Over the Rhine to Germany

Early Sunday morning, May first, we trained to Colmar where my sister Lydia met us and drove us to her home in Emmendingen, Germany. On the way, we crossed over the Rhine river, stopping to watch ships navigate through the locks. It was fascinating to see how the big boats lead the way, find their places along the side, then the small boats follow and snuggle up even closer to the sides. Then all are raised slowly by infilling water until the right level is reached and they are let out to continue up the river.

You can see there was quite a large crowd enjoying this. It was rather like a party where a magician is entertaining everyone with impossibly gigantic and unreasonable tricks -- the huge gates that raise and lower, the giant boats, the mass of water, and the small personal boats tagging along behind, everything in order, but everything wondrous, too.

Lydia, having lived in Germany for 20 years or so, speaks English with a German accent and has trouble remembering some English words. Even though her sons tease her about the few mistakes she still makes, she is perfectly competent with everyone – the storekeepers, her art students, the landlord, the bureaucracy, etc. That lovely lady with the big smile is Lydia, and I was lucky to get her picture since she usually ducks and covers.

France and Germany have had difficult relations probably since before the Rhine separated the barbaric Germans from the Romanized Gauls of what became France. Mary and I, being Francophiles, had to tone down our enthusiasm for the French in Lydia’s presence. She’s lived in Germany long enough to have absorbed their prejudices against the free-flowing Franks.

I asked her what about them bothered her most. She replied, “They drive too close.”

We laughed, but she was serious. She’s right, too, but it never bothered me.

When we were in Germany in 1961, the people we met were not happy to see us. They had been through World War II, rebuilt their country afterwards and – I’m not sure what the reason was, but Mary and I felt unwelcome. One man is indelibly etched on both our memories. We had gotten used to jaywalking in New York, London, and Paris, but when we did it in Frankfurt, a man followed us for two blocks scolding us in German. I had had a year of German in college, so could understand a bit and speak a bit more, and though it wasn’t ideal, it was better than if we’d tried speaking English all the time.

Six years ago, I returned to visit my daughter who was in the Army stationed in Bavaria, and also the family of a boy who had been an exchange student with my husband’s family years before, and, of course, Lydia. Then and this time, I felt so welcome everywhere I went! The atmosphere was totally different. It wasn’t only because I had people to visit, because I traveled on my own between places and found friendly, helpful people everywhere. Time heals, and I’m glad.

I’ll tell about Emmendingen, Freiburg, and the Black Forest in the next post. They deserve their own space.