I’m up early for the train to Paris. Sadly, I get off in Mannheim, where I’ll transfer to Worms. Not so sad really, as Worms is my first chosen destination. I’m visiting history. Tomorrow’s final train in Germany will be the one that will begin my return to the United States.

I can’t emphasize enough how much I love 1st class rail travel. If I never had to fly again, I could be perfectly content on long hauls via train. After not driving a car for five weeks, it will be strange to get behind the wheel again, but that’s not for another day yet.

My redundancy is in full effect by now. How much can I say about the many fields of wheat we are passing? A couple of years ago, when I was here in early April, there were fields of rape outside my window.

I love a dramatic sky, even if it means bloating a blog entry with too many photos. While the anonymous reader will wonder why the author has shared so many, you should be aware that I’m not trying to entice others to visit these places or resonate with the same things I find beautiful or relevant; I post all of this for two people, my wife and myself.

Worms, but not what you think. This relatively small city 50 miles south of Frankfurt plays a large role in German history as the location of much of the “action” in the Nibelungenlied, a medieval epic poem, and the beginning of the Reformation five hundred years ago in 1521. I feel fortunate to be here during the 500th anniversary of such an important event.

I’ve mentioned these cleaners in another post during my stay in Germany. I can only imagine how different American cities might be if people were given jobs such as these and all of our places of commerce were kept neat and clean (and mostly without the use of leaf blowers).

It was the Edict of Worms that opened the schism by banning people from sharing Martin Luther’s ideas. While the 95 Theses he had posted to a church door in 1517 started the world on the pathway to the Reformation, it was the Diet of Worms and their Edict that Martin Luther was “a notorious heretic” that really started the dramatic historical changes that would follow the Reformation.

This is an incredibly important inflection point in Western history that disrupted European power and laid the groundwork for dissolving empires, shifting religious adherences and led to a number of wars, the worst lasting 30 years.

First, the city walls were mostly destroyed by the 30 Years War, and then in 1689, during the Nine Years War, the city was sacked, producing more destruction. and finally, during World War II, about 40 percent of the city was damaged by Allied bombing. My point is that the building that served as the assembly hall for the Diet appears destroyed to the best of my quick research.

This is the Holy Trinity Church, which I’ll visit on my way back into town. During World War II, most of this church was destroyed, but more on that later. First, I have a date with an event that goes back to the beginning of the 13th century.

Now we arrive at the Nibelungen. This is Germany’s epic poem of heroism and is considered their Iliad. It was supposedly here on the bank of the Rhein River that Hagen of Tronje, after slaying the hero Siegfried, threw the Nibelungenhort, Siegfried’s treasure, into the drink. This, combined with my familiarity with Richard Wagner’s Ring of the Nibelungen, has finally created enough interest for me to ask Caroline to find The Song of the Nibelungs, its English title, to join our list of books read in the car.

The poem has been dated to approximately 1205 while the opera was first performed in Bayreuth on August 13, 1876. Of course, this is all just information found on Wikipedia, but as I stood here at the Rhein, I did try to imagine that day 800 years ago or more when the raiding party led by Hagen saw the evil in wealth tossed everything in the river. If this even happened in the past 1100 years, then the cathedral was already part of town, and other than all the new buildings, metal railing, and the bridge over the river, I’d imagine that things look much the same. Even so, who knows where Hagen stood precisely during all this? Plus, maybe the river has moved its banks a few times since then; there were probably docks here and there and people fishing from shore and from boats out in the river.

The bells that I’m listening to from the cathedral calling people to church (it is Sunday, after all) would have been the loudest things ever heard by the people of that time. As for recovering the silver and gold that got tossed, who would have had the swimming skills back then to dive into the river to scour the bottom, hoping to find something valuable? Even Wagner’s The Ring of the Nibelungen is unknown to me, not the music, of course, but the lyrical content is in German, and I’ve never taken the time to read it. This really is my loss, as here I am at ground zero of this epic tale and opera and I have more blanks than relevant info. Sometimes, I’m a sad sack.

