Museums and Perspectives

Yesterday I had quite a museum day. At long last, I visited Schloss Eggenberg, our local palace and museum of Medieval and Renaissance art and old coins. It was very impressive, even though it wasn't the best time of year for it. I'll try to post some photos later.

Because I had bought a ticket for the castle museum, I could also go to other museum with the same ticket. And that's how, after much anticipation, I ended up at the Kunsthaus. Modern art is very hit or miss for me. I tend to like about 1% of it, so a collection needs to be pretty large before I'll like many of its pieces! The collection in the Kunsthaus is very small. However, two works of art really stood out for me. One was a collection of mechanical spiders that apparently go for a walk every day at 3 o'clock. (Sadly, I missed this.) The other was very simple and very witty. The artist had a shipping box on the floor, with a highly pretentious title and a note that due to unpacking issues, it could not be removed, and the artist requested it be presented in the box. I like modern art with a sense of humor as well as a message.

As far as perspectives go, being here has really made me realize something about my family. We are close, and enjoy each other's company a lot. However, 'out of sight, out of mind' is very, very true for us. I've talked to my family (specifically my mother) once in the 75 days I've been here. I called her. Similarly, no one has Skype set up, despite having know that I would do this for months. In comparison, Geoff had Skype within a couple of days of me being here, long before I even had internet to Skype with.

It's not a case of my family not loving me or caring about me. My mom has done many, many things for me since I've been here, from loaning me money and helping me get it transfered, to sending me a care package at Halloween. The thing is, it's generally things I ask for. And when I don't start communication, it doesn't seem to happen at all.

This also isn't just about me. The same thing happened when my brother moved to New York. Clearly, no matter how much we love each other, we love each other loosely. When someone is out of reach, we seem to just get on with our lives. It's interesting for me to realize this, because it's absolutely a habit I have as well, and I want to change that.

Graffiti in Graz

Happy Halloween! Since Halloween is about transformation, if just for one night, I thought it would be a good time to post some of the transformative graffiti I've photographed in Graz. One of my classes here is on art in public spaces. In my opinion, several of these pieces qualify.

There are some amazing artists in the world of Graz graffiti. I like the Banksy style designs in particular. Here are a few of my favorites.

An Ode to the Older Ladies of Graz

They have ovaries of steel. To wit: today, I saw a lady who looked about 70 jaywalking across a busy street very, very slowly. A) jaywalking is a big no here and b) she absolutely had to walk past a crosswalk in order to get there. But that isn't the best example I've seen. It just reminded me of something that happened a couple of weeks ago.

I was walking home, and had to cross another very busy street. (This one, there's no way you could jaywalk it.) There was a woman, about 60 years old, standing next to the button you press for the walk sign. She was close enough that I would have had to get creepily close to press it, so I just stood next to her. Finally the light changed, and the street was clear...but the walk sign didn't come on. We stood there and waited. Finally, I asked her very politely, "Haben Sie es gedruckt?" (Did you press the button? in German).

She said, very indignantly, "Doch ich habe es gedruckt!" (Of course I pressed it!) Then she pressed it anyway, and the cross sign instantly came on. It is at this point she gained my eternal admiration, at much the same level and for the same reasons as Miss Piggy.

Without the slightest irony or self consciousness, she demanded, "Warum hast du nicht frueher gefragt!!" (Why didn't you ask me earlier!!)

Wow, lady. Just wow.

This. Is. ZUPPA!

Actually, while this is a post about soup, it is not Italian soup. It's just soup that is dramatic enough to justify Sparta puns. I have a mild cold, and that always makes me want soup. I was thinking about it anyway, but when Geoff said that if he was here, he would make soup for me (I hadn't even told him yet that I wanted some!), I knew I had to make some.

For getting over a cold, I like a nice, traditional chicken and vegetables soup. I already had potatoes that needed to be used, so that would be my grain. I bought carrots at the local farmer's market (also a beautiful rose), and then went to the Spar. I bought chicken stock cubes, since I've been looking for weeks without seeing any boxed or canned chicken broth. Then I decided to take the plunge and buy chicken breasts. I haven't bought any raw meat in the time I've been here, partially because I had trouble finding chicken breasts, my favorite, and partially because I was worried about using it all while it was still fresh. But today I found a pack of three fresh chicken breasts, and I just went for it. I thought that I would use part of them in the soup, which I was making several servings of, and part on a pizza. I love chicken on a pesto sauce pizza.

Once I got home and did some dishes, I opened the chicken so I could saute it before putting it in the soup. And boy, did I get a surprise: these were not sanitized American chicken breasts, precleaned until only the meat is left. No, they were full blooded Austrian chicken breasts, still on the bone and with skin on one side.

