Deirdre's Blog

(I expect to revise and add to this over the next few days or weeks so check back)

Shortly after I got here I took the USAREUR (US Army Europe) Hunting Course. It lasted six weeks and cost $150. That may sound like a bit but for Germans to get a hunting license they have to generally study for about a year sometimes longer and spend well over €1,000. Once I got my certificate that I’d completed the course, I had to by a minimum of €1,000,000 insurance and then go to my Landratsamt in Haßurt and get my license. The license cost me €150 for three years. Then I had the right to go and purchase rifles and pistols and to get prior approval to buy up to two handguns. I have purchased a nice Rottweil Dopplebockflinte (over-under shotgun). Bowhunting is not allowed in Germany as it is considered cruel (but then they require you to club your fish over the head before you pull out the hooks, but that’s another story).

Hunting in Germany is a bit different than in the States. First of all, as you would expect by so much training, you have to learn a lot more about the animals. It’s as if at the end of the hunter’s safety course they gave you not just a written test but a shooting test and a oral exam in which imagine you were presented with a mounted young female grouse and asked, “is it a ruffed grouse or a pine grouse?” Or asked to describe the differences between the male whitetail and the female assuming that they are out of antler and you can’t see what they’ve got between their legs. We had to be able to tell the difference between Steinmarder (Stone Martens) and Baummarder (Pine or, literally, Tree Martens) for example and the rehwild (roe deer) stands about 3 feet tall on a good day and you hunt the males from the first of May to the end of January! Schwarzwild (wild boar) are hunted at varying times of year depending on the age and gender and woe to you if you shoot a female out of season. Of course, you probably won’t lose your weapon and get a hefty fine because there aren’t really any game wardens, not as we know them, but you might lose respect with other hunters which here might mean that you’d never hunt again!

That brings us to the most striking difference in hunting here. The hunting rights are leased over a period of many years and you don’t hunt on land unless the owner of the lease invites you to. You can buy a piece of land and not lease the rights (known as a Jagdrevier) but you’ll have to buy several hundred hectares in a country where most people’s houses actually touch (but land use planning is for another day). Every three years the owner (lessor really) of the Jagdrevier must negotiate with the farmers or foresters that work the land, sometimes they own the actual underlying land and sometimes they lease it as well (think feudalism). The negotiations center around how many rehwild (and rotwild (red deer) if the Revier has them) the Jäger will kill. Here’s the part that usually blows American’s minds: the Jäger wants this number to be low, the farmers would prefer the Jäger kill everything that moves. They don’t bother to negotiate over pigs because 1) they don’t have a territory, and 2) they are so destructive that the Jäger is expected not only to kill all he or she (in which case she’s a Jägerin) sees but to call all of his or her friends who have hunting licenses as well.

So, say you have an area of about 250 hectares of mostly fields. You may be required to kill, say, six rehbok (bucks) and five rehgeiss (does). You will actually have a three year plan and you can carry forward or backward if necessary. In other words, the plan would be for 18 rehbok over 3 years and you would be expected to divide it up roughly evenly but if you shot 7 the first year you could get away with only shooting 5 the next. At the end of the three years you would settle up with the farmers and if you hadn’t shot enough you’d owe them money for the damage to their crops and if you were lousy enough they could ask a county official to cancel the whole lease and lease the Revier to someone who could hunt. At the same time you’d negotiate the next three years and the farmers would argue that there was lots of damage to their crops and you’d bring all your vast knowledge of wildlife to bear and explain how it was really the häse (hares) that were doing the damage and you couldn’t possibly be expected to kill as many deer as before because you’d just about cleaned them out.

