kaffee oma

I've been experiencing some very real struggles during my past two months in Tübingen, one of them being blog-writing.  It's not that I'm not inspired or that I'm not doing anything exciting or not even that I don't have time to write blogs.  I have plenty of time, actually.  And I sit down and try to write...and try to write...and try to write... But the words don't come quickly enough.  Or sometimes I can't find the right word.  So then I try to think of a word that would be more fitting, and only after replacing the first word, do I realize that the "more fitting" word is in German, not English. And it's driving me CRAZY. Not being able to speak English very well isn't so bad.  I've never been very good at communicating verbal messages, anyway, so the struggle has just been mildly intensified.  But not being able to clearly express what I'm thinking or feeling in writing is totally driving me up the wall.

That said, please excuse any funny-sounding sentences or strange word placements.  They are bound to occur.

So what has happened in the past month/since my last blog post?  Basically, classes have begun, I've had a couple miniature adventures, and I've been in contact with many sharp objects.

Let's start with courses.  I'm visiting two lectures - European Economic Integration (in English) and An Introduction to the History and Culture of the Middle East (or, as the professor explained to us on the first day, "An Introduction to the Language, History, and Culture of the Middle East"... looks like I'm going to be learning some Arabic).  And that one is in German, which is fun because after the standard ca. 45 minutes of being engaged, I tune out and don't really hear anything for the second half of class.  So we'll see how that goes. Besides that, I'm taking a course about formulating arguments, having discussions, and making presentations, which I think will be really useful.  Also, I'm doing two studio art courses - portrait sketching and ceramic.  My ceramics professor told us that our project for the semester was just to make something big, which I dig.  Still trying to decide what I like enough to try to make into a two-foot sculpture.  In any case, I am very happy with my courses thus far, especially because they don't begin before noon, and I don't have any on Monday or Friday.  The mother of a wise friend of mine once said not to let school get in the way of your education.  I'm excited that I will have plenty of time to explore and discover in addition to my studies.

So what would a typical four-day weekend look like?  I hope that at least a few will be consumed by longer, overnight, perhaps out-of-country trips, but the most will probably be spent much like this weekend.  Friday, we decided to make a trip to see Schloss Lichtenstein.  This required taking a train for approximately 10 minutes, a bus for no less than 30 minutes, and then getting off at a bus stop in the middle of a field, wandering down a nearby path, and then hiking through the woods for about 1.5 hours with little to no direction before finally stumbling upon the majestic castle they call Lichtenstein.  No less than a hike, it was, but the beauty of the Autumn leaves falling from the trees and crunching beneath our boots proved to be an experience just as pleasing as seeing the castle itself.  After returning back to Tübingen completely exhausted, Loren and Charles threw a Raclette dinner party. There's something really powerful about it when friends share a very typical part of their life with you, when you experience it together.  Even after the simple Raclette party, I felt somehow closer to both Loren and Charles.

The next morning, I awoke to a freezing room, and when I turned my head toward my still-open window (also the direction of my still-off heating unit), my eyes were greeted by the sight of white, flaky sprinkles falling from the sky and powdering the roof of the building right next to ours.  It continued to snow the entire day on Saturday, but unfortunately almost none stuck to the streets of Tübingen (at least in the city itself).  In honor of Halloween, Chris and I invited a few friends over to carve pumpkins on the kitchen table.  I must admit, it was a little dangerous using kitchen knives as carving tools, but no one got hurt (yes, this is one of my encounters with sharp objects... I began to carve a bit hastily, but before I could cut myself, my dear friends encouraged me to stop).  We separated the seeds from the pulp and baked them, just like home.  I also bought small, cooking pumpkins and improvisationally made two delicious pies, one of which I took to Vittorio's dinner party that night.  Not that we needed any more food.  Vittorio, being the fabulous chef that he is, had already prepared a three-course meal, which was served in only the classiest of fashions, with the little garnishes that you aren't supposed to eat.  He lives a bit outside of Tü in a real house with a real table, real dishes, and real wine glasses.  I can't serve wine out of coffee mugs anymore.  It just doesn't feel right after that level of sophistication.  In any case, it was delicious food and wonderful company.  Vittorio and his friend/roommate told us tales about the Schwäbisch man that lives above them and sometimes invites them to drink with him outside.  Vittorio's friend said that even though he can't understand anything the Schwäbisch man says, the man is still his best German friend....and even though the man just drinks all day and shoots deer, he know's he's a good person because "he does it with a beautiful smile on his face."  It was a great night.

