Waiting for Gotha

Well, I've arrived in Gotha, (or as the locals call it, the "G-thang") which will be my home for the next three months. Let me describe Gotha the place a bit before I get into the weightier matters of how my first couple weeks here have been. Gotha is located in the central German state of Thuringia (Thüringen) about 10 miles west of the state capital, Erfurt. See if you can locate Thuringia and Gotha on the maps below:

One of the first things you notice about Gotha upon arrival is the aging population. Walking around town, you get the impression that the average age is about 82.6. This impression is deepened as you discover that almost every street downtown has a Hörgeräte (hearing aid) store. One of the main reasons for this elderly population is the rapid depopulation of Gotha following German reunification and the younger generation seeking a way out of economically depressed East Germany. The German wikipedia page notes that "due to rapid depopulation, Gotha has very affordable housing costs." This is true. I pay 250 euros ($320) for a very nice room. This has made me feel a lot better about not seeing another human being for the next three months.

But Gotha wasn't always the smallest German sausage around. It actually has quite the illustrious history. Back in 1640, one of the hottest up-and-coming German princes was Duke Ernest the Pious (see below) who decided to make Gotha the capital of his new duchy, Saxe-Gotha after a territorial partition of a bigger kingdom with his brothers. Ol' Ernest immediately went about trying to make Gotha a prestigious cultural center. He introduced compulsory education up until age 12, built one of the first and grandest baroque castles in Germany (see Schloss Friedenstein below where my archive is located), and set about collecting massive amounts of books for his private library. For the elite back then, owning a really good library was like owning a basketball team or something. That's why today Gotha is an important research center for historians (along with Wolfenbüttel--I dare you to try and pronounce that).

The fun didn't stop with Ernest either. Gotha was particularly good at one of the most important activities of early modern dynasties: hob-knobbing with other royals and marrying your sons and daughters off to them. At one point or another, the ruling houses of England, Belgium, Portugal, and Bulgaria were all spawned in one of the rooms in this castle in tiny little Gotha. Not a bad resume (except for Bulgaria I guess). Even into the 19th-century Gotha still was calling all the shots in German politics. The modern SPD was formed in Gotha in 1875 and modern day German insurance began in Gotha. This is memorialized by the fact that Gotha has Germany's only Versicherungsmuseum (Insurance Museum). It's a fascinating museum which I've now visited four times. I am lying about that. Here are a few pictures of the place as seen from the perspective of my camera:

 This is my street, Jüdenstrasse (Jew Street). It's a pretty rockin' street with a Müller's convenience store and a fresh fruit and vegetable shop.

Now, a little bit about my life here. I was at first kind of shocked by how small this place was. In Berkeley I could pick and choose only the best from all the people who wanted to spend time with me. After the first few days in Gotha my best friend here seemed to be the cash register lady at the local electronics store which I had to repeatedly visit because of internet issues. But now I've changed my mind. I think that in small places like Gotha you end up developing intensive, albeit it short, friendships with the few people there are to hang out with. This may be cynical, but since there are literally no other distractions, you end up spending all your time with just a few people. This is something that I've actually experienced a number of times in Germany since I've almost always spent my summers in tiny towns with a few people. And luckily this time it is kind of similar in that I am housed at a research institute along with a number of other fellowship holders. They have become very dear friends of mine. I can't describe in adequate depth all of their very interesting stories and backgrounds and our fascinating conversations, but I'll say a little.

Above are the two ladies I've been closest to in my first few weeks at Gotha. On the left is Francesca from Naples and on the right is Nashwa from Cairo. Francesco is a philologist focusing on popular medieval arabic texts of which Gotha has a lot. I love her to death. She is the mother of two young boys and she and her husband are both academics. She has a job in Turin and her husband has one in Naples. This means that every week she has to fly across the entire country to her job for three days. She and I have similar viewpoints about a lot of things like the greater spiritualistic, non-capitalist meaning of education, pesto, and Carla Bruni.

As for Nashwa, she has a similar story...in some ways. She is the mother of twins and has just finished her PhD in Stuttgart. I think she comes from an elite Egyptian family of scientists because she lives in New Cairo (a posh suburb of Cairo) and on her last day in Gotha she bought half of Kaufland (the local supermarket). She has a big personality. I've got to tell a funny story about her while I'm on the topic. So, one day last week Nashwa wanted to set me up with one of her friends. She showed me pictures of her on Facebook and I said I would think about it. About ten minutes later she said to me, "Tim, there is something I must tell you first though. She has been divorced four times. But only two times were her fault." We all just started laughing uproariously for ten minutes straight. Thanks for the effort Nashwa! 

And here is the big group all together for a going-away dinner for Nashwa and Tomass (another great Italian). There's Duane in the back there, an American historian of early modern noise, there's Asaph (on the right), another Near East scholar from Israel, and Sietske from the Netherlands up front studying early modern alchemy. 

