Bengt Washburn

Spring Roadtrip – Destination Tübingen

Sometime during the last year our Scottish Terrier started peeing in our house. Her favorite target is a large and absorbent oriental that lays in front of the TV.  I should clarify. By Oriental, I mean the politically correct term for a rug, not a member of the Asian race. We aren’t exactly sure when she started peeing in our Deutschland house. It seems a slow and constant project she chips away at when home alone. What ever it is,  sitting around the house is no longer boring, it’s intolerable. We’ve gone from catching random whiffs of stale urine, to catching random whiffs of fresh air, to catching our breath every time we enter the living room.

Normally, this is a problem we can live with for years but my brother and sister in law were due to arrive for a visit, so I rented a steam-cleaning machine. A mere 60 euros and five hours of manual labor later and VOILA!!! The combination of steam, stale dog urine and German carpet cleaner transformed our cheap oriental rug into a giant nursing-home scented air de-freshner conveniently activated by humidity and/or foot traffic.

I blame the German carpet cleaner. Germans are very careful about the chemicals they use to clean. And by careful, I mean they use very few chemicals when they clean. As a result, the average German public restroom smells as bad as the average American public restroom looks.  I’ve lost count of the number of times its happened. The moment  I enter the public restroom my nose screams “don’t breath!” then sends my eyes on a wild goose chase looking for the source of the stench. Maybe a cow carcass or a bucket of turds. But all my eyes find is a room that looks as if it it has  been prepped for surgery.

It’s disturbing and annoying. I’m not used to the German mixed message of sight and smell. I’m used to the completely opposite American mixed message of sight and smell. I A bathroom that looks like your uncle’s colonoscopy footage, but yet smells citrusy. I’m an American. I’m more comfortable sitting bare butt and pants down in a crap-spattered room that smells like lemons.

Back to the rug. There is a silver lining to our urine fume-cloud. It provided us the motivation to go out and see some sights. Its kind of sad that it takes a urine fume-cloud and family visitors to make us get out of the house.

MarktPlatz in Tübingen Aldstadt

Stop number one on our road trip was Tübingen. A charming old city with a beautiful altstadt, or old town center. Unlike many German cities, Tübingen looks as old as it actually is because it lost only one building during WWII. According to local legend, somebody accidentally dropped a bomb out of a plane. I wonder how they knew it was an accident? Maybe they heard the crew yelling ‘Sorry’ out of the bomb-bay doors.

Tübingen, like most German cities, has an old church that everyone visits but nobody attends. Old European churches are charming, even awe-inspiring and always a little morbid.

Window at St. George Collegiate Church in Tübingen

Above, you see a window from the Stuftskirche or St. Georges Church in Tübingen. Yes, that is a man woven into the spokes of a wheel.

“Is he a contortionist?” you ask.

Yes. However, he got his contortionist skill not by stretching regularly, but rather from having a civil servant break every bone in his body…probably broken with the very same wheel into which his body is woven.

“But doesn’t that hurt?” you ask.

Only until you die.

What amazes me is that somebody thought this was a nice design fort a church window. Most biker bars would pass on this thing, but not a church in 15th century Europe.

It makes me wonder what sort of conversation preceded this interior design decision:

“Remember last year, when we had to break all of that heretics’ bones, and weave his body into that wheel? It was so beautiful! And it reminded me of St. Stephen! Maybe it would be a nice touch to have a sculpture of a dead man woven into the spokes of a wheel in the window!? Then during church people would look up, see his body all twisted and broken in the wheel and think…wow….Jesus is a really nice guy!”
Next Stop – Heidelberg

Leaving Monterey

Many people who don’t know me ask why I moved to Germany. Believe it or not, this isn’t a career move. Its amazing how many people think it is.

Truth be told, I immigrated here because of my wife’s job. She is an officer in the U.S. Air Force and was assigned to work for AFRICOM which is, logically, headquartered in Germany. Naturally, I had to follow her. I should say I wanted to follow her. After all she is the love of my life, the mother of my son and the source of my health insurance.I guess I live in Germany in case I get sick.

