There's no berg like Heidelberg

All right, an earlier adventure of this week...a day trip to Heidelberg! Please don't miss my adventures to Koblenz and Winningen in the post below ; )

On Wednesday the 21st there was an academic holiday that was essentially an exposition of the university, so there were no classes. Our exchange program scheduled for us a trip to the city of Heidelberg, which is about three hours south and east of here by the bus. The ride there was pretty uneventful...I hadn't slept much the night before, and I tried to nap as much as I could on the way.

We arrived in the city around 11 and immediately started a guided tour that would last about 2.5 hours...ugh. It was interesting, but it was definitely too much, especially because I really didn't want to listen to people complain as we were walking up stairs to see a castle. The ruins there are the largest in Germany, if I am correct, or at least they're really, really big. It's such a cool thing to see...I know this is a recurring theme in my entries, but we just don't have anything quite like this back home.

Castle with people for perspective.

So the castle was struck with lightning way back in the day, and it started a fire that eventually ignited the gunpowder stores underneath this tower, and the dramatic effects are pretty obvious, I think. Take a look at just how thick those walls are!

A 220,000 L wine keg in the castle cellar. mmmm....

The city of Heidelberg was actually very, very pretty. It's nestled in between the hills and a river (one that's not the Rhein), and is the one of the few cities its size that wasn't damaged in WWII (in contrast to Koblenz). Much of the architecture there is still hundreds of years old, and the university in Heidelberg is the oldest in Germany. After our city tour we made our tracks on the streets and set out to find some much needed food. We ended up at a classy café, and I had my first cheeseburger, excluding McDonalds, which doesn't count, since leaving home. It was actually very, very good. They knew what they were doing. Jake and I split from the group after eating and walked around the city on our own. We stopped in some churches and the university library, and in general tried not to get too warm, considering how hot and humid it's been lately.

A statue dedicated to the chemist whose namesake is attributed to a common laboratory heating device. That's the only clue you get!

Towards the end of the day, the two of us ended up at a small brewery in the downtown area. There we indulged ourselves in fresh beer and I personally added a pretzel to the snack, which was very refreshing at the end of the day. Part of the adventure, though, was the man at the table next to us who noticed that we were speaking in English. It turned out that he also was from America, Virginia to be specific. He had a massive accent which came out while he was telling us about his experiences living on the army base in Mannheim. He was so awkward though...you could just tell he was on a different wavelength than the rest of us. The man would say something and then just stare at us, even though his thought wasn't complete yet. It seemed as though he felt he was doing us a service by telling us the only way to learn German was to live in the country for a while, which was belied by the fact his German was not that good, at least his pronunciation was atrocious. His advice would have been really meaningful had I not already been living in Germany. *sigh* it kind of makes me nervous that there's people out there like that, and I'm entrusting the security of my country in their hands. Oi.

Shortly thereafter we left Heidelberg to return to our fair Bonn. The bus ride home featured more of me sleeping, and a group of people playing charades, which I really could have done without.

The next day, Thursday, my friend Arielle from Ripon (well, Skokie, but we go to school together) came to visit. She was staying with her sister and sister's German boyfriend, Sven, in Düsseldorf. The three of them came down for the day to see Bonn, and I met up with them for coffee and a walk around the city. It was really nice to see a good friend from back home in my city (yes, it's mine ;) Her sister and Sven were really friendly, and we had a good time bumming around. Following in suit with the adventures in Heidelberg, we encountered another dude who noticed us talking in English. He really was a dude, even though he looked like was about 50 or 60. He talked with a drawl and would interject the word "man" into his speech wherever he could. He was from the D.C. area, but apparently grew up in Colorado. Our new friend, Steve, was very excited to hear that Sven was a German, and did nothing but fulfill all the stereotypes that people have of Americans. He spoke loudly, fast, about nothing intelligent, and seemed to form a fast bond with us even though he didn't know us at all. Not to sound stand-offish or anything, he just wasn't very tactful in his conversation, and fortunately we were able to escape him after a short conversation.

And that's that, but more to come of the two weeks previous...maaan.

Shalom

Jon

Rain drops keep falling on my head...

Oh mon dieu, it's been a long time since I have written in here...about three weeks I believe since the last significant entry. It's been a fairly eventful chunk of time, I must say, which means I have a lot I can write about, a lot that I've forgotten about, and my major excuse for not publishing anything earlier.

