Skifahren in der Schweiz

People at Harvard are always saying that the connections you make there last a lifetime. Unfortunately, there aren't a lot of Harvard students in my little corner of the deutschsprachigen Raum, so I haven't been able to extend the Harvard bubble for another year here. Which makes me even more happy that I made friends with the VUSers (Visiting Undergraduate Students), who are mostly Germans attending the University of St. Gallen in der Schweiz, during my last year of college. I already went to Oktoberfest with some of them, and this weekend, I was invited to a tiny village in Switzerland for skiing, sledding, eating, and other winter activities.

Americans Have No Culture

Because it's basically an ERASMUS-Heim, my dorm seems to be built on the principle of cultural exchange in a way that I've never experienced before. Sure, I had plenty of international friends at Harvard. But at Harvard, the specific countries where my friends came from were not that salient to their public identities. We talked about sex in Georgia, transportation in France, educational philosophy in Nepal, etc. whenever it came up, but because we were all trying to fit into the cosmopolitan culture of Harvardland, national identities were not a huge part of our daily reality.

Here, it's altogether different. I've already talked about how this represents the first time many of the students here have gotten the opportunity to meet people from all over the world. And part and parcel of that is a kind of "food and festivals" multiculturalism that seems to be pretty common in the Heim.

Guess I Got My Swagger Back

Although I tried to maintain a positive outlook, my first few days in Austria did not go well. The problems started in the airport, when a lady asked me where the Gleis was for the S-Bahn, and I could barely get out the words for "down the steps there." When I went to pick up my roomkey from Martin's colleague, I was up to full phrases -- but only one at a time. When I tried to put together a two-phrase sentence, I ended up just trailing off halfway through. And then a girl around my age offered to help me with my baggage, but I just stared blankly at her because it took me like 30 seconds to figure out what she was saying.

Ok, I thought, I'll chalk that up to the fact that I haven't slept for 20 hours and am feeling the first stirrings of a horrific cold. But even after sleeping for ten hours, my attempt to introduce myself to my roommate auf Deutsch did not go as well as planned. Shit, I thought, have I forgotten how to speak this language? That could make things interesting.

But in the past few days, things have definitely been looking up. Finally able to get out of bed after a week-long Erkältung (cold), I've begun interacting with people, and I've found that my Deutsch skills are not as degraded as I had feared. In fact, I think I'm getting my Vienna swagger back:

Austrians are Funny #1

In the grocery store on Saturday, next to the cartons of tomato, carrot, and apple juice, I found sauerkraut juice. It's supposedly part of "Wellness für den Darm," which in English means "it gives you the runs like crazy." This is apparently a good thing.

Hey, at least it's organic!

Prater in Pictures

On Monday, the student assistants at my work took what is quickly becoming an annual trip to Prater, an amusement park in Wien, to celebrate the end of the semester. We rode the amusement park rides -- which were pretty comparable to Kennywood, with the exception of a distinct lack of large roller coasters -- and then ate dinner at Schweizerhaus, a restaurant in Prater known for its Stelze.

Bei ana Grüllarei san olle Leit dabei*

After Christmas, when the Christkindlmärkte packed up their wooden stands and disappeared from the city, I never thought I would find an Austrian activity to rival the Punschstände. But lo and behold, I just needed to wait a few months for the warmer weather, and with it, the beginning of grill season.

Genau!

I was searching Google for an explanation of why Austrians put corn on their pizza when I found this simply hilarious blog about living as an American in the German-speaking world. Although I've found that Austrians actually eat slower than Americans, I still found the following post about sharing meals with German speakers to really hit the nail on the head.

The Charmed Life

This year, the stars aligned perfectly for a European vacation with my friends from Harvard. Marion had a polo match against Oxford (the men’s team – yes, she is that legit!) over the weekend, and then planned to spend a week at her home in France before heading back to Boston for a physics internship, while Mariam was expecting to spend a week in London with her best friend from Georgia (the country) who just completed a journalism program there. Because I would be in Austria for the summer anyway, it just made sense for me to join them. And when Eunice heard that a trip to London and Paris was being planned, she couldn’t pass up the opportunity. So, before fulfilling January’s promise to myself and returning to the country of my dreams, I spent the weekend in London with my friends.

mi è piaciuta la italia

It's no secret to anyone who's talked to me in the past few months that I am seriously in love with Austria and with my life here. I'm living like a normal student, which was my goal for the semester from the beginning. But that also means I need to remind myself that there's a lot that's special about this semester as well, and that I should take advantage of the extraordinary opportunities as much as the ordinary ones.

Thanksgiving in Wien

I’ve always been the type of person who lives in the moment, and so I’ve never really had much of a problem with homesickness. I did get a little sad, though, when I Skyped my family on Thanksgiving and heard about their holiday plans, and so I was especially glad that Central College organizes a Thanksgiving Party “for us,” in that we the exchange students are the ones who need this feast the most, but also “by us,” in that we’re also responsible for cooking the foods and sharing our tradition with our Austrian guests (our roommates and friends as well as the Central College Abroad professors).

