Green and Pleasant Land | …A Blog about Culture and Writing

56th Miesau Horse Races (Pferderennen)

Posted on August 29, 2014 by Clare Dunkle

Coming down the stretch the first time at the horse races (Pferderennen) in Miesau

This weekend, Joe and I took a drive out to Miesau to see the 56th running of the horse races there. We weren’t entirely sure where the event would be held, but it proved easy to find. It’s just off L356, which is the priority road that goes from Ramstein to Spesbach, then Hütschenhausen, then Miesau. A couple of minutes outside Hütschenhausen, we could see cars parked along the road, and there was the race track on our left.

The idea of a horse race conjures up in my mind images of elaborate Ascot hats and stuffy old gentlemen drinking mint juleps, but this race was a relaxed family event. Vendors were serving coffee and cake, schwenk steaks, and other fest fare. There were plenty of places to sit down and enjoy a meal in the fresh air. A small grandstand held dignitaries, but most of the onlookers leaned against the rail or stood on banks next to the track. The crowd was full of children.

Riderless horse at the Miesau horse races (Pferderennen)

Although trotting and running races were both advertised, we didn’t arrive in time to see a trotting race. The race we saw was a traditional Thoroughbred race, and the horses were spirited and eager to run. One of them threw his rider going into the box and escaped to run the race alone. He gave it his all. He ran the track four times around by himself. Clearly, in his magnificent mind, he was winning.

Spectators trying to stop a riderless horse at the Miesau horse races (Pferderennen)

A number of spectators had the idea that they should flag the horse down as he ran by, but that just inspired him to run faster. It all looked like an accident waiting to happen to me. Fortunately, the Red Cross was standing by with an ambulance.

The winner at the finish at the Miesau horse races (Pferderennen)

Eventually, the riderless horse got tired and walked off with his owner, and the race got underway. It was a long race, one and a half lengths of the track, and the photo at the top of this blog post shows the field coming out of the first turn. This is the winner at the finish line. He beat out the favorite, who came in third, I think. We didn’t do any betting, but lots of other people did.

Escorting the winning horse at the Miesau horse races (Pferderennen)

Two gorgeous and gorgeously decorated horses were waiting to escort the winner to the grandstand to receive his prize. I think the dark horse was a Paso Fino.

Posing for photos after winning at the Miesau horse races (Pferderennen)

And here they are with the winner.

Joe and I left feeling like winners too. We’ve been to many of the fests that pop up all over the region, but this was a pleasant change from what we’re used to. It was a wonderful excuse to get out into the open air, have a schwenk, watch beautiful animals, and participate in a local tradition. We’ll be back trackside next year.

To read my latest blog posts, please click on the “Green and Pleasant Land” logo at the top of this page. All photos taken in August, 2014, near Miesau, Germany. Photos and text copyright 2014 by Clare B. Dunkle.

Posted in Europe, Festivals, Recreation, Sports, Tourist destinations | 1 Comment

Today’s word sends us back to the days when the great German universities were the pride of the civilized world. (Even Prince Hamlet went to a German university, you know.) The word is der Luftikus. No, it isn’t some specialized piece of apparatus or a technical term for a hideous disease. It comes from die Luft, meaning “air,” plus a fabricated Latin ending, and it was a word German students made up to describe one another. Der Luftikus is a ditz or an airhead.

Posted on August 26, 2014 by Clare Dunkle | Comments Off

Museumsdorf Bayerischer Wald, pt. III: Faith of Our Fathers

Posted on August 19, 2014 by Clare Dunkle

Crucifixes in the Museumsdorf Bayerischer Wald

Bavaria has been overwhelmingly Roman Catholic for centuries. Even today, Bavaria contains the highest percentage of Catholics of any state in Germany, as the following map from the German Bishops’ Conference (Deutsche Bischofskonferenz) shows. This faith helped define the identities of the Bavarians of former days, and it wove itself deeply into the fabric of their lives. Signs of it were everywhere at the Museumsdorf Bayerischer Wald, the living history museum in Tittling, Germany, from outdoor shrines and miniature wayside chapels to crucifixes and pictures in every furnished house.

