Wolken über Dresden

when i walked out of the old school train station, everything was new and big, almost like the States, with an urban sprawl kind of feel. then i realized that it was my first time out of southwest Germany. biiiiig difference. as i made my way towards the city center, i began to link the old and new buildings. maybe the clouds added to the heaviness. let me just say, it's probably good that i travel so often alone. my head is always swimming with thoughts and i am seldom sure if it would be possible for me to function with the presence of company.

imagine the majesty of Prague, but broken, and then patched together again, like a quilt. you even saw it literally so. the Frauenskirche used some of the old stones (black from age and siege), so the building is a beautiful salt and pepper mix. also refer to the cathedral in Köln with a new white chunk in one of the corners.

i will talk about Berlin later, but there was a definite contrast between the two cities. i felt a kind of stony pride out of Dresden. i couldn't completely understand the context, but at the same time, there was a familiarity in how i enjoy holding on to memories both good and bad. i wanted to come back later in the spring when there were flowers and the trees weren't bare. there were wide open promenades and meticulously trimmed gardens, café terraces and riverfront walkways that would seem to shine differently; another perspective to help me unlock the city.

oh boy. i think everyday about how little time i have left in this study abroad experience.

Anfang in Osteuropa

yay for Inter-Rail Passes! first stop: Prague. i liked it from the moment we arrived at the train station. it was beautiful in that old-fashioned, regal sort of way with a nice touch of aging that i love so much. Alphonse Mucha prints hung on the walls in the main hall, then you go down to the regional trains and there are modern murals spray painted on the walls. the subways were super deep, too. i think it is in part from how long ago they were built (less knowledge about the structure). not entirely sure on that one.

[der Hauptbahnhof]

the hostel was amazing. it was close to night life, squeezed in a downtown strip a lot like J-Hoppers in Japan. the ceilings were high, with a great big bay window and an awesome mural directly outside!

[Ausblick von meinem Fenster]

everywhere, the city had a wonderful blend of old and new. maybe it's just something about the Neo-Classicism when it's old and darkened that feels so decadent, and especially when it stands directly next to an Art Nouveau or Cubist building. the mix lets the different styles accentuate each other. i love it. feels like me; so many contrasting characteristics that only make you wonder how they all came to fit together.

[schöne Straße]

it is embedded in my heart that i want to come back, but the likelihood this year is very slim. =( oh well, these toe-in-the-water experiences are good alone, but i would need company to really immerse myself. btw, randomly ran into a classmate! Pavel had told me that Prague was considered the biggest 'little town' and by golly if i don't see him in the train station on my way out.

Prague is definitely the fiery broad that keeps a cowboy coming back. hope to see you again soon, darling.

das aktuelle Heim

last day: didn't sleep in my own bed (i'm getting too attached to this couch surfing business), drama on Holly Street, Mom had already left for AT and my dad literally just dropped me off at the airport. quite uneventful.

[mein typischer Flugzeug]

so, one month back in the States and three out of four weeks were spent traveling. gotta make it worth it, eh? i didn't sleep at all, despite the fact that my flight left at 5pm and arrived at the beginning of a new day. the movies were shitty, but i had an entry level German/English reader to keep me occupied. i didn't check the clock at all, was back in Deutschland in no time, three more hours on the train, all the -ingen names being read off and... hello Tübingen, i missed you so much! ♥

sunshine. middle of the week. bus line direct to Viktor-Renner. mailbox with a postcard from Marianna. Schlüssel in der Tür. not so clean apartment. perfekt. home sweet home.

Marie's old room was open and completely empty. the Hausmeister came in at one point that afternoon without knocking, looked at me grumpily, asked me if i was the only roommate there at the moment, slammed shut the door to the empty room and told me that the floor needed cleaning. seriously, Dude. i arrived THAT day! oh well, i took a shower and proceeded to clean the whole apartment. i put away all the dishes, wiped all the counters, cleaned the inside of the fridge, swept the floors, mopped the floors, mopped the bathroom twice and even scraped the caked grease off the fan hood above the stove. damn did it look good!

i bought some Brötchen, tomatoes and Mozzarella to make sandwiches, then left for Prague the next day; only sorry that i was leaving Tübingen so soon.

quick run through

leaving NYC, i took a Chinatown bus (note the irony that i was the only 'not Chinese' person and yet, was still obviously some sort of Asian) to Harrisburg. my scheduled taxi was 45 minutes late and there was no bus stop. i stood in an empty parking lot with three other people at close to midnight. the taxi driver had the fade set totally on the back speakers and the music was loud enough that i could barely think. at least i like D'Angelo. 'nuff said about that experience.

