I did some translation work for the Heimat Museum on Hiddensee a little while ago. I don’t
speak too much German, so I don't know why they chose me to translate their captions &
informations from German into English. They would send me by email precise, informative, text
which I would then “translate” into gibberish with a "professional" software package.
After a short pause for laughter I would take this gibberish and, using a wordbook and my
imagination, produce some text that a native English speaker might understand (if you ever
visit the island please visit the museum and read the captions!).
I will digress here. I think that my generation (ok us oldies) have benefited more from the
internet & technology than have the young. I was brought up surrounded by cars, bikes,
tv/radios household gadgets etc that broke down with amazing regularity. As no-one could
afford a “proper man” you learnt to fix things for yourself, so Windows came as no surprise at
all. Its fallibility just made it the Morris Minor of the computing world – ubiquitous, loved or
derided but fallible – and this was important because it made even us oldies feel at home,
superior. BUT we also had the benefit of a “proper” education ie pre wikipedia, so we could
also learn, analyse, question and build..
As a child, I played with meccano and the like so, when I bought my first computer in around
1995, I took the case off straight away to see what was inside. Nothing really, well nothing that
made any sense to me, but it looked like it had been assembled by a third-world five year old.
So my next two or three computers were hand built by me and do you know what? – yes they
broke down with amazing regularity! This of course gave me the perfect excuse to develop a
whole new hobby – “sorry dear – we HAVE to have a new widgetythingy adapter – could you
possibly sell one of the children or your mother …”
But now, a museum on an island unknown to me, could write to me in a language that I barely
understood, I could translate it and send it back to them the next day. Thank you Bill Gates. It
really is amazing.
I got to know a lot about the island from the translation work, its history, culture & customs
and decided that I would go there “one day”.
That day came in December 2009, just before Christmas.
The journey north from Potsdam is miles and miles of butter smooth autobahn with a traffic
density similar to the wilds of Scotland. After the autobahn, miles of arrow straight country
roads. It’s different here. In the UK country roads meander – a little left kink here to avoid a
tree – a right hand hairpin there to skirt round someone’s field. It’s probably to do with old land
reform acts – people who just wouldn’t sell their land. But in Germany, most of the country
roads would put the Romans to shame. Dead straight and with a 120 kph limit … and every so
often, to protect a junction or the only curve for miles around, they put a 70kph limit on for a
couple of hundred meters. With a speed camera.
Now, I lived in north Wales for several years and cordially loathed the “mad mullah” and his
vendetta against the motorist but, believe me, he was a pussycat!. At least in the UK the
speed cams are visible – either black & yellow stripes for the fixed, or a large and obvious
police van housing the mobiles.
Not so sporting in Germany. The fixed cams are camouflaged and cannot be seen until too
late - you just hear them whisper “gotchya” as you flash past. The mobile cams are no better.
Mounted on tripods they can be set up in the shrubbery at the roadside in the morning and
left running all day. Or put in the back of an innocent looking van and parked in a 30kph zone.
I saw one of those near to my house the other week – 8.00am on a Sunday morning. Not a
schoolchild, pedestrian, or other hazard in sight. The simple fact is that, if you break the
speed limit in Germany, you will be caught, regularly.
So to Schaprode and the ferry.
Private cars are banned from Hiddensee. The islanders who have a car leave it in Schaprode,
where you can rent a yearly parking place for a couple of hundred euro. So they go to the
mainland by ferry, collect their car and do a "big shop" somewhere. The goods were piled up
at the terminal - I saw Christmas trees, toy horses, dozens of bottles of soft drinks - things you
can't buy, or only at a price, on the island. At the home side, they collect their bicycles, load
their cycle trailers and ride home. Sounds idyllic but it must get tiresome.
My opening sentence about the island was going to be along the lines of "the first thing you
notice is the quiet ..." but it isn't. The first thing that I noticed was that daylight doesn't last too
long this far north - full pitch dark by 5.00pm. Luckily my Pension, The Weiseneck, was close
to the ferry terminal in Kloster.
