Sommer 2020 Der Fordhammer Bote
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Volume 1 | Issue 2 Sommer 2020 Der Fordhammer Bote Auslandsstudium Amy Chang Urlaub auf Balkonien! Filmtipp Kebab Connection Kulinarisches Der Döner Kurse im Herbst Grim Tales and Grimms' Tales Gender Benders German At Fordham Fordhams GermanistInnen Dr Susanne Hafner Fordhams DeutschstudentInnen Awards and Honors Grace Howie, Wei Yong Und wo sind sie jetzt? Ricky Bordelon Wir stellen vor Editors & Contributors Deutsche Spuren in New York Externe Links Was gibt’s online? German Cultural Events 2 Mein Auslandsstudium. By Amy Chang On Friday the 13th of this past March, I found myself standing in a long When the pandemic ends, I plan to line of travelers at the Reykjavik airport, waiting to board my final connecting flight to JFK. Seven hours later, the travel ban for EU citizens revisit Berlin one day and enjoy a entering the U.S. would go into effect. European travelers around me Kaffee und Kuchen at my favorite placed nervous calls to their families, talking about nothing but the travel restriction, the coronavirus and flights that might be cancelled. I had cafe, “SowohlAlsAuch.” never felt such a blanket of anxiety and uncertainty weighing on Auf Wiedersehen, indeed. strangers from all over the world. After six hours on a packed but uneventful flight, we landed safely back in New York City. While classes would resume online, my time in Berlin was complete, cut short two months and two days earlier than intended. As I looked down on the city one last time flying out of Berlin Tegel airport, I thought about how nice it would have been to enjoy one last walk by the Spree River and Museum Island. Gone were my plans to visit Munich with friends in April and my habit of inhaling late-night döner kebab at Alexanderplatz. Even as I lamented all that could have been, I counted myself lucky. I had the fortune to experience Berlin for a full semester in Fall 2019, back when the streets were sunbaked and not perpetually muddy when I first arrived in the city at the end of August. My study abroad program at Cafe SowohlAlsAuch Freie Universität offered an efficient balance of academic rigor, cultural [email protected] immersion, and independent living. Academic programming involved exciting excursions; one class trip put us right in the audience of the ZDF morning news program, where I achieved ten seconds of background fame on German TV. By the end of November, the long-awaited Christmas markets blossomed across the city, where I sipped on delicious Glühwein (mulled wine) and nibbled on Lebkuchen. Most memorably, October 2019 happened to coincide with the 30th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall. I joined in the celebrations at the Brandenburger Tor, where there were carnival rides, food stalls and live musical performances. Determined to become comfortable with the language, I spoke German to every local cashier and server I encountered, but they often switched to English upon hearing my choppy sentences and accent. More than once, strangers surprised me by approaching me at S-Bahn stations and asking me for directions in German, and apart from one instance, I had to apologize for my ignorance. One of my victories, however, was my Young East Berliners celebrating atop the Berlin Wall on Nov. 11, 1989. Credit: dpa/AFP via Getty conversation with the Hausmeister of my apartment building when I Images/STR asked him to help me with a plumbing issue. Though nervous, I managed to convey the problem to him and understand the instructions he left without resorting to a word of English. It was a soaring feeling to understand and to be understood in a new setting. 3 Living in Berlin also acquainted me with a greener lifestyle than I was accustomed to back in the U.S. When I moved into my new apartment, the seven-bin, color-coded trash system threatened to scramble my brain, but over time, I found myself sorting my trash without having to refer to the guide. I grew familiar with the Pfand system and returned bottles and cans to the machines for a 25-cent return on each item. Most notably, green transportation in Berlin is widespread; most people ride on public transport, cycle, or simply walk to their destinations. With an hour- long commute to school and three transfer points, it was not difficult to get my daily exercise. Aside from Berlin, I visited several other German cities by train, including Potsdam with its quaint Dutch quarter, Hamburg with its red-brick warehouses, and Dresden with its picturesque Frauenkirche. However, my favorite German city, second to the capital, is Nuremberg, where I spent four days during an excursion with my program. Nuremberg, with its medieval architecture, is quintessential “old Germany”; walking in its quiet, winding cobblestone streets was like stepping into a fairytale. During the visit, we took a tour of the former Nazi Party Rally Grounds, das Reichsparteigelände, and