John Wise

Wet cigarette smokers exude a stench that has me wanting to smell a wet dog instead. It’s raining today, and I care nothing about taking hundreds or even dozens of photos to capture the gloom. I must catch up on bringing the blog entries of the past few days together. You see, I’ve written a hair more than 10,000 words over these three days, and that has exceeded my ability to keep pace with editing, selecting photos, and posting.  The goal was clear for this day, but the execution is being intruded upon.

The intruder is the distraction created by those who apparently sequester themselves in cramped quarters and cars while chain-smoking and then feel they must venture out into the rain where their stench is able to erupt into full bloom. I can only guess those who don’t recoil from the wretched nose-fowling, wet smoke stink are actually used to it because nobody else is making exaggerated facial gestures of abhorrence. This is when you might realize that I’m a drama queen.

If my face was an accurate indicator of the barf factor going on within me thanks to those who flaunt their acrid perfume emanating from every pore and every thread of their being, then those indecent, inconsiderate smoking fucksticks would easily clue in on the person in their midst who is having a crisis. Instead, they remain in oblivion.

But why does today’s blog title need to focus on wet dogs and cigarettes while I’m traveling to Bayreuth? Because everywhere I walked in Erfurt today, from my Airbnb abode to the train itself, I was surrounded by the aforementioned foul aroma. I would actually have been happier if people smelled of shit or Surströmming instead of wet cigarette smoke. The former can be explained by inadvertently stepping into it while walking along in one’s own thoughts, and the latter could possibly be interesting simply because I’ve not had the opportunity to smell it yet, but the reek of wet cigarette smoke is not something I have smelled in years. Even as I landed in Bayreuth (where it was still raining), the contemptible odor of these smoking troglodytes is a constant reminder that the distant relatives of Neanderthals are alive and well just 300 miles from the cave they crawled out of in Neandertal. For those that don’t know this, the village of Neandertal is just north of Cologne.

So will this be a theme today? Could be. I’ve certainly been building up my resentment that cigarettes are ever-present everywhere one goes in Germany. The funny thing is that it’s less prevalent today than it was 30 years ago. While some people flaunt the restrictions of no smoking on the train platforms, the tracks next to them no longer sport mounds of orange cigarette butts looking like collections of millions of inch-long lipstick-stained and bent snuffed-out cigarettes that were tossed at the last second by someone boarding the train and exhaling the smoke directly on the train.

Nobody is smoking in restaurants anymore. The first time I asked for the no-smoking section at an upscale steak restaurant in Frankfurt, I was told to go outside. But there was a problem with that as they didn’t serve steaks out there. I should clarify things: smoking is no longer allowed in restaurants. If you choose to sit outside, well, that’s another story, and the person sitting at the table next to you could be a chain smoker. One more thing, and I’ll give this a break. Passing ashcans that are sending off wisps of smoldering old cigarettes can turn the non-smoker in the other direction in a split-second; that’s how wretched they smell. Okay, I hope I’ve exorcised this, and I can move on to other stuff, but I’m leaving the unflattering title.

Update: in my original post, I didn’t identify Oskar Restaurant where I had lunch called Brezenbrett’la or Pretzel Board that included Obatzter (Bavarian cheese), quark, and lard.

Well, well, well, I just looked at the photos I’ve taken so far; it’s 4:00 p.m. already, and I’ve managed to capture a mere three images. I was hoping to find inspiration from them so I could write about something, but with the images’ subject matter being food, I’ve decided that I’m not prepared to go there next. Guess I’ll have to peel out of the cafe and hit the open road on the search for adventures afar away where prairie dogs and the antelope play; ok, maybe not quite that far out, but you get the idea.

I’ve been walking randomly around town and thought I was about to discover the antipodal version of me when I realized I know too many sides of myself and that the true opposing sides are boring diatribe-laden versions where I kvetch about sports, country music, television, or cigarettes. But how are those true opposites when they are just flavors of John wearing one of his grumpy man hats?

Where are all the dogs in Bayreuth? I need to photograph one for my lead photo, but all I find are cigarette butts along the street and mold growing on the statuary. I have the rest of the day to find my photo accompaniments and return to writing, should I accomplish my task, but I do not blog without photos. The Kraftraum coffee shop, with its free wifi, is open till 1:00 in the morning and is less than 120 feet away from where I’m staying, so I have plenty of time to return to a place conducive to writing.

Back to antipodal John, who I don’t know how to approach. There must be something or someone on the other side of intrinsic me, but when I start to go down that wormhole, I find that I cannot find the version of me I’m not all that familiar with. If I had some of my former employees with me, I’m sure they could point out the error of my awareness and nudge me in the direction of the deeper asshole I seem to have mastery over, but digging in that darkness, I still arrive at the only version of me I’ve yet known. I’ll readily admit I’ve explored places of peculiarity while at the same time remaining relatively tame, knowing that depravity could take me into G.G. Allin’s territory, but he’s already done that and been there, so my interpretation would likely be ham-fisted and cheesy. Regarding the photo of the butt of a statue, do you think the sculptor used a model or just freestyled it?

The din of noise is picking up here at the Kraftraum where I’m writing this. It is a youthful hangout as opposed to the traditional German restaurants that attract the ancients that I’ve been frequenting. Like a moth to the light, I’m gravitating more and more to the universe of the elderly. First-class rail travel doesn’t see mothers with children or high school students paying for quiet civility; it’s a bunch of gray-haired codgers with intestines well lubricated with fiber. Those of us who straddle the two worlds are somehow lost between the desire to extend youth by following dimming impulses and the growing realization our voices no longer project strongly enough for our fellow oldies to hear as acutely as they once did.

As for me, I’m practicing being a convenience whore right now: if you have wifi, I’ll suck a doorknob for the password. Sure, I could write without the help of Grammarly or Merriam-Webster, Google Maps, or Wikipedia, but I’m no high-retention genius like my goddess of a wife. I am fully aware of my weaknesses; well, the only one I really know of is my inability to admit to being wrong. If I were to admit that I’m probably infallible, I’d be modest because, at other times, I’d insist on that fact. Not to say I don’t make mistakes, but that’s what experience has shown me. Though, who among you is worthy enough to call me out on that?

Too cold outside, too hot inside. The espresso machine nearly reached Max Q before the mission was aborted, with the grounds well spent. Glasses are clinking, some muffled music plays in the background, and random German words emerge out of the noise. There’s a particular sound to coffee shop doors opening and closing that rings with a familiarity I know deep within my memories. The footsteps on wooden floors with their dull thud and the sound of a jacket coming off are things you won’t hear at McDonald’s. There’s an existential question as it pertains to cafes as dusk begins to settle in on the day; maybe it’s more a Schroedinger’s cat kind of question but can a cafe exist without candles?

Well, I’ve used up my allocation of words for this visit to the coffee shop and must go back out on the street to start the cool-down process and find a photo of a dog for Bloggyville. I’ll be back later for a bottle of water as my ration of coffee has taken me to full tilt on the pinball machine of caffeine. I wonder what other nonsense I’ll find wandering the mindscape of thought streams out in the German world of ideas? Hopefully, it won’t be a study in smeared piles of dogshit with me trying to identify the shoe brand via the collapsing print that might remain in the flattened poop.

Back out on the streets, I first come upon the sound of a piano, but the front door is locked so I figured this is some private affair. In a small courtyard that appeared to be part of a school or shop, I couldn’t tell which; there was an open door, and I let myself in. A woman moves from around the corner to the area I am walking through as though she is checking out the visitor. I explain to the best of my ability that I would like to sit in and listen to the person playing in the next room; she says Gerne meaning “with pleasure.” The guy playing appears to be improvising, but he does so with aplomb.

