Regens-blog

Christkindlmarkt opens with Snow

2005-11-25T12:11:00.000+01:00

This morning Regensburg awoke to bitter cold and falling snow. Inner child awakened, I dressed quickly and dashed out.

The wind stung my face with the tiny ice crystals as I walked to the Steinerne Brucke and crossed, successfully avoiding German drivers who, to my surprise, seemed to lack any idea of how to drive in snow.

Traffic of every description—cars, buses, bicycles— slipped and slid through the streets. An elderly man took a fall right in front of the altestadt bus and was pulled out of danger by two bystanders as the driver hit the brakes and the bus skidded to a halt only a few yards from the bicyclist.

Today Chriskindlemarkt officially opens. Venders are set up in every platz and Regensburg looks very Christmassy indeed. I thought the dealers would loose sales because of the snow but the crowds kept building all through the day.

By sundown, as time for the lighting of the tree approached, several thousand people had jamed Neupfarrplatz. I joined them to hear the Mayor's speech extolling the joy of Christmas (its all about the children) while warming my hands and other parts of me drinking a mug of very potent hot mulled wine.

After a bit, the crowd got to be a bit much so I drifted back to the more intimate less frantic gatherings at Krautererplatz, Rathausplatz and Haidplatz.

Germans practically invented Christmas as we know it -- from the tree to Silent Night to the toywork shop. In Germany, however, Kris Kringle doesn't do the chimney scene. Childlen leave there shoes outside the door filled with hay or carrots for the old boy's white horse (no reindeer-drawn sleigh). But globalization may be overtaking German tradition. The representation of Kris I've seen around town looks less like the slender, distinquished Kringle and more like the classic American Coke-a-Cola Santa. More's the pity.

http://www.weihnachtsmarkt.weihnachten-info.de/regensburg/

T-Day Goodbye

2005-11-25T12:07:00.000+01:00

Last night we had our big Thanksgiving dinner at the common room of the Untere Bachgasse residence.

Kneitinger provided the roast turkey with an apple stuffing—yum. We brought the side dishes and deserts and I’m sure many mothers would be proud of the renderings of traditional family recipes by sons and daughters.

It was our last gathering and so bittersweet when we said goodbye late that night.

Most of crew will be in Europe a bit longer. Some of us have to return sooner. But one thing’s certain—we’ve made good friends here. Some we’ll leave behind in Regensburg and others we’ll find again Murray.

Just say Genau

2005-11-24T13:23:00.000+01:00

I have been promising to write this since my third day in Regensburg. I kept hearing the word "genau" pop up in coversations. Often at the beginning or end of a set of remarks or in response to a comment or a question--it didn't seem to matter. If said twice "Genau, genau..." it was a signal for the other speaker to continue.

Genau means "precisely/exactly" but as commonly used it is a verbal tick like the ubiquitous use of “like” by Americans. But where “like” sounds, well, like vague, genau is vaguely precise preserving the appearance, if not the fact, of intelligent conversation.
So here, as threatened, is my doggerel to genau.

Genau!

Living here in Germany
We hear it everyday
People speaking German
In a Bavarian sort of way

At Peaches and at Suzie Wong’s
Pam Pam and Zarap-zap-zap
At the Irish Pub and Wunderbar
We're all socially handicapped

We find ourselves in conversations
With nothing much to say
Aber Danke sehr und Bitte sehr
Und immer entschuldigen Sie

Then comes that pause in conversation
Following a comment or two
With which you nodded in agreement
And you’re not sure what to do

Don’t panic!

Just say “Genau!”
Just say “Genau!”
It’s a word that means precisely what it means.
Just say “Genau!”
Just say “Genau!”
It’s all you need to make the happenin’ scenes

Just say “Genau!”
Just say “Genau!”
And you will gain a reputation as a sage
Just say “Genau!”
Just say “Genau!”
It’s by far the most useful German turn of phrase

First Snow in Regensburg

2005-11-19T11:23:00.000+01:00

Yesterday was schizophrenic. It was cold and gray when I sent out to shop, a daily thing if only for bread. I had only gone a short block when it began to rain. When it rains in Regensburg it pours so I did an about face.

It was raining when I entered my building. By the time I reached my apartment and looked out the window, rain had turned to huge snow flakes. Proof of immaturity is joy at the first snow. “Hot damn! It’s snowing!”

And I’m out the door. Proof of maturity is that when chilled to the bone, I head for the coffee shot to work over a café latte. Several actually. I love to work with the view of the comings and goings in Rathausplaz.

The snow stopped about 1300hrs. It was gray a while longer and then, as if a switch had been thrown, every cloud was gone and a brilliant sun shone. What’s with this? From inside the warm café, it almost looked like summer of warm memory. I went outside. Nope. Still winter.
Two hours later the switch is thrown again. Cue the clouds! Okay, let’s have the snow! Roll ‘em. Laßt ihm scheien, laßt ihm scheien, laßt ihm scheien.

Viva! Viva! Viva Zarate!

2005-11-17T20:55:00.000+01:00

As I walk past the BBB (Big Black Ball) at Regensburg Uni a cry rings out: Viva! Viva! Viva Zarate! A few people turn but most hurry on to class.
Later in Neupfarrplatz: Viva! Viva! Viva Zarate! Heads snap around to find—nothing. And again in Haidplatz: Viva! Viva! Viva Zararte!
Zarate seems to be everywhere, like Underdog of fond memory. But who or what is Zarate?

Zarate is the smartest band on the Regensburg club scene and a transnational enigma.

I was introduced to Zarate by Joeseph (aka Big Daddy) a percussionist I’d seen at the Irish Harp. One evening after he did some pretty impressive scat singing, I asked if he’d heard of Cab Calloway or “Scatman” Crothers. He hadn’t so I scribbled their names down for him and we talked 40s jazz on his break.
“You have to come Halloween.”
“Here?” The Harp had been advertising its big Halloween blowout.
“No. Hinterhaus. You Know it?”
‘Yes.”
“We’ll do our own music.”
“Who’s we?”
“Just come, ok?”

Hinterhaus Halloween. I pushed through the red striped doors at the back of the ally and looked for a seat. A good looking ghoul glided up to me and just as I was thinking: “I still have IT” (trying to remember what IT is) she said: “Vier Euro.” I paid; she stamped my hand—to date the apex of my intimacy with German Fräuleins.

I’m early, indicative of squareness, but I get a seat up front. At 9:00 Zarate comes on with a lot of energy, gritas and vivas passing out gourd shakers to the audience. Big Daddy gives me a gourd about 20 inches long and that night I play my first gig as a percussionist.

“VIVA! VIVA! VIVA ZARATE!
The kinetic Latin-looking front man, Ramirez Miguel Gonzales, bounds on stage sporting a goatee, a gray suit, a too small white cowboy hat, and a large red blossom on his lapel. With what looks like a kung-fu kick, he breaks into a Mexicano rap that almost makes sense when its not gibberish. This morphs into a driving rock break behind the refrain: When I open my eyes I dream of San Pedro. Bump! Bump! Bumpbump! Bump! Bump! Bumpbump!
I cashed it in before Midnight but Zarate’s drummer liked my gourde work (or so I like to think) and told me to catch the next show at Wunderbar. I promised.

A week later at Wunderbar. “VIVA! VIVA! VIVA ZARATE! German audiences, raised in the beer-tent culture respond enthusiastically: “VIVA! VIVA! VIVA ZARATE! Zarate is the quintessential cross-cultural act. After all, Bavarian oompa music is the root of Norte Mexicano music and everyone recognizes Ramirez’s call: Salud! as Prost! by another name.

Meanwhile there is the mystery—who is Ramirez? And what is Zarate? How did a Mexican band come to Regensburg?

The band takes its name from the family of its members. Ramirez, its front man, was born in San Pedro, Mexico on the Guatemala border. Somehow as an infant Ramirez was brought to Germany and raised in a small Upper Palatinate town in Bavaria cut off from his Mexican roots. When he reached the age of 18, he left to find himself and traveled to Latin America, first to Chile and then to Mexico. There he found that San Pedro, the village of his birth, had been leveled to make way for Mexico’s first Super WalMart. Broken inside, Ramirez returned to Germany where he sheds his Mexican identity to perform at the Augsburg Poetry Slam under the alias Michl Bossle.

Unable to accept life as a Bavarian, Ramirez returned to Latin America traveling through Peru, Bolivia, Brazil, Argentina (the Ché tour in reverse) ending up in Ecuador where he hooked up with Zarate as their singer. As Ramirez and the Zarate brothers became a sensation in Mexico and the circum-Caribbean, Ramirez finally came to terms with his transnational self one night after drinking a quart of Mescal atop the Kukulcán pyramid at Chichén Itzá (and eatting the worm). "I am Ramirez,” he shouted, “a Mexican sensation without nationality!"

Ramirez convinced the Zarate brothers to return with him to Germany as representatives of the Zapatista movement and use Mexican music and culture to undermine the global industrial system from Regensburg.

The plan is going well I’m told and I’m assured that global capitalism will fall within a year after Zarate gets a recording contract. Meanwhile Ramirez encourages supporters to to continue to spread fear and confusion among the capitalist elite by giving the grito “VIVA! VIVA! VIVA! ZARATE! in public places loudly and without warning.

And be sure to catch their shows.
http://www.ramirez-artist.de/seiten/diary.html
http://harbourconcept.de/info.html

Ein Traum des Freitagnachmittages im Vondelpark

2005-11-08T08:03:00.000+01:00

(with apologies to Diego Rivera, Sueño de una tarde dominical en la Alameda) In 1957 my family was stationed in Germany and we visited Amsterdam. I have vivd memories of the canal tour in the glass-roofed boats, of white lace curtains in the hotel, and of visiting fields of tulips where windmills sails turned in the sun. That I can remember these thing so well is noteworthy because I have trouble remembering last year. So naturally I had to visit to see if my memory was accurate. I was surprised that it was and how much more came back to me.
Amsterdam’s Canal Bus is my favorite, effortless, way to get to know the city—at least the part you want to know. I bought a 24-hour ticket on and just rode with no direction known along Amsterdam’s concentric canal rings. Whether you ride the red, blue, or green lines you eventually see it all.
Amsterdam’s canal rings were built in its 17th century glory days when Holland ruled the seas pushing Portugal out of Northeast Brazil and sharking the Indians out of Manhattan for a few bucks worth of glass beads.
Those were the good ol’ days when Amsterdam’s population was growing like crazy every aspiring proto-capitalist entrepreneur wanted a house with access to the docks. So in what the Dutch claim as the first example of urban planning, the city was expanded along three concentric canals. Today a massive system of pumps maintains an artificial current that carries the dirty canal water to the North Sea.

Every house in old Amsterdam (without exception) has a hosting beam fitted with block and tackle because all (without exception) have steeeeeeeeeeeeep narrow stairs. Most houses are only about 30 feet wide—that’s why you need a block-and-tackle to get anything larger than a trunk upstairs. SO be advised when you book a “reasonable” hotel in old town, you will be climbing at least two if not more sets of stairs like THESE!!! That’s why your hotel is “reasonable.”

My reasonable hotel was the Abba. Clean, well-run, friendly and located on the # 1 trolley line near Vondelpark.

I brought my guitar hoping to find music happening. But street music doesn’t happen in Amsterdam. I saw only three street musicians--a really fine clarinet and accordion duo, Turks whose music rolled together Middle Eastern and Mediterranean styles, and an old bluesman who looked and sounded like he was from the delta. I did see a couple of calliope contraptions, however, powered by 2-cycle engines so noisy I could scarcely hear the bad circus music being pumped out. It seems odd, yet it is completely in character for A-dam.

In his Internet Guide to Amsterdam [http://homepages.cwi.nl/], Steven Pemberton describes the city as “relatively quiet, and largely thanks to the canals, has relatively little traffic.” I beg to differ. A-dam it is, without a doubt, the noisiest city I’ve ever been in. In addition to the Dutch propensity to honk car horns a the slightest hesitation in traffic, there is the din of motor scooters, jet after jet after jet making thunderous landing approaches low over the city and the early morning wakeup call of street sweeping vehicles. New York—of Dutch origin—doesn’t approach A-dam’s noise level. And while there is not lot a lot of automobile traffic, A-dam requires that you be alert on the street or die—horribly. The most likely risk of street death, if my experience is typical, is being speared by a bicyclist doing 50 kmph through red light, although close encounters with trolley cars no doubt also figure prominently in official Dutch death certificates.

