I Am Afraid to Go Dancing

One Month Checkpoint

Welcome to another exciting installment of Jeff's life in Dresden. They always say that time flies when you're having fun and looking at the calendar, it would seem that I am unfortunately one-third of the way through my short time allotted to live in paradise. I guess this means I am supposed to be reflective, questioning whether the first month has gone as well as I would have hoped. I also probably should have done laundry by now. I hope I don't smell bad.

The truth is, coming into this I had no idea what to expect. Perhaps the major question to ask myself is whether Dresden feels like home. The answer to this question is a resounding "yes." This does not mean that I renounce what you could call my "real" home. I still acknowledge that my close friends and family live across the ocean, meaning that will always be my "home" in some sense of the word. As I mentioned to my friends last night as we were sitting on the banks of the Elbe drinking a few beers, as far as moving to a foreign place by myself goes, I cannot imagine a more comfortable city than Dresden in which to do so. Despite the language barrier and the fact that I have a very different cultural background, I would say that walking around the streets of Dresden feels every bit as comfortable as walking the street(s?) of Blacksburg. Of course I can't compare this to where I grew up, as I did not have "streets" per se.

I still don't feel disappointed in the way I have spent my time, but taking an objective look at my situation I do fall short in many areas. I have no close relationships with any German people; I have made little to no progress with the German language; I have not learned of any new music; I have not taken any substantial weekend trips. Despite these shortcomings, I have still grown as a person in ways I could have never imagined, and my outlook on life will never be the same after this experience. This has been more significant than anything I have ever done.

Coming to Terms With the Language Barrier

I came up with an analogy this week that tries to explain how I can feel so comfortable here despite the fact that I can't speak the language.

Imagine that you are walking down a hallway in a school, for example. You are passing countless doors on your left and right. The truth is, you have no reason to enter most of these doors. They are various classrooms and offices which simply don't concern you. The doors that you have no business in are the German-speaking people that dominate the streets. The doors such as bathrooms and the classroom you are looking for are the English-speaking people that you already have an association with. Just like you can't walk down a hallway in a public building and enter any old door you wish, I can't walk down the streets of Dresden and have the ability to speak to any given person. That's just the way it is, and it's surprisingly easy to accept as a fact after a while. It does not make me feel any more alienated than walking down the hallway of a public building does (not at all).

Work Continues to be Pleasant and Enlightening

I am really getting into my research project, and have made a good amount of progress (in my opinion). Last fall I had a job which was supposed to be relevant to my education, but ended up being less so than my job delivering pizzas at Papa John's with Tony in northern Baltimore County. At least then I got to use interpersonal skills. This summer, ironically, I feel that my job is even more educational than my undergraduate coursework itself. No offense to Virginia Tech (or Technische Universitaet Blacksburg, as I like to call it), as without the background I was given in school, I would certainly not have the skills to perform the work I am doing now.

I am actually going to take this opportunity to complain about Virginia Tech, in ways which may offend some people. Aside from entrepreneurship, there are two main paths an engineer can take: Corporate and academic. Throughout my undergraduate career, the well-meaning academic advisors have never ceased to explain the importance of internships, and learning how to act in a corporate setting. I receive countless e-mails through the list-serv about career fairs and internship offers from defense contractors. Yes, as a young and idealistic student, my number one priority is to help the U.S. government come up with new and better ways to kill my fellow human beings. As I am beginning to learn on my own by talking to professors and graduate students, and by working in the academic environment both at the Math Emporium and here at TU Dresden, the prerequisite "extra curricular" activities for those of us wishing to continue in the direction of teaching and research are completely different than those going down the corporate career path. First of all, research experience helps. Also, a strong math background is invaluable as could be. Why has this never been stressed to me in the same manner as internships with corporations have been? According to a ranking system that I have no respect for whatsoever, Virginia Tech is supposed to have a reasonably good faculty of engineering. Am I to understand that none of us are expected to be bright enough to continue in academia? Or do they just think that those who have the ability to do so are smart enough to figure it out on their own? In all fairness, I have not been taking advantage of the University Honors Program nearly as much as I should. Perhaps this is the place where these great truths are revealed.

A Boring Seminar and a Socially Amusing Situation

I Am Bad with Names and Faces

On Tuesday morning, a girl sits down at the computer next to me. She waves and says "hi" to me. This is very unusual behavior for Germans, so I am caught off guard. I give her a quick smile, throw on my headphones, and get to work. As usual when lunch comes around, I tell my friends Vivek and Sammet (spelling HAS to be wrong) that I'm hungry, and we go for lunch. Things continue like normal. On Thursday, there is a seminar about MIMO (Multiple Input Multiple Output) wireless communications that I would like to attend. About fifteen minutes before it is to start, I log off of my computer and start to pack up. Woops, I forgot to check what room it is in. So I ask this shy albeit friendly girl who sits next to me what room the seminar in, and she tells me, and says, "We can just walk down together," to which I truthfully reply, "Thanks, but I am going to stop by the bathroom first."

