Eisenach and the black donkey

The last stop on our tour of Thüringen was Eisenach. It's a small town that is famous for being the birthplace of Johann Sebastian Bach and the site of the Wartburg Castle (if you have ever heard of Wartburg College in Iowa, it's named after this castle). Wartburg is the place where Martin Luther lived while he translated the New Testament into German.

Eisenach's streets and houses are picturesque. Its market square is spotless, its Rathaus is pink. But the most memorable place we went was a little restaurant - literally a mom and pop establishment. Mom was up front, waiting tables and pouring beers. Pop was in the kitchen, pounding relentlessly on the schnitzel and frying up potatoes. The walls were sponge-painted (in early 90s style) bright yellow. There were ceramic animal figurines on the shelves and a fake tree in the corner, reaching from floor to ceiling with a round table built around the trunk. Just when we thought it couldn't get any better, we saw that there was a Kegelbahn too.
Kegeln is a sport that looks like bowling, but the pins are skinny and there are only nine of them. So we were hanging out at the small town bowling alley. It could have been league night. We had to wait for our table because a jolly group of retirees finished eating before their weekly round. Mom was apologetic.

It was ladies night at the Kegelbahn restaurant, and a group of bitter-looking women, in comfortable shoes and too much eye shadow, ate at the tree trunk table in between their smoke breaks. Pop's schnitzel was delicious, and the Eisenacher beers cost less than 2 euros each. Mom made sure we had enough of everything.

There are no places like this in Hannover, but I wish there were. They got chased out by ethnic restaurants and wine bar bistros. German readers, if you know of any schnitzel-pounding mom and pop restaurants, please let me know.

At the Kegelbahn restaurant, we learned about the donkeys. The Eisenacher Schwarzbier beer mats on our table had a picture of a black donkey named Anja and a girl named Jessica. It's called the Eisenacher Schwarzer Esel, the black donkey beer. Even though the donkey is sure to catch your eye, he isn't only a marketing tactic.

I got to meet Anja as we hiked to Wartburg Castle the next morning.

Even for someone who lives in a 5th floor walk up, the climb to the castle had me sweating. Halfway up we passed the donkey station. Why huff and puff your way to the castle when you can ride a donkey? It sounded appealing but the stable was empty. The donkeys were having their leisurely breakfast (probably bread, cheese and wurst) and wouldn't get to work until 10. By the time we walked down the hill, the donkeys had punched in and were ready to go.

Wartburg Castle

Me at the donkey station

Jessica from the beer mat is a former Hopfkoenigin, the hops queen. Apparently they are looking for this year's queen. I am not sure what's required, but love of donkeys and beer would be a good start, and looking good in a dirndl, of course. If you're interested in applying, I'd recommend talking to mom and pop about it first. They'll take care of you.

Buchenwald

I don't have any experience that I can compare with visiting a concentration camp. It's not like a battlefield (where there were winners) or a memorial (which is abstract), a funeral (which is personal), or a cemetery (which is peaceful).

Outside the town of Weimar is Buchenwald concentration camp. Just this weekend was the 70th anniversary of Buchenwald's liberation by U.S. soldiers in 1945. Three American veterans who were part of the effort showed up, all in their 90s, along with 80 former prisoners.

This was my second visit to a concentration camp. The other one I saw is Bergen-Belsen, located closer to Hannover. I went there on a school field trip a few years ago. While Bergen-Belsen has an excellent museum and a few bits of the camp buildings, it mostly was demolished shortly after the war's end. Buchenwald, however, has several buildings still intact. And it's huge. Over 20,000 people were imprisoned there when it was liberated, and 56,000 died there during its eight years of operation.

And in a weird sort of revenge, the camp was used by the Soviets from 1945-49 as a prison for anti-Stalinists and members of the Nazi party. Over 7,000 Germans died there during that time.

Guard tower

The fence - several layers of spikes and barbed wire, some electrified

The buildings we could visit included the disinfection building, the storehouse where all the prisoners belongings were kept, the towers where guards kept watch, the posts that held electrified barbed wire, the crematorium complete with ovens and hooks. The rest of the place you could envision from the photos, the foundations and place markers. There were even strange, perverse places - a zoo for SS officers and their families, a brothel for inmates, a falcon yard open to the public.

Storehouse

Memorial to gypsies killed at Buchenwald

It's a heavy experience to visit a place where such organized horrors occured. I think I'm done.

I've been to the Holocaust museum in Washington DC, to the Holocaust memorial in Berlin, to the two concentration camps... and each experience was a little more real. Of course it's important to remember. It's important to understand what happened and know that genocides continue.
But I don't need to visit any more camps. I'd rather remember in a way that I cannot touch or walk across.

Erfurt

Just as our cabin fever broke over Easter weekend, Brian and I got ready for a train trip east to the state of Thüringen.

