Here's an awkward pic of some girl in front of the Reichstag she wasn't even posing she's just that awkward and her arms are naturally that penguin-y I know ew what a weirdo. Cool building though
Okay yeah whatever it's been like 8000 years since my last post I'M SORRY I've been doin' things and stuff. So. Since my last post:
I did some more NatureCulture learning at NOISE (as well as a LOT of doodling). Wednesday, the lecturers were feminist musicologists. I had no idea there were so many feminisms but it makes sense since there is so much that goes into feminism (feminism really does encompass everything). One of the speakers, Jannie Pranger, gave a vocalecture. She spoke for some of it, but then to demonstrate what she was saying, she sang for some of the lecture as well. It was really cool and new. After NOISE on Wednesday, I took the train to Nijmegen, a city not too far from Utrecht,. On the train, I was sitting in a section by two guys I think around my age. One was a Dutch-Moroccan named Sufjan and the other was Dutch whose name I can't remember right now but ugh that's gonna bug me so much. Something with a G I think. But we were just having casual conversation about how the Dutch think Americans are all stupid and how Americans don't think about the Dutch and then I decided to include them in my research so I sneakily turned my voice recorder on and asked them to talk about feminism and feminists. Very informative. Sufjan actually gave me the phrase "angry bitches" so I think we're getting somewhere with busting the stereotype!! I explained my research project to them and they were very interested in helping me out but also kind of awkward because I think they didn't want to offend me or something. We ended up just talking about human nature in general so it wasn't totally pertinent but it was nice. When the G-kid was getting off the train (after Sufjan had already left) I thanked him for the information and he said "not information, conversation!" which I thought was precious and true. I'm really lucky because I can treat my research like casual conversations and still gain useful data. Fun stuff. Anyway, Nijmegen is where my friend Lucy from UD is studying this semester, so I got to visit her! That was very fun. She, her friend Thais (whose verrrry fitting nickname is the Dutch phrase for "pretty boy" -given to him by his friends, not himself, he made sure to point out- AND who I'm pretty sure is crushing hard core on Lucy and vice versa and they met by literally running into each other on their bikes so if they don't end up getting married then idk what love even is), and I all went to a few bars and danced a lot. It was awesome getting to see her and really weird/kind of disorienting since we were in the Netherlands. Not Dayton. Like whoOoOoaaa how'd that happen ya know? She even let me sleep on her bed in her dorm and then ride her bike to the train station at 7am <3 trufriend. Made it back just in time for class.
Thursday's lecturers at NOISE were activists so it was cool getting to listen to the other end of the whole academia-vs-activism thing. One of the lecturers, Niamh Moore, is an ecofeminist and during her lecture she played a clip of a video that featured Vandana Shiva, who is a food activist (among other things) and who I loooove. I quote her all the time in my papers about the organic food movement. Niamh's whole lecture was really interesting and about her involvement in a peace camp at Clayoquot. The other lecturer was Joan Haran who was an amazing speaker and very inspiring. She was really good at keeping my attention (I have a tendency to drift off during class a lot even if I am interested in the given topic). I think a lot of it had to do with her sense of humor. The topic of her lecture was Screening Naturecultures: Eco/feminism and Green Film Production. She (along with almost everyone at NOISE) referenced Donna Haraway a lot. One Haraway quote that she used which I liked was, "we seem terribly afraid of patience, we mistake it for passivity." During our lunch break on Thursday, Iveta set up a small informal interview for me with 3 feminists from Greece, the Netherlands, and Finland. That was really cool and I got a lot of good information about different countries' feminisms. At the end of the day I approached one of the directors of NOISE, Iris Van der Tuin, and had another short interview about Dutch feminism. Makin' some headway!
Friday at NOISE all of the small groups had to give their presentations which they had been working on all week. All of the presentations where reallllly cool and creative and entertaining. A lot of short play type things about naturecultures and such. Had another little interview during lunch break again. On the walk home I got an ice cream cone and put french fries in it, which has been a dream of mine for a while now so you could say I was happy. Then I went on a run and got ready for the night. Friday night was the NOISE party since the week-long summer school was officially over. SO FUN. Probably one of my favorite nights in Utrecht. I ate meat. But there was a face painter and dress-up clothes and an amazing dance floor that led out to a canal and I danced with Iveta and it was just so so fun.
