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08/01/2012
Vorwort und Betrachtung
Introduction and Reflection
I am the kind of person who always likes to plan ahead, if only for the sake of having a
plan. My freshman year of college, I spent (an admittedly boring) winter break planning out my
entire class schedule for the next seven semesters. I was going to be an Economics major, with a
focus in developing nations in Latin America-all before I had even taken an Economics course
(or Spanish, for that matter). Given my propensity for planning, it’s kind of amazing to look back
on the past four years of my life and realize how much of it has actually been ruled by
coincidence and spur-of-the-moment decisions. The most important decision, the one that has
decided just about everything else that came afterward, was the decision to take German instead
of Spanish, which I only made because it fit better into my schedule. I then decided to major in
German because my college’s study abroad program was so amazing1 (2 months in Berlin and 4
months in Vienna, with a daily food stipend thrown in-you can’t beat that), and here I am now all
graduated and preparing to move back to Austria to work as an English teaching assistant for the
next school year.
Even this recent trip I took to Germany to intern at a Kunstverein was pretty coincidental.
I was a Macalester student, but I had heard about it through one of my professors who likes to
keep German majors updated on work and internship opportunities in the Twin Cities. I had
never studied Art History, and I had no idea what it took to put together a successful art exhibit2.
But I had taken a few Studio Art courses before, so I was interested in seeing what the other side
of the art world looked like, and I guess I played that fact up well enough in my interview to get
picked.
As it happened, I had already been planning a trip to Germany this summer as a
graduation present to myself, because I had actually won a photo competition through the DAAD
that paid for my flight. The contest was called “Express Your German(y)”. We had to pick our
favorite German word and then take a photo in Germany that best expressed that word. I had
chosen the word “Sehnsucht” which means “desire” or “yearning” because I already happened to
have a killer photo to go along with it-it’s a photo I took a few years ago in Munich, and it’s of a
dog who is tied up outside a butcher’s shop, and he’s just staring longingly into the window3. So,
long story short, I already had a ticket to Germany, so this internship ended up being an excuse
to stay twice as long as I had originally planned.
What was really amazing about this internship though, was the fact that I was randomly
placed in Braunschweig, which, as I learned from Wikipedia, is actually the German sister city of
my hometown, Omaha, NE. I mean, that’s a pretty huge coincidence, so I kind of took it as a
sign that this internship was the right thing to be doing.
I graduated on the twelfth of May, moved back to Omaha on the thirteenth, and boarded
my flight to Germany on the twenty-first. I spent my first month there traveling through
Germany and Austria, both by myself and with a group from the U of M (which I will explain
later). I arrived in Braunschweig on the nineteenth of June, and I stayed until the twenty-third of
July. What follows is my journal from that time period. So let’s get right into it!
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And because I realized that Economics actually kind of makes me want to cry.
You bang in a nail, you hang up a picture. That’s pretty much all there is to it, right?
3
I’m not going to lie-it’s pretty adorable.
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2
Itinerary
To spare myself and anyone else reading this any confusion4, I think I should start with
listing my itinerary for the next two months.
May 22-I arrive in Munich
May 25-I head over to Vienna
May 30-Make my way to Hallstatt
June 3-Meet up with a group from the University of Minnesota in Jena
June 9-Travel with U of M group to Berlin
June 11-Travel with U of M group to Hamburg
June 13- Say goodbye to U of M group, head to Dresden
June 19-Leave Dresden, meet up with the Kunstverein Braunschweig
July 23-Fly home to Omaha
Jeez, I’m exhausted just typing all that.
5/22/2012
Der Anfang
The Beginning
I chose to start my trip in Munich for two main reasons: 1) it’s fairly easy to get to
Vienna from here, and 2) I’ve actually been here before. I came here with my high school Latin
class, as a matter of fact. That trip was the first time I had ever been outside the United States. It
was also years before I had learned a lick o’ German. It’s kind of amazing how much different
my experience of the city has been this time around. For one thing, the city itself is quite a bit
more compact than I had realized that first time around. If you’re willing to do a bit of walking,
you can hit a lot of the major sights without ever having to step foot on a subway or tram.
Because the airport in Omaha is so close to the downtown area, I always kind of forget
that most major cities kind of set their airports off to the side. So, as soon as I got off the plane in
Munich, I had to figure out how to actually get to Munich from the airport. It turned out to be
about a 40-minute train ride into the city. I spent a good five minutes standing in front of the
automatic ticket machine trying to figure out which ticket I should buy before I finally broke
down and asked the person next to me for help. I tried (valiantly, I like to think) to ask for help in
German, but I was so sleepy that it came out more like, and I’m translating here: “Ex-excuse me.
