HAPPILY EVER AFTER
In Germany, in Rheinland, in the summer, the sun sets after 10 o’clock, behind a gauzy blue night sky. So it became ritualistic to take quiet, after-dinner strolls through the small, medieval wine-making towns we visited: Bacharach, Eltville, Oestrich-Winkel. The town centers have narrow, twisting streets lined with two-story half-timber frame houses. Most are still residences, and others have been converted to small businesses. The small streets, designed for foot traffic and horse carts, are crowded on one another, and the land slopes steeply toward the Rhine. When turning a corner one might suddenly find a church tower, rows of grape vines, a skateboard park, or the river itself. The houses are maintained lovingly, many with slate tile roofs, and painted in bright constrasting colors: yellow-blue, burgundy-saffron, white-red. Some have small flower gardens in front, clouded with bees. Thee streets have a storybook dreaminess, as if living simply, as people here seem to do, is the best way to live.
Yet the towns aren’t prettily preserved, like Bruges or Tallinn. Instead they seem ancient and also alive. (Siena and Jaisalmer are cities with a similar kind of life.) Here there are medieval churches and stone walls choked in ivy, and bank machines and dollar store too. On one walk we watched a scrum of adolescent boys kick a soccer ball, happily, down a sloped cobbled street. Their families might have lived in this place for centuries, and their ancestors might live here for centuries more.
I recently met someone from Detroit who had just returned from a visit there. He said that large parts of that city, the city he remembered from his childhood in the 1970′s, were gone. They hadn’t been gentrified or fallen into disuse. As plots were razed communities had simply disappeared. Towns like Eltville have built parking lots and supermarkets while keeping the architecture of their town centers intact. It’s an achievement that’s slightly miraculous.