Another A-dam oddity is its lack of anything like a local cuisine. Tourists hear about A-dam’s international restaurants because no national dishes exist—unless one counts various sorts of smoked fish offered by occasional vendors. Sort of a Hanseatic salted sushi.

Despite it all I love Amsterdam's friendliness. Only a few minutes after arriving, trying to get my bearings as I walked from the train station, a young man asked it I need help. Before I could say yes, he had me in tow, identified the streetcar line (#1) and helped me buy a ticket. “When I visited America everyone was helpful to me.” Where? “Miami South Beach. It was great,” he smiled “very warm.” Amsterdam was the home of Andre Gunder Frank, a good friend I never knew, whose obituary I was asked to write this year.

I crashed early Thursday to be ready for Friday. I began by using up the remainder of my canal taxi ticket. More information recalled from the tape. The canal system allowed proto-capitalists to off-load their cargos from canal barges directly to their home/warehouse. That’s why they’re protocapitalists.

And canal district buildings really do lean toward the water (it's not an after effect of an hour in the coffeebar sipping an expresso). It improves the mechanical efficiency of the beam-mounted block-and-tackle found on all old town houses. The the interior of the building might be mostly residence or mostly warehouse depending on the trade. One of the houses on the Red route was filled with huge built-in vats to store whale oil. The family lived on the top floors.

Then whaling shifted to the New England Yankees, and the house went down hill with the neighborhood. But now the old city canal buildings are being gentrified. Even the whale oil merchant's house has been converted to pricey apartments for those who work in the nearby financial district.

By afternoon, I had taken all the canal tour I could handle—the impressive Elvis imitation of the ship pilot notwithstanding. So I disembarked and headed for my room and then for Vondelpark.

It was an amazing day in Vondelpark. Warm brisk winds blew holes in immense banks of gray clouds for shafts of intensely bright sunlight. The park is named for Dutch poet Joost van den Vondel an A-dam silk merchant who converted to Catholicism, scandalizing his Protestant neighbors, and became a poet and a tireless advocate for religious freedom.
Vondelpark, known as Amsterdam's lung, was created in 1865 by the Association for the Riding and Walking-Park. While the members genuinely wanted recreational space for thousands of working poor the creation of Vondelpark hiked local real estate values and led the wealthy to build elegant homes for themselves around the lung.

Steven Pemberton’s guide tells you that the park used to be a haven for “hippies” but that it’s much less colorful now. Perhaps it’s that today’s hippies are less colorful but the park is still a favorite hangout.

Vondelpark is a classic example of the 18th century serpentine style English landscape garden. The style is a carefully constructed artifice of “natural” vistas that open up as the visitor wanders along curving paths that wind around lakes and ponds set with temples, statues, and impressive trees.

One in particular caught my eye—the most perfect climbing tree I’ve ever seen, festooned with kids whose generations had polished the tree's bark their shoes and backsides.

There are a number of “must dos” in A-dam. I managed to miss two. I didn’t visit the Red Light District, so I’m afraid those who read this far hoping for photos of scantily clad business ladies sitting in windows will be disappointed. I also missed the Anne Frank house. I did spend a half day each in the Van Gogh Museum and the Rijksmuseum.

What they say is true -- reproductions do not prepare you for the reality of Van Gogh and the energy of his brush work.

In both museums visitors can get close enough to touch the paintings. In most cases there is no glass between you and the art. It is actually nerve wracking to watch instant art experts pointing at various works, their fingers, pencils and pens poised mere centimeters above a Rembrandt. While tolerant Dutch security guards hover ready to eject troublemakers, after a time I began to wonder: are these originals or just perfect copies. Would the Dutch allow an unpredictable public to get close enough to damage these world treasures?

Of course Amsterdam wouldn’t be A-dam without its coffee shops. How do you know when you're near? You have to look for the signs.

They actually do serve coffee and tea as well as other legal drugs. And while the clientele is predominately of the dreaded pierced tattooed sort, there were not a few grayer, more sedate customers along with the occasional mom-and-pop tourist, sipping coffee and taking it all in with fascinated disapproval.

In the end it might be best to just buy the T-shirt. It says it all.

L'elisir d'amore--A Night at the Opera

2005-10-27T01:19:00.000+02:00

A night at the opera for the crew. We attended a performance of The Elixir of Love at Der Kronleuchter, the Regensburg city theater. Initially some, including me, were not all that keen on the opera. I like every sort of music under the sun, but I’ve never liked opera which I associated with over-trained coloratura sopranos, the fat ladies who must sing (and sing and sing and sing) before IT’S OVER.

But David convinced me that I couldn’t consider myself civilized until I saw an opera. Our students didn’t have to be convinced—they had to attend as part of their art history class, although to be fair, a number of them had already attended opera performances on their own. I guess I was really the uncivilized one.

But Domenico Donizetti's L'elisir d'amore (Milan premire, 1832) was an entertaining bit of Italian fluff without a fat lady in sight, well acted, well (not over) sung, closer to Broadway than Wagner. Well, the Italian libretto was sung in German, but the plot--a variation of the classic Boy meets girl. Boy loses girl. Boy gets girl--was not hard to follow although all the word-play was lost on me (Niki later told me the lyrics were quite funny).

Donizetti (1798--1848) was one of the most popular and prolific opera composers of his age. He is said to have composed over 70 operas but the exact number is unknown because many were lost after he went out of fashion. The year he died, however, one third of the Italian operas being performed were his. He was born poor but his talent was recognized and he was enrolled in a charity music academy along with his older brother (who went on to become the Instructor General of the Imperial Ottoman Music at the court of Sultan Mahmud II—now THAT would make a great opera). Donizetti is credited as the father of Italian comic opera who inspired Verdi and Arthur Sullivan of Gilbert and Sullivan.

Synopsis of The Elixir of Love (premire Milan, 1832)
taken from http://www.operatampa.org/season/elixirsynopsis.htm

ACT I
Adina, wealthy owner of a local farm, her friend Giannetta and a group of peasants are resting beneath a shade tree on her estate. From a distance, Nemorino, a young villager, watches the bucolic scene, lamenting that he has nothing to offer Adina but love (“Quanto è bella”). The peasants urge their mistress to read them a story — how Tristan won the heart of Isolde by drinking a magic love potion (“Della crudele Isotta”). No sooner has she done so than Sgt. Belcore swaggers in with his troop (“Or se m"ami”).

The soldier’s conceit amuses Adina, but he is not dissuaded from asking her hand in marriage. Promising to think the offer over, she orders refreshments for his comrades. When Adina and Nemorino are left alone, she tells him his time would be better spent looking after his ailing uncle than mooning over her, for she is fickle as a breeze (“Chiedi all’aura lusinghiera”).

In the town piazza, villagers hail Dr. Dulcamara, who enters in a magnificent carriage that proclaims the patent medicine he is selling. The quack declares the potion capable of curing anything (“Udite, o rustici!”). Since it is inexpensive, the villagers buy eagerly. When they have gone, Nemorino asks Dulcamara if he sells the elixir of love described in Adina’s book (“Avreste voi per caso”).

Pulling out a bottle of Bordeaux, the charlatan declares this is the very draught. Though it costs him his last cent, Nemorino buys the wine and hastily drinks it. Adina enters to find him tipsy; certain he will win her love, he pretends indifference (“Esulti pur la barbara”). To punish him, Adina flirts with Belcore, who, informed that he must return to his garrison, persuades her to marry him at once. Horrified, Nemorino begs Adina to wait one more day (“Adina, credimi”), but she ignores him and invites the entire village to her wedding feast. As the peasants shout taunts (“Vedete un po’”), Nemorino rushes away, moaning that he has been ruined by Dulcamara’s elixir.

ACT II

At a local tavern, the pre-wedding supper is in progress (“Cantiamo, facciam brindisi”). Dulcamara, self-appointed master of ceremonies, sits with the bridal couple. “What a pity Nemorino cannot see how happy we are,” thinks Adina. Her mind is distracted by the doctor, who suggests they blend their voices in a barcarole about a gondoliera and her wealthy suitor (“Io son ricco”). When the duet ends, Adina goes off with Belcore to sign the marriage contract; the guests disperse. Remaining behind, Dulcamara is joined by Nemorino, who begs for another bottle of elixir; his pleas are rejected because of lack of funds.

Belcore returns, annoyed because Adina has postponed the wedding until nightfall; when he spies Nemorino, he asks why the youth is so sad. Nemorino explains his financial plight, whereupon the sergeant persuades him to join the army to receive a bonus awaiting all volunteers (“Venti scudi”). Belcore leads the perplexed Nemorino off to sign him up, enabling him to buy more elixir.

Peasant girls, gathered in the square, learn from Giannetta that Nemorino’s uncle has died and willed him a fortune (“Possibilissimo. Non è probabile!”). When he reels in, giddy from a second bottle of wine, they besiege him with attention; unaware of his new wealth, he believes the elixir finally has taken effect (“Dell’elisir mirabile”). Adina and Dulcamara arrive in time to see him leave with a bevy of beauties, and she, angry that he has sold his freedom to Belcore, grows doubly furious (“Quanto amore! ed io spietata”).

Scenting a new sale, Dulcamara claims that Nemorino’s popularity is due to the magic elixir. Adina replies that she will win him back through feminine charms. Reentering alone in a pensive mood, Nemorino takes heart because of a tear he has seen on Adina’s cheek (“Una furtiva lagrima”), but when she appears, he acts disinterested. She confesses she bought back his enlistment papers because she loves him (“Prendi, per me sei libero”).

Back in the piazza, Belcore marches in to find Adina affianced to Nemorino; declaring that thousands of women await him, he accepts the situation philosophically. Attributing Nemorino’s happiness and inheritance to the elixir, Dulcamara quickly sells more bottles before making his escape (“Ei corregge ogni diffetto”).

St. Emmeram Monastery

2005-10-25T15:29:00.000+02:00

Today the art history class toured St. Emmeram Benedictine monastery which houses the remains of that saint and fragments of others. Naturally the rest of us went along as well.

Legend says the monastery was founded by St. Emmeram of Poitiers who came to ancient Roman garrison town Ratisbon (as Regensburg was once called) toward the end of the 7th Century to convert the Bavarian tribes from pagan idolatry. But that's why it's a legend. Emmerman didn't found anything.
Although I have no hard evidence, I think that Emmeram’s mission had less to do with turning the Bavarians from idolatry (which I think would require rather more than three years) than with converting them from a competing form of Christianity known as Arianism. Arians were followers of Bishop Arius of Alexandria (d. 336) who believed that Jesus, the Son of God, could not also be the Father (of similar but not same substance).

This was disputed by those who believed in a Trinity (Father, Son and Holy Spirit as one). Arianism was declared heresy in 325 at the First Council of Nicaea but it took many centuries before it could be rooted out, especially among the Germanic tribes where it had been spread by pious Arian missionaries.

St. Emmeram befriended the local ruler, Theodo Duke of Bavaria, whose family had founded a small chapel to St. George around 652. Emmeram worked among the Bavarians for some three years with such success that, a century later when St. Boniface, known as the Apostle of Germany, reported to Rome on the condition of Christianity in Germany, Bavaria was the one bright spot with many churches and monasteries established and flourishing.

Perhaps the guilt of Duke Theodo had something to with that. It seems Ota, his daughter, had been seduced and made pregnant by one of his court nobles. She had confessed to Emmeram who told her to tell daddy it was he who had done the deed. Emmeram then decided it would be a good time to take that trip to Rome he’d been planning. So, was he trying to deflect the duke’s wrath from Ota and whoever her lover was? Or did he do it? Or was he just ...what? No matter. Enraged, the Duke sent his men after Emmeram. When they caught him at Kleinhelfendorf he was tortured, then taken to Ascheim and executed (I’ll spare you the gory details).

Subsequently the guilt-stricken Ota confessed and the equally guilt-stricken Theodo spent a lifetime making up for his sin. In 697, the remains of the martyr were interred at the Church of St. George which Theodo greatly enlarged. About the same time he founded the Benedictine monastery that became St. Emmerans.