Then there’s the meat. Hmm, how do I explain this? Well, if you own a Revier, you have the right to all the meat from all the wild animals that die within your Revier and that includes the right to sell it; actually you’d better sell it to raise money to pay for the Revier (they ain’t cheap) and to pay for any damage you have to pay for. So, if you don’t own a Revier, and you go hunting on someone’s land, you have the right to keep the heart, liver, lungs, kidneys – that’s about it, those are known as the Jagdrecht (Hunter’s right) and you don’t pay for them. All the rest you pay for if you want it or you put it in the Revier owner’s meat cooler so he or she can sell it. On a Rehbok you generally get the trophy which means you get the head but nobody does full head mounts – instead you skin the head and clean the meat off then cut the top off and boil it and mount this top of the skull with antlers. Every year you are required to bring all of these from the past year to town to show them off at an annual festival. If you hunt boar you will be expected to buy the meat if you take the trophy. If you shoot a red deer you better be prepared to pay thousands of Euro for the trophy because you are going to pay for it. If you don’t want to do that either shoot a female or don’t hunt red deer (which are like Elk by the way).

There’s a lot of history to this stuff going back a thousand years or more, though it basically was all made up by Herman Göring in the 30s.

The Easter Bunny is alive and well in Franconia.   It is known as die Osterhäse (the Easter hare) or das Osterhäsla (the little Easter hare).  That second word is a peculiar Franconian word not standard German, but that’s another story.  He brings eggs, lots of eggs.  Eggs are painted and hung from trees around here in preparation.  They also have the town fountain or spring known as die Brunnen which at this time of year are decorated with evergreen bows an in gigantic and complex wreathes and adorned with eggs (sometimes plastic ones but sometimes with hundreds of real eggs, blown and painted by school children) and are then known as die Osterbrunnen, I will include pictures here.  The stores sell the usual fair but here there are Konditorei which sell schokoladehäse (chocolate hares) weighing over 700 grams (nearly 2 pounds) and standing about 2 feet tall! (and costing €40).

The connection between springs, bringing life giving water, and eggs and rabbits/hares both being symbols of fertility, being celebrated in the springtime is obvious.  It even seems reasonable, at least over a few beers, within the context of an ancient myth that the hares would conflate with the eggs and would be delivering them.  When this gets mixed with Christian symbology too though, it gets a bit too confusing.  Some of the wreath like structures on the Osterbrunnen are designed like crowns or crosses and on Palmsamstag (yes, that would be Palm Saturday, the day before Palm Sunday) the Osterbrunnen in Trabelsdorf had branches of fir on the ground in a path.  I saw no palm leaves anywhere.

I went to Schlenkerla on Thursday evening, as I do nearly every Thursday evening, and sat with a group of German friends.  I tried to describe the branches on the ground, which were either Fichte (Spruce) or Tannen (Fir), most likely the former as the latter is rare in this area.  Unfortunately I pronounced the former “fikte” when it should have been nearer to but not quite “fishte”, they were quite confused how there could be pieces of this all over the ground in a path as the word as I pronounced it sounded to them much more like the verb ficke, which means “to have sex” – but not quite so genteel.  Of course, that has more to do with springs, eggs, rabbits, and other fertility symbols than it does with palm branches on a road in Jerusalem, but who knows, maybe this too really hearkens back to an ancient religion. 😉

Yesterday the restaurants, what were open, served no meat, though you certainly could still get beer.  The church bells did not sound but at somewhere around 0530 yesterday and today some little girls walked around making noise on some very loud wooden things known as die Ratsche (ratchets) and chanting something.  Whoever thought up this idea was not very bright and ought to be flogged.  To have children running around in the streets making very loud noises, even having machines to make them, before 6 in the morning on a Saturday is insane.

About 2 months since my last substantive post, I have a lot to catch up on.  We have only had internet at home for about a week now.  Jessica and the boys got here on the 9th of February after a very long journey.  They got a ride to Portland from David then took a bus to Boston, then Aer Lingus to Dublin changed planes and flew to Frankfurt, then they took the train to Würzburg and on to Bamberg.  Their my friend Gary helped me pick them up as I don’t have enough seats in my little 325i.  We’re still working on the seating problem.  Jessica should write her own entry on how the trip went.  Everyone is settling in well; Lloyd prefers it here and wants to stay, Sam wants to know when we’re going home.  William has already helped me understand what Germans are saying.  Our neighbors invited us over the other evening and we visited late into the night then they took William to see Monsters vs. Aliens (in German of course) on Saturday.  We have four bedrooms in this house and we don’t use them all, so people are welcome to come visit!

