The "N" Word (Part 1)

A few weeks later we joined Don and his students for another tour, this time to Nuremberg. I recognized the destination as the location of the famous Nuremberg trials where Nazi leaders were tried for their atrocities in the Jewish Holocaust, but other than that, I wasn't sure what we would see. While riding the train I asked Scott, "So what else is there in Nuremberg besides the site of the trials? What are we going to see?"

 He answered, "I'm not sure what Don will take the students to see but I know the courthouse is there and Zeppelin Field, where Hitler held those huge Nazi rallies. I figured we'd just follow them." I pictured lines and lines of uniformed Nazis stretching one arm toward Hitler, where he screamed hate and from a huge stone podium.

 Don told us the courthouse was really not worth the extra travel to see so instead he led us to the "dokumentionszentrum reichsparteitagsgelände museen," or in English, The Documentation Centre Nazi Party Rally Grounds Museum.

It was housed in a huge red brick and cement building. Construction had been started on the building, which would host Nazi gatherings, before the war, but construction had been stopped due to money shortage when the war started. This explained the very modern looking glass facade where we entered.

Although the building wasn't actually complete until well after the fall of the Third Reich, the Nazis did gather for meetings there when Hitler demanded and used the finished sections of the building along with the adjacent Zeppelin Field for their rallies. Now the building was a museum documenting the rise and fall of the Nazi party. The museum furnished each visitor with an audio tour. We wove around the cold cement building looking up at huge photographs of Hitler and his colleagues through the years. The photographs were lit brightly on the wall while the rooms themselves were dim and and crowded with visitors.

Elle loved the hand held audio tour device. She held it to her ear like a telephone. She purposefully strode from one photo to the next and found the red call number beneath each picture, punched it in her phone and listened intently to the information. Of course, she couldn't understand the actual story that was being told, and there were no photos of the victims of Hitler's reign thus far so to her it was just a great exercise of independence and "being grown up."

On the other hand, I knew exactly what horrors were on the horizon as I listened step by step how this sick man slithered his way up into the three highest positions in the German government. In room after room, museum visitors gawked at the countless photos of the scrawny man with beady eyes. Before I entered even the second room, I felt sick to my stomach, guilty almost. I felt as if, by listening and looking at every moment of the monster's takeover, I was somehow honoring him. I felt as if we had taken some ungodly pilgrimage to walk on the same cold stone floors where he and his lemmings marched. Before long, I couldn't do it anymore. Unfortunately, like the Holocaust museum in D.C., and like the concentration camps themselves, there was no escape. Visitors had to file through room after room until they reached the exit.

 Scott, on the other hand, could gather the information like a historian, objectively. He stopped and listened to each photo's narration while I turned off the audio tour and simply walked forward. Elle wandered through the rooms with her dad and I pushed toward the end of the sickening parade.

Without the earpiece, I could listen to the echoes of the past as they bounced between the stone walls and ceilings and floors. I swore I could hear the barking German orders Hitler gave his men here. I clenched my jaw at the booming acoustics when his soldiers called out to their leader in chorus. I shivered at the fearful sound of thousands of military boots pounding across the cement floors as they infiltrated the halls, following a madman to hell.

I didn't stop moving forward until, out of the corner of my eye, I glimpsed some photos that didn't feature Adolf Hitler. These were photos of the men and women who resisted, all killed immediately of course. But these were the people I wanted to honor. So I put my audio tour back up to my ear and listened to every word about regular people brave enough to face the devil. I wondered if I could have been part of the resistance, but quickly doubted my own strength. I thought of my son and daughter and sadly knew immediately that I would have kept my head down to protect my own family.

The last room of the museum was dedicated to the Nuremberg trials. Again, I listened to every word and studied every face. On the far wall, actual footage of the trials played and I sneered at the stern faces claiming ignorance. Gruesome footage interrupted their bogus testimony, showing hundreds of emancipated bodies, naked and gasping in a stone gas chamber. One man sat up and looked around himself. Every other body had fallen lifeless while he clawed at his throat in desperation. I snapped my head back to the door, where little Elle would be entering. I couldn't allow her sweet eyes to see it. I didn't want to see it either.

