Love Locked

I'm back! Did you miss me? I've spent the last 18 days trotting around Austria and Switzerland with my mother and of course I could share endless stories, but I figure I just want to post a few of the moments that aren't caught in the pictures or the journal entries...the pure experiences.

So today we'll start with the love locks. I first noticed them in Salzburg on this pedestrian bridge. As soon as I saw the hundreds of locks on this bridge, I knew it had to be something important. Was it a traveling art piece? A temporary memorial? I didn't know, and I couldn't find any sign to explain it. As I continued through the city I occasionally saw signs in shops or booths offering a lock for sale. My German is so limited, but from the few words I knew, I could piece together that these were Locks of Love.

So here's the experience-I walked across the bridge and handled a few of the locks. I saw names, dates, hearts, etc. Most of the names were boy and girl pairings, but a few seemed like friends or even mother-daughters. My mother's friend commented about how crazy these locks were, but I was basking in their beauty. It struck me that each of these locks represented one single moment where someone (hopefully two people) felt loved. A frozen moment of being somebody cherished. So sappy me, almost started crying because a midst all the sadness, loneliness, hate, and prejudice in the world, here was the hopeful reminder that people are loved. Hundreds of people held a single moment of love on this bridge, and it doesn't even matter if most of these couples never ended up "working" because sometime in their life they felt loved...and that is beautiful.

The locks didn't leave me when I left Salzburg. I continued to find them on a bridge overlooking Neuschwanstein Castle and then a guard fence overlooking a waterfall in Lauterbrunnen. They were everywhere reminding me that love still exists. It even found me in the last five minutes of my film on the airplane. In the flick, it said something about how people will throw the keys to these locks into the river to keep their secret / lock their love forever.

So here's to those who have ever felt a moment of being loved. It is special and sparkling - something we should lock up into our hearts good and tight.

Stay tuned for more European experiences.