A Quarter of a Year

January 19-20th: A potluck celebration...

 and a hike up a mountain of ice.

It took over two hours to reach a peak one usually makes in thirty minutes, but the satisfaction was all the better. The view, unfortunately, all the worse.

February: My first exam as a master student here in Freiburg, truly challenging. A good amount of studying, a little bit of luck, and a good note to show for it. Success!

March: Vacation! Marina and I spend a week in Paris with her family. This is where we live, at the foot of the Pantheon:

Chillin' in the Jardin du Luxembourg, just around the corner from where we are staying.

 Seine by day,

Seine (and Notre Dame) by night.

A train ride, sitting next to a little boy with over-sized glasses that lent him powers to draw extraordinary houses and wizards, brought us down to Perpignan, where we spent the following week riding bikes to places such as...

 ...this lake, which was under attack by finger-freezing, bike-hating-or-loving winds.

Little lunch!

End of April: Another visit to Perpignan. Here we have carrot pie, carrot soup, carrot smoothie, and carrot cake. If you had a carrot allergy at this dinner, you were out of luck.

 Marina and Amanda, visiting en route a grand tour of Europe, on a waterfall hike.

Cascade.

First of May (back in Freiburg): A holiday in Germany on which many people go hiking. We trekked the Dreisam upstream and settled for a fire and lunch on this woody shore.

Andy, Eden, Elisa, und Marina. And "stick bread:" dough on stick, stick in fire. Bread. (delicious.)

May 9th, also a holiday. Also a hike day, for me anyway.

 Ihringen, Kaiserstuhl. Black Forest, Northwest of Freiburg.

A rogue field of Bärlauch (wild garlic)!

Until next time, many thoughts of blossoming Spring.

:)

A Christmas Journal Entry for My Memory's Sake

After a ten day bustle preparing for Christmas, tying up loose ends at the University (or more accurately laying them down on my desk, ready to pick them up again after the break), and selling compact discs as if they were in high demand, vacation arrived.
Before I recount Christmas and New Year's in calender form (may be a long-winded read), I'd like to preamble this post with the two dominant thoughts than ran through my head leading up to the break. They are very intertwined. The first is the following quote, and the second is the feeling of appreciation that comes right after:

A man travels in search of what he needs

and returns home to find it.

-George Moore

I am immensely thankful to have found a home during my travels, if one can call 2 going on 4 years in a foreign city 'travel.' Gratefulness characterized the start to Christmas for me and it is present at the end; it belongs in the beginning of this post, the body of it, and in the last words as well. With that in mind, here is my day by day account of Christmas and New Year's, just as much for my memory's sake as for the reader's pleasure.

Marina and I arrived at her home on Sunday, the 23rd, a day and a half before the Christmas celebration, which takes place on the evening of the 24th in Germany as opposed to the morning of the 25th. This Christmas will remain strong in my memory for many reasons, among others because it is the first Christmas I have spent in a family home in four years, and because it is the only Christmas I have had that involves the presentation of a full hand-written menu of the three and four course meals to be served for the duration of the holidays. Cooking preparations began full throttle on the 21st and continued without relent until dinner on the 24th. That's four days of cooking! They pursued thereafter as well, of course, but the bulk of the work had been done, leaving room for afternoon hikes and naps.

I spent the 24th crafting and packing gifts. In the evening we went to a service that resembled an undefined shade of mediocrity, but it was still a very pleasant experience. I enjoyed walking around the still city at midnight. I felt a peaceful appreciation for where I was and who I was with. Back at the house everyone fell asleep, postponing the gift opening to the 25th for the first time in household history. My American Influence seems to be stronger than I realized. Very good, very good...

The 25th set the blueprint pattern for most the vacation days; sleep in late, eat, go for a hike, relax, eat dinner, sit in front of the wood stove, enjoy each others company. Somewhere in the mix we opened gifts as well. (J'ai decouvert, que je suis un poisson!)

On the 26th we trained and bused to Marina's family in Switzerland in a small town somewhat near Lucerne. The day here also revolved around eating and hiking. We also listened to comedian records from a couple generations back, which spawned laughter from all present but for various reasons. Here is a picture from our walk that day.

That evening we rode back to Lörrach and the restorative vacation continued.

On the next day, after sleep and food that knew nothing of diminishing returns, we played Dixit, the 2010 Game of the Year. The game works like this. Each player has a hand of six cards. All cards are different. Each card shows a fantastical, creativity-inspiring picture. On one's turn, one must choose a card from one's hand and give a prompt that corresponds to the card. This can be a word, a book title, a song, an idiom, as one wishes. The playing field is open. Then, each of the other players has to choose the card from their hand that they believe best correlates. They give their cards to the prompter, who mixes them all together (including his/hers) and lays them out for all to see. The players must then try to identify which card was the 'original.' Very fun. What's cool about this game is that you can create your own pictures, and that's really all you need to play. There were six of us playing at Marina's and I somehow managed to come in seventh. Perhaps my imagination was too complex for my adversaries.

On the 28th we took a mini bike-foot-combo tour up to Lörrach's castle ruins. I seem to have forgotten when they were built, sometime in the mid 15th century I believe. I do however remember the new word that I learned at the castle! 'Heraufziehend' in the sense of 'heraufziehendes Wetter.' 'Herauf' means up/upwards and 'ziehen' is to pull or draw. 'Heraufziehendes Wetter' is 'looming/gathering/worsening/(your own creative and appropriate English word...translation isn't black-and-white) weather.'

