OLEC 2010 Ohio-Leipzig European Center

Back in February of Winter Quarter of the 2009-2010 academic year, 16 students committed to a study abroad trip to learn about documentary film making in Leipzig, Germany. While still in the States in mid Spring research on interesting topics with stories began without knowing little about the country and language. After 6 hard weeks of in-the-field research, classes in documentary techniques and German culture and language and exploration of the country the students are home to share their documentaries.

On the Werra

By: Andrew Thomas, Heather Germann, Kyle Ackley and Annette Drapac
To revisit their entire process, visit their project page: 3 Generations

On the Werra from Annette Drapac on Vimeo.

From Coal Comes Water

By: Brian Grady, Andrew McMillian and Max Rodriguez
To revisit their entire process, visit their project page: Post Industrial

Wächterhäuser In Leipzig, Germany

By: Victoria Calderon, Kara Brenneman and Kristen Avery
To revisit their entire process, visit their project page: Guardian Houses

Conne Island

By: Justin Matzen, Jared Towler and Abigail Geib
To revisit their entire process, visit their project page: Conne Island

Radio Mephisto

By: Alex Van Neil, Rachel O’Donnel and Lauren Byrwa
To revisit their entire process, visit their project page: Radio Mephisto

The past few weeks I’ve been home, nearly everyone in my life has bombarded me with questions about my experiences in Germany. Even now, it’s still hard for me to believe that I had the opportunity to go abroad and immerse myself in a different culture. While most of my friends were bored in Ohio, I was creating a documentary in Europe.

From the very beginning, we were thrown into the deep end. I think it turned out for the best though. I have now flown internationally all alone, had roommates from a different country, and learned to adapt to a completely different city. Independence at its finest.

I think it’s safe to say that when I arrived in Germany, I had no idea how things would turn out, and I wasn’t too confident in the project we were going to make. After all, there is only so much you can do from Ohio. As it happened, or as Bokonon would say, “As it was meant to happen,” my group stumbled upon the perfect guardian house for our project. I remember the weird looks we got as Victoria made a grand speech for an entrance, but over time they accepted us and let us into their world.

It always interests me when others lead a lifestyle that isn’t the norm, and those at the guardian house certainly did. The atmosphere was much more communal than most places I have been to. If everyone had their same ideals, we would easily live in a happy utopia.

I think I’ve been extremely lucky to see Germany. It really was a beautiful country. Taking in the countryside on long train rides to other cities was astounding. The simple beauty of small villages, open fields, and humble homes lining the tracks had an impact that I didn’t expect. At the time, it seemed like nothing important, but now they are visuals at the forefront of my mind when I think of Germany.

The people there were great as well. I’m not sure why there is a stereotype that German people are cold or distant because those that I met were very friendly and welcoming. It was especially great that we were there during the World Cup. Everyone was filled with such indescribable spirit, the public viewings of games was always so much fun.

Everyone in our group had a great bonding experience as well. At the beginning, we didn’t really know each other, but by the end of the trip we were able to make good friendships. I hope that these friendships won’t fade away with the end of summer, but I’m confident that they won’t.

I made many memories this summer that I will cherish for the rest of my life. This experience has lead me to see new possibilities in the future, more travelling, more exploring, and I know that I was part of something special.

So…I’m on a train headed for Brussels.  My friend Zack and I had wanted to go to Dusseldorf.  There were friends there with open beds, and probably food as well.  Apparently, it wasn’t meant to be.  We had no hostel booked in Amsterdam, and after four nights of what the Dutch had to offer, we were eager to leave with what little we had left of our bank accounts and dignity.  We asked the clerk at the ticket booth for a one-way trip to Dusseldorf, and he informed us that there were no trains headed for Germany until the next morning.  So, Zack asked him, “Well, what trains are leaving tonight and where are they headed?”  The clerk said,  “There’s a train leaving for Brussels in fifteen minutes.” Sounded good to us.  Brussels it is.  We said our goodbyes to our colleague Kyle Ackley, and made our way to the platform with the train headed to Belgium.

Now, as I ride along through the Dutch countryside, I find myself with the opportunity to contemplate my time studying abroad in Germany.  The chance to make a short documentary film while living abroad in Europe isn’t something that happens for many people.  I got to immerse myself in a culture that I had only previously known through my immediate family.  My dad’s side is German so I’ve gotten to enjoy many parts of their way of life, but I never got to experience it all firsthand by myself. Trying to put my time in Leipzig in perspective will be an on going process.  I feel like I probably won’t feel the full weight of my trip until I get back stateside, but I guess the best way to get the ball rolling would be to start at the beginning of my trip and work my way through.

