Monday, May 22, 2006

Trewin News: May Day

If you can stand it, here's another discursive diatribe of dissociative details on daily life here in Deutschland.

May Day

May 1 is Labor Day here in Europe. Apparently it came from the communist countries and was picked up the the Western Europeans as a good excuse for a holiday. Even older is the tradition of the Maypole. As one would expect, this tradition has its roots in the pre-Christian times. In past centuries, as in this century, the maypole is cut from a straight, sturdy tree many meters high and taller than a telephone pole. The cutting and trimming of the tree is done now with power tools by the men of a village. Then it's carried into town and painted, to be erected only on the first of May. The raising of the Maypole can only be done with brute strength. Before it has been erected, it makes a very tempting target for the men from another town. The men of the town must keep watch over the pole through the night, and naturally this requires refreshment. There is a tradition of stealing one town's Maypole in the middle of the night, when the watchers are drunk. Prescribed rules for stealing the maypole and for its recovery, or for the capture of the thieves in the act, govern the watchers and the would-be thieves. Every year there is a Maypole bedecked with Bavarian blue and white in Munich's Viktuallienmarkt, the massive food market in central Munich. By the way, the whole point of the maypole is that it's the centerpiece of a traditional spring dance.

A couple of links follow.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maypole_tradition_in_Bavaria

http://upload .wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/7/7c/Viki-Markt.Maibaum.JPG/200px-Viki-Markt.Maibaum.JPG

Soccer Fans Take a Walk on the Mild Side
Last time I wrote about how the police turn out in riot gear with the dogs for the important soccer games. "They are dealing with soccer fans, after all. Maybe you've heard how rowdy the soccer fans can get in Scotland and England. The fans are almost that rowdy here!"

I have been advised by a soccer fan with international experience. This source tells me that German soccer fans are "mild" compared to UK soccer fans. The most violent UK soccer fans ("yobs", a step above hooligans) have their passports taken away before big international games so they can't travel abroad and cause trouble.


Love art, will travel
The last April weekend we were in Munich visiting old friends. It was a good weekend. Munich is a nice city. We explored a new art interest there. In a special exhibit on Expressionism from Berlin and Dresden, we saw paintings and woodcuts by a group of artists called Die Brücke (The Bridge) that formed in the early 20th century. ( http://www.hypo-kunsthalle.de/newweb/ebruecke.html) The exhibit traveled to Munich because another important group called Der Blaue Reiter (Blue Rider) was based there. One of the Blue Rider group is my new favorite, Franz Marc. (http://www.franz-marc-2005.com/eng/html/0_0_e.html ) His colorful paintings of animals are very accessible, but express a spirituality that Marc found purest in the animal world. Toward the end of his life, he ventured into abstraction. Still very easy to look at because of the intense pure colors, but very complex. Some of you might have seen the large print of his painting of three horses that we had in our dining room in Niskayuna. Tragically, he was killed in action in the First World War.

Some Peasants wear shoes

Shoes. Bought 3 pairs in one week. Must be a record for me. I actually found 3 pairs of shoes that I liked and existed in my relatively small size somewhere on the planet. Because of my small, hard-to-fit feet, it's very easy to pass by most shoe stores and shoe departments. Imelda Marcos's record is safe from me. The shoe thing illustrates how, despite walking almost every day through Consumer Lust Central (the shops in downtown Erlangen), it's taken 3 months to feel comfortable enough with the language, the different styles of shoes and clothing, and the many different store types. To actually recognize from among the bewildering array of choices something I want to buy requires the filter that comes from repeated exposure to such a dazzling multitude of offerings. Some clothing and shoe styles are so out there, either in price or style, that I don't have to even think about them, viz. long, pointy-toed Italian shoes, anything with heels, or the ubiquitous wrinkled cotton rags, that are made to fit 20-somethings with no hips. Let me tell you, there are a lot of skinny, tall German women out there.

Munich is a very artsy town, with lots of well-dressed people. And skinny, skinny women. While I was enjoying my traditional Bavarian meat ravioli with an onion-butter sauce and creamy potato and cucumber salad, one of those tall, skinny, blond German women sat down at the table near us and ordered a salad. And mineral water. I felt like a total peasant. Eat like a peasant, look like one, I guess.

