Glistening black in the rain, fading gray in the sunlight
Checked with yellow, edged in white
Swooping and diving between and around the mountains
Like a swallow homing forever.
The road carries me down into the valley
Into the shade of forest, dusky and dark,
Curving in the lowlands, trapped and winding,
Now, suddenly it flings me arching up, up, up into the heights
Floating on a ridge on the top of the world,
A patchworked world of fields and villages
Some intricate masterpiece quilted by skillful hands;
Along the sunlit crest the road flies until we twist and turn,
Turn down dizzying curves to reach the river
The brown, brown river running swollen from the rain.
The river and the road take me away, and the sun splashes
Through the canopy of wild trees, spilling flickering light on the road
As it moves along the woodlands
Past a pregnant goat grazing by the way, and a field of buffalo,
Past smoke rising gray against the blue and green,
And mountains upholding a bluing sky until a
Sudden flood of rain; and inside my pink raincoat and visor,
I become a kingdom of myself, a muffled, moving, pink kingdom.
But the rain ceases
And a sudden orange of blossoms bursts against the sodden sky
The road is not a ribbon.
It is a gray and yellow asphalt snake, and I am a beetle riding on its back.
(Inspired by my bike trip to Mae Hong Son today (and other trips similar to it)).
A rural gas station. I love places like this to fill up since you usually can have fun conversations with the owner. Photo credit: Abby MartinAbby Martin and I on a recent trip
Someday I would like to visit Munich when I am NOT jet-lagged and cold.
On my way back to Thailand, I flew from Wichita to Denver, and from Denver to Munich, Germany, where I had a 13 hour layover. I visited Dachau Concentration Camp and several different churches in Marienplatz area in the city center of Munich.
I told some friends that I would write about my time in Germany and give some details on it, in case anyone else wants to try to do a layover like this. I struggled with knowing what to write and what to omit since I don’t like to post something with thousands of details, and yet when I was preparing for my trip, I found posts like that extremely helpful. So, if you don’t enjoy the details, skip them and enjoy the pictures instead. (Apology: I only had my phone camera which is the budget phone type and does not give very good quality photos either, so just take it as is 🙂 ).
Since I was vaccinated in Thailand and my Thai vaccination certificate was originally not accepted by Lufthansa when I sent it my documents for a pre-boarding check online, I wasn’t sure if I was going to be able to get into the country because of Covid restrictions. When I checked in in Wichita, I was asked for both my vaccination papers and my negative Covid test. In Denver, I was only asked for my certificate, and in Munich when I went through immigrations, the officer did not ask me for either one. So, if you ask me if you need to be vaccinated to enter Germany, I think the answer is yes, but it also probably depends on the officer who stamps your passport.
I had 2 hours of sleep on the flight from Denver to Munich, so I was rather tired the entire time I was there. Ok, rather is too soft a word. It was more like exhausted. When I landed in Germany, upon boarding, I just followed the signs to the baggage claim instead of the signs marked transfer. Just before the baggage claim, I went through immigration. There I gave my passport to the officer. She asked me a few questions and gave me my stamp in my passport. From there, I headed to the bathroom and repacked my bags. I got all the stuff out of my backpack that I needed for my time outside of the airport and then put my backpack into my carry on, taking only my purse with me.
I made a few mistakes, like leaving the airport before stowing my bags that I didn’t want with me. In Switzerland, the place to leave the baggage was just on the other side of the airport, and I was thinking this would be the same thing. Instead, it was inside the airport. For anyone doing the same thing, as soon as you leave customs and the “point of no return” look for signs saying, “Service Center.” Follow those signs and you will find the service center where the guy takes your baggage and gives you a slip and reminds you not to lose it. You will pay when you return to pick it up. The service center closed at 9 PM, so do NOT come back after that hour if you have a flight leaving in the night and need your luggage. It might be a good idea to ask for sure what the closing time is since it might be different from mine.
