the mysterious pickle

As I mentioned in my last post, Germans are extremely enthusiastic about the Christmas traditions, and many of them have migrated to America. One that I'd heard of years ago and continues to crop up regularly is that of the Christmas tree pickle. These things are readily available in stores and online in the US, described as this charming German tradition. The story goes that this glass pickle is hidden somewhere on the tree, and the first child to find it gets a bonus gift.

Naturally, I mentioned this to my German hosts here, whereupon they all looked at me with total confusion. I described the story, the ornament, the rules, and that it's generally known in America to be something that they were supposed to be doing every year over here. None of them had heard of it.

Later that day, we were walking the streets of Nürnberg when we passed a shop window displaying ornaments. There, in the center of the window was a glass pickle. Proof it exists! As we wandered the Christmas market, I spotted a stand stocked with every possible type of blown glass ornament, including all kinds of vegetables (would you care for a glass garlic bulb on your tree?). They had pickles of several sizes, so S leaned into the stall's proprietor and asked what the deal was. She explained that it was an upper Franconian tradition, and since we here are some 100km away from that region, perhaps it had just not migrated far enough.

Today we had some visitors from further north, so I asked them about it too, and they also had never heard of it. A little research on the internet even mentions a connection to a town in the region where they're from and still, no recognition of the pickle story. I also found a comprehensively researched article that seems to indicate that it's a total fabrication, milking the enchantment Americans seem to have with Germany at this time of year.

Whatever the truth is behind the pickle tale, it's made for a bizarre yet entertaining theme for the holiday.

german holidays

Germans know how to do Christmas properly, from the gluhwein and the markets to the vast and ancient churches that host vesper services. The markets are a unique experience that no American replica I've visited has been able to reproduce faithfully. To start with, I've had the happy fortune to be able to visit one of the oldest and most famous of all the German markets, a festivity that consumes the whole center of the old city and spreads filaments in all directions. It's bursting with inventive handcrafts, magical gifts, the usual straw-star ornament stalls, and of course, anchoring the whole experience, acres of stalls hawking any type of spiced or chocolate-coated cookie or confection you could imagine- lebkuchen, stollen, chocolate-covered fruit, waffles topped with any one of six options, sausages, corn-on-the-cob, candied almonds, and of course, the gluhwein. It's not just wine here though- it's blueberry flavored, it's cherry flavor, it's even egg-liquor flavored. The best part is that it's not served in some thin paper cup that you toss when you're done, but in a proper china mug that you can keep or return for a refund. It's quite cozy to stand among friends and family in the chill, damp air (seems like this is how it always is here in December), the steaming mug in hand, watching the sparkle and bustle whir by on all sides. Even the most seasoned locals (my generous hosts included) appear to enjoy it as much as the newbies like me.

Once the market is closed, it's time for the church experiences. We had the choice of a handful of impressively majestic Medieval churches, but chose one of the most ancient for this evening. Winter services in Europe usually means wearing every stitch of clothing you came with since even the lucky ones with the heated seats will find it woefully inadequate warmth for the 2 hours among the anciently frigid stones that make up these Gothic buildings. The service was only an hour long but the good seats all started going about an hour before, so this evening, those arriving 10 minutes prior either stood or came equipped with their own deck chairs.

The service itself involved a lot of singing of a lot of songs I'd never heard before, even with my relatively extensive carol repertoire. Accompanied by an appropriately massive organ and a passel of trumpets playing in some hidden clerestory level, the experience was fittingly awesome for an evening such as this. As with last year though, my most favorite part was as everyone streamed out the great entrance doors to the joyously chaotic tune of church bells throughout the city ringing through the cobbled streets. Families in all directions were hugging and kissing and handshaking and throwing Christmas greetings to each other as they dispersed through the streets, wet with a sheen of fog, off to dinner and cozy evenings by candlelit trees.

accidental delights

Two weeks in Germany seems like a rather fat chunk of time but it ended up being only just enough to wish that there'd been more time to explore. Along our trek from north (my beloved Weimar) to south (Oberstdorf), from east (Frieburg) to west (Görlitz), we happened upon quite a few accidental delights in our relatively loose plan.

One such happenstance occurred as we were making our way east from Weimar and felt the need to stop for lunch. A winding road labeled the Saxon Wine Street caught my eye in our six euro map book, so we exited just before Dresden and headed north to the street that we almost missed at first glance. It ended up being a narrow road that followed the Elbe's valley, stacked on the opposite side with red granite cliffs. Behind nearly every house on the street was a tiny cluster of grape vines, and the few restaurants along the way promised river trout and local wines.

