3 January 2005
The
Drive to Germany
By Annie Warmke
You can visit with Annie by going to http://www.bluerockstation.com
The map told me that we had about a five-hour drive to
Dusseldorf Germany after leaving the ferry at Zebrugge.
Five hours of searching for signs that might be in German, or French or
Dutch or who knows what? Often you will find that a city is called one name in Dutch
and another in French… you pay your nickel and take your chances.
Sometimes they throw in an English spelling just for the heck of it.
Belgium is a relatively small country, but even so, it is
divided between those that speak French and those that speak Flemish (I think it
is pretty close to Dutch, but someone will no doubt correct me).
The dividing language line is an imaginary mark that runs through
Brussels and right across the middle of Belgium.
Dutch is spoken north of this line, and French is spoken south of it.
As a compromise, nearly everyone speaks English.
The locals don’t particularly care what language there
signs may be in (as they speak all three), but it can be a bit of a problem for
us with a map written in German. One
wrong decision and we may be heading for Genoa (in Italy) rather than Geneva (in
Switzerland).
The scenery along this leg of the trip was mostly flat
farmland with huge old windmills. They sit along the edge of thousands of acres
and still pump water out of the low areas.
I had a fantasy that I would see fields of commercially grown tulips, but
that didn’t happen.
We stopped at a Shell station rest stop on the highway
after a couple of hours so we could have lunch and stretch our legs.
The salmon I chose, served with crusty fresh bread and salad, was
surprisingly delicious. The tiny
cup of French coffee in a tiny white china demitasse cup held enough caffeine to
charge up an elephant.
As we plunged further into Germany, the flat lands began to
rise around us. The hills grew
higher and occasionally we saw huge brick fortresses that were actually farm
compounds. Barns were attached
together so that the joined buildings (including the huge house) formed one
large square that served as a place for work and living.
Occasionally the houses were placed on top of the barns, which I guess
provided more heat (from the animals and their droppings below).
The woodlands were the most beautiful I’ve ever seen.
Willowy white birch trees stood in giant clusters waving in the wind.
I’d only seen trees like these once before, a few years earlier as I
rode the train from Moscow to Berlin.
There aren’t many billboards on these stretches of the
road, but one struck my fancy. The
huge picture on the sign was of a man driving his car with a can of soda in the
hand that held the steering wheel, a cigarette dangled from his mouth, and his
other hand held a mobile phone. There
were words in German at the bottom of the sign that I couldn’t read, but it
was clear they were telling drivers not to do any of these things while they
were driving because it causes accidents.
As I watched the scenery I was struck by how similar people
are from all corners of the world. I
have been lucky enough to travel through a lot of places in this world and found
that the landscape may be quite different, but the people are basically the
same. I kept wondering what would
happen if we tried to pay more attention to what we have in common, rather than
how we are different.
As we drove along, we each began counting up all of the
states and countries we had visited. Cat
wanted to know why people like to drink coffee.
We told her that after she’s been to 20 countries, she can have her
first cup. She has six more to go.
She is eleven years old and the world is a small place.
She thinks this life of hers is normal.
The little girl from Portugal she befriended on the beach in the Basque
region of Spain, or the Mauri boy in New Zealand who shared the teeter-tatter
with her, or the Arab boy on the bus in Tunisia are playmates – nothing more
or less. The most important lessons
in life, so difficult for adults, often come naturally to children.