Returning to Mainz: Signs at Sunset

Leaving the train station at Mainz-Bischofsheim in a car packed with 9-euro ticket-holders, I sent a quick message to my students:

Keep an eye out for the raight of the train. You will get your first glimpse of the Rhine.

A couple minutes later the train clattered onto the Südbrücke and began its crossing of the Rhine, but I couldn't keep my eyes on the river. They drifted upwards to the shorelind where the Mainz's Dom rose in shadow. The sun highlighting the clouds above it in dull, orange light as it set above the Rhenish-Hessian Hills west of the city.


My heart leapt to my throat. I was returning to Mainz, a city I'd lived in two previous times (for a total of six weeks)--a city I hadn't seen since the summer of 2019, hoping that I would return in 2020.

Instead, three years had elapsed. Many aspects of my life--my home in Tennessee, the role I played as a German & English teacher at my high school there, my kids, so much--had changed over that time. Yet here was the Dom. Constant (that word meanse a lot more to me now than it once did). Home.

"Mainz all Mein" is a blog where I will share what I learn over the next three weeks here, roughtly the final three weeks of June 2022. I've learned a lot here, and I have a lot to share.

Stay tuned.

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Photo credit: Pikist


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