no people, we couldn't even see the pile... very strange. In any case, it was also a bit wet, and we realized we would need some fuel to get things started. But most of the gas stations were closed, we had no gas container, and furthermore, it would have been suspicious if we were to buy a can full of gas that particular evening. So, I got a first hand lesson in "fuel extraction", from a Mexican. Yee haw.
Several excited hours and more than a few accidental mouthfuls of gas later, I was losing my team fast. The Brazilian was already in bed, along with one of the Mexicans, and the other Mexican and the German were beginning to have doubts. It was cold, wet, and we would have to walk several kilometers to the fire site to avoid being seen or heard, and furthermore if we were caught, it would likely involve a fair amount of physical pain. As a last ditch effort of motivation, I tried to appeal to the German. He was getting older, and this was a tradition of his youth. He had a group of willing participants, and it was quite possibly the last chance he ever had to do this in his life... He put on his coat.
By this time it was almost four in the morning, and the German and I were the only ones left standing by the insatiable attrition of exhaustion. There we were, standing under the warm golden glow of the single, dim incandescent light in his hallway. We had everything we needed, and we were ready to go. He took a final look out the window before heading out, and he saw that there was a dense, freezing fog all around the valley. Suddenly all the doubts from the previous evening came flooding back and he hesitated. At this critical point, I realized how tired even I was, and I said to him that if he really didn't want to do it, we wouldn't go. And you know what? We didn't go. I think we all slept more soundly that night than any of us had in quite some time.
We spent the next day seeing the sights in the nearby city of Würtzburg. Germany really is an incredible country; the beauty and history here still leave me speechless sometimes. We saw some castles, and some gardens, and we discussed the fire we were going to see in the evening, and how it was probably better that we enjoy the official ceremony with everyone else, roast some sausages on the open flame, and so on. So when we returned to Rothenburg (the place where our German friend is from), we were very surprised to see still no one around. It was about 6:30 or 7:00 and the field was completely empty and dark. We walked up over a little hill and at last we saw the wood pile! But there was still no one there... This time our German friend got a twinkle in his eye, and we knew that this was the right time. A couple of hours later we were absolutely covered in ash and soot, but there was the biggest fire I have ever seen! After a feast of fire-roasted sausages and Jägermeister, we stood around looking at our work with great satisfaction, and even the Brazilian had to admit it was pretty awesome. Funny how it took a Brazilian, two Mexicans, and a Canadian to carry on the ancient traditions of this little Bavarian town.
CERN
This little note is quickly turning into a novel, and I should probably think about getting back to work, so I think I will close by telling you of one of my most recent, and most exciting adventures of the past few months, my trip to CERN in Geneva. For those of you who don't know of CERN, you are not alone. Curiously it seems like fewer people know of it here than at home. It is the European Organization for Nuclear Research, and currently they are building the world's largest particle physics experiment, the LHC (or Large Hadron Collider), on the bedrock underneath the Franco-Swiss boarder near Geneva. It just so happens that my host family used to live a couple of kilometers from CERN (in a town called Echenevex, on the French side), and when Alex, my host father, found out they were having an Open Day for visitors, he asked me if I would like to have a look.
Saturday, 5 April, we traveled down through the famous Gruyère region of Switzerland (where we had some phenomenal iced-cream, by the way), and spent the afternoon in Geneva. As it happens there was also a balloon festival happening at that time, so we got some nice pictures, which, again, I will upload to Facebook one day. Nothing especially exciting happened, but I got to eat some hand-made Swiss chocolates, see the famous Jet d'Eau, and walk by a couple of antiques stores. One specialized in scientific antiques, and my hear skipped a beat when I saw some old Wimshurst machines through the windows, but would you believe they were closed? In any case, they were probably entirely unaffordable, judging by the prices of its neighbouring stores.
In the evening we had some Swiss fondue in the French mountains behind Geneva, and it was absolutely fantastic. And aside from a rather mundane beer for a full four-Euros-and-fifty, Alex recommended I try the Chartreuse. It is a sweet, French, herb-based liqueur, in the style of Jägermeister, and I have never felt anything burn quite as fiercely as that. While there, I couldn't help noticing a group of physicists siting at the table next to us. It's curious how they are identifiable from sight alone. But in any case I approached and asked them, just to make sure, and sure enough they were all from CERN. They told us they were originally from various universities (all in the US, I believe), but were serving terms at CERN, and gave us the best strategies for seeing the sights the next morning. So, after saying goodbye to those kind folks at the restaurant, I left my host family at the hotel, and went for a midnight hike through the mountains (partly to aid the digestion of the tremendous amount of cheese I ate)... and it was soon time to visit CERN!
