Easter Branches 2025

Posted on March 19, 2025 by Cora

So what are Easter branches?

Easter branches are a North and Central European tradition, where you cut (or buy) bare branches in the run-up to Easter, put them in a vase and decorate with painted eggs or other festive decorations. The branches will then sprout in the vase. Here is an explanation in English from Southern Living. There’s also an outdoor version where a tree or bush in the garden is decorated with colourful eggs, mostly plastic for durability. It’s basically the Easter equivalent of a Christmas tree.

When I was a kid, we always had Easter branches. There is a photo of me aged about three or four sitting on a chair with that year’s Easter branches on the table next to me. We even set up Easter branches when we spent Easter abroad. When Dad was working in Singapore in 1982/83 and Mom and I spent the Easter holidays with him, we brought our decorations along and had Easter branches in Singapore, which where a minor sensation among our neighbours, because the tradition wasn’t known there at all.

As I grew older, my parents eventually stopped putting up Easter branches and Easter decorations in the house were limited to a few decorative bunny figurines and two collectible Hutschenreuther porcelain eggs which either Mom or I had gotten as a gift. Collectible Hutschenreuther holiday ornaments are a popular gift (though not really suitable for putting on a Christmas tree or Easter branches, because they’re too heavy) and I have a lot of Christmas ones that accumulated over the years. But for some reason, I have only two Easter eggs.

Fast forward to last year. In early March, shortly after Mom died, I chanced to walk past a flower shop and saw Easter branches for sale, because it was the season. And I thought, “I haven’t had Easter branches in years. So why don’t I buy some and put them up to make the house cheerier?”

So I bought the branches, realised that I couldn’t find our old Easter branch decorations (I’m still waiting for them to show up in some unexpected place), so I bought new decorations. And because I enjoyed bringing some springtime cheer into my home last year, I decided to set up Easter branches again this year. Besides, I do have decorations now.

Since I had an appointment in the city center, I went to the Bremen flower market, which is clustered around the Church of Our Lady, and got some Easter branches, because they are fresher and cheaper at the market than at a flower shop.

There was a nice variety of branches on offer. Cherry, pussy willow, forsythia, birch tree, juneberry. I chose corkscrew hazel, because I like the way they look. And since Easter is late April, there is a chance that blossoming branches like cherry, forsythia or juneberry will be wilted by then. Pussy willow and birch are messy and besides, I’m allergic to birch pollen, so bringing it into the house isn’t a great idea.

Of course, you can also cut your own branches, if you have a suitable tree in the garden. And in fact, that’s what Dad did, when I was a kid. I think we had mostly birch branches, because we had a birch tree in the garden. I have no idea what we used in Singapore.

At home, I put the corkscrew hazel branches into a large mid century modern vase of my Mom’s and added the decorations. Here is the result:

Easter branches in the kitchen

The vase with the Easter branches on the kitchen table, where I decorated it.

Easter branches

The Easter branches in their final location in the dining room/parlour.

And here is a closer look at the guardian bunnies:

Guardian bunnies

Three bunnies guard the Easter branches.

The two smaller bunnies were my Mom’s and are probably between fifty and sixty years old. At any rate, we’ve had them for as long as I can remember.

The white laughing bunny was designed by Max Hermann Fritz in 1929 for the Rosenthal porcelain company. Rosenthal produced this bunny for decades (though apparently he has been discontinued by now) and for a while it seemed as if every German home had one.

The gun-toting pink bunny is Plundor the Spoiler from the Masters of the Universe Classics toyline. Plundor is an obscure villain who only appeared in a single episode of the Filmation He-Man cartoon. In the cartoon, Plundor has taken over the planet Trannis, where he steals natural resources, extracts the planet’s lifeforce and pollutes the environment until he is stopped by an amnesiac He-Man and a local woman named Gleedil, who looks like a humanoid chicken. In short, it’s a not very subtle tale about the evils of capitalism and pollution, except that the villain is a pink bunny. Sometimes, I really wonder just what they put into the water cooler at Filmation.

When Plundor appeared as an action figure in the Masters of the Universe Classics toyline, many people disliked him, because Masters of the Universe Classics was a serious toyline for serious people and they’d rather forget that He-Man once fought an evil pink bunny. So I got my Plundor for a good price and he makes a great Easter decoration. He also has an eerie facial resemblance to the Rosenthal bunny, which I only noticed when I put them next to each other. Now I wonder if someone at Filmation had this Rosenthal bunny at home.

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An Open Letter to the 2025 Hugo Finalists, Whoever They May Be

Posted on March 15, 2025 by Cora

This is an updated version of this post from 2021, this post from 2022, this post from 2023 and this post from last year, which a lot of people found helpful. There also a Chinese translation of the 2023 post to be found in issue 14 the Hugo winning fanzine Zero Gravity Newspaper.

Nominations for the 2025 Hugo Awards closed two hours ago and the finalists are expected to be announced in a few weeks.

Right now, no one except for possibly the Hugo administrators knows who those finalists will be. And yes, I deliberately posted this so shortly after the Hugo nominations closed that the e-mails won’t have gone out yet and no one knows who the finalists are.

However, sometime in the next two weeks or so, some of you will receive an e-mail from the Seattle Worldcon, informing you that you are a finalist for the 2025 Hugo Award and asking you whether you want to accept the nomination. Some of you will have received such e-mails before, for others it will be the first time.

But whether it’s your first or your twentieth nomination, congratulations! That’s awesome.

As a first time recipient of such an e-mail in 2020 as well as a Hugo finalist in 2021 and Hugo winner in 2022, here are a few things I’ve learned:

  1. The e-mail may not look like you think it will. When I got the e-mail from CoNZealand in 2020, the subject line was “CoNZealand Hugo Awards Confidential”. I was exhausted that day and waiting for two important e-mails, so I scanned right past that subject line, because I assumed it was the convention newsletter. I only opened the mail, because none of the two important e-mails had come yet, so I thought I might as well check out the CoNZealand e-mail while I was waiting. Good thing that I did.
  2. If you receive an e-mail from the Seattle Worldcon, please reply as soon as you can whether you accept the nomination or not. If there are questions with regard to eligibility, answer them as soon as possible. The Hugo administrator and their team work very hard, so don’t make their job any harder than it has to be.
  3. The Seattle team will also ask you to keep quiet about your nomination until the official announcement. Please don’t violate this, because you don’t want to steal Seattle’s thunder!
  4. The period between the time when the finalists are notified and when the Hugo finalists are officially announced can be weird, because while you know that you’re a finalist, almost nobody else does. I blogged a bit about my experiences in 2020 here. Basically, I kept having the niggling fear that there had been some terrible mistake and that I wasn’t a finalist after all or that I only was a finalist because all twenty people who would have been ahead of me had withdrawn. From talking to other first time finalists, I learned that I wasn’t alone in this. And while I can’t guarantee that terrible mistakes won’t happen, the chance that the wrong person is notified about being a Hugo finalist is extremely small. So relax. You really are a Hugo finalist, even if nobody else knows it yet.
  5. In 2023, it turned out that the Hugo nominations had been massively tampered with by Hugo administration team. However, this was the first time something like that happened and no member of the 2023 team is involved in any way with the 2025 Hugos, so chances of it happening again are minuscle.
  6. Do something nice for yourself to celebrate. Have an ice cream, a nice box of chocolates, a glass of champagne, a good beer, a bubble bath, whatever it is that makes you happy. You’re a Hugo finalist, so you damn well deserve to celebrate in private.
  7. You can tell a few people you trust about your nomination as long as you know they won’t blab it all over the internet. Before the official announcement, a handful of people knew I was a Hugo finalist. These include my parents (whose reaction was, “That’s nice,” before turning back to watch a rerun of Midsomer Murders), some folks from Galactic Journey and others in the SFF community, who knew not to say anything before the official announcement, as well as my accountant (because I asked her if buying an evening gown for the Hugo ceremony was tax-deductible – it’s not BTW) and the guy who repaired my patio, because he just happened to be there, when I got the e-mail. Neither the accountant nor the patio guy are SFF fans, so chances of a leak were zero. They both also probably thought I was quite mad.
  8. If you are nominated in a fiction category – i.e. short story, novelette, novella, novel, Series, Lodestar or Astounding – or nominated for a non-fiction book or essay in Best Related Work or in the special Best Poem category, you should let your editor and/or publisher know that you’re a finalist. They work in the industry and therefore know not to say anything and they may want to prepare some kind of congratulatory tweet, post or other promotion effort. Finally, editors are also thrilled when one of their authors is nominated.
  9. One thing I did not do is tell people about my nomination who might be up in the same category. Because I didn’t know who else was nominated (you don’t before the official announcement) and didn’t want anybody to feel disappointed, because I was a finalist and they were not.
  10. Even if you can’t publicly talk about your Hugo nomination just yet, there are still a few things you can do in the meantime. For example, you can update your bio to mention that you’re a Hugo finalist or write a bio, if you don’t have one yet. Important: Don’t upload your updated bio anywhere until the official announcement has been made! In fact, I spent a chunk of the evening after the Hugo finalists had been announced updating my bio everywhere it appears.
  11. In fact – and this is important – don’t upload anything that mentions your Hugo nomination anywhere on the internet, until the official announcement has been made. Even if you set a Tweet or blogpost to go live after the announcement has been made, don’t upload it yet. Because mistakes happen, you accidentally hit “publish” rather than “schedule” or a post goes live too early. I had my celebratory blogpost ready to go in Word, but I only uploaded it with links and a few comments added once the announcement had been made.
  12. Another thing you can do in the meantime is prepare a media kit, if you haven’t got one already. You can see mine here (which is in need of an update) and there are also plenty of pages around the web that tell you what a media kit is supposed to contain. Important: Get permission to use any photos that you did not take yourself.
  13. Another thing you can do is write a press release about your Hugo nomination. It doesn’t matter which category you’re nominated in, whether it’s Best Novel or a fan category. Write a press release anyway. There are plenty of places around the web which tell you how to write a press release. It varies from country to country, so make sure you get the correct format for your country. My press releases from 2020, 2o21 and 2022 (in German) are here. Then make a list of the contact info for the relevant newspapers, radio stations and other media outlets in your region or country. Once the nominations have been announced, send your press release as well as the link to your media kit to those media outlets. The press release linked above netted me two in-depth profiles and a bonus article in two different newspapers in 2020 and two more in-depth profiles in 2021 as well as an article and an interview in 2022, which is much more than I’d hoped for.
  14. Because this came up in the Hugo finalist Discord, if media attention for yourself or your work could cause a problem with your day job, talk to a union representative, workers council member or – if none of those are available – a trustworthy co-worker first to make sure you’re not accidentally jeopardizing your job.
  15. Consider whether you want to attend Worldcon and the ceremony. First of all, get a Worldcon membership, if you haven’t got one already. Like most recent Worldcons, Seattle offers a reduced rate for people attending their first ever Worldcon and others whose finances aren’t great. You can also start looking for flights, hotels, etc…. If you need to apply for a visa, do so now. If money is an issue, as it’s for many of us, think about crowdfunding your Worldcon trip, as several finalists have done in recent years. However, don’t start your crowdfunding campaign, until after the finalists have been announced.
  16. If you cannot attend Worldcon for health, family, work or other reasons or feel uncomfortable travelling to the US in the current political climate, there are also virtual memberships available, which allow to participate virtually. You can also accept a Hugo Award virtually and indeed that’s what I did in 2022.
  17. If you want to participate in programming, sign up at the Seattle Worldcon website. Do this as early as possible, so the programming team doesn’t have to find suitable programming for you at the last minute. You can also participate in programming as a virtual participant.
  18. Finally, start thinking about your Hugo voter packet. If you need to get permission to include certain texts or images, contact the relevant people.

Finally, here are a few observations regarding what happens after the Hugo finalists are announced:

  1. A lot of people will congratulate you. These will be people you expect – friends, peers, etc… – but also people you don’t expect. After the newspaper articles mentioned above came out, I suddenly got congratulations from translation customers, various relatives, neighbours, former classmates, my plumber and my Dad’s diabetes doctor among others. Enjoy the experience, thank everybody and don’t forget to congratulate your fellow finalists.
  2. Some people will also not congratulate you and again, some of these will be people you don’t expect. There are several reasons why someone might not congratulate you and most of them are not malicious. For example, some people might simply not have seen the news yet. Or they may not understand the significance, since not everybody is plugged into the SFF community and knows how important the Hugos are. Of course, there will also be a few people who think that you don’t deserve your nomination. Ignore them!
  3. Your fellow Hugo finalists are not your rivals, they are your peers. You’ll probably know some of them already and if not, you’ll quickly get to know them. And yes, only one of you will get to take home the rocket in the end, but all six of you are amazing and in a way, you’re all winners. This also applies across categories. I met a lot of great people in the SFF community and even made new friends, just because we were on the Hugo ballot in the same year.
  4. In general, there is a sense of community to siblinghood among Hugo finalists. Whether you’re a bestselling author or a first-time finalist in a fan category, you’re all in this together. There is usually a private group for Hugo finalists – in recent years on Discord – to chat, ask questions, share gripes, post photos of Hugo gowns, tiaras and pets, etc…
  5. If you’re not part of the Worldcon SFF community and don’t know anybody else on the ballot, don’t worry! You’ll get to know the others soon enough and pretty much everybody in this community is lovely and very welcoming. If you’re a repeat finalist, reach out to the first-timers to make them welcome.
  6. As a Hugo finalist, you will get plenty of e-mails from Seattle about anything from the Hugo voter packet via the program book to the ceremony itself. Pay attention to those e-mails, send any information requested in time and check your spam folder. You don’t accidentally want to miss something important.
  7. Once the Hugo finalists have been announced, there will be people who have opinions about the ballot. Most will be positive or at least fair – I always try to be fair in my own Hugo and Nebula finalist commentaries, even if I don’t care for some of the finalists – but some will be not. There are always people who think that your category or the entire ballot is too male, not male enough, too white, not white enough, too queer, not queer enough, too American, not American enough, too bestselling, not bestselling enough – you get the idea. There will be people who complain that only people no one knows got nominated or that only the usual suspects got nominated – and multiple bestsellers and Hugo winners can be “people no one knows”, while first or second time finalists can be “the usual suspects”. Some of these people won’t even wait 24 hours after the Hugo finalists have been announced to air their opinions – at least they didn’t in 2021. Some will even tag you, just to make sure you don’t miss their very important opinions. The best thing to do is ignore those people.
  8. A handful of people seem to have made it their life’s mission to mock and harass Hugo finalists. Ignore them and block them on social media and don’t let them get you down. Most of them are just jealous.
  9. There will be drama. So far, I’ve never seen a Worldcon that did not have at least some degree of drama and I have been a Worldcon member since 2014. It rarely gets as bad as it did in 2023, but there’s always drama of some kind. Often, this drama affects the Hugo finalists in some way. Sometimes, the Hugo finalists even band together and try to resolve this drama. How you engages with whatever this year’s drama will be is up to you. However, don’t let it get you down. Drama is normal. At this point, I would be more surprised at a Worldcon without drama than at one which has some degree of drama. And usually, everybody winds up having a great time anyway.

So what happens, if you win?

  1. Basically more of the same. Lots of people will congratulate you, most of them with genuine enthusiasm, a few very grudgingly (one in my case, not a fellow finalist) and some not at all.
  2. Make sure to have your acceptance speech ready before the ceremony with the names of all the people you want to thank. Check with people how their names are pronounced, if you aren’t sure. Always have a printed paper copy of your speech, because phones can and do break down, run out of juice, fail to have reception or get overloaded with messages at the crucial moment.
  3. After you win a Hugo, you should prepare another press release and send it to all the local, regional and national media you can think of. I actually wrote mine at six AM in the morning after the winners had been announced.
  4. Don’t forget to update your bio wherever it appears. That includes anthologies or magazines where you’ve been accepted, but which aren’t out yet.
  5. Your “market value” (for lack of a better word) does go up with your first nomination, goes up even further with your second and even more, if you win. For example, I got a story acceptance in the mail literally the day after I won. Of course, the story might have been accepted anyway, but the timing was still interesting. I also gained a bunch of new Twitter followers with every nomination and winning a Hugo pushed me over the 3000 follower mark for the first time. You’ll get invited to cons and you’ll notice that your name will start to show up on covers of anthologies or magazines, sometimes with “Hugo winner” attached. However, you’ll still get rejections as well, because even Hugo winners get rejected and that’s perfectly normal.
  6. You’ll also find that you have acquired more clout in the SFF community, something which also happens once you get nominated. Use what influence you have in the SFF community for good, to uplift and support others.
  7. One thing I noticed is that I would sometimes find myself thinking, “Wait a minute, I have a Hugo and [insert name of vastly more important genre person here] doesn’t? How on Earth did that happen?”
  8. That said, certain people will still call you a nobody who barely sells any books or a fake fan or whatever. This literally happened to me approx. a month after I won the Hugo, when I got into an argument about a TV show with the adherents of one of those “We hate everything” outrage clickbait YouTube channels. I pointed out that I really enjoyed the object of their rage du jour and so did many others and was called “not a real fan” in response. When I said, “Dude, I’m the 2022 Hugo winner for Best Fan Writer”, I was told that awards didn’t matter, that I was clearly not a real fan, because I didn’t hate the thing. Best just ignore those people and privately think, “Guess who has a shiny rocket? Hint, it’s not you.”
  9. Sometimes, it gets worse than online arguments with idiots. Because as I said above, there are a handful of people who seem to have made it their life’s mission to harass Hugo finalists and winners and will use any excuse, no matter how small, to send their flying monkeys after you. That happened to me, almost to the day a year after I won the Hugo, and I’ve seen it happen to others. Often, not a lot of people will help you and sometimes people you know and actually were friendly with before will join in. The best thing to do is to liberally mute and block harassers and if necessary, break off contact with some folks. On the plus side, you’ll know who your friends are afterwards. Also, never let yourself be silenced, because that’s what these folks want.

Finally – and this is the most important point – enjoy your experience! You’re a Hugo finalist, i.e. your peers consider you and your work one of the six best in your respective category. That’s amazing, so celebrate!

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Some Comments on the 2024 Nebula Finalists

Posted on March 13, 2025 by Cora

The finalists for the 2024 Nebula Awards were announced today. The video of the live announcement may be found here.

Once again, I didn’t get to read nearly as much as I wanted to last year for personal reasons, so there are a lot of finalists here that I haven’t yet read and can’t say a lot about.

Nonetheless, let’s delve right into the individual categories:

Best Novel:

This category is a mix of novels that got a lot of buzz and a few more surprising choices.

T. Kingfisher is a perennial Hugo and Nebula favourite and A Sorceress Comes to Call got a lot of attention last year. It’s also a very good book.

John Wiswell burst onto the SFF scene five years ago (Wow, has it really been that long?) and quickly established a name for himself with his quirky works which use common horror tropes to tell very different stories. Someone You Can Build a Nest In is his novel-length debut. It’s a good book and I’m not surprised to see it here.

The Book of Love by Kelly Link is also a debut novel, even though Kelly Link sold her first story thirty years ago. However, until last year, Kelly Link was purely a short fiction writer. The Book of Love got a lot of attention upon release, including from mainstream outlets that don’t normally cover SFF, probably because Kelly Link’s blend of magical realism is a very mainstream friendly type of speculative fiction. As a result, I’m not surprised to see The Book of Love nominated, though I’m afraid I haven’t read it yet.

Vajra Chandrasekera is another writer who burst onto the scene in recent years and quickly made a name for himself. Rakesfall got a lot of buzz and is not a surprising finalist. Coincidentally, his novel The Saint of Bright Doors also won the Nebula Award in this category last year. Unfortunately, The Saint of Bright Doors didn’t work for me, so I haven’t yet read Rakesfall. Maybe I will enjoy this one more.

The nomination for Asunder by Kerstin Hall is something of a surprise to me, for while I was aware of the novel, it didn’t really appear on my radar as a potential awards finalist. I haven’t read the book, though I’m looking forward to checking it out.

The nomination for Sleeping Worlds Have No Memory by Yaroslav Barsukov also came as a surprise to me, because I wasn’t aware of the book at all. It’s also published by a small press, whereas all the other finalists for published by Big Five imprints. Though Yaroslav Barsukov has been a Nebula finalist before in the novella category.

Diversity count: 3 women, 3 men, 1 writer of colour, 2 international writers

Best Novella:

This category has the fewest surprises for me and also the most overlap with my personal Hugo ballot.

Premee Mohamed has been getting a lot of attention in recent years. The Butcher of the Forest is a great novella and I’m glad to see it nominated. This one was also on my personal Hugo ballot.

