Die Spanische Hofreitschule

If you're not familiar, check out their website - http://www.srs.at/en/

The horses are gorgeous, their skills are great, but I happen to be allergic to horses. Now usually it's only an issue with my eyes swelling up, but if I take an antihistamine pill and use eyedrops, it's not an issue. Well imagine my surprise after watching 25 minutes of the Spanische Hofreitschule when I started coughing and wheezing. It was not fun! I immediately left, and now I'm back in Saarbrücken.

Anyway, it's pretty cool that the Spanische Hofreitschule is in Saarland. They are touring to only four cities in Europe - Brussels, London, Paris, and St. Wendel. The population of St. Wendel is probably less than one of Paris's arrondissements, but the Spanische Hofreitschule is performing there anyway. I think it is a big treat for Saarland, and I'm really happy that the three shows have been more or less sold out - about 2000 people per show! Also, with the number of people who have been calling on the telephone for tickets over the past few days, it has become a lot easier to understand folks on the telephone. I've even started to understand names without needing them to be spelled letter-by-letter -- that's a big deal for me! For some reason, I'm noticing I'm having trouble understanding men a lot more than women on the telephone...maybe it's because their voices are lower and so things sound a bit slurred together. I'm not sure.

But I can't wait to see what another month of being here does for my German skills!...even if the Spanische Hofreitschule almost killed me. Okay, that's clearly an exaggeration.

Bis später...

5 random thoughts and experiences over the last few days...

It's a holiday, but of course McDonald's is still open.

There's a bee's nest outside my window! No wonder that I killed 3 of them in 10 minutes when I had my window open the other day...

"Take an umbrella so it doesn't rain." Seriously, though...

Learning about power and privilege dynamics at universities in the UK from some students at Exeter who finished their law degrees at Uni-Saarland this past week.

"Scheiße! Ich habe den Bürgermeister geduzt!" (Oh crap... I used the "informal you" with the mayor!)



...the last one's not as bad as it sounds - he laughed as soon as I told him I was an American. And in my defense, I had just finished helping another customer on the phone in French!

My accent has migrated East...

...to France! I mean my accent in German. Yesterday I was asked twice on the phone whether I was French, and then someone came into the office and asked me the same thing. I'm not sure whether I should take this as a compliment because the reputation for French folks learning foreign languages in Germany is not very good. Then again, the American reputation can't be any better! At least my accent is more "European" ? I don't know what to think...

I also learned some fun new words! "pennen" is a familiar form of "to sleep" ... so I have determined (perhaps incorrectly) that when people say "Ich gehe pennen" they mean "I'm gonna hi the sack" or "I'm turning in." Also, a very specifically Saarlandischer word: "der Dauerschreiber" meaning "pen." But the usual word in German is "der Kugelschreiber"

I saw a performance of the Wiener Burgtheater this evening. It was weird because I knew the acting was quite good even though I really couldn't understand a lot of the Austrian accents. But I still understood a lot of what they were trying to communicate from what they were doing body-language-wise. Apparently some of the actors are quite well-known in the German speaking world from TV and whatnot. Afterward I went out for a beer with the coworker and friends with whom I spent the holiday a few weeks ago. One of the friends gave me his card in case I "run into any trouble." It was really kind of him. I am constantly overwhelmed by the kindness of people that I meet; it makes it quite difficult for me to be cynical, and it only adds to my idealism for what we can accomplish as one big, happy world! With that, it's quite late, we have a performance every night this week, so I'm off to bed. Gute Nacht!

The generosity of folks...

...always amazes me! A friend of the people whose upstairs I'm renting was cleaning out their rain gutters yesterday, and today he was back and offered to take me to the Altstadtfest in Saarbrücken. We had Kuchen und Kaffee at the Catholic Church, Basilika Sankt Johann, and then we walked along the Saar where he was telling me all of the names of the trees. I wish I would have had a notebook and camera with me! Anyway it was kind of funny because right now in my hometown they have the Strawberry Festival going on and the churches usually have their little tents set up where you can buy strawberry shortcake and other good treats. Today was very much like being at home, except I fortunately didn't have to deal with all of the little middle school kids pushing their way through the crowds to get to the carnival rides.

