So, in Germany there is a strong tradition of organized club activities. The right to found a club is listed in the German constitution, and is something that is taken very seriously here. People are highly dedicated to putting a good effort into whatever field of interest they might have, be it sewing, sports, or any other type of hobby. The idea behind these groups is that they can work together to improve at whatever given skill they choose.

Currently, I am participating in 2 Vereine,  a theater group and a Blasorchester.

Today I am going to talk about the Blasorchester, because we have an upcoming concert. Blasorchester is translated to English as wind band. It is a privately organized group that consists of a bunch of community members playing their instruments for fun. Unlike in the U.S. arts and sports activities are largely organized through schools, in Germany they are purely in the domain of free-time activities. This means that many of the Vereine have loyal memebers who have been participating for as long as 40 years and also a much larger span of ages and life experiences.

Recently we had a year end concert, which consisted of a combination of traditional polkas, modern artsy pieces and a slew of popular music settings that the audience could sing along to. My favorite piece was entitled “Die Klarinettenmückl” (The Clarinetbug) and featured soli from the clarinet section. It worked well because it highlighted the strong mid-section of the band.

I also got a new band uniform, one very different than any of the black band dresses I have previously had to wear in concerts:

My traditional band uniform

When I asked about the origins of this colorful outfit, which consisted of a very lacy blouse, a pink vest, a green jacket and a pink scarf, I was told that it stemmed from traditional German peasant clothing, often called “Tracht” the same category that contains some of the more well known peasant clothing like dirndls and lederhosen (which for the record, are not traditional to the region where Tübingen is located). It was a lot of fun to get dressed up and to see how a different band  uniform worked. I for one have had my share of marching and concert band outfits and although this one was pretty okay, and definitely the most brightly colored one that I have ever worn.

Overall, I really enjoy playing in the band. It helps me to feel at home and connected within the community here in Tübingen. It gives me a change of pace from the normal college student crowd and lets me see a different side of German culture.

Bis bald!

One of the things that has most occupied my time since arriving in Germany is the question of assimilation or “Anpassung” as it is called in German. As I spend more time in a country that has grown to be my second home, I ask myself how central this part of my life has become to my identity. On the one hand, it feels like being here is a wonderful dream. I have a scholarship, so I don’t have to work. I have my own apartment, so it feels like I’m living on my own. I have classes, so I’m really studying. But on the other hand, it seems very separate from the reality that I have come to know whilst living in another country.

When I first lived here, it was my first time away from home, my first time away from the U.S. and my first time away from my family. I thought that because I was having an experience that was so vastly different from anything that I’d done so far in my life, that I had to change a lot throughout it. I thought that it was going to be the defining aspect in my life more so than anything else that I’d experienced. That thought process stayed with me for quite some time, actually. Even when I started at Valpo, I thought that the experience of having been abroad somehow defined me, somehow made me something totally different than I had been before. But now, living in Germany a second time, I am starting to realize that although studying abroad has helped to change many of my perspectives in life, many of the ways I look at things, many of the ways that I make decisions, it is perhaps not the end all, be all of my life. I know that sounds somehow strange to say, but I know that although I am here, I can somehow make an identity  for myself independent of what my own expectations for the other country are.

For instance, in my intercultural competence class, we did a simulation about how people react differently when they come in contact with a different culture. Half of the class was assigned to be part of a home culture and half of the class was assigned to be the visitors in the culture. One of the rules in order to make friends with the visitors was that they were supposed to tell something about themselves before the home culture would accept conversation with them. One of the most surprising things that we noticed at the end was that the visitors, upon talking with the home culture for the first time didn’t even introduce themselves when they first met. It seems like the perfectly logical thing to do when you first meet someone new. You introduce yourself to the others and let them know who you are, but for nearly every visitor that interacted with the home culture, a simple introduction was lacking. The expectation of the visitor was that they were supposed to become a part of the home culture  and learn about it and that their own culture, their own way of approaching the situation was somehow independent of the entire exchange.