Countess by Suzan Palumbo is a gender-flipped queer retelling of The Count of Monte Cristo in space with a bonus critique of colonialism. It’s also a really great story and I’m thrilled to see it nominated. This novella was also on my personal Hugo ballot.

Lost Ark Dreaming by Suyi Davies Okungbowa was on my Hugo longlist, but didn’t quite make my shortlist. Nonetheless, I’m happy to see it nominated.

Ray Nayler’s The Mountain in the Sea made a big splash (pun intended) two years ago and The Tusks of Extinction also got a lot of positive attention, so it’s not a surprising finalist at all. Though for some reason, I thought this was a novel. I haven’t yet read it.

The Practice, the Horizon, and the Chain by Sofia Samatar is an Omelas type tale (not the only one on this Nebula ballot) about a kid from the deprived undercaste of a starship suddenly taken out of his environment to be educated among the elite. It’s a good and thought-provoking story and was on my Hugo longlist, but didn’t make my ballot in the end.

The Dragonfly Gambit by A.D. Sui is the only finalist in this category I’m not familiar with, though it sounds like a book I would enjoy.

The novella category at the Hugos or Nebulas is often a Tordotcom sweep due to their popular novella program, which is largely responsible for the novella resurgence we’re currently seeing. However, this year ECW and Neon Hemlock both managed to break through the Tordotcom dominance.

Diversity count: 4 women, 2 men, 4 writers of colour, 4 international writers

Best Novelette:

I have read only one of the finalists in this category – at least as far as I recall – and there is zero overlap with my personal Hugo ballot, so I can’t say much about the individual stories.

Eugenia Triantafyllou has made a name for herself with her short fiction in the past couple of years and is represented on the Nebula ballot with not one but two stories.

Angela Liu is another short fiction author who burst onto the scene in the past couple of years. Her story “Another Girl Under the Iron Bell” is the only novelette on the Nebula ballot I’ve read.

I have enjoyed stories by Aimee Ogden in the past, but her nominated novelette “What Any Dead Thing Wants” passed me by.

Thomas Ha’s work has appeared on several awards ballots in the past, though I haven’t read his nominated story “The Brotherhood of Montague St. Video”.

Christine Hanolsy is a writer who’s new to me. That said, I’m surprised I didn’t read her nominated novelette “Katya Vasilievna and the Second Drowning of Baba Rechka”, because it was published in Beneath Ceaseless Skies, a magazine I normally read. However, the story came out on my birthday, which may be why it passed me by.

A.W. Prihandita is another author who’s new to me, though her nominated novelette “Negative Scholarship on the Fifth State of Being” sounds like something I will enjoy.

We have a nice range of venues in this category with two stories from Uncanny, two from Clarkesworld, one from Beneath Ceaseless Skies and two stories from Psychopomp, publisher of The Deadlands and the revived Fantasy Magazine which also publishes standalone fiction. The fact that Psychopomp managed to place two novelettes (out of a total three they published) on the Nebula ballot is certainly interesting.

Diversity count: 5 women, 1 man, 3 writers of colour, 2 international writers

Best Short Story:

Once again, this category has hardly any little overlap with my personal Hugo ballot and I’ve only read one of the stories.

That story is “Five Views of the Planet Tartarus” by Rachael K. Jones, a chilling tale – more flash fiction than short story – of the fiendish punishment meted out by a space empire. This one is also on my personal Hugo ballot.

I haven’t read “Why Don’t We Just Kill the Kid in the Omelas Hole” by Isabel J. Kim, though I enjoyed other stories by the author. Coincidentally, this is the second “Omelas” response tale on this ballot, but then “Omelas” response stories are as common as “Cold Equations” response stories.

Caroline M. Yoachim has been a frequent presence on Hugo and Nebula ballots in recent years, though I haven’t read her story “We Will Teach You How to Read | We Will Teach You How to Read” yet.

P.H. Lee is another author we’ve seen on awards ballots in recent years before, though again I haven’t read their nominated story “The V*mpire”.

Jordan Kurella has been a Nebula finalist before, though I haven’t read his nominated story “Evan: A Remainder”

I also haven’t read  “The Witch Trap” by Jennifer Hudak, because I don’t read the magazine it appeared in.

Once again, we have a nice range of venues in this category with two stories from Lightspeed, two from Reactor (the former Tor.com), one from Clarkesworld and one from Lady Churchill’s Rosebud Wristlet, a magazine about which I haven’t heard a lot in recent years, though it got a lot of buzz some fifteen years ago or so. Coincidentally, it’s also the only print zine to get a story on the Nebula ballot.

Diversity Count: 4 women, 1 man, 1 non-binary, 2 writers of colour

Andre Norton Nebula Award for Middle Grade and Young Adult Fiction:

This is another category where I haven’t read any of the finalists, but then I’m not the target audience for middle great and young adult books.

The said, José Pablo Iriarte has been nominated for the Hugo and Nebula before, though I haven’t read Benny Ramírez and the Nearly Departed.

Yoon Ha Lee is another author who’s been nominated for the Hugo and Nebula Award multiple times, including in this category. I have enjoyed some of his earlier books for younger readers, but again I haven’t read Moonstorm yet.

Leah Cypess has also been nominated for the Nebula before, including in this category, but once again I haven’t read Braided.

Jenn Reese has also been nominated in this category before, though again I haven’t read Puzzleheart.

Daydreamer by Rob Cameron is a debut novel, which actually sounds like something I will enjoy, even though it is a book for younger readers.

The Young Necromancer’s Guide to Ghosts by Vanessa Ricci-Thode is a self-published book, something we haven’t seen on the Nebula ballot since 2019 and the 20BooksTo50K debacle. Considering the Nebulas were the first genre award to have a self-published finalist – before SFWA even opened membership to purely self-published writers – I’m glad to see another indie book get a Nebula nod.

Diversity count: 3 women, 2 men, 1 non-binary, 3 writers of colour, 1 international writer

Nebula Award for Game Writing:

As usual, I can’t say very much about this category, because I’m not a gamer. Elden Ring is the only finalist in this category I’ve even heard of.

No diversity count, too many people are needed to make games.

Ray Bradbury Nebula Award for Outstanding Dramatic Presentation:

The nomination for Dune, Part 2 was probably as close to a sure thing as you can get and I strongly expect it to make the Hugo ballot as well. Even sixty after its first publication, Dune is still beloved by the SFF community (and was the first ever Nebula winner for Best Novel) and Denis Villeneuve’s adaptation is actually good – unlike the Sci-Fi Channel version from the 2000s – though I do have a soft spot for the David Lynch version as well, which was my introduction to Dune and prompted me to buy the book.

The nomination for Wicked was also pretty much a given and it will very likely make the Hugo ballot as well. After all, the movie was a massive success, based on the beloved musical adaptation of a popular novel. This is unfortunate for me, because I have never read the book, have never seen the musical and have zero interest in the film. If Wicked makes the Hugo ballot, I will force myself to watch it, but this one really isn’t for me.

Doctor Who has been a nigh constant presence on the Hugo ballot since its return almost twenty years ago, though its appearances on the Nebula ballot have been less common. That said, I have enjoyed Ncuti Gatwa’s and Jodie Whittaker’s takes on the character much more than Matt Smith’s and Peter Capaldi’s takes, which I only ever saw, when they were nominated for the Hugo and which I often found a chore to watch. That said, “Dot and Bubble” isn’t really the episode of Gatwa’s first season I expected to make the ballot and I recall it being one of the less well received episodes.

The animated Star Trek: Lower Decks has established itself as being more popular than the various recent live action Star Trek series released since the dawn of the third age of Star Trek in 2017, probably because the show is funny, well written and acted and not afraid to play with Star Trek tropes in a way the live action shows often don’t. The Nebula nomination for its fifth and final season is well deserved. Plus, I’m always happy to see animated films and shows recognised by the big SFF awards, because we have so many great animated works out there which are often ignored due to their medium.

I Saw the TV Glow is a beautiful movie about two outsiders finding connection via a TV show they’re both obsessed with. I was too old for the 1990s teen shows that inspired the fictional TV-show The Pink Opaque, but I completely sympathise with the two lead characters and their TV-inspired bond. I had similar friendships and I certainly had similar TV obsessions. This film was also on my personal Hugo ballot and I’m thrilled to see it nominated here.

Kaos, which reimagines the Greek Gods as a Dallas/Dynasty type family saga, got very positive reviews upon release, but sank like a stone with viewers and was cancelled after only a single season. I have to admit I was a bit surprised to see it nominated here, though those who actually watched Kaos really seemed to like it. Plus, you can’t go wrong with Jeff Goldblum as Zeus. I haven’t yet watched it, but I probably should.

No diversity count, too many people are needed to make movies and TV shows.

***

There are a few trends among the finalists this year. Retellings continue to do well with not one but two Omelas riffs, plus retellings of The Count of Monte Cristo, The Wizard of Oz, Greek mythology and fairytales (and possibly others in the stories I haven’t read). We also have several stories with horror elements, at least two magical realist works and several works dealing with colonialism, slavery and crime and punishment. I don’t see any SFF mysteries this time around and also no robot/AI POV stories.

All in all, this is a very good and diverse Nebula ballot. It’s great to once again see so many international writer and creators on the ballot. The usual suspects will probably complain, but then they always do.

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Journey to the Edge of the Ruhrgebiet: Cora’s Adventures at the Marché Noir Retro Fair in Dorsten, Part 3: The Road Home and Greven

Posted on February 25, 2025 by Cora

Two weekends ago, I attended the the Marché Noir retro toy/comic/games/cool stuff con in Dorsten on the northern edge of the Ruhrgebiet. For the trip to get there, see part 1 and for my impressions of the con itself and the venue, a former coalmine, see part 2.

The Quest for Lunch

By the time I left the con and took my purchases to my car, it was twenty past twelve, i.e. time for lunch. But where to have lunch? There was a Mediterranean restaurant on the premises of the Fürst Leopold mine, but there was no menu posted outside the restaurant and I wasn’t really in the mood for pasta or pizza either.

Now Dorsten actually has got not one but two Michelin starred restaurants, which is highly unusual for a comparatively small town. One of them is the restaurant of Frank Rosin, a chef I mainly associate with a reality show on TV where Rosin tries to help struggling restaurants succeed, which for some reason involves a lot of yelling. Not that I’ve ever watched the show, but I’ve seen trailers. Turns out that Rosin actually hails from Dorsten and that this is the restaurant which put his name on the culinary map and eventually got him the TV gig.

The second Michelin starred restaurant is called Der Goldener Anker (The Golden Anchor) and is run by another TV chef named Björn Freitag. Freitag also hails from Dorsten and The Golden Anchor used to be his parents’ restaurant, which he took over after his father died. Honestly, there must be something in the water in Dorsten – probably something the miners dug up – because how likely is it that a fairly unremarkable mining town birthes not one but two Michelin star winning chefs?

On my way back to the Autobahn, I actually passed The Golden Anchor, because I noticed the historic building and thought, “This looks like a nice place.” Alas, I did not eat at The Golden Anchor nor at Frank Rosin’s Restaurant, because neither of them was open for lunch.

Also on my way back to the Autobahn, I drove past a fairly unremarkable retail park with the sort of stores you normally find in places like that – gorcery store, DIY store, furniture store, that sort of thing. Since it was Sunday, everything should be closed and the retail park should be a ghost town. However, when I drove past, it was super busy, so busy that cars were parking all along the road – a road which is not intended for parking – and I had to slow down to avoid endangering pedestrians walking along the road. There was even a traffic jam in the opposite direction from the Autobahn to the retail park. I was baffled for what on Earth could habe drawn so many people here on a Sunday, when all the shops were closed? Even if there was an open Sunday in one or more of the shops, the huge crowds didn’t make any sense, because the shops mostly seemed to be unremarkable chain stores. Some googling eventually revealed that there was popular flea market happening on the parking lot of a furniture store, which is what seemed to have drawn half all of those people.

Just before the Autobahn, there was another restaurant, a country inn type place called Landküche zum Schwatten Jans (The Black Jan Country Inn). They were open for lunch and I might have stopped and checked the menu, except that the place looked extremely busy with lots of cars in the parking lot. Besides, I’d already made another plan.

For in the end, I did not eat in Dorsten at all. Because once I had made it back to my car and was considering my options, I thought, “Münster isn’t that far away and should have plenty of dining options.” I also recalled that Aro Asian Fusion Bowls, a restaurant I like patronise in Oldenburg, had one or more branches in Münster. That seemed like a great lunch option. So I fired up Google Maps on my phone to look up the address of the Aro restaurant(s) in Münster and found that there also was an Aro branch in Greven, a town just north of Münster that was located much closer to the Autobahn A1 than Münster proper. They were open on Sunday for lunch and – most importantly – they didn’t close down again in the afternoon, which meant that I could have lunch at two PM, if I felt like it. So I decided to stop in Greven for lunch.

Service Station Münsterland

The way back was the same as the trip out. I drove onto Autobahn A52 at Marl-Fentrop, changed onto Autobahn A43 at the intersection Marl-North and then back onto Autobahn A1 at the intersection Münster-South.

By now, I was experiencing some pressure on my bladder and grumbling in my intestines, which meant that I should start looking for a toilet. The toilets at the rest areas and parking lots along the route are often not very clean and only for emergencies. The toilets at service stations are normally clean, but they cost 1 Euro to use.

There was a service station on the A43 named Hohe Mark, but by this point that pressure on my bladder wasn’t that bad yet, so I decided to save the 1 Euro and use the free toilet at the restaurant in Greven.

By the time, I reached the A1, the pressure on my bladder and the grumbling in my intestines was more notable. Greven wasn’t that far away and I could have made it there, but I would probably have to sprint for the toilets as soon as I entered the restaurant.

However, service station Münsterland was right ahead, so I decided to stop there to use the toilet, even if it would cost me 1 Euro. Though that toilet really wasn’t worth a Euro. Several stalls did not have toilet paper, the soap and hand sanitiser dispensers were empty and to top it off, I killed a stink bug in the washing room. There was no toilet attendant in sight, so I found a staff member at the restaurant and told him that the toilets were in bad condition. He replied that the toilets aren’t his responsibility and I should tell the toilet attendant. I said, “Well, I would have, but there was no toilet attendant.” The staff member then promised to pass it on. BTW, service station Münsterland was actually found to be one of the two worst service stations in all of Germany during a recent test. I’d say that service station Goldbach on the A27 is even worse, because Münsterland was at least open, but even by the low standards of German Autobahn service stations, Münsterland is pretty bad.

But even the service station itself is bad, it does have a lovely Autobahn chapel at the edge of the parking lot. I’ve written about Autobahn chapels before. Inspired by the roadside shrines and chapels found in Catholic parts of Germany from the Middle Ages until today, the big Christian churches started setting up chapels and churches at service stations along the Autobahnen from the 1950s on. Some of these were existing village churches which were incorporated into the Autobahn network, others were newly built.  For more about Autobahn churches and chapels, see here and here.

I don’t consider myself religious, but I like churches and whenever I find an Autobahn chapel, I pay a visit. And so, once I’d finished my business at the service station proper, I walked along a footpath towards the Autobahn chapel at the far edge of the parking lot.

Autobahn chapel Roxel at service station Münsterland

The Autobahn chapel Roxel at service station Münsterland on Autobahn A1. Built in 1969 and designed by Hubert Teschlade.

The Autobahn chapel is called Roxel after a nearby village and not Münsterland like the service station. It was built in 1969 a few years after this stretch of the A1 was completed. The Münsterland region is very Catholic and the locals felt that the new Autobahn should have a roadside shrine just like the older roads in the region, so they collected money to build this chapel.

The chapel sits a bit apart from the busy service station in a small patch of woodland. As a bonus, there were snowdrops blooming along the footpath leading to the chapel. These were the first snowdrops and indeed spring flowers of any kind that I’ve seen this year.

Snowdrops

Snowdrops blooming along the foot path to the Autobahn chapel Roxel.

Autobahn chapels tend to be fairly plain. There’s a small altar, a bench or chair to sit down, some artwork and a place to light candles. The Roxel chapel also held a surpise, because through the large plate glass windows you could see a huge crucifix behind the chapel in front of the woods.

Crucifix at the Autobahn chapel Roxel

Crucifix behind the Autobahn chapel Roxel. Designed by Hubert Teschlade in 1969

The crucifix is huge, easily two and a half meters tall. It was set up in 1969, when the chapel was built, and designed by architect and artist Hubert Teschlade, who also designed the chapel itself.

Greven

After my little stopover at service station Münsterland, I drove onwards to Greven.

Now Greven isn’t a town I was familiar with at all, but then my knowledge of the exits and towns along the Autobahn A1 gets fuzzy after Osnabrück. In fact, of the three Autobahn exits on the roughly fifty kilometer stretch between Osnabrück and Münster (the Münsterland is sparsely populated), Greven is the least familiar to me. Lengerich takes you to Tecklenburg, Bad Iburg and the Teutoburg Forest, Ladbergen has an Autohof that’s not very good, but Greven? What does Greven have? Well, Airport Münster-Osnabrück is nearby and prominently listed on the Autobahn exit sign, but that’s mainly a freight airport and not one which has a lot of passenger flights. In fact, I’ve never flown from Münster-Osnabrück, though it’s not further away than Hamburg or Hannover, from both of which I have flown.

Turns out Greven is a small town that was mashed together from several villages, which is quite common in many parts of Germany due to community reforms in the 1960s and 1970s eliminating small villages in favour of larger towns. Though the part of Greven I saw seemed more like an actual town than e.g. Stuhr, where I live, which is still eight separate villages of varying size who are forced to share a single townhall and administration.

Greven is located on the banks of the river Ems, which was a bit of a surprise, because I associate the river Ems mainly with northern Germany (see my photos of the Ems barrier at Gandersum here). However, the spring of the river Ems is in the Teutoburg Forest and it flows through the Münsterland before reaching the Emsland region, which is named after it. And indeed the Autobahn A1 crosses the river Ems just before the exit Greven. Though I didn’t see anything of the river Ems, since it flows between two of the formerly independent villages that make up Greven.

I parked my car on the parking lot behind an electronic store, which was closed for Sunday, and walked maybe two hundred meters or so to the Aro Asian Fusion Bowls restaurant. It was already almost two PM, so there weren’t a lot of people around, just a man with his daughter who ordered two bowls to take-out. The Greven Aro branch is also a lot bigger than the Oldenburg branch, which is located in a historic timbered house and thus very small.

I went to the counter, placed my order and sat down to enjoy a chicken yakitori bowl.

Chicken yakitori bowl

Chicken yakitori bowl with two types of pickled cauliflower, sweet potato, chickpeas and roasted edamame, topped with peanuts, roasted onions, sesame seeds and sweet chili sauce.

By the time the bowl was about three quarters empty, I started to notice that my intestines were rumbling again. So I went to the toilet after finishing my bowl and then decided to take a walk to help my stomach calm down and explore the town a bit.

I spotted the tower of a church in the distance, so that’s the direction in which I went.

St. Martinus church in Greven

The St. Martinus Church in Greven.

St. Martinus Church in Greven

A closer look at the St. Martinus church in Greven

The church is called St. Martinus and it has a long history. There has been a church on this spot since the eighth century. The oldest part of the current church, the lower part of the tower, dates from the twelfth century. The rest is more recent, dating anywhere from the late Middle Ages to the nineteenth century. St. Martinus is a Catholic church, because the Münsterland is very Catholic.

I found it odd that Greven had such an old church, because the other buildings in the town center were not very old at all. Turns out that much of the town was destroyed in the Thirty Years War and most of what survived fell victim to nineteenth and twentieth century modernisation attempts.

Behind the church, I came across an open square with an interesting fountain.

Church with market fountain

The rear of the St. Martinus and the market fountain.

The fountain dates from 1993. There was a plaque explaining that the various figures depict the inhabitants of Greven and the surrounding villages on tax day, when they had to deliver goods to the tax man. The scene on top of the fountain, where some poor fellow is dunked into a basin with water, depicts an old custom according to which newly-wed men were baptised in a water basin on tax day.

Market fountain in Greven

Another look at the market fountain in Greven. Note the sacks and basket in the foreground, representing the goods to be handed over as taxes.

Market fountain in Greven

Another look at the market fountain in Greven

As you can see in the background, most of the houses around this square are not very old and date from the 1970s to 1990s, when parts of the city centre were turned into a pedestrian zone.

Little Free library in Greven

A little or rather pretty big free library in the pedestrian zone in the city center of Greven.

