18:11
Waiting around.
The first morning of classes dawned cold and wet. Stephanie fortunately remembered to drag me out of bed, or else I might have never gotten up. I was still exhausted from the evening previous—I had stayed up too late trying to take pictures of lightning in the direction of Ludwigshafen.
A quick refresher course of the geography of Mannheim, so as to educate you about the locations of all the places and landmarks I keep referencing. The Hauptbahnhof (Hbf.), or the main train station, is located to the south and east of our location. In the map I have provided you can see our location, just along the Neckar River by a canal, marked with an X. The star you see below it is the approximate location of the building where our classes are held. You see the Schloss, or the old residential castle from the 1300s next to the train station. Then there is the Bismarckstrasse (the road in front of the Schloss and Hbf.) and the Ringstrasse (the Ring-street that goes around in a semi-circle).
The two streets that intersect at the middle of the Paradeplatz, or the main city square, are the Breitestrasse (Broadstreet), and die Planken, (Coming from the old tradition of laying down planks so fine ladies wouldn’t soil their dresses) which runs East to West, ending at the Wasserturm, (the old Water tower from centuries ago) marked with a circle. Ludwigshafen is another city across the Rhein from Mannheim, and is highly industrialized. (Showing here, with sunset) One of the nice things about the city is that you never have to look both ways before crossing—most of the streets are one-way. There are of course more intricate details to the plan of the city, but this is as complex as I dare venture at the moment. As I said, the day dawned bleak. It was raining again, and there were no buses running on our street due to the construction that was going on right outside of our window that had woken everyone up the day of our trip to Heidelberg. Yet apparently construction follows us wherever we go, for when we arrived at block B6, where our classes were, there was a construction shovel ripping apart the street. So we sidetracked around and dashed inside, where we ate breakfast. I was lucky enough to find a bakery on the route to class, but that isn’t saying much—the entirety of Mannheim is riddled with bakeries. The German language class is difficult, but bearable. Dr. Hasty gave us the last two days of the week off so we could work on the homework that he had assigned, one of which was to write, act out, and film a German fairy tale. Here was my submission, in English:
“Once upon a time, there was a beautiful princess who lived in a large castle. [Interior shots of our dorm] But she was unhappy, for she could not marry. [Shots of Shannon or Stephanie looking despondent] Her stepfather chose a valiant suitor for her, but she refused. [Me, looking evil] She could never marry the snobbish suitor, she claimed, because of his bad habit of refusing to do the dishes, instead opting to throw the dirty china on the floor. So her evil stepfather locked her away in a hideous dungeon. [Me, cackling in a diabolical manner] She could only be free, he said, if she cleaned the kitchen. Being a high-bred lady, she despaired. Also, the cabinets were enchanted. No matter how many times she tried to empty them, every time she opened them they were full again. One day while going through her daily ritual, she heard laughter behind her. She turned to see the stable boy of the castle. [Shot of local urchin] You can’t do it that way, said the stable boy. Why not, she asked. If you throw everything out, it will simply go right back to where it was, obviously. They just wait until you aren’t looking, he said. Reorganize it, and it will stay in its place. Curse me for a commoner! She cried. And so the princess was released from her imprisonment, and absconded away with the stable boy. Thus there was no heir to the kingdom, and after the evil stepfather died there were several bloody wars of succession fought with France over who got to keep the crown. The end.
Naturally, the others hated it, and said they would rather have a fairy tale of forbidden love about a unicorn named Charley and a horse named Priscilla. Not only did this make me gag, but it also absolved me from making any contribution towards group projects in the future, for which there was much rejoicing. Yet as you can see, it was not a very happy fairy tale, per se, but very accurate for the times, when France and some part of Germany was at war every other weekend, it seemed. This we learned about in the Holy Roman Empire class. Every time I would bring this up around my family, Joe would spout his idiosyncratic “Coffee Talk” bit, which was vexing after hearing it for the 3,000th time. Yet the HRE class has been interesting thus far, albeit a trifle one-sided. Aside from the Professor, the room is as silent and cold as a Presbyterian congregation on Sunday. But now I must depart for the Hauptbahnhof; I need my Eurail pass validated so I can travel to Freiburg this weekend. More later then.
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