Not a pile of scat was found in the kingdom of Bayreuth, but this bust of Franz Liszt was. Nary a dog either as I searched high and low until late in the day, my specimen presented itself, followed an hour later by another. On this form of a hunt, I’m realizing that Bayreuth is a small town, or at least it has that feel. I’ve circled the old town twice now, and other than the Liszt and Wagner museums, it appears that Bayreuth is primarily here for the students who study at the local university. But these are details of no consequence for the person who is visiting for a host of reasons I don’t share with many others. Of those who do visit, I’d venture to guess I’m part of a small handful of people per decade who show up in honor of the one-time friendship between Nietzsche and Wagner. Reference my previous comments about the naivety factor that led me to hope something mystical might drop out of history and into my ear.

With the best of intentions earlier, I knew that I would be burning the midnight oil at the Kraftraum. Now that I’m here again, it is only 9:30 and I feel the over-caffeinated confidence of the late afternoon is fading fast. All the same, it is too early to concede defeat and head for a room where I might be tempted to call it quits. I came to write, and that’s what I will do even if it should require struggle.

So how long should I stare blankly at the screen until words start to appear? I’m almost half-prepared to hang on until they start to flow from my fingers to your brain. The other half is laughing in ridicule at this feeble attempt where one word after the other is offered after long pauses between each utterance so that the meaning is almost lost before I find the end of the sentence.

I remember the anguish Nietzsche wrote in, pressing through inscrutable pain with migraine headaches that nearly blinded him, and yet the imperative to write tore through his being, and with compulsion, he wrote until he could write no more. I’ve never come close to reaching that kind of frenetic state in which my mind tortures me to purge the pressure of what has filled my head. This is likely because I’m not a writer but a dabbler in jotting down random words without an overarching thread that could tie it all together.

The candle has a story, right? No, it doesn’t. I refuse to anthropomorphize a jar of burning wax. What’s next, a talking dog poop smoking a cigarette while hanging out on the streets of Prague? Putting it that way, I think I might see some of William S. Burroughs’s motivation in writing Naked Lunch. Then there’s that piece of burned toast I had my photo taken with over in Erfurt. Someone, possibly sitting tired some night in a coffee shop, conjured up a grumpy, talking piece of food that became Bernd das Brot, which likely made the person a nice financial return on what may have initially been dismissed as a dumb idea.

I’ve managed to whittle away another half-hour nursing my glass of sparkling water, and while I’d like to wait until I’m the last customer here because maybe had I waited just fifteen minutes more, the flow of words might have run headlong into my consciousness, and I would have been laying down the foundation of a novel instead of using my bleary eyes to prep some photos in order to stay current with the taskmaster known as Blog.

I feel overwhelmed by my love of German bakeries and their breakfast offerings with an amazing selection of bread and sandwich preparations. Today I get to choose between three bakeries, all within about 50 meters of one another, and that doesn’t take into consideration that I have another three within the train station that is off to my left. While I was ready to go to Weimar early, I still needed to grab a bite to eat.

The first bakery I passed was the one I ate at yesterday, so I’ll skip it; the second bakery focused on bread and sweets without sandwiches. So it was the third one called Heberer that’s been “Fresh” since 1891 that ended up as my choice. The flax, sunflower, and pumpkin seed roll with salami and a kind of cream cheese grabbed my eye, and so that was my Frühstück. I nearly asked for it to go when I thought better of that idea, and since I do not need to be in a hurry, I asked to have it there with a cup of coffee.

Instead of hoofing it with breakfast in hand, I’m allowed the indulgence of sitting down, listening to the espresso machine, the murmur of low voices with no one ratcheting up their pitch with squealing enthusiasm, and strangely enough, not a single cell phone is out or audible text message coming in. In the little over a week I’ve been in Germany, it’s been rare to see someone with a computer unless it’s on a train. This idea of the separation of work and private life still exists here in central Europe.

A group of maybe two dozen preschoolers just walked by hand-in-hand on their way towards the train station; they were here to play on the temporary beach volleyball courts. Yesterday, workers were out here setting up a large box that they dumped a few tons of sand into, accommodating two courts and, next to that, a couple of tents for food and alcohol. This morning though, the sandbox belongs to the kids who are too short to play proper volleyball with a net that towers above them, but that doesn’t stop them from hysterical laughter while out here having fun.

There are people waiting here in the bakery with bags, not their backpacks or day bags for shopping, but their travel bags. I can’t emphasize enough how civilized rail travel is compared to using airports where human cattle are quarantined in a secure area. Being free to choose any one of the many businesses both in the train station and in the immediate vicinity is really a luxury worth having. It’s sad that I should have to lament the state of travel in America, but when I was younger, I thought using trains was an inconvenience to getting to where one needs to go in a hurry. Now I see the error of my petulant youth and the shortsightedness of a society that only concerns itself with productivity at any cost instead of realizing that a life well-lived has its own merits.

My train arrived at the station 15 minutes early, and when I boarded, I was the first person on. With less than five minutes before we depart, a group of teens, being teens, boards the train as a herd of wildebeest, allowing the dead to waken from the ruckus. As they find their seats they magically discover their sense of decorum and settle down to minor antics, but are mostly quiet.

I nearly forgot to mention that it was under 3 Celsius or 37 degrees as I hit the street at 8:00 this morning. I did not come prepared for nearly freezing weather. I need not worry too much, though, as in little more than a week, we’ll be on our way to the Dalmatian Coast, where it is 20 degrees warmer right now than it is this far up north. As for the state of the sky, it’s the usual mix of clouds and blue patches that promises just about anything regarding the weather.

I’m not in Weimar five minutes before an old lady on the opposite side of the street collapses. She’s about 80-something, and before I get over to her, five other people have rushed to her side, though no one is calling emergency services. She is unresponsive, although her eyes are mostly open. There’s no drooping face, but there are also no words or acknowledgment that any of us are here. It struck me how lucky she is to be walking somewhere there are others who might help if only they would call an ambulance and actually start helping. It took a woman running out of a local pharmacy to take action. I am filled with the heavy realization that someday, this very well could be Caroline or I and that there might be no one around to help. The ambulance is here now, and the lady is on her way to the hospital.

In old town now, I walk along Schillerstrasse happening upon two cello players offering up a street-side performance in exchange for a coin or two thrown into the case before them. Behind the buskers is Hoffmann’s Bookstore founded in 1710. It’s a polite, refined culture here in Weimar compared to the rush in Berlin or even the comparative speed of Erfurt. Is the population here older? The pace is certainly a leisurely one.

Dropped in at a nearby paper shop and bought my first fountain pen; seems appropriate that I should buy a writing instrument in Weimar, where so much literature has been penned. With the deep imprint of Goethe here there’s a creative legacy that has remained strong in this historic city. While not a literary movement, there’s also the mark of Walter Gropius on Weimar, as this was the city where the Bauhaus movement got underway.

There’s a problem with all of this history to be found in Weimar, where I’ve come to write today; I could easily be distracted by the abundance of cultural significance that is right before me. Other than the Nietzsche Archive, I will try to remain focused and plod along the various routes that lead me through a city that played host to Kandinsky, Klee, Franz Liszt, and Friedrich Schiller, to name a few of the principals who left their impact upon society.

Gasthaus Zum Weissen Schwan where “The white swan welcomes you anytime with open wings.” Those were the words penned by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe back on 18 February 1827 to a friend about his favorite restaurant in Weimar. This place has stood there for more than 450 years, and outside, it looks nearly exactly as it did back in the 16^th century. Did I choose this place for its history? No, I simply asked Google for the list of German restaurants in Weimar, and this one was only 90 meters straight ahead, so convenience chose it. It also allowed me to step out of the cold.

The bitch sitting next to me is as bitter as my coffee and is everything I didn’t like about particular Germans when I lived in Frankfurt. As a matter of fact, I have this feeling towards many of the people I run into who are my age and older here and in America too. The German word is Verbissen, and it translates to grimly, clenched, cramped, pinched, or otherwise wound up too tight. The woman here is ganz verbissen. It’s not a gender-specific thing either, as many a person in Germany have sticks stuck sideways up their backsides. I consider moving tables so I’m not in such close proximity to the negativity she’s exuding, but I’m sitting under the image of Goethe and want to believe my table neighbor inspires my sense of Sturm und Drang.