(removed personal contact info, e-mail me if you want it)

I’ll post more, with pics, soon!

Since I moved from a hotel to a house, I no longer have internet access outside of the office.  I can’t access Facebook at all (the Army blocks “social networking” sites) and I can’t get to my blog except before and after duty or maybe during lunch (well, I can, but I shan’t).  If anyone is trying to reach me, e-mail me.  I do see posts to Facebook as I get an e-mail telling me about them, but I can’t reply unless I have your e-mail address on this computer, which is pretty unlikely unless you’ve already heard from me.  I do have a phone at my house with a plan that includes free calling to the States (it actually costs 19 Euro cent per minute for Jessica to call my cell phone so it’s infinitely cheaper for her to call you).  Jessica has no access to e-mail at all.  We will be getting internet in a few weeks hopefully.

12.4.2009 Update: We’ve had internet at home for a week or two now and Jessica now has access to her e-mail (when she has time to check it, which isn’t that often).

I went to the hotel’s restaurant tonight.  I said “yes” to something the waitress asked and she asked me if I wanted an English menu, at first I declined and got the German menu.  I knew what I wanted anyway.  I ordered Bamberger Teller (Bamberger’s Plate – sort of a sampler of local fare) and a Fässla lagerbier (a youngster brewery, having been around since only about 1649 – Schlenkerla, on the other hand, has been around since at least 1405 – practically “industrial”).   The plate came with four meats on top of some sauerkraut and a bowl of pan fries.  I decided to ask for the menu back and the English one besides so I could work out what was what and maybe learn the German for some of these.  The meats were: Schweinelendchen (pork tenderloin), Stadtwurst (which the menu translated “Town Sausage” and looked and tasted somewhat but not entirely like a Kielbasa sold in stores back home), rostbratwürstchen (which someone apparently translated online because they got “little rust grilled sausage” – it’s a grilled bratwurst – or more literally “a small grilled grilling sausage” – as bratwurst means simply a sausage made for grilling or frying), and a piece of Rauchfleisch (they translated this bacon, it is literally “smoked meat” but it was in fact bacon though a bit thicker than we normally have it cut – it was nearly 3/8 of an inch thick!).  I had to stop myself from laughing though when I read the translation of sauerkraut – they called it “sour crout” (later looking this up on line I found they aren’t the only ones), I told the waitress “‘sour crout’ isn’t a word” and she was surprised but not particularly concerned as it turned out she was Ukrainian (I noticed her accent sounded not quite German and I wondered if she might be Russian – in fact Russian is her first language so my accent radar is dead on!).  The potatoes were called bratkartoffeln (simply “fried potatoes”).

Today was chilly but bright.  It’s -3°C now but was probably up between 5 and 10 earlier today.  I signed for the house and got the keys, I don’t really move in though until Thursday.

I have had questions about the weather.  Today is one of the coldest days since I arrived.  There was one day last week when it snowed fairly heavy for awhile but it all went away.  A few flakes now and then.  Most days it has been sunny and rather mild for the time of year.  Before I got here it was much colder I understand; but I also understand this is one of the coldest years in recent memory for this area.  I have added the local weather to the sidebar on the right and I am integrating weather into my posts.  But I am not sure whether it will change after the fact or remain fixed.  In case it changes, today’s weather is 0°C overcast with a slight breeze.

