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| Eurovision Celebrations |
At the moment Facebook is full of people informing me that
summer is here, exams are over, for some people even Uni is over but in Germany
that is sadly not the case. For all the other Erasmus people about to pipe up
with, I have 2 weeks left too, you better stop right there because I have 8
weeks left….yes you read that correctly, 8 weeks. It turns out that having 2
months off in Spring means that the long summer holidays we’re used to just
become more university. For once I’m actually not complaining (too much),
summer is significantly better than other seasons in Tübingen, I’d rather be
here now, than in February and March when it was cold and gloomy.
I’m not sure if I’ve made this point before but Tübingen is
boring, sometimes to an excruciating point, in the winter semester there was
often literally nothing to do but it’s summer now, the sun is (sort of)
shining, the Freibad is open and sitting in the park has become a pretty common
activity for us. Sitting in the park may
sound boring but luckily Tübingen has a vast array of strange people to watch.
Living here is sometimes like living in an alternative, hippie universe, the
park is full of people balancing on ropes, wearing trousers with outrageously
low crotches and playing a game that involves throwing bits of wood and bits of
wood (I don’t know the name, rules or point). Luckily drinking outside is full
acceptable, it makes the people even more amusing. We have one favourite man
who wanders around topless, performing some kind of sexual Tai Chi, always a
pleasure to watch. So I’m hoping that
these 8 weeks end up being 8 weeks of drinking, barbeques and German learning
(I guess it has to be involved somewhere). I do also have work to do, Edinburgh
are insisting I write an essay for them, it’s been so long since I did anything
properly academic that it’s been a struggle. I’m also taking a course this
semester that requires me to read German books, more useful for my language
skills than making collages, but that was a lot less demanding. Oh well, at
least I have 8 weeks left to finish it all.
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| Tai Chi Man |
To make things even better, we’ve just had a week off, the
catholics are finally doing something right and giving us a week off for
Pfingsten (Pentecost). I ended spending
part of my week off in Vienna and Bratislava, which was pretty cool. Vienna is
an unbelievably pretty city, every other building looks like a palace, but it
is pretty pricey. Bratislava on the other hand was cheap, like outrageously
cheap, and it was very cool. It has a beautiful old town, surrounded by
communist buildings and the largest communist living complex in Europe nearby.
The contrast was pretty interesting. On this trip to Bratislava we decided to
go on a bar crawl….as far as bar crawls go it was a bit of a fail. The four of
us made up more than half of the group, we were joined by 2 Aussies, one who
was determined to prove he was sooo English because he’d lived there for a
year, then 1 American soldier. The soldier made it funny at least, probably one
of the stupider people I’ve met in life, one of his greatest quotes being “do
you want to hear about war or Knoxville”, closely followed by the story of
going to rehab for getting so drunk he got lost in his own dormitory, Brandon
you made our night. As for the rest of my week off, I’ve been attempting to
write the aforementioned essay, ‘Did the east Germans feel German after
reunification?’…if anyone has the answer feel free to let me know, so far I’m
still unsure.
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| Vienna being all pretty |
Even though the Queen is German, they don’t seem to fancy
celebrating the Jubilee and Monday and Tuesday are just regular days here in
Deutschland. No fear though, we’re bringing our own taste of Britain to the
Germans, Monday is roast day and Tuesday is Pimm’s day, which we’re importing
specially for the occasion. I’m even considering making a flag.
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