Goodbye Munich

As I begin writing this Douglas and I have about 20 more hours in Munich. It is with mixed emotions that I leave Munich. I have loved my life here, but this has been a difficult post for Douglas as he has been working his required position as a Consular Officer – not his favorite position he soon learned. Tashkent was the post of hikes; Munich has been the post of surgeries. I had shoulder surgery shortly before arriving and have had two surgeries on three fingers since I’ve been here. The Embassy social life was much more active in Tashkent, but here in Munich I joined the Munich English Language choir and the Munich Creative Group. In the spirit of Emily’s goodbye monologue in Thornton Wilder’s “Our Town” I want to say goodbye to Munich.

Goodbye Munich.

Goodbye caring, helpful people who would drop everything to help me find my way and often just as soon walk me there as give me directions – in German or in English. 

Germans are even tidy when they litter!

Goodbye pedestrian zones, like long, outdoor malls often with a festival, through which I’d rather walk than ride the U-Bahn.

Sometimes the pedestrian zones are as crowded as a freeway at rush hour, like during Christmastime and the Weihnachtsmarkt.

Goodbye cobblestone streets that tear up my heels, but look so nice and make me feel like I’m back in time.

Goodbye church bells – real church bells, the kind like in The Sound of Music where you see the boy dangling from the pull rope – especially the Sunday bells when all the area churches agree it’s time to ring them.

I had the pleasure of singing in this gorgeous church.

Goodbye old, ornate buildings that echo the sound of the bells until I don’t know where the ringing is coming from; that play with the sound of the bells, tossing the sound around long after the bells have stopped ringing.

This is two views of Odeonsplatz, the gateway to the pedestrian zone where you can walk for about a mile in a couple different directions without automobile traffic. You can buy Christmas trees there in December and relax in a beanbag chair there with a book in July.

This is the Rathaus (city hall). I passed this often. On this night I was walking back from a choir rehearsal when I noticed the moon. (I would have missed this had I taken the U-Bahn.)

Goodbye Munich English Choir. Though your rehearsals were run in German (something I never understood - in more than one way) I loved singing again. I loved participating in the Evensong services and the Advent service. I loved singing in some of the amazing German churches in the area.

St. Ottillien's where we sang an Evensong and an Advent service.

Goodbye English Garden (“the backyard”). I will miss your miles of trails and rivers. I will miss autumn when I’d lie under your trees and watch the leaves rain onto me. I will miss snow winters when I got to trudge around in snowshoes. I will miss the daily assortment of musicians, the Sunday drummers, the sunbathers, the slackline walkers, the beer gardens, the dogs frolicking, walking through after a storm and experiencing the after-rain from your trees. And I will miss Confucius, Chopin and Ting-Ting the click-clack man.

The English Garden in the Wintertime and in summer.

Goodbye Orff Zentrum. There was never a better neighbor. I enjoyed the concerts – the one I attended, and all those I overheard through our open windows.

Goodbye to Prague, Salzburg, Tirol and all the beautiful German cities we visited while we were here.

Prague. Sorry for my face being a bit in the way. It was quite rainy when we were there and we have few pictures of Prague. The only other choice had some strange man's head in it. I figured it was either mine or his 

This is Bamberg, aka Little Venice.

This was taken when Douglas and I were in Neuss (along the Rhine River) to see the Rose Ensemble.

Quite possibly the most beautiful spot I visited. This is the Eib See in Garmisch.

This was taken on the Limesstrasse near an old Roman fort. I heard cuckoos talking to each other here. Delightful. This next picture was taken in this same area.

I thought the architecture of this church was interesting. (I don't know why this cursed blog keepss changing fonts on me. Anyone?)

Tirol, Austria.

Douglas's next post is in Washington D.C. for two or three years. This job will have him travelling into Central Asia - Tajikistan, Kazakhstan and Turkmenistan as a Country Assistance Officer.

We're down to about ten hours now. We enjoyed one last walk in the English Garden in hopes of wearing ourselves out to sleep tonight and sit for nine or so hours on the plane tomorrow. The moon is almost full. I'm not sure whether it's waxing or waning, but I know that Douglas and I are still in our waxing years.

(Okay, that kind of sounds weird. I don't mean my upper lip and his nose cavities. No. Cripes! I mean we're still growing, maturing. (Waxing sounded so poetic in my mind.) Um. . .  We're becoming more fully rounded. Lord, it just gets worse.)

