HEIMAT - Take Me Home, Country Roads..........

to the place I used to know.

A discussion group on German language TV on the subject of ‘what is Heimat’, ‘what does Heimat mean to an individual’, reminded me of the many people I meet in blogland who are ex-patriates of some kind or other; who permanently or temporarily live in countries other than their native land. I would even include people who have moved from one state to another, as in the US, or from one geographical area to another, north to south, east to west, and vice versa, whether this is within a country or a continent.

Special occasions, like the festive season we find ourselves in at the moment, have the effect of re-awakening long gone memories in me, a kind of ‘nostalgia for no known place’, a sort of yearning for a time that ‘may have been’ but probably never was. Memories have become concertina-ed, all summers were hot, all winters snow covered and the mists of time have taken on a permanently golden hue.

There are many doctoral theses, scientific examinations and in-depth studies on the subject; but these do not concern me here. I would simply like to explore my own and other people’s feelings on the matter. The concept of Heimat was first explored by Pestalozzi, the Swiss educationalist. Before him, a 17^th century Swiss medic, Johannes Hofer, discovered (invented?) the term Heimweh, or homesickness. It was considered to be a specific Swiss disease, a lethal condition, in particular, a disease of soldiers, until the 1930s, when it was simply re-classified as ‘depression’ or ‘feeling’.

And there we have it, the term Heimat describes first and foremost and probably exclusively, a feeling.

Chambers dictionary translates  ‘Heimat’ simply as home. There is the Swedish concept of hembygd, which comes closest to the German term. Home, homeland, fatherland, mother country, native soil, la patrie, all come close but, in essence, do not  entirely cover the meaning.

Heimat must remain untranslated, but the feeling is universal.

Heimat is the place where your conscious being was formed, the root of your existence, where you cried your earliest tears, smiled your earliest smile;

the place where you grew up, where you learned to speak, to express yourself, your feelings, your moods.

Heimat is the place where your identity was established, where you set off on the journey towards the person you are now

Heimat is the place where everybody understands the language you speak; language is a hugely important part of your identity; speaking a regional or local dialect immediately identifies you as a member of a very special and specific community. Nobody can ever learn to speak a dialect flawlessly unless they have learned it in childhood. The meaning of any phrase you utter in this language is immediately clear to your listeners, no explanation or translation is ever necessary, no matter how obscure the term.

Heimat is the place where, for better or worse, you are missed when you leave, where the hole you leave is you-shaped, and only you can fill it.

Heimat is the place where the culture is a given; music and folk music, literature, drama and storytelling, history, and the art of your native land have all been part of the natural experience of growing-up.

Heimat is the place where poetry needs no translation.

To be homesick is to yearn for Heimat.. It is a fact that once you have been away for a number of years, what you remember as Heimat no longer exists. As you grow and develop, so does the place you left; so do the people you left; the memory you have preserved is not the reality of the place you return to.

As I said at the beginning, Heimat is a feeling; smells, sounds, food, songs can all conjure up an immediate feeling of Heimat.  Hearing a song your mother sang, eating a dish you ate as a child, hearing the sound of church bells, seeing a certain kind of light, a sky, can all remind you and transform you instantly into a time traveller.

We can all create a new home for ourselves anywhere on this earth; our family is our home; for some people religion is home; we are at home in a circle of friends, we have a network of support, we live a full life ‘at home’.

But the moment we get back to ‘our roots’, hear the familiar language or dialect, walk down old-familiar paths and, if we are lucky, see the folks we left behind, we are back in a world where we become the person we were then. No matter how old and wise, experienced, famous, infamous, disillusioned or successful  we have become, when we return to the place we call Heimat, we are as old as the day we left.

Christmas is for Giving

So, whose pile of unwanted gifts is ready for return/further distribution/exchange?

Christmas is for giving, I’m told. Who am I to argue.

Tinsel, turkey, tantrums and togetherness, all gift-wrapped in shiny sentimentality, have been and gone. Well, maybe the turkey hasn’t quite left the premises as yet, there is still the carcass to be turned into stock and about a week’s worth of leftovers have to be dealt with/turned into rissoles (a.k.a. frikos) or, more sensibly, surreptitiously fed to the dog when no one is watching.