How American is that? To go somewhere you don’t really want to go for the benefits.

“Hows the job?”

“Awful, miserable. But the benefits are good. If I get sick then I’ll be happy.”

I think most people would be glad to “have” to go to Europe to get their benefits, maybe even ecstatic, but I wasn’t. Because when my wife got the European assignment we were stationed in Monterey, California.

For those who are not aware, Monterey is a city in California where 365 days a year the temperature fluctuates between 69 and 70 degrees despite being located out of doors.

Add to the amazing weather endocrinologists who speak fluent English. English speaking endocrinologists are high on the priority list, right before good schools, when you are nursing a growing goiter. Which I am.

So when I had to bundle up, ride a train to Stuttgart through 30 degree air and get my neck palpated by a Deutsch speaking Endocrinologist in an office that was hovering right around 50 degrees, all within my first week of living in Germany — I really missed Monterey. And not just for the weather.

Monterey is an historical town. Established way back in 1770 by a Catholic Priest and an explorer after they kicked out and/or converted the natives, Monterey, like Europe, is old in a very charming way. It is chock full of several old buildings, old boats and thirty thousand old rich people all driving brand new Priuses, or Priusi, I believe that is the plural.

Also, Monterey is located near Carmel, a tiny little hamlet of cottages, stores, coffee shops, and meticulously pruned trees. I believe the entire town is the commissioned work of the local painter-hero Thomas Kinkaid and was built or whittled under his close supervision by keebler elves. All of Carmel’s shops and homes are owned and patronized by billionaires and operated by migrant workers.

Speaking of the painter of light (no, not Monet you uncultured twit) the Thomas Kinkaid National Archive is located right in Monterey!

This is a picture of the Thomas Kinkaid National Archive.

Its comforting to know that somebody is making sure that our children and childrens’ children will be able to see Kinkaid paintings and know exactly where, when and how we as a culture went horribly, horribly wrong.

This example of Kinkaid’s work was originally titled “baking cookies”.
Based on the incandescent-golden glow in every window and the two smoking chimneys I would have called it “Little Cottage with Huge Carbon Footprint.”

Kinkaid, perfect weather and English Speaking Endocrinologists; these are the reasons why I was less than thrilled when my wife called to tell me we were moving to Germany. In Monterey I was already surrounded by tiny homes, old smug people and great art. What more could Europe have to offer?

Answer: Sex shops in the airports. I had only been in Germany for thirty minutes and I found myself staring into the front end of a fancy European sex shop located right in the Stuttgart airport! It had, and still has, a big, reassuringly clean and well-lit display window full of chic mannequins in creepy clothing holding colorful toys. It is conveniently located right next to the duty free shop. At first I thought it actually was part of the duty free shop and I began counting my Euro to see what duty free sex toys I could afford. It was the beginning of March and my wifes birthday was fast approaching. She is, after all, a Republican. Nothing on earth would arouse her more than a tax-free sex toy.

Ok. I sorta lied about the location. The sex shop is not next to the duty free shop but it is chic and clean and right in the middle of the airport, two doors down from arrivals in Terminal C. All the big airports in Germany have these sex shops. And it makes perfect sense. Who hasn’t been up that creek without their proverbial leather paddle?

“Dang it! I forgot to pack my vibrator…I remember I was carrying it around while I was doing my errands. I know for sure I was holding it in my hand when I hailed the cab…”

I think I am going to like Europe.

Moving Advice

Some fellow Americans recently asked me what should be done to prepare for a move to Germany. Well, when you move to Germany everything is going to be strange and new. You will probably be overwhelmed with curiosity about this new environment but because of your inability to speak the language, you will be unable to ask any questions. Maddening! My advice: learn how to ask some common questions in German before you make the move. This will give you a head start on curing yourself of the crippling ignorance from which you and all the Germans you encounter will suffer. Here are some common questions that will pop up in your English speaking head that you could memorize in Deutsch before moving here:

“What is in this meat?”

