Baaa-varia

Throughout the Werdenfelser Land in September, the subtle seasonal changes that begin in mid-August become more pronounced. Dried leaves drift from trees and the sun makes shorter, less frequent appearances. The klingel-klangel of sheep, goat and cow bells announces the animals, sleek and plump from grazing through the summer on a diet of grasses and flowers on mountain meadows. They trot through town, on their way to  smaller pastures where they will graze for the next month or so until cold weather finally forces them into barns for the winter. This is the season for the Almabtrieb in southern Bavaria. 

The sheep returned to Garmisch early this past Sunday and by 10 a.m., they had been herded into temporary pens in the center of town for the Schafpraemierung--a sheep show and judging.  As I walked through the pedestrian zone, I could hear the bleating and baa-ing of the sheep as they puzzled over their temporary quarters and complained about the impending shearing, also on the day’s schedule. 

When I walked into the square, the priest was saying a prayer of thanksgiving for the safe return. After he finished, he walked by the pens, blessing the animals with sprinkles of Holy Water. Then the day’s main event, the sheep show, with its judging and awards, started and the beer tent opened.

Lamb and sheep bells

Although the sheep were the main attraction, several artisans demonstrated crafts associated with raising sheep. One man from Sudtirol, the northernmost part of Italy just south of the Austrian border, sold hand-crafted bells for sheep and goats--these sturdy bells are meant to be hung around the animals’ necks so the shepherd can find lost members of the flock even in foggy weather. The bells vary in size, from small ones intended for new-borns to a substantial size for the bocks.

Even more impressive than the bells, he had also crafted sheep-sized collars (they also fit goats) as well as much larger collars for cattle. Farmers ‘dress' their animals for a festive entrance into town in these neck pieces, which are decorated with  intricate carvings and metal designs, as well as incised motifs. In addition, the animals often wear bouquets or garlands of Alpine flowers--they’re truly the fashionistas of the animal world.

Franz Greber, an organic farmer who raises endan-

gered breeds of sheep, demon-strated making felt, a heavy, water-repellent material used locally to make hats and slippers. 

First, he laid a sheet of carded wool flat on a table. On top, he placed a hat-shaped pattern and folded over all the edges of the wool to completely encase the pattern. Greber splashed the fluffed wool with hot water and sprinkled on a few drops of a natural soap. “You must work the wet wool  gently with the fingertips until the wool compacts,” he explained in his Bavarian-accented German. “The fibers must be evenly distributed around the pattern, which is now sealed inside the wool." 

He handed the now triangular-shaped cloth to his helper, a young neighbor, who pressed the wool repeatedly with a rolling pin over a washboard, to further flatten and compact it. 

After the rolling, Greber took over again, continuing to press and smooth the wool flat on a table, still adding dribbles of soap and water. Then, he, too, used a rolling pin to make the fibers contract into the proper shape. Eventually, when the wool was sufficiently dense, he used scissors to snip what will be the brim of the hat open and removed the form. 

Finally, he shaped the nascent hat over a wooden form until eventually the finished hat emerged.  The end product, the natural color of Greber's rare local braune Bergschafen sheep, is guaranteed to protect a shepherd’s head from the winds and cold that blow from the high mountain pastures into the valley.

The Charms of Suggestive, Deceptive Beauty

I woke up Saturday morning to the sun shining through my window of opportunity—and I decided to grab my chance. Just possibly, this long-desired, rain-free day might coincide with the wild orchids blossoming along the path to the Elmauer Alm, a mountain meadow not far from Garmisch.

Shortly before 11 a.m., the local bus dropped me off in Klais, a tiny village 20 minutes east of Garmisch-Partenkirchen. After a wrong turn or two, I found the trail, probably a logging road, leading to Hotel Kranzbach, close to where I remembered seeing orchids last spring. The sun was decidedly warm and I was getting sweaty enough to wonder why the parts of the road leading uphill, the parts that required a bit of exertion, were never shaded by trees.

After 45 minutes and a few huffs and puffs, I reached a valley and walked around the back of Hotel Kranzbach, the only Arts and Crafts-style building in Germany. In a prime example of terrible timing, Mary Portman, an aristocratic English woman who had studied music in Leipzig, decided to build this Scottish-style castle shortly before World War I. The war destroyed her plans for using the “castle” to host her musical and artistic friends. Over the intervening decades, the building survived use as a church recreational area for children from the industrialized Ruhr region; housing for the 1936 Garmisch Olympics; and a hotel for American troops after World War II. Then, in 2006 and 2007, the old building was renovated and reopened as a “wellness hotel.” It’s a fine place to spend a week hiking, sampling the local food, and restoring one’s sanity.

