Munich

While last weekend was an adventure in Ireland, this (marginal) weekend I spent perusing Chris and Molly's city of residence. Owing to some scheduling and price hassles, I flew in Sunday morning and left Tuesday, so I managed to come over right in the middle of their classes. While I only have fond memories of having classes every day to remind me what it is like, I understand the amount of hassle it requires to take in a visitor, especially when you have more mundane things to occupy your mind. So thanks again, guys, for all your hospitality despite the circumstances.

Making what seemed to be the best of two bad decisions, I decided to try to stay up to catch my 4 A.M. bus to the airport rather than trying to get some sleep and risk missing the alarm. As a result, my only sleep that first night came from about an hour on the bus to the airport and an hour and a half or so on the plane. Perhaps because of these circumstances, I mistook the directions which had been given to me by Chris and got off at the wrong bus stop: the main train station in Munich. For many people this would be reason to start panicking, but given that I was quite tired, I wasn't too worried about it. Apparently other people were, though. I received a call from Andrea, still in Oxford, relaying Molly's worry about me. Having received this call, I decided it was a better plan to just wait in the train station rather than get on the U-Bahn where I would lose reception and have Molly really worried. So, for about an hour I waited. When Molly finally did call me, she gave me the same instructions I would have followed without her. While I can't speak German, I can navigate underground trains. It's like music and karate: an international language.

Having finally arrived at Molly's apartment, the three of us (with Chris) decided on our next course of action; it was a decidedly somber next step. Visiting the reconstruction of a concentration camp is not supposed to be a light and fun outing. The only thing it made me do was think; admittedly something more difficult having only had two and a half hours sleep. The exhibit in the museum segment was entitled: "How did the Nazi party come to power?" but that is at once nearly trivial and yet beyond a museum's ability to answer; this is especially true when coupled with the companion question of Dachau: "How could a modern nation, with all its benefits, systematically, coldly, cruelly, calculatingly murder millions of people who had not lifted a finger against it?" Even Stalin had (or imagined he had) better reasons for his great purges. The holocaust was simply an absolute and needless destruction. While I do not believe that there can be "no art after Auschwitz" as Adorno maintains, I found the art pieces designed as a memorial at Dachau were repellent to me. I wondered why; then I realized that the form of Dachau matched its function. The camp was lifeless: the buildings all at cold right angles, the grass decaying and dying, the paths open and without scale, the guard towers anonymous and forbidding, the wall blank, the empty expanse open to bitter winds. Adding artwork was like putting perfume in a coffin, in order to mask the smell of death, but more than that: to add scent in order to reanimate the body with a little life. This memorial did not need artwork to display its emotion. The camp was enough, as a kind of anti-art meant to make one dull and to deconstruct the person within. After experiencing that, I can add my voice to those who say, nie wieder! Never again!

The next day, I slept in. After having some more problems with finding places on the U-bahn thanks to Chris, we decided to just take a look around some German bookstores before heading to the primary entertainment of the night. The bookstores, I have to mention, rekindled my desire to learn German after I learn ancient Greek. Chris and I met Molly coming out of class at this point, and we went and had some truly German food: sausages, sauerkraut, and a beer; Bavaria at its finest. After this, Chris and I headed to the Rodrigo y Gabriela concert.

Rodrigo y Gabriela, for those who do not know, are a pair of acoustic guitarists who got sick of their heavy metal band and traded in their electric guitars for nylon stringed guitars when they realized they could do more tricks with them. They are probably most famous for their cover of Stairway to Heaven, something to check out on Youtube if you have not. They are two of the finest and most creative guitarists I have ever heard or heard of. They have created an ideal musical situation, with Gabriela playing rhythm guitar in a style I believe to be truly unmatched (she just as often plays percussion on the side of her guitar as she does her incredible strums on the strings) while Rodrigo plays lead with ample nods to his heavy metal roots. Both of them have invented (as far as I'm aware) techniques; but then they are experts at these techniques as well. While many of their songs are not structurally or harmonically impressive (not that that always produces good musical results) their technique is beyond masterful, and is pulled off with a hint of sprezzatura which can only be found in those who truly love and have invested thousands of hours into their instruments. On the one hand, seeing them was slightly depressing: I have so far to go, still! On the other hand, it was inspiring. I want to be able to play like that someday, in a different style, sure, but with their finesse, confidence, and technical ability. More inspiring, still, was the fact that Rodrigo threw his pick out into the audience after the first set and it practically fell into my hands.

