Bodensee

A short story, 5650 words

Heinz squinted southward through the haze across the water. Jagged mountaintops stood silhouetted in the distance, maybe a dozen kilometers away.

So that's what Switzerland looks like.

He'd known since he was a schoolboy that Switzerland was full of mountains, but he never thought he would have the opportunity to actually see them for himself, much less walk among them. The peaks stood much larger and higher than he had imagined. Books and magazines hadn't done justice to the vista. He'd wanted to see and touch these mountains since he first saw them depicted in an encyclopedia at the library when he was a boy. His hand went to his breast pocket to touch the ferry ticket.

He had come a long way in his seventy-five years to this spring morning in 2011. The walk from the rail station in Friedrichshafen to the waterfront of Lake Constance, der Bodensee, took less than ten minutes, and the exercise kept him warm in the spring morning's chilly air. The last of the snow had finally melted around this part of the country as May progressed. Back home in Erfurt, the shady spots still harbored crusty remnants of last winter's snow.

This trip of a lifetime almost didn’t happen. Heinz’s son had picked up the telephone and made the reservations for the ferry and a hotel room in Rapperswil on the eastern edge of Lake Zurich. “There, Dad. You have a ride and a room reserved. After wishing for so many years, you’re going to Switzerland.”

Heinz stepped onto the terrace of the Gastätte Bodensee cafe on the Uferpromenade, the wide walking space on the north shore of the lake. Green umbrellas stood over the ten tables on the terrace, and six people sat outside, taking in a late breakfast and reading newspapers. At one table a lone woman with gray hair sat at a small table near the railing. The aroma of coffee mixed with the sound of clinking flatware floated in the air, and Heinz took a seat at an empty table near the railing, where he could see more of the lake. The enameled wrought iron chair felt chilly. A white tablecloth with placemats covered the iron table, and the fabric rippled in the faint breeze that carried the scent of the lake. He slid his suitcase, not much more than an overnight bag, under the table. He had never needed much, and on the rare occasions for travel, he always traveled light.

Heinz had made an early start this morning, his son seeing him off at the rail station in Biberach, and the ride through Ravensburg, arriving in Friedrichshafen. All told, the trip took less than an hour. Georg was right. After journeying some 350 kilometers southwest from Erfurt to Biberach, why not take the trip to the border? Georg had known of his dreams of Switzerland for years. His son had never visited the lake nor crossed the border, despite living this close for years.

Heinz thought of Alexei, the man who had occupied the bench next to his all of those years in the optical works, grinding and polishing lenses and prisms. They were friends, not close like brothers, yet still friends who took the occasional beer or coffee together. Almost the same age, Alexei came into the world three months after Heinz, and he departed this world a scant two months ago, collapsing from a heart attack after climbing aboard a streetcar. Heinz had been one of less than a half dozen who attended the funeral. The notion that the end could be nearing for him as well had reawakened old thoughts of Switzerland.

A waitress stepped up to the table. Heinz greeted her with a smile and ordered a kännchen of coffee with a kaiser roll. He had already eaten breakfast, but the soft boiled egg and cheese at his son's house had long since digested.

The waitress brought Heinz his coffee and roll. She paused after pouring his first cup from the small kännchen pot. "Anything else, sir?"

"No thank you." Heinz shook his head. "This is good."

The waitress nodded with a smile and turned away. The lone woman rose from the nearby table, coffee cup and saucer in her hand, and she stepped into the space where the waitress had stood.

"Excuse me, may I join you?"

Heinz pulled the adjacent chair out for her and gestured to it. "Please." After spending a week with Georg's family, he knew that he spent too much time alone.

Her pewter-colored hair moved with the weak breeze. A barrette kept it clamped to a ponytail that fell just below the shoulders of her pale green jacket. The lines in her face told Heinz that she had to be at least in her sixties. The years had gracefully settled on her slim frame, and she must be one of those who stayed active. Heinz always walked twice a day and harbored a secret pride that he still wore the same size clothes since his thirties.

