Fahrradvergnügen

I'm still here, dear readers, and still getting good work done, and still doing well. But I keep trying to distill complex ideas (probably imperfectly processed ones) into blog form with limited success. So today, instead of a complex idea, I bring you a single word: Fahrradvergnügen: the pleasures of doing things on a bicycle. (The literal English is the slightly cryptic, vaguely racy "bicycle pleasure.") And this is what I have been enjoying on the machine pictured above. It's old, and the materials are simple, but it's all still functional and likely to remain so, as I was reassured by the technician who looked it over when I got the tires replaced. This undertaking was necessitated by the rear tire suddenly giving out one evening. The aged texture it thus revealed (and the experience of hauling the bike to the nearest bus stop) convinced me that replacing both simultaneously might be advisable. This misadventure notwithstanding, the Fahrradvergnügen has been considerable. The bike paid for itself in the fares it saved me while I waited for my student pass to be processed, and it gets me about 90 minutes per work day of enforced fresh air and exercise. Not only that, but it gets me all sorts of independence. I can get where I need to go without worrying about train schedules! I can explore the countryside! I can sail right past any hecklers and oglers! And thanks to German culture and infrastructure, I can ride my bike in designated lanes (not always, but often) and park it in designated racks... or, in a pinch, simply hitch it to a lamppost.

O Brethren of Song!

Parish church, Finthen

This past weekend saw me out and about with the choir I've joined--or, more accurately, with the choir that's adopted me. I've only had a few rehearsals, so while I've shared the intimate experience of singing together with everyone, I'm still learning names. So a weekend of double performances was a good way of immersing myself further in the choir as well as our repertoire. Our first appearance was at the yearly meeting of the incorporated choirs of Rheinland-Pfalz. The short version of explaining that is: choral societies! Lots of them! Organized by region! Or, as my seat neighbor explained it to me: "This is German culture for you... German culture the way many Germans don't know it anymore. It still has roots in the countryside, but you don't see it in the cities so much."

"Eine echte New Yorkerin" and her bicycle

As of Friday morning, the above is the view from the halfway point of my morning ride to the archives: an overlook point on a railway bridge where I can pull my bike over for a drink of water and a look at the Rhine. I acquired a reasonably-priced secondhand bicycle from a nice man in a nearby village, whose wife didn't need her bike anymore, and who was delighted to meet "a real New Yorker." So after a trial run and a nice chat, the bike was mine. The archive only does half-days on the weekend, so after an exciting Saturday of finding a house the leper hospital once owned and finding a reason to re-date the said hospital's account book (!) I set out to make the most of a gorgeous early-autumn afternoon. There will be plenty of chilly November Saturdays in which to write my dissertation... or thus, at least, I rationalized, as I set off along the marked bike trails surrounding Mainz and Wiesbaden. These paths wander through villages and through vineyards, along the river, past families and couples, people working in their gardens, people walking their dogs, and of course, other people on bicycles.

Heading out of Mainz...

And finding out why this is called wine country:

Fähnchencreuz outside Wiesbaden:

When I saw a sign for the "bird's nest" outlook point, I decided to cycle to it, but wasn't quite sure what I was looking for, until this appeared on the horizon:

Zum Schloss? Zum Schloss!

<iframe width="640" height="360" src="//www.youtube.com/embed/TdRbjlsp7uM" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe>

The above is an approximation of my interaction with the employee of Darmstadt's public transit networks whom I asked about the best way to get from the train station to the city's archives. I haven't yet adjusted to castles being things to get directions by. But I verified that, indeed, his directions consisted of: "Take streetcar line 3 to the castle. Then walk through the castle. Then you will be at the archives." ...To the castle!