The Lörrach castle ruins. If you are ever here and see heraufziehendes Wetter, leave (in accordance with weathered signpost).

On the following morning we bid farewell to the house and family and returned to Freiburg. Just moments after we arrived Anja appeared and the reunion jubilee continued. In Freiburg we 'enjoyed,' although I was somewhat disconcerted, spring-like warmth and sunshine and took a mini-hike up Schlossberg.

Squinting in the winter/spring sun.

Tomfoolery.

Holiday cooking moved forward with spreads, pumpkin bread, salads and casserole. After spiking their drinks so as to manipulate their will, I taught Anja and Marina how to play hearts! They are now, theoretically, prepared for any Morris Family reunion.
An evening of casual reading ensued.

On New Year's Eve Eve we spent 4+ hours in the climbing gym. We also spoke English, which was refreshing.

The 31st of December commenced with the five hour regional train network extravaganza leaving Germany and entering Bavaria, taking us (almost) to Anja's homeland. The train, unfortunately, doesn't take us all that close to Anja's home. Last time I visited Anja, we hiked the remaining 22 kilometers. This time Anja hitchhiked to her car, which was magically parked somewhere in the vicinity, swung back to pick us up, and drove us to her home.

After a raclette dinner, we- a friendly group of Anja's school friends and us from Freiburg- celebrated the New Year, in stark contrast to last year, in safety. On January 1st of 2012, I decided that I would spend this New Year's Eve as far away as possible from any significant concentration of German Volk, who bring in the year by setting off fireworks with such disregard for location and nearness-of-people that the newspapers biggest task the next day is tallying how many people lost thumbs and/or eyes. This year, we drank our champagne peacefully standing in a vast and unsettled field, watching distant skies faintly light, flash, and boom.
Back in the coziness of Anja's house we played Expression, also a game worth explaining because it is so easy to set up and play. A pile of index cards. On each card, one adjective (embarrassed, upset, happy, bored, annoyed, overjoyed, awkward, quirky, etc). Nine cards are taken from the pile and placed face up on the table. A player rolls a die for his/her own eyes only, and takes note of which adjective matches the die's number. He/she then takes a card from a second pile, which contains sentences/idioms (if such a pile is not available, he/she can also take a book and select a sentence). The player must then read that sentence with the given emotion. All other players have four chips or pieces of paper with the numbers one through four written on them. One is unsure, four is very confident. The players choose a number, based on confidence, and place it on the emotion that they think is correct. The 'actor' receives a point for every chip that is correctly placed. The 'guessers' receive however many points, positive and negative, that they bid. If I lay a four on the correct emotion, I get four points. If I lay a three on an incorrect emotion, I lose three points. During this game I learned the word 'eingeschnappt' which very literally means 'snapped in' but actually means 'sulky.'
So it goes.

On the 1st we relaxed. We had a nice breakfast, watched fish in a little garden pond (they were friendly fish. Or just very hungry. We put our fingers in the water and they sucked (nuckeln) at them.), took naps, and walked the neighboring fields. We went to a small stone quarry and I felt like we were in Garden State (the movie, not New Jersey). In the evening we created and played an English version of Expression. We read from Nick Hornby's Slam.

The next morning, after an old-fashioned adieu at the station with Anja running after the train, Marina and I headed back to Freiburg. We spent the next couple days in the same fashion as the last two weeks; sleeping, eating, going on mini hikes. We made soups, nutty and fruity salads, and stuffed baked-pumpkins. We watched Children of Men and walked around the Schönberg.

On Friday Marina was off and those academic loose ends on my desk puffed out their chests in hopes of being noticed. Tomorrow kicks-off the last six weeks of winter semester before the 'break,' when the work actually begins. I'm feeling refreshed and enthused. The break was a nonstop round of family, friends, love and gratefulness. It was a vacation that has given me a lasting and sustainable strength.

My New Year's Resolution is to work on my posture and relax; no hiked shoulders, clenched jaws or permanently scrunched foreheads. The break did so much good for my mental and physical health. I am grateful for these things and would like to carry them on; eating sufficiently and well, sharing kindness and interest with others, and interacting with people and time with peacefulness, precision, and patience.

A happy, healthy, loving start to the New Year, and, as they kind of say in French,

An affectionate embrace to you all,

Ben.

Fêtes des Lumières

December 6th - December 11th, 2012, Lyon. Marina and I spent a short week in the joyous reception of her aunt and grandmother. The trip's catalyst is the Celebration of Lights, an annual event in Lyon since 1852. On December 8th of that year the Lyonnaise anticipated the installment of a statue of the Virgin Mary but had to face disappointment when a storm struck that morning, postponing the inauguration. In an act of spontaneity and gratefulness for the virgin mother, the city inhabitants placed lit candles on their window sills, and, as deducted by the reoccurrence of this tradition in 2012, also, apparently, lined the city streets with beer cans, crepes and french fry wrappers, invited millions of tourists from around the globe, and decorated their buildings with awing bright electric lights, some beautiful, some neon. 

We were fortunate to experience both ends of the spectacle, helping place candles on the quaint window sills that are as old as the tradition if not older, 

and enjoying the artistic festivities in the city center.

 Lyon by Dusk.

My favorite sight from the trip; a building with painted store fronts and windows, each housing different famed personalities from Lyon.

Ferris wheels scare me.

Vive la France. 

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. :)