A question of Schleswig-Holstein

Strandkorb at Travemünde, soft pastel on A4

For a long time, the plan for a spring escape had involved a jaunt to Stratford for a dose of The Bard. But with nothing booked and tempus fugiting, realisation dawned that the Warwickshire town, no matter how delightful, is always absolutely rammed with coach loads of camera-toting tourists.

And crowds are not what the doctor would order, were the doctor peering over the top of spectacles and penning a prescription.

With the question being one of where one could get away from, if not all, but a fair bit of it, the solution arrived with the sort of inspirational flash worthy of a cartoon lightbulb overhead: why not head to Travemünde?

Planning has been minimal, and bookings were only completed last weekend, but the hours are ticking down to departure. 

And so we head to Schleswig-Holstein. The Other Half has been getting excited about this on the grounds that he knows of its place in history.

I’m not going to get into the matter of whether he is only the fourth person to understand it after a Prince Consort who’d died, a German professor who’d gone mad and twice-prime minister of Britain, Lord Palmerston, who famously claimed to have understood it but then forgotten.

Having reached a point of climbing up metaphorical walls, the central requirements have become peace and quiet – and clean air. And the promise is good.

Schleswig-Holstein is the most northern of Germany’s 16 Länder or states, with a population (including the city of Kiel)  of 2,806,531, giving a density of 460 per square mile.

The old port town of Travemünde is included in the borough of Lübeck, thus being part of an overall population figure of 211,713 – or 2,600 per square mile.

Compare that with London’s 13,690 per square mile, and it’s entirely reasonable to expect that it will be a great deal quieter – even to the point of being able to hear oneself think!

I visited just over a year ago during my brief sojourn to Lübeck itself. On what was, in effect, the first truly good day of the year after that dismally long winter, I stepped out of sandals and onto gloriously soft and clean sand.

It was quiet that day – just a few people around – and since it’s not much later in the season, I hope it will be very little busier. Certainly, we had no trouble booking, even at such a late stage.

So, with a few hours remaining before we board the train for Paris and then the sleeper to Hamburg, it’s worth mulling the area a little.

Travemünde itself sits at the mouth of the Trave, overlooking Lübeck Bay.

Originally built as a fortress by Henry the Lion, Duke of Saxony, in the 12th century, it was later strengthened by the Danes, became a town in 1317 and passed into possession of the free city of Lübeck itself in 1329.

None of the old fortifications remain, having been demolished in 1807, juts a few years after it started to become known as a seaside resort.

Sand model of the Holstentor, one of the gates of old Lübeck

It remains a resort, but not to quite the fashionable extent of the beginning of the 20th century, when even the likes of the Kaiser visited. It is, however, Germany’s largest Baltic ferry port, boasts the oldest lighthouse on the German Baltic coast, dating from 1539, and hosts the annual Travemünder Woche of sailing races plus Sand World, with displays of sand sculpture.

Oh yes, there will be history involved in this little jaunt.

On a possibly historical but certainly amusing note, the Schleswig-Holstein coat of arms features two lions looking at a thistle.

The story goes that it was originally designed to have the lions facing the other way, but Otto von Bismarck suggested it be changed because the thistles would make those leonine bums rather uncomfortable.

It’s the sort of story that you deeply wish is true.

But setting that aside, walks along the Baltic sea shore are calling, while there is a fairly sizable-looking park not far from the hotel too.

And then there’s the food: if it’s anything like the simple but squeakily fresh sole, topped with the shrimp garnish so beloved of the region, that I enjoyed on that fleeting visit to Travemünde last year – the first al fresco dining experience of the year – it will be very welcome indeed.

Mind, since we booked, I’ve been thinking of German breakfasts and, most particularly, nearly dreaming of the herring.

The books are backed – a Thames Hudson volume on Matisse, Joanne Harris’s Blackberry Wine and The Rat, by Günter Grass, which I have already started.

And for the first time on such a trip, there’s also a a box of soft pastels, an A4 pad, an A5 sketch book, a pack of pens and another pencils, sharpener and rubbers.

So, Schleswig-Holstein wir kommen!

By the book

On World Book Day, moving behond the simple - and obviously obvious - point that books are quite simply fabulous, it seems entirely apt to ask a number of literary questions.

The current 'big question' that seems to be exercising many in the literary world is less 'what are you reading?' and more 'what are you reading it on?' Or put another way: books v ebooks. Which is a sort of new religious war.

Now frankly, there are some downright daft – and pretentious – arguments doing the rounds in favour of both sides of this debate, but it seems to me that ultimately, the only one that is important is what you like yourself. In other words, it's entirely subjective.

