Wanderlost (7 page)

I'm going for it. “I sleep sideways. Oh, and I snore.”

“Bold. Very bold,” Sam says, with an appreciative whistle. “Just so you know, I can only sleep on the left. Even on my dorm bed, which is the smallest twin mattress known to man. There I am every morning, all rolled up to the edge of the left side.”

Hmm . . . dorm mattress. So Sam's a college boy. Or just out of juvie. “That sounds painful,” I say with a laugh.

“You have no idea. So, how was your day today? Did you get your ‘coffee'?”

I can't help but laugh again. “You know, they also have coffee shops here that serve the real beverage. They even have Starbucks.”

“If you say so. Just don't let the barista talk you into any brownies.”

“Noted.”

Sam clears his throat and asks, “All's going well, then? You met the passengers, obviously. How's the group gelling?”

“Good.” I take a moment and give him a short roundup of our day, and even make him snort with my accounting of Hank's introduction.

“Yowza. He sounds like a gem. Every tour seems to have one of those guys who say totally inappropriate things you just have to grin and bear. At least Emma and Mary sound great. How's Dolores? You didn't say much about her.”

Oh right, the owner's daughter. Maybe Sam has some recon that could help me make an extra good impression on her so my—Elizabeth's—review could be
extra
glowing. “She's quiet, but good. Hey, have you ever met her? Does she come into the office? Are she and her daughter really close?”

“Um, well, actually—oh, can you hold a sec?” Sam asks.

“Sure.” I twirl the phone cord around my finger and try to ignore how my belly goes all squishy when his voice comes back on the line. I'm in Amsterdam, for God's sake. How has a random phone conversation with a boy six thousand miles away somehow become the highlight of my day?

“Listen,” he says. “I'm really sorry but something's going on with our internet connection and people here are kind of losing it. I have to hop off now and help.” He actually sounds disappointed. “But I'll give your hotel room in Germany a call, same time tomorrow. Does that work? Is this too late for you?”

“Sure, no, it's fine.”

“Okay, talk then. Oh, and Elizabeth?”

“Yeah?”

“Likeyoubye.”

His laugh is warm in my ear as I hang up the phone.

As pro-tourist as I was a few minutes ago, completely eager to spend tomorrow exploring . . . I kind of can't wait for it to be tomorrow night.

Cheese and windmills
await today.

Hopefully wind
mills
and not just wind. I'm a little reluctant to spend an afternoon on a bus with a bunch of old people who will have just spent the morning hours gorging on cheese. Who knows what bodily functions I'll be privy to on this trip.

After breakfast we meet Bento outside and get our first glimpse at our wheels for the next twenty-one days. The bus is smaller than I had pictured in my head. It looks more like a hotel shuttle than a proper bus, with just five rows of seats, two to a side, except for the last row, where a tiny bathroom is in place of the left row. A pathway runs down the center. The outside is a gray-blue color and there's a smallish luggage compartment door that swings open on the underneath part. But it's plenty big enough for just seven people and a driver, and at least the seats are comfy.

It takes about thirty minutes to load everyone's luggage, sort out who's going to sit where, and make last-minute
bathroom stops in the hotel lobby. No one seems eager to christen the one on the bus. We drive thirty minutes outside the city before pulling into a farm with a large barn and a sign promising that inside we'll learn all the finer details of how clogs are made. Oh, and cheese.

“I hope they have jalapeño. That's a Texas favorite,” booms Hank as we file off the bus.

“Actually, Hank, Holland is renowned for its Gouda cheese,” says Mr. Fenton. “Personally, I'm more excited to see the clogs. Did you know the Dutch have been wearing clogs since the thirteenth century? They're carved from willow or poplar trees and about a million Dutch people wear them as everyday footwear to this day. Mostly farmers.”

Wow, someone sure read the brochure.

“Wouldn't catch any ranchers in clogs back home in Texas. Can you imagine, Maisy?” Hank gives his wife's butt another squeeze. Ick.

“Why would you come all the way to Europe to want things just like at home?” asks Emma.

“Everything's better in Texas.” Hank has a “duh” look on his face, like the question barely merits an answer.

“I thought it was bigger.” Emma snorts.

“Bigger, better, same difference,” Hank answers, not bothered in the slightest by her snorting.

“This way, everyone.” I'm like a real official tour guide, even though I'm pretty sure my crew can easily figure out that the barn is where all the action will be taking place.
Nonetheless, they fall in line behind me like I'm the mama duck, and we waddle in to see clog- and cheese-making in action.

Two hours later, we file back onto the bus. Emma slip-slides in the clogs she insisted on buying and Mary grabs on to her arm.

“Oh, Em, didn't you hear the woman warn you how dangerous these can be? There's no traction on them at all,” she says.

