this is it. or: credits & thanks.

here's a few silly (and some not quite so silly) remarks about life in general and in particular, just some stuff i wanted to share. might get a little too emotional at some point, nevermind that, i wrote most of it at night on the plane so please excuse any weird, unexplainable or overly dramatic statements :)

so i guess this is it. i’m on the airplane while i write this so the fact that you can read it online proves that i’ve arrived home in some reasonable condition…
(update on that: yes, i have, and i got used to the new time zone after about two days, so today is the fourth and i do not feel particularly influenced by eastern time anymore. also, school has started, i'm taking it easy this semester - cause i've adopted a new philosophy: from now on i'm taking it easy and will only be doing things that i actually want to do and will not continue pursuing any activities that stress me in any shape, way or form anymore. that is an awesome philosophy and actually it demands a lot of consequence to keep my nose out of every single interesting activity that comes up, but so far it's given me the best days of my life, so i'm keeping it up, keeping my spirits high and swinging to the beat of life. i guess i'll need to have that tattooed on my lower arm or so :) )



people around me sleep and i wish i could do the same, but probably i’ll end up cuddling with my larger-than-life jet lag for a few days instead. or maybe i just exaggerate a little, here.


it was a very weird experience to be asked for help by germans – in english – and answer in english without them getting the point that i was german, or somewhat german, too. germans speak a funny accent as i now realize. now please don’t jump at me right away, i’m very well, you could say: painfully aware of the fact that i have it, too, but hey – at least i’ve started hearing it ;)

and also my german still is kind of bumpy, i guess it’ll get better once i’m back. i will miss speaking english all the time. (update on this: leo wants me to train her in english by basically speaking it at home all the time. that’ll be fun :) we once started trying this with french for me to finally resurrect my french skills but somehow that got lost along the way.)

airberlin is cool, too. they schedule flights in a way that they leave 15 minutes late and arrive half an hour early and they hand out fancy flight survival packages including earplugs and a toothbrush, that’s cute. and also their blankets are much cuddlier and much more worth stealing than the british airways ones (was it british airways? i don’t even remember). i’ll see what i can do. (update: mission complete.)

so, really, everything comes to an end, and i think it’s okay for me to go back home now. home. whatever that is.



i for sure want to go back to the states sometime soon, maybe next year or whenever – i might very well have had the best time of my life so far here in those past two months and being surrounded by germans even on this plane seems to depress me – why are they so grumpy and cranky all the time? it cannot be the weather, that’s not that different from where i just came from. it struck me that though people refer to new yorkers as being unfriendly and mean the meanest of them could never compete with an average german. interesting, isn’t it? sometimes you have to zoom out to see the whole picture…. i’m sure i’ll be just as cranky and happy to complain again once i’m back and have overcome my first week of school.

but til then, i’m happier than i ever have been and i’m looking forward to sleep in my own bed again, but i’m even happier i have had a chance to do this, to travel around, to see the world, to get to know so many awesome people, to train my english, to steal a british airways (and an air berlin) blanket, to get drunk with people i have only roughly known for hours and to see the new york (state) and massachusetts fall, to learn so much about myself, about life, people, the us and so many more things.

since every good movie has to end with credits (and this here is almost like a movie, right, it has pictures and when you scroll the site they even move, if you don't believe me, scroll faster!) i would like to add some thanks to this blog right here.


thanks to you all for reading up on this blog, for staying in touch and writing commentaries – i guess for a while there will be nothing exciting for me to tell you, the next big trip will be in at least one year from this point, or maybe it won't - life is full of surprises and weird stuff, right... so thanks a bunch for hanging out with me, mentally and/or emotionally, feel free to add further comments and contact me and of course i’d be glad if some of you kept surfing my writing blog every once in a while.

so:
first of all: very, very special thanks to prof. katja f. cantone who sent me that email back in february encouraging me to apply for that program and giving me the idea that i actually had a chance to get in. i would have never thought i had one. thanks to her and to prof. veronika busch for writing me recommendations in an instant.

