Saturday, June 10, 2017

A Moment In Patriarchy-Land: Sunny Days in Berchtesgaden

My husband and I spent a comfortable night in the busy, friendly sort of Bavarian inn where there's no soap in the bathroom and no internet in the room--the rooms are opened with actually keys--but the smiles are friendly, the service fast. The innkeeper--who gave me the cutest excuse, namely, "Oh, we only have internet here in the dining area, because otherwise we never see our guests! First it was TV, and now it's WLAN"--isn't a hundred and two. The password he just gave me indicates he's about my age. He hadn't gotten around to checking us in last night, and did so as he handed us our boiled eggs. 
"Ah, Sie Sind Der Professor!" he said, lingering on each syllable, eyes round, turning to my husband with the most ingratiating smile I have ever seen. He all but bowed and I just know he was wondering where he'd put his white gloves. It had been a long time, he told us, since they had a professor there! A real professor!
He nodded at me, the little woman.
If I'd have mentioned that by the way, I'm a professor too, the poor man would have dropped the coffeepot he was holding.
After he wandered back to the kitchen, my husband said, "See! That's how professors used to be treated. Back in the nineteen-sixties."
The Austrians at the next table were clamoring about how they couldn't wait to see the Eagle's Nest--Hitler's hideaway in bad days gone by. 
Last night we sat on a balcony at the home of friends, enjoying the sight of snow-capped Alps, green valleys, forests, sheep munching their way through the green. It's glorious. I mean, you don't say "pretty," when you're looking at Berchtesgaden. It's on-beyond-breathtaking; it's epic gorgeous everywhere you look. 
Enough to have made me wonder, this morning, in my coffeed-up state, if it's remotely possible that Hitler had a sense of beauty. You wouldn't think so, from looking at his early drawings, about which a friend once remarked: "Right away, you see there's no love in those lines. He doesn't love what he's drawing. That's why you look at the picture and feel bored." She's right. He must have picked the place strategically, not from a love of the mountains, rearing up like ancient guardians, and the lovely Bavarian houses with the wood-paneled balconies, the roses creeping up the sides, the windowboxes exploding with floral color. I never come here without a sense of unbearable contrast: the loveliness of the place and the evil genius, the canker in the rose, who held court for too long, long enough to create a tourist industry decades later. As we sat on the balcony with our friends last night, the light fading, two small electric lights appeared on a mountain peak at some distance. I asked whether that were a hiker's hut.
"Oh, no, that's the Eagle's Nest!" said our host. "It's a restaurant now."
"Some day," I said, "Mara-a-Lago will be America's Eagle's Nest." Tourists will come--I can see a cross between the mad king Ludwig's castle and the beach. Yes, bad guys make good tourism--'tis the way of the world. 
But our jovial innkeeper isn't a bad guy. Just a guy who doesn't think. The one thing he has in common with Trump, probably.

No comments:

Post a Comment