Reminiscence roadtrip

You know how it is: you spend your childhood in a town somewhere, you grow up and move away, and then when you come back to visit seventy years later, everything looks different. You wouldn't mind so much if someone had had the decency to ask or at least notify you before making the changes--before building the new roads and new houses, before replacing the obsolete train depot with a more modern one, before widening the quay and paving the dirt paths and opening the new eateries and expanding the schools and all that. If you're lucky, some of the old institutions are still around, like the Ox Restaurant where your dad used to hang out--but times have clearly changed, for now the kitchen closes for the afternoon and sorry, you'll have to go to the waterfront to find a bite to eat. Oh dear.

I know how this is, and I've only been away from my home town for 23 years. Almost everything that has been done in Urbana, Illinois, since I left has been an improvement (the prairie grass trails through Meadowbrook Park, the statue gardens on and off campus, the state-of-the-art university buildings, the cleaned up Boneyard Creek), and many of my favorite old things remain (the classy tree-filled parks, the dust-covered plaster 3-D topology models in Altgeld Hall, the experimental cows with the windows in their stomachs). But every time I go back, something else has changed, some old restaurant has closed, some store has replaced another, and it's kind of weird and kind of disorienting.

We spent August 19, the second day of our reminiscence roadtrip, visiting several more places* where Helen had spent her youth, culminating in Ueberlingen.

With all the change Ueberlingen has seen since 1944, it is a wonder that we were able to find the Admiral's house. Helen directed us straight to it, past all the newer buildings she had never before set eyes on. "There should be some train tracks there...an alley here...some stone steps..."--and suddenly we were standing right in front of it. Admiral and Mutter Fischer had moved from the stately house next door to the small clapboard house after hard times forced them to downsize. Their son Peter was Helen's earliest childhood playmate--later her sweetheart, her fiance, her husband. It was in the small Fischer house that a young, widowed, and pregnant Helen lived with her in-laws after Peter's death during WWII.

We opened the gate into the wildflower-filled garden and knocked on the door. No answer. We called up to the open window. No answer. We poked around to the side of the house and knocked again. A woman opened the door and looked quizzically at us four strangers. After Stefan introduced Helen, the woman generously invited us in and gave us a tour.

"You'll see we've changed a few things," she said. "Look, here's where we moved the kitchen."
--"It used to be in the basement," said Helen.
We went upstairs.
"This is my room," the owner said.
--"Mutter Fischer's room," said Helen.
"And here's where my daughter sleeps," the owner said.
--"Lilo's room; she's 97 now and lives in Hamburg," said Helen.
"There was a son too, wasn't there? A soldier in North Africa and Italy," the owner said.
--"My husband," said Helen.

After visiting the Fischer house, we set off to find the house Helen's father had built when they lived in Ueberlingen. "Most of these are new," Helen said of the buildings en route; "maybe the house isn't there anymore." But it was, and it looked quite grand: a massive American foursquare for the American Stoll. No one answered our knocks. We took a photo of Helen standing by the front door more than seven decades after her family had moved east to Bavaria.

Walking back down the hill on the stone steps behind the Fischer house, Stefan received some sad news on his cell phone: 97-year-old Lilo had passed away in her sleep the night before. "We were meant to come here," Helen said; "this was a gift from Lilo."

*First stop: Meersburg, a beautiful historic town on the Bodensee (Lake Konstanz), densely packed with scenic views--old old castles and old new castles, wattle-and-daub houses, medieval walls, creaky water mills, turrets and towers--all piled one atop the other. Despite all the buildings that have stood there for centuries, change nonetheless comes to towns that build their economies around well-preserved Altstaedte. Second stop: the baroque church in Birnau, in front of which Helen spent many an hour flirting with Peter.

Detours

After visiting the Burgruine Roetteln, we headed eastward along the German/Swiss border, skirting the southern edge of the Black Forest and crossing back and forth over the Rhine. (We started by heading in circles for a while, looking for a gas station. Through the magic that is the tri-national agglomeration of Basel, everyone in every rustic small-town sleeper 'burb owns a car, but none of the rustic small-town sleeper 'burbs have gas stations.)