Personally, I can do many things on a mobile device - writing this blog, for instance, or reading news on a wide variety of sites - but when I want to read a book, whether fiction or not, then I will read a book.

There is a pleasure in the physical aspect of a book. You hold it differently. It feels utterly different in your hands. That's not to say mobile devices are bad - they have their place.

The point is, there are arguments for both. And they're neither right nor wrong in simplistic terms.

But on this day, let's move away fom such diversions.

Books are a wonderful part of my life - as is literature (the two are not synonyms). As recently as 12 years ago, I considered Tolkien to be the greatest author ever and writer of the greatest ever novel(s), but fortunately, the last decade or so has seen me grow up. And realise - amongst other things - that Lord of the Rings is far from original. Far, far, far from it!

So here's a brief list to celebrate some of my favourite books - and hopefully inspire you to think about your favouring books too.

Favourite classic novel

I have to go for Pride and Prejudice, which I read approximately every two years - and always find something new in it.

I hate the chiclitification of it - this is a very clever satire, not a simplistic rom-com. Fab stuff - and too subtle of most people, it seems. Jane Austen still utterly rocks.

Favourite modern novel

The Tin Drum

There are quite a few contenders for this - more than one by Gabriel Garcia Marquez - but Günter Grass's debut novel was one of the first pieces of serious literature that I read, and it remains an astonishing work that lives high in my personal panteon - not least as an example of northern European magic realsm,, which people seem to be surprised exists.

Favourite short story/novella

Death in Venice

I have now lost track of how many times I have read Thomas Mann's apotheosis of western short fiction since I first discovered it, some 10 years ago.

It took me a month to read, that first time - I was so utterly stunned to discover that a book could have as many layers as an onion. I couldn't write anything myself for months thereafter. And then, like a damn bursting, thoughts and words burst forth: my working vocabulary seemed to grow expotentially.

There are reasons I rate Mann so very highly. And that's without even beginning to explore the ideas in a book that so many completely misread and/or misunderstand.

Favourite graphic novel

V for Vendetta

Alan Moore's graphic masterpiece was the first graphic novel I ever read. It was a shattering read and I've not seen it bettered.

Otherwise, Asterix. In English, German or even the original French.

Favourite piece of non-food non-fiction

Iron Kingdom: The Rise and Fall of Prussia

Christopher Clark's history of Prussia is a fabulous example of modern history writing. Quite simply superb.

Favourite piece of foodie non-fiction

An Omelette and a Glass of Wine

Anything by Elizabeth David is worth reading. But this collection is, in particular, an utter joy.

Favourite single volume of poetry

The Man With Night Sweats

Thom Gunn's collection left me stunned by its power when I read it in a single sitting. Extraordinary stuff.

Favourite childrens's book

Well Really, Mr Twiddle is possibly appalling, but it was the first non-picture book that I ever read, all on my own. And I sat in a little red and white whicker bucket chair and chuckled madly through the entire Enid Blyton affair.

Favourite piece of genre fiction

The Big Sleep

Raymond Chandler's masterpiece is, err, a masterpiece. Cynical poetry. Superb.

Favourite comic novel

Witches Abroad

Just on of Terry Pratchett's fantastic series of comedy fantasy satires. I could have picked any one of many others, but this gets the nod. It ranges from outright farce to heart-rending pathos.

I love PG Wodehouse and Tom Sharpe, but Pratchett has taken the English comic novel to new heights.

So, what about your own lists?

The making of a little gourmet

Otto is a bon vivant in the making.

He has discovered cheese and chicken – and is besotted with both.

It seems a long time since I had the fun of dealing with a cat following me into the kitchen at every possible opportunity to see what was going on. Mack used to do it, and he'd sit near the sink and watch me closely. Cats being cats, he was probably thinking to himself: 'Stop stirring it around in that pan – you need to leave it be to get the lardons cooking properly'.

Otto, however, is already going a stage further, having volunteered himself as my tester in chief. This works along the lines of: 'you've just opened the fridge and now have something on the work surface ... what is it?' Boing! Onto my shoulder and then, if it looks or smells really interesting, onto the work surface.

Followed by my popping him down on the floor. Followed by 'Boing!' etc.

I suspect that this is all related to his skinniness when he arrived nine weeks ago – you couldn't simply feel his ribs, but between them: he was clearly smaller than his brother, although no less feisty, and his fur was a bit like sheepskin.

Two months down the line, he's slightly bigger than Loki, wonderfully sleek and with an immaculate coat. And he likes his food.

