I touched on this topic earlier, but lately I seem to keep running into it, and my encounters merit an independent post.  With the prospect of having to pay the 500-Euro tuition fee again next semester, the German students are becoming more committed to protesting the cost of school.

The scraggly haired 20-something who announced the last protest has not made any more appearances at the front of my lecture hall, but he and his equally outraged friends seem to have gotten more organized and systematic about their approach to protesting.  For the last two weeks, large black flyers have been popping up on walls, pillars, bulletin boards and doors of the university buildings.  They’re even appearing on some of the more remote buildings on the outskirts of the English Garden, where such things usually go unannounced.

In stark contrast to the black background, the white letters “SOS” illuminate each flyer.  SOS stands for “Studenten ohne Studiengebühr,” or Students Without Tuition, and is the name of the group responsible for organization of the protests.  This time, rather than just one time and one location, they managed to organize three separate protests in succession in three places around the main campus — an impressive feat considering it has only been a few weeks since the last attempt.

I was unable to attend the protest because I unfortunately had class (through my program so they were veritably unskippable), but I did hear about it for a few days afterward.  About an hour after the protests, I had Intro to the German Governmental System and met up with a classmate, Yvonne, as we were walking through the hall.  She had come directly from the protest, and I eagerly quizzed her about how it turned out.  Somewhere between 7,000 and 10,000 people (reports vary from person to person) showed up to the university, located on the biggest and busiest street in Munich.  Everyone from professors and students to parents of grade school students were there.  Quite a few people made speeches about their various concerns, and a fair amount of people from the press turned out as well.

I was nothing short of impressed that so many people were passionate enough about tuition to come out on a Tuesday afternoon and protest, but when I told that to Yvonne, she shrugged and dejectedly noted that out of the 23,000 students that attend LMU, it wasn’t that many.  When we walked into class, news of the protest was already buzzing around the room as opinions flew.  One girl sitting a few people over from us was rattling off all the reasons that she supported tuition and how angry she got in a previous class at someone who had challenged her view.  Yvonne made the comment quietly to me, “She only supports it because her parents can afford it.”  It seems that the influence of parental income in debates over college tuition spans the Atlantic.

When the debate turned into lots of students railing on tuition, I decided it was a good time to contribute my American experience, and I explained how my university costs around $50,000 per year.  The reactions were, “Really?” “No way,” “How can you afford that?” and “That is exactly why we shouldn’t have tuition in Germany, because we could end up like the U.S.!” in that order.

Unfortunately the professor walked in and curbed our discussion toward political theories, and we didn’t get a chance to talk again until after class.  The majority of my classmates and I use the exact same bus to get from the university building to the nearest U-Bahn stop, so we had some time to chat during the commute.  I explained the process of taking out loans from the bank and paying them off after graduation, and the German students were amazed.

One guy, who had not participated in the pre-class debate, ended up sitting next to me once the others got off, and said, “Man, we must look pretty silly to you then, protesting 500 Euros.”  I told him, yeah, a little, but that I enjoyed hearing their opinions on the issue, and learning how the German system functions.  As the bus pulled up to my stop, he noted, “Well, at least we are protesting.”  I agreed.

Hopefully I will be able to make it to some of the protests next time.  At this rate the next one should be much bigger than the last.  It is wonderful to see so many student passionately fighting for their right to an education.

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Four turkeys, 28 pounds of mashed potatoes, eight pies, two pots of gravy, three bowls of stuffing and more beer and wine than I could count.  Despite the total lack of European recognition of Thanksgiving, my program celebrated the American holiday together in style.

We started organizing our large feast at the beginning of this month, when our program director posted a list of around 30 dishes on the board, and, adhering to the potluck code, we each scribbled our name next to something to bring.  I got stuck making brownies, since I was sick when the list went up, but things could have been worse:  I could have had to make a turkey.  Finding all of the traditional Thanksgiving foods proved more challenging than any of us had anticipated:  Turkeys had to be ordered in advance, sweet potatoes were obscenely expensive, there was no summer squash to be found, and cranberries don’t come in cans.  Despite some minor setbacks we all made adjustments, converted our family recipes into the metric system, and managed to make some delicious dishes.

Then there was the issue of where to keep all of our American delights.  Each of us lives in a small dorm and is confined to a drawer, or at best a shelf in the communal fridge.  As is common with shared fridge space, food tends to mysteriously disappear, with no regard for ownership.  (In one extreme incident an entire half of a birthday cake was eaten in the span of two hours, but usually it’s just an egg, or cup of yogurt here and there.) Since advance cooking was not a possibility we all spent the better half of Thursday scrambling around for ingredients, and cooking together in various kitchens across the student city.  In the end though, this made Thanksgiving feel even more like home because we cooked with one another, and the meal was fresh down to the very last pie that one girl carried in with oven mitts.