Just like my real backpack, culture comes with me and has tools that help me to process the world around me.

And so for me this lead to a lot of thought about how I interact as a visitor in German culture. How do I ignore or overlook parts of my own culture in an attempt to look for the parts of German culture to which I should react. I have to admit, sometimes I am a bit embarrassed to admit that I am American. In part this has to do with the fact that my culture is one that is easily identifiable in the media and therefore something that many people automatically associate with a different picture in their heads than I. To be perfectly clear, it’s the media’s projection of American culture, rather than the culture itself that I find embarrassing. It makes me feel sometimes that I’m disappointing people by not living up to their expectations or having to explain that this is an image that people falsely have in their minds.  Sometimes I think that this media-based image makes me worry overreact in anticipation of being categorized by the preconceived notions of others.  It makes me too eager to assume that my identity as an American is more important than my identity as an individual. And even that is highly confusing territory. As soon as I say my name, which sounds utterly foreign to German ears, people already ask about my nationality. And so already, it seems like this is something that somehow defines me. As soon as it comes out that I’m American, it feels like everything I say is a type of comparison from things in my home country or questions about  the US or questions about “How Things Are” in German or American culture. “How Things Are” questions seem to me to be some of the dumbest questions out there  in terms of getting to know a person, because it is so intrinsically difficult to separate the individual perspective from How Things Are without misconstruing  what may just be an individual experience as a cultural norm. It also makes the individual seem less important, and although we can learn a lot about a culture by talking to the individual, it is difficult to learn a lot about the culture when talking solely to the individual or about the individual when talking about the culture at large.

One of the things that I have realized to be a difficulty insofar as being able to communicate at a deeper cultural level is my personal inability to define my own preconceived notions about German culture. On the one hand, I know the stereotype about German punctuality, but on the other hand, I also lived with a family for a year that ran on a schedule that was much more fluid than I had initially expected. I will admit, that to some extent some of the expectations that I carried with me were that Germans would automatically accept me as one of their own simply on the grounds that I was interested in their culture and wanted to learn about it. Thus far, I have found that a lot more work has got to be put into “becoming a part” of a foreign culture, if something like that even exists at all. No matter how much one changes oneself, the home culture remains looming in the background, it the way that you approach something, in gut reaction to something that you see for the first time, in a way that cannot be shed by simply the will to try something new.

And so this balancing act between my own culture and the culture around me remains. How to authentically experience a culture without simply ignoring the reality of self at hand and how to try to put aside that self without simply playing the part of something one is not.  What are the real factors that affect the nature of culture and self?

I’m off to keep looking.

Bis bald!

So, upon settling into university life for real, my life has come with a lot of first in the last week. Here are a few:

1. First German Doctors Visit

Although Germany is famous for its nationalized healthcare system, I did not get to experience it firsthand until this week. I had been feeling sick for a while, but until last Friday, I didn’t actually feel sick enough to do anything about it. So once I woke up with no voice, I decided it was time to visit the apothecary. In Germany, the pharmacy is called the apothecary and it is kind of like an in between place for small ailments like colds and the flu that do not require a prescription, but could still use some homeopathic remedies or a bit of medicine. However, once I got to the apothecary, I was quickly advised that I would need to go see a doctor. Within the next 10 minutes, I was on my way to a  nearby doctor’s office and in less than ten minutes I was back on my way to the apothecary to get antibiotics. I was incredibly surprised how quickly it took for  me to go to the doctor. It was easy, since all I had to do was show my insurance card and give my address and phone number and since I only had a small ailment the doctor looked at my symptoms and then told me what needed to be done about them. This may have been an exception since I came kind of close to closing time and the practice was small, but I have never experienced a doctor’s visit that has taken less than a half hour’s wait and I was shocked by how efficiently my visit was handled.

