Wolfenbüttel Windowgazing

Crossing lovers’ bridge

Wolfenbüttel encourages wandering. Of course I can take the shortest route from my apartment to the Zeughaus reading room. Straight down Neuestrasse between rows of fachwerk houses, a left, then a right, then across lovers’ bridge, a pause to look at the flowers, the ducks, and the padlocks initialed by dozens of sweethearts, another left and the back of the old red armory is in sight. But I like the less direct route, down Lange Herzogstrasse where I can look at the shop windows, and see the displays and signs being set up outside each morning. If it’s a Wednesday or Saturday morning, I wander through farmers’ market stalls of apples, roast chickens, leeks, onions, celery, and at least eight different kinds of potatoes.

A place to daydream about your summer vacation

A few windows merit a longer look. You can tell that someone behind the scenes has thought about color, theme, and season and come up with an inspired plan. My favorite windows belong to the bookstore where I pick up a crimi now and then. Situated on the corner, it has five windows to decorate, but someone with an undaunted sense of drama crosses one window with a swath of silky blue and displays books about sailing against a map of the Pacific or drapes stands of different heights with brilliant red and adorns them with books of murder and revenge. One of my longest German conversations took place here on a Sunday afternoon. I was gazing at a window full of daffodils and garden books when a woman came up next to me and said, “It is so sad. Those flowers are dying.” She was right; some of the daffodils were beginning to wither. “They’re too dry,” I replied. “They need water,”  (Happily, plants are one thing I know how to talk about in German.) “It’s the sun,” she said, “It shines straight in this window all day.” We commiserated companionably about the flowers until Chuck came walking back to see why I had fallen behind.

Chocolate windowshopping. . . irresistible

I always have to check the chocolate shop window, even though I rarely go in. Chocolate seems like a natural for seasonal displays, wrapped in sparkling cellophane and tied with colorful ribbons for Christmas or Mother’s Day. But it still takes imagination to group them artfully in the window in a way that attracts the eye for yet another holiday. You can’t go wrong with chocolate. Walking by the window in April, we noticed that the yellow basket with assorted candies and a big chocolate bunny, was just the thing to bring to our hosts in Alsace for Easter.

Summer color — I’m ready!

And I have a soft spot for the jewelry store—the one with three windows, one sparkly, one casual, and one exotic with a poster of a young woman wearing an improbable amount of baubles and beads. Every time Chuck comes back to Wolfenbüttel he buys me something bright and colorful here. He arrived last Monday. I can’t wait to see what he picks out this time.

 

A Change of Pace

A surprised red squirrel in the forest part of the Botanical Garden

It didn’t take long to fall into travel mode. I arrived in Berlin on Tuesday afternoon, a journey that involves a bus to Braunschweig, an Intercity train to Berlin Spandau, a regional train to Berlin Zoologischer Garten, U-Bahn line 9 to Spicherstrasse, and U-Bahn line 3 to  Dahlem-Dorf. This is normal for trips out of Wolfenbüttel, a place that is directly connected to nowhere, and compounded by the fact that my destination in Berlin, the Freie Universität, is also not close to anything. But I was happy upon arrival to find that the Seminaris Hotel is right on campus, a familiar-looking American-style campus, and a block away from Königen-Luise Strasse with its cafes and shops. Three blocks West would bring me to the Geheimes Staatsarchiv Preußischer Kulturbesitz. Three blocks East would land me in the Botanischer Garten. I was perfectly situated for a three-day stay.

The weather was changeable, as April often is, so the first thing I did after checking in was to walk to

The rosemary was a little leggy, but lush compared to the other herbs.

the Botanical Garden. This turned out to be my best opportunity. I got there about 6 PM, and it was still daylight, but cold, gray, and windy. Still I found the medical herb garden and took photos of the few plants that were growing. The rosemary and mint looked lovely, but none of the New World plants were growing yet, and that is my topic, after all–the one I was hoping to illustrate. The signs were up for Nicotiana, Paprika, and Capsicum, but they presided over mud at this point. It started to rain, but I stayed as long as I could, thinking that I might not get back. This turned out to be true.

Not a place for the wet and disheveled

I came back to the sleek modern all-glass hotel only to find that a seminar reception was underway and the lobby was full of smartly dressed men and women holding glasses of champagne. No way was I facing that in wet hair, jeans and a zip-up Lake Tahoe sweatshirt, so I found a back way to the third floor and washed up, dried my hair, and slipped into black slacks and a white turtleneck with a gray sweater shell. Then I Skyped with Chuck, and at 8 PM went back to the restaurant via the lobby, now empty. The party was dining noisily in a distant room of their own, and I chose a corner seat in the empty formal dining room, ordered Irish prime rib and a dry red wine, started a mystery about the Cotswalds in winter. The service was impeccable, the food delicious and the mystery engrossing. I sensed the beginning of an agreeable routine.

