Welcome to Night Vale in Cologne!

I’ve started going running again, on my therapist’s orders. I don’t do it often — only twice a week, and only for 30 min or so — but it’s been good. I’ve started getting to know the parks and trails around the castle a little better as a result. Towards the end of the year at Etown, I had started running but fell out of the habit over the summer. I don’t enjoy it as much as I enjoyed fencing, but I had kind of forgotten how important and helpful exercise is, both in the physical and mental sense.

Also, here’s the video from January!

Starting Photography + Heading into Finals

The university system here doesn’t really seem to have a clear finals week? Most of the classes end this week, but my final papers aren’t due until March, or in one case, April. It’s a little weird, if I’m being honest. I don’t quite have a full understanding of the system though, courtesy of being a study abroad student. Regular students at the university take classes as part of larger modules, which they then get a grade on through an examination of some kind.

I think that’s how it works, at least, based on conversations and guessing at what’s been talked about in some of my classes. None of the module stuff applies to me, however, because Etown doesn’t use modules, and so I don’t need them, either. Instead of the module system, I just take a random assortment of classes and ask the professor to give me a grade, and then — if everything goes right — I get credits that are transferred back to Etown.

So, the result of this is that there isn’t a clear finals week for me, just a finals month and a half to write three 12 page papers. I’m not sure yet how I feel about this; the pro is that the deadlines are spaced out and not all crowded into one hell week of stress. On the other hand, it’s enough rope to hang yourself. The other aspect of this system that stresses me is that I won’t have any idea what my grade in the class will be until the end.

But while I’m starting to work on finals in my Philips-Universität classes, I’ve started a new BCA class: Photography! This class will technically be counted as part of the summer semester, but it’s an independent study I’m doing with the BCA program director, Kris Riggs. We’re doing film photography, starting off with black and white. So far, I’ve only had some reading and writing assignments, but I’m looking forward to the photography.

It’s been a long time since I’ve done creative work. I used to do a lot of creative writing, but since starting college I’ve had trouble with it. I suspect it’s the same reason why in junior and senior year of high school, I had trouble reading for fun. When I started the IB Lit course, most of my time was spent reading and doing detailed annotations. I enjoyed most of the books we read, but the result was that when I finally had time to read for fun, I couldn’t. I remember trying, but with a couple of rare exceptions, I couldn’t make myself interested in reading.

This was the photograph I submitted to Fine Print last year.

At Etown, I started having to do a lot more writing for school, and didn’t really have a lot of reading like the IB Lit class. After a few months, I started being able to read for fun again, and started having trouble with creative writing. A couple of random, context-less sentences and vague ideas, but nothing close to writing a new short story every couple of weeks. Nothing complete enough to submit to the literary magazine at Etown, which feels somewhat embarrassing, considering I’m on the review board for the creative non-fiction section. Instead, I’ve submitted photographs.

Photography has been a different sort of creative outlet for me. Most of it has been with my phone, but when I got to use a DSLR camera in my graphic design class last year, I was surprised by how much I enjoyed it. Although I still love writing and hope to be able to write creatively again soon, there’s something comforting in the lack of words with photography. I’m excited to work with film and explore the medium more.

Visiting Köln (a.k.a. Cologne)

This was a trip I’d actually planned way back in August. One of my favorite podcasts, Welcome to Night Vale, announced that they were doing another live show tour in Europe. Realizing that my time in Germany overlapped with their tour, and that one of the cities they were visiting was relatively close to Marburg, felt like a chance I couldn’t pass up. Who know’s when I’d have another chance to see a live show?

Despite it being on the calendar for literal months, I didn’t pay quite enough attention to when it was happening. Last weekend, I had the thought “It’s almost February! The Welcome to Night Vale show is in February! I should check when that is and figure out travel plans!” Aaaand promptly discovered that the show was the next week, and had to rush to book train tickets and a room in a hostel. This definitely made me grateful for the experience the trip to Paris and London gave me; although it was still stressful, I wasn’t as anxious or worried as I would have been if this was the first trip I had to plan on my own.

