September 12th. Arriving, Traveling, Orienting

12th of September, 2009

I am at the moment sitting in my room in the Pension House Faust listening to the Stitchcraft Album, which I was elated to learn that I had in fact after all copied onto my computer months ago when I purchased it. It is heightening a feeling of nostalgia. Or, I am not even sure if it is nostalgia, more like a realization that I am an old operator sitting in front of a myriad of connection ports, making new connections at an alarming rate. Some of these connections come from my past, but many feel entirely new and without comparison.

In the last two weeks I have been in Berlin, Tröbsdorf, Herleshausen, and Köln (really Altenburg, where the PAD orientation meeting was). In Berlin I stayed in the hostel where Matt McCown works. While there, I befriended a band who just happened to have stopped in the hostel cafe. I decided to just start a conversation with this group of English people, and then ended up going to their show, and staying up until 4 am or so dancing and laughing and having some wine. It was really fun.

Life in Tröbsdorf is different since the last time I was there, which was before college. The house looks almost exactly the same, as does the town itself. However, whereas Barbara used to stay home, she now has a job that keeps her busy from 9 PM to 9 AM three day a week. This job is working at a home for children who have been taken out of bad families. It seems to be fairly stressful, but she explained to me that mostly she has time to sleep between 12 AM and 4 AM. I am guessing she had to take up a job because two more of her children are more than 18 years old, which means that the Kindergeld they were receiving for having those children is now no longer coming in. Along with having a job comes a lack of time. Whereas Barbara and Clemens used to cook only using a wood stove, they now have an electric burner. Their cow is gone, their little garden is mostly overgrown. This means that they are getting all of their food from the supermarket. Another interesting development is that, as far as I can tell, they have no fridge. The cheese and milk and everything stays out in a box in the kitchen. I am guessing that it gets eating fast enough by the 6 people still living there, that there are primarily no problems. Franziska and Daniel, who used to be my best friends on the farm (they were 7 and 6 the last time I was there), have now entered the phase of life in which they are too old to be children, but too young to socialize as adults. My new best friends are Helene and Elizabeth, who are now 7 and 5, and extremely cute. One of the best things about Tröbsdorf was that there were so many fruit trees around. I ate so many fresh apples, pears and plums straight from the trees.In

Herleshausen, I worked full-time Thursday and Friday harvesting for the market, then sold produce at the Saturday market with Manfred. They really had a lot of different kinds of vegetables and fruits (pumpkin, zucchini, onion, 5 kinds of cabbage, green beans, 8 types of tomatoes, plums, mirabellen, sweet corn, peppers, egg plant, carrots, chard, lettuce... more) The stand was probably 25% bigger than the last time I worked there. I was pleasantly surprised by how the children were behaving themselves this time around. They were still a little rowdy, but they were much more inclined to listen to what I had to stay. In addition, they were especially happy to see me when I arrived, and really the whole time I was there (less than a week). Malte was especially inspired by my guitar playing, and Ina thanked me profusely for the influence. She was very happy that Malte could see that playing an instrument does not have to be as formal as taking structured lessons.

My contact teacher here is Michaela. She is very friendly, and I appreciate her sarcasm. Her English is really quite good, and it is definitely not obvious that she is German when she speaks. It is a bit funny of an accent, a mixture of many different English styles (Australian, English, Irish, American), but her English is better than my German. She has helped a lot, and as invited me every night over for dinner with her family. It may be a little too much, but I feel like it is important to make the connections, so I continued to go. Her daughter just graduated from Gymnasium (as I think I heard, the best in her class), and is heading out, humorously enough, the entire year to Italy to teach small children in a small town.

The first day of school is this upcoming Monday. In principle, I am just observing the classes for two weeks before I start teaching classes. However, my very first day, I will be talking a bit about New York City to a couple of the advanced classes. One weird thing that I am going to have to adapt to, is that I am, according to Michaela, not supposed to let the students address me in the informal, or ever hang out with them (even if they are only 4 years younger than me). This will certainly be something to get used to. I do not like being formal with even people older than me, and now I will be that authority figure.

This pension house is nicer than I expected. Because of how the situation worked out, I ended up getting a double room, and paying for a single. This will be wonderful for guests, if I ever have any, considering I have two beds. Also, the bathroom is like a hotel bathroom. The rent is the equivalent of $330 per month “warm” (or, all utilities included, with a cleaning lady). If a New College student is reading this, the bedroom itself is the equivalent of 1.5 Z-dorm bedrooms, plus a 1.5 Z-dorm bathroom. The kitchen is down two floors, small, and very “DDR” (plastic drawers, squeeks, closet-like), but it is definitely do-able. If it is not too expensive, I plan on looking around for a fridge, and a mini-stove, so I do not have to pay for using the kitchen. My rent would go down considerably (by 34 Euros a month!) if I did not use their kitchen.

Sachsen is, unfortunately, the Bundesland with the highest percent of people who vote for the NPD (Nationalists or Nazis without using the word Nazi). In fact, a couple members of the NPD actually made it through the last elections, which is pretty scary. Michaela told me on Friday that she heard that this particular county actually can boast that it has the highest percent of people who voted for NPD in the entire country! Woo hoo. That is super exciting. So far, I have seen posters for the NPD (with slogans something like “German jobs are for Germans”) a couple times around town during my walks around, but I have not seen anyone who I would specifically target as being a Nazi... of course, I also have not seen any “foreigners” (I have only been here for a couple days).

Tomorrow (Sunday when I am writing this), I plan on biking 30 km to Meißen and back. Apparently there is a really pretty church there and some other nice things. Hopefully stuff will be open a little bit, but maybe not because it is Sunday, and nothing is open on Sunday in Germany (besides Churches!).