Freiburg and Beyond: A Stag in Germany

It is an extremely difficult thing to do to sit around for an entire day and not do anything. While fun to a certain degree, the mental demands are also quite extreme. To have to tell yourself that every moment that you sit in front of the computer screen is not actually wasted, for in fact there is nothing better you could be doing right now. Now I have been doing the best I can to get out and do things, considering the fact that I am in Germany and it doesn’t seem right to just sit in my room all day, but when it is a crappy day and you are leaving on a big trip the next day it is hard to muster up the spiritual fortitude to engage in something as strenuous as walking half a mile downtown. Yesterday, I was able to get some people to come with me and go down to Basel for a few hours. That, on top of two nights straight of poker, has been able to keep my mind and body busy for the last two days. Nevertheless, today I spent around 10 hours doing absolutely nothing. Quite a monumental achievement. I am starting to blame IES for this stupid planning, of giving us this weekend instead of next one. Not that I don’t appreciate a free weekend, but I really wish we didn’t have to sit around for this weekend only to be thrust abruptly back into class 10 hours after we return from Paris. Kind of poor planning if I do say so myself.

Happy President’s Day everyone, I hope you were lucky enough not to have class/work. I was not, but oh well I’ll be in Luxembourg in a week. This weekend was fairly interesting. We had an American Burger Night last night and enjoyed some traditional American food while gathering with many other Americans. It was pretty cool, nice to have a little taste of home. Besides that I discovered that I will probably be getting an internship this summer, I only have to do a month long process or so in a week to get it paid for by CMC. Hopefully that will work, I would rather like 3500$. That would be quite nice. I apologize for my lack of insights lately I simply have not had much inspiration. Next week will be better I am sure, but until then you might just have to read all this drivel that I am putting out in order to keep myself busy. Sorry… I guess… hahaha.

That is a terrible pun… wow… you will understand what I mean when you read this. This happened about 2 hours after I left the area yesterday.

http://www.tamilnet.com/art.html?catid=13&artid=28403

Ahh Switzerland, thou bastion of neutrality that costeth so much for poor young students like myself. Where a man can speak three different languages, with accents unrecognizable, and English in to boot. Yea who refuse to join the EU, have your own brightly colored currency, and house oh so many shady business deals. Thou art a fickle country, so beautiful yet thou speakest French that dreaded language of the America haters (yeah I had to throw that in there). Ahh Switzerland, I love thee, yet I hate thee.

Well if you hadn’t gathered I spent the last couple days in Switzerland, Geneva to be more precise, and spent way too much money for what I received. I bought a freaking 14 CHF (~12$) Whopper meal! It was really good but still. We left early Thursday morning in the middle of a blizzard,  drove around 5 hours in a bus in business formal wear, and arrived just in time for our first lecture at the UN building in Geneva. After 2 interminable lectures and one interesting one we left and went to the hotel. I then was privilaged enough to  enjoy my first traditional Swiss fondue with a white wine included. Very, very good. I love swiss cheese, I love bread, I love wine (not so much this one but oh well). Now melt the cheese (throw a little Grappa in there for good measure) give me an extremely large fork and a small glass of wine, and I will dive into that meal. Apparently it is also necessary to scrape off the baked cheese after the majority is gone and eat that as well. Though I felt my arteries clogging, I could not help but enjoy the whole experience.

After a long night we once agains were fortunate enough to listen to lectures by UN personnel. Then we were set loose in Geneva for 2 hours. Now in those two short hours I was able to have a door opened for me by a man in a top hat, and enjoy the best “meal” of my life. It consisted of a glass of scotch and a 20$ cuban cigar. Well worth the cost. There is really nothing that makes you feel more like a man than smoking a good cigar and drinking scotch, in a suit. I also surprised myself by blowing smoke rings. I am quite amazing I know. That experiece (along with a few others that I have had at school) are really making me want to be in a position of power. Screw the money, I want to be able to smoke cigars and drink fine liquour in a suit with some powerful people in an exotic place.

Well now I tired, and I say to Switzerland adieu, auf wiedersehen, and ciao. Guten Nacht.

