Heidelberg

I am sure some of the people who stumble onto this blog via the International Program Website will end up studying in Heidelberg. I am sure if you do, you'll love it. I wish I could persuade you to Konstanz, and I am sure the Freibergers wish they could persuade you there, but if you want to go to Heidelberg, do it. From what I hear, the Uni is ancient and lovely, and great for all of the liberal arts. The Old City, which is the only part I saw, is also wonderful and on the whole it's a great town. If you are trying to make up your mind, I think you'd enjoy it. It seems like a great Uni town.

Actually, here is a good place to make a point that might seem obvious, but actually bears saying: Study abroad is going to be fun. It's as simple as that. I don't know anyone who has committed themselves to their exchange and not had it pay off in spades. Two people who studied with me earlier this year were unhappy and went home, but it was clear that they had been able to let themselves open up and really take it all in. One girl who left actually began to regret her decision as the day approached, once she realized that most of her problems were typical initial homesickness and that she had become happy. Everyone has troubles at the start of their exchange, with getting adjusted to other customs and finding friends, but it always works out incredibly. Being an exchange student is like being a first semester freshman. Everyone from the Uni is trying to help you, and everyone you meet is in the same boat and wants to be your friend.

A corollary to that is that wherever you study, you will love it. You've probably heard that before, but it bears repeating. When you first plan to study abroad in a country, the choices you have can be bewildering. There are about a dozen universities under the umbrella of the UMass/Baden-Wuerttemberg program alone, and it's hard to make up your mind where to study. You haven't heard of at least half of the places, and they all offer similar classes, and how are you supposed to know whether Ulm or Tuebingen will better suit your academic tastes? Here's a secret: They would both equally. I picked Konstanz on a whim. At first I wanted to go to Freiberg or Heidelberg but the process was taking to long so I picked the dark horse. The city and people are awesome, and my choice has paid off, but I don't fool myself into thinking it was fate or something.

There is no such thing as one true love, and there's no such thing as one true study abroad program.

Liechtenstein

My younger brother is pretty sharp for a high school kid, with a head for history and a surprising global consciousness. That's important to know if you want to get the full significance of his response when I told him I had visited Liechtenstein: "Where is that? I have never heard of it." I was sort of surprised, but not incredibly so. Before I came to Germany, I had heard the name, but knew nothing about the country. Since I visited, I don't think I have heard anything about it, except when a friend nostalgically alludes to our visit.

Honestly, I think the country prides itself on not making a name for itself. The little principality is one of the top three richest countries in the world, but it seems to not like to boast of the fact. Everything in Vaduz, the capital city is kept very clean and in good order, and groceries for lunch were a little more expensive than they are in Germany, but there were no blatant displays of ostentation and little evidence of major commercial activity. The people drive new but simple cars and live in well-built but quite traditional houses. In comparison to a close competitor for the title of "Nation with the highest per capita GDP", Luxembourg, Liechtenstein is downright pastoral. In Luxembourg, the capital of the country, you can not walk down a street downtown without seeing two international banks, three restaurants where I am not classy enough even to be a dishwasher, and six or eight shops that make your wallet feel lighter just to look at. The two cities couldn't be more different, except for two main points of comparison: They are both incredibly rich, and uninteresting to tourists.

I hate to entirely right off a city, because I do think that on a year abroad, you should go to as many places as possible, taking every opportunity that comes up. Some will be less interesting than others, but are still worth a go. Vaduz was the same. There wasn't much to do in the town, because we went on a Monday, when the Prince's personal gallery was closed. Not sure what else to do, we decided to take a hike into the mountains.

That was what really changed the day from a fairly typical expedition out of olde Konstanz and made it into a 'Really Good Day' (Trademark). We walked up a long trail through a quiet evergreen wood until we got to the Prince's castle. I have seen better castles - bigger, more dramatic. This one made a particular impression, however, for still having residents. It is hard enough to comprehend that hundreds of years ago, the nobles lived in castles the way you or I live in a three bedroom, 1.5 bath family home. It's quite an epiphany to realize that some people still do. We wondered what it would be like to be a young teenager growing up in a castle like that, and what a girl would say if he were ever allowed to invite one over. It's not something that's easy to wrap your brain around.

