Just like American newspapers, the Sunday
Badische Zeitung includes lots of ads (not that you can actually go out and buy anything in Germany on a Sunday, of course). The Edeka supermarket chain has a flyer in today's paper that sheds some interesting light on southern German culture.
The cover tells us the theme of the week: "Feiern wie in Bayern" ("Celebrate as they do in Bavaria"). A smiling, curly-haired young man holds up a glass of Bier. He is wearing Lederhosen and a Trachtenhemd--a special shirt to be worn with Lederhosen. The combination of beer, Tracht, and celebrating Bavarians can mean but one thing: it's time for Oktoberfest, the 16-17 day festival that starts in September and runs until the first Sunday in October.
Ah, but the Trachtenhemd is a giveaway: these are not real Bavarians, but Badisch depictions of Bavarians. The shirt has those fake-horn buttons that make Stefan's mother Helen cluck her tongue disapprovingly, and the photographs on the following pages have similar subtle clues to their inauthenticity.
Take the smiling young woman on the next page. Her blond hair is in braids, and her kitschy Dirndl (see below for some non-kitschy ones) is adorned with jim jams and trinkets. She holds a tray with five glowing beers. But something is not right. Were she a real Bavarian working at Munich's Oktoberfest, the glasses would be mugs, and she'd be holding perhaps as many as four in each hand--eight liters total--which would require a little more muscle on that slender frame.
The next page cuts to the chase. What signifies Bayern better than a Bretz'n (soft pretzel) and a headless, Dirndl-foisted bosom? Carol Adams, the author of
The Sexual Politics of Meat, would probably have some interesting things to say about the placement of the phallic Weisswurst (white sausage) below the waist.
And now for some images of real Bavarians in action. Way back in July, Helen's village, Steinebach am Wörthsee, hosted this year's Huosigau Fest. The Huosigau is the region of Bayern centered in Weilheim, south of the Ammersee; it includes Steinebach and the towns around the Wörthsee. The Fest featured a long parade of the various local wind band societies, with everyone dressed in their own very local, traditional Tracht--far more elegant and modest than Edeka's stereotypes.
When people in Freiburg ask me where I learned to speak German, I tell them "mein Mann kommt aus Bayern" ("my husband is Bavarian"). This once elicited the response, "ha, really? But Bavaria isn't in Germany--it's a separate country--and we're happy for it to stay that way!" While Freiburgers might say this facetiously, Bavarians would say it proudly.
Exciting news to report today: my first sighting of honest-to-goodness Wadlstrümpfe, and on the legs of none other than Wassily Kandinsky himself, one of the pioneers of abstract art in the 20th-century! The dark green calf-stockings were captured by Gabriele Münter in her 1912 painting, Kandinsky mit Erma Bossi am Tisch ("Kandinsky at the table with Erma Bossi"). The table in the painting was in Münter's house, in Murnau, in Oberbayern, so I'm guessing the Wadlstrümpfe were the real Bavarian thing.
One of the swell perks of living in Freiburg is that when your kid learns about a European artist at school, like Elias is now learning about Gabriele Münter, it's often possible to hop in the car and, within a few hours' drive, see original works by that artist. Thus it was that Elias and I drove an hour north to Baden-Baden today, to visit the the Museum Frieder Burda for an exhibit of works by artists of the group Der Blaue Reiter--Marc, Macke, Kandinsky, Münter, Jawlensky, Werefkin, Klee, and Campendonk. (Stefan, alas, could not join us, as he's busy being an academic in California this week.) The beautiful, airy museum was built by publishing heir Frieder Burda to house and make public his art collection. The paintings we saw today were on loan from the Städtische Galerie im Lenbachhaus in München.
Baden-Baden, like Badenweiler and all the other Bad- and Baden- towns around here, has been a popular spa town since Roman times if not before. The name Baden-Baden means "Baden-in-Baden" (like "Freiburg im Breisgau"), meaning "the town Baden that's in the state Baden." It's like saying, in the U.S., "Rochester, Minnesota" versus "Rochester, New York."
As we walked to the museum, we passed through the Trinkhalle, where Elias tried a sip of the healing waters.