The cats all prioritise food differently. For Boudicca, when we arrive home in the evening, 'hello' fuss on the bed has to be followed by a few mouthfuls of fresh food and then the garden.

For Loki, this is time to spend under the kitchen table re-discovering that he's got a tail.

For Otto, it's serious eating time, to which he dedicates himself without interruption – except to check whether Boudicca's bowl has more interesting meat or to take a few sips of cat milk or to munch a few cat biscuits.

A few days ago, when I was getting myself a bit of cheese – Double Gloucester – he clearly wanted to try it. I have now made a rod for my own back. He went potty for it. He's tried Boursin – a crumbly, creamy French cheese with, in this case, peppercorns in it – Stilton (probably not his favourite), an orange Cheshire and, yesterday, a creamy goat's cheese, which was, apparently, even more bonkersly delicious than anything he'd previously sampled.

Mind, on the grounds that if he's having something she better have some of it too, the Queen B has also decided that she wants cheese. Interestingly, she has always struggled to easily take food from anyone's fingers. Otto seems to have mastered this without even giving it a thought.

Last week, after I'd pared all the meat off the carcass of the roasted chicken we'd had for Sunday dinner, I gave them some tidbits on a saucer. Within moments, Otto was growling at his brother. Clearly that chicken was for him and nobody else. Loki had to have some chicken separately.

All this comes when they were getting bored of kitten food anyway – well, apart from kitten biscuits, and Boudi's helping them much through those. Her ladyship's food seems to be infinitely more interesting to them.

Now all the containers of kitten food say that you should feed them kitten food for a year. How do you do that – force feed them? It's not easily practical to cut off the kittens from Boudi and her food or visa versa – not least because cats naturally graze, so I'm not going to leave them stuck in different rooms with separate bowls and litter trays while we're at work every day.

In retrospect, both our first cats – Mack and Mabel – grew up on a diet of ordinary tinned cat food. I doubt if, at that stage, I even knew that kitten food existed.

And they're all going to get a slight addition to their diet when I can next get to the butcher on Broadway market – raw chicken wings. A colleague with even more experience of moggies than us was showing me some advice on a veterinary website last week.

As it so accurately puts it in the section on feline oral health: "Minimise dental disease by feeding a food for which the teeth of your 'hunting creature' have been designed.

"Cats are little hunting creatures. No hunting creature hunts jelly or gravy." They may like those things – but they don't hunt them.

And it goes on: "Give your cat mouse-sized chunks of raw meat twice a week as a meal. Raw chicken wings are ideal.
Don't feed cooked bones."

So, that's a new treat in store.

The "little hunting creatures" are getting into everything. And the bedroom window sill is no exception. Right behind the bed, it's very wide and covered with a wooden blind. Every cat we've had has enjoyed climbing into it to look out at the garden or, more accurately, a bay tree and a little bit of the garden. The kittens are no exception and both of them can now manage to get themselves up and behind the blind.

On Sunday, when we were having a pleasant lie-in, Otto got himself up there. And then had to get down. During which process he slipped. Straight onto my face. I got lovely cuts on the bridge of my nose and cheek from kitten claws that are like razor-sharp needles. Fortunately, they're clean and will heal without any problem, I think. If they don't, I'll go all romantic and claim they're duelling scars. Very Prussian.

Not that I could be remotely cross – for some reason or other, I have the patience of Job when it comes to cats.

Of course the development of my little gourmet raises one or two ethical questions. When Mack was first ill at around 16 years, the vet first announced that he needed dental work (which we had done) and that we should give him a diet of dry food only – to be bought from the same vet, of course.

We tried. He didn't like it one iota. Was it better to feed him what he wanted or what the vet said was best for him, but which he would just leave? Better to let him get to starving point before giving in and eating what he didn't like? I did the former.

As it happened, he had kidney disease. I've sometimes wondered if his favourite treat of all – tinned tuna, but only in brine – had helped cause that problem because of its salt content. I've never served it to any cat since he had a saucer of it on his last night alive.

We tried to convert Boudi to dry food only, but while she likes biscuits, she quite clearly doesn't believe that they constitute a properly varied diet. Indeed, after Mack died and she became a lone cat, we found that a few weeks later, she started to develop ways of making it crystal clear that meat was required. Mack – and before she died eight months before him, Trickie – had always been the ones to do the demanding and organising of their human slaves, but suddenly she had to learn to do it for herself.

Interestingly, the woman from whom we got Otto and Loki is a veterinary assistant – and she told us that they were used to having two meat meals a day, plus biscuit. So there's no veterinary consensus.

