From Tanzbödeli

It’s been a busy May in Mainz. Luckily, I managed to find a calendar last month at a bargain bookstore; I hadn’t anticipated not being able to find one in April, but most stores were already stocking their 2008 lines. (The early bird, I suppose, gets the worm.) What this means, though, is that I have a very cramped schedule smiling down at me from under a glossy photograph of tulips. I did the math today. For the month of May, I’ll have less than a week at home without visitors.

I’m not complaining, mind you. I was in Paris for four days at the very beginning of the month, visiting a friend from Middlebury and meeting up with my aunt, who accompanied my uncle to France on business. The timing was perfect. While Kristen was in class, my aunt and I saw the sights: the Eiffel Tour, Notre Dame, Montmartre. We walked all over the city, but spent a good deal of time sitting in lovely Parisian parks, enjoying the sunshine and people watching. And in the evenings, I caught up with Kristen. In one of the highlights of my visit, we took the Metro to the Paris Expo and spent a few hours exploring what seemed like an endless series of exposition halls. A pathetically tiny bit of my high school French came back to me, but for the most part, I answered anyone who spoke to me in German. It’s hard to throw that language switch.

The Paris expedition was wonderful, but what was perhaps most exciting was the sensation of returning home. I made the return trip with an old high school friend who is studying in Angers, France; we met up in Paris and then spent the six-hour train ride chatting away happily. But when our train passed into German-speaking territory, and my friends from Deutsche Bahn came over the overhead announcement system, I breathed a little sigh of relief. High school French aside, I felt like a veil was being lifted. My German may be halting and poorly accented and painfully inadequate — particularly at the university level here — but it is still something.

Language skills (or lack thereof) aside, the trip to Paris was my first real trip away from Mainz since I settled down here at the beginning of April. It wasn’t until I left that I realized how much I like my town. I like knowing my way around. I like doing my shopping at the farmer’s market and then cooking for myself at home. And as much as the parade of visitors has been (at some level) exhausting, I like showing off where I live — the cathedral, the Marc Chagall windows at Stephanskirche, our now regular evening destionations at the Alex Café or the Eisgrubbräu brewery.

But I set off from home again this last weekend, leaving on Wednesday by train for the Swiss Alps. Beth, one of my very dearest friends in the world, visited me for a week and a half this month; it was her first trip to Europe. We poked around Germany for a bit — Mainz, lovely little Marburg, the Rhine town of Bacharach — but we planned a more extravagant reunion with another high school friend, the aforementioned Angers resident, in Switzerland. Beth and I hopped on a train early Wednesday, took a break to see Freiburg over lunch, and hit Interlaken around dinnertime.

Interlaken proved more than a little kitschy — picture Swiss Army knives galore, high prices, the adventure-sport, fraternity boy set. But we met up with our friend Kaitlin and then set off the next morning for Gimmelwald, a tiny town of 130 residents high in the Alps. A train, an hour-long hike through the Lauterbrunnen valley, and a quick cable car ride later, we found ourselves at our “home” for the next two and a half days — the Mountain Hostel in Gimmelwald. We stayed in a quaint little chalet with thirty or so other hikers, and woke up every morning to what I can only describe as perhaps the most wonderful view in the world.

We spent the next two days hiking our little hearts out. What more could a couple of displaced Washingtonians wish for? (Beth in particular, the most mountain-crazed of us all, was giddy.) We hiked to the Kilchbalm glacier on our first day in Gimmelwald, stopping frequently to admire the views, catch our breath, and gorge ourselves on Alpine cheese — the pattern of the weekend, we would soon discover.

On Friday, after our first night in Gimmelwald, we consulted a few other travelers and then set off for Shark’s Fin, or Tanzbödeli, a high plateau perched in the middle of our bowl of mountains. It was a grueling three-hour hike — we descended from Gimmelwald to the river we’d followed the day before to the glacier, and then climbed (straight up, if I say so myself) over 700 meters to the base of a huge rock formation. The clouds burned off during the last hour or so of our ascent, and the view at the top — high above the tree line, and from a field of the palest, loveliest Alpine grass — was breathtaking. Schilthorn, the Eiger, the Mönch, and the Jungfrau all towered over us, close enough almost to touch, and Gimmelwald was a wink in the far away distance below.

