The Pear of Wrath

Well, well. Long time no write. But I guess that’s just 'in the nature of things.' Initial excitement about anything that’s new gives way to routine. Try as I might, I cannot help but getting used to Athens and living in it. Getting used to things is as nice as it is necessary, but it also comes at a price. Over the course of everyday life, we tend to develop tunnel view. The last two weeks, my first weeks of class, mostly had me figure out a good way of scheduling my day. When to read the assigned texts, when to write responses? Invest a lot of time in cooking? Go out until after 2 a.m. while I still have to read 20 pages for tomorrow? That’s not a big deal, of course, I get along very well so far! And I really like my days. But it always takes some time to adjust to a new environment. Moreover, being so small, Athens quickly gives you the idea that you know the place. But I don’t. Athens is more than OU and Court Street. It’s sometimes easy to forget that. Tunnel view. Anyway, I try to stay aware of the things happening to the left and right of me.

   Oh, and have you seen this crazy baby? Runs around New York scaring the shit out of people. I’m glad not to be there anymore, haha! It’s hard, however, to walk swiftly in Athens. You know that Tocotronic song, right? Dirk von Lowtzow might have written it on South Court Street. People are relaxed on the streets, not only the ones in sweatpants (who seem to constitute the majority). With some of them walking in bulks, I am often forced to lurk behind. But I guess I have to learn to walk slowly, anyway. Fight the tunnel view. Enjoy the squirrels in the snow and on the trees. Stop a minute in front of the old armory, eyeing the building’s architecture. 

The Pear of Wrath

   Later, I took another minute to wonder at that crazy blemish on my pear. Does it make you think of heart disease as well? That is a heart, no sense in arguing against it! And it looks really sick! The dots and spots on it! Is that malaria? And it even has these rays emanating from it, making it seem to pulsate! Feels like a cat's tongue. The rest of the pear was delicious, anyway.

   Sometimes on my way to school—a walk of about ten to fifteen minutes—I listen to John Steinbeck’s Travels with Charley in Search of America. In 1960, Steinbeck (then 58) set out in his truck to rediscover America because he felt like he did not know it anymore. He wanted “to hear the speech of the real America, to smell the grass and the trees, to see the colors and the light.” And he took his French Gentleman Poodle Charley for company. You know—road trips and dogs—You might know that something like this easily catches my attention. On top of that, Steinbeck’s beautiful prose, his unique style and tone are still reverberating from when I read his epic East of Eden a year or two ago. And as I might have written in previous fits of joy already, I have to read The Grapes of Wrath for my pop/high culture class, which I never had the time to before. After seven chapters out of thirty, I already like it quite a bit. Steinbeck really takes his time to unfold this story of the dust bowl and the plight of migrant workers in the times of the Great Depression. While the first chapter relates in great detail how the dust came and settled in Oklahoma, the entire third chapter is concerned only with a turtle that unwittingly carries a seed of wild oat across the highway. Sounds boring, but it’s not. There are also people in the book. Read some Steinbeck!

Brutal Athens

No sorry - the title sounds like it, but there's no physical violence in this post.

You know. We really just wanted to go see a movie tonight. We weren't quite sure which one to pick. I'd favoured the Coen brother's Inside Llewyn Davis (Yeah, still haven't seen it. But I will!). Fortunately, Sam had the idea to see Nebraska. Beautiful!!! Go see this movie!!! If you don't know it, watch the trailer. If you don't like it, watch the movie anyway. Do it! The trailer is good and tells you a lot, but it doesn't manage to communicate the beauty, the power of the movie. Seriously, it is packed with great shots of landscapes and people, with really nice humor, with kind-hearted and well developed characters, with so much sadness and love. Watch it! And it features Bob Odenkirk whom you might know as Saul Goodman from Breaking Bad! Watch it!!! Okay, so we really only wanted to see a movie tonight. But then - you know how it goes - we thought, well, let's just have a beer at Tony's, talk about the movie a bit. And that's when it started. This is the first weekend in Athens that probably all of the students are really back in town, and it shows. There's crazy people around. We've just had snow, but still dudes were showing off their tanned and tattooed arms in t-shirts, and girls wearing their high heels and mini skirts on Court Street, jumping off taxis singing Black Eyed Peas stuff while running to the ATM in order to make this night happen. In Tony's we were just gonna have this one beer, saying how we liked the movie. In comes Bob and tells us that we should come see this band at Casa across the street. Well. Okay. See the band, then we can still go home. And they were really good. Some rock'n'roll stoner blues thing, and a good show! I also liked the band that played after them - these kids looked kinda hillbilly and redneck while playing something in between the former band and straight forward punk rock - but Sophia and Sam were not that enthusiastic about them, so we left. However, the moment when we wanted to go home was already gone. So we went to Lucky's and had a beer there. It was obvious then that there was no chance I would start reading and writing tomorrow before 10 or 11a.m. So we just had a good time. And suddenly it's almost 2a.m., which is when bars in Athens close. I really tried, but I could not find anyone who knew some place else to go afterwards, so we just headed home, praising Leipzig and Germany for clubs and the absence of curfews. It's true that party in Athens starts earlier than in Leipzig. But it also ends disproportionately earlier. And, I think the most important difference is that, in Leipzig, you know you can go out, dance, party, or whatever, as long as you want to. Here, it's over at 2a.m. if you like it or not, unless you know the right people. So, Athens is tricky. You know you shouldn't party hard so you can get up early in the morning in order to study hard. And then, Court Street sucks you in, and in less than an hour, you are ready to paint the town. An hour later, Court Street sends you back home because it's 2a.m. Too late to get up early tomorrow, too early to want to go home.

