Germany: A Round Trip

 

"The past is never dead. It's not even past."-- William Faulkner

While Linda was back in Pennsylvania and Virginia the first week in March visiting family, particularly intent on seeing her two angelic grandchildren, I planned a trip to points north and past.  I set out from Vienna by train for Dresden, where I rented a car for my onward journey to Goerlitz on the Polish border and other sites.  For the first part of the car trip, the strange roads and strange language proved at least as interesting the destination; for the second part, the travel was more through time than it was through Germany's often charming villages and countryside.

Bumping and Bumbling Along

The first day of my trip had a variety of bumps, but nothing too jarring.  The train north from Vienna passed through Prague and then, rattling, rocking, and squealing along. turned west to Germany.  I arrived in Dresden at the end of the day and the beginning of the rain, which was to continue for most of the next four days.  Because my plans involved additional stops in rural areas, I had arranged to pick up a rental car at the Dresden railway station.  Having in mind that I would be paying about $10/gallon for gasoline, I had requested an economy car.  The woman at the Europcar counter, however, informed me with great pleasure that I had been upgraded "at no extra cost" to a huge Opel wagon, the largest, heaviest automotive dumpling in their kitchen, a vehicle that would get an impressive 10-12 mpg.  The size of an ambulance (but without a light bar--which I could have used), it well deserved the German name Mietwagen (pronounced "meatwagon," literally, rental car).  I affixed the GPS system to the windshield and sped off the lot into Dresden's evening rush hour.  At the first major intersection, I had already nearly passed a line of cars sitting at the light in the left-turn lane when the GPS directed me to turn left.  Unfazed by the red light and the line of obedient drivers waiting their turn, I swung past them all into the middle of the intersection and executed a perfect left; soon I had found my way to the Autobahn, the A4.  I was heading east into heavy rain and fog, the very sort of weather, as I recall reading, that had confronted the Roman legions slaughtered by the Teutons when they entered Germania on the orders of Augustus. 

The last stretch of the drive was confusing and dangerous--but more for the Germans than for me.  After about an hour, I knew I was getting close to the exit for Goerlitz, and the GPS directed me to turn off the highway.  This, I thought, does not look like a decent road to exit on--the shortest route, perhaps, but not the fastest or safest.  Two turns later, still obedient to the electronic voice, I found myself on a narrow country lane with sharp bends and curves, progressing at about 20 mph.  At many a turn my headlights illuminated clutches of cows huddled against the weather.  I passed through several small villages, in each of which couples dressed in black were out in the rain walking their equally dark dachshunds in the middle of the road.  When at last I reached Goerlitz, the GPS directed me down a dead-end street and announced that I had reached my destination.  My hotel was nowhere in sight.  I decided to make a U-turn, park, and get out and look for it.  Because the street was narrow and my Panzerwagen had a large turning radius, I pulled to the curb and then tried to put the vehicle in reverse for the second stage of the U-turn.  It was not to be.  Several times I shoved the shift lever hard left and up; thinking I was in reverse, I would gradually let out the clutch.  Each time, however, the car surged forward a foot.  Soon I was up over the sidewalk, with the front wheels on the grass on the other side.  I could not find an interior light switch to examine the pattern on the shift knob, so I opened the car door; the interior light was too dim.  People were gathering in the mist, peering from under their umbrellas into the dark car that was preventing them from passing.  I heard voices and indistinct words, at first puzzled sounds like "Ha!" and then a loud, derisive laugh--which sounds much worse in German than in English.  Well experienced with public humiliation in foreign countries from a variety of misadventures at restaurants and other venues, I told myself not to get discouraged, that those were probably just the sadistic voices of some Austrian dentists on vacation.  I remembered that I had placed a small flashlight in the bag with my maps and soon located it.  I examined the gear shift and noticed a button on the back of the stick--a release.  I pressed it and then got the car into reverse, off the sidewalk and back into the street.  Soon I had parked, and after walking a bit I located my hotel for the next two nights, the Schwibbogen, a name that sounds most euphonious when pronounced with a mouth full of potatoes.  I was tired and hungry, eagerly anticipating a huge beer and a huge plate of Silesian cuisine.

