Cloppenburg, Lower Saxony, Germany 9.7.09: Green Lanes and Prayer Chapels

Not much to report the last two days that would be of interest to anyone reading a travelogue. The 7th, Jochen and Regina had invited family over—Iris E. and her sister from Boston, and Jochen’s brother Lothar and his wife.

From mid-afternoon, we sat outside in the garden drinking champagne and talking a polyglot mix of English, German, and Badish—the latter mostly incomprehensible to me. I realize as I listen that the tendency to clip the final consonant off words like Garten runs through the whole dialect, and the indefinite article becomes something that sounds like d’ to my ear, regardless of gender or case, so that die Strasse becomes d’ Straush.

And Baden-Baden is, amusingly, Bade-Bade. But a long evening of listening to people talk animatedly in a language I only partly understand is tiresome in the extreme, despite the little nuggets of linguistic recognition that might occasionally enliven it.

As rain approached, we moved inside, and carafes of red and white wine appeared, along with bowls of peanuts and corn chips followed by sausage, cheese, and smoked fish. Then began the real Badish gabfest, with story after story, flailing hands, leers and winks, uproarious laughter. People in this part of Germany don’t fit the stereotype of the reserved, cool German at all.

I understood little, except one funny story Jochen told about someone he knows, who went into a shop and wanted to speak “good” German so he wouldn’t be dismissed as a country oaf.

He wanted a Tüte, which people around Jöhlingen apparently call a' (literally: a sound like “uh” for ein/eine) Guk. But since Badish often substitutes g for c and he wanted to be hyper-correct, he corrected the word to Cuk and threw in the final –e for good measure. He asked for a’ Cuke.

Regina told a story about Fronleichnam, when the town gathers at the church square at the end of the procession and sings, “Grosser Gott, wir loben Dich.” At a previous Fronleichnam event, near her were two people from the village known to be simple.

People call the man by some Italian song he’s famous for belting out at any gathering whatsoever—Volare Cantare, or something like that. The woman has large breasts and smiles to beat the band, always.

As the hymn began, Volare grabbed his companion’s breasts with one hand, raised the other to wave, and then launched into his Italian song. And as Jochen said later, these stories are told affectionately. Characters are a part of village life, and when they leave, there’s a hole in the heart of the community.

And then yesterday, a long, tiring drive by the autobahn through Frankfurt and on to Dortmund and Osnabrück. Steve had made a 3 P.M. appointment with a Herr M., a local historian, at the hotel in Cloppenburg, and we were afraid we’d be late, which added to the stress of the trip.

We arrived about 15 minutes late and found Herr M. waiting outside the hotel in his car, and he then gave us a driving tour of the area in which Steve’s ancestors lived—Augustenfeld, Evenkamp, and Werwe.

Beautiful Saxon countryside with restful-looking brick houses and barns, the occasional fachwerk and thatched-roof structure, fields of corn, wheat, and asparagus, and pastures with cows and horses.

The country lanes are deeper and greener, less sunnier and open, than in Baden. And people are, of course, less sunny and open—on the surface, at least—more reserved and cautious about smiling or saying hello.

This is a rare Catholic area in a Protestant region, and the church in Löningen, which formerly served the entire area, is an interesting mix of south German baroque and north German restraint—a mix I liked, since the baroque motifs don’t run wild and become simply silly-looking, as they sometimes do, and there’s space left in the church for silence, emptiness, contemplation.

In front of the main altar at the end of the aisle is a huge bible of handmade paper with beautiful modern illustrations, hand-drawn by someone local, to illustrate each page. One page is turned each day. The presence of this large, open bible at the foot of the altar is yet another reminder that Catholics in this region co-exist with Protestants, and have learned from the tradition of their evangelical brothers and sisters.

Also, out in the country—perhaps at Evenkamp—Herr M. took us to a little brick prayer chapel. It was beautiful inside, with old oak beams, a brick floor, two simple handmade wooden stools, and a crucifix. A place to sit and pray as one goes about the business of the day . . . . It was apparently built by someone with one of Steve’s family names, Endemann.

