Tag Archives: Germany

The Boarded-Up St. Boniface and the Resplendent Holy Trinity

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At the intersection of Chicago Ave. and Noble St. in Chicago, you’ll find a word you don’t see that much: natatorium. It’s attached to the Ida Crown Natatorium, a unit of the Chicago Park District.
The facility has an entry in the Atlas Obscura, which notes that “its most arresting feature is the swooping, gently curved ‘barrel shell’ roof that arches over the pool, resembling in the words of one critic ‘a wave of concrete about to crash onto the shore of Chicago Avenue.’

“Mayor Richard J. Daley himself presided over the pool’s dedication in 1961, which was named for one of Chicago’s most prominent philanthropic families.” (Actually, Ida was a member of that family, the grandmother of this wealthy fellow.)

The natatorium is at the south end of the mid-sized Eckhart Park, which is otherwise an open area of playing fields. Rising over the north end of Eckhart Park, along W. Chestnut St., is the shuttered St. Boniface Church, originally built in the early 1900s for a primarily German Catholic congregation. Presumably they didn’t want to share a church with the surrounding Poles, and vice versa. St. Boniface, of course, led the effort to Christianize the Germans and is highly regarded in that country.
Given the Chicago Archdiocese’s history of knocking down splendid Chicago churches because money is tight (and these days, there are other bills to pay), I’m surprised that the shell of St. Boniface, which closed in 1990, is still standing.

This summer, the city approved plans to redevelop the structure into condominiums, including a new building as well as units in what used to be the sanctuary. That’s better than razing the grand old church. To the side of the boarded-up structure, I noticed a construction site in its early stages.

The redevelopment is slated for completion in 2020, but for now St. Boniface still has that abandoned look. Inside, even more.

While standing on Noble St. near the hulking St. Boniface, I noticed another church not far to the north. A large-looking structure. When I was looking around Google Maps a few days ahead of my walk, I hadn’t noticed it. But there it was. The church looked to be about five minutes away, so I went.

Soon I was in front of Holy Trinity Church.
Definitely built for a Polish congregation and still very much a Polish congregation. The church is run by the Society of Christ Fathers for Poles Living Abroad.
Polish Independence Day is the same as Armistice Day, incidentally. Same day, same year. The war was over and everything was up for grabs, including self-determination for formerly partitioned places.

Completed in 1906, Holy Trinity’s design is attributed to a Chicago architect named William Krieg, who (according to one source) mostly did more modest buildings in Chicago — a lot of them. Another source calls Krieg “little known” and a manufacturer of terra cotta as well.

I wasn’t expecting the interior to be quite so ornate. I gawked at the column-free space for a while, looking at the murals covering the walls and ceiling, the stained glass, the statues and other ornaments.
A baptism was in progress, but no mass, so I moved around the sanctuary. Here’s the baptism party in front of the altar.
Later, as I read about the church, I can across this bit of information at Wiki about the space underneath. The article calls it “catacombs,” but that seems like a misnomer. Rather, the space is “beneath the area formerly occupied by the lower church, and consist[s] of a winding path lined with niches containing saintly relics…”

A little like the space for relics found at St. Josaphat in Milwaukee, perhaps. Intriguing.

The Weekend Jam at Chicago Christkindlmarket

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While she was still in town, on the Monday or Tuesday before Thanksgiving, Lilly went to the Chicago Christkindlmarket with some of her friends. I warned her that the weekend would be a bad time to visit, though I don’t think she was planning that anyway.

The last time we went to the Chicago Christkindlmarket was on a Saturday about three years ago. That was a mistake. Even the weekdays can attract a mob. On that weekend in 2015, the place was packed:
That isn’t to say that you can’t admire the things for sale.

Of course, odds are foot traffic is flowing around you while you look at things.

Lilly acquired a souvenir mug. Things trend to be a bit expensive at the Christkindlmarket, since the goods seem to be priced in euros at a lousy exchange rate, with an extra 50 percent tacked on for good measure, but never mind. At least at most vendors, you’re getting something authentically German, right?

