New html and old memories.

I promised you the big reflective entry, and you will find it below. There will be poems, song lyrics, all that godawful introspective bullshit that gives LiveJournal such a bad reputation. (To my credit, I did not author any of the texts, and they aren't about unicorns or the darkness of my suburban soul or anything.) First, however, a few points of interest and a little something in the way of illustration.

One: my mom has some guys working here, installing tile and replacing the hideous beams on the living room ceiling and so on. I met them today, since she's at work and I'm still in Atlanta. They knew somehow that I'd been in Germany, and in fact one of them was born in Frankfurt (Army brat), and was surprisingly well-informed about Dresden's history, for a random man holding a power drill. But then he asked something about my major, and when I brought up Russian history he started talking about Solzhenitsyn's The Gulag Archipelago, and in fact he quoted me a bit with a page number: a page number (226) that turned out to be correct in my edition, and you shouldn't be surprised I checked. Sadly, he quoted it for the purpose of connecting today's "liberal media" and Democrats and "political correctness" to Soviet policy in the '30s, an opinion I do not share. However. Are most construction workers capable of talking about Russian lit and Raising the Mammoth and the relative devastation of fire- vs. nuclear-bombing? It was kind of a David Sedaris moment, in sheer "who is this character?" emotion.

The other dude chatted about welding - apparently my mom has dedicated major time to informing these people about my life - which was slightly less unexpected. But really. What the fuck.

Two: I posted the pictures over at Yahoo. One of them looks like this:



Several of them are almost totally black, thanks to my twin refusals to a) haul my real camera around and b) recognize that a disposable cannot do what my real camera can. Of course I highly recommend that you use the "View Slideshow" option, since I took the time to write little comments for all of them. Also, please keep in mind that any titles that end in "GI" denote pictures taken by the staff at the Goethe-Institut, and not by me. I limited my borrowing to pictures from those events I actually attended; there were lots of shots of Meißner and the picnic and the bike tour, etc., but since I didn't participate, that would be cheating. Everyone should be able to see them by clicking here.

EDIT:You'll now find a third album there, too, featuring selected pictures from Europe 2003. I had to get them from the attic anyway, so why not scan them? Obviously I couldn't think of a reason.

Okay, I have debated many a way of presenting my opinions on last month in a more or less understandable fashion, and for now I'm just going to throw it all up there and see what sticks. I'm expecting trouble and possibly failure, and therefore drafting this all safely in MS Word (with smart quotes turned off; thank you for not fucking up my html, Clippy) for maximum ease of future editing. By the time you see the entry, therefore, much rambling will have been cut or rearranged. If you have trouble believing that, just try to imagine how much worse it once was.

We could look at it via poetry. Since I mentioned Robert Frost last time, I'll go ahead and stick in the relevant text. For clarity, I've italicized, checklist-style, the lines that apply to me in Dresden. Disclaimers follow.

"Acquainted with the Night"

I have been one acquainted with the night.
I have walked out in rain--and back in rain.
I have outwalked the furthest city light.

I have looked down the saddest city lane.
I have passed by the watchman on his beat
And dropped my eyes, unwilling to explain.

I have stood still and stopped the sound of feet
When far away an interrupted cry
Came over houses from another street,

But not to call me back or say good-by;
And further still at an unearthly height
One luminary clock against the sky

Proclaimed the time was neither wrong nor right.
I have been one acquainted with the night.

Most of that relates to the last two weeks, when I started walking instead of taking the SB home at night. There should be something in there about bridges or rivers, in order to make it the perfect summary, but it's a poem I've always liked and one I thought about a lot while I was there. I will note that (l.5-6) I wasn't so much "unwilling" as unable to explain, given that watchmen probably would have addressed me in German… Also, the deeper meaning of l.11-13 is not so important; suffice it to say there were many many towers and steeples containing clocks in Dresden, and that at night it never mattered to me what time it was, because I had nowhere to be. That struck me as happy rather than sad, but that might just be Kulturschock Phase 1 talking. Who knows how I'd have felt come autumn.

The other poem that came up frequently in that situation was part of Walt Whitman's "Reconciliation", which I know as the lyrics of the third movement of Vaughan William's "Dona Nobis Pacem". The relevant lines, which I liked to sing to myself while standing on Carolabrücke at night, looking at the reconstruction work in Altstadt and thinking about regeneration (and taking pictures so underexposed CVS didn't even bother printing them), are:

"Word over all, beautiful as the sky!
Beautiful that war, and all its deeds of carnage, must in time be utterly lost;
That the hands of the sisters Death and Night, incessantly softly
wash again, and ever again, this soil'd world".