A note for those who haven't lived/cooked with me extensively: I have a weak stomach around meat. The smell of bacon cooking literally makes me nauseous. (I love cooked bacon, but never make it for myself because of this.) Nice restaurant food sometimes makes me gag, just because something about it arbitrarily feels wrong to me. And as far a preparing food goes-well, let's just say that Geoff and I made a chicken-and-pesto pizza a little before I left, with American style chicken breasts, and I asked him to cut up the meat, because it grossed me out.

So you can probably imagine how I felt about the chicken that now lay before me. But really, I didn't have much of a choice. And while I may not be good at handling raw meat, I am good at handling unpleasant situations.

I prepared the chicken. I tore off the skin with my bare hands. I first tried cutting it off the bone, then gave in and tore it off, again with my bare hands. I dry heaved many, many times. Then I cut the meat in soup/pizza sized pieces and sauteed it in olive oil, with garlic, pepper, and rosemary seasoning. I had a little for lunch, on toasted olive bread with pesto spread on it. It was delicious.

The whole experience was definitely not enjoyable, and I plan on avoiding having to prepare my chicken like that as much as possible, but at the same time I feel good about it. I can now say that despite my issues with meat, I eat it in full acknowledgment that it was once a chicken that died for me. I think that's a good thing to remember, even though it doesn't make me want to be a vegetarian.

After my chicken saga, I put water on to boil, adding the dripping from cooking the chicken. Once it was boiling, I added the boullion cube, then chopped potatoes once it had dissolved. I chopped carrots to be added next. And then...I realized I had forgotten onions and celery, and my soup just wouldn't be the same. I turned off the stove, left my housemates a quick note so they would know my stuff wasn't abandoned, and ran to the store.

But my epic soup adventure wasn't over yet. I found onions right away, but couldn't see celery anywhere. I made a couple loops of the vegetable section. Then I looked down at a low shelve near the floor, and I saw: the only bunch of celery in the entire Spar. I swooped it up, made it back home, and finished up my soup. I made enough for three bowls-one for now and two for later. It was the most effort I've ever put into a simple soup.

And that, I bet, is more than you thought you would ever read about a simple soup.

Ich habe dich lieb, Lendplatzmarkt. (I love you, Lendplatz Farmer's Market.)

Sorry this is sideways. I have a limited amount I can upload, so I don't want to redo it. The flowers were 30 cents a stem; the bottle was delicious pear juice.

Detail of the alter at a little church by the university. It dates back to the 16th century!

This is what I bought at the farmer's market. The green pepper was a gift! Such a nice lady. That's actually the second time I've been given free fruits and vegetables there. This is basically the choice: lower quality and more expensive at Spar/Billa/Hofer, or very inexpensive and farm fresh from incredibly nice people. Mmmm, so tasty.

I love stained glass.

I don't have any pictures of it, but last night was my first time in my trampoline jumping class! It is everything I wanted it to be. There was direction-we were learning things, not just happily bouncing away-and we also got to see the advanced class. They were doing things like almost touching the ceiling (in a high, high gym), doing perfect flips...it was both impressive and intimidating. It was also great exercise. My upper thighs and calves are sore today. And I also think it'll be great practice for Aikido: all of the advanced students had very healthy, aligned form with great extension.

More Steppenwolf, Intensive German

I translated this a few weeks ago. I was pretty bored before my German intensive class started.

Each led the other to suffering, and when two in one blood and one soul are deadly enemies, life is a constant struggle. However, each has his fate, and none are easy.

For our wolf of the steppes, though he sometimes lived as a wolf and sometimes as a man, it was the case (as it is for all such mixed creatures) that whenever he was a wolf, the human in him looked on in judgement and derision-and in times, when he was a human, the wolf did the same. For example, when Harry was a person and had beautiful thoughts, felt a fine, noble sympathy or undertook a good deed, the wolf bared its teeth to laugh and showed him with bloody scorn how laughable the entire show was to an animal of the steppes, a wolf, that in his heart knew exactly what he should do: bound through the steppes, taste blood or chase a wolf in heat. For a wolf, human behavior looked comical, foolish, idle. And yet whenever Harry felt and acted as a wolf, when he bared his teeth, when he felt felt hate and deadly antipathy against all humanity, the human part of him rebelled, observed the wolf, called him beast and denied him all joy in the simple, healthy, and wild behavior of the wolf.

