When I was ... 4 Heidelburg, or dreams from childhood
(28.01.2025, rev. 20.02.2025)
When I was 22, travelling across Europe for the first time, fulfilling a desire I'd had since my early childhood, the entry into the matter was a resounding success. On the way into London from Heathrow, I cried out "Chimney pots!" Indeed, the horizon showed a long line of roofs topped with chimney pots, just like in the film Peter Pan. Europe was living up to expectation.
The first week we were all together, the five of us, and I suppose we did the usual round: Westminster Abbey, the National Gallery, the British Museum, the Wren churches ... To tell the truth, I don't remember much of it. When the others left to pay hommage to the races at Le Mans, I stayed on; there was much in London I would rather see and do. I must have done things late into the evenings, because I came back to my b&b in Clapham generally around midnight. What sticks in my mind is the drab little tea-shop near Victoria station, where I had tea and some rather dusty little pink cakes at five o'clock, which seemed charmingly genuine. I was somewhat disappointed in my landlady; her accent gave her away as an immigrant from some central European country. But the breakfasts were English enough.
After this I went over to Brussels, where I got the scare of my life, without exaggeration—but that is a story in itself, so I won't go into it. And a visit to the Ardennes, where it poured rain. My hosts begged my pardon profusely for this contretemps, but I thought it was probably typical of the region and was pleased to have had this authentic experience.
Then on to Paris, where, after a day at Versailles, my frantic life style finally caught up with me, and I was laid low with a fever for two days. Then my friend Doreen and I went off merrily to make the round of the cathedrals: Chartres, Paris, Laon, Amiens, Rheims. Chartres and Rheims were my particular favorites. I then met up with another friend, Mary, and we went to Amsterdam where the house of Anne Frank moved us, but somehow the canals and the tall narrow houses, though not unlike what I expected, did not give me quite the impression of Holland I had formed from my childhood reading, Hans Brinker, Marion and Marian. Perhaps not enough bicycles, and then it wasn't the season either for tulips or for skating on the canals. Above all, no-one wore those dainty little caps with the turned-up edges or wooden shoes, as in my book on Children of Other Lands. Denmark was not bad, especially the Danish pastries, far superior to anything called a "Danish" in England or America, and we were enchanted by Tivoli; but the Little Mermaid was a let-down, far too small, though Elsinore Castle was a wonder, and the bare medieval rooms there pleased me far more than the elaborate halls of Versailles.
Still at our furious pace, we headed south to Cologne, and after a night on the train arrived there at six in the morning, where I banged into a glass door, not realizing the bakery wasn't open yet so early. That set the tone for the day with its myriad disappointments. I had a little map with all the medieval remains of Cologne; there were about eleven of them. The cathedral lived up to our hopes, though climbing the 500-and-so steps to the top of the Spitze (the highest in Europe, we were told) used up more energy than we should have spent after a sleepless night. But most of the other "remains" either could not be found, or had been converted into modern housing and could not be visited. Nothing else was of interest to us, being students of medieval art and literature. I ended up being in such a bad temper that I was convinced that the man trying to sell an alarm clock to my friend was out to swindle her; she didn't take my advice, however, and the clock worked fine.
The next day we were on the boat at seven, and I spent the morning vainly craning my neck to find the castles on the river banks. Alas, not only were we going the wrong way—the trip up the Rhine is far slower and longer than the trip downstream—but the stretch near Cologne is not the "romantic Rhine"; by the time noon came and we had our lunch of "suppe und salat" to the contempt of the waiter, I was sunburnt and exhausted, and barely noticed the castles as they slid by during the afternoon.
It must have been soon after that, however, that we came to Heidelburg.
It was 1966; the Freilichtmuseum at Windeck with its transplanted authentic old houses and farms had existed since 1964, but we didn't know about it. Otherwise it would have made my cup run over. For what was bothering me about Europe was that there was so much modern stuff: shops and streets and houses and cars, so many things not that different from the States I had left behind. But Heidelburg! At the time the town was probably much less developed than today, or else we never saw the developed part at all but came into the old town directly, with its ancient houses on the Neckar, its castle ruin on the hill and its taverns full of beer-drinking students and sausages for supper—totally out of The Student Prince, the musical of my childhood. This was, finally, what I had come to Europe for. And the b&b we had reserved was a delight: a small simple room overlooking the river, a heavy wooden bed with a towering white feather-bed. With the next morning's copious breakfast of bread and butter and cheese and cold cuts, I was at last reconciled with my summer trip, which until then had seemed pale and wanting, without my entirely understanding why.