We were told that our program directors were taking care of the setup and cleanup, but I never anticipated that they would do so well.  I walked into the second floor of a small campus building into a medium-sized warm room, with a wall of windows and a small kitchenette at the back.  Three large tables were set up in a u-shape, covered with long white table clothes, candles, flowers, bottles of wine, and beautiful place settings.  Our director was sporting a suit jacket with his standard jeans-and-T-shirt get up, and all of our program teachers mingled around in semi-formal attire as well.  As we sat down to eat our director stood up and made a sort of cheesy (would it really be Thanksgiving without some sort of lame toast?) but still well intentioned and much appreciated toast.  He explained that no one in Germany has any idea what Thanksgiving is, but that it has become something that he looks forward to each year.  Since, he said, Thanksgiving is a holiday about two cultures coming together to share in a yearly meal, then maybe our little German-American celebration was in true keeping with the spirit of the holiday.  My friend turned to me and asked me what I was thankful for, to which I responded “friends and family, and friends that are family.” He thought it was trite, but I meant it.

The night was a feast of great proportions, and just like every year we all ate until we wanted to explode.  After four hours of eating, drinking, laughing, and talking we decided to call it a night for a few reasons, the first of which was that we all needed a couch to lie down on in order to digest the ridiculous amount of food.  The second of which was that we knew if we ducked out first we wouldn’t have to do dishes.  We grabbed some leftovers, and a few flowers and headed home through the chilly and barren student city.  We capped off the night with a few movies, and a lot of stretching out on beds and floors.

Even though I couldn’t be with my family or friends back in the states for the holiday, I don’t feel like I missed a thing, because my Thanksgiving was wonderful.  I must say though, on Friday morning I was a little disappointed that no stores chose to recognize the follow-up to Thanksgiving, Black Friday.  But I guess there’s always next year.

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Thanksgiving is just around the corner, the ground is covered in snow and I had to fork over some Euros for a pair of gloves. The official transition into winter marks the end of fall, and the end of fall concert tours. Somehow quite a few of my favorite bands were playing Munich in the last two weeks, and I finally got some European concert-going experience to add to my boat load of other European firsts.

For some reason I thought before coming to Germany that I would be going a long time without an opportunity to see smaller U.S. bands, assuming that the only bands that played Europe were huge acts (Madonna, Britney, etc.) and indie bands that originated in Europe. A few weeks ago, though, I found myself in front of one of the many pamphlet display walls, and I picked up a booklet from the Munich equivalent of Ticket Master. As I scoured the pages for familiar band names, I was blown away by just how many small American acts were going to turn up in Europe. I headed to the ticket box (conveniently located in the cultural center where I have my French class) and bought tickets to see two bands that week.

Buying tickets in advance was a new step in the concert-going process for me. In Chicago you can always count on a variety of people to be selling tickets outside of even the most popular shows. I rely on these people to sell me tickets at face value so that I don’t have to pay the outrageously jacked up Ticket Master prices, and so that I don’t have to commit to the show four weeks in advance. It was a good move, this time, to purchase them beforehand, though, because when I walked along the outside of the venue of my first show, it was completely barren of scalpers of any kind.

Concerts function largely the same way in Europe as they do in the States, so I won’t bore you with the details of ticket-taking and crowd-standing. What was the most interesting about both of the concerts I saw, though, was the way that language influenced the shows. Both bands were English speaking, one from Ireland and one from Seattle, so I knew I was bound to run into some English speakers there. What I didn’t anticipate was just how many Germans, who didn’t speak a word of English, would be at both shows, or how distinctly the Americans would stand out.

The first show was the smaller of the two, and considerably less crowded. I stood comfortably next to a group of German girls from Stuttgart, who, although they spoke no English, had seen this particular band four to five times already. It was nice to be able to purchase a beer, and talk comfortably with my German neighbors before and after the concert, comparing life stories. I noticed some guys speaking English with an Irish accent when I was at the bar, but overall most people were speaking in German. It was a great show and when the opener dedicated a song to the new American president, Obama, I couldn’t help but cheer with all the Germans around me.

The second concert, on Friday of that same week, was when I really noticed the English speakers. This band was considerably bigger, so I headed to the venue a little earlier, and ended up waiting at the front end of a fairly long line. I was bordered by a group of six guys and three girls speaking loudly in English, and a German couple standing behind me. For the first time since I have been in Europe, I actually identified more with the Germans standing behind me than the Americans in front of me. I started chatting with the couple in German and never did talk to those Americans. It wasn’t because I was ashamed or embarrassed that they were American, or being loud (that tends to happen in big groups anyway), I just finally felt more of a connection with the people who share my new home city, and that was very refreshing.

