Week 03: Short and Sweet 2.0
Fast food for thought but w/o corporate sponsorship.
Order Up
Three strikes and “Had me out like a light, like a light” as Drake said or something along those lines? Or out like a lighthouse? This third week was so packed, I think I passed out to sleep immediately the moment I got home but the difference is that I did it to myself. Overfilled my sandwich & schedule, that is. Since German supermarkets close on Sundays, so light on the filling and themes in this week's blog. A lazy sandwich is still a good sandwich so you're getting lots of bread and sauce.
The Bread
Top slice: A week filled with work. Our orientation class is wrapping up even though it seems like it will never end. Therefore, we have been bombarded with many assignments—short. Definitely not sweet. My final application for Fulbright English Teaching in Taiwan was due as well, an upcoming deadline and for English Teaching in Austria. I talked about Eurovision in my mini presentation in class this week, so maybe that will get my foot in the door or stuck because Schlager music is unfortunately, very catchy.
Bottom Slice: Our orientation courses will come to a close the following week and then we will head to Berlin as a group for three days. Social commitments are heating up for this next week with university students moving back in and starting classes and more people to meet all the time. We have a new student in our Smith program who is on a different timeline, but nonetheless, will be wonderful to get to know. I am scheming about our free time in Berlin and have a feeling it might be spent social distancing and mentally from people by staring at art. Stay tuned.
The Filling
We finally had our first free day of the orientation classes on Wednesday. I spent it, naturally, on a short jaunt through the Hamburger Kunsthalle. A good collection, nothing outstanding with slightly muddled layout but was stunned to stumble across two of the most famous paintings in Romantic Art history and a core piece in my thesis. Oddly, they were almost understated even though the security lady reminded me that it is the "Mona Lisa of our museum." I only had around two hours to breeze through so will have to spend a bit more time with the pieces to fully appreciate the space.
I returned for a quick jaunt through on Saturday, but with a friend, Emily, who is studying abroad in Copenhagen this semester. We met up on Friday and went to dinner in the Portugese district of Hamburg, explored a bitterly cold but beautiful harbour, then went out for drinks with other friends in the Sternchanze. The next day was busy work as she had a neuroscience midterm due and myself, the Fulbright application. Sunday was short and sweet. A rainy run to my favourite bakery, some bouldering back in the Sternchanze, and laps around the Speicherstadt. Emily and I didn't meet until last year and have only encountered each other a few times at school, but it was so natural to host a fellow Bowdoin polar bear. And of course, so special that she made the trip to see me (it is six hours by bus). There are so many common values that brought us to Maine and connect my friends and I irreverent of location. I know, cheesy. But you signed up to hear me interpret my abroad through the lens of a sandwich.
Somewhat ironically, I ended my week with the beginning of it. Today was Tag der Deutschen Einheit, a national holiday commemorating the unification of West and East Germany in 1990. Over the pandemic, one of the most poignant books I keep returning to is about memory reconciliation, particularly how we manage and talk about statues or memorials. Susan Neimann, the author of the book “Learning from the Germans: Race and the Memory of Evil (2019)” is coming to Bowdoin to speak. Honestly, I have had a fair amount of FOMO (fear of missing out) on campus but this is the one thing/ring that rules them all.
The Sauce
I thought the week would be short and sweet, but es ist eine Lüge. Some things lasted sehr sehr langer than I and many others could have anticipated. Things that were not short but maybe sweet.
Last week's post. I'm not on Twitter because brevity is not my skill, but apparently there is a newsletter length limit? And a limit on how much art interlaced with politics with a smattering of biblical references one can absorb in a sitting? None of that this time and still no Twitter–for now.
My time in Sylt was everything I needed. Sylt is a tiny island on the North Sea, the northernmost part of Germany and at the same latitude as southern Alaska surprisingly, and a stone's throw away from Denmark. All the town’s names sound, well, not German (e.g. Ellenborg, Morsum, Munkmarsch) and even weirder, it apparently is the ‘Martha’s Vineyard’ of Germany where all the celebrities holiday and for my benefit, I do not even know who they are so won’t look twice. Normally, I plan far in advance, but decided to just wing it and hopped on a rental bike and went for a leisurely ride of 53km. I had wanted to go to Sylt for a long time even before deciding to study in Hamburg. 1) It has great surf, in fact, the Windsurfing World Cup was on its last day 2) The Wattenmeer or Wadden Sea is an incredible ecosystem, a UNESCO heritage protected site, and the largest tidal flats system in the world. 3) I needed to have a day alone to just write and read and relax by the ocean. That clearly, did not happen but 4) I love water. I love Der Schimmelreiter. One of my favourite books I am not going to elaborate here, but its a very short novella that takes place at the intersection of German and Danish culture. Highly recommend and here is the English version and a fun little synopsis. A main crux of the story is the tension between traditional ways and emerging technology in a village near the Wattenmeer. In this case, it is an engineered dam and without it, the town will disappear. My technology disappeared for the entire day with no wifi and it was what I needed...as well as food and water. More distance was covered because I was able to wander and get lost, but definitely should have brought myself snacks.
“I heard nothing, but ever more clearly as the light of the half-moon grew sharper, I thought I could make out a dark shape, and soon, as it came nearer, I saw it. It sat on a horse, a high-boned, haggard white horse. —Theodor Storm (1888)
The reason for no snacks is that I woke up late to my morning train and was biting at the bit, even getting on the wrong connecting train to the Hauptbahnhof. I swore I would never be that person that runs for the train, but of course, I did that and more and ran all the way from my apartment to the train to the next station etc. My commute probably was the fastest on Strava. Needless to say, I did not need to be there early. The train was fifteen minutes late. Then forty-five minutes late. Then on the way back, I had foresight to take the earlier train home just in case it was late. The train was 'verspätet' ten minutes at first. Then thirty. Then we were on the train. Then the train broke down. Then another train was supposed to come. But there was a car accident. And for the sauciest thing that's happened to me since, my writing was interrupted because we were kicked off the train and put on one to Kiel and I am now stranded with around 150 lovely other people trying to go home and standing on a platform outside an irrelevant town called Jübeck which is soon to become infamous with the Deutsche Bahn complaints office. Pretty sure Mercury is in retrograde and astrology is pseudo-science but it's more accurate than Deustche Bahn. I hope I make it home so you all can be frustrated too.
Finally, the Hamburg International Film Festival was this weekend and the following and I will be going all week. The film I took my friends to was Sobre las nubes or Above the Clouds, a film about blue-collar workers in Córdoba, Argentina and their own discrete struggles and small joys. It is one of the best movies I have seen this year and the Argentinian lead actress was at the screening as well as the producer gave the introduction standing five feet from us. The city featured in the movie is their hometown and it was so moving to see them talk about their home together. I thought the movie was supposed to be only around 86 min so my friends agreed to go but it was actually around 160 min. Worth it, especially with the ample quoting of Federico García Lorca. That man could write.
Mystery Meat
Distilling the image from last week, one of my flatmates charred the entire oven apparently? Our group chat has mostly been cleanliness accountability texts that frustratingly for the head of the floor remain…unanswered. As does the mystery meat of the week :)
