Late to rise, late breakfast, late shower, late to writing, late to go outside. Try as we might to fill every day with an abundance of activities so we don’t waste a moment in Germany, it’s inevitable that we hit a wall and need a slow day. After 19 days, including our flight here, the day where little happens just shows itself, and in this case, it’s a Sunday just 48 hours before we head back to the United States.

Even sitting down to write something or other feels like a chore I’m not ready to confront. And so I distract myself with a return to my neglected social media, not that I ever really do much posting there but it allows me to catch up with various subjects of interest. While the smell of plum cake that Klaus is baking wafts in from the kitchen, I bring up some newly released music from Andrew Ostler titled “Crossing The Line.” That plum cake will travel with us to be shared between Jutta, Stephanie, Katharina, Klaus, Caroline, and me later today, but for now, I sit here lazily, hoping something will happen without making an effort.

I’m getting hungry, but the effort to go find something feels like a task too big. There’s a pizza place within walking distance, but I have to wonder who offers delivery to this area. After looking at the limited choices and considering that many places close at 2:00 before reopening at 5:00, the window of opportunity is diminishing. With maximum waffle unfolding from my inner-Schweinehund, a savior appears in the form of a loving wife and a caring sister-in-law who are willing to collect whatever it is my heart desires. It’s settled, rigatoni carbonara from that pizza place, and I get to sit in the same chair I’ve been planted in for the better part of 6 hours, aside from shower and toilet obligations to care for my body and the people around me.

Now, with the order in and the ladies out for picking up lunch, I’m again presented with a blank slate of brain. Maybe some other music will help, so I turn to Bandcamp and find Robert Aiki Aubrey Lowe’s “Candyman” score, but before things really get underway, food is already here. Sweet relief from a minor hunger and absolving myself of the need to write as my right hand will be busy with a fork and who can type with one hand?

As with all things, this half-day of doing a lot of nothing is about to come to an end. We are all about to head into the center of Frankfurt to meet up with Jutta for a walk over to the river, where we’ll sit down to some plum cake and coffee. This will require a bit of effort on my part as I’ve still not moved from my chair since noon, and we are on the approach of 2:30. So, time to close the tabs to the news stories I was catching up on, finally put on some socks, and maybe (as if there was a choice) grab my camera and join the others to take the U-Bahn into town. Maybe I can have a brief nap on the train to add to my collection of having done little this Sunday? Oh, what is this luxury? Others are running late, giving me another 20 minutes of not doing nothing other than tagging photos here on the blog while maintaining my place on the thrown of the dining table.

It’s already after 3:00 as we move down the train tracks with our basket in tow, heading to Granny’s house. The only thing missing is a wolf who we heard was busy blowing some house down elsewhere.

The rare site of Katharina as with her away at nearby Darmstadt attending university, she’s typically seriously busy, but today with the chance for the entire family to get together, she carved out time. Good thing she did, as seeing her and her dad smile so nicely together is a treat.

And here comes Jutta…

…joining us for Klaus’s homemade Pflaumenkuchen (plum cake) that he made just today.

A rare photo these days. Sadly, we don’t have someone else here on a Sunday afternoon we can ask to take a group image, so the four Engelhardts and one Wise are the best I can do.

Katharina might be grinning as she dragged her aunt Caroline into a 20-minute lesson about Pokemon possibly infecting her with an interest, but knowing my wife, I’d guess she’d never find space to fit it in.

Grandmother and granddaughter obviously share the same height genes.

Our coffee and cake midday get-together is coming to an end. I’m happy we could all be here this afternoon and that this three-week trip to Germany was so focused on family.

Which also included me. By the way, does this photo make my arms appear freakishly long?

Later, Klaus, Stephanie, Caroline, and I walked a mile over to a nearby favorite restaurant that put a blemish on our enthusiasm for the place. I’ll leave it unnamed until we get to visit on a date in the future when we’ll be hoping that they were only having a bad night.

All-in-all this was a day of rest where very little happened.

