I am lucky that I took some notes earlier in the day, as I do not have much to say about my trips to Meissen and Moritzburg except that I am lucky to have arrived in Europe on June 1, as my emails have been trivial to number due to my first day's having been June 1 and June's having 30 days. I started my day angry, as I missed the train to Meissen due to a confluence of unlucky circumstances, but I was mollified by the train and bus ride to Meissen and by reading a little more of Euripides, whose work is fascinating. I saw four hawks today, three of which were in the fields (hunting rodents, presumably) and one of which was putting on a show in Meissen itself, repeatedly swooping down and soaring back upwards over the bridge to the old city. The hawks' flying so low reminded me that I know next to nothing about their feeding habits: while one would expect them to fly hundreds of meters high, like bald eagles, so that their prey not see them, it appears that being high up is not always useful to them. I do not know how often or in what manner they attack their prey, and I do not know how good their prey is at detecting them. I suppose that my assuming that hawks and eagles would have similar feeding habits just because they are both large birds of pretty was a little naïve, as one knows that large cats of different species have vastly disparate feeding habits. Some similarities, in short, can be misleading!
Meissen itself was like a low-rent, less-interesting version of Bautzen, just like Nordlingen was to Dinkelsbuhl. It had a castle and a cathedral, the courtyard of which was full of old relics of some import, and it had a little plaque celebrating its independence from communism in 1989, but it did not have the same vitality as Bautzen, in which I was quite happy to spend four or so hours. I left Meissen after two or three hours and went to Moritzburg, which was nothing but a castle and a huge amount of woodland - hundreds and hundreds of hectares, where the nobility much have hunted before, or at least gone horseback riding. The most interesting part of the area, besides the mosquitoes, was a nearby residence that was much smaller and appeared to be worse-kempt, as the smaller residence's showing its wear made one feel a little more that one was walking in an area of historic interest. I came back to Dresden by bus, with the help of a local who told me where the bus stop was, thinking that not every day abroad has to be a fireworks display, so to speak. While I did not have any epiphanies or revolutions in my ways of thinking, I had a reasonably-pleasant day, did a lot of walking, and got to experience one more day navigating in a foreign, German-language environment. Even on travels in countries of enormous interest, such as Italy or France, not every day is earth-shattering, I bet.
I will probably end this email soon, as I want to look some stuff up and expect to be pulled into conversation - not a bad thing, but a distraction from writing (and from leaving on time this morning) - in the near future. One difference in the cultural climates of the Czech Republic and Germany is that one wants to learn the language here and to use it as much as possible, while one has no desire to learn, speak, or understand Czech. I had a funny encounter buying strawberries today. When I had decided, having considered buying cherries, on a half-kilogram box of strawberries, I took it to the cash register and said, "I would like one strawberries, please," as I did not know the word "box." The man selling the strawberries jokingly took one out of the box and gave it to me, explaining that he had given me what I asked for, and then told me how to say "box." One's desire to expand one's linguistic landscape (for lack of a better term for one's general proficiency in a language; it is much more than just learning new words, as one needs to be able to combine them) grows with every passing day: one starts out with the most basic phrases relating to trains, food, and oneself, and then passes on to constructions that involve possession (mine, yours, &c.), one's interlocutor, and objects (e.g., talking about the landscape, someone's dog, &c.) that will not bring one any material benefit (such as food or a train ticket), after which one starts learning how to use articles and conjugate verbs so as to speak at least a little grammatically. Germans are very accepting of foreigners and are perfectly willing to speak German with people who obviously do not speak it very well, and they will very often simplify their language for our sake, though they sometimes grow overly zealous and talk to one as though one spoke German fluently. In short, this is a wonderful country to visit, and every passing day in it only increases one's enthusiasm for it. [Edit: I forgot to mention that pronunciation in German can be fiendishly hard, an even bigger roadblock to one's speaking than grammar or vocabulary. Germans almost always put their emphasis on the first syllables of words, which is, in addition to being inconvenient both for long words and when one does not know how to pronounce the rest of a word (and will, naturally, linger over the more difficult syllables, changing their emphasis), challenging because Germans, like English speakers (I included), very rarely understand words that are both mispronounced and pronounced with the emphasis on the wrong syllable. I have not yet learnt how to deal with this problem, as I am naturally going to mispronounce words given my lack of experience with the language; my patch-up solution has been to give a little pause after the first syllable to add extra emphasis to it (which must sound strange and stupid, but at least makes me understood) and to enunciate as clearly as possible. It seems, so far, to be working all right.]