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(Sorry, I had to disable the weather plug-in as it was causing an error in the display of my blog.  I’ll try to mention the weather when I post – 2009.2.3)

Yesterday one of the ladies at the Hotel, Nina, went with me to look at a car.  I had no idea how to get there and the man did not speak English.  It was very gracious of the hotel to offer her help.  They have been very helpful and have offered to call about cars and apartments for me.  Anyway, we rode bicycles, which is scary enough by myself but following a German it can be terrifying.  Bicycles are “legal traffic” that is to say they are treated just like cars as far as the right of way goes, and they take this very seriously, seeing a bicycle in the left turn lane at a major intersection is not uncommon; and for the rider to be an elderly person or child is not surprising.  Pedestrians don’t have the right of way, except in marked crosswalks and when there are crossing lights.  On the way back Nina and I rode through the pedestrian zone in town and then I saw her jump off her bike.  She said that she usually would ride right through but she saw the Polizei (it’s a pedestrian zone vehicles, you aren’t allowed to ride a bicycle).  She saw a group of five teenagers crossing the street and she said that if the Polizei saw them he could give them each a ticket for 60 or 70 € for crossing illegally.  That’s about $80-90 right now but only because the dollar is up lately, would have been well over a hundred not long ago.

I had noticed that when I got to an intersection and there were no cars coming but the light was red, people generally stayed put.

Last night I went out to a small village to look at an old BMW 318i that a sergeant in my office had out there at a friend’s house.  It was not in good shape but quite cheap.  We had to jump it as it had been sitting since November and it was getting late.  After a while we went inside and when we got inside they said “It’s 10:00, you’re welcome to shut off the cars and come in, otherwise you can stay outside and deal with the Polizei yourselves”.  They said that after 10 is quiet time and the polizei will come if you make a lot of noise.  They said the same thing is true in the afternoon from 1 to 3 so children can take their naps!

It’s also illegal to leave your car running for very long (I think 4 minutes) while you’re not in it and I’ve heard that it’s illegal to leave a dog unattended for more than five hours.

Tonight I went out for some food and it’s Sontag so many places are closed already.  I decided to go with the old standby, Schlenkerla – I’ve been there five nights out of ten spent in Deutschland as of tonight.  The area on the left for the locals was open again, the walls had  been repainted I was told, and all the antlers had been replaced.  I like Schlenkerla because 1) it’s open late on Sontag und 2) ist nur ein bier so I don’t have to a) try to choose od b) try to figure out what the barmaid is saying  (yes they have a bock and a weissen but those are special orders and they end up opening a bottle and pouring it out for you – put that up against a real wooden keg with a brass tap and there’s nothing to choose and they know it).  “Ein bier bitte” takes care of everything at Schlenkerla and that’s the way it should be.  I had some bratwurst mit sauerkraut.

I was sitting for a few minutes when a couple came in and spoke to me, they wanted a seat I knew but I had no idea how to respond to them without acting like I didn’t know how to speak at all.  I finally brought myself to say “Ich verstehen nur ein bisschen Deutsch”, I got half way through the sentence and the woman completed it for me.  She must not have spoken any English though because she said “OK” and sat down and never spoke another word directly to me.  The man didn’t catch this as he was hanging up the coats.  Another man came in and sat down across from me and spoke to me.  Having practiced once, I was much quicker and the woman interjected as well, I thought I recognized this man and it turned out I was right, I had seen him last Sontag and he knew I was American.  A few minutes later the first man tried to ask me a question, so this was three in a row.  Anyway, it turned out the man from last weekend spoke English reasonably, so he and I talked quite a bit.  The couple were interested in visiting Thüringen and he was discussing this with them which he kept explaining to me. They have a different kind of Bratwurst in Thüringen among other things (there is also a cave system there where the V1 and V2 (that’s “Fau 1” and “Fau 2”) rockets were built during the “Second War”).

After a while a man came in wearing knickers and such, and I wonder if maybe he was a Jäger, I forgot to notice whether he wore a green pointed hat.  Then a few minutes later a younger man came in dressed in a mostly black costume including a tall hat and carrying a bundle over his shoulder, which I later noticed had a not at all modern hammer in it, and he had a staff in his hand.  He pounded the staff on the floor and yelled out and nobody looked at him and then he made some announcement.  I thought maybe he was crazy since everyone ignored him but then he started walking around and everyone gave him money.

