Nice German Places You Wouldn’t Want to Visit 1000 Years Ago

Some day someone will perfect time travel, opening an extreme time travel tourism industry for the German medieval ages. War, famine, plagues, massacres, bad food, awful hygiene, and religious fanaticism will appear on our social media feeds. If the past gets 3G coverage.

While we wait for time travel scientists to get it together and discover how to bend time and space so we can take selfies with Charlemagne, we must settle on seeing what’s left of medieval Germany right here.

North Rhine-Westphalia, the state I live in, is a fine place to discover German’s violent and, with the benefit of hindsight, exciting medieval roots. 

Münster I

This calm city, named for that Addams-esque TV family, is an easy-going university town today with street-side cafes and bike lanes leading every which way along its tree-lined avenues.

During the Reformation, it was a little less academic and a lot more anarchic. Anabaptists revolted against the Catholic-Protestant government and took control of the city. They were early Amish, Quakers, and Mennonites – although these guys were more violent and dogmatic than their kinder, friendlier, barn-building ancestors.

They renamed the town New Jerusalem and established a proto-communist state, abolishing private property and rebaptising its people.

This angered both the Catholics and the Protestants, so in a rare show of cooperation, they gathered an army and laid siege to the town.

Nerves frayed in the city. People were going hungry. There was talk of surrender. After the Anabaptist leader was killed in battle, his successor made polygamy legal and rushed to marry Münster’s prettiest women before telling the townspeople.

The town fell and was promptly looted and pillaged. The generals tortured and executed the leaders, and, deciding that wasn’t bloody enough, stuffed the bodies into cages hanging from a church tower. The cages are still there. Münster is macabre too, man.

Look a little closer...

There are the Anabaptist death cages.

Kaiserspfalz of Kaiserswerth

Sitting upon a throne, waited upon by servants, receiving supplicants, passing down judgements and wisdom, this was the stuff of kings, not the Holy Roman Emperor.

The Holy Roman Empire, was, to paraphrase a smarter person, neither holy nor roman nor an empire. It was a collection of hundreds of small states run by princes, counts, bishops, kings, and dukes who elected an emperor with just enough power not to annoy any of the princes, counts, bishops, kings, or dukes.

Think of it as a feudal European Union. Its borders included modern day Germany, the Czech Republic, Austria, Northern Italy, and parts of Poland, France, Belgium and Holland.

Emperors mostly ruled from horseback. They traveled all over the realm, dealing with complaints, but mostly putting down rebellions. 

To make things easier, the emperor and his imperial posse stayed in a network of castles, called Kaiserspflazes. It was safer, and he could count on good food and clean bedsheets, and he knew where the secret passages were. 

The castle at Kaiserswerth used to be on an island in the Rhine, so it was an important defensive fortification and an imperial crash pad.

What's left of the imperial crash pad at Kaiserswerth.

Münster II

Most medieval towns’ story would end after a bloody suppression of a revolt, but Münster would bounce back because the whole Catholic-Protestant mess was still unresolved. 

The Catholics and Protestants within the Holy Roman Empire made peace. If your prince was of a certain religion you had to convert or leave, this applied to Catholics, Calvinists and Anabaptists – but not Lutherans, who could stay and still be Lutheran.

The new Catholic Holy Roman Emperor tried to make everyone in the empire Catholic, which angered the Protestants. The Protestants of Bohemia (part of today’s Czech Republic) stormed Prague Castle, and threw the Catholic leaders out a window – who survived, due to divine intervention, or the short fall, depending on who you asked. 

This started a war. The emperor fought the Bohemians with the help of the Catholic Bavarians. It was a stalemate until the Saxons joined the Catholics, who started winning the war. 

To even things out for the Protestants, Sweden joined the war against the Catholics.

The Swedes and all the Protestant Germans were now winning, so Catholic Spanish joined the war to bail out the emperor (who was related to the king of Spain) and also fight the Dutch, who they've been fighting before this war.

Now the Catholics were winning, but Catholic France was not comfortable with being surrounded by two rivals (Holy Roman Empire and Spain), even though they were all Catholic. So they joined the Protestant side.

