A Year in the Life of

Today marks the one-year anniversary of when I came to Wolfenbüttel. It is the first time since I arrived here that I have any indication time has not stood still and swallowed me into its endless abyss. I have not posted anything, due to a trip to Prague, a riling genealogical adventure, not to mention the fact  that I’ve actually been working on my dissertation lately. So I thought this would be a perfect chance to share a few of my favorite memories of this last year that have somehow slipped through the cracks of my blog posts. Enjoy!

I have not posted anything, due to a trip to Prague, a riling genealogical adventure, not to mention the fact  that I’ve actually been working on my dissertation lately.

A Forbidden Rendezvous.

Late last spring, I was walking through one of the numerous scenic parks just a few cobblestoned corners away from my apartment. Though I cannot now recall the reason, I was deeply involved in some taxing thought or other which seemed of vital significance. A further impetus to my vexation presented itself upon entering the commons area of the park. Instead of the calm stillness I had hoped to encounter, I found rather the entire scenery fully abuzz with all manner of raucous ducks, chattering people and their overly-curious pets and children.

After walking ponderously about the large pond for no less than twenty five minutes, vainly attempting to center my thoughts on whatever vexing matter had been at hand, I spied just ahead a class of pre-schoolers and their chaperones, using their playtime for a park-related lesson. That it was some sort of organized gathering as opposed to happenstance was evident, for the children were partnered off and in a linear formation which, though not straight enough to satisfy their chaperones, was nonetheless far straighter than children of that young age would care to achieve when left to their own devices. Furthermore, their chaperones’ bellicose war cries  could be heard throughout the vicinity, instructing one child or another to keep his hands to himself, not to touch this or that, and to please stop dilly-dallying about (causing one to wonder what on earth the purpose of taking children to a park is, if not to touch things and dilly-dally about?)  Recognizing the entire caravan to be aimed in my direction, I braced myself for this further disruption to my thought life.

            But then one of the most curious things happened I have ever witnessed.

            In the moist plane of grass beside me, an unusually large family of ducks waddled up from the pond’s murky shore.  Due to my fondness for the whimsical ways of ducks, which is keen enough to pierce even my most ardent efforts to remain deep in contemplative thought, I studied this specimen, noting its mother-to-duckling ratio was quite unlike that of the average duck family—five, ten, no twelve baby ducks, all chirping  their barely audible little quacks and shaking droplets of water off their not-yet-feathery fuzz. Following closely on their heels (that is to say, paddles) waddled a stately mother duck, absolutely quacking her head off at the ducklings to get their butts (that is to say, hind fuzz) back into the water this instant. But the troop of ducklings appeared to be on a passionate mission, consisting of what I couldn’t ascertain immediately.

            Until I made out the trajectory of their intended path. It seemed the hoard of chirping little ducks was heading right for… the children.

            And the children, who in the duration of my own observation of these ducks, had also caught sight of them, hastened towards the ducklings in curiosity.

            The two regiments met in the middle of the path, just in front of a great willow tree, the one set of tiny eyes studying the other. The mother duck, her stateliness greatly impeding her ability to travel as quickly as her offspring, continued her quacketuous tirade. Simultaneously, the human chaperones began running up to the children from a distance, forbidding them to interfere with the ducklings, touch them, or have anything to do with anything except continue to walk on obediently.

            The ducklings and the children, however, remained equally oblivious to the commands of their officers and only continued to study one another with a joyful sense of awe. Wisely perceiving their time together would be limited, the ducks quickly opted to send an intermediary. After a quiet rumble of quacks, a member of their company was pushed forward towards the children by a number of decisive bills. Demonstrating a gentle courage, a small boy likewise stepped forward from the mass of cooing children and knelt down towards the small duck. They eyed one another, apparently deciding whether the other was to be trusted.  And, having considered the matter, the boy reached his hand down to the ground slowly while the duck waddled circumspectly towards it. In this quiet, magical moment, I noticed that the ducks black-colored bill was no larger than the boy’s smallest fingernail.

            But just before the duck climbed into his soft, gentle fingers, the mother duck flew into the midst of it all, and a chaperone angrily ripped the boy up from his perch on the walking path. The chaperones herded their charges further down the walking path. Mother duck quacked her fuzzy little lumps back into the pond. Protests and wistful glances could be observed from both groups.

            But alas, the forbidden rendezvous had been thwarted.

...my fondness for the whimsical ways of ducks...

When History Repeats Itself.

At one point a number of months ago, I was forced to notate a 17^th-century sermon that had been published to comfort the laity during times of bad weather—i.e. unseasonable rains and floods. So it was that one morning, I found myself immersed in a sermon whose writer continuously described how grieved he was that nature appeared to be so mixed up.

            “The light of the sun is dimmer now than it used to be in ages past,” he wrote. “It hangs lower in the sky, its warmth can no longer be felt as it once was. There is no more spring, no more summer. The whole order of nature has been reversed. Thus it is that we are surrounded by cold rains that will not cease. Just as Noah was in the flood which eradicated humans from the earth.”

            Luckily, there was a light at the end of this writer’s tunnel. The rains would not continue forever, he wrote, and neither would the cold. Thank God, I thought, anticipating a flourishingly uplifting finish to the sermon. The writer continued.

“The flood in the days of Noah eventually gave way to sunshine, and God will soon save us from the dimness and raininess that surrounds us—with the apocalypse.”

           

At that very moment, a burst of lightning disrupted my concentration, and for a moment I wondered whether it was one of the four horsemen. I decided I needed a break.

