Geneva

After a strenuous three day week, this past Thursday and Friday we took a field study trip to Geneva (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Geneva). I spent the vast majority of my time trapped in meetings at the United Nations (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/UNOG). Most were interesting, however, the representative from the human rights commission was extraordinarily condescending and her presentation seemed to be geared toward local fifth graders than college upperclassmen well versed in international relations subjects.

Free time was limited on such a short trip. On Thursday night, the program took all the students to a traditional Swiss fondue. I've never been a huge fan of fondue, but this was definitely done correctly. It was incredibly rich, but it was paired with very good wine, so it balanced out nicely. We ended up having our bus driver at our table, and he turned out to be a really interesting man. He usually drives musicians around; his first client was actually Dizzie Gillespie. He also served as the impartial arbiter of the mandatory punishment for dropping one's bread in the fondue, which ended up being very important indeed.

By day, free time was even more limited, but we did get two hours before we had to leave to explore a little bit very quickly. Unfortunately the duration of the trip necessitated that I had to pay for food in Switzerland. Geneva is even more highly priced than the rest of the country, from what we were told. Switzerland again did not disappoint, as I got to have by far the most expensive lemon chicken I will ever eat in my life at 40 francs. I really liked Geneva, despite its extraordinary cost of living, and I definitely would have preferred having more than two hours to see the sights.

Today, a few friends and I returned to Staufen, which you might remember as the small town involved in the hike. We received some moderate snowfall over the past few days, so we went hiking to many of the same areas, including the castle above the city, in the snow, which gave it all a much different perspective. We also ran into some shepherd's shrines up in the Black Forest (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_Forest), which were interesting to see.

It will probably be a while before my next update, because I will be incredibly busy traveling before I get a break to fill you guys in. Next Friday to Sunday, I will be in northern Italy visiting Milan and Turin. We get back late Sunday night, and then Monday morning we depart on our Western European field study trip, with visits to Brussels, Luxembourg, and Paris. Unless I bring my computer with me, which I believe is unlikely, there might not be another update until March 2 or 3.

Here are some scenes from Geneva for now though:



The United Nations always manages to get really nice land for their buildings. Their complex in Geneva, as you can see, was no exception.



The UN buildings in Geneva are a little less imposing than their huge complex in New York, but the Palais des Nationes (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Palais_des_Nations) does the job nicely.



Geneva as a city definitely revolves around its waterfront lake. The fountain you see in the center is one if the city's landmarks, a huge geyser, the Jet d'Eau (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jet_d%27eau), shooting right out the center of Lake Geneva (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lake_Geneva).


Another view of a small corner of Lake Geneva. This was taken from a bridge featured somewhat prominently in Under Western Eyes, a novel of Joseph Conrad (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Under_Western_Eyes).


A partial view of Geneva's skyline as taken from the top of their cathedral


The Swiss give their UPS drivers Mercedes-Benz to drive. What think you of that?


The flower clock in the English Gardens. The clock changes frequently in its design. This one was strange because of the irregular positioning of the numbers - the four is way in the corner of the picture, while the 1 is almost in the center of the clock.

Just a rather nice Geneva streetscape.

Switzerland: Where I avoid repeating my mistakes

After returning from Berlin, we had classes begin in earnest. I actually already made one change, and dropped my class on cultural and national identities, because it focused entirely on the Middle East. These topics are doubtlessly interesting, but I'm in a European Union program for a reason, and a slot opened up elsewhere, so my schedule for the semester will be as follows:

MW 9-1030 - EU/US Relations
MTWR 1225-125 - Beginning German I
TR - 245-415 - European Economic Policies
TR - 430-6 - European Integration Seminar
TR - 615-745 - European Political Cultures

The econ class promises to be delightfully easy, as some students in the class had not heard of Adam Smith beforehand, so we had to define who he was for ten minutes. And despite the fact that I probably will not end up doing the Brussels internship after the program for financial reasons, I'm going to try to see if I can go to some of the courses for it, since there will be French review, and I would like to not forget everything I learned last semester.

After our first two days of classes, a very strenuous courseload indeed, yesterday we were bussed to the Alps (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alps) for a day of, well, winter. More specifically, we took the 6 AM bus to Grindelwald (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grindelwald), one of the better Swiss alpine winter resort towns. Personally, I spent the majority of my day doing sledding and tubing. Tubing was actually a little lackluster - the course was rather tame and predominately a series of lazy curves. I was hoping for a bobsled run. Sledding (in German-speaking places known as sledging), was indescribably ridiculous. Essentially, they gave us one of the old Citizen Kane style sleds. And told us to sled down the bus road that they drive up the mountain with. The buses had giant horns that played La Cucaracha, or at least some Swiss equivalent that sounded highly derivative, when they neared so you knew to get out of the way, lest you and Rosebud get run down. This was a 4 kilometer sled route, complete with mattresses on trees and fences to attempt to prevent you from plummeting down the mountain side. So where tubing failed me, at least the Swiss got the sledging right.

