Gerolstein and Trier

Last year at West Point, I received an email informing me that I was going to be hosting a German officer. When I said goodbye to Christoph two weeks later, I didn’t quite think I’d see him again. When I found out that I received the slot to study here in Germany, I also sent him an email (which he never received with his deleted account). With providence’s hand, we both ended up in the same class and realized it when the professor took roll for the first time. Long story, short.

So on Friday, I drove with Christoph and his girlfriend from Hamburg to Gerolstein. You don’t know it, but you’ve probably drunken out of bottled Gerolsteiner mineral water. I’ve seen them often in the US. We first visited her parents and had catch-up talk with goulash before going to his home pretty late. It was a late arrival, but they were so excited to see Christoph that we ended up chit-chatting an hour or so before we realized that we hadn’t cooked the food waiting in the kitchen!

We woke up at around 8, and Christoph went to the tire shop to change to winter tires while I stayed behind and wrote some postcards. We had breakfast, picked up Susi, and drove to Spangdahlem Air Force base because they wanted to shop and buy American food at the post exchange. I used my military id to get them visitors’ passes, and Susi got to visit “America!. Christoph had been stationed there before on a security detail and we saw his old office. They bought things like doughnuts, poptarts, and while I bought some Dr. Pepper, peanut butter, and jerky to share with the Wohnebene. I can’t say that I was too happy to be in America in that moment, but they sure were happy to visit the PX!

We then drove to Trier, one of the oldest cities in Germany located near the border with Luxembourg. What a cool city that is. Susi had some major tests on Monday, so we dropped her off at a café to study while Christoph and I visited the main sites on foot. Trier was an old Roman city, and therefore some major points were the Black Gate and Constantine’s thermal bath. We saw a direction sign pointing towards “Amphitheatre” and took the relatively long walk towards it. I am glad that we did, as this was probably the coolest site in the city: an old gladiatorial arena. Along the sites were various cell blocks, and underneath was a cavernous maze with more cells blocks and what were probably stalls for the animals. To walk out from the pitch blackness and into the light was quite awing, especially one considers the multitudes of Christians, Jews, prisoners, animals, and gladiators who too made that walk, for the last time. We were both quite freezing after all of this, and ordered some Gluehwein on the way back to Susi. Magic!

Once the sun went down and we could no longer sea, we ate dinner (the beef liver with apples and onions tasted like home) and then went to a movie. It was late by the time we got home, but both parents had waited up for us as they had bought a large selection of Belgian beers that they wanted to sample with us. We sat there around the wooden table with bread and cheese and divvied each bottle one by one with good conversation into the wee hours of the morning.

On Sunday, we woke up and went to a memorial service in Gerolstein that honored the area’s victims of war and violence (Volkstrauertag). It was a rainy and out in the woods, fitting conditions for the somber music and reflective speeches by a lieutenant colonel, a catholic priest, and a protestant reverend.

While Christoph’s mother cooked, Heinz showed me his family’s rock and fossil collection. It was hard to believe that this mountaneous region had once been completely immerged under water. I actually enjoyed being back in the hills, as it reminded me of home and West Point. Up north in Hamburg is too flat!

The rouladen, knoedel, and rotkohl were excellent, and we procrastinated our long drive back with digestifs and cigarillos. When we finally hit the wet road, it was near freezing, but the little traffic allowed us to arrive back in Hamburg two hours quicker than expected.

It was my first weekend in Germany without a half-marathon, and so I took the opportunity to run the loop around the Binnen and Aussen Alster water masses in central downtown Hamburg. I was an idiot and forgot my camera, and lost the opportunity to take pictures of the city from the natural paths along the water bank!