The First Three Weeks of Classes

So! School as actually started, finally. After more than a month here in Tübingen, I finally started going to classes on the week of April 20th.

I managed to get all of my classes on Tuesdays and Wednesdays. While this is cool in the sense that I essentially get a five-day weekend, it also means that Tuesdays are mega-tiring. From 8:30 AM to 6:00 PM, I'm in and out of classes, with a few breaks in between. Needless to say, by the end of the day on Tuesdays, I'm bushed! I kind of like this setup, though, so I won't complain.

Here are the classes I'm taking:

• Politikfeldanalyse (Field analysis of politics/policies)
• Foreign Policy Analyis
• Deutschland/EU in der internationalen Politik (Germany/the EU in international politics)
• Politische Theorien: Demokratietheorien (Political theories: Democratic theories)
• Introduction to international relations

The two courses with German titles are instructed in German, while the classes with English titles are instructed in English. Makes sense, right??

The German courses are an extra challenge. Although the subject material is not necessarily brand new for me, I still have the added challenge of listening to the lecture in German, trying to take notes and keep up, reading extensive "required readings" for class (in German), and trying to synthesize everything into working knowledge. I'm trying to supplement the German readings with English texts on the same subject; hopefully this proves useful!

On a different note, I've been in Stuttgart for the past two weekends to attend the Frühlingsfest (Spring Festival) with some friends I've met. It was an absolute blast! Imagine Oktoberfest, but in the spring, and not in Munich. There was live music, good food, and plenty of liters of beer, of course. The festival took place inside a carnival, so there were also your typical carnival rides, games for prizes, etcetera. I found out at the BB-gun wagon that my aim is only moderately affected after five liters of beer. But hey, I still one a prize for one of the girls! Hahah!

This coming weekend, we're traveling again, but this time, we're going to one of my friend's home town in Croydon, England, which is right near London. I manage to get a relatively cheap flight with Ryanair (80 Euros). We're flying out tomorrow (Friday, May 8th) and coming back the following Monday. It will be my first time in England, and I'm expecting to have an awesome time!

I certainly miss everyone back home! I hope everything is going well for all of you.

- Alex

An Easter Trip to Amsterdam and Paris

Wow, what a busy couple of weeks it's been!

Yesterday I got home from a week-and-a-half trip around Germany, Holland, and France. The trip started two Thursdays ago when I traveled north to Münster to visit friends and celebrate the end of their senior year with them. It was great to see old friends and to meet new ones, and, as always, the Albersmeier family was as hospitable as they could be. The senior class (which, by the way, is the thirteenth grade instead of twelfth grade like we have in the states) celebrated their graduation for a good three days straight! I stayed for two days, though, and it was great fun.

The following Saturday I took the train to Amsterdam to meet up with Alli Kimmel, with whom I've acted in the plays at St. Paul's. It was wonderful to see her again, and she was gracious enough to let me stay at her apartment for a few days, even when she had her dance classes. We had a ball in Amsterdam seeing a few sights, meeting her friends, and enjoying the Dutch night life. This was my second time in Amsterdam, which was why there were fewer pictures of that leg of the trip: I had already documented a lot of the city on my first trip! This time, though, I was able to visit the Rembrandt House, which was the actual apartment that the artist Rembrandt lived in during the 16th century (reconstructed slightly, of course). It was cool to see a small glimpse of how people lived back then and how Rembrandt constructed some of his most well-known pieces of art. I was also able to take a trip to the Heineken museum, where I learned about the history and brewing process of that famous beer. As a beer connoisseur, this was of particular interest to me, especially since the Heineken brand had such a history with the American prohibition era. Did you know that Heineken was the first beer to be imported into the United States after prohibition ended? Me neither!

See?? I'm learning things!

Then last Thursday Alli Kimmel and I traveled together to Paris on the train. I was unaware that this particular train required a reservation, so when I showed the conductor my RailPass, I came quite close to paying the full 130 Euro fare for the trip! Thankfully, a nice female conductor intervened and merely had me pay the 33 Euro price for a reservation instead of the full ticket price.

Once we got to Paris, Alli and I found her aunt's apartment, and then I found my hotel. I would have stayed in the apartment, but Kate Siegel (another good friend from St. Paul's) was also coming to Paris to meet us...with five of her friends! They had already agreed to stay in the aparement before I jumped on this particular bandwagon, and people were already sleeping on the floor, so I simply couldn't have made it work, unless I slept on the bathroom floor or on the stove, neither of which looked particularly comfortable.

I managed to grab a hotel room for 275 Euros total for four nights, which was a hell of a deal considering the average hotel price in Paris for Easter weekend was 500 Euro. It was also only a 15 minute walk from the girls' apartment, so I lucked out, really!

