A Walker in the Suburbs

As I pine away for what I’ve seen (and I expect no sympathy — come on, I just had a European vacation) I decide to absorb the vacation, to swallow it whole, so it becomes a part of me. I want to eat like a European (smaller portions, more mineral water), shop like a European (every day? with a basket on my arm? this part I know I won’t manage), walk like a European (briskly with purpose but not so obviously for exercise), dress like a European (more heels, please) and de-clutter like a European (this is very crucial). For inspiration, a photo of daily life from one of my favorite European places, Czesky Krumlov.

Sometimes I finish a book, go right back to the beginning and start reading it again. This doesn’t happen often, but it happened with Driftless by David Rhodes. The book was recommended by an old friend, so it’s a word-of-mouth read, the best kind. It didn’t disappoint. Driftless tells the interlinked stories of the residents of Words, Wisconsin. One day Pastor Winifred Smith has a spiritual encounter with the Divine. Here’s how she tries to explain it to another character, a pivotal one, July Montgomery:

“Words are meaningless,” she said. “The truth dies before it fits into them. Language lacks the capacity to hold anything real. It serves an utterly different master. What’s really real is a home words can’t get into or out of.”

Reading the book for the second time, I realize how significant these lines are, because they apply not just to words themselves but to the town of Words, a “tiny town, which sits at the dead end of a steep valley.”

One of the things I like about the book is that it isn’t afraid to tackle the big topics — a belief in the beyond, why we live where we live, how impossibly lovely it is when one soul touches another. Many modern books shy away from these topics, take a much narrower slice of the pie. Rhodes cuts off a great big hunk of it. But he does it through Words, a place few people go. “State maps no longer include Words, and though Q [county trunk road and the only way into the town] is often pictured, the curving black line simply ends like a snipped-off black thread in a spot of empty white space. Even in [the nearby town of] Grange, most people don’t know where Words is.” Read this book, though, and Words will always be with you.

The second day home we drove to Indiana for Aunt Mary Ann’s funeral. So much has happened since we’ve been gone, so much has happened since we returned. Sadness and grief, yes, but also the healing salve of family. Our own three girls together again for the first time in five months. Giggles from the backseat on the nine-hour drive home yesterday, just like the old days.

We’ve seen many cemeteries in the last three weeks, most recently the bucolic Crown Hill in downtown Indianapolis. The photo above is from the Jewish Cemetery in Prague. Crowded in death as they were (in the ghetto) in life, these people clung to each other, to learning and to their own good names. Some of the graves here are 500 years old, said the audio tour guide, but if you know what to look for, you can read this graveyard like a book. A book of stones.

A few hours in Uppsala, Sweden, before heading home reminds me that I’ll soon be returning to a commute downtown. In Uppsala, a university town north of Stockholm, here’s how they arrive at their local train station. It’s the end of my trip and Ill be glad to get home. But I’ll miss the beauty, the ways of living, the quaint and the practical.

Today I leave Vienna, a city where time seems to have stopped. Time didn’t stop for me, though. I celebrated my birthday here yesterday. But as I move on into another year, it’s comforting to know that Vienna remains. A place of smokey cafes, quaint customs, careworn dignity. I’m looking for a picture that sums up this place — and of course I can’t find just one. Would it be St Stephansdom in the sunlight? An ancient walkway at the edge of the First District? A busy shopping street off Mariahilferstrasse? As I write these words, bells chime the hours. I’ll miss the bells, too. You can hear them no matter where you are.

Last night a Czech tour guide, a native of Czesky Krumlov, took us through the winding alleys of this marvelously preserved medieval village. She showed us the 16th-century murals on the wall, the rose medallions of the Rosenberg family that lived in the castle for centuries and a school that has been in continuous use since the 1400s. Czesky Krumlov has seen profound ethnic changes in the last century. First, the town lost many of its Czech inhabitants when it came under German control in 1938, and then, after 1945, all its German inhabitants. During the socialist years, the town was inhabited by people who had few ties to the region; large apartment complexes were built on the outer fringes. The inner core was preserved–not out of love for the place but out of disregard. “It was neglect,” our tour guide said. “Wonderful neglect.” And now, because of this wonderful neglect, we can walk through a town untouched by time.

Yesterday we took the U-bahn and tram to Kahlenberg. There we saw a church, a restaurant and an overlook. To the left was a path, a wanderweg. We took it down the hill past old vineyards and new grapes to Beethovengasse. At one point we stopped to look at a map. An old man offered to help us. “This is street Beethoven walked on every day,” he said. I listened to the birds and the brook. Did sounds like these inspire the Sixth Symphony, the “Pastorale,” the first movement of which is called “pleasant feelings upon arrival in the country”? While we were still technically in the city of Vienna, it felt like the country, or at the very least the suburbs. Not the suburbs of big box stores and traffic jams. Instead, a passage to the countryside. By that measure, I was once again a walker in the suburbs. A Walker in die Vororte.

We walked all over the First District yesterday, slipped into half a dozen churches, one of which was built in 740. And we ended the day at the Prater, the amusement park that lies between the Danube Canal and the River Danube. The centerpiece of the Prater is the giant ferris wheel known as the Wiener Riesenrad. I knew it as a frightening scene from the film “The Third Man” with Joseph Cotten and Orson Welles.

I rented “The Third Man” for Suzanne to watch before she came to Vienna. I’d heard it was set in Vienna and had never seen it before. The movie is set in post-war Vienna, a dark, dangerous place with enemies lurking in every corner. Vienna is in ruins. I thought, Suzanne will never want to visit Vienna after seeing this film. Now she wants to see the movie again.

I’m happy to report that we rode the Riesenrad and lived to tell the tale. This is not to say I didn’t hang on for dear life. But it was pretty tame, as ferris wheels go, and as we inched our way to the highest point, all Vienna was spread at our feet.

We met Suzanne yesterday; it had been more than five months since we’d seen her. While I was walking in the suburbs, she’s been walking in one of the great European capitals. So she took us on the first of many tours, to the Opera, Stephansdom, and Cafe Central, known for its sacher torte and Old World ambiance. We are going out again soon to the Naschmarkt and the Belvedere Castle and St. Mark’s and all sorts of other places. We have placed our hands in the capable hands of our established Vienna tour guide. Vienna has waited for us. And we have waited for Vienna.

Today we went to the Vasa Museum in Stockholm. It houses an almost completely intact 17th century warship, the Vasa, that sunk about 10 minutes into its maiden voyage in 1628 but wasn’t dredged up from Stockholm harbor until the late 1950s. The ship is a beautifully carved work of art, a messenger from the past. It’s grand and glorious. But listen to the movie, take the tour, and you learn that scores of men were crammed into its gun decks. Go down to the lowest level of the museum and you’ll meet some of the 40 men and women who perished when the ship sank, look at their skeletons and read about their lives. From their bones, scientists can learn about the diets of these people, the injuries they endured, the fractures that hadn’t healed, the illnesses they suffered. Almost all of them were malnourished; tooth decay and gum loss were common. Sailing out on this grand ship may have been the highlight of their difficult lives, and then, in an instant, it was all over. It’s easy to romanticize the past, especially when I’m traveling in Europe. The skeletons in the Vasa made me glad I live in the modern world.