GEBLITZED
Another day on the road in the shiny white Skoda. First we went back to Garssen to see if we could find the well Kathe‘s mother is standing by with Kathe in her arms that is pictured in Kathe‘s autobiography. We couldn‘t find it but did leave some of Kathe‘s ashes in a circle around the church where she was baptized 82 years ago uand where her father played the organ at the baptism ceremony and introduced her to Johanne Sebastian Bach (who later played a big part in my life because of this moment).
Then we were off to Celle to see the Celle outdoor vegetable market in the square beside the old Rathaus and to have breakfast in Kaffee Kiess and to shop. Breakfast of fried eggs and brotchen was very good. Then I shopped for an inexpensive carry on bag, preferably one that would fold down to fit on EasyJet or Ryan Air and then open up to go on Lufthansa. But no foldable bag was available and the cheapest carry on bags are over $100. So I gave up. We went to Antiquariat Cellensia to look for old German things. I bought a German map of the United States dated 1904 and Susie bought a children‘s picture book with lovely pictures but with the rest scrawled over by some energetic child
and a number of substitute money printed by individual German states to attempt to cope with the financial chaos after the First World War when sky high inflation made baskets full of regular German marks worthless.
And then we were off to Vollbuttel where Kathe‘s father, Ewald Schrader, was born and lived as a boy.
Susanne, the daughter of Kathe‘s cousin Christian and his wife Lisa had Susie in sympathy, saying she wanted to stay in touch, three days before Kathe‘s death, but Susie didn‘t have What’s App and didn’t see the message until she got Susanne’s number from Maria and texted Susanne yesterday.
The Vollbuttelers looked forward to our visit.
We drove in the rain and got to Vollbuttel at about 2 p.m. and then ate Kuchen and drank coffee and talked until about 4.
We also were shown the barn of the house where Kathe‘s father Ewald was brought up, one half of a huge building, attached to the house through a doorway. It was a warm and lively visit.
And then we drove back in the dark to Winsen and had one more memorable cross cultural experience. It was a dark, drizzly night. Again the speed limit changed every two hundred yards: 100, 70, 50, 30, 50, 100 kilometers an hour. Just as centigrade is meaningless and liters unequateable, and euros don‘t seem quite real, because we equate them with dollars, which makes everything seem cheaper because they are worth 20% more, these different speed limits don‘t seem real. We have no idea in American terms how fast we are really going. But just like the example of everyone else moving between invisible cultural wires and my trying to fit in which I gave a few days ago, flying down the road in the dark with little awareness of what was causing the speed limits to go arbitrarily up and down, we were just trying to fit in, trying to do just what everyone else was doing.
But we did it cautiously, when the speed limit would briefly between villages go up to 100 as we flew through the dark, we cautiously only went up to 80 to be ready to slow down again. But, alas, we were not quite fitting in. German drivers, used to hitting the speed limit exactly or letting loose with no speed limit at all on the autobahn, piled up behind us in a long line of cars. Finally, Susie said, „I‘ve got a huge line of cars behind me, I‘m going to speed up.“ And then at the very moment we sped up to fit in, a blinding flash went off, we were geblitzed, our license plate photographed, the great fear of every German driver we have spoken to. Concentrating on the cars behind us we must have missed a sign or taken our eyes off the speed limit posted in a little yellow circle on our dashboard. We suddenly had broken the invisible rules, we were guilty. Somewhere we are being processed and will be informed that we were caught speeding and what we must pay.
But it is not that simple. We were flying blind, we are flying blind. It is a rental car and I remember someone telling me that in some distant state in America months after they rented a car, and had not known that they had not paid an invisible bridge toll, they were fined hundreds of dollars of late fees for not paying the toll. I could feel the hand of doom squeezing me and woke up in the middle of the night trying to find a way to escape. But the middle of the night is not a good time to resolve practical matters and I finally fell asleep.
But one thing I did figure out. When driving in Germany it is not good to dawdle, not good to be leading the line of cars because the first in line is the person to get blitzed. When I glanced back after the blitz the other cars, right on our tail, had been warned and had suddenly retreated far behind us. The key to driving securely is to join the line from the rear and drive just as fast as everyone else and then to slow down when the leading car gets blitzed.
Maria is the one who rented the car with Susie as the second driver. We don‘t want her to pay or even find out. She flew on Tuesday to New York for a presentation about her latest Harvey Weinstein film and is flying back today. We don‘t want to disturb her.
Maybe Kafka could help us out. He knew all about dealing with faceless, arbitrary bureaucracies and inexplicable rules as a German in Prague. But first we have to figure out how to get a cup of coffee since we are out of coffee and don‘t know where to get coffee at 7 in the morning.
We are quite happy to pay the fine, we would have paid more than that to rent a car, whatever the fine is, 20, 50, 100 euros, who knows, and don‘t want Maria to pay it when the rental company sends her a bill. We‘ll figure that out today.
We got to Celle at supper time and decided to eat in the Brauner Hirsch, a restaurant with a number of vacation rooms above it where Kathe and I, along with Tom and Kathy and a much younger Caroline and Hannah, stayed years ago. I have many good memories of that visit including when I burned the toast and set off the smoke alarm and little Hannah came racing out of her room to the rescue with a fire extinguisher in her arms.
We had eaten in the restaurant dining room then, a cozy room full of guests enjoying supper, and did again. I had Bratkartoffeln and Spiegeleier (fried potatoes and eggs) and a beer.
It was delicious. Richard called from Minneapolis on Facetime audio and we talked with him, and then we crept home letting cars fume behind us, determined not to be blitzed again, another full day.
BILLYBABA’S WANDERING 