Die Ferien? Aber ich bin schon im Ausland...

It´s a curious time here: holidays have started for students, although quite a few seem to have exams right now, even into March (it´s so strange! Even stranger to imagine having holidays quite soon after Christmas. I think I´d go for a big, long summer break every time, but it could be nice to be on holiday when spring is springing, too.) - even so, more people seem to be leaving every day. My immediate neighbours are still here for a wee while - Uli, the fiddler next door, is going to Ireland next week, and taking her violin with her! This morning, I helped Ronit take her luggage to the railway station, on her way to Colorado (Frankfurt first). I find it hard to imagine how big the U.S.A. really is, and that it´s really quite something to travel out of it to Europe. I thought Munich was far away when I first flew here - it takes twice that flight time to get from New York to Denver, and that´s you only roughly halfway to the west coast! Jings. When you (I) think about travelling, it usually involves leaving your own country. But you could scour all of Europe and still, you could cover the same area in the States and still not have seen everything (I´m not totally sure about this, Wikipedia isn´t agreeing with other Google results... I´m going with my gut, like a good scientist). In any case, this put any notions of my own intrepidity into some perspective.

My mum came to visit last weekend - it was quite surreal, welcoming someone to a country also foreign to you! We had a great time in Munich and Regensburg, wandering around. Mum confirmed that there´s a different sort of cold here, it´s more... Cold. This was one morning out my window, I think it was -7°C:

It gets through your gloves and tingles your ears, and makes you realise that, though you thought your scottishness made you to be of inherently, William-Wallacey, born-in-a-northerly-gale, tougher stuff, the Gulf Stream weans you as a big climatic softy. Cold? - guffaws Central Europe - I´ll give you cold! Introducing: the Alps.

I am going to mention the war. We visited Munich University, hoping to see the memorial of the White Rose, the anti-Nazi resistance group which included two Munich students, Hans and Sophie Scholl, brother and sister. They were caught distributing leaflets on campus on February 18th, 1943; they were found guilty of treason and beheaded, four days later. Today, there are streets, schools and buildings all over Germany named after Sophie Scholl or die Geschwister (siblings) Scholl. Theirs is a remarkable story. This is an aside, but do you know the impression I get: Germans feel a lot less awkward about German history than we do. Why should they feel awkward at all? It can´t be changed. I think we can perceive the idea that we should be very, very cagey about mentioning World War Two in the presence of Germans - and indeed, if it isn´t necessary to talk about it, it´s perhaps more comfortable to avoid. But from what I have seen here, this part of history isn´t tucked away - it is borne out as a lesson to all the generations which followed it. What´s worst about any British guardedness is that it´s not just Germany´s history at all - it´s human history. This is what man is capable of doing to man. This struck me more than ever in my life when we visited Dachau the next day.

Words can´t do any justice. There is a museum which describes the story of the camp in great detail; there´s no pretence, only the truth as it was drawn from survivors and others. As clear as it is, it is so hard to believe - but it must be believed. We must know how evil can work. I have tried to write more, but I don´t know what else to say.

The weekend just past made be very appreciative of the company I´ve found here - now, making friends is not one of my strong points. I don´t know that it´s even one of my weak points - it´s through very little of my own doing that I have good friends. Here, though I get on ok in the lab with others, most people are a few years older than me and work in pharmacies at the weekend anyway, when I have most time to meet others. So I know that I´ve been very fortunate to meet other students outwith the lab and to have the chance to spend time with them. I met Laura for cake on Saturday and a good long walk, and then went another walk with Uli on Sunday on her study break, then went to see The King´s Speech in English with German subtitles (that is an excellent film by the way! I didn´t expect to laugh so much!) with another Julia who had been doing her pharmacy project in our lab, all quite spur-of-the-moment, and the more fun for it! Soon even these guys will leave on holiday... But it´ll be ok, I´ve been perfecting the purposeful walk of a non-native trying to blend in since I arrived. The problem might be, though, that I actually walk faster than most people now, certainly all the people I overtake, and maybe draw more attention that way. But it´s so hard to stop the arms swinging once they get going. 

This is a photo of Mum in Munich, to prove that there has been a Paterson in Bavaria (since there are suspiciously few of myself...):

Hahaha, that´s the only expression I seem able to catch of hers when snapping!