I can’t let this go without a nod to Faust, considered by many to be Goethe’s greatest work. While I’m without my own devil to the best of my knowledge, I am tormented by my desire to know more, but not at any cost. I’ve been searching for answers for a solid 40 years by now, and yet the sense and passion to continue the exploration burns brightly. I do not believe I’ll find redemption or condemnation from the deities for my lack of godlike wisdom, as to how would anyone among us ever know more than would allow us to ask more questions?

This should bring me forward to Nietzsche, but he’s been growing mold far away in the back of my mind where I’ve not seen him for an eternity. Somebody once told me that God had killed him. To live by the force of doing and to be in the moment was a concept I had to embrace early in my life, though the imprint of institutional damage had already been inflicted upon my sense of finding an explanation and justification for how I might do and think about things. Unloading the baggage of conditioning where the community goal was the installation of deep-rooted stupidity without offering me tools to recognize day from night was like the regime that steals the very life of the enemy, leaving the combatant dead and unburied where he fell.

We are supposed to aloft ourselves from the muck of being, but what has been achieved when that elevation takes us into the sewage of knowing that’s where we are at the bottom of it all? I hate the term “realist,” though recently I described someone as a harsh realist, and using the word that way, I feel it strips away the optimism laying the path for the cynic to wallow in the shit of doing and accomplishing nothing that really matters to themselves. I identified readily with Nietzsche’s disposal of the ego as a thing that had tangible qualities as opposed to it not really being there. I am without the attributes others want to foist upon their perception of my sense of going forth in my own journey. But they care for nothing; they must live and die with their characterizations.

You might believe that my generalizations of character, or the lack of it, are judgments of my grading of those I suggest are without meaning. You will have misread this, for what I really want to say is that I find it tragic how so many can breathe without a greater purpose of discovery. How does one cast aside the eyes that find patterns in the colors and shapes of nature or the ears that are seduced by the sound of life and the occasional elegance of words? We are certainly the blinded and deaf ape actors of a stage play set in folly.

“Do not give in to tyrants” might be the greater lesson from William Tell, penned by Friedrich Schiller back in 1804. I’d venture that the majority of humanity only knows the part of shooting an arrow at an apple that sits upon someone’s head, but that head is his child’s, and the person demanding this frightful action is the Governor who represents the oppressive Habsburg Empire. Of course, Schiller also wrote Don Carlos. Some say this play is part of the basis for Star Wars, though it was about King Philip II of Spain. Should you not be familiar with the story of King Philip, it was during his reign that Spain reached the pinnacle of its empire with territories held on all continents. One country in particular still bears its mark: the Philippines. The thread that holds Schiller, Nietzsche, and Goethe together is that of personal freedom and throwing off the chains of convention, religion, and tyranny. Things we all take for granted in our modern age of knowing a lot about much of nothing.

Should you begin to think this day will be primarily about the machinations of my mind, then you forget that there’s the machine that is my stomach that must find the lubrication from things classified as yummy. From the Tafelspitz, said to be a favorite of Goethe’s, to the dessert, which is also claimed to fit the category of one of Goethe’s favorites, I will leave the White Swan satisfied with a great meal and an abundance of writing while I nursed a large bottle of water and my coffee that was well cold by the time the last sip was had. It’s not every day I indulge in three-hour lunches, but when I do, it’s with Goethe looking over my shoulder while sitting in Weimar.

The Legacy of Tragedy follows humanity as we warp ourselves into twisted parodies of the Übermensch. We seem to have an apparent need to find the absurd and folly in our lives in order to create comedic theater that ends in suffering. Nietzsche attempted to warn us of our inherent shortcomings, nudging us to throw off the yoke of brand influences that were used by those who enjoyed the privilege that arrives with control.

We do our best to destroy that which we do not understand, and it would be the rare individual who was able to benefit from the words that Nietzsche wrote. You do not read Nietzsche as much as Nietzsche has read you. When you think you can agree with his tenets, you begin to realize that he pulled you into your own dogmatic beliefs that were premised on lies and deception in the first place. To read Nietzsche, one must not read him but become one’s self. If we are so lucky to identify through him the carnage wrought upon our perception by an education that was anything but, we could begin the journey into the discovery of being human.

Some may say Nietzsche’s life stopped here at Humboldtstrasse 36 in Weimar back in 1900, but his teachings are still trying to exist through his philosophy while the madness that consumed his final years lives on in our age of distorted reality where clowns operate the levers and drive the lemmings over the cliff of real happiness.

While mass murder leaves an indelible mark on a place such as Dachau, critical thinking leaves only fleeting glimpses of inspiration from the words others were able to distill from the exploration of their own skills. Just as I was looking for the essence of Bach in a church or Martin Luther in a monastery, I am here in the home where Nietzsche died, listening for the echo of his then-quiet mind, which had lost the fire that raged in his youth.

There is no hint of enlightenment to be found from simply being somewhere. We must cultivate a fertile place in this nebulous thing we call mind. Even after we believe we might have fertilized that soil of imagination, the seeds are not certain to sprout. Writing down our thoughts, scattering pigments into patterns abstract and recognizable, or linking strings of notes into tonalities that find the ear, we can only hope that maybe a single plant will have the strength to grow large, to nourish us, to offer a new stronger blueprint for the future so that generations to come will still benefit from that one spectacular moment in history when nature evolved something of great importance.

I am sitting by the window below the rooms in which Nietzsche spent his final days. From where I sit, I’m looking at a view much as it would have appeared 119 years ago when Nietzsche, steeped in the fog of relative insanity, would have listened to the song of the birds and watched the leaves swaying in the breeze. Maybe he’d simply gone deeper within himself back on that fateful day in Turin, or maybe he was truly long gone.

Goethe had Schiller, Humboldt and Darwin had their contemporaries, Gropius was surrounded by artistic genius, Nietzsche had Peter Gast (Heinrich Köselitz) and, for a while, Richard Wagner, while Feynman was able to chat with Einstein and Niels Bohr about ideas of the time. I am a layperson, not an expert in anything except my primitive curiosity that allows me to stumble into wondering and wonderment. Where are the thinkers within my community? Am I such an outlier or so abstract and unrefined as to attract the derision of those I cannot find or who have found me and decided I wasn’t worthy?

Oh, you are picking up on a hint of insecurity? Of course, you are because it is my lack of interest in that which interests others that betrays my desire to escape this partially hermetic existence in the confines of a skull. Don’t believe it’s all doom and gloom in the intellectual sharing experience of my world; there’s my junction with nature when, without the voices of others, I revel in the caress of sheer beauty, be it among the thorns of the cactus or the sulfurous water and gases that belch out of a corner of the state of Wyoming. The grandeur found outdoors in wild places has been known by my senses to cause tears to emerge from eyes swollen with the profoundly incomprehensible complexity of it all. I only wish the same for my mind when exploring the landscape within it.

I’ll have to leave soon, and I’ll have to leave only with what I came with. I have not found a thing besides the time to be quiet and allow my fingers to send tiny gestures to keys conducting a small electrical current to a powerful piece of silicon running on stored electrons in my computer that becomes squiggles of black photons that under certain circumstances are able to convey information. I suppose having the skills that allow me some level of mastery of this form of sharing should be cherished for how rare it is, as not everyone believes they have something worth writing at the risk of others recoiling or simply disregarding the import of what was thought worthwhile. So I should continue to write as one never knows what they’ll stumble upon.

One thing is certain: while others busy themselves groping for trivialities found while being the tourist, there will hopefully always be those who travel the mind far and wide looking to turn over the neurons that were randomly organized by the riot of information that fell into their senses. Extracting the precious metals and minerals that have been forming under the tremendous pressure of expectation and disappointment may yet one day produce something valuable. Time to walk again to explore another aspect of where I’m going.

