We are about to transition from one vacation to the next vacation. For Caroline, this will be vacation number two, but for me, it is vacation number four! Today is our last full day in Germany before flying to Zagreb, Croatia, tomorrow. Back in early May, when I flew to Frankfurt two weeks prior to Caroline’s arrival, I started the first part of my vacation, padding around the main reason I left early: Superbooth. This synthesizer conference felt like a vacation all unto itself. The rest of the time in Berlin and then Erfurt, Weimar, Kulmbach, and Bayreuth felt as if they were their own vacation. Then Caroline arrived, and a week was spent with friends and family. Now, we leave that for nearly two weeks of rafting in Croatia, Bosnia, and Montenegro.

The Engelhardt Saturday ritual involves shopping for the week as Klaus and Stephanie both work, and Jutta requires some supplies and other services they provide. Today, we are able to offer not only company but assistance, too.

Klaus left the train before us in order to stop at the butcher and fetch what’s needed for their diet over the next few days. Caroline, Stephanie, and I continued down to Konstablerwache, where Stephanie collects cheese, vegetables, bread, new jams if they need them, and a host of other stuff they enjoy from the open-air market locally referred to as the Erzeugermarkt (Producers’ Market).

This twice-weekly market occurs in a large open square at the center of Konstablerwache and is equal parts market and bar. The wine, apple wine, and beer flow, especially on the beautiful weather days that invite thousands from across Frankfurt to pay a visit and sit in the sun while sampling an assortment of alcohol and local flavors. By the way, I should point out to my American readers that the area that serves alcohol is not fenced off with someone checking IDs and putting a wristband on those who want to drink. Visitors are treated like adults with the trust that vendors are not interested in selling beer and wine to children, but if a parent wants to offer a sip of their favorite drink to their child, that’s their business. This creates an open atmosphere where everyone is able to mingle without a kind of us-and-them mentality. I hope I don’t need to point out that there is no one here with a weapon – concealed or worn openly on their hip.

It’s also a great place to go grazing, which was my intention this morning. All types of bratwurst from potato to chili are being cooked up, a great mixed mushroom dish which I tried last year and more pastries than you can shake a sausage at. Shortly after I was through a dish or two, Klaus rejoined us in time to choose a few jams, and then we headed over to the waffle maker who was cooking up fresh waffles and, because of the time of year, had rhubarb compote on hand to serve atop them. From here, Stephanie had other errands to run, and I wanted to get some writing done, so Klaus and Caroline headed back to Heddernheim to drop off the groceries and gather up laundry and supplies that Caroline would drag over to her mom’s place. I took the path of least resistance and went to Starbucks because I knew they had free wifi.

While sucking Starbucks’ wifi tit served me well this afternoon, this bastion of society’s superficial and trash cultures draws the foreigners in like Germans to a loaf of bread. The line here was always deep, with at least 20-minute-long waits. By my count, around two of every eight potential customers that enter the doors simply turn around and leave after seeing the spectacle of the line. If you are a teenager, Japanese, obese, or anyone else who may not want to try drinking down the bitter battery acid of a strong German coffee, then the sugary sweet, iced Starbucks treats that serve the selfie crowd on vacation is the place for you.

Finally, I yank my embittered cantankerous grump out of the slice of Americana that my every inclination had primed me for. Sometimes, I’m my own worst enemy, hah; most of the time, I’m my own worst enemy. Off I go to join Caroline at her mom’s.

This is where I should have been writing. Outdoor seating at the edge of a small park away from major streets, it’s perfect. Except like far too many businesses across the German countryside, including in the heart of its most prosperous cities, there is no wifi! Okay, I get it that there should be a separation between work and relaxation and that people tend to drag their jobs into every social and public function, thus disturbing others, but there are some benefits in having access to free wifi at every point on the map. Full stop, all I need to think about is the kid (or grown adult) playing their video game at a coffee shop with their headphones cupped over their ears for hours and hours, never budging, never drinking anything besides a free cup of ice water or the people who need to share some incredibly intrusive viral video demonstrating another dose of Darwinian idiocy that cuts into my peace of mind like a fish knife filleting my brain from its skull and I remember that free wifi isn’t that great an idea in all cases. So, where are these magic insight skills when I need them? Mostly I just flail about whining about what I want and forgetting that there are other human beings that have their own needs. Well, yeah, of course, that’s what I do; I’m an American.

