sunrise and sunset
Oct. 26th, 2005 11:29 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
choco_froshZuerst eine Frage: warum finden alle die Uni-Partys MITTWOCHS statt, und dazu wenn ich will Internet anschluss im Uni-Eingang bekommen???
Today was about as beautiful as they get: started off with yet another incredible sunrise, and it was mostly sunny with highs in the upper 60s. The view across the lake into the hills of the Hegau, as I was eating a hasty lunch in the Mensa, reminded me a little of Maine, and made me sort of homesick and sort of like some opposite of homesick. And the view from the Rheinbrücke...I wonder if I'll ever get to the point of NOT saying "Holy Shit!" when I see those mountains? Today it was relatively clear, so that you could see the weather station on top of Säntis, as well as the full details of the improbably mass of the Austrian alps on the far side of the lake. And what with the mixed agriculture/forest landscape of the Thurgau rising, encastelated, over the lake (and what a lake!) it looked like my idea of heaven.
OK, that sounds incredibly trite, and isn't even ENTIRELY accurate. But it looked like the homeland that I've never known, and that's close enough.
A beautiful day. Too bad I had to spend so much of it inside, engaged in various academic pursuits. This morning I had my first Tutorium in Mittelhochdeutsch: ich hatte enschieden, ich soll dieses einzige Kurs machen, um meine Kenntnis von den Handschriften, die ich lese, zu verbessern. In der Tat war es mir ein bischen peinlich, so viele von den Fragen der Hilfskraft (=TA) zu beantworten, wenn ich noch so schlecht Deutsch sprache, dass ich die Antworten kaum formulieren könnte. War es nur, dass niemand antworten wolte, da es 9 Uhr war? Oder wahrscheinlich nur dass ich war der einziger Mediävvist der Gruppe) Taking MGD is kind of weird: in most English-speaking countries, (I think) there's a sense that the literary canon begins with Chaucer or Shakespeare, and you get at least the latter drummed into your head before you leave high schools; while in Germany, it seems like the canon begins with Goethe, and anything before that is just COMPLETELY foreign territory to Erstis at the Uni. So weird, too, having a literary canon so front-loaded: within a generatioon of Goethe, you've already got German Literature as a subject of academic study. But I digress.
Meantime: finished leafing through the katalog of the first Ratsbuch (nope, not gonna work on that) in the archive, and decided to spend some quality time with Rupert's Chroniken der Stadt Konstanz. On looking it up online, however, I discover that the Stadtbücherei (kinda like a public library: anyway, I now have a membership) has a copy. "Fantastic!" I say. "The Uni's copy is out, but now I can go get that one instead!"
Of coourse, it might have been good to check whether the Stadtbücherei's copy was checked out. Yeah.
So instead I got out a copy of Janosch's classic Oh, wie schön ist Panama! for Grace. For the moment, I'll spar you all the rant about Janosch, Harry Potter, and Fundamentalists. Mostly just cause I want to go home and read Harry Pott- ah, get some serious reading done.
Today was about as beautiful as they get: started off with yet another incredible sunrise, and it was mostly sunny with highs in the upper 60s. The view across the lake into the hills of the Hegau, as I was eating a hasty lunch in the Mensa, reminded me a little of Maine, and made me sort of homesick and sort of like some opposite of homesick. And the view from the Rheinbrücke...I wonder if I'll ever get to the point of NOT saying "Holy Shit!" when I see those mountains? Today it was relatively clear, so that you could see the weather station on top of Säntis, as well as the full details of the improbably mass of the Austrian alps on the far side of the lake. And what with the mixed agriculture/forest landscape of the Thurgau rising, encastelated, over the lake (and what a lake!) it looked like my idea of heaven.
OK, that sounds incredibly trite, and isn't even ENTIRELY accurate. But it looked like the homeland that I've never known, and that's close enough.
A beautiful day. Too bad I had to spend so much of it inside, engaged in various academic pursuits. This morning I had my first Tutorium in Mittelhochdeutsch: ich hatte enschieden, ich soll dieses einzige Kurs machen, um meine Kenntnis von den Handschriften, die ich lese, zu verbessern. In der Tat war es mir ein bischen peinlich, so viele von den Fragen der Hilfskraft (=TA) zu beantworten, wenn ich noch so schlecht Deutsch sprache, dass ich die Antworten kaum formulieren könnte. War es nur, dass niemand antworten wolte, da es 9 Uhr war? Oder wahrscheinlich nur dass ich war der einziger Mediävvist der Gruppe) Taking MGD is kind of weird: in most English-speaking countries, (I think) there's a sense that the literary canon begins with Chaucer or Shakespeare, and you get at least the latter drummed into your head before you leave high schools; while in Germany, it seems like the canon begins with Goethe, and anything before that is just COMPLETELY foreign territory to Erstis at the Uni. So weird, too, having a literary canon so front-loaded: within a generatioon of Goethe, you've already got German Literature as a subject of academic study. But I digress.
Meantime: finished leafing through the katalog of the first Ratsbuch (nope, not gonna work on that) in the archive, and decided to spend some quality time with Rupert's Chroniken der Stadt Konstanz. On looking it up online, however, I discover that the Stadtbücherei (kinda like a public library: anyway, I now have a membership) has a copy. "Fantastic!" I say. "The Uni's copy is out, but now I can go get that one instead!"
Of coourse, it might have been good to check whether the Stadtbücherei's copy was checked out. Yeah.
So instead I got out a copy of Janosch's classic Oh, wie schön ist Panama! for Grace. For the moment, I'll spar you all the rant about Janosch, Harry Potter, and Fundamentalists. Mostly just cause I want to go home and read Harry Pott- ah, get some serious reading done.
huh?
Date: 2005-10-27 08:13 am (UTC)Meanwhile, are you SURE you don't want to move to the Cascades and become a mountain guide?