It was a tough winter. It was long, dark, lonely and isolating. I managed to get some fresh air once in a while with the occasional trip or visitor, but I spent the majority of these last months struggling. It’s safe to say I was depressed. I had so little energy or passion that I didn’t recognize myself anymore. I was eating poorly and sleeping all the time. I was waiting lethargically for one day to pass into another. In social situations, I would retreat into myself and things would proceed around me in a blur.

Although I proclaimed the dawn of spring one sunny day back in March, that day was followed by another month of deep winter and left me feeling defeated. Meanwhile, my short-term subletting agreement was about to end and I would need to find a new place to live. I started looking far too late and found myself three days from being without a home. I felt like I was out of options. I inquired at a hostel across from the train station and learned that my budget could afford me a bunk in a 10-person dorm room for a few weeks. If I couldn’t find a new place by then, I feared I wouldn’t have the willpower to finish out my Fulbright year. I could almost taste my failure, and I was more despondent than ever.

Then suddenly, like a burst of oxygen to my drowning spirit, everything changed. Friends who had been out of town on holiday returned for the new semester. They sympathized with my desperate situation and promised to help me find a place to live. And magically, within 24 hours, they had found me a room in a “Verbindung,” which is the German equivalent of a frathouse. A few days later I was moving in, the fraternity brothers helping me carry my things into their cozy villa by the river. Overhead shone the big, yellow sun, an old friend who existed only in memory. It felt like a warm symbol of better days to come. And indeed, it was. That evening I was warmly welcomed by my new housemates, and over the next few days I jumpstarted my body with picturesque jogs beneath newly-sprouting leaves along the river. Everything was suddenly lining up for me. I had just one more problem to resolve, and that was to find a job for my return to the United States.

A few days later, I awoke around 3am from a funny dream. Like I often do, I reached for my computer to surf the internet until I could fall back asleep. But I opened up my email and got a sudden burst of adrenaline. While I was sleeping, the German American Chamber of Commerce had sent me an email offering me a 1-year paid internship in their San Francisco office. It is a German-speaking office and the position is market entry consulting for German companies looking to establish themselves in the United States. Essentially, this was my dream internship. They were asking me to start August 1, exactly one month after I return to the U.S., conspiring perfectly with my plan to spend a few weeks with my family at home in New Hampshire. It seemed so ideal.

My knee-jerk reaction was to share the news with Michael, one of my closest friends from college who is in law school in San Francisco. He was on Skype and eagerly answered my video chat. After a few minutes of exchanging various versions of “yippee!”, I asked him about possible living arrangements in San Francisco. I knew he was moving into a new apartment, and we had talked about the possibility of my coming out there and us living together. He told me he had signed a lease agreement for an apartment downtown, that he was looking for a roommate, and that living together sounded like a lot of fun. To top it off, his lease starts August 1. We googled the address and learned the commute to the German American Chamber of Commerce is a mere 12 minutes. And thus, minutes after I learned I had been offered the internship, I already had an apartment in San Francisco with a close friend!

I then remembered that Marie, a German friend of mine studying in Berlin, would be interning in San Francisco at Germany Trade and Invest, the sister office of the German American Chamber of Commerce, which is located on the same floor in the same building. I was already imagining going on lunch break together and getting after-work drinks. I later learned that she had found an apartment, too, and it would be a stone’s throw from Michael and me. And aside from Marie, I have a handful of other great friends in the Bay Area I can’t wait to connect with. It was all working out so perfectly. Fate, fate, fate!

I knew with all the excitement that I was not getting back to sleep. It was still dark outside, but I looked at the clock and realized the sun was about to rise. So I put on my jacket and climbed up to the chapel on the hill behind the frathouse. I sat myself up on ledge and, for the first time since arriving in Würzburg, I watched the sunrise. The symbolism was palpable as the morning light climbed up over the horizon and glinted off the gold-topped steeples and red brick rooftops. It was just me up there on that big hill, and the sun was rising before me, echoing the promise and renewal in my own life. The dark winter was over. The helplessness was over. My life was blooming into spring flowers and I was truly alive again. This was everything I had been waiting for.