2. Feijoada

Some of my friends are other exchange students and amongst these one of the largest nationalities are Brazilians. I was lucky enough to be invited over to one of my friends houses to try the national dish of Brazil, feijoada. It is a delicious dish of black beans served with rice. Although this has nothing to do with German culture, I really enjoyed getting to know something about the home country of many of my friends and it was great to try a delicious home-cooked meal from another country as well.

3. Visiting with Eva

I went on my first visit to a German friend this week. My friend Eva lives in a nearby town where she has lived since graduating from Uni Tübingen. We worked together 2 summers ago at a language immersion camp, so when I got to Germany, I was sure to get in touch with her to arrange a visit. I got a lovely tour of her town called Esslingen, which has retained a lot of the architecture of the middle ages like Tübingen, but also a lot of the architecture of the Industrial Revolution which is different, but equally beautiful. I also realized how fortunate I am to have friends nearby. It occurred to me suddenly that the best part of this trip was seeing Eva because she is a good friend and that she is the first person who I have seen in the past two months, that I have known for more than two months. It was really great to hang out with someone who I know and love for a change of pace, rather than someone who I am getting to know.

4. Improv Group

When I got to Germany, I received an e-mail from the international student group at the university asking if I would like to sign up to have a German mentor. I immediately said yes and was quickly paired up with someone. I was happy to find that my mentor, Maike, was absolutely fabulous. We hit it off right away and she invited me to join her improv theater group in Tübingen. This experience was really wonderful. It was great to have a situation in which it was acceptable to just talk to Germans, but less formal than most of the classroom settings in which I had previously experienced. And hopefully the practice of having to speak without too much prompting will help me to improve my language skills even more.

A map of Köln, because I have been collecting maps lately.

5. Köln

I went to Köln this weekend for a conference for my scholarship this weekend. Basically, this trip was whirlwind 24 Hours heading up north on the train and listening to two whole presentations and getting to hang out with some very interesting people. I really enjoyed being in Köln because it is near where I lived during my exchange year and it was nice to see some of the culture differences between the Northwest and the Southwest of Germany. The main difference was the beer, which in the south is usually as heavier Hefeweizen and in the north a lighter Kölsch, which is a much more bitter beer. It was overall a great trip, but by far the highlight was the totebag that received as part of my scholarship. Totebags are surprisingly popular here in Germany and I must say I have been eyeing them with envy since arriving here. Needless to say, I was perhaps embarrassingly overjoyed once I arrived and was immediately handed a totebag, which I proceeded to carry around with me for the rest of the day. Sometimes it is the little things in life that count the most.

6. A Valpo Visit

On Monday a few weeks ago, Professor DeMaris from the German department was asked to be a keynote speaker at the opening for an art exhibit in Rottenberg about the Indiana Dunes. She was nice enough to show me the city and teach me a bit about Josef Eberle, the former owner of the Stuttgarter Zeitung and a donor to Valpo. It was a lovely tour and I really enjoyed reconnecting with Valpo in the process. Rottenburg is a lovely, beautifully preserved city much like Tübingen except with one big difference: it is not a university town. Although much of the architecture was similar, it gave the town a much different feel to see it brimming with people of all ages as opposed to mainly twenty and thirtysomethings.

Bis bald!

So, this past week was the first week of German university for me. Although most of my fellow Valpo students back home are halfway through their Semester, Germans Semesters are almost a full 2 months behind in schedule.

A reenactment of how I would have posed, had I remembered to take a first day of uni photo.

My schedule itself is quite different than any that I have had since beginning college. Most notably, I don’t have any classes at all on Monday. This was a surprise for me, but I was also kind of glad to have a day of the week off, in order to do more preparation before starting a week of classes. Additionally, all of my classes meet just once a week, but for much longer periods than I am used to, ranging from 2 – 3 hours long.

The dreaded cum tempore in its natural habit.