The rest comes from the Catholic Encyclopedia: http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/05406a.htm It was still further enlarged by Charlemagne about the year 800 and endowed with extensive possessions and many privileges. When St. Boniface, in 739, divided Bavaria into four diocese, the first Bishop of Ratisbon fixed his see at the Abbey of St. Emmeram, but later on it was removed by a subsequent bishop to the old Cathedral of St. Stephen, which stands beside the present one.

In 830, the then bishop obtained from Louis, King of Bavaria, the administration of the abbey for himself and his successors, and for upwards of a hundred years the Bishops of Ratisbon ruled the monastery as well as the diocese, but in 968 St. Wolfgang restored its independence and from that time forward it enjoyed the rule of its own abbots.

For some centuries it was customary to elect as bishop a canon of St. Stephen's and a monk of St. Emmeram's alternately. Many of the early bishops of Ratisbon were buried in the abbey church and their tombs are still to be seen there, as also is that of the Emperor Arnulph (d. 899). The abbots held the rank of princes of the Empire, and as such had a seat in the Imperial Diets.

The present church, which is a Romanesque basilica, dates from the thirteenth century, but was restored in a somewhat debased style in the eighteenth. It is one of the few German churches with a detached bell-tower.

The monastery was suppressed early in the nineteenth century and in 1809 the conventual buildings became the palace of the Prince of Thurn and Taxis, hereditary postmaster-general of the old German Empire, whose family still (1909) reside there. The cloister garth, in the centre of which is a modern mortuary chapel, is now used as the family burial-place.

Two Postscripts.

One: The close historical relationship between the Benedictine Order iand Bavaria is said to be one of the pillars of Bavarian nationalism. This relationship is said to be the reason Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, a Bavarian, took the name Benedict upon becoming Pope. One of the early goals of the Benedictine order was to root out Arianism among the Germanic tribes so it is interesting to note the New York Times editorial "The Pope without a Country" by the German commentator Martin Mosbach who wrote: Western theology has long been influenced by a creeping Arianism - the idea that Jesus was not of the same substance as God. It would be true to character if Pope Benedict were to invest all his zeal in the effort to recast the concept of the divine incarnation in a new language, which would once again render it understandable to modern-day theologians, teachers and intellectuals.

Two: There was some disagreement as to the importance in the history of St. Emmeram and Bavaria of the Cluniac Reform of the Benedictine order. In fact it was substantial. Emperor Henry III (r. 1017-1056) was a devoted proponent of the Cluniac reforms. Indeed his support laid the groundwork for the disasterous confrontation of his son Henry IV and Pope Gregory over the issue of lay investiture that ultimately brought down the Salian dynasty of German kings.

More Street Music

2005-10-23T10:21:00.000+02:00

Regensburg is a great music venue. Every weekend it’s full of musicians playing for free—that is for whatever you put in their bowls. Some sell CD’s of their work , but contributions are their bread-and-butter.

Some are classically trained artists, some are journeymen just learning how to collect a crowd, others are beggars with instruments. Some music comes floating down to the streets from open apartment widows. Here are some of the performers you might see.

I never have to go far to find free music. Friday, as I came out of my apartment, I turned onto Untere Bachgasse following the sound of harp music away from Dornbergpark where I had intended to go. A 20-something lady with a half-sized concert harp was doing traditional Bavarian pieces and Veracruzano (Gulf Coast Mexican) folk music. It was pretty good—a little halting in places. She was coming along but hadn’t really mastered her instrument. Still I sat and listened for 15 minutes or so. If you listen you should pay the piper, and I do, but on a scale according to quality.

I had been heading for the park so I turned down Gesandtenstrasse but didn’t get far. At the intersection of Rote-Hahrengasse a jazz trio—clarinet, electronic keyboard and acoustic bass—was doing some tasty renditions of standards. It was clear the clarinetist had spent a lot of time listening to Aker Bilk, who geezers like me may remember for his early 60s hit “Stranger on the Shore.” Fortunately the clarinetist kept the vibrato under control and the pianist took some very interesting solos.
I was impressed by bass player as well, who never got a solo break (at least while I was there) but whose lines were fluid and melodic. As a former jazz bassist, I appreciate lines that don’t stay with tonic, third, fourth, fifth. I listened to the trio for 45 minutes, then, forgetting about the park, went to buy some groceries. They were still there when I came back by and I listened another 20 minutes or so.

Dave Bonney is a fixture of Regensburg street life and lately has been performing by the kaufhaus on Dom Platz. Tall, lean, with curly gray hair the New York native left America in 1970 at age 19 and never looked back. “You should have been here in the 70s. Regensburg had a real expatriate American scene.” For many years he was a mainstay at the Irish Harp but was banished after an unfortunate exchange with the owner’s wife. “All I did was tell her to get me another f---ing bier,” he said apparently still in disbelief. Dave is interesting but difficult. Ask any waitress in Regensburg about Dave and she’ll likely say: “Oh yeah. I had an argument with him.” His website says it all: Dave Bonney—Online and in your Face (http://www.davebonney.com/ the photo above is from his website). His latest CD, appropriately entitled “All Mixed Up” (which has gotten good online reviews) is available at http://www.cdbaby.com/.

Saturday I heard a truly amazing musician in Neuparrplatz, Alex Jacobowitz, undisputed master of (wait for it) the XYLOPHON! Now that’s not something you see on the street everyday, Chauncey. Using a four-mallet technique of his own invention, he did selections of classical repertoire—Mozart, Beethoven, Mussorgsky and on and on—along with Yiddish and Klezmer music. But most amazing were his mind-blowing performances of Bach fugues. Think about doing Toccata and Fugue in D Minor—not with five fingers and a keyboard—but with four mallets, two in each hand, having to independently find and strike the correct wooden bar.
Jacobowitz, a graduate of the Eastman School of Music, is a convert to Orthodox Judaism who performs wearing a kipah and, under his shirt, a tsitsit. His home is the West Bank settlement of Kiryat Arba, near Hebron, but he loves Germany and German culture. Most of his touring abroad is done in Germany yet, oddly, he said he felt uncomfortable playing in Poland where 3 million Jews were killed in the Holocaust. I started to ask how he reconciled that with playing in the country where the other 6 million were killed and where the Final Solution originated, but thought better of it and did not.

According to his website, Jacobowitz “models his profession and lifestyle after a 19th century Chasidic musician named Michael Joseph Gusikow, who took Europe by storm in the 1830s by playing classical music on the straw fiddle, a type of xylophone that Gusikow himself invented. Gusikow was born into a family of musicians in what is now Belarus, in about 1806.”
http://www.alexjacobowitz.com/

Another unusual aspect of his act— Jacobowitz intersperses his music with humorous educational raps about music history and the composers’ lives. As a prelude to his performance of Tarrega’s Recuerdos de la Alhambra he gave a lively and learned explanation of the periods of la Convivencia in Iberia from 718-1089 (the fall of Toledo) and from 1250 to 1492 (the fall of Granada and the expulsion of the Jews) when Christians, Muslims and Jews lived together in relative peace and religious tolerance.
Jacobowitz has written book of his experiences A Classical Klezmer: Travel Stories of a Jewish Musician some of which may be read in full text on his website.

Gypsy Life

2005-10-20T18:44:00.000+02:00

Walking along Pfauengasse yesterday I came across a musician playing accordion and singing. Her act was unusual for two reason--first, you don't see many accordionists and second most street musicians are men. I took a seat on a concrete block across the street and listened for a long while as she did Irish and English folk songs, Spanish, and German pieces and slipped in some early Bob Dylan as well.
I don't know why, but I thought I knew her from somewhere. She definitely had something. People not only dropped Euros and kept walking by (the usual thing), many stopped to listen for sometime. Three older men stayed for at least a half an hour putting Euros in her case not once but four times.

Children especially liked the accordion and her voice. Babies in perambulators turned their heads and widened their eyes with delight as parents wheeled them by. Older children stopped, halting parental progresses, and entreated mom and dad for spare change.

I had my guitar with me. I had taken it hoping to find someone playing music. But it's bad form to cramp a street musician's act. Afterall they're trying to earn a living. But after listening for sometime I took out my guitar and a miracle! I was in tune with her accordion. I quietly fingerpicked some accompaniment from my spot across the street. It sounded pretty good and she smiled, which I took as sign she didn't mind. When she took a break, I went over and asked her if she knew Adieu, sweet lovely Nancy an traditional English seafaring song done by Maddie Prior and Steeleye Span. She didn’t.

Again I had the feeling that I knew her and I was about to say something when she asked: Don't I know you from somewhere? It was both odd and familar, like meeting an old friend for the first time.

I bought her CD--A Royal Hearts Flush and headed back to my apartment, ate a quick lunch, and played her CD. It was alright, but not nearly as good as her street performance. Who was this person anyway? I took the CD from the player and in tiny red lettering was the name Brigitte Graykastle.

On an impluse, I copied the words to Adieu, sweet lovely Nancy and returned to the street. Brigitte had changed locations and was playing at the Alter Korn Market. She smiled when she saw me and I sat down in a sunny place and listened. And as I followed her around for the rest of the day, I learned a few things about the life of a street musician. Street performers must have a license to play for money and the police did check to insure she was licensed and playing in the areas assigned her. Street musicians can play only 30-45 minutes in one location and it is illegal to play between the hours of one and three.

During her enforced break, Brigitte and I went into the Moritz to warm up with coffee. She told me about busking in Munich when she was 21 and her travel to Scotland to learn the highland songs and to speak English with a brogue. "People think I'm Irish. Then when I speak German they say: Wow, you really nailed the Bavarian dialect. I am Bavarian." And she smiles.

At 300 she took up a new location at Neupfarrplatz where she did what she called her second act singing the poetry of Robert Burns and Robert Frost set to her own music. Her last stand was Rathausplatz where she did international standards in French, Spanish, and Japanese as well as English. Near the end of her time, three young girls came by--obviously on their way to get a cone at the fancy ice cream shop near the fountain. They stopped and listened and as they did, I could almost see the light blub come on over their heads as they watched this talented confident woman performing--we could do that! The girls huddled for a moment then took out their ice cream money and tossed it into Brigitte's case.
Brigitte plays once a week in Regensburg. Stop, listen and show your appreciation.

Adieu, sweet lovely Nancy, ten thousand times adieu,
For I’m going around the ocean love to seek for something new.
Come change your ring with me, dear girl, come change your ring with me,
That it might be a token of true love while I am on the sea.

And when I’m far across the sea you’ll know not where I am.
Kind letters I will write to you from every foreign land.
The secrets of your mind, dear girl, are the best of my good will,
So let my body be where it might my heart will be with you still.

There’s a heavy storm arising; see how it gathers round,
While we poor souls on the ocean wide are fighting for the crown.
There’s nothing to protect us, love, or to keep us from the cold
On the ocean wide where we must bide like jolly seamen bold.

There are tinkers tailors and shoemakers lie snoring fast asleep,
While we poor souls on the ocean wide are plowing up the deep.
Our officers commanded us and them we must obey,
Expecting at every moment for to get cast away.

But when the wars are all over there’ll be peace on every shore;
We’ll return to our wives and our families and the girls that we adore.
We’ll call for liquor merrily and we’ll spend our money free,
And when our money it is all gone we will boldly go to sea.

Jewish Archeology

2005-10-18T21:39:00.000+02:00

This afternoon on our tour of the Jewish archeological site at Neupfarrplatz we were joined by Professor of Marketing Fred Miller who chairs Regensburg Programs Committee.

The excavations that uncovered the foundations of the Romanesque and Gothic synagogues were carried out from 1995-1998 within what was the Jewish section of Regensburg—said to be Germany’s oldest Jewish community.

The dig also uncovered cellars of the houses of merchants whose long distance trade with the Near East made theirs one of the most prosperous Jewish communities in Europe. Proof of that prosperity was the discovery of a large cache of gold coins and a gold ring thought to have belonged to a synagogue official.

Also of interest was a small bronze figure of a high priest of the 15th century identified as Aharon.

Throughout the Middle Age, the Jewish community enjoyed imperial protection but in 1519, as Martin Luther launched his reformation and Charles, a Hapsburg of Spain which had expelled its Jews became Holy Roman Emperor that protection came to an end. The Jewish community was burned to the ground and Jewish gravestones taken and used elsewhere as buildingstone. On the site of the synagogue a Catholic church was raised which, in short order, became a Protestant Church as Regensburg moved into Luther’s camp.

