Heidelberg Walking Tour App

A couple of months ago I authored three "apps" for the iPhone, iPod touch and iPad. These apps are guided walking tours through and around our beautiful city of Heidelberg, Germany. The first of these, "Charming Heidelberg," has now reached to Apple Apps Store, the others, "Scenic Heidelberg, Parts 1 and 2," will be released shortly.

The tour "Charming Heidelberg" is a two hour walking tour through the old part of the city and takes about two hours. It is designed for the busy traveler who has only a limited time to spend in Heidelberg, but who wants to take away the essential impressions of this historic city. The traveler is guided from view point to view point via a map and is given a short audio as well as a textual description of the important features of each sight.

You can see the tour "Charming Heidelberg" on iTunes at:

http://itunes.apple.com/app/charming-heidelberg-tour/id406468337?mt=8

Opa, where does our family come from?

Some time ago one of my grandchildren asked me to help her answer a few questions that she and her classmates received as homework from their teacher. They apparently were learning about where people in the United States came from originally. Not even her mother, my daughter, could answer the questions about our family's background with any confidence although they were of a very general nature. That is when I decided to write down as much as I know about where our family comes from. I started with my side of the family because it is more familiar to me than the background of my wife's side of the family. As I thought about what to write and the time sequence of the narrative, I realized that I have five distinct phases to my life brought about by historical events, fate and conscious decisions. I decided to publish each of the five lives as a separate volume. That way I could work on one volume at a time and not have to worry about the structure of the entire work. I wasn't even sure if I would complete all of what I had in mind; therefore, I decided to finalize one part at a time so that at least that part is preserved.

As I began to state just the facts of my origins I got the feeling that I needed to pass on to subsequent generations not only the facts, but also impressions, feelings and to describe the conditions that prevailed at the time in detail. I would like the readers to see a picture in their mind's eyes and to get a feel for what it was like in earlier times.

I have finished the first two volumes, Recollections from my Five Lives, Life Number One, 1941-1946, Sudetenland and Recollections from my Five Lives, Life Number Two, 1946-1955, Dachau.

Following are excerpts from the two volumes.

Volume 1:

...

Flight

One Saturday evening in March or April 1945, my mother had just given me a bath, there was a forceful knock on the door. When my mother opened the door a German Army sergeant (a part of the retreating Wehrmacht had arrived in town earlier and was looking for quarters for the night) announced that he required a place to sleep for himself and five of his men. My mother had no choice but to let them have the living room where the weary and dirty soldiers laid down on the floor fully clothed and immediately fell asleep with their weapons by their sides. The next morning the soldiers announced that the Russians were only a few kilometers away and all women and children should come with them. Reports that Russian soldiers raped women and abducted children, especially blond and blue eyed ones, had circulated for some time. My sister, at that time 17 years old, definitely did not want to stay. My mother did not want to let her go alone in addition to the fact that she was afraid the Russians might take me away from her. Therefore, she decided we would all go with the retreating soldiers.

The decision was made easier for her because the soldiers assured the civilian population that their retreat was only temporary and the counter offensive, when we could return to our home, was only days away. In fact they were trying to escape from the Russians and trying to reach the American lines further to the west to surrender to them and be assured better treatment than as prisoners of the Russians. (The Wehrmacht and particularly the SS had been extremely ruthless in their conquests in the East and the Russians were taking revenge).

My mother gathered up a few personal items for the three of us, locked the door to our apartment and we were helped unto the back of a German Army truck. My mother and I never saw our apartment again.

... 

Volume 2:

...

Growing Up in Post-War Germany

School

When I started school in 1947, the war had ended two years earlier. The influx of refugees had swelled the school population tremendously, leading to a shortage of classrooms, furthermore, many of the teachers either were killed during the war or were still being held prisoners of war. The classes were huge, 60 or more boys per class. Classes were held in two shifts, one in the morning, the other in the afternoon. Girls had their own school and were instructed by nuns. I don't know the specifics of their class sizes and if they went to school in shifts, but conditions must have been similar, except that perhaps more nuns were available to teach.

