Stranger in a Strange Land I like travelling and I like books, and I like you if you like those things too.

I’m seated in a Frankfurt beer garden, grateful for the cool amber liquid in front of me. An elderly man sits at the table across from mine. His face is gnarled like that of a fisherman of folklore, and sweat streaks through his crags of skin. The midday sun beats down upon us all, and it seems that all of Frankfurt is united through the same oppressive heat.
The gentleman is clearly not the sort to take a beating sitting down, not even from the sun. He looks at his companions, all as gruff as he, mutters something, and stands up. I can’t help thinking that talking to him would feel like stepping into an ocean across time, when men were men and tobacco was chewed – or would have been chewed, had he enough teeth left.
I point this observation out to my father in an attempt to cheer him up after our rough few days – Greek efficiency had left us stranded in Athens for a week, and our flight back included a long stopover in Frankfurt. I watched the cloud disappear from my father’s face and be replaced by the rainbow that is, unfortunately, his teeth. He guffaws loudly, astonished.
This is not the same fisherman.
This is not the man of grizzled bearing, the sense of having been washed back in time by the tides of imagination.
This is not the man who would have been met by Hemingway with a nod and a handshake.
This is not the man who had, up to thirty seconds ago, been wearing pants.
Yes, Frankfurt’s Gay Pride Parade had once again arrived, and this man was not going to let a good party go to waste. He and his elderly companions had seized this opportunity, and had even dressed up for the occasion - the sort of dressing up that came accompanied by whips and chains, and involved enough leather to make India scream in horror.
The elderly gentleman took up his beer glass with an air of self-satisfaction. It was clear that he no longer minded the beating of the sun, and only partly because an outfit comprised of a single leather codpiece is ideal summer attire.
Through this exemplary gentleman, our ragged band of weary travellers decided to cast away the chains that bound us to our unfortunate circumstances – a late ferry, missed planes, and an expensive bid to get back home – and to make the most of the giant, city-wide party in which we had found ourselves. It’s said that Frankfurt is a city of contradictions, and for no man was it more true than for that gnarled fisherman and the colourful parade that passed under the cathedrals of the city that hot summer day.