Duking it out at Oxfam, and shopping for mustard

The day after Christmas -- St. Stephens Day, when shops are closed in Germany -- I spotted a sweet antique sugar and creamer set in the window of the local OxFam thrift shop. The next day, before our walk, I looked up the translation for "I would like to buy something in the window" and after much practice, said to the clerk at the OxFam store that afternoon, "Ich möchte etwas im Fenster kaufen." I was told that all of the items displayed in the window are put on sale at a specific date and time, and were scheduled to go on sale a couple weeks from that day, which happened to be today. (Which is something I would have known if I had read the sign in the window, of course.) 

I put my dreams on hold for a couple of weeks, and today at 11 a.m., the designated time when I could finally buy the sugar and creamer set, we went to the OxFam store.

Things looked a bit hopeless when I saw the crowd that had gathered there. I was afraid they might have a live auction for the window items, which I would definitely fail at, not knowing German well enough to think clearly in a pressure situation (I would probably mistakenly bid 200 euros when I meant to bid 20!).

We milled around, trying to look disinterested, and at 11:00 one of the store clerks wheeled out a cart with all of the items that had been displayed in the window: crystal goblets and aperitif glasses, silver trays, a pewter tea set, beaded evening gowns, and my sugar and creamer. Everyone surged -- politely -- toward the front counter, where the clerk held up the first item, a silver tray, asking in German something that was very likely, "Is anyone interested in this?"  Several people raised their hands. She told them to each come up and shake a cup holding dice. Whoever rolled the highest number got to buy the item. So that was how it was done -- sheer luck! The pressure was on: when my sugar and creamer came up, I was ready to roll.

The leather cup on the counter holds a pair of dice, to determine who gets to buy the nicest items displayed in the window at the OxFam store

They sold off a number of items, and my palms were sweating, waiting for them to bring out the sugar and creamer. I wondered how many people I would have to beat, and prayed that I wouldn't roll a 1 and a 2, like some poor souls were doing. When the clerk finally pulled the sugar and creamer from the cart, to my great relief/dismay, no one else wanted it! I don't know if that means we have terrible taste or what, but the important thing is that the sugar and creamer set is now ours. It's so unusual and pretty -- metal on the outside, enamelized on the inside. Next time you come to our house, I'll serve sugar and cream from these:

The long-awaited sugar and creamer set: ours at last!

And now we know how the bidding wars at OxFam work.

On a less dramatic note, I shopped for mustard yesterday. I failed to look up the translation for "mustard" beforehand, but figured I'd just go to the catsup/mustard aisle, choose whatever was yellow, and all would be well. I wasn't expecting the array of choices. 

This one? Nope, that's curry sauce. 

This one? Nope -- that's mayonnaise.

This one? Probably, but I'm not exactly sure what "Hamburger Sauce" is, so better not.

At last I found it: Senf! It's the one in the blue or red container -- of course?!

Fun times with the Hanseatic League

This weekend we visited the European Hansemuseum, just a few blocks from our flat. It's a fantastic new museum featuring one of the oldest cultural influences of Europe, the Hanseatic League. The latest museum technology lets you program your visit according to what you're most interested in, in your preferred language. 

To start the museum tour, you ride an ultra-modern, polygon-shaped glass elevator slowly down to an archaeological excavation of the earliest structures built in Lübeck, in the 1100s. 

The excavated structures of early Lübeck dealt mainly with water, poo, and trash which continue to this day to be an issue for concentrated populations. (Getty Images photo of the elevator descending)

As you walk through the restored structures that were built 850 years ago, the background music is a low bass sound backed by a chord progression than never quiiiiite resolves -- designed, I'm sure, to keep you on edge, just like people back then obviously were most of their lives. 

Bear with me: I love this stuff so will present to you the history of Lübeck -- learned at the Hansemuseum -- in a nutshell:

Things started gearing up in this part of Europe in the 700s, when Slavic settlers moved to this area (near what's now Denmark), and minor Slavic princes built a fortress on the land where Lübeck now sits. After a couple hundred years and a series of wars, they abandoned it all, and in 1143 a man named Adolf II, Count of Schauenberg (whoever that is) decided to start a new town at the old fortress site. 

The count wanted to start a new trading center here, but needed people, so he sent messengers out to other lands to tell people that if they wanted "the most beautiful, the most spacious, the most fertile fields, replete with fish and meat," they should bring their families here. So they did, and that was the beginning of Lübeck. 

As the populations around the area grew by the 12th and 13th centuries, merchants were having a rough time getting goods to everyone who needed them. There were so many ambushes and killings back then, the only way for merchants to succeed in trade and live to tell about it was to band together and travel in groups, using wooden boats to ship their goods. 

Because navigation was so rudimentary, they had to stay within sight of shore in daylight, which was dangerous but necessary for survival. They only ventured onto open sea (the Baltic) at night, when they could see the Northern Star and keep their bearings. 