“Pretty risky at our age, if you ask me. No need to go courting a broken hip,” says Dolores. It's the first time I've heard her speak today. I noticed she hung back quite a bit during the demonstrations.

Emma grins and clicks her wooden heels together. The tops of her clogs are painted with pink and red tulips. “At my age, how many more chances will I get to throw caution to the wind? Live life to the fullest, that's my motto!”

So far she's my favorite. I love her energy and her giant smiles; she's like a little kid. Sure enough, her eyes widen and dance when she sees Hank hobbling toward the bus under the weight of a ginormous wheel of cheese. It's practically big enough to use as a spare if the bus gets a flat.

“What is
that
?” Mary asks.

“This here is Gouda. Turns out I like it near as much as jalapeño. I plan to introduce it to Texas.”

“I'm fairly sure one or two Texas grocery stores offer Gouda cheese, Hank,” says Mr. Fenton. He's far too much of a
gentleman to do an eye roll, but I can tell he'd like to.

“Well, they haven't had fresh Gouda like this, I reckon.”

“Nor will they. Are you forgetting we have weeks left on this tour? Can you imagine what this cheese will smell like by then?” Mr. Fenton sinks into his seat and pulls a handkerchief from his pocket. He places it over his eyes.

“He's got a point, Hank,” I say. “You should try to send it home when we get to Braubach or pass it around to everyone here over the next couple of days.”

“It would cost a small fortune to send something that heavy internationally.” Mr. Fenton sighs. “Looks like we all have some cheese sandwiches in our future.”

Hank just shrugs and slides the cheese wheel underneath his seat.

Bento calls,
“¿Estáis todos listos?”
He jangles his keys in a universal can-we-hit-the-road-now? sign.

“Um, sure.” I survey my charges. “We good?”

There's a thumbs-up from everyone except Hank and Maisy, who have claimed the last seat on the bus and are making out like teenagers. Although
I'm
a teenager and I've never made out like
that
. I whip my head back around and nod at Bento.

We're off.

We'll be ending the day in Germany, according to my—er, Mary's—itinerary, so I settle in for a long drive. Since I don't have to do anything tour-guide related, for the time being I
can relax. I plan to take in every mile of countryside with my newfound appreciation for Europe and its many splendors.

Except after about twenty minutes of this I come to a realization. Holland's countryside can be summed up in one word: flat. Really, really, really flat. Every so often we pass a windmill (which Emma is sure to point out by squealing) but otherwise, it's a lot like being on a highway in a version of Ohio where the street signs have way more letters.

I'm afraid to check, but after a bit it seems as though Hank and Maisy have finally disentangled because the snores coming from the back of the bus echo even louder than Hank's thundering voice. In between exclaiming over windmills, Emma and Mary argue in a totally cute way about whether Emma should try to find lederhosen in Germany to wear with her clogs. Mary dares her fifty bucks to wear the whole ensemble to dinner. She's known Emma for decades and I've only known her for a day and a half, but even I can tell Mary's losing that bet.

Mr. Fenton is reclined in his third row seat with a thick book. The only prop he's missing is a pipe to chew on absent-mindedly as he turns pages.

Which leaves Dolores, seated opposite him, calmly staring out the window. She's the x factor on this whole trip so far. Not only is she the VIP guest I need to be extra aware of, but she's also quieter than a whisper, and I'm betting there are turtles who don't spend as much time in their shells. I really need to find a way to cozy up to her.

But for now, I take advantage of the downtime. Once I determine I'm not missing anything life changing out the window, I grab my backpack and pull out a smaller version of my jewelry kit. I won't be able to work with the tiny needle-nose pliers or the even-smaller seed beads because of the bumps we hit periodically, but I figure I can use the time to try out a new technique I'm just learning of making bracelets using embroidery floss that gets woven and knotted around bigger beads in intricate patterns. I make a slipknot on a silver ring and loop the ring over a nail I've hammered into a small wooden board. It keeps the bracelet in place while I practice the knotting pattern.

We cross into Germany, and as exciting as it is to add a whole new country visited to my list of . . . well, two . . . the scenery doesn't change all that drastically. We're on the highway, so there's not much to see, even when we skirt the city of Düsseldorf. After a few hours, we stop for a late lunch in Bonn (hooray for the PowerBars I packed, because I'm not touching bratwurst with a ten-foot pole) and from there Bento steers us onto a two-lane road that hugs the Rhine River.

Now
there's scenery. Amazing scenery. The mountains rise on either side, while the river curves in and out beside us, and everyone is glued to the windows. We pass through postcard-perfect villages I swear could have been the setting for “Little Red Riding Hood.” The houses have crisscross patterns of wood on the outside and window boxes with flowers cascading over the sides.

“This is unbelievably beautiful,” Emma whispers from the seat behind me, and I totally get why she's using her indoor voice. It does feel like you should whisper out of respect, like being in church.

