Week 5

   This morning it was very cold.  The sky was covered in clouds so I couldn’t see that in the mountains it snowed sometime yesterday.  As the afternoon began I saw an opening in the clouds, and a white peak emerging into the sunlight.  Although beautiful, it seems strange to imagine that in a thirty minute hike I could reach the edge of the snow, and yet none reached the city streets.

Skiing is a very important pass time here in Austria, and especially in Innsbruck.  Many of the people I’ve met have told me that it is worth getting a year ski pass.  My roommate was telling me that you could easily go every weekend.  I hesitate though because I wonder if I’d really have the time.  It does not take that much time to get to the slopes though.  I think the nearest one could be reached in about ten minutes.

One of the studios at the architecture school is dealing with sport oriented cities and activity using Innsbruck as a primary example of a city that is geared toward mountain sports, and investigating how that might guide and shape its development.  I was intrigued by the topic and considered taking the course; I chose however to take another professor who came highly recommended.

My studio course had its first meeting last Thursday.  Our topic is dealing with the voids in the fabric of Berlin.  Berlin was bombed during the war so many spaces and even buildings still remain empty and abandoned.  Of course, the fall of the Berlin wall also led to many industrial warehouses and factories becoming abandoned.  These warehouses where the spaces that hosted the various underground rave parties that took place in the early 1990’s; without their abandonment and the lack of jurisdiction and police the underground culture became the night club culture that thousands of people from all around the world come to visit.  The moment also generated artistic and musical movements that now are the popular almost mainstream culture of Europe, and maybe even the U.S. 

I’m not sure what we are going to work on yet, but I know we will have to make a series of proposals that engage this artistic culture along with the remaining voids.  There is a threat that the voids could be filled by developers and investors.  The issue isn’t that economic activity is taking place in Berlin, but that if the voids get filled with luxury apartment buildings and condos, the culture that is Berlin now could be lost, and the charm of the empty spaces that can be used as passage ways and hiking routes through the city, would become closed. 

Taking this class I have realized what is so important about the experience of a place, and how even what might be considered beautiful buildings, could ultimately destroy the experiential atmosphere of the place.  After all, it’s the local restaurant with cheap pizza, or the café tucked away in an alleyway where we meet friends, that create the joy of our experience in a city, not the monuments or land value.

Since school has started I have to say that I am extremely happy to be working on something.  Before I was soaking in the sites and getting situated to my environs; now I am making friends, going out, working on projects, and getting a sense of what daily life is really like here.

I have three supermarkets within about 5 minutes walking.  One of them is a chain that was started in Innsbruck by a family that owned a bakery.  Now they are a supermarket that has a special bakery section in it that serves fresh and cheap bread.  I usually go there to get it.  On Fridays a there is a farmers market where I can buy local produce.  I get vegetables from one stand, cheese from another.  Another sells honey and mead. 

While the food quality here is really good, everything is closed by 6 or 7.  So I have to carefully plan my day in order to get everything I need by the morning or early afternoon.  Then I spend the later afternoon working on things at home.

I also began a German course.  It is quite difficult, but my roommate today was surprised by my improvement.  I wish I could learn everything so quickly, but language is more of a habitual kind of learning, and getting used to the vocabulary and grammatical rules are habits that build on top of each other, so it can never come immediately.  From an outsider’s perspective, however, it may seem to happen at lightning speed, especially when the student is immersed in it.

Last Saturday I had a chance to put my German skills to some use.  A new friend of mine invited me to a housewarming party where I knew no one except for her.  I arrived with some difficulty because the apartment was located on the other side of the city.  Innsbruck is not very large, but it is dense, and it is not organized in a square grid, so orienting yourself is not as easy as in the U.S.  I did arrive at last and began to meet people and talk to them.  I always greeted in German, and attempted anything I could say in the course of multiple conversations.  Soon enough people were helping me by teaching me new phrases, correcting my grammar.  It was a fun night.  I didn’t realize it, but it was soon 3 AM and everyone was leaving, but not to go home, to go out dancing in clubs downtown.  There is a little district in Innsbruck of clubs that are all located underneath the railroad.  The railroad is raised up on brick arches, and so under these arches are multiple clubs, bars, and music halls, and so when I arrived with the party, most of Innsbruck’s students were out on the street or in the clubs.  This is something that does not exist in Dallas.  There are some small areas with a few bars or maybe a club to dance in, but they all close around 2 AM, and then everyone has to drive home.  The best part about this district here in Innsbruck is that it is within walking distance to most of the city.

I think beginning the school year has market the beginning of me becoming part of the city and culture; the beginning of new friendships and deeper experiences.  I do miss Mexican food though.

Until next time,