A German ABC, Sort Of

Guten Tag!

Den and I returned this week from chaperoning Barb Simpson's
Clearfield High School German students' European trip.
We visited the Rhine and Mosel Valleys in Germany,
the small country of Luxembourg,
Alsace-Lorraine region of France,
and the Alps near Interlaken, Switzerland.
It was a great trip!

Chaperoning is always a humbling experience.
Sometimes I didn't pay enough attention
so, to compensate,
the next time I may have overreacted.
We were a bit noisy at a Roman ampitheater
and I may have been the culprit.
I also misjudged how well mountain air carries enthusiastic singing.
I made other assumptions that turned out wrong--
who knew that airport security was on TWO floors?
Or being the last person off the plane would put me first in line at security?
So much for racing a kid to see who could catch up to the group
only to find the group behind us...
Sorry, Frau.
Thank you for new friends and memories,
now put in alphabetical order,
mostly in English.

A is for apfelstrudel,
ancient Romans,
Alps,
and Ati, our Pakistani/Italian busdriver
who taught me his secret to a perfect pizza crust
and how to count to three in Urdu and Punjabi.

Apple strudel with vanilla sauce-- I could have licked the plate

Ancient guys. Did Nero have a beard?

Atop Schilthorn, the Alps from above.
 Glad I brought a warm coat!

Den walks past avalanche control

Ati, superb busdriver

B is for bicycles,
barges,
barbapapa (Can you guess what that is?),
beer,
bears,
bells, bells, bells,
and the Battle of the Bulge.

Streets were often without cars, but bicycles were welcome. Ding ding!

Big barges with huge engines were the only ones
that could handle the Rhine/Rhein floodwaters

Barba/beard, Papa/Daddy,
Daddy's beard is cotton candy

Hello, friend!

Bears are a symbol of the area

This man needed beer to get him through "Blowing in the Wind"

C is for carvings
on cathedrals
and castles,
and also for chess
and cards
and conversations with former third graders,
now grown.

Strasbourg Cathedral was covered with carved stone

Small creatures, each one different

Hey Lucy, is this a fox?

The saint is being attacked

Constantine's mother helped start the church in Trier

Eyes, sightless and sighted
Soldiers patrolled the Strasbourg square

My favorite rock carving in Strasbourg was a tribute to the carvers of the past centuries

Ah, castles!

This stretch of the Rhine has the highest count
of castles per kilometer in the world

Castle in the rain.
Yes, it rained.
A lot

This castle staircase was so steep that
I almost came down backwards

Conversation
 Third grade student, Myra, and her teacher, years later

D is for dogs
and detours/"deviations" past dead badgers
and "Danke"
which may make checkout ladies think you're Swiss.

Dogs were everywhere

I was fascinated with this dog's circles

Detour!
Townspeople were as surprised by our bus
as we were by their detour

E is for edelweiss,
electric cars,
Eltz, the family who has owned Burg Eltz for thirty generations,
and eichhornchen, "squirrel" in German.
I have yet to say it correctly without moving my whole body.

We followed this man in edelweiss suspenders

Electric cars recharging

Burg Eltz,
Rick Steves' favorite castle-- and ours

What a roofline!

F is for fountains,
Frankfurt green sauce,
"football" played in a Roman ampitheater
with an improvised soccer ball of electrical tape-wrapped coat-in-a-bag
and Frau Simpson, our mighty and patient leader.

Frau Simpson and Herr Frau

More bears in fountain form

Soccer.
Ummm, no...
"Football".

G is for Gutenberg's printing press,
grapes,
and groupen, one of Den's favorite German words.

Grapes! 
 Vineyards climbed the slopes of the Mosel vertically

Some of our great groupen

Our tour groupen at the Strasbourg Cathedral
and in the Alps near Interlaken, Switzerland
(photos from Frau Simpson)

H is for high places
and high water (hochwasser)
and Happy Birthday
and hat exchanges.

High! 
 Lauderbrunnen Valley from the gondola lift--
the daily view of students from Gimmelwald enroute to school

High! Flood stage warning

The daily singing of Happy Birthday
sounded especially good in the great hall of Rheinfels Castle

Den and Ethan trade hats

I is for ironwork
and internment camp.

Amazing blacksmith work

Epiphany marking beside the protective ironwork

Intricate chandelier

The best ironwork we've ever seen was at Burg Eltz

Even the grates in derelict buildings had interesting ironwork

The metalwork here made an impression as well-- Struthof Internment Camp in the Vosges

J is for Albert Jones,
one of nine Clearfield County WWII soldiers buried in Luxembourg.
We placed county and American flags at their graves
and a rock from the Rockton mountain on their stone crosses.

Justina Gaylor remembers Albert Jones

Caleb Strouse reads "In Flanders Fields"

We will not forget

K is for kinder, the German word for children.
German Kinderkids walk to school.
Alone.
Or they ride their bikes.
Alone.
They go on walking field trips regularly in their "Discover the World" class.
America could learn from the Germans.
By the way,
German has lots more Ks than English does,
and Kilroy was here.

A sign on a neighborhood school
 

Kids' bikes parked outside the schoolyard. Imagine!

L is for Loreley
and luge.
Loreley was a mythical siren
who attracted men to wreck on the Rhine rapids,
but the luge also attracted males to wreck;
testosterone flowed
as the speed record was broken
again
and again.

