Brandenburg

SO THERE'S THIS German comedian and he’s got this funny song about how there’s nothing to do in the German state of Brandenburg. In a well-known line from the song (and I’m paraphrasing here), he says that, alas, in Brandenburg someone who had been driving down an “Allee” has again crashed his car into a tree.

To understand why that’s funny, you need to know two things. First, in German, an “Allee” is a tree-lined road, usually one that is in the country. Second, there are many “Alleen” in Brandenburg because there are a lot of trees in Brandenburg because Brandenburg has a lot of forest and farmland.

So, essentially, in the song, the comedian, Rainald Grebe, is saying that in Brandenburg someone has again wrapped his car around a tree because all that really exists in Brandenburg are trees: that’s the only thing one could crash into in Brandenburg.

OK, so that’s the song. But here’s the even funnier part: when you actually get to Brandenburg, you discover that, holly shit, Grebe was right, there really are a lot of “Alleen” in Brandenburg. So many of the state roads are indeed lined by trees.

***

WE WERE DRIVING through Brandenburg today and I couldn’t help but think how pretty the “Alleen” were. A couple of roads were lined by oaks and driving underneath the canopy that their branches formed was cool. Sometimes the trees lining the road were smaller. These smaller trees were pear and apple trees.

It was just kind of peaceful, you know? And then there was me, pulling out my notebook—far away from the world—and writing stuff like, “In the puddle I saw the reflection of the treetops.”

And then driving through the villages and wondering what those squat trees with the gnarled branches planted at intervals in front of the houses were called and learning that they are called pollard willows.

Then later, taking a walk through a village that is so dark that, even with the tall LED street lights that the residents spent a lot of money on you still can’t read the street names on the signs at the top of the posts. And then wondering as you walk what this big tree off to the side of the road is, the one that casts an inky shadow on someone's lawn, and then breaking off a piece of the tree and taking it to someone who knows the area and them telling you, “It’s a Tannenbaum, a normal Tannenbaum,” which means it’s a fir.