A Poignant Day of Reflection Deep in Bavaria

Melissa and I went to a funeral today; our first together and so too our first here in Germany. More specifically, the funeral was deep in the heart of Bavaria in a small town about 30 minutes south of Munich (where they're all small). A father of a friend of ours died. I knew nothing about the man before and learned by attending his funeral that in 1958 he helped to found the Bavarian Red Cross (Bayerische Roten Kreuz). We didn't know how old he was when he died, but speculated that he must have been at least 30 in 1958. This would mean that he likely saw a few interesting things in deep Bavaria during the 1940's and perhaps even the 1930's or 1920's, depending on how old he was; he and also some of the attendees at his farewell, who were contemporaries.

The funeral was much like any other; as we walked into the cemetery chapel a priest was addressing the attendees. I understand not a lot of German, but enough to snatch the gist of addresses like these and it seemed to be a litany of the man's life. Standing off to the right was an honor guard holding two or three flag standards of the local Red Cross. Later when we filed outside to the graveside, the honor guard stepped forward one by one and dipped the flag down toward the urn containing the man's ashes that had just been lowered into the ground and covered with a few spadefuls of Erde (earth) by his son and daughter in law.

It was a beautiful warm day deep in the heart of Bavaria and the Alps were shining as we approached the small town where the cemetery was located. We had passed a small monument on the left side of the road, barely noticeable. The monument in greening copper looked to have been over 50 years old, set possibly about the time that the man we were on our way to honor was founding the Bavarian Red Cross. The monument was a sculpture of a group of sad and tired looking emaciated men, maybe tied together, shuffling along single file.

I knew what it commemorated before we stopped after the funeral to read the inscription. At the end of World War II two division of the U.S. Seventh Army were advancing through southern Germany. At the Dachau Concentration camp the Commandant ordered the camp evacuated and those prisoners that could walk were to be marched south, toward the Alps with no specific location in mind other than to keep ahead of the Americans. The camp inmates were marched along a canal that still runs through the camp until they reached the Wurm River, followed the Wurm down to Lake Starnberg and on toward the Alps, passing through the location of the monument that now commemorated this one of dozens of death marches that took place around Europe at that time.

Knowing all of this, the omission on the commemoration of any mention of Jews was notable. Notable, but not surprising for the time. It took 20-30 years for Germany and the rest of Europe, and the world for that matter to recognize and address the magnitude of the war crimes and human brutality we know as The Holocaust. People of my generation have grown up in the era of expiation and it is surprising, I think to us, that the Shoah was not a part of common knowledge of the war throughout the 50's and 60's. Many concentration camp survivors themselves did not want to talk about it, wanted to forget it and melt back into their new societies. So it was not surprising that this commemorative monument of at least 50 years ago did not mention Jews specifically. That consideration of the monument now included Jews specifically was clear from the several smooth clean stones that sat on the top.

Bavaria was Catholic and Conservative and remains so today. The Bavarian countryside in particular was very pro Hitler, pro Nazi and supplied much of the political base that allowed him to gain power in Munich before ascending to the presidency of Germany in 1933. As a preface to the final section of this post, I must say that of all the countries of Europe, Germany has done the most to come to terms with the behavior of its society and citizens during the War and to atone. It's taken many years and it's ongoing, but it's real and Germany is of course a completely different society today (Austria, on the other hand, has done the least to address these issues and is much the worse for it today as a society).

So with all of this in mind it was incredibly poignant when the very Jewish Daughter in law of the man in the urn stepped forward and began reading (in German, of course) a passage from the Jewish faith. It provided a wonderful emotional moment to the service. That it was absolutely free of any irony is pure testament to the distance, the hard distance these people from this beautiful small region in deep Bavaria have marched in a couple of generations, away from some really hard times of which they were not without culpability. We were blessed to be part of this on this day.

My heart goes out to my friend and my admiration for his wife has grown.

I will ask our friends for a translation of the passage and post it here, with their permission. I didn't bring my camera today (always a bad idea) and so will have to return and will post a photo of the monument here later.

