Rain, rain, and more rain. I could run outside under the shelter of my umbrella and fetch something to eat, or I could sit here in this mostly empty apartment with the window open, listening to the rain, wishing I could have something to eat. The rain didn’t use to present such a problem back when we used to live here, but we’d have had food on hand, and if we knew it was supposed to rain in the morning, we could go to the store the day before to pick up a package of croissants. I don’t have that luxury today as I’m practicing minimalism and trying to make the best of it.
While I’m sheltered from the weather, I stare out the open window, looking for a break in the downpour, but the water just continues to fall from the sky. Checking the radar, I can predict that this storm cell should be passing in the next 15 minutes or so. Until then, I’m forced to contend with my bible (I mean my laptop) in seclusion, although this limitation creates a small amount of resentment. I sit in front of this computer day and night when I’m not on the move and have nothing else to turn to as I’m here without wife, books, synthesizer, car, or the basic amenities one might enjoy in the place they live. All I have is this screen and the wide-open window looking out on the street so I can judge how heavy the rain is; that’s it. I’m starting to get the idea I would not have made a good monk living in a monastery.
At last, I brave the great outdoors of a wet Frankfurt after learning that the storm would be here to stay through 10:00 p.m. At the bakery, I was reminded that today is the day that those of us vaccinated or recently tested for COVID are allowed to sit indoors. After these two weeks of standing outside and then sitting outside, we are now moving quickly to the old normal. Here I am, seated in a dry, warm dining area, connected to free WIFI instead of my hotspot, with access to a toilet should I need it, and I’m feeling like a fully participating member of society. Is this my reward for following the rules?
Maybe an American reading this might think, “But John, you’ve had this in America for some time now.” The difference is that I didn’t want to go to restaurants in the United States due to the angry belligerence of a vocal minority who wanted to flaunt any safety protocols. Here in Germany, the adherence to respecting others offers a sense of shared sacrifice and the protection of a dense population with vulnerable people among them. Hopefully, the next step is no more border controls that question what my purpose is in entering another country.
Funny how we all desire shelter from freezing, wet, and hot weather. We’ll voluntarily wear the clothes best suited for the environment and utilize transportation that best meets our needs. We seek out food that satisfies our hunger and strive for work that guarantees some small part of our happiness and allows us to protect ourselves in our homes. But then a pandemic strikes, and it can only have come from the evil intention of those who want to control us and steal our rights as though they also might want us to voluntarily live in homes with locked doors and windows where we pay rent, mortgages, and property taxes to wealthy landowners and banks, wear clothes that shame us for having sex organs, garments made by exploited immigrants in faraway countries, and have to buy food from an agricultural-industrial complex that serves the elites with trillions in profit. But supposedly, this one thing, the mask, was the final straw that made the charade transparent and the intentions to defraud us of liberty so very obvious to the well-informed who watched information of questionable source material unfold on the internet that offered us a Grand Truth. Whatever truth you’ve found on YouTube, keep it to yourself as I find mine in my immediate reality, the books I’ve read that span history covering science, philosophy, and sociology, and from my sense of fitting into nature as best I can.
Enough of that and on to something different. The German language is something I can’t adapt to fast enough. I obviously leaned hard on Caroline during the years I lived in Germany and while I could make my way around the country, I made do with this limited resource I had. Today, I’m suffering from this ignorance. My needs and desires are far more nuanced at this time in my life, and I have some fairly strong ideas of how I want things to be. I’m not able to easily bring these wishes across to the person I’m in front of attempting communication, especially when they are performing a service that requires them to move through those of us in line in the most expedient manner possible. So I just have to agree to almost every question and accept whatever the default options are. My rudimentary German also opens me up to others, now testing how far that knowledge of German goes; it’s not very far. As I struggle, some will offer a helping hand by bringing their limited English to the floundering foreigner, but I’m growing increasingly uncomfortable with this equation
“Noch mal einen Kaffee, bitte,” (another coffee please) followed by, “Zum Mitnehmen?” “Nein, fur hier zu trinken” (To go? No, for here). For a language I use on such rare occasions, I’m surprised that I get by, but I want more than that. Caroline will be happy to read these words because should we move back to Germany one day, I’ll need a better proficiency in this language if I’m to get a visa that will allow me to stay longer. Should you wonder why my wife doesn’t teach me German, seeing how she’s German, well, Caroline’s over-analytical mind will answer me with the most common way of saying something in German, and then like someone with Tourette’s, she has to blurt out the other four ways it could be said unless you are in Rhineland-Palatinate where it’s said these two different ways. Okay, she’s not that bad, but you get the idea.
If a vacation is measured by doing what you want when you want, then I live on a permanent vacation, and this trip to Germany is simply a change in geography. Here I am, two Brötchen (btw, Brötchen is the diminutive of Brot, a.k.a. bread), two coffees, and two hours into doing just what I want while the weather does what it wants. I wonder what Jutta’s doing?
I arrived at Lebenshaus and found Jutta in the dining area with her fellow residents, cutting up fruit for a champagne-based fruit punch being prepared for the afternoon’s music appreciation hour. I’ve told my mother-in-law that it’s like she’s living at the Schatzalp on the Magic Mountain by Thomas Mann, except she’s not in the mountains of Davos, Switzerland, but right next to the Main River in a valley, close enough. In this kind of sanitorium where shelter is found for those who are growing weak, Jutta has adapted very well to life in her small room, and she’s just incredibly happy to see me so often.
A short visit in the morning that will be followed by a second one in the afternoon after I have lunch should put a nice spin on the day for Jutta. Maybe I can even get her out for a short walk over to the river if the weather continues to improve.