Colourful sculpture in the middle of a roundabout

A colourful sculpture in the middle of a roundabout. I couldn’t find out anything about this sculpture online, though it looks nice.

In spite of my little walk through the town center of Greven, my stomach was still rumbling. I also had one and a half hours or so of driving ahead of me, so I decided to have a cup of coffee before heading home.

On the square with the fountain, there was a bakery café called Liesenkötter, so that’s where I went. Because it was a Sunday afternoon and coffee time, the café was busy with locals, often elderly people, enjoying coffee and cake. The cake on offer looked very promising, but I had just eaten and besides, my stomach was not just rumbling, but actually aching by now, so I just ordered a latte macchiato and bought some cookies to take home, because I just can’t resist cookies.

Once I’d finished my coffee, I took my cookies back to the car and drove off again, headed homewards. The mild rumbling in my stomach had turned to a full blown ache by now. I wondered whether there had been anything wrong with my lunch. But I’d eaten at Aro before and had never had these problems.

On my way home, I stopped once more at the Bakumer Wiesen rest area on Autobahn A1 just ahead of the exit Vechta (which is nowhere near Vechta). I drank some water and hoped that the ache would subside, but it didn’t.

I stopped one more time to refuel my car, because the diesel price was reasonable, and finally made it home at five forty PM, just around sunset, so I actually made the entire drive by daylight, which is a far cry from my trip to Hanau in December. As for the grumbling stomach, I had been experiencing a bit of constipation the days before, which caused the stomach ache. I felt better after an extended visit to my own toilet at home.

So was Marché Noir worth the trip? I’d say yes. It was a fun con and the venue alone was worth the price of admission. Besides, it’s always nice to get out of the house and visit a place (or several) I’ve never been to before.

 

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Journey to the Edge of the Ruhrgebiet: Cora’s Adventures at the Marché Noir Retro Fair in Dorsten, Part 2: The Con and the Mine

Posted on February 23, 2025 by Cora

Here is part 2 of my adventures at the Marché Noir Retro Fair in Dorsten. Part 1 about the trip to get there may be found here.

Coalmine Fürst Leopold

As mentioned before, the 2025 Marché Noir retro toy/comic/cool stuff fair in Dorsten took place on the premises of the former coalmine Fürst Leopold (Count Leopold), named after Count Leopold zu Salm-Salm, the nobleman who owned the mining rights for the region. Though Count Leopold himself wasn’t particularly interested in mining, but was a passionate ornithologist and collector of snails and shells as well as a horse breeder.

The Fürst Leopold mine started operation in 1913, five years after the Count’s death. It was combined with two other nearby mines and survived several mining crises, until it was finally closed and decomissioned in 2001.

Naturally, I took the opportunity to wander around the premises of Fürst Leopold mine and take lots of pictures of the interesting industrial architecture to be seen there.

Former gate of the Count Leopold mine in Dorsten

The former gatehouse of the Fürst Leopold mine in Dorsten. RAG stands for Ruhrkohle AG, a mining conglomerate founded in 1968 which operated most of the remaining German coalmines until the end of coalmining in Germany in 2018.

Fürst Leopold coalmine gatehouse

The porter’s lodge of the Fürst Leopold mine in Dorsten. This building probably dates from the 1910s or 1920s.

Coalmine Fürst Leopold memorial plaque

A closer look at a memorial plaque next to the gatehouse of the former Fürst Leopold mine, commemorating a miners strike in 1996/1997.

I have zero memory of this particular strike – miners seemed to be striking all the time in the 1980s and 1990s – and I could find very little online either and most of what there is is focussed on artist/nun Tisa von der Schulenburg who supported the miners and actually designed the memorial plaque pictured above. According to this page about the history of coal mining in Dorsten, the Fürst Leopold Mine still had 3000 employees in 1997 and reached its all-time annual peak production of 2.4 millions tons of coal. Four years later, the mine was shut down.

It’s not that there is no more coal in the Ruhrgebiet. Some mines have been exhausted, but far from all. However, the market for German coal has been shrinking since the late 1950s – in spite of various attempts to prop up demand such as a so-called “coal pfennig” (which was considerably more than a pfennig) which was added to everybody’s electricity bill to support the German coal industry. The “coal pfennig” existed for twenty years until it was finally struck down by the German Supreme Court in 1995, because customers of German electricity companies could not be expected to support a dying industry. By the 2000s, German coalmining simply was no longer cost-effective and frankly, it probably hasn’t been since well before that time.

I think they should have kept one or two mines operating to test new mining equipment – something for which there is a market abroad – and they definitely should have shut down lignite coal mining, which is extremely harmful for the environment at any stage (lignite coal is strip-mined and generates more harmful substances, when burned) and displaced thousands of people who lost their homes to strip-mining, well before they shut down the subterranean coalmines. But lignite coal is still strip-mined in Germany, while the last subterranean coalmines shut down in 2018.

I do feel sorry for the miners who had their jobs vanish, but the German coalmines have been dying all my life (and longer, though I didn’t know that at the time) and the dying mines got so more attention than industries in trouble. When the coalmines were dying once again in the 1980s, the shipbuilding industry in North Germany was also in trouble, which also affected me, because the shipyard crisis sent my Dad travelling ever further in search of work. But while the coal industry was propped up with the “coal pfennig” and other measures, the political response to the shipyard crisis was basically a shrug and “Well, you can’t expect us to save your jobs. Ships are built in Asia these days, where it’s cheaper.” This left me with a lingering resentment for coal miners, which is unfair, because they no more asked to lose their jobs than the shipyard workers did. Besides, playing workers against each other was a classic divisionary tactic.

When I was younger, I also resented coal mining and mining in general. This is probably because the school curriculum in the 1980s forced coal mining down our throats. At any rate, I was taught about coalmining and mining in general (there was also something about salt mines) several times in school, even though I didn’t live in a coalmining region, had zero interest in mining and besides, the mines were all dying anyway, so why were we learning about this? We were also forced to learn about lignite coal strip-mining, which left me terrified that giant bucket-wheel excavators would destroy my home – honestly, what were the teachers thinking to foist this stuff on ten-year-olds? We even visited the Clausthal-Zellerfeld mining museum and exhibiton mine (which is not in the Ruhrgebiet, but in the Harz), which mostly terrified me, because the guide said that there were bats living in the mine tunnels who liked to attack girls and get entangled in their hair. Yeah, that guide was an arsehole.

As an adult, I do find coalmines and industrial history and heritage in general fascinating. I guess it helps if you don’t have this stuff forced down your throat in school and if you know that there are no monstrous bats waiting to attack you nor giant bucket wheel excavators waiting to destroy your home. In fact, I should probably visit the Clausthal-Zellerfeld museum again some time, because this time around I would actually enjoy it.

Coalmines are big – even above ground, let alone below. If you look at the photos on the sites I linked above, you can see a lot of buildings that are now gone such as the massive coal washing plant. The buildings that remain mostly date from the early years of the mine in the 1910s and 1920s. The rest has been demolished to make way for a business and office park as well as two grocery stores.

Of course, the Fürst Leopold Mine also has a mineshaft elevator tower, which is the iconic symbol of coalmining in general and the Ruhrgebiet in particular. Apparently, this is the original mineshaft elevator tower, built in 1913, when the mine opened. There was a second mineshaft elevator tower as well, but that one has been demolished.

Fürst Leopold Mineshaft elevator tower

The mineshaft elevator tower of the Fürst Leopold Mine sits on a plot of land next a street on the edge of an office park. This is the oldest mineshaft elevator tower of the Fürst Leopold Mine, built in 1913.

Mineshaft elevator tower of the Fürst Leopold mine

A closer look at the mineshaft elevator tower of the Fürst Leopold mine, complete with sign. In 1970, the Fürst Leopold Mine was combined with the nearby Wulfen Mine and renamed Mine Fürst Leopold/Wulfen.

Fürst Leopold mine building, mineshaft elevator tower and mine pump.

Another look at the Fürst Leopold mineshaft elevator tower as well as one of the above-ground mine buildings. The rusty components on the lawn are parts of a former mine pump.

Those parts of the Fürst Leopold Mine premises that had been turned into an arts and events center were all buildings that dated from the the early years of the mine in the 1910s and 1920s. There was also a lot of vintage mining equipment – mine cars, pumps, elevator wheels, etc… – installed around the area as exhibits. All in all, the whole place was a great example of how to repurpose older industrial facilities while retaining their original character.

Fürst Leopold mine machinery hall

The machinery hall of the former Fürst Leopold Mine in Dorsten.

Fürst Leopold mine in Dorsten

The machinery hall, the mineshaft elevator tower and another former building of the Fürst Leopold mine, which now houses a restaurant.

The restaurant housed in this former mine building (I don’t know what this building used to be) appears to be part of a chain of mediterranean restaurants active in the northern Ruhrgebiet and southern Münsterland, since I ran across the same chain twice more on the same day, though I’d never heard of it before. Restaurant and bakery chains are still regional in Germany, while most retail chains now operate nationwide.

Fountain at the Fürst Leopold mine in Dorsten

This interesting fountain sits in front of the restaurant on the premises of the former Fürst Leopold mine. There was still some ice on the water, because the night had been cold.

Staircase at the former Fürst Leopold Mine in Dorsten

A metal staircase and walkways connect different buildings of the Fürst Leopold mine in Dorsten. There are artist studios located in one of the buildings. Next to the staircase, you can see the terrace of an ice cream parlour, which was closed for the season, as well as a former mine car.

The former mine cars were scattered all over the premises as decoration. They probably double as flower pots in the summer.

Former mine carts of the Fürst Leopold mine in Dorsten

Former mine carts on the premises of the Fürst Leopold mine in Dorsten.

Mine carts on the premises of the Fürst Leopold Mine in Dorsten

More former mine carts on the premises of the Fürst Leopold mine in Dorsten. These even form a little train.

Mine cart benches at the Fürst Leopold mine in Dorsten

These former mine carts have been transformed into benches.

Mine equipment on the premises of the former Fürst Leopold mine in Dorsten

A random piece of mining equipment on the premises of the Fürst Leopold mine in Dorsten. Note the “Fck AfD” and anti-Nazi stickers.

In general, the Fürst Leopold premises with all the mining equipment scattered around would have made a great location for some toy photography. And since I was there for a geeky event, I wouldn’t even have drawn weird looks or – worse – overly curious dogs for setting up action figures to take pictures of them. Fisto and Ram-Man would have been great choices, since they’re both former miners in some versions of Masters of the Universe.

But while I have started to take action figures along on my outings and roadtrips, just in case there is an opportunity to take a cool photo, I didn’t take any of my figures along on this outing, because I figured I’d probably buy something I’d want to photograph.

The main building of the Fürst Leopold complex is the so-called Wage Hall, the building where the miners received their wages in cash before bank transfers were common. Wage Halls were often the grandest building on the premises to display the wealth of the mine owners. A remarkable number of them survive and have been turned into hotels or restaurants. This is also what happened to the Wage Hall of the Fürst Leopold mine, which now houses a hotel and restaurant.

Wage hall and washing hall of the Fürst Leopold mine in Dorsten

The former Wage Hall and administrative building of the Fürst Leopold mine.

Wage hall of the Count Leopold Mine

A closer look at the former Wage Hall of the Count Leopold mine. Note the sculpture in front of the building which looks like a Christmas tree made from scrap metal.

The Marchè Noir fair was supposed to take place inside the former washing hall of the Fürst Leopold mine. However, so far I hadn’t any signs that pointing to the washing hall. What is more, I also wasn’t entirely sure what the washing hall had originally been for? What precisely did they wash in there? Coal? Equipment? Miners?

As I approached the Wage Hall to take the picture above, I spotted a sign saying “Marché Noir” with an arrow pointing towards the entrance of the Wage Hall. So I followed the sign and promptly found the ticket office/registration desk. I got my armband and walked into what was now the lobby of the hotel housed inside the Wage Hall, which had a bunch of fans and cosplayers milling about.

Cosplayers at Marché Noir gathered in the lobby of the former Wage Hall

Some cosplayers have gathered in the lobby of the hotel housed inside the former wage hall of the Marché Noir con. There’s the Swamp Thing  and the fox chatting with a Ghostbuster and a guy carrying a skeleton around.

The Washing Hall or How to Clean a Miner

The washing hall turned out to be adjacent to the former Wage Hall. I walked into an enormous tiled space and was immediately struck by thousand of chains and cages dangling from the ceiling.

Marché Noir in the washing hall of the Fürst Leopold mine in Dorsten

A look down the washing hall of the former Fürst Leopold mine in Dorsten. Note the chains and the cages dangling from the ceiling.

Cages and chains dangling from the ceiling the washing hall of the Fürst Leopold mine

Another look at the chains and cages dangling from the ceiling of the washing hall of the Fürst Leopold mine. Also note the food stall offering crepes and baked feta.

Chains and cages dangling from the ceiling of the Fürst Leopold mine washing hall

Another look at the ceiling of the washing hall of the Fürst Leopold mine with all the chains and cages.

My first reaction – after “Wow” – was “What on Earth is this and what was it for?” The place certainly gives off torture chamber vibes, except that the chains are too flimsy to hold a human being and the cages are too small for humans, though sized just about right for gnomes. So did the miners hold gnomes and dwarves captive here?

The reality is not as dramatic, though just as fascinating. As explained on Wikipedia, the miners would store their civilian clothes in and on those cages and pull them up to the ceiling to keep their clothes and possessions safe from dirt or thieves. Then the naked miners would walk over to the second washing hall, where their work clothes and equipment were stored in and on similar cages. They’re pull down the cage, put on their work clothes and safety gear and go off to the mine. After their shift, they’d do the same thing in reverse – take off work clothes and store them in the cages, then walk over the second washing hall to retrieve their civilian clothes – except that they would shower inbetween, which is the washing part of the washing hall. So basically, this entire complex was a giant changing room for miners.

Now I mentioned that I did not pay much attention when teachers tried to teach me about mining in school, but I’m pretty sure I’d never heard of this system before. Honestly, if someone had told me about naked and sweaty miners walking around giant halls with chains and cages dangling from the ceiling, I might have been more interested.

That said, once you know how it works, the set-up of the washing hall makes a lot more sense. For example, on one end there was a tiled area separated by dividing walls, which now housed the toilets. However, I’m pretty sure that this used to be the showers.  Straight in the middle of the hall, there were also the remnants of some kind of plastic divider curtain, which likely once spearated the clean from the dirty area.

The chains hung in rows that looked a lot like beaded curtains. The chains were also numbered – so the miners could easily find their clothes and gear again – and in front of those curtains there were long plastic covered benches, where the miners could sit down to disrobe.

Chains and benches in the washing hall of the Fürst Leopold mine

A closer look at the row of chains in the washing hall of the Fürst Leopold mine. Also note the bench running along the curtain of chains. These benches were now used by exhausted con goers to sit down.

Numbered chains in the washing hall of the Fürst Leopold mine in Dorsten

Another closer look at the chains in the washing hall of the Fürst Leopold mine. Note the numbers, which made it easier for miners to locate their clothes and gear. Also note how high the numbers are, indicating how many people used to work here.

One thing I really enjoy about the roadtrips I’ve been taking this past year – whether con-related or not – is learning so many things I never knew about before, such as how exactly miners cleaned themselves and how they stored their clothes and gear. I suspect this will find its way into a story somewhere down the line.

However, I wasn’t just here to admire vintage industrial architecture, but to attend a con. So let’s have some impressions of the con proper.

The Con

For starters, here is an article by Stefan Moutty from the local paper for Dorsten, the Westdeutsche Allgemeine Zeitung, about the 2025 Marché Noir. He also interviews one of the organisers.

Once again, there are several videos about the 2025 Marché Noir con, because German fandom is very active on YouTube. Here is a documentary by the organisers Super Mega Action. Here is another documentary with plenty of interviews by Goreminister. Here is a video with impressions from the con by PogoBär1985. Here is a video of the con by Die Trödelmama. I definitely saw this lady – the Elvira cosplay is quite unmistakable. Here is a video about the con by We Are Ghostbusters Germany. Once again, I saw these folks at the con – some twenty Ghostbusters or so are kind of hard to miss. They also had a stall at the con. Here is a video by RetroRauner, in which he presents his Marché Noir haul. One of the two hosts of the Tales from the Fright Zone podcast also discusses Marché Noir and his haul. Coincidentally, he also didn’t know what the mine washing hall was and how it worked.

Entrance area of the Marché Noir con at the Fürst Leopold mine in Dorsten

A look at the entrance area of the Marché Noir con with the stall of the organisers, a Ruhrgebiet area fan and collector zine. Also note the Stormtrooper, Predator and Imperial officer cosplayers as well as a bunch of Ghostbusters.

As you can see in those videos and also in my photos, there was a lot of cosplay at Marché Noir, more than you usually see at German cons. In addition to the Ghostbusters and Elvira, there were a lot of Star Wars cosplayers, including several Mandalorians, a handful of Jedi and a lot of Stormtroopers. There was an Emperor Palpatine cosplayer who was accompanied by a guard of Stormtroopers and Imperial officers wherever he went. They even held the doors open for him. But then, the Emperor of a Galactic Empire beset by rebellion and civil war cannot be expected to go out in public – even to an otherwise friendly and peaceful con – without a suitable contingent of bodyguards.

Battlestar Galactic centurion and Star Wars cosplayer at Marché Noir

A Star Wars cosplayer named Imperathomas, who runs an anti-cancer charity, chats with a Battlestar Galactica centurion, who has removed his helmet.

Other cosplayers included a gleaming Battlestar Galactica centurion, a Ninja Turtle (I think it was Michalangelo), a Gremlin whom I saw sharing a coffee with an elf at one point, a Predator, the Swamp Thing, Deadpool, who was manning a bubble tea stall, and a bunch of elves. At one point, I was sitting in one of the chairs in the lobby that connected the wage hall to the washing hall, when the Predator emerged from the washing hall and yanked off his rubber mask to get a breath of fresh air. “Do you want to sit down?” I asked him, since he was clearly exhausted from walking around the pretty warm washing hall in a heavy costume. “I’d love to”, he replied, “But I can’t sit down with this costume.”

Regarding the con goers, there were obviously a lot of guys ranging in age from their thirties to their fifties. However, there were also a lot of women and not just women who’d been dragged along by their menfolk either, but woman fans. The gender breakdown was roughly 60% male to 40% female, which matches what I’ve observed at other German cons. There were also quite a lot of children ranging in age from toddlers to teenagers, which made me happy.

At one point, I saw a little boy, maybe four or five years old, who’d fished a vintage Panthor out of a bin full of vintage Masters of the Universe toys and cradled the Panthor in his arms and was clearly determined to take him home. The parents were not quite so eager to buy a forty-year-old vintage toy for a four-year-old kid. I still hope he got to take Panthor home, because I’m sure that Panthor would get a lot of love – and probably lose what’s left of his flocking.

In addition to sales and food stalls, there was also an area where you could sit down in a 1980s inspired lounge to play vintage video games. Some arcade games and pinball machines were on display as well. There was also a beer specially brewed for the con. Alas, I couldn’t try it, because I was driving.

Lounge for playing vintage video games at Marché Noir

A lounge styled like a 1980s teen bedroom where you could play vintage video games at Marché Noir. The slanted posters are spot on.

The wares on offer were a mix of vintage toys and collectibles, comics, games, t-shirts, videotapes and DVDs as well as vinyl records and cassette tapes. In fact, I was surprised how many vinyl records there were.

Comics for sale at Marché Noir in Dorsten

Comics for sale.

There were also a lot of audio dramas available, both vintage audio dramas on cassette tapes and modern ones on CD. This isn’t overly surprising, because audio dramas, particularly those aimed at kids and teenagers, have a long history in Germany. For pretty much everybody who grew up in West Germany in the 1970s and 1980s and beyond, audio dramas on cassette were an integral part of their childhood. There were dozens of series available for every age range and gender and in every genre, including lots of licensed properties. The production values were amazing – a full cast of excellent voice actors, sound effects, music – all for audio dramas aimed at children.

Every West German kid had at least a few of those audio dramas on cassette (and they also found their way to East Germany in parcels or as gifts) and would pop the tape into the player before falling asleep or as entertainment during long road trips o as background noise while doing homework. The tapes were swapped around and shared and they were ubiquitous to the point that it never even occurred to me that audio dramas on cassette were mainly a West German thing and not nearly as prevalent elsewhere. As an adult, I also learned that a single company – Europa records – was responsible for most of these audio dramas  and that a single woman – Heikedine Körting – directed and produced these dramas. She turns eighty this year and has been awarded more than 180 golden and several platinum records over her lifetime.

