Chapter 9 – The Old Fox
"Zootopia Airlines announces arrival of their flight 1470 from Zootopia, non-European mammals are requested to proceed to immigration at gate 66 before claiming baggage…"
Judy felt pretty much like the carrot farm girl that had arrived in Zootopia four years ago. Frankfurt Airport was one of the largest of the world, every 25 seconds a plane departed or landed. Judy stood at the giant window pane and asked how someone could coordinate all these planes and the thousands of mammals working here. She had travelled first class by the name of Brenda Watson, but Brenda would die here and Judith Kreuzberg would take over. She had sat next to a friendly german business badger who spoke excellent English. He was very funny and time flew literally.
In the past two weeks she had read some books on Europe and Germany and even tried to learn the language, but it was very hard. Jack's instructions had been very brief and she would be on her own during these first two days in a different country.
She already missed the kids and Nick. Leia had cried when they said good bye in the evening before her flight. Keira had played cool, but late at night, she had sneaked in Judy's bed, had pressed her head in Judy's fur. It had still been wet when she had to get up. She had asked Nick to stay at home, she couldn't stand saying good bye to him.
Judy shook her head. She couldn't waste time, she only had two hours before her connecting flight to Hamburg would depart. She held her breath when the immigration officer pressed her fake passport in the scanner, but the computer beeped like it had done for all the others before. She followed the signs "Lavatory/showers" until she reached a series of doors in different sizes. When she inserted a 1 Euro coin in one door, a one hour timer started and the door buzzed open. The shower cabin was much better than she had expected, it had friendly colors and was very clean. She used more coins to get some towels that smelled of desinfectant but were very fluffy.
Judy took out the Brenda Watson passport. In her bag she had a small perfume bottle. She opened it, threw the passport in the sink and poured the liquid over it. She threw the empty bottle in the bin. Nothing seemed to happen, but when she let water pour over the passport it dissolved and she washed it down the sink. From a secret compartment in her bag, she took out a new passport from the United Animal Kingdom on the name Judith Kreuzberg, born Folkstone, and two bottles of permanent fur dye.
Her grey fur would be too conspicious as most bunnies in Europe are brown or white. For her new identity, Jack has chosen a light brown fur color with white ears, partly white face and white belly and paws.
Judy stripped and stuffed her clothes in a plastic bag. She would later throw it in a bin on the airport. She had pinned a drawing of her body on the mirror; that's what she needed to look like. The photo in her new passport had been photoshopped to her new appearance, she just hoped the colors would come out the same. She read the instructions, showered and applied first the brown then the white color. She waited for half an hour, shivering as it was quite cold. Then she took another hot shower to wash the remaining color off. She showered until the water remained clean, then she dried herself with the towels, checking if the color stayed on.
When she looked in the mirror, she was surprised: she looked completely different in brown and white. Satisfied with the result, she put on new clothes. She opened a small case containing two contact lenses as her purple colored eyes might give her away. She fidgeted until she had both lenses in. Now her eyes were dark brown.
"Guten Tag, ich heiße Judith Kreuzberg!", she rehearsed in front of the mirror. The last name was so difficult to pronounce! She said it again and again until she was satisfied. Then, as last step of her transfiguration, she put a golden wedding ring on her right paw as it was custom in Europe. In Zootopia, nearly no one had wedding rings.
When she left the shower she had the unpleasant feeling that everyone stared at her new color, that everyone knew what she was planning. She walked to the counter of the german airline, showed her passport and her ticket. The girl behind the corner was a young bunny, very nervous and giggly, she reminded Judy on one of her sisters. Judy froze, when the girl inserted her ticket in the reading device and an alarm went off. But the bunny tried again, after turning the ticket around – and it worked.
"Tut mir leid – ist mein erster Tag heute!", she giggled and Judy understood that she was on her first day.
"Kein Problem!", Judy answered, using a phrase she had learned from Nick – no problem!
The connecting flight was just an hour long, then Judy had to take an underground train to the city center of Hamburg where her hotel was.