Can, could you please hilp-help me?” Fortunately, the man took pity on this dumb American.
Not only did he show me which ticket to buy, but he also showed me how to get to the train stop
from the airport (he was headed that way anyway). As it turns out, not only does he live in
Braunschweig, but his brother studied abroad in Omaha. How’s that for a weird coincidence?
I got to my hostel without event-I’m so awful with directions, I usually end up circling
the block three or four times before I actually find the right street to turn down. Unfortunately,
though, my room wasn’t ready when I got there, so I ended up spending about two hours napping
in the common room just past the lobby. It was furnished with hammocks, though, and plenty of
pillows, so I can’t complain too much about it.
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Not even my parents can keep my plans straight.
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5/24/2012
Letzter Tag in München
Last Day in Munich
Yesterday I went on a walking tour of Munich that was provided by my hostel. The
hostel’s brochure claimed it would be a free tour, but the guy actually charged 11 Euros per
person. It was hard to be mad about that though, because it was a really great tour. I mean, the
guy talked for almost four hours straight5!
His tour focused on 3 things:
1) teaching us to navigate through central Munich like a local,
2) demonstrating the difference between “German” and “Bavarian” culture, and
3) explaining how the Nazi party could possibly have come to power6.
To show us how to find our way, the tour guide, Ozzy, took us to see the only four structures in
Munich that survived WWII. These four structures7 are really easy to spot because, due to an old
law dictating building height, they are the tallest structures in Munich. That is precisely the
reason they survived WWII, despite the city being bombed more than 70 times. Allied pilots
used them as navigational tools, because, as Ozzy explained it, it was a lot easier for the higherups to say “Okay, bomb the building that’s due east of that really tall church over there” than it
was to say “Bomb the building that lies at 48 degrees N…”
What’s really interesting about Munich is that it looks almost precisely as it did before
WWII, even though it was almost completely destroyed in the war. Which factors into #2, that
German and Bavarian are not synonymous. Where northern Germany is generally more
Protestant and liberal, Bavaria (in southern Germany) is deeply Catholic and deeply
conservative. So, after the war ended, the Munchkens8 decided to rebuild everything the way it
was before. This stands in stark contrast to cities like Berlin, where relatively little was
reconstructed in its original image.
Ozzy also pointed out that many of the stereotypes that we have in the U.S. about the
German lifestyle actually describe the Bavarian lifestyle (to a certain degree-I mean, stereotypes
are called “stereotypes” for a reason, after all). Obvious example: Oktoberfest. But also wearing
lederhosen, which literally means “leather pants”. I definitely never saw anyone wearing them
when I studied abroad in Berlin9. While you do see them pretty often around Munich,
particularly on older gentlemen, they are actually traditionally worn by farmers because,
apparently, they wear really well, and you don’t have to wash them very often.
I have heard northern Germans say before that Bavaria is like an entirely separately
country, and Ozzy seemed really keen on pointing out all of the cultural differences between the
two geographic regions. It actually kind of reminded me of the northern vs. southern United
States. It does seem that there, as here, the northerners tend to sort of view the southerners as
He also made a point of shaking everyone’s hand at the end of the tour as he took their money,
which I thought was pretty classy of him.
6
That last one sounds way less random when you know that the Nazi party was officially formed
in Munich.
7
Of which I can only remember the Glockenspiel offhand…
8
I don’t know what you call people from Munich.
9
I did see some teenagers wearing them in Rome once, though.
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“backward”, while the southerners viewed the northerners as, I don’t really know-just different, I
suppose. More liberal, maybe? But in a negative way. One interesting difference, though, is that
Bavaria and particularly Munich is far wealthier than the other regions of Germany, while in the
U.S. some of our poorest states are in the south.
I don’t want to go too deeply into Ozzy’s third point because, well, this just isn’t the
proper forum for it. But he did point out how the Nazi party started out as a sort of workers’
party which appealed to farmers, of which there were many in Bavaria.
After the tour ended, I decided to keep walking (although it was a 4-hour tour, we did
spend a lot of time sitting around listening, and we took a break for lunch), and I headed over to
the English Garden. The English Garden is a really interesting place; it’s about twice the size of
Central Park in New York City, and it has its own sort of mini-regions. A river runs through the
park, and there’s one part of the river where it crosses under a bridge and, I don’t know if it’s a
natural result of the pressure of passing under the bridge or if it is intentionally created, but as the
river passes through the other side, it creates some pretty decent waves. So surfing is actually a
pretty big sport in Munich, despite being miles from the ocean. On a regular day, you can see a
dozen or so surfers standing on the banks on either side of the river waiting their turn to ride.
