Welcome to Jena!

**This is a late post!  But it's finally here!  I unfortunately lost my phone and a lot of my initial pictures of Jena, but I'll take some new ones and add them to my next post!**

It’s hard to describe the myriad emotions that have been plaguing me for the past week.  I haven’t written an entry in a while, partially because I’ve been going insane thinking about the DSH test (the test required to get into a Masters program here) and also because I was just confused and lost.  Really.  I was actually totally and completely lost.  No map.  No internet.  Recipe for disaster, no?  Especially for the first few days here in Jena.

When I arrived in Jena late last Friday afternoon (20.09), a young woman from the International Office came to take me to my room in the FSU-Jena guesthouse.  We trekked to the bus and took it three stops to Carl-Zeiss-Werk.  Then, we had the pleasure of lugging my bags up a hill to the guesthouse.  This has been one of many instances, where I strongly wished I had a car.  Don’t get me wrong!  I love walking, and I really enjoy the exercise, but I had a lot of shit with me.  It’s not shit to me.  It’s my life for the next year.  I like my stuff.  But my stuff is heavy.  I tried repacking all my crap to make it easier to manage.  My attempt was not particularly successful.

Once I got to the room (with balcony! Yay!  And no oven! Noooo!), I unpacked and walked back out to the main road towards the Netto (local grocery store) to get some supplies for dinner and the weekend.  For about 16 Euros, I brought as many fruit and veggies as I could fit in my day pack and two extra cloth bags.  Lettuce, red bell peppers, tomatoes, apples, bananas, and more.  It was a glorious moment.  Most importantly I bought eggs.

I then walked home and proceeded to make the most delicious and victorious omelet I have ever had.  It was a great triumph after a month of living out of a suitcase and on food from the Mensa.

A view of Jena from the area around where I live (although I did not take it).  Time to explore it all!

I slept in on Saturday and woke to the reality that I had no internet and had no idea how to get it.  After slogging into the city center (a solid 30-40 minute walk depending on the speed you walk it), I found a mall called the Goethe Galerie.  I get it, Jena.  Goethe was here.  That’s cool, but you don’t need to name everything after him or Friedrich Schiller.  In the mall, I failed brilliantly in my attempt to understand and buy a reasonable internet contract.  It turns out that most internet contracts here last for 2 years.  Sorry, I’m not sorry, Germany.  I am NOT paying for a year of internet in Germany when I won’t be here.  That doesn’t make sense.  After this epic failure, I limped home and collapsed on my bed.  It’s surprising how much cobblestone streets can stress your feet and knees!  Now my knees won’t let me forget…

Sunday found me trying to buck up my courage to go to church.  In my eventful journey through Jena on Saturday, I discovered a church I thought I might like to visit.  Friedliche Kristliche Gemeinde…or something similar (Now I know it is the “Evangelische Freikirchliche Gemeinde“).  I walked down early, in valiant effort to be German punctual rather than American late.  As the service started, everyone greeted me.  A nice German man sat next to me and proceeded to explain the development of the congregation and ask me about my work in Jena.  It was very nice to meet someone who was so willing to open up!  After the constant warnings about how “stand-offish” Germans can be, I was glad to find a nice church full of nice Christians, just like I could find at home.  Seems very stereotypical small-town Christian perhaps, but what can I say?  The first few days here were lonely.  I was so proud of myself for mustering the courage to brave an entirely new experience all by myself my second full day in a new city in a foreign country.

The next series of days are a blur of walking around Jena without a map and only a basic idea of what I needed to do to be a legal resident, but what I remember most clearly are some annoying details of German bureaucracy.  In particular, there are two very important offices that foreigners need to visit at one time or another.  One, the Ausländerbehörde, is the office for extending your visa as a foreigner in Germany.  Fun fact: this is not where you go to register your address.

My feelings about German bureaucracy.  Love the state, hate the paperwork.