The visual music of this city is the balm that soothes my inner savage beast. Soon, Starbucks fades into the distance while the bird songs of spring and bright new growth on the trees pull me into a better space.

The corner imbiss is a luxury found all across the Frankfurt area while in many other places in Germany, you will be hard-pressed to find these versions of the convenience / fast food store, which are far tinier than anything found in America.

Living in a density like this requires a kind of education, respect for civility, quiet from both children and dogs alike, patience in finding parking spots, good-paying jobs, and generally a deep understanding that life isn’t all about you and your drama. With this kind of living on top of each other, similar to that found in New York, London, and Tokyo, the person lucky enough to be able to exist here typically has access to the greatest cultural amenities and rich diversity that is 100% absent in small towns and even larger cities where small-minded thinking is still pervasive.

It should be known that Frankfurt is considered the high crime capital of Germany, and last year, it registered 58 murders, so it is pretty dangerous, I guess. Such is the price for the opulence of globalization, but still, if we compare this to the 539 people who were murdered in Chicago in 2018, things don’t seem so bad on the mean streets of Frankfurt. The tragedy of my visits to Europe, though, is that they are intertwined with crime statistics and how I’ve been conditioned by media hyping the bad actors on the streets of Europe. From the pickpockets to the gypsies who will scam you and stab you if need be, and then the uncompassionate Germans who would just stand to the side, not offering help in their effort to ignore others, we are led to believe that Europe is essentially dangerous. So when I land here, it takes time to let my guard down that there are no thieves around every corner and crafty con artists looking for the unsuspecting American. Of course, if we could just carry our guns over here, we’d be totally safe because who’d attack an armed citizen? I would like to point something else out that has raised the eyebrows of Americans I’ve shared this with, and that’s the story of children as young as 8 or 9 traveling by train or bus on their own and in small groups. When I tell them of Caroline’s first solo visit to the U.K. when she was 14, they are incredulous that a parent would let their child travel the trains by themselves in a foreign country. I wish my fellow citizens could consider for a good long moment just what kind of freedom there is where children and parents feel safe enough to allow them to wander around unsupervised. So, just how safe is our heavily armed society making life in America better for us?

If you try to make the argument that Frankfurt is mostly a homogenous place of white people, you’d be seriously wrong as it is proudly 51.2% either non-German, German citizens born abroad, or Germans who are the children of immigrants. Matter of fact, the Turkish population of Frankfurt accounts for approximately 13% of the people who live here compared to Los Angeles, where less than 10% of its population is African-American.

When I reached Jutta’s apartment, Caroline was already there, but not for long, as we headed right out. With Jutta in tow, we returned on this bright sunny day to Gunthersburg Park for a coffee and to share a small slice of carrot cake. While I sat here in the sun listening to the ladies speaking German and kids laughing and crying in the distance, I wrote and wrote, trying to catch up with some note-taking so I have something to edit following our return from Croatia in mid-June.

Our 7:00 p.m. dinner date was with the Engelhardt’s at Speisekammer where Caroline, Stephanie, and I just ate a few days ago; one can never have too much green sauce. Service was stressed tonight in part due to it being Saturday, and the place was packed. We agreed to try to get a reservation for the Saturday after we get back at an Argentinian steak restaurant that recently won the 1st place award for the best green sauce in Frankfurt; number two best green sauce is right here at Speisekammer.

