You know how they say that the sense that is most tied to memory is smell? (As opposed to sight or sound.) Well, this morning as I left for work, I walked out of the house and the smell of the warm summer air combined with a recent rain (and a very faint hint of diesel from a recently passing truck) suddenly transported me back to the summer of 1985:
Our family was living in Vaihingen, Germany, a suburb of Stuttgart. School was out and I was looking forward to my first summer of exploration. In Europe it's fairly easy to explore without a car due to a good public transportation system. I quickly discovered that bus 7945 or 84 would pick me up just outside of the gate of Patch Barracks (where we lived) and take me to downtown Stuttgart, dropping me off at the Stuttgart Hauptbahnhof (main train station).
One of my favorite activities that summer was exploring downtown Stuttgart, by myself or with friends. The main pedestrian-only street through town was called Konigstrasse, or King Street. It was about a mile long and was lined with shops.
My favorite places were record and music stores. Lerche had three separate stores along Konigstrasse and I could spend hours in those stores looking and listening to music. At the time, the exchange rate from Deutsche Marks to US Dollars was very favorable. So if a record cost 12.95 DM, that would translate to about $4.50. What a deal. Then it was on to one of my favorite restaurants for lunch. There were also three McDonalds around this area, but I would usually gravitate towards one of several pizza places, or a German cafe where I could get a bratwurst or schnitzel.
Then in the afternoon I'd find one of several musical instrument stores and sit and play the very cool guitars for a few hours, often plugging them in to ridiculously powerful amps.
This was also the time I was getting into jazz. Jazz music in the 80s was sort of in a transitional phase, and a lot of the traditional jazz had been set aside in favor of fusion or what was evolving as smooth jazz. New age was also begininng to form. This was when I discovered my favorite musician, Pat Metheny. One of the first records I bought downtown was Metheny's "Offramp." (click on the word Offramp) To this day, that album is one of my favorites, and it too takes me back to my days of roaming the streets of Stuttgart.
Once I got braver and more familiar with the streets, I would ride my bike downtown, which usually took about a half an hour, and was mostly downhill. I'd drag my bike onto the tram, which only took me about 2/3 of the way home to the Vaihingen main square. Eventually, the tram operators didn't like me bringing my bike on and they'd make me get off. That pretty much ended my biking expeditions downtown, cause the ride uphill back to Vaihingen was miserable.
I don't know why this morning's scents seemed so vividly tied to my Konigstrasse experiences, other than the weather here and the weather in Stuttgart is pretty similar. What a sense of freedom I enjoyed at this time of my life. I gained my confidence in exploring the streets of Stuttgart, and eventually branched out by taking the train to other cities closeby. Of course, there were many bigger and better trips with family in the car to lots of great places, but those small trips by myself or with friends downtown were priceless. We were in another world, yet for the most part safe.