On Tuesday, I had my first class, a seminar on Comparative Politics of European Parliamentary Systems. This class taught me about in important rule of German university: C.T., or cum tempore. This Latin phrase means that the class actually starts 15 minutes later than the time listed in the registration. Expecting the usual German punctuality, I showed up to class 5 minutes early to get myself settled in before preparing to take notes. Much to my dismay, no one else showed up for another 20 minutes, leaving me to worry about whether or not I had found the right room or if I was sitting in the wrong hall.  Fortunately, 10 minutes after the scheduled lecture time, people started to trickle in and I was able to determine that I hadn’t messed up the location of the seminar, but rather the time. In the end though, I’m glad to have a few extra minutes to spare on the way to class.

On Wednesday, I had 2 seminars and a lecuture. The first is called Intercultural Communications. I already love this course because it is so applicable to my everyday life.  The class is made up of a great mix of foreign and German student from many different countries, so it is full of intercultural communication itself. The project at the end of the class is to make a portfolio of what we have learned about intercultural communication.

The part of the castle in which I have my class.

The second of the two seminars is from the department of European studies and is called Name and Region. Name and Region is exactly what it sounds like: it’s an analysis of the names and the regions the come from with a focus on the southwestern region of Germany where the university lies.  I think this course will be a bit challenging for me, because it’s in somewhat new territory subjectwise, but I’m excited to learn about it nonetheless. Also, I should mention that this class takes place in the basement of a castle. So, no matter what it will give me a good anecdote.  The final class of Wednesday is called An Overview of Wurttembergian Church History. This is a theology course that I’m taking to fulfill my upper-level Theo credit, but I’m excited about it because it again focuses on the region in which I’m living. Already, I’ve heard about the influence that the Church has had on the culture here, mainly through a series of medieval laws concerning cleaning that have instilled a love of tidiness into the region. It will be interesting to learn more about the other impacts that it has had as well.

Thursday is a again another seminar called “Hot Topics.” This is offered by the department of German as a foreign language and I took it to work on my academic German. The course focuses on academic language and debate rather than simply casual speaking. I’m excited to see what I will learn from it.

Finally on Friday, I have my final lecture called First-Language Development. This is a linguistics class that focuses on how children attain their first language. It already seems very fascinating and complex, but I’m so excited to learn more about the details of language learning and how people process it. Last semester at Valpo, I took an introduction to German Linguistic, which I really enjoyed and I’m excited to jump into this topic more deeply.

An online PDF textbook for my Polisci course.

Another interesting thing that about German university. is that textbooks are usually either provided by PDF or available free of cost from the library. I was excited to find out that I would be saving money on textbooks after attending my first classes.   The first week was in my opinion quite good. I enjoyed all of my classes despite the rainy weather and my being sick. Now I’m ready to see where the classes and the presentations that start next week will take me. Mostly, I’m just glad to be back to the life of a university student.

Bis Bald!

So, in the free week between our German course and the beginning of the semester, my friend Charlotte and I decided to go to the Netherlands for a few days.  One of the things that struck me the most was the number of bicycles in the Netherlands. Although we stayed in large metropolitan areas, there were often few busses or running cars to be seen, but instead an ocean of bicyclists. At first, this was a bit disarming, but once we learned the correct way to walk through a steady stream of bicyclists, it became easy to navigate. We first stayed in Amsterdam, which was basically a giant art tour.

On the first day, we spent about 4 hours walking through the Rijksmuseum, but I honestly could have spent all day if not for the lack of accessible bathrooms. It was absolutely fabulous to see such great works of art from such different periods of time, all of which were equally fascinating. The museum taught not only about Dutch art, but also about Dutch history.

Some of the highlights were:

On the next day, we went to the Van Gogh Museum. It was absolutely fabulous. Van Gogh is one of my favorite artists and seeing his work and the progression of his life was wonderful.  I really liked seeing how his use of color and the wide brush strokes that are a signature of Van Gogh’s work evolved overtime. Many of the works from earlier in his life areMy favorite work was one of his self portraits, which I was unfortunately unable to photograph.

