Regrets

One of the many references to Goethe's ginkgo

One thing you have to face when going on a major trip like mine is the issue of what to leave off the itinerary. Sometimes the "triage" occurs at the planning stage, sometimes it happens when you first arrive and the scope of undertaking what you have on your wish list becomes obvious. But usually it hits later, after "stuff happens," that you cannot possibly cram everything on top of what you didn't foresee happening.
It could be a day later - after a return to a certain place is out of the question - or it could be (horrors) when you look at a travel guide and realize you didn't even know such-and-such a feature even existed: regrets set in.
I regret not seeing the botanical gardens in Berlin and elsewhere, but I'm not consumed by it. I realized, while there was still time, that seeing beautiful flowers from other countires mattered less to me than chancing upon flowers growing wild by the road. The poppy and armeria I plucked in Sachsenhausen, to press and preserve in a book, are more precious to me now than a memory of a strange orchid in a greenhouse (as lovely as that may have been).
I feel almost a guilty twinge for not looking for Goethe's ginkgo tree in Weimar, which was planted in the early 19th century. After all, he wrote a famous poem about it, and the poem seems to describe my character as much as his. http://www.wisdomportal.com/Poems2007/Goethe-Ginkgo.html But I can live with that. At least I saw the town, enjoyed its serenity, and saw the graveyard where he, Schiller, and the Goethe clan were buried (even if I couldn't find the great man's actual tomb!!).
But the greatest regret of all is failing to fufill a promise I made to myself and a dear friend, namely, that I would go to the Kumpfstichkabinet in Berlin's Kulturforum and examine some Dürer prints up close. I did go, but the special room was closed because it was Saturday. When we returned to Berlin, we didn't go back. And on the extra day we had, we went to Lübeck.
This and other regrets, small and large, become more painful when I think of how unlikely it is that I will ever be in Germany again. With that in mind, I should cherish what I did experience all the more. In life there are rarely second chances - and maybe the knowledge of that makes sweet experiences all the sweeter.
Carpe diem!

The critic remembers

Best meal (fancy): the lasagna I had for lunch at Kampinski's (Berlin); it was probably meant as an appetizer, given its modest price (8.50 euros), but it ended up being the tastiest heap of pasta, vegetables, and cheese in memory.

Best meal (simple): the falafel and sides at Dada's, on Linienstrasse, right below Friedrichstrasse, in Mitte; another Best Ever.

Best music (expensive): Beethoven's Missa Solemnis, performed by the orchestra, choir and soloists of the Berlin Philharmonic, June 3.

Best music (free): Bach's First Prelude for Unaccompanied Cello, performed in a square in Weimar by a young musician.

Freundlich katz (friendly cat)

Best music (overall): blackbirds singing, from dawn to the very late dusk.

Best animal moments: 1) the endangered white storks, feeding in a field, we viewed from the bus while travelling between Dresden and Berlin, June 5. 2) the mouse with a single stripe down his back Eddie and I saw while strolling around the garden of artist Max Lieberman in Wannsee, June 4; 3) the cat we finally met (after nearly two weeks of all-dog, no-cat streets) in Weimar, who approached shyly but ended up cavorting with us like an old friend.

Max Lieberman house & garden, Wannsee

Sebastian, Topographie des terrors

Best learning experience: Topographie des Terrors, thanks to our guide, Sebastian G.

Most beautiful interior: the church in Aachen, tied with the Nikolaikirche in Leipzig. N.B. This is a correction from the original post.

Most beautiful streets: the old, winding ones in Lübeck.

Best street with mix of commercialism, charm, walkability: Friedrichstrasse, Mitte, Berlin.

Best street with mix of commercial and residential: Tucholskystrasse, same area.

Most overrated tourist site: Brandenburg Tor.

Most touristy big city: Cologne.

Quietest tourist town: Weimar.

Best hotels: Leonardo Hotel, Weimar; Augustinenhof, Berlin.

Best museum: Cologne's Wallraf (European art from several centuries).

Perspective taking

As I promised last week, I am back this week for some reflections on my trip.

A map of Europe's Jewish population - in the house of the Wannsee Conference, where the Final Solution was drafted.

