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POSTED: Sunday, December 28, 2008

Sometimes life gets in the way of that special trip. I've longed for white Christmases of my childhood in Germany and the taste of cold-smoked “;schinken”; (ham) and spice cookies. And I wanted to see, just once more, our old apartment building and my elementary school from first to third grade. But career moves, family responsibilities and a mortgage had kept me from returning to Germany from Hawaii.

               

     

 

 

GERMANY         Note all the hotels offered a complimentary breakfast buffet. The rooms are immaculate, and every bed comes with a down pillow.         Wuerzburg » Hotel Alter Kranen: Kaerrnergasse 11, 97070 Wuerzburg. Call (0931) 35 18-0 or .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address). Charming, cozy 16-room hotel centrally overlooking the Main River close to the town square and within walking distance of several tourist attractions. Tastefully decorated rooms. A single is tiny, but the staff is friendly and helpful. Breakfast only is served in a nice dining room with pink tablecloths and candles. A basket of warm boiled eggs was a great touch. Single room, $88; double, $126. » Weingasthof am Alten Kranen: Krankai 1. Indoor restaurant attached to the historic, outdoor Alter Kranen beer garden, overlooks the Main Riverin the city center. The menu is extensive, and I enjoyed a spaetzle and pork dish. Service is great. » Rainbow Garden Thai Restaurant Sanderau: Eichendorffstrasse 16. Surprisingly good Thai food in a nice setting. Large windows gives it an airy, outdoor feel.         Rothenburg ob der Tauber » Rothenburger Hof Hotel: Rooms I stayed in were somewhat run down but clean, with eclectic furniture. The hotel mascot, Bobby, a sweet old golden retriever, was a big selling point for me. I shared my dinner with him. Single-room rates range from $59 to $98. Doubles are $98 to $141. The hotel's restaurant was surprisingly good and had a nice dinner of duck salad with greens, lentils and cabbage slaw, tomato soup and white wine.         Garmisch » Hotel Garmischer-Hof: Chamonixstrasse 10; call (0 88 21) 911-0; e-mail .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address). Three-star hotel within walking distance to the Christmas Market, with an immaculate spa for massages after a day on the slopes. My room was small but adequate. The excellent staff provided great directions and made arrangements for skiing. Single rooms run $99 to $134; doubles $134 to $195; and there's a $4.30 fee per day for a dog. The hotel restaurant had good food, an attentive staff and a large menu including a $27 Bavarian buffet. There is a separate bar. For my last dinner, I had St. Peter's fish, a delicate white fish in cream sauce, Bayerische cream with raspeberry sauce, and excellent white wine.

I wanted to see Wuerzburg, as an adult, to see what I had missed as a child. I came close to never realizing that dream because Wuerzburg Elementary closed its doors in June. And this fall, the American Army post of Leighton Barracks, including the home where I lived as an American military brat, was scheduled to be returned to the Germans.

But an amazing confluence of events occurred. While backpacking the Na Pali Coast last year, I met two university students, Daniel Schaub and Jennifer Gehring, from the Bavarian city where I had lived. They told me the barracks would be shutting down, so I scrambled to make plans and was on a plane to Frankfurt last December, stepping onto German soil for the first time in 41 years.

“;I'm home,”; I said as I drove along the autobahn and saw the familiar countryside. Somehow, I had retained a kinship with this place. By the time I arrived in Wuerzburg at about 4:30 p.m., the sky was black, but the city's historic buildings were awash in golden light. It was magical, a fairy-tale land.

I found the Main River, which runs through the city. Above it sat the Marienberg Fortress, what I remembered as a castle perched atop a vineyard-covered hill. That night, I found another picture come to life from my memory book: the bridge over the Main River flanked by two regal lions on both ends.

Turns out, Wuerzburg wasn't the small town I remembered, but a city known for its architecture. It was once the seat of powerful prince-bishops, and is the gateway to the Romantic Road that runs through Bavaria.

THE NEXT MORNING, at Hotel Alter Kranen, I was greeted by Maria Schmucker, who served me coffee, lighting a candle at my breakfast table. I commented on the absence of snow, and she explained it's been more than 20 years since it snowed in the area. Of all things, I never imagined weather patterns would change.

I headed out for Leighton Barracks and easily found my way. What a shock to find German guards dressed in blue at the post entrance. Unless you have a military escort, you cannot enter, they said. (The information I found online had stated that an American passport would get you on base.)

The guards gave me a number to call for information, and I started with the school, where a clerk said no one was available to escort me in.

“;I've come all the way from Hawaii after 41 years,”; I said, practically in tears. “;Isn't there someone who can help me?”;

The clerk was unsympathetic.

I refocused my energy on seeing the city, starting with a place I recalled visiting as a child, the Residence, where the city's former prince-bishops once lived in royal splendor. It is Wuerzburg's biggest draw. Although 85 percent of the city was destroyed in the March 1945 bombing by the Brits, the city has been restored to its original glory. Artwork hidden prior to the bombing has been returned to the Residence.

BACK AT my hotel, there was a message waiting from the Barracks public affairs officer, Roger Teel, who offered to pick me up at my hotel the next day. My spirits soared.

