more about Berlin (in English, this time)

This post was supposed to be a change-up from the extremely high levels of German and introspection present in my last one.
…at least it’s in English?

I spent last Wednesday through Sunday at my End-of-Stay Camp in Berlin. If you’re thinking “End-of-WHAT?!” right now…well, join the club. My friend Natalie (my roommate from D.C.!) and I have been writing letters to each other all year, and we’d been hoping to meet up sometime. At one point, I think she wrote something to the tune of “I hope we can find a time before Berlin…” and I’m pretty sure I laughed…as if that was going to be a problem.

You have to understand that, before most of us go on exchange, we spend a varying amount of time trying to find out about others’ experiences so that we’ll have an idea of what to expect. (In fact, you, dear reader, may well be a future exchange student yourself, in which case I wish you the very best.) And you have to understand that I’d heard about a million times how FAST exchange goes by. You have to understand that I took it to heart, I really did…but you also have to understand that it is sometimes impossible to believe. And for all that I tried to convince myself that this year was going to go by too quickly, End-of-Stay camp always seemed impossibly distant, even abstract, pretty much right up until I got on the train on Wednesday morning.

More than eight hours after leaving home, I arrived in Berlin unsure how to feel: was I finally there, or more like already? What was it going to be like, seeing all those people who had just been Facebook pictures (if even that) since our hurried goodbyes in the Frankfurt airport nearly nine months ago?

Answer to the second question: AWESOME.

When you have a group of fifty people, you can’t all be best friends. And even if all fifty of you are Americans stuck in a hotel waiting to go to Germany, you’re not necessarily going to have much in common. But nine months later, it’s a whole different story.

We did some really cool things. We:

saw the sites,

the New Yorkers in our group in front of the Brandenburger Tor

fulfilled our ambassadorial duties,

CBYXers with the American ambassador (photo stolen from Abby -- click-through to her blog!)

saw history in person,

die Berliner Mauer

made our own history,

Exchange Students Against Nuclear Power!

stopped to smell the roses,

Sorrel had a great idea!

ate delicious Indian food,

Dani knew this place and it was AMAZING (also Abby's photo)

and were just generally, without a doubt, tourists,

Zoriana takes pictures of the Berliner Dom

but the coolest part was probably how much we bonded as a group. It was really neat, being able to sit down next to people with whom I’d never before exchanged much more than a “hey, I’m Margaret” and then just talk to them until we ran out of time or got interrupted. There were things during the weekend that didn’t go perfectly, but by the end when we had to give our Betreuers (the amazing former exchange students who were in charge of the camp) feedback, I couldn’t even think of any complaints. I just wanted to hug everyone.

I came away from the camp with a lot of good: I finally got to see Berlin, and it’s an amazing feeling to know that forty-nine other exchange students have got your back.

But it also left me with the mixed feeling of knowing that my stay is, in fact, coming to an end. Berlin is behind me, and time is barreling toward the next stop: Frankfurt am Main airport. Realizing, by which I mean truly understanding for the first time, that I have fewer than forty days left here, was terrifying, which I think was sometimes evident in my face, based on the number of times during the weekend I was asked if I was okay. But at the same time, it was necessary and positive, because I am going to live the heck out of these last six five weeks.

As usual, this post is too long and too feelingsy, but I think I need to give up on saying that the next one will be better. Mal schauen!

a letter to the CBYXers

Meine liebe ,,PPPlers”,

ich wünsche, ich hätte die Wörter um euch zu sagen, genau wie viel ihr mir bedeutet. Weil ich letztendlich die Chance nicht hatte, es dem Bundestag oder der Botschaft oder sogar euch in Berlin zu sagen, werde ich es jetzt versuchen.

Wenn ich komplett ehrlich bin, meine Rückblicke an unsere Orientierung in Washington, D.C. bringen mir nicht nur positive Erinnerungen. Wie ich mich daran erinnere, war uns oft langweilig, und ich fühlte mich ungeduldig und durcheinander. Ich lernte nicht besonders viele Leute kennen, und ich zeigte mich nicht immer so freundlich und begeistert wie ich hätte wollen. Ich wollte D.C. verlassen und mit meinem Austausch so bald wie möglich anfangen.

