I have heard the calling of my roots. I have spent time in Germany and concluded it was the will of the ways for me to be there. To achieve this balance in my life, I have transplanted myself from my immigrant nation, back to the land of my heritage. This is my story... of my adventures and mishaps, of my good days and bad days, of my life und einfach Alles im schönen Deutschland.
I booked a flight and figured out some budget figures. Looks like more bad weather is on the way but things are looking up.
So it turns out I do actually have good news with this post. I officially have a room at Dortmund but they don't know where for sure. Let's hope it's somewhere on campus and not in Hacheney or Eichlinghofen... Since I got this confirmation, I went ahead an booked a flight. STA had one for 347$ but their website was down the day I wanted to book it so I found another site that had one for 345$ and I booked it through them. They gave me a hell of a time though because I put down on their application that I was a student at WCU, which technically I am not because I graduated in December. I simply doubted that they were actually going to check but then I received an e-mail from them saying that my order wasn't processed because I wasn't found on Western's registrar's list. So I explained the limbo situation I am in to them and they linked me to a sight where I could change my home university from WCU to Dortmund. But TU Dortmund wasn't on their list of German Universities. So I tried the University of Dortmund because it is often called that even though it is the Technical University of Dortmund, I guess just because it is the largest and most popular university in the city. I received another e-mail from the travel company telling me that they once again failed to find proof of my registry. I then went through the steps their website explained so as to prove my status as a student. It was pretty ghetto. I had to take screen-shots of my transcript online, as well as my latest grades and paste them into a Word document and e-mail it to them. It said to make sure my name and my university's name was clearly stated on the transcript. Well the only thing accessible to us online from WCU is an unofficial, working transcript and it says at the very top: Online transcript, not an official document. The words Western Carolina University also appear nowhere on the transcript. Then I remembered that I had switched my home university to the University of Dortmund and transcripts and grades from WCU would not validate my status as a student in Dortmund. I was angry. STA's website finally came back online (24 hours had now elapsed) and the 347$ flight was sold-out so it was looking like I was going to have to cancel the order through the other company which was still pending due to their ignorance, and book a different flight through STA which was 110$ more. But then a miracle stroke of idiocy happened: just 15 minutes after I e-mailed the ghetto transcript to this company, I received a new e-mail from them which said, and I quote "Michael, we have been able to verify your student status at University of Dortmund." Really? Really? You were able to confirm my status as a student of a university in Germany because I sent you a bogus transcript from the university I just graduated from in North Carolina? What a bunch of idiots. Anyway, I now have a flight (a 345$ flight) on the 2nd of March from Asheville to Düsseldorf by-way-of Charlotte and Frankfurt, which is the exact same itinerary I had last time so I know what to expect. Anne is going to pick me up from the airport and help me with my bags; I arrive, of course, an entire day after I took off, figuring in the lay-overs and the time difference.The snow is also melting rather quickly and the roads were clear enough for me to get to the bank yesterday. I paid my sister back everything I owed her finally and also cleared my credit card of the remaining Christmas expenditures. I then did a little budgeting. I figured in my bills for this month and also a very modest estimate of my next two paychecks (technically I'll be getting three, I think, but the last one will only be for a few days and I'm pretty sure it will go into my account after I'm already airborne). I also took out the money I think I will spend on gas for the rest of this month and took a bit off that total just to be safe so I can get wasted this Super Bowl Sunday. I also assumed my rent in Dortmund will be the maximum 250€ they told me rather than the minimum 220€. Using the current exchange rate, I should have enough money to pay for six month's rent. Of course, I won't have to pay that all up-front so I should be fine on food. I also pretty much have a job lined-up thanks to Anne. I'll be tutoring English but I won't be able to get paid until I take a class for it and I dunno how long the class is. It's also not a sure thing but the professor in charge of it said she'd love to have me since English is my mother tongue. So if all goes well, that should be enough to cover my food expenses and whatnot. What I didn't include in my budgeting is the cost of shipping a couple packages over to Anne with things that won't fit in my suitcases. I know that's gonna be expensive but it definitely won't mess up the numbers because there's something else I didn't figure in... I keep all of my change. Basically, anytime I buy something, in my head, I just round it up to the dollar and whatever change I receive, goes straight into my pocket and is probably never spent again. When I get home, I put it in a giant plastic water jug. This doesn't really affect my day-to-day monetary situation but it is a useful tactic to save money. I have definitely more than 300$ in that jar (I think the last time I emptied it was in July of 2008) and I really don't even think about it because it's all just coins. So I think I'm ok. At least ok in the sense that I am no longer stressing about the financial side of this move. I am still a bit worried about packing but I actually began to pack already but really there's only so much that I can do right now as I still have another month and the biggest necessity, clothes my PS3, I'm still gonna need basically right up until the few days before I leave. I've also got a lot of work done on my paintings but one of them is proving to be quite taxing because I'm using a kind of paint I've never used before and it's a pain in the ass to get it to mix the way I need it to. So I'll keep you updated on the rest of my busy month but for right now things are going ok. There's another huge snow storm moving east but it's supposed to hit Virginia and the rest of the mid-Atlantic and miss North Carolina, nevertheless, they're calling for snow tonight here in the mountains and even if we don't get more, we're gonna get a shitload of freezing rain again and the ice is what's really the problem here because the roads are so steep and curvy. Drück euch mal die Daumen für mich;-). Keep your fingers crossed that it's not that bad.