 Instead, I looked into a display table in the middle of the room. In it lay the newspaper headlines of the death penalties sentenced to the leading Nazis, along with a photograph of each and every one dead on stone slabs after their hangings. An ounce of satisfaction worked its way to my heart seeing them, blood seeping from their eyes and mouths, necks limp, the rope still collaring them. One man, though, caught my eye and iced my insides. He was clean faced, no blood. And he had no rope around his neck. Instead he was lying peacefully with his hands folded at his waist. His lips formed a half smile, content almost, and his left eye remained open, staring at me. It seems that while imprisoned, this man was able to get a poison tablet. He was able to kill himself on his own terms by swallowing it, and his one eye and smirk told everyone that he felt as if he had won somehow. I walked away, nauseous, fearing the evil that still lived through that man's one open threatening eye.

The Little Bread Window

On Saturday morning, every seat was taken on the commercial bus headed to Tubingen University, one of the oldest universities in Europe. Frau Becker had organized a tour of Universität Tubingen and a neighboring monastery for the American students and their host families. Don invited Scott, Elle and I to join them. We weren't sure if Elle could handle a full 10 hour day of touring but after our time with the students in Stuttgart, there was no doubt she would love it. Sure enough, the moment we arrived to the departure meeting point, she told me she didn't want to sit by us on the bus, but would rather sit with one of her "new friends."

The first thing Scott and I noticed was the dog on the bus, a mid-size shaggy dog that looked like Benji. He curled up in the aisle at his owners' feet. Since nobody else even seemed to blink an eye, we decided it must be the norm to bring family dogs anywhere and everywhere in Germany. I remembered a book I had read before coming to Germany that joked that it is less offensive to a German to criticize his children than his dog.

The bus driver announced on a loud speaker that we were expected to always wear our seat belts and reminded the men that they should sit down when using the bus toilet. Then we rode for 90 minutes to Tubingen. Scott and I reveled in the chance we had to actually sit next to each other while Elle babbled away to one of the girls she had chosen to sit beside.

We had a choice of an English or German speaking tour once we arrived in Tubingen. Scott and I of course chose the English tour, led by a German woman who had gone to college in America, and had flawless English. The rest of the group split up curiously. The native English speaking students chose the German tour, while their host families whose first language was German chose the English tour. Janine, one of the host-sisters chose the English tour as well, so Elle spent the day shadowing her. The little town of Tubingen was definitely a university town. Most of its residents were students, professors, employees and employees' families. In fact the university was founded even before Christopher Columbus in 1492 sailed the ocean blue!

The tour guide led us through the tiny cobbled streets, curvy and steep, and up and down endless flights of tiny stone stairs, worn down in the middle by hundreds of years of climbing feet. We traipsed the town from bottom to top, from the picturesque Neckar river where rows of canoe-like "shtoch" boats lined the shore, to the magnificent medieval castle poised on the tip of a mountain overlooking the countless tiny red roofs of her dominion.

Our tour guide filled us in on the "shtoch" boats as we watched them flow with the river filled with tourists and steered by a man standing in back with a long wooden pole. That is the "poke" stick, from which the boats get their name, poke-barges, or punt boats. They looked like a mix between a Venetian gondola and a good old' American canoe but they have a flat bottom and are exclusive to Tubingen. As it turns out, they play quite a huge part of the community.


Every year, the fraternities host a "stocherkahn" race in the Neckar. It had started in the 1950s as just a few frat boys having fun but now was a full community event with official university sponsorship. Over 50 teams of 8 sign up to race; men and women are both allowed. They name their boat and each decorate their boat thematically complete with full costumes. The tour guide recalled a few of the memorable themes, including one team of university professors (all male) who dressed as traditional German "hausfrauen" (housewives) to race down the river. They held wooden water buckets and sloshed mops around the boat while they floated along in their full "dirndl" costumes and wigs. She also described a favorite from a previous year of oiled up roman gods wearing only skimpy togas and leather sandals.

