Dreams, Moments, Travels
It’s Halloween, and this is Caroline Wise, who was born in Frankfurt, which makes her a Frankfurter, wearing the costume of a Frankfurter, a.k.a. hot dog. But because we were recently in Norway, where she fell in love with Norwegian Frankfurters, her costume is that of a Pølse.
[You forgot to mention that I won first place in the office costume contest! Caroline]
Two weeks since we left Europe, and not an evening has gone by yet where Caroline and I haven’t been retracing or reinterpreting our vacation in Scandinavia through dreams. Sometimes, our travels while sleeping are strange tasks that require working through labyrinths of peculiar constructs taken from fragments of something our minds have assigned to a hybridized version of a place. Still, there’s no mistaking that they are created from elements of Denmark, Sweden, Norway, or a combination of all three.
On one hand, it’s great that our brains are still processing our trip of a million impressions but at other times, the nocturnal chores being performed in our skulls become disruptive of finding a relaxing sleep. I feel that we are likely contributing to these repetitions of experiences and creating new ones because, after two weeks of being home, I’m working on the 6th day of our trip at this point, with 22 more days still to go. The idea that I will likely have another month and a half of writing and processing photos ahead of me means that Caroline and I will continue to be immersed in our memories of Scandinavia and enrich our dreams with the intensity of processing the experiences during our waking hours.
Two more weeks later, in the middle of October and a full month after our return, our dreams are still dwelling in Sweden. Repetitive pattern matching with maps and objects from Stockholm accompany my sleep just as waking thoughts of our travels guide my blog posts. I wonder if our dreams will shift to Norway in the next couple of days as I start documenting our time in Oslo and beyond.
Sixty days of writing about a nearly 30-day trip had the effect of keeping the two of us deeply immersed in the details of our lengthy vacation on an almost constant basis. Subsequently, we took it all to sleep. Waking over these months was to fragments of travels I believe we both hope are the work of cementing the beautiful moments we shared into our experiential memory in order to never forget another perfect vacation.
As for the photo, nothing says dreams like thoughts of Norwegian hot dogs, a.k.a. Pølser.
From out of the shadows of writing non-stop about our extended vacation to Europe this summer, I took a minute to step outside for this partial eclipse of the sun. I was able to use a corner of an old CD to focus on the sun in order to capture this image, and while the thousands of crescents cast upon the ground by the light that fell through the trees, it was this photo that made the grade for sharing.
Regarding the gap that exists between returning to the U.S. and this post of the eclipse: following our return, I have been working non-stop capturing the details of our extensive and immersive vacation. My life exists between a coffee shop and making meals at home; there is nothing else but my singular focus to wrap what would end up being more than 84,000 words to about 1,000 photos to hopefully best exemplify our adventure.
Bags are packed, time is short, and before we know it, we’ll be moving through the airport to take our seats for the long flight home. As I finally get around to writing this post on November 13, 2023, I have ten pages of handwritten notes to transcribe, meaning that for a post with so few photos, there will be a lot to say without me needing to add anything “from the hip.” And there’s a good reason for that: with nearly 11 hours of flight time and my intense desire to stay awake, not watch movies, and use the time to start digesting the previous month, I tried keeping my pen in touch with my notebook for the duration in the air. This was important because after we got home, we had one day to recover before hitting the treadmill, with Caroline returning to work and me starting to document our very lengthy excursion into discovery. So, without further ado, we’ll get right to the notebook, and I’ll hope my first words don’t emanate from a place where they would be better suited to be flushed into the object in the next photo.
We’re on the plane, but my heart and brain are trying to stay in Europe. Instead, I must face my inevitable return to Botox, yoga pants, military haircuts, guns, fanaticism, and monosyllabic vocabularies. Not even an hour up here and half the flight is already asleep.
Two hours in, and lunch is finished. [Notice that this is the two-hour mark, and I’d only written three sentences: sad.]
Our trip to Europe is on one hand over, but on the other, it is awaiting transformation in the days to come as I’ll be working to take it out of our impressions to share on my blog in as best a presentation as I can bring forth. The minor inconvenience of flying nearly a dozen hours each way seems a trifling cost considering that we were able to go so far and gather so much. Except, this foray produced a lot of material that must now be ruminated on. I’ll likely be spending the next month regurgitating our adventure while I’d like to get busy on my next project. [It turned out that I required two months to get to this point where our trip was about to be put behind us.]
While I love many of the blog posts I’ve written, there’s a nagging thought that I’ve said what I can about our travels and need to rise to a new challenge. But while I entertain this horrid idea that I’m feeling stranded on the Island of Nothing to Say, maybe this is a proper indicator that I need to take a break from leaving these messages for random people. I have, after all, absolutely neglected my synth for over a year because between, I felt I had more important things to tend to.
What is there in the meaning of our experiences? Not just the aesthetic, historical, or entertaining aspects of the palette of stuff we consumed but the possible personal legacy, the process so far, and what we’ll offer ourselves aside from the silly recognition that we were somehow occupied doing anything of particular note that should be captured for posterity? I must write about this journey into Scandinavia and visiting friends and family in Germany because I know all too well the ultimate value of these spilled words can only be known at a time that’s not yet arrived.