When the ferry arrives it is very much like those hotel lights, where you press a button in the
corridor and the place is illuminated for just long enough. As the ferry approaches, small
shops and kiosks put their lights on and open the door, eager to catch perhaps a new visitor
to the island with a little money in their pocket. Half an hour later when the excitement is over,
the place goes to sleep again.
In the morning, a grey start to the day, my first on Hiddensee.
A thin strip of red sky on the horizon then, the painter having run out of ideas or colours, the
rest of the sky is a uniform grey. The north wind finds little to interest it here and it sweeps
over the island, bigger fish to chill elsewhere. The mercury in the thermometer of the hotel's
porch is curled into a ball at the bottom, waiting for spring.
After breakfast and several cups of coffee, the painter seemed to have recovered his muse
for the sky was now a wintry blue, bright sunshine.
Digression
I am fascinated by the solitary print on the wall of my room in the Pension . I do not know if it is
a print of a good painting, just that it has fascinated me for several hours – perhaps that
makes the original a good work by definition.
It shows three adults walking almost in line, man woman man, along a beach on a summer
day. At first I thought the three were together but now I am not sure. The woman is perhaps a
little closer to the painter than are the men. Are the men just marching past her?
The woman is timeless but the men are firmly of the 1950s. They are neither young nor old –
wearing hats that are not quite trilbys, not quite panamas, along with white, long-sleeved
shirts, ties, and braces supporting office trousers rolled to mid calf. One holds a cigarette in
his right hand and all three, the woman included, have deck chairs under their left arms. But
where are their jackets?
The men are stiff , formal, almost military, staring into the distance. Not including the woman at
all – not with her. She. her face covered by her hair, is in a short blue sun dress with a white
hem. There is a hint of nakedness beneath. Her deck chair is of bright red stripes in contrast
to the men’s plain white canvas. She is looking down, lifting her sun dress slightly by her right
hand whilst she steps over something. The men do not look at her, nor she at them. They
stare seaward, her head is averted. Is each embarrassed for the other?
I promised myself not to take the tourist photos but .. I am a tourist so I made the walk up to
the lighthouse. It's a steady climb and a family on bikes were going that way too, the men a
long way ahead. They stopped at a vantage point to wait for their womenfolk. The older of the
two men enjoyed a triumphal cigarette.
I have realised recently that my photos are crooked - sloping horizons etc so I tried really hard
to get my tourist pictures of the lighthouse straight - but then realised that the lighthouse in
fact has a very pronounced lean. So do I correct that, or show it as is and have people think
that the photo is crooked?
Well painter man, a better end to the day. Thank you for another majestic sunset. The sea
seemed a little more troubled tonight, snapping and snarling at the shore. Perhaps there is
worse weather on the way. Snow is forecast.
.
I visited the little church in Kloster today. It is very nautical and quite pretty. The organ was
supplied in the 1940s by a Potsdam company. A gravestone showed that one of the islanders
had died at the age of 50, after being deported during WW2. I can't imagine what it must
have been like for him - the long arm of tyranny reaching even as far as this paradise.
Digression. Why are there so few UK tourists to Germany? It is a little expensive now due to
the strength of the euro, but no more so than other European destinations. The Germans are
not unfriendly, just reserved which is a good thing if you consider the state of some of the
UK's unreserved city centres at night.
If they, the Germans, do not greet you like a long lost brother it is simply because you are not.
Perhaps the British are embarrassed by looking at Germany and seeing what the UK was like
a generation or so ago, seeing what they abandoned.
The Germans work hard, drink modestly, eat well and provide excellent service. If a workman
says he will be at your house at 8.00am next Friday to do a job for you, then he will be there
on time and ready to start. If you use a motorway rest room it will be spotlessly clean, as will
your hotel or pension. If you buy something that you are not 100% happy with, then it will be
exchanged without question, without buck-passing, without the excuses that seem to be the
norm in the UK.
The weather is kind, with good warm summers and proper winters. There is much to do and
see. So why don't the Brits come? Perhaps it's the war, or football. Whatever, but you're
missing a lot and remember "what do they know of England who only England know".