What to do with the gifts? If you are lucky, have trained your family and friends well, or you belong to that happy breed who is not afraid to say exactly what they want for Christmas then you may be blissfully happy with your little stash, ready to enjoy the books, CDs, chocolates, etc. Lucky you! Otherwise you may now be deliberating whether to brave the shops with a view to returning items during the hectic Sales period for something more to your taste, or hang on for a while longer, when everything half decent might have been sold. Is there a chance that Aunt Lizzie might find out that you have taken the colourful ski jumper she knitted for you, or the massive ghost-written autobiography spanning the first 15 years in the life of some minor celebrity which Uncle Fred has kindly bestowed on you, to the Charity shop already?  Problems, problems, and you're still reeling from that small altercation between Frieda and George about the time he was caught under the mistletoe with her from next door.

Christmas is for giving.

Gardener was telling me that he has drawers full of short socks, all proudly presented by his sister-in-law, a new pair or two every Christmas. “I hates them”, he says, “I never wears them, they slips under the heel and I has to pull them up all the time.  I’ve a good mind to take them to the Rashity shop. (Gardener has verbal dyslexia). “Why don’t you tell her”, I asked.  Stupid question, the answer was obvious. I should have known.  "Noooo, I canna do that, it’s the thought”, he says. In fact, he is quite embarrassed by my show of social ineptitude.

Any of his employers, who give him a bottle for Christmas run the risk of receiving a recycled one in return. We had one from him this year  in spite of having given him some gardening tools. “ If I gets a bottle, I looks round to pass it on, like”, he says, totally without irony. As he handed it over,  he reassured us that he had bought ours. “I only drinks for Christmas, or for family parties”, he says, ” and I always has to finish the bottle, can’t leave nothing in, as I dinna drink it the next day.” He says this like it’s a matter of honour.

That seems to go for bottles of spirits too, expecially for home made sloe gin, which starts off as slin goe, until one of us helps him out with a straight face. Sloe gin appears to be a great favourite; one of his employers gives him a bottle for Christmas every year. Gardener is willing to share it on family occasions but, if nobody drinks with him, as usually happens, he finishes it off in one sitting, by himself.

Christmas is for giving.

Then there’s the delightful young women, one half of a couple with two small children struggling to make ends meet satisfactorily, who comes and helps me in the house occasionally. She starts her Christmas shopping at the end of October, “in dribs and drabs”, she says, because she can’t afford to buy every one a present otherwise. By ‘everyone’ she means the many children her nine siblings have produced between them, each of whom receives a present of some considerable monetary value.  And her own children only get one ‘major’ present each, apart from the small toys and games she puts into their stockings. When she told me the cost of the ‘major’ present I was amazed. “Because there were so many of us, Mum couldn’t afford to get us presents”, she told me, “I want my kids to have everything I never had”.  Okay, that may be laudable, but to go house cleaning for others to buy expensive presents for  a dozen or more nieces and nephews?

Christmas is for giving. Giving is more blessed than receiving.


We give and receive small presents, books, music, food and drink, tickets for a concert, a subscription to a magazine, a plant for the garden. We have no small children around, which would be a sad thing for the proud grandads and grannies who revel in the shiny faces of the very young at Christmas, nor are we obliged to put up with cantankerous, elderly relatives who have nowhere else to go, who have outlived their welcome everywhere else.


Scrooges, us? Bah humbug!

'And the Days are not Full Enough'

And the days are not full enough

And the nights are not full enough

And life slips by like a field mouse

Not shaking the grass.

Ezra Pound

E.D.

 a dear friend, 

21 January 1917 - 18 December 2009

'Time to go',

you said.

Song

When I am dead, my dearest,

Sing no sad songs for me;

Plant thou no roses at my head,

nor shady cypress tree:

Be the green grass above me

With showers and dewdrops wet; 

and if thou wilt, remember,

And if thou wilt, forget.

I shall not see the shadows,

I shall not feel the rain;

I shall not hear the nightingale

Sing on, as if in pain:

And dreaming through the twilight

That doth not rise nor set,

Haply I may remember,

And haply may forget.