"I couldn't help but notice your accent." The woman's face pinkened as she settled into the chair, perching like a bird ready to take flight. She set her cup down on the table. "My dead husband came from Berlin." She spoke the dialect of this region, Swabian, but likely watered it down for Heinz's benefit.

Heinz smiled at her. He had hardly exchanged six words with anybody since stepping off the train, and it was good to have company. Back in Erfurt, he experienced days without conversation, and often the silence was too much to bear. "I imagine he talked too loud." He winked and sipped coffee. "All Berliners talk too loud."

She chuckled. "Even his last words."

"I'm sorry for your loss." He set his cup down.

"Thank you. It's been several years." She pressed her hands into her lap. "Where are you from?"

"Breslau."

Her eyes widened as if she had seen a ghost. "You're Silesian."

Heinz nodded, flattered that she recognized his birthplace. He didn't know why he revealed that when he had spent the last sixty-five years in Erfurt. Silesia, like West Prussia, Pomerania, and East Prussia all vanished in 1945. Breslau took on the name Wroclaw as those territories became the western portion of today's Poland. The Russians and the Poles had enforced the takeover in 1945 with heavy handed vengeance. Heinz's family had twenty minutes notice to pack their bags and leave.

"Actually I've spent most of my life in Erfurt." He sipped coffee. "It's where the Russians resettled my family."

"Of course." She nodded, her voice quiet and her eyes examining.

He extended his right hand. "Heinz Maurer."

She shook his hand. "Susanne Klein. What brings you here, so far from home?"

Heinz pointed a finger toward the lake and mountains looming behind the southern shore. "That."

She followed his finger to peer across the water and frowned, not fully understanding.

"Switzerland." He lowered his hand. "I've never seen it. After all those years living in the East, Switzerland seemed more of an idea than a real place." He turned to look at her. "I was visiting my son in Biberach, and with the border so close, why not?"

Susanne nodded. "We see a lot of Swiss coming into Friedrichshafen these days. With the franc exchanging so high against the Euro, everybody does their shopping here. They're very friendly, and of course the merchants love to see them."

"Now that I've seen Switzerland. I can go now." He nodded at the lake and began to rise from his seat.

"What?" Her eyes widened.

"I'm kidding." Heinz settled into his chair and patted his breast pocket. "I bought ferry tickets to go over today." He picked up the kaiser roll that came with his coffee and tore it in half. He offered a piece to her. "Help me eat this. I have a tight schedule." The brochure in his bag listed the departure times, ferries departing each hour, and he wanted to take the first boat over. His son Georg was right to force the issue, and like Alexei, Heinz didn’t know when the end would come. Take the opportunity now to fulfill an old dream.

"Thank you." She took the bread and nibbled at it.

Heinz dunked the corner of his piece in his coffee and bit off a piece as he watched the far shore of the lake. During all of those years in the East, the rules, the Party, Heinz had fantasized of taking Georg and escaping to Switzerland. In Switzerland, a man could live free and do as he pleased.

He pointed across the lake. "This view reminds me of another when I was a boy, when Dad would take us to the Baltic on vacation. We'd stare across the estuary at Travemünde, at the West." Heinz dropped his hand to the table and gazed across the lake.

Susanne joined him, looking at Switzerland. "I've never seen the Baltic."

"You're not missing much. Acres and acres of mud flats, and the wind is so cold." He looked at her. "My son tells me that it gets pretty warm around here in the summer."

She nodded. "But the lake is still icy, even in August. You'll have to come back and see for yourself."

Heinz weighed the logistics of a return trip. Everything was more expensive in the West. He'd been frugal with his pension, and it kept him comfortable in Erfurt. Maybe he had been too comfortable and had forgotten his old dreams.

"You son lives in Biberach?" She put a hand on his arm.

