Jamais Vu

I'm in the town I lived in for two years when I was a kid, and I'm having an odd little jamais vu. I know I've been here, and I found the apartment building we lived in no problem, but almost nothing even taps an echo at me. I even had the number of our building wrong -- for years I thought it was 12 Nelkenstrasse, but it turns out to be 14, along with a 14/1 in the form of a little annex on the side which, along with a "new" fourth floor, stretched our tiny building of 5 apartments to 11. The back yard looks smaller, but unlike the cliché of "returning to one's roots," that's because it actually IS.

The bridge over the tiny river the Murg and the path along its banks are the most familiar, but even walking the streets and finding things I knew must be there -- a church a few blocks down, a park across from the church -- doesn't bring the pavement back under my feet. And the town square, which has clearly been there a few centuries beyond the 34 years ago I was last here? The only bells ringing are in the spire, not in my memory.

My inner narrative about the time here is SO vivid -- the most formative of my life -- that it's harshly jarring to realize that I can't find the physical space remotely resonant. Says so much about how the way we re-create our narratives, feed them, strengthen them, is an act of interpretation. If there's such a fuzzy space between the volumes of stories that I "KNOW" happened here, but re-inhabiting this space doesn't make it all flood back -- says so much about how much memory resides in its own time and context, and doesn't have to be a hard edge around how we interpret our histories, string together the coherent narratives of our life. Weirdly, weirdly freeing.

Rastatt is a good contrast from Heidelberg -- almost none of the old bavarian charm -- just a small utilitarian town with lots of quiet staid houses and small apt. buildings, reasonably prosperous from the mercedes plant. All shops organized around sensible offerings, lots of hair cutting places, kebap houses and travel agencies specializing in turkey, so I guess I know who works on the plant. Although, the old town that I don't remember is pretty charming square anchored by an old church and a huge schloss in the style of versailles that now houses the museum of german liberty.

No pics, because I forgot my camera cable and can't for some reason rig up the bluetooth McGyver to my phone that's worked in the past. Just chewing on this, as I walked through the town in the grey drizzle all day.

The one thing I do know? On the autobahn today, even in the crappy Opel rental, it was very clear that I developed my ideas of how to drive in Germany. In my element pushing the car to 160 km/hr, actually chortling about the brilliance of the way the germans drive fast and sort themselves perfectly into the right lanes. Auto ballet.

PS. Seriously. How could I FORGET this???