Recently
,
, and
all wrote about revisiting memories lensed by the experiences in between.
This train of thought brought me back to my years as a child in Bavaria. I spent the summers riding my bike in the country side. My parent's mandate was to be home by dark. In the day light hours, many miles can be peddaled. I traveled from Kunreuth to all the surrounding towns. Toured the grounds of the (still inhabitted) castle in town. Had a couple fist fights with local children who were not fond of an American kid living in their town. Meandered through farms, ate some strawberries.
I would bring my walkman with me, I only had two tapes at the time. One was a recording of Billy Joel's Glass Houses, and the other was Aha! on one side and Cory Hart on the other. That bit is pretty cringy, but hey, it was like 1986 or something.
The town had a baker. We would buy brochen and sonneblumenbrot (I am sure I misspelled the hell out of those). There was one small general store in town where I would buy Kinder Eggs and Pumicle comics.
The Polizei came to our Department of Defence Dependent School in Erlangen and my classmates and I all got our bicycle licenses. I have no idea now if these were anything other than a safety class or something akin to an automobile license.
In my late teens, I wrote a series of prose poems about this period. I think some of these are still in the El Paso, Texas public library in the local authors collection. I just wanted to be in the card catalog...
But I digress... another memorable thing was there was quite a terrorist scare at the time. I lived 1 hour from Erlangen, where my dad was stationed and my school was located. The bus (well, it was a mini van) would pick me up at 0630. We had an armed escort of soldiers in a jeep that followed the bus. To get on base you had to get searched by soldiers with dogs. They'd open the trunks of cars and check the inside of the cabin, as well as underneath with mirrors.
I remember a kid on my bus who had rotten teeth and septic breath. Another kid was a huge Run DMC fan and wore track suits. Fruit Roll Ups and transformers. Girls who collected stickers, and kids break-dancing. The Berlin wall was still up. There were punk rockers in Nurnberg. The way the wall in Wurzberg lit up at night. The weight of a 1 liter bierstine in the hands of a 10 year old. The way a 5km volksmarch seemed to go quickly as there was always cool scenery to take in. The mideval dungeons full of devices in the castles we visited...