Category: Germany

Time flies. My final week in Cologne is now in the books. Just like that, my summer abroad has come to an end. My last week abroad was just as exciting and full of adventure as any other week!

The week started on Sunday with a nice breakfast and conversation together with Klaus and his wife, Monica. After breakfast we hit the road and headed to Aachen, a German city right on the boarder of Belgium and just a short drive away from Cologne.

In Aachen we walked around the old town, where we visited two more beautiful churches. Later, we walked through a cemetery for American soldiers from World War II. We ended the outing with Kaffee und Kuchen, coffee and cake!

For my final class on Friday, we visited the Amtsgericht, the local courthouse for Cologne. It was cool to see how the justice system in Germany compared to America while also putting my improved language skills to work in the real world!

The final week was full of goodbyes. I’ve made a number of friends in Cologne – from in class and outside – and saying goodbye is never easy. A German phrase I recently learned made the goodbyes a bit easier and filled them with a sense of hope: Man sieht sich immer zweimal im Leben!

The phrase literally translates to something like “You always see each other twice in life” or “You always meet twice in life.” It can be taken to mean that you shouldn’t burn bridges, since chances are you’ll see your acquaintances at least once more in the course of your lifetime. I take it to mean something more: Even though I’m leaving Germany for now, there’s always a good chance that I’ll return and reconnect. It’s a small world, and I’m confident this won’t be the final “Auf Wiedersehen” as I leave Germany.

One day I visited a modern art gallery called the Lensbach house. It houses the world’s finest collection of art from the “Blue Rider” movement. Championed in Munich by Russian painter Wassily Kandinsky, and Germans Franz Marc, August Macke, and Gabriele Münter, the movement focused more on the influence of pure color in eliciting human emotion rather than form itself – the first step toward the formless creations of the Moderns. It was a fantastic exhibition, but right when the museum was closing I had a very interesting conversation with an 63-year-old Armenian museum worker named Levo (Leo, in English). I always love staying at galleries close to closing time, because they are the least busy. This conversation started with Levo telling me I needed to scat because they were closing soon. I think I tried to inject some comedic relief to start a conversation and it went from there. I told him I speak some German and he immediately opened up, telling me about how he was very disappointed with his life in Armenia, and decided to follow his older children to Germany in search of a better life. His son and daughter moved to Germany to start a business, and he came with, living with them for awhile but eventually finding his own place. He said his wife passed 6 years ago, and since then he’s been quite lonely, saying that Germany is fun if you’re young. While his story seemed quite somber, this statement intrigued me. He said that if you’re an older immigrant in Germany, people don’t pay much attention to you. Being young in a new land, like his children were when they came, has loads of opportunities in store, even if small streaks of prejudice exist. But he mentioned principally his lack of job opportunities outside of service, as well as his regional disconnect from his own Armenian diaspora. He said it is hard to integrate, because most Armenian immigrants are much younger than him. Pockets of familiarity exist in Munich, he said, but the biggest road block for his ultimate prosperity was a profound isolation in a society that didn’t, I think, outwardly try to isolate people of his demographic. After a few minutes of conversation his colleague came over and passive-aggressively told us to part, so the conversation ended rather abruptly. But it stuck with me. Levo’s courage in leaving his home country over the age of 50 had seemed to bring him more distress than prosperity, but he persisted. I know on paper his story seems sad, but he presented his short narrative in a really matter-of-fact tone. I don’t think Levo is a sad man, I don’t think he has any regrets. He was at peace with his decision to leave Armenia, but was brutally honest with me about his current state of affairs. This really got me thinking about the nuances of immigration. Many factors played into his situation – the city he chose to settle down in (Munich is quite conservative for a large city), his age, and his particular ethnicity. It got me thinking about older immigrants and the particular struggle their age poses. These are questions I need to think about further, but Levo’s story really opened my eyes to the array of struggles immigrants face.

