60 km, one tree, two tubes and an eel

On Friday I went on a day-long bike ride with my Colombian friend Olga. I ride with Brian all the time - fast, with helmets, on the road, wearing spandex and clip-in shoes. I knew that a bike ride with Olga would be a little different. I knew, for example, that she did not have a bike that cost more than her couch and her refrigerator combined, and she only had one of them. Unlike normal people, I own three bikes and my couch sucks. I also knew the ride would not be super fast, so I took my old road bike. It was fast about 11 years ago when I first bought it but lately had a few creaks and was more of a bike to take around town, provided I wasn't on a lot of gravel and it wasn't snowing.

Our destination was Steinhuder Meer, which is a lake about 30km (19 mi.) outside of Hannover. In German, the word Meer means sea. The word See also means sea, but only if it is the feminine noun die See. If it's a masculine der See, then that's a lake. So the North Sea is die Nordsee, the Mediterranean Sea is the das Mittelmeer, and the lake in Hannover with the big scary fish in it is der Maschsee. And the Germans wonder why I have not yet mastered their language. Of course Steinhuder Meer is not a sea at all, it's just a big lake. It's like the size of Lake Geneva or any number of bigger Minnesota lakes.

After riding over railroad tracks, gravel paths, and probably some broken glass on the way, I got a flat tire about an hour into the trip. It turns out that I had chosen the worst possible bike for this journey - the one with tires that were not only skinny but old. We stopped under a tree and as I pulled out the spare tire and the pump from my saddlebags, an old lady stopped to talk with us. Since this doesn't happen often in Germany, I thought maybe she would offer to help us or let us use her phone or something. Instead, she said what you logically would to two women removing a wheel from a bicycle: (this is my rough translation), "pardon me but do you know just how old this wonderfully beautiful tree is?" Olga later invented the story of how her great grandfather planted the tree back when he farmed this land, which is still in her family even though she never lived in Germany until two years ago. Had the old lady been around when we came up with that, I think she would have believed it.

Our trip continued along the Mitteland Canal, through some fields, into the woods and on all sorts of rocky, gravelly, muddy paths that seemed to be taunting my tires and just asking them to pop. They held out though, and we got to the town of Steinhude and the Steinhuder Meer, which looks like this:

It was lovely. We found a place to lock up our bikes in order to wander around and have lunch, until I realized that I would not be locking up my bike - I had no keys. They had been in my saddlebags and must have fallen out as I changed my stupid tire under the stupid old tree. Our only hope was to stop there on the way back and try to find them, or else I would be locked out and learning pretty fast about how to get keys copied in Germany.

I tried not to think about keys or tires for a while and enjoy the town, which I did.  Steinhuder Meer is famous for its smoked eel. It is supposed to be delicious, and looks like this:

I usually like to try the local dish when I'm in a new place, but something about the word eel just made me think of this:

So I didn't eat any. Olga bought one and stuck it in her backpack so she could bring it to her husband. That seems normal. Why wouldn't you ride around with an eel in your bag?

I even enjoyed the first half of our ride homeward, until my tire went flat again. I had already used my spare, but Olga had a kit to patch the tubes. So we patched both of them, put the tire on again and kept going... for about ten minutes. The patches were not as invincible as we thought, and the gravel was unforgiving. The routine went like this: tire goes flat, stopping, tire off, patching, swearing, re-patching, tire on, laughing, tire pumping, swearing, repeat. In the end I changed my rear tire five times. I got pretty good at it. My main goal was to get back to my stupid keys under the stupid old tree (if they were still there) and then I didn't care what happened. By then we'd be close enough to jump on a tram, or I could jump on the tram and Olga could ride home and do some swearing of her own. In the old days, Brian in his shining pickup truck could have come to rescue me, but the best we can do now is a bus ticket or a pair of rollerblades, and neither of those would have helped.

So, covered in grease, with a bleeding knuckle and melted chocolate of mysterious origin stuck to my pedal, we made it back to the big old tree. It was a big, beautiful, wonderful tree, because my keys were lying beneath it, glimmering in the sun (cue up angelic chorus). At least something had started to go my way. Thank goodness for Olga's imaginary great grandfather.

Olga may never invite me to go on a bike ride with her again. And, if she does, I will bring my slow, beat-up city bike and a lot of spare tubes. If there is a next time, maybe I would even try some eel, or stick it in my saddlebags for later.