Anyway, life is good here. Classes have started this week, and I think I might really enjoy at least 3 out of 4 courses. I'm gonna read a couple of great pieces of American literature, and some very interesting theoretical texts. It's gonna be a lot of work, but I expect it to be a lot of good and rewarding work. Thus, I'll have to limit myself to writing less blog entries in the next days than I had done previously. But I'll somehow manage to keep track of things.

Come for the Locals, Stay for the Globals

Ever since I have learned about the BA+ program back home at ASL, I have wanted to become a part of it in order not only to study in the U.S., but also to experience a firsthand glimpse into American everyday life and culture. This has not changed at all. But my first week in Athens has given me an insight into much more than American hospitality. I am specifically referring to Saturday when Sophia and I had an awesome dinner and game night with a group of 8 or 9 grad students from Iran, Afghanistan, Pakistan, and India. She had been invited before, and then asked if she could bring me as well (thank you!). It was no problem at all, I felt very welcome. We had some very good appetizers, a delicious rice dish (both homemade), and some good pizza, as well as coffee, wine and beer. Along with that went some very interesting talks on a great variety of subjects, and we definitely share the same sense of humor. After dinner, we played “Mafia” which some of you might know as “Nacht in Palermo” or “Werwolf”, and it was a whole lotta fun. It doesn’t happen every day that you meet such a warm and welcoming group of intelligent, open-minded, and kind people. Considering all the oversimplified and often outright wrong information that the media feed us again and again on people that we actually know so little about, an experience like this evening is priceless.

Please don’t get the title wrong, however! Americans are definitely part of the “globals” group! On Sunday, Sophia’s new roommate invited Sam, Rene, and me over for a good breakfast even though he had only seen us for a couple of minutes before. After that, Sam took him and us for a good bike tour around Athens where I learned that you have to fulfill certain requirements in order to get a coffee at McDonald's. In the evening, we were invited for dinner by his parents who are just as nice and friendly as their son. And then yesterday, I met my roommates, and I was immediately offered to be driven around town, and to get one of the girls’ bikes. It’s gonna be hard to express my appreciation to so many people around here in an appropriate way.

The Ridges

After Union troops had won the Civil War in 1865, many veterans were suffering from conditions that would be diagnosed today as post-traumatic stress disorder. In order to take care of these people, a good deal of psychiatric hospitals was built and opened over the next decades in numerous places all over the country. Athens, OH, was such a place. Opened in 1874, the “Athens Lunatic Asylum” (don't worry, the name was changed) housed about 200 patients in the beginning. In later decades, the numbers would go as high as 2,000 people, resulting in a patient-nurse ratio of about 50:1. Of course, the initially relatively good conditions declined with increasing patient numbers. And whereas therapeutical methods are said to have been very careful and humane in the beginning, the early 1900s inaugurated the time when doctors believed in the success of water treatment, electro shock therapy, and lobotomies. Cruel as these methods seem from our perspective today, I’d be careful to judge the people who made use of them. They were doctors, using methods that were scientifically believed to help. Sadly, these methods might have damaged more brains and killed more people than they have actually helped. You can read a lot of the place’s history on the website that I have read before going to The Ridges. I’m not sure about its historical accuracy, but I think it’s mostly reliable, and definitively an informative read with some good pictures.

Anyway, I wanted to go there, and Sophia was interested in joining me, so we went together. Since almost the entire complex is used by the university today, we didn’t find much of the decay that you’d expect on an old mental institution. However, the main building is quite impressive, and the huge barred windows on the east and west wings still remind you of its history. We found only one of the two or three adjacent graveyards where, all in all, some 2,000 men and women are buried. The entire complex made me curious about all these 2,000 stories. It would be interesting to know the ratio of people who died of natural causes in comparison to those who died as a result of their respective treatments.

Foo Fighters

Oh, and in case you're interested: I seriously dig the Foo Fighters these days! Their older stuff. "There is Nothing Left to Lose", "The Colour and the Shape", and "One by One" are great albums. Enjoy the 90s!

