On University Life in Germany (Read: Universität des Saarlandes)

German Universities don't function in the same way as Canadian Universities. OK, that was obvious, but I've got to start somewhere. First off, to be a 'full time student' in Germany is not only not as true as in Canada, it's also easier. German students here in the Saarland pay 150,-€ (for those who aren't aware, when you don't speak English, you use a comma (',') instead of a period ('.') to indicate a decimal point, and a hyphen ('-') is the same as '00' when dealing with currency.) every semester, and then they take as many classes as they want, at no additional cost, although despite this fact, most German students take no more than three or four courses every semester at 1,5 hours of instruction per class per week (I regret that I know nothing about lab time for science instruction).

As in Canada, there are lectures (Vorlesungen) and Seminars. However credit in a class is always on a pass/fail basis (i.e. do you get credit or not) and a 'pass' has a number of prerequisites which must be fulfilled. For lectures, this often includes regular attendance of a tutorial, and for seminars, regular attendance of the seminar itself. Most courses either end with a test or term paper, or require that you make a presentation to the class at some point in the semester. This is the extent of evaluation in the German system. If you pass the evaluation and fulfill all requirements (read: attendance), you get a schein (credit).
That's how it works here. Because German students take so few classes, a degree usually takes about 7(!) years.

Right now, many of the German Bundesländer (Lands of the Federal Republic of Germany- now you see why I use Bundesländer) including (I had to look these up- the English names for these places are really wierd, I include the German names in case someone cares or knows the German names better, like myself) Bavaria (Bayern), North Rhine-Westphalia (Nordrhein-Westfalen) and Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania (Mecklenburg-Vorpommern) have decided that they want to improve their education systems by demanding tuition of a whopping 500€ (~$685 CAN). When our instructor told us this in our German reading-understanding class, about 1/2 to 3/4 of the class was in an uproar about how unfair that was. That's when the japanese girl and I started laughing at their reactions. She pays 1.500.000¥ per year (~$14.400 CAN - the japanese don't subdivide their currency, and another exciting Euro convention! Instead of spaces or commas, they use periods to group the digits of large numbers!) in tuition alone, and, as I'm sure all the Canadian students can attest to, that won't pay for two courses at any Canadian institution. So next time that board of governors wants to raise your tuition, write a whiny letter to your MP about the sorry state of affairs!
Who'd have known I'd be using so many numbers in this post! Madness!

And what about the second most important (well, first for many of you- you know who you are...) part of going to university? Well, parties and partying here in Germany is very different, but not altogether a separate experience from the Canadian way of doing things. The key differences are that the booze is cheaper, and can be bought anywhere you can buy pretty much anything. However, because there's no such thing as a liquor store, hard-to-find liquor means that you're just not going to find it at all. For beer, this means if you want Bavarian Altbier (dark beer), go to Bavaria. If you party in a Kneipe (closest translation is pub, but it's not the same), you generally get two or MAYBE three beers on tap, and I can tell you already that your choices are limited. Some exceptional (and these exceptional ones are careful NOT to advertise themselves) places might have a little more. At the store, you can get whine and liquor from around the world easily enough, but beer other than Karlsberg is surprisingly difficult to find. Karlsberg, you see, is brewed in the Saarland. This means that pretty much everyone in the Saarland loves the stuff. The only other thing they drink commonly is Bitburger, which tastes pretty much the same (slightly better, I think) and is brewed in Rhineland-Palatinate (Rheinland-Pfalz). The problem for me is that these are blonde beers, and I like dark beer, like Newcastle or altbier, and occasionally I love a good Guinness. But I shouldn't whine, because I can drink high quality French or Italian whine (hahaha) for less than 5€- I mean the kind of stuff you schmucks in Canada pay $25+ for.

Next time, which may be next week, or maybe not, I'll address SMOKING, and I'm sure you'll find shocking. Unless you've, you know, been to Europe. Then I'm sure it really won't be too shocking. In fact, if you've spent a lot of time in Europe, I suggest you don't even read the next post, 'cuz you'll be all 'well d'uh! I knew that already!'

Anyway, if you are not one of the people described above, look forward to the next post.

Stockholm Pictures

The Changing of the gaurd at the royal palace.
Side view of the Vasa
The A.F. Chapman, the hostel we stayed in for our first four nights in Stockholm.
This is St. Stephans. This church has very special significance, in that every time we started to wander- you know, let our feet take us where they would- we found ourselves here. This church is not at a particular crossroads, nor is it particularly near anything. It simply drew us to it. And apparently no one else. It is quite far North in the city- there is nothing of interest near it, and it itself is austere and undecorated, and thus, is not of interest in and of itself, either. But nonetheless we came to this church no less than 4 times.

