Wed., 12/30/2009--1-3:30 pm. Anja and I borrow Uschi's VW (in German: 'FaoVay') and run some shopping errands, then we drive along one of the main country roads past Hachborn until a little huddle of buildings appears on our right. Erbenhausen. It starts to rain pretty heavily again just as she lets me out, asking me me again if I really want to do this. Answer: more yes than no (I was cooped up all day yesterday and enough is enough). I push out. It is country and just above zero celsius/32 fahrenheit. Visibility is 500 ft or so to a dead gray horizon or whatever comes first. The fog pulses in, clears now and again, then settles back down.
If this was Young Frankenstein I would tell my sidekick, 'It could be worse, it could be windy.' and the wind would come up immediately. But thankfully it doesn't. The rain is intermittent, but the air is always heavy with the portent of more. And when the fog really comes close and hangs in the tree branches and magnifies the sounds of dripping I wonder what it is like to be a wild animal in the woods I'm passing through. I know I am heading, however indirectly, to a shower and a meal and a warm bed. Your Wildschwein (wild boar), the deer and rabbits and foxes....they've got 3-4 more months of this. Short gray days. Cold and wet. And there will be wind. And either prey to catch or predators to avoid.
I walk thru the middle of the Hofs; well maintained, cobble-stoned courtyards of easily 2500 square feet, ringed on three sides by living spaces and storage for humans, farm animals and everything needed to support them. There are only three Hofs here but they are all large, 3-4 stories all around the perimeter and still doing the work for which they were originally intended hundreds of years ago. I have often thought of buying one of these just like this along with the land with which most of them come. And they are not remotely expensive relative to anything in an urban area. I find the architecture beautiful and the bones of the buildings extraordinary; stone and brick on the bottom, often in combination with massive half timbered oak supports above, and between the oak a stucco of sticks and wadding, the actual daub often interestingly painted in a style called Kratzwerk; literally 'scratch work'. The style of architecture is called Fachwerk and it is supported and protected by the German government. I think to blow out the floors on just one wing, reinforce the structure with I-beams, and make the 'great room' to end most great rooms. 50 x 100 feet with 40 foot ceilings. With a huge country kitchen at one end looking out at the fields and forests and gardens, and the room extending from the kitchen becoming a giant work room with desks and couches and bookshelves, a giant fireplace with a spit, and an open mezzanine for reading and erudite philosophical discussions over port and other conversational aids. This is eminently doable and a dream I have not completely given up on......but who will come visit us in the back of beyond? I am working on that.
The Fachwerk challenge German faces is that the younger generation doesn't like to work much with their hands in the cold; instead, they'd prefer to live in condo's, create synthetic securites for banks to bet on, and eat sushi in Frankfurt or Munich. Sound at all familiar?
In a minute (not a New York minute) I'm thru the Hofs and in the open, Wald (forest: 'vault') on my right and Feld (field: 'felt') on my left. I am walking straight away from the road. I pass a tiny country cemetery to my left and go right into the Wald. The rain continues. The ground is slushy and slippery, patches of ice and what is left of last nights snow. There has been some heavy machinery thru here recently and it created big ruts and ridges. The ridges are mush and the ruts are a sludgy mixture of ice and snow and water and mud; I have to watch each footfall because I don't want to end up up to my fetlock in freezing mud with a few hours ahead of me in unknown terrain.
The path ends after 100 yards or so. Nowhere easy to go. I retrace my steps, go past the cemetery and head uphill. 200-300 yards or so and I hit another dead end. Now what? I decide to make my own path through close pine woods and after a few minutes of dodging wet branches I come out into a clearing and do find a path of sorts; overgrown and treacherous, unused except I can see paw prints; something without a human master has passed by since last nights snowfall.
Tuesday, January 12, 2010
Germany in the Fog January 2010
I see the beginning of a blood trail, crimson soaking into ice. I hear snarling and rending noises. I pick up the pace as silently as possible but they are all around me. I see them at the edges of my vision in the fog, loping along, fangs dripping gore. They're herding me somewhere. I start to run thru the woods, thighs pumping in the mud, cap pulled off by a passing branch and forgotten, face lacerated, heart heaving. Why didn't I bring the Glock?.......
OKOK. Nothing is going to happen. I just thought, if you're bored, I'd liven it up a little. I do recommend Saki's The Interlopers if you like death stalking in the forest stories.