Letter from Here: Watching Friday afternoon's prescribed prairie burn in the UW Arboretum's Curtis Prairie

Letter from Here: Watching Friday afternoon's prescribed prairie burn in the UW Arboretum's Curtis Prairie

It's Been a Long Cold Winter

It's Been a Long Cold Winter
Originally uploaded by CHEEZMAN

The Solstice seems a long time ago and unforgettable. On the shortest day
of the year we were in Venice, having driven down with Grandpa Chuck, who
arrived two days earlier for a three week visit. The drive to Venice takes
five hours, but, like any trip down into Italy, is broken up in interesting
sections and so the time flies by. The boring part on the German A-8 comes
first, but, as the Stau was light, we were able to cruise at 150+ k/h and so
soon we were turning onto the autobahn to Innsbrucke. Within an hour and a
half we pass Innsbrucke and climb over the Brenner Pass into Italy. As we
began our descent down through the gorge past Vipiteno, Bressannone and
Bolzano, the car was quiet. Our attention was given to Lynn Redgrave,
reading over the speakers Inkheart, by Cornelia Funke. I realized that the
heros of the story were traveling over the same route as us. Looking up at
the many old castles; some crumbling, some shining, made it easy to imagine
the world of Silver Tongue, Meggie and Dustfinger.

Eventually we slid out of the mountains and on to the littoral plain that
crosses Italy from East to West until stopped by the rising Alps toward the
Swiss Border. The plain is anchored on the east by The Veneto, and that's
were we headed as we turned left at Verona and rolled toward Venice.

Continued in later post. This is a test to try emailing a blog post with
photos via Flickr. To see the photos from Venice with explanations and
captions, go here
.

www.flickr.com/photos/zilavy/sets/72157614021752537/

Where'd e go??

It's been awhile since I've written anything. Obviously. I really need to get back to it, to maintain some creativity in my life. Lately this has come through photography, something I've learned a bit about in the last year or so and something at which I continue to struggle. I'll post photos here, of course.

We've done a lot of traveling in the last two years. I'll try to catch you up quickly. Since January 1, 2006 we've visited: Ceske Krumlov, Paris (twice), Ljublijana (twice), Kobarid (twice), Florence, Siena, Lucca, various Tuscan hill towns, Rome, Naples, Montecassino, the Amalfi Coast, Cinque Terre, Freiburg, Berne, Murten, Bourgogne, The Alsace, Nancy, Rheims, Colmar, Budapest, Vienna, The Dolomites, Bolzano, Rovinj, Istria, Prague, Karlovy Vary, Loket, Bratislava, Velke Levare, Studienka, Barga, the Garfagnano, Castelrotto, Salzburg, Berchtesgaden, Halstatt and too many places in Bavaria to remember. I'm sure I've forgotten something, someplace (oh, yeah, a tennis camp at Lago di Garda), Amsterdam (how can I forget Amsterdam?).

Travel in Europe has occasionally approached blase, but then we plan our next trip and the excitement rushes in. Our travel has evolved, forced, primarily, by the needs of the kids. I'm generally perfectly happy, as I did last week, to amble, somewhat aimlessly, through the streets and neighborhoods of Prague with the kids. If they became tired, we rested. If they wanted to spend an hour at a playground we discovered, we did. Large green park spaces on Stadt-plans are always a draw; the kids can wander, discover, play and live without obvious structure, which is their paradigm at their ages (nearly 8, nearly 6 and 3 1/2). I feel little need to see any specific site if it doesn't fit in with the children's needs. They, frankly, won't allow it anyway, voting with their crude abilities to control impulses and emotions. Instead, they lead me and as I result I get my sense of place as well from sitting on a park bench, watching the strollers as I do from a museum. I've learned to set up artificial missions for the children, to head them in a direction with such purpose that the adjective "artificial" can be removed. "If we get to the top of that hill, you'll see where the largest statute of Stalin once stood." Who's Stalin? What happened to the statute? Why did he kill so many people? Why did they make a statue to him? Is he dead? Unfortunately, in this case, in Letna Park in Prague, the city didn't retain the statute, which would, for me have been an interesting bit if kitsch. Instead, a giant moving metronome has replaced, keeping time for I'm not sure whom. For me, it didn't work as public art. It's statement lacked relevance, but more to the point, it was piteously thin and small in a setting that required greater scale. Though the park itself, in all of it's leafy, graffitied eastern bloc neglect, worked stupendously.