"Yes." He nodded and smiled, stealing a glance at her hand. Its weight and warmth made him feel good, wanted. Heinz couldn't remember the last time he experienced a friendly touch. He edged closer to her, but not so close as to scare her away. "A very charming town, very clean, and very Catholic."

Susanne tilted her head, much the way a dog will when encountering something unusual.

"We never went to church much in the old days, not exactly encouraged by the Party." He shrugged. "The few times we went: Christmas and Easter, we went to the Lutheran church."

"Being Silesian."

"And living in Erfurt." Heinz shrugged again. "Georg and his wife showed me the church in Biberach. It's in the middle of the town square." He turned to face Susanne. "On the outside, it looks rather drab, weatherbeaten dark stone, maybe a couple of gargoyles, almost boring." He held up a finger. "But once you get inside – wow. The stained glass windows, and all the gilded statues, and the frescoes on the wall. You'd think it was a Roman basilica or something." He nodded and reached for his coffee. "Sure impressed me." He set his cup down. "I never saw churches like that in the East, and I didn't know what to think when Georg and Uta told me that they had joined. That was right before they took me to Sunday mass."

A smile creased Susanne's cheeks, and he liked the way her smile reached her eyes. "And you didn't know when you were supposed to stand, sit, or kneel." She sipped her coffee.

"Good thing my son wanted me to feel welcome." Heinz nodded. "He kept telling me what to do and when."

"I visited a Catholic mass with a girlfriend once." Susanne set her coffee cup down. "I almost died of embarrassment, standing when everybody else kneeled and not knowing what to do with my hands with the – " She searched for the word.

"Genuflecting?" Heinz reached for the coffee kännchen pot.

"Yes, that's it." Her eyes brightened in recognition.

“I was never comfortable with ceremony, and my daughter in-law has pictures of Pope Benedict hanging in the living room and kitchen.” He nodded. “Gives me the creeps.”

“Why?” Susanne’s eyebrows rose.

“Reminds me too much of the old days, when people always had portraits of the Party Chairman in their houses and everywhere: Ulbrecht, then Hohnecker. Even Krushchev and Brezhnev.” He rolled his eyes. “At least the pictures of Stalin came down in a hurry.”

“I guess you don't hang any pictures on your walls at home?” She patted his arm.

“Just my son and his family.” His arm tingled pleasantly where her hand had been. "Here, take a warm-up." He poured coffee into her cup.

"Leave some for yourself." Her eyes met his. "It's your kännchen."

Heinz emptied the kännchen into his cup and set it down. "There. Lord knows, coffee is cheap enough, and I can order more." He looked again across the lake.

"Why is Switzerland so important to you?" She sipped coffee and waited for him to answer.

"Switzerland is freedom. A place where a man could be what he wanted, where he could do and say as he wished without having to worry about the Stasi." Heinz looked down into his coffee cup.

"You had run-ins with the Stasi?" She watched him and waited to catch his eye.

"Not like you think." He shook his head. "I remember going to the market, and for the third week in a row, they still had no eggs. I remembered griping about how the latest Five Year Plan didn't seem to cover having enough goddamn eggs for breakfast. That's when I felt a hand on my shoulder." He also remembered the man in the adjacent apartment disappearing in the middle of the night. The wife and two children left behind scurried furtively in and out to work, to school, and to the market, like mice running along the baseboards, until they disappeared a week later.

"You were arrested?"

"No, nothing as serious as that." He waved her words away. "A man dressed a lot better than me told me to shut my stinking mouth if I knew what was good for me."

"Stasi?"

Heinz shrugged. "Maybe. At least a Party member. Either way, he was waiting in the same line as me for eggs that weren't there. I had enough sense to shut up, not let my mouth put me in jail. I had a son to raise." He sipped coffee. "I believed that the people in Switzerland never had to wait in line for eggs. They could get them anytime they wanted." Now that his son was raised and doing very well, what would Heinz do next? When there’s nobody left to take care of, is it freedom or uselessness?