Is this a stretch of surviving town wall, a reconstruction, or a tourist attraction, as there’s a sign nearby directing people to visit the Nibelungen museum? I can’t afford that luxury as I have 2.5 hours in town, and that’s barely enough for much at all.

I do appreciate this effort in Germany: a historical facade still exists, but the rest of the building needs to be cleared away, so they preserve what they can and conform the new house to the features of the old building, at least on the side deemed salvageable.

Protestantism from the word protestation came into being following the edict issued by the Diet of Speyer in 1529 due to the protestations of a number of German Lutheran princes. Today, Protestantism encompasses many churches beyond Lutheranism but both ideas emerged out of the words and actions of Martin Luther. Catholicism would never be the same after this.

Martin Luther, before emperor and realm on 18 April 1521: Since your most serene majesty and your high princes require of me a simple answer, I will give a straightforward one without quibbles thus: If I am not convinced by scripture or by clear reasoning, I am still bested by the passages that I have quoted and my conscience remains imprisoned in God’s word. I cannot trust the pope or the council because it has been shown that they have erred before and contradicted themselves. I cannot recant, nor will I retract anything, because it is not safe nor wise to act against one’s conscience. Here I stand; I cannot do otherwise. God help me, Amen.

Fire destroyed the Holy Trinity Church after the city of Worms was bombed during World War II. The original church was built between 1709 and 1725 on the site of the Haus zur Münze (House of Coinage) that had been destroyed in the aforementioned Nine-Years-War. It is said that the site was chosen for the church because the citizens of Worms believed that it was here that Martin Luther spoke with the King in 1521 as Luther was becoming a public enemy.

The church was modernized when it was rebuilt, as it was a near-total loss and if I understood the man I was talking with, it’s used frequently for concerts.

The mosaic in the background features the King top center, Martin Luther on the right, and his aide on the left. The first big reason for Caroline and me to return is to attend a concert here.

The second big reason to come back is for Caroline to hear the bells clang on a Sunday morning.

Leave it to the Catholics to know how to put on a show of glitz and ornamentation. Services were about to get underway when I shot this photo; the guy at the door informed me that parishioners were already signing up for today’s sermon (a measure brought on by COVID). Pleading that I only had two hours in Worms, I asked for 3 minutes, and he let me have them.

A sprint past all of this was sad, but at least I have some idea of the grandeur of St. Peter’s Cathedral.

Will we ever again build such public houses where light and shadows, ornate figures, and gilded objects are on display for all to witness? I wouldn’t count on it. Just as Caroline and I have strived to see as many national parks and monuments as we could, and we’ve kept track of them, I wish I’d done the same with cathedrals.

There’s a synagogue nearby, and I’ll not be able to stop in today as I’m now running short on time, but I did come across these stumbling stones that recognize the lives of Berta and Max Joseph, who were deported and murdered in Bełżec concentration camp that was the third most fatal concentration camp after Treblinka and Auschwitz.

How in the world did the oldest Jewish cemetery in Europe survive World War II? Are the parents of Bertha and Max buried here? Many of the graves have markings in Hebrew, so it was obvious who was interred here but I’m at a loss how this survived and wasn’t wiped off the face of the earth. Walking in, I needed a kipa or hat. I was about to be turned away by a security guy, but then he asked if I had a mask with me, instant kipa in the pocket is now adorning the crown of my head.

On the train to Karlsruhe with little concentration available. I’m tired, and I’m hungry. Father Hanns was at the platform waiting for my arrival. Out of the main train station, we boarded a bus for a short ride to Europastrasse, where we’d get lunch at the same spot he, Caroline, and I always eat. Over a slow meal, we talked about religion, philosophy, writing, reading, Umberto Eco, Caroline, Stephanie, his granddaughter Katharina, Martin Luther, various evangelical bishops, the community of English-speaking evangelicals in the Baden-Württemberg region, but not a word about Paris.

After lunch, we visited Father Hanns’s home so he could identify a particular book, it was The Mysterious Flame of Queen Loana by Umberto Eco. Hanns is surrounded by books, his home is arranged for the life of books and his place in their universe where he can read and write. In minutes, an hour had passed after the first two-and-a-half had flown by, too. We now had to make haste to a taxi stand so we could race back to the train station. Four hours with my father-in-law wasn’t enough.