Tuesday came with a trip around Munich's historical and traditional shopping center. The markets were fantastic, but I'm not sure how willing I would be to get on the U-bahn every day to get fresh fruit. Apparently, Molly and Chris need to get on the U-bahn anyway, just to get to the grocery store. Personally, I would prefer smaller and more local shops, but everyone has to live somewhere.

Upon my arrival in England, I got another reason why I'm studying at Oxford. I was at passport control in Heathrow, which has very negative connotations for me, and the young lady at the counter was asking me whether I was a resident studying in England. I replied yes, I was studying at Oxford. As she stamped my passport, she asked me what I was studying, and I replied that I was taking tutorials in philosophy and history. Her eyes went wide for a moment, and she said, under her breath, "wow," before waving me through. I only hope that the grad schools I apply to have the same reaction.

For now, then, I just have one more paper to write before I meet up with Chris again; this time it will be in Paris. From there, I'll be taking the train to Istanbul to visit Sara. I'll be on the road a lot, which always tires me out; but I'm pretty sure it's worth it.

Ein deutsches Thanksgiving

We, being myself, Molly, the other members of JYM and more than a few visitors, celebrated Thanksgiving yesterday. Yes, I know that is was a day late, but we were making due. People had classes on Thursday, and the lack of Saturday classes permitted a holiday level of drinking that might otherwise be avoided on a weeknight, helped along by a generous preparation of Glühwein, which is, as far as I can tell, mulled wine.

Amazingly enough for over twenty college students working mostly independently of one another, the dinner was pulled off quite well. Yes, the original plan was to start dinner at 4:30 and was pushed back to past 6 because of the turkey cooking team's realization the morning of Thanksgiving that they the grocery shopping team had bought them two turkeys and there was only one oven, but that worked out. Other people, unprepared for how long some recipes would actually take, came in late and the food still all ended up being warm and tasty. All of the standards were there too. The ingredients for mashed potatoes and and stuffing were easy enough to pull off, but canned cranberries and pumpkin pie mix had to be brought back from the States by a JYM student who went back for a visit this past weekend. Finding a reasonably-priced and sized turkey apparently was a bit of a feat, but Molly was more in on that than I. Otherwise, my contribution was two plates of cornbread (quickly becoming one of my favorite recipes because of its ease, speed and variability) and the gravy. Very happy with my first try at gravy. A little thick, yes, but it looked a lot like gravy. That was helped greatly along by the impartation to me that the secret to a good roux, the butter/flour base of gravy, is to stir in only a single direction.

Personally I most enjoyed the opportunity to share Thanksgiving with our four German visitors and single Estonian, especially since two of them are majoring in American studies. (I hear that over a 1,000 students are enrolled in that institute. Who would have thought?) The whole idea of a holiday is often quite different from its practice, and Thanksgiving does have the distinction of being a very American holiday.

For those returning to Gonzaga, I hope these last fews weeks of the semester do not prove too stressful. Otherwise, I'll be seeing most of you in a little under two months now.

Tschüß.

An Irish Thanksgiving

Hello all,



I see that Emmett has already written about our exciting adventures together last weekend, so I don't need to go into that, except to say, here and now, that Emmett has said he owes me dinner senior year. It's in writing now; it's official, since he is bailing out on his chance to cook for me when I go to Oxford because he is going to Paris with Chris. :-(



I was full of trepidation about spending Thanksgiving away from my family for the first time EVER, but it turned out okay. My favorite roommate left for Amsterdam on Wednesday, so I thought I was going to be doubly lonely, but one of the American guys that lives next door had his parents visiting, and they QUITE generously offered to cook a nice turkey dinner for all of the family-less Americans. All in all, there were 21 people crammed in one apartment. It was intense. I, of course, brought forth the Idaho pride and provided mashed potatoes. So, not a bad Thanksgiving overall. I even found football (U.S. style) on TV! (Ooh, side note. Apparently Irish people also call "European football" soccer. They have their own sport called Gaelic football, and I suppose that 3 versions of football was too much for them to handle.)