It was about 9:00 AM by the time we got to the site in Echenevex (one of six CERN locations with access to the underground particle accelerator chain), and the line-up at the entrance to the massive building was already becoming agonizingly long. But it was well worth it. After having a look at the various exhibits, and talking to a few of the physicists hanging around to answer questions, we headed on a tour underground to the CMS experiment that was almost ready to begin. I'll spare you the technical details, but if you are interested, you can ask me, or better still, you can have a look on the CERN CMS website. Essentially it was a giant, cylindrical electromagnet, close to 15 meters in diameter in a huge cavern 100 meters underground. As its construction was not yet completed, it was we could walk between two of its massive sections, and it was incredible. It was like standing next to something from Star Wars, a huge, dense, metal thing packed with wires and cooling pipes and so much taller than me that it took my breath away. Apparently the magnetic field is so strong that the whole thing shrinks by 5 centimeters when it is switched on, and there is a surge current of some 20,000 Amperes from the electromagnetic coils when it is switched off again. Needless to say, this whole experience really made me kick myself for choosing engineering over physics (again), but it was a good time all the same.
CONCLUSION (ALMOST) AND REGULATIONS
So that about wraps it up. Things are generally going pretty well here. I can't believe I've already been here for over three months! Just four more to go. I am liking Germany a lot, and I don't know how I am going to cope with the meagre bread, sausage and beer back in Canada. But nonetheless, there are a few things that don't sit well with me, and the bureaucracy and strict regulations are anathema to my libertarian soul. For example, I received a letter in the mail yesterday informing me that I must pay a fee for the public radio and tv stations while I am living here, or declare that I do not use these services. Fine–great, in fact, that one has the choice. But my host parents informed me that if I make that declaration, I have the chance to have my residence visited and searched for a tv or radio, presumably without warning or warrant. I find this absolutely outrageous and unconscionable. Another German friend mentioned to me that if you verbally offend someone, or give them the finger (for example while driving), you stand a reasonable chance of being successfully sued. What ever happened to freedom of expression? And I won't even start to mention my thoughts on forced garbage sorting, or my time card at work, or the countless other little things pushing and forcing conformity from all sides. I am beginning to understand why the Autobahn is such a significant thing in Germany. With so much of the German life being regulated and controlled, it is sort of a last refuge, or an escape valve to be able to drive in true freedom, with no limits in the personal space of one's own automobile. (As a humourous side note, the company Audi has a little yellow sticker on the dash board, asking that drivers travel no more than 210 km/hr in icy or winter conditions.) Although even the autobahn is being regulated more and more, especially in the name of environmental protection. Ah well, I suppose it could be worse, at least they haven't banned incandescent bulbs... yet.
So beside that, last week my company sent me to a trade fair in Frankfurt to scope out the competition and get a feel for some new innovations that are happening in our area. After being on my feet, eating cream-filled junk food and red wine for three days, my plans for the weekend were not to walk, eat or drink too much. So Saturday Alex and I ended up moving two large piles of compost halfway up the hill where our house sits, and for supper we had a rather immoderate amount of Kirshwasser-filled fondue-from-a-bag. So much for those plans. But it was a good time, all the same.
So thanks for reading. If you feel like it, drop me a line, and let me know how things are going back home, or wherever you happen to be. And if you know anyone else who would like to hear tales of high adventure in foreign lands, just let me know, and I'll send them a copy of an Ian Flemming novel... Well, either that or just add their e-mail address to my list. Now I really do need to get back to work, or I'll be deported.
Cheers!
Greg
Wednesday, February 6, 2008
Update from Germany
Things are going pretty well in the Fatherland. Two weekends ago I went to Frankfurt to visit Paperworld, and do some shopping and various touristy activities
As I had a generally positive experience last time, I decided to take the train again–first class, naturally. It was a bit nicer than second class, a bit more room, a bit better seats, and a bit fewer obnoxious children, plus I booked early and actually got the ticket for less than the price of travelling second class. Yee haw.
There is something I love about the train, something about how the iron and stone (yes, they have stone railway ties in Germany) never made the transition to plastic and silicon. Something in the tremendous power of the engines, still occasionally diesel, or even coal-powered in a few cases. Something about how the sparks fly from between the track and the wheels when a train arrives at the station. Yes, there is something very raw, and yet noble in these machines, they seem to exude an aura of courage, strength, and adventure, and there is a palpable romance in the connection to things from over a century ago. This effect is made all the more poignant by the setting of the magnificently carved stone hall that is the Frankfurt Hauptbahnhof, with its terrifyingly vaulted ceiling, and rusted copper statues. I really recommend visiting, if you get the chance.
