Monday, July 13, 2009

Sleeping in a Suitcase


It was curiosity about the former DDR – the German Democratic Republic - as well as a wish for an unusual adventure, that took me cross-country to the other side of Germany. I wanted to see the poverty I had read about, the frustration, the exodus, and I wanted to sleep in the suitcase that was advertised as the smallest hotel in the world. Hindsight tells me that it was crazy to expect a meaningful experience within a twenty-two hour time span, but by a stroke of luck I encountered the most outgoing, ambitious and open-minded person who would guide me with enthusiasm into both, a political discussion and a night in a wooden box by the Zwickauer Mulde at the far end of Saxony. Herr Lehmann, the owner of the suitcase, is an extraordinary man.

I had cut out an article about “Sleeping in a Suitcase” a few years ago, eventually researched it on the Internet and put it on my list of things to do someday. A month before my trip to Dilsberg I emailed Herr Lehmann and we set my date of arrival for September 21. He seemed thrilled, offered to give me a ride in his boat and a tour of his museum, even said he would pick me up from the nearest train station if I told him my arrival time. While I lived in Dilsberg I received a “Welcome to Germany” note from him. All that, I thought, for a ten Euro stay.

Thirteen dollars to spend the night and one hundred and sixty dollars for the roundtrip. Though I left my rented house at five thirty in the morning, I didn’t get to Lunzenau until three in the afternoon. Five transfers – three trains and two buses, increasingly more graffiti and broken glass, less flowerpots, dilapidated communist blockhouses, long red lights and detours because of highway construction – and then I stepped out of the bus into bright sunshine onto a deserted street. Nobody to ask directions, no signs, few houses, fewer cars, not even a cat. A far cry from my fortress Dilsberg where people sat on benches in front of the town gate tower and directed strangers to the castle. I should have taken Herr Lehmann up on his offer to meet me at the train station, but it had seemed like such an imposition to make him drive forty-five minutes to pick up one person.

As soon as I walked a few feet to the right I saw the restaurant “Zum Prellbock,” a white three story stucco with its own parking lot. And then I saw the Suitcase, a few feet back, separated from the street by a fence, surrounded by flowers. It was exactly as it was described and pictured online. A large wooden crate that was painted brown and embellished with the attributes of a suitcase. Not much taller than I; probably not even two feet longer, and definitely very narrow.

“I’m going to sleep in that?”

I’m not sure if I said it out loud or if I thought it. Slowly I walked alongside the restaurant, on one hand excited about having made it so far but also wondering if I would be able to find alternative sleeping arrangements if I became claustrophobic. I reached the locomotive and the restored train station that Herr Lehmann had hauled in and made into a museum. Down the stairs stretched a beer garden with wooden tables and chairs, shaded by large trees, edged by the river. Inside the dark interior of the restaurant I spotted Herr Lehmann in the middle of his kingdom. Station master hats hung everywhere, signs, posters, rail artifacts, souvenirs. We shook hands like long lost friends; his wife welcomed me with a glass of sparkling water and I was urged to sit and relax.

We talked for half an hour before Herr Lehmann suggested I take a walk to the tall rail bridge a mile and a half away. He would get the boat ready and later his wife would prepare dinner. The boat, I realized as we toured the grounds, was the dinghy tied to a tree and it had taken on some water. My host gave me an introduction to the history of the suitcase and his passion for the railroad. He works for the Deutsche Bundesbahn, the German Rail system; he is a collector of rail art and anything else that is connected to trains. His restaurant is a meeting place for cultural events like poetry readings and art exhibits and the display of unusual hobbies. He built the suitcase a few years ago because he constantly had requests from visitors who wanted to spend a night in his train station. Together he and his wife manage the restaurant, the museum, the gift shop, the suitcase and an upstairs vacation home. Tourism has declined since the younger generation migrates west, hardly any requests for the furnished apartment that he rents out for twenty-five dollars a night. He gets up at three in the morning and drives seventy kilometers to his job in Leipzig. But he never quit smiling, and with great enthusiasm he told me about his plans for the future, a suitcase on wheels to take to exhibits and to travel the continent or at least visit the children.

I had brought a present for Herr Lehmann, an American magazine about rail travel and a small figurine of a stationmaster. When he flipped through the pages aimlessly I realized that he did not understand English and suggested that he might like the photography. It was the only time I saw him reticent.

“We learned Russian in school.”

This simply had not occurred to me. Everybody else I knew in Germany had some basic knowledge of English. It was the curtain – the iron curtain - that had left its marks. The division I had read about, the uneasy readjustment of two halves that had for so long gone in their own opposing directions.

Finally Herr Lehmann took me to my “room.” He unlocked the narrow door to the suitcase and the first things I saw were the tiny sink and the toilet. The rest of the interior was filled with the wooden bunks and an old metal locker. The walls of unpainted pressed wood were almost totally covered by black felt pen writing. The ceiling was batted with a dark blue fabric on which somebody had sewn yellow felt stars.

“Make sure you leave a message too,” I was told as I read some of the poems and thank yous on the walls.

Since there was no room to move around inside we stood in front. Soon Herr Lehmann left to get the boat ready for the promised ride on the river. For the first time I noticed the mosquitoes that swarmed around the waterfront and I regretted not having brought repellent. I posed Tyana on the top bunk and took a few pictures before I closed the door to freshen up a bit. If I moved very slowly I avoided banging into the walls. A small window at the top allowed for some light but I also located the switch for a lamp by the bed. On top of the locker I saw the bible, an old book of regulations for rail travel and a Japanese adventure story. Something to read for all occasions.

