The Long-Overdue and *Warning!* Long-Winded Germany Blog: 1-2 weeks post-race

I loved Germany before my plane had even landed in Munich.  If I’m allowed to say it, I’ll admit to identifying much more closely with Germany than I have after two full months with Spain.  Maybe it’s because I look German.  Maybe it’s because Germany is the most stable country in Europe—and even emits vibes of security and confidence.  Maybe it’s because “goodbye” in German sounds exactly like cheers! and when the stewardess said this to me as I was departing the plane I was able to take it as such a pleasant salutation and return the gesture, unknowingly speaking my first words of the German language. 

Or maybe it’s because—again, I’m not sure if I’m allowed to say it—Germany strikingly resembles Ohio… at least the best parts I know of Ohio.  Walking along the river in Cologne, for example, brought Cincinnati straight to my mind.  Granted, this was walking towards the bridge and therefore the towering, beautiful, very-German-looking and world-famous cathedral was still obstructed from view, but still.

My dad’s side of the family is the German side, and he recounted feeling immediately at home when he was in Germany years (and years and years) ago.  Apparently, the same thing happened to my mom, who comes from Italian roots, when she went to Italy.  I can recognize a having a similar experience in Germany: I so naturally and instantaneously felt comfortable. 

I was under strict and persistent advice from said German father to make sure I visited said world-famous cathedral, so Dad, this picture is for you to prove I was actually there:

You’ll be further impressed to find out I actually attended a mass there.  Yes, the church is stunningly beautiful, but honestly, the tall gothic pillars don’t give it quite a homey-enough feeling.  This is perhaps appropriate for a Catholic mass, but I’ll say it was a little unnerving, with utmost respect and awe, of course.

So the half marathon… went well!  I didn’t finish in my best time, but it was still good enough to, unbeknownst to me since I do not speak German, get announced by the MC at the race as I crossed the finish line.  Not to mention that it was great to get out and into a race after a month and a half abroad in another country.  

Even after all my other mishaps at the gym with the metric system, it didn’t occur to me until the Friday night before the race that it would be counted down in kilometers instead of miles—21 signs to pass instead of 13.  I did have to stop halfway through to use a port-a-potty, which has only happened to me during one other half marathon race and at which all my fellow Running Clubbers will laugh appreciatively, but if I subtract the time it took me to wait in line to use the bathroom, I’m a lot closer to my personal best time.  This spring, my next half marathon with Running Club in March can be the tie-breaker.

I had heard that at the races in Germany you cross the finish line and are immediately handed a beer because… well, because it’s Germany.  Verdict: it’s true.  There was no water in sight at the finish line, just beer and Coke.  And tons of food.  I was feeling pretty bad by this time and skipped all the food and drinks to find my warm clothes, and pretty quickly found myself on a quest for water.  Eventually, this was located, along with my group: Tindi and Jochen, Tindi’s mom, and one of Tindi’s other friends who had also been running.  They wrapped me up in Tindi’s coat and we headed back to her mom’s house to recover.  It wasn’t until I was in a steaming shower, where I didn’t have to hold the shower head myself or turn off the water in between washing my hair and washing my body like I do in Spain, that I remembered how sweet the post-half-marathon reward is.  This was considerably extended with Mrs. Abt’s home-cooked German lunch: meatballs and capers with rice and salad.  

So I had home-cooked German food while in Germany.  What else is cool there?

1) They don’t have a speed limit on the highways except where absolutely necessary.  

2) Everyone speaks English; therefore, I had no problems with not actually speaking German and not having an English-German (or Spanish-German) dictionary.

3) The Haribo gummy candy comes in an assortment… supposedly this assortment is as hard to find in the US as peanut butter is to find in Europe.  You can imagine how important I felt getting to try it.

4) You can see the Alps from one of the look-out church towers in downtown Munich.  I won’t dwell on the fact that when I climbed the ___ stairs to the top of the church, it was too rainy and cloudy to actually see them.

5) It’s actually fall in Germany, in sharp contrast to southern Spain.  The autumn colors are dramatic and vibrant, the rain is luxurious, and there’s real grass.

6) I got to take a train to the airport.  Why are these so hard to find in America?

