Category Archives: Geography

Blogging, Geography, Grad School, PhD, Research

It’s been a long time, now I’m…coming back home.

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Name the song for which this blog is titled.

If you said The Beatles’ “Wait” (from theRubber Soul album) then you are correct!

I don’t even know why I used that for a title; of all the Beatles’ songs out there, “Wait” has never been one of my particular favorites. In fact, it sometimes grates on my nerves. Part of is the nasally singing from Lennon and McCartney. Maybe also the incessant tambourine.

But enough of that. I’m actually writing a blog post for the first time in ages. I guess that’s really why I used the lyrics in my title – it has indeed been a long time since I could make time for this blog. This semester has been hectic, to say the least. It took a good month to really transition back into the swing of taking class, working as a research assistant, etc. but I’m glad to report that “the old Matt” is back, as Micheline likes to say.

So what have I been up to? Well, a number of things. My course work is primarily outside of Geography this semester, so I’ve been doing a lot of reading in political economy and political science. I’ve been finding really good connections between that and my geography reading and dissertation ideas, so political economy/theory/stuff will play a big role in my research over the next couple of years. Yeah, hard, to believe – but I’m on track to finish my PhD in a mere 2.5 more years. I metaphorically pinch myself sometimes at that thought, and it’s been a frequent one over the last few weeks because I’ve been planning my PhD “Program of Study,” as all first-year students have to do.

Other than the coursework, the dissertation planning is coming along. I don’t have a complete project, but I’m working on research questions and thinking about the short- and middle-term plans for accomplishing the research. The most obvious part of the planning is fieldwork. Karen and I will go with the “research team” to Oslo, Norway, again next summer. The plan at this point is to go a little earlier in the year, probably mid-May after UT’s finals. We may also go to some other Norwegian cities where the oil and gas sector is more active (Stavanger and Kongsberg are potential options.) The most important part is to get the plans nailed down early enough to get cheaper flights and find housing NOT at the last minute (like last year, when my fellow research assistant and I nearly caused Micheline to have a stress-induced stroke. Sorry about that, again!)

As for mid-term planning, I will apply for grants for more research funding starting next summer/fall to fund fieldwork in Berlin. I’m not sure how long fieldwork in Berlin would take (again, I don’t have a dissertation proposal complete yet), but I would like to spend the entire summer of 2014 over there, if not also part of that fall semester. Given how much time I know went into planning the Oslo fieldwork – at least two summers of fieldwork to plan, organize, establish contacts, etc. – I’m not ruling out any time period at this point. That is why I need to start securing funding so early.

Well, I’ve got to run. I hope you enjoyed my brief update, and as usual, I promise to try writing more often… but we all know how that goes.

Geography, Oslo, Photography, Research, Travel

A [minor] Tragedy

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Hi everyone,

I’m sure you’ve all been anxiously awaiting another posting since my first (and only) post over here in Oslo. Well – a few things about that. First, the team I am a part of has been extremely effective/busy, working roughly 40 hour work weeks, and the project is going quite well for now. So, on the one hand, research is great, and it has kept me away from writing down my thoughts for you to peruse.

Second, I may not get around to editing and uploading photos until after I get back to the states next week. (Yes, oddly enough, time is flying and I’ll be back in Tennessee late next Thursday. Crazy!) However, I think that photos are the best way for me to tell the story of the fun parts of the trip, so that may never end up in a blog format, but only as a photo essay on Facebook. I guess I’ve come to terms with Zuckerberg stealing the rights to my photos…because I stopped paying for a Flickr pro account after lack of use.

Second point five (2.5) – here comes the minor tragedy that befell me. Right before heading off on Friday to explore other parts of Norway (mainly some of the western fjords and Bergen), I had one of those situations that could have gone terribly wrong, but narrowly did not. (Anyone ever have those?) Just before leaving on Friday morning, I packed my entire camera backpack for the trip – removing the non-essentials, packing some food and clothing for the weekend, etc. I sat down at the desk in my room for a couple of minutes, and then *wham.* My backpack fell to the floor from a two-foot high bed. At first, I didn’t really think anything bad about this: my laptop wasn’t inside, and it has fallen from a bed before without any incident. Then I started to think to myself, “What if this was the one time things went wrong?”