They go one at a time, surf for a minute or two (or until they fall) and then let themselves be
carried a few meters downstream in order to get out of the way for the next rider.
About a half-hour walk from the surfer area is the Chinese Tower, which, I have to admit,
was a big letdown. It took me a really long time to find it, and I get there, and…it’s just a
wooden tower. The stairs were blocked off, so you couldn’t go up it, and, like most of the rest of
Munich, it’s not even the original. The original tower was destroyed during WWII10. Also, it
seems that it was modeled after a tower in England, which was modeled after a tower in China,
which seems a little strange to me, like it should be called the “English-Chinese Tower”. But I
guess it makes sense when you think about the fact that it’s in the English garden…
5/27/2012
Einzelreisende
Flying Solo
Boy, there’s nothing like traveling alone to teach you a little bit about yourself11. I’ve
known for a long time already that I’m more of a homebody than anything else, but this trip has
helped me learn that it pays to get outside. Even just going for a walk can lead to unexpected
things.
And how’s this for unexpected: I saw the Dalai Lama here in Vienna. I’m staying with a
friend of mine whom I had met while I was on study abroad last spring12. She actually lives in
Klosterneuburg, a beautiful little town just outside of Vienna. She was a little stressed out during
my visit because she is just starting to work on her master’s thesis, so I decided to give her some
It seems that it burned down, but I can’t say for certain that it happened as a result of the war.
Example: I do stupid things when I’m nervous. Like spending so much time looking up at
signs to make sure I’m heading toward the right train that I run straight into a pole. Then get on
the wrong train. True story.
12
There’s another good Omaha-related coincidence. The first time we met was at a bus stop. I
asked her about directions, and we got to talking-it turns out her best friend studied abroad in
Omaha (my hometown).
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alone time on Saturday. I didn’t really know where I wanted to go, since I had already seen many
of the main sights the previous spring, so I decided to just head to Vienna and sort of wander
around the old neighborhood, which for me, was in the first district13. I was cutting through
Heldenplatz (a.k.a. “Heroes’ Square) on my way to the Volksgarten (“folks’ park”), and I noticed
a stage with a sign stating “TIBET NEEDS YOU. NOW!” There were some musicians already
there playing some sort of world music I didn’t recognize14. It wasn’t really my taste, but I
figured hey, free music, and I sat down to listen.
Pretty soon, the song ended, and an announcer came up to tell us that there would be a
few more performances, a couple of speeches, and then about an hour and a half from now, the
Dalai Lama would be making an appearance. I definitely hadn’t been planning on spending that
much time in Heldenplatz, but I figured the DL was worth the wait.
I have to say, seeing the Dalai Lama was one of those things on my bucket list that I
honestly never expected to actually happen (although, technically, my bucket list included
talking to him, but I’ll take what I can get). To be perfectly honest, I don’t even remember what
he spoke about. But I could have listened to him all day.
He gave his speech in English, and then it was translated into German. So I got to listen
to everything twice. But what I thought was especially moving was that he first spoke in Tibetan.
Even though almost no one in the audience understood him (and his words were eventually
translated into German), it was so important to him to use the right words, to express his
thoughts exactly. Having struggled with a foreign language myself, I could definitely appreciate
that.
5/29/2012
Kurzer Abstecher
Short Side Trip
I have been having some troubles with obtaining my Austrian residency permit, which
started the day I left for Germany. I had been told by the Fulbright Commission (through whom I
have received this teaching position for the next school year) that I would be able to turn in my
application to an Austrian Consulate within the U.S. by July 1st. However, since I will obviously
not be in the country by that date, I had made arrangements for my parents to receive the
necessary documentation (copies of my birth certificate, a certified letter stating that I have no
criminal record, etc.) and to mail them to the consulate during my absence. However, as I found
out at the airport when I called the consulate in Chicago, you have to hand in things like
residency permit applications in person15. Which is why I had to leave Vienna a day early to
head to Scheibbs, Austria, where I am now.
Vienna is divided into 23 districts. The first district is the city center-it’s got a lot of the big
sights like the Hofburg palace, St. Stephan’s Cathedral (Stephansdom), etc. I technically lived in
the eighth district, right behind the town hall (Rathaus), but I was right on the border between the
eighth and the first.