I’ve never been very good at time management or prioritizing. So, the few days before leaving were fairly stressful.  All of the students in our program had to be in Leipzig the weekend before our first class on that Tuesday, June 15^th.  My flight left on the 11^th and I arrived on the 12^th.  My last final exam was on the 10^th.  So I had to completely move out of my house at 82 Mill Street, drive three and a half hours back to the east side of Cleveland, pack for a 6 week program (which would eventually turn into a two month trip in Europe), and still make my plane in the afternoon on the 11^th.  Also, I’m going to be a fifth year senior next year, so many of my close friends were having their last week in college while I was getting ready to leave home for about 6-8 weeks.  This just added on the pile of mounting stress that accumulated until I set foot in Germany.

But I managed to do it (with a lot of help from my parents).  I made the plane out of Cleveland, watched the US manage to come up with a draw against England while waiting for my connecting flight in Toronto, flew across the Atlantic Ocean, and landed safely in Dusseldorf so that I could wait one more hour to get on a plane for Leipzig.

I got to Leipzig, and immediately had to figure out how to get to the Leipzig Hauptbaunhof.  That would be the Main Central Train Station for those of you who aren’t well-versed in the ways of Deutschland.  One of the employees at the airport pointed me in the direction of the trains and so began an hour of trying to figure out how to purchase a ticket for the train.  I must have asked about 8 to 10 different people if they spoke English.

“Sprechen sie English?”

“A little bit…”

A little bit wasn’t going to be very helpful to me at this point.  I finally found the information center, and the train attendant there spoke great English.  She told me that I could buy the ticket there at the information center, and she also informed me that I could have just changed the language setting on any of the ticket machines near the train platform and purchased a ticket.  I was amazed by my own ignorance.  I could have saved myself an hour and a half by just pushing a button.

I hopped on the train and made my way to the Leipzig Hauptbaunhof.  There, a Leipzig University student named Carolyn would meet me and show me to the dorm rooms.  She lead me to the No. 16 tram, and we headed for the Leipzig dorm room that I would call home for the next six weeks.  We got off the tram, she handed me a folder with papers I would need, a German cell phone, and a set of keys for my dorm.  She pointed in the direction of my building, and told me, “Good Luck.”  At this point, I was starting to stress a little bit.  I entered my building, put my stuff in my new room, and had something comparable to a mini-panic attack.  Here I was, in a totally foreign country.  I didn’t know anybody in my program yet.  I had never traveled abroad on my own.  My phone was in German and I couldn’t figure out how to change it over to English, and I had no idea where anything was located: stores, food, my fellow study abroad students, etc….

So I immediately explored the folder Carolyn had given me, and found a contact sheet with everyones phone numbers.  I started calling everyone.  I had expected everybody to be living together, but apparently everyone in the program was dispersed in different rooms in three large dorm buildings.  A few of the students had plans to go get dinner together so I joined them.  That was my first encounter with authentic German bratwurst, and it was everything I ever imagined.  All of us ended up going out together that night, and had a great time.  It was our first experience at Kickers In which was an establishment that all of us would be frequenting fairly often for the next few weeks. This was the beginning of my experience in Leipzig.  It was a relief to finally get to hang out with the other students in the program, and be around a group of people who were in the same boat as me.

I think this first weekend was a big part of our initiation into Leipzig living.  It was good that all of us got thrown into the water and forced to swim.  I’m glad that I had a few days where I was forced to make friends and explore the city.  We didn’t even have Internet for the first couple days so this kept us out of our dorms even more.  It was a great way to start off the program.

There I stood, surrounded by an undescribable energy.  There was so much black, red, and yellow around me, I thought that my eyes were playing tricks on me. It was an energy that I’d never experienced before with such a massive group of people. Everyone had come alive and everyone was watching together. It’s an amazing feeling to know that you’re watching a game a long with the majority of a country. Soccer, or football as the Germans call it, is something much more than just a sport. It brought the country together. Being in Berlin next to the Brandenburg gate with nearly half a million people was special. In a place with so much history, there was held this powerful event. Germany beat Argentina that game 4 – 0, what a game for Germany.

Berka, the quieter side of Germany. We were taken there to film and get to know the Baumgartl family, who needless to say were amazing people. What I didn’t expect was that nearly an hour and a half outside of Leipzig, there was a place of such peace. I think that’s the amazing part about Germany, the fact that you can travel an hour and find yourself in a very different environment.

Making the documentary was a catastrophe at times and that’s why it was truly a learning experience for me. The first time we ventured to Berka we conducted interviews in the house that had white walls. We also used two cameras, which seemed like a good idea at the time but turned out to be more crippling and stressful. Our audio wasn’t great and we ended up redoing the interviews outside in better locations when we went back to Berka. Time management was a huge part of our trips to Berka because we would have interviews and broll to get that both were vitally important for the piece. It was important to have one of us mingle with the family while the rest of us set up for the next interview or got broll. One of the things I learned was to always have the camera ready and at hand when shooting broll because you never know what could happen. One time I happened to be outside to see Willibald Baumgartl grab a ladder. I followed him out back to find him picking cherries from a tree. I quickly turned the camera on, white balanced, focused, and pressed record faster than I ever had before. Periodically he’d come down from the ladder and hand me handfuls of cherries, but as soon as he’d look away I’d stuff my pockets full of the cherries and keep my eyes and hands on the camera not wanting to miss a single moment.