After my limited cleanup session I took the camera and began the prescribed walk. It was easy to follow the river but too far to the bridge. Germans describe every stretch as being two kilometers but somehow it is always twice as long. The landscape was beautiful though it seemed neglected. Throughout my short stay in Saxony I had the feeling that two forces were at work, the fast pace of reconstruction but also a slow decline based on lethargy. I tried to sort out my impressions on a bench by the Mulde, tried to keep my expectations separate from reality, but I couldn’t. Every time I focused on the natural beauty in front of me, I remembered the face of a station attendant I had asked for directions. He didn’t move, barely opened his thin-lipped mouth, his eyes were hidden behind sunglasses. He looked cruel, like the East German policemen who shot at their brothers when they tried to climb the wall or escaped through underground tunnels. Like the villains on a movie set.

Five minutes after six I showed up for dinner and excused myself from the boat ride. I didn’t want to hurt Herr Lehmann’s feelings, but the boat looked small, the mosquitoes threatening, I was hungry, and I began to feel the effects of the seven-hour train trip.

The family sat under a tree with their evening meal. I apologized for being early. No problem, the menu would entertain me for half an hour. It not only detailed the food choices, all associated with the glory days of trains, but was also loaded with old ticket stubs, advertising, and historical facts. A clever way to involve the tourist with the concept of past rail travel and a tribute to the Lehmann’s creativity and commitment.

I ordered potato dumplings, red cabbage, and sauerbraten. And of course my daily Cola light. I am not a beer drinker and I don’t remember how many times I had to point that out during my trip. I was one of six guests and the only one who remained until it got dark. We moved inside and after a quick phone conversation Herr Lehmann asked if I minded being interviewed and photographed. He would do the interview and the Free Press would send a photographer the next morning. I had suddenly become a celebrity because I had traveled so far to sleep in the suitcase. Most visitors were young cyclists who used it because it was cheap or because it was an oddity. There were occasional travelers from other German states, quite a few Berliners, some newlyweds, an oldster who hadn’t lost his sense of adventure yet, but nobody from the US had ever slept in the suitcase.

A gentleman named Gert Flessing introduced himself and moved over on the bench so I could sit next to him. I recognized him from the website as the writer who would recite his poems the next evening.

I was surprised when he smiled and explained, “Normally I am a pastor.”
“You are allowed to drink?” I said it without thinking and was reassured that beer consumption was not sinful. We both laughed. I apologized and told him that I was not used to socializing with a pastor. Then we discussed the recent elections and the fact that the right wing, the Neo Nazis had garnered a spot on the ticket. Her Flessing explained the peculiar kind of poverty the eastern states are facing.

“Different from real poverty,” he claimed. “Our poor are demanding; they won’t make do with used things. They expect to be taken care of. We subsidize their children’s education and their heating bills in winter. But it never seems enough.”

After a while I became a bit uneasy with the conversation. The “Wende” (the change or the turning point) as they call the fall of the Berlin Wall seems to have caused many problems. Unemployment (East Germany has 19 percent, twice that of the west), the exodus of the young (more than a million people have moved to the west since 1989), the closing of factories and the decay of the cement block communist houses. My question about Neo Nazi influence on the young provoked Herr Flessing to say that, “the left is just as dangerous.”

Whatever it was that I detected in his voice, I didn’t want to explore further. I gave him my email address and promised to keep in touch. Herr Lehmann finished his interview with me and around ten his wife brought in my comforter, which he carried as he escorted me to the suitcase. It was totally dark outside. Dark, silent and thrillingly refreshing. After the door closed I brushed my teeth, slipped into my sweats and went to sleep.

Why was I surprised the next morning that my sleep was so sound? It really makes no difference how big a place is once you close your eyes. I didn’t wake until my cell phone alarm went off at eight. Extricating myself from the lower bunk, looking into the mirror above the sink, I had the urge to rip open the door and dressed quickly. With the turn of the key I was part of the real world again. I wiped the dew from a chair and sat down to enjoy the morning, realizing that the thrill of this adventure was not in sleeping in a box; it was in the effects of the total package. The cats around my legs, the deep colors of fall flowers, the bright blue sky, the mumbling of the river, Frau Lehmann’s smile as she came with a covered basket and set the breakfast table for me. Cheeses and lunchmeats, yogurt, a boiled egg, fresh rolls, jam, coffee. She sat down with me while we waited for the photographer. And he, a typical German in my eyes, immediately argued about the expectations of the newspaper.

“I am supposed to photograph an arrival.”

Well, Frau Lehmann expected to be photographed having breakfast with me. It’s what Herr Lehmann had suggested, I guess. The photographer won. We were told to stand in the parking lot, by the rail art statue, the suitcase in the background, Frau Lehmann explaining its history, the sun shining brightly into our faces. I insisted on holding Tyana the bear. A young man without a sense of humor I thought when he frowned. But this time I won. I’m German, too, you know.

The rest of the morning was that of a regular traveler. I packed, moved my belongings into the restaurant so Frau Lehmann could get the suitcase ready for the next inhabitant. On Herr Lehmann’s recommendation I took off toward the castle.

“Rochsburg is only two kilometers away. You have to see it.”

Either I got lost or the distance doubled and though I had a wonderful walk up and down mountains in the deep shadow and silence of old trees, I was glad to finally arrive at a plateau and see the castle in the distance. I knew I would miss my one o’clock bus – 13:10 to be precise – if I walked much farther. When I reached the main road, I located the sign that pointed back to Lunzenau and marched nonstop past windmills and smoke stacks – the dichotomy of old and new again – right back to the Prellbock. A quick Cola drink and a hearty handshake later I stood at the bus stop, ready for the long trip back to Dilsberg. As I had promised myself some time ago, I had slept in a suitcase, advertised as the smallest hotel in the world.

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