My final notes are, predictably, few. Meissen was clearly poorer than Bautzen or Dresden, as it had some crumbling and terribly-decrepit buildings, but it was not nearly as bad as anything that I saw in Eastern Europe. I saw some of the same shanties, big enough for two rooms at most, next to the train tracks as I saw outside of Nuremberg; while I mentioned them, I think, in my first post about Dresden, I cannot help but mention them again, as they are shocking. What the hell are people doing living in one- or two-room shanties next to a giant, burgeoning city? Are these people who, having retired, do not have enough money to rent or buy an apartment, and so live in a cheap place with no expenses save for the food that they cannot grow in their gardens? These cannot possibly be summer homes, like many Russians have, as they are both too small and are located some ten or twenty meters from the train tracks: no one would want to live there. I cannot say that these are symptomatic of Eastern Germany's poverty or of poverty in general, as they seem to be everywhere and are probably not as squalid as they seem; their existence merely baffles me. I do not believe that Eastern Germany - or, at least the parts that I have seen - is any poorer than Western Germany. That is, if Eastern Germany is poorer than the west, it does not show. There must be many somewhat rundown cities like Meissen in Western Germany, plus Meissen was hit hard by the recent flooding. I would be curious to see if what I see in Leipzig or Berlin will convince me that the east of the country is still trying to catch up to the west. (One could cite Dresden's widespread construction sites as evidence of its being behind, but Cologne, a presumably-wealthy city, had just as much construction.)
My reading of Gilyarovsky's "Moscow and Muscovites," and the author's descriptions of sanitation in late-19th-century Russia in particular, have made me think that there is no single metric by which to measure societal progress. Based on Gilyarovsky's descriptions, Moscow had a horribly-inefficient sewage system just over a hundred years ago, with houses in poorer districts being flooded by seepage during heavy rains (or the heat of summer - I cannot remember which). This interested me in relation to the Czech Republic's current filthiness, as Germany's being so much cleaner than the Czech Republic is one side (of many) to its being vastly more developed than the latter. Nonetheless, it is not like there is one country to which all others should aspire as to a model; there is not one correct way for a country to be or one maximal level of development to which all countries should aspire. Some countries are, clearly, more developed than others, but it seems to me that each country should aspire to be more developed than it was in the past, rather than trying to live up to the level of development of its neighbors. It is interesting that countries seem to go through similar phases of development, such as developing workable systems of sewage transport and keeping its roads and sidewalks clean; despite reaching similar milestones at different times, countries end up in very different places, so to speak.
Meissen itself was like a low-rent, less-interesting version of Bautzen, just like Nordlingen was to Dinkelsbuhl. It had a castle and a cathedral, the courtyard of which was full of old relics of some import, and it had a little plaque celebrating its independence from communism in 1989, but it did not have the same vitality as Bautzen, in which I was quite happy to spend four or so hours. I left Meissen after two or three hours and went to Moritzburg, which was nothing but a castle and a huge amount of woodland - hundreds and hundreds of hectares, where the nobility much have hunted before, or at least gone horseback riding. The most interesting part of the area, besides the mosquitoes, was a nearby residence that was much smaller and appeared to be worse-kempt, as the smaller residence's showing its wear made one feel a little more that one was walking in an area of historic interest. I came back to Dresden by bus, with the help of a local who told me where the bus stop was, thinking that not every day abroad has to be a fireworks display, so to speak. While I did not have any epiphanies or revolutions in my ways of thinking, I had a reasonably-pleasant day, did a lot of walking, and got to experience one more day navigating in a foreign, German-language environment. Even on travels in countries of enormous interest, such as Italy or France, not every day is earth-shattering, I bet.
I will probably end this email soon, as I want to look some stuff up and expect to be pulled into conversation - not a bad thing, but a distraction from writing (and from leaving on time this morning) - in the near future. One difference in the cultural climates of the Czech Republic and Germany is that one wants to learn the language here and to use it as much as possible, while one has no desire to learn, speak, or understand Czech. I had a funny encounter buying strawberries today. When I had decided, having considered buying cherries, on a half-kilogram box of strawberries, I took it to the cash register and said, "I would like one strawberries, please," as I did not know the word "box." The man selling the strawberries jokingly took one out of the box and gave it to me, explaining that he had given me what I asked for, and then told me how to say "box." One's desire to expand one's linguistic landscape (for lack of a better term for one's general proficiency in a language; it is much more than just learning new words, as one needs to be able to combine them) grows with every passing day: one starts out with the most basic phrases relating to trains, food, and oneself, and then passes on to constructions that involve possession (mine, yours, &c.), one's interlocutor, and objects (e.g., talking about the landscape, someone's dog, &c.) that will not bring one any material benefit (such as food or a train ticket), after which one starts learning how to use articles and conjugate verbs so as to speak at least a little grammatically. Germans are very accepting of foreigners and are perfectly willing to speak German with people who obviously do not speak it very well, and they will very often simplify their language for our sake, though they sometimes grow overly zealous and talk to one as though one spoke German fluently. In short, this is a wonderful country to visit, and every passing day in it only increases one's enthusiasm for it. [Edit: I forgot to mention that pronunciation in German can be fiendishly hard, an even bigger roadblock to one's speaking than grammar or vocabulary. Germans almost always put their emphasis on the first syllables of words, which is, in addition to being inconvenient both for long words and when one does not know how to pronounce the rest of a word (and will, naturally, linger over the more difficult syllables, changing their emphasis), challenging because Germans, like English speakers (I included), very rarely understand words that are both mispronounced and pronounced with the emphasis on the wrong syllable. I have not yet learnt how to deal with this problem, as I am naturally going to mispronounce words given my lack of experience with the language; my patch-up solution has been to give a little pause after the first syllable to add extra emphasis to it (which must sound strange and stupid, but at least makes me understood) and to enunciate as clearly as possible. It seems, so far, to be working all right.]