So here's the thing. I've done a lot of worrying,
a lot
of worrying, about this trip and whether or not I could handle it. I'm
still
doing a lot of worrying. But we're on day two and so far the wheels haven't come off this bus, literally
or
figuratively speaking. It's actually, well, going fine.

I never, ever imagined I would be seeing the Rhine River. Or windmills. Or that I'd be taking a riverboat cruise on the canals of Amsterdam. I just didn't.

And now I am.

For seventeen years, I've been perfectly content in my little corner of Ohio and, even when my friends were making plans to go off to faraway colleges, I had no desire to go with them. I felt like I had already found somewhere I truly knew could make me happy forever, so what was the point of leaving? And I still feel that way about my home. I do. But now that I see all this and realize I couldn't even have
dreamed
any of it because it was all so far off my radar, I have this weird uncomfortable twinge in my chest. Because . . . what else haven't I bothered to dream, not thinking things could get any better?

“Lizzie, which castle is that?” Dolores calls from her row, snapping me out of my thoughts. I follow her finger as she points out a turreted fairy-tale building perched high on a mountaintop.

Wow. Just wow.

Except actually not wow, because I have no idea which castle it is and my missing binder, which included interesting tidbits about all the memorable sights along our route, is likely hanging out in the bottom of a drink cart on a 757. Of course the question would have to come from
Dolores
. As in mother-of-the-owner Dolores.

Time for a good ole Aubree-patented truth-stretching. I prop up on my knees, facing backward toward my audience.

“Well, guys, I think you'll love the story of that castle. It was built in the 1800s as a gift from the king to one of his favorite knights. Legend has it that he wanted to ship the knight off far from his own castle, because he suspected the knight was sweet on his princess daughter. Even though the king liked the knight enough to gift him a castle, he didn't like him enough to hand over his daughter in marriage. The story says that the princess was equally smitten with the young knight, so she organized a hunting party one afternoon, from which she never returned. The king sent his troops to that castle there, looking for his precious daughter, but it was so well built the king's men couldn't gain access, and the princess and knight lived there peacefully for many years.”

C'mon, we're talking castles and princesses. I needed to give them a happy ending.

“That's just the kind of story a castle that beautiful deserves,” says Mary, and Dolores nods as well.

Mr. Fenton clears his throat. “Indeed. Indeed it is.”

He looks like he wants to say something else, but thinks better of it. Then he gestures out his own window. “If I may, I would like to point out the castle on the opposite side of the river, Lahneck Castle. In fact, when the Knights Templar were ordered to disband by Pope Clement, all the way back in
1312
”—he pauses and glances at me before continuing—“the last twelve Templars took refuge here, where they perished in a heroic fight to the death.”

He looks around to make sure he has everyone's rapt attention (which he definitely does) before continuing. “But the tower is rumored haunted by a far younger ghost. In the 1850s a seventeen-year-old British girl who was visiting the castle with her family wandered off from her group and climbed into the abandoned tower, where the wooden steps collapsed from under her. No one heard her cries for help or could locate her in their searches. It was only years later that her remains were found, along with her diary, which she'd hidden in the walls when she realized she would not be rescued. The last lines say, ‘All I know is there is no hope for me. Father in heaven have mercy on my soul.' And below that she drew two little hearts.”

Holy moly, Mr. Fenton knows his stuff. I shudder as I think of a girl my age trapped in a tower like a real-life Rapunzel, only without any prince to rescue her. But I shudder even more to realize that Mr. Fenton definitely knew that I needed rescuing myself just then. I try to avoid making eye contact with him.

“Um, so, as you know, tomorrow afternoon we'll be inside
one of the famous Rhine castles. We'll be visiting the”—I glance down at my itinerary to make sure I get the name right—“Marksburg Castle. Mr. Fenton, is this another one you're familiar with?”

To my surprise, Mr. Fenton doesn't look annoyed at having to do my job for me. He looks . . . excited. He pops up from his seat and asks “May I?” as he gestures to the front of the bus.

I try to make my shrug nonchalant and smile. Is he serious? Heck yeah, he can!

Mr. Fenton's own smile is wide as he reaches the front, leans one hip into the empty seat beside me, and addresses his captive audience, me included.

“Marksburg Castle is unique because it's the only one of these hill castles that has never been destroyed. It was built over centuries, beginning with the keep in the twelfth century.”

“That's real in'eresting stuff, Fenton,” says Hank. Mr. Fenton grimaces slightly, but thanks him politely.

“It really is. Do you know any other juicy stories about these castles? Those are the ones I want to hear,” says Emma, her eyes twinkling.

Mr. Fenton laughs. “I do indeed. There are more than thirty castles just on this stretch of the Rhine. There's one, the Drachenberg, that was . . .”