The Long-Awaited Final Munich Blogpost

In spite of great exhaustion and low morale, the students of the Lewis & Clark München Study Abroad Program were able to power through their last week of class, myself included. A few papers to write, a few tests to take, a nerve wracking presentation to make at the university, and just like that, it was all over. One day I, was sitting in my "Prince's Mirror" class with my 3 German classmates and the professor as we got our "Scheins," archaic pieces of paper with our grades that students have to hold on to in order to present as proof that they have completed their degree's requirements. It is one of the stupidest and most unbelievably un-German things I have ever seen. Regardless, I tuck this piece of paper into a folder, pack my bag, don my sunglasses and head down the stairs, not really knowing what to say to my classmates, and finally out onto the street where I linger for a bit, as though I didn't know to turn left and walk to the subway station. For the last time, I wait at the Universität subway station to take the U6 in the direction of Garsching-Forschungszentrum back from class to the Studentenstadt stop one last time. I waited there in the subway stop, a freshly opened post-class beer in my hand (das Siegbier: Victory Beer I called it, meaning I survived yet another class at the University under close scrutiny, and also to ease the German-overload headache), watching the news bulletins projected on a big screen on the wall in front of me.

As usual, I spent the ride people watching, seeing the characters get on and off the subway, but today I did it with more appreciation. International people watching is just that much better than domestic, the wide range of European tastes in hairstyles alone makes it worthwhile. This pastime significantly improved when Summer began, as beautiful Aryan-looking women seemingly sprang from the ground, overrunning the city--so naturally I fled the country just in time, on order that I might escape from the throngs of beautiful, screaming women beating down my door.

On that last night our program had a very melancholy goodbye party and dinner featuring delicious Bavarian food; those of us with lederhosen and dirndls sported them with pride, and who couldn't have fun dressed up like that? We had one last chance to chit-chat with our program staff. Goodbye to Ralf, the charming and charasmatic program director, to my brilliant though cooky language professor Frau Rischer (our adoptive German grandmother), to Martin, my Art History instructor and the archetype of a tall, thin, modernist Austrian artist, and to Lenka, our attractive and flirtatious Slovakian administrative assistant, just one of the beautiful women Ralf always seems to have staffed for the program, how about that? After a belly full of delicious food and a few pictures, we young ladies and gentlemen reconvened at a goodbye party of our own in the basement of my house, equally melancholy, and extending past the dawn. The last games of international beer pong, one last besoffen group rendition of "Bohemian Rhapsody," and one last conversation ended only by the realization that it was quite light outside and that we could get some breakfast.

After that, life mostly consisted of lounging in the sun when possible and inside when it wasn't, going on some last excursions in the area, and meeting up to bid yet another program partaker a fond farewell.

A group of people in my house had a little goodbye dinner for myself and the other American living in our house, and at long last they were able to eat the beef stew they had seen and smelled many times, but never consumed. It was a big hit, 'farmer food' as I described it. We sat around the rickety tables in our common room, enjoying the favorite dishes of neighbors from across the world--American stew and Ukrainian dessert, German beer and Georgian wine.

The next morning I took the gluttony to a new level when I cooked up some of the leftover stew in a pan with some eggs--talk about eating like a farmer.

I do miss my house mates and the accordion playing and singing of my two Bavarian neighbors, always a riot. But I will especially miss my 4 neighbors from Eastern Europe, a generally sweet and fun group of ladies who always seemed to be laughing and enjoying themselves, which is unusual for normally dour residents of the former Soviet Union. When I was watching Nickelodeon they were having civil wars and were struggling to break away from the influence of Moscow, all while experiencing extreme economic collapse. Even if America is the imperialist capitalist power maintaining an international security racket and spreading free-trade economics and democracy at the point of a bayonet that people say it is, at least I'm on the other end of that bayonet. But that's the lot we have, now that the Europeans are done screwing over the world with colonialism, they don't want to have to do anything about the problems of the world. The two world wars broke their spirit, and they are now pretty inwardly turned, unwilling to assert the force necessary to maintain some sense of order in the world; were it not for the US, the Europeans would just let the world slide into chaos due to a lack of public support for a military action of any kind. They like to talk about what's happening in the world a great deal, but that is all it is, talk. That is probably my biggest pet peeve; how great of hypocrites the Europeans are, talking about how the US is screwing up the world, without taking any responsibility for how they have shaped it, or their unwillingness to act in the interests of the West and the global community as a whole until things really get bad and their backs are pressed up against a wall. The fact is, for the moment, if we don't do it, no one will.The irony of America is that we are now the central character in the troubles of a world our ancestors tried to flee the "Old World" as it was called, but our escape was short-lived.

As the last few days ticked by, I and the other lingerers found ourselves experiencing what can inadequately be described as a mix of emotions, which I continue to experience even now and with no end in sight. It was like waiting for the world's other largest shoe to drop. We knew what was coming, but we had no idea how severe the effects of our sudden transportation across the world would be. Finally, we were blessed with nice weather, sometimes enjoying it outside with friends, sometimes alone through a large, open window as you pack your things. Even now, months later, I can see the wide, spear-shaped leaves of the bushes outside my window, now turned a radiant green by the afternoon sun as it slinks into the west.

