A new year on the Weinstrasse

Happy 2008, friends and family!

I hope everybody had a good "slide" into the new year. :) Sorry the blog has been a bit neglected; our internet connection went ffkkzbk in the middle of November (more on that later) and got reconnected just in time for me to disappear into the coffee-filled depths of Seattle for Christmas. That trip was marvelous. And way too short. But no sooner had I landed in Frankfurt than this tall handsome German appeared to distract me from my family-missing sorrows, and swooped me away for a week-long New Year's vacation in the Frozen East. So of course the first thing I can think to do is lean back in my rocking chair with a glass of Dornfelder, set the bifocals on the end of my nose, and commence with a long-winded droning elaboration of all that's been happening to me, me, me! :)

(Or you can just see some pics!)

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January 1-6

Olaf called the Erzgebirge in winter “German Siberia.” Given that, though I’ve never been to Russian Siberia, Dr. Zhivago looked pretty darned cold, I’ll take this as a sufficiently apt description.

From the time we arrived in Sehma on the night of December 3oth until boarding a train back to Mannheim a week later, I couldn’t stop commenting on the temperature. "Damn," I’d muffle through my scarf as we stepped outside, "it’s cold." Or later, listening to the wind attempt to tear out the rafters outside our cozy loft bedroom: "Damn! It’s cold!" Or, stepping into skis before getting enough blood moving to ward off the wind’s icy blue fingers: "Dammit’scold!!"

I was definitely the picture of a wimp – or, as ze Germans would say, a “warm-showerer” – while pulling on wool leggings and a wool shirt under my normal pajamas before climbing under two layers of feather comforters to sleep. Bert’s family even seemed mildly concerned. (There is a great picture of me and Bert’s sister, Heidi, a strapping Viking maiden if I’ve ever seen one, as we go for a walk through the snow: I’m wearing an arctic parka, she’s wearing what appears to be a rain jacket.)

At last gratification was mine, however, when two nights ago, Bert sat straight up in bed, looked at me with consternation in those enormous brown eyes and exclaimed, “Verdammt! Es ist kalt!”

The thing is, it is so cold because it is beautiful. If the Erzgebirge in March looks nearly like a picture-print by Currier and Ives, the Erzgebirge in January is a winter wonderland. Thick white snow covers everything: as if a whole town (and the forests, hills, and rivers around it) had been dipped in whipped cream. The naked tree branches were coated in enough ice to turn them into sculptures of pure white lace; and in the silent blue evenings, golden Schwibbögen would light up the windows of every house in the snow-covered town. The whole place had the look of one of those model villages you’d set out on top of the bookshelf at Christmastime. Plus the temperature really wasn’t insufferable: the parka had been a Christmas gift from my marvelous family, and – despite a sure resemblance to Joel Fleischmann in Northern Exposure – I was grateful for every minute spent bundled in its feathery depths.

Pretty pretty pretty!

Where to begin? The trip was, as ever, magical. We pulled in early enough for a light Abendbrot with Bert’s parents on Sunday night, and then settled into an apartment downstairs from Olaf and Corinna (which Olaf’s brother owns but doesn’t really use).

When I say “apartment” I mean “bottom floor of a large, pretty, old stone house that has been sectioned off for three families to occupy.” Indeed, few of the houses in the Erzgebirge – or in Germany, for that matter – are single-family dwellings. There are some, sure, but in general there just doesn’t seem to be that tradition of inexhaustibly vast frontier that made us Americans so accustomed to roominess; here, owning the entire building – plus enough surrounding property to make a front as well as a back yard – is a bit of a luxury.

However, unlike the vaguely unappetizing apartment highrises that line the residential streets of Ludwigshafen (which itself can’t be blamed – after all, the bombed-out city was entire rebuilt in the fifties, and on a budget!) the “apartments” in Sehma are absolute coziness. We woke up on Monday morning to sunlight streaming through huge windows, and a snow-covered landscape rolling gently to the mountains in the distance. It was even a little like waking up at Grandma’s house in Colorado!

That day, Monday, was New Year’s Eve, which we spent making raclette with Olaf and Corinna, Heidi and her boyfriend, Jens, and another couple from Leipzig. Raclette is neat – a very social meal. It consists of one large electric cooking device in the middle of the table, with two surfaces: the top can be used for grilling or frying, and underneath sit eight individual, wedge-shaped little skillets, one for each guest. All around the table are bowls of uncooked food pieces, which you can assemble to make a variety of mini meals under the cooker in your tiny skillet. I started with a chicken, mushroom, tomato, olive, and cheese concoction, followed by eggs and potatoes with bacon. Mmm… bacon… We also had salad and lots of wine. The leisurely meal took hours until we suddenly realized that it was a quarter to twelve!

