Tacheles Artist Squat

Berlinische Gallerie

Bamberg and Aupairing

Bamberg was really lovely. I guess there's a reason its a UNESCO World Heritage Site, no?
My family, the Sherbaums live RIGHT downtown--barely a five minute walk from the University, the Alte Rathaus, and the other beautiful, famous parts of the city. Their apartment is large and full of musical instruments and books.

Anna is a museum curator working at the Germanisches Nationalmuseum in Nuernberg. She is currently organizing a program called Kunst in der Kalter Krieg(Art during the Cold War). Her husband is an archaeologist and plays guitar and bass. One entire room in the apartment is devoted to his guitars, basses, and the piano that their daughter plays...pretty sweet. Cosima who is 9 plays piano, does Akido, has read all of the Harry Potter books and sort of reminds me of myself at that age. She is sweet and friendly and offered to lend me her Harry Potters when I told her that I had started reading the series in German. Her little brother, David, is a pretty typical 5 year old boy. He is loud and climbs on things, slightly spoiled and very affectionate. This fall he will be starting first grade and it is a very big deal. We played with his Sea Creature trading cards after dinner...

I got to Bamberg in the afternoon, and after coffee we walked around the city and they showed me some of the more famous stuff. Then we ate dinner, along with the older son from Mr. Sherbaums previous marriage who is 25 and lives in London, but is here for the summer, as well as their current summer-aupair who speaks no german whatsoever(good thing all the adults are fluent english speakers here!). After dinner I played with the kids for a little while, and then took the train back to Ingolstadt.

I'm not exactly sure how life will be for the next year with them. I think it will be great, but then again I was just visiting, not working. They do have land up in the mountains nearby with an apple orchard and Anna said that many weekends they take the Range Rover(in the city they drive a little compact bc the roads are so small) up there for a day or two so the kids can play outside. I think that Cosima and I will be very good friends and that David will be a handful, which is good because at least I won't be bored, and I certainly won't have time to get homesick!

There is also the possibility of me taking language classes while I'm there. The Fachhochschule(Community school) offers very cheap(€30) language classes once a week, but at Uni Bamberg there is also a very intensive course--five days a week, 3 hours a day--that is required for any foreign student wanting to study at a german university, that is signifcantly more expensive(€700), but also significantly better. Both places are a five minute walk or bike ride from my house.

Berlin

So I'm in Berlin for a couple days, leaving tomorrow morning. I got in yesterday afternoon and checked into my hostel which is tiny and beautiful and located over a bike shop. The lady who runs it is a british transexual. Perfect. Exactly the kind of place for me. Berlin is the kind of city where you get lost and don't want to be found.

In the morning I went to the Berlinische Gallerie which is a gallery devoted to contemporary German artists. They had a beautiful exibition on artists dealing with time, and also a cool retrospective of this german political artists. Once I get back to Ingolstadt I'll upload the few pictures I took before the security politely told me I had to pay for a photography pass.

After the BG I rode the U-Bahn up to Orangienburger Tor and checked out the largest, oldest artist squat/commune in Berlin called Tacheles. Its located in this old department store building and has been there since the 70's. The graffiti on the stairs going up was AMAZING as were the artists and their studios...I wish I'd had a day or a year to spend inside, instead of an hour. When I was done wandering around inside I went across the street to a place called Dada Falafel and had some of the best and cheapest falafel...well, ever. 

After lunch I hoped on the bahn again and went to the Neue StadtGallerie which currently has an exibit of surrealists and abstract impressionism from a very comprehensive private collection. They had everyone...Ernst, Magritte, Pollock, Dali, Frida, Diego Rivera....basically everyone and anyone that mattered to the movements. Really, really well done. 

After arting myself completely out, I wandered around a huge flea marked selling persian rugs, fur coats, leiderhosen, old books, nintendo games, antique furniture, balalaikas, wigs and silver spoons, to name a fraction of the selection! I bought a really cute tan felt hat that I think is called a cloche but then again I'm terrible with names. Unfortunately because it was already late in the afternoon, a lot of the booths were starting to close up, but it was nice to rifle through stacks of old postcards and photos and check out all the old VHS tapes of american movies dubbed into German. 

Anyways, I grabbed a cup of coffee at a little cafe and then headed back to the hostel for a shower. Tonight I'm going out for curry and a pina colada with the Paula(the owner) and some of the other guests here. I really wish I didn't have to leave tomorrow morning, and am seriously considering coming back to Berlin in august and staying here again. 