The End

Anticipation and memories

Douglas is counting down his final ten working days in Munich. We were packed out yesterday, we are down to a fraction of our clothing and toiletries, our computers, four books, a few food stuffs and several (mostly spent) candles. No piano. No CDs. No yoga mats (not that they've been getting that much use as of late). No TV. We like it like this.

I was asked by a friend last week what I'd miss most about Munich. "I'm looking at it." I answered as she looked at me. Mrs. Julie (not to be confused with my friend Miss Julie in St. Paul) is my steady writing and walking companion in Munich. I met her as part of a creative group. We stayed in that group, but also split off and formed a writing group which for a time dwindled down to just the two of us. The following is my latest contribution to the writing group. Our assignment was to write as though blind - exploring our other senses. We could still describe what we saw, but we were to emphasize the lesser senses.

Summers in our little red brick oven of a house in St. Paul nearly exorcised the saint in me. I grew up in Phoenix where temperatures in the 110’s were common so I’m not put off by hot weather. (I can hear your thoughts, “But it’s a dry heat.” Yeah. You walk around all day with an iron set at cotton a half inch from your skin then tell me it’s a dry heat. You spend a summer being able to etch your name in your skin with your fingernail regardless of how much lotion you rub in and then tell me it’s a dry heat.) In Phoenix we had the sense to put in air conditioning units in our houses. St. Paulites don’t like destroying the integrity of these ‘nice old houses’ by installing air. What about our integrity?

My last summer in St. Paul, I took classes towards a degree in piano pedagogy which meant I needed to spend a lot of time at the piano. Opening the windows did little good. It was like sitting in the oven turned up to 300 with the oven door open. Big deal. I sat at the piano trying to concentrate on theory so difficult I cried (in class and at home), fingers slipping off the keys from sweat, rivulets of sweat trickling and tickling down the backs of my calves, my own stench beginning to overwhelm me. So I took to the basement and my keyboard.

The basement is also where my husband and I often slept during the summer. Summers in St. Paul were not good for the marriage bed. Calls of “you want to?” were replaced with warnings “you’re touching me!” Trying to have sex in that weather was like going at it covered in cooking grease (appealing to some, I’m sure) with baggies pulled over our heads. The slap-slap of our wet bellies was only sexy for a minute or so. The slap-slap of my wet breasts was never sexy. The effort it took to keep it up and breathe could not have made for a ‘come hither’ expression on my face. It’s one thing to share in grief with one you love by touching and tasting a tear; it’s another thing entirely to get a mouthful of your lover’s forehead sweat in your mouth wide open gasping for air. St. Paul water torture.

So we often took to the basement. One night I woke up from what must have been a very pleasant dream. I felt light. I felt floaty. I even thought I could hear a gentle, soothing waterfall. Hypnogogic images. As I relished this feeling I rolled over on the air mattress and realized my nose was dripping – or was it sweat? Either way I needed a tissue. I reached my hand over to where my tissues were and my hand fell into inches of water. We were adrift in the basement. The weird thing about this (there were so many) was my first thought of all the centipedes that were probably taking refuge on the air mattress with us. Immediately I began to ‘feel’ them.

“Douglas!”

“Wha . . .?”

“We’re floating.”

“Mm zzammazzam . . .”

“Douglas!”

“Shit!”** (Don’t tell him I told you he said that. He has a reputation.)

“Where’s the flashlight?” I asked.

“You put it in the tissue box.”

“Where’s the tissue box?”

It was storming outside and, we later found out, the downspout had become disattached from the house so all the water from the roof, the high, pointed roof, was now pouring into the basement. He, being the man, was the one required to leave the relative safety of the air mattress to find his way upstairs to the light switch. I felt for him, I really did. It’s bad enough in the light prodding one’s way through the spider webs, but it’s worse for tall people like Douglas. He’s almost 6 feet tall the pipes hang about 5’6’’ off the ground. After this night I wrapped all the pipes in bubble wrap. Over his feet sloshing through the water I heard toes thumping into pallets, hands feeling past plastic bags of stuff from the attics of our childhood homes, his poor head finding every low hanging pipe and a vocabulary I never knew he possessed. At least the water wasn’t cold.

He made it to the stairs and up to the kitchen where he turned on the light. Of course the power was out. Lightning storm, it would be. I heard muffled footsteps through the ceiling as he searched for a flashlight, candle, firefly – whatever.

