Germany So Far – 20.10.05

 

We’re here now for eight weeks and are finally getting settled.  Here are outtakes from our journey so far.

 

Where We Live

 

We live in Starnberg, a suburb of Munich, 12 miles to the southwest.  Actually, “suburb” is not accurate if one is used to the American meaning: a town that has grown up on the periphery of a larger city, to which many people have moved to escape the city and have more open space, lower costs, etc.  Starnberg has been here a long time.  To the southwest  of Munich are a group of five lakes.  The Starnbergersee (Starnberg Lake) is the largest of these.  It’s about 14 miles long and 2 or 3 miles wide.  We live at the very northern tip of the lake.  All of this countryside here is on the way to the Alps from Munich.  In fact the land just to the south of here is called Oberbayern, “Upper Baveria”.  Of course Baveria is the German state where Munich is.  The “B” in BMW is “Bayern”, Baveria.  Our address is:

 

Owen/Disch

Würmstraße 12

82319  Starnberg

Germany

 

Phone numbers:

 

Home:  011 49 81 51447461

Frank cell:  011 49 1785227399

Wendy cell:  011 49 1785227401

 

The email addresses for both of us still apply.

 

Here we have access to very cheap phone cards.  So if you don’t have a cheap way to call us, send an email and we will call you.  We are six hours ahead of the eastern time zone, nine ahead of California.  So it’s night here when it’s just morning there.

 

 

 

Sunset on Starnbergersee

 

We decided to live outside of Munich (14 miles from the center) because Luke is going to school near here.  He and Wendy walk to school each morning.  It takes about 22 minutes.  His school is the Munich International School.  The instruction is in English.  But he has German class every day and is picking it up some.  Of course he has to go back to English/Spanish for next year.  Most of his classmates are the sons and daughters of U.S. or British diplomats or foreign service employees.  There are also quite a number of expats employed by private companies.  One dad is a lawyer from Houston, e.g.  Another is a State Department employee from Northern Virginia.  So it’s a mix of people.  One kid in his class has a mom who is with the diplomatic service from South Africa.  It’s a good group.  There are also several German kids in the class.  One of his new good friends is Julius, a local boy from Starnberg.

 

He’s adapting very well.  He likes the school and the adventure.  We went and got him some traditional Bavarian clothes, lederhosen (leather pants) and a gingham shirt.  He fit right in at the Oktoberfest.  We went there this week and had a lot of fun.  It’s a big carnival, sort of a Mardi Gras for Munich.  But there is a place for kids too, so he had a great time.

 

Where I Work

 

The Fachhochschule is very near the center of Munich.  Every morning I get up, ride my bike to the Starnberg or Starnberg Nord train station (about 5 minutes), and then take the train in (about 35 minutes).  I commuted to work by train in Boston and always enjoyed it—seeing the other people, watching the countryside go by, and, especially to be relished, reading the newspaper.  The newspapers here are wonderful, very thoughtful and probing.  Though there is a very sensationalistic paper, Bild, the main paper, Süddeutsche Zeitung (Southern Germany Newspaper), is very good.  Of course we followed the news from New Orleans and the Gulf Coast, because I used to live in New Orleans and my sister, Lydia, and I own property in Biloxi.  The news in the paper is not German-centric but rather comes from all over the world.  It’s interesting to see the U.S. from the outside.  More about that below.

 

The city is all hustle and bustle.  I noticed that I walk slower than just about anyone there, and I don’t think that is so much about being older as about now being a laid back Californian from a small place.  The Hauptbahnhof in Munich is an anthill during the commuting hours.  From there it’s a short tram ride to the Fachhochschule.  One train ticket, about $100/month, pays for all travel for the month.  So even though we have a car, using and enjoying the extensive, well run train/tram/subway system is a treat.

 

Work is great!  I have a wonderful group of people to work with here, and they have bent over backwards to welcome me.  I’ve had several interesting conversations with my two office mate.  I’m happy to be in an office with others, because then I can use my German some.  They pull me into the professor community here too.  I could not have been luckier in finding a better group of people to interact with here.

 

The education system here is much more formal than it is in the U.S.  But there are also very many things that are the same.  Lots of the same problems.  So we commiserate some.  Here the system is changing from their traditional Diplom Engineer degree to BS and MS degrees.  The Diplom degree is somewhere between a BS and an MS.  They are trying to change to have consistency throughout the E.U. and also throughout the wider world.  So there’s a lot of discussion about that.  It’s amusing to see the holdouts.  They claim the world will fall apart if this system is implemented.  They say the BS degree means nothing except that the student hasn’t stayed in school long enough to be viable as an engineer.  So all of our experience with these degrees is lost on them.

