I'm notorious for never taking pictures of my friends. I normally say it's because I would rather live my life than document it. But the real reason is that stopping for a photograph never fails to dampen my spirit. When I feel happy, loved, surrounded by friends, I don't want to think about our eventual separation, about the time when we'll need photographs to remember our joy. "You will never experience this moment again," a photograph says. "Time pushes ever forward, and all soon all you'll have will be pixels."
This was especially true of my time at the Goethe-Institut. I had such wonderful experiences and made such fantastic friends in my three and a half weeks in Schwäbisch Hall. The rapidly increasing date was enough of a reminder that our time together was limited; I couldn't bear to bring a camera into the picture as well.
Thankfully, the Goethe-Institut staff took plenty of pictures this month, and we received them on a CD-ROM at the closing ceremony today. Some of my favorite memories after the jump.
Thursday, September 30, 2010
Monday, September 20, 2010
Imagining the Other, or Anti-Fascism without Fascists
During a walk on the outskirts of town last Thursday, I found a series of bridge underpasses. Each one was heavily graffitied, and each one seemed to "belong" to a youth subculture. There were the antifascist skinheads: "Punks raus!" (Punks, get out!) and "Fuck the Nazis!" There were the hip-hoppers: "Nigga 4ever" and "Hip-Hop" (OK, this one was kind of obvious). And, across a creek from the others, was a small tunnel for the fascists / neo-Nazis: "Fuck antifa!" (Fuck antifascists!). It, and a small "White Pride" sticker on a trashbin near my dorm, was the only sign of actual right-wing extremism I've seen during my three weeks in rural Germany, and it was a pretty weak one at that. It's anti-fascist graffiti that covers the walls, bridges, and tunnels of Schwäbisch Hall.
The abundance of anti-Nazi graffiti, of course, could stem from a small troupe of anti-fascist skinheads. For them, it's not about fighting Nazis in Schwäbisch Hall; it's about fighting Nazis through "participation" in the European anti-racist skinhead movement.
For the most part, though, this was a day of "fun, food, and festivals" multiculturalism, which makes "celebrating diversity" a consumer choice rather than a call to reorder social power relations. Because of its anti-fascist history, Freundschaftstag is also a way of defining the self in opposition to the Other. Because we are not neo-Nazis, the festival indicates, we are not racist, either. If only it worked like that.
With that said, this type of multiculturalism does include FUN and FOOD. So it can't be all bad. And I had an enjoyable afternoon hanging out with various people from the Goethe. What began as a gathering of four on the main church steps became a circle of fifteen young people enjoying the sunshine; conversing in German, French, English, and Spanish/Portuguese/Italian (they're interchangeable here); and cheering for three other Goethe students and professional musicians who performed at festival's conclusion.
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| Fascism isn't an opinion; it's a crime. |
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| Ban the NPD now |
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| I actually don't know how to translate this, but the general idea is that we need a positive movement, not neo-Nazism. |
Much more prominent is Schwäbisch Hall's Freundschafttag (Friendship Day), an annual street festival celebrating multiculturalism, that took place yesterday on the main plaza.
It was started 25 years ago, when people from different parts of the world began arriving in Schwäbisch Hall and the NPD started making some ruckus. There was at least one sign of the festival's political origin:
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| A warm welcome to Friendship Day! |
It was started 25 years ago, when people from different parts of the world began arriving in Schwäbisch Hall and the NPD started making some ruckus. There was at least one sign of the festival's political origin:
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Banner on the church wall says: "Social justice instead of Sarrazin! Racism solves no problems." |
With that said, this type of multiculturalism does include FUN and FOOD. So it can't be all bad. And I had an enjoyable afternoon hanging out with various people from the Goethe. What began as a gathering of four on the main church steps became a circle of fifteen young people enjoying the sunshine; conversing in German, French, English, and Spanish/Portuguese/Italian (they're interchangeable here); and cheering for three other Goethe students and professional musicians who performed at festival's conclusion.
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| View of the festival from the church steps |
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| Lebanese man grinding chickpeas to make falafel. |
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| Homemade falafel. Yum! |
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| Brazilian drummers |
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| Goethe students performing: Sean (American viola player), Keiko (Japanese violinist), and Amy (American opera singer) |
Thursday, September 16, 2010
The Times When This Seems Impossible
The Goethe-Institut has a Tandem-Programm, in which they pair Goethe students who want to practice German with local residents who want to practice other languages. Today, I met my Tandem-Partner for the first time. He's 20, is originally from Russia but has lived in Germany for 8 years, just took his Abitur, and is going to Stuttgart in the beginning of October to study economics.