How is it that we are not sitting next to each other? Why is my wife in the row ahead of me? Because somehow I booked two window seats for us and seeing that it’s impossible to sit next to each other if we both are sitting next to a window then all that was left to decide was who sat in front of whom. The train we are on is one of the InterCity Express trains or I.C.E., sometimes called bullet trains or simply high-speed rail. We are speeding over the landscape today on our way to Karlsruhe, where Caroline’s father, Hanns lives, who also happens to be Father Hanns. With only about an hour to our destination, I have no time to waste on pleasantries and must get busy writing while the inspiration is striking.

We are creating a new sense of place where the frontier moved out of the physical world into the online space of global connectivity, and the amorphous domain of digital immediacy dictates a fluidity attempting to understand nonsense and fact existing simultaneously in a new synthetic fabric of reality. There is a challenge of perception from our time-based organic neural networks and their digital counterparts where paths choose the efficiency of minds interconnected by devices tuned to receiving input, consuming it, and often tossing it into the pile of short-term storage where it will not find any longevity. How long-term threads can evolve out of this electronic hive mind and survive beyond instant gratification is one of the existential threats facing humanity. It is in this temporary playground divorced from real-world consequences that hostilities and the fomenting of dangerous ideas are evolving like bacteria under threat of extinction.

At what point does society at large recognize the imminent viral threat of hate that some see brewing on the horizon? Can we fully understand the inherent threat that accompanies the malignant tumor of intolerance? History, I believe, shows that the critical mass of awakening only occurs during the conflagration that moves societies to new, more progressive stances following the fatigue of combat. For the canaries expiring in the coal mine and Peter telling us he has seen the Wolf, it is no comfort to them in being the original but ignored harbinger of the news that something was about to go wrong. This then begs the question for me: can anything be done to ward off the pestilence that will move in to help society atone for its stupidity?

The voices of reason are in the unenviable position of parents (metaphorically speaking) telling the child not to reach into the fire. Only after the child attempts to flee from the enveloping flames with limbs rendered useless when the entire head is aflame with a disfiguring heat that melts features away will the child in the psychotic state of frenzy come to understand the dangers of throwing oneself into the bonfire. Until then, the foolish and immature believe they can see salvation in the flames of hell that war occupies.

Did you think I contemplated lollipops while hurtling over the Rhineland? Caroline may be in front of me knitting a pair of socks but my brain is back here knitting scenes of the apocalypse that arises not from aggressors and saboteurs but from the criminally stupid whose utter lack of ideas force them into the cesspool of digested and rotting ideas that were never worth much more than the shit they were back when the excrement started falling out of the megalomaniac’s mouths who have taken us into conflict again and again.

On the bright side, we have safely arrived at the Karlsruhe Hauptbahnhof, where Father Hanns has been waiting for us. From the main train station, we head out the door and directly into the Zoological Gardens. Here’s a fun, useless fact for the reader: it’s only a 16km or 10-mile walk to France from here. Maybe you can see through this and recognize that it’s a note for Caroline and me to one day come back to the city her father has worked and lived in to make that walk along the Rhine River crossing the Alte Lauter River into France.

Spry is one of those love/hate words that, as much as I may dislike this cliched term, it actually does fit the image of Caroline’s father. With an intellectual pep, a great sense of humor, and an analytical mind that churns through thought with greater deftness than many people I’ve known half his age, it’s a pleasure to once again be in the company of Rev. Dr. Hanns Engelhardt, former judge at the Federal Court of Justice.

This retired judge, co-founder of the German-Hungarian Jurists’ Association, an Anglican priest, and author who has written riveting titles such as “Die Kirchensteuer in den Neuen Bundesländern” about church tax in the German federal states joined us today for an 11km or 7-mile walk around Karlsruhe. We started by entering the Zoologischer Stadtgarten, whose southern entry portal lies adjacent to the main train station.

