Marion's Miscellaneous Musings

I could be very comfortable in Germany. They have rules. I like rules. Rules keep me safe. It is very hard for me to break rules, even in quilting. (The autobahn notwithstanding; Germany has one of the lowest rate of traffic deaths in Western Europe -- lower than the US. There are rules for the autobahn. You can't always go 200km/hr, and you can't pull out and pass on the right. I wish they would enforce the second here in Washington.)

There is also a sense of solidness and permanence to Germany, probably because everything is made with brick or stone. Of course, a lot of it has been rebuilt since World War II. But there is a comfort to brick: this is permanent, this is solid, this is reliable. Even the barns are made of brick -- those cows are safe!

And the place is clean. I didn't notice this until we walked down a street in Hamburg with garbage -- The German Kid said he always wondered why this streeet was always so dirty. Normally there is a pride of ownership. Out in the country we didn't see run down houses and junk in the yard like you tend to see here in the US. But even then, this is Germany: the garbage on the street was in boxes and the junk in the (one) yard was tidy.

The top picture is of the town hall (I believe) in Hamburg; the second is building in Hamburg. Aside from the word Hamburger (which is the reason I took the picture), there is also the massive stone. We are big. Someone planned us. We took a long time to build. Someone cared about how we look. We are solid, we have been here a while, we will be here.

The last picture is the only wooden building I saw. It was built in the 1700s, Presumably it was not bombed during the war, there would be no reason to rebuild it. Oh, and we visited a log cabin that his parents have on the Baltic. It is made of wood, but that is only a cabin. It is not meant for real occupancy.

Of course, I didn't go to see the modern concrete buildings. Who would want to? They are just there. They look just like our apartment buildings. They were put up on a schedule. They can be taken down and no one would care. They are not so much ugly as bland.

They could at least put brick over them.