The Scandinavian genes have definitely made a contribution to the population in Germany. Where it is common for some Americans to be broader than they are tall, here I notice a greater proportion of tall people among the general population, and in general less overweight, particularly among people under 40. Our upstairs neighbor, Susi, is as pretty as Liv Tyler, and tall and slim. That said, I have seen some grossly obese people, one on a Moped, and plenty of people who don't fit the tall, slim mold. There are also people who fit the solidly built, square-jawed peasant mold. I have also heard that there is a problem with anorexia and related diseases among women here, which isn't acknowledged publicly.

The German Language
Primitive but complicated. Primitive in its expression of complex concepts, because there is no Latin or Greek to fall back on. Gravity for instance, from the Latin word for weight, in German is expressed as "Erdanziehungskraft," earth-attraction-strength. But take a given root word, and add any one of a number of prefixes to it, and it takes on the opposite meaning, or some other meaning seemingly unrelated to the original root word.

German is relatively uninfluenced by Latin vocabulary, but nonetheless some concepts are expressed similarly. For example, "survive" and "überleben" are made of words with the same meaning. Latin prefix sur- means "over" or "above," and -vive comes from the root for "to live". The German word is identical: "über," meaning "over" or "above," and "leben", meaning "to live." Some German and French words have similar roots, untouched by the Roman influence. "Auberge," a French inn for travelers, and German "Herberge," express the same concept. They both originated from the related words "berg," a hill or mountain and "burg," a sheltering fortress most often built on top of a hill, combined with the concept of a shelter for soldiers, "heer." So the concept Heer Berge, a shelter for soldiers (a bunker) became the root for Herberge and Auberge. ( www.arte-tv.com, a site in French or German only. The program is called Karambolage)

All that being said, many English words are in common use in German. "Surfen", for example, means to surf the Internet. "Zappen" means to channel-surf on the TV. "Checken" means to suddenly understand something. "Mailen" means to send an e-mail.

In the "...And now for something completely different" department, we have the dialects. Franconia, our area, has its own, called "Frankisch". Frankisch uses words like "bissl" for "bisschen" meaning a little. "Net" is used for "nicht" meaning not. Frankisch has a whole different vocabulary than Hochdeutsch (the German you learn in school). A sales associate once approached me in a clothing store and asked me something, but it was unrecognizable as German. I swear, she rolled all the letters in her words, even the ones that weren't Rs. One hears older women on the bus speaking a gentle, rolling, pleasant-sounding language, that one might not take for German. In southern Bavaria, around Munich, they speak "Bayerisch". One of the Bavarian radio stations has a daily feature, "Bayerisch for Beginners." Hamburg and Hannover are the seats of Hochdeutsch as the local speech pattern. The northernmost cities and provinces have a dialect with words and sounds very similar to English. The funniest thing is, that dialect speakers from the extreme north and the extreme south cannot understand each other.

Recent Highlights
The highlight recently was Stefan Meyer's visit. A friend from ABB and GE days, he was doing some training seminars in Munich, only 3 hours away (2 hours by the fastest train), and so came to visit, with his girlfriend Sereena. They are a good couple, and have been together for at least 3 years. We had a lot of fun, despite a very rainy Saturday when we took a "walk in the countryside" through hail and rain, Sereena and I in our new shoes. Sereena is an American from California who came to Switzerland 5 years ago for the experience of working in Europe. She is my age. She works as a dental hygienist, both at the University of Zürich and in a private practice. Stefan now collects wine. It was very interesting to hear him describe his hobby. We compared notes on our GE days. We told them about how "happy" we were while working at GE. Sereena got an earful.