Audio dramas on tape for sale at Marché Noir

A selection of audio dramas on tape for sale at Marché Noir. The series include Gruselserie (The Spooky Series), Jan Tenner (a Flash Gordon style science fiction series), Masters of the Universe, Princess of Power, both Filmation and the Real Ghostbusters, Asterix, James Bond, Knight Rider, A Nightmare on Elm Street, The A-Team and The Simpsons.

Looking at the photo above, I’m struck by how many series there were of which I have zero memory, even though they had lots of installments. I remember Masters of the Universe, of course, and Jan Tenner (which is one of the few audio drama series that were not issued by Europa) and the Knight Rider series as well as popular series like The Three Investigators or TKKG (both teen mystery series) that aren’t pictured here, but I had no idea that the rather obscure Filmation Ghostbusters or even the much better known Real Ghostbusters ever had audio dramas, let alone James Bond or A Nightmare on Elm Street. Reissuing these audio dramas, particularly the licenced ones, is a rights nightmare, so these cassettes are highly collectible, since they are the only way to listen to many of those series (okay, a lot of them are also on YouTube).

Regarding the vintage toys, there were a lot of Star Wars toys on offer from all generations of the franchise. Masters of the Universe was also represented, but not quite as much. I also noticed that most of the Masters of the Universe toys on offer were from the vintage and to a lesser degree New Adventures era as well as some recent Masterverse and Origins figures. The 200X, Classics and vintage Princess of Power lines were much less represented, though there were a few things. Transformers, Marvel Legends and Playmobil were also quite well represented. I also spotted Micro Machines, Starcom, Bravestarr, The Real Ghostbusters, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, Biker Mice From Mars and lots of other toylines from the 1980s and 1990s. There was also a stall selling vintage wind-up tin toys, which predate the 1980s. As is common with vintage toy shows, at least in Germany, boy-focussed toylines were a lot more common than girl-focussed toylines, though I did spot a couple of Barbies, Monster High dolls, My Little Ponies and even two Golden Girl and the Guardians of the Gemstone fashion sets still in box.

Later, I chatted with a woman who collects vintage dolls and hadn’t really found anything and was now waiting for her ride companions to return. “I only got a pair of socks”, she said.

Custom Masters of the Universe Lego minifigures

Some custom Masters of the Universe Lego mini-figures on display at Marché Noir. Mattel owns the Lego rival Mega Construx, so there are no official Masters of the Universe Lego sets, though there were several Mega Construx sets.

New Adventures of He-Man Terrorclaw/Terrapod, piloted by Hoove and Karatti

A vintage New Adventures of He-Man Terrorclaw/Terrapod vehicle piloted by the evil space mutants Hoove and Karatti. I have a Classics Karatti and he’s awesome. No Hoove, alas, since he was never made in Classics and the vintage New Adventures figures aren’t in scale with anything and no Terrorclaw either. There’s also a collection of Godzillas, an Alien xenomorph and the Infinity Gauntleton display.

Vintage Masters of the Universe vehicles

A selection of vintage Masters of the Universe vehicles on offer at Marché Noir. You can see the Laserbolt (first one I’ve ever seen in person), two Battle Rams, an Attak Track, a Road Ripper, a Wind Raider, a Roton, Panthor, Stridor, a Land Shark, Spidor, the Monstroid and the totally awesome Bashasaurus and Dragon Walker. Also note the beautiful in box vintage He-Man and Battlecat gift set as well as a Club She-Ra and Sorceress. There also are some vintage alarm clocks and – sigh – a Harry Potter jigsaw puzzle.

Those vehicles were very tempting, especially the Dragon Walker and the Bashasaurus, though my will power was strong enough to resist them. The fact that I’d probably have to deal with peeling stickers, missing pieces and mechanisms that either were broken or would break down in the none too far future also helped. But damn it, those vehicles were awesome.

My Haul

But enough about what I didn’t buy. I guess you want to hear and see what I did buy.

In addition to dealers selling all sorts of merchandise, there were also several small press publishers of comics, books and audio dramas present at Marché Noir. One of those publishers is Retrofabrik, who reprinted many of the West German Masters of the Universe comics of the 1980s and launched a new line of Masters of the Universe audio dramas last year. I already have all of their comic reprints courtesy of my friend local comic shop, but I was still missing the latest audio drama (episode 4), so I took the chance to purchase it at the con and compliment the Retrofabrik guys on their excellent work.

I also wound up purchasing a graphic novel biography of Friedrich Engels from the stall of the publisher and even got it signed by the author. We also chatted about the fact that Engels spent part of his youth in Bremen as an apprentice to a merchant.

The Trash-o-thek podcast, which is dedicated to trashy movies, offered a so-called Wonder Box at their stall. Five bucks got you a cardboard box which includes a trashy movie on DVD or BluRay, an audio dramas on CD and a selection of other goodies like small toys and candies. I think these boxes were also supposed to raise funds for the podcast and the con. At any rate, it’s a good deal and I got one of them.

Contents of the Wonder Box

And here is what’s inside the Wonder Box: A BluRay of the movie “Fortress: Sniper’s Eye”, the audio drama “Bloody Zombies in Bottrop”, a toy dart gun, a few postcards, a sticker, a mini-game and some retro candy.

I’m keeping the BluRay, the audio drama (Come on, who could resist Bloody Zombies in Bottrop?) and the postcards and gave the candy, the mini-game and the dart gun to my neighbour’s kids. The candy filled plastic seashell really brought back memories, because I loved those seashells as a kid, though I never liked the candy. I had no idea they were still making these. Still a good value. If I’d bought the BluRay and the audio drama separately, I’d probably have paid more.

As for toys, I found a 200X Teela, still on card (not sure if you could call it mint, because those 200X blisters are yellowing ferociously some twenty years on). I don’t really collect 200X figures – except that I occasionally pick them up, when I come across one I like – and I do like the 200X Teela. She’s also quite hard to find, because Mattel underproduced her due to some “boys don’t buy girl figures” gender essentialist nonsense. So I’m glad I finally got a Teela to go with my 200X Prince Adam and Man-at-Arms. I also picked up a loose but complete 200X Battle Cat for my 200X He-Man, because He-Man needs Battle Cat and my 200X He-Man doesn’t have one.

Finally, I also snagged a vintage Princess of Power Entrapta. She’s missing her tiara and her shield and has a few scratches, but otherwise she’s in good condition. Entrapta’s hair tends to get really messy, but this one looks nice.

Marché Noir haul

My Marché Noir haul: A Wonder Box, a 200X Battle Cat, 200X Teela, vintage Princess of Power Entrapta, a graphic novel biography of Friedrich Engels and the latest Masters of the Universe audio drama by the Retrofabrik

The various accessories – mostly some kind of projectile launcher thing, because everything in the 200X line had to launch projectiles – that came with the 200X Battle Cat are not pictured, though they were included. I honestly don’t get this fascination of the 200X toyline with projectile launchers and I don’t think anybody else does either.

Once I’d done my round of the con and it started to get quite crowded, I took my haul back to the car and decided what to do next. But that’s a story for part 3.

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Journey to the Edge of the Ruhrgebiet: Cora’s Adventures at the Marché Noir Retro Fair in Dorsten, Part 1: It’s Roadtrip Time Again

Posted on February 18, 2025 by Cora

I first heard about Marché Noir, a retro toy/comic/games/cool stuff fair in the Ruhrgebiet region, sometime last year. It sounded like exactly my sort of thing. However, Marché Noir is traditionally in February and last year I couldn’t go for personal reasons and probably wouldn’t have enjoyed myself, even if I had been able to go.

In previous years, Marché Noir took place in a former tram depot in Dortmund, but this year they moved to a new venue on the premises of a former coalmine in a town called Dorsten. The name of the town didn’t ring a bell at all, but when I looked it up on a map, I saw that Dorsten is located on the northern edge of the Ruhrgebiet and is actually closer to Bremen than Dortmund would have been. And of course the fact that the con venue was a former coalmine turned arts and events venue also intrigued me, because anything that combines a con with industrial history has to be cool. Plus, last week was the first anniversary of Mom’s death, so Marché Noir gave me something to distract me and look forward to. So I decided to go.

And you know what this means. It’s roadtrip time again!

Autobahn A1

I got up at quarter past six AM.  As with my trips to Castrop-Rauxel and Hanau, it was still dark when I got up. However, by the time I got into my car shortly before seven AM, the pitch darkness of the night had been replaced by gray twilight gloom. By now, it’s quite notable that the days are getting longer again. However, it was also freezing cold – the entire week has been cold and we even had snow.

I made a brief pitstop to throw my mail-in ballot into a mailbox – Germany is having a general election next Sunday, which is dreaded by pretty much everybody, and since the far right AfD is projected to win approx. twenty percent of the total vote, every vote counts even more than usual. Then, my civic duty done, I set off towards Dorsten.

I drove onto my old friend Autobahn A1 at Groß-Mackenstedt in southbound direction. As I’ve said before, almost every roadtrip starts on the A1. Because it was seven AM on a Sunday morning, even the normally busy A1 was as empty as it ever gets. There were very few cars about, because it was so early. And since trucks are not allowed to drive on German roads on Sundays except for urgent cargo like perishable goods or live animals, there were hardly any trucks either, at least not on the Autobahnen. Because there were plenty of trucks parked on the large parking lots along the route.

Because there was so little traffic, I made good time. Even better, my old nemesis, the monster 33 kilometer construction zone between exits Lohne/Dinklage and Bramsche is also gone with a few leftovers, where there’s still some construction work going on at the edge of the highway or on highway bridges and the like.

On the downside, the stretch of Autobahn from Groß-Mackenstedt to Wildeshausen, which used to be a “go as fast as you like” zone and then acquired a speed limit of 120 kilometers per hour, has now had the speed limit reduced to 100 kilometers per hour because the tarmac is in bad condition. I guess that’s where the next monster construction zone will be. It’s still a bummer, though, because 100 kilometers per hour is pretty slow for an Autobahn that’s straight and even, not to mention almost empty.

After Wildeshausen, however, the speed limit was lifted and I could drive as fast as I like. And because the Autobahn was empty and there are few curves and no hills here, I drove at top speeds up to 150 kilometers per hour or so, which is faster than I normally go. But in such conditions and with good music on the radio, driving is fun. Plus, it wasn’t dark anymore, but gray, though the sun didn’t rise until approx. 7:40 AM, by which time I had reached Service Station Dammer Berge with its iconic bridge restaurant. Though this time around, I didn’t stop there, because I wasn’t in the mood for soapy coffee or gloopy cake.

There was snow in the fields and woods alongside the A1. At first just a little bit and then by the time I reached Cloppenburg, the fields were fully covered in snow, though the Autobahn itself was free. Interestingly enough, the snow completely vanished by the time I Osnabrück. Normally, the hillier and more southern parts of Germany get more snow. But this time around, North Germany got all the snow, while the regions further south didn’t get nearly as much.

Country Roads, Take Me Home:

When I’m driving I need music on the radio to stay awake and alert. That makes me the opposite of my Dad, who needed to hear someone talking to stay alert, preferably live, but the radio would do as well. With was a problem during roadtrips, when I was a kid, because Dad would switch on talky radio stations – usually news and political stuff – and also keep the music at a very low volume, whereas I wanted music at higher volume and preferably no talking at all, because it disrupted my thoughts. And since I cannot tolerate headphones, a walkman was no solution either. Eventually, I learned to tune out the talking on the radio to the point that I accidentally gave myself audio processing issues (basically, I tend to drift off after a few minutes of talking on the radio or another medium), which initially made it difficult for me to listen to podcasts, audio books and audio dramas (which is ironic, considering how important audio dramas were in West German youth culture). Come to think of it, I’m not sure if I ever suggested to my Dad popping an audio drama on cassette into the tape deck of the car radio, so we could at least listen to talking that was fun. But then, I don’t think it would have worked, because my parents didn’t like audio dramas very much (some nonsense about audio dramas harming reading abilities), so I never had all that many audio dramas on tape. Oddly enough, they did buy me Kid Stuff readalong records from the US, because anything is educational, when it’s in a foreign language.

My radio station of choice has always been Radio Bremen 1, because I like their mix of older and newer music in a variety of styles. However, around Osnabrück you get out of range and have to choose a different station. In this case, this was WDR 4, which has a similar mix of music to Radio Bremen 1, though they’re more 1980s and generally oldie focussed than Radio Bremen 1, and is enjoyable enough to listen to. Though my trip to Hanau in December was actively painful, because I just couldn’t find a radio station that worked for me at all. At one point, I even asked an employee at an Autohof to which station their radio was tuned, because at least that one had decent music.

A few days ago, there was a discussion on BlueSky, where an American expat in Germany said in response to “Country Roads, Take Me Home” being played at the Super Bowl (allegedly – I didn’t watch that thing and actively dislike it, since Mom died during the night of last year’s Super Bowl, so it brings back bad memories) that in Germany the entire stadium would have sung along. In response, another expat said that they didn’t understand why Germans liked that song as well as “Seasons in the Sun” by Terry Jacks so much, since no one under fifty in the US would know those songs, which led to a discussion about John Denver (whom supposedly no one under fifty remembers either) and the music played on German radio stations, which many expats find irritating. Well, to be fair, I find American and Canadian radio stations with focus on only a single type of music irritating as well.

Anyway, as I was driving down the A1, what song came on on the radio? Exactly, “Country Roads, Take Me Home”. And yes, I did sing along – because that’s another thing I like to do, when I’m driving on my own, singing along with the radio. Later in the day, I actually heard the song a second time, this time courtesy of WDR 4. I also heard “Seasons in the Sun” BTW, which I did not need right now. Not that I don’t like “Seasons in the Sun” – it’s a good song. However, it was played at my Mom’s funeral, because she loved that song, so I really didn’t need to hear it only a few days after the anniversary of her death.

Autobahn A43 and Breakfast in Dülmen

I made excellent time and drove past Osnabrück towards Münster. At the intersection Münster South I changed onto Autobahn A43 – yes, one of the dreaded A-fortysomethings that criss-cross the Ruhrgebiet.  By now, it was 8:30 AM and time to look for a place to have breakfast. But where?

The first exit on the A43 had an Autohof, but it was closed for renovations. I also wasn’t familiar with any of the names of the exits and towns at all, since I don’t think I’ve ever been on the A43 before – at least not in the last forty years. So I had no idea which exit had a town nearby and which would just lead to an industrial estate or disgorge me in the middle of nowhere. So when I spotted a sign for a rest area named Karthaus, I stopped to check Google Maps for a suitable place nearby to have breakfast. I saw that there was a town of reasonable size called Dülmen up ahead, which had several bakeries fairly close to the Autobahn. Dülmen also apparently has some surviving medieval buildings as well as a famous nature park with wild horses, but I didn’t see any of this.

So I left the Autobahn at the exit Dülmen, ignoring the complaints of Else, my GPS. The first bakery turned out to be attached to a grocery store and was closed, but the second one was not only open and busy, but also had a large café. It was a branch of Bakery Geiping, a chain that operates bakery cafés all over the Münsterland and the northern part of the Ruhrgebiet. The name rang a bell and indeed I had coffee at another Geiping branch on my way home from Toyplosion in Castrup-Rauxel last year.

For a Sunday morning, the bakery was busy and there was a line of people waiting to be served. However, most of them were picking up fresh bread rolls to take home – Sunday breakfast is something of a ritual for many German families – and the line to eat in was much shorter. There was a poster advertising an avocado bagel, but the lady behind the counter informed that avocado bagels were only available during the week. So I ended up ordering scrambled eggs with vegetables and a latte macchiato.

Scrambled eggs with vegetables, a bread roll and two slices of dark bread

Autobahn A52, Marl and fucking Gladbeck:

After breakfast, I got back into my car for the rest of the trip. I drove back onto the A43 and two exits later my GPS Else instructed me to change onto Autobahn A52 – not an A-fortysomething for once – at the intersection Marl-North. Though it’s more of a junction, because the A52 peters out shortly after Marl-North.

Marl was actually a town whose name I did recognise as a Ruhrgebiet city that’s a center of the chemical industry. Indeed, the Autobahn directly passed Marl Chemical Park, a massive industrial complex, and I could see the various chemical plants in the distance. Apparently, parts of Mark Chemical Park are open to visitors and there is also a former coalmine on the premises, which you can visit as well. However, I didn’t know this at the time and besides, I already had an appointment at a different coalmine.

I also saw a mosque, complete with dome and minaret, directly next to the Autobahn. Mosques aren’t rare in Germany – we have approx. 5.5 million Muslims after all. And due to its industrial history, the Ruhrgebiet has a higher percentage of Muslims than many other places, because many Turkish immigrants flocked to the Ruhrgebiet cities in the 1960s and 1970s to work in the mines and factories. However, most mosques in Germany are converted warehouses, shops, restaurants or even single family homes. Purpose-built mosques with minarets and interesting architecture are still fairly uncommon and sadly controversial. Some research reveals that this particular mosque was actually one of the first purpose-built mosques in all of Germany and was built in 1992.

The signs on the Autobahn did not mention Dorsten at all, but instead announced Gelsenkirchen and – somewhat troubling to me – Gladbeck. As for why seeing the name “Gladbeck” on a roadsign upsets me, that’s because of the so-called Gladbeck hostage crisis, most of which did not actually take place in Gladbeck but in Bremen. That hostage crisis led to a massive media circus and cost three lives – police officer Ingo Hagen, 15-year-old Emanuele di Giorgi and 18-year-old Silke Bischoff, who went to my school, though she was a few years ahead of me. As a result, the entire school was traumatised – because the victims were our age, because Silke had been one of us, because everybody knew the bus stop where the bus was hijacked (it was a main stop on the bus route into Bremen and my best friend and I had been at that same bus stop the day before) and because it could have been anyone of us. Rumours were also flying high, making events that already were horrible enough even worse. I don’t know if any of those rumours were ever true and I have certainly never repeated them. And our teachers not only had no idea how to handle a bunch of traumatised teenagers, but probably didn’t even recognise they were dealing with traumatised teenagers and reacted really badly. Indeed, the mere fact that we wanted to talk about the events seemed inconvenience the teachers. Mr. Bösche, who was my class teacher at the time and a terrible person, basically told us that everything that had happened was our fault, because we had watched the news reports and live interviews with the gangsters on TV. Honestly, as an adult the lack of empathy among our teachers is shocking. If something like this happened nowadays, there would probably be psychological support offered for students.

It took me a long time to even understand that the Gladbeck hostage crisis had caused a lingering trauma in me. After all, I wasn’t directly affected. I didn’t even know Silke Bischoff personally and I didn’t know Emanuele di Giorgi at all. But 36 years later, I still cannot look at the iconic photos of the gangsters brandishing their guns inside the bus and of the gun pressed to Silke Bischoff’s head and get upset when I chance to see them without warning. I also still get upset when I pass service station Grundbergsee on the A1, where Emanuele di Giorgi was murdered and Ingo Hagen was killed in a car crash, and I would never ever stop there. When one of the gangsters was released from prison in 2018, I was furious, though I’m normally not in favour of extremely long prison sentences. And when a trailer for a 2018 TV movie about the Gladbeck hostage crisis came on unexpectedly, I literally screamed at the TV how on Earth they could broadcast this without even the courtesy of a trigger warning. That was the point when I realised that it had been thirty years after all, well beyond any statute of limitations, and that my reaction wasn’t exactly normal, but a trauma response.

Just as service station Grundbergsee bothers me, seeing the name “Gladbeck” on every second sign on Autobahn A52 also bothered me a lot. Though of course, I can’t expect Autobahn signage to respect my personal issues with a town which probably isn’t happy to be synonymous with one of the most infamous crimes in postwar Germany either. In fact, I even briefly considered stopping in Gladbeck after the con to see if seeing the place would exorcise my demons. However, I didn’t know where the bank was and apparently the building no longer exists anyway, but was demolished. I guess they wanted to exorcise the memory, too.

Besides, I didn’t have to drive as far as Gladbeck or even Gelsenkirchen anyway, because Else directed me to leave the Autobahn at the exit Marl-Frentrop. I ended up in a rural and very flat area (parts of the Ruhrgebiet have hills and mountains, but this one doesn’t), while Else told me not to take the road that led into Dorsten proper. I went along with this, because a coalmine probably wouldn’t be located in the city center, but somewhere on the outskirts. So I crossed the river Lippe and the Wesel-Datteln canal and got a little nervous, when I still saw only rural landscapes and no sign of a town, let alone a coalmine. In other parts of the Ruhrgebiet, towns and cities tend to blend into each other, but this was clearly not the case here.

