Schwimm, shwamm, ist geschwommen

Joe and I have been taking language classes now for two weeks. His is ~20 hours per week, and mine is 9 hours per week. This makes our lives a little bit busy when combined with trying to work full-time, but one thing that maintains my sanity when busy is exercise. I started swimming in grad school with a master's group, and the routine really helped me be more focused at work. So I have been exploring my options for swimming here in Tübingen. Unfortunately there are no groups or classes early in the morning, so I've been swimming in this tiny pool downtown between ~6-7am once a week with my friend Merle.

During intense swimming workouts in the US I would imagine what swimming would be like in Germany. I imagined the German swimming classes would be run by a stern coach (a la East German Olympic style-coach). I thought I might not be fast, fit or serious enough compared to tough German people. In fact, swimming in Germany is quite the opposite. This pool has only 4 lanes, and no floating lane dividers. This presents a problem when 20 people are swimming simultaneously, many of them senior citizens or backstrokers. There is absolutely NO ORDER in the pool! And most people are swimming only very casually, nothing that be considered a strenuous workout. Occasionally, people even decide to swim or walk ACROSS the lanes. It is hard for me to figure out, because there is a famous German motto, "Ordnung muss sein" or "There must be order", yet German swimming pools are entirely disorderly. However there is also a very strong respect for free time and relaxation, and I think that swimming in German falls into the category of a relaxing activity. Needless to say, I have really had to adjust my expectations, and take swimming here for what it is: Dodgeball.

Joe and I have managed to squeeze in some time for fun and socializing. On Thursday we joined my lab group at a place called the Altstadt Besen (literal translation is old town broom). The Besen is an ephemeral type of wine pub, open only October-Christmas, where the main attraction is this year's batch of local wine. It's exceedingly popular with the locals, and so Merle and others from my group had to arrive when they opened at 5pm to stake out the biggest table for our group. My new research group has ~30 people who all get along reasonably well, and there were about 15 of us there squeezed around the big table (group members Maren and Katja are to the left of me in picture). We drank late into the evening and most of us were dragging a bit on Friday morning. The Besen is apparently run by communists, and we were drinking a "red October" wine, which likely commemorates the 1917 Russian Revolution. I discovered that a little bit of wine really helps me to practice German, and maybe helps the group members tolerate all of my mistakes.

Exceprt from Joes's recent email update to family:

Martinstag, which is a Catholic holiday commemorating the life of St. Martin, a Bishop of Tours --it seems he is most famous for sharing his cloak with a beggar when he was a Roman soldier.  The protestants felt left out so they celebrate Martin Luther's special day in much the same way, which is children's candle light lantern procession followed by a goose dinner.  It also represents the start of winter and the Christmas  (Weihnachtsfest) season.  Our actual celebration consisted of eating a breakfast bread in the shape of a goose and reading about what culturally practicing Germans did last night.

Note: Armistice Day is not commemorated on 11Nov; in fact the closest thing to Veterans day is Volkstrauertag (national day of mourning), which is two Sundays before the first of Advent (in this year, it is Nov. 13), and this started in 1952. It is not surprising that the end of The Great War is treated differently in Germany than the rest of Western Europe, North America, and the rest of the British Empire. OK, enough cultural lessons.