Tübingen - Trips 13

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89. I was able to do a few trips while I was in Germany to finish out the days on my Eurail pass. I drove with someone, I think Reinhard, to the Bodensee for a day (Lake Constance). On the way we passed by the castle Hohenzollern.

Over the years, I have had a hard time getting my head around the way Germany has been structured politically. My main stumbling block was in fact thinking of this region as being "Germany" in the first place. Germany really was not an entity until 1871 when the Hohenzollern family became monarchs, and even then it wasn't exactly the same region as today. Before then, this region was a collection of little territories, little kingdoms of a sort. They were all German, but they weren't Germany.

You see castles all over Germany. These were all domains of various sizes, fiefdoms, all under the Holy Roman Empire, mostly the Hapsburgs in what we would call Austria today. Napoleon's conquest ended the Holy Roman Empire in 1806. These were more independent than the states we have today in the US. So there is a lot of local flavor, especially in those areas like Bavaria that were once their own kingdom.

I'm pretty sure I took a train out to Vienna. Quite a Ken thing to do. Vienna is way on the east side of Austria. I didn't spend the night. I basically rode all day on a train so I could spend just a few hours at the palace in Vienna. Even then, I found the Baroque colors of gaudy yellow and puke green unpleasant. I didn't even get off at Salzburg. It did look pretty from the train.

90. I went to the Black Forest with someone at one time to Bebenhausen, a cloister that had not been bombed in World War II. The region in general in which Tübingen is located is called Swabia. It's actually in the state of Baden-Württemberg.

The Swabians, like the Bavarians to the east, had their own dialect of a sort. Alex Jensen (from Hamburg in the north) used to joke about not being able to understand the Swabians. They might say, "I muss schaffe gange" instead of "Ich muss gehen zum arbeiten."

I had a radio of some sort in the Kellar of the Michelhaus. I learned more fifties and sixties American music there than I had ever learned in the States. "Neckar Altradio" (Neckar is the river that runs across Tübingen).

I'm sure I visited Stuttgart on one or two occasions. There wasn't really much for me to do there other than eat. Nevertheless, it was the passing through point in and out of Tübingen.

91. Another very typical Ken trip was a one day turn around to Berlin. I only had one day to spare on my Eurail pass, so I left on the earliest train to Berlin of the day, around 4am. I arrived in Berlin around 11am. I walked from one end of Berlin to the other in about three hours. Then I ate and hopped on another train back to Tübingen, arriving about 10pm.

I took the subway all the way to the Fernsehturm on the east side and walked all the way back. The Fernsehturm at Alexanderplatz is the television tower in east Berlin that you see in the first Jason Bourne movie. At that time, we were only six years out from the fall of the Berlin wall. Let me say again that the stark difference between bleak east Berlin and vibrant west Berlin was obvious.

I walked to the Bundesreich, which at that time was still not yet in use. Then there was the Brandenberger Tur which stood at the cusp of "no man's land." I had to go a little bit to the north to find a little chunk of the Berlin wall, since most of it had been demolished. On to the Victory Column in the middle of the Tiergarten. Yes, there were nude sunbathers there. [1]

Soon I was back at the Gedächtniskirche, the "church of remembrance." They left the bombed old church standing next to a not so attractive new cube church to remember WW2. This is not a remembrance like Civil War statues in the south seem to be. Civil War statues in the south seem to function as "we were right and shouldn't have lost" memorials. The Gedächtniskirche is a reminder of what happens when you let fascism and hate take over. It's a reminder never to let things like the Holocaust happen again.

Germany only had republican democracy for about fifteen years from 1918-1933, the Weimar Republic. Only after WW2 did representational democracy take hold. At the moment, Germany is one of the most successful democracies in the world. You can never take such things for granted of course. The temptation to protect your perceived herd at the expense of all others is always lying at the door. This herd mentality always threatens to overthrow an egalitarian society.

92. So my two months in Germany in 1995 came to an end. It was Tübingen to Stuttgart to Karlsruhe to Paris with a mess of luggage. A lovely overnight in Paris at the Hôtel Régyn. Eurostar at Gare du Nord to Waterloo Station London, sitting next to the older Russian woman I mentioned earlier. Kings Cross to Durham.

[1] Nude bathing was certainly something different to see in Germany. There was nothing really sensual to the nude sunbathers in Berlin as far as I could tell. Let's just say there weren't any models sunbathing in the park.