That office, the second important one for foreigners, is the Stadtbüro.  That is where you go to register your address.  I did not know this when I came to Jena, which resulted in me wandering all over the city, hoping on and off buses and streetcars known as Strassenbahns.  More like STRESSFULbahn.  I picked the right bus and got off at Damaschkeweg.  I then hoped on a Strassenbahn towards the Ausländerbehörde, which is located inconveniently across the city from where I stay.  The Strassenbahn then appeared to make a huge loop and reverse directions back towards the city center.  So I hopped onto another Strassenbahn and rode it for 30 minutes as I prayed for my stop to appear.  I later figured out that the Strassenbahn line I was riding had a strange loopy path that hit the stops in the middle of the route about a bajillion times.  Don’t ask why.  I don’t know.  I just don’t know.  After my ordeal, I found the Ausländerbehörde and was told I was in the wrong spot.  Back to the Stressenbahn!! Sigh.  I did eventually get registered by a very nice German woman and got myself safely home.

Okay, I wasn't crying, but I WAS definitely desperate.  I just needed a map!

Next few days included a number of visits to the International Office at FSU-Jena to beg for advice, help, and a map and lots of studying for the DSH test.  The DSH test is a test of a foreign student’s ability to read, understand, write, and speak German.  There are three levels of achievement (DSH-1, DSH-2, and DSH-3).  DSH-3 is the highest level, but you only need to earn a DSH-2 in order to study an university in Germany.  I (as I am wont to do) stressed out over it like crazy.  Between the looming test and lack of internet, I pretty much just wanted to crawl into a corner and sleep the week away if possible.

However, I survived.  Somehow. Barely.  I think.  Am I a zombie?  How do you say zombie in German?  Is that important?  Maybe I could wave my hands around and grunt.  Would that work?  I’m pretty sure that’s how most of my German conversations sound here anyway.  If they knew what I was talking about, would they scream and run?  Or what?  Interesting fact: apparently Germany gamers do not appreciate the Nazi zombies you can kill in some American zombie/horror video games…mostly because their versions never have the Nazis so they don’t get to shoot them, too.  Funky.

But, I digress.

I took the DSH test on Thursday (26.09.13), bought and consumed celebratory currywurst, and went home to pick holes in everything I had written on the test.  Friday was the oral examination.  Not like a dentist appointment either.  Although I think they could easily compare in the amount of nerves I have before either.  I talked (poorly) with two German instructors for twenty minutes about a short scientific article, and they determined my German speaking level from there.

 

Nom.  This was not the Currywurst I ate, but it's a good representation!
The small plastic fork is an integral part of the experience.

Somehow I scrapped by with a DSH-3 on all portions of the test.  Whoosh…they don’t have to kick me out now.

I celebrated with my lab mates that afternoon and evening.  We went to the Ratskeller, a small restaurant attached to the Rathaus (city hall), to celebrate the successful completion some research various temporary members of the lab had done and to celebrate my arrival to the group.  I had some delicious handmade bratwurst with AMAZING sauerkraut and delicious mashed potatoes.  Never had victory tasted so wonderfully German.  I then was given a tour of various bars in the city, introduced to the Thuringia specialty “Pfiffi,” or Pfifferling, a shot of peppermint Schnapps, and the German equivalent of a margarita.  Obviously, my week ended on a much more encouraging note than on which it started.

Kassel -- Home of concrete, modern art, and gigantic naked men

            This past week has been busy, but not too busy for the Fulbright students to visit another German city!  Two Thursdays ago (August 29^th) we went to Kassel, which is about an hour [SOME DIRECTION] of Marburg.  I considered Googling the direction we traveled to get to Kassel, but I feel this more accurately represents my state of mind the day of the Kassel trip.  (Okay, I did Google it.  Northeast.)  It’s hard to get excited about a city when most of the Germans you talk to just kind of snort, “Oh, Kassel…”  That’s what happens when you talk to young Germans sometimes though.  Just like the US, younger people seem to have a bit more trouble mustering enthusiasm to travel to small towns versus the larger famous cities.  Also, most of the time, the majority of the Fulbright students are quite tired from long days of language class.  So enthusiasm, let alone a sense of direction, can be a challenge.