Proper snow overnight with more falling - the news on TV is full of it and the journey home
might be difficult if it continues until Monday.
A whole family of deer in the garden behind the hotel this morning, no doubt feeling very
conspicuous against the fresh snow. I bought some bread and found that the seagulls were
quite happy to pose, performing aerobatics in exchange for breakfast.
I ate several evening meals in the Pension bar/restaurant. Good and filling - a year or so ago I
would have thought them very good value for money. The bar had a smattering of local "good
old boys" and, one evening, a couple who I think are staying in the Pension. They had with
them a little jack russell terrier who wasn't quite sure where he was, but was very happy to be
included in whatever they were doing. It's strange that the UK prides itself on being a nation of
dog lovers yet dogs are frowned upon everywhere. In Germany it's not unusual to see a
restaurant owner's dog asleep behind the counter, and dogs walking around department
stores with their owner is a common sight.
The snow continues and the temperature plummets. I made the climb back to the lighthouse in
the evening for some photography. Three pairs of gloves were not quite enough. My camera
stopped working so I headed back down.
The harbours in Kloster and Vitte are frozen over. Perhaps -20c at night?
Monday, and the day of my departure. Kloster harbour is frozen solid so I make my way to
Vitte where a small channel to the mainland has been kept open. The ferry crunches through
it, families of swans walking on the ice, alongside the boat.
At Schaprode, my car resembles an igloo, maybe a foot or so of snow covering most of it. But
it started OK and I began the journey home in the worst weather that I have ever driven in.
Minus 13c, thick mist, ice, hard packed snow, falling snow. My three hour journey took over 6
hours but every buttock-clenched kilometre was worth it. I had had the most peaceful, restful
and thoroughly enjoyable week.
Costs? Pension around €35 per night b&b and a good evening meal for €15. Ferry €20
approx return from Schaprode. Car park about €3 per day.
speak too much German, so I don't know why they chose me to translate their captions &
informations from German into English. They would send me by email precise, informative, text
which I would then “translate” into gibberish with a "professional" software package.
After a short pause for laughter I would take this gibberish and, using a wordbook and my
imagination, produce some text that a native English speaker might understand (if you ever
visit the island please visit the museum and read the captions!).
I will digress here. I think that my generation (ok us oldies) have benefited more from the
internet & technology than have the young. I was brought up surrounded by cars, bikes,
tv/radios household gadgets etc that broke down with amazing regularity. As no-one could
afford a “proper man” you learnt to fix things for yourself, so Windows came as no surprise at
all. Its fallibility just made it the Morris Minor of the computing world – ubiquitous, loved or
derided but fallible – and this was important because it made even us oldies feel at home,
superior. BUT we also had the benefit of a “proper” education ie pre wikipedia, so we could
also learn, analyse, question and build..
As a child, I played with meccano and the like so, when I bought my first computer in around
1995, I took the case off straight away to see what was inside. Nothing really, well nothing that
made any sense to me, but it looked like it had been assembled by a third-world five year old.
So my next two or three computers were hand built by me and do you know what? – yes they
broke down with amazing regularity! This of course gave me the perfect excuse to develop a
whole new hobby – “sorry dear – we HAVE to have a new widgetythingy adapter – could you
possibly sell one of the children or your mother …”
But now, a museum on an island unknown to me, could write to me in a language that I barely
understood, I could translate it and send it back to them the next day. Thank you Bill Gates. It
really is amazing.
I got to know a lot about the island from the translation work, its history, culture & customs
and decided that I would go there “one day”.
That day came in December 2009, just before Christmas.
The journey north from Potsdam is miles and miles of butter smooth autobahn with a traffic
density similar to the wilds of Scotland. After the autobahn, miles of arrow straight country
roads. It’s different here. In the UK country roads meander – a little left kink here to avoid a
tree – a right hand hairpin there to skirt round someone’s field. It’s probably to do with old land
reform acts – people who just wouldn’t sell their land. But in Germany, most of the country
roads would put the Romans to shame. Dead straight and with a 120 kph limit … and every so
often, to protect a junction or the only curve for miles around, they put a 70kph limit on for a
couple of hundred meters. With a speed camera.
