Steven Harper Piziks

We have more of my journal from Germany last July:

COOKING WITH FRIENDS

As I’ve occasionally (only occasionally) mentioned in this journal, I enjoy cooking. When Christina and her then-boyfriend (now fiancé) Timo stayed with us during the American end of the exchange, it turned out Christina was an avid cook as well, and we shared dinner-making chores, teaching other different recipes from our respective countries. [Ed., Christina and Timo are now married. Yay! It's been wonderful seeing their relationship progress from dating to engaged to married.]

Now that I’m in Germany, Christina invited me over to cook together at her and Timo’s place, and I avidly accepted. 

But first I had to get there.

Our plan was simple. I’d hop the train for their apartment and be there around 6:00. Timo gets home from work at about 7:00, so we’d have time to hit the grocery store and get supper going before he arrived. 

None of us counted on a very sad stranger.

A woman whose name wasn’t released to the press was apparently suffering from deep depression, because she jumped from a bridge over a set of tracks and died immediately.   An entire section of the railway shut down so the authorities could handle the situation. 

At the time, I knew nothing about this. I only knew that the train stopped at one station and stayed there. Eventually, the conductor announced we all had to disembark due to a problem on the tracks.

Grumbling and muttering, all the passengers left the train. I was barely halfway to my destination and had no idea how to get there. I texted Christina to update her, and she offered to come get me. 

I waited patiently. In America, I’m generally an impatient waiter. Hey, I’m a busy guy and every moment I spend waiting is wasted, right? But in Europe, I turn into a patient waiter. I’m perfectly content to examine sewer gratings or count subway bricks. Then I get back to America, and I’m impatient again.

At last Christina arrived. We’d already run into each other several times at school, but we still hugged in greeting, and it was a joy to see her again. Still, we were considerably behind on our schedule. I had planned to make Phony Lasagna, a sort-of lasagna casserole that’s a family favorite, but it’s a 90-minute project at least. Christina and I headed into a grocery store to discuss the matter.

Another switch for me: at home, I loathe grocery shopping. I hate everything about it, from planning the menu to making the list to fighting the crowd to putting groceries away at home. But in Germany, grocery shopping becomes fun. The store is full of interesting and unfamiliar products, or ways to present products. I scamper around the store like Rikki Tikki Tavi on speed, examining everything in chef mode.  The milk has a different percentage of fat than in America. The variety of cheese is much wider. Check out these odd vegetable combinations in the canned section. And CHOCOLATE! 

After some discussion, Christina and I decided to make chili. We selected ingredients—yes, we put meat in ours—and I double-checked with her for a spice list. She had everything we needed in that category already. She suggested putting corn in the chili, which isn’t normally an ingredient for me, but I agreed to it, and why not?

Just as we were leaving, Timo called. He was stuck in the same shutdown and was, in fact, at the same station I had been stranded at half an hour ago. However, the transportation system was sending a series of special buses to route people around the problem area, so no need to come get him.

Since Christina had taught me some German recipes back home, it was my turn to teach her my chili recipe. My secret ingredient is a big dash of curry with a fair amount of pepper.  Christina worked on a custard dessert with a chocolate center. We had a great time, cooking and chatting and catching up. (I got to see her wedding dress, which Timo, of course, hadn’t seen at all.) 

At last Timo arrived. He had a deep suntan, to my surprise—last fall he’d been very fair.  More hugs and happy chatter! A lot of it was about their upcoming wedding, which is taking place in a castle, and their honeymoon in Greece. 

The chili finally finished. I served it with a cheese plate and some interesting spiced crackers Christina found at the store. It was all delicious. Christina and Timo were enthusiastic. The chocolate/custard dessert was a perfect sweet end after the spicy chili.

We talked quite a lot and killed a bottle Diet Coke among us. (Wine? Pff!)  They actually had ice (!!!), and I got my caffeine as cold as I like it.

In the end, I had to get back “home,” and Timo offered to drive me so we could talk a little more, too, and that was very fine. It was a wonderful evening of cooking with friends, and exactly what an exchange is supposed to be about.

