Saturday, May 5, 2007

26 March: Jetz Kommt Sommerzeit

Yesterday we switched to Sommerzeit, a.k.a. Daylight Savings Time, so this morning we had to get up at what looked (and felt) like 5:45 am instead of 6:45 am. The sky was clear, the air was crisp, and I decided to take Cody for an extra-long walk because my usual morning route in the woods is still very muddy from all the snowmelt. It’s quiet mornings like this that I want to imbed permanently in my memories of Deutschland.

As I strolled through the woods I admired the slender, gray trunks of the naked trees and watched the sun creep over the hill. I startled a blue heron out of the pond – it pumped its wings slowly and soared away into the sunrise – and just moments later, two deer ran across the path not fifty feet in front of me. I haven’t seen any deer in ages. Cody was momentarily frozen in shock at the sight of these four-legged woodland creatures, but then took off after them at high speed. The woman from Nittelwaldstraße with the black shepherd-mix was just up the trail; her dog promptly took off after Cody. This was how I finally learned that the other dog’s name is Anya (before that I had referred to her as “the black dog with the white-tipped tail”). It took some effort to call Cody back; fortunately Anya’s Frauchen had a good sense of humor. (There is no direct translation for Frauchen that I know of, but it is the word you use to refer to the female owner of a housepet; likewise Herrchen is the term for a man.) She and her husband have always been very friendly to me but their dog Anya usually false-charges Cody, barking like mad and only veering away at the last minute. Fortunately Cody and Anya have recently had the opportunity to meet each other off-leash in the woods and Anya has finally decided that Cody is tolerable, although she still isn’t what I would call friendly to him. Now she just acts aloof as we walk by.

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