The more I experience in Berlin the more I love it. It seems as if around every corner is a cool market or cafe or art gallery or vintage store if you're willing to be a little adventurous. I like how easy it is to meet people, how many different sorts of people there are here, how easy it is to find a place that feels like home, or what you would want home to be. If I ever end up living in Germany more permanently, it will be in Berlin, especially since the rent here is the basically the cheapest of any European metropolis. 

Anyways, I take the train tomorrow morning to Bamberg to meet the Scherbaums, my aupair family in the fall. They are picking me up at the train station and then we'll spend the afternoon together before I go back to Ingolstadt.  I can't believe I have such little time left here! Tuesday night I'm going to see a punk show at a club in Ingolstadt(so excited!) and then Thursday morning my hostfather is driving me to the airport in Munich. Where have the past five weeks gone?

Dachau

Yesterday we went and toured the Dachau Concentration Camp, which was the first Concentration Camp ever built. It was, as expected, incredibly sad. Thousands of people suffered and died there--from starvation, overwork, abuse, medical experiments and extermination. It is impossible to find and accurate number as the SS, who kept meticulous records, omitted the deaths of anyone who they saw as sub-human--which included over 4,000 russian political prisoners and every Jew that died after 1942. Nevertheless it is enormous. We took a tour and saw a reconstruction of one of the dormitories where they had set up the number of beds that would've been present in 1933 when the camp opened, then 1938, 1942, and finally 1945. The number jumped from something like 55 in the beginning to, in some dormitories, over 2,000 by the time the camp was liberated. 

I think what surprised me the most about Dachau was how hollow it all felt, how empty, as if there had been so much sadness that the very walls had become desensitized, immune. After all, its only buildings, now. The gas chambers, the ovens, the overcrowded dormitories, the electrical fence on which many chose to die of suicide rather than starvation... it was overwhelming. 

While there we saw large tour groups of both schoolchildren and German soldiers, both of whom are required to tour at least one camp at least once in their lifetime so that it cannot be forgotten or denied. I wish America would do the same thing for our atrocities...but where would we go for tours? To the Native American reservations that still exist? To the Japanese internment camps that were torn down so that we wouldn't have to remember that we, too, held innocent people in cages, perhaps the storefronts that for years wore signs reading NO COLOREDS ALLOWED? How about the fence on which Matthew Shepard, a gay man, was tied up and brutally beaten to death? 

Unfortunately our mistakes have either already been swept under the rug or are ongoing. As the resident winners, we have the luxury of forgetting our mistakes(and therefore repeating them...Gitmo comes to mind). In a way, it is a mercy that the Germans aren't allowed that option. Right across the fence from the Dachau memorial site are normal apartments. People live in Dachau, their patios look out across the long fields were gray dormitories used to stretch. Nevertheless, the Nazi regime and the second world war are not common dinner table topics. In fact, they are almost never discussed outside school. It is simply to painful for people to face daily the knowledge that their people, their country(sometimes their family) caused such an incredible atrocity. Germany was a highly-industrialized, modern, developed nation at the beginning of World War II. Progress does not always equal civilization. Civilization does not always equal civility. Progress simply allows us to distance ourselves from the emotional and psychological consequences of our actions. 

It is easy to look at the actions of others and see morality as a thick, black line. It is only when we examine ourselves that the line grays, blurs. Modern german citizens, faced daily with that thin, gray line-- the line between mother and monster, grandpa and nazi often look away. It is a choice they cannot make. I cannot say that, placed in the same position, I wouldn't feel the same. We are all capable of horror. It is what makes us beautiful, no? That are good choices, our loving choices, our human choices, are irrevocably wrapped up in our wrongs. On the Statue of the Unknown Prisoner is says, "The dead to be honored, the living to be reminded". He stands casually, hands in his pockets, head upheld-- a sharp contrast to the pictures of the camp prisoners standing at attention for hours on end, heads bowed. It is a beautiful memorial to the human spirit--the spirit that looks daily, hourly, into the awful darkness of its own heart and yet somewhere, somehow, finds light.

Found an interesting quote in the book of Borges short stories that mom bought me for Christmas:

"Other nations live innocently, in and for themselves, like minerals or meteors; Germany is the universal mirror which receives all, the consciousness of the world(das Weltbewusstsein)."

Interesting, considering that it was written after WWII by Borges, who was severely opposed to anti-semitism and the Nazis. 

the unmelting pot

Life in Germany moves at a much slower pace than in America. Everyone has time to cook dinner, and most days we take a break in the afternoon for coffee. This is both refreshing and disconcerting for me, who was used last semester to days where I rarely had time to grab food on the go between school and work. However, it means that I am speedily making my way through the books I brought with me, and actually have time to keep a daily diary for the first time in...years?