Speaking of the airport.  My next adventure came Monday night when I flew back into Madrid from Munich.  My plane landed at 7:45pm at the northern end of the city and my bus back to Granada left at 8:30 sharp at the southern end.  I knew I’d be cutting it close, and I had a map of the metro system already studied and ready to use, and alas, I missed the bus.  The next one back to Granada left at 2am… it’s a 5-hour bus ride, so arriving in Granada at 7am would give me just enough time to shower and make it to my 10:30 class.  Check.  Lockers in the bus station so I could lock up my luggage until the later bus left?  Check.  Plans for the next 4 hours so I wouldn’t have to wander around Madrid by myself…  Question mark.

I called a friend from my program here in Granada and he passed along the number of a friend he knew in Madrid.  For never having even heard of me before, this friend of a friend was fortunately willing to offer his apartment and keep me company until my next bus left.  It ended up being a really fun night.  Then I successfully slept a few hours on the bus in the middle of the night, caught another REM cycle before class Tuesday morning, and had a full productive day back in Granada.

Now, I’m back in the swing of things here.  I’m back on the running trail, and this time the surrounding Sierra Nevadas are starting to accumulate snow on the tips of their peaks.  Today, I hiked in these same Sierra Nevadas with a group of Spaniards from Granada with a passion for hiking a desire to share that passion with anyone that can get themselves up early enough on a Sunday morning to join them.  

Furthermore, I’ve been back to my spinning classes at the gym, I finally Skyped my brother, and I made it out until 6 in the morning last weekend.  In just under 2 weeks I’ll have my first round of midterms for my Spain classes, and by the time that happens I’ll have been to Italy and back. 

I think that could call for a toast.  While the Germans spell it tschüss, I’ll go ahead and keep pronouncing/using it as cheers!

Shout-outs:

Dylan and Mr. Jennings, muchas gracias for the open door, warm hearts, and complimentary pizza and beer.  All three of these were exactly what I needed and these kind gentlemen generously greeted me as their guest after just a moment’s notice when Justin called Dylan out of the blue.

Therefore, the next thanks go to Justin, for being so damn popular that he has friends in every major city in Spain.  Justin got me a place to stay Wednesday night in a Madrid with a friend he knew had an apartment while she’s studying here, and then again got me a place to hang out the following Monday night (with the Jennings’s) while I waited for my second bus going back to Granada.

Which means Emma is next in line for an enthusiastic thank you, for so kindly hosting me Wednesday night in Madrid before I caught my plane Thursday morning.  Emma, your bathroom is certainly janky, but I appreciated it just as much as I appreciated the lentils and broccoli for breakfast the next morning.

As I’ve already said but have no hesitation to reiterate: friends and family here in Spain, northeast in Germany, and back across the ocean in the States, “thanks” does not even begin to cover the sentiment I feel when I think of the support you’ve given these past few months.  Every “good luck”, “you got it”, “come on Kate (insert accent of choice)”, and “that’s badass” never went unnoticed nor forgotten.

Mr. and Mrs. Abt, who selflessly hosted their daughter’s friend from America throughout the weekend of the race in Siegen, Germany, are owed a gracious round of applause: the large smiles, stories, and home-cooked German and Indonesian food were the toppings on the sundae—or perhaps more appropriately for me, the spinach salad to all my meals here in Spain.

And of course, thanks to Tindi and Jochen for making my weekend in Germany so memorable.  I was treated like a royal guest in the humble abode of the bride and groom to-be, and even though they might have been sick of drawing out the same map of downtown Munich for me over and over so I could find the sites of interest with a Kessler sense of direction, their engineer-brains couldn’t have given better directions if there had actually been a computer in there.  I can’t wait to (hopefully) find everything once and for all WHEN I come back to Germany.

Study Abroad Problems (Hashtag) --3 days Pre-race

It’s not my fault that I feel like crying every time I’m in the airport. 

Well, maybe a little.  I’m talking tears of embarrassment, after wandering around the airport* clueless to the terminal I’m in related to the one I’m supposed to be in.  *Note the lack of specificity here: this has happened to me in every airport I’ve been in for the past two months.  Counting on fingers, that’s… 5 airports.  I’ve been overly terminal-conscious since “that one time” I sprinted through JFK to catch my flight to Spain on that first day back in August.  Once seated on that flight finally regaining control of both my breath and my nerves, I could brush it off as traveler’s inexperience.

