There is a German folktale that was told to children about a tree, called a Schultütenbaum, that grows near schools. At the end of summer when the tree's fruit, or Schultüten, are finally ready to pick, it's time for the children to start school. My little Miss finally started Kindergarten!
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About two weeks ago, we decided to take advantage of my "spouses ride free on weekends" bus pass and take the kids to the village of Wolbeck. It's really quiet, small and its main tourist draw is a cemetery. On the outskirts there are trails that take you through the woods, so we thought that we might do that. Instead, we heard loud music, found a tent with smoke billowing out of it and dressed up drunks spilling everywhere. And so started off our introduction to Carnival Week in Germany, a pretty big deal and widely celebrated in this über Catholic region we're inhabiting. I'm so proud of myself for using the word über. Looks like my German lessons are paying off. For the next week, leading up to Lent, festivities were brought forth throughout the city. Ladies night on Thursday, a circus on Saturday and a parade on Monday, a self imposed Pancake Tuesday and Ash Wednesday. Some Catholics faithfully celebrate until Thursday, when they/we become lapsed Catholics at best. The circus was equal parts entertaining and sad. The acrobats were great, as well as the contortionists. They were the most handsome of the troupe and I couldn't help but think of all the weird circus sex they must get on the road. Seriously, they're contortionists. The animals, on the other hand, were uncomfortable to watch. I remember as a child going to the circus once, and then never again. I think it was around that time that my Mom joined the World Wildlife Foundation and Greenpeace and Amnesty for the Misunderstood Cat Ladies of the World. I'm not sure if the first two are correct, actually. Anyway, yesterday Claudia whipped one of her toy puppies with a belt because she was playing "circus", which was equally uncomfortable to watch. They can wait until they have their own kids to go again. The parade on Monday was a freaking riot. The day is known as Rose Monday and it is the most special of the Carnival days. It's the German version of Mardi Gras, but instead of necklaces being thrown from the floats, you get shrink wrapped sausages. You know, to be safe. The slightest thing can send me into a tizzy. Like the fact that Münster, with all it's pancake variations, does NOT celebrate Fat Tuesday. Wasn't Fat Tuesday the best school day of the year? If you went to a separate school in a small town, it probably was. We would spend the morning at church and then lunch in the basement. Maybe we didn't even have to go to mass? I really just remember the long tables and maple syrup. My Babcia always made Polish Pancakes (which are pretty much crepes) stuffed with homemade strawberry jam, so I did the same. I wasn't counting on the kids actually eating dinner that night, and in hindsight I should have made much more for it to be a true Fat Tuesday. A spot finally opened up for Claudia to start Kindergarten, and had she been in school on Wednesday, she would have been initiated in the custom of having a cross drawn on your forehead with ashes. I think twitterer Jenny Johnson, explains Ash Wednesday best:
Happy Pretend Your Co-Workers Don't Look Creepy When They Come Back From Lunch With Black Shit Smeared Across Their Foreheads Day!!!! So now we're into Lent and this city has shut down. Shirts are buttoned up again, people have stopped smiling at strangers, and there are no more sausages being thrown around. I think you're supposed to stop eating yummy food or something? (I had two slices of birthday cake for dinner tonight, btw.) Or are you supposed to stop having vices? I know someone who gives up sex. But she's almost 90 and her husband is dead. Which makes her really good at keeping her word. I'm glad I'm just a lapsed Catholic who is clearly just in it for the pancakes. Amen. I used to talk to Babcia every night before she went to bed. Daily ramblings, what we had for dinner, what Mrs. So-n-So said at Bingo, it's raining, it's sunny, it's snowing . . . the majority of the time our conversations went along those lines. And then, every blue moon, her mind would open up and the next thing you know she's telling you about a blue scarf she wore on her 13th birthday. And the thoughts keep coming. You don't even look at the clock until you've hung up and realize you've been talking for hours about the most beautiful, hilarious and sentimental things. Tonight was one of those nights. Stealing sorrel leaves from a neighbours meadow when she was sixteen. Her friend Katie setting her up with a German soldier. "Tara, can you imagine if we were caught?? We would have been killed!" And the first time she heard her husband sing. He came back to her village, in Marksteft, after the war was over. They went for a walk in a meadow. She said to me "It was a song about Katyusha, he sang it in Russian. All I can remember is a part about her being by the river. I think it was a love song." And then, not two minutes later, I found the song and played it for her. It was a love song. And together, her and I listened. Her remembering her husband as he was 70 years ago, and me, thinking, this has got to be the best Valentine's Day I've ever had. Apple and pear trees were blooming. O'er the river the fog merrily rolled. On the steep banks walked Katyusha, On the high bank she slowly strode. As she walked she sang a sweet song Of her silver eagle of the steppe, Of the one she loved she loved so dearly, And the one whose letters she had kept O you song! Little song of a young girl, Fly over the river and in the sunlight go. And fly to my hero far from me, From his Katyusha bring him a sweet hello. Will he remember this plain young girl, And her sweet song like a dove, As he stands guarding his proud nation, So Katyusha will guard their love. It may already be known, but it's been hella cold out here in Germany for about two weeks. The drizzle and grey have been replaced with glorious sunshine and air that stabs your skin. And no snow. It's bizarre, really.
