May 15, 2014
Day 16: Frankfurt to Kleinostheim
Our tenure as caretakers of the schwimm club threatened to be greatly extended, as we found the gate locked when we were ready to leave. A.J., the president had first thought to leave us with the key, but later decided just to leave the gate unlocked. Clearly, some other helpful member had found it unlocked and locked it.
So here is where our finely honed life skills swung into action. We had noticed a portable phone charging in the kitchen. We phoned the first person listed on the address book of this phone, and he turned out to know A.J.'s number off the top of his head. So we phoned that number and got Mrs. A.J. to roust him out. We already knew that he lived just a couple of blocks from the club. In no time he arrived on a bike, and we were sprung!
Now we proceeded along the bike path, which would soon take us to the bridge of our choice into Frankfurt. First, though, we apparently needed a brush with disaster. The path came to what to us was a blind right turn, around which it headed up a small hill. Unknown to us, a guy (read - dope) on a fast bike was speeding down this hill. At the bottom he cut around the blind left turn, keeping left, presumably to save a few inches and improve his speed. That's where he came face to face with Dodie. Dodie slammed on the brakes and the guy swerved. Head on collision narrowly averted!
This one dope was not the only one out there. We have seen this near other big cities - Vienna, Amsterdam. People are in a big hurry, and both go too fast for a path that includes doddery old walkers, children, and whatnot, and who also pass when there really isn't room. No further near misses, though.
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The altstadt of Frankfurt, such as it is, is just in from the river, so all we had to do was to choose a bridge and hop into the city. We chose a passerelle, which was actually one bridge too soon. So we had to make our way along a small but busy street for several blocks. As we paused to make sure we were at the place to turn left into the city, a woman - Monique - asked if we needed help. We spoke with her for a while, learning that she was originally from Amsterdam and was doing sales to Belgium and Netherlands for an American software company. Talking about starting activities (like cycle touring!) later in life, she told us that she and her partner had decided to take up triathlon, though neither could swim! They learned, and ultimately went quite far with it.
This discussion with Monique from Amsterdam was just the beginning of a remarkable time. In fact, it was a circus or zoo. Just jumping ahead a bit - we ended by talking with people from not only Amsterdam but also Montreal and Quebec, Poland, Thailand, Tibet, Austria, and China, plus some number of actual Germans!
We entered the square in front of the Rathaus, which was easily identified by the hundreds of Chinese tourists. It was fun watching them take pictures of themselves, the buildings, and us. The square itself is ok, but as Monique had mentioned and we were to further discover, the place had been mostly destroyed in WWII. Some time after the war a government administrative complex, in true ugly 50's style, had been built here. Only now has that been torn down and a project launched to rebuild in the original style. It is an urban "renewal" concept that recognizes that the now iconic Frankfurt highrise skyline does not make for a pleasant place to actually live in.
So this meant that the area in front of the rathaus was given over to a construction zone, at least for now. This zone stands between the rathaus and the dom, making it hard to walk from one to another until things are finished.
All the while we had been talking to Monique (and others) and marvelling at the Chinese, we had been listening to some sort of din coming from the next square over. So we headed that way, and what had started as just an exciting UQ heavy visit to an altstadt under construction became much more.
The Grampies are good at this - just blithely pushing their bikes into the middle of things they are completely unaware of. The square contained a building, and for a while we did not know what it was. It turned out to be a church. Beside the church, several hundred people dressed in the maroon of buddhist monks were chanting loudly, supported by drums. They had been doing this for at least an hour, while we were in the other square. All around were dozens of police, fully equipped, though not with riot gear. In the streets were their dozens of police vehicles. The chanters, many tibetan and many white, though in the same clothing, were chanting "Dalai Llama - stop lying".They chanted this over and over, in the manner of a mantra. It reminded us mostly of those Krishna Consciousness folks who were most active in the 70's and 80's, but who we had seen in full form in Leipzig last year.
So the Dalai Llama is one of our favourite humans. We have some of his books, we have his photo on our mantle. What were these people going on about, and furthermore, how did they get here - the middle of Germany - and why now?
One of the demonstrators approached us with some literature, and on finding we only spoke English, went and got English versions. We had a look at it. It was actually written in gobbledeegook, but there were two themes: The process for choosing the dalai llama had been flawed, so he was not a legitimate guy, and he had improperly banned this particular sect, who are believers in an obscure deity: Dorje Shugden. The protesters call themselves the International Shugden Community.
These people made us nervous, frankly, so we began to wheel ourselves over to the opposite side of the church. Now we encountered a group of black people, with stand mounted conical drums. What were these ones getting ready to protest? We had no idea, and were more intent on reaching the shopping street beyond, since we had eaten little for breakfast. Dodie went first, moving to thread herself through the drummers and scattered police. An officer (not a regular policeman, but someone in a fancieer uniform) stopped her, with words that though in German, clearly meant you can't go there. So the Grampies retreated, and headed back around by the other cuckoos. On the way, we approached a clump of police. We later observed they were all in clumps - a self defensive technique akin to the Roman phalanx.I addressed one, though it was straining my neck to look up at someone that big and tall! "What is that building and who are all these people?".
