twenty-three

As this month has been filled with posts from Sean in Africa and a second blog for my parent’s trip to Alaska, I thought it might be fun to also include a little bit from my friend Jesse, who is currently biking across Western Europe. Here’s a note from a few days back, sounds like they’re doing very well.

Thoughtless Hospitality

I write this now from a small home in Altausse, Austria. If you want to find it on a map it is east of Salzburg.  This is where I find myself after two weeks of riding a bike from Frankfurt, Germany. I won’t attempt to recount the journey, I only wish to tell a little of the hospitality Zach and I have experienced. And this I think can best be told through a small collection of journal entries. Forgive the fragmented thoughts.

9-12-06 Pasing, Germany

Today Zach and I mostly finished the first leg of our journey, we reached Munchen, and we couldn’t have received a warmer welcome than from Caleb’s (my brother) friend Lars, his wonderful wife Corinna and beautiful girls Theresa and Ruth.  After a long day of getting lost in ugly towns we finally managed to find our way here.

9-15-06 Pasing

This is a good moment- Corinna is ironing clothes in the kitchen watching the TV that Lars set up on the counter for her. He is preparing lesson plans at the dinner table which is right next to the kitchen. Zach is reading the “unabridged” as he likes to say, Counte of Monte Cristo on the only piece of furniture in the living room. I am on their small patio drinking a Newmarkter Lammsbrau Urstoff bier…

I admit today I felt a tinge of homesickness. But being in this home seems to make it OK.

9-18-06 Salzburg, Austria

I am sitting in the middle of the city fair. Rides for small children and bars for their parents surround. Maybe it is just me but for the last few days in the bigger cities it seems that people have looked at me with a strange eye. As I pass, their gaze follows me a little longer than others. I am not the type to know what others are thinking intuitively. Whether they find in me friend or foe, or simply outsider. Its probably just me.  The large cathedral in the city looms over me, another strange stare that i have felt in the land of old religion. I feel its gaze and I cannot tell if it is one of accusation, condemnation, or peace and grace. Again I am not the type to know the content of a prolonged glance. But however it looks at me i take it with a large grain of salt. the kind of grain that you take from anything that has been around for hundreds even thousands of years, rebuilding itself, replanting itself, desperate to hold on to the power it has always known.

The table at which i reside is that of a fish stand. A middle aged woman is busy clearing tables and emptying ashtrays. A cigarette still burns fresh in mine.

I am still tired from my first experience with Oktoberfest. Tens of thousands and throughout the week millions of drunk men and women cramming into small spaces. Many of the them are dressed in traditional Bavarian garb, the rest are Italians, Aussies, Brits, and a few Americans. We finally found a seat outside one of the tents, and if you don’t have a seat you can’t get a drink. We sat next to a nice German couple and a couple of guys who worked for Germany’s largest independent music station, which means American top 40. Lars questioned them on their bad choice of music. “Why no Pearl Jam or Bon Jovi even?” “It makes money” they said. Yes to capitalism here too i guess. Still everywhere is a language i don’t understand, except for the occasional slurred and sloppy American, but i find no comfort there either. It is real relationship i long for. Not someone I speak to, but someone i listen with, and one who listens when I can’t hear.

Gifts to send Lars

• the office dvd, season 1
• this is spinal tap

So far this trip i have been very introspective and yet have prayed only a few times. The cathedrals have done very little for me spiritually. It seems in fact they place a distance between God and myself that was not there before. The dove always flies at the top of the highest dome, but I need the Spirit down here with me. And as I sit here and complain about how distant God feels I realize the home that I have been sleeping and eating in has sustained me not only practically but with a home, with people who care. The dove is carrying me right now. I have not experienced hospitality to this extreme, and I do not believe i have ever been in such need of a home away from home.

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