Weekend with Wolfgang: Part II

The Esch's have always been Catholic, as Wolfgang constantly reminds me.  So, being the good Catholic family that we are, we went to Mass this morning to celebrate Pentecost.  We went to Mass at the Koelner Dom where Mass was celebrated by the Archbishop.

Little known fact:  the Koelner Dom is it's own separate community and so the Archbishop isn't allowed to enter on his own.  At the beginning he is escorted into the Mass by a large procession, and at the end he is escorted out.  He is only allowed to be in there on special conditions. Second fun fact:  In one of the windows over the alter is a crest with a black cross on a white background.  This crest belongs to the Deutsche Herrenhof, that one of the Esch's was a director of.  I am not sure how it all fits together, but by this time I am fairly certain that Wolfgang is capable of connecting just about everything to Esch in some way.  Third Random Fact: We got to hear the biggest bell at the Dom ring.  It is called the "der Dicker Pitter" in Koelnisch, the dielect spoken in Koeln, which translates to the thick/fat Peter.  This bell is so massive taht it only rings seven times a year on High Feast Days because if it was to sound more often the vibrations it would cause would cause serious structural damage to the Dom.  

Pentecost is a day that people like to get together and celebrate, actually that just sounds like a typical day in Germany.  The people that Wolfgang likes the most are members of his family, and it doesn't seem to matter how distantly you are related.  

After Mass we went to visit his son, Frank, and his wife, Elizabeth, and their son, Oscar.  Oscar is not yet a year old.  We got along great playing with a ball for a really long time and sharing cookies.  And by sharing I mean that he kept stealing the cookies that were given to me.  

After Frank's we went to Duesseldorf to visit Stephanie, Wolfgang's daughter, and her family.  She has three kids,  all older than Oscar, but still not all that old.  Again, we got along great.  I had taken some juggling balls with me and they loved that.  The oldest of the three also had some stilts that I helped her to learn how to walk on.  

Stephanie, Wolfgang, and I drove into Duesseldorf to do a small tour of the city so that I could see it.  There is a large jazz festival going on right now, so things were hopping.  We ate a potato pancake with applesauce that was pretty doggone tasty.

After seeing Duesseldorf we went back to Stephanie's house and her husband, Olliver, grilled for everyone.  It was great.  It was a lot of fun to get to hang out with these families, and they really did seem to accept me as such.  Funny how a common last name can do that.

Weekend with Wolfgang

This weekend I am spending in Koeln with Wolfgang, the long lost relative that I managed to find while I was living in Bonn.  Today, we went to Minkelfeld and the surrounding area to connect with some other "relatives".  I use this term loosely because while we all do share a common ancestor, the ancestor is typically back five or six generations.  

I arrived at the train station near Wolfgang's house at 8:55 and he picked me up at nine.  We went back to the house and had breakfast with Wolfgang's wife Ulla before Wolfgang and I packed into his car and headed out on our journey.

The first stop of the day was Minkelfeld where we met up with Klaus, the first Esch in Germany that I met.  We spent a good amount of time at Klaus's as he and Wolfgang went through piles of papers with names an dates and argues over who was who.  It was really fun to get to watch them because they both get so excited and speak in such fast dialectic German when they are together.  It is really difficult to understand, but it is really cool too.  

After visiting with Klaus Wolfgang and I drove to Maifeld to visit the church there.  Unfortunately, the church grounds are currently being renovated so everything was in a disarray.  

Then we headed back to Minkelfeld where we picked up Klaus, and by picked up I mean he drove his own car but followed us to Kalt.  In Kalt we had a "Kaffee und Kuchen"  or "Coffee and Cake" date with the mayor.  Apparently the mayor is also related to the Esch's in some distant way.  It was really fun to be at this little gathering.  Everyone kept sharing stories, with Klaus being the most animated story-teller.  

After our mid-afternoon snack we went to the first Esch farm that was the largest German farm when it was taken over by Esch's in the 1500's.  It is still owned by Esch's today.  Lots of the buildings still have original parts as well.  Franz Josef Esch is the current owner of the property and we were able to figure out exactly where he fits into the family tree while we were there.  

