The early Christmas Period

Some of the exchange students at Santa Barbara decided to go home for Christmas – see their families and enjoy a few home comforts (HP Sauce, British Tea, Good Television) and some decided they’d stick it out in the USA and get in a wee bit of traveling while they have the opportunity.  I managed to get something of a combination of the two.

After the long and arduous week that was Finals Week (all courses are only a semester long and therefore are fully examined at the end of each quarter, unlike most I’ve taken in Edinburgh) I was happy to be able to get away and start using my brain for what it is best at – socializing.  After a couple of days relaxation in Santa Barbara I caught a flight up to Minnesota where I met up with a friend of mine who was an exchange student in Edinburgh two years ago (never burn a bridge…).  I imagine that Minnesota isn’t that high on the USA wish list of many people – rightly so – but it was definitely a good time.  I spent a night in St. Paul at the end of which I had a meal perhaps more stereotypically American than a McDonalds at a place called Mickey’s Diner with gum-chewing waitresses and moody redneck regulars drinking copious amounts of coffee at half past 3 in the morning.  My brief stay in the city also included a quick trip across the Mississippi, but better than that I was treated to my first Ice-Hockey match!  I’m sure you’ll be disappointed, like I was, to discover that there were no fights but it was a really good game at least.  The action moves so fast and the relatively small crowd’s noise making is amplified as it all takes place indoor so the atmosphere wasn’t lacking either!

My friend and I took a quick trip down to his parent’s house for a day too, where I was treated to some typically Minnesotan food.  It was nice.  I threw back hearty portions of ‘tater tots’ with mince and a fish I’d never heard of before called ‘Walleye’ and if that wasn’t enough I worked it off with a beer in the hot tub in the back garden!  If you’ve never been in a hot tub surrounded on all sides by snow and general coldness it is definitely worth trying – you’re not just warm but you’re also smug about it because you know that you should be cold as your outside in below zero temperatures wearing just shorts!

After that we began on our way to Chicago for a couple of days.  I was due to catch a flight out to Boston early on the 22nd in order to meet up with my parents (hence the mixture of home comforts and traveling) and so we had just the day to check out the city, which we didn’t really get round to!  Anyway, as far as I’d been led to believe prior to arrival in the Windy City, Hot Dogs were the things to eat in Chicago.  Apparently they are well known for their hotdogs across the country – and I think I know why.  After asking around a little we were directed to a place that ‘if you’re in Chicago you absolutely have to go to’ called Wiener Circle.  Upon walking in we were greeted with a tirade of swear words delivered with a smile by an extremely large black woman who was vacuous rather than virtuous when it came to having patience.  We thought relatively little of it and quietly ate our reasonably good hot dogs until a businessman walked through the door shouting as well!  ‘Dammit! I want me a chocolate shake!’ he demanded with a wry smile…if by now you’ve guessed what a chocolate shake is you’re a cleverer person than me.

She took the money off the surface, put it in the till, raised her shirt and jumped up and down on the spot for a good ten seconds.  One chocolate shake.  As it happens a slightly intoxicated fellow in the corner took it upon himself to raise his shirt and treat the room to a complimentary vanilla shake…

In order to make a long story a little less long we’ll cut to half past 11 the following morning when my plane was landing in Boston and I, quite separately, was waking up in bed.  Needless to say this didn’t quite fit into the carefully laid plans that had my family and me landing in Boston just 15 minutes apart.  Nevertheless a not insignificant amount of money and 7 hours later I was greeting my family for the first time in 3 months or so.

That leaves us in the present (ish), with probably two equally eventful installments of my holiday season to follow, expect a fairytale Christmas in Boston, a cold New Year’s celebration in New York and a spot of culture in Washington.

A belated Merry Christmas to everyone and a Happy New Year.  Alan

Blog 10- Daily Life

I’ve decided to repress the urge to only write about exciting things, so please ignore this blog if you want to learn the meaning of life. I thought I would tell you about my every-day life in Tubingen. It has taken a while to establish a routine, but now that it is nearly Christmas and I’m preparing to leave for the holiday, I’m suddenly aware that my life here has become really full and that I am really happy. It’s a bit of a cliché that things get easier over time, and to be honest I’ve enjoyed this experience from the start, but things in Germany definitely feel like home now. The proof of it is in my room; during my first few weeks it stayed clean and (due to British Airways being mean) empty. In contrast, it now looks like a bomb has hit it. I’ve managed to accumulate the most ridiculous amount of possessions whilst here, not to mention the post-birthday debris that has become entwined between important sheets of paper and my chaotic university work filing system. For the first few weeks I couldn’t quite get used to the fact that I really was here for a whole year, and I think part of that was linked to my room being so bare. If you look at it now you’d think I’d been in it since the cold war ended.My university work is pretty time consuming. I have slightly less lectures and seminars than in Edinburgh, but they each last for about two hours instead of only one. I have all of Monday free and Friday afternoons too, which I intentionally arranged so that I would have time to do lots of travelling. Whilst I’ve managed to see a lot of places, I mostly end up doing university work on these days now. My German has improved, but it still takes a long time to prepare for classes and get all the reading done (and hence not a lot of blogs recently). I’m quite glad about the workload, though, as I love my subject. I’ve met quite a few exchange students who don’t have to attend as many lectures, and whilst they brag about it you can tell they’re actually pretty bored most of the time. Everyone’s different, but I always play the hardest when I’m working the hardest too.Last week I had to give a presentation in front of a seminar group about Iron Age burial techniques in ancient Palestine. The professor was really kind to me and gave me lots of reading in English, but I still had to translate it all into German, so it ended up probably taking more time than it would have if I’d have just read German books! Needless to say, it was the most terrifying experience of my academic life. To speak aloud in front of my class was the ultimate exposure of all my linguistic flaws. It was so ridiculously unnerving and frustrating, because it wasn’t that I didn’t know the answers, but I couldn’t articulate them properly. I would like to waffle about how it was worth it, and I’m sure in time I will be glad I did it (what job interview could possibly be as bad??), but right now I am still reeling from the trauma and am just glad it’s over.Apart from working and visiting places, in my evenings I mostly sit around eating with friends that I´ve either made through the language course I did at the beginning of the semester, or people on my corridor. I have got to know everyone really well now, and definitely recommend staying in shared accommodation if you are planning on studying abroad. It’s really nice to just have people to sit and do nothing with-I always think that’s the sign of a true friendship if you don’t have to force an action-packed itinery into the equation to make sure you’ll have a good time. When I first arrived I was pretty shy because I wasn’t very confident about my language skills, but everyone has been so friendly and patient with my endless random questions. Most people in Germany that I’ve met have also studied abroad, so they all know what it’s like. Just knowing that has been really comforting- and amusing; I know one girl who taught in Cork last year, and now speaks English with a German-Irish accent! So there we go, maybe not as glamorous as you thought, but studying abroad is definitely a fantastic thing to do nonetheless-consistency should always be valued over extreme highs and lows.

