Rushing towards France

Having survived the treacherous road through the Austrian Alps, I drove east towards Liechtenstein. To me the independent little city-state looked like an ordinary German town. David and I did not stop, but drove as fast as our rental car would go on a surprisingly flat highway across Switzerland.

In mid-afternoon we paused for tea and cakes in Zurich. On later trips I visited Zurich several times and enjoyed the historical museum with its enormous globe of the World made in the 16th or 17th Century with names of New Mexico pueblos (some out of place with Taos below El Paso) and California as a separate island. I rode the trains over the mountains to Montreau on Lake Geneva, but somehow I never saw Lake Zurich.

When David and I paused in Zurich, we did not see much but shop windows. Leaving in a hurry, I drove through a long, long tunnel. Afterwards I wondered if it was really that long, but it surprised me again on a later trip. The tunnel took us into Germany, where I kept driving after dark, and the Black Forest was black indeed. Never did get to Freiburg.

As we approached the Rhine River, I made David listen to a history lesson. I explained the Rhine’s significance as the border between Germany and France, how the two countries fought back and forth over the Rhine for centuries. I told him about our capture of the bridge at Raighmagen (spell checker couldn’t find that), enabling U.S. troops to enter the German homeland, a turning point in World War II.

Then we came to the bridge over the Rhine, an insignificant flat bridge, like the one between downtown and the Oak Cliff section of Dallas. On the other side, in a small booth like a telephone booth, a Frenchman wearing an official uniform with a kewpee cap (can’t spell that either) read a newspaper. As our German car invaded France, he lifted one hand to wave us by without raising his eyes from his paper.

We entered Colmar, and I stopped at the first lighted building I saw. It was a bar. Not a picturesque place, as I might have imagined, but a linoleum-on-the-floor, Formica-on-the-counter kind of place. I asked the slim, middle-aged woman tending bar (How do French women never get fat?) if she knew where my son and I could spend the night. In heavily accented English she said she had a room upstairs. It was as plain as the bar below, but it was clean, quiet (Frenchmen seem to drink without loud talking) clean, and cheap.

David and I spent the night in Colmar without seeing a darned thing. I’ve heard – and seen pictures – of a charming old town with a famous cathedral. I regret we didn’t take at least one day to see it. Why didn’t we linger? Why do we hurry through life without “stopping to smell the roses?” Instead, after a good night’s sleep, we left our rather dismal lodging right after breakfast.

Thinking back on that day when David and I rushed through five countries, including Liechtenstein, which really should not count, I am reminded of an old lady here at Montclair who sat on a bus for twelve days and thought she had seen Europe. David and I saw nothing that day.

I went back to Europe many times and never did go to all the places I wanted to see. I would go again if dialysis did not make it impossible. That day I knew what I was missing, but I was in a hurry to get to Paris.