Marbach - Week 1

The image on everything in Marbach.

So I arrived in Marbach on Monday - after a relatively long and treacherous trip here, which I won't bore you with because honestly I can't go through it again.  Just take my word for it, don't fly into Toronto if you don't have to, and whatever you do be wary of flying on AirCanada if you aren't at one of their primary airports.

Of course because of the relatively long and treacherous trip, I ended up without my larger bag and having to take the train from Zurich yet again, though this time I'm pretty much an expert so...whatever.

Photo of my room

Marbach is a relatively small town about a 15 miles north of Stuttgart.  It is home to the German Literature Archive, the National Schiller Museum, the Museum of Modern Literature, and it's claim to fame is being the birthplace of Schiller - one of Germany's most prized authors from the 18th/19th centuries. On Monday I picked up the key to my room, found my room, and finally got a chance to check my email on the shared computers down in the first floor area.  Because of the flight delays I got in too late to re-register at the archive, and therefore couldn't get my access code for the internet.  No problem.  I had been to Marbach last year, so I was familiar with the area a bit, so after dropping of my bags in my room, I went to the bakery and grocery store quickly before they closed.

Tuesday I headed down to Tuebingen to visit with friends and to sit in on a course that one of my committee members is teaching.  I'll be headed down there every Tuesday to sit in on that class, which will give me a nice break from writing, at least once a week.  The class was good and I set up an appointment with the professor for next Tuesday.  I should be giving her a draft of my first chapter then, and I wanted to get a chance to talk to her about a conference paper that I'm working on, as well as the exchange student that she will be sending to our department next semester.

Wednesday spent almost the whole day at the archive.  I had ordered some books on Tuesday morning, when I went to register and picked up my internet access code, so they were waiting for me when I arrived.  In addition to the many collections they have (two of which I am interested in for my project) they have a great deal of secondary literature which is useful.  Some of it I have access to in NC, but other stuff I don't.  It's great to be at a place that is so well stocked with good research materials, and those materials that I can't get here, I can usually access online.

Right now I'm just writing.  My goal is to write at least 10 pages a week.  So far for this week I've written 6 pages, but then I wasn't really able to write on Monday or Tuesday and I haven't calculated my total for today.  If I can write a minimum of 10 pages a week, I will have written about 110 pages this summer.  It's not enough in the grand scheme of things, but it's a good dent.  If I can write more than that, it's great, but if not, I still feel like 110 pages is a fantastic foundation for finishing up next year.

In a couple of weeks I'm going to try to see about getting access to the two collections I'm interested in.  They are both full of what is known as Trivialliteratur or Unterhaltungsliteratur - basically popular fiction, but it's popular fiction from the 19th century, which is pretty hard to come by - particularly if it wasn't deemed important enough to keep around.  The one collection was a private library and the other is the contents of a lending library.  Both should be interesting and I'm hoping to find some works to round out my dissertation.  The goal - right now at least - is to write about one canonical work and one work of Trivialliteratur per chapter to show that the themes I'm looking at were present in both high and popular literature at the time.  We'll see if that happens, but it's a goal - plus, honestly most Trivialliteratur has just never been looked at, so I'm fairly certain it will be "original" research.  :)

As for Marbach, I have ventured around a bit thus far, in order to find the grocery store, bank, drug store, bakery, etc.  There's honestly not much here, but I actually feel like that's not a bad thing considering I have a dissertation to write.  But I'm going to make an effort to get hont a bit.  I've met a couple of other researchers  in the archive and I have a friend who works at the hospital in Landstuhl who I'm going to meet up with the next two weekends, so that will give me an opportunity to get a out and about.

The photos are pictures of my room and the view from my window.  I forgot to take my camera on my walk today, but since I'll be walking the stretch from the archive to the train station on a regular basis, I'm sure there will be opportunities in the future.  I'll update the album as I take photos.  More next week!