Now, four hours into this leg of our adventure, the vast majority of passengers are asleep at the time they would otherwise be eating dinner, having a drink, and enjoying the company of others. It is Saturday night, after all, and these travelers are likely well adjusted to the time zone we have left, but instead of occupying themselves, they’ve shown who they are and bailed on being present. Those not lost in slumber by and large watch videos, but in any case, the majority of people have decided to kill time. I instead subscribe to the school of Why kill time when you can kill yourself? [Thank Cabaret Voltaire for this last reference, which can happen while listening to music as I write.]
This has me asking the question, what do these sleepers do while traveling in Europe? Is their sightseeing and investigations akin to a visit to a kind of Ikea? Realizing I am presumptuous, I should ask myself if I experience anything in any different manner. I might try to answer this, but my first thought is that I’m a pompous ass for expecting more from others who might in some way benefit my desires and enable me to indulge my hostility to malign those who I find to be inane. I should consider showing gratitude for the hundreds onboard right now who feed me the fodder I dull my writing axe with, as certainly there are more important subjects to write of than this constant refrain of indignation. Then again, when I’m attending a musical performance, I’m among others appreciating what’s being created and are attentive to the experience, but right now, I feel like I’m in a can of dolts.
I make this denigrating assumption based on the demographic information the airlines must have about their passengers because the flight attendants have asked everyone to close their window shades to mimic an early nightfall. This gets people to go to sleep or watch their little screens to get sucked in by the dumbest fare that could only appeal to the lowest common denominator of sub-intelligent people that somehow are also able to afford international travel. Otherwise, why would they create this atmosphere?
It’s intensely bright outside with a uniform white blanket of clouds layered over the ocean below and a solid blue sky above here at 38,000 feet of elevation. Within this jet, from my observations here in the economy section, there are no conversations reliving experiences; not a single other person is journaling. Maybe in business class, people are writing, working, sorting travel photos, or reading books, but sitting in row 27 here amongst my fellow peasants, there’s only this woman next to me knitting and then a large void. This method of ignoring one’s self by turning to sleep outside of normal sleeping routines or lazily tuning in to watch whatever shite they have streaming to their seat is an admission of their boredom and inability to be with themselves when they are responsible for the content.
It’s easy to have been in Rome, Berlin, or Stockholm and take in the sights; it’s quite the other to try to contextualize experiences beyond the guttural utterance of wow and amazing. At this point in their travels, they’ve collected the trophies, they’ve bought the right souvenirs, and taken selfies that they used to put themselves on display in famous locations that gave them nothing more than bragging rights.
Let’s return to Ystad, Sweden, and the idea of why we went there and what we gained: We went in order to balance the obvious trophy visits to capital cities by investing in experiences that would bring us intimately into the surrounding environment allowing for a chance encounter with a local or a stop along the path to pick an apple, pet a horse, check out an old home, or negotiate a small shop for a random bite of mystery food. Once at a place such as Ales Stenar, we get to consider the logistics of how these rather large stones got here, what the shape of the layout meant to the people who grouped them here thousands of years ago, and did they require shaping the stones so there’d be a uniformity? Now, I have a choice to either read and believe the speculation of others to come up with answers or I could attempt my own translation of potential meaning, although that is rendered difficult in an age where everything can be explained. The disappearance of mystery is quickly erasing our ability to imagine.
We were at the edge of the sea without definitive signs or carvings on the stones to decipher what the structure could mean and so we were left with the opportunity to consider what they meant to us. Did we have any reference points in our knowledge that could offer hints regarding meaning? Once finished touching each stone, walking clockwise and counter-clockwise around the monument, and finally strolling along the edge of the cliff, we continued our ride into a place where we couldn’t express what it was we were searching for within ourselves. In Loderup, Sweden, we visited the Valleberga Church, looking at the names of those buried in its cemetery, stepping inside to smell the old church, live a moment in its history, and maybe find a runestone that was hinted as being nearby.
Further along, we considered the mill that once operated in a building next to a stream where the millworks appeared missing, with only the diverted water still running under the house. We must capture all of the impressions we can as there’s some likelihood that the people of these southern Sweden communities know little of these places around them because they are boring and consequently cannot share much about them. Most people, or at least many, would prefer to visit Stonehenge, Notre Dame, or the Vatican as these are the perceived feathers in the cap of experience. This situation is the same in Arizona, where, at times, it feels as though few have visited the Grand Canyon, though it is so near.
We were in the weeds, off the beaten path, feeling the sea air and sting of the bright sun. While we would still have famous historic sights ahead of us in the days to come, we were enchanted to be among the farms, watching cows being moved from pasture to barn and observing our solitary track alone in a corner of the countryside that only we would discover today.
Not beyond reproach, we too could fail to discover moments away from the bustle of capital city centers where quick consumption of cultural history is given easy access (often outside of context), but we make the extra effort to capture the little things. Treasure, art, and architectural wonders make for great photo souvenirs, allowing us to believe everything’s been seen, but there’s an untold story and unseen surroundings that glue things together. Do these experiences open a channel of curiosity that drives us into further study, or are we content with low-effort trophies?