The eight of us tried to cram as much as possible into our four days in Paris. As you can see from the pictures I posted on Photobucket (see link at the bottom of this post), we went to the Louvre Museum, the Champs-Elysees, the Arc du Triomph, the Eiffel Tower...all over the place!

The Louvre Museum was overwhelming, in a good way. I heard that if a person wanted to spend at least five minutes perusing each piece of art in the museum, it would take them 23 years. That's right: twenty-three years! It's huge!! We obviously didn't try that, but I saw a lot of famous art (including the real Mona Lisa) from a lot of famous artists. The Champs-Elysees is the self-titled "Most Famous Street In The World". There's a famous song about it, too, although I forget how it goes. I assume you all can guess its title! It's quite a beautiful street to walk down; it's lined with perfectly-manicured trees and gardens, and it's wider than most streets I've seen. The Champs-Elysees is one street that intersects at the Arc du Triomph (Arc of Triumph), which is a monument to French people who have died in combat. By pure accident I managed to arrive at the Arc just minutes before a large military procession marched down the street to join a ceremony honoring the fallen soldiers and the living veterans, who also attended the event. By their age, I assumed that many of the older soldiers fought in the French military and/or resistance against the Nazi occupation. As a World War Two buff, this was particularly moving and interesting for me.

The Eiffel Tower is a must-see in Paris. I was impressed by the sheer size of the thing; it's truly huge, and an architectural marvel for its time! It was just a little surreal to be relaxing with the girls in the gardens directly in front of the Tower. I remember lying in the grass and having the enormous Tower as part of my view of the sky. Awesome!

We also saw and toured the famous Notre Dame church in which the story of The Hunchback of Notre Dame took place. That's where the panoramic pictures came from. We toured the church on Easter Sunday, so there was a mass being held with easily two hundred attendees. As a guy who's sung in many big churches and cathedrals, I was blown away by the acoustics of this place. When the choir sang the traditional hymns with the churchgoers and the organ accompanying, the sound was gigantic and breathtaking.

The trip back from Paris was certainly interesting! I left the Monday following Easter Sunday, which is probably one of the worst travel days of the year, I think. The only ride back to Germany I could find was a night train that left Paris at 8:20 PM and arrived in Stuttgart, Germany at 4:19 AM. From there, I had to wait an hour before the next train to Tübingen arrived. I took that train, arrived in Tübingen at about 6:30 AM or so, and then slept a bit.

And now it's Wednesday! I spent most of the day in various meetings for exchange students. We're meeting again for a little taste of the Tübingen night life in about an hour or so, so I have to wrap this post up and cook up some quick dinner before heading out.

Oh yeah, I'm also adding a few pictures of the area where I'm living in Tübingen to my Photobucket account, so check 'em out!

Here's the link:

Alex's Photobucket

You should be able to get to find the Paris/Amsterdam album and the Tübingen album from this link. They're on the left-hand side of the screen, under "Albums". If you can't find them, let me know!

- Alex

Three Weeks In Germany

Greetings, all interested parties!

Sorry it took so long to post again. The process of matriculation (and thereby the process of being able to use the university's internet service in the dorm room) was long, arduous, and frustrating at times, but I finally managed to put all the puzzle pieces in their correct places. Aside from an official student ID card from the University of Tübingen, I'm an actual registered exchange student here!

Things have been going quite well so far! My room in Tübingen is modest. It resembles the room I had at Miami during my first year. This room has a sink, mirror, closet, desk, desk lamp, heating element, and a bed. There's a window too, and it actually opens fully! Quite different from the metal hurricane shutters at Miami.

I've met two people so far in Tübingen. That seems like a small number for the time I've been here. Let me assure you: it is a small number. There's one thing you must remember about the German people (and European people at large): they take their privacy very seriously. As an example: whereas we Americans tend to leave most doors open in our houses (with the occasional exceptions being bedrooms and bathrooms), Europeans keep all their doors shut with almost-religious fervence. This means that when you look down a hallway, it's anyone's guess which door is a bedroom and which is the bathroom; the process of elimination usually leads to awkward moments, especially in the morning when you're in your boxers looking for the shower.

For me in the dorms, this means that I won't be able to meet friends like I did in Miami with my door open and music blaring, nor can I walk around to see who else has an open door.

However, each group of five rooms on each floor has their own kitchen facilities, in which I met my neighbor, a nice girl who is unfortunately leaving to live in her own apartment next week. Figures, right?

I initially met the other girl when I first arrived in Tübingen at the office of the Studentenwerk. We both had our bags and were clearly tired of lugging our crap around. We didn't really get a chance to talk or get to know each other, but about a week and a half later, we met again by accident at the Burgeramt (which is some sort of government office) where we both were applying for our student residence permit. She recognized me before I recognized her, and we got to talking. Her name is Laura and she's from Latvia, a small country in the north of Europe, just to the west of Russia and to the north of Poland. She's real nice, so we'll see where that goes!

