Anne's Bavarian highlights tour

[Or I could have called this post:  See what you could have done if you'd come to visit us too... ;-) ]

It was really lovely to have Anne here for a week, and have a good excuse to revisit many favorite places, and to see some new!

In her preparation to come to Munich Anne read all about King Ludwig II, so we saw the castle in town where he was born, and two of the castles he built near the Alps (see below).  At the opposite end of the Bavarian history spectrum, Anne also motivated me to read "Sophie Scholl and the White Rose" which I'd highly recommend for anyone interested in learning about the student resistance movement against the Nazis (and I'll do a post on the Scholl siblings soon).  On Anne's first full day here, we went to Dachau (see post) and then saw the White Rose memorials at the university, but the rest of her visit was much lighter, and we had a lot of fun.

This will be mostly pictures, since I've written about much of this before  -- except for crazy Ludwig's crazy castles...



Schloss Nymphenburg:
This palace was the royal "summer residence", and Ludwig II was born here in 1845.

It's funny to think of a Bavarian king being a whole generation younger than, say, Abraham Lincoln.   He even had electricity and a phone installed in his Neuschwanstein Castle in the 1880s.

But I'm getting ahead of myself.  Here we are at Nymphenburg Castle, built in the 17th century, and looking a bit like a smaller Versailles,  gardens and all.

Inside Nymphenburg is an airy "Great Hall", decorated in a beautifully colorful Rococo style, as well as the lavishly decorated quarters of the royal family (first called Elector and Electress, then later, after Napoleon declared Bavaria a kingdom in 1806, Kings and Queens).

Julia took all the pictures inside the castle.
She's loving photography these days.

One of the most famous rooms in Nymphenburg is Ludwig I's "gallery of beauties" -- paintings of many women he found beautiful, either royalty or the shoemaker's daughter, or Lola Montez, who was the cause of Ludwig I's abdication in 1848...

That night we had to take Anne to the Bavarian Augustiner restaurant for a Schweinshaxe (pork knuckle).  It is the culinary "must do" for all our visitors... But it does taste good!

Then, Monday, on to Ludwig II's castles!  Anne was a good prod for us, since neither Thomas nor I had ever seen Neuschwanstein, the "fairy-tale" castle on which Disney based his Sleeping Beauty version.  Linderhof Castle, is also nearby (which Thomas had taken me to on my first trip to Europe 17 years ago), and since we'd rented a car, we enjoyed a beautiful day visiting both of these spectacular castles.




Schloss Neuschwanstein:

Our first view.

There are so many tourists who want to see Neuschwanstein, that you have to buy tickets in advance for your exact tour, which are 5 minutes apart.  (Luckily we spared ourselves from a big line by reserving over the internet in advance.)

Ludwig II started building this castle, overlooking his parents' castle Hohenschwangau, in 1869.  It was never completely finished (construction stopped with his death in 1886) but it was worthy enough by the early 1880s for him to move in.

No pictures were allowed inside, but it is quite an amazing place -- almost every wall is decorated in frescoes of legends featured in Wagner's operas. (He adored Wagner.)  There are also many swans, which was his favorite creature.  The unfinished throne room -- which has everything but a throne -- is stunning, as is the "singer's hall" meant for private concerts.

One of the crazy things I remember in there is a dark hallway, mimicking a cave, fake rock walls and all, in order to provide a romantic grotto...



Ludwig couldn't have picked a better location.  The view, with mountains on one side and a beautiful plain with a lake on the other, is stunning.

That's his parent's castle, Hohenschwangau, down there on the hill.
Just far enough away to avoid reality (and his mother).

Here's a quote from Ludwig II in a letter to Wagner:
"This castle will be in every way more beautiful and habitable than Hohenschwangau further down, which is desecrated every year by the prose of my mother..."











Schloss Linderhof:
This is my favorite castle.  Relatively small and intimate, but with beautiful grounds and fountains.

 Again, no pictures were allowed inside, but the palace is stunning, especially the hall of mirrors (with beautifully adorned mirrors on opposite parallel walls, making the relatively small room look like an infinite hallway).

 One of the crazy things inside this castle is Ludwig's private dining table, which was lowered through the floor to the kitchen three floors below for every change of course.  He was a loner, and didn't even want servants watching him eat... not that that stopped him from enjoying several-course meals.  Apparently the staff still had to lay the table for several people, since the king talked with his imaginary friends, like the former kings of France, or Marie Antoinette.  (Looking at all his decadence, I guess he didn't learn much from, or about, the French Revolution...)