For the first half of the time, we spoke English while walking through the main park in Schwäbisch Hall. He told me about why it's so hard for immigrants to succeed in the German education system (which I knew), how bureaucratic Germany is (which I didn't know), how he loves to rap in Russian and how rap is modern poetry (I totally agree with him there!), how 9-11 was an inside job (maybe, but probably not), and how Germany is going to flounder because women want careers instead of babies (definitely not).
Then, about the time we decided to go to a bar (typical), we switched to German, and talked about how expensive higher education is in the US. In Germany, the government actually gives you money for school, and you only have to pay half of it back. But he's doing a program where he alternates studying semesters in Stuttgart with working semesters in Munich, gets 1100 Euros per month, and doesn't have to pay anything back. He thought I was crazy when I explained that I'm paying $20000 for each semester at Harvard.
We also commiserated about how boring Schwäbisch Hall is, and how we'd much rather be in big cities, where there are clubs/bars to go, different types of people to meet, and public transit that works at night (sorry, Boston!). I told him, though, that it was nice to be learning German in Schwäbisch Hall, because people were patient enough to speak German with me. He said, though, that was just because they can't speak English, and that when he worked at McDonald's, he was the only person who could talk to the foreign tourists because no one else at the restaurant spoke English.
When he spoke German, though, I was hanging on for dear life. He had a small Russian accent, but the main problem was that he spoke so much faster than anyone I've ever heard speaking German: teachers, actors, news reporters, etc. Real-life language -- the language Germans speak to each other -- clearly, is not the same language that you hear on the radio or in the TV. I could barely keep afloat, and was mainly just trying to predict when I would need to say something, or could say something, before being washed over by the flood of language. But despite it all, I never lost track of the conversation! I'll take a small victory when it comes. And I'm thankful for the opportunity to practice language in such a setting before I go to Vienna.
For the first half of the time, we spoke English while walking through the main park in Schwäbisch Hall. He told me about why it's so hard for immigrants to succeed in the German education system (which I knew), how bureaucratic Germany is (which I didn't know), how he loves to rap in Russian and how rap is modern poetry (I totally agree with him there!), how 9-11 was an inside job (maybe, but probably not), and how Germany is going to flounder because women want careers instead of babies (definitely not).
Then, about the time we decided to go to a bar (typical), we switched to German, and talked about how expensive higher education is in the US. In Germany, the government actually gives you money for school, and you only have to pay half of it back. But he's doing a program where he alternates studying semesters in Stuttgart with working semesters in Munich, gets 1100 Euros per month, and doesn't have to pay anything back. He thought I was crazy when I explained that I'm paying $20000 for each semester at Harvard.
We also commiserated about how boring Schwäbisch Hall is, and how we'd much rather be in big cities, where there are clubs/bars to go, different types of people to meet, and public transit that works at night (sorry, Boston!). I told him, though, that it was nice to be learning German in Schwäbisch Hall, because people were patient enough to speak German with me. He said, though, that was just because they can't speak English, and that when he worked at McDonald's, he was the only person who could talk to the foreign tourists because no one else at the restaurant spoke English.
When he spoke German, though, I was hanging on for dear life. He had a small Russian accent, but the main problem was that he spoke so much faster than anyone I've ever heard speaking German: teachers, actors, news reporters, etc. Real-life language -- the language Germans speak to each other -- clearly, is not the same language that you hear on the radio or in the TV. I could barely keep afloat, and was mainly just trying to predict when I would need to say something, or could say something, before being washed over by the flood of language. But despite it all, I never lost track of the conversation! I'll take a small victory when it comes. And I'm thankful for the opportunity to practice language in such a setting before I go to Vienna.
Saturday, September 11, 2010
A lazy Saturday
For lunch, my roommate Li Hon and I decided to get the Döner Kebaps we've both been craving all week. We went to Arslan's Kebap, right across the street from the Goethe-Institut. Originally Turkish, Döner is a German takeaway staple. It's lamb meat, onions, lettuce, red cabbage (see the German influence? Food culture is so fascinating), and white sauce on a thick, toasted pita. And it tastes so good!