First, just to put you guys at ease, I did get my hair cut. I walked into Frankie's Römer Friseur (Frankie's Roman Hair Salon) with a picture of myself after a fresh haircut and told him I wanted my hair done as such. I think he did a fairly good job, at the very least I was content with the way it turned out, and that's what's important. I also have a slightly different beard variation, nothing too exciting, but I'm feeling refreshed and renewed to endure the summer heat.

For the sake of the clarity of my memory, I'm actually going to start with more recent events, and then work my way backwards. Yesterday my friend Jake and I took a train ride down to the nearby city of Koblenz. The name is derived from latin confluenza, which as you may guess would mean confluence in Enlgish, as the city is at the point where the Mosel River flows into the Rhein. I was pretty excited to go, considering it's prime wine country in Germany, but I muss confess that I was a little disappointed once I got there. We didn't have a specific plan of what we wanted to do, but even just walking around, there wasn't a whole lot to see. The city was flattened during WWII and was rebuilt ASAP right afterwards, so much of the architecture is very utilatrian. None the less, there was still some classic German buildings which were pretty cool.

One of the unique parts of Koblenz is the Deutsche Ecke, or German Corner, which is right where the two rivers meet. There's an enormous monument to Kaiser Wilhelm I there, which is pretty impressive to see in person, although the throngs of children that were there on a tour detracted from it a bit...which was kind of the problem with Koblenz. There was always something that detracted from a real cool sight, whether it be a group of cyclists standing in front of you, power beer stands next to a monument, or trucks in front, well, pretty much everything. It turns out that they were gearing up for a festival and a marathon, so it was a little atypical, but I am not enticed to go back to the city at all.

The Kaiser Wilhelm I Monument, compete with....tent and power box?
Oh, and click the picture to enlarge it, you can see a man standing in the monument, which gives you a good idea of the scale. It was huge.

One of the neat parts about Koblenz, though, is that the geography there is considerably different to what it's like by me, only 45 min up the Rhein. It's very hilly down there, and there are castles and castle ruins all along the slopes on the river banks. It's such a cool sight, one that you really wouldn't see in America.

After bumming around for a while, Jake and I made are way to the village of Winningen, which his father had explored on an earlier trip here. Stepping out of the trainstation there was like walking into a different world. It was full of tiny old houses on the slopes of a hill. The streets were narrow, and vines stretched across the streets to link the houses on either sides. It was fantastically beautiful. Some houses had the bottoms of barrels imbedded in the wall, indicating that wine was produced or sold there. And that's what the village was all about: wine. It was really obvious, though, that tourists weren't common around these parts, but people were still very friendly to us on the streets.






Jake and I walked around soaking it in for a while, than afterwards we stopped in at our first wine house, which had terrific atmosphere. The room we were in was opened to the outdoors, and the wooden walls were covered with vines. We sat at a table next to a group of cyclers, and were stared at throughout the time there by the people sitting behind us. The English speaking definitely made us stick out, but that was okay because we were there for the wine, which turned out to be just as good as everything else in Winningen.

We had a glass and a plate of bread and cheese and thenmoved down to another wine house down the road, which was setup kind of like a garden with tables in it, complete with massive rabbits in hutch on oneside ; ) The wine there was even better than at the first place we stopped, although service was slow enough to bore a snail. We probably would have had at least another glass a piece if our waitress came around more often, but it just didn't happen. While we were there, it started to rain pretty hard, and all the tables under cover got taken pretty quickly, so Jake and I just moved our chairs under the overhang and scooted a plastic crate in between and continued our wine sampling. I tell you, Mom, there's nothing like drinking Mosel Riesling in the Mosel River Valley. It's pretty damn cool.

The final stop.

And that's about it...we hopped on the train and headed home, which took much longer than it should have because of poor weather, I believe. It was probably one of the more worthwhile days that I had here, though, and definitely the best in terms of amount of satisfaction per euro. I would be very disappointed if I didn't make it back there before I went home.

Okay, that's it for this post, stay tuned for the next! Much love.

Jon

Don King is my hairstylist....

How far I've come....

I had the realization this morning that I just crossed the two month mark in Germany....it's incredible to think of time going by so fast. The next three months are going to whiz by, especially judging from my experience of doing a summer program in another city. It's not a thought that I relish, because I'm really not going to enjoy leaving this place behind when I step aboard the plane July 24th. All that aside, I thought I'd take a moment to go over some of the impressions that I that I have of my current situation in life.