Before and after visiting a city such as Prague, do we understand anything more about Bohemia, the role the Habsburgs played there, or the 30 Years War? Have we cracked open a book from Franz Kafka or known of the influence of Charles University, where Einstein taught and Tesla studied? How about learning that Rainer Maria Rilke was born and studied here? Of course, many don’t and won’t care because sports, MCU, cars, guns, and game trivia play exceedingly large roles in lives uninterested in feeding imaginations to dream and create for themselves.
I get it; just because one wants to go sightseeing in Egypt doesn’t imply they must become experts on the lives of pharaohs or the construction of pyramids. Maybe the person is satisfying a childhood dream they cultivated when wanting to live vicariously through the hero’s journey, and this pilgrimage becomes a moment of realization for reasons that might be lost to time. But isn’t this, then, an admission that our dreams haven’t matured and evolved with us as we move further into life? The very nature of our humanity encourages us to build upon our knowledge before and after experiencing stories and the novelty of being exposed to cultures that came before us and to which we could be making contributions. Instead, we eschew our continuing education, and, acting like adult children; we go through the motions, collect the selfie, and move on ultimately without direction or real purpose.
Why all this heavy axe grinding, John? I profoundly dislike our empty instant-gratification-consumption culture and desire more dialog, more music, more poetry, and more study of our world by the common person because it is the common person who also denies science, falls for conspiracies, and believes in magic thinking. I do not care a lick about their economic contribution when their intellectual failings threaten our security, lives, progress, and culture itself.
I’ve looked to philosophy, theology, history, psychology, and sociology in an attempt to understand at least a modicum of what inspires us humans. I visit more churches on average than the most devout as I seek an understanding of why we accept a mediocrity among us that seems to want to turn away from the arrow of enlightenment. By not demanding more of each other, we consent to our base archetypes propagating a generalized stupidity unseen by those who believe that their version of normal is the standard bearer. I, on the other hand believe I’m closer to a troglodyte than here I wish to be. I do not read Latin, I’m stupid when it comes to chemistry, I’ve not played with trigonometry in nearly 40 years, I paint like a four-year-old, and my sieve-like memory has seemingly forgotten 93% of everything I’ve ever taken in. In essence, I feel that I don’t know shit, and so I struggle to discover where the gaps exist while others delude themselves into believing they know all they will ever need to know.
But I do have a strong opinion that we should offer the skills of discovery to our children because adults, by and large, are a lost cause with ugly habits that exacerbate their propensity to dive into the deep end of their ignorance. Rote memorization and recital of trivia, movie lines, and obedience only act to dumb us down and harm our desire to know the world. All that remains are shadows of dreams that seem to be unfulfilled by mindless consumption, the parading of belligerence, and desultory travels. And all the while, unhappiness remains part and parcel of an unsatisfying existence that struggles to find meaning. I’m convinced that greater meaning was better understood when the heavy arm of the lord pulled the masses in and demanded their obedience to the Kingdom of God and Heaven.
We were five hours from Phoenix when the lights partially brightened to wake the herd that could be woken. Later, as we get home, I’ll feel further alienated from those whose lives are ground into the earth below our feet. The deep civility and ability to converse found in Scandinavian countries further illuminated the tragic landscape of the dark cave we are dwelling in called America. Almost 200 years ago, Alexis De Tocqueville saw the character that would define the spirit of the people of the United States. Today, the traits that should have evolved out of those humble beginnings have been vulgarized to the point of pushing the lemmings to the edge of the abyss. We are an angry horde bent on personal aggrandizement, having lost our collective way. We no longer forge exemplary people; we kill children for entertainment, ensure an adequate malaise for those suffering in a rotten existence of addiction, price people out of a minimal amount of shelter, offer a pitiful education that supports our hate and contempt, and then call it freedom.
As long as there’s a flag draped over it, we can pray and believe we’re doing God’s work for the betterment of society. We are a joke, but cannot see an iota of how sick the humor is due to our economic heft and incredible ability to market anything. We somehow make it all look good, and the world follows.
What the hell? With four hours to go, the lights were turned down again. This means that in less than two hours, at about 12:30 in the middle of the night, the crew will wake the cabin and serve us dinner. While I’m hungry, I fail to understand the enforced dark/light cycle, and considering that it’s midday across America, I feel like I should regulate the relationship to sleep myself. On the other hand, to have 300 people mostly asleep means less attention must be given to the passengers, which could be a tactic to reduce stress on the crew.
For this month of travel, I’ve not intentionally listened to music or read a book. I’ve checked the news while on the toilet and looked at but a few minutes of social media just before sleep. I’ve not intentionally used an American brand outside of my Verizon phone plan or Microsoft Windows when transferring photos. In a few hours, I’ll begin to fall into old routines unless I’m frustrated enough to try to avoid some of the old stomping grounds. There’s nobody I want to share the trip with as the impressions are not resolved yet, and I’d likely have a laundry list of places and recommendations to visit that most will never be able to explore.
It’s 11:00 p.m. in Europe; we almost certainly would have been sleeping by now, except the last two nights we were out with friends and family, which had us not seeing sleep until about midnight. While it will be 3:00 a.m. European time when we land, I’m hoping the busy hand of writing will keep me awake for the duration of the flight, allowing me to sleep better through Arizona’s Saturday night.
