Tuesday, April 3, 2007

I’ve successfully made it to Konstanz, but unfortunately, without my Eurail pass. It did indeed make it to Paris, but my mother addressed the package to me instead of Sanjay, which meant that when the FedEx delivery person showed up at the apartment building, he didn’t know which box to put it in, since the address applied to the entire building, not an individual apartment. That’s really both mine and Sanjay’s fault for not thinking to tell her, but what’s done is done. Anyway, we checked the tracking number and discovered that the package was waiting to be picked up at the FedEx office in Paris, but it could not be picked up until Tuesday evening (today). I decided I could buy a ticket to Konstanz and have Sanjay pick up the package for me and send it to me in Germany, but that would require a note from me explaining the situation and authorizing Sanjay to get it for me (though we’re not entirely sure that even that would work). Well, I was going to write that note as soon as I found out it needed to be written, but then it occurred to us that it should probably be in French, otherwise it may not be of much use. To address that problem, Sanjay said that Jean-Michel could write it and I could just sign it. Due to an unfortunate series of events mainly consisting of my worrying that I wasn’t going to get to the train station in time and Sanjay telling me to chill out and that I had plenty of time, I ended up barely making my train, and only remembered that I needed to sign that piece of paper to give to Jean-Michel so he could write the note about three seconds after the door to the train closed and it started pulling out of the station. All three of us realized this just then, and I wave of horror washed over me. It was un-cool in the extreme.

I now have two possible plans of attack. Either I can figure out the German postal system and send Sanjay a piece of paper with my signature on it and we can resume plan A, or I can resort to plan B, which consists of calling Sanjay and telling him or Jean-Michel to just forge my signature, since the FedEx people have nothing to check it against anyway. The problems now are that I don’t have a phone or easy access to the internet, and I’ve got no idea how long it would take something to get to Paris by regular post. One girl on my floor in the residence here told me that a friend of hers in Berlin sent her a birthday card back in December and that it still hasn’t arrived. I don’t like the sounds of that… I suppose I’ll see what I figure out tomorrow. I have the feeling though that I won’t be able to get this sorted out by this weekend, so I think I’ll probably be hanging out in Konstanz and seeing what there is around here. I could buy another train ticket, but I don’t feel like wasting money on something that I’ve already paid for.

On Saturday, I met with Olga again and we decided walk the entire length of the Seine, since she had mentioned the last time that she had been wanting to walk across the entire city to see how long it would take, but that all her friends were too lazy to go with her. I don’t think we got a very accurate measure, since we started around noon and finished around 7:00, but that included many miscellaneous detours, bench breaks, and stopping about ¾ of the way through the journey, back tracking by metro about half the distance we’d just covered so we could have lunch in the restaurant district, then taking the metro back to where we’d left off. Unfortunately, I forgot to bring my camera with me, which was a big disappointment, since there were tons of wonderful photo opportunities I missed out on. Some of the images I would have really liked to have captured were on the most easterly part of the river where there seems to be a high concentration of industrial buildings and old warehouses, things that are not normally associated with Paris. I know urban decay has pretty much become cliché subject matter, but I think it’s more interesting when it’s in the City of Lights. During the massive excursion, Olga taught me some words in Russian, which, much her and my surprise, I was actually able to pronounce perfectly, rolled Rs and all. After accidentally discovering that I could indeed roll my Rs, I realized what this meant for my Spanish. Someone might actually be able tell the difference between when say “pero” and “perro” without having to judge from context. Yay! I guess it’s not really that exciting, but it seemed like it at the time.

On Sunday during the day, before my last minute dash to the train, Sanjay, Jean-Michel and I had a little picnic on one of the little islands on the Seine, very near Notre Dame. Jean-Michel and I sat and played guitar while Sanjay commandeered my camera for a while and discovered his new favorite hobby. I was cleaning up some of these pictures in Photoshop earlier today, so I’ll probably upload those pretty soon.