I stand around outside of the door where the seminar is to take place, and the mystery girl approaches. She passes close to someone and says "Excuse me." That's right. "Excuse me."

"Wait a minute, you don't speak German?"

"Nope, not a word," she replies.

Something is fishy here. At this point, happy I have found another English-only speaker, I begin conversing with her. We eventually start talking about the advantages and disadvantages of air conditioning. She says that at her school, all of the buildings are, out of necessity, air conditioned.

"Oh, where do you go to school?" I ask.

"Duke."

CRAP!!! It clicked. The person who was trying to be friendly with me all week, and I all but ignored, was Rae, one of my fellow RISE participants whom I had met just a week before! I felt extremely stupid. From this point on, we conversed and acted friendly with each other (as we should). As soon as I feel comfortable that I know her well enough, I will come clean and admit that I simply didn't recognize her. This probably will not be necessary, though. From her end, there were two ways to judge the situation: Either I did not recognize her, or I am a huge jerk. I would have to be a pretty big jerk to act towards her the way I did.

The Boring Seminar

The seminar began at 16:40, and I had plans to meet my poor, sick friend at 17:45 at the hauptbahnhof. I'm not sure why I was so convinced the seminar would only last 45 minutes, but I was. About a half hour into the seminar all I could really do was nervously glance at my pocket watch. It was held in a very small room, and everyone was sitting around a U-shaped board room style table, including the professor. The room was a bit overcrowded. There was no way in hell I could get out of that room without making a big scene of it. Then, a sign from God. The sun comes out from behind the clouds, and makes the projector screen he is using completely unreadable.

"Oh well, looks like we're going to have to move to another room," says the professor.

How perfect is that? The professor even joked that "This is a perfect opportunity for those of you who are getting bored to leave." Perfect indeed, Professor. Perfect.

I Am Afraid to Go Dancing

The Evening Begins in Peace and Civility

On Friday evening, Navin and I met with Emily, an old friend of hers who is participating in a similar program elsewhere in Germany, and someone whom Emily's friend had met through said program. Dinner was nice. Afterwards, we went to the same biergarten that we always take Dresden newcomers. At this point, I felt everyone got along well. I enjoyed conversing with these people. Why did I specifically avoid going out with them on Saturday night? Read on!

Let's Go Out!

Okay! It was about 23:00, and as it turns out, some people actually care about how they look. So the out-of-towners went back to their hostel to change, and I went back to Navin's dorm room. We met at the hauptbahnhof at around 23:50. We decided that we wanted to go to a club, and to make things easy, we would just find something on this side of the river.

This was the first mistake. If any of you young people ever go to Dresden for any reason, remember this one very important rule: Never, EVER go to a club in Altstadt. Neustadt is where you will find unique places that are packed with character, and most often target some sort of counterculture. Anything in Altstadt will intend to appeal to the populace.

The Club

As soon as I set foot in the door, I could tell this was not my kind of place. The people were simply not my kind of people, and the club itself was, well, "nice." I like places that have a sense of uniqueness that cannot be replicated. This was just "nice"--it probably cost a lot to build, and that's about it. I also did not like the music at all--it was very electronic, and didn't seem like the kind of thing that someone like my friend David (who has a knack for labeling music to be universally "good" or "bad" and isn't afraid to say it) would allow to be called well-crafted music. It was simply sound that fueled the dancing, and had no artistic value beyond that. At this point, my outlook was that my experience at this club would be just that much more humorous, because I was so out of place. Being out of place can be funny if you have the right attitude.

At this point, I was able to step back and laugh at the fact that I was in this club. Then two things happened that made me sick to be in there, and sick to believe that this slice of culture existed. The first thing involves video screens, placed at the periphery of the dancing area, that flashed colors in tune to the music. I noticed that about once every sixty seconds, the logo for the "Red Bull Energy Drink" beverage would flash on the screen for about half a second. If this is not considered "subliminal advertising," then I don't know what is. As with most people living in this Brave New World, I have been subjected to unwelcome advertising my whole life. Never has anything sent chills down my spine the way this did. The second thing that happened related to a song that was played. Most of the music played had no lyrics, but this was an exception. A voice came over the loudspeaker. An English voice (I am approximating): "Ladies, get on your Guccis, your [expensive sunglasses brand 2], ... , your [expensive sunglasses brand n-1], your [expensive sunglasses brand n]!" The lyrics of the song itself had something to do with the advantages and disadvantages of wearing sunglasses at night. My previous reference to Aldous Huxley's masterpiece is not incidental: Being in this club made me feel that I was in some future dystopia where intelligence was all but banned.

