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!