I swear, Caroline, I did not eat this rhubarb Danish! I only used it as a prop to show you one of your favorite treats here in Frankfurt at the end of spring and early summer. After I was done photographing it, I probably threw it to some pigeons. Yeah, that’s probably what I did.

Okay, the truth is that I woke shortly before 5:00 and couldn’t go back to sleep, so I got up and started hammering words into yesterday’s 2,800-word entry. Nearly starving by 6:30 due to my Herculean efforts, I dragged myself over to Eifler for a Vollkornbrötchen with meat and a meat sandwich that was being sold as “diabetic friendly.” And somehow, that Danish, which I don’t even like, fell into my bag. I SWEAR! That and I had a gluten-free, zero-calorie cup of black coffee in a recyclable paper cup made from recycled paper.

This is the last thing I saw before I was knocked unconscious by the malicious driver in this moving van. I mean, come on, laughing as he is about to hit me? Because I was in Germany, nobody stopped to help me, but as I did for breakfast, I was able to drag myself where I needed to go, this time to the hospital. I got free socialist health care, was slapped on the back and told to “have a good life, comrade,” and was on my way.

Okay, the truth is that this is Klaus, and I paid him to hit me so I could collect the insurance money because I’m broke, but after the police arrived, they called a Frankfurt city agency who reviewed the video footage of the intersection, and they told the police to arrest me because I was probably committing fraud. I took off running [right because this fat old guy can run], ok so maybe I took off walking briskly, but because the Frankfurt Police are government stooges paid by the ill-gotten gains of the communist state, they went back to their rhubarb Danishes and let me go. I SWEAR, this is exactly what happened.

Yesterday, I was speeding past Dortelweil, which I’d never heard of before, and today, it turns out that when Klaus pushed me out of the moving van, it just so happened to be at Dortelweilerstrasse. We had just finished delivering Jutta’s furniture to her assisted living facility when the police turned on their lights and siren behind us, and Klaus screamed, “They’ll never take me alive!” and pushed me out of the passenger side, hoping my heft might stop them.

Okay, the truth is that I didn’t have my seat belt on, and Klaus was already drunk at 8:30 this morning, took a corner too sharply, and I fell out. Just then, the cops confused me with someone who was scamming insurance companies and wanted to talk with me. Well, I don’t speak German, but I had the universal cop language translator with me in the form of a Rhabarberplunder (rhubarb Danish), and, like hypnotized zombies, they forgot all about me and so I quantum-teleported to Dortelweil where I was free to keep writing silly blog entries. I SWEAR!

I SWEAR it wasn’t me that started Slugs Against Slut-Shaming, but I did sit along a lush green pathway and wrote part of yesterday’s blog here.

Not a bonafide member of Slugs Against Slut-Shaming yet, as I’m still waiting for my badge, but when I get it, I’ll wear it proudly.

This was the very bench along the path where I sat writing and dreaming of the Rhabarberplunder Caroline can’t have while thinking about new strategic plans for S.A.S.S. because sluts need not be shamed unnecessarily.

You might question my state of mind after reading the above, but the fact is, I’m experiencing a second lazy Sunday here on Monday, and I don’t really know why. After Klaus, Stephanie, and I moved a bunch of Jutta’s stuff to her assisted living facility, I felt like enjoying the sunny day wandering around. Klaus returned the rental van to the intersection shown above, and then I chose a different direction to walk wherever. Little did I know that I was headed right for Günthersburgpark, which is more or less across the street from Saalburgstrasse, where Jutta once lived and where I’m currently staying.

I’ve been enjoying walking around like a goose, just going wherever I please until I have to turn to a map to figure out where I’ve been and where I need to go.

Through my wandering in the city, I’m trying to stay away from the trains as I can figure out where they go, and I’d like to continue walking into areas I’ve never been before. Hmm, I wonder where this train goes?

I’m at the Zoo again. Frankfurt is a strange city with all roads seemingly making circles around the center. Once I was here, like the other day, I knew my way to Konstablerwache and figured this might be the perfect opportunity to visit one of the hopping Turkish restaurants I passed on Saturday. So, that’s just what I did. Was it great? Nah, nothing had Grüne Sosse on it. Oh My God! I was just looking up the spelling of green in German; you know Grün? Well, I just learned that there’s a Grüne Sosse Denkmal, a.k.a. The Green Sauce Memorial. I believe I’ll be making a pilgrimage to this holy shrine of the Frankfurt Grüne Sosse.

In keeping with lazy and unfocused, while still trying to write yesterday’s blog post, I took up a table at Coffee Fellows between Alte Oper and Hauptwache for a coffee and a rhubarb Danish I needed to deny having, so I kept it off-camera. As for the ashtray, sure I smoke while visiting Germany and trim my mustache to a little thing under my nose and dye it black. Tomorrow I’m getting a haircut, a fade, because I don’t give a shit about FCK NZS. I SWEAR!

