Hippie ein Deutschland

Guten tog from Germany where I arrived a few days ago after a great stretch of eight days of mountain time near Vail that included four consecutive days of powder skiing, and eight days of beach time in Pensacola,Florida which included one instance of clumsily falling off a paddle board in full view of an Easter brunch dining audience of a waterfront restaurant.  In both instances I am abundantly fortunate to have friends with homes in these places who generously allow me to stay in their homes. Thank you, Tom/Jane and Shannon/Matt for contributing to a wonderful stretch of relaxation, reading, cooking and losing track of days of the week.

If you flew over northern Germany and dropped a rock from the plane, wherever that rock lands is very similar to where I am.  The middle of nowhere exists also in Germany.  The last sight of any population of people or a German pub was yesterday morning approximately 20 miles from here. At this moment, I am at a place called SeminaHaus, a small retreat/workshop center located in the agricultural north region of the country.  In German, SeminaHaus means “way the hell out there.”

Cadenberg, Germany

If you read my “Escape from Kipepeo prison” blog fromJanuary, you might recall the German proprietor of the guest house from which I made a daring escape. My taxi driver in this story, I’m fairly certain, was her sister.

We didn’t get off to a loving start. Earlier in the morning,I re-read the arrival instructions for this workshop which indicated a three hour advance notice for the taxi company is requested. I clearly missed that cutoff, but ultimately it’s a taxi company and calculated that last minute requests probably aren’t that irregular. I called just before I boarded the train, about 90 minutes ahead of time.

“Do you speak English?” I asked when the call was answered.

“If you must,” said the grumpy voice of a man or a woman.He/She had waged battle #1 by passively pointing out that no, I don’t speak the primary language spoken in this country and the burden should be on me, not him/her. I get that.  But yesterday the impact of the language gap peaked when the salesperson at the drug store in Hamburg walked me to the condom aisle when I was trying to explain that I needed Vaseline fora blister (a blister on my foot, to be clear). I remain embarrassed by what on Earth she thought I trying to communicate with my hand gestures and series of one-word English terms. “Rub,”“Blister,” “Sore.”   I politely shook my head and walked away.  A few minutes later she was now my cashier,and I was purchasing shaving cream.   “For da bed?” is what I heard her ask though I really really hoped that she asked “for the beard.”

Back to the taxidriver.

“We ask more time to know before,” said the grumpy taxi voice on the phone, quick to engage in Battle #2.

“Will you be able to pick me up?” I wanted to add “or not”at the end of that sentence to make my point but shrewdly refrained.

“We will try to be there,” and the phone hung up before I could express an insincere “thank you.”

The 90 minute train ride out of Hamburg ended in the small hamlet of Cadenberg, where to my relief, a taxi awaited with the driver that I’m pretty sure was a woman.  I met a fellow workshop participant on the train who had not arranged transport from the station at all, and he assumed that this exact scenario of meeting another participant while en route on the train would unfold. Sh would have destroyed him had he walked off the train and asked her for a ride, and I was willing to run interference. 

“Now you are two?” she said. It wasn’t so much a question as it was an angry statement.  At this point I assumed her taxi was a Porsche 911, which only has two seats, and that’s why a third person triggered a scowl from her weathered face. The other and more accurate explanation was this woman really did not like any surprises, no matter how inconsequential.  There appeared to be plenty of room in the non-Porsche.

We waited inside the taxi while the driver finished her cigarette outside. I sat in front, which meant my throat would be within reach of her large, strong hands when I mention that I need to stop to buy toothpaste.    

“Next time you tellme three hours,” she managed to say just before a barrage of coughing wasunleashed.   “Please sit behind.” 

I was surprised she said “please.”

I skipped the request to stop for toothpaste. If I cut open my current tube, I could scrape a few days’ worth more out of there and spare any additional wrath from the driver.

I moved to the backseat and Angry Taxi Driver pulled a cat out from her overcoat and set it down on the passenger seat as though this were perfectly normal, as though any amused reaction on my part would be weirder than a cat riding shotgun in a taxi. I felt empathy for the cat and the time it had to spend in in the woman’s overcoat so close to her bosom and heart of rage.  

Angry Cat Lady drove fast. Crazy speeds of fast.  I was clearly in the country of the autobahn.  She shoved a cassette into the player, and by god, it was a mixed tape.  Our ride covered five songs:  “We go Together” from the soundtrack of Grease, “Forever Young” by Alphaville, “You are so beautiful to me” by Bob Seger and two songs in German.  I desperately wanted to know who gave her this mixed tape, and the circumstances that led to its creation which I assumed was in the 1980s, the Decade of the Mixed Tape and when most of these songs had their hey day. My mind raced along with the car in a whirl of questions about Angry Cat Taxi Lady’s past love life, that perhaps she was a nice, beautiful lady who was the target of a young suitor’s attention. It was difficult to maintain this dream for her as she periodically rolled down her window to spit.  

We arrived at SeminarHaus,I mustered up the courage to ask if she had change, then paid Angry Cat Taxi Woman and she sped off barely before I had closed the trunk.

