As of today I have one more month in Hamburg. Thirty-one more days in this fantastic, incredible city. It's a bit surreal to think about. In fact, ever since about March or April things have started to shift gears in my head--take on a funny sort of hue in my thoughts. I got back after being away for three weeks at the end of March, and all of a sudden the city looked different. I left it in snow and ice and cold, and came back to shining sun and sunglasses and blossoming trees. I had grown to really know Hamburg in the winter, and it was a strange experience coming back to it in the spring.
Somehow it seemed different, like it wasn't quite the city I had left. I'd almost get lost walking around the streets since I didn't recognize everything in the new weather. Nor did it have the sense of permanence for me that it formerly did. I already had the sense that I was only going to be here for a short period of time, that I was going to leave in just a matter of months. Ever since the feeling has deepened--I'm still getting to know the city better, still discovering it, but it almost has a sense of nostalgia to it even though I haven't left yet.
It's all had a funny effect on my emotions to say the least. On one hand I can easily imagine myself staying here for a really long time. The kids at least seem to think I'm going to be around for a while; on several occasions in the past few weeks they've asked me, "Andy, bleibst du bei uns für immer?" (Andy, are you going to stay with us forever?). They always look really surprised when I tell them that my time is up in Germany at the end of June. "Aber warum?" they always ask. Which is a good question actually: why?
I guess the basic, adult answer would be that my work visa runs out at the end of June. I've got my plane tickets booked already. I haven't seen the majority of my family or friends in a year. America seems to be the place to be at the moment. The simplicity of that question, "Why?", really gets me every time though. I've come to really love this place, hearing and speaking German all the time, enjoying the little quirks and small things about life in Germany that you just can't find anywhere else. The fact a two minute train delay sparks outrage in me nowadays, that I get agitated crossing the street when the crossing signal is red, more so when there are other people around.
Maybe the kids are right. It seems a waste to have spent all this time over here and just say goodbye to the place. It's a somber thought thinking about going back to America, hearing nothing but English, driving everywhere, forgetting German. Especially forgetting German. It was an absolute shock getting here in September and discovering how sloppy and rough my German had become. Nowadays I can understand 99% of what I hear, and communicate my thoughts and feelings almost perfectly (if not grammatically perfectly). Losing the language is almost a worse thought than leaving the country. For the moment anyway I'll be returning back to the USA (at least some of those kids are going to grow up to work in the Bezirksamt when they grow older, and then they'll understand), but we'll see if I can cope with renaturalizing myself into my own country again. It's going to be quite the adjustment after all this.
Monday, May 30, 2011
Sunday, May 22, 2011
In which Andy just sums it up and gets it over with, part 2
4) Dad and Kim come to visit! Way back in January or December or so my Dad and Stepmom Kim had been making plans to come out and visit me in Hamburg, and right after Voicestream left they arrived in Hamburg after a little stay in Paris. This was especially exciting for them, considering this was my Dad's first trip to Europe ever, and Kim hadn't been here since high school or so. It was a really good time seeing them and catching up after having been apart for so long (I haven't seen anyone in my family since the beginning of September!). I did a lot of the same stuff with them that I did with Voicestream: gave them the city tour, took them into school for an extended visit with some of my classes (which the students all loved), ate out, did a little shopping, etc.
On that weekend we all loaded into a train to head down to Dresden for the weekend. A few friends I've made over here have made trips down to Dresden, and they along with a few other Germans I met said Dresden was really beautiful. And they were definitely right. East Germany is so different from the West, especially in a city like Dresden. In Berlin there are almost no original buildings left from before WWII, but in Dresden a lot of the old Baroque-era buildings were rebuilt. Very strange walking around town and seeing these huge, beautiful buildings juxtaposed with really harsh, angular Communist architecture.
5) Hafengeburtstag (Harbor Birthday)! A couple weekends ago Hamburg celebrated the 125'th anniversary of the harbor, which is one of the central pieces of the town, and one of the biggest reasons why Hamburg is the city it is today. I had no idea it was going on--the occasion somehow slipped my notice--but it was a huge event. Lots of ships of all kinds heading up and down the Elbe--sailing ships, military battle ships, cruise liners, you name it, it was all there. And there was a huge crowd on the docks for the whole weekend, it had a really awesome carnival atmosphere.
