Three Takeaways From Three Weeks In Germany

Those who know me are keenly aware of my admiration for Germany’s society and culture. I have spent a month in Germany studying the language and culture at the Goethe Institute in Munich for six of the past seven years. You will read a lot of high praise in the following post, but I am not intending to present modern-day Germany as some kind of utopia; it most certainly is not. The country is deeply divided over Germany’s role in the EU, immigration, and other issues, and like most modern democracies is experiencing a troubling rise in radical far-right political movements. So much for the negatives …

 

1. Germany is controlling Covid 19, including the Delta variant. 

 

Upon my arrival in Munich in mid-September, the first thing I noticed was that 100% of the people in the airport and on the S-Bahn train into the city were wearing masks. In Germany, cloth masks don’t count; everyone had either a surgical mask or the EU equivalent of a KN-95. When I checked in to my hotel, the first request after my passport was for proof of full vaccination. I had the CDC card ready, so I had no issue, but I did ask what they did if a customer checking in did not have this proof. The response was that they had a testing facility on site with complimentary rapid testing.

 

My traditional first stop after check-in and a shower is always Zum Augustiner, an old traditional Bierstube on the pedestrian street between Carlsplatz and Marienplatz. There I enjoy my first glass of Augustiner Vollbier Hell, the most popular beer in Munich, which is not exported outside of Bavaria and is easily the best beer I have ever tasted. Arriving at the front door, I instantly realized that things were different. First, proof of full vaccination was required to get in the door. Then you were given a contact tracing card, upon which you entered your table number, arrival time, phone number, and address in Germany. Over the following weeks I came to learn that this was the policy everywhere in Munich, with no exceptions, encompassing restaurants, beer halls, outdoor beer gardens, clubs, museums, and hotels. You literally could not dine in at McDonalds without proof of vaccination.

 

I was surprised to learn that around 18% of adult Germans say they will never get the vaccination. However, in exercising that freedom of choice, they accept that they can not participate in virtually any public activity. With that laser focus on mediation measures, you would think that Covid was rampant in Munich. Not so. Last week in the USA, the area with the highest Covid positivity rate was Alaska, with 87 positives per 100,000 residents per day. In greater Munich, population 1.6M, the positivity rate per 100,000 residents was 2 per week. Pop-up rapid testing sites were everywhere, including all department stores, and all were free of charge. As a country of 83 million people, Germany has roughly the same number of daily new Covid infections and death as my home state of Oregon, population 4.6 million.

 

2. Germany is serious about battling climate change through conservation. 

 

Germany has long had one of the most far-reaching and successful recycling programs, in addition to near universal power-conservation technologies. Virtually every apartment bulding and hotel has motion-activated hallway lighting. Escalators almost never run continuously; they too are motion-activated except in the busiest locations. Germany has by far the most privately generated solar power of any EU country, with the power companies required to purchase surplus privately-generated electricity at market rates.

 

In the last few years, the country has made a real commitment to a cultural change focused on conservation, rather than the lip service that many industrialized countries pass off as environmental awareness. Germany has a program called Re: Imagine, in which recycling is the last element rather than the first. The signage is all over the public spaces like train stations, and reads: Re: Imagine: Re: Think, Re: Duce, Re: Use, Re: Cycle. The goal is nothing short of changing the way the German society looks at consumption and conservation of any and all resources. 

 

3. Oktoberfest 2021 was canceled. Somebody forgot to tell the Bavarians.

 

Unbeknownst to me, my first Saturday in Munich would have been the first day of Oktoberfest. Since the weather that day was decidedly not typical Munch in September (74F and sunny), I canceled my reservation at a dine-in restaurant and headed to the Augustiner Keller Biergarten, the second biggest beer garden in the world with just under 5,000 seats. As I approached the entrance (with vaccination check and contact tracing card, naturally) I saw the traditional horse-drawn wagon bringing in the wooden barrels of Oktoberfest beer, just like the big parade to d’Wiesn (Theresienwiese, the Oktoberfest grounds.) Inside, the place was completely full; it took me about 15 minutes to find a table with only two occupants, who graciously welcomed me to their table. All of the standard Oktoberfest shenanigans were on full display, including guys (and ladies) standing on their table a chugging an entire Maß (liter mug) of beer in one drink, hundreds of folks singing traditional Bavarian drinking songs at the top of their lungs, and drinking lots of beer. The only thing missing was the tables full of noisy, shit-faced Italians and roving bands of crazy Aussies.