She nodded. "Erhard told me that it was always hard to find ordinary things at the market."

Heinz chuckled. "We were always short of something or another. If it wasn't eggs, it was something else." He smiled at her. "I imagine your husband had some tales to tell you."

She smiled back. "There was the year of the shoes."

"Ah, the shoes." He smiled at the familiar story.

“You know?” She tilted her head.

“You tell me the story as your husband told you.” Heinz leaned back in his chair.

"The stores had an abundance of shoes, more than anybody could wear, but no meat or butter." She shrugged. "Erhard said that if he could figure out a way to eat shoes, he would have bought plenty."

Heinz nodded and remembered. Things were so very different in the old days. He lived through the year of the shoes that she described, as well as the season of no eggs, no meat, the time of too many shirts and no flour in the stores. Now, he could buy anything he wanted, or things he never wanted, because the stores now had plenty. He rested his chin in his hand and glanced at Switzerland from across the water. Things had changed quite a lot since his younger days, when he and Charlotte first married and moved into the apartment. Soon enough, she had grown dissatisfied with the shortages at the markets, then later, dissatisfied with Heinz and his station in life.

"Penny for your thoughts." She touched his shoulder, fingers leaving a warm impression that he wanted more of.

"Wondering about my ex-wife." He turned to face her and shook his head. "She ridiculed me for liking Switzerland and called me a fool.” He grasped his chin. “Over forty years ago. The officer and party member she left me for must have found himself very suddenly unemployed with the reunification." He grinned. "Cosmic justice, I guess. She wanted to ride the man's coattails to the top, and as I remember, a lot of those party muckety-mucks ended up driving cabs and running newspaper kiosks for a living."

"My Erhard thought they all should have gone to jail instead." Susanne finished her coffee. "He escaped to the West in 1964."

Heinz felt impressed. "How did he get out?"

"A tunnel. They had several in those days. One of the first things he did after escaping to the West was enlisting in the Bundeswehr. That's how we met."

"You were in Berlin?" Heinz knit his brow, trying to follow her story.

"No, no." She waved her hands. "I need to get things in order. He enlisted in the Bundeswehr, and they sent him to Sigmaringen for training." She gestured to the north with her left hand. "I grew up there, and that's where we met."

"How did you end up in Friedrichshafen?" Heinz rested his chin on his hand and watched her face. Her blue eyes seemed to reflect the color of the lake, and he liked that. He knew that the ferry would be leaving soon, and he should hurry. This woman didn't talk or carry herself like the housewives and widows in his old neighborhood, and he wanted to learn more about her. She held herself straight and tall, her smiling face and ruddy skin radiated sunny optimism instead of complaining, and he wanted to hear more of what she had to say. He could catch a ride on the ferry's second departure, and it ran every hour. His tickets were good for all day.

"Erhard liked being near water, and after he retired from the Army, we settled here."

"A wise choice." Heinz looked up and down the waterfront. A forest of masts and sails rose from a nearby marina, and more people walked the sidewalks and promenade as the sun warmed the air. "I spent my Army days guarding the border." He rolled his eyes. "A colossal waste of time."

"Which border?"

"The NVA posted me and half my school friends straight south of Erfurt. We spent most of our duty time admiring the trees in Bavaria."

"You didn't have anybody try to escape to the West in your sector?" She touched his arm.

He patted her hand and wanted her to keep it there. "Thank God no." Not when he was on duty. "Our sector was very wide open and not very tempting. We'd have arguments in the barracks when we were off duty, about being able to shoot fellow Germans if the West attacked. I'm not sure I could, although as a soldier, it would have been my duty. Shooting German civilians..." He shook his head. "I couldn't do that, and I wasn't the only one who felt that way." He smiled. "But we could tell from those arguments in the barracks who was going to be a Party member and get promoted to sergeant."