Next you want to get your ticket. You can actually get this inside the airport, but I got mine in the subway station. I had written out some instructions on what kind of ticket I needed, and was very glad I did so, even though a few more details would have been appreciated. Watch for electronic machines where you get your own ticket. On the screen, tap the flag that stands for English (I assume, if you are reading this blog, you speak English) and then tap the square that says MVV. This will open up the options of the different kinds of ticket that you will need. Choose the Munich Zone M5 ticket, which is also called the Airport City Day pass. Also be sure to get a day ticket, also known as Tageskarten instead of an Einzelfahrtkarten, which is a single journey ticket. If you get the day ticket, you can ride any bus and S-Bahn trams/subways for one full day until 6 AM the next day. (This does not include the regular railroad). If you are traveling by yourself, get a single day ticket. If you are traveling with a group, you can get a group ticket.
The subway entrance is located across from the airport exit. Follow the signs for the S-Bahn, or sometimes it might just be an S logo in a circle. Once you are inside the subway, you will want to get the S1 train or the S8 train to go to Hauptbahnhof (also known as Munich Central Station). Make sure you are taking the train in the right direction. One tip that I found helpful was searching on google maps how to get from the airport to the Munich Central Station via tram. Google maps will show all different stops that you will make. This gave me a bit of assurance that I was going the right way.
I took the S8 subway/tram from the airport to Munich Central station, and then from there took the S2 train (in the direction of Petershausen) to Dachau station. There are also other ways to go there, but this seemed the simplest so I chose that. I did get mixed up in the Munich Central Station and got on the S2 train that was actually going back the way I came, so I had to do it all over again. If you go from Munich Central station to Dachau make sure the sign says Petershausen or Dachau. Or you can ask someone. I felt like in general the trains and the monitors with times and directions were much better marked than the Metro in NYC. I rode the S2 train to Dachau. There I got off the train and, following everyone else, walked under the tunnel and went to the sign that said, Bus 726, which was very clearly marked. To get to the concentration camp, you can also walk along the Path of Remembrance, which marks the same path that many of the prisoners took when walking from the station to the camp. On another less jet-lagged day, I would have preferred taking this path instead of the bus, but knowing that I needed to conserve my energy, I took the bus. The bus stops there at the station for at least 5 minutes and then headed to the camp.
At the camp, I wanted to get an audio guide since I had read that it was worth it, but since I didn’t have any Euros for a deposit, I was not allowed to do so.
Visiting the camp was surreal, but again, I would have gotten more out of it had I not been so tired and cold. In my state of exhaustion I felt very numb and emotionless.
It was worth it, though. Now in my mind, I can see the way the camp looked. It was also a fresh reminder of how quickly human society can disintegrate into brutality. I kept on wondering how I would have responded had I been living in Germany during that time. It’s easy to think that I would have done the right thing, but would I have had the perception and discernment needed, not to mention the courage?
A replica of the door at the entrance of the camp that says, “Arbeit macht Frei.” (Work makes free.)
I understand this area was where roll call took place.
A work of art in the shape of the Nazi symbol
Each time a prisoner entered Dachau, a tally was taken of the items the prisoner owned.
A guardhouse
The washroom
The bathrooms This was the lane between the barracks. Most of the barracks have been removed except for two that stand as a part of the museum display.
I had originally planned to stay 2 hours, but I was tired and cold. I took the 726 bus back to Dachau station, and from there took the S2 train back to Munich in the direction of Markt Schwaben. Instead of getting off at Munich Hauptbahnhof, however, I went two stations past to Marienplatz.
At the station in Marienplatz, I tried to use the bathroom. I say tried because you needed to pay Euro in order to use it and I didn’t have any. There was a slot to insert a card, but it wouldn’t accept mine. I found this extraordinarily annoying. I mean, when you can’t even find a place to use the bathroom, what kind of day is that?
Climbing the stairs out of the underground Marienplatz station, I was stunned. Suddenly, I was thrust into a world that looked like a snapshot from the 1500s. A drizzle was falling, and sprawling architecture rose up on all sides of me.
Peterskirche, or St. Peter’s Church, was first on my list, so I went there. This church is known for its tower from where you have a beautiful view of the city and can see the Alps on a clear day. However, when I got to the church, a service was going and I couldn’t find the place where you could actually go up to the tower. (Only later did I discover online that there was another entrance I could have tried.) I sat in on the service a bit and had so much fun listening to the German and comparing it to the German I knew. I caught words like “Barmherzigkeit,” and “ess gibt kein elend….” Many of the words in the sermon were easier for me to catch than the street German I had heard earlier because I grew up reading the Bible in German and listening to it in church.