Once inside, I went to the bar to get a beer, and was surprised to find all of the bar tenders speaking in English, even to those that spoke German to them. I’m not sure if that is a trend at English speaking shows, but they definitely kept it up the whole night. While standing in the small crowd gathered at the front of the concert hall, I ended up standing next to another, smaller group of guys speaking English. One turned to me and asked if I spoke English, and when I responded, “Of course,” he laughed and started talking to me.

It turned out he and his group of friends were American soldiers, who just got back from Iraq and had a long weekend off from the base, located a few hours north of here. I felt sort of silly asking him questions, but I had never really gotten the chance to talk to someone who had served in Iraq and I was curious about what daily life was like. He told me that while they are there, he and his fellow soldiers function essentially as police, talk to the citizens and try to find “the bad guys.” He recalled one day, when they were coming back from a mission in the desert, blasting Santana in their jeep, when one of the vehicles behind them got hit by a missile, and “just like out of a movie, man” they dismounted, pulled out the others and cared for them until the medic helicopter arrived. As he told the end of that story, one of his friends standing in front of him turned around and said, “Man, don’t tell that story, it’s bad memories, I ended up in the hospital because of that,” to which my new friend responded, “Yeah, but you saved a ton of people that day too, so it’s not so bad.”

We ended up changing the topic anyway, and ended the conversation with my asking if he would re-deploy. He told me that a few of them would probably get stop-loss, and he might re-deploy because it is good money. Once the band started playing, I got separated from the group, but I won’t soon forget that story. I never expected to run into American soldiers at a concert in Munich, but I am glad that I did.

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It wasn’t until recently when I was comparing stories from classes at LMU, the German university that I attend, with my program friends, that I realized just how awkward university classes can be for us here.  Let’s take one of my classes as an example: Marketing Communication is a course that I chose for a few reasons, the first of which is I have never had formal marketing training, despite working as a marketing intern this past summer. Since NU doesn’t have a wide selection of business communication classes, I thought this would be a great way to try to snag some School of Communications credit for a foreign course.

Things first went awry in the process of registration.  I previously wrote about my city-wide witch hunt for places to register. This class was one of those that slipped through the cracks and my program director had to take over registering for me.  That translated to him sending an email off to the professor explaining that I desperately needed this course to graduate and that I would have to go home if I didn’t take it.  Okay so a program director that stretches the truth isn’t too bad, but unfortunately included in that email was “she is an American.”  Strike one.

It is not bad to be identified as an American because the Germans are very interested in American culture and will at least want to congratulate us on the results of the election.  But I usually try to fly under the radar and pass as a European in class, because then the German students don’t alter the way they talk to me. (For example, my neighbor is still convinced I am half-deaf and speak no German because he speaks obscenely loudly and mind-blowingly slowly to me).  I walked into the small, over-crowded classroom full of older students, and took a seat in the corner on my first day of Marketing Communication.  The professor began the class on time (Shocker! Classes are usually expected to start 15 minutes late, officially), and started rattling off his credentials, one of which was travel.  While discussing the difference in customer service in different countries, he naturally brought up the U.S. and proudly announced, “We have an American who can help us with that information though,” then turned and looked directly at me, “that is you correct?”  This moment was like in high school when the teacher announced test grades, and revealed who broke the curve and ruined everyone’s grade.  I nodded, blushed, and he motioned and said, “well she will surely be helping us along this semester.”  My cover was officially blown.

As the class progressed I spent a great deal of time observing the other people in the class.  Everyday I have to get there early in order to get a seat, and as I watched people enter in small groups I saw that there were Russians, Ukrainians, and Argentineans.  The realization that I was not the only international student was in this situation not reassuring, though, because the rest of the students were never called out by the professor for their nationality and also seemed to be about 100% more proficient in German than I am.  That feeling was only exacerbated by my old, spacey professor who every time an English term came up in discussion (they frequently do, because in America is fairly progressive in marketing), would turn to me and question, “that is spelled correctly, right?” then swivel around to the class and announce, for the nth time, “we have a native speaker with us.”  In any other circumstance it would be fun to have people asking me about English, but I couldn’t shake the feeling that everyone was sighing and rolling their eyes.  That is until this past class.

I finally got to sit next to one of the younger guys in the class and talk to him a little.  In this class when the professor asked me about an English term, the guy would look over at me with an understanding chuckle and make fun of the old professor under his breath.  Finally, someone to commiserate with! Unfortunately, this professor assumes that I am a full-blown marketing expert, and in this class he said a ridiculously long word in German, looked at me and asked, “in English that is…?” Oh boy, heart racing, I just gave an innocent shrug, and after a horrendously long awkward pause he wrote “data mining,” on the board. Data mining? Seriously? How in the world was I supposed to know that ridiculous term?  Just as I was about to slump as far into my seat as possible, the guy to my right looked at me and said sarcastically, “Oh data mining! How could you have not gotten that one?”  The feeling of relief that comes with being in a foreign classroom and finally having someone want to relate and talk to you is indescribably great.

