,You talk like Humphrey Bogart'

RAILWAY TIMETABLES

‘’Be daring,be different,be impractical,be anything that will assert integrity of purpose and imaginative vision against the play-it-safers,the creatures of the commonplace,the slaves of the ordinary.’’

C. Beaton

Starting college in Europe, living on your own  makes you more mature and even-tempered against the critical situations.That’s a fact.But to my opinion; the main factor , which makes us ‘’wiser’’ is that; we are taking responsibilities of our own.

Studying abroad already in my first year in college came along with lots of responsibilities as well.

Cologne is like the hidden city,which has always been known as the one tiny  place,where you can’t cope with anything at all because of getting randomly bored all the time.I must admit though,for a little while I thought my only entertainment would be attending my plates classes.But to my relief,after having started living in this magical city,I noticed : Das ist nicht der Fall ! First of all, I really have never seen such a crowded campus.The city literally feeds from university life.It has so many more students than it’s mathematical capacity.This has become a problem –especially in last 5 years or so- ; since the citizens and professors talk  about it in talkshows and news all the time. Another thing,that put me under the city’s spell is the most amazing art movements,which are fluctuantly increasing. Museumsnacht,Art fairs,Pop art meetings,reading societies,concerts,theater richness,all kinds of exhibitions and types of art that you can imagine… For instance on the 8th November all the musuems in the city –LIKE ALL- are open from 19:00 pm to  03:00 am. The Cologners won’t sleep because of their passion for art. Morever,it’s free access everywhere.Just after 3 days, on the 11th of the 11. Month , the popular Cologne ‘Karneval’  starts with such a remarkable opening ceremony that even the University of Cologne is closed for that day.And in a couple of weeks we will have our most wanted ‘Weihnachtsmarkt’.To define Cologne-Weihnachtsmarkt in a couple of words: glühwein,bratwurst,Lebkuchen,mit marzipan gefüllter Schokolade,Schlittschuhen mit Begleitung Klassischer Musik,Weihnachtskerzen,rote Kleider,schwarze Hüter,lange Stiefeln,nette Leute ! But the best part of enjoying the Weihnachtsmarkt is ice-skating with classical music in the background.It’s like a movie scene that popped out of the white screen.The Cologners are so into Christmas spirit that they have published different varieties of calendars(Adventkalender). They start with the 1st Advent and end with Christmas .For each day  as you get closer to new year , they put a christmas-themed poem or short story or a quote. Driven in this christmas madness, I bought myself Reclam’s special ‘Weihnachtsbuch’,in which you can find again different stories,poems,extracts written by the most famous novelists and poets of all time like Sir Conan Doyle,Rainer Maria Rilke,Charles Dickens,Paul Auster etc.

Cologne is not only full of musuems of classical art ( Römisch-Germanisches Museum ; but it also has a wide range of modern art museums such as Ludwig Musuem,where nowadays the exhibition ,,Ludwig goes Pop’’ is busy with rocking  the whole city  with it’s Andy Warhol , Roy Lichtenstein and every other various members of Popart stream.

The city ist full of life , joy of making and experiencing art ( I would also have said ‘consuming art’; but then it would politically seem a little  American, so I’m passing it.) You get the feeling,if you don’t get enough art  in your system you ‘ll explode.

What I respect in German way of life,is that they know how to enjoy life. To give an example, nearby there’s a park called ‘’Aachener Weiher’’ ( this part of city is the nearest one to Aachen that’s why they give names to every direction/street/park a little ‘’aachenish’’. The Aachener Weiher is on Aachener Strasse surprisingly J ) Well, in this Aachener Weiher they have the littlest , tiniest pool . But they’ve been taking care of the park so well (it is surrounded by –almost- a forest  and cafes and the ‘ostasiatisches Museum’ ( where you can visit the master Paul Klee’s work until January ) that you feel yourself , as if you’re taking a walk in Bosphorous with your view of Galatasaray Insel(SuAda) and the bridges. I don’t even have to mention that there’s not one single trash on the ground.