Day 1

One of the stained glass windows of the Köln Cathedral

I got to Köln in the afternoon, and the first thing I did after eating a small lunch was to visit the Cathedral, which was literally right next to the train station. One feature of the church I found interesting was that one of the stained glass windows wasn’t one of the typical stained glass windows you expect to see inside a cathedral. Instead, it was all tiny colored squares, like pixels.

One thing I definitely liked about Cologne was that everything was all right there, and didn’t really require me to use any public transportation at all. I mean, if I was staying there for a longer period of time or if I lived there, I’m sure I’d eventually need to use it. But it was good to have everything pretty close by.

After visiting the Cathedral, I started making my way to the hostel, walking along a pedestrian street with a ton of shops. I just kind of window shopped for a while, wandering through stores that seemed interesting. One of them was the kind of store that has a bunch of different things that I can best describe as “useful items that look cute.” For example, the store had glass markers that look like tiny llamas, and cat figurines that hold steel wool. Another one of the stores I liked had a bunch of nerd paraphernalia, including a ton of Harry Potter wands in fancy boxes, and literal swords.

When I got to the theater where the show was being held — in true Samantha fashion, thirty minutes before they were letting people into the theater — there was already a long line out the door. Once inside, before the show started, it was really cool to see how many people came dressed up as characters from the show. WTNV is a podcast, that is, a non-visual medium, and rarely gives physical descriptions of characters. As a result, people’s interpretations of characters varied, but it was neat because you could still recognize who they were dressed up as.

Before the show, the artist Mal Blum played a few songs and made some jokes, both of which were enjoyable (in fact, I chose one of the songs they performed as my “what I’m listening to” for the week). Mal also played the song for the Weather, a segment on WTNV where the host announces, “And now, let’s listen to the weather” and they play a song. The songs are usually from bands that aren’t very well known or are new, and they’re very hit-or-miss. Luckily enough for me, this weather was a hit!

The show itself was fantastic. I don’t want to get too into details of the plot here, because the show is still on tour for another few weeks. This was my first time seeing a podcast performed live and it was such a cool experience. Because it’s a live performance, they incorporated a lot more visual elements than the show ordinarily contains. It was also incredible to see the actors performing their roles, to see their facial expressions.

The show was also incredibly funny, and I was laughing almost the entire way through. The writing of the show was incredible as always. There was one bit that was a reference to American medicine commercials, but with absurd rules and side effects said at the end instead of the more typical “call your doctor if you have trouble breathing.” I thought it was hilarious, though it didn’t seem to land as well compared to other jokes in the show. I don’t know how much of it was because Cecil was speaking very quickly and it was more difficult to understand him; my language comprehension in German would fly out the window if someone spoke that fast. Though I wonder if some of that was also just that medicine commercials like that just aren’t done here, and so the reference wasn’t as clear.

Anyway, I’m so glad that I went to the show. It was fantastic and I hope future me will have a chance to see more Night Vale live shows (or even just live shows for other podcasts).

Day 2

The weather on Sunday was much better than Saturday, so I got this photo of the Cathedral.

The next morning, when I headed out to do some light sight seeing before I had to catch my train back to Frankfurt in the early afternoon, the city felt weirdly abandoned, at least compared to the crowded streets I’d walked through the day before. After a few minutes of walking alongside closed stores I remembered that it was Sunday, so of course the city isn’t going to be super busy.

The first place I visited was the Hahnen Gate, which is one of the three remaining medieval gates to the city. I sat there for a while enjoying the peace and quiet, and had some bread rolls that I packed with me as my breakfast.

This is the Hahnen Gate

Then I went to an art museum, the Wallraf-Richartz Museum. Unfortunately for me, this was one of those museums where you’re not allowed to take photos of any of the exhibits. I found the exhibit on 19th Century art and the exhibit on American art the most interesting exhibits.

After that, all there was left to do was to grab some lunch and to head back to Frankfurt. It would’ve been nice to spend more time there, but it just wasn’t possible with the assignments I had due on Monday. I’m just glad that I was able to go at all.

What I’m listening to this week: Robert Frost by Mal Blum.