returning home

Returning home. This can mean so many things, and I think I’d like to hash out what it means to me. It’s full of a grand mixture of emotions and senses. The senses are much easier to define. I am tired. I am so tired, I’ve been traveling for months (years?) and I crave my bed, even though I don’t have one. My skin and eyeballs feel dry and my mouth is parched. My legs are cramped. I want out of this plane. But not before we have a safe landing, of course. All things in their due time.

I crave home. Whatever that is and wherever it is. I’ll make one soon.

I’m better at speaking of my emotions. Sometimes. I’m super damn good at feeling them, but expressing them isn’t always as easy. I feel excited and anxious. I want to see people who I miss, see what they look like, feel how they feel when we hug, and what their energy is like, know their thoughts and ideas, cause they must have changed a lot!

And I feel this pit-in-my-stomach kind of sadness that is just going to have to be part of this piece of writing cause I cannot avoid it. It’s a bittersweet homecoming. There’s no bitterness about coming home, but bitterness about coming home alone. I left with my love, I come home alone. And so it is.

I want to remember everything, but I also want to forget. Maybe it would be easier. I just don’t know.

Returning home. It’s not simple, but it’s perfect. It’s appropriate and necessary and something I’ve longed for for longer than I should have, perhaps. So the cocktail of emotions is appropriate, and I’m just me, so who could have expected less?

I love where I am from, the Pacific Northwest, and more specifically Portland, but Seattle is where I will call home for some time, how long? I don’t know… There’s a lot of “I don’t knows” these days.

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But this I know: I’m comin' home! 

the final leg

When we rented the car at the airport in Memmingen, Germany, a Renault Elf, it had 9 kilometers on it. They drove it straight from the lot for us to rent. That intoxicating new car smell was quickly replaced with the wind from the Alps and all our fruit and cheese snacks that filled the vehicle. I’m so much like my dad, who is also super sensitive to smells in general. I don’t like perfume, or scented soap, or nail polish. They give me a headache. I far prefer the scent of the fresh alpine air, the freshest blooming flowers, and the animals that roam freely, grazing on the mountain grass.

The car was a must for this journey, however, and we had a blast putting over 1000 kilometers on it in the short time it was ours. We drove all through the Bavarian Alps, visiting old spots that I used to frequent in solitude, and we explored outside of what I knew by heading in to the Austrian and Swiss alps, and of course a stop over in Liechtenstein, just for fun. 

We took to the road for the sake of being on the road this time around, and with one final destination in mind, a small town in Southwest Germany, deep in the Black Forest. The town is Totdnauburg, and had the honor of being the place where the great philosopher Martin Heidegger kept his summerhouse. There he did a vast majority of his contemplating and writing. And by the looks of this place, it was a good spot for these mental tasks. Being as we are both Philosophically inclined individuals it seemed a good place to add to our journey, and we were very pleased to find it so serene, quiet, and remote. Not a tourist destination, but a simple hut up the mountain, on a simple trail, with a killer view.

After a happy stop at this aforementioned location we continued to traverse the mountain roads through the black forest and north to a small town called Nagold, on the same-named river. That evening there was a football (that’s soccer to Americans) match between Germany and Greece. It was politically charged,  and high energy, to say the least. Germany won, so I’m glad we were in Germany, where the celebration was a dramatic display of joy in the streets for hours and hours that included millions of honking car horns.

Somehow we managed to get a really solid nights sleep through the intense celebration that lasted late into the night. We must be tired these days… And in the sunny morning we took the road again, avoiding the large and speedy autobahn for the most part, leaving the navigating up to me and our trusty map. We found simple two-lane roads that sent us through forests, along side vineyards and farms and rivers, and through miniscule towns. We like this style of road trippin. It takes more time, but it’s more beautiful. Who’s in a hurry? A wise person once told me, if you live your life quickly you will live your life quickly. Think about it.

Next stop Aschaffenburg, where our lovely German friends, Markus and Christine, awaited with their beautiful home and wonderful hospitality. We explored their pretty city and caught up after many months, cooked some meals and drank some beers, played a rainy game of put-put golf, and rested up before the last leg of our journey took place.

