Fortuitously, the Monday before my Lufthansa flight out of Minneapolis, the latest issue of the American Scholar arrived in the mail. And what should one of the essays be, but "The Peculaiarities of German Travel" by Michael Gorra. The last few months, I had been searching quite diligently for travel writing on contemporary Germany. Of course, you can find lots of history writing on Germany (especially WWII), but it's nigh impossible to find travel writing. I read John Ardagh's Germany and the Germans, which was fairly interesting and encyclopedic, but that was more of an expose than travel writing.

Thus, it was good to have confirmed by Michael Gorra that there is generally a paucity of contemporary travel writing on Germany. Travel writing today tends towards the adventure narrative, extreme travel to distant and relatively unknown lands. Or, it's writing on romantic locales, like the popular Peter Mayle books about France, or sundry travel books extolling the virtues of the Italian landscape.

Gorra's thesis is rather straightforward. He believes that each country has something unique about it, something that makes it worthy of writing about. The difference between Germany and other countries is that one feels guilty discussing "trivialities" when those trivial things are in German. The "peculiarity" of Germany is its history, and its recent and dramatic history makes it difficult for the traveller to feel at ease assessing, say cuisine or landscape, because always in the back of their minds is this issue- "How can I say that when this is the same place where..." Or when discussing the people, to think "These are the same people who's parents..."

Thus, there's very little recent travel writing about germany because people who write travel narratives feel like they can't come up with anything significant enough to say. Travel writing lacks "gravity."

I don't know if this is the right thesis or not. I do know that when you think of Germany, you think of its history almost exclusively (well, and maybe OctoberFest). I will be in Germany at least in part because of the Reformation, so I am one of those who goes as well because of the "peculiarities of German history." At least I am not alone...

This blog will take the place of the periodic mailings I send out by e-mail. You can simply come browse at any time and look at the updates. As an FYI, here are links to the language program in Wittenberg, and the Wittenberg Center:

Wittenberg Center: www.elca.org/ewbc
Institut for deutsche Sprache und Kultur: http://www.sprache.uni-halle.de/

Clint