That first walk up the Himmelsleiter was the best and darkest, my first morning back in Germany. The Himmelsleiter, that long set of narrow steps up the vineyards, through the spooky underpass beneath the train tracks in the dark, crossing the river through the autumn fog, headlights catching the cobwebs on the bridge railings like so many anglers lined up with their rods and nets, how the webs quivered and shook as the cars rushed past.

Hitting the plateau it is all socked in with fog and feels Alpine, how everything’s occluded in the dim light. The iron church bells below and ghostly silhouettes of hilltops and trees, the morning’s first birds. The almost solemn transition to fall in their muffled tones. Then the headlights in the distance below snaking along the 27, the lights white, red and green. More lights strung like necklaces across the main road in the village for the wine fest alternating red, blue, yellow, green. A photograph can say “This is what it was.” Language can only say “This is what it was like”— a line from a book Lily and I just read.

Today I’ll take a different route, favoring the vineyards over the wooded valley in hopes I can see the sunrise and return in time to persuade Lily to go for a coffee with me at the bakery by the Bahnhof, to catch up about her times abroad. She’s been to London already, will come with me to Metz (France) next weekend, then Amsterdam to stay on a farm for a weekend with two American student friends she met (men, New Yorkers). I don’t worry about Lily so much anymore, she’s shown good judgment when it counts. They did get up on the tables and drink and dance in a tent over Oktoberfest but I’m glad for that, it makes sense.

As the daylight came on the fog only got thicker. It was like walking into the gray of an old-school TV screen but the distance between me and the gray was fixed and I never seemed to get closer. Looking behind me it was the same distance too. The gray just hung there as I moved.

The bells in town were hand rung and you could tell by the imperfect way the bells spun and slid. There was a persistence to the sound like an alarm, a heartbeat. I loved hearing the bells again. Seven o’clock on a Monday morning seemed to signify something special, they just kept going. Then faded to the sound of morning traffic.

(Later)

I roused Lily at 0900 after a couple rounds of negotiations. Saying goodbye at the platform was still sad even knowing I’d see her again Friday, in Strasbourg. It’s about 2.5 hours there by car from my mom’s place and less than that to our friends Laurent and Nanou in Metz. Mom and I will drive to get Lily at her school and then over to Metz for the weekend. It will be my one big outing while I’m here.

Napped, showered, took my first work meeting at 1730, then met mom up the road at Berne’s. Met more locals, ate a Flammkuchen, the typical one with speck and that Alsatian sour cream, green onions. I’m working full time while I’m here so I need to maintain the optics of work, to be available on Microsoft Teams chat, a kind of digital leash. It’s a slow time so I’m hopeful I can fly under the radar (though we are never off the radar really with our phones).

Dreamt again it was my last day working at Starbucks and I was giving a talk to a crowded room of people, everyone I was closest to. But I only had 10 minutes to say everything and ran out of time and said goodbye as they were filing out. I knew a few of them by name but none of their faces were clear. Ten years later and I am still leaving.

Categories: Creative Nonfiction, Memoir, travel, Travelogues

Tags: Creative Nonfiction, Memoir, Poetry, prose