S soon spotted a sign for Schloss Proschwitz's winery, and since the combination of castles plus wine was irresistable, we followed the arrow up a steep road that ended at the top of the red granite cliff. There, we missed the unlabeled winery building altogether and ended up in the church yard at our first attempt, but soon had righted things and were in the sunny stone courtyard, surrounded by freshly painted yellow walls. Inside the wine shop, we learned that they didn't serve lunch at the restaurant there but the proprietor happily pointed us back down the hill to where a former ferry-landinghouse served up a good meal.

Back down the hill we found a grand old building with a sunny terrace looking over the Elbe and a pasture full of cows. We lunched there, accompanied by frosty glasses of local riesling (not normally my favorite but this was dry and delightful) while a paddleboat flapped by, and a majestically furry cat sought shade in the cool soil of a potted tree. Then, since it's a shame to go anywhere called a wine road without actually purchasing some wine, back up to the winery on the hill. There we were shown the paces of the locale, and when it turned out they had a guesthouse with a free room we decided that reaching the Polish border that day was really not all so pressing. Why not stay here in a room named after one of the grape varieties grown there, a princess fairy-tale of a room, complete with half-timbered ceilings, curly iron bedstead, a wall of windows overlooking the courtyard, and cheerful striped curtains?

After a pause that refreshed, we climbed back into our American rental hampstermobile and descended to the river valley again, where we found a tiny ferry chuffing cars across, and buildings marked with the high water levels from the flooding some years ago. Then, on to Meissen, with its tempting medieval skyline. We climbed up the hill to the castle, a white flourish of fantasy with a walkway encircling the base, then snuck up a staircase to admire the soot-stained twin towers of the cathedral inside. A winding road descended from the castle into the old town below, past crenellated brick house-tops as well as forlorn forgotten remainders of the GDR era.

We stopped to try the Meissner fummel, famous more for the story than the flavor, I'd venture. History goes that this yeast-bubble of a pastry was invented due to an 18th century messenger that was rather too fond of the local booze and kept tipping off his horse and failing to deliver things on time. So an inventive baker came up with this fragile pastry, which the messenger was required to deliver intact along with the messages, a feat that was only possible if he remained sober enough to cling to his horse. Nice story but as a flavor it was like eating sourdough bread crust without all the chewy yum inside.

We returned to the car along the riverbank, and back at the winery we tried out the restaurant on the first floor of the building. I'd already been told that Germany specialised more in the white wines, but the dornfelder that we sampled there that night was unforgettable. Of course it could have been the pinkly descending dusk, the unexpected delights of finding such a charming (and inexpensive!) guesthouse, the perfect scale of Meissen, or the foamy cucumber soup with smoked trout we had as an appetizer. Whatever it was, the evening was divine, made even more delightful by the short "commute" back to the fluffy crispness of bed upstairs.

The next morning we went down to the cheerful breakfast room where our shy hostess had set our table with crested china and a heavy silver coffee service. A basket of fresh rolls stood at one side of the table, curls of local ham and a variety of cheese at the other side, along with grown-up grape juice (this was not Welch's by any means) and a locally produced wine jelly. We ate ourselves silly before getting directions to the Schloss itself, a frilly yellow marvel set among manicured grounds and surrounded by grapes.

That day's delights continued on, with more unexpected finds as we explored other small roads. We fell upon the hunt castle at Moritzburg, complete with a chinoiserie mini-castle surrounded by peacock breeding grounds, and punctuated by a lighthouse folly (and strangely, protected the the same huntsman statues as we'd found in a secluded corner of the Schloss Proschwitz grounds), and then as we penetrated further into the former GDR territories, the abandoned leftovers of decades of brown coal mining and neglected buildings. We visited a town now in two different countries, separated by a river that had been bridgeless during the GDR times, and ended the day in another confection of an overnight, the Cloister Marienthal.

This is but a sample of the awesome, leaving me resolved that next time the trip should be even longer, leaving more time to explore these eastern parts. It's not the easy-to-love charm of Bavaria, but the contrast between the abandoned remnants of the GDR, the incredible Baroque castles that survived all the impossibility, the lack of tourist gloss, and the interesting flavors of Silesian cuisine and Proschwitz wines have me definitely ready to go again.

window on Germany

so I just spent some of the hottest weeks of the year in Germany, where I learned the value of summer dresses, cold radler, and shade.