I’m going to the dead. The living are few here as I sit in the garden of those who have visited death and remained there. Only a few tell me stories that are able to convey more than the moss-covered, rusting, and worn epitaphs that are now barely legible. Underground and in boxes, I am able to approach the hidden corpses of both Goethe and Schiller, who rest in eternity next to one another with visitors who pay $5 to be a personal witness who can assure others that both are still dead to this day. And while Schiller is not Schiller in the casket that bears his name, it is the memory and recognition of the idea of his resting place right here that holds import. Do not busy yourself with the details of the specifics because the dead long ago lost that sense of being attached to the order of things. One can learn a lot from a dead person.

The rest of the formerly living barely earn a passing glance from the likely descendants of those who now populate this wooded city of solemn respect. I don’t mean to be ironic in my irony, but the similarities to the dwellings of the presently living are suspiciously reminding me of those who are apparently comfortable in their death. There is no anguish, no more struggle, or difficulty waking to go to that job that is loathed. I say this not tongue in cheek, as a resignation to be dead in one’s life is much like that of the former person who effectively chooses to be dead in the afterlife. For all that we know, there is only the universe of the ravenous worm who devours our physical being while the mind leaks out of its cranium to be absorbed as so many nutrients by the soil thriving with bacteria.

Bacteria have been present for billions of years, and their network of genetic communication is a bit of a mystery to me while I sit in this cemetery, but one thing is clear: long after I’m gone, the bacteria will have enjoyed the feast on whatever part of me is left, be it ashes or juicy wet rotting guts, I can know well that my contribution to their kingdom will have fulfilled my role to feed its populations. In this sense, we live in a symbiotic relationship where bacteria cultivate the soils tending to their health, which allows this other layer of life to benefit from its labor while all around it, we go about our brief existence believing we are at the top of the chain. We are delusional in our belief in the illusion that we are somehow important to things; we are food.

So if we are food in a chain of life, then what is this output of the creative activity of humanity? Can it be food for something called knowledge? As we feed this knowledge our experiences and observations while its wisdom grows, how does the symbiotic nature of feedback loops then benefit us? If we toil without reward, then our payoff might be that we were instrumental in the advancement of our species, but if our reward is greater awareness of the bigger picture of why life has risen within the universe, then maybe we can fool ourselves into believing we ourselves are gods.

Are the gods simply mortal beings who have transcended being forgotten as food for other things, while the ubermensch lives on godlike in the remembrance of what they lent to humanity? A single cell may seem small and insignificant, isolated by itself, but to the molecules that inhabit that universe, the cell is heaven and hell as it is where they will live and die. To the atoms that live in the orbit of one another, thus forming molecules, the idea of the cell is a faraway dream state where the fantasy of one of the self-proclaimed enlightened atoms believes they have answers far beyond their simple nature. Meanwhile, the protons and neutrons see the electron circling them like a moon in orbit and can thank their lucky stars that they are safe at the center of their universe.

Where does that leave us? Relatively aware of the matryoshka doll nature of our existence, except we cannot perceive what our organization of information feeds beyond the immediate product of our labor and the tools and conveniences that stem from them. I can’t help but feel as though I’m missing part of the picture or outer layers, though I’m relatively certain it doesn’t involve some pious entity that would waste its time casting judgment on a piece of meat. That would be as silly as us casting judgment on the bacteria that finished off Mr. Goethe with a resounding smack of the lips at just how tasty he was after a life of getting fattened up on all that pork.

Time to rejoin those who claim to be living here in Weimar and elsewhere. Though before I leave those who are more dead than I am yet, I’d like to say that maybe it won’t be so bad when my day comes to move into the woods where life is different than it was before it was gone.

I’m hanging out at Baroness Caroline Jagemann von Heygendorff’s house down the block from Goethe’s place. This singer and actress was famous in her day and lived in this incredibly big house that is now a restaurant named in her honor: Jagemanns Restaurant. The young man who served me earlier at Gasthaus Zum Weissen Schwan told me about their second restaurant in town, which is, you guessed it, right here. This also serves as his second job.

After crossing the old town on my way back from the cemetery I was looking for a coffee, but the city of Weimar is not somewhere you are going for a cup of java in a cafe after 7:00 p.m. While making my way to a waffle shop that promised to have coffee, I was thinking that I’d get there and have to ask for it to go when what I wanted to do was sit down once again for yet more writing, should it be possible to ring something else out of cramping hands. Okay, they’re not really cramping, though all this writing comes at the expense of walking a lot. Considering my indulgent lunch that included potatoes and a pancake dessert, I really should have mounted some serious attempt at a brisk walk. Instead, there is more sitting, more writing, more diabetes.

With walking and spots for coffee all running on the thin side, it occurred to me that if Jagemanns isn’t too busy, maybe I can get this young man named Tim (I figured if we are going to be familiar with each other, I should know his name), to offer me a table in the corner where I could nurse a cup of coffee and maybe even write a bit more before I develop an appetite for dinner. While I visited the White Swan shortly after 11:00 when they opened, it was nearly 2:00 before I left, and after the feast, I was having trouble finding empty spots in my still full stomach. However, if I think about it for another few minutes, I’ll soon be famished; it’s the way I work.

On the one hand, it’s boring that I write of my culinary experiences, but on the other hand, they figure prominently in my day and my thoughts, and when tied to history, a region, a people, and their customs, the meal becomes something more than only taking care of caloric intake for the sake of remaining energized and alive. Once I’ve realized that I’ve said all that I can say about things related to my time in this restaurant prior to eating, I would like to transition to writing about something else. My sad reality is that I’ve already written so much that I’m drawing a blank about where I could go next. It will not be about the cup of coffee that is cooling as I sit here as the only person staring at a screen. With nothing else coming to mind, I guess it is time to get busy with the menu.

Just then Tim comes by and tells me they have wifi and gives me the password. I could opt to surf the net and goof off, but I’ve ordered my dinner and will consider heading back to Erfurt after that and a walk around town to burn some of the gratuitous calories I’m going to shovel in as I practice my own version of gavage.

The homemade ragout from boiled pork served au gratin with a thick layer of cheese was yummy. Tim brought me over a bottle of Dresdener-style Worcester sauce that I wanted to decline, but he informed me that this was a special former East German brand that is essential on my ragout, and he wasn’t kidding. This dive into Thüringian food is turning out to be a great treat that could only be made better if I were sharing it with Caroline.

Up next is the Rostbrätel with Thüringer Klöße or pork with dumplings. Don’t let simple descriptions fool you, as this is serious cuisine for the discriminating palate of a man who is trying to cultivate a fine sense of German food snobbery.

The day has been full of everything I wanted for this visit to Weimar and, more generally, Germany. Of course, I had dreamed that I would land back in Frankfurt so many days ago, and an insightful inner voice would spring to life, opening a channel to a cascade of musings for this blog that might catapult my thoughts into unseen territory. Alas, I am still the same voice in my head that I’ve been for some time now. Short of communicating gibberish, I’m not sure how to change the tone and maybe even the subject matter of what seems to flow from my brain. There are times I’d like to consider writing fiction, but for all I know, this is fiction, and I’m seriously delusional.

Fragments of the past remain with us long after their usefulness has been had. These tattered archaic reminders of who we’ve been often allow us to see where we’ve come from and just how far we’ve traveled. When we don’t recognize the writing on the wall anymore as being dead and useless, we join a kind of madness for the nostalgic, romanticized notion that those were the good old days. But like the rotting corpse buried within the earth, those things have become putrid and are on the verge of total disappearance. We cannot will them back to relevance. We must plaster over the past and embrace the inevitable march of progress, though we may end up kicking and screaming all the way to our grave to finally succumb to the reality that life will happen with or without us.

The day started with finishing yesterday’s writing while doing laundry in a machine that took a few tries to get going. Out on the still-cold streets of Erfurt, I knew exactly which bakery I wanted to stop at for a breakfast sandwich on a heavy roll before heading to the main train station. With a day ticket good for traveling across the Thüringer region I was ready to stop at Coffee Fellows for a Cafe Latte and a bit more writing prior to my train leaving.