Back on the train not only are we moving fast, I’m moving fast into time with only 17 minutes before we dock in Frankfurt. The problem with this is that I’m too early. Circumstances are such that I have avoided where I’m staying for some hours until later this evening because my insensitive mouth doesn’t always read people well, especially when the other person cannot be read. So, what do I do? Train ride somewhere else on a Sunday, try meeting up with Olaf the last time, or visit Jutta just before her dinner time.

Thirteen minutes to go, and I don’t want to close my computer, nor do I want to read some depressing news. Bandwidth is not so great I would watch videos, but 12 minutes is hardly enough to get into something. Eleven minutes and I have nothing to share, so before I finish this countdown, I’ll save and put things away to prepare for disembarking.

I met with Olaf after arriving in Frankfurt and spent about an hour with him chatting before walking around the corner to Kebab Han for a mixed grill of Turkish meats.

Walked into the city after the rain stopped and wandered around before taking the U6 or U7 to Heerstrasse just because it was too early to head back to Heddernheim. The tension surrounding this departure from Frankfurt is giving me poor feelings. I probably shouldn’t mention this here as I knew this was the potential price of sticking my nose in other people’s business, but those people couldn’t handle the confrontation, and so with me short of time, I had to accelerate things. Now I’m paying for it with this ill will I’m feeling. This is compounded by the fact that I’m tired, I have to pack, and I have delayed things to avoid any further confrontation. What a dumb way to end this visit to Frankfurt, where my objective was to do well by others.

I cannot believe this area near the Hauptbahnhof (Main Train Station) was ever a nice area, but a placard I’d never seen before was on a wall noting that Oskar Schindler lived here for nearly ten years. If I had the time or a better idea of where I’d have found it, I would have gone looking for Horkheimer’s old house on Westendstrasse. Hanns told me about it but didn’t know the house number, so I’ll have to make that pilgrimage another day.

It’s 9:30, and I’m heading from Heerstrasse back to Hauptwache to jump aboard the U1, U3, or U8 to Zeilweg. I’m guessing I’ll be heading to Hauptbahnhof and then the Flughafen between 9:00 and 10:00 tomorrow morning to arrive at least two hours early. I’m flying business class, so I should be able to show up a bit later, but these are COVID times, and I’m still hoping that my rapid antigen test meets the requirements I need to fly to the United States. The worst part of tomorrow I can already taste is the landing in Denver and trying to shove 40,000 pounds of stupid into my eyeballs. I’m expecting there will be a kind of sickness when I start picking up on casual conversations that swerve into the violently aggressive. I know full well that I’ll be hearing grumbling dissatisfaction and the bickering of people tense that they are not in their comfort zone. This is NOT what I’ll be experiencing at the Frankfurt Airport.

I just transformed my angst into something positive for me and, apparently, the man I helped. This guy was the recipient of 65 Euros tonight. He’s broken and falling apart. Three years in jail in Austria and super hard times have left this man of about 30 years old nearly toothless with swollen hands, horrible scars, and seriously ugly wounds on his legs that suggest he’s rotting away. His verbal enthusiasm was emotionally liberating as he told me that nobody had ever helped him like that. Originally, I’d given him 5 Euros on the train, and after some more minutes of him begging others, I threw him the other 10 Euros. When I left the platform we pulled in on, he was busy digging through the trash, but five minutes later, he was on a lower platform where I was waiting for my next train. I asked him for a photo and could see he was reluctant and I told him it was okay that I don’t take it, we’re cool. He then said, “No, go ahead, you really helped me a lot tonight,” so I handed him the 50 and thought he’d cry. He looked down at it and couldn’t believe what I’d given him; he stood up straight and invited me to take his photo. I nearly cried at this wretched man who hardly remains with the living.

