I have to say, I have a pretty sweet life here. I have less obligations than I've had probably since I was about 10, and also more money. Not a lot of money, but certainly enough to live comfortably. And did I mention that I have lots of free time? It's actually been quite a bit of an adjustment for me, going from the rush-rush pace of life at Wash U, where I had class, homework, research, a job and a thousand other things, to my Fulbright life, where under contract I only have to work 12 hours per week (I work a little more than that, but still, it doesn't even really qualify as part-time). So I've found some things to keep me busy, but don't worry mom, I'm not stressing myself out. The only bad thing about his abundant amount of time for relaxing is that I have no idea how I will ever adjust to a real job in the future. Fulbright is majorly spoiling me, but I guess I should enjoy it while I can.
However, I do sometimes actually work. My main job (through Fulbright) is as an assistant English teacher in a middle/high school, in the type of school they call a "comprehensive school" in the German school system, meaning that all students have class together, regardless of whether they're on the university track or planning on stopping after 10th grade and doing an apprenticeship. So, kind of like an American high school. However, comprehensive schools have a rather bad reputation in Germany that they don't prepare students for university as well as traditional "Gymnasien" do. The traditional German school system is three-tiered: Hauptschule is the lowest, Realschule in the middle and Gymnasium at the top. Hauptschule you stop after the 9th grade and go into a vocation like working in a factory. Realschule stops after 10th grade but you go on and do something like an apprenticeship to become an electrician or go into hotel management or something. From Gymnasium you're supposed to go onto university. I personally find this system highly elitist, because the kids are tracked after the 4th grade, and it can be quite difficult to switch from one type of school to the other. So basically if you're not good in school when you're 9 you will probably never have the chance to go to college. Seems unfair, but that's not the point of this blog, so tangent aside, back to my work schedule. I teach at the school every day except Wednesday. I'm usually there for about 4 hours per day, sometimes more if I have breaks between my classes. I help with a 6th grade, 7th grade, two 9th grade and one 11th grade class. I also help with an 8th grade drama class and oversee the English Club for the upper grades. I don't teach the classes independently, but I do lead a lot of lessons on my own while the teacher sits in the room, or we team teach together. Most of my lessons focus on American culture, such as holidays or the school system. Sometimes they go well, occasionally they don't, but it helps a lot that the kids intrinsically like me because I'm somebody new and interesting and from America. Plus the kids are just in general really friendly and funny; my favorite anecdotes will follow in a later post. In addition to my work at the school I'm a teaching assistant for two seminars in the English Department at the university in Dortmund. One is called "Cultural Education in Contexts of Diversity" and the other "English in America." I don't do much other than facilitating discussions every now and then and emailing with the students to help them on their projects, but then again, I don't get paid for the TA work either. Next semester I'm hoping to get involved with some research in the linguistics department, because I do miss that aspect of academia.
With my light work schedule, I've been able to indulge my hobbies more than ever before, as well as taking up some new ones. In three months I read more books than I read all of last year, and devote a few hours each week to reviewing French and Arabic so I can sign up for a language course at the university next semester. I've also started playing the piano again, because there's a baby grand in the music room at my school that is hardly ever used, and one of the nice teachers I work with gave me the key to the room so that I can practice anytime I want. I don't think I'll be giving a concert in Carnegie Hall anytime soon, but it's nice to be able to play just for myself. A new hobby I've taken up is knitting, which my roommate and a friend taught me. They're amazing and can knit mittens and sweaters and all kinds of cool stuff, whereas I'm still laboring to create a decent looking rectangle, aka a scarf. So basically, don't hold your breath for hand-knitted goods for Christmas. I've also been learning how to use Photoshop, so maybe I'll post some of my photography here one day. Other hobbies include watching Dexter, Mad Men and Criminal Minds online and, my all-time favorite hobby: cooking/baking. I've always loved to bake, but didn't really have the time before to spend hours testing out different cookie recipes. Now I do, which makes my taste buds really happy but is perhaps not so great for my calorie intake. My roommate and I both also love cooking, and I would say we probably make the best vegetarian meals in Dortmund (the competition for gourmet vegetarian cuisine is not particularly stiff in Germany). This leads to
just a typical dinner party. with a santa suit
our favorite activity, which is hosting or going to dinner parties with friends. A home-cooked meal is so much nicer than a restaurant. Also, the alcohol is cheaper. We decided with the other three people in our WG (who live in the apartment below us) that we should have a communal dinner every Sunday, so now the apartments trade off weeks and we get to catch up on each other's lives and laugh at Hidey the cat. It's all very "gemuetlich," as the Germans would say, a word that unfortunately doesn't have a good English translation, but means something along the lines of cozy, cheery, snug, comfortable, happy, etc. Basically used to describe anything that is relaxing and fun.
