The Highway

The call that my father had died came on a sunny January Sunday morning almost thirteen years ago. I got in the car and drove to Slovenia. From Strasbourg to Ljubljana is just under 800 kilometers—usually spent in cheerful anticipation of holidays and seeing loved ones. This time was different.

So sooner or later, everyone faces the loss of someone they love. But the fact that it's universal and inevitable doesn't make it any less painful. Grief and driving are not a good combination. That became obvious after just a few kilometers when I crossed the Rhine into Kehl, Germany. I had last seen my father there a few weeks earlier, boarding a train back to Ljubljana with my mother. The last image of him: waving from the train door, wearing his trademark wrinkled coat. Just a little wave with his fingers, like the Queen. “Goodbye,” he called. He looked tired. Goodbye. And the train left.

At the intersection near the station, I almost crashed into a car in front of me. Luckily, it was Sunday, the weather was nice, and there were no trucks. If you have to drive while emotionally wrecked, those were ideal conditions. Eight hours of reflection, memories, and mourning.

I don’t know exactly where in Germany the two Syrian brothers live—the ones who, in early November, received a desperate call from their twenty-year-old brother, begging them to come rescue him in Slovenia. But it’s possible they traveled the same highways I did that Sunday thirteen years ago. Except theirs was a Thursday, not a weekend. And unlike me, they were racing against time.

Weekday traffic on German autobahns is a nightmare of cars and trucks. Imagine your GPS repeatedly announcing another traffic jam between you and your dying sibling. “Alternative route available?” the robotic voice asks. “Thirty kilometers longer, five minutes faster.” Five more minutes of hope in a terrifying race against time. How much strength did their brother still have, alone, exhausted, freezing in some Slovenian forest?

The first major hazard on the road to Slovenia appears less than 100 kilometers in, near Pforzheim, where the six-lane autobahn abruptly narrows and plunges into the narrow Enz River valley. Pforzheim is known for having looked like today’s Syria by the end of WWII, after the Allies leveled it for its munitions factories.

Near Stuttgart, about ninety minutes in, I called my boss, Terry Davis, then Secretary General of the Council of Europe, to say I’d be out of the office for a few days. As always on Sundays, he was in his office sipping espresso—banned at home by his wife because of his high blood pressure.

Terry is an interesting character. Like many older British Labourites, he's a fierce Brexit supporter. That meant we traditionally clashed during his annual visits to Strasbourg. The last time we met, I told him it was easy for him to support Brexit—he wouldn’t have to live with the consequences for long. He called me a “snotty ageist.” A few days ago, as every year, I received a birthday card from him. A sweet old fart, despite some political delusions—above all, a decent human being. A bulldog-faced Englishman for whom I used to write speeches, always careful not to make them too emotional; otherwise, he’d get a lump in his throat and couldn’t go on.

He didn’t spend weekends in the office just for the banned caffeine—he meticulously went through the mountains of paperwork our giant bureaucratic machine churned out each week. Once, I walked in and saw him reviewing applications for a secretarial post in our office in Graz, Austria. “Do you think the President of the European Commission sits in Berlaymont on Sundays reviewing secretary contracts?” I asked, full of smug bureaucratic arrogance.

Terry, for once, didn’t snap. “I don’t know,” he said. “That’s his choice. But you can’t pretend to care about people if you forget the person. That contract might not mean much to you—but for her, it could change her life.” I still blush with shame when I think about it. Somewhere near Stuttgart Airport, I choked out the words, “My father died.” I didn’t cry. Terry did.

The highway to Munich is mostly upgraded now, except for a narrow, steep stretch near Mühlhausen—built, they say, in the Third Reich. Hitler, as some like to say, got many things wrong but nailed it with highways. But when half of Europe’s cars hit that hill, not even the Führer’s infrastructure vision holds up. In a flash, you lose an hour. I hope the Syrian brothers took another route, but I have a feeling they got stuck there. It's entirely possible their brother lost the battle for his life because of the Slovenian cold, our indifference, and that damned Nazi-grade incline.

At the summit, there's a sign showing the altitude and marking the European watershed divide. On one side, rivers flow to the Mediterranean; on the other, to the Baltic and North Seas. The Danube, which begins nearby, ends almost 3,000 kilometers away in the Black Sea. What the hell is a German river doing in the Black Sea? Why doesn’t it stay where it started?

Rivers are tricky. Water inspires fear; it can be dangerous. We fight over it. We flee because of it. Water floods. You can drown in it. You can drown in the Kolpa River. We can direct water, but we can’t stop it. Water feeds us. Water connects us. Water gives life. Water is life.

From there, the road to the Austrian Slovenian border in Karavanke Tunnel is more or less a straight line—if you make it through Munich, which lies roughly halfway between Strasbourg and Ljubljana. A lot has happened in Munich—more than just traffic jams. It’s smart to hit Austria early to avoid night speed limits.

Imagine it’s a matter of life and death, and you’re not allowed to drive over 100 km/h. Luckily, I wasn’t in a hurry. My father was nearly seventy-five. He was already dead. On his way to the ceremony marking the nazi destruction of the village of Dražgoše in WWII, after feeling unwell, he bowed his head in a friend’s car and closed his eyes. That was it. Gone.

That young man from Syria was twenty. The same age my eldest son is now. He died of hypothermia and exhaustion—waiting for his brothers, hoping those damn German autobahns in that promised German land weren’t as long and clogged as they were. My father had already died. That boy was still dying. I was already mourning. His brothers were still hoping. In vain.

I think about what some of my fellow Slovenians write and say about people enduring inhuman trials in our rivers, on our barbed wire, in our forests. “Warning: Kolpa is polluted. One less. Bullet to the head—God will know his own.”

That Thursday in the woods near Ilirska Bistrica, a human being died. In some Slovenians, something human is dying, too.

During those days, the Prime Minister visited border towns and talked with locals about the troubles and challenges migrants and irregular border crossings cause. The President, meanwhile, spoke in Berlin about values, walls that no longer exist, and a Europe without borders. Neither of them mentioned the young man who died of exposure and exhaustion on one of those borders. But they could have—and should have.

It’s good to care for people. But it’s not enough if, in doing so, you forget a human being.