i proceeded to crash on the couch at Mike&Mike's without waking anyone up. they went to work early in the morning, but i knew that Sarah had the day off, so i went to her apartment to catch up. her roommates all remembered me from my short stint with them in the summer and we all hung out as if we'd known each other since childhood. after a while, i figured that i might as well wait to see Little Mike when he got off work. found out he had the next day off and then it was drink time. yet another night on a couch and to the Waffle Shop in morning. mmm, good times!

no one was home when i got to Glen Hope, but Grammy and Karla came back from a day of shopping not ten minutes after. i putzed around the house with them for a bit and then went to JoAnn's to see the new kitchen. my cousin Jason figured that i was bored as hell and took me off-roading in his Rhino to his favourite bar. oh my. i may be the black-haired bastard child in a pot of curly blond blue-eyes, but we are indeed family by blood. let me just say, Budweiser and tequila the whole afternoon.

in the morning, said my goodbyes and headed down to Virginia to meet my Dad at Ernie and Pegg's. i missed seeing the grandkids, but it is always fun to talk with Pegg and she misses chatting with my mom. i guess i've grown enough to make a good substitute. =) back to the couch. the next morning, Dad and i hit the slopes at Wintergreen. mmm, i love slush!

back in Gville, i did my rounds at the uni, talking with professors and filling out paperwork. sooo stoked about finally having a class with Gil! went to The Stockyard with my mom, tramping through the stench of animal piss trying to find raw peanuts. read my first Jailbird, and thankfully didn't know anyone in it. started packing my things for the return to Deutschland and then off to the island with Katie.

we sat on the ferry deck shelling peanuts and smoking from a corn cob pipe. got in touch with Luke without having a phone, met him at Zilli's and spent the afternoon drinking German beer outside in the salty air. the next day we were out sunning with Joe and i got to see why Brian was banned from the seashore. i love the beach when you still need a hoody. i kept thinking about what a good idea it was to come here before i left again. maybe it's the feeling of sand between your toes while drinking Tecate with two of your best friends and having the sun shine off your hair. KT and i took the early ferry home and watched the sun rise over calm purple water. picked up the truck on the mainland, biscuits and gravy for breakfast and singing to Motown on the way back. bliss.

i apologize for the lack of photos, but my time with these people was too precious. ♥

"these streets will make you feel brand new"

and so i tried the CouchSurfing in America. Mathew was an awesome host! no worries, all accommodations and a living encyclopedia of New York City. i arrived via Amtrak and Bayardo by bus. props to Bayo for not bailing out like everyone else. him and Nick are the best travel buddies ever. hard to imagine our discovery of that just a year ago in Dallas. pause for good memories.

NYC, omg! i mean, i've been there before, but this was my first time independent of school or the 'rents. i got to really throw myself into it and damn was it beautiful. maybe it's just because of this time in my life and all the opportunities i've got after graduating this year. who knows, but every moment of walking through the streets, i could NOT get that Jay-Z/Alicia Keys song out of my head.

[Bayardo in Times Square at night]

even now when i go back and watch the music video, their pride looks, feels so inclusive, so alive. i loved how EVERYwhere there were quotes about the city. sometimes they are on construction fences. sometimes they are on window decals. sometimes they are engraved in granite facades.

[construction by South Ferry]

additionally, i was blown away by the internationality. maybe i was especially sensitive after my travels through Europe. of course there were lots of tourists too, but even from the people walking out of apartment buildings, i overheard so many people speaking German, Spanish, French... keep on going. Again on history, my mind was a total whirlwind.

[Statue of Liberty from Battery Park]

with a big dash of luck, Bayardo and i got to be present for the beginning of a performance piece, ...and Counting by Wafaa Bilal, who had come to ECU last year. amazing man. in this work, he had a map of Iraq already tattooed on his back and this night he was having a dot for every American and Iraqi that had died so far in the war. let me clarify: that is 105,000 pricks in 24 hours. go to the webpage to get the entire description. the names of all the dead were also to be read while the tattooing took place.

and wow. never been part of a performance piece before. there is something about the time frame that sets it apart. first off, documentation of the event (ie: photos) are very important, but what appeals to me the most is the brevity. it ends. it dies. and after that, the memory of it is what's important.

[filming Wafaa]

anyone could read names, and most would read a page and then the next person would come up. for my turn, i chose the list of American soldiers just so i wouldn't butcher the pronunciation and also because i'm familiar with the abbreviations for military ranks. reading a list is quite redundant and when i finished one page, i automatically flipped to a second and kept reading. it didn't strike me until i was around the eighth or so that i had gone so far.

i choked a bit at the feeling of actualization for this work by Wafaa. it was the same feeling of overwhelming that i usually get when i start making connections between a city and it's history and then applying it to the present day; except this time i was part of a piece of art, so it touched ME personally. it was like grabbing on to an electric fence and not letting go. and i had no desire to let go.