It turns out, they did (sort of). I looked at how the bag fell, and sure enough, it was right on the camera compartment. I opened that section of the bag to find the lens cap to my 18-105mm zoom lens (my “everyday” lens, if you will) smashed in… And this was the point I thought was going to be really, really bad. I was able to pry the lens cap off, and through the mess of broken glass I found to my relief that the only glass that broke was the protective UV filter that every good SLR photographer knows to put on his/her lenses. *Whew.* Listening to my dad/Scott Kelby/every other photographer and photography book out there paid off big time: I only have to replace a ~$20 filter instead of a ~$400-500 lens. However, I wasn’t able to clean out all of the broken glass from underneath a plastic ring on the front of the lens, so I decided to just shoot the rest of the trip using my other lenses and have this lens professionally cleaned when I get back to the states. So, long story short – I shot almost all of the three-day weekend trip across Norway with the 35mm fixed lens I got for Christmas last year. (Thanks, Anita and Karen!) It turned out to be both fun and challenging to work that much with a lens that does not zoom, so in the end everything worked well.

Third, the trip this weekend to see other parts of Norway was an amazing adventure, and I wouldn’t have done it any other way. In brief, we took a train from Oslo to Myrdal, then hiked 21 km (basically a half marathon) down from Myrdal to Flåm all in one day. We spent the night at a youth hostel/camp ground in Flåm before waking up very sore and then taking a two-hour boat cruise through the Aurlandsfjord and the Nærøyfjord to the tiny town of Gudvangen. At Gudvangen we had lunch from a camp stove (better than it sounds, believe me), and that afternoon we took a bus to Voss and then another to Bergen. Up until the bus ride, the weather was quite nice with lukewarm temperatures and overcast skies. At some point on the bus ride to Voss, the rains poured forth and basically didn’t let up until we left Bergen. So we got to experience Bergen as it truly is: a city aptly nicknamed “The City of Rain.”

That’s all I really have time for at the moment, so you will have to wait until I find more spare time to write. I have one blog post of “Observations about Norway” waiting in my Moleskine, so that should be a quick update I can hammer out soon. Stay tuned!

Geography, Oslo, Travel

Oslo in a Day

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Yesterday was quite a busy day! Or perhaps I should say busy afternoon. I set my alarm for 9 a.m. after getting to bed around 11 the night before – all in all, a pretty good way to fight off jet leg. (This is about as good as I’ve ever done with jet lag in Europe!)

Anyway, after the flight arrive in Oslo on Friday, Micheline met Grace and I at the airport and helped us find the correct public transportation cards (a month pass that pretty much covers every mode of public transit for a month) before we got on a train to the city’s main train station, Oslo S. (S for Sentralstasjon). Then, Grace went with Kevin to find her apartment, while Micheline and I were unable to get in touch with anyone at my apartment. So we hung out at Micheline and Kevin’s apartment for a while, until I looked about ready to fall asleep, so we went for a walk. While on this walk around the neighborhood, I had the brilliant idea of just going to the apartment and ringing the bell (because calling the number I had been given wasn’t working) and that worked out pretty well. I got the keys to the apartment, but I didn’t have my luggage, so we went back to Micheline’s apartment to wait for dinner. At this point, I fell asleep on their couch while watching Mythbusters on the Norwegian equivalent of Discovery Channel.

After a wonderful dinner of homemade pizza (thanks, Kevin!) we decided to explore Oslo on Saturday, since it was the National Music Day. There were around 30 stages set up all over Oslo, and different bands, rap artists (Norwegian rap is comically bad, by the way), choirs, etc. were performing 15-30 minute shows all afternoon. Kevin had seen on the schedule that choirs were performing at a stage in Akershus Fortress, so the plan was to meet by the tiger statue at the Sentralstasjon at 1 p.m. before heading to Akershus. I went over to the station a couple hours early to find brunch, as I hadn’t bought any groceries yet. There are two malls around Oslo S, so I explored the one directly connected to the station and bought some (relatively) cheap breakfast items from a mini-grocery store. This is a very European thing to do: firstly, to have a mall attached to a train station so that all kinds of shopping can be done on the way to or from one’s train; and secondly, to have a small grocery store inside a mall.