 

The way students are taught is much different.  Classes meet only once a week, for 90 minutes.  It seems to me that there is much less interchange between prof and students than there is in the U.S.  It’s more of a “I preach, you listen” way of education.  My opinion may change, but that is my first impression.  The students do not even register for classes.  And the entire semester is evaluated at the end, in a 90 minute exam.  Normally I have three class sessions per week, assign homework problems in every class, and give a test every two or three weeks.  So this is very different.  The students here, instead of registering for classes, register for exams.  Homework is assigned but not taken up and graded.  So it is left to you to do whatever you need to to pass that final exam.

 

With only 90 minutes per week for a class, it seems like the class content is about half what ours is.  We meet three hours per week for a typical course.

 

Also, I have only one office hour per week.  At Cal Poly I meet five office hours per week.  So it’s taking some getting used to.  I do wind up meeting with students much more than one hour per week.  I have a lot of project courses that require close communication rather than lecturing.

 

Oktoberfest

 

I went to the Oktoberfest only one day.  Luke and Wendy went twice.  It was fun.  It was good to go.  We went when it was relatively quiet.  Here are a couple of pictures with explanations.

 

 

 

Oktoberfest “Fun House”

 

The above picture was taken by Wendy at a “Fun House” at the Oktoberfest.  Here there is a vent that blows air up.  So when a Fräulein in a skirt walks over it, the skirt blows up, much to her embarrassment and to the delight an amusement of the crowd of onlookers.  Would this fly in the U.S.?

 

We also bought Luke some Lederhosen.  That is a traditional Bavarian outfit.  He loves them.  He looks like a little Bavarian kid in them until he opens his mouth.

 

 

 

Luke in Lederhosen

 

They had this Mouse Circus too.  He didn’t want to go into it.  I insisted we go in.  Therein they had a whole lot of white mice, running around on wheels, climbing ladders, running across tight ropes, etc.  He absolutely love it!  He was watching very intently and began making little mouse noises.  He was so “begeistert” (animated), he started jumping up and down, empathizing with the mice.  All of the people who had paid to watch as spectators started watching Luke instead of the mice.  He was so begeistert that in jumping up and down one time, he banged his head against the protective glass that separated the on-lookers from the mice.  I had to drag him out of there.

 

Learning German

 

We are all learning German.  Actually, Wendy and I are relearning it.  We met in German class at Oregon State many years ago.  I took about two years of German in college and really liked it.  When I worked in Switzerland in the summer of 1989, we used German some at work.  So now we’re both picking it back up again.  We’re taking German courses, listening to German radio, and watching some German movies.  No TV yet.  Maybe we’ll get one.  Don’t know.  Everyone with a TV has to pay about 40 €.  That’s for the cable, but it comes from the government. 

 

It’s frustrating sometimes learning it.  It comes very slowly, so slowly that you don’t realize that you’re actually getting it.  You also progress in a series of upward slopes and then plateaus.  The plateaus are taxing on the patience.  But then you have a breakthrough and a surge of progress.  Then it’s very satisfying when you realize you are getting it.

 

I took three weeks of German everyday when I first arrived.  That got me off the ground.  Now I’m only taking it three times a week.  My class is very interesting.  When I first walked into it, boy I was shocked.  There sat about 15 beautiful young women.  Then there was me.  What a way to wake up in the morning.  For them it was a pain.  German has genders.  Without me, they had only one language gender to deal with.  With me they now had to deal with the masculine gender. 

 

 

 

Me and the Fräuleins hard at work

 

They’re all oper Fräuliens, young women recruited by Starnberg’s yuppies to take care of their kids.  That seems to be a common way for these young women to seek better career opportunities in Western Europe.  Most are from Eastern Europe, though we also have several women from Western Europe and one from Peru.  It must be hard for them.  For them, the similarities between German and Russian or Armenian are few.  So many English words have found their way into German that if I get stuck, usually I can just say some word with a German accent and it works.

 

It’s interesting that I’m seeing that the language has changed quite a bit just since my studies back in the 70s and 80s.  English intrusion has a lot to do with this.  But there have been other changes as well. 

 

Update:  Hitech has made it super easy and super cheap to have your own multi-media language learning center.  Here’s what I’ve done.  Deutsche Welle (German Wave, the German BBC) has all sorts of stuff in German that you can download to help teach yourself the language.  What I like best is the “Nachrichten langsam und klar gesprochen” (News, spoken slowly and clearly).  So it sounds like they got this guy, fed him a whole bunch of Valiums, and then had him read the news.  And you can even download the text of the news separately.  I love reading or hearing the news.  And for me, the hearing and then understanding is my weakest suit.  So this has been a real boon.  Then they also have all sorts of articles of special interest that have the vocabulary explained right there under the article.  Plus, with today’s technology, you can get immediate access to a German/English dictionary.  You just enter the word, hit return, and it gives you the translation.  It works both ways.  English magically turns to German and vice versa.

