Lessons Learned From Travel ( Germany 1974)

The Power of Breaking Bread with Others

Der eingeschlagene Weg  (The Path Taken)

 Taunus Mountains photo from 1975 FAHS yearbook

It was 1974 and we were in our first year of a three year assignment (Dad’s military assignment) in Frankfurt Germany.

Mom and Dad were determined that we not only regularly engage with the local population and with the city proper but also with the German landscape. Dad was quite enamored with the backpacking craze of the ‘70’s, and hiking in the local Taunus Mountains provided the breadth of experience that Mom wanted and the physical challenge Dad wanted. We kids were forced to go along.

Dad was in his early 40’s and I was a spry thirteen, ready to experience our Family von Trapp “Climb Every Mountain” experience. To gear up for the trek, we had made a trip to the Rhein Main PX, as they had a dedicated outdoor department. Dad said we needed “proper hiking boots.” That meant classic leather, metal eyelet, brown-laced ankle-high boots. Cool.

My feet were already up to their full growth at size 8 ½. The boots were German so that meant European sizing. Prior to our Taunus mountain hike, Dad instructed us to manually bend our boots over and over in order to break them in.

Oh my god, this was so much work! Why couldn’t we just go on the damn walk? I was sorry later that I had not put the proper amount of time and work into the “breaking-in process.”

Dad had also purchased a “day pack” into which Mom had contributed individual bags of GORP. Dad added the trail map, and we each carried our own old Girl Scout metal canteens of water. Dad did not give us any details of the trail. He did say that we were going to be stopping somewhere to eat while hiking.

How was that going to be possible? What, was he going to shoot a squirrel, skin it, and cook it over an open fire? I did not ask.

As we passed other hikers on the trail, I noted that the men all had on long, leather shorts and wore rag knee socks with their leather hiking boots. I had on a stiff pair of Levi’s and white cotton bobby socks with my leather boots. I paid for this error in sock-wear along with my shoddy “boot break-in” efforts in the form of massive and copious blisters.

Luckily Dad had also packed a first-aid kit complete with mole skin. Was it actually made from the skin of little moles? I didn’t know and didn’t care at that point as I was so glad for the relief it provided me.

“Well, I guess next time I give you directions, you’ll follow them,” Dad said with a smile.

 “I don’t know what happened?” I said defensively. “I did what you told me!” (No, I hadn’t.)

With blisters covered, we were back on the trail. Dad walked like we were in some type of competition. I kept trying to walk beside him, but any time I got close, he went into some walking warp speed.

That man NEVER LET ME CATCH UP TO HIM on any part of the hike. How was this possible? Why couldn’t we walk side-by-side, chatting away? There was no talking, as far as Dad was concerned. He always marched along like we were on some mission.

If it had been me and I was leading the trek, I would have turned to the others and said, “How’s the pace?” or if I noticed that others were falling behind, I would have slowed down. It was not a race!

I hate competition. I did then and I do now. Seemed to me that when you were competing with someone else, the goal was to dominate and destroy. This was not good. This was, I was pretty sure, the reason that we had wars. This greedy mindset of “beating others” seemed like the reason for the woes of the world.

I did share this thought with my older sister, April while on the trail and she countered with, “What are you? Some kind of Communist?”

I of course had heard of Communism because of President Nixon’s trips to China and Russia but wasn’t sure how that related to me and my belief that we as humanity should share, rather than compete, with one another. It wasn’t like I could go to the Post library and check out a book on Communism because then it would have looked like I was conspiring with the enemy.

I simply thought that there was no good reason to pit oneself against another. Someone always ended up feeling really badly. And if that person was me, my loss did not inspire greatness--it inspired defeat and the abandonment of whatever activity I had lost at.

I eventually gave up trying to catch up to Dad, and strolled back a ways with Mom. The day was grey, a perpetual mist surrounded us. Every breath I took was happy with conifer aroma. Well, happy until I was starving.

“Dad, when are we going to eat?”

“When we get there,” said Dad, answering the question and yet not really.

“Jim, could you give us some indicator of time until we eat? Even I’m getting hungry!” said Mom with unusual urgency. Mom was never hungry.

After we had walked for what felt like an eternity, we rounded a corner, and there…there in the middle of the forest was a restaurant. It was either that or someone’s private home, but with Dad leading us up to the door, I was sure it was our lunch destination.

We looked around and I know I was confused at the lack of individual tables. There were just long tables, so we sat at the end of one by ourselves. A group of people already at one of the other long tables motioned for us to come over and sit next to them. Oh no! Mom was sure to try out her German…and she did. They must have appreciated her effort because they answered in very fractured but confident English. Mom…world’s best person. She would have made a wonderful United Nations diplomat.

On this first post-hike meal, none of us had thought to bring a German/American Phrase book, so any chance of our translating the menu was nonexistent. Dad took it upon himself to order for all of us. We all had what our German tablemates were having. I can eat just about anything and enjoy it, but Laura, my younger sister, was a super-picky eater. When she tried a new food and did not like it, she gagged very loudly, and Mom would usually end up sweeping it out of her mouth with an index finger.

We were used to this, but I think our German tablemates were rather confused. After her first gag and mouth sweep, our seatmate locals ordered a soup for Laura, seeing that the (what turned out to be Weiner Schnitzel) was not to her liking. Goulash soup…a dark brew guaranteed to please the most discriminating palate, coupled with a deep dark bread and unsalted butter. Success. The clink of crystal gasthaus green-stemmed goblets filled endlessly with wine, sealed an afternoon, adding to my growing love of Germany.

The intoxicating scent of evergreens will forever bring me back to that day. Standing in the California Redwoods on my 49th birthday some years later, wearing those very Taunus Mountain boots, I gulped a melancholy I can only imagine were the remembered promises of financial independence and being my authentic self that  I had made  to myself  forged during those German years and broken over the years. That…and knowing that Dad had begun to slow his pace, and my wishing I could get back the days when I could never catch him.

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