After breakfast, I sat outside the station for a while in a few different spots. First, I was listening to the sound check of some screamo-band on a stage a block away from the station, but after they started playing their set, I migrated over to the tiger statue to listen to a trumpet player playing familiar radio songs with accompaniment from some sort of iPod-speaker set up. Micheline showed up a little before 1; she was apparently going to meet Grace earlier in the morning to buy a European cell phone (Grace’s turned out not to work), but Grace never showed. After Kevin met us at the tiger, we decided to head to Grace’s apartment, and indeed, she was still asleep. With her in tow, we headed for Akershus and finally got some nice views of downtown Oslo. I promise to post pictures to Facebook soon! After eating lunch (also bought hastily at a grocery store), we found the stage on which choirs were performing. The first group was singing American radio songs (including Lady Antebellum’s “I Need You Now” – hilarious!) and they were pretty good, but unfortunately it went downhill from there. The next group was smaller and made up of mostly middle-aged women with four men. The director said they had been singing together for 30-something years. They were ok, but sang entirely in Norwegian and Swedish. After that, an even older (average-age-wise) choir took the stage, so we took off toward downtown again.

At first, we decided to walk around Aker Brygge, one of the most expensive/hip/posh/whatever neighborhoods in Oslo, right by the fjord. But it was rather crowded, and Grace still needed a phone, so Micheline headed for an electronics store while the three of us (Grace, Kevin, and me) killed some time at the Nobel Peace Center’s bookstore (we’re waiting for a free admission day next weekend before we go to the actual museum). After we had seen most of the bookstore, we went to a stage in front of the piers and listened to a band (actually good) play their final number before two different rap duos (comically bad) performed a couple of songs. We couldn’t take any more, so we walked over to the pier where we planned to meet Micheline, and after she arrived (new cellphone in hand), we took a public transportation ferry to the peninsula of Bygdøy. Bygdøy  has several museums we plan to visit at some point, including the Viking Ship museum, and museums for the Fram and Kon-Tiki ships as well. (You’d think they like their maritime history here or something.) We toughed out some increasingly brisk wind while walking to find each of the museums, so Grace and I can find them again on our own if we so choose, and then took the ferry back to downtown

We ended the night with some grocery shopping for the weekend (most stores are close on Sundays, just like in Germany) and Micheline cooked dinner at her apartment before we made plans for today. Today’s schedule is (thankfully) lighter, as we are only meeting at 4:30 to discuss where to go with the research project, and then it’s Grace and my turn to make dinner. This could be very interesting so I’ll keep you posted. Aside from the meeting, all I know for now is that we will spend most of the week working at our office space at FAFO – the Institute for Labour and Social Research, which Micheline has established an affiliation over the last couple of years.

Well, this post turned out to be incredibly long, so I commend you for making it all the way through it. Next, I’m going to start working through photos from yesterday and uploading them to Facebook, but that might take a little while. Stay tuned.

Geography, Travel

NYC Day 1: Best AAG Ever?!

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Hello from New York City!

It’s hard to believe it, but I think I’m in love with New York. Maybe because it’s such an awesome urban space, or because it’s such an iconic image of America, but regardless of the reason, I think New York is hard to beat. (And I’ve been wondering to myself all day: “Why did I wait almost 25 years to come here?”)

Another interesting observation right off the bat – these are my opinions of New York, and it has even been a cold, rainy day. But, hey, it beats Seattle…

Anyway, I thought I would report on how amazing the AAG conference has been so far. On a trip like this in the past, I would probably not be posting every day so if that trend continues, this may also be my ONLY post about AAG. We’ll see how it goes.

First thing about the AAG conference today – if all conferences were this fun and intellectually stimulating, I would go to them as often as possible. However, I think today is probably a statistical outlier, because I’m not sure that this many cool things usually happen at once. Perhaps a little more elaboration?

