Pedalloes

8th June. We drink a great deal and stay up very late. We’ve already lost our place in time. What day is it? How long do we have left? What’s going on back at home? We wander through the Old City.

W. has resolved to keep a notebook again. Z. shows him his – a large moleskine, in several different inks. We talk about thinking at breakfast. How do you think?, W. asks Z. He thinks as he writes, Z. tells X. And then he tells us about the meditational practices he learnt when he was a monk. It is like that, says Z. – like meditation. But he hasn’t thought about anything for a few days, he tells us. That’s the effect we have on people, says W.

Yesterday, pedalloes out on the lake at Titisee, in the Black Forest. Our passenger, R., sings in the high and lonesome bluegrass style. The Carter Family and Jimmie Rogers. He yodels, too. Then, in the middle of the lake, we stop pedalling and let the boat drift. I let my head tilt back and there is the whole sky spread before me, like the whole of my life. Life, life, I say to myself. Elsewhere, far ahead of us, the pedallo with W. and the others.

At a restaurant in Titisee, on the first full day of our trip, W. and I are delighted by the gentleness of the waitress. How peaceful and calm she is! And we, too, are peaceful and calm, the lake spreading out below us, and the pine-covered hills and mountains around us. I have my first glass of Sekt, the German Cava. I am captivated: it is marvellously dry. The Sekt, the lake, the mountains, the service. When, later, we reach the other side of the lake, W. is melancholy. We’ll never experience that again, he says.

Two days later, after the pedalloes, we bring our friends to the restaurant. We will experience it again, after all! But the service is poor: there’s no one to attend to us, and when they come – and there are many of them now, not just one – it is harsh and unsweet. Why don’t they like us?, I ask, distressed. And it’s me in particular, with my ludicrous attempts to speak to them in German, who they seem to find particularly offensive. 

I order a beer, but it doesn’t come; in the end, X., feeling sorry for me, has to approach the waitresses directly. I’ll try and win them over, she says. Meanwhile, a dark cloud obscures the sun. It’s just like Repetition, W. and I agree. Just like Kierkegaard’s Constantine Constantius revisiting Vienna. Titisee, we had thought, had the kindest of waitresses, and now? We’ve brought our friends out from Freiburg. We came out on the train – and for what?

Luckily, we have the happy memories of the pedalloes, and the long walk around the lake. There is the blazing sun and the thought we escaped for a day from the others. Later, we agree the pedalloes were the turning point; it was the hinge of our visit. After that, we grew tired of being abroad, and longed for our normal lives. We need a strategy, we decide. We need some structure to our days. We need to brace ourselves.

11th June. A day trip to Strasbourg. We speak more quietly; we walk quietly through the streets. And the wine! The glorious wine, and after X. had tried all the wines on the menu in Freiburg last night, and found all of them foul (except for the Sekt). We are emotional. We speak hushedly. And then back to Freiburg, for pina coladas.

Pina coladas! In Freiburg! It’s madness. But just as with the caiperenas the other night, they are what like the holy fire Holderlin writes of to Bohlendorff. Holy fire – just what Freiburg lacks, but here it is in a glass.