Heidelberg. Again.

What my prior trips to Germany were unable to accomplish, this one delivered. My attachments – the monsters - slipped into history. Right from the beginning I was determined to explore a different Heidelberg. From my house in Dilsberg I took a bus into the city several times a week; I got off at different stops on a whim; I didn’t follow a pattern; I didn’t secretly listen to the echo of fifty-year old footsteps.

One day the tower of the Church of the Holy Spirit forced its 200 steps on me but after some leg-numbing footwork I was rewarded with a spectacular view. Three hundred and sixty degrees of rooftops and woods, a glistening river and the castle so close I could pinpoint the spots where I had stood in December. Along the street and in the market place tourists scrambled from museum visits to postcard shopping to afternoon coffee like actors on a giant movie screen. Though their conversations were muted by the wind whistling around the tower, my connection to the image below was so intense that I couldn’t judge the speed of my observations. Did I watch slow motion or fast forward? I felt both, the lingering appreciation that comes with distance and the revved up process of multiple activities.

A week later I took the cable car to the Königstuhl, the highest mountain overlooking Heidelberg. I was crammed into the funicular’s steep ascent with many other travelers, foreign and local - a loud, appreciative throng of digital image obsessed wanderers. I felt present, my senses unobstructed by the search for old feelings. We stared into the dark depth of the tunnel from where we had emerged and wondered what would happen if a cable snapped. And then, suddenly, we paid close attention to the oncoming car that waited on its sharp descent to witness us pass. At the very top where a trail cuts through the forest I found quite a different view from that of the church tower. The city was too distant for detail. The static symbols of mass population lost themselves in the haze of the horizon. Had it not been for a single fir tree that cut into the image, therefore demanding attention, I would have stayed disconnected from my surroundings. We all took photos of each other – proof that we had witnessed the existence of man’s vast empire – and then we sorted ourselves back into our particular groups or, as in my case, into solitude. Solitude with Bratwurst and Diet Coke.

On two consecutive visits to Heidelberg I did nothing but take pictures of bicycles. I can’t imagine the city without bicycles but I had never paid much attention to their parking spaces. There were of course the regular areas at the train station, around the university, by the Karlstor, places where one could get lost in a sea of wheels. But then there were bicycles standing alone. In the middle of foot traffic. Secured to a fence. Leaning against advertising pillars. Used for shopping or to transport a pet dog through the rainy morning, or pulling a zipped up stroller with two small children. When I looked for riders, I saw an old man push his bike cautiously; it was overloaded with shopping bags and threatened to tip over any second. Another one shot pictures with his cell phone while he pedaled through the city. In a park I watched a mother teach her young daughter to ride in a straight line. As I got into a streetcar a young man dropped his bike against a lantern post and ran to catch a bus.

Between advertising pillars and graffiti and flowers Heidelberg is awash in color. The mountain cemetery took my breath away with its dedication to the remains of the famed as well as the obscure. I walked past a thousand graves that bloomed like miniature gardens, gravestones that looked like sculptures, and benches that invited me to sit and meditate. In the oldest part, the Jewish cemetery, tall, rugged monuments with Hebrew inscriptions were shaded by ancient trees. Hours flew by while I read, sat, photographed, and mused.

Another afternoon I stumbled into the stunning accomplishment of a group of local high schools. Close to twenty thousand small wooden blocks, decorated and linked together into a long wall, tell the result of an Internet letter begging to preserve peace and international law. Each block symbolizes one signature. One call to end human suffering. I had a quick relapse into my personal history when the display filled me with pride because I once belonged to one of those schools.

My last weekend was dedicated to the Autumn Festival. I listened to the mayor of Heidelberg Germany give a speech and the mayor of Heidelberg South Africa respond. A Latin band competed with an oompah band. Knights and musicians paraded through Main Street and the biggest flea market I’ve ever seen spread over Old Town. The narrower the street the bigger the displays. Clothes hung from windows, dolls hid under tables, dishes, jewelry, old toys, books, LPs, CDs, shoes, sabers, handbags tossed on tables, chairs, and boxes. It took me hours to squeeze through the crowds.

The next day I wandered through the medieval market around the university. I listened attentively to the humor of the big bad wolf as he forced the audience to pay attention to his side of the fairy tale. I watched little girls and their mothers dunk yarn into vats to form felted balls and I saw little boys swing ancient weapons over their heads. Fathers drank hot mead or lukewarm beer and ate staples of the twelfth century - flat breads topped with bacon grease and herbs, roasted pig, sausage.

My last evening in Heidelberg exposed me to another first. In December I had been overwhelmed by the sounds of an organ concert at the Church of the Holy Spirit. This time I attended a trumpet performance in the church, baroque trumpet to be exact. Mozart, Vivaldi, Neruda, Bärenz. But a trumpet in a church? Two young men behind me told me proudly that the soloist had once been their teacher. What I didn’t know then, I found later, on the Internet at home. Edward Tarr, the man who performed the solos, is one of the world’s leading musicologists and a foremost authority on baroque and romantic instruments. It was all so unpretentious. So beautiful. A perfect ending for a perfect month.

For my final night I took a room at the Holländer Hof. Last December, on the same spot, in room 225, I had said goodbye to Heidelberg with nagging regret. I had stood by the window – sad – as if I had carelessly packed an unfinished task into my suitcase. Though I had woven many errant strands of emotions into the quilt of my past, sliding in and out of remembrances, pacing back and forth through narrow streets, the farewell was difficult.

This time I just wanted to gaze at the street where I had lived when I was a young woman. And I gazed. Several times during the night. Early in the morning. Minutes before the shuttle was due to pick me up. I felt myself being drawn into a meditative state as I breathed deeply in front of the open window. The lights on the Old Bridge glimmered through the mist. The castle was, as usual so early in the morning, shrouded in fog. A pride of lions – my thoughts – slinked down the cobblestone street and disappeared around the bend. The phone rang.

“Good morning! Are you ready?”