  • Registration at 10 am was painless. Whew.
  • After registering, Karen and I meandered over to Rockefeller Plaza to kill some time. We saw the LEGO store (Mecca?), the ice skating rink, the outsides of Radio City Music Hall and NBC Studios, and we strolled through parts of the Metropolitan Museum of Art’s bookstore and Saks 5th Avenue.
  • When I went to sessions, Karen successfully had fun on her own looking at several places and shopping. She wasn’t kidnapped and didn’t get lost. Double Whew!
  • The first two conference sessions I attended, two discussions on the role of race in critical geography, were incredible. It was a near-perfect integration of a variety viewpoints from around the Geographic discipline and from outside fields like Ethnic Studies and American Studies. It had a good balance of young scholars’ perspectives and older, “big name,” professors. It had a nice balance of male, female, white, black, Asian, and Latino voices represented. Sure, that does mean that some voices were not included, but there were only 5-6 participants per session.
  • After these sessions came my presentation. The session was one of the last sessions of the day, which generally are not that well-attended, but I didn’t mind. There were about 25 people in the room, including my wife and the four other presenters, so that’s roughly an audience of 20. I’ve had bigger audiences at my first two professional conferences, but whatever. I decided to give this talk extemporaneously (Mrs. Freed and Dr. Collard at UTM would be proud) instead of read from my paper, and it went better than I expected. I finished in 12 minutes (out of 15 allotted).
  • After my session ended, the day really took a turn for the best. I set up a meeting with Dr. Ken Foote, professor at Univ. of Colorado and all around amazing scholar, by email before the conference. My advisor, Micheline, was one of his former students at Colorado, and she told him over the winter break about my thesis work. (My thesis is closely related to his research, as his book Shadowed Ground was the first thing I read to start my research.) He, Karen, and I got to talk for almost an hour. At the swanky VIP lounge of the New York Sheraton hotel. On the 44th floor. (!) The best part was that he was very friendly and down-to-earth. (And, oh, by the way, he also happens to be Past-President of the AAG. No big deal.)
  • After our meeting, the rain had basically dried up, so Karen and I strolled down Broadway to Times Square. I know that a Leftist scholar (generally opposed to capitalism) like me should probably have a different reaction to Times Square, but the place is completely mesmerizing, on a personal level, and fascinating, on a research-scholarly level. Too cool.

Even though I had to drop off my camera for repairs (more about that here), today may be hard to top for a long time…

Until next time my friends and loyal readers,

Shalom

Geography, Travel

Quick Post: NYC

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[Note: For some reason, writing this on my iPad results in no apostrophes showing up online. My apologies in advance. First time Ive really tried this for a lengthy post.]

I keep having the idea to ask for suggestions on what to do on my first trip (ever!) to New York City next week. Karen and I will be flying there for the national AAG conference, and we will be there for about a week.

Weve already thought of several things to do while we are there, but Id love to hear more advice and suggestions from those of you New Yorkers (or at least NYC aficionados) out there. Although I will not have every hour of all seven days to do touristy things because Ill be at sessions, I do plan to get in as much as I can while there! Plus, Karen will have even more time, and shes looking for interesting things to do that arent too far from our hotel. (Were staying in the Upper West Side, a little more than half way up Central Park.)

Heres a list of the things we are planning to do together, time permitting:

Seeing Wicked at the Gershwin. Expensive, yet oh-so-schweet.
Touring midtown (conference hotels are a few blocks from Times Square/Rockefeller Plaza area)
Downtown/financial district area, also going to the Brooklyn Bridge
Harbor tour of Ellis Island and the Statue of Liberty
Running in Central Park
Coney Island??

Karen is also thinking of going to the Museum of Modern Art by herself, and maybe the zoo. Shes also going to hit up some vegetarian restaurants, perhaps without me… 😉

——
Conversation from earlier tonight, which reveals how Karen and I think differently:
Me: I think Ill check the [UT] library to see if they have any New York travel guides.
Karen: Umm… Theres this thing…called the Internet.
Me: Well, yeah, theres that. But I like to have a book where I can be surprised by whats listed.

So, people of the Internets, what else do you suggest? I may not have time to do it all, but I can always start a list for next time.

Less than week before we fly away!

Busyness, Geography, PhD, Research

Dissertation thoughts

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Today was the day that I faced the demon known as comps. That’s comprehensive exams, for those who may be wondering. To be entirely honest, they were not as brutal as I thought they may be. I don’t think my committee members took it easy on me (I did write almost 4,500 words today), so maybe I was just well prepared. For that I have to thank my advisor Micheline van Riemsdijk for doing her job of, well, giving me good, sound advice.

So what do I want to do with the rest of my Friday? Well keep writing of course! I did tease everyone a week or two ago that I would divulge some details about my potential dissertation topic, so I was thinking of writing about that. Then I started thinking that academia is rather hyper-competitive these days, so I decided not to share. But then I figured that happiness lies in the middle, so I’ll divulge a little but not enough details that in the event that someone other than my closest friends and family actually reads this, and that individual happens to need a dissertation topic, and furthermore that individuals happens to be a geographer… Well, then they won’t be able to replicate my ideas and take all the academic glory (is there such a thing?) for themselves. In the interests of time, I will copy/paste some sections from what I’m currently working for class papers and Ph.D. applications for your perusal. Feel free to ask me questions in the comments section below.