Which is where I write from now, thirty-something thousand miles above the sea (what’s that in kilometers? That’s where my mind has been this past 1.5 years). We are mid-flight, homeward bound.  And that my friends, is another story. Stay tuned for more. 

Return to Bavaria

It was about six years ago that I moved to the small mountain valley called Garmisch-Partenkirchen, in the dramatic and ominous German Alps,  and just minutes from the Austrian border. A move to that charming town at a young age shaped my future from then on forward and carved out a special place in my memory. 

This past week I was happy to return to this town, to see the sights, recall the memories, experience the mountains, drink the beer, and explore the surrounding areas. I was flooded with recollections that I had previously tucked away in the corners of my mind, and other things that once seemed second nature took extra time to conjure up, creating new (and welcomed) challenges. Perhaps I couldn't recall the exact location of something, or another thing was gone entirely. Yet while nearly everything has changed a little, and some things a lot, it's still the same as it was, and I love that place. 

There is the all familiar Kurpark, which sits in the center of it all, with that yellow mansion in the middle. A perfect place to take a walk on the reflexology path, or try your skill at the 250 meter long maze in one of the fields, or walk amongst your pieces as you play a game of oversized chess. Or just sit and enjoy breakfast on the lawn in the perfect morning sun on an adirondack chair. 

I made a point to visit the old spots, of course, and also to find a few new ones. For all these years I have had a love for the Kramer mountain. The mountain was just steps from my backdoor for the time I lived there. I climbed solo to the top of the mountain and hiked all the paths scores of times. Most often I would make my way up to what we called the "halfway house" where the treat of a cold beer awaited after the long hike. 

The building I used to live in was an old hospital, with more stories than I could know, and I know quite a few. I've contemplated writing a book about that place, it is so interesting, but this is not the time for these stories. I will say this, it is just next to an elaborate and beautiful cemetery which has a tunnel that is connected to my old building. Stories, I tell you, I have stories.....

Every day I would make my way to the Loisach river. Perhaps I was passing by on my peaceful and ipod fueled walk to work, or it was my destination to write or read or think and rest. The Loisach has a special color, it is pale and cold and always flowing rapidly through the mountians and trees, through my old neighborhood! And if you listen closely that river says "om".

This train bride over the Loisach is an old favorite destination just a few kilometers out of town. I would frequently ride my bicycle out here and read with a picnic before work or on a day off. It's quiet and secluded and there's always a rainbow!

Just outside of Garmish is the great hill that leads up to Eibsee (and it's mini-me, Untersee). Eibsee is another favorite (I'm full of favorites!). This lake is high in the mountains and is a mirror to the magnificent Zugspitze, the tallest of the German Alps. After training myself I was able to ride my bicycle uphill the dozen-or-so kilometers to the lake, where I would have a simple picnic, take a dip, and head back down. 

This time around I was without my cute Peugeot bicycle and instead in a rental car, which made the climb easy, yet still rewarding. I could never tire of that view. 

While we weren't traipsing around Garmisch, visiting my old stomping grounds and reliving old memories we would hop in the car and explore that beautiful region in Bavaria. We took to the road and found another old spot, just across the Austrian border, outside the town of Erwald. The view is still of the Zugspitze, but this time from the opposite side (and with a storm brewing), with extra bonus mountains on the opposite horizon. 

 Our mini road-trip continued on as we headed out to Fussen, to visit the castle of King Ludwig, who some though to be crazy. I'm not as convinced he was. So he liked sleigh rides after midnight in the snowy mountains by the moonlight, and cared more for the arts than he did for war.... maybe the world needed more of his type. 

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A visit to Plansee in Austria concluded for us the tour of the spots I would bicycle to. Back then I was hardcore, for Plansee was about a 40 kilometer round trip ride! The trip led us along a wide and shallow riverbed and bast Linderhof castle, through the brewing town of Etall and back to the lovely valley of Garmisch... only to continue the road trip the next morning.

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