Sometime later, I ran out of stuff to write. Caroline has finally given in to taking a nap, and my momentum is fading. With the window shade open a couple of inches, I’m hoping that the light of day propels me. I’m reminded of one of my first encounters with a drill sergeant on day one of basic training in Kentucky on a very cold April morning in 1985 when he emerged from the shadows to see a bunch of young men shivering and barked at us, asking what we were doing. A collective voice of the group rose in the darkness of the early day, “It’s cold!” With rising ferocity in his voice, he roared at us, “Who gave you permission to be cold?” This had me laugh out loud and reconsider the idea of inherent laziness and the necessity for comfort, and so here I am asking myself, “Who gave me permission to be tired?”
Conditioning, pandering, exploitation, I’m just now figuring out how the airlines are programming the herd to follow their expectations of how the masses should fall into step. A passenger in the row in front of us has been on a Rocky movie marathon. I had noticed after boarding that the entertainment offerings featured both Avatar films, all the Harry Potter movies, and five of the Pirates of the Caribbean films, but I lost count of how many of the eight Rocky films were available. When I was younger, I wouldn’t have found this nefarious, but let’s look at what’s happening here: recognizing people’s propensity to binge-watch things, these people are returning to routines within minutes of ending a vacation by allowing their minds to go fallow. Following such immersive experiences with this stream of banality feels to me as if one is fertilizing their mind with the shit of the mundane, thus covering up what they just spent thousands to acquire.
Endurance: we are approaching a spot on the planet where we’ll be under three hours remaining in flight near the border between Canada and North Dakota. Going nowhere in your seat while being thrust over the earth at 550 mph doesn’t have the same compelling effect as dragging oneself over the street of discovery where so much is to be found. I struggle to latch onto moments where wakefulness remains within grasp. After 28 days of constant go, I will indulge for one day on Sunday when nothing will be demanded of our time, but on Monday, the next cycle of non-stop endurance will be re-embraced.
The desperation that I will fail to make the final 1,500 miles of our trip awake taunts me. I negotiate small milestones, telling myself that dinner will be served in less than an hour or that if I pay attention, maybe I’ll see something spectacular out of my tiny window. I should open the shade wide to have the flash of the harshly brilliant atmosphere at 40,000 feet better communicate with my pineal gland, shocking the melatonin to stay in submission until later.
At least the blank page had lines on it for the time I was staring at it while my brain didn’t even have that. Noise is coming from the galley, but the lights remain off. We land in two hours and twenty minutes, yet most passengers are still asleep. We left Germany at 3:00 in the afternoon on Saturday, and here we are at about 3:00 in the afternoon on Saturday, except we are 5,000 miles from where we began and just under 1,000 miles from touching down. Our adventure of endurance and exploration that touched all of our senses, never allowing us to catch up with how far we were going is getting ever closer to ending.
To be relentless and able to embrace/tap our enthusiasm, heading directly into constant stimulation, is a reassurance that we are still alive in ways that are appreciated and never taken for granted by these people still seated in the 27th row.
Another hour has passed, and I’m done, but the flight isn’t. Once landed, we’ll likely wait for what will feel like an eternity or 20 minutes before getting our two checked bags from the carousel, followed by stepping into what will likely be over 100 degrees (38 Celsius) of desert heat. We’ll grab a taxi and 30 minutes later arrive at home to begin the post-vacation quick unpacking, start laundry, turn down the air-conditioning, consider shopping, or just drop down in front of our computers to start catching up with all the dumb shit we’ve missed out on.
Caroline had this nutty idea that I should collage the first five photos of this post into a single shot. Is she crazy or what? We are quickly approaching the final 24 hours of our time in Europe this year, and while we’ll be eating Brötchen for breakfast tomorrow, too, I can’t know if I’ll have time to spare to lovingly photograph the final German rolls of our trip.
While at Café Dillenburg fetching breakfast, we put in an order for tomorrow’s Brötchen, some of which will be traveling home with us. Why hadn’t we thought of this on previous visits? Once home, we’ll toss them into the freezer and likely forget about them until they are freezer-burned, but no matter because they are echte Deutsche Brötchen (real German rolls), and if you don’t know what that can mean, you haven’t indulged yourself and learned how to appreciate something that is like nowhere else.
Pictured are the five types of Brötchen we are taking home, two of each. Sadly, I can’t now tell you what each is anymore, but I do know we have a mix of potato, carrot, rye, spelt, and whole-grain rolls. The choices were based on a sampling of the no fewer than a dozen types they carry at Café Dillenburg (formerly known as Brot & Freunde). While there are only twelve or so varieties on weekdays, the weekends can see as many as nineteen on offer.
Okay, I’ve got this one; it is a potato Brötchen with sesame and poppy seeds. Guide for eating my favorite rolls: cut in half and then slice width-wise, creating four equal quarters. Slather a heart-stopping amount of butter on a quarter; don’t pay attention to the German example where you can hardly tell they’ve smeared anything on the bread. Then, using a separate spoon, take the perfect amount of homemade vanilla-apricot jam (it’s important to stay away from all other jams) and be judicious as you don’t want to put the entire jar on a single quarter, else you might have to turn to a plum, rhubarb, or orange marmalade that will ruin the Brötchen experience. Someone like Caroline would likely beg to differ, but she’s a noob compared to her gourmet husband, who seriously knows everything better than everyone else.