Fulbright student on any given day of the week.

            This underestimation of Kassel’s attractions proved to be incorrect.  Kassel is the home of the dOCUMENTIA (Documentar auf Deutsch), a huge international modern art festival that takes place every five years and lasts for 100 days.  German artist and teacher, Arnold Bode, established the festival to try and counteract the artistic repression that over a decade of Nazi influence had forced on Germany.  The artists who are chosen to participate are given two years to develop their highly site-specific art pieces, many of which are left permanently in the city following the festival.  Although I’m not a huge modern art fan, there were enough intriguing pieces placed around the city to make the visit to Kassel quite rewarding.

            We took the train to the Kassel Hauptbahnhof, which is really not much of a main train station.  The tour guides we met shortly after arriving explained that the original train station had been almost completely destroyed during WWII.  There was one section that had survived that was quite lovely; however the new train station was built around this older section, hiding the lovely old architecture under a 50’s era concrete block.  The colors of the station were decidedly 50’s era as well.  The pink, baby blue, and yellow pastels really reminded me of pictures I’d seen of growing suburbs in the United States during the 1950s and 1960s.  Most of Kassel seemed stuck in the past.  Most buildings were large and blocky, concrete slabs with the only splashes of color coming from the pastel window shades.

An example of the buildings seen throughout Kassel.  Note the tasteful orange-yellow window shades.

            But, in the midst of all this gray, drab architecture, were a series of modern art installations that seemed at odds with the rest of the city.  The distinctly modern and out-of-this-world art pieces clashed with the run-down feeling of the other buildings.  The first installation we encountered was of a man walking up a slanted pole, entitled “Man walking to the sky” immediately outside the Hauptbahnhof.

What's he gonna do when he gets to the end of the pole?

            After stopping for sandwiches at a bakery, we made our way from the Hauptbahnhof to Friedrichsplatz, site of the Fridericianum, one of several museums in Kassel, and my favorite art piece, 7000 Eichen – Stadtverwaldung statt Stadtverwaltung.  The name of the piece is one of my first encounters with a German pun.  The real word that Stadtverwaldung comes from is Stadtverwaltung, meaning city bureaucracy.  The change from t to d in the word explains why the installation itself was composed of hundreds of trees.  Wald means forest.  Stadtverwaldung then implies that state bureaucracy is similar to a forest of trees, unmoving, uncompromising, and usually full of twisting and confusing ways to navigate through it.  The people of Kassel where initially distressed by the piece Stadtverwaldung as 7000 thousand oaks were planted throughout Kassel over the course of 5 years.  This art piece permanently changed the bleak face of Kassel, adding greenery to many corners of the city.  It still persists today with most of the 7000 oaks still alive and flourishing today.  Each oak that was part of the installation is marked by a large basalt stone planted into the ground like a stool next to tree.

7000 Eichen, Verwaldung statt Verwaltung (7000 oaks, forests instead of bureaucracy)

            The next installation provided a beautiful portrait of the Orangerie palace, where one of the powerful residents regularly bathed in wine, just to prove how rich he was. (I would have, you know, actually drunk the wine and found another way to prove my awe-inspiring wealthiness and masculinity.  Seriously, dude?  My baths, they bring all the bees to the yard…) He bathed in red wine regularly and encouraged some of his friends to do the same.  After each bath, the red wine was collected and rebottled.  The worst part of this practice though was surely the fact that after the landgrave and his friends bathed in the wine, not only was the wine rebottled but an additional 2 liters of red wine was collected beyond what had been originally poured into the baths.  I sincerely hope he was not marketing this wine, but that possibility is simply to revolting to contemplate.  Essence of landgrave, anyone?  Well, that wine would certainly put hair on your chest…or you know, kill you as you died slowly and painfully as your internal organs revolted against your cruel regime of landgrave red wine.  One of the two.  But hey!  Chest hair!  Be a man!

