Last Post of the Blog!

This is my last day in Germany. I'm leaving early tomorrow morning. Change planes in Frankfurt and then on to Charlotte. It's been a great trip and a really great experience. Yesterday we all presented our papers to the faculty of the International Youth Library. It went very well. Afterward, we all went out for a farewell dinner for Petra, the very nice assistant director of the library. She's the one that does all the work on the Germany side to make this study abroad possible. She finds the housing for us, etc. Very nice person. I will be sad to leave in some ways, but mostly glad to get home. A month is a long time to be away from home, especially in a foreign country.
Goodbye, International Youth Library! Here's one last picture of it.

Priem Chiemsee

We went to Priem Chiemsee today. It's a little town on a big lake. The lake has three little islands. I think I said in a previous post that they don't allow motor boats on the lake because they want to keep it clean. Found out today that's not true.
We arrived by train, then took a little green steam engine train through town to the ferry, which we took to the island of Frauen Chiemsee. There is a convent there and the nuns make liquor and gingerbread! I had some of the gingerbread. It's different from ours, but good. We ate at a little restaurant looking out on the lake. All restaurants in Germany have outdoor tables because it's too hot to eat indoors. Nothing is air conditioned. I took pictures of the lake, the convent, and the convent church which was pretty ornate. And I took pictures of the little green steam train.
Four more days!

Spain:1, Germany:0

Sad times in Germany. They lost the world cup game last night to Spain, which means they're out of the games now. They have public viewings on large screens in beer gardens, and I could here the crowd from miles away as I sat in my room dutifully working on my paper. They didn't sound too happy.
My paper is 98% finished. We are going to Priem Chiemsee (probably spelled wrong) on Saturday. It's a big lake surrounded by mountains with three little islands in the lake. One has a centuries old palace on it, one has a convent where the nuns make a famous liquor, and the other is uninhabited. No motor boats allowed on the lake to keep the water crystal clear. The island with the nuns has no cars. You take a little steam train to the ferry to get to the islands. I need to get batteries for my camera tomorrow. But here's a little map of the place.

The Princess is In

This weekend we went to Parsburg, a small village with an army base. One of the students who went on the first of these Germany study abroad trips liked it so much she moved here. She's the director of the public library on the army base. We visited her library, which was a very nice library. She seems to have almost unlimited funding. All the books were in good shape, new furniture everywhere, new shelves, etc. Nice. Too bad Uncle Sam doesn't care as much about his school children as he does his soldiers.
Parsburg is near the medieval city of Regensburg. The city is hundreds of years old and still looks medieval. We toured a palace. It belongs to Princess Gloria Thurn Taxis. I had never heard of her before, but her family got filthy rich when they invented the postal system in Europe hundreds of years ago. It was a lavish place. We weren't allowed to take picutes. The flag was on the palace roof, which meant the princess was there. We didn't see her, but we saw her car parked in the courtyard. She drives a little compact car. Regensburg is on the Danube River. Here are some pictures I took of a little village near Parsburg, and some internet pictures of Regensburg because I left my camera in the van when we were there. And there's a picture of the princess.

The Little Differences

Sorry its been so long since the last blog. I've been busily working on paper at night because we don't have much free time to work. We are taking yet another trip this weekend. But I thought I would blog about the little things that are different over here than they are at home.
American Fast Food in Germany: Yes, I admit, I've been to KFC, McDonald's, and Burger King. Munich is a very international city. There are people here from all over the world. People take for granted that a dozen different languages are spoken and we can't all understand each other. Fast food places seem to be staffed entirely of foreigners to Germany. Burger King was staffed only by people from India. McD's is Japanese. KFC, I don't even know what KFC is. But they all have a flat screen TV showing music videos. KFC uses real plates and silver ware. People really do put mayonaise on French fries instead of ketchup. And no matter what kind of soft drink you get, it has the same weird perfumey lemonny taste. Even in bottles. I think they have a different formula here.
Air Conditioning: Nobody has it. No stores, restaurants, homes, nothing. And it's sweltering hot now. They just open windows, but they haven't heard of screens. There are no screens on any windows. I have a few mosquito bites.
Transportation: You don't need a car to live here. And it's not considered a hardship not to have a car. The bus and subway systems are very good. In the morning you see almost as many bicycles as cars going to work. There are bike lanes that are actually big enough. But don't walk in them; the bikers will just run into you.
Pole walking: The fad among the older people is walking with two poles that look like ski poles.
Drug Stores: There aren't any. You have to go to an apothecary and ask the person at the counter for what you want. You can't even browse for aspirin. They have to get it for you from the back area behind the counter.
Water: The tap water here is supposed to be the cleanest in the world, but try getting any of it in a restaurant. If you want water, you have to buy a big fancy bottle. And you have to specify still water and not bubbly. Everything is carbonated. Apple juice, orange juice, even tomato juice is carbonated!

