BESIGHEIM, 5th—II—2025 Wrapped tightly in my sheets and blankets like being inside a sarcophagus trying to get warm. The tingly feeling something’s about to happen: that’s travel. So foreign yet familiar, my second home. Looking down from the saddle on… Read More ›
2 Feb 25 Now the train moved in reverse as it left the station. I always enjoyed bookending my arrival in Germany with a mirror image at the end. From the time I first saw mom waiting for me at… Read More ›
30 Jan 25 Went to the Rat for lunch today and yeah, I got the Schweinerückensteak, a kleine portion that was still too big. Convinced mom to forgo the Kaiserschmarrn in favor of a walk. Almost broke down for some… Read More ›
22 Jan 25 In the morning the frost looked like snow on the rooftops and roads and made for art photography that never came out right. I liked the town better when it was empty and closed down and imagined… Read More ›
20 Jan 25 It is another night with the heat pad. The ancient looking heater by my bed worked for a few days but then I made the mistake of fiddling with the knobs (there’s no clear on/off logic) and… Read More ›
19 Jan 25 I went to Uwe and Miriam’s house on Schwalbenhälde and told them about our time at the hardware store trying to replace mom’s Küchenwasserhahn. No matter how well you communicate your problem, people working in hardware stores… Read More ›
15 Jan 25 Another sleepless trap, tonight in my mom’s 15th-century house, below freezing outdoors and not much different in. She wasn’t joking about how cold it gets. There’s no heat to speak of that makes it to the bathrooms… Read More ›
It is hard to imagine things ever being better than this: me in pajamas and slippers with no socks, the days inching out of darkness and peach colored, both my parents still alive and our kids happy, my wife still… Read More ›
Thirty years ago I joined Starbucks in Philadelphia as a manager-in-training, my fourth coffee shop job in four years. I’d work in downtown Philadelphia for a year, then transfer to a Starbucks on Mercer Island, near Seattle, the next summer…. Read More ›
We would have rung in the new year in the Pennsylvania house, my third and last Christmas with Shana, the year mom and John gifted us airfare to Europe, my first time there. Like most rookie tourists we’d jam all… Read More ›
Bill Pearse 