After this we took two bus tours, one from there to Nuremberg, after which we took the train to Bamberg because we wanted to see the pilgrimage church of Vierzehnheiligen (Baroque and Renaissance were OK too by us), which was as beautiful as in the books but obnoxiously over-run with wedding parties, and then, to Wurzburg for the second tour which took us down to Neuschwanstein and Füssen. We drove through these castle towns and romantic cities without even stopping at most of them, so of course I remember nothing at all, except for Rothenburg-ob-der-Tauber, of which we were heartily sick even before the second time through. We had been enchanted by the town when we first arrived, our only stop on the all-day trip. But a two-hour visit was too long, as we had not come to buy, and we had eaten our lunches on the ramparts and seen all there was to see in an hour. This was my first experience with a town whose reason-to-be had become totally touristic and commercial, and it made me allergic to such places to the present day. Unfortunately it was programmed for both tours.
The remaining six or seven weeks of the summer are too long to recount here: alone or with one or more of the friends I went to Munich, various places in Switzerland and Italy, and then Vienna and Salzburg, before returning to London and home. They were satisfying in their different ways, despite many modern aspects here and there, and this satisfaction came from Heidelburg. The memory of that place remained an enchantment and coloured the rest, and the place still had some of its charm when I took my husband and children there in the 1980's. But when I went back in 2023 with my daughter's family, all that had evaporated; the town was enormous and thoroughly twentieth- and twentyfirst-century German unlovely, the old town making up just a bit of it, and a rather lifeless bit at that, where I could not find the quaint charm of before; as for the castle, it was disfigured with heavy machinery and fencing off for renovation, and over-run by tourists routed along prescribed paths; the alchemist's laboratory had been replaced by a thoroughly dull pharmaceutical museum. The idyllic memory faded away, displaced by the plain facts of modern tourism. But why be surprised? There is probably little left in the twenty-first century of the Europe I was looking for sixty years ago and to some extent found. I was a left-over romantic, and I suppose I got here just in the nick of time.
When I Was...
Sunbeams caressed my flesh as I lay on my straw mattress. They were others nearby, some sprawling a little, others hiding undercover. Not too far away a snail slimed it's sinuous way towards me, it's two antennae subtly scenting my presence. I have such an inherent dread of those creatures and the thought of one creeping over me... ughh! But then the ground shuddered and shook around me. One, two, one two...the crunch of boots on gravelly path. Without words and without further ado we are pulled from our beds, gathered together and taken to a room with blinding lights.
Again footsteps moving around, clattering noises as we are herded together. The sound of gushing water and seconds later a deluge of water cascading all over us, drowning us as we were bumped into one other, cold and bruised.
Barely recovered from one ordeal we are to be tortured again. Slowly, meticulously each of us was cut with precision with a sharp-bladed knife. I hear high-pitched screams as we are corralled into a holding area. I don't think I can bear anymore but almost immediately a chute of what felt like sand was dumped over us from above, so much that it must have been our own weight's worth. Spluttering and struggling our cuts seeped scarlet and bled out, drowning us in an ever-reddening quagmire.
At last I was warming up after the torturous water-boarding we'd suffered. Warmer and warmer - too warm as we began slowly bubbling, then boiling in a frantic, sticky scramble of bodies. Almost dead we were dragged from the hellish inferno and placed in separate cells, then clamped shut. As the air expired I could hear a distant, satisfied 'YES!' each time an explosive plop was heard.
I must have drifted off into a sweet, deep sleep. But...the following afternoon I was rudely prodded awake. I was so sticky I could barely move. I was taken from my cell, laid on a round bed and plastered with cream.
Then suddenly I disappeared down a gaping dark hole, lined with tombstones. As I was squeezed down I thought nostalgically of the warming sunshine, the gentle dew but most of all how exquisitely beautiful I had been when I was... a big, fresh, plump, juicy, red strawberry.
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Geraldine's story
WHEN I WAS …
When I was a bean seed, I wondered why I had been planted in a circle with the other seeds that lived with me in this dark waterproof cardboard box. I’ll probably never know, but here is how it stands.
I remember, when in the box, being picked up, then put down, then
picked up ….hearing a Human muttering : « these are so
expensive », then put back down on the shelf again, and finally being
purchased with a « gosh, expensive, but I really need them for this summer ».
I felt the box carrying me being plonked into a bag, shoved on what I imagine was
the Human’s shoulder, then dropped on the seat in the 2CV and up we drove to
this Medieval village everyone raved about, Flavigny.
The Human dropped me and my seed companions on a shelf and I could hear noises in the house, baby cries, a dog barking in the far way and eventually the whistling of what sounded like a kettle which it must have been as I soon smelt the perfume of hot Earl Grey tea and heard it being poured in glasses or cups, sugar lumps dropping and spoons frenetically turning in circles in the cups.