These merchants established the Hanseatic League, a group of traders all around the Baltic Sea, and this was the beginning of Europe as we know it to this day. The areas they traded are shown in gold in the map below, but they also bought and sold goods inland as far as Asia (but not yet to the New World, of course, as Europeans hadn't realized it existed yet). When you visit the cities of this map today, you can see the influence of the Hanseatic League in the architecture: houses built side-by-side with brick facades.

The goods they traded give you a feeling for what life must have been like when the hottest commodities on the market were fish, salt, timber, resin, furs, birch bark, amber, wool, and wax. They were also already trading spices, fruits, and silks from Asia and Africa by this time, which goes to show you, globalization is nothing new. 

I won't belabor this, but suffice it to say that the work and innovation that went on for hundreds of years to build northern Europe left us exhausted and ready for lunch. 

We finished up by learning about the end of the mighty Hanseatic League: in the years following the Reformation and the Thirty Years War (which ended in 1648) it had become obvious that the formerly powerful merchant class could no longer control much of anything. The Hanseatic League died out from lack of interest. Much like our oil men of today, some of the Hanseatic merchants, who used to be such hot-shots around town, refused to believe their way of life was ending. It was kind of pathetic, really: they'd hold meetings, and no one would come. New markets opened up in the New World, Spain took over as a major economic force, and trading solely around the Baltic Sea suddenly wasn't such a big deal anymore. I believe we're witnessing the same thing with our fossil-fuel-based economy, slowly grinding to a halt while a new economy gears up. It helps me to know, from learning history, that this kind of transition can take over a hundred years. I might not live to see it but it will happen.

One more note about this history: It was interesting for me to learn that it was the Thirty Years War that was the death knell for the Hanseatic League, because that war played a big role in my own family history, too. My father's side of the family originated in what became Estonia and ended up in Germany in the 1600s. This was a mystery to me, as travel wasn't easy and you didn't just willy-nilly move from Estonia to Germany in the 1600s. We recently learned that our Estonian ancestor was drafted into the Swedish Army and sent to Germany during the Thirty Years War. So THAT was how he did it! He deserted the army in southern Germany, and a couple hundred years later his descendants emigrated from Germany to America, and so we thought we were of German descent until recently.

I'll end with a set of photographs. In the museum was a photo of the street near our flat in Lübeck, taken in the year 1868:

Grosseburgstrasse in Lübeck, 1868

Today I took this photo:

Grosseburgstrasse in Lübeck, 2019

. . . and here's the back side of it:

Heidelberg, January 2

New Years Day we spent on the train to Heidelberg to visit Christof & Cordula Dörfer. Christof is another former colleague of Gary's. They live in a little town, Bammenthal, just over the hill from the Heidelberg Castle.

I remember when the Dörfers visited Raspberry Island about 14 years ago, they were talking about their plans to build a house on a hill lot in Bammenthal to accommodate them and their four little children, and here is the result. It's a beautiful modernistic house, with lots of light and open spaces:

The Dörfer home

The dining area

The back garden

Now those four little kids that visited our island are grown and most have a boyfriend or girlfriend and a successful career (architect, doctor, classical music festival organizer, and one undecided as of yet). They've turned into lovely, good people -- very engaging and fun to talk to.

Christof and Cordula on the far end, and from left to right: their son Mattias, Elizabeth's boyfriend Robin, Gary, Christof, Cordula, their daughter Ellizabeth, their son Johannes, Johannes's girlfriend Sophia, and Sebastien (a cousin) (Missing from this photo is their daughter Rafaela)

The next day, we visited the grounds of the famous Heidelberg Castle overlooking Heidelberg and the Neckar River:

The former gunpowder tower, which was blown up by the French in the 17th century and never restored. The authors and painters of the Romantic period loved Heidelberg's ruined castle just the way it was. Even Mark Twain wrote about this tower.

We also spent the afternoon with a friend from Minneapolis, Anna Hampel (96) and her sister-in-law who lives nearby, but I failed to get photos!

Later that evening, Rafaela arrived home from spending New Years Eve with friends on the island of Föhr, just off the coast of Germany, up near Denmark. Because that's what kids here do: they go to these interesting, out-of-the-way places in Europe that we Americans have never even heard about, much less visited, and they don't even give it a second thought. Lucky kids! She told us about the New Years Eve tradition on that island: people dress up in costumes (she saw men dressed as chickens, for instance, and someone dressed as Donald Trump) and go from house to house, singing. The reward is a shot of schnapps. Sounds like an interesting place!

Rafaela and Johannes on our final night in Bammenthal

We had an all-too-short visit before heading back up to Lübeck, a six-hour train ride. Before I end this post, I have to show you a Dörfer tradition that I think I'll start doing, too. When Cordula serves a pastry, like apple strudel, she serves it with ice cream, whipped cream, AND vanilla sauce. This would work well for pumpkin pie, too, I think.