The mug’s seasonal and I suppose northern European in inspiration. I don’t have it in front of me. It’s nice enough, though. Still, I happened to check and there it was on the bottom: MADE IN CHINA.

Really, Herr Händler? That’s the kind of authenticity you get at Walmart. For a lot less.

Turner Hall, Milwaukee

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From the Encyclopedia of 1848 Revolutions, part of an article on the German Turnverein: “Founded amid the nationalist enthusiasms of the War of Liberation, the German gymnastic movement, or Turnverein, had fundamentally changed by the time of the 1848 revolutions in the German lands.”

Ah, a branch of the physical culture movement. Maybe the main branch; I’m no expert. But I do blame the physical culture movement for the indignities of PE in 20th-century America.

To continue from the encyclopedia: “Although Friedrich Ludwig Jahn, the gymnasium instructor who had originated the idea of nationalist gymnastics in Berlin in 1811, was still venerated in the organization, his anti-Semitism, hatred of the French, and loyalty to the Hohenzollern dynasty left him out of step with an organization committed to national unification and political liberalism…

“These gymnastic clubs were often closely aligned with workers’ organizations and democratic clubs with whom they shared a desire for reform and a rejection of traditional hierarchies…

“In contrast to the organization Jahn had founded, almost one-half of the membership in the 1840s were non-gymnasts, the so-called ‘Friends of Turnen,’ and because of this, the new clubs engaged in more non-gymnastic activities, such as funding libraries and reading rooms, and sponsoring lectures, often of a politically liberal nature.

“Given the radicalization of the movement in the 1840s, it is not surprising that the German gymnasts were directly involved in the 1848 revolutions…

“The aftermath of the 1848 revolutions devastated the German gymnastic movement. Clubs were disbanded, property confiscated and leaders lost to jail or exile.”

One place exiled Turners went was Milwaukee. By 1882, they had completed Turner Hall, which stands to this day on 4th Street in downtown Milwaukee. Remarkably, the Milwaukee Turners are still around, and for a paltry $35, anyone can join. No German language skills or even gymnastic aptitude seem necessary.

Our Turner principles are as follows [their web site says]:
Liberty, against all oppression;
Tolerance, against all fanaticism;
Reason, against all superstition;
Justice, against all exploitation!

The hall was open as part of Milwaukee Open Doors, so we visited.
That’s not the building’s best side, which was in the shadow when we visited. Here’s a good picture of the front.

The building’s a fine work by Henry Koch, himself a German immigrant who also did Milwaukee City Hall. Built of good-looking Creme City brick, which is now going to be the subject of another digression.

“Like the road to Oz, much of Milwaukee is made of yellow brick – Cream City brick, to be precise. But how, exactly, did it end up here? And why is it such a source of local pride?” asks Milwaukee magazine.

“Clay found along Milwaukee’s river banks was naturally high in magnesia and lime, giving the brick its unique color and durability, according to Andrew Charles Stern, author of Cream City: The Brick That Made Milwaukee Famous.

“Its popularity extended well beyond Wauwatosa. Local manufacturers shipped Cream City bricks to clients around the United States and as far away as Europe, until production ceased in the 1920s, when the clay supply was depleted and builders began to favor stone and marble…”

Talk about enjoying a local sight. A building built for Milwaukee Turners from a material created locally.

Inside, we joined a tour group and saw the restaurant space, which I believe was a beer hall once upon a time. After all, they might have been physical culture enthusiasts, but they were also Germans.

Murals dating back to the early days of the Milwaukee Turners grace the walls in that part of the building. Such as one featuring Turnvater Jahn and assorted allegories.
The aforementioned Friedrich Ludwig Jahn (1778-1852), that is, the father of gymnastics, and possibly a godfather of National Socialism, though that point is disputed, and in any case the NSDAP never had much traction in Milwaukee.