Wössingen, Baden, Germany 6.7.09: Holy Nooks and Champagne in the Garden

Two less hectic days since we left Freiburg. Yesterday we drove first to Wagensteig, where we’d been told there was a Heimatsmuseum for the Buchenbach and Falkensteig area.

Kirchzarten, Baden, Germany 5.7.2009: Wild Astilbe and Green Pastures

Most arduous day yet, but a pleasant one in retrospect. Began with a train and bus trip up the Höllental to Feldberg, the highest point in the Black Forest.

The trip by train through the same areas we’d seen several days before, then through mist on a cloudy day, yesterday on a fine, hot, sunny day, was fascinating. Dark, still forests bordered by lush strips of wildflowers full of astilbe and blue and purple lupines, green pastures running up steep hillsides at whose feet sprawled huge houses and barns in the Black Forest style: one could look forever.

At Feldberg, we took a lift to the highest point, with its observation tower, and walked around, looking to the Alps at the Swiss border, and a small lake surrounded by steep rocky cliffs below the observation area.

Then back to the bus-and-shopping center to mill around with throngs of polyglot other tourists as we waited for the bus back, which took us to our train connection to Freiburg. Have I mentioned that our hotel has an arrangement that permits guests to take buses and trains all over Baden for free?

In Freiburg, we walked and walked on a very hot day—28˚—with merciless sun, and then rendezvoused with Regina’s sister and her husband to sit beside the cathedral—more sun and more sunburn—and to drink a glass of white wine at the tables set up for the Weinfest. Then yet another meal of flammkuchen and one more glass of wine, and back to Kirchzarten and the hotel, to rest for the drive back to Wössingen tomorrow.

Baden and Alsace 4.7.09 (2): Flammkuchen and Sudden Storms

From Haut-Koenigsbourg to Riquewihr, where we walked up and down the main street with its tawdry tourist shops and macaroon vendors, and too preserved, too self-conscious and perfect artifacts of medieval life. As we climbed the hill of the main street, a fierce storm suddenly blew up and we took shelter under the awning of one of the souvenir shops.

Rain poured from the skies, sluicing a sudden river down the main street, as miniature whirlwinds turned it into spouts rising up from the street several feet high. Adding to the excitement, one of the large table umbrellas of the café across the street took flight, hurtling through the air towards several hapless people who had sought sanctuary outside another shop.

When it was over, we found a nice, quiet little restaurant, where the four of us shared three flammkuchens, all delicious. The first had onions, cheese bits and bacon, and crème fraiche; the second, gruyere and munster with the crème fraiche; and the third, sheep’s milk cheese, tangy and fresh, atop the base of crème fraiche and gruyere. All with wonderful Alsatian white wine from the area.

After this, we stopped at a shopping area—centre commercial—outside one of the towns near the border, and marveled at the huge selection of good French food: seafood and fish, sausages piled atop sausages, cheeses to satisfy any taste, wines and crémants from all over France. We bought a local crémant and a sausage, as well as a box of sugar roses for Mary and a small handmade French pitcher for ourselves, pretty with its dark blue glazing and sprays of yellow and pink flowers on a green bough.

Everywhere we went, people seemed confidently trilingual, switching from French and German to English with ease. In the castle, we tagged along on tours in all three languages (the French being by far the most informative and dramatic, with a vivacious compact little man acting out the medieval method of battle, noting that one got one’s enemy down and then frapper! frapper! frapper!, arms gesticulating the motion of the pummeling halberd).

But when we bought ice cream at a café in the shopping center near the border, the waitress either did not understand Regina’s German or refused to understand, and switched immediately to French. So our drei Kugeln became trois boules, and we went away happy after having negotiated the linguistic maze and gotten what we had ordered.

At the hotel, a meal of delicious Black Forest trout in brown butter with almonds, parsley potatoes, and salad, and to bed for a very welcome early evening, with several hours in the company of James Hamilton-Paterson and his hilarious (and often disgusting) Cooking with Fernet Branca.