            Ten minutes later, I quietly sipped my coffee by the library’s kitchen window. Though the middle of summer, I was wearing long pants and had wrapped my shawl around me to seal in the coffee’s warmth. From the window I watched, as I do most days in this rainy breakfast nook of the world, as the playful drops of water bounced upon the eves of the roof.

            Until I overheard two German ladies’ conversation from across the room.

            “I don’t remember the last time we had a warm summer,” One lady said to the other sadly.

            “I know,” the other agreed. “I try to tell my children that summer is supposed to be a warm season, but they don’t understand. They’ve never known any summer but rain and cold.”

            “Yes, and I fear it will never end,” the first lady murmured in response to this.

            “No, I doubt it ever will,” the second sighed, and then upon further thought added “Well, we know that one day it will.”

            And they both nodded knowingly to one another. It was the German nod of certain doom.

            At that moment, a burst of thunder shook my coffee cup. I decided I needed a break from this depressing chatter and head back to the reading room.

            “Come, Robin,” I mumbled. “To the bat cave.”

            For the only more certain harbinger of bad things for the Germans than raining water, I thought, would be raining bat doo-doo. 

...nature seems to be so mixed up...

How many Germans does it take?

Another morning, I was the first non-employee to arrive at work and found that the Germans were capitalizing upon the phenomenon of an empty library to attend to some long-standing maintenance projects.  To escape the oppressive cacophony of tightening screws, oiling squeaks, and rearranging furniture, I fled to the furthest corner of the top floor, whereupon my efforts were rewarded with silent bliss—for all of five minutes. I soon found my quiet corner corrupted by the presence of two Germans: one was the notoriously finicky older woman whom I had already silently christened Queen of the Kitchen (which sounds even more mellifluous in German: Königin der Küche), and the second was a maintenance man of the painstakingly hardworking variety. The latter was holding under one arm a box of lightbulbs and in the other a step stool and tool box. Queen of the Kitchen was carrying a large box of cleaning supplies. It was a box I knew well, thanks to previous debacles I had already been innocent witness of in the library’s kitchen.

            First, the pair entered a door marked “employees only,” whence emanated for five or ten minutes a long stream of suspicious noises and frivolous commentary (mostly from Queen of the Kitchen, not surprisingly). All of these developments lead me to conclude they were committing an indecent(ly irritating) act behind closed doors. That is to say, the Germans were attempting to change the lightbulbs.

            After far more time had passed than it would take the average person where I come from to change a lightbulb, the pair reemerged looking haggard and exhausted from their luminescent endeavor. Contrary to my own expectations, not to mention the voice of obvious logic, the Germans did not move their mission of illumination to the nearby hallway, several of whose light fixtures had long lain fallow, gradually transforming the corridor to more of a lair-like space. No, instead, in a rare move, the Germans sidestepped all reason of impersonal logic and efficiency and progressed instead to a lone desk lamp. Namely, the desk lamp directly above the books I was reading. For reasons that baffle me as much today as the many months ago when I witnessed the event firsthand, the lightbulb in this same desk lamp was currently functioning properly—as evidenced by the fact I was, indeed, using it upon their encroachment.

            To make an irritatingly long story somewhat shorter, and only somewhat less irritating, the answer to the age old question is as follows:

I do not know how many Germans it takes to change a dead lightbulb. But as for a living, functioning lightbulb that has no need of being changed, it seems to take numerous Germans. As well as a clipboard. And a great variety of dusting and cleaning accoutrements.

German #1 to use twenty minutes, and nearly every tool in his chest, removing the (live) lightbulb from its lamp. German #2 to provide a running commentary chock full of useless advice and unsolicited criticisms on German #1’s inferior light-bulb-removal technique, a commentary that only crescendos once the lightbulb German #1 replaces the lamp with ends up not working, causing both German #1 and German #2 to vociferate amongst one another their endlessly inane hypotheses as to why the lightbulb is not working, which procures the attentions of other Germans, who have evidently been hankering for a reason to loiter about and extrapolate as to the possible strategies that could succeed in resurrecting the dead light bulb, which results in a general agreement among the whole group that a planning session be held in the near future regarding the rising problem of dead light-bulbs in the library, a discussion which (considering the Germans’ penachant for the planning of planning meetings) would have lasted until the end of time had not one German interrupted by insisting on flicking the dead lamp on-and-off, on-and-off for a total of five minutes before satisfying himself that the bulb was indeed dead and he should call the powers that be on his cell phone to notify them of the problem, who must have told him to write something down in his clipboard for the purpose of proper record-keeping and then…

At this point in my tirade, I feel obligated to mention that, as many Germans as it takes to change a(n already functioning) light-bulb, it only takes one American to politely inform the whole lot of them that changing a light-bulb involves replacing a dead bulb with a new one—not the other way around.

And when their task was finally accomplished, when the lamp was finally reunited with the original functioning light bulb, a general sound of jubilee broke forth from the crowd and it was proclaimed that, since the cover was off the lamp, they could at least finish up by cleaning and dusting it, if I would be so kind as to move my books for the purpose.

Since this day, I have been plagued by paralyzing fears that, one day, a German may ask me to go to a bier garten. Or, even worse, a German may knock on the door. Or I may come across some poultry in the middle of the street. These thoughts cross my mind, and I experience nothing short of a panic-filled terror. Because if learning how many Germans it took to change a lightbulb were that bad, there’s no way I want to find out what a German says when he walks into a bar. Nor do I want to know “who’s there?” And never, ever do I want to find out why that Hänchen is crossing the road. Not that I have much to fear. Germans rarely tell jokes, and when they do, they are not very funny.