When I programmed Else before setting off, I couldn’t find the street where the former coalmine was located. According to Else, the street didn’t exist. I later realised that this was because Else’s map is out of date (and can’t be updated anymore, because the manufacturer no longer supports this particular system) and because the street in question wasn’t built until the coalmine was decommissioned and turned into an arts venue and business park, which meant Else had no way of knowing the street. So I programmed Else for a nearby street that she did recognise. There was only one problem. The street in question was long and so Else just led me to an intersection in a rural area and announced that I had reached my destination.

I turned into the destination street into the direction of Dorsten, figuring that since coalmines are big, I should be able to spot it from the car. Never mind that there would probably be signs pointing at the arts venue. And indeed, I eventually came to a roundabout with a sign indicating the arts venue. Even better, I could spot a mineshaft elevator tower in the distance. So I had found the right place.

Finding a place to park was slightly more difficult, because the dedicated parking lot of the arts venue was full as was the parking lot of an adjacent grocery store (which was closed, since it was Sunday). Across the road from the grocery store, there was an office park built on top of the former coalmine. The office buildings had parking lots, so I just parked my car there. After all, the offices were all closed for the weekend, so who would mind?

Then I headed to the mine and con. But that’s a story for part 2.

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Cora’s TV Adventure

Posted on January 31, 2025 by Cora

Before we get to the main topic, let’s start off with where else you could find my writing late. In mid January, I was at Galactic Journey, reviewing the 1969 science fiction crime anthology Crime Prevention in the 30th Century, edited by Hans Stefan Santesson, and the 1970 science fiction thriller Drug of Choice by John Lange a.k.a. Michael Crichton, two books which very much address social issues and anxieties of the early 1970s. It’s fascinating how good Crichton was at the start of his career. Also it was depressing to write about the sense of hope and optimism that flowed through West Germany following the 1969 general election, especially compared to the fact that pretty much everybody only views the general election coming up this February with dread, because incompetent as the last government was, what’s coming is likely worse.

On a less depressing note, I was also at the Yesterday, Today & Tomorrow Blog of the Seattle Worldcon, writing about how the sword and sorcery genre got its name.

But now let’s get to the main event. For last week, I had a somewhat unusual experience, because I had a TV team in my home. No, it had nothing to do with SFF or the Hugo, but  was for a completely different reason.

NDR is a public regional TV and radio station in North Germany. They’re licence-fee financed, operate several regional radio and TV channels and also contribute programming to ARD, a joint TV program supplied by the various public regional TV stations.

Some time ago, NDR initiated a project called #NDRfragt (NDR asks), where they ask viewers/listeners about their views on various topics of the day. The idea behind this and similar projects is that the public TV and radio stations have been accused – not without reason – of being politically biassed and generally too far removed from the actual concerns and views of the viewers/listeners, who after all have to support these programs via the mandatory licence fee. So several public TV/radio stations initiated projects to give their viewers/listeners a chance to share their opinion. In general, this is a good thing.

The way it works is that they send you a link to a survey about the topic du jour by e-mail. When you fill out the survey, they ask you if they can quote from your answers (because they need your permission) and also if you would be willing to participate in a radio or TV interview about the topic.

I signed up for the #NDRfragt project some time ago. I don’t even know what it was that prompted me to sign up, whether it was a specific topic or a general sense of “This is a good project and I want to support it”. I often sign up for surveys, research questionnaires and the like, because I remember from my university days how difficult it is to get people to participate in research surveys and questionnaires. At any rate, I always tick the “Yes, you may quote from my answers” box and the “Yes, I would be willing to participate in a radio or TV interview” box as well.

I didn’t really expect anything to come from it, but then last Tuesday afternoon, I got a call from a journalist from the NDR asking if I wanted to participate in a TV interview about the topic of their latest survey – “Were the covid measures too strict and do we need some kind of political post-mortem?” I considered for a moment – it is a sensitive topic, after all, and there’s a chance of pissing off people – and then said yes.

“We’ll be shooting the interview on Friday or possibly Monday,” the journalist said, “Are you home?”

“I work from home and am generally flexible,” I said, “And I don’t have any appointments on those days.”

The lady from the NDR also asked me if I was a member of any political party. She said it wouldn’t be a problem, if I was, just that they’d need to mention it. This is probably a response to an uproar which erupted, when a TV team from a public channel did street interviews and one of the people interviewed turned out to be a member of the Green Party and the local town council. The TV channel was accused of political bias, though the interviewer likely had no idea about the party affiliation of this random person they interviewed on the street – it’s not as if journalists can be expected to recognise every single member of every party. Ironically enough, one of the other two people featured in the TV report, did turn out to be a member of the Green Party, which is mentioned in the report.

Finally, the lady from the NDR promised to call me back the following day about the exact time and date.

So now I was about to be interviewed on TV and would have a TV team coming to my house. Which meant that I needed to accelerate the post-holiday clean-up to get the parts of the house the TV team would see up to speed in two and a half days. And there wasn’t much left of the half day, especially since I had an appointment on Tuesday in the early evening.

In particular, I needed to clean up the dining room/hall – basically a large room on the ground floor, from which you can access the other rooms. It’s a room that’s used a lot, so the floor tends to get dirty and stuff also tends to accumulate before it’s moved somewhere else. So I had to move stuff that had accumulated elsewhere – either final destination or intermediate storage – clean up the place a little and – most importantly – vacuum and mop the floor, which is tiled. And I really hate vacuuming and mopping the floor, because it’s hard on the back and I hate my parents’ vacuum cleaner. We do have a vacuum bot, but you basically have to empty the room before using it, because it tends to get stuck on chairs and the like.

On Wednesday afternoon, the lady from the NDR called me back and said they would like to film on Friday morning. Also, since I work from home, could they film me in my office? “Sure,” I said, “But I’m mostly sitting in front of the computer typing, which isn’t particularly exciting.”

The lady from the NDR also said, “You mentioned taking walks by a lake during the covid pandemic. Could we film there? And can we use a drone?” I replied, “The lake and the park are maybe 600 meters away, but I don’t think it’s a problem to film there. As for the drone, we’re close to Bremen airport, but not that close that drones are banned.”

So in addition to cleaning up the hall/dining room, I also had to clean the office. Which meant more vacuuming and lugging the bloody vacuum cleaner up the stairs. Honestly, I’m getting myself a new vacuum cleaner, because this thing is barely usable, too heavy and kills my back.

Anyway, I got everything cleaned up by Friday morning – even though I managed to knock over a plate with cookies and had to vacuum part of the floor again – and was ready for the NDR TV team to arrive. Which they did – ten minutes early – when I was on the toilet in my underwear. So hurray for that. I also realised that though I had vacuumed and mobbed the entrance area and guest toilet, I had forgotten to move some of the stuff in the entrance area like keys and the like that I need to grab quickly.

The TV team consisted of three people in a van. The lady I’d talked to on the phone as well as a camera operator and a sound technician. The sound technician seemed to be fairly new to the job, probably still in training. The camera operator was the oldest and most experienced of the three. They were all very nice. They even took off their shoes.

A lot of equipment – camera, tripods, sound equipment, etc… – was lugged into my house and the reporter and the camera operator examined the dining room/hall. The camera operator in particular liked the light in the room – there is a large window and the glass backdoor – and was he also liked the vintage rocking chair, the early 1970s interior and Else, my department store mannequin. He was also fascinated by my Masters of Universe figures who have taken over some of the shelves (I really need to rearrange the shelves, since they’re still full of my parents’ books, which I don’t want to throw out, but don’t want in the entrance area of my house either). The Hugo trophy was duly admired as well. The sound technician managed to knock over some of my Masters of the Universe figures and profusely apologised, though nothing was damaged.

The reporter asked if they could see the office now, so everybody went up the stairs. “Oh, there’s more figures here,” the camera operator noted. Though in general, everybody agreed that they liked the dining room/hall better, because it’s much bigger, has better light and has a more exciting interior. And could I maybe just take the laptop downstairs? Okay, so I had vacuumed the office for nothing, though it did need to be cleaned anyway.

Back downstairs, the camera operator became interested in the living room, which is separated from the hall by a glass door. “Can we switch on the light in there, so it won’t look like a dark void?”

“Sure,” I said and switched on the lights.

Now the living room is in the process of being transformed into the collection room/toy room and has a big diorama style Masters of the Universe display, which of course fascinated the TV team.

“Oh, there are even more figures in there,” the camera operator exclaimed, while the reporter asked me if we could go in there. I said, “Sure. But there are still some holiday decorations in there that I didn’t get around to clearing away yet.”

So the TV team moves into the living room to admire my collection, while the camera operator asks if we can open the blinds. I said, “We can open one of them, but the other one is broken. There’s a cable damaged somewhere. My Dad tried to locate the damage, but then he died and I don’t think anybody else will ever be able to find the damaged cable, so it’s permanently down.”

In the end, the TV team decided that they preferred the dining room/hall and asked me to set up the laptop. The camera operator also asked if we could put some of my Masters of the Universe figures onto the dining table.

I said, “Of course. There actually were some figures on the table until yesterday, but I moved them away. Do you want any specific figures or should I just pick something?”

“Could we have these ladies?” the camera operator asked and pointed at three different Teela figures.

So I took the three Teelas and when they turned out to have problems keeping their footing on my quilted tablerunner, I also grabbed Battle Cat to hold them upright.

“Could we also have the King?” the camera operator asked, so I grabbed King Randor and positioned him opposite the three Teelas. You can see what it looked like below.

King Randor addresses three Teelas and Cringer.

Here we have the Masters of the Universe Classics Battleground Teela a.k.a. Brass Bikini Teela a.k.a. Teela in the style of the early mini-comics, Masterverse Revelation Mercenary Teela and the regular Masters of the Universe Classics Teela leaning against the Masterverse Battlecat/Cringer and being adressed by the Classics Filmation style King Randor.

King Randor addresses three different versions of Teela“So let me get this straight? When I asked Zoar for reinforcements, a portal spit out three different versions of Captain Teela?”

“Yes, Your Majesty.”

“Ready to serve, Sire.”

“Your wish is our command.”

“Well, I’m sure the Guard is in good hands. As for Prince Adam…”

“We will protect Adam, Sire.”

“With our lives, if necessary.”

“We won’t let him out of our sights, Your Majesty.”

“Sigh. I just hope Adam survives three of them.”

*** 

The sound technician then hooked up the microphone. A small mike was clipped to the collar of my sweater (later replaced with a slightly different model), then I was asked to run the wire under my sweater. Finally, the wire was connected to a receiver that was clipped to the waistband of my pants.

Once the Masters of the Universe figures were set up, I switched on the laptop, pulled up a random document (it turned out to be my latest post for the Seattle Worldcon blog) and started typing some stream of consciousness stuff, so I would look busy, while the TV team filmed.

Then I was asked to sit down in my Grandma’s old rocking chair and answer the interviewer’s questions about the topic of the week, which I did.

And then it was time to go to the park. Now the park isn’t far away, but it’s quite far when lugging heavy equipment. So we all piled into the TV team’s van and drove to the park.

Once at the park, the team surveyed the area and zeroed in on the lake, which is really the most interesting part of the park.

The camera was set up and a wind protector was added to the microphone, so it looks as if I have a Tribble stuck to my sweater. Then I was asked to look straight into the camera and give a short intro and outro statement of my opinion. After the end statement, I was also asked to turn around and walk up the path until I vanished behind some shrubbery. Rinse and repeat about two or three times, especially since a dog walker and a woman on a bike interrupted the filming.

I was also asked to walk across a bridge in the park (twice) and then I was asked to position myself at the lake and look out across the water.

“Can you take a step forward?” the camera operator asked.

“I’m sorry, but this is as far as I can go. Another step forward and I’ll end up in the lake.”

Then, the camera drone was unpacked and I had to look out across the lake some more, while the drone circled me, stirring up the ducks who live around the lake. I watched the ducks, which made it easier to ignore the drone buzzing around me. On top of everything else, it started to rain.

While the camera operator and sound technician were packing up, the reporter asked me if I had TV experience. “Sort of,” I replied, “I was active with the local public access channel almost thirty years ago. I did interviews, filming, editing, anything that needed doing.” This cued a discussion about how many things had changed – when I was editing, it was all analogue and we didn’t have drones at all – and how a lot of things had stayed the same. The lady of the NDR said that a lot of her colleagues had gotten their start at the public access channels. This makes sense, since Germany only has very few universities that offer TV and film classes – it was two in all of Germany, when I was a student, and I don’t think it’s more now – so public access channels offered everybody who was interested in working in film or TV a way to gain some experiences. “Back then, I wanted to become a director and go to Hollywood,” I said, “Eventually, I found out that writing was a better and easier way to tell stories and channelled my filmic ambitions into taking photos of toys.”

The TV team got back into the van and took me to the street corner. They would also have taken me home, but since they had to return to Hannover for the next filming assignment, I said, “It’s fine. I can walk the rest of the way.”

Once home, I had lunch. And then, because I was tired, I laid down to take a nap. I was woken about an hour later by the phone. It was the sound technician of the TV team. “I’m sorry,” he said, “But we’re missing a tripod. Could you check if it’s in your house?”

“I didn’t notice any stray tripod,” I replied, “But I’ll check again.” So I went through every part of the house where the TV team had been – including the visitors toilet – but found no tripod. “Maybe it’s still in the park,” the sound technician said, “I know it’s an imposition, but could you maybe go and check?” The TV team was shooting the next interview in Hannover at this point, about a hundred kilometers away.

So I got dressed to go back to the park. However, it was raining steadily outside and besides, I didn’t want to lug a tripod all the way back from the park (cause it felt wrong to just leave it there), so I took the car instead, parked it by the roadside near the entrance to the park and went in search of the tripod in the rain. I found it, too, leaning against a line of trees and bushes alongside a path, pretty much invisible, unless you were very close.

I picked up the tripod, carried it to the car and put it on the backseat, because it was too big for the trunk. Then I called the number the NDR reporter had given me. “Good news. I found your tripod. It was between the trees along one of the paths. I took the liberty to take it home, cause it’s safer here. You can pick it up whenever you want.” The reporter told me they’d call me back, when they would pick it up and that was that.

Tripod leaning against the coat rack

Here is the lost tripod leaning against coat rack. I used a wollen hat as a buffer to capture moisture (the tripod has been out in the rain for two hours or so) and keep it from scratching the wall.

As for the actual TV report, it aired during the Hallo Niedersachsen (Hello, Lower Saxony) regional news program on Tuesday evening and you can also watch it here on the NDR website. The entire report is six minutes long with the intro and it features three people. In addition to myself, there is a chimney sweeper/volunteer fire brigade member from Hannover and a disability advocate from the Weser Uplands who is a member of her local city council, raises hedgehogs and has long covid. So the two hours it took to film were condensed down to one and a half minutes, which is far from uncommon. The vast majority of footage shot for anything is never used.

I also briefly show up in a different report about the same topic on the NDR Info TV channel, which you can see here. Oddly enough, both reports picked the same quote about how school closings negatively affected children, which is something I did criticise.

However, I also criticised a lot of completely senseless measures which didn’t protect anybody, but were just senseless harassment such as the federal “emergency brake”, which postulated that a county exceeded a certain number of covid infections, there would be a nighttime curfew imposed (because the covid virus is apparently vampiric and only operates by night) and schools closed. My country Diepholz is very big – thank you, stupid and unwanted 1974 Lower Saxony community reform. In the spring of 2021, there was a covid outbreak on an asparagus farm near the town of Sulingen, which is at the other end of the county 45 kilometers away. So the schools were closed in the entire county and a nighttime curfew was imposed, even though the covid numbers were normal in our part of the county, which encompasses the southern suburbs of Bremen and is far more densely populated than the rural area around Sulingen. I like taking walks alone late in the evening or early in the morning, which I wasn’t allowed to do because of the bloody curfew, even though this was probably one of the safest activities you could pursue. Even worse, the asparagus farm was not shut down, but was allowed to continue operating, as long as the workers stayed isolated on the farm (asparagus farms usually employ migrant workers from Eastern Europe in not very good conditions), so the farm owner was even rewarded for exploiting his workers, while the entire county suffered and not a single life was saved. I talked about this in the interview, but it never made it into the video.

Anyway, that was my TV adventure.

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Cora’s Adventures at the Church of Eternia Masters of the Universe Holiday Event in Hanau, Part 3: The Road Home… and Offensen

Posted on January 14, 2025 by Cora

On the third advent weekend in 2024, I attended the the Church of Eternia Masters of the Universe holiday event in Hanau. For the long trip to get there, see part 1 and for my impressions of the con itself as well as walking around Hanau in the footsteps of the Brothers Grimm, see part 2.

As I mentioned in my previous post, I spent the night at a really nice hotel in the town Langenselbold some twenty kilometers east of Hanau, which meant the trip home would only be about 450 kilometers instead 471 kilometers. Small comfort, I know.

Breakfast in Langenselbold

I wanted to set out early, though not quite as early as on the trip out, because it didn’t really matter at what time I got home. So I slept until half past seven, got dressed, packed up my stuff and headed down for breakfast, which was included with the price for the room, so why not take advantage of that?

I ventured into the hotel restaurant – which was pleasantly rustically furnished – and found a lone employee behind the bar and three tables laid out for breakfast. It was pretty easy to tell which one was mine, since it was set for one. The other tables were all set for two.

Though for now I was all alone. The other guests were apparently sleeping in or at least getting up later than me. So I ordered some tea from the lone employee and enjoyed a typical German hotel breakfast.

Now German breakfast normally means bread rolls served with butter and a selection of cheese, cold cuts as well different flavours of jam and honey and sometimes Nutella in small packages. Usually, there are also some slices of tomato and cucumber for decoration, though thankfully this place had a separate plate for them. There was also orange juice as well as a choice of coffee or tea. I suppose I could have ordered an egg, if I wanted one.

Hotel breakfast

A typical German hotel breakfast with orange juice, bread rolls, butter and a selection of cheeses and cold cuts as well as small packages of jam, honey and Nutella,

The way you’re supposed to eat this German breakfast is to cut the bread rolls in half, put butter and then the topping of your choice on it. However, this is not how I eat breakfast. It never has been. I eat the breadrolls and the cheese separately, almost never use butter and don’t eat jam (allergy risk) or cold cuts (I don’t eat smoked or processed meat) at all.

This actually got me in trouble in kindergarten. Because once a week, we had breakfast in kindergarten, which looked a lot like this breakfast, though not nearly as nicely laid out. So I did what I always did, reached for a bread roll and started munching on it, only to be told by the teacher that I should eat it properly. In spite of declaring that I was fine with a dry bread roll and didn’t want anything else, I was forced to cut the bread roll in half with a dull knife and then judged for doing it badly – because I never eat that way. I was then forced to put butter on the bread roll – even though I didn’t eat or like butter as a kid and had problems digesting it – and then I had to choose a topping. Now the only remotely edible thing at the kindergarten was Nutella, since I don’t think they had cheese, just jam and some kind of meat product. So I obediently cut my bread roll in half, put butter and then Nutella on it and got judged for doing it badly. The result is that I’m probably the only person in Germany who never cared for Nutella – I only sometimes use it for baking –  and that I think I’m bad at cutting bread or rolls to this day, even though it’s complete nonsense.

I also don’t understand why the teachers wouldn’t just let me eat the dry bread roll. But then, German teachers are weird about breakfast in general and both get upset, if kids don’t eat breakfast at all, or if they somehow eat the “wrong” breakfast (and pretty much anything is wrong). My Mom had arguments about this with my teachers, who complained that she gave me pretzels and things like peeled carrots rather than a sandwiches, whereupon she replied, “At least she eats this. She won’t eat the sandwich or – if she’s really hungry, she will peel it apart and eat the bread and the toppings separately. But most likely, she’ll just hand the sandwich off to Petra [the classmate who was always hungry and ate everything] and I’m not making sandwiches for Petra.”

However, there was no Mrs. Joppe or Miss Neubauer hovering over me to judge my breakfast and the lone employee was puttering about in the kitchen, so I ate the bread rolls and cheese and the veggies all separately. I also felt a tad guilty about the cold cuts, because maybe I should have told them the evening before that I don’t eat meat for breakfast, so the cold cuts wouldn’t be wasted. However, I didn’t know what breakfast at this hotel would be like, since a lot of hotels have breakfast buffets nowadays, so the issue wouldn’t arise. But considering there were only three tables set for breakfast, a buffet wouldn’t have been feasible.

While I was eating, two of the other guests, an elderly couple, came down to enjoy their breakfast. Then, after breakfast, I got my luggage and handed in my room key to the nice young man behind the counter. I also asked, if there was anything of interest in the area for sightseeing – after all, I had a whole day ahead of me – and noted that I’d been to Hanau the day before.