Heinz remembered the one morning when the sergeant had ordered him and two others to remove a body from the wire, and he decided to keep this story to himself. Two men had tried to escape in the hours before dawn. After the guards had shot the one with the wire cutters, the other surrendered. The captain decided to wait until daylight to remove the corpse.

"I'm so glad those Cold War days are gone." She squeezed his arm. "Aren't you?"

"It's been twenty years, and most days I've completely forgotten. On the train out of Erfurt, you can't see any signs of the old border between Thüringen and Bavaria any more. I spent two years out there, guarding that border, and now it's all gone." He grinned. "If it weren't for old guys like me remembering, it's almost as if it never happened." He thought back to pulling the body off of the barbed wire, the gaping exit wounds in the dead man's chest. It did happen, and old guys like him couldn't forget, even when they wanted to.

"My Erhard used to say the same kinds of things. You would have liked him." Susanne settled back into her chair.

Heinz signaled the waitress, then turned to Susanne. "I would have liked to have bought him a beer and talk about the old days. Instead, I'll buy his widow a coffee."

The waitress stepped to the table. "Yes?"

"More coffee, please," Heinz said. "Have you any pretzels?"

"Oh, yes. The bakery sent plenty this morning." She gathered up the empty coffee cups.

"Excellent. We'll take two."

The waitress nodded and left.

"You don't have to buy me anything." Susanne's cheeks creased.

Heinz liked the way the laugh lines deepened in her face when she smiled. "It's my treat. The coffee here is very good, a lot better than my daughter in-law's." He winked. A motorboat crossed the lake from right to left as he looked at the water. The buzz of its engine faded as the boat grew distant. "I like it here."

"Where are you going to visit in Switzerland?"

Heinz rested his chin on his hand. "I'm not completely sure. I thought I'd see St Gallen, because it's not too far, likely Zurich. It depends on how far my money takes me."

"Zurich is just another big city. I'd suggest you try the smaller towns along the lake."

"You've been there?" He looked her in the eye.

"Of course. It's just a ferry ride away." She held out her hands. "I've visited plenty of times."

He took her right hand in his. "Then advise me, Frau Klein, where should I go?" Her fingers felt warm against his palm, alive and comfortable.

She glanced at their intertwined hands, then met his eyes. "First of all, Heinz, call me Sanna." She addressed him in the familiar, her voice soft and low. "I'm, Frau Klein only to the kids in the neighborhood."

"Done." He squeezed her hand. "I'm a lot older than those kids and ought to know better." He felt her hand squeeze back and not let go. The warmth of her skin against his brought a sense of comfort that he hadn't had since raising Georg and before times grew bad with Lotte.

The waitress returned with another kännchen of coffee, two cups, and two soft pretzels. Heinz pulled out his wallet and paid the bill, rounding up the sum to the nearest Euro as a tip.

"You're the first person I've seen who takes pretzels with coffee." She lifted a pretzel and sniffed. "They smell good."

"Blame it on the Mangelstaat. Heinz took his pretzel and bit off a chunk. He washed it down with coffee. “We never had enough sugar or fresh fruit for sweet pastries, so I learned to make do." He eyed the morning sun's position. "And it's still too early for a beer."

Susanne sipped coffee. "I like the combination." She paused to glance at the pretzel in her hand, then looked him in the eye. "It's different, the saltiness and the coffee. I'm not sure how to describe the flavor."

"Tastes like breakfast in Erfurt." Heinz tore another piece off of his pretzel and chewed. "Back in the day." The too-large chunk of pretzel had formed a starchy lump in his mouth, just like in Erfurt. Heinz worked at it with his tongue, hoping to not dislodge his upper dentures. He hated it when that happened, but back then, it was the best he could do for breakfast. He hated himself in the moment for ordering such foolishness when he knew he could eat better in the West, and making a fool of himself in front of this charming woman. Those days were long gone, and it was plain foolishness to visit those miserly times. Heinz willed a smile to his face, not wanting to break the spell he and Sanna had, and washed the starchy lump down with a gulp of coffee.

