Pining for Deutschland

Ugh. I miss it so!!

Every year on Facebook, I suffer through the October memories, looking at all of our trips to Germany that came to a screeching halt after that first COVID year. Our last trip to Germany was October 2019. And we have not yet picked it back up, because, well - let’s face it, people on planes are becoming more and more unpleasant, airports harder and harder to endure, and then there’s the whole Ukraine-Russia thing, and now protests over Israel in every city of any size. I don’t feel that surge of pleasure that I did when I was working and planning my vacation to the final detail the entire three months before we flew. Instead of escaping the problems of every day life, problems now seem to abound everywhere.

I miss that anticipation and excitement. I don’t want to lose it forever. Hopefully it returns if the world ever rights itself back to rational instead of emotional. Emotions are hard on the body. And the emotions of other people are singularly unpredictable and often unpleasant, if not downright scary. Geez, they’re getting in screaming matches because somebody reclines a seat.

ANYWAY - These photos are from our trip to Germany in 2016. We stayed in a gorgeous three level old townhouse, Ferienhaus Lowengrub, overlooking the river into Passau Altstadt. I could walk out the front door to the bakery five doors down, and a coffee house at the end of the block. Turn right at the coffee house and you were traipsing across the old bridge into the old city. First photo is the view from the living room, second is the back of the house. If you walked through a door off the terrace, you took a short set of stairs to the walking trail along the river. Highly recommended, if it’s still around!

If you walked out the front door and took a left around the corner, you’re at the bottom of the Maria Hilfe Kloster Pilgrimage climb. I only did it once, but quite moving. Here’s my description from that dratted Facebook, October 2016.

“Gorgeous chilly late October morning. Got up at 545, went to the bakery for J's Kaiser semmels, had a quick cup of tea and left Justin here while I made the Pilgrimage Walk up all of the stairs to Mariahilfe shrine. Three separate stairways. I cheated a bit -created a mantra and said one word per stair as I climbed. You can see from the video the proper way to do it. They started at 0600, I think, and made it to the top at 0830, in time for 0900 mass. The most beautiful, perfect, cozy small church I have ever seen. You really did feel like you were a well loved protected child of God. Prayed for a while, listened to the bells, walked in the garden, took photos of the lovely folk art left by others, then took the long way home by outside path down so I didn't bother other Pilgrims, home by 1000. What a lot already done before lunch!”

Don’t look for the video, I couldn’t load it. Drat. And I had a really good one of the church bells, too. Double drat. But the pictures are good. That first one shows the covered walkway over the roof line of the gray building. And I love the photos in the hall. I wonder where those people are now, and if their prayers were answered.

Passau is a lovely town, and after I’d walked around a bit we ventured further afield later in the week. We drove to the beautiful Wallfahrtskirche Maria-Himmelsfahrt church in Sammarei, Bavaria, Germany. I loved all the personal primitive - but heartfelt - paintings of thanks for answered prayers everywhere. The first inside photo is the new altar from the back of the church, then a close up past the new altar into the first chapel. The whole village burned in 1607 except the chapel, so they built the church around the chapel in reverence. The next picture shows the wooden side of the old building, sort of where the altar would be. And some of my favorites among the paintings.

(I coaxed my husband into going because there was also a brewery at the Kloster with great beer. Unfortunately, it was closed that day, so we couldn’t buy any to take home, but there was a lovely gasthaus across the street where we could at least sample a few.)

I am a Southern Baptist, born and bred. But I’ve never known the quiet stillness and awe that I felt in so many of the cathedrals, churches in the woods, and pilgrimage sites in Germany. I started to attend a Greek Orthodox church in my hometown last year and I can feel it a little there. I tried a Catholic church, but it was large and modern and there wasn’t a lot of silence.

I love my home Baptist church, I LOVE the pastor, but I have so much trouble not glaring at people when they talk through the musical call to worship, the offering and any other interlude that used to be there to let your mind rest and focus on God. Now it feels like an intermission. Everyone is so HAPPY to see each other, and I’m glad, I guess. But where’s the awe, the prayer, the quiet worship? I miss it.

I miss seeing the German ladies in my village caring for their family graves in the local cemetery, lighting candles, sharing their watering cans, then walking home together. I miss knowing the seasons and farm times by the Saints Days. (Don’t put out your window boxes until after St Sophie’s Day, May 16 - it could still freeze.) I miss hearing classical choir music while sitting in a tall wooden pew behind a bank of candles. I think I miss most of all hearing my shoes on the marble floor, and looking at the curve of the stone stairs into the church, worn smooth by centuries of feet before mine.

Sehnsucht is the perfect German word for what I go through every October away from the hoe of my heart. This emotive German word has no direct counterpart in English, but can perhaps best be described as an “internal, painful longing for someone or something”.

Yep. So me.