New Guitar

As some of you are probably aware, I have been learning how to play the banjo for the last year and a half or so. Rather than bring it with, I figured I would just bring some strings along and restring a guitar. I am sure that I could find a banjo here if I looked hard enough, but it would probably be very expensive. It would definitely not be at the pawn shop three blocks from here. Last week, I decided that I would finally bite the bullet and buy one, especially since it is really more of a deposit on a loan than a purchase. I doubt I will get what I paid for it when I sell it, but hopefully I will get close.

You can't quite tell from this picture, but it only has five strings. I restrung it and tuned it to something that I know how to play. In this case, it happens to be open E tuning. Since a banjo has a fifth-string that is five frets shorter than the other four, it posed a bit of a problem getting it tuned correctly. After a little experimentation, it occurred to me that I could tune the fifth string up and tune the other four down, leaving me with open E. Open E is what long-necks are usually tuned to, so all I have to do is put a capo on the third fret and I know what chords I am playing. Since I am going to be playing by myself mostly, it doesn't even matter a whole lot that the chord I am playing is actually a step and a half lower than what it would be normally.

As far as I know, this is a unique creation and I am not sure what to call it. People have been tuning banjos like other string instruments for a long time (mandolins, ukuleles, guitars, and, rarely, a bass. maybe others as well, but I have never heard of them.) There really isn't a standard naming convention. Mandos and ukes usually place the banjo part first in the name, creating banjolins and banjoleles. Basses are typically named bassjos. Guitars go both ways in names, causing a problem. I feel as though guitjo is used more often, but banjitar still shows up fairly often. I feel as though I am going to just call it an abomination or something like that. I have also thought about naming it Frank (short for Frankenstein), but I doubt that I will need to refer to it often enough that it will matter. It doesn't sound terrible (and I kind of like the lower tuning), but it definitely lacks what the banjo brings to the party. Maybe I will just have to buy a longneck when I get home.

School Update

It is a funny thing how things just happen sometimes. For instance, last week I was going to finally decide between the three classes. The translation class canceled for one reason or another. The English class was also canceled because the professor was stuck in London at the time and ended up having to follow the crowd as they swarmed onto the buses and trains. So I only had one of the classes last week. I am pretty sure that I am going to go with the two harder classes.

In other news, we went to Quedlinburg last week. I also went to Halberstadt on the way back, but that is less important. Quedlinburg has all kinds of old houses that go back centuries. I think that the twelfth century might be about as old as it gets, but I cannot remember. I took some pictures, and they are on facebook, but I feel as though the camera fails to capture the most important part of the city. If you are not friends with me on facebook (somehow?), let me know and I can put them up here.

Because everything is so old and has been unchanged since construction, all of the streets are narrow and curvy. Watching the cars try to maneuver around was pretty entertaining. As you walk down the street, you are surrounded by three and four story buildings that curve around and meander without purpose. I can't think of a place in the USA that I have been to that has a similar feel. All that being said, you kind of get bored with it after a while. That is similar to seeing old churches here. At the beginning, I was really enthralled by all of the churches around town. Now, it seems kind of boring and regular. They all of similar looking, so it gets boring after awhile. We did get to tour an old church and castle in Quedlinburg, which was interesting, but not terribly so. I definitely enjoyed it, but nothing earth-shattering happened.

That is basically my feeling of Halberstadt. Some of us decided to go there on the way back and do a little walking around. It was pretty small and didn't have a whole lot that was terribly interesting. Since it was Saturday afternoon, most of the things were closed. We did get to walk around the cathedral, which was pretty interesting. I definitely enjoyed walking around the town and seeing new things, but nothing really jumped out and made itself terribly memorable. Ideally, all of my posts would be a length this length, but that seems unlikely. Next weekend is Walpurgisnacht followed by another excursion to Naumburg which involves canoeing on the Saale River and visiting the Nietzsche Museum that is there. I am pretty excited. More to follow when it happens.

Start of School

As with all good things, foreign students aren't allowed to just hang out with each other forever. They actually require students to go to school here. Not quite the way it is back home, but "when in Rome" I suppose.