Kirchzarten, Baden, Germany: 3.7.09: Wine Fests and Black Forests

And then on the 2nd to Freiburg. Jochen drove us south through fields of corn, asparagus, pick-your-own blooms, wheat, flax, and then, in the area close to Freiburg, vines. We reached Kirchzarten about noon and checked into the Sonne, then sat in their restaurant garden and drank white wine schorles. Very hot here, both because it’s the hottest part of Germany and the weather is, according to Jochen and Regina, hotter than usual and schwül.

As we sat, a storm brewed up in the mountains around the Dreisamtal, and we hoped for a respite from the hot, muggy weather. But, as Jochen predicted, the rain passed the low-lying areas by and we were left sweltering.

Then we ordered a meal, and waited and waited, as the waitress apologized for the inexplicable delay. The meal finally arrived and was very welcome after the wait—mine, a salad plate with cucumber salad, carrot, radish, beet, potato salad, a green salad, and a boiled egg. Perfect for a hot summer day with the crisp, cool schorle.

After that, on to Buchenbach, slightly higher towards the hills of the Black Forest, where Steve found a wonderful history at the Rathaus. He spoke with someone there who told him of a Shoup house and hof still lived in by family members. This turned out to be a massive old farmhouse in traditional Black Forest style, with low overhanging eaves.

In front a large statue of a cow painted the colors of the German flag, with a slogan saying the milk sold there was a fair-trade product. At the door of the house, standing outside as if to greet us, a very nice young man who went inside and got his mother, a formidable large woman dressed vaguely in lumberjack style, who came out and talked with one foot propped on a stump outside the doorway. Over her head the date of the house and farm were carved: 1657.

She took our contact information and asked us to return this morning when her husband would be in. And then Jochen drove us up into the Black Forest.

Glorious. Cool dark hills with rocky outcrops, wreaths of mist, rain, occasional clearings with fields and lonely clusters of houses. It was like going back to the period when the Alemanni first arrived here. There’s something primitive, something prehistoric, about mountainous areas and their ancient settlements.

One outcrop beside which the road runs overlooks another on the opposite side of the roads, and is called Hirschsprung—the rocks from which deer jump from one side to the other. All cool, beautiful, still, except for the cars racing madly towards Basel and Titisee.

On our way down, stopped in Falkensteig, where Steve’s ancestor Andreas Wenzel, who married Magdalena Shoup in Buchenbach and went to Pennsylvania, grew up. We saw a sign for cherries and asparagus and stopped to buy fruit.

Bought a bottle of kirschwasser and then, when we picked out a basket of cherries, the lady at the stand gave them to us as a gift. As we stood eating the succulent, cool fruit (it was 15˚ in the mountains, and 25˚ in Freiburg), I happened to look in the book Steve had gotten in Buchenbach, and I saw that it gave the number of the house in which Leo Wenzel, father of Andreas, had lived in 1817.

We looked around, and it turned out we had parked the car right beside the house. It’s on the main road through the village into the mountains, Höllentalstrasse. It’s a large two-story old farmhouse built into the hillside, modernized at several points in its history.

The whole façade facing the street covered in kitsch—little gnomes, animals, flowerpots, in every nook and cranny available. A Wintergartenzimmer with a sign asking visitors to bring luck inside was rife with the wee creatures.

As Steve snapped pictures, up the hill from the train came two unusual looking women, mother and daughter. The mother was in black knee-length nylon tights, with black and white tennis shoes and a black waistcoat over a white t-shirt. Her hair was in a long plait wrapped in black, with multi-colored plastic butterfly clamps in it.

The daughter was similarly, if a bit less eye-poppingly, dressed. She was carrying a canvas bag with Viagra printed on the side. It was their house.

And they were very gracious, insisted we come inside, told us the house was built in 1745, and showed us all around. At one time the bottom floor apparently had a large old kitchen connecting to the barn, where geese and swine were once housed, and a living room with a large old tile stove (the original tiles mounted on display beside the stove).

