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.
The bad weather has got me feeling quite stressed.
We got our second snow storm this winter on Friday afternoon. The first one was a lot of fun canceled my graduation and made it difficult to go out and do stuff with Anne while she was here. The second doesn't look to be any more forgiving. Once again my sister and I had to sleep on the floor at work because the clubhouse of Ardenwoods is on top of a mountain and the road down was completely iced-over. At least this time we knew it was coming and brought sleeping bags. Work over the weekend went fairly well and we were pretty much fully-staffed, as compared to the last time when Felicia and I were the only servers and there was only one cook. But now I am completely beat. Staying at work that long doesn't really get your spirits up and my back is killing me from sleeping there. In addition, this snow is bringing in my last month in the states. I'm not sure how long it will take for it all to melt but the last storm was on the 19th of December and we had snow at least through the first week of January. To everyone reading this from Germany or another part of the US, I know this sounds like whining but in the south, this is really uncommon. When it snows, even here in the mountains, we usually get up to six inches and it is completely melted just two days later. We now have about two feet at my house and there's even more in Asheville because it's a lot higher than here. We don't own a snow shovel, nor do we keep ice-melt handy and everywhere has been sold-out since the first storm. The city also does a fantastic job of plowing the roads only plows the main road and makes it easy to get around the curvy, mountain roads just end up making snowbanks that block the entrances to every other road. The entire area really does not know how to function when it snows, a lot of stores will just close down. Absolutely nobody has snow chains and there are so many accidents, it's ridiculous. The one thing I was hoping to do as like a last night-out was to go bar-hopping in my own city because I'd never done that before but now because of the snow, I don't really know how likely that is. Getting back to Western (Carolina University) to see everybody one more time is also going to be difficult because of the snow. I'm also overwhelmed by the thought of going through all of my stuff, packing what I want to bring, shipping the stuff that won't fit, setting other things aside so my family can ship it to me later if I need them to and making sure everything is cleaned up at my end of the house after I destroy it doing all of those things. I'm also trying to get a set of three paintings done before I leave or they will never be finished. Somehow I have to do all of that while continuing to work a shitload because I need the money. I'm just wasting time in front of the computer really stressed-the-hell-out right now and need to go do something productive punch a baby. Hopefully there'll be better news with my next post...
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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