Narratives of learning

The legend of the see-through blue two-piece bathing suit

2008-07-28T12:17:00.001-07:00

The air had not been moving for days. The fireball in the baby blue sky has turned this most vivid tourist attraction mile into a dusty urban desert. Those who can have migrated to the mint tasting freshness of the Brandenburg lakes, those who can’t are attending the Miss Roasted Chicken 2008 awards in the empty brown fields that used to be healthy green parks a fortnight ago.

Only Patrick, Andy and Julia are excluded from the worship of the sun. The university is merciless. However, Julia’s goal for that afternoon is not to finish the university work but to get Patrick to migrate to a hidden lonely lake with her. She likes his long, brown hair, his three day’s beard, his Hawaiian shirt and the imagination of what might be underneath it. Yes, she has a crush on him. Only problem is, Andy wants to join the trip to the lake. Andy is the type of guy who is always well prepared – wearing a suit to university that you would imagine a 60 old history professor to wear, even when it’s 40 degrees outside because he might run into his 60 years old history professor. But he isn’t prepared for spontaneous natural refreshment. “The only problem is I don’t have swimming shorts.”

“No problem, I can borrow you some of mine,” Patrick’s only problem is that he is too nice to everybody. Comparing the body sizes of the two, Andy would look like a 1970’s coast guard in shorts that were very loose around Patrick’s hips. Julia realised that she needs to put an impediment to that: “Or I can borrow you one of mine. I have a beautiful see-through blue two-piece bathing suit. You’d look sexy in that.”

See-through! Blue! Two-piece! Bathing suit! The guys would have not been guys, if they weren’t getting curious. “Why do you have a see-through bathing suit?” “I wore it so often that it became see-through.” “Why do you keep it?” “I keep it to wear it under t-shirts that you tie around your neck.”

That night Julia calls up Patrick with the obvious intention to make a date even though her explanation is that she needs to borrow some papers. The conversation drifts off and of course the bathing suit is mentioned. “You could send me a picture of you wearing it,” Patrick suggests. The next thing Julia does, is to call up her best male friend Robert to ask, if that means that Patrick is interested in her. Of course, Robert wants to know about the bathing suit. He just became member number three of the secret blue bathing suit society.

The next day, Julia and Patrick actually have a date. “By chance” Julia wears a T-shirt to tie around her neck and that bikini underneath it. But Patrick is too shy to comment on it or attempt to take it off.

The morning after that, Julia is late, her flat is in a mess. Where is a bra? There’s the bikini from last night. One can see its strings under the T-shirt, never mind, I gotta go.
Robert is the first to ask her about it: “Hey, are you wearing that see-though blue bathing suit. Turn around, can I see it.” For the rest of the day, he sends her notes that she should take off her t-shirt and sit in from of Patrick in the library, if she is into him for real.

Then, Andy comes along. “Are you wearing that see-through blue bathing suit? Can I touch is and feel the fabric.” He almost takes of her T-shirt in front of everybody. Julia is annoyed, she’s had enough. She decides to demystify that ordinary boring blue two-piece bathing suit. At home, she takes a picture of it lying empty on her bed. She sends the picture to the three members of her secret society. She gets two answers. Robert says: “What a pity, I would have liked to see you in that.” Andy says: “I’m too much of a gentleman to open the file.” Only the person, whose attention she wanted to attract remains silent.

Another day later, she sits in the cafeteria complaining to her female best friend about the male capacity of legend building. What she doesn’t realize is that Max, another good friend of hers is sitting at the next table listening to everything. “I’d love to get those pictures, too.” That’s secret society member number four.

Meanwhile, Robert and Patrick try to convince Andy that there is nothing un-gentleman-like about opening those files. Fabian is with them, he is the one of the clique who is known to have the wildest connections of synapses in his head. It takes about ten minutes until he comes up to Julia suggesting: “You should take pictures of all your underwear and put them on the cafeteria walls.” Yes, Julia has learned her lesson now, sometimes silence is golden and talking is nothing but a blue see-though bathing suit.

Indiana Jones and the Roman Flower Bed Drainage

2008-07-27T13:34:00.001-07:00

The cool thing about being 14 and spending all your days at a horse riding school is that you can try all kinds of vocations there. You can practise being a vet, a teacher, a bar tender, even an archaeologist:

Our horse riding instructor had told us to put some pansies in the flower bed at the entrance of the horse riding school. We were bored because the older girls had their lesson and did not want us to watch, and our instructor gave us lessons for free if we helped in the stable. So we said yes and started digging.

We dug several holes to put the flowers in there. Soon, we started to hit a rock. Let’s dig out that rock, it’s not supposed to be in a flower bed. When the rock hit daylight, we saw that it looked big and ancient.

We had grown up in Aachen, always conscious of the fact that we were walking on Ancient Roman foundations. We had learned in school that the Romans had founded Aquae Grani because of the healthy water and had left their traces all over the place. Just a couple of weeks ago, people had found the residues of a Roman villa when they started building a new shopping centre.

Maybe that rock was Roman, too? The hot sources were only a stone’s throw away from where we were digging. Maybe the horse riding school was built on the ground a Roman villa, or even an arena? We continued digging. And indeed, we found more rocks, same size, same ancient look. They were buried next to each other.

Were those the top rocks of a Roman wall? We became excited. But, what if the wall continued underneath the barn? Would they have to tear down the barn if the archaeologists dug up the Roman wall? When we asked ourselves that question we were a hundred percent sure that we had found something ancient and that we were doing the right thing in digging it out.

Then, our horse riding instructor came along, seeing 5 teenage girls all dirty with mud and a flower bed that doesn’t look like one anymore. “What’s your business digging up those rocks? You were supposed to simply plant those flowers,” he told us and we explained him our newest excavations.
“Those rocks are definitely not ancient,” he explained us then, “I buried them myself”
“But why?”
“Because I tried to build a drainage for the flower bed, so that the rain water wouldn’t stay there. So, please put those rocks back where you found them.”

The red lipstick glitter disco river bank summer night

2008-07-26T06:42:00.001-07:00

Last Thursday I got a phone call from my childhood friend Hanna. She is in Berlin now on a business trip, hitting Hamburg next and then going all the way to Switzerland. “Shall we meet tonight” “Of course” In our youth, Hanna and me have been best friends. When we met in a Pizzaria in one of the most vivid streets of this town, we realize that we haven’t seen each other for almost three years.

Hanna’s look has become much more ordinary than what I remember, a pink cardigan instead of second-hand T-shirts, jeans instead of self-made skirts. I look much more alternative stylish than three years ago with my XL-print T-Shirt, my stylish bangs, ballarina shoes and kitsch red lipstick. Hanna complains about all those London fashion victims here in Berlin, I love their pop iconicity.

We talk about her trips to Taiwan, Laos, Thailand, my trips to Poland, Spain and the Balkans. “Your trips were probably much more exciting because South East Asia is so westernized,” she tells me. Then, about common childhood friends “Elke got married, Lena now works as a secretary,” faded boyfriends, the usual. Hanna gets a phone call from some people from her group going to a pub. She asks me if I want to join. The only obligation I have is to be at work tomorrow morning at 10 – of course I do.

We meet in a bar on a raft on the river Spree. It is a beautiful summer evening – the best way the city can present itself. People enjoy an after-work beer, there is chill techno music in the background. The Berlin mosquitos are the greatest in the world because they don’t eat us alive. Hanna and her friends from work tell me how much they love the city, the openness of the people, the art that is in the air, or rather sprayed on run down buildings. I have to agree, in moments like this, I love this city.

After one beer, most of the group leaves because they are tired. I’m shocked, it’s only 11 o’clock. “You must think we’re those hillbillies who don’t know how to party,” one of the girls tells me. The truth is, yes, I guess I’ve become a metropolitan party queen. How can you go to bed on such a beautiful night? Some of the guys want to go to a place that some street musician recommended to them – the Cassiopeia. I’ve heard about it before but have never been there. I don’t want to embarrass myself by admitting that as a Berliner I don’t know this place, so I suggest something else, but they want to go there.

In the end, that choice was perfect. The Cassiopeia is all that 21st century Berlin is about: the mixture of old and new, poor but sexy. It is a run down factory on the river bank, two floors, the walls painted red, a star spangled mirror ball, a city beach in the patio, antique deckchairs and sofas, a place to play ping pong and climb, cheap drinks. The music is hip hop and techno, just what Hanna and me danced to in our youth because the two discos would play nothing else. The public is a mixture of London glitter style tourist from Spanish provincial towns and Berliners in T-shirt, Jeans and Sneakers. My alternative chique lipstick beauty is right in between all that and even Hanna doesn’t feel underdressed.

Hanna is completely transfixed by this place. “I love it, I love it” she keeps shouting. It’s a mixture between the Sage and Kulturbrauerei, the places I go out normally, I think I have to keep this one in mind. Just like 7 years ago, Hanna and me are the first on the dance floor, the guys from our group follow. They are from the same town as Hanna and me, I find out and they went to the same crappy disco there- the B9. On the floor, we perform the worst B9 dancing moves and the glitter people join us when the place starts filling up at 2 o’clock.

The next day, I’m completely tired when I get to work but after two cups of coffee my red lip stick smile comes back. I love the city of Berlin – thanks to my old school friend I remembered again why I did.

The blessings and curses of being the youngest

2008-07-20T08:14:00.000-07:00

My youngest cousin is three years younger than me. The two of us have pretty much the same life story: we both went to a good school, graduated, went to university, had several relationships, several part time jobs. In all those things, I was always the first. I was the first in the family to have bring home a Turkish boyfriend, the first in the family to enter University, the first to learn Latin.

In that sense, my cousin always had it easier than me. He never had to listen to my grandfather going on about him forgetting another piece of his background with every foreign word he learned. And that, even though his dread locks were meant to be much more provocative than my Oasis T-shirt. When he did those things, my grandparents had already gotten used to the idea of their grandchildren doing things only their class enemy knew about.

When I decided to spend some time in the USA, I got to hear all those worries, concerns and complaints by my family. Why are you leaving, don’t you like it here? What if you get robbed? What if you get lost? Do you hate your family so much that you want to get away from us? Yes, family reunions were getting annoying in those days. The same thing happened when I was about to go Spain.

Why do you have to go to Spain? Can’t you study here? But in Spain, there is the ETA? Do you know how much it will cost to get there, in case something happens to you?

Now, my little cousin has decided to go to Costa Rica and work as a farm hand there. A much more daring and adventurous plan than me staying in a host family or getting an Erasmus scholarship, I think. I really admire his courage for doing that – going to a foreign country without a double bottom consisting of an organisation, scholarship money and a list of cheap student housings.

When he announced his plan to my grandparents, they reacted much different from what I had expected. Instead of giving him thousands warnings, my grandmother just said: “Well, you young people need to have some international experience in your CV now, don’t you?” There was no “but you really have to go?” kind of talk. Instead my cousin could lean back while I had to endure my grandmother’s worries about me not being married at the age of 24.

