Law and Order in the Park

Several months ago while driving in Berlin, I was passed by an official-looking car that caught my attention.  I snapped this photo of it at the next intersection:

Ordnungsamt vehicle

Ordnungsamt vehicle

The word Ordnungsamt on the back of the car translates literally as Orderliness Department, although a more meaningful rendering might be Office for Public Order.  I know that Germans have a reputation for being orderly, but still I was surprised to see that a public office was devoted to maintaining order.  And I wasn’t really sure what members of the Ordnungsamt do.  Today I found out.

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District Heating System in Flachau, Austria

[A version of this article was also posted at GreenBuildingAdvisor.com].

Annette, our daughters and I just spent a week in Flachau, Austria with Annette’s family. Flachau is not far from the Austrian city of Graz, where Annette lived until she was twelve years old. Over the years I have heard stories about Flachau, because it’s where Annette used to go skiing with her family when she was a child.  I was pleased that we could give our daughters a version of the ski experience that Annette and her sisters had as children. I say “a version,” because thirty years ago Flachau was a sleepy farming village, and today it’s a bustling ski town.  We had great conditions for skiing, and I am posting some photos in the Gallery section for anyone who might be interested.

district heating plant tucked into the landscape

district heating plant in the distance

2 close-up of buildingOne morning Annette and I looked after our two year old nephew Jonas so that his parents — Annette’s sister Doreen and her husband Stefan — could go skiing together.   We pulled Jonas in a sled along a cross-country ski trail that brought us by a large industrial building flanked by huge piles of logs and chips.

“Holzwärme Flachau” read the sign on the front of the building — Wood Heating Flachau.  The building is the heart of Flachau’s “Fernwärme Netzwerk,” or district heating system. Locally sourced wood chips are burned to create hot water that is pumped throughout the village to provide heat and hot water to residents.

A few days later I was back at the facility, asking for a tour.  What follows are notes and photos from that tour.

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Backcountry Skiing in Praxmar

backcountry in Praxmar

backcountry in Praxmar

Last Monday and Tuesday, Annette and I had work-related meetings in South Tyrol (northern Italy).  We visited several production facilities owned by the Rubner Group, a holding company that includes manufacturers of glulam beams, wood panels, engineered timbers, and pre-fabricated houses.  Since it’s January and the Alps are between Germany and Italy, we decided to spend the weekend near Innsbruck, Austria, on our way south.

For years Annette has been interested in backcountry skiing. She got a taste of it last year while visiting our friends Julie, Adam and Christina in Idaho, but she has always wanted to ski backcountry in the Alps.  Last weekend we were able to try it.

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Echoes of World War II

bombed excavator

bombed excavator

Annette, our daughters and I spent New Year’s Eve in Bonn with Annette’s two sisters and their families.  On the drive back to Berlin, I heard numerous reports on the radio about an explosion in the Nordrhein-Westfalen town of Euskirchen.  The operator of a large excavator working at a rubble disposal yard had been killed when his machine struck what was thought to be unexploded ordinance from WWII.  Windows within a 500 meter radius were shattered by the blast.  Debris from the explosion was found nearly a kilometer away. The authorities believe that this bomb may previously have been encased in concrete, as was sometimes done when defusing was not feasible.

Approximately one tenth of the millions of bombs dropped by British and American planes on Germany during WWII did not explode.  Every year, over 2,000 tons of unexploded bombs and other munitions are recovered.  Unexploded ordinance is common enough that companies routinely hire private bomb disposal teams to check that sites are safe prior to construction.  Safely disposing of the bombs is increasingly difficult as they decay over time. Continue reading

Energy Efficiency Conference in Berlin

In late November I attended a conference sponsored by the German Energy Agency, which goes by the acronym “dena” (Deutsche Energie Agentur).  I wrote about the conference for the website GreenBuildingAdvisor.com.  The article is available here.

