Oberpfalz, Kreis Waldmünchen 23.12.99: Boehmerwald and Dark Heart of Europe

When did I last write in this journal, and what has happened since then? Well, yesterday a trip into the Czech Republic to visit the archives in Pilsen.

Hermann S. drove us early, before sunrise, to Waldmünchen, where we met Georg. It was magical to see the snow-covered hills and little villages in the half dark.

Georg and his wife Resi met us in their house, both looking rather worried, she above all. We gave her presents, which she only half-acknowledged as she fussed over Georg, handing him a lunch (their word, pronounced German-style) she had prepared. Georg told us later she was concerned about road conditions, and both worried about the car being stolen. It was also his first trip driving to Tschechien; he’s gone before, but always with someone else driving.

The border crossing (just the other side of Waldmünchen) was a little tense. Normally, they only look at his passport and wave him on, Georg said. But Steve’s passport they took inside their station, and we waited a full five minutes as they . . . what? Checked some computer database? And why? Do Americans come into the Czech Republic and cause trouble? Or did they suspect he was not a bona fide American?

Georg says things were considerably friendlier when the border had just re-opened. For various reasons, tensions are now re-asserting themselves. The mix of surface joviality with underlying brutality in the border guards: it always makes me nervous, and cast a pall over the trip into this former Soviet fiefdom.

Almost immediate after we entered Tschechien, Georg showed us the site of a former Böhmisch (i.e., German) village which the Czechs razed completely when they expelled all Germans in 1946. There’s no sign of it now, at least not under the snow. Evidently, to keep the border secure, brush was allowed to grow up all along the border, and according to Georg, an electric fence was erected the length of the border.

The ridge of mountains that form the beginning of the Böhmerwald is another barrier, and must be part of the reason (the natural reason) that the Grenze between Bayern and Böhmen ran just here. The people, at least the German-speaking ones, were, after all, the same as the Bavarians. Borders are often such unnatural divisions that it helps to find a natural barrier to justify them.

In the snow, the mountainous, forested area is pretty, but also a bit forbidding. Without modern means of travel, it must have been very forbidding. Even yesterday, there was beaten-down snow on the roads. I can understand Resi’s apprehension: had it snowed again before our return—or, worse, rained—these roads would have been well-nigh impassable.

There’s a stillness in the woods I notice often in middle-European areas, here abetted by history. Passing through the Böhmerwald, one feels as if one is entering the very heart of Europe—I’m tempted to write, “the dark heart.” I had read the day before that the east-west watershed of the continent does run very close to Steve’s ancestral village, Weissensulz. That makes the heart metaphor more compelling.

And Georg tells us that the forest-and-mountain-chain acts as a weather barrier, blocking the very cold weather from Russian in winter. The barrier also blocks wet weather from the Atlantic, so that Böhmen has drier, sunnier weather in summer than Bayern has. Georg maintains that the Böhmisch farmers were outstanding, and had larger, more prosperous farms than their Bavarian cousins had.

The weather barrier manifested itself almost immediately, as we drove into heavy fog for miles and miles, the east side of the forest. Here, one begins to wind through small, very grim viallages, most of them at one time German, although one we passed through had always been Czech, according to Georg, who also says that the German villages were at one time prosperous, cheery, well-maintained.

Not now. Now, all these places—anyplace we saw en route to Pilsen—look like the backside of nowhere. I try to imagine the life of, say, a teenager in such a place. At least in winter, everything seems dirty, deprived, geographically, culturally, and spiritually closed in. Perhaps some other, more appealing, life is going on inside the apartment buildings and houses we passed, but not in the street—not to my eye, at least.

On to Pilsen: also exceedingly dirty, industrial, and forbidding, though the downtown squares by night, as we left for our drive back, were pretty, with Christmas lights and lots of people shopping in the evening. The city seemed more active by night than it was by day, when we arrived.

Steve had good luck in the archives, as he, Georg, and I pored over 18th- and 19-century records of the Weissensulz parish and its mother parish, Heiligenkreuz. We were able to follow the Steinsdörfer line back into the 1600s, always in Weissensulz, where Steve’s ancestors were scribes, teachers, then sievemakers and farmers.

I got little feel for Czechs and Czech culture on this quick trip. The people we met in the archives were friendly, trying out a few words of English and laughing at their attempts. We had to communicate in German. They, the way they live, seem lost somewerhe in the 1940s or 1950s. There’s just not anywhere near the level of material comfort you find in Germany, where everything’s so cushy and well set-up, or in the U.S. At least, if the material comfort’s there, it’s not immediately apparent to the eye of a casual observer.

And everywhere, all over Western Bohemia, industrial pollution hangs like a heavy gray curtain, compounded in winter by the brown coal (or so it’s called in German) the Czechs burn. Its foul smell is everywhere; you can’t even shut it out of the car, as you drive. It’s one of the reasons so many buildings are begrimed.

Oberpfalz, Kreis Waldmünchen, 21.12.1999: Winter Gardens and Blue Hills of Bohemia

*In Bavaria, at Steve’s cousins’ in the Oberpfalz. I’m sitting in a room they call the Wintergartenzimmer, off the kitchen at the back of the house. It has windows on two sides, floor to ceiling, and on the side that joins the kitchen, a beautiful corner stove for heat. This has a marble or perhaps faux marble top, resting on a stone base that forms the top of the stove. The stone is graven. A similar stone is beneath the stove.

