I got into Eberhard’s cigarettes in the Schrank which he said I could help myself to but I didn’t for a variety of reasons until last night, after booking a flight to Newark to see my grandma, and talking with… Read More ›
travel
Snow song from a train heading north
Sideways snow outside the window, all of us bundled with our gadgets, our books, our friends, the din of soft German going through tunnels, beneath bridges, the ivy, the vines, the limbs cut to the nub: I sit on the train and… Read More ›
Leaving the Intercontinental, Frankfurt via the A67
Something like 7 AM in the Frankfurt airport parking garage and the lift is out of order so we take the stairs and right away, it’s that Cold War vibe from the paint tones and the little signs and starkness… Read More ›
Sickle-shaped moon reflects on Berlin
Our first night in Berlin for some much needed alone time as a couple after 90 days in the UK with our kids — needed it so bad, we considered Iceland — after a couple drinks in a burger bar reliving… Read More ›
Four months 18 summers ago in France
In the fall of ’97 I announced I would be leaving my job at Starbucks that December, moving home to Pennsylvania for a few months and then on to southern France, to live in a condo on the beach a… Read More ›
Morning sky drawn in sidewalk chalk
Passage from Dover to Dunkirk, via Reims, to southern Germany Past the old vicarage down the hill in time for the last of the owls, bending at the bottom through a valley to the lake for disabled anglers — No… Read More ›
That one winter in the UK
By the time we got to Bath there was nothing left to see. I could have skipped London which would have been dumb, hiding instead in some quiet town by a river in the Cotswolds, some place even the English don’t… Read More ›
They packed the gaps with sand and mud
Old, half-timbered houses with uneven beams buckling and bent into one another like two drunks steadying themselves. Everything on its side, lead pipe handrails caught in their footings, ivy-choked trees. Pale morning birdsong, footpaths leading down the valley ending in… Read More ›
Salthill Serenade, Galway
Wet snow tangled in the hair of the grass outside of London, topping the cars like confetti. Going back to a Sunday a month ago in Galway, a neighborhood ten minutes outside of town called Salthill, that day we started… Read More ›
That last Christmas in Cork
We debated what to do with the uneaten ham. It was impractical to stuff it in the car with all our things, tacky to leave it behind for the owners, wasteful to throw it out, and so I climbed the… Read More ›
Bill Pearse 