Settling In

Today I finally moved into my actual room. The landlord told me yesterday that Achim (who lives in the room I have been staying in) was coming today, but Maksim told me he was coming tomorrow. He showed up right when I was on my way out the door to go meet my mentor teacher (again) so I had to quickly pack everything up, throw it in the third room, and then run all the way to school.

I finally got around to opening up a bank account today. It was your everyday normal bank account opening except that the bank employee opening my account thought it was hilarious that I have an American passport, two German middle names and a phone number from Great Britain. Also, apparently they don't require you to actually put any money into the account when you open it. The whole thing was over and she asked me if I had any more questions and I said, "Um, can I put money in? Don't you require that?" Apparently not. The other random question that I got was whether I smoke. You expect that when your landlord asks you or maybe your employer, but not your bank. However, it has to do with the cigarette machines. They still have cigarette machines in Germany, all over the place (sort of like Japanese vending machines). The way they prevent underage kids from buying cigarettes is that you can only pay with your EC-card (debit card) and it has a little chip on it that has your age information. If you don't have a little chip or you are not old enough, you're just SOL. It's an interesting solution I think.

One more thing that I had forgotten about Germany... they don't have worms that come out when it rains, they have GIANT SLUGS. When you step on a giant slug, you can feel it squish and then it's nasty and yellow-orange and completely creeps me out.

Sleeping In and Misunderstandings

I got woken up in the middle of the night and then I couldn't get back to sleep until almost five. Needless to say, I was a little groggy in the morning. I got up around nine, had breakfast and went back to sleep until 11:10. That was sort of a problem because I had told my mentor teacher at the school that I would meet her at 11:15ish. This is where we find out problems with her English. I swear she told me that she was getting to school at 11:15 because she didn't have any classes until then and she would be around - so I figured that it was okay that I was a little late. I thought this was a little confusing at the time so I asked her about five times to confirm that - but apparently what she actually meant was that she was done at 11:15, so by the time I got there, she was already gone. On the bright side, everyone (aka three people) that I talked to were very nice. The principal of the school, Herr Kuchorz, gave me a tour of the school building and explained a bit what I was going to do.

Interesting Things About the School
1) They apparently have a fantastic art program. The kids are only 5th to 8th grade - and I'm pretty sure I wasn't doing anything that good when I was in 5th and 6th grade art.

2) They also have an excellent music program - especially the choirs - and I'm pretty sure that he said there is even a choir made up of just the teachers. I'll have to look into that one.

3) When the school was first built, they had approximately 1200 students. Now they only have about 700. Why? Because after the fall of the wall, people all left for the West (because they didn't have jobs here anymore or they wanted to reunite with their families or all of those other reasons that people left for West Germany). Apparently it is such a problem at some of the other schools in the area that they have trouble staying open because they don't have enough students. With everything that I've studied about East and West Germany, school/education for younger students is one thing I never really considered.

4) The walls are covered with paintings and drawings and everything done by the students. There are murals celebrating different Abitur years and all sorts of things. In the wing for the oldest students, this is especially so. Besides the fact that it looks cool, apparently it's a way for the school to save money on painting and renovation since they don't get so much money for that. The policy is that if the students want to paint the walls, they pay for the paint - and as long as they pay for the paint, they are free to do whatever they want.

I met my landlord today also. He speaks fairly good English, which he of course wants to practice. I was very impressed actually, except for one mistake. I was downstairs talking to his mother (who lives underneath us) and he was running in and out doing some errands. At one point, he starts talking to me about spoons and I couldn't figure out what he was talking about. It wasn't until he told me that he was going to show me how to get into the apartment if I had forgotten or didn't have my spoon that I realized he meant key. I'm not quite sure how he mixed those two words up - but I'm sure my German is just as silly sometimes. Two that I used to mix up a lot are aufwachen and aufwachsen (which at least are very similar words). The first means "to wake up" and the second "to grow up". Now I understand why I used to get strange looks when talking about what time I got up that morning.

The mother of Herr Kobe, my landlord, was interesting. She asked about my parents and I told her that my father had died and so we started having a conversation about whether or not my mom had to work now. I explained that mom had already worked before. Then she asked about whether we got a pension or anything like that (which I wouldn't have known what she was talking about if I hadn't gone to the movie the night before where I learned the German word for pension - Rente). She explained that her husband died when she was 48ish right around the time of the fall of the wall. There she was with four children, no longer any form of social support, hadn't worked for years, and suddenly the state tells her, "There's nothing wrong with you. Go out and work - you're not eligible for a pension or anything yet because you're not old enough." And at the time, it was much more difficult to find a job as a woman.

Goethe

The famous German poet, Goethe, spent a lot of time in Ilmenau, wandering and writing and being Goethe. He wrote the Wandrers Nachtlied in the evening of September 6, 1780. He wrote it in pencil on the inside wall of a small hunting shack on the top of the Kickelhahn. However, it didn't appear in any of his works for 35 years. The day before his last birthday, fifty years later, he went to the hut again and remembered that he had written those words so long before and they were still there. Unfortunately, in 1870 the hut burned down so the original can no longer be seen.


