[Note: This blog has expletives scattered throughout]
Dear Chris,
Today has been one of those days that, had I been God, I would have prevented everyone from existing. It was a non-stop annoyance fest and I was not in the mood to deal with childishness.
Funny how since I've been here I've actually grown. When they said you'd learn to be independent on this program they meant it. I'm surprised that I've booked trains and hostels for an 11 day trip through 2 countries and, on top of that, have been keeping up with my grades here. I've felt like I have a little more confidence in myself.
Unfortunately, I think the greatest lesson I am taking away from here is that no matter where I go, I'm still going to be me. I don't magically change with the atmosphere. Yes, I've had to curb my usual demeanor for the sake of getting along with the people on my program, but on the whole, I kind of understand what it means to be me.
It sounds cheesy but it kind of applies; have you ever read The Diary of Anne Frank? We had to when I was in 7th grade and I remember one of the last things in the book. She had written that she was only truely herself when she was alone. And for years and years I thought I understood it, but it isn't until being here that I think I finally know it.
Being alone, being one of me here, uncompromisingly Kim, I can finally stop believing what therapists and teachers and all hosts of other people try to tell me: that the way I am is a result of all the things that have happened to me and, once I deal with those things, I can finally start being myself.
Quite honestly, it's pure shit. The things that happen to you are supposed to shape you, no matter if it's good or bad. Unfortunately, our society has these silly standards in which there is this expected amount of "normalcy" and if you don't fall within an appropriate standard deviation of the "normalcy" curve, then you need to change.
And I'm sick of it. I'm tired of people telling me I'm too guarded and too serious and that I need to "loosen up." I had people tell me that here. One girl in particular actually said to me that, after a few beers, I was finally showing my "true self." Well, fuck. Who was I before? I can't keep apologizing for who I am. Yes, it's unfortunate I can't just be ignorant about things constantly. Maybe if it were possible, I wouldn't be so sad.
I think that's true. The reason why I do become sad more frequently than others is the fact I think about things a lot more often. Difficult things. Like wondering what it means to be human. Do you realize how often that crosses my mind? Too often for someone who is twenty-one years old, that's for sure.
Wednesday, October 28, 2009
One of those days
I have no ambition, once again, to write about anything of consequence. It's been a fun-filled day what with the soccer game in Munich, but sometimes there are moments when it takes everything in my power to deal with some of the people who are in my program.
At the end of the day, the lesson is always the same: no matter where you travel, you always take yourself along. And sometimes yourself can get ugly when people chatter like a cluckold of hens.
Cheers anyway. I promise to write a substantial blog before my Fall Break.
At the end of the day, the lesson is always the same: no matter where you travel, you always take yourself along. And sometimes yourself can get ugly when people chatter like a cluckold of hens.
Cheers anyway. I promise to write a substantial blog before my Fall Break.
Monday, October 26, 2009
"Das ist nicht verhandelbar."
I'm going to be honest; I don't quite feel like filling everyone in my approxiamtely three week absence from the blog. To be perfectly frank, when I'm showing off pictures, I'll be able to recount the stories.
Part of the reason I became a little disheartened with the blog was because 1)There were people I knew back home I told mulitple times I would be in Regensburg this semester and they just now realized I was gone. And 2)Just a lack of interest except for immediate family and Chris (who skims over it most of the time).
Yes, I pessimistic at the moment. I'm a little disheartened with humanity at the moment and people on the whole. I could cry. And yet, despite the long hours I've lost sleep these past two weeks due to rampant insomnia, I will still have my German homework completed and will be one of the few people succeeding in the class. Irony at its finest.
I don't know what's going on. I could just lay down and sleep my fal break away honestly. However my plans have changed and I will, instead, be visiting Vienna (Wien) for two days, and Italy for three-ish days. Also I'll be attending to performances at the Munich Opera House. So, not exactly sleeping comfortably. I'm might buy a pillow for the train.
Anyway, just a quick note to say, "I'm alive."
Cheers.
Part of the reason I became a little disheartened with the blog was because 1)There were people I knew back home I told mulitple times I would be in Regensburg this semester and they just now realized I was gone. And 2)Just a lack of interest except for immediate family and Chris (who skims over it most of the time).
