It took a little more coordination than tools in the age of the internet might normally require, but two high school friends and I visited Colmar on a warm summer weekend in 2019. I knew of the city not for its architecture or cute village vibe but for being the main seat of Liebherr, a convenient (okay, forced… it’s been too many years since I meant to write this) bridge and allusion to the title of this post: over a dozen years ago, I had thought my career would likely wind up in construction equipment. While life change is relentless, it’s curiously circuitous to seemingly persistent themes.

The three of us had studied French together in high school. As none of us actively use the language in our daily lives, attempts to practice kept the entire weekend light-hearted as we played tourist. We spent the first evening catching a boat ride in the canal. Almost certainly there was an excellent explanation of Colmar’s storied history… if not for the years since the actual trip dulling any impression of what might have been told, I’d probably be able to offer a pithy summary. Instead, well…

In the morning, we took a trip to Colmar’s Statue of Liberty, the world’s only constructed in a traffic circle. Thankfully, there wasn’t much traffic that morning as we grabbed requisite shots from Rue de Strasbourg.

Much of the rest of the trip was spent wandering around Colmar’s bustling old town, spared from destruction during the French Revolution and two World Wars. Many European cities appear old, but an unscathed old town still seems somewhat rare.

We had a few excellent meals (this Alsatian city preserved not only the physical aspects of its French heritage well) and wrapped up the afternoon with more exploration.

The summer heat kept us out of our top-floor hotel room, and seeking shade we ended up at small park. I remember not being able to get a good composition and lighting on an elderly woman reading her newspaper, but as a juxtaposition there was a young lady reading something on a phone. And so, maybe, the musing of old and new began.

2019 was a year of profound turmoil (or at least gritted teeth): I was told in January that my project’s headcount would be slashed, which would set up years of frustrated product launches in Charleston; on top of that I knew I was slowly nearing the end of my assignment and would be accepting a departure from years of alpine exploration and a closeness to the other expats with me. Being in Colmar, whose language I once spoke more fluently than I ever did German; as a city that I knew of decades prior to my visit for a career and industry passion that didn’t materialize; and spending it with friends whom I hadn’t really seen for fifteen years with just months to go before I would head stateside — it was a lot to digest on an outwardly pleasant weekend.

Normally I try to write these posts in close proximity to the experience to lose any dulling of the senses; coming back to this over five years after I still taste the metallic bitterness of the contrast between the fading of an enjoyable four years of my life without the sharpness of my visit to Colmar proper. I remember pondering my return trip in a few months’ time as I drove, thinking over the adventures and the friendships of the closing of the decade. About a third of the way into the drive and lost deep in my thoughts, I saw what I thought was a goosebumpifyingly familiar vantage point and pulled off at the next rest stop.

As it turned out, this was exactly the rest stop I thought it was — this was Hegau, a convenient dinner stop I frequented en route after full workdays to my favorite of large, jutting rocks deep in the Swiss Alps.

Germany, and much of Europe, doesn’t necessarily change quickly. It’s a place where custom and tradition endure and where building is substantial. On a trip where my mind was given both reign and fodder to spin in overdrive, chancing upon almost as swan song the same oasis that I had so often stopped at to comfortably interrupt my first forays into the high Alps was so jaw-dropping that it was even mentally silencing; feeling the close nuzzle of a comfortable transit stop conjured an flood of memory warmer than the temperatures that weekend. Time may dull precision and detail, but perhaps the true reason I’ve forgotten so much about the sensations I experienced in Colmar is simply that they were utterly overwhelmed by a love story to nostalgia.