Life is actually kind of ideal here if you are a researcher. My apartment is about a five minute walk from the archive where I can get a lot of the materials I need for my topic. In addition, there is a research institute with computers, copiers, scanners, a kitchen, and other academics. Within five minutes from the city center you can find forest trails which I've been running on. If you just look past the fact that no one lives here it isn't that bad!

As a tangent, one of the German staff members (actually a scholar of the enlightenment) here has taken an interest in me because he writes a lot about religion and secret societies and recently did a long blog-post on mormonism and the mormon missionaries in Gotha.http://positivists.org/blog/archives/category/social/religions/mormonism  He kind of rubbed me the wrong way early on when the first thing out of his mouth after hearing I was from Utah was "I dont understand how you can be a historian and a mormon". Because of this and other conversations, I've been thinking a lot about how present I want my background to be in my current life in Germany. I came to Germany this year thinking that this year I'm just going to be "Tim, the PhD student from Berkeley" and not "Tim the mormon." This actually always seems to be my goal no matter where I am in geographically or in my belief, but it never seems to work out that way. I always make the mistake (intentionally maybe?) of saying I grew up in Utah and then I have little control over what happens next. It's an open question for me how I should approach this. I don't like the fact this becomes such a dominating aspect of my identity but I can't seem to help the fact that my odd background is very exotic and interesting for people. When they get a whiff of it it seems like that is all they want to talk about and and I can't say that I don't enjoy the attention it brings me. But at the same time I'm acutely aware of the fatigue I feel living between two worlds and never feeling completely in the one or other. 

Moving on, after one week in Gotha I got to spend the weekend with my friend Anna and her beautiful husband Max (below) at Anna's family's vacation home in the Thüringer Wald which I think is one of Germany's national parks. It's pretty dank regardless.

The house was so beautiful. As you'll see from these photos, it was kind of like a little elven fairy-tale home in some stunning mountain landscape. The home was originally built by Anna's grandpa during the second world war and was confiscated by the DDR to be used as a rental vacation home for DDR citizens. They finally got it back in 1993 and have been fixing it up since.

 Frogs are everywhere in this home. I'm including this because my mom decorates our home in the same way. But this has a legitimate reason attached to it since Anna's grandpa's last name (I think) was "Frosch" (frog).

 And the house had a sauna! This one's for you Joey. I am too lazy to rotate this picture but you get the idea.

 On Saturday we went out on a hike through the forest to collect mushrooms (Steinpilzen) and raspberries, my favorite thing ever. They were both in great abundance. But even more exciting than the raspberries and mushrooms, was just how green and beautiful this forest was. I think the fact that it was raining all day made it even more atmospheric.

Anna and I were the industrious raspberry harvesters. Max wandered off right when the going got tough. Anna was very insistent that we had to pick only the berries "above pee-level" because apparently foxes go around at night peeing on the raspberry bushes. I still don't quite get why they choose the raspberry bushes but I followed the instructions.

I think I'm going to sign-off here. I know I never got round to summing up the road-trip or talking about Boston and New York, but maybe that'll have to be another time. I think in the coming post I'll talk a bit about what I'm doing in the archives in some more depth. Also on the horizon will be trips to England, Russia, and the Rhine valley...so stay-tuned!

Consider the Lobster

Like I've been saying all along, this road trip was never about us. At the forefront of our minds this entire trip has been what influence each one of our decisions--which national park to see, who to visit, what music to listen to, and what rest stop to nap at--would have on our readers. So, with the knowledge of how carefully we've thought about what you are about to see, I present this very long post of our journey from Chicago to Maine via Minneapolis, Michigan, and Erie P.A.

Let's begin at the very beginning. Chicago. Chai-Town. Showerville. Chicago is now one of my favorite cities. I absolutely loved it. I've decided that it's pretty arbitrary whether or not you end up liking this or that city--arbitrary in the sense that often it comes down to who you are with and what you decide to do as opposed to the fixed features of the city like the people, its look, and layout. I used to dislike London because it seemed too crowded, and every time I went I spent too much time in the tube, and all I did was visit dusty old museums which should have been destroyed in the war. But now I love London and all it took was a long weekend visit last summer with the right friends and going to the right places. I think this is what happened with Chicago this time. It was summer, two of my brothers were in town in addition to Joey and his friends, and we did a lot of fun things like the zoo, a White Sox game, biking, and Millenium Park.

 We spent forever watching this polar bear. Of all the animals at the zoo, he was by far the most interesting and happiest. The Gorillas all seemed depressed and the lions just paced back and forth roaring. But this guy had a gigantic pool which he swam back and forth in playing with his toys. Every minute or so he would make a pass at the glass where all the people were watching to take a look at us.

 Leo is Joey's friend from way, way, way back before Joey met better friends. They met when they were ten at a summer camp. Leo lives in Chicago in the up-scale Humboldt Park neighborhood where he runs his own failing art business called Shiner. It's a really cool product which Leo invented himself. You can see it (and buy it) here. Love you Leo!

The "Bean" at Millenium Park. I think Peter was talking about how he was going to link his interests in the Balkans with global environmental history at this point. Like the bean, it seemed like a stretch.