Hannover anthropology and Genghis Khan

What a funny place we live in. Even though I've been here a while, I still like to observe the local behavior like some sort of low-rent anthropologist.  Here are a few things I have noticed about Hannover and Germany recently:

There are squirrels in the Hannover Zoo. I don't mean running around the concession stands and climbing the trees. I mean they are in an exhibit in the zoo, just like the lions and zebras. I used to shoo them off the patio and Brian would try to shoot them with a squirt gun. Now we live in a place where squirrels are considered exotic.

You can buy beer with coins. This is awesome and possible because the beer is cheap and the coins are worth a lot. After a few months of living in Germany, the coin pouch in my wallet split open. The one and two Euro coins were just too heavy. It's a psychological shift to know that your pocket change is enough for a big beer, or a doner kebab sandwich, or a bunch of bananas and a loaf of bread.

They can't stand the heat. Earlier this week it was hot. It was about 33 degrees, which is 92 in Farenheit. Since that makes it a little uncomfortable indoors since most buildings are not air conditioned, some schools in Hannover and the surrounding area closed due to the heat. I think this is silly. There's no danger posed by a warm summer day, other than a few kids and teachers complaining. The Germans are just not used to weather extremes. Maybe they need a Midwesterner to tell them to toughen up.

Hannover city government is worried about nothing. We got a letter from the city this week, signed and on official stationery, stating that the bike rack behind our building is to be used only by the people working in the city offices next door. Apparently someone from our building has been parking a bike there, despite a warning tag that was placed on the bike recently. What a public menace. The letter said that the bike's owner had a week to remove it or the city would take it away. This is what our local government is worried about.

Nakedness is on the rise. Along with the heat comes more visitors to the FKK beach. I ride my bike past it often. If you recall, this is what I have named the naked lake. It's the designated spot for nude sunbathing and swimming in Hannover. I am not sure if just anyone can hang out there provided they take their clothes off, or whether someone is checking ID's to see who is a card carrying member of the club. I hope it's open to anyone, because I don't know where you'd put your ID anyway.

Genghis Khan - enough said. Our friend Andy was teaching about Genghis Khan, and ran across a video clip of a German singing group from the 1979 Eurovision song contest. Eurovision is a Europe-wide competition where each country sends a musician or group to compete and the audience votes on the best one. Everyone watches it - it's like the Superbowl. And in 1979, these guys represented Germany: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qUlZUUqv5IA
You just have to watch it; I can't put it into words.

Talk like a 'Merican

It's time for me to go back to the United States for a little while, because I am starting to talk like an expat.

I now use the word football interchangeably with soccer, refer to summer holidays instead of vacation, and talk about the years I spent at university.I found myself saying that I hadn't shut down the computer "properly" the other day. I'm more likely to talk about a film than a movie, and I take photos instead of pictures.

This is what happens when you leave the U.S. and talk to a lot of people who are either not native English speakers or who not native 'Merican speakers. Either way, I consciously try to avoid speaking English that is spiked with sports metaphors and idioms that would baffle a non-American. I try to avoid phrases like "cover your bases," "right out of the chute," "throw you for a loop," and "throw him under the bus" (apparently we throw things a lot). It's possible that no one in the U.S. even says those things any more. Have I been gone too long to keep up with idioms, much less the latest slang? Maybe I'm like an early colonist who still keeps up with what was in style the day I left the mainland. Pretty soon I will pull out my hoop skirts.

There is a lot of British English spoken at the International School, and even though I don't speak it much I can understand a lot.  If something bad happens that may or may not be your fault, it's unlucky. If everything is set and ready to go, it's sorted. I still am confused when one of our English or Aussie friends greets me in the morning with a "you all right?". As an American, I assume that I look tired, upset, or otherwise bad and he says this because he's concerned about me. It's actually a way of saying "how are you doing?".

No matter how long we live here, I won't develop a German accent (I can't even really speak German with a German accent). My language does, however, risk becoming the sort of vanilla variety of English of someone that could be from anywhere. Or, it could become slowly corrupted by other languages, which is what happened some of our expat friends who have been here a long time. Our friend Andy who used to live in France ends a lot of sentences with the word No, as in "it's cold outside, no?". Tom in Hamburg lets German seep in by saying "yeah, good" much like his wife says "ja, gut," and "no stress" instead of "kein Stress." 

The best remedy for this problem? How about a month back in the Midwest? Yes, I'll take it! We leave July 8th. And once I start talking with Americans again, the rest will be a piece of cake... unless I am way off base.

Hanomag

In Hannover's hip and edgy neighborhood of Linden, among the dive bars and the Spanish restaurants and the apartment buildings where more people speak Turkish than German, is the old Hanomag factory. It's an enormous building, and a big part of the city's history. Hanomag began building steam locomotives in Linden in the mid-1800s. The company later added trucks, tractors, and other farm machinery to their production lines, and in the 1920's, started to build cars.



