This is the type of vacation day I like to claim we do not indulge in: we are moving along at a snail’s pace, but that’s just how it’s playing out. It’s after nine before boarding the train into town. There’s no walking to the city center today as we are trying to dedicate as much time as possible for Caroline to visit with her mom, and considering how late it is before we are underway, it’s best we take the quickest way possible.
We could have gotten closer to the Bergerstrasse area, but we’d not had anything to eat yet, and I spotted a place that was highly recommended in North End, our old neighborhood. The Frühstück at Glauburg Cafe was worth the acclaim this former Konditorei (pastry cafe) has gotten, although it is a bit on the pricey side. From here, it’s only about a 10-15 minute walk to Jutta’s.
A skirt in a shop window at a second-hand store caught both of our eyes and while Caroline at first asked why I was going in, she was soon walking out with the skirt you see here.
At Jutta’s, I said a quick hello and explained my need to go write, just a clever excuse to give Caroline and her mom the time to talk German without Caroline having to explain more than half of what they were talking about. The first cafe I stopped at surprised me with two things: free wifi, and they are open 24 hours a day; nothing is open 24 hours a day in Germany. So, did I set up shop? Nope, the joint also features all of the stale cigarette smoke you might or might not want.
Around the corner, at Saalburg and Bergerstrasse, I’m sitting at the Eifler Bakery, which claims to have free wifi, but I can’t get a connection to the internet, so I have to use my hotspot. I’m sitting outside, so I’m in the de facto smoking section, and with a guy behind me taking heavy drags on his cigarette and the guy in front of me with his pipe. I have plenty of smoke to enjoy; at least it’s not stale smoke mixed with sour beer that I walked into at the other place. Then there are the sex shops I’ve eschewed on this visit, well, those and the whore houses, but it’s the smell of the sex shops that hold special memories in my olfactory. I’ll leave that for another day, but knowing my ability to overshare, there’s a chance I wrote about those experiences in a previous entry years ago.
Meet Horst, who’s not altogether happy with the sad state of intellectual affairs. He’s seen enough history to know doom when he sees it repeating itself. Okay, so this is not really Horst. I have no idea who he is, nor do I care. While I was sitting outside this cafe watching others in their routines, I found myself inspired to start writing what appears to be fiction, which is a writing style I’ve not really indulged in yet.
Meet Heinz, the postman. His full name is Karl-Heinz Fischbach, and well, that’s not really who he is either, but for the sake of my nascent storytelling, he will suffice to help me flesh out one of the character ideas I’m considering.
After a couple of hours and 1800 words written, of which I’m not ready to share much more than I have already, Caroline swung around the corner, nearly missing me before we took off for a walk while Jutta napped. The picture is a humorous reminder for her of the sign that says, “Cornflakes are God’s apology for spinach.”
Some shopping and just hanging out for a while is all we did. There’s really nothing else to share about the uneventful time we spent here on Bergerstrasse.
With Jutta awake again, it was time to take a stroll in Gunthersburg Park, which is effectively across the street from Jutta’s apartment. While it’s not sunny out, it appears that the rain is finished. Caroline and her mom shuffle along, talking about stuff in their mother tongue, while I’m along for snapping the occasional photo of the two of them and generally looking for things that will stick in my memory to spur some thought or other for writing. Maybe all I’ll take from the walk are further ruminations about foggy things that reside in the back of my head, with nothing much at all moving to the forefront.
What do you easily remember seeing when you are traveling? The big significant things that you could easily find by searching the internet for nothing more than the city name of the place you visited would likely turn up most of what you saw. With that in mind, I try to make an effort to photograph those little things that are easily forgotten or unseen as incidental extras. I look at a lot of graffiti and stickers, and if my blog were about those two subjects, I’d be able to share hundreds of impressions instead of relying on a couple of dozen images while trying to find hundreds of verbal impressions to accompany the photos.
A statue of a naked woman lying in a supine position might be the last image I’d expect to find in a children’s park, but that’s what’s here, and she wasn’t the only one. While I’ve been on the hunt for a “giftzwerg” or poison dwarf to send to a guy in the Seattle area who, if he could obtain an image of one or, better yet, somebody would offer him a hand-carved fetish of one, I think I can talk on his behalf that he’d pay a good price to obtain an authentic poison dwarf fetish, maybe even a totem if that’s all that’s currently available.
My dwarves, on the other hand, are sweet.
While it’s not rainy, it feels far from sunny, and though the sun attempts to show its face from time to time and there are occasional glimmers of golden light, it remains gray and cloudy in the city in which I had long ago grown accustomed to not seeing our nearby star on a regular basis. Just because it’s gray doesn’t mean things are not interesting to look at, though; this is my version of turning lemons into lemonade.
This is a bull, and there is no ambiguity about that fact as it is anatomically correct in every way, including something that resembles a butthole on its backside. My mother-in-law asked that I not share its balls or an intimate photo of its Schließmuskel.
Slow and difficult. This is the best description of my mother-in-law. She’s still sweet in her own way, but her days must be her own way regardless of the troubles she’s putting on her other daughter, who does the bulk of the heavy lifting regarding taking care of an aging old lady. I can’t say I blame Jutta for her belligerence as she’s made it to 84, and, well, if you make it over 80 I suppose you get a free pass to do things whatever way you want. Unfortunately, getting stuck in being lazy creates a poor situation for the person who is losing mobility, but it also causes hardship for the family, who must keep a close eye on the person who is at risk of malnutrition, wasting, and the potential to fall.
While Jutta was in senior care during Klaus and Stephanie’s vacation, and when Caroline can now offer some assistance in dealing with a few things her mom needs, it ends up being a gift to my in-laws that they have yet one more weekend off from the taxing obligation to help keep Jutta in her apartment and living as independently as possible.
This cat perched atop a wall was in the process of giving the proverbial zero fucks, or is that null ficks gegeben as the cat is German? Makes one wonder if German mice taste like sausage or like chicken as in America.
Cafe Wacker for coffee is a classic place to go as it’s an old-fashioned kind of place with dark woods, tiny tables, cramped quarters, and an abundance of originality and flavor that you are looking for. You are meant to dip in, get your caffeine on, and maybe enjoy a sweet or some cigarettes if you are here on a day with favorable weather conditions and are outside where smoking is allowed.
I really wanted the rhubarb crumble to be a slice of perfection, and while it was very good, as it wasn’t too sweet and it did have rhubarb, it wasn’t something that would be dreamed about on a return visit.
Off to Sachsenhausen for dinner. After bidding Jutta a good night, we had to cross the Main River on our way, and while this wasn’t a truly photogenic moment, it does show what the skyline looks like on an average day in Frankfurt. Once in this southern area of Frankfurt that has traditionally been a corner of merriment, we tried getting a table at Apfelwein-Wirtschaft Fichtekränzi, who couldn’t seat us, over at Ebbelwoi Unser who might be able to seat us at some point, and then over to Gaststätte Atschel to get our fix of German cooking that delivered some great Handkäse mit Musik along with some wild game sausage in lingonberry sauce for Caroline and Tafelspitz with green sauce for me. Walking back to Hauptwache, I just had to stop at the Hauptwache Cafe for some apple strudel with ice cream because it’s a seriously good one, not as amazing as the one we had at Café Landtmann in Vienna, Austria, but it’s a close second.