After visiting with Franz and his wife we began our trek back to Koeln.  On the way we stopped at a couple of cemetaries to take pictures of Esch gravestones.  At the cemetary in Kerben, we were looked at suspiciously because no one recognized us.  Wolfgang proceeded to explain that we were here to look at the Esch grave and the person he was talking to promptly asked if he was the relative researcher.  It was hilarious.  And it turns out that this guy is related to us in some way as well.  

It was really cool day getting to go around to the places my family has lived, to see what they do, and what their lives have been like for the past several centuries.  

Berlin

This past weekend I spent time in Berlin with the other students from WashU.  We were there Thursday through Monday and got to have a really great overview of the city.  And better yet we got Money from WashU to do everything that we wanted to.  I think I spent about fifteen Euro the entire time we were there.  Yes, I know that with the tuition at WashU I should probably be having them pay for all of my travels but I will take what I can get.  Here is a brief overview of the weekend.

Thursday night we arrived in Berlin and had reservations at the Unsicht-bar Restaurant.  In German Unsichtbar means unseeable.  You order your food from a set menu, you have the option of choosing beef, chicken, pork, vegetarian, or surprise menues, and then you are taken back into the dining room where it is totally dark.  I mean, can't see you hand in fron of your face no matter how long you hold it there dark.  You then eat your entire meal, three or four courses, in the dark.  It was a lot of fun and a cool experience.  Of course in the cover of darkness I had a great time moving things around the table to confuse the other people that I was with.  They didn't think it was so funny but I had a great time.  

 

After dinner Ian, Katherine, and I met up with my friend Erin who had been in my Deutsche Kompakt class with me and we all went out to a beer garden and just chilled for a couple of hourse.  It was great.  

The next day we woke up and had breakfast at the hostel.  Then Katherine, Christiane, and I went to the Goverment Quarter of the city and climbed up into the large glass dome of the Reichstag.  It was a pretty spectacular view.  Then we went and looked at the Jewish Memorial.  It was amazing how disrespectful people were being. There are kids running around climbing on the blocks.  Trash is everywhere.  People just don't understand what it represents, to them it is just a big playground.  

That afternoon we met up with Ian and went on a four hour bike tour of Kreuzberg.  I got to be the rider at the back which means that I got to wear a sassy neon orange reflective vest.  It was pretty cool.  The tour was very well done and I really liked riding bikes.

That night we went and saw The Producers.  It is the first time that this musical has been released in Germany.  It is also a pretty big deal that it has been released here because the play that the producers produce is called "Springtime for Hitler".   

The next day we got a slower start.  Once we finally got on the road we went to the Ziegesaule and the Tiergarten Park.  We made our way to Ka(ufhaus) De(s) We(stens).  This is a massive department store that is in West Berlin that is a major symbol of consumer culture that was just not a part of the DDR.  The Gedaechtnis Kirche, a church that had been almost entirely destroyed during WWII but has been rebuilt is right around there too.  

After killing some time after lunch we went to a cabaret show.  It was not like what I would expect a cabaret to be.  It was more like practiced improv.  It was very difficult to understand though because they were speaking very fast German and I don't have a good enough understanding of the language to be able to pick up the clever puns.  And it was very much a social commentary and I didn't have a good enough knowledge of German politics, laws and everyday knowledge to be able to get the point of a lot of the sketches.  But it was very good listening practice.  

That night we went to this place called the Winery where you pay one euro for a glass and there are bottles of wine sitting out that you can pick and choose how much and what you would like to drink.  Then at the end of the night you pay what you think is reasonable.  After spending a bit of time there we went out and took some pictures of Berlin by night.  

The next day we woke up and Katherine, Christiane, and I went to Checkpoint Charlie.  Personally, I thought it was very interesting and very well done.  There are informational boards lining the entire intersection so we spent at least an hour outside just making our way around to all of the boards.  Then we went into the museum.  We only had about half an hour there but that was enough for me to learn about some of the escape methods that people came up with.  It was unbelievable.  Some of the feats of engineering are incredible.  

We then joined up with Ian and Daria again and went to a cupcakery in some area of Berlin.  After a cupcake I went on a tour of an underground bunker with Christiane and Daria.  It was a very good tour, but my knees were bothering me quite a lot so I didn't pay as much attention as I should have.  Ooops.