Christina Rosetti

Running-up to Christmas

Going online regularly at this time of year? Just forget it!

The period which is called the run-up to Christmas is the craziest time. If you are a Christian, this is meant to be a quiet time, a time of contemplation and expectation; after all, you are preparing yourself for the birth of your Saviour.

Everybody else just goes mad, even some Christians, who should know better.

Beloved and I are going to have a quiet Christmas; we always do. It is not in my nature to turn Christmas into a circus, we leave the drunken orgies for New Year’s Eve!   (a girl can dream, can’t she!)  Even so, we too seem to have been infected with the virus; we have been buying more food and drink than we do at any other time of year – has anyone else heard the rumour that food and drink are shortly to go out of fashion ?

I have to admit that I did enjoy greatly one particular shopping trip to Ludlow, our local market town. Ludlow is one of the best preserved mediaeval towns in the country; a huge, ruined castle and  a very fine church tower over the town. The market square is right in the heart of the town, it is surrounded by lovely old buildings and narrow lanes.  The place name ‘Ludlow’ is first recorded in 1138. It means ‘hill’ or ‘mound’ beside the ‘loud waters’ i.e., the rapids of the river Teme.

Ludlow is justly proud of its status as one of the jewel cities of the UK and guards this status jealously, making sure that no awkward new buildings are allowed within the mediaeval heart.

Ludlow’s other claim to fame is its status as a ‘foodie’ town. Unlike other busy market towns it has a large number of specialist food shops, and the stalls in the market are a joy to behold. Beloved and I visited the ‘Chocolate Gourmet’ for some extra special hand-made chocolate truffles to go with the champagne bought next door at the wine shop, before crossing over to the market and stopping to sample and buy the wares at the cheese stall, the game and fish dealer’s and the greengrocer’s stall, where we also bought large bunches of seasonal chrysanthemums, my favourite Christmas flowers. There’s even a stall which sells nothing but olives!

Shopping gives me a thirst, the spectacular Feathers Hotel was the next port of call. ‘The Feathers’ has been a favourite haunt with American visitors for many years, but then, who could resist its ‘olde worlde’ charm. They serve a mean tea too.

Valley’s End is preparing itself too. The grand Christmas-light-switch-on happened last Saturday evening in our own little square. The villagers stood in the square, getting in the way of all cars driving through, singing carols lustily and loudly, more or less in tune with each other and  accompanied by a small band. One of the many retired vicars living in Valley’s End spoke a few uplifting words between carols and a few more at the end of the session; sadly, they all got lost in the general jollity – besides the speaker system was behaving in a very wayward fashion. No matter; no doubt, the same vicar or one of his colleagues (they all like to keep their hand in in retirement) will make a similarly improving speech next year.

The singing and jolliness all happened outside the village pub, from which the publican and his helpers issued forth at regular intervals with trays bearing free mulled wine and mini mince pies, which they distributed among the multitude. No slouch, our publican; free gifts of rather sour mulled wine (sorry about that, gift horses, mouths, etc, spring to mind) inspired vast numbers of those outside to cram themselves into the tiny public bar afterwards, this time to purchase their drinks.

But first there was the grand ceremony. Naturally, the lads from the fire brigade had been testing the lights all week – in fact they had been blazing away merrily

for days. This wouldn’t be rural England if it had all gone according to plan without any hitch at all; the count-down started, the designated switcher-onner applied digit to switch and the lights came on. Some of them, anyway.  All faces turned in the direction of the lights on one side of the square, theatrical oohhs and aahhs followed, then everybody swivelled round to the other side and a great moan went up, also theatrical, and well-rehearsed in other years, because here the darkness stubbornly remained. Perhaps it took several digits on several switches, for eventually both the lights on the tree above the pub and the remaining strings of light above the houses in the square shone forth in glory.

December in the Garden

Yesterday was probably the last time this year that I spent a few hours in the garden. We were granted a rare sunny day between the rains of the past few weeks and the winter fogs, ice and wind to come. It was an opportunity to go out with my camera and search for those plants which are still pleasing to the eye at this otherwise so drab and dreary time of year, when staying indoors by the fire is much the preferred option.

