Snapshot: The Castle of DNA

From time to time I'll be posting impressions I wrote during past trips. Here's the first one:

Snapshot: Tübingen, Germany, August 29, 2001

Credit: Der gestiefelte kater, Wiki Commons

Delight and torment are never so tightly linked as when one travels. 

            Two days here, and it's not the diorama-like neatness of the place that still impresses me, not the preserved-in-amber charm. It's the civility. Punk kids wait patiently for lighted crosswalks to turn green; young women walk alone through half-lit streets on the edge of town. Is this orderliness something in the souls of the people? Or is it an artifact of affluence? Seems more the former, since America is affluent yet seem very short of civility. Cities in Europe are seen as assets, cities in America are necessary evils. Maybe that's why Americans are so ready to moot their cities by erecting suburban malls, but nothing equivalent is happening in Europe. 

            So many famous names for such a small town. Kepler, Hegel, Herman Hesse all had their turns here. DNA was discovered in a lab in Hohentübingen Castle--how incongruous.

            European women also differ from American. Tight, disco-style jeans never seem to have gone away here. Beauty in America is always either hyped up, or aggressively played-down with baggy jeans. It is sold or denied. European women seem to live with their beauty as if it is part of them. They own it.

            The 10:33 bus just went by. The time: 10:33.

© 2013 Nicholas Nicastro