University and Life

Brief reflections on my masters program: it is a program with a prescription. Bachelors in the US was four years of taking any class I wanted, all the while making sure that I, at some point during that time, or during a longer time if I so chose, attended a relatively small number of set classes. I ended in four years with two B.A. degrees and believe that at least 50% of my classes had nothing to do with either Philosophy or German. This program accords to a plan. I know exactly what classes I will be taking for the next two years. It's targeted learning. Each course has precisely to do with German as a Second Language. With small exception.

A general thing I feel that I have learned in the first five weeks: we, as a human-collective, know very little about language acquisition. There is a smaller-than-normal-hand-handful of theories and that's basically it. How exciting; SLA is a completely open research field. Why can't we get all that far in such an open space? Theories even give us hints regarding in which direction we should run. The problem is (in the words of an unfit five-week-old-student) the black box that every theory contains; our brain. We can assess, to a certain extent, input and output, that which goes into the brain and that which comes out. What happens in the middle is, theory.

Here is a peek into the program. The Associative-Cognitive Creed/Frequency Input model roughly paints our brain as a statistician. The brain tallies every single occurrence of certain sound patterns from small to large, vowels to full sentences. For every count, it also associates and tallies a particular meaning. For native English brains, the sound "left" has been registered thousands and thousands of times. Each tally also has a related meaning. When the brain perceives the word in a new incident, it accesses it's statistical database and weighs the probabilities of the different experienced meanings. It compares this information with the current context and makes the most probable association ready for our understanding. One implication of this theory is that native-like fluency is more idiomatic than it is creative. This speaks to the tremendous speed of native language; it is much easier and quicker for our brain to recall archived sets than to assemble things anew.

I am enjoying my studies. I feel like I should be working harder, but this feeling is comforted by the knowledge that I will have more to do than I find pleasant when I begin to write papers. For now I am enjoying a joyous balance between the different aspects of my life. After my exchange year in 09/10 I had a conversation with a German doctorate student and teaching assistant at the UW-Madison. I told her that I struggled with the German education system, or better put, with the German student life. I come from studying at UW-Madison, USA, where being a bachelor student means, or at least meant for me and for many others, being part of a wonderful, all-encompassing life bubble. Studies are at the university, work is at the university, housing, food, friends, sport, health; everything is at the university. The university is your Big Brother. It's very nice!
 'At a German university,' there are classes. The German university is an academic institute, a very good one. It is however not a life bubble. Work, sport, health, housing, food, and friends are not neatly and tightly packed into one system like they are in Madison. They are indeed to be found at the university, but are not as outlined and accessible as in Madison. I struggled to find all these life pieces and fit them together; I was used to just having them all, readily available, at the university.
The German doctorate student and TA was in fact a fan of the US system. She wished that Germany had the same support-network for its students as the Madison system did. (Yet I can't remember if we talked about financial systems and supports. Studying in Germany is free. Studying in the US teaches students about debt.) She did have her criticisms as well. She asked me if I didn't feel like someone was holding my hand the entire time when I was at Madison. There's a good point to this. In Madison I was, to a certain degree, given a life-package. Here I have to amass and maintain my own. That's difficult, and sometimes depressing when coming from the Madison-bubble. But now I've done that and things feel stable. In Madison I had one great provider in university, but leaving that world meant dropping much of my life-package. Now I have many different buttresses coming from various directions, and I built and chose most of them. My life feels strong for that.

Freiburg is also a bubble, a green one. I am reminded of this when I travel elsewhere. There are more incentives to ride bikes or public transportation or take your feet in Freiburg than I see in other places. Most public trash bins here have three compartments for proper sorting, and most people use them. Solar panels and wind turbines are easy to spot from anywhere in the city. There is even a neighborhood (Vauban, my exchange-year home) that collects more energy (solar) than it uses. That's a green bubble. From a particular perspective atop Rosskopf, Freiburg's backyard mountain, the bubble looks like this:

View from the Schlossberg beer garden, just for a pretty impression of Freiburg :).

Change of pace: here are recounts of last month's adventures.

Shortly after taking the language entrance exam I scurried down to Perpignan- a small city in southern France  where Marina is studying for a year- for a long week. The 500 mile trip towards the equator brought summer weather. We spent every other day on the beach.

 Where coastline meets mountain: the French-Spanish border.