Portions of dena’s website are available in English here.

dena conference logo

dena conference logo

conference venue

conference venue

Peter Altmaier, (then) Federal Minister for the Environment, Nature Conservation and Nuclear Safety

Peter Altmaier, (then) Federal Minister for the Environment, Nature Conservation and Nuclear Safety

The Christmas Story

We spent our Christmas holiday at Annette’s parents’ house in the small village of Lauenhagen, in northeastern Germany. Although this was not my first Christmas in Germany, it was my first here with children.  Now that I speak a fair amount of German, it should have been simple for me to follow the rituals of Christmas here, but I have to confess that some of them still don’t make sense to me.

In America, we do a pretty good job of keeping Jesus and Santa Claus separate at Christmas time.  We all know that Christmas celebrates the birth of Jesus, a drama that is re-enacted in still lifes and living crèches across the country.  Perhaps we attend church on Christmas Eve to remember and celebrate the birth of Jesus.  And on the night before Christmas, Santa Claus, who with his elves at the North Pole has been working all year long on presents for the good girls and boys, climbs into his heavily-laden sleigh and, led by the red-nosed Rudolph, circles the globe.  He descends chimneys, delivers gifts, fills stockings, and downs milk and cookies.  Pretty straightforward.

der Weihnachtsmann

der Weihnachtsmann

In Germany, at least in the areas I have been frequenting, there’s a different story circulating — one that I am having trouble grasping.  Gifts are delivered sometime during the late afternoon of Christmas Eve.  The deliveries are made by “Christkind” (the Christ Child), who is helped by “Der Weihnachtsmann” (Santa Claus).  When I ask Germans how the Christ Child and the Weihnachtsmann get around the globe so quickly with all those gifts, they are evasive, and murmer that the Christ Child is sometimes depicted as having wings.  So how do these co-conspirators get into the houses, and how do they know that nobody will be around when they do?  Silence. Blank stares.  The obfuscation and ambiguity are all the more curious coming from Germans, whom I have generally found to be very rational people.

Since I am a guest in their fine country, I am inclined to give Germans the benefit of the doubt.  I am pursuing the theory that the Germans’ story of Christmas is a noble attempt to resist the commercialization of this holy holiday.  The teaming up of baby Jesus with Santa Claus could be a metaphor for keeping the true spirit of Christmas alive.  This may be the case, but frankly, I don’t see children buying it.  Better to tell children the truth about Jesus and Santa Claus — that they are two sides of the same celebration — because at least the true stories make sense.

Despite the lack of a coherent, reasonable Christmas Story, Annette, our daughters and I had a fun and relaxing Christmas with Annette’s parents and relatives.  The weather was too warm for snow, but we did go for a few lovely long walks and bike rides.  I have posted numerous pictures in the Gallery called “Christmas in Lauenhagen.”

Der Weihnachtsmarkt am Alexanderplatz

Germany does Christmas well.  Annette has tried her best over the years to transplant to New Hampshire a few of the Christmas traditions she most cherishes, such as Advent singing, Glühwein, and real candles on our Christmas tree.  But it’s not the same as being here.

Glühwein stand

Glühwein stand

During the last weekend of November, Christmas markets (Weihnachtsmärkte) sprang up all over Berlin.  In the simplest cases, these markets consist of a few huts where one can purchase mulled wine and warm snacks, with tall round tables around which to gather in the evening chill. However, most of Berlin’s Weihnachtsmärkte are much more elaborate. I noticed in early December that the local newspapers were running reviews of the dozen or so largest Weihnächtsmarkte in the city, rating them as best for kids, most romantic, best shopping opportunities, etc.

We went to our first Weihnachtsmarkt of the season a few weeks ago.  It was set up at the Gendarmenmarkt plaza, where one also finds the Berlin Konzerthaus, the French Cathedral, and the German Cathedral.  Annette was put off by our having to pay a €1 entrance fee (“I’ve never had to pay to get into a Weihnachtsmarkt!”), but the cost of admission turned out to be well worthwhile.  The numerous huts were attractively constructed and decorated, the food and drinks were good, and there were lovely handcrafts for sale.  On a central stage, six musicians dressed as angels performed Christmas instrumentals on dulcimers and harps.  Unfortunately, I neglected to bring my camera.

