This article, based on my chance encounter with retired Bavarian police superintendent Otto Oeder and subsequent invitation to the Stammtisch, appeared in the Mindener Tageblatt’s January 13/14, 2024 weekend edition. Captions to photos are in English so you can follow along even if you don’t read German! Leuchtende Berghänge: sattgelbes Eschenlaub, das Hellgelb frühherbstlicher Buchenblätter,… Read more Working through History over Beer
Book launch July 9, 2023! The Burlington Writers Workshop announces the release of this year’s anthology. You can join us one of two ways: in person at Hotel Vermont or, for the geographically and time-zone-challenged (like me), online. Either way, you can get your free ticket – and order your own copy – here. Find… Read more Cold Lake Anthology Release
You’ve been reading along—or maybe you just came across this little island in the vast virtual ocean—and now you want to see these places for yourself? Now you can! Find out more. AFTER THE WALL: DISCOVER GERMANY’S HIDDEN HEARTLANDThis special tour [dates TBA] will take you to the Green Belt—the nature preserve that has been… Read more See for yourself!
There is something to be said for being older than, say, fifty: Chances are you remember the fall of the Berlin Wall, which in my case came with a surprise revelation about history. I was in my living room in upstate New York that November 9, 1989, when a friend practically ordered me to turn… Read more History is Real People
For most of her sixteen years as German chancellor, Angela Merkel said little about her East German past. After the surprise of her meteoric political career in the newly reunited country – a woman! An Easterner! – things quieted down for a while. By the time she became chancellor in 2005, the major challenges of integrating… Read more Day of German Unity: Angela Merkel’s East German Past
Last year I wrote about the time “between the years” – that time span between Christmas and New Year’s that can feel like a gap in time, a reprieve from other, more tightly scheduled times of the year. A kind of time that invites reflection and contemplation. Lately I’ve been thinking about another kind of… Read more Fellow Passengers in the Bardo
There is a German expression to describe the time between Christmas and New Year’s: Zwischen den Jahren, or “between the years.” It’s not that that time span of seven days is between any two years; what matters is the feeling of having a chunk of secret extra time. Time that is safe from work meetings, dentist… Read more A Raven-Black Faith in the Future
(Bonus Post in German! Ausschnitte aus Kapitel 18) For English, scroll back to the last two posts. Die Nachtluft hat die Hitze des Tages nicht wirklich aus meinem winzig-gemütlichen Dachzimmer vertrieben, und meine schläfrigen Versuche, einer hungrigen Mücke nachzustellen, waren erfolglos. Aber als die Morgensonne meine schweren Augenlider überlistet, fällt mir wieder ein, was für… Read more Die Vögel am Ende der Welt
Anna had reserved a room for me in a small Gasthaus one village over from Kella. During GDR times, Pfaffschwende had been just outside the Schutzstreifen, the high-security “protective zone”. The narrow road to Pfaffschwende had been the only one by which Kella residents could access the rest of the GDR. As she and Andreas drove me… Read more Dating in the Borderland
This article from the Werra Rundschau’s January 1, 2020 issue, about the festivities marking the 30thanniversary of the border opening between Kella and Braunrod, describes the improvisation that was necessary to set up a border crossing in the absence of any guidance from “above”. The fall of the Berlin Wall on November 9, 1989, had thrown the… Read more 30 years later: Kella and its neighbors commemorate the opening of the border