Eventually, we made our way to the tiny town Ofteringen, despite Helen's don't-put-yourself-out protestations ("only if it isn't out of the way. We shouldn't go if we have to go out of the way"). Helen used to visit Ofteringen with her father every summer when she was a little girl, and she had fond memories of the sawmill and restaurant her relatives owned there. It's a small enough town that it took only about three minutes for us to find the mill. Alas, the restaurant was closed for summer vacation, but after we loitered for a while, we noticed an elderly man crossing the sawmill yard. "Go talk to him," we nudged, so we tromped over and Helen politely asked whether he had perhaps heard of her father, Otto Stoll. Ayuh, sure he remembered Otto Stoll; long time ago, though. Yep.

A road sign near the mill pointed to Erzingen, 4 kilometers away. Helen's father was buried there, in his brother's family plot, after he died too young in 1942. "I don't need to go," said Helen, shuffling her feet. "It's out of the way. The relatives there were nasty. We shouldn't go; it's out of the way." "We're going," Stefan and I said.

We were already going out of our way, of course: if you want to get from Freiburg to Steinebach, driving along the Swiss border is hardly a direct route. But in Helen's defense, distances do expand in odd ways in Germany. Stefan's family used to drive from Steinebach to the neighboring village of Auing to buy farm-fresh eggs. That the farm was an easy 10-minute walk from their house was beside the point: Auing was a whole village away, so they drove.

We did well to visit Erzingen, despite the vast 4-kilometer detour. We located the cemetery above town. Although we read every single grave marker, we didn't find the stone we sought. The closest we found was a column memorializing bones that had been moved from the old cemetery in 1964. Yet we had clearly found Stoll Central. Every other marker belonged to one Stoll or another. And we met two helpful, living Stolls: a friendly middle-aged woman whose father was also an Otto Stoll, and an elderly silver-haired Frau Stoll who, after some thought, wondered if Helen's father might have been "the American Stoll." (Otto had spent several years as an immigrant in New York before returning to Germany and begetting Helen.) Frau Stoll said "the American Stoll" in a way that suggested the relatives considered him a curiosity, if not a black sheep.

Having become comfortable with detours, we made several more the next day. I'll write about them in my next post.

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.

Changes

In some ways, not much has changed since last summer...

...although we saw many things change during this year's trip.

June 19 (note the green field, top right...

...which was incredibly radiantly green)

By July 4, the green rye had caught up with the neighboring golden field.

Probably the most significant change--the change that contributed to this being one of the most pleasant visits to Germany ever--was that there were almost no mosquitoes on Helen's hill. I know it sounds trivial, but for those of us with tasty blood and robust histamine responses, this was a big deal. I attribute the palpable change largely to an event a few years ago, when to everyone's great relief except Helen's alas, the most productive mosquito hatchery in all of Steinebach the large rustic wooden tub in which Helen hoarded standing water collected rainwater sprang a leak --Flying Spaghetti Monster be praised!-- and had to be removed. That magnificent stoke of luck loss continues to bear fruit at least had a silver lining. (For a reminder of what it used to be like, see the first ever post on this blog and subsequent mentions. And no, I did not drill any holes; the leak was entirely natural.)

Cultural highlights from Bavaria

We've been staying with Stefan's mom, Helen, in a Dorf outside Munich since June 23. On Sunday, we'll head to Freiburg for the first time to start making living/work/school arrangements.

Despite a temporary setback in the weather--it rained all day today and temps were only in the 50s (oF)--the clouds that we enjoyed when we first arrived in June have lightened up a bit, and warmer temps have paved the way for gigantic prehistoric mosquitoes from Hell. Stefan located one of their breeding sites in Helen's plugged up gutters and eliminated a few hundred from the gene pool of millions. Open a window or a door for half a second and they swarm inside in search of fresh warm blood, eager to bite through socks and long sleeved shirts. Poor Elias won the prize for Most Mosquito-Bitten Torso, with about 75 bites (we counted). Screens might help, but Germans don't do screens, so instead we wave our arms around and swear a lot.

