My Travels into the Past

Tyana on the "Old Bridge" in Heidelberg

My Christmas Dinner at the "Ritter"

The Street where I lived

I led a purpose-driven life while I traveled. I explored. I read. I wrote. I took pictures. Now, home again, I wander aimlessly among German verbs, CNN news reports, and the rising waters of the Los Gatos Creek. I sleep only two hours at a stretch; at four in the morning I print glossy eight by tens of foreign affairs; at seven, when a Waste Management employee empties my trashcan, I struggle to express my general sadness in terms other than the German ‘trauern.’ What is the word I try to remember? Mourning. That’s it. I’m mourning my lost options. Matching sock to boot to distance of walking. Weighing the probability of rainfall against wearing hat, scarf, and gloves. Selecting the tastiest meats, cheeses, rolls, and fruits from the hotel breakfast buffet. While I stir my bland prepackaged oatmeal, while I battle to regain the rhythm of my previous life, I yawn. Not enough sleep? Boredom? Lack of oxygen? This is my third morning back from the trip to Nürnberg and Heidelberg, but still, snowflakes sliver through the air in front of my eyes; my feet navigate the cobblestones of twelfth century alleyways; my eyes see gold plated fountains and fortified bell towers.

Soon the mind will reverse its aim again. I know from experience that images fade, that English will replace my mother tongue once more, and that castles will be things I fabricate in my dreams and hide from the sunny California sky. Retrieval of the trashcan will be an automatic part of Wednesday morning; oatmeal will be standard fare; sitting at my computer will neither induce a yawn nor will it make me sad.

This last trip was born from a desire to touch snow. A desire to connect with the feelings that once were part of me on German streets, under gray skies, and in the shivering light of Christmas candles. But were these feelings really induced by an ancient cityscape? I used to think so. But then I walked for hours without being able to reclaim the breathless excitement of my school years. I touched sandstone walls and peeked into dark doorways. I sampled stores, cafés churches, castles. When I gazed into the window of a yarn shop, the same shop I used to enter 50 years ago, I saw my reflection; I did not see the eager seventeen-year old student who spent her allowance on knitting patterns. When I halted in front of a cigar store I was not amused by the life-size Negro statue donning a red Santa hat. He’s been part of the display as long as I can remember. We used to giggle and nod hello to him on our way to school.

Maybe I finally have to admit that one can’t go home again. It seems my memories are most alive when I sit at my computer at home. But wait; this isn’t completely true. There were flickers of recognition. Small excitements. Things that made me hold my breath. In hindsight I realize that it isn’t a rediscovery of emotions but a distinct awareness of specific sensations. On my first full day in Germany, after de-icing had delayed my plane in Toronto for two hours, after the airline left my suitcase behind, after my train was an hour late and filled to capacity, and after I arrived in a gray, damp, yet snow-less Nürnberg, after a few hours of restless sleep, I woke at four in the morning, jumped out of bed and stood in awe in front of the open dormer window until my legs were numb from the icy wind that blew into the room.

What I saw might not have excited anybody else, but for me it was an image I had longed for. The roofs across the street were white with snow; only a few red shingles peeked through. The sky loomed in darkness but the air seemed crowded with swirling white dots. When did I last stand at a window, watching snowflakes land on rooftops? Later, in bed again, I let my thoughts visit all the places I had once called home and the only one high up enough and close enough to other buildings of that height, was the hotel my mother, father, and I lived in during the war. It was in Velbert, in the industrial north of Germany. I was four years old at the time. When air raids forced us into nightly evacuations to the basement, I would sometimes stand in the middle of our dark bedroom; I would look at the sky and the silent world of dancing snowflakes as they settled on the roofs across the street. Then a siren would wail and my mother would grab me and we’d run five or six flights of stairs down to the shelter.
There were other occasions in Nürnberg that suddenly aroused one of my senses. The smell of potato pancakes at the Christmas market was so strong that I returned every evening for a late meal. The woman who scooped them from the hot oil barely nodded when I told her that they tasted like the ones my grandmother used to fry.

And one morning, at an open-air market, I was reminded of my grandmother again. I had taken a picture of the colorful display and was drawn to a group of apples. They looked leathery. I let my hand glide over the rough surface of the biggest one and searched for a name, when the owner rushed to the front to be of assistance. I suppose Oma would have scolded me if I had violated a rule; the man just shot me a disapproving glance. I should have remembered, one must only point to the fruit, the vendor will pick it up, weigh it and hand it to the customer.

“We heisst der Apfel?” I asked. What is the name of this apple?

“Boskopf.” He frowned and asked me how many I wanted.

I couldn’t contain the thrill he had incited in me with the word “Boskopf,” and told him that I hadn’t seen one in over forty years, that we used to store them in our basement, and that I knew exactly what they would look like in the spring.

