Ich Lerne (Week 2)

This week for me was all about learning how I'm going to balance my classes with our excursions and my own travels. Everyone has settled into class, which means all of the assignments are due and the first round of exams is just beyond the horizon. My schedule here is a lot different from what it was in College Station. It's mainly because we've had back-to-back classes until 1600 or 1700 most days, but that looks like it'll be changing in the coming weeks- at least for BIMS students. At this point, though, I've gotten more use to the long days. They're hard but they make me more productive, so I don't have as much to study or work on when I go home in the evenings. So, even though things calm down for me these next few weeks, I'll probably still stay at AIB just to work. I've discovered that I'm more productive there than I am at home, where I just want to watch Netflix or kill time on my phone. Which is why just yesterday, I went into town to study at AIB instead of staying at home. Today I didn't go out because my host family has Sunday brunches with everyone, including oma and the brother and sister who don't live at home anymore. We didn't finish until around 1300 and I wasn't really feeling up to the 30-minute trip into town after a big meal.

So far, my favorite class is History of Medicine in Europe. Of course, I kind of predicted it would be because I've always loved history and it's the course for which we have our excursions. It's also the course that includes our German lessons, which I really enjoy. But the lectures we've had this past week for the history course were incredibly interesting and I can't wait to learn more about the development of medicine here. Things have advanced so far from the days when medicine was tied irrevocably to spiritual and religious practices. Anyway, when it comes to German, I am constantly astounded by the differences in the language's structure and use. For example, this week, we learned how to talk about the time and it was super weird. Germans apparently like to talk about anything within the ten minutes before and after the half-hour by referencing the half-hour, not the current or next hour. That means that 1025 is "five before half to 1100" and 1340 is "ten after half to 1400." And pretty much everything after 20 minutes references the next hour, not the current one. So not only do I have to learn the German words, but I also have to remember the typical German structure for referring to time. It's all pretty confusing. And I honestly think my limited knowledge of Spanish is messing with me. I keep trying to make the "h" sound when I see a "j," instead of the "y" sound I know it has to be. And irregular conjugations in German affect different pronouns than in Spanish, which confuses me sometimes. I like learning German and I enjoy the class but, overall, I'm just a mess.

Besides classes, we went on our excursion to Cologne, or Köln for the Germans, and had a great time freezing to death. That day I was, without a doubt, the coldest I have ever been since coming to Germany. My toes and fingers started to hurt after about 20 minutes outside and the first thing we did was go on a 1.5-hour walking tour of central Cologne. The town is super cute and the cathedral was breathtaking, but it was so cold! After lunch, we all visited the EL-DE Haus for a guided tour. During the Third Reich, the building was used as the headquarters of the Gestapo and it was later made into a museum. We saw the prison in the basement, which was surreal. Most of the walls still had the writing of those imprisoned there, who were from a lot of different countries. And the rooms were so small, it's hard to imagine how 20-30 people could even fit in them, which apparently was what happened. That part of the trip was interesting but, overall, pretty melancholic.

To have us leave on a high note, the next planned event was a tour of the cathedral. Before lunch, we had stopped in for a few minutes because we had some time but now we would be going up and walking around about half of the cathedral, including outside. It amazes me how people could build such structures so long ago, with very basic technology. I also can't really fathom the over 600 years that it took to build the cathedral. Apparently, the building started in 1248 and engineers were working continuously for 200 years before there was a 400-year-long break in construction due to lack of funds and diminished enthusiasm for the project. Work didn't start again until 1842, in part because of the Gothic Revival associated with the Romanticism of the times. What's kind of crazy, to me, is that the funds at this point were mostly crowd-sourced. I don't think that there are many causes nowadays that could get the same level of support. It was from a local population too! Pretty much every charity that exists today can and does get support from around the globe and still can't completely rectify whatever injustice they're trying to address. Although, maybe I shouldn't be so surprised after people donated so much money to that GoFundMe page to help A&M pay for the fines after the LSU game- even though A&M is a for-profit institution that takes tons of students' money already.

Anyway, our guide took us up in a tiny, dodgy work elevator before she led us along the inside of the cathedral. After that, we headed outside on a narrow walkway and, in the end, up into a bell tower. The cathedral was absolutely breathtaking, especially when we went to the top of the building. But really, everything about the cathedral blew my mind, from how long it took to build, to the sheer size of it, to the beauty I saw in it and from it. It's actually kind of funny because I can still hardly believe it was real. Especially when we first got into town; we just turned a corner and there it was: this giant, amazing building taking up almost my entire line of sight. None of the pictures I took can really capture the full effect of the view or what I felt being there. I'll just include a few photos below and leave it at that for now. Some of the photos are from my fellow students because my phone spazzed-out and died from how cold it was. I felt like my fingers were going to fall off, so I wasn't surprised my phone couldn't handle the temperature.