Living in Germany during the last century it never occurred to Caroline or me that we could possibly ever walk from Frankfurt to Bad Soden in the Taunus mountains. After my recent walk from Pankow to Charlottenburg, our long walks around Budapest last year, and previous lengthy strolls through New York City and Washington, D.C. I thought I should at least check the distance from Heddernheim to Bad Soden, and at 13.8km or about 9 miles, we realized that this would be a relatively easy walk. Google found a nice route for our walk and estimated it would take about three hours to cover.
The roughly 19,000 steps across the German countryside through farmland, protected wild belts, and an arboretum made for a beautiful walk to visit Caroline’s godmother Helga in Bad Soden.
Through fields of wheat, rye, and barley, we walked over farm plots divided by the trail that often branched off in other directions which piqued our curiosity as to where those paths go off to. Soon it started to feel like one might easily walk across Germany on these small foot and bike paths that crisscross the landscape.
It’s surprising how quickly our view changed from being in Frankfurt to being so far outside of Frankfurt. Because Caroline and I had only ever used motorized transportation to move about in this city, it always felt that the city was a lot larger than it turned out to be. It was on a previous trip for vacation over here when we walked from the north side of Frankfurt all the way to Sachsenhausen and then to the main train station that it started occurring to us that this place was not as big as we’d once thought.
An old U.S. military airstrip that had fallen out of use has been turned into a state park that also serves as an arboretum. With protected lands hosting a variety of plant and animal life, we have yet another reason to wonder about what other localized biomes exist across the German landscape that are currently being protected or are slated for the return to a more natural state of existence.
A chestnut tree has taken root from an acorn taken from Ukraine by a former prisoner of war.
The speed of travel Caroline and I dream of takes us as slowly as this snail lugging his home on his back to wherever such treks take one.
The small garden plots called “Schrebergarten” are also known in England as allotments. With many people never having the opportunity to own their own land, there are these small plots people can rent to tend a small garden, put up a covered awning attached to a hut where they can invite friends for cookouts, or just hang out in their garden having a drink and admiring the tranquility. Renting one is no easy feat, as these small plots are highly sought after.
We were only about 20 minutes later than Google’s estimation, likely due to my needing to stop for photographs. Once in Bad Soden, we had to reckon with the hills we’d not considered when planning this walk. After the first 18,000 steps, we were no longer in a condition that motivated us to trudge up hills that only worked to fatigue our worn-out legs further. We first saw Helga checking her mail as we started coming down a hilltop, and so I yelled out to surprise her that we, in fact, were arriving on foot. After a break and something to drink at her old flat, we headed to her new place just down the road in the town of Kronberg. Fortunately, she was driving.
Helga has been aware for years that such a move might one day be a necessity, and she had joined a community nearly a decade ago, so she’d have priority on acquiring one of the rental units that specifically caters to retirees who when living alone can suffer from the burden and isolation. Because she’s still transitioning to the new place and things are not fully unpacked yet, we squeezed in around the dining table while Helga made us lunch in a kitchen that was barely big enough for her to turn around in.
The park in front of three mid-rise apartment buildings has a beautiful park with views of Frankfurt’s skyline in the distance. On Helga’s side of the building are great views of the Taunus mountain range. At the park, there is a pagoda, a meeting space, and some exercise equipment. Like most people her age, she’s ambivalent about whether this is the right thing to do as, on one hand, it feels as though a certain amount of freedom is being sacrificed while, on the other, accepting that one is getting older steals an amount of dignity when we want to believe we’re not really all that old.
Here I am, still sitting with Caroline and Helga for what turned out to be a great visit. I sincerely believed that, at best, I’d say hi to Helga and move on down the road to a cafe so I could once again indulge my selfishness in writing while those two caught up with each other while speed talking in German. Turns out that Helga enjoys both of us as visitors as she feels reassured in seeing firsthand our happiness in being together. Knowing that just makes the visit all the sweeter, and I don’t have to feel like an intruder. After spending the better part of the day with her well into the late afternoon, we accepted Helga’s offer to drive us back to Heddernheim. I have to admit that I’ve rarely known of another lady in her early 80’s who moves down the road at nearly 100mph but Helga wasn’t shy at all about getting down the road.
The question of whether I could take a photo of these sisters was met with a bit of disdain from the one who just arrived huffing and puffing in need of water due to her putting some oomph into her step to reach us on the agreed-upon time of sitting down to dinner. We are at Speisekammer in Heddernheim, which is about a 15-minute walk from the Engelhardt’s home and is currently rated the #2 restaurant in the region for Frankfurter Grüne Soße.
This was Stephanie’s main dish, but her appetizer was a half-portion of the exact same thing because who doesn’t love green sauce? Klaus wasn’t joining us tonight, as business responsibilities took him to Budapest until tomorrow afternoon.