Hello hello! You have reached Tim’s blog. Except this time, it’s actually updated! Yay! I’ve was kinda really busy in December and fell out of the habit of writing them, but I feel like I should get back into it. The reason I was so busy in December was that I had some sort of practice pretty much every day. Our orchestra was preparing for a concert that was before Christmas and that international concert that I was talking about also took up a lot of time. I had practices for the rock band and the horn duets. So pretty much the same thing that I did to myself in high school. I won’t give you every single detail about what I have done in the last couple of months, that would take up too much time, but I’ll certainly give an overview and try to get back in the habit of writing these things again.
Band (Yeazz)
As I said, the international music concert was put on at the beginning of December entirely by students. We hung out flyers a couple of weeks before, and as a result, the turn out was surprisingly big. We didn’t even have enough chairs, haha. We had some tables in the back which people could stand at, but then the sides and front of the hall were packed with students/professors that were interested in coming to hear some unique music.
The main part of the concert was our strange rock band with 2 horns. We played several pop hits with our own little twist to them (of course none of these songs were originally played with horns), such as “Toxic” by Britney Spears with the synthesizer part played by the horns. We also mixed in some parts from other songs that worked with the chord structure. It was much better than the original in my opinion.
In between every couple of songs, we had the other groups play their respective solos/duets. We had a girl improvise on the Korean drum, a classical piano solo, 2 much different singing solos (one was Portuguese and the other. . . Italian maybe? I forget...), my horn duet, a duet between drum set and didgeridoo, a classical horn solo, and another singer from India. Yeah, it was a big program and it took forever. It was successful though, and we might be doing it again.
Orchestra has been going really well. Most of the people I know come from there considering attending lectures where nobody knows you’re even an exchange student is in no way a good method to get to know people. We went to Bremen for a kind of rehearsal weekend. That was pretty fun, although I didn’t get to see much of Bremen, we just practiced a lot. Our concert was the week before Christmas (twice actually: Friday and Sunday and it went very well.
Christmas Time!
One of those weekends in December I visited my brother and my sister-in-law in Bonn. It was probably the last time I will see them there, as they are moving/have moved to Frankfurt. I was able to wish them a Merry Christmas and give them my presents to take on the plane, since they were going to the states for Christmas.
I had a lovely Christmas with my host family. Christmas eve we had Bockwurst and Kartoffelsalat, and then watched good ole “Home Alone” in German. Saturday the twins and my Host-grandma came to share a big Christmas dinner in the early afternoon. We made Roulade and Knödel and Rotkohl cooked in Glühwein. Mmm Mmm Mmm! After things settled down and the Oma left, I Skyped in to my own family’s Christmas morning.
The day after I then left for Stade, where I was born, to visit old family friends that knew me as a baby until I was 4. That was quite lovely; I got to hang out, talk, and take a tour through my birthplace. It’s a really picturesque town and I really enjoyed the visit. After I got back home it was time for the New Year’s festivities. On New Year’s eve I headed over to the Seeburger See with my friend Zac and we ran 10 km (twice around the lake) with a bunch of other runners. I was not really in that of shape, but whatever. At least I finished it (and only got lapped by two ridiculously intense runners). It was cold though, and my lunch did not settle too well. New Year’s was spent at a friends house in Göttingen. We watched a movie and then turned on the equivalent of the Time’s Square countdown in Berlin. It was pretty fun.
Whoo, almost caught up, just got a few more things to say about December, one of those being the Weihnachtsmarkt. Translated it’s the Christmas market, but it’s something really unique to Germany, so I’ll probably end up just calling it the Weihnachtsmarkt. Basically at the beginning of December/end of November many cities around Germany put up a market with multiple stands that have yummy stuff like bratwurst, currywurst, roasted mushrooms, calzones, crepes, roasted nuts, and this list could basically go on forever. I seriously could spend so much money there. . . They also have stands with home made jewelry, felt things, and other little souvenir like items.The size of the Weihnachtsmarkt obviously depends on the size of the city. Ours took about five to 10 minutes or so to walk around and look at everything, but in cities like Leipzig, which has one of the best, if not the best market, require pretty much a whole day to explore. Leipzig actually had multiple ones: a normal one, a middle ages themed one and a Scandinavian one. But despite the size there is always one thing unique to each market: the Glühwein glass. If you didn’t know already Glühwein is a traditional Christmas season drink, which is basically a type of very sweet wine that one drinks hot, like hot chocolate. Each city has a glass unique to it’s city and the larger cities have different ones from different parts of the city. In Leipzig I saw four or five or more different glasses. You can easily collect them by paying one or two Euros. I have the Göttingen one of course, as well as a couple more, two from Leipzig and one from Hannover. Yeah, that was definitely a high point of the German Christmas for me, and if I ever make it back to Germany I would try to go in December especially for that purpose, because they are fantastic.
