A Good Cuppa

Just had the best cup of tea since I arrived in this fair country over three months ago. No it wasn't because of the organic fair trade Darjeeling tea bag that made it, (although it is always nice to taste tea free of the blood of oppressed workers), it was because for the first time since my arrival here, I bought some milk, full fat organic milk to be exact. And oh boy does milk (especially full fat organic non-UHT-shite milk) make tea taste better, mmmm. I must say I have developed a taste for tea of the past couple of years. I used to never drink it. then at uni I gradually did, and the taste grew on me like a slow-growing poison-ivy. But now, when made right, it tastes, well, like home really.


In other news: Since my last blog entry on the more mundane aspects of my life (that was about a week ago now, jeez how the time flies), things have been proceeding apace. Last week at school was good generally, even when ignoring the Christmas market (see previous post), I felt busy, which I liked, cos as the saying goes Jesus is coming, look busy. Went to the environment meeting on Tuesday, Thursday I generally dossed about cos my German lesson was cancelled. I got an email from my History Year Abroad Essay supervisor who seemed generally supportive of my topic, and told me to read a book he's written about the topic, which I have got to track down here in Dresden (it's on the library system, but seems to be in a Professor's private collection, buggerations).

Weekend: Friday I met up with some of the other assistants for the first time in ages at a party, good to see em, and since all good things come in twos (I know it's threes), I went to another gathering with em on Saturday as well. Saturday day was spent pounding the streets and the Christmas market looking for stuff to buy as advent gifts. The staff are doing wichteln, which is secret santa but for the whole month of advent, you're supposed to give gifts every two or three days, I gave one last week, so I bloody made sure I stocked up on stuff to give for this week. Went to little Christmas market at the castle called Schloss Nothnitz (small pathetic excuse for a castle if you ask me, just a small manor house with a spirally corner) which is about a minute away from my front door. Today was ok as monday's go, and that brings right up to now with my cuppa story....

Christmas market and that warm fuzzy feeling

"You only realise what a school ethos is when you go into a school that doesn't have one." The words of the former Deputy Headmaster at my old secondary school during one of his assemblies came flooding back to me on Wednesday. But this wasn't because I was observing a school without any ethos, quite the opposite, I was seeing and feeling it in spades.

Preparations for the Christmas Market at Mittelschule Schmiedeberg had been underway for a couple of months beforehand, deciding who was doing what and so-forth. However all the laying out of the tables and setting up obviously happened on the day. School finished early at 12:30, in order for there to be time for people to have a break and then set up. Each class was doing one part of the Christmas Market, and everything was meticulously planned, with each stand being in a specific place. The pupils duly returned at about 2pm, in time for final preparations for the start at 2:30, then it started raining. Now while plan A had been meticulously planned, plan B was non-existent, resulting in what I like to call organised chaos, as teachers and pupils went to action stations and started moving tables, benches, and food inside to the little hall inside from the pupils entrance. The melee of children, tables, teacher ans chairs took quite a while to subside, and once it had the Christmas Market was already well and truly in full-swing.

Parents, grandparents, local villagers and friends of the school were all bustling around looking at the crafts, buying gifts, drinking mulled wine and eating chocolate apples. But before I could properly stuck into food and drink, we were all summoned by the headteacher into the sports' hall for a nativity play of sorts. It involved pupils from our partner school in the Czech Republic, who acted it out, while it was narrated in Czech and German by both pupils from the Czech school and our school respectively. After this there was a dancing contest between two of class sevens. I didn't vote because being a fluffy lefty liberal nerd I didn't think it was nice to select a winnern from two classes.

After the dancing it was back round the stalls for more eating and drinking. I quickly found the disadvantage of having gone into most of the classes at the school; that all the pupils seemed to know who I was, and consequently came up to me trying to sell their wares. I ended up buying a glass of mulled wine (twice), a school calender, the pupils' school magazine Der Spind, some dough ball things, a Christmas card, some hot chocolate, and some chocolate grapes. The last three I bought from the stand being run by mentor teacher's class, well they are the nicest class to teach, and they seem to like me (can't think why), so how could I refuse? And having supervised them making the chocolate apples and grapes, I suppose I had to really. Although they weren't having much luck with shifting their hot chocolate, the price was dropping faster than John Prescott's pants (oh dear the imagery).

I was quite enjoying the walking around the stalls, although I did occasionally take refuge from the crowds in the staff room. I eventually wandered back into the sports' hall just in time for the school choir. Consisting of girls from nearly every class (not entirely sure why there were no boys, either it was a girls choir or the lads aren't interested), they sang some lovely Christmas songs beautifully, enough to give me that warm and fuzzy feeling inside. The choir ended with John Lennon's Christmas song “so this is Christmas, and what have you done....” you know the one. And with the words “.....and a very merry Christmas and a happy new year, let's hope it's a good one.....” still in my head, I left school at a very late 6pm, into the dark and cold outside, but warmed by mulled wine, hot chocolate, lovely singing, and being a small part of a wonderful school ethos.