In German classrooms it is very common for students to collectively and blatantly tease the professors.  Though I risk giving the professors a bad impression of me, I usually laugh along with the other students, because having an understanding with my fellow classmates is more valuable to me than making a fantastic academic impression.  When I can become a part of that social community, I finally feel like I belong in the class and that I am just another one of the students.  My American isolation falls to the wayside and my German improves because I am not nervous or alone.

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On the night of November 4th, a group of Americans from my program, a few of our German friends and neighbors and I stayed up watching the election results come in one state at a time.  We gathered in the common room of one of the small co-op style dorms and closed all the doors, so as not to wake up the rest of the hall. Though we had an abundant supply of beer, the drink of choice was tea and coffee, and everyone was on the edge of their seats, hoping that our fellow citizens back in the states would make the decision we were hoping for: Obama.

The results didn’t start coming in until about 1 a.m., thanks to the time change.  Two German TV stations were reporting the election in a similar fashion to that of American news stations: a giant map in the background with a man in the foreground who would announce results and then turn individual states red or blue.  The entertaining part of watching it from Germany, though, was that sometimes they would get a shot of the announcer’s laptop and CNN.com was running or when the camera went back stage, there was a group of Germans huddled around a TV screen flashing CNN.   The running joke for the evening was that every time “Ergebnisse,” or results, came in the announcer had just refreshed CNN.com, which while funny, was also somewhat truthful.

Obama began taking state after state, and each time there was an enthusiastic cheer from our small American audience.  In between the announcements they showed coverage of the Grant Park rally in Chicago, and the two other NU kids and I would scan the screen for brief glimpses of the many people we knew would be there.  At that moment I got a little homesick: the whole world was watching Chicago, and half of my closest friends were there.  I wanted more than anything to be standing in that crowd watching the results.  As the night progressed, our group numbers waned to about seven very sleepy students, who would give an enthusiastic cheer when Obama won a battleground state.  I think it was the cheer for Ohio that startled me awake, and I decided that it was time for me to go to bed.  I had tried to ride it out, but I had a fever and was about ready to collapse.  When I left our German friends, who affectionately referred to Obama as “Obi,” were completely convinced that he was going to win.  In all reality it was looking pretty good for Obama, but I couldn’t help being a little nervous.  My entire political life has been full of too-close-to-call elections and recounts, so I feel like nervousness is justified.

I stumbled back to my room and flipped open my computer to check CNN one last time before bed.  After hitting refresh for the second time, Virginia and the West Coast turned blue on the map and there was a check mark next to Obama’s name at the top of the screen.  My roommate, who is studying abroad in Italy, was online and we exchanged a few all-capital-letter lines of exclamation on Google chat, and I fell asleep with a smile on my face.

The next morning, Germany awoke to a beautiful sunny day, and when I opened my computer and saw all of the Obama excitement flying at me from Facebook, headlines, emails and blogs, I couldn’t help getting excited all over again.  As I watched Obama giving his speech in Grant Park, I actually started crying.  He talked directly to my generation: “It grew strength from the young people who rejected the myth of their generation’s apathy; who left their homes and their families for jobs that offered little pay and less sleep.”  The fact that a politician has finally recognized and inspired my generation is absolutely beautiful.  I got on Skype to talk to my American friends here in Germany, and every single one, although they were touched by different lines, also cried out of happiness while watching Obama that morning.  It was a great day to be an American in Europe.

As I walked through Munich that day and passed the newspaper stands and machines, the headlines were different than I had expected.  A few that I saw said, “Good Morning, Mr. President, it’s time to fix the world,” and “Yes We Can, be friends,” or just “Obama!”  Germany was buzzing with the news of Obama, but for the Germans, the US electing Obama was something they thought was bound to happen so many publications were not focusing on the hype of our new president-elect, but on what he was actually going to do now.  It was down to business for Germany, immediately.  Der Spiegel, a popular German magazine, has been particularly US centric for the last few issues: first they had a scathing issue about the failures of the Bush administration, with a harsh depiction of the major leaders of our government on the front cover.  Then they released a special edition about the history of the US, in which they also claim the US is responsible for most of the problems in the world, good and bad.  Finally their latest issue (along with the latest issues of just about every magazine) has Obama on the cover under the headline “The World President: What he wants, what he can (not) do.”