She was rather tired but couldn't help to notice the first big differences to the life in Zootopia. She saw bunnies everywhere, she had read that bunnies made up 35 percent of Germany population. As most mammals here were smaller, everything was smaller – the tables, chairs, desks, cars… in Zootopia, Judy often felt like a dwarf, but here, without any giraffes, elephants, tigers and lions, she felt more like in Bunny Burrows. And so many foxes! The hotel was medium sized, but has a quite familiar atmosphere, the rooms were bright and nice. She threw her bag on the floor (Jack had told her just to bring stuff for the first two days as he would arrange the big luggage for the cruise) and rolled in the bed.
The long flight and the jet lag were pulling on her, the bed was cozy and comfortable, but Judy wanted to explore that old city that was so different from the modern Zootopia. Here it was 1 pm, Nick would still sleep as it was 5 am in Zootopia.
She took a long look at the phone, but calling him was out of question. She had left her smartphone at home as it could give away her true identity.
"I'll see him in eleven days…", she whispered, but that was not completely true – he would be on the ship, but they would travel in different classes, so the chance of seeing him was slim.
Before she could get sad, she grabbed her Hamburg travel guide and looked for sights to see close to her hotel. This city with over 1,600 years of colorful history had so much to offer!
Judy started with visiting the Michel, the biggest church in Hamburg. She stared open mouthed at the biggest of the five organs in there, the biggest one alone had 6,674 pipes. When she left the church, she saw a commotion of mammals in front of it and when she came closer, she saw that a street theater was about to begin. The conferencier had just started to speak in German, but he repeated everything in English as a lot of tourist group from other countries were present.
He told the story of the most famous pirate in Germany, Klaus Stoertebeker, the play that was performed by a group of foxes, wolves and one raccoon as Klaus. The play was about his execution in 1601 A.D. The raccoon was brought on the stage in irons accompanied by some twenty of his pirates. When the mayor read the verdict ("Death by beheading!"), the raccoon offered a golden chain, so long that it could be laid around all of Hamburg – the treasure of Stoertebeker, that had never been found.
After some consideration, the City Council, however, decided to behead him anyway. Klaus now pleaded for his men, he asked to pardon any pirate that he managed to walk by after his beheading.
The mayor agreed. The raccoon actor vanished shortly behind a cloth and when he reappeared, the audience laughed, as it was pretty obvious that his head was now under his shirt and an artificial head was now on his shoulders. The executioner swung his mighty sword and the artificial head fell down and blood was spurting out of the raccoons neck onto the screaming first row of the audience.
Judy remembered her own performance many years ago where lots of ketchup was spilled on stage.
The crowd rooted for Klaus while his beheaded body started to walk past five, eight, nine, ten men. When he was about to pass the eleventh, however, the executioner stretched out his leg, and the body fell.
The crowd was booing. The mayor announced that all pirates would now be beheaded, even the ten Stoertebeker had passed and the crowd booed even more.
After a lot of bloody executions, the mayor praised the executioner for his fine work, but he answered, "That's nothing, I could continue beheading the entire Council for breaking their oath!"
Applause from the crowd, but the mayor was not amused and ordered the youngest member of the Council to behead the executioner.
After the play was over, the conferencier walked around with a hat, collecting money. Judy put a 10 Euro bill in the hat – obviously too much, as the conferencier yelled for Klaus Stoertebeker, "to pay tribute to that big fan of yours!" The raccoon jumped from the stage, grabbed the surprised Judy and kissed her on the mouth.
"Thanks, lovely lady!", the raccoon sang out loud while the crowd jeered and took photos. The raccoon has smeared big parts of Judy's fur with blood/ketchup, but he was a gentlecoon and offered her a handkerchief.
Her sides still hurting from laughing, Judy decided to have some late lunch. Along the river they were dozens of nice, small restaurants. Judy entered one that looked cozy and was greeted with the traditional "Moin moin!" by a beaver in a captain's uniform.
"Na, min Deern? Wat to eeten?", he asked her and when Judy shrugged and told him she hadn't understand a word, he smiled and continued in a strong accented version of english.