But a few bits of cheese? Is it bad for Otto? What if he really likes it, though? Is it cruel not to limit them only to strictly cat food? Shouldn't we all eat just exactly what is strictly nutritionally perfect for us? Or would that not be just a tad boring – a tad anti-life?

As it happens, a bit of checking suggests that the odd bit of cheese will do no harm.

And I get pleasure from it too – it's fascinating and funny to see what cats decide they like. Mabel liked to sit on The Other Half's knee and be fed tiny bits of Scotch pancake. One evening she even ate fried onion out of a sandwich he'd made himself.

Mind, how many domestic cats eat anything like a natural diet in the first place? I've never seen Whiskas offering a range of mouse patés or Felix retailing sparrow chunks in spider gravy. I could be wrong, but I'm not aware of cattle as ever having been the natural prey of small felines.

Perhaps I shall discuss this with Otto when he gets older. I'm sure he'll say that a little bit of what you like does you good.

A model kind of woman

Yesterday's Craft Day, even if I was unable to actively participate, has left the office with a wide variety of, errr, additional decorations.

It's not that I'm anti craft. Indeed, I've always had quite a crafty bent myself.

Later in the afternoon, a little delivery arrived for me at the office. It consisted of three model kits – two resin and one metal. They're all for figures – two Prussian soldiers from 1870 and Brunhilda, the character from Germanic legend, most well known to those outside Germany from Wagner's epic Ring Cycle.

Assorted colleagues looked at the delivered boxes with wary or bemused expressions – particularly at the soldiers. Apparently, I'm "bonkers". Yet these were the same colleagues who, hours earlier, had been constructing a Christmas tree from an old, rigid board map that was now no longer needed, and knitting tiny scarves for decorative card birds that were to hang on the tree.

And I'm bonkers?

I used to knit at one time. The Other Half even has a traditional black and yellow scarf I knitted him for his role as a fan of the mighty Castleford Tigers.

I have been known to do a bit of needlepoint too. There's a rather complex one of a cat that's framed and hanging in the bedroom.

And I have put together and painted models since childhood, when my parents allowed me to have the old Airfix historical figures, but not the longed-for Spitfire.

The Spock at the top of this post was painted a few years ago and still stands, very happily, on the DVD shelves.

The Prussian soldiers are simply extensions – and quite logical ones, given that modeling background – of my abiding fascination in Prussian history (which started at school – a girls' school, note).

It seems extraordinary that there should be such a gender-based attitude toward something as simple as craft-based hobbies – that as a female, other females were bemused by my interest areas. Not by my interest in a form of craft, but by the direction in which that takes me.

I happen to work in an environment that is highly politicised – and with the majority of the staff being female: in other words, I know, work and socialise with a lot of politicised females. How odd that, while knitting seems to be almost a new form of feminist statement, a woman who prefers to do other kinds of craft as a hobby is – well, not derided, but treated with confusion. It's almost like a new version of my parents saying: 'No, you can't build a Spitfire'.

This, though, does seem to conform to something of a pattern.

Even last night, when there was a bit of Stargate Atlantis on telly in the background, I recognised an ever-so-topical reference to the Hadron Collider, described only by its initials. Isn't that an indication of geekette status if ever there was one?

And while I wasn't paying great attention to the aforementioned programme, I am not averse to sci-fi, either on screen or the page. Indeed, I have a confession: at one time I even maintained a website about one of the characters in Babylon 5, which I adored. And I once attended a B5 convention – in a hotel next to Heathrow airport: although in the interests of making male (and possibly female) readers of this blog jealous, I have to point out that Claudia Christian gave me a full on kiss at that event.

In another recent development, however, I became the one woman in our office (at present) to take delivery of an iPhone. It's logical: I work with Macs at home and in the office. I can synch it with all sorts of things. But yet again, I seem to be part of a 'male' club.

Don't get me wrong: I'm not particularly worried. But it's interesting that feminism – even in people who are very politically educated – would not seem to have really made a great deal of difference to ideas of traditional female pastimes and interests.

Of course, it's complicated further because I don't fall into just one obvious stereotypical category – 'tom boy', for instance. The same woman who loves Prussian history and paints model soldiers also likes handbags and chocolate, and as much as I'm currently reading a vast history of the Thirty Year's War, I've also got my well-worn copy of Jane Austen's Pride and Prejudice on the go as deliciously enjoyable light reading. I might love football – but I also enjoy Sex in the City. I might have collections of sci-fi trading cards – but I also collect cat ornaments.

So is an interest in history per se what's considered unusual for a female of the species? Or just certain kinds of history? Is it modeling per se that is considered odd for a bird – or just certain subjects for modeling?

And am I really so unusual – "bonkers", even?

