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More from Graf
Dec. 2nd, 2007 11:02 pmGrafenwör: 01 Dec 2007
2000 local
It’s wet here, Seattle in the winter wet, and more. Not that there is more rain than a Seattle winter, but the soil is... soil. At Ft. Lewis, it’s glacial till; battered pieces of granite which were chewed up and spit out ages ago and left to pack themselves together.
Here, it’s goopy. The grass is flat, and lank. The actual ground an ochreish yellow, and cloying. I want it to get colder. Here, where I am sleeping in heated quarters (on a cot) and not out of doors for more than twenty minutes at a time; unless by choice, colder would be better.
I also want the snow. I want to see Bavaria covered in white. I want to have a solid image of green trees and shrouded hills the next time I’m singing, “O Tannenbaum”.
Graf is a strange place. Cp. Aachen, where I am now, is cluster of brick buildings, divided in half, and each of those halves a single, long,, room. It’s a subdivided longhouse. The near distance is gunnery ranges. Any weapon the Army has is fired here, and at all hours of the day. Right now I can hear the steady beat of guys letting 3-30 rounds rip out of .50 cal. machine guns. There is no other sound like it.
To go with it is the flat, ripping, sound of the SAW, and the concussive boom of tank main guns and the rolling thump of artillery. One has the feeling of being in the near rear of a small battlefield.
In the town itself (where we went this morning. I had a wonderful pastry. A stack of thick sheets of streudel dough [MS Word doesn’t know streudel] wrapped around a hazelnuss paste, and dressed in sugar and chopped hazelnuss, with a cup of hot chocolate. Wonderful. I adore German pastries, mostly because they aren’t too sweet, and go well with both chocolate, and coffee) there is the oddity of seeing normal people going about their everyday lives to the echo of the guns.
So we are the important backstop. The civilian interpreters outnumber us(a lot), and probably speak better English than we speak Russian, but we can speak Army and also know the culture. It should be a good couple of weeks, though it will be at least two days before I have any idea of just how busy/useful I’ll be.
As I told Joe, usually this sort of thing is a week of feeling useless, and then all of a sudden, in one brief flurry of speaking, one earns one’s keep for the whole thing.
02 Dec
2100 hrs
I forgot to mention that I did a stupid when I was packing. I thought I had two lenses with me; a 17-35, f2.8/3.5 and a 28-300 f3.5/6.3. What I actually brought wasn’t the 28-300, but rather the 35-70 f2.8. This was not my best bet. It’s not terrible, but it means I have a more limited ability to 1: isolate the subject and 2: bring the distant object close to me.
Oh, well, it’s a challenge, and an opportunity.
We got to do some small amount of work today, but the fact of the matter is we are going to be a trifle extra and supernumery. There are more translators than there are Russians who will need to be translated for (esp. as they will be in small groups). We aren’t completely pointless, we speak military (and a lot of military Russian too. Anyone out there know what “interoperability means in a military context? That’s a bit more esoteric than most things but a lot of people aren’t to know how to say “machine gun squad” either).
And Joe and I headed into town as well. The cultural and military museum was open, so we went in. Lots of relgious art, some of it quite old. The mix was eclectic, some icons, some statues, a few carvings and a number of woodcuts and paintings.
The best of the paintings was a picture of Mary Magdalen. The style looked to be about the time frame of Rembrandt. The colors were rich, the light moody. She was reclining, with a book propped open on a skull; lying on it's side, the eye-sockets away from her, the mandible gone, and the teeth of the upper jaw visible.
Her body was, mostly, disproportionate. The feet weren't where the legs were leading, the toes were too long, the arms loosely structured and the fingers almost braiding themselves. But her head, neck, shoulder and breast revealed by the drape of her clothing were perfect.
The museum also had a good deal about the post (most of the military side was about Graf) It's almost 100 years old, (and more than half of that time the US has been in possession of it). When the Bavarians joined the German Empire they decided they needed a third Corps. They looked for a place to train the new units and decided Graf was to swampy to be useful.
Looking around the other places were also flawed (the reasons given weren't made clear) and more examination led to the conclusion that drainage, and good barracks would make it serviceable. If you ask me, they were right the first time.
Got some more splendid pastry. Joe was croggled when I changed my order. I’d seen a tart, full of dark, blue-black goo. “Is that poppy seed?”
“Yes.”
I promptly ordered a piece. Ah, Bavaria, practically Czechoslovakia. I love poppy seeds, and this was just the right amount. A latte to give it counterpoint and I was in a small piece of paradise.
We wandered around some more and saw a flier for a prize giveaway of some sort. But neither of us could figure out what was going on in the middle of the evening. It was labeled, XXXXXschüssen, mit Docht (looked it up, then forgot it, and now can’t find it again... we’ll see if we can head by the notice boards again). As best we can figure out there was some sort of contest, in which the shooting of a candle wick was the object.
Because of the nature of our shifts, we’ll probably be heading into town a few more times as the walk back wasn't that bad. It’s that, or sit in the billets and stare at the walls.
