It takes about an hour to get through London to Heathrow airport, and the airport is an absolute zoo. What else would one expect around the Holidays? So I stand around looking like a moron until someone comes up and gives me a hand and directs me to where I need to go. I pick my ticket up, drop my bag off, and go through inspections. The way they do things in England at the airports isn't like the States. You don't know your gate number for your flight until about 30-20 minutes before the sucker boards- so they herd all the people into this huge common space with shops all around like a mall- good for business. Then you stare at the listing of flights waiting for yours to flash a gate number. Needless to say, this herding zone was completely packed with people from all cultures and all ways of life. I don't think I have heard that many different foreign languages spoken in one place in my entire life. Also, it is not uncommon to see people running through the airport because sometimes the terminals are twenty minutes away, so it gives you only ten minutes leeway to get to your terminal. As I had a couple hours, I decided to grab a bite to eat, and sit and try to pick out the Americans. This is a little game I made up to pass the time, and I don't know if I was right all the time but I know I hit it on the button a lot of times. Basically, most of the young American guys had the 'frat boy' look, and the young American women were generally little, painted girl pop-star clones. It was fun to pass the time.
After I ate, I had to use the toilet. So I went to one of the four or five bathrooms in the herding zone, and I found a stall so I could do my business. Now this is where things get really funny. So I am prepping my throne, when all of a sudden this guy next to me starts talking real loud. At first, I thought he was talking to himself, but then I realized he was talking on his cell phone. So here is this English guy, in the stall next to me, dropping live rounds- I am talking full-on splashers here-, pulling gobs of TP off the roll intermittently, and speaking to someone on his cell phone. The funny part was that he was grunting and making pushing noises as he was talking! And the topic of his conversation is what really pushed it over the edge for me- he was taking about his father-
"Uhhhh, yeah, he died of a heeeeeart attack last week, fell down (grunt) dead (sound of relief in his voice). Yeah, he was at the office, and he just fell down. Yeah, it is a little rrrrrrrough considering Christmas. But we are going to have a little get-together (pause... grunt/fart) and it will be good to talk about it.
UNBELIEVABLE! As I sat there, I was silently busting up. I was having a hard time keeping my composure in order to do my own business!
Anyway, so the flight leaves at three, and as I am in the air I suddenly realize something- I don't speak a word of German! Now many of you are probably thinking- maybe you should have considered this before getting on the plane like when you were making your travel reservations! But I have been so busy with school, my stupid paper, and my play; that I had not even considered that I didn't even know German. What if the people in Passport Control question me- I am screwed. I won't even know what they are saying! So I start to get a little nervous.
The flight was about an hour and a half, and my plane is late because we circled for like twenty minutes making my stomach uneasy. But when I got off the plane, I immediately notice to my great relief that the signs are in both German and English. My friend Taramin and her sister, Bethany, who is also visiting her from the States, pick me up from the airport, and after exchanging greetings we head into the city proper.
A few words about Frankfurt am Main. The city was bombed to rubble during WWII, as is most of this section of Germany, so the city is a really new city. It reminded me a lot of American cities to tell you the truth. Even Europeans call it Main-hatten. Frankfurt is the economic hub of all of Europe. All the big banks have their main branches there, and the city also has like four or five sky scrapers- which is really odd for Europe. In fact, I was told there is not another city in Europe that has more. The Main River flows through the middle of the city, and the business district reminded me a lot of American cities- in other words this is very different than England and more like the US. On another note, in general, the German cities and towns I visited were extremely clean (yes, we can learn something from them about this Meredith) much more so than the average American city. I don't like to make blanket statements because their are always exceptions, but I did notice certain trends- one of which was the cleanliness of Germany. Another was everyone follows the rules in Germany- on the whole. My friend Taramin has been screamed at multiple times for jay walking. I think I can safely say that the Germans in general believe in a certain orderliness.
My friend Taramin is a live-in Nanny for this rich German couple, who both come from serious money. They live in a big house in a fancy neighborhood, and they have three other servants that come and go throughout the week. These people are loaded. The mother is a doctor with her own practice, and the father is a representative in the local Parliment. This is a serious career family here who are always busy, busy, busy. The mother speaks really good English and is really nice, while the father doesn't speak English as well and is really quiet.
