The Movie: Adams Acht (The Rome Eight)

 

About a year ago I witnessed the shooting of a movie, my son had a job as Junior Runner on site, and I was partly involved in some changes in the script. 

 

The movie tells the story of a young team of rowers and their coach who came from the middle of nowhere and went on to win the Olympic gold medal in the Eight in Rome, 1960. My father was part of that team and I grew up with that story. 

 

 

A magical part of it was that the coach, Karl Adam (1912-1976) used to be the high-school teacher of several of the team members, and in  a way he became their surrogate father. He gave them something to strive for,  and he was a male role model most of them didn't have. 

 

Certainly for my father he was extremely important and although It  would never have called him 'grandpa' I realized the significance of their relationship for my father early on.

I was only 11 years old when 'Kalli', as we talked about him, passed away completely unexpectedly, we were on a trip through the American National Parks of the Northwest and I remember sitting next to my father during an entire evening on the typical combined campground bench and table after we had heard the sad news.

That team and their victory was almost as important for Germany's feeling of rising from the ashes after the defeat in WW II as had been the soccer team a few years earlier. 

Now the film is finished and was premiered last Friday in an open air performance on the shores of the lake where they used to train, and where the rowing club is still located. 

 

 The film story is  - well, let's say rather improvised. The magical part is missing, which is a great pity on the one hand. On the other hand that way it's staying a private memory for the families, and that is good for us. The plot concentrates on mainly two team members, my father Hans Lenk (the first to cross the finishing line), impersonated by rising star Felix Kammerer, and the strokesman Manfred Rulffs (impersonated by prize Leonard Kunz)  and their love stories which are told completely differently than they actually happened. (My father's love, Ulla, is impersonated by Svenja Jung.) Some drama added, not always adhering to historical or geographical correctness. I guess the script is considered more marketable that way.

 

My mother and actress Svenja Jung

 

It was fun to be involved - if you knoŵ when and where to look (and have an inkling how I was dressed up) you can see my approx. 3 seconds appearance in the scenes in the tavern (offers for future Hollywood engagements please via email). 

 

  

It’s a cool film. And it's true insofar as there was a team of nine, they had an impressive coach, and they won the gold medal. Nothing much else is true. 

Coming to movie theatres in September - but I don't knoe about international showings. I assume they will try... 

Cold Swimming in Difficult Times

It’s been a little over a year since I started a new chapter in my life by moving to the city of Ratzeburg in northern Germany, 

Ratzeburg, view of the ancient cathedral built in the times of
Henry the Lion

 

part-time. I started a job, working full-time for two weeks, going back south to be with my family, (now only my husband, the son has since moved to Amsterdam to study at the unversity there).

It started off great, I felt a lot of enthusiasm and thought everything would be good. Unfortunately, the job situation turned out rather more difficult than I had expected and is still not quite settled. (But as of today, it looks as if it will be more settled starting March 1.) Add to that the various crises of last year in the family realm that I don’t want to talk about here (anymore), and one could say that I would have been prone to fall sick due to exhaustion after overburdening. However, one, if not the major reason why I moved to Ratzeburg, of all places, is the fact that it is situated in a lake region. 

 

Family history and childhood memories had long ago anchored a deep yearning inside my soul that I wanted to live in a lake area, with easy access to water. It might well have been a Bavarian lake, but those somehow were always out of reach (and realty prices there are extremely high) and my husband did not want to apply for a position there. So when we had agreed that we would want to move to Ratzeburg for his retirement, a combination of circumstances led to my decision that I would go ahead and start putting down roots.

It was clear to me that I wanted to go swimming in the lake a lot, and I also knew that I wanted to swim (or rather: dip, in the winter) all year round. But I had heard that it is the ‘proper’ way to start in the summer and just keep going, never stopping when the water gets colder, to make adjusting easier. After I had moved in January, I spent the first two weeks getting acclimatized by wading in the water for a few moments, up to my knees, or a bit deeper, depending on the outside temperature and my clothing equipment. At that point I thought I would start going in for good in March, assuming the water would get slightly warmer then. In February, when I returned for my second round of work, I went to the lake on the evening when I arrived and waded – and when I went home, I thought “what the …, I can start immersing now.” And I did the next day.

 

Yes, it did feel cold. Especially cold around the neck, I thought. Yes, at first it did take a few breathing exercises when doing my swim strokes to avoid hyperventilating. And yes, one does feel numb when coming out of the water, and it takes a while, sometimes even a rather long while, to get fully warm again. But walking home takes care of that part, at least a bit, a kettle of tea upon returning home helps to warm up from inside, and the feeling of elation and completeness that occurs every single time is just unbelievable. Indescribable. Unsurpassable. Inexplicable. After three times, when I still had minor doubts whether I was being insane, I was completely hooked.

 

Going for a swim every single day that I am in Ratzeburg has grounded me securely, given me a structure and, I think, has kept me sane throughout the last year. And healthy – I have not had a single cold during the last year. So I want to sing a little praise for my lake. Very few people understand what I am doing, but I have found a good friend who does the same, and sometimes we go together. But most people also don’t understand that I came up with the idea of living temporarily apart from my husband and commuting back and forth with a now six-hour drive. I just must embrace my otherness - perhaps I would even qualify for being an ‘audacious woman’ in the meaning of Anne Boyd who writes a substack with that title, although I didn’t pack up quite as thoroughly as she did?

I have recently joined the rowing club, world famous in rowing circles, where my father used to be a member and train when he was young (and where my parents met many years ago).

 

What remains to be seen is how this move and change of life circumstances can positively affect my creativity, which it hasn’t done so far. But now, with a new start ahead of me, I hope it will eventually develop. And I will keep going for a swim in the lake every day that I am here.