My encounter with the German police had given me a clear goal at least – get to Frankfurt. I had a piece of paper i had to give to someone there and then i could fly off to somewhere else. Maybe i could go back to London and pick up where i’d left off before this whole misadventure. Or perhaps i could head off to Krishna Valley or Volgy as that Hungarian monk had encouraged. In the meantime, i was still in the same situation as the night before, as the afternoon grew dimmer, i had to find a place to sleep. I also had to figure out how to get to Frankfurt. I could just catch the train.. i went to the train station and looked at tickets but decided to stick with my original resolve and hitchike and tramp my way there. I’d only given it one night, i had to push it a bit further, even though it was cold and still a bit drizzly. But I did take the train, but just one stop to Dudweiler, just one stop out of town to get me in the right direction and out of the city centre. I allowed myself that.
Dudweiler was a small town on the outskirts of Saarbrücken and i alighted after a journey of seven minutes or so. Right beside the station i found an empty building partly boarded up that looked like it might have been used as a squat at some time, or had some repairs underway, but i didn’t like the feel of it and didn’t want to encounter anyone so kept walking off into the twilight. The rain was picking up but luckily on what felt like the edge of town among the trees I managed to discover some kind of minigolf park, that seemed to be all shut up still for winter. I climbed over a bit of fence, a well practiced skill from my days growing up on the farm, and found a shelter behind a bit of shadecloth over some tables with a bbq. There was much better protection from the rain which was falling properly now and rolling out my sleeping bag which was only a bit damp from the night before i felt nice and snug. I think i had a can of tuna and some brown bread or something like that for dinner, a feast!
I can say it was Dudweiler now because i’ve just been trying to retrace my steps on google maps and it seems to match up. I checked the timetable and it’s a seven minute trip which seems to have reignited a lost memory of sitting on the train in its comfort but knowing i had to get off at the next stop and face another unknown night in the cold. I think i can remember reflecting that the last time i took a train from Saarbrucken i had just met S_. She was taking me up to her home in Koln where i would stay with her in her warm bedroom and we would watch out the window as the fireworks went off around the city for new year. That was only about five months ago, not long after i’d arrived from India, and Europe was a fantastical new world where wonderful things were happening to me. Now i was seeing her from the other side of winter, and she was still beautiful but i was watching her from the outside of a pane of glass with an empty purse (sort of).
I tucked up in my sleeping bag and felt happy. I could do this. I didn’t need to pay anyone just to sleep when this table under an awning would do. I could travel like this forever. I didn’t sleep much though. In the morning i got moving early and tiredly at the first dusky light as i didn’t want to be discovered. As i made my way along a road going to where i thought i could find a good spot to hitch hike towards Frankfurt, i spotted a little white church with a tall steeple on a hilltop in the town, not too far away, brightly lit by a patch of morning sun. It really stood out. I remembered it was Sunday morning, and i had heard the bells ringing across the still air and so i made my way over there just to have a look.
I climbed up a steep path and found myself in the carpark just outside the church where there were a few people including the pastor and they welcomed me in to join the service which was just starting. So i went inside and sat on a pew up in the back row and enjoyed the melody of the service in German which i didn’t understand, and the stained glass and feeling a little bit warm.
Although my spiritual ideas had all come from Buddhism and Hinduism i felt at home in the congregation. But i suppose i was a bit skeptical too. I felt then that Christianity must have started with an enlightened person, Jesus, and was a true spiritual tradition in the earlier days, with the desert monks and so on. But it had become so institutionalized and watered down, in the west at least. This was a modern little ‘Evangelische’ (protestant) church and the reformation seemed to me to be getting closer to the truth in a way, with the idea of direct access to God in the heart. But it had lost the idea of direct access to Got now. There was a sense of putting it all off to the afterlife. Where was the urgency? That’s the sort of critical dialogue i had in my head at the time. I was looking for people who were enlightened, with direct communication with God or Eternity right now, i wanted them to gaze into my soul and bust it apart, like what happened around some of the modern gurus i’d read about.
