David F - 2. DF Chapter 2

Day two of his journey took him further south through Germany, passing through Hamburg, only stopping briefly for a snack and to refuel his vehicle, and after nearly four hours of driving, David arrived in Hanover, where he would be spending his second night, as he was in no real rush for this trip, and wanted to see some of the countryside during his travels.

Each night while relaxing in his accommodation, David wrote in his diary of his travels so far, places that he saw, and the few places he did stop to visit, were mostly museums and other places of interest.

Having mapped out his journey, David had plans for his next overnight stop to be Frankfurt, and from there onto Basel, in Northern Switzerland, where David planned to spend a day looking around the beautiful area.

His first person that he would be visiting on this journey would be Sophie Bang, the kind lady who loves to paint the Swiss outdoors, and who helped him to find his mother Edith. They had kept in touch over the years, and although she was now much older and a little frail, she knew that David was coming to visit her in her home in Southern Switzerland, just north of the Gotthard Pass.

David spend two nights at Sophie’s home, catching up on news since they last saw each other those many years ago, and still hanging on the wall, was the painting of him as a 12 year old boy, alone and struggling to survive as he made the dangerous journey north towards Denmark.

Just over an hour after leaving Sophie’s home, and just south of the border in Italy, David arrived at his next destination, the farm where he had been held captive in the barn, with their dog – King as he only companion on the long and lonely nights there.

Driving down the driveway of the farm, David had shivers go down his spine as he approached the farm house and buildings, and to his surprise, there was no sign of the barn where he had been locked away. The house and the other buildings were very run down, and the gardens around the house had long been abandoned, as he approached the front door and knocked.

“Yes, what do you want?” the scruffy looking young man demanded on opening the door and seeing a well dressed and groomed man of similar age standing there, and right away David recognised him as the farmers son.

“Hello, you may not remember me from twelve years ago, I am David…” he said the the farmer’s son, who went ghost white on realising who was infront of him. A ladies voice called out, asking who was at the door, and the young man replied that it was an old acquaintance, and that he was going out for a short walk, before stepping out the door.

“Shall we take a walk,” the young man asked David, who just nodded his head and turned and stepped away from the door, and followed the young man down the footpath. “Karl, I wanted to let you know that I forgive your family for what you did to me, so long ago. I am only here to put closure to that part of my life,” David said to the young man.

“I am so sorry for the way I treated you… I guess I was like my father in many ways, you know he died of a heart attack less than six months after you escaped from the farm, and as you can see I have not been able to do a very good job of running and looking after the place.

What happened to our dog – King, he seemed to have disappeared the same night as you did, and oh boy was my Dad furious about that,” Karl said to David.