Berlin Remembers

 

Yesterday, as I was picking up my son from the Kita, I saw one of those red memorial candles on the ground beside the door. Someone had lit a candle and put some carnations in the plague that commemorated Rosa Luxemburg having lived in that building for a few years in the early 1900s.

It turns out that yesterday was the anniversary of her murder by paramilitaries in 1919.

So what does a Marxist killed 100 years ago have to do with anything? 

Nothing... And everything.

I don't think there's another city that goes out of its way to remember as much as Berlin does. The good bits and the bad, ugly bits. Rosa Luxemburg is just one of many brutal openers to the tragedies the city would experience. The Nazis. The War. The Holocaust. The Defeat. The Trials. The Wall. 

Guilt is a word that gets thrown around a lot in Germany. But, another accurate word is courage. It can't be easy for a country to reckon with its past the way Germany does. To openly remember its history, instead of revising it. 

It's both chilling and refreshing to walk along the streets of Berlin and see the golden stumbling stones that bear the names of Jewish deportees, along with their fate: liberation, escape, or death camp. 

You see these types of memorials everywhere. The small statue in the quiet square where the July 20 plotters were executed. The eerie stone monuments to the Soviet war dead. The concrete and steel foundation line that still runs along the path of the Berlin Wall.

In Berlin, and much of Germany, history is still a lesson you can learn from, instead of a myth that you believe in, an ideal you buy, or a grudge you nurse.

We live in a strange age where everyone lives on their own plains of reality, feeding on information that only confirms their biases. And the way things are going, that looks like it isn't going to change soon.

Being honest about our history is getting tougher. But it's good to see it's still happening in some places.

A Day Over in Hanover

Whenever we got lost in Hanover,
we looked for the "Witch Church' to orient ourselves.

Cities in Northern Germany are studies in contradictions.

Bremen is a blue-collared, working class city, where beer brewers and factory workers rub shoulders with students and artists. That strange mixture gives you a city that's grounded and unpretentious, yet still artistic and surprising. My kind of city.

Hamburg is a sprawl of sailors, refugees, drifters, musicians, bankers, ship owners, and old money at the mouth of the Elbe River. It's a city of work ethic and debauchery, with a worldliness that accepts everything and anything, because there are better things to do than judge someone for who they are or what they do – like make money or party.

To the south of these fine towns is Hanover, a mid-sized city that's a little tougher to pin down.

Every region in Germany speaks German a little different, from the rocks-in-your-mouth dialect in Cologne to the Bavarians' take on the language, which the rest of Germany unjustifiably snickers at. I've been told the German that Hanoverians speak is as close as you can get to the original High German. I'm no expert, but the German I heard in Hanover was definitely clearer and easier to understand for the slow-learning, novice German-speaker.

Hanover is a city that wears its white collar stiffly, but unlike other German cities, Hanover is not a city of bankers or chemists or engineers. It's a city of culture. There are theatres everywhere, an opera house with a packed schedule, and enough museums and art galleries to please every artistic inclination.

And yet, our only full day in the city was a Monday, so every museum in the city was closed. The Sprengel and its collection of 20th centuries masterpieces was off limits. The Kestnergesellschaft was a no go. The edgy, ultra-modern KUBUS was not edgy enough to be not closed for the day.

And since this is February, the Botanical Gardens and the gardens around the Schloss Herrenhaus would have been a dreary, cold walks. The giant forest in the middle of the city would have been nice, but barren. 

But this is turning into a blog post about what we didn't do, let's get down to what we did do.

We wandered around Hanover's lovely old town. We ate pizza at an amazing Italian place – by the way, the best Italian food I've eaten has been at Italian-owned restaurants in Germany, not tourist traps in Italy. We froze walking around the old city hall and the local man-made lake. We warmed up over kaffee and kuchen. We even did a little window shopping.

Clearly visiting on a Museum Monday in February meant what we didn't get a complete sense of the city's culture or its big cityforest. So a return trip with better weather on any day other than a Monday might in order. Even with 36 hours in the city, Hanover showed it's depth, we just need to time it better.

The Strange Places of 2017

The first week in January is a week of looking. Looking at the work inbox in amazement that so many people were sending emails over the holidays. Looking at the window at 4pm to see the sun has set long ago. Looking at the year that went by before looking at the year ahead.

Here are some (not all, that would be a long blog) highlights from the year that was 2017. 

Soaking in the Cave Bath at Miskolc-Tapolca. 