sat in the courthouse where the Nuremberg Trials occurred. Shortly after, I attended a Sunday morning service at St. Sebaldus Church, where the recent Hanau shooting cast a disturbing and solemn mood over the proceedings, though lightened by the pastor’s message of love, solidarity, and remembrance. These experiences provided me with an invaluable dimension of understanding for my studies about Germany’s dark history and the aptly lengthy Vergangenheitsbewältigung : the process of reckoning with the past, as I learned in one of my classes. As our idyllic excursion to Nuremberg and Prague ended in late February, the word “coronavirus” began to enter my daily news feed and conversations. With cases rapidly proliferating in Europe, my family and I decided I should return home early before the situation worsened. However, in the days before my departure, there was no collective sense of panic in Berlin. Empty shelves where there would have been toilet paper, hand sanitizer, and pasta were the only unusual sights. People frequented restaurants, malls and clubs as usual, even as cases in Berlin soared past the thousand mark. It was not until I arrived at the airport that I began to see face masks, but only on a handful of people. No city fascinates me as much as Berlin, a remarkable beacon of reunification and the heart of former Cold War tension for nearly half of the 20th century. Now that I am home, I miss Berlin deeply. I miss the street-fashion of the people and the diverse immigrant cuisines. I miss seeing the patchwork of classical, Bauhaus, and Brutalist architecture. Whether you enjoy techno at Berghain or Mozart at the Philharmonie, Berlin boasts a world-class scene for nearly all musical tastes, true to its 4 welcoming character. When the pandemic ends, I plan to revisit Berlin one day and enjoy a Kaffee und Kuchen at my favorite cafe, Sowohl Als Auch. Auf Wiedersehen, indeed. Filmtipp: Kebab Connection, (2004). Directed by Anno Saul and starring Denis Moschitto and Nora Tschirner. Review by E. Duchovni Will Ibo make the first German Kung-Fu movie? Will his pregnant girlfriend, Titzi have to sacrifice her chance at acting school? And will King of Kebab, his uncle’s Turkish restaurant, beat the Greek Taverna across the road after everyone sees Ibo’s avant-garde, Spaghetti-Western/Scorsese/Tarantino style commercial? The 2004 film comedy Kebab Connection, answers these and other questions. Kebab Connection is an outrageous comedy, but has its share of both touching and painful moments as Ibo finds his path to becoming a supportive partner to Titzi and a competent father to their expected child. In parallel, Ibo’s own father, a Turkish taxi driver comes to realize that the German Titzi is a part of the family to which he is devoted and no longer the outsider he imagined. As father and son wait outside the labor room, Ibo asks him: “What does it take to be a good father?” After a pause he replies: “Ask your child, not your father.” Some of my favorite scenes are of the ever-increasing Tziti, and her less talented roommate Nadine rehearsing the monologue from Romeo and Juliet. In a brisk tone, Nadine reads : “Poison, I see, hath been his timeless end.” Tzizi: “You’re not reading an autopsy report, ‘It was poison, Inspector’. You’re just realizing your lover killed himself.” The feud of Capulets and Montagues in the background nicely mirrors the Turkish-German conflict at the heart of the film. But with a little advice from a punk rocker, and a supernatural, kung-fu kick from Bruce Lee, true love, Shakespeare, and Turkish food will all triumph in the end! Kulinarisches: The REAL star of the film Kebab Connection is the “Döner Kebab,”—two fistfuls of pita stuffed with turkish grilled lamb. Watch this Youtube video: “What's a Döner Kebab? (#1 Street Food in Döner Kebab, Cologne, Germany, BERLIN.” by Alex Kehr. See also Amy’s comments on her döner experience in Berlin! 5 Kurse im Herbst: GERM 3275-R01: Grim Tales and Grimms' Tales: Short German Prose Short German Prose Across the Centuries Instructor: Dr Susanne Hafner This course is designed for students who want to explore German literature in the original and simultaneously work on their language skills. This section will specifically focus on German syntax by reading sophisticated novellas and short stories by authors such as Heinrich von Kleist, Theodor Storm, Karl May, Franz Kafka, Arthur Schnitzler and Thomas Mann, as well as fairy tales and Gebrauchsprosa. Prerequisite: GERM 2001 or permission of instructor. Rose Hill, TF 2:30-3:45 MLAL 3059-L01: Gender Benders: An Introduction to Gender Icons and Non-Conformists Gender Icons and Non-Conformists of the German Speaking World Instructor: Dr Maria Ebner This course serves as an introduction to the theme of “German Speaking Gender Icons,” and it will investigate constructions of gender identity, histories of embodied differentiation and “cultural practices” in various German-speaking contexts.