Yesterday, after taking a night train from Paris to Zurich – an eight hour ride which was quite tolerable since I was asleep on a couchette for most of it – I wandered around the Zurich train station for about an hour and a half, trying to figure out what platform my connecting train was to leave from. After having little success in trying to find Konstanz listed on the big timetable hanging from the ceiling (I now realize that only the terminus locations were listed, which is why I couldn’t find it), I finally got the gumption to ask one of the information people wearing eye searing orange vests for help. To my surprise, despite the lack of English during the exchange, I indeed gleaned some useful information. I first asked whether he spoke English, in German of course, to which he seemed a bit amused and replied, no, but that it shouldn’t be a problem since I spoke German. I do not speak German, I speak selected German phrases, but at least my pronunciation was good enough allow him to feel justified in assuming I speak more than I do. After checking my ticket, he told me that my train would be departing from platform 8, but that it would be the second train to arrive. It seems very inconsequential (well, it was important information, but inconsequential in the sense that it was a very brief and simple conversation), but this was a huge success as far as I was concerned. I’d spent the past week in Paris, feeling completely helpless because of my total ignorance of French, so being able to actually do some talking for myself. This was followed an hour or two later with yet another success that came in the form of asking a taxi driver to take me to the Fachhochschule, the university where I will be taking classes, only be topped off with successfully asking for directions to building F, where the international office is located. This third success was slightly tempered though by the fact that after starting to follow the random person to the building I was looking for, I was asked a follow-up question to which I was unable to reply to with anything terribly coherent, immediately tipping my hand and revealing my status as the new international student from USA with extremely lacking language skills. This did though have the effect of then being lead directly to the office of the international studies coordinator, who was the person I was looking for in the first place.

When I first spoke with the international coordinator, she was extremely surprised to see me, since apparently there was a student who was supposed to pick me up from the train station. I was unaware that anyone was doing such a thing, so I just assumed that I’d have to get to the FH on my own, which is what I did. She then called the guy who was supposed to pick me up, Werner, and he drove back to the international office so he could drive me to the residence where I’d be living. When I met Werner, I was surprised at how good his English was, and more so when I discovered that he’d never been to an English speaking country before. He explained to me that of the younger people in Germany, almost all of the speak English to some extent, while the older generation generally speaks none at all. Unfortunately, it also seems that all the cranky people around here are of the older generation, so I foresee not being able to communicate particularly well possibly being a problem when I have to try to deal with our particularly cranky Hausmeister, the building manager, to sign my lease and find out where to get a card to use with the washing machines.

I found out that Werner is part of a program here called Helping Hand, the purpose of which is to help international students get oriented with the school, the town, their residences, and to help them fill out all the administrative documents that prove we exist, prove that we have health insurance, prove that we indeed live in Konstanz (so as to garner additional public funds for the city), and to open bank accounts for those students who needed them for one reason or another. My roommate from Flint, Kurt, opened one because his bank was charging him $3 plus 3% of the withdrawal every time he used a foreign ATM, so he figured the Deutche Bank would be a better bet. Comerica charges me $5 for every withdrawal, but since I can take out 500 euro, or about $665 at a time, it amounts to about a 0.75% fee, which is something I think I can live with if it means I can avoid the hassle of more bureaucracy.

Besides Werner, there is another guy named Sebastian and two girls, both named Katherina, who have been helping us get settled here, all of whom are extremely friendly, did a very good job of making all the administrative stuff go as quickly as possible, and also helped us (or at least me) to really feel a lot less lost than I think we would have otherwise. Every Monday, there is a weekly gathering of international students at a pub called the Heimat, so most of the Kettering contingent ended up going (though I got there a bit late, since I decided to walk from our residence, which takes 30 minutes to get to town to begin with, but ended up taking an additional 45 minutes by the time I found the place). All the Helping Hand students were there and were genuinely interested in interacting with us, which was great, since I thought perhaps the Kettering people would be the only ones to show up, and we’d end up just taking among ourselves. After we had all been there for a while, two Mexican students from Monterrey showed up and said that they were holding a birthday party for one of their friends on the roof of their dorm and that we were all invited, so the entire group moseyed on over. I was very excited by the prospect of having lots of people with whom I could speak Spanish, which is also not very good, but much more passable than my German. Though I did talk with some of the Mexican students for a little bit, I ended up spending most of the time talking about American and German politics and history with a German student (originally from Kazakhstan) and another Kettering guy. It was a great experience, since I could never imagine anyone at a Kettering party ever talking about politics!

In the residence I’m staying in, the other students don’t seem quite as friendly, or at least don’t seem to be terribly inclined to go out of their way to talk with any Rafal or I, the two American students on the floor. That is with the exception of one German girl, Brigit, who, while I was eating my dinner in the common kitchen/living room, asked me how I’d enjoyed my first two days here and seemed interested to find out more about me. After I’d finished eating, she also helped me make sense of a German television program and told me to not worry about my poor German, that I would probably pick it up quickly while I’m here. I’m quite glad that there’s at least one person here at the residence who isn’t from our Kettering contingent who doesn’t seem unhappy to speak English with me.

Friday, March 30, 2007

Well, I have finally arrived. I’ve been in Paris for a few days now, and I think I’m still getting over the jet lag. Usually it’s not a problem for me, but I don’t think I’ve gotten up before about 11 any day this week. This has lead to my days being somewhat less than productive, especially since Sanjay’s OCD habits – which have shifted to obsessive cleanliness – prevents us from leaving the house before completing about three or four hours worth of daily compulsive rituals. I haven’t felt terribly compelled to see all the museums and attractions this time around, since I’ve already seen them on prior excursions to the city, so a lot of my time has been spent just walking around and taking in the different neighborhoods.