Yesterday we went to the “Moar Alm” (Bavarian for "Maier Alm," which means the Maiers' summer house), a house owned by some of Helen's friends (not Maiers), in the foothills of the Bavarian Alps. The current owners have traced the house back to 1603, but they think that at this point only the foundation and parts of the first-floor walls are still original. The house has no plumbing or electricity, but it puts every mountain cabin I’ve ever visited to shame. It’s BIG. Alms are where you go in the summer with your herd of cattle, to let them graze. The Alm originally was used for cheese-making--so the basement is pretty amazing--and later a stall was added for calves. Cows still graze in an adjacent field, and every one of them wears a differently tuned bell. The garden is immaculate--the American ideal of a green lawn and flowers must have been inherited from what happens naturally in Bavaria. Most of the mountain is either wooded or used for grazing, and a short walk down the road leads to assorted hiking trails. We saw a total of one mosquito on our attempted hike up one of the peaks.

On the hike we were reminded of the importance of feeding cranky kids. Elias and I drafted a mental postcard in German to his friends back home (translated into English for your reading pleasure): “Dear friends, Greetings from Germany. Today we hiked up a mountain and I hated every step of it. All I wanted to do was sleep, but my stupid parents made me go. Wish you were here, Love, Elias. P.S. I ate a banana and then everything was better.” We were using an outdated map, so we ended up on the wrong trail and never made it to the top. But we got to see woods, meadows, rivulets, and lots of cows.

Right when we were ready to leave the Alm, a rescue helicopter landed at the end of the long driveway, in the middle of the road down the mountain. The mountain rescue team was picking up an injured parasailer. How's that for service? Since we couldn't drive down, we drove uphill instead and had dinner at the Wirt Alm (inn), where the proprietors specialize in Brotzeit. Ahh, Brotizeit. Brotzeit is Germany's most cherished meal; we must speak of it with great respect, or we get in trouble with our in-laws. It consists of evenly sliced, hearty, not quite dry-as-dust German bread, plus Something. For the vegetarian, that means dry bread plus sliced cheese, or dry bread plus sliced tomatoes. The other 20 menu items are for the carnivore: for example, dry bread plus a slice of fried Leberkaese ("liver cheese," which doesn't actually have any liver in it), or dry bread plus sliced wurst and onions in vinegar. In order for dry German bread to taste good, you have to slather it with butter, and the butter here is really tasty, so that’s a bonus. Note that you do NOT get to combine vegetables with proteins; thus if you have Tomatenbrot, you get only tomatoes and dry bread: no cheese allowed. If you’re lucky, when you order a protein Brotzeit, you get a little piece of vegetable to go with the dry bread. This little piece of plant-form appears to be mainly for color, to contrast with the pale cheese or the pale meat. Radishes are especially useful for this purpose: unsliced, they add bright red to a plate; sliced, they add delicate red circles, while their white centers match the rest of the food.

Stefan, who is sitting beside me right now, is defending Brotzeit: "You have to understand, it's the social aspect that's important. You sit together, you've exercised, you have a cold beer. Those are the important things. And it's something you do particularly in Bavaria, and particularly in the mountains. It's hard to get stuff up there. So you get the simple things." The view from the Wirt Alm, of course—mountains, meadows, cows, Alpenglow—was great; you can't get that at home. But I guess what strikes me most about Bavarian restaurants is their remarkable consistency. You'd think if you could lug gallons of beer and wurst up a hill, you could lug some non-white foods up there too, or that one restaurant might lug up a few carrots, say, and another might lug up a few beets. "Yeah," says Stefan, "but what are you going to do with those?"

In the interest of marital harmony, my accurate description of Brotzeit must stop here.

I'm learning lots of useful German by reading Harry Potter auf Deutsch. My favorite word so far: Hochsicherheitsgefangene--24 letters and just one word to say "high security prisoner"! Compare that to English, which takes a measly 20 letters and divides them over an uneconomical three words. I was a little disappointed that German couldn't fit "Verteidigung gegen die dunklen Kuenste" (defense against the dark arts) into one word. Rest assured, I'm also learning words that I've been able to incorporate into daily conversation, such as Efeu (ivy), Flur (hallway), and Zauberstab (magic wand).