Skirting the buildings, I walked between the parking lot and front lawn and saw my first wild orchid (Orchis mascula )—in profuse bloom. The stalk, clustered with tiny blossoms rising from spear-shaped mottled leaves, snuggled among blue, white and yellow wildflowers in the meadow at the end of the lawn.

Not long after finding the first orchid, I branched off onto the path leading toward Elmauer Alm and for the next 45 minutes walked through a karst landscape dimpled with potholes covered with soft grasses. The pastures shimmered with yellow, blue, pink, purple and white blossoms—a sea of flowers, undulating gently as the wind blew. The orchids, listed under CITES and protected by law, seemed to thrust up from the meadow floor like exclamation marks and quite obligingly grew along the side of the paths, giving a perfect opportunity for a very close view without trampling nearby plants.

Sheep graze occasionally in the pastures, but the grasses and plants are mowed only once annually, in the fall after plants have produced and dispersed seed—this assures lush new pastures for the next year. Smack in the middle of the meadows I noticed five or six bee hives. The bees are not only the source of the honey served in Hotel Kranzbach’s dining room, but also the pollinators of the orchids. The orchids, though, play a game of deception, luring bumblebees and other bees to perform the deed of propagation but giving nothing in return: the Orchis mascula is nectarless.

Orchids, one of the largest plant families, are adapted to widely diverse habitats, so it’s no surprise to come across wild species growing in this region. These purple spikes are locally called Knabenkraut, (literally “boys’ weed”). In Britain, some of the more colorful local names include bull’s bag or priest’s pintle. A quick glance at a scientific illustration, particularly the tubers, will suggest the reasoning behind the names. (If your Greek and Latin are rusty, the plant’s Linnean name means ‘robust testicle’.)

The plant was used in folk medicine to treat colds and coughs, but it also served both as an aphrodisiac and as an anaphrodisiac. Orchis mascula found its way into the supply cabinet of practitioners of the magic arts, the multi-tasking charm, ever ready to attract or repel a benighted husband or lover.

If it’s possible to be charmed by a wildflower, I was—maybe those practitioners of magic were on to something. I wanted to know more and a bit of research revealed quite a story behind this plant. This orchid, it turns out, grows in wooded regions and open pastures across Eurasia, from Ireland to North Africa and Western Asia. In Britain and Ireland, it frequently complements endangered bluebells, creating a rhapsody of blue and purple meadows.

Despite the beauty of this small orchid, it’s acquired some dark connotations. In northern England, children called the plant “dead man’s thumb” and believed the stalks to be the finger of murderer, who had not been buried.

In one of those puzzling verses from Shakespeare’s Hamlet, Gertrude’s tale about Ophelia’s drowning describes a pastoral setting filled with flowers, including this orchid:

"There is a willow grows aslant a brook,
That shows his hoar leaves in the glassy stream;
Therewith fantastic garlands did she make
Of crow-flowers, nettles, daisies, and long purples
That liberal shepherds give a grosser name,
But our cold maids do dead men's fingers call them. . . ."

Four hundred years after Shakespeare wrote those words, while I was walking across an Alpine meadow, I could easily visualize Ophelia’s death, right there by the gently curving stream flowing through the sweet-scented meadow dotted with purple and white flowers.

Yet another surprising connection turned up purely by serendipity. Orchis mascula has been used for culinary purposes—or perhaps this is not surprising, considering that other orchid that provides us with vanilla beans.

In North Africa and Turkey, where Orchis mascula grew abundantly, the tubers were ground into a flour, the prime ingredient in salep, a fortifying, satisfying drink still popular today. Salep spread westward to Europe and became the working man’s alternative to coffee or tea in England in the 17th and 18th centuries.

In Turkey, salep is still seasonal: it’s served throughout winter months to relieve the miseries of colds and coughs. Only the most potent tubers, fresh from the previous summer’s growth, are used to prepare the drink.

Packages or jars of salep are sold in Turkish and other Middle Eastern markets. If you find it, check the ingredients—most salep today is not made with the tubers, which even in the Middle East are becoming less abundant; other thickeners are frequently substituted and most often the preparation is pre-mixed with sugar, cinnamon or other spices. Even if you can’t find the genuine article, give it a try. Reminiscent of chai, it will warm you up on a raw day.

According to food scientist, Harold McGee, the tubers contain a mucilagenous carbohydrate, glucomannan, which enables the living orchid to retain water during periods of low rainfall. Put to a culinary use, glucomannan performs a role similar to cornstarch: it thickens the liquid.

