Busy Last Week

Lieber Herr Goethe,

My brain was in command mode all week long. "Type www.bahn.de into the URL box. Fill in the blanks - from, to, when, who etc. Pick ideal time. Enter return date and time. Decide on normal price or non refundable (much cheaper). Select, add credit card information, submit payment. Print ticket for train trip from Frankfurt to Weimar. Copy email from Deutsche Bundesbahn and paste into Pages. Label. Convert to PDF. Export to iBooks. Move to Poppies in May."

Poppies in May! Most of the documents for my upcoming trip are stored in this category. City information for Lyon, Marseilles, and Avignon. The 44-page program for the river cruise through the South of France. Hotel and apartment reservations. The bill from Phoenix Reisen. Some photos and maps copied from the Internet. My iPad holds it all together. But this is just one cog in the giant wheel of preparations. There are many others. I have bought a GPS application that is supposed to help me navigate through cities and towns in Germany. It will, I hope, prevent me from getting lost on the 28 kilometer Goetheweg. And find a restaurant nearby when I get hungry.

To refresh my high school French I acquired a wacky program, appropriately named Mindsnacks. It acts more like a gaming center than a tutorial. Word birds, sliders, and swells offer timed puzzles, quizzes, and spelling bees, bombarding me with the most basic of Conversations in French.

I spent an afternoon puzzling over Skype texting. After I allowed myself a ten dollar credit I was able to send text messages from my iPad to friends' cell phones. When nobody answered I sent myself a message, marking it iPad to cell. I did get the message, but what I texted back to the number Skype had assigned, disappeared along the way. When checking into a Skype forum I learned that one can text but not receive text back. But the credit will help in phoning land lines. Skype to Skype is, of course, free.

I can't remember how long I studied the map of Terminals 1 and 2 in Frankfurt, but I am happy with my newfound understanding of the connection between the Hilton Garden Inn and the Charterbus area in front of Hall B at Terminal 1. Since I am arriving in Frankfurt a day prior to the Cruise Departure I will spend a night at this airport hotel.

The bus to Chalon sur Saône leaves at 8am on May 23. From then on I will leave the planning and worrying to Phoenix and Company. They are in charge of the cruise for the next ten days and I am confident that all is well organized. But once they bring me back to Frankfurt I am on my own again. Which means another airport hotel stay since I won't arrive until six or seven in the evening on Thursday, May 23. The train to Weimar would arrive too late at its destination to allow me to take possession of my apartment.

On Friday, May 24, around one, I will arrive in Weimar, will take a bus to Goetheplatz, and walk to 16 Heinrich Heine Strasse, and, most likely, receive the key to my apartment from a sales person in Herr Thieme's Jeans Boutique. I have secured this place, online, from the owner, early in the year, because I wanted to make sure that I would wake up to the same rooftops as before. Since I spent three weeks in Weimar before, in the depth of winter, I hope for lovely spring weather this time. I imagine standing by the window in the morning, watching sunshine add a sparkle to the dew drops on the roof across the way.

Yesterday, besides repacking my suitcase one more time, I made reservations for the shuttle bus to the airport. There were also calls to bank and credit card companies to advise them of my foreign travel plans. I placed a hold on all mail. Prepared a travel brochure/schedule, as promised, for family members and a few friends. Deep-watered bushes and flowers, tightened defenses against the neighborhood skunk and raccoons.

Today I made sure airline tickets and other documents were printed in duplicate and that passport and money would not be left behind.

Tomorrow, before I leave, I will conduct a final tour through the house, turning off computers and printers, unplugging appliances, shutting windows.

And then I will be on my way to Europe, one more time. To walk under the same sky as Vincent van Gogh in the South of France. To photograph poppies. To speak my native tongue in Germany. To sit on the bench near your house and imagine a long conversation with you and your wife Christiane.

Until then.
G.