On the one hand, I felt envious of him for not going though all the trouble I had. On the other hand, I felt sorry for him because my grandparents didn’t seem to care so much anymore. Before I had gone off to Spain, my grandmother had made me show her on a map exactly where I was going. After that, she spend every day watching the international weather forecast on TV to see if I was about to get hit by a thunderstorm or a drought. Now, her grandchildren going abroad and coming back after a year, seems to have become a normal thing for her. And my poor cousin doesn’t have anybody who worries about the weather for him.

The most successful punk band ever

2008-07-17T12:09:00.000-07:00

It was a historical moment. A grey Saturday afternoon in a Western German suburbia. That day, Hannah, Julia, and I decided to form a band. I had been playing piano for about a year, Julia owned an e-piano but didn’t know how to play and Hannah was a passionate singer. What more could you ask for? A guitar player, he was found, when Tommy from across the street agreed to join our band.

The tasks were divided quickly, Hannah would sing and write the melodies, I would write the lyrics and play the bass keys on one e-piano because bass players were always the coolest. Julia would play the keyboard chords, sing the backing vocals and play the synthesizer drums on her e-piano until we found a drummer. Tommy was to play the guitar and look cute but shut up otherwise.

But then, Hannah’s little sister Judith wanted to join the band, too. The problem was, the only instrument she knew how to play was the flute. Who had ever heard of a punk band with a flute? – we said no. She started to cry and ran to her mother. Mum told Hannah that she was grounded if she didn’t let her sister come in our band. What could we do?

During the first band practice we figured out that little Judith knew only how to play “Old McDonald had a farm”. Never mind, we said, so a punk version of “Old McDonald” would be our first hit. I changed the lyrics to sound like a protest song against McDonalds and pro animal-rights. After we decided that, we spend the rest of the band practice to make up our outfits.

When we met for the second time in our "garage" (that is the attic of my parents' house) things became more difficult. Each time Hannah started to sing, Judith blew her flute as loud as she could. In the end, Hannah had no choice but to lock her sister into a closet. Then Tommy decided that as he had nothing to say about the band's artistic development, he might as well listen to football on the radio instead of practising.

The original band members continued with vocals, bass, drums and keyboards until my father came up complaining about the noise. Of course, Judith used that chance to protest against her imprisonment. Discovering that we had locked her in that closet, my father told all of us to leave and as a punishment we were not allowed to use the attic anymore. After being stripped of our garage and one e-piano, which wasn't to be taken out of the house, the band split up even before our first performance.

In the end, I have to be thankful to my father. Since he caused us to split up right in the beginning, we never had the chance to be tempted by commercial success. We never sold out our art. In this way, true to the punk anti-philosophy, we were so unsuccessful that we were the most successful punk band ever.

Horses with inferiority complexes

2008-07-17T00:03:00.000-07:00

I liked Chocolate from the very beginning. She was attentive and had vivid eyes. She was not like those horses that are used for schooling, who seemed sullen and didn’t care about who is riding them. Chocolate always seemed curious about her rider and she always had her ears turned up in a friendly way.

I liked Chocolate from the very beginning, but I seemed to be the only one. When I was riding her for the first time, the horse riding instructor told me: “Be careful that she doesn’t throw you off. If she kicks and rears, don’t use the riding crop or she will throw you off.” I was surprised to hear that because it didn’t seem to fit to Chocolate’s personality.

The first lesson with her was fine. She was sensitive to the reins, she had a lovely trot and even though we didn’t do much galloping, she was responsive to my leg aids then. There was nothing that gave me the impression that she was one of those evil-minded horses, who would do anything to throw off their riders.

Two weeks later, we switched horses and the girl who was riding Chocolate at that time was having a hard time. The horse seemed completely changed, as if it was going crazy. When we came to galloping, she stood in the middle of the paddock kicking the other horses and rearing on her hinder legs. She girl seemed very desperate on top of the horse.

The week after that it was my turn with Chocolate again and she was doing the same things. She was great during the lesson, but as soon as one horse in the paddock started to gallop, she went crazy. But I managed not to fall off. I took it as a challenge to make her gallop correctly and since I was the only one who would take up the challenge, I could ride her every lesson.

For the next few weeks, I found out a couple of things: Chocolate only did the mounting when galloping on the left hand, on the right hand, she was fine. When using too much leg aid, she felt confused and wouldn’t comply. Therefore, the leg aid when starting to gallop had to be very light. If she was about to rear, I had to use the crop lightly and then she would start running like crazy. After half a lap she would slow down and react to my aids again. Thus, I always needed a lot of empty space ahead of me. If there were other horses, she would try to bite them.

Soon, I found out why Chocolate was rearing. Bully, one of those evil-minded horses, who deserved his name because of his size and shape, started kicking. Chocolate and I happened to be behind that horse and the hooves were flying in our direction. We were lucky not be hit. For the rest of the lesson, Chocolate was panicking. Whenever Bully passed us by, she jumped aside and mounted. She was clearly afraid of him.

Chocolate was one of the smallest horses in the stable and as I had just found out, she was afraid of taller horses, especially when they galloped by her. Therefore, she reared to make herself seem taller and intimidate them. A solution to her behaviour was found easily: stay ahead of the taller horses and start galloping before they do.

As soon as I stuck to those things, Chocolate was the best horse in the stable. There was only one problem. As soon as the other riders saw, how well she doing when I rode her, they wanted to ride her as well.

Multicoloured Advertisement Dilemma

2008-07-13T12:58:00.000-07:00

It’s a Thursday afternoon. Valery is sitting in the bus coming home from work and she is very hungry. She is thinking about dinner. What could she have? She has a fridge full of food at home but things don’t seem appropriate there. She bought a kilo of potatoes last week that is rotting away on her kitchen sink. She has to eat those potatoes soon, or she will have to throw them away.

But she doesn’t feel like eating potatoes with curd cheese. She wants something fancy, something colourful. She could stop by at the supermarket on her way home and buy deep-fried camenbert with cranberry sauce. It’s colourful and it tastes sweet. She could also bring along some chocolate pudding and some soda for desert while being at the supermarket. That sounds like a plan.

The bus continues and she is looking out of the window. It passes an advertisement poster of a fast food restaurant praising their new low fat full taste tuna sandwich.

Actually, she doesn’t feel like having camenbert anymore, Valerie decides all the sudden, she’d rather feel like having a tuna sandwich. She remembers that she has can of tuna at home, as well as a glass of prickles and some lettuce that is about to rod away in her fridge. But she doesn’t have the right bread to make a tuna sandwich. She could stop by at the bakery and get some bread, but at 5 in the afternoon they probably won’t have any left. But two bus stations from her home there is this fast food place – she could just take the bus there before even going home, get a sandwich and next door there is this coffee place, she could get some caramel flavoured iced cappuccino there. That sounds great. She has coffee and milk at home, but at home it never has this sweet, artificial taste that’s so addictive.

Or maybe, she could eat something with ketchup – it occurs to her all the sudden. But actually she doesn’t like ketchup. How did she come up with that idea anyway? Then, she notices the advertisement for a ketchup bottle hanging on the inside of the bus, right in front of her eyes. Is that the only reason why she feels like eating ketchup now? Is it so easy to manipulate her?

She decides that she doesn’t let herself be manipulated that easily. She decides to say no to consumerism – at least for today. She is not going to spend any money that day. Instead she will go straight home and make herself the potatoes sitting in her kitchen and be happy. She won’t let herself be terrorized by advertisement anymore. After all, she likes potatoes much more than fried cheese or tuna sandwiches.

How to handle praise

2008-07-12T13:23:00.000-07:00

Charlie was used to the fact that his life was a failure. He had never done good in school. He had been playing the guitar for years but was never confident enough to perform in public. He had been in a soccer team for a while but when he realized that he was the worst player in the team he quit. After school, he passed through several jobs and stuck with one that didn’t fulfil him but paid the bills. Even though, he had had several girlfriends he had never been the world greatest loverman either. But somehow he was hanging on.

He didn’t realize that his whole life was about to change when he picked up his guitar at a friend’s birthday party and played a song he had written. He had never been able to move the masses until that day. All the sudden, everybody came up to him telling him: “Wow, that’s so awesome, that’s so great” Never before had he heard people tell that to him.

A friend of his had videotaped his performance and put it on Youtube. It received 30 000 hits from all over the world and the comments were most encouraging: “Vaya canción una maravilla.” “This is awesome, publish it on CD.” “Dieser Song rockt!” “Tres cool”. At first, it seemed very scary to him, how fast the video was spreading around the world. But then, it sunk in: He was actually great at something!

The dreams, which he had thrown in the garbage as a kid, came back to him. He started imagining himself on stage as the greatest guitar god, playing at the same festivals as his childhood heroes (at least those who hadn’t killed themselves at 27). Mentally he even prepared the thank-you-speech he would give when receiving the Grammy awards.

For the next two weeks, he felt like flying. He was very creative in those days, writing a new song every day. He couldn’t wait to get home from work to pick up his guitar and work on another song. For the first time, life seemed easy to him.

Then, one night he played his new songs to the girl he had secretly been in love with for ages, but she considered him only a friend. She had been the inspiration for most of his songs. She listened to his songs and then told him: “It’s quite nice. A bit like Coldplay meets U2. Maybe not the greatest song ever, but it’s nice.”

For the first time, Charlie got really angry at her. How could she say: “Not the greatest song ever!” Could she not see that he was the greatest guitar god! What did she know about music anyway! Then, he started to think. Maybe she was right, maybe that was crap. He got angry at himself for believing that he was the greatest guitar god. Why had he ever thought so? A month ago, he would have been the happiest man in the world after hearing her comment. Now he was devastated, he wanted to throw his guitar out of the window. It occurred to him that he had been used to failure all his life but not to praise. That was why a simple comment like “great song” had made him believe he was the greatest guitar player in the world. A simple comment on Youtube had changed his whole perception. He had learned how to live with failure, he realized, now he had to learn how to live with success.

Where has the world revolution gone?

2008-07-09T09:25:00.000-07:00

I live in a quarter of Berlin which is known for the Revolutionary 1st of May. In the 1980’s that was a demonstration where political activists would throw Molotov Cocktails at police men. In the 1990’s that was a party where bored high school kids from small town Germany threw rocks at police men. In the new millennium, it has become an event where kids with migration background throw empty beer cans at police men and grab that with their mobiles.

Nevertheless, the revolutionary forces keep trying: The first year that I lived in Berlin there was a huge poster in my street which read in German and Turkish: “1st of May, 4 pm. The world revolution starts here.”
I laughed about it. But in a way, I felt proud that the world revolution would start here in my street. I would be a witness to history, maybe I would be even part of it. But then I realized, what that meant: because people feared riots, the bank and the supermarket in my neighbourhood were closed and boarded up, even a week before the 1st of May. They even shut down the two metro lines which run through my quarter, trying to isolate the revolutionary forces.

