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Wanderung 5

Happy Haus for Holt’s in Hamburg.

February - April 2004

April 11 - Gross Vollstedt

We headed north to another really small town called Gross Vollstedt (Greater Vollstedt) (54 degrees 13.903 minutes north, 9 degrees 52.148 minutes east) for our walk of the day. As it was Easter Sunday, the traffic was light and we made good time, arriving around 10:30. The parking lot was full, so we parked on a nearby side street and walked over to the town school that was the start point. I was encouraged to see signs of preparations underway for feeding lunch to us hungry walkers at the start-finish point, and we bought our start cards and set off in good spirits.

Altho it was slightly cloudy and cool, we still had a great day for walking, and the local club offered really nice 5, 10, and 20-kilometer routes. The 10-kilometer trail was about 2/3 in the woods lying to the west of Gross Vollstedt, which for us was just ducky. At one shady spot in the woods we were walking on a layer of moss that was at least 2 inches thick, and it was just like walking on a plush green carpet! That had to be my absolute favorite trail surface, even better than a layer of pine needles. The pine needles can be wonderfully fragrant but are never as soft as this moss was. Along the farthest edge of the route we came to the border of Klein Vollstedt (Smaller Vollstedt) and just broke out laughing because it was just hard to imagine a town being smaller than Gross Vollstedt.

We reached the choice point for 10 versus 20 kilometers when we were only about 1 hour or 5 kilometers on our way, and that made it difficult to decide. On the one hand we felt relatively fresh but on the other hand we knew jolly well that if we walked the 20-kilometer route we would have at least 3 more hours of hard walking ahead of us. We decided on the 10-kilometer loop, erring on the side of caution, but we both really wished they had a 15-kilometer version for us because we seem to have more than enough energy for 10 kilometers but not enough for 20. Also, the next walks we planned to take in Moelln were the 15-kilometer routes, and I really wanted to practice walking that distance again.

The walk back to the town was pleasant. It was nice to see so many parents with young children doing the walk. If we can’t recruit younger folks into Volksmarching it will, of course, go the way of the dodo, which is to say, extinct. Somehow the Germans are managing to do that better than our clubs in the U.S., and maybe having the great meals at the end of a walk has something to do with it. I had the big grilled pork chop, Monika had the wurst, and we both had a serving of potato salad (5.30 Euro for all of that). Having the nice meal was very pleasant, and fortunately it was warm enough by then to eat outdoors because the indoor dining area fairly reeked of smoke. I almost never see a Volksmarcher smoke in the U.S., but in Germany it was quite common and never so much true as at the finish points where the big meals were served. We were also surprised to see a box with samples of snuff at the finish point, right there were anybody could get to it and it was flavored with menthol to appeal to kids. The mandatory health warning was on the back of the sample and only readable when taken out of the flyer, so overall it looked like yet another blatant attempt to addict youngsters by the tobacco companies.

We decided to take the back roads over to Eckenfoerde, and along the way we took a ferry across the north-east sea canal. Monika enjoyed that as much as always (see “Muschi and the Ferry”) and took lots of pictures of the ferry, the cars, and a passing freighter. In front of us on the ferry was a Mercedes-Benz tractor and a beautifully restored antique out for a Sunday drive. The twisty little 2-lane rural roads we took were challenging for me but at the same time fun to drive and a lot more interesting than the Autobahn. The topography in this region was more rolling, hilly, and wooded than the area just to the west around Schleswig, which also made it more scenic.

In Eckenfoerde we parked and walked along the beachside path looking for the administration center that was supposed to have the Volksmarching information. We found the material inside the Vistor Information center, but it was unfortunately closed for the day! Since we also located the train station a couple blocks away, we were at least ready for taking the train up there and trying one of the 9 walks that radiate out from the information center, which was our ultimate goal.

We walked back along the beach to a park with a sculpture of a mermaid getting ready to eat a Greek god or something (that’s my interpretation, of course). Along the way we passed a small park with war memorials from 1848 (Danish) and 1849 (German), and I did wonder how long it takes for these memorials to become, as it were, pointless to the current generation of citizens. In the U.S., of course, Virginia still remembers the Civil War from roughly the same period, but we don’t seem to have any strong feelings for the Spanish American War of 1898, so something about the nature of the war seems to be critical for maintaining emotional reactions in a culture, but I’m not sure what.

The drive back to Reinbek lasted a little over an hour, but the Corsa wasn’t really comfortable for more than 3 hours of driving a day and I was glad to call it quits. That afternoon on TV we watched a nature special on Dohlen, the smallest species in the raven family of birds that is fairly common in Germany but is not present in the U.S. to the best of my knowledge. Think of a small, gray crow with a black head and a nicer disposition and you’ll have a rough picture of it.