Water has a way of embellishing scents like the heat has a way of magnifying – I mean embellishing – tempers. While awaiting Douglas in this dark, splashy basement where the air mattress bounced off my Barbie dream house I could smell the years from the blocked drain. I could smell the rotting wood of the pallets we brought down to keep boxes of Douglas’s old army uniforms and my old singing telegram costumes dry. (While he kept you safe I kept you laughing.) And ever so faintly above all these normal basement smells wafted the memory jerking scent of my old Avon perfume bottle collection.

Somewhere in a distant corner I could hear the occasional piece of peeling plaster break off and splash into the water. That stirred up the bats, the wings of which could be heard . . . no that was Douglas’s slippers flip-flapping on the kitchen floor directly above where I had drifted.

Candle in hand, he descended the stairs. He stood at the bottom of the steps and told me to come to the light like I was a moth.

“Did you bring my slippers?”

“Why do you need your slippers?”

“I don’t want to walk on the basement floor in my bare feet.”

“It’s covered with water!”

“I know.”

He stomped back upstairs. All this happened just a couple of months before we left St. Paul for the Foreign Service. I had been reading a book, “Our Man in Belize,” about a Foreign Service officer in Belize during a hurricane. The day after the hurricane he slogged through waist deep water stepping on the submerged bodies of dogs and people. There was no way I was walking across this basement in the dark with bare feet. Douglas returned with my Wellies. This was the night I found out my Target brand Wellies (not really Wellies, I know, I know) leaked. Walking up the stairs I sounded like an eight year old playing his armpit.

“I’m not farting,” I told Douglas. “It’s the Wellies.” 

*Note to Douglas's mother: He didn't really say shit, that's just artistic license.

* Note to my mommy: Indeed Douglas did say that. I would never think of using a word like that under the guise of artistic license.

Salzburg

One of the blessings of being married to Douglas is the number of 'firsts' I've experienced with him. Many of these are a result of his working for the Foreign Service like studying Russian and German and living in and visiting different countries. I had another first over the weekend - we went to Salzburg. If I could go back and tell my ten year old self that one day she'd go to Austria where The Sound of Music was filmed she (I) would have been ecstatic. Douglas and I did not go to the touristy Sound of Music sights; neither of us wanted to walk away with "Doe a deer, a female deer" stuck in our heads all weekend. But no matter, we had a fabulous weekend.

In short Salzburg is inescapably beautiful. The presence of the mountains standing over and around everything is a constant, glorious feature. Add the old, stylized buildings, walk the streets and it is like being in the past or a character in a novel.

We didn't have much time so we didn't get to see a lot. One surprise was the Salzburg Panorama Museum. In the early 1800's Johann Michael Sattler decided to paint a panorama of Salzburg as it looked from atop the castle. He did this before photography so he must have had an excellent mental image of the city because there is enough photograph-like detail in it to see many aspects of daily life in 1829 Salzburg. It is displayed in a round room so you can stand and imagine yourself on top of the castle looking at it through what Douglas would call "history goggles". Also on display are his many cosmoramas - paintings of various cities throughout the world which he painted so that those who could not travel could still see Cairo, Syria, the Hudson in the United States, Mecca, Athens, and many more foreign places. Unfortunately we were not allowed to take photographs in this museum.

We visited Mozart's birthplace and saw the tiny 3-4 octave piano on which he composed The Magic Flute. We learned that his sister Maria Anna was also an accomplished pianist playing many concerts and recitals, but as a female was "encouraged" to marry rather than pursue a career.

The Salzburg Cathedral is lavishly ornate with many chapels, five sets of organ pipes (four smaller and one grand set in the back) and carvings and paintings everywhere. You can descend into the catacombs to see not only what you'd expect to see, but a small collection of day of the dead style shadow art.