So, speaking of the German class, it went really well, and involved several surprises. I was originally placed in B2. The classes were divided into A1, A2, B1, B2, and C1, with C1 being the highest. This is the European system for foreign language competence, where C2 is near native fluency. So I was happy with being in B2-that's the highest anyone who hasn't lived in the country would expect. As it turned out, that was a major reason I was placed in B2-I haven't lived in the country before. Once I was in the class, it became obvious it was the wrong level for me. We were just doing things I had learned before, we were doing things I had done three or four times before. I was divided though, because I thought C1 might be too difficult for me, and I didn't want to leave the friends I'd met in B2. Finally, I asked my professor what he would recommend, and he told me to go to C1. So, a week into a three week class, I did.

I joined the class on a Monday, and the next Wednesday was our midterm. I really stressed out over it (let's just say Geoff mayhave gotten a semi-hysterical phone call over it) but I also studied my ass off. When the test came, it wasn't as hard as I feared, and when we got the results back, I got the second highest score in the class! I couldn't believe it. So C1 went really well for me, I learned a lot, and the people were just as nice as in B2.

I also bought these dictionaries:

The little one is Collins, because he is small and sometimes irritating, and also because he's a Collins dictionary. The big one is Darcy, because he's hard to handle but gives good results (he's entirely in German, and fairly comprehensive), and also of course to go with Collins.

Internet!!!!!!!

So, I'm sure everyone reading this blog has already heard that I haven't had internet in my dorm...until today! I really can't overstress how hard this has been but:

*I haven't talked with my family for almost a month

*To check email, I had to go into/stand outside of cafes that had it...kind of a sketchy thing to do at night

*Like at most colleges, registration and communication here is through Internet and email

*Graz closes down in the evening and on Sundays, so whenever I didn't have plans with friends here or work to do, I was really bored.

But anyway, now I have it! I have a lot to talk about, and I prewrote some posts, so there'll be a lot in the next few days.

First days in Graz

September 1st, my new apartment

The last day has been really difficult for me. In part it’s that I haven’t been eating properly-a combination of not wanting to impose on people who were doing me a favor, not feeling sure of my choices, and not really wanting to eat. But today, as I felt really low emotionally and weak physically, I realized that on top of not sleeping much for a couple of days, I hadn’t eaten anything more than a coffee and a juice in 24 hours and not much in the 24 hours before that. So I found food, took it home, and ate it. This is much more complicated in a city you don’t know, relying on your second language. I blend in well though: people have already asked me for directions twice, and everyone who doesn’t already know I’m an exchange student has used German with me. (Many if not most people here speak English better than I do German.)

I went to a Spar first and bough Zweibelbrotchen and Bergkaese. (Little onion breads and mountain cheese.) I tried to walk to the historic part of town to enjoy scenery with my meal, but my recouses were too low to manage it properly and I ended up walking in circles. I finally sat down on a bench and tried to eat, but even small bites made me feel nauseous. So I walked on and found a farmer’s market. I had wanted some fruit or vegetables to go with my meal, and here I saw beautiful tomatoes. I picked out a few and handed them to the owner of the stall, but when she saw how few there were she just gave them to me. I felt very taken care of, particularly since I had been feeling very alone.

I went home to eat so that I could have washed tomatoes and also something to drink. I had to eat kind of slowly to avoid feeling sick again, but I definitely feel better now. If I can find the energy in time, I’ll go out again-I could use tape for decorating, but more importantly I didn’t see any toilet paper in the bathroom. I still need to unpack, too.

Later

I just went out again, and along with toilet paper, I got cereal and milk for tomorrow, plus almonds for emergency protein. This time I didn’t get lost at all, and I remembered where the Spar from before was. Pretty impressive for a trip done while I needed to pee!

The wind has really come up in the last hour. I think a storm might be blowing in.

September 2, 2010, 19/2/2 Ghegagasse (my apartment)

My intuition has been through the roof lately. I navigated the...interesting...layout of the Frankfurt airport on a lucky guess, and if I had chosen the other option, I would have missed my flight to Graz. (As it was, I was in the last ten people through the gate-everyone else had already boarded.) Then today at Ikea, I bought batteries mostly on a whim...a few hours later, my camera batteries died.

(Belated) Travel Liveblogging

Travel Status: In Progress

from Sea-Tac airport

Since I don’t have trustworthy internet, I’m writing this in a Pages document to be posted later. At any rate, my journey has begun! I got up at six this morning (much more impressive, Geoff got up at six this morning, and with much less incentive) and got ready to go. We made it to SeaTac a little late, assuming you’re supposed to allow two hours for international travel, but no harm done. Saying goodbye to Geoff was the hardest one of all. Apart from everything else, he’s the only one I’ve never had to say goodbye to for long before.

