Zürich and Schaffhausen*

On Saturday morning, Elias and I walked to the Hauptbahnhof and took a train to Zürich, joining Stefan for the weekend in Switzerland's largest city and one of the wealthiest and most expensive cities in all of Europe. Zürich was used by the Romans as a tax-collection site, and it was probably named by earlier occupants before the Romans ever got there.

On sunny Saturday, we did a self-guided walking tour through the old town, where we encountered charming Gaessli (wee alleys), the largest clock face in Europe, Sprüngli chocolates, decadent bejeweled and gilded antiques costing tens of thousands of CHF, and a Lamborghini. The chickens were nervous about the high price of Mineralwasser, but we humans thought it tasted better than any we've had so far. Perhaps you get what you pay for.

On cold, rainy, grey Sunday, we walked up into the hills to the Zürich zoo; afterward, we caught the Georges Seurat exhibit at the Zürich Kunsthaus. I promised Elias I would mention the pileated gibbons on the blog. The highpoint of our zoo visit was watching a young gibbon relentlessly taunting his papa, the papa gibbon responding by grabbing, chewing on, and kicking said offspring, and the mama gibbon stoically serving as "base."

Saturday evening, we took a train to Schaffhausen, on the Rhine, to meet up with one of Stefan's colleagues and his wife for dinner. Records of the town date to the 11th century. M. and D. showed us the scenic Rheinfall, Europe's largest waterfall, in neighboring Neuhausen, as well as Schaffhausen's 16th-century fortress, Munot. We walked from Munot down the hill into the Innenstadt, where D. explained that one of Schaffhausen's architectural trademarks is Spionfenster (spy windows)--small rectangular holes in the sides of oriel window boxes that allowed modest Medieval women to look out on street activity without themselves being seen.

This quick trip exposed us to the delights of Schwyzerdütsch, an expansively lush, gangly, and angular Alemannisch dialect, all elbows and knees.

*Not in Southern Germany.

Bairisch and Alemannisch

In July, as we drove across Bavaria en route to Baden-Wuerttemberg, Stefan kept saying things like, "over this next hill, the dialect changes," and "in that town over there, they speak a different version of Bairisch." I'm assuming the very specific, very local differences in the language reflect a historical tendency for people to stay put: that is, it's not uncommon for Germans to remain in the vicinity where they grew up.

Local language differences are also abundant in Alemannisch, a dialect spoken in Baden-Wuerttemberg, among other places. The Badische Zeitung has had a bunch of articles on Alemannisch lately, coinciding with the recent publication of Rudolf Post's Alemannisches Woerterbuch fuer Baden (The Alemannisch Dictionary for Baden). As one article pointed out, the ever-popular root vegetable known in high German as a Kartoffel (potato) might in Alemannisch be called a Herdepfel, Erdaepfel, Herdaepfl, Herdoepfel, Grumbeer, or Grumbiir, depending on where you are. While the etymological connection between -offel (Kartoffel) and -epfel (Erdapfel) is nifty, even niftier is the conceptual connection between an Earth-apple (like the French potato, "pomme de terre") and a Ground-pear (Grumbiir).

I certainly hear a difference between Bairisch and Alemannisch. Mainly what I hear is that Bairisch involves a lot of long, drawn out vowels and diphthongs--as in "Booooaaaarisch," which is how Bavarians around Steinebach pronounce "Bairisch"--while Alemannisch is wispier and more sprightly with its consonants.

I can do decent conversational approximations of Bairisch. I know how to boss people around and to curse, as in "Gehma! Packmas! Horst mi! So a Kaas!" ("Let's go! Let's get packing! Listen to me! What a cheese!"). I can also end a telephone conversation with my mother-in-law: "Also. Also, pfirdi! Pfirdi! Also, pfirdi!" ("OK. OK, so long! So long! OK, so long!"). ("Pfirdi" is supposedly spelled "Pfuad di," but I just don't hear it that way.) For the foreigner who has difficulty remembering the gender of nouns, Bairisch conveniently smushes almost all of its articles into "a/an" or "d'/'s," regardless of gender, as in "a Bisserl" ("a little"), "an Oachkatzlschwoaf in veteriol Oi eidaucht" ("a squirrel's tail dipped in vitriol"), and "d'Frau/da Mann/'s Kind" ("the woman/the man/the child"). Bairisch phrases that get said a lot in our house include "Was is' des Ding da?" ("what's that thang there?") and "scho' schee" ("schon schoen," meaning the equivalent of "real nice" in Southern drawl).

The nuances of Alemannisch are still beyond my grasp, but the diminutives -le/-li are both accessible and charming. Examples are plentiful on trail signs in the woods, identifying places like "Fuchskoepfleweg" ("Wee Fox-Head Way") and "Jaegerhaeusle" ("Hunting House-let"). There's also a well-known hiking route called the "Wii Wegli" ("Wine Way-let") that traverses the wine country of the Markgraeflerland region.

To hear how much Alemannisch pronunciation varies over how little geographical territory, check out this nifty audio website: http://www.alemannisch.de/unser_sprooch/tonprobe/index.html.

Tuniberg

In our effort to give him much needed quality time with kids his age, Elias started a five-day "Bernd Voss Fussball Camp" today in Opfingen. By this evening, he was well exercised, tired, and quite happy.

