Fifty bucks for our entire family is a steal, and Dan and Bethany haven’t yet steered us wrong. We decide to visit Freizeitpark Ruhpolding.
Kyle drives us through idyllic Alps-infused Bavarian countryside to a little town hugging the Austrian border, GPS charting a rural route with no theme park in sight, and I’m fairly sure we’re lost. Then I see it—a wooden sign swinging on a pole. A gravel parking lot is tucked into the hillside, and a narrow hiking path disappears into the hills. Arrows on the path point to the park. We zip our jackets and trek uphill, panting to the entrance.
Devoid of primary colors, rubbery walkways, and the stripped natural landscape so common in American theme parks, Freizeitpark Ruhpolding is hewn out of these Bavarian hills. Trees canopy the play areas and slides copy the ebb and flow of the land, resting on hills and letting nature dictate their downward course. I breathe in forest air and exhale worry. Bethany was right.
There are vintage carnival rides and a roller coaster, but the park is mostly wooden climbing structures, monstrous tire swings, zip lines, and merry-go-round discs set at an angle on a hillside, devoid of handles and safety rails. The kids jump with abandon in a ball pit crammed full of other kids. I haven’t seen a ball pit in the States outside a therapy clinic in years.
“This place is the best!” Finn trills as he whips down a slide in a felted toboggan.
Some parents are playing with their children, zipping in tree houses and besting them at skeeball and tin can–shooting games. Many more are seated on decks outside cafés, sipping beer and coffee and quietly chatting. All kids are free to wander. Ours join them.
We play with the kids at first, whooshing down precipitous metal slides and screaming with them. We spin in a ride that whirls backward at such breakneck speeds that I make my body a seat belt for Finn for fear he’ll careen out of our shared seat. Later, when Kyle and I tire, we soak in Bavarian sunshine on the wooden deck, nursing drinks and watching the kids gallivant.
We leave at closing time and make the hillside stroll downward. On the way, I instinctively grab Reed’s hand. He’s my wild child, a boy who prefers to sit upside down to hear a story, who dances down the sidewalk and spins circles in the produce aisle.
“Hey, Mom,” Reed says, voice quivering, “did you notice you’re always grabbing my hand?”
“Well, I just want you to be safe,” I say, loosening my grip. I am called out.
“But I’m seven now. I know I’m a kid, but sometimes when you hold my hand like this, it feels like you don’t trust me.” His face crumples with tears.
Last week in Turkey, Tate and I were waiting in the car while Kyle and Reed ran across the street to take a photo of him in front of the hospital where he was born. We were reminiscing about the trip, the freedom she felt to go alone to the bakery in Cadenet, to swim by herself in the community pool across the street from our Thai guesthouse, to stroll the acreage of the Pasignano farmhouse in Italy with Abbie.
“If we were still living in Turkey, would I be allowed to run errands on my own?” she asked.
“Yep,” I answered her. I remembered watching eight-year-olds run into the corner store from our apartment balcony, three-year-old Tate begging me to let her join them. Soon enough, you will, I’d answer.
Tate sighed. “I really wish kids were allowed to do that kind of stuff in America. We should tell the president to make it a law so that kids have more freedom and adults aren’t so nervous all the time.”
I remember this conversation, and stop on the Bavarian trail back to the parking lot and look Reed in the eye. “I don’t mean to treat you like you’re little. I want to show you that I trust you. Because you are a good kid. You’re a fantastic kid.”
“Mom—I have something to tell you,” Reed says. He breathes deep and wipes tears running down his face. “I’ve been almost around the whole world now, and I’ve done a good job. I haven’t gotten lost or gotten hurt. I feel like I’m growing up.” He pauses. “Do you think you can stop holding my hand so much?”
I look down at our hands; I’m still holding on and Reed is cupping his palm free. I release my fingers and he slides his hand in his jacket.
“I love you, bud,” I say, messing his hair.
“Love you too,” he replies, and runs ahead.
Uhldingen-Mühlhofen is so difficult for us to say, that between Kyle and me, we default to a butchered nickname: Uberlingen-Dinglehopper. We snicker childishly at the highway exit and entrance signs declaring Ausfahrt and Einfahrt. I love that the word for airplane is flugzeug, which literally translates to “fly-thing.” The word for speed limit is geschwindigkeitsbegrenzung. German amuses.
We want to revel in more Bavarian countryside, so at the last second, we book a guesthouse in Uhldingen-Mühlhofen, the miniature village along the Bodensee lake. Along the way, we take ausfahrts to villages that sound even mildly interesting, soaking up our rental car before returning it in Paris. We need coffee this morning, having spent a day at Freizeitpark Ruhpolding yesterday, and Uhldingen-Mühlhofen is still two hours away. We approach a road sign for the village of Landsberg am Lech, and it looks pleasant enough from a distance. Italy is less than two hundred miles south, but it’s no small feat to find a decent cup of brew in Germany. We cross our fingers, hope for the best, and make the exit.
I find directions to an open bakery on my phone app, and as Kyle searches for a parking spot, I read about this unassuming village.
“Oh, my goodness,” I gasp.
“What?” Kyle asks.
“This is where Hitler wrote Mein Kampf,” I say, scrolling Wikipedia.
“Whoa. Are you serious?”
“And this is said to be where the Hitler Youth first formed.” I survey the village’s town square, with its innocent houses and pink-tinted shops. One of the vilest persons born into this human experience wrote his foundational ideas in this pocket-sized place. I see no signs commemorating this history.
I scroll through my phone and read more as I wait for our coffee order at the bakery. Landsberg am Lech is also where the United States Army liberated a concentration camp with the help of one of their soldiers named Tony Bennett, and it’s where Johnny Cash was stationed with the air force. The village’s medieval wall is still erect, cannonball still stuck on one side.