This is unique, I suppose — this very human desire of ours to attain prominence, to stand at a great height and survey the world below and above, to feel both small and large at the same time. In the Alps, at the altitude of some 2000 meters, I felt my lungs more acutely; I felt my hips, my haunches. But mostly you feel the expansion and contraction of something I cannot quite express. The world is so old — stone and fragile grass, the crow buckling in the wind even this high, buckling, and the fin of a great, gray shark cutting up into the sky. Tanzbödeli — the “li,” I assume, a diminutive in that indecipherable Swiss German — means “the little dance floor.”

Curiously, when you make this ascent in the company of very old friends, it is the contraction you feel most of all. For all of the geographic expanse, for all of the long-stretching rail between Mainz and Interlaken, for all of the space hovering between my home here and my home in Washington and my home, my transient home, in the hills of Vermont — for all of this, we come somehow together in a bowl of mountains. We sleep on bunks that run together without breaking. We bicker in the grocery store. And then we coax one another up onto a high and windy plateau.

Kaitlin is home to Angers, and Beth is zurück to the United States, and Alex is visiting friends in Berlin. The majority of the German students have cleared out for Pentecost. This time yesterday I was descending from Gimmelwald in the pendulum of a cable car. (Does one contract, now, or expand?) It is strange, after all of this, to be home in Mainz again; the return journey this time around felt a little different than my coming-home after Paris. No Alpine air; just a brush of dark clouds on the horizon, menacing enough to keep me from the bicycle ride along the Rhine I’d planned. (We came home yesterday, late, to a terrific thunderstorm; the very ordinary walls of my dormitory were welcome. We listened to the rain and cooked spaghetti.)

For now, the parade of visitors is abating a bit. There is so much I want to write about — my experience with Swiss German (an indecipherable dialect for many Germans, let alone me), my trip last week to Weimar with the Middlebury program. A few notes, before I forget otherwise:

I will brag here for just a minute about my first oral presentation for class — I couldn’t tell you how well or poorly it went — the adrenaline having skewed any perspective about performance or the passage of time — but it’s finished. I downed a quick glass of wine before class to calm my nerves, and then delivered a fifteen-minute presentation on a nature poem by Goethe. The professor even smiled a bit — an anomaly with regards to most professors here. Bravo, Katie, bravo.

I was in Weimar last weekend. Saw Goethe’s house. Visited a sub-par Bauhaus museum. Enjoyed a good bit of sunshine. I also visited Buchenwald, a concentration camp just a few kilometers from one of Germany’s great capitals of culture. It was my first, and I found that I did not know how to react. The program coordinator here in Mainz went with us, and told us a story about her father, who was in the Hitler Youth when he was a child. They’ve only left a few buildings intact at Buchenwald; most of the others have been reduced to their foundations, with shards from the rubble strewn over the

While I was wandering through an exhibit of art created by prisoners at the camp, though, I was startled (and appalled) to realize that three tattooed men with shaved heads, all wearing camouflage and offensive t-shirts, strutted through the building. This, at least, dredged up a reaction from me: fear, yes, but mostly disgust, and the overwhelming, inappropriate desire for confrontation. I knew immediately what I was seeing; in the former West, where unemployment is lower and the economy is generally stronger, we don’t see many (if any) neo-Nazis, but Weimar falls in the former East. I can only assume they were neo-Nazis; I may be wrong, but I got home, Googled for more information about neo-Nazis and concentration camps, and discovered this.

Next year is pressing in upon me. I am taking the helm at the newspaper; I am swimming in a mess of thesis ideas (and non-ideas); there is the promise of a late-summer retreat to the Vermont mountains. And there is so much I want to write about!

Am I silly to ask if this is this contracting or expanding?

Augenblick

At long last rooted in Germany, and finally in touch again with fellow editors at The Middlebury Campus, I agreed last week to write an “Overseas Briefing” for the news desk. Every week, we feature a column from a different junior studying abroad. There are reminisces about Parisian cafes and the life in Siberia. I wrote about everyday environmentalism in Germany — there was news from home about Step It Up, a Midd-organized campaign that earned national coverage and support. Earth Day, too, as the colorful banner across Google.com reminded me. And I was riding home on my bicycle, balancing the groceries on one handle bar in a thin woven bag telling me, “Mach mit — Deiner Umwelt zuliebe.”

It was a safe, newsy choice — I mentioned Angela Merkel’s name, I avoided any overly personal admissions. But honestly, I wanted to write about appearances, and the noticing of things — the disconcerting, but perhaps fitting truth, that I find myself paying more attention to appearances in Europe. I’ve felt a little like the country bumpkin come to the continent, and the language barrier only enforces this impression. But because my German improves slowly, I’ve resigned myself to working on the other things. Take the haircut, for instance.