We started in Erfurt, which we chose almost at random. Erfurt is old, pretty, not too far away. This is one of the luxuries of living in Europe - to hop on a train and find unique places, historical places, strange places in the same amount of time it would take to drive through Chicago in rush hour traffic.

Erfurt is a city of steeples. They point strong and straight to heaven, in case you'd forgotten that's where you should be looking. Beneath the steeples are old houses and bridges, and tucked in at a modest height is the oldest synagogue in Europe. Built in 1100, it escaped destruction over centuries. So did Erfurt - it stayed intact during World War 2.

This is the medieval synagogue

The most striking steeples are up on a hill. St. Mary's Cathedral and the Church of St. Severus stand side by side at the top of a dramatic staircase. I don't know why they were built next to each other, but it looks very impressive. At the foot of the cathedral hill, Erfurt's Frühlingsfest carnival was running, with its distant sounds of music and the rhythmic screams of people on rides.

Cathedral and St Severus

During our little trip through Thüringen, we were on the Martin Luther trail. He studied at the university in Erfurt and lived as a monk in the town monastery. At a biergarten by the river, a sign claims he once drank beer there too. You can see how Luther might have objected to the gold and gradeur of the two "bad-ass churches" up on the hill. Brian actually came up with that phrase, but I wish I had.

Mixed in with the medieval buildings are modern ones, and playgrounds and kebab stands and mobile phone shops. They are reminders that Erfurt is still a living, working city. It's easy to forget that this was part of East Germany, since you have to look pretty hard to find the same crumbling houses or abandoned warehouses we saw in Wittenberge.

We got to most of the sights in Erfurt, but unfortunately did not make it to the mustard museum. We did have some mustard, and a sausage, at the biergarten beneath the cathedral. It was museum-worthy mustard. You could even call it bad-ass.

Frohe Ostern

Easter in Hannover has a smell. It's not the smell of chocolate or a roast in the oven.
It smells like a campfire.
This is because, the night before Easter, there are huge bonfires all over the city. Big piles of brush and old Christmas trees throw flames into the sky.

Most German Easter traditions immigrated to the U.S. along with our ancestors: decorating eggs, hanging eggs from a tree, the easter bunny, Easter baskets, etc. What didn't make it across the ocean (as far as I know) is the slightly pagan ritual of burning stuff on Holy Saturday.

Here's the history of the bonfire tradition, according to Deutsche Welle:

The bonfire is an old pagan ritual and in the past peasants used to watch the fire carefully because superstition said the fields would be fruitful and the households protected from sickness as far as the light from the fire reached. Today the event is mainly a social gathering and an excuse for the Germans to get together and celebrate over a beer.

Brian and I did not go to the bonfire. We did go to German Mass on Easter. Often, we go to the Spanish language Mass on Sunday evenings. It always felt a little more familiar. But now Brian tells me he is learning more German at church than anywhere else. He reads the words to the old hymns during Mass and figures out all sorts of new vocabulary. I am a little worried that he might learn too much and start speaking German like someon. Instead of saying 'hi, how are you?' he might come up with a 'good morrow, dear sir, how dost thou?'

At German Easter Mass, you wouldn't have known it was the biggest religious holiday of the year. The pews were about half full. The people wore jeans. Most kept their coats on. The songs were solemn. Mass lasted precisely 58 minutes.

But what do you expect, my husband reminded me, in the heartland of the Reformation? This is the part of the world where drama and ceremony and flash caused a lot of trouble for the Catholics. Of course they are subdued. Of course they won't splash holy water or wear Easter dresses.

Even though the Catholics in Hannover don't make a big production for Easter, the whole weekend is an event. Good Friday, Easter Sunday and Easter Monday are all public holidays. Everything is closed. Everyone has the day off. The Easter bunny (he's actually a hare here) is hanging around. The Easter eggs are painted and hanging from branches. Or they were, until the branches got tossed into the bonfire.

So Frohe Ostern to you all.

Stay-cation

It's spring break time in Germany, and we have two weeks off. This year, Brian and I decided to do something out of the ordinary - nothing. We decided not to go anywhere. We wanted a stay-cation. This all sounded great. I had visions of long bike rides and projects around the house, maybe some day trips outside of Hannover, sunning myself on the balcony, lounging by the lake.

What have we gotten? Rain, wind, hail, snow. Repeat. Mix them all together and repeat hourly for about six days, and you have a Hannover spring break stay-cation.

By day 2, we were already checking out last minute flight deals. But no, we resolved to stick it out a little while longer. We looked hopefully at the forecast. We told ourselves to relax and get to those indoor projects and sleep in.

On day 4 the wind gusts were so strong they almost blew me off my bike. Fatefully, coupons for train travel arrived in the mail.

By day 5 the hail continued and pelted us on our way back from the hardware store. Brian and I admitted to each other that we suck at stay-cation. So during happy hour around the corner, we made a list of possible destinations for next week. We will travel somewhere for a couple of days. I guess staying put is harder than it seemed.