The Bells of Stuttgart

I honestly don't remember much about Stuttgart the first time we visited it. Scott and I basically spent the whole time arguing. Standing in Schlossplatz, Elle screamed at us to stop arguing and we were shamed into smoldering silence.

On our way to Stuttgart that morning, Jochen had called and invited us to get off the train a little early to have ice cream with him in Schorndorf. I was really relieved by the invite because I was dying for some outside conversation and Jochen had struck me as a fun, straightforward guy.

The village was beautiful with a square crowded with tents selling produce, meat, bread, cheese, fresh flowers and souvenirs. Surrounding the square were tall Fachwerkhause (half-timbered houses), dark wooden support beams criss-crossing their facades. A decorative maypole, topped by an evergreen tree, stood proudly amidst the houses. Like most small German villages, an archaic church sentried the middle of the square. It's steeple touched the clouds and stone gargoyles shot out from every side.

People were everywhere walking through the square while small cars and hippy delivery trucks maneuvered around the crowds. A boy, probably 10 years old overheard us talking and ran up excitedly to find out if we were American. A mentally handicapped older man approached Jochen for conversation and presumably some spare change. We had a small lunch and ice cream at Jochen's favorite cafe. He didn't know the menu, so I assume it was the staff that made it his favorite cafe. Young, pretty girls worked behind a delicatessen/espresso bar making paninis (called toast here) and crepes, both sweet and savory.

 Jochen pointed out one waitress as a friend of his who models for his artwork. He described his work as sculptures constructed only with clear tape. He showed me a photo of one on his iPhone. It was a woman in a bathtub. The water covered her midsection but her breasts were heavy and visible. Her legs were sprawled spread eagle on either edge of the claw foot tub. One hand hid beneath the surface of the water and one reached for a conspicuously phallic water spigot. I tried to hide my initial embarrassment, assuming it was my own American sexually repressed mentality. Other than the shocking subject, the details were quite amazing when one considered his simple media.

We talked with Jochen for more than an hour and before we left, I told him he'd have to take me out to see the nightlife sometime. Scott stopped in mid chew and gruffly commented on the inappropriateness of a married woman asking men to take her out without him. An uncomfortable silence followed for an eternal ten seconds before Jochen recovered with a question about Scott's classes at the university.

From the moment we were out of Jochen's sight, we argued the rest of the day. Scott pointed out how offended he was by my asking men on two different occasions to take me out without him, and I defended my innocent motive of just needing to get away and let loose for a few hours with someone who knew their way around. As in most heated arguments, our emotions got the best of us and neither really heard what the other was trying to say. Our disdain for each other was palpable. Fortunately, it was a rainy day in Stuttgart and the main street, Kunigstrasse (King street) was not too crowded. I'd like to think we didn't embarrass ourselves too much.

People strolled from store to store in the walking mall made of large rectangular stones. The street reminded me of the miracle mile in Chicago, other than the huge Mercedes Benz sign twirling atop a brown brick tower at the end of the street. Tall modern buildings housed multi-leveled department stores strung together with escalators. Customers shuffled in and out of the tall glass doors. Some led leashed dogs and didn't hesitate even a moment before entering the stores with them.

When the rain fell harder, we squeezed against the building. The eaves sheltered us from getting soaked. It was there huddling together that we both resigned. Scott shook his head and simply said, "Do what you want." I shrugged and thought to myself...and you can think what you want... We finished the day by walking through another of the damp city squares where rallies and demonstrations are usually held.

















Earlier in the day, we'd passed the same spot and a group of people hovered around the long white steps in front of a government building. The cul-de-sac ending at the square was lined with polizei vans. A dozen blue police vans curved around the narrow road and police in full riot gear stood around them watching the small demonstration. A woman with a megaphone connected to huge amplifiers yelled in German on the top of her lungs. The crowd around the woman called back now and then, while everyone else walking by, or sitting in the outdoor cafe just went on with their lives as if nothing strange was going on. It seems that loud demonstrations and rallies with someone screaming into an amplifier is a norm.

We had scurried quickly away from the screeching voice earlier in the day, and were relieved that she had left by the time we came through this second time. This time we were able to amble leisurely squinting up at the multiple church steeples surrounding the square. We discussed the possibility of having dinner in Stuttgart before catching the train back to Schwabich Gmunde. Scott had noticed an Italian restaurant near a statue of King Wilhelm who, Scott had recently learned, persecuted his ancestors four generations before.

 Our guess that it was near dinner time was easily enough verified when at 6:00 (18:00 here), every church bell in the vicinity started ringing. The multiple gongs from every direction slammed into each other above us, and echoed as they vibrated away to meet the newest clangs heading back to the square like some huge nautical storm. The power of the sound was overwhelming. Our eardrums swelled with the waves of volume. Elle covered her ears and Scott and I met each other's eyes amused by our mutual awe.

