The clock reads 4:45 in the morning and we’ve already been awake 30 minutes now. While we went to sleep at midnight, Katharina arrived home after we had already gone to bed; how she’s awake right now is beyond me. And then I remember, “We, too, were young once and could just keep on going.”

When you live in the inner city of Frankfurt, this is an unknown site as the narrow streets and compact structure of the architecture don’t offer many panoramic views of the sky. Katharina’s idea to go out early to photograph the rising sun at daybreak was a perfect way for us to begin our last full day in the Frankfurt area.

And there it is, our sun. It’s almost a sad thought to think of how few times in my ten years living here that I saw this sight while in America, I’ve seen it hundreds of times. Back in the years, I was living here, we would often go to sleep well after the sun had already risen and nearly cursed it for waking the birds while we tried to get some sleep after an impossible night of hard partying. You might say that in those closing years of the ’80s into the mid-’90s, I was more interested in the artificial sunrise brought on by a kind of inebriation that lent itself to also witnessing a menagerie of fantastical life and mathematics brought to spatial illumination out of the dark recesses of a curious mind.

Smiling faces on an early Saturday morning shortly after sunrise must certainly be one of the better ways to start the day.

This is Katharina Engelhardt with her aunt, Caroline Elisabeth Wise. We first met this somewhat shy, seriously nerdy young lady just five years ago as she began her teen years. A couple of years ago when Caroline paid a visit to the Engelhardt’s to celebrate her mom’s 80th and her sister’s 50th birthdays, I wasn’t able to attend. This visit was in honor of our niece’s 18th birthday. At this point in her life, she has as much passion for horses as she seems to have always had; the matter of fact is that the family makes time, nearly if not every year, to take Katharina on a vacation that centers on horses just for her. She’s been picking up on crafting projects with the help of her mom, Stephanie, and photography from her dad, Klaus. Katharina has also taken a liking to judo, which is a passion of her father. This coming year, she’ll be making the choice about what to do regarding university; I’m guessing it will be something science-related. While she’s already been to America on a school-sponsored trip to New York, she’s yet to visit us out west, though I think that day will come somewhere in the not-too-distant future.

I thought I had the fortitude to just plow into the day after our photography outing, but NO WAY. Klaus, Katharina, Caroline, and I, in agreement that a half-hour nap would be helpful, all crashed for a couple of more hours of serious sleep. Awake for the second time, Klaus headed out for some shopping while Caroline and Stephanie were going to head out for some shopping, too. As for me, I wanted to catch up on some writing, so I opted to stay put until I learned that the girls were heading to Konstablerwache for the Saturday open-air market. I love this place, and missing one last visit would have been too much to endure, so along I went. Maybe you noticed I didn’t mention Katharina? She’s still out of commission and sleeping hard.

The mushroom man nearly tricked me into thinking he wasn’t here today because when we’d been here a couple of weeks ago with Angela, I’d seen his stand and, more importantly, his giant wok of simmering mushrooms, but we’d already been grazing and had no appetite when we’d caught sight of his stand. Not seeing him on a quick scan of the market, I’d already had some white asparagus from one vendor and a potato sausage from another on Stephanie’s recommendation. It was just after that I saw his food stand and ordered a bowl of mixed mushrooms cooked in an herb sauce. His mushroom concoction is a melody of everything you see in this photo. Seeing how I hate mushrooms, I walked over to the nearby McDonald’s and got a Big Mac. JUST KIDDING!

Converging back in Heddernheim, we collected Katharina and grabbed the next train to the Hauptbahnhof to get on an S-Bahn out to Höchst. Seeing that TGV train up on the schedule leaving in 3 minutes for Paris has me dreaming of another trip to Germany. It’s a 4-hour trip on a high-speed train across the German and French landscape and only about $110 round-trip for the journey. Come to think about it, we’ve never been to the Channel Tunnel either. Travel fever is in full effect.

We are in Höchst, which is a little village on the Main River. We have nothing really in mind more than a lazy day on the river, spending some time together. Okay, well, I have something in mind; I’m craving some soft-serve ice cream really badly.

The Engelhardt’s seem to know where we are going, Caroline and I are just going with the flow. Sometimes it’s great to not be the people in control and be able to find surprises in where we end up.

Walking along, taking in the sights, not in a rush to get anywhere.

This is my new love, abandoned steps. Sadly the last ones I found were two weeks ago in Como, Italy. Does anyone know of a guide to abandoned steps across Europe?

What time is it? It’s snack time on the Main. Hint: Main, as in the river we are sitting next to that rhymes with time!

We needed that energy refueling stop as our adventure was taking us over the river. This photo attests to the fact that we made it to the other side. How grueling is the crossing, you ask? Not as bad as I’d imagined, as the 1€ per person ferry made it safely across in only about five minutes. Any longer, and I was certain the sea monsters and piranha-infested waters of this Rhine River tributary would have been the end of us.