The best part of the Linderhof grounds is the Venus Grotto.  Built essentially for private but elaborate productions of Wagner operas, it featured the first electrical lighting in Bavaria, and a heated underground lake (which was part of the "set"so that some of the opera singers might swim as they performed...)

The king's seat in the rocky wall
 facing the "stage".  The audience
was simply him and a few servants.

This grotto is unbelievable.  But cool.





The Garmisch classic hike:
We call our excursion into the Alps, which starts in the mountain resort area of Garmish-Partenkirchen, our "classic" and the seemingly great weather provided opportunity to show Anne our favorite hike.

We started off with a gondola lift which got us up to about 1230 m (a 500 meter difference from the town) and we were almost immediately in an alpine paradise, especially this time of year with many wildflowers.

That's a month which just looks like a hummingbird.
(Thomas' picture)

This hike takes about 4 hours but is not difficult.  It has a very high ratio of reward per exertion!

We had a good view on the Alpspitze (2826 m) for much of the hike.  (I still can't believe Benjamin and I were on
top of that last August...)

Hiking in the Alps is so civilized.  You can easily plan your route to include a stop at a Hütte with hot lunch...

After lunch the clouds started to look a little ominous.
Luckily we only had a brief shower, mostly while we were in the trees.

The Partnachklam (gorge) on the way back down to town makes you feel a little like a traveler in a Tolkien adventure..

Another wonderful, if tiring, day.  Thanks, Anne, for visiting!

It's hard to stay awake on the train after a day in the mountains!

Dachau

"Work makes you free":  the infamous Nazi lie on the entrance gate

I had been putting off a visit to Dachau, although I knew I needed to see it.  When Anne arrived at the end of June, and agreed to accompany me, it was time.  The weather also seemed fitting, with ominous black clouds hanging low over the site of such former horrors.

If you don't know about Dachau, I will simply include here a  quote from the official Dachau memorial foundation website (where you can learn much more, especially in the virtual tour section).
 "On March 22, 1933, a few weeks after Adolf Hitler had been appointed Reich Chancellor, a concentration camp for political prisoners was set up in Dachau. This camp served as a model for all later concentration camps and as a "school of violence" for the SS men under whose command it stood. In the twelve years of its existence over 200,000 persons from all over Europe were imprisoned here and in the numerous subsidary camps. 41,500 were murdered. On April 29 1945, American troops liberated the survivors."
Dachau is located just 10 miles northwest of  Munich.

The Maintenance building, behind "roll-call square"

"Roll-call in November 1938". Drawing by Karl Freund,
17.12.1938.  © KZ-Gedenkstätte Dachau

The main museum exhibition documenting the history of the camp is in the Maintenance building, where arriving prisoners were brutally registered by being stripped naked, shaved, shunted through showers, and given ill-fitting striped prison uniforms.  That building lies behind the "roll-call square", where thousands of prisoners were forced to stand at attention every morning and evening, no matter how weak or sick, in order to be counted.  Often this lasted hours if the numbers didn't match the SS records or if prisoners were forced to receive or watch brutal punishments.


I'm not sure I have the words, or the stomach, to write more here about what I learned and read in the museum.  It's good though that these memorials are there for people to remember what can happen when fanaticism and political power go unchecked.

"Roll-call square" and the reconstructions of two of the 34 prisoner barracks

The foundations of the original barracks.

Part of the "shunt room" where new prisoners were registered.

The "shower" room, where rough shaving, de-lousing, and showers took place.
Note the historical picture on glass is placed such that you can see the same
view from then as now.
The room is also notorious for the "pole hanging" torture/punishment, and
you can see where the beams used for this were attached to the pillars
(and the beams themselves in the historical picture.)

Replica of the barrack beds for prisoners.  Near the end of
the war at least 4 prisoners shared a slot meant for 1 person.

Photo origin unclear, but copied
from here.

The ovens for burning the dead.

  

   from the German Federal Archives
and copied from here 

Much has been written about the evil and atrocities in the Nazi concentration and extermination camps.  I especially remember reading "Night" by Elie Wiesel which affected me deeply.  It is unspeakable, how horrifically human beings can treat each other.

The memorial sculpture, by Nandor Glid, is very effective.  It looms over the International Memorial between the
Maintenance Building (now museum) and roll-call square.

"You" versus "you" and other language issues

Ahhh, the German language.  I have, of course, never thought so much about language as I have this year, nor fully appreciated my native-tongue proficiency:  in English I simply have a vague notion in my head, I open my mouth, and out it comes, fully formed and usually comprehensible.