We went to Würzburg, a nearby city full of history, to see the Prince-Bishop's Residence (built in the 18th century for Prince-Bishop Carl Phillip von Greiffenclau). Massive Tiepolo frescoes on the ceiling (3 years in the making), giant marble staircases suitable for making a grand entrance under the frescoes, and ornate goldwork in a mirror-room to rival Versailles. The massive frescoes on the ceiling of the entrance hall establish the Prince-Bishop's place in Classical mythology as well as his place in the heavenly and earthly hierarchies. Angels take his portrait toward heaven, his likeness watching over the representation of Europe, master of the world. Asia, America, and Africa are all represented by fantastic figures, America by a half-naked, brown woman crowned with feathers astride a giant crocodile. There are allusions to cannibalism in the New World. This fresco is the largest fresco in the world. (I guess the Sistine chapel was done in pieces in between frames formed by the stone structure of the church.) The frescoes in the main hall survived the war because of the architectural genius of Balthasar Neumann. The mirror room, however, was greatly damaged. Restored after the war, it's a palace, for a "Prince of the Church;" so much for that vow of poverty that goes with priesthood, I guess.


Did I mention Germans love vacation?
Thursday May 25 is a holiday here (Ascension Thursday), so we are spending the long weekend on a trip to Switzerland to visit old friends.

Germans, especially Bavarians, have lots of holidays sprinkled throughout the year. The Bavarians celebrate a lot of Catholic holidays. And maybe you've already heard that the Germans are very fond of going on vacation for 2 or 3 weeks at a time. They can't imagine the 10-day tour of 12 European cities that Americans have to do. There is a 2-week break in the schools for Pentecost (June 5). The Burwitz family is going to the Italian Riviera during this break. Our neighbors upstairs just returned from 2-1/2 weeks in the south of France. Italy is the number one vacation destination for Germans, and the US ranks as a dream vacation location that in spite of its perceived drawbacks (violence and the government's politics) is still desirable, although not necessarily a place that they will really visit.

The Social Scene
We are taking a German class Monday and Wednesday evenings. Often we go to the local teahouse with a couple of our classmates after class. We usually end up speaking German with our classmates, who are from Portugal, Columbia, Spain, Egypt, Belarus, Russia, Uzbekistan, Poland, India, and Kenya.

Our social scene is different than when we were in the States, more active. I guess it's a different set of people here. We had our upstairs neighbors (young married couple) for a simple evening meal, the Burwitz family with their 2 school age girls here one Sunday afternoon, and recently had two German-Brazilian couples over for dinner. The German men were both colleagues of Richard's when he was here 12 years ago, and for this present sojourn they were his sponsors, so to speak. They are both married to Brazilian women, and they both can speak Portuguese with their wives as well as English. One of the wives speaks no English, so we spoke German almost the whole evening.

Richard works with a professor from Swarthmore, here on a sabbatical. He and his wife were here 15 years ago while Nelson worked for Siemens for a year. We have exchanged dinner visits. Nelson's wife, Barbara, is a frequent shopping and swimming companion. She has a couple of long-time German friends, and one of them is a tutor of German. Barbara and Nelson lived in Niskayuna for a while when Nelson worked for RPI. He has also worked at Livermore Labs. They have two grown children with concomitant grandchildren, 5 in all. Barbara is a natural athlete, very active, and very careful about what she eats. She sets a good example for me, and is a type of food-conscience. But I am still in the try-everything-at-least-once stage, and so have a good bit of recovery to do already.

The obligatory web link
Richard and I both have blogs on the internet. They are currently in the formative stages, so don't expect much. A couple pictures, and maybe eventually old issues of this newsletter. Don't laugh at our simplistic presentation. With this burgeoning social life and weekend trips to keep the content of this newsletter up to our low standards, we don't have time to mess around on the computer! The links are:

cardinaltrees.blogspot.com
and
rtrewin.blogspot.com

Stay Tuned...
Next time we will have a trip to Regensburg, ancient Roman outpost and later Imperial city of the Holy Roman Empire, to report on. And probably details from die Schweiz (Switzerland), which in an old German dialect means "beautiful place."

We are thinking of you all, and missing you. The lilacs, spireas, and rugosas are in full bloom here and we remember how beautiful this time of year is in the states. Wishing you warm weather and time to smell the roses, we sign off of this installment.