A detail from another Turner Hall mural whose subject is the founding of Milwaukee.

Pictured are Solomon Juneau and a Native American. Juneau founded the city in the early 1800s.

I feel another digression coming on. From the forward of Solomon Juneau, A Biography, by Isabella Fox, published in 1916:

The name of Solomon Juneau has long been honored, alike for the sterling integrity, the true nobility of the man, and for his generous benefactions in the upbuilding of the city he founded nearly a century ago, near the Milwaukee bluff on the shore of Lake Michigan. He was the ideal pioneer — heroic in size and character — generous by nature, just in all his dealings, whether as a fur trader with the red man, or in business transactions with his fellow townsmen, through the trying times when early settlers often required fraternal assistance, and the embryo city in the wilderness was ever the gainer through his benevolence, for selfishness was non-existence in him…

They don’t write ’em like that any more.

The star attraction in the Turner Hall is the ballroom.

The ballroom was damaged by fire at some point, but it’s stabilized enough — including netting covering the ceiling — for public events, such as the wedding that was going to be held there sometime after we visited last Saturday.

Eventually, the room will be restored. Bet it’ll be a marvel.

The Day I Met Casper David Friedrich

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Odd what makes an impression. The Charlottenburg Palace? Good, very good. Casper David Friedrich? I was fascinated. Unfortunately, I haven’t seen that many of his paintings since — some at the Hermitage in St. Petersburg, as I recall, and maybe one at the Met and one at the Louvre that I’m not sure I saw. Most of them are still in Germany.

July 8, 1983

Breakfast and then on the bus around 9. The wrong bus. But we found the right one before long and soon were downtown, heading our separate ways. I found the U-bahn and went out to the 1936 Olympic Stadium, still complete with fascist sculpture, which reminded me some of archaic Greek statuettes with their smiles. Saw the pool where The Festival of Beauty diving sequences were filmed.

Took the U-bahn and then walked to Schloss Charlottenburg. First I wandered the expansive grounds and saw the busts of the 12 Caesars and their wives. Went into the palace for a tour. Wore woolies over our shoes and looked at the fine old furniture and the vast collection of porcelain, among other things.

Back on the U-bahn. Met Steve, who had had his hair cut (part of the experience of visiting Berlin, he said), and we went to the National Gallery. Impressive collection, Neoclassical, Romantic, Impressionist, some early Modern, took in Monets, Renoirs, some Picassos. Especially taken with Renoir’s “Im Sommer.” Hard not to be.

Then I saw an entire wall of Casper David Friedrich. I didn’t remember ever seeing anything of his, or knowing much other than the name. Wow. I spent some time with them. Especially “Mann und Frau in Betrachtung des Mondes” and “Eichbaum im Schnee.”

The gallery wasn’t that large, which was a virtue, and later we headed for the Reichstag to catch a bus. En route we passed as close to the Brandenburg Gate as you can without getting shot at.

Back in West Berlin we ate some fish for dinner and Steve returned to the hostel. I walked some more and discovered a glittering shopping center off Budapester Straße. Then I went back to the hostel, tired.

’50s Euro Bottles

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Out in our garage, there’s an accumulation of bottles. Collection’s too dignified a word. Some of them have already been photographed for posting, generally for the oddity of their labels.

My parents brought home some bottles from their time in Europe in the mid-1950s. Some time ago, I decided to take pictures of them at my mother’s house.

A Chianti. I assume Rigatti is the brand. For a Chianti to be a Chianti, it must be produced in the Chianti region and be made from at least 80% Sangiovese grapes, Vinepair says. Also: “Almost none of the Chianti sold today comes in the classic straw basket.”

Clearly not true 60-odd years ago.A grappa. The brand label is partly missing, looks like. According to Rome File, the main ingredient of grappa is pomace, which consists of the grape skins, seeds and stalks that are left over from winemaking.

