13 June 2005 Monday
Contact at last!
I had sent the first email on Thursday and figured that your weekend had been completely computer-free, and thus resigned myself (sadly) to an empty box day after day after day. This morning however, I saw several folded pieces of paper in the box of #211. YAY!!! I am thrilled that you were as delighted as I to discover this FAR more immediate method of staying in contact.
Wertheim
Home of Great Worth. When we talked to the Filipinas who had traveled on the Rhine in the opposite direction from Vienna to Amsterdam, the good doctor had mentioned that Wertheim was her favorite because of the home-hosted visit. The way that she and many have pronounced it was 'Werth- eim.' I have corrected my mother at least with 'Wert - Heim', (you know, Mom, Heim of Heimsath, not Heims - ath.)
We pulled up alongside the pier, and the sailors put down the ramp in their ever so efficient way. We waved at the white swans with their wobbly brown feet, and assembled ourselves for the walking tour. Our blue group was in good spirits and we were off.
We walked beneath the street which brought us through a narrow walkway between buildings to the glassblower Karl who was energetically waving a huge American flag to indicate the entrance of his demonstration glassblowing studio. Beautiful English. Loves to tell a tale and show off his significant skills that go back six generations. How many of us can say that about our professions?
Karl, who looked like the stereotypic beermeister, uses only the finest clear Corning material, virtually unbreakable. We all sat facing his table as he joked and expertly showed us how he created "'free-style, no tools!" hangings and ornaments. Terribly fluid gestures. Effortless.
The Galileo instrument (clear tube with small colored bubbles of liquid with the metal tabs hanging down) in Germany is made only by his workers in Wertheim... not breakable, while those made in Asia are breakable (affirmed by one in our group.) He had Bill, one of our fellow GCT travellers take a swig of Jaegermeister (a flavored liquor) and then blow an ornament, with the decorative coloring made by rolling the clear hot glass in crushed bits of colored glass. (Your grandchildren will be able to tell what you were drinking many years from now, Karl giggled.)
After his demonstration, Karl invited us to visit his wife's shop, at the end of the walkway. We were also invited to stay in the studio, use the facilities, send or check our email, and have a free soda from the refrigerator. Such a generous invitation could not be passed up by many of us.
Plastic bottle for donations to the Wertheim Retirement House (probably for his house payments.)
I wanted to pick up some items for my dad, so I bought two bottles of wine (2.50 EU each mostly for the wine labels) and some small cute bottles of flavored liquor. I was even able to buy a tiny bottle of Jaegermeister, which Karl had during the demonstration. More postcards, and a bracelet that had some charms of Wertheim. Since the links of the bracelet itself is not very good, I will remove the charms and reassemble them on one of my own silver bracelets.
Incidentally, my plan of collecting the charms of various cities has given me some shopping-purpose. So far I have found the little enamelled charms that say Koln, Heidelberg, Deutscheland, Bavaria and Wertheim. They are usually found in the classic ticky tacky tourist souvenir shops that we all love so well, usually somewhere near the cash register. They used to be a common purchase, assembled when the trip is done, but my sense is that this is now a more rare purchase. Each charm costs anywhere from 2.60 to 3.00 EU, though it will add up in the end.
The highlight of the trip was supposedly this Home Visit that Karl, clearly one of the First Citizens of charming Wertheim, had organized. He had thought, or so he said, that most Wertheim people would not be so interested in opening their homes to anyone, much less to American tourists. Nevertheless, he wrote an article in the local newspaper to see if he could get any takers. Twenty four families responded (!!!) and they have since assembled a list of sixty families who participate in this Grand Circle Tour sponsored home visit.
For this tour, we were divided into about 6 - 8 groups of various numbers and a bus dropped us off (school style) at various locations around Wertheim. We were arbitrarily assigned by virtue of our bus seating, and ironically our group had the three mother/daughter sets, the first cousins (Flo and Fran) and one other husband wife couple besides mom and I. Again, I am embarrassed to be unable to recall all names, but that is due to my weak memory and no insult to all our fantastic fellow journeymen and women.
The bus with our group wound around and about and through Wertheim to one of the outlying communities. A suburb of sorts. While we were in the more historic part of Wertheim, we had clandestinely watched one woman hanging out of her window, cleaning the inside outside sills of her apartment window. She was the very essence of the neat hausfrau. Made me want to check all of our screens for spiderwebs and dirt and invisibles motes!
Robert, yet another beermeister-looking fellow, met us at our bus stop, shook all of our hands and brought us into his house. I took pictures (with his permission of course) and we wandered about his two story house. Retired postal worker whose wife works occasional weekly hours at a small food market in town and his 14 year son.
It was his wife who had baked the multilayered cake with a layer of cherries and a cheese cake layer and a hazelnut topping. After the house wandering and then the garden examination, we sat around the dining table and had a conversation. Robert's English was excellent; his son's English is unknown. "How was school?" his father asked in German."Not so good," said the 14 year old in German. The son Sebastian dutifully came in and shook hands all around but disappeared after the initial introduction. The photos of the son's room will yield posters of some rappers or singers whom I am sure that Andrew would recognize. The neatness of the room had everything to do with Robert's cleaning abilities however. Probably not the son Sebastian, who had minorly spiked hair but was dressed like the more typical absent 14 year old of America.
Our conversations flowed in and around the cake and the coffee and spilled onto many different topics. Education, professions, recipes, Wertheim, health insurance etc. All of us had introduced ourselves briefly and somehow we skipped past me, probably because I was sitting right next to him and had introduced my mother, who was immediately to Robert's right and therefore the beginning of the group. That created a little bit of awkwardness that later one of my group would remark upon. It was certainly not an intended slight and I would have surely said something except that I was finally just tired as it was mid afternoon, always a low energy time for me. By the time the bus came to pick us up again sequentially, we were very happy to say farewell. Delightful brief peek into a German household.
Others would have descriptions of their visits around the evening meal. All groups had different experiences, including one who visited a former ambassdor's home, an inherited in the old part of town town house. They had a very different experience with these very well traveled people in their 80's. This house was furnished with family heirlooms, but the residence itself was chopped into many smaller rooms and the maid’s kitchen was never opened up for examination.
Meals are generally interesting though there is always that awkward moment of where to sit. Something like choosing up teams. Open seating. Mommy generally prefers that I do the talking, though she engages in conversation as she pleases. Even at this point of the trip, there are still conversations to be had with people with whom we have not sat.
Wine loosens all of our tongues, though I do confess to becoming tired of listening to my own voice. Sometimes Mommy worries that I talk too much, though I feel as though my part is as facilitator and hopefully not monopolizer. That thought alone makes me want to do more listening than I am doing. And with that, I will still my fingers, and snap my mouth shut for the evening. SNAP!
posted by Articulate Pen @ 2:25 PM
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