adriano & rosa & dennis dornik wash dishes in boom-time germany
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Adriano & Rosa & Dennis DornikWash Dishes
in Boom-Time Germany
In the Kitchen of Büsum's Hotel Nordsee-Halle,
Summer 1966
By Dan W. DurningAugust 2011
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The spats were frequent and loud, with dramatic gestures amplifying the points
Adriano and Rosa were making to each other. The words were mostly
incomprehensible because they were yelling in Italian. And because this was the
first time I had encountered real Italians from Italy, most of their arm waving and
hand posing was unfamiliar -- though I could usually guess at the meaning.
Adriano was a slight and slim, with sensibly cut dark hair and a jutting chin. In his
late 20s, he was curious and outgoing. Rosa, about the same age, was shorter,
rounder, darker, and quieter than her husband. She was less outgoing, but always
friendly. If I hadn't seen her energetic fussing with Adriano, I would have called her
meek and shy.
Fortunately these episodes were brief and seemed to have little lasting effect. Soon
after the yelling and waving were done, the couple was again smiling and humming
as they deftly loaded dirty plates and glasses into the industrial dishwashing
machine and scrubbed the cooking pots.
I witnessed these periodic eruptions of marital discord because I was their co-
worker in the kitchen of Hotel Nordsee-Halle in Büsum, Germany. It was 1966; the
German economy was booming (the Wirtschaftswunder was in full bloom) and
seasonal businesses, especially in tourism and agriculture, were bringing in guest
workers to fill temporary positions. Adriano and Rosa came up from Italy for a job;
I came from Arkansas for my first adventure in Europe.
Adriano, Rosa, and I were hired to clean the pot, plates, glasses, and cutlery of the
hotel's restaurant, bar, and nightclub, plus do other menial kitchen tasks that were
beneath the dignity of the cooks and waiters. Fortunately, I had spent a couple of weeks washing dishes at a summer camp in Siloam Springs, so I had some
experience. Unfortunately, I wasn't very good at the job.
The Healing Waters of Büsum
Hotel Nordsee-Halle is located in Büsum, a small North Sea coastal town whose
beach and mineral baths (Heilbaden) attract German and English tourists in the
summer. The hotel is located on a branch of the town's protected harbor, and its
upper windows look directly out to the North Sea.
The name of the city is not pronounced as Bosom (as in, "rock my soul in thebosom of Abraham"), but, with the umlaut, more like Bersum (rhyming with
Hersome). That is not exactly correct, but was the best I could do. (Try buying a
train ticket when you can't properly pronounce the name of the place you want to
go.)
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Büsum, 1966: Hotel Nordsee-Hall is the white building behind the lighthouse
In 1966, the city had only a couple thousand residents spread out on a flat plain,
but its population swelled with tourists in the summer months. It offered tourists a
picturesque harbor, complete with aging fishing boats, plus a graceful old church,
an enticing bakery, and an ancient restaurant that served the best Bouillabaisse inthe world. You could buy a nice currywurst at a stand along the main drag and
wash it down with a Berliner (beer with a cherry syrup) while listening to a juke box
in a nearby restaurant play, "Monday, Monday."
The main attraction in Büsum is a sloping U-shaped beach that really is a dyke built
high to protect the low-lying city from the North Sea. This beach/dyke starts at the
harbor's entrance into Büsum and stretches miles to the north. At the top of the
beach/dyke is a paved promenade. Another walking path is carved along its
middle.
The beach/dyke is fenced, so that visitors have to pay admission to access it. Themineral baths are inside the gate nearest to Hotel Nordsee-Halle. On the beach are
dozens of scattered mobile cabanas -- about four feet by four feet -- that visitors
rent to have a place to change into and out of bathing suits, to lounge, and to
escape the sun.
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Attractions of Büsum, 1966
Most of Büsum's beach area is covered with grass. It slopes to the tide line, where
sea meets land. There, large rocks have been placed to hold back the sea. Entry to
the cold water is by paths or steps going through the huge rocks. When the tide is
out, tourists walk out on the tidelands, which stretch far into the distance. In 1966,
a local band, heavy on tubas, would go out onto the tidelands to play music. When
the tide was in, the bravest tourists would climb down rock stairs to plunge into the
frigid water.
The water was too cold for me. I could wade out in the cold water, but retreated
after a short stay. I kept waiting for it to get warmer as summer advanced. Then,
one day in late July, just what I wanted: the water had become warm enough for
me to tolerate. I swam around the bay, looking forward to daily swims in the
coming days. Unfortunately, that night a big storm blew in, creating a churning,
black sea. Next day, the water was as cold as it had ever been, and while I was
there, it never warmed up again.