Being abroad has probably made me more patriotic than anything else in my life.  Living in another country, you usually feel a little more pride about where you come from.  Just like when you go to college you magically have an immense amount of hometown pride, even though before you may have hated it there.  In my experience, Europeans do not hate Americans, like everyone likes to think.  They do not like our politics, and in a place where politics is a more popular subject, that tends to get misconstrued as general disdain.  Politics aside, the Europeans I have met enjoy many of our cultural highlights just as much as we do: radios play half American music, MTV is one of the most popular stations here and every party is loaded with our 80’s classics.

I was discussing the Der Spiegel article that blames the US for the world’s problems with my German friend, and he had an interesting take on it.  He said, “You know it’s easy for everyone to turn to America and blame them, because you are more involved in many issues than other countries, but I think it’s better than what we are doing, which is sitting around pointing out faults.”  Now that was a pretty extreme opinion, but he did have a point about America being easy to blame.  My program director gave another good insight: Austria, Germany’s smaller neighbor is always obsessed with what is happening in the German news, in the same way that Germany is obsessed with what’s going on in the much larger US.  In his opinion, smaller countries will always be interested in what’s going on in the larger, more active ones.

For me, I have had a little shift in opinion.  Back in the states, I was the first one to say “yeah the US is really messing up the world right now,” and there is some truth to that statement politically and diplomatically.  But what I think you don’t see if you stay in the states is that we export and influence much more than I ever realized. Our culture influences the world scene just as much as our politics do.  And while I was never in support of the Bush administration, I think that the worst thing that happened in the last eight years is that we got a little reckless and forgot that every move we make influences other countries which was reflected in Bush’s policies.  More than anything else, I hope that Obama can just be conscious of this effect.  If we had a president with an attitude like that, his/her politics would fall into place and be naturally more internationally caring and empathetic.

For now, though, I will continue to enjoy saying I’m an American, because I couldn’t be more proud of the decision we made.

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For the last two years, each time I would get an illness of some kind that reached beyond the “these are normal symptoms of a cold” plane, I would give Searle (the doctor’s office at NU) a ring, and set up an appointment for sometime within the next 24 hours. They are actually very good about making appointments, and the $25 no-show fee seems like a reasonable way to ensure college-student responsibility. After crawling my sick self over to Searle, filling out paperwork for a few minutes, I would get in to see one of the doctors. But, no matter what my symptoms or ailments, the two first possibilities were always: pregnancy or mono. Delightful.

Whenever they posed the “Is there any situation you can imagine, in which you would have contracted mono?” question, all the games of pong would flash through my mind, and I usually chose a simple “possibly?” answer. Then if I were lucky, they would quickly decide to run some sort of jam-a-q-tip-down-your-throat test on me to see if I had mono, and/or strep and I would get the results back in about two days.

That, my friends, compared to a lot of health care in the U.S., is a pretty good system, and we should consider ourselves lucky. However, comparing our best health care to the universal health care system in Germany is like comparing a matchbox car to a Porsche. Let me tell you a tale (that many politicians would have you believe is tall) about my first hand experience with universal health care.
Monday and Tuesday of this week I had two pretty nasty fevers that prevented me from going to class. While I hate doctors, and I loathe having to admit that I am sick, in order to be excused from class you have to have a note from a doctor. Therefore, I decide to email my program director and ask him for a doctor recommendation, in order to obtain this note. I am insured through my program, and it costs roughly 50 Euros per month, but is included in the lump sum that I pay to be here.

I got the name and phone number of a doctor about three U-Ban stops away, in the late afternoon on Tuesday. I called the office, only to find that this doctor’s hours were from 8:30-11:30 a.m. Monday through Friday. Yes, that’s it. That’s pretty typical for Germany though, so undaunted, I called again the next morning, and asked to make an appointment with Dr. Schneider, to which the receptionist responded, “You don’t need an appointment. Just come in before 11:30.” Surprised, but glad that I could see a doctor that same day (my condition had worsened considerably, and I was now seeking medication and not just an excuse note), I headed to the office.

The office was located in between two shops on a crowded street, on the second floor. I opened the door, and walked into a small office, with a receptionist sitting behind a counter on my left. I nervously shut the door, and rattled off the history of my current illness and how I came to be in this office to the receptionist. She looked me over, and simply asked for my insurance card, a 10 Euro co-pay, and then I sat down and waited for the doctor. Wait, you might be thinking, where is the clipboard with 10,000 pieces of paper to fill out? Where is the medical history request? Well there wasn’t any. All of my information was programmed onto my insurance card. About 20 minutes later the doctor called me into his office.