I already knew that Germans aren't as interested in air conditioning as we Americans are, which is fine when you're in a castle that breathes ancient cool from its stones, or a marvel of carefully engineered efficiency. The rest of the time, things can be a bit stuffy, and I had to wonder why I never saw a single fan anywhere. When I was a kid, summertime meant sleeping to the lullaby of the box window fan. The size of half the window, these babies went on the windowsill and sucked that marvellously cool night air into the bedroom. Cheaper than air conditioning and much more comfortable than going without breezes. Why haven't the Germans figured this one out?

The second and much more distressing absence was that of window screens, which I only saw on a single window in a single guesthouse during the entire trip. Unlike Iceland, Germany breeds plenty of mosquitoes who do the exact same nocturnal ballet as they do in Massachusetts. They're also just as attracted by the light, so apparently, the proper way to handle this is to diligently and carefully close all open windows at dusk and keep them closed until you go to bed. Once it's dark, they're safe to open.

We failed to do this one night, and the result was mosquito air raids all night. Since it was stuffy in the room (see the first point here) and since Europeans don't believe in sheets, just duvets (see previous conversations here), staying totally covered up in a mini-tent of blanket protection was a non-option. The next morning, fat mosquitoes, hungover from their blood-fest, festooned the walls. Weeks later I'm still finding battle scars on my legs from where I was munched on.

This is the country that has made a name for itself by coming up with the best and brightest in modern engineering, and they can't figure out a window screen? Is there nobody that finds it annoying to sit in a stuffily closed room as they eat dinner or read before bed, or dislikes the threat of being an insect supper should they wish for some fresh air?

In almost every other respect, I've been impressed by what I've seen in Germany. They've got a spectacular train and motorway system and clever features abound in their cities and homes, so I hope someday I will understand how these two simple, yet essential features of summer comfort seem to have gone missing there.

summer nights

It's a forgotten delight that I have been absorbing as best I can while here in Germany, after having not seen a properly dark night during all these summertime months in Iceland. The days here are warm and moist but the evenings, after darkness falls, are positively magical. The first evening here, S and I took the long way through the forest and alongside the fields to the small Franconian village nearby. We walked at dusk, interrupting few along the way- a rabbit or two, some kids hard at work on some mini-excavation project. Mostly it was just us and the scents and sounds of the dusk.

On our return route, we stopped by an inn with a friendly-looking terrace, and there we sat beneath a chestnut tree for a wheat beer. There was no music there, just the nearly whispered conversations from the three other tables, and some rattle from the neighboring cowshed. Above us, the stars filled in the sky, and we settled into vacation feeling as our glasses emptied. Finally, time to return, past the cow barn where a few curious ones snuffled at my hand and gazed at me with their liquidy eyes. We followed the path back, by the trout breeding ponds, along the fields now clattering with crickets and overstuffed with wildflowers, ending beside the cornfield, ripening silently in the dewy summer dark.

the national hobby

I'm in Germany now, for my third-ever visit, and I'm still getting used to the special ways they do things here. For example, I am still marveling over the wonders of the German roadside food-stop.

Less than two hours after stepping off the plane the first afternoon here, we stopped at a standard sort of rest area off the autobahn where I found myself confounded by the selection, and dazzled by the brilliant sparkle of the immaculate glass and countertops. Of course, when in Germany, it's simple for me to choose what my first meal should be. It must be sausages. But then, what does one have WITH it? There's dumplings and potatoes and fries and a salad bar with all sorts of pickled and brined bits to put on top, and then there's beers and beers and beers (just off the highway, no less).

A few meandering trips through the vast food service area and we settled outside on the patio next to the water feature. Ladies and gentlemen, I remind you that this was a highwayside food stop, and yet we were sitting on a terrace flanked on one side by rosebushes and on the other side by a pond decorated with water plants and complete with its own mini-waterfall. Beyond the pond was a charming little castle-jungle gym for the kids, and the whole area was perfectly well-tended. The rose bushes were clipped, the pond scum-free. The only thing that possibly disturbed the moment was the enthusiastic bees that found radler far too interesting and had crowded inside my empty bottle.

For dessert and coffee, we retreated inside, where we sat at tables decorated with fresh bamboo shoots in vases, and where the chairs at the empty tables had all been perfectly aligned at a welcoming diagonal. This appears to be just your average German approach to highway travel. No Sbarro's, no Panda Express, no sticky menus on the tables. Amazing.

Of course, this kind of tidy takes a lot of work, and I'm coming to realize that the national hobby of Germans is the keeping-tidy-of-things. There's the car washing and polishing, the hedge trimming, the house painting and fence re-aligning. One must make sure the driveway is free of weeds and the trees don't get too tall. All in all, a lot of work but the end result from the perspective of a relaxed summer traveler is quite delightful. I'm relishing it tremendously.