15 Aug 1985, Posted by Scott An Chora in Travelogue, No Comments.
08/15 Heidelberg, Germany
In a middle of a dream a young man introduced himself to me, explained that we knew one another and that he had something to show me. I looked at his face and couldn’t recall where we had met or when. He stated that he had been given permission to show me something and at that moment opened what could be best described as a door. Behind the opened door I saw billions of people of all ages, with all characteristics, moving frantically as if searching for someone important to them. As I moved closer I noticed that my mind did not perceive the physical characteristics of these people. I could see what I would describe as their souls, their true selves, with fears, jealousies, greed, kindness and love, both the good and the bad. My young guide never said another word. It appeared that each were lost and were seeking a loved one but could not locate them by the characteristics of their souls. It was a hell of confusion and sorrow. The memory of that dream remained with me for some time. Along the river I have learned that my family consists of those individuals, that if need be, I could identify. So from this point forward I tried to disregard the baggage people carry around and sought to identify the true characteristics of each person I encountered by focusing in on who they are before what they say.
With the new morning we headed south down the Rhine toward Maniz, which was like pulling branches back to let the sunlight through. The artificial forms of timekeeping were peeled back to expose the past. Those small ancient towns with their terraced vineyards opened up windows of curiosity and the desire to explore. By the time we reached Mainz the sky again opened up and handed us nothing but rain, buckets of rain. The dash between the boat and the bus made us look as if we had gone for a swim. There wasn’t much of a decision, we weren’t going to share Germany with the rain and decided we would head farther north towards Amsterdam.
We arrived into Amsterdam late and needed to find ourselves a place to stay but came across one “No vacancy” sign after another, after another, after another. Rejection made my feet feel even more tired. We needed to find a place to rest our feet and as you would expect, it ended up being a coffee shop. We were three days from the end of a three-month un-limited rail pass. The plan was to end up some place where we were willing to relax and take a break from all the train travel. So we decided not to hang around Amsterdam and would head west through Spain to the south coast of Portugal. The weather forecast was positive and relaxing on the beach sounded perfect when I repeated the word back to myself. We purchased a fairly large chunk of the best hash in town, a bag of Drum tobacco, a six-pack of beer and waited in a small pizzeria along the main boulevard. As we began to run out of time, I told the maître that I wanted my money back, we had a train to catch and we couldn’t afford to wait much longer. Our waiter boxed up the first two pizzas that came out of the oven rather that have cash going in the wrong direction. We didn’t get the two small pepperonis we ordered but ended up with a large octopus and a medium sausage plus something.
We managed to secure a compartment to ourselves, lit up, ate up, drank down the beer and eventually slept like babies. We arrived in Paris half-asleep with our shoes off and bags in hand. We scurried across the station to make our connection, only to discover there was no train. “Rail man said, you got the wrong location” and getting information from the French was like pulling teeth. If they thought they had a choice they kept their mouths closed. Eventually we discovered that they rescheduled the train’s departure from the southern station across town. Customer service didn’t include updating signs or announcing changes in anything other than French. The hash, the beer, interrupted sleep, jogs through the subways all made it one long and tiring night.