The Girl

So I was in some weird-ass club that made me feel out of place. Perhaps I could handle this. What really topped off this evening and made it have a lasting emotional effect on me was a girl who imposed herself to dance with me, whom I had no interest in whatsoever and would have rather kept a safe distance from. It was not a random girl from the club, but one whom I had arrived with. I enjoyed my conversation with her, but had no interest in her beyond that. She was dancing with me, and as you can imagine, this is no ball-room dancing. I'll leave you to create your own mental picture. The problem is that I really had no "out." The music was not going to stop, and clubs don't exactly close early in Dresden. I had no idea what to do. Eventually, at around 02:30 or so, I just played it off as if I were tired and wanted to go home.

The Walk Home

It's not really the dancing itself that bothered me. I could have continued, albeit bored, without feeling too uncomfortable. What really bothered me is the fact that I did not know how to deal with the situation in a way which would allow me to continue enjoying my night. Granted the whole "club culture" is new to me. I get excited when I discover my own shortcomings, as it allows me to stop questioning why I may act a certain way in certain situations. But I really can't pinpoint why I completely failed to handle this situation.

When I walk down a street, I spare no brain power in observing every little detail around me. Even if it is a street that isn't especially nice, or a street that I walk even on a daily basis, there is a mathematically infinite number of observations to be made. When I walked up Prager Strasse on Friday night, though, I stared at the ground a meter in front of me. I was so wrapped up in thought that should I have looked up at the city around me, my brain would have exploded due to an overload. I more or less forgot I was even in a city. For better or for worse, seeing the tram tracks passing underneath my feet didn't seem to remind me.

Two Wheels and a Portable CD Player
When I woke up on Saturday morning, I realized that I do not have the skills necessary to interact with other people, so decided to take a nice and pensive bike ride up to a city called Pirna--by myself. The ride itself was so nice that I took the same exact ride today. It is about 40 km round trip, but completely flat. I plan on making this a regular activity, similar to the Huckleberry Trail in Blacksburg. The ride is much nicer than going in the direction of Meissen, and the city of Pirna suits me much better than the city of Meissen. The narrow streets are there, but on the whole I feel that I am in a nice, albeit small, city that is relevant to the present day. I found the doener stand within five minutes of entering the street grid.

Saturday Night--Just What I Needed

Saturday was my first opportunity to spend some quality time with Jess. This is good, because it turns out we have a lot in common. We are both very independent people who enjoy the perks of spending time alone, but appreciate the company of others just the same. She also has a similar attitude towards the future, that compared to what our lives are right now, it's not looking so great. I doubt that when I am thirty I will be able to randomly move to a German city for three months. She is also critical of America, likes to read, and found the corporate world to be just short of vomit-inducing.

We began our evening by sharing a bottle of wine and were joined shortly thereafter by our Ohioan friends. We went down to the doener stand near our residence, enjoyed our evening meal, and decided to meet some of the other Ohioans down on the Elbe to have a few beers. This was a very nice experience, just sitting there, drinking, enjoying the conversation. Going "out" has its perks, but sometimes this kind of thing can be even better. We even made it home by 01:00, which I am told is considered early for people our age.

A Few Notes on Commenting

As I am sure you are aware by now, my self esteem is solely dependent on the quantity and quality of comments I receive on this blog. While I appreciate the effort of everyone who is working hard to make me a happier person, it has come time to deliver a reminder that comments must be appropriate for the wide audience which this blog enjoys. Unfortunately, I was recently forced to edit the comment of a well-meaning reader due to inappropriate sexual content. The necessity of censorship is a reflection of those being censored. Should everyone express themselves in a way which is appropriate to the forum of expression, no censorship should be necessary. There is a time and place for certain kinds of self expression. Someone may have a perfectly legitimate opinion on whether it should be legal to include racist comments on milk cartons. I encourage this person to express their opinions in the appropriate forum. A kindergarten classroom, for example, would not be the appropriate place to express these opinions. Similarly, this blog, which is read by persons of varying age and relationship to myself, is not the place to make immature comments about the link between night life and homosexuality. I am not going to allow some of my readers to be alienated due to the inappropriateness of certain comments. This would be devastating to my self esteem. Thanks again to those of you who continue to make audience-appropriate comments.