The excavations also turned up remains of the Roman outpost of Castra Regina, founded by the Emperor Marcus Aurelius in 179 CE. One artifact found at that level was a figure of Mercury, not unlike the much later figure of Aharon.

Now the site of a large kaufhaus (department store), banks, and specialty shops, Neupfarrplatz has seen a number of historic events including a 1919 Communist rally of workers and soldiers inspired by Rosa Luxemburg’s Spartakis movement that swept Regensburg and the rest of Bavaria into a short-lived Bavarian Soviet Republic (Räterepublik Baiern). In 1933 Nazis chose Neupfarrplatz as the site of their Regensburg book burning, one of hundreds that took place in a single night throughout Germany. During WWII anti-Hitler demonstrators gathered there only to be crushed by Nazi troops.

Today Regensburg again has a thriving Jewish community and its relations with Christians are generally good. Yet the city fathers of Regensburg, the home town of Pope Benedict XVI, had to be prodded to acknowledge the city’s past anti-Semitism. When Jewish activists called for a historical marker explaining the 650-year-old anti-Semitic sculpture of the Judensau (Jewish sow) on the side of the Dom (St. Peter’s Cathedral) that defames Jews by showing them sucking at a sow's teats, city official refused. Finally, a little over a year ago, compromised was reached and a plaque put up calling attention to the Judensau.

This spring Regensburg was visited by U.S. Special Envoy for Holocaust Issues Edward B. O’Donnell who met with Rabbi Dannyel Morag and other prominent members of the Jewish community. Later some 300 people attended his lecture at the university on the need for German-American cooperation to fight against anti-Semitism and for freedom, democracy, tolerance and global human rights.

Oh yes—the plague (a marvel of historical vagary) reads (in German only): "Nowadays, the relationship between Christians and Jews is one of tolerance and respect."
Good to know.

Kepler Museum

2005-10-16T21:35:00.000+02:00

This week we had a tour of Regensburg’s Johannes Kepler museum. He did not live in Regensburg, nor do his work here, but he had friends here and died while visiting them. So the city created a museum in part to honor his contributions to astronomy and (mostly) to preserve a fine example of a 13th century house. The museum has a number of early astronomic instruments none of which are of Kepler’s time, admitted our tour guide sheepishly, but of the 18th century. However the museum does hold Kepler notebooks and first editions.

One of the more interesting museum documents records the failure of a gathering of Catholic and Protestant scholars summoned by the Holy Roman Emperor at Regensburg to decide whether to continue to use venerable but less accurate Julian calendar or to accept Pope Gregory XIII’s. The latter was more was made more accurate by shaving10 days from the Julian date and by adjusting the reckoning of leap year. But the politics of religion trumped science. Protestants refused to accept the Pope’s calendar on the principle that the Pope could do no right. The document shown here, signed by Kepler in Regensburg, is an agreement to disagree.

Kepler is sometimes called the “father of modern astronomy” for his discovery that the planets have elliptical orbits, traveling faster as they approach the sun, and for his “three laws” supporting his observation. The first two laws he published in Astronomia nova (1609) and the third ten years later in Harmonice mundi.

He began his career as a professor of mathematics at the university in Graz, Austria where he wrote his Mysterium cosmographicum. Its publication led to correspondence with Galileo, a proponent of the Copernican solar system, and with Tycho Brahe, court astronomer to Holy Roman Emperor Rudolf II. Kepler’s book led to his appointment as mathematician to Rudolf II’s court at Prague. Rudolf may or may not have been mentally unbalanced (as some histories say) but he was far more interested in art, music and science that in the affairs of empire which came to be conducted by his brother Matthias.

When Tycho died not long after Kepler’s arrival, Kepler took his place as court astronomer. Although Tycho rejected Copernican geocentric planetary system, his extensive records of planetary movements made at his Prague observatory, would provide the data for Kepler’s work. Kepler later published Tycho’s observations as Tabulae Rudolphinae, dedicated to Rudolf.
Our tour guide reported that Kepler found his position of astronomer was often confused with that of astrologer and he was often asked to do horoscopes and make predictions. Kepler thus took up the ancient art of astrology in which he did not believe. Nonetheless, some of his predictions were amazingly accurate as for instance his correct prediction of the day and year of the outbreak of the Thirty Years War.

Historians of science have held Kepler as an example of the magic and mysticism that suffused the early sciences noting that, in his Harmonice mundi, he used the same mathematical calculations by which he demonstrated the elliptic of planetary orbits the increasing speed of their orbits as they approach the sun to hypothesized that planets had "songs" that increased in pitch as they near the sun. Kepler spoke of this as “God’s music.” Modern critics saw this as proof that while Kepler’s head may have been that of a modern, his feet were planted firmly in medieval superstition.

But was Kepler really wrong? If he was, what are astronomers doing with their hundreds of arrays of dish antennas—radio telescopes—tracking and recording sounds emitted by celestial bodies from pulsars to galaxies. Listening to God’s Music perhaps.

Berlin II: Pergamon, Protestants, and Return

2005-10-11T21:54:00.000+02:00

The Pergamon Museum tour, like that of Gilligan's Minnow, was to be three hours. It turned out to be rather longer for many of us. The Pergamon is too much for just three hours--even on roller blades. Because of the size of of Regensburg group, and because the tour was a class project, admission was free.leaving fund for wireless audio guides for everyone.

At the turn of the 20th century German archeologist were busy beavers. Heinrich Schliemann's excavations at Troy and Mycenea established the historical truth of the stories of Homer and Vergil and soon German scholars were digging up the national treasures Greece and of nations yet to be made from the Ottoman Empire yet to collapse. They collected so much stuff they were running out of room in the Bodemuseum. To hold all the booty the Pergamon was begun in 1909, completed in 1930, damaged during WWII and still shows bullet and shell scars.

The muesuem is named for 2nd Century BCE Pergamon Altar with its 371-foot long sculptural frieze of the war between the gods and the giants (neither a sports team) that is its most important exhibit.

But for my money more amazing is the reconstruction of Babylon’s eigth gate, the Ishtar Gate, built to that goddess by order of King Nebuchadrezzar II in 575 BCE. Its surface is covered by blue glazed tiles on which are depicted dragons and bulls and it leads to a Processional Way with walls covered by 120 lions made of glazed bricks.

The art of polychromatic glazed brick continued to develop amoung later peoples of the Eastern Mediterraean including Muslims whose art has its own wing in the museum. Below you can see the progression from Babylonian to Persian to Muslim application of this art form.

I found myself taking pictures with my World Civ classes in mind especially the monumental sculptures of the Assyrians and the rock carvings of the mysterious Hittities.

One thing about going through a huge collection like the Pergamon's is that patterns emerge--across cultures and across centuries. I kept seeing design elements that reminded me of a famous piece that was one of those feared lost in the looting of Bagdad's mueuems following the fall of Sadam. Called Goat caught in a Thicket, it was later recovered.

Compare its design to these other pieces--the first Assyrian (7th Century BCE), the second Iranian (7th Century CE ) and the third from a Muslim carpet (15th Century CE). I'm no art historian but this seems to be a trope of that endured for centuries in among sucessive civilizations in the Middle East.

Sunday we left Berlin early in order to have some time at Whittenberg where Martin Luther posted his 95 thesis to the Cathedral door, ended what passed for European unity, and indirectly gave rise to a world of nation-states.

The Catholic Encyclopedia refers to University of Wittenberg then being "in its infancy (founded 2 July, 1502), with an enrolment of one hundred and seventy-nine students. The town itself was a poor insignificant place, with three hundred and fifty-six taxable properties, and accredited the most bibulous town of the most bibulous province Saxony."

Luther was born 1483, the son of a relatively well-off anti-clerical miner and a deeply religious mother. Both were harsh disciplinarians who beat Luther often. Luther was schooled and sent to university to study law and was a brilliant scholar. He became an Augustine monk After being struck by lightening while traveling (think Paul on road to Damascus) he became an Augustinian monk, then a priest, then a professor of theology at Wittenberg University of Saxony in 1508.

Obsessed by questions of sin, forgiveness and salvation he was struck by Paul's Epistle to the Romans I:17 "The just shall live by faith." He concluded faith in God freed man from sin, not good works. The ultimate implication was that the structure of the Catholic Church was not needed for salvation. Luther was also influenced by Humanism, the Renaissance philosophical and literary movement that put human values at the center. Humanists emphasized secular studies (the humanities), and classical ideals and forms, rejecting medieval religious authority in favor of scientific knowledge.

The issue of salvation crystallized for Luther around the Pope's sale of indulgences to finance the building of St. Peter's in Rome. Indulgences lessen the time that a soul would spend in Purgatory by transferring reserves of goodness (spiritual capital) built up by particularly holy people to sinners in return for a cash payment made to the Church.

In 1517, Luther nailed his famous 95 theses to the Cathedral door. It wasn't really as an act of defiance but rather the usual way to announce an academic debate:

Out of love for the truth and the desire to bring it to light, the following propositions will be discussed at Wittenberg, under the presidency of the Reverend Father Martin Luther, Master of Arts and of Sacred Theology, and Lecturer in Ordinary on the same at that place. Wherefore he requests that those who are unable to be present and debate orally with us, may do so by letter. Nothing may be nailed there anymore however; its doors are covered in Brass.

They aroused tremendous discussion. The local bishop saw nothing heretical but advised Luther not to publish any more for a while. But Luther did not lay low. He vigorously answered his critics, fanning the flames by asserted Church councils had authority over the Pope and that the Church had been wrong to condemn John Wycliffe and John Huss as heretics in the late 14th century for teaching that salvation required no Church, only the word of God contained in the Bible.

Politics Surrounding Luther. When Pope Leo X summoned him to Rome, Luther argued to his Prince the Elector Frederick that it was unwise for German princes to allow the Pope to order the extradition of citizens of their kingdoms. HRE Maximilian agrees advising Frederick to "take good care of that monk." At that time, Pope Leo was selling indulgences and trying to tax the German princes to finance a crusade against the Turks. The imperial Diet refused fearing the money would be used for other purposes as in the past and complained that all the good church offices went to Italians. But HRE Max did promise the Pope to deal with Luther, if Pope suspended extradition order. Pope agreed and Luther was summoned before Church authorities at Augsburg.

Luther refused discipline; Frederick protected him. Pope tried to bribe Frederick to give up Luther (the child of Satan) by offering him the Order of the Golden Rose. Luther persuaded to back off to preserve the unity of Christendom, but then renews his attacks. Denies the superiority of the Clergy to the laity; declares individual interpretation of the Bible to be ultimate authority - not Pope or Church; rejects salvation through good works; fasts, saints etc; rejected existence of purgatory; reduced sacraments to two - baptism and communion (his new name for the mass); repudiated the then "new" doctrine of transubstantiation; calls for marriage for priests and end to monastic orders.

In 1520 Pope Leo issued a Bull of Excommunication. Luther publicly burned it, then issued his Address to the Christian Nobility of the German Nations calling on German princes to assume authority over religion within their own boundaries. Princes respond, eager to gain independence, not only from Rome, but from the new HRE Charles V. Thus in 1521, Charles summoned Luther to the imperial Diet at Worms: "I neither can nor will recant anything since it is neither safe nor right to act against conscience. Here I stand; I can do no other.” Charles put Luther under an imperial ban, a death sentence. But the Elector of Saxony hid Luther in Wartburg castle where Luther translated the Bible into German, considering it absolutely necessary since his defense was the Bible.

Peasant Revolt, 1524-1525. In South West Germany peasants defy their lords; refuse to honor feudal obligations; justify by reference to Bible. Fearing loss of his noble support, Luther repudiates peasants; calls them swine and urges nobles to "drown the revolt in blood" which they do. German prince then assume authority over religion within their borders = church as arm of state, the object of all "new monarchies." This trend firm by Luther's death in 1546, as was his increasing anti-Semitism.

Since the fall of the DDR, Whittenburg has attempted to remaking itself as a tourist Mecca (well, not exactly Mecca, but you get the idea).

That afternoon we were back on the train, all tired puppies headed home.

Well, almost everybody!

Berlin: Personal Aside

2005-10-11T17:03:00.000+02:00

Sitting on the hostel steps, I was playing guitar waiting for the group to form to catch the train home. Our landlady's daughter came down the steps and Iasked her if she'd be returning soon to her Malta home.

"Yes, soon. Thank heavens! Did you have a good weekend?"