COOKING FOR FRIENDS

Since I’m staying with JK and AK and they feed me regularly, I felt I should cook for them at least once. I thought I’d make for them something fun and new. In this case, my weirdo combination of cordon bleu and chicken Kiev.

“I will need to be a little rude,” I joked, “and rifle your kitchen to see what equipment you have.”

This also started with a trip to the grocery store and inspired more Rikkti Tikki Tavi scampering about, this time assembling bread crumbs and chicken breasts and cucumbers and corn (which I couldn’t find frozen; only canned, for some reason).  Earlier that day, I had already visited a street farmer’s market and picked up potatoes.

In the kitchen, I set to work. It was interesting and fun to use someone else’s kitchen to cook in. AK got home from work in the middle of it and asked when supper would be ready. When I told him it would be about half an hour, he looked a bit surprised, but AK does most of the cooking in the household, and he often doesn’t get home from work until seven or later, so they’re used to eating at eight or even nine—quite normal in Germany, but a little startling to Americans.

I discovered the chicken breasts (pre-packaged) weren’t in large pieces as they usually come in America, but were a lot of much smaller fillets. This only stymied me for a moment—I decided on the spot to make a whole bunch of smaller servings than fewer large ones.

I oiled the chicken fillets with sunflower oil and rolled them around cheese and ham, then rolled =that= in breadcrumbs. They went into the oven (carefully checked for Celsius temperature). After that, I boiled and mashed the potatoes (their set of beaters caused me some consternation, but I got it sorted out) and made Ukrainian salad out of cucumbers, sunflower oil, and salt, then heated the corn.

Everything came out deliciously, and AK and JK were very impressed.  It was fun!

Monday was another school day. KL and I let the students have at while we bummed around downtown Esslingen. I could do this every day, thanks.

The next day the students and teachers took a trip to Heidelberg. We bustled down to the train station and hopped aboard an ICE train for a three-hour ride which I still enjoyed, thank you.

Heidelberg is an old, old city that was largely untouched by World War II. It’s a medium-sized town at the bottom of a valley on the banks of the Neckar River (which also flows through Esslingen). It’s the quintessential German city, with narrow, cobblestone streets, unexpected churches, little markets, and a world-class university. Looming over the whole place is The Ruin.  The Ruin is a ruined castle that was built and inhabited only a short time before a war blasted it into semi-rubble. It’s been partly restored, but largely left as a ruin and something about it looks incredibly romantic and poetic, which is why it hasn’t been fully rebuilt. It’s a stunning site. Heidelberg is probably my favorite place in Germany, and if I won the lottery, I would give serious consideration to living there.

The students were given time to explore. Me, I had my own agenda.

See, Darwin has been doing genealogy for decades and, like most genealogists, he has a few stopping points—ancestors he can’t get past. One ancestor is Graf (Count) Johann (Johannes/John) Damon (Dammon/Daymon/Daman). Darwin can’t find his parents, a necessary step for going farther back on his tree. 

However, family legend says he studied at the University of Heidelberg in the early 1800s, when the Napoleanic Wars pulled him out of school. Eventually he made his way to the United States. I was going to find out more about him.

My main goal was to find out if it would be worth searching more for him in Heidelberg. See, I only had about an hour, and I was fairly sure that if the records existed, they would be scanned from hand-written pages and saved as photos or PDFs. Early 19th century hand-written German is a bitch to read. You have to know, for example, if what looks an f is actually an f, an s, or even ss. Capital letters are florid and difficult to distinguish from one another. V and W look much the same. So I was fairly sure that finding Daman in any existing records would be a difficult and careful hunt, which I couldn’t do in just an hour. I wanted to learn if it would be worth it for Darwin and me to return later. 

I located the university library with my iPhone and discovered it was only a short walk from the meeting point for the students. Yay! I hiked through Heidelberg’s horrifyingly delightful streets to the massive stone library, which is conveniently located across the street from an equally massive church built of pink sandstone. I had settled on the library as a more likely place to store old records than, say, the registrar’s office.