Shopping at Walmart, Attempts at Dancing

I understand that most of you might have better things to do than to read 800+ word entries on every single one of my days here in Athens. Also, classes are starting next week, and I might have other things to do than writing such entries. However, since this blog does also serve as a personal journal, I want to keep writing about the things that are happening to me here since so many of them are worth preserving, and also sharing. So, maybe I will be a bit more selective about the things I’ll jot down here. Please don’t take this as a promise, however. Now, I just wanna talk about the most memorable from Friday: Shopping at Walmart and attempts at dancing. 

In only a few days, Sam has tripled the reach of his kind beneficence. No longer is he taking only me for shopping, but he also chauffeured Rene and Sophia to Walmart. In a way, Walmart was not easy. I’m not always good with making decisions. Thus, Walmart was the wrong place to go. Not only do they have everything, they have it in different brands, colors, sizes, and flavors. Oh, and most of it is coated in sugar. At the checkout, you really have to be a pro if you want to put your groceries in your own geeky tote bag. Otherwise, the cashier will put everything in plastic bags for you. And you feel that you have just committed a serious ecological crime. I did not buy that much, but still left the place with at least six plastic bags that are not even meant to be used a second time. It felt like they’d get damaged as soon as you’d lift them up with more inside than a box of Pop Tarts. So now I’m thinking of how to bring them to a good use.

Later that night, we shuffled through some bars again. I have to say in advance that most people I’ve met here so far have a very different understanding of good music than I do. Of course, that is reflected in the bars as well. The one notable exception is Tony’s, often playing some Punk Rock which is a nice alternative to the otherwise prevalent R&B music. As for dancing, even Atheneans admit that their city is not the place to do it. 23 bars, no night club. Two attempts at dancing in bars, both of some locals and some of us, were successful for maybe ten minutes each. And, as much as I still enjoy the older stuff of blink-182, you just don’t play “First Date” right between two rap songs when there's people dancing. After 2 a.m., when all bars closed, we had almost witnessed a fight at a burrito place over nothing, and we saw one drunken guy falling on the sidewalk. The police saw him, too, and they took care of him. So, Athens is really coming alive now. It’s a university city, and it shows. It definitely won’t get boring.

 

Thursday

No photos on this post, I’m terribly sorry!

On thursday, we met our Professor and advisor. At the entrance to his office, we were greeted by a golden maneki-neko, a Japanese beckoning cat. That was cute. Back in his office, however, I noticed that this man actually seems to be interested quite a bit in Southeastern and Eastern Asia. Various figurines and artifacts which I do not know the names for were on display all over the furniture. That makes his office very charming, and I feel like it does reflect its owner. He's kind of a unique, some would say spacy, man, and I guess I will come to like that. Oh, and he said that he did actually shake hands with Allen Ginsberg after a reading back in the days! He seems like an interesting and intelligent guy, so it’s a pity I do not have a class on the Beat Generation with him.

On my way home, I stopped at the Diner because I was craving for a coffee. I decided to get a chocolate milk shake as well, and it was good. Like the coffee, the shake was very very much, and I guess I’m gonna take some of it back to Leipzig in the form of body fat. Anyway, I had picked up a copy of The Athens News (which is free), and I skimmed through it while I drank my coffee and milk shake. The section with the letters to the editor caught the major part of my attention. It looks like really anyone can write about whatever’s on their minds. Here are some of the most interesting quotes (they’re all anonymous):

“If solar energy actually worked, wouldn’t people be more energetic when working in the sun, than when working in cloudy conditions? But actually, if the sun is shining hot enough, it actually makes you less energetic! It’s actually just common sense, people!”

“Ha, I knew it! This cold snap [referring to the ‘polar vortex’] proves once and for all that climate change is an elaborate hoax foisted upon the world by greedy scientists intent on ballooning their research budgets. It’s so obvious.”

“Is someone making up ‘Athens Voices’? Some of them are so idiotic. I have to think it’s creative writing. Nobody’s that stupid!”

In the evening, ISU hosted a game night where I played the most competitive Pictionary session of my life. Things got kinda crazy towards the end when both teams were tied and everyone wanted to win. After that, when we left the building, we found that it was snowing. Very nice puffy and fluffy snow. Immediately, three Atheneans threw themselves on the ground to make snow angels. Then, the group kinda split, and I went to Broney’s with two others because I thought that’s where we would meet Sam. It’s a big bar, and hardly anyone was there, including no Sam. So Majed, Sophia, and I had a beer (Budweiser’s not that bad! Still I spilled half of mine…), and then went to Tony’s, where Sam had been all the time with a friend of his. Tony’s is a great bar with cozy booths and blackboards on the tables. So we exercised our skills at drawing animals and had some Hot Nuts, shots of coffee and almond liquor. Good stuff. Good times!