Wafaa Bilal. check out his work. especially Domestic Tension.

pause.

okay, i could probably have made that bit a post of it's own, but maybe the length of this one helps explain my feelings about New York.

and on to Coney Island. unlike me, Bayardo was hopping around and staying in a different place every night. i went down earlier in the morning with Mathew, who went to buy a couple gifts to give on his own CouchSurfing travels that were coming up soon, and we met up with Bayo there on the boardwalk. i had no idea how popular the movie The Warriors was OR how thick Coney Island was with Russians.

[polar bears sunning in 50°F weather]

Mathew left us after some nice conversations and Russian pastries, then Bayo and i took the bus up to Prospect Park. originally we wanted to go to some museums, the botanical gardens and maybe the zoo, but somewhere in our wandering we ended up in the public library and opted to go straight to Dumbo and the bridge.

the timing was perfect. it was late afternoon and natural sidelighting always makes for good photos. we probably spent an hour on the bridge, photographing and dreaming of living somewhere in the Upper West Side, biking daily across the Brooklyn Bridge to a studio in Dumbo.

[Bayo on the north side of the Brooklyn Bridge]

last stop: art museums. i had no idea how big the Metropolitan was. almost 5hours and i barely saw half! not to mention, it's free to get in. there is so much stuff from all over. makes me wonder how the hell anyone can accumulate it all. gotta love having Graziani as an art history prof. made me appreciate the old stuff a lot more. =)

[a cappella group in front of the Met]

Bayo was bored with the Met, so we went on to MOMA. again, i can't say enough about seeing artwork in person. there is no way a textbook can do an 8' x 8' Picasso painting justice. i suppose one could go back to the concept of how the human eye has a bigger tonal range than a camera. that is, without Photoshop. ;)

[men in front of Matisse]

oh, and of all things, ran into Brian McBride after hitting up B&H Photo. i felt like Uncle Tosh, seeing people i know everywhere i go. but really, more than all the sightseeing, good company wins overall. like Nick, Bayardo and i had lots of good conversations as well. it was nice to talk about language barriers and have a mutual understanding, plus a lust for travel. after all the new friendships in Europe, there was a great relief to come back to something established and even watch it grow more. thanks, Bayo!

Philly, you nice, but you ain't the 'Burgh

after a week of what i guess you can call rest, it was off to Philadelphia for the photo conference. College Park, MD happens to be conveniently on the way and i got to visit Jessica from the Sommerkurs!! it was also conveniently the night of the Maryland/Duke upset. whoa. you Terrapins are crazy, but the cops were indeed a bit over dramatic about everything. i could see myself living in DC, though. especially for the international route. hm.

it was a quick drive to Harrisburg, where i parked my car at my aunt's house and got a taxi to the train station. i know! trains in America?! felt like home (ie: Germany). a bit as if i stepping to a time capsule from 30 years ago, though. =P the conductor had an old skool get-up and hand-wrote little tickets to tuck in the rack above your head.

enter: Philadelphia

mmm mmm, American urbanity. i forgot that Philly was one time bigger than New York and i didn't think so much about writing the Declaration of Independence until i got off the train. i know i talk about the impact history has on me when i visit a city. well, the States have hardly let me down. at least here, i don't need a tour guide or brochures because i remember learning everything in grade school (or more likely, from my father).

i didn't have time for sight-seeing. the vibes i got from Mr. Brotherly-Love were just swimming in my head as i sat through the lectures with SPE. the conference as a whole was not too exciting or invigorating like Dallas. i kind of expected that. after KKΨ, i know better than to get caught up in the glam of big organizations. still, i enjoying hanging out with the our photo department, seeing old faces and meeting the new crew (even though it meant four nights of sleeping on the floor). perhaps it was really just a ploy to visit Philly and the Big Apple. ;)

Grenzen ganz löchrig

at least i managed to wash my sheets before i hopped on the plane, but i did leave my room in quite a mess. the trip wasn't bad. the plane was half empty, so everyone got a chance to lay down in the center at some point. wow, did that make everything ten times better!

things didn't feel strange until i landed in Charlotte. the white rocking chairs were a nice familiar sight and i met an older couple from Greenville at the bar, but i just spent a lot of time looking out the window after that. i think it was watching people working outside that really got to me. i know it's the same situation in every country, as labor is never a fun event, but the tediousness of it hit hard; like i got pulled back into the clockwork.

