MICHELE'S MUSINGS

I couldn’t wait for our first stop in Germay. We meandered our way inefficiently by train (no direct route) to the Eiffel where my dear highschool pal Diana now lives with her husband and 2 kids. The Eiffel is ta hilly, green region with beautiful rock formations and caves that much resembles wisconsins kettle moraine area (glaciated landscape). We arrived in the tiny picturesqu toen of Gerolstein, which is a booming metropolis compared to Walsdorf, the nearby town where our friends live. We arrive on Mayday, when the simgle men in the village put up the may pole, a pine tree placed high on a tall pole decorated with crepe paper streamers. Each village had one. We found the single guys next to the pole pounding down beers and sausages....quite willing to share. On the evening of May 1st, the guys play pranks on the towns people....moving lawn funiture around town or puttine a little toilet paper under your windshield wiper-totally harmless stuff. We enjoyed many walks in the countryside...it was heavenly to be away from a big city. Helmut’s (diana’s husband) parents were so good to us. We did a makeshift slideshow for them by showing them the photos we had up on the web site.They really enjoyed this and it sparked some really interesting conversation. Helmut’s dad learned English in Texas. He explained that he had been a POW in WWII, inducted into Hitlers army. He was in Italy when his tank was blown up, and because he had removed his shoulder straps, he was thrown into bushes instead of killed like the others in the tank. The French soldiers found him there in the bushes. He was sent to north Afrika where he almost died of starvation. The French were known to be very cruel to their captives. When the American camp inspectors came, he was only 90#...the sick POW’s were sent to hospitals...hewas sent to NY, TX and eventually California, where he was sent to do farm labor. He said that 25% of the POWs sent to California to work eventually permanantly immigrated (in the Sacramento area). He was later sent to England to rebuild after the war. It was 1946...he wanted to stay in England, as he was welcomed by the English family he had been sent to work for, but because his only other brother was killed in Russia, he was sent back to work his parents farm in Germany. I jsut finished reading “letters form Vietnam”, now a classic...and with the fighting in the former Yugoslavia, and talking to Helmut’s dad,war has been much on my mind these days. I wonder if you back home can feel the depair, destruction, and waste as profoundly being that much farther away from what was one yugoslavia. Here in Walsdorf I celebrated my 35th birthday. Diana even made me a cake from scratch! This is meat and potatoes country...good cheese, meat, breads, and yes sour kraut. Drew and I did a day trip to Trier where supposedly rlatives on my dads side still live. He visited them in the 1950’s as a soldier in the army. It is a picturesque town, and ancient town situated on the Mosel river. It was once one of the most important cities in the world...right up there with Rome and Constantinople! Hard to imaginenow...though you can still see remains of roman baths and and an amphitheater. We headed onward up the mosel to Cochem....its a tiny medievil town with a wonderful castle high on a hill overlooking the village. It is surrounded by vineyards, and attracts a fair number of tourists (mainly Germans I think). We had intended to take a boat up the river, but found it not running that day...this was a charming enough place to stay, so we did. Usually when things didn’t work out as we planned, they turned out even better!!! We eventually did take a boat trip up the Rhine river. We were on a wonderful steam driven paddleboat...passing casle after castle (I’d guess we passed 25 castles) most were just stoney remains without true interiors. The friench went on a rammpage in 1689 and blew upall but 2 castles along the Rhine in an effort to destroy the ability of the germans (called something differnt at the time) to collect tax money and use it to fund wars against france. See, as a merchant if you were taking your wares down the river you had to pay a tax passing thru each “princedom”...it was considered “protection money”. Off to Stuttgart we went, to visit Mathias, a UCSD friend doing his studies in San Diego while we were there. He took us to the Merdedes Benz factory and museum. This was SUCH am interesting tour even for a person who has no interest in cars and is not technology minded (like me). To see the detree of automation is mind boggling....each car is different on the production line, parts are delivered to the factory 10 minutes befor a robot installs them...everything is precisely choreographed. We headed to Munich to visit another UCSD friend Gianni and his gf Gabi. They took us to every beer garden in town...we had a whole day together biking around the city...visiting its beautiful parks , palace grounds, and site of the Olympics. The average Bavarian consumes 350 liters of beer a year...they have these white sausages that they eat only before 11:00am and it comes with a mandatory liter of beer. Keep in mind...the beer gardens are like beautiful public parks that sell sausages, kraut, pretzles and beer, where people gather to talk, and sit at long communal benches...not like smokey bars. We saw locals dressed in their best Lederhosen and cute little hats with the feather,chugging away, singing songs, showing pride in their Bavarian culture. Off to the German Alps we went with our quitessential tour guides G and G. We saw the castles of the crazy king Ludwig, who did at age 40 under mysterious circumstances. H was found drowned 4 days after he was removed by his uncle from the thrown. The 19th century castle Neuschwantein is the most famous (Walt Disney modelled his castle after this one), but our favorite was Linderhoff castle and grounds. Ludwig was obsessed with Louis the 14th of france (who lived centuries earlier), and of the opera composer Wagner (were they having a secret afair and were forced appart when it was discovered?)...he lived a strange unhappy life building castles, eating alone, building his own private opera set in a manmade cave with heated lake and lighting so that he could watch wagners opera performed over and over. On to Prague.

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