Still Life with Books

Had a great European breakfast buffet at the hotel. I focused on protein: salami, cheese and eggs, with a side of potato cake.

Our walking tour guide was about our age: he studied in Amsterdam in the seventies. We walked along canals, went through a little alleyway that is gated in the evening, and learned about Amsterdam. For years Catholicism was illegal and there were ‘hidden churches.’ We went into one: it looked like a normal housefront but inside was a cavernous church that opened up like the Weasley’s camping tent.

Begijnhof, a peaceful oasis in central Amsterdam, was established in the Middle Ages as a lay religious community of Catholic women. The quiet courtyard is surrounded by houses and tucked away in the middle of the bustling city.

In the afternoon I headed off on my own to the Rijksmuseum.

When I was 16, I wanted to work on my uncle’s wheat farm in Montana. My three older brothers had all worked there and it was my turn. But my aunt replied to my inquiry with a gentle but firm no: the bunkhouse was no place for a girl. I was bitterly disappointed.

But my ever-resourceful mother had an idea. Why didn’t I write to her college friend, Paul, who worked for Nabisco and often travelled to Germany. I had studied German for five years. Paul knew a German family in northwestern Germany who were willing to take in an American teenager. I spent my savings on airfare and soon was on my way to six weeks in Deutschland.

It was a tremendous experience and more than compensated for my disappointment about Montana. My German parents were very accommodating and took me on day trips to see the sights of northwestern Germany, including medieval Celle, Lünenburger Heath, and an ancient Roman ruins at Xanten.

A year or so before my trip, my parents had hosted two ‘Dutch boys’ (as my mom always called them). They were in their mid-twenties and worked as interns at Merck with my dad. I contacted them and they picked me up for a visit to the Netherlands. We had supper and stayed overnight with Gertjan’s parents in The Hague.

I was in love with Rembrandt (still am) and my one wishlist item was to see Rembrandt at the Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam.

In the last few years, as an experienced mother, I’ve wondered about one aspect of this trip. When we got to the Rijksmuseum, the Dutch boys told me they wouldn’t park and that they would stay with the car while I ran in to see The Night Watch. Now I wonder, What would their mothers think of their behavior. To bring a visitor to a museum and say, Run in while we wait in the car? Having just been to the Rijksmuseum I now understand: there is no parking at the museum. I’m sure they explained that to me at the time.

I did what I was told, ran into the Rijksmuseum, quickly found The Night Watch, and gazed at it a few minutes. As I walked out I peaked into the side galleries and found a still life that took my breath away. It was more lifelike than a photograph. I found a postcard of it in the gift shop.

Over the years I’ve looked many times for that postcard, but I misplaced it long ago. But the memory of that still life is the most precious of my day in Amsterdam.

The only thing on my wishlist this week for Amsterdam was to go to the Rijksmuseum and track down that elusive still life. I wasn’t sure I’d even recognize it if I did find it. I looked online for any Rembrandt still life, but could find nothing. I fantasized about trying to engage someone at the museum information desk. How would it go?

My walk to the museum was wet and rainy. I forgot to pack an umbrella from home, so I bought a cheap one at a souvenir shop. Very cheap: it blew inside out at the slightest wind. A tiny bit better than nothing.

As I approached the information desk, the young man seemed eager to help. I explained to him, “I was here in 1973 and I saw a still life by Rembrandt that took my breath away. Do you know how I would find it?”

He pointed out that the museum had been extensively renovated since then, so nothing was in the same place. He looked in the museum catalog. When he found nothing, he suggested I go up to the gallery and look around. “You need to find this after all these years,” he said sympathetically. He recommended I be sure and see the  self-portrait of Rembrandt as a young man. ,It is quite small, 7 x 8 ½ inches, and easily missed. I was glad for the tip.

The Night Watch was behind a wall of glass and the view obstructed by scaffolding. They are removing old varnish to restore the color. Happily, I wasn’t there to see that masterwork. My experience five decades ago was sufficient.

I strolled from work to work, enjoying familiar pieces by Rembrandt and Vermeer. In one gallery I saw a large still life above an ornate cabinet. As I studied it, I realized that I had found my masterpiece. Still Life with Books by Jan Lievens, circa 1627. 

