This has taken much longer to write than I intended; well over a month at this point. As a result, the letter itself is also much longer than originally planned. I hope you all made through finals alright, and are enjoying summer. I’m living in a fabulous apartment for the next two months with two guys from the Stanford program, and so far all that we’ve done this week when we get home from work is sit around and watch soccer. ‘We’ in this case is myself and Robbie Kittleson, since our third roommate James Olunga is still visiting his family back in Kenya. You probably know someone who knows one of them (check thefacebook to find out who), and I’m sure they’ll tell you they’re both great guys. I’ll put some pictures up on my web space as soon as I figure out how to. I’m locked away from the campus broadband at the Stanford center, and dial-up at home is not cooperating.
Anyway, as is custom with Stanford students, my quarter ended in a deluge of work. We took about a field trip a week, meaning we did no work and got little sleep, only to find that when we returned we had to have make-up classes, as if these weren’t planned months in advance but were snow days or something. Then in the middle of finals I went out to this conference on globalization that kids from each of the overseas programs went to. It was held in Berlin, so at least I didn’t have a 20 hour flight like the poor saps from Kyoto and Santiago. Our group discussions were pretty wishy-washy, but I spent two of the three nights out until the trains start running again at 5 am, so that was fun. But I should note that one is often ill-prepared to discuss the dynamics of international economics when one is running on about two hours of sleep. The only stuff I could reliably stay awake for was when (Stanford IR prof) Stephen Krasner was talking, because he’s the most awesome humanities professor alive. Otherwise, naptime. Then as soon as the conference was over, I had to write the final paper for my crazy sports class.
This was the course that had me writing out an agonizing two pages of sociological analysis in German every week, but the final was an open-ended question, and we were to answer it in English. Clearly, this was my opportunity for vengeance. After muddling through a full quarter of academic work auf Deutsch, I would write an essay of crippling opacity. I slapped on my headphones and cranked up a recording of a concert Ben Harper played in Berlin, cranking out unintelligible academic-speak while jamming to Voodoo Child. I recast the topic question on my terms, and then half-answered it with an equivocating, back-to-front thesis, “The much more interesting and relevant question is whether the experience of sports in Germany can reveal something heretofore unknown about and yet unique to that character. Ironically, the most exceptional aspect of contemporary German society is a rejection of German exceptionalism, a deep and thorough longing to be an “ordinary” country, just one nation among many others in a variety of international groupings and shared identities.” I broke out the weapons-grade vocabulary and pressed into service every idiom, aphorism, and allusion I could lay hold of, in an effort to browbeat and intimidate my audience. I wrote sentences like, “If we were sloppy in our treatment of causality, we even could easily conclude that every minute peculiarity of German sporting behavior reflects some indelible aspect of the Teutonic character.” It was glorious. It must have worked, too, since I would up doing much better in the class than my grades on the weekly papers would have warranted.
A few days after the quarter ended, my family started an epic tour of Deutschland, and I spent a week touring southern Germany with my parents and grandparents, eating hearty Bavarian meals and looking at castles. My mom planned the whole thing with this travel book she has from a guy named Rick Steeves, and she treated it like we were working on our Germany merit badges, with a solid list of requirements that had to be checked off like GER’s before they left the country. “Okay, we’ve ridden a boat down the Rhine, so that’ll count for the 7c and taker up one of our required above-100 elective slots…” But she was pretty good about not overprogamming the days, and my only real problem is that quaint German bed-and-breakfasts, or Pensions, have quaint little beds with quaint little footboards. This is all very charming unless you happen to be, say, 6’4”, when it just means you can’t fit onto the bed without curling into a ball like a cold puppy. That’s fine for a day or two, and then you’ve had enough of medieval towns, and want to get back into buildings that were made after people became a bit more normal-sized. Our apartment, for example, has 12-foot ceilings.
This past week has been great. Every day, I just come home from work on the train, cook myself some food, and then plop down to watch the European soccer championships. I have learned, however, that Robbie and I are in dire need of a cookbook. Two nights ago after I finished cooking myself some pasta and a sausage, I went to put the ingredients away, only to find in the refrigerator and the cupboard an identical packet of pasta, a jar of the same brand pasta sauce, and a package of exactly the same Wurst I’d just fried up for myself. Neither of us, it seems has any imagination. So yesterday we met some friends for dinner and watched the England-Portugal game in Potsdammer Platz on a giant outdoor screen. The Trojan horse is long gone, but now there’s a hundred-foot inflatable Spider-Man climbing one of the buildings.
The game was ridiculous, 1-0 from the third minute until there was only five left on the clock, when the Portuguese scored on a rocket that bounced off the crossbar. Both teams scored with only minutes to play in the second overtime period, forcing a shootout. I should mention at this point that David Beckham is worthless. I’ve seen him play in four matches, with no goals, no assists, and two missed penalty kicks. Leading off for England in the shootout, the most famous athlete in the world missed the goal. The shootout tied at 4-4 (thanks, Becks), and went into two extra innings until the Portuguese goalie made a lucky save for the win. On the upside, I have a new favorite soccer player in the entire world, and English defender named Ashleigh Cole. First off, he’s named Ashleigh, which is pretty awesome if you can pull it off. Second, he absolutely shut down the entire left-hand side of the field. Time and again, Portugal’s flashy young starlet would come dancing down the field, feinting, bobbing, and weaving, his hair immaculate and his ears studded with bling that would make Barry Bonds blush, only to have a steely-eyed Cole kick the ball right out from under him. And when the shootout was tied 4-4 after the five regular kickers and the teams had to go down the rosters for shooters, did Cole score? Yes he did. Take that, Mr. Posh Spice.
Anyway, the little guidebook that my mom has says in the introduction that “Travel makes it impossible to be ethnocentric.” This is nonsense. If anything, absence makes the heart grow fonder. I’ve taken to saying ‘howdy’ and ‘y’all,’ just because I’m an American, dammit. I watch world-class soccer every day, but a little part of me is grousing about how much more boring it is than basketball. If I had a cowboy hat, I think I’d wear it, silly as that would look with shorts and sandals. Maybe it’s because the language is so confounding, or maybe it’s just that I haven’t had a decent burrito in four months, but I feel much more American here than I ever did at home, in actual America. So I’m still having a good time, especially since the quarter is over, but I’m really looking forwards to getting back home. Plus our place in suites next fall will be awesome, I’ll get to take water polo again, and all my classes will be in that most beautiful of modes of human communication, ye olde English language.
If any of you will be in Germany between now and the end of August, or in San Diego in September before school, give a holler, and otherwise I’ll see you back on campus. And let me know how your summer’s going – I love to get mail that I can actually read.
