When you’ve crossed the Pacific in a
one-er, the Atlantic seems like a pond. Lufthansa did a good job getting us
over but we have to say the world spins too fast. When you take a seven hour
flight ex NY starting at 6pm US time, it’s only about five hours later that it
gets light again.
But that’s life. Frankfurt Airport, like Changi in Singapore,
does everything as efficiently as you could imagine and we were driving out of
the car park in a Hamburg-registered VW Polo 50 minutes after landing. The
autobahn was the inevitable challenge, providing the usual entertainment of big
Mercedes and Beemers going past at 200 km/h, since we weren’t in the mood to go
a lot faster than 130. But aside from getting lost early, we did fine and my
German was sharpened by asking some four locals where our friend Uli’s
Weidenweg address was in Erlangen, just north of Nuremberg. Top marks to the
bin man.
Seeing Uli Buettner was a big hinge point
on our trip. Uli and his wife Birgit had hosted Laura some three years before,
and they had both visited us in Sydney in November 2011. Sadly Birgit passed
away in March, and we wanted to make sure Uli was holding up.
He’s doing well, with a lot of help from
late 20s daughters Ulrike and Anke, and Anke’s new husband Vincent. We had two
nights in Erlangen interspersed with a day trip to Bamberg, half an hour north,
where I had been in 1968 and Anna in 1980. Erlangen’s a nice town but Bamberg
was amazing, with winding streets and the lovely old town hall in the middle of
the river Regnitz where I’d done classes. Letting Uli drive us up the autobahn
at a rate of knots in sixth gear in his Merc was a view from the other side.
Ulrike’s a genius at jigsaw puzzles, so
Anna gave her a puzzle of the Golden Gate bridge. I had jet lag, which
mystified Ulrike slightly, but she has a wonderful relationship with all her
relatives including Vincent. Her brother in law is your modern Renaissance man,
having been educated in Copenhagen and speaking English like a native, and
telling funny stories in English including the accents. He and Anke brought forward
their wedding date to February to include Birgit because and then held the
formal reception in April in a long-booked Schloss.
We had a boozy dinner chez Uli the first
night, then a Bier Garten dinner the second night at the Kitzmann brewery,
celebrating 300 years. Lovely stuff and a lot of fun with schnitzel and liver.
Wednesday was a travel day from Erlangen to
Meillonas, near Bourg en Bresse, where our friends Colin and Elaine have bought
a marvelous, quirky 18th century house. Elaine worked at one point
for Westpac in Paris and their lives are a neat mix of French food, English tea
and German breakfast cereal.
