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

The Spirit of Bavaria

Posted on June 27, 2014 by Clare Dunkle

Dairy herd on the Alm by the Königssee

If you take the walk suggested in yesterday’s post from the Königssee to the Obersee in Berchtesgaden National Park, you will soon come across a rugged wooden sign. For those who don’t read German, here is a translation. “At the little Alpine cabin, there is fresh Alpine milk and buttermilk every day. A butter, bread, and cheese snack is six minutes’ walk away.”

Signpost pointing the way to fresh Alm milk by the Königssee

Signpost pointing the way to fresh milk by the Königssee

From this signpost, we couldn’t see the cabin in question, but we could see the source of that fresh milk and butter: a herd of contented dairy cattle lying around on the hills nearby, accompanied by a couple of goats that looked as if they were straight out of Heidi. I don’t know when dairy cattle eat. Every time I see them, they’re lying down.

Cows dozing to the chime of their own cowbells

Even when we couldn’t see the cattle and goats, we could hear them. Each has its own bell, and the whole area rings with their gentle chimes. Those bells aren’t for tourists, either. Cowbells have been used by shepherds for over 5,000 years. In hilly terrain, shepherds need their help to find missing livestock. So cows really do need the cowbells–because because their horns don’t work!

Unable to resist the offer of fresh milk, we took the six-minute walk to the cabin. (More like three, I’d say.) It had a cheerful appearance, a few picnic tables out in the sun, and two self-serve windows.

Snack time on the Alm by the Königssee

There, the simple menu included milk from the day’s milking in massive mugs, as well as beer and a few other kinds of drinks. The milk was amazing, even according to my friends who didn’t ordinarily drink milk. It had the mildest, sweetest taste of any milk I’ve ever drunk. The chewy rye bread and butter (Butterbrot) had a sprinkling of spices on it that my friends pronounced very good, but I ordered it without spices (ohne Gewürz). But then we saw a platter of the Speckbrot go by, and we had to have some. Speck is bacon, more or less, and each little square of rye bread had its own complete piece of of it:

Speckbrot (“bacon bread”) on the Alm by the Königssee

Meanwhile, here was the view from our picnic table. Emperors and sultans haven’t had a better meal in a better hall than this.

View of the Königssee from the Alm

Posted in Folk traditions, Food and drink, German language, Recreation, Rural scenery, Tourist destinations | 2 Comments

If you travel to Bavaria or Austria, you’re likely to notice that every other town name ends in “-au“: Ramsau, Schönau am Königssee, Lindau, Oberammergau, Grainau, and the list could go on and on. That’s because, in this stony, mountainous region, an “au” represented one of the only locations level enough to use for grazing cattle or growing crops. Die Au is what we Texans call “bottomland,” a fertile low-lying meadow or patch of forest next to a body of water.

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

The Most Beautiful Place on Earth

Posted on June 26, 2014 by Clare Dunkle

An electric boat on the Königssee

In my fifty years, I’ve been to twenty-one countries, and I’ve done my best to see the best they had to offer. Two weeks ago, I saw the best of the best: the Königssee and Obersee in Berchtesgaden National Park.

Formed by glaciers and fed by glaciers, the Königssee and adjacent Obersee lakes have the most unearthly blue-green color. Tiny mineral particles in the glacier meltwater are responsible for this. Too small to fall to the bottom of the lake, they stay suspended in the water and scatter the sunlight. I haven’t enhanced or altered the color of this photograph so you can see that strange green water for yourself.

Blue-green water in the Königssee

I’m not the only one who considers the fjordlike Königssee lake to be special. In 1909, Prince Regent Luitpold ordered that no gas-fed or diesel-fed motors be allowed on the lake and designated the area around it to be protected land, along the lines of American national parks. Boating since then has been extremely limited, and electric-powered boats have plied its waters ever since. While the prince made this decision in order to limit noise, we now recognize how important it has been in limiting pollution: no oil-slick smooth trails cross the waters of this lake long after their boats have passed, as they have done in other bodies of water I’ve seen. In fact, the clean, quiet electric boats hardly raise a ripple.

Even the Nazis looked after this lake and confirmed its status as a protected wilderness. No waste products have been allowed to run off into the lake; they are scrupulously piped away from its pristine depths. The result is that the Königssee is the cleanest lake in Germany, reported to meet the standards of drinking water.

Duck in Berchtesgaden National Park

Of course, this little fellow doesn’t know anything about that, and neither do the numerous trout. So I declined to take a drink of the Königssee.