Now, I lived in north Wales for several years and cordially loathed the “mad mullah” and his
vendetta against the motorist but, believe me, he was a pussycat!. At least in the UK the
speed cams are visible – either black & yellow stripes for the fixed, or a large and obvious
police van housing the mobiles.
Not so sporting in Germany. The fixed cams are camouflaged and cannot be seen until too
late - you just hear them whisper “gotchya” as you flash past. The mobile cams are no better.
Mounted on tripods they can be set up in the shrubbery at the roadside in the morning and
left running all day. Or put in the back of an innocent looking van and parked in a 30kph zone.
I saw one of those near to my house the other week – 8.00am on a Sunday morning. Not a
schoolchild, pedestrian, or other hazard in sight. The simple fact is that, if you break the
speed limit in Germany, you will be caught, regularly.
So to Schaprode and the ferry.
Private cars are banned from Hiddensee. The islanders who have a car leave it in Schaprode,
where you can rent a yearly parking place for a couple of hundred euro. So they go to the
mainland by ferry, collect their car and do a "big shop" somewhere. The goods were piled up
at the terminal - I saw Christmas trees, toy horses, dozens of bottles of soft drinks - things you
can't buy, or only at a price, on the island. At the home side, they collect their bicycles, load
their cycle trailers and ride home. Sounds idyllic but it must get tiresome.
My opening sentence about the island was going to be along the lines of "the first thing you
notice is the quiet ..." but it isn't. The first thing that I noticed was that daylight doesn't last too
long this far north - full pitch dark by 5.00pm. Luckily my Pension, The Weiseneck, was close
to the ferry terminal in Kloster.
When the ferry arrives it is very much like those hotel lights, where you press a button in the
corridor and the place is illuminated for just long enough. As the ferry approaches, small
shops and kiosks put their lights on and open the door, eager to catch perhaps a new visitor
to the island with a little money in their pocket. Half an hour later when the excitement is over,
the place goes to sleep again.
In the morning, a grey start to the day, my first on Hiddensee.
A thin strip of red sky on the horizon then, the painter having run out of ideas or colours, the
rest of the sky is a uniform grey. The north wind finds little to interest it here and it sweeps
over the island, bigger fish to chill elsewhere. The mercury in the thermometer of the hotel's
porch is curled into a ball at the bottom, waiting for spring.
After breakfast and several cups of coffee, the painter seemed to have recovered his muse
for the sky was now a wintry blue, bright sunshine.
Digression
I am fascinated by the solitary print on the wall of my room in the Pension . I do not know if it is
a print of a good painting, just that it has fascinated me for several hours – perhaps that
makes the original a good work by definition.
It shows three adults walking almost in line, man woman man, along a beach on a summer
day. At first I thought the three were together but now I am not sure. The woman is perhaps a
little closer to the painter than are the men. Are the men just marching past her?
The woman is timeless but the men are firmly of the 1950s. They are neither young nor old –
wearing hats that are not quite trilbys, not quite panamas, along with white, long-sleeved
shirts, ties, and braces supporting office trousers rolled to mid calf. One holds a cigarette in
his right hand and all three, the woman included, have deck chairs under their left arms. But
where are their jackets?
The men are stiff , formal, almost military, staring into the distance. Not including the woman at
all – not with her. She. her face covered by her hair, is in a short blue sun dress with a white
hem. There is a hint of nakedness beneath. Her deck chair is of bright red stripes in contrast
to the men’s plain white canvas. She is looking down, lifting her sun dress slightly by her right
hand whilst she steps over something. The men do not look at her, nor she at them. They
stare seaward, her head is averted. Is each embarrassed for the other?
I promised myself not to take the tourist photos but .. I am a tourist so I made the walk up to
the lighthouse. It's a steady climb and a family on bikes were going that way too, the men a
long way ahead. They stopped at a vantage point to wait for their womenfolk. The older of the
two men enjoyed a triumphal cigarette.