Part of the reason I didn’t try very hard to go up the tower in Peterskirch was because I wanted to climb the tower at Frauenkirche just as much or more, so I decided that I would do that instead. On my way to Frauenkirch, however, I stopped at a café for some food and coffee, and use a bathroom. The café was packed full, however, and it took me a long time to order and pay and stand in line for the bathroom. I was also reminded how different the German culture is from our culture. I tend to think that because the language is similar to mine, and because we are Caucasian, the culture must be similar. The people seemed much more self-assertive than what I was used to. Everything seemed to simply be 15 degrees different than what I expected. Even the bathrooms were odd, and I found myself getting a little grouchy about some of the differences, until I realized it and gave myself a talking to. After finally getting finished in the bathroom and figuring out how to get the door open again, I ordered some coffee in the café to eat with my cheese bread. The lady who got my coffee spoke only German to me. I could follow what she meant, but found answering harder. When I ordered, she asked me if that was all. I recognized that word, “alles,” and nodded and said, “Alles, ka.” (Ka is a polite word used at the end of a sentence when speaking Thai). After that I decided to simply speak Pennsylvania Dutch in return if they spoke German to me. It seemed every time that I tried to speak German, the Thai part of my brain went into high gear and spewed out words instead. After I got my coffee, I asked if she knew where I could buy an umbrella.
“Oh,” she said, “I have one right here!” So, she sold me an umbrella made of clear plastic that said, “I love Munich,” and I marched out proudly in the rain holding my coffee under my umbrella. I was very happy by now, since the coffee helped with my grumpiness, and I love rain, and what better way to explore Germany than from under an umbrella in the rain?
Me on a temporary boost from the coffee and happy in the rain with my umbrella, which was clear which made it a bit hard to see.
Next, I went to Frauenkirche, but because I had spent so much time buying my cheese bread and coffee and umbrella and trying to figure out how to get in and out of the bathroom, it was already after 4.30 which meant the towers of the church were closed. That made me quite sad. Frauenkirche was much less ornate than Peterskirche. Not too far from there, I also found another church called St. George’s Church. It wasn’t on my list of places to go, but I stepped in anyway. I found this one to be the most beautiful of the three churches I had visited.
The towers at Frauenkirche
The bells at FrauenkircheSome of the architecture at St George’s Church
I had originally hoped to visit Munich Residenz, which was a former royal palace located not far from Marienplatz, but I was getting running out of coffee and inspiration. As I walked along the street with my umbrella, listening to the church bells and the music from the street bands, it seemed perfect. I love rain and I love umbrellas and old cities with history. But I didn’t want to stay. All I wanted to do was go home and take a hot bath and curl up with a good book and open up my living room windows and watch the rain in Munich from there. Or sleep.
Marienplatz
But I couldn’t go home. So, I went back to the airport. I took the S1 or the S8 back. I am not sure which, but it went without mishap. I slept on the way back and talked with the man on the seat opposite of me who was visiting from England.
I picked up my luggage, and went to my gate early.
*note: one piece of advice. For anyone planning to do a jaunt out of the airport on a Munich layover, or in any other foreign country, the best thing to do is to plan ahead. This may vary according to personality and travel experience, but when you only have a short time in a country, every minute counts and every minute that you waste trying to figure out how to get from one place to the other is one minute less of exploring. This article is by no means an exhaustive commentary on a Munich layover. For more information, google “what to do on a layover in Munich,” and you should have all sorts of articles at your fingertips. On both my Switzerland and Munich layover, I mapped out my route beforehand and how I would get from one place to another and was glad for every single bit of research I had done before entering the country.
A few days ago, here in Hutchinson, KS, I went with my aunt for her weekly chemo treatment at the local clinic. We were waiting in front of the elevator when the door opened and three elderly ladies disembarked. Upon seeing us, the one immediately exclaimed, “Oh, my ladies from Yoder!” The next one saw us and exclaimed as well, “Oh, I love Yoder. We spend a lot of money in Yoder.” And they chattered away about Yoder without giving either of their subjects the time or airspace to say, “Well, actually, we are not from Yoder. We are from Hutchinson.” (Yoder is a small town about 12 miles southeast of the Hutchinson area. The Amish in that area are more “well-known” by tourists than the Amish in the Hutchinson area).