I know why Caroline suggested the collage; she could have never guessed that I could write so much about the beloved Brötchen, and even if I had run out of meaningful banter, having the full-size photo of each allows me to indulge in the fantasy of the Brötchen being right in front of me here in America where I’m absolutely deprived of real bread. Don’t try telling me that Dave’s Killer Bread is pretty good; else, I’ll present you with another gold floor decoration you can lick, as you are obviously gullible enough to believe anything.
Guten Morgen Frau Engelhardt! I followed along with Caroline and Stephanie to Lebenshaus before bringing Jutta over to Cafe Einstein for a mid-morning treat and to say goodbye because tomorrow, we really do fly away, even if you started thinking we were going to be here forever after so many blog posts from Europe. Mom and her two daughters will spend a bit more time over their coffees after I leave before they, too, will say their goodbyes. From here, Caroline and Stephanie will have a sisters’ day out in Mainz. Caroline might add another blog entry about their adventure in the future.
This old lady, closer to the end of her life than the beginning, is all about love. This idea was nearly lost on her as she drifted near the pit of relative unhappiness (abject acceptance) right up to the age of retirement. Sadly, my mother-in-law, in her first decades on earth, only knew a kind of sterile, cold, matter-of-fact type of love. Today, she enjoys laughter that comes from within instead of a superficial, perfunctory chuckle that fails the authenticity test.
We are keenly aware that each visit with Jutta could be the last, and I believe that Caroline, Jutta, and I are okay with that; Stephanie, I’m not so sure of. I’m fairly certain that my sister-in-law will experience profound loss at Jutta’s passing as something feels unresolved, but I’m not at ease to inquire as I think I’d risk opening an avenue of hurt.
And so we’ll share a hug and offer hope for another brief visit in the morning, but time is short in those brief hours before we fly and so my goodbye for another year or two has to be memorable as I take in her smile. I have to wonder how many goodbyes are shared between people after they’ve accepted the limited time remaining for one of them though that limitation effectively hovers over all of us?
Klaus wasn’t with us this morning as he had to attend a conference call for work. While the women had their own ideas, Klaus had made plans that had him and me meeting up at Hauptwache so we could catch a train to Bad Soden. From there, we’d board a bus over to Königstein im Taunus, not too far outside of Frankfurt.
We were heading into the mountains to experience the best currywurst known to humankind while the plain white Kaiserbrötchen should be considered a travesty to the German culinary experience and banned in Europe.
Just kidding, we are out for a hike on the 3 Burgenweg, which ideally would have been a 13.5 kilometers (8.4 miles) hike, but we dawdled. Phew, good to get that out of the way, but what would one expect when two guys armed with cameras hit the trail on a warm, blue-sky day? Klaus assured me that this is a well-marked trail due to the hiking club that maintains the signage. Well, that might have been an overstatement.
The evidence of suboptimal route marking is seen right here: Our hike was supposed to lead us right over to the Burgruine Königstein (Königstein Castle Ruin), which is the first part of the “3 Castles Trail” we are hiking today. We decided to forego that castle at this time and catch it at the end of the loop since we had no idea that we would leave the trail in Kronberg to make our dinner reservations at a favorite Portuguese restaurant of Klaus and Stephanie.
Okay then, off to Castle Falkenstein, which sounded a bit like Castle Frankenstein to me, though I already knew that Frankenstein is over near Darmstadt.
I tried my best to Photoshop the haze out of this three-image panorama, but this is as good as I got. I can’t say I’ve ever seen a clearer image of the city I called home for so many years from such a distance as today. Off to the right, we could see the planes taking off at the Frankfurt Airport while in the background, about 55 kilometers (35 miles) away, is what I believe to be the Odenwald mountain range.
And before we knew it, we were at the foot of Castle Falkenstein.
I think Klaus and I were both surprised that the ruins were open, and not only that…
…the tower was also open, offering us this view of the northeast corner of Königstein.
This is the most un-hospital-looking hospital I’ve ever seen.
Eat these and have a reason to visit the un-hospital-looking hospital.
Thanks, Klaus, for picking a perfect day and a perfect trail through the Taunus Mountains.
Maybe because it was only Friday afternoon and not the weekend, but we only encountered a few people, mostly on other trails that bisected our own.
This was a huge surprise seeing that nobody would fault one for thinking that all Jewish cemeteries in Germany were wiped off the face of the earth during the Nazi reign, but then you come across one and can only scratch your head and wonder, “How did this survive?”
Following Klaus, as he handles the guidance responsibilities, absolves me of anything more than being present. What an awesome gift on our last day in Germany. No thinking, just wandering.
This is Bürgelplatte, which appears to be all that remains of what might have been a small castle a long time ago.
It’s a shame that when I was in my 20s, I thought nightlife was the best life for me and that these places surrounding Frankfurt were for old people. Well, here I am now, an old person proving younger me right.