“How did you make that sound with your mouth?”

“Can my dog shit here and if it does do I have to pick it up?”

If you have small, outgoing children you could teach them how to ask that last, potentially embarrassing, question. Or any potentially embarrassing question:

“How much does this cost?”

“May I sample your grapes?”

“Do you have any soft toilet paper?”

If you are wise and literate you might want to familiarize yourself with German culture by reading a book. Then you will probably have different questions. Complicated questions composed of  one long multi-gendered compound German word that could fracture your yankee larynx during pronunciation. Enjoy.

If you are like me, better at watching movies than reading, then you should prepare for your journey as I did- by watching every Hollywood war movie you can get your hands on. Your war movie background will give you a more informed level of curiosity, but you will need to adjust your questions-to-memorize-in-Deutsch list accordingly. Some suggested questions for those with Hollywood History backgrounds:

“Where did all the barbwire go?”

“Can this little bridge support a panzer tank?”

“Was that steeple a sniper position?”

“Is that a natural pond or did a bomb make that?”

As an added benefit, your WWII Movie knowledge will make your expectations of the German people very easy to exceed. Don’t be thrown off guard when every person you meet is nicer than they were in the movies. There will be other jarring differences as well. The people actually wear a wide variety of clothing. Their fashion sense goes well beyond military uniforms. Helmets and armbands apparently are passé. They drive smaller vehicles, very few of which are green or armored, and roughly half of the adults are women.

By the way- You THINK you can say German names but you can’t. Dirk is pronounced Dee-yah-ue-eer-uck. I am not kidding.

As a final note. Our German neighbors are great. Their country is beautiful. The food is delicious. The history is amazing. I am looking forward to visiting friends in Essen this weekend and my comedy show next weekend. More later

Bis balt- or Bis July actually.

We Take the Sudetenland

Following in the footsteps of Hitler, our family kicked off its European Vacation invasion with a trip to the Sudetenland. Why not? We had an affordable place to stay, some cool people to visit and it was close to home, only a five-hour drive by car. Unfortunately, we don’t own a car, we own a Hybrid. With both the electric and combustion motors whining in protest, our little green machine guzzled up gas and nibbled up autobahn at the blitzkrieg pace of 79 miles per hour — getting us to the Czech border in just under six hours.

We drove past the outskirts of beautiful Prague on the way to our destination city. Much of Prague was left unscathed by WWII bombs, it was however, severely scathed by communist architecture. Wide swaths of beautiful pre-communist buildings were interrupted by big grey blocks of what would strike you as very practical architecture if it wasn’t so mind-numbingly ugly.

We spent the majority of our time in the beautiful southwest region of the country, more specifically in Moravia, or even more, more specifically, in Moravian wine cellars.

Here we are in a wine cellar that is over three hundred years old.

One of three wine cellars we visited in Moravia

Normally I don’t drink but this wine was free of charge. It was also free of preservatives and consequently, hangovers. Or so they said. I am not a seasoned drinker so just to be safe, I dowsed my entire frame with anti-hangover deodorant body spray by Axe

Anti-Hangover Body Spray by Axe- yes it is a real product.

I’ll never really know why I didn’t feel bad in the morning but I didn’t feel bad (unless you count the immense guilt that comes with being raised devout Mormon in Utah and drinking great wine in Moravia).

All the wine cellars we visited were dark, damp and rampant with mold and the Mormon in me couldn’t help thinking, “These wine cellars would be bad places to store dry goods.” The basement at the Capuchin Monastery in Brno however, struck me immediately as an excellent food storage room. It was cool, dark and arid! It was the perfect place for the preservation of grain or canned goods and, as it turns out — dead bodies. The basement at the Capuchin Monastary is not, however, the perfect place to take your four-year old son.

