Sunday, April 2, 2017

Frankfurt

     After the flight from Denver to London, the trip to Frankfurt was easy, a couple of hours.  Thanks to the European Union, we didn’t have to clear customs in Germany.   (Does Brexit mean that folks will have to present passport or visa when they leave the Chunnel?)  
      We walked to the car rental place and were soon on our way.  We spent two nights in Dinkelsbuhl, an old walled town.  I missed all the interesting stuff, a walk around town, taking in the wall and all the old buildings.  The next day, I called on a doctor, who thankfully could speak English.
     Virus, he said.  He prescribed a “soft” antibiotic that would prevent me from getting a secondary infection, a dose of Ibuflam 600mg (ibuprofen, 400mg available over the counter), and some nasal spray to keep me breathing through my nose.  I went back to the hotel and slept the rest of the day. 
      I got up, dressed, walked four or five blocks, had a sausage and kraut, and back to bed.  The others had a good time, I think.
    The next morning, we paid our hotel bill and took off for Goppingen where the in-laws live.  We took some less-traveled roads, much more interesting than the autobahn, which is lined with trees or manmade walls, which keep the traveler from seeing much of the countryside.
     As we drove through towns and villages, we saw folks dressed in costumes.  We were told it was “Dirty Thursday”, preceding Mardi gras and Ash Wednesday.  On Dirty Thursday, the women of the village capture the mayor, who is not allowed to say anything for four days.  I’m guessing the custom gives women control of things for most of carnival week.  It is also a good excuse to drink a beer or two and begin the great celebration that ends with Mardi gras. 
     After checking into our hotel in Goppingen, a niece, Isa, came and led us to her parents’ house where we had supper.  It was here my disappointment in German beer sprouted.  It wasn’t bad beer, it was good beer, but it was Pilsner.  My imagination had conjured up a nice dark, malty, foamy brew, but so far, I had only Pilsner beers.
     We weren’t the only guests, as three other couples, were also present, all members of the family.  Fortunately for us, nearly everybody knew some English, and could translate for us when German broke out.
     On Friday, we all piled into one car and headed for Stuttgart.  We made a mandatory cathedral visit on the way.  We stopped in a smaller town with a big clock tower.  It also had a shopping center where the Goodwife was allowed a few minutes to take a look at a sewing shop.
     In Stuttgart, we toured the Porsche factory where Isa works.  Porsche has brought the assembly line a long way from Henry Ford’s time.  Many things are automated, but some things still have to be done by human beings.  Parts carts are totally automated, but it takes a person to load the carts with the right parts on the right tray before the cart wanders off to the assembly line all by itself. 
      The assembly line is multi-storied, but rolling off one conveyor, onto the elevator, off the elevator and onto the next conveyer is all automated.  All parts are timed to arrive “just-in-time”.  We watched two guys putting heads on engines.  One person hooked the head to a hoist, which moved over the waiting engine.  One person placed a gasket properly and they both carefully aligned the head as it was lowered onto the engine block.  A power wrench came down and zapped all the head bolts at the same time, about two seconds.  The engine headed for the next section.
     The Goodwife noted that most of the women were working the sewing machines in the upholstery section.  They were working with cowhide to cover dash as well as seats.  United States hides are verboten because the barbwire used to contain the critters scars the hides unacceptably. 
     To keep assembly line workers from complacency, they change positions every two or three weeks.  The engine people this week may move to bodywork next week.  Since several people can do several different jobs, one person’s absence doesn’t hold up the line.
    The day we were there, the factory planned to turn out 240 cars.  Needless to say, none of them were ours, though a future owner could watch his/her car being assembled.
     Timo and mate joined us at the Porsche factory.  Timo was a foreign-exchange student in Atwood for a year around the turn of the century. We all met the extended family in a local eatery, a pub-like place that served only wine, no beer.  It was noisy and I still didn’t feel very well.  No beer?  In Germany?




     On Saturday, we took three cars of folks to Lichtenstein castle.  It is not the country of Lichtenstein, just a castle named Lichtenstein.  It was remodeled into a hunting lodge.  The owner still uses it for that occasionally.  It was February and the castle, made of stone, was cold.  Living in a castle would be a sentence, not a privilege.




     We went for lunch to one of the family’s apartment.  It was nice enough to take a walk followed by a nap.  Isa and Martin hosted us for supper our last night there.  Politics was on the agenda.  The family sang some folk songs for us.  We couldn’t join in.  Someone translated.  We would probably call them ballads, sad songs about life.
     We headed out Sunday for Dortmund with Timo leading the way.  We stopped to have a light lunch along the Rhine.
    
   
   We didn’t take the Viking River cruise.  We watched a ferry make a U-turn across the river with its load of autos.  No bridge in sight.
     We got to Dortmund in time to go to the brewery museum.  Dortmund used to be the Milwaukee or Golden, Colorado of Germany, a beer producer.  We didn’t see the modern brewery, just the museum.


    That evening, we met Timo’s family at a modern looking restaurant.  Inside, it was quite antique with heavy wooden beams and tables.  Outside, in the town square, a carnival was set up to celebrate, what else, the end of carnival season. 
      On Monday, Timo took us for a walk around a former site of a foundry.  It had been converted to a lake with luxury houses all around the perimeter.  Following lunch at Timo’s apartment, we headed back to Frankfurt.
     Tuesday (Marti gras) was one of the longest days of my life.  We got a wakeup call at 4 a.m.  We took the rental car back to the airport, and walked up to the terminal.  This time, we were ready for security, all our bottles in a plastic bag.  In preparation for our return to the states, we breakfasted at McDonalds in the Frankfurt airport.
    Our 7 a.m. flight took us back to Heathrow.  We had to change terminals.  They loaded us on a bus and we went through the back alleys of the airport.  We arrived at Terminal 5.  Though we had never left the airport, we had to go through secruity yet again.  I got my fourth and final pat down.

     At about 11:30 a.m. local time we departed for Denver.  Nine hours later we would land in Denver.  It was about 3 p.m.  We chased the sun all day.  At 7:30 p.m. I crawled into bed.  We had been up for nearly 23 hours.  Our European journey was over.  
     Some observations on Germany:  I expected Germany to be clean and neat, which it mostly was with a couple of exceptions.  The taggers are set lose there.  Walls and signs sport the same graffiti as we see in the States.  In Dortmund, near the brewery, it was very trashy.  Timo’s lady companion says whenever she has to travel that area, she makes sure her car doors are locked.  They blame it on the immigrants, who lack the German sense of order.
    We saw a lot of modern looking buildings, such as the restaurant, with antique interiors, as mentioned.  We also saw many ancient looking buildings that survived the war, as in Dinkelsbuhl, that had completely modern interiors, modern beyond what we are used to.  An example would be flush toilets with two choices of flush, one for liquid waste, two for solid waste.  They are water-savers.
     One final note, when we get to the “beam me up, Scotty” stage, foreign travel will be a lot easier.  No need for a pat down, maybe?

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