dships at night, studying by day. On Friday we went out to the Cafe Glockenspiel which is situated on the sixth floor of a building across from the famous Altes Rathaus with its Glockenspiel. First we had drinks (Sheba had a Pina Colada in the coolest looking cup I have ever seen, shaped like a Tiki face) over in the bar side, then we had dessert in the fancy part overlooking Marienplatz. It was a lovely evening shared with some great friends, and looking out over Marienplatz, the evening and then the rain falling (cooling off what had been quite a hot day). On Satuday night, I saw Harry Potter und der Halbblutprinz. Yes, dubbed in German. I haven't seen a dubbed movie since Pippi Longstocking, and, ahem, that was quite a while ago. I found it a tiny bit distracting but they did a good job keeping the audio match pace with the scene, and the voices were very, very much like the orginial actors' voices. And then, of course, another language makes it possible to slip in other jokes, for example:
Ron's Girlfriend rushes in to the hospital where Ron is lying, to see Hermione by his side.
RG: "Ich bin seine Freundin!"
Hermione: "Ich bin seine . . . beste Freundin!"
No idea what the original English is, but it's funny because in German, there is no distinction between "friend" and "girl/boyfriend". When I say "Mein Freund" (my "male" friend) and I am female, it sounds like I am talking about my boyfriend. I have to go out of the way to indicate that he is not my boyfriend and address him as "Ein Freund von mir" (a "male" friend of mine). So here, Ron's Girlfriend says "I'm his (girl)friend!" and Hermione says, "I'm his best (girl)friend."
I'm not sure why English only has this problem with males discussing female friends. I would never address my platonic male friends as "my boy friends" but "my guy friend said," etc. But a guy might have to say "a girl friend of mine..." if he wants to indicate straight-off that she's female. But if he said "my girlfriend" it would definitely sound like he was discussing a romantic relationship, whereas I am going to say "my guy friend" ("male friend" sounding a bit too Kinseyian for my taste), and it's clear it's platonic.
Also, they sell beer and wine in theaters here. Europe, huh?
On Sunday I ended up walking around a street festival on huge Leopoldstrasse for about an hour--pedestrian traffic only for a weekend!--which was wonderful. It also allowed the
unprecedented view of seeing mustard-yellow Theaterinkirche through the Siegestor. I'll miss that about Europe--just wandering in and out of daily life, wandering into a festival with no intention of ever having seen it in the first place . . .The rest of the week was study, study, study time.
After the classes came to a very good end, I began packing up. Now I am looking at the utter chaos that is my room. JYM has a great program where you can sell boxes to future program students--useful things that you don't necessarily want to take back with you, plates, coffee machines, laundry hampers, etc. So I am in the process of sorting out my belongings. I have to get the boxes ready for the next student (and haul them over to JYM sometime), and pack up my own boxes to be sent back to the United States (I am an impulsive book buyer, and also wanted to make it easy on my schlepping stuff back by sending some bulky sweaters, etc. back with the books.), and yeah, then of course through all of this there's bags and bags of trash and recycling.
I also have to get my room to German Standards of Cleanliness sometime, too, or, as Hans Peter said, they will send a 'Cleaning Team', "die so viel Geld verdient, wie ein lawyer in Manhattan."
Yesterday, I had intended to get off at Alte Heide and go shopping at Edeka for groceries, but I 
was so distracted I missed the stop and got off at Nordfriedhof, a stop too far. So I decided just to walk through Nordfriedhof, the city cemetery. I'm in love with it, really. It's so calm and quiet and such a great place to think. It runs parallel to Ungerstrasse (five months here and I can never spell it with 100% certainity) so I just walked through it on my way to Alte Heide.
Last night we had this huge, never-ending party at JYM. Almost all of us dressed up in Tracht and we attended a little ceremony in JYM, where the major prizes were given out, and the yearbooks distrubuted (which are GREAT! and have a great theme--Jugendstil).
was so distracted I missed the stop and got off at Nordfriedhof, a stop too far. So I decided just to walk through Nordfriedhof, the city cemetery. I'm in love with it, really. It's so calm and quiet and such a great place to think. It runs parallel to Ungerstrasse (five months here and I can never spell it with 100% certainity) so I just walked through it on my way to Alte Heide.Last night we had this huge, never-ending party at JYM. Almost all of us dressed up in Tracht and we attended a little ceremony in JYM, where the major prizes were given out, and the yearbooks distrubuted (which are GREAT! and have a great theme--Jugendstil).
HP gave a wonderful speech, as always. He quoted a student on his view of the experience. I'm afraid I'm going to have to paraphrase here. "What will I tell people about my study abroad experience? The nights spent in Pot drinking glass after glass of beer? The time I got myself completely lost in the Hauptgebäude? What will they verstehen? What will I tell them? I will probably tell them gar nichts."
After that, we went to dinner in Dietlindenstrasse, at a Bierhalle with amazing, upscale food (weird, huh?) which we had pre-ordered. I had amazing carrot soup, a grilled chicken salad--just delicious. And I ordered my first Maß. Of course, I was hardly able to finish it at all (I had to have several friends help me, who had no problem polishing off their own, whereas I had barely gotten down a quarter), but hey, I felt very authentic in my dirndl and with my bier.