“Well, Frankfurt’s always worth a visit,” the young man said.

“I don’t doubt it,” I replied, “But Frankfurt is the wrong direction. Is there anything in the other direction, since there are a lot of towns along the Autobahn.”

“Well, those towns all have Christmas markets, but…” He shrugged. “…Christmas markets are kind of all the same everywhere. Plus, they’re all closed now.”

“Well, I’ll probably stop somewhere further north,” I said, “I have family near Göttingen, so I might pay them a visit.”

Outside, I took the photos of the hotel and Langenselbold Palace, which I posted in the previous post. Then I headed for my car and found the parking lot, which had been so full the night before, nearly empty.

Just Driving in the Rain

The day was as gloomy as the one before, though the sun was up by now. And then, just as I reached my car, it started to rain. So I jumped into my car and drove off.

I made my way back onto Autobahn A66 and set off towards home. While I drove through the Kinzig Valley, it was raining most of the time. On the mountains on both sides of the highway, I could even see a bit of snow.

I considered leaving the Autobahn at Steinau an der Straße (Steinau on the Street), the town where the Brothers Grimm actually spent most of their childhood, for though they were born in Hanau, the Grimm familiy moved to Steinau when the brothers were quite small. The former house of the Grimm family in Steinau is museum and apparently, the town also has a castle.

However, by the time I was approaching the exit Steinau an der Straße, the rain had gotten heavier, so I drove onwards. The most annoying thing about the rain was that according to the weather forecast, the day was supposed to be cold and overcast, but not overly rainy. So why was it raining and when would it stop?

A little after Steinau, I did stop at rest area Hundsrücker Berg, drank a bit of water, had a cookie and a piece of chocolate and checked the weather app on my phone where the pesky rain had come from and when it would stop. The weather app said that the rain would get lighter and eventually stop, though it might return in the afternoon, which was good enough for me.

By now, I was feeling a bit of pressure in my bladder, so I got out to use the toilet and indeed, the rain seemed to be getting lighter. The rest area also had a nice view overlooking the Kinzig Valley and the Spessart Mountains, so I snapped a photo.

View across the Kinzig valley from rest area Hundsrücker Berg

This view across the Kinzig valley towards the Spessart mountains from the rest area Hundsrücker Berg on the A66 is quite bleak and gloomy.

Then I drove onwards, towards Fulda. The rain did indeed stop, though the day was still overcast and gloomy. I paid attention to the brown tourist information signs by the side of Autobahn, which mention interesting sights along the route, but nothing really piqued my interest and made me want to check it out.

So I just drove on, steadily northwards. I’d considered stopping in Fulda to have lunch and maybe check out the city, which I’d never visited. But by the time I actually reached Fulda, it was not even eleven AM and way too early to have lunch. So I continued onwards, changing onto Autobahn A7, still driving steadily northwards, through the bloody Kasseler Berge again. At least the rain had stopped by now.

Autohof Lohfelder Rüssel

By noon, I was approaching Kassel, which should be the perfect place to find something to eat. Just before Kassel, there was service station Kassel East, but service stations are overpriced and the food quality is usually not good, so I drove onwards.

The very next exit – Kassel-Lohfelden – had an Autohof, so I took that exit and decided to check out the Autohof. And if the Autohof turned out to be disappointing, I could check my phone for other food options in the area.

Autohof Lohfelder Rüssel (Lohfelder trunk) turned out to be located on a plot of land between Autobahnen A7 and A49, literally an island between two Autobahnen. The Autohof has an independent restaurant – not just a fast food chain – which looked decent enough, so that’s where I had lunch. It turned out to be a good decision and I have added Autohof Lohfelder Rüssel to my personal list of Autohöfe that are actually good. In case you’re interested, the list is: Autohof Lohne/Dinklage on the A1, Autohof Schwarmstedt on the A7, Autohof Lohfelder Rüssel also on the A7 and Autohof Apen/Remels on the A28.

I ordered a dish called Spaghetti Um-Lei-Tung (Spaghetti Detour), which consisted of spaghetti with Asian style vegetables in a sweet and sour sauce. It was an interesting and tasty dish, especially for an Autohof, where the food is normally pretty meat heavy, since they mainly cater to truckers.

Spaghetti Um-Lei-Tung

Spaghetti Um-Lei-Tung a.k.a. Spaghetti Detour, courtesy of Autohof Lohfelder Rüssel in Kassel.

At the table next to mine, there was a group of football fans in Borussia Dortmund jerseys. Dortmund is not located on the A7, so the fans had to be en route to an away match. I realised that I hadn’t paid any attention at all to the German football that weekend – after all, I attended an event where the important teams are the Heroic Warriors, Evil Warriors, Evil Horde, Great Rebellion, Snake Men, Space Mutants and Galactic Protectors, not Werder Bremen, Bayern Munich, Borussia Dortmund and Hamburger SV. Besides, I paid more attention to German football, when my parents were still alive, because they cared and were both Werder Bremen fans. Indeed, whenever I visited Mom at the nursing home or Dad in hospital, I always kept them up to date about the latest football results.

So I checked my phone whom Dortmund was playing that Sunday and it turned out to be TSG Hoffenheim. Hoffenheim isn’t much liked by anybody except by their fans – and since the village of Hoffenheim only has 3200 inhabitants, they don’t have a lot of organic fans – while I quite like Borussia Dortmund. So I wished the Dortmund fans a good onward journey to Hoffenheim and told them I was rooting for their team, which was absolutely true. The match ended in a draw BTW.

And while I was checking football results on my phone, I also checked how my hometown club Werder Bremen had fared the day before. Turned out they defeated FC St. Pauli, which will pain my neighbour Jan, who is a huge St. Pauli fan to the point that his one-year-old son always runs around with a woollen St. Pauli hat. I once told Jan that he should be careful or his kid would become a Bayern Munich or Hamburger SV fan in a fit of teenage rebellion. “Bayern Munich I could tolerate, but if he becomes a HSV fan, he must move out,” Jan replied. HSV and St. Pauli are both based in Hamburg and bitter local rivals.

Unlike the Dortmund fans, who had to make it to Hoffenheim in time for the match, I had plenty of time and so I decided to order a dessert. The holiday menu offered warm apple strudel with cinnamon ice cream and vanilla sauce, so I ordered that. The nice server said, “I’m very sorry, but we’re out of cinnamon ice cream. But I could give you vanilla ice cream instead.” “That sounds wonderful,” I said and so I had warm apple strudel with vanilla ice cream and vanilla sauce as well as a latte macchiato.

Warm apple strudel with vanilla ice cream, vanilla sauce and slices of orange and a latte macchiato.

Warm apple strudel with vanilla ice cream, vanilla sauce and slices of orange and a latte macchiato, courtesy of Autohof Lohfelder Rüssel

Autohof Lohfelder Rüssel also has an Autobahn chapel, a curious German phenomenon, about which I wrote more here. Inspired by the roadside shrines and chapels found in Catholic parts of Germany from the Middle Ages until today, the big Christian churches started setting up chapels and churches at service stations along the Autobahnen from the 1950s on. Some of these were existing village churches which were incorporated into the Autobahn network, others were newly built.  For more about Autobahn churches and chapels, see here and here.

The Autobahn chapel at Autohof Lohfelder Rüssel is a fairly new one, built in 2009, though judging by the Brutalist design, I’d assumed it was older. I’m also glad they’re still building new Autobahn churches, because I like that something like this exists as a refuge for travellers who want a moment of quiet and contemplation.

Autobahn chapel "Light on the Way" at Autohof Lohfelder Rüssel in Kassel

Autobahn chapel “Light on the Way” at Autohof Lohfelder Rüssel in Kassel

I’m my mother’s daughter – and my Mom could never pass a church without going in, less for religious reasons, but more because she liked the architecture and atmosphere. And so of course I went into the Autobahn chapel. It’s very peaceful inside. They have an altar where people can light candles for victims of traffic accidents and also for any other reason as well as a guestbook. I left a note in the guestbook, saying, “I’m on route from Hanau to Bremen and found this chapel. I’m thankful that places like this exist. Merry Christmas.”

Offensen

Refresh after my stopover at Autohof Lohfelder Rüssel, I set off again. I had briefly considered driving into Kassel to visit the UNESCO World Heritage site Bergpark Wilhelmshöhe. However, a gloomy December day isn’t really the right time for that. I’ll probably come back in the spring or summer, when the artificial waterfall is switched on.

Instead, I decided I would do what I’d tentatively planned to do on the way out, namely make a pit stop in Offensen near Göttingen to pay a visit to my relatives there. For more about my family connection to this tiny village near Göttingen, see part 1.

I didn’t know the exact address – the address I did remember turned out to be that of my Aunt Irmgard in Göttingen, who’s dead – so I just set Else, my GPS, for Offensen (Uslar), figuring that since Offensen is very small, I would easily find the right house. Else directed me to leave the A7 not at the exit which lists Offensen’s neighbouring town Adelebsen as one of the destinations, but at an earlier exit. I did follow her advice, though, and quickly found myself driving along narrow country roads through the Solling mountains.

At this point, I began to doubt the wisdom of the whole expedition. For absolutely nothing along that narrow and winding country road seemed even remotely familiar – not the town names, not the area, not the landmarks (what landmarks there were). I drove slowly along the unfamiliar roads, much to the frustration of the local drivers stuck behind me. On top of it all, it started to rain again.

“What am I even doing here?” I asked myself. “I haven’t been here in more than ten years, I don’t recognise anything and I’m not even sure if Aunt Elfriede and Uncle Gert are still alive, since they were older than my parents.”

Finally, I got the chance to stop at the side of the road – it was a very narrow road and there was not much chance to stop – and let the impatient local drivers pass – though they felt the need to honk at me for being nice. I seriously considered turning around and returning to the Autobahn. However, the road was too narrow to turn around safely, and besides I’d been driving through the backwoods of the Solling mountains for twenty minutes at this point and would have to drive back another twenty minutes, wasting forty minutes on a completely pointless detour.

So I decided to drive on to Offensen after all and take a look to see if there was anything there left at all. Eventually, I reached the neighbouring town of Adelebsen and suddenly I started recognising the landmarks again such as Adelebsen castle, the ancient Jewish cemetery on a hillside that had so fascinated my Mom, and the ruined church of Reinshagen. I was finally back in familiar territory.

Adelebsen castle on a hill

Adelebsen castle sits on top of a hill above the eponymous village. The tower and much of the castle date from the 13th century and were inhabited by the Counts of Adelebsen, until the last Count died in 1957.

Come to think of it, it makes sense that I didn’t recognise anything, when I left the Autobahn, because I was coming from the south, whereas we had always come from the north, when we visited Offensen, so of course I’d never been on those narrow, winding roads before.

Somewhat encouraged, I drove on to Offensen, only to realise that while the village seemed familiar, I had no idea how to find the house of my relatives. I remembered that the house was at the edge of town and that just behind the house, there was a bridge over a creek. So I pulled into a bus stop – it was a Sunday, after all, and therefore it was extremely unlikely that a bus would need to stop at exactly that moment, since there probably only were two busses per day anyway – and checked Google maps. I located the creek and the bridge and realised that I had taken a wrong turn.

So I turned into the right street and – lo and behold – there was the farmhouse. I recognised it at once, complete with the barn where I’d helped Aunt Elfriede feed the pigs and chickens and the attic where I’d played in the stored grain with my Smurf figures as a little girl. I had a Smurf cart drawn by a snail and used it to ferry grain back and forth.

Offensen farmhouse

And this is the farmhouse, where my relatives. The building at the back is the barn, where I helped Aunt Elfriede to feed the pigs and the chickens. You can even make out the staircase that leads up to the attic where I played in the grain.

So I parked my car by the roadside – I didn’t want to drive onto the yard of the farmhouse, in case my relatives no longer lived there – and walked over to the house. I decided I’d ring the doorball and explain who I was to whoever opened. Even if Aunt Elfriede and Uncle Gerd were no longer alive, there had been kids. There was at least one daughter, older than me, who’d played with me in the grain. And even if someone else lived there now, at least they might know what had happened to my relatives.

So I rang the doorbell, but there was no answer. I then walked across the yard towards the barn, calling “Hello! Is anybody here?”, since there was a delivery van parked in the yard with the logo of a supplier of organic pork, which made sense. This time around, I did attract a living soul, namely a black cat. The cat immediately came to me, rubbed against my legs and followed me around the yard. Almost as if she recognised me, though that wasn’t very likely. After all, it had been more than ten years since I last was here and cats don’t live as long as humans.

Offensen cat

The cat looks out of a window in the covered entryway of the farmhouse.

Offensen cat

The cat has settled down on a large swing suspended from the rafters of the barn

The cat was lovely, but unfortunately she wasn’t able to answer any questions about what had happened to my relatives. And there was no one else around. Offensen was completely deserted.

When I returned to my car, I finally saw another living soul that was not a cat, but two teenaged boys walking a dog in the rain. I asked them if they knew the people who lived in the farmhouse and if they knew what had happened to the Münnemann family who used to live there and explained that I was a relative, but the boys didn’t know. I guess they had a story to tell at home about some weird woman who asked about the farmhouse by the creek.

In retrospect, I’m kicking myself for not writing down the name of the supplier of organic pork mentioned on the van parked in the yard, because they likely would know what had become of my relatives and who lived in the house now. It was an unusual name, but for the life of me I can’t remember what it was.

However, there was still one place to visit in Offensen, namely the local cemetery, where my Great-Aunt Mariechen and Uncle Heinrich are buried. I’d been at that cemetery several times and remembered that it was located on top of a hill above the village. Apparently, it’s customary in the Solling mountains to place cemeteries on top of hills – also see the Jewish cemetery of neighbouring Adelebsen. Lucky for me, there even was a sign pointing to the very narrow road that led to the Offensen cemetery.

So I made my way up to the cemetery on the hill and immediately recognised it. The gates, which give the date 1868, when the cemetery was established and the funeral chapel with its stained glass windows, which is considerably newer than 1868 (I’d guess it dated from the 1950s or 1960s, maybe even later), and which so fascinated me at age two that I disrupted Aunt Mariechen’s funeral service to point out how pretty everything was until a nice lady who worked at the local kindergarten – yes, tiny Offensen had a kindergarten in the 1970s – took me by the hand and went outside with me where I found a really great white stone. I still have that stone BTW.

Offensen cemetery

Offensen cemetery. Note the date 1868 chiseled into the posts of the gate and the funeral chapel in the background. Note the passive aggressive sign from the cemetery administration in Uslar on the gate.

Offensen funeral chapel

A closer look at the funeral chapel of Offensen cemetery. The chapel is much newer than the cemetery, though I couldn’t find out when it was built. I guess sometime in the 1950s or 1960s.

That said, my visit to Offensen cemetery was depressing. For starters, the cemetery was half empty with only a few graves left. In Germany, graves are removed after twenty-five or thirty years unless the family pays up to continue using the grave. It’s something of a scam IMO and the period is much too short, though it does make some sense in big cities, where cemeteries would easily get crowded.

Offensen, however, is tiny – only 269 inhabitants – so you could easily just leave the graves where they are without runnings out of space. However, the cemetery administration in Uslar, the town to which Offensen belongs since the 1974 Lower Saxony community reform forcibly bundled previously independent small villages into larger communities and even combined smaller counties into larger ones, mercilessly removed the graves anyway and even placed a passive aggressive sign on the cemetery gates, informing people not to place flowers or candles into the lawn or the anonymous graveyard (Offensen has an anonymous graveyard?), because this would interfere with lawnmowing.

So fuck the Uslar cemetery administration and fuck the 1974 Lower Saxony community reform, which was forced on the towns and villages from above and absolutely hated by everybody at the time, even though many seem to have forgotten that. Here’s more about the 1974 Lower Saxony community reform and why it was supposedly necessary (those little villages all did their own thing and did not comply with centralised planning). Here’s also a report about the more recent community and county reforms in Saxony-Anhalt and Mecklenburg-Vorpommern and that there are actually negative effects with people feeling more disconnected from local politics. I sympathise with that. Note that the county seat of the county where I live is a whopping sixty kilometers away – thank you, fucking 1974 reform.

So I walked across the half empty village cemetery in the rain. It was pretty clear to me that I wouldn’t be able to find Aunt Mariechen’s and Uncle Heinrich’s grave – after all, Aunt Mariechen died in 1975, so that grave is probably long gone. However, I figured that maybe I would find the grave of Aunt Elfriede’s first husband. But I didn’t find anything and maybe he was never buried there in the first place.

I also tried the door of the funeral chapel, but it was locked. No white pebbles either and I couldn’t even tell where I might have found mine. Though come to think of it, Aunt Mariechen’s funeral service might also have been in the village church of Offensen and not the funeral chapel, since the village church has an impressive historical altar which was more likely to impress two-year-old Cora enough to disrupt a funeral service.

A look across the village of Offensen from the hilltop cemetery

A look across the village of Offensen from the cemetery on the hill.

All in all, the detour to Offensen was a failure and also pretty depressing, though the rain might have something to do with that. Initially, I had planned to maybe pay a visit to a visit to the Jewish cemetery of Adelebsen on the way back, but since the weather was so awful and it was already past three PM by now, I just drove straight back to the Autobahn. After all, the sun would set in less than an hour and I wanted to get as close to home as possible before it got dark again.

Service Station Harz East

The detour to Offensen had also tired me somewhat, so a coffee would have been nice. However, it was a Sunday afternoon and the bakery cafés would close at five PM, if they were open at all. Offensen no longer has a bakery at all. Adelebsen has two, but both are tied to grocery stores and were closed on Sundays. Uslar and Bodenfelde have several bakeries, but that was the wrong direction. Of course, Göttingen also has plenty of bakeries, but I didn’t want to drive into Göttingen either. There’s a really nice bakery at Autohof Schwarmstedt on the A7, but that’s north of Hannover, more than an hour away, and by the time I’d get there, it would be closed.

So a service station was my best bet to get a cup of coffee. However, I’d passed service station Göttingen East just before I exited the Autobahn to go to Offensen, so it was behind me now. I figured the next service station would be Hildesheimer Börde just south of Hildesheim and quite a way off. However, I’d forgotten service station Harz East, which was maybe forty kilometers or so north of Göttingen. So that’s where I stopped for a coffee and to use the toilet.

Now service station Harz East is not normally a place I’d patronise, since most of the service station building is taken up by a McDonald’s, though there’s also a coffee and snack counter unaffiliated with McDonald’s, which is where I ordered my coffee. However, service station Harz East was remarkably busy for a Sunday afternoon a week before Christmas. And the busiest part was the McDonald’s where almost every seat was taken by families on their way back from a day trip, truckers and soldiers returning to their posts after the weekend. So I guess fast food chains like McDonald’s or Burger King are what most people want from service stations and Autohöfe, even though I don’t. In fact, my Dad would occasionally stop at a roadside McDonald’s or Burger King for food, while on the road, so I’m not sure why I avoid these chains now he’s gone. Though I really hate ordering via touchscreen, because it’s so impersonal, so maybe that’s the reason.

It was already getting dark by the time I pulled into service station Harz East and once I had finished my coffee and continued my journey homeward, it was completely dark. So once again, I got to drive past the Harz in the dark and didn’t even get to see any of it. That said, I should maybe do a day trip to the Harz when the days are longer and weather is nicer.

Homewards and Service Station Goldbach

So I continued the rest of my journey in the dark once again. The coffee had refreshed me and I passed Hildesheim and Hannover. I did consider stopping somewhere for dinner, but when I passed Autohof Schwarmstedt north of Hannover, which has an American style diner, I found I wasn’t hungry yet.

At junction Walrode, I changed onto Autobahn A27 for the final leg of the trip. At this point, there wasn’t much of a chance of finding a place to have dinner, because the Autobahn cuts through a thinly populated area and even the few exits and towns there are, are quite a bit away from the Autobahn, requiring yet another detour.

There is, however, one service station on this leg of the A27, namely Goldbach. I don’t normally stop there, because it’s pretty close to home. But I was getting tired again, which is a dangerous state to be in, while driving, so another coffee would have been nice.

So I pulled into service station Goldbach, only to find the place completely dark. The service station and restaurant were closed, which they normally never are. And it wasn’t even seven PM yet. Worse, there were no lights on the parking lot anywhere, so I had to make my way to the gas station (which was open) in the dark, using the flashlight function of my phone to avoid stumbling. The lack of lights is super dangerous, because service stations do get a lot of traffic, so it’s easy to get run over. Besides, it was Sunday, when trucks aren’t allowed to drive on German roads, so the parking lot was full of trucks waiting until they could continue their journey.