My final notes are, predictably, few. Meissen was clearly poorer than Bautzen or Dresden, as it had some crumbling and terribly-decrepit buildings, but it was not nearly as bad as anything that I saw in Eastern Europe. I saw some of the same shanties, big enough for two rooms at most, next to the train tracks as I saw outside of Nuremberg; while I mentioned them, I think, in my first post about Dresden, I cannot help but mention them again, as they are shocking. What the hell are people doing living in one- or two-room shanties next to a giant, burgeoning city? Are these people who, having retired, do not have enough money to rent or buy an apartment, and so live in a cheap place with no expenses save for the food that they cannot grow in their gardens? These cannot possibly be summer homes, like many Russians have, as they are both too small and are located some ten or twenty meters from the train tracks: no one would want to live there. I cannot say that these are symptomatic of Eastern Germany's poverty or of poverty in general, as they seem to be everywhere and are probably not as squalid as they seem; their existence merely baffles me. I do not believe that Eastern Germany - or, at least the parts that I have seen - is any poorer than Western Germany. That is, if Eastern Germany is poorer than the west, it does not show. There must be many somewhat rundown cities like Meissen in Western Germany, plus Meissen was hit hard by the recent flooding. I would be curious to see if what I see in Leipzig or Berlin will convince me that the east of the country is still trying to catch up to the west. (One could cite Dresden's widespread construction sites as evidence of its being behind, but Cologne, a presumably-wealthy city, had just as much construction.)
My reading of Gilyarovsky's "Moscow and Muscovites," and the author's descriptions of sanitation in late-19th-century Russia in particular, have made me think that there is no single metric by which to measure societal progress. Based on Gilyarovsky's descriptions, Moscow had a horribly-inefficient sewage system just over a hundred years ago, with houses in poorer districts being flooded by seepage during heavy rains (or the heat of summer - I cannot remember which). This interested me in relation to the Czech Republic's current filthiness, as Germany's being so much cleaner than the Czech Republic is one side (of many) to its being vastly more developed than the latter. Nonetheless, it is not like there is one country to which all others should aspire as to a model; there is not one correct way for a country to be or one maximal level of development to which all countries should aspire. Some countries are, clearly, more developed than others, but it seems to me that each country should aspire to be more developed than it was in the past, rather than trying to live up to the level of development of its neighbors. It is interesting that countries seem to go through similar phases of development, such as developing workable systems of sewage transport and keeping its roads and sidewalks clean; despite reaching similar milestones at different times, countries end up in very different places, so to speak.
The strawberries here are excellent and look slightly better than the cherries, which, while tantalizing, cannot live up to the fantastic, and exorbitantly-priced, cherries that I bought in liquor stores in Prague (Yes, it is a bizarre society.). My only other note is that Dresden takes it 6:00 PM church bells very seriously. The knelling of the bells two nights ago was almost symphonic, as it sounded like one bell held a steady, bass note, while the other bells ran out over it; one felt as though one were listening to a choir on the streets! I may visit the Hygiene Museum, which I probably mentioned two days ago, tomorrow morning before leaving for Leipzig, as it sounds unique and only costs $3 for students (Being a student is great for travelling.). It feels like just yesterday that I got here (It was two days ago.); it is still strange that I only have two more cities to visit before I fly to Amsterdam and then, after six more days (which will feel almost like a postscript, as I will be staying with family friends and will be a short train ride away from the airport), fly home. I have no regrets about leaving, as one has to end these trips eventually; I look forward to regular exercise, seeing family and friends, routines, and serious work. As long as nothing in the world (i.e., in the historical parts of cities that I want to visit or in their natural surroundings) changes drastically in the next few years, I will be able to happily wait for each 9-month period in Fayetteville for my next chance to go abroad. I will certainly have plenty of experience on which to base future decisions (e.g., I did not take any night trains this year and will avoid Eastern Europe in future) and should be able to make each coming trip more enjoyable than the last!
This is Meissen's picture-perfect castle hill.
Moritzburg Castle from across the water.
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