The automobile soon became Hanomag's most important item, and by 1931 the company had built its last locomotive. As Germany's second largest car manufacturer (behind Opel), Hanomag made some pretty cute little cars in the early 30s:


Then World War II came, and Hanomag switched to producing not-so-cute vehicles for the German military. I don't think the Nazis were into cuteness.
 They made engines, an army-style tractor, and troop carriers. They also made ammunition and anti-aircraft guns, right there in Linden, a little working class suburb of Hannover. As you might imagine, this made Hanomag a target for Allied bombs. If you add in Continental making tires, a metal works factory nearby, and the city being a pretty important railway junction for the region, Hannover looks like a big red bull's eye. (Some of this war-time production was done by forced labor... once I learn about it I will make sure to tell you more). While 90% of town was destroyed by 1945, some key buildings remain. The Hanomag factory is one of them.

Maybe the early Hanomag workers looked like this

After the war, Hanomag went back to making tractors. Today, Hanomag is part of Komatsu, the world's second largest manufacturer of construction equipment. Komatsu still uses much of the original factory building, but it also houses a big bike shop and OBI, a hardware megastore that would remind you Americans of Home Depot. Home Depot is not hip or edgy, but it's handy when you need to paint your living room. It's also way cooler when housed in an early 1900s factory building with a statue of an idealized worker guy holding a sledgehammer outside.

Flohmarkt

Yesterday we went to the flea market, or the Flohmarkt if you are speaking German. The flea market is on the edge of the old part of Hannover, on either side of the Leine River, just beyond where the city walls used to be. It's sort of an antique market, meaning that people don't just sell junk, they sell old junk. It's a fun place to wander around on a Saturday.

There are a lot of dishes, record albums, old books, costume jewelry and blenders that may still work. There photo above is of a stand that sells only American license plates.

Every sort of old knick knack you could ever want was for sale on this table. There were even some you'd never want, like these black-face figurines. This kind of stuff is not considered offensive in Germany.

Our big find of the day was a big framed, hand-drawn map of Hannover in 1815ish. The woman who sold it to us said it was hanging on her mother's wall for the last 40 years. It is now on ours. The city walls and the river are easy to spot. Maybe there was even a Flohmarkt on that same spot 200 years ago, where they sold really old junk.

Zimmerleute

About a month ago, on my way to German class, I saw two young men waiting at a stop light. I took a good look at them, not to see whether they were attractive (though that's something I would usually do), but because they were dressed strangely. They wore black bell bottom pants, black vests and jackets and top hats, and they each held a few small cloth bags and a walking stick. These were not confused hippies on their way to a formal dinner. They were Zimmerleute.

Zimmerleute are journeymen craftsmen. They are carpenters, masons, plumbers, or tile makers, and they are really on a journey, following a tradition established by medieval guilds. They go on a working pilgrimage for three years and one day, leaving with exactly 5 euros in their pockets and plans to travel around, doing small jobs in exchange for lodging, food and a little spending money. Zimmerleute must be younger than 30, single, childless, and have no criminal record. They cannot go within 60km of their hometowns, cannot have a vehicle, and using public transit is frowned upon.  They have only what they can carry and depend on strangers for assistance - no cell phones, no laptops, no GPS. Their costume is not only traditional, but has a purpose: it makes them easy to recognize and they command more respect than your average hitchhiker.  The Zimmerleute must return home with only 5 euros in their pockets, having learned from their experiences and ready to become master craftsmen.

There are not a lot of Zimmerleute around; most apprentices decide not to take the three year journey. The only reason I suspected I had seen some is that our friends Kaska and Thorsten picked up a pair of Zimmerleute at a gas station just after Christmas. The bell-bottomed guys were headed to Hannover, and were happy to squeeze in among the luggage and Christmas gifts in the back seat. One was nearly finished with his journey, which had brought him all over Europe and a few places in Africa. After a a quick conversation, they promptly fell asleep for the rest of the ride.

It seems funny that in a place where strangers generally don't talk to each other, Zimmerleute would be so dependent on the generosity of those they meet. Germans do, however, have a respect for their history and tradition, and seem to like these guys. Apparently it's still possible to travel around with no money and find somewhere to wash your underwear or check your email once in a while.

So what were these two doing in central Hannover, looking a little out of place next to the scuba dive shop and the lighting store? I didn't have time to ask, and since I was on my bike I could not offer to take them anywhere. Maybe they found a hippie to let them sleep over in exchange for some plumbing work and fashion advice.