…Traveler’s inexperience continued.  The Lisbon International Airport in Portugal, where I now sit to catch my connecting flight to Munich, consists of two terminals.  Only two.  And for what it matters I’m not sure the second one exists.  After perusing the departing flights on multiple screens and not finding my flight, I am convinced I need to be in the other terminal.  So I turn corners, walk through airport bars and cafés, even ask a security guard; take an escalator, go through security again, which includes chugging once again the water from the bottle I’ve just refilled, and wind up all the way back in front of the first screen I checked.  Rephrase: I’ve succeeded in making a complete loop around the airport.  Duration of loop: roughly 25 minutes.

I look again, knowing my frustration is in spill-over danger.  Not on the list.  About five seconds away from stamping my feet and causing a real scene, the voice in my head finally surfaces.  “Stop checking the screen and check the email confirmation you went through so much trouble to print.  You’re looking at your boarding time, not departure time,” it mutters, exasperated and rolling its eyes at me.  What do you know, my flight to Munich, Germany is indeed further down on the screen, 30 minutes later than the boarding time I had been searching.

Luckily, the realization brings instant comic relief.  I will laugh about it now.  The funny thing is, the better I get at travelling the worse I get at Spanish.  After my weekend in Portugal, my host mom told me she could tell I had been speaking English all weekend because my Spanish was worse.  If three days in Portugal exacerbated my Spanish, I have no idea what three weeks back in the States after Christmas will do.

Then I remember that I’m in Europe, currently on the chattiest flight I’ve ever been on, probably one of the few English-speakers among so many Germans, with a copy of Harry Potter y la piedra filosofal (in Spanish, if you didn’t catch that), writing letters in English, and reflecting on the Spanish woman I helped in the cafeteria line at the Zurich airport in Sweden.

I think that’s me calling trump.

1 week pre-race

It’s been a pretty good week.

I got a job!  Last weekend, a man overheard me speaking in English on Skype in the Internet café and approached me when I was done to ask if I’d be interested in teaching English to his kids.  I met the entire family yesterday afternoon and have been officially hired—I practice my Spanish with the parents, speak in English with their three beautiful and very well-behaved children (triplets), and I’ll get an extra 20 euros a week. 

My host mom bought romaine lettuce instead of iceberg last weekend and served that for dinner.  Yes, this was a highlight of the day.

I finally made it to the chupitería—the shot bar of Granada.  The menu has 121 different kinds of shots, and with every shot you get a card with a value of 1 point—certain amounts of points win you different prizes.  75 points wins you a sweatshirt, for example so my collection has officially started.  The most adventurous shot I had Saturday night was one with vodka, rum, and tabasco sauce.  Get this—I liked it. 

And now I’m en route to Munich, Germany, where I’ll meet up with a friend from Running Club before heading on to Cologne with her for my half marathon on Sunday.  Even at the first gate in the Madrid airport, I was surrounded by the German language… and therefore instantly less ostentatious as an American, since I look 100 percent more German than Spanish.  Thank you, Kesslers, for the German genes.  Unfortunately, when I say I don’t know a lick of German I mean it; I don’t even know how to say “hello”.

Needless to say, I’m stoked for the race.  One of the first things I noticed when I first got here was that my American personality had seemed to fold away into the pocket lint of being one small person in the disorienting world of… the world.  Literally, it's terrifying.  So since my American personality has seemed to be hiding since I've been in Spain, as if shying away behind Mom’s leg in front of a stranger, running has come to define me—my complete need to be in my running shoes out on a trail every day is kind of hard to hide.  So I’d say this is the most in tune with running I’ve ever been.  And amidst trying to be modest in the face of so much awe and support from my friends here, it might not hit me how cool it is to run a race in another country until after the fact, maybe not even until I return the States. 

What my friends here don’t know is that once I’m back in Granada next week, my running routine doesn’t change.  This whole past month and a half wasn’t just training, it was me.  Hi, everyone.