She had never been in a restaurant like this. Pred and prey sat mixed on large tables, it was quite loud as Germans seem to speak a lot during eating. The beaver sat Judy next to a couple of weasels – something that was unheard of in Zootopia, but here no one seemed to care, so Judy accepted it. They introduced, the couple were from Hamburg but both spoke English rather well.
Judy felt a bit dumb – nearly everyone here could speak English and she knew just some words. When she admitted to the weasels that she hadn't understood a single word of the beaver they laughed and explained to her that he spoke a language called "Plattdüütsch", an old, northern version of German that was still quite common with the elder folks here.
When Judy asked what she could eat, th e weasels suggested trying a fish dish – most on the menu was fish, as this was a city full of nautic traditions.
Judy shook her head in shock, "But I'm a prey, I don't eat fish!"
"But dear, look around, a lot of prey animals do eat fish here!", the weasel girl named Bianca told her.
And in fact, nearly everyone here had some sort of fish on the plate. The beaver, who had overheard the conversation, smiled at her and said, "You shutt trai my fresh self-made Labskaus!"
"Labs-what?", Judy asked.
The weasel named Boris explained that this was a traditional dish at sea. It was made from leftovers, mixed with minced fish.
"It looks not nice, but it tastes delicious!", he said and Judy accepted.
She had told them that she was from the U.A.K., which did not seem to impress them much, but when she mentioned that she has just arrived from Zootopia where she had visited some relatives, they were excited and asked thousands of questions.
"I have heard, they all live in nice new skyscrapers over there!", Bianca said.
"Yeah, and pred and prey life really close together – it must be like paradise!", added Boris
"Well…", Judy said hesitating, "I wouldn't call it paradise… and preds and prey are strictly separated, a restaurant like this would be unthinkable over there. I have a friend… a colleague… he is a fox and when we wanted to eat in a fancy restaurant… there was trouble… other guests complained about us…"
"But why?", Bianca asked, her eyes wide in shock.
"In fast food places, they serve both, but still they are mostly sitting on different tables."
The two weasels looked at each other as if they did not believe her and Judy felt a bit awkward, but in that moment, her food arrived; a plate with a red goo, covered by a fried egg, two slices of beet root and something that looked like a rolled-up fish.
The beaver laughed when he saw Judy's face, "Ha-ha, no be shy, deern, trai it, trai it! Is gutt! No get fooled by rett color, is roote beete juice."
As he waited for Judy to try it, she put some of the red goo on her fork and tasted it. The taste was strange, she had never eaten something like that before, but it was not bad, bot bad at all.
Ten minutes later, she had finished her plate, even though she hadn't dared to try the rolled-up fish called 'Matjes'. She had received so many sightseeing tips from the two weasels that she would have needed two weeks to see all.
She used one of the many pedestrian bridges to cross the river Elbe. On a series of islands inside the river was a part of the city called 'Speicherstadt' or storage city. These enormous houses built of red cinder bricks had once stored the treasures of the city; everything that was delivered by ship. In medieval times, mainly pepper, the black gold, had been stored here and weighed with real gold, as it was the most valuable item traded here.
Nowadays, there were museums and stores in the red buildings. Suddenly, Judy noticed that she had entered a dead end; in front of her was water. Just when she wanted to go back, she smelled something familiar, the scent of carved wood, like in the workshop of her father's. And really, in the very last building she saw a variety of large benches, made from dark wood, beautifully carved with most delicate figures. She entered. In the hindmost corner of the vast workshop, an animal worked at a work bench, carving wood. When she came closer, she saw to her delight that it was a fox.
"Hello? I didn't want to disturb you, but…"
The fox turned around. Immediately, he reminded Judy of Peter, Nick's father, even though this fellow seemed to be much older. His face looked worn, but his emerald eyes, very similar in color to Nick's, looked wide awake. He started to talk to her, but she didn't get a single word. Obviously, he was speaking the strange language called Plattdüütsch, like the beaver in the restaurant.