We started the New Year in Miskolc-Tapolca, where we visited the famed Cave Baths. What stuck with me on our trip was our Lillefüred visit. It was a foggy, cold day – cold enough for the lake to freeze, so we could walk out onto it. 

Again and again, when we came for family visits to Hungary, we returned to the country's beautiful east side for hikes, wine drinking, and heritaging. 

The view from Füzer Castle.

Kata's Christmas gift for me were tickets to a Düsseldorf hockey game. I'm a Canadian cliche, but I'm okay with that.

Great seats, too.

We ventured into the Netherlands twice this year, to Rotterdam and a great road trip to The Hague, Haarlem, and Kinderdijk. It might have to do with my Dutch heritage or that every bar and cafe offers cutting boards with meat, cheese, and deep-fried nibbles to snack on as you drink your beer, but I feel like I can't visit that country enough.

When the sun comes out in Rotterdam, you get out.

Our time in Canada always feels brief, so I pack the schedule with friend and family time, and the getaway so Kata can discover my homeland. This year, we made it to Ottawa, where we were easily able to combine Discover Walks with some family time with the locals.

Family time = Photo Time 

I had a month without work and a freelancer friend in Hamburg had some time on his hands. We met halfway between our cities in Bremen for a mid-week getaway. Bremen is an old Hanseatic city, with a lovely Gothic old town. But it's also a student town with a energetic artsy vibe. We discovered this because the only good bars open on a Tuesday were the student drinking holes, which we frequented.

The entrance to Art Deco Street.

The oldest guys at the student bar always take the most selfies.

Kata and I discovered the Eiffel National Park. I wanted to write a longer, stand-alone post, but I couldn't find a story, theme, or thread for 200 words. I'll get to it later, but it's a wild, big, beautiful corner of North-Rhine-Westphalia. 

Walking around old lava.

Watching a friend get married, twice, in Toronto and Paris.

Well look at that, holding up the bar well past last call again.

My parents came to visit Europe. This was a big deal, and a lot of fun.

Walking through Aachen with the Euro-Trippers.

And this happened.

Autobahn-ing to Bavaria

Photo by Katalin Varga

The Road

Driving on the Autobahn is about enjoying the lack of speed limits, but also taking the fullest advantage of them. Traffic slows or stops so often on the famed highways that when you have the chance, you put the pedal to the metal and cover as much distance as possible before traffic comes to a grinding halt once again. 

The speed limit isn't so much a luxury, but an opportunity to recapture lost time. 

After a few hours, you are skilled at making the most efficient use of those windows of no-speed-limit driving. You become adept at looking for the next slowdown during these bouts of high speed. You start to sense danger. You get nervous when you see the flash of a brake light ahead. 

After you're accustomed to the fear of brake lights, and after you've understood that time is lost and gained during those precious minutes when you can drive as fast as you can, then you have understood the Autobahn – it's stop and go stretched into a longer, faster scale. 

The Plan

On Google Maps, the trip from Düsseldorf to the edge of the Alps, seemed simple. Six hours of Autobahn driving, with a few pee breaks, would make it a do-able weekend trip. 

We left after work on a Friday, planning a stop for the night halfway. Then, I figured, it would be an easy drive in the late morning to the Alps. Sunday afternoon would, in my completely inexperienced and totally unprepared mind, offer plenty of time for the six-hour drive home. 

In reality, it was six hours to get halfway there. There was construction, where lanes were reduced and narrowed, so you're inches away from oncoming traffic on one side and inches from the daredevils passing you on the other side – yeah, drivers pass on the inside in a construction zone. 

Then it took us an hour to cover the final 10km. The traffic stopped after we had passed the last exit, so we were stuck, waiting to get to our exit, knowing our beds for the night were so close.

By the time we staggered into our hotel it was almost 1am. We showered and lay in bed, feeling too tired to fall asleep. 

We didn't really get a look at the city we were in – Würzburg – until we awoke the next morning and looked out the window. In the distance, we saw the fortress-like palace on a hill overlooking the city. The sun was shining and it seemed like it was a good day to be on the road. We went downstairs for our first Bavarian breakfast. 

I pity the vegan living in Bavaria, because this region knows how to do bacon, eggs, and dairy. Everything tasted fresh and delicious.  

The bacon tasted like those thick slices of country bacon you get from farmers who care enough about their pigs to name them. The butter was smooth, rich and creamy. It tasted like butter, a taste we forget in this margarine-mongering world. 

There was even a photo of the egg farmer delivering eggs to hotel in front of the scrambled eggs on the breakfast buffet table. She wasn't holding the day's newspaper for Proof of Freshness, but I still couldn't help but appreciate this commitment to serving good food.  