I was reading up on this extreme Eastern cold front and stumbled upon an article about a Dutch man visiting the area, who fell through 10 cm of ice and is still MISSING. That's terrifying. So naturally, when Aaron said he wanted to take the girls "sliding" on the ice, I was really excited to have an hour of shopping to myself. He decided that they would go to the old city moat, which is now a flooded ditch, a frozen flooded ditch. There were signs near the bridge that said you should not go on the ice, lest you slip to your cold, watery death, but Aaron was not to be dissuaded. In fact, an oft seen legless, homeless, wheel chaired Man with a litre and a half bottle of beer resting on his lap, assured Aaron that the sign was all nonsense. In German. (I do not speak German.) So Aaron, being responsible, decided to heed the sign's advice and walk about 100 metres further, out of the sign's view, to where a bunch of teenagers were drinking and doing some sliding of their own. At this point I left, because I'm anxious about such things and all my hovering was noticeably pissing my husband off. I got lost trying to find what I was looking for in town and when I turned a random corner, who is there but The Oft Seen Man. Seriously, this guy moves backwards. In his wheelchair, over cobblestones. I have no idea how I managed to run into him again, but I did and he offered me a ride on his lap. In German. Taking this as a sure sign that the ice was cracking at that very moment, I ran back to the frozen ditch to find my family basking in the sunshine, as happy as can be. So I gave up my hesitation and joined them on the ice. Life was good, until I saw a fish swimming 10 cm under my feet, and then it was time TO GO. After the debacle that happened on Sunday, we decided that we would stay low key and use the car to travel nearby. After a quick call to Anna & Wilhelm's for suggestions, we decided that we would go to Tecklenburg, a village about 30 minutes away.
It's a higgily-piggily sort of place, with crooked lanes and a quiet air. Our main requisite was that we be near the forest, and we were not disappointed. I'll let the pictures do the talking now. Germany has strict laws in place prohibiting retail stores from operating on Sunday. It's an effort to "synchronize society" and keep the traditional day of rest in place. I love the values behind it, and see no fault in limiting consumerism to 6 days a week. It helps protect families by ensuring that they are, by law, given at least one day to spend with each other. But heaven help you if you run out of milk. Gas Station Milk does nothing for the soul.
In Münster, Saturday is market day, and all good wives and mothers are out buying goods for the next day's hot meal. There is also a drop in centre right outside the market for children so the parents can shop in peace for up to three hours. It really is peaceful. I had some German recipes translated and hit the market with my list. On that list was savoy cabbage. Soon after coming home, the girls decided that we should take some cabbage and carrots to the bunny patch the next day and give those little guys a treat. So today, Sunday, with nothing else to do but go out in the pouring rain (have I mentioned how much it rains in Münster before?) we went and fed the bunnies. We crawled through the low shrubbery that the bunnies hide out in and scattered the leaves and carrots and we waited. And waited. No bunnies came but it was so nice to just have the girls sit still under the canopy of a shrub and listen to the rain all around us. On our way home we stopped in at the chocolate cafe to warm up with hot chocolate and croissants. It was nice. Perhaps I've been too hard on German Sundays? With a little bit of imagination, we had a perfect day of rest. All along the river my Dzia Dzia worked, repairing old bridges, river walls, etc. He was a bricklayer. One summer he found himself near Marksteft, near the farm my Babcia was living on.
