It’s colder today than yesterday so it’s a good thing I brought my handmade psychedelic wool beany and multi-color photographers gloves Caroline made me! With almost everyone else wearing the drab grays and blacks of a European winter, I’m walking around looking like Mr. Lollipop Head. I do believe I have made my fashion statement out here by the German stock market as I gleefully welcome the onset of spring – which is yet to arrive. From there, we light the way over to the Alte Oper, the old opera house. Only the shell remained after World War II, and while Caroline was growing up, she got to visit this historic opera house after renovations came to a conclusion. After its grand reopening, Caroline had the opportunity to perform in the Mozart Hall of the Opera while she was in the choir. Later, she watched Itzhak Perlman conduct, and, following that caught Madness, Ultravox, and a few others over the years.

From Alta Oper, we walked through Taunus Anlage, a large park in the downtown Frankfurt area, on our way to the Hauptbahnhof. As we strolled under the new highrises under construction, we came upon a sight neither of us thought we’d ever see again: the old-style telephone booth that used to dot the city.

While much of Frankfurt feels smaller to me today than it did two decades ago, the Hauptbahnhof, or main train station, seems much larger. Over 20 main tracks enter the main building; more are underground. This icon was built in 1888 and today serves about 350,000 people a day, making it the third busiest train station on Earth, behind two stations in Japan. While this place sees its share of junkies and homeless people, they are barely seen by most of the throngs of people who are pouring through here. Across the street is Kaiserstrasse and the red light district, but there are also many nice boutiques, restaurants, and even a Little India residing in a side passage.

As we reminisce and talk about Caroline’s job across the street, no, not in the red light district, she worked as a sales clerk at a computer store that focused on the Commodore line called GTI; we dipped into a rather large magazine shop, a really large magazine shop. What struck us the most was the rack that offered scientific magazines; they probably feature more scientific publications than the average American bookstore has, featuring magazines on guns, hunting, and muscle building combined! We’re talking serious geekdom on this shelf. We leave impressed, if not a little sad too, that typically, we only find two to five science publications on offer, and in U.S. airports, we are lucky if we see one.

Back down in the underground, we once again board the U5 for our short ride to the National Library stop on the line where we walk around the corner to the hospital. Between the cleaning of her room, physical therapy, and lunch, we didn’t have much time to visit before we headed out to get our own lunch and visit Jutta’s apartment to take care of a few things. On the way to Saalburgstrasse, we stopped at a small shop to share a Döner Kebab; think of it as a gyros sandwich to make it easy on yourself. Sadly, our reunification with this Turkish staple was only mediocre, we’ll have to find better.

Walking into Jutta’s apartment was like walking into a museum. Books from the late 1700s to drawings and sculptures from her two daughters when they were in grade school, to the artifacts and souvenirs she has collected on the many trips to the U.S. she has made since 1997 when we invited her over the first time for a short two week holiday that brought her up the coast of California and over to the Grand Canyon. Jutta’s life is on display in every corner, but it’s a bit sad and cold in here without her presence. We washed the dishes and straightened up what we could, as there were a few things left undone due to her fall. With things in order and our own fill of nostalgia starting to overwhelm us, it was time to get back on Burgerstrasse to catch another train for a return visit with Jutta.

After one more visit to see Jutta in the hospital and following her dinner, we are again at Konstablerwache before heading over to Hauptwache for the train ride back to Stephanie and Klaus’s. Instead of taking the train all the way through, we left the underground to walk up Zeil again. Good thing we did, as it gave us this perfect moment to grab a photo of two Frankfurters in one amazing photo while on our walk.