 The racers have two chances to win. They could cross the finish line first, in which case they are awarded Germany's favorite prize, kegs of beer. I can't remember the exact amount the winners receive but it was a lot, something like 200 liters of beer from the university and 50 liters from the town officials. The second way to win is with the beauty prize, which is awarded to the best costumed team. They win 50 liters of beer. How could an 8 person team possibly drink so much beer? Well, that question is easily answered by the other honor bestowed on the winners; they are responsible to host a party for all the racers AND spectators with free beer. Surprisingly, though, the post-race party isn't necessarily the highlight of the fun. The losing team's "prize" is sometimes even more entertaining. The boat that crosses the finish line last is awarded 4 liters of cod liver oil, which is split up among the team members. Each loser must drink a half liter of cod liver oil in front of the whole party. Their misery in doing so is apparently great fun for the winners.

We finished our tour in the town's Marktplatz, the center square. Like the rest of the town, the open walking mall was on a noticeable grade. We stood on the slanted ground and stared up at the Rathaus (town hall), and it's amazing astronomical clock, that tells exactly where the moon, planets and constellations are at any given moment. Although it was built in the early 1800s, to this day, when the clock's hands overlap, the townspeople know without a doubt to expect some sort of eclipse. My favorite part of the tour was here in Marktplatz.

Our guide pointed to two half-timbered houses standing side by side near the Rathaus and told us the story of the little bread window. If you look closely at the windows on the third floor (which Americans would know as the fourth floor), you'll see one frame that is painted white. That is the little bread window.

It's named for a local legend that took place right after the Thirty Years war in the mid 1600s. People were hurting for money and food at this time. In the house on the right, on the third floor lived a childless couple, who were fairly comfortable, financially. Directly next to them in the house on the left lived a huge family. The father of the family owned the local bakery but their income didn't allow a bigger apartment for their steadily growing family. Every two years it seemed, the mother had another baby. There apartment became so full that the childless couple in the next house decided to help out. They broke down the wall between their apartment and the bakery's family's apartment, then rebuilt a new wall within their own apartment, adding a new room to the baker's house. So, to this day, the two separate houses are connected on the third floor by that shared room.

 So why is it called the little bread window? The childless couple refused to take any money in compensation for their generous gift. Instead, without fail, they would find a fresh loaf of bread left anonymously outside their door every morning.

Reinforcements

After the bells in Stuttgart, Scott and I felt like chocolate and peanut butter together. We were best friends and began touring Germany with light hearts and easy laughter.

Reinforcements had arrived in the form of about twenty students from Grand Valley State University, who would be staying in and around Schwabish Gmunde for 6 weeks, along with their German professor, Don. We were invited by the university to join them and their host families for an orientation on Tuesday evening. Elle was beyond excited to see all the young people and immediately began stalking her favorite "new friends" as we found seats arranged in a u shape around the front of the classroom.

Frau Becker, the international coordinator at Pädogogische Hochschule (Pa-Ho), began the meeting by welcoming all of us. She spoke loudly and enunciated every word. The problem was, she was speaking German. Needless to say, the host families were German and the students were German students, so they all understood. That left Scott and me pretty much clueless until Frau Becker suddenly changed to English. At this point she told the group that there were a few in the group who couldn't speak Deutsch so we were welcome to introduce ourselves in English or German if we wanted. She hadn't mentioned our names, but her body language and eye contact made it clear to everyone that it was Scott and me who were the non-German speakers.

Don introduced himself first, in German of course. Don is a few years younger than Scott. He is tall and fit with the slightest hunch in his shoulders, as some tall people have, maybe to compensate for their height. He has shoulder-length hair, parted in the middle and smooth brown with a few wiry strings of silver peeking through the thick locks. We knew him from Grand Valley but not very well. I had met him once briefly a few years back, and then again just before we came to Germany when we hosted a casual dinner for three GVSU families who had taught at PaHo in Germany. It was at this dinner where Don witnessed my very first efforts at German.

As the German introductions, one by one, curved around to us, I couldn't help but take the challenge. I had been excused to use English, but there was no way I was wasting my three weeks of The Pimsleur Approach CDs to balk at a perfect chance to try it out in front of so many people. By the time all eyes in the room - about 40 pairs - turned to me expectantly, I was ready. Clearly and proudly I recited..."Ich bin Molly Stabler. Ich bin hier mit mien Mann und meine tochter. Mein tochter heist Elle, und Wir kommen aus Michigan." While I talked, I watch amused as Don's eyebrows slowly rose, his eyes widened and his mouth gaped open. By the time I finished my introduction, the room erupted in applause. I was so surprised that for an instant I remained still. Then my natural love of attention took over and I decided to enjoy the fun. I raised both arms and clasped my hands together. Then I pumped my clasped hands on either side of my head like a boxer who's just won a championship, causing laughter and more applause.