When I had to walk 20 minutes to the next bank that wasn’t boarded up, to get cash in order to buy food in a supermarket 15 minutes walking distance, I decided that it was not so great after all to have a revolution starting in your own neighbourhood. Why can’t they start on a field somewhere in rural Brandenburg? All supermarkets and banks have been shut down over there anyway.

The day of the revolution I had a hang-over. And all that happened in my street was that a death metal band was playing right in front of my house. Thank you very much! That was not the revolution that I had imagined. There was no excitement or electricity in the air. Only drunk kids with long hair banging their heads to bad cover versions of Metallica that were making my head explode. If that was the World Revolution, it might as well happen without me.

A week later a saw a poster, which read: “8th of May, 2 pm, great demonstration at Görlitzer Bahnhof, the World Revolution starts here.” So, the grand revolution had advanced one metro station in a week. Amazing speed. Maybe by now it has advanced up to the fields of rural Brandenburg, but most likely it got stuck at the final metro station still waiting for a bus.

When your little empire collapses

2008-07-08T13:10:00.000-07:00

Anita had grabbed the opportunity of her life and clung to it. Even though she had never cared for cars or sports, connections got her a job in the public relation department of a motorsport team. And she found out that she actually enjoyed that job.

Kimberly was the complete opposite. At the age of 19, she had started to live in a leftist commune, study Marx and wait for the world revolution. How the two of them collided is a story too long to tell.

“So, you are making your money with automobile racing?” Kimberly asked her and Anita answered: “Yes, one can say so, even though I don’t race myself.”
Kimberly critically questioned that profession: “And are you aware of the fact that automobile racing is the most fascist sport on earth?”

If there was one thing that Anita had learned about university politics, it was that leftist people often mixed up fascism with capitalism and that was why they didn’t know their enemy. So, she answered critically: “I agree, if you say that automobile racing is the most capitalist sport of the world, but what is fascistic about it?”
“Then, why for example, are there no black or Jewish racers?”
Anita said: “First of all, I know a black driver and secondly, I think it's more of a social thing than a racial problem. Most people from minorities don’t have the money to buy their sons a go-kart and if they have some, they worked harder for it and don’t want their children to waste their money on those things.”

Kimberly ignored that answer kept shooting holes in Anita’s conscience: “I assume you talked about National Socialism in school.”
“Yes, that was always a topic, “Anita answered her
“But you only learned about the crimes of the Nazis, not about the structures which still continue.”
“What kind of structures do you mean?” Anita wasn’t sure if Kimberly was offending her, implying that all Germans are still Nazis.
“Well, for example, automobile racing. Are you aware that the Nazis supported that sport because it displays the New Man. Male, powerful, fearless and controlling technology? The New Arian. The automobile racers were the first to ban Jews. What do you think about that?”
“But you can say that about every sport,” Anita’s defence was a bit weak. But then Kimberly just got started: “Have you heard of those?” She asked and named race tracks, cars and drivers. Anita had to admit that she knew the race track and one of the drivers was the father of one pilot in her team.

For Anita, it was a strange feeling to know somebody, at least by sight, who had collaborated with the Nazis. (Her grandparents had told her that they had hidden Jews in their basement.) For the first time in her life she started to doubt whether she had taken the right choices in her life. The Nazi accusations had really caused a stir in her mind. Because of her 1990s German socialization she knew that there was nothing worse than being fascist. And now her working environment had been declared as such. But it was not only that. She also had the feeling that she had missed something essential, something meaningful in her life. When she was young she had always imagined that she would join a group like Greenpeace or Attac to save the world at least a little bit. And what had happened to that dream? Today, she was organising press conferences for people who objectively were not even unimportant but harmful for the environment.

That conversation gave her many sleepless night and desperate hours of self-doubt. Should she quit her job and work as an anti-globalization activists in the rain forest? But, on the other hand, what was Kimberly doing to change the world? Reading Marx over and over again, would that alone be enough? In the end, Anita concluded that she would continue to recycle her garbage and donate money to a feminist education centre in her street and thus help change the world at least a little bit.

What's vital?

2008-07-07T11:26:00.000-07:00

A computer with an internet connection and two hours to kill can take you anywhere. On that particular day, we came to a page that would calculate how much unemployment payment we would receive if we weren’t students. I would get exactly € 2 less a months than what my student job and scholarship add up to.

One friend of mine was convinced that one couldn’t live off the money received from the state. She was politically active and demanded a raise in that payment. I told her that I agreed with her that the reform of the employment market wasn’t the best possible solution. But I disagreed with her that one would starve to death because of it. After all, I wasn’t starving. I ate healthy food, was going out regularly and was able for my horse riding classes. The € 2 didn’t really make the difference.

“But you couldn’t afford to go to the theatre and that’s vital,” she told me
“Theatre? No, food is vital and housing,” I told her, “and the state pays your rent and you can buy enough food for that money.”

Her answer was, “but you have to take your children to the theatre regularly, so that they can receive a classical education. And that’s vital for their future.” She wouldn't change her point of view that theatre and music lessons were as important for a child's education as food and a warm place to sleep, no matter how long we argued.

This conversation again made me realize that I was different. As a child, I had been to the theatre three times; once because a friend of by parents’ played in an amateur drama group, once with school and once because there was an opera performed in a football stadium. Nevertheless, I made it to the age of 24 and what’s even more a miracle is that I was able to enter into spheres where theatre visits are as important as food. And that, even though I only knew Romeo and Juliet from the movies.

Actually I like Germany because...

2008-07-05T09:49:00.000-07:00

I’ve always been one of the least patriotic people one can imagine. Not because of the great history and politics, I just could never really identify with the country I happened to be born in. I always felt like an underdog. So, in sports, I could always identify of the underdogs but since German TV only shows those sports where Germans are winning, I never cheered for the Germans. Germany just seemed a country too big for a small person like me, Belgium seemed more fitting, or Estonia, or Slovenia.

I didn’t find myself in German literature either: Goethe was boring, Fontane was too uptight and Grass too perverted.

I didn’t feel so much ashamed of German history. That is because I can identify more with the victims than with the perpetrators. A German-Jewish academic from Berlin seems much closer to me than a painter from Vienna. But the German virtues never seemed to apply to me either: I’m not a very punctual person, I grew up in an anti-authoritarian way, so discipline is a foreign word to me, my flat is always in a mess.

I had always felt lost in the German society in a way, so I moved to abroad. And I had been to Spain for about four month when I found myself uttering the following “I actually like Germany because....”

That day, I had just tried to book a flight from Spain to Finland, bad idea – I had a connection via Germany and Estonia, taking first a bus, then an airplane, another airplane, a ferry, and then a train.

That night I was out with my international friends and I told them: “I actually like Germany because it’s so easy to get everywhere from there.” There was no sarcasm on my voice. My international friends told me: “Come on, don’t be so cynical, it’s nothing wrong with loving your country.”

But I meant it. That is why I like Germany – because it’s so central in Europe and it’s so well connected with flights and international train. I love travelling and therefore, I like Germany, because it’s so easy to travel from Germany. Maybe, that is my sense of postmodern patriotism in a way.

...and in the end, it turned out that the Spanish ALSA was more reliable that the Deutsche Bahn.

The future chancellors and Nobel Prize winners - 5 years later

2008-07-04T10:47:00.000-07:00

It was the 4th of July 2003, our personal independence day – graduation day at a high school in Aachen, not just any high school, the elitarian high school of Aachen, one member of the German cabinet had graduated from that school, one famous violinist and a poet as well. There we were – 80 graduates, 19 years old kids dressed in suits and evening dresses, playing punk songs while receiving our diplomas.

We were the elite of tomorrow, we were told in the festive speeches, we could be anything we wanted, if we just tried. And we felt greatness. We were smart, we thought we knew everything, we would never be more mature than that. The world had only been waiting for us to be freed from school.

In the year book it was written about each of us: “the most likely to become the German chancellor” “will win the Nobel prize in biology” “I want to change the world with my writings,” and we were on our way to do that.

Three months later, I found myself in the university cafeteria of the Humboldt University drinking coffee with people from the elitarian high school in Kaiserslautern, Bremen and Sprock-Hövel. They were as great as I was, 300 first year students all with the same goal of achieving fame and greatness.

On Christmas that year, I talked with my best friend from the high school days. She had always been the best in class and she studied medicine now. “It was hard to get used to the fact that you are just average,” she told me – exactly.

Today, exactly 5 years have passed since we were told that we were the stars of tomorrow. None of us has achieved that greatness so far. None of us has failed completely either, as far as I know. Some have finished their job training, have their first real job, car and two-room-flat. But most of us are still caught up in university, studying beyond the four and half years of regular time.

Maybe five years is not enough time to build up fame and greatness. But each of us had to learn a lesson – we were not the only ones out there, thousands as high school graduates in this were the same as we were, the world had not been waiting for us. Yes, we are average and the thing we would have never imagined is: we enjoy it!

Marilyn Manson and Axl Rose in the library catalogue

2008-07-03T11:45:00.000-07:00

The public library in Aachen is one of the ugliest buildings imaginable. The 1970’s proliferation of concrete definitely left its traces. No matter of the weather, inside there was always the light of a rainy November day. To get there, one had to step across the the bus station which was known for its notorious smell of urine and for syringes on the floor. Not exactly where you would want your teenage daughter to hang out every Saturday, to be honest.

Nevertheless, my mother happily gave me the signature for the library card. She was relieved that I asked for a library card and not for a belly button piercing, I think. So, I got inside with my shiny and new library card and I started to browse the shelves. At the age of 12 I had no clue about Literature. So, I started with books which had been turned into those movies that I wasn’t allowed to watch. Stephen King’s Pet Cemetery, The Silence of the Lambs you name it.

My parents didn’t really care what I read as long as I brought home books instead of boys. They completely lost track when I discovered the English Book sections and tried to read John Irving’s Hotel New Hampshire in the original version.

On the forth floor, there was the music section. One could borrow CDs, and honestly, I often copied them to tapes, I hope I’m not getting sued for this confession. I still have those tapes in my basement but I have no tape recorder to play them anymore. There was also sheet music and my piano teacher's disappointment was big as my excitement when I found the notation sheets for November Rain by Guns’n’Roses. It was not what my she had wanted me to play, but at least it made me practise every day.

In 1999, the public library became innovative and introduced the highlight of the latest technology – the internet. An hour costed 5 Marks, I think I spent all my pocket money and all of my Thursday afternoons there. The Internet brought world to a girl in the backstreets of this country's western periphery: I could find out the newest gossip about my favourite rock stars, print out the lyrics of their songs, write emails to people in the USA or to my friends from across the street.

My father always said that I was crazy. He thought it was all about printing things out and he could go online at his workplace and get me the things I wanted. But he neglected the excitement of having the world at my fingertips. Besides, could I really make my father print out the lyrics of Marilyn Manson’s The Dope Show?