If you want to visit the Königssee, my advice is to stay nearby and arrive early. We stayed in nearby Ramsau at Alpenpension Auengrund, a 13-minute drive from the lake. It was a bargain, the breakfast was wonderful, the owners were delightful, and I hope to stay there again the next time I visit the area.

Boats start sailing the Königssee at eight in the morning this summer, according to the posted schedule. Compared to the lakeside wilderness, the most unattractive part of your day is likely to be the large parking lot in Schönau am Königssee, a five-minute walk from the boat dock. The earlier you get there, the emptier it will be and the less likely you’ll have to wait for a boat. You have to take a boat to see this beautiful place because the sheer cliffs surrounding much of the lake make it impossible simply to hike around it.

The Obersee

I also recommend not stopping at the first major stop, St. Bartholomä, but buying a ticket to go all the way to Salet at the opposite end. From there, you can walk to the Obersee, pictured above, and walk around to its far end. Not that many tourists were coming this way when we were there, so it was a very pleasant and quiet walk. It’s easy as hikes go, level for the most part except for an area where there are big stone steps along a cliff, but a strong cable acts as a handrail there. We weren’t sorry we had our hiking poles, but they weren’t necessary.

Forest by the Obersee

Thick green forest borders the Obersee, full of mossy rocks, and a cuckoo was calling steadily in the trees nearby. You can’t help counting upward as you listen to a cuckoo; from what I could tell, it ended up being about two hundred o’clock.

The Obersee

This is what I hope heaven looks like.

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 Nationalpark Berchtesgaden, Germany. Photos and text copyright 2014 by Clare B. Dunkle. Due to an incorrect setting, comments have been inadvertently turned off for this post, but will return on later posts.

Posted in German wildlife, Recreation, Rural scenery, Tourist destinations | Comments Off

If you travel to the Königssee, you’re likely to see Forelle on the menu everywhere you go, perhaps as part of another word, such as Forellenfilet. Die Forelle means “trout.” This cold-water fish is stocked in the clear Alpine water of the Königssee, and it may only be taken in limited quantities to serve in the restaurants nearby. Räuchern is a verb meaning “to smoke (in cooking),” so die geräucherter Forelle is “smoked trout,” a Königssee delicacy.

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

Still Green and Pleasant

Posted on May 21, 2014 by Clare Dunkle

Flowering tree at the Keukenhof Garden, Lisse, Netherlands

In 2011, when Joe and I were in Germany on a temporary assignment, I was posting on this blog three times a week. Then we received wonderful news: we were being sent back to Germany to live. I left to pack up the house, expecting to be able to pick up the blog in a couple of months.

That was two years ago.

By the time I came back to Germany, I had a new writing assignment: preparing my daughter Elena’s memoir for publication and writing a second memoir–my memoir–to match it. These memoirs focus on our lives with Elena’s adolescent anorexia nervosa. Going back into all those painful memories left me exhausted and overwhelmed. I had no more time or energy for the blog.

Halfway through hellish rewrites, I discovered that my poor blog wasn’t even displaying on Android browsers at all, and my website was looking shabby and outdated. I’ll have to do a major project when I finish these books, I thought. I’ll have to rework every single page on the site. And while I’m at it, I’ll need to move to a new web server… export the blog to a new location… make everything HTML5-compatible… optimize the whole thing for phones and tabs…

Thoughts like this didn’t help my stress level!

But now it’s all finished. Vanishing Girl, Elena’s memoir, has just gone through copyedit. Hope and Other Luxuries, my memoir, is right behind it. We should have the line edit and copyedit finished by the end of June. The website is finished, too. Every single little bitty code on every one of my site’s 138 webpages has gotten tweaked. The whole shebang is on a shiny new Linux server somewhere in the cloud (a.k.a. Dallas, Texas). The blog is up and running again in its new home. And I have time again to look out the window and see the green.

It is still green. VERY green. And other colors too. I can’t wait to tell you more about it.

Tulips at Keukenhof Garden, Lisse, Netherlands

To read my latest blog posts, please click on the “Green and Pleasant Land” logo at the top of this page. Photos taken in April, 2014, in Lisse, Netherlands. Text and photos copyright 2013 by Clare B. Dunkle. No copying in whole or in part without the express written consent of the author.