The man across from me said that the man in the costume was studying a trade, in this case woodworking and after he has the basics down he must go on a journey outside of his home area.  He said this is a tradition that is only practiced in a few ancient crafts such as woodworking and baking.  The craftsman must leave his home and go on a journey and not enter within a certain distance of his home for several years.  This does several things, most importantly it prevents too many craftsman in one area competing and it ensures that craftsman learn new ideas from other areas.  These tradesmen who are journeying are called Geselle.  He said the Zeitung (newspaper – most likely “Fränkischer Tag” – i.e. the Franconian Daily) said a baker from the north of Germany is currently visiting Bamberg and he is learning the breads of Bamberg which are much different from the breads in the north.  When he has learned enough he will be allowed to stop journeying and return to his home to take over his father’s bakery as the new “meister”.  So it is with the woodworker, he will have to find work in Bamberg and it is traditional to give him some money to support him, just 0,50 € is plenty.  So, I gave the Gezelle “fünfzig Cent”.

(Everyone is “the man” or “the woman” because almost nobody introduces themselves, so unless I ask someone’s name, I have no idea what it is).

I went to a brew house (Brauerei Greifenklau i.e. “Griffon Claw Brewery”, founded in 1719) last night and talked to some guys at my table who spoke some English.  In conversation I asked them how to address the barmaid.  This approximate conversation followed (P&M = Peter & Manuel, D=Doug):

D: How do I address the barmaid?

P&M: Frau

D: What if she is a young woman?

P&M: Then mädchen

D (considering that mädchen is a girl, usually a little girl):  No, I mean one who is, say, 18 or 19

P&M:  Frau

D:  I thought Frau was for an older woman,  isn’t there another word for a young woman?

P&M: No, there is nothing in between, either a mädchen or a Frau.

D (cutting to the chase):  Well what is a Fräulein?

P&M:  Ha ha! we don’t use that word, that meant an unmarried woman, a virgin, long ago, but it hasn’t been used in a very long time.

D (astonished):  Really?  Not at all?

P&M:  Oh, you can say it to a nun.

D:  A young nun?

P&M:  Nooo, it doesn’t matter, any age, she can be 87, still she is Fräulein.

In a second bar we went to together (A tapas bar – Spanish style there are many of these around), I asked the barmaid, who spoke English quite well:

“No, that word hasn’t been used since before “the Second War” except maybe by Americans and people who are trying be funny” (I bet this means to make fun of Americans).

She went on to say that it was somewhat insulting because it means “little woman” (as in womanette, not small size).  She said she didn’t think it had been used since “the First War” and that people thought it was used in the 40s only because Americans used the word so much then.

Yesterday I went out for coffee in the late afternoon.  The coffee shop was easy to find, this is a European city after all.  The coffee menu took some work.  Coffee was listed in three sizes pott, tasse, and another size I don’t recall.  The waitress spoke some English and said that these were small, medium, and large, and that the pott was the medium (they were not listed in order it turned out).   The pott cost 2,60 € (I’ve found that the “€” actually goes at the end).  I looked to see if they had an Americano (which for anyone who is not familiar is a sort of watered down espresso – still decently strong – like the espresso made in a stovetop espresso pot rather than an espresso maker), but they did not; I wasn’t looking forward to a plain black coffee but I didn’t really want any of the specialty types listed (the Germans generally seem to write their coffee names in Italian too).  It turned out that what I got was more like what I wanted than I expected.  It was basically not too strong espresso (sort of like an Americano but with the crema) in a cup the size that you’d get with a set of dishes (“pott” is translated “pot” in the books but apparently means a large by German standards cup), a tasse must be the size of a small tea cup.  I don’t think I’ll be buying a lot of it though because that was nearly $4.00 for a cup of coffee and it’s exactly the same price as a 1/2 liter of beer at Schenkerla.

After this I went back to my room and a short while later met up with CPT Hanna (the first American I’d seen to speak to since Friday) who showed me around the area and showed me where a couple of other breweries are located.  I then went to Schlenkerla to get some brats, I really wish I’d gotten a shoulder or at least a ham hock.  The brats were not enough.  I noticed some people looking my way, it may just be self-consciousness but I thnk they were looking at the way I was eating, that I was switching my knife and fork back and forth and they were holding their knives in their right hands and their forks in their left hands.