Thursday, May 18, 2006

Spring is in full swing

Running the dishwasher: a chemistry experiment. Salt for water softening, rinse aid, and detergent. Sometimes the detergent has all 3 functions in one. Hard to find one that doesn't. Dosing with all those chemicals leaves one confused about what to leave out or what is really necessary.

Meeting the neighbors: friendly women, Frau Blum and Frau Beer. Frau Blum is a cheerful, talkative woman who gladly finishes my sentences for me - very helpful for a novice in the language. Her husband spent 40 years on the technical faculty of the University in Erlangen. He speaks English and rides a low-slung recumbent bike with a windshield. Frau Beer is also friendly, about the same age. She and her husband are frequently seen around the house doing gardening, and always greet me cheerfully Frau Beer goes for walks with her 92-year-old mother-in-law, who looks more like 82.

Lawn fanatics here, too. The homeowner behind our house was applying the pressure washer vigorously all day yesterday, cleaning every hard surface around the house. They have a very green, well kept lawn, which they mow with a corded electric lawnmower.

Electric lawn mowers with and with out cords are very common here. Sure keeps down the noise.

The first people we invited to our place were the B. family, Peter and Ulla and their two girls. We had cake and coffee with them, Peter showed his pictures taken in Egypt during the solar eclipse, and his pictures from Siena, Italy. He takes such beautiful pictures, that I feel like I've already been to the places he photographs. The girls watched Harry Potter in English -- Anna is learning English in school-- and Pia, the younger, drew a picture of the Easter Bunny's Easter egg factory that stretched over several pieces of paper and was very precise. Ulla asked for the banana bread recipe. We spoke German the whole time. The whole visit lasted 6 hours, and none of us realized that much time had passed.

We had our upstairs neighbors down for "Abendbrot," a simple meal with cheese and bread and cold cuts, and maybe a salad. I had made a coffee cake and had just enough of Grandma Leroux's banana bread left. Susi asked for the banana bread recipe. Originally from Hamburg and younger than us, Susi & Marek appreciated the chance to practice their English. The previous 1st floor tenants were Americans, with a young child, and only had a year's contract with Siemens. Susi and Marek thought they were nice people.

We spent the long weekend traveling. (Good Friday and Easter Monday are holidays here.) We spent Friday in Würzburg, a beautiful little city that was painstakingly rebuilt after the firebombs at the end of World War 2. A famous late middle ages sculptor, Tillman Riemenschneider, lived here and worked for the Prince-Bishop on churches and palaces. We visited a museum in the castle that overlooks the city and the Main (pronounced like "mine") river. There was a special exhibit on textiles and local traditional costume that covered the last few centuries. This was especially interesting to Kathy, but Richard thought it was interesting too. There were lots of other permanent exhibits, and we spent most of the day there. After that we went to a restaurant that specializes in Frankish food and wine. (Würzburg, Erlangen, Nuremburg, and Bamberg are in a region called Frankonia, which is named for the Franks, who were a Germanic tribe that lived here. The tribe spread to France, which is how France got its name.) We had a wonderful meal. Richard had wild boar and Kathy had a dish made from wild boar too. We drank frankonian wine and left very happy.

And yes, the peasants were revolting (Mel Brooks, History of the World Part I). One revolt in the 1500's was joined by the Mayor of Würzburg, Meister Til Riemenschneider, and he was imprisoned and tortured for his sympathies. That was toward the end of his life, and it put a real damper on his heretofore prolific artistic career.

The next day we went to Bamberg. We started the day by stopping at a Cafe for a "Bamberger", which is one of the many types of German Croissants. (see enclosed photo.) We spent most of the day in the old Cathedral and in the diocesan museum that is in the attached cloister. The only Pope buried north of the Alps is in Bamberg, and we saw the 1000-year-old, gold, silk vestments that he was buried in. (The vestments were removed in 1942, probably because of the war.) We saw more sculptures by "Meister Til" Riemenschneider, and lots of interesting architecture. We had another wonderful meal; Richard had the local wurst specialty and Kathy had goose. The goose was very tasty with crispy skin and a light gravy. We had to leave a little early in order to buy some groceries before the stores closed for the holiday. We also wanted to stop by a little town on the way home to pick up a lamp for the dining room. (I'll be installing that today.)