While it's exciting and rewarding to be able to (more or less) communicate and converse in a language I learned only in the second half of my life, I miss the spontaneity and humor of being able to just speak without thinking... Possibly I'm sort of slowly getting there in German, but here is a partial list of what slows me down!!

Sie vs. du:
OK, this shouldn't be so hard, since I did learn French as a child, and second person singular has the same choices as in German.  Formal "you" is Sie, and informal "you" is du, but I realize I never really spoke much French outside a classroom, where it was abundantly clear who was "vous" (the teacher) and who not.  In real life, of course, it's not so clear when and if to use the formal or informal case, and at what point you can change.  To any stranger older than 16 or so, it's generally Sie.  But actually not so clear... since in my gym everyone calls each other du whether they've ever seen them before or not, and in my choir all the singers call each other du, but the director is definitely Sie (and he uses Sie for most of us, but du for some he seems to know better...)

by Dale Askey, from http://bibliobrary.net/2010/01/04/when-to-use-du-and-sie/

This chart is only partially a joke.  Other than maybe the last choice box, it's actually pretty relevant.  For example, the blood-relations/saying-du-to-the-spouse thing was a bit weird for me last weekend when I met a bunch of Thomas's father's cousins (without Thomas there, he's in India), all in their 70s or so, whom I'd never met before.  I tried very hard to avoid saying "you" in any form before I figured out what they were calling me, and that was also not clear.  I think they didn't really know how to address me either.  Argg.

[I have a theory related to this:  I think the language differentiation in the forms of "you" may explain the initial reserve of most Germans upon first meeting you, at least compared to the (possibly excessive and sometimes insincere) early friendliness of North Americans.  If one is used to keeping people at a distance with Sie, and only switching to du upon getting to know a person quite well, maybe that  translates into holding back on the heart-to-heart small talk until one qualifies as a quite familiar acquaintance, if not friend.
My choir experience supports this.  In the first few months of rehearsals, the other singers were cordial but mostly ignored me.  Only after the intensity of Christmas rehearsals -- and maybe also due to my German getting better -- did people start joking and chatting with me.  Now, I banter
(as well as I can) with many of them and feel like I have made several good friends there.  It's great, but it took longer to feel part of the gang than it would have at home, I think.]

Gender of nouns:
My father-in-law used to have a joke for me when I would continually confuse the three genders of nouns:
"Das(s) die der Teufel hole.  Ein Wort, drei Artikel!"
The first sentence roughly translates to "May the devil take them" but it sounds like, as the second sentence says, "one word with three articles!"... (For those in blissful ignorance of gendered nouns, the three forms of nominative "the" are das [neutral], der [masculine] and die [feminine].)

from http://mosaicmercy.org/german-articles-chart/

It's hard enough trying to remember the gender of words, but then you throw in the case usage on top of that and I really have to (or used to) think hard to get the simplest articles or adjective endings correct.  For example, take a word I use all the time, like the U-Bahn.  If it's the subject of my sentence, say
Die U-Bahn ist grossartig  ("The subway is great")
then, being feminine, there is a die in front of it.
However, people usually end up talking about the train in the dative case since it often follows the word mit, as in
Ich fahre mit der U-Bahn ("I'm taking the subway" or literally, "I'm traveling with the subway")
and then there are the bazillion people talking on their phones while riding the train, and often saying something like
Ich bin jetzt in der U-Bahn ("I'm in the subway now")
both of which put a der in front of U-Bahn because UNFORTUNATELY the dative form of die is der!  Which gets me very confused since then when I'm trying to speak quickly I remember hearing "der U-Bahn" a lot, and think it must be a masculine word, so I over-correct and say something like
Ich fahre mit dem U-Bahn (wrong) because the dative form of der is dem...  Arrrg.
 (I won't go into more details of grammar -- enjoy looking it up if you want...)

Separable verbs:
For the most part, I've made my peace German grammar -- most rules of gender, case, and the various adjective endings which depend on them are reasonably logical.   (Although I have to say here that "n-nouns" drive me crazy -- those are the masculine nouns that decline according to case, usually with the same ending that would also make them plural...)
BUT, really: I de- verbs that separate, delaying the prefix that contains all the subtly important information, leaving the root of the word dangling precariously by itself with no meaning of its own, until you finally come to the very end of the sentence -test!
 [With apologies to Mark Twain...]

Prepositions:
These are not so surprising, probably.  Listen to any non-native speaker of English and you are also likely hear mixed up prepositions.  They're very specific to each verb they accompany in each language.  Here, for example, are a couple literal translations of some German verb-preposition combinations:  "I'm happy over the gift", "He's interested for modern art", "Her house lies in Maple Street" (which does not mean it's blocking traffic).  Similarly to English, there are no rules to clarify which preposition follows which verb, so you just have to memorize the combinations if you haven't grown up with it.  Ugh.  It's humbling to know I sound this funny when I'm speaking German but I just can't think of / about / over the right word fast enough.

Long words:

The Jack Daniels ad has a 21-letter word warning you
to drink responsibly

So much has already been said, and made fun of, over German compound words I won't elaborate here.  (Although did you see the news story a couple weeks ago about Germany dropping it's longest word?  They thought 63 letters was pushing it.)
In some ways I see now that compound words make a lot of sense, and allow for very specific descriptions.  However, for reading, it's slow work (although sometimes amusing) to try to figure out where one word stops and the next begins.

--------------

I could go on (and on...) but these are my main stumbling blocks.  Every so often, especially when I get frustrated, I read again Mark Twain's essay called "The Awful German Language", which is a fabulously funny treatise on his struggles with the language when he studied in Heidelberg.  I can only be a pathetic echo of his wit, and his writing is all the more funny for being so true.  (When Thomas first gave me a printed copy of the essay, I literally fell to the floor with tears rolling down my cheeks.)

Here is my favorite quote from Mark Twain's "The Awful German Language":
Personal pronouns and adjectives are a fruitful nuisance in this language, and should have been left out. For instance, the same sound, sie, means you, and it means she, and it means her, and it means it, and it means they, and it means them. Think of the ragged poverty of a language which has to make one word do the work of six -- and a poor little weak thing of only three letters at that. But mainly, think of the exasperation of never knowing which of these meanings the speaker is trying to convey. This explains why, whenever a person says sie to me, I generally try to kill him, if a stranger.


I hope this little riff of mine has not offended anyone, and my apologies if so.  Writing in my native language provides here a bit of a release valve to the obstruction of often feeling tongue-tied in German.  But... I'm not so bad as all that, and indeed in the right circumstances I can even have a roughly normal conversation!

Ehrlich gesagt, (truly said), it has been a delight and a privilege to learn to speak German here in Germany.

Blitzbesuch to Berlin

We spent a blitz-visit in Berlin of one and a half days last week.  The Humboldt foundation had invited us (and a few hundred other prize winners) to their annual meeting there from June 5 - 6, and again treated us very well. 

The new Berlin train station is very cool, with many
levels -- two of which are for trains traveling
 in perpendicular directions.

We had hoped to take a night train from Munich to Berlin on the Tuesday night before the meeting, but as all sleeping cars were booked, we got up early Wednesday so that the 6-hour high-speed train ride would get us there by early afternoon.

When we arrived, the weather was (finally) spectacular, and we enjoyed an hour or so walking from our hotel on Alexanderplatz (center of former East Berlin) down the famous Unter den Linden avenue.

The Berlin Fernsehtrum (TV tower),  near
 the Alexanderplatz, is the tallest structure
in Germany, at 368 m.   [Photo by Julia]

The Berliner Dom (cathedral) on the Museumsinsel in the
Spree river, is impressively huge.

We didn't get as far as the Brandenburg gate before we had to turn back, but we saw the famous Museumsinsel area (the museum island, in the Spree river) with a refreshing mixture of beautiful old architecture and lots of new construction.

Many holy buildings have been built on this site:  originally Catholic in the mid-15th century, since 1539
it has been Lutheran, Calvinist, and now Evangelisch  (protestant).   The current cathedral was built in 1905.

The Museumsinsel has lots of history.  This construction
zone is the Schlossplatz, where the former seat of
East German government (the Palast der Republik)
was torn down in 2008.

The Humboldt buses picked us up at 3 pm for a reception and meeting.  (The talks frankly lasted too long... they fed the kids while we were inside, but we didn't get any food 'til after 8, which made it even more difficult to stay awake-- especially after getting up at 5:30 a.m.  Ah well.)

Julia made a new friend, Kayla.

Benjamin did well at amusing himself.

It stays light very late in Berlin, in June, so we saw some of the city even during the bus ride back to the hotel at 9pm.

Potsdamer Platz: The wall went right through this area during the Cold War
segregation, so it's only recently been developed from a wasteland to an
impressive modern square.  (There are many colorful above-ground pipes in
Berlin, like the pink one here.  I think they are for pumping water out of
construction areas, since Berlin is essentially built on a swamp.

This Coca-Cola sign just reminded me of my favorite
German movie: " Good Bye Lenin" (See it, if you haven't!)

View from our hotel window
(on the14th floor of the 40-story Park Inn)

The Park Inn is the tallest hotel in Germany

I'm sorry this is going to be a long post, for a short trip, but the next day was pretty exciting:  we got to meet Bundespräsident Gauck! (Not quite so famous as Chancellor Angela Merkel, but almost.)

Gardens of the Schloss Bellvue

Our buses left the hotel early, for the morning reception at Schloss Bellvue, the official residence of the president.  With only a quick pass through security, they let 500+ Humboldt prize winners and families into the beautiful grounds.

Thomas the Humboldtian

President Gauck gave a relatively short and eloquent speech about the benefits of international research cooperation to all the assembled "Humboldtians" and then was very patient about dealing with the crowds as everyone tried to meet him afterwards.  (I had assumed that the the bodyguards might organize a queue but apparently not -- and it was interesting to see the cultural differences between those of us used to lining up patiently versus people from Asia and the rest of Europe who just elbow their way to the front...  we nearly gave up, but managed to briefly meet him after all.)

He didn't seem to mind all the crowd pressing
in on him.  (I'm surprised his bodyguards didn't...)

I had a view of President Gauck
throughthe crowd after his finished
his speech.  He seems to be a very
thoughtful and compassionate person.

Julia, and her friend Kayla managed to get a photo with Gauck early on.
(That's Kayla's dad on the left, and the man with all the white hair is
Prof. Schwarz, the president of the Humboldt foundation.) 

Our 15 seconds of fame.  Prof. Schwarz, President Gauck, me, Thomas...
My choir friends in Munich were highly impressed with this picture!

The Humboldt people had organized at least a dozen tour boats to take us all on a river cruise after the presidential reception.  We had really been looking forward to seeing the main parts of downtown this way, but the water was so high on the Spree river (you must have heard about the terrible flooding in eastern parts of Germany) that the boats couldn't go under the bridges downtown, so we were taken out of town, south east. 

"Molecule Man" is a sculpture of three bodies
with holes, 100 ft high, seeming to walk
on the river.

I had the top deck to myself, as people ate lunch below.

Although somewhat disappointing not to see downtown from the boat, we did get to see one of the last remaining sections of the Berlin wall, along a section where the river was the boundary.

This is the west side of the Wall.  On the east side is now the 1300 m
East Side Gallery with many famous "graffiti" paintings from 1990
(on what was until then the blank east side of the barrier).

After the boat ride, we had less than two hours before the next Humboldt session, so Thomas and I (leaving tired kids in the hotel watching Sponge Bob in German) hopped on an S-Bahn into downtown.  We mostly wanted to see the Reichstag building and the architecture of new government buildings nearby.

The glass dome of the Reichstag building is visible along the river

Some of the new government buildings to the north side of the Reichstag
building are very modern, but fit in very well I think.

The Reichstag building, opened in 1894, is probably most know for the 1933 arson attack that provided the
Nazis with the excuse to invoke strict martial law, essentially leading to a one-party state.
Since 1999, the building houses the German parliament (it was not used between WWII and reunification). 

We had enough time for a quick walk to the Brandenburg Gate, which is massive and impressive.


















Then, another ride on the Humboldt buses (they must have spent thousands on busses alone, for all of us) to dinner and an award ceremony at the Charlottenburg Palace.  Luckily, a double-decker bus is good for sightseeing along the way!

The Siegessäule (Victory Column) from 1873 is over
66 m high, including the 8.3 m bronze statue of "Victoria"

Schloss Charlottenburg, from 1699

Going in to dinner.

With the full Humboldt itinerary, we hadn't seen nearly as much of Berlin as we'd hoped, so we got up early the next morning to specially see the Holocaust Memorial.

Thememorial looks like a sea of uneven concrete  slabs.  The ground dips and swells, and the center is remarkably deep -- from the edges you'd never guess there were so many people in the grid.  The whole place is designed to make you uneasy, since it seems like it should be an ordered and regular atmosphere, yet the ground and blocks are all slightly askew, making it feel confusing.  Very effective and imposing.  Below ground is an information center, which we didn't have time to see.  (For the kids sake, at this age, maybe that was for the best... they know about the Holocaust, but haven't been confronted with details yet.)

We saw a lot of flooding between Berlin and Munich.

We were lucky that our train back to Munich left on time, since some were cancelled due to all the flooding.  We had to be rerouted, and it was almost amusing (although frustratingly slow) to have our high speed ICE chugging slowly along the winding single-tracks out in the middle of nowhere.

It was really too bad we couldn't spend longer in Berlin, but the kids were already missing 3 days of school (which the German system is pretty strict about) and then Thomas was flying to India the next day.  It's really an impressive, cosmopolitan city -- with a very different feel from Munich!