Der ewige Igel

I've been visiting Stefan's mom in Steinebach about once a year for 23 years. Throughout that time, Stefan's mom has been feeding two kinds of animals (not counting the mosquitoes): cats and der Igel ("the hedgehog"). The cats have changed--first there was Maxl, then Döpferl, and now Döpferlkatze--but the hedgehog has remained a constant, always der Igel.

Helen has a large yew tree just outside her front door, next to a flag pole on which flies a banner in Bavarian blue and white, and for as long as I've known her, she has kept two small glass bowls under the tree, into which she puts quality food scraps for der Igel. I have never actually seen der Igel, but the scraps disappear, and Helen replenishes the bowls, so I assume the hedgehog really does exist. He must be a very long-lived hedgehog, to have lasted these 23 years--but of course he's also been very well fed. So well fed, in fact, and for so long, that he has become somewhat of a legend, at least to me: the eternal hedgehog, der ewige Igel.

We spent last week in Steinebach with Helen, and as usual, I did not see der mythical Igel. I still need to blog about that week, but for now I will jump ahead to Prague. For the next few days, we're staying in Černý Vůl, a 40-minute schlepp from the big city. Tonight, after a long day in Prague that ended with a metro ride and then a bus ride and then a brisk walk from the bus stop along a busy road and then down some steps to a shortcut over a bridge and then finally back to our rental cottage, there it was: ein Igel. Not der Igel, of course, since der Igel is presumably wandering around the yew tree and the flag pole in Steinebach, quizzically wondering where the food has gone; but certainly a hedgehog. It's the first hedgehog I've ever seen in the wild (if a hedgehog playing dead on a crumbling concrete sidewalk by a stone wall next to a metal gate outside of Prague constitutes a hedgehog "in the wild").

We'll have a few more days in Steinebach before this trip is over; perhaps, given tonight's auspicious sighting, this year will be the year when I finally see der ewige Igel.

A Czech hedgehog playing dead in the wilds of Černý Vůl

What we do in Steinebach

When we visit Helen in Steinebach am Wörthsee, we are always very busy. After starting the day off right with Semmeln and assorted accompaniments for breakfast, we turn our attention to what to do for dinner (the kitchen is small; shall we cook at home, or go out again?). Once a decision has been made, it's time for lunch. Between lunch and dinner, our late afternoon is made complete by observing the sacred German tradition known as the 4pm Carb (Kaffee). (When I first met Stefan, I couldn't understand how he could wait until 7 or 8pm to eat dinner, while I was ravenous by 5:30. A few months later, I learned he was eating a big cinnamon bun every day at 4:00.)

In between all of that eating, we do sometimes manage to get out and about to see the marvelous sights, like the lakes, the bakeries, the gelato stands, and the grocery store (it used to be stores, but Tengelmann closed earlier this year. Indeed, much has closed over the past many years. When I first came to Steinebach with Stefan, there were separate stores for baked goods, milk-related dairy, eggs, meat, beverages, and fruits and veggies. It used to be that you never ever dared touch a piece of fruit at the fruit store, but instead waited for the proprietor to select the [hopefully] best pieces for you. Now everyone feels free to squeeze the peaches at Edeka). And of course we always get together with Stefan's relatives. Kaffee and dinner provide excellent opportunities to catch up with one another.

But do not think we do nothing but eat in Steinebach! On this trip, we did manage to take an excursion into Munich for a day, in order to meet with the family banker; afterward we expressed our gratitude by taking him out to lunch at a fine Bavarian establishment around the corner (not pictured).

Outdoor seating at a Munich restaurant on a typical Bavarian
midsummer's day. Notice the jackets, umbrellas, and heat lamps.

Another afternoon, we drove to Utting, a small town on the Ammersee, to meet a decades-long friend of one of my mom's decades-long friends; Dvora is an accomplished potter and retired art teacher, so in addition to all of us simply getting to know each another, we enjoyed talking about our art, first over hors d'oevres and again after a fabulous homemade dinner.

And on a Monday, we and a subgroup of relatives made a sunlit evening caravanning tour through the local countryside to admire a range of upper Bavarian country restaurant exteriors. (We could pretend this had an architectural and cultural purpose, but it turns out Monday is a Ruhetag [rest day] not only for German museums but also for Bavarian country restaurants; it took us four tries before finding a place that was open for dinner).