And something German.

I didn’t know this until I looked it up. Steinhäger is a type of German gin, flavored with juniper berries. It’s local to Steinhagen, North Rhine-Westphalia.

It makes me glad to think that my parents, or at least my father, sought out a few local liquors while in Europe. Not only that, they kept these aesthetic bottles as no-extra-charge souvenirs.

Casablanca at 75

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Yesterday we all went to see Casablanca on the big screen. It was in a few theaters nationwide on the occasion of the 75th anniversary of its late 1942 release.

At $4.50 a pop, how could I pass that up? I checked, and the other movies showing at the same multiplex are Thor: Ragnarok, Daddy’s Home 2, Murder on the Orient Express (starring Kenneth Branagh’s facial hair, I’ve read), A Bad Mom’s Christmas, Jigsaw, Boo! A Madea Halloween, Happy Death Day, Geostorm, It, My Little Pony: The Movie, Seven Sundays, and, interestingly, two Bollywood features: C/o Surya and PSV Garuda Vega.

I’ll never live long enough to confirm this, but I suspect that not a single one of those other titles will be revived for a 75th anniversary showing, or for any other year.

Ann had never seen Casablanca before. I didn’t expect her to know, for instance, much about the geopolitical background of the movie, such as why “Vichy” might be important, so I spent a few minutes beforehand explaining a few things to her. I went as far as whistling a few bars of “La Marseillaise.”

She said that sounded familiar — of course it does, it’s an aural shorthand for “France” in English-speaking media — but she didn’t know what it was. I said it was the national anthem of France, and that the movie puts good use of it.

Rick Blaine has been characterized as a stand-in for the United States and its isolationist ways before Pearl Harbor, and I suppose there’s something to that. After all, Victor says to Rick (and I think it’s too-good-by-half Victor Laszlo’s best line): “Welcome back to the fight. This time, I know our side will win.” An optimistic line, that. It’s sobering to think that the movie was not only set when the fate of mankind was in the balance, it was made then.

I’ve seen Casablanca a number of times (not sure how many) since the first time in film class in 1983, so I could focus on details, such as the evocative sets, especially Rick’s. Carl Jules Weyl, who did the splendid sets on The Adventures of Robin Hood not long before and on The Big Sleep a few years later, was the art director.

It also occurred to me how well Victor and Ilsa were dressed. Awfully stylish for a couple barely staying ahead of Nazis pursuing them across the Mediterranean and then North Africa. We never see the luggage that Rick sends Victor off to deal with at the airport, so he can have a moment to tell Ilsa what’s what, but it must have been a steamer trunk or two.

But that’s overthinking the matter. This is the Golden Age of Hollywood. Of course the luminous Ingrid Bergman is going to be dressed to the nines, even in a war-torn world.

Something else I noticed this time was a line with distinct foreshadowing, spoken by Major Strasser to Ilsa: “My dear, perhaps you have already observed that in Casablanca human life is cheap.” Indeed. As it turns out, cheap for Major Strasser, the only major character who dies on screen. And I never get tired of hearing Capt. Renault say, “Round up the usual suspects.” When my film class heard that, we cheered.

Ann wasn’t entirely sure what nationality Renault was supposed to be, so she asked me after the movie. I suppose that’s a function of not watching enough old movies with French policemen or soldiers in them. The kepi is all earlier generations needed to spot a Frenchman, but that must not be so any more.

I also suggested to Ann that she pay attention to the supporting and minor characters, who are widely regarded as one of the chief delights of the movie. Especially these two.

I’m glad to report that Ann liked the movie. It’s entirely possible that she’ll see it again when she’s older, and get more out of it, as one does with good movies re-watched or books re-read. Maybe she will see it around the 100th anniversary. I’m sure Casablanca will still be watched then.