I had gone to visit a famous Berlin biergarten in Victoria Park located on one of two hills in the former swamp that is Berlin. I had a nice hike up the hill through hardwoods trees past a small waterfall and came out at the top of a long grassy sloap.

Musicians from Portugual, Poland, Germany, England and I-don't-know-where were playing. The music organized itself around Paul, a 60-something Portuguese fado singer some 20 years in Berlin who runs a sort of booking and advice service for musicians. He was playing a guitar made for him by a serious young guy with dark hair in a pony-tail. It was his first guitar; before he had made violins! Languages were mixed, but that doesn't matter when you speak music. Michael, a Pole, played guitar, harmonica, sung English lyrics but spoke no English. His real instrument's the accordion, said Paul. He's a virtuoso. I asked Paul if he had heard the Russian accordianist who played on the U-bahn. Yes he replied said the Russian's name to Michael who smiled and nodded: "really good."

I played and sang and drank a little beer with an ever-changing group of amazing and inventive musicians. About 8:00 a metor crossed the sky, so large and low and coming straight on, I thought it was a plane landing at nearby Templehof. By 9:30, I was cold and hadn't eaten; my legs were so cramped I didn't know if I'd be able to walk down the hill to the U-bahn. I didn't want to go: I had to go and limped away as another muscian arrived. Let's see--did I have a good time?

"Yes, I love Berlin. It's a great city; unique."
"Can't stand Berlin anymore. I want to get back to Malta! I liked Berlin when it was divided. Then it was special; the out-post of democracy. It made us creative; speacial. That's gone now, and I don't like Osties."
"Sometimes I miss the Cold War too," I said. "It was so.....predictable."
She gave me a funny look and smiled goodbye.

Berlin Divided: Part I

2005-10-10T20:42:00.000+02:00

Last Thursday everyone took the now traditional trip to Berlin, the restored capital of reunited Germany. Like Cold War Berlin, this trip blog will be divided in two so it's appropriate to begin with a partial group photo at the Brandenburg Gate. Beginning from the left (again appropriate as the view is from former East Berlin) are Claire, Jaime, Heath Keller (MSU's Director of Marketing and Online Programs), Matt, Nathan, Karen, Megan, Eric and program assistant Lydia Röder, an Ostie born in the former German Democratic Republic (DDR).

The train trip about six hours and we arrived at the Zoologischer Garten station about 15:30 (3:30pm). Thanks to program assistant Niki Ehrmann, bargain hunter and negotiator extraordinaire, out round-trip trickets cost just 54 Euro each instead of the published special rate of 85 Euro. At the station we killed time playing hacky sack while Herr Director Ernest and Lydia bought combination subway-local train-bus passes for our four-day stay.

Passes in hand, we took the U-9 tube to Guntzelstrasse and the Pension/Hostel Finck--friendly, inexpensive and in a nice neighborhood.

The first evening was free and many adventures were had, best told by those who had them (hint, hint). One of the more interesting was that of Nathan, Jeff, and others who went with Heath and visited the Reichstag that evening and, having missed the tourist rush, were able to enter its glassed dome without having to wait for hours (as is usual).

After they came down they bumped into German TV news crews there to cover an announcement of an agreement on a grand coalition by Angela Merkel and Gerhard Schroeder. As we know now, it didn't happen, but I understand Heath and some of the students were seen in the background on mational German news! So cool!

Early next morning we took the U-9 back to Zoologischer Station to meet our tour guide from Original Berlin Walks. It was chilly and a light mist softed jagged "broken tooth" of Gedachtniskirche across from the station. Originally built in the 1890s as the Kaiser Wilhelm Memorial Church, it was mostly destroyed during WWII (as was four-fifths of Berlin). After the war, a new church was built incorporating the surviving partially ruined tower.

Our guide, Sarah, an animated New York expatriate with an MA in German studies, told lively (if not always accurate) stories about Berlin and German history. One of the first stops was the Berlin Cathedral built as the court cathedral of the Hohenzollern, Prussia's royal family. Kaiser Wilhelm II raised a storm of protest when he tore down the previous catherdral to build what he intended to be a protestant version of St. Peter's Basilica in Rome complete with a great dome in style of the Italian High Renaissance style. It too was heavily damaged in WWII and rebuilt over 20 years from 1975–93.
In the distance Sarah pointed out the misty distance the needle of the Fernsehturm television tower. Upon completion in 1969, it was the highest tower in the world (203 meters). Intended as proof of the Communist DDR's technological prowess, it had to be completed by a team of Swedish architects when the East Germans were unable to finish it.

We crossed the Spree River to Museumsinsel, designated a UNESCO World Heritage Centre because of the five world-class museums located there - Altes Museum, Neues Museum, Alte Nationalgalerie, recently reopened after reconstruction, Pergamonmuseum (with the famous Zeus Altar from Pergamon) and Bode Museum.

In addition to giving a thumbnail sketch of the museums and their holdings, Sarah told use about the origin of the namer Berlin. "It doesn't have anything to do with bears!" she said emphatically. "That's what Berliners say but it's not so. Berlin is old Slavic for swamp." Berlin is certainly a city of water, cut by multiple branches of the Spree River and dotted with dozens of sees (small lakes) and ponds.

A tourboat passed by (one of many plying the Spree) and I made a joke about Berlin being the Venice of Prussia. It fell flat then and I expect little more from it here--but I'm not gonna let that stop me. ;~)

Most of Berlin's older public buildings bear the scars of war--9mm, 20mm, 50mm, bomb and shrapnel damage incurred during allied bombing and in the fierce fighting of the battle of Berlin, the last major action of the war in Europe, as you can see 0n the columns behind Sarah.

Just opposite museuminsel is the Palast der Republik, the former DDR parliament built on the site of what had been the Kaisers’ palace.

In 1950, the DDR tore down the half destroyed structure, built the Palast der Republik in its place, and renamed the square Marx-Engels-Platz. After reunification, the square's old name Schlossplatz was restored and Schroeder's government decided to reconstruct the imperial palace at a cost of 400 million Euro. Although the money has yet to be found, the Palast der Republic is scheduled for demolition this year. The plan has deeply divided Berliners; half feel the Palast is historically important and should therefore be saved and half do not. What of the DDR's history should be preserved?

This is an ongoing problem of reunification that must be continually negotiated. What if anything is worth keeping from the old Communist regime? Though it was deeply flawed, Osties who lived most of their lives as East Germans have memories and associations they feel are worth preserving. One was the DDR traffic light with its fat green and red men that signal walk and don't walk. Plans of the BRD (Federal German Republic) to switch to Western sytle pedestrian lights, with their stark stick figures, were defeated. The Osties kept their tradition--one of the more whimsical examples of what is known as Ostalgia.

Some Red Remnants are intentional, left by the BDR as statements of civic instruction. One is the mural painted on the exterior wall of Eric Honecker’s Labor Ministry depicting the joy of life in the DDR in classic Socialist Realism style. Originally the building, identified by Sarah as an example of the Nazi regime’s “intimidation architecture,” was Goering's Air Transport Ministry. Today it houses the BRD Finance Ministry. In the courtyard facing the DDR mural is a hugely enlarged photo of protester killed by the regime in its brutal suppression of the anti-communist uprisings of in June 1953 following Stalin’s death that March.

No doubt German reunification is a tangle of contradictions. I asked Lydia if she had been a Young Pioneer. “No, but” she said (whistfully?) “I still have my blue school scarf, just like those children.” Later she told me Sarah’s telling of the Leipzig Monday demonstrations that led to the collapse of the DDR almost made her cry remembering the joy.

It's not an exaggeration to say that the Berlin Wall and Ostalgia have emerged as an engine of growth in the tourist sector of the German economy. The Checkpoint Charlie Museum is one of the most popular in the city and the area around it is essentually a Cold War Theme Park only lacking twirl-and-puke rides to be complete. Venders sell what purports to be authentic DDRuniform parts, hats, pins, insignia, and on and on.

Sarah endorsed one of these entrepreneurs, Herr Frank, selling Berlin Wall fragments packaged with a photo of his own of the fall and a piece of DDR memorabilia, only 5 Euros each. It seemed to me he looked familiar and when I saw a photo of a much younger Frank hammering at the wall, I knew. I had seen that shot used in a world civ text book. I was hooked. I bought four sets. I think most of us bought something. It was a good day for Herr Frank.

The Brandenburg Gate, where Cold Warriors confronted one another for half of the last century has become a place of street performers.

Pariser Platz has also been restored as embassy row where the French and British Embassies are, and where the American soon will be, as soon as the intersection of Unter den Linden and Stresemann Strasse can be shifted to accommodate US security requirements at a cost to US taxpayers of 2 billion dollars—and that’s just to move the roads. The embassy will also have two underground stories and a long tunnel leading to a single secure entrance in a nearby park.

Nearby on Unter den Linden is the Embassy of the former Soviet Union, now the Russian Federation. But somethings change slowly. According to Sarah, the statue of Lenin was only removed from the front entrance in 1994 to avoid sending a wrong signal during President Clinton's 1994 visit. Lenin's not gone; he's merely been moved to the rear, which may say something about the Russian state today. But look closely and you'll see signs of Russian Ostalgia.

Our walking tour also took us to Humbolt University, whose graduates include the Brothers Grimm and Karl Marx, and where Albert Einstein briefly taugh physics before he, and many other professor, Jews and Gentiles alike, left enmass in response to one of the most infamous pre-war acts of the Nazi regime--the book burnings of 10 March 1933.

Sarah pointed to a bronze plaque at the site of the bonfire with a quote from Heinrich Heine. "Where they have burned books, they will end in burning human beings," she read, translating: Dort, wo man Bücher verbrennt, verbrennt man am Ende auch Menschen. "Heine wrote these words in 1821. It's almost as though he saw into the future."

Nearby was the Holocaust Memorial, a field of 2,700 sarcophagus-like slabs of varying heights, designed by American architect Peter Eisenman laid out on a large piece of land between the Brandenburg Gate and Potsdamer Platz. There is no plaque identifying the site as a memorial to the Holocaust. There is a plaque, however--a long list of rules for conduct; no sunbathing on the slabs; no skateboarding and so on, all in German of course.

Sarah remarked with amusement and some irritation that vistors who don't speak German often leave flowers at the plaque of instructions, thinking it to be a trubute to the Jewish vicitms.

Berlin is unique among the world's capital cities because its division by the Wall with its "kill zones" left large areas of undeveloped land after its fall. Open spaces summoning development have made Berlin a playground for modern architects.

Only a stone's throw from the Holocaust Memorial it the site of Hitler's bunker where he, Eva Braun, and his dead-ender followers committed suicide while the battle for Berlin, defended by boys and old men, raged above them. There is nothing to identify the spot--a parking lot in front of luxury apartments built for the DDR elite. As Orwell famously said, while all were equal, some were more equal than others.

While Sarah’s presentation was generally very good (especially on the Cold War period and after), she fundamentally misrepresented Hitler’s rise to power. I asked her about it in private as we walked, not wanting to undercut her tour presentation. But now I will correct her for the record.

Her assertion that Hitler “seized power” as a result of the economic crisis of hyperinflation is not only wrong, it’s a dangerous (and common) misperception. The peak of hyperinflation (when it took one trillion Deutsch Marks buy one US dollar and Germans burned money to heat their houses because it was cheaper than coal) came in November 1923, the month Hitler staged his unsuccessful Beerhall Putsch in Munich.

Hitler came to power during the Great Depression (a period of global economic deflation and massive unemployment) BY ELECTIONS in which the Nazis won a plurality—taking 37% of the vote. This would have forced him to form a Gross Coalition—a situation not unlike that facing Schroeder and Merkel. Not wanting to govern with partners, Hitler called another election for 5 March.

Just days before the election the Nazis (probably) set the Reichstag ablaze to provoke a crisis and when the election was held they got 44%. This allowed Hitler to avoid a coalition and to convince the aged President Paul von Hindenburg to declare a state of siege under Article 48 of the constitution, which suspended civil liberties. One month later, the Reichstag passed a law allowing Hitler to rule by decree. Together, these became the legal basis for Hitler's dictatorship.

We must never forget--democracy is the only form of government that can commit suicide.