I found a surprising number of plants worth recording. It has always been my habit to ensure winter interest in the garden, after all, my kitchen window looks out over the main part and I like to linger there, idly surveying the bird feeders which are alive with small birds coming for their allocation of seeds, nuts, fat and kitchen scraps. There is a constant traffic between the feeding stations and the surrounding trees and hedges with frequent stop-overs at the seed heads of herbaceous plants left standing for just this purpose. Fragrance is also important to me and there are several winter flowering fragrant shrubs planted close to the back door and the path which I use most often to get to the back gate.

Phormium with their stiff strap leaves

the bronze grasses

and the prostrate euphorbias all give shelter to insects

in their convoluted and enclosed hearts,

providing feeding grounds for birds all winter.

The Silk Tassel Bush (Garrya elliptica)

is a large shrub providing primarily winter interest with its gorgeous,

genuinely grey tassels and grey-green leaves which are glossy green

above and woolly grey below.

The shrub is evergreen and will provide shelter for birds in all weathers.

Garrya will grow anywhere, in sun or shade and poor, sandy or chalky soil.

It does not like cold winter winds and would prefer to be grown in some wind shelter.

 Choysia Ternata is lovely at any time of year.

Crush the leaves and their beautiful fragrance will reach out to you.

Choysia is evergreen and when grown in a sheltered spot will blaze at you

 all winter, particularly so when caressed by sunlight.

Benno

came out too; all his walks recently have been muddy ones;

He enjoyed a stroll about the garden which didn't end

in him being rubbed down before he was allowed back

into the house.

and finally, the King of the winter garden, the holly bush.

Although I grow several varieties, the variegated and golden leaved ones among them,

at this time of year I make for the dark-green, spiny-leaved, red-berried ones.

Making sure that I leave enough of the berries for our winter visitors,

the fieldfares and redstarts, as well as our all-year resident, the blackbird,

I cut the straightest twigs for the house;

a Christmas house without holly in vases and small, home-made

decorative arrangements is unthinkable, as is

a front door without its holly wreath to welcome visitors.

The Scraper's Diary, Saturday March 29th, 1947, Munsterlager

Munsterlager

We reached here, strange as it may seem, by the scheduled time, by the right roads, and in time for the dance!

As the members of the card school are broke, the losses at solo will not be payed until we get next week's money.

This place is known as the "Larkhill" of Germany, being on Luneburg Heath. Except in that the camp appears to hold some life, I agree. Except also, of course, that there are only three of us in this room, and that the lavatories aren't frozen. I have intended to mention for some time now that German inventiveness and thoroughness has made even details in barracks here better than British creativeness can make details at home. Windows open and shut properly and are double-glazed. Bathrooms function efficiently, as they are meant to do, as do electrical switches.

For gadgets, buy German.

o-o-o-o-o

Sunday, March 30th, 1947

We went for a walk this afternoon to see the place in daylight. It is a small, straggly town, with few shops. There are two cinemas, one British, one German, but there is no show tonight. The Salvation Army Club opens at 6.30,  the NAAFI, a mile and a half away, at six. However, there are some promising woods hereabouts and we are soon going to explore.

Three in a room; I had to sign for the windows being in good order. I have just swapped our bust bulb for some stranger's good one.

Very pretty girls here, also many Poles and V.D. posters.

It is quite warm, the air is soft with the smell of pine trees, and the heavy fragrance of Spring, subtly sharpened by a faint suggestion of petrol..........  Symbolic, if you insist.

o-o-o-o-o

Hamburg, Monday, March 31st, 1947

As the entire band is off duty today, the Band Master obtained passes for us and we are spending a day's leave in Hamburg. This is a two hours' journey from Munsterlager, but it's worth it.

The town, very largely, does not exist.

I've used all the expressions I know to describe the devastation of German cities, but Hamburg is flattened, - albeit to a lesser degree than Bremen, - over a larger area than any place I've seen yet.