This went on for 30 years, which is what the war was called, because originality was killed in the war along with millions of people. They ran out of energy and signed a few treaties, known as the Peace of Westphalia, ending the 30 Years War and, the equally original 80 Years War.

This treaty changed how states interact with each other. They had to respect other states’ sovereignty, especially over territory, politics, and religion. It also recognized Catholics, Lutherans, and Calvinists were all given legal rights – not Anabaptists, sadly they would be considered heretics, which is really unfair since most of them were pacifists.

This was also the first major international political conference, which changed how states make and keep peace. We wouldn’t have the UN or EU without the Peace of Westphalia, which was signed in Münster.

Munster's city hall, where they signed my favourite
peace treaty: The Peace of Westphalia

Walkin' in Aachen

This city is tucked in a far corner of Germany, close to France and Belgium. It isn’t big, maybe 200,000 or so people, but back in the day when kings were kings with beards and swords, it was Charlemagne’s capital city. He lived here when he wasn’t putting down rebellions, which was mostly what he did.

There isn’t a lot left from those days. Years of kings and other important people who try to outdo the previous generation have torn down and rebuilt the city until it was decimated in the war.

One of the old survivors is the Palatine Chapel. It isn’t the biggest church around – Cologne’s Dom and all those fancy French gothic cathedral are much bigger – but damn is it lovely in its simplicity.

It’s based on a Byzantine design – because it was built in the 800s – so it’s circular, not the usual rectangular or cross shape, and its interior covered with mosaics. It has a vaulted dome, a short tower, and a bell tower. 

It’s ancient. It’s understated. It’s one of the nicest churches I’ve visited in Europe (when you travel in Europe, you poke your head into a lot of old churches).

The Palatine Chapel of Aachen.

The vaulted, mosaic-ed dome inside the Palatine Chapel.

That gold box is Charlemagne's tomb.

Does Anyone Win in the Dutch Election?

Tomorrow’s Dutch election is shaping up to be a contest between two parties, the incumbent right-wing, elitist-loving conservative party and the white-skinned anger goblins of the alt-right party.

That’s not entirely fair to the 28 other parties we don’t hear about running for seats in the election. These aren’t the crackpot fringe parties of Canadian elections either – the Marijuana Party of Canada really should’ve named itself the Pot Party – seventeen of them have seats in the Dutch House of Representatives.

There are socialist, liberal, and conservative parties. There’s an animal rights’ party. The 50+ Party for seniors. There are parties for Christians and Calvinists. A party based on astrology, called the Party for Human and Spirit. There’s an anti-racist party, which has no seats yet. There is a Pirate Party too.

They all have a shot at winning or keeping seats with Holland’s system of proportional representation. Think of it! All those voices. All those politicians with different platforms, ideas, policies, and agendas working together.

So why is it that the only politician we hear about is the leader of the alt-right anger goblin party? Why is the only election issue we hear of is about staying in the European Union or addressing some imagined Muslim problem?

Forcing the non-issues

The Netherlands is wrestling with an ageing population, a falling birthrate, and a corporate tax system that invites fraud – just to name a few election issues. Now I’m only getting a taste of the election coverage as an English-speaker, I hope Dutch news coverage is more comprehensive. 

If every lead international news story is some racist politician somewhere saying something racist, over time the only narrative for the election in voters' minds is about that politician. Then two choices emerge in the voter’s mind: the ruling party, which is news because it dictates policy and the most grabbing attention opposition politicians.

There are two principles in advertising at work here. One is that familiarity with a brand potentially leads to loyalty to a brand. So when you’re about to buy deodorant you gravitate towards the deodorant you’ve heard about – hearing enough about something implies legitimacy.

The other is people post-rationalize their emotional decisions. You hear this in clothing stores where people offer sensible reasons for the thing they impulsive bought. You say you need that really cool sweater that's on sale because it’s cold outside sometimes, glossing over the fact you already own 12 sweaters.

Put those two principles together and you have a situation where voters gravitate towards politicians they are more familiar with – through the nightly news, newspapers, or social media – and they rationalize those politicians’ emotional appeals into something, well, less irrational.