Apart from that, the alps are incredible. Everyone has seen the Sound of Music, but it's entirely different to actually be up there, where the grass is greener than you have ever seen, and the sky bluer than you thought possible, and you can see what basically amounts to an entire country by craning your neck a little. When we first got into Liechtenstein, we were curious why all of the world's rich people would want to live in such a quiet, boring little town. Before we even got halfway up the mountains, it was clear why.

Stuttgart

Stuttgart is the capital of the old German state of Wuerttemberg, and since 1951, it has been the capital of the state of Baden-Wuerttemberg. It's the largest city in BW and the 6th largest in Germany. Lots of facts there, but more importantly for exchange students, it's also a very pleasant place to visit, with lots of museums, good shopping, and some lovely old architecture.

A great example of that architecture, if you can get there within the next few years, is the Old Train Station. Built in the 1920's, it's a lovely example of pre-war German architecture and a UNESCO world heritage site. The biggest political drama in Stuttgart at the moment, and one of the biggest in BW, is the 'Stuttgart 21' plan, which aims to better link South Germany with major rail destinations like Paris and Vienna by demolishing the old Bahnhof and building a new underground railroad through the city. This has been a major source of controversy in the city, and when we were there in early October, the place was absolutely swarming with police officers. Clustered around the opera house, on the main lawn, was an armada of police vans, set up to be a headquarters. We were entertained over dinner by a crowd of protesters, one of whom was giving an impassioned speech that our German was not quite good enough to follow.

But the politics were not the only selling point for the city. The main shopping streets are quite modern and busy, but have a character and relaxed feel that's hard to describe but that made Stuttgart feel much more comfortable, at least for me, than a similarly sized city in the States, which are typically too full of hustle and bustle for my tastes. The museums in the city are also very good. The Landesmuseum is a very good gallery that juxtaposes classical and more modern art in a way that I quite appreciated, and in the Wuerttembergische Staatmuseum we saw one of the largest collections of glass in the world. Not that the glass in itself was interesting, but it was very cool to have seen such a thing, that I didn't even realize existed. It was like meeting the man with the Guiness World Record for going the longest without eating salt. You wouldn't have thought that it existed, you are not quite sure why it does, but it was interesting to see.

Personally, however, my favorite memory of Stuttgart isn't a museum that just has to be seen, or a restaurant I can recommend, but a chance find, like most of the best memories. In a little music store right on the main square across from the palace, I found piano scores of Mozart's Don Juan and Wagner's Tristan und Isolde for 9 Euros each. When I took them outside and looked inside, I realized that the Wagner had handwritten notes in an old-fashioned German script in the back cover. The notes are dated from Muenchen 1865, the city and year in which the opera premiered. Without even realizing it, I'd managed to buy a piece of cultural history.

Munich, Take 1

Germany has always been a breeding ground for great minds. It was once known as "The Land of Poets and Thinkers". Goethe, Kant, and Bach are just a few of the most obvious cultural figureheads of Germany. When you keep that in mind, it's a bit disheartening that when your average American hears the phrase "German Culture", he will immediately think of women in the traditional low-cut corset of a German farmer girl and massive steins of beer. We all had these preconceptions, and so as not to disappoint ourselves, early in our stay here we made the Hajj to the holy land of drinking and dirndls: Oktoberfest in Munich.

It's between 4 and 5 hours from Konstanz to Munich and we wanted to get there early, so we left at 5:45 AM on a Sunday. It was the last Saturday of the Fest, and every train we took was packed beyond capacity with passengers, many clad in Lederhosen, and even more drinking, despite how early it was. When we eventually got into the city at noon, much later than we expected, the streets were overrun with people of all sorts, almost all here for the fest, all having a good time.

Munich is an absolutely lovely city, and a few of us decided to do some exploring before we went off to the Wiesn (The name of the field where Oktoberfest is held). We wandered a while, through the garden of the old palace, before going to the Haus der Kunst ("Haus of Art"), a contemporary art museum which was doing a large exhibition about Houses and Homes. It was really interesting, and since I have been in Germany, I have picked up a fondness for modern art museums. Sure, a lot of the work in them is gimmicky, shallow, or uninteresting, but they have a freshness and exuberance that you can't really feel in a gallery full of Renoir, Rembrandt, and Rafael.