The highlight of the weekend, however, was the Queen Mary 2, the biggest cruise ship in the world. It docked in Hamburg for a few days, and left Sunday evening. Seeing it was just unreal. You can't understand how big the thing is until you see it with your own eyes. For a little perspective: I looked up some info on it afterwards, and apparently it's like 10 meters longer than a Nimitz-class aircraft carrier.
6) Grünanlage: After the Hafengeburtstag (actually, on the very same weekend) I ended up getting hooked into a group of people who were going to check out the Grünanlage. What is this you ask? Well, it's an ENORMOUS outdoor techno festival that they host every year in Hamburg (that particular was full of "big" things, come to think of it). I thought I was staying for about a half hour (as it was Sunday) and ended up staying for about three. I'd never been to anything like that, nor do I think I'd go just on my own, but it was a really...unique experience. I'm actually really glad I went.
On that weekend we all loaded into a train to head down to Dresden for the weekend. A few friends I've made over here have made trips down to Dresden, and they along with a few other Germans I met said Dresden was really beautiful. And they were definitely right. East Germany is so different from the West, especially in a city like Dresden. In Berlin there are almost no original buildings left from before WWII, but in Dresden a lot of the old Baroque-era buildings were rebuilt. Very strange walking around town and seeing these huge, beautiful buildings juxtaposed with really harsh, angular Communist architecture.
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| Our hotel room in Dresden. Surprise suite (Rick Steves called it "cozy" or something). |
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| Dad and Kim admiring the sights. |
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| Climbing the stairs to the top of the Bastei. |
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| A look down on the Elbe (it flows through Dresden too!) |
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| Observation area in the Bastei. Really amazing place. |
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| The three of us up at the top. |
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| Downtown, with the dome of the Frauenkirche on the left. |
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| The old center of Dresden, completely restored after the firebombing. |
The highlight of the weekend, however, was the Queen Mary 2, the biggest cruise ship in the world. It docked in Hamburg for a few days, and left Sunday evening. Seeing it was just unreal. You can't understand how big the thing is until you see it with your own eyes. For a little perspective: I looked up some info on it afterwards, and apparently it's like 10 meters longer than a Nimitz-class aircraft carrier.
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| The Queen Mary 2. Enormous. |
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| Another shot of the ship. |
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| Grünanlage. A tiny, tiny view of the crowd. |
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| Every once in a while someone would light of a traffic flare in the crowd and dance around with it. Insane. |
Wednesday, May 18, 2011
In which Andy just sums it up and gets it over with (part 1)
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| Sitting in a square in the Albacine neighborhood, with the Alhambra and the Sierra Nevadas in the background |
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| A view of the Sierra Nevadas. |
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| The beach at Nerja. |
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| Street art in Granada. The city is particularly famous for it. |
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| A small town on the side of the road between Granada and Nerja |
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| The Park Inn Hotel in Berlin, where the conference was held. |
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| Me with Kiersten and Karl, fellow Fulbrighters. |
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| Enjoying some street beers on the edge of the fountain in Alexanderplatz, close to the hotel. |
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| A shot of Albacine neighborhood. |
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| Outdoor spice market! |
3) Voicestream comes to visit! After all that running around I had about a week and a half to rest and recuperate, and then some current Voicestreamers all came to visit me in Hamburg! Willie and Casey (who were studying in London) and Shannon all came up for the weekend, stayed at my place, and we all got to reunite and do a little sight seeing! I had joked around with them back in Ithaca about doing a reunion trip like that, and it was so cool that we put a weekend together and actually did it! They hadn't seen each other since the previous semester either, so it was a great opportunity for us all to get back together and catch up. I took them to my school to introduce them to some classes, did my classic, well rehearsed Hamburg city tour with them, blew their minds with Currywurst and other German delicacies, and generally just had an awesome time and rehashed many tried and true ICVS stories and inside jokes.
