Fulda is a town in central Germany, approximately 1 hour northeast of Frankfurt and a few hours north of Munich. During the cold war, this town of 70,000 also happened to be of extreme strategic importance to NATO, being the most easterly point of what was then West Germany. Should the Soviet Bloc attack, the Fulda Gap was thought to be the most likely point at which they would enter. A US tank batallian was stationed here, sacrificial lambs that would pull the US into any conflict concerning the region.
Years later, the Americans are gone and the Soviets have been reduced to bad actors in Command & Conquer games (though to be fair, the Tank Rush was a formidable strategy). Stepping into the brisk night air, I noticed that the downtown sector had already closed (7pm) and snow was softly falling. I would later learn that nearly a half-meter of snow had been dumped on Munich, leaving me happy with the decision to come to town a bit early in what would make this my third visit to this sleepy little German town.
Thomas soon came to pick me up. I had no idea who Thomas was. I had been sitting in a coffee shop waiting for my cousin Anja to pick me up when man approached me asking, "Jacob?"
Thomas it turns out is Anja's fiance, a Bavarian from Munich who had moved up to Fulda for work a half year ago. Bavarians are the German equivalent of Texans, but with their own dialect (even the Germans can't understand them) and of course, a well known propensity to drink. He told me a story of how at one Octoberfest, he was finishing up his fifth liter while the field behind the tent was increasingly filling up with passed out Australians and Italians (hence the name, "Tourist Field"). I took to him immediately. At home, Anja was waiting for us and after dinner, we were joined by her father Dieter, whose couch I would be borrowing for the weekend. I've never met anyone quite like Dieter before. Deep set eyes with an equally deep voice, gray peppering his hair and mustache, always telling jokes and singing. Later, after I thanked him for a breakfast, he quickly replied deadpan, "I am a mother without breasts."
In the morning, Dieter dropped me off in town and I set off to refamiliarize myself with the sights. Fulda is your classic German village, with cobble stoned streets, one proper Cathedral, open air markets, an old city wall, and pubs on nearly every corner. The thing is, in Central Germany you would be hard pressed to find a town that didn't look like this. Its like visiting a postcard, truly quite wonderful.
I walked through the town, mentally noting the coffee shops I would stop in after my brain had completed its freezing process. In some ways, these small German towns represent the picturesque 1950s American towns of Iowa and Wisconsin. Clean and friendly men in ties sit as clerks at grocery stores, butcher shops gleaming bright, people greeting each other in the streets, and not a single Asian in sight. When my mother and sister visited with me here a few years ago, I'm quite sure our net 2 Asian presense set some kind of record. In a few weeks, the square will be filled with tents selling hot wine, but today I had it largely to myself. I noticed a line of Germans standing outside of a bar smoking and later asked my cousin Peter about it. 6 months ago, Germany's first smoking ban went into effect.
"It cannot last," began my cousin. "People will stay home and the government will change."
"But, " I countered, "these laws have all met with success in New York, Ireland, England - all the big traditional smoking centers."
"But not here in Germany. We will stay home before we go out if we cannot smoke."
The sentiment was wide ranged, with many pubs and bars empty, people electing to stay inside or to go to special smoking bars. But I'm not so sure that it won't take. Even Dieter and Uta have banned their children's smoking when they visit, making them go to a small clutter filled room at the back of the house with the window wide open, not the most idyllic place for a smoke. Anja's fiance Thomas has decreed their apartment smoke free, forcing her out into the night air. I hated to point it out, but it looks to be a losing battle (with good cause, no doubt).
Understand, this is a country that loves their vice. It is against the law - the purity law (an unfortunate name, given the history...) - if you brew a beer and add sugar to it. After 11pm, television channels start broadcasting pornography, not even attractive porn, with overweight women in black leather and bald men with apples in their mouths. Just last year, I was on the autobahn in a car hurtling over 160mph, the driver not wearing a seatbelt because face it, all a seatbelt is going to do if you crash at 160mph is give your the parents the option of burying you in two coffins. So the smoking thing isn't going to die down any time soon. I watched in awe - true, God given awe - as my cousin Anja smoked an entire cigarrette in only two puffs.
"You know, " I stated matter of factly, "if you smoked like that in college, people would not have let you near their joint."
Stranger still, the smoking laws allow an establishment to offer smoking if it creates a clear divide between non smoking and smoking (a problem with the older, smaller pubs), but doesn't offer how large that divide has to be. One cafe I wandered into featured 3 tables on the ground floor (non smoking) and almost 30 tables upstairs, each one filled with smoking Germans. A blind person must have decorated it - small pillars with chinese script stood in the middle of the floor, surrounded by a wall pinned with straw cowboy hats. The menu, naturally featured itallian food with cuban drinks. I think the proprietors figured if you are the one place in Fulda that can offer smoking, you can put whatever you want in the place and Germans won't care. I told this to Peter and Anja later and they reacted like I had discovered Shangrila.
"Where is this place? Are you sure? In Fulda?" In the end, I drew them a map, happy to know something about their city that even they didn't know.
Peter is a giant, taller than me by a good 4 inches and outweighing me easily by 30lbs. He also happens to be marryied to one of the tiniest, sweetest, most patient women I'd ever had the pleasure to meet in Katrina, now a proud mother to a huge 4 month old.
Peter and Katrina can best be described by one singular moment. At dinner, as Peter's boy was attempting to suck on his entire fist, Peter leaned over to me, nodded to his boy and whispered, "Fist fucker."
Katrina just rolled her eyes, muttering, "Peter...", picked up her fork, and stabbed him in the leg.
Now if that isn't love, I don't know what is.
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