The Germans celebrate Christmas on Christmas Eve, and that is the time for big dinners, presents being torn open, and general celebration. On Christmas Eve, the Grandparents show up and the father's two teenage kids from a prior marriage. It was a nice, quiet Christmas- by my family's standards- and we ended up having a pretty extravagent dinner. I brought smoked salmon sent by my Uncle Al and Aunt Juanita, and it was a huge hit at dinner. Everyone was speaking German most of the time, so I kind of was left out of a lot of what was going on, but the salmon kind of brought me into the fold.
For Christmas we had goose (a first for me), turkey, salmon, and some kind of really good chocolate cake thing that Annette made at the last minute. All the food in Germany was AWESOME, and the sweets there are top rate! There were other things that we ate for Christmas dinner too, but I cannot remember them all. This family was not just wealthy but they had a lot of culture to them that I didn't quite understand. I didn't know what to do with all my different forks, knives, spoons, and plates- so I just tried to follow everyone else's lead. I really felt out of my element. Simon is not exactly synonymous with cultured. There were a lot of little things throughout my stay that I really felt like I dropped the ball on just because I didn't know what to do or what was proper; and I really felt like I was being watched. I think I made us Americans look pretty bad- I wish I could have done better.
Anyway, so Christmas passes, and we end the night by playing Hangman on the kids' new drawing board. This was actually pretty fun, but after my friend Taramin started getting all the German words right- none of the German's wanted to play anymore and went to bed.
The next day (December 25th, Christmas Day) we were going to travel east into Bavaria and check out a couple places there. Taramin had never been there, and some of the tourist books had some cool pictures in them from that area- so we took off in the 'Nanny mobile' and headed east. The first stop was this town called Aschaffenburg (in English it is pronounced- Ahshaffenburg). Because it was Christmas Day everything was closed, but we walked around the little town. The town is also off the Main, and it had a giant palace which we walked around the outside of. The real treat though was the Church in the town- which was open!- called Stiftsbasilika St.Peter and Alexander.
After messing around for a while in Aschaffenburg, we took off, headed east and south, and landed in Wurzburg (pronounced Vurzburg) as it was getting dark. Wurzburg really demanded more time than we had to give it because it had a church and a castle on a hill that we never got to. We ran to the palace in town, and took some pictures there before it got dark.
About the most medieval looking church I went to during my trip was the one in Aschaffenburg (13c). Most of the others were later style churches with baroque style stuff inside from after the Middle Ages. This stuff was really neat, but it was not exactly up my alley or within my knowledge domain. On the whole, in the places we went the stain glass was really modern or non-existant because English and American bombs having decimated much of these towns during a little war in the 1940's. While the church in Aschaffenburg was really nice, I felt, incorrectly at the time, that this was a sign of more to come. Unfortunately, that just wasn't the case. I didn't really hit another church that I could get really excited about until my last day in Germany on our trip to Trier.
On Christmas-
Compared to what I am accustomed to in the US, the German and English Christmas is really sort of mellow. They decorate trees and whatnot, but they do not really embellish as we do in the US with decorations everywhere. My Christmas' at home resemble more the Griswold's family Christmas than the English or Germans, who seem to have more subdued Christmases. In fact, I spoke to a number of English people (I am sure the Germans would agree with them), and they believe doing a lot of decorating with lights on the outside of ones house is really tacky. They talk this sort of thing down a lot and refer to it as the 'commercialization' of Christmas. I don't know- I personally think that is part of the fun of Christmas if you ask me. I like all the little decorations and lights flashing, and I kind of missed it to tell you the truth. Not that I didn't see it in some places, but on the whole the Christmas here and in Germany is much more mellow.
Anyway- this concludes my first two days in Germany. After running around Wurzburg we got something to eat in a little cafe that was open next to the train station. Then we headed back to Frankfurt, and we discussed what we would do on the following day when we planned to head a little west. Check in tomorrow for my trip to Mainz, Wiesbaden and the Frankfurt sculpture museum.