(You can hear a sample of the track over at Amazon, although for accuracy's sake keep in mind I am neither a baritone nor an orchestra. Also, I promise some of the other movements are more exciting; should you get a chance, give the whole thing a listen.)

While we're on poetry and lyrics, I'll go ahead and stick up "My Time of Day", because Guys & Dolls is my favorite musical ever, and I can never resist an opportunity to drag it into things.

"My time of day is the dark time
A couple of deals before dawn
When the street belongs to the cop
And the janitor with the mop
And the grocery clerks are all gone.

When the smell of the rainwashed pavement
Comes up clean, and fresh, and cold
And the streetlamp light
Fills the gutter with gold

That's my time of day
My time of day…"

Granted, in Germany the grocery clerks are gone from about 6 PM onwards, but if you were in Dresden this summer (or the southeastern United States right now, thank you Hurricane Katrina) you've got a great sense of the smell of rain-washed pavement, and as my shot of Mr. Ludewig so strongly suggests, Dresden has major lampposts, if you're into that.

All the other relevant songs, I think, are pop numbers you can grab off WinMX, should you want to hear "I'm So Excited" or "It's Raining Men" or any other numbers off my own personal Radio Dresden. When I get back to school I'll hook you up with some German hip-hop files, but at the moment I lack the means.

But poetry isn't the only way; far from it. We could try some kind of table-y thing, since I don't have anything better to do this afternoon than learn some new html. And I've got the perfect counterpoint to the glory that was Dresden: my first trip to Europe, also vaguely educational in nature, i.e. study-abroad in Innsbruck in 2003.

Summers Abroad
Factor	Innsbruck (Six Weeks in 2003)	Dresden (Four Weeks in 2005)	Winner
Location	A mid-sized university city in Austria; stretched along the Inn between two ridges of the Alps. A pretty Baroque district, if you're into that.	A mid-sized East German city; stretched along the Elbe in a fairly flat area. A gorgeous Baroque district, if you're into that.	Tie. Mountains vs. Elbe.
Weather	2003 was fatally hot. It wasn't awful in the Alps, but it wasn't great there, either.	Sure, it rained 4-5 days a week, but then it never got much above 75°F.	Dresden
Program: Classes	German Cold War history: taught in English by a great professor from Augsburg. I was easily the best of 13 students (perhaps 4 of whom were trying). German: taught by a nice but clueless American professor. I was easily the best of 2.	B2.2: taught in German by Sylvia, who is exceedingly clue-ful. I think I'd rank in the middle third (of nine), but we didn't have tests or grades, or course credit to transfer home. Everyone appeared to be trying, more or less; personally I even learned something.	Dresden
Program: Other	A tour of Innsbruck. A handful of optional lectures, two parties at the beginning, one at the end, a trip to the castles of Southern Germany. Some random sports, a factory tour, etc. Class field trips (on weekends) to relevant cities, e.g. Venice or Berlin. I averaged about two activities a week.	Tours of various neighborhoods in Dresden, plus trips to Pillnitz, Leipzig, and Meißner. Arranged visits to museums, bars, and factories. Films, conversation practice, a library with educational and entertaining books and videos. Parties at beginning and end. I averaged about four activities a week.	Dresden (I like having the option of structured activities)
Fellow Participants	~600 American university students, known for brawling with locals and local security. At least one hospitalization. The program (unbeknownst to me) was nicknamed "frat camp", and rightly so.	~230 international visitors of various ages. The dozen or so whom I got to know were relatively dedicated to learning German, without being hideous nerds like yours truly.	Dresden!
Solo Travel	A weekend in Paris to visit Mom, a weekend in Copenhagen for no reason at all, two day-trips to Vienna, one to Salzburg.	One day-trip to Prague, and I should have done much more research beforehand.	Innsbruck (I had a Eurail pass and three-day weekends)
Personal Performance	My closest friends were the eight-to-fifteen-year-old kids of the American professors. I went to several free concerts, one movie, the grocery store, and a museum.	My closest friends were my classmates. I went to a concert, a museum, the parties, Olga's apartment, various stores, and Thursday night's dinner (still no bars).	Dresden

That's a pretty big table, eh? And not too bad for a first attempt, at least structurally speaking. The key point there is that I make all my friends in class, and if there are no classes, or if the other students are not as involved as I am, I make no friends. If I have no friends, I am not tempted to go to planned events outside of class, regardless of their nature, and if I avoid planned events, of course I don't make friends there, either. It is a vicious cycle of nerdiness, but since I have no intention of changing it's important that I recognize it now and make future travel plans accordingly.