thanks to dr. david bettez (thanks for the articles, too) and prof. john yopp, to andrea o’leary and karen slaymaker, who all have made our trip to kentucky an awesome experience. also thanks for getting me a new student id three days before we left…. and for taking me to the airport and getting coffee and breakfast, karen, and thanks a lot for those awesome brownies, andrea :)

thanks to jamie fairfield who is a great ta and will be an awesome professor someday, i’m sure.

thanks to the fulbright commission, that offered this huge opportunity to us all and is the only reason i ended up going to kentucky in the first place.

thanks a lot to the fellow fulbrighters: to bliss, not only for taking me on her plus account for my lost in space days but also for hanging out with me, dealing with all my strangeness and moods ;) , laughing our asses off and having loads and loads and loads of fun and a great time together.

to yuliya for playing durak and – again – laughing our asses off and thanks for your willingness to switch languages and for loving super mario and for surfing on the same wave with me. thanks to erdem who wrote a song for me. i’m very sorry i had to abandon klampfi in the desert – well, not quite, but it was kansas, close enough, trust me – but i’m sure all the three of us will get over it. please record a video with that song for me because it was so pretty and deep. thanks to olya for sharing her writing with me. i hope we will still have a chance to exchange our author intentions and styles at some point – writing club reunion? when? where?
thanks to lesha for showing me that it’s okay that my russian doesn’t flow quite as perfectly as some people and sometimes i myself expect and that i shouldn’t worry about it.

thanks to nelli for not trying to talk to me at 7 a.m. and for being the best roommate (in the literal sense of the word) i could possibly imagine and for letting me borrow your hairdryer (that would, unlike mine, actually work under altered power conditions).

thanks a lot to all the kentuckians who hung out with us and with me.

special thanks to trevor, who introduced me to not too sucky american beer and extremely hoppy american beer that gave me the third worst hangover of my life. also thanks for tolerating the troop of crazy germans invading your shop every day asking for strange things like herbal tea. we never got to play durak, did we? well, we should at some point.

thanks to lujza for taking us out of the college world and out to the movies and lex jazz, that was great!

thanks to krista for showing us around and taking me out to that bar where her fiance’s band played some good rock music. thanks a lot to daniel for being able to sing along to wir sind helden music and for amusing me with your ability to enter clubs with your bahncard 50 which doesn’t even say a birthday. and great thanks, obviously for finding my purse and getting it back to me, you in a way saved my trip here.

special thanks to kalan, who introduced me to the beauty of nonsense american cartoons and weird horror movies and that pretty southern accent, even though i still do not understand why you ask me about what kind of accent you have when i have just about two weeks ago started hearing accents (and trying to distinguish them) at all. thanks for helping me out with that whole purse issue and for calling me when i arrived in kansas city and while i was hanging out on the bus and in central park and wherever else and for discussing kleist’s thoughts and ideas with me. finally i have come to understand my role as a woman. yay. yay indeed. oh, and thanks for giving me the stolen umbrella which i then forgot in karen’s car before i left lex. and for providing everfreezing me with a blanket. i sure had a fun and great time hanging out with you :)


thanks a bunch to masha, who i know has so, so much on her mind but still always keeps her spirit up and fights like a tiger – thank you for driving, for taking care of me (and my kidneys, they say hi and thanks, too), for providing – everything. for having that awesome home that feels so comfy and cosy right when you enter it and for just being there. thanks for being the inspiration you are! i love you!

thanks to my grandma, too, who has told me a bunch of interesting things while i was in kansas, and as always cooked my favourite soup, you know how much i love soup :)
thanks for not worrying too much about my whereabouts and state of being or for at least not showing it too much (i know she was, of course.) so that i did not need to feel too guilty about travelling all on my own :)

oh, and big thanks to sanya IV for learning my name, even if by the time you read this internet will probably be old-fashioned and dead or something.

thanks so much to brett for organizing and taking care and providing me with food, warmth and a bike map which i never used, for not making me get up at 4:50 am, for convincing me to stay a few more days, for calling and mailing to all the comrades to make sure i get a roof over my head in other places, too, for making me laugh and relax and for always staying cool and laid back even through all of my weird organizational, health and mood issues. also thanks for taking me to the train station at 7 am on a sunday i.e. getting up at 5:30 on a sunday, i know that was cruel, sorry about that. i never got to get you that puppy, but i’m pretty sure i can arrange something for when you visit germany the next time. german shepherd or black caucasian? maybe i can even find a mix (or arrange one). oh yeah, and thanks for sharing my slightly creepy sense of humor. and for constantly making fun of me and my english. you’ll get it all back once you start speaking (and not only reading :P ) german.

