Kindred Spirits

I had a difficult time getting out of bed this morning. I cried through the questions, “Why must I always come up with good reasons to get up in the morning? Why can't I just be happy that it is a new day and I am breathing?” But, I am abundantly happy that I did get up this morning because I met a few “kindred spirits”, as Anne of Green Gables likes to call those people with whom she gets along very well.

My “good reason” to get up this morning was to attend an Erlangen Tourist Bureau tour called, “Mit dem Fahrrad-Die Geschichte der Erlanger Gaerten” (With the Bicycle-The History of the Erlanger Gardens). I had mapped out the location of the start of the tour on my city map a couple of weeks ago and road nearly by it yesterday on my way to the forest, so I felt confident in my ability to find the spot this morning. Well, good planning can only get you so far in life.

I had the darndest time finding the correct street I had to ride down and passed by it several times before figuring out where I had to go. The situation was this: just as in Metro Detroit we have a few roads that change names a few times as they pass between cities and counties, in Germany the roads change names every few blocks for seemingly no reason what-so-ever. I was looking for “Allee am Rothelheim”, but the only sign I saw was on the opposite side of the road and it was something that began with an “H”. I finally figured out on the map that the street across from Alle am Rothelheim was called “Hofmanstrasse”, but the sign I was seeing from across the road was written in such a fancy script that I didn't think it looked like “Hofmanstrasse”. At whits end I decided that I must have found the correct street and went for it. I crossed my mental fingers that the group would still be at the meeting point and that I would know when to stop by seeing their congregation and not by finding another correct street sign. Thankfully, they were still there and the tour guide had only just barely begun speaking. Whew!

It was a lovely tour and the weather was absolutely perfect. On Thursday and Friday I thought the radio was calling for a Thunderstorm today, but only late in the afternoon did it sprinkle for a while. The tour brought us to a variety of “green spaces” in Erlangen, ranging from natural protection areas to tree lined ditches to manicured grassy squares to beer gardens. The tour guide was very proud of Erlangen's infrastructural insistence on having “green spaces”. As a Michigander, I am used to there being swamps, streams, and forests all over the place, so the amount of “green spaces” here in Germany feels so pitiful. But I can also understand that if someone like Professor Aay were to give an Urban Geography tour of Grand Rapids, he would probably come off sounding a lot like this tour guide. The United States is yet young and we have so much room to move around, but it is a thing to marvel at how after these nearly thousands of years of inhabitance of Germania, the folk have managed to restore and preserve swaths of green space.

The tour ended at the Burgberg beer garden (“Burgberg means “castle mountain”, but there has never been a castle there and it is merely a small hill) and so a fellow tourist and I decided to have a beer and chat. Jana has lived in town for about 2 ½ years working for Siemens in the Logistics department (1/3 of Erlangeners work for Siemens, 1/3 are students at the University, and 1/3 fall under Other). She is actually a Czechian, but speaks German wonderfully. Jana has a daughter about my age, is divorced, and enjoys her job here in Germany but loves her homeland and looks forward to living there again soon when her 3 years here in Germany are up. We chatted about all sorts of things and it was quite pleasant to sit outside in a beer garden to hold our conversation. The beer was good too. Nothing special, just refreshing and light. Perhaps I will see Jana again to go for a bike ride in the woods or something.

My next stop of the day was to find the “Society for Creative Anachronism” in the Schlossgarten. Bernhard had informed me that he and his friends would be gathering in the park for medieval “fighting practice” and suggested that I stop by. I wasn't sure if I wanted to find out what exactly this group of people did because I figured it was more dorky activities and people, which I already have my fair share of in life. No offense to those of you who are my dorky friends, but I wasn't sure if I wanted to continue to identify myself as a dork. But, once a dork, always a dork, and my curiosity was peeked.