So, what did the public library in Aachen do to me? Horror novels and rock music with submissive lyrics, hanging out in a poor quarter of town regularly, becoming a music pirate? Well, when I first came to university, I had long been used to travelling to the world of libraries.

Emotional Baggage

2008-07-01T13:32:00.000-07:00

Everybody in their twenties carries around a lot of emotional baggage. Jessica did so even more than other people. Six weeks had passed since she had broken up with her ex when things started to get serious with Paul.

To Paul Jessica seemed like the woman he wanted to marry. She was good-looking and not bitchy at all. This time, he was for real and he wanted things to work out. When they first started dating Jessica told him about her ex, how he had made her feel like a sexual object. Paul decided that he would never let her feel like that.

Now Paul found himself in a paradox. He asked himself: how to have sex with a woman without making her feel like a sexual object? Of course, he wanted to have sex with her – that belonged to a relationship, but he did not want her to know that he did. He even researched in the Cosmopolitan and found out: Women easily think that men only want sex.

Jessica, on the other hand, wanted to be desired in a sexual way. She just did not know how to ask for it. She was wondering what was wrong with him, so she took the first sexual step. Afterwards he kept telling her: “Oh I didn’t know you were such a passionate woman.” He made sure she knew that she had started it. Soon, Jessica got tired of arguing with him after each act of compassion, who was to blame. He always said it was her even though he knew it was him. Paul always repeated that she was so passionate and she began to think that he considered that to be something wrong. Did he not like a woman who took the initiative? Did he prefer a rubber doll?

In fact, Jessica wasn’t enjoying sex with Paul. He was always asking her ver y tensely: “Do you really like it that way? You know some women think that this position is disrespectful to them.” All her excitement was gone after being asked for the fifth time if she was comfortable and she had to fake it. Of course, Paul’s concerns didn’t help his physical performance and Jessica thought that he was nervous about his best friend’s performance. She began to think that he was blaming her activity for that.

After a while, Jessica just didn’t want to sleep with Paul anymore. The mere thought of kissing him led to the image of another stressful night. That night the reversal of roles took place: Paul became the sexual monster he had been trying to repress. He continued trying, waking her up six times a night and telling her that she unconsciously tempted him. After she wrote him off the seventh time, he got up and held a piece of chocolate in front of her face. “If you’re not feeling well, eat that.” Jessica had never felt so disrespected in her life. She locked herself in the bathroom unable to face that now it had come true what she had wanted. She was desired but she lost the control over the situation. That made her freak out and reveal the monster in her.

Four days later, they had their break-up talk. Jessica believed that they had talked too much, Paul believed that they hadn't talked enough. Both weren't able to face the monstrous reflection of themselves in the eyes of the other. They ran away from the image in the mirror and accumulated even more baggage for the future.

Self image and outer appearance

2008-06-30T12:26:00.000-07:00

Sara was the first girl in her class to have breasts. She was 11 years old. Puberty had not yet sunken in with her when her mother tried to have that mother and daughter talk about soon you’ll be a woman, you’ll get your period and personal hygiene is very important now etc. Sara didn’t really listen, she had been reading teenage magazines in secret for about two years.

But when her breasts started to grow, this put her to a problem: how to dress? Her mother had always bought her long and wide T-shirts, and with the first dents appearing she looked completely out of shape – she thought that she looked fat in those.

She tried a sweater that was really tight and made her blooming chest appear bigger than it was. For the first time, her friends noticed her breasts and were envious: “You’re breasts are too big. You need to have surgery to make them smaller or you will have problems with your back for the rest of your life.” Yes, Sara didn’t feel comfortable with her breasts at all. She couldn’t understand why other girls envied her and put socks in their empty bras.

When boys started to play an important role in her life, her breasts were in her way again. She had the feeling that boys were only looking at them and not at her. She had a hard time making her first boyfriend understand that she did not appreciate him opening her bra in public.

By the time puberty ended, she had gotten used to the fact that her breasts were bigger than those of her friends – she tried to use them as weapons and started to wear T-shirts with a very low neck-line. But after a party pictures of her neck-line started to circulate around her school. She felt embarrassed and took more care to dress decently.

Sara’s self-image in her early twens was that of a rather curvy woman with big breasts which attracted a certain type of men - not necessarily the type of man she wanted to attract. But when she was 24, she had to learn the hard way that self images are sometimes far away from the reality. She was in a disco with her best girlfriends wearing a T-shirt that highlighted her curves and hid the problem zones, she had started to feel really comfortable with her body and she was on the hunt. That night all her friends were talked to, but she wasn’t. That’s because they all have bigger breasts than I do, she thought bitterly and it occurred to her that her breasts weren’t that big at all, in comparison to her friends quite ordinary. That was what she had always wanted during puberty, but could the ordinary compete in a world of plastic surgery?

Americans are different

2008-06-29T10:41:00.000-07:00

A bar full of international students in some university town: The walls of the bar are painted red, there is Indi Rock music on the stereo. The table is full of empty glasses. One hears laughter and creative English with different accents.

We might have been in Poznan, in Gijón, in Turku, or in Utrecht, Osijek, Liverpool or Aachen, it didn’t really matter. The bar, the drinks, the people and the music could have been everywhere across Europe. We had gone through a lot of drinking games so far that night. We played what the Germans call Mäxchen, the Czechs Mahaček and the English Cheating, we played something that has to do with flipping coins which is well known in Asturias, Palatine and Lanchester, and the backpackers from New Zealand taught us a game that was called card race.

It was about 2 am in the morning and we had known each other for about 9 hours. The boys from England ordered another round of Cuba Libre for all of us, even though one of them was already passed out on his chair. It was time for the Never-Ever game.

For those, who don’t know Never Ever, it’s quite easy. One person in the group says a sentence including ‘never ever’ (e.g. I’ve never ever been to Romania) and the people who have done that (in that case been to Romania) have to drink. Usually, the sentences involve sex, so ‘I’ve never had sex on the beach’ would be a more suitable example. The goal of the game is to reveal things about the other people in the group and get them drunk.

So, I found myself raising the glass to the sentence ‘I have never made out with a Spaniard.’ The game went on: “I’ve never had sex in a car.” Five of us drank. “I’ve never had cheated on my boy/girl friend” Only two were drinking, “I’ve never had a one night stand” everybody except for two American girls drank. Then it was the turn of the American girl. Her statement was “I’ve never had sex with more than one person in my life.”

8 Europeans and New Zealanders, all between 21 and 24 years old, started to laugh and drank the rest of their drinks. The glasses of the American girls were still almost full. The two American girls seemed quite shocked. They asked us: “So, how many people have you slept with?”

The average number of sexual partners in our group was 7, it turned out. One American girl then told us that she had only slept with one man in her and that she had thought that she was going to marry him until he left her. A sad story and the alcohol made it even sadder. She went on giving a movie like speech that she only would sleep with someone who she really loved and whom she would marry, she hoped that her future partner would do the same thing. Otherwise she would always wonder about all the other women her guy had slept with before her, if they had any diseases, if he had felt anything for those women. She couldn’t understand why we were not concerned about those things, she had known us for half a night and she knew we were quite decent people.

One of the girls shut her up: “Man, it’s just sex, don’t make such a fuss about it.” The Polish, German, Belgian and English students all agreed. I don’t want to know how many of us had sex that night, but nobodywas planning to get spend the rest of his/her with that person, in the end.

In between cultures

2008-06-28T08:40:00.000-07:00

The young woman came home for a Sunday dinner with her parents. She didn’t like the idea of going there because her parents only asked her one question: “Why don’t you get a job?”

She has been unemployed for 6 months by now. After she graduated from high school, she did not start a job training in the company where her father worked, the way her parents had wanted her to do. Instead, she enrolled in a university and studied some kind of humanities. Her mother always struggled to explain what her daughter was actually doing. At first, the parents had been okay with the choice because they thought any university degree might do her daughter good.
But tensions had increased during the studies. The father had often accused his daughter of intellectual talk and once she graduated her parents began to realize that ethnologists were not searched for in the local newspaper.

After graduating, she remained unemployed. Since she didn’t make any money on her own, her boyfriend paid her rent. She had met him at a law school party and his parents were loaded. But her parents didn’t like him. He looked down on their working class pride as if it was a thing that people should have gotten over by the end of the 1920s.

That was why they did not want him to marry their daughter. They sensed that she had started to feel ashamed of her background and they did not want his charity to pay their daughter’s costs of living. They had hoped that they had raised their daughter to be self-sufficient and self-confident women. They were hoping that their daughter would leave that guy once she was not dependent on him anymore.

The daughter wasn’t able to explain them that she loved him that her boyfriend was able to offer her and her future children a much more exciting life than her working-class parents ever could do. That future consisted of opera instead of TV, Patagonia instead of Mallorca, sushi instead of hamburgers, piano music instead of the radio.

She was sitting at the table. Her mother put a bowl with potatoes down and her father talked about the latest automobile racing. Then he began with the typical Sunday question: “And, do you have a job now?” Silently she shook her head praying that interrogation would not continue. He asked again: “Why don’t you get a job? It can’t be that difficult?”

She had enough. So, she stood up. She looked at her father throughout and then she asked: “Why? Why don’t you just leave me alone?”

Then she left her parents’ apartment without saying goodbye. She took the bus and drove though half of the city to get to her future parents-in-law’s house. There, her boyfriend was having the same kind of family dinner. The differences were that instead of TV noises there was the sound of Haydn in the background, the meat was not deep frozen and the talk was about a Goya exhibition instead of Formula 1.
Nobody asked her about her job or why she came over. They started to talk politics. Her boyfriend’s mother, who came from a family of industrialists, asked her: “So, how is your family feeling about the recent workers’ strikes, I think that most workers are actually against those unions.”
“My parents are both union members and we think that the strike is a legitimate means to make the society aware of the situation.” she said with pride in her voice before realizing that this remark was considered inadequate.
She continued to eat silently. She could feel the disapproving looks coming from all sides of the table, especially from her boyfriend. She wished to disappear. It seemed as if she did not fit in anywhere.

What happened to teenage dreams

2008-06-27T08:56:00.000-07:00

He was sitting on the central square in town and he sang a song I knew very well. “Come as you are, as you were, as I want you to be” I knew all the lyrics by heart. It was the summer of 2001, but I wanted it to be 1991 because I was affected by Grunge fever.

I stopped and watched that guy play. With his ragged blue jeans, his bleached blonde hair and his Chucks, he looked a bit like Kurt Cobain. I couldn’t help but sing along. When he noticed me, he smiled at me with the most gorgeous smile ever. I was falling in love. As soon as he finished his song he came over to me and asked: “You really seem to love Nirvana, don’t you?”
“Yeah,” was all I could answer even though I would have wanted to tell him: “and I love you.”

He took the coins out of the guitar case right in front of him and told me: “I’m going to have drink; you want to come along?” So, I came along with him. We came to a run down shag in a field where some punks were selling the cheapest beer in cans. He bought a can of beer for himself and a can for me. Then we continued walking and he guided me to a stream at the end of the field. We sat down on the banks and he put his arm around me.