It seems, as Spock might say, to be thoroughly "illogical".

History around every corner

If you want to avoid history, then you’d probably be best advised to avoid Berlin, because you really can’t keep away from it there.

It’s not just the obvious, the large scale. Here a street named after a student leader in 1968, there a tiny brass plaque in the cobbled pavement to a woman who was deported to a concentration camp from that spot.

I wanted to do history – well, some history. A trip out to Potsdam and Sanssoucci had been identified as a must, giving me a lovely big dose of old Prussia as we strolled around the gardens, formal and less formal, that surrounded Frederick the Great’s getaway palace.

There too was the grave where he was finally interred, in accordance with his wishes, at night and without ceremony, next to the graves of his beloved dogs.

It was a Monday and the palaces themselves were closed. Whilst that meant not being able to wander in the halls where the king had entertained guests with his flute playing and conversed with Voltaire, it had the advantage of meaning a greatly reduced tourist presence that day, thus enabling many moments of solitude, where the only sounds were bird song, a gentle breeze in the trees and the occasional buzz of insects. It was beautifully soothing.

Not quite everything was shut – the shop remained open, so I didn’t have to miss out on the appropriate fridge magnets, postcards and a lighter. The Other Half has long been tolerant of what he describes as my being a "romantic Prussian" – his reward was being photographed next to a T34 tank at the Soviet War Memorial in Tiergarten later in the week (his kind of history).

But even as one approaches Potsdam on the train – a lovely journey through wooded countryside much of the way – more recent history imposes itself. When the train stops at Wannsee, for instance, and you see the name on the platform sign, it is impossible not to make the historic connection. And then, of course, Potsdam itself hosted the allies’ post-war conference to decide the fate of Germany.

A short walk down the road from our hotel in one direction was the Jüdisches Museum, with architect Daniel Libeskind’s shattered Star of David providing a disorienting and claustrophobic experience next to the old Kollegienhaus, where the main part of the museum is housed.

In the other direction had stood Checkpoint Charlie, where people could pass through substantial checks from the US to the Soviet sector. Now, with the original checkpoint in a museum, a copy has been built and bus loads of tourists queue to have their pictures taken in front of it, with models dressed in the uniforms of the four occupying powers.

With spectacular irony, on street corners in all the major tourist areas, trestle tables are loaded with reproduction Soviet and DDR military memorabilia – hats in particular: communist iconography made for profit.

And on Marx-Engels-Forum, the knees on the seated statue of Marx are polished to a shine by the endless bottoms seated there for holiday snaps.

Later in the week, as we walked from the hotel to the Philharmonie to see the Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra, we found ourselves on the street where the last remaining stretch of the Berlin Wall stands. If every souvenir shop that sells what they purport to be real fragments of the real wall is telling the truth, then that wall must have stretched to the moon and back – never mind across a city.

There are holes in the remaining stretch, with bared wire visible like prison bars, and gouges where the surface of the concrete has been stripped away, as though by clawing hands. It is ugly and obscene, and something keeps you mute as you hurry past.

The next day, I discovered from my Time Out guide to the city that the building site on the other side of that stretch of wall is where the Gestapo headquarters were. A temporary exhibition of photographs from the first half of the 20th century stands on the site while an exhibition and memorial centre is built. The pictures displayed are the only place where it is apparently legal to show the swastika, an otherwise banned symbol.

I’m never comfortable amid such history – but then again, it should disturb. In Amsterdam, next to the Westerkerk, stands a small statue of Anne Frank. On many occasions, I’ve seen people having their photographs taken, smiling, next to it. Which disquiets me.

In the UK, we’re comfortably removed by distance from most of our historic dodgy deeds. There are some memorials to the victims of the trans-Atlantic slave trade, but none that I know of to the victims of the British concentration camps in South Africa in the first years of the 20th century or in Kenya in the 1950s, for instance.

And Churchill and Bomber Harris even have statues to celebrate them – conveniently ignoring, amongst other things, their roles in the 1919 gassing and carpet bombing of the Kurds in northern Messopotamia (as it was then) or in the firebombing of Dresden in 1945 (which incident itself still divides opinion as to whether it was proportionate: even Churchill tried to distance himself from it).

The immediacy of such history prompts one to query one’s own relationship to it – and one’s own response. And in some cases in particular, there is a sense that one has to have a socially-approved ‘correct’ response. If you don’t, have you ‘failed’?

Not all Berlin’s recent history is so disquieting, thankfully. It was with great delight that I found a collection of 21 original pen and ink erotic sketches from 1925. Together with a bowler hat purchased from the same market, I could quite happily create a Cabaret mood.