I wonder where this giant boulder came from. Is it a glacial erratic, or was it unearthed? I don’t believe it fell off a formerly high cliff landing here before erosion wore away the mountain. I tried learning something about it, but while others have photographed it, I can find no explanation for the mystery boulder.
We’ve reached Kronberg Castle, which is closing in just a few minutes. No matter, as we need a bite to eat and something to drink before catching a train back to Frankfurt to join Caroline and Stephanie for dinner.
In the mid-1980s, after arriving in Germany with the U.S. Army, I spent my first six months wandering the Rhein-Main area of Hessen and went to countless villages via anonymous train stops that I kept no record of. I have no recollection if I’ve ever visited the castle herein Kronberg but I want to return with Caroline now that I’ve stopped here.
These are the Drei Ritter (Three Knights) at Friedrich Ebert Straße in Kronberg. The characters above represent debauchery, and the words below translate to, “Your advice is far too late.”
This is St. Johann Church, and it’s Protestant, so I can just forget about entering on a Friday.
Gasthaus Adler has a menu that talks to me, it even screams at me to return for its Austrian-influenced eats.
How I managed to snag this photo from a moving train will always be a surprise, as they so rarely work out. Klaus and I were on our way to Tasquinha da Jacinta to sample some Portuguese cooking at one of Klaus and Stephanie’s favorite restaurants in the Frankfurt area. Sorry, there are no photos of us or our meals but it was so nice to relax and do nothing that I took advantage of the moment to just hang out. Dinner was great, though you’ll wait a good long time for service since the place is popular, packed, and only open Friday, Saturday, and Sunday.
Passing through the Ginnheim tram stop, look closely; this is a self-portrait.
If only the day were over! We need to knock out the majority of our packing so we can avoid as much stress in the morning as possible. Talk about using every single moment of vacation to remain busier than we ever are at home: this was quite the endurance test. For all intents and purposes, vacation is over.
This is the first comment that rose to a level that demanded I convert it into a post. On this day, when Claudia and Caroline were hanging out, I was able to selfishly slip away for writing and ice cream. I was hoping that Caroline was going to post a little something about her and Claudia’s time together, but it has turned out that Claudia beat Caroline to the punch by leaving a very sweet comment in German on my entry. I asked my wife for a translation so I could post it here because it doesn’t belong unseen below a blog entry:
It was a magical day – almost as if time had stopped breathing for a moment. The sun was shining and it was somehow unreal to actually see each other when we usually just chat. I would like to add a few more memories from my perspective.
The day before, I was panicking because I had wanted to come by car. It’s a good thing that I came by train after all. I was so happy to meet Caroline and finally get to know John in person (who had initially planned to just say hello and then bow out politely). Naturally, he was immediately “arrested” and had to have coffee with us, followed by lunch at an Italian restaurant. How thoughtful of John to swap seats with me because my spot was a bit drafty. We spoke both German and English, which worked very well.
After lunch, John sought some alone time, mindful of their imminent departure for America. So, after walking through the pedestrian zone looking for a pleasant spot, Caroline and I ended up heading to the same elegant café where we had enjoyed our coffee outside earlier that morning. Since, as we all know, calories don’t count when traveling, we grasped the moment and, without hesitation, indulged in the tastiest ice cream sundaes with hot raspberries and cream. I conceded halfway through – which is not my usual style – Caroline held out a little longer…
Unfortunately, time passed far too quickly, and so we rushed to the train station, where my train was already waiting.
One last hug, and then another, and another…. three, four? … while we nervously awaited the impending call for the train’s departure. Then, impermanence struck, and the doors closed. Like a dream.
— Claudia
Good morning to the dawn, and hello to the light of day. Thank you for welcoming us into another waking moment where we can consider how we might use our time to wander into the most amazing lives we’ll ever know.
And here comes the sun to shine on Café Dillenburg where we are fetching our daily bread and entertaining the idea that we could bring some of their Brötchen home with us, and I’m not only talking about this home away from home at Haus Engelhardt. With our morning meal bagged up, we raced back to Blauwiesenweg, where the butter and all variety of jams will join a pot of coffee for the greatest breakfast ever experienced. Unless you know the real pleasures of echtes Deutsches Brot, you cannot relate to my endorsement of this fascination and luxury to be had when munching on fresh Brötchen with homemade jams.
No time to spare as we have things to do and people to see. The vacation within the vacation continues, while the vacation from vacation(s) will have to wait until Saturday night after we land and all of Sunday before Caroline steps back into work and I get busy trying to knock out a bunch of blog posts. Having only about 36 hours of recuperation sounds dire and likely difficult considering our age, but that’ll be nothing a lot of coffee can’t conquer.
Who schedules these itineraries? It’s already 9:45 as we near the corner where Lebenshaus sits across from the Main River; our first date of the day is expecting us any minute.
Guten Morgen, Frau Engelhardt. Hello, Mr. Wise. With the formalities out of the way and Jutta finished with her breakfast, we offer the briefest of visits as we are meeting someone at the Hauptbahnhof in less than an hour, but we’ll be back later.
Yo dude, how’s God?
Check the background; God is everywhere.
I wonder, too, about how many times I’ve shared a photo from right here at Römer, but today, I’m trying something new; later, I’ll share another photo of Römerberg but from a different angle.
