Tuesday, April 6, 1999:
Carl took Celia and me to the airport in St. Louis. Had a pleasant chat with the ticket agent whose son, it turned out, is considering transferring from Mizzou to SLU next year. I gave him my card and invited his son to call me. He gave me his name as well and upgraded us to first class seating for the St. Louis to Detroit leg of our flight (no connection, I'm sure!). We got on the plane only to have a "ground hold" imposed on the flight because of high winds at Detroit. That was quite a concern because we only had an hour and a quarter layover in Detroit (the same amount of time our travel agent had originally planned for our group of thirteen this coming summer). As it turned out, we didn't get off the ground until after an hour and fifteen minute wait. Thus we figured we'd miss our connection to Europe for the first time in ten years. But the pilot made up ten minutes of flying time and after we landed in Detroit we literally ran the 9 minutes to our gate where the ticket agent called, "Frankfurt?" to us as we were approaching, waved us past the ticket counter and directly onto the plane, whose doors closed behind us and we left for Frankfurt.
The trip to Frankfurt proved uneventful (just the normal food, movie, more food) and we arrived in Frankfurt after a relatively short flight of just over seven hours.
Wednesday, April 7:
Our first new experience - we had to buy a ticket for the rail trip from the airport to the Frankfurt Hauptbahnhof(main train station). In past years we had always had a pass of some kind, either GermanRail or Eurail. The machines that dispense such tickets were not too clear for a newbie like me, so I stood in line and got our tickets from the ticket counter of the German train system at the airport.
Our Intercity Hotel where we have reservations, is just across the street from the Hauptbahnhof. Since we were so early, we stored our luggage at the hotel and spent the rest of the morning visiting shops at the Hauptbahnhof. We checked in around noon, made reservations for a Frankfurt city tour tomorrow at 1 p.m., and then took a brief nap. At this hotel, they give you rail passes for all trips in the metropolitan area of Frankfurt for the days you are at the hotel, so we spent the afternoon exploring one of the rail routes from Frankfurt to the West to Hochheim. Then back east to two stops past the Hauptbahnhof station, which is called Hauptwache, where we found a Turkish restaurant and had a delicious supper of "Hähnchenbrust in Gemüse mit Butterreis" (breast of chicken in vegetables with buttered rice). While eating there, we shared a table with a handicapped man who was employed by a bank selling stocks and securities to businesses. Chatting with him helped me to practice my German listening and speaking skills - you sure lose it if you don't use it!
Spent a leisurely evening watching TV - mostly CNN but some German programs as well.
Thursday, April 8:
Had breakfast in the hotel breakfast room. Although our hotel room was small (matching our round-trip air fare), the breakfast room was large and well-stocked with all kinds of goodies, all on a "help yourself to as much as you want" basis, choosing from several kinds of meat, bacon, rolls, juices, cooked eggs, scrambled eggs, fruit, milk and cereal and more. I had several helpings each of scrambled eggs, potatoes, bacon, cereal and fruit. One of the persons sharing our table was a young man who had spent a year attending college in Raleigh, North Carolina, majoring in art, but now was working for Commerz Bank of Germany. The other person who sat down just before we left was a young lady, apparently also a business person, starting her day with a cup of tea.
Then it was time to try an eastern rail ride out of Frankfurt to the Offenbach Ost station. We explored that area briefly, hopped back on the train and came back to our Hauptwache stop, where we had had the supper last night. We window shopped a bit; bought a few souvenirs and then decided to buy a carton of apricot/orange juice and a couple of strawberry-topped rolls there for lunch in our hotel room; hopped the train for the two stops back to the Hauptbahnhof and our hotel and had lunch.
We had just finished lunch when we got a call from the hotel desk saying that the Gray Line tour person had arrived early to pick us up for the city tour. We were ready so we were taken immediately to the departure point for our two hour tour of Frankfurt. The sights includes St. Paul's church; the Imperial cathedral; Römer(the old city hall and related buildings); the town square Römerburg with the reconstructed half-timbered buildings (80% of Frankfurt had been destroyed in World War II); Goethe-Haus(where the famous German poet had lived); the international fairgrounds; the banking district; the Hauptwache; St. Katherine's church; the museum section of town; and the old towers of the former city defenses.
