Well. I really blew it. I would like to make a public apology of my disappearance from the face of the earth. But instead of writing out a long, lengthy epistle full of tears and sorrow, I’ll get on the ball to bring you all up to date, starting with My two weeks of madness (which I’d been writing about a little here and there in a word document).
“2 weeks of madness: Luxembourg, Paris, Barcelona
I am starting this post before I go to Barcelona (yay, Msoft word), so that when I return I won’t have to type EVERYTHING up, just mostly everything.
On the 31st, as planned, we got on a bus at 6:30am and headed to Luxembourg. It is a really beautiful city! It really is a “burg,” an old fortress that just has city built throughout/on top of it. There are ancient towers and stone walls sticking out in random places, as well as wonderful precipitous battlements overlooking valleys and whatnot. There is also a series of tunnels that run through the city, but it cost money to see them, which my compatriots vetoed. We spent the day just walking around the city, and then exploring an amazing valley that runs through the city. This valley is a long park, and you can barely tell you are even in the city sometimes. We also visited an old stone church that is the oldest in Luxembourg, no longer in use of course. All in all, a wonderful time, and definitely turned me into a Luxembourg fan.
One of my favorite parts of Luxembourg though is the linguistic atmosphere. Luxembourg (the country) has three official languages: Luxembourgish, French, and German. Each language plays a slightly different role. French is the “service language,” and so almost all road signs or government related material is in French. German is the “media language,” appropriate considering the role of German in the invention of the printing press. Over 60% of the books published in the country are written in German. Luxembourgish is the “heart language,” the language people speak at home or together with friends and family. It’s the heritage of Luxembourg, a tiny country that borders both Germany and France, under one control or the other back and forth through the centuries. Luxembourgish is a real testimony to the history of the country, as it is really a sort of French/German Creole, just different enough from both to be hard to understand. Above all, I loved that there was almost no English in the entire city, other than a shop with the name “House of underwear.” For the first time being in Europe, I felt like I had a special mother tongue—not just some worldwide code—as my first language. And I got around using my German and what little French I had. Totally sweet.
Then I came back to Marburg for 72 hours of Church, classes, and a little bit of sleep. On Wednesday, I got up at the crack of dawn and headed to the Train station. At 10:30 in the AM, my plane landed in Charles de Gaules airport outside of Paris. After casting about desperately, I finally found an official desk-looking-thing and went up to it with a trembling “parlez-vouz anglais?” on my lips. Safely on the bus (I later found out, the more expensive one, alas), I settled down to snooze. About 45 minutes later, I saw my first vue de Paris. My bus stop was Gare de Lyon, which according to the merciful officer at the airport, was right near la Bastille, which was right near my hostel.
Well, it turns out, it was really only pretty close to la Bastille, which was only pretty close to my hostel. In any case, I was glad I’d opted to pack light enough to carry all of my belongings on my back. With the help of a magical map that Alex had given me before I left, I found my way to my hostel in about 30 minutes.
30 minutes of wandering through Paris, and it’s already captured me. The streets, the buildings, the little shops… The air was even cleaner, probably just due to the fact that no people group in the world except for maybe Russians smokes as much as the Germans :P I got to the hostel a half hour before I was supposed to check in, so I walked around for a little while, and contacted Rachel, Amy, and Amanda, to let them know I was there. We spent the rest of the day basically bashing around, visiting a graveyard with famous people buried in it, eating baguettes, and visiting the modern art museum of Pompedou.
Thursday was a whirl of the Eiffel Tower, Museum d’Orsay, eating in a café, getting lost in Paris at night, finding our way (via the Eiffel Tower) and then having a half-hour conversation with an Italian guy—Amanda speaking Spanish, him speaking Italian. pretty wild.
Friday we hit up Notre Dame, le Louvre, and that night went out to eat at a sweet little restaurant, complete with French wine and French onion soup!
Saturday was my last day, and we got up really early to get out to the palace at Versaille when it opened. It was a beautiful place, but HUGE, and by the time we’d walked around the grounds a bit, I had to rush to catch my train. So after running through the palace (I wanted to see that “on my way out”) I caught my train back to Paris, caught my bus to the airport, and flew back to Frankfurt.
all in all an amazing trip. Paris is really a city I would like to get to know more. Maybe I’ll be able to make a return visit someday…”
That’s what I wrote before I fell off the face of the earth.