Dorm Life: Parties and Permission

So I've complained about people cooking dinner in our kitchen before, but this isn't about that.  This is about that.  This is about the common courtesy one extends to neighbors when in a joint living situation.  When I suggested my kitchen as the potential Halloween party/Birthday Party location for my friend Eduarda, I told her to hold off on sending the invitation to everyone until I had a chance to ask everyone else on the floor if it was ok.  I even invited them all to come.  And they did come, even Miss Montana who hardly ever leaves her room. I think because it was a courteous exchange and because it wasn't a big drunken crazy party, people felt comfortable there. This isn't to say that the simple act of asking people for permission to have a party automatically makes it a better party, but it fosters a certain amount of goodwill amongst the people with whom you live.

Showdown in the Kitchen

So last night I was suffering from what can only be described as one of the worst sinus headaches in the history of mankind.  It's much better today, but I think I should still probably take some ibuprofen just to be on the safe side.  I have a lot of friends who get migranes, and I don't know what a migrane feels like, but this was probably the sinus headache equivalent of a migrane.  It hurt my entire head to cough and though I was just laying in bed and breathing my head was pounding.

Anyway, because of the pain, and the fact that I have to get in just the right position to sleep with this head cold, I had some problems falling asleep.  I tried reading just before I went to bed, but the headache was too bad and focusing on the words and writing notes was too much.  This was at about 1:30 am.  I put a warm compress on my eyes and finally drifted off to sleep at what was probably around 2:00 am or so.  At 3:45 I was woken up by loud voices in the hallway.

Hunkering Down and the Putzplan

Having had a relapse of whatever it was I got about 2 weeks go, I've spend the last 2 1/2 days in my dorm - not really leaving my room except for showers, food, and other necessities.  It has afforded me the opportunity to finish up some reading for my Ph.D. exams and given the cold and the amount of rain that we've been having, it's actually been preferable to going outside.  Apparently, however, my absence has been noted as people have been asking about me.

Rather than this being a lengthy post about either my reading or my illness, I figured I would take this as an opportunity to tell you about the latest goings on in the 2nd floor of Prinz Karl.  The more responsible of the Brazilians decided that it would be a good idea to sit down on Tuesday evening and talk about our Putzplan.  Putzen is the German word for cleaning, and Plan - well, I think you can probably figure that one out.  Anyway, at 8pm we met in the kitchen and assigned weeks for cleaning and other responsibilities.

Basically, if it's your week, you must purchase toilet paper, make sure that the bathrooms are clean between visits from the Putzfrau, make sure that the garbage gets taken out, and clean any big things in the kitchen.  In addition, we agreed that if you make a mess you clean it up.  It is not the responsibility of the person on duty that week to clean up your dishes from making dinner for 10 people in the kitchen.

That was Tuesday.  This morning, I go into the kitchen and find it a disaster.  I almost took a picture.  I really should have because it would show you the level of filth that some people think is acceptable to force other people to live with.  Anyway, there were apparently about 8 people in our kitchen last night drinking, eating dinner, and having a good time, but nobody decided to clean up after themselves.  Now it's one of the Brazilian's job to clean this week, and let's just say that he is challenged when it comes to basic household maintenance and well anything else that takes place in a kitchen.  (As an aside, we were amazed that he cleaned his room last weekend, but then he has a girlfriend, and if he wanted his girlfriend to stay over, the room needed to be cleaned.)

Having talked to one of the Brazilians briefly in the kitchen today, he said that he cooked, but that the other Brazilian didn't get a chance to clean up.  I thought to myself - wait a minute - it's not his job to clean up your crap.  I mean, it's nice if the people for whom you cook help you clean up afterwards, and given the number of plates and glasses that were washed, I would suspect that someone did clean up after dinner.  But don't blame your friend and fellow countryman because your dirty pots and pans were scattered everywhere. OR because there were beer bottles everywhere in the kitchen.  OR because you were too drunk to take care of it.