I always worry going though security, and I never have any trouble. (Apparently airport security doesn’t find ernest looking young white women very threatening. How surprising...) Now I’m waiting to board my first flight, from Seattle to Calgary. Then Calgary to Frankfurt, and finally Frankfurt to Graz. I already saw a woman arround my own age wearing a shirt that said, “I speak Denglish, for better or for Wurst!” My sister’s boyfriend asked me to bring him the corniest tourist shirt I could possibly find. I think there’s going to be a lot of contenders...

from Calgary International airport

One time zone jumped, one flight down. I’m hanging out at my gate, despite having two and a half hours left before boarding. This next flight will be the big one. When we land, I’ll be in Europe for the first time, but I won’t be done flying yet. From the Frankfurt airport I have one more flight to Graz.

midflight to Frankfurt, 8 p.m. Bellingham time, somewhere between 9 p.m. and 3 a.m. local time

After a beautiful sunset, it’s now full dark. So far I’ve watched a Hopalong Cassidy movie with dinner (both were surprisingly good), seen an episode of Scooby Doo while tipsy (an impressively surreal experience, and surely a good way of marking the first time I’ve been allowed to have alcohol in a public setting), and cringed at an episode of Hell’s Kitchen. By the way, everyone who told me Lufthansa was good was absolutely right. The seats are relatively big, the meal was good, and the availability of media is excellent. I even have access to electricity, although not internet. Some day...

Also, first class Lufthansa is beyond cool. Instead of forward facing seats, they have cool sideways sections shaped like the dividing line of a yin-yang. Someday, I’ll fly Lufthansa first class. I only hope it isn’t so far away that they’ve changed their seating!

I’m a little nervous about my transfer in Frankfurt. I wasn’t given a ticket for my flight to Graz at Sea-Tac; they swore up and down that I had to pick it up in Frankfurt. I also don’t know whether I have to manually transfer my luggage, or how much of a layover I’ll have. Thank god I understand German fairly well. This gives me a whole new respect for the courage of people who travel to countries where they don’t know the language. One of my good friends spent her summer in Italy and Turkey, when her only languages are English and German. Another is going to spent this next semester in India. She doesn’t speak any of the Indian dialects. On the other hand, this trip has also given me a new respect for my own courage. By doing a Direct Exchange, I’m relying heavily on my own organizational, linguistic, and practical skills. It seems like the other exchange students I know are flying on flights that were arranged for them, at times chosen for them, or are even going in groups. Weak sauce, my friends.

I don’t actually mean that, of course. Any exchange is a huge effort, and differences in how much are a matter of very small degree. The challenge of leaving the people and things we love behind and surviving in an unfamiliar context is the real thing, and that doesn’t change.

Graz, Austria, at Nina’s sister’s apartment

Wow, Nina, my Austrian mentor is worth her weight in gold. I hope they’re paying her, because she’s helping me a ton, and she’s doing it for three other people, too.

Goldfinch

A Pretty Grab Bag of Shiny Objects

1. In German, only the first word of the title is capitalized. Wie zum Beispiel, "Eine schoene Tasse von helle Dingen." (Such as, for example, "A pretty grab bag of shiny objects").
2. I fly out to Austria on Monday, 18 straight hours of travel. Normally I can't sleep on planes, but between the sheer amount of time involved, the fact that I haven't been sleeping much lately, and how early I'll be getting up that morning, I suspect I may discover new and exciting sleeping abilities.
3. One of my favorite things about cold and/or cloudy weather is that drinking tea becomes much more rewarding. So far today I have had a white/green mix, a cup of Violette (French violet scented black tea), and (right now) peppermint with a teaspoon of sugar.
4. Do you know any poets who don't end up being pretty repetitive? I can't think of any. I love Billy Collins and Dylan Thomas, but I was reading them both last night and most of the p0ems I don't like read like parodies of themselves. Even the ponies with quite a few tricks seem to run out eventually.
5. On the subject of poets: one of the things I have most enjoyed hearing said was from a poet at his reading who explained very slyly that he did not like T.S. Eliot, because he loves T.S. Eliot. People who hate on Eliot: we are on to you.
6. I am bringing four DVDs with me to Austria: It Happened One Night, Howl's Moving Castle, Colbert Christmas Special, and Robot Chicken Star Wars II. That's two favorite movies, one godawful yet wonderful holiday tradition, and one thing I haven't seen. Maggie, come the holidays I will make hot chocolate with nutmeg in your honor.
7. I have no idea who my roommate in Austria is. I just hope she lives up to the standard set by my last roommate, who is seriously awesome and has one of my favorite qualities in a person, that of encouraging wacky things to happen.

