Part 1
Our Daughter, Heather has decided to leave the Air Force in January. She already has a job waiting for her with United Airlines out of Denver. She has spent the last two years serving her country in Germany. Before she leaves, next year, she wanted us to visit her and had enough sky miles built up to pay for our tickets. How could we pass up a deal like that?
Still, there was a lot of trepidation in planning such a trip. We were both “over the hill,” dealing with health issues. Jackie was the robust one in our twosome! That all changed a year ago when she contacted an autoimmune disease that attacked her eye. It ate away at the wall of her eyeball, making it so thin, the doctor was afraid the eye would explode! Doctor’s words, not mine! To stop the deterioration of the eye, they prescribed high doses of steroids. It worked, her eye is stable, and they are slowly weaning her off the medicine, but the cure wrecked havoc in the rest of her body.
It accelerated her osteoporosis and small fractures formed across her pelvis. Those gave her great pain in walking so she sat stationary for too long, and blood clots developed in her legs, broke loose and lodged in her lungs. She was hospitalized for four days. She was released, but blood thinners were added to her long list of medications. Doctors now say her pain is from arthritis, and a hip replacement may be the only succor in what seems a never ending saga of maladies, and potential cures.
Though I have visited multiple countries around the world, travel always takes me out of my comfort zone. Jackie calls me “a stay at home fuddy-duddy.” Just thinking about walking around airports, and foreign cities had me tripping over all kinds of hypothetical obstacles. The responsibility of getting JJ there and back would fall on my shoulders. Was it possible to tour some of Europe and have quality time with our daughter when pain insisted on following Jackie around? She was determined to try, and who was I to stand in her way!
We took her walker, and our daughter arranged for someone with a wheelchair to meet us on arrival in Atlanta and Frankfurt and wheel her around the airports. In the end, my fretting was for naught. Yes, she still hurt, but she was a trooper and didn’t often complain. She could have stayed home and hurt, but she choose to go to Europe, have some fun, see some new sights, and visit our daughter, in spite of the pain!
The following narration is PART ONE of our jaunt to Europe.
November 21
Our flight to Germany took eight hours. We were seated in economy, so there was hardly room for my knees, much less to stretch my long legs. No position was comfortable, so I endured! I stood up only twice, both times to get JJ something from the overhead bin. To kill time, I watched two movies. They seemed to make the time pass more quickly and lessen the pain in my legs and backside caused by being stationary for so long. Most of our flight was at nighttime, so I tried to sleep some of the time, but it was a restless sleep, at best, and not enough!
It was daylight when the Airbus descended through the layer of cotton clouds to lower elevations and prepared for our landing in Frankfurt. Though we made our trip at the end of November, almost wintertime, I was surprised to see most of the fields still verdant, a patchwork quilt like my mother used to make, colored mostly in shades of green, with a smattering of blocks where naked forest sprouted from the mostly flat landscape that sprawled over Southwest Germany. Little towns dotted the countryside, the houses sporting steep, red-tiled roofs, many of them centuries old.
Sadly, the antiquity was marred by the modern construction of municipal buildings and apartments to meet the need of a growing population of young Germans and, probably, the great influx of foreigners coming through the open borders. The beautiful terrain was tied together by roads, railways, and bike and walking paths, crossing farmer’s fields, bisecting woods, and connecting every little town like the quilting stitches my mother used to sew into one of her fancy bedspreads! The face of the sky was gloomy, and it had obviously been weeping softly. It was a wet blanket I looked down upon, but it was still beautiful!
Because JJ needed a wheelchair, we were some of the last passengers to deplane. Once inside the terminal, we were met by a uniformed man driving an electric vehicle, like a golf cart. He drove us for what seemed like miles, changes floors in elevators, taking us through immigration, customs, and baggage claim, then dropped us off at an outside door where we hoped to meet our daughter, Heather. He was courteous, always smiling, and was there to serve those in need. Jackie could not have walked that distance, so we were grateful for his help. And amazingly, he wasn’t there to receive a tip. He was gone with a smile and a wave before I could even get money from my pocket! He was a refreshing contrast to our experience at Orlando Airport where I had to pay three tips even before we boarded our plane.