Last Wednesday (I think that time moves faster on this part of the globe or something) we all had to report for our German as Foreign Language placement test. Classes for all of the normal students also started on this day. We were somehow immune to this start date because of this test. We couldn't start going to class because we didn't know which class we would be in. Until we got our test results back the next day, we had no idea what we should do, so we just kind of went to classes as a big mob and sometimes actually had to sit through class. Other times, we were just told to leave, since we weren't sure which class we would be in. I managed to test into the B2 level (they have six levels here from A1 (meaning you don't know the language at all) to C2 (meaning that you are basically a native speaker.)) The classes I have are all fairly boringly named. That is not to say that they aren't interesting and important, it is just to say that there is no fluff attached to the class names (and how interesting can grammar be, anyway?) like we often have in the homeland. They are: Speaking competence, Vocabulary, Writing Competence, Grammar, Listening Comprehension, and German Culture.

Beyond these, I will be taking two more classes, but I am not entirely sure what they are yet. One of my options is German to English business translation. From the one period I have had, it seems like a pretty interesting class. It would also be a fairly difficult class, since I lack a business vocabulary in both languages. But, since we will be mostly proofreading the translations that computers give us, it seems manageable and also very important in case I ever decide that I wanted to do some translating on the side. I would probably have to go to grad school for that, which is a possibility. The problem is that, once I am back living in the States, the demand for German-English translation will drop to about as low as the demand for something can drop (Slightly above "another hole in my head," I would imagine) and I would not want to consider relocating for a job on the side. But, the class is interesting, so I would like to take it, if my studies would allow.

The other class that I am debating over is the C2 version of Writing Competence. We all accidentally attended this class on the first day, not fully understanding the European system (I have an excuse for that. I am not sure what the Europeans were thinking.) During this class, we all had to provide a writing sample based off of a small picture in order to give the Professor something to decide whether we should be in the class or not. My picture was of airplanes at their gates at an airport. I wrote about all of the different times that I was on an airplane. Not really something directly related to the planes (since I never mentioned the airports or the planes at all,) but I figured it was close enough. The next day, I received an email from the professor saying that I could take both the C2 and the B2 class if I wanted. That should also be very difficult and rewarding and I would like to take it as well. I am just afraid that, if I take both of them, my schoolwork will interfere with my traveling the country. As I cannot have classes on Fridays (I have been trying to do that for my whole college career to no avail. I get here and I can't have it any other way, because the only German classes offered are for Chinese students only,) I have been planning on spending lots of time traveling and seeing things that I will not have any other opportunity to see.

And so, the slacker option rears its ugly head. There is a class called Foreign Culture Competence. It is a very high level English class that compares the culture of Germany with the culture of the United States. In all reality, I should probably not take this class. It is just so damn tempting to take a class in a language that I understand very well (I was going to mention something about "completeness" or "understanding all of the words of" but both of those are probably false.) At the very least, the language that I think in, which makes learning that much easier. At this moment I am strongly considering taking both of the hard courses, which is what I should do. I am just afraid that I am going to be jumping in way over my head if I do. I suppose I need to decide before Monday, so I should probably get on that.

At this point, I strongly considered taking a break before talking about what goes on in the classes and the people that I am taking them with. However, I realized that I probably wouldn't get around to it for another week or so if I stopped now, so I have decided to soldier on. Feel free to get up and take a break without me.

The translation class was very interesting. Apparently, the professional translator uses a very expensive version of something like Google translate (which I think I can acquire for free? I will have to check on that) and then proofreading what the program spits out sentence by sentence. Definitely a lot easier than doing it completely by hand, especially if you have to look up more than half of the words to figure out what it means. Speaking competence apparently means that we are have to speak in front of the class a bunch, or something along those lines. All we did was introduce ourselves (we did that in all of our classes, so I won't mention it again) and go over the basics: buy note cards that you can use as flashcards, by the newest version of this dictionary. The older ones will be wrong some of the time and should be thrown out, etc. I can't imagine that every class period will be like that. I guess I will have to wait until next week to see. Vocab just involved just looking over some vocab and the same spiel from before. The first writing competence just went over some sentences. The second one repeated the vocab exercise, but with a different list.