 

Over the next three weeks, this scene was played out in every beer hall and beer garden I frequented. At the traditional Oktoberfest, every “tent” has a band that plays all day and evening every day. These bands were re-purposed to all of the beer brand’s indoor and outdoor halls and gardens, so there was traditional Bavarian music literally everywhere daily.

October 13, 2021

Portland, OR

The Masks of Portland

 

Greeting from the "anarchist jurisdiction" of Portland, OR. Here's a sampling of the 99% of our folks who wear masks, and the creative ways they match their clothing and/or send a message ...

Solid State: The Story of Abbey Road and the End of the Beatles

Kenneth Womack is arguably the premier Beatles scholar on the planet, having written no fewer than nine books on the Fab Four, including an exhaustive two-volume biography of the Beatles’ legendary producer, George Martin. I do not use the word “scholar” lightly. Womack’s books are extensively researched, and are attributed with literally hundreds of detailed footnotes. He also writes for the on line magazine Salon.com, typically on the anniversaries of an album release or other noteworthy event in Beatles history. It was at the end of one of these, an article celebrating the anniversary of the Beatles November 1964 appearance on the Ed Sullivan Show, that his two latest Beatles books were mentioned. The title of the first intrigued me: Solid State: The Story of Abbey Road and the End of the Beatles.

 

Abbey Road has long been my favorite Beatles album, and I would have likely read it anyway, but it was the “Solid State” that really got my attention. From the book I learned that before Abbey Road, all of the Beatles albums were recorded on a 4-track tape recorder, with the genius George Martin creating the intricate multi-instrumental and vocal stylings of albums like Sgt. Pepper using track bouncing and countless other innovative studio tricks. Abbey Road Studios was seriously behind the times in studio mixing and recording technology, so in the months before the Beatles started working on Abbey Road, they had upgraded to a more modern 8-track recorder. This also necessitated a new mixing console, as the one they had used for years was a custom-built deck that had only four outputs, whereas the new recorder would require eight. In designing the new mixing board, the engineers decided to use all transistors in the board’s electronics, rather than the vacuum tubes (“valves” in Brit-speak) that were in the old board. This gave the recordings a very different sound, with tighter, deeper bass notes and far less distortion, lending the music a more open, clear tonality. The change is starkly apparent from the opening notes of Come Together on side one.

 

When Abbey Road was released, it did not meet with universal praise. Quite the contrary. Many reviewers panned it, not only because they didn’t like the song compositions (they didn’t) but because of the sound of the recording. “There's just something odd about the sound of this record” opined one reviewer, while another put it even more directly: “It just doesn’t sound like the Beatles.” It was the sound of the new fully transistorized (Sold State) mixing console.

 

Womack’s Abbey Road book is a fascinating song-by-song look at the Beatles creative process on this, their final effort. They went to sometimes astonishing lengths to achieve perfection, or as close to it as possible. There are too many examples to list here (read the book!), but they include Paul spending two full weeks getting the vocal to Maxwell’s Silver Hammer to his satisfaction, George re-recording his overdubbed multiple guitar parts on Here Comes the Sun over fifty times, and the literal weeks of rehearsal of the three-part harmonies that grace the famous side-two medley, painstaking taught by George Martin.

 

The over 100 pages devoted to a detailed description of the recording and assembling of that famous medley are, to me, the most interesting of the book. I vowed not to listen to Abbey Road until I had finished reading Solid State, and when I finally put it on the stereo I was simply blown away. I immediately listened to it a second time, through very good headphones, and was doubly impressed.

 

Read this fantastic book, and put on Abbey Road. You’ll never hear it the same way again.

March 18, 2021

Portland, OR