Kneitinger Brauerei Tour

2005-10-06T08:04:00.000+02:00

Yesterday we were given an amusing and informative tour of Brauerei Kneitinger by Kneitinger’s own historian, Toby. The brewery claims to have produced beer in the same location on Arnulfsplatz since 1530, but this, Toby informed us, was a slight stretching of the truth.

The Kneitinger family operated a Gaststätte there from 1862 but did not construct the brewery until the 1890s—a young operation by German standards. Today the brewery is run by a charitable foundation. After the tour and the tasting of really good dark beer, unfiltered direct from the vats, Toby presented us with our Kneitinger Bierdiplom (I intend to frame mine) and the crew had their regular stammtisch at the brewery restaurant which features Bavarian specialties such as Schweinshaxn, Rindsgulasch, Schweinsbraten, and Rahmsauerbraten. Yum!

The current ad campaign features the Kneitinger Goat as King Ludwig II. We're mad for the goat!

Layla

2005-10-05T07:31:00.000+02:00

What'll you do when you get lonely
And nobody's waiting by your side?

What I do is take my guitar and find a place to play—usually the platz at Neupfankirche where groups of young people tend to congregate. It usually doesn’t take long for someone to ask if they might play.

Yesterday some young boys and some younger girls I took to be their siblings were playing around the church steps. The three boys came over right away and one, urged by his mates, asked to play. He was all of 11. I handed him the guitar and he began to finger-pick a killer version of “Layla.” He really knocked me out. At his age he is already much better than I am and I told him so. His friends kept asking him to do one of his own songs but before he could, his parents called from across the platz, and the kids said a quick farewell.

Later that evening, after studying for my German exam (which I really should be doing now instead of typing this) I took a break and went down to the Irish Harp to have a beer and see who was playing. I took one of the only open seats left at a small table near the bar occupied a woman who was being entertained by an exuberant Irishman who was explaining that he and his friend were headed up the Donau canal to the Rhine with a two-masted Turkish ship they’d picked up in Istanbul for a buyer in London. “Except we had to take the masts down, don’t you know—the bridges. You can’t sail a masted ship under the bridges,” Capt Phil explained his mate Richard nodding in agreement.

The singer came on doing Irish chestnut after Irish chestnut. Phil and I sang along (I doing an Irish accent to match his) both of us sounding rather better than the gravel-voiced performer.

In between sets, the lady at the table asked if I was from England. “Nein,” I said, practicing for my upcoming German exam over directional prepositions, “Ich komme aus den USA.”
“Kentucky?” she asked and then, to my obvious astonishment, “Murray?”
She introduced herself. Maria Endres from Pfreimd. She was in Regensburg visiting her son who had sent a year at MSU as an exchange student and earned an MBA.

We spent the next couple of hours taking about Murray and Germany, about our children--her four sons and my two daughters. And of course, singing along with Capt Phil who bought the final round.

He and Richard drank up said they had to leave. We’re shoving off from the canal dock at 5 AM. Why don’t you come and see us off, he kidded.
I’ll be there, I promised. What’s the name of your ship?
“Layla,” he said. “Like the Clapton song.”

I kept my promise. I was there at 5 AM this morning to wish Capt Phil and Richard a safe trip.
The pictures are ify cause the flash didn’t function but……

Let's make the best of the situation
Before I finally go insane.

Fishing Rinchnacker Ohe

2005-10-01T11:00:00.000+02:00

Another fishing expedition in Deutschland. Again I selected a stream in the Bayerischer Wald. Rinchnacker Ohe small tributary to the Regen snakes its way through a beautiful green valley between the tiny town of Rinchnacker and Naigermuhle near Regen stadt.

It's not easy to fish relying only on train, bus and foot for transportation. I got up at 4:30 AM to make a 5:52 train to Zwiesel. Although I bought my day ticket to fish the stream in Zwiesel, the stream was at Regen, two stops back down the line. From the train station I walked 2km to Naigermuhle and another 2km to reach the waterI wanted to fish.

In Zwiesel I had a stroke of luck—the station master was a fly fisherman. He sketched a map of the stream, showing where the best water was and a shortcut – a wander weg (forest path) that would lessen my hike.

He spoke no English and my German is broken (to say the least), yet two fly fishermen can always find a way to communicate. Before I left, I gave him a fly I had tied, one that is unique to North Carolina, a grizzled palmer called the Smoky Mountain Widow.

I didn’t get to the stream until 11:30. The weather report had promised the only rainless day this week. Nonetheless it was overcast, cold and spitting rain. Still I changed into my old tennis shoes that serve here as my waders and stepped into the cold water.
Within a short time an Äsche (grayling) hit—a tiny one but it seemed promising. Thymallus thymallus, a memeber Salmonidaean family that includes trout and salmon, tolerates only very pure waters, and is notable for its sail-like dorsal. Gradually, the sun emerged and shone brightly the rest of the day—the first sunny day I’ve had in Bayischer Wald. I caught two dozen or more small Äsche, several fairly large, and two whoppers about 13 inches and perhaps a pound (a 5-pounder would be a record breaker). I also caught a dozen or so Bach Forellen (brown trout), the largest about 12 inches.
At the end of the day I found myself along a slow moving section running through a green meadow above Pfistenmuhle where I was defeated over and over by trout rising selectively to hatch of mayflies so small as to be almost invisible.

Finally, as the sun dropped, passing from late afternoon into a spectacular sunset, I admitted I was licked, packed up and hiked 8km back to Regen just in time to catch the train to Regensburg. Worn, achy, exhausted, I realized I hadn’t eaten since I got up. But it was worth it.

Neo-Nazis and Anti-Fascists: Protest and Counter Protest in Regensburg

2005-09-28T21:23:00.000+02:00

Last night (Tuesday) there was a noisy, if not large, protest and counter protest in Haidplatz, just behind my apartment on Hinter de Grieb. Regensburg has an active neo-Nazi movement, the Nationaldemokratische Partei Deutschlands [NPD] Kreisverbandes Regensburg, headed by one Wille Wiener. The Regensburg Nazis made the German headlines not long ago by seriously beating an Iraqi man they encountered on the Munich subway.

This June when the NPD set up a recruiting table in the Kassiansplatz there was a confrontation with anti-fascists who gathered to protest. There was a scuffle and a couple of anti-fascist protesters were arrested and Wiener and the Nazis withdrew issuing threatens. Little if any of this was reported in the Regensburg press which is more concerned with boosting the community than with reportage of embarrassing reality.
[http://de.indymedia.org/2005/06/121021.shtml Regensburg: Eskalation am NPD-Infostand]

Last night’s episode came after it was announced that Michel Friedman, a former CDU politician was coming to Regensburg to give a reading to publicize his new book, Kaddisch vor Morgengrauen. Friedman is a colorful and controversial character whose mother and father were “Schindler Jews” saved from Auschwitz Birkenau by Oskar Schindler. In the 1980s he was a member of the Frankfort Central Jewish Council and a rising star in the Hesse CDU until he was sidetracked by fund-raising improprieties and by particularly intemperate personal attacks on Chancellor Helmut Kohl. Later he was involved in a prostitution and cocaine scandal and convicted of drug possession but he managed to rehabilitate himself and now moderates a weekly political talk show on the N24 news station.
When Wiener’s Nazis learned of Friedman's book reading at a hotel on Haidplatz, they organized a protest citing Friedman’s moral corruption. Within hours the Regensburg political Left, mostly students, anarchists and the local multicolored, multi-pierced punks, had organized a counter protest. The Regensburg police moved quickly and in force—body armor and full riot gear—to cordon off Haidplatz to keep the two groups apart. The result was the loud exchange of last night.
What strikes me is the openness with which neo-Nazis are allowed to operate in the reunified Germany. In the old FGR, the display of Nazi symbols and the promotion of its ideology were illegal. While the former is still disallowed, the ideology is now protected by free speech laws. In the 2004 elections, the anti-democratic, racist, anti-Semitic, xenophobic NPD of Brandenburg and Saxony won seats in the German parliament.

Declaring “Our fathers were not criminals,” NDP head Udo Voigt believes in “the natural law of the inequality” of human beings and has called for “re-evaluating” the crimes of Hitler’s Third Reich. For better or worse, speech is free in Germany and, as in the USA, one takes the good with the bad.

Alana Seaborg: How we spend our rainy days

2005-09-28T05:47:00.000+02:00

Since this was the first week we didn't have any classes on Friday, we decided to take advantage of the opportunity and....sleep in. I got up when Jen called me to inform me that Lydia, one of the German tutors, had her car in Regensburg for the day, and wanted to know if a small group of us would like to drive somewhere. After showering and getting some much-needed laundry done, we called her back and Jen, Jaime, Claire and I hopped in the car and headed out into the unknown wilderness around Regensburg. I'd forgotten how much fun it is to ride in a car!

After a 20 minute ride, we found ourselves on a hilltop by the Donau river at the monument Walhalla, created by Ludwig II (we think) and filled with busts of famous Germans. Jaime was the only one who paid the 2.50 euro to get in; the rest of us were far more interested in the beautiful panoramic view.
It was a cloudy day, and had been raining on the drive over, but finally stopped just before we arrived, so the land was clean and wet. The sun was trying to come out and the bit that did make it through made the river water sparkle. The wind was fresh and not quite cold, so it felt good on ours faces as we took in the view. Lydia told us we would have to come back in a month or so when all the leaves on the trees had changed colors...what an amazing picture that will be! In the meantime, we explored around the outside of the actual building and took plenty of pictures.

When it was time to leave, we took a last, longing look and headed back toward the car. A good time was had by all, and we look forward to going back again.

Saturday morning we got up early and caught the 8:45 train to Munich for the first day of Oktoberfest. We timed our arrival perfectly (unintentionally, of course) and stumbled across the parade street just as the parade was getting ready to start. The idea was to follow the parade to the fair grounds for the big party, and in case we missed the thousands of people cramming the streets or the bands and floats marching past, a huge billboard with circled start and end point, labeled "You are here. Go there." pointed out the way we should go.

We excitedly listened to the music as the bands marched down the street and strained to see over the crowd. Of course, all the bands were dressed in traditional German garb, and in the colors of their respective Bundesländer (state) (I know, I will probably mess up some of these titles, so someone correct me if I say something wrong).
the first drumline

Halfway through the parade, it began to drizzle slightly, and as umbrellas went up, I had to vacate my vantage point from the front step of a store in order to squeeze in between people to see the parade. Our group snuggled closer and closer as the parade drew to a close because we were shivering from the cold. Jen and Claire decided that they wouldn't wear their newly purchased dirndles (German traditional dresses) because they would likely freeze to death. Regardless, we watched to the end of the parade before rushing off to get something warm to drink.

Of course, several floats bearing German brand name beers made their appearance, and the floats were filled with singing, drinking individuals. We twice heard "Hey, baby! I wanna know if you'll be my girl!" belted out from a German float, which we found amusing.

brand names make their appearance

When the parade was over we went to a cafe to get some heise schokolade (hot chocolate, which they were out of, unfortunately), then followed what remained of the crowd to the fair grounds and wandered through the rides, beer tents, and other attractions.
merry-go-bar
We decided we should go get a beer at one of the beer tents, but without a reservation, we had to wait until the right number of people had left the tent. An hour passed, during which time some of the groups waiting in line behind us had been able to get inside. Determining that the guard at our door had a vendetta against Americans, and nearly freezing our toes off by this time, we took our leave and headed back to the subway station to head home. Note to everyone: make a reservation at a beer tent before going to the 'Fest, take an umbrella, and go on a weekday.

Regardless, it was a fun trip, and we look forward to going again when it isn't raining.
More later (on to Prague, Paris, and the rest of the world).

Czech and Double Czech

2005-09-25T14:28:00.000+02:00

Last week Claire, Kyle, Jennifer, Jaime, Alana, and Morgan asked me to travel with them to Prague. DBahn is running a super price on the round trip—only 39€ to the city of a thousand spires. I had planned to take advantage of the wonderful weather to go trout fishing, but they were very persuasive. Alana had already scoped out the youth hostel scene and reserved a room at the AO; all I hade to do was show up Thursday at the Regensburg bahnhoff.

When I got there I got euros from the geld machine, bought my ticket and a dönner sandwich for a quick dinner on the platform while I waited for the train. The ride to Prague was uneventful. The only glitch was that Alana had forgotten to bring the address of the hostel. Opps.