Our visit to Steinebach was timed to coincide with a big family birthday bash: Helen turned 90 earlier this year; Stefan's brother Rodi had turned 70; an aunt had turned 80; and Stefan was about to turn 50 and his niece Vroni 40. All of these "round birthdays" warranted a celebration!

The party was held in beautiful Schloss Sulzemoos, in what had formerly been a large arcaded stall for horses but had been converted into an exquisite restaurant, with an emphasis on locally-grown organic foods. Festivities of course began with the 4pm Carb, with coffee offered by the restaurant and an array of tasty desserts provided by several of the 50 or so guests. Selections ranged from sponge cake topped with fresh fruit to chocolate cake to apricot cake to cheesecake to spice cake to rum-soaked nut cake to creamy mango pudding, and on and on and on.

During the pause between Kaffee and the onset of dinner, we mingled with relatives and friends who had traveled from near and far. We worked off some of the calories by walking all the way to the church next door (at least 100 meters distant--200 if you count the walk back) to look inside. The Baroque church is one of the oldest in the county, with a foundation dating back some 1200 years.

Later, back at the restaurant, everyone enjoyed a four-plus course meal, beginning with a salad (the perfect mix of crisp, tender, and crunchy), followed by the best ravioli I've ever had (homemade pasta filled with ricotta and greens, on a bed of fresh spinach, topped with fried sage leaves and lightly warmed cherry tomatoes; holy moley). There were main courses and sides for carnivores and vegetarians alike, and then, several hours after dinner began, it ended with Bavarian creme and sliced mascerated strawberries.

Rodi and Renate had arranged for someone to bring in an electronic keyboard, and Helen's neighbor Berthhold had checked out some scores from the Munich City Library, so between courses we built up our appetites by playing sentimental oldie Tangos while friends and family sang along. Renate had written some humorous Staenzl (verses)--a Bavarian big party tradition--to roast the birthday honorees, which she and a trio of other relatives sang to the accompaniment of Berthhold's accordion. Things wrapped up at a regretfully early 11pm, but the immediate family hung around a while longer, chatting contentedly about food and other topics.

11pm: Satt

Restmüll

Check it out, folks. Pictured here alongside two very impressed German chickens and a pair of women's size 40 feet is the sum total of all the Restmüll we've accumulated since August 1.

Restmüll is garbage--what's left over after all the paper goes into the paper recycling bin, all the non-Pfand glass bottles go into the glass recycling bins, all the food scraps go into the compost bin, and all the packing materials go into the wondrous gelbe Sack, the catch-all for packing materials (plastic containers, butter wrappers, bubble pack, milk cartons, styrofoam, toothpaste tubes, you name it).

Our Restmüll consists mainly of bicycle handlebar tape, dryer lint, an old polyester shirt, used razor blades, bike-grease infused rags, my hair, and a full vacuum cleaner bag we inherited from the previous tenants.

When we registered with the city of Freiburg a few months ago, we received a form for Restmüll collection. Garbage service for one year would have cost us well over 100 Euros, a hefty price to pay for about one cubic foot of trash over a six-month stay. Maverick Americans that we are, we didn't pay.

We considered driving our sack all the way back to Steinebach at the end of this month and combining it with Helen's garbage, but she doesn't pay for Restmüll service either, and we didn't want to have to, oh, I don't know, leave it in one of the trash receptacles at the local train station or something--not that we've ever even thought about doing such a thing for Helen before, let alone done it this past summer, of course. We considered sneaking it over to Elias's elementary school under cover of darkness and hefting it into one of their industrial trash containers--a method clearly used by other system abusers on our street--but taking advantage of young children's designated garbage space just seems so wrong.

We figured we'd wait until we moved out of our apartment to see how the situation panned out, but this evening, our new neighbors (HW's brother's family) came over for dinner, and they kindly invited us to cram our Restmüll on top of theirs for pickup tomorrow. Thus tonight, at long last, we bid adieu to four months worth of accumulated garbage.

Bayern in Baden

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.