Silvester

We've been away from Lübeck the past five days, visiting friends and ringing in the new year. Happy New Year! We arrived back in Lübeck by train this afternoon: Thursday, January 3, 2019.

Before we left the U.S., I was under the impression that the Internet in rural America, where we live, is the worst in the whole wide world. I discovered this past weekend that I was wrong: it's also bad in rural Germany. This is why I wasn't able to work on this blog for the past few days. I apologize to my sister Sara for putting a scare into her when I suddenly stopped communicating. We're fine!  :-)  

Before we left town, we met up with a former student of Gary's and her family, at a little cafe near our flat that Peter recommended, called Frau Brömse. They make their own kuchen there, all the china cups and plates are charmingly mis-matched, and it looks like this from the outside, next to the children's skating rink I mentioned earlier:

Frau Brömse Cafe

After a visit with Imke and her sisters and nieces and brother-in-law . . .

Imke, Michel (Imke's son), Ute, Birte, Gary, Antje, me, Andy, and Kirsten

. . . . we walked down to the main Christmas market for:

Gary and a former dental student, Imke

Feuerzangenbowle!  This is hot wine made with a loaf of sugar that's been soaked in rum and set afire so that it drips melted sugar into the wine. The fire in this case had been done before we arrived at the Christmas market, but we still enjoyed the last hot wine of the season together before parting ways. This was our last visit to the famous Lübeck Christmas market this season; it's now been dismantled. 

The next day, December 30, we boarded the train and headed toward Lüneburg, east of Hamburg, to meet Gary's former colleague Georg and his wife Angie at Georg's family farm. I talked about this farm in my previous blog (germangetaway.blogspot.com). This is the farm with the big combination barn/house that's been in Georg's family since the 13th century. It's where we would be celebrating Silvester: New Year's Eve. 

The night we arrived, Georg & Angie treated us to an elegant goose dinner at a nearby restaurant.

We were happy, spoiled campers. (Angie, Georg, me, Gary, Maria)

The next day, New Years Eve Day, we went for a long walk around the farm. Across the fields you can see little villages nearby, like this one:

And this one:

 . . . and also a few pferde:






When we got back after our walk, we had gluhwein out on the patio:

. . . and then Maria asked us over to her combination house/barn for kuchen. She served us apfel kuchen, chocolates, and stollen at this table:

We then had time for a nap before Silvester started. At 7, we met in the kitchen at George & Angie's house to meet the other guests, Henrick and his family. Henrick is a chef who brought all of the ingredients, pre-cut, for raclette:

Pears, olives, herbed butter, shrimp, raclette cheese, tomatoes, 

and a variety of wild game: hare, wild boar, venison . . .

... and peppers, white potatoes, blue potatoes, brötchen, smoked pork, liver, guinea fowl . . .

. . . which we all cooked ourselves at the raclette grill in the center of the table. (Gary and I now also have one of these at our island, and serve raclette to guests in the winter, thanks to Georg & Angie showing us how it's done. In the U.S., you can buy raclette cheese at Trader Joe's at Christmastime, but any good gouda or Swiss will do). 

Cooking meat on top of the raclette grill, with trays
broiling cheese-topped ingredients underneath

Fieder, Birgit, Maria, Henrick, Angie, Gary, me at the raclette table

At midnight, Fieder put on an impressive fireworks show outside, along with people in the villages all around us (during which the local fire brigade was called upon, apparently, to put out a fire in an awning). 

After that, Angie served Berliners (we call them bismarks), and then, around 1:00 a.m. Maria's served us chocolate mousse! Ach du lieber! There was no sign that the Germans were slowing down, so at 1:30 this exhausted and wimpy American announced she was going to bed. The rest of them stayed up until 3 -- and then got up the next morning at 8 a.m. to serve us früstück . . . 

Georg at the breakfast table

... and to drive us to the nearest bahnhof, about seven minutes away. 

I hope they napped all day New Years Day, because they deserved to after such a grand Silvester!  

We were headed next to Heidelberg, which I'll cover in the next post.

A walk along the Baltic

This morning we boarded a bus for a half-hour ride to Travemunde, the resort town north of Lübeck where the Trave River flows into the Baltic Sea. Now we know how much the bus costs -- 3,20 eu each -- so we can confidently go to Travemunde whenever we feel the urge, which I'm sure will be often.

Today we were headed to meet Peter for a walk along a relatively isolated stretch of beach he knows of. In Germany, you're never really isolated in the same sense as Americans think of isolation, in that there's always someone out walking along with you. We passed a hundred people on our walk today (probably twice that)  -- and this was off the beaten path! But the walking paths here are so convenient and ubiquitous, I'm not sure which is better: few paths with no people, or more paths with many people? I think both are good. 