Personally I think Beatrice is living the life. Teaching, pre- and post-planning leave her about two months of summer vacation, and she says she usually spends one at the beach or visiting friends (28, and she has seven friends important enough that she bought them all souvenirs: hello, 311.), and the second taking a language course somewhere or another. At this point I feel I could sustain such a life indefinitely; not that I've ever tried it, but doesn't it sound wonderful? Imagine a new language class every year, oh my children. My rapture is related to larger life questions that I find myself very much reconsidering at the moment, but I'll leave that discussion (at least, in English) until I have a bit more in the way of answers. Suffice it to say, in the words of the great Camille:

galadriel58: And I don't need a PhD to teach, and I sure as hell don't need a PhD in Russian history from a high-ranking school to teach.
cammyal: true true
cammyal: and if you don't like grad school
cammyal: i'd say FUUUUCKCCKKCCKCK IT

And a final note: Olga e-mailed me in that patented half-subconscious Deutschlish we all speak now. I've appended my response below, since it's not at all private and it functions as a kind of "Mein Wochenende" mini-Aufsatz. It's a hard habit to break. For authenticity, I've left out the umlauts, even though German is ugly as hell without the umlauts.

"Sorry about the missing update. Als ich am Samstag zurueckgekommen bin, war ich ploetzlich muede: es war mir sehr zu heiss hier in Atlanta, und weil meine Mutter mich am Flughafen nicht abholen konnte, musste ich mit der S-Bahn durch die Stadt fahren. Als ich endlich zu Hause war, hatte ich halt kein Lust, im Tagebuch zu schreiben. Am Sonntag habe ich das aber gemacht, und ich glaube, heute werde ich noch einmal (und zum letzten Mal) ueber Dresden etwas schreiben. Das ist traurig; danach wird es mir wirklich zu Bewusstsein kommen, dass alles mit Dresden zum Ende gekommen ist.

Mein Englisch ist noch perfekt... aber Tippen was mir ein bisschen schwer, weil die z, y, -, /, und ein paar andere Tasten auf amerikanischen Tastaturen verschiedene Plaetze haben. Nachdem ich mit meiner Freunden/Freundinnen im Internet studenlang "gesprochen" hatte, ist das Problem aber weggegangen.

Jetzt habe ich also nur ein Problem: ich will nach Dresden! Ich bin gar nicht sicher, was ich machen soll; ich fuehle mich, als ob mein Studium mir kein mehr Interesse hat. Vielleicht moechte ich lieber Sprachen lehren, und keine Geschichte, aber was denn? Nach zwei Wochen muss ich trotzdem nach Chicago, um Geschichte zu studieren. Ich muesste ganz von vorne anfangen... aber viellecht ist das besser, als den falschen Weg entlang noch weiter zu gehen.

Siehst du, ich habe mich sehr verwirrt, und das waehrend meinen Ferien! Wahrscheinlich wird die Zukunft klarer, oder? Lies mein Tagebuch nur: alles wird da erlkaeren worden, wenn ich selbst es verstehen kann. Auch in diesem Eintrag gibt es meine Fotos; sie sind nicht alle so schoen, aber du bist da! Ich glaube, du wirst die lustig finden.

Schreib bald, hier oder im Tagebuch! Wenn du auf Englisch "sprechen" willst, schreib auf Englisch; wenn Deutsch, auf Deutsch. So koennen wir die beide ueben. Eines Tages schreibe ich wahrscheinlich auf Russisch: das wird dir ganz komisch, ich glaube."

By all means run that thing through Babelfish and let me know what you find, besides a variety of grammatical errors. I know what I meant, and I suspect Olga will, too.

So there you have it: I went to Dresden, and it was better than some other places I've been. I'll need to go back when I've built up the arm strength to carry my real camera (and tripod and film and lenses…) and retake all the pictures I completely screwed up this time around. Next time I'll rent a bike, since I wanted a bike the whole time I was there, and pack a couple of sweaters and a more effective raincoat.

You? You should also go to Dresden, my friends. You should go and you should take me with you.