I finally met Sanjay’s good friend, Jean-Michel, who was described to me as being typically French, but as jovial and slapstick as he seemed to be, he struck me as being anything but typically French. Apparently it was his taste for cheese and wine that defined his Frenchness, as far as Sanjay was concerned, but I haven’t met anyone else here who smiles or laughs as much as he does. He is, however a walking example of why I’m not jumping on the motorcycle/scooter bandwagon anytime soon; he has a cast on his leg because he tore two ligaments in his knee when he crashed his scooter. Yet somehow, he still manages to ride it, even with his leg plastered completely straight.

Jean-Michel is also typically European with regard to his linguistic ability, being fluent in French, English, Spanish and German. Fortunately though, he did a very good job of not making me feel so bad about my mono-lingualism; I do a good enough job of doing that myself! (Actually, I speak 1.23 languages: English – 100%; Spanish – 20%; German – 3%). A slightly more embarrassing encounter happened earlier today though, when I finally met up with Sam Imberman. I believe it was the first time I’ve seen him in about seven or eight years, so it was nice to catch up a bit. I ended up having lunch with him, three Italian and one British friend of his, which went passably well, since clearly the Sam and the British fellow, Pete, spoke English, and because the Italians spoke a very little English, but were eager to give it a shot (not to mention they also understood Spanish fairly well, because of its extreme similarity). After lunch, Sam and I had a nice conversation about urban planning, mass transit systems and modern architecture over some tea at what seemed to be some sort of Arabian café, and then met up with several Spanish friends of his. The languages of choice were French and Spanish, and although theoretically I should have been able to understand what was going on about 50% of the time, I’m still can’t keep up with high speed (i.e., normally paced) Spanish conversation, especially with a thick Spanish (versus Mexican) accent thrown on top of it. I’m terribly out of practice and it shows, with embarrassing results.

Speaking of embarrassing things, I managed to pull a doozey. Before I left Michigan, I put together an envelope full of my travel documents so I wouldn’t forget anything. And I didn’t forget anything, except for my Eurail pass! Only that little flimsy, $1100 piece of paper! I don’t know why the Eurail system isn’t computerized to the extent that I could provide proof of identity at a train station and simply have a replacement document printed, but that’s just not the way it works. Therefore, I’ve had my mother FedEx it to me here in Paris, so hopefully it will arrive safely. Please! Especially since I need it on Sunday to take the train to Konstanz. Boy, this was a nasty mistake

On a slightly more enjoyable note, on Wednesday evening, I had dinner with a pen-pal of mine who lives in Paris. Having gotten bored with the outlets for conversation at Kettering, I managed to acquire several European pen-pals who also enjoy talking as much as I do (though I’m not sure any of us could rival Brandon). Olga was born in Tajikistan, but spent most of her life in Israel, and then recently moved to Paris to attend university. She’s another obnoxious polyglot (no, not obnoxious, I’m just jealous), able to speak French, English, Hebrew, Russian, and some Spanish and Arabic, but fortunately for me, tends to favor English. Anyhow, I suggested we have a meal, since I’d be in town, so we went to a nice, but surprisingly affordable Japanese restaurant Wednesday evening, and then traipsed around the city for several hours thereafter, quickly realizing what a bad idea it is to drink about a liter and a half of water each during dinner in a city where public restrooms are about as common as subway stops in Detroit. (Okay, okay, there are public restrooms, but a very few, and none I’d like to use if I plan on not catching the bubonic plague.) After finally finding a fast-food place with a public restroom and feeling as if we’d just won the lottery, we continued our adventure with a tour of La Défense, the only modern skyscraper area of the city, and topped it off with what probably seemed like a much longer walk than it was back to Sanjay’s apartment building, since we neglected to catch a ride on the metro before it closed.

Okay, time to watch some French television. No, I'm not violating my principles here; it's not for entertainment, it's for language exposure!

Pre-departure

Well, the time is finally nearing. I just finished the last of my finals for the winter semester today, and now I've got three days till my plane leaves for Paris. I've been waiting to return to Europe for almost three years now, and this time I'll have three months to get acquainted (which I'm already anticipating will pass unpleasantly quickly). The plan for the beginning of my expedition consists of meeting up with Sanjay, whom I haven't seen in nearly three years, staying with him in Paris for about a week, and then taking the night train to Konstanz a week from this Sunday. For those of you who remember Sanjay, the last time I talked to him, he said that he'd lost quite a bit of weight, and is apparently quite a trim fellow now, which I think is directly connected with his - in my opinion - very wise decision to resume eating meat after about a five year hiatus. He has assured me I won't recognize him when he meets me at the airport.