Yes, I pessimistic at the moment. I'm a little disheartened with humanity at the moment and people on the whole. I could cry. And yet, despite the long hours I've lost sleep these past two weeks due to rampant insomnia, I will still have my German homework completed and will be one of the few people succeeding in the class. Irony at its finest.
I don't know what's going on. I could just lay down and sleep my fal break away honestly. However my plans have changed and I will, instead, be visiting Vienna (Wien) for two days, and Italy for three-ish days. Also I'll be attending to performances at the Munich Opera House. So, not exactly sleeping comfortably. I'm might buy a pillow for the train.
Anyway, just a quick note to say, "I'm alive."
Cheers.
Friday, October 16, 2009
Overdue
So, I know this is late. But since I think I remember saying something about going to Prague (or if I didn't, I am now). If I didn't flesh out the details to Berlin, I'll have to recap that later. This is because the trip to Prague, Czech Republic, was epic.
Last Thursday, I caught the 2:19 pm train leaving for Prague along with two other girls. There was no careful planning; whatever had been in my bag for Berlin I took (but exchanged the underwear and socks). And, of course, I grabbed my passport.
So, I hop on the train after a full morning of classes and a severe lack of preparation, I left for Prague. I was armed with a handy book from the Regensburg Hauptbahnhof (train station) that told us the all the times of departure and arrival from Regensburg to Prague... along with transfers.
This was the first of the misadventures; I had read the schedule incorrectly and didn't realize we had a transfer. By the time we had stopped at the station, we realized the our mistake and quickly hopped onto the train for the five hour ride to Prague. Settling in I was armed with a book, a fully charged iPod with $30 worth of new music on it and a sense of relaxation after the almost bad turn in our trip.
After about ten minutes on the train, a police officer comes by. He says something in German and the German girl in front of me pulls out her passport and I follow suit. Happy that I've passed inspection, I realize my two companions are looking at me. I say, "He's just checking passports, no big."
The other two girls stare at me and then a flurry of movement happens. Both of them are tearing through their bags and purses and I already know: they don't have their passports.
Let me put this into perspective: These two have already traveled a lot and been out of the country. They're feelings about being here are carpe diem while in Europe. They're pretty fearless to the point of inconsiderateness sometimes. However, while making their plans for the weekend, they forgot the most important item on the checklist. I, on the otherhand, have never traveled without our program and my first time really experiencing indepedent travel was in Berlin... not that far away from our trip to Prague.
So, they don't have their passports. The police officer informs them that they'll have to get off at the next stop. In the five minutes we have to formulate a plan, we decide to send me to check into the hostel because it would be silly for me to repay for another ticket to get to the transfer station again. And I'll pay for the hostel. For all of us. For the entire time we're there (this including another guy who was arriving Saturday).
We say our good-byes and I end up talking to the German girl for the duration of the trip. I'm feeling pretty confortable and confidant. Then we get into the Czech Republic. And everything's in Czech. I become a little hesitant in my abilities to work my around the language here; there's no Latin or Germanic base in it
(obviously).
We arrive at the Prague train station and I step off and armed with directions to the hostel and a couple of koruns I bought off of someone who had come back from Prague. After exchanging the rest of my euros and obtaining a map, I sat down at a cafe, determined that I could find the hostel (we had been promised that it was only a fifteen minute walk from the train station). I walk outside and it's dark. There are lots of shady people around. I walk back in the train station.
I didn't want to be a failure at checking into the hostel, but I can't figure out the map... it's all in Czech. Go figure. I'm walking around and wondering if I could ask someone for directions. I had been using German so far, because English isn't as common as German in Prague. That and I don't know Czech. Then, I see a sign. "TAXI."
I took the easy way out and paid 500 Koruns for a taxi ride. That's about 20 Euro. That was about 28 Dollars at the time I paid for it. Most expensive taxi ride of my life and it was well worth it. I ended up in on a shady street and wandering up and down, watching probable drug deals going down. I finally find the hostel behind a pile of trash cans and quickly push the button that says "hostel," buzzing the lady from upstairs. I hide myself in the room for the rest of the night.
I'll continue this Prague blog tomorrow... Prague Part II: The city tour and the return home.
