(Translated from German by Gemini AI)

Saskatoon, the largest city in the province of Saskatchewan, is virtually unknown to anyone. Joni Mitchell's hometown, on the other hand, is known. A visit to the Canadian musician's birthplace.

Visit Saskatoon, the largest city in the western province of Saskatchewan, which we previously knew little about, begins with the bell-like singing of Joni Mitchell. Her album "Blue," from 1971, full of piano and guitar and light, dreamy singing, provides, as we drive around, a bright, fleeting feeling, occasionally melancholy but always sensual and comforting.

And whom do we actually think about in this city? We think about Joni Anderson in her youth, the real-life counterpart to the restless singer-songwriter, who suffered a debilitating polio infection in her ninth year, the school doctor setting a molecular anatomy model on her career as a red-haired swimming teacher, and her mother giving her lessons on distinguishing between light and dark sounds. Among all the charming young ladies of North America, she is the one I mean.

We listen to the album in Kiwanis Memorial Park, tucked between green lawns like in "Little Green," the third song on "Blue". We jog through the dunes, enjoying the quietness over the Canadian Plains. We were tired, slightly hurt, a little weary, but still cheerful, almost cheerlessly flying straight through the German land and out onto the South Saskatchewan River bank, where her university friends used to spend time, along with the administration.

We had just arrived, before it got dark in the prairies. Danielle Byl from the traffic authority welcomes us to the "Unofficial Joni Mitchell Tour." She calls herself a Mitchell expert, sitting in the middle apartment of an old wooden duplex. The two do not know each other, which is not surprising, given that we are now dealing with an album "Blue" heart. Danielle is happy to stand and speak to us, even if she can only tell us two things that you have to understand as being part of the over 20 albums she has made: She is a woman, and she is interested in jazz.

The great admiration is certainly not unrequited. Mitchell had plans for a Joni Mitchell Museum here in 2018, having compiled two small chronologies. One is in a promenade in a new river building, the other's name, if I recall correctly, is still a secret. We meet up with Danielle to talk. We are in the middle of Canada, and immediately in the middle of a Mitchell piece, I "wished I had a river so long I could teach my feet to fly on oh I wish I had a river I could skate away on", from the first stanza of "A River" on the album "Blue".

The river is natural, as is the eighth song of "Blue". Errors are forgiven, not just a fleeting blue melancholy, because we were able to learn something from school days, and because a school class and a screeching train are just making their way through the Kemai Memorial Run. The club had a quilted mattress and was proud of its best exhibits, which belonged to the greatest Canadian artists.

We stand up. Danielle urges us to "Urge for Going" and drives us across Broadway Bridge, one of the seven bridges in the city, the West to the East side of Saskatoon. The right bank can no longer be seen. It is the opener of "Songs of a Prairie Girl", one of Joni Mitchell's least acclaimed compilations, on the subject of Saskatchewan to Joni. The Broadway Avenue is where the young Miss Anderson in 1962, alongside Louis Riel's grandfather, made her first concert, which was one of the first two successful broadcasts in the city. We stand at the Shoppers Drug Mart on Taylor Street, and we were there in the family apartment, the home of the Anderson family, the 1992 across North Battleford to the 1903 Hanover Avenue.

There is no longer a quiet housing area with elementary school, college, and clean, bright apartment buildings. Far and wide, we can see the students only going to Queen Elizabeth School and the Aden Bowman Collegiate building, which are just two blocks apart and were the first double schoolhouse to be built in Austria. Strangers who came from the Bowman family were not allowed to make any complaints in the Canadian schools. As a result, the art teacher had to give a nice class to the cleaner, who, being stronger, wanted a table. The drawing that Joni Mitchell sent to Bob Hinz from Paris is hanging in the library. "But why not here?"

"Yes, why not, actually?" So on to the Lathey Pool, where Joni and her friend Sharolyn spent a short summer vacation in the outdoor pool recreating the choreographies of Luther Williams. Luther Williams was a universally pleasant swimming teacher and actor in the 1950s, who starred in the Hollywood film drama Schoolgirl Water Games. For the teenager, who was confined to the hospital for almost a year by the polio infection she contracted at the age of ten, it must have been a liberation. It was the last polio wave that swept through Canada in 1953, including Neil Young, the country's second great musician. Since 1955, the Leonard Cohen Company, which came in this instance, has been vaccinating against it. Today, the Lathey Pool is a small spa basin with red tiles. Dark hairs hang in the murky cloud front of the Anderson face, on whose garage driveway a black pickup truck stopped. "Yes, the Andersons live here," confirms the short-term owner while shopping from the car. And just as he said it - in that characteristically Canadian friendly and precise way - we didn't want to disturb him any further.

And then the official part of the "Unofficial Joni Mitchell Tour" was over too. We hugged Danielle, who had accompanied us down Broadway Bridge, and sent us back to the alternating Canadian Swin and Kemp Memorial Parks and back to the Bessborough Hotel, whose rooms and towers grew larger with every step. The Bessborough is a legend in Saskatoon. Joni Mitchell even painted it on the cover of her second album, "Clouds", though only with a small background. With its 58-meter high main tower, it resembles an oversized castle on the Loire. In fact, it was built between 1928 and 1932 by the Canadian National Railway directly on the riverbank. The generosity and comfort of the past have been preserved to this day. You don't just stay here, you lodge here.

We also felt a strong "Urge for Staying" in the lobby of the Bessborough Hotel, where we had two halves. The other half, which began the next morning and perhaps unfolded so full of joy because of it. We follow this downstream, past the anchor of the nostalgic excursion ship "Prairie Lily", and past a pond where American pelicans lie in wait for fish in the churning water. The rare birds have been home in Saskatoon for over 40 years.

Then over the northernmost of the seven bridges and back to the other side of the river. The plain was brown, and the streetscape was larger than we thought. We needed a break.

At a rest stop in front of the Jim Patterson special bank, we should put down the bicycles and step onto the fine gravel. The river and the small skyline shimmer here in the winter light of the Northern Lights, energetic, erratic, unique - a sign of how much Joni Mitchell, whose exuberant personality was simply not made to stay in Saskatoon for life, is now residing in British Columbia and "California". Track number six on her album "Blue". Christoph Moeskes

WAY TO SASKATOON
Travel Saskatoon is served several times daily by Air Canada from Toronto and Vancouver (aircanada.com). Flights are also available with Air Canada / Lufthansa (lufthansa.com) or Condor (condor.com).

Saskatoon Overnight stays at the Bessborough Hotel are available from €140. The Remai Modern Art Museum (remaimodern.org) is equally outstanding, as is the Wanuskein Heritage Park, which reports on indigenous life past and present (wanuskewin.com).

Joni Mitchell The eighty-two-year-old rarely performs after her stroke in 2015. Official tours in Saskatoon dedicated to Joni Mitchell have not yet been established.

Further information can be found at discoversaskatoon.com and tourismsaskatchewan.com.