Wie einige Monate alles ändern können.

Wie ihr wisst, ich hatte geplant, am Freitag einen kurzen Vortrag zu machen, aber am Donnerstagabend veränderte ich meine ganze Rede. Ich hatte was bemerkt, worüber ich vorher hätte nicht schreiben können, und zwar, wie viel wir gewachsen waren. Und vor allem freut es mich, dass wir alle zusammen wuchsen.

Als wir uns letzten Mittwoch wieder traf, erkannte ich fast alle von euch, aber unser damaliges Verhältnis ist mit dem jetzigen nicht zu vergleichen. Wir kamen in D.C. als sehr unterschiedliche einzelne Menschen an, aber wir verließen Berlin am Sonntag als eine Familie. Ich kann mich gar nicht erinnern an noch so eine Gruppe wie wir — groß genug, dass wir nicht alle einander gut kennen könnte, aber trotzdem mit so vielen Gemeinsamkeiten, dass jeder von uns mit jedem anderen sitzen und ein gutes (sogar tiefes) Gespräch halten könnte.

Irgendwie ist es schon Juni, also genießt eure letzte Wochen. Es werden traurige und schwierige Tage sein, wenn wir uns wieder sehen, aber jetzt wissen wir, dass wir alle einander haben werden. Wir werden einander trösten, unser gemeinsam Trauer und Freude teilen. Wir werden, zumindest noch einmal, einfach für einander da sein.

Ich habe so ein großes Glück, dass ich euch alle meine Freunde nennen kann. Ich hoffe mit meinem ganzen Herzen, dass wir unsere Verbindungen zueinander und zu Deutschland nie vergessen werden. Ich habe euch alle, meine schöne PPP-Familie, so sehr lieb.

Bis dann,
Margaret

Nä, wat wor dat dann fröher en superjeile Zick

If you’re reading the title of this post in utter confusion, don’t worry — most Germans would feel the same way. About a million years ago, back in September or so, I posted about my first trip to Cologne and was amused by the idea of Kölsch, the dialect spoken in Cologne, actually being its own language. To be fair, to my very green ears, most German that wasn’t spoken at a speed of about five words per minute sounded like total gibberish, so the finer differences between Hochdeutsch and Kölsch were totally lost on me at that point. But by February when I started brushing up on my Karnevalslieder, it was very clear that the latter was a whole different animal. And in March came Karneval!

Actually, that’s not entirely true. Karneval officially begins every year on the eleventh of November at 11:11 AM (I bet it’s going to be an extra big deal this year on 11/11/11!), takes a break over the Christmas holidays and starts up again sometime in January or February. I went to the Galasitzung in my village in February, and no, I will not tell you what my costume was. It was pretty fun, I got to know some of the people in my village better, and it whetted my appetite for the Straßenkarneval, which is the part that happens in March.

Of course, after looking forward to this all year, I got Achilles tendonitis the week before and spent the first day of Karneval, and spent Weiberfastnacht (Karneval Thursday) on the couch. The happy part of this is that I got to be at home while my host parents and their friend Susanne got ready to go out, and it was a very festive mood!

 

Pretty spiffy costumes, eh? That Friday, my friend Kate (the one who lives in Stuttgart) showed up, since, unlike mine, her region isn’t particularly well known for its great Karneval celebrations. We did some exploring around the town where I go to school, baked chocolate chip cookies, played lots of card/board games with Mona, aaand experienced Karneval in Cologne twice!

The highlight of Karneval is Rosenmontag, or “Rose Monday.” We got up early so that we would have a good place from which to watch the parade. Luckily, Gaby and Tobi have friends with a shop right along the route, so we got to stand outside of it and always had a place to go inside and warm up if necessary, which it was, since the parade is around five hours long.

We wore different costumes on Monday, except for Tobi, the eternal knight. I am a meadow, in case you’re wondering.

