david miller troyer

so everything’s fixed now. instead of a contact page, “talk to me” at the right is now a mailto: link behind a fancy script to protect my email address. I don’t really like this, but it will have to do until I figure out some things… if you’ve sent me an email through this website in the past week and I didn’t reply, I probably didn’t get it. thanks, peace.

oh, and I added some pics of people I encounter around thomashof in the gallery. these pics are courtesy of Ulf Mayer.

so I woke up late this morning, around 10:30… after working a wedding from 3:00 pm to 12:30 am. it was ridiculously crazy, and I was at the dishwasher the whole time (mostly by myself), minus 5 minutes to eat a piece of cake, and 20 for dinner. that is why I slept in.

jared hankee, a lancaster native, emu grad, and former trainee who is now working in karlsruhe with refugees and asylum seekers came upstairs to invite me to thomashof’s pastor’s house for lunch. a group of about 15 younger people does this on sunday afternoons… they’re very welcoming, patient with me and my german, and overall I had a great time. jared really saved me, because I was bored just 30 minutes after waking up.

after eating, we pulled out the maps and searched for a good place to spend the afternoon sightseeing/hiking. we decided on le château du fleckenstein (sorry, there aren’t any good pages to link you to), about half an hour across the rhein valley into france. wow. I don’t know what else to say, really, other than I wish I would have known we were going out and thus taken my camera. it was an atypical castle ruin, and not that exiting for the germans, but I rather enjoyed it.

on some more random notes, someone called me this evening while I was out, “a guy who spoke english”… and for the life of me I have no clue who it could be… on another note, sometimes I really wish I had a digital camera so I could more easily share my experiences on this site… we’ll see, hope all is well wherever you may be, peace.

or at least frying them. today was most interesting, one of the ladies went home sick, and so I got to help prepare the food. well kind of, in reality all I did was fry the french fries, and refill the various salads. oh well, better than washing and drying dishes by myself. though, after a thorough shower, I still have a faint scent of french fry fat.

I’ve been enjoying the two groups who have been at the conference center so much, that I thought I would have to comment on them. the first is a group of about 25 zivis. guys generally about a year younger than I, just out of high school, doing service alternate to the military. they’re having some sort of 2 week pow-wow, and this is the end of their second. the majority have ascertained that I don’t speak much german, and they often avoid asking me questions, and some like to practice the bit they know with me. (apparently germans currently take 9-10 years of english in school, but most tell me it’s not very practical).

the second group is the best. “meditation des tanzen”. basically a group of about 30 women (and a scattered few men) who obviously need to get away from their spouse and dance for a week. yes, I said dance. it’s pretty hard to explain. whenever I see them dancing, it can be anything from a quasi-barndance to watered down yoga or tai-ji. overall they’re very friendly, but from observing them for the past week and a half, I think a lot of them try too hard to impress each other.

tomorrow (friday) I work the late shift, and then on saturday I’m working for Frau Feldmann’s (one of the main cooks) daughter’s wedding. it should be interesting, as there are 120 people set to show up, our theoretical maximum. the best part of it is, there aren’t enough place settings for 120, so one crew eats… we wash their dishes and take them out for the next round. subsequently, I’ve heard weddings like this are the most stressful time to do dishes and it has broken many a trainee and zivi… anyhow, we’ll see what I’m made of. ciao!

so this is not typical to see such a thing on my blog, but I thought it was too hilarious to pass up.

This weekend has been fast, and boring. I spent the better part of saturday seeking a relative german goldmine, the Amerikanische Bibliothek (American Library). Karlsruhe used to host a major american military base, but when the cold war ended, the base was closed. out of this came (among other things) a lot of cheap housing, a closed airport, and scattered military barracks, and this american library. needless to say, it was closed for a month this summer… a major disappointment, but something to look forward to indeed.

You know, after 2 weeks of experience here, I realize this journal is often vague and ill detailed, and I apologize. I think the major part of this is I haven’t really had time to reflect, and honestly, I don’t feel like much has changed. The area I’m in resembles the valley very closely, the people are friendly, and I can call or email home like I was across harrisonburg at school. in all honesty, this is a slight disappointment, I’m not sure which words to use to describe how, but apparently I created ill-expectations. I’m not sure if expectations have ever served me positively, and I will continue to try to avoid them as much as humanly possible.

despite the lack of time to reflect, I can say that a Germany is a diverse nation and culture. I can positively say all of the stereotypes I was told before I left, or even told by fellow trainees about their placements (i.e. germans don’t eat corn, germans don’t understand or use sarcasm, germans never put meat and cheese on the same piece of bread, germans never go to church, germans always… etc) have all been false. granted these are mostly silly things, but the fact is slightly alarming. it makes me wonder what they think americans never or always do.

on another note, weekends are boring. did I say this already? I really need to travel before it gets cold and rainy, but I honestly don’t know where to start besides the German lonely planet book that was left by previous trainees. easy enough one might say, but my mind complicates this with fears of falling into a tourist rut… and a desire to blend in and go more unnoticeably by speaking german.

anyhow, this is my long-winded, halfways serious post for the month, I hope you all enjoyed it.