Anyone from Yoder will quickly correct you if you think they are from Hutchinson. Anyone from Hutchinson will do the same. We are quite different, in our minds anyway. But to the non-Anabaptist outsider, we are basically the same.
I experience the same thing when in Thailand and a fellow American discovers my roots. A common remark is usually similar to this, “Oh, then you must be from Pennsylvania!” And such comments follow such as, “I’ll bet your mom makes the best shoo fly pie.” When I say, “No, I am actually from Kansas, and I don’t think my mom has ever made shoo fly pie,” their brow inevitably wrinkles and they blink several times as if to say, “She is confused by her transplant into Thai culture. She actually is from Lancaster, Pennsylvania and eats shoo fly pie on a daily basis, but she is simply confused.”
Actually, I have only been to Lancaster twice in my life, which would come as a shock to the aforementioned fellow Americans, who consider Lancaster to be the hub of all that is Amish and Mennonite. And it probably is.
My second time in Lancaster was just last month at REACH, which is an Anabaptist missions conference held every 2 years in Lancaster, PA. REACH is a stark reminder of how many different stripes of Anabaptists exist. I should make sure to say that not all the people who attended REACH this year were from Lancaster and I am sure thousands of Lancasterites did not make it to REACH.
I am sure that the ones who organized REACH this year did not do it to show off all the different sub-denominations of Anabaptists that exist. I am sure that they planned REACH in order to give God glory. And it certainly did.
But forgive me if I marvel a little. After spending 7 and a half years in the tropics of Thailand where the sighting of a Mennonite causes no less excitement than a UFO streaking across the night sky on a summer’s eve, it is overwhelming to spend 2 days at a mission’s conference with 2500 Anabaptists.
It is rather like eating 5 meals of pizza after subsisting on rice and spicy minced pork for 2 years.
Or like drinking a gallon of chocolate milk after you have been drinking Pepsi all your life.
Or like reaching a desert island in the middle of the ocean after you have been at sea for 5 years. You should be overjoyed at being on land once more, and you are with one part, but another part of you longs for the jostling of the waves once more.
Doing REACH is especially mind-boggling if you do it while you are jet-lagging after an 11 hour time change. Jet-lag has a way of bringing out the worst in you, whether it is feeling totally void of emotion and energy at 2 in the afternoon, or whether it’s giggling helplessly and immaturely at an ill-timed comment during one of the regular sessions at REACH.
Even with all of the overwhelmingness, I really did enjoy REACH.
The three things I enjoyed most was reconnecting with old friends, making new ones, and attending the breakout sessions. I got to stay at my friend Abby’s house, and go out to eat with my childhood friend, Tina. I got to see Judi and Barbara and Diana and Rosa. And I will stop listing names there, because soon I will offend someone for not putting their name on the list.
Then there was meeting new people. People that stopped by the INVEST booth who knew so and so who used to live in such and such a place. People who were friends of a friend, or who had spent time in Thailand years ago, or parents of a friend, like Amy’s mom and Abigail’s parents. I met someone I had been told various times I should meet, and then found out she had been told the same about me.
And the breakout sessions. The general sessions were good too, but the breakout sessions tended to be more informal and specifically tailored. I got to listen to my good friend, Janelle, speak on mentoring young women, and then another good friend, Carolyn, speak on discovering steady joy in a life of following. Another of my favorites was a workshop by Allan Roth, on the advantages and disadvantages of being an Anabaptist on the mission field.
Between all these delights, I sat behind the table at the INVEST booth and watched all the different tribes and kindreds and tongues of Anabaptists stream past and enjoyed talking with some of them. Being on the more conservative end of the Anabaptist spectrum at a mission’s conference has interesting consequences because of the tendency to be put in a box. I find this strangely enervating, and yet at the same time exhausting, since shattering preconceived notions can be somewhat exhilarating and yet you do get tired of jumping out of the boxes that hundreds of people put you in. Can I not just be me and not the box you put my church constituency in? Yet, I realize that Anabaptists thrive by placing people, and figuring them out, and well, putting them in boxes. I do the same and in some ways it is a natural human instinct. One of my teachers once called it a survival instinct.
Once REACH was over, we spent a groggy evening at Janelle’s house and then she drove us back to Abby’s house.