Since we got there so early, we had lots of time to roam the streets and take pictures with people with interesting costumes! (I stole a bunch of these from Kate, since they were pretty much all on her camera.)

Even more impressive than the many creative costumes were the floats during the parade. Many of them made political statements, like this one, a protest against the proposed “Stuttgart 21″ train station. They were really amazing!

After Kate left on Monday night, Karneval was still not quite over. On Tuesday, my Dorf put on its own parade! Tobi and I went to watch Gabi and the other angels here in the village. I have no good photos from the parade, but here’s one of my favorites, the lovely Andrea, at the “after-party.”

Unfortunately, am Aschermittwoch war alles vorbei. (On Ash Wednesday, it was all over!) And of course, that’s all a good two months ago now. But I can look back and say, nä, wat wor dat dann fröher en superjeile Zick. A very loose translation: good times!

Things Germans Do That Confuse Me

First of all, a big fat apology for my lack of diligence on the blog-updating is in order! You know that feeling when you procrastinate on some harmless task, and the longer you put it off, the more daunting it seems? In order to stop being terrified of having over two months of blogging to catch up on, I’m going to just do a series of shorter posts instead of one long, boring recap. Hopefully I’ll be able to catch all the highlights over the next week or two!

I have been similarly lax on my Amikinder videos (I’ll try to get back on track with those too), but if anyone has been following the YouTube channel at all, you may be familiar with Lydia, who has a hilarious running theme of “things Germans do that confuse me.” Well, here’s something Germans do that confuses me: as you may remember, Germans buy their water in Kisten. Instead of drinking tap water, they buy big plastic crates containing glass bottles of mineral water. Normally, we buy Gerolsteiner water, but Tobi prefers Spa water, which is not sold here. So, we drove to a foreign country in order to procure, yes, water. Of course, this is Europe, so the nearest foreign country is pretty much as a rule day-trip distance away. (Russia is partly in Asia, so it doesn’t count.) And I live near enough to the border to drive to Belgium in the morning, visit two different grocery stores, take a leisurely stroll through the town, and enjoy the weather in a terrace café, and still make it home in time for lunch.

Gabi and Tobi with an éclair in Belgium! the sign in the background says "Bienvenue - Wilkommen"

Another thing that I am pretty confused by are “Maibaüme” or May trees. May Day was one of the weirder traditions (although not necessarily in a bad way) at my high school, but it did not prepare me for the German “Mainacht” celebration. Aside from being a Karneval-like excuse to hang out with people and drink beer (minus costumes, plus nice weather and fireworks), “May Night” brings with it the very strange custom of erecting “May trees.” This had been mentioned and even explained to me multiple times, but I just really did not get it until I drove past a friend’s house after the May Night festival to see that her boyfriend had placed a huge birch tree with colorful ribbons hanging from the branches in her front yard. And when I say huge, I mean taller than her three-story house.

Just kidding. I still don’t get it.

I didn’t get a picture since it was around 1:30 in the morning, but here is an approximation:

ein Maibaum (source: http://www.maibäume.de/)

In other news…there is a lot of other news. I’ll try to spread it out a little bit over the next few days instead of dumping everything on y’all at once, in case I haven’t built up enough anticipation already by waiting months to write this. Bis dann!

what I’ve been up to

you can also check out the amikinder YouTube channel to see more of me (and a few of my friends) rambling.

the short version:

• I go to school, which is pretty good
• I went to my CBYX mid-stay camp, which was great
• I got tendinitis, which is unfortunately timed

In other news, I did “get into college,” and should have more to share on that front in about a month.

Hope this post finds you all well! (: I really haven’t forgotten how to write and will do a proper post soon.

and the first half comes to a close!” (echt?!)

I’ve been completely terrible about both updating my blog and writing in my journal lately. Way to go, me. I’ll try to give you a run-down of my life in the past month, anyway.

First of all, if you don’t get the title of this blog post, don’t worry. Let’s just say that playing as much “Backyard Soccer” as I have in my life is probably not something to be proud of. I’ll come back to this later.