So on Wednesday and Thursday, I trotted to the archives with my laptop, examined boxes of manuscripts related to 16th-century

The Prussian Privy State Archive, a treasury of information

Berlin court apothecaries, requested and ready in advance, and had a hearty bean soup at the Mensa with a friend from the German Historical Institute tour last summer, and, at the end of the day, Skyped with Chuck, picked up my mystery, and ordered something tempting in the dining room. Wednesday it was a risotto with goat cheese and peas, Friday was chicken breast wrapped in bacon with braised leeks and mashed potatoes.  Today I reverse the journey and take 2 U-bahns, 2 trains, and a bus back to Wolfenbüttel. It will feel good to be in my snug little apartment again and to walk to the library along the cobblestone streets between the rows of fachwerk houses. I look forward to a simple potato soup or a fresh brotchen with ham and cheese for dinner. But I have been pampered, and somehow I’ll always associate the Freie Universität with a mysterious snowy Cotwolds farmhouse.

A Commitment to Spring

My winter clothes are going home. Coat, gloves, scarf, and hat are on a plane to California where they will no doubt gather dust in the back of a closet. It wasn’t hard to say good-bye to winter coats at the Frankfurt Airport this morning, but knowing that my husband was leaving with them was a different story. As I took the familiar train back from Frankfurt to Braunschweig and the 420 bus to Wolfenbüttel and stepped into our apartment, I felt a growing emptiness, even knowing that he will be back in May with plenty of suitcase space for us to go home together this summer.

January brings a need for structure and order.

The last time I was alone in Wolfenbüttel was in January, when I came back after the kind of joyously hectic Christmas holiday that our four children and eight grandchildren create just by being themselves. Returning to solitary research was lonely, yes, but oh so peaceful. Bundled against the January cold I walked the wet cobblestone streets between rows of fachwerk houses feeling a need for structure and order. Resolutions involving healthy food, exercise, a revised research plan, intensive German study feature prominently in my journal entries for the New Year. Of course the novelty soon wore off, but I was rescued by a kind of miracle that Wolfenbüttel seems to produce regularly. A new group of scholars arrived in early February, excited and friendly and eager to get together for lunch, share research strategies at coffee, organize pizza nights, and restart the stammtisch, a regular Thursday-night get-together at the Augusta, which had somehow died out over the holidays. They came from all over—Melbourne, Budapest, Naples, Munich—and even a friend from Tokyo whom I had enjoyed getting to know last November. I discovered, not for the first time, that when you really want to talk, you stop thinking about speaking perfect German and just let it flow. By the time Chuck came in February I was eager to introduce him to all my new friends. I know when he comes again in May it will happen again.

Daffodils have been planted in front of the Zeughaus.

In spite of the light snowfall on Easter morning, I am not the only one making a commitment to spring. The corner ice cream shop has set out tables, chairs, and couches for sun-loving clientele. Daffodils have been planted in front of the Zeughaus. Crows are noisily refurbishing last year’s nests in the still-bare trees. Spring brings a renewal that is more energizing and more lighthearted than New Year’s resolutions can ever be. Good-bye winter coats. It’s 9 degrees in Wolfenbüttel and I’m ready for ice cream in the sun.

Getting to know the Archives

 

The München Stadtarchiv, stately and accessible.

There is a feeling of suspense about an archive that a library just doesn’t have. In the library I request printed published texts with an author and a title. The books I order are usually relevant to my research project, although some titles are deceptive. (The “hundert und sechzig Blümlein” in the Arithmetischer cubiccossicher Lustgarten turned out to be 160 math problems.) I can read these books comfortably in spite of the vagaries of sixteenth-century spelling. It is highly tempting to stay in the security of the Zeughaus reading room, order more books, and examine the use of New World medicinal plants in a variety of almanacs, garden manuals, herbals and medical guides. Yet how much real-life immediacy it would add to see the personal medical formulas and pharmacy holdings that people jotted down and used every day.

Still, it was with some trepidation that I entered the reading room of the Braunschweig city archive on a January morning to meet the unknown challenges of 16^th-century apothecary records. Undoubtedly, they would be written by different hands over the years. The paper might be fragile, the ink faded, and the writing illegible. I may just sit and stare hopelessly, trying to make some meaningful notes out of mysterious scratches and wondering when I could respectably just leave. Some historians claim to be “archive rats.” They just love immersing themselves in the archives. I haven’t been won over yet.  But that may be changing.

