We're starting the third day of our German vacation, and I still haven't quite made the temporal adjustment. Besides, it's hard for me to sleep past 4am no matter what I do — my father was the same way — so while my beautiful wife and strapping young son sleep, I'm sitting on the balcony of our Ferienwohnung (vacation rental) with a cup of fresh coffee, the remnants of yesterday's loaf of fresh bread purchased at the local Bäckerei, some cheese, and a jar of homemade jam given to us by our hostess, Frau Geyer.
It's not yet dawn, but the light is brightening. A train just pulled in; we're only two blocks from the station. I can see the outlines of the mountains that surround us: the Rheingrafenstein in front of me and the Rotenfels to the left and behind. There's not much to Bad Münster; it's less than half a mile wide and about three quarters of a mile long, and with the mountains, there's no place left for it to expand. (More about Bad Münster here.)
Coming here is coming home.
We moved to Bad Münster am Stein (now merged with neighboring Ebernburg) in the winter of 1958. My father was an American life insurance salesman who came here to make his fortune selling insurance to young GIs starting their families, but he never had the stomach for the hard sell, so the fortune never quite materialized. We'd already been in Germany for a while, first in Katswang, near Nürnberg, then in Haunstetten, a suburb of Augsburg. My father always liked small towns, and that, I think, drew him here.
While I have vague memories of the previous places I lived, Bad Münster is the first place in my life I remember clearly and vividly. I loved living here. We rented the bottom floor of a house on am Felseneck, which was then a dirt road, so sparsely populated that our house had no street number. The field next door had two bomb craters and a destroyed house. We played army in the ruins, dug in the ruins of the house, and one day were convinced we'd found a corpse in the basement, though I strongly suspect it wasn't. Our landlord, Herr Venturini, who lived upstairs, owned the TV repair shop, and we filled one of the bomb craters with old vacuum tubes, which make a great sound when they shatter.
The post-war reconstruction was still going on. The railroad bridge, which had been the target of those bombs, was just being rebuilt. A new elementary school was going up on the Ringstraße, one block away. Although I had attended first and second grades in the American military school system, as civilians we paid tuition, so my father decided it would be a great learning opportunity (not to mention cheaper) if I attended the local Grundschule.
After school, we'd climb the Rotenfels. There was a narrow path in between the school and one of the local vineyards (the Nahetal is less famous as a wine-growing region than the Mosel, but it's still the biggest industry in town), and we'd go all the way to First Bench, an outcropping with a breathtaking view of the tiny valley that makes up the town. (Yes, there will be pictures shortly; I'll post the link as soon as I manage to upload them from my iPad.)
We left Bad Münster in the winter of 1961. The Berlin Wall had recently gone up, rumors of war were in the air, and my father wasn't happy about potentially having to evacuate his wife and three young children without a military priority in the event of World War III. That was nearly half a century ago.
This was the happiest period of my childhood, and when we needed a vacation from home restoration, jobs, and life in general, coming here was the most appealing thing I could think of.
We arrived in Frankfurt Tuesday morning and got here around 11am. The town has nearly doubled in size since I lived here (from 2,500 to about 4,000 today); my old street is paved and there are houses where the craters once stood. I remember the house across the street being built; it's old now. The vineyard looks the same, as does the grundschule.
As I've been writing, the sky has gone from dark blue to blue-gray. There's a cloud hovering directly in front of me, just slightly above eye level. It's not close enough to the ground to be called fog, and thin enough to be mistaken for industrial smoke, but it's just a cloud. To the east, a streak of yellow has just appeared over First Bench.
Our first day was consumed by jet lag and settling in; Wednesday I had to track down electrical adapters (in the rush to move out of our house; I misplaced part of the pile of Stuff Not To Forget I'd carefully accumulated in preparation for the trip) and had to drive all the way to Darmstadt to find what I needed. Today we're planning to hike in the Rotenfels. We haven't yet decided what the rest of the week (or the next) will bring, but I'm more than content to sit here.
You can't step in the same river twice, but today I believe that yes, you can go home again.
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