Around the time I last made an actual post, I started school again. This made me both nervous and excited, and happily ended up being an indisputably good thing. It was so nice to see everyone again, and they at least pretended to be happy to see me, as well. The first week was still a bit sketchy, since I was both sick and homesick (they tend to go together and are a terrible combination), but it got better very quickly.

One of the best parts of last month was that I finally got a cello! Before my exchange, I was sad that I wouldn’t be able to bring mine with me, but sort of figured, “Well, I’ve been playing for eight years, it’ll be nice to have a little time off…” Wrong answer. I missed it so much, and playing has simply been making me so happy! I joined an orchestra nearby and will hopefully be able to play a bit with my friends’ band. Another CBYXer and I even made plans to play a cello duet at our next camp (looking forward to the bringing cello on the train…). It’s really made a big change for me, and made me realize that music is something that I never want to lose. Maybe cliched, but true nonetheless.

At the end of my second week back in school, I went bowling with my philosophy class, which was a pretty epic failure (every time I go bowling I expect to have improved at least a little, but it very rarely happens), and then to a friend’s party, which was quite strange. You see, it was a goodbye party for Lena, who left shortly thereafter for her own exchange in New Zealand. I was suddenly in the position of “experienced exchange student giving advice to nervous outbound”…in German! It was bizarre to think about that in contrast to where I was last January, and even weirder to hear everyone talking about how fast the time will go between now and when she gets back in July — about a week after I go back to New York.

Which brings me to the fact that, by many counts, today is the halfway point of my exchange.
…what?

I’m pretty sure that there have been many times in the previous five months when, if someone had said, “Hey, you have five months left in Germany,” I would have been sorely tempted to say “…Okay. That’s enough.” But today? Guys, I’m just getting started!

rambling

A lot of this is just me introducing myself/playing with my hair. Sorry ’bout that.

on going home (and Heidelberg)

Funny word, home. While jointly considering this topic and the fact that a new Dave Carter and Tracy Grammer album is coming out soon (remarkable when you consider that Dave Carter died when I was nine), I recalled that during our first couple of years living in Kingston, Harriet and I used to sing the chorus of “Gentle Arms of Eden” loudly whenever we reached the FDR Drive on the way back to Brooklyn. It begins: This is my home, this is my only home… Obviously, we were a bit overexcited because I really do not consider the FDR Drive “the only sacred ground I’ve ever known,” but my point is that after a time, the singing died down. It wasn’t that our love for Brooklyn had diminished; it still hasn’t. But Kingston became our home, too.

On Monday, I arrived in Heidelberg. It felt completely surreal to be back in the place where I first fell in love with Germany and with the people who made it happen. I walked into the house, and I felt like I was home. It looked the same, it smelled the same…I know that sounds really weird, but smells are somehow incredibly memorable, even when you don’t realize that you remember them.

Of course, there were a few differences. There was snow on the ground, we didn’t eat outside, and the cast of characters was slightly altered. Also, my presence did not force everyone to converse in another language, and it was great to understand plans as they were being made, instead of waiting for someone to translate the result for me at the end. But however you slice it, I had a feeling of being back in a place where I belonged.

Quick background: Chrissi is my “exchange partner,” you could say. I stayed with her for a month in summer 2009, and she stayed with me for a month last winter. Angelika and Bernhard are her parents. She has two brothers who are in various foreign countries at the moment, but her boyfriend Paul was there. They are all really lovely, fun people, without whom I would probably be in Kingston suffering from an acute case of senioritis right now.

Anyway, I really had an amazing time in Heidelberg. We did old things (bought candy in the Zuckerladen and hiked up to the Königstuhl) and new things (visited the Speyer Technikmuseum which provided a wealth of entertainment in the form of peculiar English translations and cool old cars, went ice skating, saw the Heidelberger Weihnachtscircus, and played about two hundred rounds of Kniffel — Yahtzee to you, America). I got to see lots of people who I haven’t seen in a year and a half (I was reminded of how little German I used to speak when I successfully answered the question of what language I wanted to converse in and was met with expressions of surprise at how well I could understand), and try to explain things about politics and education for which I lack almost all of the necessary vocabulary, and even take the train down to Stuttgart to visit my New York-friend Kate. (Just like everyone promised, it was really wonderful to spend a few hours with someone who I could understand and converse with easily.) (We spoke German.)