After walking the perimeter of the park, I finally found a few subjects who I figured fulfilled the description of dorks participating in medieval fighting practice. Bernhard had not yet arrived, so I watched from a distance, deciding if I wanted to approach or to just go home and pretend I had never seen anything. Curiosity and a feeling of duty won over me again and I approached. Bernhard had said that these people were typically Americans and that English was spoke among them, and I heard English being spoken, so I decided to making my introductory comments in English. There was a woman sitting on the ground who was watching after her nearly 2 year old son and two young men gently fighting with stick swords. Everyone was very friendly, so I stuck around to chat.

As I got to know them all, I felt very much among “kindred spirits”. The woman, Maggie, reminded me a lot of Trisha Harting and her husband of a few of my male friends. I'm always fascinated to see how certain types of dorky people fit into boxes that I could label with preset descriptives. I was joyed to hear Stephen quote Zim and Gir, joyed to see Gotfried's gothic, long, black skirt and his long, pony-tailed braid, the piercings and tattoos on Gotfriend and Maggie, and everyone's interest in fantasy literature. People like this make me feel so at ease. It is not that I am necessarily exactly “like them”, rather that I feel like I can be exactly who I am and we will all appreciate each other just the same.

I shyly told Stephen and Maggie about my enjoyment of the Erlangen Tanz Haus and to my great joy, Stephen said that he loved to dance! He said that he had done Swing Dancing in college and that it would be great fun to try the Erlangen Tanz Haus. I gave him the address and time, so we will see if he comes tomorrow.

Stephen is an officer in the American military and works in Bamberg, where the Americans still have a large presence. Maggie, an American who has lived for several years in Germany, stays at home with her son ,while Gotfried, an American-German mix who grew up in Germany, is a nurse in the mentally ill ward of a hospital. I was nervous about befriending Bernhard's friends, but I quite enjoyed myself, so I suppose it was for the best after all.

I suppose you are still wondering what this Society for Creative Anachronism is and does. Well, from what I gather, it is basically a club for people who enjoy re-enacting various elements of the medieval period. Or, as Gotfried put it, Dungeons and Dragons players who have social skills! And who like to act out the game instead of just play it with cards and imaginations. The club has mass meetings for medieval warfare, medieval style parties, and craftsmanship displays. Just as my first friends at Calvin College used to amuse me so much with their dinner table discussions of imaginary D&D adventures (Dungeons and Dragons), this group of Society for Creative Anachronism participants made me laugh a lot and entertained me greatly.

I have only worn my opal ring a few times since being here in Germany, but I learned today that I have been declaring myself married, which is definitely not the message I want to be sending out to the world of single men. You see, on Thursday I asked Chris, one of the students in the lab, if his wife was also a student. I figured that he was married based on there being a ring on his left-hand ring finger. He said that his girlfriend was not a student, and that he was not yet married. I protested that he was wearing a wedding band. He replied that in Germany the wedding band goes on the right-hand ring finger. As much as I wanted to believe him, I didn't. So today, when I was chatting with Maggie and I noticed her only ring on her right-hand ring finger, I asked her about the situation. She explained that what Chris said is true. In Germany, the engagement ring goes on the left-hand ring finger and the wedding band on the right-hand ring finger. I quickly pulled my opal ring off of my right hand and moved it over to the left hand. I suppose I might now be declaring that I am engaged, but that is not so bad a declaration as being married.

Doo-dee doo-dee doo-dee. I hear this repetition of sounds thousands of times a day, be it in my head or in reality. This is the sound of the German ambulance. The lab is located across the street from several different medical buildings and at least one of them receives ambulances. At home I live near a main thoroughfare. The sound of German ambulances is so repetitive and memorable that it sticks in my mind terribly. While I work away in the lab thinking about how many grams of sample I am measuring out or how much of a chemical I am squirting into my vile of sample, I hear doo-dee doo-dee doo-dee over and over in my head. Sometimes I am not aware of whether it is real or not and I have to knock myself back into focus to discern the matter. I suppose that I should one day get used to the sound and no longer think of it in reality or fiction, but until that day, it is the soundtrack to my life. Doo-dee doo-dee doo-dee.