As quickly as it had started, it stopped and everyone stared at Scott, wondering if he too would surprise them with a newfound knowledge of German. His face was bright red and he held his breath for just long enough to start a whole new round of laughter. He introduced himself in English. He may have felt a little embarrassed at having been shown up by his Frau, but I'm pretty sure his pride outweighed anything else.

It was with this group that we began touring. Our first day trip was to Stuttgart. Elle immediately chose some college girls to cling to and as we tramped through the city, she skipped along joyously, chattering away to the girls about anything and everything. At one point, she turned to Scott and me, barely able to catch her breath, said, "This is my best day in Germany yet!" Don took us to the top of the train station tower, where a huge silver Mercedes Benz symbol rotated above a 360 degree panoramic view of the city. Elle hopped between the students who took turns holding her up to the fence to look over. Those students who loved kids were obvious, and Scott and I nudged each other, knowing that we may have just found a few babysitters for the next 6 weeks.

For lunch, the plan was to walk into a huge park area that the city was fighting to protect from a train station expansion. Environmentalists -and Germans are huge tree huggers- had painted construction gates with their opinion of the future construction.

Don left with a few students to buy bread and cheese to eat while the rest found a shady spot under one of the doomed trees to sit. Elle shadowed Thomas at this point. She was so excited later to show me the sign language he had taught her, "crab," and "rabbit," and "My name is Elle."

Scott and I spotted a biergarten close to where the young people would picnic and decided that we would eat there. We thought it may be tough to lure Elle away from "sooo many friends" until we pointed out the trampoline sitting right beside the rows of wooden picnic tables. We filed through a cafeteria style line to choose and purchase food. Scott and I ate wurst and drank bier while Elle sprang around the netted trampoline to her heart's content. When she tired of jumping, she bounded out and galloped to the playhouse and swings just beside the trampoline. Scott and I spent the rest of lunch discussing how underprivileged America is not to have our own outdoor beer gardens with playgrounds and trampolines!!

When the students finished eating, they wandered over to watch Elle jump. I could see the envy in their eyes when they read the sign saying "nur für kinder bis 12", until one student kicked off her sandals and climbed in with Elle. She laughed at our shocked faces and put her hands in the air, mocking a clueless tourist. In a loud drawling voice, she mispronounced each word, "EEESH SPRAKE AH KEYN DOICH!"

Scott and I returned to that biergarten the same night when the students headed to a festival in another section of the city. Don joined us along with two of his former students who had returned to Stuttgart and now live here. Elle had fallen asleep exhausted and was now sprawled out on the grass beside us while Elly, Heidi, Don, Scott and I had beers and joked.

We worried that when a sleepy Elle woke, she would end our fun but we were dead wrong. Amidst our conversation, she sat up, blinked once and looked around. Then she popped up and scampered back over to the trampoline. As evening came, more families arrived and the kids ran around the playground, climbing in and out of the trampoline while their parents drank monstrous mugs of beer.

When Don left the table to go get us another round, I took the opportunity to ask Elly and Heidi about their former professor. Watching him throughout the day, I had admired his calming voice and friendly eyes and I wondered how his coed students reacted to him. "So, tell me, are there a lot of students who have a crush on Herr Anderson?" Both Heidi and Elly laughed at the idea. But they didn't mean it in a cruel way. Quite the opposite, really. Heidi clarified, "No, we would never think of him that way. All of his students respect him too much for that. Whenever the German students get their new classes, they brag when they get Herr Anderson, because he's the best, smartest and toughest, but he still manages to keep such a genuine rapport with all of his students!"

We stayed out too late and didn't climb off the train back in Schwabish Gmunde until well after dark. Scott couldn't help but capture German beer getting the best of me once again, this time in a bush seconds from the bus stop. I still felt great, though. Elly and Heidi had given me their phone numbers and encouraged me to call them anytime. With Don's help, they even convinced Scott to ok a girls' night in Stuttgart some night. Not only that, but Elle was begging to have a babysitter soon. The outlook was great for some time to just get out and have some fun in our temporary home, Deutschland.