There is a splendid bus network in Perpignan for which one pays one euro and gets a ride for upwards of an hour in any direction. This is the view from such a bus taking us to...

such a beach.

 Views from the same bus, leaving Banyuls-sur-Mer, a town just a couple miles north of Spain, about 30 miles south of Perpignan.

This beach was reached by means of bike. 10 Kilometers and a bike path, for the most part. The first time we rode to the shore we left at shortly after 5pm and arrived at shortly after 6. We rode back in the dark. The second time we rode to the shore, it was dark before we even got to the beach. That's the glory of it! One is so close to the water, it's worth it just for a late night bike ride and stroll! And dip, if one pleases.

Jumping ahead: A couple weeks later Marina's family had a hiking reunion in Münstertal, a village south of Freiburg in the Black Forest. I happily joined for the weekend and got to hike Belchen, one of the largest peaks in the Black Forest. I've been there a couple times now and do believe it is my favorite. To me it feels like an eternally large forest always filled with light fog and mystery. I do confess, many forests feel like this to me. After all, I did grow up with Narnia and Lord of the Rings.
 Here are a couple pictures.

 Beginning to ascend the Belchen.

 The snow covered mountain in the distance is where we're headed.

 Lunch break in a little hut along the way.

The weather turned as we neared the top. It stayed relatively harmless and made for a fun stormy scramble :). For someone into the fantastic and German romanticism, this photo is not very far from Casper David Friedrich's Wanderer über dem Nebelmeer.

A couple weeks later, my friend Tobi and I went for a morning hike on Knybsfelsen. This is the view from the southern tip of Freiburg, looking out towards Switzerland.

Shortly thereafter, a new roommate of mine, Antonio, and myself went for a short weekend-getaway to Annecy, France. I'd been there twice before, but had only visited the beach, or at least that's all I remember. This time we had a chance to get to know the city a bit as well.

Notice the mountain that looms over the city from yonder.

The lake is actually directly next to the city (app. 200,000 residents), though it looks like it's secluded. The water is strikingly clear; it flows down from the surrounding mountains and goes through countless natural filtration processes before collecting.

We began hiking up that looming mountain and got as far as this cliff. Unfortunately I don't have a broad shot; the cliff took over the entire mountain. We are perhaps 1/3 the way up and that is as far as one can get. Unless one has rope.

Little travel buddy came with me!

1818, Wanderer über dem Nebelmeer, Casper David Friedrich.

That'll do it for this post. In a few hours I'm off to Lyon for a long weekend. woohoo!

Many cheers and smiles.

Love,

Ben. :)

Time For General Updates

This post was written over a month ago, a week before the start of my Masters. It is late, but that is better than nothing.

Lately (lately is relative) I've written lots of hike-, picture-, tours of the Western European world-, lots of 'la-di-da look at me traverse fields and tiny mountains-' posts, but a life update hasn't come up in a while. It is highly possible for someone following my life only through the blogosphere to think I've been wholeheartedly studying trumpet for the past year and am now somewhat good. This is wrong.

Sometime in late April/early May came the realization that I do not what to study music. I want to make music, and listen to music, but I do not want to study music. My brain is wired to study other things. That's just how it is. I think music and the study thereof is just as intellectual as the study of anything else, but my brain has different tastes. My heart and soul, they are very much into music! My brain wants something else.

That is a very plain summary of music and me. It took some time for me to chip away at that block. It was not necessarily the greatest time. Had to face the fact that neither studying music nor being a professional classical musician were my cup of tea. Then came the question, where does music fit? Fortunately, answers came too.

Good, music placement solved. What next? Strong urges to study, to learn like my brain wants to learn. End of May/beginning of June is pretty late to decide one wants to start studying in the fall. In fact that wouldn't fly at all in the U.S. I was however not looking to studying in the good old U.S. of A, and in Germany I still had six weeks. Those six weeks were strenuous. Finding programs, finding universities, trying to organize applications, gathering documents from several different sources across the Atlantic (luckily all competent ones with good support systems), getting last-minutes recommendations and writing papers was nerve-wracking. I handed in my applications the day before they were due, often with missing documents that were to then arrive a week after deadlines. But it worked. With a catch, of course.