My big ol' box of stuff arrived yesterday, which was another adventure entirely. In my box I had included some generic nasal decongestant and cold medicine, which you're apparently not allowed to import to Germany. I had the option to either have these items seized, to send the whole package back to the States, or to ship the generic medicines to an Apotheke (drug store), where I could pick them up. Frankly, the Target-brand meds weren't that worth it, so I just had the German customs office seize the meds and I took the box of the remaining items. Of course, I had to travel to a neighboring town in Germany called Reutlingen in order to do all of this, because that's where the regional customs office is.

I'm quickly realizing the extent of the German bureacracy system. They've got a damn office and department for every conceivable task, and they're all in different places in the city. Also, they naturally hold typical German working hours, which ranges from five hours in the morning (and that's it) to an eight-hour day with a hour and a half lunch break. This usually meant that by the time I got finished with one step in the matriculation process, the other offices were closed. A good example of all of this is getting my internet set up in my room. The office that dealt with the university's network needed to have my matriculation confirmed before they could give me my credentials to use the network. Of course, when I finally got that confirmation and my credentials, I found out that I had to sign into the university's email service in order to activate my credentials, which I couldn't do in my goddamn room because I didn't have internet there yet.

So you can see where the frustration comes from!

Other than all that, though, I've had a great time so far here. I spent the last week and a half in a German town called Münster, where I did the exchange with St. Paul's. I still have several friends there, so I visit them everytime I'm in the area. I stayed with a girl from the exchanged named Maike Sandker. Her and her family were very hospitable towards me, for which I'm very thankful. It was just too lonely in Tübingen, so I had to be with folks that I knew for a bit! My semester doesn't start until April 20th, so I might make another trip up there, as well as a trip up to Flensburg, which is a German town right next to Denmark in the north of Germany.

When I'm not trekking around Tübingen doing matriculation-related things, I'm visiting every small restaurant and bar that I can find. There's a huge amount of history and character in these places, and many have a locally-brewed beer on tap. One larger bar/restaurant that I visited called the Neckarmüller overlooks the small river running through Tübingen, and they have a brewery attached to the restaurant itself. The beer was unquestionably delicious, and it amazes me that it has been brewed according to the same small-batch recipe in the same building and same location for the past century or two.

This is unrelated, but my guitar amp doesn't seem to be working properly. I think it's because I have to remove the grounding pole so it can fit into the transformer (since the voltage on the plugs is different here and must be adjusted so my electronics don't fry). I'm looking into a way to fix it, but needless to say, it's a big pain in the ass, since that amp was the main reason for me shipping that huge box of crap all the way over here!

Well, this post has gotten pretty long, so I'll cut it off here. I'll let you all know how things progress!
I miss you all. Let me know how things have been going back home!

- Alex

T-Minus 28 Hours

Hey everybody! Welcome to my blog about my upcoming semester abroad in Germany, and all the interesting, crazy, enlightening, and possibly stupid stuff I'm going to get into while over there!

Just kidding; I don't do stupid stuff. Anyone I know can tell you that.

But seriously, it's now 9:40 AM on Tuesday, March 3rd, which is 27 hours and 55 minutes from when my plane leaves the gate at BWI.

I still have to pack everything. EVERYthing. Procrastinator? Yeah, pretty much.

I'm so damn excited, though! Nervous slightly, yeah, for sure...mostly about two big things.

1) The initial trip to the University of Tübingen is going to be rather ridiculous. I'm flying from BWI to JFK airport in New York, then from JFK to Dublin International Airport in Ireland, and then from there (at 5:00 in the morning) to Frankfurt International in Germany, from which I have to take a train to Stuttgart, at which point I'll change trains and go to Tübingen, which will then lead to me walking with my luggage (or taking a cab, if I'm feeling beat) to the housing office, where I will pay my deposit in cash and get my key for my room. Then I'll go to my room and collapse, most likely.

2) I will know absolutely no one in this town. It's not a particularly huge concern, since I was in the same situation in Miami three years ago which worked out great. But this is a different country. Whoof!

Anyway, I should go pack or something. I'll try to update this blog as often as reasonable. It won't be everyday: "Today I woke up and went to class and ate food and went to bed", but I'll keep you all posted on how things go so that you won't miss a thing. You'll laugh, you'll cry, you'll cheer...it'll be good, I promise! Hahaha.

By the way: I'm calling this blog "Alex Does Europe", which is a variation of the title of the movie "Beavis and Butthead Do America". That's where that comes from, and I'm sure there are other examples of that type of wordplay that you can think of.