I hung out at Paperworld for a good six hours on Saturday, saw the sights, took some pictures, and was offended by the Polish.
It was about 5:30 before I got to the shopping district, and 5:45 before I realized that all of the shops closed at 6:00, and about 6:15 before I found out that they were all closed on Sunday too. But I wandered around anyhow, saw a couple of interesting places to visit on a later trip: a very interesting looking gun/knife shop for Danny, et al.; the opera house; a few other shops.
Sometime around then I also began my "Quest"...
To make a long story short, I walked half way across the downtown area, and went to four McDonald's before I finally found one that served beer, but boy was it worth it. They served it in the classic wax paper cup, so I took it and my fries, and sat down. And I savoured that beer, I savoured it through a yellow and white straw.
The night went on, I tried some fried duck at a chinese restaurant with moderate food, but the best service I have ever had in my life. I found out where all the excitement happens in Frankfurt, and eventually I made it to bed.
Those were most of the highlights from Frankfurt. There were a few other things, but perhaps they would be better told in person.
Aside from that, I tried some more blood sausage. I decided to fry it over a low heat, flipping it frequently, but that didn't help at all. After a few minutes, it just erupted in the frying pan, and all that greasy, grainy, black, rank-smelling "meat" went everywhere...especially the garbage can. Last week a coworker held a welcome dinner for me, with a "Vesper", which is a local meal that involves a lot of raw meat and onions, and some blood sausage (correctly called "Blutwurst".) As you might expect, I tried it again. And I very quickly discovered something: you aren't supposed to cook it! Holy crap! It's filled with little pockets of pork fat, and when they heat up, the Blutwurst ruptures. Anyway, it actually wasn't that bad, when prepared properly. Who knew?
And in other news, I moved from the beautiful little flat 60 seconds from my office, to a house about 10 minutes away, and about 200 meters lower in altitude. I figure it will be good for my cycling training in the summer. And also, it is quite free. The family regularly hosts exchange students and the like, so they have offered me a couple of rooms in their rather monstrous, century old house, meals, and even laundry absolutely free of charge. Quite awesome.
Oh, and by the way, this week was carnival, or "Fastnacht"...more on that later.
Anyway, I think it's time for lunch.
Cheers!
Greg
As I had a generally positive experience last time, I decided to take the train again–first class, naturally. It was a bit nicer than second class, a bit more room, a bit better seats, and a bit fewer obnoxious children, plus I booked early and actually got the ticket for less than the price of travelling second class. Yee haw.
There is something I love about the train, something about how the iron and stone (yes, they have stone railway ties in Germany) never made the transition to plastic and silicon. Something in the tremendous power of the engines, still occasionally diesel, or even coal-powered in a few cases. Something about how the sparks fly from between the track and the wheels when a train arrives at the station. Yes, there is something very raw, and yet noble in these machines, they seem to exude an aura of courage, strength, and adventure, and there is a palpable romance in the connection to things from over a century ago. This effect is made all the more poignant by the setting of the magnificently carved stone hall that is the Frankfurt Hauptbahnhof, with its terrifyingly vaulted ceiling, and rusted copper statues. I really recommend visiting, if you get the chance.
I hung out at Paperworld for a good six hours on Saturday, saw the sights, took some pictures, and was offended by the Polish.
It was about 5:30 before I got to the shopping district, and 5:45 before I realized that all of the shops closed at 6:00, and about 6:15 before I found out that they were all closed on Sunday too. But I wandered around anyhow, saw a couple of interesting places to visit on a later trip: a very interesting looking gun/knife shop for Danny, et al.; the opera house; a few other shops.
Sometime around then I also began my "Quest"...
To make a long story short, I walked half way across the downtown area, and went to four McDonald's before I finally found one that served beer, but boy was it worth it. They served it in the classic wax paper cup, so I took it and my fries, and sat down. And I savoured that beer, I savoured it through a yellow and white straw.
The night went on, I tried some fried duck at a chinese restaurant with moderate food, but the best service I have ever had in my life. I found out where all the excitement happens in Frankfurt, and eventually I made it to bed.
Those were most of the highlights from Frankfurt. There were a few other things, but perhaps they would be better told in person.
