Landing

The last few weeks before leaving the US were really difficult. Every day was a fresh assortment of problems to solve that took precedence over all the sadness of leaving our life. It was a miniature military operation and there was no room for anything but logistics. Efficient logistics are not compatible with emotional response, especially as they approach escape velocity. I don't mind shoving the last few days into a pit of oblivion, honestly. The only memory I will reserve is for my friends and neighbors, who helped pack and clean and take care of pets and drive us to the airport. The friends who said "I will take care of that" and they did. They are golden.

We landed in Brussels, stuffed our nine (9) suitcases into a storage facility, and got on a series of trains and buses to Roetgen, Germany. Our house in Brussels wasn't open until 15 August so we had to go somewhere for a couple weeks. The only thing that sounded nice to me was to sit in the countryside with nothing to do. Roetgen is small but mighty in its powers of restoration, I can testify. It's outside Aachen, which has a gorgeous cathedral and a convenient train station. It was the first German town that was captured by the Allied forces in World War 2 and there are loads of remnants from the war around the countryside--especially these anti-tank fortifications in the ground called Dragon's Teeth. We found a house at the very end of a tiny village street that is owned by a sweet lady named Heidi. She presented me with a bottle of my favorite mineral water (Gerolsteiner is from there! It is actually from there and I did not know!) and told us to go straight to a restaurant called Steaks & Co. which is not at all what you'd think. It's actually a beer garden type of place where all the locals seem to end up and owned by a Bosnian family. The second time we were there the daughter of the owners, around 12 or so, said to me "You are so pretty!" and I said "YOU are so pretty!" and then we were friends. Miles got the tomatensuppe and I got the other thing that didn't have meat in it, and Phil had beer and brats and cevapi and rinderfilet and probably took about two years off his life expectancy.

For the first few days we slept and looked at cows. There were two living behind our house, next to a stream. Miles built boats and sailed them downstream and I read mystery novels with the cows. Every day I went to Edeka, which Heidi had informed me was the best grocery store. Heidi is right. Edeka has more aisles of various dairy than I have ever before seen in my life. Edeka has chocolate and cookies and a bakery counter with friendly ladies and tomatensuppe and Kniepp bath salts for a song and a sarcastic check out guy who sings out "ciao ciao, cheers" after he's done ringing you up. I could live there.

This region of Germany is called the Eifel and, in addition to hosting the ancient volcanic source of Gerolsteiner, it is home to a lovely national park and an almost-too-picturesque village called Monschau. We eventually pulled ourselves away from cows and Edeka and got on many buses and explored the region. I loved it, Miles loved it, Phil loved it, except when we missed our buses. One outing a day was about all we could handle in that first week. Mostly we just read, played in the stream, hiked around, and planned when and what we'd next eat. No one wanted it to end.

Heidi drove us up to the bus stop on our last day, hugged us, and waved until we pulled away.