I did some more NatureCulture learning at NOISE (as well as a LOT of doodling). Wednesday, the lecturers were feminist musicologists. I had no idea there were so many feminisms but it makes sense since there is so much that goes into feminism (feminism really does encompass everything). One of the speakers, Jannie Pranger, gave a vocalecture. She spoke for some of it, but then to demonstrate what she was saying, she sang for some of the lecture as well. It was really cool and new. After NOISE on Wednesday, I took the train to Nijmegen, a city not too far from Utrecht,. On the train, I was sitting in a section by two guys I think around my age. One was a Dutch-Moroccan named Sufjan and the other was Dutch whose name I can't remember right now but ugh that's gonna bug me so much. Something with a G I think. But we were just having casual conversation about how the Dutch think Americans are all stupid and how Americans don't think about the Dutch and then I decided to include them in my research so I sneakily turned my voice recorder on and asked them to talk about feminism and feminists. Very informative. Sufjan actually gave me the phrase "angry bitches" so I think we're getting somewhere with busting the stereotype!! I explained my research project to them and they were very interested in helping me out but also kind of awkward because I think they didn't want to offend me or something. We ended up just talking about human nature in general so it wasn't totally pertinent but it was nice. When the G-kid was getting off the train (after Sufjan had already left) I thanked him for the information and he said "not information, conversation!" which I thought was precious and true. I'm really lucky because I can treat my research like casual conversations and still gain useful data. Fun stuff. Anyway, Nijmegen is where my friend Lucy from UD is studying this semester, so I got to visit her! That was very fun. She, her friend Thais (whose verrrry fitting nickname is the Dutch phrase for "pretty boy" -given to him by his friends, not himself, he made sure to point out- AND who I'm pretty sure is crushing hard core on Lucy and vice versa and they met by literally running into each other on their bikes so if they don't end up getting married then idk what love even is), and I all went to a few bars and danced a lot. It was awesome getting to see her and really weird/kind of disorienting since we were in the Netherlands. Not Dayton. Like whoOoOoaaa how'd that happen ya know? She even let me sleep on her bed in her dorm and then ride her bike to the train station at 7am <3 trufriend. Made it back just in time for class.
Thursday's lecturers at NOISE were activists so it was cool getting to listen to the other end of the whole academia-vs-activism thing. One of the lecturers, Niamh Moore, is an ecofeminist and during her lecture she played a clip of a video that featured Vandana Shiva, who is a food activist (among other things) and who I loooove. I quote her all the time in my papers about the organic food movement. Niamh's whole lecture was really interesting and about her involvement in a peace camp at Clayoquot. The other lecturer was Joan Haran who was an amazing speaker and very inspiring. She was really good at keeping my attention (I have a tendency to drift off during class a lot even if I am interested in the given topic). I think a lot of it had to do with her sense of humor. The topic of her lecture was Screening Naturecultures: Eco/feminism and Green Film Production. She (along with almost everyone at NOISE) referenced Donna Haraway a lot. One Haraway quote that she used which I liked was, "we seem terribly afraid of patience, we mistake it for passivity." During our lunch break on Thursday, Iveta set up a small informal interview for me with 3 feminists from Greece, the Netherlands, and Finland. That was really cool and I got a lot of good information about different countries' feminisms. At the end of the day I approached one of the directors of NOISE, Iris Van der Tuin, and had another short interview about Dutch feminism. Makin' some headway!
Friday at NOISE all of the small groups had to give their presentations which they had been working on all week. All of the presentations where reallllly cool and creative and entertaining. A lot of short play type things about naturecultures and such. Had another little interview during lunch break again. On the walk home I got an ice cream cone and put french fries in it, which has been a dream of mine for a while now so you could say I was happy. Then I went on a run and got ready for the night. Friday night was the NOISE party since the week-long summer school was officially over. SO FUN. Probably one of my favorite nights in Utrecht. I ate meat. But there was a face painter and dress-up clothes and an amazing dance floor that led out to a canal and I danced with Iveta and it was just so so fun.
almost all of the antioch folks minus two people
so so so fun.
