Account of a trip (with licence of sentiment and no pics)

Thursday, midnight tolls. Metaphorically thoug, as bells here (if any) get swallowed by the gears of S-Bahn, U-Bahn, trams, buses, bikes´chains, random by passers.

My mobile rings:: it´s B. “Would you like to come here over the weekend?” Here means Hennestedt, a village of 1914 inhabitants about 1h away from the Danish border.

No need to ask: last minute trips simply galvanize me. In the morning I bike to my office with my back pack ready with the essential to face Nordic climate (or so I thought). I dribble everyday duties and fake a stomach ache, hole myself in the bathroom and get Berlin Linien Bus on the phone.

With a bunch of Euros I secure myself a last minute round trip Berlin-Hamburg-Berlin. I skip my lunch break, leave my two-wheels precious to the cares of a colleague, at 17.30 sharp I flee to ZOB, the central bus station. On my way there I throw a glance to the tiny houses with orchards in the outskirts of the city, countryside miniatures to fulfill Berliners´ longing for  bucolic illusions

Once at the station, as usual I glimpse furtively at the caretakers coming somewhere from the East, going back home with card box boxes roughly tighten together, suitcases sealed with sellotape, at the homeless dozing off on the benches and at the globe trotters with flip flops and boots hanging from their giant rucksacks.

I breathe this humanity, then collect my ticket. I should have had only 10 mins to change in Hamburg, but luck blesses the brave and I manage to slip into a belated bus which departs at around 18.30.

We drive through flat Brandenburg, it takes only 20 mins for all traces of urbanization to disappear: woods and countryside all over, only road signs and wind turbines remind us that, after all, we are still in the heart of Europe.

In Hamburg I manage to drop by the WC centre and swallow a bread roll. At 22.10 I take the train to Kiel, getting off at Elmshorn. 

It´s cold, the station is tiny, I think one could easily count on a hand the number of foreigners having been around (let alone, maybe, Danes). Just to deny my statistics, a Cameroonian emerges from the dark and decides to kill time telling me why he ended up in Germany. Questioned on why the hell is in the middle of nowhere up here, he shillyshallies with a “visiting someone”.  

Numb with cold, I hop on the last train to Husum, my stop: Heide. The names on the way turn grimly Scandinavian, I cling  onto Heirnich Böll not to give in to Morpheus.

At the ghastly stop, B. is the only human being around, but this is not at all the reason why it feels good to see him. He’ll be away for the whole month,  sailing down to Lisbon and chasing after tides and good winds. He left Berlin a week ago to go and visit his parents, we thought we wouldn´t see eachother in the meantime, but here we are, thrilled walk-ons looking for the right lines in their scripts to play.  

I had no time to worry about the meeting with his parents: no freaking out over what shall I say, what shall I bring them, what do they expect from me. I reach B´s house tired and unkempt. His sister is also waiting for me, everybody speaks with a thick Swabian accent, it´s like ending up in Südtirol with a family from Apulia. Old Mr and Mrs W. moved from Swabia to this remote strip of Germany bordering with Denmark to find their peaceful corner of heaven among cows and deer. E. (the sister) has the same, sweet countenace of her brother, the same little nose and high forehead, the same, sweet, slightly oblique eyes that seem to run int he family, only dark instead of blue. She looks friendly and I forget I am among strangers.

I forgot what our small talking touched upon, I quickly sneaked into the family Wohnwagen, companion of many a family journeys in the past. It´s a big car equipped with a cook, a tap and a fridge. The roof can be folded and allows passenger to stand in the back or becomes an additional bed. Total number of beds available: 4.

In the morning, only after a cool shower I start resembling a human being again. When I sit to the family table, I am aware that now it is indeed time for the classical introduction to parents. Crunching on slices of black bread, I also get to know N, the hoppy Buddhist boyfriend of B´s sister. He utters no word of German, and we end up speaking French as it´s too early for me to grasp his English with a thick Gallic  accent. For once, having another Southerner at my side calms my embarrassment. Even the long-time family pets welcome me: Nova, a beautiful golden retriever who stares ceaselessly at whatever lands into my plate, and Silvester, a cat so fat that, unable to jump on my lap, he pokes his nails into my legs and moans till I lift him up.

It seems the Frogeater and the sister stayed especially to shake my noble hand, they leave quickly, not before Mum W. has taken the ritual group picture. N's quiet smile still lingers in my mind, it reminds me of an ancient, long-forgotten calm I've never got to experience. 

