On Woden’s Day, the ninth of July, in the year two thousand and eight Anno Domini, I embarked on an aimless journey through the city of Marburg, Germany carrying only a digital camera to record my experiences and a map of the human nervous system to help me find my way.

Given that I’m not especially familiar with either Marburg or the human nervous system, neither one is at all a good analogy for the other, and I have such a bad sense of direction that I’ve been known to become lost in large walk-in closets, I expected it to be an interesting, disorienting, and possibly frustrating experience. In the end, I proved correct on all three counts.

I set out at 5:15 PM, from a more or less random point near the top of the city. Because it was high in the hills and close-ish to the city’s edge, and because there seemed to be a more or less equal amount of city to my left and to my right, I decided I was in the brain’s longitudinal fissure. Following from there, I figured that the apartment where I’m staying would be located roughly at the base of the spine. I wanted to walk around for an hour or two, exploring Marburg’s neural byways, and then use my map to return home before my dad finished giving his lecture at the university (at about 7:20). I walked down the fissure a ways, turning off onto the first path that piqued my curiosity (taking me into the right parietal lobe, according to my map). Slowly meandering my way through the brain, I stumbled upon all kinds of weird detritus: dreams, stray thoughts and dogs, lost ideas, graffiti, half-empty beer bottles…my map informed me that the human brain is a mass of folds and furrows, and there were indeed a lot of really narrow, twisty, multiply branching alleys and lanes in that area. Somehow, I didn’t get lost or so distracted that I’d end up spending the whole evening in that one organ, and the map actually led me true, out of the thicket of apartment buildings and dingy bars, out to a broad, roaring throughway that seemed to be (using the map’s terminology) the Intumescentia cervicalis (I’d have called it “the top of that huge nerve bundle that runs down the middle of your spine”).

The bustle of the Intumescentia cervicalis was a little too much for me, and all the sights and sounds along it a bit too plain and touristy and obvious, so I went off along a nerve running through the right shoulder. I followed it all the way down the arm, which was shorter than the map seemed to think it was, till I came to a fingertip (I’m still not sure which one) and had to turn around. It was a quiet, foresty place to walk, with fewer people and impulses travelling along it than I’d have expected. Maybe Marburg’s a lefty.

It started to rain—just a drizzle at first, so I ignored it, but gradually I and my map became wet enough that I felt the need to seek shelter. I headed back to the brain, thinking of its many crevices and overhung nooks. But finding a dry place proved more difficult than I expected, and I’d wandered deep into the cerebellum before I found a suitable doorway to crouch in. After a couple of minutes, a marmalade cat with a scratched nose joined me. We exchanged pleasantries in the language of cats, and soon he’d decided he liked me enough to jump onto my lap, butt his face against my chin while purring like an old radiator, and knead my legs with his claws out, which kinda hurt. I took a few pictures of my feline friend’s back, but unfortunately my camera’s batteries conked out just after those, so while I have a photographic record up until that point, you’ll just have to take my word for it that the rest of my trip happened.

So. After…maybe eight, ten minutes…the rain had let up enough for me to continue. Still in the mood for exploring, I opted to go up, further into the brain. (I found a huge brown slug that I’d dearly have loved to photograph. It was munching on a leaf, and I amused myself for probably an unhealthy amount of time by poking it lightly to make it draw its head under its mantle. My index finger got really slimy. I also had the opportunity to spy on several people through their large, open windows and accidentally wandered into somebody’s private-no-trespassing garden, yard, or rooftop hideout at least four times.) Confusion set in around what I was thinking of as the Corpus callosum. By that time, I had truly begun to think of the city as being human nervous system-shaped, conforming to the map, but the brain seemed to go on much too far, and I couldn’t get back to the Intumescentia cervicalis. Several times, I’d find myself at the top of a hill from which I could see it, and I knew that once I got back to it, I’d be un-lost and more or less able to find my way home—but none of the paths my map told me led there actually did. Finally, I put the map aside temporarily and managed to re-find the Intumescentia cervicalis through good old-fashioned trial and error. It took a long time, though, and by the time I’d managed to get onto the road I thought went back to the apartment, eventually, my dad was calling me to ask where I was. (Okay, I wasn’t quite carrying only a digital camera and a map. I also had my cell phone, key, a couple of euros, miscellaneous pocket junk.) I ended up meeting him on the road, at 7: 35 PM.

If you’re curious, the apartment was really somewhere along the north gluteus inferior nerve of the left buttock. More or less.