light work schedule, I've been able to indulge my hobbies more than ever before, as well as taking up some new ones. In three months I read more books than I read all of last year, and devote a few hours each week to reviewing French and Arabic so I can sign up for a language course at the university next semester. I've also started playing the piano again, because there's a baby grand in the music room at my school that is hardly ever used, and one of the nice teachers I work with
Santa is a huge beer fan
gave me the key to the room so that I can practice anytime I want. I don't think I'll be giving a concert in Carnegie Hall anytime soon, but it's nice to be able to play just for myself. A new hobby I've taken up is knitting, which my roommate and a friend taught me. They're amazing and can knit mittens and sweaters and all kinds of cool stuff, whereas I'm still laboring to create a decent looking rectangle, aka a scarf. So basically, don't hold your breath for hand-knitted goods for Christmas. I've also been learning how to use Photoshop, so maybe I'll post some of my photography here one day. Other hobbies include watching Dexter, Mad Men and Criminal Minds online and, my all-time favorite hobby: cooking/baking. I've always loved to bake, but didn't really have the time before to spend hours testing out different cookie recipes. Now I do, which makes my taste buds really happy but is perhaps not so great for my calorie intake. My roommate and I both also love cooking, and I would say we probably make the best vegetarian meals in Dortmund (the competition for gourmet vegetarian cuisine is not particularly stiff in Germany). This leads to our favorite activity, which is hosting or going to dinner parties with friends. A home-cooked meal is so much nicer than a restaurant. Also, the alcohol is cheaper. We decided with the other three people in our WG (who live in the apartment below us) that we should have a communal dinner every Sunday, so now the apartments trade off weeks and we get to catch up on each other's lives and laugh at Hidey the cat. It's all very "gemuetlich," as the Germans would say, a word that unfortunately doesn't have a good English translation, but means something along the lines of cozy, cheery, snug, comfortable, happy, etc. Basically used to describe anything that is relaxing and fun.
romantic setting for the WG dinner
Georg and Steffen being awkward
Hidey does not love Amanda as much as Amanda loves her
Less gemuetlich is the "Nordstadt" (north city), which is the area of Dortmund I live in. It's not really known as one of the most desirable addresses in Dortmund, mostly because the majority of the residents are immigrants and it's in general a lower socioeconomic-, working-class area. Basically, it's just not the most beautiful part of Dortmund: kind of old, industrial, not always kept-up and frankly kind of grim sometimes. I think there's a pretty high unemployment rate in the area, as every morning on my way to work (my school is also in the Nordstadt) I almost always see people hanging out on benches and outside kiosks drinking beer (at 7:30am). There's not really any violence to speak of in the area, just a lot of people with not-so-great economic prospects, and a lot of people of foreign background, to the point that you hear far more Turkish/Arabic/Bulgarian/what-have-you on the street than you do German. The good thing about this is that when I go into a store or Imbiss (fast food stand) I don't have to worry about messing up my German, because the shop owners probably don't speak it any better than I do. The residents do have a little bit of neighborhood pride, though, as evidenced by the electric sign on the side of a high-rise apartment building that says "the sun rises in the north." Aplerbeck and Dorstfeld and the other sissy suburbs may think they're the best, we Nordstadt-ers know better! So now, enjoy the scenery of the Nordstadt:
all that was left of a church after the war
I don't know why there is a Navy store, nor do I know why they fly not only the American flag, but the Canadian and Confederate ones too
I swear I live by every train track in the city
Remember the pretty view out my bedroom window? Well, they cut off the tops of the trees a few weeks ago, so now I get to enjoy this. And trust me, it looks better in this picture than it ever does in real life.