Do you see God in the face of animals, or is the domain of the soul unique to humanity? Is heaven a construct of our desires or a literal representation of the apostles’ knowledge delivered by the voice of God? Did Nietzsche kill God, and did God then turn around and kill Nietzsche? Throw in a bit of Schopenhauer, who is Hanns’s favorite philosopher, and you have a snapshot of our conversation as we walked through the zoo.

Can you feel God? Yes, it is experienced as love. Can you see God? Yes, it is seen in consciousness. Is the law fair? In as much as the people administering it are able to be honest, yes. Do you fear death? I certainly do not welcome it before it must come, but it does appear to be an inevitability.

The thought that God is not a deity lying in wait but is the thread of our shared existence as cultural entities coexisting in a mindful thinking environment where a mutual sense of preservation of history, language, art, and traditions requires a common belief system and mythological framework is something to consider. The dogma of shoveling God into the image of a man with the inherent biases of proportional reward and punishment based on piety is archaic and fails to serve me. Should God exist it should be available to serve us instead of us serving him. This, then, should imply that we are acting on our behalf in as much as it benefits the rest of our species and reflects positively on what we have gained from our ancestors.

After exiting the Zoo at the northern end and passing a few of the infamous construction sites that Karlsruhe is notorious for, Hanns brought Caroline and me over to the Bundesgerichtshof, aka the Federal Court of Justice, for a look into the grounds from their courtyard so we could get a better view and a photo. However, we were not allowed to do as much as touch a camera while we were inside. Caroline had this great idea while we were waiting to learn if Hanns would even be able to bring us on the grounds as visitors when she noticed that the glass we were standing in front of was nearly a mirror. So here we are nearly 30 years later, recreating that very first photo we took of ourselves back in 1989, which I’d posted prior to leaving for our jaunt across Germany and the Balkans. The Bundesgerichtshof is where Hanns worked for the majority of his career before exchanging the robe of the judge for the robe of the priest.

Schlossgarten is the next leg of our walk through the city of Karlsruhe. On previous visits, we’ve only moved between Hann’s small bungalow and a nearby restaurant that has become our regular go-to place for lunch; today will be no different. After trying some other items at the Badisch Brauhaus on Stephanienstrasse on previous visits, I finally ordered the Fleischkäse with fried egg and Bratkartoffeln though I did not join father and daughter for a glass of wine and instead stuck to my teetotaler ways and ordered my obligatory bottle of sparkling water.

While not able to write and walk, I am able to hang behind or jump up front to take photos so I appear well occupied while Caroline has the opportunity to enjoy her father’s German wit and command of language that I feel inspires Caroline and her appreciation for his oft demanding intellect and command of the moment.

European elections are just around the corner this Sunday, and here in Karlsruhe, we happened to be so lucky to wander into VerfassungsFEST or Constitution Days. It was 70 years ago this week that the Federal Republic of Germany was established and the rule of Basic Constitutional Law or Grundgesetz was set forth. While Bonn was the capital of the newly formed West Germany, the courts were established in Karlsruhe. I am not sure if that was in order to maintain an independent court but that seems the logical reasoning behind the geographical separation. It was still early in the day while we were here on a Friday, but I was hoping that by evening and then on Saturday, there’d be a much larger gathering in celebration of 70 years of protecting civil rights and social values ​​such as diversity, openness, and legal certainty, which the Basic Constitutional Law guarantees for all citizens.

Germany is walking into its future with a lot of uncertainty as the flames of intolerance are once again seeing their embers stoked. The long experiment to establish a unified Europe was broached back in 1920 by British economist John Maynard Keynes who called for a free trade union, and then in 1946, Winston Churchill became an advocate for the United States of Europe. It was ultimately the work of Chancellor Helmut Kohl of West Germany and President François Mitterrand of France that the European Union was formally established with the signing of the Maastricht Treaty on the 1st of November, 1993. So, while two powerfully influential Brits were once advocates for this social, political, and economic super union, it is Britain itself today that is working so hard to fracture the union that has begun to eclipse the financial might of the United States.

