Ich habe mich in Würzburg verliebt

“Aren’t you looking suspiciously radiant today! Is there a new man in your life?” Doris leaned forward with an eager grin and raised eyebrows. Their regular Friday lunches at Ulele had resumed after Jean’s return from Germany, and Doris hoped to get all the details of the trip. Life in Tampa could be too predictable; she longed for a vicarious adventure.

The server approached with menus, but Doris waved him off like a duchess dismissing a footman. “Later, please.”

Jean toyed with the straw in her Ulele Sunrise cocktail as her oversized hoop earrings glinted in the soft light. The palm fronds on her batik dress matched the real ones dangling outside the tall windows. “If I tell you,” Jean said, voice lowered like a courtier imparting a state secret into the king’s ear, “Will you swear not to tell a soul?” She met Doris’s gaze with a shy smile.

“Oh, you know me,” Doris said, pretending to zipper-close her lips. “The queen of discretion. Now spill! I can’t bear the suspense.”

Jean turned her head to the side, as if weighing crucial matters in a balance. She trusted Doris, but she knew that whatever she told her would spread all over town in hours. They’d been friends since high school, sharing secrets for over fifty years. Well, who cared? Let the gossips’ tongues wag—she felt too good to care. Jean opened her mouth, and the words spilled out like a tropical cascade in the rainy season.

“I’m in love, Doris.” Then, shaking her head, “But not with a man.”

Doris blinked twice. “Wait!” She pulled her chair closer. “Are you saying—”

“I’ll explain everything, but let me tell it my way, okay?” Pausing, hand to heart as if she were pledging allegiance, she said, “I fell in love with Würzburg.”

“What-burg? What kind of name is that?” Frowning now, Doris pointed an index finger across the table. “I can’t even say it. Those German names are for the birds.”

“Würzburg,” Jean repeated, savoring the syllables. “The most beautiful name in all the world. It’s a city in Bavaria, the perfect size—only 130,000 people. It has vineyards on the hills. The Main River meandering through it like a shimmering ribbon. A fortress and a palace. And this sense that at any moment you can walk through a door from the twenty-first century into the Middle Ages.”

“You can’t have a love affair with a city,” Doris objected. “No matter what Sinatra said about San Francisco. A city is a thing.” As a lawyer, she was not given to flights of fancy.

“Oh, but this city is very much alive, and my love for it goes deeper than any affair with a man. As soon as I walked from my hotel across the bridge, die alte Mainbrücke, I fell head over heels in love. People from my time took selfies with stone statues of medieval saints with this gorgeous city in panorama in the background—the red roofs, the towers. Church bells rang with an insistent rhythm. The air was heavy with history and the earthy smell of the river. It felt like I’d come back to my real home, although it was my first time.”

Doris sipped her Ring of Fire cocktail with a puzzled look. “Your poetic side is showing, that’s for sure. But Jean, that’s Europe. Lots of old stuff all over.”

Jean spread her hands. “In Tampa, everything is so new that a hundred-year-old building is a big deal, but in Würzburg, an unbroken line goes back to pre-Roman times. I attended Mass in a cathedral that they completed in 1075. It’s called Dom Sankt Kilian, after the Irish saint who Christianized the city in 686. When the pipe organ echoed in the vaulted nave, I got goosebumps thinking about the centuries of prayers and beeswax candles and incense permeating the stone walls. As if history could sing. Can you imagine!”

“Okay, but what’s it got to do with love?”

“Everything.” Jean sighed. How could she explain this? “After I looped through the city on the cheesy tourist train, I realized I’d never be able to see all I wanted to in only three days. So, I made random choices.”

“Because you’re an artist, sweetie,” Doris said. “That’s you.”

“And dyslexic to boot,” Jean said. “I chanced upon the Grafeneckart building. Inside there’s this scale model of the ruins of the city after the 1945 British bombing. In twenty minutes, almost 5,000 died and about 90% of the city was destroyed. Just like that.” She snapped her fingers. “Women and children, priceless medieval buildings. Gone. I wanted to throw up.”

“But that’s war—a righteous war. Hitler had to be stopped.” Doris pierced a pineapple chunk with a toothpick to make her point. As the more conservative of the two, she tried to keep her imaginative friend grounded in reality.

“I know, but it’s the first time I came so close to a war. Vietnam, Afghanistan, Iraq—those were on television and in the newspapers—yet this time I was standing in a city that had nearly been wiped out. I thought, my people did this. I didn’t expect to feel that kind of grief. From that moment on, we were connected like the intertwined roots of ancient oaks. The people of Würzburg became my family.”

