Update

The long awaited update is finally here.  I have probably been out of contact with many of you, who are currently reading this, for at least a few months, probably close to six months if not more.

Much has happened since I've arrived.  There have been trips to Vienna, to Munich, and Linz, an upcoming return to Berlin, school work, stress,  people leaving, dropping, and arriving, bar hopping and roof-terracing, warm weather and cold weather.

I'm not going to go into detail about everything, because then I'd be here forever.

The weather is getting warmer, and I'm just a few weeks removed from a month-long vacation in February, during which I did nothing for a variety of reasons.  I have the first two weeks in April off for Easter, as well, and some vacation time in May.  I'm looking forward to them by virtue of time by means of acceleration.  Since I lived in Munich for a year, the culture shock wore off more quickly for me than most, and afterwards everything just fell into routine.  At least the weather is getting warmer, and my disposition about being here as somewhat improved.  Mostly, I'm too distracted with school to focus on anything else, but I don't particularly want to be there, either.

I've settled in.  Not to say I wasn't settled in before, but if you're forced to spend a year with the same twenty people, be sure you choose carefully.  I'm as much as six years removed from some of the undergraduates, who make up the majority of the already small group, including having one as my roommate.  Most of the time I just want to be left alone.

At least the weather is getting warmer.

Two graduates have already dropped out, and another has promised to drop out after the end of this semester.  One of them was a good friend of mine, Kristen, who left at the end of January.  So that sucks.

Salzburg is quite quaint.  A smaller city with a somewhat bigger feel, but more of an antique feel than a large feel.  You can walk from one end of anything important to the other in about an hour and a half to two hours, but bars are plentiful, and the food is, well, mostly Italian.  Any actual Germanic food you can find is mostly touristy-German-pseudo food, mostly serving Schitzel in it's various forms, yet the best kind--Jägerschnitzel--is curiously absent from most venues.

Being in Salzburg does offer me the unique opportunity of being able to visit Munich, and one of my best friend's that I had there, Maxi, who has changed considerably since I left Munich, but we had no problems picking right up again.

Maxi playing Chess

I actually started writing a mass e-mail in the beginning of December, but after reading over it, I found it to be too long and often irrelevant.  Much of what I had written has changed, anyway.  My old roommate moved out, and I got another one.  It's unfortunate.  Not that we don't get along, we get along just fine.  But I'm not a roommate person.

Moreover, something is caught in my freaking "M" key, and it's really irritating, because I have to use my keyboard so much.

The winter in Salzburg wasn't pleasant.  I had been going out about twice a week until February, when it became freezing cold, and I spent most of my time wrapped in a blanket and in the fetal position rocking back and forth, clicking my ruby-slippers and hoping for spring.  It would be dark by about 3:30 pm, which made my long days at the university seem even longer.

My keyboard is really irritating me.  Why am I constantly having keyboard problems?  Doesn't even seem to matter what kind of computer it is.

Now it's dark between five and six, and this semester's schedule is better than last's.

Since school started, however, I've been having a very difficult time sleeping, and I don't think I've had such consistent trouble sleeping ever before.  It's close to five-thirty in the morning right now.  In fact, I'll be exhausted around 10 pm, fall asleep for two hours, then I'll be awake for the entire night.  It's quite irritating.

There's been other stuff that's happened, like group excursions, like snow-shoeing for example, where we climbed up a mountain in snow shoes, then essentially ran down.  It was almost like skiing downward, and I'd say how deep the snow was, but I'm too prone to exaggeration, but I can tell you if you took a step too hard, you could suddenly find yourself chest deep in snow.

At least the weather's getting better.  I forgot what it felt like, to be able to go outside without a coat.

Something amazing happened a few weeks ago, which hadn't happened since October.  The sun came out.  It  only emerged for an instant, but it came out nonetheless.  Thankfully, it shines now with more frequency and longer duration.

I've been thinking about some sort of keepsake I should buy, but can't think of one.  I have yet to really buy anything substantial since I've been here.  The only thing I've bought is a hat.  Actually, two hats, but the second one doesn't count, because I got it for a few Euros at some street stand, because the wind was blowing cold air, and my ears were hurting.  That was the day Akasha, Matt and I went for a hike.  It was a Saturday.  That was nice.

     Of course, it wasn't a hike as much as it was a walk for a few hours.  Now that the weather is getting nicer, I want to go out more.  People generally aren't sick of the bars yet, but they have start to become a bit drab, while in November they were a nice escape from the cold and the dark.  Plus, until about the middle of November I still spent most of my time with Kristen.  But she dropped out and went home.  She was nice; you would've liked her.


Without a hobby, one is completely lost.  I've been writing more than I should, because it's sort of distracting me from my studies, but I ended last semester with a 3.7, so I have to be doing something right, and the more I relax the better I do.  I relax until I feel a little pressure, and then I do my best work.  I wrote a semester thesis on Nietzsche, on whom the program director who also traveled with us wrote his dissertation, (he was also the prof for the class, for which I wrote the semester thesis).  I ended up with an A, even though Nietzsche is one of the most difficult German writers to understand.  This semester I've started working on my Master's thesis on the Bildungsroman, and started reading Goethe's Wilhelm Meisters Lehrjahre, so that is factored into the amount of credits I'm taking.

I've also started working out on a somewhat relative basis.  Last week I never made it to the basement of the building where the gym is, because I've been having a hard time sleeping, and I have been way too tired.  Dropping weights on my face seems like a bad idea.  I could be wrong--it's just a hunch I have.  But it mostly helps with the stress and the overall miserable atmosphere in Salzburg.  People like to stare, and they regard you with a somewhat mild reluctance not unlike a stray dog.  I've acclimated to strangers not interacting with you, ignoring pleasantries so common in American culture.  I kind of like it better.  A few new Americans moved in half-way through the year, and I'm starting to understand the stereotypes about Americans being superficial and contrived.

I speak a lot of Russian.  There are a lot of Russians here.  I have some Russian friends.  I should be in bed, but it's Saturday so there's no reason for Russian to bed.

I love my camera.  I use it often.  But I find landscapes dull.  I prefer people, and despite the size of my camera, I no longer feel conspicuous using it.  Our program director encourages me to write for the school's and publish some of my pictures, and someone in Bowling Green noticed one of my pictures, and asked permission to print it in some magazine or something.  It's not uncommon for me to take 800 pictures in a full day.  But the shutter goes up to six frames a second, so some of it is exposure bracketing and some other things that it's quite technical and uninteresting to most people, I'm sure.

From the top of the universities language building

 This is the most recent picture of myself I have, taken just a few days ago.  I've developed an aversion to having my picture taken.

I'm taking a Sozialphilosophie (social philosophy) course, which is in a different building and much more aesthetically pleasing.  The floors are marble and the building itself is significantly older.  The view from the lecture hall consists of the Residenzplatz and the facade of the Salzburg Cathedral.  It's nice to escape from the language building.  There really is no "campus."  Instead, university buildings are scattered throughout the city.  The weeks have been going by fairly quickly, and it helps that I only have two classes a day.

This is however, the end of my update.  I'll try and write something more often, and some of the entries might be retroactive as things occur to me, thus this might not be in chronological order whatsoever.  It just depends on how much time I have and what I feel like doing.

Damn "M" key.

I hope everyone is doing well, and I cannot wait to come home.  You can write me at SHOBSON@BGSU.EDU

Schöne Grüße,
Seth