Give Me Five

5 things I am missing most:

1) Hot sauce, spinach, broccoli, 100 percent whole wheat, almond and rice milk, unsalted nuts, oranges, strawberries, blueberries, and peanut butter.  This aside, the food here is still delicious and healthy.

2) Friends and family.

3) Not only a biweekly paycheck (although I haven’t even been here a month yet) but also the obligation of going to work and doing semi-important things every day.

4) My own personal space.

5) The Running Club at Ohio State!

5 things I am missing least:

1) Paying rent.

2) Football.  The truth is, I do miss this a little—but I associate full responsibility of this to my first bought of homesickness.

3) So much homework that I have to find my head and reattach it every morning before I begin my day at Ohio State.

4) Ohio State construction, even though there’s a lot of construction here on a main road near me.  This construction is to build a subway route, and somehow this seems exponentially more productive than whatever is going on at every single campus road and main highway route in Columbus.  Notably, none of the construction here is orange; the signs are lime green and by some miracle still more appealing than said Ohio State construction.

5) Judge me however you will for this one: foreigners everywhere around campus.  By natural and necessary irony, I am the foreigner here, speaking English, speaking English loudly, moving around in groups of people speaking English loudly, sounding like an idiot when I do speak Spanish, foreign-looking, easily excited by things which are new to me and everyday-blasé for Spaniards, obnoxiously touching everything in every store whether or not I have the intention to buy it, and cosas así.  Even still, the foreigners here in Granada are so ubiquitous that it’s part of the culture, which makes it a little easier to feel like I’m fitting in.

My plan is to update this list at least biweekly and have a record of the transformation!  

Gym Star

Hacer ejercicios… This could be its own category entirely.  The first day I ran around Granada, a day last week, my run turned into a series of sprints—the park was much smaller than I was prepared for and doing intervals was the only way to keep myself running.  The next day when I pulled off the trail to do some push-ups and sit-ups, with the strange looks I was getting you would have thought it was completely unreasonable to be exercising at the park.  Well, maybe it is and I just don’t know it yet. 

Today was the first day I tried out the gym down the street from my homestay.  First of all, the point needs to be made (as humbly and modestly as possible, mind you) that I have been complimented several times on my capacidad to speak and understand Spanish (thank you, Spanish teachers I’ve had for the past nine years, for drilling vocab and grammar into my head and thank you, studious Kate, wherever you are now, for once studying so much and miraculously remembering almost as much now). 

However, talking with local receptionists at the gym is an entirely new story.  I turn into someone who might as well be speaking Chinese. 

Today being my first day actually entering into the part of the gym with the class studios and weights, this aside, it’s mentionable that I have been in the gym three times before this day attempting to talk to the receptionist about how much it would cost to join, how much it would cost a student at the University of Granada to join, the different classes offered (they do spinning here, too, and it’s called “spinning”), and what’s included with a membership.  I wanted to ask for her personal opinion about how sorely I would stand out as an American in a tiny gym with lots of people waiting their turn to use mats and weights and machines, but since I didn’t know the most polite way to ask this, I refrained. 

So I finally made it inside.  It has been a long time since I felt as nervous as I did in that moment.  Lots of other people were standing around the desk watching me struggle (I managed to pick the busiest time of day to try to get in), and in my head they were all snickering at me and my American pronunciation and voice and gym clothes, and of course I forgot my lock for the locker that was so kindly provided, and of course I mistakenly used the towel they gave me at the front desk to mop up the water I spilled out of the sink when trying to refill my water bottle before finding, almost immediately after, a water fountain with a spicket precisely for refilling water bottles, and of course I later was the only one in the spinning class without a towel, and of course I was also the only one sweating as profusely as it is possible to sweat, and of course I could keep going but I’ll, once again, refrain. 

It could have been a comedy show.  Before the spinning class started, I took several minutes testing out the hand-held weights and medicine balls on the main floor.  What I failed to remember is the metric system… I went for my usual 10-pounders and very quickly realized that they were 10-kilogrammers.  *NOTE: According to Google, 1 pound = 2.20462 pounds* …the best thing I’ll get out of this is sore arms, something I’ve been waiting for since I arrived here. 

