Part 14: Long way home

Tuesday, 12 August, 2003. Pirna, Sachsen, Germany. Facing an ordeal of multi-stage, multi-mode travel that would have been problematic in the best of circumstances, what I had was a nose that absolutely refused to stop running, no matter what I tried. The only thing I knew would work was back home in Boston, on my night table.

After our last buffet-style breakfast at the Hotel Bernardo Bellotto, we arranged with our delightful hostess to leave our bags in her office after we had checked out, so we could do some last-minute exploration of her "schoene Kleinstadt." She, like our taxi driver from the night before, was astonished that we had gone all the way to Prague the previous morning and returned that same evening.

Our first stop was at the church just around the corner, the one from whose tall tower we had heard the brass choir a few nights earlier. The Blue Guide to Eastern Germany, which I foolishly left at home because it has never been updated to take into full account the 1989 reunification, waxes enthusiastic over this Marienkirche, "one of the most beautifully decorated hall churches in Saxony." What caught our attention, though, was some reconstruction work being done in the choir stalls, which I assumed was necessitated by the "Hochwasser" of a year before. That allowed us to look into the innards of the building.

As we were taking pictures of various things, a woman came to us expostulating about something, and it was evident, we thought, that some kind of fee to take pictures was required. I asked how much, and whether 2 Euros was sufficient, and she seemed placated. But when we went to the information desk near the entrance it dawned on us: we had just been panhandled. Oh well. Now, just today (30 December) I was reading somewhere the puzzlement of a German visitor to the U.S. over the conspicuousness of poverty in this country, saying that in Germany they take care of their poor people. While this had been the first time we were actually approached for a handout, I do have to insert here that in several places, I remember especially in Erfurt and Dresden, we had seen the apparently permitted passive form of begging: people sitting silently on the street with hands outstretched.

By the way, the helpful woman at the information desk informed us that the renovation work had not been necessitated by the flooding, but that an opportunity to do some delayed maintenance as a result of the cleanup was being utilized.

Our next errand was to search for an Apotheke where I might find the equivalent of my longed-for Benzedrex inhaler. We first went into a Drogerie that didn't offer anything of the sort, although there were some nasal sprays, one of which I pessimistically purchased. When we did find an Apotheke, it took me some effort (and paging through my pocket dictionary) to get across that I was seeking for an "einatmet Ding" – the word "inhaler" was not offered in the English section. The woman who was trying hard to understand finally saw the light: ah. But, "nur mit Rezept" (only with a prescription), she regretfully informed me. I had
a fleeting thought of making some use of the excellent German health system by trying to find an Arzt, but fitting all of that into the day's already fraught travel arrangements was too daunting, and I decided just to tough it out. My biggest worry was for all the people I would be exposing to God-knows-what microbes in the course of the next 24 hours.

We returned to the hotel, had Judith Fichtner call a taxi, and went to the Pirna Hauptbahnhof for the last time. We had hours before our sleeper would arrive at Dresden Neustadt Bahnhof to take us to Frankfurt.

Now I must complain once again about the Michelin Green Guide and its maps. Here, the map of Dresden did not show the Bahnhof in Dresden Neustadt (the "new town" on the right bank of the Elbe), but stopped just short of it. So I had no way of orienting us to the streets around the station and to find out just how far we might have to go in what direction to see what was worth seeing in this part of town. I finally purchased a map of Dresden at the bookstore in the station (you may remember that I was unable to find the one I had bought in Pirna several days earlier), and at last we could set out for our last day of sightseeing -- after a stop at the Drogerie in the station to stock up on tissues, and after making grateful use once again of the blessing of luggage lockers.

The one destination I had in mind was the "Japanese Palace," for no particular reason other than that it was there. Again we made our way down broad, sunlit streets by darting as quickly as possible from one diminutive patch of shade to the next. When we got to the museum, it was hard to see anything Japanese about this neo-classical building (but you can go to a rather fun interactive panorama
and click on the directional arrows on the photograph to see that the roofs on the end pavilions do have a fancied "oriental" character). Inside, sculptured figures of costumed Japanese men do finally emerge from the background.

No longer containing any of the Meissen and East Asian porcelain for which the building was originally designed, it now has a museum of prehistory and a museum of ethnology. Signs at the entrance proclaimed that admission was free -- but when I decided that the Papuan exhibit featured in the ethnology museum sounded like a better starting place than the prehistory museum, behold, we were (shades of Leipzig!) greeted by a second admission booth and here tickets were demanded. Tickets that needed to be purchased back at the entrance. I declared, as best I could through my sniffles, that we were perfectly willing to pay an admission, only it just was not at all clear where we were to do so. After several trips back and forth, waving pieces of paper that were deemed insufficient, we finally got everything sorted out, and the door to New Guinea was at last opened to us.

Have I mentioned that it was still very hot in Germany? In this exhibit, it had been decided to give viewers an experience of true tropical heat -- and the temperature was surely another 20 degrees fahrenheit above that on the outside. The exhibit was marvelous, but the atmosphere was not helping me cope with my ailment. When we finally did reach the exit, we could appreciate the fact that the steam bath we had just unknowingly subjected ourselves to made the rest of the world seem quite tolerably cool, for about fifteen minutes at any rate.

We continued our explorations and headed in the direction of the Dreikönigskirche (Church of the Three Kings). Here the destroyed building had not been restored to its original state after the firebombing (it had not been that distinguished a building to begin with), but lovingly remodeled into a "church house" that serves as a conference and cultural center (before the most recent alterations, it had served for a time as headquarters for the Saxon parliament). A much-reduced worship space now is used for Lutheran services, as well as a home for the impressive altar from the old church that had barely survived the destruction. While this building is not a great esthetic treasure, it does join the melancholy and instructive list of churches that serve as memorials to human brutality -- like the Wilhelmskirche in Berlin, and like the Coventry Cathedral in England whose deplorable destruction was the excuse for the barbaric Anglo-American Dresden conflagration. It also provides, like First and Second Church in Boston's Back Bay, a demonstration of the architectural challenge of retaining mementoes of a beloved older building while providing for today's needs.

