Category Archives: Germany

Germany

Zwiebelmarkt

4 Comments

Before accepting a job in Weimar, Germany, I looked it up on Wiki Travel. (I didn’t do this until after moving to Seremban, Malaysia and, well, if the only thing Wiki Travel has to say is that your town is near the airport, I wouldn’t suggest moving there.) I knew the basics of Weimar – home to the Weimar Republic, after all – and there were a variety of other mentions that caught my eye, one of which was the Onion Market. When I arrived, locals and expats alike told me, “Let’s just hope the Onion Market is on this year.”

A few changes due to Covid notwithstanding (no Queen of the Onion Festival, no pre-dawn opening, only four stages with live music instead of ten, a manageable number of visitors rather than the 250,000 that usually flock to this town of 65,000) it was!

Zwiebelmarkt was part food festival . . .

. . . and part harvest festival (I made my way to several farm stalls before it got too busy) with specific attention given to onions, which I will never see the same way again.

There were opportunities to buy onion-themed gifts and other household items (my contributions to the regional economy include a bouquet of dried flowers and a couple packs of spices) . . .

. . . and opportunities to sample onion-based foods. I can vouch for Zwiebelkuchen (onion cake) and Zwiebelsuppe (onion soup).

There were performances, too, of both the musical and circus variety, as well as a special carnival area for children, which was not too far from the medieval fair where some really fun bands played.

“Why did you choose Weimar?” a Weimar native asked as we drank beer and wine, sang along to Incubus and Radiohead covers, and used her sky app to find Jupiter and Saturn.

Many reasons. I can’t honestly say that onions were taken into consideration, but I’m glad they have become part of this experience.

Germany

Don’t stop your bike with your chin

1 Comment

Oops. The road was wet and I came off my bike. Split my chin open. Spent about four hours at the hospital getting seen, stitched, CT’ed for the pain in my jaw, and seen again. Not the way I planned to spend my Tuesday night!

But I learned a few things worth noting:

  1. People here are kind in an emergency. Two of my colleagues were very close by, one in a car and another on a bike, and they both stopped immediately to help. One found a pack of emergency tissues in my backpack and brought my bike back to school for safekeeping. The other put me in her car, called the school, and drove me to see our nurse. The nurse took one look at me and shouted to another colleague, who drove me to the hospital.
  2. While we were doing some sidewalk first aid to stop the blood dripping from my chin onto my jacket, dress, and tights, several strangers asked if we needed help. Two were children on bikes and two more were pedestrians who went out of their way to come over to us. This was heartwarming and I thanked those who I could.
  3. Figuring out medical care in another language is difficult. I was at the hospital for around four hours and I spoke broken German almost the whole time. The doctor had taken a Medical English course, she told me, though we communicated mostly in German unless it was obvious that I was lost. It took some gesturing and explaining from the doctor, and guesswork on my part, but I knew what was going to happen before it happened. All in all, the experience was frustrating and tiring for me, but it worked out okay. I was struck by how difficult and scary it must be for immigrants to any country, especially those with no language skills, to communicate in a crisis. I was near tears and I wasn’t even in a crisis! Sitting in the wrong waiting room and staring at the wrong door was a moment of deep understanding, and I will not forget it.

In my frustration, I wrote to a few friends and received encouragement, offers of help, and commiseration in response. “Approach it all like a writer,” one wise woman suggested. And so I have.

Germany

Turning

1 Comment

The world is turning, and I know this now in a way I have not known it, not really, for a number of years. I know that the world is turning because the light is changing. I knew this, of course, and have known it, but now the light is changing; I have missed this.

For the first time today, I had to turn on my bike lights for my five-minute ride to school. It was dark. I haven’t had this in a long time. The suns rises and sets around the same time all year round on the equator, roughly between 7:00 and 7:30, morning or evening. By comparison, when I arrived in Germany in July, the sun rose at 5:12am and set at 9:27pm. Today, it rose at 7:20am, which is when I turned my lights on, and will set at 6:45pm.

Something I was very aware of while living in Malaysia and Singapore was how difficult I found it to judge the passage of time. With the same light, darkness, and more or less the same weather, it was hard to remember when a certain event had occurred and almost impossible to keep track of what I would have worn to said event. Same clothes for same events, all year round. (Notable exceptions being caught in the rain during particular summer storms, and the cold front that came through Singapore last January during which I, for the first and only time, wore jeans in my house.)

It’s different here. Aware of how much colder it will soon be, and it has been cold already, I’ve been very deliberate in spending time outside. And then I remind myself that I moved countries because I missed seasons and that, before Covid, my friends and I were making travel decisions based on which seasons we wanted to experience. Fall in Korea, winter in Europe, spring in Japan.

The amount of light is changing, the leaves are slowly beginning to follow, and the air tastes different in the morning, afternoon, and evening. The apples that I’ve been picking off trees have ripened, and I’ve completely given up on open-toed shoes. I’d need to change clothes multiple times a day to be consistently comfortable, so I’ve settled in a mostly happy medium of tights, scarves, and jackets that zip.

The world is tuning and time is passing. Later this week it will have been three months since I arrived here, which is already a quarter of a year. How did I get here, and so quickly? If I look back six months, which puts “arrival in Germany” squarely in the middle, much of what constitutes my day-to-day is unrecognizable. And much has remained so obviously the same.

So it goes, whether or not we stop to think about it. While days might stretch on forever, weeks pass. While weeks drag, days might fly by. Such is time. This, too, shall pass, and for everything, there is a season. So it goes. And so, one foot in front of the other, do we.

Nami Island, South Korea – October 2019