First Day of School!

Today was my supposed first real day at school, when I would assist in the classes and not be the show-and-tell object for everyone’s entertainment. This was not so. At 9:30 I went to my first class, a group of eighth-graders who were very friendly with me and one another. I only got them to ask me one or two questions unprompted, but asked them things like favorite color and pets. They used my questions as a model for their own questions and we managed to pass the class period in a reasonably painless manner.

Then I had a three-hour break, because my usual seventh-grade class had a special sports day. I wandered around the town, found the train station (Bahnhof), visited a lovely church, and bought a planner. Unlike most of the stores in the States, the store I went to only had 2013 planners, no 2012/2013 or even 2012. So I bought a beautiful 2013 planner that was on sale and popped down to the larger store to buy a notebook. For the next hour I wrote dates in each page to create my own planner. I like the preprinted one better.

This is my school

Around noon I had my last class of the day, a tenth-grade class with a teacher who paraded down the hallway waving an American flag. I found this entertaining, but the students seemed to find it strange. This class was also primarily a question-and-answer session with me, but these students were very chatty and hardly needed any prompting to ask me questions. We also had a bit of a debate about the difference driving ages in the States and Germany – the Germans can’t get a driver’s license until they’re eighteen. One student asked me to say something in German (they don’t seem to believe I actually can speak their language) and a particular boy up front couldn’t stop laughing at my accent. I don’t think I’ve ever been so unreasonably embarrassed as I was then. Thankfully one of the other students told me she thought my accent was sweet, so I corralled my dignity and talked back to the mocking boy. My teacher-contact encouraged me to not feel embarrassed in the future and remind such childish students that I will learn German as they learn English. I suppose it’s no surprise that fourteen-year-olds think they’re on top of the world.

Yesterday I didn’t work – every Monday is a day off – and instead went around to all of the various bureaucratic offices with my teacher-contact to register my address, apply for a residence permit, and apply for a bank account. I was so grateful to have a native speaker alongside me; the appointments all went very well in great part (I believe) to the presence of someone who belonged in the country. She could speak with them far more quickly and fluently then I could, and was herself clearly German. Despite a natural suspicion, everyone seemed very friendly because of her. The people who work in these offices hear a lot of non-Germans attempt to get German residency because German social programs are all-encompassing and generous. The woman at the city hall said that she sees a number of people who have a family outside Germany and get money from the German government to support this family.

This sentiment seems slightly anti-immigration to me, though I understand a system that pays for non-citizens who don’t work in the country can’t be sustained. Certainly it’s difficult that people in Bulgaria or Romania have no good options in their own countries, but for all its economic success Germany can’t support all of Europe. I have to settle on the fact that it’s a difficult question and I understand both sides. It seems a bit of a cop-out.

I’ll end this long post with an example of the German character: this weekend a protest came through the neighborhood where I’m staying. It primarily included a bunch of trucks and cars, including what looked like trucks from waste collection and scrapyard facilities. These vehicles had signs on their fronts saying things like “Is This Integration?” and “More Than 10,000 People With Lives Ruined!” and “Show the People What it Is!” but I have no idea what the protest was actually about. The Germans I spoke with seemed equally puzzled. The people driving the trucks honked their horns and rang bells, though they also stopped politely at stoplights and stop signs, and to let people cross. 

Excuse the roof, this picture was taken out of a third-story window.

Even funnier than the polite demonstrators, though, was that a police car drove in front of and behind the whole procession. It turns out that if someone in Germany wants to have a protest, they must first inform the local police station and get a permit. The police station will send someone to watch over the situation, but not interfere with whatever is happening unless things get out of hand. 

In Germany, even protests are by the rules.

Cologne Adventure

A great deal has happened in a couple of days.

On Wednesday I helped to teach a lesson on parts of the body to “nine-year-olds” comprised of my fellow teaching assistants acting like children. After another evening of information about the Fulbright Program, health insurance, and alumni organizations, I went to bed early and got up dark and early for our trip back to Cologne.

The Cologne main train station (Hauptbahnhof) has these amazing short-term luggage storage containers: you put in €3, shove your suitcase into the little box that opens up, and wait. The door closes, your luggage is whisked away, and you can retrieve it with a little card the machine spits out after taking your money. I think everything goes to underground storage. Wherever my huge suitcase was stored, I appreciated seven hours to explore Cologne without dragging along sixty-something pounds of my life behind me.

A survey some years ago named the Cologne Cathedral (Kölner Dom) the most beloved place in Germany. It’s certainly huge, beautiful, and very Gothic.

It was raining that day, but I like the idea of the cathedral stretching through the clouds.