My advise for anyone else making a documentary for your first time, it’s very exciting, but take it easy on the coffee. During our first trip to Berka I was offered cups of very strong coffee that I didn’t refuse, by the time that I was setting up the interviews my hand were shaking and I had a little trouble standing still. Of course by mid-afternoon I started to crash but luckily it was coffee and kuchen time so that got me going again. One tradition Americans need to start following would be coffee and cake in the afternoon, it’s just a great idea.

One regret that I have is not learning more German before going over there. Heather would always make fun of me because often times when people told me they didn’t speak english, I would proceed to talk to them out of instinct. I guess I had this crazy idea in my head that people would understand me if I just tried hard enough, this was generally not the case.

Andrew Thomas

I like to step back after I have an experience and contemplate what it is that I got out of it. At the same time, while I’m in the experience I like to be fully immersed in it and save a lot of the reflecting for later. I’ve been reflecting on my Germany experience since I’ve been back home. When people ask me about Leipzig I then go into every possible detail to try to do this unique city justice. All I can think however, is how I wish that Susan Baumgartl was here with me to talk about it. Susan had a certain knowledge and love for her city and her country that anyone could hear from her words. It was the kind of knowledge and love for history a person could never learn in a history class. History in a classroom can be so broad and factual but that’s just touching the surface. History can also be very personal, and it’s those personal stories that are the heart and soul and that drive us.

I was taken a back by the Baumgartl family, of whom, our group did our documentary on. Their personal stories made German history come alive for me. It was as if we’d been filming the documentary over the last sixty years. I’m very grateful that we had this opportunity and that the Baumgartl’s opened up to a us. This family like many others, had been living their quiet peaceful lives after the re-unification, with no one knowing what they had been through. It’s amazing what we found and dug up in such a quiet town like Berka…and I think that Heather, Kyle, Annette and I are better people for even knowing them.

Andrew Thomas

Despite the common mistake of judging an individual or culture too quickly, I found myself making this habit a general tendancy when first arriving in Leipzig. However, after a stay of six weeks it becomes easier to remove oneself prom pre-existing prejudice and the ease of broad generalizations. What I have found to be a fundamental difference between the Germans and the Americans (despite how cliché it may sound) is in the way we choose to combat our image.
Over the past century, Germany has bore a legacy unlike any other country, being the impetus behind two world wars, genocide, and a stringent socialist system. But what one sees today when they witness the broader culture, is a society rooted in democracy, equality, environmentalism, and national service. Let us take two common practices within Germany to illustrate this; recycling and a mandatory two-year service in the military or domestic service. For Americans, the act of trash removal is the most meaningless and routine part of the day, a commonplace task that is overlooked and yet bears extroadinary weight in it’s environmental effects, and the overall reputation of a wasteful populace. However, in Germany most take the time to separate their trash and do so in a refined and neat way, even though the amount wasted is usually in small doses. Recycled glass and plastic bottles are recollected for cash, making it possible for the impoverished to grab some money, all while cleaning up the streets. In the end, Germany reflects it’s desire to progress not simply through its innovation, but through the cnstant chore of maintaining a beauty within their environment, and making sure this will remain as such for their upcoming generations.
As well, the government has made it mandatory for all students upon graduating high school to either serve the state in work or to enlist in the military for two years. Rather than the commonplace American habit of graduating and then milking mom and dad for a while, Germany instills a national unity and national pride through a system that allows one to engage this requirement in a way they see fit. Take a look at our own nation and what does one see; economic disparity, spoiled children, washed out parents, and corruption. That is not the problem inherently, rather the fact that Americans see their country in this way and make no unified effort to combat their reputation is. I may have seen Germany as a lederhosen-wearing, war-mongering, society of pretentious Europeans, but all Germans see their country as a country of change, one that will show the world what a nation should look like. Just look at the red, gold, and black banners waving outside the Brandenburg gate; this is what Germany wants the world to see and rather than putting up a façade, they work each and every day, in every task they perform, to make this a reality.

Finally being back in America is amazing. Its sad knowing that I will probably not get the chance to go back to Leipzig, but in the end there is no place like home.

In the last six weeks we have worked so hard. We produced a documentary. Which I know seems like “Ok. Duh. That was the whole point” but you don’t realize how much of a big deal that is til you’ve spent three days locked in a German dorm room with your team. To me, it was a great accomplishment that Team Mephisto was able to produce a documentary like this. Of course, we had a lot of help. There was a lot of checking in with Sam, Frederick, and Brandon and it would not have been possible without those in Germany will to help us both in front of the camera and behind. I think in the end we owe it all to everyone that made it possible.

Inside Radio Mephisto from Lauren Byrwa on Vimeo.