I originally set up this Sonderjourneys blog with the plan to tell about my travels. And then it ended up being more about spiritual travels. But now it’s time to go back to it’s original purpose and write about my 60th birthday trip to Germany.
Here’s the background. I lived in Germany for ten years, from 1996 to 2006. That was where my kids grew up and where my marriage thrived – and then fell apart. Some of the most joyful and most sorrowful moments of my life happened there. Meanwhile, I was living in Virginia and hadn’t been back to Europe at all in 18 years. Every time a friend posted pictures from a European vacation, I felt nostalgic and yes, envious. I’d remember how hard it was the first few years in Virginia to have a long weekend and realize that I couldn’t use it for a quick trip into France.
But during the pandemic, I refinanced my mortgage and got rid of mortgage insurance and finally had a little money in my budget to put toward travel. I started thinking about my looming 60th birthday. How did I want to celebrate?
My 50th birthday had been on a Saturday, so I’d thrown myself a party. But on a Saturday in June, most of my friends had other things going on. So this time, I wanted to do something I’d been wanting to do for 18 years – go back to Germany.
To make it even better, for two years now I’ve been working in a job where I select books for my public library system. When I worked in a branch, June was the busiest time of year because of the start of the summer reading program. But in Collection Services, our fiscal year ends on June 30th, so we have to stop ordering for the previous fiscal year well ahead of that deadline. Which makes it perfect timing to travel for my birthday.
Now, the year before, my sister had gotten married in May – so no June travel for me. But that was when I started thinking about my 60th birthday coming up and began making plans. I knew I wanted to go back to Germany, but where in particular would I go? My initial plans included driving across France. But the more I looked at details, the more I remembered how we used to travel when we lived in Europe – travel to one place and spend a week or so there, rather than flitting from place to place.
And then in late summer 2023, a good friend from my library in Virginia announced on Facebook that she’d moved to Germany. She was in Leipzig, in a part of Germany I’d never visited. When I reached out to her, she was happy and welcoming. So I began thinking about focusing my time two places: Leipzig with Kate to balance out time in the Kaiserslautern area where I’d lived before.
Then as 2024 got underway, more and more small disasters happened, each one costing a chunk of money. I thought maybe I was irresponsible to follow through on my plan to go back to the place my heart loves. But as I was thinking that, my youngest told me they’d gotten a bonus at work and they wanted to give me money toward the trip! So I went on planning my 60th birthday trip, guilt free.
At first, I’d planned to start the trip with my old stomping grounds. But then Kate sent me a message that there was an international Bach Fest going on in Leipzig at the start of June! I checked the Bachfest website – and it was finishing up the weekend after my birthday. So I got us tickets to a Bach Choral Cantatas Concert on my birthday in the Nikolaikirche, one of the churches where Bach actually served!
I bought tickets and sketched out my time. I was planning to rent a car, and I ordered a sim card via Amazon that you can put in your phone to switch it to a European system. Just in case that wouldn’t work, I printed out lots of google maps to the places I was planning to go.
So that brings me back to Day 1 in Germany.
My flight took off at 11:05 pm on June 10. I’d spent the day packing but still got to the airport pretty early. There was a short layover in Iceland, in an airport so small they don’t even tell you the gate until they’re ready to board the plane. I got some sleep on the first leg (I hoped), and even had an empty seat next to me. Fortunately, one worry that I’d end up being too tired to drive did not happen. In fact, my planning was good. It’s five hours from the Frankfurt airport to Leipzig. I planned to drive one hour the first night, and I found a Tagungskloster – a monastery with a hotel – in Fulda. So that was my plan.
I arrived in Germany at 4:10 pm, tired but excited. At the airport, I made sure the European sim card worked. It did! Hooray! I used an ATM to get some Euros. And I picked up my rental car. Which all took a good bit of time.
I’d realized just before I left that the rental car would be manual transmission. Could I remember how to drive it? I think the last time I drove stick was in Germany, in fact. When I got it, it was an adorable little Fiat 500 – with six speeds! Yikes! But I used the rule that if the engine was revving loudly, I should probably shift.
And then I headed out! I got google maps pointing me to Fulda, but I stopped at a gas station before I got on the Autobahn because I couldn’t figure out how to turn on the air conditioning (which my reservation said it would have) or make the GPS voice go over speakers or roll down the windows. There was a moon roof letting in sunshine and it was hot in the car.
It turned out, there was no air conditioning. But the rest I solved. The buttons for the windows were in the middle of the dashboard, rather than on the doors. So I ended up driving through Germany on a gorgeous evening in the 70s (Fahrenheit) with my windows down and a moon roof above me. When I got to Kate’s, I discovered you could plug in your phone to the car and the map would show on the display in the car! But on the first drive, I was mainly using the voice directions, plus glancing at the phone in my purse. It wasn’t until Day 9 that I realized that the current speed limit would also show up in the corner of the screen, which ended up being super helpful.
And then I was off! Driving on the Autobahn through the German countryside! There wasn’t a whole lot of traffic between Frankfurt and Fulda, the weather was beautiful, blue clouds and white puffy clouds, a cool breeze outside, and I was really back in Germany! Oh, and I was figuring out how to drive stick again. I don’t remember any scary moments on that first drive, and both stick and the Autobahn was all coming back.
Fulda itself was a little trickier. I got to the right neighborhood after some wrong turns (google maps wasn’t giving me a whole lot of notice, which I did get used to as time went by), but then it tried to make me turn into a road that was marked as closed for construction. I finally parked at the bottom of the hill below the monastery in a public lot, and trudged up the hill to check in. It was more like two hours than one by the time I finally got there.
Later I took a picture of the road I climbed to get there:
At the desk, they told me how to get to the place where I could park my car closer. My room was on the third floor, and there was no elevator, so some more work getting my luggage up the stairs.
The room was monastery simple, but cozy:
I took pictures out the windows right away.
But alas! That ended up being a mistake. There was a restaurant on the premises of the monastery and I’d seen that its terrace had a beautiful view. I went down to have a lovely dinner overlooking the city at 7:10 pm – and discovered that they’d closed to the public at 7:00 pm and were holding a private event.
After the difficulty I’d had even finding the monastery driveway and feeling tired and jet lagged, there was no way in the world I was getting back in my car to try to find food. So dinner that first night was a Kind bar I’d brought in my bag.
And then I did enjoy the Kloster for a bit. Something I adore about Germany in June is that the sun doesn’t go down until about 10 pm. I went out in the Klostergarten and enjoyed the flowers, the breezes, and the wonderful sideways light, all before winding down enough to get to sleep.
I was already remembering things I love about Germany – the beautiful countryside, beautiful weather, long twilights, polite and helpful people, the sound of the German language (they all spoke English as soon as I opened my mouth, but still.), the windows (when I got to Kate’s, she laughed and said I was the first visitor they had who knew how to open them.), driving on the Autobahn, and that feeling of being back home – at least a place that had been home for many years.
Oh, and the bonus? When we’d lived in Germany, my family counted the castles we touched and got to 167. To count, the building had to have a name, be at least 100 years old, and either be fortified or be a residence for nobility. The Kloster Frauenberg had some hefty fortifications, so I decided it qualified. Castle #168, Tagungskloster Frauenberg!
My German vacation was off to a great start, and my heart was full.