The outside is stained black with city smog, even though Cologne’s air is very clean – enough centuries of anything but pure air turns the stone black. The city has undertaken a cleaning project since the mid-1960s, when they finished repairing the damage from World War II. As with all European cathedrals, the detail is gorgeous.

The inside is very tall and plainer than I expected. I accidentally joined the 9am Mass (Gottesdienst) while exploring and got a blessing from a rather confused priest. The priests in German-speaking countries all seem so bemused that I don’t take communion but want to participate somehow. Maybe most non-Catholics just don’t go up. I knew I was in Germany when a woman visiting the cathedral started throwing out the burned-down candles and straightening the hymnals. Naturally, everything must be in order.

Outside the cathedral I found a number of living statues as well as a ton of people. In addition to school groups, I saw two men “floating” (it’s a clever chair contraption) and one adult man walking briskly after a pigeon. The pigeon just walked faster.

Later these people will become "living statue" buskers.

Cologne’s main shopping street boasts a number of high-end stores, including one called Louis Vuitton. Having never been in such a store, I thought I could browse the thousand-dollar merchandise and popped right in. I should have known I was in trouble when the man employed to open the door opened the door for me, but it wasn’t until he asked me to stay on the little walkway in the middle of the store (where I couldn’t see any of the merchandise) that I realized this wasn’t a browsing sort of place. Sure enough, one of the women working there came over to take care of me and asked what I was searching for that day. I told her a present for my mother, at which point she showed me a number of very expensive purses and I tried not to look like I wanted to bolt every moment. After a few minutes I “picked” a purse and asked her to write it down so my mother could look at it online, then left and never went back. I think that was a class faux pas rather than a cultural one, but I felt ridiculous nevertheless.

The shopping street also boast more low-brow clothing stores:

Because twenty-one is pretty much ancient.

Today was my first day in school - I fielded questions (in English) in three classes and thoroughly enjoyed the whole thing. It was a little awkward because no one expected me today, but we smoothed everything over and eventually the students even talked. It took some coaxing. Between the school day (which ends at 1:30ish) and the school fair (Schulfest) in the afternoon, I ended up speaking a lot of German and it made me very tired. Amazing how difficult it is to talk when talking doesn't come naturally. I look forward to the day I'm not translating in my head the whole conversation.

To end on a smile: a centurion and Gandalf having a smoke.

Flights and Orienteering

Today is Day 1.5 of orientation at a lovely middle-of-nowhere place called Haus Altenberg. It's a temporary settlement that I find very welcome after the 28 hours of travel on Sunday/Monday, including planes, trains, and automobiles. I got lost twice in Toronto and had to be rescued by two separate friendly employees and went through security three times (once for each airport besides my destination) and customs twice. The Canadian customs was much more thorough than the German customs despite the fact that I am working in Germany. I now have to go through a fairly complicated set of steps to get a bank account and residence permit here, starting Friday or Monday.

The Haus is comfortable and our orientation staff very friendly; the other assistants are rather chatty and seem to have made fast friends with one another. I find the whole thing a bit overwhelming and stretch my comfort levels every day by sitting at a different table and making conversation for meals.

There are, however, many good things about this orientation. My room is adorable and feels like it's under the rafters.

And I have a room key that reminds me of some Romantic European past. Or Cinderella's mother locking her in the attic. Egal.

The church that is connected to Haus Altenberg is lovely and old, with stained glass, stonework, and tombs. The inside is surprisingly plain and boasts a number of what seem to be tertiary altars behind the main altar, but which are neither decorated nor have any elements of the Eucharist. They look rather like they were forgotten.

It is both the Catholic Church of the Assumption of the Virgin Mary and the Protestant Cathedral Parish of Altenberg. I think if I were the Protestant in Alternberg, I would have major church envy and try to join up too. Of course this beautiful church also rang its bells at 6am, which pleased me not at all.

The other thing happening in Altenberg besides the Fulbright orientation is an archeological dig aimed at preserving the monastery that used to be here. In the words of our head of orientation Günther, we see a number of "academic looking persons scratching in the dirt" as we go from lunch to another session.

We have another day of orientation and then a very early morning on Thursday to have breakfast and head back to Cologne. I hope I've absorbed enough information to make this whole thing go well.

Ready or Not!

Tomorrow morning I fly to Toronto then to Munich then to Cologne, where I find the main bus terminal and look for all the other sleep-deprived Americans. We'll all try to stay up until a normal bedtime in Germany because that's majorly helpful with jet-lag. (No joke) It'll be fun.

Cologne Cathedral. Very gothic.