“You always feel things deeply, Jean. But didn’t they rebuild the city?” Doris adjusted her chair, sensing this story was more than a vacation replay.

“Stone by stone, they—mostly women—recreated the city center with love. The citizens of Würzburg treasured their past and brought it into their present. You can feel it when you walk the streets. We’d never do that in America, where we pave over the old and worship the new. I left the memorial and gazed at the cobblestoned lanes and old stone buildings with wonder.”

Jean paused, staring into her cocktail as if it contained answers to mysteries. Then she continued. “That memorial captured my heart. But there were two more things that pushed me over the edge into an abyss of love.”

Doris sipped her drink. “Knowing you, it must have involved art.” She glanced at Jean’s paint-stained fingernails.

“Oh, yes. I discovered Tilman Riemenschneider, from the sixteenth century, by accident. Doris, his work is exquisite. He made limewood come alive; his sculptures cry out to be caressed, the folds of cloth and the tangled hair and those contemplative faces. His saints look like they are about to tell you a story.”

“Never heard of him.”

“Neither had I, but now I’m obsessed. I hiked all the way up to the Marienberg Fortress to see a fantastic collection of his work. Worth every step. Not only the most famous artist from Würzburg, he was also the mayor, until they broke his hands for being on the wrong side in the Peasants’ Wars.”

Doris winced. “Oh, my God.”

Jean agreed. “Exactly. Riemenschneider became the spirit of Würzburg for me, and I half-expected to see him come around the corner in his wood-chip-covered doublet.”

“So, you weren’t just in love with a city, you were in love with the city ghost!”

They both laughed, but the truth of Doris’s comment stayed in the air.

Jean aimed her straw at her friend. “You’re not wrong. I know it all sounds a little strange. But I did visit some places the guidebook recommended, like a normal tourist. I went to the Residenz, the Prince-Bishop’s palace. Three hundred and sixty rooms. Everything was on the wrong scale. Even the Tiepolo fresco spread itself over seven thousand square feet. Gilded this, gilded that—it was too much! It left me cold, like Versailles transplanted where it didn’t belong.”

“Too grand?”

“Too hollow,” Jean said. “I found the Käppele fit my concept of Würzburg much more closely.”

“What’s that?” Doris frowned. “It sounds like something Italian.”

“No, it means ‘little chapel,’ and it’s on a hill overlooking Würzburg. It’s a pilgrimage church from the 1700s; people from all over the world have been coming to it for centuries.”

“So, what’s so special about it?”

“You trek this steep path up from the Main River past the fourteen outdoor Stations of the Cross with their life-sized statues. At first, I snapped photos like an idiot, but then I realized I was on sacred ground. I stopped to pray at each station. I felt like I was in the crowd too, as Jesus made his way through Jerusalem to Calvary two thousand years ago, and I was in tears when I reached the chapel.”

Doris’s expression softened. “I guess it really got to you.”

“You have no idea. The church was beautiful, but I’ll never forget the hallway filled with offerings from believers thanking Saint Mary for answering their prayers. Cards. Embroideries. Paintings. Dolls. Even a black Madonna. I couldn’t stop crying.”

“That sounds intense.” Doris took Jean’s hand in hers and nodded.

“That’s what cracked me open. I’d traveled all the way from Tampa to Germany to find that I wasn’t a tourist, I was on pilgrimage. Würzburg gave me that.”

The two fell silent, thinking about Jean’s new lover, Würzburg. The murmuring of other diners and discreet music returned. Doris studied her friend, who normally hid behind sunglasses and self-deprecating humor, but now beamed with life and light.

“I’m a little jealous,” Doris said finally. “You really are in love.”

Sadness tinged Jean’s smile. “I loved my husband. We had a good marriage, even with the arguments about my paintings. But I never felt about him the way I feel about Würzburg. The sad thing is, I don’t have the money to go back there. Leaving Würzburg was like ripping duct tape off skin. Now I have my memories, a Riemenschneider coffee-table book, and hundreds of photos on my computer. And the ache.” She blew out a soft exhale. “That ridiculous ache from losing part of yourself.”

“But you’ve found your soulmate,” Doris said in a soft voice.

“Even though he’s five hundred years old!” Jean said. They both laughed. It wasn’t a big laugh, more of a chuckle between old friends who have seen a long life with all its absurdities.

Doris signaled to the server that they were ready to order lunch: Gulf Grouper for Doris and Tuna Benne for Jean.

After he left, Jean gazed out the window at the rustling palms. She liked Tampa; it had been her home for decades. But Würzburg was as much a part of her as the blood in her marrow. She’d told Doris the truth: she was in love.