back from Germany

am back home now. its good to be home and sleep in my bed and not share space with people and have clothing be optional but it sure does suck to go back to work. am tired of working and am ready to be saved from it. i could use a longer vacation - luckily summer is just 7 weeks away.

i really enjoyed this trip. the people i worked with were pretty cool with great senses of humor. we all developed catch phrases that would send others into peals of laughter - dont think they make much sense to anyone else though. will hopefully be able to visit some of them at some point. plus i had lots of fun.

observations on germany

- very very clean
- very very law abiding (rarely did anyone cross the street against the light)
- environmentally conscious - lots of well planed bike lanes and people using them
- not the most fashionable people in the world
- the women wore very little make up (right on!)
- people were really nice - i seem to get lost alot and people always took time out to point me in the right direction sometimes even walking me the way.
- german women have ginormous feet - large sizes are pretty easy to find
- very pretty and well maintained.
- they surely do love their sausage
- good girly beer (more on this later)
- german is a very difficult language to pronounce
- nothings open on sunday - which drove me crazy.

i liked germany and i liked the workcamp experience. hopefully will be able to repeat the experience

happy easter

ok its a bit late but Happy Easter

<---- these were some friends visiting us for easter, but sadly no one has seen or heard from them in a while.

On saturday, our local partners came and cooked and had dinner with us. they made some traditional german food to eat with potatoes and eggs. there was also an easter egg and chocolate hunt.

sunday was a nice day with the weather deciding to warm up a bit and show that it is spring. i went to church and it was all in german so i understood things like und (and), mit (with), and thats about it. but it was a lovely small church.

later on the group went to the park and cavorted around, i saw some art and stuff. was pretty nice.

easter here is a massively scary experience for an american. everything is closed for friday, sunday, and monday. i mean everything - no shops, grocery stores, nothing except parks and museums. i cannot understand how you close everything like that. what happens if you run out of food? do you start eating the weakest members of the family?

kassel - working

so we're working on our benches.

its kinda cool because as always there are logistical problems and we have to solve them so am using a different part of my brain. plus we're sort of learning some stuff about landscape architeture and stuff. the project involves groups of people from Documenta - a modern contemporary art extravaganza hosted by the city of Kassel every 5 years, architecture students - a school project, social works - increasing communitcation within communities, and the communities themselves. its really great that these different groups are working together to create something.

but then there's us . . . working our little hearts out and hopefully making something that will function and not fall apart.

the first set of benches we are building are in front of a church. the church let us use their kitchen so we had hot food every day (sci provides the food and wee take turns cooking). it has been quite cold and have realized that construction is not a viable career alternative (very hard work and you know, am lazy) here are some pics of us hard at work.

will write more on people later - there are some characters

kassel welcomes us

this was really nice and i feel kinda bad for what i'm about to say but oh well.

basically, i am working with a volunteer organization SCI that does work with communities all over the world. you develop the program and they provide the people and some of the money for operating costs. There is a wide range of things that they get involved with. I am here working in Kassel helping to build benches to help turn used green spaces into someplace where people can gather and stuff.

on the first day we were welcomed by the community we were gonna be working with and were invited to a get together with us as the guests of honor. Last year, a community got and received a SCI group to come and help build a wall to create a garden area from a parking lot for a group of apt blocs. its also a space they use for things like neighborhood barbques and such. so they decided to welcome this years group. it was really really sweet but a bit of torture.

first we got lost cause em the directions included looking for a large wall with holes in it and nothing about street signs. then we get there and the neighborhood puts on entertainment for us. dear lord!

there was a woman who recited poetry - in german. half of the group has no knowledge of german and it seems like to brought out every poem she had ever written. i am not a big fan of poetry and it loses whatever charm it had in a foreign languges. interspersed with the poetry wa music. again sweet but em . . . again in german. the singer reminded me of Dieter - you know the mike myers character from SNL but with black glasses and a red shirt. the band consisted of Dieter on keyboards and some dude on clarinet - need i say more?