On something of a tangential note, this relates to my beef with vegetarianism (har har har!). Rather, not so much vegetarianism, but people who become vegetarians, but don't put forth the effort to actually eat a healthy diet by finding replacements for the nutrients provided by meat. I'm less than delighted to report that I know more than a few vegetarians who, out of a selfless desire to preserve big, cute, stupid cows (not that I think they should be eaten because they're stupid; I'm just laying that out there as a statement of fact), subject themselves to something I might dub "The Beige Diet: Extreme!" The "Beige Diet 1.0," something I heard about repeatedly during bi-annual forays to Swarthmore College and was apparently practiced by a student there, consists of fare such as cauliflower, mashed potatoes and gravy, turkey, chicken, rolls and breads of various pale, whitish hues, topped off with some milk. The enhanced, "extreme" version is the same, but without the milk, meat or either of the vegetable items (which I think are only classified as such due to a loophole somewhere in the naming convention). Essentially, 90% of the solid food intake for these people is made up of bread and processed cereals. And then one of these people then has the gumption to ask, "does my butt look big?" "No, don't worry! All the carbs just pooled in your hips!"

Also unrelated to travel, but in line with my food thought, I'm suddenly reminded of a notice I read in the menu for our local Flint Chinese carry-out restaurant, Hong Da. "Spiciness can be adjusted to suit your taster." This is probably the best Engrish statement I've seen, and I think will have to refer to my tongue as my taster from now on. I think it's much more descriptive of the actual function of the organ, so why not strive for precision in our language?

Returning to the point at hand now... When I finally get to Konstanz, I'll be taking three courses: Heat Transfer, Machine Design and Germany Within Europe. I was originally supposed to also be taking an FEA course, but it was cancelled due to low enrollment, and because of the bio-engineering concentration for my major, there weren't any other classes I could take that would count toward my degree. This means it's going to feel like vacation compared to the five to six courses per semester I've been taking for the past year and a half. Additionally, according to the schedule I received from Kettering's international office, I'll only have classes three days per week there. I'm extremely excited about this and looking forward to having so much time available for traveling. I know, I suppose I should allow some time for doing... what was that again? Oh yes, homework. But I think that's an activity I should be able to accomplish a good deal of on the train to and from wherever it is that I'm going.

Speaking of train travel, I've been told by one of my former German teachers that I should try to get to Spain at some point it I'm able, in order to watch the train cars get moved from the standard to narrow gauge tracks. I'd like to see a cost-benefit analysis of keeping the Franco era tracks versus standardizing them. What would be the cost to replace the infrastructure versus the time lost in transferring the cars from track to track? I guess I assume it probably doesn't take terribly long. Either that, or Spain figures it was a good national defense measure at the time, so they might as well keep it. Clearly, this is an idea that should be adopted by Homeland Security. In the event of war, the Iranians will never be able to roll their troop cars into the United States! Anyhow, Eulalia, my favorite high school Spanish teacher, mentioned to me several years ago that I should let her know if I ever find myself in Spain, since her parents would be more than delighted to meet and feed one of her former students. If I recall correctly, they live somewhere near Barcelona, which is a convenient location, since I don't think I'll be making plans to travel to the western side of the country because of the terribly long travel time.

Also on the tenative travel schedule are Rome (a must for the engineering achievements), Prague, Berlin, and possibly Dublin, London and/or somewhere in Greece. I suppose I should have given more thought to this before now, but unfortunately I've otherwise occupied with dynamic systems analysis and fluid dynamics until earlier this evening. I'm open to suggestions from those who have been abroad for some time already.

I had a dream the other night that kind of distrubed me. There was a woman who had applied for a job at a company that was run out of an individual's home, and after her initial interview, she walked over to one of the bedrooms, crawled underneath the bed, and waited for the family cat to walk by. As the cat approached the bed, she reached out with a large chef's knife from under the bed and stabbed the cat in it's side. The person who had been interviewing her then entered the room and chastised her, saying, "You know, that wasn't in the orientation manual."

Something else I am looking forward to in Europe: stricter gun control laws. I pretty confident that I just heard three gun shots and a car peel out. That's definitely not the first time I've heard that this semester either. About a month ago, I thought I heard shots just down the block from my house here in Flint, so I called 911 after that so someone could come and check it out. I'm pretty sure that did absolutely no good, but I figured it was probably worth the token effort on my part. I guess that's what you get in the country's 3rd most dangerous city. Unfortunately, as a friend of mine once said of Flint, "It's always dangerous, never exciting." Hopefully Europe will do slightly better in the second category as well.

Okay, the hour seems to be getting extremely late (or early, as the case may be), so I will end this for now. The next update will probably be from the other side of the Atlantic, and perhaps a little more focused/interesting.