I am going to have to keep this post short, both because I am itching to go downstairs and use the internet (but do not want to do focussed work, like writing, there, as there are too many flies), and because I have nothing much to say. Erfurt fit the bill exactly: it was a pleasant, very beautiful medieval town with churches, theaters, museums, and the houses of important former residents coming out of the woodwork. It had a spectacular cathedral square with what looked like two cathedrals, though one of them was surely just a glorified church, and it had one city square that was called, oddly, "Anger." The areas outside of the city center were not, like in Halle, dead, though that may have been because it is a Saturday; there were several burbling creeks running through the city; and there were three synagogues (or, perhaps, monuments to Judaism), none of which I could find, in the city center. My only real note about the city is that several parts of it, including its central plaza, were under construction: Germany is rebuilding itself! The widespread construction in this part of Germany is the only sign that it is behind the rest of the country in any way - that and its having poorer trains. The brakes on the trains here screech like in the rest of Eastern Europe, though they are much better-ventilated than their eastern equivalents, and the people living here are sensible enough to leave the windows open when possible. In all other ways Eastern Germany appears to me to be just like the western part of the country, though this may be because I have failed to make some germane observation or other.
The train ride to and from Erfurt was, as train rides often are, eventful. On the way there I finished reading "The Bacchae," which I enjoyed immensely; I have discovered that I prefer Euripides to Shakespeare. I find Euripides much more focused on ideas than Shakespeare, who devoted a lot of energy to very complicated plots with large casts of characters, and I prefer the rhetoric of Ancient Greek speakers to that of Shakespeare's characters. It seems to me that, while the speakers in Euripides' plays are meant to be duplicitous at times and sometimes outright wrong, they still speak in such a way (as rendered by the translation that I read) that one can follow their arguments and gauge them for oneself, while Shakespeare's characters merely speak in circles, weaving their words in such a way as to say almost nothing at all. Euripides' characters have provocative philosophical debates, while Shakespeare's characters can turn "good morning" into five lines of nonsense that one has to fight to decode. I probably already mentioned having decided to read Sophocles and Aeschylus; it turns out that the Greeks had a lot to say about the human condition that is relevant today and that they set a solid groundwork for future Western literary endeavors.
The train ride back from Erfurt was, perhaps, more exciting thant the train ride there, as I paid more attention to the landscape. Despite being halfway between wakefulness and sleep, I saw several rivers, rolling hills of forest, some impressive churches, and even a couple of castles on the way to Leipzig. I did not take any notes today, not being in the mood to do so, and have exhausted my store of things to say in this post. It is frustrating to me to sometimes run out of commentary, as I cannot seem to control whether or not I have a lot to say; on some days, I am bursting with new impressions, while on others, I have pleasant or unpleasant days but take little away from them. I am now going downstairs to surf the internet and continue reworking my travel plans for the next few years. While it might sound silly to be planning so far ahead, I am guaranteed, unless the University of Arkansas shuts down, to be in graduate school for the next few years, and it is trivial to plan around the time that I will spend there. The only uncertainty for the coming three years is whether or not I will spend a year abroad in Russia, but even that is not a big roadblock for my planning. My basic idea is to spend the next two years visiting Europe before seeing parts of Southern Asia and even Latin America; I would write more about this, but I cannot imagine that it is interesting to anyone but me. I hope that my time in Berlin motivates me to write more. Perhaps I am simply a little tired of writing.
The train ride to and from Erfurt was, as train rides often are, eventful. On the way there I finished reading "The Bacchae," which I enjoyed immensely; I have discovered that I prefer Euripides to Shakespeare. I find Euripides much more focused on ideas than Shakespeare, who devoted a lot of energy to very complicated plots with large casts of characters, and I prefer the rhetoric of Ancient Greek speakers to that of Shakespeare's characters. It seems to me that, while the speakers in Euripides' plays are meant to be duplicitous at times and sometimes outright wrong, they still speak in such a way (as rendered by the translation that I read) that one can follow their arguments and gauge them for oneself, while Shakespeare's characters merely speak in circles, weaving their words in such a way as to say almost nothing at all. Euripides' characters have provocative philosophical debates, while Shakespeare's characters can turn "good morning" into five lines of nonsense that one has to fight to decode. I probably already mentioned having decided to read Sophocles and Aeschylus; it turns out that the Greeks had a lot to say about the human condition that is relevant today and that they set a solid groundwork for future Western literary endeavors.
The train ride back from Erfurt was, perhaps, more exciting thant the train ride there, as I paid more attention to the landscape. Despite being halfway between wakefulness and sleep, I saw several rivers, rolling hills of forest, some impressive churches, and even a couple of castles on the way to Leipzig. I did not take any notes today, not being in the mood to do so, and have exhausted my store of things to say in this post. It is frustrating to me to sometimes run out of commentary, as I cannot seem to control whether or not I have a lot to say; on some days, I am bursting with new impressions, while on others, I have pleasant or unpleasant days but take little away from them. I am now going downstairs to surf the internet and continue reworking my travel plans for the next few years. While it might sound silly to be planning so far ahead, I am guaranteed, unless the University of Arkansas shuts down, to be in graduate school for the next few years, and it is trivial to plan around the time that I will spend there. The only uncertainty for the coming three years is whether or not I will spend a year abroad in Russia, but even that is not a big roadblock for my planning. My basic idea is to spend the next two years visiting Europe before seeing parts of Southern Asia and even Latin America; I would write more about this, but I cannot imagine that it is interesting to anyone but me. I hope that my time in Berlin motivates me to write more. Perhaps I am simply a little tired of writing.
Two cathedrals in one square? Impossible!
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