Confession

After weeks of resisting, I finally succumbed to temptation and snitched three grapes from the vines on the Tuniberg on my run/walk today. Two purple, one green-yellow. I know it was stealing, and officially, I won't do it again, even if other people are doing it too. (For the record, all three grapes were mighty tasty.)

In organ news...

The Catholic church on the corner, St. Urban, is kindly allowing me practice on their 1936 three-manual electropneumatic organ on Thursday mornings. In theory, I have a generous amount of time twice a week at St. Petrus Canisius, but have only been able to practice there once in the past month, due to various secretarial summer vacation schedules and our trip to Copenhagen. This morning, I attended my third service at the only Lutheran (vs. Evangelisch) church in Freiburg--conveniently located in the neighborhood--and met the regular organist, who had been gone the other two Sundays for Sommerferien. As soon as I told her I was an organist, she said "oh, would you like to play or practice here sometimes? It would be great to have more people using this instrument!," for which I am immensely grateful.

As I am usually at a loss for words trying to describe being a Jewish church organist in the states, I won't even attempt to describe being one in Germany.

Kaiserstuhl and Merdingen

Elias continues with jock soccer camp this weekend. He's still having fun, but we're learning how different soccer is in Germany compared to the US. None of that chipper YMCA it-isn't-whether-you-win-or-lose building-moral-fiber stuff here--it's all about the champs. Kudos to the few girls who manage to nurture their love for the game: of the 65 or so kids at the camp, 62 are boys.

After we dropped Elias off on Saturday, Stefan and I drove to Ihringen, on the southern end of the formerly volcanic Kaiserstuhl, and took the train around the mountain to Endingen. We then hiked the 17 km length of the mountain back to the car. The Kaiserstuhl offers a mix of forested peaks, grassy meadows, and terraced vineyards, along with a chapel on the Katherinenberg and a lookout tower on the Totenkopf (the highest point, 555m). A long portion of the trail had stone markers from 1772 and 1773, indicating the then-border between Austria and France.

After we picked Elias up, we drove over the Tuniberg to Merdingen for a wine and Zwiebelkuchen fest. Various clubs in town host food and drink stalls in the local vintners' courtyards. All the wine came from the Merdingen vintners' collective, and all the food was prepared by the clubs. We ended up buying an entire pan of Zwiebelkuchen--which in Baden means a very thin, crisp dough, with a sour-cream chopped-onion custard baked on top--in exchange for the men's chorus club making us a vegetarian one (hold the ham). Stefan asked if the chorus was going to sing and was told that after the wine had flowed long enough, everyone would be singing. Add to that the poems posted on the tent walls about how a good Zwiebelkuchen helps with the wind music, and you can imagine what things must be like by the time folks drag themselves home at 4 a.m. We were happy to have made it to Merdingen's fest, as the Merdinger Rot Spaetburgunder is our favorite so far.

Flaedlesuppe und das Maedchen

Today was cold, windy, and wet, and Elias was outside at soccer camp from 10 a.m. to 5:30 p.m. In the U.S., I would warm up my boy with a nice steaming bowl of matzoball soup for dinner. Alas, matzo meal is not exactly a staple here in Germany, so we made the next best thing: Flaedlesuppe.

Flaedle are Swabian crepe-like pancakes, also known in our house as "papa pancakes," since Stefan's usually the one who makes them. To make Flaedlesuppe for three hungry vegetarians, take six eggs and beat them with a generous flumph of flour and an appropriate amount of milk (don't ask me how much, just wing it), until the batter is the right consistency--thicker than crepe batter, thinner than spaetzle dough. Cook the batter into several pancakes the way you would cook crepes (but not as thin), in a pan with a little butter or oil. After they're all cooked, roll one or two Flaedle at a time into a cylinder, then slice into thin strips. Once all the Flaedle are sliced, ladle some of your favorite veggie broth into a bowl, add some of the Flaedle strips, a little parsley, and voilà: Flaedlesuppe.

Over our bowls of soup, I felt poetic, and so recited "Tod und das Maedchen" using my well-honed maiden and Samiel voices (Samiel being the demon in Weber's opera Der Freischuetz). Flaedlesuppe and Death don't really have much in common--or they shouldn't, anyway--but "Tod und das Maedchen" is the only poem I remember in its entirety auf Deutsch, so that was that.

Angela Merkel in Freiburg

Thus far in my travels, I have discovered two things that Americans are so much better at than Germans that there is simply no contest.

The first thing is refrigeration of vegetables in grocery stores. In Germany, it is not uncommon for vegetables to sit outside under a parasol all day long. In the summer, this means veggies must be consumed the same day they are purchased lest they turn to smelly mush overnight in the refrigerator or cellar.

