Christmas Away from Home

Der Watzmann, CC BY-SA 3.0

I remember my first Christmas away from home. I was in Germany, in the town of Berchtesgaden near Salzburg, forever infamous as Hitler’s mountain getaway. I’d been on a university work program when I’d landed a serving position in one of the town’s pensions. The original six weeks morphed into almost a year of backpacking throughout Germany and the rest of Europe.   I met interesting people and had a myriad of experiences.

In between trips, I’d return to Berchtesgaden where I’d always find work. Berchtesgaden was like Canada’s Banff, filled with tourists and always in need of workers. Serving tables was a great way for me to improve my language skills and being in Germany was my first real attempt to explore my elusive roots. Life was an adventure. 

But working past midnight, as Christmas Eve became Christmas Morning, serving cocktails and caviar to well-off holiday skiers, took a toll on me.  I returned to my little servants’ quarters that I shared with some fast-asleep young women from Turkey, feeling more than tired—I felt lonely. 

What cheered me up? I had one gift to open from an aunt living in the opposite end of Germany … near Hamburg. I just remember the thrill of opening that present. It was a wallet with some German money inside and a note to come visit her. It made that Christmas memorable and even today I’m reminded of her kindness and of the power of gifts. 

Christmas makes loneliness more lonely. I’ve tried to convey that in my novels, and I hope to be sensitive to those around me … to reach out and give. 

Like Déjà vu?

Like many of my fellow baby-boomers, I traveled through Europe as a youth. What started off as a structured university-work-program, morphed into a year-long adventure—a roller coaster experience filled with extreme highs and lows. (Only the young can have so much drama!) Now, upon reflection, with Tainted Amber soon to be released, I realize my experiences in a small Bavarian town helped me gain insight into what my mom might have experienced when she worked in rural East Prussia as an independent, but naïve, young woman. 

After she died in 2011 and I gradually went through her belongings, I came across the documents she’d completed to access a German pension. I learned that she’d worked as a maid for three different landowners in rural East Prussia. In Tainted Amber, I’ve melded these into one location. 

I didn’t realize Berchtesgaden’s significance when I chose it out of a list of options at the student employment office at 42 Feuerbach Strasse in Frankfurt an der Main. I remember the office address clearly because I was so afraid of getting lost. I could have picked Stuttgart, Heidelberg or other cities, but Berchtesgaden sounded like ‘garden’ and I’ve always preferred nature and the outdoors over city congestion.

Creative Commons: Colin Smith

Berchtesgaden was the end of the line for the Deutsche Bundesbahn. It was a long train ride deep into the mountains. I concluded that maybe Berchtesgaden would be like Banff. I had no idea I was entering Hitler’s favourite area. The rail station, my introduction to the town and entrance point to my new job, had a big date sprawled into the brick: 1938. Turns out it had been remodelled that year because of the many official Nazi, and international, visitors who would go through its doors. It was then that I had an inkling of the town’s history. It’s been a slow simmer, this fascination with the Second World War, but the ingredients to turn its study into a passion have always been there. Back in the seventies, I was merely a young woman determined to have fun and explore without her parents’ supervision. 

Tainted Amber, set in 1937, is a story about how Nazis impact eighteen-year-old Katya. East Prussia was a place, like the Berchtesgaden area, that the Nazi elite would frequent to enjoy nature and relax. Katya ignores them as best she can. Like me, she’s determined to be independent, and coincidentally, has ambitions to be a writer. 

Kaiser Bun: CC- Kobako

The Pension, (hotel with bed and breakfast) where I worked, was old, nestled along a roaring creek and ancient trees. It wasn’t the most fashionable place in town . . . definitely more rustic than modern and it suited me perfectly. Like Katya, I would have to go down to a dark, dank cellar if I wanted a bath. Limited hot water.  I preferred heading to the local pool and using their showers. Honey for the fresh Kaiser buns that were delivered every morning came from the hotel's garden. I had no idea that forty years later memories of my tiny servant room would become the template for my character’s own room. Even now, I look back at the completed book and I’m surprised at how I incorporated my experiences into Katya’s own. It wasn’t intentional.