After the end of the tour and after we were returned to our hotel, we decided to try a northern route of the commuter rail out of Frankfurt, going as far as our rail passes allowed in that direction, namely, to Bad Homburg. We explored the area there briefly, then decided to hop the train again and go as far south as possible on that route, namely to the Frankfurt South train station. It was a larger station, with several restaurants, including a McDonalds. I actually chose a restaurant (a small Eis-Cafe seating about 25 people around very small round tables) other than McDonalds because I was able to get a menu and figure out that one menu item was chicken soup with egg and "brötchen". It was delicious food and the atmosphere had (as Celia said) "local color", with friendly, jovial folk of all ages enjoying a good time along with the good food. We enjoyed "gemischtes Eis" for dessert. At a fruit stand at the station not far from the restaurant we bought some strawberries and bananas for a midnight snack at the hotel. The names of the train stops as we are approaching the Hauptbahnhof are beginning to sound familiar.
A peaceful evening of news about the not so peaceful world completed our day.
Friday, April 9:
We decided that today would be the day we would try to visit Bingen and communicate directly with the Hotel Krone where we will be staying this summer. Our "Frankfurt and suburbs" pass reaches as far as Mainz, so we decided to to to Mainz and then buy a regular ticket from there to Bingen. Everything went well. The "regular" train from Mainz to Bingen was a quite modern one.
It was good to see the familiar buildings in Bingen and to look across the Rhine and see Rüdesheim and the grape orchards along the far shore of the Rhine. The Hotel Krone was open; we were able to give them our VISA number directly instead of through the Bingen Tourist Board. They offered us a brochure of the hotel; we asked for and received three more to share with the rest of our group coming over this summer.
One of those enjoyable incidents of being mistaken for native Germans happened at one of the kiosks on the Rhine at Bingen that sell tourist materials. I told the gentleman behind the counter (in German) that Celia was interested in the book "Legends of the Rhine" that he had available, but that I could not find a price on it. He looked, couldn't find the price on it either, and was starting to go look it up in his records, but then he stopped, turned, and said (in German), "Oh, but this is in English"? I thanked him for thinking we were German-speaking folk, but that the English version was indeed what Celia wanted. The price was reasonable, and we got it as a souvenir.
Spent some time in Bingen looking for the kind of Beanie Baby that one of Elaine's colleagues was interested in, but without success. Stopped for lunch at a small restaurant specializing in rotisserie-fried chicken and got three half-chickens for less than ten Marks. Thoroughly stuffed, we decided to do a bit more window-shopping before deciding to head back to the Bingen train station. Had to stop for a dish of ice cream at the same ice cream shop where eight years ago a number of the ten Cappelners, including Pastor Jones, had enjoyed an after supper dessert. Celia recalled the exact chair and table where she had been sitting that evening in 1991 where some of us had surprised the proprietors by ordering large servings of "Apricose Eis". Such is the stuff fond memories are made of.
As per usual it took us less than thirty minutes to arrive in Mainz. During that ride we were in a train car with the first handicapped rest room we'd seen in ten years of German rail travel. A push button to open the sliding door, a push button to close it, wide expanse of turning around room with the usual handicapped conveniences inside - very modern and up to date.
Then 40 minutes to get from Mainz to Frankfurt. Having put in a more strenuous day, we decided to have a quick supper at McDonalds at the Hauptbahnhof. Bought a couple of midnight snacks, then retired to our room for an evening of relaxing and watching TV.
Saturday, April 10:
A lot fewer people at breakfast - the business travelers were absent. After breakfast we looked over our maps of the area around the Goethe Haus. Took the S-Bahn(commuter train) to the Hauptwache S-Bahn station near the former Goethe residence and walked to the Goethe Haus, arriving shortly after its opening hour of 10 a.m. We were able to stroll through some of the exhibits and then joined a guided tour of the house and museum until noon. The tour guide pointed out that the lowest four steps of a stone staircase leading up to the second floor looked slightly different than the higher ones. We were told that those lower four steps were all that had survived of this house in the bombing of Frankfurt in 1944. We saw pictures of the house before and after the bombing. As was the case with many of the other buildings in Frankfurt, some of the priceless artifacts in the house had been stored underground for safekeeping.
After leaving the house, we walked to the area where Goethestraße and Goetheplatz are located, then had lunch at a Pizza Hut in an extensive underground shopping area at the Hauptwache Station.
We spent several hours meandering down the Ziel, a pedestrian mall and shopping area several blocks long. The street included a number of artisans at work, from musicians playing instruments to a life-size "granite statue" of a man, with a sign on a container near his feet that said,"Geld bewegt die Welt - mich auch!" (Money makes the world move - me too!). When someone put some money in the container, the statue came to life and on some occasions would shake hands with the donor. (VERY realistic make-up and costuming!).