Today I wandered downtown to look at the Christmas lights (very pretty, even though they haven't turned all of them on yet) and finally get started on my souvenir shopping for my family. It is officially Christmas season! That, coupled with the fantastic cold and joy that shopping brings me, put me in a good mood, the one I usually associate with Christmas. :-)



Tomorrow my friend Doug is coming to visit for a few days, and I'm very excited about that. Next weekend I am going to visit Andrea at Oxford, and we are going to see Wicked in London!!!! Prediction: Andrea and I will be hard pressed not to sing along to all of the songs.



I hope you all had a wonderful Thanksgiving! I miss you terribly.

Love,
Anna

On Aqua Vitae and plain Aqua.

Since Chris, Molly, and Anna seemed to have so much fun visiting each other in Cork and Munich, I've decided to join in the excitement. This weekend I visited Anna in Cork, and next weekend I'll go bother Chris and Molly in Munich. Then I'll be traveling pretty much until Christmas break, so I won't be able to really return the favor of having my schedule being disrupted and getting behind on my work. Sorry guys...
I must admit, I had rather romantic expectations for Ireland. I'd never visited before. Looking back, that seems strange, but since the opportunity was there, it was something I couldn't turn down. I had an image in mind of small villages with people speaking in Gaelic, playing violins at the pubs at night, and lots of green rolling hills before you got to the silvery blue sea. Perhaps there are parts of Ireland like that, just like there may be parts of England where people still wear monocles and speak snootily on every subject. Cork, however, seemed to me to be just like England; even the different accent didn't throw me off, since it was about as different as a Cornwall accent.
The flight over was a little exciting. Flying on Ryanair, I have a vague hope that my chances are better for sitting next to someone who is interesting and hygienic, rather than the usual people who seem to take over half my seat and snore the entire flight. This trip, I managed to avoid that problem. Instead, a few minutes after being seated, I found a sharp pounding in the middle of my shin. The source of the pain was a foot attached to a three year old girl, quite precocious and energetic. After a little while, her mother noticed and put an end to this quickly. She apologized, I said it was nothing, and figured that would hopefully be the end of any interaction between us. What I found instead was that she was the source of my cleanliness when her daughter decided to vomit upon landing. I took her wet wipes appreciatively, and again waved off her apologies. She wasn't the one who needed to apologize to me.
Everything was uphill from my arrival. Even the pouring rain which greeted me (thanks again for putting up with that, Anna) was better than the plane. Though it seemed like it would last forever, the rain just meant I had a chance to learn a new card game. After quite a while, the downpour receded. Anna and I decided it would be worth the risk to go visit a couple of the local drinking establishments. The first was large enough so that it didn't seem crowded, but the second place was packed shoulder to shoulder. The drinks, however, was very good. The Guiness was, in my opinion, superior to the export product, and Anna introduced me to a local beer, Murphy's, which is one of the better beers I've ever had in my life. Too bad it's only made in Cork and not likely to be found in England.
The next day we visited the Jameson Distillery. It was an interesting trip. I didn't ever even think about the difference between fermentation and distilling was, but, after the visit, I can even tell you the difference between Irish whiskey, American whiskey, and Scotch. The highlight of the visit was at the end, where they took volunteers to be whiskey tasters. After a slight moment of indecision and fear, I raised my hand and was hustled off to a separate table with three other people away from the rest of the group. There they gave us samples of three different kinds of Irish whiskey, Scotch, and Jack Daniels'. They do indeed have very distinct tastes. After I picked up my certificate labeling me a qualified whiskey taster, Anna and I were both starving, so we found the cheapest fast food place in town and had wings and chips. It was funny going from sophisticated to dirt poor in a matter of minutes.
That evening the rain continued. It was raining when I got back to Oxford as well, so instead of blaming it on the fact that I'm living in the British Isles where it rains a good portion of the year, I'm going to say there's a good chance I'm a rain god, like the Douglas Adams character. Perhaps places with droughts will pay me to visit them; alternatively, perhaps vacation places like Malta will pay me not to visit them. I can see lots of opportunities here. Still, the rain kept us inside for the rest of the evening, so it mean playing more cards and watching The Usual Suspects, a brilliant movie.
My visit was far too short. Someday I'll have to go back to Ireland and take a good tour around the country, but for now, I suppose it's enough to say that I've been to the homeland at last.

Pas de francais

Well, this week was insane. I'm so tired today. I'm definitely not ready to take on another week. I need another weekend. School was long this week. I have a paper for all my classes that was either due this week or is due the next. I hate writing and the fact that it's all in French doesn't help.....