14
Before you say it, I’m pretty sure it wasn’t traditional Tibetan music.
15
Admittedly, I had not taken the time to carefully read all of the documents I had received from
the Fulbright Commission, which said the exact same thing. I had been trying a “take-care-ofthings-as-they-come-up” approach to get me through the stress of graduation and preparing for
this trip. Didn’t work out quite as well as I had hoped…
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Scheibbs is a small enough town that I couldn’t actually find a hotel online to reserve a
room at, so I had to go to the next town over. I didn’t think about how I was going to get from
the train station to that town, though, and when I got there around dinner-time on a Tuesday
evening, the last bus had already run. Fortunately, I saw a man leaving his office (which was in
the train station but I don’t think was actually affiliated with it in any way), I asked him for
directions, and he ended up offering me a ride to my hotel. Normally, I’m not the kind of person
who would ever accept a ride from a stranger, and I had my father’s voice in my head the whole
ten-minute ride telling me how dangerous it was, but I was desperate, and he seemed like an
upstanding citizen. Which he was. He dropped me off at the hotel, which was closed and had a
sign saying, “Call this number for a room”. He called the number for me, since I didn’t have a
cell phone, and about 10 minutes later the proprietor showed up to show me to my room. As it
turns out, he and his wife had been on holiday the day before and had closed the hotel that day,
so, despite having made an online reservation, my arrival was a complete shock to them. I’m
pretty sure I was the only guest in the entire hotel, which was a pretty scary feeling, I have to
say. There may have been one other person there.
But why did I have to go to Scheibbs, you might be asking yourself. Well, the town that I
will be teaching in falls within the district of Scheibbs’ jurisdiction, so I was told to hand in my
permit application here. Unfortunately, though, all of the necessary documents are with my
parents in the U.S. Everyone I have spoken with has been very accommodating, though, and they
agreed to allow me to bring in copies of my docs that my parents have emailed to me and then
send the originals later on.
The next day…
Well, upon my arrival at the town hall, I was informed that, due to some bureaucratic
border that goes along my town, I cannot register with them until I know what my permanent
address will be in Austria. So, now I guess it’s time to find an apartment… I have been given the
email address of the woman who held my position for the last two years. Hopefully, she will
have some advice on where to look. I might even be able to snag her old apartment.
As far as my permit application goes, I have been told I can apply at a later date at any Austrian
consulate in Germany16. Until then, I’m just going to finish up with my trip as planned. Next up
is Hallstatt.
6/1/2012
Hallstatt
Today is my last day in Hallstatt, and although I was really excited about coming here, I
am more than ready to leave.
16
NOT TRUE! This is an update from July: wasted a day and more Euros than I care to mention
on a trip to the consulate in Berlin, where I was told I can’t apply there without a Meldezettel,
which is a document basically stating that I am registered with the government and can legally
reside in Germany. Which I can’t obtain because I’m here as a tourist. I have been assured by
officials in Scheibbs that I can come back to their office when I arrive in Austria in September,
and I should be able to get my visa within a week of applying. Fingers crossed. If I don’t get my
visa within the month (after which I can’t legally stay in Austria), I’m just going to move to
Croatia and work on a fishing boat for the next year.
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For anyone who has never heard of Hallstatt, it is arguably one of the most beautiful
places in the world, and certainly one of the most beautiful places I have ever seen. It’s a little
town located in Austria’s Salzkammergut, a resort area that spans across the federal states of
Salzburg, Upper Austria, and Styria17. It’s sort of nestled at the bottom of the mountains and on
the edge of a giant lake. A few of my friends visited here during study abroad, but I had never
gotten the chance, so when I found out I would be coming back to Europe this summer, Hallstatt
was first on my list of places to visit.
Hallstatt is accessible by one of two routes: by train and by bus (or car, I suppose).
However, although the train is the main method of getting to Hallstatt, the town itself is not
actually directly accessible by train. Rather, the train drops you off at the station across the lake
from the town, where apparently no one lives (there isn’t even a bathroom at the train stationthat’s how small it is), and you have to take the ferry across the lake to the town. Luckily, the
ferry is pretty inexpensive, and it comes about every fifteen minutes.
My hotel is sort of on the very outskirts of Hallstatt- even still, it’s only about a fifteenminute walk from here to the city center. But it’s directly adjacent to some beautiful hiking trails
into the mountains. Unfortunately, I didn’t bring the proper hiking gear for the weather-it’s been
raining for about 90% of the time I’ve been here. So I haven’t explored too much. I’ve been a
little wary of those trails since I almost fell off a mountain two days ago trying to take a photo of
myself with the beautiful landscape in the background18. Needless to say, I wasn’t about to go
back out there when the path was slippery with rain.