Going in for my spinning class I was slightly more confident since I’ve had years of multiple cycling classes a week to give me the experience I need to blow people’s doubts off the bike when they first look at the skinny white girl with running shoes instead of cycling shoes climbing onto a bike.  What I again failed to remember was that the entire class would be conducted in glorious español and therefore I’d need to stare incessantly at the people next to me to copy from them what we were actually doing.  Don’t do anything American, don’t speak unless spoken to, stop sweating so much, I am sweating so much, don’t do anything American… these were all thoughts running through my head—in Spanish, thankfully, because that might be enough to preserve a small spoonful of my pride after this hora y media at the gym. 

Inevitably, I am one hundred percent sure that the cycling teacher quickly saw through my quiet, don’t-make-eye-contact disguise.  Within 10 minutes he was counting down our sprints as “three, two, one, let’s go!” instead of “tres, dos, uno”… oops.  I’m pretty sure I also heard “la chica americana” at least once, not to mention he had to point right at me after one of the climbs and tell me to get in the ritmo of the music.

By the time I left, both looking and smelling like a wet dog—worse than the ones on the street without a leash—by the time I left I still had the same endorphin high I get from going to the gym in the States.  It’s hard to say how much of my racing heartbeat came from the adrenaline of being the new kid on the block playing hide and seek or from the intensity of the class.  Either way, I am proud to have understood and therefore learned new words for exercise motivation: Siéntete las piernas… están en fuego! –made me want to go faster to make my legs burn more; prepárate la carga, which made me feel like a bolt of lightning as I imagined readying to charge; and somos un equipo y buen trabajo, followed by a round of applause at the end all helped to bring my athleticism back to the control tower of my body, kicking my inhibition from lack of language skills to the back of the gymnasio.

Conclusion: success!

Decision: to join the gym or not to join, and if I don’t, which gym will be the next victim?  Or, better asked, will it be the gym or will it be me as the victim?  Or, more interestingly asked, which way will build more endurance for my throbbing, exercising heartbeat?

Views from my running trails

Run Rudolph Run

If the first thing you hear when you see that name are the chords of the electric guitar at the beginning of the Chuck Berry song, and the first thing you think of is the scene from Home Alone when Macauley Culkin’s family is sprinting through the airport, then you’ve got a pretty good image of my first plane ride out of the United States.  Yes, it almost didn’t even happen.

My flight from Columbus to New York was uneventful.  My first hour of layover was equally uneventful until I checked my flight information five minutes after my plane was supposed to begin boarding.  A flight attendant who barely spoke English told me I was in the wrong terminal and there was no way I would make it to the correct one in time to catch my flight… and she was right.  By some stroke of luck I immediately overheard someone who had made the same mistake, and I followed him to the correct terminal.  “Followed” is putting it gently… shuffling vociferously between people previously minding their own business, gasping vehemently at every stop on an escalator or shuttle, wobbling obnoxiously with 100 pounds of carry-on luggage, and cutting the 2-hour security line—which turned into an inadvertently theatrical ordeal since there was a whole group of us hurtling our backpacks onto the cart,  whipping our shoes off, and chugging water bottles that had just been refilled (that was me)—this description is more fitting.  Future lesson learned: pack lighter carry-on bags.  Oh, and make sure I’m in the right terminal.

Since then, things have gone as smoothly as possible.  I spent two nights with the other students in my program in Madrid, one night in Toledo, and I’ve been in Granada a week now, since Sunday.  Those 6 days have given me enough time to finally unpack my suitcases, get to know my host mom, figure out the fastest way to walk to school with my roommate (actually, I’m not sure yet that it’s the fastest), and find a few running trails!  I’m in the slow process of trying to feel like myself again in a new city… it’s a lot to get used to under the circumstances of knowing it is my home for the next 4 months.

I’m officially signed up for the Cologne Half Marathon in Germany on October 14!  My training has intensified on me before I’ve even found the best running routes around Granada, and since my Spanish skills are not up to par enough to make me sound more sophisticated than a 5-year-old when conversing with receptionists at local gyms, I know this race will creep up on me.  Still, getting to run regularly again has been the highlight of my week; hitting the ground running may be the only thing that keeps me grounded as I begin to explore the beautiful, friendly, and safe—I know some of you have been wondering— city of Granada and make plans to travel through Spain and along to several big cities in Europe… just no more airplane running workouts, please.