English as She Is Spoke

I do not believe that many people travel to Germany to enjoy the food, but I do--in the same spirit that, in Italy, I had a quest for the worst-tasting digestivo liqueur.  And I often find the menus even more fun than the food.  Goerlitz is split into a German and a Polish section by the Neisse River, which serves much like the transition of the River Jordan.  Crumbling, drab, and uninviting shades of gray and brown--like so much of what I have dined on in this part of Europe--the Polish side is still recovering from decades of communism.  German Goerlitz, however, has quaint architecture and colorful houses and shops, and it draws from at least some guidebooks praise for its regional cuisine, Silesian.  Although I found it not much different from the pork, starch, and cabbage entrees I have consumed in Austria and elsewhere in Germany, I did see in German Goerlitz some of the most fun English-language menu items I have yet run across.  That evening and the next I ate in the Stadtwache (City Waking) Restaurant, a repository of linguistic and culinary treasures.  As soon as I saw the English menu, I got out my pen and a scrap of paper and began writing quickly and furtively, fearing the waiter would suspect I was trying to pirate their culinary creations for a rival restaurant.  Among its offerings:  "Herring salad lijing nit cerium after grandma's prescription," "Meat of the pig comb inserted in the darling drink," "Meat with homemade lumps," and "Blather in a homemade way."  At lunch the next day I found on a menu "Silesian white rat and sticky balls" (named, I hope, in a spirit of jocularity) and so had to order it; it turned out to be slices of pork roast, I think, but I like to believe it was a cut from a huge rodent.  The dumplings, the size and hue of golf balls, seemed to be lightly glued together.  They had the texture of nerf balls that had been soaked in oil; when I tried to cut into one with the edge of my fork, it gave slightly and then scooted across my plate.  Another Silesian menu item I saw, but did not try, was "sharp potty soup with many onions." 

Winsen

On Thursday morning I was back in my Panzermobile and the rain and fog, heading out from Goerlitz to the A4 and back toward Dresden, where I turned north for a half-day's drive to the Hannover region.  My paternal great-grandfather Wilhelm, a blacksmith, came from the village of Winsen an der Aller in Hannover, and it is he who emigrated to the U.S. soon after participating in a battle in 1866 against the Prussians in Langensalza, Thuringia, in central Germany.  I was curious to visit Winsen, and I cannot explain it as much more than that:  seeing the town was like visiting a grave of someone I did not know but knew of.  When I was studying English literature, I could never relate with much intensity to the themes of ubi sunt? and Ou sont les neiges d'antan?--profound longings for what no longer exists.  I did find, however, a vague sense of connection with the past, a sense of the naturalness of change--and a pleasing feeling of completing a circle.  Ur-grampy had never made it back from the American Midwest to see his home again, and perhaps I was returning there on his behalf. 

The fog on the ground was not the only fog in Winsen.  The town, which sits on a plain that looks a great deal like Illinois but with birch trees, is now little more than a busy crossroads lined with recently built houses and small strip malls--bakeries, florists, plumbing repair businesses, and perhaps thriving umbrella shops.  I could find little evidence of the past except for the Lutheran church, which dated from 1822, and the town hall, from the 18th century, heavily remodeled at times over the decades.  A stele next to the church was dedicated to the fallen in the unification wars of 1870-71, but that was it for memorials.  Surprisingly, I found no monument celebrating the enormous achievements of my family in the fields of Piety, Obedience, and Introversion.  For several minutes I strolled the town cemetery looking in the mists for family ghosts but could not turn up, so to speak, our surname; I was aware, however, that the custom of these pragmatic Teutons has long been to disinter bodies and reuse grave sites every 50 years.  Many of the grave markers wore green velvet shrouds of moss, and light blankets of crispy gray-brown autumn leaves lay on the ground above many of the sleepers.  Had I found a stone for Ur-Ur Grampy Ludwig, or any stone with our surname, I would have left a potato on it.