Percentage of Catholics by diocese in Germany, 2012 (katholische Bevölkerung nach Bistümern)

The chapel pictured below could hold only eight or ten people. It has the words, “Heiliger Florian beschütze uns for Feuer,” or “Saint Florian, protect us from fire,” written over the door. St. Florian, a Roman soldier in the late 200s AD, organized and trained an elite firefighting brigade. During one of the many religious persecutions of the time, he was sentenced to be burnt at the stake, but he seemed so eager to die this way that his executioners lost their nerve and drowned him instead. Because of his connection to firefighting, St. Florian has been invoked all over Europe for over a thousand years as a protector against the deadly fires that used to sweep through cities and villages.

Wayside chapel to St. Florian at the Museumsdorf Bayerischer Wald

In addition to buildings and shrines, the museum contained an indoor exhibition of small religious objects, such as the crucifixes pictured above. In the days before plastics and mass production, each of these items was handmade, so even though they were similar, they showed interesting variations, like the Pietà sculptures pictured below of Christ’s Mother holding her dead Son. In the sculpture on the right, her heart is pierced with swords, representing the seven great sorrows of her life. One of the swords is missing.

Pieta sculptures in the Museumsdorf Bayerischer Wald

Folk art has a common style around the world, incorporating bright colors and flattened features. This primitive painting of St. Joseph with the Christ Child reminded me of paintings from Mexico.

Painting of St. Joseph in the Museumsdorf Bayerischer Wald

After the invention of printing, colorful illustrations became cheaper and cheaper, and people across Europe looked for ways to decorate their homes with these pretty pictures. In England, the Victorians experimented with cut paper art, and around the same time, someone in Bavaria must have been doing the same thing. The altar below is a masterpiece of cut and glued paper, foil, and other inexpensive materials. It’s only about eleven inches high.

Miniature altar in the Museumsdorf Bayerischer Wald

One of the things that fascinated me the most was the museum’s collection of votive plaques. People had commissioned these to express their thanks for an answered prayer, and that means each plaque had a story to tell.

Votive plaque at the Museumsdorf Bayerischer Wald

This votive plaque from 1799 especially caught my interest. The man in the foreground is wearing the clothes of a gentleman, and he’s carrying blueprints and drafting tools. We can see an arch crumbling beside him. If the damage were nothing more than the single block falling down, he wouldn’t have had time to pray for help, but as it is, this plaque tells us that he called on St. Sebastian, pictured in the upper left. Perhaps he was the architect of a building that caved in. This plaque tells us that St. Sebastian answered his prayer and saved his life.

To read my latest blog posts, please click on the “Green and Pleasant Land” logo at the top of this page. All photos taken in June, 2014, at the Museumsdorf Bayerischer Wald, Tittling, Germany. Photos and text copyright 2014 by Clare B. Dunkle.

Posted in Churches and religion, Europe, Folk traditions, German art, German history, German house decoration, Public art, Tourist destinations, Village life | 1 Comment

The English word, “plastic,” has its roots in the Greek word for “to mold” because plastic is formed, not carved like wood or beaten into shape like iron. But the German word for plastic, der Kunststoff, expresses a different concept. Der Kunststoff comes from der Stoff, meaning “material,” and die Kunst, “art” or “artistry.” Unlike natural materials, plastic itself is an expression of human creativity and ingenuity.

Posted on August 18, 2014 by Clare Dunkle | Comments Off

Museumsdorf Bayerischer Wald, pt II: Life before Plastic

Posted on August 13, 2014 by Clare Dunkle

Fountain at the Museumsdorf Bayerischer Wald

The word plastic means, more or less, “pliable” or “moldable.” Plastics are so pervasive in our lives that it’s hard to remember how recent they are. The first modern plastic was only invented in the 1850’s, and it wasn’t until a hundred years later, the 1950’s, that plastics were mass produced in sufficient quantities that they began to displace the materials humanity had always used before for its household objects. A trip through this living history museum brought that civilization-changing divide into focus.