Last month, on a trip to Austria, I had it all chopped off. I have long hated the cliché, empty transformation that The Haircut promises, but I caved. I’d spent a few romantic weeks traveling in Europe and wanted a haircut to go along with the new persona. Something easy, I told myself. Something hip, I hoped. Now, on the bus, I fidget with my hair — my lack of hair. I’m surprised when I find one long blond strand sticking to a jacket, or an old t-shirt.

I’ve since realized that it boils down to a matter of confidence, this issue of appearances. The new haircut was the first tentative step. And a few weeks ago, before anxiously taking up swimming at the university pool, I hurried off to buy a proper swimming suit and a pair of goggles. I hemmed and hawed in the department store aisle until settling on something suitably sure of itself: a sleek black suit, a flash of orange like a racing stripe. I threw in a cap for good measure. Step number two.

Uniform in hand, I’ve registered for a free class at the Schwimmbad, working on the different strokes with a group of docile slow pokes. We trail after one another up and down our lane, huffing and puffing our way through the “Kraul” while the instructor looks on. She shouts in German, “long legs!” or “strong legs!” — something about legs. The new suit does not make up for my horrendous splashing. In spite of myself, I enjoy it.

Outside of class, I go during the open swim hours and swim the length of the pool most unprettily. (The Germans, it must be noted, are beautiful swimmers.) A few old men kick their legs in lazy aerobic exercises, their round bellies hanging over alarmingly small Speedos. We eye one another warily. The rest of us spend our time darting out of each others’ ways when possible. I am a frantic swimmer — I swim too quickly for my own good, and then clutch at the edge of the pool, breathless, when my lap is finished. And then I must pause there, waiting while the other swimmers go on their paced and pretty ways, until I can continue.

Even in the new swimming suit, I feel like an imposter here. Because I am intimidated by the be-goggled, unfaltering swimmers, my laps resemble weak Ss towards the deep end. I watch the old men from the corners of my eyes. And on Fridays, when we share the pool with the divers, I dawdle even more than usual.

This week, when the older students leapt from the taller of the two springboards, they entered the water like unfolding knives. A few of the oldest boys dropped almost to the bottom of the pool, twisting, before rocketing up again. At times, when my laps took me to their end of the pool, I noticed their explosion into the water from the corner of my eye; other times, I waited under water (discreetly, oh, discreetly) to watch them curl into the blue.

But most endearing were the littlest. They clamored up to the springboard, towels in hand, and congregated near the ladder. One at a time, these narrow-chested boys, wearing older brothers’ old swim trunks I supposed, laid their towels out at the edge of the board, sat down upon them, and tucked their knees to their chest. (Such small knees these young German divers have! I thought.) And then, one by one, they rolled forward off of the diving board and slowly opened up into small and imperfect dives. Forward, toppling down; they opened their hands to the water. Such small splashes. The left behind towels waved like flags from the board.

It may be that here, I notice appearances only because, away from home, I operate differently. (Would I pause to marvel at the divers in an American pool so, I wonder?) I am tuned to watch: the Mainzers in the red and white of their beloved football team, the old women on their precarious bicycles. The littlest of the most methodical divers. The children in the Stadtpark. The rounded toes of the girls’ sophisticated shoes.

When it comes down to it, I think, it is the noticing — the awareness of differences, the interest in differences — that makes me most singular here. I fuss at the new hair. I worry about my American shoes, my backpack. But in the end the Edie Sedgwick haircut and the sleek swimming suit and those leaky goggles cannot hide me for what I am: the American — the tongue-twisted, ill-swimming, wide-eyed American. The fact that I notice that I am different makes me different.

I have switched to English again — it feels a bit cowardly, speaking and writing and thinking in English. But with all of this noticing, I can’t help it. I am utterly unable to synthesize this experience without reaching for English. I don’t have the words in German to even comprehend the way children roll forward off of a diving board and into the deep end of a swimming pool. I am still speaking an enthusiastic, imperfect German with my German acquaintances and in my courses, but it’s too painful, too frustrating, to go without English for very long.

I’m off to Paris tomorrow to visit a friend, see my aunt and uncle, and fuss at my hair in the shadow of invariably tall, impeccably dressed Parisians. Photographs from Croatia are up — expect Austria, Italy, and London and Dublin soon.