Because it was such a nice day (first shorts day since I've arrived: 70 F and sunny), we brought homework with us and went to Schwäbisch Hall's outdoor beer garten, on a park right on the river.
My homework was to read the weekend edition of the Süddeutsche Zeitung, a well-known paper out of Munich, and use the reading strategies we've been talking about in class. Unlike my previous German classes, where it seemed like the goal was to work towards the day when you would be fluent, this class is all about strategies to survive in German culture RIGHT NOW. Concretely, that means reminding us of elementary school reading strategies like making a list of questions we hope the text will answer, recreating an outline of the text, and using context clues to figure out the meaning of new words.
As my teacher loves to say, we're the equivalent of German ten-year-olds in terms of vocabulary, and we need to accept that we're going to read and speak like ten-year-olds, because we can't go around the world with a dictionary in hand. Being told that I need to accept my limited conversational capacity, and work within it, rather than trying to use a dictionary to speak with the same high-falutin' style I do in English, was a little hard to hear. But I think it makes a lot of sense. And I love that I can just read German blog posts and newspaper articles without taking lots of time leafing through a dictionary. Reading the newspaper today was also an interesting look into German culture: immigrant incorporation (always a controversial subject), small rural beers making a comeback -- especially among young urbanites -- a la PBR, and the growing tendency to bury people in the forest instead of in a cemetery.
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| Döner Kebap |
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| Li Hon with her Döner in the Biergarten |
As my teacher loves to say, we're the equivalent of German ten-year-olds in terms of vocabulary, and we need to accept that we're going to read and speak like ten-year-olds, because we can't go around the world with a dictionary in hand. Being told that I need to accept my limited conversational capacity, and work within it, rather than trying to use a dictionary to speak with the same high-falutin' style I do in English, was a little hard to hear. But I think it makes a lot of sense. And I love that I can just read German blog posts and newspaper articles without taking lots of time leafing through a dictionary. Reading the newspaper today was also an interesting look into German culture: immigrant incorporation (always a controversial subject), small rural beers making a comeback -- especially among young urbanites -- a la PBR, and the growing tendency to bury people in the forest instead of in a cemetery.
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| Locally brewed beer and the Süddeutsche Zeitung. The perfect way to spend an afternoon. |
False Cognates
If you've ever learned a new language, false cognates -- words that sound similar in two languages but mean different things -- can be tricky. I still sometimes get tripped up by stay / stehen (stand) and map / die Mappe (pencil case), and I remember how one of the first year English students at the Austrian school in 2008 answered the question, "Where did you go?" with "me." (Wer is German for who).
Another false cognate, one that I experienced richly last night, is foosball / Fußball. Fußball in German is just regular soccer; what we know as foosball is Tischfußball (table-soccer). At the Goethe-Institut party last night, about 50 teachers, staff, and students met in basement bar for beer, multilingual conversation, and, of course, Tischfußball. (Yes, the Institut has a bar. This is Germany, after all.)
I've never been very good at foosball, but I spent quite a few nights in high school playing the game in a friend's basement, so I thought I had some grasp of it. But Tischfußball, even though it uses the same apparatus, has more in common with Fußball itself than with the American arcade game. While my preferred "strategy" has always been to fire off a big spin of the lever when the ball gets in my vicinity, the Germans I was playing with and against employed lateral passes, sent the ball back to the goalie for a clearing kick, and paid close attention to field position. I'd never seen anything like it before. Instead of leisurely holding the handles while sipping my beer, I found myself bent over the table, in intense concentration, trying to match my opponent's centering passes with my own tackles and blocks. After embarrassing myself a few times, I was even able to pull out a win against Kathi, another Central College Abroad student, and Umut, a Turkish student in my class. (Okay, so my partner was a native German and the best player of the night. I scored one of our goals!)
Another false cognate, one that I experienced richly last night, is foosball / Fußball. Fußball in German is just regular soccer; what we know as foosball is Tischfußball (table-soccer). At the Goethe-Institut party last night, about 50 teachers, staff, and students met in basement bar for beer, multilingual conversation, and, of course, Tischfußball. (Yes, the Institut has a bar. This is Germany, after all.)