The service neared its end and I was embarrassed suddenly when the collection came around as i didn’t have anything to put in it. But then an even more embarrassing thing happened. A second collection plate was passed around with much whispering conversation which i didn’t understand, and they brought the plate to me. They had made a collection for me! I was so touched and yet horrified I didn’t want to take it but what could i do? I must have looked quite weather beaten after my two nights outdoors in the drizzle and my wandering around and my brief brush with police the day before. Perhaps they though i was a hobo but afterwards I spoke to a few of the congregation outside the church who spoke English. They asked me where i was from, what i was doing. Rather proudly i told them that i was on a quest to seek the truth! One of them said something that has stuck with me – “we are all seeking the truth”. It took me down a peg, made me feel like i was a bit of a fraud, even worse as they had collected a plate of money for me.
Looking at the map now, I am pretty sure that this church was the Heilig-Geist-Kirche (Church of the Holy Spirit), on Martin-Luther-Straße, a modern little church that was built in the 1960s. One of the many churches rebuilt in that 1960s modernist style after the war. And i’m just reading how it is about to be demolished following deconsecration in May 2026 because of a declining parish. So that seems like a sad little chapter to end on. There is a nearby Christuskirche Rotenbühl which is similar, but i don’t think it was that one.
Anyway, after saying goodbye to the congregation i began making my way out of town and my eyes were constantly scouting for places that offered a bit of shelter from the elements. I saw a bit of a carved out hollow in the side of a road cutting and thought that’d do if i needed it.. but then reflected how awful my situation was. Here on the edge of town there were nice houses tucked into the woods with big backyards, inside they had cozy beds, well stocked libraries and larders. People living here probably had friends around for bbqs and drank wine, went to university, had a nice education. What was that all about? Was it really just about to avoid having to sleep in a ditch? Hundreds of years of civilization and learning all of it really to avoid the reality that awaits us of having to sleep in a ditch in the rain.
I didn’t have a map but somehow found my way to a highway that was signposted towards Frankfurt and i put on my silly hat and started hitchhiking again. Happily it wasn’t too many hours before a car stopped and two girls about my own age or slightly older offered to drive me a good part of the way there. I jumped in happily and enjoyed the rush of elation that a hitchhiker feels when he finally gets into the warm backseat of a car. We chatted a bit about where I was from – people were always a bit surprised to hear i was from Australia – and i can’t remember how much i told them about my tramping life but when they dropped me off, the girl who was driving thrust a 20 mark note into my hand. So they too must have felt sorry for my battered appearance or perhaps there was something else that i was exuding apart from unwashed smells. I did have a spark in my eye, following my crazy dream. It was an unusual spark and i knew it. I could turn it on or i could hide it. Most often i would hide it – people don’t want to see a crazy spark in some strangers eye. But if the person was receptive and kind, then a kind of electricity would jump across and suddenly they were right there with me, in the adventure with me, trying to work it all out. A wonderful mad free energy was what i possessed, whatever you think about “energy” that’s what it was, whatever you think about woo, there’s a spark in the eye of the unchained ones and sometimes it can jump out.
I can’t figure out what was the town they left me in. It was somewhere on the edge of the Palatinate Forests that stretch towards the Haardt Edge, covering the hills with the highway winding thru it. Perhaps it was Bad Dürkheim. In any case, perhaps it was being with the girls for an hour in their car and feeling sorry that i was becoming such a mess but i got into a phone box and called a little hotel in town to see if they had a room. I decided I would lean on dad’s Visa card again and get myself washed up before heading to Frankfurt tomorrow on the train. The hotel was a bit of a walk out of way.. i remember having to climb up quite a steep incline to a sort of higher part of the town then down some suburban roads. The place seemed mostly empty and the nice chap who ran it upgraded me to a big room with a huge bouncy double bed in it. What a turn around of my conditions due to the magic of money wired from home. I think i used one of my old telephone cards to call home too, spoke to the folks. So it was the loosening of the purity of my quest and a return to some ordinary comforts. Whatever, i didn’t mind. Climbing in between pure sheets, freshly showered, i felt like a fraud again. Who was I? A questing tramp or a dumb ozzie kid living on his dad’s Visa card. Oh well time would answer that sort of question and i fell fast fast asleep.