A few minutes after my train pulled away from the Frankfurt Hauptbahnhof today, I looked out of my window to see a young man standing alone in the middle of an empty field. His car was parked a few meters away, and the driver’s side door was left open, as if he’d exited in a rush. As the train drew nearer, I could see that he was playing the violin -- passionately.
I assumed that he had been compelled to practice on the outskirts of town because of his apartment's strict Hausordnung (house rules), which forbid the playing of musical instruments indoors, along with just about anything else you might ever want to do. Perhaps this empty field is his practice room, I thought, where he comes everyday to play, uninterrupted, for hours and hours.
However, it's just as likely that he has a perfectly good practice room at his disposal, but that today, while driving down the Autobahn, he was so overcome by the beauty of this particular sunny day (a rarity in Germany in winter), that he felt compelled to pull over and play a hymn of praise to the sun gods.
After a solid week without sunlight, this one radiant afternoon was certainly the answer to my prayers.
1 comment:
If you don't write that story, I certainly will. A lovely vignette that only reinforces my suspicion that your new life is nonstop arthouse, whereas mine is a terrible romantic comedy starring a miscast Tobey Maguire where he doesn't get the girl. You are missed.
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