And then there were chickens

Everyone we know in Germany is getting a chicken for the holidays, because there's something comforting about creating a flock of cheerful chickens when you're living an ocean away from your well-equipped community pottery studio back home. In case you're wondering, the photos demonstrate that to make a chicken, you have to start with an egg.

The recycled clay this evening had clumps of unidentifiable black leathery crud in it, and there were many casualties among the eggs on the ancient 33 rpm Shimpo wheel as a result. From a bad egg comes a contaminated chicken, and who wants a chicken with a hole blasted through it due to exploding organic crud? No one, that's who.

Mist postscript

OK, I was trying to keep this a family friendly blog by sticking with the most polite synonym for "snap" that I could find. But as Nancy rightly commented, it means more than "drat." Stefan adds that I mistranslated "Mist" as well. He says Mist is the manure one shovels out of a stable ("usually mixed with urine and wheat straw"). So oddly, Mist literally means what snap only figuratively alludes to in order to convey something even more uncouth. Perhaps there's a linguistic terms for such a twist?

Chickens on tour

As I don't yet have access to an organ to practice on, and as the local pottery co-op is closed due to summer vacation, and as my excuse to strike up casual conversations with complete strangers in the park is busy attending summer camp, I'm on the lookout for ways to keep myself busy. Today I went on a short walking tour of the Altstadt, revisiting some of the sights Frau H. showed us last week.

The "Haus zum Walfisch" (Whale House, left) was built 1514-1516 and acquired its name because at the time it was, figuratively, the biggest fish in the pond. When nearby Basel went Protestant during the Reformation, several of Basel's university professors fled to Catholic Freiburg, including the Dutch humanist Desiderius Erasmus von Rotterdam. Erasmus lived in the Haus zum Walfisch from 1529 to 1531.




Two American chickens (right) imagine the view Erasmus might have enjoyed from his front door.





Guarding the door of the house are two waterspout gargoyles. Evil spirits trying to enter the house would have seen these kindred figures, realized the house was already claimed, and moved on to another place to haunt. One of the gargoyles has goiter (left), an illness endemic to the Schwarzwald.



Freiburg has official "sister cities" around the world, including lovely Madison, Wisconsin. Each of the sister cities is represented with a mosaic shield on the cobblestone street in front of one of the two Rathaeuser (right).


The chickens appreciate the hard work and artistic challenges that must go into laying down all those stones, so they don't mind that the mosaic of the Wisconsin State Capitol building doesn't clearly depict the golden badger atop Lady Forward's helmet (left).

No tour of the Altstadt would be complete without a visit to the Muenster. The entrance to the Gothic cathedral is decorated with hundreds of small statues, variously depicting scenes from Christ's life, the triumph of good over evil, important medieval residents, and a range of fantastical creatures. The chickens were unable to get a closer look at the nose trumpeter (right) due to the protective wire installed to keep pigeons away from the statuary.

After wrapping up their brief visit to the Altstadt, the chickens pause at the "Verschmutzung verboten" fountain in Herdern and contemplate the unthinkable (left).

Thanks y'all

Sehr Geehrte Leserinnen und Leser ("very honorable readeresses and readers"):

Thanks for all the feedback on the blog, both via comments and via email. Blogger.com refuses to let me respond to comments with comments at the moment, so here's a full-fledged entry to catch up on issues/questions/concerns you've raised, for all you enquiring minds who want to know. In no particular order:

A zip line is a pulley, sometimes with a seat attached, suspended on a wire cable on an incline.

Thanks, Teofrastus, for contributing the Spanish word hippopotomonstrosesquippedaliofobia (fear of long words), which measures in at a delightfully ironic 35 letters (assuming I counted correctly). Helen says we left "Gesellschaft" (company) out of Donaudampfshifffahrtsgesellschaftskapitaensgattin, which would bring that word up to 49 letters. I pointed out to her that "Starnbergersee" has nine more letters than "Donau," but she objected that there isn't a steamboat company on the Starnbergersee. There is one on the Danube--so we're not just goofing around making up words here.