Despite its picturesque scenery, Hallstatt has been ranked by many different sources as
one of the top ten creepiest places in the world because of its Beinhaus or “charnel house”. Being
tucked between a mountain and a lake as it is, land in Hallstatt is scarce. So, like in many places
in Austria and the rest of Europe, residents chose to use a charnel house as the final resting place
for their deceased19. When someone died, their body would be buried for a period of about 10-15
years to allow them to decompose, and then their skulls and a few other bones were dug up again
(essentially, then, all grave plots were rentals). Their skulls would be exposed to sun- and
moonlight for weeks to allow them to bleach and then were decoratively painted20 with a crown
of flowers (symbolizing the flowers that are planted on graves) and placed in the charnel house.
Today, there are more then 1200 skulls there. The skulls of priests are recognizable because they
were placed on books.
Although I admit that it is rather morbid to visit such a place while on vacation, it was
actually really peaceful and not at all creepy. It is also really interesting from an environmental
perspective when you consider just how much actually goes into our burial process today in the
U.S.-from the chemicals we use to preserve our bodies to the wood we use to create our coffins
to the actual land we take up for cemeteries.
Now, it must be said that the last person to be interred in the Beinhaus died in 198321, so
this practice is not one that is still common in Austria, but it does make you think about burial as
17
Interesting fact about Hallstatt: I just read in an article that an exact replica of the entire town
is being built in China. I think you all can appreciate what I mean when I say, “Ummm, what?”
18 That’s what I get for trying to take a selfie.
19
Austria is a deeply Catholic country, so cremation was not a viable solution to their space
problem until relatively recently.
20
As long as their relatives could afford to have it done.
21
Her skull is recognizable by its gold tooth.
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a cultural practice, as well as the uses we have for burial sites beyond the obvious one of
disposing of our dead. What I mean by that is that they are not actually simply a place to
“dispose of our dead”. We visit gravesites to remember and honor our deceased loved ones. We
bring them flowers to remind the world (and, if you believe in spirits, to remind those people
themselves) that those people are still loved even though they’re gone. Of course, families in
places that used charnel houses would have been able to do this in the 10-15 years that the
deceased remained buried, but what happened after those fifteen years? Did families still visit
charnel houses?
I suppose I’m sort of rambling here. That’s kind of what happens when you’re shut up in
a hotel room by yourself for a few days.
Tomorrow I’m heading to Salzburg, just for the night, and the next day I will be heading
to Jena, a university town in Germany, where I will be meeting up with a group from the
University of Minnesota.
6/3/2012
U of M Group
For the next 10 days I am traveling with a group from the U of M. The trip was organized
by the Department of German, Scandinavian, and Dutch and particularly by Professor Arsena
Ianevea-Lockney, who is leading the trip and graciously allowing me to tag along. The point of
this trip is, by my understanding at least, to consider environmental initiatives and practices in
Germany (and to practice our German, of course). We will be visiting the Carl Zeiss Jena, a
company that is the leading producer of lenses, such as those used in scientific and medical
equipment, Schott, the largest manufacturer of high tech glass in the world, and the Bundestag in
Berlin, among other places.
Excluding train and airfare, this trip is completely paid for, which is amazing. The only
stipulation is that we must each take turns writing a one-page essay after our various excursions
describing what we saw and learned. Which is not a bad price to pay for ten nights of room and
board. But, since all the main points of our trip will be covered by these essays and, I assume,
made available online somewhere on the U of M’s website, I am choosing not to write about it
here.
6/27/2012
Erste Eindrücke von Braunschweig
First Impressions of Braunschweig
From what I’ve seen of Braunschweig so far, it’s a very pretty little city. I don’t know
about land space, but in terms of population, it is about half the size of Omaha, and it definitely
has much more of a small town feel. My second day here, I gave the office a book about Omaha
that I had picked up at the airport (it’s actually the same one I bought for my host families when I
studied abroad last year). It’s mostly just a book of photos, but it makes Omaha look really good.
I think my coworkers appreciated it, they all sat down together to look through it, and one of
them even said “This is Braunschweig’s sister city?!”
I really like the atmosphere in the Kunstverein Braunschweig’s office. The office itself is
very open and airy with lots of sunlight. All of my coworkers are extremely warm and friendly,
and they’re really patient with my German. They all seem to be pretty good friends, which is a
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nice thing to see in an office. One thing I absolutely love is that they all eat lunch together every
day, and they actually take turns cooking. I think that sort of thing really helps you bond as an
office. It’ll be my turn to cook soon, so I have to think of some typical American fare that’s also
easy to cook. I might make tuna salad sandwiches.