While America has played a key role on the world stage of promoting “ideas” of peace, dragged others into prosperity with our great ability to purchase consumer goods, and been a leader in the evolution of technology that has benefited humanity, there seems to be a fundamental breakdown in our collective desire to promote the health and welfare of our own citizens as we devolve our world view into one of outward hostility while simultaneously fostering an environment of intellectual mediocrity, disregard for our environment, and flaunting our ability to kill abroad and within. Don’t take me wrong; I love the opportunity and economic prosperity that is still alive and well within the borders of America; it’s just that I no longer see America trying to raise the standard and quality of life for its own citizens much less than for the rest of the people of our planet.

After bidding Hann’s farewell, we’re going back to Frankfurt, or are we?

This is that Toto moment where references to Kansas can be made. We are at the Siegburg/Bonn train station about 100 miles north of where we should be in Frankfurt. Why is it that we are experiencing the sunset near the former capital of West Germany? Because when I asked my wife about the train and correct stops due to what I thought I read on one of the overhead signs regarding our trip to Frankfurt this afternoon, she didn’t pay attention to my concerns and simply reassured me everything was fine, except it was not. You see, we didn’t pay to travel from Karlsruhe to Bonn; we paid to go to Frankfurt. My first thought was to find a conductor and explain the mistake; Caroline’s first impulse was telling me not to alert the “authorities” to our transgression and hope we could get off at the next stop undetected. The problem there was I had no idea what the next stop was because we were on an I.C.E., and they don’t make many stops. Finding a person in charge, it turns out they were very sympathetic to our error of not getting off at the airport and transferring trains to the Hauptbahnhof. To be honest, Caroline was partially right in her thinking as years ago, all trains went into the Frankfurt Main Station. So, while we didn’t have to pay for our free sightseeing ride to Bonn, there was no guarantee that the ride back would be free.

While waiting at the Siegburg/Bonn station, a policeman noticed our state of anxiety and asked if he could help. We explained the situation and that we simply had to board the next train south and hope to be back in Frankfurt at a reasonable hour. He explained that we could board either train heading south, which was both running late, and that we shouldn’t forget that we’d have to transfer after reaching the airport. Waiting together, we made small talk, including my admission that in my younger years, I was able to fast-talk myself out of speeding tickets by playing the dumb American who’d left his passport in his hotel room even though I was technically an illegal alien who’d stayed well over the time I could have been considered a tourist. Back on a train, we were soon pushing close to 200mph as we rocketed over Germany for the brief trip that returned us home.

Back in Frankfurt at the airport, we had more than a few minutes to wait for our next train, and there was the policeman we’d been talking with prior to leaving the Bonn area. We learned a lot from this incredibly friendly officer of the law. While we’ve been here in Germany, we’ve seen ACAB sprayed in graffiti all over the place; it stands for “All Cops Are Bastards.” With over 308,000 men and women in the German Polizei, I find it impossible to characterize all of them as bad. This, though, is the perception that pop culture has created a large part of the blemish on their profession due to a kind of cultural appropriation, where white and Turkish youth culture identifying with American minority movements are acting like German police are serving up injustice across Germany. There have been ugly, apparently racially motivated, or at least excused shootings by law enforcement in America that have seen rally cries from appropriately irate people of color who are feeling like targets of an unjust system. While black Americans and other minorities may have justification for their resentment of what appears to be a biased system, there is scant evidence in Germany of racially motivated socio-economic-driven pressure to oppress entire classes of people.

The officer explained how the average age of a policeman in Germany is now 45 years old and that recruitment is very difficult under the public perception that cops are generally bad people. He pointed out how German officers across Germany only discharged a total of about 70 bullets in 2017, while in America, officers are known to have discharged 40 bullets or more in one incident, occasionally firing over 100 rounds at suspects. For comparison, in the United States, hundreds of people a year are shot and killed by law enforcement officers, while in Germany, since 1963, the year I was born, German officers have shot and killed a total of about 484 people, or about eight people per year.