Reflect before you elect

That’s how an idea as farcical as Brexit became a part of the UK’s political conversation, and how half the voters turned the emotional message of political sovereignty into an irrational idea of economic prosperity.

There’s very little we can do about the media, it covers the outrageous no matter what. As voters, we need to see we’re being manipulated. We must understand we’re emotional beings – not as smart as we think we are, but definitely smarter than the populists give us credit for.

We need to look a little harder at our own political thoughts and actions. Where do they come from? Why do I like what that politician is saying? How are my problems being addressed? We need to be a little more rational about ourselves.

Otherwise the anger goblins of the world might end up running things. 

How Rotterdam got its Architecture

Rotterdam's strangely stunning train station.

Rotterdam's market hall. The windows on the sides and the top are flats.

Architecture is a city’s body language. It say the things that cities want to say, but it also conveys things a city might not want to reveal about itself.

Do the glittering glass condo buildings along Toronto’s lakefront demonstrate that it’s a modern, densely-populated international city? Or does it show that developers have so much influence that they can build cheap glass buildings in a wintery city and cram in as many small apartments as they want?

European cities and the people that ruled them had a lot to say after World War II. Their cities had their own architectural body language.

The Soviets erected grand monuments to show off the glorious socialist dream. But also built massive, identical apartment blocks to house workers like tools on a shelf.

West German cities rebuilt their old towns from the ruins, as if to get something back from before the war. Beyond the old towns, low-rise buildings with the same flat plaster facade were built – functional, unostentatious, unromantic, German efficiency. 

Then there’s crazy, eccentric Rotterdam. Whose old downtown was obliterated by the Germans in 1940 and faced a choice to rebuild its old commercial centre as it once was or try something else.

Rotterdam commissioned some of the most loopiest, high concept designs it could find. Skyscrapers in odd shapes or don’t even look like skyscrapers. Windows not shaped like windows. Glass, brick, and concrete jutting out in odd directions.

So, what exactly is the city trying to say?

What does a train station that looks an inverted check mark convey to people arriving? Or a market hall with a barn-like, sloping roof made of apartments? Or houses shaped like cubes?

I have a guess, but in order to get to it, I couldn’t look at Rotterdam’s architecture in its totality. You have to look a little closer at specific buildings, like the Cube Houses.

House of Cubes.

As the name suggests, they are houses shaped like cubes. They’re set atop brick pylons and hover over a concrete courtyard. The idea was to open up land below for community use by raising people’s living space above the it.

It’s a cool solution to a serious urban problem. The design is striking, and divisive. Some find it ugly. Others like it. But since it was unprecedented, there were flaws.

The houses themselves are cramped and there’s a lot of lost space from the slanting walls and ceilings. The interior design is clearly what people in the 1970s thought the future would look like.

The Cube Houses say, “We’re going to try something new. We might get some of it wrong, but why not give it a shot?”

And that is what Rotterdam is trying to say: “Why not?” It’s the busiest port in Europe. Holland’s business centre. It was never a big draw for tourists. Yet, the city has enough civic courage in itself to say “Why not?” to ideas that would make other cities pause. And it has enough civic confidence not to give a shit if anyone else doesn’t like it.

Maybe other cities can learn from that mentality. Maybe we all can.

Inside the House of Cubes.

If you go:
There are two reasons to make the trek out to the Delfshaven, Rotterdam's old harbour. One is the old church where the pilgrims prayed before setting off on the dangerous trip to the New World. The other is the Pelgrim Brouwerji, where the pilgrims might have gone for one last drink before setting off. We spent a sunny afternoon outside, sipping all their fine brews on the quiet street.

One reason I enjoy Holland -- it isn't just my Dutch heritage -- is the cosy bars. Holland can be a windy, rainy place and it's nice to get indoors, drink a strong beer, and nibble on a plate of snacks (also a great Dutch thing). We really liked Sijf and its neighbour across the street, Thuis Bij Schell.

Almost every meal we ate in Rotterdam was great, so Bagel and Beans, Picknick, and Nieuw Rotterams Cafe all deserve honourable mentions. In conclusion, go to Rotterdam and eat in Rotterdam.