We after a brief stop in Plzer, we arrived in Prague at 10:40. When we got off the train Morgan was greeted by his mom who had come over for a European experience and off they went.

The rest of us schlepped our stuff into the station and headed off to change our Euro for Czech Koruna. Meanwhile Kyle and Jamie solved the “where is the hostel?” problem. As Yogi Berra famously said: “You can observe a lot just by lookin’. There, above the passage leasing to the subway, was a huge sign “AO Hostel” with address, toll-free phone number, and subway directions. It wasn’t hard to find after that, although we did have to ask a Czech policeman to point us in the right direction when we emerged from ultra-modern subway.

The AO was clean, friendly and communal. It was also cheap—at least the room itself was, but there were a number of extra charges (sheets, breakfast etc) that make me think it’s probably as cheap to stay at pension where breakfast and linen are included and where you have more security and privacy. But this could just be a function of my geezerness. Knowing I would not be the best of company when tired, I elected to sleep. The kids took off to see what there was to see in the immediate area. They found pizza and karaoke.

The next day after a late start we were off. Sightseeing began with the Prague Castle which the guide books say is the city’s most popular destination. We crossed the Vltava River by way of the Mánesův Bridge. The castle is huge, its walls running over 600 yards along the crest of the hill overlooking the city enclosing 18 square acres. It was a wooden stockade with earthworks until the 9th century when Prince Boøivoj began the castle.

The climb to the castle takes you along the Alley of Gold, a winding lane of small houses that cling to the castle walls named for the goldsmiths and alchemists who lived and worked there. In modern times Czech writers, most notablyFranz Kafka, resided in the Gold Alley houses that today are occupied bycraft and souvenir shops.

Inside the wall is the great gothic cathedral of St Vitus begun in 1344 by Emperor Charles IV who in 1357 also commissioned the bridge named for him that connects the Old Town of the castle with the Lesser Town.

The cathedral took 600 centuries to build. The bridge went rather more quickly, but Charles didn't live to either of his projects that came to define the skyline of Prague.

Since its construction castle has been renovated and added on to many times, the last in the 18 century during the reign of Maria Theresa and has served continuously as the seat of government. In our explorations we found what was advertised as "the best ice cream in Prague." Our scientifc taste-tests confirmed that claim--at least to our satisfaction.

After exploring the castle we crossed back over and found a nice (cheap) outdoor café in the Jewish quarter, away from the unbearably touristy central market, and had a late lunch.

As late afternoon came one, we set out to Karlos Most (Charles Bridge) which, guide books notwithstanding, truly is Prague’s tourist central. Hundreds of artists and musicians work the bridge. Karlos Most with the castle in the background may be the most frequently painted scene in the world (note: check Guinness Book of Records). We walked it up and down until evening taking in the scene and people watching.

The brass plaques of Jan Nepomucky and Queen Sofia have been burnished over centuries by the touch of thousands of people. Jan was a priest tortured and executed by King Václav IV because, when commanded to reveal the confession of Queen Sofia whom the king suspected of infidelity, he whispered it into the ear of the king’s dog rather than to the king.

Thus Jan became known as the "martyr of the tongue" and the patron saint of those who resist political authority. To pet the dog is to preserve a secret or, in another version of the legend, be granted a wish.

As evening came the kids wanted to get back and get ready to go out for the night. But I thought it would be fun to take the 1 ½ boat tour of the Vltava and they were nice to me and agreed. It was the best 10€ I’ve ever spent. A MUST DO for any trip to Prague.

We finished at dark—too late to go clubbing--but we found a great authentic Czech restaurant that was still serving. We had gourmet meals for what you’d pay for two Happy Meals in the States, but perhaps as memorable was a HUGE barbe (carp-like fish) in an aquarium in the restaurant. “How old is that fish,” I asked? It was this big when we got it nine years ago, said the owner, holding his hands about 5 inches apart. I have no picture (my batteries were dead by then) but perhaps Alana will send hers along.

We went own ways for the last day agreeing to meet later at the station. I spent the day looking through the old city trying to find places off the beaten track. There are a few where at least tourists come singly or in pairs, not herds. One is Lennon's Peace Wall where dissident Czechs protested the old regime by writing anti-Communist graffiti and lyrics from John Lennon's songs foreshadowing the Velvet Revolution.

The graffiti today lacks the content and depth of the Communist-era protests, more like tagging, but in a city of artists even tagging can be artistic.

The return trip was quite an adventure. After crossing the German border the train was pulled off to a side track with no platform and were ordered (there is no other word) without explanation to a small Waldbahn (Forest train). We passengers, old men and grandmas included, had to hop to the ground (take that grandma) and stumble with baggage to the other train. We rode it two stops and were again ordered off and onto busses (again no explanation) which to us to another station where to trains were waiting—one to Nuremberg and the other to Munich via Regensburg.

I was not pleased and said so. Aboard the last train, a young German told me that he knew this would happen. He was informed when he booked his ticket online two weeks before. Well, I said, with obvious irritation, no one told me. Certainly they did, said the young man. No, they didn’t, I relied. I bought my ticket Thursday in Regensburg. Here is the printed itinerary. This little umleitung isn’t mentioned. Nor did the other passengers seem to know. Ah, well, he replied, I thought it went rather smoothly. We are only 2 minutes behind schedule.

"Indeed," I thought to myself. "One thing you can say about the folks at Deutsche Bahn--they make the trains run on time."

Stammtisch--for the regulars

2005-09-20T23:02:00.000+02:00

Tonight was the first of what promises to be a regular Tuesday night gathering. We now have a stammtisch (a table reserved for regular patrons) at Kneitinger Brauerei. Until now most of the gang only knew stammtisch (if they knew it at all) as a term used to describe a weekly gathering organized by well-meaning language teachers to encourage speaking German in a social setting.

In fact the stammtich is one of the most important German social institutions. At these reserved tables groups of like-minded regulars came together to talk politics, literature, music, hunting and fishing--any number of things that might form the basis voluntary association (Verein). For good and ill these beerhall Vereine were central to German cultural and political development.
Stammtich clubs contributed to the spread of the Enlightment in Germany and to German liberal and republican sentiments, leading to the failed Revolutions of 1848 that sent thousands of Germans (including my father's family) to America seeking political asylum. There they founded German towns (like Fulda, Ohio), brewed great beer, and became ardent supporters of the Union in the Civil War.

Like most social institutions, however, (including the FORCE) the stammtich has a darkside.
Thus Hitler launced his failed 1923 rebellion, the infamous (and comic) Beerhall Putsch from the Nazi stammtich at the Munich Bürgerbräu Keller.

But I think it safe to say that our stammtisch will not turn to the darkside--except when we order ein Dunkels mit sechs, Kraut, and Brot.

Regensburg--Germany's Hollywood?

2005-09-20T10:01:00.000+02:00

Well , maybe not Hollywood, but certainly a favorite shooting locale for German directors. A couple of weeks ago the film Kommissar Lukas finished shooting.

Now another film crew is making a nuisance of itself on the city streets shooting Die Familie Sonnenfeld, a family-oriented sitcom similar to the late-70's show American show Eight is Enough.

Yesterday as I turned on to the pedestrian-only Konigstrasse, I saw a camera dolly and paused at the intersection. But only for a moment before some assistant to the assistant director urgently motioned for me to keep walking: just be natural; pretend nothing is out of the ordinary!

It's hard to shoot a believable guy-walking-down-the-street scene when everybody keeps stopping in midstride to stare at the film-making process. But its hard not to stare at a man trying to be natural with an assistant to the assistant to the assistant walking in front of him with a 6x4 reflecting panel to assure sufficient light on a blindingly sunny day (the first we've had in sometime).

That afternoon, I encountered the crew in he Dom Platz where I had gone to do a little busking--playing guitar and singing for spare change (why hide my light under a basket, eh). One of the crew, a young kid, sat down and listened. After a while, he offered that he wrote songs and played (I'm an artist, he said). So I passed him my guitar.

He sang song of his own about suicide--reminicent of "Don't Fear the Reaper." I asked if he had heard of Blue Oyster Cult but it was before his time. I asked for more and he did three more cheery tunes about death, alienation, and isolation.

Eventually we ended up doing a pretty good duet of Eleanor Rigby with 2-part harmony on the
Ah, look at all the lonely people Ah, look at all the lonely people.

I told him about www.garageband.com -- a site set up by the Beatle's producer, George Martin--where he could get his music out for free without a record contract.
And a good time was had by all.

Fly Fishing the Regen (Catch-and-Release)

2005-09-18T22:17:00.000+02:00

When I came to Germany I brought my fly rod, reel, and flies intending to fish. Soon after I arrived, I went to the Rathaus, presented my American fishing licenses (Kentucky and North Carolina), filled out the proper forms with a passport photo, paid 17.50 Euro and got my Auslanderangelschein. Then I went to the local Regensburg fishing shop, Angelsport Muggenthaler, located (where else) near Fischmarkt Platz to but some German-style flies and a copy of Angelfuhrer Bayern to find the good (and affordable) trout streams. Affordable because in Germany, as in most of Europe, the fishing rights to streams are privately held. In order to fish you must buy a day ticket for the water you wish to fish.

NOTICE: I am a catch-and-release fisherman--something that has just begun to catch on in Germany. No fish were harmed in the making of this blog.

My first outing was to the Schwartzer Regen at the little town of Viechtach. The guide book said it had rainbow, brown, brook trout and grayling. The day ticket was reasonable--11 Euro. I fished all day and caught three 20 inch Barbe, making me the big winner among the three of us hardcore enough to be on the water on such a nasty day. Barbe are a hard fighting fish but ugly. A booby-prize for die hard tout fishermen like me. But I did find a cheap gasthaus that had a great restaurant where I had a great dinner.

The town was pretty though it had clearly seen better days. It is the only place I've seen in Germany where the train did not run on time. It left the station 20 minutes late.

So this weekend I bit the bullet and moved up stream to the Grossen Regen at Bayerisch Eisenstein in the Bayerischer Wald where the day ticket cost 29 Euro, or so said the guidebook. When I got to town I checked into a cheap pension near the river, then went to the Grenzwald Gasthaus to buy the ticket. The young Fraulein waitress did know what to do, however , so she gave me a blank form and told me to fish and come back at noon. The owner would be there and could pay then.

So I fished and caught several trout before it began to pour rain. I returned to the gasthaus and waited an hour for the owner to arrive. When he did show he became upset that I had elected to stay in a cheap pension rather than his pricey hotel and informed me that day tickets were only for those who stayed at his place. But he would bend the rules and sell me a day ticket for 35 Euro. I was steamed but, having come so far, took it.The next day was overcast and threatened rain, but only threatened. The fishing was great. I caught about 40 trout, most toward the end of the day when the trout started rising to a huge hatch of tiny gray mayflies. So now I have a problem.

Do I submit to the proprietor's arm-twisting and stay at his hotel? Or do I return to the down-at-the-heels pension where I made friends with the owner, an ex-pro tennis player and his elderly mother and confront the Grenzwald owner and make him honor the prices posted on his website and in the guidebook? The latter I imagine. We’ll see.

Top ‘a da World, Ma! Climbing St. Peter's Dom

2005-09-18T12:10:00.000+02:00

Thursday we MSU Regensburgers has an opportunity afforded very few—we ascended St. Peter’s Dom (Cathedral), one of Germany’s two gothic cathedrals. The other and best known is Cologne’s whose 515 foot spires made it the tallest structure in the world until 1889 when Alexandre Gustave Eiffel erected his tower in Paris. The Regensburg Dom towers are said to be modeled on Cologne’s although to me their design seems inspired to the canopies over the various naves inside the Dom.

The outing was part of the art history class taught by Kristine Andrea, but all were invited and most came. The day of the ascent we began in the restoration shop where craftsmen work in the old ways with the old tools to restore those parts of the sandstone structure deteriorated over the centuries by weather and pollution.

There she continued her lecture on Gothic architecture from the previous class. The Gothic style originated in France in 1136 as a transition from the Romanesque first seen in the church of St. Denis whose designer introduced the innovations of spires and the rose window, the latter sparingly used because too many windows would weaken the massive walls need to support the building’s weight. The desire to bring more light to church interiors led to the innovation known as the flying buttress that transferred the weight of the structure though it to the ground permitting the wall to be opened to hold huge stained glass windows. The characteristic spire was added to the buttress to increase its weight and stability.

