My First Two Weeks

My journey should start on Saturday, January 3 at the Frankfurt Airport. Together with Cynthia, I took US Airways Flight 9251 via Philadelphia to Ohio’s capital Columbus. After a delay of approximately 1 ½ hours - mostly resulting from the waiting line at the short-staffed Immigration Office in Philadelphia - we were happy to see that Cynthia’s landlord and his wife were still patiently waiting for us at the airport. Cynthia had had a warm contact with him and his family in the preceding weeks (including several Skype sessions), so he had offered to pick us up from the airport, drop us off at a hotel and drive us to Athens the day after. After a thirteen-hour flight combined with a reasonable jet lag, we still could not decline his offer to meet their daughters at a German Bierhaus and get something to eat. All in all, we had a really nice first evening with good German-style beer and Quesadillas from a food truck – I guess this is what Midwestern hospitality is really about. 

Snowy Court Street

Having arrived in Athens on Sunday, we thankfully had a full week to organize our schedule, and resolve all bureaucratic matters. The three courses I picked are Introduction to Strategic Communication, Communication Writing and PR Planning – all offered by OU’s Scripps School of Communication. Last but not least: The Global Leader Ship Center Course. 

Every instructor seemed to have been to Leipzig so far and only had kind words for our Alma Mater. Dr. Brook Beshah, who serves as an academic advisor for the GLC class, even graduated from Leipzig in the 1990s and invited us to a “Kaffeeklatsch” (his words!) on our first day. He’s still fluent in German and is excited to return to Leipzig for the Transatlantic Summit. Patricia Cambridge (who teaches my PR Planning class) spent a couple of weeks in Leipzig, admires Bach, loved going to the Thomaskirche, and just started learning German again. Professor Wagner (who teaches the Intro Class to Strategic Communication) uses German phrases (“Wo ist das Wasserklosett?”) to illustrate the brain’s memorizing process when saving unfamiliar information.  

Almost everyone I have met so far in Athens seems to be of German descent (at least to some extent), meaning that the grandfather, grandmother or great-great grandparents emigrated from Germany at some point. That (and the fact that Athens has its own Aldi), the hospitality and welcoming of the GLC students make this town feel closer to home than it actually is. In my next blog entry I’ll definitely be able to talk a little more about academia, so far classes have just started and there’s little to tell. However, I’m really excited to see what the next couple of weeks have in store for me.

Germany in the U.S.