Saturday was a paper-writing day for me. I also ate a lot of cookies. Strowis was completely transformed on Saturday because it was their 15th anniversary and they were having a giant party. Major decorating and setting up for live music (almost everyone that works there plays music so they were all really cool and fun). That was a very fun party as well. Did a lot of dancing to fun live Strowis music.
SUNDAY WAS MOVING DAY! As much as I hate packing, I was very excited to because we were leaving for Berlin! Really sad to leave Utrecht and Strowis, though. They will always have my heart and I told Strowis I'd see them soon because I have every intention of going back. 8 hours of travel later and we arrived at our destination! We were greeted at the train station by our homestay coordinator (Ipek Ipekcioglu, a Turkish German lesbian DJ who I'm pretty sure runs the Berlin DJ scene and is really kewl) and all of our hosts. My friend Hannah and I are roommates in our homestay, which is really fun because I like Hannah and we have a plan to blare The Clash while baking cookies sometime this week. Our hosts are Marie and her girlfriend Sue. Marie is a DJ and a translator and a cinema worker and is Portuguese but has lived in Berlin for about 20 years now and Sue has lived here forever but she grew up in the DDR (east side of the Berlin wall) so there is a lot of cool DDR stuff in the house. They also have a really cute cat named Schubert who is awesome and loves me but also has scratched me when we were playing one time so idk.
Berlin has been awesome so far. I live pretty close to the longest part of the wall that's left and it's reeeeally cool looking with all of the murals and graffiti and whatnot. We also live right next to the river Spree which is pretty. Our classes and lectures are held in a big squat called Mehringhof theater. Our whole situation is very unconventional and nontraditional and I love all of it. Totally queer-ing study abroad norms.
Monday was Iveta's birthday! We had class in the morning and then went to lunch at an awesome Indian place. In the afternoon we had a 3-hour walking tour of the city. It would have been soooo much more enjoyable if it wasn't raining and freezing cold out. I was very miserable for a lot of the tour but I also think that could have been aiding in my experience because a lot of the tour focused on the Wall and the Holocaust, so I was often overcome with sadness and since the weather was also sad, it seemed appropriate, as terrible as that sounds. I wish I had journaled or blogged that day, though, because I learned a lot of cool and interesting things about the city and the country and I'm afraid I might have forgotten it now. One interesting thing is that apparently the Nazi Germans set the Reichstag on fire years ago, but all of the German tour guides will not admit that. Two days later we were proven that because we had a tour of the Reichstag and the guide said that it was a "mystery" who set fire to it. Funny. I also never knew that when JFK was here and he was talking about the US support of Berlin, he said "Ich bin ein Berliner!" thinking that he was identifying the the Berlin people by saying that he was one of them after just one day of being in their city, what he said was actually translated into "I am a jelly doughnut!" because he used an article. I thought that was pretty lol-worthy. I'm actually realizing that I'm better at the German language than I thought I was. I still am intimidate to use it in public, I think mainly because I know all of the locals would make fun of my yoga
Tuesday, we had class until 4 and then I had skype dates with my mom and Debbie.
Wednesday, we were finished with class at noon so I came home and ran around our neighborhood a little before our tour of the Reichstag. I found an adorable park right around the corner of where we're staying and also a sweet corner store which has everything anyone would ever need including 79 cent dark chocolate bars. There are a few cool bars and restaurants on our street too so that's nice. The Reichstag was awesome and HUGE and sooo mod and futuristic looking it was very cool. At the end of the tour we went up to the roof and took some cool pictures.
Saturday was a paper-writing day for me. I also ate a lot of cookies. Strowis was completely transformed on Saturday because it was their 15th anniversary and they were having a giant party. Major decorating and setting up for live music (almost everyone that works there plays music so they were all really cool and fun). That was a very fun party as well. Did a lot of dancing to fun live Strowis music.