Last week I job shadowed a Social Worker who works mainly with young people who are immigrants or come from immigrant communities. It was fascinating. Much like the southern US where there is tension between "natives" and hispanic immigrants/migrants, there exists here cultural/racial/religious tension between native Bavarians and the turkish/moslem community. Bavaria is an extremely conservative part of Germany. Bavarians consider themselves Bavarian first, and German second(and only really when talking to internationals). Bavaria is something like 80% Roman Catholic, and that culture is deeply ingrained in everything from food to school schedules. It is no wonder that that comes into conflict with the also deeply proud and culturally defined Turkish immigrant community here. 

However, it saddens me to see this country, which has worked so hard on creating tolerance and acceptance after the horrible events of WWII in many ways fall back into the same old ruts. Germans are a proud people, which is part of what makes them distinct and beautiful, yet pride is dangerous. After nearly 60 years of the Guest Worker program being in affect, the government and social organizations have only in the last 5-10 years started to address the issues that arise when two completely different cultures and religions collide. On one side of Ingolstadt we visited a middle school with a 5% immigrant population. On the other side of town, near the neighborhood where I work, the school is almost 100% immigrant. The segregation is in many ways voluntary for both communities--many Turkish families see themselves as Turks first, Germans second, and there are families who have lived here for 3 generations who still speak only Turkish. Nevertheless, it is segregation. 

Moreover, this voluntary distance between cultures and peoples only serves to hurt the children who are growing up in an increasingly globalized world. At the KinderCafe last week there were children from Russian, Turkish, and Kazak backgrounds. As long as everything went well they were friends--helping each other learn new german words, sharing food and cleaning tasks-- but at the first sign of trouble or conflict, they immediately broke down into family/culture groups. Gangs are a serious problem for the older ones. There is little hope for the bright future that the German public education system(fantastic and nearly free through the completion of University) offers. 

In Germany there are two choices for Highschool. If one has good grades, one can go to Gymnasium and be on track for University studies. If one has poor grades(or poor german and english speaking skills) one goes to Hochshule to learn a career. Most of the kids I work with will barely make it through Hochshule, despite their obvious intelligence, because they lack the motivation, language skills, and familial support to make the necessary grades for Gymnasium. In this, Germans--whether native or immigrant--are doing their children a gross disservice and participating in a vicious cycle that keeps immigrants from every fully integrating and contributing to the greater society. 

However, there is hope. The woman I job shadowed was an inspiration. She saw her job as working AROUND the beaurocracy and contradictions inherent in the system because her goal is to help these children. She is very good at her job. I can only hope that there are more social workers like her.

My first week at work went well--not much to do there because it is a holiday week here in Bayern due to Pentacost. However, I did have a lot of fun going to the VolksFest(like a State Fair) with a group of turkish kids and one of my bosses. 

On Friday I got to help out with a program called "Kindercafe" where all of the kids in the low-income neighborhood where I work get together and learn about cooking healthy meals/kitchen hygiene/etc. Its a really interesting program because, not only do these kids who would normally be alone in the afternoons while their parents work have a place to go and hang out, but it also allows them to learn how to take care of themselves and eat more healthily than the pizza/snacks they might otherwise eat while their parents were away. Moreover, because the people running it have backgrounds in child psychology, it gives the kids a safe place to work out issues and problems they might be having at home or in the neighborhood through the context of food. Before I was allowed to work with the program I had to read a pretty long(15 pg) document about the pedagogy of the program, its goals, and accomplishments. 

Saturday was my guestmother's mother's birthday so we went to her house for a large midday meal with my guestfamily and their relatives. It was a really interesting experience! Besides my guestfamily there was also my guestmother's two siblings and their families, plus various family friends. We all ate a HUGE meal and then afterwards there were 5, count 'em 5, birthday cakes! Germans are really big on eating together and sort of the...ceremony of food. Birthdays aren't so much celebrated with lots of stuff but rather with conversation and food and family. Although everyone was speaking very quickly in a really hard to understand dialect("Bayerish" sounds about as much like normal German as a Louisiana bayou accent would sound to a northerner's ears) I still had a lot of fun. One thing I really appreciate about Germans is how welcoming they are. Unlike Americans who will be very friendly on first meeting you but then oftentimes not follow up, Germans can seem a little cold and direct at first but they will bend over backwards to make you a part of their community.

