Manners

Here in Munich, things are crowded, so people bump  into each other out in the street and don't always say "bitte" (excuse me).  In this respect, it's like New York City, where I grew up.

But people are friendly here.  They make casual conversation with those they don't know, and don't avoid eye contact like New Yorkers and people in Prague.

Public conduct varies by culture.  Last week, I was on a tram with my friend Michelle, who hails from Marion Virginia. A man who was making for the door shoved me out of the way without so much as an "excuse me."  Michelle was horrified by what she perceived as a total absence of manners.  I was not.  I'd grown up riding the subway, where people use their elbows a lot.  Michelle couldn't get over it.

Later that evening, we went to the grocery store.  Michelle bought a great big jar of Nescafe Instant coffee, which is very pricey in the Czech. Somehow, she dropped it as she was leaving the store.  Glass and coffee were everywhere.  Michelle began to pick the glass up with her hands, but a store clerk ran after her, swept up the glass with a broom, and brought out a brand new jar of coffee, refusing to charge her for it.

We thought this was above and beyond, but we gathered the store clerk viewed this as ordinary decency. As I said, the sense of propriety varies by culture.

Once more, small world

At Rock O'Reilly's in Prague, I met Sharon Cradic, whom I ought to know at least by sight, since she and I are in the same college at ETSU.  Sharon works at University School and adjuncts in Kinesiology.  Both of these are departments in the College of Education.

An athletics person, Sharon has been working in a rural community doing a baseball camp for teenagers and kids. Her project is in its third year.

Weird that we didn't meet each other 'til both of us were in Prague.

Dachau

Located on the outskirts of Munich, Dachau was the first of the Nazi concentration camps.  It was here that Hitler's people developed the methods of torture and control they would later apply to Jews, Roma, homosexuals, the disabled and mentally ill, and political dissidents throughout Europe. Hitler himself never visited a concentration camp, relegating their supervision to his henchmen. Like Terezin, which I wrote about earlier, Dachau was more of a way station than a death camp, though many prisoners were killed here.  In places,  its grounds are picturesque, almost like a college campus.

 They've replaced the original fence of course, which was electrified when the Nazis were in control. Prisoners sometimes suicided by throwing themselves against it.

Because of its proximity to Munich, Dachau was a training center for the S.S., Hitler's brutal police force. It was here that previously normal German twenty year olds were taught how to torture people. Dachau was a center for human medical experiments.  The gas chambers and crematoria which were used so extensively during the Holocaust were developed at Dachau.

 

Munich

Now that camp's over, we have time for a bit of travel. We're in Munich, Germany's third largest city,  a place of glorious medieval structures and magnificent red roofs. Decorative bellworks or glockenspiel, mark the hours with processions of quaint metal figures.

 It's a place of high energy and marked prosperity, and, though it's difficult to believe today, this was the cradle of Nazism.  It was here that Hitler consolidated his power, and this is where he had his headquarters.  Kristallnacht, the 1938 attack on Germany's Jews which ushered in the Holocaust, was coordinated from Munich.

Years ago, a friend gave me a Star of David. At home, I don't wear it much, but I've been wearing it here.  Because I can.

When you gotta go

Those of you who read my China blog will remember I wrote quite a bit about the Chinese toilet, which is essentially a hole in the restroom floor. My friend Jana Dobesova asked if I'd write something about Czech toilets. I can attest that there's nothing particularly remarkable about the Czech plumbing.  But the cultural customs around the use of these receptacles are entirely different.  In America, there are on occasion pay toilets, but not that often.  We consider charging to use the commode unneighborly.  We even provide toilet paper without any charge.

But the Czechs apparently view the provision of restrooms as a SERVICE for which the client pays.  In the train station restroom above, you purchase a pass for a specified number of visits.  Pretty straightforward.  But what if you're at a concert  in the castle area, and you feel a call of nature?

