A cosmopolitan classroom

FRS 144: Berlin

About a week ago, on a flight to Berlin, I was sandwiched between a window and a foreign girl with whom all I shared was an inhibiting language barrier. Sitting there, I tried to momentarily suppress my post-midterms exhaustion and think about my own expectations for the trip that all the members of our freshman seminar had been looking forward to since the beginning of the semester.

I knew that I would love Europe and get to know my 13 classmates well over long days packed with museum visits. I anticipated learning the essential tourist phrases “please,” “thank you” and “excuse me” in German. But any expectations of a positive experience severely underestimated what would be an incredible, genuinely rewarding week with FRS 144, “Things Come to Life: Explorations in Modern and Contemporary Art.”

Our freshman seminar focuses on the ideas and development of significant art movements of the 20th and 21st centuries. In Berlin, we visited a total of 15 exhibits that contextualized the abstract themes we had been studying throughout the semester. In only one week, we were fortunate enough to see some of the most important collections of modern art in the world and meet with the curators, directors and artists who put them together.

Many of the paintings, prints and installations we saw were awe-inspiring. Sometimes, however, our visits were also exercises in expanding our definition of art. Eventually, our perplexed expressions took on some form of mild admiration as we analyzed disturbing sexual photographs, a film that showed a cow defecating in reverse or a case full of moldy oranges.

The lines between art and non-art became so blurred that at one exhibit we had to verify that the plastic rectangular prisms on the floor were in fact benches and not priceless installations.

Granted, having come out of a taxing midterm week, there were moments when it wasn’t so easy to stay awake (almost all of us were guilty of slipping into two-minute power naps during a contemporary music concert at the Philharmonie). But, in true Princeton spirit, we made sure to take advantage of every engaging experience and push off sleep until it was impossible not to do so. Also, seeing that we were a concentrated group of Princetonians, it was hardly surprising that as we walked from exhibit to exhibit, the conversation would switch from dramatic recitations of Carly Rae Jepson’s “Call Me Maybe” to discussions about the effect of the medium on representation of duality and motion in a specific art piece.

Coming from the culture of heavily chaperoned high school trips, it was refreshing to have our professor grant us generous independence. We didn’t want this freedom to go underutilized, so, armed with lists of recommended bars and clubs from anyone we have ever known that has been to Europe, we went out to explore Berlin’s nightlife.

While we were not always successful at getting into the better local hot spots, we created memories every time we navigated the streets of downtown Berlin, laughing and reflecting fondly on the day’s events.

Before the trip, my interactions with most of my classmates consisted of sporadic whispers in our three-hour weekly seminars, quick bathroom trips together outside of Marquand during our four-minute class breaks, and friendly waves around campus. The trip presented the ideal opportunity to bond with the classmates we sat across from every week but hardly really knew.

With every day of the trip, we all got more comfortable with each other, and soon everything got infinitely more fun. Now that we’re back on campus, what used to be freshman seminar will become a weekly trip reunion where we will have enthusiastic discussions about contemporary art filled with momentary bursts of laughter whenever we are reminded of the funnier times we had together in Germany.

This trip brought classroom material to life, fostered friendships among our classmates and enabled us to establish a comfortable relationship with our professor that will be invaluable in enhancing class dialogue and learning. But it also served another purpose. Our Berlin experiences often demanded that we compare German culture with our own, whether it was during conversations about Berlin’s history with locals or as we passed by a political rally in the heart of downtown Berlin.

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People often speak of college as a time in which we must strive to become more culturally aware and better global citizens. This trip did not merely supplement my Princeton intellectual experience: I will always look back at how it shaped the way I see the world.

Spring break ended as it had begun: by boarding a flight that would take me to a destination of hectic schedules and little sleep. I knew my reentry into Princeton craziness wouldn’t be easy, but I was glad to be going home.

As the plane finished its final descent into Newark, I realized that I landed more than a great vacation opportunity with FRS 144. I was exhausted and happy, but more than anything I was deeply grateful to have had a spring break that I will always remember.

– Yaniv Sapir

LAT 335: Rome

Writing from somewhere on the Black Sea, his barren place of exile, and quickly approaching the end of his life in 18 CE, the famed Roman author Ovid created through poetry a nostalgic, idealized vision of the Eternal City, with its marble, recently-built temples, theaters and gleaming streets. He begged the gods and the emperor to allow him to return to his ancestral land from the desolate province he had been banished to, but ultimately this wish was never granted. While Ovid was unlucky 2,000 years ago in this respect, we, the students of LAT 335: Ovid and Rome, were not, and after a mere 12 hours of bus and plane travel we found ourselves tramping over the Palatine Hill and through numerous museums, struggling with the city’s public transport system and making clumsy forays into the local nightlife in traditional students-abroad fashion.

I’ve been on summer programs in foreign countries before, but traveling with classmates with whom I regularly meet at Princeton to discuss matters such as syntax, meter and Ovid’s (surprisingly detailed) advice on how to hook up with girls at the Circus Maximus was a completely new and pleasant experience. While the hours between 9 a.m. and 4 p.m. each day were spent on archaeological site visits and museum treks requiring leg muscles of heroic proportions, we would break off into smaller groups afterwards to wander Rome’s multitude of alleyways on our own, have a look at some churches or throw enthusiasm to the wind and get a refreshing cone of gelato instead. Left to our own devices, it was easy to feel like experts of the city, hopping on and off buses and unflinchingly crossing busy streets like the locals we definitely weren’t. At dinner (7:30 p.m. every night), we would reconvene at a fantastic Sardinian restaurant near our hotel where we were fed truly enormous meals by possibly the most hospitable owners imaginable.

Hankering for a taste of the Roman nightlife, some of us would then venture back out after dinner — which in stereotypical Mediterranean fashion, was drawn out and leisurely — to find either an Italian wine bar or one of the ubiquitous pubs which usually contained an intriguing mix of young, chatty Italians and Anglophone ex-pats. In one of the pubs we visited we heard an Irish singer perform a unique rendition of Elvis Presley’s "Suspicious Minds," which I imagine will stick with those of us lucky enough to have witnessed it for some time.

Midway through the week, our already protracted trip to Rome was cut short by a trip to Naples, including one full, very sunny day stomping through the extensive remains at Pompeii, now perpetually inhabited by friendly stray dogs, the unofficial hosts of the city to the dozens of tour groups who visit every day.

We stayed at the wonderful Villa Vergiliana, a sort of haven for roaming classicists where I imagine hundreds of similar groups of Latin students have bonded over beers in the evening, games of ping-pong out in the yard or cards in the library exactly as we did.

While Ovid describes his terminal departure from Rome in emotional terms, with excessive grieving and much beating of the chest, ours was muted in comparison. The only woeful part was a cavalier bus driver’s near failure to turn up to drive us to the airport. And then, much like ancient travelers departing at the first light of dawn for a distant land, we were driven through the Aurelian wall, out of the city to catch our flight — much more confident than Ovid was, I’m sure, that our return to Rome at some point in the future is assured.

– James Corran