This morning I had grammar and we talked about the sentence. I also got to briefly revisit elementary school, which was fun. The teacher used a bunch of example sentences to illustrate the different parts of the sentence that can exist. She decided to do this by telling a story using two of the easiest names from the class. As my name is fairly easy, it got chosen and I got to break a French girl's heart, causing her to plan revenge against me. I would think that I am mature enough to allow my name to be used in a class example without effect, but I felt really awkward during it. Some things never change, I suppose. After that, we all went to Listening Comprehension. I assumed that this would be the easiest of all of the classes, since, due to the similarities between German and English, I can understand much more of the language than I can speak. It is also much easier to listen, since you don't have to come up with the words yourself. I could not have been more wrong about how easy the class would be. We began by listening to some people talking about the correlations between the weather and health. It might be the fact that weather has its own special vocabulary (outside of the basic kind of stuff) but this seemed torturous to me. It also could have been the fact that the paragraph we were supposed to fill in the verbs on was shoddily copied, making it more difficult than it would have been otherwise. It also could have been the fact that of the 15 or so verbs on the list, I knew less than half of. Hopefully it will be better next week. I would really have to drop down to the B1 level for that class, especially since I am trying to attend the C2 course at the same time. I guess I will have to wait and see how that turns out, as well.

After a brief lunch (well, the eating part took about 5 minutes or so. The waiting in line took more than twenty,) I headed to the library to print my notes for the talk that I was going to give for German Culture on Germany since the reunification. There are only three computers that are hooked up to the printer system (you actually print from a photocopier) and they were all occupied during the half an hour or so I waited. Luckily, I had sketched some very rough notes on a notepad as I was reading stuff. The rest I had to come up with by memory. As I was the first person, I think that I will be granted some slack. The professor didn't seem particularly displeased, so that is good. An interesting point about the copy machines here. They all have usb drives on them, so you could print directly from your jump drive, if you wanted. However, I think that they only read .pdfs and not .docs, so I couldn't print mine. I couldn't find the documents on there, at the very least. I could find some pdfs, so I will have to try that next time. There ends my first full week of class in Germany. Hooray!

Since, in the past, some of you have whined about the lack of people in my entry, here is some information about the people. The other exchange students seem divided into equal parts from China and from France. There are also a couple Belgians and Czechs besides us two Americans. The people are all nice, which is good. However, as the French students choose to converse with each other in their native tongue, I am left out to dry when they are in a group. The Chinese students are the same way, but they have all been here since September and I don't spend much time outside of class with them. Since the Belgians can all speak French, Derrick and I are left either conversing with one another or the Czech students. However, there are only three of them and they are all studying things in addition to German here, so they aren't always around the rest of us as we go from German class to German class. Maybe I will just have to start learning French. Also, there is a girl from South Dakota here that lives on the floor above ours. She is in a class with Derrick. There might be other Americans running around, but I don't know of any. There was a guy in the hallway the other night with a Minnesota State Bulldogs track jacket, but he seemed terribly confused by my questions, so he must have gotten it from somewhere else. I am not sure if that means Duluth or some other university in the state. It was odd, at the very least. There was also a guy in the union yesterday who was decked out in Twins garb. I was caught off-guard at the beginning and wasn't quite ready to ask him about it before he walked away. Perhaps he will wear it again.

Germans? Do you honestly think that there are Germans in Germany? The truth of the matter, is that I don't know any. I am vaguely acquainted with a couple that spend Thursday evenings in the International Center (Inter-cultural meeting is what it is literally, I would call it an international center in English) playing foosball. However, as with the other people that I have talked to there, I haven't gotten good contact information for anyone, so I haven't been able to follow up on anything. Perhaps I should do that, the next time I go. For those of you who are familiar with foosball, these German guys are definitely better than anyone at Sawbill. Hopefully it will be good practice for the fall when I return. I can't imagine that I could have possibly forgotten anything from this post. I apologize for the length and will try to space it out in the future. Maybe I will remember something I forgot and will have to post it tomorrow. Bis später!

