The ten days since I arrived in Braunschweig and began my
internship at the Georg Eckert Institute have been exciting, chaotic, and very
busy, but I have loved it all so far. I began work the day
after arriving, though my boss slowly eased me into my surroundings. This post
is in many ways my first time to really sit back and reflect on all that I have
done so far. With everything going on, its almost hard to imagine that less
than two weeks ago I was back in Massachusetts, and a week before that I was
still in DC finishing up my first year of grad school. Below is a very
general overview of my experience in Braunschweig so far. Upcoming posts will
cover my trip last weekend to Dresden and Prague, another about my first week
working at the Georg Eckert Institute for International Textbook Research,
another on the strange little things I have noticed and encountered living in
Germany so far, and finally one on reminiscing on the plane about when my
interest in German culture began, and how through this my academic and career
aspirations were born, and perhaps without realizing it, have led me to my
current circumstances.
I arrived in Braunschweig after a long flight to Madrid,
followed by a five hour layover, a four hour flight to Hannover, and then an
hour train ride before finally arriving in Braunschweig. I was unable to fall
asleep on either plane ride because as embarrassing it is to admit it, I have a
childlike fear of flying and am usually a nervous wreck throughout the duration
of a flight. While air travel is an incredible modern advancement, enabling us
to quickly visit regions across the world that would have been unimaginable
just over a century ago, I nonetheless feel like humans were made to stay
grounded. No matter how it may be, I never feel comfortable being in a
contraption thousands of feet above the earth, with just the floor separating
me from plummeting to the ground. My
opinion is that until technology enables to grow our own wings Terminator-style,
humans and air travel are naturally incompatible.
When I finally arrived in Braunschweig, I took the trolley car straight
to the address of my new apartment on Wilhelmstaße, where I was greeted by
Martina, who was to be my new boss at the internship. She gave me the key and
then showed me around my apartment. It is a modestly sized but brand new
apartment, and has everything I need for the next two months. I have my own
desk, closet, bathroom, and a small kitchen area with a stove top, sink, and mini
fridge. It is also in an excellent location. My apartment is directly across
from two bakeries (bakeries here are like Starbucks in America, as in there are
five of them everywhere you turn), a supermarket, and a gym. I am also a two
minute walk from downtown Braunschweig, where centuries of rich cultural history
are mixed with modern restaurants and shops.
Braunschweig in many ways is what one might imagine when envisioning a small German city, filled with beautiful old buildings, churches
and landmarks, plenty of places to shop and eat, and of course, very good (and
cheap for that matter) beer. And while
there is a McDonald’s and a Dunkin Donuts downtown, for the most part the city
seems not to have been impacted by globalization compared to nearby European
cities. It has been able to maintain a strong cultural identity, one in which
people are warm and neighborly towards one another, and no one ever appears to
be in a rush. And unlike larger German cities, it seems that at least half of
the people I have encountered speak little or no English, which has made it
difficult to communicate at points, but overall I like that it forces me to
rely on the little German that I know, which I imagine (or at least hope) will
make be a better German speaker. Most conversations I have with native speakers
goes well for the first few sentences, but as the conversation gets more complicated,
I usually resort to telling them that ich
kann nicht Deutsch gut sprechen, or “I cannot speak German well.” Despite
my lack of vocabulary and comically bad pronunciation, most people seem to
appreciate that I am at least making the attempt to speak the language, and as
a result tend to be very courteous and helpful.
While it is
technically a city, it has a very small town feel to it, and you can walk from one
end to the other in just over a half hour, while never having to worry about
walking through the streets by yourself. The office where I work is halfway
across the city but only takes me about 12 minutes to walk there. There is also
a top notch trolley and subway system, which always runs on time and has very
clean trolley cars. And like many areas in Nothern Germany, the preferred
method of transportation is biking. They almost outnumber cars and pedestrians
on the streets, and even have their own lanes on the sidewalks. In a town where
everything is in relative distance, cycling is the perfect way to get around,
especially with the pleasant spring weather we have been experiencing so far. I
have yet to decide whether or not to purchase or rent one myself, for while I
do love to bike, I have rather enjoyed the short walk to work every day through
the old center of town. It is a pleasant little town square, rebuilt after
allied bombing raids at the end of WW2 destroyed 85% of the nearly thousand-year old structures
(which will be covered in a later post), but they have designed it in a way
that you would never guess that these buildings are actually the replicas of
the original structures.
While Braunschweig and DC tend to have similar temperatures,
I haven’t felt the god-awful DC humidity that makes you question whose genius
idea it was to build a city on top of swamp lands. While I have already begun
to miss DC, I do enjoy the feeling of not living in constant fear of profusely
sweating at any given part of the day. It is nice to be able to sit down at an
outside restaurant and have a coffee without wondering if you’re going to need
to towel off afterwards.
Perhaps the only thing I do not like about being here is
experiencing this all by myself. It is not to say that I’m lonely, but rather I
feel that traveling is best experienced with a companion. While I have enjoyed
sitting at the outdoor restaurants and having a cappuccino or Wolters Pillsner,
(a beer brewed here in Braunschweig considered medicore by German standards, but would
be the best beer at nearly any bar in America), and conversing with the friendly
locals, it would be great to have someone else to take it all in with me. There
are so many little things worth noting throughout the day, and it is an
adjustment not being able to quickly point out what I observe to someone else.
But perhaps this is the plight of us millennials, that when we do not have
constant communication either in person or through our phones, we start to go
stir crazy. Either way I have highly enjoyed living here so far, soaking in the
beautiful and relaxed German culture, the food, and making the most of my free
time outside of work, which has also been a wonderful experience so far, and I
will cover in my next blog post.
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