Bremen, West Germany, 1983

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Around this time of the year 34 years ago, I spent a couple of days in the north German city of Bremen. City-state, actually: Freie Hansestadt Bremen, the Free Hanseatic City of Bremen. Once a state in the German Confederation, then a component state of the German Empire, it was merely a city according to the Nazis. Since 1947, it’s been a state again, the smallest in area of the Federal Republic.

Odd, Bremen and Hamburg got to be states again, but not poor old Lübeck. Such are the vagaries of history.

I had a fine time. How could I not? I was a young man with exactly nothing else to do at that moment but see a new city in an interesting old country. I was a free man in Bremen/I felt unfettered and alive… Well, that lyric wouldn’t have quite the same vibe, but that’s not too far off. Anyway, my tourist impulse was in full flower.

This is David and me. He was the brother of a New Yorker friend of mine in Germany, Debbie. Mostly I was by myself in Bremen, but I met up with them toward the end of my visit. The background is the Schnoor, more about which later.
BremenJuly2.83The following is an edited version of what I wrote at the time.

“At Bremen I exited the station, got a map, and experienced the first-time rush of a new place. You aren’t tired, you feel open to the world, you want to look at everything you pass by. I crossed downtown Bremen’s large fussgangerplatz, walked by shops and goods and people, and enjoyed the sights and sounds. That kind of rush doesn’t last long, but it’s great while it does.

“I found the Jugendherberge, an ugly squarish building between downtown and the industrial Weser riverside. Check-in wasn’t until 1:30, so I sat under a bridge near St. Stephen’s and ate the bread and wurst I brought. The brot was a little dry and the wurst something like raw hamburger, but I needed the sustenance.

“Then I checked in and began wandering. I found the Rathaus first, then the famous 1404 statue of Roland. I spent a good while in Bremen Cathedral (St. Petri Dom zu Bremen), marveling at its intricate, aesthetic wonders, such as the painted pillars and the statues illustrating the Parable of the Ten Virgins. Went to the crypt, thought to be the oldest room in Bremen, dedicated in 1066.

“Sometimes I mulled a bit gloomily that time will sooner or later reduce the cathedral to dust — via nuclear attack in August or 10,000 years of erosion or something. But it’s here, now, and so am I. Before I left, I bought a little book about the cathedral.
Bremen Cathedral“Not long after I left, I spotted a series of white dots painted on the sidewalk, with the words Zum Schnoor –> every 30 or 40 feet to go with them. I followed them to the Schnoor. I’d heard that the Schnoor was the oldest surviving section of the city, and so it seems. The Schnoor is focused on a narrow street of that name, lined with aged shops and other buildings. Some of the side streets are even narrower, barely wide enough for two people to pass.

“En route to a church I never got into because it was always locked, I came across Böttcherstraße. Every ten feet or so is another work by one Bernhard Hoetger, some interesting stuff dating from pre-you-know-who Weimar years. Apparently the Nazis didn’t much like the works, but they survived them and the war. [Brick Expressionism, I’ve read, is the term, at least for some of the buildings.] There was also a small cinema tucked away in the area. Showing that evening: Death in Venice. An Italian movie with German subtitles, probably, or dubbed in German. I decided not to go.

“I walked further afield, near some small city lakes, and then to the Übersee Museum Bremen, near the main train station. It’s an ethnographic museum, complete with huts from New Guinea, a Japanese shrine with a manicured garden and a pond with goldfish, and a elegant Burmese temple. All of the labels were in German, but that didn’t matter much [I experienced something similar some years later at the National Museum of Ethnology in Osaka.]

“There was a special exhibit of schoolchildren’s paintings: ‘Japanese kids see us and German kids see Japan.’ A funny mix of cultural and political images, mostly, tending toward the stereotypical. My favorite was a Japanese drawing of a German with a grinning Volkswagen for a head, eating sausage and drinking beer. Hitler’s face and swastikas were common, as was Beethoven’s face, and some drawings showed Germany torn between the Stars & Stripes and the Hammer & Sickle.