Peter met us at the bus stop in Travemunde in his van, and drove about a kilometer north of Travemunde, where he parked at this restaurant and we set out on foot. 

As we walked, Peter pointed out that the shore along the Baltic Sea is eroding at the rate of almost 2 meters annually, which is a lot of erosion. You can see the effects of it here:

I asked if this was due to sea levels rising from climate change, but Peter said no, this has been going on for a very long time. He said that when he was on this same walk twenty years ago, the house in the next photo was set well back on land, with a garden in front and another house in front of it, toward the sea, with a garden in front of that house at the water's edge. And now it looks like the photo below; the other house is long gone, as is the front garden of this house:

Next time we come, it's possible this house won't be here anymore, either. 

Along our way, we saw this cute bird bench with a puddle in front of it from yesterday's rain:

... and something from one of my favorite Christmas carols, The Holly and the Ivy. They both appear to be full-grown:

Eventually we found a stairway leading down to the beach, where we walked for over two hours back toward Travemunde. Our iPhone app tells us we walked 7.4 miles today! That should work off that muzen and gluhwein we had at the Christmas market last night. Along the way we looked for bernstein (amber) and rocks with holes through them, the name of which I can't remember. We didn't find either one, but I picked up a lot of rocks I thought might be amber. (Apparently you can tell the difference between amber and a regular old yellow rock by trying to float it. The rock will sink; the amber won't.)

Here's a view of the house we passed earlier, from the beach:




Along the way we gathered a bit of natural clay for Gary's sculpting; it's there in abundance and will soon be washed out to sea. 

We also saw these sights:

A guy standing out in the sea in waders, fishing for cod

A tree recently washed down to the beach. They let dogs run freely in Germany without leashes. Imagine that!

What's left of a brick building that has been washed out down to the beach

Two and a half hours later, we ended up back at the restaurant where Peter's van was parked. We stopped in for some grunkohl suppe (kale soup) which was made with potatoes and was very good. We were among the few who took advantage of outdoor seating, even though it was balmy -- in the 40s Fahrenheit. All of the outdoor tables were decorated with boughs.

Afterward, Peter drove us back to Lübeck, where Gary and I walked to a cafe nearby that Peter had recommended for a gathering of some old friends of Gary's tomorrow. We wanted to make a reservation for nine people, so I looked up the translation on my iTranslate app to run past Peter, to ensure it was fit for public utterance (I do not trust this app!). Peter said it was fine, so here's what I read off my iPhone to the young woman at the cafe: "Wir wollen eine reservierung machen, aber wir verstehen deutsch nicht," which means, "We would like to make a reservation but we do not understand German."  It worked great: she asked if we speak English and very kindly made our reservation! Whew!

It was an excellent day, but our dogs are barkin'. These Germans sure do like to walk!

Christmas Eve, an antique Christmas tree stand, and Gary's sculpture project

Merry Christmas! 

Before heading out on Christmas Eve, Gary and our landlord/friend Peter obliged my wish to attend the Christmas Eve service at my favorite cathedral, Jakobikirke, a couple blocks away. Here's one of the pieces the choir sang (part of it, anyway -- excuse the shaky video; I was trying to be discreet):

*SIGH*!!! The service was gorgeous, as I knew it would be. That was all I wanted for Christmas.

Afterward Peter drove us the half hour to his partner Maren's house, where we four had a nice light dinner of a grated potato dish and a wonderful beet salad that Peter made (cooked beets & potatoes & celeriac with herring and plain yogurt as a binder; definitely going into my recipe file). It was the perfect way to celebrate Christmas -- peacefully and beautifully.

Today (Christmas Day) on the way back to Lübeck, we visited the home of one of Peter's friends, Martin, who is renovating (along with his wife, Elke) this grand combination house/barn:

You can't see it well here, but the huge roof is thickly thatched. Here is Peter with Elke & her son, who is generously loaning me his violin while we're here.

Martin explaining some of the work going on in the barn half of the house. You can see the old timber framing behind him.

On the second floor of the house half: the future master bedroom, with a view of the lake

It's an impressive, long-term project; it took Martin and Elke two years just to clean things up at the home site before they were finally able to start the "fun" part of renovation, four years ago.

During our visit, their antique Christmas tree stand caught my eye, and Martin gave us a demonstration. It's a music box, from the 1880s! Absolutely charming. We've never seen anything like it.

Martin changes the music box disc to a different tune. They have about a dozen of these old disks to choose from.

And now, the afternoon of Christmas Day, we're back in our flat again! This week I'll be continuing with my illustration "work," and Gary is already well into his first sculpture (this is no one in particular, just a study). Whenever I walk past the kitchen now, I do a double-take, and I think you can see why!