In which accidental re-americanization plays a role.

Last week I attended a gathering of charming, intelligent, over-privileged individuals to celebrate the F-bright New Year and get orienteered into German bureaucracy and society. We convened in the anciently prominent university town of Göttingen, where we sat in an American chain hotel and conversed in American English and thus proceeded to befuddle my brain and location sensory devices. As nice as it was to have arrived long before the start of orientation, I was almost relieved to need to be somewhere and do something official. It was wonderful to find myself amongst all of these interesting, friendly, fully bright people after two weeks of little human interaction. The ease of getting to know someone with a shared mother language is not to be underrated.

There was also the additional perk of boisterously reuniting with one of my Smith friends who also has a research grant and will be located not so far from Home Sweet Hamburg. Having someone there with four years of shared experiences, including our previous year together in Germany, was very comforting. Other perks included being very well fed, a lovely city tour, and free evenings to do whatever. In addition to all of the important grant-related information overload, I was both happy and disconcerted by a discussion we had about social matters, more specifically about how hard it can be to make friends in Germany. I was comforted to learn that I wasn't the only person who had struggled in this realm, and was then discomforted by the fact that I would probably still have some trouble this time around. One of the leaders of the discussion compared German and American social interactions like this: Americans have a soft shell and hard core. Germans have a hard shell and soft core. (Peaches and coconuts, if you will.) Americans are friendly and easy to chat with, though it's hard to get beneath the surface of pleasantries and make true, lifelong friends. Germans are hard to befriend initially, particularly later on in life when friend groups have long been made and they're not looking for more, though once you get through the shell, they are more open emotionally and more committed to you as a friend than Americans tend to be. Gross generalizations, I know. Don't shoot the messenger.

We were half-jokingly encouraged to visit Italy and Greece and help support their economies. I was amused. Maybe I will. Maybe they should finance our trips there-- oh, wait. The German government is already on that.

Here are some pictures taken in the city and down rural back streets. The weather was simply delicious.

I had several hours to spare before my train on departure day, so I stuck my bags in a locker in the train station and set to strolling. I hadn't gone ten minutes before running into a couple of my fellow Fellows who were doing the same thing, so we teamed up and partook in some co-wandering. The climax of our adventure came about via a pumpkin festival that we stumbled upon downtown. We each indulged in a great splotch of totally yum pumpkin soup while sitting in the sun amidst the hustle and bustle of the city square while a couple of well-dressed people cranked out everything from traditional German classics to Simon & Garfunkel to ABBA's "Money, Money, Money" on their xylophoney machines. There was much grinning contentedness in my face. The fact that I was heading to my favorite German home directly afterward only helped to further light my delight.