UNDER THE SURFACE
As an outsider it is hard to see below the surface of German life, as it must be for a German when visiting Asheville. On the surface yesterday was a lively Saturday market day in Celle. We had breakfast at Vatter on the way to town. We stopped at the train station to get Susie’s train ticket to Hannover airport. The line at the ticket office, with advice so thorough and exact that it takes forever to get through the line, so Susie used the ticket machine and got not quite the right ticket. When we asked at the Winsen pharmacy about the Covid 19 negative test now required in addition to vaccinations to return to the United States we were referred to a lab where the test was 120 euros ($145) but with Elke’s help found a cheaper place for 90 euros. But found it hard to believe that every traveler was required to pay that much and when we looked on line, found that there twenty kinds of Covid 19 tests with the PCR Covid 19 test being the most accurate, by far the most expensive, but with the other 19 being acceptable. So I remembered a free testing site in Celle, everyone welcome, results in 10 minutes after a swab barely pushed into our noses where we went and got an official looking negative report, which it turns out worked quite well. German perfectionism wasn’t necessary this time.
Then I wandered around Celle all day. The Saturday morning vegetable market was in full swing, the streets were full of shoppers, and the very elaborate Christmas decorations were being erected. There was a giant 30 foot replica of a common German table top pyramid of wooden painted figures circling because the heat of candles made the slanted blades at the top rotate the whole display.
There was a giant log house and then a beautiful painted house where it appeared Christmas were going to be sold. In a week the streets of Celle and the square in front of Kaffee Kiess will be a giant Christmas market.
But under the surface of the fun of Christmas there was another side of Germany. In from of the Kammer Lichtspiele, in another square there was a small crowd and loudspeaker which alternated music and denunciations of Germany’s Covid 19 rules.
All around the square were posted signs castigating the government as being tyrannical, claiming that the true facts about Covid 19 were being suppressed and that there was a conspiracy to sicken and kill Germans through a diabolical vaccination program. These were anti government conspiracy true believers, who believed in freedom and individual liberty. Everyone who didn’t believe as they did were caught in a conspiracy through blindly believing false information. The were accusing liberals of all of the blindness and stupidity that the liberals are accusing them of.
And then in the storefronts in another part of Celle was a Poster exhibit in window after window, posters that mocked racism, anti immigrant hatred, fear of Jews, blind believe in conspiracies.
The anti vaxxers were a small group with almost no one paying attention to them, the liberal posters also had almost no one paying attention to them. Most people were beginning to celebrate Christmas, but under the surface there was occasional bitterness and hate and fear and tension and an attempt to face this fear and bitterness with laughter.
As I walked around I noticed that the side door to the large church in the center of town was open.
I went in and put the suggested 1 euro into the collection box.
The church is very ornate and beautiful and old, heavy with tradition.
There were a few people in the church, reverently lighting candles or taking photographs. A woman in the front row was sobbing uncontrollably.
Somehow this place of love and quiet meditation and acceptance of pain and grief countered the anger and counter anger outside of the anti vaxxer demonstration or the anti anger poster exhibit. But there were very few people in the church as well. My overall sense was that while most people in Celle were celebrating Christmas but that below the surface there was anger, anger mocked and quiet meditation and reverence and, of course, many more intense emotional responses that I couldn’t know about.
BILLYBABA’S WANDERING 