Hannah Swithinbank

Not in Kansas Anymore

Yesterday I finally met my new supervisor and got introduced to the department by some of his students. Yay for people to talk to who aren’t inside my head!

New boss-man is vaguely suggestive of portly series one Blackadder, but with more brains. He is very busy and likes to refer to himself as Francis Cornford’s Young Man in a Hurry. Who I now have to google. This means I won’t really have to talk work to him for amonth, which is good as it gives me time to do some. He also wants us to only speak German from December. Man the panic stations.

So I now have a desk to work at in the department library in the Philogium (which, btw, is an arcitectural gem featuring permanently broken escalators rising up its core). However, the library doesn’t open till 10am. Which I failed to check because I am so used to the libraries I use opening at 8.30 or being locked with keys of which I possess a copy. So instead of writing job applications/reading Sallust/doing German prep, I’m in the cafe drinking some truly awful espresso, spinning out my time online.

Why I like the Wallraf-Richartz Museum.

Point 1: It has art in it that I understand, unlike the Museum Ludwig, which I went to on Thursday.  I do *try* with modern art nowadays, I really do, but honestly at some point my mind just reaches a breaking point and it normally involves random objects being scattered on the floor of the art gallery.

So, that gets the modern art bashing out of the way up front. I’m just more comfortable with art up to the early C20th, and definitely with stuff that involves a canvas or something similar hung on a wall (and sculpture, more generally).  But also the Wallraf-Richartz is nicely laid out, with a broad collection and really good introductionary panels to each room in German and English, plus little computer screens and headphones installed in the seats in each room that give you more information on specific works  – they’re in German only, but you know what – I was good with the wall signage.  Hurrah for explaining the context of the works and all that.

They’ve also got a couple of really good exhibitions on at the moment – they started yesterday and run to January, which is why I waited till today to go to this museum.  The first is called ‘Mit Napoleon in Ägypten, and showcases the Museum’s collection of sketches of Egypt’s temples by Jean-Baptiste Lepère, who was a French architect and egyptologist who went on Napoleon’s expedition to Egypt in 1798 (y’know, the one where they found the Rosetta Stone).  The exhibition showcases the (fanatastically stunning)sketches and their reproduction as engravings for publication, and discusses the beginnings of Egyptology as a scholarly pursuit and the French expedition as a whole. And it’s really really good.

The other is a showcase of Van Gogh’s Boots (right), which they have displayed on its own in a room, and contextualised with excerpts from the critical debate about the importance of the painting – specifically essays by Heidegger, Shapiro and Derrida.  Fundamentally, it’s a meditation upon aesthetics and the meaning of art, but it’s really nicely done, and it doesn’t presume any knowledge of either the art of the criticism. I was completely engaged without feeling patronised, so yay for the Wallraf-Richartz.

And, my gosh, next up is an exhibition of Stradivari violins, including concerts. It would be bliss to go to them all, if only I came into a couple of thousand euros. €150 a ticket PER CONCERT. But you get champagne, so that’s ok, right?  That won’t make me hate them.

Afternoon Out

Today I did actual sightseeing stuff. I went to the Römisch-Germanische Museum, which is home to all the fun ancient things that have been dug up around here.  Mostly it’s too late for my tastes, being AD – although I have learnt to identify a bust of Augustus at 20 paces.  Teaching archaeology and running around Roman museums has done that much for me.   I really need to take a tame archaeologist with me to the museum, in order to properly appreciate all the stuff that’s in there – because it is clearly a really good collection that properly illustrates Roman life in the Germanic provinces. I just don’t know anything, really, about that (except that some of the Imperial family hung around up here fighting battles), and I can’t properly read the explanations, as my German isn’t that good (and my imperial archaeology isn’t good enough to guess).   Then I think I will get much more out of it.  That said, the two big mosaics (the Dionysus and the Philosophers) and the reconstructed Tomb of Poblicius can’t fail to impress even *this* Republican philistine.  They really are stunning – and beautifully displayed.    I invested in a year’s pass to the Cologne Museums (it covers all the major beasts), which at €50 for students was an absolute steal.  You’d comfortably spent €20 visiting three of the eight or nine covered, as a student, and I have plans to go to all of the ‘big three’ (the Römisch-Germanische, the Ludwig, and the Wallraf-Richartz) more than once. And I’m only here for six months.   Even if you’re not a student, the year’s pass is only about €68, which is still worth it.

