We meet mom’s friend Helga for dinner at the Croatian guy Tony’s new restaurant and sit inside at the best table (“without shadows,” Tony says). It’s called Adriatic cuisine, which I take to mean Mediterranean, though my geography and culinary bearings aren’t great. I ask Helga if she’s a translator knowing she is, but she’s a lot more than that she says, mostly a writer — freelance, like me. Helga looks to be deep in her 60s though she has no plans to retire and has never married or had kids, worked for NATO and traveled the world, speaks impeccable English at times better than mine. She and mom have gotten so close they text every day as a means of checking in on each other, as both have had heart concerns. But I can’t tell if mom really likes Helga or if she annoys her.

We sit near enough the kitchen we can watch them cooking and see occasional flare-ups by the stove; there’s a small bar by the window to the kitchen where Tony and his brother, our waiter, pour beers from brown bottles then swirl the wheat as they do, stirring the tall glasses with a spoon to distribute the residue.

When the meal is done and we finally get the bill Tony offers us free shots, something they all do in Croatian restaurants Helga explains. I say no thanks to Tony, Ich trinke nicht, which I’m proud to say, but I get no praise from Tony or anybody else. You do it more for yourself anyways, less for the praise.

Mom and I have coffee in the late morning at Berne’s, the bar/café up the road, the same place Cadillac Kolstad played that one year for the Winzerfest wine festival. Berne and Cadillac were friends for a short time but had a falling out after Berne got stressed over Cadillac’s drinking and ridiculed Cadillac about it publicly during a performance. Mom later told Berne he shouldn’t keep feeding Cadillac booze then and lining drinks up on his piano, he should fix him what he really needs, a meal.

We watch the local beer delivery driver wheel a pallet of bottles down the cobblestone street with a hand-driven forklift and lower it by a hatch door leading to the cellar beneath Berne’s. Then, the process of conveying the cases of bottles down the steep steps with a hand truck and swapping out the empty bottles and kegs. It takes a good half an hour and the driver, a bearded guy with an ample gut, takes his time enjoying a Fanta and cigarette when he’s done, then notes the order delivery details using a clipboard and pen, all by hand, tearing off the carbon copy, leaving it for Berne.

The hornets are bad this time of year—that’s why Germans cover their beer glasses with a coaster (so they don’t choke on one)—and they’re especially bad at Berne’s. We can only sit there for so long whiling away the time before we have to go. And when we do it’s always the same procedure in reverse, using our scant Deutsch to ask for the bill and always apologizing for it (Entschuldigen, mein Deutsch ist sehr primitiv).

Helga agrees, as a translator or copywriter, our days are numbered: AI’s coming for us. It’s just an elegant autocorrect, a pattern predictor, and nowadays people care less about quality and more about making money. Time’s a-ticking I say, and point to my wrist.

In his book Castaneda talks about the spiritual significance of knowing the place you will die and for me I knew right away where that would be. But here on my walk in Germany I stopped to consider another place, this overgrown meadow by the rushing stream. The way the sun comes over the ridge and lights the underbrush still wet with morning dew. The golden grass drooped over, tufts of wildflowers the same as the ones we’d seen on the PCT, little white bracts called “pearly everlasting.” Small sounds beside the flowing water of birds peeping, a far-off jet cutting the air.

I felt a momentary peace, grounded in the here and now. My spirit felt at home. But then suddenly over the ridge came a large, red hot-air balloon gently lifting above the valley. I could hear the sound of its small engine gasp, like a pilot light on a stove. The balloon had something written on the side of it in large print. Could the figures in the balloon see me below? I waved as they soared overhead. Then I could see the small flame that kept the balloon aloft, could hear it cut the air.

Castaneda’s don Juan would say it’s a sign but for what, I could not tell. That Yaqui Indian seems to come from another time, a world ripe with meaning, much different than ours today.

On my walk back to mom’s I had to stop to pick a few grapes off the farmer’s vines because that was part of the whole experience of being here, tasting the local fruit, chewing the skin. There were lizards you’d sometimes see scamper across the stones to a hiding spot, large black beetles moving like tanks. The ubiquitous chocolate-brown slugs snacking on their morning greens, snails in their shells like the ones we used to see in France: how the dog would lick them off the walls then eat them, the crunching sound it made.

Germany was alive, as my senses were now too. Outside it was still dark enough you could see the sliver of the moon like a set of horns, red and fading. I wanted to take a picture of it but these things never come out the way you want them to. Still you had to try.

Categories: Memoir, travel, writing

Tags: Creative Nonfiction, existentialism, identity, Memoir, spirituality, travel, writing