As one last note on the trip, last time I was in Switzerland, in Basel you might recall, I had to pay 18 dollars for a personal pan pizza. The Swiss have institutionalized highway robbery as their food-service industry. Yesterday, I learned from my mistakes and smuggled a loaf of bread and jar of Nutella across the border, so I could teach those Swiss a lesson.

Anyway, I'll leave you with some pictures of the Alps:









The sunset (sadly, could only be taken from a moving bus) over Lake Thun (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lake_Thun).


Alpine trains.

The travels have begun

First things first, I've recently returned from several days of traveling. As such, I'm having to split this entry up into two, so no computers shut down from picture overload.

Since the last entry - actually, very recently thereafter, I came down with a rather bad case of the flu. I was quite sick from Sunday night until about Wednesday morning. Thrillingly, I had two exams on Wednesday, so even though I was no longer sick for them, study time was not really existent. I also had to miss a soccer match Tuesday evening I was supposed to go to. But such is life, and at least I was generally well for the trip. All that remains at the moment is a persistent cough.

Early Thursday morning we departed for Estonia (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Estonia). Estonia is essentially, as far as Europe is concerned, the middle of absolute nowhere. As such, the capital city, Tallinn (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tallinn if you had not clicked the link in the past) felt rather provincial despite it's significant legal status. They have been doing their best to eradicate memories of Soviet control, which they refer to as an "occupation" despite being fully incorporated into the Soviet Union. They seem much more accepting of their Russian colonial legacy, however.


This is one of Peter the Great's palaces, Kadriorg, right outside of town on the Baltic Sea (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Baltic_Sea). It's actually considerably smaller than I expected. Interestingly, out front was a series of ice sculptures of the Chinese zodiac to celebrate Chinese New Year. Do let me know if you can possibly explain why.

Tallinn's old town has remained fairly well preserved despite generally being fought over for 600 years.




This is a statue commemorating the Soviet war dead from World War II, the Bronze Soldier (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bronze_Soldier_of_Tallinn). Previously, it held a prominent place in a major town square. The Estonian government recently moved it to a Soviet military cemetery a few kilometers outside town, past a dilapidated army complex. Russia was, needless to say, displeased.



Estonia had tons of old churches, relatively concentrated together. They were fully integrated into the urban environment and they certainly did not follow the German urban historical policy of disencumberment, which removed buildings around urban churches so as to make them a more dominating presence in the squares. In Estonia, there is even ice skating right above.

Directly from Tallinn, we flew to Berlin. Actually, that's sort of a lie, we had to double back across Germany to Frankfurt because there are no direct winter flights from Tallinn to Berlin, but we ostensibly got there directly.

I enjoyed Berlin a great deal. The city has some issues dealing with its past as well and seems to be a perpetual construction site. But there is certainly a ton more going on, with monuments and points of historical significance on almost every street corner. Might I add that both Berlin and Tallinn were very cold. Going still further north in winter, not always a good plan, especially when we had to spend so many hours at a time outside.



This is one of the big surviving East German landmarks, the TV Tower at Alexanderplatz (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alexanderplatz). East Berlin still feels rather different than what was West Berlin, with the exception of the very central part of town, Mitte (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mitte). Mitte, as the location of most of the conventional tourist points and was directly divided by the Berlin Wall, has been fully reintegrated. Yes, Alexanderplatz is technically in Mitte, but is far enough away from the immediate surroundings of the wall that it still seems like East Berlin. As our hotel was slightly outside Mitte further into old East Berlin (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/East_Berlin), this was the district which I was able to best get a feel for.



This is actually a protestant church, believe it or not, the Berliner Dom (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Berliner_Dom). I ended up not getting inside to take pictures because one day we got in because we pretended we were going to a service. The second day I tried to go in to take pictures, they wanted to charge me five euro. I find it unacceptable to charge admission to an active house of worship for any denomination, so alas, no pictures have been taken. The Berliner Dom is located on Museum Island (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Museum_Island) which has a rather impressive concentration of artifacts in one place. I only made it to a couple museums on it, but I managed to see the Ishtar Gate (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ishtar_Gate), one of the surviving gates of Babylon dating from the 6th Century BC.