This next week I'll be working with the Social Worker at the EA which should allow me a really interesting look into the parts of German society that don't often go on the news.

busy, busy weekend

Wow, what a wonderful weekend I had!
On Sunday my Hostfamily took me to this small town nearby called Kelheim an der Donau(on the Danube). We took a boat down the Danube through this amazing limestone cliffs to an old Monastery. The Monastery has the oldest still-working monastery-brewery in the world and also a beautiful roccocco church created by the same architect as the roccocco church with the large fresco in Ingolstadt. There was also a small chapel by the same architect up on a hill. Inside the chapel were all these beautiful and strange pictures hanging on the wall. Each one showed a particular problem--sickness, poor crops, dying farm animals, etc-- and then an angel or Mary coming to help. My hostmother explained that these pictures were painted as prayers. There were so many of them, some extremely old, and were such an interesting mix of distress and hope. We ate lunch in the biergarten in the courtyard of the church(of course! there are biergartens EVERYWHERE here)

After the monastery we went to this building...i don't know whether to call it a monument or a temple...up on one of the cliffs overlooking the Danube. It was...amazing? strange? surreal? The building itself was made out of pink stone and was round and completely windowless with a large dome. There was a large skylight in the dome which lit the inside, which was completely empty except for the tourists, of course! Around the walls stood giant white angel statues holding gold shields with the names and dates of famous battles during the Napoleanic Wars. On the outside of the building were more angels, each holding a placard with the name of one of the German States. Apparently the first king of united Germany--after the Napoleanic War when all the principalities and states were formed into one country-- built this building as a monument to the unity of germany through war. The building was made mostly of marble and was incredibly beautiful. My first impression was that it came straight out of Lord of the Rings, it was so fantastical. I'll post a couple pictures so you can see, because its hard to describe. It was a strangely sacred place, almost holy, but I wasn't sure what was being worshipped there...war? unity through struggle? germany? Germany has a sordid past when it comes to Nationalism, so sometimes its hard to see something as beautiful as this without being reminded of the end result of extreme national pride. Germans love Germany, perhaps too much.

After the monument we took a tour of some nearby limestone caves. They reminded me a lot of Linville Caverns, except smaller and older. The tour itself was really cute--and at the end there was this odd light/music show in the largest cave where they believe pre-roman priests once worshipped. All in all it was a lovely and full day, and so sweet of my hostfamily to take me out and show me around.

On Monday, which was a holiday here in Germany because of Pentacost, we went to Munich for the day. First we climbed Alte Peter, the largest climbable churchtower in the world, which was 306 steps! And I got some nice shots of Munich spread out before me. An interesting side note: like many European cities, Munich has a pigeon problem. So instead of poisoning them or shooting them like other cities, Munich simply puts out birdfeed filled with birth control...which I found hilarious but also very humane. So like the Germans to think about efficiency--why kill extra pigeons when you can simply stop so many from being born!

After Alte Peter we got lunch and then went to the Deutsches Stadt Museum which is devoted entirely to science and innovation. The museum is HUGE and simply impossible to see in one day. They have sections devoted to everything-- astrononautics, aeronotics, seafaring, paper and printmaking, glassmaking, ceramics...you name it, and hold demonstrations during the day of each different system. I learned more than I will probably ever need to know about printmaking and ceramics, but it was really interesting! They also have a really beautiful and impressive collection of boats and ships from all around the world, some very old. I spent a good two hours in the museum and at the end saw an exhibition of high voltage electricity. It was extremely loud and pretty impressive, but mostly reminded me of The Prestige, hah. I kept expecting a clone to pop out somewhere after each burst!

Today was my first official day at my service-learning job. I'm working at the Evangelische Ausliederarbeit which is a center for immigrants. They have a lot of different programs--from language classes to job and appartment help, to after school programs including a film club and music studio. This morning I was simply shown around the center and introduced to all the different programs. Because of Pentacost there is not a lot going on this week, however next week I will probably be helping out with a program for single mothers, helping them learn catering skills(since catering jobs are usually in the evening) as well as kitchen hygiene, physical presentation(how to dress appropriately for german contexts) and healthy-cooking skills. The nice thing is that every week I will probably get to work with a different program. They even have a teaching-garden for kids and a "Kinder Cafe" where kids learn how to cook healthful meals! They also give some councelling services, especially for young people struggling with the conflict between their two seperate cultures. While I was there getting orientated a young muslim man came in needing help because he no longer wanted to wear his turban but his father wouldn't allow it. In germany there is a lot of tension between christians and muslims, so oftentimes its easier to get a job if one is cleanshaven and doesn't wear a turban. But of course, many parents see their chidlren putting aside the turban and beard as a denial of their religion and heritage. The more I learn about Germany--even its warts and flaws such as these--the more I seem to love it. It is a beautiful place to vacation, but I think I will really enjoy the opportunity to see Germany in a different light and learn about the parts of German society that you don't normally hear about in a language class.All in all I'm pretty excited about working there, and tomorrow I'll find out my schedule for the week.