Gelnhausen 4 - Circumventing the smoking ban, jamming on the Autobahn, and tribulations of US Customs
Saturday afternoon, as I write this, the church bells are chiming in the courtyard, signaling the end of the day. It is almost 6:00, time for evening prayers and evening meals. It is Samstag, Saturday, and most of the shops closed at 2 p.m. but the cafes are open, and I am sitting outside in the chilly air, drinking a cup of German hot cocoa. I fly out tomorrow, luckily one of the Zeldmans has offered to drive me to the airport in Frankfurt, as the trains are very sporadic and you cannot rely on a specific train coming at a specific time. I will be truly grateful if that happens! I am glad I did not rent a car or hop on trains and try to zoom through the German countryside during the four days I was here, but instead just sat back and relaxed into a German town for a little while. I think I was able to absorb more of the culture that way (I went to grocery stores, to malls, to shopping centers and drug stores, to local bars and out of the way cafes). I can see castles all day long, what I am more interested in is people, and how they live, work, play.
It’s been a wonderful experience.
On Saturday night, the townspeople we had met held a “bar hopping party” in honor of the Monks. Gary and Cindy and I met up with them at one bar, where the bartender / owner of the little shop was so happy at getting a full group of 20 into his bar, he decided to close it as a private 
party so people could smoke inside (In Germany now, it is forbidden to smoke inside a restaurant or bar, unless the place is large enough to accommodate a smoking and non-smoking section, and of course most of these little pubs and restaurants are not large enough for that… it is apparently also highly illegal for the bar owner to do what he did, but hey – he was making quite a large amount of money on us, most of the people in the group smoked, and it was quite cold outside that evening, so… it was not the first time bar owners had done that for us during our stay in Gelnhausen). Anyway, since the barkeep made the party private, the group quit barhopping and got serious with drinking, giving gifts to the Americans who were leaving, and singing more songs in German and English. It was a rousing good time!! I got back to the hotel late, REEKing of cigarettes and not having packed yet (I mentioned it was a tiny bar, filled to the brim with about 20 people, almost all of whom smoked - I may have been the only one who wasn’t - and the door was locked and windows closed) ... but it was a wonderful way to end my stay in Gelnhausen.
The next morning, Andy Zellman picked me up to drive me to Frankfurt, which took about 30 minutes on the Autobahn. The highest we sped was 160kmh, which is approx. 100mph. Someone went whizzing by us during that time, I have no idea how fast they were going, but it was screamingly fast. They even careened a bit out in front of us, and I wondered if I was going to see one of those famous wrecks on the autobahn you hear about (almost always fatalities at those speeds). The Autobahn actually has speed limits on sections of it now, and Andy would suddenly slow down considerably (to 100kmh, or about 65-70mph) when we went through one of those zones.
At the airport, Andy gave to me a gift from his father, a shotglass from their little bourough Altenhaslau’s 750 year anniversary (750 years!!!) back in 1990. That was a very special gift, indeed. And my good fortune doesn’t stop there! On the plane, my seat-mate was this German woman, 
about the same age as me, named Sylka, who was on her way to Charleston, SC to visit her sister. We had many similar interests, and talked a good portion of the trip, sharing language (I helped her practice English, she helped me with more German words), culture and travel stories. A big dream of hers is to see the Grand Canyon one day. 10 hours never went by so quickly, it really made the trip immensely enjoyable, and now I have a new German female friend!
I did discover, however, the scrutiny foreigners must endure to enter our country. They have to give fingerprints from the index finger of both hands, and also have a photo made, plus answer numerous questions about why they are coming, how long they will be there, etc. And we ALL had to go through three levels of customs checks before we could even get into the main part of the airport. It took me well over an hour, closer to ninety minutes, to get through all of that. When I went into Austria from here, it took me only about 30 minutes, and I only had to go through one checkpoint to have my passport stamped and customs declared. Americans are truly paranoid! One of the young men who served as our driver in Krems said he would love to visit America one day, but he refuses to go to any country that forces him to supply a fingerprint when he hasn’t done anything, and when his own country is so welcoming to foreigners. I can't blame him.
But in spite of that, it felt good to be home. I was definitely ready to eat familiar foods and see familiar faces. Maybe one day we'll get it right.
Thanks for reading, I hope you enjoyed.