For some moments, both tried to make the other one understand, but just when the fox shrugged with his bony shoulders, Judy had an idea and tried the old fox language, Vulpine, that she had learned years ago and taught Nick, while he had learned Lapine and taught her.
The green eyes of the fox became wide with astonishment.
"Yes… yes, I understand you!" His accent was much different, but still she could understand every word he said, "But how comes… I never heard a bunny… how comes, you know this language?"
"A good friend of mine, a fox, taught me…", she said and the old fox threw back his head and laughed.
"That is so amazing! I haven't spoken Vulpine for years! I have taught my kids, but they have no use for this old idiom, and my grandchildren… they didn't even speak Platt, let alone Vulpine. But look at my manners, I haven't even introduced myself. I am Karl. Karl Holzmann, the old carpenter and wood carver."
His head went up full of pride and suddenly he looked years younger.
"You see these benches? They are from the oldest church in Hamburg…"
"Yes, the Michel!", Judy said, "I visited it just today! My name's Judy, by the way."
"Well, my little bunny girl, you may have noticed there, that the benches are missing! They need restauration, they are over 900 years old! And I am the only guy who still knows the old ways of carpentry…"
Karl wanted to know everything about Judy and she didn't had it in her heart to lie to him, so she told him the truth. When she finally asked him to keep her secret, he threw his head back and laughed again.
"Who would believe me? A bunny, walking in my workshop, speaking Vulpine and married to a fox! With two cubs! And on top of that, you are a cop on a secret mission! Don't worry, dear, I won't tell anyone…"
He allowed her to sit on one of the ancient benches while she watched amazed how a piece of wood became a delicate figurine under his experienced paws. Names were carved in the benches and Karl explained that the benches were reserved for the oldest, richest families, called 'Pfeffersäcke' or pepper bags, as most of them got rich by trading spices.
Karl knew the most fascinating stories about the city and Judy loved to listen to him. From time to time he stopped working, turned around to her as if he wanted to check if he was dreaming or not. Then he shook his head, laughed silently and continued.
It started to get dark when they said good bye and Judy promised to come back tomorrow. Ho bowed down to be level with her face and said, "I am 95 years old, I spent 80 years in this workshop, but I've never met a bunny… no, a mammal like you. I know exactly why your Nick fell for you. Hell, if I would be 70 years younger, I would propose to you right now!"
Judy giggled and hugged him. She hopped back in the hotel. Even though she hadn't slept for 21 hours now, she was much too excited to go to sleep. She went into a bar for a drink and a snack but the place was packed with soccer fans as there was a big game on TV that night. Most of the guests wore German soccer jerseys and rooted for their team. Judy had been in the school league soccer team in Bunny Burrows and she had been rather good with the ball, but what she saw here was completely different. But after she had stared on the screen for half an hour she started to look around in the pub and noticed once again how different mammals behaved over here. Pred and prey stood close together, and when Judy received glasses of beer without ordering any, she was looking around for the spender, assuming someone wanted to flirt with her – enough male bunnies were present. But then she noticed, that every time some thirsty soccer fan walked to the bar, he or she ordered a round for the entire table! In the half time break, Judy walked to the bartender and ordered twelve beer in her best German. She had already learned, that it was customary that the spender drank first, shouting a loud "Prost!" in the round. So she did and received eleven salutes and friendly nods from the others at her table before the heads turned back to the match.
During the exciting phase of the game, everyone stood up and Judy could not see the screen any more, but a grinning wolf simply grabbed her and sat her on his broad shoulders like she was a child.
It seemed a bit rude in the beginning, but somehow, Judy liked this kind of spirit.
When she finally returned back to the hotel, the concierge gave her a letter from Jack. It contained only the time when his train would arrive tomorrow afternoon.
She crawled in bed, tired but excited, and before she fell in a deep, dreamless sleep, a final thought ran through her mind: How could Jack say that the mammals here are dumb and unfriendly? They are all so friendly and open minded! I am sure they have their problems over here, too, but I bet it would be very nice to be a cop in this city!