We walked around a bit over here and dreamed of one day bringing a bike on the train to this point on the Main River and riding it back to Frankfurt. Turns out that since we left, there has been quite a bit of work done on greenbelts and footpaths dedicated to traffic other than by speeding cars and trains.

We took up some refuge from the Sun and sat under a tree in the grass to watch and listen to the sounds of life, river, wind, rustling leaves, and the occasional bee out on a pollinating nectar collection journey.

While we sat in the grass, Katharina was riverside with one of the horses from her collection of hundreds of model horses. She’s become quite adept at capturing horses from her collection in settings that, at first glance, appear to be real horses in their natural environment. Maybe she’ll share a couple in the future, and I can make a blog post of some of my favorites.

This bridge crosses the Nidda River which is also the beginning of the Frankfurt Greenbelt that allows visitors to walk or ride their bikes on about 70 kilometers of paths through the region to and around Frankfurt. More information can be found at Frankfurt.de under the heading Greenbelt; there’s also a free map at the Tourism Office and a free app for your phone. The Frankfurt Greenbelt was crowned in 2014 as the “Most beautiful hiking trail in Germany.”

Thunder was being heard in the distance, so we started walking in the direction of the train station, but not before we made another pit stop for replenishment. My mint-ginger iced tea was great, but it was Caroline’s rhubarb soda that won the day for yummy.

Reaching the train stop just in time to take cover as the drops came down hard and huge. Still no soft serve.

While we had the chance for a nap earlier, I could feel the exhaustion of a vacation that had been lived large bearing down on me, and seeing I wasn’t getting any closer to finding a reviving cone of soft serve; I had to opt for the next best thing; coffee. Again, no paper cups for the landfill. Across Europe, we’ve noticed that straws and paper cups are not so quickly handed out. While we stopped for my coffee, we also had another mission on our way to our dinner reservation, but Stephanie had something else to tend to, so we agreed that we’d accompany Klaus and Katharina to look for some travel gifts that Katharina would offer her host on an upcoming trip that sees her leaving a day after we do.

With gifts in the bag, we took the train to a nearby stop for the walk to the Zur Golden Kron restaurant. Since the last time we ate here, the establishment has changed ownership and now features an Austrian-influenced menu.

Stephanie finally joins us and we are ready to start the indulgence of our evening meal.

Except that before the food can be delivered a torrential downpour inundated the place. For a while, we thought we might be able to hold out as the umbrellas over our table were effective in keeping us dry as others scurried away. That didn’t last long, as though it were testing us, the rain came down harder yet. We were brought umbrellas so we could dash for the dining room. While our meals were delayed as they were for everyone, as about 30 of us had to be resat, the food was exceptional, and we’d love to return for another meal at Zur Golden Kron.

It’s difficult to say goodnight to Frankfurt and even harder to say goodbye. There was a point early in our travel planning when Caroline asked why we don’t just spend two weeks in Frankfurt and I insisted that I wanted to go other places. I can’t really tell you if I’m in love with some kind of nostalgic ideal or if the city really is imbued with the qualities I want to believe it is. What I do know is that I feel at home here more than anywhere else I’ve ever been.

I’ve been back to Buffalo, New York, where I was born, a number of times, and while I enjoy my visits and tastes of Buffalo, it is a sad and depressing place in so many ways that are complicated by the issues of racism that are alive and well. While racism is endemic in almost all economically depressed locations in America, it is especially tragic in Buffalo as this historically important place was once one of America’s most important and successful cities.

On numerous occasions, I’ve returned to Los Angeles, where I spent my teenage years, and while I still love L.A. in so many ways, it will never be a city with a character or thought of as a destination because it is 1000 destinations with myriad characters. Southern California is truly a melting pot, but it is too big to ever feel like you’ve been there.

Arizona, where I currently live, is sterile with an extra heaping spoon of conformity thrown on top. Culture, entertainment, intellectual rigor, gourmet cuisine, bustling nightlife, none of those figures in the makeup of the greater Phoenix area. People will live there for a lifetime and never travel more than 30 miles from their homes. This is the 6th largest city in America, but it might as well be Anywhere 100 miles from Anything.

America is at a crossroads where the only thing it is able to celebrate is its love of sports and celebrity, along with its dislike of immigrants, government, and opinions that don’t fit their own. And that’s what I have to return to tomorrow. On the other hand, America is vast and is not fully baked. I do know we have the ability to change, just as the Germans who threw off the yoke of Nazism and modernized their society did over the last 70 years. America will have to throw off the yoke of Stupidity and modernize our education. Maybe this is why Trump and Putin are both so influential in their respective countries right now; they both have an aging, uniform, under-educated population that is too big to ignore and too set in their ways to adapt to the changes our modern economies have created.

Thanks to the Engelhardt’s, Frankfurt, and the rest of Europe for staying up late, keeping us entertained, learning, and smiling.