So I'm not dead positive since I'm no cemetery scientist, but I'm pretty sure once you're buried in the U.S. then that's it. No one is ever going to dig you up no how, that is, unless they are some creepy grave robber if such a thing still exists....Not so in Germany. Here you lease a grave for thirty years. When the time is up, if no one from your family pays for the next thirty years, then your remains are dug up to make way for the next "tenant". I'm not really sure what they do with the people whose families have defaulted on the payments. It's not like there is a hot line you can call (actually, hot lines don't even exist in Germany, at least not toll-free ones, but that is an entirely different topic...) to find out what happened to the bones of Fräulein Müller. 1-800-Call-a-Corpse, where are you when I need you?
This thirty year rule, mixed together with good old fashioned German bureaucracy, has made the local Kreuzberg cemeteries even more interesting and macabre than they already would be: both the ones in my neighborhood have at least a dozen fancy crypts where the families lapsed on their payments. The bodies have been removed- you can tell this by the trees growing through the roofs:
By the gardening equipment stacked beyond rusted gates (in this one the crypt was even open, going down at least six feet. Um, can you say creepy?!?):
And by the boarded up doors:
Still, there is a problem: The bodies had to be removed because no payment had been made but you can't exactly lease the grave to anyone else since the crypt says Familie Hoffmann in large, Art Nouveau letters. Probably the buildings are also under Denkmalschutz which means they can't be torn down, making it all the more complicated.
Still, the old crypts have a beauty to them, albeit dilapidated and spooky. Just the thing for a stroll on a dark and cold Sunday afternoon in December...
I don't know what it is about graveyards. True, there are several gorgeous ones near my house and true they are green, quiet and nice to walk in. Still, I think I have a special fondness for them because of growing up in Tucson. Tucson may be many things, but green is not the first one that comes to mind. I remember driving to church with my family (we lived there until I was 10)and always pointing out the window at some point and saying "Look! There's the tree!" As in THE tree, the only tree we ever really saw that was more than a stick (it must have hit an underground water main or something, because I remember it being tall and very lush.) After church we would sometimes go to the graveyard where they had, you guessed it, trees and grass and other green leafy things. When we went, we always had a picnic. Maybe that explains it: to me, graveyards have the cheerful feeling of a family Sunday eating fried chicken and potato salad....Either way, when the sun was actually shining today, it was the first place I thought to go to.
Winters in Berlin are tough. Grey skies everyday, frozen dog shit all over the street (frozen if you're lucky that is!), grim faces... A native California girl, I've never liked it even before I had kids. Now that I have two young children, the season is basically unbearable. A double stroller, two sets of snowsuits, no car....Cars are expensive to have in Berlin and since we live in a great urban neighborhood we don't really need one (we can borrow my brother-in-law's if need be...) But still, babies, a heavy stroller, a subway system where nearly NO station has an elevator and only sometimes an escalator (very steep stairs in their place)I almost never leave the neighborhood. I've been keeping myself busy with creative projects so I don't go crazy. Jewelry making, collages, etc. for my two etsy shops. Still, there is a problem with light. In order to post the items I have made to offer them for sale in Schaufenster and Rose, red Rose I have to take photographs. Though lovely, our apartment doesn't get very good light. Many an afternoon I've driven myself crazy taken blurry picture after blurry picture. Occasionally I set up things in the courtyard in the back, but it's not really much fun even if the light is better. Yesterday I had a revelation: I need to take photographs and get out of the house a little bit. Why not go to one of the graveyards nearby? There are two really nice ones (including one where Brahms and Schumann are buried.) When Mia was in pre-school I packed up baby Lilly and headed to the one on Bergmannstrasse. The sun was actually shining and I got some great shots of both the necklace and two collages which was great. Photographs plus small winter outing equals sucess. Hooray!
dead positive since I'm no cemetery scientist, but I'm pretty sure once you're buried in the U.S. then that's it. No one is ever going to dig you up no how, that is, unless they are some creepy grave robber if such a thing still exists....Not so in Germany. Here you lease a grave for thirty years. When the time is up, if no one from your family pays for the next thirty years, then your remains are dug up to make way for the next "tenant". I'm not really sure what they do with the people whose families have defaulted on the payments. It's not like there is a hot line you can call (actually, hot lines don't even exist in Germany, at least not toll-free ones, but that is an entirely different topic...) to find out what happened to the bones of Fräulein Müller. 1-800-Call-a-Corpse, where are you when I need you?