I have no idea how to sandwich something witty about this subway station between the previous paragraph and what comes next. I’ll think about it and maybe edit it in the future, but probably not.

I don’t know this guy, but I’m into the buttholes behind him.

Okay, the truth is that this is the artist Torsten Kühne at the Schirn Museum, which just reopened this past Friday after a year of being closed. The featured exhibit presents the works of Gilbert and George! We were just chatting to set up a meeting for the two of us over coffee on Thursday morning. I hope he doesn’t plan on showing me his butthole, but if he does, I’ll be sure to get a photo to prove that he did.

It took an entire week before I dipped into Olbia Pizzeria for a number 5 salami with mushroom pizza. I wanted to order rigatoni diavolo at the same time because my pizza is only 6.50 Euro so how filling can that be? But these pizzas were always satisfying when Caroline and I lived about 175 meters away around the corner. There are more than a dozen of us waiting outside for our pizza, with more walking up while others are leaving with their paper-wrapped dinner. I’d like to say this is the best pizza I’ve ever had but, to be honest, it’s at least the best in Germany I’ve had, and it seems that many in Frankfurt agree with this assessment as they’ve won many Best Of awards here at North End of Frankfurt.

Afterward, I’ll see if I can’t get another couple of miles of walking in to work off the indulgence I’m about to enjoy. Before taking off, I needed to share that for the first time ever; I’m sitting in Glauburgplatz, which is a little playground and park about a minute and a half from where we lived on Gluckstrasse over two decades ago. There’s a WWII bunker here that, like so many bunkers in Germany, proved too difficult and costly to tear down after the war, so they were left standing. They are built so heavy that they make great band rehearsal spaces, but this particular one I believe, is being torn down as housing is more important these days. Just before I left Arizona, we heard of a 500-kilo bomb that was found right next to the playground, buried under 6 feet of earth, and needed to be detonated. The mountains of sand they brought in to cover the explosion still sit in place.

I’m sitting in the park because Olbia doesn’t have outdoor seating, so no one can eat at Olbia. It turns out that quite a few of us pulled up one of the seven park benches or a stretch of wall to enjoy our dinners outside. What’s so normal to me after having lived in Germany for ten years is something that I hardly even notice anymore: most everyone here has an open bottle of alcohol with them. When customers walk up to the window at Olbia, a few of them are carrying open bottles of wine they sip from while waiting. How strange it is that this is perfectly legal here and in America, it would probably give rise to melees, which would have more people drawing guns in their drunken belligerence, but here, nobody is checking the IDs of anyone enjoying a beer or bottle of wine while chilling at a playground.

Walking around relatively aimlessly, there’s a lot to notice, smell, see, and listen to here in Frankfurt. Bikes, scooters, carts being pulled down sidewalks, tires rumbling over brick streets, birds, conversations of friends walking along, many women heading somewhere, sometimes in pairs and just as often by themselves. As I make my way through this environment, I can’t even consider running into someone I know, nor can I imagine starting up a spontaneous conversation. The language, more often than not, is only one more part of a soundscape that creates a bubble where I’m relatively alone in my thoughts and observations. Getting used to this again is not so easy as there’s this tie to my best friend in Phoenix, who is not here to share these extraordinary moments with me.

So, I am totally anonymous and somewhat unattached to the typical requirements that are put upon those who are making a living and working to accomplish some traditional task or challenge that is a normal part of life. I live outside of that normal, aloof, and able to observe to my heart’s content. The potential for nothing to intrude into my peaceful wanderings is certainly a luxury afforded to few. Like sitting in a church, I’m streetside waiting for the external to make itself known, and instead, I watch some silly teenagers flirt for a moment and just as quickly part ways as if it was just a chance encounter.

It’s after 10:00 p.m. here on a Monday night, and there’s no slowdown on this relatively quiet street. An Italian man riding a bike talking loudly to himself passed by just after half a dozen young women were heading somewhere. The sound of clinking glass, footsteps, and even the occasional drag of a cigarette can find its way to my ears. If I had to try to keep track of how many bikes pass by I’d guess it to be something around 10 per minute with an equal amount of scooters zipping over the street and sidewalks. Slavik, German, Italian, Spanish, and Turkish voices are heard, along with a host of accents behind those learning German that I can’t identify. Finally, a drunken German, barking loud, aggressive, heavily punctuated, cigarette-destroyed, non-sequential words that just bolt out of his mouth randomly, almost threateningly.

I’m not feeling like I’ve walked off much of my pizza yet as words don’t offer a sense of consuming many calories, but then again, what’s driving the fingers and brain to participate in the expenditure of energy in this attempt to say something that I believe I want to share with myself and my wife? Then it dawns on me, yes, I’m using the food I ate to assist in this process, but it is the motion of walking and the peristalsis that comes from that, which commands my bowels, kidneys, and other organs to perform more efficiently so that my spike in blood sugars might be kept in check. Time to keep walking.