Who needs alarms when flying early in the morning? Not us; we were up about 10 minutes before our wrists were supposed to start vibrating at 4:00 a.m. In quick order, we were dressed and headed downstairs to wait for the taxi we’d arranged for yesterday.
Above it all and mostly distanced after 17 days in Scandinavia, we are still in a relatively safe space but that was coming to an unexpected end.
Two hours after leaving Norway, we are on the streets of Frankfurt, dragging our bags along for our first stop. On the train out of the airport, we noticed a marked difference between the polite and trusting Scandinavian culture we had left behind and the brusque and maybe even abrasive Germans. After 17 days of super civility, I wasn’t ready for the rude high school kids on a field trip riding in the same direction as us. Sadly, and yes, I’m aware that this will carry a hint of racism, their ethnicity combined with their aberrant behavior is part of what is likely giving rise to/sustaining the evergrowing nationalism in countries that are trying to integrate a growing immigrant population due to their own shrinking population. If you live in one of Germany’s big cities, you are likely inured to this spectacle of crass antics, but I can see how small towns would feel the sting.
The perspective shift of being enchanted when we land in Germany coming in from the U.S. is lost on entering from Scandinavia. Germany can be a bit cold and distant, but it’s mostly polite, respectful, and rule-driven, in stark contrast to the potential-of-violence-at-any-moment style of American uncertainty. If I’m reluctant about returning to the States after we visited Europe, this will be amplified when we return to Phoenix this coming weekend.
Frühstück (breakfast) was at Cafe Liebfrauenberg near Kleinmarkthalle. Not our first choice, but with our bags in tow (including the broken-wheel suitcase), we were more interested in shortening the distance between getting something to eat and visiting with my mother-in-law, Jutta. While still sipping my coffee, Caroline zipped around the corner to a sewing shop, hoping to find a few notions she might be able to use to repair her quickly disintegrating purse strap that, after years of constant use, was about to render the bag useless.
Here I am, no longer just a tourist. I should be able to write something meaningful, but constant distractions drag my eye and mind to watching the goings on around me instead of slipping into exploring the profound. To write, I must drop into a kind of routine where my focus is undisturbed by novelty. When I’m able to look within and between the thoughts that give rise to impressions, my hand feels mysteriously compelled to leave words on the page. I’m aware that the majority of words that fall from my pen can be mundane and mediocre, but on occasion, I find that what has appeared from a recess of my mind exceeds any hopes I might have had to produce such eloquence. That is what I’d like to aim for all the time.
We’ve moved over to Lebenshaus, but Jutta is participating in an exercise program, and while we can see her, she’s not become aware of us yet. As we watch, I see residents I’ve become familiar with over the past couple of years and notice that changes in aging for the elderly can be significant. The process of decay robs people of a lot. This could be a part of our future, yet few of us are prepared for this. Slow death is not a popular entertainment subject nor a part of reality TV. How and why do we choose to hide the elderly or, at best, relegate them to the margin where they need not be acknowledged?
Am I on the spectrum regarding my social tensions? We are at Zum Standesämtchen and I’m starting to seethe at the empty state of these vacuous lower-order excuses for humans on vacation. Dignified people do not stand with mouths agape, we should not get pissy with someone talking in their native tongue to us in their country. They have no obligation to speak your version of one of the 7,117 languages distributed around our earth. We owe it to ourselves to, at a minimum, master our mother tongue, speak clearly with concision, and, when appropriate, slow things down and temper the volume. You are in someone else’s culture, and respect starts with you.
When in a public space, I do not care where you’re from or what you like or don’t like about your vacation, life, or job. If it’s hot and humid or raining, nobody needs your pronouncement of the obvious. This is not small talk; it is the inanity of someone who needs to be at the center of attention or is afraid of the quiet. And don’t admonish me to pay attention to my own business as you drag yourself on stage screeching and dressing in ways that say, “LOOK AT ME!” The same goes for those of you sporting face tats and musculature that verges into the spectacle. You need and obviously desire attention and cannot dictate when your clown-ass has others gawking.
Away from Römer at Cafe Einstein with the throngs on the otherside of the threshold, I’m able to enjoy the moment with Jutta, sharing our experiences and a few photos from our vacation within a vacation. We spent a couple of hours at lunch and then another couple here chatting over coffee and sweets, which is not known as fika here in Germany.
The plaque here at Römer reads:
On this site, on 10 May 1933, national socialist students burned the books of authors, scientists, publicists, and philosophers.
The outer ring reads:
That was only a prelude. Wherever they burn books, in the end, will also burn human beings. 1820 Heinrich Heine
The sign says Construction Site Entry and I believe you should heed this as an admonition pertaining to your life; you are under construction and need to recognize that the work upon yourself is a never-ending project.
Over the course of the last weeks in Scandinavia, embedded among the more than 67,000 words I’ve penned were near-daily laments of the behaviors of those I could only wish were not on vacation at the same time we were. If I were as smart as I’d like to aspire to you, I should have encapsulated it all into this succinct poster we saw towards the end of the day, “You are not a tourist. You are an ambassador.” Come to think about it, doesn’t this apply to the very person we’d like others to perceive?