My Babcia was good friends with another Polish girl named Sophie. Sophie was the opposite of my Babcia. Where Babcia was dark and buxom, Sophie was blond and petite. They each had Sunday off work and would often go for walks along the riverbank. And that's how they came upon a boat full of eager young gentlemen. Babcia remembers having to walk a plank to get on the boat and that the men on the boat refused to put the plank back until early in the morning. They drank and laughed all night, feeling their youth. They then said their good-byes and went on their separate ways. Babcia had to walk 7 km at sunrise to deliver sugar beets to town. Babcia has always supposed that Dzia Dzia had girlfriends all along the river. She's probably right. His parents never accepted her because he left a fiancé back in Poland that he was expected to return to. What ended up happening was that the war ended. And a lot of people did not know where to go. Poland was destroyed. So my Dzia Dzia returned to Marksteft, to the not so little "schwarz" haired girl that must have made quite the impression that night on his little boat. Sophie also married a man that she met that night, the love of her life, named Henry. So even though the war had ended, my Grandparents stayed in Germany. They worked on the farm, and earned a fair living. To this day she collects a German pension. She says that Germany remains beautiful in her memory and the people she knew were very kind to her. When it was time for all displaced persons to find a more permanent residence, my Grandparents moved to a refugee camp in Karlsruhe. They married. They lived here for a few years yet. In a room with three other couples, including her friend Sophie. Eventually those couples had children, including my Uncle Zbigniew, aka Ben. And then their time in Germany came to an end. Babcia recalls a loud announcement being made for all bricklayers to come to the office. They were leaving for Canada the next morning. Just the bricklayers. It would be another year before Sophie, my Babcia and their children would be able to make it over. Meanwhile, in a little house in Hamilton, my Dzia Dzia bought a table for his family to use. An old, beat up canning table was there to welcome his family home. They didn't have much, but they had a place to gather and be together. That was all they needed. They came of age on the apex of Germany's great invasion. At the ages of 24 and 18 respectively, my Dzia Dzia and Babcia were displaced from their homes in Poland and became forced labourers for Germany. My Dzia Dzia lived and worked on a small boat on the River Main and my Babcia was a farm worker in the small town of Marksteft, near the border of Bavaria.
My personal knowledge of their time during the war is sometimes filled with sadness, but the overall story becomes one of two people growing up and falling in love behind a backdrop of war. Their experiences of the war are probably greater than what they've ever told anyone, or through the years the feelings have been tempered so that when repeated they aren't angry stories. I've only ever been offered snapshots of atrocities, but maybe that's all they've retained. My Babcia recalls paper raining down like confetti for hours after a neighbouring town was bombed. My Dzia Dzia once told me of a toddler being murdered in town and how helpless he felt at that moment. The most enduring story for me, though, is the one of my Babcia's first boyfriend. He lived 7 kilometres away, the next town over. She met him through the family she was living with and he was a farmer's boy. Once a week, after church, they would each walk 3.5 kilometres to sit in a field and be teenagers. She remembers he smelled of fresh carrots. One day, instead of meeting him in the field, his friends appeared. They told Babcia that two boys had stolen a loaf of bread and started running once they saw that they had been caught. Babcia's boyfriend, seeing the boys running away from chasing police officers also started to run, out of fear. Unfortunately, he was shot. Her first love was dead and the war was responsible for that. As sad as it was, the story was familiar. Crimes against citizens were common. Life had to move on or it wasn't worth living. And it did move on. Stories continued to be made, and those stories, luckily, have been passed down through the years. I think I'm going to take some time to write these stories down. My grandparents were luckier than some. I loved hearing about how they met, fell in love, married and had a child, despite a war being fought in the background. I'm going to attempt to link their story with my own. My story being that I get to experience living in a country that tries to shed itself of what happened 70 years ago while still respecting the history and lives of those that lived through that time. I'll keep you posted. I'm going to give Mary credit where credit is due. She birthed Jesus. But, she didn't take the time to put up a pine tree in the little manger, even though guests were arriving imminently. No, society had to wait until the Germans came up with the idea to do so. At first they thought to decorate an oak tree, but then decided that pine was perfection as it pointed towards heaven. Anyway, give it a few hundred years and this country is full fledged, teenage boy, eager beaver about Christmas.
We really noticed, a few weeks before our vacation in Canada, that people window shop here. It's not a saying folks, it's the real deal. Throngs of people, out on a Sunday, just shopping in windows, not spending a cent. The windows, as such, are decorated to the nines. It's really pretty. Then there are the Christmas markets. These guys are a hit. So many friggen people just milling about, sipping mulled wine, or hot chocolate as the case may be. I had a bad reaction to the mulled wine in Denmark and dare not venture down that path again. Claudia thinks it's the best hot chocolate ever, and she would be right. It's the best hot chocolate ever. Everything adds up to a genuine holiday spirit. Everyone wishes one another a Merry Christmas, and they're happy to say it. We're happy to be here, revelling in it all. I'm grateful that I was able to see family and friends so close to Christmas, as the distance between us would surely have felt much wider had I not. Frohe Weihnachten and Merry Christmas! It's official. I went to buy smokes today and the man behind the counter pulled them down before I even opened my mouth. Ironically, the only German I've managed to master is "Zwei Davidoff Blau, bitte." I'm sticking to the positive here, and not the idea that maybe, just maybe, I smoke too much.
Anyway, same old, same old here. Apartment blah blah blah. Stressing over four stupid walls has nearly drowned out the excitement of being home in less than a week. Nearly. Friends, family, I miss you. |
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