This was my 4th visit to Prague, a city that once was my favorite on earth, but about which I'm now more ambivilant. This arises not from familiarity, but from abuse, if that's the right word. Prague is stupendously beautiful, urgently visited now by all. Locals are driven out of the center, the day to day businesses serving them turn over to souvenir shops of all sorts, cheap thrill attractions (though no so cheap: we intended to go to a "blacklight" performance one night, hearing good things about it, til the nearly 100 Euro price tag for the family shut it down. As Melissa summed: this ain't Broadway.), restaurants, cafes, pizzeria's, "authentic czech cuisine" joints. The town becomes a museum piece, existing for tourists. It compares then unfavorably to, for example, the equisite town of Rovinj, in Croatia. The medieval charm, narrow maze streets and seafront setting are exhilarating. Rovinj, thankfully, retains it's locals, it's cobbler shops, open markets, passagiata. You meet this people over the course of a visit, talk to them, thrill to their friendliness, their stories. Only after two days, after findng grotty Letna Park, did my appreciation for Prague begin to return.

Rovinj, Croatia at dawn

We like to travel off the grand tour tracks (Kobarid, for example, I will write about this soon in a post. It is perhaps my favorite place on earth) and out of high tourist season. I'll share our discoveries and happily give opinions and advice. Since I've figured out now how to post photos, this blog should be heavily illustrated also. I don't know who I write for: me? you? the children? posterity? Actually, I do know, it's me. But I want you to read. After nearly 2 years I'll work toward some coherence, which I know is not here yet. Enjoy and thank you for your patience.

Dachau with Daughters

This afternoon turned out to have odd, interesting and bothersome twists. It was cold, but the sun was out so I decided during Sorchia's nap to pick up Olivia and Oona early from school and bike them out of Unterschleissheim, across farm fields and through woods to the Dachau Concentration Camp (Olivia is 5 and Oona is 3 and its high time they learned about genocide). On the way, Sorchia and I were accosted and nearly attacked by a lone swan that has taken up residence in the park we ride through every day. He had in fact been harassing a 12 year old boy as we drove up. (I've got a video to prove all of this).

The ride out went well. I knew half of the route and the other half I'd memorized from scrutinizing Google Earth. But as we entered Dachau and neared the camp, Sorchia, sitting in the bike seat immediately behind me, started crying. Clearly she was getting very cold, even though I'd bundled her up tight. The sun was sinking faster than I'd calculated, so we aborted the camp and opted for a few minutes at a playground.

While we were unloading, a man walking his dog came up and started chatting in German. His face was friendly, gray stubbled and shy of most of the important teeth. He wore a dirty peasant hat and peasant coat. From the little vocabulary I've picked up in the last two months I learned that he and his family were among the ethnic German's expelled from Romania in the years after WWII. I thought this quite interesting because the phenomenon of this expulsion is something I had never heard of before recently reading about it in depth in Tony Judt's excellent Postwar: Europe Since 1945. Ethnic Germans had been emigrating to different parts of eastern Europe for hundreds of years and settling in farming communities and small towns. These people hadn't lived in Germany for generations and were "citizens" of the countries in which they'd settled. It was the breadth and success of this dispersion that had, in part, emboldened Hitler to conquer territory that contained these ethnic Germans. After the war, whether because of their unwitting contribution to Hitler's plans or for revenge, the Allied leaders acceded to the demands of Romania, Czechoslovakia, Poland and others to allow the expulsion of these, likely largely innocent populations. Many settled in Bavaria, and here I was talking to one of them.

After 10 minutes or so at the playground, long enough for me to negligently fling Oona violently from a spinning appartus, causing her to face-plant into the woodchips, I noticed the sun was now setting and so we had to go!. This was urgent. I had no headlight on the bike, the way back was unlit and one short stretch was on a narrow road with some traffic. Also, the temperature was dropping noticeably. Sorchia balked at loading and she sobbed all the way back, 7.5 miles as I flew as fast as I could while pulling two girls in a trailer. When we got home and inside, I realized that poor Sorchia's feet were underdressed and were ice-blocks, clearly to the point of causing pain. Bad Dad! She and I cuddled in a chair for awhile until she warmed up. I'm hoping that tomorrow the rain holds off so we can try again to make the camp.