Last Thursday, I caught the 2:19 pm train leaving for Prague along with two other girls. There was no careful planning; whatever had been in my bag for Berlin I took (but exchanged the underwear and socks). And, of course, I grabbed my passport.
So, I hop on the train after a full morning of classes and a severe lack of preparation, I left for Prague. I was armed with a handy book from the Regensburg Hauptbahnhof (train station) that told us the all the times of departure and arrival from Regensburg to Prague... along with transfers.
This was the first of the misadventures; I had read the schedule incorrectly and didn't realize we had a transfer. By the time we had stopped at the station, we realized the our mistake and quickly hopped onto the train for the five hour ride to Prague. Settling in I was armed with a book, a fully charged iPod with $30 worth of new music on it and a sense of relaxation after the almost bad turn in our trip.
After about ten minutes on the train, a police officer comes by. He says something in German and the German girl in front of me pulls out her passport and I follow suit. Happy that I've passed inspection, I realize my two companions are looking at me. I say, "He's just checking passports, no big."
The other two girls stare at me and then a flurry of movement happens. Both of them are tearing through their bags and purses and I already know: they don't have their passports.
Let me put this into perspective: These two have already traveled a lot and been out of the country. They're feelings about being here are carpe diem while in Europe. They're pretty fearless to the point of inconsiderateness sometimes. However, while making their plans for the weekend, they forgot the most important item on the checklist. I, on the otherhand, have never traveled without our program and my first time really experiencing indepedent travel was in Berlin... not that far away from our trip to Prague.
So, they don't have their passports. The police officer informs them that they'll have to get off at the next stop. In the five minutes we have to formulate a plan, we decide to send me to check into the hostel because it would be silly for me to repay for another ticket to get to the transfer station again. And I'll pay for the hostel. For all of us. For the entire time we're there (this including another guy who was arriving Saturday).
We say our good-byes and I end up talking to the German girl for the duration of the trip. I'm feeling pretty confortable and confidant. Then we get into the Czech Republic. And everything's in Czech. I become a little hesitant in my abilities to work my around the language here; there's no Latin or Germanic base in it
(obviously).
We arrive at the Prague train station and I step off and armed with directions to the hostel and a couple of koruns I bought off of someone who had come back from Prague. After exchanging the rest of my euros and obtaining a map, I sat down at a cafe, determined that I could find the hostel (we had been promised that it was only a fifteen minute walk from the train station). I walk outside and it's dark. There are lots of shady people around. I walk back in the train station.
I didn't want to be a failure at checking into the hostel, but I can't figure out the map... it's all in Czech. Go figure. I'm walking around and wondering if I could ask someone for directions. I had been using German so far, because English isn't as common as German in Prague. That and I don't know Czech. Then, I see a sign. "TAXI."
I took the easy way out and paid 500 Koruns for a taxi ride. That's about 20 Euro. That was about 28 Dollars at the time I paid for it. Most expensive taxi ride of my life and it was well worth it. I ended up in on a shady street and wandering up and down, watching probable drug deals going down. I finally find the hostel behind a pile of trash cans and quickly push the button that says "hostel," buzzing the lady from upstairs. I hide myself in the room for the rest of the night.
I'll continue this Prague blog tomorrow... Prague Part II: The city tour and the return home.
Wednesday, October 7, 2009
The Long Awaited Update
I'm too lazy to look back and decipher when I last wrote something coherant. Ever since the trip to Nuremberg, days have blended together and they have been punctuated with the occasional test or class that I scramble to hurriedly become prepared for.
I'm not sure if I talked about Nuremburg, so if this all sounds familiar, skip down. We took a day trip into Nuremberg last Tuesday and spent most of our time touring the museum that houses most of the Nazi collection. You would think that after years and years of a fine American education (I will pause to allow that small drizzle of sarcasm settle) that we would be prepared for everything we saw there. Quite honestly, I had no idea about some of the stuff presented to us. Yes, I know about the concentration camps (the KZ) and Hitler's supposed neurosis, but I had no idea of the extent that nationalism took hold of this country after the Treaty of Versailles. I think it was the planned architecture that really surprised me. Hitler's architect, Albert Speer, was hired on as a compliment to Hitler's meglomania and his job was to build these over-the-top and massive buildings to symbolize the power of the German National Socialist Worker's Party. It was daunting to learn about the plans Hitler had; plans such as making Berlin the capital of the world. The museum itself is housed in part of the old Reich Congress, a huge uncovered dome. But then there was a fire and we had to evacuate, no joke.
