Adventure Gone Awry

Is it time to stop traveling?

After a nice breakfast with Trixi and Lorenz, they left to attend a lecture while I stayed behind to work on my book. Lorenz would be back later to deliver me to the train station. As I waited, I grew increasingly anxious about the impending train transfers to get to Montabaur where Bernd (Tanja’s father-in-law) would pick me up many hours later. 

As promised, Lorenz shuttled me to the train station and I said goodbye to the friends who had so graciously shared their home with me for the past 3 weeks. 

I am much slower these days in processing information, and I have struggled at times in the past to locate the correct platform and train. The first transfer had only five minutes between arrival and departure. We arrived three minutes late, so I had two minutes to get off, find the next train and board it. Gratefully the next train was right across from the one I just got off and I made it!  Victory!! I was on this new train for two or three hours and could relax a bit.  

There was a really friendly young man from India sitting across from me. We talked for the first half hour or so. 

The time allowed for the next transfer was fifteen minutes. Lorenz told me that I would need to go up and down to get from the platform at which I would arrive to the platform from which I would leave. I was a bit apprehensive, but it seemed straight forward. I got my backpack on, stood by the exit as my train was arriving in the station, moved quickly, got off, saw an escalator up, got on it, saw an escalator - got on that and sure enough, I was on the correct platform with plenty of time to complete the transfer. There was only one track on that platform, so there was no other train behind me going somewhere else. The digital sign above the platform read Train #814, the one listed on my ticket. Train #814 arrived on time and I boarded it for the last leg to Montabaur. I relaxed. It would not be long before I would be in Montabaur to meet Bernd. I texted him, Tanja and her husband Sebastian that I would be arriving on time. I felt good to have accomplished the transfers.    

As the train was approaching the Montabaur stop, it did not slow down. It sailed right past that stop. The apprehension I’d felt that morning returned immediately, taking on the form of horror, horror that the fear of getting on the wrong train had been realized. How was it possible? I was at the right place and the right time; all the posted electronic signs I could see had confirmed it. 

When finally the ticket agent was done checking tickets, she told me that there were two trains scheduled seven minutes apart on that one track. The one I was on was running late, so it arrived at the time Train #814 was scheduled to arrive.  I was on the wrong train. One headed to the same final destination without making nearly as many stops, including mine, Montabaur. 

First, she pulled up on the screen of her handheld the two trains I would need to take to accomplish the return trip to Montabaur. She told me to take a picture of the screen.  Then, she gave me a tiny printout so that I would not need to pay more to get back to my original destination.   

This all happened in the last moments before disembarking. We were in a small area surrounded by people, luggage in hand anxious to get off since this was the destination of the train (Koblenz). I had to push my way through the crowd to get to the luggage rack to get my backpack. I grabbed it, put it on my shoulder, with my electronics bag in hand, and made it off the train. 

I was unclear where exactly I needed to go to get to the first train. A young man from Iran who had overheard my dilemma offered to help me get to the next train since he would also be taking it. He was such a gift to me. We started down the stairs to find our platform. I was struggling with my backpack, trying to move it from one shoulder to both, when I saw why I was having trouble. There were two pairs of boots hanging from it. 

The level of horror I felt exceeded what I had felt when I discovered I was on the wrong train. My backpack was still on the train. I tried to get back, but I could see that the train doors were shut. The train started moving. It was over. My backpack was leaving on an adventure of its own without me. Not only was I without its contents, all my clothing and a couple of prescription medications, but someone else had just lost their backpack, unwittingly stolen by me! 

I talked with my new friend Arya and decided that at least I could try to find someplace to leave the backpack that might allow them to eventually find it. We found our way to a ticket agent. He agreed to put it in his little office and get it to the lost and found at another station where lost and found is kept. Just as I was handing it to him, a couple came running up behind me saying it was their backpack. I was so grateful for both our benefits. They got their rucksack back and I could let go of feeling responsibility for someone else’s plight. They were grateful to have it back, and one of the couple said he had had his hand on my backpack at one point.

Arya stayed with me and led me to the platform on the screenshotted itinerary. I took the train with him, planning to transfer once more to get to Montabaur. He showed me exactly where to make that transfer. He told me that he came from Iran three years ago. His girlfriend is going to University in Cologne, Germany. He doesn’t yet know where he/they will go next.  We both are in traveling mode. 