Posted in Europe, Gardening | 2 Comments

The Wheels on the Bus…

Posted on May 24, 2013 by Clare Dunkle

School bus

My body may be in Germany, but my heart and soul are still in Texas, and that’s where a set of my books will be too in a couple of days. Last week, I received this appeal in the mail from J.W. Caceres Elementary School in Donna, Texas:

J.W. Caceres Elementary School bookmobile drive

Now, here’s an appeal that didn’t ask for my money–all these good people want is books! Not only that, but they’re going to take those books for a ride and bring them right to the front doors of the children who want to read them, and they’re doing it during the summer months, when those children will have the free time to do a little reading for pleasure. This may be the gentle push these children need to become lifelong readers and learners. It was in the summer that I first learned to love books. Didn’t you? The rest of the year is just too busy.

Donna is right at the southern tip of Texas, in the Rio Grande Valley, not too far from the sea. Intrigued by the letter, I looked Donna up in City-Data, and here’s what I learned about it: The population is about 16,000 people, and the estimated median household income is only $25,000; compare that to the rest of Texas, where it’s $48,000, and the rest of the country, where it’s even higher than that. City-Data also informed me that unemployment in Donna is high (almost 12%) and that the average house has a value of only $60,000. This isn’t a wealthy town.

But Donna is a town blessed with educators who really care about their children. When I asked for more details, the principal explained that the district is supplying the bus for this project, and the elementary-school staff themselves are volunteering to keep the project going during their vacation time. “We are very excited,” she wrote me, “and our students are also very excited to have the opportunity to continue to read throughout the summer.”

Please consider doing what I did: send some interesting books to these children! Maybe you’re a YA author like me, and you’re afraid that your books are written at too high a reading level for grade-school students. Not to worry: the principal tells me, “We do have several of our 5th graders who are advanced readers and read middle school as well as beginning 9th grade material.” And these advanced readers might be the very ones who will fall in love with your books.

If you can’t send any books, then please consider passing this appeal on to others who might be able to help. Do you know any bloggers who review children’s books? Are you in touch with any librarians who might be weeding some high-interest books from their shelves? Is your best friend’s library bursting at the seams? Please reach out and let these people know that their books are tired of life on the shelf. They’re ready to go out and hit the road!

To read my latest blog posts, please click on the “Green and Pleasant Land image at the top of the page. This post may be freely copied in any format. All data on Donna, Texas, comes from City-Data.com and may be found at this link. The photo of the bus at the top of the page is in the public domain and comes from Wikimedia Commons, at this link.

Posted in Books and reading, Texas | Comments Off

Many cultures consider the calico cat to be a sign of good fortune. The cheerful pattern of orange, white, and black patches is a genetic anomaly that normally occurs only in female cats, and just the right combination of factors has to occur to bring it about. Maybe this is why Germans call a cat of this color die Glückskatze, from the possessive form of das Glück, “joy” or “luck,” and die Katze, “cat.” The calico is good luck’s own cat!

Posted on April 15, 2013 by Clare Dunkle | Comments Off

To the Heart of Winter

Posted on April 11, 2013 by Clare Dunkle

Snow-covered trees near Feldberg, Black Forest (Schwarzwald), Germany

In February, Joe and I spent a happy four days near Feldberg in the Black Forest (Schwarzwald). It didn’t snow while we were there, but it had just finished snowing, and the stuff was lying around everywhere. This utterly fascinated me. I know little about snow, and I try to add to my knowledge every time I get near it. Since I’m a writer, what I mainly do is stand around looking at it and trying to think of ways to describe it.

Last year, when I went to Bavaria, I noticed that snow on rock cliffs looks metallic and makes the rocks look like they’re layered with mica. This time, what I noticed is that snow tends to match the clouds overhead. Only if the clouds overhead are white does the snow look white (as in the photo above). If the clouds are light gray, so is the snow:

View from Hotel-Pension Kräutle, Feldberg-Neuglashütten, Germany

And if the clouds are deep violet-blue and gray, the snow responds with a color like glacier ice. (I love Germany for its violet-blue clouds, which I never saw in Texas).

View from the Feldberg Ski Resort, Feldberg, Germany

Put a really gloomy set of dark charcoal clouds into the sky, and the snow does its best to respond. The result is a landscape that doesn’t just look cold, it looks frozen both literally and figuratively. It’s a landscape of secrets. Beneath the twin blankets of cloud and snow, the world is fast asleep. I found myself wanting to whisper.

Black Forest (Schwarzwald) between St. Blasien and Feldberg, Germany

The other thing that fascinated me on this trip is the way snow banded the evergreen trees. It gave them a peculiarly furtive and menacing character, as if they were donning some sort of wild-animal skin, a crazy camouflage. They no longer seemed to be friends:

Black Forest (Schwarzwald) near Feldberg, Germany

Big or small, stripes belong with wildness.