Mahlzeit! Extracurriculars in the archives

A face I often make at 14th-century handwriting

It hardly seems possible that I've had barely over a week in the archives. I've learned how to pace myself to stay there (productively) the whole day, although learning how to regularly have productive evenings afterwards will take more work. I've also read what seems like a daunting quantity of fourteenth-century contracts, though these are contained in a slim bound volume. I've uncovered several unexpected themes that excite me (oral culture! legal process as ritual!) and several prospective tasks which are... less exciting. (Since no one's yet created a map or graphs to keep track of the smaller hospitals' territorial possessions, guess what I get to do?) As of today, I feel that I've also had a breakthrough in my social relationships with the other archive regulars. A word of explanation: as the testimony of other researchers makes clear, I have landed in an unusually friendly archive. The size of it contributes to this, I'm sure: there's only one table for all the researchers, and if there are three of us to a side, polite elbow- and-document-shifting is necessary. Greetings and farewells were nearly the only words (besides mild jokes about scribal handwriting around the table, and shared Mozart nerdery with a musicologist) I'd exchanged with most of my fellow-toilers. The affable Herr H. was an exception: in a shared Kaffeepause in the lobby, we discovered that we shared a passion for opera, and that I'm about the same age as his daughter. Since then he's taken to uttering small English phrases at me with extreme gravity at intervals, in addition to more genuinely casual German remarks. When he informed the Herr Professor who is his seat neighbor that I was working on Very Old Documents Indeed, the latter kindly offered to take a look at any bits of handwriting I might find especially difficult. But it was not until today that I discovered the shibboleth for more shared interactions.

If Spain is that way, where's my path?

The municipal archives of Mainz are closed on Thursdays. In future, I'm sure I'll find productive ways to take advantage of this--writing, working on my databases, going to other archives--but today, I decided to frolic on this enforced day off. So I googled "Wanderwege Mainz," found a database of German walking/hiking trails searchable by starting point and desired distance (because of course such a thing exists) and found myself a Wanderweg. This helpful database noted that it was recommended to use a map when following their routes. It also made a note of how the routes were marked. I tend to think of "recommended maps" as the sort of thing that one scrutinizes anxiously for about 15 minutes, stuffs into one's bag in order to use the hands-free signs, and then stuffs at the back of a drawer for about 15 years. Well. Fortunately, I bought one anyway, on the principle that I could use it to plan independent expeditions. (The train station bookshop had a section devoted to maps of walking/hiking and bicycle trails. Have you gathered yet that the Germans are serious about this whole Wandern business?) Arrived in Gonsenheim, the village where my route was to begin, I walked in a circle twice without seeing any of the promised signs. And then I saw the sign on the left: the little yellow seashell on the blue background. This was a sign I recognized: such symbols mark the roads to Santiago de Compostela. Three weeks of walking through Spain trained me to greet these signs with joy, and so I decided to follow this one. And I was rewarded, for I soon began to recognize landmarks on my map, though I never did find the alleged path markings.

In which I enter the archives

I've just finished my first day at the archives, and I am brain-dead. I also feel as though my eyes and throat are still self-protectively tightened against the dust of ages (it really is the dust of ages.) But--I just finished my first day in the archives! I'll need to build up my dust-resistance, but this is really it: I am actually obtaining and reading the original documents relevant to my research! This is both thrilling and terrifying. I'm sure most (all?) fellow graduate students can relate to the horrible fear of Doing Things Wrong (what if I am not looking at these documents efficiently and intelligently?!?) I also had to overcome irrational fears: for instance, that my ringing of a small bell next to the imposingly solid door of the archives would result in a "Who goes there?!" interrogation. It resulted in the door being buzzed open, and a very pleasant woman giving me the paperwork (and the directory of relevant documents compiled in the 1920s and typed up in the 70s) which I needed. I also half expected an archivist to pop up from somewhere to ask if I was really qualified to do this. When the archivist did pop up over my shoulder, however, it was to ask how I was doing. He then proceeded to inform me that most of the extant hospital documents were account books (this I knew,) but that since I was doing social history, I might be interested in the leper hospital's chartulary, which contained, among other tidbits, information about one time in the fifteenth century when a leper, without permission, left the hospital to attend the carnival celebrations of Fastnacht. To this day, Mainz takes the carnival season very seriously, and I can't wait to find out all available details about the adventures of the partying leper. I'm also glad to know that Mainz's chief archivist has fifteenth-century leper stories at his fingertips. More soon!