Follow-up on Your First Moment of Jen (MOJ)

Okay, now for a more substantial post, filled with just as much silliness, but with words, rather than actions.

I suppose I shall litter this post with a few scattered stories before going into a more detailed rendition of this week. So, prepare, as usual, for a bit of disjointedness, followed by a more straightforward narrative.

* * *

Today, I saw a yellow kite flying amidst the grey, overcast sky, floating solitary in the dim field and valiantly attempting, in all its sunshine valor, to find its way against the shards of biting wind. It was actually quite successful. Its winning battle made me smile to myself, anyway.

* * *

Yesterday, upon walking home, I stood and watched a small down feather float to the ground. I picked it up and took it home with me. This brings my small feather collection to...two now. Also, while sitting near the river Aller, I pilfered a smooth, tan rock from the bank. A small pine cone also now adorns my window sill from the forest. I've become a nature klepto.

* * *

Last Saturday while in the Altstadt, Andrea #2 spotted me and walked over to sit with and talk to me for a little while. She has sort of taken to looking after me whenever we meet, since she constantly strives to better my German (which is actually worse when I talk to her precisely because this makes me nervous). Despite this, I've taken a liking to her, since she is generous and patient with me. Today, even, she spotted me while driving her twin sons home from school and insisted on giving me a ride back to the flat. As she said in English, "Don't be shy!" Despite the fact that I actually wanted to walk home, I still appreciate the generosity of my neighbors.


Well, that was fun.

So, let's get on with the more coherent part of this narrative. This week marks the return to work, for which I am incredibly glad. You have no idea. Herbstferien was too long, and, being the broke Fulbright scholar that I am, I wasn't able to fill my time with too much glamorous traveling and whatnot. Though I very much enjoyed my solitude with nature in Celle, having nothing to forcibly occupy my time can be dangerous for me. I realized this more fully when I returned to work on Tuesday, and how nice it was to chat awkwardly with my coworkers and help the students again! Yes, that was an exclamation point. I have found that my German has gotten better even just two days into work, though it's still kind of, maybe dismal.

Some French students are here for the week as part of an exchange program, and they participated a bit in 4a yesterday, Susanne's class. We had fun singing them the bicycle song, which actually goes to the tune of "The Wheels on the Bus." I will say, though, that in order to be an effective teacher (and to have fun, period), one must act out situations with such dexterity that you'll be labeled certifiably insane if performed outside of the classroom. Anyway, I think the French kids were amused.

Today went surprisingly well, considering that it is my most "difficult" (in the sense that it's still easy) day. 4c actually behaved rather well. One of the girls in the class loves Hannah Montana, so, of course, a conversation went thus:

Student: "Kennst du Hannah Montana?"
Me: "Ja, ich kenne sie."
Student: "Na! Kennst du, wo sie wohnt?"
Me: "Nie, das weiss ich nicht. Aber, ich kenne sie."
Deniz, the class goof: "Bist du ihre Kusine?!"
Me: (classic eyebrow arch)

In short, because I'm American, I am expected to know everything about Hannah Montana...and be her cousin. (Yes, I know he was joking.) Hooray for the globalization of really bad American T.V.

But, in all seriousness, it really is great to be back. I knew this when I entered the classroom of 2a this morning, and Linda's face lit up as she exclaimed, "Hello, Jenni-fuh!" and proceeded to give me a full-on child-hug. Not a tackle, but the sweet kind of hug that only a child can give.

Blegh, that sounds like the maternal instinct is setting in. Believe me, it's not. But, I am very fond of my students. And, yes...they are my students.

Welcome back. Now let's see how long it will take until they become little hellions.

Snapping Out of It

So, I deleted the last post because, as a friend helped me realize, personal, emotional outbursts don't really belong in a blog such as this one. This blog is intended to provide a Jen-sized lens through which to view my stay in Germany and not to serve as a medium for me to post typical, inside-my-head emotions. So, yes. Alles klar.