Und das, meine Freunden, ist alles.

Wolves, Foxes, Fish, and Greyhounds

Here's the next section of Steppenwolf. It's likely to have some errors, because I wrote it on a Greyhound bus when I didn't have a dictionary or any internet.

One could speak long and continuously on the subject and write books about it....but it meant nothing at all to the Wolf of the Steppes, because for him it was all the same if the wolf had been magic’ed or beaten into him, or if it was only a fancy of his soul. What others wished to think and also what he himself wished to think was worth nothing to him, because it did not take the wolf out of him. The Wolf of the Steppes had two natures, one human and one wolfish. That was his fate, and it may well be that was nothing special or unusual. There have been many people who have much of dog or fox, fish or snake in them without any particular difficulties. In these people, the person and the fox, the person and the fish live next to each other, helping rather than hurting each other. Some people’s good fortune is due more to the fox or the monkey than to the human. This is known to everyone. But it was different for Harry. In him wolf and man ran against each other, and did not so much help each other as were locked in a deadly struggle.

I actually translated that last Friday on the route from Bellingham to Mt. Vernon. I might have gotten more, but a drunk man sat next to me and I was too busy with damage control. He wasn't actually threatening, just extremely irritating, and in my space enough that I didn't want to give him any opportunities to mess with me. When I was a little girl, my brother would take the Greyhound across the country from his college in New York to visit us. It was probably easier for him what with being male, but still! I would never want to do that.

Steppenwolf & Friends

It's hard to get much done in this setting. For me at least, limited privacy and limited mobility mean limited productivity. I haven't done much recently beyond yardwork and Aikido. But I have translated a little more of Steppenwolf:

It pleased clever people to argue over whether he was really a wolf, or if he had once, perhaps before his birth, been magically transformed from a wolf into a person, or if he was born a person imbued and still possessed with the soul of a wolf from the steppes, or whether perhaps this belief that he was truly a wolf was merely a conceit or sickness. For example, it was of course possible that this man was in childhood wild, unruly, and disorderly, that his teachers had tried to slay the beast in him but that the best faith and imagination could do was to lay a thick coating of education and humanity over his true, bestial self.

The process of translation is fascinating to me. It's not at all like simply reading a book, in your first or second language. That goes considerably faster, and if there are words you can't define, you generally get them from context and keep going, sometimes looking up the essential words. In translation, that doesn't work, because you need to follow each sentence to completion, rather than gaining an overall knowledge and comprehension of the work. In addition, even a little foreign language study will tell you that one-to-one translation is generally a myth. In this passage, the phrase "in der Tat", which literally translates to "in the deed" but colloquially and contextually means "in truth" becomes the modifier "true" in the phrase "his true, bestial self". This phrase is in itself two phrase sewn together to shorten the sentence without sacrificing meaning. Why did I do this? Because a reasonable sentence length in German comes off as Thomas Pynchon on a bad day in English.

I get the feeling my current opinions will amuse me in the future. I'm so new at all of this...

German Practice

...can be quite fun, if you do it right. I didn't want to lose my ability over the summer, so I've been trying to consume media in German whenever possible. Der Spiegel is online, which is a huge help. Youtube is another great resource. I've been watching Disney movies in German. Aschenputtel (Cinderella) is well suited to it, Die Schöne und der Biest (Beauty and the Beast) is equally good...and not even German can help Mulan II. It's a little harder to find originally German television/movies on Youtube, mostly because I don't know what to search for.

But it's not just speaking I need to practice. Reading and lit crit will be important as well. And since I already have ein Tractat vom Steppenwolf, von Hermann Hesse, that will be my starting place.

Es fangt an mit "Nur für Verrückte" als Einsatz. Ein gute Anfang, finde ich. Ein Übersetzung, so weit wie ich kann...

Only for crazy people

There was once a man named Harry, called the wolf of the steppes. He walked on two legs, wore clothing and was a person, but at the same time he was obviously a wolf. He had learned much from that which people of good understanding could, and he was quite a clever man. And yet there was something which he had not learned: how to be satisfied with himself and his life. This he could not do. He was an unsatisfied person. This was probably because he knew, at all times and from the bottom of his heart (or at least thought he knew) that he was not really a human being, but a wolf from the steppes.

Thank you, Hermann Hesse, for using relatively simple language. We'll see if I've bitten off more than I can chew, but I'm interested to see what happens with Harry. It will probably be very humbling to read a professional translation-which is why I'll be avoiding it, so as not to get discouraged.