My lunch bears mentioning as it was a strange play on traditional items I’ve been eating for the past couple of weeks. Here at Leib & Seele, I tried their mashup of veal schnitzel stuffed with green sauce herbs, an egg, and Handkäse served with Bratkartoffeln. I found it to be an abomination, but it will sustain me. Continuing with a theme I plan on wearing out, it is as though the hand cheese and egg took refuge in the schnitzel as a way of finding shelter. Yeah, I went there, as why not hammer at the inane for the sake of a groan?
And, of course, I’m inside because I can be. For Germans, it’s been seven months since they could sit in a restaurant, and takeout has been their only option. It is nice outside, and under normal circumstances, I would have gladly sat streetside for the people watching but nothing is yet quite normal. Then, while I’m here considering what I might write next, a song that will become a featured track from my 2021 trip to Germany starts to play. It’s called Save Your Tears by The Weeknd. Why do the cheesy songs in heavy rotation always seem to find my ear is a mystery?
I should drink this espresso and pretend to eat the Apfelstrudel I’m not having, but if I had, I’d certainly need to get out of here for a serious walk to work that off. Should you, too, be growing bored of these food reports, I’m right there with you and realize I need to move on to something, anything else.
QR codes are everywhere and on everything as the pandemic inched us closer to a contactless society. With the opening of restaurants and shops, some QR codes are quickly being removed as menus are put back in customers’ hands, and appointments to enter certain stores are no longer needed.
What will be around for some time to come are COVID tests until the population of Europe is vaccinated to the point of herd immunity.
Churches were closed for a time, and then when they did open, they were only there for services. Now, as I walk by the wide-open door of a church in Frankfurt, I feel invited in. Every state and city has its own schedule for reopening, dependent on their infection numbers, so while I was able to visit churches in other cities, their incidence of COVID had already reached manageable numbers. This is the interior of St. Catherine’s Church (St. Katharinenkirche), which I’ve photographed a couple of times already on this trip, but only from the outside.
Walking, walking, and more walking. Added three miles as I walked from Konstablerwache to Westend and Palmengarten. I walk and look, I walk and listen, and as I walk, I realize I’ve missed so much of the city back in the day because I was always on my way somewhere instead of nowhere in particular. So, I walk some more.
Walked into St. Paul’s Church (Paulskirche) for the first time ever and found myself alone. This mural on the ground floor represents the procession of the elected German and Austrian representatives into Paulskirche, who in 1848, presented a Charter of Basic Rights and a Constitution trying to bring a unified Germany into democracy.
As I walked upstairs, the pattern from the chair legs and the cleanliness struck me, but now you know what this abstract image is.
John F. Kennedy spoke here back in June 1963, where he commemorated the “German cradle of democracy.”
During World War II, this church was mostly destroyed. In rebuilding it, the outside remained true to form, but the interior was greatly simplified.
There’s a lot of history shared on the ground floor about the democracy movement that started right here in Frankfurt for Germany, along with the Goethe Prize from the city and the Peace Prize of the German Book Trade.
This dragon guards the Standesamt, which is the German civil registration office responsible for recording births, marriages, and deaths. Unless you’ve studied German history, you probably don’t know that the country of Germany was created in 1871 from the previous collection of German states. The Standesamt was established across the country, taking effect on January 1, 1876.
Hello again, Jutta. Another walk to the river with my mother-in-law, enjoying a short video call with Caroline and a coke. Life is good.
Back to walking with a good amount of extra walking. Walked into the Church of Our Lady (Liebfrauenkirche) and then back to Bornheim-Mitte.
Time for some domestic chores so I can keep this going as I drag my laundry to a nearby laundromat that I hope I can use without too much frustration of getting change and figuring out how the soap goes in and the dryer works. Oh, you think it’s so easy? You’ve never visited a German laundromat. Though I will admit that the last time I did, I probably was mighty stoned.
Longest kilometer walk I’ve taken today, likely due to the sense of dread eating at me as I made my way to the Eco-Express Waschsalon, where I sensed panic awaiting me. The worst thing that was going to happen was that I’d have to Skype Caroline in to decipher what I was brain farting on, but I got through with it, and my stinking clothes are in the washer and presumably getting clean. No matter, they are being spun around in soap and water and will have to be cleaner once they are out. It wasn’t until my clothes were in the washer and I was sitting down that I noticed the British flag on the screen, signifying English instructions were available. Oh well, I’m improving my survivability in Germany this way.
I skipped picking up a Döner kebab on the way as it looked closer on the map, and I thought I might throw in my laundry and then go fetch something easy, but it’s a good way back, so I’ll hope my clothes are done before they close at 10:00, it’s 8:20 right now. I shouldn’t concern myself with my clothes being left alone as already a few people came in, stuffed their things in a machine, and took off. There are other machines where the wash is long done, but no one is here tending to it; maybe they went home for dinner? I’m so negatively conditioned by the American experience that I’m too paranoid to leave my dirty, wet laundry alone as though some underwear sniffer will come and drag all my clothes away.
The laundromat itself is immaculate, unattended, and without a bunch of sketchy freaks in the place. If you’ve ever used a public laundromat in the United States, you know exactly what I mean, and the idea of using them at night should send shivers up your spine. I’m hungry after having walked nearly 7 miles after lunch.
Nice, it’s only 8:35, and my clothes are in the Trockner trocknering. I see Döner in my future. Hmm, four levels of heat; I hope I don’t light my clothes on fire. Three minutes already passed; I’m wondering if I should check it. Four minutes, this might be the proverbial watched pot. The great thing is that my stress level has gone way down.
I was greeted by four smiling and laughing guys at Döneria at the corners of Weidenbornstraße and Seckbacher Landstraße. I thought I was over-posting about food but the Döner sandwich I had was seriously the best of the half dozen or so I’ve enjoyed while here in Germany.
The king of Döners.