I’m staying in an apartment in the basement floor of the Kunstverein. It’s actually really
roomy, and it’s partially aboveground, so there’s plenty of natural light. But it’s definitely meant
to be a non-permanent living space. There’s no actual oven (although there is a fridge). But
they’re not charging me anything for it, and it has its own clothes washer, so I’m not
complaining.
I do wish that I had worked out the timing of my stay here a little differently, though. It
happened that I arrived about a week after they opened their latest exhibit, and I will be leaving a
good month before they open their next one, so there hasn’t been a whole lot for me to do in the
office so far. I started working on translating their website into English, but I’m not sure I am
quite up to the task. We’ll see how that goes.
6/30/2012
Spaziergang
Going for a Walk
Today was another one of those days where going for a walk led to unexpected things.
Braunschweig’s Städtisches Museum (“city museum”) has been undergoing some renovations,
and today was the big unveiling, so admission was free all day, and I think there were even some
free guided tours throughout the day. I hadn’t planned on going at first, but since my boss had
taken the time to tell me about it, and had even searched the office for a brochure to give me, I
figured I had to, if only to tell her all about it on Monday.
It’s really only a ten-minute walk or so to the museum, but I decided to take the long way
because the weather was so nice. It’s rained just about every day I’ve been here so far, and I
haven’t been able to wear a short-sleeved shirt yet, much less actual shorts, so even though it was
overcast, I soaked it up.
When I got there, though, I was stopped by yet another stage. This time, there were two
Spanish guitarists22 playing just outside the Städtisches Museum. There weren’t too many people
milling about, but there were bratwurst and crepe stands set up all around the stage, so it was
pretty much heaven. I got a (severely over-priced) aperol gespritzt23 and an extra-long bratwurst
and sat along the curb to listen for a few minutes before going into the museum…and I ended up
staying there for about an hour and a half24. They only played for about forty-five minutes (and
however long they had been playing before I got there), and then there was about a half-hour
pause between them and the band that followed them. My hopes weren’t all that high for the next
In the sense that they played “Spanish guitar”, not that they themselves were Spanish. They
were pretty definitely German.
23 Aperol is actually an Italian aperitif (which, according to Wikipedia, means that it’s an
alcoholic drink that’s normally served with meals), and it’s mixed with white wine and soda
water to make aperol gespritzt. It’s delicious and fairly popular in Germany and Austria.
24 I actually took Spanish guitar lessons for about four years growing up (although I never
practiced), and watching this performance honestly made me want to take it up again. We’ll see
how that works out.
22
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band; they were all dressed in black and looked just a little too-cool-for-school for my taste. But
then one of them pulled out a banjo, so I figured they were probably alright.
They actually weren’t all that bad. They sang in English the whole time, and it seemed
like they were playing pretty well known songs, but I didn’t recognize them at all (I actually
recognized more songs that the guitarists had been playing-they basically ran through my Gipsy
Kings playlist).
I ended up never going inside the museum, but all in all, I’d say it was a pretty good little
Saturday evening. Of course, here any day I can go outside without my raincoat is worth
celebrating.
6/31/2012
Fahrt in die Heide
Trip to the heath
It is not an exaggeration to say that my Aunt Jane knows absolutely everyone in the
whole wide world. Okay, so it may be a slight exaggeration. But she does seem to know just
about everyone in Omaha, and they seem to know just about everyone else. Which is how I came
into contact with Herr L25, the former mayor of Braunschweig.
Apparently, he was good friends with Aunt Jane’s neighbors and visited Omaha
sometime back in the eighties. My Uncle Jeff even took him golfing once. So when Jane heard
that I would be interning in Braunschweig, the first thing she did was email her old neighbors
(who had since moved to Colorado) to see if they still had his contact information. They did, and
they sent him an email explaining who I was and what I would be doing in Braunschweig. Since
his current work involves fostering the relationship between Braunschweig and Omaha, Herr L
seemed to be pretty excited by my visit. He even called the Kunstverein before I got there to
introduce himself and tell them some of the plans he had in store for me, like having me over to
his and his wife’s house for an asparagus dinner (as it turns out, asparagus season-Spargelzeit- is
practically a national holiday in Germany) and taking me on a tour of Braunschweig’s court
house (which honestly wouldn’t have been my top pick for places to tour, but I’m trying to keep
myself open to new experiences).
