Zeppelin (page 67)
“Graf” means count in German. As in the illustrious Count Dracula was also Graf Dracula. And Graf von Zeppelin, invented the airship that will bear his name.
When “Graf Zeppelin” circumnavigated the northern hemisphere, demonstrating its capability in a variety of climates and weather conditions, besides Tokyo, it stopped in Friedrichshafen on the Bodensee.
There was a formidable older woman with perpendicular and orthogonally extended blond braids relaxing as well as she was able to on a chaise longe. She wore a peculiar brooch, and she wore it with arrogance. If you had recognized her red wind-blown face, you would have known her as the famed air pirate captain Mother Holle, whom we met on page 48.
A connaisseuse of airships, Mother Holle was particularly prideful of the bernstone amber that made up the bow and stern of her zeppelin brooch. It was a subtle brooch, being ingeniously made.
Mother Holle has been looking for a Kur, a cure. She had just been on the shores of Gardasee, that lovely Lago di Garda split among the powers of Trentino, Lombardy, and Veneto. And she’s on her way to the Kaiser Spas in Pomerania. But in between, she’s stopped here, on the shores of Lake Constance, where there just so happens, to be Graf Zeppelin’s magnificent floating airship hangar. And Mother Holle had with her, packed neatly and unobtrusively, her Soochow-silk parachute.