                                       

They have this elegance in doing things. When you’re jogging in Aachener Weiher , your path should be clean,full of oxygen . Your companies are the most loveable squirrels and rabbits. There is this one squirrel,which has been following me in all my jogging-sessions J

Or when they want to celebrate things. The whole city cooperates . Like in the example of Köln-Karneval on the 11.11th or in Weihnachtszeit. They put platforms and huge christmas trees and every single christmas-themed-ornaments in the streets and markts.

Studying here brought me this kind of appreciation and joy …

I will bring an end to  my post with quotations from Norwegian Wood,which I underlined and found signficant.The book is mainly about Toru,who ‘s starting college and connects everything he’s been through with the future and tries to figure it out,how he should continue living in present.

He talks about every single detail of college life,atmosphere(like dorms,classes,stereotypes that you get to know in nearly every university all around the world).. Murakami’s style is definitely very distinguished from other contemporary bestsellers. He calls Norwegian Wood as the most ordinary book he has written. Apparently, he himself was also thrilled and didn’t expect this one to be his most famous novel. Maybe also ,,Kafka on the Shore’’,which I didn’t read yet but definitely planning as soon as I can.

Opposite  of what most readers think, the book is actually not autobiographic at all. He made it clear several times . Apart from easily written (as he says it so) , there are still some really deep observations about human nature and youth and about balancing the opposite things such as past-future; youth-elderliness,joy-sorrow . Toru - in all these cases- is the one who holds the balance in his hands for his own sake and for his beloved ones’ sake.

‘’…Gatsby stayed in first place for a long time after that. I would pull it of the shell when the mood hit me and read a section at random.It never once disappointed me.There wasn’t a boring page in the whole book.I wanted to tell people what a wonderful novel it was,but no one around me had read the Great Gatsby or was likely to.Urging others to read F.Scott Fitzgerald,although not a reactionary act,was not something one could do in 1968.’’

‘’…That’s why I read them.If you only read the books that everyone else is reading,you can only think what everyone else is thinking.Real people would be ashamed of themselves doing that.’’

‘’..That’s me.

   So why didn’t you answer?

 I just didn’t feel like it today.

She took off her sunglasses again,set them on the table,and looked at me as if she were staring into the cage of some rare animal at a zoo.’I just didn’t feel like it today.’You talk like Humphrey Bogart.Cool.Tough.’’

‘’…I like the idea of working overseas,for one.But mainly,I want to test my abilities.If I’m going to test myself,I want to do it in the biggest field there is-the nation.I want to see how high I can climb,how much power I can exercise in this insanely huge bureaucratic system.Know what I mean?

Sounds like a game.

It is a game. The one thing I do have , though,is curiosity.I want to see what I can do out there in the big,tough world.

…..Life doesn’t require ideals.It requires standards of action.’’

----à>>>> ‘’…What does it mean to be a gentleman?How do you define it?

                         A gentleman is someone who does not what he wants to do but what he should do.’’

‘’…Here and there stood groups of four or five students expressing whatever opinions they happened to hold,laughing and shouting to one another.There were skateboarders in the car park.A professor with a leather briefcase in his arms crossed the car park,avoiding them.In the quadrangle a helmeted girl student knelt on the ground,painting huge characters on a sign with something about American imperialism.It was the usual midday university scene…..Whether they were really happy or just looked it,I  couldn’t tell.’’

‘’..Girls my age never use the word ‘’fair’’.The central question for them   is not whether something is fair but whether or not it’s beautiful or will maket hem happy.’’Fair’’ is a man’s word.’’

‘’..It’s a question of ‘what then’.Some people get a kick out of reading railway timetables and that’s all they do all day.Some people make huge model boats out of matchsticks.So what’s wrong if there happens to be one guy in the world who enjoys trying to understand you?’’

To conclude:

-deus ex machina in Euripides-

(This literary part about Euripides will be written in another post , since I think it is worth being mentioned seperately )