At the gas station, I used the toilet – which was open as well – and then had a cup of coffee at the gas station itself. I asked the guy behind the counter why the restaurant was closed and was told, “Oh, they don’t have enough staff, so they close at three PM.”

While I was drinking my coffee, two somewhat tipsy East European ladies came in to buy champagne from the gas station shop, before they got into a car with a man and drove off. I suspect they might have been prostitutes. Not that it matters and they were very nice.

The conditions at service station Goldbach with a pitch dark and dangerous parking lot and the restaurant closing at three PM were so bad that I wrote an angry e-mail to Serways, the company operating the service stations at German Autobahnen, to complain about these flat dangerous conditions. I never got a reply. But then Serways is kind of infamous for being an overpriced monopoly owned by investment funds who don’t give a fuck.

As for dinner, there is an American style diner at Autohof Oyten, but that’s only twenty minutes from home and since I wasn’t tired anymore, I could just as well drive home and eat something there.

Home at Last

It was half past seven, when I finally made it home.

In theory, I should have received a package in the mail that day, which I’d instructed the mail person to leave on the doorstep. However, there was no package on the doorstep, so I assumed it hadn’t arrived after all.

When I took some trash out, I finally did find the package waiting for me on the table of the patio behind the house. Turns out my neighbour had found it and since he knew I was out, he thought it would be safer on the patio. I also found something else waiting for me, namely the Christmas tree my neighbour had bought me and also left on the patio.

As for what was in the package, it was a vintage Tiki mug. I do collect things other than Masters of the Universe figures, you know.

Tiki mug

This vintage Tiki mug is marked “Gastronomy supply Stuttgart” on the bottom and was used in the restaurants of the Möwenpick chain in the 1970s.

So that was my very long trip to the Church of Eternia Masters of the Universe holiday event in Hanau. Was the event worth the long trip? Well, I had fun and that’s the most important thing and I made pretty good haul, too – see my previous post. Plus, I got to see some places I would probably never have visited otherwise.

Would I do it again? Honestly, that’s something I will decide next yeat, if there’s another Church of Eternia holiday event.

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Cora’s Adventures at the Church of Eternia Masters of the Universe Holiday Event in Hanau, Part 2: The Con as well as Hanau and Langenselbold

Posted on January 13, 2025 by Cora

Following some holiday interruptions, I return to my adventure at the Church of Eternia Masters of the Universe holiday event in Hanau, which I attended on the third advent weekend. For the long trip to get there, see this post.

Into Eternia

The Church of Eternia Masters of the Universe holiday event took place in a business and retail park on the outskirts of Hanau, so getting there would have been an issue, had I decided to take the train, since the train station is in the city center, so I would have to find a bus – in a city I’m not familiar with.

I had programmed my GPS for the address of the con venue, but as I was about to drive into the target street, as Else my GPS always phrases it, I spotted a mannequin dressed like an Eternian Royal Guard pointing the way to the parking lot of some adjacent business – I think it was a garage – which was closed for the weekend and had a bigger parking lot than the actual venue.

Mannequin dressed as an Eternian Royal Guard pointing to a traffic lot.

The Eternian Royal Guard has been deployed for traffic control. I wonder about those boots though. Did this particular guard take a detour through the tar swamps?

The venue itself turned out to be a paintball arena called Color Area. It has hosted Masters of the Universe events before such as the Los Amigos convention before it moved to Neuss, because the owner is a fan.

The premises were festively decorated with a Masters of the Universe theme. I’m not sure which of the decorations were part of the regular interior and which had been specifically set up for the holiday event, but whole thing looked good – especially considering the place normally operates as a paintball arena.

Once I got my ticket, I found myself in the outdoor part of the venue, where a stall selling sausages – charmingly named “Grill-at-Arms” – and a stall selling hot beverages ranging from coffee and tea to mulled wine and alcohol-free holiday punch, basically mulled fruit juice, had been set up. There were also a few tables and seating and outdoor heaters, since it was pretty cold, barely above freezing.

Church of Eternia entrance area.

The area just outside the venue. Note the Castle Grayskull entrance and the Spider-Man mural.

Grill-at-Arms

I have to admit I chuckled at “Grill-at-Arms”, though it makes total sense that Duncan would be the Eternian barbecue master. I now also want to find an action figure sized grill for him.

The outdoor patio with the grill and some tables and seating are a regular part of the venue according to the website and were not just set up for the con. The idea is that people can relax and grill some burgers and sausages after a round of paintball.

Because I had gotten up very early in the morning, was exhausted from driving and the coffee I’d had in Kirchheim had worn off by now, I went to the drinks stall and got myself another coffee. I wouldn’t have minded mulled wine at all, but I still had to drive to my hotel later, so coffee it was.

After I finished my coffee I ventured inside through an entrance way shaped like Castle Grayskull wearing a Santa hat. Next to the entrance, there was also a Sky Sled replica driven by a mannequin in a Santa outfit wearing a Skeletor mask.

Castle Grayskull entrance way at the Church of Eternia con

Castle Grayskull is decked out festively.

Santa Skeletor on his Sky Sled

“You’d better watch out, you’d better not cry, you’d better not pout, I’m telling you why. Santa Skeletor is coming to town.”

In the entrance area, there was a Christmas tree as well as a beautiful diorama of the throne room from the 1987 live action movie, staffed with a mix of Masterverse and Classics movie figures as well as custom versions of characters that never had an action figure in their movie forms such as the Sorceress, Man-at-Arms, Teela and Detective Lubic.

Masters of the Universe movie diorama front view

Front view of the Castle Grayskull throne room diorama from the 1987 live action movie. There’s even a camera operator included.

1987 Masters of the Universe movie diorama

Side view of the Castle Grayskull throne room diorama from the 1987 live action movie. This inspired me to get myself a Classics Karg, especially since he’s fairly affordable. I also hope that Mattel eventually makes the missing movie characters in the Masterverse line.

Batman Rocks

The next room after the entrance area housed a stall selling seasonal sweets and candy, a human-sized Road Ripper replica as well as tombola. The tombola was intended as a sort of fundraiser for the event. The prizes had been donated by various vendors and every ticket was supposed to win you something.

Tombola at the Church of Eternia Masters of the Universe holiday event.

The tombola at the Church of Eternia Masters of the Universe holiday event. Note the Man-e-Faces banner and the relief of the Central Tower of the Eternia playset in the background.

I purchased a ticket, opened the little plastic ball and found a piece of paper inside which said, “Batman guitar”.  I handed the paper to the tombola attendant and said, a tad puzzled, “Apparently, I won a Batman guitar.”

Well, it turns out that what I won was not a Batman guitar but a McFarlane Toys Batman action figure with a guitar.

McFarlane Toys DC Multiverse Batman action figure with guitar

And here is the Batman action figure I won photographed on my kitchen table at home.

Why does Batman, a character not normally known for his musical abilities, have a guitar? I guess only Todd McFarlane knows for sure. Though this is a very cool Batman figure. I couldn’t find this particular figure on Amazon, but a quick look shows that McFarlane Batman figures normally go for around 30 Euros, which is a lot more than I paid for the ticket.

As for why Batman has a guitar, personally I believe that Bruce Wayne occasionally feels the need to play a few chords and belt out songs to relax. Alfred isn’t overly impressed by Bruce’s musical skills, but knows that he needs to unwind. Catwoman pretends to enjoy it and sometimes joins in and Damian makes fun of his Dad. As for which songs Bruce likes to play, this one is an obvious candidate as is this one. Sometimes, Bruce also stands around on roofs in full costume and belts out “Behind Blue Eyes” by The Who, because for years I misheard the lyrics as “No one knows what it’s like to be the Batman, to be the sad man, behind blue eyes.” And yes, my version of the lyrics totally fits, except that I always assumed Bruce Wayne had brown eyes.

An Eternian Christmas Market

The rest of the venue – both the indoor part and also a small backyard – had been given over to stalls of vendors – both commercial and private – selling vintage and modern toys and merchandise. Masters of the Universe was strongly represented, of course, but also Star Wars, Marvel and DC, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, Wrestling figures, various retro games and even Barbie. The whole thing was billed as an Eternian Christmas market.

There were some true rarities as well, such as the first ever vintage Tytus figure I saw in the flesh (the two giant figures Tytus and Megator came out at the tail end of the original Masters of the Universe line and are among the rarest figures – I have the Classics versions, but not the originals), a loose Bionatops, missing his gun, but otherwise in very good condition (and I really wish Mattel would make the Preternia dinosaurs again one day), a vintage Dragon Walker in box, which I duly admired, but did not buy, because if I ever get a Dragon Walker, I want to play with it and not keep it in a box, as well as pretty much the entire range of the mini-statues (called “stactions”, because these are statues that look like action figures) that continued the 200X toyline after Mattel cancelled it. The stactions are quite rare for something that isn’t that old – though they are coming up on twenty years by now. At any rate, I almost never see them anywhere.

There are a few videos on YouTube about the Church of Eternia event by Stamm der SABINErinnen (I’m pretty sure I spotted this lady at the event), bumo.tv, who couldn’t attend himself, but hosts a video a friend of his made, and The Ulti-Mate Player, all of which give you some idea of what the whole thing looked like. One of the most positive effects of attending German Masters of the Universe and toy conventions this year is finding so many German geek, retro and toy YouTube channels I had no idea existed.

Phantom covers framed on a wall

This wall of framed Phantom comic covers is part of the regular interior of the venue, as I learned when I commented upon them, since The Phantom was my Mom’s favourite superhero.

The event was smaller than Toyplosion or the Los Amigos con, but both the offerings and the crowd were still pretty good. One thing I really liked was that there were a lot of families with kids in attendance. There even was a guy dressed as Santa who handed out little gifts to kid attendants. I saw a couple of cosplayers – not just Masters of the Universe, but also several Star Wars cosplayers (I think they’re a club). In fact, I initially mistook a Star Wars cosplayer in Jedi robes for a monk, when I saw him getting out of a car. Finally, I also met the guy again who told me about the event in the first place. “Cool, so you made it after all. Though I’m afraid I still don’t have a Classics Rattlor.”

My Haul and Fun with Action Figures

Chatting with other fans is fun, but of course you also attend such events to buy stuff, so here’s my haul:

McFarlane Toys Batman, Masters of the Universe 200X Serpent Claw Man-at-Arms, Princess of Power Scratchin' Sound Catra and Masters of the Universe Classics Ninjor

My Church of Eternia haul: In addition to the Batman figure, there’s also a 200X Serpent Claw Man-at-Arms, a Princess of Power Scratchin’ Sound Catra and Masters of the Universe Classics Ninjor.

And since I had them all set up already, I also took a photo of Catra getting up close and personal with Man-at-Arms.

The Vintage Princess of Power Catra is getting up close and personal with the 200X Serpent Claw Man-at-Arms, while Batman and Ninjor look on.

Catra is getting up close and personal with Man-at-Arms, much to the amusement of Batman and Ninjor.

“Meow, what big strong muscles you have. Why don’t we go somewhere more comfortable?”

“Unhand me, girl. I’m in a committed relationship and besides, you could be my daughter.”

“Just enjoy the ride. Catwomen are chaotic and will drive you crazy, but they’re also a lot of fun. Trust me, I have experience in that regard.”

“Meow. Just listen to Batman and relax.”

“I most certainly will not. Like I said, I’m spoken for and you’re lesbian.”

“Oh, my Catwoman kisses girls, too, on occasion. It’s very hot.”

“Yes, but is she in a troubled relationship with the daughter of your King?”

“The USA are a republic, so we don’t have a king.”

***

After a bit of fun with action figures, let’s get back to my actual haul.

For starters, I found a loose Masters of the Universe Classics Ninjor for a good price. Ninjor is one of the more absurd Masters of the Universe characters, for why would Eternia have ninjas? The answer is of course that ninjas were cool in the 1980s and rival toylines like G.I. Joe or the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, who were just getting started around this time, all had ninjas, so Masters of the Universe felt the need to have one or rather two ninjas (cause there also was a white good guy ninja planned, who never made it into production in the original toyline, but was released later on) as well.

Besides, Ninjor is the only Evil Warrior (okay, there’s also Twistoid, but almost no one cares about Twistoid) I was still missing in 6/7 inch scale. What is more, I have his good guy counterpart Slamurai, so of course I needed the villainous Eternian ninja as well. Plus, Ninjor is actually awesome. Just look at those demonic red eyes and monster feet. Whatever this guy is, he’s not fully human. The Classics Ninjor also has an unmasked head, though I’m setting mine up in full ninja get-up for now.

Masters of the Universe Classics Ninjor

Behold the Masters of the Universe Classics Ninjor: Note his clawed feet and glowing red eyes, indicating that this is not your average Earthly ninja.

Besides, now I have Ninjor, I can also recreate “The Search for Keldor” mini-comic with my action figures, since I have every character I need for it.

I also found a loose Serpent Claw Man-at-Arms figure from the 200X toyline. Now I don’t officially collect 200X figures, but I picked up a few, whenever I found them for a good price. And fifteen Euros is certainly a good price. Besides, Man-at-Arms is a crucial character I’m still missing. Now I really need to find a 200X Teela to complete the family, but she’s very expensive for some reason.

Masters of the Universe 200X figures

My small collection of Masters of the Universe 200X figures: Two-Bad with reversed sides, Beast-Man, Mer-Man, Blood Armour Skeletor (who’s apparently quite rare), Keldor, Serpent Claw Man-at-Arms and Prince Adam. I don’t have a He-Man yet, because so far I’ve only found weird variants I don’t want.

Finally – and this was an unexpected highlight – I found a vintage Princess of Power Scratchin’ Sound Catra in a really great condition and for a very good price. Now I normally don’t buy vintage Masters of the Universe and Princess of Power figures from the 1980s, because either the condition isn’t great or they’re really expensive. And in almost all cases, there is a nicer more recent version of the character.

Scratchin Sound Catra

Vintage Princess of Power Scratchin’ Sound Catra. Isn’t she gorgeous?

But when I found this utterly gorgeous Scratchin’ Sound Catra for a great price, I just had to buy her. She’s missing her cat mask and the comb all the Princess of Power figures had, but otherwise she’s complete and in great condition.

Of course, we have had several Catra figures since the vintage era. However, they were all based on her appearance in the Filmation She-Ra cartoon (and in one case on her appearance in the 2018 She-Ra and the Princesses of Power cartoon). But as with many of the Princess of Power characters, Catra looked quite different in her toy form from her cartoon counterpart (this is apparently due to Filmation basing the designs on early prototypes). And none of Catra’s three variants in the vintage Princess of Power toyline – regular Catra, Scratchin’ Sound Catra and Shower Power Catra – have ever been made again in any toyline. Which is a pity, because I’ve always loved Catra’s toy look with the furry skirt and patterned tights. She looks very much like a 1980s pop star. Indeed, check out this 1984 music video of Nena, where she looks almost exactly like Catra.

But there’s also another reason why I bought this Catra figure and that’s because I always wanted a Catra figure back in the day and never got one. Because my parents – bless them – accidentally bought me a Vultura figure from the Golden Girl and the Guardians of the Gemstone toyline instead. From an adult POV, it’s an easy mistake to make – pink and gold packaging, 5.5 inch doll with dark hair and skimpy black and red clothes – but as a kid I was annoyed that my parents had gotten me the wrong toy again (this happened a few times). I still have the Vultura figure BTW and she is in great condition for a forty-year-old toy, but she just isn’t Catra. For that matter, please someone bring Golden Girl and the Guardians of the Gemstone back, because that was an awesome toyline.

So now, almost forty years later, I finally have a proper Catra figure. So of course, I had to introduce her to her frenemy She-Ra. Unfortunately, my vintage She-Ra got lost – in addition to Vultura, all I still have from back in the day is a mangled Flutterina – but the Origins She-Ra figure works very well.

Masters of the Universe Origins She-Ra and vintage Princess of Power Scratchin Sound Catra

I wasn’t in love with the Masters of the Universe Origins She-Ra, but she fit remarkably well with the vintage Catra

“Hey Adora…”

“Go away, Catra. I don’t want to fight you. Not today.”

Catra gets cozy with Adora and strokes her cheek

Scratchin’ Sound Catra’s scratching action feature looks more like she’s trying to stroke someone’s cheek. Though it’s better than some of the 200X figures, who look like they’re doing a “Heil Hitler” salute. Besides, it’s amazing that Scratchin’ Sound Catra’s action feature still works after almost forty years.

“Who said anything about fighting, meow?”

“What… what are you doing, Catra?”

“What’s it look like, Adora?”

Catra and Adora kiss.“This is wrong, Catra.”

“But it feels so right…”

Smooch.

***

In Hanau on the Trail of the Brothers Grimm:

Okay, after that little interlude, let’s return to my adventures at the Church of Eternia holiday event in Hanau.

At noon, I went to a retail park across the road from the con venue. Since I didn’t fancy sausages, I had lunch at an Asian buffet restaurant, which was pretty much the only place where you could get something to eat in the area.

Then I went to a Rewe supermarket to buy some sparkling water for the trip back home. Now supermarkets and retail in general is a lot less regionalised than it used to be with the same chains operating all over Germany. That said, there still are regional differences. For example, I couldn’t find my usual brand of sparkling water and had to resort to buying a different brand. I chose one that’s nationally available, so I wouldn’t have problems returning the bottle.

Another thing I noticed was that this Rewe market had a whole shelf of Äppelwoi (apple wine), a type of cider popular in the region around Frankfurt on Main.  My local Rewe in North Germany doesn’t carry Äppelwoi at all. If I want it – and there is a recipe which requires it – I have to go to a specialty store. But Hanau is Äppelwoi country and so even a suburban Rewe market has several brands.  I was tempted to look for Frankfurt Green Sauce herb bundles – another regional specialty I can’t get in my part of Germany at all – but it was the wrong time of the year for that.

The con started to wrap up around three PM. I made a brief pit stop at a gas station in the retail park – after all, I’d driven 471 kilometers and my tank hadn’t been completely full, when I left Bremen – so it was time to refuel and besides, the gas price was good. I chatted briefly with the young man behind the counter to ask him for directions to the city center. “There really isn’t much of interest in Hanau,” he replied. “Well, there’s at least one thing of interest,” I said, “And since I’m here already, I at least want to see it.”

Now there are a few things that Hanau is known for: Two of them are negative The first is that Hanau was home to a manufacturer of fuel rods for nuclear power stations that was embroiled in a scandal about improperly stored nuclear waste in the 1980s. Indeed, in the 1980s, I mainly knew Hanau as “that place where they make nuclear fuel rods” and probably would have refused to visit the town at all. The fuel rod factories and storage facilities are all gone now and I wasn’t even in the part of the city where the nuclear factories once were.

The other negative thing Hanau is infamous for is a mass shooting in February 2020, where a far right arsehole killed nine people, all of them members of various ethnic minorities, and wounded several others in and outside three different shisha bars in Hanau. He also murdered his disabled mother (who is often forgotten in memorials, even though she’s as much of a victim as the other nine) and finally shot himself.

However, Hanau is also famous for a positive reason, namely that Jacob and Wilhelm Grimm, the famous Brothers Grimm, were born here. Though they only lived in Hanau for the first few years of their lives before the family moved to nearby Steinau an der Straße (Steinau on the Street, which refers the medieval trade route Via Regia). The brothers attended a grammar school in Kassel, university in Marburg, both were professors at the University of Göttingen, before getting kicked out for co-signing a petition against the suspension of the constitution of the Kingdom of Hannover (modern Hannover is very embarassed about this) and finally moved to Berlin. In fact, I passed by several places where the Brothers Grimm lived and worked – Hannover, Göttingen, Kassel and Steinau an der Straße – on my trip to Hanau. Coincidentally, Hanau is also the starting point of the German fairytale route, while Bremen is its endpoint. Though I did not drive along the actual German fairytale route, much of which follows smaller country roads. That said, I have visited many of the sights along the German fairytale route in the past and may well visit again in the future.

I found a parking garage at the edge of the city center of Hanau (the actual city center is largely pedestrianised) and started exploring. I wanted to visit the Brothers Grimm National Monument on the market place and see what else I could find along the way. Like many German cities, Hanau was badly bombed in WWII and much of the historic city center (not remotely a target of strategic value, unlike the factories and train line on the edge of the city) was completely destroyed. So there were fewer historic buildings than you’d assume and much of the city center was drab post-WWII buildings.