When I asked the woman at the Monastary ticket booth, “How much for the childs ticket?” she gave me the stink-eye and said, “No charge!” while pointing at the appropriate place on the price list hanging in plain sight. A thick accent made her English difficult to understand, but the implied meaning of her abrupt tone was crystal clear –‘you must be a dumb-ass’. I assumed she was cranky because some ‘Ugly American’ idiot had made her lift an arm and point at a price list five inches from his face but in hindsight I realize she was cranky because some American idiot was taking his small child into a room full of human remains.*

According to experts, repeating an action and expecting a different result is a symptom of insanity, but if you are a good parent, it is a description of your job, so before entering the sacred catacombs I performed a ritual of futility by giving my son the standard “proper behavior in public places” speech. It is the same talk I always give him, the one he always ignores like a pre-flight safety video, and I rattled it off with all the enthusiasm of a flight attendant, customizing it a bit for the current situation by carefully replacing the words ‘restaurant’ with ‘tomb’; ‘diners’ with ‘bodies’; and ‘eating’ with ‘sleeping’.
My customized speech was something like this: “Listen kiddo, you have to be quiet in the ‘tomb’ because the ‘bodies’ are ‘sleeping’.”

Being clueless, or as my wife says – “of little situational awareness”- I was two, maybe two and a half corpses into the tour before I noticed the eerie silence of my son being quiet. He wasn’t fidgeting or trying to touch everything the way he does at the store. He actually asked me to ‘hold him’, something he had never done in a space where running around and making noise were highly inappropriate. He wasn’t even showing off for the monks like he does when we visit other people’s houses or have company over for dinner. In fact he was behaving much better for these dead people than he does for live people. For the first time in his life, he was an angel.

At first I was proud of his behavior. And I was proud of myself. My persistence had paid off. The lecture on ‘proper social conduct’ had finally sunk in. All it took was the added impact of a few corpses, and not overly grotesque corpses at that. The first bunch of monk-mummies really weren’t that bad. They were all peacefully posed, carefully clothed and safe behind glass. All of them had eyelids, cheeks and lips that were fully intact and closed, covering completely what would have been some scary-as-hell holes for a four-year old to behold. In all honesty these dead bodies were no more disturbing than the mannequins at the local thrift store and much less disturbing than Michael Jackson was for the last decade of his life.

But then we flowed with a small crowd around the corner and stumbled onto this:
Several teenage girls failed at muffling their screams. My ‘little angel,’ concerned by the noise, whispered, “Are they going to wake them up!?”

I sure as hell hoped not. This was already creepy stuff. If they ‘woke up’ it would warrant immediate evacuation of body and bowel. These corpses were out in the open, raw and in a creepy way  they were choreographed and costumed- lying side by side in neat rows, their skulls propped up gently on stone pillows, their desiccated flesh and skin blending in with their perfectly matched ‘Gap-Khaki’ rags. All of their mouths were frozen wide open, as if by order of a dentist. Their heads were tilted, but no two were tilted the same, giving them a frozen, yet animated quality. It was as if they had all died simultaneously in mid  chorus or conversation. I imagined a slumber party in Pompeii.

I finally ‘came-to’ when my son made no attempt at the deep, carefully groomed sand on the floor. After living on the beach in Monterey for two years, the sight of pristine sand normally makes my son go bananas with glee.

“Whoa, this isn’t right!” I thought, “He should be squirming like a puppy. Begging me to bury him in that sand. Something is wrong!”

I then realized that the calming effect of the corpses was not reverence born of a new found maturity. It was terror. So we bolted. We really only saw about six of the more than hundred or so Capuchin monk skeletons. But no biggie. My son got in for free and my ticket was only three dollars. We saw six dead monks for three bucks which comes out to fifty cents a corpse, half the price of your average exotic dancer. In my book thats a bargain.

*Two more things-

Question for the monastery: If it isn’t child appropriate why are children price-listed as “free”? Surely you realize few parents alive can resist a family-entertainment bargain, even if the family entertainment is a bunch of ghastly, dead bodies.

Tip for the monastery: If it is not appropriate for children, make it prohibitively expensive for children, like Americans do with drugs, black-jack, call girls, hard alcohol and (recently) tobacco.