April 10 - Tetenhusen and Easter Bonfires

The Volksmarch scheduled for Saturday and Sunday was in Tetenhusen, a really small town southeast of Schleswig where we had done some a previous walk. For the compulsive Gentle Reader who wishes to find the exact spot, the starting point was the town school located at 54 degrees, 21.057 minutes North, 9 degrees 29.950 minutes East, to be precise. The school’s soccer field had been turned into a temporary parking lot, so I had no trouble finding a parking space at all. Monika had left her walking belt at home, which unfortunately included the books we were currently filling in, so we bought a new set before setting off on the walk.

The clouds had completely cleared off by this time and we started off under a dazzlingly blue sky. The sun was so strong, in fact, that I left my hat in the car and took off my jacket and sweater layers while we were walking. The walk route consisted of 5, 10, or 20 kilometer loops out to the east of town and back. There is not much town in Tetenhusen, so we were walking thru fields and into the woods within 15 minutes. The trail master had done a very nice job in laying out the trail thru the forested areas to the east of town and we were actually walking in the woods about ¾ of the time. Altho the trails were basically logging roads thru the forest, the surface was somewhat soft and yielding and that was easy on our feet, so it was a very pleasant walk.

What the trail master had not done so well was mark the trail. The markings alternated between red wooden arrows at ground level or striped plastic streamers up in the trees. There was no pattern to the marking that I could discern, so we never knew what type of marker came next. When we were leading a clump of walkers we did in fact lose the way by missing a streamer about 50 feet away on a small side trail, but it was only a small detour. Having learned our lesson we very carefully tried to trail along after other groups of people in the hopes that they were better at spotting these marks than we were. That strategy worked well and we didn’t get lost again during the 2 hours it took us to walk the 10 kilometer loop. We would have tried a 15 kilometer trail if one had been offered, but it was not and as we had not done any long walks in the preceding two weeks, prudence dictated foregoing the 20 kilometer trail.

So we arrived back at the school only slightly exhausted but totally hungry. Once again the local club offered good choices for Mittagessen (grilled hot dogs or pork chops, French fries or potato salad) and desert (various torten and cakes), and we were only too happy to support them by having a nice leisurely lunch right there. The French fries (German: Pommes Frites, and definitely NOT Freedom Fries!) were coated with some kind of salt + spice mix that gave them an outstanding kind of barbeque, tortilla chip type of flavor. I’m guessing from the color and flavor that the seasoning had some paprika in it, but beyond that it would be pure guesswork. Monika liked the French fries she tried (she had ordered the potato salad) and if we had thought about it they were so good we might have split another order rather than have the torten for dessert.

After the walk we scooted back along the interstates to Reinbek to get to the Famila store before it closed for the evening. We were short of food and we knew that all the stores would be closed for Easter Sunday and Easter Monday, so we really wanted to buy enough to at least last us the weekend. Altho Aldi closes at 2 p.m. on Saturdays, Famila stores stay open until at least 6 p.m., so we had plenty of time to get there and shop before it closed. In fact, since the traffic was light and we had found a new 2-lane interstate connection for the way to Schleswig, we were back home by about 3 p.m. and even had time for an afternoon nap, something we only did rarely in Germany. While driving, I was still learning more of the German street signs, like the fact that a blue sign with a car outlined in white meant a limited access road regardless of whether it was a two-lane road or Autobahn.

I would certainly recommend anyone driving in Germany to brush up on the differences in road markings to minimize the number of times you come flying up on an intersection and say to yourself, “What the heck does that sign mean I should do?” You also want to brush up on what the rules are when there are NO signs. For instance, the speed limits on major 2-lane highways (Landstrasse) are 100 kph unless otherwise marked, but that drops to 50 kph in an incorporated village or town—I never did figure what the speed limits were for unincorporated towns or 2-lane limited access roads. You should also prepare for concatenations of signs that you would never find in the U.S. My favorite one was a stop sign just below a traffic light that was, at the moment, green. What was I supposed to do? Stop for the stop sign? Go for the green light? Stop, then go? Proceed with caution? Drop back five yards and punt? As best I can figure this from the way other drivers behave, the extra stop or yield signs on a traffic light only take effect during those periods the lights are not operating. But I’m definitely not sure about that interpretation and I really should have asked Gustl.

One curious thing I noticed on the Autobahns was that when the speed was reduced the authorities had often appended a sign underneath the speed limit explaining the reason for the speed limit. The reasons I have encountered range from “no shoulders” to “bad pavement” and even “noise reduction”! There are, I think, some advantages in explaining the reason for traffic signals to the citizen. For one thing, it might help compliance with the law. I noticed that most German drivers were slowing down for the “no shoulders” and “bad pavement” speed limits, but were generally ignoring the speed limits for “noise reduction”, which kind of made sense.