Den stands where Loreley sat.
We have no pictures of the luge--
didn't want to break the camera!

 
M is for manhole covers--
works of art at your feet,
different in each city,
and musicians that play in the city squares.

Trier

Cochem

Bernkastel

Cool sounds from a steel drum lid, inverted

A Belgian band plays in Luxembourg

Not everyone is a music lover. Three out of four isn't bad...

N is for naps.
Catch them when you can.

Den catches a nap waiting for everyone to arrive

O is for Omega,
which is the last letter of the Greek alphabet.
Alpha is the first, then beta, thus the origin of "alphabet".
To celebrate the thousandth birthday of Strasbourg's cathedral,
two new windows were commissioned.
On the left is Alpha, the beginning, the Creator
with fish and plants and earth and sky.
On the right is Omega, the end, King Jesus,
but if you look Very Closely,
when you look at Jesus
you see people--
as it should be.

We could have looked at these windows for hours

Click on this picture
and make it as BIG as you can
to see some of the 150 faces photographed.
Our tour guide was one of them

P is for plantains big enough to hold pens,
Patton's grave,
pigeons in the square,
poppies,
and lovely people
like Paula from Mexico City
who taught us
that Moien means Hello in Luxembourgese,
and people like the Chinese fusion engineer
who asked us why the USA
didn't want to participate in
international fusion technology research.
Sorry...

Many European plants were the same species as North American plants,
but this plantain was the biggest I have ever seen.
It held my pen!

Patton's wife wanted to be buried with him
but that was not allowed,
so she had herself cremated and sprinkled
on his grave

Pigeons lurking

A poppy is a remembrance of soldiers

Our new friend Paula, a teacher/journalist/nanny

Q is for a quiet lunch of quiche Lorraine
eaten in the French provence of Lorraine.

A good meal with good friends

 

R is for  Rhine River,
rooster weather vanes,
and Ruben, our tour guide.

A three hour tour

Floating past centuries of history 

photo by Sandy Rowles Brown

Almost every weathervane was a rooster

Ruben, the fast-walking, umbrella-carrying, fun tour leader

 


S is for snails,
stork nests,
and stones.

At this size and with their plentiful numbers, no wonder snails are on the menu

Platform for a stork nest to keep them away from chimneys

Stones were recycled from previous centuries

Love the mix of stones

Interesting

Ancient Roman bricks reused to make a retaining wall

Streets get even more colorful when it rains

Corner erosion

Stones atop the Alps

 


T is for timbered houses
and tunnels.

Timbered houses were almost ubiquitous

Old timbers in the towns, new ones growing on the hillsides

All the senses-- the smell of roses,
the sound of waters,
the touch of raindrops,
the sight of centuries-old timbers,
and the lingering taste of tiramisu

Tunnel under Rheinfels Castle

 

U is for umbrellas
and UNESCO,
sponsor of World Heritage Sites
that prohibit new bridges on sections of the Rhine
which makes big buses use small ferries
that make drivers of little cars Very Nervous.

Umbrellas and reluctant dachsund

 

V is for Verboten!
Not always sure what the signs meant,
but if you're comtemplating it,
don't do it!
Verboten!

Our German is not good--
if you park here, you'll be stuck in private ground?

Ummm...
Zurich has strong people? They are not allowed here

 
W is for WC,
walks,
wading,
and waterfalls.

Also known as "toilette",
a welcome sign

Pre-breakfast walk with Christa through private gardens--
like backyards without the houses

Wading in the Rhine, river of ancestral migration

Wine, product of the Mosel valley.
It may make you slightly loopy

Lauderbrunnen waterfall on the left. Don't fall on the right

X is for Marx.
Karl Marx grew up in Trier
looking at the Black Gate.
His house is now a Euromart,
the German equivalent of a Dollar Store.
Ironic.

Pink house was home of little Karl

Trier's Black Gate, an entrance to the old Roman City

Y is for yodel.
We tried.
It wasn't pretty.

This man can't yodel

Z is for Zum Wanderweg 
and zillions of other memories
of bunkers
     disguised as houses
and dancing in city squares--
     (Is that square dancing?)
     and wishing that you had organized a flash mob
and skies
     that once held countless fighters and bombers
and long airport security lines
    where you may be called upon to body-block
    leering Eastern Europeans
and a pearl-handled Mauser
     with a layered stock
and jesters to encourage you to speak freely
     and roses to shut you up
     explained by tour guides that sound like Monty Python
and looking down
     at shipping barges in Rotterdam's canals 
and basement masses
     and confessions
and stairways to heaven
    conquered by limping grandmas
and wishing you knew
    even a small part 
    of what the cemetery guide forgot
and drug-sniffing dogs in training
and schnitzel
     with noodles (sing it!)
and astronomic clocks
     watched on the quarter-hour
and new ways of organizing the alphabet
and are Unterwesels
     the minions for Oberwesels?
and James Bond
     mysteriously appearing in bathroom mirrors
and contests
     to see who can keep their feet in glacial meltwater the longest
and putt putt golf
     (Do they have that in Germany?)
and good times with friends,
     new and old.

Zum Wanderweg--"Trail this way."
Blessings on the trails yet ahead of you...
Auf wiedersehen!