St. George's Basilica has no public toilet.  I waited until after the concert and started searching.

It's amazing how far you can walk WITHOUT sighting a public toilet. And at this point, I REALLY needed one. Finally, I sighted one, though the gate in front of it was closed.

No matter.  I deposited the requisite 10 crowns (about 50 cents) in the box provided and proceeded to the restroom.  A humorless woman barred my way.  She spoke no English, but I gathered the area was closed.  The floor was wet.  She'd been mopping.

My Czech was not up to the task so, waxing dramatic,  I spoke in impassioned English.  I begged and I pleaded.  I said I was tired and  old.  I offered to pay extra money.  I took some out of my purse.  She remained impassive.  I told her to think of her mother, her grandmother.  She shook her head.There was nothing to do.  I was on her turf.

I turned to go.  But then she called out, "OK, OK!"  She made it clear she wanted no extra money for the extraordinary favor she was extending.  But I gave her a handsome tip and clasped her hand.

Constituency

The plan was to focus on four groups in our English Camp: Pastors, church office workers, University and high school students, and the general public.  I imagined I'd be teaching a lot of business English, helping people to edit papers and modify accents-- things you do with advanced English learners.

We never imagined that our major constituency would be young women who were now mothers of small children. Most of the women who came to camp of necessity brought their children.  All had been excellent students of English and felt they were forgetting the language because they had no opportunity to practice.

In the Czech Republic, women have paid maternity leave.  Employers are required to rehire them if they want to return to work within (I believe) a year of giving birth.  But the government pays women a stipend for staying home with their children until the children are three. Who wouldn't take the stipend.

Thing is... it's a trap.  Employers are not supposed to discriminate against young mothers, but they do.  Once a woman is out of the workforce, it's hard for her to return, even if she has excellent education.

The women we worked with believed that English was their ticket of return to the workforce.  With only 12 million speakers of Czech, the international language is essential to tourism, commerce, and the service industries.  It's hard to get a job in the Czech without English.  Even a job in a restaurant or department store.

The women we worked with viewed English as a form of cultural capital essential for their success.

Fruits

People signed up for our English camp week by week.  Students could come for as many weeks as they wanted. We held a recognition ceremony every Friday, which celebrated our own and our students' hard work, as well as our developing friendships.

Soup culture

As part of our program, we offered lunch.  To us Americans, this meant sandwiches,  cookies, and fruit.  But as we quickly learned, lunch to the Czechs meant soup, even on a very hot day. I of our crew, had the most experience creating these big stewing potfuls of meat, veggies and noodles. My family is East European, so maybe it's in my DNA.

By default, I became the camp  cook, arguably a more vital position than that of head teacher. I rose early each morning and started a broth.  Tastes vary by culture, but over time I figured what the students would eat.  I learned to use pork to flavor my cooking, which I never have, when producing borscht, leek and potato soup, corn chowder, and mushroom soup with potatoes.  I won't bore you with the recipes, but I'll be happy to share them.

These dishes were money savers as well as crowd pleasers, and talk about food and cooking helped build a bridge to our students. Meals in the Czech are pricey if you eat out or buy a lot of prepackaged food, but the produce here is extremely inexpensive.  I'll miss that.

 

After the circus

Well, that's it!  English camp ended yesterday, and we're mopping up.  We held our final recognition ceremony yesterday. There are signs to take down, dishes to wash, materials to put away.

Of this period in any project, Joe likes to say, "If you're having a circus, someone has to sweep up after the elephants."

Exertions

I could never chin.  I think my body's center of gravity is in the wrong place, even now that I'm fairly light.  I used to earn the wrath of gym teachers when I consistently failed President Kennedy's test of physical fitness, which required students to chin at least seven times.

When we went to the park, Pavel, a very fit student attempted to help me chin, with only minimal success. A native speaker of Czech, he could only communicate with our Vietnamese students in English.

