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.