Inside, I found an information desk, where a Very Helpful Lady sat me down and asked me what I needed. I told her. She settled her glasses on her nose and started clicking keys. I was a little worried that my request would be greeted with a semi-huffy, “I can only help you a little,” but not at all. I had just handed a librarian a research puzzle, you see, and most of them live for this kind of thing, including the Very Helpful Lady.

A second monitor that faced me mirrored what she was doing, which was very useful. She called up a number of records sites, and it turned out I had been right—the early 1800s records were PDFs of old books. Printed or typed records didn’t start until the 1830s, long after Daman would have been a student. They definitely had the records, and the VHL perused a few of them to see if Daman’s name cropped up. In the meantime, she fired questions at me (but very nicely). Did he earn his doctorate? (No, he didn’t even graduate.) Do you know what he studied? (No.) Do you know what religion he was? (Protestant.) 

I also called poor Darwin, who was dead asleep at 4 AM back home, to get more clarification on some points. (Hey, this was the only chance to do this search with on-site help. Sacrifices must be made.) He scared up a little more information and answers to the questions, but not a whole lot. Most of it was, as I said, family legend, and wasn’t official knowledge.

Rather than become frustrated by the skimpy information, the VHL became more interested. Could we find him? She suggested that, since he was born a count, that we check the city records at Kassel, where he was born. Records of nobility were more carefully preserved. We should also check at churches for birth, baptism, and marriage records, since we know his religion. And she showed me a bunch of places where such records were already digitized and available on-line. (Although Darwin is adept at searching web archives, American search engines often ignore European archive sites, and without a URL, he didn’t know where to look.)

In the end, I came away with a whole bunch of leads, including the tantalizing idea that his original (pre-Amercan) name may have been Jacques, since there was a Jacque Daman from Belgium who served under Napoleon, was injured at Waterloo, and attended university at Heidelberg. Darwin doesn’t think he’s the right person, but it’s worth following up on. And we have the other archives to search now.

I thanked the VHL effusively for her time, and she seemed pleased. So it was a good day for all!

The first weekend, no field trips were planned. This a Familienwochenende, or family weekend, in which the individual families do what they want. We later learned various families went horseback riding, took trips to France, toured Stuttgart, and more.

As for me, JK and AK took me to the Burg Hohen-Zollern. 

The Burg Hohen-Zollern ( https://www.burg-hohenzollern.com/) is a working castle. The prince and his family still live there, and a flag flies at the highest tower to indicate if he’s at home. The place is ingeniously built around a spiral ramp. To get inside, you have to haul yourself up the mountain to the castle itself (thank heavens for shuttle buses), then start up a sort-of driveway that curves around and around in a spiral around the castle and then finally into it. Naturally, if you’re part of an attacking army, there are plenty of places for defenders to throw dreadful things like arrows, hot pitch, and boulders down on you. The modern version is more welcoming, and is festooned with statues of Kaisers and other luminaries of Prussian history.

I love castles, and spend my time in them in a kind of happy haze. I adore trying to figure out which parts are original and which were added or changed. I live for trying to figure out who did what to whom and where and imagining what the place was like after it was first built.  I got to indulge myself fully here. 

Only limited areas of the castle are open to the public (it’s a private home, after all), but I explored everything I could, including the interesting cellars. Many levels wind themselves deep under the castle, connected with stone spiral staircases and low stone passageways lit only by dim electric lights. The original kitchen was down there, and is still used today to store the family china. I followed one passage and found an old guard room, and then another tunnel, and then a door, and suddenly I was outside the castle at the bottom!  I couldn’t get back in, so I had to wind my way around the spiral back up to the top to find JK waiting for me. (He grew up in the area and knows the castle well, so he mostly let me explore.)

Afterward, we had lunch in an interesting indoor-outdoor German/Italian restaurant/musical performance/petting zoo place at the bottom of the mountain. The place is popular for weddings, and during our time there, three sets of wedding parties came through! I had an embarrassing moment in which I insisted on paying for lunch, only to have both my cards turned down. (AK paid, and I later hit a cash machine to pay him back. I called the bank to complain, and they said they didn’t even have a record of an attempt at payment from the restaurant, so it must have been their credit card system at fault.) 

On the drive home, we stopped at JK’s parents’ place for a moment, and I met his father. We bonded over our mutual dislike of Donald Trump.