Welcome to my blog. Here, I will attempt to post descriptions of my life in Germany. I created this mainly to keep in touch with the people I left behind in the States but it's also a journal and a travelogue of sorts and anyone is welcome to read and comment. I moved to Germany because I felt it was simply what I needed to do with my life (please read "My Story" below). At the present, I am studying to earn my masters degree at the Technische Universität Dortmund. Where my life will take me after this particular segment is done, I do not know. But this is the record of this part of my journey. Of my adaptation to the German life, my explorations of the continent that drives my interest and my pursuit of higher education. But most importantly: my pursuit of the equilibrium my soul flirts with while I am in Germany relishing in the vast history and culture of my heritage. If you choose to read this, I thank you deeply for your interest in my life for that truly has value to me. I’d love to see comments and to hear from you all so don’t hold back.
My Story
My name is Michael Pude and I am a college student currently working on my masters at TU Dortmund. I was born and raised in Western North Carolina. My mother's family are of Italian descent and hail from Buffalo, New York. My father immigrated to the US from Germany in the 70s and when I was younger we took a couple trips to Germany to visit my relatives. I think I was too young at the time to understand the significance but I think I like that because ever since then, when I thought about Germany, it was quite intriguing. Not quite a mystery but more like a fuzzy picture in my mind. And as I grew up I felt a desire to see the picture clearly.
I became very interested in my German heritage and German culture, history and eventually the language. I took four years of German in High School but sadly never practiced with my father. In college I found my passion in History. I loved learning history at the collegiate level. I found it so awesome I wanted to tell other people about the stuff I was learning. I decided I wanted to teach history. This double-major of History and Secondary Education which I took on, often led to me having to fill out paperwork to allow me to take more than the maximum number of credit hours each semester, in order to graduate in even five years. This unfortunately left no room for German and I only took one semester of it in college. I quickly, however, directed my entire focus on European History. I learned a great deal about Germany as well as the rest of Europe and I imagined myself later in life, traveling Europe and doing historical research. There was only one problem: I was imaging something that I hadn't actually experienced yet. It was clear to me then: I needed to get to Europe to figure this out for real. In my last year as an undergraduate, I was given the opportunity to finally study abroad. Germany was of course my first choice but I was open to all possibilities. I almost ended up in Estonia, actually. I dare you Americans to find Estonia on an unlabeled map. But as I thought more about it, I grew apprehensive. Everything I wanted in life hinged on this starting point and I feared I would fail in Europe. I felt I needed to go to Germany where I at least stood a chance because of my background knowledge in the culture and most importantly the language, which I had always struggled with by the way. I looked at the list of cities available to study and found Dortmund among them. The professional soccer team from Dortmund had always been my favorite because when I was younger I liked their black and yellow color scheme. I spent almost six months of 2009 in Dortmund as an exchange student and cataloged the time in another blog entitled Püde Abroad. While I was there, I met Anne, my amazing girlfriend. She is from a small town in the mountains about two hours east of Dortmund that reminds me of where I grew up. She is also studying at the university to be a teacher and we simply understood each other very well and began to hang out. She informally taught me the vast majority of my language skills. By the end of the semester, I was one of the two Americans that had found a significant other in Germany and I really, really didn't want to go back to North Carolina. From August 2009 until March 2010, I spent most of my time talking to Anne per Skype or ICQ and putting in a lot of hours at Ardenwoods, the retirement community I work at. I also used this time to slowly come to terms and prepare myself for the inevitable life alteration that had been looming since I got on a plane to leave Germany that August. I had to go back. This time for good. I decided to return to Dortmund to study History and English at a post-graduate level and earn a degree with which I could teach those subjects.
Ode to the country I left behind
Cites I've Visited
Click on the World Map to link to an interactive push-pin map that shows everywhere I've ever been!
Ohrwurm
And I don't wanna live that way
Reading into every word you say
-Gotye ft. Kimbra: Somebody that I Used to Know
Slideshow
Here are a select number of photos (my favourites) that I've taken during my time in Europe.
I've written a discription for every one of them so take the time one day to go to my Flickr profile and look at them all, please!
COUNTRIES I HAVE VISITED
About this Blog
-The color scheme of green and yellow is derived from that of my favourite U-Bahn Station in Dortmund: Kampstraße. The U-Bahn is the sub-way and in most European cities, each station is decorated differently. The first photo in the right column is a small section of the wall.
-The Phoenician Sea is another blog where I publish some of my short stories and poems.
-TU Dortmund or the Technische Universität Dortmund is the university where I study.
-BVB is the nickname for the Dortmund soccer club. The full name is BVB09; the letters stand for "Ballspiel-Verein Borussia" which mean "the Prussian Soccer Club" and the 09 denotes the year of its foundation (1909). They were the first team to qualify for the Budesliga and scored the first goal in the Bundesliga. They also play their home games in Westfalenstadion (aka Signal Iduna Park) which is the largest stadium in Germany. I have been a fan long before I first came to Dortmund, in fact, it was BVB which made me chose Dortmund as the city in which to do my semester abroad in 2009.
-Ohrwurm literally translates to "earworm" but it means something that is stuck in one's head, such as a song. In that part, I just post whatever is stuck in my head at the moment or something that I have found myself thinking about quite often.
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