This is the German parliament building, the Reichstag (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reichstag_building), amidst the Berlin snowfall. In the late 1990s, a giant glass dome was put atop the building, which permits both looking in and climbing to the top to get views of the city.


The views are rather good, this is only a small portion of the way up to the top, but you can easily see the Brandenburger Tor (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brandenburg_Gate) and most of the other landmarks of Berlin by climbing its winding ramp.

I rather enjoyed Berlin though, despite a tense moment where a rather offensive girl from our class compared the Israel/Palestine conflict to the Holocaust. Publicly. In a meeting at the German Department of Defense. Needless to say, I don't think the program will be getting that meeting again anytime soon.

Alright, stay tuned to part two of the entry.

When cultural differences become apparent

Cultural differences are funny things. Everything goes along in a relatively normal fashion, and then they spring up out of nowhere. Things like pop costing more than wine in grocery stores are different, but not at the level they actually provoke any thought. Differences like that are easily accepted. Really, though Germany has been different, it hasn't felt terribly different than the US, at least culturally speaking.

Today, though, there was a moment that made me fully realize that I was in fact in a culture beside my own. We went to the Narrenumzug, a carnival/parade of sorts in the town of Umkirch (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Umkirch). It is a Fastnacht (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fastnacht), which is a pre-Lenten carnival of sorts. Not quite Mardi Gras, however, since it's purpose is to scare away winter. As a result, everyone is heavily costumed, etc.

However, the difference came in with the conduct at the Narrenumzug. It involved a lot of grabbing children and running away with them from their families and trying to make them cry, for one. One guy threw a staff in the air and hit a kid on the head. Another disconcerting aspect was the weird overtone of sexual harassment. There were girls that were grabbed and dragged into the street and thrown onto mattresses and had confetti shoved down their shirts and pants and had their lower backs stamps. Others were wrapped in saran wrap, spun in front of the entire crowd, and the like. Typically, these were girls in the age range of 14-20, and much older men taking part in the actions. This would NEVER go over in the United States. Vulcans can't even dot people on the face anymore at parades, and yet here, it was completely ordinary to be throwing girls on mattresses in the middle of the street and shoving things down their shirts. Essentially, the experience seemed to be like why people watch a horror film: the reactions and moments of terror were part of the experience, and none who grew up with it were bothered in the least. Nonetheless, it was radically different than what would be acceptable in the United States, so it was a very eye-opening experience.




Before I get onto the other fun pictures, as promised, I have solved my camera dilemma. So you can see a couple pictures of my room and nearby:

The view out my window when it is actually sunny (which is almost never):



The ridiculous version of blinds I have: It's a metal square with weird holes on it that is on a track outside the window. I need to reach outside and pull it loudly across to open and shut it. It looks like a nuclear blast shield:

My room; not the most exciting room in the world. But it functions, I suppose:


Yesterday, we took a German class field trip to Heidelberg (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heidelberg). Heidelberg is an older city that escaped damage in the World Wars, so it has plenty of old buildings intact. Notably, it was important in the Holy Roman Empire. Notably now, it has an illegal non-franchise Hard Rock Cafe. There was an impressive palace/castle above the town, which is now basically in ruins, but it remains imposing. That day also involved my first near-missed tram due to still developing concepts of inconsistent train schedules on the Verkehrs AG. You figure out the official acronym for our public transportation yourself, you twelve year old boys. Anyway, I got a phone call at 716 informing me that the last tram I could make and be on time was in two minutes, so various important things were forgotten. I made it on time. And we ended up waiting for the people from the 748 tram anyway. Oh well.




Other than that, survived the first week of intensive classes. I have my first test in both on Wednesday, right before leaving for Estonia in the morning, so the next couple days will be busy with that. On Tuesday, I'm going to my first soccer game with the local team, SC Freiburg (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SC_Freiburg). It is undoubtedly the best way to prepare for my exams the next day. Finally, I booked my spring break - we will be vacationing in Nice (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nice) over Easter Weekend. It promises to be warmer and sunnier than Germany.

I'll try to put up an update before I leave for the week on Thursday morning, but if not, I'll give you all an update when I'm back from my first field study.

The First Week

I had meant to give an earlier update than this, but a combination of busyness plus technological failings has pushed it back. My camera ceased to work. I'm working on replacing it and getting the old one returned under warranty, but in the meantime, I'm going to have to be stealing pictures from my friends here, that I've been along with for. It's the best I can do. I'll also not make this too overly long, but if there's anything else you want to know/are interested in, let me know and I can write another post on it or just e-mail you back if it's specific at all. I'll also include parenthetical Wiki links to things that are mentioned, should you happen to be self-motivated and intrigued enough to look at them.

