semester šednost

So that's Czech, not German, but it's appropriate.

My days here start around 8.30. I get up and get dressed, make breakfast and pack my bag for the day. I open the window curtains, turn off the lights, put on my coat/scarf/shoes, and lock my door on the way out. Walking to the U2 station nearby takes only a few minutes but is always cold enough to make getting to the station a relief. I walk past the American Church, a Turkish bath place, and usually someone with a dog. Yesterday, I saw a man on a razor scooter walking his chihuahua.

Unlike in Prague, I get a seat on the U-Bahn every day and I don’t have to transfer at all. It takes about half an hour to get to the “Culture Brewery,” the complex that NYU’s building is in. I walk from the U2, passing expensive cafes, bike rental shops, the original curry-wurst place, three gold stumble stones commemorating the murders of the Jewish residents of a building, a plaque commemorating the murder of an “anti-fascist,” an absinth bar, a men’s underwear shop, and a grocery store all before turning up the steps into the complex which I cross to the school building.

My classes are wonderful. I’m behind in German, but so is everyone else. I’m re-reading my old notes and hopefully I’ll be ready for our first test next week. My Architecture of Berlin class also has a graded assignment next week. I’m presenting a midterm assignment (early, I know) on the biographies of objects. I’m actually really excited, and then I’ll go on to write a paper on the same topic which will be my final exam. The class is interesting. We discussed how the museum was developed to provide a place for the “common man” to go for examples of how to culture himself and build his home. It was the one cultural space, save the department store, where women were also allowed, and it was hoped that women would both make sure the men behaved well. The other theory drawn up by those new to positions of power in the industrial age, was that including artifacts from the lives of the common men would pull them in because they would feel proud to be included. In post-modern times, the museum has developed in such a way that the ritual of ‘visiting’ it (for a transformative, cleansing purpose) has become hugely important. Apparently, our instinctual draw towards stability and stasis used to be soothed by religious and community rituals but now is soothed in cultural institutions, such as museums (the article we read was by a man named Tony Bennett). Interesting ideas… And my professor always starts by asking us to write something down on colored note cards, which he then sticks on the board in clusters by topic. Visual learner? You bet.

My Museum Island professor is new to teaching American students, new to teaching this course, and new to dealing with the university. He was surprised that they hadn’t ordered readers for us, not knowing that he had to submit a master copy before they could send out for copies. Poor guy. He also wanted to schedule extra trips on Fridays or Saturdays, but he’s somewhat shy so he let two girls with trips planned every weekend bully him out of using those days. Sometimes I don’t understand my peers. Hopefully the professor will get more comfortable and confident as time goes on. He’s fascinated by how maps change over time and how public space is (or isn’t) used at different points in history. He talked us through the growth of Berlin from a fishing town and medieval manor to its current urban mass.

After that class, I stay in the same seat for the next class as well. New York and Berlin as Knowledge Cities is the class that I joined after talking to the professor over dinner at the end of orientation. It’s an education focused course and it’s discussion-based. We started with a light piece that describes a fictional knowledge city, and he used it as a springboard; we discussed what we felt was good or bad about the city described in the piece and by doing so were able to better articulate our understanding of what a ‘knowledge city’ should be. I’m curious to see how the class develops. At one point, we got sidetracked because one of the boys asked if we could define ‘knowledge.’ I worked through my own thoughts on a piece of paper while listening to the professor and the class talk out all their different understandings of ‘knowledge.’ The struggle between their desire for a workable definition and their understanding that the definition would have to be so broad as to barely qualify as a definition was really fun to listen to. I haven’t been part of a conversation like that in a long while. The professor is a very energetic lecturer because he is totally in love with teaching. And he’s fascinated by changes in youth culture that he witnesses by working with new students each year.

The class I had tonight is Cities, Places and Communities of Berlin. The professor gave us a lot of country history and an outline of the current political system (party platform sketches included). He also assigned us a graphic novel as our first reading assignment. He usually teaches a Friday morning class of 4 that takes a lot of in-depth academic trips. This semester, he was assigned a Thursday evening time slot because my school decided that study abroad sites shouldn’t offer Friday classes so that students would be able to travel. Which I have my own opinions about either way, but you’d think the school would have asked the faculty and/or students if we supported this new idea of theirs. *Sigh* Because it’s a Thursday evening instead of a Friday morning class, our professor has suddenly found himself with 18 students and more trying to get in despite the course cap. He’s a bit overwhelmed. Today he gave us travel suggestions and a website to go to for restaurant ideas. Saturday, he’s taking us on a trip through a Turkish neighborhood. We’ll see the mosque, the immigrant museum, and a restaurant where we will eat and where he promises we’ll return once we taste the food. I’m pretty excited.

That’s my classes. We have a mandatory trip to Hamburg next weekend, and then it will be one weekend to do work before Hillary and Alex come. I’m a little curious about how we’ll all sleep in my room, but I’m very excited to see them.

Also, I finally got some pictures online. They're here!