Overheard in German(y)

pushen, as in “Man muß durch das Studium pushen.”

Appropos of nothing, just to cancel out some of the nastiness of the picture in the post below, I’m going to post the awesome head of a dragon getting slain that I snapped over Easter in Berlin.  Would it say too much about my current state of mind if I made it my profile picture on Facebook?

umpteenth complaint about life here:

OK, it’s one thing not to have air conditioning.   Much as  the Texan remnants of my soul might rage against the lack of it, I do recognize that it’s not really necessary in Northern Europe and that, if you keep windows open, dress sensibly and don’t mind a little sweat, it’s really not that bad.  (I personally can’t measure up to conditions 2 and 3, so it is that bad for me, but those are my issues.)   In fact, benefit to the environment aside, some people I know who haven’t lost all touch with nature  and their bodies argue that going without AC is preferable to putting up with the frigid temperatures that seem to reign in most American public buildings in the summer time, with the ridiculous contrast of sweating outside and having to  bundle up inside.

I just don’t understand the combination of not having AC *and* not having screens on windows! I just had to banish the second threatening insect from my room in as many hours.

Rants and a Dilemma

I just got back from my quasi-Christian dormitory’s obligatory “Opening Weekend.”  We left at 9am on Saturday morning for a large-group, cabin-type facility about an hour away in the Odenwald (not as pretty or romantic as it sounds, at least not this time of year), stayed a night in hostel-style dormitories, and came back the next day.  The highlight of the trip, or at least the ostensible point of going to the forest, was a 3-hour forced hike in the woods, which all 27 of us did together, excepting one girl who recently had surgery.  I personally didn’t find it taxing, but three of my roommates who had colds/chronic back problems/foot-wear issues were really suffering.

I need to mark and internally digest about myself that I almost *always* resent mandatory large-group activities, even when they are more luxurious than our typical dormitory outing.  (To be fair, most of the students here are on an extremely tight budget, and so have to count every penny.  I just wish we weren’t all forced to partake of cold showers and lunches consisting of nasty, damp German bread and flavorless cheese.)  I hated them even when I was of an age when they are to be expected – why did I think I’d tolerate them better at the age of twenty-fricking-nine?  My “go with the flow” attitude of fall semester has pretty much evaporated, and I find myself wondering on a daily basis why in hell I signed up to live in a dorm where I am contractually obligated to participate in weekly house evenings, three trips per year, and one party per semester.  And where most others seem to be perpetually sunny-natured and like to do things in groups, and look askance at anyone who does something strange like sometimes eat meals in their room, or not change out of pajamas until noon.  I apparently did something revolutionary the other night, when I was feeling uncommunicative and so skipped the beer-drinking portion of the first night of the “Opening Weekend” festivities (before we left for the forest the next day).  A (German) roommate who’s also feeling a bit disgruntled lately said to me admiringly “I wish I were as brave as you.”

OK, I need to stop my ranting.  Despite my bitterness, I actually enjoyed most of the trip, albeit in a backwards, self-mortifying kind of way.  The point is that in this dorm, and especially this weekend, I tend to gravitate toward other recalcitrant margin-dwellers.  And my good mood about the weekend,  and feeling like maybe things here would be OK after all (after a rough 3-month stretch), was spoiled by a long conversation I had on the way back to Heidelberg with one of my fellow black sheep roommates.  She was telling me how hypocritical she finds this dorm, which has theological affiliations and consists by about 2/3 of students training for the pastorate.  One of the stories she told to prove her point was this:

There used to be a homeless man who would sit most of the time on a bench on the street outside the dormitory.  She and another roommate would chat with him regularly and got along with him well. One day she allowed him into the dorm to use the internet.  Then because it started to rain really hard, he asked if he could sleep overnight in the basement, and promised to be out the next morning by 6 am.  But on the way down to the basement, another roommate saw them and asked what was going on.   When she found out that the homeless man was going to stay the night, she protested on the grounds that people here regularly leave their doors unlocked, and he could easily steal something.  My friend ignored her, and the homeless man did indeed stay the night and leave by 6 the next day without stealing anything.  The issue was brought up at the next house meeting, though. They took a vote on the question of whether any homeless person would ever again be allowed to stay in the dorm, and out of 25 roommates, only my friend and one other person — who happens to be our one resident atheist — supported allowing him to stay.  And my friend found that totally inconsistent with the Christian ideal of loving one’s neighbor.

I personally feel a bit conflicted.  As my friend, who claims to be not particularly religious, told the story, I felt heartily ashamed that all the theology students cared more about maintaining order and protecting their property, and only two non-religious people wanted to extend hospitality to the homeless.  And yet I really don’t know how I would have voted at that house meeting – I think I might have either abstained, or voted pro-homeless more out of shame and guilt than true, single-minded conviction.  Because part of me thinks that he *could* have stolen something — and, while the idealist in me thinks it’s better to take that risk than be guilty of inhospitality, another part thinks it wouldn’t be right to expose other roommates to that possibility without their having agreed to it.  Also, maybe this is middle-class paranoia, but even though the two “pro” roomates chatted on a regular basis with this man, how well could they really know him?  Or, given that he lives outside the margins of fixed social relationships, be sure that he wouldn’t do something unpredictable and bad?

Dear readers, do you have an opinion here?