School
Yeah, school is boring. I’m not going to talk much about it. I’m taking two General Biology classes, a Genetic/Biotech class, and a Music science class. I like the Music one and the Genetics/Biotech class the best. They are both seminars, and therefore smaller, and much more interactive. Plus I just loved learning about what technologies are put to use that we aren’t even aware of. Basically, be careful what you eat, but most importantly moderation is key. There are often times sketchy things in your food, but for them most part you shouldn’t be paranoid, there is a lot of media hype about Biotech being evil, when the truth is that it has a lot of good aspects, and we have been using Biotech ever since we’ve been making beer and cheese. Biotech does a lot of good things for us, for instance drugs like Penecillin have been created by using fungi, and Corizone is produced significantly easier by using a type of mold. Another type of mold also produces citric acid originally found in lemons, so think twice before thinking that the citric acid in your gummy bears comes from actual fruit. That point is actually pretty creepy.
You know what? The music class is also very interesting, so I am indeed going to talk about it, too. You can skip this section if you don’t want to read about me analyzing Tchaikovsky’s Symphony #6. Not that I need to give you permission. I’m giving my report next week on this symphony and I must say that I found the whole research process to be extremely interesting. You see, Tchaik was a Russian composer that fell out of the norm of Russians, by writing in a more western manner. The forms of his earlier symphonies were reminiscent of the Classical-era symphonies of Mozart and Beethoven. Many important Russian composers of the time disapproved of him, because he was not Russian enough. Russians at the time liked to take a melody from their folk music and play around with it for a whole piece, unlike the western way of taking a melody and developing it into a counter melody that leads to another one, with tons of fluidity and standard Sonata form. The problem that came into the Romantic era at this point was that many melodies were extravagant and intense, and really didn’t fit into this kind of writing. Tchaik found a solution to this problem by kind of going away from Sonata form in his later symphonies. He did his own thing, which suited him well, because he was a master composers of memorable melodies (everybody knows the beautiful melodies of the Nutcracker Suite and Swan Lake). Many critics were of the opinion that he should stay that way and avoid writing symphonies. When he did he got criticized of not having unity in them. His melodies did not really flow into other melodies like what was traditionally done. He had one melody and then introduced another and then messed with them both in a development section. As a result, his sixth symphony was highly criticized. There is a really great Youtube video of Leonard Bernstein defending Tchaikovsky, and pointing out how his sixth symphony achieves unity, that is incredibly insightful if you’re interested. Yeah, so I have gotten to like really the symphony. The way he writes, changes and integrates melodies is really great to listen to and study.
Alright you can start reading again
I have that presentation on Wednesday, I’m super nervous. Anyways, this week is the last week at the University before finals, because next week I will be in Berlin for the Berlin seminar. I’m super excited to see everybody again and explore Berlin, it should be a great time. Basically that means I should be starting my internship again. I want to try something new for February and March and then definitely come back sometime to the Graslandwissenschaft internship, because the people there were really great, and working outside when nature wakes up from it’s slumber is quite nice, although we’ll have to see how my allergies take it. I heard May is pretty bad for allergies.
Ende
So that’s basically it for today. I have other things that I could talk about like my friends ridiculous area representative, and my opinion about the sad state of Christianity in Germany (the one thing that I would consider a kind of culture shock for me), and me being quite homesick at times during the times where nothing is really going on, like after New Year’s, but I’ll save those for another blog that is lacking on content. It’s kinda strange thinking about the fact that I’ve been away from home for 6 and a half months. The most I’ve done before that was 4 weeks and I was with my family still. I have literally been living in another family’s home since July. . . weird. I’m looking forward to this Semester though, starting this next internship will really get my mood up again, and I have a feeling the next six months are going to fly by. Until I write again, macht’s gut!
Skez
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