The Train, the Tagebuch, the Ticket

She said I needed it and I should go. “Three weeks,” she’d told me. “Three weeks, and see what happens? It’s been only a month since your Dad passed, and you need to get away.”

So I ordered up three tickets and packed. One ticket was to get there, by plane, from New York to Charles De Gaulle airport outside Paris. The second was to get home, by plane, from Stockholm back to New York. I had in mind to tour Germany by train, to see the places where my Dad had grown up. For that I needed the third ticket.

I needed only a back pack. I’d been on one or two train trips before and managing a suitcase or even a duffel bag was a pain in the ass. It wasn’t just the carrying of it on and off the train. It was “What do I do with this?” while in one city or another, sightseeing. So I chose wisely and efficiently.

“Goodbye. I’ll be fine. The kids will be fine. When you come back, there’ll be dinner on.” She looked me in the eye, trying to push the conviction into my stubborn brain that I could process my grief enough in three weeks to come back functional. I’d already said goodbye to the kids back at the house. Here at the airport curbside I hadn’t wanted to make a scene. They were all three too small to really know what “three weeks” alone with Mommy meant. I just prayed that they’d let me back in the house. The odds would improve as long as I had gifts for them.

I kissed her and hugged her and kissed again. I mouthed the words “Thank you. I love you” as I turned to walk through the revolving door and to the check-in counter. Just as on all my previous trips I didn’t watch her out of sight. Old Irish proverb.

The flight was uneventful. Charles de Gaulle was clean and organized and right on the rail line. I boarded my car ten minutes before departure, after coming through passport check, stopping for groceries, buying a good-sized map of Germany, and one of those little, black travel journal books. I already had a tired and worn Thomas Rail Guide – the rail rider’s Bible. The Thomas’s and the map would get me there. The LBB would let me tell my story. Maybe the tale would be only to myself, but it would be a tale anyway.

The train passed through the French countryside, then up through Belgium and across the border and into Aachen. I’d chosen this route in Thomas’s to extend the hours on the train. Sometimes the best route is not the fastest. I did not want to arrive at my first destination in the middle of the night, so I took an arcing path up and then down through the western edge of Deutschland. I’d change trains in Aachen – Thomas said the layover time was twenty minutes, plenty for the reliable DB service. Then by dawn I’d be running along the Rhine with a seat on the port side because I wanted the view of the river and the vineyards.

Did it seem strange to be passing through these exciting and inspiring, romantic locations without a look around? Why was I charging ahead to southern Germany? Well, I’d visited the museums of Paris once before, a few years earlier. I wanted to save the rest of Paris for the chance to bring my wife, too. And Aachen had its church where Charlemagne was buried. I’d seen that, too, on an earlier business trip.

My first entries in the LBB described the feelings at departing home. It was a good place to start a story about travel and grief. I kept it to just a couple of paragraphs – no need to slobber when the goal was to end the slobbering. Then I proceeded to comment on the airplane and its food, the airport and its food and finally the train and my food.

My groceries were the most practical solution. I could not afford to dine in the dining car every meal, nor in restaurants at every change of trains. I’d done this bit before and buying just the right amount of food meant not having to carry it off the train or throw it in the bin with a pang of guilt. And it was likely that the yoghurt, the breads, the sausages, the beer, the pastries would all be different as I passed from one country to the next, one region to the next. Why not? I’d bought a Second Class Eurailpass, so why not travel like a second class passenger?

The sun came up on the other side of the Rhine. The vineyards were beautiful that second day of my trip. I changed trains again in Cologne, in the station right under the eaves of the famous cathedral. “Too bad…” I thought, as I had a passing wish to stay over and see inside the church. This third train would take me to my first real destination: Stuttgart.

I arrived in the early afternoon. My plan was to take the late evening train to Munich, then switch in the night to a westbound train and double back to Ulm. Crazy, I guess, but it used up more of the night. I’d have the third full day in Ulm, the city of my Dad’s birth. From there I figured I’d go north, all the way through Germany to Denmark, then further, all the way up through Scandinavia. It was June. It should be beautiful.