I've never been very good at foosball, but I spent quite a few nights in high school playing the game in a friend's basement, so I thought I had some grasp of it. But Tischfußball, even though it uses the same apparatus, has more in common with Fußball itself than with the American arcade game. While my preferred "strategy" has always been to fire off a big spin of the lever when the ball gets in my vicinity, the Germans I was playing with and against employed lateral passes, sent the ball back to the goalie for a clearing kick, and paid close attention to field position. I'd never seen anything like it before. Instead of leisurely holding the handles while sipping my beer, I found myself bent over the table, in intense concentration, trying to match my opponent's centering passes with my own tackles and blocks. After embarrassing myself a few times, I was even able to pull out a win against Kathi, another Central College Abroad student, and Umut, a Turkish student in my class. (Okay, so my partner was a native German and the best player of the night. I scored one of our goals!)
Thursday, September 9, 2010
Just Like Harvard
Last night was the first Goethe-Institut Stammtisch. Culturally, it used to be common in Germany for men to meet regularly at a specific bar to drink and socialize. They even had a regular table: a stem-table or Stammtisch. I've been told that only old men (and foreign students, apparently) do this nowadays, but I still had a ton of fun getting to know other young students at the Goethe better.
Tuesday, September 7, 2010
The P-Word Again
Of the eleven students in my German class, five of us are students: me, another girl from Central College Abroad, a 20-year-old Turkish guy who wants to become a translator, and two 24-year-old engineering students, one from India and one from Israel. The others are older adults, many with families, who are here in Germany for work and need to learn German. In fact, we have four doctors in the class (three of whom are Romanian)! I feel so privileged compared to them. Here I am, studying abroad just because I think it would be fun, and because I want the personal satisfaction of being bilingual. I guess what I didn't realize before is that in most of the world, being bilingual (or even tri- or quatralingual) isn't some membership badge to the cosmopolitan elite. It's the best way to survive and provide for your family. My introduction interview partner, for example, is an engineer from Libya with a 10-month-old son. He's been learning German from the ground up for seven months now, and next month he's going to bring his family to Germany because he finally has the language skills to get a job.
I know that (white) Americans get derided all the time for only speaking English. (In fact, that was my original reason for wanting to continue studying German, even though it no longer fits neatly into my academic or career interests.) And maybe the world would be a better place if everyone could speak multiple languages. But I think I would rather work for a world in which learning other languages isn't so painfully necessary, a world in which opportunities for high-paying jobs exist in every language. And then we can worry about all becoming polyglots who get to learn about other cultures.
One other thing: I realize how horrible it is that I needed to go to Germany to interact with recent labor migrants on a personal level when the United States is one of the biggest sites of immigration in the world. I don't have a good explanation for it, except that, for all the I'm-just-here-for-academic-enrichment privilege I bring to the table, I am going through a somewhat similar process to the immigrant students in my class.
I know that (white) Americans get derided all the time for only speaking English. (In fact, that was my original reason for wanting to continue studying German, even though it no longer fits neatly into my academic or career interests.) And maybe the world would be a better place if everyone could speak multiple languages. But I think I would rather work for a world in which learning other languages isn't so painfully necessary, a world in which opportunities for high-paying jobs exist in every language. And then we can worry about all becoming polyglots who get to learn about other cultures.
One other thing: I realize how horrible it is that I needed to go to Germany to interact with recent labor migrants on a personal level when the United States is one of the biggest sites of immigration in the world. I don't have a good explanation for it, except that, for all the I'm-just-here-for-academic-enrichment privilege I bring to the table, I am going through a somewhat similar process to the immigrant students in my class.
Monday, September 6, 2010
It's Definitely the Destination, and Not the Journey
Because the journey fucking sucks. There was a crying baby two rows behind me on the plane, and the person in the seat directly behind me thought it would be fun, apparently, to sleep with their head against the tray table, so I couldn't even recline my seat (without giving them a headache, at least). I started feeling nauseous mid-flight from a mix of allergies acting up and sleep deprivation (many of you know how I get), but was too embarrassed to ask for a barf bag, so I just didn't eat anything -- or open my mouth.
Once I got to the Frankfurt airport, I had three trains to catch to the Goethe Institut in Schwäbisch Hall (a small town in southwest Germany). I was worried about making them, because I had only scheduled myself 12 minutes in between each train. That was the naive American talking. In Germany, everyone takes their luggage off the rack, grabs their bags, and lines up in front of the door 10 minutes before the train reaches the station. Exiting the train takes about two minutes, then another two minutes for new riders to get on. A four-minute stop at each station in total. So that's why German trains run on time. Not some bullshit notion of "national character," just the minimal got-it-togetherness of being prepared to exit when it's time to do so. And, of course, knowing that you have another train to catch in six minutes that won't be running late either.