After that, we had an after-party in the Rationaltheater in Münchner Freiheit, which is owned by a friend of HP's and is a cool place. I wish we had had the run of the place to ourselves, because I kept having to make sure that someone was watching after my belongings while I went to dance/talk to other people, etc, since there were a couple of random people coming in. But anyway, it was still great fun, and one of our number provided us with excellent music. I imagine that a group of dirndl- and lederhosen-clad American youths jumping up and down and yelling out the chorus of "SWEET HOME ALABAMAAAA, WHERE THE SKIES ARE SO BLUE, SWEET HOME ALABAMA, I'M COMING HOME TO YOU" must look pretty funny. The Rationaltheater was a good scene, though, and a good choice by the program. Took a while for the party to warm up but I think everyone had a good time, and some of us had to say our goodbyes, due to leaving over the weekend or on Monday.
As I looked out over the group from my comfty chair, I was torn by several conflicting emotions. How odd that we had all come together for this singular purpose and were now being scattered to the four winds again, what did it all mean? Having to say goodbye--an old hat of which I am quite weary. But sometimes things aren't as meaningful without the knowledge that there is an end. . . . Again, I thought about Russell in Almost Famous: "This is the circus, everyone's trying not to go home. No one wants to say goodbye." And I don't mean to diminish the value of this experience by comparing it to a circus or the drugs-and-alcohol fueled rock-and-roll scene, but what I suppose is meant by "circus" is the strangeness of our collective purpose, how inorganic for a bunch of American students from all corners of the country to be gathered in this one time and place in Europe for this one purpose. I was a bit sad.
On the other hand, when I went to dance, I was just smiling ear-to-ear, looking at my comrades
and shouting to each other with the chorus: "DON'T NEED MONEY, DON'T TAKE FAME, DON'T NEED NO CREDIT CARD TO RIDE THIS TRAIN!" Standing there dancing, being twirled by several of my guy friends, looking at each other and grinning like mad fools we are in our youth--I was just so happy I had met these people at all, happy to be young, alive, and well, full of energy, discovering the world, having our hearts broken and our ideas changed but forging ahead regardless, to have had these amazing experiences, bizarre and weird as it is, that I had begun to discover myself --oh so happily caught in the smoky, dizzy, and heady fury of the Jugendstil.
After that, we went to dinner in Dietlindenstrasse, at a Bierhalle with amazing, upscale food (weird, huh?) which we had pre-ordered. I had amazing carrot soup, a grilled chicken salad--just delicious. And I ordered my first Maß. Of course, I was hardly able to finish it at all (I had to have several friends help me, who had no problem polishing off their own, whereas I had barely gotten down a quarter), but hey, I felt very authentic in my dirndl and with my bier.
After that, we had an after-party in the Rationaltheater in Münchner Freiheit, which is owned by a friend of HP's and is a cool place. I wish we had had the run of the place to ourselves, because I kept having to make sure that someone was watching after my belongings while I went to dance/talk to other people, etc, since there were a couple of random people coming in. But anyway, it was still great fun, and one of our number provided us with excellent music. I imagine that a group of dirndl- and lederhosen-clad American youths jumping up and down and yelling out the chorus of "SWEET HOME ALABAMAAAA, WHERE THE SKIES ARE SO BLUE, SWEET HOME ALABAMA, I'M COMING HOME TO YOU" must look pretty funny. The Rationaltheater was a good scene, though, and a good choice by the program. Took a while for the party to warm up but I think everyone had a good time, and some of us had to say our goodbyes, due to leaving over the weekend or on Monday.
As I looked out over the group from my comfty chair, I was torn by several conflicting emotions. How odd that we had all come together for this singular purpose and were now being scattered to the four winds again, what did it all mean? Having to say goodbye--an old hat of which I am quite weary. But sometimes things aren't as meaningful without the knowledge that there is an end. . . . Again, I thought about Russell in Almost Famous: "This is the circus, everyone's trying not to go home. No one wants to say goodbye." And I don't mean to diminish the value of this experience by comparing it to a circus or the drugs-and-alcohol fueled rock-and-roll scene, but what I suppose is meant by "circus" is the strangeness of our collective purpose, how inorganic for a bunch of American students from all corners of the country to be gathered in this one time and place in Europe for this one purpose. I was a bit sad.
On the other hand, when I went to dance, I was just smiling ear-to-ear, looking at my comrades
and shouting to each other with the chorus: "DON'T NEED MONEY, DON'T TAKE FAME, DON'T NEED NO CREDIT CARD TO RIDE THIS TRAIN!" Standing there dancing, being twirled by several of my guy friends, looking at each other and grinning like mad fools we are in our youth--I was just so happy I had met these people at all, happy to be young, alive, and well, full of energy, discovering the world, having our hearts broken and our ideas changed but forging ahead regardless, to have had these amazing experiences, bizarre and weird as it is, that I had begun to discover myself --oh so happily caught in the smoky, dizzy, and heady fury of the Jugendstil. Photos: (1) View of Altes Rathaus and Theaterinstrasse from Cafe Glockenspiel as night falls (2), Pole vaulting at the Street Fair on Leopoldstrasse (3), The sun shines over the graves in Nordfriedhof (4), The winds of change are ushering me homeward (5), The boundless sky over Nordfriedhof.
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