That night I went to sleep dreaming that I was trying to find a breakout session in the church where REACH was held, and using Google maps to find it.
I long to live your streets in the glimmer of the rain.
I flew from Zurich to JFK, arriving in New York on Monday evening, March 21. My sister, Sara, and a friend flew from Kansas to meet me where we toured NYC for a day and a half and then traveled by train to Lancaster, PA for REACH conference on the 24th and 25th. We stayed in Brooklyn, visited the Ministry Training Center in Queens, stopped in close to Times Square for lunch, rode the Staten Island Ferry, visited the 911 memorial, and finished off with Brooklyn Bridge. I am not counting all the various detours we took in trying to find our way through the city subways. It was a bit exhausting after having flown in from Thailand, but we loved every minute of it. Ok, well, the aching feet we didn’t love.
I walk along the narrow streets cobbled and silent in early morning
Wondering at how the many years have flown, and I,
I have come back over the ages from a pilgrimage far through the tangled vines of history
Back to where a part of my soul was born.
Echoes from these ancient roads speak to my blood
Stirring the fire within me, the old, old fire from the masters of that age;
And as I walk, I feel the ghosts of yesteryear speaking
The flames of the old beliefs that turned history on edge;
And as I gaze upon the streets and the river where these ancestors lived and died,
I feel their eyes upon me as I walk, and I wonder what they see.
In Grossmunster church, I run my hands over the back of the wooden pew and sit
Beneath the shadow of the faces in the stained-glass windows
Where Zwingli and Grebel and Manz once stood; and suddenly time is no longer a wall between us
Because men still kill in the name of faith, and the difference between zeal and truth
Is too often undiscerned while factions war against factions, both in word and deed,
Uncaring of the blood that is shed within the church itself, despite the legacy of sacrificial love,
Yes, love, that was mingled with truth and baptized by fire and water.
The words on the wall come alive as the church itself speaks:
Herr, bleibe bei uns, denn ess will Abend werden, und der Tag hat sich geneigt.
I will sit here under the shadow of these walls and wonder for many years.
I had a 7 hour layover in Zurich, Switzerland, and took the chance to make a dream of mine come true. I had about 3 and a half hours in the city itself. Perhaps some other day I will write a post on how to do a short layover in Switzerland.
Although all photos are mine, and were taken in the Mae Sariang disctrict, several of the ones with fire, as well as the Tukay were taken last year, some up at Saohin.
The next series of posts will be vignettes of a journey as I travel from Thailand to the States, Lord Willing and I don’t catch Covid, on Sunday evening. This includes a 6 hour layover in Switzerland, a day and a half in NYC, 3 days in Lancaster, PA at the Reach conference, and then home to Kansas for several weeks, and then flying back to Thailand in late April, with a 12 hour layover in Germany. If anyone comes to Reach, be sure to stop by the INVEST booth, which will be right beside IGo and MTM’s booth. I am holding all these travels in an open hand and trusting God (or trying to, I should say) to orchestrate this all ( and keep me from catching Covid before travel, since many of my acquaintances have had it recently).
Spurred by a whim, I wrote this tonight. Imperfect, but it was satisfying to put together.
Tonight I was wishing that I could write some of what was moving inside of me, but as I was reading other poems, I felt that so much of what I was feeling was already written so well in other poetry. You know that moment when you are reading a poem and you come to this phrase and you are like, yes, that phrase! It says it exactly! It hits that spot. And you want to crow to the whole world that you have found that phrase, but often you sort of feel a bit silly after the crowing.
Anyway, I just took some of those phrases (and others for gluing the others together) and made a poem. I am not sure what the purpose was. Inspirational? Maybe. Humorous? Perhaps some may find it so. Creative? Yes, partly. Cathartic? Yes, I think so.
Here we are:
The ache of the twilight is upon me but I cannot speak
The words will not come.
But many other have already written them for me.
Come, let us see.
The day is done, and the darkness falls from the wings of night
As a feather is wafted downward like
Tears, idle tears, I know not what they mean.
Yet, I beg you, tell me not in mournful numbers
That life is but an empty dream
That the road less traveled by is no different than what it seems
That nothing gold can stay; that there is no rest even in Flander’s fields.