My first experience was last November in the Wolfenbüttel city archives where I took full notes on two documents, partial notes on others, and puzzled over some which appeared to be written in code with disappearing ink. I was pleasantly surprised to find more useable records in the Braunschweig Stadtarchive, especially a dated series of pharmacy inventories in which the New World plants I was looking for stood out prominently. On March 9 I returned to my home base in Wolfenbüttel from a successful visit to city archives in Munich and Augsburg. No, I couldn’t read everything. But I could certainly read more, and I have learned two things.

First, don’t judge an archive by its appearance. It took me three hours to find the unprepossessing entrance to the reading room for the Augsburg records I needed, but I couldn’t even get through all the manuscripts they had, and the room is only open once a week.

The records I needed in Augsburg are temporarily only available in an obscure offsite location, but they were well worth the effort.

The archivist was very helpful and I’m enthusiastic about a return trip. Second, it’s not just that the archives are getting better, Iam getting better. I can assess the handwritten documents faster and identify relevant information more easily than I could a month ago. It may be time to revisit the Stadtarchiv Wolfenbüttel.

Warming the Wolfenbüttel Winter

The reading room windows

I love the reading room in winter. It’s simple, warm, and friendly. I walk in with only a laptop, a notebook, and a pencil and the librarian on duty immediately steps into the back room and brings out the books I’ve requested. I choose a back table where I can survey the whole room and I set up my laptop, plugging the power supply into the socket hanging over the table. I prop up the first book that interests me on a gray foam wedge and adjust it to a comfortable angle, draping a velvet-covered chain to keep it open. I look around and see a few familiar faces of other researchers working on this Saturday morning. If anyone looks up we smile and wave quietly. Through the windows surrounding the room I can see rain falling on the red tile rooftops.

I open the file for my book on the laptop and continue where I left off on Friday, taking notes or transcribing text when it’s really relevant. Each book has a file and an entry in my database. In six months, when I start to write my dissertation, I will need all the information I can get. In my notebook I jot down any thoughts that come to mind outside the actual content of the book, such as “request more almanacs” or “pick up milk.”

The herbal book I am examining has a picture and description of each plant, telling its medicinal applications. The book is dated 1536. I note that the author illustrates imported plants with a neat woodcut print of a twisted root or an open sack full of seeds. Having no idea what cinnamon actually looks like in its habitat, he shows a stack of four thick sticks. Mediterranean herbs such as marjoram, rosemary, or basil are shown as entire plants, roots and all, as are plants that grow in Germany like onions or garlic. All this bounty and no mention of food or cooking! This is a medical book. The author is interested in the Galenic balance of humors and how the plant’s properties of wet, dry, hot, or cold can restore good health.

No wonder I’m hungry when the library closes at 1:00 PM. I pack up my laptop, leave the reading room, bundle into my winter coat at the library door, and head out into the cold rainy town. I cross the wet cobblestones into the Wurst Bazaar, which has the best French fries in Wolfenbüttel. The woman behind the counter recognizes me and smiles. Somehow currywurst sounds good today.

Currywurst for lunch

She cuts up hot roasted bratwurst, pours spicy barbecue sauce over it and sprinkles it with yellow curry powder. Then she pours fresh French fries on to the plate and dusts them lightly with paprika. I take the plate to a back table and get out my current book, Out of the East: Spices and the Medieval Imagination by Paul Freedman. It is only fitting that the next chapter is on how Europeans imagined India as the mysterious land of spices.

Wolfenbüttel has a new face

The skyscrapers of Frankfurt

My husband arrived on October 15, and this changed everything. What a treat to have someone who listens patiently to my evolving project ideas and who insists that I get a printer and a warm winter coat. He was here the day my book was turned down, and we talked about it over roast chicken and potato salad until everything was back in proportion again. We went together to the Fulbright Alumni Welcoming Conference in Frankfurt the weekend of November 4 and had a wonderful time meeting present and former Fulbrighters, both German and American. The Friday evening gathering was at a bar called the Proletariat, and we all sat at one long table for 30 sharing apfelwein and archive stories. Saturday morning there was a group of over a hundred and we met our regional representatives, some of whom are planning Thanksgiving dinners, and we had choices of workshops such as how to get into consulting or how to get along in Germany (not that it is difficult, but being away from home for a year can be hard no matter where you are). The skyscrapers and department stores of Frankfurt were dazzling after the cozy streets of Wolfenbüttel!

