I’m not going to lie, there are only a limited number of things that one can write about from abroad. Things are different here – well, duh. Doing stuff is fun – this should go without saying. And then I happened to be in Paris during the terrorist attacks last Friday.
Instead of sharing writings, I recorded a few videos to express my thoughts on the matter. While these may also be found on my YouTube Channel, they are embedded below in the order in which they should be viewed.
How Friday unfolded for the four of us Valpo students:
In-the-moment thoughts from Saturday, brought to you from under the Eiffel Tower:
These thoughts about Saturday and Sunday were compiled on Monday and Tuesday:
Extra footage from Paris:
Finally, to help lift your spirits after this rather depressing subject, a video of my cat from last year. Just in case it’s needed.
This is not an experience anybody should have to go through. Even so, I never experienced firsthand stress or danger, and was fortunate enough to be able to inform my family of my safety and of the attacks before they heard about them on their own. The four of us, along with all of our friends, families, and communities, are truly blessed in far more ways than we can count. May we not forget those ways, and not take the gifts of life and experience for granted. Amen.
This week started out as pretty low-key compared to the two when I was on vacation. On Tuesday we went on a class trip to the Mercedes Benz factory in Sindelfingen. I like cars quite a bit so enjoyed it a lot! They have 35,000 employees at the complex that has its own fire department, five restaurants, and a daycare. They assemble the S-Class, E-Class, Maybach, and GT sports coupe, as well as some bullet-proof cars. On Friday Reid and I went to Strasbourg, France for the day. Luckily we got back to Reutlingen before the attacks in Paris, and it was also lucky that other Valpo students who were in Paris were safe during that time. Yesterday a few of us went to the Hohenzollern Castle for a few hours. It’s only a half hour train ride away from Reutlingen!
A racing game they had setup at the Mercedes tour.
Talking about cars with Professor Veit and a few others. (Notice Professor Hanson getting fingerprints all over the car!)
Reid and I stopped for a few minutes to hear this band in Strasbourg.
Hiking on the trails around the Hohenzollern Castle.
The Reutlingen Opera House was lit up like this Saturday night after the Paris Attacks.
Reid, Ryan, and I attended a small student-led vigil for the Paris attacks on Saturday night.
If you’re living in a foreign country for any extended period of time, you’re bound to run into things that just happen differently than what you’re used to. It is unrealistic to expect things to be the same, but with just a little flexibility on your part, you can find yourself adapting pretty well to these things.
In case this post is too long for you to want to read the whole thing, some of the big points are covered in this video:
Electrical outlets are different. This will not affect your life in any way whatsoever, as long as you’ve made sure you have dual voltage plugs.
“Input: 100-240V~ 50/60Hz 0.15A” This is a magical symbol. If it’s on your charger, then it will work (with a plug adapter) in Europe.
Light switches are different too. Many tend to be reversed from the US, with a [down] = [ON] scheme. However, they’re huge, so you really just have to hit the thing somewhere and you’re good to go.
At one time, I judged Germans for their obsession with mineral water. I had tried it before, but didn’t particularly enjoy it. It’s carbonated, and has a distinct taste from the ions dissolved in it. My opinion of Mineralwasser did a sharp about-face in the past few weeks, and I now quite enjoy the stuff. However, beverages is one of those areas over which one should (rightly) have complete control. If you don’t like Mineralwasser, have a Hefeweizen.
Speaking of Hefeweizen, the beer in Germany is decidedly better here than similarly-priced beer in the US. This is a very easy adjustment to make upon your arrival, but I have a feeling that the adjustment will be far more difficult when I come home. That’ll be fun. I can’t remember who first remarked to me that American beer is essentially rental beer. Beer goes in, you have fun with it for a few hours, and then you excrete an eerily similar product once your lease expires. Not the most pleasant analogy, but people who are still sober enough to follow the logic really enjoy it.
I’ve taken quite a few showers here, and I have yet to find one that is not sufficiently tall. As a taller-than-average person, I’ve grown accustomed to stooping in the shower – even in my own home! As far as I can tell, this problem does not exist in Germany. Unfortunately, the same is not true for doorways. Older buildings (several centuries old) might have shorter doorways, but people weren’t as tall, so that’s excusable. You know that you’re in an old place, so it’s your duty to watch your own head. However, I’ve also bonked my head walking out the front door of the dorm, which is never a good way to begin one’s day.