 Like I said, two of my brothers also happened to be in Chicago at the same time and we hung out. The encounter between Nathan and Joey's cousin Michael was pretty hilarious. Joey's been telling me about Michael forever. All of Joey's pithy and crude maxims about life apparently stem from Michael ("don't argue with retards" is one of them). He's a loud, fast-talking, opinionated, but warm guy who left day-trading because it was destroying his soul. At the same time, my brother Nathan is exactly the same way--apart from being a Manhattan playwright. Joey and I just sat silently as Michael and Nathan loudly shouted at each other their various opinions about movies, literature, and the best omelet to be had in New York (the red omelet apparently). It was like watching two waves meet and spike and double in height.

Moving on, one of the most interesting parts about Chicago to me was the Ukrainian and Polish neighborhoods. They were right next to Leo's apartment. It seemed like Ukrainian and Polish were really the main languages still spoken in these enclaves. This seemed really unique to me--that there were still pockets of insulated immigrant communities in America speaking their own language. And then I realized I was just being Eurocentric and that plenty of Asian, Hispanic, and other insulated, ethnic neighborhoods exist all over the country. In any case, the Ukrainian village was especially interesting because of the current crisis. Ukrainian flags were everywhere, and signs saying "Pray for Ukraine" and "United We Stand with Ukraine" hung in all the store windows.

I had to find a restaurant with borsch of course.

Our next stop after Chicago was to Minnesota to pick up Joey's friend who we'll call "The Good Book". The Good Book needed a break from the hustle and bustle of the twin cities and her 80-hour a week job selling antique books. So we swung by, nabbed her, and headed up to Duluth. A lot of these photos our out of order but there's a picture of Lake Superior down there along with the Mackinaw Bridge. The U.P. was a strange but beautiful place. The culture seemed a bit like Alaska's: sparsely populated, remote, and (therefore?) full of guns, separatists, and strange accents. They call themselves "Yoopers".

Above: Duluth. My brother told us that Duluth is known as the "San Francisco of the North". It's definitely really far north.

Next stop: Old Mission! After the Minnesota backtrack, the work part of our road-trip was over and we could start our vacation. So we went to my family's summer vacation spot in Old Mission near Traverse City. The pictures you'll see below depict the following: the chapel where my parents were married in 1971 and where I was married in 2014, some black raspberries we picked, and the trip to our friend Logan's cherry orchard where we got to see how cherries are harvested. Watch the video! It will blow your mind.

From Old Mission we headed down to Erie P.A. to stay with my sister Cathy and her family for a night before arriving in Maine. Sophia, Cathy's 4-year old on the Good Book's lap, is known wide and far for her charismatic one-girl acts. She didn't disappoint during our visit. When we arrived, she went straight up to Joey and demanded "Who are you?!" "I"m Joey, Tim's friend" he replied. Sophia immediately retorted, "You look funny" and walked away. True, but not something you usually say directly to someone with a funny face.

Ok, here we go. We've arrived at the Maine part of this blog. My readers may remember that in my first post I exuberantly stated "I'm dying to see Maine and eat lobster until I puke". Well, apparently I wasn't just overstating my excitement to eat Maine shellfish. I was quite literally looking into the future. The first night in Maine we went to a restaurant across the bay and ate a mountain of clams. Hidden in that mountain was one evil clam which had been predestined for me. After a pleasant evening of learned discussion, poetry reading, and puzzles, we all retired for a well-earned night of restful sleep. At about 1:30AM the house awoke to the sound of my retching. I had at first hoped that my puking would blend in with the sound of the waves washing against the rocks outside, but that hope was dashed pretty quickly. I'll try to refrain from going into detail but let's just say it was so loud that even the Good Book who wouldn't even be awoken by a Tsunami had her sleep disturbed.

To my credit, I got back up, wiped that puke off my face, and ate lobster and oysters (not without some trepidation) two days later. I had come to Maine with a purpose and wasn't going to give up that easily.

Lobster time. As we approached Maine, we read David Foster Wallace's "Consider the Lobster" essay out loud. If you haven't read this essay, read it now. He discusses the debate over whether lobsters (and animals more generally) feel pain and whether it is ethical to boil them alive. It's mostly interesting to me for the questions he raises about what it even means to feel pain or compare animal and human consciousness and our uneasiness in considering the ethics of live lobster boiling. Needless to say, we had a long debate about this in the car afterwards but eventually agreed we would all eat lobster anyways and just not think about it.

I can't gush enough about Maine or Joey's family's hospitality. We stayed in Joey's mom's beautiful home right on the coast halfway up the state, ate seafood every night, and saw Portland and the rest of Maine by day. Joey's mom runs a cute, little general store stocked with only the tastiest products she finds at the food fairs she travels to all year. She basically let us plunder the store for breakfast and lunch.

This post has got to end now because it is too long and boring and I am about to jump on a flight here in New York to Frankfurt. I know this is kind of an anti-climactic ending to the road-trip blog so I'll write an epilogue including some reflections about what this trip means to history when I get to Germany. So long!