I got home at about 2am this morning and had to wake up at 7am in order to be at the soup kitchen by 8.30.  Not knowing whether the clocks were going to turn an hour forward or an hour backward (or if my phone would do it automatically...), I waited up until 3am to see for myself.  Luckily for me, they went backward (of course.), and I was allowed five hours of sleep instead of three. At 8.30 punctually, I was at the soup kitchen with my sleeves rolled up and ready for action.  It was fun to get to know the different characters in the kitchen and to listen to them yell at each other and speak in Schwäbisch.  There are a particular few that I found especially endearing.  

First: Gisella.  Gisella is the boss, the big man.  She likes to yell at people and tell them what they're doing wrong and how they should do it better.  I like her because she has everything under control, and she won't let anyone mess things up.  She yelled at me because I took the dishes out of the dishwasher too early by like five seconds.  She's really great.

Then there's Kaffee Oma.  I don't know what her real name is because I can't understand anything she says to me, but I call her Kaffee Oma in my head.  As you might have guessed, she brews the coffee.  She's super duper sweet and blabbered to me all day.  It went like this:  She would tell me to come over to her and then point at a dish or pot or pan or something, say something in Schwäbisch, and then look at me.  I would look back at her with an eyebrow up, look from side to side, shrug my shoulders, then try to finish whatever I was doing before.  Then she would grab my arm and drag me around the kitchen, showing me what she was doing.  It was really cute, and I decided that she's officially my best friend in the kitchen.

There are also a few others, who I would describe in short as Jan the Dish Man, The Evil Stepsister, and Lazy Linda Lou.  The soup kitchen was a little different than that which I once worked in in Boston, in that the visitors were served by volunteers because there was not a good setup for a serving line.  Also all of the food was homemade, which was definitely not the case back home.  There was even pumpkin soup, a little of which I got to bring home with me.  It was a very nice establishment, and I'm excited to go back next month.

Really, the only other mildly exciting things in my life would be the scar that's forming on my knuckle from breaking a wine glass as my hand was inside washing it, the glass bowl I dropped in the kitchen on Thursday morning, tripping over cobblestones daily, and almost getting run over by a few cars.  Luckily, I've made some really great friends that don't allow me to touch glass, pull me off the street when cars are coming, and turn on the light for me when it's dark in the hallway and I can't see.

It should be a fun year.

wir sind immer dabei.

aaaaaaand I'm finally in Tübingen.

Technically I've been here for 19 days, but only today did I think to myself, Holy shit, I'm actually in Tübingen. I think this delay can be attributed to a few things.  First of all, like you probably already suspect, I have been so busy getting settled, unpacking, figuring out where to buy groceries/how to buy groceries, doing laundry, registering to be a student at the University, ETC. that I haven't really had time to think about what it actually means in terms of my life now that I'm here.  Second of all, most of my free time has been devoted to working on the whole Making Friends task, which means that I'm too occupied with sitting on the steps of the Stiftskirche with new people I've met to stop and think about how these people and these steps will play a role in my life.  And third of all, I experienced this grandeur realization right after I woke up from an hour long nap, when the sun was shining brightly through my window, my eyes were still a little bit squinty, and I wasn't completely awake.  So it was kind of just a dreamy exaggerated reality.  But I'm going to roll with it, nonetheless.