The web catalog image doesn’t do it justice. The reflection of the glass in the pewter pitcher. The roll fresh-baked and inviting. I can almost smell the old leather.

The description on the wall explains more that I realized.

“Appearances can be deceiving. What at first sight looks to be an overturned lute is just an old wooden case for the instrument. The books, too, are a disappointment; they are merely empty bindings, limp covers of leather or parchment meant to hold bills and other documents. These are all old objects – cast off, worthless and transitory.”

I learned in high school that excellent still life studies the transitory nature of life. The cut flowers and fruit will soon die; nothing lasts. I understand now that in Lievens’ painting, these things are already worthless. (Well, the roll was fresh that day. Does anyone have some softened butter?)

Berlin and home again

After Dresden, it rained, so on our first evening in Berlin, we had an abbreviated tour of the neighborhood. Afterward, Jim and I wandered and found a vaguely French restaurant, where I had ‘Flammkuche’. Who knew, this rectangular, pizza-like dish: thinly rolled dough covered with white sauce and toppings, is Germanic. According to Wikipedia, it is, specifically, from “Alsace, Baden-Württemberg and Rheinland-Pfalz region. (northeast France, south Germany).” It was ‘lecker’.

Next morning, we took the U Bahn (subway) to central Berlin for a tour. The tour guide was excellent, but I never bonded with the city.

We had to detour around a church where Angela Merkel and other dignitaries were attending a service in honor of “Unification Day”. On October 3, 1990, just ten months after the precipitous fall of the Berlin Wall, the former East and West Germanys reunited. Berlin became the unified capital as it had been before the partition in 1945.

We had the afternoon to ourselves and our first act was to touch the column of the Brandenburg Gate. It is so named because it leads to the city of Brandenburg, made famous by Johann Sebastian Bach’s six concerti. Here's number three. Since the gate was in Soviet-controlled East Berlin from 1945 to 1989, I never imagined I would actual touch the iconic gateway.

We spent quite a bit of time at an outdoor exhibit about the rise of the National Socialist German Workers' Party (Nazi). It is chilling to follow the timeline and realize how quickly they built an efficient and effective political machine and dismantled civil liberties. Within weeks of gaining power, dissidents were being systematically arrested, tortured, and often murdered.

For our last evening, we went to supper with our tour group, all 26 of us seated at a long wooden table in a noisy restaurant called ‘3 Schwestern’ (Three Sisters). As our guide, Caroline, predicted, where twelve days before we had been complete strangers, we were now all friends. It was a delightful evening. I think Caroline was hoping for some nightlife by herself, but she sensed our collective panic at the idea of finding our way back to the hotel without her (none of us had come near to mastering the public transit system), and agreed to lead her ‘ducklings’ home once more.

Next morning, Jim and I arose early, took a street car to an express bus to Tegel Airport. I won’t bore you with the frustrating  details, but we were ‘bumped’ from our flight and spent an anxious time wondering when we'd get home. British Airways took pity on us and their seats were more comfort than those on our outbound flight.

Now we’ve been home five days. Today we were trying to remember each of our hotel rooms. The memories are already fading. I wish I’d taken pictures of each one; it would be so satisfying to have a memory aid.

I so enjoyed practicing my German. I tried to decipher each billboard and sign. Jim said I noticeably improved as the time went on. Returning home, I’ve decided to continue studying German for the next six months and then evaluate. It’s not as practical as Spanish, which is one big reason I haven’t kept it up since college. But it has given me such pleasure and satisfaction to study and improve. I love the German language. And with my German heritage, it could be useful in family history.

And now in Berlin

This evening we said good-bye to our Dutch driver, John. Auf Wiedersehen! Tschuss! He’s been great: flexible, good-humored, an excellent driver. We marveled at the corners he turned and how he skillfully maneuvered the bus into tight spaces. When traffic jams were reported, he spent his break using a paper map to find a better way.

He made a funny joke. I’m not sure it translates well, but I’ll give it a try. In Bavaria, in southern Germany, the common greeting is ‘Gruss Gott!’ (Greet God). Trying to be authentic, I boarded the bus on our Munich morning with a sunny “Gruss Gott!” He replied, “I’m not going that far today.” Confused, I asked him if I’d used the wrong greeting for the area. No, he replied, it’s something we say: we aren't planning to go all the way to heaven today. Dutch dry humor.