As we were whisked through the airport, it was hard to miss seeing all the Muslims who were traveling. Their women, heads covered with a hijab, were everywhere. We had flown to Germany, a foreign country to me, but in the Frankfurt Airport it seemed we had landed in a multi-cultural center somewhere in the Middle East, instead!
Another thing I noticed was the number of people smoking. I went outside to find a landmark or gate number to tell our daughter where to find us. The air was cold, but full of cancer-causing smoke. Everyone outside puffed on a cigarette. The stench was worse than what I remembered of the high school boy’s bathroom back in my day! I guessed that “Tabacco Free Germany” was not a slogan, here!
We waited a long time, not realizing that our texts with Heather were not getting to her. Thankfully, she came walking down the outside sidewalk looking for us. It was a happy reunion! She had planned to pick us up at curbside, but when she did not hear from us, she parked in the short-term garage and came to our rescue.
We soon piled our luggage into her car along with JJ’s walker and headed south on the Autobahn. When my daughter is in the pilot seat of a Lockheed C-130 Hercules, she flies! I learned on the Autobahn, that when she is in the driver seat of her Mini Clubman, she flies, too, at least where it was legal.
Contrary to what I heard about the German Autobahn, there were speed limits, mostly when passing through towns or in congested areas. However, once you were traveling through open countryside, the speed limits were lifted. A driver could go 90, 100 mph or more if road conditions permitted. It did not seem like we were going fast because everybody else on the road was driving at the same speed. If you broke a posted limit, you would be caught by a mobile radar unit and camera. Five or six months after committing the infraction, you would get a ticket in the mail. Polizei were few and far between on the road.
The Germans were sticklers for keeping cars in good running condition. In fact, if you broke down on the highway, you would most likely get a traffic ticket, Heather told us. It was your responsibility to make sure your car was safe to drive, and it was assumed that because your car broke down, you didn’t maintain it. Maybe that was why they allowed cars to go so fast!
We stopped in the city of Mannhiem for lunch. I was hoping for a German restaurant that served sauerkraut, but with JJ’s disability, such establishments were too far away to walk to. Instead, we settled for a place that served gyros. I did not have good memories of eating lamb when I tried it years ago, but I had to admit that Greek gyros were palatable! We sat at a table by the window. The streets were busy with cars, bicycles, and pedestrians. Many nationalities walked the street outside, Africans, Asians, people from the Middle East, and I couldn’t forget that we, those three Gringos from Sanford, Florida in the restaurant eating gyros, were also foreigners! It was a multicultural city, and we fit well into the mix! Some people might have even thought we were Germans, but if they heard us talking, that notion would had quickly been erased!
After lunch, Heather drove us to Mannheim Baroque Palace. Construction on this opulence was started in 1720 and when it was finished, it contained close to 646,000 square feet! The second floor was the main level for affairs of state and was divided into huge rooms with twenty-foot ceilings painted with frescoes, and floors of parquet with fancy designs in the wood. There was a throne room, a ballroom with marble covered walls, a dining room, library, and others, many with large, old tapestries hanging on the walls. I did not know why anyone, then or now, would need a place that big. Today, a large part of it is used by the University of Mannheim. Much of the palace was destroyed by bombs in World War II but has since been brought back to its former glory.
I enjoyed seeing the palace and learning some of its history. However, I was greatly disappointed that in our excursions through Mannheim, and our tour of Mannheim Palace I could not find the Steamroller, anywhere!
November 22
We slept till almost noon. Six hours difference in time change had really messed with our internal clocks. By seven o’clock last night it was all I could do to keep my eyes open! When we did go to bed, it was so cold in our room that we snuggled to keep warm, something that did not happen much in Florida!
Though it was only Wednesday, we celebrated an early Thanksgiving. A turkey, frozen or still gobbling, would be a rare bird in Germany. Heather was able to purchase a small one at the base PX. It was more than enough for the three of us! Though I’m sure Germans are oft times thankful, the country does not have a designated day to remind its population to give thanks for their many blessings.
We watched a movie at night, then climbed the stairs to sleep. In the morning we would travel to the German/Swiss boarder to start our next adventure.
FIN
Life Happens/This And That
- https://fillburns.com/2023/07/24/getting-old-is-getting-old/
- https://fillburns.com/2023/07/04/smelling-like-a-cowboy/
- https://fillburns.com/2022/06/27/the-big-seven-zero/
Writings By Phil 
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