A couple memorable things that have happened since I've been in Tübingen:

I spent the first night awake until who knows when, emailing back-and-forth with my mom because my stomach hurt so badly, I thought I was going to die. For real. I actually believed that. After notifying various family members and friends of my condition so that they could spend their precious time being concerned about my health from halfway across the world, Mum and I came to a conclusion that my nervousness (which I had not yet come to terms with, but suspected existed) and the coffee and espresso I drank throughout the day were probably to blame.  The next day, Ute, my resident director, recommended that I buy this really nasty-tasting stomach medicine that is made from plants.  It's so old school - you have to swallow the liquid.  She told me that if it doesn't taste bad, then it isn't going to work.  Life lessons.

I lost my phone.

Some kind person found my phone and used practically every resource my phone had to offer to figure out who it belonged to.  I was really shocked and impressed that someone would even return it, but then my friends reminded me that no one would want to steal my phone anyway because the screen is shattered and it's falling apart. But I still like to think he was just a nice person.

My language course made a trip to Blaubeuren, which is in the middle of nowhere.  We were there for 5 days and weren't [technically] allowed to speak English.  It was a really great opportunity to get to know everyone and to have a week that was really, specifically devoted to speaking in German.  We went on a hike one day to go see these ruins, and just as we came upon this beautiful field mid-hike, it started raining and hailing.  It was so incredibly magical that I couldn't help but spinning around in the rain/hail, even though it was freezing. I was pretty sick the next day, but I guess that's the price you pay.

I've been really homesick.  It's not that I expected my friends from home to be in Tübingen when I arrived at the beginning of the month, but I didn't realize that out of habit, my mind would expect that friendly reunion that always follows summer.  And instead I was just met with more challenges, more things to adjust to, more things to adjust, more, more, more.  So that has been really exhausting.  But it will get easier eventually.  I have already begun to develop relationships with some magnificent people in my language course, and I'm looking forward to spending the year with them in Tübingen.

I live in a room. I'll post pictures of my new room at some point, but right now I'm tired and don't feel like taking pictures. Or tidying up. Some infos for the purpose of creating suspense:  Aside from the fantastic location (right in the Altstadt), it's pretty large and fairly nice (the building is ancient - I'm not going to be picky).  There is a downside though. The downside of my room is closest to the door, and the upside is closest to the window. What do I mean? The building is sinking or falling apart or something else probably dangerous, and the slant of my floor makes walking from one side of my room to the other similar to climbing a mountain. Also, judging by the gigantic cracks in my ceiling, I can probably expect my friend that lives above me to end up falling through his floor into my room at some point this year.

That's all for now folks. Stay classy. (America, I mean you. Our rep over here in Europe is not as attractive as I'd prefer it to be.)

three months, inspired by faucets.

Three months.  That’s a quarter of a year.  That’s 1/3 of ACL reconstruction healing time.  1/16 of the time I’ll be a college student.  Approximately 1/83 of the time I’ve been alive.  

It’s too long to be a vacation.  Too short to be a new way of life.  Enough time to lose sight of your targets.  Enough time to realize new ones.

Three months is a chapter, it’s not a book.  It doesn’t have a beginning or end.  It grows out of what was already established, but it is the basis for what follows.

And while I think the power of this period of time – three months – is a beautiful thing, I must also admit that it intimidates me.  Because in three months, you don’t really get to experience the luxury of leverage.  You meddle and discover.  You ponder.  You experiment.  You make conjectures.  But three months, by no means, is enough time for you to actually know.  To settle.  To establish a direction.

And that’s why, after the past three months in Germany, I don’t actually know anything about living in a foreign country.  Even though I had my own apartment, I still have no idea what it’s like to be living on my own and to be settled.   And although I had the amazing opportunity of doing an internship at Hansgrohe, I wasn’t there long enough to feel like I was part of it.