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| Willie taking a picture in the park. |
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| All of us in the observation deck of St. Michel. |
Tuesday, May 3, 2011
The Death of Osama Bin Laden: A Perspective from Germany
It was a pretty normal Monday morning in Germany. May second, the first Monday back from the Easter holidays. I had just had a really pleasant week of relaxing in Hamburg--sun, 70 degrees, friends, books, barbeques, a quick trip out to Friesland to see a fellow Fulbrighter--and was getting ready to get back into the swing of things at school. Like every 20-something with a laptop, I jumped on Facebook to check up on things quickly before leaving the house, and this is the first thing I saw:
It's quite a comment on our world today that this is how a major, MAJOR piece of world news got broken to me. I remember the chaos on the radio when I woke up on Tuesday, September 11, 2001. How none of the commentators on X96 or NPR had any idea what was going on that early in the day, only a couple hours after the first plane hit. How everyone in Frau Kerr's 8'th grade German class were staring at the TV in the corner watching the second tower collapse. Little details stick out in particular: the confused, frightened expression I saw on Frau Kerr's face when I walked into the classroom; the bewildered way we all walked around the school, trying to comprehend an event with implications that totally surpassed the understanding of a bunch of suburban junior high school students; Jenny Moody crying in the hallway.
Almost ten years later some lolcat-inspired photo of Obama in sunglasses and a handful of status updates brought that chapter in American history to a close for me. The world is a strange place.
It's stranger still thinking and looking at how this event is happening in the US. On Monday I went to school, taught some kids, went to a cafe and wrote some emails, finished the day with our weekly game night at Down Under on Grindelallee, and went to bed. I didn't even talk about Bin Laden's death to anyone until I met up with a few other Americans in the city later that night.
I did a lot of thinking about the whole thing, but that was basically it for me.
The atmosphere on the other side of the Atlantic, as I understand it, was electric. There were spontaneous rallies in the street all over the USA on Monday. Firefighters and policemen parading around Ground Zero with thousands of New Yorkers cheering them on. People dancing and singing on the National Mall and in front of the White House. American news websites were overflowing with reports about Bin Laden's death, and I imagine the big cable news networks were abuzz the whole day with coverage. There was a fierce division among my friends about everything. Some praised the actions of our military, jubilant that the face of terrorism for the past ten years has finally been brought to justice, God-Blessing America up and down. Others were torn about the event, or even critical of it, commenting on the irony of the celebration of death--even the death of the most famous mass murderer in the world.
I don't even know what to think really. Looking at America nowadays is like looking at a foreign country. If you put me on a plane and sent me back tonight I would be totally overwhelmed by the response. While the comparative silence of the Germans around me is weird enough (I'm still an American, after all), the videos and news reports and blogs I see and read are strange as well. The death of Osama Bin Laden has so many implications for so many different parts of the world that it's hard to form a single opinion about it.
I wouldn't say that the Germans around me have been ambivalent about the event, but their silence is strange. I haven't even talked to any of my teachers about it, which goes to show how the topic is being treated over here. Interesting how something as major as the death of the mastermind behind 9/11 is hardly something worth talking about over here, and I don't think I'm tainting that judgment with my own cultural background--the event had deep and long lasting implications all over the world. Granted, it's more relevant in America and the Middle East than in other parts of the world, but somehow...I would expect something else I guess. A different response. Europe as a whole has been very opposed to the Afghanistan and Iraq wars since the beginning. One of my friends who went on a trip to France close to the beginning of the Iraq war said that some people on the street would spit at him for the sheer virtue of his nationality. This could be the beginning of the end for those conflicts, and yet this past Monday was just like any other day since I've been here.
And my own opinion on the matter? I can barely put it into words. Am I ultimately glad that there's one less evil person in the world? Yes. Am I going to sing and dance in the streets about it? No. I think the world needs to move on from this period in our collective history. This one man wrought so much evil and put so many terrible events into motion, and even his name and the ideas and ideologies he stood far have been misused and twisted and manipulated to justify even more acts of violence and death. It would be an absolute shame to let his influence outlive him. "We got him," as our President puts it, and I really, really hope that this marks a turning point for America and the rest of the world. After ten years we finally got him, and we need to put what he did to rest.