Every surface, every square inch, covered in kitsch. The walls dancing with more kitsch on every spot available. A plastic mock elk’s head which R., the house owner, played for us. It sang American rock songs and bobbed its antlers. A little chef who peed and then ground his pelvis obscenely, with an erection lifting his apron, and another on the pot who grunted and produced horrendous toilet noises as Handel’s Alleluia chorus played.

The daughter, J., did not want her mother to display these—Nein, Mutti! Nein, bitte. Nein. But the mother ignored her, and we laughed and laughed at the little figures. And then she kindly gave Steve a clock and a vase as mementoes of the house.

An original (referring to the woman, that is), as Regina said, perhaps someone who owns a flea market in Freiburg, we thought. Definitely someone who dances to her own music.

And then back, the train to Freiburg, where we walked from the Hauptbahnhof to the cathedral, where a wine fest was taking place in the cathedral square: tents with wine from various vintners of the region, food, music.

We found a tent with wine from the area around Jöhlingen and had a glass of cool, crisp, dry Riesling as a band played oompahpah music and people at another table lifted their elbows and shoulders and swayed to it in mock enthusiasm. I had a salad with shrimp garnele, shrimp in a potato batter with threads of potato covering the whole, and then fried. Good on a very hot, close summer’s day.

As we walked back to the train station, Jochen pointed out embedded in the stone sidewalk something now being placed all over Germany, he said—Stolpfersteine, gold squares with names of Jews killed in the Holocaust engraved on them, and information about what happened to them. Jöhlingen has some of these now, he told us.

Oh, and in the kitchen of the Wenzel house, a shrine to Mary, with a dinosaur peeping over her shoulder, and at her feet gnomes, tiny apiaries with bees, a fat little chef in a chef’s hat, and innumerable other gewgaws. Very much like what we saw in New Riegel, Ohio, in fact, where Steve’s Wenzel ancestors and others from this area of Baden went after they arrived in Pennsylvania.

Wössingen, Baden, Germany 3.7.09: Cloudbursts and Pots of Oleander

Days passing quickly and full, with little time to write. On the 1st, we traveled to Germany.

The experience with Ryan Air (on which M. had booked us to save pennies) was unsettling. When we arrived at the airport two hours before the flight, the snaking queue for their counter was horrendously long. They had apparently opened the counter only a short time before, after people had lined up and waited for hours (for all their flights), and it had too few staff.

Oberhochstadt, Rhine Palatinate 3.7.1998: Horseradish with Wine, and Elvis Presley

Now driving back from Baden (and the Rhineland Pfalz) to Hamburg. We left Jöhlingen yesterday morning and drove to Oberhochstadt, east of Landau, where Steve believes his Wolf family lived.* This is not far at all from Jöhlingen, but in passing Karlsruhe going east, one passes out of Baden and into the Pfalz—and, we discovered, out of one linguistic zone and into another.

In the Pfalz, they speak a Pfälzischer dialect, and even our ears could detect a difference between that and the Baden dialect. People we met in Oberhochstadt told us the dialect is the same one spoken by the Pennsylvania Dutch, and that they can understand the Pennsylvania Dutch very well, even though quite a bit of their dialect is archaic Pfälzisch.

People around Oberhochstadt don’t distinguish between p and b, so that Pressler = Bressler, or something in between, similar in quality to that blended labial b and v of many Hispanics. One finds the name spelled both ways here.

One clear difference I can hear between the dialect of Baden and the Pfalz is in its rhythm. The Baden folk were more sing-songy, where the Pfälzisch ones are more phlegmatic. Nor did I hear the latter say ish for ich, as in Jöhlingen, but that could have been because I didn’t listen carefully.

Oberhochstadt is a wine village on the Südliche Weinstrasse, rather pretty and neat, but a bit less . . . ornate? . . . than the Baden village. It has grown together with Niederhochstadt, so that both today form one village.

In Oberhochstadt, we found the church locked and the parish office (which wasn’t marked, so we could have been at the wrong place altogether) closed. We asked in a bakery across the street, and found all church books are now in Speyer.