While this might look like a decoration in the floor of something or other, it’s actually a 1000-year-old rod of gold that was buried by a Valkyrie and is said to provide eternal life to all those who lick it to taste the flavor of Valhalla that it connects to. I swear.
Seems I might have misread this sign in the past. A dozen years ago, Caroline and I were visiting the Montreal Basilica, and I thought this sign (displayed without the Psst message) was a signal to parents that it was okay for children to pick their noses, but seeing the sign like this changes the meaning significantly. I thought about correcting that old post, but I’ve decided to leave it as proof that for once in my 60 years, I’m owning one of my mistakes.
It was just a year ago that this mystery woman on the left (I already know the one on the right) was this elusive figure from the Cologne, Germany, area the world had never seen. Today, I’m unmasking her: she is Claudia, the Brünnhilde of fiber arts, kumihimo, and tablet weaving, to be exact. Last year, Caroline traveled north to see her in person for the first time; today, Claudia traveled south so these two could meet again. How they have anything to discuss is beyond me as they chat on a near-daily basis, making the most of the time between Caroline going to sleep and Claudia’s waking to punctuate some rare time Claudia seems to find between performing her super-human; I think Nietzsche called it “Ubermenschian,” feats of fiber knowledge distillery that could only have emerged from mythology.
I think jealousy is in order here because consider this: Caroline loves me and makes me socks. Claudia has knitted a pair of socks for Caroline that she’s modeling right here, and while blurred, I think it’s obvious that Claudia is looking lovingly at this “wedding banded sock” pattern that I think the women were hoping I wouldn’t notice.
After allowing Claudia to buy us lunch because who doesn’t need a free meal after what we just spent in Scandinavia, I stormed off in a jealous huff of rage to drown my sorrows.
At first, I considered throwing myself on the subway tracks, but this poster looking for leads of a corpse found in the Spandau forest back in 1988 kind of depressed me. Those haunting, hollow eyes made me realize that death wasn’t an option for me. But ice cream was.
The race against time unwinding is on with only 48 hours left before we step out of Europe to return home to the U.S. I’d opened a small window of two hours where I’d attempt to plumb some inspiration to write, but the limitation feels harrowing as my inclination is to shove the intensity of the previous month onto the page in as many words that I can wring out of my hand. I didn’t anticipate that the location I’d chosen to find my wit would be as busy as I found it, but it was a beautiful late summer day at the most popular ice cream shop in Frankfurt. I should have moved to a coffee shop, but minutes are precious when the clock cannot be paused.
Life is like this bowl of ice cream, refreshing and sweet, but it’s melting and will go away. I have a choice not to finish every drop and allow the remainder to be carried off, but who would allow a second or a drop to not be savored?
For 34 years, I’ve been returning to this corner at Wielandstrasse and Eckenheimer Landstrasse in Frankfurt’s north end. I lived nearby for six years and took everything other than my relationship with Caroline for granted as it was all just normal life of no special importance. Only in retrospect have I gained the perspective that the years of our 20s contribute greatly to our romantic notions and nostalgia for the world we were exploring as it lingers into the years. We were defining and shaping the people who would enter the next decade excited or bored, satisfied or angry, challenged or defeated.
I see a couple of elderly ladies well into their 80s at an adjacent table while seemingly mirror images from their past; two young ladies about 21 years old are seated at the table on their other side. The young women have no idea yet that their future selves are already forming inside them and that what is so intensely important to them on this day will lose all importance before they know it. The rapid advancement and intrusion of technology and an ever-present media have torn the fabric between generations into irreparable shreds where the groups are nearly alien to each other. There is no regard for the elderly, who are bulldozed into giving up their bearings and made to feel incompetent, while youth have no time for studied reflection or even self-study before having to respond to the next wave of electronic stimulation.
When do we arrive at the place where we start to gather the knowledge that will best serve us? Are we collectively fooled into believing that the essentials are found in clothes, hair products, a favorite sports franchise, the band we currently love, or the subject blowing up on viral media? To be a composite of media contrivances is a cruel joke on the masses who feast upon anything other than the bitter questions of what it might mean to exist.
There’s no suggestion that any particular area of study is going to deliver a hint of enlightenment or happiness. Likewise, only the idiot would fall for what’s being fed to society. For the sake of transparency, I, too, have played the idiot, and to an extent and on occasion still do. But, I also have some inkling that I must struggle in the word soup of my mind and ask myself: is this good enough? Have I been wasting my precious attention?
The line at the ice cream shop snaked around the corner as a kind of proof that we gravitate towards the sweet, and rarely do we lineup for the bitter. Bitterness introduces a grimace and the consternation that we have to contextualize our experience to find the value; it is not readily apparent. Time for me to go for a walk.
Starting from Nordend, I walked until I reached the Alte Nikolaikirche (Old St. Nicholas Church) on Römerberg. I dipped inside to take a respite from the bustle of the busiest square in the city. There are four of us in the church, which is peculiar when one considers how frequently it’s photographed. Then again, who on a sunny Thursday afternoon is interested in communing with their soul? The house of God is cold and nearly empty, and I suppose rightfully so when cake & coffee or a beer under a warming sun invites indulgence. I wonder if Jesus stands in a corner wondering where his faithful are.