On Reading "Mrs. Dalloway" in the Stadtpark

I am reading Virginia Woolf in Germany, and in the absence of Big Ben and the Hydes and Regencies of Westminster, I’ll supply the Mainz Stadtpark — where I am writing, presently — and the routine passage of the red and white Deutsche Bahn trains. The travel between this pretty stretch of green and the Rhine River, south I think, or over to Wiesbaden. It’s Sunday here.

(The nice thing about writing from the park, I’ve decided, is that I have only as long as the battery in my laptop holds out; right now, that looks to be an hour and a half. I’ve put off writing in any serious way about my March travels or my arrival in Mainz in part because it is too daunting a task. With six and a half weeks — and about eight countries, by my count — behind me since I left the United States, I just don’t know where to begin. But I’ll get something down, and throw it online, because that one bit from February is beginning to look a little lonesome. Not a day in the life of Clarissa Dalloway, perhaps; an hour in the Stadtpark will have to do.)

I carried both Mrs. Dalloway and To the Lighthouse for four weeks across Europe, but didn’t open either until alighting, at last, in Germany. There was a book about the Balkans that caught my fancy at one point, but most often, I spent what little time I could scrape together frantically writing in my daily journal. I can only sum it up by saying that the business of recording took on monumental importance. In our thirty passage across Europe, I collected the names of favorite bakeries, and town squares, and the contents of breakfast. My fanaticism in recording petered slightly when we were joined by traveling companions or visited friends in Austria and then later Italy, England and Ireland.

(There go the bells. Quite a fuss, in fact, for a quarter to six.)

During my first two weeks in Mainz, I’ve been making slow but thoughtful progress through Mrs. Dalloway. I was amused, at first, by the immediacy of London — a city I had seen, just briefly, a week before. And when the amusement of familiar names and shared sights passed, I settled in for what I imagined would be the obligatory read. I felt a pang of guilt at indulging in something so very English. But much to my surprise — and only in further support of a language I already miss very much — I’ve fallen quiet in love with the book. While it is a taxing read at times, it lives up to the claims that, with this novel, Woolf has mapped the shape and trajectory of consciousness.

I like it very much.

My fondness for Woolf’s text, and for Clarissa Dalloway and her set, springs in part, I imagine, from the peculiarity of my days here — they are not too terribly unlike Mrs. Dalloway’s. (“And people would say, ‘Clarissa Dalloway is spoilt.’” How apt!) Classes start tomorrow, which should be something of a shock to my system; without such routine, my days now are measured by trips to the supermarket, and outings to the city center, and long afternoons in the sun. And like Clarissa, gone to buy flowers herself, I often feel as though these concrete moments — the exchange with my baker, perhaps, or a cheerful encounter with old women on the (omni)bus — are startling punctuations of reality. Otherwise, I am a bit without anchor.

This is all to say: the simplest of outings here take on extraordinary meeting; it is a thoughtful way of living, and curiously, but pleasantly, lonely; and I like Virginia Woolf.

I want, like Woolf, to make sense of my days here in a transcript-like record, to illustrate the movement of my mind, yes, but also the topography of the “alltäglich,” the daily. It’s a daunting task, though. I feel here as though I look more than I think. And when we speak — the Americans to one another in a strange mix of English and German, and to the Germans in sentences that leap and stretch between apologetic and enthusiastic — I am only reminded that I can only say so much.

We’ve had an astonishingly sunny stretch of weather here. There are reports of snow from Middlebury — snow in April! — but here, it feels like summer is setting in. Here in the Stadtpark, I’ve been tossed back into the sunshine again. No sleeping Peter Walshes to report on, or quarelling lovers, or sad and solitary Septimuses. The novelty of life here gives me the same kinetic appreciation for daily life that I think Woolf expresses. I like the park, in part because I feel some kinship here with my neighbors. That the children speak such high and lovely German amazes me. That the old women ride their rickety city bikes with such confidence amazes me.

And at some of the simplest things — phrases sung out across the park: “Zug kommt! Schnell! Schau mal!” or, “Kucht Mama, ein Hund!” — I am tickled pink! Perhaps I romanticize this place and these people. (“David!” called out, just now, over the park. I’ve watched him, David, make his adventurous way across the footpath and up into the pansies. “Komm zurück!” And he toddles back to his mother and sisters, father trailing. How proud at his outing!) The sunshine brings it out in me, this fondness for strangers. Not June in Regency Park, but a lovely April in Mainz. It sparks the same goodwill.

