We left Holland for Germany on Wednesday, September 30th, to spend five days in Frankfurt before Ed had to leave for two weeks in Turkey. We chose Frankfurt because there are cheap flights in and out of it, but we mostly wanted to stay there because our friends from Jerusalem, the Williams, live there. Jolynn had already driven us to France the day we arrived in Europe, and now we would get to spend a few days with the whole family. Isaac and Mary were beyond excited to see Ivan, and they all got along like gangbusters. It helps that Ivan is bright and inquisitive and intellectual and loves science and fantasy and space and Minecraft, just like my kids. I don't know that I've seen Mary so mentally compatible with any friend as she is with Ivan, and he and Isaac do all the usual boy stuff together.
So why do I hate Germany "again"? Our first trip to Germany as a family happened a little over eight years ago at the end of our year in Denmark. Super-smart Ed and his super-smart wife decided to take Mary (age 5), Isaac (age 3), and Linda (age 2 months) on a 12-day driving tour of Germany, during which time they stayed at hostels in nine different cities. And they invited Ed's single brother Ben to come along for extra hands, who ended up primarily as a witness to Ed and Candice's marital breakdown. Beginning your trip with a 5 am flight is a mistake. Hostels with young children are a mistake. Moving that much was a mistake. Fighting German traffic was a mistake. Traveling that long on a tight budget was a mistake. There were a few salvageable moments on that miserable, horrible trip, and I'm pretty sure we vowed never to go to Germany ever again.
Germans aren't particularly warm and friendly, they are rather aggressive on the roads (and not just on the autobahn, but in town where you can see their angry faces and hear their car horns). So that wasn't very fun, but it didn't matter too much--one lady even got out of her car to come and yell at us while we were trying to park, and Ed and I just laughed. Not in her face, but later.
Housing is at a premium in Frankfurt, and it took me weeks to find something we could afford anywhere near the city. Even then, it was the most expensive place we have stayed, and it was in the worst shape. The owner was very apologetic about his management team, but facts be known, we had a leaking radiator that left streams of water across the bedroom floor every morning, not enough blankets (the maid told us to use towels for the kids), no wifi the whole time we were there, a sticky kitchen, and lots of lights that didn't work. On the positive side, it was in a relatively quiet area with decent shopping, and we were only 20 minutes from the Williams. And there was a great Thai place nearby where Ed and I ate one night.
Our stay coincided with the 25th anniversary of the German reunification, and Frankfurt was hosting the largest celebration in Germany. As a result, traffic was awful and one afternoon we were routed through the labyrinth from hell: we drove through a major traffic jam, got shunted into a detour, and got stuck behind a student driver in a collection of one-way streets: in the end it took two hours to get to the Wiliams. This was on our third day in Frankfurt, and the day before Ed was to leave for Turkey, which was a terrible day. Read on:
Frankfurt is where Ed and I began to realize that our three month excursion is beginning to take the form of a Homeric Odyssey. It seems that no matter what hurdle we overcome at each port of call, the next stop will yet bring another unique and potentially "deadly" trial of wits and courage. This time it was Ed's scanner. His research for this entire trip is a process of making x-ray scans of Old Assyrian tablets in collections across Europe and Turkey in an effort to try to geotag the tablets. Scholars often don't know where many of the tablets originate they only know where they ended up and were buried). Ed's scanning will hopefully help historians get a better sense for the trade and the people but identifying where people were when they wrote various things. But Ed's scanner has had no end of trouble, and had to be sent back twice already to the company to be fixed. He had been using a loaner scanner, but he had returned that one by mail and was supposed to receive his repaired original machine from the company before heading to Turkey. Now it was Friday and it hadn't yet arrived. After chasing down phone numbers at DSL, Ed realized it had been delivered to another city within Germany, but customs was holding it because it looked like he was buying it new and they wanted him to pay the import taxes. In the end he had to pay 500 euros to get it out of customs and get a special delivery so he could have it in time for his trip. There was great relief and rejoicing when it arrived at the Williams at about 7 pm on Friday evening--he left at 5:00 the next morning. (Of course, when he arrived in Turkey, he discovered that the company had neglected to include a necessary power cord, which he didn't receive until the following Thursday, and then a few days later there was a software problem, for which he lost another two days of work. But those are later chapters in the
Edyssey.)
There were some good things about Germany, the best of which was Jolynn and Jay and Ivan and Emily treating us like royalty. Jolynn fed us at least four times, gave the kids corn dogs and goldfish crackers from the commissary on base, invited us to watch two sessions of General Conference with them, let our kids play with their pianos and guitars and toys, and lent Mary a dozen books to take with her on the rest of our trip. And Jolynn just let me talk and vent and helped me to relax. They made Frankfurt worth it.
Another good point: our apartment was also near a forest with a lake. Ed and I went out one moonlit evening for some romantic time near the water, and I took the kids out one sunny afternoon for a walk around the lake. The forest was just like the ones we used to play in in Denmark, and along with lots of dogs to play with (tame ones on leashes, not wild ones), there were also the log teepees we saw all over in Danish forests.
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| The kids really, really, really, really, really want a dog when we get home. I don't think I'm up for it. |
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| A giant downed tree with interesting fungus formations. Linda was grossed out by the fungus. |
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| Teepees! |
I'm a little embarrassed that I didn't take a single picture of the Williams, because they really were the very best part of Frankfurt.
Ed left Saturday morning, and I stayed with the kids until Monday morning. Ed had convinced me a number of weeks ago that since it didn't make sense for us to pay to go to Turkey with him (and be bored in industrial Ankara), and since we couldn't find anywhere within the vicinity of the Williams that we wanted to pay to stay in, I should take the kids and head south where the housing is cheap. And warmer. So I looked for the warmest and cheapest place I could find, and voila! The Italian Riviera! Of course, it would take us nine hours to get there, but even with the driving time and cost of gas, it would be cheaper (and hopefully more fun) than staying anywhere north of there. I decided to break up the trip, so on Monday we headed south through Heidelberg and landed just over the Swiss border by Lake Constance in a small town called Neuwilen. But on the way there, we were supposed to stop at the Porsche Museum in Stuttgart. Thank heaven I looked at the website the night before, because it is closed on Mondays. We went to Heidelberg Castle instead, which I absolutely loved. But I still owe the kids a trip to the Porsche Museum.
The Castle is almost a millennia old, but lies in great measure now in ruins, and has for centuries. It was a favorite haunt of Romantic artists and poets, and I could easily see why. I could just picture Lord Byron mooning about the castle walls, perched by the fountain, composing poems about ghosts and lovers. The kids, however, just wanted to ride the funicular. Which we did.
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| Clowning around, as usual. One of our airbnb hosts, in his review of our stay, wrote "those kids were so full of beans, it was amazing Mum and Dad had any energy left at all". I think about that review often, in moments like these. And I hope that all the Europeans around us in line are as positive about their "energy" as our host was. |
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| The view going up the hill. |
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| The view of Heidelberg coming down. (Through a window, unfortunately.) |
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| This lovely Romantic fountain was right in front of the carefully constructed grotto. I love how the Romantics carefully constructed their wildness. |
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| This guy was guarding the doorknob on the gate into the grotto, which was unfortunately locked. |
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| I looked around the gardens and castle walls while the kids waited oh-so-cheerfully and patiently for me to be finished. Kind of like this. |
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| Exploring trails around the ruins. |
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| Is that Isaac? No, it's brave, brave Sir Robin! |
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