My way home will eventually be marked by a line of electrical towers that march thru the woods like kilted samurai warriors. Follow them and eventually I'll find my village and the fields around it I actually know by sight. But the fog is so dense I can't see the towers anywhere, which means I'm just wandering in this surreal field/forest landscape with no landmarks whatsoever. Up and down. I hear birds and somewhere in an undefinable distance the sounds of traffic. Fog is a strange conduit; sounds travel but direction and distance are scrambled. I am in the middle of a field or forest and I hear a truck that sounds like it is 100 feet away. Worse, it sounds like it is coming from my right, then my left, then from dead ahead.
I find an asphalt lane edging another Wald and Feld; then suddenly I am cresting the middle of several Felds, completely in the open. The rains lessens, the fogs lifts, and I see the Hochspannung towers (the samurai) like sentinels and follow them. The road twists and turns, rises and dips. I am completely alone. I have not seen another person since I left the Hofs.
It is so strange to walk in this world. Alternatively wonderful and a little scary. In an era of instant communication I didn't bring my cell phone. For a few hours I don't exist. I am quite cold and wet, but as long as I move my core is warm enough. I pump with my hands until they begin to freeze, then I put them in my pockets next to my femoral arteries. Two or three years ago I walked in a similar landscape through fields and forests. It was Fall and only cool, but my mind wandered and after a couple of hours I came out of a forest expecting to know right where I was, and instead saw absolutely nothing I recognized. It was late in the afternoon and the sun was already behind the last hill. I realized I had no idea anymore, having twisted and turned so many times, which way was even home. But even more than that, looking over this timeless Dorf (village) it seemed like I might have also walked into the Twilight Zone. I imagined my next vision being that of an old man and a horse drawn plow, and then other signs to let me know it was 1850 or 1750, not 2007 or so. I thought maybe I could retrace my path back to where I got lost and get home that way, but remember this place and how to find it when I wanted to go back in time again.
I follow the power lines around a series of Felds and finally take a path down a hill. Almost an hour has passed. I can hear traffic ahead of me (that's how it sounds) and when I come out into the open a sense of chagrin is total; I am less than 200 yards from where I got out of the car. All the lefts and rights, of fighting my way through a pathless forest and slushy, slippery paths and I am right back to exactly where I started.
Back up the hill I go. Over to the right looking again for my power poles. Can't see anything thru the fog. My hands are wet and freezing and it is hard to get them to go into my pants pockets, which are sticking to my skin. Maybe this wasn't such a good idea. Maybe I should have brought the cell phone. I turn right at what appears to be the top of the hill, go along for a bit, then hit another downhill path, the only one visible. Another 3-4 minutes dodging puddles and ice. Traffic sounds. I am back to the same road. Shit!
I read an article in the last couple of years, about how French peasants in the countryside whiled away the winter months in the 1850's. It turns out they whiled them away mostly by sleeping. 4 or 5 to a bed for warmth since there was never enough wood to keep them warm. 18 hours a day for months at a time since they had no incentive to do Jacqueshit, neither the land nor very little of anything else actually belonging to them. And never enough food to keep their energy up, so why get up in the first place? Basically, they hibernated.
It is 2:20 or so. What passes for sunset here, a kind of joke since the gray that never leaves most days just gets darker until it becomes black again for another 16 hours, happens at around 4:30. Sunset is called here, with typical German precision, 'Sonnenuntergang', or 'sun go under'. 'Look Wilhelm, sun go under'! You may have notice I capitalize lots of German words....in German they capitalize each and every noun. Always.
I head again back up the hill. The fog lifts and the power lines come into view finally. Things start to make real sense. The weather comes and goes but now I know where in general I am. I could venture back into the Wald beyond the poles, but I do worry now that I'm going to be late for dinner, which is set for 4pm. Like the French peasants we often eat just two meals a day in the Winter. Root vegetables two ways! Actually, we eat like kings. Better, even. But especially if there are only 2 meals I don't want to miss one. So, I hurry....back thru Hachborn, along a Feld thru Ebsdorf, then across the last mile or more of fields separating Ebsdorf and Beltershausen. I can't see much of anything but I'm close to home.
The rain begins to sheet down and my hands are mostly useless. I spare a moment for soldiers trying to load ammo into old rifles in the trenches in WWl. Their hands were useless and their feet were rotting in their boots. Bombs were falling, and other people they often couldn't see were firing machine gunsat them while they huddled waist deep in mud and blood and snow. And death. Every once in awhile an officer in a warm house somewhere would decide it was time to jump up and charge across the Feld with fixed bayonets. What a good idea that must have seemed!
3:15 sees me home. I am sopping wet. It takes minutes just to get my gloves off. My hands can't grip or feel the zippers on my jacket or the laces on my shoes. But no one was shooting at me. And dinner was terrific.
OKOK. Nothing is going to happen. I just thought, if you're bored, I'd liven it up a little. I do recommend Saki's The Interlopers if you like death stalking in the forest stories.