So here I am now, with just under two months left of my Fulbright grant. And as far as I can see, it’s smooth sailing from here. I am resolving to make the most of every day, to truly enjoy this golden period of my year. I worked hard for this and I endured a lot to make it to this point. I am proud of myself and proud that I will end this experience on a high note.

I came into this knowing it would be challenging, but I was confident that the overall trajectory would be positive and fulfilling. I lost that confidence somewhere along the way, but things have worked out more perfectly than I dared to hope for. Cheers, world.

Today marked the end of the 2013 Fulbright Conference in Berlin. These five days were some of the most action-packed I’ve had in a while and I’m still swept up in an emotional excitement that I can’t quite put a finger on. I’d like to share my impressions of the event.

One of the most pervasive emotions throughout the whole conference was the sense that I was in the company of incredibly bright, talented and accomplished people. Over 500 Fulbrighters gathered in Berlin from around Europe. There were other English Teaching Assistants like myself, Masters and PhD students, professors and artists from all disciplines. The five days were a constant stream of socializing and networking over coffee, food or wine (depending on time of day). There couldn’t have been a more inspiring group to be a part of, and we shared a mutual respect for one another’s accomplishments.

They also put us up in a really nice hotel and made sure we were never without food or drink. After months of scraping by on my Fulbright budget, it was a marvelous change of pace to enjoy a room on the 24th floor of the Park Inn, breakfast and dinner buffets and a ceaseless flow of beer and wine. All of the networking and brainstorming were particularly enjoyable in this cushy atmosphere.

The program was a mix of panel discussions and working groups on European topics such as the sovereign debt crisis, the higher education system and American vs. European news media. These sound like discussions I’ve had in the classroom at college, but the difference here was that what we came up with seemed to matter. Government officials in attendance were actually interested in the ideas and solutions we put forward. How cool.

The social atmosphere was eclectic and rich. It was like college, or study abroad, or a summer program. We were all in it together. After months of being varying degrees of isolated in posts across the continent, we were once again surrounded by people like ourselves. People who understand what we are doing here and are having experiences similar to our own. People who speak our language and share our transatlantic perspective. In this setting, we got a break from being “foreigners” for a few days.

Overall, I am honored, humbled and inspired to have taken part in this year’s Berlin Fulbright Conference. I feel rejuvenated by the whole experience. My only regret is that it’s now over.

 

 

It’s been a long time since my last post, because I’ve been in somewhat of a winter lull. It’s cold outside; the sky goes from dark to gray to dark again. I feel somewhat lost. My friends have been mostly studying for exams since Christmas and are now home on break. I’m left rather alone and bored.

I’m also broke–broker than I’ve ever been before. This stipend I’m getting is not nearly enough for me to live the way I’m used to. I’m eating shitty frozen food because it’s cheap…you are what you eat, right? No wonder I’m gray and blah. I mean, if it tastes better when you cover it with mayonnaise, there must be something wrong. I need to feed myself better.

I am, though, beginning to understand seasonal depression and I think I’m vulnerable to it. It’s like I have to fight to feel happy when staring up at a thick, overcast sky. The world is just so unwelcoming when it freezes like it has this German winter. It’s a violent, hopeless place that makes you run from fire to fire before you freeze with it. It’s ominous, like we’re all stuck in some cosmic prison–and we’re vulnerable prisoners. I feel if the world should end, it should be during winter.

There was just so much going on in my life down in New Orleans that I’m shocked by the current stillness. I used to spend nearly all of my time with friends, and our lives together were rich with passion. The social life I had there seems unmatchable from where I sit now, and it’s hard for this 22-year-old to accept that his life has grown lamer.

I’m also coming into the second half of my grant period and, just like last year before graduation, I don’t know what’s coming next. It’s still a little ways off, but I remember all too well how quickly those months slipped away and left me suddenly facing “the real world.” I managed to escape it for a year to come to Germany, but now it’s time to make something happen. I’m nervous, I’m unsure, and I’m afraid of being overwhelmed. Fleet Foxes really says it best, though. Helplessness blues.

This is a creative piece, based on a nightmare.

You were living art. You moved like a smile, muscles, bones, exquisite soul in full expression. As you strode among the hard surfaces of Here, your slender legs propelled you with a grace belonging to no man or woman. You were immaculate form. You embodied no corruption. Gender is corrupt.