Got on the train and rode to the limits of our free tickets in Hanau, explored the train station there but found no restaurant that we wanted to patronize. So we decided to have another meal at the Turkish restaurant we found a few days ago. But by the time we got to the underground area at the Hauptwache stop, that part of the commercial underground area was closed - presumably for security reasons., since it was after 6 p.m. The population in the area was becoming predominantly young males, so we grabbed a quick meal of McNuggets at a restaurant nearby, then got on the train back to our hotel, for our usual relaxing evening.
Sunday, April 11:
We decided to visit the Senckenberg Museum of Natural History. This required taking an S-Bahn two stops over to Hauptwache station, then down to the subway (U-Bahn) station thee and on the subway to the Bockenheimer Warte station. This station is on the edge of Goethe University on whose campus the museum is located. After walking two blocks we found the entrance.
The museum was very impressive and well worth the visit. It had the most impressive collection of mounted bird specimens we had seen anywhere, each wit its German name, English name and its Latin name and a map of the world showing its habitat. And the birds formed only a small part of the mounted specimens in the museum, which included fish, arthropods, plants, rocks, minerals, insects, large reptiles and mammals, whales, elephants, dinosaurs, and the history of the evolvement of humans. Six hours later and after having had a snack at a rest area with set of food dispensing machines where Celia was injured slipping off a bench, we decided a ride to Mainz on a set of soft train seats might help recovery.
Just outside of Frankfurt, a lady sat down in a seat facing us and eventually we got to chatting. A 68 year old widow, she had worked in Mainz much of her working life. Though born in Poland, it was in the German-speaking part. She married a German and since the early sixties had worked for a car rental firm in Mainz. We told her of our trip to Europe in June. and of our intent today to find a new place to eat our evening meal, possibly in the train station at Mainz. She said she'd be very happy to show us to the restaurant there. When we got to Mainz, she did so, only to find the restaurant closed for renovation. We thanked her; she apologized and wished us "a gute Reise". We got two pieces of pizza and soda from a local vendor and took the next S-Bahn to Frankfurt. After a brief stop in our hotel we decided to visit our Eis-Cafe at the Frankfurt South station. Rode the train there with Celia trying their tomato soup and my trying their bean soup in a very leisurely supper atmosphere. Part of the time the background music consisted of a vocalist singing Amazing Grace (in English). Got back to our room later than usual, but continued a leisurely evening, including TV.
Monday, April 12:
Decided this morning to visit more thoroughly the Römer area of Frankfurt where we had only spent fifteen minutes of our city tour last Friday. We took the S-Bahn to the Hauptwache stop, then walked past the Goethe Square, cut through a couple of smaller streets, following our city map and go to Römerburg Square just as it was starting to rain. Took shelter first in a souvenir shop, where Celia found a suitable souvenir for her - a T-shirt in her size displaying the Newschwanstein castle. We got ourselves oriented and headed for St. Paul's church, where the German National Assembly convened in 1848. There was a nicely done mural around the inner core representing German leaders throughout history. The outer walls had a series of pictures with English and German text providing a brief summary of the struggle of the German people to become a nation.
Back across the square in between the raindrops we went to the second floor of the middle of three Gothic-style buildings to visit the Imperial Hall, lined with the romanticized portraits of fifty-two kings or emperors, thirteen of whom had celebrated their coronation banquets there.
Then to the "Alte Nikolaikirche", a church that had served as the court chapel in the middle of the twelfth century, as the church of the city council in the fifteenth century and now serves as the church of St. Paul's congregation. In the guest book, one person from Greece had written (in English) that he hadn't found God in that church, and that God was not to be found in "evangelistic" churches. The next entry, in German, affirmed the prior comment. So I signed my name and country below my bilingual comment, "Gott ist hier! It takes some people longer to see the Light". While I was doing that, Celia was lighting three candles for the three servicemen captured in Yugoslavia.
Stopping at another souvenir shop in the Römerburg Square, we saw some Beanie Babies and I inquired about the ones that had the German Flag on their chest. He showed us one - the price was DM450 (about $300), one per customer per month. He told us his policy was to keep DM50 to cover costs and to donate the other DM400 to a children's cancer hospital. We took a picture of the proprietor holding the prized item.
We then walked through the light rain to a U-Bahn station a few blocks away, took the U-Bahn as far south as it went to the Frankfurt South Station, then took the S-Bahn on a joy ride further south to Darmstadt, then back to Frankfurt getting to the Hauptwache station about supper time and had our Hähnchenbrust in Gemüse mit Butterreis again at the Turkish restaurant we had discovered. After a leisurely supper, eating and watching shoppers walking by in the underground shopping mall, we headed for our hotel in the more than chilly evening air.