My Birthday Rant-because on your birthday you get to say what you want :)

Normally, despite my birthday turning me one year older, my mental age regresses to about seven in the lead up to it. Some people (tends to be the grumpy ones) don´t like Birthdays. I, however, am famous for having on several occasions written a Birthday wish list for the coming year only three days after one just happened. What can I say?!? It pays to be prepared. Bearing this in mind, you can imagine the slight trauma of deciding what to do for my birthday this year-not only in Germany, but the all important 21st! After scouring Facebook three days before the event for other people’s ideas to nick, I started to panic. Photos of enormous marquees filled with people in evening-gowns mocked my naive assumption that 21st birthdays could just be celebrated in the local student friendly (i.e. cheap) pub. A costume and theme appear to be expected of you! Heaven forbid you should want to celebrate your birthday without a good dollop of tacky, shiny, and/or fluffy accessories. Drunken renditions of “Happy Birthday” no longer fulfil the demand of friends to embarrass you as much as possible; unsuspecting members of the public must now be draw in, blinded so unable to turn back, by neon flashing badges and wands. WANDS?!? Come off it! Please forgive me for retaining the hope I will not turn senile in the next three years and be unable to remember what event my photos were taken at because there were no bright orange glittery **21** signs present.  Woe be it if I ever lay hands on the greed-driven, tasteless, probably-by-now-stinking-rich businessman who’s managed to wedge the idea that these crude (and not very subtle) cries for attention are necessary into the heads of birthday girls and boys of our generation.            

Don’t even get me STARTED on hen nights.Like I’ve said though, I love birthdays. Or rather, I love it when its MY birthday Perhaps there is a shop that sells such shoddy rubbish in Germany. Or even worse perhaps Clinton Cards are branching out. Either way, thankfully, no such shops exist in Tübingen. And so, free from this English (or is it American?) tradition, everything turned out pretty fantastic. I had a great night out with friends, and hardly any random strangers at all were traumatised. Believe me, if we were all wearing tiaras the casualty list would have been much, much higher.

Thanksgiving

So, because I’m a bit lame, I still haven’t updated since Thanksgiving, which I’m sure you all know was about a week and a half ago. So, here goes.

Thanksgiving takes place on a Thursday (meaning we get a Thursday to Sunday weekend) and so we (Myself and flatmate Nick) left on Wednesday night with our host for the weekend, Netta. Being, as we are, largely used to the British way of driving, we were a little anxious (not to say scared to death) during the journey up – most conversation was routinely interjected with STOP!!! or BRAKE!! or ‘Why are we being pulled over?’. filling our minds!

Thanksgiving is my kind of holiday, it basically involves eating as much food as you can fit in your mouth and helping it down with as much wine/beer etc that is possible (considering that you’ve already put as much food as possible in your mouth!) In order to paint a little picture for you, among the foods that were consumed were: turkey, beef, mashed potatoes, yams, 4 different salads, stuffing, cornbread, mixed vegetables. Dessert included: pumpkin pie, chocolate cake, lemon meringue pie and a little treat I loved called apple crisp!

If that wasn’t enough to convince you that we need some sort of equivalent holiday in the UK (perhaps celebrating the Normans breaking bread at Hastings…no?) there was a whole host of different family members drifting in and out of the door all day and congratulating each other on their achievements of the year and generally engaging in top family banter. At least I’m pretty sure that that was what was going on, after all there was a lot of Hebrew being spoken throughout!

After our long day we did what any self-respecting Brit does around mid-afternoon on Christmas Day – we took a little nap in order to recharge our batteries and give our stomachs a chance to do some digesting undisturbed!

The next day (despite no longer being Thanksgiving) was equally eventful. This particular Friday is widely known in America as ‘Black Friday’ as most shops hold ridiculous sales beginning any time as early as 4am and with Christmas drawing nearer shoppers go nuts trying to get the best deals – fights break out, children get stood on etc. So we went into San Francisco to have a little look at the craziness. By happy coincidence it turned out that SanFran was turning on its Xmas lights so we managed to kill two birds with one stone by staying and watching that!

It was definitely good to get away for a couple of days and forget about the insane amount of work that is set for us here! Over the next couple of days we triedour hand ata little bit of ice skating, some bowling, even a little bit of mini golf! Obviously there was a relative tidal wave of work waiting for me at the end of our brief interlude, but it was enough fun for me to have decided that Edinburgh University needs to start observing this holiday! It comes jsut at the right time of the year when people’s heads are starting to drop – I’m sure it’ll increase productivity of students outside the holidays!