My idea is to head into Gotha first, and then later in the day, I’ll move over to Mühlhausen before returning to Erfurt. Until then, I’m indulging in the reliving of my youth sitting here in a train station, finishing my Frühstück (breakfast), and watching the cavalcade of people go by.

These smaller rail stations operate in waves as opposed to the larger stations in big cities that remain constantly busy. It can feel nearly empty here, and then a train pulls in with a rush of passengers flooding into the main corridors aiming for the exits. Two minutes later, things return to calm.

The train I’m boarding this morning only runs once an hour, so there’s an imperative not to become so entwined with my writing that I lose sight of the time. Without the ability to focus and find flow this feels stilted and hard-fought for. This is where reading a newspaper works well. Of course, very few people are reading those today, most are looking to their phones for whittling away the time. That path of least resistance grabbing at instant gratification feels like cheating on capturing experiences instead of investing in oneself. Insert the tone of the grumpy old guy here.

This has me thinking of just how this is different than sitting at a Starbucks back home. For starters, I’m at a place where travelers are moving through. Some are going on adventures in a nearby city or maybe off to a regional airport where they’ll go on holiday to some exotic location on Earth. You can visit a train station again and again and rarely do you see the same people twice, besides the ones that work at the concessionaires you visit. Today I’m one of those people who is not only on holiday, but I’m about to take off on another adventure within the one I’m already experiencing. With that, it’s time to walk over to my track and get on the train.

I find it amusing my nervousness when finding my track and where exactly I’m supposed to be. No matter how many times I’ve done this there’s always a nagging fear that I’ll somehow misread something and be at the wrong place at the wrong time. There are always details I miss when reorienting myself with how the system works, such as sitting in seat 22, row 12 on car 14 instead of car 15. It’s now three minutes before my train arrives, and I have 97% certainty that it will be on time. My time on board will be a brief 20 minutes, and I have all of the excitement of going to Gotha as I had on leaving America to fly into Germany.

The train ultimately goes to Eisenach where Martin Luther translated the Bible out of Latin and into German while at the Wartburg up on the mountain. I’m not going that far today; Caroline and I were there five years ago on a previous visit to Germany. Eisenach is also the birthplace of J.S. Bach, who figures into why I’m going to Mühlhausen today. As a note, this regional train does not have wifi available. Instead of staring at this computer screen, I’m going to use the time to stare out the window at the rolling hills and billowy clouds as we get underway.

Into the town of Gotha with the appropriately named Schloss Friedenstein Gotha. This palace sits at the top of the hill, looking back at a museum and forward to town. With only a brief couple of hours before the train leaves for my next stop, I didn’t have the time to tour the exhibits, maybe on a subsequent visit with Caroline.

Heading downhill, the fountain I passed was spectacular and nearly impossible to photograph without a drone to get an overhead shot. The town is a small and pretty affair with a city hall as you enter the main shopping area. It didn’t take long to pass through, but on the way, I did make an extra stop.

I found another maypole. By the way, that spectacular fountain I mentioned, you are only seeing a tiny fraction of it as it extends downhill in a series of cascades that when at the bottom of the hill you look back at four or five levels of thing.

The Margarethenkirche or St. Margaret’s Church was open via a side door, and as luck would have it, there was someone up at the organ playing. I sat through four pieces before departing to see what else I might find.

When I first entered the church, the piece that was being played came to an end, followed by a long pause. I could see the top of the organist’s head in the mirror, so I said thank you for the bit I was able to listen to. The woman at the organ looked up to see me standing in front of the nave and smiled. With that, she returned to playing though it was an upbeat, almost jazzy piece of music that sounded like it could have come from a contemporary play.

I probably said it ten times last year on our Churchstravaganza Tour, but I just love these cherubs.

Maybe I should wax on about my love of stained glass? These ancient monuments to God are also monuments to humanity’s ingenuity and sense of the aesthetic. Regardless of its symbolism and anybody’s feeling about deeper meanings found in the various religions of people, it is without question that much of the art of humankind has originated in our observance, respect, and fear of the unseen and unknown.

I walked over the grounds of the palace on my way back to the train station, where I was given one of the day’s highlights. I came to a class of kindergarteners who were out walking with their “handler.” She told me her official title, and it wasn’t teacher, but I can’t remember her description. So after I was informed that it was a violation of privacy rules to photograph children without their parents’ consent, the lady struck up a conversation to find out where I was from. Learning I was American, she brought the kids closer and asked them to demonstrate that they could count to 10; they did great. Next up, they translated the names of colors from German to English, and finally, they told me their names beginning with, “My name is…” Some of them were seriously intrigued by this strange American guy speaking German and English, though it was far more English than the former. I’d venture to say that their German language skills eclipsed mine by a kilometer or more.

There was plenty of time to spare as I sat down in a cafe to wait for my train and do a little note-taking. All too soon, the train was pulling up, and I had to shut down and hoof it over to the track.

Twenty minutes later, I was pulling up in Mühlhausen for the walk to the Divi Blasii Church. I thought this was the location where Bach first performed Gott ist mein König, but I’d left my notes in the room in Erfurt, so I wasn’t sure. The guy behind a counter selling souvenirs let me know that I had the wrong church for that performance and that I needed to walk over to Marienskirche (St. Mary’s Church).

Would you believe that everything you are seeing is painted in the trompe l’oeil style? Yeah, neither would I. That guy behind the booth had a hearing problem, and subsequently, the inherent speech pattern made it more difficult for me to understand him, so the translation was on another level of incomprehensibility. My first question would have been if any part of this organ existed back in Bach’s day.

This small corner of the church held the most intrigue for me as it appeared to be a place of penance more than a place of worship. Maybe this is as good a time as any to give thought to the Protestant Reformation, as I’m in the heart of where that movement began. Not Mühlhausen in particular, but this general corner of Thüringen where Martin Luther threw down the Ninety-Five Theses and soon thereafter the Church of England appeared and threw their hat into the mix of chaos and the Western world devolved into a special kind of mayhem where things like torture were thought to be able to bring people back to Catholicism. This tumultuous period came to an end around the time hostilities in the Thirty Years’ War came to a conclusion. To say this was a pivotal time in history is an understatement, as this division was going to have ramifications for centuries to come. In comparison to modern Islam, one might say things are the way they have always been: bordering on lunacy.

Today I once again failed to find God. I was told that I would find him here in his house of worship; why is he him anyway? I was told I would find him in my heart. With my head underwater, I have a life-threatening reality of not finding air. Swallowing air, I can burp, but I do not satisfy my need for water. I can eat my words, but I’m still hungry. I collect words and resequence them into my own expressions of perception, or I board a plane, and if I’m fortunate, I land in someplace I’m returning to or visiting for the first time. When I turn to God, I cannot find the essence or even a morsel of hope that satisfies my curiosity to find that which is all around me.

Maybe my soul has lost its way and the thing that is the most obvious is directly in front of me. If so, I am blind and contentedly so. Those of the faithful might say I’ve not sought God out, or I’ve not fully accepted him in my heart. Well, when I was younger and without bias of disbelief, I said my prayers and went to church, but still, God left me alone with the iron fist of a tyrannical society that was trying to convert me into a pawn of its own needs.

My path to adulthood was one of strife where, as far as I was concerned, God had long ago hocked a loogie into my soul if indeed I even had one. For all the parts of my body I did damage to growing up, I never once cried to a parent that my soul was in agony. It’s not that I wanted to avoid God to be difficult or to enhance finding my inner edgelord, but Jesus Christ, if God and his son are so prolific, wouldn’t someone somewhere have captured something in the art or on video of just a little something that would allow a collective gasp by humanity that miracles or the hand of God just laid down the majesty from the Kingdom of Heaven and that we should get our shit together posthaste?

I’m starting to get the impression that yarn bombing is becoming a national sport here in Germany. Come to think of it, I’ve never seen anyone yarn-bombing a public object. Could this be the sign from God that he does, in fact, work in mysterious ways, starting with knitting seat warmers of brightly colored remnants of yarn he no longer needs?