It’s been cold all day and then rainy as we entered Berlin. We’ll stay here two nights and fly back to Boston Thursday morning. It’s been a wonderful experience, but we’re both ready to be at home in our own bed.

I’ve fallen in love, again, with Germany and the German language. It’s the land of my heritage: my dad’s mother’s parents spoke German and were born in Prussia. My mom’s mother, Lola Marie Bader, came from German stock as well. Because of that, I chose to study German in junior and senior high school and continued in college, reading Goethe and Schiller.

After Cologne, we stayed at medieval Bacharach, on the Rhine, and toured Rothenburg, another medieval town. Then we rode to Bavaria and toured King Ludwig’s Neuschwanstein Castle, Oktoberfest in Munich (it's so much more than beer), and Nuremberg.

Then we drove into the former East Germany. Having studied German and Germany in the 1970s, when Germany was divided by the Iron Curtain, I never expected to visit this part of the world. Erfurt, a beautiful, modern city with a medieval old town that wasn’t bombed during World War II, is where Martin Luther became a priest and later a monk and professor at the university. In Wartenburg castle, we saw the room where he hid out and translated the New Testament into the modern German language he crafted.

Today we visited Dresden, which has risen from the ashes of the February 13, 1945, fire-bombing, introduced to my generation by Kurt Vonnegut in Slaughterhouse Five.

I’d love to visit Germany again. I could stay in many of these places for longer to enjoy their beauty and explore their history. But I won’t say ‘sicher’. When I was 16 years old, as I prepared to go back home after my summer in Germany, my German mother said she hoped I’d return to Germany and visit them. I enthusiastically said, "Sicher!" “Was meinst du, sicher?” (What do you mean by certainly?)

She explained that she had already had a heart attack (she was about 35 years old) and that nothing was certain in life. It was sobering. A few years later, I learned that she had died. “Was meinst du, sicher?”

Yes, indeed.

Lünenburger Heide

When I was sixteen, I desperately wanted to work on my Uncle Dan’s wheat farm in Montana. My brothers had done it and I wanted a piece of the action. But my aunt and uncle wouldn’t hire me.

My mom suggested I ask their friend, who frequently worked in Germany, to find a German family that I could help out for the summer: a nanny of sorts. I’d studied German for three years in school with the formidable Frau Disbrow.

I paid my own airfare and lived with the Bauer family in a tiny village, Nierswalde, part of a slightly larger town, Goch, near Nijmegen, Netherlands. As an experienced mother, I now recognize that I was more of a burden than help: my German parents basically added a moody teenager to their family of three active boys.

For me, it is still the trip of a lifetime. Being immersed in German, I became Frau Disbrow's star student that following fall of my senior year. (I had been afraid of her up to this point, and I'm pretty sure she didn't like me.)

My German parents took me on trips to see a Roman amphitheater and the nearby castle at Kleve.

We also drove on the Autobahn to the Lünenburger Heide (Heath), stopping at the medieval city of Celle (established by 985 C.E.). In the Heide we visited some farmer friends. They invited us to their cherry orchard, where we spent several hours picking  from ladders, then sat around a huge bowl of cherries and ate as evening fell.

I have never eaten my fill of cherries since. We sat and talked until dark, a magical day during a wondrous summer.


Jim and I are on a Rick Steves “Best of Germany” 13-day tour. We flew into Hamburg on Saturday. Monday morning, I discovered that we would be travelling through the Lünenburger Heide. In fact, our prima tour guide, Caroline, had arranged for us to visit a working dairy farm, Hemme Milch. As we drove through the countryside I reveled in my return to the Germany of my youth. Northern Germany is not usually a tourist destination for Americans, but it won my heart long ago.

Tonight we’re sleeping in the medieval town of Bacharach on the Rhine River after touring the Cologne Cathedral. Cologne was the farthest south I got in 1973 and the cathedral was the most magnificent building I had ever seen (and I grew up just 25 miles from Manhattan). I was a little apprehensive that it had grown too large in my imagination, but the vaulted ceiling still hung impossibly high above me, a marvel of stone in air.