Ian's Blocker Blog 2022

      I grew up in the town of Avon Connecticut; a place whose sole icon—if the pictures at our local pizza places are to be believed—is the six-story hilltop Heublein Tower. Built by the German immigrant Gilbert Heubline who promised his wife Louise he would build her a castle. I spent many a summer afternoon hiking to the top of Talcott Mountain to visit this tower. It isn't something I thought to much about at the time, or even reflected upon, until recently I found myself hiking up a a muddy cliffside on the way to visit Burg Hohenzollern in the town of Hechingen. It was funny in one of those, "the more things change the more they stay the same" type of ways, because for the first time in years I actually began to reflect on Heublein towner as a holdover of the type of Cultural practice and phenomenon I was experiencing in Baden-Württemberg. Now I don't want to confuse anyone into thinking these buildings are aesthetically similar, but rather I want to make a cas...

 I really love the format of blogging because as a literature major I often find myself and my writing bound by things like "the conventions of the language" or "making sense in a concise form." I do not feel the same type of limitations here, and frankly that affords me a lot of piece of mind, because the format opens the door for the random happenings of my life to take on a quasi academic shape.  The title of this post is "Die Schreckliche Deutsche Sprache" which is the German name/translation of Mark Twain's iconic essay "The Terrible German Language." In this essay Mark Twain pokes around his lifelong journey to learn German and gives a quick American whit to the eccentricities of Deutsch. It is a perfect read for anyone learning German, and upon rereading the essay in the appendix of Twain's book "A Tramp Abroad" — which chronicle's the satirist's 1878 trip through Baden and Switzerland—I inclined to share an irkso...

In the past few months I have claimed that the unifying "Theme" of this blog has been an exploration of space and culture, as this is already the type of casual analysis which I bring to my Alltag. A large part of what drew me to study in Germany in the first place was the way in which I felt Germany, and the Germans, value culture and community more than us Americans. While a lot of what I have written about in the past has fell into the category of cultural generalizations today I am excited to be talking about a real piece of policy—the locally infamous €9 Ticket. A few weeks ago the German governing coalition; consisting of the center left SPD, Liberal FPD, and Greens announced a plan designed to alleviate cost of living increases and encourage environmental travel by subsidizing public transit during the summer months. Since the beginning of the war in the Ukraine gas prices in Germany have been shockingly high by American standards (the equivalent of $12 per gallon bein...

I've gotten into the habit of writing my way into these posts; and while I have attempted not to do that presently, my point, and the topic at hand, is ultimately far too broad not for me to be a bit speculative and indulgent. I want to talk about die Kultur. Admittedly, that is impossible in a blog post. In fact, the point of these Blocker-blogs is to peel back the layers of die deutsche Kultur from an American perspective—so saying this weeks post is about Kultur is a little bit like saying today I am writing about Germany. More specifically I am going to talk about Tübingen's recent "Kultur Nacht," a citywide celebration of the arts and culture, which in my experience, felt quintessentially German.  So what is "Kultur Nacht"? "Kultur Nacht" is an annual event put on by das Kulturnetz Tübingen , a regional organization and intermediary for the arts, which for one spring night converted downtown Tübingen into a a display. With well over 100 differ...

       As a lifelong runner and nature-lover finding new places to run, and hike, was the my most anticipated part of moving to Germany for the semester. There is no better way to discover a place than on foot, and Tübingen has not disappointed by offering up the most extensive and stunning network of trails I have ever lived near in the form of Schönbuch Naturpark . While this post could easily go in the direction of me gushing over my love of this space and recounting in far too many words how I have been truly alone here, without the sound of a car or plane to keep me company, I want to instead focus in on the concept of Wanderung , or w andern gehen as a facet of German identity.      So what is Die Wanderung? For most English native speakers, the word offers up images of wandering, an almost aimless journey, but to the Germans it suggests something completely different. The most direct translation of wandern would be "to hike" but in many way s ...

Concision is an important part of the writing process. I think this always applies—being able to directly and intently describe ideas in any format is a virtue. After having written this post, I am writing this here preface to present the fact that I understand the value of concision, however elusive the blog format may make it. What follows is an anecdote and hearsay—but ultimately a piece which remains invested in answering a question: Is what I experienced in Radolfzell the perfect representation of the European relationship between space and community or was it just a holiday weekend? Having read the preface, you are probably wondering, "what happened in Radolfzell?" Trust me its not as exciting as that makes it sound, yet it is thought provoking.  While in Radolfzell, Baden-Württemberg on the night of April 16th I, accidently, attended a Catholic Easter Mass. Well okay it was really 11:00 PM, and I did choose to attend, but I had not planed to attend nor be in Radolfzell...