Speaching in German

Twice!  Twice in less than a week I had to address groups of about 100 Germans... in German!  With groups that size I have just about zero fear of speaking, assuming the language of the day is English and I can just be myself.  German on the other hand is just awkward.  No matter how good it sounds in my head the words end up turned around somehow or another.


Case 1:  Last Sunday the International Student Group (IST) was visiting the church that lends us a room each week.  Every language represented said something in that language (I was the only native english speaker, and coincidentally the only language the congregation understood before the final translation into German).  Then the group leader, spur of the moment, asked us, over the microphone, if any of us could briefly share what IST meant to us personally.  Awkward pause before I shuffled over to the microphone fumbled through some positive sounding words.  Everyone understood, but... rather challenging.


Case 2:  My small group was responsible for handling the details for Large Group this week for the SMD.  My task (in addition to set up and tear down) was to talk briefly about why we worship.  Fortunately my troubles with German drove my point home stronger.  For me, being able to worship with music allows me to express myself more fully and completely than with words alone, just as speaking in English allows me to express myself more fully and completely than when I speak German.  That is the gist of what I said, only it took me a good many more words to say it in German.


That's all.  Hopefully I'm off the hook for addressing large crowds for a while.
Thanks for your attention.  Good night.

holidays, shoes, and the like

It's been a bit since I've written.  Life goes on though so here is the scoop.


November 1st - German Holiday - no work! Prayer brunch with SMD.  In addition to prayer it included weißwurst (white sausage) and Bretzeln (soft pretzels) both with sweet mustard.  Weißwurst is super traditional in Bavaria, though the feelings about it are quite mixed.  I enjoyed it though.  There is some debate about the proper way to eat it.  It's rather soft so it is encased like many sausages to hold it together.  The question is whether you poke a whole in the end and suck it out, or slice it open and scoop it out.  I went for the slice and scoop method.  The other didn't seem socially acceptable.


That afternoon I joined a few friends at their apartment complex and we made Christmas cookies.  They don't have thanksgiving here so Christmas is already on everyone's minds.  They are rolling out all the Christmas decorations at the mall right now actually.  I left the christmas cookie pics at home, so apologies there, but we decided against bowls and instead piled the flour on the table and shaped it like a volcano and put the wet ingredients in the top and then mixed it with hands =) with lots of love.  The girls made their cookies with steel... but they still tasted okay.  I finished the day with a trip to a cake shop with a friend.  We ate outside and froze to death.  Most of the cakes had some sort of alcohol in them.  Germans are pretty obsessed =)


Next evening was SMD, which was swell but let's move to Thursday.  I went to the international student group (IST).  We learned some Bavarian words and expressions.  They say "That is sausage" to say "it doesn't matter, it's all the same."


The other main thing that was exciting for me was finally meeting with the head of innovation for PUMA and talking about my project with him.  Turns out he graduated from Carnegie Mellon in Pittsburgh!  Anyways, another intern was already doing a project on soccer cleats and they mentioned that they might give me the same project for a different kind of shoe.  I was so scared they were going to assign me to cricket or handball!  In the end, it's RUNNING!  I was thrilled.  Running biomechanics is even cooler than soccer in my opinion because it's so advanced but so regular so you can study it really well.  Running is primarily done in Boston so they'll be teaming me up with someone there to talk with.  They mentioned maybe sending me there which would be sweet, but then they remembered the Boston guys are coming here in a few weeks so there is now need... schade (what a pity).  We'll see what happens but I may end up training for a marathon depending on how this project turns out.


Check out Octobers PUMA magazine here!  Unfortunately some of the info is only viewable from PUMA locations...  Talks a lot about the new 32 year old CEO of PUMA, Franz Koch.  He has a longboard!  Also Volvo Ocean Race!


K I gotta run enjoy the sun before it sets (at 5pm!)

"Hey Slave"

Common Bavarian greating, "Servus," came straight out of Latin - means slave.  Not sure how that got popular.

Ankunft und Alles

I think I already mentioned, but Irene put me off two days so here comes Wednesday, August 31st.

  

Anecdote 1:

On my way to the airport with my dear mother at 7:30.  I ate a banana on route, and just as I wanted to throw it curbside across a lane and a half of traffic, my mom goes and changes lanes to take the fun out of it.   It still flew into 3 pieces as the wind took it before hitting the ground though =)

Anecdote 2:

I fly to Newark, and with the rescheduling of my flight, I ended up in an ‘extra legroom’ seat.  Sadly it was about 1 hour in the air and hardly necessary.  The guy sitting next to me was about 65, turns out he’s flown to over 100 different countries and more than 3,000,000 miles.  That’s about 121 laps around the globe!  Over a million with Delta Airlines, and a million with Continental Airlines.  He says he likes Continental best.  I think I’ll keep flying Continental (regretting forgetting to register my last 3 flights on their frequent flyer program).