First of all, I would like to describe very briefly - perhaps unfairly so - the book I finished reading a couple of days ago. It's ALONE IN BERLIN by Hans Falluda. I bought it in Berlin, on the wonderful Friedrichstrasse, early in the trip, and I read it on and off during the second half. It certainly kept me absorbed on a several train rides and the on plane home.
Alone in Berlin was published in 1947, shortly after the author died, unfortunately. It fictionalizes a true story of two "ordinary" Germans during the war, a simple man and his wife, who decide not to lay low and keep quiet while Hitler marches all over Europe, killing innocent people (including, in the novel, the couple's only son). The novel is fascinating for several reasons. 1) it's a gripping tale of a horrible time, complete with absorbing plot, distinct and captivating characters, and well-wrought setting; 2) pathos manages to alternate with absurdity (a trait peculiar, I have found, to European literature and film); 3) the insights Falluda provides into the human condition in general - and, in particular, how people of all stripes handle war - are utterly unforgettable.
(I alos enjoyed recognizing parts of Mitte, Berlin's central neighborhood, where I walked and stayed.)
Although almost completely uneducated, Otto and his wife Anna decide to do their best to oppose the war, and that consists of spreading the word of its injustice. This they do by writing messages on postcards and leaving them around Berlin. Eventually they are caught, falling to the inevitable fate of those who dare to confront tyranny. They are convicted of treason, punishable by death.
I felt despair many times while reading; after all, it was based on a true story and the war really went on like that. At the same time, the absurdity had the effect of making it bearable, not only because it injected a welcome dose of twisted humor. The reminder that life is absurd, when you really think about it, gave me a deeper understanding of suffering. If everything is ridiculous, then how do we define tragedy? Human egos, human ambitions and vanity all seem petty and absurd - yet they are as responsible for what we call "evil" in the world as anything truly frightening, like sadism or a complete lack of empathy. What else caused the great massacres of the 20th century but exaggerated self-regard? At least one person - with the help of equally egotistical and sycophantic hangers-on - had the supreme arrogance to think his ideas could change the world for the better. His ideas and nothing but. If there is one distinguishing aspect of the despot it is a manic disdain for discussion and perspective.
Coming home from a life-changing experience, I have other kinds of perspective to ponder. But it is still important to remember that things are not always as they first (or later) appear.

Home again - through new eyes

After many, many hours (17? 18?) of travel yesterday, we arrived home. The weather was wonderful - sunny, warm - so that certainly helped as we trudged from one point to another, and finally disbarked the bus on our street. How strange it all it seemed, in a way! Travel shifts your perception in subtle ways usually, but now and then it hits you smack in the frontal lobe: I'll never be quite the same again, you realize, and neither will the world.
Following my earlier wish to see the Alps yesterday: no such luck. Wrong angles, high cloud cover, poor sense of direction? Saw some of the east coast of Canada jutting into the Atlantic, at least!
Home. While airing out our apartment, we called our mothers and the woman who looked after our plants. Then we hit the sack like the couple of zoned-out (but happy) travellers that we were. No unpacking!
Bright sun awoke me at 5:00 this morning. I think I will have to take a mid-afternoon nap. If I last to mid-afternoon! After unpacking and sorting things an hour ago, I must head for my community garden and see how it has been trasnformed, in quite another way, during my absence. No matter how tired I am, that is motivating me to get going.
It's amazing how much you can pull through when you know you have to. Our plane from Berlin to Munich was late, so we had almost no time in Munich to go through passport check and security, let alone buy a magazine or final chocolate bar. The plane from Munich was also delayed, but thanks to a tailwind, we arrived on time.
I am glad to be home, yet sad to leave Germany: the feelings run almost parallel.
One thing I don't miss is the pressure of humanity - throngs of people everywhere, most of the time. People and the things they carry and think they need. People and stores full of things. Germany is just like home in that respect: so material.The reason I loved the country was that the material seemed balanced by more spiritual issues - like conviviality, responsibility to the natural world, art, philosophy, literature, science ....
But the material world could not be overlooked.
In the airport, for example, people dragged/rolled bags that would easily swallow most of my entire wardrobe. How much stuff do they really think they need for a week or three abroad? Did they spend all of their touring time shopping? While checking in, I heard the attendant tell a middle-aged couple in front of me (they were "shabbily well-heeled") that not only would they be charged for an extra bag, they would pay for extra weight per bag! They merely nodded as if it hardly mattered. And there I was jettisoning things like newspaper sections I didn't need, just to save weight! I'm glad I did, if not for the plane but for the bother Eddie and I went to while moving our bags ourselves in and out of trains and hotels.
I am eager to walk down the street without carrying as much as I did for nearly three weeks. I am looking forward to touching the soil of my own little plot of ground, listening to my regional songbirds (while very poignantly remembering the German blackbirds), and cooking in my own kitchen again. Such little things, which we take for granted. But they can give us happiness and cost so little. Another value in travel is coming home to what we love, but with new eyes.

Not quite the sea

When we planned our trip, back in April, I was dismayed to see how little water we would likely see. I enjoy mountains and forests, but have a special fondness for water, especially the sea. Berlin has the River Spree, Cologne has the Rhine, and various other rivers pass along the cities we visited or travelled through. I heard about a small, Medieval town on the Baltic, and decided that - since Denmark had been eliminated from our itinerary due to time constraints - we would try to visit Lübeck, which is very close to Scandinavia. (Indeed, boats and trains leave there for Copenhagen and Stockholm.)

