We came back to Germany with children this time.
The trip was different. We rode cable cars over the Rhine, wandered through castle markets, chased pigeons, found Roman temples beneath shopping malls, and spent entire afternoons in places chosen mostly because they were close and good for kids. Corbin asked to go home almost every day.
The Rhine was still there. The castles were still there. But the people walking beside me had changed, and so had I. The journey became less about seeing everything and more about noticing what happened between the things we had come to see.
Dani’s eyes flicked across the board.
A single train to Mainz was listed for the rest of the day.
It left in four minutes.
“Track two.”
The shock lasted about a second.
Then we ran.
Bags bounced against our sides. The kids’ backpacks shifted on our shoulders.…
A family friend once told me about a church in Mainz with blue stained-glass windows so strange they frightened her son.
I’d been looking for them ever since we’d landed.
~
Mainz cathedral looked like several buildings pressed into one. Romanesque walls rose beside Gothic ribs and later Baroque additions.…
The hotel sat a mile away, but the distance felt longer.
Our duffel, overstuffed with both backpacks and extra gear, balanced precariously on the stroller frame. The weight bowed the frame. The wheels squeaked. We stopped at nearly every curb to readjust it.…
A sign beside the toy shop door listed its hours.
Open 16:00–18:00 Wednesday and Friday.
It was Sunday. The town was quiet, and every other shop we passed was dark.
Then Dani stopped.
Someone was inside.
Through the window, we could see the owner hunched over a workbench among shelves of wooden toys. …
The horse seemed impossibly large.
Even through the rain, the monument dominated the point where the Rhine and Moselle met, a mountain of dark stone with an emperor on horseback balanced above it.
Corbin wanted nothing to do with it.
The broad staircase climbing the pedestal was soaked by freezing rain, each stone step polished smooth by more than a century of feet.…
My stride was sure. The grass was wet.
The kids were back at the apartment watching a movie.
Dani was asleep.
I had promised her forty-five minutes.
Then I slipped out the door.
~
The vineyards climbed the hillside in five enormous terraces, each held in place by a stone retaining wall nearly six feet high.…
Vineyards covered every hillside around Bacharach.
For days, we’d walked among them.
The boys hardly noticed.
On our last evening, something clicked.
~
We’d set out, for one last family hike to the Postenturm tower.
Both boys grabbed their wooden swords from the toy shop, and off we went.…
Cologne Zoo greeted us with cheetahs. They waited behind a low fence, seemingly close enough to touch.
The kids didn’t notice.
Instead, Avery ran to the playground.
Corbin followed.
A tower rose above us on wooden posts, connected to another by a rope bridge.…
The plaza in front of Mainz Cathedral stretched wide and car-free.
In front of it, our kids ran around the plaza—arms outstretched, scattering birds from statue to statue.
“Pigeon, pigeon, pigeon!”
“Bird!”
It didn’t matter that their words weren’t legible.
It didn’t matter that they made a scene.…
Corbin had been asking the same question every day since Bacharach.
“I want to go home.”
He said it on the Rhine. He said it during hikes, at breakfast, and before bed. Every plan and every event was met with suspicion.…
I raised my camera and tried to frame Cologne Cathedral.
It shadowed the plaza with Gothic columns of ashen stone and the blackened backsides of its stained-glass windows, the plaza floors casting dancing reflections of the gargoyle and buttresses.
Rain pelted me and began soaking through my shirt
In the distance, Avery began crying.…
The Temple of Isis and Mater Magna—of all the places in Mainz, I’d most wanted to visit this.
~
The entrance sat in the first floor of a shopping mall.
A clothing store on one side.
A bakery on the other.…
At the cable car ticket booth, the attendant apologized as she charged us extra.
“This is a special event day. The castle grounds are hosting an enormous market.”
Dani nudged me.
“A market.”
~
The cable car climbed slowly over the Rhine.…
Phantasialand won almost by accident.
It was close. Everyone described it as “great for kids.”
I’d even hacked their broken website just to book the hotel.
Dani leaned into me as I pressed the submit button that night for our reservations.…