And that the struggle nought availeth. Just because
I am nobody (who are you?), does not mean that I have never
Slipped the surly bonds of Earth
And danced the skies on laughter-silvered wings;
Or spent time alone in the night, on a dark hill
With pines around me spicy and still;
Or lived sad and strange dark summer dawns,
With the earliest pipe of half-awaken’d birds;
For I have loved hours at sea, gray cities,
The fragile secret of a flower…
Long have I known a glory in it all.
And yet, tears, idle tears, I know not what they mean
Rise in the heart, and gather to the eyes,
And thinking of the days that are no more
And, I must ask, does the road wind uphill all the way?
If so, let me rest here in these woods so lovely dark and deep,
While you come and read to me some simple and heartfelt lay
And these aches shall fold their tents like the Arabs
And as silently steal away.
(It was written quickly, and since it is not meant to be a masterpiece poem of any kind, I didn’t chew and meditate on it and edit it much, so if you have any ideas of more phrases that could be thrown in, I would love it. And I think I will write more of these in the future. For therapeutic purposes. )
I should leave you to guess where the lines came from, but I feel like putting the lines here without them really being my own is almost infringing on copyright purposes. I don’t know. But here you are:
The Day is Done, by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
Tears, Idle Tears, by Lord Alfred Tennyson,
A Psalm of Life, by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
The Road Less Traveled By, by Robert Frost
Nothing Gold Can Stay, Robert Frost
In Flander’s Fields, by John McCrae
Say Not the Struggle Nought Availeth, Arthur Hugh Clough
I am Nobody, Who are You? by Emily Dickinson
High Flight, John Magee
Stars, Sara Teasdale
I Have Loved Hours at Sea, Sara Teasdale
God’s World, Edna St. Vincent Millay
Uphill, Christina Rossetti
Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening, Robert Frost
I thought Mae Hong Son province was at its finest in June when the clouds and mist hung low over the greening mountains.
But these days, I think differently. The rainy season is mostly past, and the days are beginning to be cooler now. The vibrant green has faded slightly, only slightly, and other colors are starting to emerge: browns, oranges and yellows. And still the mists come in the morning.
credit: Amy Smucker
Amy and I drove to the sunflower fields in Mae U-Kho, in Khun Yuam district yesterday. There are over 500 rai (1 rai is about .4 of an acre) of small sunflowers (similar to what we would call Texas sunflowers at home) that bloom every November and are one of the largest tourist attractions in the mountains of Mae Hong Son. I have heard several rumors of how the sunflowers were planted there, one being that it was a royal project by the queen, and another that they were introduced by missionaries.
We left after right after school yesterday, after a very odd week of teaching online, in which we only taught two full days since the students were getting vaccinated and tested for Covid before the planned onsite date of Nov 22. I was feeling very restless by the suffocating feeling that occurs from this kind of schedule and was very ready to see some different scenery instead of the inside of the office at school.
It took us about 2 hours by bike and by the time we got to Khun Yuam, it was dark and getting cold. Or cold to be on a bike. We were trying to reach our destination before it got pitch dark, so we didn’t stop to watch the full moon rising slowly over the eastern mountains. But it was there on the edge of our sights constantly as we maneuvered the curves and hills in the semi-twilight.
We slept at the empty house of a friend in Khun Yuam and left for the sunflower fields in Mae U-Kho early this morning. There is something intoxicating about being out in the mountains on a motorbike in the early morning. It has to be intoxicating to induce me to set my alarm clock for before 6:00 on a Saturday morning.
I want to write about how the colors glowed, and how the gold of the sunflowers looked from the distance over patchworked fields, and how the sun popped through the clouds and how the sea of fog in the distance looked and it felt to weave along the curving roads in the middle of a November sunrise.
But I don’t know how to write it. I feel lost. I only know to say that there is something excruciatingly beautiful about the way rolling fields of sunflowers look on a backdrop of blue and black mountains that layer their way to the horizon and then touch a deep blue morning sky edged with clouds.
So I will say it with pictures. I believe they will tell the story better than I can.
“There’s gold in them thar hills.”Walking up to the first lookoutAmyMeOur trusty steed that carried us all the way up and balked only once on a steep hill. Amy had to get off and walk while I labored on up the hill in 1st gear. Our breakfast “Yom Gai Saep” or Spicy Chicken Salad.
insearchofabrook 