For two years running while in seminary, I took a January term that involved an extended international trip. The first Jan. term was a class at the World Council of Churches in Geneva. As a part of that trip I also visited Munich, Florence, and Barcelona. The second Jan. term was a trip to Merida, Mexico.

(The third January of seminary was a different journey altogether. I stayed home, great with child and looking for a job. I could not go on an adventure this time, so the adventure came to me: the search committee of the church I currently serve piled into a van and traveled 600 miles each way to meet me and hear me preach. One week later, I was offered the job.)

Every January now, I get the urge to travel. There’s something in my body that has grown to expect travel this time of year, even after only a couple years of it. The holidays come to an end, my birthday comes and goes, and it’s time to get on a plane. The feeling is really strong this year. And here I sit. So the next best thing is to travel in my own mind by recalling some highlights of the Europe trip. This is the way I remember it, not necessarily the way it happened.

These entries are for me, to hopefully exorcise the travel bug for good, or if I’m lucky, to send it into remission until we can take a fine summer trip TBD. As for the rest of you, are these entries a series of postcards, or an insufferable slide show? That's up to you.


Part I: The Journey
I packed for this trip over a series of days. There’s something very satisfying about the process—culling through huge heaps of clothing, deciding what to live without, squeezing shampoo and Woolite into petite plastic bottles, making room for that special scarf, not because you need it, but because it cheers you. You can’t beat the elegance and simplicity of carrying all of life’s necessities in a few small bags—“Everything I need is right here.” By the time I left for the airport and three weeks in wintry Europe, I was carrying a roller bag and a duffel. OK, and a backpack. I have some room to improve, but I had much less baggage than some of my companions.

I have my sister-in-law to thank for this, whom I had visited a few weeks before at Christmas. She spent a year in Paris during college, and not only did she provide invaluable packing advice, but she gave my wardrobe the stamp of approval. Especially the shoes. The shoes are what give Americans away in Europe—clunky, white, and practical to a fault. Mine were comfortable but sleek, and an unremarkable black. I was ready.

Part II: Munich
P and J were also on the flight to Munich, and were already there when I arrived at the airport. We didn’t have seats together; probably good, we would have talked much too late into the night. I finished my dinner, caught a few minutes of in-flight TV, took a Tylenol PM, and put an eye mask on and ear plugs in, souvenirs from a red-eye flight the year before. I closed my eyes and thought, “I’m too excited to sleep.” My next thought was, “Hey, it’s breakfast.” No time elapsed. I was Ripley in the Alien movies.

It wasn’t a good rest of course. After staggering through customs, my friends and I stood in front of the currency exchange and debated: cab or train? cab or train? Cab, and an important travel lesson: Sleep deprived people will carelessly choose the costly option. Forty-five minutes and too many deutschmarks later, our cab dropped us off at the Hotel Jedermann—the Hotel Everybody, a genial, youthful place with an internet connection in the corner of the lobby. We checked in and met up with our friends who’d arrived the previous day. Lest we be tempted to sleep, they whisked us off to the Marienplatz, where we arrived just in breathless time to check out the town carillon in its noontime dance of whirring and tinkling. Sehr Deutsch!

Our time in Munich was short, a smudge of jet lag and January drizzle.
We took a tour, we visited a museum.
We ate lots of meat.
We walked a lot.
We didn’t speak the language. That part was pleasant, a whole level of cognitive activity shut down. We couldn’t fall into eavesdropping as one can do in a crowd. Even our tour was in German. The weekend was one of absorption, of soaking up the little juicy bits, sponge-like, and not needing to do a thing with them: the neon store signs nestled under angled, rust-colored Bavarian roofs; the exhibit of Christmas decorations at the city museum, featuring trees, advent calendars, and figurines of Nikolaus, whom we recognized, and the devilish Krumpus, whom we didn’t; the Isar River, grey and meditative in its concrete-reinforced banks; and the tankards of beer with heads floating on top that defy gravity, like a stiff meringue.

My travel companions, all killing time before having to report to Geneva for the start of class, got along well.

We wandered through cathedrals, because we were seminary students.

We went to the Hofbrauhaus, because we were tourists.

And we went to Dachau, because we had come this far.


to be continued…