• Schnitzel - I'm not sure what I'm going to do in a country where schnitzel is not a consistently available dietary item. There's some days where I think to myself, "Jon, it's been a long day, you should really get yourself a schnitzel." And then it happens. There's schnitzel in front of me, and the world is in order again. Today was one of those days. Thank you schnitzel.
• Failed German Stereotypes - I cannot say enough how off American stereotypes of Germans are. Beer, pretzels, lederhosen, polka, kraut, sausage. Yes, sausage dishes are more common here than in American, and maybe so is kraut. You can, indeed, purchase pretzels bakeries. And beer is pretty significant. But man, if you really think that's what defines the German people, you need to get over here (and not go to Bavaria) and find out with this country is about.
  
• The Mullet - Sweet mother of all that is holy. Disgusting. And it's here. And it's popular. I think I vomited a little bit in my mouth. It is the hip hair style within a certain sector of people here, and it's horrifying. It's not what you think of when the word mullet skips across your neurons... it's a stylized, gelled, multi-colored monstrosity that rests upon people's heads and makes me cringe when I walk through the streets. I try to be accepting and open-minded, but it's so hard to think that mullet could actually be viewed as an attractive thing. (Note: No comments about my own hair, which has seen no cutting instrument in the past two and a half months. This baby's on a roll...)
• Beer - German beer is really good, there's just no getting around that fact. And it's cheap. Dollar per unit volume of beer, you get a much better deal here, especially for the quality of malted beverage you receive. So-so German beer is like good quality American beer, with a few exceptions. All that withstanding, I must say that my favorite beer here is Newcastle, which is not German. But overall, German beer is grade A.
• Bonn - Is gorgeous. I love the way this city looks, and from my understanding it's not even all that spectacular in comparison with other German cities. It's so green and verdant, I can't help but feel that it energizes my personality. It's definitely not the forests and lakes of the Northwoods, but it has a distinct charm and elegance of it's own. Two paraphrase the Emperor's New Groove, when the sun hits the city right, it sings. Or maybe that's just me.
• Old architecture - A little more universal. The old buildings and structures around here are really cool, and they allude to a history and tradition that is much older and much more established than those back home.

• The language - I love the language here, and it's simultaneously one of my biggest joys and my crippling frustration. German is a really cool way of communicating...the way it sounds and the way you use it are just really satisfying. Granted, it my not sound as silky and seductive as French, and it doesn't have the ridiculous vocabulary of English (we're huge). On that last point, German may not have an established word for every thing in English, but you can use existing stems, pre/suffixes to convey a remarkable amount of information.
  But it's so damn hard! I feel like my personality evaporates half the time I talk in German because I can't act like Jon Paretsky...I'm too busy trying to figure out if I know the verb the expression of my thought requires. The program I'm really enables me to make the most of having American friends, which doesn't not increase my German skill. I use German with a few friends, in the classroom, and definitely in the lab...but everyone who I have communicated with can use English better than I can use German. My chances of becoming fluent while I'm here are around nill, but I'm definitely gaining an appreciation for the Sprache, language.

• America - Oh America. There's too many thoughts associated with the name of my home country, it's kind of like (4th of July) fireworks in my head. Some good, some bad, a lot of in between. A lot of it being the way it is. I'm very proud of being an American, but I think it's in the way that anyone is proud of being from the country of their birth. One thing that astounds me here is how little people really know about American people (look who's talking, I just wrote about how little we know about Germans, but bear with me if you please (or bare with me, if you feel like streaking (oh English...))).
  
  What is my nationality? American, obviously. But what is my ethnic heritage? German, Norwegian, Polish, English. Uh, no American in there. I have cousins in Israel. My friend Jessica von Hertsenberg (also American), strong German ancestry (go figure...), as with Jake Eschenberg, Jennifer Brussow. My girlfriend, Rachel Resop, has Polish ancestry, and my buddy Bryan Nell also German and Norwegian. Some of my great grandparents were immigrant farmers; I have a school book in norwegian from distant grandma. Where are we from? Hardly any of us have roots in America. Caucasian Americans are from all over the world, and mostly from Europe. Look at the names of some our cities: New York (from the english York), Ripon (where my college is), also english. Rheinlander (wager a guess, I dare you), and Berlin. Los Angeles, which is Spanish, if I'm correct. Marquette, Eau Claire, Fond du Lac, Praire du Chien all are French. (Want a real Ameircan name? Try Milwaukee, Oconomowac, Waukesha, or Waukana. Look English to you?) (I didn't mean for this to exclude the African-American population in American, but
  