 
Of course, I don't have to wait until Germany to start making stupid cultural mistakes. Oh no. I have those mistakes covered right here at home. See, I went to the bank to get some Euros, because trial-and-error has taught me that the only thing worse than exhaustion when you first land in a foreign county is exhaustion and no local currency. Being the seasoned traveler that I am, I asked for some of the money to be in small bills so I don't hand a cafe worker a fifty when I'm trying to buy a cup of tea. (Fun story: in Trinidad, I handed an ice-cream vendor a hundred Trini dollar bill to buy my 2.50 Trini dollar ice cream. She wasn't happy. I got a lecture) So I say "can I have part of that be tens, fives, and ones? And some twenties too?" and the nice bank teller says "sure" and I go on my merry way. When the money comes in, there's a note that apologizes for no one-dollar bills, because every country in Europe has dollar coins. Which I knew, of course, being in England for a year...

No one-euro bills. Unfortunately this is not my money.

I'll be hanging out in Cologne for a while after my orientation is finished on Wednesday while my teacher-contact gets home from school. So, anyone who has been to/heard of Cologne, what should I see? My luggage will be in a locker in the train station. I will be footloose and fancy free. Also tired. (Please use small words)

Countdown

I fly to Germany in less than a month.

Yikes.

I've been to Europe before, but I was coddled and cared-for during that trip. I arrived to a house already set up for me, I was over-oriented to everything you could imagine about a new city, and I was there with a bunch of other Americans. Plus, it was England. The only difficult part about the language in England was fighting to keep the dreamy expression off my face every time someone spoke. When I visited my great-grandmother's family in Germany I went to bed at eight every night, worn out by the constant mental translation. I don't want to be a ninety-year-old woman this time around.

I'm training to avoid the fatigue by watching Disney(ish) movies dubbed in German. The Lion King, The Little Mermaid, The Hunchback of Notre Dame, The Emperor's New Groove, and Beauty and the Beast are fabulous. Pocahontas is a little bit of a historical mind-game and Aladdin isn't funny at all. Robin Williams makes that movie. Dialogue tends to be a direct translation, but the songs are very different to fit the meter and rhyme of Disney tunes. Armed with a childhood knowledge of the music in English, I muddle through and understand the whole thing far better on the fourth repeat.

Some song differences:
"I'll fight this into order, straw into gold" instead of "we're gonna turn this sow's ear into a silk purse" (Mulan)
"I'd like to mention, I'm not just talking lion-Latin" instead of "but thick as you are pay attention, my words are a matter of pride" (The Lion King)
"In my world" instead of "a whole new world" (Aladdin)
"Time writes the myth" instead of "tale as old as time" (Beauty and the Beast)

And possibly my favorite translation: The Emperor's New Groove is called A Kingship for a Llama

Ah-hah! Oh...

I figured out a possible answer to the mystery of no returned emails from prospective apartments. Most people plan to be in one place for a least a few years, whether for work or school. I'll be in Germany for ten months. It's not worth the stress of getting used to me and then having to play the roommate-finding game all over again in a year (I'm looking at you, college dorms). One of the people I emailed told me as much when he apologized for having to refuse me a place in his apartment.

Hopefully his excuse is the real answer. It would be nice to know that my current lack of housing is the Fulbright program's problem, not mine. Fingers crossed on that one.

Picky picky picky

Exciting July 4th news - this morning I found an email containing a reply from one of the apartments in a non-sketchy area! To be fair, I've received seven emails from non-sketchy apartments thus far, but all the rest said "sorry, the room has already been rented". I don't think that counts. It is entirely possible that I can celebrate my country's independence and my own lack of future homelessness on the same day. Plus, this place has a puppy named Fox.

Of course there's a catch. The room I asked about has already been rented, but there's another room that will be free starting September 1. This one is "a little smaller" but still very livable, according to the email. Pictures attached show a tiny (11 square meters) room that barely fits a bed and has three hooks on the wall for all clothing. Four years of dorm life have ensured my acceptance of any size living quarters, so this shouldn't be a problem, right? But then the email included pictures of the rest of the house, and I'm not sure I can do it.

The hallway looks like someone lives in it (park bench, dresser, and assorted chairs all along it). The kitchen is tiny and dirty. The bathroom looks nice, but the email mentioned that the shower doesn't always work. Where many postings note that the apartment will often cook together and relax together in the evenings, the email noted that the most important thing for this one is that we all accept one another and give one another space. As an introvert, this expectation is fabulous and ensures that I will not make any friends while in Germany. I'm not sure what the "accepting one another" refers to: does someone refuse to shower? Will everyone shun me if I don't eat sausage?

So I can't decide. Apartments seem to go fast (I email one day and am told the next day that the room is taken: truth or convenient lie), but this doesn't seem like a match. Then again, no one else has emailed me. It's a quandary. My generous teacher-contact at the school has offered to let me stay with her for a little while and search for an apartment once I've arrived. That may have to become my default instead of my last resort.