Yesterday was rather enjoyable. As I am prone to do on Saturday mornings and early afternoons, I strolled about the Altstadt, this time with the intent to purchase (cheap) Christmas gifts for family. And, my mission was successfully completed. (Hey, see what I did there? I used passive voice. Why is this important? Because I don't have to worry about using it anymore. Put that in your juice box and suck it, college history and literature essays.) However, while on my search for Christmas gift goodness, I came across these following jewels:

Near the Altes Rathaus (which is also tourist information), I spotted two slightly over middle-aged men exiting the building, glancing over a map of the Altstadt. I overheard their conversation and noticed their heavily English accent. So, I decided to do something completely random (for me):

Me: "Englisch?"
Men: "Uhh...yeah."
Me: "No, this is cool! It's always nice to hear English around here."
Men: "Oh, are you...English?"
Me: "American. Are you tourists?"
Men: (quick glance at map) "Uh, no."
(some more pleasantries, exchanges of background info, and wary glances from the men)
Me: "By the way, sorry about randomly butting into your conversation." (They were very disoriented.)
Men: "Not at all. We thought you were a German wanting to practice English."

It turns out that these two Englishmen were members of the base that is situated near/in Celle and that one of the men was new here (hence, the map). Though I think I scared them a bit, it was a good experience for me. Sometimes I do get this impulse to butt into a conversation with a complete stranger, and usually it turns out well. Though, most people give me a look that implies that they are very startled that a very short, very...chipper young woman, someone who totally does not resemble the standard con artist that they have been warned about, attempts to converse with them.

Other highlights of the afternoon include the local (English) street musician singing "Ring of Fire" near Rossmanns, some flute players playing "Chiquitita," spying an elderly gentleman who resembled a Country Western Santa Claus, and having hot chocolate with Maryle during a nasty bout of weather.

Today was also a bit adventurous, for it is Meerit's eighth birthday. I am currently in the process of knitting her a soft, red scarf, but, staying true to my procrastinating form, it's...unfinished. Andrea invited me to "coffee" at 15:00, which, of course, means coffee, tea, three different kinds of cakes, and cupcakes. Of course. I met Andrea's mother, Lina, and Tjark's parents. Meerit's godmother and Andrea's brother also arrived, albeit late. So, we set about eating multiple portions of the diabetes-inducing feast, with Lina scolding me for not finishing the third piece of cake that had been forcibly placed before me. Overall, though, it was another enjoyable experience, despite the fact that I continuously blunder through my German and wonder why Fulbright saw fit to give me this job. However, it is a jovial wonder, so it's okay.

To once again clear my head, I walked through the field this morning and evening. It's my own little slog of utopia, that field, at least right now. Even though I'm alone here, even though I've had to face some personal demons this past week...I still feel very much at peace in this little strip of land in Germany. No matter how down on myself I get while here, no matter how many personal flaws I will come to realize and confront, I know that when I take my afternoon stroll through the field, I can feel that, somehow, everything will be all right. Everything will, for better or for worse, resolve itself...one way or the other, it will work out.

Take a deep breath. Ready? Steady? Go!

Celle im Herbst

Autumn has come to Celle. And it is wonderful.

And wondrous, actually. This is perhaps the first actual autumn that I have experienced in my twenty-three years. Now, I must defend Alabama in the fact that it is very pretty in the fall. Despite what one might say about my beloved state, Alabama has some lovely foliage and landscapes. However, the temperature is the rub, for in October it can easily still be in the low 80s. Not very autumnal.

But, Celle! I can't get over how gorgeous the scenery is this season. I'm very fortunate in the fact that I live right next to a vast field and wooded path, and, on sunny days such as this one, I have taken to 1.) trying to ride a bike and 2.) strolling along this way, in addition to my standard walking route through the suburb. I can't quite accurately describe the feeling I get when I walk along this way, upon viewing the richly blue sky or the crisp, burnt orange of the changing leaves that makes the trees appear blazing in the distance. Throw in the sharp, invigorating breeze that fills my lungs, and you have a very Robert Frost moment.

You'd better be taking notes, Frost.

With temperatures in the high 40s, I think I know what autumn really feels like. And it has lifted my spirits like nothing else has this past week. I have been outside this past month more so than perhaps the entire year (this is an exaggeration, but only slightly). It feels good.