So many days on vacation and so many experiences potentially lost to the fog of being busy all the time. But here I am to write these posts letting us account for each day covering the important moments. Maybe, like Jutta, we all suffer from a kind of dementia where the new information coming in takes precedence as we try to figure out how to deal with the new day. If yesterday was packed with things relatively mundane, why put importance on them and elevate them into long-term memory? But when we can return to even a fragment of the minutiae, it often happens that a flood of impressions arrives with the hint. We’ve seen with Jutta how an old photograph or piece of music aloft forgotten memories, how will this work when blogs with hundreds or thousands of photographs along with the text accompanying them can bring context and intense reminders to people?

Our lunches with Jutta are never brief affairs, as we typically end up spending between two and three hours camping out at our table. This being Germany, nobody cares how long a customer occupies their place in the restaurant as it doesn’t affect a tip when everyone is earning an hourly wage that isn’t dependent on our largess. There are differences in service for sure, but one difference I don’t miss over here is the server absolutely ignoring you once you’ve settled your bill. So, we just sit in the sun, take our time, order more water, Coke, or coffee, and enjoy chatting. By the way, the talk rarely takes aim at the weather other than maybe the briefest of observations regarding the current moment. Sports and TV are also off the plate unless the ladies are talking about a documentary or something from the news. We do talk a lot about family, travel, and the people we are watching.

After three hours on the first course, it’s time for ice cream, more coffee, and mineral water over at a corner Eis Cafe (ice cream parlor). I think we only spent about 90 minutes here before starting the slow walk back to the assisted living center. While Jutta has greater mobility with a walker, she’s still nearly as slow as any sloth or snail, moving nearly imperceptibly, requiring nearly 30 minutes to get her somewhere that it would take anyone else maybe 5 minutes to walk. Writing this feels like an exaggeration, but I’ve made the walk of 100 meters (300 feet) to the Main River and 260 meters (850 feet) to the restaurant we visit so many times that I have a pretty good sense of the average to get between places.

And with that, it’s time to make the walk back to the facility, passing this bear we pass nearly every day we’re in Frankfurt.

That giant teddy bear has a friend nearby who, weather allowing, is blowing bubbles non-stop.

We are dropping off Jutta back in her room, where, in one relatively small room, she’s hanging on to the mementos that bring her joy. From the photobooks I put together of some of her travels to the map of Indigenous peoples across America, including the Navajo rug, she wove herself on one of her many visits. There’s some furniture she cherishes, along with various photos of Stephanie, Klaus, and Katharina, just enough to warm her heart that her family is out there, hopefully doing well.

With the portable toilet that’s been ever-present on the right side of the street now gone, I just had to take one more photo of this sight. We walk by so often, and both love how the old-fashioned bridge connects the two sides of government offices that occupy this area.

Time for shopping now instead of waiting until the last day as we usually do. The first stop was at Blutsgeschwister for a bag to replace our worn toiletry bag and a new umbrella, both with the same gnome design.

Well, this is embarrassing. It’s December 2023, and I’m moving through a bunch of old posts, rechecking them for grammar mistakes and links that have died, when I discovered something wrong with this post. That part of what’s wrong is that from the bag above, there was some missing text, and all of the subsequent photos and text from here down. The photos had been uploaded, meaning that there was text here at one time, but inexplicably, it’s all missing. I searched for cached versions and checked Archive.org, all to no avail. I do know that we were in MyZeil near Hauptwache with Caroline searching for a perfume that was beguiling her as she smelled it on the streets as people walked by.

I’d know these clothes anywhere; we could only have been shopping at Gudrun Sjödén.

The guy who worked here at Red Wing Shoes was incredibly helpful in doing a thorough measuring of Caroline’s feet, both of them. Unfortunately, they didn’t have her size of the Iron Ranger boot in stock and couldn’t have it in before we were to leave Germany, but the service was amazing nonetheless.

My memory is thin here, but the photo was likely chosen as I  had something positive to say about the festive nature of this busker ensemble that was getting their groove on here in the main shopping area.