Physical punishment in school was an accepted practice. No parents that I ever heard of went to the school or to other authorities to complain about punishment meted out to their child. In general, one seldom mentioned at home the fact that one was punished in school because one could expect to be reprimanded by one's parents for being unruly or otherwise derelict in school. My mother would never punish me physically, but she had a way to let me know that she was disappointed, to say the least.

Understandably, discipline was an important factor in classes of this size. We were assigned seats by the teacher according to their scholastic ability coupled with their general behavior. That is, slow-learners and those with a potential for inattention were seated in the front rows so that the teacher could keep an eye on them, whereas the more reliable students were placed further to the back of the room.

The teacher placed a reliable student at a desk next to the door who would open the door when there was a knock and who would announce whoever wanted to enter. When our teacher or some other school official entered the room we had to jump up from our seats and shout: “Guten Morgen, Herr Lehrer!” or “Guten Tag, Herr Lehrer!” or whatever title the person entering had. It often happened that the whole procedure had to be repeated several times until it was done satisfactorily. The seats of the benches flipped up when we stood up, but they all had to flip up with one big bang and not at random. “They have to make a sound like a cannon and not like a machine gun,” was the admonishment by the teacher.

...

The final version of Volume 1 can be found at http://www.epubli.de/ and at http://www.lulu.com/. The final version of volume 2 will be available at the two publishing sites shortly.

The Body on the Beach

I took an early morning walk along the beach this morning. The sun was just starting its climb into the sky in the east, making me squint as I headed in that direction. I was heading toward a jetty composed of piled up rocks which ushers boats into the adjoining harbor. Other than a man walking toward me at the very beginning of my walk I was alone on the beach.

So I thought! As I progressed further toward the jetty, squinting into the sun, I perceived a dark form laying in the remotest corner of the beach next to the jetty and right up at the dunes that mark the end of the beach. The sun was right in my eyes, but I caught a good glimpse of the form – it definitely appeared to be a human body!

I won't claim that my heart stood still, but it definitely skipped a beat at that realization. Had the man who passed me done some evil deed or had the previous night's high tide washed up the result of some tragic accident? The thoughts literally cascaded through my head: If this is a body, what will I do? Will I examine it for any signs of life? Shall I just ignore it? Shall I turn around and go for helps since I don't have my cell phone with me? Or shall I just pretend I never saw it?

All the while I was thinking these thoughts my feet kept moving me closer to the lifeless form. I finally decided that I could not ignore it completely, but I decided to confront the problem obliquely. That is, I pretended that I didn't see it yet and headed toward the jetty along the water's edge, well away from the dunes, hoping the body (now clearly identifiable) would get up or just move its head. I kept thinking: Move...move...damn it, move! Lo and behold, just as I was almost abreast of the “corpse,” the point where I would have been forced to make a decision as to what I would do next, it sat up and squinted at me as to say: What are you doing here this early in the morning?

The “corpse” was a young lady dressed in some kind of beach-going attire. I walked past her as if I didn't see her, chagrined at my earlier trepidations, stopped briefly at the jetty and then made my way back down the beach, quite relieved that I was not the discoverer of some unpleasantness. I wondered, though, what the reason was for her being there: Was she the remnant of an all night party at the beach, someone trying to get an early start on a sunburn or just someone like me who enjoys the solitude of the ocean early in the morning.

Lesson learned: Always be prepared for the worst and hope for the best and most importantly – always carry a cell phone.

Cape Cod Vacation – Only the Beginning

We travel to Cape Cod every summer to be with our children and their families. The cottage we have there serves as a base for our visits to our offspring and for a place for them to come and spend time with us. Cape Cod is a vacation paradise with beaches and amusements of all sorts. We love it...

We arrived on a Thursday afternoon, got car insurance, registered our Jeep which had been slumbering uninsured and unregistered over the winter in the garage at our cottage and in the process discovered that it had no brakes. Since it was getting late we shelved that problem and hurriedly laid in some supplies.