By the way, one of the most remarkable things about my visit is pretty well illustrated by the following two photographs:

I took the first one on Tuesday. I took the second one on Saturday. Yes, same week. On Saturday it was about 60ºF. Gorgeous weather to walk up the hill without a sweater, but also completely insane. There was practically a river coming down the trail. I’d pretty much forgotten that it was winter until it started to get dark unexpectedly early. Unsurprisingly, I saw a bit of flooding on the train back north along the Rhein on Sunday.

Which brings me back to my point. Leaving Heidelberg again was really sad (and I’ll definitely be going back), but meeting Gaby and Tobi again at the train station in Düren was really happy. Coming back to the house and having a fire in the wood stove again was really happy. Even having the dogs jump all over me was really happy. I was home. Again.

I guess those people who insist that home is where the heart is have a point. It’s kind of cool that mine is scattered all over the world. (I could make some really great Horcrux jokes right now.)

Oh, and if you’re into contemporary American folk music, Dave Carter was pretty much a songwriting genius and Tracy Grammer is still wonderful.

how many 747s?!

I’m a fan of numbers, so I geeked out slightly over this and wanted to share it with you.

The stats helper monkeys at WordPress.com mulled over how this blog did in 2010, and here’s a high level summary of its overall blog health:

The Blog-Health-o-Meter™ reads Wow.

Crunchy numbers

A Boeing 747-400 passenger jet can hold 416 passengers. This blog was viewed about 7,200 times in 2010. That’s about 17 full 747s.

In 2010, there were 31 new posts, not bad for the first year! There were 81 pictures uploaded, taking up a total of 86mb. That’s about 2 pictures per week.

The busiest day of the year was December 24th with 148 views. The most popular post that day was an exchanger’s Christmas.

Where did they come from?

The top referring sites in 2010 were cultures-shocked.org, facebook.com, great-perhaps.tumblr.com, mail.yahoo.com, and mikesyearingermany.blogspot.com.

Some visitors came searching, mostly for ourbatteredsuitcases.com, cbyx at home interview, samlearnstospeak.wordpress.com, also octopus can be wrong, and nsli turkey site:wordpress.com.

Attractions in 2010

These are the posts and pages that got the most views in 2010.

1

an exchanger’s ChristmasDecember 2010
2 comments

2

about meFebruary 2010
8 comments

3

other blogsApril 2010

4

become an exchange studentApril 2010

5

ich bin hier!September 2010
5 comments

 

By the way, WordPress also informed me that I’ve had eight views today so far and that “The number 8 is a Fibonacci number, being 3 plus 5. The next Fibonacci number is 13. 8 is the only positive Fibonacci number, aside from 1, that is a perfect cube.” Thanks!

Anyway, frohes neues Jahr! I’m headed to Heidelberg tomorrow, so you should hear from me again sometime next week. Feel free to hold me to that. Bis dann!

an exchanger’s Christmas

When preparing for exchange, one is introduced to the “normal” progression of emotions. At the beginning, most exchange students are excited and happy (the “honeymoon” stage). Next comes culture shock and homesickness. One of the normal low points of exchange is the holidays, and then it tends to get progressively better from there, until the end when students are sad about leaving. Normally.

WELL. I’ve never been one to embrace normalcy, and I have to say that this feels like one of the high points of my exchange up till now. There are definitely things that I’m missing about Christmas in New York, like candlelit Christmas Eve services (at least no burning hair this year!), pork pie and coffee cake, a full house, and, most of all, those crazy and wonderful people who make the house full. But it has barely stopped snowing in days, Germany is completely beautiful, and I’ve never felt closer to my host family. I’m so excited to be celebrating Christmas here with them, and I’ll see everyone on the other side of the ocean again soon.

Lots of love to all of my families, near and far, und ich wunsche euch ein fröhliches Weihnachten. ♥