 

Then it even got better.  I discovered MP3 players.  I bought a 256 MB MP3 player for 30 €.  It has ear speakers included.  So you can wear it around your neck, put the ear buds in your ears, and listen to the news of the day, reading it at the same time if you want.  The 256K player will hold about 60 news broadcasts.  This has helped my German comprehension tremendously.  The old days of hearing boring conversations about everyday German are over.  The cost of all this?  30 € for the player.  I bought a set of plug-in speakers for 20 € to turn the MP3 player into a stand-alone sound system.  So for 50 €, you’re in business.

 

Hiking, Biking

 

We went hiking in the fore-Alps one weekend with friends from our traveling club.  Here’s a picture of Wendy and Luke from that trip.  It was only an hour south of Munich, but it was really alpine.

 

 

 

Luke and Wendy – Herzog Hike

 

The transportation network here is wonderful:  the trains, trams, subway, bikeways, and walking paths.  The Germans are very active people.  Though they eat a lot of meat and drink a lot of beer, they’re all pretty fit.  I have really enjoyed getting out and about on my bicycle.  My exchange professor lent us three bikes, one for each of us.  I went out an bought a faster bike, not an expensive one, a 1978 Motobecane.  It’s a good compromise between a regular street bike and one that you need to take out on the gravel roads through the woods occasionally.  They are too tempting to turn down all the time.

 

(As most of my friends know, the ones who make fun of my 10-speeds, my interests in bikes is pretty retro.  The Motobecane has 12 speeds.  What do I do with all those gears?)

 

 

 

What to do with all those gears?

 

Everything here is on a human scale.  I’ve been running some.  Usually if I go for a five-mile run, I pass through probably five little villages.  It’s like New England, only even more compact.

 

 

Motorcyclists in Rothenburg out for a ride in the rain

 

We’ve had great weather for the seven weeks we’ve been here with the exception of just a few days.  It is amazing to see so many people flee the city during the weekend and seek stress relieve and enjoyment in nature.  I’ve seen lots of even pretty old people tottering along country paths during the weekend.  It’s great to see so many that still have an active appreciation of the benefits of getting outside.  Even on one really rough weekend weather-wise, we saw lots of people braving it and bicycling.  In a medæival town we visited, we even saw a group of motorcyclists out for fun.  Boy did they pick a lousy weekend!

 

 

 

Every road is designed with an integral bike path

 

I have had some great rides after work.  I come home early, hop on the bike, and head out into usually a new direction.  What castle will I come across today?  This past week I rode over to Andechs, a monk cloister not far from here.  It was quite spectacular.  An old church up high on a hill.  Joe Mello, Jeff Caldwell, Andrew Kean, the rest of the crew from Cal Poly would go bonkers here.

 

 

 

Church courtyard in Andechs

 

Odd Things I’ve Seen or Heard

 

Country music sung in German.  Really weird!

 

The Bavarian greeting is “Grüß Gott!”, which loosely translates to “Praise the Lord!”, a sort of antiquated greeting.  German is sort of antiquated itself, and Bavarian German is even more this way.  So when you go into a town on your bike, often there is a welcoming sign that says “Praise the Lord in Droßling”.  At the church in Andechs there was, of course a beer garden.  There is said “Praise the Lord in the Beer Garden”.  That wouldn’t fly in Mississippi.

 

Pictures of naked women every day on the front page of the trashy, but popular, German newspaper Bild. 

 

I went swimming at the Nordbad (North Bath) in Munich.  The pool was beautiful.  I asked the lifeguard how old the pool was.  He said it was built in 1940, which means that it was a wartime pool and it survived the war.  “It was designed by Mr. Speer”, he said.  That would be Albert Speer, the Nazi architect.

 

My officemate was in the U.S. maybe 20 years ago, in the Bay Area.  He went there to teach, but really to get his pilot’s license.  He told me he wouldn’t go to the U.S. now.  I asked why.  He said he didn’t feel welcomed if he had to be fingerprinted and grilled about his background.  So our Fortress America is turning some people off.  People ought to realize that our xenophobic foreign policy doe have its costs. 

 

I can’t believe how this society takes care of its less capable members.  I saw a kid of about seven years old get on the tram the other day, by himself, on his way to school.  On his backpack was a big placard that said, “In case of emergency, please call this number: XXXXXX.”  As an American friend point out, that placard in the U.S. would be an invitation for mischief.  Here it’s a sort of notice to society to look out for this little kid.  I also saw today a kid, probably 7, riding his bike home from school, again by himself, in downtown Munich.  Can you imagine that in a city in the U.S.?

