We drove from Macon to see family who live
between Annecy and Geneva. We drove up into the Alps in Haute-Savoie for a day
of seeing goats, cross-country-skiers, and to eat in a small and friendly
restaurant. It was very friendly, that is, until the table next to ours was set
on fire (by the meats-over-coals dish the couple had ordered). The customers
were not worried... as the waiter was putting out the fire, their only remark
was “more sauce, please.”
After our two days there, we left for
Freiburg, a city that was re-built (after WWII) according to its original city
plan. The streets are narrow and lovely, the store- and hotel-fronts blend old
with new, and there is a canal running down one side of all the walking and
biking streets. Our hotel has been running on Oberlinden for (roughly) 700
years. Here was the view:
The city’s people are very friendly, and the shops very interesting — do you need an umbrella store?
or a lovely restaurant?
Moving north, farther into Germany, we
noticed that the houses became more concerned with rooflines... that is, each
house and barn seemed hugely roof, against the snow to come. And there seems to
be some interest in trapping the sun through solar panels:
We had planned to visit more cities, but, on
finding that our next hotel had lied to us (they were not in Heidelberg, so it
was impossible to find them there), we decided to change our plans. The
autobahn is awe-inspiring; if there are no work-stations or problems, the speed
limit is up to the driver, who can go as fast as desired, as long as s/he
maintains control of the car. We were also seeing that cities seem more alike,
from one country to the next, than countryside, and we thought the German countryside
utterly gorgeous, so, why not slow down and see the landscape?
As we drove, we saw geese and swans and
hawks, and chased down hotels (that we sometimes could not find) and small and
interesting villages. “It’s a wild goose chase!” my husband said, and, yes,
that’s what we have begun.
Logs are being harvested and stacked for
pick-up. These smaller roads are accompanied by walking and biking paths. It is
late in December, but the fields are still green, or ploughed up for the next
crop. Vineyards are stacked up on careful hillside shelving. We pass a
glassblower’s huge compound, an Audi factory, a “polizei” speed trap (cars here
blink their lights, too). Someone has died along this road and her family has
left candles and a white marble angel. We stay in two hotels in a row run by
families; one speaks English, the other does not.
We drive by the town of Speilberg. It is 7
degrees Celsius. We stay in another hotel and leave the window open. The church
bells ring all night. When it is 2:00 in the morning, the louder bell rings
four times for the hour, then a smaller bell rings twice, then the louder bell
rings once to say it is the quarter hour, then twice for the half hour, then
three times for three-quarters of the hour, then at 3:00 the whole cycle begins
again.
A covered bridge: “Did you think they
started in Vermont?” my husband asks. We are driving in and out of the
Schwarzwald, the Black Forest. Woodpiles become very important:
Two shaggy cows. Muddy sheep by a beautiful stream. We drive
higher into the mountains, and see snow, ravines, waterfalls, and our car tells
us “Risque de verglas” (black ice). The woods are dark and deep... again,
Robert Frost didn’t invent these forests... these are fairy-tale forests, thick
with moss... and dragons. I start reading Grimm’s
Fairy Tales.
We stop for a Renaissance castle, WasserSchloss
Glatt, with moat and timbered buildings:
And a town, later, on the Bodensee, called
Meersburg, with defensive walls:
This is a fairy tale. Charley looks
at the orchards, bare branches now, with a few scattered apples left:
and he says the apples seem to have given
way, over the years, to decorated shiny balls and the Christmas tree.
I start a drawing:
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