First, I came across the former residence of the Prince Electors of Hesse and the Counts of Hanau-Münzenberg. Not that there is much left. The medieval castle was torn down and rebuilt in the 18th and 19th century and their successor was destroyed by two massive air raids in early 1945. It would have been possible to rebuild the palace, but most of it wasn’t rebuilt in an attempt to erase the feudalist past. This was sadly quite common in post-WWWII Germany both East and West, though only the East gets flak for it.

So let’s take a look at what’s left of Hanau castle:

Water tower Hanau castle

The sole surviving tower of Hanau’s medieval city wall, built in the 14th century, and part of the former residence of the Prince Elector of Hesse. The building behind it is the former chancellery of the castle, which was restored.

Hanau chancellery

The former chancellery of Hanau castle, built in the 17th century, has been lit up after sunset. Since the 19th century, the chancellery building has housed the Hanau city library, the city archive and other cultural institutions, which is why it was lucky enough to be rebuilt after WWII. The parking lot right outside the historical, literally where the castle courtyard would have been, is another postwar city planning mistake.

Hanau Stadthalle

The former mews of Hanau castle were turned into a Stadthalle (literally city hall, but Stadthallen are events venues not administrative buildings) in 1928. The neo-classical facade was added in 1928, the rough stone walls behind it are part of the former mews.

The Stadthalle events venue is now named Paul Hindemith Halle for the famous composer and pioneer of free tonality, who was born in Hanau in 1895 and is the third most famous son of the city after Jakob and Wilhelm Grimm. I first encountered Hindemith’s work in high school music class, when a teacher valiantly tried to introduce us to free tonality and atonality and painstakingly explained Hindemith’s alternative system of tonality, whereupon my classmate Gerthild, who came from a musical family and earned some money for herself as a church organist, dismissed the whole thing as nonsense. “This was Hindemith’s life’s work,” the teacher said. “It’s still nonsense,” Gerthild declared, “It’s not my fault that he wasted his life on nonsense.”

But even though my classmate Gerthild declared Paul Hindemith’s life’s work nonsense, his hometown Hanau still named their Stadthalle after him.

Hanau Castle tower

The former tower of Hanau castle looms above some residential buildings. The top of the tower was destroyed in WWII and its former outline is represented by a steel structure.

The sad fate of Hanau castle once more illustrates that postwar city planners were as much of a danger to historical buildings as WWII. Buildings that were salvagable were town down because they no longer fit someone’s vision of what the city should look like, only a handful of buildings were restored and weird half ruins were left standing as monuments to WWII bombing victims. And it didn’t just happen to 19th century buildings which were considered hopelessly old-fashioned at the time, but also to much older buildings you’d assume would have historical merit.

There are plans to restore Hanau castle to something closer to what it was before WWII, which includes restoring the tower with the weird steel skeleton outline to its former glory. You can see more about that here.

As I ventured further into the city center of Hanau, the next sight of interest I came across was a beautiful timbered house. This striking building, erected in 1543, had been Hanau’s townhall until the 18th century, when a new townhall was built and this one became obsolete. Nowadays, it houses the German Goldsmith Museum, since Hanau was once a center of jewellery making.

German goldsmith museum in Hanau

The German Goldsmith Museum in Hanau, built in 1543, with fountain of justice and Christmas decorations.

Justice fountain

A closer look at the fountain of justice in front of the Goldsmith Museum. The fountain was set up in 1608 and is decorated with a statue of Justicia.

German Goldsmith Museum after dark

The German Goldsmiith Museum after sunset with all the Christmas decorations lit up.

Once I came across the Goldsmith Museum, I thought I’d reached the historical city center, but instead I walked past more drab postwar buildings and finally a modern shopping mall, built in 2015.

Lit up tree at the Forum Hanau shopping mall

A lit up tree with hearts decorates the Forum Hanau shopping mall.

By now I was in the pedestrian shopping district Hanau, which was quite busy and bustling, since it was a Saturday afternoon a week before Christmas. Though I didn’t pay much attention to the stores, since it was basically the same chains we have at home.

And then, at last, I found the market place and the Brothers Grimm.

The Brothers Grimm National Monument

The Brothers Grimm National Monument in front of Hanau’s new townhall.

Since it was a week before Christmas, Hanau’s market place had been transformed into a Christmas market and Hanau’s new townhall, built in 1733, had been transformed into Hesse’s largest advent calendar, an idea I found very charming.

Unfortunately – since it was a Saturday a week before Christmas – the Christmas market was also packed. Even getting a decent photo of the Brothers Grimm was difficult, because people had settled down at their feet to eat Christmas market treats

Brothers Grimm National Monument

The Brothers Grimm National Monument in front of Hanau townhall with Christmas market.

Hanau also has other monuments devoted to its two most famous sons (sorry, Paul Hindemith), including a Fairy Tale Path of statues representing various fairy tales collected by the Brothers Grimm that are scattered around the city. Apparently, there are eleven fairy tale sculptures altogether, though I only came across two of them, largely because I didn’t know that this Fairy Tale Path existed.

Indeed, when I came across the first fairy tale statue, representing “King Thrushbeard”, I didn’t make the connection to the fairy tale at all, but just thought it was a neat piece of art, which is why I took a photo. Regarding “King Thrushbeard”, there is a delightful East German movie version from 1965 with interesting minimalistic set design and starring a very young and handsome Manfred Krug, who even plays the hurdy gurdy at one point.

King Thrushbeard statue in Hanau

King Thrushbeard by Dr. Hatto und Christoph Zeidler

The second fairy tale statue I came across represents “The Devil With the Three Golden Hairs” and this time around, I realised exactly what it was, because the scene of the evil king forced to spend the rest of his days as a ferryman is very memorable.

The Devil with the Three Golden Hairs statue in Hanau

The Devil with the Three Golden Hairs by Wilhelm Zimmer

For even though fairy tales, whether the ones collected by the Brothers Grimm or the ones penned by Hans Christian Andersen or Wilhelm Hauff, were considered old-fashioned, too violent and possibly harmful for children, my parents didn’t care and read or told (cause note that these were original stories to be told) me the Grimm and Andersen fairy tales in all their bloody and gruesome glory.

Indeed, when I first came in contact with the watered down US versions of those classic fairy tales as a young kid in the US, I even asked my Mom why the American fairy tales were all wrong and left out all of the good parts, Mom replied that American kids get scared more easily than German kids, so the fairy tales had to be tone down, so American kids wouldn’t be scared. Of course, Mom just wanted to keep me from blurting “This is all wrong and this is how the story really”, followed by a detailed description of the gruesome fate of Cinderella’s stepsisters or the Evil Queen from Snow White, in kindergarten in the US, but it’s still a remarkably accurate description, except that it’s parents and teachers who would get upset by the gruesome originals rather than the kids.

Should I ever come back to Hanau, I will definitely visit all of the fairy tale sculptures. But that day had already been very long as well as cold and drab. And though it was only ten past four PM, the sun was already about to set. So a hot drink would have been nice to warm me up again. However, the Christmas market was too crowded and besides, mulled wine was out because I still had to drive to my hotel. And since I had passed several cafés along the way, which were cozier and considerably less crowded than the Christmas market, I went to the Henri & Leo bakery café to have a coffee instead.

Afterwards, I made my way back to the parking garage where I’d left my car. By now, it was almost completely dark again, though it was barely five PM. But then daylight is brief and fleeting in mid December.

In Bed with Napoleon: A Night in Langenselbold

After my excursion into the city center of Hanau to pay a visit to the Brothers Grimm, I hopped into my car again and returned onto Autobahn A66 to drive approximately twenty kilometers to the town of Langenselbold, where I’d booked a hotel for the night.

Now I’d never heard of Langenselbold before in my life. However, the town had a hotel with free parking and rooms that were cheaper than what I would have paid in Hanau and it lies next to the Autobahn on the way home, so it was the perfect place to spend the night.

Since it was completely dark, I had to rely on my GPS to guide me through the narrow streets of a town I’d never even heard of to my hotel. The GPS finally led me to an archway, which seemed to lead to some kind of courtyard or quad with two lit up buildings. There were signs informing me that parking was not allowed in the courtyard/quad, so I parked on what turned out to be the parking lot of a church, picked up my luggage and headed for the two lit up buildings, one of which turned out to be my hotel.

Turned out that my hotel and all the other buildings around the courtyard were part of the former residence of the Counts of Isenburg-Birstein. Note that the photos below were taken the following morning, because it was dark by the time I arrived. That said, the photos still look gloomy, because it was another gloomy day.

Langenselbold Palace was built in the 18th century in the grounds of a former monastery. In the 20th century, the city of Langenselbold purchased palace as well as the grounds from the Count of Isenburg-Birstein and turned the two main buildings into the townhall and the city library, though some members of the Count’s family continued to live on the premises.

Langenselbold Palace: A look across the garden with well

A look across the garden of Langenselbold Palace with a well in the foreground. The two buildings at the far end of the garden/courtyard were a former storage building as well as the former resident of the Count of Isenburg-Birstein and his family. Nowadays, they house the townhall and city library of Langenselbold. The two buildings on the side are the former stables.

Langenselbold Palace stables and well

Another look across the garden/courtyard of Langenselbold Palace. The large building at the far end are the former stables, which now house an events venue. There’s an identical stable on the other side.

Meanwhile, the building that housed the former servants’ quarters and military barracks had been turned into a hotel and restaurant called Dragonerbau (Dragoon Building in reference to the time it served as military barracks during the Napoleonic Wars).  This was the hotel where I was staying.

Dragonerbau building in Langenselbold.

The “Dragonerbau” (Dragoon building), former military barracks and servants’ quarter turned hotel and restaurant.

When I made my booking, I assumed the hotel was some kind of country inn with a weird name. The fact that it turned out to be a historical building that once housed dragoons  and other soldiers during the Napoleonic Wars made it a lot cooler.

And it’s not just the dragoons, no, Napoleon Bonaparte himself spent the night at Langenselbold Palace in 1813, fleeing the united Prussian and Russian forces through the Kinzig Valley towards Frankfurt (so nope, Cold War strategists did not come up with the idea to use the Kinzig Valley as a route to attack/conquer Frankfurt). For the Count of Isenburg-Birstein was a supporter of Napoleon Bonaparte and invited Napoleon and his forces to spend the himself the night at Langenselbold Palace. Though I strongly suspect that Napoleon slept in the actual palace on the other side of the garden/courtyard and not with his soldiers at the barracks. So I probably did not spend the night in the same building as Napoleon Bonaparte 211 years before, though on the same premises.

I went to the reception, registered, got my room key and went up to my room on the first floor to refresh myself. The furnishings were somewhat rustic, but nice enough. There was also – uncommon for Germany – a kettle and a tea tray as well as a water bottle.

Hotel room interior

The interior of my room at the Dragonerbau Hotel in Langenselbold.

My room was at the rear of the building, overlooking the garden of the hotel and a public swimming pool. Autobahn A66 was very nearby, only 500 meters or so away – which I didn’t realise until morning – but nonetheless it was pretty quiet. I was a bit surprised at how many airplanes I heard passing by overhead both in the evening and the following morning, until I realised that I was very close to Frankfurt on Main and Germany’s biggest and most important airport.

Hotel room window view

The obligatory view from the hotel room window, taken the following morning. You can see a playground behind the hotel, a public swimming pool, Autobahn A66 and the Spessart Mountains in the distance.

Since the hotel had a restaurant, I planned to have dinner there, so I wouldn’t have to venture out again. However, it turned out that the restaurant was already full booked for the evening. At was a Saturday a week before Christmas, after all, so you had both date nights and Christmas parties taking up space. I probably should have reserved a table beforehand, but I almost do that, because things like date nights rarely cross my mind.

So I had to venture back into town after all. I probably could have walked – Langenselbold isn’t that big. However, I was both completely unfamiliar with the town and exhausted, so I took the car and headed into town. I found an Italian restaurant named La Contessa, where I had dinner.

Caprese Salad

As a starter, I had caprese salad.

Ravioli filled with cheese and pear, served with sage butter

As a main course, I had fiorelli filled with cheese and pear, served with sage butter and parmesan.

The food was very good and probably cheaper than at the hotel. The only downside was that I couldn’t order wine with my dinner, because I still had to drive back to the hotel.

Because I was exhausted, I had dinner relatively early – at half past six PM or so – and then returned to the hotel, foregoing the kind of after dinner walk I normally like to take in situation like this.

This time around, I also found the right parking – because the church parking lot was not the one I was supposed to take – only to find it pretty full, because the hotel shares a parking lot with the adjacent event venue Klosterberghalle, where there was some kind of event going on. What is more, the hotel restaurant was also full, so I had to squeeze my car into a fairly narrow parking space.

Then, once I was back at the hotel, I went straight to bed, figuring I would fall asleep almost instantly, since I had been up since 4:30 AM, had driven 471 kilometers (more like 500 kilometers, if you factor in driving around Hanau and driving to Langenselbold), and walked five or six kilometers, too. Besides, I was dead tired.

However, there was one problem. I couldn’t sleep. I guess the six or seven cups of coffee I had over the day – normally, I have one or two cups – were just too much caffeine.

Of course, I did fall asleep eventually after all and had a good night’s rest. Which was important, because I still had the long drive back ahead of me. But more about that in my next post.

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A Tale of Two Geldors

Posted on January 10, 2025 by Cora

In the 1980s, both the original Masters of the Universe and Princess of Power toylines were very white indeed, with the only two black characters, Clamp Champ and Netossa, introduced at the very tail end of either line. This is something of a surprise, since other Mattel toylines were a lot more diverse at the time. Barbie has had black friends since 1966 and by the 1980s, you could get black, Asian and Hispanic Barbies as well as an array of multicultural friends in addition to the standard blonde and white Barbie.

But even though the Masters of the Universe and Princess of Power toylines were very white, both the mini-comics and the Filmation cartoons depicted a more racially diverse Eternia and to a lesser degree Etheria. The Filmation cartoon had a recurring black character in the royal archaeologist Melaktha (who still hasn’t had a figure in any toyline) plus various background characters of colour and also occasionally sent He-Man to visit other kingdoms on Eternia whose inhabitants happened to be not white.

Meanwhile, the Masters of the Universe mini-comics usually stuck closer to the actual toyline they were supposed to advertise, though there were several instances of characters looking very different from the final toys – usually because the comics were based on early prototypes. And the third wave of mini-comic from 1984 also featured several stories where He-Man and friends battles not Skeletor and his Evil Warriors, but one-of villains who never had toys in the original line.

One of these one-of villains from the mini-comics was a character called Geldor. He appeared in the 1984 mini-comic “The Secret Liquid of Life”, written by Michael Halperin and drawn by Larry Houston, where Geldor commanded an army of monsters and did anything necessary to obtain the titular liquid and eternal life, only to be thwarted by He-Man and his friends. “The Secret Liquid of Life” is definitely one of the better and more iconic mini-comics of the vintage era. You can watch a dramatised reading here.

In addition to the fact that the entire supporting cast of “The Secret Liquid of Life” consists of original characters, it’s also notable that all of those original characters – the villain Geldor, his unnamed wizard goon, the sage Torgul, his daughter Maran and the heroic Prince Dakon, childhood friend of Prince Adam and Maran’s fiancé, are black. Indeed, Larry Houston, the artist who designed the characters for the mini-comic, based Geldor on Mr. T. As can be seen in this scan of the original artwork, Larry Houston also explicitly included a note for the colourist that Geldor is supposed to have white hair and black skin.

But while Geldor never had an action figure in the original toyline, he has since appeared in action figure form twice, once in the Masters of the Universe Classics toyline, where he won a fan’s choice contest (a win that apparently was controversial, since international fans favoured Geldor, while many American fans favoured a character named Illumina), and once in the Masters of the Universe Origins line.

I happen to own both Geldor figures, so I took a photo of them standing side by side:

Masters of the Universe Classics and Origins Geldor action figure side by side.

The Masters of the Universe Classics and Origins figures of Geldor side by side. The Classics Geldor has a glass of the secret liquid of life as well as his iconic axe. The Origins Geldor has no glass, but a whopping three axes for maximum chopping action.

If you look at the two Geldors side by side, you’ll note that they’re very similar except for the size difference. You’ll also note something else. Both of them are pretty light-skinned.

So what happened here? Did Mattel whitewash one of the comparatively few characters of colour from the early years of Masters of the Universe? And if so, why?

Personally, what I suspect happened is that the Masters of the Universe Classics version of Geldor, which was the first time the character ever appeared as a toy, came out a little bit paler than intended. Because if you compare Geldor to other Classics figures, his skin tone is a tad darker than that of He-Man or other white characters, but not as dark as other cannonically black characters like Clamp Champ or Netossa or Dekker or Zodak with a K, all of whom had figures in the Classics line. If you look at the original mini-comic, Geldor’s skin tone as well as that of the other characters also varies throughout the comic. This isn’t uncommon for the Masters of the Universe mini-comics – the colouring was often off, even for characters who did have toys.

It seems to me as if the skin tone of the Masters of the Universe Classics Geldor came out a bit lighter than intended. This might have happened at the factory during the final production, though this video of the Mattel display at the 2013 San Diego Comic Con gives a glimpse of what is likely the Geldor prototype and he’s pretty light-skinned, too.

I checked the director’s commentary video by Masters of the Universe Classics brand manager Scott Neitlich on his YouTube channel to see if he addresses Geldor’s skin colour, but he doesn’t. The video mostly focusses on the fan’s choice contest Geldor won and the related controversy. I also checked contemporary reviews of the Classics figure to see if any of them address the fact that Geldor is lighter skinned than he should be and found that only the review on the German fansite Planet Eternia (which pushed Geldor in the fan choice contest, earning them the ire of the American fans of Illumina) and the review on It’s All True address the issue in passing, mostly along the lines of “Huh? I thought Geldor was supposed to be black.” The It’s All True review also puts Geldor next to the Masters of the Universe Classics figure of Dekker, another black character with white hair, to show the difference between the two.

Meanwhile, the artwork on the unofficial bio of Geldor depicts him as black once again and also connects Geldor to the slave city of Targa from another 1984 mini-comic also drawn by Larry Houston.

Last year, almost exactly to the day ten years after he appeared in the Classics line, Geldor received his second action figure in the Masters of the Universe Origins line. The figure was sold exclusively on Mattel Creations and as of this writing, he is still available.  This time around, Geldor looks pretty unambiguously white, both as a figure as well as in the artwork on the back of his package and the accompanying mini-comic.

This is quite surprising, especially since Mattel has even integrated the Rulers of the Sun, a toyline from the 1980s which was specifically created by a black mother as a response to the overwhelming whiteness of Masters of the Universe and other toylines of the era and which featured diverse characters of multiple races, into Masters of the Universe and made all the Rulers of the Sun characters, both produced and unproduced, as part of the Origins line. So Mattel clearly doesn’t have an issue with black characters in Masters of the Universe. So why is Geldor once again portrayed as light-skinned in his Origins incarnation?

Now I don’t know for sure, but what I suspect happened is that the designers of the Origins Geldor figure looked primarily to the Classics figure rather than the original mini-comic for inspiration – note how similar the headsculpts are – and simply had no idea that Geldor had originally been portrayed as black.

Interestingly, in the mini-comic that came with the Origins Geldor figure, “Plague of the Immortal”, written by Joshua Sky and illustrated by Tim Lattie, Geldor is portrayed as white, while his opponent Prince Dakon, returning from the original mini-comic, is still black and Geldor’s late wife, who never appeared in the original mini-comic, is black as well. Again, you can watch a dramatised reading of the comic here. A lot of people criticise the Origins mini-comics, but I quite like this one. Not only is it a direct sequel to the original mini-comic, but it also explains why Geldor was so eager to achieve immortality in the first place. Last but not least, Geldor learns the error of his ways in the end and is reformed, which is a more satisfying ending than “He got eaten by a tree, but then he got better.”

So it seems that Geldor’s changing skintone is less a case of deliberate whitewashing but more of a mistake. Though Geldor is not the only Masters of the Universe character of colour who fell victim to whitewashing. Two characters from the New Adventures of He-Man, Vizar and Nocturna, suffered the same fate. Vizar is black in the New Adventures toyline, while Nocturna is Asian. However, in the New Adventures of He-Man cartoon, Vizar and Nocturna are both white and Nocturna is shown to blonde, when he takes off his helmet. And the German New Adventures comics, Vizar and Nocturna are not only both portrayed as white (and Vizar’s appearance is based on an early design), but they have also swapped names and abilities. Though once again, this seems to have happened more due to communication problems than out of malice. Neither Vizar nor Nocturna have ever been made again (and likely never will be), so we don’t know how later toylines would have portrayed these characters.

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