Teutonic Travels, Part One: My Year Begins

After a short visit to DC, I have finally arrived in Germany. I am spending the next two months in Cologne, a major city in the Rhineland, Germany’s most populous region. Cologne is somewhat typical of modern German cities, with a bustling Innenstadt full of tourist attractions, fine dining, and culture, nightlife, usw.* It reminds me a little bit of the week I spent last year in Berlin, but only in the vague ways all German cities resemble one another. To me, the similarity is much like the vague commonality shared by northeastern American cities such as Philadelphia and Boston. As I have said, however, I have not spent much time here yet, and will have more to tell on the subject of Cologne in the future.

Since I have already been through orientation for my year on the CBYX, I have met most of the participants of this year’s program. They are by all accounts a friendly bunch, and the liveliness amongst the participants is surprisingly uniform. I wouldn’t be surprised if the administrators of CBYX look for such traits, be it actively or passively, since the program leaders continuously make a point of informing us that we are acting as American ambassadors to the Germans we meet and befriend during our year here.

Beyond the ubiquitous friendliness and approachable dispositions, most of the participants also seem to have a healthy amount of drive, similar to my classmates at alma mater. Like CMC students, many of them possess an interest in international relations/public policy/politics/business/economics,** and almost everyone likes to drink. Though Claremont had a diverse student body, I would argue the CBYX group is even more so. I’ve met a future pastry chef, orchestra conductor, mason, another chef, more than a handful of engineers, businessmen and a forest ranger. Even more exciting, they come from all sorts of universities and colleges as well: community colleges, state schools, small liberal arts colleges and large research universities. It’s exciting to talk to people from regions of the country that I have never visited nor its locals encountered.

Unfortunately, shortly after meeting one another, we were all placed on an overnight flight to Frankfurt, where we split into separate groups to reach each of our separate language schools. Language school for those to whom I have not explained this, is the first part of the CBYX program, lasting from my arrival yesterday to the end of September. Each participant spends two months at a language-training center run by an affiliate of CBYX, the Carl Duisberg Centren. I am studying at their office in Cologne with forty other members of the program, so fortunately I still have a number of friendly faces in the city with me. Little of interest has happened at CDC yet, so I’ll come back to that later.

After the long (8 hours) yet tolerable (arrived early) flight on Lufthansa, we proud participants found ourselves on the ground in Europe… at quarter to six in the morning… after little to no sleep… with a fully scheduled day ahead of us. It was the first true test of the Cologne group’s mettle. Many struggled to stay awake. Many more fell asleep from time to time. Some did so open-mouthed in presentations by the language school director.*** Others did the same while giving their cabbie directions.**** But in the end, everyone survived that first very long day in Germany and lived to tell the tale.

At the end of that long day, I finally met my host family, or Gastfamilie, for the first part of the program. They live in the eastern suburbs of Cologne, and have been very friendly to me thus far. The woman of the house, Frau Zielinska-Lange, is very warm and friendly, and she tolerates my German Fehler with patience mixed with schoolteacher firmness and seize-the-day type attitude for learning experiences. Her last name tripped me up the first few times I tried to say it,***** and her daughter Lena told me I can call her by her first name, Goska… which did not help much either. In any case, I’ve stuck to the Sie formal address when speaking to Frau Zielinska-Lange, since I still barely know her, and she has been kind enough to welcome me into her home. The aforementioned daughter, Lena, is a graduate student at the University of Bonn home for the summer. She has also been quite friendly, and she had the resourcefulness to introduce me to a system wherein I can call the U.S. from land lines for only 0.0114€ a minute!****** There is also a man of the house, Herr Lange, but I have not yet met him. I went to sleep only an hour or so after arrival yesterday out of sheer exhaustion, and he is not yet home as of this writing. Thus far I have been able to determine he is a repairman by trade, of what no one seems to know, and is very busy during the summer.

The Lange family also has two dogs, Maya and Saba, who are by far two of the friendliest, most obedient dogs I have ever seen. I am not really a dog person, but these two are getting me there. The language barrier here is a little thicker, so I will update with more on the dogs later as well.

If you are still reading at this point, particularly with the increasingly irrelevant footnotes,******* you must be pretty interested in what is going on over here. I will post again to keep you apprised of my adventures and mishaps. There have been a couple thus far, but I thought they would be more amusing and less pathetic and bedürftig sounding if amusingly compounded together into a reflection on the mishaps of traveling. Till then, let me leave you with this thought on European fauxhawks: in the time since I was in Austria last summer, one of the following has occurred:

1. Nothing, and they are just typically more extreme and architectural in this region
2. The fashion has moved towards a more angular, bird-like look
3. I have become stodgier

I intend to resolve this mystery by the time I write my next post.

Until then, bussi bussi.

--------

*und so weiter – the German equivalent expression of et cetera.

** Just one I’ve met so far, but she’s adamant, so that compensates.

***They know who they are, and if they are reading this, I hope they have a good sense of humor.

**** …I don’t want to talk about it. Ok? Don’t judge me.

***** Go ahead, read it aloud. I’ll give you a hint. It rhymes with NOTHING.

****** Subject to change without notice.

******* I read David Foster Wallace’s Infinite Jest before I left this summer. Wallace’s relationship with footnotes in that book is, shall we say, intimate and involved.