A dozen years ago, the novelty of landing in Frankfurt, Germany, my home for 10 years between late 1984 and early 1995, was such that I couldn’t resist trying to photograph every meter of the place, but by now, I’ve shared so much of the city, that it feels redundant to share any of it again. But here we are, having been picked up by my in-laws, indulging in a second breakfast of fresh Brötchen after dropping our bags at their home, and then grabbing a couple of train passes so we could travel between Heddernheim and the city center.

Don’t know if, on first glance, you can see the similarities between these two women, but this is Caroline’s mother. She’ll be turning 90 this July, and she’s one of the primary reasons for our return to Deutschland.

After picking her up at Lebenshaus St. Leonhard, where she’s been residing in assisted living for the past four years, we brought her over to Römerberg, the city hall area, for some lunch. Our usual haunt, Zum Standesamtchen, was a bit too noisy due to an event featuring live music and presentations regarding EU integration, so we opted for the nearby Frankfurter Wirtshaus, which claims to have been on this site since 1479. It being asparagus season, the white type of asparagus, that’s what the ladies opted for and what I should have had too, as my pork loin was meh. More memorable was my attempt to use their 546-year-old pissoir. The bouquet was wretched, easily eclipsing the stench of the much younger public toilet in Gamla Stan Stockholm which was a mere 121 years old when I suffered for the 22 seconds of my “visit”. No joke, it took a solid five minutes for the lingering stink to stop attacking my olfactory.

Following the obligatory relating of our flight details, our plans for subsequent visits and seeing Caroline’s father and godmother, and our extended visit to France in the coming week, we took Jutta back to Lebenshaus for her inevitable afternoon post-lunch nap. This 1,231-year-old city on the Main River is looking and feeling perfect today, a breezy 70 Fahrenheit (21 Celsius), it is a busy Saturday, which is to be expected when the weather has turned perfect after their typically long gray winter.

There’s so much to see in this super-familiar city, but we have only a few hours before our next date. Choosing where to go next is not an easy decision, as the inclination is to see it all.

In some funny way, to me anyway, these barriers are similar to the time limitations that are imposed on us visitors. First off, these temporary barriers have been placed at the periphery of the festivities at Römer because particular people with mental disorders have taken to using cars as weapons to plow down people, causing havoc to bring attention to their cause célèbre. While we’d like to run amok across the frontier of time to do all that we might please during our visit to Frankfurt, our self-imposed barriers dictate that we observe the limitations of curtailing many of our desires. Vacations are not infinite or free to do all that we please.

There were easily 25 people in the Birkenstock store off Hauptwache; it looked as though shoes were being given away for free. I’m pointing this out because of our astonishment that a retail outlet selling shoes should be so busy; this is no longer true in the United States. Our destination was the DM Store (Germany’s version of Walgreens), but our visit was short-lived as it was so crowded, we grew claustrophobic after not finding what Caroline was looking for in only a few minutes. We figured we’d try another visit on a weekday instead of a Saturday.

Adulting. At a public fountain in the middle of the hive of activity in the shopping area, who were the people who finished off more than two bottles of wine and a beer before abandoning the remainder? More importantly, to American readers, who is allowed to drink in public at fountains, on trains, or while pushing strollers? A photo depicting the last scenario will arrive at the end of our visit to Europe, where we watched a grandfather pushing his grandson around in a pram with an open bottle of beer in its cupholder. The only conceivable answer to such wild behavior is that while we Americans can strap a weapon to our belt to walk around gangster-style, Europeans have decided it’s okay for people to drink responsibly in public, even if they leave a nearly full bottle of wine for any strolling juvenile to nab on their way to a life of alcoholism; what irresponsibility, huh? Oh, wait, I almost forgot about the more than 2,200 gun deaths committed by children aged 1 to 18 in the U.S., where somehow, they’ve taken possession of firearms left in public. Good thing alcohol isn’t treated with such low regard, thus keeping our children safe from this abhorrent poison.

At Konstablerwache, the Saturday open-air market was breaking up, but not the open consumption of alcohol; people were standing around in public holding on to their beverages, without law enforcement nearby ready to crack heads and break up fights, maybe because that’s not typical of the dignified behavior of those indulging such freedoms.

Hare Krishnas and various Christian religious zealots reach out with music and proselytizing while vying with blatant consumerism as heavy crowds practice retail therapy in person, just like in the old days before the rise of the all-powerful internet. It’s almost like Germans are unaware that mass shooters and other perpetrators of violent crime are waiting in the shadows to prey on hapless victims. How, in this day and age, can people, oblivious to reality and online bargains, visit shops and stores, many of them not giant chains, to buy stuff when they could have saved time and money by shopping on their phones while driving home from work or picking up the kids? Then again, it is Saturday, which begs the question: Is there nothing on sports TV worth watching instead of risking skin cancer or pickpockets?

The fever to shop overwhelmed Caroline, requiring her to dip into a tea shop to stock up on some flavors that will bring her back to vacation, even if just in spirit, following our return to America. Back in Heddernheim, to our surprise, our niece Katharina was able to join our dinner party for a traditional Hessen meal at Speisekammer.

Some things don’t change, such as my starting my evening meal with Handkäse mit Musik, a farmer’s cheese with onions, cider vinegar, and caraway seeds served with a slice of rye bread. After indulging in this spectacular regional specialty, I remained in the territory of traditional eats and went with green sauce, schnitzel, and bratkartoffeln, while the rest of the table opted for a variation of one of the few Bärlauch (wild garlic) dishes. An aspect of this restaurant that really endears it to me is that, though we only show up every two years, they remember us from previous visits and welcome us back.

I’ll translate for you, the rainbow (LGBTQ) plushie’s sign reads, “Fuck Alternative For Deutschland.” AFD for those unaware of current German politics are effectively Fascist Dickheads. Their party leader is Alice Weidel, a woman who is in a relationship with a Sri Lankan woman, raising two children in Switzerland, but advocates for her party’s hate platform during her jaunts to Germany. Maybe the party should be known as WTF.

Life in Germany is basically perfect and has largely been so for the larger part of 80 years following World War II, back during the “Crush the Fascists” program. Today, like in so many other countries experiencing success, old people, afraid of losing their position of influence and lifestyle due to the influx of foreign workers, as these old people FAILED to make enough children to replace their society with native born citizens, now flail about in fear that something will be taken away from them while migrants are given for free what the oldies worked hard for their entire life. Not only did age encroach upon their bodies, but grand stupidity accompanied their moves to becoming seniors. So, like so many other countries populated by a plurality of idiots, they are empowering hate through locking down thoughts of change as though crippling their economies will be recipe to reestablish the dominant culture to their rightful place at the top of their throne. It would seem that economic and social success are formulas for decay by pushing intellectual rot into the otherwise better senses of those who’ve been driven to fear.