As a housekeeping note, I will now be posting every Sunday night- that means that for all you North Americans, if you check in the evening you will be able to read new posts. If I feel particularly motivated, there may also be posts during the week.

Stockholm

Stockholm, put simply, is most definitely in my top 2 places ever. Despite the fact that Sweden isn't generally considered a part of 'old Europe' however as a result of the cold weather all the history they do have got preserved (bad joke...). But seriously- I think Stockholm has as many museums as Paris or London, and the overwhelming majority of them are free of cost.

Here's an interesting note: Many, if not most Swedes have better English than native speakers. They have the vocabulary, accurate grammar and accent of a native speaker, without any of the idiosyncrasies- that is, if you understand English, you can understand a Swede when they speak English, but for a lot of people they can't understand American or British English (usually one or the other)- Swedes have the precision of speech of someone who learned English as a foriegn language, but they speak it so well.. Swedes English speak good. Although they often exhibit this adorable accent that doesn't make it harder to understand, it just adds a lilt to the way they talk. And unlike Germany, you don't have to be under 40 to speak English. You can ask an 80 year old woman (yes, I did do it) where something is and she can answer in perfect English.

Anyway, we flew via Ryanair to the land of the Swedes on the 25th of October, and we returned on the 31st (we means Naoko and I) Because we flew with Ryanair, this means we didn't land at Arlanda airport (10 minutes by express train to Stockholm) we landed at Skavsta airport (2 hours by occasional bus to Stockholm)..

Stockholm is not arranged like any other city I've ever seen before- Stockholm is actually pretty much an entire archipelago. The Gamla Stan (Old city) is located fairly centrally, and contains a series of narrow streets with no motor traffic and the royal palace. The shops are primarily tourist-oriented (there's an 'American specialty store'- you know only American tourists actually go in there), although many of the residents of Stockholm go there for a pleasant walk (esp. early in the morning and late in the evening, when most of the tourists (except obviously Naoko and I) are gone and the shops are closed. Other islands include Skeppholmen (where our hostel was located- more on that later)- which was until the 60's an exclusively military island and Langholmen (where our 2nd hostel was located- more on that later) which was a dedicated prison island until sometime in the 40s.

Funny notes- 'bus' is spelled 'buss' and an elevator is called a 'hiss'
Language notes- the standard greeting is 'hej' (j pronounced like German, that is essentially the same a 'y' in English). 'Thank you' is 'Tak'. 'And' is 'och'.
The Swedish language is essentially something stuck right between German and English. That's what people say about Dutch, but Dutch still sounds goofy to me and I speak English and a pretty good amount of German, whereas pretty much every word in Swedish is generally obviously related to either German (more often) or English.

On our hostels:
the first, which we spent the first 4 nights in, was actually a boat. We slept on a boat! How terribly exciting. But really, that's about all I can say about and I'll leave the rest to your imagination (and the pictures posted above).
The second hostel was actually the old prison on Langholmen. We got our own cell, which had a very thick steel door, and was situated in the middle of a museum display! The flavour of the place was actually more like a hotel, although at hostel prices (I'm not complaining!)

Now, I don't really intend to bore you with tedium about every single museum we saw and every shop we checked out, but the Vasa Museet is practically (for a naval history buff like me) worth the trip to Stockholm by itself. (see pics above)
The Vasa was going to be the largest ship in the Swedish navy during the 30 years war. It had a whopping 2 gun decks (a lot at the time of the 30 years war), but on her maiden voyage, she travelled 2 very shaky km and then promptly sank. For Sweden in the 30 years war: Disaster! For historians today: AWESOME! Because it sank in Stockholm's briny (if you don't know what briny means, I suggest the O.E.D. (this 'blog does not endorse the other 'dictionary' in any way. We suggest in the strongest terms you not use that.. thing.)) harbour, the boat did not decay. Then a bunch of folks in the '60s lifted the boat whole from the bottom of the harbour and towed to the museum, where it lies today. OK- we've got an INTACT 17th century ship with everything but it's masts and cannons sitting inside this giant museum. This wasn't just any ship, either. It was going to be the flagship. It is one flashy ship- see pictures above. But it's one of those things you have to see up close. There's something about the ship that can't be expressed in words (maybe it's just because I always get soft in the knees when it comes to history stuff like this). Seriously- if you ever go to Stockholm, go to the Vasamuseet. Even if you aren't a history buff- it is so incredibly amazing.

The Royal Palace- you get to see more of it than Buckingham, and they too do the changing of the gaurd, except there are some key differences:
1. The guard, instead being a bunch of guys in ridiculous hats like the Beefeaters, act and look like an active military unit. The Beefeaters hold their rifles like they're for decoration. The Swedish Royal Gaurd hold their rifles like they know how to use them.
2. The band plays more interesting music.
3. you can actually see what's happening because there are about 1/100 as many people.