71 Years Ago Last Night

I had forgotten about this when I wrote yesterday’s post, and was only reminded of it this morning while watching some of the news coverage of the events in Berlin.  Fifty one years before it became the night that the Wall fell, November 9 was the Night of Broken Glass.  A 17-year-old Jewish boy living in Paris had walked into the German embassy and shot the official there in protest of his family back in Germany being expelled to Poland with no possessions and no money.  Within two hours of the official’s death reaching Germany, members of the German secret police, in civilian clothing, carrying pickaxes and sledgehammers, went out into the night and acting on very specific orders, destroyed nearly every synagogue in Germany, along with Jewish cemeteries, schools, shops and houses.  Dozens of people were killed and thousands rounded up to be sent to concentration camps.  Although Jewish persecution had been escalating under the Third Reich for some time, Kristallnacht is often cited as the beginning of the Holocaust.  In 1988, historian Max Rein wrote, “Kristallnacht came… and everything was changed.”

In 1989, it became a night when everything was changed again.  It is a night to celebrate, but also to remember that which cannot be replaced.

 

Twenty Years Ago Today

Twenty years ago tonight, the world watched as the Berlin Wall, both literally and figuratively, began to fall.  On our televisions, we saw the now-iconic images of East Germans dancing on top of the wall in front of the Brandenburg Gate, of people attacking the concrete with sledgehammers and pickaxes, of the masses of people streaming through the open gates and celebrating together in the streets.  I was nine years old, and this event marked the beginning of my awareness of the greater world.  Over the next two years, I watched the Iron Curtain come down, the Cold War end, Germany reunite, the Soviet Union dissolve, and my country go to war in the Persian Gulf.  I remember thinking that maybe there were always such momentous things going on in the world but I had been too young to notice.

To celebrate the anniversary, I’m spending the evening tonight with my two favorite East Germans.  I’m having dinner at Markus and Karen’s place and we’re going to watch Good Bye Lenin!, a poignant and very funny movie about a guy whose State-supporting mother went into a coma just before the Wall came down, and the lengths he goes to to keep her from discovering the truth once she wakes up.

For some non-fiction video, below are a couple clips from YouTube.  The first is a really nice six minute documentary about what actually happened to open the German borders.  The second is the segment from ABC Nightline that aired November 10, 1989.  Near the end of the clip, Ted Koppel asks the reporter in Berlin, “Are we getting carried away with all the champagne bottles, or is this one of those pivotal moments in history that people will still be writing about fifty years from now?”  Looking back, it’s hard to believe that could have been a serious question.

The “Change” as they call it here happened peacefully, but the last twenty years have not been easy.  I know, now, about the struggles Germany is still having to reunite itself, and they are serious ones, but I had no idea of them before I moved here.  I don’t think most foreigners do, and I think the Germans are proud of that.  They present the strong and united front of a prosperous and successful country, whatever the family squabbles may be behind the scenes.  And that is a truly remarkable achievement.  Congratulations, Germany.  Happy Anniversary.

 

Jack-a-what-did-you-call-it?

Halloween is a fairly new holiday in Germany. There are pumpkins for sale in the store, but people tend to use them whole as decoration (or maybe eat them? I really don’t know what Germans are doing with their pumpkins).  One thing they do not usually do is carve them.  Outside the expat community, jack-o-lanterns are known only second-hand through American movies and TV shows.  So on Saturday afternoon, I was pleased to be able to introduce two enthusiastic Europeans to the fine art of pumpkin carving.

Karianne and Mischa with their first pumpkin carving efforts. Very scary!