So why are German police being victimized by this general perception of police brutality? It’s likely in large part due to entertainment neither respecting borders nor coming with warnings not to generalize and demonize these officers who, by and large, work hard to protect the largest part of the population from insanity, greed, hostility, and violence. I don’t believe politicians and media pundits care about correcting these perceptions, as society needs its boogeymen and people who can absorb the derision of the angry horde who need to cast blame on someone, anyone. If the hostility wasn’t directed at law enforcement, it might be directed at those who are failing to lead us politically or who are really abusing us with fear-mongering and bloodletting that has the unwashed masses tuning in for their dose of titillation.

Look, I’ve had my own fair share of encounters with policemen, some of whom could easily be called dicks. They can appear to be unemotional control freaks though they are who we entrust to handle situations that would make meeker people shit their pants in fear or perform instance justice on persons who just violated a child for the expediency of gaining revenge for the victim, but day in and day out they mostly all perform their jobs with the dignity that we’d hope for. Our bias to paint them as a bad lot because of a few horrible instances where, on rare occasions, the proverbial bad apple does something unconscionable is a disservice to ourselves and to the incredible number of people who literally sacrifice their own safety for our own. It’s sad that we are so emotionally fragile and prone to want to see others victimized when we think they can handle it; police officers are just as human as the rest of us, even when they are playing the badass. Thanks, anonymous German officer, who had the time to help us get to where we needed to go and helped us understand a different point of view regarding his profession.

Ah, the familiar sight of the Frankfurt Hauptbahnhof. It’s 10:30 p.m. by the time we emerge back into the city, and we are hungry. There are plenty of fast food joints still open, but we want a traditional German dinner as we can never have enough German food.

Not far from the European Central Bank and near Willy-Brandt-Platz, we headed over to Restaurant Klosterhof, which has great reviews and a kitchen that’s open until 11:30 p.m. six days a week. We had a great server and a great meal, while our expectations were actually quite low. Why were they low? Because we were not in Sachsenhausen, maybe this place catered to tourists. Instead, I had an incredibly memorable meal called Schlägler Chorherrenschnitzel, which is a veal schnitzel fried in butter, topped with bacon, slices of apples, and lingonberry, covered with melted cheese, served with a fried egg and fried potatoes, a.k.a. Bratkartoffeln. This was no common schnitzel, I can tell you, as it originates as a dish served to Abbot Dominik Lebschy, who restored the Order of the Premonstratensians at Schlägl Abbey in Upper Austria back in the mid-19th century.

It’s midnight as the train shows up to take us out to Heddernheim.

We are hardly alone on the train as many people are heading out of the city back home while others are traveling in the other direction as they venture into various nightclubs and parties that will be going on well into the morning. If we weren’t getting up early in the morning to go to the Konstablerwache Market and visit with Jutta, I think Caroline and I could have easily wandered around the city for a couple more hours simply taking in life in a city that seems to always be on the go.

Living in Germany during the last century it never occurred to Caroline or me that we could possibly ever walk from Frankfurt to Bad Soden in the Taunus mountains. After my recent walk from Pankow to Charlottenburg, our long walks around Budapest last year, and previous lengthy strolls through New York City and Washington, D.C. I thought I should at least check the distance from Heddernheim to Bad Soden, and at 13.8km or about 9 miles, we realized that this would be a relatively easy walk. Google found a nice route for our walk and estimated it would take about three hours to cover.

The roughly 19,000 steps across the German countryside through farmland, protected wild belts, and an arboretum made for a beautiful walk to visit Caroline’s godmother Helga in Bad Soden.

Through fields of wheat, rye, and barley, we walked over farm plots divided by the trail that often branched off in other directions which piqued our curiosity as to where those paths go off to. Soon it started to feel like one might easily walk across Germany on these small foot and bike paths that crisscross the landscape.