While I didn’t formally interview three people of different ages, I have had an innumerable number of conversations about US culture and politics, especially as compared with Germany. My Guesthouse owner, a woman 60 years of age, expressed extreme discontent about the US pulling out of the Paris Climate Agreement. She is generally fond of Americans and the United States, but this political news opened up a new can of worms of her views on the US’s actions to combat climate change. She complained about our lack of perspective as a nation with a threefold punch of unprecedented power, influence, and geographic isolation. She made the case that the US is far behind Europe in creating a society less based around consumption and more around minimalism. I think my main response to this is that the US, throughout it’s history, has been arguably the purest capitalist state ever produced. I would cut us a little bit of slack in the transition from rampant consumerism, a stereotype for which we are widely known, to a more frugal society. Nonetheless, I think we can learn a lot from the green way Germans live – for they are a much older nation with a distinctly different history than us. Another conversation about this topic that struck a tone with me was with some Russian kids I became friends with. They held more progressive views about the current state of the Russian federation and had really nothing negative to say about the United States, surprisingly. They all mentioned that Russia, and by extension Putin, runs under the false mask of democracy. They said that dissenters of Putin are silenced, and media is highly censored behind the scenes. This lead to a discussion about the volatility and intensity of the US media. My friends said they are amazed at what our media is allowed to and does say, on both sides of the aisle. They said they love consuming American news media because it is, in their view, a pure crusade to make every perspective available. Yes, sometimes, to disavow and tear down others, but they were awestruck about savagery with which our media functions. A hot topic was Colbert’s daily lambasting of Trump. The dichotomy between our countries’ respective media approaches definitely sparked interest from both sides – mine and theirs.

The title of this post “Immer in Bewegung” roughly means “always on the move” and it sums up pretty well my activities over the past week. On Tuesday I hopped on a train and headed 45 minutes out to the nearby city of Augsburg. Augsburg is a great city filled with history and offers a bit more of a relaxed pace than Munich. It played an important role in the past as a meeting place of the Imperial Diet and was also the home of Bertolt Brecht. My chief interest in going there was to visit its incredible medieval cathedral, which contains the oldest stained glass windows in all of Europe. Although badly damaged by Allied bombs during the war, the windows and much of the artwork survived. The attached Diocesan museum had incredible artifacts, including the cathedral’s original 11th century wooden doors. While wandering around the city, I haphazardly entered an evangelical church and encountered a group of American Lutheran pilgrims from Indiana and Illinois. It turned out the church and convent was where Martin Luther had been imprisoned for a short while in 1518. There’s history at every turn in Germany!

On Thursday, I took the S-Bahn out to the town of Tutzing to hike the Ilkahöhe. One of the benefits of staying in one place for an extended period of time (as opposed to standard on-the-move tourism) is that I’ve been able to see many places not commonly visited by regular tourists on a schedule. The Ilkahöhe is one such example. The trail is about 7 miles roundtrip and leads up to a mountain overlooking the Starnberger See and a chain of the Alps. It’s an extremely peaceful place with cows grazing, families biking, and older couples taking a stroll. There was a small pretty parish church and a convenient beer garden there as well. I sat on the lookout vista of the Ilkahöhe and spent several hours reading.

On Friday afternoon, I grabbed a Flixbus down to Innsbruck. Although it was pretty rainy, I spent the evening exploring around the old town and the nearby University district. I stayed the night at a great local hostel that also serves as a work training center for disabled individuals. The next morning, on the recommendation of the Rick Steves tour book, I took the bus about a half hour to a small town called Hall in Tirol. It was very pretty and had an interesting coin minting museum and a beautiful basilica. I enjoyed eating a delicious Wurst at the ongoing farmer’s market and watching daily life in a regular Austrian village. I went back to Innsbruck and spent a few more hours exploring, visiting the Golden Roof museum and the St. Jakob Dom before going to an English Mass at the Jesuitkirche. After three weeks of only attending German liturgies, it felt a bit weird hearing it in English again.

On Sunday I needed to relax a bit, so I stuck around Munich and visited the Egyptian Art Museum and the Deutsches Museum. After a nice Currywurst lunch, I headed down to the Isar and spent the rest of the day lounging, reading, and swimming at the river.

Classes are going great! I’m getting a lot more comfortable with my vocabulary and speaking abilities.

Last week was an exciting one! Being immersed in the language has helped my German speaking skills and confidence improve, and the language classes are going great. After class last Thursday, a group took a trip to the famous Schokolade Museum, or Chocolate Museum, right in the middle of Cologne! Not only did we learn about the history of chocolate cultivation and consumption, but they also displayed a chocolate packaging machine in which the chocolate is poured, hardened, separated, and bundled up for delivery! Pope Francis even made an appearance as a chocolate mold on display!

Of course, there was also a giant chocolate fountain, and I did get to sample some as well!

Perhaps one of the best memories of last week, even better than chocolate, was a conversation I had with Sugras, a 23-year-old Mongolian native who has been living in Germany for over a year. He lives in the same house as me, two doors down, but we actually ran into each other by chance at the Straßenbahn stop down the street on Saturday evening.