Marc

American Problems That Could Be Easily Fixed: Part 1

Anyone remember the way that American car companies have been in free fall for the last several years? It turns out that at least one of those companies was even more clueless than we all suspected. I will not speak of GM here, because one can argue that there are separate companies involved or something. That isn't really the point. The point here is that Ford Motor Company is entirely capable of making something that is not a large truck. I know it is hard to believe, but you are going to have to trust me on this one. Alternatively, you could trust wikipedia instead. Or, I could take pictures of real cars that exist here in Germany. Anyway, why Ford is run by idiots.

As I am sure most of you recall, Ford has only recently admitted that, yes in fact, they are capable of making the small car that Americans have been giving all of their money to Honda and Toyota to have. Personally, I own a Hyundai and am very pleased with its small stature and turning radius, and it isn't even a subcompact. They even make a smaller one that I could buy, if I wanted to. Getting back to Ford, they have not made anything that might even be optimistically called "small" since 1997. The Focus might be in the compact class, but it is gigantic in comparison to real compact cars, my Korean one for example (an easy comparison for me to make, since my car is often parked next to my sister's Focus.) In the very near future, Ford will be re-releasing the Fiesta to the United States.

This is where I try to avoid thinking about this too hard. Ford has been selling the Fiesta in the rest of the world since the seventies. Americans stopped buying Fords because they only sold us huge vehicles that guzzled fuel. This seems as though it would have been a no-brainer to just add the Fiesta to the American market. A small, fuel-efficient car would have sold like crazy due to high gas prices and American Patriotism. If this would be the only source of Ford's stupidity, I might be able to forgive them. It gets worse.

In addition to the Fiesta, Ford also sells a model called the "Ka" in Europe. This car is even smaller than the Fiesta and also gets 46mpg. They have been selling this car in the rest of the world since 1996. Again, this seems like it might be obvious, but it isn't to them. After doing some research, I found out that the Ka will not be joining the Fiesta in the US because Ford has deemed it too small to succeed in America. (http://www.egmcartech.com/2009/11/09/mulally-ford-ka-and-new-ford-ranger-not-coming-to-u-s/) A car that is American Made and gets 46mpg does not exist. It could exist, but Ford decided that it doesn't want it to exist. Advertise it as Red, White, Blue and Green and you would make a killing. Why they are not doing this is beyond me and I am going to avoid thinking about it too hard, for fear that my brain might explode out of confusion.

Ugh. I feel bad that the people that have the misfortune of working for Ford are being by people that are so out of touch with what people want. Hopefully those poor people can get other jobs before the company is crushed by the weight of a million unsold explorers and F150s.

Trip to Berlin

Yesterday, I woke up at quarter to five. Showered, made and ate pasta and left for the train station at 530. The train left at about 6 and we got to Berlin just before 8. We (Two Czech exchange students, a visiting Czech girlfriend, and us two Americans) then spent the next 10 hours walking around Berlin and seeing the sites. Did we see everything that Berlin has to offer? Not in the slightest. However, we did see some of the biggies, which will allow us to be more focused with our return journeys. Well, I cannot speak for the others in the group, but I will be more focused on seeing the rest of the things to see when I go back, because I will assuredly do so.

