Odd and ends

So many things still to write about--dinner with Stefan's brother's family yesterday in Odelzhausen and our conversation about whether Jewish soldiers would have been included on WWI memorials with crosses (yes, if the crosses were "iron crosses," but probably not if the crosses were church-affiliated, and so much more to say about different kinds of anti-Semitism and how it played out regionally in the part of the world now known as Germany); how to recognize small Bavarian churches from afar (see photos below--there are basically two predominant types of Baroque towers, the onion dome and the simple triangle); lunch with Inge (Helen's best friend for the past 70 years); the annual dueling Haensel und Gretels in Muenchen (today we reconfirmed that the Gaertnerplatz performance is not the one to attend if you want to be able to hear the singers over an adequate pit orchestra, but we aren't sure we can handle going to the Staatsoper performance next year to confirm that it's the one to see); and how sad it is that the performance of "Aloha He, Stern der Suedsee" by Die Flippers has been removed from youtube.com because of copyright restrictions.

But (to paraphrase Chaucer) instead of writing about all those things, we're feverishly packing and repacking, already pining for Germany before we get on a plane tomorrow to head back to the U.S. We thought we had all our suitcase and carry-on space cleverly mapped out, and then a Nigerian guy tried to blow up an airplane in Detroit the other day and our airline changed its baggage rules. Oh well. Back to work.

There are, of course, lots of things to look forward to back home: our friends, our cats, our house, our neighborhood; organs to play, pots to wheel-throw, a choir to conduct, writing workshops to give; a gas oven and stove top, American baking powder, and local streets that are wide enough for two cars to drive on in opposite directions at the same time. We're dusting of our "might coulds" and "oughta shoulds" and girding ourselves for culture shock.

I don't know that I'm ready to give up my Wadlstrumpf home quite yet, but our final week of Vodafone service expires at ~22:30 tonight, and that deadline seems an appropriate way to mark the end of a lovely six months of talking to myself and to you dozen or so loyal readers out there in ether-space.

But saying farewell to Wadlstrumpf doesn't mean I'll be giving up my new blogging habit. Tune in Tuesday at mightoughtashould.blogspot.com for the next exciting installment.

Also, pfirdi, pfirdi, also, also, servus, pfirdi!

P.S. Loferl

I forgot to mention yesterday that my swanky new authentic Bavarian Chiemgauer Loferl were made in Austria (just like the Ur-Rezept for Linzer Torte!).

The jewel in the crown

The obligatory Christmas preparatory frenzy came to an end late this afternoon, when activity all over Germany came grinding to a halt and almost everyone sat down for coffee and Gemütlichkeit (coziness). At Helen's in Steinebach, gemütlich it was, with peppermint tea and hot coffee, clementines and apples and pommegranate seeds, and Plätzchen, Plätzchen, and more Plätzchen (Christmas cookies).

There is no shortage of Plätzchen in this part of the world, because German industriousness kicks into a wild bacchanal in the kitchen during Advent. In mid-December, while I was busy scouring the internet for a brownie recipe that would actually work with German ingredients in an electric oven with a broken temperature gauge*, every other woman in Germany was busy creating magic with nuts, egg whites, butter, sugar, and chocolate or an occasional form of fruit (candied orange peel, lemon juice, raspberry jam). In Freiburg, where Plätzchen are called Brötle, Paul's mom gave Elias a tin of homemade cookies, and then the ravioli guy gave us a bag of cookies, and then we had dinner with Familie M. and there were more homemade cookies, and then Familie R. gave us a veritable sack of homemade cookies for the road (Christina's Zimtsterne topped with meringue Baiser were pretty much the best Brötle I've ever tasted). Despite being nearly blind, Helen herself must have made at least 250 cookies in five different varieties, and she has received cookies from so many different friends that it's no longer possible to keep track of who made what. Fortunately, keeping track is not really an issue anymore, as we ate most of the remaining cookies this evening.

Then it was time to open presents. Ever romantics, we gave Helen a clothes dryer, because even if you're a pro-environment, industrious, robust German willing to schlepp your wet clothes from the basement of the little Häuschen next door all the way up to the attic of the main Häuschen (the only place at Helen's where clothes can dry quickly in the winter), you deserve a break when you're almost 87.

As we don't usually celebrate Christmas at home, Elias was thrilled to hand out and open packages beneath the Christmas tree. (The dryer, of course, was not under the tree, but rather in the basement of the Nebenhaus.) And while we had intended to do only low-key gift-giving, since suitcase space is at a premium right now, there were some special surprises. It is difficult for me to express in words my gratitude to my mother-in-law for the present she gave me--something so simple, yet so profound in the intimate bond it expressed. I don't think anyone has ever given me a more perfect Weihnachts gift: my very own Wadlstrümpfe (Loferl + sockies).

*I found one! For best results, use a small pan or triple the recipe, and err on the side of undercooked. If you use coarse salt, all the salt will sink to the bottom. If you're lucky, like me, the novelty of salty-bottom brownies will impress the starving graduate students in the lab where your husband has been a guest professor, because the students are happier to think you're a creative cook than an error-prone one.

Correction: Wadlstrümpfe

This just in: I sent Helen a postcard of Kandinsky wearing Wadlstrümpfe, and she sent back a note saying Wadlstrümpfe are regular knee socks, and that the footless calf-warmers are called Loferl. Naturally, this has thrown the editors of this blog into a whirlwind of surfing activity.

It appears that the term Wadlstrümpfe most often refers to Tracht knee socks (as opposed to everyday knee socks*, which would be Kniestrümpfe or Wadenstrümpfe), occasionally to Loferl alone, and occasionally to the combination of Loferl plus matching footie or short sock. An online Bavarian dictionary that is thorough enough to spell "Bairisch" four different ways (Bairisch, Bayerisch, Bayrisch, Boarisch) defines Lofal/Loferl/Loifal/Loiferl as Wadlstrümpfe zur Lederhose. An essential part of the Chiemgauer (vs. Huosigauer) Tracht, Loferl are thus a specific subset of a more general category of calf stockings, and the socks in the photograph I posted in July would correctly be referred to as Wadlstrümpfe.

The editors apologize for any confusion this error may have caused.

*Unless, of course, one wears Tracht every day.

Kandinsky wore Wadlstrümpfe!

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.

Not just any socks

Part of the process of starting a blog includes choosing a url. Blogspot.com then searches its records to determine whether your desired web address has already been taken. Wouldn't you know, brotzeit.blogspot.com and pretty much every conceivable variation of [kaes]spaetzl[i, en, n].blogspot.com are in use. (We didn't know that in Baden-Wuerttemberg, Brotzeit is called Vesper; for the record, vesper.blogspot.com is also unavailable.) So Stefan started suggesting culturally relevant words that only a privileged few would know. Thus was born wadlstrumpf.blogspot.com.

You can tell from the L without a neighboring vowel that "Wadlstrumpf" is a Bavarian word. Other Germans spell Wadl "Wade[n]." Stefan says it is difficult for Bavarians to say "Wadde," so they say the much easier-on-the-tongue "Wadl" instead. Besides which, other Germans don't wear Wadlstruempfe anyway, so Bavarians can call them whatever they want. "Wadl" means "calf"; "Strumpf" means stocking. So a Wadlstrumpf is a calf-stocking.

Note that the men in the photograph are not wearing Wadlstruempfe: they are wearing socks. Wadlstruempfe are for the calves only. Take away the grey part below the bottom green stripe, and you have a Wadlstrumpf. You see a lot more socks than Wadlstruempfe in Bavaria. How's that for a concept familiar to only the privieleged few?