Tuesday, April 13:
Out our hotel room window this morning we saw lots of people with umbrellas and wearing winter coats. After watching TV for a while, we learned it was seven degrees Celsius (45 Fahrenheit). We waited an hour or so, then decided to try a trip west to Wiesbaden. It turned out quite enjoyable. Saw some scenery we hadn't experienced before. The sun came out and warmed things up so we explored a few blocks around the Wiesbaden train station, then had lunch as a small restaurant we found there. We found and got a copy of the "Städteverbindungen Deutschland" giving the schedule of virtually all trains traveling in Germany, a book I had been hoping to find.
Celia and I were standing at a train schedule board at the Wiesbaden Bahnhof, discussing which train to take back to Frankfurt when a lady came up to us and asked if we spoke English. She said she needed help (actually all she needed was some reassurance). She wanted to go to Mainz from Wiesbaden and had already purchased a ticket. She wasn't sure how to read the schedule. We showed her several trains she could chose, including the times they were traveling. She thanked us and chose the train that was at that moment loading passengers a few platforms away from us.
As we returned to the Frankfurt Hauptbahnhof station, we decided to see if there was an underground shopping area under this station as well as the one under the Hauptwache station that we had already explored. We found quite an extensive layout of shops and stores, so we browsed there for a while eventually having supper at a Pizza Hut in that complex. Spent some time planning our last full day in Frankfurt tomorrow.
Wednesday, April 14:
Since the high temperature for today was to be in the middle 40's (Fahrenheit), and since we weren't really interested in visiting museums about modern art of about the history of postal service, etc., we decided to travel as many of the commuter rail routes in and around Frankfurt as we had time for.
We started out by buying items for our lunch from the grocery store below the Hauptbahnhof: a pack of cookie/crackers, wrapped package of 16 very thin turkey slices and two cherry juice drinks. We would decide later where to eat our lunch. We took the S2 commuter train through Lorsbach to Niedernhausen and returned. We knew that castles are more common in the Rhine region so we were a bit surprised to see the ruins of an old castle near the train route between Lohrsbach and Eppstein. On one corner of the ruins someone had constructed a modern residence. It was in the town of Lohrsbach that we came by an elementary school with children out at recess time. (Celia also spotted a black cat there!).
By the time we arrived back at the Frankfurt Hauptbahnhof, it was past 11 a. m., so we decided to cross the street and eat our "brown bag" lunch in our hotel room.
After lunch we took the S6 from the Hauptbahnhof north and east of Frankfurt through Bad Vilbel, Groß Karben to Friedberg and then returned to the Frankfurt city center, passing the Hauptbahnhof and going to the Turkish restaurant at the Hauptwache station. The usual proprietor was there, a young man, but he was out of our favorite menu item. I told him Celia had liked the vegetables; he was very accommodating, filing her plate with 3-4 times as much as she would eat normally at home. He helped me to select Mussakka mit Butterreis, which was delicious. Making small talk I told him again how we had enjoyed his food but we would be leaving tomorrow for home in the USA. Soon he joined us at our table and chatted. He had come to Germany about eleven years ago, with all his family still in Turkey. He flies back to visit them periodically. In response to his questions as to exactly where in the U.S. we lived, I have him my business card and elaborated on the information. He then gave me his name and address on his business card. He asked if we would like some Turkish tea. We said, "Certainly!" He said he would have to heat the water, so we went off to do this (all this discussion with him in German while he intermittently had to serve a customer or accept payment from a customer). Eventually he returned with two delicate glasses of tea - as soon as he served us and sat with us again, another customer saw the tea and ordered some.
As we were leaving, we wished him well. He declined my offer to pay for the tea.
Just now I have reconfirmed by phone our reservations for tomorrow's flight with Northwest Airlines from Frankfurt to Detroit.
Thursday, April 15:
By the time I woke up in our hotel room, Celia already had her suitcase half packed. By breakfast time, we were ready to check out of Hotel Intercity. We bought meat and crackers and fruit juice from the grocery store in the underground shopping area at the Hauptbahnhof for our lunch. Our rail passes were still valid, so we took the train one last time to get to the airport. Since we arrived at the airport earlier than most leaving on our flight, the security check, etc. took very little time. Thus we had several hours of time to wait around until lunch. Had our lunch, went to our departure gate, waited a while, boarded the plane and took off. Eight hours later we arrived on schedule in Detroit. After a brief layover in Detroit we left for St. Louis, where we arrived a bit late. We called Carl and Thor, who came to pick us up. With the aid of their mobile phone, we were able to know exactly when to go out to the three minute drop off location outside the terminal, get in their van, and head for home.