I have never met a European who likes Donald Trump. Like, =ever=. I was once in a taxi in Ireland and after I mentioned my effusive hatred of the baboon, said driver replied that he had never met an American who supported Trump. I thought about that and wondered aloud if it’s that baboon supporters don’t often travel outside the USA. The driver thought that might be the case, too.

We rode the train to Esslingen. This was a six-hour deal, but I like traveling by train. Way more room and less stress than flying, more comfortable than by bus. The only problem we had was how to stash the luggage. German mass-transit is wonderful about a lot of things (cleanliness, ease, speed),  but they can’t seem to figure out how to design a train car with adequate luggage space for travelers. We had 26 people, all with two bags. There was literally no room for all the suitcases in the luggage racks, and we were forbidden from using the open area between the cars. In the end, we stashed bags behind seats and piled them in an extra seat that we’d bought for someone who ended up canceling. This also meant figuring out some serious logistics—the trains stop for three minutes at each stop, and if you and your luggage haven’t de-trained by then, you’re off for the next city.

We ended up doing a fire brigade. When the train stopped, a bunch of students debarked and the remaining students literally threw the suitcases onto the platform to them. We barely made it!

At Esslingen, a handful of students met us with SM, one of the teachers I knew. Joyful reunion! Then we gathered up our stuff and hoofed it about half a mile through hot, sticky sunlight to the school, where the rest of the families awaited us.  More joyful reunions! (Remember, the students all knew each other from the American end of the exchange.) The parents had brought a potluck supper and we had a little welcome party in the school’s cafeteria.

Here, I met JK for the first time in person. JK (I use initials because many Germans are more leery of social media) and I had been corresponding for several months by email. He was supposed to come to the American exchange to stay with Darwin and me, but he got injured and couldn’t fly at the last minute. (This is how we met and befriended CE, his substitute.)

Anyway, Jan and I got to meet and it was a fine thing. We got on quite well.  

The party ended early—everyone was tired and wanted to get home.  I saw the students off and hopped into JK’s car. In JK's apartment in Stuttgart (a short but winding drive away), I got the chance to settle in. JK is a biology teacher and a comic book geek (yay!), so the apartment is filled with exotic plants, fish tanks, and other interesting animals (including poisonous frogs, geckos, and a variety of insects). The apartment building overlooks the valley where Stuttgart lies, and the view of the mountains is striking in every way. On the balcony in the morning, we eat a breakfast of bread, cheese, and tea and listen to the church bells in the distance. You don’t get more German than this!

July 22, 2011 (Friday)

Rain again, and barely 60 degrees.  Meanwhile in Michigan, it’s in the upper 90s and low 100s.  We need to slice twenty degrees from Michigan and send them over here!

Checked out of the hostel without incident and climbed onto the tour bus.  We spent the morning touring a German movie studio and movie lot.  They filmed DAS BOOT there, and several famous (to Germans) TV shows and movies.  In the afternoon, we toured the Allianz soccer stadium, which is the one coated with paper-thin plastic that lights up in different colors, depending on who’s playing.

By now I was having a hard time walking.  I have bad feet as it is, and the constant climbing was giving me serious trouble.  Everything over the last several days involved stairs or an incline, and always up, and by now I was limping badly.  At the stadium, the guide ended the tour at ground level, then told us to follow this ramp up to the main entrance, which then required us to go back down to ground level again.  I failed to understand why we couldn’t simply walk around the stadium to the bus.

And then we were on the back to Esslingen.

That evening I back “home” I took C and M, my hosts, out to a late supper at their favorite Italian restaurant.  The food was delicious, and the guy one table over was having rock-baked fish.  This involves coating an entire fish with about five pounds of salt made into a glaze with a couple egg whites and baking it for a long time.  At your table, the chef breaks the inch-thick salt coating open and carves the fish.  I’d heard of this dish but never seen it, and it was very interesting.
 

July 20, 2011 (Wednesday)

 In the early morning hours we boarded a tour bus and started a three-day trip to Munich. I was looking forward to this—I don’t know Munich at all and wanted to see this part of the country.