Then the husband of the bakery manager, Herr M., took us to the house of the parish secretary, a Frau S., who offered us coffee. At this, M. decided we should eat, and took us to a Metzgerei, where he rather mysteriously ordered for us two pork schnitzels and pomme frites, as well as food for himself and his wife. We paid for all.

As we waited for the schnitzels, he told us that beef with horseradish and something—potatoes? noodles?—is a local speciality, and that during the August wine fest, people come to eat this and drink wine (horrible-sounding combination, wine and horseradish). As he told us this, people came and went, all friendly, in a bit gruffer, more overt way than in Baden, and many large and slow, big-boned and heavy, as Herr M. was.

Then back to Frau S.’s where we ate our schnitzels and potatoes as she and her husband sipped coffee and ate the cherry kuchen we offered them, from Frau Klink. They talked of how too much freedom has produced egoism, and has caused the youth to leave the churches. I found it a bit eerie and unnerving to hear all this, as we sipped mineral water and apple juice from glasses with the papal crest, from his visit to Speyer. The feeling was fascist, in that covert way in which fascism continues in European (and American) Christianity, running underground—so smug and decisive, and closed to self-criticism after World War II.

From Frau S.’s to Herr Pressler, a local teacher and historian who, the S.’s thought, might be able to advise Steve about his quest for roots. The Presslers were very gracious, offering us some of their own Gewürztraminer, which was very good.

With Herr Pressler, we talked of many things. He told us that Hochstadt is paired with a town in Pennsylvania whose name sounded something like Hosh, which Herr Pressler said is how local dialect would pronounce hoch. Apparently many of the inhabitants of the Pennsylvania town came from Hochstadt, primarily, I gathered, in the 18th century, as Protestant emigrants. There’s been much to-ing and fro-ing between the two communities, and Herr Pressler and his frau have been there three times.

Herr Pressler told us that the lineage of Elvis Presley has been traced to the Hochstadt Pressler family, and a man in Little Rock, who descends from this family, has been in touch with him and plans to write a book about the line. (He also told us an exchange student from Little Rock lived in Hochstadt last year.)

He told Steve that Wolfs had, indeed, lived in Oberhochstadt, but the name has died out. Unlike Steve’s family, these were Protestant, and were in the 18th-century migration to Pennsylvania.**

According to Herr Pressler, Oberhochstadt had belonged to the bishop of Speyer, and Niederhochstadt to the Knights of St. John. Somehow, in the various historical transitions that occurred in the area, this community became Protestant, and that remained Catholic, and the area remains very religiously divided today.

Herr Pressler also got onto the war, telling us that Hitler appeared to many Europeans as an alternative to communism, hence his popularity. He said that this is why the churches remained silent as he rose to power . . . .

He spoke, too, of the fate of the local Jews, claiming that, in contrast to the Speyer bishop, the Knights of St. John permitted the Jews to live in their community, and so the Jews were treated less horribly in Niederhochstadt and during the war than in other areas.

Though they were expelled, and the synagogue pulled down—not burned, because it was attached to wooden buildings on either side. Nevertheless, descendants returned after the war and have been (so he said) cordially received. If I understood aright (all of this in German), the last two Jews of the town were sent to a camp in France during the war, and died there as elderly people.

Other bits and pieces from Herr Pressler: the local people were Franks originally. In the Thirty Years War, the community was decimated (as with Jöhlingen), and many Swiss came to the area. (In Jöhlingen, many folks seem to have come from the region of Württemburg near the Swiss border, as the Kulds did, so that Jöhlingen today has a mix of Frankish, Alemmanic, and Swabian blood—perhaps the same in Hochstadt, though the Frankish may predominate?)

Herr Pressler recommended that we stay overnight in Offenbach, whose Rathaus has the civil birth, marriage, and death records for Oberhochstadt. We did so, and found the village tedious—no center, traffic everywhere, since it’s on the highway to Landau and other places, and, in general, glum and cheerless. No windows had flowerboxes, though this is the mildest climatic region of Germany, and fields of nursery flowers grow all around.