Music of the true artists danced among us. We followed the sound to a door guarded by a velvet rope. I knew the place. I knew its rules. But I chose to forget them. I chose to forget the bouncer, my teacher, with his lessons and his examinations. His exacting rules of existing Here. We passed this exam, one you did not know we cheated. I knew. I saw him covet you, mistake you for my She. I chose to ignore. I chose to forget.

Inside, we existed together. Our souls music, we reverberated through the air. To the Others we were Boy and Girl. I smiled at this. I am sorry.

Back outside in the cool night air. For a moment, I forgot we were different. But Here, they don’t let you forget. The cold metal barrel was pressed against the back of your head. You didn’t make a sound.

“Bring the rope”–the harrowing voice of the bouncer. The length of soft, stuffed fabric. I should have known this is how it would end. But I had wanted to ignore, to forget. I thought I owed it to you. Or maybe I was selfish. I followed into the park, the unwilling henchman. Carrying the lethal weapon of “in” and “out.”

Under the canopy of a manicured cypress tree he made me watch as he squeezed the red velvet around your gentle neck. Grisly how quickly the life vanished from your eyes. After you were gone, the bullet didn’t hurt much.

I shouldn’t have brought you Here. You were conceived in a better world. Here, I couldn’t save you. Here, I couldn’t save myself.

Our vigilante left our bodies floating in the man-made lagoon. Our souls hovered a moment among an Earth manipulated by men into unforgiving forms. Then we vanished. We didn’t belong Here.

I have a knack for storytelling. No matter where I find myself, I seem to wind up with an audience hanging on some tale of my own personal (mis)adventures. I often don’t even mean to do it–I sometimes step out of myself and think, “yup, he’s at it again.” But I suppose if people didn’t want to hear my stories, they wouldn’t listen. And storytelling is a beautiful way to get a message across. It’s all about catching someone’s attention and, so long as you can keep it, the sky’s the limit. So, yeah, I’m a storyteller. I suppose I always have been, but there’s one classic of mine that stands out as the story that started them all. The story I’ve told time and again upon repeated request– “please, Jeffrey, tell us that one again.” I’ve told it so many times it seems to have taken on a life of it’s own. It has titled itself, simply and directly, “The Women’s Panties.” Here it is, folks.

It was my fifteenth birthday party and the sun had set over the lush field of my backyard in rural New Hampshire. My friends and I were gathered on my screened porch where I was unwrapping the collection of awkward gifts that 15-year-olds give to each other. I don’t remember what these gifts were–I guess they failed to leave a lasting impression. That is, all of them but one. Indeed, one gift, unlike the others, was unforgettable. It was a gift I would have liked to forget or, even better, to never have received. It was a pair of black women’s panties.

Now, a little background information is necessary. Like I said, I was fifteen and, like many fifteen-year-olds, I was supremely self-conscious. I didn’t yet know that I was gay, but the rest of the world seemed to have already drawn that conclusion. I couldn’t escape the insistence of what seemed like everyone around me that I was, in fact, gay and that it was something to be ashamed of. So I tried (with laughably poor success) to convince the world otherwise, and attempting to appear “straight” and “normal” was a full-time occupation.

So here I was, a helplessly homosexual high schooler hell-bent on being a straight guy. And in front of my friends and God, I unwrapped a gift of black women’s panties. The dim lighting on the porch couldn’t conceal my horror and shame, and so much blood rushed to my chubby adolescent cheeks that it’s a wonder I didn’t literally die of embarrassment. I reflexively shoved the unwanted gift back into its gift bag and forced a “thank you” to Kim, my all-knowing yet seemingly oblivious best friend who had brought these panties into my life and home.

