High ways and night songs

Part 1: The long way home

so this is me, right in the middle of the road, right in the middle of this wide and wild road that takes me back home, all the way from Belgium, all the way from Brussels, and what a great road it is, taking the long way home, a way i have never travelled before, a way that moves from the city streets of Brussels towards the South, from Flanders towards Wallonia, passing Waterloo, passing Rochefort, crossing the Ardennes to get to Luxembourg, tempted just a moment to stop there, but then going on, on and on, through the yellow fields and over the green hills of Lorraine in France, across the Moselle to Alsace, through small towns, almost down to Strasbourg, and then across the Rhine to Germany, Baden-Baden, Stuttgart, a last change of roads, a last change of lanes, before it eventually comes to a halt, some four countries later, some six hundred and something kilometres after Brussels, some six hours from the start

i get my bags out of the car, but i leave them downstairs, i am too high to unpack them yet, still high from all those highways raced down, from all the hills passed, from all the valleys crossed. high ways, that really is the right word for those roads, ways that make you high, ways that take your thoughts spiralling somewhere in the sky, and i can still see them there, they aren't back with home either, they are still lingering next to the hazy clouds, talking to the trees that wander along the horizon

and it's while i pour myself a cup of coffee that i wonder how i could think twice before i took that route, why i even considered going along the usual way that would have crossed straight back to Germany from Brussels and then straight down to Stuttgart, following the map&guide route that only comes with the options 'fastest way' and 'shortest way', as if that would be all that there is about life, as if the ways you take in life were of no importance themselves, as if any way could take you back to the start

Part 2: A change of ways

this travelogue is part of the subside travelzine
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