  As American's we draw a rich cultural history from the European settlers who established our country, and definitely more so in certain regions (I'm guessing Germantown has a bigger German influence than oh, say, Atlanta.) As children in America we make pie charts detailing our family ancestry. Many Americans identify strongly with their culture and tradition carried on through their family, even if they haven't been to the country where it came from. At the same time there is definitely a distinct American culture, which is rich with an abundance of sub-cultures. In comparison with Western European country, our nation is huge, both in area and population. 300 Million Americans.... that's more than the populations of the Germany, the UK, France, Italy, and Spain put together. Inconceivable! Think of the different cultures of those European nations, and look then at all the people who stand under the stars and stripes (okay, we're a weird bunch...). There is remarkable diversity in America, but it shares the blanket of our American English. I could travel a thousand miles East or West from Wisconsin and still be on American soil. It's just so different from the way things are in Europe though.
  
  Where is this rant going? The biggest, hardest, most complex part of me being here is dealing with my cultural identity, and then also taking in how other people view my culture. American culture, or at the very least the culture of the English language pervades what I have seen of Germany. Our music is on the radio, and it's not even our old music....what's hip here is just behind the cutting edge of what people are listening to back home. Some of our clothing brands are here, and I constantly see people wearing Abercrombie and Fitch, Hollister, and even American Eagle (gag me). McDonalds, Coke, Subway, KFC, Burger King...okay, capitalism and globalization. Greys Anatomy and Dr. House. The thing is that it seems that so many people here take in parts of American culture, but at the same time, people really don't care about or for us. I've heard such a weird gamut of stereotypes about us... that we're sex-crazed....what? or that we all wear uniforms in high school...huh? Where do stereotypes come from....the media, for sure, supplies a great deal. But damn it, when has Hollywood ever been a consistently good portrayal of what real American life is like? Other people are content to stereotype us based on our involvement in the world, or our berserk politics, I shudder at the thought.
  
  But there's so much more behind us than that! Just like there's so much more behind Germans than pretzels and lederhosen, or mimes and crying in the French culture...it's a part of their cultures, but it isn't the culture of the whole country. (French comment delivered with nothing but love, Coraline). Yes there are some crusty, weird, rude, crass, despicable people in America. But they're everywhere in every culture.
  
  I am American. I am no better, yet no worse than anyone else. But American is just a part of who I am, because at the end of the day, whether I put my head to rest in Wisconsin, Germany, Spain, or France, I am Jon Paretsky.

Peace and love.

There and Back Again... A Paretsky's Tale

Wow, so it's been a long time since I've updated and let anyone know what's going on in my life. Sorry about that...last week Wednesday was my birthday, and events preceding and succeeding that day kept me fairly occupied. First and foremost, thanks to everyone who sent me birthday greetings, whether through the mail or electronic. I had a great birthday, fairly low key, but I was priviliged to spend it with the good friends, and that's all I want. Wednesday we were at James Joyce, a favorite Irish Pub of ours, where we ate pizza drank some fermented beverage, and watched a soccer game on the big screen. On the walk home, Jake and Jessica took me to an italian restaurant to get me tiramisu for birthday cake. It was a great evening.

I include the events of the following evening purely for the delight of my beloved Mother : ) Because most of us had class on Thursday morning, not many people were too interested in staying out too late on Wednesday. So we made up plans for Thursday night as well. Bönnsch, our favorite restaurant which brews an amazing beer by the same name, sells small kegs for the person on the go. A handful of my homies and I decided it would be cool to get one and take advantage of one of Germany's blessings: being able to legally drink outside. I'm sure few of you really care to know many details about this, but the grace of the story comes in the actually process of obtaining the @#$%! thing. It involved paying a 100 euro depost (!!!!!) for this tiny keg. While Jake and I were checking it out, the Bartender was giving us instructions on how to work the tap. Translated, it went something like this:

Bartender: Do you have a hammer?
Jon: Hammer? No, we don't.
Bartender: Okay, so take your hammer, and hit the tap once very hard.
*Jon and Jake exchange a confused look*

Jake and the Bane of the Hammerless

Not ones to be discouraged by the lack of a key component to the evenings success, we took our keg and marched merrily to the park where we were planning on enjoying a lovely evening. The keg had other things in mind. I had placed the tap in the recess where it belonged and tried to push it in, but to no avail. Obviously we needed a hammer. Sweet. Hey, idea! We could just hit the tap in by slamming it against the concrete berm! Great thinking, Jon! As I picked up the keg to manipulate it into position, Jake gives his oppinion:
"This looks really dangerous. I think I like it!"
No sooner had he finished speaking did the keg impact with concrete, pushing the tap only partially in, which resulted in a fine spray of beer to shoot out around the edges. I struggled valiantly to push the tap in the rest of the way, but a moments slip was all it took to douse me and Jake in a golden cascade of malted goodness. In public. I vehemently pushed the tap in the rest of the way, which was no problem with the seal broken, and went to wash off in a fountain.