This mortifying scene would have been the end of this story. That is, if it weren’t for my penchant for unwittingly creating absurd circumstances, circumstances which lead only to disaster and despair (and later, amusing stories). No, the birthday embarrassment was not the end, but only the beginning. Cleaning up after my friends went home, I wracked my brain for what I should do with the panties. My first thought was to bury them in the bottom of my underwear drawer and let them be forgotten in leftover lint and the passage of time. But what if somebody found them? What would my mother think if she found women’s panties in her teenage son’s underwear drawer? Certainly, like the rest of the world, she would assume that her son was gay and was secretly sauntering through life in nefarious female underthings. No, the underwear drawer was not an option. “Throw them in the trash!” you might suggest. But my father meticulously sorted all of our household garbage before his weekly trip to the recycling center. I wasn’t about to let him discover his son’s discarded panties among his family’s waste. No, I could certainly not throw them in the trash. So I chose to hide them in the most secure place I knew: a locked drawer in a file cabinet in my bedroom closet. And there they would rest, alongside some softcore pornographic print-outs that just barely snuck past the “parental control” block on our family computer.

In the months that would follow, I would learn what it means to have a guilty conscience. I was haunted by the panties I kept locked in my closet (symbolism noted). They were always in the back of my mind, a dirty secret I helplessly tried to repress. I was overcome with paranoia that they would be found. Whenever my parents called across the house to me, “Jeffrey, can you come here please,” (for one reason or another) I would panic and think to myself, “Oh God, they must have found the panties!” The more time that passed, the stronger this paranoia grew. Eventually, I was convinced, I would be found out.

The following autumn (probably 4 or 5 months after the panties came into my life), I came up with a solution. I was home sick from school and home alone in my house. Being home alone was always a freeing experience in those days and, on this day, I was going to free myself from the panties. The weather had grown cold, cold enough to fire up the wood stove in our cozy country living room. I eyed the cast iron stove and imagined the smoke rising from the brick chimney above. What a perfect way to bring an end to this madness, I said to myself. Up in smoke, as they say, and I would be rid of the panties forever. I retrieved the key to the secretive drawer and pulled the black undergarment out from the very back. I reluctantly snagged the pornographic photos, as well. It all goes today, I vowed. Back down in the living room, I arranged some crumpled newspaper, a few pieces of kindling and a couple logs, and I lit a match. I first burned the photo print-outs and then, with freeing catharsis, flung the black women’s panties onto the yellow, licking flames. Finally, I clenched the wood stove door shut and called an end to this embarrassing chapter of my life.

The end, right? Wrong. No, fate always seems to have another trick up its sleeve for me and, in fact, the story of the women’s panties had yet to reach its climax. Later that evening I was settled in at the table in my family room, working on homework assignments after my personally momentous sick day. My parents and sisters were home from work and school, respectively, and my father was about to light his evening fire in the wood stove. Now, my father is a man who takes his wood very seriously. Heating his home the old-fashioned way is a source of pride for him and his year is divided into the following tasks: procuring cordwood, cutting and splitting it, stacking it outside, transferring it into the garage and cellar, and ultimately burning it in the wood stove. Visitors to my house always remark on the constantly-regenerated woodpile about the length of a football field. So on this crisp autumn day, my father was not just lighting a fire, but initiating a near-holy ritual. Until, from across the house, I heard the curious poking of his fire poker.

“What the heck?” he said conspicuously.

My body froze and I held my breath. Calm down, I told myself. You burned them. The panties are gone. Forever.

More poking. “What is that?” he wondered aloud.

Oh no. Ohhh no, no, no. It can’t be. My breathing quickened.

“Is that…” he scraped something toward the front of the woodstove, “…is that a pair of women’s panties?”

At this point, I began to panic.

“I don’t know, Ray,” my mother responded, as if he were crazy.

“It is!” He concluded. “It’s a pair of charred women’s panties. What the hell is a pair of women’s panties doing in the wood stove?” He said it as if the wood stove were an altar and someone had desecrated it with their fouled undergarment.

“I don’t know, Ray!” my mother exclaimed defensively. 

I must be dreaming, I thought. This is just some horrible nightmare. This can’t actually be happening.

My father commenced his own miniature witch hunt to find out the perpetrator of the desecration. Whether it was his wife or one of his daughters, burning panties in the wood stove seemed to be an alarming destruction of evidence to some crime that best be brought to light. But, like my mother, both of my sisters were offended by the mere suggestion that they were sneaking around burning their underwear when no one was looking.