It’s surprising how quickly our view changed from being in Frankfurt to being so far outside of Frankfurt. Because Caroline and I had only ever used motorized transportation to move about in this city, it always felt that the city was a lot larger than it turned out to be. It was on a previous trip for vacation over here when we walked from the north side of Frankfurt all the way to Sachsenhausen and then to the main train station that it started occurring to us that this place was not as big as we’d once thought.

An old U.S. military airstrip that had fallen out of use has been turned into a state park that also serves as an arboretum. With protected lands hosting a variety of plant and animal life, we have yet another reason to wonder about what other localized biomes exist across the German landscape that are currently being protected or are slated for the return to a more natural state of existence.

A chestnut tree has taken root from an acorn taken from Ukraine by a former prisoner of war.

The speed of travel Caroline and I dream of takes us as slowly as this snail lugging his home on his back to wherever such treks take one.

The small garden plots called “Schrebergarten” are also known in England as allotments. With many people never having the opportunity to own their own land, there are these small plots people can rent to tend a small garden, put up a covered awning attached to a hut where they can invite friends for cookouts, or just hang out in their garden having a drink and admiring the tranquility. Renting one is no easy feat, as these small plots are highly sought after.

We were only about 20 minutes later than Google’s estimation, likely due to my needing to stop for photographs. Once in Bad Soden, we had to reckon with the hills we’d not considered when planning this walk. After the first 18,000 steps, we were no longer in a condition that motivated us to trudge up hills that only worked to fatigue our worn-out legs further. We first saw Helga checking her mail as we started coming down a hilltop, and so I yelled out to surprise her that we, in fact, were arriving on foot. After a break and something to drink at her old flat, we headed to her new place just down the road in the town of Kronberg. Fortunately, she was driving.

Helga has been aware for years that such a move might one day be a necessity, and she had joined a community nearly a decade ago, so she’d have priority on acquiring one of the rental units that specifically caters to retirees who when living alone can suffer from the burden and isolation. Because she’s still transitioning to the new place and things are not fully unpacked yet, we squeezed in around the dining table while Helga made us lunch in a kitchen that was barely big enough for her to turn around in.

The park in front of three mid-rise apartment buildings has a beautiful park with views of Frankfurt’s skyline in the distance. On Helga’s side of the building are great views of the Taunus mountain range. At the park, there is a pagoda, a meeting space, and some exercise equipment. Like most people her age, she’s ambivalent about whether this is the right thing to do as, on one hand, it feels as though a certain amount of freedom is being sacrificed while, on the other, accepting that one is getting older steals an amount of dignity when we want to believe we’re not really all that old.

Here I am, still sitting with Caroline and Helga for what turned out to be a great visit. I sincerely believed that, at best, I’d say hi to Helga and move on down the road to a cafe so I could once again indulge my selfishness in writing while those two caught up with each other while speed talking in German. Turns out that Helga enjoys both of us as visitors as she feels reassured in seeing firsthand our happiness in being together. Knowing that just makes the visit all the sweeter, and I don’t have to feel like an intruder. After spending the better part of the day with her well into the late afternoon, we accepted Helga’s offer to drive us back to Heddernheim. I have to admit that I’ve rarely known of another lady in her early 80’s who moves down the road at nearly 100mph but Helga wasn’t shy at all about getting down the road.

The question of whether I could take a photo of these sisters was met with a bit of disdain from the one who just arrived huffing and puffing in need of water due to her putting some oomph into her step to reach us on the agreed-upon time of sitting down to dinner. We are at Speisekammer in Heddernheim, which is about a 15-minute walk from the Engelhardt’s home and is currently rated the #2 restaurant in the region for Frankfurter Grüne Soße.

This was Stephanie’s main dish, but her appetizer was a half-portion of the exact same thing because who doesn’t love green sauce? Klaus wasn’t joining us tonight, as business responsibilities took him to Budapest until tomorrow afternoon.

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.