SUNDAY WAS MOVING DAY! As much as I hate packing, I was very excited to because we were leaving for Berlin! Really sad to leave Utrecht and Strowis, though. They will always have my heart and I told Strowis I'd see them soon because I have every intention of going back. 8 hours of travel later and we arrived at our destination! We were greeted at the train station by our homestay coordinator (Ipek Ipekcioglu, a Turkish German lesbian DJ who I'm pretty sure runs the Berlin DJ scene and is really kewl) and all of our hosts. My friend Hannah and I are roommates in our homestay, which is really fun because I like Hannah and we have a plan to blare The Clash while baking cookies sometime this week. Our hosts are Marie and her girlfriend Sue. Marie is a DJ and a translator and a cinema worker and is Portuguese but has lived in Berlin for about 20 years now and Sue has lived here forever but she grew up in the DDR (east side of the Berlin wall) so there is a lot of cool DDR stuff in the house. They also have a really cute cat named Schubert who is awesome and loves me but also has scratched me when we were playing one time so idk.
Berlin has been awesome so far. I live pretty close to the longest part of the wall that's left and it's reeeeally cool looking with all of the murals and graffiti and whatnot. We also live right next to the river Spree which is pretty. Our classes and lectures are held in a big squat called Mehringhof theater. Our whole situation is very unconventional and nontraditional and I love all of it. Totally queer-ing study abroad norms.
Monday was Iveta's birthday! We had class in the morning and then went to lunch at an awesome Indian place. In the afternoon we had a 3-hour walking tour of the city. It would have been soooo much more enjoyable if it wasn't raining and freezing cold out. I was very miserable for a lot of the tour but I also think that could have been aiding in my experience because a lot of the tour focused on the Wall and the Holocaust, so I was often overcome with sadness and since the weather was also sad, it seemed appropriate, as terrible as that sounds. I wish I had journaled or blogged that day, though, because I learned a lot of cool and interesting things about the city and the country and I'm afraid I might have forgotten it now. One interesting thing is that apparently the Nazi Germans set the Reichstag on fire years ago, but all of the German tour guides will not admit that. Two days later we were proven that because we had a tour of the Reichstag and the guide said that it was a "mystery" who set fire to it. Funny. I also never knew that when JFK was here and he was talking about the US support of Berlin, he said "Ich bin ein Berliner!" thinking that he was identifying the the Berlin people by saying that he was one of them after just one day of being in their city, what he said was actually translated into "I am a jelly doughnut!" because he used an article. I thought that was pretty lol-worthy. I'm actually realizing that I'm better at the German language than I thought I was. I still am intimidate to use it in public, I think mainly because I know all of the locals would make fun of my yoga
Tuesday, we had class until 4 and then I had skype dates with my mom and Debbie.
Wednesday, we were finished with class at noon so I came home and ran around our neighborhood a little before our tour of the Reichstag. I found an adorable park right around the corner of where we're staying and also a sweet corner store which has everything anyone would ever need including 79 cent dark chocolate bars. There are a few cool bars and restaurants on our street too so that's nice. The Reichstag was awesome and HUGE and sooo mod and futuristic looking it was very cool. At the end of the tour we went up to the roof and took some cool pictures.
Then some of us got dinner at an "authentic" German restaurant in a very tourist-y part of the city. Overpriced but still really good food. I ate meat again because I thought I should try some German wurst. I have zero regrets because it was so worth it. Delicious currywurst and potato salad.
My pal Bethany was pretty delicious too. Thursday we had a lecture on "Trans* in Germany - from violation of human rights to supportive alliances" which was really interesting and also easily kept my interest. Really cool and disturbing stats and facts about policies regarding transgender rights. Apparently Argentina is the best country for trans people because they have next to ideal identity laws and stuff. We were off in the afternoon so I went on a jog and then Hannah and I did our readings in the park because the weather was BEAUTIFUL and there's a kindergarten or something next to the park so there were a bunch of little kids playing on the sets and they were absolutely adorable. I soaked up some nice sun and got my readings done at the same time, it was perfect. Thursday night a lot of the Antioch people went to this bar called SilverFuture (gay bar - frequent activity for me these days. If anyone knows some fun bars in Berlin that aren't specifically gay, give me a shout. Nothing against the gay bars, I've always enjoyed that kinda crowd, but it's nice to mix it up sometimes ya know?). Fun night though.