“After the museum I had dinner at the Restaurant Belgrade. For DM 16, I had an excellent Hungarian goulash, potatoes, salad, bread and beer. Returned to the hostel at about 10, very tired, and went to sleep almost at once.

“At breakfast at the hostel I talked with a Japanese girl who’d been to the Bremen Geothe Institut and who was about to go home. She was pleasant, and showed me postcards of Japan. After checking out, I wandered the streets on the other side of the Weser a while, then at 10 took a harbor cruise.

“It was a busy place, with ships from all over, and vast industrial areas along the banks, including a huge drydock belonging to Krupp, and a Kellogg’s factory with enormous murals of Tony the Tiger and Snap, Crackle & Pop on its side. I couldn’t catch a lot of the narration, but it seemed mostly about ship sizes and carrying capacities, so I didn’t mind.

“Back on land, I visited the church opposite the Dom, Unser Lieben Frauen Kirche, the second-oldest church in the city, and not as ornate as the cathedral. I took a tour of the Rathaus, and as Steve promised, the place has remarkable woodwork. For example, the puti-like faces on some of the chairs managed to have lustful and leering expressions. The Rathaus also has a fine collection of model ships, mostly the 17th-century Bremen fleet, and an assortment of portraits of Holy Roman Emperors.

“As if that wasn’t enough, I then went to the Ludwig Roselius Museum, which houses paintings & furniture & gold & maps from the 17th and 18th centuries. Saw the original black painting of Martin Luther that I’ve seen reproduced a number of other places [Lucas Cranach].

“My energy was low by this time, but I walked some more, returning to the Böttcherstraße at 3 and hearing the chimes of the Glockenspiel House and seeing the rotating woodcarvings of explorers and airmen. Met Debbie and David soon after, and we repaired to a nearby cafe for beer. They’d been there the day. Returned to Lüneburg soon after on a faster direct train, and had dinner together at another Yugoslav restaurant. For DM 14, got Serbian combo of meat, rice and beans, along with beer.”

One more thing. In Bremen, near the Schnoor, I found a memorial I didn’t expect. I made notes about it in my Bremen Cathedral book, which is what I had at hand.
Bremen CathedralUnsere Jüdischen mitbürger

Martha Goldberg
Dr. Adolf Goldberg
Heinrich Rosenblum
Leopold Sinasohn
Selma Swinitzki

Wurden in dieser Stadt in der Nacht vom 9. zum 10.11.1938 ermordet.

Murdered during Kristallnacht, in other words. This is what the plaque looks like. Remarkably, Adolf Goldberg has a Wiki page, which also tells me that the memorial was erected in 1982, only a short time before I saw it.

Old Town Ramble

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Been going to the city more than usual lately. One destination for a recent walkabout was Old Town, a near North Side Chicago neighborhood that I’ve passed by at the edges countless times. Walked through it, not so much. On a warm day this month, when I did finally take a walk in the neighborhood along such streets as Cleveland, Hudson, Sedgwick, Orleans, and Menomenee, all north of North Ave., I had the strange feeling that I wasn’t quite in Chicago any more.

“There is a scale to Old Town, a closeness of building to street and street to cross street and curb to curb that you simply don’t find anywhere else in the city,” one Vince Michael wrote in the limited but informative blog Renown Old Town.

“It is not so much about the rope mouldings above the windows or the paired brackets and dentils at the eave or even those Furnessian ornaments on Adler & Sullivan’s Halstead Houses. It is about a premodern relationship of buildings and streets and narrow alleyways – something not unusual in Rome or the old part of Edinburgh but exceedingly rare in Chicago.”

I didn’t think of Rome during my Old Town walk, and I’ve never wandered Edinburgh, but even so something about the alignment of the neighborhood is atypical for Chicago. It doesn’t really come through in pictures, though you can get a sense of some of the area’s handsome buildings that way.

