Sean in Bozen
28 June 2006

Every morning I get up and usually have a European-style breakfast of bread, cheese, yogurt, etc. It's what's readily available, so it's the least hassle (most of the yogurt flavors are what you get in America, but the hazelnut yogurt is an interesting diversion). For this month, I'm staying in college student housing run my Salesian priests. It's a very pleasant place, and while the religion is present, there's no pressure at all. I'm in a suite with two bedrooms, but the other bedroom is vacant, so I have the shared kitchenette and bathroom to myself. The building is modern European, like what Ikea would build if they built buildings. A whole city of such modern buildings would be ghastly, but you can get away with it when the old Baroque houses or Gothic churches are so close by. I wish I could stay here longer, but my brief lease runs out later in July before the students come back.

I stop and schmooze for a few moments with Gregorio, one of the guys who runs the building. He's older, a real nice guy, and is a real scholar and intellectual, and has taught in places like Israel and Alexendria. Gregorio speaks a bunch of languages, but the only language we both know is English. His English isn't very good, but we communicate just fine anyway.

Work is a short walk down Carducci-Strasse, diagonal across the little park, and over the Drusus bridge which crosses the Talfer river. Motorbikes, bicycles, small cars, and small trucks zoom by. There's a great view of all the surrounding mountains as you cross the bridge. The one to the north reminds me a little of Devil's Tower, but it's much bigger, and it's like a Devil's tower which has melted down some on the sides and is mostly covered with green trees, where the steep red rock doesn't show thru.

EURAC's building was built back in the 1930's and was originally the local headquarters for the Italian fascist party. Others have certainly pointed out the rich irony that the renovated building is now the home of an institution so firmly commited to the modern European ideal of a pan-European community. The old parts of the building are the historic red color, and the new parts are sleek glass. It's easy to bump into a wall or door.

I was mistaken when I said I work directly for the European government. EURAC is technically a private institution, even tho a big chunk of its funding does come from the EU; but it functions as a quasi-public research facility. There are lots of things going on in the building. Some have to do with things like land use planning or environmental regulations. Downstairs is the human genetics lab; they are studying the genetics of the populations in the mountain villages here, where there has not been a lot of migration over the centuries. I'm up in the department of Specialized Communication and Multilingualism.

I share an office with Stefanie, my co-worker from Stuttgart. She is very smart and pleasant to work with. We usually talk in German, but her English is very good, so sometimes we speak in English too. We sit across from each other, both very intent on our work. At 10:30 or so, somebody comes around and asks if we want to go on a coffee break. Sometimes I go, sometimes not. We walk as a group down to the EURAC cafe. The coffee is very, very strong and is served in tiny cups; there are different kinds, but they don't have the American kind of coffee, which the people here who have been to America describe as very thin and watered down. We stop at the main Eurac reception desk on our way back to pick up a free apple. Back at my desk, I write programs, send emails to others at related institutions, and research some solutions.

I usually go back to my room for lunch. Sometimes I go out with co-workers.

I work until 6:00 or so. Then I hurry to go do a little grocery shopping before 7:00 when everything closes for the night (except the restaurants and cafes). There is not a lot of time to fool around if I want to buy anything.

There is a good gay community center in town. I've started making some friends there. This last Sunday, there was a mountain hike. I was supposed to get a ride with this guy named Sepp (short for Josef), but it was gray and rainy on Sunday morning, so Sepp called me on my Handy (as they call cell phones here), and we decided to cancel.

Later, the day turned beautiful. Sepp called back and asked if I wanted to go see the Stuanerne Mandln, these mysterious, very old heaps of stone on to of a hill whose history is not well known. We went way, way up in the mountains to the hiking spot, and on the way up, you could see Bozen spread out down below like a map. It was a really good hike. Lots of families were out with their kids and all. On the way back down, we stopped at this little mountain restaurant, and I had a very interesting omlette filled with some kind of berry similar to cranberries, but smaller. Sepp doesn't speak any English, so we chattered away in German the whole day. We understood each other perfectly.

This made me feel a lot better about my German. I mostly get along OK speaking German at work, but sometimes it can be a bit of a frustration. Talking to Sepp the whole day made me realize that my problem is just that we use a lot of difficult legal, bureaucratic, or scientific words at work. It'll just take time to learn more of those words. I've probably learned a hundred new words, or more, since I got here.

Then there is Georg. He is a real down-to-earth kind of guy. He speaks the local dialect of German so heavily that I can't understand half of what he says (imagine a non-native speaker of English, one who had learned textbook British English, trying to understand a redneck from the American deep South; that's a bit what it's like). There's a bar called Samba where some of the guys go after the weekly get-together at the gay community center, and the waiter there speaks the local dialect of German so heavily that I can understand _nothing_ of what he says, not one word of it. It's definitely German, but it's German which sounds like it has been run thru a gobblety-gook filter. Still, I'm starting to learn a few of the regional pronunciations.

This evening I happened to run into some other Americans, nice middle-ages men and women; it was a tour group. They were the first Americans I've talked to since I got here. We had a nice chat on the street. Now, in Bozen, there are Italians and there are those who speak German, and I'm in the latter category. When I'm talking to an Italian store clerk, it's the same as if I were any other German; I simplify my German, throw in the few Italian words I've picked up, and help make myself clear with hand gestures (that is, if it's an Italian who doesn't speak much German; some speak excellent German but with a pronounced Italian accent). For some reason, after chatting away in American English with those folks, and then walking away by myself with my sack of groceries, I felt like a foreigner here for the first time. It was an odd feeling.