At first, we were drinking our beer silently. Then we started talking, or rather he started talking. He told me that he wanted to be a Grunge singer. He was ‘working’ as a street musician only until he had money to buy himself a ticket to Seattle. There, he would be discovered as a star and become famous. At 27 he would kill himself, just like his great idol Kurt Cobain had done, because all great musicians die at the age of 27.

When he finished his drink, he took up his guitar and started to play again. I was transfixed. He knew how to sing and play really well. I dreamed of giving up school and coming to Seattle with him. While he played the songs from Nirvana’s unplugged album, the sun was setting. Then he kissed me. It might have been the most romantic moment in my life.

But all the sudden he got up and told me: “I gotta go.”
“Why do you have to go?”
He answered me in a singing voice: “We are not in Seattle, dear, and I don’t want to get stuck somewhere with a girl until I made it to Seattle.”
I felt his voice piercing my heart and then I said goodbye to my teenage dream of dating a musicians who would write a love song for me.

The writer who doesn't know what to write

2008-06-26T11:54:00.000-07:00

She is sitting at her desk. In front of her, there is a notebook and a pencil. She has to write something now- just something.
Writing, that was her job. She was a writer. She wasn’t very famous or decorated with success, she couldn’t even make a living from her writings. But, somehow she needed writing like other people need oxygen.

Her friends always told her that she was writing the most exciting and most interesting stories in the world. But her critics didn’t agree with that, what they said in their comments was destructive.

She knew that she could write very well, when she was sad. Pain and sorrow were great inspirations; they made turned words into a torrent. But today she isn’t sad. She had been out with her friends on Friday and Saturday night, and she had talked to her mum on the phone for an hour. Now she is nervously sitting at her desk looking out of the window. She is watching the birds flying in the summer sun and trees shaking in the summer breeze. She doesn’t do anything but watch.

This is too much of an idyll for writing, she thinks. The sky looks like a motive for a postcard. But she knows that she has to write something. She has to be productive because her fans expect that from her. She thinks a lot about things she can write about.

What did she do yesterday? She watched TV, then she met some friends and went to a pub. She rejects that idea, nothing profound in it, nothing serious, nothing that laments the errors of this world. She thinks a lot and rejects a lot of ideas. It seems like she does nothing all day long except for sitting restlessly at her desk and rejecting one idea after the other. It’s getting late. But finally she has an idea which doesn’t get rejected by her superego right away. She starts writing:
The writer who doesn’t know what to write.

Under neon loneliness

2008-06-23T04:40:00.001-07:00

As a lonely person, I'm afraid that people might notice my loneliness. When I go somewhere on my own, I'm often worried that people think I'm some kind of freak and that would be the reason why have no friends who come along with me. That is why I often miss movies or concerts I would like to see. I have nobody who comes along with me, instead I stay at home and write this alone in my bed.

Lately I found myself in a difficult situation. My favourite band - I have loved ever since I was 14 years old and I have always felt a special connection to all their songs ever since I heard them for the first time - came to town. My friends didn't apprechiate their music the way I do, were out of money or had not time. I had a difficult choice to make: going there on my own and feeling ashamed of my loneliness or missing the opportunity to see my favourite band, who can sing about my little empire of mind like nobody else does?

After contemplating for a week, I bought the ticket. On the day of the concert, the band came on stage forever delayed. (In reality, it was two hours). But this way, they gave me the opportunity to observe the beautiful freaks at the concert:
Quite a number of them were on their own, more lonely people than I had thought there would be in this town. I could tell that they were lonely by the way they behaved. They did the same things I do, when I feel uncomfortable with being on my own. They wandered around, looked around themselves nervously and then sat close to a group or another lonely person. They often took out their moblies, pretenting that they waited for a call from a friend who was late - they knew the phone call would never come but they wanted to make the people around them believe they were alone because they were waiting for somebody.

I somehow felt superior to them because I recognized their behaviour. I smiled at a lonely girl who sat down next to me pretending that we belonged together. The smile said - I know how you feel - but I didn't dare talking to her. Nevertheless, I did not feel lonely anymore.

When the band finally came on stage, I was somehow glad that I was on my own. It was just the band that I had loved for years, the sex appeal of the lead singer, the music and me, and an auditorium full of underdogs like me. No boyfriend around, who would destroy this magic with his sarcasm.

Ode to my sunglasses

2008-06-22T05:26:00.000-07:00

My sunglasses are really big. They make my eyes look like insect eyes. I appear just like a giant fly wearing them. I love my sunglasses to be that big.

Behind my sunglasses I can hide. When I wear them it feels like there is a vail between me and the rest of the world. When I wear my sunglasses people can't tell what I'm looking at. I can stare at people and they won't notice.

When I wear my sunglasses I sometimes feel like a child who puts his hands in front of his eyes thinking that other people can't see him now. Sometimes I make myself believe that people can't see me when I wear my sunglasses - of course I know that they can see my body regardless. But they can't see my eyes and large parts of my face - that is why they can't recognize me.

In Spain, I once was interviewed on the street by a reporter of the local TV channel. I was wearing my sunglasses that day and he took me for a Spaniard until he noticed my accent. Usually, the Spanish noticed that I was a foreigner on first sight because of my blue eyes and blond hair.

Therefore, my sunglasses make me believe that I can be taken for somebody else. My sunglasses give me strength to do things I normally wouldn't dare to do - going to a park and lying in the sun wearing a bikini, walking through the city taking photos of the buildings I like, wearing my horse riding clothes on the metro, smiling at a good-looking stranger...

When I wear my sunglasses, I can put a curtain between the people who stare at me and myself. Only I can see through it. That way I'm able to say to myself that I don't care what they might think of me.
Therefore, my sunglasses are not a protection against the sun. They were too cheap to fulfill that task anyway. They are rather a protection against me feeling embarrassed. Plus, my friends say that I look really cool with them 8-)

Btw: I wore my sunglasses when I was sitting in a park writing the first draft of that story.

Lost in the Spanish language again

2008-06-20T01:56:00.000-07:00

José was 35 years old and desperately in love with me. I was 23 and had no particular interest in him. But he had a car and I wanted to get to know the countryside. That was why I agreed to a day trip to the coast with him. And that was how I ended up standing on to of a cliff posing like a model. José had the idea of taking photographs of me with the sea in the background. Now don’t get any naughty ideas in your head – it as 3 pm, we were on a public road and fully dressed.

So, I was standing there on the cliffs, trying to pose the way the models in those TV-casting shows do. I told José, who was playing the photographer, that he should tell me how to pose.
He told me in Spanish: “Mira el parajito” (Look at the little bird). I thought, he was talking about the birds that were flying over the cliffs. So I looked up towards the sky, trying to have a dreamy look on my face longing for the ocean.
“No, no, no,” José told me, “mira el parajito.”
I kept following the sea gulls with my eyes.
“No,” José shouted at me, “You don’t understand me. Look at me.”
I turned towards him and had a strange look on my face. He took a picture and he didn’t care about my strange look; he was in love and, therefore, he thought, the picture was beautiful. I didn’t agree but I had no patience to pose any longer.

The next day, I had coffee with Pablo and Nuria, two other Spanish friends. They asked me how my ‘date’ with José had been. So, I used the opportunity to ask, what parajito means, other than little bird.
“Did he really tell you that?” Nuria asked me
“Yes, why?” I looked at her in a puzzled way.
“Well, in colloquial language, parajito means penis.”
“What? What did he want to tell me with that?”
“Maybe you don’t want to know.” Nuria suggested, “You don’t want to date that guy again.”

“But maybe, he meant something else,” Pablo told me later on.
“What’s that?”
“In Spanish, if you want to take a picture of children and if you want them to look into the camera, you tell them: Mira el parajito, and by that you mean the flash.”
“So, José was talking to me as if I was a child?”
“Probably, but you don’t want to date a guy, who talks to you as if you were a child.”

Lost in Translation

2008-06-19T01:30:00.000-07:00

Two international students in a Spanish supermarket – a miraculous firework of colours, strange words, different smells and the sound of a language that is still foreign to us. The wonderland of the Carrefour (Karéefourrr, as the Spanish pronounce it) and the two of us just like children in Disneyland.

We manage to pull our cart full with delicious wonders of consumerism to the meat counter. We have to draw a number waiting for the obligatory moment of choice between all those delicacies. Michele, my Italian flatmate and companion in this adventure, points towards a bowl with pieces of meat, onions and peppers, dipped in a red sauce. “This looks delicious, let’s take it” he tells me in a schizophrene mix between Italian, English and what he thinks is Spanish. The sign on the bowl reads “Conejo.”
I ask Michele: “Do you know what conejo means.”
“I don’t know,” he tells me in his fabulous Italian accent and then continues with his laid back attitude: “But it doesn’t matter, the meat looks good. Let’s buy.” He buys half a kilo.

About an hour later – back in the kitchen of our L’Auberge Espagnol (for those, who don’t know the movie that is a flat shared by exchange students from all over Europe). Michele is preparing the meat that we just bought. Filippo, my other Italian flatmate sits at the table and eats a salad.
Michele tells him: “We bought such delicious meat, do you want some.” Filippo declines the offer and tells us that he will only eat salad tonight.

I ask him in English: “So, you are a rabbit tonight?” Filippo doesn’t understand the word rabbit, I don’t know the Spanish word for it and my explanation – in Spanish – of the animal with the big things you hear with – fails. I pick up the dictionary that’s in the kitchen constantly. I look up ‘rabbit’ and when I read the word ‘conejo’ I start to wonder: “Michele, what’s the name of the meat we are eating.”
“Conejo, why?”

Cafeteria food

2008-06-17T10:38:00.000-07:00

The other day I had lunch with some friends at our student cafeteria. One of them had veggie sticks while the rest of us chose a dish with meat because we were afraid of what the cafeteria would present as veggie sticks. The friend with the veggie sticks told me a fter his first bites: "They are actually quite good. Do you want to try some?"

He gave me a bite of his sticks and after chewing them, I noticed:" They taste like guinea-pig food!!" That exclamation of mine, of course let to the question: "Why do you know how guinea-peg food tastes like?"

So, I had to tell them the whole story:

Once upon a time, there was a 7-years-old girl, who wanted to have a Lego horse and whose best friend owned 3 guinea-pigs. One beautiful day, the friend's older brother dared her to eat a spoon full of guinea-pig food. He would give her his Lego horse, if she did. Of course, she accepted that bet.

The older brother was, just like all older brothers, quite mean. So, he told all his friends, that I would eat guinea-pig food, if they offered me their Lego horses.

That episode had two advantages for me, in the end: First of all, after a while, I had a stable full of Lego horses. And secondly, nobody can fool me with guinea-pig food disguised as veggie sticks.