thanks a lot to all the comrades who put me up:
bunnie (i’m sorry you now ended up having to pay for the movies – send me jasmine, i’ll take her out to the movies in berlin or wherever) who treated me like a family member and who convinced me of the tastefulness of chicago pizza, italian beef/sausage and weird popcorn. who let me ride a bike but wouldn’t let me walk in southside chicago and who waited and cruised around the chicago union station for two hours to pick me up. i appreciates our sightseeing tour greatly (he drove me around downtown chicago at about 10 mph, showing me all the sights and not caring for all the honking cars behind. he commented the honking as follows: "man, calm down, okay! what is it about today? can a person not even drive around anymore, doing some sightseeing and stuff? what is it? come on!"
also big thanks to jasmine who took me out to the movies and who will have to go to germany at some point.

bryan, who slept on the couch while i had his room – i would have easily taken the couch, you know… and who outlined boston’s higlights for me and stayed away from giving me directions so that i could actually find the subway ;), who noted down all the important stuff and provided me with breakfast and protection from the crazy kittens.

zoe, who took some of her very little time to hang out with me, see michael moore’s movie and eat vegan stuff, who let me crash on her couch and thus made my whole i-like-new-york-experience possible. also thanks for the bagels. keep in touch!


thanks to everyone who took time to hang out with me, i know everyone lives a busy life and i really appreciate it. of course you all are welcome to visit and i will try my best to give a little bit back – thanks to tim, genevieve, chris, nick and josh from boston, to vicki, heinz, ryan and dan from minneapolis, steve from chicago, maya and jesse from new york, hillary, kameron, bobbie and lex from lexington.

thanks to everyone who stayed in touch with me from far away – thank you for your moral and emotional and sometimes financial or organizational support: special thanks to leo and viv, who always tolerate the weirdest things about my life, moods or needs for support. i love you and appreciate your help and your being around in my life a lot! :)

thanks to h.h. penning, kathi, sophie, toddy, alex and sebo for commenting.

thanks to cat stevens (if i had a dog i sure would love it a lot, too, man! we’re soulmates!), amparanoia, culcha candela, kleist, monet, clueso, bob dylan, jason pollack, follow your true colors to the work you love, michael moore, kirchner, gauguin, matisse, cezanne, miró, howard zinn, frederick douglass and harriet jacobs, bob marley, wir sind helden, michael jackson, gerry mulligan, juicebox, thanks to photography, music, movies and literature (and beer along with fortune cookies) for keeping me up spiritually, mentally, intellectually and emotionally. oh yeah, special thanks to existentialism, cause discussing you after three hours of sleep sure is a lot of fun. and very special thanks to the internet that has made this whole blog possible.

thank you everybody, i really had an awesome, incredible time in the states. i guess this is the times we will look back to and enjoy recollecting forever.

have a good whatever time of the day it is where you are, take care and always keep in mind that there’s always room to grow and the world is full of beauty and unbelievable things, just look out and keep some space for them inside your minds and hearts.




bye!

some more new york

okay, so here's some more ny before i sum everything up and leave you all to your real life - the weird thing is that i had never felt any particular desire to share my life with everybody in form of a blog but now i feel like i'm really gonna miss that. i'm thinking of ways how to redefine this blog elegantly so that i can not only write travel experiences into it...

but, anyway:
on sunday i went museum hopping, going to the museum of modern arts (moma)

and the international photography center. the moma was extremely crowded, that sucked (and they completely ignore joan mitchell which totally freaked me out). but it was fun to see the works they exhibited and also to people-watch, cause people in famous museums are rarely really interested in fine arts in general or in the place they're visiting in particular, that makes them even more fun to watch. the weather sucked, too, by the way:

(if you click on the picture to see it in full size you can actually see the rain coming down...that's about how rainy it was...)
so i got slightly grumpy at some point….. but that night zoe and i went to the movies to see capitalism: a love story. this is definitely worthwhile watching, it’s not half bad for a michael moore movie. you know, dear us friends and comrades, you are living in interesting times these days – thank you for finally getting angry and standing up against what’s happening, cause there’s enough, and it’s great that people actually start questioning the sensibility of this crappy system. we had vegan pizza afterwards – you know my relationship towards vegan food – but it was really good with artichokes and some indefinable soy stuff on it and there was so much of the topping that it was more of a quiche or something than pizza.




i decided to spend the second day in new york (and my first sunny day for a while!) in a more relaxed and easygoing way:


walking around (really something genuinely new for my style of travelling), seeing central park, hanging out there, i had one of these perfect moments: the sun was shining, i sat on a bench and had coffee and that saxophonist played all the great tunes: just friends, autumn leaves, take the a-train – kitschy? maybe. i don’t know. he played beautifully, i must add – i would easily buy his cd at any given time, and may i add: any street musician in nyc plays better than many of the professionals in germany. i’m not sure whether i should feel bad about my own sax skills or if i should laugh out loud about those jazz musicians in germany who always take themselves so seriously and feel so smart and cool about their music. i guess i’ll choose the second one, especially since i have never thought of myself as a great musician. so, yeah, sorry dear colleagues: any given street corner musician in new york, the one in the park must have been in his eighties, just simply plays better than you. haha.

perfection


central park was very nice, i spent half the day talking to friendly people over the phone, reading, writing, enjoying the sun – that was awesome. really one of those perfect moments. and very relaxed, too.



i had dinner somewhere between the upper eastside and harlem later on – i didn’t quite make it to harlem or the bronx or queens, ny is just too big for two days, or weeks, for that matter – in an italian restaurant. i only went in there because they served chicken penne a la vodka (and were about half as expensive as the other places around) and i found that really cool and wanted to try. i did, and it was great:

didn’t taste like vodka though. at all.

central park by night:


i walked around for a little longer and decided to go and see grand central station which is much bigger than i ever would have thought.


i will definitely need to come back to new york at some point and see all the other places i did not make it to this time – the comics and cartoon art museum, for instance, and so many more. it is a very cool place! and crazy, too.



zoe's apartment:

i'm in freakin fu**** new york city!

wow, at some point today it just struck me - i'm in new york city, oh my god! how did i end up being here? woooooow.... i'm staying with comrade zoe and her two roomies maya and jesse, they pay 1200 $ each for their apartment which is in eastern village, each has a room of - say - well, maybe five square meters. it is a very nice place though.



so i started off walking from here, eastern village, went down on bowery and broadway and over to lower manhattan, that's where the ferries to staten and ellis island go. tomorrow i want to check out the moma, the comics and cartoon art museum, the photography museum and central park - maybe i'll even go to the zoo and meet my heroes from madagascar. wave and smile, always smile.
on monday i want to go check out harlem and the bronx, see what that's all about and have new york style cheese cake and egg cream that has neither eggs nor cream in it somewhere along the way.

i'm in new york, incredible! new york!

broadway




in memory of the fallen fire fighters at 9/11


stock exchange - any open questions?

brooklyn bridge

story of my life

boston, massachusetts: noch dreimal schlafen

of all my different destinations and places to stay my boston arrival for sure was the least stressful. our comrade bryan picked my up at the station, showed me my room (i would have taken the sofa, too, of course, but who says no to an own room, right….), the crazy cats tried to bite and scratch me a few times and then we had beer. genevieve came over (bringing the beer) and we hung out for a while laughing about her overweight cat and other random things – the bostonians have a mean sense of humor. they’re nasty. evil. they’re great!

first of all, bostonians hate everyone else. sometimes they even hate each other. most of all they hate the harvard and mit (massachusetts institute of technology) kids. but they also hate rain, or snow, some of them hate the states or at least all the other states. they start sentences with “the only city i don’t hate besides boston…”


they like to drink (and smoke enlightening substances), they understand and actively use means of irony and sarcasm and despite all their hatefulness – or maybe that’s the reason why – spending time with them is extremely fun and i felt at home right away. it’s weird, isn’t it, that sometimes you just hit it off with people and places right away, no time for adjustment needed or anything. bostonians are awesome. boston is a nice place, too, especially in fall. it is comparable to bremen in its size, so you can walk to many places.