As said before, the Ruhrgebiet is the former seat of heavy industry (coal mining and steel production) in Germany. Very little of this industry is left now, because, as is the case in most Western nations, mining and other heavy industries have been mostly taken over by developing countries where production is cheaper. However, some factories and power plants are still in operation, and remnants of industry can be seen all over the region. For example, there are "Halden," or slag heaps, near all the major former mines. Thankfully, they've all been grassed over and planted with trees, to the extent that they really look like natural hills just rising out of the ground. Many have become popular walking or outdoor activity areas, such as Halde Haniel in Bottrop, where I went with Pascal's mom. A way of the cross was installed on a winding path up the hill, ending at a large cross where Pope John Paul II once gave an address. Also on the top of this particular Halde is a small amphitheater where plays and concerts are occasionally held, as well as a crazy totem pole sculpture garden. The view from the top is amazing; I could see the entire Ruhrgebiet (almost as far as Dortmund even). Interestingly, interspersed with the cities and smokestacks are huge tracts of very rural areas that look like forests or fields. As I mentioned in my first post, a lot of Germans picture the Ruhrgebiet as smoggy and gray, but in reality it's almost overwhelmingly green.
the very top of the heap wasn't grassed over
cross at the top of the path
totem poles
amphitheater
the streets of Essen
Before industrialization, the Ruhrgebiet lacked in major significance in the German economic or cultural scene. Some cities (such as Essen or Dortmund) were moderately important as seats of power or trade, and Duisburg was very important for trade along the Rhine and had a renowned university, but overall the area was pretty much a collection of villages and farms. The discovery of coal kick-started the region's growth and towns sprang up quickly and with an eye on cheapness and efficiency rather than aesthetics. Add to that the fact that the Ruhrgebiet was extremely heavily bombed in World War II (industrial production sites of steel and weapons were obviously critical targets for the Allies) and in some towns over 75% of the buildings were destroyed. In the post-war period the prevailing architectural style seems to have been "plain concrete blocks," not too dissimilar from what Americans thinks of as typical Soviet architecture. All of these factors combine to create the unfortunately reality that the towns of the Ruhrgebiet are really just not all that pretty. That's not to say that there are no pretty or traditional buildings at all, and I certainly think that the construction of the cities here is extremely interesting and attractive in sort of utilitarian, modern way, but Dortmund and company lack the charm of towns such as Tuebingen with their quaint medieval buildings and winding cobblestone streets. That being said, I find Dortmund to be considerably more "livable" than Tuebingen, because I don't feel like I'm living in a postcard or constantly being a tourist at some historical site. Also, because there are so many cities in close proximity to each other, there's always stuff to do, concerts to go to, exhibits to see. It's not at all isolated, like I sometimes felt Tuebingen was, and, in my opinion, the perfect place to just have a normal day-to-day life. So now, some pictures of the wonderful city of Dortmund:
flying rhino statues are all over Dortmund
the market square and Reinoldi Church
Germans love eating outside
a building across from the Concert House
modern buildings by the train station
entrance to subway station
the TV tower in Westphalia Park in Dortmund
view of downtown Dortmund from TV tower
I live behind the smokestack
old brewery that has been converted into a museum
typical Ruhrgebiet: nice park, green treas, abandoned mines
I hope everyone had a wonderful Thanksgiving with no overcooked turkeys, burnt rolls, obnoxiously drunken relatives or any other incidents that could make the day less than pleasant. Overall, my Thanksgiving was great with plenty of food, cider and champagne. Only one small catastrophe marred the day...
it looked something like this
For Thanksgiving dinner, I was in charge of making sweet potato casserole and a dessert. I decided on apple pie bars, a recipe I'd never made before but which sounded delicious. As I mentioned before, Thanksgiving isn't a holiday in Germany so I had to schedule all my cooking around work. I made the sweet potato casserole on Wednesday night, got up early Thursday morning to make the crust for the apple pie bars, then finished them that afternoon. Altogether I devoted a fair amount of time to baking. On Thursday evening I set out with my roommate and a friend of her's to go to our other friend's apartment for dinner. We were all loaded down with pots and casserole dishes, so I was in the precarious position of trying to balance the baking sheet of apple pie bars on top of the sweet potatoes. Not two minutes away from our apartment we were crossing an intersection, I slipped just a little bit on some ice, but it was enough to send the baking sheet careening off of the casserole dish. It did a graceful flip in midair and landed, upside-down, in the middle of the street. The light was changing, so we had no time to figure out an ingenious solution of how to get the whole thing back into the pan. In desperation I simply used my hands to scoop up a clump and then we ran out of the way of oncoming traffic. I was rather annoyed that my hours of work had come to nothing, so I decided to eat some of the broken pieces anyways, asphalt and motor oil be damned. They were delicious.