            Speaking of manly men, after our tour of the city, we were introduced to the most handsome man in all of Hessen, Herkales.  Herkales is part of the very large monument that is part of the World Heritage Site and Bergpark Wilhemshöhe above Kassel.  Part of the 200 foot monument, he towers above the park with his stunning height of 25 feet.  In his naked glory, he nobly looks out over Kassel and the cascading human-made waterfalls that run for 500 feet down towards Wilhelmshöhe Schloss.  The cascades do not run continually as at least 92,000 gallons of water are needed to fill all the cascades.  As the water runs down, it encounters a couple locations were pressure builds up enough to produce a fountain, where water shoots high into the sky before continuing is journey downward.  While the water was not running the day we visited, we still traversed the path the water would have followed to the bottom.

Herkales, looking noble and naked.

            After running through the cascades to the pool at the bottom, which a statue of Poseidon guards, the water continues to a Roman aqueduct.  Now, the Romans never actually made it to Kassel, but one of the landgraves of Kassel really wished they had (Who didn’t want to be conquered by Roman soldiers?  Yay, death, destruction, and possible slavery!).  He had a Roman aqueduct built to try and convince everyone (besides SCIENCE.  Carbon-dating, look it up) that the Romans had actually come to Kassel.  He convinced no one.

I, for one, welcome our new Roman overlords.

            Our final stop was at the Wilhemshöhe Schloss.  Since Goethe lived in Kassel, a Gingko tree was planted by the Schloss to commemorate his brief stay, a tradition in Germany.  We all were told to grab a leaf from the ground and take it with us for good luck.  As we toured the grounds and walked back to the Hauptbahnhof, our tour guide, a very sassy German woman, regaled us with tales of the Brothers Grimm, who lived in Kassel and Marburg for much of their lives, and their journey to get their fairy tales published, as they suffered from the same hunger, which plagued many of their characters, living on a single meal a day.  Their loyalty and love for each other was truly beautiful, and their own struggles highlighted how much they might have wished for their own happily ever after, although, if their stories are models, they seemed to realize that not many people got a happy ending.

Good luck?  Hope so!

            I walked away from Kassel with a yellow Gingko leaf in my pocket and a new respect of site-specific modern art.  Kassel was a concrete-covered gem of German history.  It’s amazing what architecture can hide from or reveal to us.

Frankfurt am Main -- Or how modern art continues to baffles me

            Yesterday, we went on a trip to Frankfurt, which is approximately an hour away from Marburg, to go to the Summer Museum Festival.  You may also remember that Frankfurt is the city I flew into on August 4^th so my initial memories of the city were colored significantly by my exhaustion and post-travel stress.

            Unfortunately, this journey did not start off much better.  Our bus left for Frankfurt at 8:00 AM, which meant I had to get up at 6:45 AM to get ready.  Now this time isn’t truly terrible if I’m honest with you (and if I’m not honest in my blog, then where else would I be honest?  Don't answer that).  Lots of people have to get up earlier than that on a daily basis.  In my defense though, 3-5 hours of intense German language school plus homework every day can really take it out of you.  The weekend is the only time we usually have to sleep in so every morning of sleeping-time we lose is quite distressing.  Motivating myself to get out of bed on a Saturday is possibly one of the hardest feats of willpower.  Pretty much every bone in your body is perfectly content to stay in bed and not see another city in Germany, because SLEEP.

Post-language course collapse.

            In addition, you’re traveling with Americans.  The problem with traveling with Americans is that you just KNOW they’re going to be late.  Yes, you are an American, and YOU are going to be on time, but the others traveling with you haven’t gotten the memo that Germans are super punctual and being late is not at all fashionable.  If they’re late, you can be late, right?

            WRONG.  Faulty logic alert!  Faulty logic alert!!  It’s a vicious cycle.  Don’t be fooled!  If you fall for this logic, then ALL THE AMERICANS WILL BE LATE.  This is how stereotypes are perpetuated.  That being said, we left Marburg at 8:10 AM.  Guess why...
            The bus trip was uneventful, although it was my first time on the Autobahn during this trip to Germany.  The weather was gorgeous: sunny and scattered white puffy clouds (which will be important later today).