After all the ancientness, I decided to take advantage of the sunshine – and ended up wishing I’d taken my sunglasses – before going to listen to Vespers at the Kölner Dom.  There’s this pilgrimage thing – Domwallfahrt 2009 – going on at the Dom, and there’s a bunch of services taking place, so I thought I’d go and listen to some music in stunning acoustics.  I strolled across the Hohenzollernbrücke (which is the railway bridge) to see the view back to the cathedral. You’d never think that a railway bridge and station would do much more than spoil the view of a gothic cathedral, but the juxtaposition really does work – despite the fact that the sun was directly above the Dom, requiring much eye-screwing-up.  I’m going to go back in the morning and after dark some time to take some more photos across the Rhine.   Vespers was lovely, too. I only stayed for a little while (and sat through the build-up before hand, which is what the last photo shows), but it was just perfectly relaxing, and the music (girls’ choir) was gorgeous.  I think I’m going to have to go back for more services in a language and denomination I don’t understand.

Sorted?

German phone number. CHECK.
Sends messages outside Deutschland. CHECK. Though apparently not to my mother’s phone.
Registered as a furrriner living here for more than three months. CHECK. That one took some time, due to not being able to read the signs very well. Furrrriner fail.
Bank account so I can get my scholarship. CHECK. Easiest bit. Nice bank lady who was happy to speak English to me.

I live here now.

I’m working up to the bit where I do some work.

After yesterday’s adventure to find the International Office was done, I explorationed into the city centre and saw the cathedral (quite stunning but v. busy due to something called Domswallfahrt – I may venture thence for Vespers or Evensung tomorrow though) and meandered a bit, and had my first proper Köln brewed beer, and it was all very civilised.  I spent this morning running around doing busywork, and then pootled back into the Neuemarkt where I had spied a Habitat, for I needed pillows.  Don’t do your household shopping in Habitat, ye godes.  I whimpered and fled from the one-person €30 coffee presses and €50 towels towards a nice department store called Karstadt, where I spent about half the amount on a pair of pillows, a towel and flanel, the fluffiest blankey you ever did contemplate snuggling up in, and a coffee press.  Mmmm. I can have coffee tomorrow morning.

I think tomorrow that I might take myself to the Römisches Museum by the Dom, to see all the ancient things, and then I might be about ready to think about doing some work from next week.  The new supervisor is in the States, but I think I can be brave enough to go and find the department and say hello to the department before he gets back. Hopefully they’ll have heard I’m coming. Oop.  Are all visiting scholary things so disorganised, I wonder, or is it just at this stage of my career. Do I get to have a monkey to do all this organising stuff for me, and tour me ’round and introduce me to people, when I get higher up the academic food chain?  That would be nice.

Arrival

So, I have arrived in Cologne. It was a loooooong day of trains. Left St Erth at 0700, and arrived at Koln Hofbahnhof at 2115, by way of London and Brussells. Did I mention it was looooong. And my big suitcase was superheavy (which was partly why I got the train), and now my arm is so tired from pulling it that I can barely hold a pen to write a list of all the things I need to do tomorrow.

But my new landlord met me off the train, and brought me to the apartment, so I have a very hazy idea of where I live, except that it’s about 10 minutes walk from a direct train/tram (seriously, it starts as a u-bahn, and ends up overground like a tram) into the city centre, and that there’s a nearer stop if I don’t mind changing once along the way.  I know that there’s lots of shops on a street that we walked up, including a supermarket that opens at 7am, which is good, as I will need breakfast tomorrow (having had a cereal bar and satsuma for supper). I know that the university is vaguely ‘up-the-way’, and I’m going to trot off there tomorrow to find the international office, who were supposed to be emailing me about an appointment for tomorrow, but haven’t – but I have been invited to a concert and drinks, and to a reception by the mayor, and a city tour, and offered shiny public transport deals, so I guess I can go find them about the other stuff, like police registration and banks. My German appears to be coming back – at least, I can understand a good deal, but I don’t have the confidence to talk yet. My default foreign language is still Italian, so I need to crack that habit. Tomorrow I think I will be writing lists of conjugations and declensions, and pinning them up around the apartment to help me out.

It’s all very nice in my wee apartment. The internet works – clearly – which is A Good Thing. I have a pretty large kitchen and a large study bedroom, and a wee shower room. I have nowhere to hang stuff, but I will cope, as I have only about two things that need hanging anyway, and my coat is hanging off the end of the bookcase. I have more bookshelves than I can use, since I didn’t even bring a shelf’s worth with me, so the bookcase is being used for trousers and jumpers, and make up and camera gear. I also appear to have a TV with some kind of digibox, and a PS2 for DVD watching, plus there is a copy of a Tony Hawk game a drawer. And I’m here to WORK. yes.

See, dinky wee apartment. Oh, and I have a (somewhat small looking) double bed, so people who don’t mind snuggling can come and stay. Otherwise they may have to bring their own rollmat and sleeping bag. I am going to buy more pillows though.