Closed Today, Come Back Yesterday

Friday morning I turned the Panzerwagen south for Bad Langensalza in Thuringia, site of a battle on June 27, 1866, and for which Ur-Grossvater Wilhelm received a service medal.  I presume his smithing skills made him useful in beating plowshares into swords, or perhaps he was of service to the horses of Hannover's cavalry.  The Hannover forces, allied with the Austrians, did battle against the Prussians just west of the Langensalza.  Although the Prussians lost the first engagement, they returned soon after with stronger forces and won the war.  Perhaps that conflict is what prompted Wilhelm to emigrate not long after, but his motives are lost in the fog.  The town itself is lovely--well restored and maintained shops and homes built centuries ago, often in bright pastels, and a thriving pedestrian area.  It is, however, one of the "baden" towns, and the two-lane highway that connects Langensalza to the rest of Germania is choked with traffic.  Very often it felt as if the military history of the past had lost the battle to spa tourism.  Aware that it was growing late in the day, I pressed on in my quest to reconnect with the ancients.  Although I suspect my spoken German in itself could qualify as a war crime, I employed it with the kind lady who tended the tourist information office and spoke not a syllable of English.  She directed me to the city museum, closed for the day, and gave me a map showing the location of the battlefield, blocked to traffic.  Soon I was on my way in my Panzerwagen to the battle site, now entirely farm fields, flat as a potato pancake, with new crop growth peeking up low and green as moss.  In the distance I could see three or four memorial stones--a good ways out on a narrow road that was open only to pedestrians and bicyclists--but, with no place to park my tank, inaccessible to me.

Exotic Thuringian Cuisine

I said my goodbyes to the ghosts of 1866 and headed on to Gotha, where I spent the night.  Gotha also has a charming old city, with includes a church boasting a statue of Luther built into the stone Gothic doorway, just as I have often seen St Peter on Catholic churches in Europe.  I love how, in Europe, history is present less often in stone monuments than in stone layers.  I was ready for a cultural diversion and thought I had found one:  a restaurant close to my hotel was Greek, and I looked forward to a change from the German diet.  When I received my entree, however, the purported lamb was in ground patties and highly salted.  It may well have been pork, or even white rat; next to it rested the rice, shaped in balls like dumplings. 

Elbe Was I

 
On Saturday morning, in the heaviest fog yet, I completed my auto loop-journey.  Shortly before noon I returned the Panzerwagen to Europcar, next to the train station in Dresden.  As I stepped out of the car, I felt like a soldier who had just taken off a heavy backpack after a long hike. 

Dresden sits on the Elbe River.  To cross it is to make the transition from the restored old city to the modern new town.  As soon as I saw a sign to the river, the Napoleonic palindrome, "Able was I ere I saw Elba," began looping through my head like a stuck song, and it remained there all day, annoying as tinnitus.  Hoping in vain to change the tune, I turned it into "Eble was I ere I saw Elbe."  I checked into the Kipping hotel, one of the few structures in the old city to have survived the Allied firebombing in 1945, and headed off on a walk to see old Dresden.  Many of the restored structures from the 18th-century palace complex are somewhat blackened by oxidation of the sandstone, something that gives them a kind of crispy look and makes them natural, durable reminders of the firebombing.  Beautiful though old Dresden is, I felt as if I had seen it all in about 15 minutes.  I had no desire to linger in it, and so I spent the next 3 hours in the city's wonderful gallery.  Raphael, the Venetian masters, the Dutch masters, Cranach, Canaletto--I loved it all.  There, too, I found a scene that has become a visual cliche in the U.S., one that is common on greeting cards and card-shop coffee mugs:  Raphael's "Sistine Madonna" portrays a large scene of Heaven; at the very bottom of the picture, two cherubs sit.  They look whimsical, resting their elbows on a "transition panel," a coffin lid, a demarcation of Heaven and Earth, the future and the past. 

Back to the Present

Sunday I completed the second, larger loop of my train trip, circling back to Wiener World.  It was the first morning that I had seen bright sunshine since I left home.  As I waited in the cold at the Dresden station for my train back to Vienna, my breath making the only fog that morning, I noticed another train stopped at an adjacent platform, about to depart.  A father was standing next to the car opposite me, and I could see the face of a little boy of about 4 peering out the train window.  The two of them waved to each other.  As the train began to pull out, the father jogged along beside the car, continuing to wave, and, as the train slowly picked up speed, he broke into a sprint, waving the whole time, running full out beside the car until he came to the end of the platform and the train drew into the distance.  He stopped, turned, and walked slowly past me toward the station exit, a soft smile on his face telling me he knew the little boy would be back.