Getting to know your neighbours via football

2008-06-16T03:50:00.001-07:00

Right now there is the Euro 2008 going on and this has turned out to be a great opportunity to get to know my neighbourhood:

These days, I can see a large number of Turkish flags, which doesn't surprise me because there is a high number of Turkish migrants living in my street. Quite a number of German flags were there, too, but somehow they started to disappear, once Germany lost to Croatia.

One guy in my street hung out an Italian flag, one store has a Swiss flag in the window and there is one car with Croatian flags parked in front of my house - I didn't know that there any Croats living in my neighbourhood.

Then, I learned that things were different:
I was used to the fact that I could tell whenever Germany or Turkey scored a goal even without turning my TV on, because I could hear people cheering outside and I could hear the fireworks going off.

But, last Thursday, I heared people cheer three times: one time, when Germany scored and two times, when Croatia scored. So, apparently there is also a high number of people from Croatia living there. That explains why a bank in my neighbourhood has advertisements in Croatian in their window and a pub nearby sells Croatian beer - you notice those things once you keep your eyes open for them.

What happened to our childhood dreams?

2008-06-15T08:16:00.000-07:00

She had always been a very creative child, doing painting, crafting, drawing etc. Her grandmother was a professional tailor and taught her how to sew. From that moment on, she stopped playing with her dolls; instead she turned them into models for her new collection of clothes.

Whenever she was asked by people, what she wanted to be, when she was grown up, she told them that she wanted to be a fashion designer. Her mother and grandmother encouraged her plans very much. They already dreamed how they would visit a fashion show in Paris watching their little girl's creations on the cat walk.

When she was 11 years old, the little girl was given her first chance to actually make a fashion collection for money. At her school, they had a Christmas market, where the pupils would produce home-made gifts and sell them, giving the returns to charity. She was in a group which made earrings and she really loved that task. She chose colourful beads and put them together creatively, producing very lovely and colourful earrings. However, her instructor told her: “You cannot use so many colours. Colours are not in fashion in the moment. Nobody will buy such colourful earrings.”

Reluctantly, the girl put away the yellow, red and green beads and only produced earrings that were either blue or purple. At the Christmas market, only her mother bought one pair of earrings that she had made. The earrings by the other kids, which were only black or silver, the colours of fashion that year, sold much better. She heard two kids say about some shiny blue earrings she had made: “Look at those. Who would wear such screaming blue earrings?”

She despaired. Before feeling ashamed that none of her earrings were sold, she bought a pair herself. The lesson she learned that day way that being a fashion designer had nothing to do with being creative but with copying what other people said was in fashion. She decided that if that was the case, she did not want to be a fashion designer anymore.

Fourteen years have passed since then. She has gone through many career plans ever since and threw all those in the garbage. Now, she is one of those people who at 25 still don’t know what they want to do with their lives. But she has kept the blue and shiny earrings all those years. And when she wears them now, in a time where colours are in fashion again, everybody tells her: “I love your earrings, where did you get them?”

Knowing how to communicate with your printer will save you a lot of money

2008-06-14T11:26:00.000-07:00

My printer has a life of its own. It even talks. In a nice female voice it tells me: “Printing job started,” “printing job finished,” “please refill paper,” “paper jam.” It only wants to be plugged into one specific USB-hub, if I choose another one, it pretends to be a different printer and my computer cannot find it anymore.

It even found a friend – my vacuum cleaner. Whenever I plug the vacuum cleaner into the outlet next to the printer, the printer turns itself on and, in delight, it starts spitting out empty pages. It doesn’t do the same thing, when I plug in my reading light there, so it must have a special relationship with the vacuum cleaner.

My printer is also very creative at times. Then, it prints things triple the size, uses colours at random, and sometimes it even places the texts on the page in a very inventive way. Usually, it does that whenever I’m printing a page that I need to turn in to my professors.
Sometimes, the printer is on strike and refuses to do its job. Then I get a message on my computer, which reads: “Couldn’t communicate with the printer.” A lot of times this has happened, after I printed out 10 pages without communication problems.

Usually it helps to keep the printer happy by giving it lots of white paper (it doesn’t like recycled paper and destroys the pages) and pretending to refill the cartage regularly. It often tells me that it’s empty, even though it isn’t. Then, I have to take out the old one and put it back in.

But sometimes, the only thing that helps is threatening violence. Then I have to tell it: “Listen now, we are on the fourth floor and if you don’t do what you’re supposed to, you’ll fly out of the window.”

Rarely, my threats even need to be accompanied by pressing the reset button or cutting the power supply. Then, it usually turns my desk into a discotheque with all its lights blinking before finally giving in. But, in the end, I can always rely on my printer.

The other day, my boss asked me: “Do you know something about printers? Mine broke down.” I tried all the tricks I knew from mine, even the threatening, but it wouldn’t work again. I even took it apart, to see if there was a piece of paper stuck in it. But there wasn’t and the printer wouldn’t work again. In the end, we had to call the technical support, who took 5 minutes to fix it. But the bill was 30 Euros.

Even though my printer causes me trouble constantly, I’m happy with it because I know how to communicate with it. I don’t want one, where I have to call the technical support and spend millions of dollars on it.

Why you need foreign languages II

2008-06-10T01:29:00.000-07:00

I had a similar experience to the one that I just posted in the Basque Country:

Last year, I was travelling through Northern Spain. I came to Bilbao with two girls I had met on the trip; one was Russian, the other one French. They both didn’t know English very well, but they spoke fluent Spanish. That was how we communicated.

We spent some time together in Bilbao – mostly because of the Guggenheim, but also because we were curious about the Basque. Was their language really so different from any other European language, and did they really have such separatist attitudes? –Yes.

We met three nice Basque guys one night in a Burger King, who very really funny, friendly and helpful. They offered to show us some parts of the city, the best clubs and cheapest restaurants. The only problem with them was that they would only speak English to us.

“Spanish is another foreign language for us, just like English. And Spanish is imposed on us, that’s why we prefer English,” they told us. My friends did not understand their English.

The result was that I spend the whole day translating the Basque guy’s English into Spanish for my friends, even though the Basque guys’ Spanish was probably much better than their English and my Spanish.

View of Bilbao from above the hills

Why you need foreign languages I

2008-06-09T12:28:00.000-07:00

When I was 16, I learned that one might need four languages to buy bread rolls:

My friends and I were on vacation in the Flemish part of Belgium. On the third day of the trip, it was my turn to buy something for breakfast. My friends had told me beforehand that the lady in the bakery wouldn’t understand German. Since I didn’t know the English term for bread rolls, I tried to speak French to her: “Je voudrais quatre petit pains, s’il vous plait.” [I’d like four bread rolls, please.]

I don’t know, if the store clerk didn’t understand French, was offended that I was speaking that language in a Flemish village or simply realized that I was not French. But she asked me in English, if I could repeat what I wanted. I pointed to the basked with the bread rolls and told her “Four of those things, please.”

When she handed me the bag full of pastries, I wanted to be polite and used the few Dutch words I know: “Dank je wel. Tot ziens.” [Thank you very much, goodbye.]

Then, she finally noticed my accent and answered me in perfect German: “Gerne geschehen. Kommen Sie morgen wieder?” [You’re welcome, will you be back tomorrow?]

What would I have done, if I hadn't known those four languages?

Moving Cup

2008-06-08T07:21:00.000-07:00

When I was a child, our family had the tradition of the reading night. Instead of watching TV, one night a week we would pick out a book and everybody would read aloud one chapter and then pass it on to the next person.

Last Christmas, my mother decided to re-launch our common reading sessions. She picked the autobiography of a second-class celebrity, which she had gotten as a gift.
Not my cup of tea, but I didn’t complain. Over the years, I had learned that sometimes it’s better to say “Yes, Mum,” than risk an argument. While I was reading it aloud, I actually noticed that there were some paragraphs, which were quite funny, in a cynical way.

But then, I came to realize what my silent disagreement with my mother’s choice had caused: for my birthday, she gave me her copy of that book! “I remember you liked it at our reading night, so, now you can finish it – you hardly ever come to our place, so we can’t finish it together.” “Yes, mum, thank you.” I was not going to pick a fight with her on my birthday.

Three days later, a friend of mine saw the copy of the book lying on my desk: “Oh, I see you also got one. I wouldn’t have thought you'd read something like that.”
“It was a birthday gift.”
“I got one copy, too,” he told me, “but I keep it wrapped, so that I can give it to somebody else some day.”
I wonder if my mother had had the same plan...

Things you shouldn't say at a date

2008-06-04T10:02:00.000-07:00

The other day, I had a coffee with a guy whom I had met in one of my classes, and his friend. When I had met that guy for the first time, he seemed to be really nice – an average 21st century students actually. That is fashionable, educated, liberal, and open-minded.

I don’t remember how we came up with the subject, but at some point the guy started telling a story: “I’m not homophobe or anything. But the other day, me and my friend ended up a gay party and the guys there were hitting on me all the time. This one guy kept looking at me all the time and then he came over and started to talk to me. I told him to back off or else I would beat him up.”

My comment on that story was: “That’s what happens at a party. Now you know what it feels like, if you are at a party as a girl and straight guys hit on you constantly. I think your problem is that as a straight guy you’re not used to somebody hitting on you.”

He answered me: “Well, that’s different. If a guy hits on a girl, that’s natural!”

I wanted to shout at him, argue with him,about how wrong he was, ask him “What is natural, then?”...but after I had exclaimed: “Oh my Gosh!” his friend interrupted me.

He advised me: “Don’t take him seriously, he wants to sound tougher than he is.” And to his extremely not-tough friend he said: “Next time, somebody hits on you, just tell him in a nice way that you’re not interested. Gays will mock you even more, if they realize that you feel offended.”

So much for being an educated, liberal, and open-minded 21st century student.

I looked around the café, hoping that nobody had overheard that conversation. Then I made up a reason to leave and decided not to meet with him again.

The reason why Boygroups exist

2008-06-02T04:00:00.001-07:00

Things always work that way in a small town suburban neighbourhood. One neighbour helps the other and everybody knows everything. A woman from across the road told my mother one day, when they met on the street: "My daughter just had another F in English. Do you know somebody who can help her?"
"What a coincidence," my mother answered, " my daughter is always getting As in English and she is looking for a job."

Not exactly the truth, but my mother wanted things to be that way.

So, I - 18 years old with a part time job, a boyfriend, a car and school work to do - was stuck with a 12-year old girl from across the street 3 hours a week - for 7 Euros an hour, I shouldn't complain.

The girl, I will call her Nadja because - honestly - I don't remember her real name, always gurned. When I tried to explain English grammar to her, she told me that she knew all this already and that she wasn't stupid.

Soon, I figured out what Nadja's problem was - she just did not study. Instead, she spent her time practising dancing or shopping - basically the same attitude I had had when I was 12. She told me that she did not see the point in studying English - she was going to be a famous dancer and there she would not need English.

