Sachsen to Niedersachsen

How easy it is to become ensconced somewhere. Some creature comforts, steady access to a seemly endless supply of cheese, meats and bread, not to mention beer and wine and I was ready to settle in. Sort of. Not speaking the language is a major liability and in spite of my dedicated efforts, online learning is not the same as conversation. Our situation began to crack at the seams when the little work there was, dried up.
 Miraculously or so it seemed at the time, we received an invitation to come support, teach and participate in an Eco Village Permaculture Work camp in Cameroon. I had to look in the atlas to find it, google informed  me it was French and English speaking with 200 local indigenous languages. In the Northwest region we will be visiting they speak English.
All that we'll deal with in due course. Wrenching ourselves out of the suite in Sachsen we rented a car and spent most of the afternoon packing it and cleaning up, gracefully exiting south and west towards  the ancestral home of my mothers' people.
Amazingly we managed to get everything ( I thought we were traveling light?) into or onto the car. I had quickly thrown together a roof rack ... the bicycles would not fit inside.
The autobahn's are quite efficient even in the slow lane at 120kph so we allowed serendipity to determine our resting place that night, turning off onto a secondary road driving through potential National Park and deep forest till almost dark. We made a right, drove through an old stone gate and there it was, an ancient Monastery converted to prison and  a hotel beside. Slightly richer than we had planned for, we took a room above the entrance and fell asleep to the sounds of Italian tourists telling stories and laughing into the wee hours.



After a wander through the town of Erbrach and an extended visit with the hotel owner (she reduced our bill!) we were off, lunch included.
 After driving for an hour or so we were finally in the neighbourhood of my ancestors.

 I had a few place names which we investigated as only one can do sitting in a car, but unsurprisingly no traces remained. I did get a feeling for the place, as much as one can 400 years later.

We visited a nearby castle where stopping in the weeds at the side of the road I inadvertently picked up a hitchhiker.

Staying as long as possible on the secondary roads we eventually joined the autobahn, into Frankfurt and the challenge of parking with two tempting bicycles on the roof. Reassembled they spent the night in the backyard locked.
I woke in the morning scratching like crazy from a bite on my leg. Only later did we figure out, I'd picked up a tick....Lyme disease...
Then following the Rhine to our next stop Cologne or as they say it in Deutschland, Köln. An amazing city with some interesting architecture, less worry about the bikes, we locked them to the car and spent two nights in the company of good friends.
 Of course we visited the Cathedral, had beer in typical (small) glasses and took the gondola across the river and autobahn.
 I couldn't help noticing as we drifted over the once Roman spa now modernized a few unclothed sunbathers below.

 I love how bicycles are an important mode of transport here, dedicated bike paths beside the sidewalks, everywhere.
 Münster especially, thousands of bicyclists nearly dominating the traffic scene.

In Bonn we reconnected with a long time friend of Elke's, walked along beside the river and had the universal male ritual of bonding over BBQ in the backyard.
Driving can be hypnotic,  but relentless on the autobahn, the lines of trucks on the outside, the fast drivers on the inside and us weaving back and forth between the three lanes between. So back onto a secondary and past the historic home of my partner, the family name prominently displayed. Her school still stands, although memory made it hard to locate at first.  A short visit with an auntie and a hotel in Bremen for the night.
 Morning found us wandering through her old haunts, reconditioned and spiffed up for the tourist trade. Not far away we stopped at her younger sister's, where we stored the bikes. A late afternoon run into Ahrensburg and then Hamburg, the final stop for the car, returning it in the morning with 10 minutes to spare.
It's amazing to have all that responsibility, and then to let it go.....
Our resting place at the moment a flat landscape excellent for bicycle riding to the trains... to Stade or Hamburg, or Cuxhaven.

Ongoing aging

Recently my  brother Charles wrote a blog about aging.
His was in terms of our survival as a society; the metaphoric parallel being a crumbling edifice of over extended credit and wasted energy squandering the last moments (resources) and possibilities in some mad rush for profit with no regard for consequences or tomorrow.
That is not my plan or strategy.  I  tripped and fell on the road last week, my knee and toes were scraped, the other knee twisted as I successfully held an empty beer bottle up and away from the pavement and breakage. Those bottles are precious here, no deposit unless you break one. Like me, luckily unbroken but used.
 I've been limping along with a cane back and forth to the office making the climb up and down the 4 flights to and from the apartment, my knee complaining on every push up or jar down until today when I declared enough! I need to rest.
Oh for the immortal feelings of youth! Those days of pushing through the pain trusting in my body's resilient self healing abilities.
I sure as hell don't feel old, or at least my mind doesn't . That word feel, somewhat limited by my 5 senses to the emotional physical. What is it that I sense? This experience of aging? Layers of events in time, some sweet, some bitter, sour and... salty? The perfumed memories of ecstasy,  of unbridled pleasure, the sharp taste (?) experience of fear, eruptions of anger and the shock of disgust. Each a moment in time past, layer upon layer stretching back beyond my actual recall.
I am in the here and now struggling with a desire to know my future (what a joke! we make it in the moment by the consequences of our actions). There will be forces beyond my influence that will shape what happens next. By my actions and thoughts in  this and every proceeding moment I determine my direction. I open my mind to possibilities and the opportunities appear. I make my choices and I age. My choice would be gracefully, in spite of the numerous challenges I've inherited or absorbed. I take care of myself now, little accommodations and indulgences, hesitations and allowances keep me  centered and secure, at least within my own mind.
My parents are aging. Does this process speed up as we approach our end? They have seemed old since I was young and now I am old too. Relatively of course, a mere blip in the earths history, my importance limited to a small circle, yet potentially significant beyond my understanding. We are all, each of us, part of a cycle that may go on and on depending on circumstance for longer than I can imagine.
So aging as I see it remains limited to what I experience directly, I have seen death, participated in creating life and recognize my limitations in at least a physical sense. My accumulated knowledge gives me some potential for wisdom, my experience has taught me the value of patience and restraint, the pleasures of companionship and community and  exposed me to the amazing diversity of life itself.
Where do I go from here? I continue on this path of service. Sharing, supporting, assisting, contributing and receiving, embracing humility, offering what I can to the processes that shape tomorrow.