Theological and Revolutionary Musings

This is something I've being mulling over for a while, so here goes.

As an Atheist (although I have verged on Agnosticism sometimes), I do not believe there is a god (yes this is stating the obvious). Whether he (or she, let's not be sexist here) is the god of Judaism, our god the father, or Allah of Islam, I don't believe he (she, it) exists. Now you can't prove this, but you can't prove the flying spaghetti monster doesn't exist either, now granted there's a load of texts supporting the existence of a God, whereas there isn't for the flying spaghetti monster, but still. So I am about 90% sure he/she/it doesn't exist.

However for the purposes of this argument I am going to say that he/she/it does exist. It is partly based on a hazy memory of a play about Irish navvies in the 19th century, the name or plot I can't remember, but it isn't relevant. What is relevant, however, is one of the lines in the play. When a navvie is asked by a missionary whether he believes in God, his response was something like (you'll forgive me, it was a few years ago now, the memory is somewhat hazy); "believe in him, aye, tolerate him more like". Hilarious, well I found at the time anyway. Yet the point it raises is an interesting one; that should a divine being exist that you don't have to see it as something totally positive.

The way this can be seen is in five questions which I once heard Tony Benn say he would always ask if he met a powerful man; "If I meet a powerful man, I ask five questions: What power have you got? Where did you get it from? In whose interests do you exercise it? To whom are you accountable? And, how can I get rid of you?" We can use the same approach for a divine entity.

Starting with the first question; what power does this god actually have? We're told through the various faiths that he is all-seeing all-knowing, in other words omnipotent. However how do we know this? Could this be a sham? Could the myth and fear of his/her/its power be keeping us asking the truly searching questions. Let me put it another way; can he/she/it really strike us down with a bolt of lightening? If not, then why are we not questioning him more often?

This question of what power this divine entity has leads us conveniently onto asking where on God's green Earth he/she/it got them from? Did this divine entity always have these powers? Or are they a badge of office? If they are a badge of office then by what right does he/she/it still have them? If they are born with those powers, then surely it's time he/she/it gave them away? However for sake of argument we will say that god is an office with powers like any other office.

Leading me on to the next question, in whose interests are the powers of the office of god exercised? Ours? Just life on Earth? Or all life-forms across the universe? Or are other divine beings responsible for these? If it is just the beings on Earth, and other divine beings are responsible for other planets, then he/she/it is not really omnipotent (or divine for that matter). If this power is therefore exercised in the interests of all, how does he/she/it reconcile the inherent differences of reconciling the wishes and needs of so many different peoples on different planets, in different galaxies, quadrants, universes dimensions etc? Simple fact is, it must be a pretty hefty task even for someone so powerful and amazing as that. Do we really need a generally overseer? If I am honest I am sure the myriad life forms in all universes, time zones, dimensions, quadrant, galaxies and systems will get along just fine on there own. However, if I am wrong, and we do need something in overall command of the whole operation, would it not hurt to try somebody different in the position of god for a wee while?

If this is so then how do we go about doing this? You see because if god has been in power for so long, and has not thought about handing over, then I doubt the person will go willingly. I mean as far as we are aware even to people of faith god is not really accountable, it's really a one-way thing. If you believe, you have to believe everything, and worship and obey etc. You have to explain yourself to him, but does he to you? Never! Now granted according to mythology god did create the whole universe, and I suppose you could see this as his thing, he made it, so he gets to play with it. Except playing here, means playing God, in a very literal sense of the word. No I'm sorry he is not accountable to anyone, not even the people who believe in him, means only one thing we need to get rid.

Lack of accountability and a desire and need for fresh ideas are not the only reasons for carrying out our own bit of regime change. Let us look at the facts here. Here is a man (or a woman or a thing) who has been in place for according to him 6,000 years, and according to us a billions of years. Since our planet formed and humans evolved he has been telling us to worship him. Now I ask you, what kind of ego do you need to have to want to be worshiped by everyone do or three times a week communally and several times a day privately? It also does not set the best example to our children. No-one should be worshiping anyone, liking yes, complimenting by all means, but getting on your knees or bowing? It is that kind of hierarchical authoritarian thinking that got so many monarchs overthrown. There is also the apparent need for the guy to be associated with every good initiative going. He/she/it apparently created the universe (ok, fair enough, you may have kicked the whole thing off), but he/she/it then insists that he/she/it is responsible for the Earth, the human race, all other animals, (and I therefore assume all animals on all other planets, see above paragraph). This is one big ego, Tony Blair is nothing compared to this.