After 31 straight days of intense activity, I’ve ground to a halt today and need to do nothing. Obviously, writing is not nothing, but doing the minimum is de rigueur. Mentally, this is harder than it sounds because here I am in Germany; I could have gone to Mainz today to gaze through the church windows created by Marc Chagall and visit the Gutenberg Museum in the same city. Instead, I sit here in the living room of a house in Heddernheim while the sun is shining outside. I feel guilty for this laziness as there’s an implication that I’m bored or simply not motivated enough to take advantage of the geographical location I find myself in. Writing this pains me as I’m afraid that the truth is that I’m wasting a valuable day.

On the other hand, I could say that I carved space out of the clutter of activity to allow other things to fill the gap. In that now vacant area, I can allow a different seed of inspiration to blow in. Whatever lands might one day sprout to become a mighty apple tree or merely a weed. The point is that I need these moments to be nowhere and be no one wanting anything so I can find the surprise of what is being cultivated in the place where something else might have otherwise been. This one day where I shut down everything except the essentials for sustaining life is not a lost day; it is a gift I’m giving to saturated senses.

I do not want to (Ich will nicht) see what I’ve not seen today; I will leave that for another day that will or will not arrive.

Stephanie and Klaus Engelhardt are my inlaws who had asked back in May if I could come over to Germany. After Jutta’s apartment was turned over to the owner, I took up residence at their place, as Caroline and I have done on other visits. Breakfast, lunch, and finally dinner were all had with these two today.

After tonight, things get busy again.

It’s a lazy Wednesday by the Wadden Sea, and a short vacation will come to a finish. Not in a rush of activity but the quiet gray of doing nothing much at all. It’s okay to not be in a hurry, to take refuge in a warm room with the conveniences required for sequestering ourselves, even if for only some hours. Languorous activities such as we are engaged in ask for a bit of mindlessness, and maybe the act of writing violates those principles of inactivity, but staring at the ceiling or the inside of my eyelids doesn’t feel like an option either. So I write of the past from the future of when said things I write actually occurred.

This theme of photographing the space where I commit my thinking to bits represented on a screen should have been given more thought many years ago because, more than selfies, I would have quite the collection of locations and settings where I’ve sat down to this exercise of trying to explore wit, cynicism, spleen, awe, love, and delight.

This is the door to the house where Theodor Storm’s parents lived. I’d guess that he lived here as a child. With Storm arguably the most important person in history to hail from Husum, no wonder the small town recognizes him. Maybe I’d also consider Nicolaus Bruhns, who was said to have been an influence on Bach for celebration, too, if he actually had that influence. What’s not in doubt is that Bruhns studied under Dieterich Buxtehude, which lends some gravity to this person who only lived a short life of 31 years back at the end of the 17th century.

I certainly didn’t try this masterpiece as that might have ruined my admiration that something so beautiful was on display, tempting my sense of culinary wonder. It will forever hold a place in my imagination that this may have been the greatest-tasting cake ever created. I didn’t even bother to note the location where I saw it as I hope to forget just where it was. Should I ever return to Husum and have the burning desire to finally try one, maybe I’ll learn they no longer make this work of art, but it can live on here forever.

Friendliest looking moat I’ve ever seen. Klaus and I hiked up the mountain to Schloss vor Husum (or Husum Castle). That’s a lie because there are no mountains anywhere near here, but the quite small castle actually does exist. Also, this is not a moat; it’s just a lush pond.

This is a corner of the castle that must represent the rest of the structure. I would have liked to photograph the place in greater detail, but some groundskeepers had red tape up to cordon off the area directly in front of the main part of the buildings so they could get some maintenance work done.

Bird photographer, I’m not (cue a chorus of “Photographer of many things you are not, John”), but that’s not going to stop me from trying. Heck, I don’t really care about this bird, for that matter, but it will do as my stand-in for the many birds that were out of sight but not out of hearing range. This makes me wonder where Rammstein was when they penned the words for Ohne Dich and the lyric Und die Vögel singen nicht mehr (Translation: And the birds no longer sing). Obviously, they weren’t in Husum.

Time has eaten the lion’s face and will ultimately eat mine, too, except mine will likely be a horrific sight as it’s happening.

I’d guess this street looks much like it always has and that Theodor Storm and Herr Bruhn would recognize most things aside from the electricity box and the cars.