Out of the Closet

I need to comment on the quality of quality in western consumerism in the early 21st century. We all work hard for our money while mass producers are simultaneously drilling us with advertising to get that money. They promise a fair exchange. But is it really? I bought a digital camera just over a year ago. I did my research and went to Camera's West, decision made on what to buy. Of course Russell the salesmen thought that maybe I needed something just a step up from the one I'd set my sights on. One with less shutter lag, because of course this would be important to me in taking action pictures of children. He was right, I thought, and the Sony he sold me was a good camera and took great looking photos. Never mind that I spent $150 more than I'd intended.

As an aside, I don't think this would have happened in Germany. I've dealt with a few salespeople at Media Markt, the German version of Best Buy. They don't work on commission and don't really even want to be bothered with you, much less consider you a customer to be served. The upside is that no one tried to push us into the next highest price on whatever appliance we were purchasing. No pressure. I like that a lot.

Back to the camera. So what then to make of what happened 8 months later? While on a day trip to Mount Rainier, Olivia was holding the camera and slipped on the trail. The camera didn't slam on the ground, drop or hit a rock. It rather rolled gently through the dust. The camera was off and all orifices were closed tight. I picked it up, dusted it off and turned it on. The camera popped the lens out part way, made a straining high pitched noise and quit. It was done. Kaput. No cost effective repair available (of course I hadn't purchased any warranty), "but for only $150 more, you can have almost the same camera, brand new." IPODs cost $250-$350 but are only expected to last a few years. It seems that there is so much disposable income in the developed world, and so much pressure to spend that income rather than save and that whether anything of quality and long lasting value is purchased is no longer the point or the aim. The spending is the end in itself.

I've been contemplating the IKEAization of our lives recently because, as may or may not be generally known, German houses do not have closets. I first learned this several months ago while furiously online-researching reasons not to move to Germany. I found a blog from an ex pat woman who had much to complain about Germany, lack of closets included. I went straight to Melissa and said, with no thought toward presentation and no small amount of indignation, "They don't have closets in Germany." "No", she responded, "that can't be right."

But it is right, and its not really all bad, for a couple of reasons. First, all of the square footage that would have gone into closets is instead living space that you can walk upon and see, leaving the impression that the rooms and the houses are more generous in size, more useable for action. Second, the lack of a closet requires confrontation of actual clothing needs, rather than impulsive wants. Is your closet full? I'll bet it is. All of our closets in the States were so full that the bars were strained in the middle like sway-backed horses. The rub is that over half of the hanging clothes were rarely to never used. Instead of closets, Germans use wardrobes, or kleiderschranks. By definition, smaller than most closets. Excess is precluded and one must choose carefully what goes into the kleiderschrank, based presumably on what is actually regularly used.

Which brings me back to my point. We've been here for 2 months and have not yet purchased our kleiderschranks. This is not because they're hard to find. In fact they are everywhere and we get circulars in the mail daily advertising them. We've visited IKEA and at least 5 other stores several times (an activity that likely awaits me in hell, 24 hours per day). Each time we vow to make a decision so we can stop the death marches. But so far we haven't, in spite of the fact that the products are pretty much all the same and are relatively cheap for a large piece of furniture.

The problem, as it occurred to me recently, is the absolute failure of the worthy idea and mission of Charles and Ray Eames. I'd never heard of these people (husband and wife, 20th century designers. This is what wikipedia is for if you've not heard of, or much of them) before stumbling on an exhibit of their life's work and philosophy at the Library of Congress when we lived in Washington D.C. Possibly best known for their design of a molded plastic chair, the Eames's were convinced that quality and aesthetics in design should be available to the middle class. These plastic molded chairs, ubiquitous 30 years ago, are now classics and are ironically beyond the reach of the (shrinking, thank you very much GWB. Asshole.) middle class. They were wrong, quality and aesthetics are generally beyond the reach of the middle class.