So I went to the gym in Freiburg today for my first big work out since I got here. Consequently I am extremely sore and ready to go to bed. However, I thought it best to comment first on the experience. As anyone who regularly goes to a gym will attest, there is a certain comraderie that develops between those working out in the same place. Whether it is all the testosterone flowing, or a sort of primal totemic ritual arising a collective effervescence (a la Durkheim) I do not know, but there definitely is some sort of communion that develops almost immediately when working out in a small weight room. I thought that it was particularly interesting that this feeling trancends language and culture barriers to function even in such a different place. Everyone in a weight room (who legitimately works out) understands one another. I was able to communicate far easier with the guys in this weight room than I have with any other group of Germans that I have met. Granted it is probably because the conversation consisted of a few words and grunts, but I felt as if I was actually getting my point accross. I really felt at home for the first time since I got here. I will post some other time on my Eliadian interpretation of why this is, but for now, suffice it to say that in a weight room I feel as if we are all related despite the barriers that exist in the real world.

So I have learned, as my Facebook status states, that no matter what the continent is there is no reason to do today what you can put off till tomorrow. It is hard to really get motivated to do anything without an imminent deadline especially when I am in a completely alien environment. I am slowly but surely getting used to living in this apartment in Freiburg, but I am still having trouble coming to grips with the fact that I have to actually do work while I am here. It is kinda sad I know, but in order to do things here I have to change my entire process of doing work and it is messing with my head. I don’t like writing on a laptop and there is really no computer lab that I can go to type papers at 10 o’clock at night. This sounds quite bitchy I know, but if you think about it it really is a problem that would hit anyone. I guess this is another thing that studying abroad is going to teach me: how to work productively in a completely different setting. But anyway, apart from my inability to actually do work I have had a pretty enjoyable weekend. Watched about 7 movies, and spent alot of time just recovering from the last couple weeks. It was kind of funny, one of my German flatmates even called me lazy today. He’s definitely right, I mean I haven’t gotten out of my pajamas in two days, but seriously I feel like I deserve a couple days off. Tomorrow it is back to work with no end in sight for about a month so I am going to enjoy this general laziness as long as I possibly can.

I survived skiing in the Alps. Barely, but I did it. I now can say that  the first time that I skied it was in the Alps. Snow tastes great by the way, and when it is forced into your mouth about 12 times because of a head first wipeout-summersault combo it is very sweet indeed. I only skied down one actual run (I spent the first 3 hours doing a class for liability reasons) and that was more than enough for me. I am glad that I have had that experience, but I don’t think that I will do it again anytime soon.  Sports where I can stop when I am tired or when I feel like I am going to die are more along my alley. The whole not being able to stop and then screaming like a little girl immediately before I roll down the hill is not that great of an experience for me. I can understand why people like it, but it really is not for me. But hey, I have now skied the Alps! Pretty sweet.

Let me start this out with the fact that I do not drink coffee at home. However, I am slowly growing to appreciate it despite my misgivings. It does not taste good, it has a very small effect on me, and it makes your bodily functions go crazy. Nevertheless, after having drunk approximately 25 cups of coffee (slight hyperbole) over the course of the last weekend I can safely say that I understand the attraction to it. I think coffee is almost entirely psychological, with its effects being purely based on the placebo effect. Whenever I am convinced that coffee will help, it does, and vice versa. This, when combined with the powerful psychological effects of being in a routine, is what leads people to “not be able to live” without their coffee. The caffeine, I believe, is an almost secondary ingredient in the whole mess.

Ok. Now for beer. I am in basically the beer capital of the world (though to be accurate I would be about 100 miles east in Bavaria), and am loving it. I consider myself able to appreciate the fine tastes of an expertly brewed beer, and I am getting ample opportunity to try some of the best in the world. While some of my program mates have chosen the party scene, I prefer to experience the flavors of German beer in a perfectly sober state of mind. As a friend of mine on this program said: “I do not appreciate all those people who drink just to get drunk, but when I saw you that first night thrust your nose into the glass and savor every sip, I knew that this was a man who loved his beer.” My current plan is to make a list of all the beers I try and write a summary on each of them for the future students in IES EU. A worthy venture if I do say so myself.