A Vermeer from the Rijksmuseum

Another painting from the Rijksmuseum

On the second to last day, I finally fufilled my dream of visiting Vondelpark, a large, Central Park-like area located at the southern end of Amsterdam that I had read a lot about and was excited to see. I was not disappointed. It was actually a beautiful piece of property that was a nice break from the hustle and bustle of the city and its bikes.

Finally, Vondelpark!

On the last day in Amsterdam we went to the North end of the city, located across the IJ lake and went to a great market and the EYE Film Institute which had some nice little exhibits about Dutch film, . Later, while waiting for the train to Utrecht, we waited at the public library, which aside from having a spectacular view, also had a lot of books. I took some time to just sit down and read, in Dutch, which is very linguistically similar to German, so much so that you can understand much of it without having learned the language.

An absolutely adorable canal in Utrecht

Utrecht is a much smaller, although very friendly city that is packed with churches. There were 22 total each with its own unique set of bells that at times filled the airwaves in the city. I am a huge fan of churchbells. There is something about the unconscious keeping of time that is so beautiful about them.  On our first night in Utrecht, we went on a Lumina Trajectum tour of the city. This consisted of a scavenger hunt for a bunch of lights throughout the city, its canals and landmarks that took us right through the old city of Utrecht. Later, when we visited one of the churches on the tour, Sint Wiliboald’s, I found an answer to a question that had been on my mind since coming to the Netherlands: why did it cost money to look at the churches? In Germany, churches are usually free of charge to visit and therefore one of the easiest ways to see beautiful architecture and history if you’re travelling on a budget, but since arriving in the Netherlands, we had only been able to find one or two churches that were open to the public. The answer I found lies in the structuring of the churches themselves. In Germany, the church is financed through a special tax that registered members of the church are required to pay, so there is always sufficient funding for church upkeep. In the Netherlands, congregations are separate organizations from the groups that own and maintain the church buildings (which may sometimes be the government). Therefore, the cost of maintaining the historical church buildings is not always covered by the congregation alone, but by the people who come to look at the churches.

View from the windmill’s balcony

A poorly lit picture of the Dutch invention that helped to make windmills more efficient

One of my favorite parts of the entire trip was the tour of a sawmill we took while in Utrecht. It is one of only two working sawmills in the Netherlands and the tour that we got was absolutely amazing. The windmill, aside from being the Netherlands national symbol, is actually one of the things that helped to launch the Netherlands into the wealthy nation that it became during the first industrial revolution. Because of good wind catching land that existed in the Netherlands, sawmills were able to be easily built to process wood from places like the Black Forest in Germany, conveniently located just along the Rhein river.

I also enjoyed many, many Dutch foods. The first was Gevulde Koek, a cookie filled with marzipan. Marzipan is one my favorite foods, so combining it with basically anything was a winning combination for me. I also had some salted licorice. Many people do not like the strong and bitter taste of salted licorice, but I enjoy the herbal flavor that it has combined with its sourness.

I also enjoyed eating Gouda. Charlotte and I were trying to save money, so we decided to go shopping at the Dutch grocery store instead of eating out at every meal.  I think that this is the best way to get to know a foreign culture, to stick your head in a grocery store and see what you can find through the everyday food that is offered. It was interesting just to look at the shelves and see what there was to eat. I found some lovely salmiak (salted licorice) that I enjoyed.

Overall it was a great trip. I really enjoyed seeing how a culture that seemed so similar to German culture on the surface could be so different once I learned a bit more about it.

Bis bald!

So, in the past week, I have discovered something absolutely amazing just down the road. There is an milk dispenser right near where I live that gives fresh milk 24-hours a day. It’s kind of whimsical, especially coming from someone who’s lived in suburban areas most of her life.  I was especially excited to find the automat because the milk here in Germany is slightly different than in the United States.

Fresh milk from the lovely milk automat.