And this is why we haven't yet bought our closets: Anyway you look at it we're going to spend good money on furniture that is absolute crap. This is a trigger that the common sense part of our brains have for two months been screaming at us not to pull. We'll go into a store and examine a store model that seems to work just fine. Then we'll pay money and receive flat boxes that fit neatly into our vehicle and contain all of the parts to construct our very own piece of crap at home. We won't even need any tools, except a screwdriver and 2-4 hours of our time, because they've invented these new fasteners that aren't screws or nails but are a series of straining points pulling sections of particle board together. Inevitably, when finally constructed, something won't square up just right, or a piece will be missing, or I will have misread irreversible step 16 causing a self-inflicted flaw I must live with. In the end, after 2-3 years and we return to Seattle we will leave these pieces of crap here. Probably to be destroyed, landfilled because who is going to buy used crap? (don't answer that one.)

I've tried reductio ad absurdam on this problem: If we're just going to buy crap, let's just put up a bare open bar for hanging clothes. Ah, but this leaves out aesthetics, so we're back to the crap. It's Thursday and, I swear, by the end of this weekend we are going to be resentful possessors of brand new crap. What choice do we have?

I Have a Dream

It's been a month since the last post. So what do I need to write about? Impressions of living in Germany? Well, I'm learning to be patient when I need to get something done, because nothing important gets done quickly. Take the tagges mutter situation. That means day mother; day care person for Sorcha; my sanity savior as I've been taking care of Sorchia (a beautiful child , interested in anything I show her, obsessed with cows and other large hoofed animals, happy always with a developing sense of humor) all day, every day. At 16 months, she doesn't understand that, in life, some time must be devoted to mundanities such as grocery shopping, cleaning, regularity. I'd say 80% of the time this is no problem. But, when one does need to shop, clean, maintain regularity, then she has no patience and the effect on this adult male is to raise stress level. If she didn't take a daily 2 hour nap I'd be in a strait-jacket. I now better understand songs like "Mother's Little Helper" and the popularity of Valium in the 70's (can you still get this substance?).

So anyway, the Tagges Mutter: I first learned of the existence of these saviors at the local Familien Zentrum, where, at least a month ago I had a meeting with a woman who carefully took down the details of my child care needs: at least 3 days a week, but I'll take what I can get. "Nothing available now", she said, as Sorcha dumped the woman's ash tray on the floor and started gleefully picking through the butts. "I'll call you." Three weeks and butkus. Then I get the call on a Thursday. Available Taggesmutter, in my neighborhood, 3 short days per week. Great, I'll call her Monday, I think, set things up and start the following Monday, at the latest. Maybe I can even get Sorcha in by the end of the week. I call Monday, and the woman says maybe we should meet on Saturday. Saturday! That's nearly a week out. Ok, I adjust, cancel a weekend family trip to the Alps and we meet Saturday. Ok, I think, we're probably on track for a Monday start because of course this woman is in it to make some money. The meeting is painstaking. Her 18 year old daughter comes in to help translate around the edges. She usually does 8-1, but maybe she could do 8-4. She brings it up. I accept. Perhaps too eagerly as she then seems to trend toward talking herself out of these extra hours. Look, I think, you brought it up and it took me about 2 nano-seconds to adjust my expectations to the longer days and helplessly watching her now try to pull it back was torture. In the end she agreed to the long days, so I'm thinking we start Monday. Not so fast, jack. First we must both arrange a mutually agreeable time to meet with the coordinator at the Familien Zentrum so we can simultaneously sign paperwork formalizing the agreement. This turns out to be Wednesday, at which meeting I learn that the first 2 weeks is and "adjustment period" and I must hang out with the Tagges Mutter for the first two weeks and the sessions can be no more than 2 hours. Is this typical? How does anything get done in this country? So the following Monday Sorcha and I show up at the Tagges Mutter's haus. "Oh no", I hear. There is a problem. "You must bring haus shoes for Sorcha." After 45 minutes of sitting around watching Sorcha do just fine I couldn't take anymore. "I think maybe I'll take off for a couple hours" I say, standing up. Tagges Mutter visibly stiffens, crosses arms, seems to be thinking of good reason to oppose this. But she can't. Sorcha is fine. In the end I agree to spend the first 20 minutes where she can reach me at home in case there's a problem. I do. There isn't. I'm free! That was a couple weeks ago. Today Sorcha spent her first long day with the Tagges Mutter. I played tennis, went on an excellent long bike ride with a friend and cut the grass for the last time before picking up all of the kids on the bike. Sweet beautiful day.