In Bamberg, the cathedral is devoted to the sainted King Henry II, and his Queen, also sainted, Kunigunde. Funny names to us, but they actually lived in the 11th century. That was long enough ago that several legends about the saintliness of their lives were rampant, and their tomb in the Cathedral is carved (by Meister Til Riemenschneider) with scenes from their lives. Queen Kunigunde is rumored to have walked unharmed over hot plowshares to prove her innocence and virginity. She was an intercessor on the level of the Virgin Mary at the time. This is the only case I have personally encountered of people who were reported to be saintly and miraculous (mostly after their deaths), who actually existed. Fascinating. We saw their 1000-year-old ceremonial robes in the Cathedral museum.

We were surprised to learn that the Bamberg bishopric was at times a haven of humanism and middle class commerce. During the past 1000 years, the fortunes of the town went up and down depending on the rule of the Cathedral Canons, and other wars. However, the middle ages in Bamberg weren't so dark or bloody as the 1600's and 1700's were at times.

Easter Sunday we went to Nuremberg to see a special exhibit about how Franconia was added to the Bavarian state just 200 years ago. A lot of history happened around here in just those 200 years. Franconia and Bavaria were separate until 1806; Nuremberg was the industrial city and Munich (in Bavaria) was the art city. The union was both financially advantageous for Franken and forced by Napoleon, but it resulted in the looting of many Franconian church treasures during the secularisation that Napoleon enforced (I think that's right; history buffs feel free to enlighten me). The church treasures, some from the middle ages, were transported to Munich or melted down for the precious metals. Apparently a wave of nostalgia for the "good old days" of the 18th century followed. Traditional costumes (lederhosen, wool jackets, colorful dresses-see photo) became popular again, and artists painted romantic views of the countryside, all green, with peasants rejoicing in the fields. Also in the 19th century, the fairy tale castle of Neuschwanstein (the one that Cinderella's was modelled on) and King Ludwig II's other pretty castles were built. That is in part how Bavaria got its fairy tale image.

Did you know that the Barbie doll has its origins in a doll made here in Franken from a comic book character? "Bild Lilly" (literally, picture Lilly) was so popular here in the post-war years with her pretty face, feminine figure and stylish clothes and hair, that Mattel bought the concept, and the rest is history.

We found out the key to the big soccer rivalry between the two cities. Nuremberg held the German championship until 1969 when Munich won it. Munich won again in 1972, '73, and '74. The fans get really intense about it. There are bumper stickers here in Frankonia that say, " I don't brake for Bavarian soccer fans," (the team from Munich) and "Don't honk: the driver is dreaming of his soccer club," that is, the Nuremberg team. Every soccer fan has one or more knit scarves with his team's colors on it. The scarves are tied around the wrists, and sometimes the neck and waist, too. There are songs for each team, and before the important games, you can hear the fans singing their songs on the way to the game. They generally occupy a whole train car, with open beers, singing and drinking and rocking the car all the way from Nuremberg to Munich. The police are always prepared for the big games. They show up in great numbers at the train stations, sometimes in riot gear, and with German shepherds in muzzles. They are dealing with soccer fans, after all. Maybe you've heard how rowdy the soccer fans can get in Scotland and England. The fans are almost that rowdy here!

History is very important here, at least to me. I have a lot of catching-up to do, in order to understand local history. The fuzzy concepts that one learns in high school -- Reformation, Thirty Year's War, Huguenots -- It all actually happened here, where I am living now, and influenced how cities rose and fell! One time period that we have yet to see more of is the centuries before 1000AD. Roman ruins and old Germanic sites also abound here. We certainly got a good dose of history Easter weekend.

Tuesday, May 16, 2006

More Pics: Saturday Market in Erlangen

Who can resist?Colorful fruit
Café Mengin- lots of exquisite and tasty pastries, on the corner of the Schloss Platz.
Organ Grinder in Action

Saturday Market in Erlangen

A view from the Hauptstrasse of the Saturday Market on the Erlangen Marktplatz