Item number two is crowd control. Wow. Americans do this so much better than Germans that the refrigeration of vegetables seems like small potatoes.

Germany's Chancellor, Angela Merkel, was due to speak in front of Freiburg's new Rathaus today at 1:30 p.m. I arrived at 1:20, not expecting to get very close and planning more to watch the crowds than to hear her speak. Would people cheer wildly, the way Americans did last year at Barack Obama events? How many people would show up? What kind of security would there be? The plaza was already teeming when I arrived.

Now, you might ask what's more important, efficiently managing crowds or feeling secure enough with your collective national masculinity that you can elect a woman as your leader. Yes, you might ask that, and now we have to give a point to Germany, cancelling out America's point for refrigerated vegetables. Still, Americans are better at crowd control. Here's what I learned:

1. It's easy for people to get into political rallies in Germany without going through security checks. This might have something to do with the fact that Germans don't tote semiautomatic weapons to events where their national leaders are speaking. (Doh! Another point to Germany. Better luck next time, America!)

2. The only way to get from the Altstadt to the train station is through the Rathaus plaza. Ignorant tourists such as myself might think it would be easier to avoid a crowd of thousands by circling around the plaza, perhaps aided by some well-placed detour signs; but the unending lines (wait, did I say "lines"? Germans don't do lines. Change that to "flow") of people determined to snake their way to and from the Bahnhof today provided ample evidence that other routes simply are not possible. This probably has something to do with local disruptions in Earth's magnetic field.

3. Germans are happy to try to walk through a crowd of thousands to get to the Bahnhof, without knowing why there might be thousands of people milling around. "Are people waiting for someone?", a passing gentleman asked politely. "Angela Merkel!" I replied, and he nodded approvingly before being swept onward.

4. When faced with large crowds, Germans are happy simply to push people out of the way. If you're lucky, they might warn you first with a friendly "Entschuldigung," or maybe an annoyed "Ich muss zum Bahnhof!" ("I have to get to the train station!"; note the implied "Curse you, you immobile idiot!" in the preposition "zum"), but a forceful shove will get you out of the way just as quickly.

5. It is unwise to shop in the toy store on the Rathaus plaza. As I stood crammed in place with a dozen other people, watching the tide flowing to and from the train station, the storekeeper came out every five minutes to tell us to keep the entrance clear for her customers, something that was physically impossible and became sort of a running joke amongst us squashed folk. Either the storekeeper needs to chill out, or she doesn't understand basic laws of physics--neither of which are good qualities to mix with children and toys.

6. Being squashed together and griped at with other people for 50 minutes builds community. When Angela Merkel finally arrived on stage around 2:10 p.m., we chatted pleasantly about how it was impossible to see anything.

7. Angela Merkel has a vision for Germany's "Zukunft" (future). Unfortunately, I can't understand even English when a speaker's voice is over-amplified in an unsuccessful effort to drown out the background noises of the masses, so I'll have to read about Merkel's vision in tomorrow's Badische Zeitung.

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.

Gelato

When I first visited Germany with Stefan 19 years ago, Munich, Herrsching, and other Bavarian tourist meccas were filled with gelato shops. The gelatos were made by small scale operations in small batches, often run by Italians who headed northward for their summers. Less rich and with more intense flavors than American ice creams, our favorites included Maracuja (passion fruit), Johannisbeere (currant), Mango, Gianduja (hazelnut), Mocca, and Stracciatella (sweet cream with chocolate bits).

This June, we noticed freshly made gelatos were harder to find; many ice cream shops in Munich were selling factory-made ice creams that could just as easily be purchased by the (diminutive) tub at the supermarket. Of course, price consciousness and do-it-yourselfness are not the point of buying an ice cream cone to eat while strolling along the Ammersee, just as they aren't the point of going out for Brotzeit; nonetheless, there has been a tangible drop in Bavaria's ice cream quaintness quotient over the past two decades.

Thus, one of the joys of living in Freiburg has been discovering that its downtown is rife with gelaterias. To say they are competing for tourists would be inaccurate, as there are clearly enough Eis-hungry tourists to go around. The best shops serve small-batch flavors at prices so affordable that they mandate regular return visits. Our current favorite is a window shop near the Augustiner Museum where the milk ices are barely sweet and more milky than creamy, and the fruit ices are refreshingly tangy.

On our most recent visit there, the shopkeeper detected our foreign accents and laughingly complimented our pronunciation of "Stracciatella." "I've heard everything," he said, explaining that the previous day a child had asked for "Cacatella." Now that's a flavor I wouldn't want to try, though the concept would probably go over well with every three-year-old I know.