Yesterday, as I walked down the sunny autumn street, headphones on, I realized I was smiling. I also realized I am never so happy, so expansively filled with magnanimity as I am just before I leave for a trip. It seems at those moments that it is what I am meant to be doing all the time.

And so, I leave this quick missive to let you know there will be photos and experiences to share on my return.

Ciao, friends!

Gripped by a crippling ennui caused by heat, stiff muscles, restless sleep, stagnant work projects, and the knowledge that vacation is still a month away, I’ve been unable to write much of anything.

I’m heading to Nova Scotia for my vacation this summer. Airfare has been purchased, details are being cared for, now all there is to do is wait for the time to leave the city to arrive. I haven’t been back for almost 5 years, and I’ve never returned in the summer since I left home. The time is so filled with the promise of walking the beach, catching up on reading and writing, meals with old friends and family. The anticipation is so delicious that, in a strange way, I almost don’t want the vacation to actually come.

For me, going home is always a strange affair. Equal parts excitement and anxiety, so blended that it’s next to impossible to tell the two apart. The comfort of being in a place that knows you inside and out (and you, it) juxtaposed against resentment that comes from that very knowing. Peeling back the layers of nostalgia generated by distance in both space and time and not knowing whether what you’ll find underneath will be a soft, ripe fruit or a hard kernel. The place has a hold on me somehow. One that goes beyond just being where I grew up. It’s almost like a living being on its own, with a personality and emotions, the drunk at the party who’s boisterous and happy one moment, sullen and bitter the next. I’m hoping that when I peel everything back there’s a little of both.

I’m now on Day 2 back in Germany. It must feel like a flashback to my solitary reader. It feels like just yesterday I was writing about Day 2 my last time here. Though that consisted of a lovely wedding, whereas this particular trip is about the Frankfurt Book Fair. 

After the obligatory staff dinner, I went to the hotel, quickly checked email, then attempted to get lost. Turns out it’s harder than one thinks. Granted I didn’t walk for miles and miles, but i took shortcuts, wandered onto streets that turned out to be relatively residential, and still… no dice. After walking for about an hour, I resigned myself to not finding anything cool to do in the neighborhood and found my way back, gathering supplies on the way. 

What a different experience this is, compared to the Frankfurt of summer. Then, I visited with friends, was entirely a tourist, and was on vacation. Now I’m attempting to squeeze in a few sights between work and getting some sleep. It’s autumn and the city is a bit quieter. It doesn’t smell so much like a city now that the heat of summer has gone; the scent of sweltering concrete has been replaced with the smell of rain on leaves as they change colour and fall to the ground. It’s a sort of freshness, but not what you’d think. Fall’s scent is the smell of things to come. It is certain and definitive. The capriciousness and liveliness are replaced with something more earthy and solid. 

Far from the romanticized Germany of summer, this is real, workaday life, but in another country. In a way I’d hoped it would be wholly disappointing by comparison. But I’m still enthralled with the type of stimulation I receive here–a new language, different culture, and lots more pork than I’m accustomed to. 

June 28 – Day 2

On Saturday morning we awoke, still tired from the trip, but excited about the wedding. We had some breakfast, then took a short walk in the small town so that we knew where we were going later during the day. We hadn’t realized how small the “Alt Stadt” where all the day’s activities were being held was, so the walk was short. It felt so strange, nonetheless, to be in this environment.

I’m not sure why things seemed so surreal. I think part of it had to do with how much I’d romanticized Europe, having never been there before. I’d spent the entire day before focusing on constant motion in order to reach a destination, feeling over-stimulated and attempting to not look like a total fool in a place I’d never been. All that kept me from recognizing the wonder and confusion I was experiencing. Feeling the cobbles under my feet as I walked the town, I found myself wondering how much of what I was seeing was artifice. I felt like I was meeting a celebrity in the grocery store checkout line after seeing pictures of her for 20 years.

It may also have been the jet lag.