We sat down across from one another, and I told him what was wrong. He took one look down my throat, felt my neck, and gave the diagnosis: strep (well, he also said something about tonsillitis, but I wasn’t sure exactly what was wrong because it was all in German). No jamming of q-tips or two day waiting period for results, just an immediate decision. We then made small talk while he wrote me a prescription, and filled out a slip excusing me from classes Monday through Thursday, since I would be highly contagious until the next day. I walked out of the office with my two pieces of paper, and found the nearest drug store — an “apotheke” here, they are on every corner. I walked in and gave my prescription to the woman at the counter, who then walked to the back, picked up a bottle, came back, asked me for five Euro, and told me to avoid dairy. That simple.

Similar things have happened to quite a few people on my program. One girl had a bike accident and landed in the hospital for close to a week, where her bill was only 15 Euro per night. I know that there are so many intricacies to the American health care system, and so many fundamental things that can’t be quickly changed. But, living in a country with a system like this feels like I just won the lottery. When we tell stories of people dying because they can’t afford health insurance, or hospital bills the Germans flat out don’t believe us. That is not possible in their world.

If nothing else, this experience made me realize that we have a long way to go in the States.

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In February 1943, members of the non-violent resistance group Die Weiße Rose, or the White Rose, in Germany dropped hundreds of protest flyers in the main building of Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich. The Gestapo was called immediately, the group was taken into custody, and was executed within a week.

That main university building, where I have many of my classes, is now a memorial to the White Rose group on the first floor. That was an extremely abridged version of their story, but it comes to mind every time I walk into that building. The government has placed stone copies of their leaflets all over the plaza that look just like the originals when they were strewn all around the building. Mixed in with the flyers are small biographies of White Rose members, in a tribute to their resistance.

I don’t know if it is the history, the German university students, or a combination of both, but the atmosphere in the classrooms is completely different than that of classrooms in the US. Students have a much more casual attitude towards professors: although professors give students all the information that they could want to get out of the class, the students are never afraid to question the teaching method. Before class begins, students often make announcements about upcoming events or club meetings and are usually greeted with more enthusiasm than the professor. In one particularly overcrowded classroom, a petition against occupying a small classroom for such a popular class was circulating within three minutes of the start of class.

Usually I get a big kick out of these protests because it makes me feel like a part of the German student community when I can laugh or commiserate with the students. One protest however, I just can’t take seriously: tuition. The German universities have recently started charging 500 euros per semester for schooling, which, compared to the total lack of tuition that previously existed, may seem like a lot. But coming from our delightfully overpriced university, I have a hard time taking their complaints seriously, especially when a fair amount of them still receive scholarships. Whenever the tuition issue comes up in a conversation with a German student and I inform them that my university costs roughly $50,000 per year, I receive a wide range of jaw-dropping responses: “Seriously?” “I could buy like a Ferrari instead of going to college for that.” “How do you pay for that?” “No way.”

Though I find it hard to relate to the tuition protest, I do enjoy seeing students exercising their right to speak out. On my way down the stairs and through the main foyer, I eyed some protest postcards that were strewn all over the floor of the building. I was so enthralled with how many they were able to “distribute” that I hadn’t even notice I had walked outside, until the black postcards gave way to the stone leaflets of the White Rose as I made my way to the U-Bahn.

It’s an incredible juxtaposition to be walking through a place with such history and see that same spirit living on today.

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Just when I though that I had escaped the paralyzing awkwardness that plagues many social encounters at NU, and escaped to a land of suave partying, I realized that having a knowledge of the basic partying and subsequent flirting etiquette of a country is fairly important.  Now, you can always pull the “I’m a charmingly uninformed foreigner,” card, but in case you ever find yourself in Germany and want to play the game, I have compiled a list of helpful tidbits for your reference.  Please note that these were painstakingly gathered through a series of heinously awkward run-ins with the German college partying experience.  With no further ado:

1.    Admit you are foreign.  Not only is Europe full of people that don’t originate from your current location, but they are all usually curious about where you come from.  In the student city, where I live in Munich, I have not yet seen a hall where all the residents are from the same country.  At parties, this is an especially good conversation starter, and usually it ends up with them grilling you about American politics.  On that note, when you meet someone new, it is standard operating procedure to see how many languages you have in common, and if it is not the language of the country you are currently in, you will inevitably speak that one.  Most parties are peppered with heated conversations in at least three languages.

2.    Don’t dance the American way.  This is one thing that I have heard is different in other parts of Europe, but in Germany, grinding is not exactly popular.  The American rub on each other as much as possible style of dancing is all but unheard of.   Even in the student club- that is, in the basement of one of the dorms (ridiculous, right? Eat your heart out NU), notorious for having “grabby guys,” – is nothing compared to a night at the Keg, or a Greek formal.  Sometimes it really looks like a scene out of some 90’s sitcom prom:  Everyone is either dancing in a group, or if they are so lucky as to have a partner, the couple is dancing at least 8 inches apart, facing each other, and not touching.  Inevitably the DJ will throw on an American song, and everyone does their best impression of knowing the English lyrics; “Just like a prayer you can take me zer!”