"What's it like in Erfurt?" she asked. "I've never been in the East, no closer than a trip to West Berlin back in the 80s."

Heinz shrugged. "It's just an old town with a lot of old folks like me living there." He ran a quick inventory of his neighbors through his mind. The youngest was in his fifties.

"No children?" She cocked an eyebrow.

"Of course there's children there, just not as many as before, so it seems." Heinz shrugged, thinking. It had been a long time since he last saw children playing on the sidewalk, and those were a neighbor's grandchildren on a visit for the holidays. "A lot of the younger people moved to the West, like my son Georg." he nodded at her. "Better work, a chance at a better future."

"Naturally. Who wouldn't want to make a better life for his children?" She tore a piece off her pretzel and chewed.

"And how many children do you have?" Heinz raised his coffee cup to his lips.

"Two daughters. Ulrike lives in Sigmaringen with her husband Harold, and Liesl is in Stuttgart."

"Grandchildren?" He took a second sip of coffee.

"Just one, Ulrike and Harold's son. Thomas will turn ten this summer." She sipped coffee. "And you?"

"Two. Gaby and Toby, and they're both teenagers." He rolled his eyes. "Just you wait until Thomas reaches thirteen."

She chuckled. "Can't be any worse than when our kids were teenagers."

"The teenagers in Switzerland are much better behaved." He sipped coffee and looked at her. "Got to be."

"Oh?" Her cheeks dimpled and wrinkled again as she smiled.

"Of course. Everything's better in Switzerland." He looked across the lake. "After sixty-five years in that shithole in the East, Switzerland looks very good."

She pulled back, as if she had been slapped.

"I'm sorry." He put his hand on her knee and shook his head. It had been a long time since he last felt happy or satisfied with retirement in Erfurt, and the long pent-up words had simply spilled from his mouth. He liked this woman and didn't want to burden her with his troubles. "Erfurt's a dying town. Nobody but us old timers left, and what we remember isn't always happy."

She took his hand. "We all have regrets, things we could have done better, if we'd only known."

He squeezed her hand. "Thank you for understanding." Being a widow, she must have experienced plenty of her own troubles.

She reached out with her free hand to touch his cheek. "You must have had it very hard in the East."

"Hard enough." It had been decades since the last time a woman touched his face. It felt good and reminded him just how alive he was. After Lotte left, he spent his time raising Georg and working. Somehow, that had never left any room for dating or a social life beyond commiserating with the other parents in the neighborhood. "I'm glad to be a free man." He patted his pocket, where the ferry ticket lay. "I can cross the border any time I want." He wanted to get on the ferry, but he didn't want to lose this moment with Sanna.

“And you won't need a tunnel like my Erhard.” She offered a smile.

“But I'll still need my passport.” He smiled back. I've heard that the Swiss are very orderly.

“And they won’t ask to see it, because the Swiss are very friendly.” She squeezed his hand. “You'll have a grand time seeing the sights.”

He nodded agreement and considered inviting her to join him. But they had just met. He wanted to know her better and wasn't sure how to accomplish that.

“And this is something you've wanted to do for a long time, so enjoy yourself. Tell your son what he's been missing.” She shook her head. “Living all those years in Biberach and never once heading down this way.” She clucked her tongue.

Heinz finished his coffee. “I think I missed the first boat.”

She glanced at her watch. “The next ferry leaves in an hour. Did you exchange your Euros for francs?”

“Naw.” He shook his head. “I thought I'd do that after crossing the border.

“Let me take you to my bank. The exchange rate there is better than what you’d get over the border. They see the tourists coming and just fleece them.”

Heinz reached for his bag and rose. “I'm lucky to have this expert advice from a local.”