Enough, I think, of Virginia Woolf. I promise that not all of my carrying-ons here are so ponderous! I am settled now in my dormitory, which is located adjacent the university here in a tidy little residential neighborhood. There is a kindergarten across the street, and a grocery store within five minutes walking distance. I’ve taken up swimming, too; I am a terribly unpretty and ill-coordinated swimmer, particularly when compared to the sleek and methodical Germans, but I’ve found it very relaxing. The old man who I assume works at the pool calls me “Amerikanerin” — it’s quite endearing, actually.

Classes begin tomorrow — what a jolt to my system that should be! I’ve played at speaking German here, and on the whole, I’ve enjoyed it a great deal. A few run-ins with dorm neighbors, a few conversations over dinner, the occasional exchange, marked by smiles all around, with shopkeepers or cashiers. But it’s down to business tomorrow! The school abroad in Germany is the only of Middlebury’s programs, as far as I know, that requires students to be fully immersed in the university system. That means I’ll be approaching each of my professors this week, singling myself out as an American exchange student, and asking permission to take their courses. Press the thumb for luck, as we say in Germany.

That’s it from the Stadtpark, I think. Back to my Woolf. When my Internet access is a bit better, I’ll make sure my photographs from the March trek go up — some of them, at least. And, if all goes as plans, I’ll be updating more frequently now that I’m settled in Mainz.

(An addendum: I wrote this earlier this week. In the four days since, I’ve registered with the network here and finally established an Internet connection at home. I’ve also finished Mrs. Dalloway — with a start in my bed late at night, no less. I’ve also made it through my first week of classes. And since Monday, we young Americans are making strange sense of news from home. Shootings and rulings; from Mainz it all feels disconcertingly distant.)

Pre-Departure Thoughts

With Kristen whipping up fajitas in Paris, Becky ruminating on "pain au chocolate" in Poitiers, and various other friends scattered throughout the blogosphere abroad, I decided recently it was time to tip-toe into the world of study abroad blogging. Now, I know there are blog critics among you; Alex has already voiced his complaints, and another friend explained via e-mail recently that she has been "raised to make fun of blogs." Let me explain.

My impetus for "blogging" — for my parents: "web logging," get it? — originated in a I took a year ago with Barbara Ganley. Every student in the class was required to keep a blog; we posted writing assignments, responded in writing to each other's work, and used our "mother blog" as a sort of virtual blackboard for posting class assignments, syllabus updates and the occasional interesting tidbit that we wished to share with one another. We posted summer reading recommendations at the end of the semester or shared links to poetry readings online.

I myself came to blogging a bit reluctantly, in part because I was distrustful of the technology, but ultimately found it made for a unique classroom dynamic that I haven't seen duplicated since. Our classroom expanded as the discussions that started in class spilled onto the blog, as new discussions popped up in cyber space. I found that blogging provided a uniquely thoughtful approach to creativity in our lives — all in the company of others, of course. Some of us were more enthusiastically tied to the blog, but on the whole it fostered informal learning and passionate discussion. But this was the sort of class for blogging; we turned to the blog as writers learning about writing and writing about writing. The blog was suitably self-conscious, suitably meditative.

This is not to say that every class would not benefit from a bit of blog action. But for me, blogging was about writing and communicating within a community. And I do not know that every undertaking is well suited for blogging. Barbara — ever a thoughtful blogger — may be quick to disagree, and her experience is far more extensive than my own. But for me, I appreciated the blog while our class was in session, and enjoyed being part of a community of writers. And when our community was disbanded, as all classrooms eventually are, I shuffled back — a bit sadly, but in part relieved — to the solitude of writing on my own.

So with the exception of a few posts made in German during my Language School summer, I resisted blogging once school let out last spring. The linguistically imposed isolation of my summer at Language School, where I spent seven weeks speaking (and writing) nothing but German, made blogging with others tricky. And the rigors of the academic semester left precious little time for the sort of "slow blogging," as Barbara terms it, that I was most interested in pursuing. More than anything else, however, I resisted blogging without purpose. The sort of blogging that appeals most to me, I think, is blogging within the parameters of a well-defined project. I didn't have a ready-made community for my thoughts. And I think I feared hurtling my reflections on the sometimes tedious process of day-to-day learning into a void; perhaps, I worried, it would be self-centered of me to write about something so ordinary.