I began to hear my father’s boots pacing around the other end of the house. He was building up the courage to confront me, his only son and the only remaining suspect. I looked to the sliding glass door in our family room that led to the backyard. I could think of nothing but to escape, to run into the woods and away from the charred, bikini-cut evidence. But I was barefoot and my shoes were in the direction of my father. This would be a complicated escape.

Before I had the chance to think further, my father stomped reluctantly across the house and into the room. I focused in on my homework, hoping he would go away. He didn’t.

“Jeffrey,” he began a sentence I’m sure he never imagined he would speak, “were you burning a pair of women’s panties in the wood stove today?”

I was cornered and I didn’t know what to say. In the absence of a better idea, I chose to tell the truth.

“Yes,” I said sheepishly, and I looked into my father’s eyes. He looked exactly like one would imagine he would look when discovering that his fifteen-year-old, undeniably homosexual son had taken to burning women’s underwear in the wood stove.

He paused for a moment, aghast, before issuing a response in the form of a stoic command:

“Stick to wood from now on.”

This past weekend was a big moment in Würzburg. After a year-and-a-half renovation, the Würzburg Cathedral was reopened to the public to kick off the Advent season. I have been here for three months now and have been unable to go inside this architectural focal point of the city center. Therefore, I felt I had to be there. The grand reopening consisted of two big events: the Saturday evening transfer of the relics and the Sunday afternoon 1st Advent mass.

I was one of many to arrive at the front steps on Saturday evening to witness the procession into the newly-renovated Cathedral. On this occasion, the holy relics of the bishopric of Würzburg were being returned from their temporary holding place in a nearby church back to their permanent home, and this transfer happened in grand style. There must have been close to 50 firemen with torches (yes, torches) standing in place to light the way from the other church, down the street and around the corner to the Cathedral. On cue with a symphony of bells from the twin bell towers (which had been silent through the renovation), a procession made its way toward the heavy Cathedral doors, open for the first time in many months. This procession was led by a mass of altar boys, followed by countless priests, the Bishop of Würzburg, a group of Catholic-affiliated Verbindung (fraternity) brothers bearing swords and, most importantly, the holy relics. These relics are the gem-bedazzled skulls (yes, skulls) of Saints Kilian, Kolonat and Totnan. Saint Kilian is the patron saint of Würzburg, having come here from Ireland with his two camarades in the 7th century A.D. to introduce Christianity to Franconia. The Cathedral, built between 1040 and 1075, was christened in his name.

I almost skipped out on the 1st Advent mass on Sunday afternoon, as I had been to the relic procession and service the evening before and I feared the mass would be a letdown. Well, it wasn’t a letdown and I’m glad I went. The mass was even more impressive and began with the lighting of the first candle of the advent wreath, which was subsequently raised on an automated pulley over the altar. The massive pipe organ I had enjoyed the evening before was accompanied by drums, horns and the impeccably rehearsed Cathedral choir. The intermingling tones reverberated through the massive space in a way that is best described as heavenly. I arrived too late to get a seat, and instead joined many others standing in the back. It was the music that made me stick it out for the full mass, which came in at just under two hours. Upon exiting the church I had the pleasure of enjoying the bells once more, which happen to comprise one of the largest bell assemblies in Germany.

Considering this was a big reveal of the new-and-improved Cathedral, I suppose it’s appropriate to comment on the building itself. First, it’s quite large–the 4th largest Romanesque church in Germany. It’s 345 feet long, a good bit longer than a football field. It’s an interesting mix of architectural styles–the interior was given an extensive baroque-era facelift, which essentially consisted of infilling the whole place with an ornately plastered substructure. It was heavily damaged during the bombing of Würzburg in 1945, however, and the restorators chose to restore the front section to its original, pre-baroque appearance. So, in effect, you have most of the congregation sitting in an austere Romanesque section of the church, facing the twinkling, ornate Baroque sanctuary and altar. I like this mix because it allows you to enjoy the different styles from different periods of time. But these styles are also ripe for comparison, and I spent much of the two hour Advent mass analyzing my impressions. My take-home conclusion was that the Baroque ornament is beautiful and that, without it, the Cathedral may be a bit of a letdown in comparison to some of the other churches in the city. But what bothers me about the Baroque elements is that they scale down the space to make it seem smaller than it truly is. They rob the Cathedral of its sheer volume by lowering the ceiling with imposed arches and artificial strata. You may see what I mean if you have a look at my photos–compare the size of the priests to the back wall, then compare the size of the priests to the height of the ceiling in the foreground. I find the sheer height and volume, for a building constructed in the 11th century, to be more impressive than the fussy facade. But that’s getting pretty knit-picky. Overall I really enjoy the space and I’m glad that it has been reopened!