In the mid-afternoon, we eventually got to the Wiesn, which was like nothing we had expected. Honestly, I couldn't say what I was expecting, but it wasn't rows of giant beer tents on one side of a giant field, a myriad of carnival rides on the other, joined together by a swarming, seething mass of people, occasionally punctuated by a roasted almond stall. It was overwhelming and incredible. A friend who had already been there a day and stayed up all night partying had called us to let us know that he had a table for us in one of the tents. But it was to no avail. The crowds at the entrance were too thick, and we couldn't get in. In the end, we stayed on the Wiesn for only a few minutes before leaving to get dinner and catch our train.

If you are in Germany for October, and want to go get smashed and party at Munich Oktoberfest, it's going to take you a lot more time, effort, and probably sleep-deprivation than we were willing to put into it. And honestly, I don't know if it would be worth it. Most cities in Germany have their own Oktoberfest and you can go as wild as you want 20 minutes from the comfort of home. The one in Konstanz is sort of like a mall parking lot carnival, but it was still a great time. And that negative sounding review isn't trying to dissuade you from going to Munich Oktoberfest either. For one thing, Munich is a great city, and for another, it is one of those things that you have to experience and be able to understand for yourself, not just from stereotypes. Just don't be disappointed if you don't get to drink 8 liters of beer.

The Castle on the Sea

If you study in Konstanz, you will probably make an expedition to Meersburg sometime during your September or March orientation. If you happen to be studying somewhere else in Baden-Wuerttemberg, I highly recommend that you make it a stop on your eventual warm-weather tour of the Bodensee. It's a small town, with not quite enough going on to warrant making it the end goal of a long train ride, but if you want to understand why the Bodensee has been a source of poetic inspiration for German authors from Goethe to Hesse and beyond, an afternoon among vine-covered hills and treacherously steep streets of Meersburg is vital. Even if you don't give a damn about German literature, God forbid, the views alone are worth it.

The town of Meersburg is named after Die Meersburg, the 'Castle on the Lake', a name that sounds like something from a fairy tale. The Burg is said to have been built in the 7th Century by King Dagobert the First, whose name most decidedly does not sound like something out of a fairy tale. It was lived in until the late 19th century, when it was made into a medieval museum. As far as such museums go, it's interesting but nothing spectacular. It's tough to make yourself passionate about placards and descriptions of coats of arms from the 1300's. What is truly mind-blowing is the sense of history that I mentioned in my post about Konstanz, the idea that you are standing in a building of stone that has survived unchanged through generations upon generations of men, and will continue to serve as a relic for hundreds of years more, at least.

Another focal point of the castle tour are the chambers that Annette von Droste-Huelshoff lived in for the last years of her life. Annette, or 'Die Droste' as many locals affectionately call her, as though she were an old aunt who still lives down the road, was The preeminent German poetess of the 19th century. If you have taken an upper-level German course at UMass, chances are you have read her short story 'Die Judenbuche' ("The Jew's Beech"), renowned as one of the first detective stories. As far as I can tell, Meersburg has the same love for her that Amherst has for Emily Dickinson, and the same hoarding of artifacts that relate to her. In one tower of the castle, you can see her bedroom and study, the stuffily conventional blue, floral wallpaper more appropriate to the musty sitting room of an elderly family friend than a 1400 year old castle. Samples of her handwritten poetry and prose are available for display, so an interested visitor can read her works of forlorn love that I have trouble seeing as having much more literary impact than the anguished scribblings of a snubbed thirteen year old. But I shouldn't be mean; her depictions of female attempts at self-identity in the constricted social order of her day are truly very good, and I think she is remembered more for them than for her love poetry. And no matter what you think of her, it is always interesting to see and try to understand the way the great minds of the past lived.

All Aboard

Let's face it. Trains in the States suck. Really, they barely exist. Outside the patchy commuter rail net that extends into most major cities, and the incredibly-overpriced Amtrak lines that course up and down the coasts, we don't have a train system at all. I think the closest most American college students have come to dealing with trains on a regular basis was when they had a Thomas the Tank Engine comforter in their crib. In Germany, on the other hand, everyone rides the trains. The Deutsche Bahn can be a little expensive for single tickets, and they apparently have no idea what to do with snow, but they are so convenient that any travel-minded exchange student (Read: All exchange students) will soon acquire an intimate familiarity with the company. Why not, when it is probably possible to get between any two cities in Germany with a short bus ride, a train ride of indeterminate length, and another short bus ride?