Karianne and Mischa brought their pumpkins over to my apartment Saturday along with Karianne’s sewing machine so I could turn the fabric I’d bought in Bonn the week before into curtains for my bedroom.  I  now have two very nice curtains, and a rod to hang them on but no screws to attach the rod to the wall and no drill to put in the screws even if I had them.  Someday I will have a fully furnished apartment…  sigh.  But anyhow.  Pumpkins were carved, fun was had, seeds were roasted, and Mischa’s house had the only jack-o-lanterns on the block (and possibly much farther).  Karianne took a lot of pictures of the whole carving process, so if/when she posts them on her blog and/or gives them to me, I will share them with all of you. (No rush, K!) :-p

Waitress slicing some really fresh Parmesan for my pizza.

For dinner we all went to the same Italian place in Spich that Karianne and I stumbled into the night she helped me move.  I’ve been wanting to go back ever since and order the pizza  that involved the giant cheese being wheeled out on a cart.  The pizza turned out to also involve arrugola and prosciutto, two other things I like very much, and so was highly worth the trip.  The leftovers also provided an excellent opporturnity to horrify Markus with tales of cold pizza for breakfast.

 

Angela Merkel’s Quiet Revolution

One of my friends on Facebook posted a link to this article in Slate magazine about German Chancellor Angela Merkel.  It’s a really interesting look at German (and European) politics and the woman behind them.

By Anne Applebaum

Did you know that there were German elections in late September? Were you aware that the German socialists were soundly defeated? Had you realized that there was now a new government in Germany? No? Then give the credit—for both the victory and the fact that you haven’t heard about it—to Angela Merkel, Germany’s chancellor, who will address a joint session of Congress on Tuesday.  And even if you did know all of that, you might as well cheer anyway, because Merkel’s achievement is far greater than it seems…   click here to continue reading.

 

Celebrating Fall

I brought my camera to lunch at work on Friday to take a picture of the gorgeous maple leaves but Markus insisted on getting a photo of me enjoying the leaves as well.  What can I say?  There is nothing like the smell of a good leaf pile.

Last Thursday night, I had Piotr my new Polish officemate, along with Markus and Karen, over for dinner to celebrate Piotr’s arrival, and Karen’s move to Cologne, and my new apartment, and fall in general.  After reading my recent sweet potato post, Markus requested them, so the meal ended up looking a lot like Christmas usually does at my house: pork loin, sweet potato casserole (with brown sugar and pecans on top but no marshmallows), warm bread, salad, and cranberry sauce, made from fresh, straight-from-America cranberries that just happened to be on sale at Rewe.  I did not, however, buy any drinks and so was forced, with many apologies, to serve my guests tap water.  Well, it was supposed to be an ‘American’ meal.  My favorite part of the evening was possibly when Karen raised her glass for the first time, drank, and exclaimed in surprise, “Das ist Leitungwasser?”  This is tap water?  Why yes, yes it is.  If only you’d known how delicious it was all this time.  hehe…  It’s like being in the Peace Corps: spreading understanding and friendship and good old American values, one native at a time.  They all liked the sweet potatoes too.

 

Zum Rotweinwanderweg

Germany is known mostly as a producer of white wine, but there are a few regions where they make red wine as well, and one of them is the Ahrtal.  The Ahr River flows into the Rhine just south of Bonn, and the steep, slate sides of its valley are lined with vineyards.  The Rotweinwanderweg (Red Wine Hiking Trail) winds through the woods and vineyards of the Ahr valley above quaint little wine villages below.  Every fall, the towns hold wine festivals to celebrate the harvest and producers set up stands along the trail where thirsty hikers can sample their wares.

Karianne and I met at the train station in Bonn about 11 o’clock last Saturday morning and set out for the village of Altenahr.  The train was packed to standing room only, mostly with elderly Germans sporting rucksacks and walking sticks.  Those old folks do like their wine.  Luckily, most of them got off the train before we did and the trail was never too crowded.  Altenahr is a fantastically cute town presided  over by a ruined castle which we visited before following the grape-embellished signposts to the trail.