“Wie ein altes Weib,” I said. Like an old woman. “All shriveled up.”

The man stood patiently when I explained that I lived in America and that we didn’t have Boskopf there. Then he handed me the one apple I wanted and counted the change I gave him.

When I came to Heidelberg I realized, again, how easy it is to bring back the sensations foods produce. How the mealy flesh of chestnuts moistens in the mouth. How the pungent smell of herring sandwiches lingers. How peasoup ladles slowly and begs for the companionship of smoked ham.

Ok, so food is a quickstep into the past. What I didn’t expect was the effect of sound. After a lengthy trek through Oldtown, following the steps I would have taken on my way to school or work in the 1950s, I was tired. It rained heavily all day, my left hip ached, I had not connected with any of the sites I had visited. Neither old teachers’ voices nor the taste of a first kiss, nor the pain over a lover’s infidelity came to life. Most of the several-hundred-year old buildings were unchanged and cars and bicycles still clung to the sidewalks of narrow alleys, and I strode like a zombie, driven forward by the need to experience something. Yet my mind stayed uninvolved. Curious and appreciative but uninvolved. I might as well have walked through old Cairo or the back streets of Beijing. Antiquity? Yes. Familiarity? No. Then bells rang. An Advent evening service at the Church of the Holy Spirit. I entered the wooden portal, was handed a sheet of paper with a song, sat, and waited. While I admired hundreds of flickering candles the organist began to pump the pedals of the organ. I watched her body move, watched her solemn face come alive, and slowly the gray city washed away, floated into the candle light, rose into the music that surrounded me. I was transported to the small church of my hometown where, at the age of seven, I was an angel, proclaiming the arrival of the Christ Child. Later I shook hands with the pastor, a woman of about forty, and told her that my son had been baptized in the Church of the Holy Spirit, that I hadn’t been inside for more than forty years.

“Frohe Weihnachten.” Merry Christmas. She nodded and smiled. Then she held her hand out to the person behind me.

As soon as I left the church I lost the magic. Organ music proved to be a fleeting sensation, strong enough to soothe but not strong enough to bring back religious devotion. A haunting experience.

Probably the most intense feelings came to me each evening when I was safely tucked into the comfort of the Hotel Holländer Hof. I was sure they had given me the best room in the building. Two windows. One facing the Old Bridge and the Neckar River, the other facing Obere Neckarstrasse, where I had lived in three different houses from the age of nineteen to twenty-three. I could see all three of them and spent several hours by the window at various times of day and night. However, this was not what brought me closer to remembering the winters of my past. For one thing, it only snowed once while I was there and the snow soon disappeared into the wet cobblestones. What made me remember Christmas the way it used to be was television.

Almost uninterruptedly through the night a Bavarian station put on an impressive array of old-time craftsmen, musicians, storytellers, cooks, and artisans of every kind. Nativity Scene collectors and carvers followed men in traditional costumes who sawed logs, and women with angelic faces who sang familiar songs. Grandmothers baked gingerbread and brewed hot wine and cider. There was Father Time from Russia handing out small presents. A marathon to aid poor children showcased major figures of European politics and entertainment, all of them in storybook settings of alpine splendor and festive décor.

I didn’t want to go to sleep because I didn’t want to miss any of it. Whatever eluded me on the streets came to me in my hotel bed late at night in the form of televised romantic retrospectives. I even saw one of the favorite films of my teen years on Christmas Eve. “Sissi,” a historical romance about Franz Josef, the young emperor of Austria and his love for one of his cousins. The film was released just before Christmas 1955 and now celebrated its fiftieth year. There were write-ups in the newspapers and though I fell asleep halfway through, I was thrilled to watch Romy Schneider who would be my age had she survived her fame. She could never rid herself of the saccharin image of innocence and romance and committed suicide at the age of forty-three. She is said to have died of a broken heart.

I think that I have learned several lessons on this trip. The journey back to one’s youth is a solitary journey, tolerated by others, but not shared. Deep emotions come from interactions with people and are tethered to the time of their occurrence. They can’t be recreated by a walk in the footsteps of the past. As I found out, walls do not speak. And though it would be nice to belong, the spiritual flood of organ music does not bring back religion.

All this is actually a good thing, I believe. How confused would the mind become if it had to produce two experiences simultaneously? A lifetime of impressions has altered my responses; while I can taste, hear, feel, touch, and smell the past occasionally, I no longer react to it. My mind lives in the now. It has enough to deal with when it is suddenly transported from one country to the other, when it can’t quite keep pace with the landscape, the language, the images. As I am writing this, I can feel the immediate past fading. But serendipitous moments – the sound of the organ, swirling snow, an apple – they are like bright stars on the night sky; they can be connected, like dots, to form the life that is uniquely mine across decades and across oceans.