 

The U.S. from the Outside In

 

The 7.10.05 (10/7/05) Süddeutsche Zeitung had this to say about us in Iraq:

 

Bush’s Deer-in-the-Headlights Look

 

“Tunnel vision” is what the Americans call such a vision, like George W. Bush has when he looks at the world:  pigheaded and straight ahead the president looks at his dream picture in a still further-off future:  in Iraq and the entire Middle East freedom and democracy bloom.  The daily setbacks on the long way to that point (weekly a good many more than 100 Iraqi victims suffer terror attacks, meanwhile almost 2000 U.S. solders have fallen) Bush is fully able to turn a blind eye to.  “Hold up” is yet again the marching order.

 

Only this:  ever fewer Americans want to follow their commander-in-chief in this direction.  The home front is crumbling, and Bush’s war in Iraq is increasingly unpopular.  And an end to the incursion into Iraq is not yet in view:  indeed, the U.S. military talks about the building of a new Iraqi army and uses all sorts of statistics to report (and overgloss) about these new troops.  The bottom line is, however, that if America now withdrew all its troops, Iraq would fall apart.

 

That is something that all the Bush critics must first recognize, even those who have been against the march on Bagdad since the beginning.  In the best case, in the spring of 2006, U.S. generals say there is a possibility of a (minimal) withdrawal.  Until then, skeptical congressmen will have to be satisfied with symbolic gestures.  The clear vote of the U.S. Senate against any kind of torture in military prisons is a signal from Congress:  America does not want and is not able to violate its own system of values in the war against terror.  That the government tried to push away this decision shows that the president is looking a long way out into his tunnel:  the president does not want this small light at the end of his tunnel.

 

The translation may be a little rough.  I’ve stuck to the German closely.  The SZ is a mainstream newspaper, probably the most credible one, in the most conservative German state.  I think their most conservative politicians would be considered very liberal in today’s America.

 

So the Germans don’t pull any punches for us.  We are pretty universally viewed as cowboys and people who shoot first and ask questions later.  There also was an article in the SZ the other day about Florida’s new “Stand Your Ground” law, where anyone can shoot first and ask questions later.  I guess there was a kid who was playing the normal prank of ringing a doorbell and then running and hiding.  He was shot by the homeowner who thought he was a burgler.  They ask me about things there, specifically about guns and support for the war.  I don’t have any answers for them because I ask the same questions myself and don’t understand those views.

 

One guy told me, when we were talking about the evolution issue, that he just couldn’t understand the way Americans are able to believe wholesale in something like Creationism or Intelligent Design, whatever the new foothold is on the slippery slope of bad science.  Most Germans are unaware of how wacko Americans’ beliefs are on this issue.  I have no answer for them.  How can a country that has given so much to the world technology-wise turn its back on the reason and rationale of science and embrace a concocted position like Creationism or Intelligent Design?  I read about a guy who guides religious people down the Grand Canyon and shows them that the world is only 7000 years or so old.  There they have the evidence right in their face, yet they are able to explain it away with pure concoction.  Heaven help us!

 

The whole thing about Harriet Miers is hard to understand from here.  She’s not conservative enough.  Didn’t the Republicans barely win?  Now the right-wing part of that right-wing faction is demanding more compliance with their views.  What about the more moderate Republicans, maybe 4/5^th of them?  What about the other half of the U.S. that thinks the president kowtows to the radical right too much anyway?  Religion is a big part of her life.  Huh?  Is that now a necessary qualification for a Supreme Court justice?

 

I’m sorry, but our value system and the way we weigh things just looks ludicrous from the outside.

 

Aviation

 

Oddly, I thought I’d really miss my adventures in the air and have been proven wrong.  We have been so busy so far that this has not much entered my mind.  I think that flying has been my primary intellectual stimulation recently.  Learning German has just come in to fill the void.  They are similar.  Quick thinking is what they have in common.

 

I was lucky enough to go flying last weekend in a glider.  In California we use a tow plane to drag us (slowly) up into the air.  Here, they use winch launches.  In a winch launch, a truck with a really big engine is at one end of the airfield and the glider is at the other.  A long steel cable connects them.  When the pilot says “Go”, the winch starts taking up the slack.  This pulls the glider forward, and when it gets up enough speed, it gets into the air. 

 

 

 

Our big, beautiful bird takes to the air

 

The big difference is that the winch stays on the ground and the tow plane leaves the ground with the glider.  With the winch on the ground, it has much more “purchase”.  So it can drag the almighty, holy xxx out of the glider.  It is a launch, like a space launch.  You get mashed into the back of the seat.  You go up at an angle of about 45º, instead of the towplane’s 3-5º.  You’re up and off in probably 20-30 seconds.  So it’s more like being shot out of a cannon in a circus stunt.  Fun! Fun! Fun!  Flight is freedom!