The Rotweinwanderweg runs about 3/4 of the way up the valley and passes through both forest and vineyards.  When not in the forest, you get really fantastic views down across the valley.  The fall color was about at its peak, making it even more beautiful.  From Altenahr, we walked east to Mayschloss, where we descended into town and found the wine festival, booths of food and drink set up in the town square with tables and music.  An ABBA medley was playing when we arrived, but before long some musicians took the stage with more traditional German tunes, and some of the old couples got up to dance.  It was very cute.

From Mayschloss, we hiked past Rech to Dernau, where we caught the train back to Bonn.  We never actually bought any wine from the four or five places we passed along the trail, because by the time we wanted something, they were all sold out of Federweißer, which is the one thing I wanted to try.  It’s “young wine”; a sort of cloudy white grape juice that has very recently begun to ferment, giving it a high sugar content and low alcohol content (my kind of drink).  It produces a lot of carbonation and so cannot be stored in sealed bottles, and must be consumed very quickly, making it even today a seasonal product that is only common in grape-growing areas.

Back in Bonn, Karianne and I hit up one of the department stores, where I picked out fabric for my bedroom curtains and we both got a little too excited about the crafting possibilities.  We had dinner at a place called Cafe Bisto Pendel, a dark, formerly smoky pub kind of place.  I had a strawberry milkshake and a cheeseburger, which weren’t bad.  Smoking has been banned for several years now in Germany, and in this particular establishment, smokers seemed to have been relegated to the upstairs, but in order to allow smoking at all, the whole place has to call itself a “smoker’s club” and as smoker’s clubs are for members only we had to become “members” by signing our names to a piece of paper on a clipboard before they would serve us.  Ah, loopholes.  However, I can now claim membership in a German smoker’s club, and you never know when something like that will come in handy.

In Altenahr

Karianne in front of Areburg

Me and another bit of the castle

View from the castle ruins

In some places, the trail went right between rows of grapes.

Karianne demonstrating Nordic walking

At the wine festival in Mayschloss

In Mayschloss

The vines grown on steep, slate slopes.

Another view of the valley

 

10 (Small) Things That Make Germany Different From America

When I was preparing to move to Germany, I knew some things would be different.  The electrical sockets.  The language.  That frosty German reserve.  But I have also discovered a lot of small differences that aren’t mentioned in any of the guidebooks.  Here are some of the daily reminders that I’m not in Kansas anymore, Toto.

• Doors: They don’t close flush with the door frame, but have a lip around one side (to stop drafts?).  Door knobs are never round.  Interior doors (like to the bedroom and bathroom) always lock with keys. The keys go in the locks with the teeth facing down.
• Germans use 2-hole punches instead of 3-hole.
• Milk comes only in 1.5% and whole.
• Traffic lights turn yellow before becoming green as well as before red.
• Wedding rings are generally worn on the right hand.
• Toilet paper squares are actually rectangular.
• There are no screens on any of the windows.  Windows are able to both  swing open from one side and tilt open from the top.
• Linens: Beds have only a fitted sheet, never a top sheet.  Pillows are big and square.  Instead of blankets, duvets of varying thickness with covers that match the pillowcase are used.  Two people sharing a bed will each have their own duvet, and sometimes their own mattress.
• Light switches are large and flat.  They are pressed rather than flipped.
• Vehicles are required to have yellow turning signals in the back, rather than the red ones usually seen in the US.

 

I have a destination!

The Eastern European Metropolis which I will be visiting is…

Stockholm!

Right.  So Stockholm is not in Eastern Europe.  I know.  See, the best laid plans…

When I went to book the surprise flight tonight, even though it said there were flights available on the calender, when I went to make the booking, it wouldn’t go through.  Exclude fewer cities, it said, even when I wasn’t excluding any at all, or change the dates.  I played with the dates but couldn’t get anything for this weekend or next weekend to work.