“Storable” Milk from the grocery store

Instead of getting big gallons of milk, like many Americans do, German milk comes in litres. That is no big surprise considering the size of most German refrigerators is comparable to mini-fridges that most college students have in their dorm rooms. However the milk itself is also a bit different. It is called “haltbare Milch” or “storable” milk. This means that until opening, it can be stored for quite some time without refrigeration. The milk tastes perfectly fine on its own, a bit different from fresh milk, but perfectly acceptable. However, since I drink a lot of milk, I prefer to drink it fresh instead of out of the carton and the dairy farm nearby was the perfect solution.

This is the perfect time to talk about the overall differences in German food. German food is what I would describe as fresher. When you walk into a supermarket, there are not always very many ready-made options as in the U.S. The grocery stores themselves are a lot smaller and the frozen food section is also a lot smaller.  Germans usually go shopping every 2 or 3 days as opposed to once a week, so the produce used to cook is usually fresher as well. There are also a higher fat content in German milk than in American, with most people buying 1.5%-whole milk instead of fat-free or 2%. This goes along with the idea that the milk is less processed and contains more of its original nutrients. The biggest exception to this, I have found is broth, which comes in a powdered form which much be reconstituted in water. But again, I think this has to do with fridge space which is usually reserved for things that absolutely must be refrigerated. Another exception are eggs which are kept out of fridges both in grocery stores and in homes. These are sold in 10 or 6 packs instead of dozens, which again fits with the motto of going shopping multiple times a week. Bread is of course purchased freshly from the baker, although it can also be bought from supermarket shelves at a lower price but sometimes lower quality.

In attempt to add another level of depth to my discovery of German food, I asked my flatmates a few questions about their own shopping habits. Most of them responded that they actually go shopping a few times a week, but that their families go shopping less often and also have larger fridges. They said that this was mostly due to lack of planning on their part and spontaneous decision making. They also said that students tend to eat less fresh food (something very true in American culture) because it takes longer to prepare. One of my them even said that usually, one doesn’t tend to cook freshly until around the age of 30 or when they have children. When it comes to milk, none of them drink fat-free milk, but solely on the grounds that it tastes better as opposed to it having any large health benefits. As with anything, this was a decidedly unscientific way of describing German culture, but I thought it would be interesting to see what a few people think anyway. When I asked what they thought about the sizes of German fridges, the responses varied from finding the size of the fridge impractical to not needing anymore space. Once my classes start up, I will hopefully have some more serious topics to write about than just milk.

Bis bald!

So despite the total 1 year and 1 month total that I have ever been in Germany there are many things that Germans do that just don’t make sense to me. So I decided to ask around and see what explanations I could find to what I largely find to be  the conundrums of German culture.

1. Bottled Water:

Although tap water has been proven to be higher quality than many types of bottled water, Germans still buy their water from the store instead. Especially considering the efforts of the average German to maintain an eco-friendly lifestyle,  I was surprised that so many reusable bottles were in circulation (and I really mean circulation, there is a very well running bottle recycling program in Germany that incentivizes recycling by offering money for returned bottles- and this unlike the recycling program in the U.S. is located in every grocery store entryway). My teacher explained this as being caused by the historical health benefits of drinking water in spa towns, where springs produced mineral-rich water. Eventually the health water was bottled and sold in popular stores. Even though the water sold in stores is of the same quality as the kind found in a faucet, the idea that buying water is healthier has stuck.

2. Covered Legs:

So Germany, as you may have heard is known for being a notoriously  liberal country. Some of my classmates have already come to class wanting to know how they can politely ask their flatmates to please not walk around the flat naked quite so often. However, when the Germans do wear clothes, the ones that I have seen so far tend to be pretty covering. Even on a hot day, women will wear a skirt with tights or long pants.  Men wear skinny jeans instead of shorts as well. Every time I wanted to wear shorts or a skirt without tights, I felt like I was wearing a sign that said “Guess who’s an Ausländer (foreigner)!”  At first I wracked this up to the simple pragmatism that is the explanation for so many a parts of German culture. But then I started to realize that even when I thought it was okay to be wearing shorts (i.e. hiking up a mountain on a 25 degree Celcius day), nearly everyone else was wearing jeans. To answer this I went not to my teacher, but to my street smart Tutor, Joanna, who seems to have her finger on the pulse of German fashion (and yes, I know how weird that sentence might sound, but these are the logical things that go through my head whilst contemplating German culture). And the answer was, actually just the pragmaticism that is the explanation for so many things in German culture.