Now, people on another continent can injection-mold our dolls, water pipes, cereal bowls, and toilet seats for us. We’re surrounded by cheap, colorful plastic; if you’re indoors, it’s a pretty good bet that you can reach out and touch something plastic right now. But almost within living memory, humanity had little or no plastic to work with. They were making what they needed out of natural materials, and they often were producing those items within their own communities.

Blacksmith tools at Museumsdorf Bayerischer Wald

They made things out of metal.

Barrels at Museumsdorf Bayerischer Wald

They made things out of wood and glass.

Fishing nets and gear at Museumsdorf Bayerischer Wald

They made things out of natural fibers and leather.

A fish-shaped pan at Museumsdorf Bayerischer Wald

And they made things out of ceramic.

Because so many of these materials were worked locally, complicated sets of tools were on display everywhere at this Bavarian museum. What we would expect to find hidden away in a factory, Bavarians of the old days might have right in their living rooms, like this cobbler, who had his workshop in his house. (I love the specially modified stool.)

A cobbler’s workbench at Museumsdorf Bayerischer Wald

Woodworking tools were everywhere. It brought into sharp focus for me just how valuable my woodcarver, Paul, was to the village that took him in in my werewolf story, By These Ten Bones.

A woodworking workshop at Museumsdorf Bayerischer Wald

Posted in Europe, Folk traditions, German history, German house decoration, Recreation, Tourist destinations, Village life | 2 Comments

Die Katze hat hitzefrei.

I took this picture of my cat, Leela, in the middle of our heatwave. If she could speak, she’d be saying, “Don’t expect any dead mice on the patio today. I have hitzefrei.”

When my girls were going to German school, they would call me up in the middle of the morning and gleefully announce in beautiful Denglish, “We have hitzefrei!” Because most German schools have no air conditioning, they occasionally have to cancel classes because of excessive temperatures just as we Americans occasionally cancel class because of snow. The word hitzefrei comes from die Hitze, “the heat,” and frei, “unoccupied” or “at liberty.” So hitzefrei is a free day because of high temperatures–a heat day, you might say.

The adjective, hitzefrei, and the noun, das Hitzefrei, mean exactly the same thing, so in most common expressions, the only question is whether to capitalize the H or not. Hitzefrei haben, “to have a heat day,” and hitzefrei bekommen, “to get a heat day” can be either one, so there’s no wrong answer here. But Hitzefrei geben, “to give [students or workers] a heat day,” is always the noun and always capitalized. Kein Hitzefrei bekommen, “not to get a heat day,” should also be capitalized.

Posted on July 8, 2014 by Clare Dunkle | Comments Off

Beating the Heat in Germany

Posted on July 6, 2014 by Clare Dunkle

Hot duck in Lindau am Bodensee

It’s sunny and 85 degrees outside (30 degrees C), and even the ducks are listless and miserable. My Texan friends might laugh, but stop to think about this first: Germany has almost no air conditioning! Everywhere you go right now, from stores to restaurants, you’re unlikely to find that chilly blast of refreshing A/C we Texans take for granted.

The first time Joe and I moved to Germany, it was already September, and summertime heat was the last thing on our minds. When we picked our first house, we didn’t think to ask about the prevailing breezes, and we weren’t sorry the house didn’t have a basement. Passive solar? Sure, we’d heard the phrase–but we hadn’t ever had to live it.

We spent some desperately uncomfortable days and nights in that house.