FOOD AND SHOPPING
Maultaschen (kind of like ravioli, but BETTER!) and Hefeweizen from Barfüsser in Reutlingen.
Everything that I’ve purchased has tax included in the price tag. This makes calculation so much easier, and helps somewhat with budgeting. I can go to the grocery store and pay with exact change (assuming that I have exact change). The calculation isn’t a bunch of adding, then multiplying (or multiplying multiple times for different tax rates – alcohol for example) – it’s straight adding. If you were super curious, the receipt gives a rundown of the taxes applied for your different items, but I can’t think of any reason why I would need to look at this.
Tipping is also considerably different. Not leaving a tip is generally not seen as rude. Usually, I round up to whatever is easiest to make change. Far easier in the calculations than I’m used to. Sure, mentally calculating a tip is never a problem, but it’s so very nice not to have to!
BACK TO OTHER STUFF
Half of the time, showers don’t have curtains. My friend Dominic posited that this was due to the German appreciation for things that look good. Why block a well-designed shower by covering it with a curtain or a door? This argument may have been true for the shower in his apartment, but I’m not convinced that it applies everywhere (see video). Not having the curtain means more careful planning when you’re bathing. Don’t set your clothes somewhere that will become or already is wet.
Light switches are sometimes located outside of the room in which the lights are located. This isn’t a problem necessarily, but if you forget about it, you may find yourself looking around in a room for a switch that isn’t there. This has some potential for asinine pranks, particularly with showers. Fortunately, this has yet to occur.
One very nice difference: Donald Trump (or insert the name of whatever presidential hopeful you want) can say the stupidest, most racist thing ever, and it still wouldn’t show up in the evening news here. Instead, we have substantive, worthwhile stories. There’s a refugee crisis going on, and the response from the US has been disappointing at best. This is a global problem – people are dying because of the inaction of countries that should be helping. I only wish that my politicians answered to their constituents.
As you probably noticed, most of these differences are superficial. You’ll notice them, but likely would not be annoyed by anything here. I’ll talk about the especially gear-grindy stuff in a later post. For now, dinner time. Tchuss!
Micah is currently studying in Reutlingen, Germany, but in his picture, he is standing in front of the Notre Dame Cathedral in Paris!
Micah’s tip, for those of you going to Reutlingen is this, “One tip for someone studying here would be to see as much as you can while here, not necessarily just around Europe but also places that are in or near Reutlingen. There are several miles of hiking/biking/running trails within a few minutes of campus. A Eurail pass is also a must, it makes traveling so much easier and the cost will be made up very quickly if you travel a lot!”
Micah’s favorite class has been his German 101, and also wanted to let everyone know that, close to Reutlingen, Mercedes Benz and Bosch both have headquarters!
I was with Jordan and Mackenzie for most of my two-week break. We started out in Barcelona, where we rented bikes for a day, saw the Magic Fountain (a fountain that “dances” and changes lights to music), went to the beach, to Park Güell, and even to a Barcelona Football/Soccer game!
The bike lanes in Barcelona are the best I’ve ever seen in a city!
The Valpo Pin on the bike lane. I can’t say I didn’t get some funny looks from people in cars when I was on the ground taking this!
Skipping rocks in Barcelona (Valpo Pin in foreground)
After Barcelona we flew to London where we saw all the classic sites like Big Ben (actually the bell inside of the tower), the red payphone booths, double-decker buses, taxis, the London Eye, St. Paul’s Cathedral, Westminster Abbey, Buckingham Palace, Abbey Road (where The Beatles famously crossed), Platform 9 ¾ at King’s Cross Station, went up the Tower Bridge, and rode on the Tube. We also got to meet up with a friend from our freshman year at Valpo, Jen Ehr! It was great to see her again and to have her show us around Oxford University where we also got to see the dining hall they modeled the one in the Harry Potter movies after.
One of the many stereotypical London things we saw while there.
It was nice to meet up with a friend from Valpo, who now goes to Oxford. Jen gave us a great tour!
Crossing Abbey Road, complete with a London taxi waiting for us!
Rome was our next stop, where we went to the Colosseum, the Roman Forum/Palatine Hill, the Trevi Fountain and Spanish Steps (both under construction unfortunately), and also got to see Pope Francis give a blessing on Sunday at noon! It was really cool seeing what humans were possible of doing 2,000 years ago. I could have personally spent a whole day at just the Colosseum and Palatine Hill.
One of the many times we got gelato over the two-week break.