2000 local
It’s wet here, Seattle in the winter wet, and more. Not that there is more rain than a Seattle winter, but the soil is... soil. At Ft. Lewis, it’s glacial till; battered pieces of granite which were chewed up and spit out ages ago and left to pack themselves together.
Here, it’s goopy. The grass is flat, and lank. The actual ground an ochreish yellow, and cloying. I want it to get colder. Here, where I am sleeping in heated quarters (on a cot) and not out of doors for more than twenty minutes at a time; unless by choice, colder would be better.
I also want the snow. I want to see Bavaria covered in white. I want to have a solid image of green trees and shrouded hills the next time I’m singing, “O Tannenbaum”.
Graf is a strange place. Cp. Aachen, where I am now, is cluster of brick buildings, divided in half, and each of those halves a single, long,, room. It’s a subdivided longhouse. The near distance is gunnery ranges. Any weapon the Army has is fired here, and at all hours of the day. Right now I can hear the steady beat of guys letting 3-30 rounds rip out of .50 cal. machine guns. There is no other sound like it.
To go with it is the flat, ripping, sound of the SAW, and the concussive boom of tank main guns and the rolling thump of artillery. One has the feeling of being in the near rear of a small battlefield.
In the town itself (where we went this morning. I had a wonderful pastry. A stack of thick sheets of streudel dough [MS Word doesn’t know streudel] wrapped around a hazelnuss paste, and dressed in sugar and chopped hazelnuss, with a cup of hot chocolate. Wonderful. I adore German pastries, mostly because they aren’t too sweet, and go well with both chocolate, and coffee) there is the oddity of seeing normal people going about their everyday lives to the echo of the guns.
So we are the important backstop. The civilian interpreters outnumber us(a lot), and probably speak better English than we speak Russian, but we can speak Army and also know the culture. It should be a good couple of weeks, though it will be at least two days before I have any idea of just how busy/useful I’ll be.
As I told Joe, usually this sort of thing is a week of feeling useless, and then all of a sudden, in one brief flurry of speaking, one earns one’s keep for the whole thing.
02 Dec
2100 hrs
I forgot to mention that I did a stupid when I was packing. I thought I had two lenses with me; a 17-35, f2.8/3.5 and a 28-300 f3.5/6.3. What I actually brought wasn’t the 28-300, but rather the 35-70 f2.8. This was not my best bet. It’s not terrible, but it means I have a more limited ability to 1: isolate the subject and 2: bring the distant object close to me.
Oh, well, it’s a challenge, and an opportunity.
We got to do some small amount of work today, but the fact of the matter is we are going to be a trifle extra and supernumery. There are more translators than there are Russians who will need to be translated for (esp. as they will be in small groups). We aren’t completely pointless, we speak military (and a lot of military Russian too. Anyone out there know what “interoperability means in a military context? That’s a bit more esoteric than most things but a lot of people aren’t to know how to say “machine gun squad” either).
And Joe and I headed into town as well. The cultural and military museum was open, so we went in. Lots of relgious art, some of it quite old. The mix was eclectic, some icons, some statues, a few carvings and a number of woodcuts and paintings.
The best of the paintings was a picture of Mary Magdalen. The style looked to be about the time frame of Rembrandt. The colors were rich, the light moody. She was reclining, with a book propped open on a skull; lying on it's side, the eye-sockets away from her, the mandible gone, and the teeth of the upper jaw visible.
Her body was, mostly, disproportionate. The feet weren't where the legs were leading, the toes were too long, the arms loosely structured and the fingers almost braiding themselves. But her head, neck, shoulder and breast revealed by the drape of her clothing were perfect.
The museum also had a good deal about the post (most of the military side was about Graf) It's almost 100 years old, (and more than half of that time the US has been in possession of it). When the Bavarians joined the German Empire they decided they needed a third Corps. They looked for a place to train the new units and decided Graf was to swampy to be useful.
Looking around the other places were also flawed (the reasons given weren't made clear) and more examination led to the conclusion that drainage, and good barracks would make it serviceable. If you ask me, they were right the first time.
Got some more splendid pastry. Joe was croggled when I changed my order. I’d seen a tart, full of dark, blue-black goo. “Is that poppy seed?”
“Yes.”
I promptly ordered a piece. Ah, Bavaria, practically Czechoslovakia. I love poppy seeds, and this was just the right amount. A latte to give it counterpoint and I was in a small piece of paradise.
We wandered around some more and saw a flier for a prize giveaway of some sort. But neither of us could figure out what was going on in the middle of the evening. It was labeled, XXXXXschüssen, mit Docht (looked it up, then forgot it, and now can’t find it again... we’ll see if we can head by the notice boards again). As best we can figure out there was some sort of contest, in which the shooting of a candle wick was the object.
Because of the nature of our shifts, we’ll probably be heading into town a few more times as the walk back wasn't that bad. It’s that, or sit in the billets and stare at the walls.
