I don’t intend on making this blog a seminar on German, only just this once I’d like to present you with one of my favorite German words: Mühe (/ˈmyːə/). A decent definition would be “effort associated with difficulties and burdens” (I translated this from Duden). Translations would be “trouble,” “labor,” “hassle,” etc. I bring this up because the past week has been full of Mühe. Here are some examples:
In my sparse free time I’ve been reading a book of German poetry called In Time’s Rift (Im Zeitspalt) by Ernst Meister. I wrote a couple papers on another one of his collections called Wallless Space (Wandloser Raum) this past semester. I was introduced to Meister by Penn State’s very own Dr. Samuel Frederick who translated these two collections along with poet named Graham Foust. If you ever thought German syntax was difficult, read this guy. I never thought I would ever be so baffled by a handful of words. This is an instance where Mühe can be fun!
This in addition to the mounting stress of recruiting more participants. I’ll have at least one more this week in addition to the five I’ve already tested. I knew it would be hard to find English native speakers here, but I didn’t think they’d be this hard to find. Having so few at one month seriously keeps me up at night. I think today I’m going to resort to street recruitment, i.e. if I hear an American/English accent on the street I’ll stop them and ask whether they want to do a study, not unlike the Mormons outside of the Palmer Museum, or the Willard Preacher preying on sinful students. I can be either uncomfortable with a lack of participants or at least know I tried while being uncomfortable in the process.
In other Mühe-related news, remember when I visited my friend who was studying in Amsterdam a few weeks ago? Well, complications have risen out of that. When I rented a bike there I had to leave them my passport as a sort of security on the bike. You can imagine where this is going. I couldn’t take the bike back the morning I left to go back to Mannheim so I had my friend take it back for me. The plan was that he would mail the passport to me once he returned the bike. I wasn’t sure whether the address I left him was correct, so I told him to hold off on sending it until I got back home and checked. He sent it anyway, and it’s been over two weeks and it still isn’t here. Major ugh. Even worse, he left for home on Monday, so if it’s being sent back to his dorm, someone else is going to end up with my passport. This is quite literally the last thing I needed and the most unfortunate thing that’s ever happened to me abroad.
So I’ve scheduled an appointment with the US Embassy in Frankfurt to get a new one. There is plenty of time to get it processed and sent back especially if I get the the emergency passport which could be issued the same day, so at least I’m not trapped for good. But: Homesickness + no passport = dread. I’d like to come back home this summer. Very much so.
These are rough times; Mühe is perhaps too weak of a word.
Mit Seufzern und Tränen,
Jack