On the other hand, no explanations were offered for some other peculiar signs that Monika finally explained were prohibiting cars from passing other cars during certain hours of the day. During those hours a car was allowed to pass trucks or cars pulling trailers, but not other cars. I think they wanted to normalize the flow of car traffic, but it was completely ignored by all the drivers including me. When you think about it, if everyone obeyed that sign what would ultimately happen is that you would get huge traffic snakes (German: Schlange) of cars impatiently following behind one slow car in the right lane. That just doesn’t make sense and would, I think ultimately be unsafe—even the Polizei car I saw driving along the Autobahn ignored it. What all of us foreign drivers could use would be a big, fat pamphlet on all the possible German traffic signs together with information on which ones take precedence when multiple signs are present and which ones are typically ignored. If anyone finds this, please let me know. AAA, are you listening?

Since we had rested with a nap and refueled with Kaffeetrinken and Abendessen, we had enough energy to ride our bikes over to an “Easter Bonfire” in the neighboring town of Glinde. We found out about this via the local newspaper and were intrigued that the local firefighters were promising that this year they would burn 1,200 cubic meters of wood rather than the paltry 500 cubic meters of wood they burned last Easter. To the best of Monika’s knowledge, these bonfires are set all over northern Germany, at least, and possibly over the entire country. For certain we passed a small bonfire being set in a parking lot in Reinbek as we rode over to Glinde.

We didn’t have to ask directions in Glinde, a pile of wood in the empty lot across from the Obi builder’s market was already burning brightly and sending streams of smoke and cinders into the clear blue evening sky. I was worried for an instant that it was already over despite the fact they said it began at sundown, but then I saw an even larger pile of wood that was not yet lit. When we parked our bikes and walked over, I found out what Germans do with all their old freight pallets—they burn them in huge bonfires on the Saturday before Easter!

To people like myself who pick up pallets and knock them apart for firewood (see Wanderung 1), that seems a bit wasteful but burning tons of them all at once surely does create a spectacle. It lasts a long time, too. We drove by 2½ days later and the pile of ashes was still smoldering. I imagine that this is due to some grand old German tradition; the only question is, how old? After watching thousands of Germans gathering around huge bonfires on a warm night near the spring equinox and celebrating wildly, I’m guessing this is a really old tradition that predates Christianity. Certainly I can’t see any connection to the Christian celebration of Easter, but I’m sure someone can set me straight on this.

One thing I’m sure of is that the adults were having lots of fun eating, drinking beer, and watching the flames leap into the sky. The children, however, were having even more fun. They were throwing wood onto the fire, lighting it with brands, and in general doing everything they could to encourage it to burn. I was watching young kids running around not just with sticks in their hand but burning torches that they threw onto the fire. For the toddlers I saw the parents calmly looking on, but the slightly older children seemed to be unsupervised and they were having a whale of a time playing “bonfire”. I absolutely could not imagine a scene like that happening in the U.S.

I of course remembered how much Judson and Martin used to enjoy playing with campfires during our trips in the old days. Boy would they have freaked out on lighting this bonfire! When the largest bonfire was really burning bright, it was so hot that an automatic safety zone developed around it. So the firemen started another really small fire, so that all the children had another nice fire to play with.

The celebration continued on into the night with music and dancing, but we weren’t sure whether the lights on our bicycles would work or not, so we headed home shortly after sunset when it was still a bit light. Since the lights didn’t work, that probably was a good decision but I was sorry to miss the dancing. The songs played by a DJ were mostly oldies like John Denver’s “Country Road”, and a 5-piece band across the parking lot were also singing hits from the U.S., so I felt right at home and we could have danced while wearing our bicycle helmets. That would have undoubtedly looked peculiar but given my difficulty with dance rhythm and footwork it would have probably been safer!

It turned out, however, that we could also watch yet another folk music special on TV when we got back to the house, so that was nice. At one point they featured a 100 year old singer by the name of Johannes Heesters. He sang a German version of Sinatra’s “I did it my may” and boy could he still belt it out. Just amazing, and he received a well-deserved standing ovation from the huge crowd at the end of it. From Herr Heester the moderator switched over to “Toni” a 8-9 year old, and it couldn’t have been more of a contrast. The kid had some missing teeth but the front teeth were already there so he could also sing quite well. For comic relief they had one singer who had to do a day of house repairs for a randomly-selected housewife from the audience, and another one who had to make up Easter time lyrics for Christmas carols right on the spot. He successfully ad-libbed rhyming lyrics to “O Tannenbaum” (which became “Oh Easter Bunny” as in “Oh Easter bunny, Oh Easter bunny, You bring such pretty eggs…) and “Ihr Kinderlein Kommet”. We also saw a children’s choir singing in ladybug beetle costumes (high cute points) and two enormous, rough-hewn guys called the Wirklaender Herzbuben dance a pas de deus in extra-large tutus (hilarious). I don’t think we have this kind of entertaining popular music TV special any more in the U.S., and it was definitely a pleasant way to end the evening.