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.

Time to return our rental car this morning. The photo I’m sharing here is of three of the four vignettes we were required to purchase as we drove across a small corner of Europe. The top orange sticker is from Switzerland, below that is Slovenia, and at the bottom is the vignette from Austria. Hungary used an electronic version. Vignettes are a taxing system to gain permission to drive the roads of a specific country. The Swiss one was our most expensive at 40 Euros (about $48), and while it was good for a year, we only used it for half a dozen hours as we drove from Colmar, France, to Como, Italy.

My thoughts on the vignettes are that they are a good idea. Do I love the cost? Not really, but I understand the idea behind them. I’m already spending at least $25 a day for a rental car, plus about $8 a gallon for gas. I filled up in France and didn’t need gas again until we were halfway across Italy. Without the vignettes, I would have crossed through Switzerland using their roads for absolutely free. I used a winding mountain pass over the Alps and tunnels and pulled over on gravel shoulders a number of times, thus adding to the wear and tear that a Swiss citizen will have to repair and be compensated for. While it could be argued that this cost was exorbitant, I cannot agree; we ended up spending about $8 an hour to pass through the Alps or about what we’d pay to watch a blockbuster movie per hour. Thanks for the privilege, Switzerland, and for being smart about this. The truth is that we are already spending $200 – $300 a day just to be in Europe, so this is of little consequence in the scheme of things.

Frankfurt is in a massive building expansion with cranes dotting the landscape, just as we saw five years earlier during that visit. The area where these high-rise apartments are going up was an industrial area full of train tracks. Caroline had a job with a company there when I met her. Today, there is a luxury mall where we returned the rental car in their parking garage maze, a bunch of hotels, and blocks of new apartments that honestly are seriously visually unappealing.

Rather than catch a subway right away, we decided to walk to the Hauptbahnhof (main train station) to see what was in this neighborhood besides construction. The area is culturally diverse, and it shows up in the restaurant offerings from half a dozen countries, many from outside the European Union. While things are not gentrified yet, it seems that the writing is on the wall where improvements to one area spill into the adjoining area, and soon rents are going up, and some of the diversity is pushed further out along with some of the charm.

Reaching the Hauptbahnhof, we needed to get underground a couple of floors to wait for the U5 subway/tram that travels in the direction of Preungesheim. Our stop is the fifth one, where we exit at Glauburgstraße, our old neighborhood.

We’ll just go ahead and do this backward and start with a sweet. Of course, we had to visit Eis Christina on Eckenheimer Landstraße, our favorite place in the universe for “Spaghetti Ice.” This strange-sounding concoction is actually a dollop of fresh whipped cream in the bottom of the bowl topped with vanilla ice cream pressed through a device that pushes out what looks like spaghetti, which is then covered with strawberry sauce (looks a lot like tomato sauce, huh?) and finally, it’s topped with grated white chocolate for that authentic Parmesan cheese appearance.

Around the corner are Weberstraße and Neuhofstraße. About three car lengths north of the intersection is the first place Caroline and I ever kissed, and that’s where we are standing for this selfie. It was at 5:00 am on a Sunday morning, the 18th of June, 1989. In a moment, I was smitten with a Frankfurter in Frankfurt. Today, I am still fully taken by this beautifully cute, curious, empathetic woman who helped me refine my enjoyment of life and shared a million incredible experiences that have made our lives far better together.

Walking down Nostalgiastraße, the experience wouldn’t be complete without a stop at Olbia Pizzeria. We enjoyed takeout from this tiny neighborhood joint for years, often two or three times a week. Today as we were already half-full from the Spaghetti Ice, we split a pizza.

Today is Caroline’s and my day to do what we want in Frankfurt. From lunch in our old neighborhood, we walked towards Saalburgstraße to visit Jutta for one last time during this vacation. The importance of this particular sign is that it is from Rapp’s which is a local juice company from just north of Frankfurt. During the ten years I lived in Germany, I was in love with not only their orange juice but things like blood orange and passion fruit juice too. Looking up the company as I write this, I see that they now feature rhubarb juice; if only we’d known this earlier in our visit.

Caroline’s favorite “graffiti” in Frankfurt that we’ve passed many a time while visiting Jutta (Caroline’s mom).