I have realised recently that my photos are crooked - sloping horizons etc so I tried really hard
to get my tourist pictures of the lighthouse straight - but then realised that the lighthouse in
fact has a very pronounced lean. So do I correct that, or show it as is and have people think
that the photo is crooked?
Well painter man, a better end to the day. Thank you for another majestic sunset. The sea
seemed a little more troubled tonight, snapping and snarling at the shore. Perhaps there is
worse weather on the way. Snow is forecast.
.
I visited the little church in Kloster today. It is very nautical and quite pretty. The organ was
supplied in the 1940s by a Potsdam company. A gravestone showed that one of the islanders
had died at the age of 50, after being deported during WW2. I can't imagine what it must
have been like for him - the long arm of tyranny reaching even as far as this paradise.
Digression. Why are there so few UK tourists to Germany? It is a little expensive now due to
the strength of the euro, but no more so than other European destinations. The Germans are
not unfriendly, just reserved which is a good thing if you consider the state of some of the
UK's unreserved city centres at night.
If they, the Germans, do not greet you like a long lost brother it is simply because you are not.
Perhaps the British are embarrassed by looking at Germany and seeing what the UK was like
a generation or so ago, seeing what they abandoned.
The Germans work hard, drink modestly, eat well and provide excellent service. If a workman
says he will be at your house at 8.00am next Friday to do a job for you, then he will be there
on time and ready to start. If you use a motorway rest room it will be spotlessly clean, as will
your hotel or pension. If you buy something that you are not 100% happy with, then it will be
exchanged without question, without buck-passing, without the excuses that seem to be the
norm in the UK.
The weather is kind, with good warm summers and proper winters. There is much to do and
see. So why don't the Brits come? Perhaps it's the war, or football. Whatever, but you're
missing a lot and remember "what do they know of England who only England know".
Proper snow overnight with more falling - the news on TV is full of it and the journey home
might be difficult if it continues until Monday.
A whole family of deer in the garden behind the hotel this morning, no doubt feeling very
conspicuous against the fresh snow. I bought some bread and found that the seagulls were
quite happy to pose, performing aerobatics in exchange for breakfast.
I ate several evening meals in the Pension bar/restaurant. Good and filling - a year or so ago I
would have thought them very good value for money. The bar had a smattering of local "good
old boys" and, one evening, a couple who I think are staying in the Pension. They had with
them a little jack russell terrier who wasn't quite sure where he was, but was very happy to be
included in whatever they were doing. It's strange that the UK prides itself on being a nation of
dog lovers yet dogs are frowned upon everywhere. In Germany it's not unusual to see a
restaurant owner's dog asleep behind the counter, and dogs walking around department
stores with their owner is a common sight.
The snow continues and the temperature plummets. I made the climb back to the lighthouse in
the evening for some photography. Three pairs of gloves were not quite enough. My camera
stopped working so I headed back down.
The harbours in Kloster and Vitte are frozen over. Perhaps -20c at night?
Monday, and the day of my departure. Kloster harbour is frozen solid so I make my way to
Vitte where a small channel to the mainland has been kept open. The ferry crunches through
it, families of swans walking on the ice, alongside the boat.
At Schaprode, my car resembles an igloo, maybe a foot or so of snow covering most of it. But
it started OK and I began the journey home in the worst weather that I have ever driven in.
Minus 13c, thick mist, ice, hard packed snow, falling snow. My three hour journey took over 6
hours but every buttock-clenched kilometre was worth it. I had had the most peaceful, restful
and thoroughly enjoyable week.
Costs? Pension around €35 per night b&b and a good evening meal for €15. Ferry €20
approx return from Schaprode. Car park about €3 per day.
| HIDDENSEE |
A typical beach scene from
my childhood with the menfolk
in their work clothes – but not
England. The men are too
smart, the woman too sexy.
my childhood with the menfolk
in their work clothes – but not
England. The men are too
smart, the woman too sexy.
Cycle & trailer park at the
ferry terminal, Kloster
ferry terminal, Kloster
The Church at Kloster
| Sunrise & Sunset |
| copyright 1970 - 2012 grahame soden. all rights reserved |
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