My way home will eventually be marked by a line of electrical towers that march thru the woods like kilted samurai warriors. Follow them and eventually I'll find my village and the fields around it I actually know by sight. But the fog is so dense I can't see the towers anywhere, which means I'm just wandering in this surreal field/forest landscape with no landmarks whatsoever. Up and down. I hear birds and somewhere in an undefinable distance the sounds of traffic. Fog is a strange conduit; sounds travel but direction and distance are scrambled. I am in the middle of a field or forest and I hear a truck that sounds like it is 100 feet away. Worse, it sounds like it is coming from my right, then my left, then from dead ahead.
I find an asphalt lane edging another Wald and Feld; then suddenly I am cresting the middle of several Felds, completely in the open. The rains lessens, the fogs lifts, and I see the Hochspannung towers (the samurai) like sentinels and follow them. The road twists and turns, rises and dips. I am completely alone. I have not seen another person since I left the Hofs.
It is so strange to walk in this world. Alternatively wonderful and a little scary. In an era of instant communication I didn't bring my cell phone. For a few hours I don't exist. I am quite cold and wet, but as long as I move my core is warm enough. I pump with my hands until they begin to freeze, then I put them in my pockets next to my femoral arteries. Two or three years ago I walked in a similar landscape through fields and forests. It was Fall and only cool, but my mind wandered and after a couple of hours I came out of a forest expecting to know right where I was, and instead saw absolutely nothing I recognized. It was late in the afternoon and the sun was already behind the last hill. I realized I had no idea anymore, having twisted and turned so many times, which way was even home. But even more than that, looking over this timeless Dorf (village) it seemed like I might have also walked into the Twilight Zone. I imagined my next vision being that of an old man and a horse drawn plow, and then other signs to let me know it was 1850 or 1750, not 2007 or so. I thought maybe I could retrace my path back to where I got lost and get home that way, but remember this place and how to find it when I wanted to go back in time again.
I follow the power lines around a series of Felds and finally take a path down a hill. Almost an hour has passed. I can hear traffic ahead of me (that's how it sounds) and when I come out into the open a sense of chagrin is total; I am less than 200 yards from where I got out of the car. All the lefts and rights, of fighting my way through a pathless forest and slushy, slippery paths and I am right back to exactly where I started.
Back up the hill I go. Over to the right looking again for my power poles. Can't see anything thru the fog. My hands are wet and freezing and it is hard to get them to go into my pants pockets, which are sticking to my skin. Maybe this wasn't such a good idea. Maybe I should have brought the cell phone. I turn right at what appears to be the top of the hill, go along for a bit, then hit another downhill path, the only one visible. Another 3-4 minutes dodging puddles and ice. Traffic sounds. I am back to the same road. Shit!
I read an article in the last couple of years, about how French peasants in the countryside whiled away the winter months in the 1850's. It turns out they whiled them away mostly by sleeping. 4 or 5 to a bed for warmth since there was never enough wood to keep them warm. 18 hours a day for months at a time since they had no incentive to do Jacqueshit, neither the land nor very little of anything else actually belonging to them. And never enough food to keep their energy up, so why get up in the first place? Basically, they hibernated.
It is 2:20 or so. What passes for sunset here, a kind of joke since the gray that never leaves most days just gets darker until it becomes black again for another 16 hours, happens at around 4:30. Sunset is called here, with typical German precision, 'Sonnenuntergang', or 'sun go under'. 'Look Wilhelm, sun go under'! You may have notice I capitalize lots of German words....in German they capitalize each and every noun. Always.
I head again back up the hill. The fog lifts and the power lines come into view finally. Things start to make real sense. The weather comes and goes but now I know where in general I am. I could venture back into the Wald beyond the poles, but I do worry now that I'm going to be late for dinner, which is set for 4pm. Like the French peasants we often eat just two meals a day in the Winter. Root vegetables two ways! Actually, we eat like kings. Better, even. But especially if there are only 2 meals I don't want to miss one. So, I hurry....back thru Hachborn, along a Feld thru Ebsdorf, then across the last mile or more of fields separating Ebsdorf and Beltershausen. I can't see much of anything but I'm close to home.
The rain begins to sheet down and my hands are mostly useless. I spare a moment for soldiers trying to load ammo into old rifles in the trenches in WWl. Their hands were useless and their feet were rotting in their boots. Bombs were falling, and other people they often couldn't see were firing machine guns
3:15 sees me home. I am sopping wet. It takes minutes just to get my gloves off. My hands can't grip or feel the zippers on my jacket or the laces on my shoes. But no one was shooting at me. And dinner was terrific.
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