Road Ruminations – 14jun08

George Rebane

We arrived in Frankfurt am Main yesterday, descending through a cloud filled sky that sprinkled the countryside with brief showers.  This reminded me of the exact scenes I saw 45 years ago as a young second lieutenant arriving in Germany for my first duty station after Artillery School.  That eight-hour flight had been on a CL-44 turboprop run by Varig Airlines under contract to the Dept of Defense, and full of military personnel and dependents with young children.  I was blessed with a little screamer about six months old in the seat behind me – that kid must have held the Leather Lungs of 1963 title.

On yesterday’s flight Jo Ann and I were on an American Airlines 767 in business class – what a difference.  We breezed through passport and customs and were met by our longtime friends Hans and Gitta.  After lots of hugs and frenzied conversation where everyone wanted to ask all questions all at once, we walked about three miles to the airport’s parking structure where their van was waiting.  Frankfurt is the economic center of the EU and the commercial hub of all Europe with an enormous airport to match.

The ride to their house in Oberrad (a suburb) took about thirty minutes during which all of our ‘German juices’ started flowing again - Jo Ann and Gitta in the back seat.  The city looked very familiar since we were here ten years ago.  My artillery unit was based in one of the small towns surrounding Frankfurt, so this city became the local metropolis for us while in the Army where we came to the big PX to do the serious shopping while stationed here.  Our first child was born in the Frankfurt Military Hospital.

Gitta’s sister Helga with her man Peter joined us immediately after we arrived in Oberrad.  More frenzied conversation while food and champagne started arriving from the kitchen.  (l to r, Peter, Gitta, Helga, Hans)  This visit also marks the fiftieth anniversary of when in 1958 Jo Ann went to Germany as a teen-age high school exchange student.  To put this reunion into perspective, I have to remind the reader that ‘alles war auf Deutsch’ – everything was in German, our usual language when with our German friends.  And our last immersion in German was ten years ago; talk about being rusty and sounding like a five-year-old.

The conversation soon turned to politics, the economy, and the world situation.  We are blessed with friends with whom ‘daisy talk’ is not tolerated for long – substantive exchanges are the hallmarks that make these visits so memorable.  They are also a form of linguistic torture as we search for the appropriate words while our German slowly returns.  Today we both are already more fluid in these exchanges which must also handle the kind of subtle humor that Germans often inject into these conversations. 

On the agenda for today (Saturday) is a tour of downtown Frankfurt on a ‘wine tasting tram’ that will take us on a circuit of notable spots where we can disembark, walk around, and catch the next streetcar full of tipplers.  Tonight, with yet more friends in attendance, we'll have a backyard BBQ during which at least half the world’s problems will be examined in detail and many of them solved if only … .  The clarifying properties of imbibed ethanol are simply amazing.

Comments

[Russ]

George,

From the pictures your friends look like they would be at home in any American backyard. Please share more of you conversation, it is really important to get other points of view. May not agree with them, but we need to know what real people point of view are regardless. We could learn something!

Russ

[George Rebane]

Good points Russ. We did have some very interesting conversations re the US and EU roles in a future world with growing Russian, Chinese, and Muslim militancy. Will post on these and the insights (at least for us) they revealed.

[Martin Light]

Hello George, greetings from the safety and security of little Nevada County! Is that a sink to the right of Gitta in the photo of her and Jo Ann in the van? I caught a story on Friday's International Herald Tribune that Irish voters rejected the latest EU treaty as follows:

"Europe was thrown into political chaos Friday by Ireland's rejection of the Lisbon Treaty, a painstakingly negotiated blueprint for consolidating the European Union's power and streamlining its increasingly unwieldy bureaucracy. The defeat of the treaty, by a vote of 53.4 percent to 46.6 percent, was the result of a highly organized campaign that played to Irish voters' deepest fears about the EU. For all its benefits, many people feel, the Union is remote, undemocratic and ever more inclined to strip its smaller members of the right to make their own laws and decide their own futures."

I'd be interested in knowning what your friends think of this latest twist.

Continue enjoying your walk down Memory Lane!

Martin

[George Rebane]

Thank you Martin, yes that's a sink in their camping van. And, our German friends happen to agree with the Irish, their fellow EU citizens. Losing your status and prerogatives as a sovereign nation-state gives pause to all in the EU. Ultimately, in such environments multi-culturalism eventually kills all the cultures it contacts with even the dominant one finally transforming to become something else and unintended. Everyone in the EU knows this, but the political thought police make it hard to debate in public forums.