I'll always remember those bells. Somehow, they represent the moment when Scott and I joined the same team on this trip; the moment when loneliness didn't pervade me and when intimacy and opportunity rang louder than any longing, doubt or regret.

Caged Animal (Part 2)

"So what?" I asked Scott when he said it was getting close to 1 o'clock. We were on the bus with plans to go to the train station and catch a train to Stuttgart for the day. Stuttgart is the home of Mercedes Benz and it's the biggest city anywhere near us. It's kind of like the Chicago of this area. I was trying my hardest to fight the depression I had felt the day before and thought a day trip to a new place would brighten my spirits.

"So, if we get to Bahnhof (the train station) at 1:30 and catch a train immediately, we won't get to Stuttgart until almost 3:00. A train ticket is kind of a lot of money for only a few hours there."

I sighed, annoyed, "O.K. Fine. You make the plan for the day then." "Why don't we just get off the bus at Marktplatz in Schwabish Gmunde and take Elle to the Vasserspielplatz (water playground)." "That's fine." I shrugged begrudgingly.

Scott has always had a quirk - a quirk he'll deny I'm sure - of giving me the choice for where we should go or what we should eat or what we should do, and then, for some reason, changing the plans anyway. Honestly, I usually find the quirk amusing and laugh at him when he does it, contentedly going along with his alternative plans anyway, but my mood was not good. Because I was feeling so bad, he was the poor soul who took the brunt of it. His changing the plans at the last minute really irked me this time. In fact, in my state, everything about him annoyed me to no end.

The clothes he wore embarrassed me. The noises he made were like nails on a chalkboard. The words he chose, his gait, the way he hung his mouth, the way he chewed, the way he even breathed all made my jaw tense and my skin crawl. The poor guy couldn't do anything right. It was just one of those awful kind of days in my head when I couldn't stand my own husband.

So, of course, I hated his idea but felt powerless to do anything else. I wouldn't go to Stuttgart for the first time on my own, right? We found a cafe with dozens of small round tables and wooden folding chairs outside on the mall. The weather was an absolutely perfect sunny day in the low 70s. We could see the decorative fountain where children played and Elle investigated all the little water gadgets while Scott drank Coke and I had a mineral water.
A stone-throw away sat a circle of vendors selling fresh produce, meat, cheese, bread, fresh flowers and big grilled sausages perched on thick Briegel bread (briegels are unique to this part of Germany; it's a hard salty bread, half pretzel and half bread). We treated ourselves to three of the hot, juicy sausages while Elle tiptoed through the water.

 The Vasserspielplatz was small but quaint and very creative. The kids had to pump the water into the little steel river using different types of pumps. One was a round plunger that Elle could push down repeatedly to force water up into a pool. One had a paddle wheel that turned with the pressure of the flowing water. Her favorite was a wood and metal swing. She had to stand on it and balance as if she were on a surfboard. When she rocked the swing back and forth, the water pump dipped up and down, causing a spurt of water to pop out of the ground in time with her swinging. The harder she pumped the higher the burst of water flew.

Needless to say, this feature attracted most of the other kids as well, so they would come up behind her and wait for her to get off then climb on the swing themselves. She ran to us crying that she couldn't do it anymore because another kid had made her get off and we finally convinced her that if she stood long enough beside the swing, he would soon get off and she would have another turn. While she waited, a sweet little girl maybe 5 years old approached her. She looked straight into Elle's face and smiled. Elle became nervous and walked to another part of the river. The little girl, with curly brown hair and an endless smile skipped behind her.

Elle wasn't sure how to handle the situation. She knew by now that the kids here didn't understand English and she couldn't figure out how to play with someone without being able to give directions. She ran over to us. The little girl, sure enough skipped behind her and fearlessly came right up to our table. She smiled up at me with huge brown eyes. I handed Elle two chocolate tube-biscuits and told Elle to give one to the girl. The girl took it happily and said, "Danke" in the sweetest little chipmunk voice. "Wie heist du?" I asked her her name and I told her, "Das ist Elle." She nodded up and down so fast, her smile permanent, and the two of them galloped back to the water swing as new friends.

 Elle played happily and Scott and I ordered Eis (ice cream). It ended up being a fine day really so we agreed to go to Stuttgart the next day. I was able to relax into the sweetness of the situation and in spite of myself, let my resentment go, but I still couldn't feel genuinely happy or excited. That in itself was enough to depress me more. I kept asking myself why I wasn't happy when I was here having drinks in an outdoor European cafe on a perfect day with my husband and daughter.

The next day we would indeed take the train to Stuttgart, and the tension that had been notting in my stomach would finally release in a spectacular argument with Scott in the middle of the beautiful Schlossplatz (Castle Square).