The room has a tile floor of light tan, and white walls. In the middle is a table with an old-seeming sewing machine for its base. I feel quite sure Hermann S. built the room. He’s amazingly talented. He paints, gilds and repaints church statues, works in wood.

It’s a simple room, but so esthetically pleasing. Atop the stove are two ebony statues, I think of Masai people, since there is a similar statue upstairs that Hermann tells us comes from the Masai people. One the wall over my shoulder is a statue of St. George killing the dragon. The saint has a brightly colored cape, and the base on which the statue sits is gilded—Hermann S.’s own work. The Bavarians don’t leave their saints in church; they bring them home.

Over the table is a light fixture made from what appears to be an old oxen yoke, of darkened wood and leather with iron studs. The door to the room is plain wood, but ornamented with a carved scroll beneath the window. Outside, as I look at the peach-colored stucco walls of the house, I see that Hermann S. has painted scrolls of gray, yellow, and brown above and below the window—the Bavarian sensibility, to ornament.

It snowed last night and during the previous day, perhaps for days before here. The snow must be about 10 inches deep, but the temperatures are just above freezing, so the snow is packing slowly. Rain is predicted for Wednesday—the 23rd. It so, I hope it washes the ice and snow off the roads, so that a trip to Weissensulz will be possible. Getting here yesterday afternoon was a bit tricky. Dark had begun to fall as we left the autobahn and started our trek through the Oberpfälzisch hills and villages. Several times, the care went into skids when we tried to stop and turn. Steve’s expertise pulled us out.

Very peaceful hear, the snow overlaying everything, the stove purring efficiently in the corner. But quiet for the visitor. I feel in my bones that if I lived here, I’d soon find it very unquiet. There is, almost literally, nothing to do, not even a shop or a bakery. The young leave, as they leave the Eifel. For those whose families have long been established, as the S.’s have, it’s home, and Hermann S.’s house shows that one can make a life here, a pleasant one. Still, a sadness hangs over the place, the sense that a way of life is soon to pass, as the young go to Rötz or father afield to Regensburg, and the parents nurture the village—for whom?

The sadness of any passing. What were those lines I thought of yesterday, as drove, one of those many blockbuster opening sentences I devise, never to complete the story they begin? “Being Irish, they enjoyed reciting the names of things, especially things that have passed from the earth. My grandmother used to recite the names of apples she knew in her youth, which were no more: Yates, Mollie’s Delicious, the Cullasaja, and on and on, a formidable litany. And when she’d take me to her attic to explore the contents of trunks up there—her mother’s, Kate Ryan the immigrant, her brother John’s, who died at her house, her mother-in-law’s—there would be lessons in forgotten quilt patterns, the Double Wedding Ring, Geese A-Flyin’, Broken Dishes. Many of the unquilted tops in her mother’s trunk she had pieced along with Grandma Kate. To see them was to remember a whole history now goine, since each quilt top incorporated pieces taken from the clothes of family members no longer alive—the black silk dresses of Kate herself, who was perpetually in mourning for a lost child, the bright sprigged gingham of little Lizzie who died as a girl, or the blue denim workpants of Tommy, who had fallen dead hoeing cotton one hot summer day.”

Frau S. comes and goes as I write, a stricken look on her face. Unlike her husband, who’s solid and very relaxed, she flits nervously here and there. Even in Germany, I’ve never seen a house so immaculate. When we were here at Fronleichnam, she was preparing her yard for the procession by pouncing like a bird on infinitesimal pieces of detritus in the grass, as we men sat talking in the evening air.

There’s something fierce in the busyness, the cleanliness of German woman, something I wouldn’t want to encounter in an enemy. Even as I write, she’s moving purposefully across the snow-covered driveway with a pail in her hand, talking to a neighbor all the while, poised as if to run back inside to complete her chores. She has an apron on, of course, that blue work apron that seems standard for so many village women.

What she tells me when she flits in and out, I’m never entirely sure. She speaks broad Bavarian, rapid-fire, in a guttural, forceful tone. She’s brought a carafe of tea, and is telling me how to line up the red dot with the opening. And now she has bottles of mineral water, lemonade, and homemade apple juice. I think she’s saying—yes, I do understand this clearly—that the apple juice is cold from the cellar, and I shouldn’t drink it cold for fear of harm to my throat.

They eat only bio food. No white sugar or flour, only whole grain and brown sugar from Africa. Breakfast this morning was a very delicious muesli with grated apples and grains. Dinner last night was wonderful—a fresh trout fried in butter with almonds (truite almandine), served with parsley potatoes and salad—a really good salad of onion, bell pepper, lettuce, and tomato, with a simple vinaigrette. The dressing was the first non-sweet, non mayonnaise or cream dressing I’ve had on this trip to Germany.

*This posting resumes a travel narrative whose last installment was posted on this blog on 12 May. Now that I've re-located my misplaced travel journal, I can complete the saga of this particular trip to Germany.