Hallo Freunde!
After my first two weeks of actual classes, I thought I'd get back to the blog and briefly fill you all in on my comings and goings. I am now doing real coursework at a real (and fairly prestigious) German University, with real students, and quasi-real homework (apparently it's mostly self-study...I'll pick up on that eventually). Anyway, my course schedule this semester is officially as follows: Astronomy, Spanish, New Testament Theology, and Literary Texts after 1945 (all of which are in German). So now that I'm an official student, I've been buckling down and studying all the time, ensuring I receive the best grades to transfer back to my University immediately after I've begun my studies...
...Or something like that. I've also found the time to go travelling the last two weekends, and both trips were phenomenal and exciting in their own ways. My first trip, which I took last weekend, was to the capital of Germany, Berlin! Once there, I met up with my good friend, Aubrey, and my new friend, who also happens to go to SLU, Amanda. They were both studying in SLU Madrid, but they came to Berlin, so we enjoyed a couple days together in the city.
The first day we were there--not including the misadventures of me trying to find Aubrey and Amanda for several hours the first night, only to find them halfway across town at some place called "Abebar"--we went on an English tour of the concentration camp for Sachsenhausen. The tour was, as expected, particularly somber, but it was particularly tragic because it was the weekend commemorating the 70th Anniversary of the liberation of the camps and the end of the war, meaning that there were survivors of the camp who came in that day, and they wore bandannas to symbolize that they were survivors. They were walking throughout the camp, and naturally the majority of them spoke German, while very few, if any of those in the tour group spoke German (apparently our tour guide barely knows German and has lived here for 6 or so years!).
As I've mentioned before, being there itself was tragic enough, but for me, hearing what some of the survivors had to say is what hurt the most. To have a little background information, Station A is the location where the camp's newest prisoners would enter, (right next to a sign saying "ARBEIT MACHT FREI," or rather "Work will set you free."), and Station Z is where the gas chambers/crematorium were. While our tour guide spoke about the horrors of the gas chambers, I began to zone out and listen to the 90+ year old man, talking with his family in Station Z. I was somewhat far away, mildly distracted, and my translations are usually choppy at best, but I caught him say something that just pained me deeply: "I've never seen the inside of this place before, but I've known many friends who have...and then I never saw them again." And from that point on, I couldn't really pay much attention to the tour as much as I could try to contain the striking reality that this man had just spoken---and no one in my group seemed to understand a damned word of it. I don't know if I ever have experienced a feeling like that man was feeling that day, and I hope to never have to even consider a time when it would be necessary to.
However, in contrast to the sadness of Sachsenhausen, Aubrey, Amanda, and I did later enjoy ourselves that evening and tried to go to a club my friend Connor had recommended: Matrix. Aubrey and Amanda justifiably didn't want to bring their American passports into a German club, and I completely understood, so we continued forward with our ISIC cards (legitimate international identification cards---they have an age listed, picture, and everything). That being said, we talked with the bouncer for a moment, and he said their IDs weren't good enough, (despite the fact that we were together and I had about 4 different cards proving I was 20 and we all happened to go to the same University). Following this, he said he could get us all in for 20 Euro per person. We said that that was crazy, and promptly spent about a third of that and had just as good, if not a better evening, chilling in their room in the hotel. Good times.
Finally, just a few hours ago, I got back from Lambsheim, where I have probably spoken the most consecutive hours of German since I got here. Basically since I got there yesterday around 14:00 until a couple hours ago when I returned, every single conversation I had (save a minute-long phone call to Emily last night) was in German. The reason I was in Lambsheim (a suburb of Frankenthal), is because I happen to have a lot of family there. Yesterday I met specifically with the Roßner family. Claudia Roßner is the niece of my Oma, and she and her husband let me stay with their family this weekend. I never could have imagined being so sad to leave people who I barely knew at all before I came to Germany, but they were absolutely hospitable, and it actually made me have my first twangs of Heimweh since I've arrived in Germany. ("Homesickness," you lazy bums.)
So, that concludes the general update of my life for the last two weeks. Keep posted, and I'll continue to try to be fairly regular about posting on a bi-weekly basis.
Stay clear, Friends.
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