After a while, everything was quiet in this place, after footsteps had heavily walked up the stairs and something I had already experienced in the shop dropped upon us in our box : silence and peace !
I can’t remember how long we stayed on the shelf in the house, but one afternoon, we were picked up and dropped in what looked like a baby’s pram ! Well, we could hear this baby babbling and we went downhill for a while. The pram stopped, the baby was taken into a garden and settled on the grass with a few cubes and plots. The Human started digging and grating the ground, then took this long tool with a rake at its end and raked over and over again until the earth was alsmost as fine as sand.
Our box was opened and, my fellow grains and myself felt uneasy and scared, but we were soon rewarded as the Human started sewing us 5 by 5 in little wholes in a circle. Before it raked the earth upon us to burry us, we all looked at each other, knowing we would not feel lonely and were experiencing the beginning of our real life !
It was dark now, we felt some water slowly dribbling upon us. The baby was still making noises, the sun was heating the earth, quite a few birds were singing, then the sounds faded away again as the night fell upon us. I remember the cold creeping on that night and the following ones, but it was becoming more and more bearable. The mornings weren’t as cold and we would cuddle together, the five of us.
Some time later, it was a very warm afternoon, we had been watered regularly, we were swelling and swelling and it really seemed to be the right day to try and get our leaves growing.
We heard the voice of the Human above us, looking at the earth with words of hope : « these beans are soon going to pop out ! »
The baby was dropped on his green playground as usual, the Human went down to the next bedding and we could hear it digging and raking again, and mumbling : « mmm what shall I sew here, carrotts, cabbages, cucumbers and what about a few flowers too ! That ‘s the idea… »
It was baby’s teatime and we could hear him sucking at his bottle and nibbeling his « petit-beurre » and coming out with his expected little burp ! And the Human saying « there it is, good ! good ! »
And that’s the time I chose to give a big hit on the surface, cracking the earth above, and letting out my 2 first leaves to the sun’s carress ! There was light all around ! what a change from my early life in a box and underground ! Shear bliss .
And then I saw this Human looking at me with almost wet eyes and crying out so loudly « they are growing, they are growing ! » I’ve literally seen my beans coming out to life ! ». It looked so proud and I, too felt proud of being a plant, a future vegetable and I immediately knew I would have to fight against snails and all sorts of worms and bugs to pull through and do my job. But it was worth it !
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Jackie's story
When I was…
As the scent of spices and incense wafted through the air, two young girls Vishu and Riya leant against the cool stone wall of a nearby temple, Vishu’s fingers traced the intricate carvings.
The sun dipped low over the bustling streets of Kashi, casting a warm glow on the ancient buildings lining the Ganges. This is one of the oldest living cities in the world and is considered the holiest city in Hinduism. The city is known for its ghats (riverfront steps leading to the water), where pilgrims take holy dips in the Ganges. The city is also famous for its ancient temples and is a hub of classical music, art, and literature. casting a warm glow on the time worn constructions that line this sacred river.
“Can you believe it? Just last week I was in France,” Vishu said, shaking her head as she recalled the cobblestone streets and croissants. And now I’m here, dodging cows riding in a tuktuk instead of descending into the dark depths of the metro.
” Riya laughed, her dark eyes sparkling with mischief. “Do you miss the Eiffel Tower? The Arc de Triomphe and all the shopping.
“A little,” Vishu admitted, her voice softening. “But this feels... alive. You hear that?” She gestured towards the chaotic symphony of honking horns and distant temple bells. “Sounds like my morning alarm,” Riya laughed, rolling her eyes.
The two friends stopped at a makeshift street café - you should try the lassi here. It’s like drinking a cloud.” Vishu smiled, “A cloud? Are you still hoping that its going to rain? “Come on, let’s go before I change my mind and order a croissant instead!”
No, you must try this so they sat among the morning workers and others who had stopped for their omlette and chapatti and watched the preparation of their drink. Boiled milk then chilled, instant coffee, chocolate powder, sugar and chocolate syrup to coat the glass. Topped off with vanilla ice cream.
“I never had anything so delicious as this when I was in France said Vishu”.
“so you’re glad your back in India then?
Yes, I can wear my sari enjoy bright colors feel like they are alive, tie my hair back in my plait with fresh lotus flowers – go to the temple every day and cook with my favorite spices, real spices that make my mouth feel like fireworks exploding and enjoy the chaos of the markets and buy plenty of fresh vegetables . But -I miss the rain, the misty mornings but not the traffic as in Paris it was often blocked for hours with people shouting and becoming very aggressive to other drivers –I was almost run over by a bus “ ooops – be careful said Riya laughing there are 5 cows just behind you …. They could become aggressive like the Parisian drivers”
Annemarie's story
