The last post from our weeklong visit with my mother-in-law Nina in southwestern Germany:
Chicago you really know how to roll out the red carpet. After nine hours in a flying tin can, we collapsed into a cab at O’Hare on Saturday night. Minutes later we sat in a traffic jam on 94, courtesy of the Magnificent Mile Lights Festival.
“People come here from Wisconsin!” said our incredulous cabbie, still chatty before we ditched him for the subway. “They should get their own lights up there!”
They really should; it took two hours to get home.
The Resident Feline usually requires a few days to get over her separation anxiety. She pulled out the stops this time, squawking away like an injured bird for two days straight before entering the silent treatment phase, which features her accusatory, Village of the Damned face.
I’m in trip withdrawal. Last week I had pretzel bread at my fingertips. Now we’ve got a diminishing pile of German sweets and nearly 600 photos, several taken, finally, in a mostly open, mostly ruined castle.
As evidenced by this last picture, the castle is geared for commerce, featuring banquet halls, a church for wedding services and even a youth hostel. The grounds were largely deserted during our visit save for two elderly women in the restaurant who talked the ears off anyone within earshot. Renate and I smiled dumbly and nodded while they gabbed with Nina.
“They said with all the Americans here, there will never be war,” Nina told us as the women helped each other out the front gate and up to their parked car. How cool is it to go out to the local castle for a beer with a friend?
The American military presence permeated our visit; the army base at Baumholder that hosted Nina’s teaching program houses 15,000 American troops, making it the largest base outside the 50 states. Nina received a copy of Stars and Stripes every morning, and the TV pumped in American shows and curious military commercials warning people not to talk about their travel plans. “You never know who’s listening,” said the ominous narrator.
I had no expectations for the trip, which made it easy to be captivated by Germany’s charm. The Rhineland, located in the southwestern part of the country, is sensibly developed; small towns hug the riverbanks and valleys of the heavily agrarian region. Fortunately no one appears intent on flinging strip malls across the area.
So, I loved it, had a blast, can’t wait to go back. Of course, it helps to have the right travel companion.
