Globalization Tour, Day 1

What happens when ten Americans, ten Russians, and nine Chinese young professionals and scholars board a tour bus for a two-week land cruise through Germany? I will soon find out. Today our assembly of young professionals and scholars set out upon a journey I have dubbed the “Globalization Tour”. We are setting out to learn German history and culture in the name of world peace and prosperity through cultural and knowledge exchange.

What brings us together is the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation, which has sponsored our research in Germany. In addition to a stipend for living expenses, the Foundation sponsors language training and organizes several networking events, one being this study tour. At night we gratefully raise our beers to our benefactor, “Uncle Alex.” Formed through a process of self-selection and the wisdom of the Foundation, our group is composed of 12 men and 17 women, all under 35, from a variety of fields:

3 lawyers
3 environmental engineers
3 artists
3 city planners
1 architect
3 social scientists
1 public health expert
4 marketing and human resources researchers
1 accountant
1 banker
1 policewoman
3 education researchers
1 bee expert
1 journalist

Last night we met up in Dresden, to kick things off with some sauerbraten and hefeweissen. There was one American table, one Russian table, one Chinese, and one mixed, which included our intrepid tourguide Friedrich, the lone German of the assembly. Gracious, friendly, and infinitely patient, he bears the official title of Baron von Maltzahn. Although aristocracy is not a prominent part of German society, it is a nation formed from many small kingdoms and innumerable titled families.

Today we began exploring Dresden with a presentation from the City Manager, who is also a friend of Jen’s. She showed us a marketing video promoting the city as a traditional center of arts and culture. It is located in the Elbe river valley, which is protected as a U.N. World Heritage Site for its pastoral beauty and Baroque buildings and bridges in the urbanized area. It has had modest population gains since German reunification in 1990, to about half a million people, while nearly all East German cities have been shrinking. A massive rebuilding effort, resulting in the reconstruction or new development about 75% of the central city, has restored it as a tourist destination, and they have about 10 million visitors per year. Abi and I were inspired to try our Baroque manners to fit in at the castle.

Perhaps the largest project was the rebuilding of the Frauenkirche, a church which was destroyed in an Allied bombing raid made famous by Kurt Vonnegut in his novel, “Slaughterhouse 5”. Between 30,000 and 130,000 people were killed, almost entirely women, children, and refugees who had sought shelter because it was not a military target. When I first visited Dresden in 1994, it was a gray, grimy city full of Soviet architecture and grand ruins that looked like the bombs had fallen yesterday. The Frauenkirche was a pile of rubble surrounded by a small village of stone-masons workshops. I was amazed to observe craftspeople sorting bits of the church into piles, and then attempting to assemble them like a giant jigsaw puzzle. Today I saw the result, which was completed in 2005: the rebuilt church includes just 10% of stones from the original, recognizable by their darker color. It was just in time for the city’s 800^th birthday celebration in 2006.

We wound our way through the historic center with a tourguide, shivering and muttering complaints in an unexpectedly cold wind. Most historic buildings and sculptures are magnificently restored, and contrast interestingly with the space-age buildings which remain from Communist times. New investment is evidenced in the homogenous contemporary-style shops and hotels by the train station, and shiny new trams. Even the frescoes documented the changing times – we saw a block-long mural of a proud parade Saxon kings over 200 years by the old opera house, rivaled by a Socialist-realist mural celebrating the rise of the worker on the wall of the GDR Philharmonic.

In the afternoon, we took the train to the nearby town of Meissen to visit the famous porcelain manufacturer of the same name there. The Chinese were the first to discover how to make porcelain, which is prized above regular pottery because of its superior beauty and strength. For several hundred years, they had a monopoly on its production, despite the best efforts of Europeans to buy, steal, or negotiate the secret through diplomacy. Finally, at the direction of a Saxon king, a German chemist spent four years reverse engineering it, and got lucky in 1708. Meissen became the first place outside of Asia where porcelain was manufactured. At the factory, we saw skilled craftspeople working with the clay to form tableware and sculptures, all by hand from start to finish. In the shop, you might find a saucer or egg cup for 50 Euro, but most items were more in the 500-5,000 Euro range, perhaps 40,000 for an entire table setting.

What struck me, observing this factory, was the irony of a hand-crafted item being reproduced en masse. Each craftsperson is reproducing designs often 100 years old or more. They are very skilled, but much of the value comes from the tradition and history of the brand – people are willing to pay for the cache. As Adel put it, “it’s not real art.” Jessica, who is herself a porcelain artist, was impressed with the quality, “these folks are professionals.” There is also a large porcelain collection on display which includes some figures of Chinese people, as interpreted by 18^th century European artists. They were jolly, with wide smiles and long earlobes. “That’s not real Chinese,” a couple of Chinese colleagues commented.

After the factory tour, about half the group decided to climb up the winding, cobbled Meissen streets to check out the castle which huddles protectively over it. From its ramparts, we looked down upon a frozen ocean of pitched red roofs. We found that silliness transcends language and cultural barriers when we spotted a doorway framed by empty saint-pedestals and got into making dramatic figure compositions.

For me, the day ended with a heated discussion with Larisa, Oleg, and Wyly over Indian food in a German kneipe about global warming, ethical pig farming, and who will be the next guy in our group to shave his head (so far Oleg and Wyly are BBC, or bald by choice). On the way home, Daniela gave a demonstration of East Bolivian carnival dances at the tram stop, and die-hard tourist Constantine took off, guidebook in hand, saying, “I’ve got one more church to see.”