Stuttgart was where my Dad had grown up. I disembarked from the train and took out the copy of pages from his memoirs – the pages which described his arrival in Stuttgart in 1940 as a boy. The street names had not changed. The buildings had. Nearly all had burned in a firestorm late in WW2 bombing. I crossed through the park grounds, then several large streets full of all manner of German automobiles, then through a neighborhood until I found the first ascending stairway.

It wound up through trees and shrubs, climbing one of Stuttgart’s many hillsides. The backyards of homes bordered it, much as homes bordered stairways in San Francisco where I’d also explored. It was quiet, a bit damp, and sporadically sunny.

I emerged finally, breathing hard and sweaty under my arms, onto the large street which the memoir said headed for his new home. His entire family had followed this same route from the train station, carrying their suitcases, as they went from the small city of Ulm to this large city. Head down, squinting a bit at the memoir’s text, I wound from one corner to the next. Finally, I stopped across the street from a large home, multiple apartments stacked up, with a cement stairway along one side to the hillside garden at the back. “This is it!” I said aloud, startled a bit at the sound of English here on the street.

I didn’t stay long. No one was home – I checked. I captured a few photos on my camera, knowing that they would go into an album at home and be looked at only once in awhile. My kids, though, would be able to see pictures of where their grandfather had been a kid. I managed to crank my wrist around and hold the camera steady to take what I hoped was a well-framed and focused selfie. Knowing the truth would have to wait until the film was developed back home.

I stopped at the nearby cafe and ordered a coffee and croissant to celebrate. It tasted really good. I could somehow imagine my own Dad stopping here as a boy with my grandmother holding his hand. I suppose he’d have enjoyed a hot chocolate as much as I enjoyed my coffee.

My Dad had stayed in Germany until 1949. He’d fought in the big one. He’d been wounded and sent home. Later, he’d found a sponsor and come to America to meet and marry my Mom and have me and my siblings. He’d had a good life, an amazing life, a life he probably never dreamt of when he was here having chocolate with his mom.

As I descended the stairway, headed back to the train station, I was editing the entries I planned to make in my little black book once I’d boarded the train. The twenty thousand dollars I’d inherited from my Dad at his death was being put to good use, I felt. Yes, I had done the responsible thing, as I expected he would have expected of me, and put most of it into the bank – for my kids, not for me. He loved those kids of mine. The rest I’d used to buy these tickets and groceries and even this coffee and croissant.

It had been a wonderful day, fulfilling many dreams I’d had for many, many years. As I had plenty of time back at the station before my departure, I placed a collect call to my wife from the booth. The operator put me through within only a couple of minutes. It was mid-morning for her.

“Hello? Yes, it’s me. I’m fine. No, nothing’s wrong. I wanted to call and tell you that I’ve had a splendid day. I’m in Stuttgart and I’ve hiked all the way up to Dad’s old house and back.

“Yes, tonight I go on another train, this time to Ulm. You remember? I plan to ask around and use that photo my uncle gave me to find my grandfather’s gravestone. It’s a small city. How hard can it be? Then I’ll go to the cathedral and climb the stairs all the way to the top. Yes, even if it’s raining.

“Anyway, how are you and the kids? Yes, I know I’ve only been gone a few days. Good, glad to hear all is going well. What now? Yes, tell them I haven’t forgotten to bring them presents!

“And, I miss you, too. Okay. Yes, I bought a little black journal and I’m writing down my experiences. You’d be happy to know I’m even writing about my feelings. Yes … thanks for the example you’ve set for me.

“Well, I should go. Maybe I’ll call again from Ulm, although I don’t know if I’ll find a phone. I love you. Bye.”

Yes, the entries in the book that evening on the train included two shed tears. And I left a blank page where I’d tape in a print of the photo of his house, later when I came home to my own.