The Art of Participatory Leadership. That’s the name of the workshop that explains why I’m in the middle of nowhere, Germany.  A focus of my sabbatical is to become more proficient, knowledgeable and enlightened about leadership theories, processes and strategies, particularly as they relate to conservation. In the Fall I will be fully entrenched in directing a few leadership initiatives for our university’s College of Natural Resources. Leadership isn’t my area of expertise or background, so I’m forging conversations with experts, building my network, and participating in these types of trainings to prepare for this role.  

Now, in our world of natural resources we have a contingent of very earth-loving, earth-minding, and sometimes earth-smelling individuals.And these natural resource circles sometimes overlap with the hula-hooping,twirling, incense-burning community circles. This Art of Participatory Leadership, to my surprise, is a rather shining of these overlaps. I could stand up during one of our circle sessions –we rarely meet in any other shape form – spin around a few times with my arms spread, and no one would pay much mind to it, and more likely, a few people would probably join me.

I am appreciative of the hula-twirl-incense community because they often live a simple life from which our planet benefits.  However, it is not always a crowd that I interact with especially well.  Despiteour mutual respect for nature and concern for its well-being, when I introduce myself as a faculty member from a university and she introduces herself as an “intentional nomad who transfers stories around the hemispheres,” I’m not sure what to do with that and thought a more direct way would be to ask "Who signs your paycheck?" but that seemed too direct, even for a German.  While checking email one morning I received an unsolicited “I refuse to  be a slave to email” comment, and for a second I wanted to hold her up by her scarf and tell her I need to check email so kids in Kenya can f-ing go to school.   But I hold back, because I'll smell like incense if I touch her.  Instead, I just avoid.   

I have to, for example, avoid the Hugger. I have been confronted with this prototype in the Earth muffin community before, and the Hugger is represented here as well.  She has no boundaries. Need for personal space is part of “the problem” in her view. This morning she bear hugged someone from behind while he was trying to pour milk in his cereal bowl.  During a session about facilitation techniques, each of was asked to design and implement a 15-minute discussion on a topic of personal interest, and hers was titled “Cuddle.”  I’m not joking.  I am hiding from “Cuddle” right now in my room because we are given the liberty to be a “butterfly” during this workshop and opt in and out, just as an actual butterfly would apparently opt in and out of workshop sessions if that was available in the insect world. Call me Monarch, call me Mariposa, but dont call me down to that session on Cuddle.

At the least, the Hugger brings a game aspect to this workshop for me and I love competition (another character flaw the Hugger would perceive, I'm sure).  I fear that if I break the thinnest layer of ice with her, she’ll see me as a target. I’ve seen her hug others. I could read a book chapter and clip my nails in the time it takes her to complete a hug. So the game is making sure I don’t end up in her vicinity. I have to be mindful at all times of her whereabouts, in the dining hall, the meeting rooms, and hallways. Today I reached for the salad tongs at the same as she did. We almost touched. Fortunately, before I could scream, she pulled back and quietly exclaimed “croutons." That's a new one for me, a Hugger or Hippie aversion to croutons.  I've seen croutons in a lot of other countries, so it was probably an anti-globalization thing. 

Just prior to the “Cuddle” discussion a second Earth Muffin in pants that I associate with clown outfits requested to close her discussion session with a Native chant.  There’s no precedent for “closing” a session thus far, and despite generally being skeptical of white people who do Native chants, I strapped in for the ride and sat back to watch the show. The Closer was a friend of the Hugger.  The two of them hugged a lot. Today they hugged when they found themselves together at the section of the kitchen where you put your dirty dishes, as though the cosmic force brought them together yet again for the 12^th time so far today.  The Closer asked us to close our eyes.  I knew the Hugger stood up while the Closer chanted because she was sitting two seats away from me and I could hear and feel  her arise.  Next to me was a colleague as skeptical and cynical as myself – thank god we found each other on Day 1.  But, the Hugger hadn’t risen to hug. She had risen to twirl. I know this because I kept one eye open which I needed to do for self-preservation.  The chant by The Closer sounded something like “Barn owl dries the miso” and it was repeated in a variety of cadences for about two minutes while the Hugger twirled away. The Hugger and the Close shared a massive embrace, as though they were separated at birth by a stoned midwife and were just now reunited 28 years later.  It took a lot of self-restraint to maintain a stoic look. I dared not make eye contact with my fellow cynic.

Tomorrow I plan to run. I ran this morning and afterward it was suggested by one of the facilitators that I include my run as one of the options on the list of  “Morning Preparations” which is fancy hippie talk for “things people do before breakfast.”  I would generally rather have someone in the bathroom with me while I pooped than join me on my run. It's MY time.  I kindly indicated that I preferred to run alone, which was refuted with a challenge to be different here than I am at home. So I got more strategic and spoke their language. Running is my form of my meditation, during which I can connect with myself and feel a sense of harmony while harvesting the dreams of the night.  This response was met with nods of agreement, as though I had just made myself vulnerable and was opening up.  Whatever it takes to get in a solo run.