Since then, I also went to Barcelona, which was also incredible, though not as organized as Paris. But that was nice; it was sort of a vacation, rather than a "tourist trip." We spent the first day on the beach, sleeping after an exhausting 12 hour trip from Marburg. The second day we actually got out and saw some of the city, and it was maravilliosa.
the verdict: I could definitely live in Barcelona.
That brings me to now, exactly 12 days until I leave Germany. In way of an explanation, a big reason I've not been keeping this blog updated is that the pace of life quadrupled between my last post and this one. After two weeks of Euro-tripping it, I came back to a University that was not the passive, lazy institution I'd become accustomed to. Suddenly papers and projects and was weiß ich* were due, and Exams were right around the corner. Also, suddenly my time in Germany was almost over, which meant it was time to do all of the things I'd been meaning to do. A word on the University facet though...
The European (specifically the German) University System is much different than the general form of Higher Learning in the US. First of all, homework is almost non-existent, and graded homework is unheard of, except by Professors who model their classes after a United States style. What does this lack of graded feedback mean for students? Two very important things. 1) You must be self motivated to stay caught up and learn things, because the Prof's job is not to make sure you are learning. Professors are information springs; it's up to the student to drink. 2) Get ready for fun at the end of the semester! If you though finals at US Universities and Colleges were stressful, you h'ain't seen nothin' yet. Imagine for a moment that your final exam/paper/project/whatever it may be is not only the final, and cumulative, but also the only thing that decides your grade for that class. Better pray you don't have a bad test day, because --even if you took amazing notes and learned more than you could have ever imagined in the class--if you blow the test, you blow the course. Have fun!
Anyway, so I've been studying like crazy to make it through these last two weeks of ridiculousness at the Uni Marburg.
Not everything was storm-clouds and plagues though, during that time I did do some fun things. Here at the castle, there were two pretty big parties: the "Schloß party 4 friends" and the Sommerfest, both of which were an absolute blast. For the Sommerfest, I learned a Hungarian folk-dace, and a bunch of my Schloßmates and I helped Zita, our Hungarian Mitbewohnerin** show off a very fun piece of her culture.
The other big event involving the castle was the "Sport-Dies," or "Sport day." It should be noted that "Dies" does mean "day," but not in German. It's Latin. I have no idea why they used it, except because they probably though it would be cool and classy. Which it is. On Sport-Dies, Fei, Patrick, some other Schloßites, and I marched down to the Fußball fields in full uniform. There we proceeded to play 4 hours of very intense Fußball against other thrown-together teams of Fußball-fähig*** Marburgers. It was really fun, even though we only won one out of 4 games, and I didn't even break my leg, though I was sore the next day.
While I'm on the subject of Fußball, I have to say that one of the coolest experiences I had was watching the semi-finals of Germany vs. Turkey, to decide who would go on to the final, and potentially, become the Europe champion. For those of you who don't follow European soccer (or soccer at all), Germany won. It was incredible. First, the whole room erupted into deafening cheers, then, when those died down, you could hear the entire city of Marburg going crazy. Cheering, singing, honking, it was pretty incredible, and very exciting.
Lastish, but not leastish, was our BCA group trip to Hamburg. It was a very good trip and a very bad trip. It was a good trip, because Hamburg is a wonderful, sea-going palce, and is full of amazing waterways that go through the entire city, and on which you can take many fun boat-tours. It was a bad trip, because it was too short, and because it was full of mishaps such as missing our train right off the bat, and arriving in Hamburg 3 hours late as a result, and then the next day, missing our ship, so that we weren't able to do one of the things we'd planned. Still, despite the setbacks, it was a great time, even though the whole city smells strongly of fish. My favorite part of Hamburg (other than riding in boats) was going to Balin Stadt (which you had to take a boat to!). Balin Stadt is like an Ellis Island of Germany, only instead of dealing so much with incoming immigrants, it had a lot of outgoing traffic. It was really cool to learn about the people who were leaving everything behind to try and get a fresh start, and especially neat to realized that my German was good enough to understand everything that was going on, and even to listen to some little recorded interviews of immigrants from years and years ago.
That brings us pretty much up to date. Now I am on the home stretch to leaving what has become my home behind. I'm sad, and excited, fearful, and a little relieved. Pretty confusing. I tried "practice packing" today, and I think I'm going to have to leave some of my clothes behind that I brought with me. That's no biggie, but it reminds me that I will be coming back home with a piece of Germany embedded in me, and I'll be leaving a piece of me here.
*was weiß ich = lit. "what do I know," used like "who-knows-what"
**Mitbewohnerin = housemate (fem.)
***fähig = able, capable
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