Dustin Long
Overseas Columnist
It’s Super Bowl Sunday in Heidelberg, Germany, one o’clock in the morning. Outside there’s not a sign, but in Moore Haus, nine of us sit around a television with flickering reception of the American Armed Forces Network. Life is good here, and things are changing. Football has been making a major comeback in the past weeks, as well as season one of “The OC.” Here’s an update with the latest from the Heidelberg program, a few anecdotes, insights and messages home.
Sophomore Tom Rickeman has founded a football league, appropriately named the RFL (Rickeman Football League). Sixteen of the guys in the house compete on four teams each Sunday in rotating tournament play.
“Fasching” or “Carnevale,” the European equivalent of Mardi Gras, came to its climax this weekend. Roughly half of the students here dispersed Thursday and Friday, trickling out across rail and airlines to join in the celebration. Venice has a reputation for crazy and outrageous Carnevale festivities stretching back to the Middle Ages and about a dozen especially historically minded Heidelbergers joined in this year to help perpetuate the city’s legacy, for posterity’s sake, of course.
Here’s the story of Fasching in a nut shell, according to sophomore Sarai Small: “Well, we had a lot of fun with the pigeons in San Marco Square, (Venice).” One student put bird seed in his jacket and zipped the pigeons inside. The problem came when he “threw it in the air so they could all flutter out, but the jacket just wiggled and flopped to the ground.”
Last week, Amber McMahon had a similar experience trying to pet one of the apes of Gibraltar on a trip to Morocco. After falling off her camel the day before, a monkey got into her backpack. It ate her and Joey Brumme’s food and stole their chocolate, which was cute, they thought, until he started grabbing for Amber’s passport. After chasing him off, she sought a little reconciliation by trying to pet the monkey on the back of the neck. The ape responded by biting her on the arm, but was then attacked by another, larger primate, Joey.
I myself am just returning from a weekend spent with four other guys in Norway. We drove, motor-boated, ice-walked and climbed our way just over 1,000 miles along the southwest coast of Norway. In preparation for our personal Fasching celebration and parade, we traded in our “Rent-a-Wreck” at Frafjord for some stilts and a boat with a five-horse-power engine (one horse per person) to go fish for something to cook on the Fasching bonfire. About a mile and a half into the cliff-girded channel, just at dusk, our motor broke down. Fear set in. After dismantling and repairing the engine, we were able to catch our plane back to Heidelberg and arrived at the house, only to hear the now familiar voices of the characters of “The OC.”
“The OC” is Moore Haus’ latest craze.
“I watched all twenty-seven episodes this weekend,” Jessica Jackson said.
Next week is the group fieldtrip to Berlin, then Spring Break, then just six weeks left here. The time so far has been fantastic and it’s my pleasure to report back about such a great group.
02-10-2005