My Life is Good.

Really, it is. If I can say, "Oh, I'm not doing much today. I'm just going to hop on a train to Bremen," then I can't justifiably say that life is anything but good.

Hey, look! I've been mentioned in my department's blog! Take a look here: UAH History News.

This is going to be another one of those sectioned off posts, seeing as I have much to talk about: my travels to Hannover and Bremen over the course of two days. I will save some reflections about my stay overall for a post later today. So, stay tuned.

This is going to be a very long post.


Hannover

So, I took a trip with Maryle and her university friend, Sarah, to Hannover Tuesday. To give a bit of background, Sarah is traveling through Europe at this very moment, and she stopped by Celle to visit Maryle. In addition to this, I have two (actually, three, but we'll get to that) friends from the Fulbright orientation who live in Hannover, and we had been planning for awhile to meet up. So, it naturally made sense to have all of us meet in Hannover for a free tour of the pretty parts of the city.

And this is how the day went. (I'm not going to leave you hanging; it went very well.)

I arrived at the (rather dingy) Celle Bahnhof rather early, since I'm entirely too punctual when planning trips and whatnot. I called Maryle to notify her of my arrival, and she informed me that she and Sarah were on their way and would be at the station in twenty-five minutes. So, I waited around for that allotted amount of time and started wondering why they were late. I got a call from Maryle...and the poor women missed their bus. So, they literally power-walked to the station, which takes about roughly forty minutes from Maryle's place to this particular destination. We missed our desired train, but, as there are many trains that go through Celle to Hannover, we managed to catch a train not long after their Power Walk 2009.

Upon our arrival at Hannover, we set about finding our way to Ernst Augustus Platz, which is where my friend, Bill, had said he would meet us "unter dem Schwanz," or under the tail, of the Ernst Augustus statue. Notice that I said "he," as in one solitary person. I suppose you can imagine my surprise when not one, but three, people were there (after I had, you know, looked right at Sara and passed them). That's right; Bill, Sara (my roommate in Altenberg), and Patrick (another Fulbrighter whom I had passingly known at orientation) were our tour guides for the afternoon. This is rife with awesome.

So, we six travelers traipsed about Hannover, viewing mostly the Altstadt of the city, which, along with almost everything else in Hannover, had been reconstructed after World War II because of the British bombings. We toured the Marktkirche, viewed in a professional manner some mildly suggestive statues in the park bordering the Altstadt, procured some lunch at the Markthalle (an American-type mall), and ended our six-person tour at the Neues Rathaus. I received a really neat history lesson of Hannover from Bill at the Rathaus, with the four large models of the city on the courthouse's ground floor. The difference between the 1939 and the 1945 models is striking.

As I desired to go to the Niedersaesisches Landesmuseum Hannover, Maryle and Sarah split off from the group to go a-wandering, and my Hannoverian comrades walked with me to the art museum. On the way, my tour guides showed me the St.-Aegidienkirche, which had also been obliterated by British bombing. However, as a memorial, the church was left in shambles, which provides a stark contrast to the rest of the city. This was one of my favorite landmarks that my tour guides showed me. After going to the wrong museum, we found our way to my desired destination, and I left my benevolent friends in pursuit of high Aht.

Now, I must make a digression here because I love art museums. During my trip to Germany last year, my main activity was literally perusing art museums. "Hey, let's do fun stuff!" "No, I'd rather fill my lungs with the dust of dead people's masterpieces." I was not disappointed with Hannover's collection, though I will say that when the museum proudly proclaims to house such works as Monet, Botticelli, Rembrandt, and Rubens (and Renoir! A lovely surprise), it usually means that there is one of each, and not famous ones, at that. But, hey, I'm not complaining. There was also an impressive collection of Caspar David Friedrich and Max Liebermann. That was really cool.

