Muenster :: Germany
Where people put me up and I get to not be so much of a tourist.
Places: Gottingen & Muenster (usually, ue is spelt as a single u with 2 dots on top, but this keyboard dosen´t have that)
Coolest thing I did: Spanish Party III: Return of the King
Coolest thing I didn´t know: Most of the Grimm fairy tales were sanitised for English children. The original versions told to kids in Germany have far more gruesome endings.
My study in mass tourism took a detour when I decided to go and stay with some of the German friends who had offered to put me up during my long trip. So my first stop after Heidelberg was the student town (they all seem to be student towns) of Gottingen. Katherina is a friend of Mark´s who came to stay with us in both Sydney and London at various times, and she was more than happy to lend me her couch. So she met me and took me back to the converted hospital in which she´s got her student digs. The rooms are all high roofed and have a loft for sleeping in added, and the kitchen and bathrooms are shared between the inhabitants of the floor. i met many of these over the weekend, including Chemsy(sp?), who we´d also entertained in London.
The best thing about these towns has to be the young vibe. As I came for the weekend, I was introduced to the usual evening routine. A nice meal (Kat is a hell of a cook), followed by a few warm up drinks before getting out on the town at just after midnight (a phrase I used which seemed to amuse some for no reason I can fathom). Our first night was a couple of the later opening bar/clubs (cosy affairs, but both with slightly warped DJs and thus musical tastes), but it did seem a little quiet. I was assured this is because whilst you can go out and get into trouble any night of the week, Saturday is the night.
We started with a few warmups before I was loaned a bicycle and we were off to the campus Spanish Party, which is apparently organised by the large population of Spanish exchange students. This was the first time i´ve ridden a bike in probably half a decade, and after a few glasses of red I might not have had the best of balance. Still, the saying about it being just like riding a bike is true. The party itself was quite good, and I continued to meet people from countries around Europe there, especially some Polish blokes who have a cousin in Perth (having relatives/friends/pets in Australia always seems to help people befriend the stray Aussies) who were quite talkative. I´ve decided pop songs that were originally in Spanish sound far better than the English translations. I mean what the hell does "my breats are small and humble so you won´t confuse them with mountians" mean (Shakira sang that)?
I think one of the best thing about the weekend was seeing all the young Europeans mixing together on the campus. It seems really easy to study in another country over here, and unlike ourselves in Australia, alot of students do take that oppertunity (we Antipodeans seem to wait until a bit later to start globe-trotting). It would have been impossible even 15 years ago for young Germans, Spaniards, Poles and Slovaks to be sitting around a table with a lost Aussie discussing politics in English. Again, it´s a small gesture towards the hope that maybe the next generation will have less inclination to carry all those nationalistic hatreds that just don´t make sense in any way but historical curios. I was staying with a very educated group of people (all of whom seemed to speak 3 or 4 languages, something that always makes me feel like a bit of an idiot), all well into their long degrees (it takes 5 and a half years on average to finish a degree here) so maybe they are not the best indication of how the man on the ground here thinks, but it´s still nice to think in the post-Berlin wall Europe, people are getting on with the business of..well getting on.
One thing that I did get an answer for was the beggars and the dogs. All around Germany, you see people begging (though quite a few of them have dyed hair and decent steel cap boots and so on) with dogs the size of small horses (I think the Alsatians we have t home come from the runt stock. These things are huge). It was explained to me that the government gives better unemployment benefits if you have a dog. I didn´t however, get my next theory that the bigger the dog, the more money you got, validated. Apparently, the form dosen´t have space to put the size of your dog in cubic metres.
I did also get taken (as a touristy side trip) to Hamelin, the town of pied piper fame. Apparently there are alot of these little towns with half timbered houses all along this part of Germany, and you can do a tour of them all if you want to see the "Fariy Tale Road". I´d say you would have to be a primary school teacher or something to have even heard of half of these towns, so we just went to the best known one and ate ice-cream instead. Tiamisu is most excellent.
My last few days have been spent in Muenster staying with Joerg, who with his friend Burk, came over with my mate Rob to visit me in London. Again, they seem more than happy to return the favour and let me crash out here. Making up for the London leg of the 4 day bender Rob & I took them on, the boys have been taking me out and showing me how to string together the happy hours in Muenster (again, a large student town). In between this (and the highlight here is the people, not the old buildings), I have managed to take a walk around town and see the many, many churches and the castle, which is now a university (I think). The fact this town alone has at least half a dozen cathederal sized churches with all the artwork that goes with it, maybe all that reformation/counter reformation war thing did leave some good things.
One thing that has become apparent though is I´m mostly seeing restored works, due to the fact that nearly every Lonely Planet entry for major German cities involves the words "firebombed into oblivion" and "allies". People keep telling me to go and find a copy of Kurt Vonnegut´s Slaughterhouse Five, which he wrote on his memories of being a POW in Dresden during the Allied campaign. Seeing as I find him alot more readable than Twaino, I might do that next time I get the chance.
So yesterday I was a wee bit hung over and didn´t get out much. I did manage, however, to take in the only large Picasso collection outside Paris. I´ve seen the Picasso Muemum in Paris, and last year the Tate Modern in London had a show called Matisse Vs Picasso (Picasso, 10seconds into the 9th by knockout), so I had seen alot of his stuff before, but this was a private collection donated to Muenster last century. As a result of the collector´s career as a graphic designer, most of these were his lithograms, including alot of the illustrations he did for books on Greek and Roman mythology. It´s a very small collection compared to Paris, but very different. They tend to be more towards his earlier, less abstract works, which I like (though I do still like the Guernica in Mardrid the best, more for it´s politics than anything). Worth a visit, indeed (and like locals of any town, most of the guys here haven´t seen it).
I have to say, it´s been good seeing people I know again. Whilst you do meet people as you travel all the time (and meeting people in hostel bars and lounges tends to find you like minded individuals) it´s far better when you get shown around a place by friends who live there. There is far less guesswork involved, and it´s a self fulfilling prophecy. Now I´ve stayed with these people in both towns, I´m looking forward to seeing them in Sydney one day (or wherever I put my head next) and returning the favour.
And I would have never ordered the beer with strawberries floating in it on my own. That alone was worth the price of admission.