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.