The following letter was written by Bob to his Grandmother from Freiburg, Germany. Bob had recently earned a bachelor's degree from the University of California, Berkeley, then flown to Great Britain (hitchhiking from London to Edinburgh and back, visiting at least one Loch) and then come to Freiburg to work since he was running out of money. He got a job as a laborer with a landscaping company and was shoveling a lot of dirt.
The letter below includes some interesting points:
Text of letter:
Sat, Jun 10
Dear Grandma,
Your letter was most enjoyable to read. It was nice to hear all the news about the family. The trip to Rockport at the end of the summer sounds like it will be a great time for Mom & the two girls, though I imagine that can be a very tiring drive. I am quite sorry that you do not feel up to traveling north with Dad. I hope you do not feel too poorly.
Life here is settling down for me and beginning to feel more comfortable. I have always been very poor at learning a foreign language, but the constant exposure and short lessons at night are just beginning to show results. It is amazing how it affects me when I can occasionally completely understand something a German says. A real feeling of exultation. A question: doesn't your side of the family have some German blood? I noticed (impossible not to notice) that just about all the residents have blue eyes and fair complexions. Though I never thought about it before, this is not generally true in the U.S. I have also heard it is more characteristic of Southern than Northern Germany.
A couple of interesting pieces of gossip about my work: First, I became aware of the first piece of sabotage I have ever seen. A kid at the work site became really annoyed with being stuck doing some miserable work with a heavy machine in the hot afternoon. So he calmly damaged a minor part of the machine and then announced it wouldn't work. No one could be sure he did it (he boasted to me & another American about it) so nothing happened to him. About a half hour later the foreman fixed the machine & the kid got back to work.
I mentioned another American. He had only been working a couple of days; yesterday he was fired. There is an incredible amount of sitting around & not working. The foreman is a party to it. There are, however, two unwritten rules I have learned. First, when the boss shows up you have to look busy (it is really ludicrous to see the site while the boss is present & five minutes later). Second, when the foreman tells you to do something, you do it immediately & stick with it until it is finished. As with all the work, nobody really cares if you take your own sweet time about it & stand around a lot, just so long as you are nominally doing it. Unfortunately for the American, he violated the second rule by walking away from some particularly unpleasant work. He was told to pick up his money & not return at the end of the day. I have watched others stand around doing nothing 10 out of 15 minutes, seen people work at a snail's pace, and noticed them arrived ½ - 1 ½ hours late. All of this was ignored, just so long as you didn't obviously cross the foreman. For myself, I would rather be working, really working, at double the pay for half the time. As much would get down & I would have more free time. It is almost annoying to be industriously laboring away, only to have a couple of fellow workers say: "Langsam, langsam (slowly, slowly)." Such is life at a construction site. I will be glad to get a more skilled job later, after I have begun to master German.
I like Freiburg quite a bit, though the weather leaves something to be desired. The price I pay for having the lush, thick foliage surrounding me is almost daily rain. A couple days ago a thunderstorm hit, but there was more hail than water. It seems strange for it to be 70º or 80º and still have ice falling down from the sky. In fact, it seems wierd just to see little, white BB's dropping out of nowhere & dancing around on the pavement. Such inclement weather provides everybody with an excuse to lay down the shovels and run for shelter. If it rains heavily for more than half an hour though, everyone goes home for the day. No pay for not working obviously. Since it usually rains at night or late afternoon this is not too much of a problem.
After six months the University has finally gotten around to issueing me my degree. A friend picked it up for me & is going to send it. I am interested in seeing what it looks like. I applied for graduate school, but I am afraid my grades are far below the acceptable minimum, though I have at least two good recommendations from professors and did reasonably well on some national graduate exams. I continue to study math, but really don't have the time, which is another reason for wanting a less strenuous & time consuming job.
Ellen wanted a more detailed picture of Freiburg and since I assume this will make the rounds, here is some more, meine Schwester. I recently saw a replica of an old Freiburg map from before the 15th century (I think). It was a completely walled in town with an old church and various watch towers. The church still stands and the old bell tower goes crazy at 7 in the morning & evening. A plaza surrounds the church and serves as an open air market for locally grown fruits and vegetables. Besides these fruit stands there are a couple of hot dog & waffle stands (hot dog is obviously not quite right). The plaza, in turn, is surrounded by relatively old buildings housing restaurants, bakery, and modern dep't stores (in Germany & Britain, too, a dep't store sells both clothes and food, besides everything else.)
Moving outward from the central plaza, ones sees a mixture of the older Freiburg & the new, paved over Freiburg. One or two cobblestone streets lead towards the center of town, but these are crossed by the wide, asphalt Kaiser-Joseph street. At one time this street also was part of the ancient town, because it narrows down & passes under one of the remaining towers which I assume led out of town. Kaiser-Joseph St. is lined on both sides with the usual dep't stores & what-not you would expect to see in any city. The only other interesting part of the city is its central park which is a really nice set of lawns & gardens where people congregate. In one place there is a giant chess board built into the pavement and two-foot-high chess pieces are provided. On Sunday you can see 10 -20 elderly men standing around & kibbutzing as two of their colleagues play. I think it has one hell of a lot more class than shuffle-board. Right now the roses are beginning to bloom and are taking the place of the pinks & whites of earlier flowers.
Suburban sprawl has already begun here, but things have not gotten really ugly; largely because of the incredible vegetation which you see everywhere and the lack of industry. The large University here is the major enterprise, I think.
Hi everybody,
Love Bob