Suitcase-Weariness/Frankfurt and the Longest Day

Living out of a suitcase can be exhausting.  Even if your trip is supposed to be relaxing, often you are sleeping on different beds, and all your normal daily habits and routines are disrupted.  You forget to take your vitamins.  You skip flossing; after digging around in your toiletry case for the floss for five minutes, you realize that someone else needs to use the bathroom.  You forget to apply sunscreen. Getting dressed often means resorting to wearing completely wrinkled clothes in combinations that you wouldn’t be caught dead in at home.  Shaving legs?  Forgetaboutit.  Makeup and hair fussing?  Out the window.  Exercise?  You hope you’re getting enough by all the walking around and seeing stuff you’re doing (unless, of course, you’re staying in one of those fancier hotels with a gym, and at the same time, have enough time to take advantage of it).  And sometimes you lose complete track of how much water you’re drinking, or how much fiber you’re [not] consuming, which results in….other problems.  Some people seem to not be bothered about this at all; I, however, am not one of them.  I’ve done my share of traveling, though, and have found the secret to be taking some time every day for myself to unwind, reflect, and take care of personal business.  I have a sort of mental checklist of things which I must do that day, and try to find a way to fit them in; whether it’s flossing my teeth, sending an email to a friend, finding and eating a piece of fruit, or simply sitting down and writing about my day, it helps to center me.  If I have to get up a few minutes earlier to do it, I set my alarm.  It can make the difference between suffering through a trip, or having an outstanding experience.  And you can return home rejuvenated, instead of needing a vacation after your vacation.

Frankfurt am Main

My friend Raigan moved to Germany after we were together in graduate school almost 20 years ago.  We don’t see each other very often—mostly when she comes in summer to visit her family in Chicago—but we’ve still managed to stay in touch.  She’s always been a bright spot in my life, one of the most energetic and enthusiastic people I know.  She teaches English in Frankfurt, is married to Uli (who reminds me of a sort of red-headed German Michael Palin), and has two delightful sons, Christopher and Sebastian, ages 14 and 10.  The last time I visited her in Germany was 1997, with Patrice before we were married.

Contrary to popular belief, there are some places on the German autobahn that have speed limits.  There are strict rules for driving on the autobahn, and the most important is to only move into the left lane if you aim to pass someone.  When passing, you do it quickly, because someone will inevitably move up on your tail.  Traffic is fairly orderly as a result, with the exception of those who completely ignore the 130 kph speed limit and cruise the outer lane at speeds of almost 200 kph (see entry “A Word on Driving”).

As we got off the autobahn, my French GPS and my pint-sized co-pilot helped me locate Vogelsbergstraße in the Bornheim neighborhood (in a neighborhood referred to by Raigan as “the grain burger area”), and my plucky friend “adjusted” a “no-parking—construction” sign so I could park right in front of the building’s front door.  After some introductions and some freshening up, Christopher and Gaël bonded over the iPad while Raigan led me to the Friday market, the Wochenmarkt.  Stands selling everything from music to vegetables to sausages lined the platz, and loads of people were milling about, chatting and drinking wine, playing with babies on the grass, buying their weekend wares.  We got in line and bought a bottle of white wine to share, which we did on a park bench.  Germans are by and large a very trusting group, as we saw lots of parentless young children heading for a nearby park while their parents enjoyed the company of grown-ups at the market.  Raigan told me that in Frankfurt children learn to travel about the city on their own from a very young age, and it’s not unusual to see an elementary-school child taking the bus or metro by him- or herself to go to school or get home.  Germany is a rule-dominated society, so I suppose that if everyone follows the rules, and everyone has good training from a young age, this independence will serve them well throughout life.  Coming from the U.S., however, this just seems downright dangerous.  It begs the question, however….do we coddle our children too much?  Is it any wonder our college freshmen can’t function on their own?  The concept of  “helicopter parents” is for all intents and purposes unknown in Germany.  Food for thought.

Anyway, we had a lovely late dinner, and awoke refreshed the next day, ready for the longest day of the year.

Of course, it’s not really the longest day (I believe all of them still only have 24 hours), but the day with the most daylight is quite remarkable in northern Europe.  The sun came up ridiculously early (around 5 am, I think), and didn’t go down until almost 10 pm; the twilight lasts long past 11 pm.  We did our best to make the most of the daylight.  Christopher, Sebastian, Uli and Gaël went to Christopher’s baseball game (which I guess is fairly popular in Germany as a remnant of U.S. occupation) while Raigan and I scouted out the open-air market on Berger Straße and did some souvenir shopping in the morning. I needed a present for my father-in-law’s birthday on the 24^th, and a bemble for apfelwein, a beautiful ceramic pitcher specifically for Frankfurt’s special applewine, was just the thing.  We ate a late lunch at one of the sausage stands, and I learned the German way to eat a bratwurst.  I have always wrongly assumed that the roll was for putting the bratwurst in, but it’s actually just for accompaniment.  The sausage is gripped firmly with a napkin (too hot to touch!) and dipped into the mountain of mustard before enjoying.  There are beef sausages, skinny sausages, and a curry sausage for the really brave folks.

How do I tackle this?

Like this!

Raigan's curry sausage

After lunch we returned to the apartment and met up with the boys.  Sebastian had to go to a birthday party, and the rest of us took a long walk to the Chinese garden, a lovely park with a pond of ducks and turtles.  The boys were enthralled with the giant chess game; old men in French parks play pétanque, or boules; it seems that old men in parks in Frankfurt play chess.

Afterwards we enjoyed a drink; I bravely tried an aperol, a brilliant orange Italian liqueur mixed with sparkling wine.  For dinner, we met up with more ex-pats, Raigan and Uli’s Irish friends and their two small sons.  The five boys were so squirrely, we banished them to their own kids’ table in the beer garden; fortunately, Germans are quite tolerant of children in restaurants, and parenting is a sort of shared responsibility.  The weather was lovely, and I enjoyed schnitzel with potatoes and Frankfurt’s special “green sauce” (tons of fresh herbs mixed with crème fraiche), apfelwein (of course), and a particularly tasty strudel for dessert.

Obligatory weekend pillow fight

The next day after a lazy breakfast we went to the garden.  Frankfurters often have urban gardens on the outskirts of the city, green spaces they go to for growing food or flowers or both, or just go to for enjoying the outdoors.  We saw gardens that had prize-winning flowers, and were extremely well tended; Raigan and Uli share a garden with another couple that is a bit further out and functions as a sort of daytime campsite.  Although they live in a fairly crowded urban area, they can drive for 20 minutes (or walk for an hour) and be in the middle of the woods in the great outdoors.  

Uli made a fire to grill some sausages (of course), and we sat and enjoyed the breeze while the boys played in the tree house and complained about not having their electronic doodads.  Raigan and I took the long way back to the house, walking through winding pathways, a couple of parks, a cemetery, more gardens, and tiny, quiet streets.  It was the perfect ending to my stay in Frankfurt; the next day was back in the car, and more autobahn back to France.