The term Gothic was not applied until the mid-16th century when Giorgio Vasari, a student of Michelangelo, employed it to denigrate the style as "heaps of spires, pinnacles, and grotesque decorations lacking in all the simple beauty of the classical orders." When gothic went out of fashion, those who came after attempted to minimize what they thought were its excesses, stripping the interior stone work of it color to mimic what they believed was the classical style of Greece and Rome (not knowing, as modern art historians do that columns and interiors of Greek and Roman temples were also brightly painted).

In the 19th century came a neo-gothic revival at which time the Regensburg Dom finally got its towers and replacement widows for those destroyed by previous generations—not windows of stained glass, however, but of painted glass with a geometric panels completely foreign (and inferior) to the almost psychedelic complexity of the gothic .

The climb started in the donkey tower, a structure that takes its name from the crane (or donkey) atop it that was used (and is still used) to raise large blocks of cut stone and statuary to the top of the Dom. There are no stairs but a tight winding ramp that brings one, dizzied, to an attic space above the cathedral where is a huge wheel in which workers would walk to power the winch that raised the stone by the donkey crane. Of course upon being informed of this arcane piece of medieval building lore, everyone had to take his or her turn as human hamsters trending in the wheel.

From there we winded our way along the narrow ledge of the Dom roof to reach the platform between the two spires, which the highest point one can reach with ropes and climbing harness.

The view over the city was spectacular despite the overcast sky.

But even more impressive, for me at least, was that I was able to see close up what very few people will ever see, sculptures done with as much care and artistry as those inside the Dom—poignant statements that the work’s the thing, not done for human admiration but as an offering to God.

Bartek Lenon returns to Poland.

2005-09-09T16:54:00.000+02:00

This summer Bartek Lenon has been an integral part of Regensburg street life. I don't think it's an exaggeration to say he's better known by Alte Stadt residents than the Bürgermeister. Tuesday he takes a train back to Uniwersytet Wrocławski where he'll start work on his thesis dealing with Alexis de Tocqueville's meaning in contemporary American political discourse.

Last night we sat at a sidewalk cafe cheaply occupying seats which the proprietor would have rather seen filled by better-heeled patrons. He talked for hours of his work as a performer (which he take very seriously), of his trips to the United States, of Daoism and Zen, of the incredible changes in Poland since the Fall of Communism when he was four, and of hope for a better world.

He promised to email his thesis to me when it’s done and I promised to read it. I’ll miss him and so will all the children who took flowers from his hand.

Neuschwanstein--was Ludwig II mad or merely irritated? We report, you decide.

2005-09-05T21:04:00.000+02:00

Late Saturday night Clair, Morgan, Alana, Kyle, Jamie, and Jennifer (yes, I’m naming names) talked me into accompanying them to Neuschwanstein, “Mad” Ludwig’s castle at Fussen. I must have been crazy too because I said yes, despite having webcourse assignments to grade and my own Ger 201 homework to do. We left at 6:45 am Sunday and got back on the Escargot Express from Munich past midnight. I'll let them tell you about that.

As all the world knows Neuschwanstein was the model for Walt Disney’s Sleeping Beauty Castle. It was planned by a set designer, not an architect and, like a stage set, its camp artificiality is apparent when seen close up. In fact if Ludwig were alive today he’d probably one of the so-called “developers” of criminally bad taste who erect the 300-thousand dollar McMansions (excuse me, “starter homes”) that now despoil the American landscape.

One wonders if the plotters' real reason for overthrowing Ludwig was to prevent a plague of “starter castles” built for the addled Romantic Wagner-loving German nobles exemplified Ludwig’s close friend and aspiring actor Paul Maximilian Lamoral von Thurn und Taxis (whose family palace is in Regensburg and whose brewery produces German's worst beer).

Ludwig built his many palaces in part as a way to make work for unemployed Bavarians. He was immensely popular with the peasants who nearly foiled the aristocratic plot to remove him by surrounding him intending to escort him to safety in nearby Austria. But he refused to leave his kindom. Subsequently he was seized and imprisoned at Berg on the Starnbergersee near Munich. Afterward Ludwig and Professor Bernhard von Gudden, the doctor who had declared him insane, were found dead on the shore of the lake after they failed to return from an evening walk, probably murdered by the coup leaders for whom a live imprisioned monarch was an inconvienence.

Was Ludwig mad? Probably not, beyond having insanely bad taste.

Film Kommissar Lukas shooting in Regensburg

2005-09-03T22:07:00.000+02:00

For several days a film crew has been shooting a film titled Inpector Lukas in the Alt Stadt. A seach of the local newspaper online has revealed nothing. I have been able to find out little except that it is a police thriller and that one scene takes place at might in the rain in front of the Altes Rathaus. When I know more you'll be the first to know. Until then...

Around Hinter der Grieb

2005-09-03T12:12:00.000+02:00

Hinter der Grieb, the alley (there is no other word) on which I live runs east-west and at sunset the light is intense. The incredibly clear and humidity-free days at the beginning of the week made for great photo ops on my alley and around die Alt Stadt. He is a little of what I saw.

Donua Excursion to Weltenburg Monastery

2005-09-03T09:09:00.000+02:00

The day began with thunderstorms. The group had planned an excursion up the Donau [Danube] though the romantic Donaudurchbruch gorge to the Benedictine Weltenburg Monastery, the oldest monastery brewery in the world. Should we continue or ditch it for Nuremburg? A vote and bravely we decided to risk the weather. A good choice. The early heavy rain gave way to sunshine just as we arrived to take the bus to the boat.

We enjoyed a great trip first passing the Befreiungshalle, or “Liberation Hall” -- a neoclassical extravagance built by King Ludwig I of Bavaria in 1863 to commemorate the “Great Battle of Nations” where, at Leipzig, the 34 German states defeated Emperor Napoleon. The building, which appears far too large for the hill upon which it sits, is divided into 18 sections, one for each of the Germanic tribes. More about it at: http://www.altmuehltal.de/englisch/kelheim/e-befreiungshalle.htm

From there the tourboat entered the spectacular Donau Gorge where the rock faces have been shaped into curious shapes by water, wind and weather. As we passed through, Niki, one of our program's super assistants, translated the boat captain's remarks as he pointed out the various rock formation that have been named---"kitchen rock" a perpendicular wall rising from the water, the Bavarian Lion, the bishop´s mitre, the kissing couple, the rude man, the Roman rock, and rock with a statue of St.Nepomuk, patron saint of fresh-water navigators and bridge builders.

From http://www.areion.org/weltenburg/short.html
The Benedictine abbey of Weltenburg is the oldest monastery in Bavaria and was founded around 600 AD. by the monks of St. Columbanus. It is situated near the entrance to the scenic Danube gorge, on the northern slopes of the Arzberg Mountain, near the site of the ancient Celtic settlement of Artobriga. The baroque church was built by the architect brothers Cosmas Damian Asam and Aegid Quirin Asam. Work began in 1716 by order of Maurus Baechl, Abbot of Weltenburg from 1713 to 1743; the entrance hall completing the building was finished in 1751 by Franz Anton Neu.

Two useful websites for those living in Germany

2005-09-01T18:59:00.000+02:00

First:
Brian's Complete Guide to Getting Around Germany. This has information about driving, flying and how to use trains and urban public transportation with crystal-clear illustrations of how to purchase tickets from machines and how to get around in these often confusing facilities.

http://home.att.net/~texhwyman/verkehr.htm

Second:
HOWTOGERMANY. From their webpage--

Welcome to the best on-line information resource for expatriates in Germany: the website of How To Germany magazine. How To Germany tells you everything you need to know about living and working in Germany as a foreigner. The magazine's feature archives are available on this website, and we update them frequently to keep you current on developments important to a happy and successful stay in Germany.

http://www.howtogermany.com/

CDU Rally -- Candidate Merkel speaks

2005-08-29T23:00:00.000+02:00

This afternoon Angela Merkel, the CDU candidate who hopes to replace Gerhardt Schroeder as German Chancellor, spoke at the Domplatz in Regensburg. Merkel, whose detractors call the "Iron Lady (a comparison to former British PM, Margaret Thatcher) and whose supporters call "Angie" was born in the old GDR (East Germany) and began her political career there as part of the democratic movement that signaled the end of the Communist regime. After reunification she was mentored by then Chancellor Helmut Kohl and has chaired the CDU since 2000.

The Domplatz was packed with her supporters and protestors opposed to her policies. In 2003, she expressed support for President Bush's Iraq war, accusing Schroeder and the SPD of anti-Americanism. She believes in free markets, decreased regulation, sees a place nuclear power, and believes Germany must move away from the old state-centered way of doing business. Merkel and her coalition partner Edmund Stoiber, leader of the CSU (with whom Merkel has a troubled relationship), have also proposed a flat tax that would, if I understand correctly, effectively raise German taxes.

Though the police and security presence was heavy, I was struck by the fact that anyone could come to hear her without the screening typical of the public events of President Bush. If Merkel is elected, she will be the first woman to govern Germany in 1000 years.

360-degrees of Regensbueg from Dreieinigkeitskirche

2005-08-29T22:17:00.000+02:00

Some people plan their encounters with and in foreign lands. I believe in serendipity. I walk around –lost some would say—hoping something good comes.

So I made a wrong turn looking for Maximilianstrasse (okay, a really wrong turn) and ended by on Gesandenstrasse. There I passed by the Dreieinigkeitskirche (Holy Trinity) Lutheran Church.

A sign there announced that its turm (tower) was open to the public so I went in, paid 2 Euros, and climbed to the top, passing its huge bell on the way up the twisting stairs.
What I got was a spectacular 360-degree view of Regensburg with the added benefit of helping me orientate myself in the twisting medieval city.

What you get are more of my photos and an invitation to climb the turm yourself. It wll be 2 Euros well spent.

Bartek Lenon

2005-08-28T19:32:00.000+02:00

Some of you may have noticed the white-faced street performer, dressed in the black frock coat who invites passersby--especially children--to take flowers from his hand. He is Bartek Lenon from Poland.

Kids love him and it's great fun to watch them interact with him. Neither children nor parents have any fear and it easy to see why. When ladies take a flower, he takes their hand and kisses it-- quite courtly.

Today he asked if I would take some photos and send them to him. Here are a few of the results. Put a few euros in his bowl and help him buy a bowler hat.

Sunday in Der Alten Kappelle

2005-08-28T11:11:00.000+02:00

Sunday mass in the recently restored Alten Kapelle (Old Chapel), a Rococo gilded marble marvel (try saying that fast three times), is an artistic as well as religious experience. The low notes of the great pipe organ vibrate in the listeners’ bodies as incense fills the air.

REGENSBURG SCENES

2005-08-27T20:41:00.000+02:00

Around the Bahnhof and its Arcaden

Die Alte Stadt

What's new in Germany

2005-08-27T20:13:00.000+02:00

Keep up with what's going on where our students are living and studying by reading Germany's most influencial new weekly, Der Spiegel, on the web in English at

http://service.spiegel.de/cache/international/0,1518,k-6712,00.html

2005-08-27T18:34:00.001+02:00

on the way to the Dultfest

2005-08-27T18:34:00.000+02:00

Kids in the street

2005-08-27T18:33:00.000+02:00

At the bridge to "fest island"

2005-08-27T18:30:00.000+02:00

a scene not unlike any Kentucky state fair

2005-08-27T18:29:00.000+02:00

Herr Director Ernest points the way

2005-08-27T18:28:00.000+02:00

to the fun. In the foreground is Lydia, one of our German student assistants.

2005-08-27T18:24:00.000+02:00

Prost with the fest band

2005-08-27T16:45:00.000+02:00

Wander Youth sits at wall that will be under water two days later

2005-08-27T16:43:00.000+02:00

Preflood Danube as water begins to rise

2005-08-27T16:39:00.000+02:00

Oldest Bratwusrt Imbis in the world flooded

2005-08-27T16:38:00.000+02:00

Water to the Windows

2005-08-27T16:10:00.000+02:00

Alt Stadt at evening in Flood

2005-08-27T14:06:00.000+02:00

Post-flood clean up at the bratwurst stand

2005-08-27T13:54:00.000+02:00

Waters near the peak of the Old Bridge arches

2005-08-27T13:48:00.000+02:00

Rain ends as water peak

Saturday Famers' Market

2005-08-27T13:21:00.000+02:00