After the tour I went to the TV tower with Christiane and we chilled there for a while.  We did a bit of juggling which was a lot of fun.  The other WashU students met us there and we all went to the hotel where another group from WashU had just arrived.  We went out and had dinner with the Professors that were accompanying that group. 

After dinner Ian, Katherine, and I went around and just walked around Berlin a little bit.  We found the red light district.  Ian was very happy about that.  In his words, "You know you are in a city when there is a red light district."  Ian in from Washington D.C. and St. Louis is the smallest city he has ever lived in up until living in Tuebingen so he was happy to be in a real city again.  

The next day we woke up and came back to Tuebingen and jumped right back into classes and being students again.  This trip has begun a month of traveling on the weekeds for me though.  Next weekend Cologne to see Wolfgang again.  

Living in Cloud Nine

The past week has been rather rainy and drizzly here in Germany.  Personally, I wish the sun would return, it has actually rained every single day for the past week.  But, I knew that rained a lot in Germany when I signed up to study abroad here.  

Last week, I woke up one day and looked out my window only to realize that I couldn't see anything,  literally anything.  My first thought immediatedly went to that I was now blind.  The logical part of my brain quickly assured me that was not the case because if I was in fact blind I wouldn't have been able to see my desk and window.  

The next option I came up with was that I had been abducted by aliens and they had just lifted my entire room off of the building and I was now flying with them through outerspace as they took me back to their home planet to run tests on me.  

Thankfully, that second option wasn't it either.  In reality, I was just living in a cloud.  Being on top of the mountian means that I am a lot closer to the clouds than the citizens of Tuebingen who live down in the town.  Every morning last week, I woke up to find my room enveloped in a white mist.  Sometimes I could see a little ways through the mist and was able to distinguish the ghostly outlines of the other buildings, sometimes not.  Most times I couldn't see the top of the tall buildings, they just slowly disappeared into the sky.  After the initial shock of not being able to see anything, I have come to enjoy living in the clouds.

This one's for you, Pops

It has come to my attention that I have only been writing about the fun I am having and the adventures I am taking.  I was under the impression that those are the only things that people would really want to hear about.  I was wrong.  Here is my work load from yesterday, a typical day in the life of Caroline.

• Went to class for three hours
• read six chapters in a German novel, by Goethe, aka not easy stuff
• wrote an Expose on the six chapters read
• translated two articles
• read seven articles for other classes
• prepped material for classes the next day
• review material from last time
  

Did I mention that all of this is occuring in another language, cause it is.  Hopefully, this information has put you readers at rest, that I am, in fact, learning something and having to do work while I am here.  

I can't think of a title...

I have successfully survived the second week of classes, which actually is probably more like a first week of classes because in the technical first week of classes everyone is just signing up for stuff and seeing what they actually want to take. Regardless, I survived and am even feeling as though I am on top of my work. (That really is a new feeling for me because at WashU I am perpetually behind.)

I wrote my first "paper" for a college class in German this week.  Every week for my lit class we have to write an expose about a certain passage from the book and explain the deeper meaning that it is talking about.  Normally not my strong point.  But this week we had to explain the chemical analogy and how it fits with the entire theme of the book "Elective Affinities".  A) I am a chemist and understand the chemical example and am therefore able to come up with smaller similarities that non-science people can't come up with and B) I wrote a paper about this exact thing last semester in my German Lit class.  

I sent my expose to the TA for my class and asked her to read through it and check for grammar, word choice, sentence structure etc.  She said she would do it this week but from now on she isn't going to. I am not so thrilled about that.  I guess I will have to make a German friend to help me out.  Oh well, after reading it and correcting it she emailed me back and told me that I had a good job and I should be "maechtig Stolz" (powerfully proud) of my work.  

I also had to translate a text from English into German for one of my classes.  It is really cool to have to think about English in such a methodical and analytical way.  At the same time it is really obnoxious to have to think so hard about your native language.  

After a "week" (I only have class three days) of classes, I am ready for the weekend.  I am going to Karlsruhe today.  Pia, my TA from Deutsch Kompakt invited me to go with her and some of her friends because there is a "free festival-thing" and they want to go camping.  So we are going to Karlsruhe to camp, but don't have tents, or sleeping bags.  Sounds more like we are going to play I'm homeless.  It should be fun anyway.