Soon I will have to shut up all my shades against the awesome, blinding power of the sun. I remember listening to quite a bit of “Pancho and Lefty” and “Honky Tonkin’” by Townes Van Zandt; "Box of Rain" and "Ripple," and the entireGrateful Dead album Americn Beauty were also listened to on an almost daily basis; the bitter-sweet anthems of my retreat...I shall return...

At some point in the year, it stops being a vacation or adventure and it becomes your life. I don't know exactly when it happened, but I would have to guess sometime during what we refer to as the Dark Times, referring to the particularly grey, icy, and muddy winter we had. Nonetheless, München has been a home to me, whenever I returned to the city I felt as though I were returning to a safe haven. No one required telekinetic powers to predict what happened, namely that we are forced to leave once we have gotten to the point where we feel relatively assimilated and comfortable within the culture, are able to converse well with people, and are generally comfortable with and knowledgeable of our surroundings. I guess that's just life, they give everything to you just so that they can take it all away, if you will excuse my melodrama.

It was even more awkward to re assimilate into American society than it was to assimilate into German society. To put is simply, you don’t have many expectations when going to another country and culture, you come with the expectation of adaptation. When you’ve been gone from your own land for a long time, you have a lot of expectations, mostly that it will be just as you left it, as though your homeland eagerly awaited your return. This is not so, places and people change (especially in this Great Recession), expectations become warped, and your language is confused.

Of course there are things I looked forward to doing, such as going grocery shopping at 2 am just for the hell of it, just because I can. Eating Mexican food and In-n-Out was high up on the list. Just being back on the dollar is great, no more multiplying everything by 1.6, not to mention the fact that goods are considerably more expensive in Europe. When I go to the store it's not a big task where I must struggle with the language and culture, trying to figure out where they would put bouillon cubes in the market, and what bay leaves would be called (Lorbeerblätter, for those who are curious). At the same time, I won't be able to get a half

liter bottle of delicous beer for $0.75, one of the few things here that is cheaper, god bless em. The many references to beer in this blog may seem juvenile at times, but seeing, or tasting I should say, is believing, and I believe in the basic goodness of Bavarian beer, and the culture surrounding it. Therefore, I find any notion—while surely none would exist because my Apollonian self-discipline being well known—that leads people to doubt the seriousness of my academic endeavors to be extremely offensive; it is in fact a critical part of the study of their history and culture. For example, I made a presentation about Kloster Andechs, a Benedictine monastery and brewery about an hour outside of München, which I researched on a purely fact finding trip. I was in the presence of other pilgrims, we were just on different pilgrimages.

Though I will miss the rich food here, I can recreate a lot of it back home. Top foods that will be missed include Kasespätzel, a dish resembling macaroni and cheese but with what are dumpling-like bits of dough and usually served with some pork cutlets or sausage, and Leberkase, which is corned beef and onion pureed and cooked in little loaves, then usually served on a roll or with potato salad. My favorite Bierhall food is a rotisserie half farmer's chicken with a stuffing of sorts therein, and it is succulent. I will also miss the typical Bavarian breakfast, white sausage, buttered pretzels, and wheat beer. That one will be hard to replicate, due to the uniqueness of the sausage, and the social mores in America against drinking in the morning, unless it's a mimosa, which somehow makes it okay.

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It will be nice to being babied again, not by my parents, but by my society. In Germany, the expectation is that you are aware, informed, and responsible for yourself. In the United States, the expectation is that you are stupid and need to have everything spelled out for you, and need everything to be covered in plastic so as to guard against freak accidents. Products in America come with a 20,000 word long disclaimer some lawyer has written to prevent the company from being sued for any possible occurrence of extreme stupidity by the consumer. Rather than curbing behavior to increase the capability and self-reliance of the average person, we cater to ignorance and ineptitude. Germans let their kids scrape their knees, fall, get stung by bees, etc. so they learn about caution and cause and effect. They are also capable of riding a bike when a couple years old and take the subway to school as 7 year olds by themselves. Their parents aren't overwhelmed with media-fueled paranoia of them been kidnapped, raped, tortured, killed, and dismembered because their local news doesn't tend to capitalize on that kind of "news." American kids might as well be raised in bubbles, never learning any consequences first hand when young, and then are inexplicably reckless when they get older. They play games where everybody wins, in a society where nobody's feelings can be hurt by saying anything remotely controversial, and where the special needs and aims of every group requires special treatment, and at the expense of the overall welfare of our society. The USA has become a place where legislation and liability has replaced the personal responsibility of the citizen. So we just keep having government do it for us, telling us where, how, and what, but it's no matter, so long as it's spelled out for us. Some call it liberal social progress, I see it as nothing more than a slow slide to mislabeled fascism. Self-determination is what made America. However, self-determination is hard; it's easier to hand it off to someone else so long as I enjoy the leisure provided me by earlier, more independent, harder working Americans. Democracy is not for the lazy, which is too bad considering how lazy we have all become. So centralization and consolidation continues, historical signs of the waning of a civilization, but it's not too late, fellow citizens, it's not too late...so I will simply close with a word from Thomas Jefferson: “were we directed from Washington when to sow, and when to reap, we should soon want bread.”