McGee also describes a “chewy” ice cream, maraş, that takes salep one step further. This popular Turkish street food was originally produced by hand, but today a machine, a dondurma maker, does the work: it pounds and stretches salep to which mastic (an aromatic resin) has been added. After a 20-minute pounding process, which performs a function similar to kneading bread to develop the wheat’s gluten, the water forms ice crystals and the mixture begins to freeze. The crystals crowd the glucomannan into less space and bonds begin to form. The end product, cut into serving size portions with a knife, forms a dense, elastic mass resistant to melting. It’s the perfect solution for those of us who like to savor an ice cream cone slowly, but race against the drips coursing down the cone in summer months.

* * *

Summer was fleeting that day on the Elmauer Alm. Eating lunch above the meadow, I noticed the clouds gathering over the Zugspitze to the west and a chilly wind blowing across the fields. I turned back, coming down the trail at a faster clip than I had come. I hurried through Klais, and hopped on a train heading back to Garmisch. I arrived back in town just as the rain and two weeks of November weather descended on the valley—weather perfect for a cup of salep.

The Best Medicine? Laughter, Of Course!

Crossing the bridge over the Partnach, the river that separates Garmisch from Partenkirchen, a thought crossed my mind: the threats and crises that we face, while different from those of earlier centuries, are no more serious than those problems of the 16th—or any other—century. Maybe there are even a few lessons we could learn from the way people coped.

During the 1500 and 1600s in the Werdenfels region, epidemics and Swedish invaders regularly caused massive social upheavals and high death rates. The Oberammergau Passion Play grew out of these events, as did another tradition that has spread to many towns in Bavaria, the Schaeffler dance.

The Schaeffler were the coopers, the craftsmen who made not only the barrels to store beer and wine, but a variety of other wooden containers and kegs. Their name came from the Bavarian word Schaff, a keg or barrel that opens on the top.

Munich’s beer barrel makers, who eventually formed a guild, were an integral craft there since the 7th or 8th Century —no surprise considering the central role that beer has played in the city. According to a local tradition, their dance originated in 1517, one of the numerous years that the plague had infested Munich. Thousands of Munich’s inhabitants had died and the city was at a standstill. Only the Neuhauser and Isar gates were open and vigilant guards permitted very few people to enter. Coins brought into the city had to be soaked in vinegar and letters were fumigated with smoke. Streets were deserted, except for the gravediggers. Eventually the disease loosened its grip but Munich’s residents continued to huddle in dark rooms, refusing to open tightly shut windows.

During these grim days, a member of the coopers’ guild realized that the town’s residents needed a bit of comic relief. He called together the members of his guild and asked them to help cheer up the local population with music and dance. The coopers agreed to participate and, wearing their green caps, white shirts, and red jackets, marched to the marketplace and began dancing in circles with boughs of evergreen. The joyful sound of music and colorful celebration lured inhabitants outdoors. Church bells began to ring, calling people to services of thanksgiving. Joyous reunions with friends thought to be lost fueled the revival and Munich finally awakened from its nightmare. Thanks to one man’s idea and help from his guild, the dark mood had been banished and the city returned to life.

Of course, Bavarians are not known for missing—or forgetting—opportunities to celebrate. In the 1700s, records show that the Schaeffler dance was again performed in Munich. During the 19th Century the dance spread to other communities, thanks to young men who had apprenticed in Munich as coopers. When they completed their apprenticeships, they moved to other communities and introduced the custom throughout Bavaria as well as Franconia, just to the north.

By 1842 a cooper in Murnau, about an hour south of Munich by train, introduced the dance to his town. Since Murnau at that time boasted 11 breweries (today, as far as I can tell, there are only two left) and many of the coopers had apprenticed in Munich, there was no shortage of experienced dancers, who were also required to be single and of good character. Murnau’s first recorded Schaeffler dance took place in 1859 and established a tradition now observing its 150th anniversary.

Originally, dance participants were limited to single young men of good character. By the 1960s, the numbers of men taking up the cooper trade dwindled and the changing times necessitated compromise and liberalization. If the dance was to survive, new sources of dancers had to be found. Thus, men who were married or worked in other occupations became eligible to participate. But despite the disappearance of barrel making as an occupation and the dispersal of the custom beyond its original location, one tradition is still maintained: the dance was, and still is, performed only every seven years.

In mid-July, Schaeffler dancers from Bavaria and Austria gathered for Murnau’s celebration. Not only was there dancing in the street on both Friday and Saturday, but on Sunday, crowning the weekend, all 2000 participants paraded through the old town before a crowd of about 10,000 visitors, who happily enjoyed the escape offered by the laughter and spectacle.

