Blog #3 - Cows and Communism

Hey everyone. We just returned to Freiburg from our second academic field trip, this one going to Berlin and Tallinn, the capital of Estonia. Before I get into that, here are pictures from the cow festival I mentioned in the last blog entry.

It was an interesting festival. The baby cows were cute until someone yelled out “hey, look at the veal!” I also rode a mechanical bull with mild success. I don’t plan on taking it up as a hobby.

So, back to the field trip. We left Freiburg around 8AM last Tuesday. We took a train to Mannheim, another town in Baden-Württemburg, and changed trains for Berlin. On the train ride I learned to appreciate something called Frikadellenbrötchen, a Danish meatball sandwich. They are delectable. If you ever get the chance I highly suggest trying one.

Traveling by train is more fun than traveling by plane, in my opinion. I really enjoyed seeing the German countryside as we sped along at upwards of 200 km/h. We rode Germany’s equivalent of Acela, the ICE. That stands for InterCity Express. It was a smooth, comfortable 5-hour train ride from Mannheim to Berlin. We arrived at Berlin Hauptbanhof, a new train station that was built not too long ago. It is a very fancy-looking building, with east-west trains running above ground and north-south trains running on ground level.

We took a local train to Friedrichstrasse, and then walked a few blocks to our hostel. It was a very modern building, and had a bar that showed soccer…er…football games. At night the bar would fill up with young fans who hooped and hollered every time a goal was scored. What’s interesting about staying at hostels is that you meet lots of people around your age who come from all over the world. We made up most of the American population, but we mostly ran into Australians. We sat down and talked with three of them about our cultures. One of the more amusing things I found out was that Australians don’t like to use complete words. They always described themselves as “’Stralians” and were not hesitant to admit their linguistic laziness. I was interested to find out that when Australians travel, they travel for months at a time because their country is so much farther away from the world’s more popular travel destinations.

But enough about the Aussies. Berlin caught me somewhat off guard. I wasn’t quite sure what to expect about the city. I knew that it had been divided from 1961 to 1989, but I wasn’t sure how that would’ve affected the city’s physical makeup. We stayed in the former East Berlin, which was a sorry system of Socialist-style structures. Sorry, I was in an alliterative mood. As to be expected, a lot of East Berlin’s buildings were built in the Socialist style, which means large, grey and bland. We didn’t venture into the West too much. We visited the Jewish Memorial which was designed by a New York architect and walked through the Brandenburger Tor, which was completed in 1791, survived complete destruction in World War II, and was where John F. Kennedy pronounced himself a jelly donut in 1963. We saw the Reichstag building from our tour bus, as well as the new, ultra-modern Chancellery building.

We visited Humboldt University, one of Europe’s most prestigious universities. There we met with the Secretary General of the European Movement, a government-funded grassroots (kind of oxymoronic, no?) organization that seeks to speed up communication between the German federal government and the European Union. His speech was a little contradictory, in that he stated that his organization sees Europe as becoming an increasingly federal system, yet he denied the existence of any “pan-European” identity. But hey, I’ll save the political analysis for my essay that’s due in two days.

Our next meeting was with Mr. Gernot Erler, one of Germany’s two Ministers of State. That is, he is the second most powerful figure in Germany’s Foreign Ministry. He is a member of the Social Democrat Party which is currently in coalition with the Christian Democrat/Christian Social Union parties. He is also the most intimidating-looking person I’ve ever met.

All that aside, his speech was a very thorough summary of Germany’s accomplishments during its presidency of the European Union. He answered all of our questions very articulately, unlike most politicians who like to sidestep questions. On a side not, he sounded like Henry Kissinger.

After Berlin we flew to the cold lands of the north. That is, we went to Tallinn, the capital of Estonia. Estonia is the northernmost Baltic State, which borders Russia to the east and Latvia to the south. It’s a small country, but is very excited to be a member of the European Union as we learned from out meeting with Aivo Orav, a political director at Estonia’s foreign ministry. This was my first trip to a former Soviet Republic. I’ve been to a former Soviet satellite (Czech Republic). You can tell that the memory of the Soviet era still looms, as characterized by more big grey buildings, buses that look like they’re from the early 1980’s, and the omnipresence of the Russian language. Estonia’s largest minority are Russians, who came over from Russia during the Soviet era. Almost every sign is written in Estonia (one of the goofiest languages I’ve ever seen; I’ll elaborate later), Russian and English.

I was very impressed with Tallinn. We stayed in the “up-town,” the older section. The city’s medieval walls and town hall still stand. There is a town square with neat little alleyways and streets jutting off of it. The downtown area was just as modern as any other major city though. Sure enough, there were McDonalds’ and 5-story shopping malls. What impressed me most about Tallinn, however, was how many people spoke English and how well they spoke it. I was quite glad that they did, because I could not understand Estonian at all. Imagine a few common English words, then double up on the vowels and add a few extra syllables, and you’ve got something that resembles Estonian. For example, a souvenir store is called “suuveniiridid.” I thought Dutch was a goofy-looking language, but then I saw Estonian. Streets bore names such as “Toompea” and “Rahukohtu,” while signs advertised things such as “Kohvik-Restoran Merevaikus Patkuli Vaateplats.” Don’t ask me what it means. You’d think “Pood” would mean “food,” but it doesn’t.

My main complaint about Tallinn was the weather. It wasn’t quite as cold as I thought it would be, but it did rain an awful lot. Much to my dismay, my umbrella with the European Union’s circle of stars refused to function and kept on flipping inside out. I hope that isn’t a microcosm of how the European Union functions. I hope it continues to work properly.

Myself and 4 others braved the rain and wind, walking 2 kilometers to a palace that formerly belonged to Peter the Great, a Russian czar. The palace has been turned into a museum housing artwork that Peter owned. It had a lot of nice pieces of art, and had a well-kept courtyard garden out back. We wandered a little further up the street and found the residence of the Estonian president. Instead of a White House, they have a Pink House. How quaint.

Our time in Tallinn ended with a farewell dinner at a traditional Estonian restaurant. While we were eating we were serenaded by an Estonian accordion player. Due to a mixup in the menu, I was given a plate of salmon. As most of you know, I hate seafood, but I thought to myself “when in Tallinn, do as the Tallinners (?) do.” So I ate salmon, and it wasn’t too bad. For dessert we had caramel cake, which tasted a bit like graham crackers. Yum!

Our time in Tallinn was also marred by the departure. We were supposed to wake up at 4AM and be on the bus by 5AM, in preparation for our 7AM flight. My alarm didn’t go off, and we didn’t receive our wake-up call, so I woke up to one of my roommates (who had been partaking of Tallinn’s vibrant nightlife) stumbling into the room and saying “guys, everyone is on the bus, we have to get downstairs now!” I packed in about 30 seconds, losing a pair of flip-flops and my razor in the process. We got on the bus about 10 after 5 and got to the airport, boarded our flight, and arrived in Frankfurt am Main at 8AM.

That said, I’m still a bit tired. I’m going to rest for a bit and then start to write my essay.

Thanks for stopping by.

-Dave