No, I'm not having too much fun in Germany. Being a cultural ambassador is hard work.

Ah, the platform in the toilet bowl--the #1 comment-generating topic to date! What to say.... According to Freud, a child's first gift to its parents is poop (a child who withholds such gifts is anal-retentive; and note the delighted fuss parents make over successful potty-training). The platform offers toilet bowl users the opportunity to admire, shall we say, the fruits of their labor well into adulthood. By the way, when doing routine cleaning, it is a bad idea to drizzle liquid hand soap on the platform, though the bubbles you get after flushing are mighty impressive.

Never fear, there are Beethoven and Mozart streets in Freiburg.

On the lack of a Mendelssohnstrasse: There's one in Basel and one in Offenburg, so it isn't a regional thing. I'm guessing the composer street names in the Freiburg 'burb date from the 1930s--big years for German Nationalism. A few years after Mendelssohn's untimely death in 1847, Wagner published an anonymous, remarkably anti-Semitic article on "Judaism in Music," claiming that Jews just can't write anything good and criticizing Mendelssohn's music as underdeveloped and derivative (and Heinrich Heine's poetry as false and inauthentic). So an intersection between Mendelssohnstr. and Richard-Wagner-Str. truly would have been sweet to see.

Stefan is a German citizen; Elias and I are American citizens. Stefan hasn't voted in an election since he moved to the U.S. in 1989. If he gets his act together, he'll vote this fall. We're here until the end of December.

Yes indeed, people rabidly guard their Restmuell bin space. Observe this bin, photographed this evening in the Altstadt. Know what the red doohickey on top is? That's right, it's a lock. I did manage to find a Restmuell bin without a lock downtown this afternoon (not that I would ever, ever sneak my own trash into someone else's bin, of course).

When we're back in the U.S., we'll have to invite all of Elias's java-drinking buddies over for Kuchen and decaf.

Cultural differences

Yesterday, we moved into our apartment in Freiburg. After six weeks of traveling, we've finally emptied our suitcases and put them into storage. It feels good to have a space to call our own.

Around the corner from our apartment building is a lovely little fountain--a rectangular stone basin that receives a constant stream of water from a patinaed spout with a floral motif. A plaque above the spout reads "Verschmutzung verboten!," which means "Dirtying forbidden!"

I love what this sign says about German culture. First, it assumes that anyone who would consider befouling a pretty fountain--let us call such persons "vandals"--can read. This is logical, as Germany's literacy rate is one of the highest in the world. Second, it assumes that literate vandals will be dissuaded by a sign that tells them mucking up the fountain is verboten. Perhaps German vandals are too obtuse to understand that dirtying fountains is inappropriate; thus, telling them it isn't allowed will correct their wayward urges.

I maintain that a mere sign will not stop anyone low enough to consider verschmutzing a fountain; Stefan maintains, "it will, if they were brought up right."

Is Stefan correct on this one? Freiburg is the most graffiti-covered city I've ever visited in Germany--graffiti in the Altstadt, graffiti on our apartment building, graffiti on bridges and signs and trees. There are clearly people around who are willing to verschmutz things that most people would recognize ought not be verschmutzed. The fountain, with its forceful, exclamation-point enhanced, cast bronze command, appears untainted.

Yet observe the four mysterious, cement-filled spots around the plaque. What was on the wall before? A Jugendstil flourish, chiseled off by someone unaware of the rules? Or a previous authoritative order, absconded with by vandals who learned about irony im Gymnasium?

Speaking of Schmutz and cultural differences, a word is also in order about prepositions and the Wasser Klo (WC). After 19 years of visiting Germany, I have finally learned to say "aufs Klo" ("on the water closet") rather than "ins Klo" ("in the water closet"), for Germans call the toilet itself the Klo, as opposed to the tiny narrow closet in which it resides, and they laugh at you (appropriately) when you tell them you have to go into the toilet. There is more to be said about German toilets--particularly the special platform within the bowl--but I can't bring myself to write about that on a public blog.