It has been a fine Spring day. Warm and happy, the temperatures many degrees above freezing point,  and yet there are large chunks of ice still on the river, and occasional patches of snow in the country ditches. Heavy clouds rolled up after tea and after an egotistical announcement of lightning and thunder, it rained hard. The sun set in a livid jaw of sky and it's nearly dark now. Dark and wet. Heigh-ho.

We did quite a nice lot of business this afternoon in several jewellers' shops, had tea, and are now waiting patiently in the NAAFI  gramophone room for a Beethoven piano sonata to dry up so that we can hear the March Slav (Tchaikovsky) and (Sibelius') Swan of Tuonella.

Cautionary Verses

The Llama

(and Sally)

Photo Jeremy White

The llama is a woolly sort of fleecy hairy goat,

With an indolent expression and an undulating throat

Like an unsuccessful literary man.

And I know the place he lives in (or at least - I think I do)

It is Ecuador, Brazil or Chile - possibly Peru;

You must find it in the Atlas if you can.

The Llama of the Pampasses you never should confound

(In spite of a deceptive similarity of sound)

With the Lhama who is Lord of Turkestan.

For the former is a beautiful and valuable beast,

But the latter is not lovable nor useful in the least;

And the Ruminant is preferable surely to the Priest

Who battens on the woeful superstitions of the East,

The Mongol of the Monastery of Shan.

Don't blame me, blame  Hilaire Belloc

Children Be Good, Nikolaus Is On His Way!

Tonight, the night of the 5^th December,  is the night when children in central and eastern Europe expect the arrival of St Nikolaus, bringing his sack of toys and gifts for all children who  have been particularly good during the preceding twelve months.

Saint Nicholas is the common name for Agios (Saint) Nikolaos , the Bishop of Myra, who lived in the fourth century AD in Myra, Lycia, now  part of modern Turkey.

Historically, there is very little more known of him, except that he was generally seen as a charitable man with a social conscience.

Legends however, abound. Nicolaos saves his home town from famine by  miraculously providing grain;  he saves three maidens from shame and ignominy by secretly leaving three pieces of gold in their hovel, while they sleep, thereby providing them with a dowry to marry. He saves sailors from a watery grave and leads a young man imprisoned in a far land back to his homeland. His most famous miracle is that he resurrects and reassembles three drunken  students, who have been murdered, chopped up and pickled in a vat by an evil innkeeper.

No wonder Nicolaos became the patron saint of, among others, children, students, sailors, travelling merchants and apothecaries.

St Nicholas is celebrated in many central and eastern European countries; in Germany, on his feast day, which falls on December 6th, he is a bringer of gifts for children.

These gifts and sweets didn’t come free, you had to have been a very good child during the previous year. St. Nikolaus often brought his servant, Ruprecht, with him, who carried not only the sack with presents on his bent back but also held a switch, a bundle of birch twigs in his hand, which would be used if it could be shown that you had been naughty.

When male members of the family, disguised with beard and appropriate costume, i.e., a magnificent coat  and boots for St Nikolaus and dark rags for the Servant Ruprecht, roughly knocked on the door and demanded entry, many a child’s heart beat a furious tattoo, fearfully remembering a small lie, a naughty deed or a hidden shame.  When Nikolaus accused little Eva  of spitting in anger, all she could think of to save her own neck, was telling on her cousin Markus. “He does it too, he did it first”, she squealed.  Nikolaus appeared to have been overcome with emotion at that, as evidenced by his heaving shoulders; she got away with it.

Before the times allowed us to travel to branches of the family living in other villages and celebrate the day with my cousins, Saint Nikolaus didn’t come to me in person. “He has to visit too many other children to make time to come here, he may not come at all”, Mum said.  Obviously, I was very disappointed but also just a little relieved; my conscience was never totally clear. As the evening progressed, the atmosphere in the kitchen where I was sitting with my back to the large, old-fashioned range, with a picture or colouring book, grew quiet, with a slight tingle of tension in the air. I kept my head down firmly over my book, all the time listening for sounds from outside.