the sky was a thick blanket of clouds, but little pockets of light started opening up. i noticed because spotlights popped up on the Tarmac. i looked up and noticed the holes in the clouds. behind the claustrophobic grayness, the blue was so bright and clear. it reminded me that had seen another place sometime before and, despite where i was at the moment, i could not have that memory taken away from me.

then i climbed into the little propeller plane and off we went. so many people are scared shitless of them, but i love it. there is a slow crescendo as the engines start up and the vibration makes the plane feel like a living being. it was like an alarm clock waking me up to the fact that i was really going home to people who knew me.

and that was that. my dad rode with my mom to pick me up. we went straight to Ham's to meet up with some friends. drank home brewed beer until late. woke up and went to class the next day. i know, i'm a dork. talking with Dr. Jensen was amazing, though. she was tickled pink that we could have real conversations auf Deutsch after i had only finished German II. found out that Colleen from KKΨ was taking German. after class, who should walk in but President Mike Miller! oh yeah, forgot that i knew everyone and their brother. etc. etc. and so goes returning to Greenville.

ein Besucher!!

i have been envious of all my european friends that can easily get visitors, so when Nick mentioned coming across the pond, i was super excited. never really had an exact date and time, but i told him the name of my town, gave my class schedule and included directions from the train station to my place just in case. that crazy nut didn't write down my telephone number, couldn't get in touch with me and i got a call from my roommate around 10pm when i was out at a bar saying, "your friend is in our kitchen." oh well, that's how we roll and everyone over here is completely flabbergasted that it actually works.

after the Faschingsumzug in Tü with the Narrenzünfte, i thought it would be something interesting and with a local twist. we walked to a neighboring town with another Ami, Andrew, via a trail that i had done with some StudIT friends earlier.

[Wurmlinger Kapelle mit Schnee]

it was awesome as a first experience in Deutschland, i think, and especially for photos. in Rottenberg, we met up with Oli and had a mini excursion like our crew from back in the States. the train ride home was a bunch of photo talk. Nick was stoked about coming to me and Oli's class later and getting to see the facilities.

[Fotografs sind in ein fotografisches Gespräch vertieft]

it was so nice to muck around with another photographer again. i took him through Tübingen and cooked Schupfnudeln. we walked to another neighboring town, Bebenhausen, and photographed the cloister. the Prinz Karl dorm threw a Karneval party that was totally insane. a visit to Heidelberg ended by staying with Stephen from the plane to Ireland. for one week, i can't think of a better time! even Greg benefited from having so much english in our apartment. =)

[Schnee in Heidelberg]

the highlight though, was probably all the conversations. Nick and i had plenty of time to talk, on account of the close quarters, and we already have a good dialog, but he has also seen me evolve as an artist and understands better where my ideas are coming from. it was nice to constructively talk about ideas. oh dear, made me homesick for the rest of my friends. still, means a lot to have a visitor and, like i said, i love to share. so really, it was the kicker of my first six months. thanks again, Nick!

oje Neujahr, du hast mir schon hintergelassen!

and how do i go two months without a post, you ask? keine Ahnung. i pretty much spent a lot of time studying, Nick came to visit and then i was back in the States for a month, not to mention a fifteen day trek through Europe not even two days after my return to Germany.

so, i only went out photographing once in January, but it was magical. enter: die Narrenzünfte. Carnival is popular all over Europe and similar in time and manner to Mardi Gras in New Orleans. although, things are different around the Black Forest. Narrenzunft translates into 'fool's guild' and these groups get together for parades in every town around Carnival time. what happens: they drink a bit and then put on wooden witch masks and terrorize the bystanders. include marching bands. i loved it.

[ein Schwob mit meinem Karneval, bitte]

it was like any other parade. the participants throw candy at the crowd and whatnot. BUT, there is the risk from not knowing if it's a good witch or a bad witch. sometimes you get goodies, sometimes you get a faceful of confetti before your reward. personally, i think it's a wonderful mix of fun without too much glam.

[Tübinger Teufel]

reminded me much of Halloween when working at Sheetz. people are definitely different when in costume. for a college town where it is just an excuse for girls to dress like sluts, it usually means that people are overly obnoxious, but here, with masks, the barrier made the mischief less personal. blah blah blah. artistic discussion about the aesthetic symbolism of masks. puh, i saw it as people coming to an event for the sake of a fun time.

needless to say, it was a nice break from the books. it had snowed the night before and the streets were a bit icy. i stood at my favourite corner and got to look out over the square when things really got hopping. at the beginning, some kids were throwing fake snow out their window and down on the crowd, but the real snow later was icing on the cake. i think this picture captures it all.

[der Holzmarkt vor der Stiftskirche]