The Roman Colosseum as well as the Roman Forum/Palatine Hill were absolutely amazing! Crazy what people could do 2,000 years ago.
The Valpo Pin overlooking the Colosseum.
On our way to Venice we stopped in Florence for the day where we found this awesome market area! I picked up some dried fruit and Mackenzie and Jordan got some uniquely shaped pasta and a couple random things for Christmas gifts. Upstairs they had a large piece of truffle that was listed at 330,000 euro!
A friendly old Italian man started talking to us (in Italian) while in Florence. It was hard to understand but cool nonetheless!
Next stop, Venice! We did a lot of just walking around there, going over bridges and getting lost on the side streets. What would normally be a questionable alleyway in the U.S. was a perfectly normal place to walk there, just had to be careful for the random dead-ends that only led to water!
Venice was a beautiful city. We spent hours just walking around getting lost in the maze of roads and canals; there’s nothing quite like it in the world!
Mackenzie scaring Jordan next to the water!
The end of my trip was spent with Nick in a small town called Wengen in the Swiss Alps. I couldn’t have asked for a better place to end the two weeks! We went on a 2-hour hike when we first got there and that night our Airbnb host made cheese fondue and had wine for us. Although Switzerland is very expensive, it was well worth it!
The Swiss Alps in Wengen, Switzerland were breathtaking!
Nick trying his hand at chopping some wood at a little campsite area on top of a mountain.
Who am I kidding – the classes aren’t really particularly boring, but rather information about classes might not be the most interesting thing. Sorry about that.
First, I’ll focus on the classes offered through Valpo. These classes always take place in the same classroom, and all 16 of us are enrolled in all of them (not quite true, but I’ll get there later).
Here’s a video about our classroom and the building in which the classes occur:
Everybody takes one of the German classes, taught by Swantje. They meet in consecutive hours, and you enroll in whichever one better reflects your German abilities. 204 is the one you’ll need if you’re pursuing a German major or minor.
European Art & Architecture is taught by Dr. Walter Springer, an art historian from Tübingen. With Dr. Springer, we’ve discussed characteristics of gothic cathedrals (think Notre Dame in Paris), the structure of art (form, lines, colors, composition, etc.), and common themes in religious art. Prof. Springer often reserves the end of class for students to recreate famous paintings and sculptures, while he tries to identify the piece of art. He’s fairly good at this, and has even been able to correctly guess some more obscure pieces.
Economics is taught by Prof. Baldur Veit, who also runs the Reutlingen International Office and probably manages at least a dozen other things away from Hochschule. We’ve discussed how Germany and the EU work, what exactly went wrong with VW, and why Baden-Württemberg is a good place to live. We’ve been told that part of the final exam will be spelling “Baden-Württemberg,” a task which still seems to be difficult for many of us.
Utopian/Dystopian Literature and Social Theory is taught by Carter Hanson, who is also the director of the Valpo study center in Reutlingen for the next two years. This class can count for either English or social science credit. It features discussions of the questions raised by utopian thinking, regarding aspects of history, politics, culture, art, and morality.
Luther and Bach is also taught by Carter Hanson, and can count for history or theology credits. One of the early discussions was about how one can assess the validity of a biographical work. This class was also the basis of our second group trip to Leipzig, Erfurt, Eisenach, and Wittenberg.
These classes account for 16 credit hours, and fulfill general education requirements. Since one only needs 12 credit hours to maintain full-time student status at VU (and thus scholarships), not everybody is taking every class. Perhaps they already fulfilled their gen. eds., or perhaps they simply weren’t interested in taking a particular class.
Or perhaps they’re a VIEP (Valparaiso International Engineering Program) or EIB (Enhanced International Business) student, and have other requirements. For VIEP, we need to take one engineering class taught in German at the Hochschule. In the German academic calendar, the Wintersemester lasts from October to February, so you’re basically on two semesters at once. To be able to take these classes without a credit overload, one must drop a few of the Valpo courses. In my case, I left Utopian/Dystopian Literature and Luther & Bach. Though I had been looking forward to Luther & Bach, my schedule without either of them was a bit more conducive to travel.
This german course began for Nick and me three weeks ago. After initially attending a class that was well beyond our abilities, we switched into Kraft- and Arbeitsmaschinen (work and power machines), and found that to be far more appropriate for our level. Though lecture goes by somewhat quickly, between the two of us, we’ve been able to keep up just fine. However, the class so far has also been a review of thermodynamics and heat transfer, which has greatly improved our comprehension of the material. Though this class will certainly be a test of our skills, I’m confident that hard work will pay off for us both.