My roommate here at the Goethe Institut is from Japan. She speaks German at a beginning intermediate level, and very little English, so communication could be a little tricky. Oh well, we can practice German on each other.
This morning I took a placement test at the Goethe Institut in speaking, writing, and listening. I was placed at B.2.3, which I about what I expected. The exam moderator also asked if I was interested in a challenge, and true to overachieving Harvard form, I said yes, so she said she would put me in a higher level class if she has enough students to create one. I won't know my final course until tomorrow morning, the first day of classes.
After my placement test, I took an hour and a half walk around the town. There are parks on each side of the riverbank with pedestrian bridges to connect them, and a small park island as well. The park island seems popular with gutter punks, but also with young families. And I got catcalled twice (by an old man and a fifteen-year-old), so being a woman out in public can suck here, too. I'll be sure to Hollaback (great resource!) if anything nasty goes down.
The town itself, being built on a riverbank, is very hilly. Many streets are only for walkers and bikers, and sometimes, the best way to go between streets is to take a staircase. I haven't figured out, though, which staircases are public, and which just lead to someone's backyard. Hopefully I'll get my bearings before any awkward encounters go down.
With all the hiking and biking trails, the medieval-looking buildings, and the lazy, clean-enough-to-glisten-in-the-sunlight river, Schwäbisch Hall is the type of European town you see in the movies (at least before it gets wrecked). Or maybe that only happens in the movies I watch.
Once I got to the Frankfurt airport, I had three trains to catch to the Goethe Institut in Schwäbisch Hall (a small town in southwest Germany). I was worried about making them, because I had only scheduled myself 12 minutes in between each train. That was the naive American talking. In Germany, everyone takes their luggage off the rack, grabs their bags, and lines up in front of the door 10 minutes before the train reaches the station. Exiting the train takes about two minutes, then another two minutes for new riders to get on. A four-minute stop at each station in total. So that's why German trains run on time. Not some bullshit notion of "national character," just the minimal got-it-togetherness of being prepared to exit when it's time to do so. And, of course, knowing that you have another train to catch in six minutes that won't be running late either.
My roommate here at the Goethe Institut is from Japan. She speaks German at a beginning intermediate level, and very little English, so communication could be a little tricky. Oh well, we can practice German on each other.
This morning I took a placement test at the Goethe Institut in speaking, writing, and listening. I was placed at B.2.3, which I about what I expected. The exam moderator also asked if I was interested in a challenge, and true to overachieving Harvard form, I said yes, so she said she would put me in a higher level class if she has enough students to create one. I won't know my final course until tomorrow morning, the first day of classes.
After my placement test, I took an hour and a half walk around the town. There are parks on each side of the riverbank with pedestrian bridges to connect them, and a small park island as well. The park island seems popular with gutter punks, but also with young families. And I got catcalled twice (by an old man and a fifteen-year-old), so being a woman out in public can suck here, too. I'll be sure to Hollaback (great resource!) if anything nasty goes down.
The town itself, being built on a riverbank, is very hilly. Many streets are only for walkers and bikers, and sometimes, the best way to go between streets is to take a staircase. I haven't figured out, though, which staircases are public, and which just lead to someone's backyard. Hopefully I'll get my bearings before any awkward encounters go down.
With all the hiking and biking trails, the medieval-looking buildings, and the lazy, clean-enough-to-glisten-in-the-sunlight river, Schwäbisch Hall is the type of European town you see in the movies (at least before it gets wrecked). Or maybe that only happens in the movies I watch.
Thursday, September 2, 2010
Inspiration
Today I went to the funeral of my nanny, Berta Haberleitner Dignon. Berta was one of the first people -- and the first Austrian -- I ever met. I know that the nanny relationship can be problematic, and I hope my parents paid Berta well, because she took wonderful care of me for the first eight years of my life while my parents were at work. I went on play-dates with her own grandchildren, and we visited her on holidays even after she had retired from working for us. I'd like to think that some small part of my interest in German comes from that early influence. I have distinct memories of learning my first German words (for doll, girl, etc), and my parents tell me that I first spoke English with an Austrian accent!