3.    Stay late. One of my biggest pet peeves about the NU party scene is that nothing starts until 12, and then it sometimes doesn’t last past 3.  My troubles have been solved here, as parties usually start around 10 and don’t stop before 4 a.m. That is especially true when you are going out into the city, because between about 2 and 5 a.m. the subway system doesn’t run, so your options are to fork over the cash for a cab, or keep partying until the early morning subway starts running.  One night we all went out with a few Germans, and when a large chunk of the group decided to head home just before 2 a.m., the Germans were shocked because they had another two bars lined up.

4.     Don’t mix up your grammar.  If you are at a party and stumble upon a special someone, and are attempting to tell a story about your male friend, and accidentally say “mein Freund,” this guy might decide to take a hike.  That’s right, in German they make flirting and dating all the more confusing by having the same word for male/female friend, and boy/girlfriend.  The distinguishing factor?  One letter.  If you say “mein,” it means “my,” but “ein,” just means “a.”  Sounds simple enough, but while sipping on a beer, at a loud and smoky party, that important letter gets jumbled and mumbled every time.  Despite at least two years of studying, and two months in Germany, all of us on my program are still struggling with this subtle, yet oh-so-crucial grammatical error.

5.    Text, text, text.  I should say SMS, SMS, SMS.  If you manage to make it through the languages, dancing, late nights, social grammar and actually get a number from someone, don’t expect a call.  I thought that my friends at NU were obsessed with texting- that is, until I made a few German friends, and realized that their lives run on texts.  Unlike in the States, though, their text messages are formulated like little emails, complete with a “Hi [insert name]” at the beginning.  It is a whole new social art form, especially the sign off:  at the end it is always some two to three letter slang acronym that I usually end up looking up on google.  I now know why it was so hard for our parents to keep track of the LOLs, WTFs, and BRBs.  If you really want a texting experience, try using T9 in another language.  Yikes.

Ok so the chances of you being in Germany and needing to use this information are slim to none, but hopefully someone out there will benefit from my (many) social mishaps.

Read Alex’s previous post | Meet the rest of our abroad bloggers

According to the Princeton Review’s interviews of our fellow Wildcats, an average NU student “is an excellent student who works hard and has a leadership position in at least two clubs, plus an on-campus job.” Say what you will about college ranking services and their analysis of college campuses, I think that is a pretty accurate statement. At NU, I too fell prey to the pre-professional, over-achieving, “work hard, play hard” mentality, mainly because it was in perfect alignment with my track record in high school. I rarely skipped class (except when Sheridan looked like an arctic tundra and I had class in Tech), turned everything in on time, had my hands in more clubs than should have been feasible and never dropped a class…until yesterday.

Since last Monday, I have been on an academic roller coaster: walking confidently into a classroom full of 25 year-old German grad students, then immediately slipping back down into the valley of intimidation when asked to sign up for a research presentation and working my way back up to an almost-as-good-as-original level of confidence again by talking to my American friends. Despite the frantic nature of the last weeks, I had been keeping up with my four university and two program courses, until one of the confidence rebuilding talks with some program friends. They were comparing first-weekend-of-homework horror stories, and I snidely contributed, “Well, I didn’t have any…” and my roller coaster car peaked and then succumbed to gravity. My stomach dropped. I had forgotten to look up the readings for my political philosophy course. OK, on a normal day at NU, this would have been no big thing. I could have gotten up early, skimmed the reading and scammed my way through class. Unfortunately, an entire book of Aristotle in German was looming over me, and my 10 a.m. discussion section was creeping around in the shadows.

I confessed my high academic sin to my friends, who quickly responded, “Just drop the class.” I hadn’t even considered it. I knew that I was giving myself a little wiggle room to test them out and see which would make the final cut, when I signed up for so many classes. But when the time came to actually get rid of one, the NU student in me shone through. It took two program friends, an email from my best friend and a late night Skype chat with my mom to convince me that I should just let this class go. Even after I had “officially” decided to drop the class, I woke up the next morning, without my alarm, with enough time left to get to the class and had to convince myself to go back to bed.

I’ve been so conditioned by my schooling to rise to the challenge, take as many difficult classes as I could and get thoroughly involved with extracurricular school activities. This is obviously not just the result of two short years at NU, or even my time in high school. Rather, it is a result of some hybrid mix of that and my competitive drive. This whole time I have been trying to fit my American schooling mentality into the German university system, and it took this class to shake me out of my irrationality. For the first time since middle school, I don’t feel the need to go above and beyond the call of academic duty. The point of studying in Germany is first and foremost to take classes, given, but I am also supposed to experience the culture, and that includes being more relaxed about schooling.