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I thought I was going to vomit when I was going to the airport the morning of my departure. I stopped at some bushes on the way to the subway stop, but just dry heaved, no relief, just frustration. One is in a bad place when one actually desires to give over, as the Germans would put it, but is disappointed when they realize that they are in such a lowly state that they cannot even find relief in that most unpleasant of acts. Needless to say, I was handling my day of departure not quite as well as I had anticipated. I did not handle it as coolly as I would have liked when I was told at the airport that I would be charged $200 to check a third bag instead of $40, due to some exception which I, of course, met. I used all the forces of persuasion and German I had to battle the injustice some jerky Kraut was administering on my sorry American ass, but ultimately I had to give up. It was an effort I knew was futile to begin with. It didn't matter what I thought I read on the website, what mattered was what it said in the rule book that sat at that man's counter. Arguing rules with a German is like arguing snow with an Eskimo. I'd lived in Germany for a year, I knew the Kafkaesque hopelessness of battling German bureaucracy, but if this was gonna be the way the Germans saw me off, I might as well go down guns blazing, in the style of Tony Montana in Scarface. It also could very well be that I was somehow cherishing the moment, seizing one final opportunity to mix it up linguistically with a German. Having spoken my mind, I conceded and emptied my pockets.

Luckily one of my best friends from the program, who also goes to UPS, Nadia, was on the same flight as I. We were able to get seats together, significantly helping the 11 hours from Düsseldorf to LAX go by faster. The entertainment for the flight included episodes of the King of Queens and a Mickey Mouse cartoon...actually it was one episode each, they just played them twice. It's okay though, because the second time I saw Mickey enter Pluto into a Dog Show (with hilarious results of course) it really got me thinking as to whether Disney was trying to make a bigger statement about the ethics of training and breeding dogs for such events. Maybe the two hourse of sleep I was able to muster the night before was beginning to take its toll. I was also blessed with not one, but two romantic comedies centered around weddings (27 Dresses and The Wedding Date, the former not being that terrible, the later...). Sleep came and went. While waiting in a long line for the coach bathroom with the rest of the proletarian scum in coach, I had an enjoyable conversation with a German a few years older than I, who said she was going to California as part of a teaching degree. Oh, if only this poor, sweet girl knew what sort of serpent pit full of snot nosed little middle school shits she was climbing into, and her English wasn't even that good. I simply encouraged her to watch a lot of TV and try to learn slang as quickly as possible.

Nadia and I made our way through the terminals of LAX to customs, where I explained my long absence from the country and showed my Visa, nervously hoping to avoid a potentially very time consuming hassle. I was so shocked that I nearly wept when the customs officer told me simply, "welcome home," gave me a piece of paper and I was on my way. I was pleased to find my bags all intact but most importantly present, and so I made my way through the renovations and back to America.

This is where the story of my time in Munich ends. Needless to say, it was a life-changing experience which I will not fully come to grasp for some time in the future, but I know just as much about that as I did about the gravity of what I was doing on August 30th, 2007. The last couple of months, especially the first 6 weeks or so, represented and unbelievably busy, exciting, stressful, and tragic time in my life, mostly centered around my father's death. I now find myself in a more difficult situation than I anticipated. When I first went to college I was told to study what I liked and the rest will fall into place. Now I find myself wrapping up my degree, facing an economy and job market which even the most optimistic would term as uncertain, and without the support of my father. That too is an unexpected and certainly unwelcomed plot development in my life's story, but that's just the way she goes. As I get settled into a comfortable groove, it gets a little easier, but it's still an uneven path, but that all is another story to be told in a different way. That story will be told at another time. After a lot of consideration, the thought came to me that writing a book could be a very therapeutic and fulfilling experience. I don't know how I will approach writing it, whether as a firsthand account, or through the creation of a character with a similar narrative, or something else. I also don't know when I would be able to devote serious time to writing it, so the approaching year will be note taking and brainstorming at best.

Well, this last blog was something I first started in Germany, something that has been revised countless times. Not necessarily from a desire of mine to make it an opus, but out of an inability to find a way to represent it all in a somewhat concise manner, and an often intense struggle with bringing myself to reflect and write on what was, and is, happening to, around, and within me. I write it knowing I will find it inadequate within a day, but knowing that the longer I put it off the grander it could become. So I've kept at it, writing during flashes of inspiration and emotional fluidity, forcing myself to go back and edit when I couldn't muster the mental and constitutional fortitude to write. Cranking out a paper last minute is no problem, writing about yourself to a public forum is daunting and requires time and reflection. This last post especially seemed to need that time, which even at this point is, as expressed earlier, inadequate, but it will have to do because the search for perfection is ultimately foolishness and folly, and a blog is not the place to direct such energy. So then that is it for now! I will close simply with the Bavarian form of Aloha, "Servus!"

The adventures continue: http://kurtinberlin.blogspot.com/