I like having multiple language groups at camp.  It helps students see the importance of having a common language.

I'd forgotten how physically demanding it is to work with young students day after day.  It's not at all like teaching at ETSU.  On the weekends, Joe and I are more or less in a state of collapse.

All my campers were able to climb the tree pictured above.  Alas! I could only make it half way up, and that with assistance.

Transportation

On Vienna streets, cars move at a pace I found pretty alarming，but the place is much lest congested than major American cities.  Public transit by tram, bus and subway is excellent, and there is also a city wide program where one may rent bikes and helmets at very low cost.  These bikes are deposited at the rider's destination just like a rental car.

Singing (or playing) for supper

Vienna is extremely proud of its musical heritage.  Europe's greatest composers all performed here, and statues such as this one of Mozart pay tribute to their work.

From all of the world, people come here to study music, but the competition for professional employment is fierce.  Many accomplished musicians eek out a living by playing in the streets.  Passersby toss them coins. 


These impromptu outdoor performances are excellent.  Not all the musicians have permits to be on the streets, but I'm told the police aren't overly harsh when telling these artists they have to move on.

  

Connectional community

There is a strong connectional community within the ex-pat United Methodist Church.  In Vienna, we stayed at the home of Reverend Kathy Young (pictured left), a Montana native who pastors Vienna's English Speaking United Methodist Church, an ethnically diverse and well-established congregation of about 250 members (sanctuary pictured below). 

The missionaries working over here are an extraordinarily interesting group of people.  Kathy, for example, previously lived in Vienna to train as an opera singer.  

Some of our friends think we're silly to do these overseas "workations" where we have the pressures of following schedules and cranking out lessons as we do at home. 

We do take time for sightseeing and recreation on occasion.  This past weekend, we caught a train to Vienna and toured the splendid Schonbrunn palace gardens, developed by the Habsburg monarchs in the seventeenth century.  We treated ourselves to overpriced apple strudel and enjoyed the view.

Instructional strategies

Our son Michael, who teaches in Philadelphia, came to help with our program last week.  Camp has been growing.  In particular we have more children, and it's counterproductive to have them sit in class hour after hour. 

We've invented a lot of games: pronoun ball, adjective ball, noun ball.  We identify colors of objects out in the parking lot and affix labels.  Our students love the hokey pokey.

Standing room only

Our brief weekend in Vienna began with a train ride I shall describe as memorable.  I didn't know that in addition to buying a ticket I should have reserved seats, and the train was packed. For the first half hour, we stood.  Then, Mike sat down on his suitcase after first offering it to me. I started sliding off and opted for the floor alongside the backpackers with their disassembled bicycles. For a few minutes, this made me feel young, but then I began getting excruciating leg cramps and had to keep standing up to clear them.  Observing my discomfort, a lovely young Asian woman insisted on giving me her seat and later found one for Joe.  

Living Large

A couple of the students have gardens, and they keep bringing in giant zucchini.  They don't seem to know what to do with these enormous vegetables, and they think I do.  We Americans are partial to  big things, aren't we?

Having no experience with giant zucchini, I've been cutting them up and sauteing them with onions and adding some onions and garlic.  You can also add potatoes or onions.  Pretty good.

I wonder if vegetables get big because there is so much sunlight.  Prague is on the same latitude as Newfoundland.  The sun rises well before 5:00, and it's light 'til 9:30.

Golem making

According to Jewish legend, one may create an android-like creature by writing the correct series of Hebrew letters on parchment.   Such creatures are amazingly strong and tremendously stupid.  They are called Golems.

In the sixteenth century, Rabbi Loew, chief spiritual leader of Prague's Jewish community, created a Golem for the ghetto's protection.  I remember learning about it in Hebrew school.  The Golem stood eight feet tall.

The inscription on a Golem's forehead, was 'emes,' Hebrew for truth.  To disable a Golem, one simply removes this word's first letter.  This was done after Rabbi Loew's death, and the Golem was stored in the synagogue attic, where, I am told it remains to this day. 