3. Internet security

So this one is less a conundrum and more soemthing that just occured to me as being very different. Germans are very very careful about the online footprint they leave. If not made clear by the outrage after it was revealed that Chancellor Angela Merkel’s phone was being tapped by the U.S. government, Germans are very conscious of their online footprint and the effects that this footprint can have on their real lives. One way that this has affected my daily life is in the form of online banking. I decided to do online banking, because it is convenient for me since I don’t live in the center of the city. When I signed up, I was told in great detail about the many contracts that I would have to sign and return and given a small machine about the size of a calculator. This machine is called a TAN machine (TransAction Number). In order to access my banking information, I have to physically stick my bank card into this little maschine and then put sensors up to a flashing graphic on the screen in order to receive a code which I then have to type into the computer in order to do anything. I personally think that this is very interesting and probably a very good thing, what with the growing threat of cyber crime.

My little TAN Machine

I also noticed a difference at the library where one must first insert a student id into the printer before being able to print out papers. First you send the document to the printer, then you go and insert your card and select print. This has two main benefits. One, you are physically at the printer when your document prints, so no one will lay it off to the side or throw it in the recycling bin. The document is secure. Additionally this prevents over-printing by bringing in an additional step to the printing process. If you decide at the last minute that you actually don’t want to print the document or have made a last minute change before printing, there is a last-minute change to opt out of wasting paper. I am a fan of this system because of it’s paper saving qualities and efficiency in organizing the printing at such a large university.

4. Barefootedness, everywhere.

So according to the teacher of my language course, it is possible in Germany to go shopping, or eat in a restaurant in without wearing shoes. Coming from a country where the phrase “No shirt, no shoes, no service” exists, I was a bit surprised. Americans are mostly taught that going barefoot is somehow unclean. This, like many other practices belong to what Germans refer to as “alternativeness.” Unlike the American definition of this term that has to do more with punk music, German “alternativeness” is more of a term used to describe an environmentalist way of living. Other qualities that might qualify someone as “alternativ”  are having dreadlocks, being a vegan, or wearing a specific type of pants made from fair trade materials that sit looser around the legs. This style is quite popular in the region of Germany that I live in, which due to the popularity of the Green Party has something of a name as a green region. I don’t know quite how I feel about the blatant categorization of  people like this, but I would like to note that this label is much less attached to the worth of person as it is to a descriptor of their outward appearance. Kind of a shallow term to describe the shallowness that inherently lies in an appearance.

These findings are in no way definitive, but I thought it would be interesting to share with you some of the things that have been most fascinating to learn out about German culture.

Bis Bald!

So it has become something of a habit that I go hiking at least once a week with my friends. And  I thought it was about time that I summarize some of the fabulous hikes we have taken together.

Hiking, it should be noted is a very German pastime. The subcategories of hiking are “Spaziergang” which involves a jaunty walk lasting less than 2 hours and “Wanderung” which must last at least 2 hours to qualify for this category regardless of level of difficulty.

A sequoia tree (originally from California) found in the forest in Schönbuch park

Bebenhausen: It was only a short bus ride from Tübingen out to this idllyic small town, but we ended up taking a 13 km hike around the Schönbuch forest preserve. One of the highlights of this hike was the small forest libraries located towards the start of the trail. It was charming and I was able to lend out a small thriller (called Krimi), which is one of the more popular genres in German popular literature. It was interesting because there was actually a gate at the entrance to the park, but it was free for everyone to open, so it was really an enclosed park. We did not originally intend to go 13km but as it turns out, we took a real Wanderung after all. We ended up going through some gorgeous wine mountains and landing in a small town nearby. All in all it was a great day under the open skies and my first experience being in a national park in Germany. It also convinced my friends and me that we should keep hiking.

