Bis bald
Tom took my hand as we walked from the U6 toward her building. If her name wasn’t on the door, he said gently, seeing the apartment might be upsetting. I told him I understood, but I had to try.
Her name was on the door. I burst into tears.
I hadn’t heard from Gudrun in over a year.
In 2004, I was in Munich on a scholarship to study at the Goethe-Institut, just as I was starting my career as a German teacher. Gudrun was my host “family” for those six weeks that summer. For more than thirty years, she has rented out the two spare rooms in her top-floor apartment in Schwabing, one of Munich’s poshest neighborhoods. I had one room, and Alexander, a Russian chemistry student at the university, had the other.
My flight was a mess and my luggage was lost, and somehow Gudrun and I kept missing each other. Alexander let me in, and it was three days before Gudrun and I formally met.
The first thing she asked me was when I was going home. I was so taken aback that I blurted out the date, annoyed that she seemed to want to get rid of me. Immediately, she lit up. “Great! You’ll be here for my birthday party.”
By “party,” she meant over 100 guests, dancing and celebrating until well past 4:00 AM. The rest of the time, Gudrun, Alexander, and I sat on her terrace every evening and talked about life, the universe, and everything else.
In the years since, Gudrun and I have kept in touch through letters, emails, and Christmas cards. Whenever I traveled to Germany, I made sure to pass through Munich to see her. But this year, my usual Christmas letter never came. I worried that life had taken her, and that no one would know to tell me.
Which is how I ended up on Giselastraße, holding my husband’s hand, staring at a name on a door.
We were already connecting through Munich on the way home from Cyprus, and once we’d had our fill of sun and sightseeing, we changed our flights to give ourselves a few days in my favorite city in the world.
It was my first time back in Germany in 13 years. My first time in 20 years there without students. My first time in Germany alone with Tom. And I had no idea how my German would hold up. It had been almost four years since I’d used it every day.
I’d booked a hotel in Schwabing, near my old stomping grounds, and after a great night of sleep, we set off to find her. As soon as I saw her name on the door, I sent her a quick email. When she answered and invited us to lunch the next day, I sobbed again.
The next day, we climbed to her apartment: six floors, no lift. Somewhere above us, we heard Gudrun say, “So geht das, sehr langsam.” That’s how it’s done: very slowly. Tom and I giggled all the way up.
She looked exactly the same. Maybe a few pounds different, but the hair, the style, the fashionable outfit were all Gudrun. We walked in and traded the traditional pecks on each cheek. She didn’t remember meeting Tom in 2006. It had been twenty years, after all, so we made introductions, handed over the sunflowers, and sat down to catch up.
“Ich hab’ nicht gewusst, ob du noch hier warst,” I said. I didn’t know if you were still here. I meant the apartment. I would never say the other thing out loud. But Gudrun heard both meanings, the way she always could, and laughed it off.
“In meinem Alter kannst du nicht wissen,” she said. At my age, you never know.
Her email had invited us for traditional Weißwurst (Bavarian white sausage), but I knew her well enough to expect more than that. Sure enough, the table was set family style, with cheeses and breads, beer and wine, an aperitif, and one giant slice of Sacher Torte for all of us to split. A friend of Gudrun’s joined us too, someone I’d met in 2010 when Gudrun came to Chicago to celebrate her birthday.
The apartment was just as I remembered it. Art from friends and students who had lived with her over the years covered the walls. Cheeky comics were still pinned to the bulletin board by the door. Out on the terrace, flowers lined every edge, right where we’d once sat every evening.
The four of us talked for three hours straight about everything under the sun. My worries about my German dissolved almost immediately. It was as if no time had passed.
I didn’t want to think this could be the last time we’d see each other, so instead of goodbye, I said, “Bis bald.” Until soon.
For our last day, I had planned the Alps: Garmisch-Partenkirchen and the loop around Eibsee, my favorite hike in the world, a lake ringed with towering peaks. But after a week of running around, neither of us had it in us. I suggested a gorge instead, then a hike to an off-the-beaten-path restaurant. Every plan was more complicated than we wanted. Finally I said, “What if we just take the train to Garmisch?”
Two subway trains, a regional train, a bus, a hike through town, a cable car, and a walk later, we reached a biergarten on the mountainside.
Tom wandered off, and when I finally spotted him, he was holding a large bottle of Augustiner NA (non-alcoholic) and two glasses. At the top of the steep path, I stopped and framed the jagged peak between the pines, its pale rock still catching the light above the hazy blue ridges.
Then I started down toward him. An older man warned me the path was “gefährlich,” dangerous. The table looked out over rows and rows of beautiful pine trees, with mountains lining the horizon in every direction. Other hikers sat in the garden with a beer, or with coffee and a slice of something sweet. Tom poured us each a glass.
It sounds ridiculous to say we traveled that far just to have a beer and then turn around and go back to Munich. But that’s the thing. We had an adventure together. We were flexible, and we followed our energy and our interests.