I should note that I made something of an impression on the Büsum beach. In
preparation for my visit, knowing I would be in an ocean resort city, I had bought a
groovy sixties bright orange swimsuit set: swimsuit to mid-calf with a matching
short-sleeve jacket. Looking around me at hairy men in the briefest of swim
thongs, I quickly sensed that my suave wear was attracting attention -- and more
than a few snickers.
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The Hotel Northsee-Halle
The trip to Büsum began by flying from Fayetteville to New York; then, after my
first visit there, I flew Air France to Frankfurt. After a day in Frankfurt, I took a train
to Hamburg and another train to Heide, where I collapsed into a mercifully soft bed
at a local inn next to the train station. I fell asleep wrapped in a thick comforterlistening to Germans singing drinking songs downstairs. The last leg of the journey
was on a small train across flat, treeless agricultural land to the end of the line: I
was in Büsum.
At Hotel Nordsee-Halle, I was welcomed and fed lunch, then promptly fell asleep at
the table where I was served (my first experience with jet lag). After a few hours of
sleep, I was shown my accommodations for the summer. Though I was paid little
for my work, I got free lodging and meals. My new home was a two-story house a
couple of blocks away from the hotel. I shared the house with others who had come
to Büsum for the summer to work for the hotel.
The house was comfortable, but lacked hot water, so I went most of the summer
without a bath or shower (making visits to the frigid North Sea imperative). I did
get a huge immersion heater and large pot in which I could heat water to wash
whatever parts of me I thought needed attention.
I shared a bedroom with four members of an Austrian dance band the hotel had
hired for its night club. They sang mostly English and American hit songs, plus
German tunes that stirred the locals. I heard them often during my first two weeksin Büsum because I was assigned to stand behind the bar at the night club facing a
small sink. There I would wash out the dirty beer and wine glasses as they were
returned, and try to dry them. The two flimsy towels they gave me to dry the
glasses were quickly wet and inadequate for the job, so my drying efforts were
mostly symbolic.
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The Austrian band was pretty good. The night club patrons seemed to liked it, and
they often filled the dance floor, doing the most uncool dances imaginable. The
patrons especially seemed to like several rousing German tunes that brought broad
smiles and rhythmic clapping.
I was surprised to find out that the band members, though they sang numeroussongs in English, could not speak the language. We did not communicate too much
in my first weeks there. Later I found out they spoke decent English, but the
owners of the hotel had told them to speak only German with me to encourage me
to learn the language faster. Good luck with that.
Nordsee-Halle and Büsum Harbor, early 1960s
The husband-wife owners of the hotel oversaw its operation, but left most of the
managing to an experienced hotel manager and his assistant. The owners drove a
big Mercedes and were all business, enjoying ordering people around. The woman
owner, whom I met soon after I arrived, got into her head that my name was
"Dennis." I never found the right time to correct her, so that summer I was known
to most folks at the hotel as "Dennis Dornink."
When I did not understand something the owner or manager told me in German, I
usually would smile and nod my head for several seconds. I expected I would figure
out later what they had told me -- and usually did. The technique served me well,
except a few years later when I was having a conversation with my Hausfrau in
Vienna. She was intently telling me something that I did not quite understand, and
I was grinning like an idiot and bobbing my head up and down, showing my
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agreement. Finally, seeing a strange look in her eye, I figured out that she was
telling me about the recent sudden death of one of her friends.
Aside from the owners (who, without any good evidence, I suspected of having Nazi
sympathies), I liked the my coworkers at the hotel. The general manager was a
plump, genial, patient man in his 50s; he was good-natured and well suited todealing with the most demanding guests of the hotel. He was assisted by a young
woman in her early 30s; quiet and pleasant, she was competent without flair.
In addition to these two, the hotel had assembled a quirky group of workers for the
summer. They included Luigi, the suave and handsome Italian waiter, about 30,
with curly black hair, a prototypical smooth-talking multi-lingual Romeo from Italy.
Luigi stole the heart of many restaurant guests. I am sure it was a shock for all
when he had to stop working for a couple of weeks in the middle of summer to
receive treatment for gonorrhea.
Depiction of The Old Bastard
Another of the characters at the hotel was the guy I called "The Old Bastard." He
found out about his nickname and was immensely pleased. TOB was a stout,
weathered old guy with the look of someone who had spent decades at sea. He
wore a perpetual scowl with a rosy nose in the middle. Best I could tell, he
responsible for maintaining the hotel, and he ran a small bar that was open long
after the night club had closed. Attendance at the bar was waning, so The Old
Bastard brought in an "exotic dancer" for the after-midnight hours. I really wanted
to find out how exotic she danced, but TOB always chased me out of the bar before
the entertainment started. At 19, old enough to drink German beer, but not old
enough to enjoy the esthetics of dance.
Meeting Fay Franklin, California Girl
For the first couple of weeks I was in Büsum, I was the only American working at
Hotel Nordsee-Halle, but one day I stumbled upon a young woman from La Jolla,
California, who was making beds and cleaning rooms at another hotel in town. She
felt mistreated there (way too many work hours for much too little pay), and seeing
how comely she was, I took on the mission to help her. So, I introduced her to the
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general manager of Hotel Nordsee-Halle. Soon she was working at the same hotel,
sharing the upstairs in the communal house with the other female employees.
Fay was not a blond southern California girl, but had the good looks and intelligence
native to northern California. She was a bit more sophisticated and worldly than
most young women her age. I was smitten. She even had relatives in Hamburg,Arkansas, so we were likely made for each other. When she told me she had just
completed her sophomore year at a college in California, I lied, telling her I had
also just completed my sophomore year. Would she be interested in a guy who just
completed his freshman year -- so much younger than her?
She said she had a boy friend back in California, but romance was briefly in the air.
That quickly ended after we made a brief, disastrous weekend trip to Copenhagen.
It was early July. We took a train from Büsum to another city (I think it was
Rendsburg) where we changed trains to get an express to Copenhagen. After a nice
visit there, staying at the local youth hostel, we planned to return by the same
route, and disembarked the express train at the same city to catch the local train to
Büsum.
Waiting on the station platform, we added up all the money we had and decided we
could afford (and had time for) a nice meal at a restaurant near the station. We ate
heartily, having a jolly time, and went back to the station with empty pockets for
the final leg of the journey. But the train to Büsum didn't come on time. It never
came! When we finally found the train station manager, he explained that the train
to Büsum was unavailable because (1) the route had been cancelled or (2) the train
did not run on weekends. I am not sure which of these two reasons he gave. I
remember it as the first one, but the second one make more sense.
So, we were a 100 miles from Büsum, it was early evening, and we had no way to
get there. And we had no money whatsoever. How we got back is painful to
remember. As an inexperienced traveler, I had no idea what to do. We (Fay)
decided to take the next train to Hamburg. There, we (Fay) found someone (an
American college guy) to loan us money for train tickets. My contribution was to
become catatonic during the overnight stay in the dark, cavernous, nearly deserted
Hamburg train station.
I will concede that my performance that trip was not impressive; some would say itwas truly wimpy. Fay took note, and said something like, "I feel sorry for whoever
marries you." As you might imagine, the romance didn't blossom, though Fay and I
were friends for the rest of the summer. Hey, she was ancient -- a year older than
me -- so it was probably for the best.
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Mia Buoni Amici: Adriano e Rosa, Italani
Working in the kitchen with Adriano and Rosa was a highlight of the summer. It
was an instructional experience for me. They were everything you would expect
after watching Italian characters in the movies: noisy, emotional, demonstrative.
But they were also so much more than the stereotype. They were proud, dignified,hard-working people making the best with what they had.
Our conversations were mostly rudimentary because of language barriers. But we
did have some good exchanges. As I recall, Adriano told me that he was from
Naples. He was born shortly before World War II, was an infant during the war, and
grew up in the grim conditions of post-World War II Italy.
I think we viewed each other as curiosities -- I was the first American with whom
they had spend any time, and they were the first genuine Italians I had met. We
got along well together, largely through their tolerance of my ineptness in the
kitchen, and laughed often. The work was hard and hot, and unfulfilling is so many
ways. Nevertheless, they carried it out with gusto.
I marveled at their energetic spats and was thrilled for them when they told me one
day that they had just learned that Rosa was pregnant. The arguments came less
frequent after that.
Adriano and Rosa were happy to get some Kennedy half-dollars from me as gifts.
The late president was still immensely popular in Catholic Italy. In turn, I was
touched when, as I was departing from Büsum in the middle of August, Adriano
gave me a picture of himself, inscribed on the back:
14/8/66 translated August 8, 1966a deni To Danny,che ē un who isCaro Amico, a close friend.adriano e Rosa Adriano and Rosa,Italiani Italians
Adriano e Rosa, Italiani
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(Noting my lack of dish washing aptitude, the general manager moved me out of
the kitchen after about a month. I was put in charge of a tiny harbor front shop
that sold Swedish ice cream dispensed from a machine created for that purpose. At
last I had no choice, I had to speak as much German as I was able to. I didn't missthe kitchen, but I missed working with my Italian friends.)
View from my Ice Cream Shop, Büsum, 1966
I have often wondered what became of my 1966 kitchen mates and the bambino
who was on the way. Whatever did happen, I am sure it was accompanied by lotsof shouting, arm waving, and warm reconciliations. And no doubt they always had
the cleanest dishes in town, even if I wasn't there to help.