No photos of dinner, family, or anything else followed this billboard in the subway advertising cigarettes. While it’s tragic that we apparently lost about six hours of a day on vacation in Germany, in the scheme of things, it’s nothing as our documenting of over a thousand other travel days is a treasure trove of otherwise forgotten moments.

Part 1 of this entry will be published shortly, but for now: here we are on the other side of the same day. Everything began as usual with breakfast; though with Klaus and Stephanie out of town spending some days in Konstanz with a side trip to Zurich, we had to walk over to Brot & Freunde to fetch our morning meal. With this being my first visit to this nearby shop, I was astonished at the variety of Brötchen as in 19 choices not counting pretzel variations. This, from a small shop away from all major shopping areas, is a non-descript tiny place, and this doesn’t even take into account the more than a dozen sweet pastries on offer too! If that weren’t enough, they have an espresso machine to make us hot drinks too, which we need to take advantage of as we don’t know how to operate the coffee machine at home.

While Caroline’s smile suggests a staged photo, she was editing my entry about the Popel eater (boogers) and was having a laugh at my description and, of course, the use of the word Popel, which is probably the first-ever use here on my blog. We are taking things slow this morning as we’re waiting for our niece (Nichte) to arrive around 11:30. This also turned out to be a good opportunity to do laundry as even we need to stop on occasion in service of the mundane.

Between things, Caroline spotted a photo album that she was curious about and grabbed it. It turned out to be old photos of Jutta and classmates from the late 1940s to the early 1950s. My mother-in-law, at age 14, can be seen in the top left photo, front row, far left. From that, you might be able to identify her in the other three images.

As is typical with people with dementia, Jutta was able to identify nearly everybody in these images, including first and last names, without thinking twice. As for me, days later, I have zero recollection of who she mentioned, but I suppose that’s not all that important.

Here’s Jutta at age 17 in 1952.

From the 60 or so photos in the album, these were the ones we felt were a good representation to set aside for digital posterity.

Almost perfectly punctual, Katharina arrives to find these two strangers in the place she grew up in. Our niece is living in Darmstadt, where she attends university. Katharina and I had some time together back in June, so I’m leaving the Tante und Nichte (aunt and niece) for a day with each other. You can follow what I did in the blog entry A Walk Around Frankfurt.

Katharina took a quick look at the potted plants in the kitchen and living room and applied water where needed. She clearly inherited Klaus’ green thumbs. Caroline sent this photo of the Venus fly trap to Klaus to assure him that it had survived his absence. The girls watched a fly hovering around the plant and even landing on one of the traps in suspense, but the fly was able to escape, maybe because the plant was not in need of fresh nourishment.

Shortly thereafter, after looking up the local vegan lunch options, niece and aunt were on the way for their own fresh nourishment at Dominion Food Revolution on Gruneburgweg.

Not realizing that the vegan shawarma with hummus would be such a gargantuan portion, Caroline was happy that Katharina’s burger was small enough to allow her to share the dish.

Both took photos of the dishes and enjoyed their conversation in the warm sun. Afterward, dessert was in order.

Katharina picked a brownie and Caroline a Middle Eastern pudding with rosewater, coconut, and pistachio crumbles. Since Katharina still had some time before her return train to Darmstadt, they decided to swing by “Oma Jutta” at Lebenshaus for a short visit. Criminally, Caroline missed the opportunity for a selfie of all three, but since my middle name is “forgiveness” (among others), I won’t hold it against her for long. When it was time for Jutta to head over to the dining room for supper, Caroline walked over to Eiserner Steg to meet me and pursue our own dinner plans.

Can’t forget that we’re in a pandemic, though we are thousands of miles from home on vacation as occasionally the explosive numbers and widespread movement of a new variant in America take hold. While trying to avoid current events, people want to talk, and headlines pop up in the subways on animated billboards. So, we’re going home later this month to the breakout of the COVID variant called Mu. Germany will vote on a new chancellor a few days after we leave, and a note or two about Afghanistan made it to our eyes. Enough of that stuff; I only mention it because today I’m opening with this photo of us on the subway that has us in masks. In previous days, I’ve tried to keep masks out of the picture to offer a semblance of normal as it existed before the age of the Pandemic.

