Well-traveled

Stuck in Nietzsche’s Norddeich

My plan changed and, frankly, for the better. A train is far more energy-efficient than even a Prius, and my trip could be just as spontaneous, given Germany’s extensive high-speed train network. Buoyed by these thoughts, I whistled my way up to the Deutsche Bahn ticket-sales counter and asked the attendant, “So, where am I going today?”

I do not recommend asking a German rail attendant a question that requires right-brain activity. He licked his lips and asked, “Shouldn’t I be asking you that same question?”

I explained, as reasonably as I could, given the absurdity of my request, that I wanted him, according to his whim and fancy, to send me along the happy rails into the land of poets and thinkers. After an awkward moment, the displeasure on his face began to melt, as if his humanity and his job were joined for the first time. His posture loosened as he asked whether I had anything particular in mind.

Nature, I said. I was tired of the city. I wanted Eden. He looked me up and down. “I have just the place for you!” he exclaimed.

He punched a few buttons and handed me a one-way ticket.

From my comfy seat, I watched the flat countryside whizz by, as we passed thousands of wind turbines on the way to the North Sea. The helpful attendant had sent me to a place off the international tourist track, the island paradise of Juist, a national park and one of the northernmost points in Germany.

We passed a nuclear power plant belching clouds of water vapor into the heavens, but it didn’t send Chernobyl chills down my spine. Every single nuclear power plant in Germany is slated to be closed, forever. Though committed to sharp greenhouse-gas reductions, Germany won’t do it with nukes. Citizens’ coalitions and Greens concerned about safety won legislation that will phase them all out by 2021.

I got off at the last stop, the North Sea port of Norddeich. * This doesn’t translate as “Not Paradise,” but it might just as well. The town was an unlovely mix of industry and suburban monotony. There wasn’t a centimeter that hadn’t been worked and reworked by human hand. Every street, home, garden, and tree was manicured, shaped with the kind of precision that belongs in a Mercedes engine but not in your neighborhood. It made me think of a friend who told me he left Europe to work in Mozambique because “the cake has already been baked in Europe; they’re just arguing over the icing.”

The last boat of the day had already left for Juist, so I was stuck in Norddeich. And to my dismay, despite the blandness of the place, I couldn’t find a room. I walked into one hotel after another. All were booked solid. It was a Friday, and German tourists from western Germany’s highly industrialized Ruhr area had descended on Norddeich. Why? I had no idea.

A German in one of the “No Vacancy” hotels told me that there might be rough oceans the next day, which could mean no boats to Juist. My backpack getting heavier by the second, I wondered if being stranded in Norddeich was Kant’s, Schopenhauer’s, or Nietzsche’s concept of hell.

Finally, I discovered a tavern displaying a hand-scribbled “Rooms Available” sign. I walked into a lively dinner crowd and a crackling fire and snagged what seemed to be the last room on the island.

One of the tavern’s waiters took me there. I was to stay in somebody’s apartment a few blocks away. Hearing that I was American, the waiter began to reminisce about his life’s greatest adventure: a ride across the American West on a Harley Davidson. As he spoke, I realized that he viewed his entire post-motorcycle-trip life as a gigantic anticlimax. Here he was now, in his 50s, waiting tables in Godforsaken Norddeich, with only two remnants of that dream still visible: a set of long biker sideburns and a thin ponytail collected from the hair remaining around his bald spot.

I arrived at the tavern for dinner at exactly 10:01 p.m. It closed at 10. No matter that it was still lively; this was Germany, and now it was closed. I walked past other restaurant windows. Folks were sipping good beer, laughing, enjoying a quasi-natural weekend in domesticated Nordeich. None of the taverns called to me. I began to feel the melancholy of the solo traveler: On the flip side of every foreign adventure is the startling sense that you don’t belong there. Of course, that’s also why you can see the place with fresh eyes. I walked back to my little room, missing home, wherever that was.

The next morning, a couple of hundred Germans and I sailed out of Norddeich’s harbor. The sun’s reflection was phosphorescent on a calm sea. I stood on the top deck and mixed in with dozens of passengers. As we passed a solar-powered lighthouse, our boat nearly collided with a much smaller one; it swerved at the last second.

Das ist Norderney!”—”That’s Norderney“—a middle-aged man with a trim beard exclaimed, * indicating Juist’s larger, traffic-jammed sister island. He announced this earnestly, as if he himself had discovered the place. He and his wife wore matching teal blue parkas. I struck up a conversation with him. He reminded me of many other sturdy, wholesome Germans I’ve known. With Dutch-Bolivian Mymza long since returned to Amsterdam, I felt the texture of my thinking change as I spoke only German. Anyone who is bilingual knows that switching languages is a way of switching personalities. I felt myself, once again, becoming slightly more ironic and precise: a little more deutsch.

Two hours later, we slid into Juist’s slender port. A lighthouse and church steeple rose out of the tidy island town. The contrast with loathsome Norddeich could not have been more dramatic. Juist’s white sand beaches and grassy dunes beckoned. I couldn’t wait to get off that boat and explore. Beneath the cheery clink of horseshoes on cobblestone, Juist resonated with a gigantic ohm of silence.

Corrections, Aug. 29, 2008: This entry originally misspelled the names of the town of Norddeich and the island of Norderney. (Return to the corrected sentences.)