Sanna waved his words away. “You're a thrifty man who appreciates a good bargain. You didn't work all those years just to throw your money away.” She took his arm and nodded to Friedrichstrasse.

Heinz stood a little taller than usual as she led him past the rail station and north on Riedleparkstrasse toward her bank. Lotte once took his arm like this when they walked, but that didn't last long. Sanna had a subtle way of showing when to turn and which way to go, not towing or steering him like a schoolboy, and he liked that. The last time he walked the city with a good woman on his arm, he was a just a young man.

He wondered what made Sanna so interested in him and eager to help. The attention felt flattering. After all those years taking care of his son and himself, somebody was extending a hand to help him. This woman may have been a stranger to him a half hour ago, but he realized that now she may have become his friend. He wanted to know more about her and what she liked.

Sanna chatted about Erfurt and the East, asking more questions about his neighborhood and what sights the city offered.

“It's just the place where I live.” He shrugged.

“But as I've said, I've never visited the East. Erhard had no desire to travel there after reunification, and I've always been curious.

“A lot of old buildings.” He shook his head.

“And Switzerland has a lot of old mountains. It's a matter of perspective.” She looked at him.

“You want to see what you've never seen before.” He shrugged.

“Isn't that what you want to do with visiting Switzerland?”

“Yes.” He nodded and looked her in the eye. “I just can't imagine anybody wanting to visit Erfurt to see the sights.”

“Surely, the downtown has its share of historical places.”

“I suppose so.” Heinz thought of the old Rathaus, the original town square by the river, where the farmer's market was set up every Saturday. A lot of that escaped the bombing during the war, and there was the big church, where he took Georg on Christmas Eve and Easter Sunday. The same church where Martin Luther once preached and talked of reformation. She didn't need to see the boxy concrete apartment buildings that went up in the 1960s.

They soon reached her bank, and the exchange rate was better then what Heinz had anticipated. After changing his Euros for Swiss francs, he thanked her for the tip as they returned to the waterfront and the ferry terminal.

The large ship was already docked and taking cars and passengers for the trip across the lake. Its diesel engines idled a baritone rumble.

“Here you are.” She patted his arm. “From here, your next stop is Romanshorn, gateway to Switzerland.”

Heinz looked at the large ferry, painted white with a red stripe along the gunwale. “After all these years.”

Sanna reached into her purse to pull out a pen and a scrap of paper. She jotted on the paper and pressed it into his hand. “Call me when you get back. I'd like to show you the Zeppelin Museum before you go home to the East.”

“Zeppelin Museum?” His eyebrows rose. He had never heard of such a place.

“The airships, of course.” She pointed to the white building next to the ferry landing. “And it’s right here.” Sanna put her hands on her hips. “This is Count Zeppelin's hometown, and he made all kinds of test flights over the lake.”

Heinz stopped to think of the giant dirigibles associated with Zeppelin, stories his father told him when he was a boy. The Germans built the biggest and the best. Everybody remembered what happened with Airship LZ-129, the Hindenburg, and that marked the end of the era.

The horn on the ferry blew to warn that it would soon be departing. Heinz looked up at the boat's bridge. He pocketed the paper slip. “I'd enjoy seeing the museum. Thank you.”
“Now get on the boat, or you'll miss Switzerland.” She nudged him toward the ferry. “You'll have a home cooked supper waiting for you when you get back.”

Heinz boarded the ferry and headed to an upper deck, where he could see the lake and the dock. He returned Sanna's wave as the ship pulled away and headed south across the lake.

White foam trailed the ferry as it turned to depart the harbor, then picked up speed and the people on the dock shrank to dots on the horizon. Heinz continued waving until he could no longer see her. His hand went to his pocket and his fingers rubbed the slip of paper with her phone number. He looked over his shoulder and glanced at the mountains of Switzerland.

Heinz kept his gaze to the north and the woman he had just met long after he couldn't make out her form or the docks.