Antidote 3:

5 hour layover in Newark! I was sitting at a table for 4 with my chinese food and I see three people muttering in German, looking for a table in the packed food court.  I offered  the seats at my table and they joined me (it’s not peculiar in Germany to sit with strangers like it is in the States).  It was great to hear German again.  Turns out they were on their way to Vegas.  They were from Munich and should have had a Bavarian accent that I couldn’t understand, but they didn’t.  Despite the warnings I got from Osnabrückers last time I was in Germany, I have been able to understand everyone’s accents here just fine (well, admittedly a bit rusty, but otherwise fine).  Also, did you notice that I titled this section ‘Antidote’?  Sorry just messin’.  I’ll continue.

Anecdote 4:

I hate flying across the ocean.  It’s not the ocean per say that bothers me, more just that whole 8 hour in a plane thing.  As I’m boarding there, the flight attendant says ‘go there,’ pointing to the second row of first class.  I had just read on the website about first class seating reclining into a bed 6’3” long and was getting ready to be stoked.  When I asked for clarification, he meant that I should cross in front of that seat to get to the other aisle since my seat was over there =’(  Tragedy.  My seat didn’t even have the extra 5 inches of the previous flight. I watched TV shows for an hour, talked to the nice little German lady next to me for a minute (who was lucky enough to get hit by the hurricane on her visit).  Breakfast and dinner came and suddenly (well not really suddenly), with a few hours of sleep and a legion of goosebumps to my name, I arrived in Munich.  Note, somewhere between cold and sleep we passed from day 0 to day 1.

Breaking from anecdotes for a bit, I took a 30 minute flight to Nürnberg, jumped onto the subway for the city center (with 100 pounds of luggage), grabbed a train to Erlangen, and then found the right bus to get me near my apartment.  I walked the brief quarter mile and found the address I had written on notebook paper.

Anecdote 5:

I knock on the door, hear a shuffling upstairs, a window open, a head comes out of the window looking rather like Einstein with his wild gray hair, “Ryan? I’m Reinhard Völkel-Prohaska.  Just a minute, I’m taking a very important call.  I’ll be there presently.”  He then comes down in a bit, welcomes me, shows me around.  I’ll get to descriptions later.

Anecdote 6:

So I’ve made it to my appointment at the bank in Herzogenaurach (Herzo), the next town over where PUMA is located.  The young man helping my to open my account looked only slightly older than myself, was wearing one of the best looking suits I’ve ever seen in person, and had great English.  We decided to meet in English just so I wouldn’t miss any important details.  After the account is set up, he takes me to the teller to get me some cash, but some issue with my travelers checks she claims she can’t do it (and is quite obnoxious about it).  She was maybe 50, with dyed yellow hair (I think it was supposed to be blond).  They are bickering in German for a bit very fast and so I didn’t catch everything but she musters up her meanest voice and says something like “I’m very sorry, but I won’t do it!”  He steps it up immediately and says, “ I’m very even more sorry, because you have to do it!”  She turns away finally and gets my money.  With way too much cash in my pocket, I hurry back to my apartment to pay the landlord for the deposit and rent.  I grabbed some food from a nearby store, unpacked my things and hit the sack at 8pm, turned into day 2 and woke up at 8am.  Much needed since I’d only had 3 hours in the last 42 hours.

Day 2 is exploring the apartment, sorting out details with my landlord, skating 2 or so odd miles to the city center to get my bus pass (that PUMA is paying for, score!) that let’s me take all the buses in my city, Herzo, and anywhere in between.  Admittedly there is nothing in between besides 20 minutes of my life for twice a day, 5 days a week, for the whole next year.  It’s about $80 a month.  For those of you with cars, I assume it costs more than that?  Tried the scenic rout home, which was cool, for a while, until I was lost.  Fortunately I’d just acquired (Edward A. that word choice was for you) a map at the bus station and righted myself pretty quickly.  Longboards are the best thing ever for exploring.  Here are some of the sights along the way.  I’m pretty sure there were much more beautiful parts of the city, but theses are the pictures I took.  I’ll do more over the coming weeks.  Overall, a very lively and pleasant place.

