Frankfurt to Paris, pictures to come

1/1/07 Von Frankfurt Nach Paris

In the Frankfurt Hauptbanhoff, the main train station, specifically seat 71 in car 267 of train 56 to Paris Est; now rolling backwards as it seems the remainder of my trip will be. The sky is a steely gray and it matches the metal, glass and concrete city to the T. Over the Main River now, pronounced ‘mine’, which is significantly narrower than the New River by Blacksburg. Most of the trees here are deciduous, meaning bare now in early January, and the thick wet air reminds me of leaves on the ground in the Virginia woods. Bernd has made the point that the Virginia climate and wilderness are very like those here in Germany.

The only colorful thing in the city itself seems to me to be the graffiti, which I personally find cheerful – identical in every respect to what rebellious teenagers do in every country I’ve visited. Bernd has told me that all big cities were mostly destroyed in World War II, and that all the ‘old’ city centers were rebuilt to reflect what they originally had been. The history here is simply unfathomably long to my American mind; I just walked out of the cathedral where the emperors of Germany were crowned, the kings of the kings of regions, before the New World was even known to exist by people on this side of the ocean.

The trains are bright red, clean, and very much on schedule. I have not paid for one of the express ones, but nonetheless the houses and woods outside flash by; I’m under the impression even slow trains go 150 km/hr, which at 1.6 km/mile is near 100 miles an hour.

I’ve finished the part of my trip with Bernd’s parents, and I’m going now south to Paris to visit Jose, his girlfriend Florencia, and hopefully Ricardo as well. Perhaps I shall unfold my map of France and guess the cities as they pass. At the moment all I see are fields of close-cut cultivated green on one side, highways with a dotted line separating oncoming lanes (as opposed to the double yellow line with which I’m familiar) and what look like factories, smokestacks billowing white into the slate sky. It is perhaps nearly time to trade my German dictionary for my French one, to get out my Paris guidebook. I’ve six hours on this train, perhaps 3 more with light to see countryside – I suppose I’ll stop writing and gaze out the window for a while…