Chapter 27: A visit from home and a birthday in Freiburg

Last weekend, Lawna and I drove up to Frankfurt in a rented black VW van to pick up our son Michael and his girlfriend, Victoria, at the city bus terminal where they arrived from a stay in Berlin. Michael is working on his doctorate in German at Columbia University and is making an annual visit to brush up on the language in country. After waiting for some time, a bit anxiously since they do not have cell phone service during their stay in Europe, I finally caught sight of a fully bearded Michael and then Victoria in a long yellow dress, both wheeling their bikes from the bus they had deboarded. It was wonderful to see them! Michael studied at Goethe University in Frankfurt a few years ago and knows the town. We stowed the bikes and their backpacks in the rented van, and then Michael guided us through the city metro system to the picturesque historic center of an otherwise modern high rise city, and, after walking around the town square and taking some pictures, we found an Italian restaurant and enjoyed a leisurely meal with good conversation. I think we helped to close the restaurant, and, as we still had a two hour drive back to Spesbach, we hopped back onto the metro, made our way back to the van which was safely parked by the bahnhof (train station), and started off home.

Together in Frankfurt

It has been just Lawna and I these last months since we arrived in Germany, and it is good to have the company now of our son and Victoria. Lawna grew up with two brothers and later had two sons. In other words, she has lived her life in a high testosterone environment, and I think the extended company of Victoria has been a real joy for her. They have gone clothes shopping together, and walked out into the nearby fields to pick summer flowers and make arrangements for the apartment. Victoria is like the daughter or sister she never had. It has been fun just to watch movies together in the evening, passing a bowl of popcorn around.

Michael atop Homburg Schloss

Michael and I have biked around the Spesbach and Landstuhl area together, and the four of us have climbed up to the castle ruins of Homburg, and then enjoyed beers together down at the base of the hill. Later in the week we drove to Strasbourg to see the cathedral and wander around the shops and cafés. Finally, this last weekend, we drove south to Freiburg, where Michael first lived in Germany on his study abroad program. I booked hotel rooms so that we could make a full weekend of the visit, and, again, Michael, visibly happy to be back in his first German city,  showed us around his old hood. We saw the great Münster cathedral, a vast Teutonic gothic structure full of bizarre medieval carvings. Michael and Victoria climbed the tower stairs to the viewing area while Lawna and I rested our feet below in the cooler vault of the church (the temperature had reached the humid nineties, and Germany has almost no air conditioning). Now I kind of wish I had made the climb. Maybe next cathedral--they're everywhere here.

in Strasbourg

Staying cool in Freiburg

Freiburg bikes

Freiburg türm

Market flower stand

Münster tower

Münster Tannhäuserish  interior

Freiburg street clown

On Thursday night, Lawna and I went out to celebrate her birthday at the Greiffenegg Schlössle restaurant that overlooks Freiburg from atop a high hill. Michael wanted to show Victoria some of his favorite night spots in town (maybe not for parental consumption), and that freed us for a special dinner, just the two of us (which, though ever sweeter, is no longer such a novelty). Again, we closed down the place, along with a Chinese student and German software developer that we met at the next table. Both spoke excellent English, and we ended up conversing over glasses of wine into the night. We returned by foot to the hotel after Michael and Victoria. We had out partied them!

The restaurant where we celebrated Lawna's birthday

The view of the Münster from the restaurant

It's good to have Michael and Victoria's presence in our house. We wish that Brian could be here, too. We will have him with us, we hope, after he graduates from UTSA next fall. Germany is a wonderful place, and we are enjoying a great adventure that we never expected to have at this point in our lives, but we do miss our families. Fortunately, modern technology makes it possible to keep in close communication through media such as this blog, email, Skype and a good long distance phone package. When I was a child, living in Japan and, later, in Hawaii with my parents and sister, we could only access the US mainland by slow mail. Even television news had to be flown to Honolulu, so that with the time difference, we received it a day late. Of course, satellites changed everything, and now the World Wide Web makes communication instant and simple.

But, still we miss our families. It's a blessing when we receive a flesh and blood visit. For Lawna, the visit from her boy had to be the best birthday present possible.