as the Germans would say. For the past week I've been teaching all my classes about Thanksgiving, because it's a holiday that's basically unknown in Germany. I've been talking about mashed potatoes and green bean casserole and pie and all the other delicious Thanksgiving food for so long that I can hardly wait to finally eat them tonight! I don't think the German students share my enthusiasm for Thanksgiving, though: most of them thought that making a dessert out of pumpkin was the most disgusting idea ever. At least my 6th graders enjoyed making hand turkeys today. Such are the finer points of American culture that I'm introducing them to.
Tonight I'm getting together with a group of Americans and a few Germans to have an almost-proper Thanksgiving. I say almost because 1) we don't have the day off, meaning dinner has to be in the evening rather than the afternoon, 2) the girl's apartment we're going to decided we're going to have goose rather than turkey (because turkeys are kind of hard to find in Germany), and 3) this will be the first Thanksgiving I'll spend not in the company of my family or relatives. I miss everybody a lot, but I've heard pumpkin pie with extra whipped cream does wonders for homesickness. I'll keep you posted on whether that's true or not. In the meantime, I hope every one of you has a wonderful, delicious, relaxing Thanksgiving!
NRW is the abbreviation for Nordrhein-Westfalen (North Rhine-Westphalia to us english-speakin' folk), which is the state in which Dortmund is located. It's the most populated and most densely populated state in Germany, mainly due to the high concentration of people in the Ruhrgebiet as well as the metropolitan regions of Duesseldorf, Koeln (Cologne) and Aachen. I spend most of my time within the Ruhrgebiet, but this post will describe some of the experiences I've had in other parts of NRW. This would also be a good time to look at the pictures in my Nordrhein-Westfalen - Fall 2010 album!
We begin with the Fulbright orientation, which took place from September 6th-9th in a retreat house next to the Altenberg cathedral, which is in the middle of nowhere about 45 minutes outside of Cologne. There were about 200 Americans there, all in Germany to be English teaching assistants. Most, like me, had just graduated from college. They also came from all over the US and were assigned to the most diverse locations in Germany, from Munich to a tiny town on an island in the North Sea by the cost of Denmark that can only be reached by ferry (I'm not kidding, a girl I met was actually assigned there). Before we all headed off to our future homes and jobs we spent a few days together "networking" (aka meeting people whose couch you could crash on later while traveling) and getting a little bit of basic instruction about German bureaucracy, the school system, and foreign language pedagogy. It wasn't exactly an extensive preparation for teaching, but it did equip us with the essentials to get a start in our new towns and our schools. And I did meet some great people there with whom I'm in regular contact.
Next stop: Sauerland. This is a hilly/mountainous region to the southeast of the Ruhrgebiet that's not very developed and pretty popular for hiking and winter sports (at least for people from western Germany and the Netherlands who have never seen a proper mountain in their life). Pascal's grandparents live there, so I go out there occasionally with his family to visit them. It really is a beautiful and peaceful region, and his grandma, in true grandma-style, loves nothing more than forcing delicious food on us until we burst. In my photo album you can see pictures from a hike we went on up to a cross erected on a hill overlooking the village. If only it had been a few weeks later we would have been able to see some real fall foliage. Next year!
The next pictures in the album are from the Allerheiligenkirmes (All Saint's Day carnival) in Soest, a small town about 45 minutes east of Dortmund. Even though the rides, games and stands selling unhealthy but delicious food were more or less the same as at carnivals in America, the atmosphere was a million times better because the carnival was set up right on the streets and squares of the old town, creating a fascinating juxtaposition of centuries-old half-timbered houses and neon lights. I can't say I've ever seen a roller coaster in front of a cathedral before.
