Week 06: The Dog Days are Over

Unleashing all the back-logged energy and wondering why no dogs in the entirety of Germany are not on leashes?

So many fungi growing along the Alster which you can follow north past the Hamburg and Schleswig-Holstein border. I think these looked a bit like dog ears.

Order Up

Our sun bathing has turned into forest bathing as the daylight has receded to setting before 6pm and rising at the same time as I wake up. There are three trees for every dog in Hamburg—100,000 furry friends traversing the city. And the thunderstorms roll in as a pack, keeping the constellations behind the ever shifting curtains. Sirius, or the Dog Star is the brightest in the sky and I am certainly not the brightest bulb in the box, especially during my first week of university courses. I am a creature of habit and have been nesting in books and bark and am letting my daily astrology readings convince me that progress comes in bite-size chunks and that eating an entire baguette last week in one go, might contribute to my summer-like lethargy.

The Bread

• Top slice: Trial week of classes. I went to one or more every single day except Wednesday and truly did not do much more than that. I took a night walk in the rain and sharp wind with a boy from Belgium and saw boats fighting against the wind. I am so gullible I believed that a statue in the middle of the lake was a man who open water swims every single day and that French Fries come from France.

• Bottom Slice: It is truly autumn. I will take the train this week to the outer corners of Hamburg and run many of the paths before the leaves disappear and I start to jet during the weekdays to visit friends throughout Germany and beyond. And tell myself I will do homework on the train but as per usual, will pass out and hopefully pass my classes rather than fail them.

People here are so persistent. I see kayakers too, constantly even at night.

The Filling

In all seven of the classes I visited, I was so shocked at how fabulous the art history department was. The course options are incredibly diverse, the professors flexible and speaking clearly, and I am surrounded by so many other art history students. I hope to find community among them but while I can fully comprehend two hours straight of German (and on Thursday six hours back to back), speaking more than one word in German has been somewhat intimidating.

I wanted to take a Metal Detector training class (in the Classics department, of course) but have no desire to fight the Bowdoin Registrar even though we paid a quarter million dollars for a college that taught me to problematise everything and connect metal detectors to a current reading of an urban landscape and buried cultural heritage. But anywho, the classes I sat in on and my final choices (bolded) were the following and are roughly translated

• The Basis and Invention of Monument Preservation

• Difficult Heritage: Reconciliation and Monuments

• Depictions of the Sea and Interpreting the Nature Landscape

• Discourses on 21st Century Repatriation: The Benin Bronzes

• Patchwork Landscapes: Blurring Lines Between Urbanity and Rural in Hamburg

• Media Revolution: Northern Print Culture and the Gutenberg Press

• Photos in China from the 1850s to 1980s

I ultimately decided on classes that have a solid mix of other majors or levels of degree—BA and Master’s students are often mixed in the same course which creates an atmosphere I am interested in witnessing and most likely, forced to participate in. The discourse on the Benin Bronzes is one of the biggest topics in European art right now and a few of the class members are actually professionals at the museum in Hamburg that is presenting the objects and the complicated narratives. The idea of a ‘discourse’ goes beyond just theory or academia. We will be analysing discourse through the lens of social media as well which today, has a monumental role in keeping museums accountable and pushing for the rightful return of cultural artefacts to their respective homes. Don’t even get me started on monuments. There are two full classes on this theme which is one of the reasons I am just in awe of the art history programs at big universities that are at the forefront of these discussions.

When I sit in the classes I am convinced I want to pursue a PhD in Art History. Then I want to do work with outdoor partners focused on furthering access and fostering community. Then I want to lounge in the sun in an Italian countryside writing poetry that no one cares about but sure looks good in a painting. A timeless cliché

Goethe: mastering the contemplative original ‘plandid’ (planned candid) photo. Also described as a '“celebrated poet to a drop-out.” Bowdoin, please give me my degree.

It has almost become a cliché for people admit “Abroad is not always as fun as it seems.” But it is a truth worth repeating and letting yourself say. I am reminding myself to not read it as ungratefulness but rather an earnestness at knowing what actually living in a place is like. For some reason, I have not felt deeply compelled to go and travel every weekend. There are corners of Hamburg that I want to explore and take the train to the end of each line. I remind myself that the city is not my playground and that I chose this program for this reason precisely. Yet, it still is hard to see large programs with students who speak English so freely and bounce to and from Greece to Ireland not because I am envious of travelling, but envious of the way that community has been automatically formed.