Continue reading Dissertation thoughts →

Blogging, Geography, Knoxville

Summer Update

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I’m sure the few of you faithful readers out there might be wondering how the summer is going for the in-between-semesters grad student, so I’m going to try to update you with a brief post.

After returning from a month in Europe and two more weeks on the road to West Tennessee, I finally took the time for a real summer break. Whether or not this was actually a good thing is open to debate, because while my mental health greatly appreciated some down time, my work ethic has not yet recovered. And that is a really big problem, given all that is upcoming this fall semester!

During the downtime, Karen and I have lazed around the house, started watching LOST on Netflix, and last week had a Harry Potter marathon, culminating in seeing the final movie at the downtown movie theater yesterday afternoon. We also went to Sevier County (read: Gatlinburg, Pigeon Forge, Sevierville) on Saturday to get our Pancake Pantry fix and shop the outlet malls whilst we had Gap and Banana Republic store-wide 30 percent off coupons… Banana Republic has become my all-time favorite clothing store, but only when shopping through the outlet store.

In a close second, my next favorite store has become Nike, but again, only the outlet/factory store variety again. (Note the grad-student-on-a-budget theme running here?) Speaking of Nike, most of you have likely seen my occasional post to Facebook about running with Nike+. I started the fifth week today, and though Karen dropped out on me after serious knee pain last week, I’m going to keep this up as long as I can! I don’t know if any of you are using Nike+, but if you are and want to add me as a friend, my username is matrcook.

In the last two weeks, I have slowly gotten the ball rolling on my to-do list for the fall. It’s quite extensive because I’m teaching a section of Geography 101 – World Regional Geography to approximately 120 students. Tuesdays and Thursdays at 8:10 a.m.! It’s slightly daunting for my first real teaching assignment, but at least it’s only one class and I have had a lot of time to prepare for it. Last week I laid out the rough draft of my syllabus and this week I plan to hammer out the rest of the nitty-gritty details. The course focuses on five world regions: Africa, South Asia, East Asia, Southeast Asia, and Oceania. For those of you who know me best, you know that I have never been to ANY of these regions. While that is not a major problem, it does make it a little more difficult to gather materials, and it makes me a LOT more dependent on the textbook and other sources rather than my own experiences, photographs, etc. Still, my goal is to help my students have a better understanding of the world by the time the course is over, while having some fun along the way.

Also accomplished last week was the beginnings of what I’m calling my “List of Ph.D. schools under consideration.” At this point it stands at seven schools in the U.S., two overseas, and (surprisingly) *none* are in Germany. Not saying it couldn’t expand at this point, but I will have to start narrowing it down once the semester starts. Application deadlines for some programs are as early as Dec. 15, though a majority are in January. I’ll keep you up-to-date as often as I can throughout the semester, provided busyness doesn’t have me hanging from the ceiling by my ears.

In other news, my biggest concern for the remaining part of the summer is my thesis research. I have seriously neglected it for a few weeks, and it is now time to remedy that. I’ve started by writing down the common themes that kept popping up in my observations, interviews, and conversations while in Berlin, and from there I will start to work on transcriptions that fit into the different themes. This qualitative data analysis is definitely difficult if you’ve never done it before, but my advisor pointed me in the right direction last week during a two-hour meeting! I’ve now got a couple of books to help steer me for the next several weeks. Beyond this analysis work, I’ve quickly got to start working on a paper for some conferences I’m attending this fall. I was accepted to present a paper on my Stolpersteine research at the MTSU Holocaust Conference in October, and I plan to use many of the same ideas from that paper in another to submit to the Southeastern Division of the Association of American Geographers (whew. That takes a while to write! That’s why we just call it SEDAAG – pronounced “see-dag.”) The SEDAAG conference is in November, but I have to submit the entire paper in about a month. Scary!

That’s all the time I’ve got for now, so I hope you’ve enjoyed the update. I’m sure there are things I’m forgetting, but they’ll be saved for another day!

Geography

Initial thoughts on Paris … An unbelievable city!

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Bonjour from Paris, everybody!