Afterwards there was a short 5-minute feature on motorcycle safety that was very interesting to me, being a motorcyclist. The video featured getting ready for the summer riding season by oiling the chain, checking tire pressures, and checking out the bike’s handling and breaking. But the really impressive parts were the shots of a motorcyclist getting caught in traffic situations where he had to lay the bike down to avoid an accident. The film showed the guy skidding out with his motorcycle while in traffic, which was a gut-wrenching picture for me, and sliding across the pavement toward a car. That particular sensation I remember all too clearly; it is emblazoned somewhere in my memory under the label of “Don’t Ever Come Close to Doing This Again!” (There are, unfortunately, other things in that category like running out of fuel in an airplane, but that’s another story.) I literally was almost jumping out of my chair and yelling at the guy as I watched this accident scenario unfold. It was so realistic that for a moment I wondered if they were using videotape of some actual accident to make their point, but I don’t think so.

To top it all off, on the next segment they put normal clothes and special Kevlar padded leathers on this guy and then dragged him along the street. I’m not kidding; he was holding onto a rope tied to the back of a motorcycle and literally dragged along the pavement while twisting and turning. They showed the ripped-up normal clothes afterwards and compared them to the Kevlar outfit that had only surface abrasions. Talk about a graphic demonstration! What I was disappointed in was that they didn’t even mention the name of the stuntman in the credits for the video; I thought the man deserved at least a silver star for putting his hide, if not his life, on the line.

I relaxed a bit by chopping some wood for our evening fire. The evening news featured demonstrations in Germany that marched under the banner “Frieden kommt nicht durch Gewalt”. That roughly translates as “Peace does not come thru force”, which is in stark contrast to the implication of the U.S. motto that “Freedom is never free” which strongly implies force and sacrifice are necessary to ensure freedom. The Germans were currently mourning the loss of two embassy guards in Irak, and I wondered what their reaction would have been if their bodies had been dragged thru the streets like the bodies of U.S. civilians apparently were. Monika thought the result would be an immediate call for the total withdrawal of all German military and civilian personnel in Irak, which is the polar opposite from what I expect the U.S. reaction would be.

After the news we relaxed while watching the fire burn down while we watched “My Fair Lady” on TV. We had tried to watch “Bridget Jones Diary” but quickly given up because the dubbed voices were so quick and unclear that Monika couldn’t even understand them. Conversely, the dubbing for “My Fair Lady” was unbelievably good. Since the major story line for the movie is teaching Eliza to speak perfect English, that dialog had to be converted into speaking perfect German and then synchronized with the original picture. At one point the movie had Eliza enunciating all the vowel sounds (incorrectly) and Higgins replying with the correct pronunciations. They had to use the German vowel sounds for that scene, and altho I had trouble hearing the differences Monika said that to her ear they were very distinct. Eliza’s father in the original spoke a kind of mild Cockney accent, and in the German version they had him speaking with a Berlin accent. The translations were equally excellent for all the musical numbers, and since I sometimes have tried my hand at that I was really impressed with how smooth, flowing, and true to the original meaning the translated versions were. Unbelievable that they could do a conversion of a musical movie about speaking English into German so well.

I understood far more of the German in “My Fair Lady” than I would have typically done for similar made-in-Germany films that we have watched, and I think two big factors helped me understand the German. First, seeing an English film gave me a familiar cultural context that in the German films was often lacking and tripped me up. Secondly, I had already seen the movie a couple of times in English and that helped me by filling in the gaps in the dialog where my German vocabulary failed. Basically, I never totally lost the thread of the story and that happened with some regularity in the pure German films.

So here’s yet another Uncle Bob suggestion for High School students considered German for their language requirement: suggest that your homework be listening to German-dubbed movies! I mean, you can always crib for the exams by watching the English versions, and still have many free hours of watching TV every week. Having your high school pay for the video rental fees has just got to be a winner! And can you imagine being able to say to your parents when they complain about your watching TV something like, “But I am doing my homework! My teacher is forcing us to watch this!” (Remember to us the highly indignant teenage tone when saying that.) And it doesn’t have to be the dopey adult stuff like “Murder She Wrote” (German: “Morder ist Ihr Hobby” or Murder is her hobby). I definitely saw dubbed versions of Star Trek: The Next Generation (German: “Star Trek: Die Naechste Jahrhundert” or Star Trek: the next Century) and cool films like “Lethal Weapon II” and stuff like that. Worth a try, eh?

Copyright 2004 by R. W. Holt and E. M. Holt
Prolog Map Epilog

February 2004
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April 2004
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