On the left, as many of my readers already know, is my mother-in-law Jutta Engelhardt. On the right is Rita, who is one of her “caregivers” visitors who help ensure Jutta stays engaged and able to live on her own as long as possible. We heard that Rita has learned much of Caroline and me, along with Jutta’s ten trips to the United States. It was a pleasure meeting this outgoing and happy lady who is fond of sharing her time with people who can benefit from her smiling face.

After a couple of hours, it was time to bid adieu to Jutta, give this sweet old lady one more hug for the road and leave her with wishes that we should see her again in a couple of years.

Leaving Jutta is bittersweet and mixed with many emotions. We can never give her enough time on our visits, though we are very well aware that her precious time may be shorter than our own. This impulse to shove another lifetime of great memories into a brief moment while on vacation is futile, and yet we suffer from the guilt of having to walk away. Maybe because we are so far away and not able to visit spontaneously it makes our togetherness all the more important and meaningful.

From Jutta’s, we walk over to the Bergerstraße, grabbing a coffee along the way before boarding the U4 subway at Bornheim Mitte in the direction of Konstablerwache. Here and in more than a few of the subway tunnels, I’m amazed at the great selection of bread, fruits, vegetables, and other goods that are so conveniently available.

We could stay on the train and arrive quicker at our destination, but we are trying to milk every moment we can in taking in Frankfurt from all angles. This is Zeil, that runs from Konstablerwache just past Hauptwache, which is out in front of us somewhere.

Along the way down Zeil was a temporary fruit stand with a lady selling various berries. The ones I’m most interested in are these red currants. While we’ve indulged in our fair share of Sachertorte, apple strudel with vanilla sauce, vanilla ice cream with hot raspberries, and even a visit for some spaghetti ice, we’ve also made sure to eat anything and everything that comes paired with red currants. Maybe because of the tart flavor, red currants are not popular in the United States, or we don’t know where to look.

Walked over by what used to be one of my favorite English bookstores in Frankfurt; it’s now a Five Guys Burger joint. Around the corner from there, we saw that Cookies Nightclub is still in business. Back in the day, I saw Nitzer Ebb, Happy Mondays, and Steve Albini, among others, perform here. On one occasion while out on tour with Psychic TV, I ran into Caroline at around 3:00 in the morning here and met Angela for the first time. This was two months before Caroline and I would fall in love.

We are doing something very out of the ordinary today. Caroline is trying on new clothes with full consideration of potentially buying stuff. Caroline rarely shops for new clothes, opting instead to wear things for years or when need be shopping at discount and second-hand stores. Shopping at a fashionable brand boutique like Gudrun Sjödén, where we are, is exceptional. While this wasn’t one of the pieces she ultimately left with, I have to admit that I was pleasantly surprised that we had bagged up at least half a dozen things that got pushed into the buy column and out of the uncertainty of I’ll-think-about-it column that is the norm.

After having Chinese tourists use us as props, it was our turn to use them in the same way. Their enthusiasm is infectious, and I only wish they could break out of their group clustering more often and engage with others.

If you know Frankfurt, you know that we are crossing the Main River, and if we were just shopping near Hauptwache, then we must be heading towards Sachsenhausen. Believe it or not, we had quite the torrential downpour while we were in Gudrun Sjödén, but by the time Caroline had tried on more than 40 different items, that storm had come and gone. Good thing, too, as we do not have umbrellas with us.

Note: we brought our rain jackets from the States with us, and while they were great on the Colorado River in late fall, on the Alsek River in the Yukon in early summer, or on the Oregon Coast on cold rainy days, they were a horrible idea to bring to Europe on hot and humid days where we would have felt more like tightly wrapped sausages on a steaming table than would have been comfortable. We must bring umbrellas on our next visit.

Looking back at the way we came, you can see a fraction of the many locks attached to Eiserner Steg. The “Iron Bridge” was built for foot traffic back in 1911/12 and today is as important to the skyline of Frankfurt as any of the churches or high rises.

On our way down the world’s narrowest sidewalk to find the place we hope to have dinner at. Just kidding about the width of the sidewalk; we’ve been on narrower.