Arriving at Marienskirche, I wanted to be extra certain about the details supplied by the guy back at Divi Blasii, but the lady at the counter didn’t even know if Bach had ever played there. However, she had phone service that I’ve been struggling with and was able to look up the piece of music I was referring to, and sure enough, it was first performed at Marienskirche.

I took up a spot in a pew, and with my earphones plugged in snugly, I turned on BWV 71, also known as Gott ist Mein König. The effect of tuning out the ambiance of the church created a listening experience that was too isolated. Another aspect of the experiment is that the church is no longer functioning as such; it is now a museum dedicated to Thomas Müntzer. Funny how even as an atheist, I sense the missing presence of God in a house that used to be dedicated to the worship of the idea of such an entity.

I was naively looking for a transcendent experience, maybe even the opening of a wormhole in the fabric of time, so I could transport back 300 years and find a hint of what it might have felt like listening to this piece of devotion. Instead, I took the opportunity to listen to it in much the same way as I’ve always heard it. Oh well, nothing ventured, nothing gained.

I cherish these views where all reminders of modernity are hidden from view, and for a moment, I’m standing in another age. Of course, I don’t miss the smell of animal shit, human excrement, urine, or plague-carrying rats that might have been running around. Then there are things like hot water running into the shower at my lodging that are incalculable luxuries that we often take for granted. Hmm, for everything I don’t want to encounter and everything I require for my comfort, I wonder if what I’m really looking for is the Disneyland version of history.

Over to the edge of the old town, I found the hidden small entrance that takes you up a tower and onto a 350-meter length of the remaining old fortification wall. The view from the first tower was worth every penny of the 5 Euros I spent to acquire my bragging rights of having been there and done that. After climbing a few of the towers, I decided I’d had enough for one day of narrow, steep wooden steps and instead focused on the narrow walkway on the wall. The moat that was part of the fortification is long ago emptied of its alligators, sharks, and aquatic dragons.

Walled fortifications with lookout towers were the best defense for the day when marauding dickheads were on the prowl looking for booty, food, wenches, a few new soldiers to replace those that died in the last drunken raid, and maybe some hostages if anyone of importance happened to be in town. Most walls are now gone, replaced by nuclear weapons, figuratively speaking, of course, but on occasion, we can find a few remaining sections reminding us what it was like when we needed to escape the shit, plague, and stench of piss below.

Think about it; this view is almost identical to one someone fifteen generations ago back in 1569, would have seen. The price of this time travel is simply saving your shekels until you’ve amassed enough to carry yourself up some narrow old wooden stairs out in a small town 218 miles (351km) from the nearest international airport. Pray to the deity of your choice that some idiot below isn’t riding the horn in his car to spoil the effect of being there.

These are the kind of stairs you’ll be navigating as you move from tower to tower.

Sweet God, the idiocy of believing I need to share so many photos to adequately allow others to explore where I’ve been or maybe refresh my memories when I’m near death’s door should I be forgetting that I’ve lived a charmed life is starting to wear thin. I could opt to simply post a photo with some minor amount of location data, but what fun would that be in forcing me to wrestle something profound out of my head so as to impress my future self with how smug I was in the arrogance of my youth? You might think that 56 years old is no longer my youth, but experience tells me that the 80-year-old version of John will look at this younger version with contempt.

Ah, the sweet fields of canola. What the serious fuck was America thinking when they decided that “rape” needed a more user-friendly marketable word and thus came up with canola. Did someone consult Engelbert Humperdinck’s parents?

I’m back in Erfurt now, where these cobblestones late in the day have been known to blind people with the incredible glare that shines off of them. I swear that I’m not lying or even exaggerating this: I promise. Had I not taken this photo through a welder mask, I, too, might not be able to see these words I’m writing at this very minute.

Dr. Molrok struck here, but destruction is striking back at his work as age attempts to remove his fading artwork.

This puppet maker has one of the coolest shops I’ve ever been in. I’d spotted his shop two days ago when it was closed, and I peeked in. I didn’t visit the next day as it took me this long to stumble upon it again. Someday I should learn to use my phone to mark locations that I find of interest.

Oh, look at these cuties. I have no idea if these are seriously large ducks or a type of geese. Momma bird was keeping eight babies warm under her wings. I probably stood across the creek for 15 minutes watching them be cute parents.

I don’t know if the national bird of Germany is the swan, but one wouldn’t be blamed for thinking that there’s a good chance it is so. Another Thüringian meal has been captured in the basket of flavors.

My time here in Erfurt is most recognizable from this central shopping mall location where my walks got underway in the old town. There’s nothing very special here as far as history or cool shops are concerned, but this is a reminder of the skyline in the early evening and the beautiful street trains that rumble down the center of the arcade. While I’ll walk until it’s well dark, this is the stopping point on my report for another busy day.

*Photo: The morning walk took me to this mural that wasn’t all that easy to photograph as it’s highly detailed and so I’m only sharing a small part of its medieval dreamlike and simultaneously nightmarelike imagery.

One goes somewhere to do a thing, or maybe they don’t. Maybe they want to do a thing but are ill-prepared; on the other hand, it could be the place that is ill-prepared to support the intentions of the visitor.

Five hundred years ago one simply needed to be present and in possession of a modicum of intelligence for the facility of doing what needed to be done. Here I am in the modern age of consumer convenience, but what I want is not easily had. I walked miles around the old town of Erfurt today looking to enjoy a coffee with some needed wifi so I could better demonstrate my languid strengths to those who might be passing by, but finding that elixir of onlineness is like finding a unicorn in the desert.

*Photo: Bread, along with beer, though not necessarily together unless we are talking pretzels, are the two main food groups in every German’s life. Should you wonder just what’s so important about these particular pieces of bread, then you are obviously not German because, for someone who doesn’t get to see this every day, it is porn for the gluten addict.

At the main train station was a Starbucks outside and a Coffee Fellows inside. One promised serious foot traffic and noise rushing by while the other a kind of familiarity that I’m trying to escape. I chose the little-known brand, sacrificing the quieter location for the bustle.

Settled in I was able to tie up some loose ends in order to clear the slate for today’s experience. What big things are on the menu you probably didn’t ask about? Well, I’m telling you anyway because this is my forum, so there’s that. I have nothing. I’ll be trying to explore so little of nothing that I will attempt to stay out of my wandering mind’s eye in order to go nowhere and find much.

*Photo: When moving into new apartments where hallways are narrow, streets are narrow, and German ingenuity broad, you create a solution that allows for a more efficient method of accomplishing something that would otherwise be inefficient, then that system of smart tools will be deployed instead of relying on mere brawn.

There’s a problem with this idea of finding much. You see, thinking ended long ago while we walked through our environment. Today, we are gleaners of inconsequential trash stacking up in our electronic devices, proof of having been there and done that. But just what have we done? We’ve done nothing. We cannot do anything. Walking in a cathedral has no meaning; standing before a waterfall is superfluous, and taking selfies in front of a statue is an insult to the iron that rests upon the stone. Why is this? What is it that we are trying to accomplish?

Is anyone tying together the bits of history, studying the effects of surface hydrology and what it might mean to the underlying bedrock, or even trying to find a deeper meaning to the aesthetic of majesty that flows with water cascading over an edge to fall below? Hell no. Okay, certainly, when snapping the selfie with you and the guy on a horse with really big balls (the guy who earned his own statue probably had really big balls, too), do you give two cents as to why he’s there or why you are there?

*Photo: Digging out the ruins that lay below a house for centuries is the job of the team that’s sifting history from its tomb. I asked the guys from what period they were exploring and was informed that it was Roman.

I’ll bet a dollar that the majority does not have the luxury of asking questions like, “Why?” You see, we can hardly hear ourselves, and should we find the time to explore the self, do we have the intellectual capacity to do so? Let’s say there’s a hint of that potential: where does one go to taste the sweet relish of mind stuffed within our heads? The ascetics of 500 years ago entered a monastery and isolated themselves within the stone walls of the church and grounds in order to concentrate on a conversation with God. Prior to arriving at the need to isolate themselves, people were able to walk a street without the distraction of two-ton hunks of aggressive steel moving near light speed in their general direction. They didn’t or couldn’t contemplate moving out of the way of a bicyclist. Electrical anything was centuries away.

