Tuesday, January 12, 2010

January 12th - Auf wiedersein

9.00 a.m.
Tonight at 10.10 (8.10 a.m. Wednesday in Melbourne)we are scheduled to fly home to a city where the temperature has been more than 50 degrees warmer than what I've become accustomed to.

Today they will have launched the new system at work. I wonder how it went.

There are a few things I'm looking forward to:
Seeing Hil, Rob and "Celly"
Not having to wear 78 items of clothing whenever I leave the house
Flat white
Celebrating our 40th anniversary
Catching up with some cricket
De Bortoli chardonnay
The Saturday Age
The Sunday Age
The gals at work (and AL of course - gotta say that)
Regaining the power of speech
My daily games of Alchemy and Word Mojo Gold

I'm going to start implementing my New Year's Resolutions too. No more unachievable, high flown stuff but something practical, i.e. memorising my mobile phone number and labelling all the mysterious dollops in the freezer. That should be do-able.

What I'll miss:
The Triple Ms - Mere, Matt 'n Mads
The cheese
The bakeries
Being so close to other European cities
Efficient transport system
The Kulture
Just knowing I am in Europe
The excitement of travelling
New experiences

2.10 p.m.
Just back from a farewell lunch with Mere at Textorbar. I had a chardonnay, a real one with body, flavour and discernible alcoholic content, not a wussy Euro one and it's gone to my head. I have to rest up.

Das es alles. Tchuss!
Limburg January 11

For our 6th and final trip out of Frankfurt we decided to go to Limburg. Surprisingly, it has nothing to do with Limburger cheese but instead has a beautiful Romanesque cathedral and an intact medieval town. I got some good photos of the old cemetery in the snow.


We had a tasty lunch though it was not at all what I'd deduced from my reading of the menu. After 5 weeks of living here I clearly haven't mastered a lot of Deutsch.
Sunday January 10

If the film, "On the beach" had been made in Frankfurt and Ava Gardner had never gone to Melbourne it would have been spared decades of cultural cringe. If she thought Melbourne in the fifties was the end of the world she should see Frankfurt on a Sunday. It is closed. Everything is closed except the bakeries (and thank God for them and their delicious cakes and bread) and the ever-present trinkalles (small streetside kiosks where you can buy a short snort at any time of night or day). People are wandering the streets, forlornly looking into shop windows and wondering what to do next to get out of the cold. What a wasted marketing opportunity!




Tonight it was our turn to return the hospitality and Matt cooked his signature dish - tacos, and Mere made an excellent apple crumble. We dragged in a table from outside and thawed it out to accommodate the extra numbers. Their friends are so interesting to talk to and it was a terrific night.