downtown is just downtown, i guess, like everywhere, shopping and whatever else.

there is a lot of stuff on the american revolution that you can see and find out about – i didn’t do any of that – and there’re parks and the charles river and the ocean is nearby. it’s got a subway, too, and people seem to be reading a lot around there.

they also have a science museum with a harry potter exhibition:


i think it might be a nice place to live in – not too huge, but still not that far away from new york (for excitement) while rather easygoing in itself. and the bostonians are great, have i ever mentioned that?

track george!


cause really, books, music, coffee is all we need or want, right?


the reason why i went to boston in the first place was that i wanted to see if it had the vibe for me – it does. i’m kind of thinking of applying for a fulbright year at the mit (because i really want to be hated by all the 50 of our comrades and everyone else there , and because they have that fantastic linguistics program where you can study under ancient Chomsky, and the buildings are all nice and pretty, too). so i found out what i needed – yes, boston is a place i could see myself living in, yes, the comrades are cool and fun and the political landscape and scene is interesting and good, yes, the weather is slightly better than in bremen and the fall is very nice

and they have that subway, i love subways.

lunch

so, on thursday i walked around all day, i went to the mit




and to harvard


(which both are technically located in Cambridge


which is just across the river and very proud of its independence – i cannot really see why:


if i were cambridge i’d try to be boston, really…)

that here is boston university. or maybe boston college, who knows. they both exist and are universities, but the name was already taken, so what will you do....
boston has like a thousand schools: at least five universities and a ridiculous number of colleges.


in the evening i went to a public meeting of the socialist alternative. i met some of the other comrades, we went out for beers and had a fun time.


on friday i finally went shoeshopping – remember, i hate shoesshopping. i bought sneakers on sale for fourty bucks instead of some decent winter shoes. not exactly what i was going for, but at least i completed my mission – i walked through two pairs of shoes here. both were almost done with the world even before i came here, but still.
later that day i met with tim, whom i had met the night before, and we walked around, then went to some irish bar, had food and beer, went on to the next bar with nick (yet another comrade) and so on and so on –


tim gave me a ride home that night and when we arrived at the sa office/bryan’s place/the place i had all my stuff in i found out i was locked out.
now, one peculiar thing about the people in boston is: never pick up their phones. ever. they all hate talking over the phone (among other things) and just never pick it up. they might text you (i found out texting costs me 10 minutes per text, sent or received, what a rip off!) back later on, but they do not pick up their phones.
we tried to call bryan (who does not pick up his phone) and then genevieve who lives around the corner and has a key for the place (and does not pick up her phone either). luckily she however called back, so we went over to her place and hung out there for a while.
i slept very little in boston, so i was quite happy when i could finally go to bed, the crazy kittens jumping on and off the bed all the time til i fell asleep.
so, all’s well that ends well – i’m on my way to new york, three more days and that’s it.

i’m kind of getting ready to go home, i mean, i have started preparing myself morally. that’s okay – constant travelling is inspiring, but exhausting, both physically and emotionally. i don’t know yet what is going to happen in new york and it’s only about three hours away – i’m on the bus and hoping for the best.
i’m looking forward to come back to the states and visiting all the great people i’ve met here, but for now i’m good with staying in one place for at least a couple of weeks. yeah, that will be good. i’ve found out that i will have my fridays off half of the semester, too, so if i skip fachdidaktik which i hate anyway (teaching methods, stupid busy work stuff) on tuesday and my one and a half classes on thursday i will actually have almost a whole week off of school –i’m planning that for the thanksgiving week, not, because thanksgiving played any role for my life, but because i’m going to berlin that tues- and wednesday anyway, so i might as well stay there for a couple more days or maybe go someplace else, munich maybe? what do you think about that, yuli? :)

as of now i will leave it at that – it’s not unlikely that i will post the new york update from the airport or even from germany on tues- or wednesday. i wish everyone a good time til then, thanks for hanging out with me to tim, nick (and thanks for the beer), genevieve and josh, for putting me up, providing me with all the information i needed as well as coffee and breakfast to bryan. i’m looking forward to seeing some of you at summer school next year or at any other time in germany, the us or anywhere else in the world. socialist travellers of the world unite! :)