Aside from that, I tried some more blood sausage. I decided to fry it over a low heat, flipping it frequently, but that didn't help at all. After a few minutes, it just erupted in the frying pan, and all that greasy, grainy, black, rank-smelling "meat" went everywhere...especially the garbage can. Last week a coworker held a welcome dinner for me, with a "Vesper", which is a local meal that involves a lot of raw meat and onions, and some blood sausage (correctly called "Blutwurst".) As you might expect, I tried it again. And I very quickly discovered something: you aren't supposed to cook it! Holy crap! It's filled with little pockets of pork fat, and when they heat up, the Blutwurst ruptures. Anyway, it actually wasn't that bad, when prepared properly. Who knew?
And in other news, I moved from the beautiful little flat 60 seconds from my office, to a house about 10 minutes away, and about 200 meters lower in altitude. I figure it will be good for my cycling training in the summer. And also, it is quite free. The family regularly hosts exchange students and the like, so they have offered me a couple of rooms in their rather monstrous, century old house, meals, and even laundry absolutely free of charge. Quite awesome.
Oh, and by the way, this week was carnival, or "Fastnacht"...more on that later.
Anyway, I think it's time for lunch.
Cheers!
Greg
Friday, January 18, 2008
The Eyes of a German
Well, as you probably all know, I am in ze Deutschland. Why and how I got here is truly a mystery for the ages, but in any case, it's a good time. I ended up in a little town, with very little excitement going on, but they are German, and I am Canadian, so they seem more interesting to me than they really are, and vice versa.
I am working for a company called Grässlin (I love that German kezboard ;) ), and everyone seems quite nice. I am working in the product management area, currently doing research for a new potential product in the renewable energy sector.
I spent the first five days or so jet-lagged to the point of brain-dead stupidity, but beside that it's been pretty nice. One of my colleagues took me on a tour of the area, and it's quite beautiful. A lot like New Brunswick, but with almost exclusively fir forest, and bigger mountains. Plus I am right in the heart of cuckoo-clock territory, and there are two house-sized cuckoo-clocks in the vicinity, which given my propensity toward wooden gears and the like, caused me no end of excitement.
The dialect in the Black Forest is a bit difficult, even for native speakers who are not from the area, and so it is that I thought I could speak German pretty well, until I came here. I realized I have very little idea what any of the locals are saying... at all...especially when they are drunk... Which brings me to my main point; it has been said in Germany that if you do not make eye contact when making a toast, you will have ten years of bad sex. From this, I have rigorously deduced that if you look into the eyes of a German when making a toast, you will be guaranteed good sex for ten years. Wow, that's a lot less funny than when I had originally conceived it.
Anyway, the beer is good, aside from the new German fad of mixing beer with pop (that was an unpleasant surprise, let me tell you...), and the Black Forest Ham at home is not even close to what you get here. Here it's actually smoked, not cooked, and is far more scrumtious. I had a bunch of other exciting stories, like the time I offered candy to the stranger on the train, or the strange linguistic experience I had with a Thai waitress, but they are kicking me out of this internet café (or the closest thing to it in St. Georgen), and it will have to wait for another day...
Good day my friends...
Greg
I am working for a company called Grässlin (I love that German kezboard ;) ), and everyone seems quite nice. I am working in the product management area, currently doing research for a new potential product in the renewable energy sector.
I spent the first five days or so jet-lagged to the point of brain-dead stupidity, but beside that it's been pretty nice. One of my colleagues took me on a tour of the area, and it's quite beautiful. A lot like New Brunswick, but with almost exclusively fir forest, and bigger mountains. Plus I am right in the heart of cuckoo-clock territory, and there are two house-sized cuckoo-clocks in the vicinity, which given my propensity toward wooden gears and the like, caused me no end of excitement.
The dialect in the Black Forest is a bit difficult, even for native speakers who are not from the area, and so it is that I thought I could speak German pretty well, until I came here. I realized I have very little idea what any of the locals are saying... at all...especially when they are drunk... Which brings me to my main point; it has been said in Germany that if you do not make eye contact when making a toast, you will have ten years of bad sex. From this, I have rigorously deduced that if you look into the eyes of a German when making a toast, you will be guaranteed good sex for ten years. Wow, that's a lot less funny than when I had originally conceived it.
Anyway, the beer is good, aside from the new German fad of mixing beer with pop (that was an unpleasant surprise, let me tell you...), and the Black Forest Ham at home is not even close to what you get here. Here it's actually smoked, not cooked, and is far more scrumtious. I had a bunch of other exciting stories, like the time I offered candy to the stranger on the train, or the strange linguistic experience I had with a Thai waitress, but they are kicking me out of this internet café (or the closest thing to it in St. Georgen), and it will have to wait for another day...
Good day my friends...
Greg
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