Outside the party went. We stood around a snow-covered hay bale on a snow-covered hillside with a view of the snow-covered Sehma valley below, and by the time the bubbly had been distributed, it was midnight. And I gotta say, the best way to celebrate New Year’s has got to be looking down on a valley in the Erzgebirge. All the towns came alive: bells started drifting up from every corner of the valley, followed by the marvelous, anticipatory screeee! of firecrackers. Pink and green and gold lit up the night; we danced around in the snow; friends called from other parts of the country; and “der lustige Bert” proceeded to light a few rockets of our own and then flee so comically that he was even more entertaining than the fireworks.

Prost Neujahr!

The party then continued a few houses down the road at Bert’s uncle Gert’s house, where everyone else sampled Gert’s famous punch… while I fell asleep on the couch.

So on that note, here are two observations from my first week back in the Fatherland: 1) Everyone is having babies. 2) I forgot how much people here can drink!

It’s true. On Sunday night – before New Year’s Eve – I felt unusually sleepy. Then I realized that this might have to do (other than jetlag) with the fact that I’d been offered, within the first day of being back in the country, a total of two beers, two glasses of wine, and a Schnapps, for no particular reason except that we’d stopped by various houses to visit.

It’s not like people sit around getting drunk, any more than most Americans would sit down and consume two liters of 7-up at a time. Beer is simply What You Drink. I hate to stereotype, but sometimes it seems we Americans have a relationship with alcohol that lies somewhere between titillating excess and scowling Puritan disapproval. Whereas Arizona law dictates no sale of wine before a certain time on Sundays, the beer on the menu here costs the same as, and often less than, a bottle of water. You can go to any Christmas market and enjoy a cup of mulled wine – standing right there in, gasp, public! My God, what if the children see??

I’m pretty sure that this has something to do with a centuries-long tradition of sterilizing the village water by simply fermenting it. (I’ve also heard that this accounts for the British love of tea.) Funnily enough, people do look at me a bit sideways when I drink tap water instead of bottled mineral water. “Well,” they say, eyeing my glass. “I suppose one can. It’s potable. But you don’t have to,” they protest, “We have plenty of normal water right here!” And a 1.5-liter bottle of sparkling Odenwaldquelle hovers over my glass. I attempt to convince them that the water out of the faucet here is delicious; but the general reaction is still a bit as if I had started to drink, I dunno, mouthwash, instead of just rinsing with it.

As for the second observation: 2007 appears to have been the Year of the Baby. I read an article a while back that mentioned a correspondence between the jubilant World Cup in Germany in summer 2006 and a sharp rise in birth rates nine months later; and am inclined to believe it. This is good news. The country could use a little population boost. With an economy based on socio-capitalism, the successful financing of social programs (like public healthcare) is heavily reliant on having a healthy generational bell curve. That is, the population should consist of mostly working-age folks helping to support the young and old on either end; and yet in the last couple of generations, the population has only been getting fewer and older. Not to mention that holding Olaf and Corinna’s bright-eyed baby, Samuel, is a warm and snuggly prescription for a New Year’s Day hangover.

Speaking of New Year’s Day and babies, I finally got to meet Sophia! Conny and Nate were at her mother’s house in Bernsbach for the holiday, and so we got to catch up a little over coffee and cookies. I also finally got to meet Conny’s sister, Franzi, and her brother, Thomas, which felt weird, seeing as how I’d seen so many pictures and heard enough stories that I’d completely forgotten I’d never actually met them. It was like talking to moving photos. Franzi’s daughter is just a couple months older than Sophie, and so it was a baby-filled visit. Sophie’s great. She’s good-natured and curious; plus Nate’s parents had brought her a warm fuzzy outfit from the States that includes a hood with ears, so that she looks like a stuffed animal when bundled into her carriage for a walk.

Franzi (holding Louisa), me (holdie Sophie), Heidi, & Conny

Meanwhile, Nate and Conny are as funny as ever. Nate couldn’t get enough of remarking on the uniformity of Erzgebirge Christmas decorations, and feigned dry, Natelike shock when he spied a multicolored Schwibbogen in one window. “Is there a hotline we can call to report this?” he asked gravely (before discovering that the offending Weihnachtsschmuck was a perfectly respectable white-light-bedecked arch, seen through a multicolored stained-glass window).

New Year’s Day also included a succulent lunch prepared by Bert’s uncle, and another walk through excessively charming snowy villageness back in Sehma with Olaf and Corinna.

The next day, Bert, his mom, his uncle, and I hopped aboard the steam-engined train to Oberwiesenthal (the skiing town at the top of the Fichtelberg), strolled across the border, and walked about an hour or so to a Czech café where I saw they served “American potatoes.”

“What are ‘American potatoes’?” I asked eagerly.

“Kind of like french fries, but they’re bigger and thicker, and lightly spiced. Plus they leave the skins on,” explained Gert. (I like Gert.)

Wedges! The menu offered potato wedges. Not that German fries aren’t heavenly, but I was curious to order “American” something from a Czech menu and see how it would come out.