Does the lack of ornamentation have to do with the religious character of the region? Or am I reaching for an explanation, and in doing so, reaching into a tired old grab-bag of religious tricks? Still, it’s possible: Regina Klink told us that Wössingen near Jöhlingen is an historically Protestant village, with a rather repressive culture that disapproves of dancing, etc.

Last night unmemorable. A walk here and there in the town in a futile attempt to find something, anything, that would look like a shopping area, a town center or square. After that, a sauna and swim at the hotel (Krone), for which we’d paid dearly, so felt obliged to use these, followed by a light dinner (Steinpilz in consommé and salad for me; some broccoli and carrot and potato squares fried and served with rice) with good local Gewürztraminer, and a splurge—ice cream with hot raspberry sauce and whipped cream.

This morning, to the Rathaus, where Steve drew a blank—nary a Wolf in the birth index from 1793 to the 1940s. Is he barking up the wrong tree altogether?

And then the drive back to Hamburg. Now somewhere north of Frankfurt on the terrifying autobahn, made more terrible today, somehow, by the fine weather and Friday afternoon vacation mentality: eager, earnest Germans on Urlaub, a force not to be taken lightly!

I liked the Rhineland, the wine culture and smiling landscape, though the experience in Offenbach showed me village life in the landscape can be dreary. Offenbach was more like an American town than anything I’ve encountered in Germany: pretty fields all around, and then that . . . faceless . . . center of human life plopped down in their midst. To the extent that there was any life, it was in the “suburban” area where a filling station, Pennymarkt, and drink shop were to be found. Religiously fueled individualism transmuted into American culture? We could have been in Anywhere, Iowa.

Is this because of the strong ties of the region to parts of the U.S.? Or am I making large, unfounded assumptions on the basis of too little evidence? I am, after all, only passing through these areas. Perhaps it would be better to keep quiet, given that I know so little: my initial impulse when I began keeping this travel journal.

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Going north (we’re now north of Kassell): always, that discernible thing about the northern sky, whether in Canada, northern Germany, Scandinavia: discernible and yet so hard to describe. Is it that the light recedes (and yet it’s more constant in summer, the further north one goes)? Or is it the humidity in the atmosphere of a cool, damp land?

This I know: in southern Germany, there was a difference. The light makes things simply . . . brighter . . . the further south one goes. People say that climactic theories about regional character are bosh, and they can be; but I’m hard-pressed to deny that something of the phlegmatic temperament of northern regions is due to the drabness of color, there, in this always muted light. Those impossibly dreary colors of the Canadian Group of Seven . . . .


*Note: a few years down the road, we were to discover we were in the wrong place. The Wolfs came from Oberhöchstadt in Nassau, close to Frankfurt. See my German travelogue for 2005 on this blog. One umlaut can make a world of difference.

**When we found that Steve’s roots lie in Oberhöchstadt of Nassau, instead, we also found his Wolf ancestor—who came to Minnesota in the mid-19th century—left Germany after serving in the defeated Catholic army of the prince of Nassau, as the Prussians seized control of the area.

Weingarten, Baden 30.6.1998: Witches' Nests and Pogroms

So. Back in the pretty little church, where it turns out witches were persecuted, Jöhlingen having been quite a nest of Hexes, according to cousins Steve met yesterday. We also discover that the synagogue here, too, was pulled down on Kristallnacht and all the Jews sent packing. A cousin Steve met yesterday tells us there are families still living in the village who are well-respected, who participated in this action—who broke Jews’ windows and pulled their clothes and furniture onto the street.

How can human beings do something so horrifying? Casts an altogether different light onto this pretty little Baroque church. Iris, the cousin, showed us a picture taken in the village as the war began. Shows 5 or 6 smiling Mädchens in front of a sign where someone has chalked the slogan, Die Juden sind unser Unglück. Iris says most of these women still live in the village, elderly now.

Weingarten, Baden 29.6.1998: Peeping Putti and Carolingian Graves

Sitting at the Kuld corner in Jöhlingen, trying to draw—and very badly—the statue of a whittling man that sits beside the millstones the city has placed in a fountain, from the Kulds’ mill. Just saw the church and cemetery, both beautiful. The former appears to have been built 1785-1790, after the first church was destroyed (?) in 1781. A Carolingian gravestone from the 9th century is in the church.