On Monday, Karen and I flew in to Charles de Gaulle Airport outside of Paris and stumbled our way around a new airport until we finally figured out how to get our bags, find the free shuttle bus to the hotel, etc. Fortunately we are staying very close to the airport, but unfortunately we hopped on the wrong bus. However, it stopped at another hotel just up the road from ours so no worries!

Then we checked into the hotel (Park Inn Roissy-en-France) and proceeded to not successfully get in our room! Turns out there was some kind of problem with the handle. Two maintenance guys and an hour or more later, we finally had a functional door handle. Then we figured out the plans for the evening, and headed in to Paris. Our hotel is close to the airport, so it takes about half an hour to an hour to get from hotel to whatever the destination is in Paris. In short, we got off the metro, after much confusion about how it works, near Notre Dame, ate supper (I had Nutella Crepes!), and walked around Ile de la Cite and the Louvre area. We stayed out a long time because it stays light out until around 10 p.m., and finally got back to the hotel around 11:30.

So here are my initial observations about Paris. Let me start by saying that these are very likely skewed because of, and also in comparison to, my favorite European city, Berlin.

Paris is unbelievably:

  1. Larger. Both in size and in population, Paris outduels Berlin. Paris, for example has a metro population of around 10.2 million while Berlin has 4.4 million. With a larger population base, one can imagine how much worse the typical European stereotypes of smell, crowding, etc. are in Paris compared to Berlin. Trust me, they are justified.
  2. More Confusing. Paris, and perhaps the French in general, could be really nice and learn from the Germans when it comes to efficiency and adequate signage. Seriously, the French metro is much more difficult to navigate than Berlin’s, and if you don’t believe me just compare their maps. (Berlin vs. Paris) We’re getting the hang of it, but sheesh.
  3. More Diverse. Because of France’s, ahem, colonial history and Germany’s shadowed 20th century past, Paris is much more diverse. There are a lot of Africa migrants and first generation French-Africans here, and from what I can tell, a lot of them are completely integrated into the Parisian lifestyle. Compare this with Germany, and Berlin in particular, where only one ethnic group tends to be noticed as “different” – the Turks. It seems to me that France has done a lot more to help with integration.
  4. More Expensive! Berlin always seems expensive to me, but then again, I’m from the good ole state of Tennessee, which almost always ranks at the bottom in the U.S. for cost of living. This is good, while living in Tennessee, but “movin’ on up” to a city like Berlin (whose motto is “Poor, but Sexy”) or Paris (easily a world-class city) is hard on the pocket book. I’m sure if you are from London, New York, or D.C., Paris seems right on par, but as for me? Give me a break!
Berlin, Geography, Photography

Day Off

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That’s right, folks. I gave myself the day off in Berlin.

But, um… shouldn’t you be doing work?

I know, I know. I feel a little guilty about taking off an entire day, but Karen and I have gradually been getting worn out as the last two weeks. And it was supposed to rain today. Then it didn’t. Oops.

At least we’ve managed to rest our cobblestone-wearied legs and get a couple loads of laundry done! It was seriously piling up, and it’s not exactly an easy or quick process when everything takes hours to dry on the laundry rack.

As far as the research goes, it’s coming along fairly well. I have two interviews scheduled this week, and I’m changing up my tactics a little to try to get more responses before we have to leave. I’ve made an online survey, which some of you may have noticed on the new Stolpersteine Befragung page here on the blog. I’ve made some flyers to post around the city with the Website address in hopes that more people will take the survey.

Since the surveys have not (yet) turned up many people to interview, I’m also going to start doing semi-formal interviews: basically, just approaching someone sitting on a bench or people who don’t seem to be in a hurry, and asking them a few questions about the Stolpersteine to find out their opinions about the memorials.

Karen and I have also been having some fun along the way this week, so don’t feel too bad for our tired feet. A group of students from UT lead by one of the German faculty have been here for the last few days, and we went with them to tour a WWII-era flak-tower on Friday morning and also toured the Museum of Musical Instruments at the Kulturforum yesterday morning for a couple of hours. They were both amazing, and it was good to see some familiar faces – I audited the interdisciplinary-part of the course with these students during the spring semester. They get credit for both the class and the trip!

Finally, I know you are all probably begging for some eye candy (and by that I mean photos) so here are some of the most recent.