I account much of this attitude toward being so fortunate to travel throughout Europe in the past and feel comfortable in navigating the systems as difficult as they were (e.g. my trip to Switzerland where I got fined I think, three different times?). Even with my motivation to explore Hamburg, it has been hard in some ways and I have felt everything but earnest and everything muddled in nostalgia. To be a real adult is to navigate the channels in which we enter into a community and contribute with the time and bandwidth we have at the moment. When it comes to moving over and over again, the growing pains never get better but they become familiar.

In full honesty, it was a hard week for many reasons and even tearing through a book a day did not fill the time that I needed to empty out my head full of past experiences. I cannot be fully present when pasts or upcoming events are so visceral they need to be attended to. Autumn last year was filled with inconceivable joy but losses that should have been an impossibility. Summer was a time of reunions I never could know would feel so essential. This landscape is filled with reminders that bring up the places where I felt the dissonance of self-development and loneliness in the last two years and the ways to heal by sharing those things with another person.

One of the best books I have been reading is called the “The Lonely City: Adventures in the Art of Being Alone” by one of my favourite authors, Olivia Laing, which reframes the ethos of loneliness through an art lens but also, lets us embrace loneliness not as a symptom of not being okay, but an indicator of a liminal state that encourages us to notice, name, and acknowledge significant shifts in our lives. It is the classic postgrad partum where all of us have moved away, choosing to do so and still can share moments through phone calls or letters—I am so deeply grateful to stay in touch with the most busy and kind people—but liminal spaces, to be blunt are just exhausting asf.

For my endlessly rooty Appalachian Trail moments. And morel hunting as a child in Jensen Trail in Iowa. And my foraging friends in Washington.

But I am writing again. And running regularly. And swimming. And meeting random people at the climbing gym who have mullets and study marine science and will talk for an hour with me about phytoplankton. My goal this week and the following months is to transform the tiredness into a slowness; revisit my old-memories and relish in the histories of forest and myths that are reminders of a lineage of human loneliness. And the ability for one small object like a mushroom to hold all the good the bad of multiple communities throughout time is a marvel. Also though, don’t let your dogs eat mushrooms. That is bad. Very bad.

The Sauce

• There was a pumpkin cutting event at our student dormitory tonight. There are some wicked talented people and it makes me muse over baking some fall desserts, but I have been quite frankly, very lazy with my cooking since our kitchen is extremely small, the dishes are often needing re-washing, and investing in all the baking starter ingredients seems slightly illogical at this point? I may give in though…I am not the most talented pumpkin carver but I know I can whip up some incredibly bread full of keratin or based in a squash.

  

  Pumpkins courtesy of our dormitory group chat. None of these are mine.

• I had a relaxed Sunday morning getting some tea and a blackberry cake treat with Isa. We decided that it will become a monthly routine at Cafe Schwesterherz which as cheesy as it sounds, I have always wanted a Schwester (sister) and we always have the best heart-to-hearts.

• Feeling grateful for having a brother. I walk away from our calls feeling reassured and sometimes frustrated, but that is because we tend to challenge our own dogmatic positions on how to navigate tricky person-to-person relationships. We don’t always agree, thankfully, and it helps me reframe ways to think things or approach them. Feeling grateful that he got to run the Timberline Trail in Oregon, my first solo backpacking excursion in 2021 truly during the dog days but inspired to do my own little romp through the Harburger Berge or the cute hills that Hamburg considers their mountains.

• I want a Mushroom & Swiss burger (and some fake beef). Helena has some beef with me because every time I come home I make her run with me. But then we would get ice cream or a mushroom & swiss burger afterward. Missing that and get your butt over to Germany!

Mystery Meat

• The cat is out of the bag. I got another…tattoo of a cat on my wrist. My friend got a matching one. Except they were temporary as the club we travelled to last week with some friends used a unique entry stamp that reminded me of Alice in Wonderland. Techno music reminds me of the latter with hazy light and people flailing like they were chasing a ball of yarn, but definitely not the former as it is incredibly…un-complex. I would request Florence + The Machine’s “The Dog Days Are Over” (a true banger) but I know that German techno lovers’ bark is, in fact, just as worse as their bite. An indirect quote from someone who heard it directly but might be misquoted, “I love techno. I listen to it when I wake up. When I go to sleep. When I cook. I love techno.” We all have our joys.