- best-of
The train never left the station.
The sun beat down through the windows, and the air-conditioning had stopped sometime before we boarded.
An announcement crackled overhead.
A language I didn’t understand.
I looked around until the German exchange student beside me smiled.
“Power outage. We have to change trains.”
She picked up her bag.
I followed.
She led me across the platform, where we climbed onto another train.
It was more crowded than the first.
We stood shoulder to shoulder in the aisle, waiting.
Nothing happened.
The German girl looked toward the front of the car.
“Same problem. Still no power.”
We ran to the next one.
“Is this normal?”
She shrugged.
“On hot days. Sometimes.”
By the third train, I was ready to give up.
Still, we squeezed through the doors where we found a place near the back and stood among the other passengers.
The air smelled of warm clothes and stale breath.
Sweat was already gathering under my collar.
Then the vents came alive.
Cold air spilled from the ceiling.
Everyone looked up.
The train lurched forward
The German girl laughed.
“Third time lucky.”
“Yeah.”
I leaned against the door and watched the countryside slide past.
Windmills turned above green fields.
Rows of flowers stretched beside the tracks in long bands of color.
The train kept moving.
After a few stops, the German girl gathered her things.
“This is mine.”
She smiled, waved, and disappeared through the doors.
I watched the platform slide away, then turned back toward the window.
~
An hour later, I reached Düsseldorf.
My tickets said I had to transfer here.
I glanced at the time printed on them.
It would stop for thirty seconds.
The station made that seem generous.
Then the doors opened and I followed the flow of people into an underground concourse.
Stairways led in every direction.
Electronic signs flashed destinations I couldn’t pronounce.
My ticket was in German.
So were the announcements.
Thirty seconds. Maybe fifteen remained.
I picked a staircase and ran.
At the top, a train was waiting.
I sprinted the last few steps, climbed aboard just before the doors closed, and collapsed into the nearest seat.
The train pulled away.
To my left a river appeared, the evening sun glinting off its blue surface.
A castle appeared on the far bank.
Terraced vineyards rose into the distance.
Only then, did I glance at the overhead display board.
There it was—the fifth stop.
KOBLENZ
The doors slid shut behind me.
~
The rosé arrived before the food.
I was sitting at a riverfront coffee shop. The sun was going down. Ordering wine had been easy. Ordering dinner was not.
The menu was in German.
I picked something at random and handed it to the waiter.
He said something back.
It sounded like a question.
I shrugged, then pointed at the menu again.
He nodded and left.
A moment later, a bowl of cold, pickled fish in mayonnaise arrived at the table.
I looked at it, finished my wine, and left the fish untouched.
Outside, a teacher led a group of children through the city, each wearing a reflective vest and walking in line. Like me, they were headed to Ehrenbreitstein.
We continued uphill as darkness fell.
That night, I had a six-person dormitory and its balcony to myself.
~
The next morning, I rented a bicycle.
My map showed a rental shop near the train station.
I took the steep mountain road down instead, following the route the teacher had pointed out the night before. Then I caught a city bus, then walked the last mile.
The address led me to a coffee shop rather than a bicycle store. The woman tending the tables told me she would help in a moment. I sat outside and waited.
Two hours and four reminders later, she brought out a steel-frame bicycle and sent me on my way.
“Do you have spare tubes? A pump? A repair kit?”
She shook her head.
“Stay close.”
I showed her my map, but I took it anyway.
~
Castles stood above the small towns along the Rhine. I stopped whenever I could reach one, or whenever I wanted a photograph.
By the time I reached Saint Goar, I had covered the first half of the ride.
My hostel stood outside town, at the top of a steep road. I couldn’t climb it with my loaded bicycle, so I walked the bike uphill, left it in the hostel’s bicycle garage, and went back down to town for dinner.
I found a restaurant and ordered a large plate of steamed vegetables and a pork schnitzel bigger than the plate beneath it. Afterward, I bought a bottle of wine from a nearby shop and carried it back to the hostel.
