Why live overseas? In the midst of day to day life, It’s easy to forget just why I chose to leave all my safety, savings, cars, yard, personal space, friends and family behind and try out a new country. This weekend I had a great reminder of one of the key benefits: experiencing new cultures. My pal Juergen, who I wrote about way back at the beginning of the MBA, is from Germany, and was kind enough to take me on a brief tour of his home this past weekend. Specifically, he is from Mömbris, a small town in the Aschaffenburg district in the Regierungsbezirk of Lower Franconia in Bavaria, Germany, or put more concretely, he is from the the place where oompah bands, big beers, sausage, lederhosen, and most other stuff that we foreigners think of as “German” come from. This suits me quite well.
Autobahn
Juergen lives in London, but had been working in Freiburg all week, and I flew into Frankfurt, where we met. We got a spiffy little BMW hatchback, and zipped off to Dusseldorf to visit Daniel, another MBA. The Autobahn is pretty famous: everybody knows that this is the freeway with no speed limit. People go either normal freeway speed on the right side, scary fast on the left side, or fighter jet speed so the scary fast people have pull over to the right and get out of the way. The fighter jet thing was kind of hard to believe. We would be doing a jaw grinding 90, and these fighter jet dudes would bear down on us and just blow past. Just watching them made me feel sort of dizzy.
Dusseldorf
We got the Daniel’s house in the mid evening. His apartment is HUGE by London standards… room for a big screen TV, a big deck, dining room table, the works. It’s in this old factory that now has been converted to housing, and so is kind of rustic in a hip sort of way. The best thing about Daniel’s place is that there is a raised sleeping pallet which can be lifted up by an electric winch, revealing: oh yeah, you know it… a hot tub! Total Austin Powers action, really funny. I’m sure Daniel has put this to good use. That night we all went out with Daniel’s buddy Marco, who is doing a PhD at the local university. The night was spent in classic MBA style: drinking way too much at clubs with loud music, chatting to random people, and watching my buddies get shot down by girl after girl. I was (once again) sorely underdressed. I only brought running shoes and t-shirts, not the dress shirts and shoes that most euro clubs require. This was dumb of me, I should have remembered, but the guys managed to squeak me in to the clubs one way or another anyway. We came home at 5:30 AM. That makes me tired again just writing it. After breakfast we split for Erlangen, where Juergen’s fraternity is.
Juergen, Daniel, Marco
Germans wear nice shoes, Americans wear shitty ones…
Erlangen
This is the town where Juergen’s fraternity is located. It’s where the Friedrich Alexander University is located, although for complex reasons, he actually studied at another University, but became a member of a fraternity at this one. Fraternities in Germany are in some ways similar to those in the states (dudes in big old house, lots of beer, new members have to do all the shitty work, etc.) but in at least one way, they are TOTALLY different, and that way would be the sword fighting. By sword fighting, I mean actual dudes with armor, fighting with actual swords, actually cutting the shit out of each other and getting big gnarly scars… and here is the important bit: big gnarly scars on their unprotected faces and heads. Does this sound more interesting than the phi delta gamma beta whatevah guys at your school? I bet it does. The basic run down on the sword fighting is this: the fraternities date back to the end of the 18th century, when people actually did wear swords, got into duels, etc. To join a fraternity, you had to fight someone from another fraternity, and if you got a scar on your face, it was a sign of character, toughness, etc. This tradition continues today, and is apparently unchanged from the 1850s. The duelers wear chain mail shirts, heavy leather gloves, neck armor, and these armored goggles with a metal nose plate. This keeps you from getting cut in the chest, neck, hands, eyes or nose. Then, they stand across from one another with both feet facing forward and one had behind the back, and swing the swords at one another’s heads. A round of fighting consists of four swings of each sword, with the swords held above the head. Then, the duelers are stopped. Then, there’s a break of a few seconds and they start again. This goes for up to 30 rounds, or until someone is cut really badly and the match is stopped. You can end up in a fight one of two ways: (1) you do one as part of a organized bout so as to be accepted into the fraternity, or (2) you get someone angry enough at you that they take their business card, rip it, and hand it to you, which means that you are challenged to a duel. Apparently these frat boys never get into fist fights, but if they get really pissed off at someone, they will hold a duel. If you are a crappy dueler and you get challenged, a senior guy in your house can do the fight for you. In either case, people are going to get slashed up, and it’s a pretty serious deal. I got to see the practice room with all the practice targets, helmets, swords and etc. Juergen even dressed me up in the gear for shits and giggles.
no caption could really do this one justice
One of the chief pastimes of all students is drinking beer, and these guys are no exception. I made sure to help as much as I could in this regard.
I think this stuff was called pils… sort of lagery
These guys predictably live in a big old 19th century house with tall ceilings, a bunch of formal rooms, and lots of dark wood. There are little pictures of every member ever on the wall, but for the guys who were in before photography, there are these little silhouettes. There’s some kind of a thing about wearing these little captains hats and tricolored sashes, but I forget exactly what that’s all about. The dudes smoke constantly and from what I can tell pretty much drink constantly as well. One of the rooms is a bar, and this is where I was first exposed to the singing traditions of the house. They have these little leather bound books with metal studs on the covers that have all sorts of Germanic student drinking songs in them. The senior guy in the room kept yelling “silencium” which I guess means silence, and then would tell everyone to open their books and sing. I managed to catch one of these on video with my phone.
(http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vUm5RNkN630)
priceless
Nuremberg is Nürnberg
The next morning we got up and went to a beer garden, where I drank a big beer, and ate a huge pork knuckle with a giant potato dumpling. In the interest of not torturing Juergen in the car on the way home, I skipped the sauerkraut. After lunch, we went to Nürnberg, which people in the US tend to call Nuremburg, this is where the Reichsparteitagsgelände, or Nazi Party Rally Grounds was. There’s a very famous war movie of a statue of a giant German eagle holding a swastika being blown up, and that was at the Reichsparteitagsgelände. This is also where the big Nazi rallies were held, and where the big famous book burnings were, etc. Today, most of the grounds have been turned into parks, so I doubt those old Nazis would even recognize it today. This is also where the top Nazis were prosecuted by the victors after the war. This is a grim museum, but I was glad to get a chance to see it, as it’s an important historical site. Juergen gave me a lot of extra details on artifacts and photographs in the museum, so it was a very instructive visit. After, we wandered around the old town center, which was pretty cool.
Mömbris
On the way back on Monday, we stopped for the second time at Juergen’s grandparents’ place, which is out in the hilly countryside of Bavaria. This area is just gorgeous with lots of trees and little fields and farms, sheep, orchards and vineyards, it’s quite idyllic. Grandpa actually fought in the war, just at the end. Apparently he was a 14 year old anti aircraft gunner in the last days of the war. After the allies overran his emplacement, he rode a bike with flat tires some 200 miles home. Grandma and Grandpa were very kind to me, and fed me lots of tasty Bavarian lunch: sausages, cold cuts, terrine, home made cakes, etc. All very good stuff, right up my alley.
Juergen and his grandparents
country lane outside their house
some things are the same everywhere you go
On Germany
I found Germany to be a pleasant, leafy place with nice little towns, great food, and an admirable dedication to beer drinking. They also really dig the pork products, and I can’t argue with that at all. I definitely need to go back!
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