So, I arrived last Wednesday morning after a flight mishap got my first route canceled. We've been kept very busy since then. In case I really haven't told you anything at all about my trip, I am studying in Freiburg, in southwestern Germany (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Freiburg_im_Breisgau). The town of Freiburg itself is pretty straightforward and centralized - everything that's open past 6 pm is located downtown as a general rule. So all of the tramlines lead downtown, which makes navigating the city relatively easy. For those who haven't looked it up at all, it's about 220,000 people. But it has a bigger light rail network than Minneapolis, with 4 lines. That's how you know you're in Europe. The juxtaposition of building constructions has been really interesting.

My apartment itself is rather odd. It's part of a converted French military barracks from the military occupation after World War II. Each unit is unique and they do not follow a set pattern. Mine actually happens to be two stories tall, centered around a staircase. I live with two German girls, one German guy, and one French guy, though one of the German girls is yet to appear in the apartment. All of my roommates have been nice, and they all speak English well enough for us to communicate without any problems. Pictures of this will be forthcoming, as right now they are trapped in my broken camera. This is a picture of the street that I live on though:

The 75 students have largely started to segregate by this time, and really did rather definitively by day 3. It was actually really interesting how quickly it happened. When first going to college, I remember there being some fluidity in figuring out who we wanted to spend time with, and people breaking in and out of groups and it not being a big deal, but here, everyone seems pretty set. There is of course mixing, but we have a group of about 12-14 people that I think will be mainly fraternizing, and then I have a smaller group of 4 that I've been generally spending time with.

This last weekend we went out and about twice. On Saturday, a group of us went hiking between two small German towns, Staufen (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Staufen_im_Breisgau) and
Sulzberg (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sulzburg). It wasn't a strenuous hike, but it was up in the foothills of the Alps in the Black Forest, mainly hiking through vineyards. It's really relaxing, and I'd like to find a couple more routes through the area over the course of the semester. Preferably when my camera works. In Staufen, there is a small old castle overlooking the town, from which I'll include a couple pictures at the end of this post.

On Sunday, we took the train to Basel, Switzerland (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Basel), with an unscheduled detour in Schliengen (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Schliengen). From what we saw of Schliengen, it looked like Braham (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Braham,_Minnesota) - essentially a three bar, one post office town. However, from what the Wikipedia article says, it's actually interesting. This may or may not be true. If it was, they hide it well. Basel itself was pretty interesting - it's right along the Rhine river, and the row houses along it make it look more like Copenhagen than what you would expect Switzerland to be. After meandering for a couple of hours, we were forced to walk through a downpour for an extended period, making for a very wet trainride back to Freiburg. Switzerland also provided my first of many currency exchanges, where I learned that nothing is more expensive in Europe than eating in Switzerland. The exchange rate between Swiss Francs and Dollars is pretty much equal. In looking around, McDonald's cost about 14.00 for a value meal. Naively, we were led to a restaurant with misleading prices on the outside, where I was cornered into paying 17.50 for a personal pizza. Next time I go to Switzerland, I will pack a lunch.

Anyway, classes have started today. My German class is moving relatively quickly, but I feel good about it, and my professor for my seminar is rather entertaining, spending most of the hour and a half quoting Winston Churchill. This Saturday we are on a field trip to Heidelberg (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heidelberg), one of the more important German cultural cities. Then Thursday, I leave for Tallinn, Estonia (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tallinn). But more to come on those when they happen. For now, here are a few more pictures of the trek so far:


The view from atop the castle in Staufen. For the record, this picture I actually took myself, as I was borrowing a friend's camera who didn't feel up to this last part of the hike.


Two pictures of the mountains on the hike


Staufen, the hike's end, with the castle on top.


Basel

Initiating

As I realize how little I have actually bothered to do to prepare (a mere 36 hours before I leave for Germany for five and a half months), I've decided to further my procrastination by setting up the blog promised to all before I leave.

So here it is. I'll be blogging here about my trip, at the request of many - and the outright demands of few. I don't have a ton of interest at the moment, other than I've gotten to spend a ton of time on phone holding and became very attached to the androgynous-yet-soothing Bank of America phone robot director. "The next available teller will answer my call," indeed.

I sincerely hope at least one reader figures this out on there own, but there is a reason for the somewhat absurd title of said blog. I feel like I need to go on record here as I really like preempting sure to be repetitive questions. The title comes from the only song, let alone 70s punk song, that I know of about Germany. There are probably more. But until then, enjoy Adam Ant's "Deutscher Girls."