they went on with this for an hour and the food was on a table only a few feet away. sometimes i curse the fact that my mom managed to drill a few manners into me since it would have been nice to just reach over grab some food and tell them to quit it. but they looked so happy doing it and it was so sweet to go through all that trouble for us, so i sat and paid attention during the poetry and pretended to feel the music.

here's a pic of us waiting for the performance and other party goers to come. Dieters in the back.

cologne to kassel

i got up and decided to take a walk around cologne until my train left for kassel. its pretty cool cause i met this girl in the hostel who was doing an exchange study in berlin before heading back to grad school - she's a math major. this is why i really like hostels - for the opportunity to meet peeps from all over. there also seemed to be a stag party staying there. they went about with bleached blonde hair, wearing kilts- no shirts- and blue paint ala braveheart, oh yeah - and drinking. sorry no pics.

but anyhoo. i saw some stuff, took a walk along the Rhine, and went to a sculpture garden. pics are below. the sculpture was more along the lines of scary but its nice to see the municipality taking an interest in the culture.

i then took the train to Kassel. When i was able to keep my eyes open to observe, the country side was quite lovely. lots of farms and cute little villages and rivers and . . . just really peaceful and lovely, hence the whole sleeping thing. oh and the trains are massively comfortable and smooth riding.

am stayin at a school - primary- so things are all small and stuff. the group am working with seem pretty cool so far. will write more on the project later. there are ten of us - a couple of germans, a swiss, a greek, a spaniard, 2 polish, a bulgarian, a japanese, and a serbian. uh, yeah there's me representing Romania. you have to apply to the program from the country you live in. and am doing a good job too!! - i will eventually teach everyone how to count in romanian. those language lessons are coming in handeee.

hello from Cologne

okay i know that i have not been the best at updating the blog after traveling so am trying somthing new and updating while still traveling. this way - hopefully - things will make there way here. am making sacrifices here, i cant even tell you how difficult it is to type with a german keyboard.


so i got here today and i scored a hostel like two blocks from the train station. really nice since it cuts down the lost factor - am in constant danger of, though i was at first since i took the wrong exit from the station. i ALWAYS choose the wrong direction. i dont understand this since i teach geography and all.

today i went to the Dom which is this magnificent cathedral. its is freaking huge and quite a marvel. one of the reeasons why i love temples and cathedrals is the sheer effort involved in constructing it. people would work on it their entire lives and still not see the completion. i am romanticising it a bit but i think it the amount of faith involved is amazing. seeing stuff like this - at the the same time that humans are incredibly destructive and inhumane, we also have this great capacity for beauty. That is worthwhile.

Then upon exiting the catherdal, joy of joys, was the Ludwig museum which focuses on modern and contemporay art. it was awesome though after a couple of hours my brain and eyes were on overload. they kinda suck cause they wouldnt let me take pictures and then they didnt have postcards of the stuff that i wanted. but i sw things like warhols brillo boxes and there was a Mondrian - that man totally knew how to use lines and boxes -and lictchenstein. there were also lots of stuff by some german artists that i had forgotten about like macke and a Man Ray exhibit. there was also some russian constructivist stuff and i realized again how great is. i also realized again how much women were excluded from the art establishment. other than the contemporary stuff, only the russian constructivists had many women participating. i guess that was one benefit of the bolshevik revolution - allowing women the freedom to participate in aspects of society previously denied to them - and this was before women had the right to vote in most western countries.

lunch with Lulu

yesterday, i had lunch with a friend. lunch was great and she is a lovely person, but that is not why i am writing.

While not quite afraid for my life, there were a few hairy moments from the time she picked me up. Seatbelts are kinda superfluous to Romanian mind. i have gotten into cars, put on my seatbelt like the well indoctrinated american i am and been asked if i was scared. Am like, no but you have to put it on to be safe.

She likes to say a prayer every time she gets into the car and starts driving and when she reaches her destination. I didnt ask but she explained to me that she gets into a lot of accidents. "Why hairy?" you ask. She drives like she owns the road and creates her own lanes. The tram lanes are hers and even when there was no traffic on the road in front of her, she was still driving half on the road, half on the tram lane.

i now understand her need for prayer.