It's quite a comment on our world today that this is how a major, MAJOR piece of world news got broken to me. I remember the chaos on the radio when I woke up on Tuesday, September 11, 2001. How none of the commentators on X96 or NPR had any idea what was going on that early in the day, only a couple hours after the first plane hit. How everyone in Frau Kerr's 8'th grade German class were staring at the TV in the corner watching the second tower collapse. Little details stick out in particular: the confused, frightened expression I saw on Frau Kerr's face when I walked into the classroom; the bewildered way we all walked around the school, trying to comprehend an event with implications that totally surpassed the understanding of a bunch of suburban junior high school students; Jenny Moody crying in the hallway.
Almost ten years later some lolcat-inspired photo of Obama in sunglasses and a handful of status updates brought that chapter in American history to a close for me. The world is a strange place.
It's stranger still thinking and looking at how this event is happening in the US. On Monday I went to school, taught some kids, went to a cafe and wrote some emails, finished the day with our weekly game night at Down Under on Grindelallee, and went to bed. I didn't even talk about Bin Laden's death to anyone until I met up with a few other Americans in the city later that night.
I did a lot of thinking about the whole thing, but that was basically it for me.
The atmosphere on the other side of the Atlantic, as I understand it, was electric. There were spontaneous rallies in the street all over the USA on Monday. Firefighters and policemen parading around Ground Zero with thousands of New Yorkers cheering them on. People dancing and singing on the National Mall and in front of the White House. American news websites were overflowing with reports about Bin Laden's death, and I imagine the big cable news networks were abuzz the whole day with coverage. There was a fierce division among my friends about everything. Some praised the actions of our military, jubilant that the face of terrorism for the past ten years has finally been brought to justice, God-Blessing America up and down. Others were torn about the event, or even critical of it, commenting on the irony of the celebration of death--even the death of the most famous mass murderer in the world.
I don't even know what to think really. Looking at America nowadays is like looking at a foreign country. If you put me on a plane and sent me back tonight I would be totally overwhelmed by the response. While the comparative silence of the Germans around me is weird enough (I'm still an American, after all), the videos and news reports and blogs I see and read are strange as well. The death of Osama Bin Laden has so many implications for so many different parts of the world that it's hard to form a single opinion about it.
I wouldn't say that the Germans around me have been ambivalent about the event, but their silence is strange. I haven't even talked to any of my teachers about it, which goes to show how the topic is being treated over here. Interesting how something as major as the death of the mastermind behind 9/11 is hardly something worth talking about over here, and I don't think I'm tainting that judgment with my own cultural background--the event had deep and long lasting implications all over the world. Granted, it's more relevant in America and the Middle East than in other parts of the world, but somehow...I would expect something else I guess. A different response. Europe as a whole has been very opposed to the Afghanistan and Iraq wars since the beginning. One of my friends who went on a trip to France close to the beginning of the Iraq war said that some people on the street would spit at him for the sheer virtue of his nationality. This could be the beginning of the end for those conflicts, and yet this past Monday was just like any other day since I've been here.
And my own opinion on the matter? I can barely put it into words. Am I ultimately glad that there's one less evil person in the world? Yes. Am I going to sing and dance in the streets about it? No. I think the world needs to move on from this period in our collective history. This one man wrought so much evil and put so many terrible events into motion, and even his name and the ideas and ideologies he stood far have been misused and twisted and manipulated to justify even more acts of violence and death. It would be an absolute shame to let his influence outlive him. "We got him," as our President puts it, and I really, really hope that this marks a turning point for America and the rest of the world. After ten years we finally got him, and we need to put what he did to rest.
Monday, May 2, 2011
Part Three: Brussels
The last part of our tour was Brussels, which we were only visiting for a day and a half. No big problem for me, since I’d already been there before as well, and it was great to visit it again. Brussels had been the last stop on my backpacking tour, and I really liked the city. It’s a strange mix of urban nastiness and old European beauty. The city on a whole is just gorgeous, but when you’re walking through it the atmosphere is so urban and chaotic. There are police sirens everywhere, homeless people all over the sidewalk, trash and dirt and graffiti—a city of contrasts, if you will. Even though it’s kinda small, it’s nevertheless a really interesting place, and I was excited to see it a second time and compare experiences. Plus I got to act as a secondary tour guide: a supplement to Mr. Steves. The whole time I kept on going, “Woah! I’ve totally been here!” and, “Guys, this place is just around the corner, trust me.” Brendan and Karl called it “The Andy Fry Nostalgia Tour of Brussels.”