Not long afterwards, it started to rain ; )

Another big event in my life lately...I went to Scotland last weekend to visit my buddy Bryan. I left early on Friday morning from the Cologne airport. It was the first time being in a plane since coming to the Fatherland, and it was strangely nostalgic. Interestingly enough, it's very easy to get through security here. There's so much pressure back home to filter out "terrorists", or my friend Jenan who has arabic ancestry, it makes flying that much more stressful. Here it was pretty chill. My flight was comfortable and short, and I arrived in Edinburgh without incident. I immediately found myself immersed in an English speaking culture, which I hadn't really thought much about, and it caught me off guard. I withdrew some money in Pounds from the money machine and made it on my merry way.

Getting to St. Andrews from Edinburgh was an interesting feet. It wasn't defined by anything spectacular, but I was dead tired and terrified I was going to fall asleep on the way there and end up in, I don't know, the arctic circle or whatever is left north of Scotland. Fortunately for me, I had an old couple next to me who was helping me keep track of the villages we were passing, and I made it St. A's just fine.

To spare a lot of gory details, I met up with Bryan not too long after I arrived, and we hung out and chatted till some of his friends showed up to cook dinner. We ate, of course, a very fine Scottish delicacy: Haggis! It was great : )

Mmm dinner : ) Haggis!

Bryan Nell's Seal of Approval

It tasted like amazingly flavorful meatloaf, and we had a great time preparing and eating it.

The next day found Bryan and I exploring the small and quaint city. There were lots of gorgeous sights to be seen, not the least of which was the North Sea, the beach being removed only about 50 meters from Bryans apartment. It was gorgeous! The weather was so so in the morning, but after spending a considerable amount of time in the botanical garden, it started to rain. We made our way to a pub to take shelter from the elements and satisfied our hunger with sandwiches and a blessed pint of real Guiness from fair Dublin itself. Upon leaving the pub, we were surprised to find that the moist weather of before had transformed into a pristine and gorgeous day! I'll take it. We walked around the city some more, and eventually ended up at the old golf course. The old golf course, like, the first golf course ever. See below....

For some reason this little bridge is apparently pretty famous.

Afterwards we walked back along the coast a little bit, taking in some of the ruins along the way, such as this castle:

We ended up at the ruins of a Cathedral that had been sacked during the Protestant Reformation (my religious heritage opening a can on Bryan's ; )) We were able to climb up a tower that afforded a fantastic view of the city. And I don't have any good pictures from it....


And that's about it for excitement. We hung out with Bryan's friends again and made sushi for dinner (pretty simple), and I left early the next morning to return home. Logistics got a little obscured by changes in the sunday bus schedule, but a taxi driver was more than willing to take my 10 pounds to transport me to the train station. I met an older Czech woman there, and I helped her figure out the train system there and carried her bags between trains and buses until we finally parted ways at the Edinburgh. It made the day go by faster to have a pseudo tavelling companion. All in all it was a good trip...I really enjoyed Scotland, but the best part by far was just being able to hang out with my best friend.

Something significant that I took away from my trip was that I really missed Germany while I was away. I missed being to talk in German, for one thing, but also the food, the drink, the way people act, the stores and such. Maybe I'm just growing comfortable here, but I noticed a lot of little differences being in St. Andrew's. For one thing, people dress very differently...I saw more exposed midriffs on my weekend than I have in the months I've been at Germany. People seem to dress and act with more propriety here. It's just an observation, but I'm down with that. It's good to be back here.

I have another week of school, and then I'm off for a while...we get a break for Pentecost ; ) Rachel, my girlfriend, is coming to visit me, and we're going to make our way over to Grenada, Spain, to check out some other aspects of european culture. I'm really curious to see how that works out, but I'm excited to see my lady!

All right, I'm out. I need to go make myself some din din. In closing, I leave you with one final picture that I took while taking a walk back when Bryan was visiting me. I love it, but it will need a little translation to be fully appreciated:

Parking only for visiters
House of the Lutheran Church
Wine Restaurant

Hmmm.... : )

Much love.