          The tour bus stopped by the Römer, conveniently located next to a Starbucks.  After a quick Starbucks stop for the homesick Americans and equivalent bakery stop for the gung-ho “being in Germany where bakeries are everywhere is still a novelty” Americans, the group of Fulbright students split into two: one group that would take an English tour through the city and the other group that would take the German tour.  I joined the German tour group, eager to see how much I could understand at this point in time.  You’ll note that this is a significantly improved reaction to the German language in comparison with my encounter on the train three weeks ago.

Some of my fellow Fulbright students enjoying the German tour of Frankfurt.

            The tour was led by a very nice German woman, who took pity on us and spoke slowly and enunciated carefully.  She was quite easy to understand with only a few of her sentences escaping my understanding.  The most interesting fact I learned about Frankfurt was its large history of reconstruction.  Almost every famous building you see on a guided tour like this was rebuilt.  World War II bombings by the Allies destroyed a significant portion of the major buildings in Frankfurt.  Reconstruction of different areas continues today.  There isn’t a section of Frankfurt that does not have a large crane rising over the rubble or run-down ruins of an old building.  At the end, we got a great view of the city and the perpetual reconstruction from the top of a gigantic shopping mall.

A perfect example of old and new Frankfurt behind me.  How many cranes can you spot?

            There were a surprising number of street artists in the square in front of the Rathaus (city hall), including several who appeared to be levitating.  There was also a man playing what appeared to be steel drums.  He was definitely more impressive than the levitators, as he did not have a skeptical group of Fulbright students determining how “levitation” was a trick surrounding him.  What can I say?  This is what happens when you get a bunch of young students together in a group in a foreign country.  We are determined not to be tricked into awe; something must be genuinely awe-inspiring.

My reaction to seeing "levitating" men.  Once a scientist, always a skeptic.

            After puzzling through a solution to the levitating men, a group of my fellow Fubright students and I stopped in a riverside Café for lunch and enjoyed some Middle Eastern inspired-fare.  My “Pasta Al Arrabiata” was delicious and, even more importantly, contained absolutely no potatoes in any form, a difficult feat for any meal purchased in Germany.

            Post-lunch we all picked museums to visit for the rest of the afternoon.  The Summer Museum Festival in Frankfurt is like the Sommer Fest in Marburg on crack: fifty times bigger, incredibly loud, and packed with Germans and tourists.  The coolest part of the festival is that entrance to ALL of the museums for the whole day requires the purchase a single four Euro button.  Four Euros for entrance into over 60 museums!  It’s a geek’s dream come true!

Welcome to the Staedel Museum! ...and temporary biergarten?

            I went to the Städel Museum of Art and spent three hours wandering through the halls with two Fulbright students.  The museum had some spectacular pieces of old art, some pieces of art that were just old, and some pieces that were neither spectacular nor old.  On that note, modern art is a genre that continues to elude my understanding.  If I could have created the same piece of art myself, why is it art when someone else does it.  For example, one of the special exhibits was of one man’s fingerprints.  Just fingerprints.  What?

            Some of the ancient art was amazing: the Rembrandt and Remeer paintings blew me away.  However, some of the artists seemed to need a lesson in body proportions.  Dear ancient artists, a baby’s leg should be bigger than the baby’s head unless something is terribly wrong with said child.  In addition, just because you think someone’s head looks small, doesn’t mean you should draw it WAY smaller than the rest of the body.  Or maybe you should.  I mean, hey…you still got into one of the premier museums in Germany.  Who am I to talk?

            Just wait, I’ll fingerprint myself or draw a disproportionate baby someday, and then I’ll be famous for sure.  Actually, I’m pretty sure I’ve done both of these things, and I’m still not famous.  Maybe I need to rethink my “get-famous-quick” plan.