Does that happen to other writers? It must.

The Sound of Music

The recent death of the great actor, Christopher Plummer—may he rest in peace—reminded film-goers all over the world of The Sound of Music. For me, the movie’s up there with Dr. Zhivago as an all-time favourite. I was at the impressionable age of ten and eleven when The Sound of Music played for more than two years at the Kings Theatre in sunny St. James. Movies were not part of my growing up years . . . they were considered too worldly by my church . . . but after a year of begging, I finally got to see this one. The sinful pleasure was worth the long line-up.

Over the years, I’ve re-watched The Sound of Music as a school musical (one daughter got to know and love the songs), as a dress-up, sing-a-long at the old Globe Theatre in downtown Winnipeg, and as a performance at Rainbow Stage . . . where I got to bring a carload of seniors, excited like teenagers at the evening out. I think that’s what I loved so much about the musical . . . it was for all ages. 

I suppose the most powerful Sound of Music experience for me was during the time I waited on tables in the Berchtesgaden area (half an hour from Salzburg) and regularly hiked the hills that the film opens up with. I turned twenty out there during a student work program and spent the afternoon of my birthday walking in Maria’s footsteps, traipsing through alpine meadows and feeling on top of the world. 

Hitler’s mountain wasn’t far away. I could see it when the clouds weren’t hanging too low. Back then, I was still too young, too inexperienced, to have more than a glimmer of understanding about how the war had scarred the world and also my own family. But even then, I was quite aware that evil minds appreciate beauty as much as good minds do. In that perfect landscape, where “the hills are alive with the sound of music,” Nazis nurtured plots of world domination and destruction. If evil can lurk in such beauty, the reverse must be true. Goodness can be found in the ugliest corners of our world. 

I never found any edelweiss on my meanderings, nor the blue alpine flower called enzian—although I often served the Enzian Schnapps made from its roots. I’d like to go back. In the meantime, maybe I’ll just listen to Christopher Plummer singing Edelweiss.  Wait, he didn’t actually sing it, did he? That makes him and the song even more endearing. 

Mountain Births

Oberndorf, photo by Gakuro

I’ve often pondered the coincidence that creators of both extreme violence and deep peace were born in the same area of Austria, close to the Bavarian border.

Hochdorf, almost 50 kilometers north of Salzburg, is the birthplace of Franz Gruber, an organist and primary schoolteacher. He taught in the nearby village of Arnsdorf. Gruber is credited with writing the music for “Silent Night,” (German: Stille Nacht) which was first performed in 1818 on Christmas Eve in the St. Nikola church in Oberndorf about 3 kilometers away. The parish priest, Joseph Mohr, wrote the lyrics.

The story has it that Mohr needed a carol for the evening mass. In only a couple of hours, his musical friend Gruber came up with a melody to Mohr’s poem. But then the organ wasn’t working! So they had to improvise their new composition, which they sang as a duet that Christmas Eve, with only guitar accompaniment.

Photo by Anton-kurt

Today, it's only 17 kilometers on the S Bahn north from Salzburg to get to the idyllic mountain village of Oberndorf (population 5500). You can still visit the now famous St. Nikola parish church which was rebuilt, because of flooding, in 1937.

If you stay on that same train for another 40 kilometers, you’ll arrive in Braunau am Inn, a bigger town (population 16,000)—the birthplace of Adolf Hitler. Hitler failed as an artist; and instead of making beauty, he created the Second World War.  Ironic, isn’t it, how Silent Night and the Third Reich, were born in such close proximity to each other?

Mg-k - M. Klüber Fotografie

As a young adult, I had the opportunity to work in Berchtesgaden, on the German side of these mountains with Salzburg only 35 kilometers away. Hitler’s shadow still loomed large on the pretty town—his teahouse on the Kehlstein, then like now—a tourist destination. In those days, I didn’t think of how peace and war had had their humble beginnings in the mountains around me. I was only in awe of their majesty.