Salzburg!

Got back from Salzburg, Austria last night. It's a 2 hour train ride from Munich. It was fantastic! I loved it! I've heard people rave about Salzburg and now I know why. I saw the most beautiful scenery I've ever seen in my life. It's surrounded by the Alps and there are castles and fortresses everywhere. You walk down the street and look up and there's a mountain with a castle on it. Buildings are all centuries old. There are little shops all up and down the streets and little alleyways. There was a street festival going on at night with live music in several places, food vendors from all over the world, etc. The streets were packed with people at night.
AND...Salzburg is where The Sound of Music was made! You know the scene in the gazebo? I saw the gazebo! I went in the church where Maria married Captain Von Trapp in the movie, I rode around the hills where she sang, I went to the fountain where they sang Do Re Me (or however you spell that). You know the scene where the children are in the trees along the road? I saw the road and the trees! I saw the convent!
Salzburg is Mozart's city. I saw where he lived. And we went to a Mozart dinner concert in a restaurant that was built in the year 803. Yes, 803. And it's always been a restaurant. It actually has a sign out front saying "since 803". Mind boggling.
Can you believe I didn't pack my camera? I'm going to have to put some pictures from the Internet of Salzburg to give you an idea of what it's like.

Bavaria State Library

Went to the Bavaria State Library today. All I can say is it's huge. It's comparable to our Library of Congress. They have Gutenburg Bibles, and even more rare, a ninth century codex (I didn't see them; they're only shown at special exhibits - I did see books from the twelfth century). There are several reading rooms. I did't take pictures because I didn't want to bother the people in the reading rooms. One is for university students and it seats about a thousand. One was of antiquated texts and it had book shelves to the ceiling with ladders, scholars at tables pouring over many a quaint and curious volume of forgotten lore. We went to the periodicals stacks -- there is a very long corridor, maybe an eighth of a mile, and nearly a million volumes of periodicals only. I'm posting a picture of the corridor. We also saw some books that were burned by the Nazis, evidently somebody snatched them from the fire, or these were on the periphery. Pictures of them here. Some were actually Bibles. Other various shots from the state library. I'm exhausted again. This weekend: Salzburg, Austria. God help me.

Baby Swans

More research today. Tomorrow we go to the State Library, so we won't have a chance to do any work. This is just a sight seeing thing. Friday we get to work. Then this weekend we are going to Salzburg, Austria.
The pictures are of swans that live on the little lake behind the castle that the International Youth Library is in. We eat lunch in the castle restaurant every day, and the back of the restaurant looks out on the lake. The swans have a couple of babies.

At last...Paulus

Forty-three years ago (I was seven)I had a book called Paulus and the Acorn Men. It was a big chapter book, too much for me to read, but the pictures were fantastic. It was about a little woods gnome named Paulus and a band of little acorn men and a witch named Eucalypta. The pictures were full page color paintings and they were really amazing. The book went its way as good books will, and I've looked for a copy of it for years. The author is Jean Dulieu, so I thought the library might have it. The card catalog (OPAC is only for acquistions after 1993) had Paulus en de Eikelmannetjes, published in Amsterdam. I requested the book (you can't browse; you have to look it up and request it). That was yesterday and I got the book today! I almost asked if I could buy it. It's not in English, but I remembered every picture. Evidently it's a popular book. There are some pictures from the book on the Internet, and here they are.

Finally started work today!

We had our first day of work in the International Youth Library today. There are seven of us and we each are researching different topics. Here's mine: IFLA, the International Federation of Library Associations, has published a multicultural library manifesto. In it, they describe what a multicultural library is, what it's mission and goals should be, it's materials, services, policies, etc. The section on implementation just says to disseminate the manifesto and practice its principles. What I am attempting to do is create a practical plan for school librarians who would like to make their libraries more multicultural. Why would they want to do that? Two reasons. One is that we serve muticultural patrons: our students. The other is that state curriculum includes teaching about different cultures. So what I'm doing is taking the broad brush strokes of the IFLA manifesto and creating a more practical guide to follow. What I hope to gain from the library here is a familiarity with international children's literature. There are dozens of lists for librarians of recommended titles of multicultural children's and young adult literature, but rather than just blindly pass the recommendations along, I want to actually see and evaluate the books first hand. And probably create my own list of translated books that would be available to American school librarians to buy for their libraries. I will also probably create an evaluation tool for librarians to go by when selecting international books. So, here is a video of the inside of a very old chapel that is in the castle that the library is in.