We went back to the house and Sugras offered to make dinner. He prepared Chinese beef dumplings — who would have thought I would get the chance to enjoy Chinese cuisine in Germany?! As he made dinner, we had a good, long conversation which covered many topics. He talked about his experience as a minority in Germany — that is, a non-native German.

To him, many Germans appear cold at first, especially in public places like the Straßenbahn or on the street. People don’t smile at him, and it would feel out of line for anyone to talk to a stranger. In my experience in the U.S. and especially the Midwest, by contrast, it’s not completely out of the ordinary for someone to have a conversation with a total stranger as if they’re good friends. He wishes people would be a bit more friendly. Interestingly, he has found that when he speaks English – and not German – people pay more attention to him and are more willing to talk to him.

We also talked about politics and religion; Donald Trump is always an interesting topic of conversation for people who get a chance to talk to an American about it! Sugras, like many Mongolians, practices Shamanism, a spiritual religion which pays special respect to ancestors and forefathers. Interestingly, Sugras had only a vague idea of what Christianity was, and offered some views of religious conflict after I gave him a brief overview of Jesus’s story.

I’ve also had some conversations with Niyyat, another tenant in our house and my next-door neighbor, who comes from Azerbaijan. He speaks primarily English as he’s studying IT networking at a local university. He commented on his experience telling Germans where he’s from — most people can’t locate his country on a map, he says. He finds this issue extends beyond just Azerbaijan, and notes that Germans struggle with other countries’ geographical location in his experience as well. If people were more educated about where countries are located and what’s going on in the world, he thinks xenophobia would be much less prevalent. For instance, German UN forces are in Syria; if people realized this, they might be more welcoming toward Syrian refugees.

It’s always fascinating to learn about how people from other countries view the world, and Germany is a country full of migrants today, offering a unique opportunity for cultural exchange. Food, ideas, and conversations are always great, and Germany is a great place for all of those things!

I’ve had a very full couple of days in the past week. It’s awesome to have my afternoons and weekends free to explore Munich and the surrounding countryside. Last Thursday, acting on a recommendation from another student at the CDC, I rented a bike and rode several miles in both directions along the Isar River. It was a very hot day out, so hundreds of families were out relaxing and swimming in the river. I took a little swim myself to cool off and join in the fun. It’s very interesting to see the various social differences between Germany and the United States. For example, many people (both young and old) sunbathing along the river were naked and probably half the swimmers were skinny dipping – there just doesn’t seem to a comparable social stigma about the body here in Germany.  Having a bike allowed me to see a lot of new areas of the city and it was great fun.

On Friday afternoon, I caught a bus to Salzburg after class. I explored the town throughout the evening and visited most of the main tourist sites. I enjoyed having a whole conversation with another man in German as I hiked up to the Fortress. I’m getting a lot better at using the language conversationally. I stayed the night at a youth hostel – where they were conveniently playing “The Sound of Music.” The next morning, I got up really early and went for a run around the Kapuzinerberg and stopped in one of the churches I passed and was fortunate enough to hear the cloistered Franciscan monks singing their morning Lauds. It was a cool reminder that there is still a part of Salzburg removed from the tourist shops and sightseeing tours. I caught a bus to Berchtesgaden to visit the Kehlsteinhaus (in English known as the Eagle’s Next), Hitler’s former mountaintop retreat. It was quite crowded but the skies were fairly clear, making for incredible views. I had a nice conversation with an Alabama fan who saw my ND shirt and jokingly gave me grief about our historically bad season this year. I caught an evening bus back to Salzburg and got in pretty late.

Early on Sunday morning I trekked back to the bus station and headed out to Garmisch. It’s a fairly small vacation town about an hour south of Munich famous as the site of the 1936 Winter Olympics and as a major site for Ski Jumpers. I attended Mass at the big local parish and was able to understand a fair amount of the homily, but I was more interested to see how everyone there was dressed. Most all of the men were wearing Lederhosen and the women were wearing beautiful traditional Dirndl dresses. It was cool to see that Bavarians really wear these cultural outfits as dress clothes, as most of the men in Munich I had seen in Lederhosen were either waiters or employed in the tourism industry. I trekked up to the old Olympic Stadium and hiked through a geographical wonder called the Partnachklamm Gorge and explored the surrounding trails. There were many German couples and families out hiking as well on that beautiful Sunday.

I’m now in my third week of classes – time is flying by way to fast. I’m so incredibly thankful for this opportunity and I’m trying to make the most of everyday.