Oldspeak Ministry

I’ve been kept pretty busy these past couple of weeks with the intensive language session the Albert-Ludwig University of Freiburg is putting on for us Ausländer (international) students. My weekday schedule has been as follows:

• 9:15—10:45 – Language course, part I
• 10:45—11:15 – Pause (pronounced “pow-sa”)
• 11:15—11:45 – Language course, part 2
• 12:45—14:30 – Lunch and errands break
• 14:30—16:00 – Introduction to Journalism in Deutschland
• 16:00—16:30 – Pause
• 16:30—18:00 – The History of German Film
• 18:00—18:30 – Pause
• 18:30—20:00 – Landeskunde (German culture in brief)

So I’ve had overall very little time to explore or write blog posts/postcards, though I did managed to send off a couple. More will follow, I promise.

Anyways, even though I haven’t actually begun with actual university classes, the intensive classes are for the most part taught by university lecturers, and with the exception of the language course, are basically structured to resemble university classes. As such, I wanted to remark on some of the differences between the American and German education systems.

Back at Indiana University, my professors always tried to remain objective and impartial; even when it was obvious that they held a particular bias, they generally were agreeable to hearing other viewpoints so long as they were substantiable. Of course, there were exceptions from time to time, but those were just that: exceptions. On the other hand, in my History of German Film class, we recently finished covering propaganda films from the Nationalsozialismus era of German history, during which it was extremely obvious that the lecturer, ah, did not think very highly of the content of those films. Now it’s true that the 3rd Reich is a still sensitive topic for the Germans, but even on more mundane topics, such as the relative worth to film history a particular film possesses, the lecturer constantly speaks his opinion. The same I’ve found to be true in my Landeskunde class, where the teacher takes for granted that the German equivalent to Social Security is a worthy program and that we should all be our brother’s keepers.

It could be the subject matter; I’ve admittedly taken more math and science classes at IU than anything else, and those tend to be less subjective. However, it seems to me as if American universities, or at least the pre-med courses at IU, are more interested in covering a standard body of knowledge while the Germans attend university to hear an expert’s take on an issue.

That also leads into a philosophical discussion on the goal of higher education. The German word for education, “Bildung”, doesn’t just refer to learning. Rather, it evokes an image, or “bild” of the relationship between man and God/enlightenment. As such, education means not an accumulation of knowledge, but rather the transformation of self that the pursuit of knowledge brings about. Sadly, the demands of the modern world, those same circumstances that led to the decline of liberal arts education in America, have had the same effect in Germany.

In other news, also tangentially related to enlightenment, I visited Staufen, now just a small town in Southwest Germany, but once a bustling commercial center due to the presence of silver. It also happened to be the town where Faust, written on by such esteemed authors as Goethe and Marlowe, was reputed to have lived. We visited both the Faust-house and the Staufen hill-top fortress, though it began raining, so we didn’t have as much time as desired to explore the city.

Expectedly, my German has been improving by leaps and bounds since I arrived. Though my speech is still stunted, my listening and hearing comprehension have shown drastic changes. Just yesterday in Landeskunde, the lecturer was occasionally interjecting French words into her speech, and I suddenly thought “how different her voice sounds when she’s not speaking English”, only to immediately thereafter realize that she wasn’t speaking English! Also, I’ve begun reading the Golden Compass (Part 1 of His Dark Materials) auf Deutsch; it’s one of my favorite novels, and not only do I already know what’s going on, but it is particularly appropriate for my vocabulary level as a “children’s fantasy book.”

Well, that’s about it for this entry. Here’s to a wonderful Easter!

William

p.s. If you haven’t given me a mailing address yet for postcards, please do! ^_^

At first glance, Germany is just another modern, first world, post-industrial country that happens to be primarily associated, at least in America, with Bratwurst and Lederhosen. Such an image is not entirely false—well, the Lederhosen part is—but beneath that almost too picturesque facade thrives a vibrant and distinctive society.

One of the most obvious differences for newcomers from America is the emphasis on recycling. All waste must be sorted into the various categories for recycling, including not just sorting into paper/cardboard, plastic, glass, and garbage, but instead paper/cardboard, general plastic, packaging materials, white glass, brown glass, green glass, biological waste, and finally, everything else. Oh, and that’s not counting drink bottles, which are a separate category unto themselves; a “tax” of about 0,25 Euro is applied to all drink bottles, which can then be redeemed when you return them to any of a large number of automated kiosks scattered across town in grocery stores to be rewashed and used. According to Lotfi, one of my suitemates, foreigners oftentimes have this stereotyped image of the Germans “always putting everything in its rightful place.” Now why would anyone get that impression . I find it also very telling that he also speaks on how Germany really doesn’t push recycling very hard at all. Sort of different from most of the United States, to say the least.

Public transit, as could be expected, is also far better here than in most of the States, but the comparison cannot really be drawn as the population density is so much higher here than that of most towns in Indiana. What is different, though, is the attitudes people have regarding transportation; in my humble opinion, it is not the number of opportunities and technologies a nation has, but rather the view they take towards using them that most distinguishes a people. After I got off the bus from the Basel-Mulhouse airport to Freiburg, my program manual strongly recommended that we then take a taxi to the IES center. As it happened, I shared the cab with Stacy, another IES program participant, but despite the fact that there were two of us with our luggage in the cab, the driver lamented aloud the fact that we were taking and paying for a cab when the destination was clearly within walking distance. Or the other day, in preparation for a street-car worker strike, my intensive German course teacher suggested that we just walk to class; after all, most of us lived only about an hours’ walk away from the university.

The German word “stolz” almost directly translates as “proud,” and can be used in almost all the roles we assign to “proud.” However, a subtle difference is that “stolz” is almost always negative. German culture, at least that of my teacher’s generation, considers it a major faux pas to be noticeably proud of one’s achievements. It took a few minutes for that cultural difference to be realized by several of my class, including not only us ignorant Americans, but also a Norwegian and a Swede. Perhaps just a knee-jerk rejection of the ultra-nationalistic sentiments of the ’30s and ’40s, but still a rather intriguing cultural trait. I’m actually extremely curious regarding whether or not the newer generation shares that sentiment.

Well, that’s it for cultural observations in this post. I’m certain more will pop up as I actually become more integrated into German society, though my views will likely be significantly tinted by my Taiwanese/American upbringing. On a more personal note, I’m settling into my new residence, the Vauban, relatively well, and I’ve even somewhat worked out the tram system. When it gets sunnier and I have the time, pictures and more information about my daily routine here in Freiburg will likely be forthcoming. Until then, tschüs!

William