Living it Up in Europe

When my housemates and friends reappeared in my life last week, everyone seemed to be in a tourist frenzy and living fun lives. I thought it would be nice to get on board and start the tourist part of my German summer. The result was an exciting weekend.

My house was abuzz with plans to visit a nearby city called Herzogenaurach, which is where the Addidas company has its headquarters and an outlet store (although everything in it is in fact manufactured in China, not Germany). Pratibha had already visited Herzogenaurach by car with a coworker. Sabastian doesn't have a bicycle, so he planned to travel to Herzogenaurach by bus. I do have a bicycle and thought the trip would make for a pleasant little tour of my region. On Friday I mentioned to Baraa my interest in bicycling to Herzogenaurach and he responded with an equal interest. So, we decided to head over that afternoon in the lovely sunny weather. Before our departure, he went to the Mosque for an hour and I played my flute on Erlangen's mainstreet for a half hour, during which time I earned 3 Euros! The route to Herzogenaurach passed through a few villages and some nice fields filled with wheat, horses, and streams. The sun was quite hot, but thankfully I had on a hat and had brought plenty of water. Considering we didn't quite know exactly where we were going, we first ended up at the Addidas headquarters building where the nice receptionist redirected us to the outlet store. I do want to mention as an interesting observation that the majority of employees who passed through the atrium in the Headquarters spoke English with one another. The Outlet Store was full of all sorts of sport and exercise products. Even with everything reduced in price by 25-30%, I still found the prices high, so I just wandered the store like it was a museum. Baraa purchased a military style baseball cap because he was going to Barcelona for the weekend and needed some sun protection for his eyes (and receding hairline). He convinced me that a cold, prepackaged ice cream would taste delicious on such a hot day, so I spent 90 cents of my earned 3 Euros on a savory Nestle chocolate and vanilla ice cream stick. While we were eating our ice creams a storm came blowing in. We thought we were doomed to ride in the rain, but it surprisingly only sprinkled a little before we made it back to his apartment. Our visit to his apartment was brief because he just needed to change clothes before his going shopping in town for some new summer pants (for Barcelona). I thought the apartment looked tidy and decent, but apparently, as Baraa told me yesterday, the apartment-mate was quite displeased that a "woman" had been in the apartment because the apartment was not in nice, proper viewing order. ?!?!? Sure, crazy man.

Friday evening I chatted with Sabastian in our kitchen and he told me of his plans to attend an opera the next evening in Nurnberg. I thought a visit to a real, live opera in Europe sounded like a splendid idea, so I decided to attend with him. Saturday morning I got up at a decent hour and took the train to Nurnberg for a day of being a tourist. I first walked across the old city from the train station to the Kaiserburg, passing by a variety of big, old giants along the way. The old city is quite lovely with narrow winding streets lined with tall buildings, the Pegnitz river running through the middle, and a thick wall enclosing it all. I found out that a ticket to the Germanisches National Museum would also get me a tour of the inside of the Kaiserburg, so I plan on going back some time to do that. A thunderstorm steadily approached Nurnberg and sent out warning sounds via thunder, but the streets remained full of people, even as the rain began to dampen us all. Considering the humidity of the day, I think we were all glad for a little drizzle. As it seems to happen these days, the rain didn't last long and the rest of the day remained sunny.

My next destination was the Documentation Center, which is a museum about WWII, with a specific emphasis on Nurnberg's role in the Nazi Party. Nurnberg is famous for the "Nurnberg Trials" after WWII, but the city was also home to large Nazi Party rallies. The building in which the museum is housed was intended to be a large meeting place for party members, sort of like a congressional hall. The museum was very well organized in a way that enabled me to learn everything they had prepared for me. I learned a lot in the museum and would highly recommend it to anyone who visits Nurnberg. After the museum I walked around some of the rest of the old party grounds and passed through Zeppelin Field, which is famous from photos of Hitler giving speeches there. As a sidenote, I passed the modern city stadium where Elton John was apparently giving a concert that night. No, I didn't see him wandering around outside by the buses. That would have been pretty nifty if I had though...

Time was quickly passing and I had to get back to the opera house. Sabastian had convinced me to attend the opera by telling me that the music was beautiful and I would have to agree that the music was quite wonderful. The opera was called "Die Puritaner", by the Italian Bellicini. I'm told that it is an older opera from something like the 1800s. What I loved about the opera is how beautifully the sounds of the human voices and the orchestra accompanied one another. The opera was sung in Italian, but above the stage was a screen with translations in German. I found myself closing my eyes sometimes in order to focus on the sounds instead of thinking about what was being said. Our seats gave us a great view of the orchestra pit and I enjoyed dividing my visual time between the orchestra, the stage, and the text.

I initially thought that the plot of the opera was too simple and silly, but the more I've thought about it, the more I realize how real of a situation it is for some people. Simply stated with some details omitted, the story is about a woman who is about to be married to a man she really loves, but then he runs away with no explanation to her. She goes into a state of mourning and distress over his abandoning her. When he finally returns after 3 months he explains to her why he had to run away and she is delighted over his return. But, the story ends tragically with him being shot as punishment for the act of treason he had committed when he ran away. I had thought the story simple and silly because I didn't understand why the woman would carry on her sadness for months on end over his leaving her. But, I began to realize that she had really, really loved him. I am not well acquainted with such deep love, but I know a few people who are, and when I put my brain in their shoes, I can see how this story has more of a hint of complexity and seriousness.

I now possess the schedules for the operas, plays, and dance programs in Nurnberg, so I may have to visit one of these events again before the summer is over. Sabastian has highly recommended the opera house in Dresden, which is a city near to Cottbus. I intend to take his suggestion and enjoy another delightful evening at the opera.

Sunday was a hot and humid day which just begged me to go outside and enjoy it. I wanted to see if a nearby lake, the Dechsendorf Weiher, was swimmable, so I invited my landlord's son to join me in a bike ride and possible swim. Jan is 13 years old and doesn't have many friends, but I know he likes to bike ride, so I thought we could have some fun together. His parents warned us that the lake may be too full of algae to swim, so I wasn't too optimistic about swimming when we arrived and I saw that there was a lot of green globs of algae in the lake. But, as I said, it was hot and humid, and other people were swimming, so I thought "why not give it a try". Boy am I glad I did! The water was quite shallow for a long ways out and the temperature was great! I decided to not get my head wet because it didn't seem necessary under the algae conditions. We spent about an hour swimming, floating, and chatting. I had a great time and we both agreed that we were spending our time much better than we ordinarily would have been on a Sunday afternoon, which would be sitting alone at home in the yard reading. We both love reading, but swimming in a lake with company is so much better on a beautiful, hot day! The algae did have the one negative effect of accumulating in the snug areas between my body and clothing, but it was nothing a little showering and clothes washing couldn't fix.

In this recollection of my weekend, I can't eliminate Monday. I went to the lab for a few hours Monday morning and then headed over to hang out with Steve. We spent a pleasant afternoon together. I introduced him to the television show "Bones", he taught me the basics of Swing Dancing, we ate scrumptious Kraft Mac 'N Cheese for dinner, and viewed the film "K-PAX". I had four days in a row of good times. I was blessed.