March 2013 Articles

Archives by Months

Notes from Germany

It’s hard to believe, but in just 40 days I’ll be coming home. My, how time flies! Already, it’s nearing the end of May, and my travels have taken me to two new places—to Bern, Switzerland and to Innsbruck, Austria. Traveling has become even more enjoyable since summer finally arrived. The warm, pleasant weather has immersed the countryside, the sunlight shimmering on the green of the trees, and everywhere I see children and families, couples and groups of friends, enjoying this beautiful time of year and delighting in the warmth of the day. It’s as if no one can remember winter and its snows, nor should they. It’s summer now, and we’ll all enjoy it while it lasts.
Back at the beginning of May, I decided to visit Bern, the capital city of Switzerland. I’d heard that it was quite beautiful, though it’s not a place most tourists ever visit. And so, at 6:00 on a Friday morning, I packed my backpack with sandwiches, a canteen of water and a book to read, and then traveled south with the train through Freiburg, Germany and on into Switzerland. Three hours later, I arrived in Bern. Bern is by no means a large city—its population is about 300,000, close to the size of Shreveport or Jackson—and in fact, there isn’t much to do there. There are no world-famous monuments or churches, and the city doesn’t attract many tourists. The city itself, though, is beautiful; in fact, I’m hard-pressed to name another city in Europe that I found so astonishingly gorgeous. The oldest part of the city lies within a bend of the Aare River, and from the high ground near the cathedral, you can look down at the water, at the clear blue current, in mountains born, coursing now towards northern hills to join at last with its more famous cousin, the Rhine. To the south, the white peaks of the Alps tower over the city, and to the north, green hills spring up in a chain that runs on all the way to the border of Germany. I only spent one day in the city, and in truth, I didn’t do much else besides wandering down narrow cobblestone streets and admiring Bern’s many medieval buildings. At one point, I climbed a hill and sat overlooking the whole city, its beautiful red-roofed buildings, the river wrapped around it, the hills and mountains in the distance. It was a great day, and I knew then that all those other tourists—wherever they were—well, they sure were missing out.
The other place I visited in May was the city of Innsbruck, Austria. I was going there to visit my friend, Katherine, a girl I’d met while studying in Bamberg, Germany three years earlier. Katherine is from Texas, but has been teaching for two years in Austria with Fulbright, the same program that allows me to teach in Germany. Innsbruck is one of Austria’s most famous cities, although it is quite small with only about 150,000 people. In fact, though it feels like a small town, Innsbruck is actually very well-known in the world of winter sports—the Winter Olympics have been held there twice, in both 1964 and 1976. Innsbruck lies right in the Alps, in the small valley created by the River Inn between the mountains. Indeed, the word Innsbruck in German means, “Bridge over the Inn,” and that’s why this city developed—for a long time it had one of the only bridges that spanned the Inn River. Today, though, Innsbruck is a bustling little city that attracts thousands of skiers, hikers, and snowboarders the world over who come to explore the Alpine peaks all around the city. During my visit, Katherine and I took the ski-lift to the top of the Nordkette (the Northern Chain), a set of mountains to the north of the city. It was amazing to stand on peaks about 8,000 feet above the city, to look down at the world below you and to see the buildings and the people nestled tightly within the mountains. It was a great experience, and like my trip to Bern, one that will linger with me long after I’ve returned home to Louisiana. Cody Bennett