Bright and early the next morning I returned the rental car which we had used to drive to the Cape from Bangor, Maine, to the airport, walked to the bus terminal, arriving just in time to take a one hour bus ride back to our domicile and called AAA to have the Jeep towed to a garage for repairs, before our youngest daughter with two small children and a dog arrived at 11 A.M.

We didn't even have time to clean the cob webs out of the corners. More pressing was the setting up of the rubber swimming pool which had served us so well in the past couple of years by occupying the grandchildren. Unfortunately, as was the case last year, the pool had developed leaks over the winter. How that could be is a mystery to me, because this past winter I stored it in a cardboard box in the living room of the cottage rather than rolled up in a corner of the garage, as I had done the year before. This time the holes were tiny “pin prick” holes rather than the larger rodent-induced holes of the year before. Luckily our youngest daughter is very handy and almost singlehandedly patched the holes. Later on our oldest daughter with her two boys and her dog arrived thereby augmenting the turmoil. A stroke of good luck was that we got our Jeep back after a brake line was replaced.

The next day, Saturday, we discovered that overnight some more leaks had mysteriously appeared on our pool which kept two of us busy locating and plugging. Then our third daughter arrived at 9 A.M. with four children and two dogs. This daughter with her entourage only stayed for the day which was good because as the day progressed I was being torn several ways since I was detailed to take various grandchildren to the skate board park, to the go-cart track, to the mini-golf course and in between pumping up bicycle tires. I couldn't keep that up indefinitely.

Sunday was a real letdown from all the hectic activity of the day before because everybody but me and the remaining dogs went to the zoo in the morning, all I had to do was to go to the skateboard park practically all afternoon which is easy duty once you are there because you can sit and read a book, write or just daydream while the kids work off their energy on the “half pipe” or the “tabletop.”

On Monday (Memorial Day), our youngest daughter with two children and dog left early to avoid the traffic and our oldest daughter with two children and dog left shortly thereafter, also to avoid the feared “off-Cape” traffic after a long weekend.

After everyone had left, my friend and I just sat there enjoying the peace and quiet and went to bed early.

Book Announcement

Some time ago one of my granddaughters asked me to answer a few questions she needed to have answered for a report at school.  The questions were basically, where did your ancestors come from, when did they arrive in the US, etc.  I realized that not even my children could answer these questions accurately, so I decided to write a family history which my grandchildren can consult whenever they get around to being interested in where their ancestors came from.  This family history has taken a bit longer to complete than anticipated; therefore, I have decided to split it into five parts and to publish each part as it is finalized, instead of waiting until all of it is written, which may take a long time.

The five parts represent the five distinct phases in my life: My being born in the "Sudetenland," which is now part of the Czech Republic, during World War II, my years growing up in Bavaria after the war, my move to the United States in my teens, joining the US Air Force and making it a career, and the years after retiring from the US Air Force.

I call the series of volumes Recollections of my Five Lives and I am putting them out there for anyone who is so inclined to read them. The first of the five volumes can be obtained at http://www.lulu.com/.

The C-17

“Better than Lufthansa,” I said to my friend as we got settled into our seats on a US Air Force C-17 cargo plane. “How is this better than Lufthansa?“ she asked. I stretched my legs out until my body was almost horizontal. “Look at this leg room, you don't get that on Lufthansa,” I said.

We had started on our latest adventure this morning in Germany by picking up a rental car in Heidelberg and driving to Ramstein Air Base. We intended to”catch a hop” on a plane chartered by the US Air Force that takes military people and their families to Baltimore, Maryland. However, before it was time for the roll call for the flight to Baltimore, an announcement was made that passengers desiring transportation to Bangor, Maine, should gather at the processing counter. Why not go to Bangor instead of Baltimore – after all, we ultimately wanted to go to the Boston area (to Cape Cod to be precise) and Bangor is about half as far from Boston as Baltimore is.

