Europe Through My Lens

It’s heating up here in Tübingen; summer is on us.

Coming here, I thought a lot about the cultural standards for how people should and shouldn’t dress while in Germany; like an obsessive amount of thought went into it. Mostly because I didn’t want to stand out as a foreigner or even worse, as an American. Over the last week, I’ve spent a lot of time observing what people wear as it heats up, and I realized that Germans are just like everyone else; they all have their own styles and their own way of dressing. While yes, they won’t wear sweatpants to class, and a lot of people wear pants throughout the summer, even when I have no clue how they aren’t dying, but a lot of people will wear shorts and t-shirts to class and out and about. Honestly, people don’t care about what I’m doing as much as I think they do. People don’t usually have or want to spend the time it takes to stop to look around at the people around them. While I’m still going to put more thought into what I’m wearing than I do when I’m home, in Maine, I’m not going to put so much pressure on myself to dress in a way that I think is the norm for Germany, because truly, there is no standard. No one cares what I do or don’t do. Anyway, moving on because I had my first test while I’ve been in Germany, and it was for my A2 German class.

I actually had a school visit for the “Rent an American” program I’m in during our scheduled test slot, but my teacher took pity on me and let me take it with the second group of A2 German. Which I’m very grateful for this because I would like to get the credits for this class. There were a couple of things that were different from tests I’ve taken in the US. The one similar thing was how the test was laid out; it had a listening section, a vocab section, a reading section, and a writing portion. All of which is completely normal and standard for a test in a German class. But something that I wasn’t and haven’t been prepared for is that most people write in pen here, and tests can only be done in a blue or black pen. You can’t use anything that can be erased. Maybe that’s something my German professor exclusively does, but seeing as no one else seemed shocked by this, she can’t be the only one. Another thing that is different from the US is the grading. In Germany, the highest grade you can get is 1, and the lowest is 6. I got a 1,7 on the test, which is roughly equivalent to a B+. Which was exactly what I thought I would get since I need to work on listening. But besides that, I made some really stupid grammatical and a few spelling errors.

Speaking of my school visit for the “Rent an American” program, it went really well. It was my first one, so I was a little nervous, especially since I had to be at the school quite early in the morning. There were two other people from my program there, so they gave us each a class to talk with. My class was quite shy, but they were 8th graders, so I expected as much. I’d love to do more visits, but they’re all on Monday, Tuesday, or Wednesday, and I have class. I’m hoping we get a request for a visit on a Thursday or Friday, so I can actually go.

Not gonna lie, I have very few things to say in this post, but I needed to make it. But anyway, yesterday, I went to a pool that is roughly a 30-minute bus ride away. I actually have to take two buses, but the second bus ride is only 2 minutes. The pool has a student discount, which is really nice, especially since the pool is really nice and has a lot of stuff. It was about 90° when I went, so it was super packed. This made it hard for me to practice my swimming technique. I have this insane dream to do a triathlon after I graduate from college, and an even more insane goal to do an Ironman at some point. Which wouldn’t sound that crazy, but I am not the best at swimming. I know how to not drown, and I’ve been teaching myself the actual technique for swimming since my stress fracture during my sophomore year cross country season, so like two years. The problem is that I have a lot of bad habits from years of not actually knowing how to swim; the most annoying one is learning how to breathe while swimming. But anyway, what I’m saying is that I need to go at a better time, aka a time when it’s less crowded, so I can spend less time avoiding children and more time focusing on improving my technique.

Another kind of cool sports-related thing that I found recently was that Tübingen has parkruns every Saturday morning. For those who don’t know what parkruns are, it’s a free 5k race, typically held in a park, and it’s very casual. People can go as hard or as easy as they want to. Sometimes after parkruns, people go get coffee together. Maybe I’ll get the confidence to go to one of those post-run coffee sessions, but for now, I’m just going to tackle actually going to a parkrun. I plan to go tomorrow morning. I’m planning on taking it relatively easy, though, because it’s more about just figuring out if this is something I want to keep doing, but my plan is an 8-to 8:30-minute mile pace. So about a minute slower than my actual race pace. I just want to know how my training is going as I start to really approach my summer training and the summer heat head-on.

On Sunday, I’m going on a short hike in Oberdorf with the hiking group that I’ve been going on hikes with. So that will be in my next post.

My Weeks in Photos

All the photos I have are ones that I took during runs. I started running in a new part of Lustnau, and I really like it. It’s like I unlocked a new part of “the map.” That’s a video game reference, in case you didn’t know.

The rest of the photos are ones that I took this morning on my run. I went early to try to beat the heat, but I still ended up sweating during the last mile.

I got excited by this swan. The iPhone camera doesn’t do it justice. I may have to come back at that time, but with my real camera.

Well, that’s it for this week’s blog post. Hopefully, next post, I will have some hikes to write about or photos taken with my actual camera. I got super distracted while trying to write this post because I had the book I’m writing open and then Pinterest for the boards I’ve made for my book. I also got distracted by a book that I’m reading for fun; I don’t usually have time to read for fun, and honestly, I don’t have the time, but I’m willing to procrastinate doing my homework if it means I can read for fun.