So here is what I am trying to say, we should not stand for it any longer. I mean why does he/she/it still get to be god, (heck, why even did he/she/it even get to be god in the first place), we should all have the opportunity to have a go. Once we've ousted him/her/it, I would suggest (but I am open to other suggestions here) elections every five years, anybody over the age of 18 can stand or vote, and no-one can serve more than a maximum of three terms. My manifesto: solve the universe's problems and abolish heaven and hell on the grounds that the principle is elitist. Face it god, your days are numbered, to quote Karl Marx you are the opium of the people, well not anymore. To sum this up even quicker; God, you are the weakest link, goodbye!

Catch-up Post 2

Last time in Julien's life, he met and battled with a Morven, and wrestled with new timetables, now for an even greater challenge, the Tom!

The rest of the week passed without great incident or noteworthy thing to report. Taught a new class H7 which was interesting, and they seemed to be ok with me, so tis all good. The only other thing was that on Thursday my German language class was cancelled, which meant I was at a bit of a loose end on Thursday, but I did a little bit of reading for my German Year Abroad Essay, so that's all good. Also downloaded skype at some point during this week, and started using it!

Tom arrived on Friday afternoon, after dumping stuff back at mine we went back into Dresden, met up with my former housemate Manuella, and we went to the christmas market, after a Gluhwein, Manuela went on her way. Me and Tom stayed and had another one. We went then to have something to eat met up with Manuella again before she went off to a party. Went onto another bar for a few more beers, before heading home. Saturday I showed Tom round Dresden, and we ended up back at (guess where) the Christmas market, more Christmas market stuff was consumed, before we headed home to warm up, (gawd was it cold). We then met up with Tomek and went for a few drinks in a couple of bars.

The next day me Tomek Louise and Tom all went to a photographic exhibition, at least we tried to, cos we couldn't find it cos it was closed, we then tried to find a Christmas exhibition at the city hall. That was closed as well (this was Sunday we're talking about). So plan c was a trip to a cable car up a hill which is in the east of the city. Twas fun, we walked down, cos we're glutton for getting cold like that. We found a small Christmas market near the bottom of this cable car, which was cool cos it was, smaller, cosier, and less crowded than the main Dresden one. The fact one of the stalls where we got out Gluhwein (amongst other things) gave us a free shot, probably also endeared it to us. Then it was off to one of the bars near uni, before Tomek and Louise headed home. Me and Tom then went to a Chinese in Neustadt. Went back to the station, and Tom got his night train home, although not before accidentally leaving his hat, so I now have his uber-cool hat until the next time I see him, woohoo!

Catch-up Post 1

Gawd it's been nearly 2 weeks since I last posted, no excuse for it really, apart from the fact I have been really lazy. But anyway may as well catch-up.

Well since the last post I've had two amazing weekends. For the first the ever-amazing Morven came to visit which was brilliant. She arrived on the Thursday night and left on the Sunday, and inbetween time amazing fun was had by all. Took her to my school on the Friday (she didn't mind, or so she said, before anyone has a go at me for taking my guests to work). It was fun, took her into classes 7a H9 and 5 and fun was had by all. We then bussed it into Dresden, and I showed her the highlights (and lowlights I'm afraid, but you kinda have to walk past them) of my lovely city. This included a late lunch in a decent restaurant which I quite like, which is just within my price range. Having said that Morven sneakily paid while I was in the toilet, although I got my own back by paying for getting into the Frauen Kirche and other things later. And so it continued throughout the weekend, with neither of us wanting to let the other one pay for stuff, she just wouldn't let me be a gent, nor I her a lady, what are friends like, eh? Think it actually worked out evens in the end, so twas ok!

On the Saturday we went to the football, saw Dynamo Dresden beat the might St Pauli 3-0, saw my housemate at the game, didn't know he was a fan! The police presence was massive, the game's a bit of a derby, which explains why the main road going past the stadium where the trams go was blocked off with police in riot gear and helicopters flying overhead! Got in and out no problem and there was no trouble as far as I could tell. Dynamo didn't play well first half but were 2 up in the last 4 minutes before half time both goals from Alexander Ludwig, one a well worked corner, the other a penalty. Played far better second half but missed a hat full of chances, Vorbeck eventually getting the third with seven minutes left.

Saturday night we went to on a mini-bar crawl, mini because it only involved 3 bars. Met up with Tomek and Louise as well, and then joined by Katrien after Louise had gone to another engagement (the socialite). Spent ages at the first bar, before going to the really cheap Barenzwinger night finished at 2 in Katy's Garage. Sunday Morven left, as the saying goes, all good things most come to and end, rest of the weekend was rather non-descript really. As for the res of the week, that was fine two, worked out my new lesson timetable at school, doing more lessons, but that suits me fine, means tis more interesting working with more and different classes and teachers! Catch-up post 2 follows soon!