EUROZONE DIVERSITY: GERMANY

   I have finally arrived in Krakow, the final destination of my Grand Tour. And before entering the five-day retreat period at Auschwitz/Birkenau, I want to back-track a few weeks and post what I drafted in Rome about Germany and Greece. Seems I'm always a little behind as a blogger!

   Here and in the following two posts are some thoughts and photos showing the contrasts I encountered as I went from northern Germany to Santorini, one of the southern-most Greek islands. Once in the Eurozone, I never had to go through customs nor change to a new currency. Yet still I encountered, remarkably intact, a diversity of history, language, geography, cuisine, and character that makes travel so interesting and mind-opening. 

   One theme of my retreat at Auschwitz will be "oneness in diversity." The retreat teacher, Bernie Glassman, explains: 

   "We yearn to find things that are common to all human beings, around which we can come together. But underlying that yearning is the desire for people to be the same, to be the same as us, to affirm our way of seeing things. And that's the trap. . . .Adolph Hitler had wanted a one people event. His way of doing it was to eliminate diversity. He created hundreds of places like Auschwitz and Birkenau where he could destroy diversity and create one people who looked the same, lived the same. But he couldn't do it. Because the one thing we ultimately have in common is that we're all different."

   May the difference live on. And may we come together in peace through a deeper understanding of our differences.

In Germany. . .

oaks and heather

Heather in the Lueneburger Heide (Heath) where Frauke and I went hiking. 

wet, green, and flat 

Frauke (right) in garden of Lene (left) and Harrow Rademacher, Frauke's
brother and sister-in-law who hosted us for a "family history tour" in
 Wiesens, Ostfriesland. This is the area in northwest Germany where our
great-grandfather lived, and where our roots go back to the mid-1500s.

schnapps and riesling
brown bread and salami

kuchen and kaese
BMW's and bicycles

efficiency, frugality

Hansel and Gretel

sturm und drang

Berlin Wall, section called the "East Side Gallery"

red brick and stained glass

steeples and steep roofs
umbrellas and sweaters

tidy, cozy and protestant
early to rise and late to bed.

Typical north German farmhouse with connected barn.

Family. Familiarity.

This rock, where I'm sitting with Frauke's brother Harrow, is part of the family
 legacy. It's a spot where children going back many generations, and including
Frauke and her siblings, played as children.

My German family: Hillmer, Joanna, Frauke, Harrow, Lene and Marianne.
Frauke, Marianne, and Harrow are siblings, my second cousins. Marianne
and Hillmer's son, Habbe (not in photo), is married to Joanna; they are working
the family's dairy farm and raising another generation in the family house.
Their parents have moved across the road into a beautiful converted windmill.