Church bells

The "Enser Tor" in Korbach, one of the historic gateways into town

We have been back from our trip to Germany for little over a week, and no longer can the desire for an afternoon nap be explained by the lingering effects of jet lag. We have returned to our daily routines, read the mail and the weekly papers that had accumulated during our absence, and even Leo, our German Shepherd, seems to feel reasonably assured that we are not going to leave him again for three weeks every time we get in the car. 

It is hard to believe that such a short time ago we walked the streets of picturesque little towns, admired their neatly restored houses, and stood in awe at the architectural beauty of castles and churches. 

"Buchhandlung Urspruch", my favourite bookstore

At the end of our stay we returned once more to Korbach, the town where I went to school for nine years after finishing my elementary grades, where my parents moved more than thirty years ago and where my mother still lives. While I didn’t grow up there it is very familiar to me, and when I first see the characteristic spires of its two main churches, St. Kilian and St. Nikolai appear in the distance on my visits I always feel I am coming home. The town has many beautiful timbered houses worth looking at as well, and plaques explain about the history of important buildings. 

Ever since I was a child I enjoyed reading fairy tales, myths, and legends, and I was delighted now to find that a number of legends originating in the county of Waldeck, which has Korbach as its county seat, had been compiled in a book. The slim blue volume titled “Geschichten, Erzählungen und Sagen aus dem Waldecker Land” (Tales, Stories and Legends from the County of Waldeck), retold by Henning H. Drescher, contains some stories I heard or read as a child, but many so far unfamiliar to me. One of those is about the time when the two big churches were built. I hadn’t realized that they had been built at the same time: the construction of St. Kilian’s Church was completed in 1450, that of St. Nikolai’s Church in 1460. 

St. Kilian

St. Nikolai

Here is a translation of the story I found in the little book:

“Many, many years ago, it might be half a millennium now, the mayor of the “New Town” (founded by merchants when the Old Town became too small) left town through the “Berndorfer Tor” (Berndorf Gate) on a muggy summer evening. He came from the building site of the church of St. Nikolai. At that time the people in the old part of town were in the process of building a beautiful church in honour of their patron and protector St. Kilian. The citizens of the burgeoning New Town didn’t want to stand back, and so they began, almost at the same time, with the construction of the church of St. Nikolai. Thus the people from the Old and the New Town were in competition for a hundred years building their churches. The closer the building project of the citizens of the New Town came to its completion, however, the more they had to admit that St. Kilian’s church was much more beautiful than theirs. How high and mighty the spire of the church towered over the lands, and its wonderful portal was not to be matched. Even the generous donation of the Countess Elisabeth was not enough to keep up with the proud patricians of the town. 

Disgruntled and grumpy the mayor rode out toward the Homberg, paying little attention to the greeting of the guard at the gate. He wanted to check how things were going at the lumberyard of the town, even though in the west, behind the Eisenberg, heavy thunder clouds were gathering. Riding at a gallop, he had just reached the defensive dyke when the storm started to rage. Just in time he reached the edge of the forest where he could seek shelter from the pelting rain for himself and his horse under the wide crown of some mighty beech trees. He remembered an old weather rule: Beware of the oak trees, avoid all willows, don’t go near fir trees, but seek out beeches. 

He himself didn’t know the meaning of fear, watched the storm take its course, and calmly held the reins of his trembling horse. He would stay under the beech trees until the storm was over. Faster and faster lightning and thunder followed each other, and soon the whole wide country was veiled in weather clouds and pouring rain. 

Suddenly a blinding bolt of lightning, followed by an echoing, rumbling thunder! In the nearby quarry rocks tumbled down. With a huge effort the strong man held on to his trembling horse that was rearing up in fear. 

But then, suddenly, the wild force of the storm seemed to have been exhausted with that roar of thunder. 

When the finches in the crowns of the beeches started singing their sweet songs again the grumpy mood of the mayor had dissipated as well. Leading his horse by the rein he cheerfully walked toward the lumberyard. 

But what was that? Dishevelled and without moving a red haired old man squatted at the side of the road in front of him, and his tired, beseeching gaze said more than a thousand words could have done. “Hello, old man, you’ve been much shaken by this bad weather, haven't you?” When the old man nodded wordlessly the mayor took his hip flask from the saddle bag. “Redbeard, take this and drink it; it was supposed to be my nightcap, but you need it more than I do.”
 

