i find myself on a couch in schwabing-west, afloat in my head up to my ears.
i made it to the airport on friday in high spirits. the stewardpeople on lufthansa just kept offering us glass after glass of wine and then brandy/bailey's...absurd. e, my travelbuddy and "colleague," fainted twice on the plane for mysterious, possibly malarial reasons but we landed without catastrophe. couldn't find a way to call our couchsurfing host, christian, so we just showed up at his house which worked out okay after all.
that night, we went to the ludwig-maximillian-universitat where the students are striking, occupying the main student center (which is fucking echoingly huge) to demand free university education, democratization of education. in the plenum, they were also talking a lot about "bildung" vs "ausbildung"--something like self-edification/intellectual nourishment vs job training. tons of universities across germany, austria, and some of the university of california schools are occupied.
this place had been occupied ("besetzt") for about 2 weeks and this weekend i happened to walk into the international students' plenum on education reform. classes are stopped and apparently the students have a right to protest there (or so i was told), which is why they haven't been forcibly removed. i talked to a lot of people about their participation and why there is little organizing of a student movement (at uchicago, or among lots of schools, or internationally) in the US. of course a lot of it is privatization--how much can you protest when you've paid, or someone has paid, so much money for you to be at that institution? the accountability of administration and investors to the students and faculty is also clearly quite different at private US universities as compared to here in munich.
anyway, it was a pretty amazing thing to see...so many signs, people (a huge lecture hall full...maybe 300, 400? more?), lots of crusty-looking freaks and queermos and lots of "normal-looking" and impassioned kids...and all of this discussion about the facticity of science and what the purpose of the university is, whether happiness matters...happening openly, in the main lecture hall of the school with no "adults" in sight.
so yeah, that was cool. then some band started playing and e, jeanne, christian and i danced on the desks and drank and talked to kids. we did a radio interview...i'll let you know if i can ever find it online.
today, sunday, e and i slept till about 3p.m. and christian made pfannkuchen/german pancakes and then we wandered to this huge art/market festival (tollwood...some kind of semiannual thing) and i liberated So Much. it was the perfect setting--huge crowds, tiny booths, overpriced beautiful things...mmmm. i have some new little instruments for our house. then we found our way to this place that was doing reggae/jazz-improv (lelz you were basically there with me but you would have been able to jump onstage). also the walls in this place were fucking sick...there was a huge octopus (picture forthcoming), vomiting panda bears, lots o little buddies and tags [howyousayuhhhh] out the wazoo...
all in all, it's great to be speaking german, great to talk to other people who are traveling or working or doing cool stuff, push away some of my anxiety and come face-to-face with other anxieties (hrmhrmfinals, these things "queer" and "radical," what is awkwardness, the place of art in my life). i am missing the baohaus like woah and my attachments to people in general. i have so much of you inside of me.
love,
eliot
more info on the LMU occupation if you're interested
someone at the plenum talked about this site for int'l student movement
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