It’s restrained Baroque, less active and gaudy than Bavarian Baroque, with walls and ceiling of light pink, green, white, and yellow (the latter all pastel colors, too). Over the confessionals on either side of the church are very kitschy cherubim, peering down mischievously onto the two confessional doors (curtains). Sin transmuted into kitschy fun: I rather like it.

Hamburg 26 and 28.6.1998: Ancestral Millstones and Reminders of Krystallnacht

26.6.1998

Today Simpson would be 47 years old, and my parents 50 years married. As I lay abed drowsing, Simpson’s face popped into my mind, reminding me of this anniversary. And in the weeks prior to this, I’ve had flashes of Simpson’s face, often as a young, fresh-faced boy. This makes me know in my heart of hearts how much I miss him, and how much loss I feel, as I look back down the one-way tunnel of years to our childhood.

Hamburg 28.6.1998

Course in Hamburg now over—Deo gratias—and Steve and I are now driving to his Kuld ancestral village in Baden, Jöhlingen. Have just passed Hannover.

A gray day—another gray one, after several such days in a row, with heavy rains in Hamburg. That, and the cold Steve and I both now have, and too little sleep last night, and fatigue from that seminar, have me tired and despondent.

How to assess the seminar? The students seemed well-disposed, even friendly, and interested. Several people (Wolfram, Dietrich W., a Missionsakademie student) told me it was astonishing that all the students came every day and participated.

But I feel so empty and unsuccessful at the end, as if I sought to conduct a symphony and ended up with a high school band playing out of tune. Perhaps my own sense of emptiness, that life has passed me by?

If I do feel that way, I do so in addition to all the horrors life has dumped on me—because I don’t ever know how to connect, in and from my heart of hearts, with others. We discussed the place of gays and lesbians in society. I didn’t tell them I’m gay, didn’t know if I was permitted to do that. And there was Steve. I didn’t tell them he’s my longtime companion.

Ought I have? There are all those considerations about rules, regulations, how far to go, what might be permitted.

And then there’s that . . . uncontactability . . . of Germans. On the surface, gruff friendliness and politeness (at best). But one’s never invited further, and with my lack of linguistic ease, how can I even think of assaulting that barrier?

So. Nice, energetic students, whom I’ll never see again, and with whom I made only the barest of contact.

I feel so old, so used up and cast off, so rapidly passing through life without real contact or meaning. Who will deliver me from this body of death?

Last evening spent with the R.’s, who were exceedingly kind. We drove in the cold wet evening to Wohltorf. The Sachsenwald, and the neat—and affluent—little villagesn were very appealing. In Wohltorf, posh and urbanized as it is (urbanized by proximity to Hamburg), there were fields with cattle, horses, pigs—working farms, play-pretty little farms.

Rudy had made a risotto of Pfefferlinge and parsley, with bits of seasoning ham—very good. We had that after champagne, followed by a home-made blackberry ice, with copious amounts of Rotwein and Kirschwasser as a digestif. A pleasant, enchanting evening, with light falling in the garden all around their house, the apple trees laden with fruit, the windows looking out on all sides. As night fell, C. played Chopin for us; he’s an accomplished pianist. A European evening, with cultivated people whose culture is simply taken for granted, worn lightly, not exhibited ostentatiously as it might be in the U.S.

We talked of many things, including C.’s French teacher, an East Prussian. Rudi says that people from that region are very—was it bescheid?—very modest, able to live with very little while pursuing very high cultural standards. He (the teacher) can sleep with equanimity on the floor or in a bed, saying, “It could be worse: it could be Siberia.” He’s helped Rudi and C. renovate the cottage they all jointly own on the Île d’Oléron, and has masterfully preserved architectural features (e.g., an old door) they might have thrown away. He’s given C. his old Citroën, “Ente,” along with a set of tools he handcrafted to work on it.