We also walked around the city and found the marriage fountain. This is a gorgeous fountain dedicated to letting everyone know that marriage, for the most part, sucks big time. We also visited Albrecht Durer's house and his "wife" Agnes gave us a tour. We also visited the toy museum where a special exhibit of sci-fi toys was being displayed. Nifty, in my opinion.
Okay. Nuremberg finished. Obviously, I spent my weekend in Berlin. Not so obvious, I was deathly ill. If I did not have the H1N1 strain of the flu, I had a whole new one because it was horrible. Even now, almost a week later, I still feel pretty week and have a diminished appetite. But Berlin. Notably, Unification Day was going on this weekend and so it was a big party. Going along with that, were able to see the parts of the wall that were left standing. It was hard to imagine myself seperated from the world by a concrete wall... and well, men with guns of course. But I tried to imagine how it would be if this wasn't 2009. It was so easy for us to step back and forth through Checkpoint Charlie, but even in the 1980's the travel allowances were strict. I also visited the Bauhaus exhibit, the Museum of German History, and became an expert at subways.
I'd like to go on, but I really must study for a German test tomorrow. No one let me forget I need to write about the glass trip!
Cheers!
I'm not sure if I talked about Nuremburg, so if this all sounds familiar, skip down. We took a day trip into Nuremberg last Tuesday and spent most of our time touring the museum that houses most of the Nazi collection. You would think that after years and years of a fine American education (I will pause to allow that small drizzle of sarcasm settle) that we would be prepared for everything we saw there. Quite honestly, I had no idea about some of the stuff presented to us. Yes, I know about the concentration camps (the KZ) and Hitler's supposed neurosis, but I had no idea of the extent that nationalism took hold of this country after the Treaty of Versailles. I think it was the planned architecture that really surprised me. Hitler's architect, Albert Speer, was hired on as a compliment to Hitler's meglomania and his job was to build these over-the-top and massive buildings to symbolize the power of the German National Socialist Worker's Party. It was daunting to learn about the plans Hitler had; plans such as making Berlin the capital of the world. The museum itself is housed in part of the old Reich Congress, a huge uncovered dome. But then there was a fire and we had to evacuate, no joke.
We also walked around the city and found the marriage fountain. This is a gorgeous fountain dedicated to letting everyone know that marriage, for the most part, sucks big time. We also visited Albrecht Durer's house and his "wife" Agnes gave us a tour. We also visited the toy museum where a special exhibit of sci-fi toys was being displayed. Nifty, in my opinion.
Okay. Nuremberg finished. Obviously, I spent my weekend in Berlin. Not so obvious, I was deathly ill. If I did not have the H1N1 strain of the flu, I had a whole new one because it was horrible. Even now, almost a week later, I still feel pretty week and have a diminished appetite. But Berlin. Notably, Unification Day was going on this weekend and so it was a big party. Going along with that, were able to see the parts of the wall that were left standing. It was hard to imagine myself seperated from the world by a concrete wall... and well, men with guns of course. But I tried to imagine how it would be if this wasn't 2009. It was so easy for us to step back and forth through Checkpoint Charlie, but even in the 1980's the travel allowances were strict. I also visited the Bauhaus exhibit, the Museum of German History, and became an expert at subways.
I'd like to go on, but I really must study for a German test tomorrow. No one let me forget I need to write about the glass trip!
Cheers!
Tuesday, October 6, 2009
Entschuldigung
I've been bad about keeping up my blog. I have a good excuse because I have been extremely busy pretending to be a Bavarian pretending to be a "Northerner." That and I had a lot fall on my plate as soon as I came back. Just to be honest, I have a test on tomorrow and the day after... and then I run off to Prague. So, this won't be updated for a little bit.
Sorry. I'll work as fast as I can.
Cheers!
Sorry. I'll work as fast as I can.
Cheers!
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Who's writing this thing?
- The Little Wandering Owl
- Every real and searching effort at self-improvement is, of itself, a lesson of profound humanity.