Okay so…..this is my tenth day in beautiful Horb am Neckar, Germany and I’m loving every minute of this crazy adventure!
Things have not gone exactly as planned, though. My plan was to post Blog entries every single day that I’m here, but that hasn’t happened. The jet lag that I had when I arrived was pretty intense and I think it threw me off my game. But we can still catch up. Let’s pick up where we left off, which was me on the plane in Boston – about to take off – on the first day of my journey.
After flying over the Atlantic I arrived in Copenhagen in the middle of the night – the middle of my night. It’s a big, busy airport. Nice looking. What I found curious was how much it looked like a mall. It had a food court and a zillion stores, most of them pricey high end shops. If I had more time I would have shopped – or at least browsed – and pondered whether or not it would be a good investment to spend $80 dollars on a Snickers bar. But I had to catch a plane to Stuttgart, and I didn’t want to get distracted by shiny objects and lose all track of time.
When I got to the customs area the customs officer had a square face that at some point had contracted into a perpetual grimace. He looked like a clenched fist, like someone who had been weaned on a lemon. I said hello and went to hand him my Passport and my Vaccination card. “PASSPORT ONLY! PICTURE SIDE UP!” he growled. “Oh okay” I said “I just thought because of the Covid thing that..”. “PASSPORT ONLY! PICTURE SIDE UP!” he growled again. His unexpected intensity rattled my tired mind and I began fumbling to remove my passport from its protective plastic sheathing. “PASSPORT ONLY! PICTURE SIDE UP!” Yeah yeah yeah don’t get your trusser in a bunch, Jack. He stamped my passport and handed it back to me.
When I finally boarded I grabbed my window seat. As other people boarded I noticed it was a whole new group of passengers. What happened to the mixed group that flew with me from Boston to Copenhagen? The nice lady from Lincoln? The girl named Anna from Austria who goes to Harvard and enjoys Irish Step Dancing? Are they trapped on an island in the South Pacific with a Smoke Monster? These new passengers were all large heavyset white guys with crew cuts. Who are these people? Where are they going? One of the big mouth-breathers plopped down into the seat next to mine, and I watched in horror as his forearm blubber spread over my arm rest. I squinted and sighed. In my mind I thought about pushing my bony elbow into that big slab of dimpled chicken skin to reclaim my share of the armrest, but instead I leaned hard against the side of the plane and closed my eyes. You can have the arm rest….I have Germany.
I thought I was supposed to be in Stuttgart at 6:00am, but the plane didn’t leave Copenhagen until 8:00 in the morning. By the time I got to Stuttgart it was almost noon. After I got off the plane I was faced with two doors: One was for people who had something to declare and the other was for people who had nothing to declare. The only thing I had to declare was how tired I was, so I walked through the door for ‘Nothing to Declare’ and I found myself in the airport. OMG! WHAT HAVE I DONE? I JUST BYPASSED CUSTOMS!! I was sure that at any moment the alarms would sound and I would quickly be surrounded by large men with angry German shephards. I found the nearest airport attendant and explained that I’d made a mistake and I wasn’t a criminal and I couldn’t afford to spend any time in the Stuttgart pokey. She looked at my ticket and asked if I had landed in Copenhagen. Yes. “When you landed in Copenhagen you landed in Europe. You already went through customs”. PHEW!
At this point I’d been traveling for almost 24 hours since I left Providence and I hadn’t gotten any sleep. What’s worse, I still had a ways to go – now I needed to catch a train to Horb! There wasn’t any direct routes from Stuttgart to Horb, so I had to take a bus to Tubingen and from there catch a train to Horb. The bus station in Tubingen is under construction and all the ground was ripped up. This rendered the wheels of my heavy suitcase and backpack useless.
When I finally finally finally got to Horb…..I got off the train, grabbed my bags and walked outside into a bright sunny day. Just outside the entrance is an outdoor cafe named Gleis Sud, or South Track, I think. I took a seat under a big umbrella and breathed a sigh of relief. I made it to Horb!
The owner of the Cafe allowed me to use his WiFi, and seeing the shape that I was in, brought me a coffee with a tiny ice cream cone on the side. Nice!
I was absolutely exhausted! I called Walerija, an artist at the Residency, and told her I wasn’t sure that I would be able to lug my heavy bags up a steep hill on cobblestone streets. She said she would call the Director of the Residency and he would come and pick me up.
As I looked out across the plaza and drank in the beauty of the pristine buildings and houses, I saw a light haired man with a kind face waving in my direction. I looked over my shoulder to see who he is waving at, but there was no one there. Then I see him walking across the plaza towards me and he’s holding a small bouquet of flowers. How sweet is that!
It was Josef Nadj, Director of the Antonie-Leins – Künstlerhaus Residency in Horb – also a brilliant Sculptor – and he had come to pick me up! What a wonderful welcome to Horb! After we exchanged greetings he looked at me and said “You’ve arrived but your spirit has not arrived yet…” Well, y’know Josef…airlines lose everything. But he was right. When you’re that tired you’re just not you. You’re on some sort of auto-pilot operating solely on adrenaline and will. He grabbed my bags and we took the short drive to the Residency on Wintergasse Street, which sits at the top of a steep hill.
The Residency’s red-roofed building is made of stone and has a timeless old-world look to it. In the back is a big courtyard and there’s a metal spiral staircase that leads up to the different floors.
In the Residency there are three Resident Artists. We each have our own apartment. There’s also a big Studio space:
There’s also a shared kitchen. The beautiful yellow flowers on the table are the ones that Josef gave me:
And the view from my bedroom window is picture perfect! Give me an easel and a thousand years and I could paint the changing light in this valley every single day!
After Josef helped me get settled in, I walked him out to his car and headed back through the courtyard. As I approached the big metal spiral staircase, I tripped and fell really hard and my knee smashed against the metal grate! This is where it happened:
When I fell I screamed but my scream was drowned out by the sound of the staircase, which instantly became a gigantic Tibetan gong, the sound echoing through the hills and valleys of the Black Forest. I was on all fours with my butt up in the air, hoping that Josef wouldn’t come back and find me this way! And I knew that every eye in the houses on the hillside above me were probably looking at me, and shaking their heads at the blond American who was like a fish out of water. Then, with a bloody knee and tears streaming down my face, I had to climb the staircase to get to my apartment. Every step hurt. And the staircase is see-through which triggers my fear of heights. All I see is a big drop under my feet. So I’m clutching the rail with both hands because I’m afraid of heights and I don’t want to fall again. I must’ve looked like a raging agoraphobic that just woke up outdoors.
I finally made it to the top. Here’s a picture of my knee. No, this is not the result of a feral bobcats scratch – this is the result of a metal grate:
I rested for a bit but I was too wired to sleep. As afternoon turned to evening I limped my way up the hill to a nearby restaurant and had a delicious meal.
After dinner I went for a little walk in the town square. As I’m walking back to the Residency – uphill, of course – I’m almost near the driveway when a car comes speeding around the corner and nearly hits me! The car stops and I hear a familiar voice say “Bonnie?”. It was Walerija, one of the other artists in the Residency. We had exchanged several voice mails in the weeks before I left so I recognized her voice instantly. We finally meet! She’s a young, smart, attractive, cutting-edge performance Artist who also works in stained glass and has a great sense of humor. “Come up” she said, and we went back to the Residency for tea and talk. Love her!