Daily research at the Bibliothek continues, but now leisure time planning has become interesting too. Recently we went to the movie theater to see a new German production of “Tom Sawyer.” It was a convincing recreation of Hannibal, Missouri, all filmed in Thüringen and Brandenburg. No matter how your German is, if you know the story you will enjoy all those familiar scenes of Tom whitewashing the fence, Tom and Huck showing up at their own funeral, and Tom and Becky lost in the cave.

Sometimes research blends with socializing. One October evening we were invited to visit the apothecary of a friend I met here in August, and Chuck contentedly read his ebook while I was fascinated with the inside view of how an apothecary works. My host and I were about the same age, both trained in medical fields back in the days of test tubes and Bunsen burners, before digital inventory tracking, so we enjoyed sharing experiences of the changing world of medicine.

Leisure time also includes Christmas shopping, hoping to go home with something a little different in a couple of weeks. I love passing by the Wolfenbüttel Weihnachtsmarkt every day, usually yielding to the temptation of warm roasted sugared almonds. Last weekend we visited the Göttingen market, enjoying the ambiance of the university town where our son spent 5 months a few years ago. We had a delicious Christmas feast in a vaulted stone cellar—me with roast goose, red and green cabbage, potato dumplings and gravy, Chuck with schnitzel with mushrooms, pommes and a fresh salad. We took the train home, and spent the evening listening to a recording of “Lord of the Rings.” Yes, the quality of leisure time has certainly improved!

Weihnachtsmarkt in Göttingen

Fulbrighting in the Fall

A sunny Saturday discovery

Wernigerode Castle is here for a reason—not to show the size and beauty of this massive structure in the Harz Mountains, but to emphasize that clear patch of blue sky. Those balmy days in the high twenties, or mid-seventies, depending on your scale of choice, are fading into memory this week as the weather in Wolfenbüttel slips into autumn. This is good, I tell myself. It’s just the down-to-business back-to-school feeling I need to focus on the research, which, after all, is why we’re here.

Research is a solitary and slippery thing and without some serious goal setting you can lose your bearings. I started building a database this week with tables for the sources, medicinal plants, and, most of all, the sixteenth-century people I’ve come across in my reading. What was their place in the world of medicine and how were their lives connected? Did they know about each other, exchange information, even cuttings for their herb gardens? Who made the rules, decided what was permissible, what was on the cutting edge and what beyond the outer limits of medicine? I want to start thinking quantity. How many plant medicines are listed in the pharmacopoeias and of those how many came from the Americas?  Every day I read books written almost five hundred years ago and find I am more intrigued by them than I am by the evening news.

Almost too pretty to rake

Which is probably just as well for an historian. This morning I was out the door before 8:30 hoping to be first in line for a hair touch-up. The town was still misty and the stores were closed, but things were just beginning to get busy. The bakeries were lit up and serving coffee indoors, for the moment, shopkeepers were moving displays onto the pavement and the Wednesday market stalls were being set up in the Rathaus square. The verdict was still out on whether it would rain, but market day will go on rain or shine. There was a gusty breeze, not cold, but definitely noticeable. Leaves were falling into the waterway that borders the castle on the street side and a tree in front of the Lessinghaus was showering the lawn with red leaves. It’s been a long time since this California girl has seen autumn up close and personal.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

New start in Wolfenbüttel

The fountain of the Göttingen Goose Girl

Now I feel like a Fulbright scholar! The orientation was in Göttingen where about 50 students were welcomed, informed, and fed under the care of a conscientious German Fulbright staff. Monday afternoon we checked in, learned more about how the program works, and then split into two groups for walking tours of downtown Göttingen. I enjoyed the historical tour of the University, where I saw the statue of the goose girl, a university legend. Beginning students lay flowers at her feet and return to give her a kiss when they receive their doctorate. Even though I’m not enrolled here, I would love to give her a kiss in about two years!

Tuesday the conference got down to business. I found out I need to get a residence permit from my local immigration office (which requires a signed apartment contract, insurance coverage, 2 photos, proof of Fulbright affiliation, and passport), and then I need to use that permit to open a bank account. I also need to identify an on-site research advisor so that I can qualify for doctoral status with the program. I have to register with the local university, pay fees, and get their student id (need more photos), not that I’m going to take courses, but it’s required for Fulbright scholars, and student status carries some privileges. (For example, rowdy Göttingen students were locked in the university jail instead of the one downtown).

