22 October 2007
The weekend of 12 - 14 Oct we went with the ECLA (both professors and students) to the Harzgebirgten where the witches live and Goethe's Faust joins in a Bacchanale, and the medieval village Quedlinenburg with 1000 yrs old timbre-houses. The trip was meant to 'stimulate the social bonding', which is really quite a sad and artificial context. You're sitting together in the train, looking around and thinking 'Do we reeally have to talk to each other, we're going to be stuck together for too long anyhow' 38 students studying, eating and living together is already a crazy social experiment without the mountains. But by the time we were walking up the mountains and happily kicking the leaves on the granite stone, there was a softening attitude towards each other. We were close to singing and there was happiness in abundance. Friends and foes approached and everything cleared against the background of mountain forest and time-frozen villages; and of course our share of beer and bratwurst. "It rocked."
Posts