Dear modern art piece, I'm not sure I know what you are, but I'm pretty sure you'll haunt my sleep for the next week or so.

            After alternating between quietly contemplating and snickering our way through the Städel, we continued to another café (see a pattern?) for Nutella crepes and tea to avoid the pouring rain that had descended on the city.  Told you to keep an eye on those fluffly white clouds from before… Our time was soon up, and we said “Wiedersehen!” to Frankfurt before hoping on our bus back to Marburg.

Los geht's!

Author's Note:  This is my journal entry (slightly edited for better clarity) from my travel to and first day in Deutschland.

____________________

I’m exhausted.  In every way a person can be tired.  Emotionally.  Physically.  Ecumenically.

Okay, so maybe not that last one (I'm SO funny when I travel), but suffice it to say I’m pretty gosh darn tired right now.

Let me recount for you the excitement of my first day in Germany.  It started at 3:15 AM in Los Angeles, California.  The morning was cool and lovely, making my choice of jeans, boots, and a tank top perfectly reasonable.  I checked my smart phone to see what emails had come my way, and to my horror, found out that my flight from LAX to Philadelphia had been cancelled due to aircraft maintenance.  

Aircraft what now?

As calmly as I could I lumbered blearily to the kitchen where my mother was putting some pieces of bacon in a skillet and informed her that I had no idea how I going to get to Germany.  If I didn’t make it to Philadelphia, I couldn’t catch my flight to Frankfurt.  After a brief conversation with a US Airways representative, I was able to reschedule my flight through Phoenix, adding time to my already long and arduous journey.

With the details confirmed and new tickets printed out, I stumbled blindly through check-in and security at a different airport (a condition required by the stop in Phoenix) and made it to my gate.  I remember the only clear thought in my head being, “Please, let this be the only mishap today.”

            

Oh, how little I knew of what was coming.  My flight to Phoenix arrived at 8:13 AM.  I disembarked with my ukulele in hand and backpack fully loaded.  I then proceeded to speed walk across half the Phoenix airport to make it to my gate in time to board the flight to Philadelphia.

            

Squished next to an old lady with a big poofy red coat on, I gritted my teeth for 4 hours of mind-numbing boredom interspersed with sleep.  However, sleep was elusive as red coat’s lady red coat invaded at least a third of my own seat.  Not eager to look a gift horse in the mouth, I thanked heaven for the small mercy of making the connection.

            

Then, the god of airplane connections frowned upon me, and its visage was terrifying.  I waited for 2 hours in the Philadelphia airport, waiting for Flight 702 with service to Frankfurt to board.  The 4-hour layover turned into a 6-hour layover.

            

Just let me get on the plane.  PLEASE.

By the time we boarded, all the kids on the plane were bored out of their tiny little minds and exhausted.  Cue what felt like 3 hours of screaming crying infant noises on the plane.  It was probably thirty minutes, but who can tell time when sleep-deprived?  I watched Mr. and Mrs. Smith, and portions of the following movies: Prometheus, Black Swan, and The Avengers.  These were all seen from over the shoulders of the people in front of me, while children screamed around me.

Upon getting the Frankfurt, I breezed through customs and picked up my luggage.  I probably brought too much luggage; it was difficult to handle it all by myself.  Luckily when I made it to the Zug (train) to Marburg, I was exhausted, hot, sweaty, and near tears.

The worst part? Here I was...so proud of myself for getting to the Hauptbahnhof (main train station), buying a ticket, and getting on the correct train.  Then, when I gave my ticket to the ticket checker, he said "Ach so, du musst GERMAN GERMAN GERMAN OH GOD TOO MUCH FAST GERMAN FOR ANNELISE'S TIRED BRAIN."  All I could do is look up meekly and ask, "Was?" ("What?").

Imagine me as the donkey and the packages as the German language on the day of my arrival.
Yeah, this is gonna go great.

Lucky for me, the University student across from me spoke German and English and was able to translate.  Fun fact: The train to Marburg splits in Gießen.  Half of the train continues onto Marburg.  The other reverses direction and goes towards to Frankfurt before heading to Dillenburg.