I tried to tell her that if she wanted to be internationally famous, she needed to know English. I tried to play games with her to learn new words, I tried to make her write texts using the new words because that was a way my English teacher had got me to study new vocabulary. But nothing worked - she was stubborn and of the opinion that she could express herself with her dances, when she was be famous.

I was about to despair, but then I found out that she really liked the Irish boygroup Westlife. I asked her if she wanted to know what their songs were about. Of course, she said yes. So, I spent the next hours looking up Westlife lyrics on the Internet and translate them with her. That really got her into practising English and I realized that there is a purpose for everything in this world, even for boygroups.

Intercultural misunderstandings

2008-06-01T05:18:00.001-07:00

He was the first from his village, who had made it. He had been given a scholarship to study in the West – the land of milk and honey. He would spend three years in Berlin, Germany, Europe, study engineering and then come back, marry his sweetheart and build a power station, which his village so desperately needed.

Before he started off, people in his village had warned him – the Westerners will not welcome you. They hate us; they say we mistreat our women. He did not believe in those warnings. All his life, he had learned how important it was to treat women with respect. Why should anybody complain about that?

A travel guide, which they gave him before he left, said: “The inhabitants of Berlin are known to be very direct. They have their own kind of charm. You will see when you get there.” He learned what the guide meant a couple of days after he had arrived in Berlin:

He was taking the metro and when he wanted to get off, a good looking girl wanted to enter. Since he had been taught that it was polite to let a woman through the door first, he offered her enter before exiting himself. After a couple of seconds, she reluctantly accepted. Meanwhile, a couple of people, who also wanted to leave the metro, had piled up behind him.

When the girl finally entered, a man behind him started to complain: “First exit, then enter. Those are the rules over here. Typical tourists.”

He smiled helplessly at the girl. But instead of smiling back, the girl gave him a peculiar look. On her face, he could read the following: “Leave me alone. Don’t hit on me.”

He started to wonder, as he left the metro station. What a country was it where men would be so impolite to their women and where women would mistake courtesy for pick up lines? And why were those people saying that his people mistreated their women?

Long live improvisation!

2008-05-29T06:38:00.000-07:00

It was not the first time this had happened to her:

At the beginning of the new term, she had made all those resolutions – this term she was going to read all the obligatory texts, she was going to prepare each lesson, this time she was going to be a good student.

But, soon things went the way they always do:

The book she had ordered did not arrive on time. She had to prepare a presentation, which she should have started two days earlier. The copy machine had not been working when she wanted to copy the text. She got drunk at a party on Monday; she had had a hang-over on Tuesday. On Wednesday, she had been sitting in a café all day long instead of studying.

Excuses, excuses, excuses...

The result was that, by the fourth week of the term, she had not read the play they were discussing in her class. She had not prepared the secondary literature either.

But she had made it to the class, at least.

She was definitely not the only one who was hanging on like that.

That day, the professor decided to test his students. So, he randomly called up students, asking them to analyse parts of the play. She tried to hide between her neighbours. She wanted to be see-through.

But the professor had no mercy with her. He called on her to interpret one song from the play. Hastily, she read the first few lines in her neighbour’s copy of the book.

Ancient Celtic goddess –fairies - music – folk song – the few words she noticed.

“I think, this song highlights the importance of folklore traditions for the author. It mentions the old religion and tales – therefore, it mourns the loss of those in the present. It is, therefore, a criticism of colonialism, where native cultures are made to disappear, therefore, it calls for the independence of Ireland ....I think.”

Her voice was weak at the end of the statement. Was that too farfetched? Was that even in the play? She had no clue what the play was about, actually.

The author was Irish and the play was written in the late 19^th century – this was all she remembered from the past lessons.

“Very good analysis,” the professor answered, “I see, at least one student has read the text.”

Listen to your teachers every once in a while

2008-05-27T11:05:00.001-07:00

In dressage, Fabian and me were a great team. I had been practising with him for almost two years and I saw him almost every day.

I knew all about him: that he was afraid of dogs, that he hated walking through puddles and he did not like jumping over hurdles.
He fulfilled my commands easily: when I wanted him to trot, when I wanted him to gallop, when I wanted him to stop. There were not many disagreements between us.
Only, when I wanted him to jump over hurdles or cross some water, did he give me trouble.

One day, during a jumping lesson, my horse riding instructor put the hurdle up to110 cm.
I knew Fabian would be very stubborn, even if he had to jump 60 cm. I had never done more than 80.
I told my instructor: “He’s not going to jump that high. He is not going to do it.”

“Oh, come on, just give it a try.”

“I can try, but he won’t do it.”

“Come on, it’s your turn now.”

I galloped towards the hurdle in the usual way. I was sitting very stiffly on the horse, expecting him to brake all the sudden or gallop past the hurdle.
But then a miracle took place. Fabian jumped - as if he had done nothing else all his life.
The people outside the paddock were cheering and my instructor gave me that I-told-you-so-look, but I had the honour of being the first to make that horse jump 110 cm.

Building up a family myth

2008-05-26T06:28:00.000-07:00

When I was a child in the 1980s, my parents told me bits and pieces of our family history: „Your grandfather worked as a policeman in the GDR and in 1956 he fled to the West, during the night without telling anybody. Even your grandmother and her three kids – your uncle, your mother and your aunt – didn’t know. One day, they got a phone call from him in the West and he told them to come to the West, too, half a year later.”
My grandfather, however, remained silent.

When I grew older I started to wonder why he had escaped:
“Your grandfather realized that real socialism wasn’t what he had expected it to be,” my grandmother answered me when I interviewed her for a school paper on family history in 10th grade. My grandfather remained silent.

“Your grandfather realized that he would make more money as a factory worker in the West than as a police man in the East. After all, he had to support a family of 5,” she told me at a family reunion soon after that. My grandfather remained silent.

“You grandfather probably got into trouble drinking. I think, he injured somebody in a pub brawl and that is why he had to flee,” that was what my uncle had told me when I was 19 years old, after my grandfather had threatened to cut him out of his will. My grandfather remained silent.

“Your grandfather had an affair with another woman and eloped with her to the West. Then, he realized that he was lost without his wife and allowed us to follow him,” my mother came up with this version about a year ago after accusing her father of being irresponsible towards his family. My grandfather remained silent.

I always imagined my grandfather's escape in a wild romantic way, like in the movies: him as a young man running over the border strip at night, his former colleges running after him – they have dogs barking, men shouting, spotlights, some shots, but he is faster. He is cleverer. He hides in the bushed. He escapes.

Then, he would sleep in fields and train wagons until he made it to the far West of our republic. There, he would remain in the underground for about 6 months until he thought it was safe for him to call his wife and children to follow.

But then, the young man had settled down and over the years lost his strength. A month ago, my grandfather, just skin and bones recovering from stomach cancer, broke his silence:
“I heard at work that I was to be drafted to the army. But I did not want to join the army. So, I left during lunch break. I crossed the border, as a policeman I had no problem with that. I went to the next town in the West; there they told me that they would not hire refugees from the East. Then, I called up your grandmother from a payphone, she told me to go to the place where her uncle lived. He could get me a job in the mining industry. Six months later, I had saved enough money to buy plane tickets for her and the kids to follow.”

Taking a look from the other side of the class room

2008-05-25T09:49:00.000-07:00

We, the students, say about Prof. Dr. J. that he is the living proof that the cafeteria food cannot be bad for your health because he has been eating in that cafeteria every day for almost 50 years.

Some, however, say that the big mole on his bald forehead proves the contrary.

Indeed, Prof. Dr. J. eats in the cafeteria with us every day. He never goes to the more expensive restaurants on the campus and he always prefers spending his lunch break with his students than with his fellow professors.

We consider him more like a grandfather than a strict professor, who seems to be too arrogant to talk to his students.

He gives us the impression that he really cares about us, his students, and wants to know what is going on in our lives.

The other day, he seemed quite nervous while having lunch with us. One of his students would have her final exam the next day. I was surprised and a bit naive. Why would a professor be as nervous about an exam as the student? After all, the professor had taken thousands of exams in his life, for the student all her future career depended on it.

Yes, he told us, he was nervous, too, because as a professor you want your students to get the best marks possible. So, you spend all day long thinking how to formulate the questions.

Final exams were no routine, where you would use the same questions every time. You would consider each student and choose the questions according to them.

I wouldn’t have thought that our professors take so much time thinking about us.

In the end, the student who had the exam that day told me that the exam was really easy and that he had asked her about things she had studies ever since her first year.

It will only start to rain, if you don’t have an umbrella with you.

2008-05-23T03:00:00.000-07:00

In Salzburg, there is a baroque castle, which is famous for its water games. In the summer, it is one of the most beautiful places to be, sitting in the castle’s park in the sun, enjoying the impressive architecture and the vivid statues of ancient mythology, watching the beautiful fountains and getting refreshed by sprinkles of water from the jeux d’eau.

My parents had found that place before I was born and spent some romantic moments there, I assume. My mother always talked about how much she liked that castle and the pretty park, so she made us return there a lot of times.

One time, there was a rain cloud in the morning, when we left for the castle. But my father said it would disappear by the time we were at the castle. So, we didn’t bring any raincoats or umbrellas.

But the rain did not stop. Instead, it increased and we also got wet from the fountains, while watching the water games. All the other people who had been to the castle that day had umbrellas and gave us the ‘look-at-those-crazy- tourists” look.

In the end, we were so soaked that my mother made us stop at a clothing store in the next village to buy new clothes, so that we would not catch a cold on the ride back.

The next years, when we returned to the castle, we always brought along our rain coats, umbrellas and an extra set of clothes. But it never rained again.

If you are interested in the castle, here’s the link:
http://www.hellbrunn.at/hellbrunn/english/start/index.asp

On the road

2008-05-21T01:35:00.001-07:00

On the road. The road as a class-room.

I think that a lot of learning takes place while travelling. Imagine yourself a family in a car. The father is driving, the mother in the passanger seat and two children in the back. The father behind the wheel wears leisure-wear and looks relaxed putting his elbow on the car's window.
The two children, sitting on their legs looking out of the window, seem quite excited. The mother, whose wears a summer dress and sun glasses, turns around to the children telling them something about the things that they see on the road.

The family in this picture might go to an unknown place. They might meet new people, see a new landscape or visit some relatives in a different town. But even then, they might learn something new: their relatives will tell them about the things that they experienced in the meantime since the family’s last visit.

On the road, they will see many cars, maybe with different license plates and if it’s a long trip they will stop at a restaurant and try new food. So, the two children will come home with lots of different impressions.

From this trip, they will have learned that there are people living in a different manner from their own. They will have experienced that the world is bigger than their surroundings. They will have learned to adapt to a new place and to get along without their toys, which they could not bring, or without their friends, who did not come along. They will have heard people speak in different dialects, different languages even. Maybe, they will bring something home from the trip, a new dish that they have tried, a new word that they have learned or a new toy.

So, hopefully, that trip was a lesson for them in tolerance and open-mindedness, seeing that people are not the same everywhere.