So I went to the runners up.  I picked the Western European Metropolises over Culture because it required excluding fewer places.  The possible destinations were Barcelona, Berlin, Lisbon, London, Milan, Rome, Stockholm, Vienna and Zurich.  And I am going to Stockholm.  I leave Cologne at 6:55 next Friday morning and get back at 5:55 pm Sunday evening, so I get almost three full days to explore.  I’m glad I didn’t opt for three nights… the only thing I know about visiting Sweden is that it is supposed to be terrifically expensive.

But the Blogosphere has spoken, and I will not forget about the cities of Eastern Europe.  I need to look at my calender again and figure out when I can work in another weekend away.  And then I will book a surprise trip to somewhere in the east.  In the meantime, I need to start reading up on the friendly folks to the north…  Scandinavia, here I come!

 

And the winner is…

The poll has closed and the winner is….

Eastern European Metropolis!  I will be going to either Belgrade, Bucharest, Kiev, Krakow, Sarajevo, Sofia, Warsaw or Zagreb.

The selection of eastern cities took an early lead and never looked back.  It came in first with 8 votes, followed by a tie between cities of culture and western European metropolises, with 4 votes each.

I think it says something interesting about my friends and family (or at least my blog readers) that they would pick the list of least-known and most exotic destinations.  There is a world of difference between Rome, London and Milan, and Bucharest, Zagreb, and Sarajevo.  I have to admit, I don’t actually know what countries more than half the cities on that list are in.  Admittedly, those countries have changed an awful lot during my lifetime, but still, these are not places at the top of my must-do-in-Europe list.  So thank you for getting me out of my comfort zone.  I’m hoping this will be a little like Semester at Sea, where some of my favorite counties turned out to be the places that I never would have included on my own itinerary (like Malaysia and Brazil).

I don’t have time to book the tickets tonight, but will do it tomorrow and let you know exactly where I’m going.  Stay tuned, and thanks for voting!

 

An Afternoon in Brühl

I am continually amazed by the degree of agency I have in my own life.  Part of this, I think, has to do with living in a place where rail travel is so common.  There is something about standing in a big train station like the one in Cologne, with all different types of trains pulling in and out, bound for places you have always heard about but never been to, and know that you could just hop on to any one you like.  No one checks tickets at the door, so even if you didn’t take the 2 minutes to buy a ticket from a machine, you’d get a fair way to somewhere before getting kicked off.  It’s an entirely different mentality than air travel, and full of unlimited possibilities.

I woke up last Saturday morning with absolutely no plans, but the weather was so nice, I decided on a last-minute jaunt to Brühl.  Brühl is a smallish town halfway between Bonn and Cologne, actually not very far from where I live, but on the other side of the Rhine, so it still takes about an hour to get there.  Brühl gets its own entry in Lonely Planet Germany, for three reasons: the palaces, the museum, and Phantasialand, Europe’s first Disney-style theme park.  Phantasialand is on my must-visit list for next summer, but it was the other two things I was interested in on this trip.

In the early 1700s, Clemens August of Bavaria became Archbishop of Cologne and a Price-Elector of Holy Roman Emperors, one of whom turned out to be his brother Charles.  (You might remember my post about Trier, where I visited the very pink palace of another Elector from about the same era.)  And because what else is an Archbishop of the Holy Roman Catholic Church to do with his power and wealth, Clemens built himself two fantastically lavish palaces away from the hustle and bustle of the city, using the very latest designers from France, and connected the buildings with the vast Schlosspark, where he could indulge his fancy for falconry.

Augustusburg, the main palace, is very big and very yellow.  And in the early hours of an October Saturday afternoon, it was swarming with wedding parties.  I counted at least five.  Around every corner there were small groups of men in matching suits standing and smoking, while cold-looking women in white strapless dresses were perpetually hurrying off to somewhere else.  All that finery was a little intimidating, so I bypassed the main building (which can only be seen on a guided tour anyway… I may have to bring Markus and Karen here…) in favor of a stroll through the gardens.