I was accepted to my top choice program at the University of Freiburg under the condition that I pass a language entrance exam. After intensive preparation and a couple years off my life due to stress, I passed and am now officially enrolled in the Masters Program "Fremdsprache Deutsch/Interkulterelle Germanistik" (German as Second Language/SLA Acquisition/Intercultural German Studies). And I am enthused.

There is your quick update from April until now(ish). On a completely unrelated note to end the post; Henry this picture is for you. Look at that railway.
How does it make you feel?

love,
Ben.

Three Nights and Four Days in the Wutach Ravine

Before Marina sailed away on a bus to a distant corner of France, she and I took a mini vacation hiking along the Wutachschlucht, a ravine in the Black Forest's southeast. During my last day at work before heading into the gorge, a co-worker gave me a newspaper article entitled "More than 50 Persons this Season Requiring Helicopter Rescue in the Wutachschlucht." We considered this very thoroughly, nonetheless reaching the conclusion that we could not at all understand why so many people needed to be saved via helicopter from a very defined hiking trail. We prepared ourselves satisfactorily and left Monday for Schluchsee, a clear water quarry lake 15 kilometers east of the Ravine.

The beginnings of our trip were very much inspired by Mark Twain's great European Foot Tour of 1878;

"One day it occurred to me that it had been many years since the world had been afforded the spectacle of a man adventurous enough to undertake a journey through Europe on foot. After much thought, I decided that I was a person fitted to furnish to mankind this spectacle. So I determined to do it... (after arriving in Hamburg) we made preparations for a long pedestrian trip southward in the soft spring weather, but at the last moment we changed the program, for private reasons, and took the express train."

Like all experienced hikers, we left Freiburg at the early hour of 5 in the afternoon via rail, so as to avoid city rush hour foot-traffic in Freiburg, got to Schluchsee a little after six, and decided to camp there for the night, as to be fully rested for the next day. 

Atop our wilderness-dinner-table-rock sits Marina, at the foot of our campsite and on the coast of a man-made lake.

Schluchsee.

Our tent above the lake, next to one of the rare arborselectrusboxiiae, only to be found in southern German lake regions and Japan.

The lake and the girl of whom I am quite fond.

After getting up early and going back to sleep in order to get up a little later, we went to the campground's sole baker and bought ourselves some bread. We then sat on the two most squeakless swings I've ever ridden and observed a group young hiker toddlers who were part English and part German. We know this because their conversations sounded like, with perfect corresponding British and German accents: "let us look for proper treasure, komm her! Ich habe ihn gefunden!" (They found the treasure. It was under the climbing wall. Always look under the climbing wall.)
We then ate breakfast on our rock table, talked about Madison and Devil's Lake, and watched groups of Swiss boys struggle to stay warm in the water. After packing in and checking out, we realized that it was too early to start a hike, being one in the afternoon, and decided to go for a swim.
Briefly thereafter, and shortly after eating lunch, and directly following several map and personal consultations, we promptly began hiking towards Lenzkirch. As a matter of fact, we first began hiking not towards Lenzkirch, although we had that intention. We then turned around, and from that point on, only got closer to our goal.

We arrived in Lenzkirch (above) at sunset and set up camp.

Hi.

We had dinner in front of this pond where there was a relatively nice patio and bench. I don't know that I've ever eaten so well on a camping trip. We grilled zucchini and tofu burgers, we ate cake, drank tea from Turkey, and talked about surprise birthday parties in huts hidden im Schwarzwald.

We left Lenzkirch the next morning a little before noon and got to the head of the ravine at around two. Our goal was to make it through the bulk of the Schlucht that afternoon, finish off a northern tail of it the next morning and then hop a train to Freiburg, where we had a meeting with our Landlord at 4:30. That didn't all exactly go as planned, but we'll get there when we get there.

The gorge was beautiful. A winding river, a trail that took you right along the shores edge and immediately thereafter had you scurrying up rock to then wonder how you got up so high and far away from the water so quickly. Sometimes I felt like I was in Costa Rica again. There were some habitats I'd never experienced with such lush, like this:

We lost our map upon entering the ravine. Fortunately there are trail markers everywhere you go. They state not only where to go and how far, but also in which rescue sector you are, in case you need to call for a helicopter.