During this past week, my last week at Hansgrohe, I was asked what’s better – living in Germany or living in America.  First of all, I think that’s kind of a difficult question for me to answer considering the extreme differences of the living environments I’ve come to know in each country.  America:  either small town in the Midwest, living with parents, going to high school, or city on the East Coast, living on a college campus around tons of students my age, attending university.  Germany:  a tiny storybook village, living on my own, working full time.  Yeah, it’s tough to compare.  Anyway, later that night I was thinking about the question again, and, I mean, I don’t know...  I don’t really think that I necessarily even live in either country.  As if it’s my territory, I’m grounded to it, I’m a part of it.  I feel more like we all just live in the world.  And there are different places that we choose to spend our time, to establish relationships with people, sights, and adventures, but those places can’t be ranked.  It isn’t our location in the world that makes us favor being there over being somewhere else.  It is the relationships we form, the connections we have fused in that location, the feelings we have when we’re there.  So, really, to get back to answering the question, it’s not a matter of where I’m living – whether it be Germany, America, Ireland, Chile, whatever – but rather how I’m living.  And that will differ from person to person, from place to place. 

So where is the next place on my agenda?  Tuebingen.  But I will never make it to Tuebingen on the train with all of the things I have to transport.  Today I tried to squeeze all of my belongings into two (what I thought were large) suitcases.  And this whole process was a little bit of a slap in the face – not only because I couldn’t fit everything, but also because of the sheer fact that I had to fit everything.  This charming little apartment is not mine.  I must relinquish my reign of the terrace.  My spices do not get to stay settled next to the stove.  My bedroom door was just a temporary home for that weird lemon-lightbulb wall hanging.  …And it wasn’t ever my bedroom door.  But just when everything started feeling a little bit like it was mine, just when I dug a tiny baby hole in my heart for this apartment, just when I started looking forward to going “home,” it has to fade away.. And this is where three months gets complicated.  Because it’s a taste, a trick, a tease.  You’re almost there, you feel like you have it, but then it’s over.  And my morning rituals – making coffee, playing music from my computer on my bed, balancing my straightener against the bowl of the sink – they lived a short life.  They’re all meaningless now, things of the past.  And they must be recreated to fit a new place, a new way of life. 

Every morning on the way to work, walking down the mountain, saying hello to the man with white hair, turning right at the intersection and listening to the English music on the carpenters’ radio, actually feeling my nose get stuffy when I took the path between the trees and bushes, watching people take their cars through the carwash as I walked behind the gas station, observing the apples that fell from the tree on the walkway next to Norma, listening to the splashes of the fountains while approaching the Aquademie, seeing the green light that signaled I could pass through the Hansgrohe gate, and hearing the beeeeep when I stamped my time in the mornings – those things are no longer a reality for me.  The smiling faces to which I said Morgen and Tschuess everyday will no longer be part of my routine.  And that makes me really sad, because those smiling faces were some of the most kind and welcoming people I have ever met.  They were patient with me, even though it was sometimes hard for me to understand their German.  They included me, invited me to lunch, to concerts, to Tupperware parties.  They taught me about the products, Hansgrohe’s philosophy, how the company functions.  They trusted me, they taught me, and they inspired me.  And just as soon as I thought I was figuring it all out, when I started to feel like I was really a part of the team, when I started to take more chances speaking in German, it was over.  And that is very disappointing for me because I struggled all summer feeling like my performance and my personality were lacking, knowing that by speaking English my work would be easier and I could really develop relationships with my colleagues.  But wanting to improve my German and wanting to respect the German people by speaking their language, I refused to let myself transition to English at work.  And in some ways, I guess this held me back.  Or caused relationships to develop more slowly.  Or made it difficult for me to express my opinion or my gratitude.  So I struggled under my own principles.  But, after three months, I was finally beginning to find direction, delayed as it may have been.  And even though it feels like it was over before it even started, my internship at Hansgrohe is an opportunity that I will always be grateful for, treasure, and remember.  I was truly lucky to have met and worked with the people at Hansgrohe and for the company itself.

So, while three months, quite frankly, sucks in a lot of ways, it can provide a lot of enlightenment and lessons for the future.  It’s an outcome of one set of decisions and an input for an entirely new set.  And I’m excited to discover the direction in which my past three months will lead me.