Note: I don’t have internet, but I can get it for free at the mall in town so... I’ll be slightly less prompt than you’re used to.

Here is the air near Nürnberg.  Not the best location to shoot but it was more 

gorgeous than most country sides.

Here is my Landlord (Reinhard) with wife and Aunt.  

All three like wearing socks and sandals.

Here is the mall where I get internet.  Super nice.

 Walking down the street in the city center.

 The city hall, 'Rathaus Erlangen.'

 Playground in front of the Rathaus.

 Typical scene just outside of the city center.

On my way to getting lost.

Cool clock!

If at first you don't succeed, try try again.

Rain Rain go away, come again another day.

sorry, I'm done being cliché now. Due to Hurricane Irene, my original flight was canceled. Now I'm leaving Wednesday August 31st, putting me in to arrive on September 1st. That was going to be my first day of work but...

Everyone is being super flexible. PUMA was super understanding and told me to just wait to come in until Monday. That gives me 4 days of getting myself settled in and exploring! Thursday and Friday should be rainy, but Saturday and Sunday will be free to cruise around town on my longboard, getting familiar with the area. I'll be sure to grab some pictures to give you a feel for what I'm dealing with here. Hopefully I find a spot pretty quick with free wi-fi. Then I'll update again. Since I'm not sure when I'll have access again, I took screenshots of quite a few maps and sets of directions to all the important places in town.

I spent a good bit of time searching online for a decent church in the area. Despite being in a student town, most of them have sad looking websites that weren't very helpful. I almost gave up finding one, when all of a sudden, there it was! A church that looked relevant to real life, but... darn... turns out they are borderline cultish =P Finally found an online phone book that listed one more church that I hadn't seen. It's called the 'Jesus-Life Gemeinde'. Turns out it's less than half a mile from my apartment. I'll definitely visit there soon. The one other place that jumped out was an international church where everything is both English and German. Looks like a cool place, though I'll be speaking English all day at PUMA, and so I don't want to deal with any more English if I don't have to.

Off to go tidy up my room so my parents don't have to.

Wrapping Up (Part II)

I'm calling this part II because I already have a part I. I'll be wrapping up till I get home I suppose. Let's go back in time now to Monday morning on the 14th of February, the day I left Osnabrück, bound for England. I packed up my things and abandonned my room. The caretaker came and inspected and the only problem he found was some dust... oh well.

I left my bags with my roommate and set out with my backpack to run some errands and set off. At 11:30am I caught the 2 hour train to Bremen (free with student ID). My flight was not until 6:30 so I had time to kill. Instead of taking the tram to the airport, I decided to follow it by foot and see what there was to see. Here is one of the random monuments I found. Someone said it references an old law that is still in the books that allows farmers to bring their pigs through the streets of Bremen. Who knows.

So after walking for over an hour, with some video documenting to be posted soon, I arrived at the airport. After walking through a city full of beautiful buildings it seemed as if RyanAir was kind of a disgrace to the city with it's cheapness. There were terminals 1,2,3 and E. E was for RyanAir and you had to walk through a passageway from the main airport to get there. Most of the building is just aluminum like a warehouse or something. RyanAir only had 3 flights that evening so they didn't even send the employees into the terminal for security check etc. until 3:30pm. When I first arrived there were just a few old folks with bags waiting...
While I waited I explored and decided to document this German phenomenon. I've noticed it most commonly in Restaurants. WC (Restroom) is almost always down. Usually down two flights of steps and down a long passageway, very away from everything. You know, like not close to anything at all. Maybe that would be gross? Everyone knows those rooms are gross but we all deal with it differently. In America we just call it a restroom and pretend it's a nice place. In Germany they call it "the toilets" and just keep it far away. Both work I suppose.
All the money I owned, I had on my person. Heading to England I had to change some over to pounds. Here is some of my money. I have all the commonly used bills including £, €, and $. Notice that the European money goes down to 5 (~$7-$8). Once smaller than that you have to use coins... I accumulated £10 of change in one day in London... very obnoxious.
Traveling went well. I landed in Stansted airport and then took a 2 hour trainride to Haywards Heath where a friend, John Dixon, picked me up and brought be to my room. More on that later.

to be continued.