We found the time to go yesterday, but if I had been hoping for a good whiff of salty air, I was very disappointed. The island on which Lübeck sits is surrounded by the River Trave - another river! As it's still, technically, on the northern coast, I suppose it's the mouth of the river, an estuary. However, all I saw was freshwater - murky tea-colored water with no airborne salt whatsoever. Damn!
The town itself is charming in parts. There are many very old and very beautiful buildings, most notable the twin towers "guarding" the entrance to the city. But what we ended up walking through in order to see the 15th-century churches (and, later, the original home of marzipan) were streets full of very ordinary stores. It looked like Copenhagen along the river, Eddie said (he was there 10 years ago), but downtown it could have been any North American metropolis, complete with fast food joints and cheap outlets.
 
 
We changed trains in Hamburg going and returning, but did not see anything except the outside of the station. It's a pity our time was so limited, because we could have seen more examples of water - fresh and salt - in that northern port. However, the skyscrapers I glimpsed from the train did not make me regret my loss too much....
Today we go home. I'm hoping for clear skies - not only to help the pilots of the two planes we'll be on, but to allow us to see the Alps as we fly into and out of Munich! I do enjoy my biogeography ... so next time, if there is a next time in Europe, I will take better care to include a greater variety of regions and features. There's more to a country than its old buildings and pretty town squares.

Berlin again

From Weimar, Tuesday morning, we returned to Berlin by early afternoon. It occurred to both of us that this could be another angle to our experience (and one we could have another time, another place): pleasure of returning to a city barely known but strongly familiar. It's the type of thing hard to explain immediately after it happens; I suppose I will be able to write about it when it sinks in and settles, clarifies.
Add it to the list of things that time will ripen before full comprehension sets in!

Whatever was going on in our nervous systems, one thing was certain and that was how glad we were to come back, even for a day and a half. I never expected to like Berlin so much, but I do and I'm not alone. I'd stay here another week or two in a flash - at the expense of cities I have yet to see!
We walked from our funky hotel - more about that another time - down to "our old neighborhood" in Mitte, around Friedrichstrasse. We shopped just a little, quite worn out in that regard, and ate an early supper. It reminded us how we long for our own kitchen, eating our own food. It's fun to travel and dine out, but there is an inherent stress in straying from tried and true meals. After a while, it's not a treat but an ordeal to take those chances (the cost of having someone else do the work). We're ready to do the work ourselves again.
That readiness to go home side, I'm sad to be leaving Germany. I will be thinking about it and our amazing experiences here for a long, long time.

Funky hotel's courtyard

Please check in, especially in the next few weeks, as I reflect on some events I skipped or merely glanced at in this blog while away. I also intend to assemble more photos by theme, review a wonderful book I'm reading - Alone in Berlin, by Hans Falluda - and summarize some of my German lessons after the fact.

Bach in the City

Yesterday was my first "bad day." No matter how much I tried to clear my head - with caffeine, micro-naps, food, or fresh air - I couldn't shake the effects of two nights of interrupted sleep. If that doesn't sound like much imposition, you might like to know that on an average day in Germany, I have been logging about 10km of walking, sometimes three to six kms at a stretch with hardly a sit-down. That is a marked contrast with my daily "mileage"at home. When I lose sleep at home - an all-too common occurance - I can sleep in. Not here. Too much to see! However, no amount of pleasant distraction yesterday could really twang my higher cortical functions past Adequate. I had a few close shaves, the first since arriving, and that's including the days I was in the firm grip of jet lag. I guess I should count myself lucky I got off relatively easy for a "bad day."
Our day consisted of a short (and potentially very unpleasant) trip to Jena, about 15 min. by train from Weimar. We had our first glimpse of the mountains further south in Bavaria - but low enough to be covered all the way up with forest. (No discernible alpine zone.) Again, we regretted not deciding to leave Germany from Munich not via Munich. The town is larger than Weimar but quite pretty. I found an old-style toy shop and had to restrain myself from snapping up all the delightful wooden toy animals I saw - hand-carved in the region!
From Jena we went to Leipzig. Still tired and subpar mentally, we trudged around, stopping for rest and refreshment too often. We both cheered up when we came upon the Thomana - St. Thomas's Church - which is is celebrating its 800th anniversary! For the last 12 years of his life, J.S. Bach played the organ and led the boys' choir there - a choir that is still going strong. Bach's statue is outside the chrch, which is in a lovely little square, tucked off to the corner of the busy commercial section. (Leipzig is the most commercial city we've seen so far.) 










Another treat was ... another church: the Nikolaikirche (Church of St. Nicholas). The interior was stunning - more like a small cathedral. I had never seen such a "feminine" color scheme before - pink, white and green like a marzipan confection. I have no idea how the church people keep it so clean - immaculate, actually - when a modern city full of pollution can breathe right in through the doors.

We were too tired to see the natural history museum, let alone the zoo. So all I will have are Berlin's equivalents. Not much for comparison value, but valuable in other ways. 

I had a wish list before I came, and music was definitely high on it. Mission accomplished in that respect, and a few others!