When I walk through Erfurt, I encounter tourists negating space with the mindless activity of collecting trophies to show people who don’t really care that they posed, in the same way a thousand other visitors that day did in front of “popular object du jour.” Through this noise, both audible and visual, we are taken to distraction where we can never find our minds as they sift the pollution of the soundscape.

Combine this futility with the relative fact that many of us do not have enough information or knowledge to be considerate of the machinations of the inner mind, and we then become complicit in allowing our brains to lay fallow, never to burst forth with a flowering of curiosity.

*Photo: Visiting the church here at the Protestant Augustinian Monastery where Martin Luther lived from 1505 until 1511.

What do we do, where do we go, how do we find the place where people of 500 and 1,000 years ago went to listen to themselves? Not only are we actively destroying our environment for the continued reasons of convenience, but we have obliterated the city for the sake of allowing those on a mad dash to a consumerist existential certainty, better known as “owning shit,” to run rampant through the landscape destroying any semblance of serenity.

As I think about things, I wonder about the effects of war and plague on the imagination that arises out of the inner dialog of that part of humanity that survives these tragedies where extraordinary population reductions have occurred. I loathe wanting to realize that it is after these convulsions that rip at the fabric of complacency that we whip our minds into a froth with the intent of repairing what was just a dark historical moment that threatened our cultural underpinnings.

*Photo: A single candle burns inside the chapel here at the Protestant Augustinian Monastery. The original facility was built back in 1277.

The very thought that a maelstrom is a salve for a decaying body politic where the survivors must transcend the conditions that laid the foundation for repair is not the kind of comforting idea I hoped to find today. All of a sudden, it appears self-evident and imminent that the lubrication of civility must be run out of the machine, thus triggering a seizure. Out of the ruins of our own frailty when change demands strength, it would appear that rather than find the muscle and the will to correct our path, we instead run to panic, and if nature is not taking action against us, we turn within to commit a kind of mass suicide.

In a world that requires care and cooperation, are we seeing in the rise of nationalism the kindling of hate that can deliver us to war? Is there a subconscious effort that is about to whip humanity into a battle of cultures where the bet is that the West will remain the reigning hegemon? Are our egos a pestilence using advanced weaponry as a kind of virus on other humans we are afraid are too dissimilar to ourselves to be healthy for our own well-being?

*Photo: This is the cloister of the Protestant Augustinian Monastery. It’s an interesting thought that within this covered walkway, Martin Luther would isolate himself during moments of reflection over 500 years ago, seeing almost exactly the same view of things as we see them today.

Well, that’s my food for thought on this fine Monday as I find myself walking in Martin Luther’s footsteps. When he was looking at the corruption of the Holy See and the Catholic church as a whole, I would like to think that if he were alive today, he would be railing against the corruption of politics at the behest of economic activity that is abusing their power by dividing people along cultural and racial lines.

Capitalism is dragging us away from nature and doing its best to ensure our compliance in the act of the purchase instead of the act of abeyance that would allow us to recover from our overindulgence. We are not only fat and diabetic from our poor diets; we are mentally fat and diabetic from our sugared brains that haven’t seen the light of reality since TV dinners of the 50s and saccharine caricatures we’ve been feasting on for decades, culminating in the absurd antics of the current climate that defies logic. We pray at the altar of celebrity in the nave of social media. We are vacuous from the hollowing out of our ideals that were replaced with want of brightly candy-colored shoes, silly clown-like fashion, and a type of alternative attitude we falsely believe is edgy.

*Photo: The library of the Protestant Augustinian Monastery, though I’m not sure about authenticity as there wasn’t a placard explaining the room.

We pay false lip service in stating that the bourgeois is dead, that the middle class has disappeared, the exact opposite has occurred. Our inner cities in prosperous regions of countries have learned just what the luxury of satisfying every want can mean to them. They want to protect their urban civility, Starbucks, cheap airfare, and the ability to take what they want. This is the power of the purse that can be milked to foment fear, and there are people on the right who fully understand this. Threaten to take away my purchasing power or ability to pay a mortgage, and you will have me happily paying any cost as long as it’s only monetary to rid the landscape of the scourge who threatens my local Whole Foods and way of consumer life.

*Photo: There are a number of rooms in an exhibit where visitors are introduced to an interpretation of what Martin Luther’s experience might have looked like.

Okay, this is definitely going downhill into Rantville, where I’m taking large swings into the realm of nonsense, but I came to write, and writing is what I’ll do. Time to change channels.

*Photo: Praying and contemplation, aside from the rare meal were the order of the day for a monk looking at how to best work for God.

While I walk around this town where Martin Luther walked so many years ago, I’ve been trying to move away from the travel narrative that only shares with the reader my sense of the aesthetic based on my particular observations. While this is great for Caroline and me reminiscing about our adventures, it doesn’t bring me to what could have otherwise been in my mind.

Martin Luther was lucky that he had a monastery to turn to as a refuge where isolation and inner dialog were a major part of the program. Today, we sign up for yoga and then buy the appropriate ensemble to feel better about our efforts at self-improvement; that’s fine, but where’s the mind yoga? Martin Luther was certainly exercising the mind when he walked to Rome back in 1510 only to find himself disgusted with the Catholic Church and its hypocrisy. Thus, his mind was set in motion to alter the history of literally everyone in Europe and more than a few others in faraway lands.

*Photo: Somebody or a number of those somebodies have been yarn bombing Erfurt. This one in the tree was a hidden specimen that required leaving the side street I found them on.

Thinking of thought like the knitting of an object using a specific pattern, we must first collect the required materials before we can bring together the many threads to create the whole. Obviously, we will need to understand the basics of knit and purl stitches, and likewise, with our minds, there are requisite materials and techniques for learning we must acquire. I have to wonder out loud just how much effort the average person is making to that end or are the majority satisfied with the routines they’ve mastered and that pay the bills?

*Photo: Sometimes, you must crochet things to get what you want when on a yarn bombing mission. This motif is from the 2nd Order of Chicks first established back in 1611 following the banning of the Yellow Beaked Brigade of Brigands.

*Photo: I guess this has become a kind of selfie where I find it memorable to capture the space where I’ve been writing. There’s an incredible difficulty, though, in finding the right coffee shop, the majority of them do not have wifi, and I’ll be damned if I’m going to visit a Starbucks while in Europe.

*Photo: Dinner tonight is at the Köstritzer “Zum güldenen Rade,” where authentic Thüringer cooking is promised.

As is usual when ordering water in Germany, I opt for sprudel, a.k.a. water with gas. Also, as has been typical, I don’t think I’m drinking enough over the course of the day, so I opt for the 0.75-liter large bottle of sparkling water.

First to be delivered to my table this evening was a tasty dish of arugula with elderflower and mustard dressing. I don’t know how Thüringian it is, but I felt a deep need for some fresh greens, and nothing satisfies quite like some spicy rocket doused in holunderbluten dressing.

Attention Caroline: Do not read the following. The German bread cannot be denied and must be eaten, diabetes be damned. Good for me they are only like four thin mints worth and won’t go making me explode Monty Python style.

Next up in my feast of Thüringian delights is a wild garlic cream soup. Fortunately, it wasn’t rammed onto my table 10 seconds after I finished my salad. It’s nice being in a restaurant that doesn’t need to turn tables to ensure good tips for the server. The suppe war Sehr gut, lecke even, that’s Germlish for, “The soup was very good, yummy even.”

