Neuendettelsau

This being the third new place in 2 months in which I showed up not knowing a single person, I arrived in Neuendettelsau tired, a little on the cranky side, and for the first time since arriving in Germany, had a brief “Why on earth am I doing this?!?” moment, but it did not last long as I was greeted by Judith at the Neuendettelsau station.  The students are happy (at least they pretend well!) to speak slowly for me, repeat, and try alternative ways of saying what they’re attempting to tell me. 

Neuendettelsau is gorgeous right now with the trees at their prime fall colors.  I am so relieved to be out of the city…makes it all the more beautiful here!  I can open my window and smell “cow” or walk down the path just a short way and be among the fields or in a patch of forest.  There is no sound of traffic, no smell of exhaust, very few sirens blaring.  Peace.  Something I all too often take for granted.  I forget how stir-crazy I get when I cannot escape city life.  I finally have a room with enough shelves for all my books.  Only, I don’t have my books!  I’ve spread what I have out as much as I can to make it cozy and homey, but I still have 8 cupboards, 8 shelves, 1 drawer, and the giant box under the bed completely empty.  Oh how much fun I could have organizing here!  There is no question that I will accumulate more things, but hopefully not enough to fill my space!  Filling it with cookies would be okay.

Saturday I spent a lot of time reading.  I’m beginning to realize I have A LOT of work to do on my Wartburg classes before Christmas!  Five and a half books down, 6 or 7 to go and some papers to write.  This is on top of learning Deutsch and I’m sure that any work I will need to do for classes here will take me longer than ever to complete.  But, I must remember to have fun.  This isn’t about being a scholar.  This is about living in another culture, learning a new language, and understanding the world in a new way.

Sunday morning I went with a couple new friends for worship at die St. Laurentiuskirche.  Apparently the state of being lost and confused in services is not just an ELCA seminarian thing.  I wasn’t the only one who couldn’t figure out what page we were on!  I’m not sure whether to be more amused or more troubled by this.  When the seminarians can’t figure it out, how do we expect everyone else to follow, much less visitors?!?  What does this mean for church leadership?

In the afternoon I decided to go for a walk around town.  As I was walking, I noticed a nun behind me, happily singing down the road.  I stopped at a cemetery gate and waited.  She walked right up and started talking to me.  Sister Sofie gave me a tour of the cemetery and we managed to communicate most things but I have to work so hard at understanding the current words that I forget everything else we’ve said.  I can only focus on one word at a time!  I wandered through the rest of Diakonie Neuendettelsau and down the street to watch horses being brought in for the night under a beautiful sunset before making my way back to campus in the dark.

And, FINALLY, an address:

Alyssa Augustson
Waldstraße 15a/ 75
91564 Neuendettelsau
Germany

Pax.