Friday we had class all day. After class, a few of us hung out and go a drink at a bar in the same squat quad as our "classroom," called Clash. It's a really cool place I'm excited to return. They were also playing a German cover of Blister in the Sun when we walked in so that's a good sign. We met a girl named Zsofia from Budapest, who told us about a free concert in a park this weekend and who might sit in on one of our classes just for something to do. She just got to Berlin a few days ago and will be here for 3 years studying cultural studies. She's nice and we became facebook friends so obviously we're now bff's until the end of time. Then we did a little exploring around that area of the city. Went in some shops, got some big soft pretzels from a bakery, and went home. Friday night, we went to Lauren's (our TA) favorite bar from when they came on this trip 5 years ago called Barbie Deinhoffs. Really cool place with awesome music but unfortunately just sitting, no dancing.
Yesterday (Saturday), I went on a run and then Hannah and I went to Goerlitzer park so meet Iveta and some of the other Antioch folks. Suuuuuuch a beautiful day yet again. Iveta brought some blankets, chocolate, and a foam hello kitty ball that a few of us used as a volleyball. Really all of the ingredients for a perfect day I think.
Friday we had class all day. After class, a few of us hung out and go a drink at a bar in the same squat quad as our "classroom," called Clash. It's a really cool place I'm excited to return. They were also playing a German cover of Blister in the Sun when we walked in so that's a good sign. We met a girl named Zsofia from Budapest, who told us about a free concert in a park this weekend and who might sit in on one of our classes just for something to do. She just got to Berlin a few days ago and will be here for 3 years studying cultural studies. She's nice and we became facebook friends so obviously we're now bff's until the end of time. Then we did a little exploring around that area of the city. Went in some shops, got some big soft pretzels from a bakery, and went home. Friday night, we went to Lauren's (our TA) favorite bar from when they came on this trip 5 years ago called Barbie Deinhoffs. Really cool place with awesome music but unfortunately just sitting, no dancing.
Yesterday (Saturday), I went on a run and then Hannah and I went to Goerlitzer park so meet Iveta and some of the other Antioch folks. Suuuuuuch a beautiful day yet again. Iveta brought some blankets, chocolate, and a foam hello kitty ball that a few of us used as a volleyball. Really all of the ingredients for a perfect day I think.
Last night a few of us went to another squat called Tuntenhaus which apparently only has these parties 3 or 4 times a year and they're always a big deal. When Hannah and I got there, we had to stand in line for a loooong time but eventually got in and met up with some pals and danced a lottttttt. So sososo fun. I love how much dancing we do here all the time. This place was really cool and alternative too so of course there was some really good people watching. I've come to the conclusion that Europe I think is just the people-watching capital of the world. I know this because I'm an expert on Europe because I've been to two countries so trust me. Just kidding. I actually have noticed that Berlin generally is not that fashion forward. At least compared to Utrecht and even the big cities in the US. I would expect differently - it seems like Berlin would have lots of well-dressed people. There are some, but far fewer than I expected.
Today (Sunday) I planned on going to one of the Sunday-only flea markets here and then to the free concert that Zsofia told us about. But of course, I was overtaken by the lazy Sunday syndrome and I stayed home the entire day. I went on a jog and showered and did some facetiming with some peeps. Hannah went to the flea market and got a sweet dress for one euro and a scarf for one euro so I'm feeling pretty regretful. Oh well. Next time.
Again - apologies for the length. Will write again soon. Til then, Tchuss!
xx
Today (Sunday) I planned on going to one of the Sunday-only flea markets here and then to the free concert that Zsofia told us about. But of course, I was overtaken by the lazy Sunday syndrome and I stayed home the entire day. I went on a jog and showered and did some facetiming with some peeps. Hannah went to the flea market and got a sweet dress for one euro and a scarf for one euro so I'm feeling pretty regretful. Oh well. Next time.
Again - apologies for the length. Will write again soon. Til then, Tchuss!
xx
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