Dinner itself ended up being too much as I’d ordered a Thüringer Klößen (dumpling) with my mustard-marinated pork cutlet that was smothered in grilled onions and apples. The dumpling was served with a side of dark beer gravy. Earlier with my soup, I was tempted to order a second portion of bread, but remained strong and denied myself the indulgence (it’s my effort to channel Martin Luther here at the dinner table). You should know that Caroline will never believe that I exercised my inner will, actually using discretion in not ordering more. If she does believe I passed on more bread, it will only be because she thinks I was saving room for dessert. God, I hope they don’t have apple something or other on the menu of sweets.

After sitting here for nearly two hours, it was time to get my walk back on.

*Photo: After having walked past a couple of skins in a slightly sketchy corner of town, I had to reluctantly pass through this tunnel that smelled exactly like you might imagine.

My walk took me across town, only about a mile really, over to the Topf & Sons building, which is now a memorial organized by the Buchenwald Gedenkstaette. On the site is the former headquarters building that served the company that was complicit with the Nazis in building the ovens that cremated the Jews of Auschwitz, Buchenwald, Dachau, and other camps.

*Photo: The work of Doktor Molrok. I need more time to figure this one out.

*Photo: This is the Schmale Gera stream that runs through town. Back in the day, it was used to run mills across the village.

This placard is in the elevator of the apartment building I’m staying in. Just in case anyone forgets that it’s preferred that nobody burns the building down and that men shouldn’t simply piss in any old place they want. The big one, other than no bike riding in the halls, is that they don’t want your dog shitting in the building. Seriously, does anyone think it’s the 17th century and that their dog is some kind of pet of the king of France taking a dump in the corner of Versailles like it’s just normal or something?

This is my temporary 140mph office on steel wheels. There must have been a breakdown of service on my Frankfurt to Berlin leg of this trip as nobody came by offering coffee. All I can imagine is how this porcelain cup of hot coffee would slosh about spilling over the sides and potentially damaging my computer. Without hesitation, the steward who carried the tray of coffees to our car set it right down next to a rather costly Surface Book and didn’t flinch.

After leaving Berlin, I was trying to get caught up with blogging chores before falling too far behind, so I used the two hours on this highspeed ICE train to go online (one of the rare places where wifi is free, known as WLAN here – pronounced Vay-Lahn if you are asking a German).

Every so often, I’d look up to ensure that the entire world hadn’t just passed me by, and sure enough, it was still out there. We had a stop in Leipzig to drop some people and pick up others. I’ve got to say that I do believe that modern train service could work in America. The economics of air travel within the states is not viable for the spontaneous traveler. One cannot simply show up at the airport and choose a destination with a departure in the next hour or two and then be quickly on their way. Instead, they will have to pay nearly three times the cheapest published fare, and that’s if there’s a free seat on the tightly packed flight.

So where I paid a little more than $90 for a 1st class ticket to Berlin from Frankfurt, which is nearly the exact same distance between Phoenix, Arizona and Los Angeles, California, a flight on a cramped seat bought today for the trip across the desert would be at least $220 with bag restrictions, I don’t have on the train. Back when I booked my trip to Berlin, I could have purchased a 2nd class seat for as little as $40. While we can jump in the car for 5 hours and drive the 340 miles to L.A. I cannot tap into free wifi, focus on writing, or sip on a coffee delivered to my seat, all while traveling at 186mph to Southern California in about 2 hours. I’m starting to wonder if the powers that be don’t want a truly mobile, spontaneous population.

I’ve arrived in Erfurt this afternoon to a much slower speed of life than that of Berlin. I’d equate this to going from the bustle of New York City to sleepy Phoenix. While I was able to make some serious headway into writing, I’m still nearly a full day behind. Prior to leaving Berlin, I took the time to prepare yesterday’s photos and send a couple out to people wanting a copy of an image I shot.

My feeling is that the time spent caring for these details on a computer instead of maximizing my sightseeing opportunities allows me to share with Caroline some of the moments I’m experiencing while she’s still in Arizona.

By creating this space I end up looking at and consequently thinking about things that I can allow her to, in a sense, join me. Keeping her in my thoughts becomes a constant reminder of how spoiled I am to be here. More than the music stuff, nature, architecture, history, or food I’m afforded to indulge in, I want to let her know how much awareness I have that I appreciate this opportunity to dwell within myself.

Of course, there’s the knowing that if she were here with me right now, we’d be smiling like loons at one another and holding hands far more than we can ever do back home due to not being next to each other every waking moment. When we travel, the luxury of John and Caroline’s immersion runs deep. I have never needed to step away for “me time” because I’m bored with her; that’s just not in the nature of our relationship.

Something within me is quickly changing as I drift out of the machine known as Berlin and flow into the brook that is Erfurt. I’m starting to miss Caroline more than ever. This doesn’t imply that I simply turned her off upon landing in her home country, but it is a reflection that my attention was aimed squarely at being fully present for Superbooth.

At this point in the adventure, things would certainly be enhanced by Caroline’s presence, but I wanted this extended sojourn so I could spend a good amount of time organizing words here on this digital paper. So, I’ll try my best to limit the lament and focus on whatever it was I was hoping to discover in my mind.

To say out loud that is a beautiful day to be here would be gratuitous, and I’d hope that it is obvious. After checking in to the place I’m staying for these days, I walked out of the front of the building and headed to what looked like the center of the old town. It’s Mother’s Day today, and Germans are out with their loved ones for ice cream or maybe just a lovely walk around town while enjoying each other’s company.

John Das Brot meets Bernd Das Brot. I feel that the Wikipedia article on this character best describes him, so I’m going to borrow it and share: Bernd is a depressed, grumpy, curmudgeonly, constantly bad-tempered, surly, fatalistic, melancholic loaf of sandwich bread speaking in a deep, gloomy baritone. This puppet television star was a favorite of Caroline’s just a dozen years ago; I think it was because he reminded her of her husband.

I am surely in Church City. There are 36 churches and 15 monasteries in this small town. I will not attempt to visit them all, but I will stop in when the chance to do so arises. Walking into the Erfurt Cathedral, which is also known as St Mary’s Cathedral, was on the top of my list because this is the exact spot where Martin Luther was ordained back on the 3rd of April, 1507.

I probably sat here for about an hour listening to Chanticleer’s Palestrina: Missa pro Defunctis & Motets, and when quiet, I’d listen to the sounds of the cathedral. Afterward, I went next door to the Church of St Severus, where I sat in on a service being offered to those in attendance. The service was in German and closed to tourists. Baptized Catholic as I child, I assured the lady at the door I was there for God and not taking pictures. Some might say that lie will help deliver me to hell, but I assure you that this minor transgression pales in comparison to the big ugly shit that my feet could be held to the fire for. I did not take photos or make a recording of the incredible reverb the nave offered, as that would be rude. Listening to a pipe organ in a 13th-century church is an experience everyone should embrace once in their life.

The Maypole comes in as many versions as there are towns that erect them. I don’t believe that anywhere in America observes this European tradition, though the majority of our ancestors are descendants of Europeans. That is if you are not part of the original inhabitants of North America. The maypole is thought to come to us out of the medieval Christian European culture and symbolizes the return of warm weather. Somewhere in the back of my mind is an old song about dancing around the maypole, but I was probably 5 or 6 years old when I learned it, and now it’s long gone.

I walked into the night until few were left on the streets of Erfurt. It’s difficult to get a sense of the medieval culture that once existed here. While some of the architecture still exists, the blue light of television flickering through windows adds to the spoiling of the atmosphere. The neon shop signs along the narrow passages and the white electric light emanating from the houses don’t help either. Fortunately, the sound of a shallow brook running through the heart of town can only sound as it did hundreds of years ago, so I do have that added reminder of the past.

Maybe this is as close to pre-modern Erfurt as I will get. What a beautiful village I get to stroll seemingly by myself. That the streets are no longer strewn with sewage, nor is it dumped into the stream, has the added benefit of not raising a stench that would have been out here along with the stink of slaughtered and butchered animals. So the idyllic, sterile, and safe landscape just might be more desirable than a primitive medieval village where life could be extinguished by morning with the plague moving through. About now, a hot shower and clean sheets sound like the kind of luxury I really want.