I lived for three semesters in Tuebingen, Germany on the edge of a wood. My building was an enormous 14 story student dormitory that stood out as the first definite point of civilization on the horizon when you are in the trees. I grew to deeply love those trees. The twisted oaks, the thick spreading Beeches and the pockets of dark dark green evergreens.
Walking west from my building into the trees and down the road I came to a meadow that stretches down to an orchard outside the village Hagelloch. Paths stretched out through the trees and ran along the edge of the orchards to the west and to the north they plunge deep into Schoenbuch Naturpark.
To the Northeast across the fields out my window and down the hill through the trees was the Cistercian monastery Bebenhausen. The Cistercians when they began as a reformation of the Benedictians wanted to go outside the city into the countryside and devout their life to agriculture and beer brewing (incidently a sect of the cistercians is the trappist which are responsible for the glorious trappist ales of belgium, but that is another story). With Bebenhausen, you get a sense of the history and geography of the attempt to build a monastery out away from the city. At the time Bebenhausen was built, Tuebingen was confined to a very small medival city center that would be over an hours walk to the monastery. Close enough to make a day trip, but long enough not to just stop by.
The simplicity of the monks intent is apparent in the oldest sections of the monastery; the rooms are simple and sparse, painted only with different types of plants and flowers that you can still found to this day right outside the monastery in the woods. Very practical for a simple monastic life. As you walk through the monastery you can see the increasing complexity of religious life and theological ideals. The gothic wing, built later, is an absolutley beautiful room. Décor a combination of mythology, nature and christian iconography. Mythical beasts weave there way into patterns of leaves and acorns and deer. It is somehow in between the life outsiide the walls of the monastery and the life of the imagination. It is by far one of the most beautiful pieces of architecture and painting I have ever seen in Europe.
Down the hill to the south from the monastery is the old city center of Tuebingen. The University is spread throughout its different parts. Its buildings have a perfection and quaintness that at times made me forget it is actually a real place that has exsisted and developed since the middle ages. As my good friend Mr. Peach put it, it is like Disney Land for adults. Many of the buildings have rather posh shops in them selling watches, clothing or shoes. It is a strange contrast when during the afternoon and evening on warm days it fills up with students. They gather in swarms on the steps of the cathedral and by the fountain in front of the city hall. The city squares are ringed with cafes and pubs that students flow in and out of in swarms on warm nights. The old city center stretches from the top of the hill where the castle is down eastward to where the land flattens out along the river. There on the river is the postcard water front with the willows and the stockerkahns (like English punts at Cambridge)on the river. Most of the buildings in the alt stadt date from the 15th century, the time right in between the end of the middle ages and the early reformation. Many of the buildings are an assortment of the wooden beam bracing style where the beams that make up the structure of the building is cleary seen in the walls. These are painted with deep rich colors to contrast the color of the walls. The whole winding climbing mess is entirely to romantic looking at moments. The oldest university building is the alte burse which now houses the philosophy faculty. The Friday afternoons that I actually attended class in the warm spring where spent there.
North of the alt stadt contains some newer University buildings which have a charming cement bomb shelter look to them. This was were I spent my mornings in German language classes. Most of my time in the winter months was spent when not in my room inside cafes in the old city and in the spring and summer out in the park in between the old city and the new university buildings.
Tuebingen is typical of a small university city. Crowded during the semester and empty in the break. Culturally it can be a bubble. Surrounded by forest on one side and the swabian countryside on the other, the climate is intellectual, international and frivolous. When I first took the train from Stuttgart and found myself passing through increasingly smaller towns as the train went south I wondered if I had made a mistake. I boarded a sparse slow regional train and left any European cosmopolitan realities behind as we wound slowly south to Tuebingen. After you get outside of the urban sprawl of Stuttgart you begin to pass through a series of towns with “ingen” for endings. Plochingen, Boblingen, Metzingen, Reutlingen, and finally Tuebingen. The countryside was beautiful if not distinctly rural.
Tuebingen is a distinct break in the pattern of villages. It is a bubble of both youth and University culture and a hub of international students. The population is around 80,000 and hosts a nightlife and youth activity scene for a town twice its size. I met Germans who would come from towns that were larger around the area to take advantage of Tübingen's music and events.
It is small enough to recognise most people, but big enough not to know them. In a smaller town conversations are generally started after seeing someone once or twice. In a bigger city a conversation is never started and you rarley see the same person twice. Tübingen dwelt in a strange middle with students on bus lines and pubs and cafes seeing each other over and over again but not talking to each other without a definite context. ''Oh your in this class? I have seen you on my bus.'' I wondered if part of this was Germanic Sociology. Why would you talk to someone without grounds or reason? The American concept of being friendly simply to be friendly is generally lost on Germans. This does not mean however the Germans are not a friendly people. On the contrary. I have found the Germans to be even more faithful friends than americans at times. They may be grumpy about it, but if they say they will help you they will help you. There friendliness is expressed differently. Speaking broadly it is expressed through action and long commitment. In light of this contrast, Americans our incredibly superficial people socially.
But basic human tendancies are not completley locked to cultural contexts, they spread across ethnic and national divides. It is common for a new student to put forth an effort at a party to get know people more than they normally would whether they are german or american. The hunger for contact is basic instinct even if it is relativley expressed.
I sat at a table once with three germans who never made eye contact with me until I asked one of them a question. As soon as I did we talked for over an hour and they greeted me ever time they saw me after that. As an American it was difficult to get past my conception of the silence and stoicness as being rude or uninterested, but once I engaged Germans, they spoke to me and were very friendly and helpful. I asked a German friend of mine why germans were so reserved. He thought Germans needed to have a reason to talk to someone.
Another myth about Germans is their language. German is a harsh language. But it has more variation and melody then you would ever expect from the war films that finds its way into our subconscious impression of the German language. The local dialect in the region is Schwabisch. It is a melodious sounding dialect that was very hard for me to understand when it was spoken quickly, or even slowly. But it was beautiful to listen to. There was a warmth of tone and range in it that one does not associate with the sharp rough high German. It is a dialect of thick dipping tones that sounds much like an obo rushing through triplet notes. The dialects differ so sharply, that a friend of mine from northern Germany said she could not understand her Swabisch professors once she arrived in Tübingen.
I think I could go on mulling over memories trying to come some conclusion but as I do I am at a lost. The experience of living in another country and culture is not something that can be articulated. You notice the differences slowly when you come back to your own counry and I am still in that process. I see little differences. I notice certain things feel strange or wrong and I am caught between a place that became familiar and is now gone and a place that I know should be familiar but now isnt. If there is something that did become very clear to me while I was in Germany it is that the walls and borders that create our culture have been formed by time, time of our experience in them.
Time is a crazy magician, he transforms things into different things as we go along within his strange labyrinth. It is only walking through this labyrinth that the walls of our experience and of our culture become clear. And we see in perspective and from distance in memory and contrast what events meant. So I withold articulation and summing up of what Germany was. It was to large, to impactful, to strange, to difficult and far to important to do that. Meaning of experience perhaps is given to us over time and we are doing an injustice by trying to attribute meaning on to it. So for now I just have these memories and stories that I am sure will weave and unweave and be remembered in different lights over time and as time with its weaving gives them different layers of meaning.