The DB boasts a wide variety of train types and ticket packages which you would do well to become acquainted with as soon as possible. As tempting as it is to 'Schwarzfahr' (An invaluable German idiom meaning 'To ride without a ticket'), it is probably a bad idea for train rides of any length. If you are going no more than twenty minutes to half an hour, it's quite likely that you will never see a ticket controller. But they tend to show up without fail anytime you wish they wouldn't, and the fine of 40 Euros or twice the maximum ticket price is definitely not worth paying. (With buses, on the other hand, paying the fine now and then is almost certainly cheaper than buying two or three tickets a day, assuming you can not get a Student Ticket. In four months in Konstanz, I have only been controlled once).

Since you will probably be travelling with friends, you will most commonly be buying group tickets. In this case, a Bundesland Ticket is the best value. There is one for all of the 16 German states, and the price varies depending on the size of the state. The Baden-Wuerttemberg Ticket, for example, costs 28 Euros for a single day's worth of unlimited travelling for five people in any non-express train within the state. If you are going between states, just buy a ticket for each Bundesland you go through, and it'll probably still be cheaper than individual tickets. For weekend travel, the 39 Euro Schoenes Wochenende (literally 'Beautiful Weekend') ticket allows five people to take any non-express train in Germany for one day. I have a friend who is going to use this ticket on Christmas Day to ride with her boyfriend to Berlin; Serious money-savers take note. In addition, the DB often works together with popular attractions to offer deals on train tickets and entry prices. I went to Europapark, 'The most popular seasonal theme park in the world' according to wikipedia, with some friends for only about 48 Euros each.

Take my word for it: you are going to be spending enough time and money on train tickets in Europe, so do your research and make sure you don't pay more than you have to.

First Impressions

Constantia, Constance, Konstanz. The little city of 90,000 that lies on the Bodensee, divided by the Rhine, and sandwiched between Germany and Switzerland has been called by many names over the years. After only a few days here, however, it is impossible to call it anything other than Konshtansh, as it is pronounced in the sometimes too strong accent of its mostly Swabian population. Just like every freshman from outside the Pioneer Valey gradually picks up the unexpectedly silent 'h' in the name of UMass Am'erst, a new Konstanzer subconsciously picks up this affectionate name for his favorite German town.

And it is the favorite town of everyone international student who lives here. That is probably selection bias; after all, for many it is the first city he sees in Germany without having to stress about getting through customs, catching 2 trains and a bus, and exposing his not-yet-confident Deutsch to the disdainful scrutiny of the Starb

ucks barista. But it is also more than that. I think it has something to do with how small and comfortable Konstanz is. Every German city has a history that North Americans, for whom 1776 is the distant past and a house from 1900 is ancient, can not help but be mystified by. We are thrilled to wander through the cozy cobble-stoned streets and alleys, to0 narrow for an SUV, and know that around any corner we might bump into a coffee shop that housed Goethe on his summer holidays in 1785. In Konstanz, those tiny epiphanies and the overall sense of aesthetic awe one gets in the presence of truly beautiful architecture are concentrated into an Altstadt ('Old City') that can be walked around in half an hour, but has enough labyrinthine curves to allow for weeks, even months, of new discoveries.

Do not think, however, that Konstanz am Bodensee is a museum of hermetically preserved curiosities with no life. The University proves that impression wrong in an instant. Founded in 1966, it moved to the main campus in 1972, and it remains there until this day. In this case, campus is something of a misleading word. Do not expect to admire the ivy that climbs over the cultured brick buildings as you lounge on the quad. The UniKonstanz campus is primarily composed of one building, a concrete monstrosity that comprises smaller, internal buildings for every layer of the alphabet, barring 'I', 'N', and 'Q', because the system wasn't complicated enough. Everything is decorated in primary colors, and it's not uncommon to stumble around a corner and find yourself standing in front of a multi-colored affront to human sensibility. It's beautiful.

I mean that, too. Despite and because of its idiosyncracy, it's obviously drug-inspired architecture, and its total disregard for form, style, or navigability, almost anyone you ask will grudgingly express their affection if pressed. When you factor in the often world-renowned faculty, the incredible location in easy view of one of the most beautiful lakes in Europe, and the library, which is currently closed due to asbestos, but will be open by next year and is the largest and most lauded in all of Germany, I can only give the heartiest recommendations to any student who might decide to study in Konstanz.