This was also the first and only place on the tour that we scored a Couchsurfing host (for those unfamiliar with the website, you can find some info on it here). Since there are so many tourists in Europe it’s kinda hard to find a host, but after a protracted search we finally found one in Brussels. And I have to say, our host was probably one of the most…unique and interesting people I’ve ever met. Her name was Suki Jenkins, pronounced “Sooki” (no, I’m not lying, that’s actually her name). She was an American, born in Seattle, and had been living in Brussels for the past fifteen years. When we got to her place we started chatting and getting into her life story, and the thing just got better and better as we went along.
As I said, she was born and raised in Seattle, and spent the first part of her life living and working there right in the middle of the grunge scene in the 90’s. She’s spent her whole life working in the music industry, and got her start at Subpop Records. The first act she ever signed with her label? Nirvana. The second act? Sound Garden. AKA this lady is famous. We were floored. I spent a pretty large portion of my formative years listening to Nevermind on repeat in my CD player, and to be with someone who had, you know, given Nirvana their start was just insane. Something I wasn’t expecting out of this particular CS experience at all, which is half of the attraction of the thing. She also said she worked for a time at the Cowboy Café, which was one of the big bars in the Seattle grunge scene. She said she’d always serve Kurt Cobain free beers since he was broke all the time.
Her life story gets stranger after that. She said that higher up in the music industry things get really nasty and heartless—the upper echelons of the big labels are full of people in suits who are just in it for the money and don’t care about the music. So she decided to turn expat, and came out to Europe. I can’t remember exactly, but she’d spent time in Belgium, Germany and France working in varying capacities in different music scenes, finally settling in Brussels and starting her own music co-op: Music Brussels. She spoke four languages—English, German, French, and Dutch, and supposedly held something like four or five university degrees, although I’m not sure how much I believe that. At either rate, we had some very interesting conversation for those first few hours in her living room. You could tell the lady had partied pretty hard throughout all of that history too—she was only in her late 30’s/early 40’s, but her face told a different story.
Anyway, she had some business to take care of, so we excused ourselves for the afternoon. She invited us out to a concert her co-op was throwing later that night, so we wandered around the city for a while and met up with her later. Of course, this was no normal music venue. Apparently in the 20’s “tent shows” were all the rage. They were essentially touring music venues—the thing looked like an enormous circus tent, dark red and faded yellow, and the inside was all decked out with hardwood floors, tables, booths, a stage and a bar. I think this particular tent had started in Berlin at some point in its early history, and had been on the move ever since. Somehow Suki had managed to get in contact with a group that still maintains and uses one of these tents, and they set up camp in the square behind one of the big churches in Brussels.
The show was kinda small—a three-piece Belgian act was playing, and the audience was basically Suki’s friends and some other randoms. Suki’s posse was, of course, a bit eccentric—definitely a group of fringe characters hailing from all over Europe—but they were all friendly and really inviting, and showed us a great time. After the concert we went on a tour of all the smaller local bars in the city, and generally just had a great time.
The next day was the official end of our trip. We hadn’t been in Brussels long, but the week was up, and we all had different plans at the end of the week and different places we had to be, so we couldn’t stay in the city much longer than we did. We got up at a leisurely hour and hung around for a bit, said goodbye to Suki, hit the few remaining sights we hadn’t seen the day before, and headed off to the airport to fly back to Berlin. It marked the midway point of my own journey, and once we got to Berlin we said goodbye to Brendan, and I hung out with Karl and his girlfriend Kiersten at Kiersten’s place in Berlin, giving myself a bit of a layover before heading to my next destination.
All in all it was an incredible trip. I got to see some new places, revisit old ones and get a new perspective on them, and spend a lot of time with Karl and Brendan. The Wanderlust strikes me from time to time, especially after summer 2009. It comes in waves, harder at some times, lighter at others, and this was the first time since then that I’ve been able to travel for a long(ish) period of time on this continent since then. I spent my few days in Berlin just relishing in it, remembering back, finishing journal entries on the whole thing and just taking it easy after being on the move for a week straight. And I wasn’t even finished! I had Granada right around the corner, and the Fulbright conference after that.