Frieding

As tends to be the case when we're visiting Helen, the plan for recovering from a big event like Christmas Eve is to go out the next day to eat more food. We had a reservation for 11:30 this morning at the Wirtshaus "Zum Queri" in Frieding, in theory about 5 miles away from Steinebach. So after I got up, I put on my hiking boots, grabbed a Semmel (crusty roll), and set off for a pleasant walk, with the intent of meeting Stefan, Helen, Elias, and Familie F. for lunch.

My route took me first through Auing and across the highway to Seefeld. Schloss Seefeld, which in its current iteration dates mainly to the 18th century, is still inhabited by the local nobility, the Graf zu Toerring, who counts the Woerthsee among his many holdings.

From Seefeld, I tromped south to Widdersberg, where I found a teeny tiny sign pointing to "Frieding-Andechs" and listing a few addresses on "Friedingerstrasse." That's when I made my fatal error: assuming that the sign meant the street was named Friedingerstrasse and that it would lead to Frieding.

I should have learned my lesson this summer, when I tried to get back to Steinebach from nearby Hechendorf am Pilsensee by following a sign labeled Auingerweg. I assumed the gravel road would lead to Auing, but instead it dead-ended at two barking miniature schnauzers in the middle of a cornfield.

The gravel road I followed today headed south, passing by a pretty village off in the distance. Eventually it descended down a hill and into some woods. A nordic walking sign pointed in the general direction of the main road, so I took a right onto the trail. It eventually dead-ended at a deer feeding trough in the woods, at which point I remembered the lesson of Auingerweg. Simultaneously cursing and snickering, I pushed my way through some scrub and emerged in a recently plowed field that I cut across to a road. I hailed down a passing bicyclist who kindly redirected me to Frieding--the pretty village I had been admiring from afar for the past two kilometers.

Behold the Semmel

Behold the Semmel in some of its infinite variety:

The Semmel* is the most revered of German breakfast foods. Made with refined white flour, it is what we oafish Americans would call a Kaiser roll and might ignorantly buy in the deli section at Kroger's without batting an eye. Not so in Germany. The locally-owned corner bakery might be good for Kuchen, but if you want the lightest, airiest, fluffiest, crust-crispest Semmel, you paradoxically must go to the chain-store bakery halfway up the block; and if you are a Semmel conoisseur (i.e. German), you can actually taste the difference. Unlike hearty rye Pfisterbrot ("the best bread we Bavarians have," says Helen, and which Stefan once gushed over by exclaiming, "and can you believe this stuff lasts for weeks without ever tasting stale?"), a Semmel's shelf life is limited to a few hours, on principle if nothing else. Reheated day-old Semmel do not a proper breakfast make: they must be purchased fresh, daily, if you're going to do breakfast right ("Immer frisch, immer frisch"--always fresh--Helen instructs). You could choose to start your day with something "heavy," say a whole-grain roll with actual nutritive content, but the Semmel-eating majority will shake their heads and pity your woeful miseducation.

*Northern Germans call Semmel Broetchen (diminutive breadlets), which Bavarians think is Just Wrong.

Accursed cheese and Landeck

Today, while we were stuck in a traffic jam in the rain, Stefan inadvertently taught me another way to curse auf Bairisch: "So a Kaas." Literally, this translates as "what a cheese" ("so ein Kaese"*), but the tone of voice suggests cheese here is yet another metaphor for Mist.

We were on our way to Landeck, which was supposed to be a quick trip up the road just past Emmendingen. The good news, I suppose, is that I'm not the only driver in my family who gets lost on occasion. Or maybe that's bad news. In any case, it took most of the afternoon to travel, as the crow flies, 15 km and back, yielding what Stefan's mother Helen described as "eine wunderschoene Schwarzwaldreise." "Das Wetter wurde immer besser" ("the weather got better and better") she insists, describing the light drizzle that had turned into a heavy downpour by the time we got home.