The truth is that the average house in our part of Germany doesn’t need air conditioning. It has features that, if properly used, can help keep its residents cool. The walls are cinderblock, with stucco on top of that. They’re at least a foot thick. Windows in most well-made houses are equipped with Rollladens (yes, all three of those Ls belong there). Rollladens are special shutters that roll down outside the window glass. They can be rolled down in such a way that they let in some light, like these Rollladens in my dining room:

Rollladens (rolling shutters) set to let in some light

Or they can be closed entirely, like the Rollladen over this window in my library:

Fully closed Rollladen (rolling shutter)

Rollladens help immensely to keep a German house cool. By keeping sunlight off the window glass, they stop that “hot car” greenhouse effect. They also trap dead air and insulate the window area from heat. In effect, they turn my windows into more of that lovely, thick German wall.

Every window downstairs is shut tight against the higher temperature outside. But heat rises, so upstairs, I’m letting the breezes blow through to keep any warm air from getting trapped. This house’s second story has large patio-door-style windows at each gable end, and they stand open day and night. The house also has four large windows in the roof, and they’re open as far as possible to let the rising hot air escape.

My house would seem to be doomed to be an oven because an entire south-facing room is glass without proper Rollladens:

Glass garden room off my living room

And a large part of the roof is glass, too. (Thank God, it has polarized window film on it.)

Glass roof panels over our living room

Because I take advantage of the other features of the house, however, even the room right next to all this glass is cooler than the outside air. The thermometer on the desk in the library tells me it’s 78 degrees (26 Celsius) right now, seven degrees cooler than the temperature in my sunny garden outside.

But, on an ordinary day, I wouldn’t be in this room at all. I would be taking advantage of the best passive solar feature this house has to offer: a full basement apartment.

The first time we house-hunted, we didn’t give basements a second thought. By the time we got to this, our third house, we walked into the basement and said, “Great! This is where the guest beds go and where the writing workstation goes. This is where we’ll escape in the summer.” Right now, all the Rollladens are closed on the half-height basement windows downstairs, and Joe is lounging on one of those guest beds in the twilight, surfing the web on his tablet. The room feels almost too cold. That’s because the temperature down there is 73 degrees.

That’s right: it’s five o’clock in the afternoon on a clear summer day, and a whole section of this un-air-conditioned house is twelve degrees colder than the outside air!

In the winter, that basement apartment is also the warmest place in the house. Its living room is a big, clean, plain room without pictures or distractions, and that’s where I do my writing:

My writing workstation

The big cinderblock walls of my German house are heating up right now, but tonight the temperature is scheduled to drop down to 59 degrees (15 Celsius), and I’ll keep the second story windows open all night to let today’s heat radiate out of here. If the heat wave continues for several days, even the basement will slowly lose its cool, but that’s unusual in Germany. Tomorrow is forecast to reach a high of only 71 degrees (22 Celsius). I’ll open all the windows in the house to let as much of that chilly air as possible reach both sides of my German walls, getting them ready to battle the next heat wave… whenever it comes along.

To read my latest blog posts, please click on the “Green and Pleasant Land” logo at the top of this page. All photos taken in 2013 and 2014 in Rodenbach, Germany, except for the duck, which was photographed in June, 2014, in Lindau am Bodensee, Germany. Photos and text copyright 2014 by Clare B. Dunkle.

Posted in Daily life, Europe, Seasons, Weather | 1 Comment

The word, “Bavarian,” appears to date back to the AD 400s, to the days of the decaying Roman empire, when it was used to describe the people who lived east of the Swabians but west of historic Bohemia (now the western part of the Czech Republic). The Romans are long gone, but the Bavarians are still there. The name for their land was Baiern until King Ludwig I decreed, in 1825, that it be spelled with a y instead: Bayern. He had just been crowned at the time, and one imagines that he got a real thrill out of this use of his new royal powers. Now the kings are gone, and the German state of Bavaria is der Freistaat Bayern.

Germany resembles Queen Victoria in profile, and Bayern (Bavaria) occupies the entire back of her neck. Oh, you don’t believe me about Germany and the Queen? Just take a look.