They were awesome. Fresh, plump, crisp, tender, spicy, and exactly like you would get at a steakhouse. I gobbled up both my own and the rest of everyone else's, and was tempted to order another, separate portion. Nothing like hot salty potatoes on a cold snowy day!

While Regina and Gert headed back to Sehma by bus, Bert and I hopped off a few miles early so that we could walk a bit longer through the snowy woods and hills. I couldn’t get enough of stomping around in the snow; and thanks to Shauna’s merino wool socks, my feet stayed toasty warm despite the minus-whatever degrees. :)

The next day, we decided we still hadn’t tanked up enough fresh mountain air before the impending return to BASF-scented Ludwigshafen, and so we spend the day in the hills near Wiesenbad, hiking a couple of hours up to the castle in Wolkenstein. Somehow it seems there are only a few ways to describe wintry bucolic beauty before you resort to exhausted cliché: suffice to say, every step of every walk and hike was sheer visual feast. We wended our way along the sides of hills overlooking deep valleys; through woods heavy with creamy snow; alongside fields of horses whuffling their lips over the ground in an effort to eat the icy white stuff; and all the way up to a stately castle on a mountaintop.

Here's a "holiday home" you can rent in Wolkenstein. Wow...

There, we found a cozy café; and I know this blog busies itself excessively with food descriptions, but I just gotta describe one more. At this café, they serve the best fish you will ever eat in your life. I still don’t know what it was. Trout? It was juicy, oily, pink, soft, flavorful yet mild... roughly a foot long, freshly caught in the river at the foot of the mountain, and cooked and served whole, next to a pile of creamy yellow potatoes. Admittedly, attempting to eat an animal that retains its original animal form is a little unsettling. But after the first steaming pink forkful, you become a savage. This macabre little pile of skull and spinal column and bones piles up, while your only focus is on finding the last scrap of fishmeat between head and tail. Mm... delicious barbarism.

Friday was spent in lazy Vacation Mode. We slept until the last moment possible before tromping over the hills with Heidi to have lunch at Gert’s; then Bert and I fell asleep on Gert’s couch for another two hours. We woke up; had some After Eights (Gert is an After Eight pusher); tromped back home; and I made a crustless pumpkin pie for Bert’s family, simply because I didn’t feel like all the work required to make the crust. Maybe that makes it more like pumpkin custard... at any rate, it was a success, and one American got to smell pumpkin pie baking as she stared out the window at the moonlit snow.

Saturday was skiing day. Bert had been wanting to go cross-country skiing all week, but hadn’t gotten his new skis waxed until Thursday night. So despite the arctic weather that blew white feathery rivers sideways across the roads, we donned our gear and headed out with Heidi and Bert’s dad, Horst, to try the cross-country trails.

The Lißners all grew up on skis, and it shows. Heidi had no sooner tumbled out of the car than was she attaching the things to her feet like extra body parts, and gliding away naturally over the snow. Bert and Horst were not far behind, and I… well, I’m from Arizona. Plus, compared to Bert’s tall, powerful family of mountain giants, my usually well-built frame of five-foot-five is apparently so dwarfish that we had to borrow ski poles from the neighbors just to find ones that fit me.

But my boyfriend is the most patient boyfriend who ever boyfriended. While his broad father and statuesque sister glided expertly away through the forest, he gently instructed his shrimpy foreign girlfriend in the basics. I have to admit to being a bit frustrated that something which had come so easily last March was suddenly so difficult; but Bert assured me that the conditions were also different this time, and that (so he says) my skis were particularly slippery, and that’s why I kept sliding backward when I meant to move, you know, forward.

These... look... like... skis...

It was still a lot of fun. Once, in learning to turn around, I fell over into a pile of snow with my skis crossed behind me, like some kind of cartoon. Then, just as I was starting to get the hang of swooshing along on the even surfaces, our path headed up a long, steep, curving hill. Bert assured me I could ascend this. He demonstrated by splaying out his feet so that his skis formed an open V, and scrabbled up the hill. I splayed out my skis in similar fashion and scrabbled in place. Bert looked back down to see me flailing around, buglike, at the bottom of the hill, laughing hard enough to make the whole business go from difficult to impossible. By the time I did get a few feet up the incline, some other people started approaching from behind, and I didn’t know how to get out of the way. Here, my overtaxed facilities gave out. Bert looked me in the eye and advised me to turn sideways while stopped on a hill (while we let the people who knew what the hell they were doing go by), but for some reason, I stopped understanding German and just stood there squinting at him. And then sliding backward.

That was yesterday. Now we’re plopped on the train back to Mannheim, and my triceps are pleasantly sore; Bert is snoozing off and on next to me with his earbuds in, waking up just occasionally to blink at me with those eyes that are the same color of his chocolate-brown sweater.

The holidays were wonderful.

We’re almost home.

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