Yesterday, I visited St. Leonhard church and learned of the oldest building in the area, St. Justinus church in Frankfurt-Höchst. Ironically, we had just cycled past it the other day on our family bike tour, and I had no idea. As I brought this up with Caroline, she pointed out casually that this had been one of her many “Fun Facts of the Day” at work but hadn’t thought of it until I mentioned it. With some time available this morning, we took the train out to cross this important historical building off our list of places to visit.

Well, that was the plan. Little could we have guessed that a Catholic church would be closed Monday through Thursday due to the pandemic. Maybe we can come out to Höchst on a subsequent visit to see the Saint Justinus church that’s been standing here and in continuous use since 830, and I do mean the year and not 8:30. I posted a photo of the church from the river the other day during our bike ride and I can’t find a better view from where we are now so I snapped this image of Jesus on the Cross at the side of the church where two gentlemen informed us about the closure much to our disappointment.

Nothing left to do but make the best of a poor situation and return to the square where we had lunch the other day (under the blue umbrellas) and grab a bite to eat before going to see Jutta.

Our very German meal at Gasthaus Zum Schwan of pork variations with bratkartoffeln and cabbage was on order. Caroline opted to supplement the food with a hefeweizen.

Though we couldn’t commune with Gott (God) in his house here in Höchst, we could take some time to appreciate the old town.

There’s so much being said here with stickers that go beyond personal brands and veer into politics and social commentary, but with me falling behind in my blogging, I don’t really have time to decipher the sticker about Bolsanaro, Fuck Peter Booth, or FKTN which is not Fukutin a.k.a., a protein-coding gene.

While this distant suburb of Frankfurt has some quaint and historical qualities, there’s something provincial I sense here, making the place unappealing. I should blame this squarely on my own bias as there’s something about the inflection of the working-class Germans and their chain-smoking that gives them the appearance of blunt dullards on the verge of losing their humanity as they slide down the evolutionary ladder.

Caroline most certainly let out a loud groan reading this last sentence, but to ignore Germany’s class awareness is to simply stick one’s head in the sand, just as Germans are apt to do. I’ve written before about how Germans do not vacation in their own country unless they are skiing in the Alps or visiting Sylt up on the Wattenmeer. This, in my summation, is because, in those two locations, Germans will encounter other wealthy Germans, while in nearly all other locations they risk running into those fellow citizens that embarrass them.

Enough of picking at scabs; time to get on the train and return to the big city.

I walked with Caroline over to Lebenshaus, where Jutta lives; they have a nice clean toilet that’s free. From there, the plan was for me to catch up on writing.

As I headed away from the ladies, I ended up going to the coffee shop I knew they’d be visiting so I could surprise my mother-in-law.

And here they come.

We are at Einstein Kaffee on Römer, where mother and daughter are having a slice of Johannisbeeren cake and coffee while I try to focus on the writing. Once the cake was devoured and the last drop of coffee gone, the ladies headed back to Lebenshaus.

A little later, Klaus joined me for a short time, and when Caroline returned from Lebenshaus, they walked off to meet with Stephanie for a rice bowl dinner at a nearby favorite joint while stayed on to finish my writing for the day. A crowd had been developing in the center of the square outside Einstein; it was a political rally held by the Green Party.

People in the cafe were complaining about the size of the crowd and how last year’s Christmas market had been canceled due to expected crowding, and yet, for politics, the authorities are afraid to impose restrictions as they find that their own voices being heard face to face with the electorate is too important. Whatever serves power is allowed; whatever serves the individual is tertiary after power and money. I do not mean this ironically, as with Germany being in the driver’s seat of the Europan economic engine, they better keep the balance of governance in top form if the EU is to survive.