I sat with the bottle and watched boats move up and down the Rhine.
For the second night in a row, the staff had given me an entire floor to myself—a big room with twenty empty bunk beds. Sitting there alone, I didn’t fill it so much as it emptied me.
Only the fluorescent lights hummed.
When daylight came, it bathed the room in shades of pink and amber.I stretched, then climbed back on my bike and pointed it uphill.
I pushed.
Nothing.
I stood on the pedals.
The chain creaked.
The wheels trembled.
The bike stayed put.
The road pointed straight up, so I got off and walked.
Above me towered Rheinfels Castle.
My guidebook described a network of old mine shafts beneath it, built as secret access and escape tunnels.
A sign marked the entrance.
I hesitated there—long enough to feel the weight of the warning—then I stepped into the darkness.
The gift shop had sold candles. Just a single stick wrapped in cloth to carry through the dark.
I’d laughed, then reached for my flashlight.
After fifty yards, the tunnel began a steep dive, plunging at a constant slope into the Earth to match the hillsides.
No one followed me.
My flashlight caught the wall three feet ahead, then the floor, then the ceiling. Every movement made the shadows jump.
Something moved.
I stopped.
Nothing.
I swung the light back.
Just rock.
I kept going.
The tunnel narrowed. My backpack scraped both walls, first on one side, then the other. I turned sideways and tried to squeeze through.
My shoulders caught.
I backed up.
The pack caught again.
I pulled harder.
My breath came faster.
My hands shook.
I stopped and pressed my back against the rock.
The flashlight beam trembled across the ceiling.
Someone had painted a line marking the path through. It looked chipped and fading.
I waited.
Ahead of me, the tunnel bent.
Then bent again.
At last, the walls pulled apart and the passage opened enough to turn around.
I ran.
Daylight.
It never felt so good.
~
When I could stand again, I got on my bike again. Downhill first, then I kept moving.
The pavement kept changing beneath my tires—asphalt to cobblestones, cobblestones to dirt, dirt to gravel—but the Rhine stayed on my left.
At last, the gravel gave way to city.
Mainz.
I kept riding
I hadn’t accounted for the size of it, and the day’s shadows had grown long when I finally reached the street where my map showed the hostel.
Single-family homes lined one side, with a grassy park on the other.
I felt uncertain, but a man walking his dog pointed me up the hill and into the park.
I followed his directions and soon came to a mansion with “Jugendherberge” flying on its flag.
I thought of the empty rooms.
“Probably the same tonight.”
As I put my things away, I found one of the lockers was already claimed.
“Fancy a beer?”
I turned.
A Brit, about my own age, was sitting on the bunk across the room.
I looked at my bicycle leaning against the wall and thought about the miles I’d ridden that day.
“Yeah.”
We walked downstairs.
“I’m Stephan.”
“Caleb. Here for just the night?”
“I have a friend’s wedding in the morning. You?”
“Summer break. Making my way down the Rhine.”
Five minutes later, we’d made it down the hill and back to town.
Stephan pointed toward a beer cart parked beside the square.
“One for the road?”
We walked toward the river with bottles in our hands.
I’d ridden past the same lawns that afternoon without seeing a soul. Now they were covered with circles of friends.
Glass bottles knocked together. Someone laughed loud enough to turn heads before disappearing back into the hum of conversation.
A nearby fire snapped, and the smell of wood smoke drifted across the grass.
We bought beers and kept walking, stopping whenever the conversation did. I couldn’t tell you what we talked about anymore. Whatever it was seemed important enough to keep us awake until dawn and unimportant enough to disappear with the night.
The fires had burned lower, but people were still scattered across the grass in loose circles, talking as if morning were hours away instead of minutes.
~
The clock was too loud. The room too silent.
Across the dorm, Stephan’s bunk was already empty.