The house Storm lived in for a short period doesn’t open until 2:00 or 40 minutes before we depart. Like the castle, Caroline and I now have a few things to return to Husum for.

These three ugly gnomes were in a sideyard with no explanation of their purpose. Maybe they keep the spirit of Storm alive?

Time for more food, more fish, more Bratkartoffeln, more mineral water, and a very nice server at Gaststätte Tante Jenny.

North-Friesische Futjes from Waffelgut sure looks like orange-sized balls of fried dough, er um, donuts, but who am I to turn up my nose to the strange delicacies of ethnic peoples when I’m visiting their lands? Buying five was .50 euros cheaper, so I played it safe and only got two with sugar and the other three plain.

Don’t go thinking I’m eating lunch, futjes, and then ice cream; the donuts are for the train. The Waldmeister and hazelnut ice cream were to go with my coffee. Now I’m ready to get on a train that’ll take about 8 hours to bring us back to Frankfurt. By the way, I didn’t really want the Waldmeister ice cream, but I knew that once Caroline saw this photo, she’d be asking how it was, so I had to oblige her. To be honest, I can’t say I really enjoyed it, though I did finish it.

Only two trains will be required to get us home; this one goes to Hamburg and the next one to Frankfurt. I met a man from Yorkshire here on the platform in Husum who’s been living in Erfurt for the past 20 years; he was waiting for the train so he could photograph the two engines pulling our transportation to Hamburg. Something about the diesel engines intrigued him, but I didn’t have time to learn more as the train was on approach, I stepped away so he could focus on the matter at hand and not me.

I don’t know where I’m at, and if I think deeply about that, I may never really know where I’m at other than with myself in a bunch of situations that defy believability. I mean, how is it that I’m on a train cruising at 100 mph across Germany, and in less than a week, I’ll be having coffee with Ed Tankersley again at King Coffee on Union Hills Avenue in Phoenix, Arizona? Ah, did you pick up on that? I can’t confuse who I am with where I’m at, but how many times do I make such wrong-headed comparisons where I count on my wife finding and correcting my blunders? Is that part of the basis of surrealism or absurdity? But John, you stated you didn’t know where you were. Oh really? My inference was about where I am inside and where I am when I’m somewhere else other than the John, who is talking to Ed, Klaus, Caroline, or anyone else really. The John that is writing this is using his fingers to express a voice that is never heard by anyone but myself. My writing sounds like me to me, but does this version of John sound like the one you know? I know where my body was when I wrote this, but the person who has been changed in subtle ways over the past few days hasn’t been realized fully yet. Or maybe I have been, and I’m mostly just the person I am and always have been as I write this.

I didn’t travel 1,300 kilometers to be the same person I was before this journey that has taken me to the tidal mudflats of northern Europe. I’m looking for something. Did I find it? I never know for certain as it doesn’t present itself as a bookmark, an artifact, or even a carbuncle of oozing knowledge. That would be a thing, wouldn’t it? Every time you gain something when learning, you move one step closer to appearing as Baron Harkonnen in Dune. Better would be sprouting a new branch; maybe trees used to be humans who learned that it was better to gain knowledge while reaching into the sky and enjoying a life of standing in place, taking it all in.

Maybe I’m always looking back at myself, and the person or realization I don’t find is lost in my inability to know myself in those places. I visit cathedrals, forests, oceans, rivers, cities, and coffee shops, always searching for the essence of self and place, trying to find a clear image of the person who was slightly different yesterday but in many ways the same as I’ll be tomorrow. I believe I know that I’m not outside nature, but my integration with it is a blur of deciphering as an ever-changing world goes by that doesn’t allow for fixing on points that might ground me in certainty. And so I keep on this path of discovery, hopeful to find whatever that something is.