Our destination was the Ruinen Landeck, which offered a good excuse for a rainy-day excursion with Helen. Like so many other area Burgs, Landeck was erected in the 13th century by the local nobility (in this case, the knight Dietrich von Geroldsecker) and trashed in 1525 by angry peasants during the Bauernkrieg. The remaining ivy-covered ruins include part of a church and part of the main residence, and the stonework and easily accessible location suggest the Burg was of the posh and expansive--rather than cold and isolated--variety.

*"Kaese," by the way, is another one of those special words that ends with an -e but is masculine rather than feminine, like "Name."

Prague photo dump

First, the passport snafu:

We spent four days visiting Prague from a home base in Černý Vůl, about 40 minutes from city center via bus + metro.

Although the Czech Republic is part of the EU and part of the Schengen Area, you still need to have your passport ready when you pass the border from Germany if you are riding a bus--something we did not realize until about 30 minutes before the border, when I phoned Petra (who was on a bus with Elias, Jean, and Helen) from the car Stefan and I were driving (so we'd have a car, if needed, in Prague. Turns our that while Prague is pedestrian friendly, its burbs absolutely are not.) I phoned and said, "oops, ha ha, we still have Elias's passport, but that surely won't be a problem since the Czech Republic is part of the EU, right?" To which Petra said, "there are signs ALL OVER THE BUS that say 'have your passport ready for inspection at the border.'"

We were way ahead of the bus, so we crossed the border ourselves to check. Mmm, nope, no border control. Our cell phone SIM card only worked in Germany, so we drove back across the border to call Petra again. "There's no border control," we said. She said, "I checked with the driver, and he says we need to have the passport; border control officers sometimes check buses."

We negotiated that we'd wait for the bus at the last German rest stop before the border so we could hand off the passport. Stefan and I waited about 20 minutes, entertaining a busload of applauding teenagers by blowing Elias's bubble solution out the window, until we saw a tourist bus zip past on the highway. "That's it!" shouted Stefan, "I'm sure it is!" He pulled out of the parking area in hot pursuit while I phoned Petra. "We just saw you go by!" I said. She said, "what are you talking about? We're not there yet."

Thus Stefan and I crossed into the Czech Republic a second time. We turned around to head back to the German rest stop, but as soon as we crossed back into Germany, Petra called to say the bus was just crossing into the Czech Republic and the driver would wait for us--but only for a few minutes--at the first truck stop.

Thus we revisited the German rest stop, turned around again, and crossed into the Czech Republic a third time. We deftly handed off Elias's passport (which, obviously, he had not actually needed) between the passenger window of our car and the driver's window of the bus and continued on our merry way.

And now, the Prague photo dump. Too...many...photos...so I'm just dumping them here.

Day 1: Malostranská beseda museum; Church of St. Nicholas; vegetarian dining oasis; palace complex including Treasures of St. Vitus reliquary collection (no photos allowed; excess of riches with creepy body bits inside makes one understand why Jan Hus had issues with the Catholic church), St. Vitus cathedral, and St. George basilica; and dinner near the river.

Minimalist piano at the Malostranská beseda museum.

St. Nicholas church

St. Nicholas dome

Wee orglet at St. Nicholas church

Don't mess with Christians at the Church of St. Nicholas

He messed with the Christians

Mozart played here (Church of St. Nicholas)

Mozart probably also played this one too, but the St. Nick brochures aren't specific

A vegetarian oasis in a country of carnivores

Jean, Elias, and I ditched the rest of our group for this. Yum!

Grammar Jean teaches Elias what "nursing a drink" means

He applies his newfound knowledge to the best mango lassi EVER

Changing of the guard in front of the palace entrance

Gehry's Dancing House

Red roofs

St. Vitus cathedral organ

Wee orglet at St. Vitus

Codpieces were at their peak of stylish popularity in the 1500s

Centuries of rubbing at St. Vitus makes codpieces shiny...

...or a little chipped

Of course, codpieces need not stand in the way of rubbing

St. George gets ready to kill a dragon; here's suggested reading for both of them.