Douglas wasn't feeling very well after lunch (too much strudel) so I ventured into the Hohensalzburg Fortress alone while he stayed out in the fresh air. On the lower floor was a marionette museum which is either charming or terrifying depending on how you feel about things like clowns. Upstairs I saw a collection of torture implements (it seems like you can't go to any of these old cities without seeing some good old torture devices), antique musical instruments, swords and guns (not to be confused with the implements of torture) and a few rooms set up the way they would have been back in the day. This is when my prince comes into the story. Not Douglas. He was still downstairs getting some fresh air, though, as there was a front moving in (more on that later) he would have been fine in these breezy rooms with the windows open. An older guard pointed to a closet or cabinet - looking structure and asked me, with a gleam in his eye, if I knew what was hidden in it. I took a guess. Something to heat the room? "No, my princess." he replied. "Guess again." "A toilet?" Wrong again. He told me to look around the room to see what was there then return and try again. I did and then guessed a closet. Nope. He then made a dramatic production of unlinking the chain that held back the masses and allowed me - just me - to go back and look to see what it contained. He made me promise to not be angry with him when I realized how disappointing it was to discover its contents. I promised. It was enclosed on three sides by two by fours, but I could see a bit through the cracks and within it hung a bat - a stuffed bat. But that wasn't it. There was a staircase just visible in the corner that spiraled down. That was what was hidden in/under this closet-like place. He then took me on a short, private tour. He made a show of pulling from his pocket a key which opened a window through which one could peek into the private gardens of the monks. "No one but the monks can go there, ." He said. 'Except through this window with their eyes.' This man loves his job. He then showed me the famous red marble of Salzburg and a shape in some of the decorations. "Do you know what that is, my princess?" He asked me. "It looks like a turnip." I answered. He was delighted. "That's right. Now come with me." He took me to one of the ornate ceramic stoves used for heating and showed me first his "favorite turnip" then  a figure holding something in his hand that looked like a drinking vessel. He asked me if I knew what was in it. "Beer?" I guessed. "No, not liquid. Something essential to the diet." "Wheat?" Nope. I slowly put two and two together and guessed salt. Actually I guessed "salz" which is salt in German. My prince was impressed. (He was fairly easy to impress.) He was a charmer. I wish everyone enjoyed their work as he does.

The Monk's private garden.

The ceramic stove with my prince's favorite turnip.

It was raining steadily and we were a little crowd weary so we decided to return to the hotel, which was on the outskirts of Salzburg, for dinner. The bus that brought us into Salzburg was either an apparition or only ran into the city. We looked and looked, walking, passing bus stop after bus stop finally making our way (did I mention it was raining now?) to the main train and bus station where we were told where to catch another bus which would take us to yet another bus. (My skirt was wet nearly to my knees.) This was about six bus stops from where we stood - in the direction from whence we'd come. Sigh.

Moral of the story: if you go to Salzburg beware of Bus #120.

That was Saturday.

Sunday we drove to see the Hellbrun gardens. This is a delightful little place that Prince Archbishop Sittikus had built. This was a man with a sense of humor. He had trick fountains installed throughout the gardens. While his unsuspecting guests were leisurely strolling admiring the flowers he'd push a secret button or turn a magic key and snarf someone would get a shot of water in the face. After the garden tour his guests were not safe seated at the picnic table (you'd think the hole in each of the seats would have clued them in) because he would give them a shot in the fanny as they ate. (His seat remained dry.) He had a tiny theater with figures that moved about to the strains of organ melodies powered by, what else, water.

It was just a short walk to the zoo from Hellbrun so we walked there. The zoo holds special memories to Douglas's family; his parents and he were there together when he was about 20. Douglas remembers seeing a bird called a Beo bird. As they stood looking at it he said, "I wonder why it's called a Beo bird." Just then the bird turned its head and said "Beo." They all shared a good laugh and carry the story to this day.

Alas, we did not see the infamous Beo bird. We did, however, get quite a show. Some of the animals were particularly amorous that day. It began with the Pumas. We couldn't quite see them (not that we were really trying) but we could hear them. And we knew what they were doing. I guess, judging by the sounds they were enjoying it - hard to say, I'm not a Puma. After a few minutes the female came strolling down the hill. The male trotted behind. He must not have been, um, finished as he was pawing at her. She'd snarl at him. She'd had enough. He rubbed her. Swipe! She wasn't having any more of it. He tried one time too many and she let go a growl that nearly made the spectators scatter. Then it was the monkeys. (I'm sorry, I don't remember which kind - one of the small breeds.) No pictures - I do have my limits - and no big story here, just doing what nature calls us all to do. But the lions . . . they were entertaining. They were just barely out of sight. Again we could hear them. There were lots of contented growls. This time, after a few minutes, it was the male that walked away. The female followed, passed him then fell sprawled on her back in front of him. Apparently she had not had enough. They were decent about it. They took it behind a rock, but we could still see her paws up in the air! I didn't think cats did it like that  I guess that's what I get for being raised in the city.

Another glorious view of Salzburg.