But on a more fun note, I finally went out of my French speaking region. I ventured into Bern and got earfuls of Swiss German which made me feel really lost and confused as to how in the world I was supposed to get food anywhere because my German consists of nothing and even if I could speak haut dutch it wouldn't have made too much difference to the Swiss. Wandering through some of the street markets I'd catch a handful of French every now in then and was glad to hear that 'cause it felt like home. I did manage to somewhat communicate and in buying myself this dang awesome hat. I must say it was funny though because I went with an English speaking friend and we spoke in English to each other, but whenever confronted by the others we would switch into French, although we realized our English would probably be understood more than our French, oh well.

In Bern, we went to the Einstein museum. It was dang sweet and worth the high toll that they exact out of you for entry. I was sad I didn't know German because although the exhibit was in German, French and English all of Einstein's notes and papers were in German. It would have been fun to understand them besides the occasional math formula. My friend (completely non-math orientied) gave me such a strange look when I tried to explain my excitement over the law of sines that I kept the rest of my math and physic joys to myself. It was too bad she didn't want to discuss red shifts and relativity.... Other than that we placed tourist and took a lot of random pictures and saw the other stuff in the city, but it was so dang cold. In feranheit (I'm getting used to Celcius, it's getting hard for me to think of regular temperatures, 1 is just easier than 37) is was 26 degrees out and I've decided winter is not the best season to go exploring, although I'll undoubtably do it some more. But it was an amazing train ride home because seriously all of the country looks like a postcard. And with the alps in the background all covered in snow that look fake because they are too pretty and too perfect (although most of the time there's too many clouds to see them) I don't know what could be better.

Ein Wochenende in Irland

Anna visits Munich last weekend and gets to play tourist in our adopted city. This past weekend Molly and I get to repay the favor for three nights. Head over Friday morning and wake up bleeding early Monday morning, only to wait an additional two hours in the airport because a replacement crew member needed to be flown in from Dublin.

First up, Cork and Ireland and general impressions of such. Cork and Ireland, in their great similarities to Spokane and the United States, provided a break from Munich, Germany and not merely through the language. Yes, I have been greatly enjoying the urbanity and cosmopolitan nature of Munich and the related opportunities to see my first opera and ballet, but it can be overwhelming, too far removed from my past experiences. Getting into Cork and seeing streets lined with stores that I could actually afford to shop at was a relief in some ways. There was such a sense of vitality in the streets too. When we went out in the evenings, whether on a pub crawl (Tried two different stouts over two nights. Absolutely vile drinks that were a struggle to finish. Also the awareness that bars packed to capacity and blaring music that forced you to shout though the person you want to talk with is next to you are not my place was strongly reinforced) or whatever, the sidewalks were full of passing groups families and groups, very rarely plugged into their iPods or talking on cellphones.

Saturday, we went to Killeagh at my request. Hearing that I was going to Ireland for the weekend, a cousin of my mother's sent me a list of names of distant family who still might be around Killeagh, the town my Irish relatives swarmed out from. Looking for the relatives was a bust. Talked to random strangers, visited the post office and looked through the baptism register of the local church, all to no avail. Still, despite that particular failure and Molly and Anna's need to repeat "Kill-a Queen" every half hour, I liked Killeagh. A lot like my hometown in Baudette, small and the people knew each other. In the cemetery, I spoke with a couple, and they pointed me towards some people who knew the O'Neills and McCarthys, general directions and all. After totally missing the turn, I knocked at a random house, and they were able to set us on the right path again. Another benefit of visiting Killeagh? We got to see the countryside. Get to miss that living in Munich coming on two months, and it was the Irish countryside, which has its own undeniable charm.

We made our way over to Blarney Castle and its famed stone on Sunday. It's a huge tourist attraction and has some small notoriety as the "most photographed building in Ireland." Kind of wary of that at the beginning, but I really did enjoy the visit. Avoided kissing the stone because I hear that the locals whiz on it regularly (and a morning washing is definitely not enough to make me want to put my lips on it), but the castle was cool, had a very different feel from those I have visited in Germany. The grounds were absolutely great. Ireland has a pretty strong tradition of mythology, and it is not difficult to understand why after seeing that place. The rock formations and caves and thick brush were something out of a fairytale or Lord of the Rings.

Taking it easier for the rest of the month. Heading over to Heidelberg on Saturday to catch a Bloc Party concert and then remain in Munich for the rest of the month. Gives me time to start up my essays.