Several nights ago I set out with Rani and Mamta to document for this blog the Berlin Weihnachtsmarkt experience.  We considered going to the market at Potsdamer Platz, where we had seen sledding on an impressive man-made slope, and the huts were set up to mimic an aprés ski experience, but instead we decided to head for the market at Alexanderplatz.  What we found there was not what I had expected.

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Die Jagd

Annette has a number of uncles, cousins and in-laws who are hunters.  Her uncle Klaus is probably the most avid of her hunting relatives.  Fortunately for him, he owns several forests abundant in wildlife, and he has the means to organize multiple hunting parties each year.  These are parties in two senses of the word: a large group of people headed into the woods, and a celebration with family and friends.

1 treibingIn mid November, Klaus hosted his annual fall hunt near the hamlet of Lauenhagen, about one-and-a-half hours north of Berlin by car. Annette’s parents live in the village, as does her uncle Hartmut, who farms the surrounding land.  Klaus’s large country manor house dominates the approach to Lauenhagen.  Another uncle owns a house nearby.

The hunting party began with a dinner on Friday evening in the hunting lodge, a renovated stone barn located on the far side of the courtyard in front of Klaus’s house.  Annette and I missed the dinner because we had tickets to see a concert in Berlin that evening, but we arrived on Saturday morning in time for the pre-hunt breakfast.  We borrowed rubber boots  — Gummistiefel — and loaded up on eggs, bacon, rolls and coffee.  We then gathered with the other participants in the courtyard.

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Clärchen’s Ballhaus

0 Claerchens_Ballhaus

Clärchen’s Ballhaus

A few weeks ago, Annette began talking about visiting Clärchen’s Ballhaus. She said it was one of Berlin’s oldest dance halls, a place where one could go to ballrooom dance on any day of the week.

Talk of ballroom dancing makes me nervous, but I have learned to mask this involuntary response with stoic enthusiasm: “That sounds interesting. We should check it out sometime.”

Annette grew up breaking hearts on the (ballroom) dance floor. She loves to dance, and I am sure that the partners of her youth loved to dance with her.  I am a relative late-comer to ballroom dancing.  My parents offered to sign my brother Tom and me up for ballroom dancing lessons at the New Haven Lawn Club when we were in our early teens, but I considered myself too cool to take advantage of the opportunity.  These days, I am one of the less cool dudes on the ballroom dance floor. The lessons that Annette and I took together in Keene just haven’t seemed to stick.

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Bauhaus

[A version of this article was also posted at GreenBuildingAdvisor.com].

My apologies to anyone who is expecting a post about the influential modernist design/build movement that flourished in 1920’s Germany.  The Bauhaus of this post’s title is a home center along the lines of Home Depot and Lowe’s in America.

Bauhaus

Bauhaus

I haven’t actually found any hardware stores in Berlin — something akin to Aubuchon in New Hampshire, or the mom-and-pop hardware stores that may still exist in some small towns in America. The biggest home improvement store chain in Germany is called OBI, which is the third largest such company in the world, after Home Depot and Lowe’s.  I have heard that there is an OBI up in the Mitte section of Berlin, but Bauhaus is the home improvement store that I have seen while biking around town.  In fact, a large new branch of this Swiss-based retailer is being constructed not far from our apartment.  DIY is apparently alive and well in Berlin.

A couple of weeks ago, I had occasion to pick up a few items at Bauhaus.  Since I was not in a rush, I decided to tour the store with my camera, taking photos of things that seemed notable, particularly as compared with the product selection at home improvement stores in the US.

The rest of this post contains lots of photos interspersed with brief notes.  If visiting the Home Depot doesn’t give you the shivers, you might find something of interest herein.

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