After leaving the Hauptbahnhof, we went to the Reichstag and the Brandenburg Gate. Getting the biggies out of the way first is often a wise practice. Although we didn't get to tour the inside of the Reichstag (we got there just before 8am and would have had to wait in line for 90 minutes to get to tour it) the outside was still pretty cool looking.
Although the Brandenburg Gate didn't look as cool at 8:30am as it does in the night picture that they have on Wikipedia, it was certianly made more interesting by the fact that there weren't thousands of people there.
After that, we headed down the Allee Unter den Linden towards Museum Island. Since it was now only 9am and none of them were open, we took pictures of the outside of the Old Museum and the Cathedral and found ourselves some breakfast. Coincidently, as we were leaving the cathedral, a group of Czech tourists were just arriving there. This, of course, meant nothing to me, but the Czechs in the group seemed to be amused.
After some much needed coffee and breakfast at a café, we took the S-Bahn to Schloss Charlottenburg. The castle was pretty sweet on the outside. But, as previously, we did not go in because it would have meant waiting in a long line and paying €10. Ahh the joys of being impatient and poor. Perhaps when I am older.
After the castle, we walked toward the heart of the city, found a Scientology church (Did you know that these existed in Germany? I didn't. I thought that they had outlawed or something) and ate some delicious Chinese food. The real beauty of immigration is that it allows me to eat delicious Chinese, Indian, Thai, etc. cooking nearly everywhere.
Once we were full of delicious food, we continued our journey and went to the Kaiser Wilhelm Memorial Church. The church was destroyed during the Second World War and has been left that way as a memorial. Before showing you pictures of the church, I am going to pause and complain. The following is addressed to anyone who might be pro-war (as an abstract concept) who happens to read this: If you are going to insist on having a war, please be kind enough to do it away from things which could be damaged. If you are going to agree to not damage anything, then you are not allowed to have a war. Do you know how many things in this city (or even country for that matter) would remain had they not been destroyed by war at one point in time? A whole freaking lot, that is how many. Anyway, ranting addressed, primarily, to people who have been dead for over 60 years aside, here is a picture of the ruined church.
Also, here is a picture of the inside.
The area surrounding the church was full of all kinds of street performers (dancers, jugglers, caricaturists, a brass band, human statues, at the very least). I don't have a picture to prove that one, you will just have to take my word for it. After watching them for a while, we headed to KaDeWe (Kaufhaus des Westens), the largest department store I have ever seen (Kaufen, if you don't know, means "to buy" The other words should be pretty self-exploratory). I am not usually one to be Claustrophobic, but I can hardly imagine how one could not be in that place. Seven floors packed to bursting with people looking at overpriced stuff. Also, an entire floor of perfume. I really wish that they would had a sign that said something to the effect of "Do you have breathing problems near perfume? Well good freaking luck holding your breath, because there is no way you are going to be able to get off of this floor holding only one breath" I made it through alive by alternating holding my breath and taking large breaths through my sweatshirt. I hate perfume. After we freed ourselves from the mob in that place, we headed over to the Großer Tiergarten. (Big Animalgarden) and relaxed in the sun for a while. Two of our party decided that it was nap time and slept. In the intervening time, I took more pictures of ducks than any person could ever need. To make the ducks more interesting than they normally are, a family showed up to feed them chunks of bread. Hooray for free entertainment!
There were also some other birds fighting for the bread. I have no idea what kind they were, except that they enjoyed plotting their attacks from a nearby tree.
After our rest, we spent a little more time walking around the garden (It could also be viewed as walking "out" of the garden, since we didn't really meander at all) and then headed back towards the train station to go home. Before we made it back to the Reichstag and the train station, we found the Schloss Bellevue, which is largely equivalent to the White House (In that it is the president's residence, even though the American president and German president are not terribly similar positions).
Since, in order to get back to the train station, we had to go to the Reichstag, I decided to take another picture. This one serves the dual purpose of being a time comparison ten hours later, and also captures the weirdest thing I have seen here in Germany (much weirder than the man running along next to a guy on a bike wearing a large metal chain who barked back at dogs)
If we were near some sort of American embassy or something, I could understand the stop sign's existence. As we were between the the German Chancellery Office and the Reichstag, I am utterly confused.
The Berlin Hauptbahnhof. Much cooler than ours here in Magdeburg (as one might expect) It is also the most interesting public transit station I have ever seen. For some reason, the airports I have been to are always boring. Well, that isn't entirely true. The one in Brussels was pretty interesting, but I was so tired at the time that I didn't appreciate it much. This is not my picture (notice how it is all black and white and artsy. Filip, my neighbor, is an Industrial design major and is pretty artsy. Luckily, he put this picture on facebook so I could steal it. Even though it is not mine, I still feel as though it provides an adequate summation of the whole day. (even though it was taken before 8:30 in the morning)