Although it’s only Thursday (and my last post was Sunday), I will be leaving for our two-week break with Jordan and Mackenzie tomorrow morning and won’t be able to post while on that break, so I’m squeezing one post more in! This past week was nice because the German 101 class met in the evening versus at 8am, so was a nice week to sleep in!
Tuesday afternoon I rode up to the top of the hill visible from my dorm room. We went up there as a group in the first week we were here, but the colors have changed quite a bit!
Wednesday morning the group was invited to a reception with the city of Reutlingen at an art museum downtown. We went on a short tour before the reception that has occurred for every group of Valpo students who have come here. The 50th anniversary of the partnership between Valpo and Reutlingen University will be during the 2016-2017 academic year. It is potentially the second longest U.S.-Germany university partnership.
Our study abroad group (plus Jon Cisneros, the intern from Valpo, our Economics professor, and two city employees) after the reception.
The group went ice skating with our German teacher Wednesday night before going to a Mexican restaurant later that night!
This weekend Reid, Ryan, Teddy, and I all went to Paris. The trip started out a little rough with a 2-hour train delay and mixed up Airbnb (people renting out rooms of their houses) plans, but in the end we all had a great time! We did most of the tourist sites including the Eiffel Tower, the Catacombs, Notre Dame, the and the Arc de Triomphe. Contrary to what some say, the city did not smell bad overall, just in very few certain areas, but that may be different during the summer.
Just me and my new friends in the Catacombs, they aren’t looking so hot!
Ryan posing for a picture in front of Notre Dame.
The Eiffel Tower made a good backrest for Reid!
The Valpo pin during the Eiffel Tower light show.
We rented bikes for part of the day on Saturday, it was awesome being able to see more of the city that way!
The view of the city from the top of the Arc de Triomphe.
This weekend helped continue the trend of never having a dull moment this semester! On Friday a few of us hiked up to a castle less than a half hour bus ride from campus. While some told us it was a 2-hour hike just to get up, Jon and I made it in about 45 minutes and down in 20! It turns out they actually meant it was 2 hours there and back, but we still made really good time! While there we went on a tour inside the castle (unfortunately no photos were allowed) which was in extremely good condition and took in the beautiful fall scenery.
On Saturday, Mackenzie, Jordan, and I traveled to Strasbourg, France. It is right on the Germany-France border so not too far away for a day trip. We saw a beautiful cathedral, a street show downtown, Petite France (a small town area on an island in the city), and drank some freshly squeezed grape juice at a wine festival.
A group of us hiked to the top of the Liechtenstein Castle only a half hour away from campus! The fall colors were beautiful!
A better view of the castle!
Mackenzie having some fun in one of the alleys in Strasbourg, France!
Jordan and Mackenzie figuring out how to cut our French pastry into thirds.
An example of some of the glass artwork that we saw in Strasbourg!
A larger view of the glass artwork Mackenzie was looking through.
I have done a lot of traveling over the past week! Friday, September 25th was the start of our group portion of the trip that began in Leipzig. Over the next few days we saw several places related to the Luther and Bach class we are taking back in Reutlingen. Kennth’s blog will include all of the details of the group trip, but on Wednesday morning Mackenzie, Jordan, Kelsey, and I went to Prague. It really is a beautiful city and very cheap too. At the restaurants we ate at beer was actually cheaper than a Coke or water of the same size! Finally, on Saturday the three of us took a day trip to Oktoberfest in Munich which was definitely an unforgettable experience!
It was a great time touring the Wartburg Castle in Eisenach, where Martin Luther hid for a period of time during the Reformation.
Kellie enjoying the stunning views of the countryside from the castle.
Later that day, we all toured the Bachhaus Museum where we had an opportunity to listen to several of Bach’s compositions in cool hanging chairs!
Nick checking out the printing press at the Augustinian monastery where Martin Luther became a monk.
After the tour of the monastery most of the group (including Professor Hansen!) took a ride on the spinning pendulum ride at the Erfurt Oktoberfest. Everyone made it without getting sick!
While exploring Erfurt later in the day the group I was with came across this swingset on top of an old fortress. The views of the city and distant countryside were beautiful!
Jordan, Mackenzie, and Kelsey enjoying the famous Charles Bridge Band in Prague.
Micah is currently studying in Reutlingen, Germany, but in his picture, he is standing in front of the Notre Dame Cathedral in Paris!
