Tales from Germany

Sunday the 24th of May The faithful gather for outside the Roman Cathedral, dating from the fourth century, in Trier. (c) Anli Serfontein, 2009 Bishop Stephan Ackermann, Germany's newest and youngest bishop, exists his official residence to go to the Cathedral for the official ceremony. (c) Anli Serfontein, 2009 L ooking for a shady place to sit down in Trier on a hot Sunday, the church bells started peeling at full volume from all directions. Trier has more churches on a square kilometre than any place I know, but today was different: The new bishop of Trier, Stephan Ackermann was being inducted. And that is when we ran into a procession of Roman Catholic priests and bishops. In the hot-humid early summer air ancient traditions mixed with modern times. The procession was headed by a priest carrying a huge old Bible. All the great religions of the world are based on scriptures and this symbolised 2,000 years of Christian tradition. We are just small cogs in the wheel of time. Trier...

„Basteln, Wandern and Putzen” is the name of the second edition of my book in Germany. The name comes from a chapter in my book listing the things I negatively associate with living in Germany. "She pokes fun at her own inability to spotlessly clean her house, make anything with her hands or go on compulsory but torturous hikes - all prerequisites to living in the country", the publicity blurb said. With some wonderfully warm days here in Trier, the wandern (hiking) season is truly upon us. With May and June full of public holidays, the season is traditionally opened on May 1, when families go on loooong hiking outings with friends. It is definitely a group activity, which involves a picnic or a meal somewhere. As I wrote in my book I am completely allergic to this type of activity. As I sat on my stoep with my laptop last Friday, Labour Day, trying to overcome my writer’s block and write in some wonderful spring weather: group after hiking group went past our ...

This week again brought the realisation how we have completely come to accept a Europe without borders and the enormous advantages of such a Europe. In the run up to the NATO Summit, Germany reactivated its border controls with neighbouring countries and those of us living in border areas felt the effect. Yet it is only 14 years ago this month that Schengen came into operation and the border controls between EU countries fell away. The first borders to go were between the Benelux, France and Germany before in the last decade most others followed suit. For me, as a South African, it brought so many advantages and freedom! When I first arrived here in 1995, I needed a visa for Luxembourg – to put in petrol or go to the post office or the cinema. Yes it is true! And every time we drove over to Luxembourg we had to grab the purse with Luxembourg money. And if we drove a bit further to shop in France we needed three purses and three currencies for a day trip. Living only 15 kilo...

The art of breadmaking and baking in this country is on par with their engineering skills. German expats and those of us who have lived in Germany for years, all miss German bread once we are out of the country. It is one of the first thing German expat communities do when they are abroad, set up their own bakeries. My husband had his best ever pretzels outside of Bavaria, at the German bakery in Cape Town. Now one thing that the German bakers even do better is to take a bread recipe from anywhere in the world and turn it into a masterpiece. I spent weeks in Tuscany trying to find a Ciabiatta that was not dry and tasteless. My favourite in this area is with feta cheese and olives on top. Add to that a glass of red wine and it is a meal. Or take baguette, which is big in our area on the border to France. The bakeries here have all sorts of healthy baguettes with muesli, with all sorts of nuts and corns, with cheese. A feast! And on Fridays I buy organic health bread from the market here...

The Leipzig Book Fair which started yesterday is a real feast for authors and readers. Unlike Frankfurt which is THE International Book Fair for rights, Leipzig has a Carnival atmosphere and is designed for readers to hear, see, meet and even touch (well shuffle and push past) authors. It is tangible and real, whereas Frankfurt is haughty and more for agents and publishers and VIP authors and DEALS. 1,900 (mostly German) authors are reading at the Fair and all over Leipzig, as part of the “Leipzig liest” – Leipzig Reading -festival. The organisers are expecting 120,000 visitors and there are exhibitors from 38 countries. I displayed my book From Rock to Kraut there (that's me and my book), last year just as it came onto the market. Well, display is a great word, it was sort of hidden behind a bookcase at Books on Demand’s (BoD) stand and they probably did not think that I would travel across Germany just to check it out . But if you pushed a few people out of the way ...

The Leipzig Book Fair is a feast for readers and authors. It has a magic, carnival-like atmosphere and is not as haughty as Frankfurt. I will be at the Fair on Saturday 14th March. Last year I had my first taste of Book Fairs in Leipzig and took this impressive picture. The German Edition of my book Basteln, Wandern and Putzen : From South Africa to Trier - Living among the Krauts , will be on display with Vito von Eichborn's Edition BoD - Hall 3 D 200

I am a theatre buff and some of my earliest childhood memories are of being taken to the theatre in Johannesburg. One of the joys of living in Germany is its rich theatre tradition. Even a small city like Trier with its 100,000 inhabitants has a small tripartite theatre. However despite the money being spent on the physical structures, I believe that the vast majority of German actors are lousy. The biggest torture for anyone coming from the Anglo-Saxon world is to watch original English-language plays being performed in German, especially Shakespeare. As far as I am concerned most German actors just can’t do Shakespeare or any monologues. If they are angry they scream and if they are emotional or moved they whisper that you can’t hear a word of what they say in the third row from the front. I don’t know whether it is the language or their training but German actors just don’t know how to use the variety in their vocal cords. They obviously have never been trained in the subtle differe...

The Pope, or I should rather say the German Pope, caused the Germans a lot of headaches this week. The week started off with the influential political and cultural magazine Der Spiegel putting the Pope on their cover, saying a German Pope embarrasses the Catholic Church. They went further to dissect him and his views in detail. The problems the Germans have with this conservative Pope, is that denying the Holocaust is a serious punishable offense in this country. It seemed that years in the Vatican had made the Pope forget this fact. Why else would he have pardoned a Holocaust denier? In fact he was called the Panzer Cardinal by his detractors here in Germany long before he became Pope, because of the way he bulldozed through his conservative theology. By Tuesday last week, the German Chancellor, Angela Merkel entered the fray more or less telling the Pope to sort out the mess. She got a lot of flak for that, but she had to save Germany’s reputation. This Pope was d...