A slightly too-dark picture of the Blautopf, I promise it is very blue.

Blaubeuren: This hike actually took place during our class retreat. We went on a tour of the monastery located in the town of Blaubeuren and then proceeded to the Blautopf, or blue lake in town. Blaubeuren actually has a special connection with the University of Tübingen because it is where the bishop who asked the pope for permission to open the Uni Tübingen lived. Then we went past the blue lake to some ruins located on the top of the mountain. Although it did not technically take 2 hours to get to the top, this was a much more difficult hike than in Bebenhausen. Afterwards we hiked to a giant cross and memorial on the top of a hill in Blaubeuren. This was actually nice even though the first hike had been kind of tiring. It was good to have an afternoon off of classes to just enjoy nature and be outside.

The view of Schloss Lichtenstein- named after the light colored stone on which it sits

Lichtenstein: This was perhaps the only one of the hikes that actually had a goal at the end. We hiked not to Lichtenstein the country (which is in fact properly spelled Liechtenstein in German),but to Castle Lichtenstein located about 40 km from Tübingen. We took a bus most of the way and only ended up hiking a few kilometers. This was most definitely a Spaziergang. It was very easy and partially paved and of course ended in a castle and a biergarten. The castle itself was modeled after a book at the wish of Count of Urach, so it was literally something out of a fairytale. It was located on the edge of this beautiful cliff and had a gorgeous view. This hike was one of the best planned so far and we even remembered to bring a cake along to eat at the end of the trip up to the castle. This castle also has a connection to the University because its owners were relatives of Count Eberhard Karl (for whom the University is actually named).

Bodensee (Lake Constance):

The English translation of the name of this lake will always remain a mystery to me, but it was really gorgeous no matter what it was called. This trip was yet again in conjunction with my German course. We took a bus from Tübingen down to the lake to first look at the Marienkirche located on the shore of the lake. We went to Schloss Meersburg where Annette von Droste-Hülshoff, a very important German poet lived and learned about her life a bit. My favorite part however, was neither the castle, nor the church (although both were cool), but the stone-age museum that we saw on the lake. The stone-age museum was actually a collection of reconstructed stilt houses in the lake. The houses were built because the provided optimal protection from animals and allowed for easy access to trade routes.

This was interesting to me because it was something that I had never expected to see something like this in Germany. With the abundance of castles and churches, it is easy to forget that there were periods in German history before any of that was built.  So, this wasn’t really a hike per se, but we still had quite a good Spaziergang between the different points of our trip and enjoyed a nice day on the lake.

The “German-ness” of hiking reminds me of an important cultural difference between the U.S. and Germany. Germany, at least the Green-Party-dominated region of Baden-Württemberg, is a country that is very aware of its relation to nature. Aside from the fact the Green party, which bases the majority of its politics on an environmental viewpoint, is a major player in parliament, Germans themselves seem to take into account the environment in small ways in everyday life.  Recycling is precisely sorted out people are more willing to take public transportation systems and always bring their own reusable bags to the supermarket. The bike lane is something to fear whilst crossing the street due to the number of bikes zooming past at any given moment. And its not to say that these lifestyle choices are not without their marginal benefits: gasoline is much more expensive here in Europe so it makes sense to drive less, the urban sprawl allows for more public transportation in more places and German grocery stores charge for plastic bags making it cheaper to bring your own bag. However, I find it overwhelmingly positive that such initiatives exist at all and that care for the planet is in the forefront of everyone’s minds. And with all the gorgeous opportunities to hike, how could you not want to do everything to protect the planet?

Bis Bald!