We were fortunate that not too many people want to go to Bangor and got on the flight. First misgivings arose when a fellow passenger was heard to say that it was very hard, if not nearly impossible, to get out of Bangor. Well, I thought, they must have rental cars. We've passed through the town of Bangor before, but were never at the former Air Force base which now is Bangor International Airport. But then I remembered from my Air Force days comrades disparagingly talking about being stationed at the Air Force base at Bangor and it being “... out in the boonies,” or “... in the middle of nowhere.” Oh well, we were committed!

So, now we are settled in the trusty C-17. There are canvas seats along each side of the aircraft providing seating for a total of about 50 passengers. The seats called “troop seats” don't have a back to them, the outside wall of the airplane is the backrest. Consequently, the seat backs don't recline, but then again, you don't bother anybody behind you as you do on a regular airliner when you recline your seat while the person behind you is enjoying his or her airline meal. Anyway, there is a small foam rubber pad to keep your shoulders from hitting the cold metal of the aircraft body. Oxygen masks, floatation devices and a curious plastic bag with an oxygen bottle attached to it are provided. As it turns out, the plastic bag you put over your head in case the cabin fills with smoke and the oxygen in the bottle keeps you from suffocating in the plastic bag. The load master (or is it load mistress, because she is a female Technical Sergeant) lovingly presented and explained to the small children on board that the bundle she was presenting to them was their very own life raft in case we had to land in the water. They think of everything, don't they?

At this moment, as luck would have it, just as we are about to push back and taxi out to the runway a huge rain shower, the likes of which even I have rarely seen, has broken over us and we are told by the nice load master that we would have to wait out the rain and lighting – which could take as long as three hours. She further advises us that we can unbuckle and freely move about the cabin, underlining the fact that we may have to wait for quite a while before taking off. Some hardy souls have begun to spread blankets on the metal floor and have laid down to sleep. I prefer to just sit here, look at the pallets of cargo strapped to the floor in the middle of the cabin which separate the passengers on this side wall from those on the other side wall.

…

Some time after writing the above lines the rain let up, but lightning lingered in the area, delaying our take off by about two hours. The flight was very smooth, but seven and a half hours long. Because the C-17 is noisy, the crew passed out foam rubber ear plugs that cut the swishing sound the air made as it passed along the fuselage and the thundering of the engines to a murmur, allowing me to enjoy the whistling and chirping of my tinnitus the whole way.

Well, what do you want besides lots of leg room, the ability to move about the cabin as much as you want – mostly to get warm – all for $4.25 per person. That fee was charged for the box lunch consisting of two small breaded cutlets (cold, but there was a microwave oven near the cockpit), a bottle of water, a Dr. Pepper, two small bags of chips, several candy bars and some plastic cutlery – what else could you ask for? My thanks to the US Air Force.

The Bird

As I was sitting on my terrace one evening I watched a medium-sized black bird with an orange beak as he hopped across the lawn. He hopped a couple of times, stopped, seemed to listen, look around and then hopped on again. Sometimes, between hops, he would peck at something on the ground.

Watching him made me wonder how that bird sees his world. Birds have keen eyesight and undoubtedly he knows who his immediate enemies are. But, what about humans? Does he know what we are? Are we just obstacles in his search for food or nest-making materials? Does he see us as monsters that are slow and predictable and therefore are not an immediate danger to him?

I tried to entice the bird to come perch on my finger by imitating his whistle as best I could - no luck. I know that the whistle wasn't perfect, but I was hoping that it would be close enough to at least get a reaction out of the bird. I don't know what I would have done with him anyway, I guess I was trying to show him that he had nothing to fear from me.

Without bird-in-hand I continued my philosophizing. For instance: Does this bird have any concept of time, does he care about yesterday or about tomorrow? How does he see his life as a whole - if at all?

Sometimes I envy the birds I see crossing the lawn or the sky above it. They seem to be living for the moment - the flight, or the worm on the ground. They don't seem to be burdened with scruples, regrets, memories, plans for the future, or with thoughts about growing old.

Sometimes I wish I were a bird.