Last we come to a few pictures that I took in Duesseldorf when I was there for a conference held for all foreign language assistants (including languages other than English) from my area of NRW. I think there were around 100 of us, with the largest contingents coming from Great Britain and Spain, followed by the Americans. This event was organized not through the Fulbright Commission, but through the Educational Exchange Service (a German agency), through whom we get paid and who are our direct overseers here in Germany. It lasted for 2 days and was basically another networking event, which I appreciated because I got to know a lot of people who live in or very near to Dortmund, so I can actually hang out with them on a regular basis. We also went on some small excursions around the Ruhrgebiet (a "region in change" as they kept calling it) to take a look at the old industrial sites and the uses they were being put to now. It would have been pretty interesting, except that I had seen literally every single thing we went to before; Pascal's mom has done a pretty good job over the past several years of taking me to all the architectural highlights and museums in the area. Perhaps she's secretly in cahoots with the Ruhrgebiet tourism agency? Regardless of the redundancy, I enjoyed the Duesseldorf conference and getting to take a couple days off work to hang out with my friends :)
That about covers my exploits in greater NRW; next time I'll focus more on the Ruhrgebiet and life there (a propos the title of this blog). Til then!
These were two different trips, but I'm including them in the same post because they're the only places outside of Germany I've been to so far.
The old town
I went to Valencia at the very beginning of September, before I even moved to Dortmund or went to the Fulbright orientation. I spent the last week of August with Pascal's family, and then flew to the beautiful and warm Spanish Mediterranean city of Valencia for the weekend to meet up with my dad who was there for a trade fair (he has a hard life, let me tell you). It's great traveling with my dad because 1) we like to do the exact same things, namely lots of walking, biking and going to museums, and 2) the lodgings and meals are considerably better when I don't have to fund them myself.
Dad at the beach
The weather was sunny and warm/hot the whole weekend, and we took full advantage of it by visiting the aquarium and going to the beach. In addition, the architecture in Valencia is a gorgeous mix of Moorish, Gothic, Romanesque and uber-modern styles. And let's not forget the sangria and paella, which originated in the Valencian region! I highly recommend Valencia as a travel destination, especially as an alternative to the extreme tourist crowds in Barcelona. Plus it has the most beautiful beach and water I have ever seen in my life. Next time you're jetting off for a Mediterranean escape, you'll know where to go.
cathedral plaza at night
cathedral tower
the dolphin show at the aquarium
futuristic architecture in the museum complex
I went to Amsterdam in the middle of October with my friend from home, Sarah, who was visiting me/doing a tour of Europe at the time. The canals and cobble-stoned bridges of Amsterdam are absolutely enchanting, well earning it the title "Venice of the North," though in my opinion it's actually prettier (and certainly cleaner) than Venice. Also, I have NEVER seen so many bicycles! I'm pretty sure I saw more bikes than cars. I have also never seen so many prostitutes, probably because I as a general rule do not frequent red light districts. But when in Rome...
at least I got to stand outside the AF house
Unfortunately, we didn't go to any museums, such as the Anne Frank House of the Van Gogh museum because they were either too expensive or the line was far too long (we tried twice at the Anne Frank house). We did, however, take a canal cruise, which I highly recommend. And here's another insider tip for ya: if you buy fries (and you should), get the samurai sauce. Trust me.
Currently working in a middle and high school in Germany thanks to a Fulbright English Teaching Assistantship grant.
~This blog is not an official Fulbright Program blog and the views expressed are my own and not those of the Fulbright Program, the U.S. Department of State or any of its partner organizations.~
Less gemuetlich is the "Nordstadt" (north city), which is the area of Dortmund I live in. It's not really known as one of the most desirable addresses in Dortmund, mostly because the majority of the residents are immigrants and it's in general a lower socioeconomic-, working-class area. Basically, it's just not the most beautiful part of Dortmund: kind of old, industrial, not always kept-up and frankly kind of grim sometimes. I think there's a pretty high unemployment rate in the area, as every morning on my way to work (my school is also in the Nordstadt) I almost always see people hanging out on benches and outside kiosks drinking beer (at 7:30am). There's not really any violence to speak of in the area, just a lot of people with not-so-great economic prospects, and a lot of people of foreign background, to the point that you hear far more Turkish/Arabic/Bulgarian/what-have-you on the street than you do German. The good thing about this is that when I go into a store or Imbiss (fast food stand) I don't have to worry about messing up my German, because the shop owners probably don't speak it any better than I do. The residents do have a little bit of neighborhood pride, though, as evidenced by the electric sign on the side of a high-rise apartment building that says "the sun rises in the north." Aplerbeck and Dorstfeld and the other sissy suburbs may think they're the best, we Nordstadt-ers know better! So now, enjoy the scenery of the Nordstadt:
