T-D Travels

Sunday, June 1, 2014

I realized that I never posted photos of the adorable town of Quedlinburg we stayed in, nor of the River Wesser in Bad Harshafen, and now I have photos of roses and castles and churches and Madonnas and of Cologne Cathedral and other Cologne sites (we went there yesterday), and I don't think I ever even posted the blogs I wrote on Quedlinburg and the Brocken, etc. This is a shame, because I wrote them!! So I am going to do some catching up right now, and bring you up to date with what we have been doing since Berlin, which is actually quite a lot. This means that this blog will continue to be out of time order, no doubt confusing to some of you. Just try to go with the flow.
This is the first post I wrote in Germany, even though in terms of time order, it comes after Berlin, and before Bielefeld. I will try to let you know of when these things happened. We were in Berlin from Monday night to Friday morning, then picked up a rental car and drove to Quedlinburg. While there we took one day trip to the Brocken, and then left Quedlinburg on Monday morning for a stop in Goslar, then on to Bad Harshafen, where we stayed overnight, then to Bielefeld on Tuesday. It is now Sunday, and we have been in Bielefeld since Tuesday, and will leave here on Friday for Barcelona and then Madrid. Yesterday (Saturday) we took a 2-hour (at 100-110 miles per hour!!) train to Cologne for the day, and back last evening. One thing to realize about northern Europe at this time of the year: at 1):00 pm it is still light out, although getting to be twilight. In another week or so, that will be true at 11:00 pm. It's pretty cool, but it makes it REALLY hard to know what time it is, to eat supper at a reasonable hour, and to then get to sleep at a reasonable hour!
Okay, here goes the first Quedlinburg post, with photos:

Friday night, May 23, 2014: I am sitting in an amazingly beautiful room

in the most romantic little inn/guest house, Kunst Haus (kunst=art, or design), in the most adorable town, Quedlinburg, I would have been able to imagine

the town, or market, square of Quedlinburg

the fairytale rooflines of the town

View looking down from the castle

(those of you who have been to some of the other “most adorable” towns and villages in Europe will be able to imagine it). Seriously, this town is a UNESCO-designated world heritage site; its more-than-1400 half-timbered buildings date mostly from the early 1500s through the 1700s (with some, including the castle, being much older), and something about it is so much more adorable and jaw-droppingly gorgeous than Colchester, an old Roman city in the eastern part of England, with its own share of half-timbered Tudor-era buildings that we visited a couple of years ago for a conference (I guess here in Germany, the era is not referred to as Tudor!). Maybe this is because Colchester is indeed a city, although a small one, and has more modern buildings mixed in. This town of Quedlingberg, on the eastern edge of the Harz Mountains in the old East Germany (GDR), lays claim to a number of “first” and “oldest” and “only remaining” and other such designations for its numerous parts. I will perhaps bore you with the details of those another time.
For now, let me point out a disturbing bit of local history, which pretty much sets the mood for my impressions of the city we have just come from: Berlin. This town, with its 10^th-century castle (“schloss”), was one of the seats of the Holy Roman Empire, with its [Holy Roman] Emperor (“Kaiser,” which comes from the Latin “Caesar”) Heinrich, son of Otto I, bringing about the First German-based Reich (empire). When Hitler launched his 3^rd Reich (the 2^nd Reich was, I think, Kaiser Wilhelm. Or was it Bismarck? I keep getting mixed up), he brought a large contingent of SS and other Nazis to Quedlingburg to celebrate the castle and to reclaim it for the 3^rd Reichand for its own mythology (Goebbels was a propaganda and public relations evil genius. His staging of these sorts of events and rituals was part of what brought about such wide-spread popular support). There is a display at the Schloss on the Nazi uses of propaganda to rework the history of Otto I, Heinrich, and the local area for their own purposes, and of their taking over the 12^th century castle-church (originally built in the 10^th century, then burnt down and rebuilt) for their own Nazi cult (this cult came with rituals and some really weird beliefs. Indiana Jones was kinda in the right ballpark). They took out the altar and cross, bricked up the choir (the front section of Christian churches, where altars stand), and used the church for Nazi rituals and meetings. Additional photos show Hitler Youth blowing trumpets from rooftops to welcome their “emperor,” all houses hung with swastika flags, and the people of the town filling the streets.

Not too far south of here are Buchenwald and another concentration camp, Mittelbau Dora, where many of Berlin’s Roma (“Gypsies”) and a Roma sub-group, the Sinti, were sent, along with many others, and were worked to death.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mittelbau-Dora

Now that I have thoroughly depressed myself –and in this wonderful, adorable town!—again, let me just say that this trip so far has reminded me of what I experienced when I visited Poland: one cannot get away from World War II and the Holocaust in Central and Eastern Europe; it just smacks you in the face, at least if one is paying the least bit of attention. In fact, one cannot get away from history, period.

It makes me aware that although the US certainly has a few centuries of history, and has its own genocide, its own race-hatreds, its own history of both internal and external vicious brutality, and even though Native Americans lived on the land for more thousands of years than was recognized (as we are learning), AND even though we endured a devastating Civil War, our land has seen comparatively so much less bloodshed, and no matter how crowded with ghosts it might seem, "honey, you ain’t seen nothin’ yet.” The land here is so clogged with ghosts that I sometimes feel that I am walking on bones. And, in fact, given the millennia of battles that have raged over this land, the plagues, the generations of successive immigrant groups (Celts, Germanic tribes, Huns, Turks, etc), I probably AM walking on bones, many of which may not lie quietly. And THAT makes me glad I normally live in a “young” part of the world. Ooh—just had a Legolas moment: “This forest is old. Very old.” Yep, well this farmland--and these streets-- are old—very old.
Photos from the castle: