Adriano & Rosa & Dennis Dornik Wash Dishes in Boom-time Germany

8/6/2019 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.

Documents

Adriano & Rosa & Dennis Dornik Wash Dishes in Boom-time Germany