I took advantage of Presidents’ Day weekend–admittedly a perk of my gig–to bring my kid to Hannover, which, I have come to learn, is the Cleveland of Germany. Every German who I told about this trip responded with the same appalled, “Hannover? Echt? Why?”
Random dude at my local beer bar overheard me talking with my pal about my Hannover plans and interceded to innocently inquire as to why I should travel to such a “painfully mediocre place.”
When I emailed the one person I know who lives in Hannover* and asked what to do there, she replied, “there isn’t much to do in Hannover, that’s kind of the point. It’s a fantastic place to live, rents are low, everything is bikeable and laid back. But there isn’t really anything to see. My best advice to tourists planning to go is don’t go. But if you’re sure…” With this fair warning, she kindly offered a few things to see, do, and eat.
Now, admittedly, Hannover isn’t what it used to be…
But Hannover is a perfectly good place to learn about the peril and the promise of the mid-nineteenth century struggle for liberalism, nationalism, and democracy from your chatterbox father.**
Hannover is a perfectly fine place to escape the rain to drink beer and eat potatoes.
And with a belly full of beer and potatoes, it’s a perfectly opportune place to ask your kid to pick two buildings that look interesting next to each other and to imagine the conversations they might have.
And when the sun comes out, it’s a perfect little place walk along the river, find an abandoned, decrepit, duct-taped hula hoop, and give it a new life.
This week, I feel grateful to be reminded that…
Hannover and Cleveland–and Perpignan and Poznań and Ypres–are perfectly imperfect little places. They are home to real people with real lives. They are decidedly what we make of them.
Don't matter where you’re at; matters who you’re with.
Hula hoops spark joy.
If you don’t have sunshine, there’s always beer.
And as Robert Hunter reminds us, “once in a while you get shown the light in the strangest of places if you look at it right.”
That Hunter lyric is featured in the final reader contribution to our Official Sabbateur Cover Song Playlist. Big thanks to the scores of readers who heeded my call in last week’s Sabbateur to share your favorite cover songs!
Now I might cop to a bit o’ bias here, but I, for one, think this playlist is a gift. I’ll say this about your selections:
I dreaded the prospect of a bunch of soul versions of folk and rock tunes. There are a couple of them peppered in there. But, there are also soulless versions of soul tunes.
To wit. Who among you prefers the Robert Palmer to the Marvin Gaye version of Mercy Mercy Me? Show yourself! How? Mercy Mercy me, indeed!
Kävelee kuin ruotsalainen, the Finnish version of Walk Like An Egyptian. Solid gold. Whoever added that, please comment below so I can thank you personally. Cheers.
I am super into cover songs that fundamentally re-imagine the original. Power of Love. Creep. Private Eyes.
Looks like it’s high time for me to take a deep dive into Black Pumas and Lana del Rey..***
Five readers shared their love of Jeff Buckley’s version of Hallelujah. This is the subject of an extraordinary episode of Malcolm Gladwell’s Revisionist History podcast (the genius of which is dissected here). If you listen to one podcast this week, you should surely listen to…
Mine! On Monday I shared an enriching conversation with a Baptist minister who planted a church in Berlin. In meditating on President's Day while on the train ride home from Hannover, I developed the introduction to that podcast.****
I cordially invite you to enjoy that conversation and, of course, the playlist.
*Shout out to the esteemed Dr. Anna Zychlinsky-Scharff who, despite her tepid review of her fair city, offered lovely recommendations, many of which we pursued. The rest? Well, no one willingly visits Cleveland twice. But if you are in Hannover soon, you absolutely must explore the exhibition of Berlin-based artist Benjamin Rubloff (my dear pal and podcast guest, for whom I wrote this song) at the Robert Drees Galerie (Feb 25 - Apr 15).
**My daughter allows me very little time to explain profoundly complex historical trends. But the window for explanation opens wider on vacations.
***I already dove in to the Black Pumas on KEXP and at the Rockpalast.
****This may well be the subject of next week’s Sabbateur. The problem of commemoration, remembrance, and memorialization has weighed on me this week. If you listen to the intro to my pod with the minister, you might feel my dissonance.
A note on The Sabbateur: I have convinced myself that rituals matter. Practices that mark time ground us. So this year, I will carve out 45 minutes on Friday, the Sabbath of my ancestors, to sit quietly in the corner of the high school library and ritually reflect on what I have been obsessing over that week. I would write more and more poetically, but I gotta get to my 9:45 class.