My father followed a similar path but with an additional graduate time in the US and would agree. However, he might also start to waffle (on par with his heimat) when considering what $60,000 per annum might buy at a European school. When we are comparing a dirt cheap apartment or “kot” at a few hundred dollars a month to a $15,000 room and board, we might miss the point.
What would a student armed with a 12,000 dollars budget per 4-6 month stay buy in terms of food and lodging, plus entertainment and travel?
And I don’t know about Germany, but in France students can eat cheaply at Resto Us located throughout the city (that’s how it was in Paris.) Subsidized, decent meals for a fraction of the cost of what you’d pay in dorms. The school where I was at, the food was also considerably better than at the average college dorm cafeteria. There was free wine, too
That’s in addition to significant discounts on public transportation, movies, theater, symphony, concerts of all sorts and ballet. Even that the poshest, most exclusive venues.
I could never afford to go to world-class dance as much as I did as a poor student in France.
That would be a LOT of money for 4 to 6 months, it would be a very luxurios life for a student to have $2,000 or more per month. Here is a 2005 overview of German salaries. The amounts have not changed considerably: http://www.worldsalaries.org/germany.shtml
xiggi: I apologize. I didn’t mean to pick a fight with you; I honestly thought you had some great Emily Dickinson quote that I couldn’t remember, although it did occur to me that maybe you meant Frost and “Stopping By Some Woods On A Snowy Evening” and had gotten confused about Amherst.
However, you shouldn’t dig yourself in on this one. If you referred to “the Great NFL Team of Texas,” no one would think you meant the Oilers or the Texans. If you referred to the “Great Football Team of Texas,” maybe it could be the Cowboys, and maybe the Longhorns, but it wouldn’t be the Aggies, great as they are. In this metaphor, Frost is the Aggies, and Dickinson the Cowboys, except better…
JHS, there is no need for apologies. I only used the oblique reference as a sequitur to the previous sentence about path. Again, I am not from the Northeast and my reference was fueled by two things: at the time I was immersed in the works of Robert Frost --courtesy of a group of scholars led by CMC’s Robert Faggen – my younger sister was visiting Amherst. She did comment how she liked the library and we end up talking about it at Christmas. About that and perhaps about another dismal ending of our beloved Cowboys or Longhorns. I also remember the JFK stories and one about Frost discussing the meaning of Mending Wall poem at Amherst. I did think that Frost had a multi-years connection to Amherst as a fellow, scholar, and professor I guess that spending time elsewhere created different connections… I was not aware of similar activities by Dickinson.
I fully understand that people who eminently familiar with Dickinson’s connections with Amherst might have registered my allusion as you did. Chalk it to my regional or factual ignorance. I meant Frost but I can see why people were confused. After all, some of us are all pine and others all apple orchard.
As always, a small disagreement --if there is even one-- has become a learning opportunity. I now know more about Dickinson than I did yesterday. Next time, I’ll refer to the Poet laureate of Vermont, courtesy of Wikipedia!
Nice discussion, Xiggi and JHS. I think what is in the back of many people’s minds, even non NE’ers, is that a fairly well-known play about Dickinson is titled “The Belle of Amherst”.
