…und Guten Tag aus Dresden, Deutschland!

First I must apologize for not posting the next day as I had promised, but I needed to prepare longer than I originally thought for the upcoming weekend. As a result, rather than have two separate posts for Week 2 and Germany, I will discuss both in this post.

It is the end of my second week in Prague, and my mind is a whirl-wind of thoughts and emotions. The week started out with what could be called our first real day of classes, opening with literature, and it closed with what could potentially have been a significantly life-changing weekend.

We had what I would consider our first normal academic week of the semester, and I refrain from saying normal week, because we only have six of these academic weeks over the entire semester. ONLY SIX. Which means, we now have FIVE left. (The math works out though, because with two weeks of excursions, four weeks for the ISP, one week for orientation, one week for finals and one week for debriefing an academic experience abroad, that gives you a fifteen week semester right there.)

This week’s theme was Art  and Nation, which was evident through the discussions we had, particularly in my Theater History course. We talked a lot about how the Prague National Theater has been a huge part of national identity for the Czechs since before it was even built, and the rest of our discussions were surrounding specific literature (Kafka’s Amerika, for example) and history (Germans/Czechs of the North Sudetenlands, where we were for part of this weekend).

We had two evening performances this week, both of which I missed unfortunately, one because I did not feel very good (and was also ill-prepared for a rainy commute home that day) and the other because I did not leave enough time to commute from home.

On Wednesday we had our first real Creative Writing workshop, which for me personally was very insightful, and I’ve already been applying it to my outside work, which is interesting. With a group of 4 people for a workshop, we each get about a half-hour of feedback, which is really, really nice, because it means we can go into a lot of detail. What makes me even happier is that our homework this week is to re-draft the stories that we wrote, so that means we’ll get two weeks of specific/detailed feedback on these pieces, the kind of attention that even Redlands Creative Writing workshops can’t give you. I’m less thrilled with the apparent feedback we got about not asking the visiting writer enough questions, because he spoke for an hour straight without taking a breath, giving us a very limited time to ask questions. (And when we would, he spoke for another ten minutes). Given that feedback, it made me realize how unfair double-standards are. She gives the writers certain expectations of the encounters, and then gives them free-reign since they’re her friends, and then holds us to standards that are incredible unfair and impossible, because she can’t be bothered to put some limitations on her friends. Sorry for the bitterness, but I will be extremely sore if that’s the kind of unprofessional attitude that’s going to determine one of my creative writing grades back at Redlands. I suppose it’s good to know that not everything about being in a different continent for 3.5 months will be entirely fantastical and positive and amazing, but there’s a bit of reality here too.

Anyway, on Thursday we had our first film session. We watched the Slovak movie Shop on Main Street, which is an incredibly dark but beautiful movie about the Holocaust from the Czech/Slovak point of view, which was a little bit different than the usual German-holocaust film, but in many ways also similar (of course). The basic story follows this poor man (and his wife) are struggling to make ends meet until the man’s brother-in-law (the Nazi leader for this town) makes the man the Aryan controller of a Jewish shop that this frail Jewish lady who is almost deaf (supposedly). The story then follows their interactions as the Germans descend upon the town and order all the Jews over to camps. I will leave you to watch it to see how it ends, but it’s a very moving story of an unexpected friendship.

This movie then prepared us for our weekend excursion. We left the very next morning to the North Sudetenland for the first part of the day. This was a very unsettling experience in a number of ways. Because of the struggles between the Czechs wanting their own nation and the Germans living in this area wanting to be part of the Third Reich, ultimately the Germans were cast out as the Czechs finally achieved their own nation and the Germans lost the second world war. As a result, German people and families and whole villages were uprooted and kicked out of the Sudetenland. You can see the results physically with some villages being simply ruins and old buildings (and some have returned completely to wilderness, no signs of any old buildings even) and in others where people still live, you can culturally see that the same sense of home and community never returned. Perhaps the most moving part of the Sudetenland excursion was the last part, when we stopped at a cemetery. It is mixed German and Czech, but that’s hardly a fair description. The vast majority of the German headstones had been dug up and tossed carelessly into a corner of the cemetery. Often times you could see a headstone with names and dates completely dug up, on its side, leaning against the mossy wall of the graveyard, or perhaps a headstone that was missing half of it, so you couldn’t read the names or dates any more. It was in this excursion that I remembered a book we read in our honors literature course last year, about the sociology of hauntings, and I think this was a lived experience of what that book was trying to communicate: a sense of a whole community, and generations, simply wiped away and tossed aside, because they picked the wrong side of a war. Not even memories exist, and you wondered whether the present German families even knew where to come if they wanted to see their ancestors’ graves.

After that cheery excursion, we then made our way to Dresden. Most of the excursion here was on Saturday, when we had free-rein to explore the city until 6pm and it was time to head back. My group ended up just walking around and not going to any one particular museum. We did a bit of shopping, and with the help of my friends now have a “writer’s jacket” that I’m very excited about, we got some gelato which was very good, and we visited several paper and crafts stores. It was a fun day overall, but the inspiring part of this excursion was the night before.

For dinner, my language skills came in really useful. Our waitress spoke very little English, and when others could not communicate that they wanted water, I jumped in, told her what they were asking for, and how many glasses for water we needed. I felt really good about being useful after that. In fact, just a quick note about Saturday, I did all my shopping in German, and I was good enough at it, that I don’t think most of the clerks realized I was American. Indeed, most of them didn’t say a word of English to me while making my purchases, which excited me more than anything about learning German ever has. But back to Friday night, before dinner even, I had the most romantic moment I have ever had in a European city, and perhaps the most so I will ever have. Not romantic in the sense with a person, but with a personal experience. Words will never do it justice, but given I do not have photos of the moment (which would not do it justice either, but rather give a visual) I will have to do my best to describe it.

It was night out, completely dark. We were walking down the bridge over the river towards the old town (Altstadt) of Dresden. On either side of us (of the bridge) were old, ornate buildings lit up by warm, golden lights. The buildings had a slightly grungy quality that was striking and beautiful, and which was there because the buildings were rebuilt with bits and pieces of the blackened remnants of the old bombed city. All around us were these soft, golden lights that give off a warm and friendly feeling. In the midst of all this it was raining. Not harshly, but enough that my hair was getting wet, and I could see droplets glinting off my Northface jacket. But perhaps what’s most striking of all was the silence. Looking over the bridge, I saw the water flowing slowly under us, and it was all quiet except for the singing in the distance. On the way to the bridge, we had passed a man and woman singing along to an operatic soundtrack. And the music and their voices were echoing off the buildings out across the river, singing a melancholy and haunting tune, which gave this scene a whole different dimension.

Maybe those words moved you somehow, but I can guarantee you there is absolutely no replacing the lived experience of that moment, and I am unsure whether or not I will ever have an experience like that again. It helped contribute to the realization (as well as my success with communication and the language) that I could seriously see myself moving out to Germany after I finish undergrad. I could see myself getting a working visa and living my first few years after college in Germany, becoming completely fluent in the language, and perhaps even extending my writing to two languages. But there’s a long time before I make that decision, and lots of places and experiences to influence me as well.

Aber, für jetzt, das ist alles! Aufwiederzehn!

(Dresden, Deutschland)

Bis nächstes Mal,

Joe