Opfingen is one of a handful of small communities incorporated into Freiburg yet situated several kilometers to the west along the Tuniberg, a sizable hill terraced with vineyard after flourishing vineyard. While Elias was learning new soccer moves, I jogged from Opfingen north around the Tuniberg to Gottenheim, then walked back over the hill, enjoying in the views of grapes and the mountains beyond. In July, when we stayed in Waltershofen (one town north of Opfingen, also part of the Freiburg municipality), all of the grapes on the Tuniberg were green. They have since ripened into purple, red, and yellow-green clusters, and the season of new-wine fests is upon us.

The local wines are quite delectable. With Deutsch-als-Fremdsprache enthusiasm, I've been describing them to people here as tasting like the local dialect sounds: "leicht und knusprig" (light and crisp). This generally elicits skeptical looks, perhaps because most folks here haven't spent a lot of time listening to the extended diphthongs of Bo'arisch (Bairisch), where a simple three-letter word might be drawn out into a four- or five-letter one without a second thought (e.g. turning "gut" into "gu'at[h]"). Bavarian sounds more like a full-bodied red might taste, in contrast to the airy Spaetburgunder flavor of the Badisch dialect. My word choice is possibly also confusing because "knusprig" means "crispy" as well as "crisp," which might evoke images of words and wines infused with rice crispies. Nonetheless, I stand by my choice of adjectives.

As my friend Melissa points out, molted cicada shells are also light and crispy. For those who find that analogy helpful, I would suggest that full-bodied reds are the whole cicada: more than you'd necessarily want to encounter on a warm summer evening. With Badisch Spaetburgunders, you get to appreciate all the essential features of the cicada, without the undesirable heaviness of the squishy parts.

But back to the Tuniberg. In the Google Earth image below, you can see the entire hill (my trot covered only the north end). The Rhine river curves into the left of the image, about 8.5 km west of Opfingen as the cicada flies.

Gottenheim and Breisach

Elias, in bed reading, wanted to know why he had to go to bed, whereas Stefan and I get to stay up late and drink Ovaltine. I told him it was because we’re grown ups and we have all the power. Seeking justice, he asked, “so will I get to stay up until 9:30 and drink Ovaltine when I’m grown up?” You got it, kid.

Now that his head has hit the pillow, we’re finally enjoying some quiet. From the moment Elias and I stepped out the door this morning, until now, he’s been chattering non-stop. Setting the bar high for most of his verbal communication today, he started by finding out how “Puff the Magic Dragon” would sound if he used his fingers to hold his tongue outside of his mouth while he sang. Then he lowered the bar.

After Stefan went to work in Freiburg, Elias and I walked from Waltershofen to Gottenheim—about 5km along the ridge of the Tuniberg, following paved bike routes that meandered past vineyards and fields of corn and overgrown asparagus. Upon entering Gottenheim, we discovered a park with a zip line. Elias could have stayed all day, but instead we headed down to the Bahnhof and caught a train to Breisach.

Breisach is on the east side of the Rhine River; on the other side is France. The town is an odd mix of the very very old (some bits and pieces go back to the 12^th century), 1950s post-war modernism, and industrial storage tanks. About 85% of the town was destroyed in World War II.

High atop the town is the St. Stephansmünster, built between the 12^th and 15^th centuries, and restored after the war. Near the Münster, we found a small stone memorial and a chilling plaque: “To the memory of the Breisacher Jews, who on 22 October 1940, together with all Badisch, Pfälzisch, and Saarländisch Jews, were deported to the concentration camp Gurs in the French Pyrenees. We cannot alter the past, but the future lies in our hands” (2004). The Breisach synagogue, built in 1804, was burned down in November 1938, shortly after Kristallnacht; another memorial (which we didn’t go see) stands on that site. There's apparently still an active Jewish community in Breisach that serves the town and the surrounding communities.

After lunch, Elias and I played a round of mini-golf at the dumpy mini-golf course across the street from the RV park on the Rhine, then went for a walk around Breisach’s Eckartsberg. Eckartsberg is a terraced vineyard; its walls include parts of the original city walls dating from the 14^th century, and on top are some remains of old city fortifications with the European flag flying in the breeze to symbolize unity.

The walk along the Eckartsberg is designated “Lyrik am Weg,” a walking tour that includes plaques with poems. We observed two genres of poems: those of the “O Rhein, your wines are so great” variety, and those of the “O Rhein, you separator of formerly fighting nations now at peace” variety. Among the former was this tidbit from Goethe: “Trunken müssen wir alle sein! / Jugend is Trunkenheit ohne Wein...” (“We must all be drunk! / Youth is drunkenness without wine...”). There's more to the poem, but I was greatful to Goethe for those first two lines. Perhaps 8-year-olds jibber-jabbered in his time as well.

Among the latter variety were poems such as this by Lina Ritter (1888-1981): “Warum trennt uns e Rhi? / Ass mir zeige chenne, wie / me Brucke bäut.” The poem is in Alemannisch, the dialect spoken in this region, so the sign translated it into Hochdeutsch: “Warum trennt uns der Rhein? / Damit wir zeigen können, / wie man Brücken baut” (“Why does the Rhine separate us? So that we can show how one builds bridges”).

The Eckartsberg walk took us close to the freeway over the Rhine, and Elias decided we should walk to France. Alas, the site of his first steps on French soil did not show the country in its best light.

Stefan met up with us in Breisach after work. After more wandering and dinner, we drove home—stopping off at the very fun zip line in Gottenheim, the highlight of Elias’s day.