We talked, too, of C.’s piano teacher, a Russian Jew with a Russian soul, who screams, threatens, hugs, kisses, praises. C. adores him. His sister C. refuses to go to him.

Just at Hildesheim now. Pretty landscape, with fields of grain and rows of trees running through them, and hills (the Harz Mountains?) in the distance.

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So. Now at Weingarten, a few kilometers from Jöhlingen, the latter village having proven to have no guesthouses, pensions, hotels, or Fremdenzimmer. The place we’re at here—the Golden Lion—is seedy but clean, half as cheap as the other places we checked, all full. It’s either an old inn, or a converted farmplace whose farmyard (enclosed farmyards typical here) has been taken in and converted to the inn.

When we drove into Jöhlingen in the late afternoon, another stroke of luck. I happened to see a name painted on a house—Kuld, along with Küferei and Weinbau—and told Steve about it. He stopped, and the place turned out to be his ancestral house, built in the early 1700s. Was a farm and mill, plus a cooper and wine-equipment maker.

In the house was only a Frau Kuld, whose husband died in 1991, and whose only son died in 1995, two years older than Steve. She showed Steve a Stammbaum that matches his, and then took him across the street to two millstones from the old Kuld place which the village has erected into a fountain with a plaque saying that they’re from the Kuld family’s old mill.

After Jöhlingen, back here to eat at a local restaurant that turned out to be very pricey, indeed. Steve and I had only appetizers, soup, and wine, and it still came to 102 DM.

I did enjoy my victuals, though—a summer salad of field greens, asparagus, and sugar peas, along with a tomato soup with pesto, ravioli, and gnocchi. Steve had herring filets and mushroom soup. We drank one of the good white wines of the region, and are now enjoying a Riesling from Jöhlingen itself, back in the hotel room.

I like this region. The people seem more mixed (Protestant and Catholic, German tinged with a bit of French), and thus more tolerant and sophisticated than Bavarians. There’s a pleasant, unhurried joie de vivre air about them. Perhaps because we speak some German, or because they could see we were penurious travelers, the restaurant owners brought us an on-the-house tray of small amuse-bouches, tiny tastes of the bounty of the local farms. That made the experience in the restaurant even nicer.

Lots of interesting Fachwerk buildings, too. But walking tonight after dinner, we happened on something horrifying: a plaque on the Catholic church (built immediately behind the Protestant one) saying that across from the church stood a synagogue that was destroyed on Krystallnacht in 1938.

This is recent history. Who tore down that building? Did local people stand by and shake their heads sadly, or did they participate? Did these gemütlich folks orchestrate the whole thing? Did they plan it cold-bloodedly? And what of their Jewish neighbors and friends? This region seems to have been full of Jews. What became of them? Who remembers today? Is the war just over and forgotten, along with all that preceded it? Or does anyone remember, atone, feel shame?

The church bells outside the window (yes, those very same church bells) have just rung 10 P.M. A long day, and now I hope, a bit of sleep.

Salzburg, 11.7.03: Angelus and Trompe L'Oeil Cornices

Sitting in a boat at Wolfgang am See. The Baden cousins, Jochem, Regina, and Helga K. have driven down and we spent most of the afternoon and evening walking in Salzburg with them. Have now driven into the Alps to Wolfgang, where church bells are ringing the noon Angelus, as we wait for the boat to take us onto the lake. All very nice, a beautiful day.

I notice bits about the Jöhlingen accent I don’t hear when I’m there: ist is isht, bist is bisht, gestern is yestern. If I’m not mistaken, the accent around Köln (Kölnsch?) is similar. Is this true of the Rhine region in general?

A woman yesterday at the tree in front of the nuns’ church told us it’s called Plantanen—as well as I could understand the word.

In front as we wait, carved dark wooden balconies and roof overhangs. The balconies have multicolored geraniums and a yellow (small) creeping daisy. One house had trompe l’oeil cornices painted onto it. A small plaza leading down to the water, which is green and purple—the latter in the deeper areas.

And now off! I can understand the German of the guide, to my surprise. Well, bits of it.