I spent the trip to and from Switzerland reading The Horizontal World: Growing up Wild in the Middle of Nowhere by Debra Marquart.
It’s a book of memoirs by this lady who grew up on a farm outside of Napoleon, ND. And it’s not some retired county commissioner who wrote the 500-page history of Smalltown, USA, for its quasquicentennial and had his niece-who’s going-to-be-an-English-teacher read through it to fix of all the “your/you’re” problems. It’s a book proper. Been reviewed by the New York Times. Available in hardcover. All that jazz.
Napoleon is the next county over from PoDunk. The author mentions places I’ve driven a thousand times, like Wishek and the Hague cemetery and Highway 3. As she described the landscape, I could so thoroughly picture it in my mind, that I was actually shocked when I looked up to find myself in a train car with a bunch of drunken Germans.
Last year I read Population: 485 by Michael Perry. The book contains his reflections on moving back to his small hometown in Wisconsin. While I was waiting at JFK this fall, I spent a good chunk of time in the bookstore reading Mennonite in a Little Black Dress by Rhoda Janzen. She writes about returning home to live in her tight-knit Mennonite community after an ugly divorce. Books like this always leave me with mixed feelings. I completely enjoy them, but when I’m finished, I think, “Heck, I could write something like this. I’ve got as good of a story as them.”
And then I think, does the world really need another sarcastic sentimentalist writing about growing up in a quirky family in the middle of nowhere?
Probably not.
But I’m going to say yes.
Because someday I want to write one and I want people to read it. And if people do not read it, I will…well…I don’t exactly know what the recourse is for unread memoirs, but rest assured, I will do something. And it won’t be pretty.
But Switzerland, on the other hand, was pretty! (sweet segue alert)
The grass was vividly green and the cows wore bells. The chocolate broke hard and crisp and two orders of fries cost more than a Swiss Army Knife.
We stayed at Irma’s Bed & Breakfast. She was a lovely lady who knew minimal English, but we still managed to visit about the house and her children, borrow some glue, and accidentally lock a potential guest out of the apartment where we were staying. Oops…
We stayed in St. Gallen, a small city in the northeast of Switzerland. In St. Gallen we visited the gorgeous cathedral (during mass!) and a medieval library, where we had to put these giant dufflepud-like slippers over our shoes to keep from scuffing the floors. From St. G, we branched out into even smaller communes: cows and cuteness in Appenzell and a chocolate factory in Flawil. The chocolate factory was great! It was exactly what I thought a chocolate factory would look like. Full of delicious smells and people in white coats and plastic shower caps walking briskly from machine to machine. And a factory store with discounted chocolate… Yess….
Switzerland isn’t part of the European Union. I didn’t know this until June. I was rather surprised at first, but considering its track record of neutrality, I guess it makes sense. According to my 2004 Rick Steves guide, despite its neutrality, it has a rather beefy defense system. “Each house has a gun and a bomb shelter. Airstrips hide inside mountains behind Bat Cave doors. With the push of a button, all road, rail, and bridge entries to the country can be destroyed, changing Switzerland into a formidable mountain fortress.”
Nice.
They also don’t translate anything into English and have different plug-ins than the rest of Europe. I suppose this ensures that all Swiss have to buy anything electronic in Switzerland instead of in cheaper Germany. Sneaky.
On our way back to Prague, we had a three hour stop in Munich, Germany, so we did a blitz tour of the city. Munich is the first European city I had ever visited. I was there for two days back in 2004 (hence the outdated guidebook) with Sairhead and our dads. I was instantly enamored. If all of Europe was like this, I knew I was a goner. After that trip, I wanted so badly to spend an extended period of time in Europe. So I went to England for a year. England was the reason I was brave enough to consider the Czech Repubic last year, and that year is the reason I’m here again. Yup, all my European expeditions can be traced back to those stinking gargoyles on the Munich New Town Hall. Sigh…
On the three-hour train from St. Gallen to Munich, my friend and I were greatly amused by a fellow a few seats in front of us. He so inspired us that I wrote this little sketch:
The first thing we noticed was The History of the Peloponnesian Wars resting unopened on his lap. It was bookmarked halfway through. “Has anyone actually read that?” I thought. “It must be to impress the ladies.” And indeed, it seemed to be working. Despite the shiny gold ring on his left hand, the lady in the seat across from him was impressed. Her back was to us, so I couldn’t hear what she was saying, but he nodded and affirmed with polite attentiveness. I imagined him as the quiet, studious type.
But then she stopped talking, and he began.
For over an hour, he regaled her with tales of his insurance company. Barely pausing to breathe, he waxed verbose on quotas and profit margins and dividends. He sat perfectly upright in his chair, his hands clasped in tight fists on his enormous paperback while he explained policy differences. Every so often, he would make a sharp gesture to underscore a point, and his prematurely grey hair would vibrate in sync. The perfectly combed and parted mane was hair-sprayed with such vigor that when it did move, it did so en masse.
Perhaps the lady in the seat across from him regretted her 10 minute soliloquy after he launched into his fourth quarter sales stats. I wondered what it would be like to have that much to say.
Pushing the hour mark, it seemed like he might be petering out. I was still rooting for him, hoping he’d be able to make it the last 20 minutes before we pulled into Munich, but I didn’t think he’d last. Then, at the eleventh hour, he caught his second wind and began on the pros and cons of conference calls.
He was rather entertaining, I mean, as entertaining as the subject matter allowed; his wide set eyes crinkling with laughter at one moment and laden with the weight of the insurance biz the next.
They were on their way to some business function in Munich, I gathered. He and his co-worker–a balding British bloke of few words– heading to Bavaria at the peak of Oktoberfest. His co-worker was dressed business casual, but this fellow (We named him Stephan [with a “ph”]) hadn’t gotten the memo. He sported a pair of leather pants and a starchy plaid shirt. The pants sat a few inches above his loafers and had red detailing on the seams. They were like a cross between ankle-length lederhosen and fringy chaps.
On and on he talked, until the train pulled into the hauptbahnhof. I secretly rejoiced that he made it! My friend and I followed their little group, Stephan slinging what looked like his wife’s aerobics bag over his shoulder. They made a beeline for the main exit, and we eventually turned back in search of a luggage locker, but I wished I would have spoken to him before they disappeared in the crowd.
“Thank you,” I would have said. “Thank you for that entertaining trip.” And then perhaps I would have purchased some insurance.
Which sounds to me like a very admirable way to go. 
The RPD Blotter 