The gardens are Baroque, whatever that means, but they are expansive and very, very formal.  Everything is planned, geometric and symmetric.  I have never seen such square trees.  The fountains were not on and the ground looked like it had very recently been dug up for winter, but all the beds were still lined with tiny little hedges in geometric patterns.  On the far side of the gardens was a forest, cut through with broad, tree-lined avenues leading to Falkenlust, the smaller but equally lavish hunting lodge.  Walking between them takes awhile, but it would be the perfect distance to traverse on horseback, or possibly in a carriage, if one were wearing a really nice gown.  Walking through here made me feel like a character in a Jane Austin novel.

Falkenlust is relatively tiny, with only about four rooms on each of the two floors.  You are free to wander through them as you like, but you have to wear felt slippers over your shoes that makes it seem like you’re ice skating across the parquet floors.  The ground floor has a dining room, a sort of living room, and the guest bedroom suite.  Upstairs is August’s private quarters, with his bedroom, dressing room, a coffee salon, and one room where the walls are completely covered in mirrors and Chinese porcelain.  The whole place is done up mostly in blue and white, the colors of Bavaria, including the grand stairway which is covered with 5000 blue and white hand painted tiles from Holland.  You are not technically allowed to take photos inside, but the mirror room was so fantastic that I waited until the docent wasn’t looking and snapped one anyway.  Shhh… don’t tell.  According to the pamphlet, seven-year-old Mozart visited Falkenlust in 1763 and noted the mirror room especially in his diary.

As I walked back to the main palace and to town, my first thought was that there was no kitchen in Falkenlust.  It must have been in one of the low outbuildings, where the lowly common folk toiled.  The second thing was that it suddenly seemed no wonder that Mozart had composed the type of music that he did, if he grew up surrounded by places like this.  His music is bright and intricate and exquisite, exactly like the rooms I had just been viewing.   It’s the music of lavishly clothed nobility dancing in twinkling, mirrored halls.  I suddenly understood how it was possible to describe both music and architecture as Baroque.  Thanks to the minor miracle of modern technology, I could actually indulge these musing while listening to Mozart’s music on my iPod as I walked.  [Note:  The palaces are actually early Rococo (the architectural style that followed Baroque) and Mozart is considered a  composer of the Classical era (the musical style that came after Baroque) but still, you get my point.]

Back at the main palace, I continued on to the Max Ernst Museum, just a few blocks away.  Max Ernst was a 20th century artist born and raised in Brühl.  He attended the University of Bonn before leaving to spend most of the rest of his life in France and Arizona.  He was a prominent member of the Dada movement and an early surrealist, so some of his art is very dark and very strange.  But he also made these really charming and playful sculptures of funny, geometric creatures with big eyes and endearing smiles.  I first saw one of these sculptures (and indeed, first heard of Max Ernst) at the Modern Art Museum in Bonn last winter and have been wanting to visit the museum dedicated to him in Brühl ever since.  It did not disappoint.  I saw plenty of wonderful sculptures and a lot of other interesting things as well, including a small painting of a woman from the 1930s standing on the terrace of Augustusburg with the gardens in the background, which I found particularly delightful.

By the time I was finished with the museum, it was getting late and wet and dark (curse you winter) but I wandered over to the other train station so I could see a little bit of the town along the way.  The picture of the two little square guys below is a Max Ernst fountain in front of the courthouse.  The rest of Brühl isn’t much different than most German towns… a pedestrian zone lined with a few historic buildings and a lot of chain stores in ugly and/or nondescript modern buildings.  Not that I’m complaining about the stores.  I popped into a Galleria and got a couple new pairs of socks.  I was tempted by but did not actually get an F.C. Köln rubber duckie-shaped goat.  I figured I should actually go to a game first.  Don’t worry, it’s on the list.

Augustusburg

Side view

Some of the formal gardens

View across the pond

More gardens… and forest

Avenue of trees

Falkenlust

Room of mirrors

In front of the Max Ernst Museum

Max Ernst creatures in a town fountain