Marching brass bands. . . , horses and oxen pulling beer wagons. . . , clowns. . . , floats depicting Murnau’s history. . . , men twirling hoops. . . , standard bearers carrying the flags of each Schaeffler corps. . . , the Schaeffler themselves, most wearing the traditional green, white, and red outfits and leather apron of medieval barrel makers . . . , a group of people dressed in medieval costumes pulling a cart bearing a plague victim to his final resting place—all paraded through Murnau’s old town, representing some element of the Schaeffler dance tradition and the harsh times from which it developed. This cheerful legacy created during tragic experiences is a triumphal commemoration of the grim human events, survived thanks to the touch of humor and humanity.

For more photos, see
http://www.br-online.de/bayern/kult-und-brauch/schaefflertanz-bayern-handwerk-ID1237820575755.xml

Leaving Home, Coming Home

26 May

Lynne dropped me off at Dulles Airport with plenty of time to spare. I checked in at Lufthansa, managed to negotiate my way through security, then settled down with Three Cups of Tea and a sandwich of Virginia smoked ham I had bought at Washington’s Dupont Circle Farmers Market. Good thing I had the sandwich—which was substantial—to sustain me through the next two meals of airline food.

The plane pulled away from the gate early and we arrived in Munich on time. This was fortunate, because the flight was thoroughly uncomfortable--anyone is uncomfortable sandwiched into a space not fit for a piece of salami. The bozo in front of me reclined his seat as we flew over New York City and left it that way until we crossed the Rhein, where we began descending for the landing in Munich. I contemplated upending dinner—swill deemed edible only at 30,000 feet—but decided I couldn’t pull it off without having it look intentional. The fact that Bozo was sitting in an exit door aisle and had four feet of leg room in front of him didn’t make it any easier to refrain from subversive acts. The portly guy next to me had appropriated the entire arm rest and poked me in the ribs a few times for good measure. I dread flying and I think I bought my Garmisch apartment just to give me somewhere to hang out in Germany so I don't have to fly so often.

After I regained my freedom and straightened myself from the pretzel-shaped contortion I had been molded into on the plane, I caught the S-Bahn and then the local train to Garmisch—all on time. The green hills that begin just outside of Munich whizzed by the windows. Starnberger See, one of the huge lakes in the Alps' northern foothills, sparkled sapphires in the early morning sun. Cattle, recently released from their winter quarters in barns, munched the sweet grass and flowers in the fields. Finally, the mountains appeared in the distance, growing larger and more imposing with each mile of track that the train devoured. The miniature huts, used for dispersing hay storage in fields as a precaution against losing the entire crop to fire, dotted the pastures.

Approaching Garmisch, the tall spire of the Alte Kirche pierced the horizon. This is the town's old church, built in the 13th Century and modernized in the 15th Century. Finally, the onion-shaped towers of St. Martin's, a Rococo gem, appeared. The train pulled into the station, I wrestled my luggage off the train, down the station's steps, and headed to Ludwigstrasse. At St. Sebastian's, the chapel dedicated to the memory of soldiers killed in the World Wars, I veered to the left. Then, finally, at 9 am in the morning, 15 hours after I locked my door and left home in Washington, I was home again in Garmisch.

In the Beginning

Gruess Gott!

In southern Germany and Austria, local people will greet you with these words. If you say "Gruess Gott" in return, you may not be local bred, but people will know you’re working on your qualifications! I’ve been working on mine since 1971, when I first set foot in Germany. On 2 September 1971, I arrived in Bavaria to spend my junior year at the University of Munich. I was smitten and spent 32 years scheming up ways to get back here on a permanent basis. Now I split my year between Garmisch-Partenkirchen, a small town in Bavaria's Alps about an hour south of Munich, and Washington, DC, a large town not far from the Chesapeake Bay. Both towns have distinctive flavors, special celebrations, and lots of good food, to say nothing about the beer and wine! So join me as I move through the year and let me introduce you to my two home towns! Food and culture are my main interests, so I’ll spend plenty of time on those topics, but there is so much else, that I’m sure I’ll range far afield.

Right now, I am in Garmisch. I migrated back here in late May, while the lilacs were still in bloom, huge puffs of them filling the morning air with sweet fragrance. The sky was clear and sunny, it was warm. That was for the first few days. Since then, it’s turned gray, clouds have shrouded the mountains, and rain has been a constant guest. And according to weather reports, it will remain with us for at least the next three weeks. What would Ben Franklin, with his proverb about guests and fish stinking after three days, have to say about our lingering weather? Despite the less-than-ideal weather, there’s plenty to do and see. . . .