Back in Wolfenbüttel, I went right to work. Thursday I opened a bank account so that the direct deposits have a place to go into and my fees and rent have a place to go out of. Then I walked to the Landkreis Office and asked them about getting a residence permit and was told I have to first register at the City Hall (Rathaus). I walked down the street and around the corner to the Rathaus and got registered and presented with a big welcome packet of information in about 5 minutes. To celebrate, I stopped for coffee and strudel on the way home. Friday morning I went back to the Landkreis office, this time with an appointment and registration form and they put an extra page in my passport with my photo that states I am a legal resident here until July 31, 2012.

Let me tell you why I love Wolfenbüttel. At each of the three offices I visited on Thursday I asked politely, “Do I need an appointment” (“Brauche ich einen Termin?”) and at each one they said yes, but come on in. Can you believe it? I have heard rumors of students in the big city taking several subways only to be told to come back tomorrow or go to a different office or stand in line. I did everything within about 6 blocks of my apartment with little or no waiting and was greeted with a smile every time.

Carnival rides in front of a REAL castle!

They’ve been setting up carnival rides in front of the castle. Friday evening the rides were whirling, the lights were twinkling, the music was playing, and the kids were having a wonderful time. I paused to watch, before turning toward the library. There was going to be a concert with a piano, violin, cello trio playing selections by Mozart, Beethoven, Hayden, and Ravel. Inside I ran into several researchers I know. The vaulted interior of the library with its baroque painted ceiling and rows upon rows of precious old books almost up to the top made a beautiful setting for the music, which was absolutely spellbinding. Afterward, some of us walked back to the apartment together. How can you not love this town?

 

 

Coming and Going

They call it Little Venice.

I used to love cookies, but that was before Wolfenbüttel. Those of us doing research in the archives here get together for coffee every weekday at 1:30. It’s a time to chat and share ideas, pick up mail, meet new people, and sometimes to say goodbye. After I had been here about two weeks, someone brought chocolate chip cookies. Great! I thought. Until I found out it meant goodbye. You can’t go, I pleaded. You’re 25% of the people I know! But the flip side is that you meet new people very quickly. You notice them right away. If you’ve been here a week, you’re ready to show them around.

Life is like that, you say. But I’ve had a more specific type of preparation. In the fifties I attended an American grade school in Teheran. We were a small community in those days. The school opened in 1954 with 100 students in K through 6. Each year it grew a little and classmates came and went as their parents had different projects that ended at different times. My Dad was teaching at the University of Teheran and we stayed four years. By 1958 I had outlasted everyone that I started with. But I knew everyone in the class and I felt completely at home. It was hard to leave.

Sometime in late May I realized I had three grants that would take me to Germany for a very long time. (I had more advance warning than that, of course, but until my orals were over on May 24, nothing else really registered.) Others may panic under pressure, but I go methodical. I focused on one grant at a time, as though it were the only one. I packed and spent time maximum time with my family and took off on June 25 for the German Historical Institute Archival Tour. Flew home for a week, and flew back to Germany for seven weeks research in Wolfenbüttel on a Thyssen Grant.

No cookies today. Just me and the Wolfenbüttel wolf near sunset.

Tomorrow I fly home for two weeks and come back for a year on a Fulbright scholarship. I’m happy I’m going home and I’m happy I’m coming back. Wolfenbüttel is a good place to be and I didn’t want to bring cookies to coffee today.

Ice Cream, Flowers, and Sunshine

A chocolate sundae and purple flowers! Life is good!

 

It was a fine day for a birthday in Wolfenbüttel! It’s been a cool summer, so the appearance of sunshine definitely added to the festivities.  And when it rains? You appreciate what a great place this is to do research. The dukes started collecting books almost as soon as the first ones were off the press. They must have been the techies of their time.  I was reading one of their books today, printed in 1530. I’m interested in the reception of New World medicinal plants in the sixteenth century, so it was awesome to read the words of a physician speculating on the medical potential of plants that were still quite new to him. But human interest in medicine is timeless. A book written in 1550 surprised me with a wonderful section on baby and child care. Not just what to do when the baby is sick, but how to soothe teething pain, how to take care of the first new teeth, bathing, exercise, and diet. A regular sixteenth-century Dr. Spock. Of course some mothers might take issue with rubbing warm goose fat on the baby’s gums, but, hey, you use what you have.

It may have been a rainy Sunday morning, but the band played on.

And what I have now is  a cheap umbrella. I didn’t really think I’d need it, but the weekend after my birthday was rainy, putting a slight damper on the fair in town. Consequently, I got a good view of the stage in the square Sunday morning and enjoyed some fun music and good company along with coffee and a warm cherry strudel.