The Queen’s portrait

Posted on June 30, 2014 by Clare Dunkle | Comments Off

Museumsdorf Bayerischer Wald: History in the Open Air

Posted on June 29, 2014 by Clare Dunkle

Flowers in a window at Museumsdorf Bayerischer Wald

This wonderful open-air museum lies in the village of Tittling, twenty minutes north of Passau, in southeastern Germany. The large, grassy park contains a hundred and fifty buildings that, according to the website, date from 1580 to 1850–a nice bit of symmetry, that. Many of the buildings, however, were still in use up to the 1970s before being moved to this sunny time capsule of a museum.

Historical outbuildings at Museumsdorf Bayerischer Wald

As large as the museum park is and as small as the village of Tittling is, Google Maps still manages to lose the place: it tried to direct us to Herrenstrasse 1, on the right (east) side of B85, whereas the museum actually lies a little further north and to the left (west). Fortunately, we ignored Google Maps at this point, stayed on B85, and followed the brown “cultural” signs to the museum. They led us there without mishap.

Farm complex at Museumsdorf Bayerischer Wald

We learned about this interesting place on Tripadvisor, one of my favorite sources for travel activities because the reviews are written by regular travelers like me and contain lots of helpful advice. The website for the museum itself isn’t quite so helpful for English speakers. So far as I can tell, it’s written only in German. That’s exactly what the Google Translate browser plugin is for, though. I use Chrome and have this Translate plugin installed so that I can translate webpages with a click of a button. It works quite well with this museum’s website and easily unearths basic information such as opening hours, location, and ticket prices. However, if you try it, you may wonder what the mysterious link, “Model Covenant Blame,” is for. But that’s just the sort of thing that makes translation programs fun. Click the link, and the “translated” webpage will invite you to view a “model of a bunch of censure in the 19th century.” Who could possibly resist?

I thoroughly enjoyed the museum. Many of its buildings were elaborately furnished with decorations and tools of from a bygone era. Enough Bavarian farmhouses were represented that a pattern of life could quickly be detected. On one side of the big main room, there was a corner table with good light, suitable not just for meals but for fiddly wintertime projects involving lots of small parts and patience:

Interior of a Bavarian farmhouse at the Museumsdorf Bayerischer Wald

And on the other side, there was a large, cozy stove and yet another well-lit area suitable for sewing, weaving, or preparing meals, as well as easy access to the bedroom, where a small child or two could be put down to nap without getting cold:

Interior of a Bavarian farmhouse, Museumsdorf Bayerischer Wald

In other words, the main room of the historical Bavarian farmhouse was a multipurpose space that allowed both husband and wife to keep busy side by side yet maintain their independent spheres and consequent sanity during the long, snowy winters.

Mill-driven machine rooms at the Museumsdorf Bayerischer Wald

I loved the museum. It fed my passion for old, shabby spaces undergoing genteel decay. Readers of my books know how much I love that.

Outdoor stairs at the Museumsdorf Bayerischer Wald

More tomorrow…

To read my latest blog posts, please click on the “Green and Pleasant Land” logo at the top of this page. All photos taken in May, 2014, in at the Museumsdorf Bayerischer Wald, Tittling, Germany. Photos and text copyright 2014 by Clare B. Dunkle.

Posted in Europe, Folk traditions, German art, German history, German house decoration, Tourist destinations, Village life | Comments Off

If you’ve read the children’s classic, Heidi (and if you haven’t, then you should immediately do so), then you’ve already learned about die Alm. It’s such a unique term that it isn’t usually translated. Die Alm is any high mountain meadowland where Alpine shepherds in Austria, Germany, and Switzerland pasture their flocks and herds in summertime. In the winter, die Alm is subject to bitter cold, wind, and thick snowfall, so the livestock can’t stay there; they have to be driven up to die Alm in spring and back down into the valleys in autumn. This results in parades all over the region in September and October as the shepherds and farmers decorate their animals with flowers, headdresses, and special bells to move them back home. This parade is known in German as der Almabtrieb, from treiben, “to drive,” ab, “off” or “down from,” and die Alm, that high Alpine summer pastureland.

Posted on June 27, 2014 by Clare Dunkle | Comments Off