Oktoberfest 2014 a Great Success

The German Club was proud to host our fifth annual Oktoberfest in Bro. Willie’s Pub on Saturday, Oct. 18th. As in past years, the event included music, dancing, good food and drink, and games with prizes. Campus DJs did a great job of DJing the event, playing a combination of popular German and Austrian songs, electronic music, and even a small amount of Polka to get people dancing. Food served included hot Brezen and Würstl. Beer was served upstairs, including Paulaner Weißbier, the world-famous wheat beer brewed in Munich. Games included Steinheben, a game where contestants attempt to hold a liter of water with an outstretched arm for as long as possible, a costume contest with prizes for the best dressed Mädel and Bursche, and a guessing game where contestants had to estimate the number of gummy bears in a liter Stein. We had an estimated 200 people attend, and it was all in all a great event!

     Congratulations, German Club Members, on organizing such a fine event.

Students on the Salzburg Semester Program Experience Great Roommates, Travel.

The ten students in the 2014 Salzburg group are settled into their dorm rooms and most have met their roommates (from France, Greece, Pakistan, Kosovo). They sailed through two weeks of intensive German classes and orientation activities, and have been on the regular course schedule since mid-September taking art history, philosophy, the study abroad seminar--and German, natürlich! They’ve also mastered the art of riding city buses, traveling by train, shopping at the beautifully renovated Merkur, cooking pumpkin soup and Putenschnitzel, and wearing Dirndl and Lederhosen. We saw Mozart’s Zauberflaute in the Marionettentheater and were given a tour of the Hohensalzburg Festung (fortress) by a guide who had a key to all the locked doors! Moreover, the group is healthy, arrives on time, and remains cheerful and flexible, even during those early days of unrelenting rain. Ausgezeichnet!

          We visited the most beautiful example of Austrian Baroque at the Melk monastery, stood before the grave of miraculous Saint Walburga in the Eichstätt convent, walked the streets of Eichstätt to see Germany’s largest collection of Baroque buildings, ate dinner in an old castle, marveled at the immensity of Nürnberg’s Altstadt, learned about the Third Reich at the new Documentaton Center at the former NSDAP party rally grounds, and saw the lovely library and monastery church in Metten. And these are just the highlights! The students are soaking up knowledge like sponges, making comparisons, integrating knowledge and experience, and asking probing questions. We’re hoping for more of the same as we finish this first month and look forward to the second.

                Best wishes to all from this very special place, Salzburg group 2014

Contributed by director, Anna Lisa Ohm.

Austin Eighan ('14) Receives International Parliament Scholarship

Austin has been selected to receive a scholarship from the German Federal Parliament to participate in their five-month long International Parliament Scholarship (IPS) starting in March 2015. The participants selected from around the world gather to pursue their political, historical, economic, social and cultural research alongside practical work with members of the German government and attend lectures at Berlin universities. The IPS will give Austin an opportunity to pursue further his research begun for his Honors thesis on the success of middle-size corporations in Germany and supportive policies of the German government as well as social attitudes. Over 100 young students from around the world are chosen for this special program which, since it was founded in 1986, has become more theoretical and more  international in scope.

Congratulations, Austin -- a scholarship well deserved!