the world has turned and left me here

the good portugese samaritan

After several nights of the Munich party scene, it was a rainy Sunday and Ed was bugging me to find something to do. Travelling very far from Munich was pretty much out of the question. We looked at taking a flight or a train to Paris only enough to convince ourselves it wouldn't be possible. Then I remembered an email I had gotten from a friend that described a day's outing near Munich, and within a few hours we were on our way to Andechs monastery.

It was a miserable rainy day. The S-Bahn left off about 5 km short of the monastery itself, so we had a 45 minute walk on foot, in the rain. Our sneakers were heavy with water when we finally got there.

(Certain colors look so much more vivid on a gray day, don't you think?)

The original plan had been to attend Catholic mass in the hopes of hearing the Benedectine monks at Andechs sing. But the sanctuary turned out to be narrow and confidential, not the kind of place where soggy non-Catholic American boys easily remain anonymous. So we instead went straight for the food. When we opened the door to the brewery pub it was like stepping into another world, into the Prancing Pony at Bree or something. Warmth. Yellow light. Smiling faces. Wooden floors, and a big yellow dog sprawled out lazily beside his master. The sounds of merrymaking. Ed and I gorged ourselves on German food, putting down Leberkaese, Grilled Pork, two enormous pretzels, potato salad, etc. Probably the best German meal I've eaten to date.

Afterwards we wandered around Andechs for a while and then decided to go before darkness set in. We got creative and tried to take a different path back, through the woods, where swollen waterfalls roared brownly. We passed sheep on a hillside. An apple tree presented itself and we plucked two, ate them along the way. Eventually, though, we had to admit to ourselves that we had no idea where we were going, and that the best course of action would be to retrace our steps back to Andechs and go back the way we came. (The ability to admit you're lost, and to resist the temptation to deduce the way from your misinformed American sense of absolute direction, is one that you should learn while here in Europe.)

But because of all the time we wasted in the woods, darkness came too soon. It was still raining and Ed and I were worried about not making the S-Bahn in 20 minutes, and then having to wait another cold 40 minutes for the next one. Unexpectedly, a car stopped, and we got a ride from a young Portugese guy named Fernando. He had been on his way home from work--heading the opposite direction--but turned around and stopped for us because he said he "knew what it was like to walk in weather like this." We parted on friendly terms. Not once had he started in with any moralizing or proselytizing. It seemed like a genuinely selfless act.

You know I can get pretty cynical about things and people sometimes. But it's hard to be cynical when you know there are people like Fernando out there, who turned his car around, away from the warm home that awaited him, and gave two dripping wet total strangers a comfortable ride, in the opposite direction, asking for nothing in return.