Enjoy the following Freiburg music video, accompanied by two street musicians, the Münster bells and yours truly on mandolin, guitar and bouzouki. The tune is a German traditional song, "Die Gedanken sind Frei" (My Thoughts are Free).

          

Chapter 26: Mainz, City of Gutenberg

Last weekend (I've been lazy about blogging) we drove for about an hour northeast to Mainz, the city of Gutenberg. Our son Michael had told us glowing things about the place from his stays in Germany, and it is an interesting city, especially if you like history. The most prominent landmark of the city is the magnificent Mainz cathedral of Saint Martin and Stephen which still dominates the skyline.

Cathedral of Saint Martin and Stephen (Mainz Cathedral)

As you can see from the photo, we arrived on market day, and the main squares were covered with open air produce stands. It was a sunny, warm day, and the streets were teeming with visitors and locals browsing through the market, packed into stores and relaxing in the cafes. It wasn't until the merchants took down their market stands later in the day that we got a clear view of the Stadtmitte (downtown) layout.

Stadtmitte market day 

First, we took in the cathedral. We have already seen plenty of beautiful churches, and Mainz is uniquely beautiful and historically significant in the history of Europe. It was the site of important coronations, not just of German kings ("German" is actually a later Romantic nationalist concept), but several Holy Roman emperors, the kind that could call the entire continent out to a crusade. The church's architecture is mostly Romanesque, not as ornate as the later Gothic style, and it doesn't house the incredible windows of a church like Metz, but its dimensions are vast with high domes that afford a gigantic soundscape. In fact, we were lucky to arrive for a free organ recital by Jonathan Dimmock, who plays for the San Francisco Symphony. I'm usually not that fond of pipe organ music, but in a space like Mainz Cathedral, the effect is thrilling.

organ of Mainz Cathedral

interior of Mainz Cathedral

After visiting the cathedral, we walked across the square to the Gutenberg museum. Mainz is the city where Johannes Gutenberg started printing bibles with movable type and changed the world. The town square has a statue dedicated to him, of the old, fatherly looking bearded man holding a book. In fact, no one knows what he really looked like. He invented the printing press as a young man, and the style of the day was clean shaven, so the portraits we usually see are probably total fictions. That aside, the museum is well worth the couple of euro it takes to get in. The exhibit is not just about Gutenberg, who they've only devoted part of a floor to. The rest of the four storey building is about the history of print, mostly movable, but also engraving and calligraphy. And it's not just about European print. There are sections on Asian printing techniques, Islamic calligraphy and even ancient Egyptian and Babylonian engraving. And yes, there's even a wall of contemporary graffiti! The collection is impressive, and the detail in many of the ancient books is astonishing. Of course, the museum houses several Gutenberg bibles, and includes lots of information on how they were made and the early combination of mechanically printed text and hand-inked illuminated flourishes.

Offices of the Gutenberg Museum (previously a palace and later a grand hotel that housed Mozart and Goethe)

Replica of Gutenberg's press. The museum staff conducts demonstrations of Gutenberg's printing process at regular intervals.

From the museum, after some lunch, we walked along the old streets and discovered some more interesting looking churches that were closed. Further down, toward the Rhine (which we never caught sight of while we were there), we visited a free ancient maritime museum that houses several reassembled Roman ships that have been discovered in the area by archaeologists. If you like ship stuff like I do, this is a really fascinating place. Unfortunately, I don't have any pictures. They requested that we not photograph anything. We will certainly return to this city. There was plenty that we were not able to see, and it's located near us. I've been wanting to see examples of rococo architecture, and I was thinking we might have to visit Bavaria or Austria for those types of buildings, but Mainz has several grand rococo cathedrals. We just didn't have a chance to see them, and one was closed.

Entrance to Augustiner Kirche (closed roccocco church that we will have to visit later)

Mainz is only a short distance from Frankfurt. We had originally toyed with the idea of visiting both cities in one day, but there is simply too much to do in each one. We will briefly see Frankfurt next Friday when we pick up our son Michael and Victoria. They have been staying in Berlin these last couple of weeks and will be visiting us in the south for a while. Michael studied in Frankfurt at the Goethe University and knows the city well. I'm sure we will visit there during his stay, as well as Freiburg, where he also lived as part UT's study abroad program. We are very much looking forward to having Michael and Victoria with us for awhile. We miss our family!