A Kitten For Your Troubles, or, Swiss Fields
Colmar, France to Flühli, Switzerland
I woke to the pitter patter of rain and church bells. It was early, the birds chirping, new light coming in through the trees, the leaves crackling with a soft wind. The night before we had found a small clearing in the woods off a road that ran up into the hills. We slept in, ate breakfast in the van, waited for the rain to clear, and then we were off — it was to be a full day. Breakfast in France, lunch in Germany, dinner in Switzerland. We drove back into Colmar, through green farm fields wet with dew, into town, passing the Laverie St. Marie, couples walking into the old center for the Sunday market with their wheelie bags in tow, a man in a red jacket strutting down the street alone, his head held high. In the daylight, Colmar is just as charming as in the night, and full of Easter decorations for the holiday — great wheels of cheese displayed in storefronts, colored eggs hidden in planters, petting zoo animals on side streets, church bells tolling.
We followed the bells to the central church, where Palm Sunday celebrations were underway. We sat for a coffee in the cafe across the street from the church and watched. The French Scouts handed out fronds to the faithful, the bells rang louder, and come 11 o’clock the doors of the church opened and the red-frocked priests and his assistants and altar boys poured out into the square. One young boy with a white-gloved hand held a flaming candle at the pastor’s side, another boy a microphone, while all eyes went to the priest, a surprisingly young-looking man wearing red with a deep furrow above his eyebrows. The bells stopped ringing and the faithful surrounding the church raised their fronds — a forest of fronds — and repeated the French of the priest. Then after some minutes they all filed nearly into the church for Mass.
Watching all of these from afar were a group of six white men in trim buzz cuts holding assault weapons and wearing blue berets — a small deployment from the French army.
Once the service outside the church was over they left quickly, leaving the square oddly empty. I went up to the French Scouts selling fronds.
Combien? I asked.
Whatever you want, the young women responded to me, in English. I dropped a few coins into their collection box.
We spun around Colmar. There was an Easter Market, and Rory found a giant Flemish rabbit on display, the size of a small dog. A few streets over, we chanced on the Musee Bartholdi, the French sculptor of the Statue of Liberty who was born in Colmar. The museum currently has an exhibit on the 80th Anniversary of the American liberation of Colmar from the Nazi’s. Ironic, I thought, considering that certain French politicians on the left are now calling for America to return the Statue of Liberty to France.
And how would that happen exactly, logistically? asked Rory.
We got back in the van and kept driving south.
Out of Colmar we quickly got off the interstate and started passing through little French towns, and then after consulting our paper map turned east towards Germany and suddenly we were passing over the Rhone and into Germany. Through small German towns, church belfries sticking up against the green fields, a man in blue with a backpack trudging uphill on his bike. Through one town we loop twice, trying to find a supermarket to stock up again before we head into pricy Switzerland, passing by the same garden with four watering cans, red, green, yellow, and blue, neatly lined up against a black wire fence.
We’re heading more and more up into the hills with every minute, the fields neat furrows of brown, or green, dotted with yellow poppy fields. For lunch we turn off into an old farmyard. A man wearing a black apron sits out on the front steps, smoking a cigarette.
Hallo! he greets us. I speak no German. He speaks English, tells us it’s open. We eat asparagus soup and cordon bleu and vegetarian schnitzel and good beer and Sidney has a honey shot for her sore throat. As we leave the cook who speaks good English shook all of our hands. Tschuss!
A few hours later, we’re in Switzerland, and it’s gorgeous. Rolling hills, and then suddenly, the alps appear in the distance covered in snow and wrapped in clouds. Further up into the Swiss valleys — green fields full of little yellow peonies, mountain tops vanishing into the fog. At a lake beside a farm on the side of the road where we stop for a walk — a beautiful orange girl cat, not a year old, hunting ducks. She spots us, runs over. We’re surrounded by fresh air, and the blue lake and the blue sky and the clouds skidding across the sky, mountain tops vanishing into the fog. The orange tabby is ever so friendly, and for a moment we were worried we would have to take her home, but she was thankfully distracted by a duck and ran off. Anyways, she was living in cat heaven, we thought — beside the lake, probably a nice barn for a home, the grass to play in and pets from passing walkers.
We set up our camper in a campground in Flühli, tucked up against the mountains, and before the sun sets and we eat ramen and go to bed I take a hike up into the hills, from trails that lead directly from the campground, up through green fields and besides a babbling brook that reminds me of Wyoming, birds in the trees, and once I have a view from above over the campground and the town — a lone home throwing woodsmoke into the fresh spring air, a yellow light on a top floor, snow on nearby peaks, white-tailed deer running up and down the steep slopes, the barely audible passing hum of a plane. I’m a world away from Brussels, from the city, from human bicker and bob, up in the clouds. It’s a feeling of space I haven’t had for a long time, and I resist leaving until it’s nearly proper dark. With the sun beginning to set I set out back down the trail for our camper and home.
Tomorrow we head over the Alps and into Italy.