Mum W. parades the classic color combination: beaming blue eyes, spaghetti-straight hair with remaining blonde sparkles, jeans and sweatshirt regardless of her age, she’s a frank speaker and has no manic compulsive obsession for the car hair fluttering around. Dad W. reminds me of an orthodox icon of the Fathers of the Church: he already rounded the mark of 70, a long beard and the serene composure of someone who knows a lot. It doesn´t come hard to chat with him while scanning the titles of the numberless books on his shelves in the bright living room.

Once taken possession of the Wohnwage, the dog, B. and I get on the move, destination: Sankt Peter  on the North Sea. The North Sea has a beauty of its own: no kaleidoscopic glows nor the pervasive smells of the Mediterranean. Clouds gallop furiously , wind blows pitilessly, and sudden, violent rain showers shred the shy sunrays.  Colors are gloom, low tide leaves kms of slime, dead shellfish, shells, some rare algae. People walk slowly on the soft seabed, the bravest let water lap against their knees, most do kite-surfing. The happiest are dogs of every size and race, they run, roll on the ground, make friends. Their  owners are intent to keep straight in the wind and do not mind them not behaving.

In Friedrichstadt small, pied houses decorated with ancient fishing hooks, rusting boats at the harbor, everything like in a postcard. On the market square I catch sight of an osteria from Rome, I skim curious through the menu and feel proud we´ve spread even here, as no fake Italian would come up with some typical Rome recipes or make no mistake in spelling their names.

Once back home, B the betrayer claims he is in “vacation mood” and takes a nap, leaving me to entertain his parents. For dinner mum W. proposes something which is eatable, after all, at these latitudes hunger makes me turn a blind eye on cooking skills. The dessert satisfies my culinary ambitions: it´s called, simply, “the Danish lump”, it´s made of marzipan covered with sugar and raisins. The big sweater conceals my waistline and the wind bowls at our last conversations before slipping into bed.

Sunday it’s time to reach Husum, a “city” for the modest local urban standards. I follow a sign saying “castle”, ending up deceived by a building which is just slightly bigger than all the others, no antique portals nor towers. It rains intensely and Nova can´t ask for any better, I pull sharply on the XL waterproof jacket which I borrowed from mum W. Then we reach some artificial dykes, I see no  beauty in the mechanical art, but the grey ebb and flow on naked concrete nearly brings me the voice of the little Mermaid.

Eventually, we drive to an island, Nordstrand: the landscape blends into mild hills, sheep and cows tempt Nova and I need to have her on a leash. The wind moans above us, we glance at bright red light towers in the horizon and breathe the drizzle.

Then a second, last supper all together. I do not really know what I am eating. There´s tagliatelle on a plate, and undefined green veggies in a bowl, covered with cheese and some sauce on the side. Again, I´m far too hungry to perform a lecture on pasta purism, and I end up once again devouring the marzipan lump together with a “Viennese waltz”, a bomb iceacream with hazelnut, caramel, nuts.

At 18.30 I need to get going. I can´t stop brooding over mum W.´s observation that “I have a Roman nose”, as in Italy I´ve always been proud of sporting a small, anonymous nose. At the train station I come across a sample of mos germanicum: a girl lurking at the vending machine asks everybody if they´re travelling to Hamburg.

Indeed, 5 passengers travelling together are entitled to get a group ticket.  Instead of paying 21, crazy E (for a 1h30 journey), each pays only 7. No panic, no one is expecting any social contact: it only takes to sit not too far away from eachother, nobody feels like buttonholing the others. It´s all about saving money, an act made official by writing down the names:  Sarah Stenzel, Niko Börger, Marthe Leikkeber and Marwin Weven embodied for me the inscrutable collisions of random atoms.

I change again in Elmshorn, then I drop off in Hamburg. This time I don´t manage to take a tour of the bakeries open 24/7, I rush to the bus. A baritone voice declaims the on board Decalogue: no mobile phones allowed, use of trash-bins “encouraged”, only toilet paper to be flushed down the toilettes, seat belts to be fastened according to this and that new law .

On the way back Morpheus easily wins over Böll. I emerge from my numbness just in time to catch a glimpse of the spectral S-Bahn at Messe Nord. It lies in the Far West, close to a pile of steel looking alike the Eiffel Tower. The only sound rumbling in the underpass comes from the training of a solitary skater. One last sly glance at the people populating the station, and I catch the last S-Bahn home. 

There is a Turk training his massive mastiff, and a lanky German keeps saying how sweet its face is. To me it looks like those fighting dogs from movies, likely to tear apart whatever comes their way.

It´s the last thing I see before automatically  inserting the keys in the keyhole, silently sneaking in not to wake my flatmate up.

Another beautiful, random weekend is over