The reopening of the Würzburg Cathedral was a fascinating event to witness and take part in, because it is a part of the living history of a congregation that has existed since the arrival of St. Kilian in 686 A.D. This particular cathedral has been a hugely significant part of the city for almost a millenium, and the crowds of spectators and worshippers demonstrate it is important still. It truly felt as though the people of Würzburg came together on this occasion, the reopening of their Cathedral, and I was humbled to be a part of their celebration.

 

Something brought me back to Berlin. Something I can’t really explain, something I don’t completely understand. But after my first two months here in Germany, there was some sort of gravitational pull back to the place where so much began for me two years ago. My semester studying abroad in Berlin was a first taste of adulthood, a complex and confusing one of high highs, low lows and uncertain conclusions.

I arrived late-August of 2010 an enthusiastic, optimistic student, excited to experience the unique lifestyle Berlin had to offer. I intended to spend a full 11 months in the German Hauptstadt, to return to the United States the following summer with excellent German and lucrative personal and professional connections. I stepped proudly onto the platform at the Hauptbahnhof wearing a pair of black leather-strapped, combat boot-inspired sneakers I had bought thinking, “these are perfect for Berlin.” From my head, to my heart, to my feet, I was ready for a new, exciting journey for which I had the highest of expectations.

I would venture that it was largely because of these expectations that my time in Berlin waxed sour. The honeymoon period was brief and reality quickly set in. The reality was grey, overcast, windy and cold. The reality was a city that often looked more like a Communist nightmare than a European dream. The reality was that I was 20 years old, living alone for the first time in a big, foreign city and there were going to be struggles, sometimes significant. Convinced I could handle everything, I approached these struggles with a will to persevere. But this perseverance was achieved through an emotional stubbornness that made me unreceptive to the lessons they could have taught me.

I decided Berlin was not for me. It was not what I had imagined, it was not what I wanted, it was not what I thought I needed. And once that decision was made, I threw in the towel on my time there. Once I decided that Berlin was wrong, I couldn’t see anything “right” about it. I gave in to a terrible pessimism. I made the decision to shorten my stay to one semester and returned to New Orleans and Tulane for the spring. I had lingering issues with my semester abroad that in some ways seemed a failure. I asked myself “what went wrong?” and couldn’t come up with an answer.

Going back to Berlin was an opportunity to seek answers to this question. I suspected that walking the same streets, riding the same trains would bring back buried emotions and help me to understand what I was feeling in that place and time. And I was right. As soon as my ICE train was approaching my old neighborhood of Charlottenburg, memories and feelings came out from hiding. Looking at my reflection in the train window, I could see my 20-year-old self staring back at me. I revisited old routes and haunts and found pieces of myself in each. It was an emotional journey.

It has taken me nearly a month to process my impressions from this trip to Berlin. What answers did I find? What went wrong two years ago that made me choose to pull the plug?

Here’s my conclusion: I was young and struggling to adjust to life on my own in a foreign metropolis. I was unhappy and I needed something to blame. I blamed Berlin. I decided I was unhappy because Berlin wasn’t right—wasn’t friendly, wasn’t beautiful, wasn’t welcoming. But my problem was in me. I was struggling and I wasn’t able to help myself because I couldn’t realize that I was the problem, and not Berlin.

I have said that this year in Germany is a second chance for me, a chance to do it over again, not making the same mistakes twice. An opportunity to participate in the abroad experiment once more with lessons learned from last time. I came in knowing it wouldn’t be easy, and it hasn’t been. But my life right now is entirely of my own making. There is nobody/nothing else to blame for my problems—they are mine and I have to own them. And I am owning them. This is helping me to learn, to build, to grow. I am letting life teach me as I find my path, as I find myself.