Bergfest ("mountain party") is the celebration of the halfway point; you've climbed to the top of the mountain and now you're heading down the other side. The students celebrate it for those of their number who are halfway finished with their time at the Fachschule. For me, my Bergfest means that it's been five months since I arrived in Stadtroda, and I still have five more months before I go...wherever.
It's a very odd feeling to be at the halfway point. On the one hand, it feels like I just here and I can't believe that I'm already halfway through. On the other hand, I can't believe that I've been here what feels like most of my life and I still have another half again to go through. Isn't it odd how memories and perception of the passage of time work?
The somewhat odder feeling that's been plaguing me recently--that I'm about to tumble off a cliff of activity and noise into a void of nothingness--is because the Winterschule groups that arrived in October will be completing their classes in March (in five weeks and two days, as I was reminded by a student) and will all leave for practica or work. This means that everything will return to how it was last fall: namely, quiet, peaceful, slow, and really really boring. Also, almost all the friends I've made are in the Winterschule groups, and I feel like I'm just starting to get to know them a little better.And they're leaving in a month, which is practically tomorrow and also a really long way off. Isn't this confusing?
To assauge this somewhat, I'm trying to start something I should've done a long time ago: start an Englischnachhilfe meeting. More students than I expected have shown interest, so I'm going to try to set up an out-of-class meeting/study session/party to (maybe) speak English and (hopefully) have a fun time. That's next Tuesday. I'll let you know what happens.
Before I forget, I should tell you how the rest of Hamburg went. After I posted my last post, I was hanging out in the kitchen and started chatting with a nice woman from Madrid. Of course she tried to speak to me in Spanish, and I got all embarrassed that the only non-English words I could dredge out of my brain were in German. Then we both started talked to a Japanese girl sitting there as well, then another American asked me what state I was from, and then we all started exchanging travel stories with a couple of Australians who'd come in to eat their ramen, and before long it was 11:30 and we were being thrown out of the kitchen, which should've closed at 10.
Next day I didn't have too much in the way of plans, so I consulted my computer and decided on the Hamburger Kunsthalle (the Art Gallery). It started promisingly enough, with old masters and David Caspar Friedrich (I really like his paintings!), but eventually it degenerated into modern art (yech). When I left, it was pouring just like it had been when I'd gone it, except now it was dark, and I simply couldn't make myself trudge through the rain to another museum, so I had dinner in the train station and went back to the hostel to relax a bit.
As I was reading my book about English history, I got a text from a Couchsurfer that had been unable to host me but had offered to meet for drinks or something while I was in Hamburg. We'd tried to connect and hadn't been able to find a good time, but now she offered to meet me in an hour with some friends, so off I went. Together with her, another German friend of hers, and a guy from Vancouver (lol), we found a bar with a nice place to sit (despite the pounding music and pea-soup smoke) and chat for a while. One of them told me that I spoke German almost without an accent, and although I know that's not entirely true (the music was really loud), it still made me feel all happy inside.
We split up with plans to meet at the Fischmarkt (Fish Market) the next day, and I went back to the hostel and crashed. Although I'd been planning to get up early, that never works out well for me and packing took longer than normal, so I barely made it to the Fischmarkt before it closed. Still, this meant that the vendors selling meat, cheese, fruit, fish, and all manner of trinkets and clothes were trying to offload their goods at low prices, so I got some cheap fruit and the very last fish sandwich and tromped off happily through the rain back to the train station. I finally arrived back in Stadtroda that afternoon, and
This is now the last week of classes in Jena, which means everyone's taking tests and I'm trying to get my forms signed so I can not get credit for anything. (What? I know, don't make no sense.) This means Russian class is over (YAAAY) and so is linguistics (booo). I've already sent in the money for next semester so I can keep my free train ticket card thing, so now I just have to wade through the ridiculously overcomplicated course list from hell that is the Jena Vorlesungsverzeichnis to find my next classes.
So that's my life right now. I've been fighting with myself and agonizing over whether I should return to the States to see my family and friends or if I should stay in Europe and travel, and although I know they're not mutually exclusive, I still haven't come to a reasonable conclusion. I think, though, that I'd really like to visit home. I just don't want to, y'know, stay there.
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