By this time we were ready to rest our feet, and we returned to the Bahnhof in search of food and, especially, drink. What we found was the only air-conditioned space in the whole structure: the Burger King! This became our headquarters for the rest of the time we had until our train should come for us -- we would cool off, have a nibble or a sip, wander out to the station again or even to the streets. There are wonderful fountains a few blocks away at Albertplatz; I was enthralled by and photographed the sleek trams with their efficient and informative signs (such a contrast to Boston's Green Line!), and I even made a desultory but unsuccessful search for an internet cafe. Unlike the unreal, haunting fantasies of the not-yet-convincingly resuscitated heart of the royal city, the Neustadt around the Bahnhof is a place where people do mundane, real things, like work, and commute, and do their marketing (right next to the Burger King the station contains the busy local supermarket!).

I'm still cogitating about the persistence of cities, how they manage to do a phoenix-like resurrection in exactly the place where they were destroyed. Exceptions seem to be those cases where a city's waterway has somehow deserted it -- like Babylon's -- otherwise, neither flood nor fire seem to keep cities from sprouting at the same place over and over again.

At last our train appeared on the full and busy announcement board! We retrieved our bags and found the platform. There we looked at the diagram showing what cars are where, and there indeed seemed to be no first-class cars indicated. What might that mean about the nature of our sleeping accommodations (which, I began to realize, had been remarkably cheap)? While we were waiting we met a German chap who had been on a bicycling tour. He had to cut it short to return home to the Rhineland -- because his 95-year-old great-aunt had succumbed to the heat wave, like the famous thousands of French senior citizens whose deaths made the news around the world at just this time.

The train arrived, we found the car that had our number on it, and the attendant showed us to our berths. The compartment contained six shelves, three on each side, although the middle ones were not deployed. Jay refused to consider the top one, so I clambered up there, with about a foot between my nose and the ceiling. A genteel lady (possibly Swiss; the train's final destination was Zurich) was shown to the bottom shelf opposite us. She was as nonplused and bewildered as we were. "Ist dies richtig?" she plaintively asked the attendant, who, with no apology whatsoever, assured her that it was.

I arranged my tissues and my camera and my back pack on a tiny space at the end of my shelf and settled in, sighing, for what promised to be the worst part of the journey so far. It was. At some point on the journey, not long out of Dresden, our compartment door opened and a young man was shown in, to climb to the top shelf opposite me and above the gracious lady two shelves below. (I know; these are supposed to be called "berths," but they really did not deserve so grand a title.)

I slept fitfully, going through my tissue supply at a terrifying rate, and before any kind of rest could be accomplished the attendant came around to inform us that our stop was next. I frantically gathered together my belongings -- and could not locate my passport! Much frantic climbing up and down before I opened a pocket in my camera case, and there it was. By that time we were in the station and had to make a mad scramble out the door with our bags following behind all higgledy-piggledy.

We were indeed in Frankfurt-Süd, not Frankfurt Hauptbahnhof. And once the smattering of other passengers from our train had left, there was not another soul in the station. I could find no information board telling us how to get to the Hauptbahnhof where we could get a train to the airport. We finally went down the stairs into what passed for the main waiting room of this outlying station, and again I was stymied by the Frankfurt information system, where you have to know what time your train leaves before you can find it on the very full schedule. At last I did discover, after going through acres of fine print again and again, a train to the Hauptbahnhof. Two hours from now! There was no human sustenance available anywhere in this desolate place, so we ensconced ourselves on the appropriate platform, I continued depleting my tissue supply, and we waited.

Finally the first morning suburban trains began to arrive, and at long last came our train. In the Frankfurt Hauptbahnhof I had another difficult time trying to locate the line to the airport, but at last we found that one too. Upon arrival at the airport, the next task was to find Singapore Airlines. That, too, took much wandering around even to find an information counter, and then more wandering around to find the proper gate. In all this vast airport, Singapore occupied a single window. Another hassle ensued when the security checkers did not realize we were traveling together; finally that got straightened out, and we waited for our plane. No refreshment available in the waiting area.

We boarded at last, and were herded into steerage in the center of the huge Boeing 747. The central compartment contained about 100 people, of whom three were babies. Very unhappy babies, who made their unhappiness loudly known for the next seven hours. Singapore is a lovely airline, as airlines go, but the patient and capable attendants were themselves pushed to their limits on this chockfull flight. The only pleasant memory is of the soothing hot towels Asian airlines have the grace to supply to their passengers.

We landed at Kennedy, finally located our bags, were welcomed home by the immigration guys, found our way to the USAir terminal that would load us on our transport to Boston, and finally got there. Jay insisted, again, that we would take a taxi home instead of using the subway. All the new routes for the Big Dig confuse everyone -- our driver took us the opposite route from what we expected, going along the Charles through the center of the city instead of around the city to the south, and the fare was about $40 or so. As opposed to the 40 cents it would have cost me on the subway and bus, with my senior pass. Oh well.

He did get us to our house, and I left my suitcases down in the entryway and ran upstairs to my bedroom. I made a beeline for my nightstand, and there was a Benzedrex inhaler, which I immediately inserted into my grateful nostrils. Ahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

That day, I saw on the news on my computer that a cool front had moved across Germany.

If you can stand it, I plan to do one more installment -- a retrospective on the whole trip, and musings on why one travels, and on genealogy and the nature of cities and villages, and all like that. It's still 2003!

Barely.

[composed on 31 December 2003]