Magnificence

Prague is located on the Vltava River in the central Bohemian region of what is now the Czech Republic.  Some sources say it was founded in 880 A.D., but there have been settlements on the Vltava since Paleolithic times. Prague is  a city of castles, cathedrals and orange tile roofs.  We wandered about it for hours.

Europeans, much more than Americans, are conscious of history. One cannot visit this place without being aware of a past which produced magnificent monuments to faith but included acts of monstrous intolerance.

Thievery

In a city of 1.3 million, there is apt to be crime. On Friday, my portable data projector was heisted from our sanctuary as we prepared to recognize students who had satisfactorily completed the first session of English camp. The doors were locked, but we think the thief slipped in through a window. This was, we believe, an inside job since the robber knew where to look.

Our camp takes place on the grounds of a residence for Christian students and others associated with the church, a complex of possibly 100 people during the school year.  Not all people are honest.

It’s disheartening, but our program continues.  The police, when I went to see them, were polite, efficient and sympathetic.  I had expected far less.  The Czechs tell horror stories about their police force—perhaps their distrust is a vestige of Communism. 

Our room is now double locked at all times.  I have bought a new camera, a sense of security is more difficult to replace.  Travel makes us more vulnerable than we would be at home for the outsider is conspicuous.

I take what I view as sensible precautions.  On the whole I’ve had pretty good luck. This is my tenth international project and my first really serious problem.  

A matter of taste

Twice a day, we provide snacks for our students—yogurt, fruit, vegetables, nuts, cakes, cookies.  I’d imagined we’d have to limit the children’s access to sugar, but  I was wrong.  They are not very interested in sweets, preferring vegetables and peanuts.

Although the Czechs make excellent pastries, the basic Czech diet is low in sugar.  When we baked bread, my students thought it peculiar that I use a half cup of sugar for two loaves of bread—hardly excessive in my mind.  They would have used a single tablespoon, only.

The Czech diet is high in fat. However, obesity is far less prevalent than in the US, possibly because Czechs walk so much.  The favorite meat here is pork. Knowing this, I prepared a lean pork broth for yesterday’s lunch. I threw in cabbage, carrots, leeks, potatoes and turnip, since all these vegetables are popular here.  The result, I gather, was more Chinese than Czech. The students said they had never eaten anything like it. They thought it odd I had skimmed off so much of the fat.  

A Learning Community

Each morning, we separate into groups.  Sometimes we put adults and children together; but more often we instruct these groups separately so we can offer the grownups advanced work on grammar and vocabulary.  Later, we have a snack and afterwards, singing, which Gary leads.

Lunch is included in the cost of the camp, and we prepare it together. Our students believe a bowl of soup is essential for an adequate lunch, so I start a broth each morning, and we throw in vegetables later on. This is particularly good for the less advanced students’ English development.  

English Conversation on subjects the students choose rounds out the day. We continually ask them what they need help with and develop lessons accordingly. Homework is voluntary, but if students complete it, we critique it.  Everyone in our program wants to be there.

 There is no school board, no hierarchy.  We negotiate how we’ll develop the program, and the students negotiate with us.  It’s idyllic.

First Day

On Sunday night, Michelle, Gary, Joe and I were worried about our project.  We didn’t know much about the students who’d be coming, and we didn’t have a lot to work with. The electricity was not working, and our supplies were limited to paper, markers, and masking tape. I didn’t even have a chalk board.  

But the students came, and we got busy assessing them.  Most have university English and wanted a chance to practice speaking.  Two brought their children, and we incorporated them into our activities.  We sang English songs.  We ate a meal together. We discussed current events, incorporating vocabulary and grammar.  And we saw that, thank God, we’d be able to bring this thing off.

.

  As Marva Collins said,  materials don’t teach; buildings don’t teach; people teach.