This is all a long-winded explanation, I suppose, for my trip back to blogging. I thought for a good long time about whether or not I was interested in taking up this sort of writing while abroad. Then Barbara coaxed me into Blogging the World, a project she started last year to connect students writing about their study abroad experiences. And I recognized the fervor with which I read blogs — those of my friends abroad, in particular. Writing projects aside, they make for interesting reading, and I’ve enjoyed following my friends’ adventures abroad from their blogs. (Perhaps this is because our lives become extraordinary during these few months -- or at least extraordinary in the conventional sense.) Rather than than long e-mails from Mainz, expect the occasional update here. I imagine I will approach this blog as a work in progress; this is to be a virtual notebook, a sort of collection of drafts of thoughts cultivated abroad. Not a journal, necessarily, but rather the rough outlines of a project that I do not yet quite understand.

Enough, for now, about blogging. I leave for Germany a week and a half; I fly on the evening of February 27. Until then, I am at home. Home, for me, is Steilacoom, Washington. I am without a car most days, so I don't venture far. I eat my cereal at the kitchen table and read the sub-par Tacoma News Tribune. I listen to NPR or re-runs of This American Life. I bake. I'm collecting recipes from the Food Network, and putzing about in the kitchen. (I made my first lasagna a few nights ago.) And I walk The Dog, a good-natured, rusty-colored pony of a dog; we amble around the neighborhood. We like best to walk in the woods east of Steilacoom, on trails used by Fort Lewis soldiers for training exercises. At home, I read my book, or watch old Sidney Poitier films, and The Dog and I nap intermittently until the rest of family comes rumbling home.

I have grown very fond of Washington. My family landed here when I was twelve or so, the last stop on my father's extensive string of military tours. When I was in high school, he retired after nearly twenty-five years in the Army, and we moved the fifteen minutes from Fort Lewis to Steilacoom. I have lived here substantially longer than I have lived anywhere else, but only in these last two or three years has Washington begun to feel like home. This realization came, I suppose, when I left again, this time for college on the other side of the country. And now I consider myself a proud Washingtonian; the state may well be the hub for the collections of essays I plan to write as my senior creative thesis.

What strikes me as odd, then, is that on the verge of planning a five-month romp through Europe, I am more preoccupied with details of home. I spent last summer holed away in Vermont, a state I love nearly as much as Washington, but what this means is that I have spent little time here at home in the last two years. And two weeks from now, I'll cast off again. This is not to say that I not deeply excited for my trip. But it is to be an anchorless sort of adventure, and I trade the familiarity of home — the repetition of names and places, the certainty of my traveling companions here — for something unknown and impermanent. I find myself a bit melancholy that I will miss June — a cool, wet month — on the Olympic Peninsula, or at the cold southern beaches of our state.

Home aside, Alex (my boyfriend, traveling companion for the month of March, and fellow Mainzer-to-be) and I are planning the first (and grandest) of our trips. March is to be spent wandering in Europe. The logic for front-loading our traveling abroad is a little convoluted; with friends already well settled in foreign countries, I think we are both a little anxious to be on the move. On top of that, this bit of February and March is something of a summer vacation; the German university system, rather than operating on a fall-spring semester schedule, has only Winter (say it with a niced, strong "v") and Sommer semesters. Our classes don't start until the middle of April, and we won't be finished until the end of July. By then, I imagine, I'll be tired, and rather wanting my breakfast cereal at the kitchen table and walks with The Dog. And our friends, whose apartments and dorm rooms we will be invading on and off throughout March, will have packed up, vacated their conveniently-located and affordably-priced housing, and headed back to the States.

We are still largely without a plan, but off we go at the end of the month. We'll descend on friends in London and Italy, rendezvous with my roommate of two years, Alison, in Austria, and dabble for a bit in Slovenia and Croatia. I'm hoping we'll make it to Dublin and its environs as well. When our month is through, it's on to Mainz, just outside of Frankfurt — precisely the place where we kick off in late February. Mainz is the capital of the German federal state of Rhineland-Palatinate and is located on the infamous Rhine River. The small city is one of the centers of the German wine trade and is, believe it or not, the only German state to have a wine minister. Throw in some Roman ruins for good effect and a good measure of history. Mainz also happens to be the one-time home of our favorite Johann Gutenberg, inventor of the modern printing press. Wine and books, then: all signs seem to indicate that this city will suit me well.

And so in April, the study bit of study abroad kicks in. (I'm just hoping my rusty German does, too!) Until then it is back to reading my guidebooks and baking my cookies and walking my dog. If you've made it this far, thank you for sticking out an exceptionally long post. Expect an update again once the March trek is underway.