German word of the summer: Höhenangst

 The first few days of travel are key. That's when themese start to emerge, where traditions are made.

We were in Berlin's Tiergarten, at the base of the Siegesäule a.k.a. the Victory Column that is topped with the golden angel I wrote about elsewhere.

"You want to go up to the top?"

I can't remember who asked the question first. The answer was 'yes'. And with a can-do, "all for one" spirit, we dutifully paid our 4 euros and ascended the spiral steps to an amazing view above the park. 

Far in the distance, the dome of the Reichstag popped up above the trees. We looked down the Strasse des 17. Junis at the Brandenberg Gate. Berlin lay at our feet. Only Victory herself was above us.


This began a tradition we would follow faithfully throughout the trip. A few days later, after our walk down Unter den Linden, we climbed to the top of the cathedral to have a look around (Photo: the view of the Altes Museum and the Lustgarten from the cathedral dome).


The theme would continue throughout the trip. Elaina came back from Cologne and reported that she had climbed to the top of one of the towers. She had even counted the steps. A couple more students put Cologne on the "list΅.

A group of us went to Strasbourg, France, on a Saturday excursion. There was a chance to climb the tower of Strasbourg Cathedral and we took it--of course we did!. 

Up, up, up we climbed, coming face to face with gargoyles. My fear of heights came to mind, and my knees felt week whenever I looked down at the square far below. Soon we were 66 meters above the ground.


The climb went up the unfinished tower on the right of the photo above. At the top was a lookout station where the town had once kept watch for fires--and approaching enemies. The view was amazing. Off to the west, we could see the hills of the Black Forest rising beyond the Rhine.


Whenever I got close to the edge, though, a German word came to mind: Höhenangst, a fear of heights. Looking out across the Rhine was fine, but whenever I got close to the edge, I got goosebumps and felt my knees go week.

The stairs went down the completed tower. I was behind Anna (pictured, above), whose Höhenangst was equal to mine. She descended very slowly, giving me more chances to look out at gargoyles. When we reached the square, she was ready to kiss the ground.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

When Mainz threw a Party for the Ages -- the Middle Ages

Image
In the middle of the marketplace stands a column called the " Heunensäule ." Erected there in 1975 to mark the 1,000th anniversary of the building of Mainz Cathedral, it was a column that had been quarried but never used by the original builders. Around the base of the column are four bronze headpieces, each a symbol of Mainz's history: a bishop's mitre, for the Archbishop of Mainz's role as head of the German Church and one of seven electors of the Holy Roman Emperor; a gladiator's helmet, representing Mainz's Roman history; a jester's hat, to show Mainz's place as a carnival city; and, finally, an imperial crown (pictured, right) . The crown is recognizable to students of German history as the Rheichskrone , an octagonal crown studded with jewels and topped by a cross. The crown was created in the early years of the Holy Roman Empire (HRE), probaby the 10th or 11th century. It has been passed down, emperor to emperor ever since , and it can still...
Read more

Tale: The Seven Maidens of Oberwesel

Image
I've told this story a number of times to students as we rode a ship up the Rhine. Here's my take on the age-old tale--JD On a hill above the town of Oberwesel stands a castle known as Schönberg. It's not a surprising name, for the castle, translated as "beautiful mountain," indeed looks down on one of the most beautiful scenes in the world: the Middle Rhine Valley! In this setting, every hilltop is beautiful, and many hilltops feature castles. Oberwesel's castle doesn't owe its name to its setting, however. It gained its name long ago when its owner died unexpectantly, leaving behind him seven sad daughters, each one as beautiful as a summer sunrise. The seven daughters grew up in the castle; their only father was the Rhine. Each morning they would run out of one of the castle's seven doors and roam the countryside together. They picked berries and found honeycomb in the dark gulleys and shadowed streams that rushed down the hillsides. They returned f...
Read more

Women of Wurms: Myth and Memory in Germany's Camelot

Image
I grew up in the middle of a large forest in southeastern Ohio on a low, flat hill called "Tick Ridge." Perhaps it's all the lonely days I spent alone, populating the woods with creatures of my imagination, that explains my fascination with timeless tales. Grimm's fairy tales were an early interest, but so were the tales of King Arthur. Written in medieval Britain, based loosely on characters 500-800 years older still, the stories populate the forests of England with knights errant, strange, magical ponds, dragons, and other amazing characters. At the center of all the action (until the final battle) stands Camelot: a fantastic castle at whose heart lies the Round Table. While many locations around Britain lay claim to being the place on which the stories are based, Camelot is a castle of the readers' mind, and it will always be that way. At the same time that Chretien de Troyes and, later, Thomas Malory, were fleshing out the tales of Lancelot, Guinevire, and Ar...
Read more