(We're almost done here, kids.) Upon meeting Maryle and Sarah, we three, two Cellers and a world traveler, jaunted down to the Hannover "Oktoberfest," otherwise known as the German State Fair. It was amusing to view the different attractions, though the two most interesting ones involved a horrid airbrushed illustration of Chuck "WTF" Norris and a mechanized contraption that I dubbed the Child Molester Crocodile With the Beer Gut and the Long "Tail." So, after snapping a few photos of the oddities of Oktoberfest, our weary souls and our weary...soles returned to Celle for the night.

Since Hannover is a short jog from Celle, my adventures in this city are far from over, I imagine. However, this trip was a nice introduction to the city of the Georges.


Bremen

Ah, Bremen! So many adventures and misadventures! Bremen, I love you. Thursday!

Oh, you'll get the reference when you read the story.

The send off to Bremen went a lot more smoothly than to Hannover, since buses weren't early and trains were on time. The two and a half hours of travel passed uneventfully, and we arrived in Bremen around 11:40, giving us much time to go a-wandering about the city on a Wednesday, a day all of us had assumed would be a grand time for tours and whatnot.

Have I mentioned that things like tours are not offered on Wednesday, but on Thursday? I didn't? Well, imagine that.

Maryle, Sarah, and I had planned on taking the Beck's brewery tour. That was closed until Thursday. Then Maryle noticed that there was also a Mercendes-Benz tour. Hey, guess what? That was also closed until Thursday. So, we three, standing in the rain and wondering what to do (and laughing pretty much the entire time), headed over to the Bremen Altstadt with no particular agenda. This actually turned out to be a very nice time, with our own improvised tour of the flashy things that Bremen has to offer its tourists.

Marktplatz is a rather impressive center of a German Altstadt. Despite the constant rain, the layout and the attractions of Marktplatz were admittedly quite beautiful. We strolled about the Altes Rathaus, viewed the Roland statue, walked around inside the St. Petri Dom (one of my favorite cathedrals of my stay so far), found the famous Bremer Stadtmusikanten statue (smaller than I had anticipated, but really cool nonetheless), and wandered inside the Unser Lieben Frauen Kirche. At this point, we had lunch at the German fast food place called Nordsee, where Maryle retold the story of the Bremer Stadtmusikanten in the vivid way that only Maryle can. This is a good thing, by the way.

During the events mentioned above, we three naturally took photos. While Maryle was taking a picture of us, she said "Thursday!" instead of the standard "Cheese!" that has become ingrained in American culture. So, that is how a new catchphrase has entered into my life. However, it must be uttered only on Wednesday.

After lunch, we set off to find the Kunsthalle, an art museum that both Maryle and I had dearly wanted to view. So, as is the norm with travelers, we three trekked through a very beautiful park, the Wallanlagen, and stumbled upon the Theatersgarten, which is a memorial for the Theater that once stood there before its destruction in World War II. Then, we made our way to the Kunsthalle.

It was closed. For renovations. For two years.

I think this is when we realized that, in a fit of laughter, that we just needed a beer and to sit down and chat. So, upon our tour through Schnoor, the fifteenth- and sixteenth-century art/blacksmith/shopping district of Bremen, we sat down at a restaurant (with a closed kitchen, by the way) and had our Beck's.

I believe that, during the rest of our trip, we realized just how cool it was that we three had been traveling together for two days. As Sarah and I had talked about before our train to Bremen, we had known that we are incredibly lucky to be making our way through Europe at such a young age. But, I think Sarah summed it up quite nicely when she said, "Guys, thanks so much for being awesome and traveling with me these two days" as we walked up to a random Bremen windmill...because, really, I had a great time traveling with Maryle and Sarah, particularly on our misadventures in Bremen. So, upon bidding farewell to Sarah at her hostel, Maryle and I returned to Celle.

Celle, a town that has the crappiest bus schedule in the history of mankind. This is a bit of an exaggeration, but I'll leave it at that. Suffice to say, Maryle and I managed to return to our homes.

Hannover and Bremen in two days. Who would have thought?

Baby Steps

REMEMBER, KIDS: DON'T LEAVE YOUR PASSPORT AT HOME.

EVER.

YES, THIS MERITS ALL CAPS.