So I decided to write a blog along with a good portion of the CMCers abroad, but I am kind of new at this newfangled technology so we will see how far it goes.

I am in Freiburg, Germany, a small, eco-friendly, college town in southern Germany. I am close to France, Switzerland and Austria and in the sunniest place in Germany (which means it only is cloudy about 75% of the time). While here I will be studying the European Union and its various activities both domestically and internationally. All the while I am living in a German dorm with two English speakers and 4 Germans, each with our own room and sharing a kitchen and bathroom.

Freiburg is a very cute and student orientated city. It is fairly small, only a little over 200,000 people and is home to a very prestigious University and a pretty famous old cathedral known here as the M:unster. It is also the environmental capital of Germany, which basically means that people get angry at you if you do not separate your garbage correctly in to the 5 different trashcans.  Still it is typically German with its wonderful local beers and bratwurst, both of which are adding to my already fairly ample girth in a distressing fahion. Thank God for the huge amount of walking.

I came in exhausted almost 3 weeks ago after about 15 hours of traveling. In the first week we did mostly orientation stuff; including walks around the city and a hike up the tallest mountain in the Black Forest in snow shoes. (At the top was the coldest weather I have ever experienced, terrible I miss 60 degrees and sunny).  The next week began an intensive phase in which we had around 4 hours of class a day of German and EU History. At the same time I spent alot of time walking around the city enjoying its small idiosyncrasies and getting to know the back streets. During that time we also  watched the inauguration, eagerly debating the meanings of Obama’s phrases and laughing at some of the absurdities of the American election process with our German professors. By the end of the week I felt comfortable in Freiburg, was recovered from my journey and ready to embark on this crazy European semester.

That weekend was a plunge into German culture. We went to Meersburg and Constance in order to see one of Germany’s historical castles and a beautiful lake. It was a great trip and an interesting look into the past. The next day I experienced a traditional Baden-Wurttenburg festival first creted to scare away the winter. The festival consists of a massive parade of people dressed up in frightening costumes and dancing through the streets. They also throw excessive amounts of confetti and drag young women into the street in order to stuff them with confetti. This festival has been around for centuries and though it has developed into more of a light hearted parade, it is still interesting to see this ancient tradition. One of the biggest things that has impressed me about Germany is the ability to see so far into the past (something not possible in our younger nation).

This last week kicked off the first of my many big trips throughout the EU with the program. We went to Talinn, Estonia, and Berlin. Talinn was a fascinating mix of cultural periods. There were old Russian Orthodox style churches, along side medievil walls and towers, beside broken down Soviet buildings, right across from Western style skyscrapers. It also is one of the most technologically advanced places I have been. There is wireless everywhere, they voted on the Internet and will be doing it on cell phones, and most importantly for me they invented Skype. Estonians also love Americans, something that blew me away when I first went there. They are some of the most enthusiastic supporters of all American policies (including Iraq) I have seen in Europe (almost more so than in the US itself). Granted they simply want the US to protect them against Russia but it is still touching. They also love karaokee (though I have a small sample size for that theory based purely on my experience in a small bar where I received standing ovations for a rendition of Queen’s Bohemian Rhapsody).

Berlin was interesting for a completely different reason than Talinn. It was simply amazing to stand where Kennedy and Reagan both stood while denouncing the Soviet Union, and to see a powerful memorial in honor of the Jews who were butchered in the Holocaust. I was also very lucky to be able to visit the German Ministry of Defense and the American Embassy, and listen to presentations on German troop deployments and American/German relations respectively. Both were extremely interesting. Perhaps one of the most fascinating things about Berlin is the clear divid that remains between the West and the East. The East remains older and more worn down in appearance, while the West is extremely modern. One can still see a line where the Wall stood, and on both sides the architecture draws one back to the Cold War stand off. It is also interesting to be walking down the street and to see a statue of Marx and Engels in a park, as well as the face of Lenin on a wall in East Berlin.

This weekend I will also be skiing (or probably falling) in the Alps. It should be a good time.