Learning German: der Heurige

Heurigen are wine taverns directly on the property of the vineyards whose wine they serve. They exist throughout the Eastern Austrian wine-producing region, and have become a veritable institution since Kaiser Josef II permitted vintners to begin selling their own wines in 1784. Today, there are two types of Heurigen: touristy places reachable by the tour buses full of Germans who come down to sample Austrian wine, and more rustic accommodations that often require a hike up a meandering mountain path that's too steep for the tour buses to travel. On the last day of my Mom's visit, I wanted to show her one of the latter. With a recommendation from Marie, the assistant director of my program, and a printed map from Wiener Linien (Wien's equivalent of the MBTA), we were ready to go.

Frauentreff, or in English, Meeting Women

Central College Abroad gives us the opportunity to complete an internship during our time in Vienna. Brie, another girl with the program, and I are both working at Frauentreff, a non-profit organization for foreign-born women in an immigrant neighborhood. Frauentreff has German language coruses, beginning literary courses, and advising for women in multiple languages (Turkish, Spanish, and three West African languages -- Ewe, Twi, and Hausa -- I had never heard of before). This is mostly advice and help with everyday life (How do I register my daughter for school? Could you translate this form and help me fill it out?) and small bureaucratic matters that present minor annoyances to cultural insiders but major roadblocks / sources of confusion for immigrants with little knowledge of the system and weak language skills. It's a bit ad-hoc, but nonetheless important. Unfortunately, there's not really much for us to do, so I don't know how long this internship is going to last, but I've enjoyed simply watching the work of the center so far.

Today, Brie and I went to a beginning literacy course. Because all of the women were from small villages in Turkey, they had never had the opportunity to go to school, and since studies show that it's easier for a person to learn to read in their native language, the class was conducted in Turkish. The women were working off of a paper with a bunch of very simple, "What is your name?" questions, and then various answers. First, the women attempted to read the paper through. A phonics lesson then followed, as the women had to attempt to figure out how to write each of the names of the people on the paper. Finally, the women had to attempt to write their own name using phonics. It was fascinating, because even though Brie and I could read the words on the paper, we didn't know what they meant -- the exact opposite of the women in the class, who understood the words but couldn't read them. By the end, though, both groups understood that "ismin ne?" means "What is your name?"

At the end of the lesson, the teacher told Brie and me that we could gladly stay and drink tea with the women. We accepted, and suddenly, the women were pulling out huge containers of food and pouring heaping amounts of a dish that looked and tasted like Italian wedding soup without the soup on plates for us. A large, circular piece of flatbread (very similar to naan) formed the basis of the meal, and then there were various topping options, from joghurt (Greek style, but don't tell Turkish people that) to thick cherry filling to cucumbers and parsley.

Brie and I didn't have a language in common with these women, because even though they've been in Austria for two to five years, they spoke very little German. They understood us when we said "Bitte" (please), "Danke" (thank you), "Entschuldigung" (excuse me), and "Auf Wiedersehen" (goodbye") -- what you can learn in any tourist book -- but when I tried to ask them "Wie heißt das auf Türkisch?" (What is that called in Turkish?), I got a mix of blank looks, "Türkisch, ja" (meaning that Turkish was the only word they understood), and "nicht verstehen" (don't understood). But that didn't really matter, because if you want to be my friend, all you have to do is feed me. The women were incredibly nice, and told the director of Frauentreff, a Turkish-born woman who has lived in Germany and Austria for 20 years, that they wished we could talk to one another better. I think they don't have a lot of opportunities to interact with Austrian / non-Turkish people. The director says that because they can find everything they need in their neighborhood (just like back in their villages in Turkey), they rarely venture out.

By the end of the meal (and with some help from the director), we had learned the Turkish words for sugar, bread, tea, thank you, spoon, and bowl. One of the women even asked us how to say goodbye in English. There was only one lingering question: Was that supposed to be lunch, or does "drinking tee" really mean "drink tea and eat until you burst?" I'll have to Google Translate that question and ask the women at "tea time" next Friday.

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.

Fascism isn't an opinion; it's a crime.

Ban the NPD now

I actually don't know how to translate this, but the general idea is that we need a positive movement, not neo-Nazism.

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. 

Much more prominent is Schwäbisch Hall's Freundschafttag (Friendship Day), an annual street festival celebrating multiculturalism, that took place yesterday on the main plaza.

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:

Banner on the church wall says: "Social justice instead of Sarrazin! Racism solves no problems."

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.

View of the festival from the church steps

Lebanese man grinding chickpeas to make falafel.

Homemade falafel. Yum!

Brazilian drummers

Goethe students performing: Sean (American viola player), Keiko (Japanese violinist), and Amy (American opera singer)

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!

Döner Kebap

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.

Li Hon with her Döner in the Biergarten

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.

Locally brewed beer and the Süddeutsche Zeitung. The perfect way to spend an afternoon.