It was only then that we began to understand that the building was a church and that the Dalai Llama (yes, the Dalai Llama!) was about to enter it, past the welcoming committee of international drummers that the Grampies had just tried to wade through, with their suspiciously laden bicycles.
We circled around past the Shugden guys (still loudly chanting) and headed toward bakery row. The Shugden people now quieted and disbursed a bit. That must have signalled that the Dalai Llama had entered the buildng at the other side. So now in the nearby bakeries, the Grampies and the Shugdens ordered up the danishes. Meanwhile I noted some police returning from the Tschibo store with coffees. I would have a photo of that, but did not want to aim anything at them! Still it showed that no matter how intense your affairs, there is alway time for a coffee and danish break!
We walked on the shopping streets for a bit. Here the Chinese (remember the Chinese) had swarmed, attempting to buy out the stores, such as the Henckel store. Other nearby stores held other advanced German goods, like elegant kitchen and bath stuff and furniture.
Walking along through this, I tried to puzzle it all out. Here we were in the formerly bombed out center of a great city, where protesters from a land on the other side of the world felt safe to congregate, and be protected (presumably at no charge) by dozens of local impressive looking but benign police. Meanwhile tourists from many countries, not least the China that is also heavily involved in the Tibetan thing, snap up the fruits of production in what is again one of the most developed counties in the world. Also, turning back to the Dalai Llama, I had considered that the Chinese had long ago defeated him. Yet he was able to garner the attention of not only supporters but also opponents. - Good one!
Our reason for being on this side of the square, other than the bakeries, was the birth house of Goethe. The famous German poet is best known for Faust. This was on sale inside, in German, in three parts. Oh well, at least we can say we were there. Actually, Dodie was there. I was outside with the bikes. While standing there, I was approached by a Polish couple. They could only speak a few words of English. But they let me know that they were flying that afternoon to Ottawa. They had a four hour layover to look at Frankfurt. Their reason for going to Ottawa? Their son had met a Canadian girl in the Himalayas, and now both were living in Ottawa. Hmmm, a Tibet connection, again.
We had now seen enough for one lightning visit, so we headed back through the Tibetan demonstration area. Not before, that is, being stopped by some people from Thailand. They wanted to take our picture and have their picture taken with us. Back in the square, things had changed a bit. Now a large contingent of Dalai Llama supporting Tibetans had occupied one side of the area. They were all dressed in fancy traditional garb, and were doing a gentle circle dance. The Shugden people were seated and quiet. Quite civilised all around. A barricade separated the two groups. We went over and asked the police about it. They had provided the separator at the request of the groups. I was thinking, isn't Germany great - the police hand out the supplies and you don't even have to go rent it yourself.
Now Dodie slightly got into the act again. She decided the Dalai Llama should have a token of support from Canada. So she went up to the back door of the church and asked the (German) officials there if they would pass him a "Canada" sticker. They refused. Oh well, says Dodie, it never hurts to ask!
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So we made our way back over the river, and sailed merrily away. The path was usually smooth and paved, and extremely well marked. Our next objective was Hanau. Honau is the birth place of the Brothers Grimm, of folk tale fame. We crossed the river again, but Hanau was actually harder to figure out than Frankfurt. We had to make heavy use of the GPS and penetrate far into what actually is a fairly big place. We find found the Grimm "denkmal", which is a statue of the two brothers. They were born in 1785 and 1786 and died in 1863 and 1859, says a bronze plaque at the foot of the statue. And that's it. No explanatory panels, no story books on sale. We made our way into city hall and found essentially nothing at the tourist information there, except for shopping bags that said The City of the Brothers Grimm. So I guess you, and I will have to Google it.
On the side of the city hall was a poto display and several plaques. What it showed was that the area had been totally destroyed (90 percent) in WWII. Except for the statue, the Rathaus square was totally boring. This explains it. Reconstruction had been done with a practical bent, not to replace what had been there.
One of the plaques, as best we could make out the German, said that 500,000 gypsies " sinti und roma" had been deported from here and murdered. Other plaques mounted in the years since express the sentiment that this should never happen again.
We followed the GPS back out and over the river, and trekked onward. We had spent an awful lot of time at Hanau with little return, so when we came to Seligenstadt, which appeared to have a really interesting monastery and old town, we regretfully passed it by.
The path was smooth and paved, passing through newly sprouted corn fields mostly. We were heading for an organized camping some few kms off when we came to a little copse of trees in the middle of the fields and just at the path. Inside was a picnic table and garbage can, and a really enticing level gravel spot. "Honey, we're home!"
captions - perhaps quite a bit later
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Today's ride: 57 km (35 miles)
Total: 969 km (602 miles)
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