The stranger took the cup and emptied it without setting it down. Then, as if sustained by a new life force, he straightened to his full height so that the mayor drew back a few steps in alarm, gave back the cup and said, “Thank you, noble gentleman. You helped me, and I would like to repay you. Can I do anything for you? Maybe you are worried about something?” The mayor suppressed a smile and thought, ‘you would be the proper one to relieve me of my worries.’  But since he was in a good mood he told him about his concerns about the church of St. Nikolai that was so much less impressive than its sister church St. Kilian. “If it’s nothing else that worries you, I know how to help you with this. Come and follow me!” Saying this, he walked toward the quarry, so fast that the mayor had trouble following him. Then he pointed to the spot where lightning had struck the rock wall. A thin, glittering zigzag line at the bottom showed where the lightning had entered the ground. With a golden hammer the stranger broke the shimmering  lightning trail from the rock wall, sparks flying, and gave the mayor a handful of the pieces he had broken off. “Take this and look after it well. And when you are about to make the bells for the tower of your St. Nikolai’s church don’t forget to give this to the bell founder: “der Glocke zu Nutz, dem Wetter zum Trutz, dem Turme zum Schutz” (of use to the bell, a bulwark against the weather, a protection for the tower).

The mayor took the golden fragments and carefully placed them in his saddlebags. When he turned around to ask this and that and to thank the old man nobody was there anymore. The old man had disappeared without a trace.

After this strange encounter the mayor started on his way home, and nobody ever found out about this wondrous hour. When the day of the bell founding came, however, he gave the founder the golden rock fragments and instructed him to smelt them with the other metals. From beginning to end he was part of the founding, and he could hardly wait for the day when the bells’ peal would sound from the bell-fry.  

It was a sunny day late in the fall when the new bells of St. Nikolai rang out powerfully over town and country. Right away the citizens of Old and New Town gathered in the streets and listened joyfully to the beautiful pure peal. As the song of the bells carried far into the distance, the people from many surrounding villages streamed into town to listen up close to the wonderful sound. Content and beaming the mayor and his councillors stood in the midst of the cheering townspeople. Many years have come and gone in the county of Waldeck, but to this day the bells of St. Nikolai tell with fervour and might about joy and pain, quiet sorrow, but also the happiness of young couples in this old and venerable town of Korbach."

I couldn't say if the bells of St. Nikolai sound any fuller or more beautiful than those of St. Kilian; I like them both. Church bells, for me, bring back the orderly world of childhood, of days governed by their mighty sound, from the morning peal at seven to the evening peal twelve hours later. Gone are the times when children had to be inside by the time of the evening bells, and it won't be long until nobody even remembers that it once was so.

Coming home

“Wherever I live

                it is most beautiful.”

                                (from Japan)

These words from yesterday’s calendar page seem to summon perfectly what I felt after our drive north from the Calgary airport the night before last.

Three weeks in Germany, brim-full with wonderful encounters, time spent with family and friends in beautiful surroundings have come to a close. There is little time for contemplating when there is so much to take in – all this will come later, unfolding bit by bit during quiet hours spent weeding or harvesting in the garden.  

As usual, the flight was a time of transition for me, of gaining distance from what had been, not only physically but emotionally, suspended in a space all of its own, belonging neither to the past nor the future. I enjoy flying, even under the somewhat cramped conditions of the Air Transat airbus, possibly for that very reason. It’s almost like an emptying of the mind to let go of what has been and make myself ready for what comes next. 

We picked up our car at the Park2Go and were on our way by 6:30 p.m. The Rockies, so much closer in Calgary than they are at home, were only dimly visible in the west, but the late afternoon sun streamed in through the windows, and it was warmer than it had been in Germany for much of our visit.

I let my eyes wander over the expanse of fields stretching east and west, the grey band of highway ahead of us, and was suddenly struck by the emptiness, almost monotony, of the landscape. I remembered the tall trees, the narrow, winding roads, the profusion of wildflowers, the little creeks in the dreamy valleys of the Odenwald to which we had just said good-bye, and, with surprise, caught myself thinking, it is so much prettier there!  What makes me, with all my love for hills and forests, long to return to this whenever I’ve been away for any length of time?  I felt a bit like a stranger, the atmosphere of the plane ride still lingering.