Crypt in St. George basilica

St. George crypt decor

Ceiling in side chapel at St. George basilica

Charles bridge

Duck

Swan

Let sleeping ducks lie

Day 2: Charles Bridge; River cruise along the Vltava/Moldau; Old Town birthday dinner

The birthday boy got up early and went for a bike ride

Meanwhile, Elias tended to his mosquito-bitten feet

I interrupt the photo dump to mention that the mosquitoes in Germany were really bad this year. They're always bad in Steinebach, especially on Helen's hill, since big buckets of standing water are a source of Bavarian garden pride; but this year, even folks off-hill were talking about how bad the mosquitoes were. Cold temperatures did nothing to deter them (in NC, the mosquitoes don't breed when temps are that low). Thanks to a lot of rain, a lot of flooding, and--so we were told--a lot of mosquitoes imported in standing water inside used tires from Egypt, Germany has record varieties and numbers of mosquitoes this year, including whatever kind sucked blood all night from Elias's toes before we left for Prague. His digits were so swollen, it took a few days to even see that multiple bites were the source. Soaking in warm water with vinegar eventually led to adding salt too; Stefan added some olive oil too once, to complete the salad dressing, but that was NOT HELPFUL. Anyway, back to photos...

Tourists appreciating the Pietà on the Charles Bridge

Unexpected (and consequently breathtakingly shocking, when I saw
it) view of the Old Jewish Cemetery through the bathroom window at the
Design Museum where we ducked in for coffee. See Day 3 for more info.

Charles Bridge from boat

Dancing house row

Another scenic view...

...and another...

Our boat passed the Kafka Museum. The day before was Kafka's birthday.

Old Town art nouveau door...

...and another...

Holding up a snake and windows

Etc.

Hobbit penthouse

Stunningly tasty Ristorante Casa di Carli

Day 3: Jewish quarter; Design Museum (no photos allowed, of course, except if you sneak them through the bathroom window or the front door); Old Town Square

More Old Town Art Deco

Gilded nipples

Dvořák conducted here: the Rudolfinum, home of the Czech
Philharmonic. Alas, the Philharmonic was on tour--in Bavaria.

Jewish quarter: organized tourism has helped restore all of Prague's
synagogues. Photos were not allowed in any of the buildings.

Grave stones. Cemetery space was limited, so generations were buried atop
one another. There may be as many as 100,000 burials here, in the space of
a large city block. Old tombstones remained as new tombstones were added.

Bodies were prepared for burial here. The cemetery was used
for burials between the 15th century and 1787.

In business since 5760

Prague is Kafka Central. His admirers know what to eat.

Kafka statue near the Spanish synagogue

Adjacent pages in Prague tour guide: Highlights for Children...Kafka

A hint of the ornate luxuriousness inside the Design Museum

Old Town Square: Church of Our Lady before Týn. Tycho Brahe is buried here.

The famous astronomical clock. It even tells you if it's
night or day, in case you can't tell from the sun.

Jan Hus attempted to reform the church 100 years before Martin Luther.

Good Duke Wenceslas I of Bohemia

Trdelnik for the tourists: grilled dough with cinnamon, sugar, and nuts

Happy siblings...

...and their happy mom

Day 4: Petrin Hill

By Day 4, I felt like I was stalking my friend Christie, who had visited Prague the previous summer and had posted online a hundred or so photos of her trip. "Oh yes, Christie was here;...oh, and she was here too. Oh, and she saw that statue too, and she must have taken that picture from this spot right here..." Of course, there are about a bazillion tourists in Prague every day, and they pretty much all visit the same destinations; but it still felt a little weird to retrace a friend's photographic steps.

Memorial to the victims of Communism

Big bubbles at the top of Petrin Hill

Climbing the observatory tower

My inner acrophobe was roused from its sleep

Not as tall as the Eiffel Tower, but tall enough

Funky perspective: the buildings in front are much smaller than the ones in back

Zoom lens view from the top of the observatory tower

We took a funicular train up, walked back down

Thick mouse

View from a coffee shop, recently reopened after major flooding

Freaky squashed-faced giant babies, a.k.a. art.

Maybe these babies are related to these babies.

Nothing says eternal love like your lock hanging with hundreds of other locks

Scenic Černý Vůl

Helen dozed on the veranda of our vacation rental, so we put a bottle of Slivovice on her and took a photo. 

Thus ends the photo dump. Of course, "for every one you see, you know there are thousands of others hiding in the walls..."