No, nothing happened, but I realized that, upon waiting at the Zollamt after getting lost for twenty minutes prior to arrival, I did not have my passport on my person. I told myself to stay calm, and I did--which, as some of you may know, is a big step for me. I'm proud of myself. I have had a package waiting for me since Wednesday, and I had been dragging my feet about picking it up because I didn't know where the post office was. But, as I am supposedly taking a couple of day trips Tuesday and Wednesday, I knew that I needed to pick it up today. I looked at a map and realized that I could walk to the post office from the Franzoesischer Garten, so, with a stern face and a sterner determination, I set off (in a bad mood, but being an adult dictates that one needs to fulfill responsibility even in a bad mood).

Of course, I went the wrong way down the street, spotted a post office, realized that it re-opened at 14:00, and waited around for fifteen minutes until a gentleman informed me that I was at the wrong place. Then more wandering ensued for about ten more minutes until I reached the Zollamt (not being above asking a pair of tourists where it was located). I approached the counter and ran into more obstacles, since the nice man at this location informed me that I needed an invoice--but, being almost in tears at this point, since it had been a rather bad day, after all, does actually help. He let me open the package to see if it included an invoice and, lo and behold! there one was. So, in the end, I received my package.

After that little misadventure, I met Maryle and her friend, Sarah, at the Altstadt, wherein we trekked over to this really cute (it really is cute) tea shop named Tee Kanzlei. Upon my search for some strong Irish Breakfast tea (my favorite tea, by the way), we came across a middle-aged gentleman who turned out to be a New Yorker. Imagine that. He was a rather jovial fellow, bilingual, and evidently owns the shop and visits every year. He was, to say the least, very entertaining and seemed rather impressed that Maryle and I are actually living here in Celle. Random encounters make me content.

And, yes, I found my Irish Breakfast tea. I've just tasted it. It is a mouthful of lovely.

Tired, hungry, and a bit melancholy, I returned to my flat. Admittedly, I am in a better mood now, reflecting the day's events and taking in my small accomplishment of finding the Zollamt by myself (and finding my blasted passport, which was in my other bag). Baby steps.

I have more events to recount, such as Sunday's Verkaufsoffen, but for now I shall enjoy the rest of my tea and dream of better days. Or mental states, at least.

Herbstferien

To start, I cooked myself a hot meal tonight. Okay, so it was only a can of soup, but my sister recently berated me for not eating enough. So, I thought I'd do a change from the roll, deli meat, and cheese that has consisted of my dinner for about three weeks. (Hey, sometimes I added mustard into the mix.) This might have you wondering why I haven't gained weight, but also keep in mind that I walk roughly four kilometers at least five days a week and consume mainly coffee, tea, and whatever the teacher's lounge contains. (This is a lie. I do eat breakfast and lunch.)

Of course, now I have to clean dishes, and I don't wanna.

So. It's now Fall Break. This means two weeks of...I don't know. A Hannover trip is in the works, so hopefully I'll visit some friends early next week. Perhaps a Bremen day trip, too, since that wouldn't be too expensive. It's just that this break has come so suddenly, and, having only worked three weeks at Klein Hehlen, I'm not ready for one. I still want to work.

I suppose my main fear of this break is that I'll become depressed, as I won't have much to do. This is a valid fear. I have many destinations I'd love to visit, but it's really too late to ask anyone if I can come for a few days and mooch. So, in a somewhat less elegant way than is usual of this blog, I'm going to occupy my time by making a list of desired destinations during my Fulbright tenure.

In no particular order:
Hamburg
Bremen
Weimar
Frankfurt
Dusseldorf
Dresden
Cologne (again) and Aachen
Florence, Italy
Rome, Italy
Brussels, Belgium
Anywhere, England
Amsterdam, The Netherlands*
Paris, France*

*Yes, I know. I'd rather visit the countryside of these countries, but come on, people. ART MUSEUMS. The Louvre... I'd love that.

I'm not going to be able to go to all of these, mainly because of money and not enough time. But, the least I can do is visit the German cities, since train travel is very convenient and, if one burrows enough, affordable. I have friends/family in Florence, Rome, Brussels, and near the London area, so there's always a possibility... If I don't eat or buy anything at all. I only slightly jest.