repeating myself?

Writing a blog is a funny thing: it's kind of like facebook statuses (insofar as I used to think quite frequently in facebook status updates in a kind of "look-how-witty-I-am" kind of way, but didn't often get round to writing them because they just sounded ridiculous and pretentious) but anyway, I often walk past things when I am being pensive and think yes, that is indeed blog-worthy. And so I came home today thinking exactly that, but now can't remember for the life of me what I was going to say. Hopefully it will come.



I went to Lübeck at the weekend. It's in Schleswig-Holstein which is the northernmost Bundesland of Germany - ticks another off my list of ones to visit. There are 16 (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/States_of_Germany) and so far I have managed half (if you don't count stopping off in a train) ... anyway, Lübeck is a lovely small city by the Baltic and the old town is pretty much an island encircled by a river. We took a walking tour which was really interesting as the lady doing it could remember what the city was like before the Nazis took over: it was one of the dominant cities in the Hanseatic League of northern traders and was given Free status in 1226, a status which it retained until the era of the Nazis, and apparently it was revoked because the city refused to let Hitler speak there in his election campaign.



Two interesting things happened at the weekend. Well, more, but two worthy of mention. Firstly I got to drive a German car... it was so funny, Hannah's stepdad let me sit at the wheel, gave me the keys and told me to drive around, but Hannah and her mum got in before I could get going. Then I asked if I was just doing a few turns in their road and he said no no no, let's drive to the beach. It was hilarious: the car was so different in terms of the height of the clutch that I stalled it immediately (oops) and then when I reached to change gear I instead pressed the button for the electric windows on the car door. Oops. But once you realise the gear stick is on the other side, everything else seems to make sense, apart from giving way... that was tricky... but you do get used to it. HILARIOUS.



The other thing that was interesting was how Hannah's mum talked about German history. It made me realise how hideously ignorant I am, but also how interestingly "neutral" she claims to be, although everything she said was tinged with patriotism. She was talking about how she couldn't claim to be proud of Germany, not because of the atrocities in the past (because, she argued, and I have heard this argued before, it's not like you Brits did everything right in the past - true, but we didn't recently initiate genocide...) but because she doesn't think of her country in terms of one whole state, instead as many different nations under one roof, and that's why they're much more open to refugees or different nations. Interesting. Not sure quite how well that washes, but what was interesting was the vehemence with which she labelled her views "neutral" ... they obviously weren't neutral, they just claimed to be.



Incidentally, I went round to my teacher's house the weekend before for lunch, and because of our conversation we ended up watching this DVD about the destruction of Berlin after WW2. The place was razed to the ground, completely, and was rebuilt in the first few years by women, brick by brick: the city was too poor to finance new bricks being made so the woman would clean each brick and put them in piles to be used for rebuilding. There were hardly any men around because they were all in PoW camps.


This week I have bits and bobs lined up - annoying that I rushed to get to school having snoozed my alarm once too many, only to find my only class for today all walking towards me going to the theatre. Bother. The lack of communication is irritating, like I don't have anything else to do! But lined up this week is lots of packing for moving :-) ... various meet-ups and events, Bible studies to write and lead, things to organise, people to boss around, things like that. All rather normal, just with a house move at the end. Woop!