Entertained by Angels Unawares

After nowhere near the req­ui­site 9 hours of sleep, our kind hosts gave us a ride into Ulm this morn­ing, where we did the final stuff trade-off with Andrew’s par­ents and then saw them and Zeke off to the train sta­tion. These good­byes are really get­ting old! Only one more, next week in Bre­genz, and the next time we meet after that they will be in a camper van and track the whole dis­tance with us through Italy.

We took one last turn through Ulm—Luther surely would have seen the Rathaus and the Geschwörhaus, both of which were built before the 16th century—and then headed down the bike path along the Iller River. It was one of our first clues that we are approach­ing the Alps; the Iller flows north, con­trary to our direc­tion, com­ing as it does out of the Alps, which also means it’s prone to flood­ing dur­ing the spring melts. Another clue was the sud­den appear­ance of birch trees, which require a fairly cool cli­mate. Until we get into Italy, the cli­mate is going to get cooler the far­ther south we go, not warmer.

In the town of Senden we left the path for a bit to seek out a gro­cery store and eat a bite of lunch. So as not to retrace our steps we tried to take a short­cut (har, har) but this time the out­come was beau­ti­fully serendipitous—an elderly cou­ple hailed us lost-looking pil­grims and asked where we were bound. “Ah, pious Catholics!” he said. “Nope, pious Luther­ans!” we replied. We explained our pur­pose and they smiled—he’s Lutheran, she’s Catholic, and as I men­tioned yes­ter­day, “mixed” mar­riages are the seedbed of ecu­menism! They invited us for cof­fee so we got to visit one of the many gar­den plots you see all over Europe on the edges of town. Horst and Rosemarie’s was in pris­tine order, full of flow­ers (espe­ically marigolds), with a dar­ling lit­tle house.

We noticed once again how quickly “the war” (always World War II) comes up in con­ver­sa­tion. Horst grew up in Sile­sia, what’s now Poland, and had to flee west into Ger­many when he was 13, the flight last­ing a whole 3 months. They told us all about their fam­ily and their bees and how after Horst spent his career installing tele­vi­sions they threw theirs out—“Every hour in front of the TV is an hour of your life lost.” Not own­ing a TV our­selves, we were pleased to find such kin­dred spir­its in such an unlikely way! After load­ing us up with a jar of their own honey and cherry toma­toes picked right off the vine, they walked us the whole way back to our cor­rect path, a mercy indeed. As one of our read­ers com­mented, in accept­ing hos­pi­tal­ity we can find our­selves enter­tained by angels unawares.

That was the high­light of the day all right. What fol­lowed was a three hour march through a long green tun­nel, the con­tin­u­ing bike path along the Iller, with the river itself blocked from sight most of the way. It’s amaz­ing how numb­ingly dull pil­grim­age can get when there is noth­ing to look at. With­out scenery and ever more keenly miss­ing my books, I got down­right restive. Once I even found myself think­ing, OK, my mind is clear of dis­trac­tions, how about some pro­found spir­i­tual insight, huh?!—though most assuredly spir­i­tual insight does not arrive in that fash­ion. The one wel­come inter­rup­tion was another cou­ple cycling past us who were so intrigued at our response to the ques­tion “Where are you headed?” that they stopped and chat­ted with us for awhile. We finally got into a camp­ground at 7 and installed our­selves in a cute lit­tle wooden bun­ga­low. It will def­i­nitely be an early night.

paul sailhamer says:
September 12, 2010 at 2:57 pm
You may remem­ber in Pil­grims Progress how Chris­t­ian has these long dis­courses as they walk with Faith­ful, Hope­ful, Talk­a­tive, etc…as you must know, con­vers­ing is a great way to shorten the kilo­me­ters. Spir­i­tual insights usu­ally come when not specif­i­cally sought. Plan­ning, brain­storm­ing, remem­ber­ing, review­ing the books read by a cer­tain author or on a cer­tain sub­ject, etc., are often good ways to direct the con­ver­sa­tion and usu­ally a valu­able insight or two will surface.
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