I don't know what happened to my sunglasses. We stopped at a guest-house for salad and potatoes seven kilometers into the Schlucht. When we left (at 5 o'clock with 14 kilometers ahead of us), I put on my sunglasses and they looked like this. Mind you, my left eye had nothing to complain about.
The Wutachschlucht hosts hundreds of hikers everyday. One is advised to be patient, expect people traffic jams, and always stop at narrow passages to allow a party to pass. However, when you enter the ravine at two, and really only start to get into the thick of it at five, you do not need to worry about other people, at all. I'm pretty sure we did not see a single person from then on until ten in the morning the next day.

We found a little abandon stone chapel along the way.

You couldn't go inside, but with good reason. It looked like the ceiling could cave in at any second.

A runoff next to a sheet of shell limestone, which formed a large portion of the ravine's walls.

Cool, fresh water filtered by a big heap of moss.

At about 7:30, with an hour of light left at the most, we had made it seven kilometers from the guest-house and had seven to go. We stopped at a trail marker and pondered for several minutes about what we should do; the skies were gray and we heard thunder in the distance. After a good five minutes of starring at the signs and nurturing a skepticism about hiking through a slippery ravine in the dark, in the rain, and under lightening, we looked about twenty yards beyond the guidepost and said to ourselves...hey, is that a hut?

It was. The Schurhammerhütte. We decided to set up camp there. A nice field, picnic tables, a fireplace, and fresh water. And of course, most importantly, shelter. We set up our tent in the hut for a little extra warmth and bug protection using strings and a shoelace. We took a short hike in the sprinkling rain, then cooked ourselves dinner: noodles, cake, tea and beer.

Our goal was to get up early, finish the hike and make it back to Freiburg. Seeing that sunlight has no chance against wood, it remains dark in the hut all day. We did not consider this in the evening and did not set an alarm, which did not help us get up early. We awoke from a deep sleep a little after ten when a pair of hikers, who had been underway since seven, stopped in the hut for their breakfast. The first thing we heard was the voice of a nice gentleman saying, "no need to get up, go on sleeping." 

After a quick, barely two hour long breakfast we went on a way. We debated calling off our meeting and spending the day casually bathing in the ravine, but had no reception and decided it was worth it anyway to try and make it on time. It was the right decision.

Racing out of the gorge.

Hey look everyone! The Old Man in the Mountain lives! He just moved to Baden-Wuerttemberg! And cries sometimes because he misses New Hampshire.

Saying goodbye to the Wutachschlucht.

We made it to a bus which took us to another bus which took us to the train to Freiburg. We were only 45 minutes late! We called ahead and it wasn't a problem. We didn't get to do the northern tail of the ravine, but it's on our list. It was a fantastic vacation: beautiful scenery, fresh air, delicious meals and wonderful company. A perfect week before Marina's departure. :)

I have a temporary acceptance to the University of Freiburg for a Masters Program in German as a Second Language and Intercultural German Studies. I have to pass an entrance exam on the 24th of September, for which I am taking an intensive preparation course starting tomorrow. That will be my main commitment for the next two weeks. I'm excited! And a bit nervous. Very much looking forward to starting the course.

For now I'm off to bathe in the sun and read about the dangers of sugar.

Enjoy the week!

-Ben. :D

Bidding Farewell to Frau Scheurich

A week after I moved in with Anja and Marina (and Eran soon to follow) in October, the three of us went on a roommate-roommate-roommate bonding hike atop Feldberg, where there was snow on the ground and  I felt like we were in a parallel world because the mountain's forests had elements of all four seasons at once and looked like this:

The hike kicked off an incredible year. It's only fitting that we ended the year with one as well.
A week before Anja's departure, we rode our bikes to a bordering town, ate croissants and drank chocolate milk at a cafe (on the street curb in front of a cafe), and went for a hike. Due to unmanageable group-lethargy, the hike was immeasurably strenuous.

Look at that incline.

wow.

Very much summer in Germany.

Kiss attack: Marina 1, Anja 0.
That evening we watched a movie, an activity that much better suited our vigor.

A week thereafter, Anja was off to Helsinki (via Umpfenbach, Allgäu, Umpfenbach, Frankfurt). It was a sad Sunday. The apartment felt (and still feels) empty and quiet without Anjyy. Fortunately, we live in a fiber-optic world with more than a handful of methods for immediate contact.

Eran, Anja, Me.


Next up: Plunging into the Gorges of the Black Forest.

tootles!