Even luckier me, I was on the wrong part of the train to get to Marburg.  At Gießen, I grabbed all my stuff and sprinted to the front of the train.  And then, after a few more stops, I was in Marburg.

Gott sei dank. (Thank god)

Fulbright Nightmares

Author's Note: I meant to post this before I left for Germany; however, I was a bit short on time so you get it now!  Please enjoy my clear distress.

Annelise
________________

Part 2 of the "What I'm doing the summer before my Fulbright" Series

I think I'm going insane.

No, really.  Straight jacket, maniacal laughter, padded walls insane.

Because I hate WAITING.  And that's all this summer feels like: a gigantic waiting game for August 3rd, which -- just a friendly reminder -- is exactly seven days from now.  I feel like I'm in a never-ending line at a water park, waiting forever for something REALLY SUPER exciting while getting sunburned and increasing frustrated in the process.

It's gotten infinitely worse as time has passed.  On the surface, I may seem pretty cool and collected about the whole Fulbright process.  In fact, I seem too laid back, according to family and close friends, but that's been my way of dealing with the stress of preparing to move to a different continent.

1. Close eyes.
2. Ignore progression of time around you.
3. Slowly gather items necessary for survival in the great (not so) unknown.
4. Internally, FREAK OUT

This internal freak out has come to a head recently as it has been seeping into my dreams.  I usually don't remember my dreams, but the ones I have about the Fulbright are particularly vivid and terrifying.

The most recent found me sleeping on a plane to Europe.  Pretty benign, right? (Sleep-ception!)  Well, as dreams do, we then jumped immediately to customs.  I was suddenly in the Berlin airport, waiting to talk to an official and get my passport stamped

BUT I DIDN'T HAVE MY PASSPORT.  I had a copy of my sister's and my mom's passports but not my own.  I didn't even have an ID of any sort.  In fact, I couldn't prove to anyone that I was who I said was.  An adrenaline-induced panic and terror hit me.  Everyone was staring at me, and I just knew that they ALL knew.  They were all judging me and waiting for the customs official to laugh in my face and send me home.

The reaction of the customs official?  He stuck a barcode on my arm and gave me a sign to wear around my neck...a sign that said, "I'm not allowed to leave the airport."  The Germans, it seemed, were prepared with the perfect form of punishment for trying to sneak into their country.  The remainder of my dream saw me wandering miserably around the deserted airport with this sign around my neck, waiting for the Germans to ship me back to the US.

When I woke up around 2 AM to fling my covers off and stop this terrible dream, my immediate reaction was to look frantically for my passport.  But, as it was 2 in the morning, instead, I blearily rolled over into a much less frightening dream about blueberries that I've been having on and off for the past month.

In retrospect, my dream is an interesting conglomeration of pre-Fulbright stress and commentary on my views on capitalism...

Forgetting my passport is obviously every international traveler's worst nightmare.  Good news is, unlike in my brain, they don't actually let you get on a plane to a different country (at least in the US) unless you have a passport.  But the barcode and sign?  I attribute that to my fear of public embarrassment and my father's obsession with labels (Thanks, dad).  He got a label maker a couple years ago and proceeded to label all inanimate objects and anyone who stood still for too long.  Or maybe the label is my commentary on society as a whole.  THE MAN only sees you as a barcode!  A number!  A cog in the great machine of life!

Or it could be, ya know, crazy stress brain being crazy.

Either way the STRUGGLE IS REAL (in my head).

Reading Lists – or how other people’s expectations of my free time are unrealistic

Part 1 of the "What I'm doing the summer before my Fulbright" Series

What was the last book you read?

When I meet a new person, there is always the requisite introduction followed by forced small talk about the weather.  But one of the questions that my introverted brain will inevitably dig out of the meager "small talk" repository in my head is, "What books do you read?"  And this can be a make or break in a relationship, because the books someone reads can tell you a lot about a person.

You read "50 Shades of Grey" how many times?