Maybe the clouds are gods floating overhead, free to travel the earth and come and go as they please. Condensed water drops hold the power to deliver the most valuable resource to humans in the form of clean water that nourishes our green plants, so they produce our oxygen. A symbiotic system that is not reliant on the idiots in between. What about those of us who are between places such as here on this train, being neither here nor there? I’m busy using resources, not producing anything, ah but is producing information that may at some point be construed as knowledge have value? That’s not up to me to decide; only history and those with an interest in the past make those decisions. Then, in an age where information is akin to countless fields of wheat, we speed past and find it impossible to inventory and assign value to this commodity that will rot in the field if not tended to. I have to accept that every word and every letter written here just might be one kernel of wheat out of 22 on one of the five heads of a single plant 62 meters away from the train in a row I cannot identify. An ant could come by taking that kernel I’ve left to its nest, and in a week, all that I contributed would be gone. The grains I leave behind will ultimately disappear, having been transformed into something else.

We’ve reached Hamburg, and again, we are playing musical trains as we jump from track to track as flexibility is required to move so many trains through a busy system. We’ve still not seen the new Elbphilharmonie, nor is it in this photo, but someday Caroline and I will visit the hall, which is one of the largest concert venues on earth.

We passed through Uelzen and Celle, both of which I’d never heard of. They went by in a blur like so much fence, graffiti, and wheat the train passes at terrific speeds.

Note: after I returned to Frankfurt, I looked up Celle and have now put it on the list of places for Caroline and me to visit. As for Uelzen, while they have an interesting main train station, that seems like that’s about it.

We have stopped and taken off again as we move down the track at nearly 250 kilometers per hour or 150 mph away from Hannover. With less than three hours remaining before reaching Frankfurt, it feels like this journey will quickly come to an end.

You don’t know how much you love the sun and mountains until you’ve left the flat gray area of somewhere that sees little to nothing of these two aforementioned attributes.

I’m reluctant to move on to the next image as I have nothing else in the camera yet, and my traveling south is being occupied by putting these words up. If I were to pause, might I get sleepy? So I must find something in the silhouette of the land and dramatic clouds that inspires me to babble on. Note that it’s now taken me five hours to write the 1,693 words I’ve written so far (pre-Caroline edits, of course), which, writing this statistic, makes me open the calculator to see that I’m writing about six words a minute minus eating, drinking, and photography breaks. That probably means I’m getting closer to seven words a minute when I am writing. If I am to occupy myself for the next couple of hours, I better slow this blistering pace down.

Shadows are creeping over the landscape, especially as I set in to write for this photo, for it is a good 30 minutes after I snapped this shot. We just passed Neu-Eichenberg with a nice old train station about 40 kilometers from Kassel and our last stop before Frankfurt. I just finished reading about the history of the Eichenberg Station. Should you be interested in what it looks like and its history, follow this link to Wikipedia. And with this, I can only share that we are riding into the sunset. Should I find another photo, worthy of inclusion, I might discover more to blather on about. Until then, maybe you too, should just stare out a window at nature or, better yet, take yourself into it.

Didn’t have to wait long, and fortunately, I was able to snatch up the camera just in time to grab a photo of the sun setting over the Fulda River that I didn’t think was salvageable as I had a lot of reflection from the window I was shooting out of. But the important parts of the image that tell the story look nice to my eye. It’s 8:30 in the evening as we pull into Kassel. This city was supposed to be one of my side journeys that is surely out of contention for a visit, as are so many others. Paris, too, will have to wait. Maybe when Caroline and I return in the fall, we can find our way down some of these other romantic roads and rail lines.

We are quickly running out of daylight during our final hour on the InterCity Express train (ICE) we’ve been on since Hamburg. I should point out that these 8 hours of travel are all the easier as we are sitting in 1st class with fast wifi, no seat neighbors, a table, and a quick ride that doesn’t suffer from turbulence.

I thought two photos ago that I was done and could just relax into the last minutes on the train, but here we are passing through Fulda, and I spotted some buildings on a distant hill, but as I started snapping photos, this factory sprung into view. That was a win.

Maybe this is redundant, as I posted an image of my workspace on our way to Husum this past Sunday, but right now, I can’t remember, and I’m too lazy to check. Okay, so I just went and checked, and I took that weird reflection photo in the tunnel a few days ago, but that photo was then; this is now. So, do I sign off figuring I can’t do any better than this, and at 26 photos, this is certainly a long enough blog post, or do I hold out for one more? Just kidding, I’m done. Vacation to the Wattenmeer and all that it included is done.