Turning from the Lord, whom I do not know, to my mother-in-law, whom I’m quite familiar with, I leave the church for the short walk to Lebenshaus but not before delivering that second promised photo from a different angle of Römerberg.
We must try our best to capture the increasingly rare moments of the few that still exist, with those who have had impactful impressions upon who we’ve become. The math of what remains with a person of 88 years of age under their hat is one of numbers growing smaller. While my mother-in-law had nothing to do with my upbringing or early life impressions, she did have those impacts on the woman with whom I fell head over heels in love, her daughter Caroline. Not only that though, Jutta spent many a vacation with us in the United States, and in every departing, I had to contend with how I saw myself and how I interacted with Caroline’s mother. Her initial visits tended to be marred by my lack of sympathy and understanding of aging people. I struggled with the intransigence of someone habituated to a routine incompatible with my own. Reconciling my belligerence helped me grow and understand where the roots of those poisons were planted and what fed them; if I’m lucky, lessons were pressed right into my heart, and today, I’m a better person for my time shared with this lady.
Shoot, earlier, I went on some made-up tirade about some tryst or something between Caroline and Claudia; yeah, well, I was joking, but I did go have a Spaghetti Eis because every time is a good time for a treat from Eis Christina. Sadly, upon our return to Phoenix, we learned that after 50 years in business, Eis Christina is calling it quits, at least at this location, as they left a hint they could open elsewhere in the future, but that remains uncertain.
What is certain is that Caroline still loves me and will still make socks for me and that she loves her mother. Rarely does a Sunday pass while we are in the States that these two don’t talk on the phone for at least a couple of hours, and while we are in Germany, we try to take every opportunity to say hi, take her out for a sweet, sit with her next to the river, have a coffee, and simply share time with her.
So much beauty, potential for happiness, and great moments can be found in a day, though this seems amplified by the fact that we are traveling and only in places momentarily. Stopping to think about it, isn’t that what we have at home, too? What is it about routine that throws a pall over the day? Could it be that while engaged in habit, we forget to look up and see what our reality is? Well, I think it’s that and something else, which is the attitude of those around us. If the outlook of those around us carries an intellectual pallor that is gloomy and full of dark storms, we risk getting pulled into their maelstrom. We can walk across the bridge with someone we love and with whom we enjoy smiling and delight at the opportunity to be taking in life, but we can also fail to see any hope due to depression and gravity that pulls those exposed to negativity and despair into the void.
I think of my own days walking through this city, unable to see the brilliance of the day, when everything was cast in shades of gray due to my dejection of not only feeling like an outsider in this foreign land but also because I felt like an outsider of the human race. That version of me, which wasn’t a daily thing but frequent enough that scars remain, is a person I’m happy to have left behind. Hardly a day goes by where I don’t wonder why society cultivates this type of harm against those who are vulnerable and what it is in the human character that desires to hurt those already in pain. While I’m an atheist, I still care for those who are poor, not only financially but poor of confidence and societal acceptance due to some perceived flaws that allow those of privilege to cast aspersions.
I’m not one considering an entry to the idea of heaven, but to too many of those who claim faith, how do you reconcile your blatant ignorance of the book that holds many lessons that are wholesome and good with the harm you inflict on the poor, hurt, and depressed people that are likely suffering due to your lack of concern to repair a society that rewards harm and aggression against those who cannot defend against your systems? Isn’t it your bible where the quote, It is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter into the kingdom of God, comes from?
Please don’t take this last quote that a rich man is only the person with a lot of money; it pertains to all of us who have a rich life even if we are not financially in the greatest of places. What do we give to others? What do we take away or deny? Are we only rowing forward for our own sake? I supposed I’m okay with that reality, but then let’s put the pretense of some Christian ideology behind us. Let’s do away with the lies and admit that we are selfish, petulant little assholes enjoying the greed bag of stuff we can claw away from others. You, who give back through sharing knowledge, care, art, music, medicine, teaching, and protecting others, are the best part of Team Humanity that society cultivates on the margin.
Today feels like a lesson in how to slice time into a hundred pieces. We started with breakfast at Haus Engelhardt, dipped in on Jutta, met up with a distant friend, ate ice cream, wrote, returned to Jutta, thought some more, and wrote, finishing the day with dinner in honor of our friends Olaf and Sylvia and their (by now young adult) children Johnny and Lucy. While this was possibly in recognition of Olaf’s upcoming birthday, I think it was more about friends getting together on one of the rare opportunities we are in proximity to each other’s orbit.
On our way, we stumbled past Dal Bianco Pizza on Darmstädter Landstrasse, which appears to be the long-lost place that I thought had the greatest garlic bread ever back when I lived in Sachsenhausen for some months around 1991, but that’s another story. I’m leaving this note here with the hopes that on a subsequent visit to Germany, we’ll remember that I left his breadcrumb. Closing out the night, Olaf introduced me to a couple of things he’s currently listening to; at the top of the list for me is the psychedelic band Wooden Shjips; he also encouraged me a listen to Little Simz, born to Nigerian parents in London, England. I find her real name, Simbiatu “Simbi” Abisola Abiola Ajikawo, far more interesting than Little Simz.