Kid with Marx and Engels
What a priceless face! Random kid with the statue of Marx and Engels in Berlin.
Karen at the Berlin Zoologischer Garten
Karen at the Berlin Zoologischer Garten – The Elephant Gate
Museum for Musical Instruments @ Berlin Kulturforum
Museum for Musical Instruments @ Berlin Kulturforum. Our tour guide could play almost every instrument in the place!
Crumhorn player
Our tour guide gives us a sample of some crumhorn music. So awesome!
Berlin, Geography, Germany, Research

The Best Laid Plans…

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It’s the beginning of the fieldwork grind – the part where I put in a lot of work and make something out of this trip. Today I observed Gunter Demnig install Stolpersteine at three different sites around the northern Tiergarten area of Berlin (the Hansaviertel, as it’s known locally). They were very different and all very interesting.

We had no idea what activities would be going on at the different sites, but when Karen and I showed up at the first site we could make it to this morning (after a bit of a late start out the door…) we found not an empty sidewalk, but a gaggle of school children,  teachers, and family members.

My initial instinct was to think that this group had to be an example of the school groups who help Gunter Demnig with the Stolpersteine project by doing the research about Holocaust victims’ last home or business. I asked around and ended up striking up a conversation with someone that I thought was a teacher accompanying the group. He said he was actually a social worker from the school, but close enough for me. He informed us that the students were from the local elementary school, and while they had not helped do the research for this site, one girl’s mother was the sponsor for the stones being installed. (Each Stolperstein costs about €95.) The students, it turned out, were the school’s choir program! So they sang several songs accompanied by their music teachers (on acoustic guitar – think of the style of Edelweiss from The Sound of Music. Yes, I know it’s technically Austrian, and technically that Rogers and Hammerstein wrote it. That’s beside the point.) At any rate, the students were very good at singing, and nearly every song was sung as a round with three parts to make it that much harder.

Herr Demnig was running nearly a half an hour late, so we had a lot of time to watch the children sing and talk to the social worker, who also introduced us to the sponsor. When Demnig arrived, the installation only took about five minutes, and then he hurried off to lay a few more stones in northern Berlin that I knew Karen and I would not be able to make it to fast enough by public transit. I found out that Demnig and his assistant travel in a red working van with a lot of room in the back for the stones, tools, cement, dirt, etc. So while Demnig and his assistant drove on to the next few sites, Karen and I stayed to listen as the patron told the story about the girls who lived at this site during the Nazi regime. I didn’t catch all of it, but the important part was easy enough to pick up: “Ermordet in Auschwitz.” Murdered at Auschwitz.

During this mini-lecture, the social worker came up to us and explained that there was another group of students who were also there – a group of middle school-age students from a nearby Jewish school, with their teacher and a rabbi (or at least, I assume he was a rabbi.) They were the group that helped with the research, and their teacher said a few words about the process as well before the rabbi sang a very haunting chant in Hebrew and said the Kaddish.

After this was over, and I handed out some of my business cards to people I thought would be nice to stay in contact with, Karen and I headed off to find lunch before meeting back up with Demnig for more installations. I have the entire list and a map of the locations, by the way, which is how I knew where to find him at different points throughout the day. I’ll be doing the same thing tomorrow.

After lunch, Karen and I went to the next site on the list and met back up, quite unintentionally, with the sponsor from earlier. She had evidently sponsored four more Stolpersteine at this location, and again we waited several minutes for Demnig to arrive. There was no ceremony at this site because the sponsor, Demnig and his assistant, a couple of people from the Berlin organization that coordinates the legal aspects of placing the stones, and Karen and I were the only ones there. Demnig was much more open and congenial at this site, and he didn’t seem at all rushed like he did when surrounded by 50 or so kids earlier in the day! He strikes me as a very kind man with a huge heart to take on a project of this size, despite a somewhat gruff exterior.

The third installation was much like the first. This time, a high school class promoting diversity and tolerance had researched victims who lived at what is now the location of their school. The three new Stolpersteine were added to several that had been placed in the sidewalk in front of the school. Demnig was again surrounded by the students as he worked, and again did not say a word. After the installation, he hung around for a few minutes as the some of the youth talked about fighting against racism but then headed off again for the next site.

I hope to follow him around tomorrow to several more installation sites, and hopefully can talk to him a bit as we go along. As always, I’ll keep you posted as time allows.