Lucy, annoyed as usual (taken in April, 2010)

Since we were in one of Germany’s premier ski areas, Joe didn’t just look at the snow, he went ahead and skied on it.

Joe, skiing at Feldberg, the Black Forest (Schwarzwald), Germany

What can I say? He’s not a writer!

Posted in Recreation, Rural scenery, Tourist destinations, Weather, Writing craft | Comments Off

In German, schwarz means black, and der Wald is the forest. Der Schwarzwald, the Black Forest, is now a popular tourist destination in southern Germany. But it has been known by this name since at least the days of the Romans, who were awed by how dark and dangerous these ancient conifer woods could be. A military posting to a fort in this region could easily mean death; the Germanic tribes attacked and set fire to these forts so regularly that the burning forts themselves served as warning beacons to the rest of the Roman army.

Posted on April 10, 2013 by Clare Dunkle | Comments Off

Almond Blossoms

Posted on April 8, 2013 by Clare Dunkle

Almond blossoms (Mandelblüte) in Edenkoben, Germany

This is why we came to Edenkoben, Germany: to see the almond trees in blossom. A herald of spring, the almond trees bloom while many other trees are bare, sometimes as early as February. Like Easter, they promise rebirth.

But, after the darkest winter on record and the coldest March in over one hundred years, this is what we saw when we got to Edenkoben: not a hint of spring green. The grape vines didn’t show so much as a single leaf.

Spring? in Edenkoben, Germany, during the Almond Blossom Festival (Mandelblüten-Fest)

We and the Germans are growing desperate for spring. Germany hasn’t thawed out for months. Ever since spring officially arrived, night after night has been below freezing, and the days have hardly been better. We can’t get into our gardens, we haven’t been able to prune or clear the trash away, and those people who’ve been shopping the plant sales have been huddling indoors with all their new purchases, the clematis vines and box shrubs crowding the floor tiles near the windows like unhappy refugees.

March is the time when the various almond blossom festivals take place in the Rheinland-Palatinate—that is, in any year but this year. Gleiszellen wound up cancelling their festival. Gimmeldingen keeps moving the date. But Edenkoben, after having moved their festival once, went ahead and held it this weekend, April 6-7th. Unfortunately, the almond trees didn’t cooperate. The sun came out, and so did some festival-goers, but the branches to the left of these wanderers should be loaded with pink and white blossoms.

Almond Blossom Festival (Mandelblüten-Fest) in Edenkoben, minus the almond blossoms

Several years ago, I stood in the Van Gogh Museum in Amsterdam and studied the painting Vincent had made for his newborn namesake nephew, the painting called Almond Blossom, 1890 (Blühende Mandelbaumzweige). Vincent Van Gogh was already very ill, but the knowledge that his dearly loved brother, Theo, had named this new son for him filled Vincent with gratitude and enthusiasm, and he wanted to create a special painting to hang in the child’s room. The work that resulted is a true masterpiece. Even Vincent praised its patience and firmness of touch. Would this mark a rebirth in the life of the troubled painter?

Alas, no. The effort had been too great. The very next day, Van Gogh suffered a fresh breakdown. By the time he recovered, the blossoms were all but gone, and his favorite season was over. “Really, I have no luck,” he wrote to Theo.

Vincent Van Gogh would not live to see the almond trees blossom again.

Vincent Van Gogh, Blühende Mandelbaumzweige, or Almond Blossom, 1890

The sadness and wistfulness of this last great masterpiece of hope has haunted me since the day I saw it. Naturally, I couldn’t resist trying to capture my own Almond Blossom. Fortunately, a handful of young trees had flowered in spite of the cold. The older trees apparently knew better. It seems that “young and foolish” applies to trees as well as people.

Almond blossoms at Edenkoben's spring festival, Mandelblüten-Fest, Edenkoben, Germany

To read my latest blog posts, please click on the “Green and Pleasant Land” logo at the top of this page. Photos taken in April, 2013, in Edenkoben, Germany. Text and photos copyright 2013 by Clare B. Dunkle, with the exception of the Van Gogh painting, which is in the public domain. Weather information is from Spiegel Online International articles dated February 26, 2013, and March 28, 2013. Van Gogh information is from the Van Gogh Museum and the Vincent Van Gogh Gallery. No copying in whole or in part without the express written consent of the author.

Posted in Festivals, Gardening, Recreation, Rural scenery, Seasons, Tourist destinations | 3 Comments