After a little while, I fell asleep. When I woke up half an hour later the sun had slipped a bit lower, and colours had intensified in the changing light. The sweet honey smell of blooming canola fields filled the air, and I noticed how green it was. There had been ample rains in our absence, and wheat and barley were headed out. We had returned to full summer, to the promise of a bountiful harvest.

By the time we turned off the highway a few miles from home the sun was glowing red right above the horizon. Quiet ponds, ringed with tall reeds, reflected its light, families of ducks and geese hardly making a ripple in the water, groups of gulls flying homeward to their nightly gathering places on one or the other lake.

Driving down the last hill, seeing our house, the spruce trees along the driveway, the lawn, the red, orange and yellow nasturtiums in the barrel by the mailbox, catching a glimpse of blue, purple and red from the perennial bed at the front of the garden, I knew I had come home.

Biking in the Odenwald and Neckar valley

Friday, July 13^th, 2012

It is eleven o’clock at night, and we have just come back to our comfortable “Ferienwohnung Ticks” (“Holiday Apartment Ticks”) after another day of biking and walking in the Odenwald. My hair is wet after a walk home through the forest from the rustic country inn “The Rose” in a nearby village where we had a delicious supper. The easy half hour walk through the mixed forest right behind my brother and sister-in-law’s house was one of the many wonderful experiences of this summer holiday. Much of so densely populated Germany is forest, and well-marked hiking trails and paths abound, often very close to villages and towns yet skirting them in a way that they are hardly noticeable. 

I have always loved the beech and oak forests I grew up with, and they were, for the longest time, among the things I missed most in Alberta. During my visits I am happy about every opportunity to spend time among the stately trees. 

We left my home county of Waldeck in northern Hesse on Wednesday and arrived here in Wald-Michelbach at Johann’s brother’s place in the early evening. Johann’s oldest brother and several of his cousins and their spouses awaited us; they had gathered for a week of biking in this beautiful area south of Frankfurt. 

The Odenwald is one of several German Mittelgebirge, forested hilly if not low mountainous areas whose highest elevations reach up to 1,500 m (the Feldberg in the Black Forest). The highest elevation in the Odenwald is the Katzenbuckel (Cat Hump) at a little over 600 m, obviously not one of the higher ones. 

The group of cousins has met once a year for a one-week bike tour for many years, and every year somebody else is responsible for organizing the tour. They have explored many different parts of Germany this way, and this year it will be the Odenwald and the surrounding lower lying area along the Neckar, one of the tributaries of the Rhine, wide and deep enough itself to be navigable by big freighters carrying coal, fertilizer, and other goods. The Odenwald, of course, is a bit challenging for the not-so well trained bikers like Johann and myself because of the many hills, but only about twenty kilometers away in the Neckar valley many less demanding destinations await.

                                               ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

This is how far I got before I succumbed to beckoning sleep. By now it is Sunday afternoon, and once again the small pink roses in front of the window are basked in sunshine, its arrival as sudden as the downpour only minutes earlier. While we have, for the most part, not been blessed with hot, sunny summer days we have been extremely fortunate nevertheless. Every morning the sky was covered by a thick layer of cloud, often threatening rain, the weather map promising no more than a 50% chance of a rain-free bike ride, yet we never really got soaked yet. 

Our first destination, on Thursday, was the little town of Hirschhorn, about 20 km away in the Neckar valley. We started out on a dirt road through the forest, hardly used by cars. Not wanting to exert ourselves too soon most of us pushed our bikes up the hill, enjoying the spicy forest scent and the many wildflowers along the way. 

I am amazed how many blooming flowers I find here; surprised, too, how many names I remember from the time I lived here. As a teenager already I was interested in the flora and learned the names of many native plants, and even now, after so many years, I recognize many of them. It seems to me that we have far less variety in the prairie parklands around our home, though maybe not in Alberta as a whole, and particularly not in the Rockies.  It could be that the flowers are less conspicuous, too, possibly because it is more arid than here. 