Caged Animal

For three days I allowed myself to slip into a depression. I lost motivation to do even the smallest routines that I had made since arriving in Germany 2 weeks earlier. I didn't have the energy to jog. I didn't see the point in listening to my daily German lesson. As much as I learned to say, it didn't help in understanding the quick-speaking locals, and I didn't really have anyone to talk to anyway. I stopped having my evening glass of wine on the balcony, worried that the alcohol would make me only more depressed. I had to swallow a disappointing truth about myself; somehow I only existed through other peoples' eyes, and without any people here from whom to reflect, I felt like nothing.

To make things worse, I felt bad about little Elle having only imaginary friends to play with. I kept thinking of something my friend Sue from America had told me one day as we left a play group at her house. "The best gift you can give your child is a sibling." I beat myself up now for not giving Elle that precious gift when I had the chance.

It was during this 3 day span that Scott returned from work one day excited to tell me he had met another visiting professor from America. He had invited him to join us for dinner the following night and asked me if I preferred to cook dinner or go to the one restaurant in town, which he had dubbed Mario's. I couldn't help but be excited as well. I was so hungry to socialize and I wanted to return to Mario's to see Annamarie and Mario again.

When we arrived at the Italian restaurant, Annamarie had not yet started her shift so we ordered from a young waiter who we later found out was Mario's son. When we ordered milk for Elle, he returned with warmed milk. We remembered then that Annamarie had asked on our first visit if the milk should be warm or cold, and that the owner of a Turkish food stand we visited the week before had insisted that the juice in the refrigerator was too cold for Elle. We corrected him, requesting specifically kalt milche and made a mental note that small German children probably drank their beverages warm so we would have to specify from now on when we ordered milk for Elle. We ordered beers for Scott, Ryan and me.

 Ryan was from New York state and had been in Germany teaching English Literature for at least a year. He was a lanky 27 year-old with spiraled shoulder length hair and a short forehead. While we drank and ate, he told us about his time in German and my interest was piqued when he mentioned a book he was writing. He said he was finishing his fifth draft and getting ready to search for an agent. After grilling him mercilessly about the setting, plot and characters in his novel, I asked if he wanted to hear the idea I had for a novel I wanted to work on while in Germany.

Scott scoffed, "It's a romance."

 "No, it's not just a romance!" I insisted. "Sure, it has an affair in it but there's much more to it than that."

 Ryan said he wanted to hear about it and listened intently while I explained the plot line of the novel. I had been thinking about it for a long time, but until this moment, hadn't even thought of starting work on it. If this 27 year-old had finished a FIFTH DRAFT of his novel, I thought to myself, there was no reason I couldn't at least finish one draft of SOMETHING!

 "The premise is based on something that happened to us in real life. See, when we told Scott's parents that we were coming to live here, they told us that they had lived in Germany when they first married. They'd stayed for a full year in 1955, and in fact, his mother kept a travel journal. She gave me that journal to look through."

Ryan nodded and I continued to tell him my idea to fictionalize from that point on, so the daughter-in-law reads the journal only to infer some secrets about her husband's family from the journal. While struggling with the decision to tell her husband what she has uncovered about his past, she also discovers some truths about her own relationship with her husband. As I rambled on, I became more animated and excited, not only by the book idea, but for the mere chance to talk to someone besides Scott and Elle. I shared the twists and and turns of the plot and the surprises along the way while Ryan nodded approval and Scott rolled his eyes, probably embarrassed by my enthusiasm.

"Anyway," I continued, "Most of the book will actually be a flashback to 1955 Stuttgart through the journal, so I figure while I'm here I can do some research and interviews about the 50s in Germany and start a first draft." I searched his face anxiously for a reaction. "What do you think?"

"Do it! It sounds like something people would want to read." Ryan diplomatically encouraged me.

By this time, Annamarie had arrived and came over to us to welcome us back. She rubbed my shoulder and back familiarly and I savored the touch. Mario peeked his head out of the kitchen to wave to us as well. After two beers, I was feeling relaxed and at peace. I told the guys how good it felt just to drink a little too much and hang out. I told Ryan he would have to take me out on the town drinking some night to let loose. Scott told him I was a "caged animal!"

Before we left, I walked toward the bar to give Mario a quick hug. Honestly, he and Annamarie were the closest thing we had to friends so far, so I wanted to take advantage of any camaraderie I could find. When I approached him, he kissed both of my cheeks, and pulled me in for the hug. He was about equal to me in height, so it was an effortless embrace. His hand rested on the small of my back. When I pulled away and turned to leave, he kept his hand in the same place, causing him to feel my entire circumference, from back to waist, from waist to stomach. I smirked to myself, those Italians are smooth.

 I skipped out to catch up with Scott, Ryan and Elle. "Did you see that? He was able to get an all-around feel of my waist and stomach just by keeping his hand still. He's a smooth operator."

Again, Scott scoffed and shook his head, "You know you loved it, Molly!"

 I laughed, "Yeah, I did!"

"See, Ryan, what did I tell you, she's a caged animal!"