 Our first stop was actually along the way at Neuschwanstein. This is the huge fairy-tale castle on top of a mountain, the one that everyone thinks of when you say “German castle.” It was started in 1869 by King Ludwig II, who was much-hated at the time, partly because all the building of elaborate castles was draining the treasury. Eventually a plot to depose him was hatched. Doctors declared him insane and unfit to rule. Attempts were made to arrest him, and he snuck away with help. His body was found floating in Swan Lake the next evening, despite the fact that he was a strong swimmer. Neuschwanstein was never finished, and Ludwig himself only lived there a few weeks. Only 17 rooms were actually completed. A few weeks after his death, the local parliament said, “We have to make back some money from this disaster,” and they opened the castle to tourism. Now it’s Bavaria’s biggest money-maker, and Ludwig is highly revered. Go figure.

 To get to the castle, you can hire a horse-drawn carriage or hike. Guess which we did?

 The weather was cool and slightly rainy, and we hiked all the way up, accompanied by a steady stream of other tourists. At the top, we learned that the tour we were supposed to join wouldn’t start for 45 minutes. KL fretted. Should we allow the students to go up to the high bridge which overlooks the castle or make them wait down here?

 “I didn’t come all the way to Germany to stand around and look at a castle wall,” I announced. “I’m going up to the bridge, and any students who want to come with me may come along.” And I left.

 Marienbrücke (Maria’s Bridge) spans a gorge some distance behind and above NSS castle, and Ludwig had the bridge built for the sole purpose of being able to enjoy the view of the castle. However, it did involve yet more uphill hiking. Oi! All of us (and yes, all the students wanted to come) hoofed it way, way up through forested pathways to the bridge.

 The bridge is wood and cable, and if you have vertigo, it’ll hand you a big plate of it. You look down a looooooong way to a narrow firehose of a river that pounds through rocks below. And beyond is the castle, in all its fairy tale splendour.

 We enjoyed the view and took a lot of pictures. I went to the other end of the bridge and found a mountain trail that coiled around the side of the cliff. Two other students and I followed it a bit. Signs in German basically said, “Only idiots leave the trail. No, seriously! If you break your legs, don’t come running to us!” But they didn’t say you COULDN’T leave the trail.

 And then I found the staircase. It was seriously cool, made of tree roots and stone. I very much wanted to climb it and see where it went. The signs didn’t quite forbid it, after all. But I had students with me and had to set an example, so I forebore.

 We hiked back down to the castle proper in plenty of time to join the tour. (Ha!) I liked the inside of the castle very much, and we got to see all 17 finished rooms. I only wish I could have stopped and examined them in more detail. Every bit of wall was painted with a scene or something, and I wanted to work out what they were.

 What amazed me was how small the rooms were. We’re taught (by Hollywood) that castles are supposed to have huge rooms you could play soccer in, but Ludwig’s bedroom really wasn’t that much bigger than mine, and I have more closet space (probably more clothes, too). Yeah, he had an actual toilet and a cold water tap in his room, but I have hot water on demand and a shower. Shows you how much luxury we live in compared to even the wealthiest king back then, you know?

 After the tour we trundled down to the bottom of the hill. That was a trip! Some of the students found a shortcut and asked me to translate the signs. I said it definitely a shortcut and was probably steeper. They decided to take it, and I followed. Hoooo! Going down was almost harder than going up! Our shins were burning by the time we reached bottom, and we were HUNGRY! I had sandwiches in my backpack, but I really wanted something hot. I paid four Euros for a hot dog and it the best hot dog I ever ate.

 Also along the way to Munich we stopped at a small town and took a boat ride around the Bodensee. Once again we were early and we had some free time. A bunch of us descended on a coffee house, and the proprietor was the only one working right then. She zipped around bringing coffee, tea, and cake for us.

 The boat ride was tranquil and pretty (and thankfully dry). Then it was supper at a Bavarian restaurant, and we were dropped off at the youth hostel. There was the Reading of the Rules (900 Euro fine for smoking or drinking) and the handing out of keys. And then bed.

 I actually got little sleep. I was the only adult male on the trip, so I had to supervise all 25 males. Yeesh.