The Neckar valley close to Heidelberg

Through tiny, dreamy villages surrounded by forest, meadows and small fields we descended on narrow paved roads to the Neckar valley.  It was an easy stretch where little pedalling was necessary. In Hirschhorn, our destination, we stopped at the local locks for a little while and watched how a big freighter was lifted – amazingly fast – so that it could continue on its way upstream. After looking at a small church nearby, the Ersheimer Kapelle, interesting mainly because it is the oldest in the Neckar valley (built in 1345) we made our way to the medieval town centre where we locked our bikes and hiked up to the Hirschhorn Castle along a historic sheep path on uneven stone steps, well worn by many feet over the centuries. 

We had just ordered coffee, cake and ice cream – some of us beer, too – at the restaurant, and were enjoying the marvellous view from the castle’s terrace when a rain shower forced us inside. Here, tables covered with white table cloths, each table setting with several kinds of glasses and cutlery, seemed to await a fancier crowd than a group of tired and hot pedal pushers, but the waiter quickly made room for us all and didn’t give any indication that we might not be welcome guests. 

Some of us climbed a few more sets of stairs to the top of the tower to have an even better view of the surrounding area, which was well worth the effort.

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Since the way to Hirschhorn had been almost all downhill the way home, of course, meant a steady climb, and we were all happy when we reached Wald-Michelbach in the early evening.  

Unsterblich duften die Linden

It’s twenty to three in the afternoon, the tail end of an early siesta. I just opened the window of my loft again that I had closed when I came up here two hours ago. The sun has moved around and is now gazing in, a hot mid-summer sun: temperatures are in the upper twenties. Right now traffic noise obscures the bird song, but later in the evening, just like this morning when I woke up for the second time, around 4, the sweet voices of song birds sound from all around. 

Yesterday, when I dropped off Johann at a friend of ours just north of Frankfurt, we went for a walk to the eighteenth-century castle where her husband has his office, taking a short cut through the park. We had just crossed a slow moving little river wending its way dreamily through tall grass and reeds, weeping willows dipping their branches into its murky waters, when I was stopped in my tracks by a scent, well-known, but from a different lifetime, it seemed, and not immediately identifiable. This scent embraced me, filled me with a sweet melancholy, made me think of poems by Eichendorff or one of the other German Romantic poets. What was it? 

         

The line of a poem slipped into my mind ... “Unsterblich duften die Linden ...”  I looked around, found maple, willow and oak. Hmmm ... no. It wasn’t any of them. Had my senses, my memory, deceived me after all? After a few more steps we rounded the corner of one of the castle’s outbuildings, and there it was: a huge linden tree, its trunk greenish with age, its densely leafed branches forming a thick canopy, with clusters of blossoms, two-flagged sails with fuzzy greenish-white little tufts at their centers. I stood transfixed, eyes closed, and breathed deeply. There is nothing that can quite compare to this scent.

It is not Eichendorff, but the poet Ina Seidel (1885-1974) who wrote the poem I remembered. Here it is, along with my attempt at a translation:

 

                                TROST

Unsterblich duften die Linden –

was bangst du nur?

Du wirst vergehn und deiner Füße Spur

Wird bald kein Auge mehr im Staube finden.

Doch blau und leuchtend wird der Sommer stehn

und wird mit seinem süßen Atemwehn

gelind die arme Menschenbrust entbinden.

Wo kommst du her? Wie lang bist du noch hier?

Was liegt an dir?

Unsterblich duften die Linden.

 
                   CONSOLATION
  

Immortal, the scent of the linden –

What do you fear?

You will fade away, and soon

no one will find your traces in the dust.

But summer will stand glorious and blue

and will with its sweet breath

gently deliver the poor human breast.

Where do you come from? How much longer will you stay?

What do you matter?

Immortal, the scent of the linden.

                     ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Linden trees are in bloom everywhere now, along roadsides, in parks, in the old, beautifully restored graveyards here in Korbach, their crowns buzzing with bees and bumble bees. They are joined by a multitude of flowers, both wild and carefully tended to in gardens. In short: it is beautiful wherever I turn.

Once again: short musing from an airport

The cat story will have to wait a bit longer: right now we are at the Calgary airport, on our way to Germany for a three-week holiday. Twice in one year - that is a rare treat! It is also the first time that Johann and I will be going together in 25 years. It is a great opportunity to see friends and family, including some we don't get to see very often, and we look forward to it very much. 

For me, it was hard to leave home at this time of year. Summer is so short and intense, the time when everything is green and ablaze with colour so precious that I hate to give up any of that. 

It will soon be time to board, so I better pack up. There will be posts during our trip, I hope.