Classes here only meet about once per week (for humanities) and last only two hours. Clubs don’t court new members in any sort of fair — you have to go hunting for them yourself. And “partying” is considered a legitimate hobby. I recognize that I could not have gotten to Germany or won my scholarship without my previous academic record and attitude; And I still sometimes miss having back-to-back meetings in Norbucks, running to grab curly fries in between and knowing all of the third floor Norris regulars. But, I have been diligently perfecting the art of not being involved. I must say that it is almost as rewarding. I spend time chatting with my neighbors and friends while cooking in the kitchen, smoking hookah on my porch or watching a soccer game at the local bar. I meet just as many people, and get to hear a lot of amazing life stories.

Coming here was a lifestyle adjustment, and I am sure that coming back to NU will be as well. For now I am going to enjoy my laidback education and make sure to soak up as much German culture as possible. It makes sense now that there is no Princeton Reviewprofile for LMU.

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One of the most unexpectedly difficult things about my Euopean experience so far has been trying to figure out how to cook for myself. Ok, so this is something that would have happened whenever I got my own place, but it just so happens that I not only have to learn how to cook, but I also have to learn how to cook in German. On the positive side, the times when I am fumbling around the kitchen are the times when I meet the most people from my dorm.

My neighbor across the hall, Zied, who has been particularly nice to me from the start, is always cooking, and I’m not talking Easy Mac, or even spaghetti. When you walk into the kitchen and he is cooking, there are usually three to four pots dominating the stove top, vegetables and spices scattered across the counters, and without fail he is standing in the middle of the chaos, calmly stirring one of the pots. I can smell his meals from down the hall, and usually jealously eye the soup de jour while throwing together a salami sandwich and retreating to my room.

Last week, when I was making my first attempt at steaming vegetables in the microwave (yes, I am that new to cooking), and staring into the microwave, Zied was cooking a particularly delicious looking dinner. We started talking, and he asked me why I don’t cook very often, to which the answer was simple: because I don’t really know how. But then, rather than laughing or joking, he said plainly, “I could cook for you sometime.” Yes! I excitedly discussed my schedule for the next week with him, and we decided that Thursday would be the day. Over the course of the week when we would pass each other in the kitchen he would ask me things like if I like sea food, or what kind of wine was my favorite.

Thursday night rolled around, and my stomach was rumbling after a day of sparse eating in anticipation for the feast that awaited. I went into the kitchen, only to find Zied cutting up a variety of different kinds of sea food. Amongst them I noted an octopus tentacle, a squid and something that looked like oversized shrimp. This was going to be an adventure. We chatted as he cooked, and I got out the dictionary, in an attempt to both teach him the English words for the fish he was cooking, and figure out what exactly they were. He is from Tunisia, and can speak French, Arabic, German, and a tiny bit of English, so we always speak in German, because it is the easiest common ground. While the fish in some sort of spicy smelling red sauce was bubbling on the stove, we had an appetizer of parmesan, tomato, and fresh basil (he pulled it off of a plant, seriously), and some wine. When the main course was ready, he dished me up a huge plate of spaghetti noodles, with the fish sauce. It was absolutely delicious.

Alright, so the food really isn’t the most interesting part of the dinner, the conversation was. When I asked him how he learned how to cook fish this well, Zied told me that when he was younger he would go to an island with his cousin for a few weeks. To save money, they would go catch their own fish and then find new ways to cook it. That included catching octopuses, and immediately after biting their necks, because otherwise the tentacles would wrap around his arm. He explained that you learn to do that from an early age, because he lives on a small island, and would see all of the adults catching them that way. I didn’t even have a good story about catching regular fish to counter that tall tale.

When clips of the most recent U.S. presidential debate flashed across the TV, we of course started talking about politics. Bear in mind this is the neighbor that watches more of the debates than the Americans that I know. For the first time in this discussion, though, he pointed out another layer of American global influence. He said, “Something that you probably don’t even realize is that who is president in your country has a huge impact on the world, especially small countries.” Coming from Tunisia, he has seen firsthand how a change in the president of the US can hurt or help a country. The way he explained it is that when there is a president in office who is more concerned with humanity, the small countries do well, but if it is someone that cares more about money, then all the small countries feel a strain in their budget. That was the first time that I have felt absolutely humbled by someone else’s political experience, since I got to Europe.

The conversation shifted back to a lighter topic when Zied piled another huge helping of his delicious fish pasta onto my plate, despite my protesting. I haven’t been that full in a long time.

Read Alex’s previous post | Meet the rest of our abroad bloggers