Anyway, it's week one of the Putzplan and it's not going too well.  The German woman on our floor -  is up next week and I suspect it will be a little different with her.  Let's hope.

A few stories/observations and stories from the past 2 weeks.

1) I tried to sleep while the Brazilians in my building had parties – twice.

The first party I didn’t know anything about.  It was the first Saturday I was here and all of a sudden the bell for our floor kept ringing and more and more people were coming upstairs.  Now at this point I had a pretty serious case of jet lag and I had taken a nap earlier in the day, which was probably a bad idea.  I was really trying to get on a regular sleep schedule, so the party was particularly disturbing.  But what was most disturbing about this party was the fact that they went away at around 11pm, and I got a couple of hours of sleep, until they came back at 3am and started listening to music and drinking some more.

Biomüll – the bane of my existence

So I recycle.  I’m pretty diligent about knowing what’s recyclable and what’s not, but the Germans take this to a whole new level.  In fact, there’s a blog for my dorm, and the first post that the Tutor for our dorm put up, was about how to separate your garbage.  We had an entire hour in my class (well maybe not quite an hour, but whatever) about how to separate your garbage.  Apparently foreigners just don’t get this concept.  But really, what’s so hard about reading the directions and following them.  Seriously.

Earplugs

I'm testing out a set of ear plugs right now while my floormates are hanging out in the hallway.  Two notes on ear plugs.  #1:  If you have tinnitus (aka ringing in your ears) it makes it a lot worse.  All you can hear in your head is the ringing.  #2: If people in the hallway are using it as a soccer field, earplugs will not dampen the noise completely.  Plus you'll feel the vibrations of the tromping around in the hallway through the floor.

Hopefully they'll work when the inevitable next party happens.  I'll keep you posted.   :)

Sweet Jesus….not a Guitar!!!

So Cicero, one of the Brazilians who live on my floor of the building, just bought a guitar.  He’s not a bad guitar player, but I am currently listening to Miss Colorado, her friend Mr. Boston, and the other Brazilians trying to sing.  Now the Brazilians aren’t bad, if only because I don’t know what the hell they are singing, so really, who cares, but Miss Colorado is a TERRIBLE singer.  Now, let me be clear, I know what bad singing is.  My father’s singing is so bad that the people in front of us in church got up from their seats and moved one time.  But Miss Colorado is completely tone deaf.  Plus she has this nasal kinda whiny voice that really grates even when she just talks.  Argh…seriously….it’s killing me.  I’ll have to take some video of their “jam sessions” in the kitchen so you all can at least hear how bad her singing is.

Oh God, they’re trying to sing Bon Jovi now…please make them stop.

Here’s the other thing about Miss Colorado.  She has all of this music on her iPod from the 80s and she acts as though nobody has heard it before.  Right now they’re trying to sing Brian Adams songs, and soon they will be moving on to Rush or some other such nonsense.  I guess the Brazilians have never heard them before, but seriously, the other night at the birthday party from one of the women in the dorm, she was listening to something an acting as though it was new and nobody had heard it before.  The woman, whose birthday it was, is a little older than me and we gave each other a knowing glance and continued about our business.

Travel Update – The Final Chapter

So, where were we, ah yes, we’re in the dorm meeting the other folks on my floor.

Rent Update

They have managed to find my first month's rent!!!  Whooo Hoooo!!!!  That is the best news I've heard all week.

Travel Update – Part 3: Die Wohnheimverwaltung

So, at this point in the adventure I’m standing outside the Wohnheimverwaltung waiting for them to open at 1:30.  Now, I’ve worked with German bureaucracy before, so I know that if the time says 1:30 then the time is 1:30 and no earlier – in fact, if they could get away with starting later they probably would, but their conscience would get the better of them and they would still manage to make it to the door before the clock struck 1:31.  I say this because there is little to no point in opening the doors to look inside before 1:30 if they say that they open at 1:30.  Seriously people, where do you think you are?