I got off and found my way to the platform on the itinerary to wait for train #821. As I was waiting, a fellow from Africa who is seeking asylum asked for help in finding the train to Munich he was supposed to take. He had an envelope of papers and pockets full of small pieces of paper. Among them he found a ticket, but it had no specific train information. The train I would be taking was going to Munich, but I told him to wait until the train stopped and ask the Agent who got off for help. 

I recognized that my dilemma was tiny by comparison to what he is going through. 

When it was nearing the time when my train should be arriving, there was no train. Then one arrived right behind me on a different platform number. I checked the train number, and although on the wrong track, it was the right number. That train took me to Montabaur.  I texted Bernd and waited for him to arrive. After more than one miscommunication about our locations, we found each other. 

Waiting for me at Bernd’s home in Welschneudorf was a pot of hearty Lentil soup that Bina had prepared in anticipation of my arrival. There was a sausage that had been cooked in it. Bernd sliced it up, gave me utensils, and opened a beer for me. I had only had snacks since breakfast, so I wolfed down a couple of bowls of soup and savored every drop of the beer. I went to bed soon after and realized I would be sleeping in the only clothes to my name. 

The next morning Ulle, a close friend of the family who also speaks English, joined us. I got to know her the last time I was here.  We had a full breakfast of fresh rolls and sweet spreads, a savory variety of sausages, cheeses, and soft-boiled eggs. After the meal, she got out her iPad and we filled out the online forms identifying the lost backpack in hopes that it might end up at the train station’s lost and found department. 

Twenty-four hours later the email arrived. The backpack had finished its journey in the train station in Dortmund, Germany, about two and a half hours from where I was in Welschneudorf. 

The following day Bernd drove the sometimes crowded Autobahn among many LKW (trucks) almost 400 kilometers round trip to Dortmund and back. I retrieved it from the Agent and thought better of giving her a hug and a kiss. I just gave my backpack a warm embrace before taking it out to the car and depositing it gently into the trunk.

It reminded me of a Monarch butterfly chrysalis, ready to open and unfurl its Ziplock wings to release my underwear, socks, T-shirts, house shoes, sleeping shorts and shirt, the little scissors for trimming my mustache and beard, my toiletries, my two prescription bottles, and most important of all, my scrubby for showering. I had put on fresh clothes and clean underwear on Friday morning before I left. It was now Tuesday afternoon. I had worn and slept in the same underclothes since then, very grateful that the weather was cool and there were no long uphill hikes.  There is only so much wicking of moisture and scent management to be found in even the best of the hiking garb.  Bernd and I could not divert to stop for lunch or ice cream on the way back since the morning’s full charge in his electric car was down to six percent when we rolled into the garage. On Wednesday, after resuming my prescriptions that morning, I realized that the thyroid medication actually seems to make a difference.  

I have all sorts of conflicting feelings about what happened.  At one level it was traumatizing. It reinforced an unavoidable reality. Anything can happen. Just because things are going very well, just as hoped, does not mean things can’t change for the worse in seconds. Yes, good things can happen just as quickly, but that reality is not traumatizing. Since things like this have happened before, I am fully aware of that painful truth. There is a level of dread that will not allow me to count my chickens before they are hatched. I needed to have that backpack in my hands before I could let go completely of last vestige of apprehension that it might not be there at the lost and found in Dortmund.

On the other hand, hugging that backpack reinforced another reality. I have taken the wrong train, subway, bus, before. I have missed the stop I was supposed to get off at before. I have forgotten to pack something I needed, forgotten to put my travel bag in the car, only to discover that I had done so at the destination many hours away. In spite of those experiences and more like them, in spite of every major disaster that could have happened, I am still alive. I have just taken my next breath. There will be a last breath. Where will I be when I take it? I don’t know. Should it happen while I am writing this post, it will be in Welschneudorf, Germany.

I am eighty years old and still breathing in spite of countless missteps and potential disasters. That is comforting, reassuring. It does not change reality. I may not be breathing later today or tomorrow. I can either live in terror of that reality, or simply live. I hold expectations lightly, accepting that they may not be realized. At some level, I live in a state of intentional denial. I know the worst can happen. I choose to locate that knowledge outside of my daily reality. I choose to live in the present, engaging in life fully while I have it. The good news is that I can choose to do things in the present that bode well for the future.  I cannot live in that future until it arrives, but I can stay active, challenge my brain, take my meds, eat good food, make friends and even make plans in the present. With or without me, the future will happen no matter what I do. It is enough to live now, to take the next breath. Whether perceived through the lens of Religion or Science that next breath and the moment of life it brings with it is absolutely miraculous. 

• Peter