Old Town, Chicago

Old Town, ChicagoOld Town, ChicagoOld Town, ChicagoEvery interesting neighborhood worthy of that adjective has its spots of whimsy. So too with Old Town.

Old Town, ChicagoOld Town, ChicagoThen there was this charming building, Schmidt Metzgerei. Butcher’s shop, though the it looks like Mitzgerei, except there’s no dot over the first i. (Vince Michael posits that Mitzgerei is an older variant spelling; I couldn’t say).
Schmidt Mitzgerei, Old Town, ChicagoIt stands out now, but probably didn’t when it was new, as a butcher’s shop with dwelling space on the second floor for the butcher and his family. “The mitzgerei, built in the classic German fachwerk style, utilizing heavy timber framing, was established in 1903,” writes Vince Michael. “Today it is the home of the Sullivan Law firm. It is a fine example of the early German immigrant construction that at one time was quite common throughout the Old Town Neighborhood.”

There’s a broader context, of course. The AIA Guide to Chicago tells us that Old Town “was settled by German produce farmers, who were numerous enough to establish St. Michael’s parish in 1852. After the devastation of the Fire of 1871, wooden cottages sprang up to house the homeless. Most of the ‘relief shanties’ are long gone… The area remained heavily German throughout the following decades, and by 1900, North Ave. as far west as Halstead St. was known as German Broadway.”

Afternoon Music Selections

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Ann and I were in the living room yesterday, and I called up YouTube on the TV. It’s one of the things you can do with a modern TV and wifi. She wasn’t really paying attention, since she had her smaller electronic gizmo handy, so I decided to play “Telstar.” The video shows mostly unrelated space images, but never mind. I thought it might get her attention.

I was right. “What is that?” she asked. Or maybe it was, “What is that?” But I don’t think she really wanted an answer.

After it was over, naturally I had to play the Tornados’ “Robot,” whose Scopitone doesn’t look very good on a bigger screen. But the YouTube poster’s (in 2006!) description is apt: “Tornados rock the twang in a back-woods sci-fi robotic dance party! And then kiss girls!”

She wasn’t impressed by that, either.

If it had occurred to me, I would have dialed up “Trans-Europe Express” (English or German). It’s been 40 years this month since the album of that name was released. Of course I didn’t hear about it at the time, but in the early ’80s, and even then I had no idea that it had been received so well by critics, for what that’s worth. All I know is I’ve always liked it.

When I looked it up recently, I was surprised to learn that the Trans-Europe Express, as in the train system TEE, doesn’t exist any more. Probably because I confused it with the TGV, which is very much still around.

Or maybe I could have played Kraftwerk’s “Tour de France,” another fun tune from some other zone, or “Beatbox” by Art of Noise. If your children don’t think you’re just a little strange, you aren’t trying very hard.

End of the Week Debris

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Rain, I don’t mind. Miserable cold at the end of April, that doesn’t seem right. That’s what we have, with the promise of slightly less miserable cold during the early days of May.

Here’s a picture of my nephew Dees, taken (probably) by one of his bandmates while they were in Atlanta. I doubt that they’d mind me posting it.DeesAJA fellow I don’t know, who seems to be an Englishman — or at least an English-speaker — living in Germany, left me a message at BTST, asking whether I knew the exact location of the Goethe Institut in Lüneburg. He’d attended classes there the same summer I did in 1983, though in August, and if you Google “Goethe Institut, Lüneburg,” I’m the first hit. He must have found me that way. Guess not many other people have posted about their fond memories of the place.

He had the chance to visit Lüneburg again and wanted to see the school. Sadly, I had to tell him I didn’t know the address after all this time. It isn’t on Google Maps, so my suspicion is that it’s long closed. I vaguely remember hearing about plans to close it, even when I was there, but wouldn’t swear to anything.

Apparently he made it to Lüneburg in late April and didn’t see the school. He did find that it was snowing.

If I remember correctly, that’s the handsome Lüneburg Rathaus. But I never saw it during a light snow.