At the funeral, our priest shared a letter written by her son that gives some background on Berta's amazing, inspiring life:
I was getting more and more nervous about going to Germany/Austria during the course of the past week. But after attending Berta's funeral, I'm not really nervous anymore. Studying abroad in Europe for a few months, with a six-year language background and e-mail and Skype contacts to friends and family back home, is nothing compared to what Berta was doing about the same age.
After I went to Austria for the first time in 2008, Berta told me that she had lived for two years in an apartment next to the Universitätskirche (university church) in Vienna. One of my first stops in Vienna will be to say a prayer in that church -- for Berta, her remarkable life, and for her power of the human spirit.
At the funeral, our priest shared a letter written by her son that gives some background on Berta's amazing, inspiring life:
Berta Juliana Haberleitner was born in 1922 and grew up in the village of Willendorf, which sits along the Danube River near Vienna, Austria. Her father worked for the Austrian railroad. Berta grew up during the Great Depression, and in the late 1930s Willendorf, along with the rest of Austria was overtaken and occupied by Germany during the build-up to WWII. She actually saw Adolf Hitler when he paraded through the streets of Vienna with the German army. As a teenager, Berta was taken away and forced to spend several months in a Hitler Youth camp in northern Germany. Her two brothers became conscripts in the German military: Fritz into the army and Rudi into the Luftwaffe [air force]. Her brother Fritz was wounded and spent over a year and a half in a Russian prison camp.Obviously, that's a very positive spin on Austria's involvement in Nazi Germany. The reality, of course, was more complicated and less innocuous. Berta's village was only meters away from Mauthausen, the only concentration camp in Austria, and she told my dad that she remembers watching the trains pass by en route to the camp. She certainly knew something was up, although she claims she didn't realize how bad things actually were in the camps until after the war. I'm not sure if this was due to the fact that Berta was a young teenager at the time, or whether information was really that compartmentalized. Besides, Berta had worries of her own:
She and her family survived WWII and endured many hardships, including the relentless Allied bombings of her country and the invasion of the Russian Army on their vengeful march to Berlin. Because of the extensive damage, the first year after the war was very difficult: rationed food, rationed heat and electricity. She actually was shot at by a farmer when she crawled through his food plot searching for food when there was none. She ate horse meat for over a year. Berta left her family and Austria in 1947, determined to find a better life for herself. She emigrated to Glasgow, Scotland, with a Jewish family and worked as a nanny there. She met my father William Dignon, Sr, who was working for the Scottish Gas Board as a plumber.Berta told me that she spoke almost no English when she met her future husband. He flirted with a German-English dictionary, looking up his sweet nothings word by painstaking word. One of her friends in Scotland told her that if he was willing to put that much effort into courting her, he was probably a keeper.
They soon married and in 1951 they decided to immigrate to the US and Pittsburgh with their infant son Alan. Mom and Dad ended up having four children ... Although he grew to become a successful engineer in the real estate business, Dad's life was cut short when he died of heart failure at age 54 back in 1979. Once again, Berta, as determined and strong-willed as always, carried on and lived independently for the next 30 years on her own. She died Sunday night at age 88 of complications from congestive heart failure and diabetes.
In one of her moments of clarity recently, in a conversation with her granddaughter Jessica about the 16-year-old girl who was attempting to sail alone around the world, Jessica commented on how unbelievable it was that anyone would have the courage and guts to attempt such a thing. Berta looked up at her and said, "It's unbelievable the things you can do when you are unafraid." Words that perfectly capture my mother's remarkable story and life.Berta's story cements for me the notion that human beings are capable of surviving pretty much anything. Berta withstood years of starvation, the destruction of her homeland, the loneliness of transatlantic migration, and the pain of her husband's early death. And through it all, she remained an incredibly loving and compassionate human being.
I was getting more and more nervous about going to Germany/Austria during the course of the past week. But after attending Berta's funeral, I'm not really nervous anymore. Studying abroad in Europe for a few months, with a six-year language background and e-mail and Skype contacts to friends and family back home, is nothing compared to what Berta was doing about the same age.
After I went to Austria for the first time in 2008, Berta told me that she had lived for two years in an apartment next to the Universitätskirche (university church) in Vienna. One of my first stops in Vienna will be to say a prayer in that church -- for Berta, her remarkable life, and for her power of the human spirit.
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