That afternoon, it was nice to reunite with the backpacking visitors, Daniel and Jennifer, whose information had set me to this quest. We hiked up to the Marienberg Fortress where the twilight enhanced the medieval look of the thick-walled buildings. I remembered going there as a girl with my family, thinking how cool it was to be inside a castle.

The sun set, the city lights below flickered on and all the bells from the city's cathedrals and churches rang in unison.

We visited the city hall where a display of the city showed the bombing by the British in 1945 left just the shells of the city's buildings. Daniel leaned up against a few of the bombshells that had been dropped on the city, and scanned the names of the dead lining the walls. He didn't find any relatives' names, but it was sobering to reflect on the many lives lost that day.

We found a quaint Bavarian restaurant with good bratwurst, sauerkraut and local Franconian white wine, then enjoyed the Christmas market, drinking in holiday cheer with “;gluehwein,”; hot spiced wine. I bought Gummi candies and sour sticks, which I loved as a kid.

The next day, Roger Teel drove me around the post. I easily recognized Concord Hall, the apartment building where I had grown up. The drab beige building sat alone at the end of a row of houses called Colonels' Row. We walked up to apartment C-7, and I rang the bell but no one answered.

Roger snapped a photo as I choked back tears. It was surreal to stand on the same granite floors as I walked as a 6-year-old, in a country thousands of miles from Hawaii. I photographed our sledding hills, now green and devoid of snow.

We also visited Wuerzburg Elementary, where classrooms held only a handful of children. Big picture windows in a third-grade classroom brought back more memories of how, as kids, we would be itching to go outside play in falling snow.

MAINTAINING MY Wuerzburg base, I drove to Bamberg, a pleasant country drive. My favorite part was passing through quaint villages.

Bamberg, a sprawling city with an unattractive industrial look, was not the small town I had imagined, and there was no way I could find the apartment we lived in when we first moved to Germany. But the old town was splendid with cobblestone streets and half-timbered buildings painted with frescoes. I found delicious “;lebkuchen”; (gingerbread cookies) at a bakery, which brought back memories of the ones baked at Christmas by our maid Heidi Sauer.

SAINT NIKOLAUS arrived my last night in Wuerzburg. In the town square, an oompah band played mostly American yule tunes, and kids in the audience took the stage to sing a Christmas carol or recite a poem in exchange for a chocolate Nikolaus from the man himself.

From Wuerzburg, I headed down the Romantic Road, picking two of the medieval walled towns. I set out for the most popular, Rothenburg ob der Tauber, where every day is Christmas. But I was most eager to get to Garmisch, where I spent childhood vacations.

When I arrived in Garmisch, the sky had darkened and I knew what it meant. The next morning, I awoke to see thick flakes falling outside my room. I ran to the balcony and my smile lasted the day. Through the hotel desk clerk, I was connected to a ski shop and Werner Schabel, a ski instructor who turned out to be patient and funny.

He took me to a hill on Hausberg where I could see the ski run for the 1936 Winter Olympics. The powdery snow was falling heavily, and visibility was poor, an advantage for a beginning skier who would have been terrified to know how steep it was without the thick powder layer.

We sang German Christmas songs as we rode up on the ski lift. After skiing, he brought me home to meet his wife, Hanna, an English teacher. We talked about their many travels, and they showed me their cozy flat, kept warm by a wood-burning tile stove, and shared her homemade Christmas cookies and stollen. We also had a shot of Italian lemon liqueur, and some rum-spiked hot tea.

Zugspitze, the highest peak in Germany, at 9,720 feet, was where I longed to ski. Conditions were too cold and poor for skiing the first few days I was there, but improved by the third day. The view atop Zugspitze was spectacular. Although conditions below the clouds were gray and cloudy, it was sunny and the skies were clear and blue from my vantage.

Zugspitze was a challenge, with its fast, steep runs, but with Werner's help I managed to avoid flying off the mountain.

AFTER THREE days of skiing, I decided to head to Oberammergau, 12 miles from Garmisch and best known for its Passion Play held once every 10 years. The town was blanketed in snow, and I photographed dogs being walked by their owners along snowy river banks. Being a dog person, I was fascinating to learn about a dog hotel, Hotel Wolf, that had 60 dogs registered that night.

Oberammergau, renowned for its woodcarving, was where my brother and I got hand-carved wooden flutes as children. There I purchased a single unpainted carving of a man with an ax.

Later, I found a butcher/wine shop where I dined at a stand-up table on a sandwich of wonderful cold-smoked schinken, a childhood favorite, served on crusty “;broetchen.”; It was a taste I have never forgotten. I could die now or at least return to Hawaii feeling fulfilled.

Heading to Munich, I took a detour to Dachau, one of the first concentration camps opened during World War II on the city's outskirts. The cold wind was a chilling reminder of what those interned there had to endure wearing thin uniforms year-round, their skeletal bodies weakened by overwork and starvation.

Dachau held mostly non-Jews such as political and religious prisoners. What I had read in books began to take shape in my memory, including the original brick cremation ovens that could not keep up with the mounting corpses. After the Americans freed those interned, area residents came to see what was going on inside Dachau and were shocked to learn the truth of the smokestacks that continuously burned, a young German guide explained.

It was a sobering end to this personal journey. The next day, I got on the autobahn and made it to Frankfurt in four hours. I took more photos of Wuerzburg and hoped it wouldn't be the last I'd see of this city, nor this country, which will always hold a special place in my heart.