Wandrers Nachtlied

Über allen Gipfeln
Ist Ruh,
In allen Wipfeln
Spürest du
Kaum einen Hauch;
Die Vögelein schweigen im Walde.
Warte nur, balde
Ruhest du auch.

Wanderer's Evening Song

Over all of the hills
Peace comes anew,
The woodland stills
All through;
The birds make no sound on the bough.
Wait a while,
Soon now
Peace comes to you.

Frankfurt/Friedberg

It's now the middle of the night and I am not exactly sleeping - the phone woke me up and I am having trouble regaining sleep mode.

Before I got to Ilmenau, I went to visit Tom Aney and his family in Friedberg, which is a suburb of Frankfurt. I don't know if we've ever actually met before, but family is family right? Cecilia and Ben are great kids - they don't fight too much and have generally sunny dispositions. Ben isn't quite old enough to talk yet - but his two favorite words are "Cah" and "Ah-oh" - which both can loosely be translated as referring to cars - but ah-oh can really be made to fit all situations.

Saturday I went into Frankfurt to go to the Museumsuferfest. All the museums in Frankfurt are arranged along the shores of the river (hence the name Museumsufer) and every year they throw a big festival with food, shopping, entertainment stages, and cheap admission to the museums and their special activities and exhibitions. I got really fascinated by the multicultural dances at one of the stages and basically just sat and watched them for a couple of hours. I also got to see some dragon boat races. It was a fun time, but it's one of those things that it's more fun to have someone to go with.

Sunday I decided to hang out with the Aney-Szilagyis. Tom and I took the kids to the Friedberg Feuerwehrfest (fire department festival). The kids got to run around and sit in the trucks and bounce on a bouncy house type thing. It was your typical cute little small town festival. Later, we went to the swimming pool. Their swimming pool is in Ockstadt, another little town in the area, and the pool is fed by a mountain spring of some sort and it is COLD. The water is definitely not clear like a mountain spring though.

Going to the pool made me reflect a bit more on the differences between Europe and the United States. Think about the last time you went to a public pool. Do they allow jumping into the water? Do they allow running by the edge of the pool? How about pool toys or floats and things like that? Of course not - and there would have to be at least ten lifeguards. This Ockstadt pool allowed you to jump in wherever you liked and run around as much as you wanted. They have a giant black inner tube which all the kids fight over and hang off. And there are NO lifeguards. And of course, because you are in Germany, you can buy beer at the pool.

Third Day in Ilmenau

This is the outside of my apartment building in Ilmenau. I live on the third floor (basically the roof although I think there is actually someone who lives on the fourth floor - must be really small). Yesterday I climbed the Kickelhahn - tallest mountain the region around Ilmenau - and this is a view of Ilmenau from halfway up the mountain.

Today I decided that I would hike the Goethe Wanderweg. It's a trail that Goethe used to hike often when he lived in Ilmenau, using beauty of nature to inspire him. Then he apparently wrote his poems on whatever was available at the moment - stones, building walls, etc - early graffiti and all of that. The whole trail is 21 km long and goes from Ilmenau to Stützerbach. Usually you take the bus back to Ilmenau from there, but I decided I was cheap and it was only 10 km back to Ilmenau so I walked. 31 km is a long way. Unfortunately, my camera ran out of batteries about twenty minutes into the hike so I only got a few pictures. That just means I have to do it again sometime.

There's a heated outdoor pool that's only open for a couple more days. I meant to go after hiking today, but I was a little too tired - plus it's really only about 50 degrees here, so it's hard to get in the mood for swimming even if it is heated. I walked over and looked at it the other day though - fairly elaborate - with water slides and everything. Maybe I will go tomorrow. There's also an indoor swimming pool, but it doesn't open until the outdoor pool closes.

This evening I went to the movie theatre. Wednesdays and Sundays it has what they call Kino-Extra - which I would term as showing indie type films. I saw a movie called "Der große Ausverkauf", which translates to "The Big Sellout". It talked all about privatization and how it has affected different people across the world - another one of those movies that makes you really uncomfortable to be an American because you feel like it is all your fault. It was a German film, but it was completely not in German at all - mostly in English, sometimes in Spanish, always subtitled. I think there is usually a discussion of the films afterwards but I was pretty tired after all my hiking so I just went back (also I don't have a key to my apartment yet and I didn't want to be locked out because my roommate already went to sleep or something).

Tomorrow's agenda:
- get a bank account
- register myself as a resident of the town
- go meet my Betreeungslehrerin (mentor teacher) - whose English to be honest is really not very good - maybe I don't speak very clearly, but she never understands what I say - I think I will try German - but she probably wants to practice her English also) - I heard from the guy at the Tourist Office that she broke her hand somehow - but it's okay because you don't need your hands to teach (his words not mine).