A few days after my arrival in Braunschweig, Herr L stopped by the Kunstverein to meet
me in person and give me a list of proposed activities for the two of us to do together. Herr L was
very warm and welcoming, but he seemed a little thrown-off when he first saw me. I thought,
“Well, maybe he was just expecting someone older or something”, which actually turned out to
be the case. As he explained to me, there must have been some miscommunication between him
and my aunt’s old neighbor, because he thought it would be my mother who would be interning
at the Kunstverein, not me. Suddenly, his suggestion of visiting the courthouses made sense-my
mom is a juvenile court judge. He had to admit, he thought it was a little strange for a 50something-year-old judge to be interning at an art gallery. I think he thought she was going
through some sort of Eat, Pray, Love existential crisis or something. And, as he pointed out, it’s
also nearly unheard of for an American to be able to take an entire month off for vacation time,
which he found doubly confusing. He was very polite, and we had a good laugh about it, but I
think that ultimately the miscommunication was really awkward for both of us.
25
Since I have not asked his permission to mention him in this journal, I have chosen not to use
Herr L’s full name.
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I emailed him a week or two later to take him up on one of his suggestions for an
excursion, and the way he replied made it pretty obvious that he wasn’t expecting to ever hear
from me again (as he told me later, he figured I would have much preferred taking a tour of the
local discotheques to hanging out with him and his old fart friends-his words, not mine). But a
daytrip to the Heide sounded too charming to pass up.
It is an annual tradition among his hiking group to meet up at the farmhouse of a friend.
They eat, they drink, they gab and afterward they go for a sort walk around the property. What’s
really funny is that my mom would actually have loved it. She’s an avid hiker herself. I enjoyed
it, as well. Herr L is an extremely warm, grandfatherly figure. I really enjoyed his company for
that reason-both of my grandfathers died before I could get to know either of them, so it was a
completely new experience being around someone like that.
I spoke very little the whole day, which they jokingly (I hope!) mistook for boredom. But
it is actually quite difficult to follow a conversation in another language, especially when there
are ten or more people involved, and they’re all talking over each other and recalling shared
stories from years before. Even when I tried to concentrate, I only grasped about 30% of what
they were saying, and I always just seemed to miss the punch line or the most important part of
the sentence, whatever it was. Even still, it was just really nice to be around people who so
clearly enjoy each other’s company and who have such a history together.
I also got to try herring for the first time, which was not so nice. It actually did not taste
bad, but for some reason, I had no idea that it would be served cold, and the temperature, much
more so than the flavor, just did not appeal to me. Of course, I was a guest, so I told the host that
it was delicious (if a little surprising), and I ate at least half of it before giving up, but they all
laughed at me anyway because I’m a terrible liar and they could tell I didn’t care for it. The
strawberry-cobbler-like dessert, however, I did enjoy.
7/7/2012
Mitglieder Reise
Members’ Daytrip
Yesterday the entire office, as well as about 10 of our Kunstverein’s members, took the
train to Hannover to visit the Made in Germany Zwei exhibit. This is the second Made in
Germany exhibit (hence the Zwei), the first being in 2007. The exhibit is housed in three separate
galleries-the Kunstverein Hannover, the Sprengel Museum Hannover, and the
kestnergesellschaft and features over 40 different international artists, all of whom live and work
in Germany. The exhibit was also curated by all three institutions.
Since each building was a part of the same exhibit, it was kind of amazing to see the
difference in the types of works presented by each and even in the tone of the different
institutions themselves.
We first went to the kestnergesellschaft. I really enjoyed their selection of works, mostly
because many of them were paintings. Whether or not I actually understand what a painting
means or what the artist is trying to say within a painting, I feel like I just understand painting as
a medium better. It’s more accessible to me than sculpture or performance art, for example. I
don’t know if that’s just because I’ve been exposed to more paintings than any other type of art-I
feel like we’re kind of taught as kids that painting is THE main form of art. Not that I believe it’s
better than any other form, I just think that we learn at a young age to look at and consider
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painting more so than other forms. I don’t remember being shown a single sculpture in my
elementary school art classes, but we were shown a different painting almost every class.
Anyway, I digress. Point is, I like paintings.
We were given a tour of each of the exhibits, and it was really interesting to compare
later on what our own Kunstverein members thought of the tours with what my co-workers
thought26. For example, the tour guide at the kestnergesellschaft, which was our first stop,
mostly spoke about the work that was involved in setting up the exhibits and maintaining them.