Another little thing I discovered was that if you order a package in Germany and you're not at home to get it, they will leave it at the neighbor's house! I've never had that happen in the USA - we would always have to drive out to FedEx or UPS at the airport or to the post office in our town to pick up a missed delivery. Nothing too exciting in the packages - just a couple of German books for my thesis work and a GRE test prep book. I just made myself sound like the most boring person in the world; to counter that, I present... photos from Paris! Disclaimer: I am not and I do not claim to be a photographer; furthermore, I am discovering that my camera is not a fan of situations where there isn't a great deal of light. Please enjoy the pictures despite these two factors, and know that I have great memories of Paris beyond these photos.

Click Here for Pictures!

(Link to copy and paste: http://www.flickr.com/photos/64017522@N03/sets/72157626831203145/with/5829976457/ )

These definitely aren't Blue Bus drivers...

One thing that always makes me smile on UM's campus is how nice the Blue Bus drivers are. I have literally been able to run across South University waving into the bus driver's mirror as they are parked in front of the UMMA and have them wait for me. Perhaps this is why it takes forever to get anywhere on UM's campus with the bus. Still, you can imagine my surprise yesterday when, after arriving only seconds after the SaarVV bus doors had closed, the bus driver shook his head at me, refusing any late entry. Even better was this morning when another young person had the EXACT same experience. Are they trying to teach us some kind of lesson about being on time? With all due respect to the SaarVV, I think that this particular government agency could use a lesson in its ability to keep a consistent schedule. The buses with the mean drivers were 2 minutes early, last week the bus that departs from right outside my work didn't even show up, and in general the last bus that should theoretically bring me to work on time never does because it's always 5+ minutes behind. AHHH! In general, though, the transport system here is very convenient and far superior to what Ann Arbor/Washtenaw County have. Then again, it's not a fair comparison due to tax structures, public priorities, etc.

In other news, I just wrote a letter in French! If I've experienced anything on this trip, it is realizing how much my 7ish years of studying French has really paid off. German is still a work in progress... I hope that the last 7 or so weeks here will yield even better results. One thing that I've noticed is that once I realize someone speaks English better than I speak German, it's hard to coax my mind into speaking German again. I'm not sure what that is - some kind of personal problem about them judging my German negatively? It's very silly, to be sure. I'm understanding almost everything now, though the local dialect is still sometimes challenging.

Now it's back to printing off tickets. This week we have Mahler's Symphony No. 3, with a second performance at the Arsenal in Metz. According to my French friend, the Arsenal was inaugurated with the help of Dmitri Shostakovich and the acoustics are quite good. But I think that I am going to stay in Saarbrücken this weekend and have a quiet weekend here.

Pictures from Paris are coming, I promise! I'm just struggling a bit with how to organize/arrange the album on Flickr. Bis später, alle!

A weekend in Metz!

These photos are from a couple of weekends ago. SNCF had a "Pass Pompidou" special where I was able to get train tickets for €1 each way - a great deal! A professor I met on the plane, Laetitia, gave a tour to me and Alexandra, another UM intern who is currently living in Stuttgart but came up to Saarbrücken for the weekend. She is a great travel buddy!

I also went to Paris this past weekend! But I am planning to upload photos from that trip to Flickr or another photo-sharing website that is more user-friendly than Blogger...

A view from the garden of a café where we stopped to grab something to drink that morning. It was actually a very slow-paced day, which was nice!

There is a story for this... I am pretty sure it has to do with a knight coming in and killing the dragon. And the dragon has a name like.. Graouilly or something! See, if I would have uploaded these that day, then I'd still remember.

Metz Cathedral...note the flying buttresses, a dead give away of the Gothic style...

And to think that they built this place in the 13th century... they're restoring the clocher right now.


Andd here we get to where the Germans came in during the 19th century and started changing things around, namely with the huge, medieval style doors, only remember that they were added in the 19th century.


