My mother was born not too far from here, the twin daughter of ethnic-Armenian Ukrainians who had been stuck in a tug-of-war between Nazi Germany and the USSR. Not long after my mother and aunt's birthday, my aunt died. The war was winding down, and that may have helped my family, as the Germans needed cheap labor more than they needed additional murdered corpses to bury.
I knew all of this before I came to Herrenberg, and I didn't know what to expect, except it was almost exactly as I had always imagined it.
The town is very cute, and I'm always thinking about the heroism of quiet resistance, and maybe in this case, there was some of that hanging around in late 1944.
The train station feels more like a stop. Train lines begin and end. I used to think beginnings were just reversed endings, but I now know that's not true. Of train lines, of romances, or streets--although streets are much trickier to gauge.
Here are two thoughts:
1. Don't get run over by the train.
2. You'll never make as much free money as I did here in 1998, but I didn't want free money; I wanted and needed a stamp, gosh-darn-it! And a lovely German man, a Herrenberger through and through, observed the moneymaking and partook himself before spotting us some stamps. read more