Fiction or nonfiction? Fantasy, historical, romance, or mystery?  Paranormal romance? (Apparently, it deserves its own category now if you check your local bookstore.)

When you find someone whose literary interests coincide with your own, it is a beautiful day -- and not just because you live in California, where it's always sunny.  The number of roads down which your conversation can travel multiply rapidly.  Will you discuss the intricacies of Harry Potter?  A biography of Nelson Mandela?  Or perhaps the latest sports book on evolution of running as a sport?  With all these options, you might even be able to imagine having a second conversation with this person.  Heaven forfend.

In contrast, when you discover that someone has not read some book was absolutely pivotal in your development as young adult, this revelation can drastically alter your opinion of someone.  This doesn't  necessarily mean you suddenly think "YOU'RE A TERRIBLE PERSON," although this sort of reading prejudice can happen, especially when exclusively fiction readers meet exclusively nonfiction readers.  It's not that you have nothing to talk about; it's just that you're silently judging them for constantly ignoring reality by partaking only in fantasy-land or for having such a poor imagination that reading about dragons seems unappealing.  The fact of the matter is if you're going to talk about books with someone, it usually helps if you have similar interests.

This is where reading lists come in to play.  As a recent college graduate, I have had a large amount of free time on my hands.  I leave the country in August, I've already been accepted to graduate school, and I have a part-time job for June and July so there's not much else I can add to fill-up my schedule.  As a result, I have found myself perusing various websites for good books to read.  At the start of the summer, all I could think was "I should read EVERYTHING!"  I'm a naturally introverted person so increasing the number of easy conversation opportunities I have with someone seemed like a great idea.

But the truth is everyone and their mother has a list of books for you to read.  And honestly, everyone should read this particular book or this one or you just aren't a true American, renaissance woman, young adult, etc.  As a result, I've come away from my reading quest a bit bemused.  It's amazing to me how much I'm supposed to have read at this point in my life, and I'm an avid reader.  As a young child and teenager, I devoured books, getting through piles higher than me and my sister combined on a regular basis.  Of course, college hindered my ability to pick my own reading as readings for various courses took over my life.  As a chemistry major, most of this reading was "Defining the Hamiltonian" or "The C2 Symmetry Group," not exactly "classic" literature in the same way that a humanities major might describe it.

No, guys.  It's PARTICLE in a box.

For four incredibly busy years, I learned more and more about science, while falling far behind on the books I "should" have been reading.  Where was the literature from Bradbury, Hemingway, or even Stephen Hawking?  Yeah, you get some of that when you're at small, private liberal arts college, but there are hundreds of books beyond those that somehow I was supposed to read, according to these reading lists.

So when you're this behind on an impossible list of reading, how do you catch-up?  Short answer is: you don't.  And this is where I get a little pep-talky.  Don't think of it as being behind!  In the end, I have had to remind myself, "You've got a lifetime of reading ahead of you. You don't have to read all of the world's books in one summer."  If you know me, you know I'm just determined enough (read: stubborn) to think that I could catch up on four years worth of reading in one summer, but it's just not going to happen.

Another important note (this is a no-brainer for most people) is find books that interest you.  Just because a book is a classic does NOT mean you'll like it.  Similarly, just because a book is popular doesn't mean you have to like it.  I mean...not everyone was meant to understand Justin Bieber's life and enjoy his autobiography.

At the end of the day, how do I pick which books to read with so many from which to choose?  My policy after my initial enthusiasm waned is: one book I know I'll like and one risky book.  This idea was adapted from the rule some of my good friends in college had: do something smart and something stupid every weekend.  Here there isn't really a stupid option, just a book you might not normally read -- perhaps longer or more dense than your normal picks.  When I get to a really tough book on my reading list (Ulysses, I'm looking at you), I power through a chapter or two before switching over to something a bit lighter and easier to read.

It ain't a sprint, people.  Just gonna take that reading list one book at a time.  What are you reading this summer?  You can see what I'm reading in the right sidebar.