For example, there was a beautiful work that they housed in a little hallway built especially for it.
It was a set of 4-6 (isn’t that awful, I’ve already forgotten how many there were) lights on the
floor, and each light was housed in a sort of cube made of rectangular mirrors laid against each
other. Each structure threw these beautiful lines of light against the walls of the hallway. It’s
really an insanely simple idea, but the effect was spectacular. Also, because the mirrors
surrounding each light were aligned slightly differently, the pattern each light made on the walls
was also different. It’s kind of hard to describe, but believe me, it was breathtaking. Anyway, the
tour guide told us all about how they had to come back and check the work every day because
people always knock into the lights (since they’re on the ground) and knock the mirrors askew.
There was another hallway that housed several paintings by one artist (embarrassingly,
I’ve already forgotten his name, but his work was one of my favorites). His works were all on
square canvases, and they featured geometrical patterns-mostly large circles with lines running
through them to make smaller shapes. Again, simple, but beautifully layered; they were actually
sort of retro looking, and they reminded me a little bit of records. But the guide pointed out how
the wall from which they hung had actually been painted in three different colors, each one
blending into the next27. While our Kunstverein members appreciated his succinctness, my
colleagues were a bit disappointed in how little time he actually spent interpreting the works and
discussing what themes and messages the artists had intended. Of course, we were a little rushed
because we were a bit behind schedule, so maybe the tour guide had that in mind as he was
showing us around.
The next place we went was the Sprengel Museum. To be perfectly honest, I found the
building much more impressive and interesting than the art within it. Some of them were
incredible, like a photo of a mule that was layered over with stripes of darker images28 so that
they looked like zebras.
It was also kind of hard to hear anything when we were there because of the acoustics
(combined with the student tour groups and the person/people who kept standing too close to the
art, triggering a warning alarm).
Yeah, the Sprengel Museum’s selection wasn’t my absolute favorite. But, oh man, the
Kunstverein Braunschweig blew my mind. First, to get to the main exhibit, you have to go up a
flight of stairs. But, hanging from the ceiling over the stairs are these twisted pieces of metal.
They look like girders that have been warped and twisted and then hung from the ceiling by,
what I hope and assume are, really strong cables, making them look like flying snakes. Or
I was working so hard to understand everything, that I didn’t even notice how the tours
differed from one another.
27 Because I’m that kind of person, I would like to point out that I noticed it before he mentioned
it.
28
Or maybe they were just black stripes without other images-I didn’t look to closely at them
because I didn’t want to disrupt anyone else’s view.
26
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streamers29. The artist, Max Frisinger, works solely with found materials, and if I understood
correctly, only used materials he had found in Hannover for the Made in Germany exhibit.
Once you finish staring up (and hoping nothing comes crashing down) and make your
way up the stairs, you turn right30 into a room that’s covered with chains of all different lengths
hanging from the ceiling. Hanging off of each chain is-well, I don’t actually know what they’re
called…the metal bits that dangle off of coo coo clocks. Kind of look like pinecones? Anyway,
what’s really cool is that the artist, Alicja Kwade, also cut some of the coo-coo-metal-pine-conethings in half and attached the top halves to the floor (at the ends of chains) and the bottom
halves to the ceiling so that it looks like the chains are running through the ceiling and floor31. I
didn’t understand everything the curator was saying (partly because, by the third gallery, I was
sort of exhausted from listening to German for hours), but I think it was supposed to bring to
mind the flow of time, or the fluidity of time. Something like that.
It may sound kind of weird, but I think I kind of want to live in the Kunstverein
Hannover32.
7/18/2012
Das Ende
The End
Things are sort of winding down here for me. I have two more days in Braunschweig.
Then on Saturday, I head to Berlin for the weekend, and on Monday I fly home from Berlin.
Although the timing of my internship (between their two summer exhibits) was rather
unfortunate, it has definitely been a worthwhile experience. I really think my German has
improved tremendously in this one short month. Even though I had studied abroad in Germanspeaking countries, I was generally surrounded by other American students, so I have never had
to use my German constantly like I did here.
I think I’ll probably miss Braunschweig, but I am also ready to be home. I only have
about a month before I have to head back to Austria to start my job. But I have promised to come
back to the Kunstverein Braunschweig for a visit at some point in the next school year.
That’s probably a better analogy.
Turn left, and you’re making your way to the coat room.
31
There are pictures of it online, if my description is completely confusing.
32
I guess it’s a little less weird when you consider the fact that I’m already living in the
basement of the Kunstverein Braunschweig.
29
30