The noise, when it came, did not come from outside, but from right behind me. With a great clatter a wooden toy, a tin of hard boiled sweets and toffees, apples and  gingerbread biscuits came flying into the room. Saint Nikolaus had thrown all these goodies down the chimney for me and they had survived coming down into the kitchen via the big black stove pipe and the fire in the range. It was a wonder Mum hadn’t been hit because she was standing right there, in the way. On the other hand, it was good that she was standing there because she said she had heard Saint Nikolaus  shout down the chimney that he might come again, later in the night, on his way back home and if he had anything left in his sack he’d put it in my boot, if I left it out for him. 

Which I did. And Saint Nikolaus was as good as his word: in the morning I found that he had left me a book and a teddy bear and more cookies and sweets and apples than could fit into my boot!

Treats

Occasionally there's a season when things come together, a season of fireworks, when I am allowed to scrub up,  dress up, put on the slap and go out on the town instead of dressing down, enveloping myself in the massive and massively heavy family raincoat, trudging around the muddy fields with dog, walking stick and large hat jammed on head.

The past few weeks have been the answer to this blogger's prayers,  not one but three such outings have been granted; I have been wallowing in culture, until I am almost drowning in the unaccustomed riches.

The Mid Wales Opera Company performed Mozart's 'Marriage of Figaro' in Ludlow.This is a company of young players and singers, all of them at the beginning of their careers, but true professionals giving of their best nevertheless.

The next outing was a visit to the theatre to see a performance of Pirandello's surreal masterpiece 'Six Characters In Search Of An Author' by the acclaimed Headlong Theatre Company under Rupert Goold.

Never having seen the play before it was quite a challenge to follow the action;  the play is about six imaginary characters looking for an author to write their play, in which these characters and their roles already exist. The characters themselves act out the play yet to be written.

Six Characters In Search Of An Author is a classic of modernism, a fundamentally subversive moment in the history of modern theatre. Its self-conscious setting, its fragmented narrative, confusing time levels and radical ideas caused an uproar at its first night on 9 May 1921.....


Hard work, yet very enjoyable and just the kind of challenge I like after several months of mud-wrestling and not much else.

And there was yet more! The City Of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra beckoned with a concert under its conductor Andris Nelsons playing three Romantics, Liadov, Rachmaninov and Dvorak. The fantastic young Pianist Nikolai Lugansky gave an absolutely virtuoso performance of Rachmaninov's Piano Concerto No. 3, which kept the audience in Symphony Hall on the edge of their seats. One of the men in our company was in tears at the end, I kid you not!

Treats like these make the realization that life in the country is

a permanent fact of life easier to accept. Country life has great advantages;  having to fight my way through the crowds in Birmingham is not something I frequently hanker after, but I will gladly do so in order to experience a world class concert by gifted performers.

Valley's End is a gorgeous place; it is often said that there isn't a house that doesn't enjoy a spectacular view, the people are friendly and kind and the pace of life is quiet and calm. Just occasionally though, this blogger loves to partake of a different life, the life I left behind in the big city, a life of noise, dirt, excitement, traffic, crowded pavements, jostling people and rumbling, packed, trains.

Eh? Who am I kidding? Where would you rather live?

TRAINS

Siberian Restaurant-Cars

Siberian Restaurant-Cars designed for passenger 

Comfort over thousands and thousand of miles!. . . . .

Here, over a carafe, people sing and quarrel

And wounded hearts are torn and torn again.

The sailor hurrying back from leave,  the beetle-browed

Actor about to go on tour: for miles

And miles these friends against their will sit there,

Touch foreheads, and they stare into each other's

Eyes.  And all the pain of half a lifetime,

And all that they have hidden deep within them,

They dare confide to one another's hearts

Among the passengers as if in private.

Your whole life, espousals, separations,

Sad mistakes of former days, the need of

Human nature for confession - stronger

Than diffidence. How many novels, stories,

Poems here, if you dug about enough.

How remember them and not go crazy!

The friends are mumbling: light, darkness, and light, 

Darkness once more, break across their faces.

If only they could forget about all this

How simple their heavy lot would be.

Through the window, unpeopled Siberia

And midnight forests stretch for a thousand miles.

Evgeny Vinokurov

translated from the Russian by

Anthony Rudolf and Daniel Weissbort

Photos Jeremy White




If we want to confide in Strangers
We make do with the WWW
Instead of going on long train journeys