Vorhersage (forecast)

So not talking about weather but more the up coming plans as my time here winds to a close. Today is Wednesday so I've finished 1.5 of my finals. Tomorrow is the oral part of my German final, and Friday is German culture. That's the one I'm worried about. I have a billion documents in German to read and 98% of the class speaks better German than I do. 10% fail every year... Without that credit, I'm not a full time student and I owe everyone lots of money, but no pressure. Anyways,

So I closed my bank account, de-registered from the University, closed my insurance, and told the state I'm going home. I had set all those things up in English a few months ago, but I ended them in German. That felt good. Saturday is cleaning and packing and scrubbing my room. Saturday night is my birthday party. I plan to introduce everyone to apple crisp and coke floats. I think the floats will freak people out, but nobody can say no to a good apple crisp so everyone should be fine =)

Sunday is church, and then lunch with my pastor. We'll probably cry together or something. When I get home I have to make sure everything is in top shape for handing the keys back over to the caretaker. 10:30 monday morning he'll be there to lock me out of my house. Then I need to run and get back my deposit on the department and run to the train station.

Train goes an hour to Bremen. From Bremen I fly with Ryanair to London. Hopefully they don't scam me out of all my money (click). From the airport I take a train into London and then another one south to Haywards Heath where I'll be staying at the YWAM base "Holmsted Manor" (click). It's beautiful, take a look. I'll be staying there with some friends that used to be involved with YWAM Pittsburgh. Hopefully, I make a trip up to London, but also get to catch up with folks and meet new people. It'll be weird being in a country where everyone speaks English, and should be a lot of fun.

Thursday I take the Eurostar to Paris. That's the train that goes under the English Channel. I'll stay with my cousin who is studying fashion design there in Paris. That's where I'll spend my actual birthday. Hopefully I remember some French because from all I've heard (even from my French friends here) they would rather not speak English with me =P

The next Monday (the 21st) I'll take a train through the Alps to Milan, Italy. Here is where I insert the forecast in Milan for the next week (I promise I was planning on talking about weather when I started writing this) . This isn't the week that I'll be there but I can expect something similar! I'll be staying with my friend Francesca who I met here. I'll probably stop in and visit one of her English classes at the University and enjoy all of the strong Italian accents. My Italian is non-existent except for a few words I learned last year, but hopefully with my "Learn Italian in 7 Days" book, I should learn something. Fortunately there is lot's of English, and Francesca's whole family speaks German because her Mom is German.

In the end I come back to Osnabrück for the weekend and say goodbye to all my church friends. My Swiss flatmate said she's taking at trip home and may have some good Swiss cheeses to do a cheese fondue when I get back. Kind of scares me, and kind of sounds fun.

I fly home Monday the 28th of February, and back at RIT the end of the week. I have way to much to do but it should all be delightful so I'll try not to complain.

See you all soon!

[- R N W -]

Hitherto

So there are days in my American Literature and Culture class that I get bored and stare out the window and this is what I see. While on the one hand they are only typical townhouses/apartments that are for the boring people that just want to look like everyone else, there is nonetheless something beautiful in their uniformity. The many layers of repeating architecture, straight lines, and perspective. There was even one day when I saw sunlight splashing across all of this. I shouldn't say splashing because it was so neat and uniforms that it was more as if the sunlight had painted geometric shapes on the city landscape. It was in Osnabrück though and I don't ever expect to see that sun again though so we've settled with this picture.

On another note, we learned something intriguing about the German language today that I found amusing. We have the word "Gentleman" which is "Herr" in German. Make it into anadjective you have "Herrlich" which means "glorious, superb, magnificent." All well and good. Well there is a flip side. "Lady" is "Dame" (where we get the word 'dame'), but when you make that into an adjective you get "dämlich." "Dämlich" is best translated into English as "dopey, dimwitted, goofy, daft." Just to be clear, I don't think women are so, in fact I might even consider women to be "herrlich" but nonetheless I couldn't help but find it amusing. Also the Germans use the phrase "hitherto" relatively frequently and I would like to start using it in English. We'll see what happens.

Terrific Speaker

This was the speaker we had last night at SMD (German equivalent of IV). He is an ex hippy and drug user... well maybe still hippy.. but ex-drug addict anyways. I didn't follow all of what he said exactly but I still enjoyed listening to him sit there and recount how God moved in his live during the last 65 years (I can't imagine being born in Germany in 1945). There were maybe 30 students there and we all sat around on pillows to listen while drinking juice. A good evening for sure.

and here's a link to see what he really looks like:

Intensiv Deutsch Kurs

So the intensive german class, 5 hours a day this week is not as intense as I expected. Here was the project I worked on today. It helps me conjugate the verb "to be" in German.

Ich bin

du bist

Sie sind

er, sie, es ist

wir sind

ihr seid

Sie sind

sie sind