Dinner in Frankfurt is nothing without a glass of apfelwein (apple wine), known as “Ebbelwoi” in the Frankfurt dialect, unless you are like me and don’t drink alcohol, and then a bottle of sparkling water will do. We were lucky to show up at the right moment and get a spot at a table as within minutes of our arrival, the place was packed.

As I said, every spot is taken. Even under the tables, there are some well-behaved dogs down there.

Green sauce is one of the signature dishes of Frankfurt and you can bet that we started by sharing a Handkäs mit Musik before the main course. The tastes of Germany never get old, and I’ll miss these dishes when we go home. Tonight’s last meal of the day was at Fichtekränzi established in 1849. The word fichtekränzi is the wreath of plaited spruce branches that signaled apple wine is served here.

Beautiful graffiti rendition of Frankfurt!

I suppose it’s not just the Frankfurt skyline that I’m in love with, but maybe it’s also the idea of all that I understand that surrounds this city historically, culturally, and intellectually. While it is not the seat of political power, Frankfurt is the seat of economic power and is in a role I don’t think it’s aware of; I believe it also plays a large role in the image of who a German is. Thirty-three years ago, when I first stepped foot in the city, it was cold and efficient. Back then, it had just barely recovered from the devastation of World War II that had concluded 40 years prior. As Caroline was growing up, she still saw the scars on Frankfurt, where the war had ruined places that were not quite finished being rebuilt. Now, more than 70 years after the war, the Frankfurters are a different people. They are not so cold and grim. There is color and laughter. The place is more casual, and service is often offered with a smile. Being in this city today, while comparing it to what it was in 1985, we are still in a melting pot of cultures, except now it doesn’t feel polarized and bitter.

While this trip didn’t take us to a dozen German cities like our visit five years ago, there is a different vibe in Frankfurt than the more stodgy, stuck-in-the-past Karlsruhe that was one of the other German cities we visited on this trip. This city shook the music world and brought a new generation to the dance floor with an impact that had implications on a global scale. Tonight in Frankfurt am Main, the city will celebrate Night of Science at the University Campus on Riedberg from 10:00 p.m. until early Saturday morning, with people from across the region attending talks and sessions about various disciplines across the sciences. The train system will be running over the wee hours to accommodate those who want to participate with the benefit of public transportation.

Frankfurt is the birthplace of Goethe, Henri Nestlé, Anne Frank, Theodor Adorno, and even American entrepreneur Peter Thiel. The city also can brag about famous residents over the years and centuries who called this home, such as Charlemagne, Arthur Schopenhauer, Max Beckmann, Max Horkheimer, Oskar Schindler, and Jürgen Habermas. Frankfurt has a long history of cultural and intellectual importance from the time of the Holy Roman Empire up to pissing off Otto von Bismarck regarding Frankfurt’s “Democratic spirit and freedom of the press” and more recently with The Frankfurt School of Critical Theory making large impacts on Western thinking.

A smarter plan feels needed, one that would better organize human potential than the laissez-faire methods that have gained so much popularity. A new outlook on education, culture, business, and finance is in order, and I, for one, vote for Frankfurt to lead such an effort. Frankfurt should take inspiration from its diversity, curiosity, and long intellectual history and put it to some good.

Katharina had asked during the day if we’d be interested in waking up at 4:30 in the morning for a sunrise photography mission on a nearby overlook. Of course, we said yes. In order to try and get some sleep, we are leaving the inner city and heading back to Heddernheim.

Waiting for one of the subways that will take us to the Zeilweg stop, we check out the posters that tease us about some of the events going on in the region over the next month or so. Events include literary, opera, stage plays, festivals, concerts, history exhibits, art shows, and everything in between.

Our day of indulgently exploring Frankfurt together is nearly over. This is the view from the Zeilweg tram stop, where just ahead is the little turn-off between the bushes that leads us to the Engelhardt’s home. The sound of the trains pulling in and braking and then accelerating as they pull away will remain with us until we fall asleep. It is a welcome sound reminding us at midnight, when we finally head upstairs to get some sleep, that the people of Frankfurt are going home while others are going out as Germany moves forward on trying to be a positive catalyst for societal change instead of blundering ahead as a bulwark of blind adherents of conformity.