Parents' dedication

2008-05-16T04:56:00.000-07:00

I'm one of the few students in Germany, who managed to go to university without having an academinc background (that means my parents never went to university).
Since there is a lot of debate about how to get children of non-academinc background to go to universityright now, researchers might see me as a good example - or a guinea-pig...

Of course, things were not always easy, but on the other hand, things were not always as hard as one reads in the media. The reason for that was that my parents were really dedicated to offer me all opportunities they could.

For example, my 7th grade geography teacher once gave the assignment to look up words such as "sub-urbanisation" in an encyclopedia at home. However, we did not have an encyclopedia at home. My grandparents had a 2 volume Brockhaus edition of 1950, which did not include those entries.

So, my mother drove to the next bookstore and bought me a one-volume student encyclopedia, which helped me for that homework and for many other things. But two years later, my parents thought that it would be outdated and got me a bigger one for christmas.

I probably wanted something else, but in the end, I'm really thankful for the encyclopedia, the atlas and the dictionaries they gave me for christmas on several occations. In the end, they proved to be much more useful than a doll or a CD.

Learning by travelling

2008-05-15T02:58:00.000-07:00

Before I came to the city of Osijek, I had never heard of the siege of Vukovar - an educational gap, some readers might say, other might not even know that places like Osijek and Vukovar exit - honestly, I didn't know about those places before I had been invited by some Croatian friends to come and visit their country.

Of course, I had known about the Balkan Wars before, I remember seeing thing about them on the news when I was a child. Back then, the Croatian- Serbian boarder seemed very far away...and 15 years later budget airlines make me reach that place within one hour.

We had been in Osijek for a week - already there, the fact that you could still see bullet holes in buildings impressed me, even though you can see those in some buildings in Berlin as well. But, of course I know that was from WWII, which is quite far away, and the Balkan Wars took place when I was a child and when our Croatian hosts were children.

In Osijek, we saw a movie about the siege of Vukovar, about how the Serbian army had conquered that city, killed the patients of the hospital, and forced the civilians to walk about 50 miles on foot to Osijek. The movie was quite disturbing, especially knowing that this had happened close to us, to some of our friends.

The next day, we actually went to Vukovar. We rode those 50 miles in a bus and the weather was pretty bad that day, we were told that it had been the same when the civilians where forced to go. Just looking out of the window, one could image the hardship they must have suffered.
In Vukovar, you could see the ruins from one Habsburg castle, which had survived until 1992. There were still burnt down trees standing on the Danue river, looking very sad.

Across the river, there was the border to Serbia. What struck me, was that there was no bridge connecting those two countries which had once been one and then became enemies. Our Croatian travel guides told me that there had been a bridge but that it was bombed in 1999 - a time when I had been 15, thinking about horses and boyfriends.

I think that, on that trip, I had learned more about the hardship of war and forced migration, than history books or documentary movies can ever teach me. Standing on the fields that had actually been battle grounds and talking to people who had witnessed that war erased all the distance that newpaper articles, books and movies had not managed to close.

Reading back childhood memories

2008-05-14T07:46:00.000-07:00

My collegue told me a neat little story:
His mother had kept all his books that he read when he was a child. Fairy tales, adventure stories - all those nice, easy books that are used to teach children how to read.
Last christmas, he went home and as he was feeling ill one day he spent all day reading those children's stories because they were easy reading, taking him back to the land of fairies, dragons and magicians.

The funny thing about the story is that the same thing happened to me once. The first time I came home for the summer after starting university, I had caught a summer flue. So, what I did was lying in my old room and reading all those stories that I had liked as a child. It was gorgeous - taking me back to my childhood in a way. I even forgot about feeling ill.

So, take one rainy afternoon, go back to your parents' place and read through your old book - it will make you laugh, cry and brings back childhood memories.
If you are a parent, keep your children's books, they might want to read them again some day.

Who put the bricks in the wall??

2008-05-12T04:37:00.000-07:00

"We don't need no education
we don't need no thought control
no dark sarcasm in the class room
teachers leave us kids alone"

That was what the young English teacher read on the blackboard when she first entered the class room. She was known to be not the most self-confident among the teaching staff and, of course, she took it personally.

So, she started out with a ten minute speech telling her 8th graders why those few lines were offensive to all teachers, why it was necessary for kids to receive education and why they should be thankful to their teachers for trying to do their best every day etc.
The kids looked very puzzled after the speech.

When she was done, she asked in an angry voice: "So, now tell me, who wrote this on the board?"
Silence among the pupils.
She asked again: "Who did this?"

Then a shy, little girl raised her hand: "It was Mr. E., our music teacher."
"What! Why did he do that for?"
"He wants us to sing 'Another brick in the wall' at the school concert."

Home schooling

2008-05-09T05:17:00.000-07:00

When I was in the United States, I stayed with a host family who was home schooling their daughter.

The mother told me that she was doing home schooling because she did not trust the public school system. She also thought that it would be best for her teenage daughter to pass through middle school easier because she would not be exposed to peer pressure. She was not concerned that her daughter would miss social interaction, thinking that the girl could learn all about society within the family.
She was sure that the girl also preferred to be a home schooler because this way she was more
flexible in her curriculum and could do what she liked (e.g. take piano lessons or do ice skating as a P.E. class).

The girl, however, told be that she hated to be home schooled because she did not get to see her friends anymore. She was able to meet with other people her age, but not the people she liked but the people her parents chose for her. And she wanted to join the local middle school's sports team but couldn't. She wanted to learn Spanish but her mother only knew a little bit French, so she had to learn that language.

However, there is a happy end to the story. When the girl was in 9th grade, her parents finally 'had mercy on her' and let her go to the local high school. Now, she is the star of the cross country team and happily wearing jerseys in her school colours.

Class room technology

2008-05-08T07:39:00.000-07:00

I lately read a text about generation conflicts that distinguished between the Gutenberg generation, which optained all of its knowledge from books and the digital generation receiving all their knowledge from multimedia. My generation, which started out learning with books and then got to know multimedia in their teenage years, is probably in-between:

Here is a little anecdote, which shows that this is somehow true.
The other day, one of my professors asked me, if I could set up the beamer and the power point for her at the beginning of the class. While I did that, she told me apologinzingly: "I'm still of the old generation, where we didn't get to know the technology in school. My daughter, who is in 6th grade, - for her it's normal to give a power point presentation." Then she asked, if we had that in my school as well.

I told her that the first time somebody im school wanted to use Power Point was in 11th grade, and that was a big shock for the teachers because they didn't know how to set it up either. I think, when I was in 6th grade, there were no computers in our school to use that technology and the first time I used Power Point, was in my 6th semester of university. So, I had to be learning by doing.

Historical Narratives of Learning

2008-05-08T01:34:00.000-07:00

Traditionally, the right to education was reserved to upper class male students. Often education was provided by the church and so learning was closely connected to religion as well.

One history professor told us that in Spain in the 1950s a lot of young men wanted to become priests because that was the only way to leave their village and get access to university. In the 1960s, however, when the public educational system was enlarged, so that more people from the lower classes were able to access secondary or university education, the number of young men applying for priesthood sank. This shows how religion in that time was the only way to access education back then and I am sure that a lot of young men did not opt for priesthood because of their belief but because priesthood for them was the only way to leave behind their villages and learn beyond the basics.

In Spain, even today priesthood is sometimes considered as a way to achieve a secure life, I think. The mother of a Spanish friend of mine once told him, you should become a priest. Then, the church will pay for your education, you will never be unemployed and you can have a girlfriend nevertheless.

Familiar narratives of learning

2008-05-07T02:32:00.000-07:00

My mother and my uncle are twins. So, they always used to be in the same class. My uncle says that he thought that this was great. This way, he was always able to copy my mother's homework and didn't have to do them himself.
He says that it was great for my grandparents, too because they only needed to buy each text book once.
"They knew that your mother would be the only one using them anyway," my uncle tells me.

One day, even the teacher told him: "You don't need to give me your homework. I know that you are going to have the same as your sister."

By the way, my uncle works as a teacher now...

My mother's response to that story (05-13-2008):
My mother told me that it is true that in his adolescence my uncle was not really concerned with school but his attitude changed when he grew older and more mature.

She told me this little anecdote about a biology class when they were in 6th grade. The teacher had a model of a human skeleton and asked the pupils, which bone was which. My uncle was apparently not paying attention at all, so when it was his turn, the teacher pointed to the pelvis and asked him: "Which part of the body is that?"

My uncle, who apparently was woken up from a day dream, answered full of self-confidence: "That's the breast."

"Now you see," my mother commented mockingly "what was on your uncle's mind in those years."

Latin Narratives of Learning

2008-05-07T02:12:00.000-07:00

This photograph somehow reminds me of my old Latin teacher. He was a rather traditional type of teacher who always wanted us to memorize facts and did not apply any modern methods of teaching in his class.

He was also a bit scary in a way, because each day he made somebody come up front and asked that person the new vocabulary. This, of course, was a rather stressful situation for the student up front because if he or she said something stupid the whole class would laugh. I think, the only positive thing about this type of oral exam is that nowadays me and my class mates wouldn’t get nervous if we were in some kind of game show on TV because we were used to public exposure in our Latin class.

After a written exam he would usually make the best student in our class come up front and write her translation on the board. One time, however, he made me come up front and write down my results. That was really surprising because normally I had Cs or Ds in Latin. But in that exam I did really well and got an A-. So, this time the public exposure of my great mark was more positive than humiliating.

Slovenian Narrative of Learning

2008-05-06T12:54:00.000-07:00

A friend from Slovenia lately told me the following urban legend from the University of Ljubljana. He says he doesn't know if it's true or not:

There was an exam one day and four students came late to the exam. They said their car broke down and that was why they couldn't make it on time. The teacher said, no problem, you can take the exam tomorrow again.

The next day, the four students arrived on time. In the beginning of the exam, the professor told them: "The exam has two parts. The first part
consists of several multiple choice questions. The second part is only one question and you have to explain your answer. That is
the most important part of the exam."

The students started with the multiple choice part, which was quite easy. Then, after an hour the professor passed around the sheet for the second part. He told his students again that this was the most important part.

Then, the students read the question. It said: "Which part of the car broke down?"

Narratives of Learning I

2008-05-06T06:58:00.000-07:00

When thinking about learning, we usually think about school, teachers, class-rooms and learning things like writing, reading, math etc.

But learning starts much earlier, even before school we learn how to speak, to walk, to eat with fork and spoon, to tie our shoe laces and so on.

After we leave school learning also continues: for example my mother started to learn how to play tennis when she was about 40, so that she would have a shared hobby with my father. Another anecdote would be that last week I explained to my boss how to use an external hard drive. So, in that situation she became the student, I became the teacher and her office became a class room.

If we consider a class room to be any space, where learning takes place, then there are many more class rooms than just in school buildings. A museum can be a class room, a forest, the Internet, even a metro can be considered a class room if we learn from the people we observe there.