Stay tuned for part four: Granada.
This was also the first and only place on the tour that we scored a Couchsurfing host (for those unfamiliar with the website, you can find some info on it here). Since there are so many tourists in Europe it’s kinda hard to find a host, but after a protracted search we finally found one in Brussels. And I have to say, our host was probably one of the most…unique and interesting people I’ve ever met. Her name was Suki Jenkins, pronounced “Sooki” (no, I’m not lying, that’s actually her name). She was an American, born in Seattle, and had been living in Brussels for the past fifteen years. When we got to her place we started chatting and getting into her life story, and the thing just got better and better as we went along.
As I said, she was born and raised in Seattle, and spent the first part of her life living and working there right in the middle of the grunge scene in the 90’s. She’s spent her whole life working in the music industry, and got her start at Subpop Records. The first act she ever signed with her label? Nirvana. The second act? Sound Garden. AKA this lady is famous. We were floored. I spent a pretty large portion of my formative years listening to Nevermind on repeat in my CD player, and to be with someone who had, you know, given Nirvana their start was just insane. Something I wasn’t expecting out of this particular CS experience at all, which is half of the attraction of the thing. She also said she worked for a time at the Cowboy Café, which was one of the big bars in the Seattle grunge scene. She said she’d always serve Kurt Cobain free beers since he was broke all the time.
Her life story gets stranger after that. She said that higher up in the music industry things get really nasty and heartless—the upper echelons of the big labels are full of people in suits who are just in it for the money and don’t care about the music. So she decided to turn expat, and came out to Europe. I can’t remember exactly, but she’d spent time in Belgium, Germany and France working in varying capacities in different music scenes, finally settling in Brussels and starting her own music co-op: Music Brussels. She spoke four languages—English, German, French, and Dutch, and supposedly held something like four or five university degrees, although I’m not sure how much I believe that. At either rate, we had some very interesting conversation for those first few hours in her living room. You could tell the lady had partied pretty hard throughout all of that history too—she was only in her late 30’s/early 40’s, but her face told a different story.
Anyway, she had some business to take care of, so we excused ourselves for the afternoon. She invited us out to a concert her co-op was throwing later that night, so we wandered around the city for a while and met up with her later. Of course, this was no normal music venue. Apparently in the 20’s “tent shows” were all the rage. They were essentially touring music venues—the thing looked like an enormous circus tent, dark red and faded yellow, and the inside was all decked out with hardwood floors, tables, booths, a stage and a bar. I think this particular tent had started in Berlin at some point in its early history, and had been on the move ever since. Somehow Suki had managed to get in contact with a group that still maintains and uses one of these tents, and they set up camp in the square behind one of the big churches in Brussels.
The show was kinda small—a three-piece Belgian act was playing, and the audience was basically Suki’s friends and some other randoms. Suki’s posse was, of course, a bit eccentric—definitely a group of fringe characters hailing from all over Europe—but they were all friendly and really inviting, and showed us a great time. After the concert we went on a tour of all the smaller local bars in the city, and generally just had a great time.
The next day was the official end of our trip. We hadn’t been in Brussels long, but the week was up, and we all had different plans at the end of the week and different places we had to be, so we couldn’t stay in the city much longer than we did. We got up at a leisurely hour and hung around for a bit, said goodbye to Suki, hit the few remaining sights we hadn’t seen the day before, and headed off to the airport to fly back to Berlin. It marked the midway point of my own journey, and once we got to Berlin we said goodbye to Brendan, and I hung out with Karl and his girlfriend Kiersten at Kiersten’s place in Berlin, giving myself a bit of a layover before heading to my next destination.
All in all it was an incredible trip. I got to see some new places, revisit old ones and get a new perspective on them, and spend a lot of time with Karl and Brendan. The Wanderlust strikes me from time to time, especially after summer 2009. It comes in waves, harder at some times, lighter at others, and this was the first time since then that I’ve been able to travel for a long(ish) period of time on this continent since then. I spent my few days in Berlin just relishing in it, remembering back, finishing journal entries on the whole thing and just taking it easy after being on the move for a week straight. And I wasn’t even finished! I had Granada right around the corner, and the Fulbright conference after that.
Stay tuned for part four: Granada.
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