At 11 AM, we made our way to the City Hall for the civil ceremony. All the wedding guests crowded into a hot room, some seated in benches, some standing and craning for pictures while our friends sat at a table with a mirthless officiator. The ceremony was not long, maybe 20 minutes, and was very formal though the bride and groom were somewhat casually dressed. One of the interesting things about watching something like this take place in a completely different language is that it allows you to more closely observe the different ways people communicate. You become more finely attuned to body language or facial expressions, those subtle movements that normally slip into your consciousness under the radar when you concentrate on the words.

After the wedding, everyone made their way to a small area outside for glasses of celebratory champagne and to watch the bride and groom perform what is apparently a wedding tradition. There was a sawhorse set up, with a hardwood log perched atop it. With a two-handed saw, they were to cut the log in half, to symbolize how they would work together in their marriage. It was impressive how quickly they managed to do it!

A second, church wedding was held later in the evening. The church, like the rest of the town, was originally built in the middle ages. There was lovely woodwork on elevated pulpits and the paint looked as if it had been there a while. The floor was marble, and restoration on it had been completed the day before.

Like the civil ceremony before it, it was interesting to listen to something as familiar as a wedding in German. I found I was able to more or less understand what was going on. It didn’t hurt that the bride and groom has placed some programs in English around the church so that we could have a sense of what was going on.

When the ceremony was finished, we all made our way to the hotel in town for a meal, some drinking and dancing. Someone was kind enough to teach me the Viennese waltz, which apparently if done correctly, should leave one dizzy. Everyone had a great time and the party didn’t wrap up until 4AM. The sky had begun to brighten by the time I went to bed.

June 27 – Day 1, Leg 3

Arriving in the Köln train station, we knew we had to make good time. It was rush hour, and the bride and groom were expecting us to have arrived already. The ticket agent in Amsterdam had given us some instructions on how to get to our tiny final destination in Freudenberg, but it seemed too bizarre that someone a country away would be able to get us so close to such a small place efficiently. We went to a ticket office to get an update.

We purchased train tickets to a tiny town called Betzdorf. From there we were to catch a bus to Siegen, as the train tracks were closed for repair. The ticket agent in Amsterdam had been right. I was amazed. Somehow a network of countries, each smaller than the province of BC, had figured out how to move literally millions of people daily–comfortably, efficiently, and accurately. And not just to downtown centres, but into the middle of what would soon seem like nowhere. During my regular daily commute on the SkyTrain from downtown, I’ve often been appalled at stalled trains, people’s refusal to actually let one off the train, crowding the doors both inside and outside so that it’s impossible to maneuver either the train or the platform. I never would have imagined that somewhere, somehow, people were embarking and disembarking in a dignified manner, getting to where they needed to go—even if it was far away—all using public transit.

We boarded a train for the ride to Betzdorf. I was still feeling so excited, but it was by this point, the excitement was beginning to be tempered by the fact that I was tired and ready to be there so I could change, wash up, and have some proper food. Disorientation was also starting to set in. I was in another country.

Leaving Köln, the train cut east, making it’s way through an increasingly rural area. There were vestiges of industry—mining, steel plants and the like—but many of these areas were once again being taken over by greenery. As we moved closer to Betzdorf, there was more and more farmland, and I eventually began to wonder, “Where the hell am I going?”

We arrived at the Betzdorf train station to find that basically no one spoke English and the bus stop where we needed to board to get to Siegen in 5 minutes was not apparent. Gravitating of course to someone in uniform, we attempted to get out what we were looking for with little luck. When a random man standing by heard me say “Siegen” he began speaking to me in German and amazingly, I understood! Something inside had woken up and kickstarted those language lessons I’d taken my first year in university over 10 years ago, and I could (mostly) understand what he was saying. We went with him to the bus stop, chatting, he in German, me in English, and actually having a conversation. I felt what would be my first surge of new confidence—I was traveling.