Yeah, it's a huge cathedral...


There is something unique about this representation of Jesus being condemned to death... If I'm not mistaken, I believe that Laetitia said that Adam was the figure on the right helping to punish Jesus, which is still quite unique.


Stained glass windows from a very long time ago... some of them were actually blown up during the war, so Marc Chagall came and designed new ones. You can't really go wrong - medieval windows that have been there forever or great art from Chagall! At another site in Metz, there is a church with windows from Jean Cocteau, strangely enough (he directed La Belle et La Bête, a surrealist film version of The Beauty and the Beast).


View from the other side of the cathedral - the sun had a weird effect on my camera, but it looks kind of cool.

Temple Neuf de Metz (built by the Germans)

Side tributary of the Moselle

Metz theater / opera

A cool view from under a bridge along the river

Statue of Paul Verlaine - I also saw an original manuscript of "Le ciel est, par-dessus le toit" in the church where he was baptized! Amazing.

Park near L'Arsenal, where the festival is having a concert this week

Four periods of architecture in one place!

A sun dial, whose story Laetitia didn't really know...

Laetitia and I in front of the Centre Pompidou - Metz


Me, Alexandra (another UM intern), and Laetitia


"Échos" The mirror installation by Daniel Buren - looking out at the actual city of Metz


Reflection (the "echo") of Metz


Looking down from the third floor into the Centre Pompidou Metz

Christihimmelfahrt and other experiences in Germany

Yesterday was a holiday in Germany, Christihimmelfahrt, which I think is equivalent to the Day of Jesus's Ascension to Heaven. One of my coworkers took me to a barbecue at her friend's house. It was really, really fun, there was great food, funny and intelligent people -- I just really felt at home and welcomed. A bit of Saarländischer fun, there is this word 'schwenken' or 'Schwenker' in noun form. And 'Schwenker' can have three meanings (hopefully I don't screw this up!) -- the person who is doing the grilling, the grill itself, or the meat that is being grilled. I also noticed a really interesting feature of the fast conversation yesterday, which was that people stopped talking in complete sentences and started saying things like, 'mir verstehen das nicht.' I can't even translate what that would be in English because the actual sentence in German would be more like 'Ich verstehe das nicht' which means 'I don't understand that.' (Again, someone let me know if I'm wrong on this point) But this didn't just happen once, it happened over and over again. They also told me at this barbecue that in Saarland, until a woman is 70 years old, she is 'es Dagmar' or 'es Kathrin' and after she turns 70 she becomes 'die Dagmar' or 'die Kathrin' -- 'es' is a netuer 3rd-person pronoun ('it') while 'die' is a feminine definite article ('the'). I don't know whether or not they were serious, but it was funny and interesting nonetheless...

And then yesterday evening, I went to schwenken with some students that I have met through an American friend at the Universität des Saarlandes (University of Saarland). It was really great - the conversation kept drifting freely between English, French, and German, depending on whom I was talking with. It's really weird because I'm finding that once I know someone in a particular language, I prefer to stick with that language. For example, there was a French gal, but we were talking mostly in German at first, and then when I found out she was French, we started speaking French a bit, but then it just felt forced... I can't describe WHY exactly. Anyway, there were like 30 people at this schwenken / schwenker / whatever, and I may go with some of them to the pool later today if the weather gets nicer.

Currently, I don't have much to do at work so I'm just posting this quick update from here. I'm going to Metz with one of the other UM interns this weekend, and a prof I met on the plane from Rome to Frankfurt is going to give us a little walking tour of the city. It should be pretty wonderful - I was only there for the Centre Pompidou before, but I saw Metz through one of the enormous windows at the end of the exhibition wings, and it's a gorgeous city. There are actually €2 roundtrip tickets from anywhere in Lorraine (right over the border from Saarland) to Metz using the TER regional train system, so we'll definitely be taking advantage of that! I also booked some cheap TGV tickets for next week that were on special, and I'm going to talk with some of the students I met last night at the Uni to see if they have any pointers on where to stay...or hopefully someone has a friend there!