With our bellies full, we resumed the road trip. Again, running into enough slowing or stopped traffic that our arrival was delayed. We arrived late, so we decided to check into our hotel later and proceed straight to our destination: Neuschwanstein Castle. 

Neuschwanstein... what you can't see is all the tourists on the bridge, taking the same photo.

The Castle 

Neuschwanstein Castle was designed by a reclusive Bavarian prince who wanted to use it as a private retreat and hide from the world and his princely responsibilities. An irony, considering it's now one of Germany's biggest tourist attractions.  

A small town at the foot of the castle's hill is built for tourists, and offers carriage rides, souvenirs, and cheap sausages to visitors from all over the world. For those who decide to walk up the hill instead of taking a carriage, they are treated to fresh, pine-scented air and views of the castle as they approach it.  

Neuschwanstein is less castle and more palace. It's filled with over-the-top ornate wood-working, gold trim, fancy furniture, ball rooms, throne rooms, and glorious views of the mountains above and the valleys beneath it. It is a romantic place.  

The castle has been accepting visitors since shortly after Ludwig's mysterious drowning – for over 130 years – so the Bavarians know how to move as many paying customers through as quickly as they can. 

You book a time to get in. You follow a guide into the castle. The guide doesn't speak. You get an audio guide and the human guide waves and hustles you from room to room. As you enter a room, a tour group in front of you is leaving that room. As you leave that room, another tour group enters it. 

Of course, you don't get to see every room, because that would take to much time. The tour concludes after a brisk half hour, then you exit through several gift shops, but not before passing a few balconies with stunning views.

Impromptu Parking Lot Mountain Photo Shoot.

The Alps 

As lovely as the castle is, it doesn't compare to the beautiful mountains that surround it. Neuschwanstein is a fairy tale, but the Alps are mythical.  

As we drove south on Saturday, we were waiting to catch the first glimpse of them. At the top of every hill, we squinted south, but didn't see them. They didn't come into view gradually, but suddenly. As we rounded a bend on the Autobahn, it appeared: a big, granite wall that looks so big that you wonder why couldn't you see them sooner. 

At one point, after we visited the castle, we stopped in a gym parking lot to watch the setting sun glint off the mountain and take a few photos. From the balcony of our hotel room, it was easy just to stand there and stare at them.

Our hotel had a balcony with a beautiful sweep
of the mountains.

The Burg 

Red-roofed Rothenburg ob der Taub was one of the biggest towns in the Holy Roman Empire during the Middle Ages. The walled town grew wildly rich from trade passing through its gates.  

Then it run into some bad luck.  

A Catholic army captured it during the 30 Years War. They billeted there, which is a technical way of saying they lived in and pillaged the town at the same time. Not long after the Catholic army left, the plague arrived, killing off a chunk of the surviving population in gross and gory ways that aren't worth describing here. The city got a break for a few hundred years. It sat there on the Taub river forgotten, in a sort of stasis.  

Then the war came in 1945.  

Unlike many German towns and cities, Rothenburg ob der Taub was spared carpet bombing because it had no strategic value – no mines, factories, refineries, or military targets, unless you count the Medieval city walls and cobblestone streets. 

As the Americans approached, the German army got orders to fight to the death. The German commander disobeyed those orders and surrendered the city, sparing it from an artillery barrage and giving us a picturesque Medieval German town to visit. A rarity. 

Rothenburg's old Town Hall.

Unlike many rebuilt old towns in Germany – which look frighteningly alike – Rothenburg's old town is not a standardized cookie-cutter old town. It's a product of its medieval past – glorious and inglorious – not a post-war rebuild. The streets curve and bend for inexplicable reasons. There are pretty buildings that please the eye and functional buildings that aren't so eye-pleasing. It's often the latter that don't get rebuilt from the rubble. And rare is the city with its old walls not only intact, but so diligently maintained that one can walk around the city by walking the wall's battlements. 

With only two hours to spare, we had time for a discovery walk and a pfifferlinge-themed lunch. It wasn't enough time. Rothenburg is not the type of place you'd spend an entire weekend, but it deserves at least an afternoon of strolling and sightseeing.  

But of course, we wouldn't have come to Rothenburg if we weren't making a road trip of our trip to Bavaria.  

Europe is so dense when it comes to historical significance or natural wonders that you just point the car in a direction and drive. The Autobahn, despite its occasional slowdowns, is a fantastic way reach those interesting places.  

A true old town.